Halloween – Boo!

The Season: There is not much in the way of Halloween parties or trick-or-treating at the White Wolf Mine this year. Ok, there never is, but some years, I join my grandchildren. Last year, I walked with the little candy harvesters dressed as a blind pilot.

Next year, I’ve committed to rejoin the hunt for candy. I think I’ll go to Home Depot, get some sample strips of shaded paint, wear all black, and go as “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Bullet Points:

** Low-cost crap from China – from the sweat shop to your door!

** Nevada – Nevada was home to the Paiute, Shoshone, Washoe, Goshute, and Mohave people before Spanish explorers came to the Americas. Then it was known as part of Alta California and was ruled by the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Latter-Day Saint State of Deseret claimed all of Nevada in the Great Basin. The United States annexed Nevada in 1848, and it became part of the Utah Territory before splitting off into the Nevada Territory on Halloween, 1861. Statehood came on Halloween in 1864, making Nevada the 36th state in the United States.

** Are you Asian?

** Fishing Boat – or Drug Boat? (right)

** A new product from L’Oréal – for women only.

** The Russian chick messes up the lip sync. (some sort of Halloween theme?)

** What do you need?

** At the Dealership – with WSF.

** The death toll in a massive police raid on a notorious drug gang in Rio de Janeiro rose Wednesday to 119 killed, including four policemen, Brazilian police said.

** On family occasions, during the holiday season, make this suggestion to family members who have TDS: watch it to the end on YouTube.

** It all began like this.

** (Huckabee) According to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl’s new book about the 2024 election, “Retribution,” Barack Obama was angry with Nancy Pelosi for endorsing Kamala Harris for President within 24 hours of Joe Biden’s withdrawal. Karl claims that Obama and Pelosi privately agreed not to approve and that Harris shouldn’t be handed the nomination. A source close to Pelosi reportedly told Karl that Obama’s message to her was, “essentially, ‘What the f— did you just do?!’” I can’t say that we agree with Obama very often, but to give the man credit, that’s precisely what I would have said, only without the profanity.

** I don’t know why Canadians love paying taxes, but they do.

** Russia is testing an invisible nuclear cruise missile. Pres. Trump is not impressed. (zerohedge)

** How does a 33-year-old lifelong do-nothing — a person who has never held a real job, never suffered a true challenge, been handed everything on a silver platter — turn into a mayoral frontrunner in New York City? How does a self-described socialist who despises capitalism become the leading candidate for the mayoralty of the world’s financial capital? (not for long) How does a man who nods at “globalize the intifada” and refuses to say Hamas should disarm — all while complaining that the real victim of 9/11 was a distant relative who was allegedly given an ugly stare by a fellow subway rider (he just made up the story for his electorate – channeling Pedo Joe Biden) — become the most likely next mayor of the city in which 9/11 occurred?”

From Ammoman

Which cities in the U.S. are safest? Reporting variations and inconsistencies in crime stats made answering that question challenging.

However, as you know, we often conduct in-depth research to obtain the best answers. Our latest report lists the safest cities in the U.S., and here are the highlights:

• Irvine, CA, and Virginia Beach, V,A are the safest large cities in the country.
• Gilbert, AZ, Plano, TX, and Honolulu, HI, are large cities with violent crime rates below the national average.
• The safest cities in each state range from violent crime rates of 9.43 per 100,000 people (Connecticut) to 526 per 100,000 people in South Dakota.

https://ammo.com/research/cities-with-the-lowest-crime-rate

Are you Hungry for Roast Beast?

Only SNAP recipients can afford it.

Chinese Gold

(h/t Ken, Claudio, and VM) Maybe a decade ago, I was approached by some Mainland Chinese types who said that they wanted to introduce crypto backed by physical gold. I told them that I thought it was a good idea if you wanted to move value from place to place and store it. In concept, it would be redeemable in at least 100 locations worldwide. I thought that it would advance money laundering and tax dodging to a new level. Something never contemplated. Of course, it would crash the PRC almost immediately, as everyone would buy it and withdraw their money from the clutches of the CCP.

Fast forward to today. Imagine a world where the Chinese yuan is as good as gold. Literally, every yuan is backed by real bullion. Every headline screaming: “The era of the gold-backed yuan has arrived.” Sounds glorious for Beijing, right? When you peel back the propaganda, the math, and the politics, you realize: a gold-backed yuan is the financial version of a unicorn. Pretty to fantasize about. Impossible to ride.

Let’s start with the numbers. China’s official gold reserves? Roughly 2,300 tons — worth about $200 billion. Sounds huge, until you compare it with China’s $40 trillion M2 money supply. That means for every yuan in circulation, there’s barely half a percent of gold to back it. That’s like calling yourself a billionaire because you found some coins under the couch.

To make the yuan credibly convertible, Beijing would need 20–30 times more gold — basically an entire decade of global production. That’s not monetary reform. That’s global market warfare. The moment they try, gold prices skyrocket, the dollar strengthens, and China would be caught in a self-defeating spiral — trying to buy credibility while destroying gold’s affordability.

If China had the gold — would they actually let anyone redeem it? A gold-backed currency only works if you can convert it. Yet the yuan isn’t even freely convertible into U.S. dollars, let alone gold.

Try wiring $100,000 abroad from China and you’ll hit a bureaucratic wall faster than you can say “capital controls.” You’d get a lecture on “patriotic responsibility” and a stack of red tape thicker than the Great Wall. Now imagine a foreign fund manager asking the People’s Bank of China to redeem a billion yuan for bullion.

That’s the core problem. A gold standard demands trust, transparency, and rule of law — three things Beijing has never offered. The dollar dominates not because it’s flawless, but because it’s trusted. If you hold dollars, you can spend them anywhere, anytime, under a predictable system. Try doing that with the yuan — where one bad tweet could freeze your assets.

A genuine gold standard would tie Beijing’s hands. No more printing money to bail out property developers or local governments drowning in debt. No more stealth stimulus when exports collapse. That’s monetary handcuffs — and Beijing’s entire model runs on printing, not prudence.

Gold is honest money. It punishes waste, rewards discipline, and exposes lies. That’s why the CCP will never embrace it. Gold represents freedom — the freedom for savers to protect wealth, investors to move capital, and citizens to measure truth. And truth is the one thing China’s rulers fear most. So, the next time you see a headline about the “gold-backed yuan,” remember this: You can’t back a currency with gold when your entire system is supported by fear.

More about Zoltan

In “Mamdani’s Experiments Won’t Faze the Rich,” Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral platform for New York City is scrutinized by Nicole Gelinas, who argues that although wealthy residents and major businesses may dominate local attention, they will essentially be shielded from the disruptive policies Mamdani proposes, while middle- and lower-income New Yorkers may face the brunt of the consequences.

The article highlights several of Mamdani’s radical proposals—such as an immediate rent freeze for all rent-stabilized tenants, elimination of bus fares, and the creation of a new Department of Community Safety to shift responsibilities from the police to civilian outreach workers—showing how these well-intentioned ideas may undermine long-standing regulatory frameworks, strain transit funding, and shift risk onto less affluent residents.

Chinese Espionage

In 2019, the FBI arrested Zhongsan Liu, an employee of the Chinese government. His job was management at the New Jersey branch of the China Association for International Exchange of Personnel, or CAIEP. Since 2017, Liu has been observed arranging illegal visas for Chinese recruiters who used CAIEP and Confucius Institutes at six American universities, where these recruiters sought suitable students or faculty for espionage operations. Liu had spent the last 26 years working for CAIEP and was believed to have been active in the Thousand Talents Plan since its inception in 2008. That was about the same time the Confucius Institute program began in 2004 as a means of cultural exchange and, as it later turned out, to observe and control Chinese students attending foreign universities. As time went by, it was discovered that the Confucius Institutes were more about intelligence work than cultural education. Many of the staff at the Confucius Institutes are Chinese with PhDs and J-1 research visas.

As successful as this espionage effort was, most Chinese Americans approached by recruiters were not interested and politely declined. A growing number quietly reported their encounters to the FBI or to friends who could do it for them. The Chinese knew this was a risk and considered it acceptable, given the amount of intellectual property being stolen and put to use in China.

Another calculated risk was the Confucius Institutes being exposed as extensions of Chinese espionage efforts and as organizers of Chinese students to protest whatever the Chinese government wanted. Many of the students agreed with their government and were not just following orders when they protested some American affront. But these Chinese students, usually in America for the first time, began to doubt some of the issues they had been sent out to protest. This was especially true of the Hong Kong protests, which were massive. The Hong Kong Chinese want democracy, and the official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) line is that democracy is inefficient and not suitable for China or the Chinese. Many overseas Chinese, as in Taiwan, Singapore, and other Western countries, would disagree. The CCP considers these Chinese misled and in need of reeducation or perhaps the benefits of CCP rule.

Look at Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who had been tapping Fang Fang, a Chinese Communist spy, running him while he was on the House Intelligence Committee. Even after unmasking, Swalwell is still in Congress! Is he reporting back to Beijing? I can’t say, except that he’s a devoted enemy of the MAGA movement, as one would expect. Even the disclosure that he spied for Communist China was not enough to get him thrown out of Congress, let alone executed for treason.

The Day of the Dead (and Sermonette) is Coming this Sunday here on VM.

The Brazilian Drug Gang Problem

Eventually, it becomes a military problem.

Drones dropping bombs, anti-tank rockets being fired, high-caliber weapons firing in all directions, columns of smoke as far as the eye can see. This isn’t the Gaza Strip or Ukraine; it’s Rio de Janeiro, where narcoterrorists are trying to reinforce their control over civilian areas and the police.

The result was around 60 deaths, including at least 56 criminals, with 81 arrested.

In Utah

State officials promise large-scale involuntary addiction and mental health treatment at Salt Lake City’s edge. Critics see “a prison, or a warehouse.” Others see a solution to the homeless problem. Utah is following the VM philosophy toward the homeless problem. (1) Isolate and triage, which means round up and arrest. (2) Criminals go to prison or jail depending on the crime they’ve been convicted of. (3) Drug addicts go to treatment to dry them out and rehabilitate them. (4) The insane go to medical treatment with a humane entry point back into society, eventually, if they’re capable. It’s an expensive undertaking and requires the facilities necessary to handle the problem, but as a society, we don’t have much of a choice. Living facilities for the hardcore wastrels need to be safe and monitored (not inner city projects).

Utah has a smaller homeless problem than many states. Working with the Department of Health and Human Services, they found that state capacity would need to increase by 4,700 to include all those experiencing severe and persistent mental illness that prevent them from meeting their “basic human needs.”

Some oppose it because it involves an involuntary component. Ultimately, it’s more humane, and there isn’t room for NGO’s to skim money from the “solution” that goes into the democrat party war chest.

Identify the Armor

1

Not a T-55

Identify the Ship

2

It’s new…weird, but new.

3 & 4

ID both the vessel and its main battery (2 graphics) – Recent test.

Identify the Aircraft

5

Distinctive engines

6

62 built

End