Alright look, I've had this blog going pretty regularly for just over 5 years now. I started it with the original purpose of posting the bets I was making for the 2020 election which still to this day remains one of the most bizarre events I've ever bet on in my life. It was profitable ROI wise but it was tough to get a whole lot of money down where I was playing. There were so many massive, sudden, strange price moves all over the place that I felt compelled to talk about it somewhere. It has since then morphed into what is it today: a little place where I discuss topics I feel qualified to discuss. Sports betting obviously being the main one with the PPH world (pay per head sports betting accounts) in particular focus. I've thrown in lots of crypto and some economics and a little of my life. And while politics has always been in the background of everything, the only time I really get into it is when discussing betting on it, like with the 2020 election and a little bit of the 2024 election. The number of times I've mentioned Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, outside of talking about a bet, is probably less than 5 total. And while we're going to depart a little bit from this today, I do intend on keeping it that way. I am in no way an expert on the politics of the day, nor do I ascribe to be one. Being super plugged into everything that's going on is not only time consuming and draining, but I find that it's largely a waste of time. What do you do differently with the information? Just complain about it online? I think that is maybe a hard lesson we all got over the past 10 years or so. I know I did. Loudly posting your political opinions online doesn't do anything for you or anyone. That's not how you win hearts and minds, if that even is your goal. But at the same time, you can't just shut the world off. You live in it too, and there are decisions being made on your behalf that effect you. So there's sort of this line you have to tow toe where you're an informed citizen but you can't let it intrude on your life.
Anyway, that's all a long way of saying that I'm going to get into politics here but it will absolutely not become the focus of this blog. But one of the main focuses here has been to call attention to the absolute (say it with me everyone) waste, fraud, and abuse going on in this country. My specific flavor has always been looking at inflation from money printing, but it's all down stream from the same rot. This idea that your money isn't actually yours, which presupposes that your work and its production isn't actually yours, which presupposes that your mind and the workings of it isn't actually yours, which presupposes that your LIFE isn't yours. And finally, after all this time, someone is actually doing something about it. Like, really, actually, literally, doing massive, major actions with far reaching consequences, at break neck pace. It would be absurd for me not to talk about it. But I'm not going to really get into the day to day, nitty gritty of what Trump and Elon are up to. You can watch the news yourself for that. Rather, I'm going to talk about the overall big picture, why it matters, why you should care, and what I think is at stake here.
I don't want to sound hyperbolic or like too much of a fan-boy here, but I do think this is a bloodless Revolution. It's at least "Revolution-adjacent". We're talking major, major changes to the way our entire system works and the way OUR money is spent. Everyone knew the federal government was wasteful. It was one of those things where everyone just sort of shrugs and says 'well what can you do?' as they slowly get bled out, pretending not to notice the cut. Well we finally got someone in the Oval Office who had the balls and the brains to bring in the single best human being for the job right now to absolutely gut these little bastions of corruption, line by line. Every single day it seems there's a different headline that I would have been overjoyed to get in a whole YEAR. USAID being gutted, Social Security payments to people OLDER THAN AMERICA, a Treasury Department that quite literally never turned down one single payment request(!!) Having Elon Musk, a private citizen business man, giving a 20 minute speech from the Oval Office laying bare some of the most egregious instances of fraud that they've uncovered so far, while ALSO throwing out there that it's odd that a number of politicians have salaries that are less than $200k a year, yet have net worths of over $10 million (and some over 10x THAT). Where did that money come from, exactly? Like, just having that sentence uttered in the Oval Office alone, JUST THAT, would have been enough for me, honestly. Just for someone to finally and clearly say that sentence. And it was just one remark among many, in one speech among many, in one DAY among at least the next four years. The pace of this administration so far has been nothing short of breath-taking.
It's hard to describe the way I feel about politics and my country more broadly right now. I have never quite had this feeling before. I think I got a taste of it in 2016 when Trump won the first time, but that was so unexpected, even to him I think, that the shock of him winning alone was like half of it. When you consider how unexpected it all was, the opposition he faced his whole term, then a whole year wasted with Covid, it's amazing anything got done at all. But boy does this term feel different. They really hit the ground running and were more than ready. Seeing a solid, competent, confident, experienced man back in the White House, signing Executive Order after Exectutive Order WHILE taking questions from a hostile media for like an hour straight is almost jarring, especially after the last 4 years. It makes you realize how much they've taken. To simply have a competent human being actually doing the bidding of the American people, for no other reason than it is what they hired him to do, for that to be as quasi-revolutionary as it is, it really just shows how corrupted and sick and captured the entire federal apparatus of the United States has become.
As far as left-wing opposition, man, I gotta tell ya, there really ain't much. And I've been looking for it. I can't remember a time in my life when one of the parties was more down and out than the Democrats are right now. Maybe in 2008 when Obama trounced Mccain (which ultimately led to Donald Trump 8 years later), but even then the Right was at least making noise. They knew they had to go back to the drawing board and they did. Well maybe it was done for them, but the point is that the drawing board got brought back out. But now on the left it feels like there's a super old, geriatric power base that is unbelievably corrupt (even for modern politician standards), entrenched in their ways and in their base, and they aren't going anywhere. Then you have this super radical, younger faction of their party from which we have heard some of the dumbest fucking ideas I have ever heard in my life in the past decade or so. They took aim at Western society as a whole and really just unloaded the clip. Universities, media, art, labor, science, the government. They quite literally got their tentacles in just about everywhere. And their mission was always nebulous, at best. Increase racial diversity (which always kind of secretly but kind of not so secretly just meant less white men). More 'tolerance'. Defund police departments. Lots of weird sex stuff. Guys can be girls if they say they are and vice versa. Criminals don't understand that crime is bad so we shouldn't lock them up. Borders are bad, unless it's a border in a foreign country. Then it MUST be defended. I could go on and on. It's like we gave the keys to our world to the single worst fucking high school guidance counselor you've ever heard of in your life, and it almost worked! Can you imagine if we got four more years of Kamala Harris?! Some people were shocked at how much Trump won by. I was shocked that single person voted for Kamala Harris, but that's simply my opinion of course.
There was a great interview the other day on the CNBC morning show with the CEO of Palantir. He made a great point, among many, which was that the Democrats could and should be a part of this DOGE thing by Elon. They could get together and demand that they be let in on it, be shown exactly what they're doing and how and why. I think Elon would actually be receptive to that. If not, it's even better for the Dems as now you can really make the case that Elon and Trump are up to something shady. But instead they've backed themselves into such a corner that they have to fight Trump and Elon at whatever it is that they're doing, even if the American public very much likes what they're doing and wants them to do it. So at this point I really don't see any roadblocks in front of Trump, at all. I'm sure the left will lick its wounds and come back in a different form, and as hard a right winger as I am, I don't want any single party or person to ever get too much power. I couldn't possibly be any more pro Trump/Vance/Elon, but that doesn't make me a republican for life or anything.
But it is an odd feeling lately. Is it... civic pride? Is it being proud to be an American again? Ever since the fog of 9/11 lifted, I feel like this country hasn't really given us much to be proud of. It started to feel like one big strip mining operation, and we were the ones being strip mined. Did you know that cost of a house in gold has actually decreased over time? Read this if you want to truly go insane. Despite housing getting insanely better over the last 100ish years, in spite of the average house size increasing 74% from 1910 to 2016, in spite of the cost of labor increasing dramatically, the cost of housing has actually decreased in real purchasing power. The average price of a house in 2020 (the latest date this info had. It's actually worse now) was $313,000 or 5.8 KG of gold. The average price of a home in 1900 was $4300, which was equal to 6.5 KG of gold. So if you sold your home in 1900 and received gold instead of cash, you could use only that gold to buy an average house in 2020 and still have more than 10% of the original gold. If you received the $4300 in cash instead, in 2020 you could maybe afford to buy one really nice couch for the house. Or put up about 80 feet of chainlink fencing.
I mean, really think about that for a minute. That is how much inflation has stolen from us. I can't think of any other single metric that shows the true cost of inflation like that. I guess one of my main points in all this is that we really don't even understand how good we could and should have it here. The amount of raw wealth that has been slowly and quietly stripped out of the American public and given to corrupt bureaucrats all over the globe and to people in government with 'suction to the system' is truly astonishing. And it comes at the expense of your quality of life.
This is really what gets me the worst. How can anyone be against what Trump and Elon are doing right now? It is genuinely baffling to me. I understand the 'last thrashing' of the establishment. The dying, sick, gasping breaths of a bloated system finally collapsing on itself. The people that benefitted from this system, I can understand them hating it. They're utter parasites and deserve every ounce of contempt we can muster, along with serious jail sentences. But I mean, I can at least wrap my head around them not wanting their gravy train to end. But fellow citizens? People working normal jobs, paying taxes? How can anyone not want to stop themselves from being robbed? It's like covid all over again where I feel like I simply don't understand half the people in this country anymore. Imagine reading about all this 100 years from now in a history book. "Elon Musk cuts the US deficit in half, finding trillions of taxpayer money going right out the door, stolen, out of the country, into the pockets of some of the worst, most brazen criminals alive, living in countries that openly despise America and Americans. And some American taxpayers...didn't like it." It's bizarro world.
Random things:
-I would be remiss if I didn't mention this. I know it came out of absolutely nowhere, but this new 4 nation NHL all star format has been incredible. The best players in the world suiting up for their countries and to say they are taking it seriously would be a ridiculous understatement. During the first US vs Canada game, which was in Montreal, the home crowd booed our national anthem. So team America decided to beat the shit out of Canada in THREE fights in the first minute, then went on to win the game. WE ARE SO FUCKING BACK!
-The rematch is tomorrow, Thursday 2/20. And here's a sneaky little play I'm considering. We know these teams consist of basically every teams best player and they are playing their balls off. Well, the tourney ends Thursday and the league gets back into action Saturday with a couple games going Saturday afternoon. Especially for the West Coast guys, that is a lot of traveling and a lot of intense hockey in a short period of time. I might look to fade some teams and/players on those early Saturday games. Especially if tomorrow nights game is especially intense/nasty and/or goes into OT. I have yet to really dive into the schedules but the idea is there. (See? There's always an actionable betting angle somewhere).
-I came across a great quote recently and I can't get it out of my head. This may be a prelude to my next post but I'm not sure yet. I need to really think about it more but the quote is "When you just want be left alone, you become a libertarian. When you realize they'll never leave you alone, you become something else." I can feel the libertarian in me slowly dying over the past 5 or so years. I think libertarianism and atheism have quietly taken a beating in the past couple decades. Something I'll definitely get into here at some point.
Well that about wraps things up here. Check back soon, I'm feeling very writer-y lately. Buy Bitcoin, store it yourself, and have a good day!
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