Sunday, December 27, 2015

Yet another Rubio argument

Let's talk about Rubio and Immigration... You Trumpkins and "EVERYONE NOT NAMED REAGAN IS A RINO!!!" Folks can stop reading here... 

Of course his participation in the Gang of 8 deal was stupid, and yes, it was unConservative, but why must it disqualify him from the Presidency? No matter how much the ideological purity crowd wants to believe it, Rubio is not some Manchurian Sleeper Agent sent by the Chamber of Commerce and the Illuminati to help usher in the dawn of a new era in GOP-sponsored Progressivism-lite. I think the truth is much more simple. Rubio was a young politician at the time, still is really, with Presidential ambitions and not much in the way of signature achievements. I think he looked at the tactical situation and thought hey, I'm a young Latino, if I can pull of a 40-years-in-the-making grand bargain that provides real border security with a path to citizenship as long as illegals in the country pay a price then I would have to be considered a front runner for the Presidency... And I think that could have been absolutely true. If he'd pulled it off, he would have been personally responsible for bringing in a huge new wave of Latino voters to the GOP. That would have been a huge win for all of us and a massive defeat for the Democrats who have been looking for a way to lock those up votes for years.

It's just that he miscalculated in getting into bed with people who did not share his vision for his own future. I do think that McConnell, and Reid, and Boehner, and even McCain are, at this point, in this to maintain their own power and position, and Rubio was a sacrifice to that effort. To misquote Animal House, "he fucked up, he trusted them."

So he made a mistake. He reached high and came up short. And when it didn't work, he apologized and promised to do better in the future. What else can you want in a President?

But let's get down to brass tacks. Let's say I'm wrong and Rubio is a sleeper agent bred in a lab by the GOPe to deliver Amnesty in 2016... So what? Amnesty won't come from the President... It can't. If there is going to be an Immigration law, it will, in fact must, come from the House. So if a border security first bill makes it to his desk, do you really believe a President Rubio would veto it? I mean even if deep down he really REALLY wants to? Of course not... But you know who WOULD veto such a bill? President Hillary.

And so no matter who wins next November, the Immigration fight will still be in the House... Right where it's always been. And if by some miracle the Conservative base is successful in getting the right bill through that battle, I'd be thrilled to see Rubio sitting behind the Resolute Desk waiting to sign, because I'm confident he'd do the right thing.

UPDATE: it occurs to me that, despite angry base claims to the contrary, it IS possible to be both the GOP establishment choice AND and good Conservative... Oh and by the way angry base voter, you already won! The GOPe wanted Jeb! and they're not getting him... So you forced them to compromise and support Rubio instead. That's how a negotiation works... Everybody gets a little something. It's not a negotiation if one side loses everything and the winners salt the Earth. Why not stop being angry for five seconds and try to enjoy your victory... Thing is, we rarely make good decisions when we're in the middle of a tantrum.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

The eerie prescience of Bluto Blutarsky's sweatshirt

Ah College... Those heady days when you spent your time practicing the finer points of grifting... Learning to suck the system dry for your own benefit and with a minimum of effort.... Never having to worry if that degree for which you paid 100K would actually result in a job after graduation.... Because if it didn't, you'd simply force the University to create a six figure "Diversity Consultant" position for you...

What? You say that wasn't your experience? Well Things have changed. There's a new normal on America's college campuses that can best be described as "Everything is offensive and must be removed"... Memory-holed as Orwell would have said. All other considerations are secondary.

First, college age Social Justice Warriors went after current, sitting University Presidents and Professors, not because they were racist, but because... Well, no one is exactly sure why. But having gotten their scalps, most notably at Mizzou and Yale, these SJWs... Terrorists without the beheadings, decided to go after bigger fish.

It started with Woodrow Wilson. I was inclined to let this one go because Wilson was, apparently, an actual racist... And also a Democrat, as most historical racists were, and it's fun to watch the Left eat its own.

But this monster is insatiable, and it won't stop with Wilson... in fact, it did NOT stop with him.

At Harvard Law, the venerable School Crest, founder, and the word "Master" have all been declared problematic... They've got to go. At Oxford, the most famous scholarship in the world is in danger of losing its name because this Rhodes guy was apparently not a 21st Century Renaissance Man... as is entirely typical of men who lived in the 19th Century of course, but no matter. The movement has no time for such trivialities. Like a shark it must continue relentlessly forward to its next meal or die.

But statues and names are pedestrian pursuits. What these people want is real power, real control, not over College Adminstrators, but over the lives of everyday citizens with different (read: WRONG) ideas about what it means to be free.

And so, having gotten everything they've ever asked for with a bare minimum of fuss and muss, these young Alinskys in training have moved on to more practical battlefields, like Dining Halls. At Oberlin, undercooked rice is now "culturally disrespectful." This guy wants you to know that the fact that there's no fried chicken on the menu proves Oberlin doesn't care about honoring black culture... Even though if fried chicken WAS on the menu, somebody, probably this same idiot, would be calling THAT racist.

Trying to appease these people is like being one of Jigsaw's victims in the SAW franchise. You can't win, and anything you try only makes things worse, until your head is crushed by a bladed Rube Goldberg contraption while the discorporated voices of Cloward and Piven cackle on the staticky speaker of an Occupy Campus (TM) bullhorn. But off these college administrators go anyway, somehow believing that if they can only say the right thing, apologize in the right way, offer the perfect ritual sacrifice, that they'll be left alone.

They won't.

Having won every battle they've fought, often without even trying very hard, the smell of blood is in the water. The SJWs are basically trolling these Universities at this point. What else should we ban to appease their insatiable desire to punish the white male Patriarchy? Should we ban the Rolling Stones and The Beatles? "It's the End" and "Under My Thumb" prove pretty conclusively that both bands had, at best, a problematic view of women's rights.

Frankly, It's a miracle that no one has tried asking for straight up cash payments yet.... Oh wait, they actually have.

If this keeps up, eventually, like Bluto Blutarsky's sweatshirt, every University in America will simply be called COLLEGE.... every other potential name having been declared highly problematic. When a young college man (or person who identifies as a man) asks his gender-fluid date where he should pick Xer up, Xe'll tell him "Dorm 1138". And the only thing on the dining hall menu will be locally sourced, culturally respectful, cruelty-free diet Soylent Green.




Wednesday, December 16, 2015

The real legacy of the Obama years

Cowardice masquerading as courage...

If you watched the news at all this past Tuesday then you know that Los Angeles Unified School District closed some 900 schools, stranding 650,000 kids and their parents because of a dubious threat of terrorism.

The threat, in the form of an email, was also sent to a New York City school system who deemed it so preposterous that not only did they keep schools open, but Police Chief Bratton was out in the media within hours openly mocking Los Angeles for falling for this hoax. On cue, the LAUSD Superintendent, in full on CYA mode, appeared before cameras spouting that most odious of Bureaucratic weasel phrases "out of an abundance of caution"....

I'm sure that was a relief to a million or so parents who had to scramble for childcare that day with less than a half hour's notice.

But it was the response to the overreaction the following day that revealed what I think is the true legacy of the Obama years, and that is this... across America in towns big and small, are public officials by the thousands... each with a staff, and a salary, and an office, but without much in the way of courage or basic common sense. But what they've learned from the man in the White House, is that there is no amount of stupidity that can't be covered up with a flowery, meaningless speech.

Take the President of the LA School Board, who obviously spent the night getting an earful from pissed off parents. He walked in front of the microphone this morning and, hoping that he could use an elegant turn of phrase to make us forget how badly he and his colleagues overreacted to a threat so bogus the author couldn't even be bothered to capitalize "Allah", said "what you saw yesterday was a community turning towards one another, not against one another"...

Really?!


I mean what hell does that even mean? Who in god's name wrote that and how much do they get paid? Did you write that WHILE parents were scrambling to find a place to park their kids for the day? 


Listen, that crap may work with the President, who has been getting passes he doesn't deserve since he took office, but this is a low level Bureaucratic functionary we're talking about. I don't need to hear poetic bon mots about the better angels of our nature from this guy. I need him to shut up, do his job, and let me know when it's done.


And then our own Police Chief stood up and, flashing his anger that we mere citizens would dare to challenge his judgment, complained "it's easy to sit in judgment when you're not responsible for the outcome..."


What!?


I'm not responsible for the outcome!? These are OUR kids we're talking about you douchecanoe. To misquote Breaking Bad... "I AM THE RESPONSIBILITY!!!"


Oh and by the way, we only know the contents of the email threat because it was leaked (probably by New York in an effort to shame LA). LA Officials tried to keep it secret because they were worried, correctly, that we would all see what reactionary pussies they really are and call them on it.

Look I'm not highly a paid public servant, but this is not hard. Here's what a smart, confident, capable Authority Figure would have said...

"My Fellow Angelenos,

This morning we received an email threat of terrorism. You can read it yourself as I have directed my Deputies to immediately release the full contents of this email to the Public. In short, an anonymous terrorist claims he and others have planted bombs and nerve gas in several Los Angeles area schools. They claim to have done the same in New York City.

We cannot, as of yet, verify the claims contained in this email but I want to stress that we have no credible evidence to suggest that this threat is real.

Nevertheless, I know how scary this must sound. We are talking about the safety of your children and I do no want to give the impression that we are taking that lightly. I have asked the Police Chief to give me two armed officers to place on the front steps of every LAUSD school... that's eighteen hundred armed men and women... who have pledged to protect your children with their very lives. SWAT and Bomb Disposal units will spread throughout the city doing random checks on school across the area.

You will feel an armed presence today and you will feel safe. I can promise you that.

Any parent who elects to keep their child home today, I want you to know that I understand. And to any LAUSD teacher who feels uncomfortable coming in to work today, I get it, and we will work hard to accommodate you.

But LAUSD schools WILL be open for business today.

To the terrorists who would threaten our children I say this. We will take every precaution to defeat your plans and deny you these victories you seek, but make no mistake, we will not upend our lives at your every whim.

This is Los Angeles... we can take it.

Have a great day at school."

Thursday, December 10, 2015

The speech that could dump Trump

Rush Limbaugh made an interesting point. Regarding how to shut down the Donald, he said that there is no major Conservative figure with the moral authority to stand up and say to Republican voters, "this man cannot be our nominee. You must not vote for him. And here's why..." He argues that the Party Establishment has been so feckless and tone deaf over the last two decades that the voters have simply tuned them out and are now flocking to the Donald in a pique of "screw you."

I think he's almost right...  there is one exception.

George W. Bush

(and a righteous howl of rage and indignation rose up over the Internet such that children covered their ears in pain and flocks of birds took wing in sheer terror)

Yeah yeah I know, but stay with me here. I'm not saying Bush could step to the podium and heal all our party divisions with one sentence. But I do think there is a speech in him that could solve this. Here's what I think it would sound like:

----------------------------------------
My fellow Republicans,

We need to have a conversation about where we are as a party. I have never been more excited about the future of the Republican Party. I look at our outstanding field of Candidates and Party leaders and I see the future. I see two Cuban-Americans whose personal stories are literally the story of America. Both are the product of working class parents who came to this country to escape large oppressive Governments and the tyranny of Socialism so that their children could have a chance at a brighter future. And now two of those children sit a hair's breadth away from the Presidency. That's an incredible story that could only have happened here.  I see a brilliant businesswoman who is the embodiment of the American dream. A woman who started her career as a secretary and worked her way up to CEO of one of the largest and most forward thinking tech companies in the world... another amazing story that must be filed under "only in America." I see Governors who have led States like Texas to economic success that has dwarfed what many thought possible in the face of a massive recession, Governors who have broken racial and ethnic barriers in states like Louisiana, and Governors who have broken through iron-strong blue walls of power in historically Democratic States like New Jersey.

Across the aisle, on the Democratic side, I see a stale past. Old... white... tired. The same failed ideas of Socialism and Big Government that have brought us to this sad place of weakness abroad and economic disaster at home.

We should be killing them. But we aren't, and we won't... not as long as Donald Trump is our front runner.

To those of you who support Donald Trump I want to say this. I understand the message you're sending. I do. You're angry. You're angry that for twenty years the establishment leaders of your party, backed by corporate interests and big money donors, have tried to force upon you things that you hate. Things like open borders and Amnesty. Things like more and more spending and bigger and more frightening levels of National Debt. And worse, when The Democrats and their media allies have called you racist, or backwards, or small-minded for opposing those policies, those same Establishment leaders have not had your back. They have caved in the face of false charges of racism and sexism and selfishness over-and-over again, and it has been nothing short of disgraceful. You want someone to fight for you, to demand that our leaders stop accusing you of dark and evil motivations. To say dammit, this is NOT how you treat people who are your fellow countrymen and who have legitimate concerns about the direction in which this country is headed.

Instead we fought for our own entrenched interests.

Yes I said "We". I understand your anger and frustration because I am partly responsible for it. You have been asking for smaller less-intrusive Government, better security abroad, and safer borders for two decades and we have not listened. It's become an article of faith in the media that the Tea Party was created in racist opposition to the first African-American President, but that is an awful lie. The Tea Party was born under my leadership. It was a reaction to MY policies, not Barack Obama's. And I should have listened. We all should have listened. That's on me...

It's on all of us.

You have done nothing wrong except believe passionately in your nation's potential. We have done just about everything wrong. And I'm sorry as hell about it. There's not much I can do about all that now except to say that I do not believe that it's too late to fix this... to heal the rift that has sprung up between us. But we cannot fix it with Donald Trump as our nominee.

I believe Donald Trump will destroy this party. I believe it in my heart. It's not just that I think he would lose to any Democratic nominee in a landslide, though I certainly think that's true. It is that he will squander an historic opportunity to expand the tent under which the Party ought to be thriving. He will give the Democratic Party and their media allies cover to expand upon the vicious lie that Republicans are racist, sexist and backward. It's not true. It's never been true. But I promise you this, they'll do it, and it will work.

And we will lose.

I used to work in Baseball. Baseball is unique among sports because it carries with it a set of rules that don't appear in the rule book, but that are just as iron-clad as the rule saying three strikes and you're out. Politics is a lot like that. The unwritten rules of Politics say I'm not supposed to be giving this speech. It's unseemly for a former President to speak out against a sitting President, much less to speak out against the front-runner of his own Party's nominating process.

But these times we live in are extraordinary. We face challenges that the people who agreed upon those unwritten rules could never have imagined. We face a National Debt so large that it can never be paid back. Think about that. We can never pay back our National Debt. What does that even mean for our future? No one really knows, and no one seems to care... certainly not Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. We are still a year away from the Presidential election and already both Candidates have proposed programs that, while they may buy votes, would also add trillions of dollars to our debt.

Trillions.

We face an enemy so evil it burns people alive and drowns them in cages. An enemy that rapes and murders captive women because they don't share the same faith. An enemy that even now is looking for ways to kill as many Americans as possible in attacks on our homeland. Believe me when I tell you this because I've seen the intelligence... if they could get their hands on a nuclear weapon and set it off in New York City tomorrow, they would. And they may yet.

One hundred million Americans are out of the work force. Put another way, one third of the nation is not working... an historic number. Another fifty million are on food stamps. The Democrats like to talk about sustainable systems... does that sound sustainable to you?

Like sugary sweets, Donald Trump says things that make us feel good. "I'm gonna build a wall." "I'll bomb the shit out of ISIS" (his words, not mine). But the things that make us feel good are rarely good for us. Donald Trump is not a serious man. He's certainly not a Conservative, this man who once supported in thought, word, and deed, the Woman he now claims he would run against and defeat.

He is an entertainer. He is a master showman and I don't know that anyone has ever been better at manipulating the media than he. But he cannot be our nominee.

My fellow citizens, we must not vote for this man. We cannot. Anger is not the same thing as sound policy. We have an historic opportunity to grow our party under the leadership of a smart, sober, and thoughtful leader. Let's seize it. We must... for if we travel down that other path... well, that way lies madness.

Thank you. good night, and may God bless the United States of America.

Friday, December 4, 2015

What if it's ISIS?

So now we're starting to get stories that the San Berdoo killers pledged allegiance to ISIS, although Obama and his media allies are still pushing the workplace violence angle...

If you're wondering why that might be, I'll tell you. Obama has spent a lot of time and political capital explaining to us how much of a threat ISIS is not, and that's allowed him to do several things that he seems absolutely fixated on for some reason... closing Gitmo, bringing in tons of Syrian Refugees even he admits we can't vet properly, and refusing to close our Southern border.

If it turns out he's been wrong about ISIS (spoiler alert: he is) then he won't be able to do all those things he's unnaturally fixated upon... for some reason. And the worst thing that can happen to Obama is not getting his way.

But there's another angle here. If it turns out this was an ISIS attack, or even an 'ISIS-inspired" attack, then it's yet another detail to add to a growing mountain of evidence that Government is completely incompetent and totally unable to defend us from this growing threat... despite Obama's continuous claims that they are a contained Javee squad and there is no evidence of any imminent attacks on the homeland now or ever.

If people begin to wake up to this reality, they might realize that if they find themselves in the midst of such an attack, that they are on their own.  No one will be coming to help them.

And you want to know the first thing people do when they come to the conclusion that they are on their own in the face of a violent existential threat?

They buy a gun.

UPDATE: It's impossible to stay focused on a breaking news story forever. Eventually we will all get tired of this and focus on other things, like living our lives. I think Obama is going to try and ride this "workplace violence" pony as far as he can and hope to get past that point where people stop paying attention. If he can do that, our Idiocracy Culture will move on never having heard that these killers were Islamic Jihadists and ten years from now, everyone will parrot the Workplace Violence line as if it's established history.

Monday, November 30, 2015

A free market solution to the Campus PC scourge

Some people look at a problem like the rise of totalitarian Political Correctness on college campuses and beg for a Government solution... I, on the other hand, see free market opportunity.

It's only a matter of time before some enterprising University begins to market itself as an alternative to the big Northeastern Campuses and their stifling attacks on anything that doesn't conform to the current in vogue narrative.

As an a example of what that might look like, take a College like Hillsdale... By marketing itself as a center-Right alternative to the standard Liberal campus, and by reaching out to prominent Conservative radio hosts like Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved, in a very short time, Hillsdale has transformed itself from a College I had never heard of, to a place I would consider putting on my kids' college wish lists.

There aren't many industries that are more competitive than colleges competing with one another for students willing to shell out 100K for what they're selling, and generally, the Free Market works better than my brain, so chances are that this opportunity is already a topic of conversation in the back rooms of many American Universities... I would look for the revolution to begin in the South, but begin it will and as kids who feel stifled by campus PC begin to make different choices, the market will begin to correct even the worst of the worst... 

Yale I'm looking in your direction.

UPDATE: I think you're going to start seeing a lot more of this. In fact, if I were the President of a University looking to re-brand in this way, I would actively encourage Professors to publicly speak out against PC attacks hoping that some percentage of those rants will go viral.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Terrorism and your personal risk assessment

There are 24 hours in a news day, and the cable news networks have to fill every second of it. So we can expect a steady diet of warnings about ISIS plots to attack and destroy all manner of American soft targets this Holiday Season...

So should we worry?

Maybe.

Americans as a rule are pretty bad at risk assessment. We worry too much about the wrong things. But are we justified in worrying about threats from ISIS? I've got two thoughts on this...

1) Is there a real personal threat to you from ISIS attacks?  Probably not. There are 350 million Americans spread out across 3.1 million square miles. The chances that ISIS will attack and that you will have the bad luck to be standing close enough to be shot or blown up when they do is infinitesimally small. So yeah, be aware, don't walk around staring at your phone, have good situational awareness, but don't let fear of dying in a terrorist attack change the way you live your life at all. To paraphrase one of the dopiest meme we've ever come up with as Americans, that's how the Terrorists win.

2) Is there a real threat that a terrorist attack on America will change the country in ways that will negatively affect you and your family? Absolutely yes. 9/11 gave us The Department of Homeland Security... that Jaba The Hutt of Government Agencies, and its Salacious Crumb the TSA. From that flowed the Patriot Act, the NSA Warrantless Surveillance programs and, presumably, that giant NSA monstrosity in the Utah Dessert that runs so big and so hot that it routinely melts its own servers.

Is ISIS a threat to our way of life? Sure... but you know what the true existential threat to America really is? Massive growth in the size of Government and the explosions of debt and loss of Liberty that inevitably comes with it.... that is the true existential threat to our Nation, and if ISIS does pull of a successful attack on our Homeland, the real damage will occur when we beg our Government to overreact to the threat and they happily oblige.


Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Compassion is not a suicide pact

Hey guys, did you hear? We have a ROBUST system for vetting Syrian Refugees to make sure none of them pose a terrorism threat to the United States... yep, we sure do, our Attorney General just said so. Apparently it consists of interviews and, well... interviews I guess.

Refugee Vetter: Are you a terrorist?
Refugee: ... no?...
Refugee Vetter: Are you sure?
Refugee: ... yes?...
Refugee Vetter: Right, off you go then!

I'd like for someone to please tell me which Government Agency has detailed dossiers on all military-aged males from every random backwater village in Turkey and Syria?  Is it the same agency that "fully vetted" the Tsarnaev Brothers!?  Is it the same agency that sent a fully approved Visa to the Post Office Box of Mohammed Atta six months AFTER he led the 9/11 attacks!?

Seriously, when Achmed shows up claiming to be a peaceful family man and Rotary Club Member from Asscrack, Syria, how can we know if he's telling the truth? Who do you call to verify literally ANYTHING he tells you? The level of trust in Government I see on my social media feeds with regard to this Administration's ability to perform this incredibly dangerous task successfully is completely misplaced, given that the consequences of failure are so enormous.

Let me ask you this, you don't want the US to get involved in another Middle Eastern War, right? Iraq was a mistake, you say? Getting out of Afghanistan was the right decision? Fine... what do you think we're going to do when five teams of Syrian Terrorists shoot up five different Malls across America on Black Friday?

I'll tell you what we're going to do... we're going to get involved in a really big goddamned war in the Middle East, that's what.

Compassion is important, I don't want to overshadow that. It's what makes us different from ISIS. Even knowing the dangers, a large number of us still want to help these poor Refugees in whatever way we can. That speaks well of us as a people. I know that the vast majority of these people are trying to save themselves and their families from the same kind of brutal violence that terrifies us. I am completely sympathetic to that, and I'd be doing the same thing if I were them.

But wanting taking a brief pause to make sure we're not importing the same kind of horror that France and Germany have already imported to their countries does not make me an awful person, despite what Vox and Salon may think.

Compassion is not a suicide pact.

UPDATE: As I said

Friday, November 13, 2015

College campuses are exactly like ISIS...

...because of Rape Culture you guys...

If somebody came up to me and said "apples are exactly like oranges", I would assume that they know next to nothing about apples or oranges. And since the SJWs comparing college campuses to ISIS live on actual college campuses, I have to assume that in this case what they know nothing about is ISIS... Which is terrifying.

I don't know where all this crazy is going to take us, but I'm worried in a way that I'm not sure I have ever been before.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Happy Veteran's Day

"When I go home people'll ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? What, you some kinda war junkie?" You know what I'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is."

Trump changing his tune?

Trump must be listening to his consultants because his tax proposal answer in last night's debate was very... Un-Trump. He didn't attack anyone, in fact he complimented his fellow candidates by saying they all have good proposals and while he thinks his proposal is the best one, any of them would be better than Hillary Clinton's.

That is a vastly different Trump than we are used to seeing. Not only did he say obliquely nice things about his fellow candidates, but he actually (gasp!) went after Hillary Clinton.

I wonder if that will help soften that hard ceiling he seems to be stuck under....

Friday, November 6, 2015

End the TSA...

In the wake of a report that an ISIS bomb brought down a Russian Airliner and with a recent expose showing the TSA still fails to spot the majority (95%!!!) of weapons smuggled through airports even after being warned and subsequently re-tested, the White House says it's reviewing options to see if there's a way to "enhance security at airports."

Well...

I have one simple idea, but it will never be considered by the Federal Government because it requires collecting less tax revenue, spending less tax revenue, and giving up some measure of control over its citizens... Three things Government would rather gargle raw sewage than ever even consider.

We should immediately eliminate the TSA and use the money to pay a private company to run airport security. Because here's the truth, it's not hard to predict the Government's response the next time a terrorist attack kills people at an airport or on an airplane... They will say people are dead because we didn't spend enough tax money on security measures. That's what they always say... no matter how much we spend, it's never enough to actually get the job done. What a freakin' racket. And because we're all terrified of being killed by terrorists on an airplane, like suckers, we will all dutifully nod and reach for our checkbooks... again.

No one will get fired. No one will have their budget cut. Nothing will change, except that a river of cash will get dumped onto the problem without actually, y'know, solving a goddamned thing. And we won't hold anyone accountable because on some level we know Government is incompetent and a certain expectation of failure is already baked into our assumptions about everything they do... and too many of us are brainwashed into thinking there's no other viable solution to these kinds of large-scale problems other than a top down Government solution.

But there is. A private sector company would live in absolute terror of losing a billion dollar plus contact and would bend over backwards to make sure not so much as a sharp word gets past their security measures. And if they should fail, they would expect to be fired and forced to make room for the next security firm with the next great idea on how to keep us safe. I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that in the first year after privatization, the percentage of weapons test-smuggled through Airport Security would drop from 95% to a statistical near zero. It would HAVE to, because any private sector company would know that its consumers (you and me) would have zero tolerance for failure even in Year One.

That's the difference between government and the free market. And the longer we continue to embrace government solutions over market solutions, the more we are going to find our lives unnecessarily placed at risk by Bureaucrats who don't care because they fear no consequence in the wake of failure.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Los Angeles receives a lesson, neglects to actually learn anything

For decades Los Angeles has been dealing with a problem called "runaway production", which means that Hollywood has been fleeing the high tax, high regulatory, high union environment of Los Angeles for more business friendly states, like Louisiana, and countries like Bulgaria... Yes that's right, it's so expensive to shoot movies and TV in L.A. that it's actually cost effective to ship an entire production to... lovely Bulgaria.

The solution is obvious, lower taxes and reduce regulations to lure production back to the city. But in the Liberal ideological bubble that is Los Angeles, the obvious solution is like garlic to a vampire. 

But there's good news...the rich Hollywood folks who really run this town (the politicians are nothing but their own personal paid employees) are, apparently, crazy but not stupid. Last year L.A. Government was successfully lobbied to change the tax environment to make it more attractive to its Hollywood patrons, and the results were entirely predictable. Production came roaring back to Los Angeles. According to Variety, production days in the city are up 54% over the same period last year. That's amazing. Imagine the same thing happening to, say, the auto industry in Detroit. A city is apt to be utterly transformed by an increase in business like that.

But sadly, this is not a lesson Los Angeles will learn. This city is simply not interested in reducing taxes or regulations because they aren't interested in giving up any measure of control over the lives of their citizens... improvements to their economic well being be damned.

If creating a friendly tax environment can fix the movie business, it can fix any business. Sadly, no other industry has lobbyists as powerful as Studio Heads, Network Chiefs and JJ Abrams. And so, the broader California economy will continue to tank, and those who can leave will continue to do so until Los Angeles is populated only by the ultra rich and the desperately poor.

Our city Poiticians know the answers. They know how to fix this. But they simply aren't willing to give up the power that high taxes and burdensome regulations grant them over our lives. And so we will continue to suffer.

The message to Los Angeles' dwindling middle class is "suck it."

Good luck with that.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

CNBC Debate was a huge win for the GOP

Ignore your social media feeds... it's full of establishment pundits and your Liberal friends. They don't understand the truth, that what happened last week on CNBC was a huge win for all of the GOP candidates...

HE FIGHTS!!!

Most of the support for Trump can be summed up this way... "HE FIGHTS!", the Trumpkins on Twitter will say. Sometimes they change it up to "HE HAS BALLS!" but that's really just another way of saying the same thing.  Well last week it was like the GOP Candidates got jumped in a biker bar, but instead of folding and getting shipped to the hospital in a long line of somber ambulances, they turned back to back and dove into the fray. They fought like gladiators... wrestled the moderators to the ground, and choked them out. It was a huge win for the candidates, especially those like Cruz who are hoping to overtake Trump. There's a reason why Cruz was widely credited as the winner of the night... because he led an incredibly effective counter-attack against an obvious Left-Wing Media hit squad.  And if Obama wants to crack jokes in front of his sycophantic supporters about the GOP not being able to handle moderators, let him. He's not the target audience for an off-year October GOP debate, and neither are those supporters.

BUT... BUT... THE DONORS!!!!

I saw several insider/pundits, Rick Wilson chief among them, reporting during the debate that big money donors were telling them the debate was a disaster for the GOP. I happen to like Rick a lot, and he's forgotten more about politics than I'll ever know, but who cares? Isn't it clear that this election is as anti-donor class as any election in our lifetimes? Let them whine... what are they going to do, stay home with their checkbooks closed? At the end of the day they will fall in line. They stand to make more money off a GOP President than any of us. And again, the donor class was not the target audience for this debate... at least not as it turned out.

MEDIA BIAS ON DISPLAY

Look, the truly committed Leftists will never admit it. But everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders saw media bias on display last week in all its glory and many, to their credit, were even willing to say so. A Liberal friend of mine once tried to get me to watch a dopey Fox News documentary in which, he said, the money quote was Shepherd Smith caught on camera saying "this is why people hate Fox" when some right wing bias slipped out on camera. Well that door swings both ways. I think an awful lot of moderate to center-left voters started to wonder just how deep the rabbit hole of media bias goes last week, and that's a huge win going forward. Next time Candy Crowley steps in with a timely assist for a struggling Democrat during a debate, perhaps it won't pass so unnoticed by everyone not already pre-disposed to vote GOP.

Folks... that's three big wins for the GOP... you can embrace it and hope the next debate will be better in terms of substance and issues... or you can wallow in donor-class hysteria until you're miserable. It's your choice.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Ditch and Switch?

So... this is a thing.

Fascinating

Media bias and the GOP (non-John Harwood edition)

Media bias reveals itself in a lot of ways that have nothing to do with combative factually incorrect debate questions on CNBC...

For example, TNT is advertising its new series AGENT X all over my Facebook feed. And what's the first thing I notice? How hard they've worked to make the heroic female President (played by Sharon Stone) look like Hillary Clinton.

Alongside Tea Leoni's failed MADAM SECRETARY (another short blonde bob and pantsuit affair) that's at least two major series this calendar year where the producers have worked hard to make sure you associate Hillary Clinton with the highest office in the land.

But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Anyone still wonder why the country has lost faith in Government?

Elijah Cummings thinks impeaching IRS Chief John Koskinen is a waste of time and money. Apparently impeachment is very expensive and at the end of the day, "won't help a single American."

Well.

Koskinen allowed a fascist witch like Lois Lerner to weaponize his Agency against his fellow Americans because they dared to disagree with her on matter of political ideology. Murder is a horrible crime to be sure, but it terms of cultural rot and societal decay, there is nothing that rivals what happens to a country when its citizens fear unpredictable and capricious persecution by their own Government.

That has to be punished. It HAS to be. America's citizens need to know that this kind of behavior will not stand and since the Justice Department has declined to do its duty, that task is now left to the Legislature.

But while we're on the subject, you know what else is expensive? Prosecuting murder. And hey, it doesn't really help anyone, does it? I mean the murdered people aren't any less dead. Cummings is right, we should just stop putting murderers in jail. No upside.

And what about financial criminals like Bernie Madoff? Putting him in jail didn't get anyone's money back. And it's not like Bernie was going to commit the same crime again, I mean what idiot was going to give that guy money ever again? So hey, that problem was solved, Madoff was ruined... why bother with the expense of a trial?

BECAUSE LAWS MUST BE ENFORCED!!!

THAT'S WHY IDIOTS LIKE ELIJAH CUMMINGS HAVE JOBS!!!

DO YOUR FRIGGIN' JOB YOU LAZY MORON!!!

OK I feel better now.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Trump: The reason for the season

If you're like me, and you spend a lot of time wondering why so many of the hanger-on loser Republican candidates are continuing to stay in and gum up the race... then you need to get out more.

But as long as we're on the subject, seriously, why is Rick Santorum wasting everyone's time (not to mention their money)?

I think the explanation is Donald Trump.  Like a black hole, he's creating a massive distortion in the underlying physics of this race. As long as he's the front runner he will continue to soak up all the available airtime and most of the oxygen that other candidates need to survive. But here's the problem, we all know that Presidential Candidates are, on some level, delusional. I think it's just too easy for the marginal candidates to convince themselves that there is some mysterious coalition out there that really REALLY wants to declare their support but just hasn't been able to because of the Trump circus. That delusion leads to a second one, that if they can just hang around until Trump collapses they can be the one to pick up his suddenly leaderless constituency AND that mysterious constituency that has always been secretly supportive of their candidacy but couldn't or wouldn't say so.

And it's really easy for them to convince themselves that this plan is not really all THAT crazy, because after all, for one of these candidates, Rubio is my guess, that gamble will actually pay off.

I'm not saying it's smart, I'm just saying its the only thing that makes sense.

Monday, October 26, 2015

The source of the next great American economic collapse

The Student Loan Bubble

71% non-repayment rate!

We probably have some time, but likely not a lot. And if we're still in the trough of this crappy Obama economy when this bomb blows? Whoooo-doggie!

What are you doing to protect yourself now that you've been warned?


Saturday, October 24, 2015

College kids are cruel

Student holding sign on ESPN College Gameday... "Sarkissian drank my other sign"

Ouch.

Friday, October 23, 2015

The non-Prosecution of Lois Lerner

When a state of affairs exists where half the country believes it could be targeted at any time by agents of their government because of their political beliefs and that, even when exposed, there will be no consequences for those who do the targeting, we are very near the end of the Nation as we know it.

Why we lose

Yesterday was fairly depressing. For one thing, Hillary, with the help of her allies in the Press, seems to have skated away from the worst of the Benghazi Committee relatively unscathed, as I suspected she would. But lost in the discussion of did the gun smoke or didn't it, I noticed something...

My Social media feeds are pretty diverse in terms of ideology. I've got Cons, RINOs, Libs, Moderates, and everything in between. And what I noticed as those feeds scrolled by over the course of the day was that while the Right Wing reactions were all over the map (some, like Hugh Hewitt, thought Hillary took it on the chin while others, like Rick Wilson and Byron York, thought the GOP embarrassed themselves) the Liberals in my feeds were marching in absolute lockstep.

On the Left the message discipline was truly extraordinary. No one thought Hillary did anything but drop the mic. You would think based on nothing but the law of averages, that there would have been at least one person willing to say "hey fellas, she might have performed well today, but this hearing certainly showed how sleazy our presumptive nominee is, and that's pretty disconcerting."

But there was none of that. The ability of the entire Left to stay 100% on message is both chilling, and impressive. The Right simply isn't capable of that kind of solidarity. I think it makes us better people. But I also think it's why we lose.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Technology, the Economy, and the L.A. Supermarket Strike

I'm not the kind of guy who jumps down the throat of private sector unionized workers looking for a raise. If those industries want to handle their business through unions and striking, that's none of my business. And so when Los Angeles supermarket workers went on strike in 2003 I did not take the opportunity to remind those arguing that supermarkets were not paying them enough to raise their families that no one asked them to try and raise a family on a supermarket checkout salary.

Better to take the high road.

I did, however, make the following argument to a friend.... I said look, these supermarket employees will wind up getting a raise. This strike will get settled and the employees will get just enough of a salary bump to make them feel like it was worthwhile to strike. But here's the thing... Major technological changes are coming to retail business and anyone who takes this raise and goes back to life as usual is a fool. Treat this strike as a bullet dodged and go out into the world, and while you're making more money, train yourself for something better. Because when that next strike comes, you will not get a raise... You will get replaced by a machine.

Ten years later, I would guess not many of Los Angeles' supermarket workers took my advice. More's the pity because those machines are already here.

Saw a story the other day on smart grocery carts. You place your groceries in the cart and a sensor automatically adds the item to your bill, which you pay by swiping a card on your way out the door.

Let me tell you something, the second, the VERY second these machines go online and show reliability, they'll be ordered by every supermarket in America... and, no, it's not because supermarket owners are hateful horrible people who can't wait to fire their employees. No, they are going to be adopted by every supermarket in American because it's what their customers want.

Let me say that again. Human employees are going to be replaced because IT'S WHAT THEIR CUSTOMERS WANT.

Think about it this way, when you go to the grocery store, where is the bottleneck? What part of your grocery store trip take the most time? That's right, it's the moment where your desire to get out quickly is overcome by the inability of a human being to scan 75 items any faster than they already do. It's that interminable period of time where you stand behind some old grandma unloading her full-to-the-brim shopping cart one cherry tomato at a time while the checkout lady swipes the same jar of peanut butter across the scanner 57 times hoping for a beep. If the store could eliminate that bottle neck, they'd save you 15 minutes, minimum. on a busy day at the store.

There's not a customer in the world who wouldn't cheer that result. Sure they'd spend a half-second wondering what would happen to all those nice people behind the checkout lanes, but that's it. One single trip to the supermarket on a busy Saturday without running into the old lady and her cherry tomatoes and it's over Johnny.

Think about all the jobs lost at Supermarkets alone. My local supermarket has 10 checkout lanes, each manned by one scanner and one bagger, times three shifts (my store is open 24 hours). Once the smart carts arrive, that's a minimum of 60 jobs lost... at one store... overnight.

Yikes.

So what should yo do if you're standing in the way of this speeding, out-of-control, gravel truck? I'll say again what I said 12 years ago... start training for your next job now. Not tomorrow, today. I don't know how long you have, but not long. Maybe five years before we're all using these things every day... along with checkout kiosks at fast foot restaurants... and table-mounted tablets at sit-down chains like Chillis and Applebees... and god knows what else.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Another Obama economic #Fail

I saw a revealing quote from our HHS secretary today as she attempted to downplay what are expected to be underwhelming Obamacare sign up numbers for 2016. I'm paraphrasing here, but she said, they (the Government) expected that as Obamacare came of age, that there would be a shift away from employment-based healthcare towards the ACA, and that this shift has not occurred.

See the problem here is that our HHS secretary has a typical leftist view of US employers... She assumed that everything she had been taught about American companies was true... that they are cruel, heartless and hate the fact that they actually have to pay their employees. She believed that the very second that Companies saw a way to stop having to pay for employee benefits, that they would jump at the chance and throw their employees to the wolves in an attempt to further boost their already ill-gotten profits.

But somewhere along the way, the free market intervened.

See, it didn't happen that way did it? Turns out in the free market, companies who want to attract and retain the best employees have to offer those employees something better than the shit show that is Obamacare... quality affordable Health Care, tailored to each individual employee's needs, and purchased on the open market

Free Market - 1
Obama - 0

Monday, October 19, 2015

I felt the Bern

Last week's Democratic Debate was my first real exposure to the Bernie Sanders phenomenon. And I gotta say, the fact that this lunatic (and that's really what he is) is drawing huge crowds tells you how putrid Hillary is as a candidate.

First of all he looks like an escaped mental patient . With his wild white hair and crazy eyes he reminds me of Doc Brown...  insane electrified colander on his head Doc Brown. Even his delivery... If he was running down Fifth Avenue shouting that the end of the world was nigh, how would he sound different?

And his understanding, or lack thereof, of economics is laughable. Here's 18 trillion dollars in program proposals... Don't sweat it though, we'll tax Billionaires to pay for it.  Well, there are something like 500 Billionaires in the country. You do the math... Because Bernie clearly hasn't.

What an awful, awful field the Democrats has produced. If the GOP can't win this, and I think there's a really good chance they can't, we might as well hang it up. We won't win the White House again until some major corrective event occurs... If ever.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Serenity Now

In the excellent 2005 feature film adaptation of Josh Whedon's FIREFLY series, a Government agency uses a "serenity" drug to pacify the population of a planet in hopes of eliminating crime and violence. What they produce, instead, are beings so full of apathy and so uninterested in even the most basic details of their daily lives that they lay down wherever they are... and peacefully starve to death.

After discovering this horror perpetrated by a Government with, of course, the best of intentions, Ship's Captain Mal Reynolds vows to expose the horror and make sure Government can never do such a thing again.

He says....

"Sure as I know anything, I know this - They will try again. Maybe on another World, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now? Ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."

I was reminded of this quote when I read an article earlier this week about scientists who believe they can change people's opinions about religion and immigration (among other things) by blasting subjects' brains with a particular kind of magnetic pulse. The fact that the two opinions they sought to change in this "experiment" were belief in God and a belief in National Sovereignty tells me all I need to know about their politics.

Now perhaps the science behind this is complete and utter bullshit. But if it isn't... it's only a matter of time before someone, probably the same kind of person who wants RICO statutes brought to bear against anyone who does not believe that we need higher taxes to fight Global Warming, decides that this is a technology that needs to be used on Americans whose beliefs are not sufficiently Progressive... preferably by force.

If that should happen, I will aim to misbehave.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Chris Christie is right about Social Security

This will probably lose me some fans, so I'm going to ask both of you to please remain calm as you read this and hear me out...

Christie is proposing that we means test folks making a certain amount of post-retirement income out of Social Security payments. I think he's right.

But, but George, I paid into the system all my life, it's my money, I should get it back... WITH INTEREST!!!  Yes, I agree, in theory. Look, if it were up to me I would abolish the entire system as theft to begin with. But the system is the system, so we're stuck with it for now.

Know what else we'ere stuck with? 19 trillion dollars in debt. I don't think we can ever pay that back, but what we definitely can't do is continue to make that number bigger, forever and ever.

We just can't. It will literally destroy the nation eventually. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next year, but someday.

And the only way we can stop that number from growing is to cut. Cut as much as we can. Cut EVERYTHING... if we can.

There can't be any sacred cows.  Everything has to be cut, across the board... yes, your pet project too. I don't care what it is.

Yes, that too... everything.

We either do this voluntarily, right now, or reality will do it for us eventually... and it won't ask for permission first. And while we might be able to get away with just a 5% cut across the board today, reality may impose a 10%, or 20%, or 50% cut ten years from now.

So we can play the "not in my backyard" game if we want. We can bitch and complain and argue that this or that ONE THING can never be cut. But there's a big reality check waiting for us just over the horizon. And we'd better do something about it right now, before it swamps us all.

Christie's idea is a good first step.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

One thing I don't understand about Trump...

Yeah I know... one thing!?

OK it's many things, but right now, the one thing on my mind is why he just can't seem to get worked up enough to take his anger out on the Left.

Anderson Cooper is flat out telling us he won't seek to pit the Democratic candidates against one another tonight, which is exactly the opposite of the way CNN handled the GOP Debate a couple weeks ago... and also the opposite of the way Fox News handled their GOP debate back in August.

Trump was pissed at Fox for the way they treated him, less so at CNN, because I guess after getting hammered twice he figured that's just the way it is... but now we have Cooper saying no, no that's NOT the way it is and I'm going to go easy on the Democrats so we don't hand the GOP bats with which to hit their rivals over the heads next Fall, and The Donald, for all his fighty ballsy fightiness has nothing to say about that!?

Unbelievable this guy.

Another evidence-free claim from Camp Hillary

I see quotes like this a lot in the press...

“Hillary’s always at her most effective when her back is to the wall,” says one of her longtime political advisers. “After weeks of pounding and pummeling by the press, she’s mad as hell and isn’t going to take it any more.”

And my reaction is always, this claim of competence under stress or when the chips are down... what exactly is this based on?

She always reacts like a rabid weasel when pushed into a corner... always. Do these people even remember "what difference, at this point, does it make!?"?

The 3 AM Phone call ad was a complete joke the very second her campaign cut it.

Monday, October 12, 2015

The Survival Podcast

I'm not a podcast guy... just don't have the time to commit to them. And with all the folks screeching at each other on cable news and talk radio every day the idea of another political show is about as appealing as being dragged through an acre of cactus by my ankles.

But there is one podcast I make time for... THE SURVIVAL PODCAST hosted by Jack Spirko.

Jack is a self-described Redneck from Texas, but he really sells himself short with that description. Jack managed to build and sell several telecom companies through the 90's and did quite well for himself. As his business success combined with a political evolution from Republican to Libertarian to Minarchist, Jack decided to drop out of the rat race and start building what he was preaching... a life based on Liberty and a Homestead as free and disconnected from the system as it's possible to be.

And that's what the The Survival Podcast is about.

If you're looking for advice on how to ride out the Zombie Apocalypse in a bunker in the Ozarks, this ain't the show for you.  As Jack likes to say, if you aren't equipped to survive a hurricane, earthquake, job loss, or death of a loved-one... you're probably not equipped to survive the End of the World.

I'm going to go ahead and link to one of Jack's basic preparedness shows to get you started. Well worth your time.



Friday, October 9, 2015

Would guns have stopped the Holocaust?

I dunno, but I bet some of the folks who lost family to the Nazi death machine would have loved to see those family members take a couple SS guards with them on their way out.

I see the talking point counter-argument seems to be that a couple of Jews with guns would not have been able to stop the entire Nazi war machine.

Well...

I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure the Nazis didn't round up all the Jews by sending the Wermacht down the streets of Berlin in Tiger Tanks. Those guys were pretty busy elsewhere... like on the Russian Front. No, they went and kicked in doors in groups of 8 or 10 SS officers. Could a handful of Jews with surprise on their side have inflicted major losses on those first groups of SS who showed on their doorstep? You betcher ass. Ultimately, would it have stopped the Nazis from rounding up all the Jews anyway by advancing on them with larger and more violent units? Probably not... but when your next stop is a boxcar headed for Auschwitz, "probably not" is a lot better than "definitely not"

I side with Ben Carson on this one.

UPDATE: I didn't even get into the difference more and better guns could have made during events like the Warsaw ghetto uprising...

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Email Alerts

So I've gone ahead and added a gadget over on the right side tool bar that will allow you to receive updates via email when new posts go up... At least I hope that's what I've done... Turns out I'm a better writer than I am a web designer.*

I may put up an RSS feed button as well if I can figure out how to make that work. Stay tuned.




* this claim is true even if you think I'm a shitty writer.

Joaquin V. Katrina: This Time it's Political

So as I watch the disaster recovery in South Carolina, run by the impressive and formidable Governor Nikki Haley*, I can't help but wonder about something.

If it was George Bush's fault that the levees failed in New Orleans, why isn't it Barrack Obama's fault that Dams (DAMS! PLURAL!) failed in South Carolina?

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the (R) in front of George Bush's name... nothing at all.

In other news, I see a US air strike went awry and killed a bunch civilians and doctors. Now personally, I think war is an ugly and difficult business and I know that no other country goes out of its way to protect non-combatants like we do... no one else comes close. But despite our best efforts... literally our very best efforts, sometimes things go wrong and innocents are killed. And that is why I have no interest in blaming Obama for this incident... but I will note the fact that some of the same people who used such incidents to suggest that George Bush was an evil warmonger with children's blood on his hands, don't seem to have any interest in tagging Obama here either.**

Strange, that.***




* For fun, contrast Haley's commanding response with the public wailing and gnashing of teeth on display in the wake of Katrina by Governor Kathleen Blanco and NOLA City Mayor Ray Nagin

** Where is Cindy Sheehan these days? I guess now that she's no longer politically useful to the media, they've dropped her like an aging ex-girlfriend. Maybe she'll be back for an exciting return engagement if the GOP wins in 2016.

*** Not really

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Pop quiz hotshot. What object am I describing?

In America there is a product sold legally in thousands of storefronts all across the country. Every year millions of Americans present a photo ID to prove they are of age and then with very little else in the way of hurdles to jump, no other tests, fees, or requirements of any kind, they are allowed to buy this product for their own personal use. And then, in a shocking display of abject responsibility, the vast majority of people who buy this product use it to... have a good time. And even though this product is potentially very dangerous, deadly even, millions of our fellow citizens use it safely every single day and never think twice.

I should mention that this product is highly regulated and that using it in certain ways is illegal.  One of the many ways you can use this product to break the law is to kill people with it. And yet despite the existence of many thousands of federal, state, and local laws on the books, every year our fellow Americans do, in fact, use this product to kill other Americans... they did so more than 10,000 times last year alone, even though they knew in advance that doing so is a felony punishable by long prison sentences and hefty fines. Worse, often times these criminals commit mass killings with multiple victims mowed down in a single event... one particularly disturbing incident in Kentucky claimed the lives of twenty-seven people in a single night.

And of course each and every time the calendar clicks over to a brand new January we wake up to discover that in the previous twelve months many thousands more used this product to kill themselves in a variety of nasty ways.

Beyond the death and destruction, some estimates put the financial cost of using this product illegally at 132 BILLION dollars every single year. When you measure both the social and real physical costs to society, very few things come close in terms of sheer destructiveness.

Of course, the product I'm talking about is alcohol. And yet despite the costs I've cataloged here, there is no real support for banning alcohol in America, nor do I expect there ever will be. This despite the fact that we Americans prove every year that no matter how many laws we pass making DUI illegal, some percentage of us are going to continue to do it, and thousands will die. The only way, the ONLY possible way, to save most of those who die from DUI would be to ban alcohol 100%, and even that would be no guarantee of success. Bootlegged home-brew and bathtub gin would still wreak plenty of havoc. We learned this painful lesson during Prohibition when we went so far as to add an Amendment to the Constitution banning booze and discovered that along with our new law we got the added price tag of mob violence, death, and mayhem.

But there's simply no stomach for such a ban in Modern America. Why not?

And why, on the other hand, are so many people so damned anxious to ban guns? Contrast our laissez faire attitude toward booze with the rabid activism of the anti-gun movement. They tell us that we are morally compelled to "do something" about guns if it would save the life of even a single child. All of which raises a question, are children who die in DUI incidents (1,150 under the age of 14 in 2013 by the way) second class citizens? Are their lives less important than those taken by gun violence? Their deaths less meaningful?

I say no. Every life lost is a tragedy, but here's the thing, and there's really no way of getting around this... we live in a free society and living in a free society carries with it a small risk that one day you may cross paths with a dangerous, evil, or even just an irresponsible person and that it will cost you your life. That risk can never be truly removed from our lives... not by laws, not by governments, and certainly not by hashtags.

And so I say let's have a little consistency here. We either ban guns AND alcohol and give government even more control over our lives for some marginal increase in safety... or we don't ban either one... we accept that doing so carries a small amount of personal risk, we do whatever we have to do to mitigate that risk (by, say, getting a concealed carry permit), and we go on about our lives and enjoy our freedoms.

I know which side I come down on.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Self-serving interview of the week

So the father of the Oregon shooter gave an interview where he blamed... shocker... lax gun laws for his son's murderous rampage. Anti-Gun groups like Mom's Demand Action have seized on the interview and are playing the old "absolute moral authority" card... a play not run much since the heady days of Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink.

Anyway let's listen to what this guy has to say for a sec...

OK that's enough. Gee I wonder why he might want us to focus on gun laws. I'm just spit-balling here, but maybe it's because if we focus on the law, we'll be less inclined to ask uncomfortable questions like... hey pal, how did you manage to raise a mass murderer? or... were there any red flags, any signs of mental illness that you missed? And to what extent do you share culpability for all those shattered lives... could you have stopped this?

Instead he asks... "How was my son able to get 13 guns?"

Well hell dude, I dunno... he's your kid, you tell me.


UPDATE: I see Bobby Jindal is making the same point... I always knew Jindal was a smart guy... that's why he follows my lead.

Monday, October 5, 2015

Does my iTunes playlist say "Presidential Material" to you?

Over the weekend I was reading an article about how much money the Presidential Candidates are spending on Campaign Consultants to design playlists for them and it occurred to me that someone putting together a list of reasons why Donald Trump is leading in the polls could do worse than to start there...

So after I washed the taste of vomit out of my mouth, I started to think about how a conversation like this, between a Candidate and a Consultant, might actually go...

Consultant: OK, so any thoughts on songs you'd like to include?

Candidate: How about Open Letter (To a Landlord) by LIVING COLOUR? I love that song, plus it would show people that I care about minority housing issues.

Consultant: Absolutely not... that song portrays a highly problematic image of inner city life as being dominated by crime, drugs, and violence... Also, we need the Urban Hipster vote and we don't want to suggest that gentrification, per se, is a bad thing.

Candidate: ... OK, how about Here Comes the Sun by THE BEATLES? I mean everyone likes the sun.

Consultant: Oh no... no no no no no... Have you listened to Run For Your Life? HIGHLY problematic... we don't want to trigger victims of abusive relationships... no BEATLES...

Candidate: I don't want Run For Your Life, I want a DIFFERENT song by the BEATLES...

Consultant: Doesn't matter. Liking one song by the BEATLES could be taken as an endorsement of their whole catalog.

Candidate: ...

Consultant: Any other ideas?

Candidate: ... how about the theme song from PEANUTS?

Consultant: ...we'll get back to you... (shouts down the hall) BOB! SET UP A FOCUS GROUP!!!