How to tell what's really going on.

If you want to know what's really going on in a country, you look at where people are spending their money. In the USA, they're breaking all records for gun sales and you can't get ammunition except at very high prices.

This April saw the most gun-related background checks of any April on record, making it the 12th month in a row to achieve a high water mark for gun sales.

The FBI ran 2,145,865 checks through the National Instant Background Check System last month, according to the agency's records. That represents more than a 400,000 increase over the previous record set in April 2014. Though the numbers represent the best April on record, the month also saw the fewest checks of any month thus far in 2016.

The trend of record-setting months began last May. In that period the background check system has seen records set for the most checks in a day, month, and year. Thus far 2016 is on pace to pass 2015 as the best year on record for gun-related background checks.

I don't know what the sales of camping equipment and dried food look like, but I would bet they're breaking records too.

Something else breaking records, pickup truck sales. Big-ass crew cab 4x4 rigs with V8s are flying off the dealer's lots.

Taken together, that looks to me like the population of the richest, most powerful country in the world getting ready for a war. They can get the hell out of Dodge, go anywhere in any weather, eat for weeks once they get there and shoot anybody who tells them "no." These are people who seem to think their cities and towns are going to become unsafe, and they'll have to leave. Or maybe fight.

That would be the smart ones. The dumb ones are week-to-week on their food stamp cards. Also record numbers. That's what the smart ones are worried about, when those cards all stop working the same day.

In the coming election, when Mr. Trump wins in a landslide over the Hildebeast (like that's a brave prediction, given the gun sales) we will be able to tell if people relax by how the gun sales move. If they keep making new records, that will not be a good sign.

The Phantom