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.

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.

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.

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?

College kids are cruel

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

Ouch.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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!!!