Why Do You Rob States?

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton replied, “Because that's where the money is.”

States have a lot more money than banks.

This is a partial reply to Tim's comment on a recent post where he pointed out that even 200,000 Chinese anchor babies becoming eligible to vote wouldn't be that big of a deal. I might have thought that as little as 3 months ago. Something completely changed my mind. The California High Speed Choo Choo, as Deano calls it, flipped me.

Authorized in 2008, it was supposed to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. Anyone familiar with California permitting and zoning red tape knew instantly that it was going to be insanely expensive and take forever. AI says that as of April 2026, the estimated cost for the full Phase 1 California High-Speed Rail project (San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim) has reached approximately $126 billion to $135 billion and I have no reason to doubt it. 

Not a single mile of track has been laid so far.

This sad, little bridge in Central California is just about the only solid evidence the high speed choo choo project even exists.

Someone on X made a snarky comment that completely changed my thinking about not just the high speed choo choo, but the graft and corrupting uncovered in Minneapolis, California and elsewhere as well as the voter fraud. In short, the post asserted that there was never any intention of building the railroad at all. It was all graft from the start.

It immediately rang true. When it was announced in 2008, I thought there was no way it was ever going to happen. I'd gone through the permitting processes on relatively straightforward remodels and construction and they were beyond onerous. This one, cutting across any number of habitats of strange and unusual creatures, seemed doomed from the start.

It was Willie Sutton on an utterly cosmic scale. The entire project was intentional theft. Everyone involved in it, save for the Global Warming Climate Change fanatics, knew it would never be built.

New hypothesis: The Democratic Party is mostly AWFLs with a pack of ruthless and intelligent parasites riding on top, directing it. 

The AWFLs thought they were stopping the death of polar bears while the parasites were sticking needles into the biggest financial veins they could think to find.

Michael Schellenberger, ex-progressive, wrote the staggering San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. It detailed the results of his inside-the-system research into how SanFran managed to spend stunning amounts on the homeless without having any effect other than increasing the size and severity of the problem. What he discovered was a huge industry that made money off of suffering.

Some of the NGOs he detailed would get money from the government at the beginning of the year and then do nothing but lobby and budget for next year's money. That was it. That was all they did. Get money and then get next year's money.

Our youngest son and I went to a Padres game recently. The stadium is near one of our zombieland areas. We had to drive through it to get to the game. Every zombie we saw had a price tag of about $80,000 per year. The money wasn't going to the zombies, it was going to government agencies and NGOs that would kick some of that money back to Democrat campaigns.

Dig this.

Elon Musk was right.

The federal government was just writing checks to anyone who asked for years on end.

ZERO Verification Requirements.

Today, I confirmed a pattern:

Dissolved business entities billing Medicaid at scale.

In just one small batch, I’ve verified over… pic.twitter.com/rDCtS3HrJS

— Walter Curt (@wcdispatch) April 12, 2026

The Somali fraud schemes in Minneapolis were of a piece. Dittos for the Los Angeles hospice scam recently uncovered by people doing the most basic of due diligence.

In answer to Tim's comment, I'll just stop with this:

Why was the border wide open for 4 years? Why don't we have national voter ID? Why are we all along in the world in having birthright citizenship?

Add it all up. It's Willie Sutton at as large a scale as can be managed. It's not that 200K Chinese will change a national election, although if they are properly placed, they certainly could. It's that birthright citizenship is just one more tool in the graft toolbox.

Steve Martin On Performing Live

I love watching artists speak about their profession. This bit from Steve Martin was particularly good.

Enjoy.

Pre-Secession Feeling

 Dig this.

Across the country, at least ten states, including Washington, are now exploring or have already passed an exit or wealth tax to combat revenue losses from residents fleeing to lower tax areashttps://t.co/rSrea03PNm

— KOMO News (@komonews) April 8, 2026

And this.

The past five years have seen a massive migration of Americans out of heavily Democratic counties and into ones where Donald Trump won majorities in each of the past three elections. That’s according to an exclusive analysis by Issues & Insights of the latest Census Bureau and election data.

Most analyses of internal migration patterns look only at state-level data. And what they show is that blue states are losing population to red states, and have been for many years.

I&I wanted to go deeper, so we used the latest Census data on migration between counties, and compared that with how these counties voted in the past three presidential elections.

What we found was that millions aren’t just moving out of blue states, but are moving out of blue counties within states.

Add on top of that the likely decision by the Supreme Court to uphold birthright citizenship even in the face of massive Chinese birth tourism where there may be as many as 200,000 Chinese in China who were born here and then quickly whisked back home. The blue states will absolutely be sending them mail-in ballots which will be perfectly legal.

How long can that go on and get worse as more and more foreign governments take advantage of the situation to create massive numbers of Manchurian Voters? When do the red states, becoming redder by the day, say they've had enough?

It's not just a sorting of the population, it's a realignment of irreconcilable camps. It's almost like the Southern cadets and instructors at West Point mounting their horses and riding home after secession, but before the start of the war.

Add to that this, which is being uncovered in several forms in several blue cities.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is embroiled in a national fraud scandal. Thus far, much of the coverage has focused on alleged schemes related to unemployment insurance, hospice care, and food stamps. In this exclusive investigation, we shine a light on one of California’s largest initiatives: the In-Home Supportive Services Program, or IHSS, which pays family members and other individuals to provide home-based care for the elderly and disabled—at a cost of nearly $30 billion per year.

On the surface, IHSS presents itself as an instrument of compassion, directing billions to caregivers who help with cooking, personal care, laundry, and other daily needs inside recipients’ homes. But a growing number of experts and critics argue that the program is rife with fraud, losing roughly an estimated $6 billion to $12 billion yearly to scammers. Meantime, the state’s powerful home-care unions collect more than $149 million in membership dues, funneling money into the political network supporting Newsom and California Democrats.

The level of fraud is so great that it is impossible to believe that the fraud wasn't planned by everyone involved.

How long can this last?

Beatnik Prayers

Between work, family commitments, Cursillo commitments, parish activities and more, I'm redlining most days right now.

For Cursillo, I'm one of the assistant leaders for this coming weekend retreat. As such, I've got to write a short letter to each of the 25 newbies who will be coming up with us. Naturally, I asked AI to help. Here's the anodyne letter it wrote for me.

Dear Brother in Christ,

I have been praying the Rosary and have fasted in preparation for your retreat, asking the Lord to open your heart to His grace. You are not walking into this weekend alone. Christ is already there, waiting to meet you in a powerful and unexpected way.

Simply receive whatever the Lord wishes to give you. There is nothing you need to prove and nothing you need to earn. I will continue to keep you in prayer throughout the weekend.

De Colores,

[Your Name]

That's a very nice base on which to improvise, but then I asked it to give me a beatnik scat version. I think I like it better, you dig?

Brother in Christ,

Hey man, dig this—you’re walking into something holy, something real. I’ve been rollin’ the Rosary beads for you, fasting and layin’ it down before the Lord, askin’ Him to crack open your heart and let His love pour in, slow and deep. You ain’t walkin’ in alone, no sir—Christ is already there, cool and steady, waitin’ just for you.

So take it easy, let it happen, don’t push, don’t prove—just be, and receive what He’s layin’ on you. I’ll be keepin’ the prayer rhythm goin’ all weekend, askin’ that you feel it, know it—that you’re seen, loved, and called, man, right down to your bones.

De Colores,

[Your Name]

One of my favorite things about AI is the way you can get it to generate wacky material on a whim.

On Centurions And Truth

It was Palm Sunday a few days ago and I had the rodents* at the 1100 Mass. The Gospel reading was Matthew 27:11-54. It's an absolute beast of reading, being the full Passion. I used AI to summarize it so I didn't accidentally anesthetize the rodents.

In the reading is this passage.

The centurion and the men with him who were keeping watch over Jesus feared greatly when they saw the earthquake and all that was happening, and they said, "Truly, this was the Son of God!"

Why was it that the Centurion and his boys were the ones who understood what was happening?

First off, you have to recognize who they were. The Centurion was equivalent to a Master Sergeant. He'd come up through the ranks, seen a lot of combat, plenty of executions including crucifixions and, if he was like the E-7s and above I've known, he was eminently practical, grounded and hard-boiled.

The Centurion. He smoked Marlboro Reds, of course.

When he was on guard duty in a quiet area, he and the boys would stand around, shooting the breeze. They'd talk politics, conspiracy theories, gossip, sex, the military life and swap campaign stories. They'd all have known a lot about Jesus. He was a big deal. You know that because when he entered Jerusalem, the people waved palm branches at him in his honor.

The Roman soldiers would have known about the rumors of miracles and the way the Jews had hoped He'd be a military leader and lead an uprising. When He preached peace and love, the Roman soldiers must have been relieved. The last thing they wanted was this relatively quiet backwater to go hot.

Then there was their local flag officer, Pontius Pilate. If they hadn't seen it themselves, they'd certainly have heard how he got shoved around by the Jews over this Jesus guy. Pilate hadn't seen any need to crucify Him, but the Jews shoved it down his throat. That's not a small deal. You never want to see your commanding officer get kicked in the nards like that.

Finally, there was Jesus' reaction to the whole thing. The Romans had seen plenty of execution and torture sessions and every other time, the victim would be crying or begging or protesting his innocence. Here was a totally innocent man quietly taking his unearned punishment.

Yep, Jesus was special the Centurion and his boys could all see it. They saw it because they had no dog in the fight. They'd been raised with polytheism which they didn't really believe. They'd grown up in a cynical, hedonistic world. Jesus was different from all that. Certainly what he preached was radically different.

When Jesus finally kissed the big strawberry and the sky got dark and the Earth shook, you better believe the Centurion knew what had just happened. 

He may have been the only one who really understood it. Well, he and his boys.

Utterly grounded, with nothing invested in it one way or another, they could see the Truth when it was blasted at them at full volume. Everyone else would have reasons or excuses or explanations or ways of minimizing what had just happened. The Centurion was trained to see what was, what really was.

It's my firm belief that the author of Matthew's Gospel did a bit of editing in that passage. I would bet it was something more along the lines of, "Are you (effing) kidding me? This guy is clearly the Son of God. How could these (effing) morons be so stupid as to kill the Son of God?"

Next time I'm having any kind of doubts about my faith, I will imagine explaining them to the Centurion. He'd box my ears and yell at me like a drill sergeant about being the dumbest animal that had ever crawled the Earth if I couldn't see the Truth.

* - The rodents means the Children's Liturgy. These particular rodents are aged 3-9. Like the Pied Piper, I take them away from their parents for the readings and the sermon for rodent-appropriate teaching and general mayhem in a back room. It's loads of fun.

San Diego Vs. Mobile

I visited God's Country earlier this week to look at a house on the east side of Mobile Bay. After landing at MOB, I drove over to Fairhope on Airport Blvd to I-65 to I-10 to Alabama 98 and down to Fairhope. Going back to the airport later during the week, I took the same route, but kept to the surface streets going down Government Street instead of the freeways. The drive is about 35 miles. Fairhope proper is high rent. If you're familiar with San Diego, think La Jolla. Around MOB, it's low- to mid-rent.

As I drove this time, I noticed something. No potholes, no homeless, no trash. I mean zero. There might have been the occasional grocery store plastic bag, but I didn't see more than 3 in that 35 mile drive.

Here in San Diego, the streets are practically dirt roads in some spots. Where our rental is in Bay Park, the roads are atrocious. There are large chunks of suburban San Diego that are free of the homeless, but it's almost impossible to drive even 10 miles, much less 35 without passing several zombies. San Diego has large sections that are zombielands. Everything near the San Diego River, anything in the Sports Arena area and all of downtown from the Barrio to North Park is zombielands. In the zombielands, trash is ubiquitous.

That's just the homeless. That doesn't touch upon the impoverished areas that are common to all cities.

In short, common areas in San Diego are in pretty poor shape. Common areas in Mobile are in excellent shape.

I asked AI* for the relative per capita government spending and got this.

City	Total Budget	Population	Per Capita Spending
San Diego	$5.82B	~1.4M	~$4,100
Mobile	$455M	~187K	~$2,400

San Diego spends 70% more per person than Mobile.

How about per square mile?

City	Budget	Area	Spending per sq mi
San Diego	$5.82B	372 sq mi	~$15.6M
Mobile	$455M	180 sq mi	~$2.5M

San Diego spends about 6x as much per square mile.

AI tied itself in knots trying to make excuses for San Diego, but they were all self-inflicted. It blamed the homeless, labor costs, regulations and so forth. The truth of the matter is that San Diego is deep blue and Mobile is moderately red. Mobile has a Republican mayor, but it is also 50% black, so I doubt the Republicans sweep to victory in every election.

Decay is a choice and San Diego has made that choice.

Speaking of decay, in the Gulf South, you live in an environment rife with predators from the microbe level on up to the plants and animals. If you leave a house unkept for a year in San Diego, you get weeds, but not much else. If you do that in the South, your house will begin to be devoured by mold, fungus, weeds, vines, trees, insects and more. San Diego has occasional, localized fires. Mobile has regular downpours and floods in addition to hurricanes.

Make all the excuses you want, but San Diego has a much easier maintenance problem to solve than Mobile.

There's much more. California is having spasms about how expensive housing is here. Our rental garners an absolutely obscene amount of money every month. I have no idea how anyone can afford it, but we're only charging the going rate which is upwards of $4000 per month. The only reason our middle son and youngest son have houses here in San Diego is that we took care of their down payments. My boss at work, a middle-aged woman of some accomplishment, cannot afford to buy a house. It's insane.

To solve this problem, San Diego has permitted the construction of enormous numbers of high-density housing - condos, townhouses and apartments. The road system was designed for a much smaller population and its flow capacity cannot be increased. As a result, the freeways slow down hours before rush hour and come to a standstill for a good hour or more during rush hour.

In Mobile, the I-10 tunnel that leads from the city to the Mobile Bay bridge clogs up briefly around rush hour and the surface streets slow a bit, but the rest of the time, it's only the timing of the traffic lights and the rural school buses stopping to let kids on or off that slow your journey.

Clearly, San Diego governance is horrible in the short, medium and long-term sense. The homeless problem could be solved in a month by strictly enforcing vagrancy laws. The trash and pothole problem would then have access to money now spent on the zombies. In the long term, there's probably not a lot that could be done. Like Nashville and Atlanta, just to name two places I've experienced, San Diego has outgrown its infrastructure.

AI estimates we have about 200,000 illegals in the county. That's roughly 10% of the population. Maybe the long-term solution would be border enforcement. Note that I haven't even touched upon California's looming fiscal catastrophe.

At any rate, the sooner we get a safe house in Dixie, the better.

I've traveled all over the country and as far as I'm concerned, Mobile, Alabama has the best skyline of all.

* - For AI, read ChatGPT.

Is It The One?

I spent the week in God's country, looking at a particular property on the Fish River. The place was so beautiful, even wife kitteh loved it and said it was The One. She didn't go with me on the trip, but the realtor had done a thorough video walk-through before I left. She'll come with me on the next trip, after the inspections and before we close.

The view from the dock is perfectly adequate.