What I stand to gain or lose with tomorrow's election results.

 

The Trump "fight" picture. AP.

As you are certainly aware, the election is tomorrow and I thought one more post was appropriate. This one isn't going to be trying to convince anyone to vote for a candidate, or a recap of what I think will happen, I already did both in a previous post. I still think my arguments there are valid but there's no real reason to rehash them. 

So what is this post going to be about? This one is a more personal post about how I think the election will effect things. In short, I think a Kamala Harris presidency would be an absolute disaster for me and a Trump presidency would be, at worst, status quo ante but would likely lead to an improvement in my life. There are winners and losers in every situation, but in my case I think I would lose out quite badly if Harris gets into office. 

Of course, the elephant in the room is that things could go so badly that the rest of this post is completely unnecessary. Ukraine continues to worry me. The war there is not going well for NATO and the fact that we are in a de facto shooting war with Russia and it isn't the #1 election issue is beyond bizarre to me. 

And it's going to get worse before it gets better, if it gets better at all. Russia is making rapid gains and Ukraine is simply running out of troops. They have no real way to win the war and my concern with a Harris presidency is that she is going to do desperate or stupid to try and salvage the war. The only way that a "win" happens in Ukraine at this point is if we send thousands of NATO troops and that would lead to World War III.

To be fair, that's not a 100% possibility, my guess is that Harris will cut and run, but she is more of a war hawk than even Joe Biden. I just don't trust her to not screw it up. I guess it's possible that Trump could screw it up too, it's a terrible situation after all, but I think that Harris is a lot less qualified to handle the issue. 

And I have a lot of anger over the war. In 2016 I voted for Donald Trump because I was convinced that the Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton in particular, wanted a war with Russia. After the 2020 race, those fears were obviously concerned. At least Trump is actually interested in peace and will be willing to cut a deal with Russia to end the war. Harris will be under extreme pressure from the deep state to  continue the war at all costs, they have wanted the war for years. 

And if she does fail in the Ukraine-Russia war? Well it's essentially the end of all things. It would be extremely easy to screw things up so badly that the war goes nuclear and if that happens, I die. Russia would target several cities in the region and one of them is close enough to my home that I would die, but not close enough that that death would be instantaneous. Is this likely? It's not zero so it's something to be concerned about, I think it could be as high as 25% chance under Harris, and like 5% under Trump. Both are pretty unacceptable but I like my chances with Trump better than Harris.

The threat of nuclear war isn't the only reason I am worried about a Harris presidency. She's a pretty direct threat to my job as well. I work in the beef industry and the Democrats are incredibly hostile towards all meat production. Though I don't think they will go so far to ban meat entirely, it's not outside the realm of possibility that I could lose my job under Kamala Harris. At the very least she could put into place more regulation that could hurt my company.

My bigger fear is the fact that I am saving up for a house. My original plan in 2020 was to use the extra money I was earning from the pandemic hazard pay as a down payment for a house. Unfortunately, the Biden White House has done a lot to ensure that I could not afford the actual payments, despite having a pretty huge down payment. The huge amount illegal immigrants brought into the country by Biden has massively increased demand for housing and the interest rates have not helped. 

And what has Harris proposed to "solve" this problem? She's going to subsidize demand by giving foreign born first time home buyers $25,000. I wouldn't qualify for this, and most Americans wouldn't, because my parents had homes and it's only available for first generation home owners, the vast majority of whom will be foreign born. All this would do for me is subsidize demand, which would increase prices and would put housing further out of reach. To be fair, she has said that she wants to build new housing, but that won't come online for years and the subsidy would increase demand today.

Of course it's not entirely hopeless for me buying a house. If the economy collapses, I might be in a good position to buy one. But then again, I have to worry about my job. People will always need to eat but even if Harris leaves the beef industry alone, it's the meat I think people are most willing to give up if prices go up. 

To be fair, I think the economy could collapse under Trump instead, but I think that is less likely. If it happens it won't be because of Trump, but the general weakness of the economy after four years of Biden. But with Harris, I think she could be the one that screws us over deliberately with her terrible policies. 

In some ways I am better positioned to make it through an economic collapse, I have a lot of liquid capital due to saving up for a house. But if the scenario is hyperinflation, that won't help me. I really fear that with Harris we will have a collapse just because she supports left wing economics. 

Finally, I am genuinely worried that the kind of tyranny we have seen under Biden will continue under Harris. I fully expect her to go after Trump supporters and for her to censor social media, to the point where I won't even be able to post links to my blog on social media.  

And given the Biden's moves to prosecute and persecute Trump supporters I have zero reason to believe that I wouldn't be caught up in some kind of crackdown. My guess is my reach is small enough that I wouldn't be the first person rounded up, but I am sure I am on a few lists. But I have no interest in dying in prison on false charges. 

I also think that the possibility of civil war is a lot higher under Harris. The most obvious reason would be that she steals the election. My gut says that's not possible with the early GOP numbers we are seeing but it's not impossible. But that's hardly the only way it happens. Like I said, I expect Harris to continue to be tyrannical and at some point people won't put up with it... I would, of course, be affected by the war and might even get caught up in the fighting.

Of course all of this is the worst case scenario. What's the best case scenario under Harris? The economy could limp along and not collapse. The Ukraine War could continue but not escalate into nuclear war. And my job could be fine. But I don't see how Harris would improve my life in any way and in every scenario she does nothing about illegal immigration, which is a major hurdle for me not getting a house. 

Under Trump, that's probably the worst case scenario, other than the small chance of fallout from Biden ruining the economy or the Ukraine war going horribly. In most cases though I think the economy gets better, illegal immigrants get deported and we get a chance of having peace again. Almost every outcome is better for me under Trump, so that's of course why I am voting for him. 

2024 fishing year in review

 

Smallmouth Bass I caught this year.

Since I am sick to death of writing about the election, I figured it was time to write about something different. Since we had Daylight Savings Time screwing up the time, I will no longer be able to fish this year for the most part. Generally I stop fishing once it's too dark during the evenings to go, though, like last year, there is a chance I will go fishing once or twice when I go on vacation in December. 

So how did this year go for fishing? Well, it depends on what part of the year you were talking about. In the Spring and early Summer I was on fire. I caught all kinds of fish, including a couple of new species, a 10 pound plus catfish, a huge sheephead (freshwater drum) along with an above average number of both largemouth and smallmouth bass. 

After that? I essentially had nothing, other than a 2nd 10 pound catfish. Later Summer and Fall were rough, even though I was fishing almost every weekend. No matter where I would go I would either catch a few small fish or end up getting nothing at all. Even when I took my vacation in September, I didn't catch much at all, even though I was fishing almost every day. 

So what was the problem? I think it was both the weather and where I went to fish. I only tried one new spot this year and though I didn't catch much impressive there, my Dad caught a 45 inch lake sturgeon. It was a great place to fish, but I never went back. Instead I focused on the  places that were close to home or otherwise convenient, even when they weren't producing. 

As for the weather it was a hot and dry summer and fall. We are having a nice rain today but we simply didn't get much rain and that meant water levels were low. And it was very hot to the point that sometimes it was just too hot to fish. In theory low water levels should make things easier to fish, but in practice that hasn't worked out for me the last couple of years. 

The two new species come with an caveat, only one of them was fair caught. The first one was a Lake Whitefish that I absolutely snagged. I was going for Walleye and I didn't get it in the mouth, so back it went. I also caught a Quillback Carpsucker, which was a fair catch, but only because I happened to snag him in the mouth, I seriously doubt he went after my blade bait. 

The one thing I didn't catch were walleye, or the closely related sauger. They just weren't around when I was fishing and I only saw a couple of them get caught in places where folks were fishing for them. You can catch walleyes from the shore, but I just wasn't having any luck at all with them at all. 

Still, it wasn't all bad. I had one day where I caught half a dozen largemouth bass and I was fairly consistently catching decent sized smallmouth bass in the 15 inch range, which isn't terrible for Wisconsin fishing from the shore. And those two catfish were pretty amazing to catch. And as bad as I did, I noticed a lot of folks fishing near me that did a lot worse, so many folks were getting skunked around me. 

It was a frustrating year for the most part. No new personal bests, no walleyes or saugers, no real good stories to tell, at least not ones I was directly involved in (my Dad will be talking about that sturgeon the rest of his life). I am hoping next year will be a lot better.

I think what I have to do most is try some new spots. There are a ton of spots in Wisconsin to fish and I gotta be willing to go to some of these places that are more than 30 minutes away from me. I had some plans to go fishing at the big dams in Central and Western Wisconsin, but I ended up not going. If I had I might have had some better stories this year.