TXLV: You're about to pay more for your beer and liquor, with less choices.

Hold on to your wallets, because the Texas Legislature is at it again....

Craft Brewers call Texas Legislature's passage of bill 'disheartening'. Ronnie Crocker, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

A bill that would force Texas breweries, once they've grown beyond a state-limited size, to sell and buy back their own beer before offering it in their own taprooms has now passed both houses of the state Legislature.

Before we go any further I want you to think about the logistics of this for a minute.

1. Texas Brewery brews beer, wants to sell some from their taproom.
2. If they are above a certain size (175,000 barrels of annual production) they cannot unless....
3. The 'sell' the beer to distributors and then buy it back at a mark-up (sometimes as high as 30%).
4. It is likely the beer in question will never leave the premises.

In other words the Texas Legislature, supposedly one of the most conservative in the country, has just mandated that Texas brewers of a certain size must pay up to a 30% tax on their wares to a private industry for which the industry does not have to offer any services upon return.

Of all the bad liquor laws in the State of Texas, including those that Wal-Mart is challenging in Federal Court and almost anything related to the TABC this undoubtedly takes the gold medal as the worst.

Imagine if you made sandwiches and wanted to sell them at a restaurant, but the Texas Legislature ruled that you could not sell those sandwiches until you paid 30% of their value to Sysco. This would be true even if you purchased your meat from a local butcher, and brought it to your restaurant without their services.

I would imagine you would feel a little bit put out by all of this.

Yet, our august officials in the Texas Legislature (with mostly Republicans voting in the affirmative) have determined that this is a very good thing and an area where government should get involved. I would say that I can't wait to hear Dan (the Man who would be King) Patrick offer up a 'conservative' argument for this but I'd be lying.  Lying because I doubt any politician is going to be asked to explain their vote, or offer justification for it. It's unlikely that they'll suffer for it at the ballot box either because, on the whole, Texas citizens don't care.

What they do care about is being able to buy beer, wine and liquor at commodity prices, whether or not the product in question is, in fact, a commodity.  While buying liquor in Houston I've, first-hand, heard customers arguing for massive discounts on luxury liquors such as Louis III, Pappy and some high-end Champagnes.  They want Dom or Veuve (more of a mid-range product but that's another post) but they want to pay low-end Moet prices. $9.99 per bottle please.

Of course, that $3.00 tap beer will now cost $4.00 despite never having left the facility. A dollar of that cost is going to a company that is doing nothing at all except collect a private tax imposed on the producer by Texas' increasingly un-conservative legislature.

I, for one, hope the breweries sue.  Because I think they'll win if they frame this as an unconstitutional taking. The argument for seems pretty strong.

I hate to say it for the small liquor stores but I hope Wal-Mart wins as well.  Texas liquor laws need to be blown up, rewritten and the ground needs to be salted where the three-tiered system once stood.

Then what is left of the GOP needs to do some soul-searching and decide whether or not they want to keep their elected officials. Increasingly, it's getting harder and harder to find ones that deserve an affirmative answer to that question.  Certainly no-one in leadership.

Election 2016: R-E-L-A-X The Country is not going to crumble.

Throughout this entire election process I've found myself dismayed with America's current choices, but I have not ever, nor am I now, really all that concerned with the eventual fate of the Republic itself.

Don't believe me?  Read this.

Go ahead, I'll wait.




Back?  Good.

And while I don't think that America is going to be in for days of wine, roses and stuffed peacock, I do think that, ultimately, the Republic will endure.

I think that because the United States of America is a bigger thing than one man in one office at any one time.  We survived Jackson, Buchanan, Harding, the scandals of Grant, the ineptitude of Carter, the god-king delusions of Roosevelt, the paranoia of Nixon, the hedonism of Clinton and the fecklessness of Obama.

In short, America will emerge from this all right.  Maybe not as strong as we were before, maybe with less influence on the global stage, maybe a little bit poorer, but if there's one thing that history has taught us it is that the machinery of the Republic moves on. Yes, we might have just made a modern day Caligula the President-Elect, but the Holy Roman Emperor didn't have any checks and balances on his power, the Bronzed Ego will.

He'll also have a partially functional Congress to have to do business with and a newly motivated minority in the Senate. He'll have States who have enumerated powers seeking to keep those powers and (hopefully) a rather conservative Supreme Court that (hopefully) rediscovers its skepticism toward executive power.

He'll also have a mid-term election to face in a couple of years. And a citizenry to satisfy who has shown a willingness to flip the legislative branch opposite the political leanings of the executive branch in order to curb excess. Like Obama before him, Trump and the GOP are going to find they have a very short window for enacting change.

Granted, the map for Democrats in 2018 does not look promising, and they'll have to find the will and activism to do something they traditionally haven't. In short, they're going to have to turnout for mid-term elections. That they're likely going to be doing with with Sens Elizabeth "high cheekbones" Warren and "Angry" Bernie Sanders as their standard bearers should give them a moment's pause.

The temptation will be there for the GOP to overreach, here's hoping what remains of the Democrats will not let them. I'd appeal to their good sense but the GOP has shown to have little of that remaining.

Most importantly though, the power of the USA lies not in her political class but in the machinery of the people. This morning around 300 Million people are going to wake up and continue going about their daily lives. They will do this tomorrow, and the next day, and the ones after that. They will continue to go to jobs, participate in leisure activities and (hopefully) nurture families that will generate the next generation of leaders.  Leaders who, have a pretty low bar to clear to best the levels of accomplishment attained by the Baby Boomers.

No doubt there will be struggle. There will be disagreement and there will be stumbles along the way. Radical Islamic terror is still a thing, China is still looking to expand her footprint in Asia and Russia will now become very emboldened. Our allies in Europe are still trying to figure out where they went so wrong and Africa is a powder-keg waiting to explode in a fury of Ebola and poverty.

The climate is still going to change (as it has for Millennia) and the United Nations is still going to try and stop it rather than figuring out what in the word we can do to deal with it. Energy demand will continue to increase while supply lines are threatened, and there's still the issue of what to do with a under-educated workforce that's slipping further and further behind because of an education system that's totally in shambles.

The unions will still want more money to maintain their outdated business models and there will still be progressives running around clamoring for economy-killing things and pining for the day that their hand-picked "experts" get their hands back on the tiller.

Crony Capitalism is just as prevalent in GOP administrations as it is in DEM ones, and Sheldon Adelson has spend tons of money making sure that his interests will be brought to the front. In short, there are a long list of distractions that the new Trump-led GOP will have to overcome to meet their campaign promises and try to attempt to open back up an economy that almost 75 years of progressive policy has strangled.

Here's hoping they succeed.

Election 2016: A #PostGOP fairy tale

Humpty Trumpty sat on his wall (not funded, as he claimed, by Mexico)

Humpty Trumpty had a great fall.

And all of Reince' horses

And all of Reince' men




Couldn't put Humpty Trumpty back together again.


And so ends the sad, sad tale of the former Grand Old Party.




Goodnight children.

Goodnight Reince.

Goodnight GOP.

PostGOP: Your Party 'Tis of Thee.

Ted Cruz "Reagan '76 Moment" did not go as planned.

Thunderous boos for Cruz, who refuses to endorse Trump. Julie Pace and Jill Colvin, AP via Chron.com

Undercutting calls for Republican unity, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz stubbornly refused to endorse Donald Trump Wednesday night as he addressed the GOP convention, igniting thunderous boos from furious delegates as he encouraged Americans to simply "vote your conscience" in November.

In a surreal moment, Trump unexpectedly walked into the arena just as Cruz was wrapping up his remarks. Delegates chanted Trump's name and implored Cruz to voice his support for the businessman, to no avail.

It's an open secret that Cruz viewed this speech as his "Reagan moment" harboring visions of the Gipper's 1976 Republican National Convention speech that catapulted him to the front of the conservative pecking order and into deity status among the party faithful (this, historical revisionism aside, despite not actually accomplishing the conservative goals that he set forth that evening).

After starting the campaign as a staunch Trump defender, and allowing others to try and take the lead attacking him, and consequentially, getting attacked, ruthlessly, by the Trumpets. Cruz eventually had to pivot late and became the victim of Trump's smears of his wife and father.

Outside of Texas, this is not a good look.  In Texas, where Texas Republicans are desperate for a conservative water-carrier, Cruz is being hailed as not only wearing Ronald Reagan's underwear, but being present when they were woven from the bands of liberty.

Just. Stop.

The first thing is this. If you're of a GOP-lean to 'turn back the clock' to Reagan-era Republicanism then you're part of the problem. It's not the 80's and most of the electorate (myself included) wasn't old enough to have even cast a ballot for his Ronaldness.  Yes, Reagan did some good things and he made the GOP (and America) believe again after the morass that was the Carter administration, but he also did some things wrong (refusing to go after entitlement reform along with cutting taxes) that was chief among them and, indirectly, added to some of the structural problems we have today.  Reagan is great, as a historical figure, but he shouldn't be used as the basis for a party platform. We're never going back to the 80's (thank the Lord) and we shouldn't be trying to. Hopefully wherever disaffected conservatives (including myself) end up in these PostGOP days hopefully we won't bring the anchor of Reagan with us.

But Cruz is no Reagan.

He never was, and he never will be. In fact, despite his so-called principled (more on that in a minute) stand in his speech last night the fact remains that Cruz is a candidate with appeal in a very narrowly defined region: Texas and Oklahoma. He couldn't sweep the South as his campaign predicted and, Nationally at least, his favorable/unfavorable ratings fell off a cliff (even, to a lesser extent, in Texas) when he pivoted from Trumpet to Trump basher.  Cruz' biggest problem is that, outside of the faithful followers, his sudden anti-Trumpness is seen to be just more opportunism from the opportunist's opportunist. Ted Cruz is widely viewed as having one guiding principle, his designs on the Presidency.

So Cruz makes his speech and the Trumpets blared. As they do.  Some even went so far as to physically threaten both Cruz and his wife. If this is emblematic of the "new" GOP then count me, and many others, out. In fact, the new-ish alt-right GOP is an increasingly authoritarian, nationalist and white supremacist party. It's not a pretty place to be.  Not all Trumpets are that way, of course, just as not all Democrats are stark-raving socialists, but enough are that they are currently controlling the narrative.  At least they come about their beliefs honestly however, which is more than can be said for the remaining GOP faction.

I'm speaking about the party loyalists, the people who are glancing askew at the #NeverTrump movement and giving them the stink-eye over not falling in line. The people who still have #MarcoRubio2016 in their social media profiles and who, for some reason, think that they have "built the party" and feel that people "owe" the GOP a vote. What they don't realize is that when you lie down with dogs, you wind up with fleas. Pardon me for dissenting but to me principle is more important than assuaging the egos of people desperately trying to remain relevant.

The GOP is your party, not mine, and it clearly has no room in it for ideological diversity. In a way, it's become the Democrat party without minority groups. It's a monolithic turd in the punch-bowl of politics whose time has passed us by.

Both parties are relics, but they're being kept on life-support because they also write the rules. And those who write the rules have an advantage in the game.

No, I will not vote for Trump.  And I will not vote for Hillary either. Nor do I have any obligation to ensure that down-ballot races are won by a GOP whose chosen to adopt into their platform, ideas that I find objectionable.

The GOP is your party Trumpets. Which is what all of you now are. Guilt by association and such.

PostGOP: The problem with our politics

Politics makes us angry. And stupid. REALLY stupid (Caution, NSFW).

We know this but we continue to think that politics is a unifying force, a chance to walk into the ballot box and "do some good" by voting the "right way". It's activism without effort or consequence. You don't even have to do research any more because there are pay-to-play voter guides that arrive in your mailbox which tell you who the approved candidates are, depending on your party of choice that is.

Trudging out to a voting location on election day is the lowest form of political participation. It's a cop-out designed by a system whose sole purpose is the preservation of the system.  Because it's so easy and, due mainly to voter fraud and gerrymandering, so meaningless today, it's cheapened what it means to be an activist as well.

Consider this: Yesterday 100 "sheroes" (Really Huffington Post?) stripped down into their pre-apple Eve outfits and held mirrors over their heads in "protest" of....what?  The so-called "war on women?"  In the Middle East there are the Yazidi women who are taking up arms and fighting against ISIS insurgents who would round them up, gang rape them, and sell them into sex slavery. In Pakistan their "Kim Kardashian" was just strangled by her brother in a so-called "honor killing" which drew cheers and praise from many Pakistanis. In America, 100 women in the buff holding up mirrors because they might have been, possibly, body shamed at some point. (ignoring the fact that the most egregious forms of body shaming often come from other women)

This does not give men a pass. In fact, the so-called "bro" culture needs to be placed on the ash-heap of history to be burned beside Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" dirge. Here's an idea men: Don't sexually assault women. Full stop. Just because a woman is dancing with you, or speaking with you, or dresses and acts suggestively, doesn't mean that she wants a night of hot, sweaty sexual relations with you, or to even be groped by you. She probably just wants to be noticed which, in a way, is kind of sad.

The problem is that we've allowed the boundaries of personal relationships to be argued within the political realm.  We've given it over to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to tell us how we should interact with one another. In many cases, we're now looking to President Barry to tell us when it's OK to make love.

This is a problem for a couple of reasons. One, take a look at most politicians. Many of them marry for their careers, have children for their careers and then carry out a charade that lasts for years in the name of their careers.  What the hell do they know about what normal, work-a-day people need from love and affection? Given what we know about the Clintons, do you think their marriage is based on love of one another? Or profit? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.

Yet we continue to trudge into the voting booth and pull the lever to put people in power whom we would never invite over to a backyard cookout, or invite to our kids weddings. We do this, and then we ignore them until the next election season.

And that is the problem with our politics.

We have bought into the lie that voting is our responsibility to our Democratic Republic and it goes no further. We vote, they rule, period end of story.  The people that you put into office then take a look at razor-thin voter margins with low participation rates and claim a "mandate" that allows them to take policy proposals drafted by aides, influenced by their particular set of patronage and claim they are doing the "will of the people".  And we allow it, because taking the time to write a letter or make a phone call or, horrors, run for office ourselves in today's hyper-charged environment detracts from our Saturdays watching college football.

And no, I'm not just pointing a finger at you, I'm guilty of this myself.

The result of our apathy and inaction however is a political system that is not only broken, it's hopelessly corrupt and totally unresponsive to the will of the people. It doesn't matter what the issue is, both sides will immediately seek to triangulate it in a manner that most benefits their political patrons. They then roll this out to their sycophant "activists" and "party regulars" who have been looped into the system through outright bribery, or an appeal to their sense of belonging to a special club. All of this is then packaged up neatly in a tidy bow by a compliant media who regurgitate material uncritically to those outside the circle.

The citizenry, if they're paying attention at all, take a peek at a sound byte, shake their heads at the idiocy of the "other side" and wonder who's going to be the next winner of The Voice. But they voted, they tell themselves, so they can bitch.  Anyone who didn't just needs to shut the hell up.  This is a ridiculous argument because there is no voting requirement tacked on to the First Amendment. I heard someone, although I cannot remember who (sorry!) suggest that voting is the easiest and least participatory thing in politics that you can do, and I agree.

It also makes you the angriest.  Because you're moving along in your day to day life not winning or losing, you're just hanging on.  And politics, like sports, gives you a chance to feel that you ARE winning at something, that your hum-drum life, being hollered at by the boss for your TPS report lacking a cover sheet, actually has some meaning when a team with which you have no actual affiliation wins. When someone is against your team, or (even worse) "for" the other team, you get viscerally angry because they are chipping away at your absolute sense of superiority. Your political party is no longer reflective of your political leanings, it's a core component of your identity and any threat to it is dealt with aggressively and (unfortunately in some cases) violently.

And round and round it goes.

The rest of that saying is "where it stops, nobody knows".

But I think we're now witnessing a self-perpetuating cycle. No calls for civility, or a cease in hostilities, is going to slow the political outrage train. We've gone so far off the rails that I think any and all hope of political reconciliation is gone. The progressive left's need to feel morally superior is only out-weighed by the alt-right's need to be outraged.

In retrospect, it's not surprising that the two sides have nominated two reprehensible human beings to be their standard bearers. The only surprise is that it's taken this long to get this low.

RNC Convention Day One: Not Ready for Prime Time.

After all of the build-up, Day One was well, anti-climactic.  In fact, the thing that's being discussed the most, ironically, is whether or not Melania Trump somehow plagiarized Michelle Obama from 2008 and the Bronzed Ego's entrance.

As is usual, I have some thoughts:

 - First, Melania Trump didn't plagiarize anyone. The speechwriters for the Bronzed Ego's campaign might have (and probably did) but to think that Ms. Trump wrote that speech is silliness at the highest level. Like ALL politicians and political people, she read from the TelePrompTer and said what she was instructed to say, reading from a speech written by a twenty-something writer who couldn't get a gig in Hollywood.

 - The MSM freaking out over this is rich. There is probably no bigger repository of plagiarized work than in the media. And they ONLY punish reporters and columnists for it when they get caught. Spare me your crocodile tears and do something besides report 'hot tips' from your ruling class sources. There's a thought.

 - #NeverTrump never had a chance. Reince Preibus, a man who seems to have received the RNC chairmanship as a prize at the bottom of the box of his weekly allocation of Cracker Jacks, was never going to allow that to happen.  When things got thick, they just vacated the Stage. In short, they ran away. All that's left now from the #NeverTrump group is noise and grousing on social media. You now have a choice: either give up on it and leave the GOP or continue to try and change it from within. Obviously, I'm in the leave camp as I've never really been all that enamored with them in the first place. Compared to the bat-shittiness of the Democrats they're OK, but as a stand-alone conservative option?  Nah.

 - People don't like it, but fear sells.  To a point. It's clear that the GOP (Bronzed Ego version) is going to try and run as the party of fear. From those evil immigrants (and, unspoken, people with brown (not Bronzed) skin, and the Jews) to scary trade, to a declining moral code the image of America under siege is going to be hammered into viewers over and over again.

 - In THEORY, the fear angle is not a bad one. Instead of asking "are you better off after 8 years of Obama" the "are you even safe after 8 years of Obama" is a fair question to ask. Police being shot, Black Lives Matters protesters blocking highways and openly calling for the murder of, and forced takings from, "white people" the case that a "3rd Obama term" as Hillary is making, could be disastrous could have legs, if the Republicans had a competent option at the top of the ticket making it. Instead they have a man who seems, in comparison, to be an even riskier option to all but his alt-right and party over principle followers.

 - YES, the voice vote was a sham. As it was always intended to be.  Reince and Co. have made a deal with the Devil.  And they understand that breaking that deal has consequences. What they are not understanding is that the problem became intractable when they made the deal in the first place.  Because deals with Beelzebub only work out well for the Devil himself. Trump is getting free publicity and will be elevated to cult status with a large enough swath of people that he can profit from it for the rest of his life.  The GOP is getting an eviction notice from the adult political table.

 - Going back to the strategy. Benghazi and the e-mail kerfuffle don't matter.  Because, again, this election is less about policy and more about safety.  And while they are horrific instances of the Anointed One proving herself to be incompetent, addled, or worse intentionally incompetent the rank-and-file American looks at those issues and says "so what?" They don't feel that an Embassy attack in Libya, no matter how botched, effects them much at home and they honestly don't have the best grasp on the latest encryption standards for e-mail communication or why it matters much.  Hell, THEY don't understand e-mail so why should it worry them if the next President doesn't?

 - People WANT a bigger government because it hasn't started taking away things they like. Yet. Until it does the Democrat Party can continue to run on a platform of largesse with no consequence, and promising all and sundry special interest groups that they will supply them with hand outs. The Democrats understand what the Republicans do not: Americans, on the average, are a greedy, stupid lot who, most often, don't understand who it is they are pulling the lever for in the ballot booth. (This is also why, recently admittedly I've decided to stop voting at all.  Voting is nothing more than a show, especially when you live in a gerrymandered strong "R" district as do I.)

 - I still think there's a case to be made to people regarding rule of law, restoration of freedoms and fiscal sanity. But it can't be approached by putting on Reagan's underwear and wrapping one's self in the flag. It's also not going to be accomplished by the Bronzed Ego waxing poetic about deporting 'illegals' and building a wall that the Messicans are going to pay for. In short, we're going to have to live through 4 years of a Clinton Banana Republic before people start to get the idea.

 - That said, I think it might be a while before these ideas become politically tenable. I think that America is about to go through a Texas or California experience with single party rule, single party corruption and single-party inspired legislation.  The last time we had this the ACA was the primary result, and look what a fetid-pile of pig-shit that's turned out to be.

 - Finally, the media coverage of this event is too "gotcha", too "fact-check" driven to really be of any use. What you are seeing now is less about covering the news, and more of a classic case of over-correction from their fawning Trump coverage in the primaries.  Then again, when you consider that the courtesans in the media have been paying fealty to the Anointed One for decades now, that really shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

PostGOP: America's For Profit Criminal Justice Outrage Industry.

Here we go again.

I'm not sure whether Alton Sterling was a good man, or a bad man. To be honest, it doesn't really matter. I'm also not sure whether the two Baton Rouge police officers involved were good or bad men.  And that doesn't really matter.

Because using anecdotal evidence to try and create a proof of case for broad, societal issues is never a good thing, it's never productive and it never produces good results. Ever.

All that we accomplish by moving from tragedy to tragedy is to create hucksters. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has built an entire career doing this, as has the Rev. Al Sharpton. Deray McKesson  tried, and failed (at least initially) to parlay this into a position with the ruling class. The Black Lives Matter movement itself has been increasingly bold, going as far to stop a Pride parade in Canada in order to demand.....money.

There are a few people in America getting wealthy on the backs of the angry mob. They are doing so by refusing to underestimate the stupidity of the American people, our media, and how we react to emotional pulls. In short: not well.

The two sides then become locked in an absolutists wet dream.  Black lives matter (and ONLY black lives matter) on one side and the petulant "All Lives Matter" movement on the other. This is not an argument about who matters, but about who matters MORE.

In many ways, the all lives matter cry is synonymous with "check your privilege". It's a guttural demand that one side is irrelevant, that the designs and goals of many are not important. Both arguments are played by the ruling class as battle cries, and flayed by the media as serious political talking points when, in fact, neither really are.

The fact is, it's OK to be a Caucasian and acknowledge that "driving while black" is a very real problem in America without having to acknowledge that everything you have has been given to you due to an illegitimate system. It's OK to believe that some people in police departments across the land view black Americans as something less than human without demonizing the entire rest of the country as somehow morally deficient.

And finally, it's OK to admit that Black Lives Matter make some valid points, but that they also should not be held inside a vacuum. In fact, the greatest path to solving these issues, ALL of the issues, is to embrace criminal justice reform in it's entirety. That does not mean that you are belittling black lives, but elevating them while also elevating all lives.

You would think that this concept would be a fairly simple one for clear-thinking, honest actors to grasp. That large swaths of the activist communities in America (and the politicians that incite them) are not grasping it suggests that many are neither clear-thinking, or being all that honest. And dishonest leaders have shown a historical precedent for taking advantage of a proletariat that loses its ability to reason.

A bigger problem is that the reasonable voices are being drowned out by a for-profit media who is only looking to turn anger into shareholder return at the expense of their so-called "civic duty". (Something the media does possess (now or ever) despite their endless romanticizing of themselves.)

Sadly, any hope of having a meaningful discussion has been lost. The Republican House, headed by Speaker Paul Ryan, failed to include criminal justice reform in their "Better Way" policy paper. (A paper which has been largely ignored by the media).

Because of this the hard work of reform is going to have to be done on the fringes, in Statehouses and at the municipal level, where the politics, and the politicians, are diminutive and increasingly petty.

One thing is for sure, in the battle between the Bronzed Ego and Anointed One, needed reform is going to get an extremely short-shrift. The good news out of all of this is that whatever follows the GOP seems to understand that this is a huge issue that needs reform.  But that is going to come to the front in 2017, or later.

For 2016 then it appears that we are going to have to heed the advice of Dante:

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

A fitting coda to 2016: The official ascension of the ruling class.

Something! must be done.

In the wake of the BREXIT vote where the great unwashed rose as one and stuck their thumb in the eye of the globalists America needed to be sure that such a thing would not happen here. What's the point of ruling after all if you can't have a ruling class?

After all, ruling classes are above the law, in fact, they have no law to follow. That said they do their level best to ensure that all of the non-ruling class members suffer equally under the law. Choosing to regulate as if everyone is a dishonest lawbreaker, and not just punishing the dishonest lawbreaker.

In fact, quite often, the goal of the ruling class is to take large sums of money from those who circumvent the rules and let them skate free.  We used to make fun of countries such as this in America by calling them Banana Republics, a derisive term that is now turned inward on the former "greatest country in the world". I wonder if they're all sitting back having a chuckle at our expense?

The Media, always in for a little authoritarianism and strong-man sucking up, has gone whole hog in defending the Anointed One with some of the dimmer lights (such as Sally Kohn) suggesting that it's "unreasonable" to suggest Hillary did "anything wrong at all". It's an amazing bit of mental gymnastics that takes place in for-profit companies who present themselves as the guardians of the public trust and who are desperately trying to not get on the bad side of the new American Monarchy.

In his, reliably solid, piece today, Kevin D. Williamson of National Review makes the case that there is good news. Namely that Americans will use this election, and the rule of the Anointed One after that, to come to a grand conclusion that they don't really need the government, and that it really doesn't matter to their lives.

While I believe this is true, to a certain extent, I also believe that the best thing to do in order to survive in the current political environment is to stay off the government's radar. In fact, I believe that either staying unnoticed or political patronage are pretty much the only two paths forward for American business owners now.

If you get on the bad side of the tin pots, they will regulate you into oblivion,.

We are now, more than likely, going to see at least 4 years of a Hillary Clinton Presidency. They say that the best person for the job of President is someone who doesn't want the job because they understand the responsibility it contains.

Hillary Clinton wants, and has wanted for a long time now, to be President in a very bad way.


That should tell us all we need to know about her, but it won't.  And even if we did most people would ignore it.


Because handouts or something.

We are on the verge of electing the most incompetent, corrupt, vindictive President in history (no matter who wins) and there's nothing you or I can do about it.

God save the Queen.

In Rationalia, there is no debate. #PostGOP

America's stupidest smart person is at it again.  This time, Neil deGrasse Tyson wants something he calls "Rationalia" as a perfect state:

@neiltyson

Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence

Sounds wonderful right?  A Utopia of pretty people making decisions based on perfect knowledge ran through perfect intellect arriving at the perfect outcome.  The fly in the ointment being, as Kevin D. Williamson of National Review points out, Human understanding of the world, and human intelligence, is far from perfect.

This means that Rationalia is going to be governed by those who think they're perfect (gods), but are in fact flawed.  What Neil deGrasse Tyson is really calling for is no better than that of any other Narcissist, his deification.

All hail Tyson! and what not.

The problem with this is that a move toward a rational society requires, by definition, the elimination of the irrational from the equation. The only way to accomplish this completely is to either enslave, incarcerate or eliminate. In most cases it's all three.

In many ways, we're already moving toward Mr. Tyson's wet-dream fantasy of a ruled state. Already the Democratic party is calling for the incarceration of so-called "climate change deniers" in their official platform and the idea that people who make choices the 'rational' establishment considers wrong should be denied those choices continues to spread. As a society we've decided that it's totally acceptable to kill, unborn, those humans who we consider to be undesirable. And we've killed humans that we consider to be undesirable for years now. (i.e. the death penalty). How much further do we have to go to decide that death is a "rational" punishment for those who refuse to partake in the bounty that is Rationalia?

Is this a slippery-slope argument?  You bet.  But the reality is we've been told "trust us" many times by the authoritarians among us and they've leaped that hurdle every time. (Remember "we're not trying to FORCE anyone to adopt unisex restrooms. Honest?)

Avoiding the science fiction based world of SkyNet and Soylent Green for a moment, lets think about something a little more believable.

For one, I don't think that lining up American citizens behind the storage sheds and shooting them all in the face will ever happen. But with the rise of genetic research, selective breeding and the movement toward cradle to grave government education and stewardship of our children we are raising a society that is going to be bred, trained and hardwired to comply.

Your soon-to-be-born baby has a genetic marker that has been shown to imply a predisposition to cancer?  Abort it.  The babies that are born will be placed into the education system as soon as they are weaned. From day care to post-graduate education (which, considering the current state of decline of the American education system will be required in order to land a remedial office job) your child will be offered learning from the brightest minds, the best of the best. Instructors such as Neil deGrasse Tyson as an example.

Now let's say you remain a malcontent. You choose to believe something different than the established scientific line.  Your options?  You will be consigned, permanently, to the perpetual underclass doomed to live a soulless existence with all of your freedoms taken away, and all of your choices made for you. You will be provided food, shelter, medical care and other necessities but you will not be allowed to breed (your rebellion being viewed as a genetic defect that must be culled) and you will not be allowed to move freely.  In short, you will be enslaved to a life of hard labor from which you can never escape due to your inferior intellect and every decision in your life will be made by someone more enlightened. If you don't think this is possible, or if you laugh it off, take a look at the news today.

A bigger problem is what to do with the surplus population.  A rational view of the world, based on the weight of evidence, suggests that poverty is prevalent because there are just too many people clogging up the arteries of Gaia for her resources to be allocated effectively.

This is bad, because it means that huge swaths of humanity must either be eliminated, or ignored. In Rationalia enlightened individuals such as Mr. Tyson will determine who makes the cut and who doesn't. In the real world it's going to be decided through the rule of force, as it always has been.

In other words, you first Mr. Tyson.

PostGOP: The Christianity we deserve, not the Christianity we need. #PostGOP

Another day, another adverse SCOTUS decision affecting Evangelical Christians and Catholics.

Supreme Court won't hear challenge on Washington State's rule that pharmacies dispense emergency contraception. Robert Barnes, Washington Post (mysteriously placed behind the Houston Chronicle's soon-to-be-reimposed firewall)

Coming on the heels of the abortion ruling (discussed yesterday here) and taken into the broader context of GLBTQ+ wedding cakes and other baubles Evangelicals and Catholics are, understandably, distraught.  And while I'm certainly not a man or religion, I do consider myself a Christian and am therefore somewhat sympathetic to the complaints of the religious, to a point.

I get that you feel under siege and that the walls of modern society are closing in around you, and I get that, because you've relied on government to achieve your aims, you feel that you are losing. I understand all of that and I empathize.

I would also argue that relying on the government to provide support for your faith was never a good option, or a preferred one.

One of the worst things that happened to religion (of man) vs Christianity (of God) is that it allowed itself to become politicized and it's issues framed among party lines. This has led not only to a fracturing of the congregations but also a dilution of the message.  Lest we forget, that message is salvation through Christ crucified.  Full stop.

All of the other that we are trying to do is legislate the world into our morality, instead of trying to work with them and guide them there. In short, there's no reason trying to put someone who doesn't care on a blind date with God.

It also makes no sense to believe that selling a GLBTQ+ couple a wedding cake somehow indicates de-facto support for GLBTQ+ marriage. That's the same as blaming a gun-maker for a person taking his gun and shooting someone. (OK, not literally the "same" but intellectually the same, I know some won't get that and I'll be accused of "comparing GLBTQ+ marriage to killing people!" but what can you do?)

It's long been my belief that any change for the better that we're going to see is going to be accomplished outside of the political arena. In the streets, neighborhoods and communities where help is needed most.  What Christians, and conservatives need is to abandon crying to our political ruling class every time we feel aggrieved and to get our message of economic freedom, rule of law, respect for property rights and limited regulatory frameworks out to the very people they will help the most.

But that's what we need.

What we deserve is Donald Trump assuring everyone that "Of course" he's a Christian and that he "loves God" despite having a tenuous grip on the Bible. We deserve to have leftist groups having their own private mic-drop moments by quoting Bible verses out of context and using them as proof of case.

In short, we deserve exactly the mess we have now because we've asked for the mess we have now.

And boy are we getting it.

PostGOP: On abortion, it is probably best to move on. #PostGOP

The SCOTUS has spoken and said that Texas' attempts to require surgical standards for a surgical procedure is Unconstitutional.  Of course, the Texas Lock Step is giddy not only that money will keep rolling in to their preferred organizations but that Wendy(?!?) Davis FINALLY won something.

Of course, Republicans are angry and suggest that the "fight" is not over.

Joy.

A better idea, in my mind, is to move the issue out of the political arena and, as the volunteer did in the first linked article, start taking options to the streets. Maybe the correct response to the government-sanctioned killing of the unborn is not more government, but more advocacy?

Maybe it's time to let the poor and minorities (those who have the most abortions) see the faces of the angry well-to-do Caucasian women who are cheering for this. Maybe it's time to stop looking to leadership from the government at all levels, and go about opening more clinics for carry-to-term clinics in areas where abortion clinics don't operate.

People are not going to stop caring about this issue, no matter what the gang of fools writing for the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board think. As we've seen, abortion is a 'line in the sand' issue and there's really no room for compromise. You either think it's morally wrong, or you don't. If you do then you're most likely to either support banning ALL abortions, or severely restricting abortions in certain cases (Rape, incest and medical concerns). If you have no moral qualms then you probably don't favor any restrictions on abortion up to, and including, immediate post-birth abortions. (Of the type performed by Dr. Kermit Gosnell. (It is important to remember that, despite the atrocious nature of his crimes, there were some on the left who supported Dr. Gosnell and felt he did nothing wrong.)

If you're an anti-abortion advocate on the right it's pretty clear that you can expect no refuge in your fate from the government.

In other words, you need to start doing the hard work in the communities or just get the hell out of the way of history. Relying on carnival hucksters like Lt. Gov Patrick to make things better for you is false hope.

My gut tells me that whatever follows the GOP is going to have to be much less active in politics, and much more active on the ground.

Because, if they're not, progressive politics is going to imprison and enslave a generation of poor, primarily minority citizens with no hope of escape.  The only chance to reverse this is to provide a new narrative based on the power of markets, rule of law and economic freedom.

It beats where reliance on Republican leadership has gotten us.

PostGOP: Governed by the least of us.

Childish behavior reigns in the Federal House of Representatives....

Democrats hold house floor in election-year sit-in on guns. Erica Werner (AP via HoustonChronicle.com)

At one point overnight, the two sides nearly came to blows after Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, approached the Democrats and yelled, "Radical Islam!" Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., started yelling back. The two came within inches of each other, both screaming, only to be separated by colleagues.

...

House Republicans used their prerogatives as the majority party to muscle through, with no time for debate, a partisan bill that provides money for the Zika crisis. GOP lawmakers overruled Democrats' objections and then acted to adjourn the House into next month. Democrats cried "Shame, Shame!" 

 

Unreal.  We've reached a point where re-enacting the bell-ringing, naked Cersi, walk of shame from Game of Thrones, and two utter morons hollering each other like children (although I doubt either of those fools would ever actually have the guts to come to 'blows').

The problem is GOP members, and their current alt-right majority followers, are backing the childish outburst of Rep. Louie Gohmert while Democrats, and their current majority of unthinking followers, are backing the immature screaming of Rep. Corrine Brown.

A pox on all of their houses (pun intended) as the current gang of fools that we've elected to represent us shows, once again, that they are incapable of adult behavior.

The problem is that most of us (except 12% of poll respondents who have their head in the sand obviously) don't like Congress as a whole, but think that the jerks that represent us might indeed be jerks, but they're OUR jerks and are jerky in a manner that we prefer.

And that's the problem. It's why Gohmert, a man who has the debate skills of a rabid grizzly bear, and Brown, who is one of the dimmer members of Congress, continue to pull money from the taxpayer trough.

A healthy source of blame also needs to be laid at the feet of those who blindly follow party over principle, those same people who are now supporting The Bronzed Ego and Anointed One respectively.

What we're seeing now is the new normal, because (and we don't want to recognize this but it's true) Congress is a fuzzy mirror of our collective society as a whole. If we don't require of them adult behavior, and if we don't show it in our political discourse among ourselves, then we're going to be in for much worse before it gets better.  If it ever can at this point.

Society (and politics) always finds a way to plumb the bottom.  Always.

PostGOP: The More Things Change....the more the American experiement goes awry.

A couple of nights ago I saw a Mercedes commercial discussing the future of self-driving cars. It was a pretty neat thing with a dad having a learning moment with his daughter using a video screen while the car drove down the freeway.

I turned to my wife and said 'In our lifetime we'll see self-driving cars'.

Then I got to thinking.

"How do we know that the two people in the car were a dad and his daughter?"

I mean, the country is currently undergoing a massive re-evaluation of what is, and what is not, acceptable on the marriage, gender identification front. And while it seems ridiculous to say that a societal return to authorized pedophilia would ever happen (remember, pre-teen girls marrying older men was quite common, even in Western culture, not all that long ago) is it silly to think that we might return to those days?

The point is that things move fast. Sure, the groundwork for the sexual and political transformation (calling it a revolution is a disservice to actual revolutions) that America is undergoing has been being laid for years, in colleges, in public schools, if history is being written by the victors then future history is going to have a decidedly progressive slant.

The thing is, there's no "wrong side of history" but there is a "losing side of history" and that's the side that you don't want to be on.  We're going to have to come to grips with the idea, for now, that conservatives are most certainly on the losing side and there's very little that can be done about it in the short term.

For the highest elected office in the so-called "beacon of freedom" for the world we're going to be faced with a choice between a corrupt, paranoid egotistical woman with no redeeming moral quality, or a complete and utter berk who happens to be a self-promoter with a childish set of debate skills. If we have a choice at all.  Because, at this point, The Bronzed Ego appears to have decided to mail it in against The Anointed One giving legs to all of those "stealth Democratic operative" conspiracy theories.

A bigger problem is the increased tendency of every level of government (regardless of party affiliation) to try and throw the US Constitution into a very large paper shredder.  From the 1st Amendment to the 10th, and through all of the V articles, the only thing that politicians seem to take interest in are the items that provide them with more power.

Because of this, the 9th Amendment is pretty cool to Progressives because it allows them to create so-called "rights" which they then use as a cudgel to limit the actual freedoms that their political opponents pretend to enjoy.  For Republicans, relegated to joke status and limited to controlling the States, the 10th Amendment is a fave-rave because it lets them file lawsuits and call for a gang of idiots to meet in a doomed-upon-announcement Article V convention of the States.

The idea behind the convention?  To further amend the US Constitution putting more power in their hands.

We have a media that's dropped all pretense of neutrality, and which is actively arguing for the rights of other people to be curtailed. We've even gone to calling for the detention of political dissenters on a variety of issues.

It's an old cliché but true, the United States, the so-called freest country in the world, has the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration (excluding N. Korea, for whom we have no reliable data) in it by far.  You're only free in America if you choose to toe the line. Step off the line, even for a second, and an army of paramilitary shock-troops come busting down your door to slap the nonconformity out of you.

Amazingly now, in Texas which bills itself as the reddest of red states, they don't even have to follow proper due process to use evidence against you.

We have cities that are devolving into de-facto war zones where more people are dying on a weekend than Omar Mateen killed at Pulse. Yet no one is saying anything about it because it's "just a bunch of minorities killing minorities" and we've somehow decided that that's OK, as long as progressives are running things and making sure that it's their patronage system in place.

We don't debate anymore in America, we snarl, snarkily of course. It's gotten so bad that some in societies lowest-common-denominator (the US Senate, for those of you new to this blog) publicly stated that Republicans wanted to "sell guns to ISIS" because they didn't want to pass a so-called gun control bill that would strip around a Million people of due-process rights.  Then those same water-carriers voted against a compromise bill because.....election season.

In a just world those politicians would be paraded in the public square, laughed at, and faced a barrage of rotting vegetables being hurled their way.  This before being booted from office (if not recalled for sheer stupidity) and their names forever enshrined as a synonym for stupid.

Instead, they're being praised for making "sick burns" of the other side and the best observers can do is shake their head and talk about just how prescient the fairly pedestrian movie Idiocracy really was.

It's not that we should yearn for a return to so-called "greatness" or that going back to the bygone days of old would be ideal. But isn't it OK to yearn for a return of competency and that we move forward in an intelligent manner?

As a conservative, I tire of political figures (and gadflys) trying to put on Ronald Reagan's ideological underwear and parade around in a false fug of nostalgia, just like I tire of progressives trying to solve the current financial mess by clamoring for a return to a 1960's economy.

There are great ideas out there, the so-called "gig" economy, self-driving cars, telephones that have more computing power inside them than the entire NASA moon mission, but we waste all of that focusing on trains, bikes, footpaths, selfies and 140 character pieces of mediocre snark.

We've chosen to view government as an ATM machine and then we're appalled when politicians (saying 'greedy politicians' is a redundancy) use it to dole out cash to their friends, supporters and ideological fellow-travelers. We call for better leadership but cast our votes for two of the worst leaders in the modern era.

In short, we keep doing what we've always done, just more so and more loudly, and expect to wake up in the morning to a different America.


Because of this I've come to the conclusion that we are all insane.




Which, when you really think about it, explains quite a bit.

PostGOP: The American Political System as Low-brow Comedy Act

Over 100 people were shot and either killed or injured at Pulse, a GLBTQ+ nightclub, in Orlando a few days ago.  The shooter, Omar Mateen, was the son of Afghan immigrants and a Muslim who was apparently radicalized and, quite possibly, both gay himself and likely slightly mentally unstable.


To the Democratic sycophants that make up the editorial board of the New York Times (alongside many Democrat-first, GLBT+ issues second, activists, this is enough evidence to point the finger for the crimes at..........


White, middle-class, middle-aged, conservative, Christian males. A group of people with whom Mateen most assuredly had very limited, if any, contact.  If, like most thinking people, you look at those conclusions with confusion, it won't matter to those on the Left. Just like a discussion surrounding whether or not Mateen was, in fact, gay does not enter into the thought process on the right.


What enters the minds of writers, non-thinkers, media talking-heads and 'activists*' on both sides has been guns. In fact, the most pressing issue of the moment is whether or not to do two things with them. First, the old "common sense" canards are rolled out.  Banning so-called "assault" weapons for one (which would have no effect and had no effect on crime the first time it was tried) and second, suspending due process for Millions of Americans who might find themselves on a vaguely defined 'terrorist watch list'.


If you're surprised that so-called social liberals would move down this path remember this: It was the Democratic Party that was the driving force behind Japanese internment camps during WWII.  So what's happening now should not entirely surprise you.  As Jonah Goldberg says "what a dumb time to be alive".


I concur.


Kevin D. Williamson also offers up some thoughtful, wise and accurate observations on the matter. Pointing out to people that this is not about, nor has it ever been about, "reducing crime". Instead it's about gaining power, exerting control and silencing a large, but shrinking, political group that has been unfriendly toward Democrats historically.  One of the few unprotected classes left in America is the Caucasian conservative male.  There is no flag for him, no movement cutting commercials or Hollywood star shedding crocodile tears. In fact, the lampoon of the redneck hick, fat, wearing a dirty wife-beater t-shirt (dirty because he worked in it all day not because he spilled food and beer on it FWIW) is not openly mocked, but encouraged.


Editorial cartoonists, who would much rather have their arms forcefully removed and their children beaten with them than draw a caricature of Mohammed, gleefully mock and disparage middle-American men with no worry of career repercussion. You can draw Bubba being racist, but you cannot draw Omar being a homophobe.


Nor is it possible to have a rational discussion around what could likely be the real story.


A Muslim man, who happened to be a closeted homosexual, struggled with the social and moral norms of a religious belief system that is 100% opposed to the GLBTQ+ community even being alive. Thinking his sexuality a personal flaw, and unable to turn anywhere for help and support, he lashed out in the way he was taught by radical elements who used his anger toward the world to kill and wound around 100 people.  The other option is that he cased the club and planned his attack. In that case he's not disturbed at all, just a radical Islamist who committed a horrendous act of terror. We may never know where the truth lies because he didn't leave many hints.


There is a lot in that paragraph above that both sides could possibly agree on, and work to fix.


But that is not how American politics work today.


Today we have comedians like Sally Kohn banging away at her typewriter that all Republicans are racist homophobes, we have Donald Trump crowing that he was "right" about terrorism as he stares fondly into his gold-framed mirror. We are stuck with elected representatives who look at polls, listen to campaign advisors and don't have the intellectual heft to generate an original thought.  And we have a President who is a suit so empty it's almost folded.


We don't have a government, we have a comedy show.


The only problem is, right now, there's nothing much funny about it.

PostGOP: The ruling class needs you to hate.

In the wake of the worst act of terror in US history the political ruling class is relying on you to hate.


What you hate largely will depend on what side of the political aisle you fall.  For Republicans, the target is Islamism. In the more dirty corners of the alt-right movements it's Islam itself. For Democrats, the target is Constitutional freedoms and, more importantly to them, Republicans. Because to politicians every action is a political opportunity in the making both sides are rushing to judgment in a direction that they feel will cause the most damage to the other side.


GLBT/Liberal activist Sally Kohn has waged a single-person war against Republicans on Twitter all but claiming them to be accomplices in the shooting because of that nebulous term called "hate". It's not Omar Mateen who killed 50 people and injured another 53, it's Republican rhetoric against the GLBT community. Obama and Clinton (increasingly one and the same person) have called for suspending the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens, and ripped a page from Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner's book by suggesting that the key to all of this is love.


Trump?  Well, he's scorched earth and taking the "look at me" approach by bragging he was "right" to have his stance on Islam.  One thing Trump and Obama have in common is an extreme level of narcissism that requires them to always be the center of attention no matter the situation.  As Conservative gadfly David Burge (@iowahawk on Twitter) "The bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral".  None of these events are about the people, they're framed and messaged into being about the great leader, the supreme being whose elevation to the office of President will save us from our more base tendencies.


All of this creates two national conversations that have nothing to do with one another and no chance of ever finding common ground. While the useful idiots over at Vox are Voxsplaining Obama's so-called prescient foresight the in-the-tank-for-Trump sycophants at Breitbart are celebrating the supposed "threat to the left's agenda".  Of course, both are wrong. 


First, the idea that a so-called "lone-wolf" attacker could strike at any time was not some celestially received knowledge that Obama along possessed and second, the idea that the left's agenda is somehow threatened by reality is a pipe-dream.


No agenda is ever truly threatened by fact. Both sides function on hate, fear and greed and rely on the relatively uniformed electorate to push them across the line.


The easy solutions are gun control, suspension of Constitutional rights and rounding up the usual suspects. The hard slog is admitting the fact that, in a free, liberal, democratic society, there will always be threats and dangers that bad people can do harm. For years this has been the trade off that American's have accepted. We get that there are risks, but we're willing to take those risks in order to ensure our supposed freedoms.


The problem that we're starting to see is that the trade-off is becoming imbalanced. We still have the threat and risks (mainly due to lax-enforcement of law and political concerns) but we've lost the freedom to make our own choices. We've lost property rights and we're incarcerating more people than anyone else in the world and at a higher rate as well. The predominate number of those in jail are minorities. We like to play pretend that America is a free nation on a shining hill but the fact of the matter is we've morphed into a militarized police state where it's easier to break the law than it is to toe the line.


Besides the over-criminalization of society, the fact that the ruling class has decided to pick and choose which laws to enforce has led to the devolution of the United States into a large banana republic instead of a great experiment. There are few, if any, politicians left who seem to have the ability to turn this around, to reverse course and get things working again.


Freedom, and the politics associated with it, is based on hope and respect, tyranny is based on hate and fear. For all of Obama's "hope and change" rhetoric what he was really pushing for was the hatred of freedom, the expansion of government and a statist desire to expand government into every area of American life. Obama never had hope that the people would make the right decisions, he always feared how they would choose. 


If you think this is going to get any better with either the Bronzed Ego or the Anointed One in the Oval Office you're fooling yourself.  America is on the cusp of electing a President who will take the next step to authoritarianism regardless of which option they select. You can say this with confidence because neither candidate has the ability to deal with dissent in an adult manner.


In the interim however, get ready to see a lot more calls to hate.  We're about to go from the "3 minutes hate" to the "5 months hate" and it's not going to be pretty.  In fact, it's going to get worse until people realize exactly what we're about to do to ourselves.


I'm not sure we have it in us any longer to understand that. Nor would we prescribe the needed remedy even if we did.


















(hint: it's not 'revolution' or Abbott's nitwits tying to form a "convention of the states", nor is it a rewrite of the Constitution, or the repeal of the Bill of Rights that Harry Reid so wants to see. In short, it's nothing that's being proposed by the two major parties currently.)

Decline: Two seemingly unrelated, but telling, stories.

Today there were two good pieces on National Review Online, related to entirely different topics, but each telling in their own way.


The first piece reminds us that the government that is no longer answerable to its citizens is no longer governing, but ruling.

Pinocchios with Pensions, Kevin D. Williamson, National Review Online

From Lois Lerner’s weaponizing the IRS on behalf of Democrats before the 2012 elections to Mrs. Clinton’s toilet-server shenanigans to gross abuses of prosecutorial power among Democratic state attorneys general, the lesson of the Obama years is clear: If you are close enough to power, you can do anything, and there is never a price to pay.

The second piece is a reminder that a media that tries to make, rather than report, news is no longer media but propaganda.

Katie Couric: More Reality TV Star than Journalist. Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online.

This is the more lasting lesson of the Couric scandal: Reality TV has conquered all. As a society, we want to be entertained far more than we want to be informed, which is why these scandals vanish the instant they become boring. It’s also why Katie Couric is more a reality-TV star than a real journalist.

Both of these stories combine to illustrate why the United States is an empire in the last stages of decline.

For one, we've thrown away our representative system of government for a representative form of rule. Yes, we ostensibly have a say in who is ruling over us (but not in reality, as I noted yesterday) but the actual mechanisms of government, the administration, is often staffed by un-elected bureaucrats freed from the needs of shaking babies and kissing hands.

Couple that with the fact that more people typically vote on an episode of American Idol than they do in the typical election (the Presidential election possibly being an exception) and you have a recipe for decline on a Biblical scale.  The Romans ruled the world, but eventually even they went off the boil, primarily due to a gluttonous public distracted by "bread and circuses" (thank you Juvenal) while their leaders wallowed in depravity. The concept of "media" in those days was slightly more limited in an age where all writing was done by hand, often on papyrus and at great difficulty. In fact the closest thing the Romans got to "media" was public speeches (and paid counter-agitators within the crowds) by Caesar and the Senators.

What we have today isn't really media either. It's propaganda. In fact, throughout most of American history there hasn't been the romanticized "media" working feverishly to uncover corruption, fraud and abuse on behalf of the citizen, as Hollywood romanticized. Early newspaper publishers were sharply partisan, and their publications were often de facto house organs for their chosen political party. The Screwtape Letters, Poor Richard's Almanac, The Federalist Papers were all propaganda forwarded by politicians with a stake in the game. Quite literally, that stake could have been being hanged for high treason.

Today the stakes aren't nearly as high.  IF a reporter is caught violating the so-called public trust then they are typically released from their journalism position and make an immediate transition to the PR team of some politician.  This typically makes sense because it is most likely that they were getting most of their copy from said team to begin with. In most cases however, As Mr. Goldberg points out, there are short bursts of outrage by the offended side, followed by a non-apology apology and this blue pebble churns along as if nothing untoward has happened.  Until it's time for the next outrage.

As Mr. Williamson points out it's very common for the "outrage" to emanate from the government itself. Since there's no functional independent media apparatus to check them, they pretty much can operate with complete impunity knowing that there will be no serious, lasting repercussions for their actions.

While this doesn't mean, yet, that the American government is sending out shock troops to kneecap their political opposition, it does mean that people can suggest that political opponents be arrested and hardly anyone bats an eye. In fact, there are a large group of people who would stand and cheer America's descent into full-on authoritarianism. The problem for the people that are cheering is that they will be the first ones line up against the wall in the purge of the bourgeoisie, betrayed by their ruling bettors in Night of the Long Knives fashion. One thing about authoritarians, they ALWAYS have to have a purge.

This is not a conspiracy theory, nor am I predicting that the United States of America will fail as a State in the immediate future. As we've seen in the past, it's never too late for a (brief) renaissance of a State and America, with her still-powerful but stagnant economy, has a singular ability to pull back from the brink and reclaim greatness. 

The problem is that doing so is going to take information and several cans of care. Right now it doesn't seem that the media, citizenry, or government care all that much about providing either.

Election 2016: Where I am right now. #PostGOP

I thought that this piece by Ramesh Ponnuru over at National Review Online was pretty good.

Trump vs. Clinton: Grim choice for conservatives. Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review.

No voter is under any moral obligation to judge whether Trump or Clinton is the lesser evil. 

Refusing to vote for either one of them — by writing someone in, voting third party, or voting only for other offices — need not be an evasion of reality or a shirking of civic duty. It may be the right choice, at least if it is combined with tolerance for conservatives who make different judgments in this dismal year.

Agreed.

As a resident of one of the reddest districts (TX-2) in the reddest State, just, it's highly likely that my vote for any office is going to be meaningless.  For all of the talk about democracy and what not the fine State of Texas tradition of gerrymandering pretty much ensures that while the 'participatory' portion is encouraged, the effective is pretty much all but meaningless. As is any one, individual vote.

Politics in Texas has devolved into a shit-show of long-time party activists bemoaning how hard they 'fought' to 'build' something that probably shouldn't have been built in the first place. It's a clusterfuck of epic proportions to watch the modern-day Texas GOP convince itself that pay-for-play slates don't dominate, and that a large portion of it's electorate simply pushes the 'straight-ticket Republican' button on the machines and goes on their merry way.

In fact, Texas democracy has gotten so bad that the State is effectively broken at a functional level. It's probable that you have a better chance of getting something done in Italy than you do in Texas. Hell France probably has a better "git 'er done" rate than does the Lone Star State of today.

The Texas Agricultural Commission is ran by a buffoon, the Texas General Land Office is ran by a nascent political careerist whose election was brought about mostly by his name, and certainly not by his grasp of GLO issues, and the Texas Comptroller's Office is staffed by a man who is taking his cues from former disaster Susan Combs.  All of this and we haven't even spoken about the AG who is under indictment for (and mostly likely guilty of) securities fraud, and a Governor who's idea of a strong political stand is making fund-raising pleas based on his pie-in-the-sky call for a gang of nitwits to conduct a Article V Convention of the States. Something that will never happen, but from the promise of which much campaign cash can be raised.  When he's not talking about suing the Feds that is.

My Congressman, Ted Poe, is now supporting light-rail expansion in a city where it makes no sense, and is really not doing much of anything.  Ted Cruz is marginalized, and John Cornyn is....well, he's John Cornyn, possibly the blandest man in Texas politics now that David Dewhurst has left the building. (thank goodness)  On the bright side, he has a good head of hair. On the downside? He has a bad head for policy.

The Texas Speaker of the House, Joe Straus, is by all accounts a petty, vindictive man, who has decided that conservatives are the worst people in the world and the Lieutenant Governor is an avowed Theocrat with a monster Messiah complex and some pretty scary authoritarian instincts. In short, he's a demagogue.

Even more depressing is the fact that this group of clowns is in power because the Democrats don't even elevate to the level of a bad joke in Texas.  Yes, they get pumped up by the sycophants working in the Texas Lock-Step Political Media, but when they get ready for prime time and to meet the Texas voters we're subjected to moon-shots for Texas education, ringing the damn bell, filling the damn boot, bad (horrible) singing political ads, a candidate who didn't campaign but apparently cooked some chili, a technocrat's technocrat and the most overrated pair of pink tennis shoes in modern history.

At least the Republican candidates, for all of their faults, could fog a political mirror. Texas Democrats are the equivalent of an intellectual pop-gun.  In fact, they did us all a favor when they fled to the casino in Ardmore, maybe they should consider a permanent relocation? (hint: take the netroots with you. It will help, I promise, no one likes a group of people who continually call them stupid.)

The rub of all this is that, with the possible exception of people in Houston, Dallas and Austin, Texans are an agreeable lot, still (somewhat) self-reliant and unlikely to be caught up in all of the commotion surrounding the so-called "hot issues". Most people just want roads that are in better shape than those in developing nations (without tolls would be nice), secure neighborhoods, good schools and either trades education or decent secondary education for their kids. Issues such as sanctuary cities (the 'most important' issue of the next legislative session per the Governor) who takes the piss where (hint: let the market work it out) and all of the other issues you see on the news are mainly not on the public radar.

Until there's a party that starts talking about these issues there will continue to be more and more people pulling back from participatory democracy believing, correctly FWIW, that their single vote doesn't matter a hill of beans.  The rub is, it doesn't.  Because, in the grand scheme of things, one person sitting in a tiny voting booth pushing a button on any one race doesn't matter. Those who tell you that it does because of one race in Cut n' Shoot Texas that was decided by three votes is using the exception to try and prove the rule.

There are far more productive things you can be doing than campaigning, pimping your preferred party or voting even. Primarily you can be getting out there and getting work done.

That's where I am right now.  I respect you if you are not, but the fight for conservatism is not going to be won by entrusting it to either the GOP or Democrats, it's going to be won by individuals working outside of the political system to make things better.

PostGOP: What they mean when they say "it's for the children". #PostGOP

There is, currently, a lot of durm and strang being heard over so-called "emergency leave" payments by many State of Texas departments and rightly so. Texas, technically, forbids paying severance to released employees but, as is the case with most laws, the devil lies in the unintended consequences which has led to a much more shady agreement in the form of emergency leave.  At least with severance pay you know what you are getting.

As they do, the gang of idiots that make up the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board (which should be shuttered, the ground on which they opined salted and the monies wasted on them used to hire more hard news resources) has decided that this money could be better used "for the children".

Perks for ex-staffers. HCEB, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

Keep in mind that this is your money. It is money taxpayers might be willing to spend on education or public safety or to protect children from abuse and neglect. 

Yes, keep that in mind. You should probably also keep in mind that ALL government revenue is (their words here) YOUR money. That's because the government doesn't MAKE anything. They don't produce anything other than laws, and there's no revenue driver there.  In fact, except in limited cases such as the Tennessee River Valley Authority and other various utilities, the government is one giant cost center sucking resources from the revenue drivers of the United States.

This doesn't mean that government is inherently bad (although, I would argue that politicians are, and have to work to overcome their horrible natures). There's nothing wrong with being a cost center.  In fact, in my day job I'm an accountant working for shared services at an oil and gas company.  I don't 'produce' anything of value other than my work, which (ironically) is in regulatory reporting (in part).

But without someone like me filling this role the company would find itself in trouble because it would not have the ability to pay severance taxes and government royalty, or comply with the myriad regulations that are placed on us by alphabet soup agencies.

The problem is when you start to think that money sent "to the State" is going to be spent on education, public safety or to "protect children" (whatever the hell that means) because, I can assure you, it's not.

In fact, most of the money that we spend on government is used to.....run the government. This is true not only at the Federal level but also in States that pride themselves on so-called 'fiscal conservatism' as does Texas.

Because, despite what they will have you believe, it's never 'about the children' but about making sure that the bureaucracy continues to function. I don't say this to disparage government workers, because all bureaucracies operate in this manner, but just to state fact.  There are currently more alphabet-soup agencies operating in the government than you think, even in your worst nightmares.  What we read in newspapers and see on TV is just the very public tip of the iceberg. In fact, when you get caught up in the Kafkaesque nightmare that is government bureaucracy you realize just how all-encompassing it is.

What governments do is plan, and hold meetings. What they don't do (well) is 'get things done' or take care 'of the children' which is why you constantly hear about CPS 'missing it' on tales of abuse. Is that because the CPS workers are bad?  No. It's because the CPS bureaucracy sucks up all of the financial oxygen.

Because that's how they run, it's how they think business should run as well.  On any given day you have an army of taxpayer funded bureaucrats sitting around offices trying to determine how to more tightly (and expensively) regulate the sectors of the economy over which they've been granted dominion. And, yes, this even happens in a State such as Texas that hails itself as "business friendly".

Increasingly, the goal of these agents of change is not to streamline regulations in order to ease compliance, it's to make them as difficult to navigate as possible in order to increase government audit activity which they believe will increase fines and penalties, thus allowing the bureaucracy (and, they hope, their paychecks) to grow.

So it's a naive piece of writing from the gang of idiots over at the Chronicle to think that the money not spent on severance is going to go to the children, or public safety, or any other public good.  The fact is that a large portion of the tax takings the government collects is going to be spent on feeding the machine.

Whatever follows the Republican Party after the Trump disaster needs to focus in on this and trumpet it to the skies. They need to show people just how an overbearing regulatory state (or, in Texas, a bureaucracy that's administratively broken) is a drain on both their financial well-being and their ability to succeed.

One of the biggest causes of voter anger is that the 'game is rigged' against the little guy and that only the big corporations can navigate the current marketplace in a manner savvy enough to succeed.

The Democrat's answer to this is to increase the size and scope of the machine promising that, by increasing the monies thrown into it, somehow efficiency will be attained and a wonderful new, Utopian era of democratic socialism will emerge.

Conservatives need to trumpet a different, more workable message. The idea being that by eliminating red tape and freeing the marketplace (except where safety is concerned) the ability of people to move among economic strata will be restored. Of course, their needs to be an admission that the GOP of old did, in fact, kowtow to large corporations and aided and abetted the machine in creating rules that only they can navigate, often to the ruin of small business.

Once this is flushed out of the way the focus needs to be on simple, fair, effective regulation that is easy for business to comply with and which ensures the integrity of the markets. I don't think there's much of an intellectual market these days for no regulation, except among Libertarians, and they're spending their time dancing on stage in thongs, but I DO think the public would get behind regulatory simplification, making it easier to comply, and easier to interact with a streamlined bureaucracy when compliance activities are needed.

Two weeks ago I took a day trip to Washington D.C. for my job. The oil and gas industry had the opportunity to meet with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to appeal for some sanity on soon-to-be published oil and gas valuation rules drafted by the Office of Natural Resources-Revenue (ONRR which is part of the Department of the Interior (DoI).  These are far reaching regulations pertaining to federal and tribal royalties for oil and gas produced from federal leases.  Conservatively (and falsely) the ONRR has decided that the industry-wide impact of these regulations would be $80MM per year. (In reality, it's probably closer to $200MM per year).  To appeal these wide-ranging regulatory changes and plea for additional review the oil and gas industry was granted.....



30 minutes.


That's a problem.  It should also be noted that small oil and gas companies had no voice at the table because, for the most part, they are being shut out of producing from federal leases due to the extremely high-cost of clearing the regulatory hurdles.

This needs to change.

BadPolitics: D. C. is a place with no redeeming value. #PostGOP

I just came back to Houston from a day-trip to Washington D.C. to attend some meetings with regulators regarding new oil and gas royalty-valuation regulations.

As an illustration as to what's wrong with government:  The bureaucracy believes that this regulation will cost industry almost $100 Million dollars per year (that's low FWIW), and we were granted a 30 minute audience with one of the king's minions.

That this happens with great regularity shows the ever-deepening hole that is becoming the regulatory state under President zero.

D.C. is a monument to the leviathan.

They actually put on their license plates "taxation without representation" because they don't have a voting congressperson (and think they should qualify for statehood) in D.C. They have a highway system that seems to be designed by morons, a public transit system that continually catches on fire, and an entire system of being that's designed to both reflect, and promote, the Federal government system. (The tallest building is, by law, the Washington Monument, which fulfills the ideal that nothing, or no one, is more important than the government.)

Alphabet soups are everywhere, and young workers spend the day either surfing porn (if news reports are to be believed) or (apparently) running around in parks. Only a few workers seem to actually be getting any work done and most of those are lobbyists from private industry.

There is an earnestness around those who work for the government, an attitude of arrogance as well, as if what they are doing is really more vital to the survival of the Republic than the attainment of wealth by those in the private sector. When asked, in private moments, some of them will admit that what they are doing is how things ought to be. Sharing a beer with some of them is typically the best way to get them to cop to this, a belief in not only their superiority, but in the inherent good in government and the all-encompassing evil in the private sector.

Then, they're off to run in the park or head to a concert or do the things that young, primarily Caucasian it should be noted, progressives like to do. (When they're not telling people what it is they should do).

I was amazed to find out that D.C. had Uber and Lyft.  But then, Uber'ing around town is still considered "cool" despite some of the older cronies in the Democrat party saying so, my belief being that it will eventually win out over the tired taxi lobbies as the old guard fades away into their well-off political retirements.

D.C. is a land of mass-marketed "craft" beer, modern-day taverns that feature gourmet, "organic" food, often marketed as "farm-to-table" but probably from the back of a Sysco truck, of pub-crawls and late morning work times which allow for sleeping in after you've had two too many the night before.

IF you can afford to live in D.C. of course, which only a select few (again, mostly Caucasian, progressive) can.  The rest of the crowd have to move out to the sticks where it's becoming more and more difficult to get into town, where a commute from Springfield can take over two hours, where the Metro system is such a mess it burns more often than not, and has just fired most of its management. Most people just walk.

Despite all of this, there's a pride around D.C. of their public treasures. The Pentagon (of course) was roundly ignored but almost everyone took pains to point out that we were "just caddy-cornered" from the White House, and that I should visit D.C. soon because "there were some great new monuments" to be seen. You get the feeling that even the people who are lobbying against the Obama administration are voting for him. Part of the reason for that is job security, and part is because D.C. has fallen victim to a sort of Statist group-think.

There's no job small enough that the Government cannot, and should not, go for a large, unwieldy solution. There's no issue so inconsequential as to stoop below a regulatory need. Everything that you do, the air you breathe, the water you drink, the poop you take, the food you eat, the alcohol you consume, the TV you watch the decisions you make that harm no one whatsoever except yourself. ALL of that must be regulated by one of the thousands of alphabet-soup organizations that make up government in the U.S. of A.

And the seat of that government lies in Washington D.C.  whose primary residents are working overtime (within union rules of course) to make absolutely sure everyone and everything is operating within the parameters that they have decided is best.  And this, is ALL they do.  All day, all night. Because it's what we've asked them to do.

Now you see why it's going to be such a task to untangle the regulatory state.  Because hives of these people exist not only in Washington D.C. but in every State Capitol and every major city and every county seat and every small bit of government you can find.

Behold how free.