The Death of DOMA, and another fine mess you've gotten us into . . .

It's the latest, most important news.  DOMA is toast. 

I never knew where Congress got the authority to create a restrictive definition of marriage in the first place.  It sure isn't in the enumerated powers.  What, the interstate commerce clause?  That means if a homosexual couple gets married in a state which permits such marriages, they are married for purposes of federal law, and have the benefits and obligations that arise under federal law. 

Well, if the Defense of Marriage Act is toast, does that mean that states now have to recognize homosexual marriage relationships created under other state's laws?  Or can the states say that a marriage that would be contrary to law in one state isn't automatically made lawful because some other state let it happen under more liberal laws?  In other words, may states now question the legitimacy of actions of other states, when citizens move from state to state?

Further, there is the Prop 8 clusterf*ck the court is dealing with.  California voters passed Prop 8, saying, no homosexual marriage.  Some people sued the state, saying that Prop 8, enforced by the state, would violate some sort of rights they imagined they had, just as if a right is some sort of biological appendage rather than a condition created by government action.  Anyhow, the political masters of California, who didn't like Prop 8 much in the first place mostly because they don't like the idea of citizens getting all uppity and thinking they should be considered, decided not to defend the case brought by the people who were suing to claim Prop 8 was a violation. 

So, how tough is it to win a lawsuit, when the defendant doesn't show up?

To avoid a default position, the original proponents of Prop 8 stepped in and nominated themselves as defendants.  The plaintiffs, suing the state, wanted them kicked out of court, saying, "We aren't suing you, we're suing California and you have no right to be here."  The problem went to the 9th circuit judges who said citizens can defend a lawsuit when the state defendant won't.  Contrarily, the Supreme Court has  ruled that citizens cannot appear and defend if the state, as defendant, won't.

I guess that means that the challenge to Prop 8 will be upheld because the political masters of California are going to take a dive on the issue, and the voters who voted and passed Prop 8 can pretty much go pound sand, for all that they matter.  Governor Brown wants queer marriage in California, and his will be done.

So where does that leave us?  Who the hell knows.  More litigation will ensue, for sure, for sure, and speeches will be made, politicians will weep phony tears, activists of one sort or another will activate, and pulpits will roar with righteousness.  And all the sturm und drang will be in aid of homosexual marriage. 

Hey, what percentage of Americans are exclusively homosexual in the first place?  Maybe 5%, if that?  And what percentage of those want the right to marry?  Certainly not all.  After all, a helluva lot of straight people have determined that marriage isn't all that.  So we have all this attention paid to something that will benefit only a fraction of a very small minority.

Thanks Supremes.  You made the mess worse.  Gah!

I guess that the issues of government surveillance of citizens without probable cause, contrary to the 4th Amendment, can be safely ignored.  And no need to concern ourselves with the politicizing of IRS decision making.  And we needn't be concerned about who decided to let Americans die without even trying to do something about it in Bengahzi.  And nothing to look at when Kathleen Sibelius tries to shake down constituents.  No need to wonder about the EPA's violation of administration rule making rules.  Homeland Security's heavy handed violation of travelers means nothing.  A porous border with the federal government declining to enforce its own laws is something we should welcome in the name of diversity and social progress.  And don't speak of the threat of militant Islamism which has declared war on us and shown over the years that attacks can be made within our borders with impunity.

None of that dreck is all that important, compared to the rights of homosexuals to fulfill their heart's desire to prance down a wedding aisle with a white veil masking a heavy beard, all with the approval and support of loving government busybodies.

Don't get me wrong.  Homosexuals are wronged by the present state of the law.  Well.  Fix that.  Let's get it done clearly and without confusion, and let's stop screwing over the icky queers, if that's our thing, and let's get on with the real challenges to our republic. 

Or could it be that our government masters welcome and promote the distraction provided by minor issues, like homosexual marriage, so that attention will be directed away from some the concerns noted above, all of which arise in the first place mostly because many of our government masters are not fundamentally in favor of a republican form of government which essentially empowers the little people to resist the depredations of solipsistic politicians? 

Nah, surely not that.

Big Alterna . . .

Got some unsolicited stuff in the mail, as we do, now that my bride has subscribed to some information services promoting good health.

It occurs to me that providing for alternative medical practices and ingestible supplements is a big business, bringing in big, big bucks, when you figure that on top of all the stuff being sold, there's a whole arkload of alternative treatment practitioners, healers, spiritual advisors, swamis, consultants, and suchlike, from acupunctuationists to rolfbrokers, to reikipilots, and all notional practitioners in-between.

And every damn one of them shares to following two points.

• They aren't doing what they do or distributing what they deliver for no charge.
• They all hate and despise what they contemptuously call Big Pharma, by which they mean protocols and substances that have been developed with more than a passing familiarity with the scientific method.

I say it's time to recognize that you have a choice between Big Pharma, and Big Alterna.  And your choice ought to be related to efficiency of result, alone, and not the fact that Big Pharma makes big bucks.

In that regard, Big Pharma is indistinguishable from Big Alterna, and don't think otherwise.

But hey, if you believe that a $139.00 hat with earflaps, made out of a sun activated corn silk and mole fur blend derived from ranch-raised moles, will cure migraines and ice-cream headaches, well, go for it.

It probably won't make any difference, in Darwinian terms, anyhow.

The NSA, that is, National Spy Agency . . .

There are reasons for being suspicious of our government.  And keep in mind that being against the government is not the same thing as being against the country.  We're just talking about the guys running the place, you know, the current four branches of government, the judiciary, the legislature, the executive, and the vast unelected civil service.  (Yeah, there's four, that is, one more than your teacher, who didn't know any better, told you about in the seventh grade.)

Let's see.  There's Fast and Furious.  There's Sibelius.  There's Bengahzi.  Then there's the Bengahzi cover-up.  There's the IRS being politicalized.  And there's the NSA wiretapping deal.  There may be more that I've forgotten.  Any of these could be enough to shake up the White House.  After all, with Nixon, the problem was bugging just the Democratic campaign offices, and that was enough.  But the NSA has bugged the entire country, including your voice calls, email, texts, etc.  A ginormously huge data center is being built in Utah to store everything the NSA gets.

And this is potentially the worst of all.  First, I'm pretty sure there are hackers in China and Russia, and maybe Iran, who can't wait to hack into all this NSA data.  If they haven't already.  And of course, we have our own domestic hackers to worry about, not the mention the various government busybodies who are going to check you out.  And if they are collecting information from everybody, then everybody is the potential target, and it has nothing to do with actual guilt or 4th Amendment probable cause. 

Do you think that girl you dumped in your senior year has forgotten about it, now that she works for the Veteran's Administration where you just happen to be applying for benefits?  Let's just check you out.

But that isn't the worst of it because, second, there's a million dedicated, crazy conspiracy-theory paranoids out there, slapping their knee right now and saying, "I knew it!" 

We have a whole lot of crazy people running around loose, since the great psychiatric insight of the seventies -- that the best and most humane treatment for crazy people is to pretend they can function in normal society and to ignore them and their emotional pain until they commit a serious crime that gets them locked up for a time.

So here's a little message for all the crazy people. 

Boys and girls, just because it's true that the NSA really is collecting all sorts of information about everybody, not just foreign transactions, doesn't mean you haven't been crazy all this time.  You just caught a lucky break, but you are still crazy.  Even though all the electronic data is being collected, the government is still not spying on you and watching what you do through the light bulbs, not now and never was

At least not the old kind.

I'm not so sure about those new curly compact florescent kind.

Can you say "ersatz," boys and girls? . . .

I drink no-fat milk.  I use whole wheat spaghetti noodles and pizza dough.  I eat low fat cheese.  I use turkey sausage, not pork.  One morning, for breakfast, my wife made "pancakes" using grated apple, banana, and egg.  (They were good.)  I use artificial sweetener.  My hamburgers have no burger in them, so they have soy and nuts instead.  I think the little bits of bacon in my salad are really flavored bits of brown styrene.  My buttery popcorn involves no actual butter.

I could have teeth "whiter than white" by use of an inexpensive product.

My shirts don't need ironing after washing. 

My car shifts its own gears.  The gasoline in its tank comes partly from corn alcohol.  The fabric of my pants comes from an oil well.

So, it occurs to me that I am living an inauthentic life.  And I'm not alone in that.

Is it then any wonder that we can hear the pitchman on television say, "Get the facts, just try it for yourself," and not even hear the  clanking of the logic underneath that statement? 

All the phony we live with has nourished our stupid quotient.  (If you can have an intelligence quotient, I.Q., then you can have a stupid quotient.)

So, don't get me started on politicians.

Bad moon rising . . .

IRS is being sued for going far beyond the scope of a search warrant and seizing all sorts of patient treatment records, far in advance of 4th Amendment limits. 

Keep in mind that IRS is given enforcement obligations for Obamacare. 

If IRS won't "play by the rules," why are the citizens required to report honestly, on penalty of criminal punishment? 

Are we getting closer to when massive and pervasive civil disobedience is in order?

Freedom of speech . . .

The Homeowners Association said he couldn't have an American flag in his yard, so, as a good neighbor, he took the flag down and freshened the look of his home.  Take a look.

That'll show 'em who's boss . . .

So the acting head of IRS had turned in his notice that he was quitting in June.  in response to the IRS scandals - one of the four breaking out in Washington at the moment - the President fired him.  Two weeks before he was going to leave on his own.

The President wants us to know that sometimes doing the right thing means being a hard-ass.

Happy 21st Century Mothers Day

Mothers Day.  Once, 'twas an honored and harmless commercial tradition of coercing males to spend money on useless trinkets, flowers, and over-priced buffets.

Now, in the politics is everything age, it is a splendid opportunity to increase breast cancer "awareness," whateverthehell "awareness" is supposed to actually mean.  Also, a good time to celebrate and encourage abortion rights for reluctant breeders - they's kinda the same thing as mothers, right?

Fathers Day?  The kids spend five minutes crayoning a card. 

Increased awareness of prostate cancer?

Cue the sound of crickets.

Hey, make me a sammitch . . .

Washington State Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles

is sponsoring a six year effort to go through all the laws of Washington and remove all mentions of men, males, and suchlike so as to make all official language gender neutral.  It's going to be a six year process to bugger the language so as to make men aware of their reduced status in a modern world run by women who are mighty.  Hear them roar.

So, instead of watchman, we'll have watchperson.  Also, there'll be firepersons on duty and people can make a living or just be fisherpersons for a hobby.  Instead of penmanship, we'll have something horrible like good write-itude.

I guess Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles has checked around and satisfied herself that having a hyphenated name entitles her to a mandate.  I mean persondate.

And for manhood and womanhood, I guess we could go with "convexity" and "concavity" to refer to traits normally associated to distinguish gender behaviors.

One can make jokes about this endlessly, but I'm pretty sure Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles would not "get" any of them. 

The sad thing is that this sort of effort to achieve gender neutrality in the language can only grow out of a sense of inferiority.  I suspect that women who are comfortable with themselves don't get their ears hurt when they hear the word "fireman." 

This can't be the new normal, can it? . . .

The report says that a young woman couldn't enter a stranger's home in the ordinary way, like, maybe ringing the doorbell or knocking on the door.  So the young woman, being unusually small, took off her black dress and crawled through the doggie door.  The homeowners, hearing odd noises, investigated, and found her sitting in the bathtub, no water, naked.  She was in due course arrested.  When being taken into custody, she told the cops she didn't think she was doing anything wrong, sitting naked in a bathtub in a home she entered through the doggie door.

What do you say to an unknown naked girl in your bathtub?

And what's going on between the ears when a young woman thinks it's okay to take off all her clothes and crawl through the doggie door into a stranger's home?

I know, nobody is ever actually told, specifically, that as you go through life you should never take off all your clothes and crawl through a doggie door and go sit naked in a strangers' bathtub. 

But we all pretty much agree that that's something not to do, without being told.  Right?

I know this must be true, because in all these years I've never met an unknown naked woman in my bathtub.  I have a camera for just in case.

Where do terrorists come from? . . .

Many observers of public affairs express fear that all of the many no-neck mouthbreathers who make up the political right will collectively rise up against poor, pitiful not-hurtin-nobody Muslims, because said mouthbreathers are ignorant Americans, "clinging to their guns and religion."

No sign of it yet.  Wonder here do we keep 'em?

Americans pretty much know that not all Muslims are terrorists, so there isn't any general persecution of Muslims forthcoming.  And that's the truth.

On the other hand, while not all Muslims are terrorists, the terrorists have all been Muslim.  Not one damn Buddhist in the lot.  And that's also the truth.

So, if anybody is looking to find a terrorist, I wouldn't spend a lot of time looking at the membership of, say, some Presbyterian church.

We need to do something . . .

It's far too easy for people to go to kitchen utensil conventions and to buy pressure cookers from unlicensed vendors there.  We need tougher laws governing selling of pressure cookers, licensing, and background checks.  Because if we can save one life, and because shut up.

Latest science news . . .

Some scientists have been studying vertebrate brain structure, and there are similarities, in all vertebrate nervous systems, no matter whether fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, or mammal.  After much brilliant work with that part of the brain that deals with hoots and calls and language in humans, scientists can now understand the meaning of sparrow bird calls.

It turns out that "tweet tweet twitter peep twitter," doesn't mean, "good morning to all the world!"

It means, "Back off or die, motherfuck!"

John Kerry be clowns himself again . . .

Kerry said that we are "all united," and North Korea will "never be accepted as a nuclear power."

Never be accepted!

He went to elite schools, was admitted into elite clubs, and has unwaveringly thought of himself as one of the superior, able to identify all who fail to measure up for membership in his exclusive digs.

Hey John.  You don't get to say who gets to be a nuclear power.  If the get ahold of a bomb, they're a nuclear power.  Q. E. D.

Doofus!

Just a little observation . . .

Have you noticed how frequently mouthbreathers and dropouts feel the need to instruct others?

The Supreme Court prepares to screw up gay marriage . . .

Everybody has a right to get married.  Nobody has the right to marry whoever or whatever they choose.  You can't marry somebody who doesn't want to marry you back.  You can't marry somebody who is only six years old. You can't marry somebody who is already married to somebody else.  You can't marry more than one at a time.  You can't marry your pet St. Bernard bitch, no matter how comely she may be.  You can't marry a unicorn.

The gummint gives specific legal rights to people who marry according to the gummint's specific marital prescriptions, like rights to consent, rights to pass on property, tax distinctions, etc.  Rights are legal conditions created by government.  Not all rights belong to everybody. If so-called rights to marry are extended beyond the boundaries of the specific marital prescriptions, they cease to be rights.  They become property.

 

The problem isn't that gay people are denied rights available to married, straight people. The problem is that special privilege has been granted to married people. Why should marriage, a public confession to strictly private behavior, be given any special privilege at all?

 Want more rights for gay people?  Consider that at the state level, citizens vote on issues of rights all the time, while also voting for representative candidates.  There are even referendum privileges where citizens can propose changes to laws granting or reducing rights.  But at the federal level, citizens only vote for representative or executive candidates, never issues.  We are stuck with the fact that Congress and the Executive can and will act only as they damn well please. 

 

But at the state level, we get to vote.  That's a hint that the right to marry is a state issue, not a federal issue.  Some states permit gay marriages; some don't

 The issue of marriage only seems to be of federal concern when it arises between the states, as when state A permits a couple to marry, where they would not have been permitted to marry in state B.  We've always relied on the theory of full faith and credit to resolve these matters, and that's why somebody came up with the cockamamie Defense of Marriage Act.  At the federal level!  Thereby putting the federal government and some state governments at odds, and creating a 10th amendment quandary to be ignored by the buttheads of the right who didn't like getting outvoted.

I don't see marriage as one of the enumerated powers of the U.S. Constitution and it sure as hell isn't covered under the interstate commerce dodge, where butthead progressive types seem to find justification for most of their pet notions. 

 So it seems to me that the DOMA is the problem and could be dumped for unconstitutionality. 

 

What to do if you are gay, in a committed, loving relationship, and your state of residence is not one of the states permitting gay marriage?  Move to a more congenial state, and marry, butthead.  (I suggest that anybody contemplating marriage, straight, gay, or just bent a little funny, should take a look at divorce law while looking at marriage law.) 

Thus Walt hath spoken, fully anticipating the Supreme Court to pay no attention whatsoever to the words of Walt.

Science question . . .

Tardigrades.  Okay, so I now know you can't drown them, freeze them, roast them, starve them, or dry them out, and they can survive in the cold vacuum of space.  They will survive.

Can you squash the little buggers?

Portland has an arts tax . . .

Portland, Oregon, has a permanent tax on everybody, for the arts.  Every resident of Portland over age 18, who has income, must pay $35.00.  Shut up and send the money in.

The revenue raised by the tax is going to be spent, half, to get more arts teachers in the schools.  the other half will be spent for "the arts".  I think that means for cronies, cuddle buddies and fellow travelers.

This tax was the result of a vote.  Voters approved it.  Wonder if the voters would be just as jazzed by the idea of a math tax, to hire more math teachers in the public schools, and the other half -- for math?  Hey, where are people most limited, in their ability to appreciate artistic expressions, or in their ability to understand and use basic number relationships?  What holds more people back in their prospects for a comfortable life, the inability to understand percentages or the inability to distinguish between crimson and scarlet?

How about this.  I'll pay the tax and they won't have any problem with me.  I like art and I can afford it.

But there is a whole 'nother issue.  If this law is later held to be a  head tax and therefore unconstitutional, as legally it ought to be, I'll expect my refund to be paid promptly without giving me any problems.  But deep down, I expect that that's 35 dollars I'll never see again. 

Because it truly isn't about the constitution or the arts; it's all about who gets to spend my money and what they choose to spend it on

Just sayin' . . .

Have you seen the car commercial showing the doofus in the white shirt and necktie trying to teach his kid how to play catch?  Doofus has to keep chasing the ball 'cause kid can't get the ball to him -- because the kid is throwing as awkwardly as his father.  Dude throws like an African-Indonesian with a Hawaiian birth certificate.

Mandatory Sequester comment . . .

Remember that around a year ago, President O said that he would veto any congressional attempt to avoid the sequester of funds, which he demanded?

Nah, they didn't think you would.

For the last six years (that includes Bush, doncha know, but doesn't exclude Obama) the American population has suffered continual erosion of their family budgets, both through price increases, like gasoline, and through loss of revenue, from job losses and income reductions.  And our federal rulers can't find a way to reduce expenses and are yelping about national disaster in the form of a mere 1 or 2 percent reduction in spending?  When spending already exceeds income by a hell of a lot more? 

The sequester would be a decent first step towards resolving the problem, even though insufficient in and of itself.  And it won't be a disaster, that is, it won't be a disaster unless it is implemented disastrously to punish the impertinence of people who don't think that increased government spending must be supported in any and all cases and by any means possible.

We have fallen in amongst bandits.

Should we start looking for cover? . . .

Last year our government bought, according to published information, 1.2 billion rounds of hollow point ammunition.  That's not our military; that's government civilian agencies like Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.  Simple math tells us that there are multiple rounds for every man, woman and child in the U.S. 

And your little dog Toto, too.

Wonder if our government masters are planning to do something they expect will seriously arouse the citizen subjects?

State of the Union Speech . . .

Oh, this guy is go-o-od!  Slick can get it done, can't he?

I mean, when you watch and listen to the speech, it sounds really terrific.  There are points where you feel like standing up and cheering.

But then when you read the speech, and you are restricted to the cold, hard logic of English sentence structure --  he repeatedly contradicts himself, that is, when what he is saying isn't actually nonsense or false to fact. 

But it truly sounds so good, doesn't it?  'What we have, here, is a seamless blend of "finally, somebody who gets it,"  with "this guy just doesn't get it."

I guess that's why commentators have termed him, "magnetic."  He has a positive, attractive pole and a negative, repulsive pole.  All in one.

These people perturb me off . . . mightily . . .

The currently fashionable snark of the right hand side of the political spectrum is to refer to people on the left as "low-information voters." Well, guess what.  There's low information voters on both sides, and in far greater numbers than there should be. 

But that isn't the real problem.  An absence of information can be corrected.  It's bad information that is the problem.  And where does the bad information come from?  News media just publishes stuff.  It normally doesn't create the stuff it publishes.  (The key word is "normally.")

When it comes to politics, the news media gets the information from the political people  - the politicians and all their operatives, suckups, agents and cronies.  The truth isn't in them.  Right and left, blue and red, conservative and liberal, fat cats and wellfare pimps, bullies and whores, big and small government believers, all of them, with the constant 24/7/365 spin, "analysis", and polls, are responsible for the fantastic, bad information breathlessly published, also 24/7/365,  by the news media.

Is there anybody left who isn't convinced, by now, that except for the religious terrorists in the middle east, the source of all the problems and challenges facing us is Washington D.C., and all the state capitol buildings?

I hereby move that it be resolved that we relentlessly present all politicians with nothing but disrespect, sarcasm, mockery and contempt.  It shouldn't be hard to do and we get plenty of opportunity.

They've earned it.

Separation of Economy and State.. . .

It's become popular in certain self-satisfied circles to justify disregard of constitutional considerations by pointing out that the writers of the constitution just couldn't know how the world would change and couldn't craft a political document that created a government capable of dealing with the modern world.

Well, the constitution does, after all, provide for amending the document.  So to say that the writers of the constitution couldn't provide for the future is disingenuous, verging on deceptive.  They planned for what they couldn't know of the future, by providing a way for the future to amend the document as it would later appear necessary.

In fact, the document was amended almost immediately, for fear that government busybodies would ignore the rights of a free people.  And there was historical justification for doing so, for example, freedom of and from religion leading to a clear separation of church and state.  These early Americans had seen first hand religious persecution and government interference with religious affairs, and they were close in time to crusades pitting Christianity against Islam.  They knew of executions based on religious beliefs and forced conversions, and the dreaded Inquisition.  So, the clear separation of church and state was imposed in response to a known danger of government, as they knew it to be.

Now, we live in modern times, and we see more of the damages a powerful government can do.  We know better, now, in ways our constitutional fathers could not know.  When our smug and self-loving social critics complain that the constitution is outdated, they are probably right.  We know now of a government threat not apparent to the framers of the constitution given the body of information they had, at the time.  We need another amendment to the constitution.

I think we need a clear separation of church and the economy.  No "stimulus" of the economy.  No price supports.  No commodity boards.  No "investment" in businesses.  No security regulations.  No tax-exempt activities or tax breaks to encourage business activity.  No interference to settle labor disputes, other than to respond to criminal activity or breach of the peace.  No federal banking regulations -- federal "reserve" bank.  No picking of "winners and losers."  None of it.  Government is not good at business and the economy, and much too frequently government activity pretextually in aid of the economy amounts to powerful politicians rewarding friends for favors, or spending public moneys on pet projects featuring fat doses of self -aggrandizement.  So.  None of it.  If you can't do it right, the truth of which has been demonstrated adequately, then leave it the hell alone.  Mint hard money and let banks take care of banknotes, privately.

The trouble with government activity in the economy is that it re-assigns risks in unrealistic ways.  Naturally, government activity will affect the economy, as when the navy ships are in port, money flows.  It's when the government tries to do stuff in order to deal with the economy, directly, that is the problem.  So.  Quit it. 

Maybe we can curb some of the bureaucratic temptation to help us, by helping themselves to the public purse.

And I'm getting pretty damned suspicious about government fooling around with education, too.

A billion here, and a billion there . . .

When you save, you park some unneeded money somewhere -- bank, bond, stock, mattress -- in hopes that when you want to turn that money into something needed, like food or rent, it will be there. If you put the money into a bank you are thought to be prudent. If you put the money into the stock market you are thought to be a genius when the market rises, and an unfortunate victim when the market falls, as it inevitably but unpredictably does.

 

 When you put your money into any financial institution, bank or corporation, wonder of wonders, they don't actually keep it for you. The institution either spends it frivolously or loans it to some moron who can dress well enough to impress a lending officer. The institution frequently makes some money in spite of itself and sometimes distributes some of the money to you -- always first assuring that its officers get bonuses at year end. You, of course, would frequently not approve of how your money gets spent. And you are betting that both the money and the institution you put it into will be there when you need it to be, despite observing one institution after another bite the big one over your lifetime. It requires a great deal of blind, unreasoning faith to make this bet, and this faith used to be called patriotism.

 

 Nowadays, we have a new economic system. It seems a mere handful of exploited foreigners can manufacture all the products that are actually needed, and a great deal more besides. So we've turned ourselves into developers and marketers of unneeded goods and services -- just kinda to keep our hand in. Many of us basically get paid for peddling something unnecessary, but if it doesn't sell, we don't eat, so we keep at it anyway. Many more of us, not wishing to peddle garbage, have become what is called -- with a straight face, mind you -- knowledge workers. We collect data and reassemble bits and pieces of it into new and exciting configurations so as to support the making of predominately inconsequential decisions, which in turn mostly have to do with how to sell more shoddy goods and unneeded services. Finally, if we are good at peddling garbage or mining data, we get to supervise others in the same sad trades, whether or not we are good at supervising.

 

But each and every worthless trinket that gets bought and pitched into a landfill ( a whole 'nother issue ) contributes even if only slightly to keeping some poor desperate drone alive and secure in the knowledge that somehow he matters.

 

That drone may be you or it may be me, so spend while you can and don't be stingy. It all counts. 

 

 Of course, when times get tough, lots of us lose our worthless jobs, so we can't spend.  Generally, the cause of such tough times is usually, but not always, caused by government policies.  This is known as bad luck, or karma.  In such times, government steps in and gives money to those who've are no longer getting paid for doing the stupid stuff they used to get paid for.  The theory is that those people will thereby be able to continue to spend and will, in due course, continue to support this financial merry go round.  But since we don't actually have a government that is quite right bright, those exalted government managers are unable to understand that every dollar they give to somebody to stimulate spending, comes from taxing somebody who now no longer has that dollar to spend because government took it.  So, in fact, the effect of "stimulating" the economy which depends on spending, is really merely shifting the same spending from one sector to another, with no real actual gain. 

 

 So hang on as long as you can, because our government leaders think that energetically whirling around in circles somehow is evidence of their being a big wheel.  And the fact that the system is spinning around in one spot makes it dig itself in deeper and deeper.  In other words, we are so screwed.

 

Hating Hillary . . .

Hillary Clinton's defiant congressional testimony before Congress concerning the management of the Benghazi travesty has brought some old critics out of the closet.  Take a look, here.  Wow.

That is, wow, if it is true.  But also, wow, if it's false.  Somebody, either Hillary or her accuser, here, is a sure-enough, bigtime weasel.

Apropos of nothing much, I always wondered how it was that the mysteriously missing billing records from her time as an influential attorney working for the Rose Law Firm, while married to the state governor, were found much later, when no longer useful, in the plate room of the White House.  (But I never lost any sleep over it.)

Common sense gun restrictions . . .

The Wall Street Journal, among others, reports that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has kidnapped about forty people, including Americans.  The Islamists are doing this in Algeria, in order to retaliate against the French, who are intervening in Mali.  The location of the kidnappers and the kidnappees is far away from any immediately effective response.  An Algerian security force attempted to storm the place to rescue the hostages, but was driven off.

See?  This just goes to show that all the wrong kind of people have access to guns.  It should therefore be a national priority to eliminate easy access to guns that can be used to shoot people.  The Supreme Court said that we have a constitutional right to own guns, but there can be reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.  So, the common sense solution to the problem is to let people only have the kind of guns that are incapable of shooting people.

We would all be much safer then, because terrorists would be unable to use deadly force, since they would naturally only own the kind of guns that are incapable of shooting people.  Terrorists would have to content themselves with yelling.  Which, you have to admit, would be better for us infidels.

Of course, psychopaths, like the ones who shot up the schools, or the one who shot up a theater, or the one who shot up an army post, or the one who shot up the University of Virginia, all would still be able figure out ways to obtain the old fashioned kind of guns that can shoot people.  But we are just going to have to live with that because, as I'm sure you all know, being a dangerous psychopath is a civil right, such that attempting to restrict a psychopath from being dangerous would seriously trample on their free expression of their psychopathology.

You win some, you lose some.

I Know It's Crazy But What Would Happen if . . .

I've been reading about the incredible debt the U.S. has been undertaking here of late.  Things like, the debt in the last three years has increased by 60%.  Things like, the amount of debt growth in the last four years is greater than all the debt the government ever undertook -- and paid off -- since the country was formed. 

Young people are so screwed by this debt.  Their entire productive future is at risk of having politicians pay federal debt out of their future.  They have to pay off unconscionable student loans, and pay off the government's traitorous level of overspending, and have a life, too?

I've also been reading about the gun regulation controversy, and some have gone so far as to suggest that armed rebellion or even a break-up of the states, forming several smaller countries, could result from an attempt to take guns away.  Probably not, but what if . . .

So, what happens if a few states decide to up and quit?  Would there be a civil war, again?  Nowadays, would Pennsylvania, for example, supply it's young men to fight in a war to prevent Texas, for example, from withdrawing?  Would they go?  At this point in our country's story, do we have enough currently serving military officers willing to go to war on the president's orders to prevent disintegration?  Or would they resign their commissions?  More importantly, are there enough riflemen willing to obey orders to shoot at Americans at home, and get shot at by them, in turn?

Maybe not.  The American military is best equipped to fight "big" wars with massive force.  Would the military leaders really order missles to be fired and bombs to be dropped on fellow Americans, in this day and age? 

And here's my question.  If some states were to withdraw and form a new government for themselves, leaving the union, would  their citizens cease to be U.S. citizens?  And if so, what's their responsibility for the national debt?

If the national debt gets worse, would or could a price be reached by a money hungry federal government to let citizens of a state "buy its way out" of the union, with a negotiated payment price and terms? 

Win-win?

A new year's fiscal cliffery . . .

It's now 2013, a new year, and righteous time for resolutions.  The Republicans have resolved to continue being Republicans, and the Democrats have resolved to continue being Democrats, the proof of which proposition exists in the cliff avoidance plan adopted in the Senate, at the absolute last minute, when they've had literally years to figure out how to get this done.  Gah!

What was the fiscal cliff?  It was a silly scheme whereby if our political masters couldn't finally figure out how to reform our tax system and/or how to bring overspending under control, then the previous tax cuts would "automatically" expire having the effect of increasing the tax burden, and massive spending cuts would "automatically" happen, "across the board."  The morons who passed this legislative kludge thought of it as so repulsive that surely they would have to figure out a good way of growing up to accomplish good government, so as to avoid going over the cliff that they had created for themselves.

Okay, we have two massive problems.  The first problem is that we're broke.  The government doesn't have enough money to do all the things it has committed itself to do.  What should be done? 

One thing would be to reduce spending, first, by eliminating all waste, and second, by eliminating all unauthorized spending, and third, by reneging on selected committments for impossibility.  (Wait one.  Unauthorized spending?  There hasn't been a budget passed for three years; it's all unauthorized!  And renege on what kind of committments?  For example, do we have to give money to the Palestinians and the Egyptians, when we already give money to the United Nations, thereby funding international corruption?) 

Another thing to do about being broke, which has been the strategy of choice, more or less, for the last ninety years or so, is just print up additional new money.  That's called inflation and our government masters have decided a long time ago that a "little bit" of inflation is a good thing, somehow.  This is absolutely going to continue happening.  Oh, and "more than a little bit" is defined as when people start to pay attention.

I teach bankruptcy.  One of the interesting features about bankruptcy is that debtors are nearly always able to keep increasing their debt during "pre-bankruptcy," which means that there's always somebody who expects to profit from somebody else's financial vulnerability by lending, despite the signs of financial insecurity. 

That leads to the third response to being broke.  Borrow money to keep living beyond one's means.  It's kind of like, how can I be broke?  People keep lending me money.  How can I be broke?  There's still blank checks in my checkbook.

And this is why Congress invented the fiscal cliff for itself.  Basically, Congress said that if we hadn't done anything effective to control our spending and revenue, then, magically on January 1, 2013, we would be officially broke in our own estimation, even if there were people who were willing for one reason or another, to keep lending and funding our financial descent into harmless world-class international inconsequentiality.  (Why, there might be world leaders who would welcome and encourage the collapse of the United States.  Imagine that!)

So, what did the Senate do at the last effing gasp of December 31, 2012?  It passed a law to twiddle with taxes and do nothing about spending, so as to claim that it saved us from the cliff.  Basically, spending will be looked at in the future when we examined the so-called debt limit that we (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) impose on ourselves. 

See, we aren't broke at all.  We can keep the party going by a quick trip to the ATM.  We can always borrow more; it's just money and other people's money at that.

And that leads us to our second massive problem.  That is, that all of our political masters, legislative, judicial, and executive, are more or less but always too much, either stupid or evil.  No other explanation will account.

I think our political class thinks that it can continue along the same path it set out on since President Wilson, because the American public at large is extremely reluctant and unlikely to pick up its guns and engage in an armed revolution against the present parasitical and tyrannical government.  (But maybe all the guns better be seized, I mean controlled, for just in case.)

And I agree.  It won't come to that, and that's why I don't own a gun.

But massive civil disobedience?  That sounds more likely. 

When you think about it, perhaps government has lost, or is about to lose the benefit of the public conviction that government can essentially be trusted to act for the greater good.  If government ceases to be an advocate for justice, and becomes a mere change agent to redistribute wealth, then it loses it's moral justification for the use of overwhelming force even as it may continue to use overwhelming force.  At that point, government becomes our adversary, which like any adversary might be outwitted, deceived, and finally beaten in that fashion.

And for this reason, I can say without a trace of cynicism, I wish us all a Happy New Year, and I resolve to continue to have faith in the foundational ideals that formed our unique American culture.

The NRA misses the target . . .

Okay, so I expected silliness from the anti-gun side.  They want more regulation in spite of the simple fact that all of the proposed regulations, as well as the considerable regulations that already exist, won't prevent a nut case who hates his mother enough to put four rounds into her face from blowing away little kids, if that's the plan.  Nevertheless we have calls to ban automatic weapons, which have already been illegal since the 1930's, or to ban high capacity magazines, when all a crazy nut nonentity loser has to do is buy several regular magazines and stick them into his pocket on his way to the elementary school, or the theater, or the church, and on his way to momentary fame with his name and picture spread all over the news for a week or two.

And I also expected that the National Rifle Association would reject the notion that it is somehow complicit in mass murders.

But the recent press conference by the NRA is just as silly as the anti-gun dreamers.  The motto is now, "Guns don't kill people.  Violent video games and Hollywood slasher movies kill people." Give me a break.  Those things are classless and repulsive, but that's about it.  If anything, violent or pornographic movies and media might act as an outlet for twisted aggression rather than as an instigator of evil.

So what does the head of the NRA suggest?  Armed guards in all schools.  Right. 

The government and the Cult of Homeland Security has done such a good job with the TSA and airport safety; let's create a government school security authority, armed, for safety sake.

Hey, it isn't that I don't care that our little kids, or big kids for that matter, are highly vulnerable.  It's just that I don't trust government solutions to do anything, other than increase opportunities for graft and political patronage, to protect the kids. 

But hey.

It occurs to me that there are lots of citizens at home, nowadays, having lost their jobs.  and a whole lot of those jobs are never coming back.  So what do we have?  An untapped pool of home school instructors, that's what.  If schools are so dangerous that we have to have armed guards permanently posted in the schools, well, keep the kids home, where they will be safer.  And probably better educated in the long run.

What serious people do . . .

 



An elementary school in Israel.  Prepared to improve the odds.  (Thanks)

Have you ever noticed that all the crazies who want to go out in a blaze of bullets before the final round that ends their life, never, ever, choose to go to a police station and try to shoot all the cops?

Realistic response to a threat = teacher has a carbine.  Idealistic response to a threat = lock the doors and call "first responders".  Silly response to a threat = gun free zones.

John Kerry for Secretary of State . . .

The leading edge in men's fashion . . . .

Tights for men?  They are are calling them "meggings," for men's leggings, I guess. 

With all the cultural conditioning that goes on from birth about the proper distinctions between men and women, well, let's just say there's a name that's suitable for men who choose to wear meggings.

Give it a moment.  It'll come to you.

How civilization ends, not with a bang, but a guffaw

Evidently, adult "onesies" are what all the seriously hip people in the UK are wearing.

Open the gates and let the barbarians in; this civilization's done for.

The Imperial City Council has decreed . . .

The Portland City Council went all in, declaring that no retailers can offer plastic bags, and all must offer paper bags.  The mayor says that this is because the plastic bags get into the ocean, citing no evidence of any kind. 

I don't know anybody who disposes of plastic grocery bags in a way that's gets the bags into the ocean -- unless the trash collection companies are sneaking trash containing plastic grocery bags into the ocean, and if that's the case it seems to me that the point of the solution is to deal with them.  Not that I think that's what's happening.

I just wonder how it is that the grocery bags get to the ocean, as the mayor has noted.  For that matter, I wonder what color the sky is in the mayor's world, and can he hear it when the butterflies blink.

Anyhow, paperbags are only somewhat recyclable and much of them end up turning into a nasty substance in permanent landfills.  When they get recycled, you get paper stuff.  Plastic bags are also recyclable, and require less energy to do so, and there's lots of high-value products made from the plastic.  For that matter, the plastic bags could be, themselves, a product of recycling.

Anyhow, I, for one, think plastic grocery bags are superior to paper grocery bags, and I think that the Imperial City Council of Portland is populated by morons whose egos have sucked their brains dry.

But you know what? 

I'd be perfectly okay with a ban on plastic bags in favor of paper bags, if the matter could be put to a vote, and the majority of us citizens voted in favor of a ban on plastic grocery bags. 

In other words, the issue isn't just the relative merits of paper or plastic.  The other, greater, issue, is who is the boss of you.  And I've got a good idea how the city council thinks about that.

Always listen to the man with a badge and a taser, boys and girls, for he is your friend and will save and protect you . . .

A clear case of contempt of cop.

Pinellas Park, Florida -- Daniel Jensen wasn't running from the law, he was trying to protect his home from burning up. Yet, Pinellas Park Police tasered him in the process. Jensen and his attorney say it's an excessive use of force.
Jensen was still shaken and visibly emotional as he retold what happened last Thursday evening. He said being tasered by police has not only impacted him, but it also impacted his children, who saw it all happen.
He described the Pinellas Park Police officers actions as "brutal." He said they showed "no compassion."
"All I remember is laying in water, being electrocuted for saving my home," said Jensen.
Four days later, burns on Daniel Jensen's body still mark where the stun gun's probes hit him. He says they tasered him for doing what any father and husband would do protect his family's home from an out-of-control grease fire.
The 42-year-old father of two recalls his wife waking him around 6 in the evening, saying there's a big fire at his neighbor's house.
"I could hear it, I could feel it," he explained.
He ran outside and grabbed a fire extinguisher. He sprayed it until it was empty.
"I was calling for my daughter and getting no response. I came out, grabbed the hose and sprayed her room until I heard she was out. I was always taught to help when you can; help is what I tried to do," said Jensen.
He continued to recount the events. He said he then took the garden hose and started watering down his fence and the back corner of his rooftop, trying to prevent the fire from spreading to his property. But with each attempt, Daniel said Pinellas Park Police kept pulling him back... even though firefighters were not in sight.
"They kept telling me, 'Let it go, that's what insurance is for.' That's not acceptable to me," said Jensen.
Captain Sanfield Forseth with the Pinellas Park Police Department said officers could have charged him with obstruction for not listening to an officer's orders.
"I wasn't doing that. What I was doing was what any home owner would do to protect a family and home," said Jensen.
Captain Forseth said the department will not be charging him.
When Jensen saw the fire jump on to his back roof, he again grabbed the hose. That's when he said -- unknown to him -- a police officer pulled out a taser and fired it at his back.
"As I went to grab the hose, I hear an officer on this side. There was a boat here; he was just behind it. He said, 'Hit him, hit him! Take him down, tase him!'" explained Jensen. "I didn't know they were talking to me, or about me. I was concerned about putting water on the fire, and the next thing you know I'm being tased."
Daniel said a Sergeant ordered an officer to tase him, but the officer never warned him as department policy requires.
According to Pinellas Park Police policy, an officer will use a taser when "other control techniques" would likely result in a "physical confrontation" that may cause injury to the officer or person. But the officer must first give a "verbal warning" that he is going to use a taser.
After tasing Daniel, he said several officers picked him up, carried him to the front yard, threw him on the ground and handcuffed him.
Daniel says he's very disappointed in the police department.
"They should have more tolerance with the public, to exhaust all options before firing electricity into somebody, handcuff them instead of tasering them."
Daniel said about the experience as he fights through tears, "It was horrible. I was laying in a puddle of water being electrocuted here by the people that are supposed to protect us. I'm trying to protect my family, my neighbor, and they bring harm to me. I don't understand."

Captain Forseth with the Pinellas Park Police Department said they exhausted all other options, and that their goal was to keep Daniel and the officers safe from the fire.

 

 The cops are supposed to  be law enforcement.  To you and me, and most cops, that means, they have special powers of arrest in aid of enforcing criminal laws and they have a duty to do so.  But some cops . . .

Here, cops ordered this guy to stop doing what any normal person would do in such an emergency -- he wasn't committing any crime.  No crime, no special cop powers.  But he ignored their orders.  So he had to be tased.  For his own safety.  And this was probably an "obstruction of justice" according to the chief cop, because he wouldn't stop doing what he had a legal right to do, at the command of a cop, based on the cop's uninformed and untrained opinion -- backed up by a badge and a taser.

What about the election . . .

I'm supposed to comment on the election?  Okay.

It's about hand.  The issue is, are you willing to dump devotion, reverence, reliability, and competence in order to get the upper hand? 

You know the answer.  The entire steady march of 19th century Marxism through the 20th century is all the proof you need.

It's a mystery . . .

Since the first 9/11 Al Qaeda has been reported to have been in recession, as its various participants periodically blew themselves up, or got shot, or were vaporized by a drone. 

The economy of the U.S. has likewise been receding. 

Now, with the second 9/11, it seems that Al Qaeda has revived itself a lot more successfully than our economy.

And I say . . . hmm.

The regime abides . . .

The regime abides.

When Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, one of the Navy SEALS who died fighting in Benghazi, met with Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State assured him that, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.” And they got him, officially on charges of violating parole, unofficially on charges of violently offending violent Muslims.

The woman whose policy had overthrown the Libyan government and then placed a barely defended consulate in the middle of a city of Jihadists, did not promise the grieving father that his son's killers would pay. She promised him that the man who offended his son's killers would pay. Not only would his son be the first casualty of that appeasement policy, but the Constitution that his son had sworn to support and defend would be the second casualty.

Read the whole thing. 

I remember being very, very troubled by Watergate.  This is worse.

Paper or plastic, revisited . . .

Once again, I enjoyed carrying a paper bag full of groceries through the rain, as the bag dissolved in my arms.  Once again I thought of our local Portland government masters who righteously decreed that plastic bags filled with groceries are hereby declared to be  unsustainable, unmoral, unattractive, unpatriotic, ungreen, unhygienic, and ungood and anti-social, and are therefore not to be tolerated in the land of Port.

Buttholes! 

There used to be a choice; the checkout people would say, "Paper or plastic?"

Progressive politicians just hate it when people can choose.

The other day, I was in a store when I heard, but did not see, a gentleman in the adjoining aisle loudly say, "Ah, Portland.  Land of the Lost!"  I don't have any idea what happened that made him speak those words, and I don't actually know what he meant by those words.

But I understand.

French youth's declaration of war . . . .

This is an interesting event.  I'm not sure what to make of it, but then, I'm not of the same culture nor the same age.  By a bunch.

Nevertheless, I understand the frustration with the "hippie" values which have infected the political landscape.  They got that rejection of responsibility thing right, I think. 

Everything was "groovy" for the youth of the late 60's while the grownups were still in charge, even as the youth of the 60's aged into their forties and even fifties.  But now, when the youth of the 60's have become the grownups in charge - not so much. 

You still see self-congratulatory bumper stickers announcing, "War is not the Answer." 

Well, maybe not.  But the answer sure as hell isn't the "flower power," "love is all around,"  "if it feels good, do it,"  cheery optimism which rejected the values and life strategies which saved western civilization in the first half of the 20th century.

The message is that things aren't free just because you don't have to pay for them.  Somebody else is getting stuck with the bill.

The bitter consequences of voter suppression . . .

So there's a report around that the NAACP has a delegation appearing before the United Nations Human Rights Commission, asking for an investigation into voting in the United States.  It seems that the NAACP's constitutuency is being shut out of the election process.

There's some arithmetic involved in their complaint.  You know that convicted felons are barred from voting.  That's one of the consequences of committing a felony, the same as fines and incarceration. 

About 20% of convicted felons are black, but blacks only amount to about 12% of the population.  Thus, suppression of voting rights falls disproportionately on blacks.  Got that?

Oh, the humanity!  Convicted felons sobbing themselves to sleep in their cells over not being permitted to vote while locked up.  And the horror continues even after release from the penitentiary, because even while the term of incarceration is completed, the individual remains a convicted felon who can't vote.  Quite understandably, in consequence of the sense of loss and incompleteness that comes when a felon can't vote, felons turn to drugs and violence as a distraction from their bitter disappointment at having the ballot box slammed shut on their fingers.  Metaphorically.

Oh, if only someone older and wiser had taken these young felons aside when they were but mere delinquints, and had explained that wandering from the path of righteousness leads to loss of the right to vote, why, the crime rate would surely have been reduced. 

Just imagine. If only people had had "that talk" with the young delinquints, perhaps America would now be treated with the sight of younsters wearing Boy Scout neckerchiefs, where today you see them sporting a droop with their pants permanently around their knees and their ass in the breeze.

Pay no attention to that pollster behind the ribbon, for I am the mighty Oz, comming atcha

It's one disaster followed by another, to the point where there is hardly any effect at all.  None of the following disasters matter, if you monitor media reporting.  What disasters?

The economy keeps getting worse, not better.  They are talking about another round of "quantitative easing" of our money.  This would be like the third dose of a big-ass shot of adrenalin directly into the heart of the patient. "Quantitative easing," is an extreme last-chance operation intended to blast a heart back to life.  Or else.  Note well, it didn't work the first two times. 

By the way, "quantitative easing"  is really some fancy-pants politician's deceptive use of language because he doesn't want us to know that what they are really doing is inflating the money supply radically, but just making it all up as they go along, printing notes and contracts and calling it money.

It isn't real value, folks.  Oh, and by the way, if the price of goods goes up with inflation, and it does, if your income doesn't go up to match the inflation, and it doesn't, well, that's basically the government way of raising money at your expense.  Another name for that is taxation. 

More and more people are out of work, or working at some sort of survival job because that's all that's left, and the unemployment insurance ran out some time ago.  The housing market sucks, despite experts saying it's getting better.  Very many businessmen, you know, the ones who pay money to people for working, are just hanging on, if at all, to the point where half the businessmen say that they wouldn't even start the business they are presently in, if they had to start it fresh today -- not worth it.

The middle east, what can I say?  It's kind of like the notion of voting took hold, there, but the majority invariably votes in favor of barbarism and bloodshed. 

And there's a war on young women.  The country is sticking young women with impossibly huge student loan debt to fund degrees in sociology, and dance movement, and women's studies, and journalism and communications, and aroma therapy, for shit's sake, with the promise that some crude and abusive businessman, somewhere, will be unable to prevent himself from hiring such independent and capable young women and paying them $85,000, plus benefits, a year, in return for their showing up and wearing suits and heels.  (That's the businessman who, as a sole proprietor, must be rich, and so must be taxed.  Eat the rich.)

And not only that, but the nation cruelly denies such women free birth control, a necessity in a society that highly values hooking up before names are exchanged, or perhaps only moments thereafter.  It's an option.  Or if women choose not to use birth control, it is only their natural function and right to be mothers, with or mostly without the committment of a father.  Not only that, but there seems to be a grave shortage of drone-men who are so in awe of unmarried motherhood that they welcome the chance to support any women who bravely has another man's child without bothering to have the other man.  Oh, the humanity!

But as I say, none of that matters.  In place of things that make a difference, we have polls.  We have local polls, phony polls, national polls, push polls, private polls, secret polls, and polls about polls.  They call you at home, at work, they e-mail you.  They will give you free stuff at the restaurant if you will just answer a few questions about the quality of your dining experience with them.

And the results of the polls are reported as if it is news.  It isn't.  Poll results are what lazy journalists do when they have to fill up broadcast time, or journalistic white space, and they don't actually have anything. 

It's like, "Nothing happened today, as far as I know, but some guy telephoned some poll results, so here ya go.  Based on a recent poll of some people in a park right here in Estacada, Oregon, 14% of all Americans ever born deny masturbating in the shower.  Oh, and 12% of them who didn't indulge in such conduct volunteered to start if there was any money it in, and the rest of them were Republicans.  Back to you in the studio."

I don't think you can trust polls.  I think people tell lies to poll interrogation.  And I know people mess with pollsters -- 'cause I!m pretty sure I'm not the only one. 

And I'll do it again and I recommend you do the same.  You already know the language of the interrogated man in the street.  Use phrases and expressions like, "rich and robust," "sustainable,"  "naturally sweet," "people who care," "people like us," "dependable," "improved," "margin of error," etc. 

It's just a poll.

How can it be that intelligent women . . .

can ever be found crying their lonely selves to sleep?  Maybe it's because . . . 

It's a good thing the Democrats are united because . . .Well, just because.

So here's what happened.  Always before, as far as I know, the Democratic Presidential Election platform has had some language in it saying something nice about God and Israel.  Not this time.

People noticed and started yelping about the platform never even mentioning God.  I suspect God is neither surprised nor hurt, because, as far as I know once again, He or She is not a clingy, needy sort of a deity.  But still, even if any particular Democrat remained unaffected by notions of piety, would it have killed them to pander to those who believed?

The big problem was Israel, because the Democrats get a lot of campaign contributions and support from American Jews who by necessity feel kinship with Israel.  And if we don't support Israel, there's a good chance Israel would be erased as a necessary first step to the establishment of the Caliphate.  Not a good thing in my opinion.

Anyhow, many Democrats thought once again about the platform, and there was a motion to amend the platform, to restore God and Israel to the platform language.  Evidently it takes a 2/3 vote to amend the platform at this point.  So a voice vote was taken.  All in favor, say aye; all opposed, no.  It sounded evenly spread between the ayes and nos to me and I think it sounded even to the chair as well.  But without blinking an eye or a blush of a cheek, the chair announced that the ayes were 2/3rds of the votes and the motion passed.  (I'm pretty sure the motion didn't pass, even at a simple majority, because I don't think there was a majority.  It sounded 50/50 to me.)  Anyhow, all the no-sayers instantly turned to boo-sayers.  Loudly.

But here's the thing.  If I were wealthy, and Jewish, and believed in big cradle-to-grave government, I still would be disinclined to give the Democrats any money.  Why?  Because about half the assembled convention loudly voted against supporting Israel.  If I were Jewish, I'd uncomfortable with that.

Follow up . . . Social Security Administration, too?

The Social Security Administration wants to buy 174,000 rounds of .357 pistol ammunition.

This bears repeating.  The Social Security Administration wants to buy 174,000 rounds of .357 pistol ammunition. 

What, they want to get prepared for when us geezers, codgers and coots get unruly?

Wonder if it is possible to mount a rifle scabbard on an aluminum walker, kind of like they mount saddle rifles?  Maybe crosswise, like in the back window of pickup trucks?

I don't, myself, own a gun.  Sarcasm has always been my weapon of choice.  But . . .



























































?

Does hollow point ammunition expand upon striking paper targets . . . and other interesting questions.

Here's something interesting, and by interesting, I mean alarmingly peculiar.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants to buy 46,000 rounds of handgun ammunition, the kind that expands when it hits somebody.  Also, a thousand paper targets. 

Originally, this was published as being for the National Weather Service part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and then people started wondering why those boys would need bullets, so a correction was issued, stating that there was a clerical mistake.  It isn't for the weathermen at all; it's all for Fish and Wildlife. 

Well, okay then.  I guess that means that they plan on missing all the paper targets altogether up to 46 times before actually hitting one of 'em.  And just how many Fish and Wildlife guys do they have, guns blazing away?

But hey.  Aren't handguns all about shooting people?  Nobody goes hunting for deer or elk or bears or just little varmints with handguns; they use rifles.  Right?

And what people?  Certainly the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration isn't contemplating using all those rounds of ammunition just on a thousand paper targets, which would be absurd.  And they certainly aren't going to use them on fellow government employees. 

I think that means that some of us are anticipated to be the targets.

Oh, and relate Fish and Wildlife ammunition purchase to the recent riot control training given to some United States military personnel, and things are looking increasingly spooky.

At this point, leaping to conclusions would be paranoid, recognizing that all that ammunition could be intended either for offense or defense, or maybe just for sale to some fast and furious drug cartel, which, given recent history is not that far fetched.

Nevertheless, can you say Second Amendment, boys and girls?

Tunnels into Israel -- the ones that are underground . . .

Israel is asking Egypt to destroy all of the "underground tunnels" used to circumvent Israeli security. 

I've always believed that pretty much all tunnels are underground.  That's the whole point of tunnels. 

Ah, reporters! 

And their editors, if any.

But I'm sure this little language flaw provides absolutely no insight whatsoever into the mental quality of the writer. 

Just because a person needs to unburden his shriveled soul in a comment to a news report does not create any obligation on anybody else to read the damn thing, and other similar thoughts . . .

I read all over the internet various news and opinion articles, most of which, whatever point of view is espoused, are reasonably articulate and thoughtful even if I find I disagree.

Then I read the readers' commentary that inevitably follows.

Great Glory Be, there's boatloads of stupid out there!

And it's not just stupid, but positively, proudly, assertively, aggressively and ungrammatically stupid.

It's like -- they had teachers and parents who decided that self-esteem was more important than information.

It's like -- they all got trophies for showing up.

It's like -- the jobs they had suited to their skills and intellectual abilities -- you know, picking up an item and placing it in a different location -- got outsourced when their employer got tired of spending $32.00 an hour to pay $12.00 an hour to employees when the same work could be done in West Buttcrackistan for $4.00 an hour, plus $3.00 an hour in "incentives" to government officials, to pay the employee $0.80 an hour. 

So, being otherwise not occupied, they decided to share their stupid with the world.

When a person is like totally under-employed and it's hard to fill up the empty hours of the day, but you're not yet at the point where there's nothing left but to get yourself tatood, a person will naturally turn to expressing one's self on the internet, no matter how pathetic and embarassing that self may be.

And that's why  -- hey, why are you looking at me that way?  What's that look supposed to mean?

Expecting a display of identification to support a claim of the right to vote, is discriminatory and racist, and you should be ashamed to even think it . . .

I went to the Texaco station to fill up the gas tank.  I offered my Texaco gas credit card to pay for the gas.  The attendant wanted to see some indentification so I showed my driver's license.  He explained that he had to ask for proof of identity because his boss insisted that all the rules be followed.

Okay, I showed my identification; this isn't a big deal.  I had to show it to travel by air, and I have to show it if I want to pay for things with a check.  Sometimes we have to show a driver's license to rent a video.  Us law abiding citizens frequently display our drivers licenses in order to obtain wanted goods or services.

What I don't understand is the fuss raised by certain political observers (communists) at the idea of requiring government identification for purposes of voting in government elections.  They argue that requiring a person to show identification is inherently biased and unreasonable, or racist. 

Why is it unfair to require a person to confirm identity to vote, but it isn't unfair to ask for identity to board a plane or buy something with a credit card?

Why it's almost as if they (fascists) were personally offended by the idea that voter fraud should be suspected, detected, and prevented. 

Hey, nobody said it was the liberal political commentators (socialists) who were cheating.  But I think that describing the requiring of proof of identity in order to vote as being somehow racist or unfairly discriminatory constitutes probable cause to believe that those self-same liberal political commentators (traitors) are encouraging and profiting from voter fraud.

Either that, or Texaco is subjecting me to racial discrimination. 

All of a sudden, I feel so violated!

In keeping with 21st century American social mores, I therefore claim victim status.

So, when do I get paid?

Michelob message

I see that Michelob Lite has a new pretty boy illustrating the life you think you could lead with beer. This pretty boy does't shave, just like the previous beery avatar. Grooming isn't important if you drink the right beer, right?

Altruists and weasels . . .

How come people are so hard on one another?  T. S. Eliot said, long ago: “Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” 

I pulled the quote from http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304288/legislative-dishonesty-thomas-sowell. 

Oh.  The other half the harm that people do comes from pure malice. 

As between the two, I'll choose to deal with a malicous weasel before I want to hang with a self-congratulatory altruist.  They're both evil but you'll meet a higher class of evildoers among the weasels.

Mannies, of all things, wierd and wonderful . . .

Last night my bride and I finished watching the monster historical mini-series from the 70s and 80s, Winds of War and War and Remembrance, about World War II.  If you want to watch it, it's available for rental but plan on using two or three weekends and staying up late to watch 'just one more disk'. 

Anyhow, now, while steeped in WWII, my parents' times, I happened to see the front cover of a magazine where one of the articles was "We love our manny."  The article was about "mannies," that is, the increasing frequency of males being nannies, nurturing other people's children all day.  You know.  Drawing daffodils, telling stories about pastel colored families, and singing songs of unicorns. 

Looks to me like males like the resolute and deadly American males of WWII, and their glorious women, are certainly an endangered species.

No doubt those who own up the title, "manny," are thinking that by doing so others will think that they are admirably secure in their woosie-tude.  (I made that word up but you know what I mean.)  But we don't think that at all.

They're just everyday woosies.

Little voices .. . .

There are leaf blowers going on outside.  I mean, THERE ARE LEAF BLOWERS GOING ON!!!!.  These are being operated by lawn care service employees, who, being employees covered by Worker's Compensation and OSHA work rules, are required to use hearing protection devices.

But what about the rest of us?  We aren't issued hearing protection devices; we just have to muffle our ears in our arms and hope the bastids finish soon.  I already have a permanent ringing in my ears from seventy years worth of the unrestrained noise of civilization gone mad with the power to industrialize the processes and procedures of noise making to an unnatural level.

Hey, how tough would it be to muffle engine noise?  Answer, it isn't that tough. 

On the other hand, there is a large subclass of subhumans who evidently like noise in all its forms.  How else can we explain why many people will prefer a big, throbbing, loud Harley to a well-muffled, big Honda, purposefully humming along?  Why else will the big Harley hog rider sit waiting for a green light, twisting the throttle repeatedly while going nowhere?  Why else do some children completely ignore the colorful and expensive educational construction toy purchased by an aunt, in favor of vigorously and repeatedly pounding a four dollar sauce pan on the bare kitchen floor?  Producing loud noises fulfills some atavistic need; it makes them feel good about themselves? 

But even if production of noise for its own sorry sake isn't a motivator for all of us, there remains many of us who tolerate noise, who live with it comfortably.  I have  theories.

One theory is that the absence of random, intrusive noise permits a person to hear the background "om" of the universe, causing one to contemplate both one's place in things, and one's naked insignificance, a notion which is discomforting to undeveloped egos. 

Okay, well, maybe it isn't the background noise of the universe; it's just your own blood circulating in your inner ear.

The other theory is that we all grow along the way a little interior voice based on our experience, that serves to guide us past points of difficulty.  You know.  That little voice that you want to ignore, that tells you that you are about to screw up, bigtime.  Again.  The noise helps a person ignore that little voice, so that they can go ahead and screw up bigtime. 

When a woman is saying to herself, "He said he's sorry and if I take him back he'll never do it again, and I know he loves me in his own way,"  she must not be hearing the little voice that's saying, "You've been through this before, try to catch up." 

When a man is saying to himself, "So all I have to do is give them my credit card number and they will send me, with free shipping, a three month supply of Ecuadorian batshit beetle bark to rub on myself in the privacy of my own home, and my manhood will swell to legendary proportions and all the girls in my keyboarding class will want me," there's a little voice he isn't hearing that is saying, "You might want to do something about that fat ass and those skinny arms, and lose about forty pounds first, there, Sparky."

When a doctor is saying to himself, "All my friends say that they've made alarming amounts of money, and Bernie says he can't promise anything but he's never made less than 30% a year before, but we have to buy in before all the wall street crowd finds out about this and the more I put in, the more I'll get out, and I'm really tired of working fifty-five hours a week to make a lousy two hundred grand a year," there's a voice in his head that says, "If it sounds too good to be true, it damn sure is too good to be true.  Do you know the expression, 'Sucker bait'?"

Why do otherwise smart people screw up?  It's because they can't or won't listen to that little corrective voice in their head.  And why won't they or can't they hear that little voice?  It's because of the DAMN LEAF BLOWERS AND HARLEYS AND ASSORTED OTHER INSTRUSIVE NOISES.

There's a little voice in my head right now, saying I should just give this up because I'm looking like a nut case.  But I can't hear it.

Experts to the left of us, experts to the right, but nary a correct thought among 'em . . . . . .

Overheard a conversation at a restaurant.  It was a guy I'm guessing is in his late fifties.  He and his companions were discussing the current political scene.  I heard him say,

"It's not their fault.  The trouble is, the people are politically uneducated.  They don't know it is against the law to criticise the President of the United States.  They don't teach the constitution in school.  People don't know that the job of a corporate president is not to maximize profits; it's the same as the job of the president of the United States.  They are both supposed to create jobs.  That's what they are for under the Constitution."

This is so wrong that it hurt my ears, but this guy conceives of himself as a cut or two above the general population when it comes to political information.  The helluvit is, it could be true.  In any event, his companions seemed to be impressed.

Gah.

Bumpersticker Scripture

I saw a bumper sticker today.  It asked, "Since when did compliance with Marxist idealogy become patriotism?"

Actually it didn't mention Marxism.  It used the expression, "corporate directives," so I fixed it for you.

What European elections tell us . . .

So Greeks said austerity sucks and they voted against it and Germans are getting a little more comfortable with the idea of currency inflation to "help" Greece, Italy, Portugal, et al.  But in France, the voters went all the way and dumped on their liberal president and voted for the  farther left anti-western socialist. 

Copy cats.

Portland does politics . . .

Here in Oregon, Portland has twenty-three candidates on the ballot for mayor.  Twenty-three!

With that number you can bet that at least one of them is a socialist.  At least one is clinically depressed.  At least one tears up when singing the National Anthem.  At least one has had an extramarital affair.  At least one bounces checks.  At least one collects pornography on a home computer.  At least one cares for a disabled adult relative.  Probably more than one are genuinely nice people for whom there is no place in politics.  One is a sociopath; one is a psychopath; one is an animal lover.  At least one should be locked up; hell, one has been locked up.  Probably one inherited money, and probably another one started from nothing and made money.  At least one is a religious fanatic, probably.  The problem is  -- who?  How can you tell?

So, look at the externalities.  Only a small number of them have spent a lot of money promoting themselves for the job.  All the signs and ads reveal that.  We know who has spent a lot of money.  Is that the one we vote for, on the ground that at least we know something about them?

I know this.  Few people who have a lot of money money will  spend it without expectation of return of value of some kind, even if it is just to get their vanity bump rubbed.  And I know that the job of mayor doesn't pay all that well, to justify the kind of money that is being spent.  And the prestige of the job isn't really all that great.  It's kind of like being voted Most Courteous for your high school year book.  I mean it's something, but not quite . . . as meaningful to others as it is to your mother.

So, as to the big spenders for the mayoral election, well, I have to wonder who do they really represent.  No.  Really.  Where is the money coming from?  Really, who do they represent?

Portland potholes triumphant . . .

There's a guy named Charlie who is running for Mayor of Portland.  Lots of people like Charlie, evidently, based on the appearance of yard signs.  Charlie is experienced in government and Portland affairs despite having not lived in Portland all that much of late.  One of his claimed reasons for why we should vote for him is his record on potholes.  He says he fixed 'em.

I say he missed a bunch.  Maybe somebody should put some signs up around the potholes, "Charlie missed this one."  Bet the pothole signs would exceed the number of yard signs.

. . .and little pink piggies can fly . . .

within living memory -- mine -- the Red Chinese were killing people for the crime of being landlords. They called it a cultural revolution to purify the culture for communism. Nowadays? There are country clubs in China where a Western car manufacturer is sponsoring a golf tournament for professional golfers and the event isq available for viewing on cable television here in the U.S. and Euurope.

A toxic culture . . .

Reuters reports the poisoning of Afgan schoolgirls.  Education of women is un-Islamic, you see.  Oh, it's "legal," now, for females to be educated, after having formerly been illegal, according to the Taliban.  Just a little, oh, let's say, risky.  These "people" also stand around and throw disfiguring acid into the faces of young girls walking to and from school.

I say, any  "multi-culturalist" and anybody else who holds that all cultures are morally equal, is himself a moral and intellectual moron, no matter how many academic degrees may have been earned.

Hollywood romantics . . .

So Brad and Angelina got engaged.  Just in the nick of time.

Intelligent dinosaurs on other worlds . . .

Oh, my.  We need to worry about meeting extra-terrestial life.  Scientists say that intelligent dinosaurs might rule other worlds, so it's just as well we not meet them. 

What's the worry?  Intelligent apes rule our world.

Trayvon be thy name . . .

Turns out that a news producer has been fired for manipulating, or editing, the transcript of the police report that Zimmerman was phoning in.  The report left the impression that young Trayvon was hunted down and shot merely for being black and out of place.  But the material "edited out" leaves a little different impression of Zimmerman's motivation.

Well now.

I don't know if Trayvon Martin was a victim or if he had it coming.  Neither does most anybody else, but that hasn't prevented people, great and small, from expressing their opinions or feelings on the subject, or somehow finding meaning in the reports of the event.

I won't do that.

Except to agree with an Australian commentator, that "Trayvon" is a ridiculous name. 

Notwithstanding that when you hear the name, "Zimmerman," you don't instantly imagine "Hispanic guy from Florida."  

And for that matter, if your first name in common usage is 'the reverend" you should be staying at home administering to some congregation, and not cashing in frequent flier miles in search of news cameras to jump in front of to preach your message -- which has damn little to do with salvation and a whole bunch to do with shaking down institutions for cash and concessions under threat of the next racial storm.

No vacation this year, with gasoline this dear . . .

Filled up my car with gas today.  On the one hand, I can remember when it was a good day when I could afford to say, "Two bucks of regular, please," when I got down to a quarter of a tank, and that would easily take the needle to over half a tank.  On the other hand, it's good that I can afford to have the tank filled without thinking about the cost.

But then, on the other, other hand, good great flaming fires of doom, have you seen gas prices recently!

I am typing this just after amending my will.  Don't want there to be any confusion about who gets the unused portion of my gasoline.