I Beg Your Pardon?

Picked up a new antibiotic for the cat yesterday. The instructions on the bottle, with a childproof cap no less, say, "Give one half of a pill by mouth at bedtime."

Wait a minute. We're dealing with a cat, here. Following those instructions would use up those thirty pills in about two days. My wife finally decided it meant that we should pill the cat at our bedtime, which makes more sense in some ways, but less in others. Like giving instructions to a human, "take one pill by mouth at high tide."

Molly doesn't much give a shit one way or the other, but...

Dancing to the Symbols

Elizabeth Warren has endeared herself in popular liberal politics, and there is considerable clamor to have her run on the national ticket with Hillary Clinton. Clinton, it is said, has Warren on a “short list” of three candidates being vetted for that position.

This demonstrates my point about liberal popular politics being more interested in symbolism than substance. Warren is certainly articulate and has a nice line of invective against Wall Street, and recently against Donald Trump, but in substance, in terms of experience and accomplishment, she is an empty suit.

A Harvard law professor who served an appointment overseeing the infamous TARP, she then served in an appointed position overseeing the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Her ivory tower approach created so little teeth that almost no one knows that the bureau exists eight years later.

In four years in the Senate she has introduced one bill on her own initiative; an affair having to do with student loan interest rates which has languished in committee without so much as a vote for cloture and is a prime example of empty symbolism in any case, because interest rates are not what’s wrong with student loans. The problems with student loans are that they cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and that they exist at all due to the atrocious cost of higher education which necessitates them.

She has not raised her voice in support of any other specific measures in the Senate in any meaningful way, but has been pretty much a “place holder,” voting on issues in the manner that the party instructs her to vote. She has spent her time in the Senate travelling to New York to rail against Wall Street and economic injustice without actually doing anything to reign in the first or correct the second.

Despite Warren’s complete lack of any foreign policy credentials whatever, and her apparent disinterest in domestic policy beyond Wall Street, she has become the darling of the liberal wing of the Democratic party and forced Hillary Clinton to adapt her campaign strategy accordingly.

Notwithstanding Clinton’s assertion that a running mate would have to be someone “entirely ready to become commander in chief,”  she allowed it be known that Warren was one of three people being considered. This was a sop to the left wing of her party and illustrates that Clinton’s campaign is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Appalling Symbolism

Democrats are on fire to “do something” and, as usual, what they want to do is entirely symbolic and is, in this case, governmental thuggery of the worst kind.

I have no real issue the gun control aspect of this latest Democratic exercise in grandstanding, but the “no fly list” is an abomination in conception and in execution, and to use it as the basis of an abridgement of constitutional rights is an abuse of power of the highest order.

A person can be placed on the list based on mere suspicion, and virtually every name on the list is placed there on that basis. The list is conviction with not even a pretense at due process of law. One cannot challenge his placement on the list, has no right to face the accuser, and is provided no right to assert innocence. Many people are on the list and do not even know they are on it.

This is what our popular politics has devolved to; cheerleading for morons who grandstand in the seat of government to demand unreasonable removal of civil liberty in an act of empty symbolism pandering to fear.

Presented (Almost) Without Comment

From “Club Orlov” on where we are headed,

"Last New Year's eve in Cologne, Germany, a mob of around a thousand male migrants attacked and molested a large number of women. There were some German men on hand; did they defend their women? No, they didn't. Or take the recent incident in Orlando. Conspiracy theories aside, there were over 100 people there against one gunman. Did any of them rush the gunman? The first 10 might have gotten shot; but the next 10 could have piled on, dropped him to the floor and stomped on his neck, ending the incident. But that didn't happen, did it? Where was their killer instinct?

By way of contrast, consider the incident that took place in Murmansk, Russia, where some migrants that had been expelled from Norway for bad behavior started behaving impudently toward some Russian women at a night club. The local lads didn't like that at all. According to some reports, the police showed up when the situation was already well in hand, and did their best to show that they are no slouches either. Result: 18 rapey migrants ended up in the hospital, 33 in detention, all begging to be sent home. If you are thinking that these people aren't quite civilized, then perhaps you are right, but we need to further process this thought.

You see, when your civilization is collapsing, civilized people become a liability. It may not even be just a question of culture or society; it may be a question of breeding. Just as you can breed hunting dogs to specifically disable certain instinctive behaviors—pointers don't attack the prey but stupidly stand there pointing; retrievers stupidly carry the prey back instead of eating it on the spot—you can also breed a race of men that don't defend their women but stand there stupidly waiting for the police to show up and maybe do their job.

The selective breeding works like this: keep arresting all the men who exhibit normal violent responses to violence and sending them to jail, where the only relationships they can have are homosexual ones and don't produce any offspring. Then the only men who are left on the outside and able to breed are the docile, tame ones, and over just a few generations they produce a breed of docile, tame humans who stand around watching strangers manhandle and molest their women, or wait for a lone gunman to get around to shooting them, hiding in the bathroom and furiously diddling their phones."

I would add that when you have a generation of men who were raised by helicopter mommies, who were not allowed to even walk home from school on their own, whose mommies solved problems for them, then when the shit hits the fan they will be hiding in the bathroom on their iPhones, calling their mommies to ask what to do.

Blowback

So much for the claim that California’s raise in the minimum wage would not be accompanied by any negative consequences. The grocery workers union is voting on authorization to strike today and the projection is that the vote will be heavily in favor of the strike.

Grocery stores are trying to “reduce costs in the wake of California's minimum wage increase,”  which seems a bit contradictory until one examines what the contentious issues are. The issues are not wages, but involve fringe benefits and the rate at which wage increases are accrued. Since the beginning wage is increasing, employers want to slow the pace of wage increases and to increase the workers' contribution to the cost of health and pension benefits.

I have no dog in this hunt, but I don’t know why anyone would be surprised by this. Do not be surprised if food prices increase.

Democracy Dies

The Democrats have their "superdelegates" who answer to no one in electing the party's nominee. They are not the deciding factor in Clinton's coronation, but between them and the media the deck was heavily stacked in her favor.

Republican leaders are denouncing Trump in wholesale lots. I may agree with their sentiment, but in doing so they insult their voters. The man is the choice of the people of their party and these elites are openly rejecting the choice made by their voters.

Both parties have now reached the point that they openly display the degree to which they disdain the people whom they supposedly represent. They no longer even pretend that we have democracy.

Embrace Panic

Democrats in the Senate are staging a dramatic filibuster right now to enact legislation which would “prevent suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms.”  Let’s abandon the constitution altogether and simply send all suspected terrorists to Guantanamo.

Oh wait, George W. Bush already did that. We didn’t like it, or at least we pretended not to. If we did it today we would be sending more than half a million people from this nation there, at least half of them American citizens.

The Department of Homeland Stupidity has gone ape shit with these “terrorist watch” and “no-fly” lists, and even they admit that many of the names on those lists do not deserve to be. This legislation does not seek to prevent “suspected terrorists” from buying assault rifles, it seeks to prevent them from buying any firearms at all, and so Senate Democrats now want to deny a constitutional right based merely on being suspected of a crime.

Almost eight years after we threw innocents into Guantanamo merely because some angry neighbor sold them to us for a $500 reward, we are denying the protection of our constitution to people without due process of law, based merely on suspicion.

Don’t applaud these idiots. They are engaging in demagoguery, appealing to the base fears of people cowering under their beds. We are a better nation that that, or at least we were at one time. We were a nation which honored the rule of law.

Abandoning Logic

After 9/11, we banned knives and box cutters on airplanes. We then banned liquids of more than 3 ounces. We understood the connection between these things and the loss of life that followed.

So why can’t we understand the connection between assault weapons and mass shootings?

This is an illogical and absurd argument, but I’m not going where you think I’m going.

The connection between box cutters and loss of life was a “one off” event, one which depended entirely on the element of surprise and which cannot be repeated now that we know what can happen. Even if knives and/or box cutters made it onto the airplane, the chain of events would not and could not take place as they did on that fateful day.

The connection to liquid is even more absurd. No liquid explosive has never been successfully deployed for a terrorist attack, or even developed for use outside laboratory conditions. No liquid explosive has ever led to one single loss of life, so “the connection between these things and the loss of life that followed” is a completely spurious argument.

The TSA search process is almost entirely “security theater,” and serves almost no purpose other than to deliver a sense of comfort to the flying public, and a false sense of comfort at that, since there is often cargo which accompanies passengers on those flights which is not screened or searched.

The loss of life caused by assault rifles is fairly clearly documented, however, and there is little doubt that more stringent regulation would significantly save lives. We need, though, to have cogent and reasonable argument to that point, not absurd appeal to unreasoned fear.

Fighting Fire With Good Thoughts

A Salon.com article regarding the “terror issue” carries a subhead, “Trump's bluster will only appeal to his hard-core backers; Hillary can address the issue properly — with reason.”  I didn’t bother to read the article.

Only a Hillary Clinton follower would think of addressing the “terror issue” with reason. If that could be done, it would not be a “terror issue” and we would not be waiting in lines for hours and taking off our shoes at airports, which is an utterly unreasonable act.

FDR said that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” and then he locked up all Americans of Japanese extraction in internment camps. Clearly, his reaction to Pearl Harbor was not to “address the issue with reason.”

Actually, no matter how much Democrats would like to hide from truth, the more terror attacks there are in this nation between now and the general election, the higher is the chance that Donald Trump will be the next president. I do not applaud that truth, but…

Before you jump in my shit, yes, I know my references to FDR are with respect to two different issues. That does not invalidate my point. It actually reinforces my point, and in spades; think about it.

Still Bouncing Back

Molly has survived two full years of intestinal lymphoma, and is still unfazed by the twice-daily medication routine which includes pills and shots. She shows no effects of the issue other than occasionally not wanting to eat.

Yesterday was one of those days. She didn’t eat much of anything overnight and wasn’t interested in breakfast, just went in my office and hung out in her bed. This is the point at which her Mom generally goes nuts, opening five different cans of food and trying to persuade her to eat, something which the poor damned cat just doesn’t want to do. But Mom is out of town today.

Dad is more low key. I waited until about three hours after the medication, one of which is an anti-nausea shot, and brought her some tuna. She decided that yes, she certainly could snarf down some tuna, and damned near licked the glazing off the bowl. By noon she had polished off the 3oz can of tuna and was in the kitchen yammering at me about the despicable and intolerably empty condition of her food dish. By bed time, mine that is, she had polished off two more cans of regular cat food and this morning she was demanding breakfast as usual.

Cat bounces back pretty good.

Not In The Mood

The political scene has just been too nasty and dispiriting for me to be willing to comment on it, capped by the media finishing the Democratic primary election before the voters did, naming Clinton as the nominee before voters in California even started voting. They are not allowed to publish results before the polls close, but apparently they can do so before they open.

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, Hillary Clinton won the primary election on a day when no one voted, which pretty much tells you what the status of democracy is in this nation.

I Don't Get It

The media greatly exaggerated the “violence” which occurred when Trump appeared in San Diego last week. Thee dozen arrests were made, but all were released. There was only one physical confrontation caught on film, which was shown over and over again.

That being said, it seems police are not doing as well elsewhere and Trump protestors, many carrying Mexican flags, are behaving very badly against people who are attending to hear Trump speak. What are they trying to accomplish with this kind of thing?

I don’t get it. They are accusing Trump of hate, and then they are shouting obscenities and throwing eggs and missiles, and attacking people who are peacefully going about their own business.

It seems to me that they are confirming Trump’s accusation that Mexicans are lawless thugs. As reluctant as I am to agree with anything Trump says, I’m not sure what other conclusion to draw from persons waving Mexican flags and physically attacking a peaceful assembly.

Bridge On The River Kwai

Watched on TCM last night. A movie has to be great to be as watchable 59 years later as it was the day it was released. Awesome.

Do Not Thank Me

This weekend is not dedicated to those serving our nation, or to those living who have done so in the past. This weekend is dedicated to remembering those who have lost their lives in the service of freedom. So please do not thank me for my service. Not this weekend. Do that in November. And do not wish me happy Memorial Day. Go to your nearest National Cemetery and place a flag on a hero's grave.

Well, That Says A Lot

Headlines today in the stock car racing venue are all about the racing abilities and chances of various drivers. Except one. One headline tells us that, "Danica reveals her favorite social media platform."  Got it.

He Said, She Said

Of the use of a private server Clinton says, “It was allowed…”  The Inspector General says, “She did not ask permission, and would not have received it if she had asked.”  Slight discrepancy there.

Clinton admits that she did it, “as did my predecessors.” The IG says that, “rules were clarified in 2009,” which is the year she entered office as Secretary of State. How could her predecessors have been operating under rules that did not exist until her first year in office?

I’ve always laughed at the defense of claiming that “other people did it too.”  If a bank robber stands in front of a judge and responds to the judge’s question regarding his defense that “other people have also robbed banks,”
I think the judge is going to reject his argument.

The line in the report that I found most illustrative of the incredible hubris of the woman is the part about a memo going out over Clinton’s signature warning State Department employees not to use non-government servers due to security issues, while she was using a private server and had been notified that it had been shut down at least twice due to hack attempts.

And we have not yet even started on contributions to the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State.

Deeds, Not Words

Ian Welsh makes a powerful point today on the degree to which we should pay attention when politicians claim that they have “learned from mistakes” made earlier.

"Hillary Clinton is not credible in having learned from the Iraq fiasco, because she was also for Libya. She didn’t learn the practical lesson (destroying a regime is easy, not having the country become a failed state is hard); nor did she learn the ethical lesson (don’t attack countries who haven’t attacked you.)

Clinton is not credible, because her actions have not changed. She’d be for the next Iraq in a heart-beat and find reasons why it was justified. Her rhetoric against Russia and Putin might as well be from the Cold War and is a great threat to world peace (and survival.)"

To some degree people know this, as is reflected by the fact that more than 60% of those polled answered no when asked if she was honest and trustworthy, and yet well over half of Democratic voters are voting for her anyway, and an overwhelming majority will do so in the general election.

Thank the media, who report at great length on what Hillary Clinton is saying and never, ever compare it to what she has done in the recent past. The media today does not consider it to be it’s role to report facts, but rather to pass on what it has been told by the establishment to pass on. We still have freedom of the press, but they no longer use it.

Chaos Reigns

Last year NA$CAR announced that they were no longer going to enforce any kind of rule regarding lug nuts on wheels. No longer would an inspector be located in each pit assuring that each wheel on the car had all five lug nuts properly tightened, but that it would be left to the discretion of the team.

What they did not say was that this was a cost cutting move, eliminating 43 officials who are located in the pits. All pit rules are now enforced by television remote, and the camera cannot see the wheels, so they decided to hell with the lug nut rule.

The result should have been predictable. Cars were returning to the track after a pit stop with as few as three lug nuts on some wheels, and not all of them tight. Wheels were wobbling and vibrating; doing everything, in fact, except coming slap off the car. Nobody quite dared say anything, because criticizing NA$CAR gets you a fine of up to $50,000, and can get you suspended.

No penalty for losing a wheel and wrecking the field, but badmouth NA$CAR and…

Anyway, along comes Tony Stewart who has missed the first part of the season due to a preseason injury and is sort of a modern day A.J. Foyt. (Foyt: “Hell, if we’re going to race taxicabs, we ought to get a bunch of damned taxicab drivers to drive them.”) Tony says that not using five lug nuts and tightening all five of them is dangerous (well, duh), and that NA$CAR was not only wrong to quit enforcing that rule, but was neglecting the safety of drivers when they did so.

NA$CAR responds with a $35,000 fine and says that “driver safety is our first priority,” and then contradicts the validity of both the fine and the claim by changing the policy and ruling that any car having one or more loose lug nuts on any wheel at the conclusion of the race will be penalized by the loss of a finishing position. Nobody points out that that means they can leave lug nuts loose on all pit stops except the last one, including Tony Stewart who is already out $35,000.

The lug nut issue became even more, pardon the pun, “nuts” in the All Star race last night when, after each pit stop and after all the cars had returned to the track, NA$CAR called all of the cars back into the pits and lined them up so that officials could visually inspect that they had five lug nuts on each wheel and that all lug nuts were touching the wheel. Matt Kenseth observed that it was much like the NFL interrupting a football game to check the players' shoe laces.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was overheard to comment that “This race reminds me of the first time that I tried to fly a remote controlled helicopter. I didn’t know what the hell was going on then, either.”  I feel you, Junior.

Silly Season Accelerates

This new overtime limit decreed by Obama has generated some of the most nonsensical discourse I’ve seen yet, including that by Obama himself, who seems to think that salaried people will have their hourly wage set at their present salary divided by 2080 (the number of hours in a year based on 40 hrs/wk) and be paid at that rate plus time and a half for overtime. Well, I hope that happens, but I have my doubts that many employees will be that fortunate.

A lot of formerly salaried people will now be punching time cards, too, and getting their pay docked when they take off early, and most of them are not going to like that very much at all.

But quite a few people will make more money and/or have more free time with their families, so sometimes when the president plays imperial dictator it’s not all bad. Well, unless you think the constitution matters, of course, but I seem to be in a voiceless minority on that issue.

The Washington Post opines that the new limit “will be devastating to our nation’s job growth and economy,” which seems a little bit hyperbolic to me. But then, it’s the Washington Post, so one has to make allowances.

They claim that “in the short term, businesses will boost the salaries for about 4.2 million workers.” Yeah, right. I’m trying to picture myself as an employer with a guy who’s making $28,000 per year and giving him a raise to $48,000 so that I don’t have to pay him overtime. Somehow, that concept refuses to gel in my mind.

They also say that employers will “lay off employees who work more than 40 hours,” which is so nonsensical that I don’t even know how to refute it, and will “push such employees to work overtime hours off the books,” which is illegal and really hard to do if you have laid them off.

They go on to say that their dire economic consequences “have already been proved true when it comes to raising the minimum wage,” except that no consequences whatever have been established from raising the minimum wage other than a few “veteran employees” who were already making $15/hr are complaining that it’s unfair that newcomers are making the same amount as they are. That’s not an economic consequence. In fact, a few people whining is not really a consequence at all.

Pot Calls Kettle Black

Paul Krugman has been writing about the boorishness of using personal attacks against the other side, such as Trump using "put down" language about women, and yesterday he accused Bernie Sanders of "petulant self-righteousness," and says of Bernie supporters that he "feels sorry for all the genuinely idealistic, well-meaning people who got caught up in this terrible mess."

I read this pedantic jackass so that you don't have to.

Vindication

All of last winter in discussions regarding the, then, upcoming El Nino I kept arguing that regardless of comparisons to the equatorial temperatures of 1997-98, we cannot really predict what El Nino will do this time around because we are not taking into account the extraordinarily warm waters in the North Pacific. I was not claiming that El Nino would be a bust, merely that we could not be sure that it would produce anything like previous weather patterns.

Of course it has produced weather patterns extremely at odds with typical El Nino years. The Pacific Northwest, which is normally left dryer than normal by El Nino, has been inundated and the Southwest has seen a continuation of drought, with rainfall not even reaching normal amounts, let alone the torrents predicted by El Nino addicts.

Now we hear from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) that the cause of the disruption of usual El Nino patterns seems to have been caused by warmer than normal water temperatures in the North Atlantic and a resulting persistent high pressure ridge off the northern California coast.

I’m not going to say that, “I told you so.”  Except that I think I just did.

Hope For The Future Remains

My grandniece, who is just turning thirteen, does not do social media; says that it is a waste of time. "What can you say," she asks, "in 140 characters that is actually worth saying?"

Well, yes, but that "killer" was only 75 characters.

ROTFLMAO

CBS News does this "On The Road" which I normally watch while I'm cleaning out the cat box or something. Boring. But the one Friday evening had me in stitches.

It's this guy changing the oil in his car. Then he's trying to braid his daughter's hair, and failing. She's pretty cute, and he's a dedicated father. He figures out how to do it and observes that, "Something as simple as sending your daughter out and her being proud of her hair, and you being proud of your work, it's a beautiful thing."

So he starts giving classes for other single dads on braiding their daughters' hair. The uniformed cop with the hairbrush in his gunbelt was the finishing touch.

Mudslinging Is Not a Campaign

The headline reads, “Democrats' Mixed Messages on Donald Trump,”  and the first paragraph of the article tells us that, “The GOP's winding path to unification around Donald Trump has had the collateral damage of muddling Democrats' message as they try to settle on a playbook to go after the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee.”  How pathetic is that?

Perhaps the main problem for the Democrats is that rather than “going after the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee” they should be advocating some principles and policies which they support for the benefit of the nation and its people. Mudslinging is not a valid leadership position.

Democrats should be, for the most part, ignoring Trump and telling voters what they will do to lead this nation forward. Pointing out the manner in which those positions and policies differ from those proposed by Trump is one thing, but running a campaign which consists of “going after” the opposition, "we don't have anything to offer, but Trump is this and that,"  is idiotic.

We Have Lost It

The President of The United States of America, the "exceptional nation,"  the "most powerful nation the world has ever known,"  is sending out a national directive on bathroom usage.

I know the issue is not as trivial as it sounds, but... Identity politics has come to this; national directives from the President about bathroom usage. God help us all.

Recipe of the Week

I invented this while watching a local cooking show, basing it on the presentation of something involving apricot preserves which was about as subtle as a hand grenade. Still, it started me thinking. I made it last night, and all I needed to revise was thickening with cornstarch.

Orange and Ginger Shrimp

¾ cup Orange Marmelade
1 Tbsp Ginger root, minced fine
1 Tbsp light Soy Sauce
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tsp cornstarch
1 # shrimp, small, peeled and deveined
1 Tbsp Oil
Rice, prepared in advance

Season shrimp with just a touch each of salt and pepper, add garlic and set aside.

In a saucepan melt the marmelade with ginger, soy sauce and a pinch of salt. Simmer for 5-10 minutes then dissolve 2 tsp of cornstarch in cold water and add to the sauce to thicken it.

In a skillet over high heat, saute shrimp in light oil until they are nearly done but just a touch of gray is left. Add several tablespoons of sauce and continue cooking until shrimp is just done, but not overcooked.

Serve over rice topped with remaining sauce.

Paul Krugman Obfuscates

Paul Krugman had another of his “don’t worry, be happy” pieces cheerleading for the current government establishment a few days ago, in which he tries to assure us that we should be entirely comfortable with government debt in any amount. He has told us many times that the amount of debt is not a concern because government debt is never repaid, and in this piece he assures us that the interest we are paying on that debt is a miniscule amount not worthy of concern, being barely over one percent of our nation’s Gross Domestic Product. He gives us a nice graph and asks if we,
"See the crisis?" adding that, "Neither do I."  Right.

He could also tell us how the interest payment is related to the whale count off the coast of Patagonia, which I’m sure would be even more comforting, and would be just about as meaningful as its relationship to the GDP. Economists like to relate everything to the GDP, because it turns big numbers into small numbers and makes everyone comfortable with things that should be scaring the shit out of them.

I am not one of those silly pundits that says that the federal budget is like your family budget (because I am well aware that the average family can’t print money), but comparing the government’s interest expense to the GDP really is like comparing your budget spending item to the amount of revenue that your employer generates. The amount that the federal government is able to spend is not constrained by the GDP, but by federal revenue, that is by the amount that it taxes the public.

If interest expense eats up too large an amount of the money that is being taken in by the government, then it has to either collect more taxes or it has to cut back on the spending it does for other things, and the rise and fall of the GDP has very little to do with that directly. Yes, a rising GDP will increase revenue, but not sufficiently to justify using the ratio of interest expense to GDP as a meaningful measuring stick.

Of real concern to us, then, should be the question of what percentage of the money taken in by our government is consumed in paying interest on the federal debt, and is therefor unavailable to be spent for other purposes such as a social safety net. Now, I don’t have a Nobel Prize like Dr. Krugman, but I can make graphs too.

That’s a much different picture than the 1.2% number painted by Paul Krugman, isn’t it? And, on the face of it, it’s a bit more comforting one. Although it reflects that the debt is costing us a whole lot more than he wanted to admit with his “percent of GDP” chart, it also shows that while we were paying more than 35% of our income in 1996, our interest cost has dropped to a bit under 20% of revenue now. That would seem to confirm that the rising GDP validates Paul Krugman’s “don’t worry, be happy” position on government debt. Well, only if you're happy spending 20% of revenue on interest payment, of course.

Not really, though, because although revenue has increased the last few years, it is not that which has caused the ratio to drop so much as it has been a dramatic drop in interest rates, from an overall rate on the debt of 6.6% in 1996 to 2.2% today. Why did those interest rates go down? Because the government decreed that they go down. Interesting, right?

Can those rates go back up? Not only can they do so, they absolutely have to do so. Paul Krugman says in this little piece that “the market wants to lend us money for almost nothing,”  but the truth is there is no place else to lend money because no one else who is able to borrow money wants to do so.

Let’s add another line to the graph; what we would be paying as a percent of revenue if the interest rate had remained at 6.6% until now. Yikes.

And this graph is the part that no one wants to talk about, and it’s why the stock market almost crashes when the Federal Reserve even hints that it is going to raise interest rates. Because when the federal government is coughing up 60% of its revenue to pay interest on the debt it is going to raise taxes, and that raise is going to hit businesses and the rich.

We live in interesting times, but the establishment does not want for us to know just how interesting these times really are.

The Call of the Wild

Obviously never reached these ears.

Comedy Devolving Into Farce

An Army captain is suing President Obama because he says that Obama does not have the authority under the War Powers Act to be fighting a war against the Islamic State. He is, apparently serving in a military intelligence function somewhere in Kuwait.

Of course, using “military” and “intelligence” in the same sentence is something of an oxymoron, but that’s a different topic. As for a junior officer filing a lawsuit against the commander in chief; well, I suspect that dude is going to be a civilian a lot sooner than he presently thinks he is.

The president is not fighting the Islamic State under the authority of the War Powers Act, however. Like several presidents before him, he thinks it's unconstitutional because it interferes with the war-making power of the commander in chief. I think it’s unconstitutional because it delegates Congressional war-making power to the executive for sixty days.

But all of that is irrelevant because Obama is fighting the Islamic State under the authority of an act called the AUMF passed in 2001, the full name of which is Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists.

A whole host of politicians and military officials have told us that the AUMF authorizes the use of military force against "Al-Qaeda and associated forces" or "Al-Qaeda affiliated forces," but nothing even similar to those phrases occurs in the act. What the AUMF authorizes is the use of military force, “against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”

Note that it does not authorize the use of military force against anyone launching any future attacks, let alone anyone merely planning such attacks, and it certainly does not authorize the use of military force where no attack is imminent.

Not to mention that it’s hard to claim that the Islamic State is an "Al-Qaeda affiliated force," when the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda are fighting against each other in Syria and, just to complete the farce, we are actually backing Al-Qaeda in that particular fight.

The enemy of my enemy is who’s on first?

Clinton v. Trump

Looks like that’s the matchup in November, which I find profoundly depressing. The predictions all say Clinton will win, outpolling Trump by 54% to 41% which I think I find even more depressing. Maybe not, but… Four years of Hillary Clinton?

Popular vote, however, does not mean a whole lot, because we have the electoral college. The real question is about states. Are there any red states which Trump will lose? Nobody seems to think so. Are there any blue states which he might win? It can’t really be ruled out; Florida comes to mind, and maybe a few others.

Sanders would have a much better run against Trump, but Democrats are much too smart to nominate someone like Sanders. No, it will be Clinton vs. Trump.

And it's not clear that Clinton is “the lesser of two evils.”

Traveling Cat

PetMD provides a nice “how to” article for transporting a cat to the vet. I hope that they have more experience at treating cats than they do transporting them.

First they say to invest in a carrier and then just leave it sitting in the living room with a few treats in it and “…you may,” they say, “find the kitty hanging out in it.” Right. You may also find unicorns hanging out in it. Even my cat, Molly, is not stupid enough to willingly walk into the carrier when it is in our house.

When the carrier is at the vet… Well, that’s a different story. More on that later.

Anyway, they finish that little fantasy by saying that, “all you’ll have to do is keep an eye out for when the kitty is inside the crate and slam the door on your way by.”  I definitely am going to call the vet for an appointment, and when they ask when I’d like to come in tell them I don’t know and that it will depend on whenever Molly decides to hang out in her carrier.

They do not say what to do if the cat doesn’t want to get into, or be put into, the carrier. A cat not only has teeth and claws, it can splay its legs out and make itself much wider than any carrier door.

The way to get the cat in the carrier is really not all that hard; you have to catch the little bugger by surprise. Cats are fast, but even cats cannot react instantly. Have the cat in the living room and get the carrier out in the bedroom with the door open and ready. Now carry the cat into the bedroom, holding its head such that it can’t see the carrier until you are in the act of inserting it through the door. Next thing you know the cat is inside the carrier wondering what the hell just happened.

“Never open a crate with a cat inside,” they then tell us, “unless you are prepared for the cat to spring out of the crate and make a dash for freedom.”

Well, you can be prepared for that if you want to, but it isn’t going to happen. What is going to happen is that you are going to need a pry bar to get the terrified creature to come out of its “safe place” and allow the giant in the white coat to torture it. The mad dash is going to happen if the vet doesn’t have a good grip, and it is going to be the cat disappearing back into the safety of the carrier.

We have to take the carrier off the counter and hide it, because if Molly can see it she is making a determined effort to head for it, which complicates the vet’s ability to examine her. When it’s back on the counter there is a little thunderclap as she breaks the speed of sound getting back into it.

Molly is generally fairly quiet in transit, sort of muttering a protest from time to time. One time she was silent after we left the house until we reached the freeway and I was just about to merge with high speed traffic, at which point she emitted a major protest in the form of a piercing shriek. I almost had a terrible wreck.

Thank you Molly, I appreciated the thrill.

United States of Hysteria

Target has published a policy that permits “transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity." Sort of makes me want to go shop at Target, but more than a million people have had the opposite reaction, signing a petition to boycott Target.

One brilliant writer opines that this will cost Target business and devalue their stock price, and that the people in question are not acting out of hatred or discrimination against transgender people, but for “the safety of women and children,” and “the loss of dignity and privacy that women and children expect when they enter a bathroom.”

“Loss of dignity and privacy”  I might buy, although it’s quite a stretch. A woman who believes she’s a man, lives like a man, dresses like a man and dates women looking at me while I’m fully dressed? Sorry, the idea just does not freak me out. Watching me urinate? Well, I wouldn’t particularly like having a man who is a man watching me urinate, but we have a sort of code that prohibits doing that, so…

And the “safety” concern? “The fears among those who oppose the policy,” the writer says, “stem from the potential problem of predators entering the women's bathroom.” And he thinks that “potential problem” is created by Target’s new policy and has not existed previously? It is a present problem, neither created nor exacerbated by Target’s new policy.

And safety is not really the writer’s concern anyway, because after a brief mention he drops the safety issue and goes on to discuss the so-called “privacy and dignity” issue at great length.

I have not used a women’s bathroom, but I am pretty sure that women do their thing inside a closed stall. Right? Anything that they do outside of that closed stall they will be doing fully clothed. Am I wrong?

The implication is that the “privacy and dignity” fear being expressed is not based on my conclusion being wrong, because this writer says, “If a woman gets out of her stall and sees a man washing his hands in the women's bathroom…” In the first place, since everyone is fully clothed at that point, while I can see that the event might be unsettling I fail to see why it would be traumatizing. More to the point, a transgender person is going to be dressed as a woman, so how is the person exiting the stall going to know that it is a man who is doing the hand washing?

This writer goes on to say that people are going to sell their Target stock, driving its value down, for the same reason that Chipotle's stock value dropped when people were repeatedly coming down with e-coli infections from eating its food; they felt that their safety was threatened.

Only in America would facing death from a deadly disease be considered comparable to being unexpectedly being confronted with a fully clothed person of the opposite gender.

Repairing the Unrepaired

In San Diego non-summer heat waves usually last only a few days, so by the time the air conditioner repairman comes gets there the weather has cooled, you are no longer using the air conditioner, and you don’t know whether the repair has been effective or not.

We had one of our brief warm spells in February and my unit (which is still under warranty) did not keep the house cool, so I called for service. The guy said it was low on refrigerant and added five pounds along with some "stop leak," which he said would fix it.

I did not use it again until April, at which point it did not cool the house properly, so I called for service again. The guy said that the unit was overcharged and removed five pounds of refrigerant, which he said would solve the problem. The weather dropped to a high of 68 degrees, so we’ll have to see, but one has wonder.

Let’s say you have a machine which is running lopsided. The repairman says, “Oh, it needs a frammis,” and puts a frammis on it. The next time you go to run the machine, it is running lopsided again and a different repairman says, “Oh, the problem is that frammis. That shouldn’t be there,” takes the frammis off and proclaims it fixed.

The next time you go to run the machine, how is it going to run? Lopsided is how it’s going to run. It is now in the same state that it was in before the frammis was added, and it was running lopsided at that point. Why is adding and then removing a frammis going to make it run any better?

Why is adding five pounds of refrigerant and then removing it going to make my air conditioner work any better? The service company has not explained that. To give credit where it is due, at least they have not charged me any money for not fixing my air conditioner.

The Information Age

When is the last time you heard of anyone contracting Malaria in the United States? In 1947 the United States Health service was tasked with stamping out Malaria which is a disease carried by mosquitos and was, at the time, a major health problem all across the southern tier of states. They accomplished the task in two years.

Today we are wringing our hands and quaking in fear over Zika virus, a disease also borne by mosquitos, being told that eradicating it is a task beyond comprehension, and are unable to even get started due to Congressional paralysis.

I was reading a discussion over the weekend the gist of which is that the development of the Internet and related technology has not done much of benefit, and this would seem to be a case in point. We are living, we are told, in the “information age” but it appears that history is not part of that information. It is certain that we are not living in the “accomplishment age.”

Hyperbole Exposed

Danica hype is significantly reduced this year, but whenever she is shown during a race the commentary has been that she is “learning” (after three full seasons!) and that she is “getting better all the time” and about what a great future she has. The facts so far this year would suggest otherwise.

At this point last season, after eight races on the same tracks, she had an average 17.6 finishing position. This year she has a 24.6 average, no less than seven positions worse than last year. She finished 24th in the standings last year, and ranks 25th so far this year.

Last year she finished on the lead lap in six of the eight races, this year she has done so only twice. Last year she wrecked in none of the first eight races but has wrecked twice this year. Crashing out of 25% of your races is not going to put you high in the standings.

Last year she finished a total of four laps off the lead lap, this year her total is almost twice that, finishing a total of seven laps behind the leaders.

She was inside the top ten twice last year, a 7th place finish and a 9th; this year she has no top tens, with a best finish of 16th at Martinsville. In six of the eight races she finished worse than she did last year. At Phoenix she finished better by position, but was on the lead lap last year and a lap down this year.

I’m not sure what part of all that constitutes “getting better all the time.”

Consequences

To repeat my earlier disclaimer, I do not oppose a $15 minimum wage, but I do oppose pretending that it will be entirely free of any negative consequences.

Dean Baker has a discussion today of criticism of the Sanders plan for health care in which he cites an example of a “single mother with two children, earning $26,813 a year,” and how her health care costs would be affected. He then points out in his argument that Sanders is also proposing a $15 an hour minimum wage and that “if this single mother were working a full time job, she would see her pay increase by almost $3,200 a year, even if her pay was only at the new minimum.”

He then throws the real kicker into the argument about raising the minimum wage, saying, “it is likely that her pay would increase enough to leave her still well above the minimum,” which is a very good point indeed.

Picture an employer which has some jobs which are unskilled and pay minimum wage, and these workers are working alongside other workers who are skilled and are being paid above minimum wage. I assure you, this is by no means an uncommon scenario. Now assume that the workers are told that all of them are being paid the same amount because the unskilled workers have gotten a big raise, from $7.25/hr to $15.00/hr, while the skilled workers have gotten a very small raise, from $14.50/hr to $15.00/hr. That is most certainly not going to fly.

Proponents of the raise in minimum wage claim that employers can afford it because they will only have to raise prices a miniscule amount to cover the increase for the minimum wage workers, but reality is that employers will have to bump their entire pay scale upward consistent with the increase at the bottom of it, and that represents a major increase in payroll costs. History has, in fact, shown this to be the case when the minimum wage is increased by any amount.

Some employers will not be able to increase revenue sufficiently to cover the increase in costs and will be forced to reduce their work force. It may be only a few, and we can hope that such is the case, or it may be more than a few.

So is the minimum wage something we want to do? Sure, maybe it is, but let’s be sure we are informed as to the consequences.

Economists Are Idiots

The other day I commented that economists know as much about business as does the average house cat, and Dean Baker penned a piece on Wednesday in which he sets out to correct a mistake published by a Stanford Business School professor and proves that my statement was right on the mark.

To clarify my remark, a businessman does actual bookkeeping and manages a business, planning based on those numbers for the future course of his company and keeping track of whether or not his business is or is not making money. Sometimes he lies about the latter, of course, but even so he knows the facts even when he is not revealing them accurately. Economists, on the other hand, create “models” and formulas which explain why the overall economy does what it does. That largely consists of developing a mathematical formula from present conditions and claiming that it predicts what will happen in the future, much like predicting based on the El Nino of 1998 that San Diego would get 28” of rain this year and then trying to explain why we only got 6” of rain.

At any rate, Professor Joshua Rauh of Stanford Business School wrote that state and local pension funds are more seriously underfunded than claimed by the funds, because they are using a 7% rate of return on their investments rather than a more reasonable rate of return on risk free investments of 2.5% which currently prevails.

Dean Baker refutes the professor’s claim, saying that the numbers used by the funds “are not pulled out of the air,” but rather are “projections of investment returns based on actual experience and a range of standard economic projections.” That is to say history and numbers pulled out of the air by people like him. History is good because interest rates have not dropped recently. Oh, wait…

And Professor Rauh’s projections are no good because he is a business professor, while Baker’s projections are good because he’s an economist. You say tomato…

Then he gets to the real proof that economists should never be allowed to discuss business. He discusses how pension funds “typically average the value of their assets over the prior five years,” and points out that in 2013 that average “would have included 2009 and 2010 when the stock market was badly depressed.” He does not point out what part of Professor Rauh’s discussion involved 2013, nor does he say why that has anything to do with this discussion, because no reputable pension fund manager would put more than a very small portion of a fund into the volatility and high risk of the stock market.

As even further proof that Baker is badly out of his field of expertise, he acknowledges that the stock market is not a "risk free" investment which pension funds require by going on to say that as 2009/10 was replaced in those averaged years “with the much higher stock market values of 2014 and 2015, the funding status of these pensions will look considerably stronger.” Yes, it would look considerably stronger but, due to the risk that those stock values will dive back down to 2009/10 values, it would not be considerable stronger.

So, aside from the fact that pension funds are not materially invested in the stock market, something that Dean Baker should know if he does not, his little journey into fantasy land points out that economists are concerned with how things look, while businessmen are more concerned with how things are.

Aliens Have Landed

Paul Krugman and Dean Baker have both written pieces in the past few days regarding the need to increase inflation in order to “reduce the real interest rate” (emphasis mine). That “real interest rate,” in case you are not familiar with it, is the actual interest rate minus inflation. So, if the interest rate on your loan is 3.5% and inflation is running at 2% then the “real interest rate” on your loan is 1.5%.

There are so many things wrong with that that it’s hard to decide where to begin.

Let’s open with the fact that interest does not apply only to loans, it also applies to savings, so reducing interest is devastating to people who depend on income from their savings to augment their retirement income in their declining years. Inflation generally is devastating to people on fixed incomes, but economists don’t really care about that. They are perfectly willing to screw the senior population in the name of “growing the economy.”

There is also the working person who is setting aside money for future retirement and wants to see those savings grow. Reducing interest means they will be disappointed and will have to work longer or retire more frugally, and economists don’t really care about that either. No economist is willing to say outright that savings are bad for consumers, but they prate constantly that they are “bad for the cconomy,” so they are perfectly to screw the working class as well as seniors.

There is also the little fact that while I am having to pay more for practically everything I buy, my house payment is still the same because the bank thinks the “real interest rate” is the one printed in the loan documents. I have not had the temerity to go to a loan officer and demand that they reduce the interest rate by whatever the current inflation rate is, because I don’t want to get thrown out of the bank.

Notice I did not say that I’m paying more for food and energy, because those are not included in the calculation of inflation. They are excluded because they are “too volatile,” meaning that their prices change too rapidly. It’s interesting that computers can keep up with stock prices that change hundreds of times per second but cannot keep up with changes in the price of beef at Safeway.

At any rate, after that little side trip, inflation means that people pay more for the goods and services that they buy, but it does not mean that they pay lower interest rates. Not to mention that the Fed is breathlessly waiting for increased inflation so it can raise interest rates.

Part of the rationale is that businesses are more willing to borrow because they believe they will repay the loan with inflation-affected money that is "worth less." I’ve never met a businessman who subscribed to that little piece of insanity; the only ones who buy into it are economists, who know as much about business as the average house cat does. If nothing else, it depends on knowing not what inflation is now, but what it will be in the future when the loan is repaid, and no reasoning businessman is going to stake his future on that kind of uncertainty.

What planet did these economists come from anyway?

Sanders Has A Plan

I know this is kind of wonkish, but I was greatly cheered today to hear that William K. Black has signed on as an economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign. Black was a central figure in prosecuting corruption in the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s, including imprisoning the infamous Charles Keating and charging the “Keating five” that included John McCain (who got off thru the influence of his wealthy and politically powerful father-in-law).

He has been very outspoken about the failure to prosecute the financial crimes of the decade past, and of Congressional failure to reregulate the financial industry, but the media has rigorously ignored him. He is smart, highly articulate and indefatigably ethical.

Some have been critical of Sanders for not having a specific plan for “breaking up the big banks.”  Well, maybe or maybe not, but he certainly has an excellent one now.

Dishonesty Abounds

Establishment Democrats are wont to accuse Republicans of lying and of spouting gibberish, Paul Krugman leading the chorus but far from being a solo voice, but manage constantly to demonstrate that this is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Obama has now said that the worst mistake of his presidency was, “failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.” The rightness of the decision to intervene in Libya is certainly arguable, but the point here is why he thinks that he should have been planning for the aftermath.

The announced purpose of the intervention, and the scope permitted by the United Nations resolution, was to prevent a massacre of the people of Benghazi, which was actually a fairly spurious claim in itself, and the administration claimed repeatedly that there was no intention of using that intervention as a pretext to overthrow the Ghadaffi regime. The UN resolution, in fact, specifically forbade any attempt at regime change. The US pretense did not, of course, hold up very long but still, the claim was made.

The intervention was made under the principle of “responsibility to protect,”  and that was the basis on which application was made to the United Nations for authorization to do the intervention. How do you plan for the aftermath of the overthrow of a government while at the same time not intending to overthrow a government?

So Obama is now saying that he made a mistake by not planning for what to do after having done what he never planned to do in the first place, sort of like saying that I made a mistake by not planning in advance what to do after I crashed my car, and almost as asinine as claiming that the reason for continuing our presence in Afghanistan is that “we are denying them space in which to plan their attacks.”

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton, in response to an accusation that she supported a foreign policy that gave rise to ISIS, claimed that, “ISIS was primarily the result of the vacuum in Syria caused by Assad first and foremost. Aided and abetted by Iran and Russia.”

Either she thinks that is true, in which case she is grossly unqualified to be leader of anything larger than a dog pound, or she is lying, in which case she is very well qualified to be president because that's what presidents do most of the time.

ISIS was created in Iraq, and Iraq remains the center of its power to this day, not to mention that many of its senior leaders are Iraqis. Its first major victories were in Anbar province where, at one time, it presented an artillery threat to the Baghdad airport. Its growth was fueled by sectarian politics in Iraq and the Obama administration, with Clinton as Secretary of State, certainly supported the Iraqi government’s suppression of the Sunni people who provided the core of the Islamic State movement.

She will probably get away with it for the same reason that Obama gets away with his nonsensical foreign policy babble, which is that the vast majority of the American people couldn't find Iraq on a map and really don’t give a shit what happens outside the borders of this nation. They think that “supporting the troops”  means buying a magnet for your car.

Paul Krugman Is A Shill

Paul Krugman has now completely abandoned logic and honesty in his pursuit of supporting the oligarchy and shilling for a Clinton presidency. In a blog post today he asks, “were big banks really at the heart of the financial crisis, and would breaking them up protect us from future crises?”  and answers his own question with a dishonest and a historically revisionist “no.”

“Predatory lending,”  he goes on to say, “was largely carried out by smaller, non-Wall Street institutions like Countrywide Financial; the crisis itself was centered not on big banks but on ‘shadow banks’ like Lehman Brothers that weren’t necessarily that big.”

Bank of America was a huge player in the predatory lending game. It was certainly not small at the time, and it definitely could not be considered a “non-Wall Street institution,”  so Krugman’s first defense of “big banks” is bullshit. Besides which, predatory lending was not the proximate cause of the crash, it only laid the groundwork.

The crash itself was caused by trading in financial instruments based on those faulty mortgages. It was that which took down Lehman Brothers, which was the fourth largest investment house in the United States at the time that it failed, so it’s pretty hard to agree with Krugman’s dishonest claim that it “wasn’t necessarily that big.”

Not to mention that it was the failure of Lehman which revealed that all of the other investment banks, including the three larger than Lehman, were as rotten and buried in bad investments as was Lehman and being "too big to fail"  had to be bailed out.

Krugman’s claim that “going on about big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders has done”  is utter bullshit, as his claim that an “absence of substance beyond the slogans seems to be true of his positions across the board.” Krugman is not ignorant of the truth regarding the campaign of Bernie Sanders, he is lying in an attempt to bolster Clinton’s presidential aspirations.

Making It Up

Dean Baker has a post today critical of the concept that economists praise the shipment of jobs overseas because it improved the lives of people in poor countries, and are at the same time pushing for welfare programs to improve the lives of people in this country who were impoverished by the loss of those jobs.

“Let's imagine,” he says, “that mainstream economics wasn't a make it up as you go along discipline,”  stating a position that I have held for several decades.

Economists have these mathematical formulas which they claim can foretell how the economy will perform, but I maintain that the claim is laughable since they developed those formulas by concocting the formulas to fit an aggregation of present facts.

Based on that process I could concoct a formula to determine who will win the Super Bowl based on scores in the first eight games of the season. That team would, of course, probably not even win their division.

Baker had a post yesterday which rather proves that economists are making it up as they go along, in which he claims that the failure to increase productivity is caused by low wages. WalMart, he points out, is hiring lots of workers such as greeters who do not do anything productive, and they do that because wages are low. If wages were higher, he claims, they would no longer hire these workers and productivity would improve.

He has, however, been claiming for years that raising the minimum wage would not cause employers to lay off any workers, so he sort of needs to make up his mind.

No, I Don't Oppose It

As a matter of fact, I think it's idiotic that they "phase it in" over a five year period. Who does that serve? If you are going to raise it, just raise it.

As with most laws passed by most legislatures, I think it is poorly implemented. For instance a waiter making $20,000 per year in tips must still be paid a salary of $31,200 per year; the same salary as a janitor or a lawn care worker, who rarely, if ever, is tipped at all.

Thinking Outside The Box

A minimum wage of $10.50, translating to $21,840 per year, is considered unacceptable. California feels the need to raise that to $15/hr, or $31,200 per year. Meanwhile, they have no apparent problem with seniors living on an average Social Security of $14,160 per year. So the Millennials cannot, or should not, be expected to live on $21,480 per year, while it's okay for seniors to live on 66% of that amount. Just a thought.

Small Cons and a Big Con

The Chargers knew that the chances of getting a stadium deal on its own merits was slim at best, nonexistent at worst. They claimed to need $350 million in revenue from the city, but in reality they needed $550 million given that the $300 NFL “contribution” included a $100 million grant and a $200 million loan.

The plan was to sell the deal in Mission Valley with new 2% hotel tax paying the cost so that they could convince the people of San Diego that it would require “no new taxes.”  After several months of peddling this plan somebody pointed out that a court had ruled that 2% hotel tax illegal. Ironically, they thought they could get away with diverting that tax to the stadium because the hotels weren't presently getting it anyway.

That is the first of two small cons. The hotel tax increase supposedly is “from 12.2% to 16.5%” and is merely a 30% increase. Except that the 2% tax is not currently being imposed and so the actual increase is a 60% one, from 10.5% to 16.5%.

The second small con is that in the current plan there is still no mention made as to how the $200 million loan from the NFL will be repaid.

The big con is that, knowing he could not possibly sell his stadium to the taxpayers, Spanos combines it with a convention center expansion which is much more well received by the public. The public will vote in favor of the convention center expansion so that ComicCon will not carry out its threat to move to Los Angeles, and will not mind that the price of that expansion is a football stadium that we don’t want.

Sort of ironic that we don’t mind if the Chargers move to LA, we just don’t want ComicCon to do so. Tells you something about San Diego.

No Problem: It's Free!

The Chargers have finally announced their $1.8 billion stadium plan, and it won’t cost us a dime. Not a penny. We get it free for nothing. Yea, let’s vote for it. Does it include a pasture for the unicorns?

The plan does include an addition to the downtown convention center, but not in the location that the convention center wants the expansion to be built. The expansion is across the railroad tracks and several blocks away from the existing center, while the center (quite understandably) wants the expansion to be an extension of the existing building; something which is entirely feasible.

Let’s start with the first fiction in the plan; that hotel visitors would pay for it by raising the hotel tax from 12.5% to 16.5% and devoting that money to the stadium. Well, no, the tax is not presently 12.5% because it was raised to that rate illegally and the court reduced it back down to its present rate of 10.5%. So in actuality the plan would raise the tax from 10.5% to 16.5%, which is a significantly greater increase than is presented by proponents of the plan. It's not a 30% increase in the hotel tax; it's a 60% increase. Honesty never plays a major role in these things.

Sportswriters and politicians say flatly that such an increase will not reduce tourism, citing no surveys or studies to back that up, but pointing out that Anaheim and San Francisco have similar tax rates. Indeed they do. Anaheim has Disneyworld and San Francisco has, well, San Francisco. We have… Indeed. Hotel owners are less certain. They don’t mind the 2% increase, voted in favor of it themselves when the increase was for the purpose of tourism marketing, but the 6% thing worries them a bit.

These hotel taxes would be paying off $1.15 billion in bonds. Those bonds would be spent, according to the San Diego Union Tribune, as follows: $350 toward the football stadium, $600 million for the convention center, and $200 million to buy land. No mention is made as to why they are not saving $200 million by using the vast tract of land the city already owns in Mission Valley, where Qualcomm Stadium is presently located.

The NFL is “paying $300 million” which was a significant contribution back when the stadium plan was $800 million, but seems pretty paltry now that the price tag is $1.8 billion. Not to mention that $200 million of that is actually a loan, and that there is no mention in the plan as to any source of funds with which to repay that loan. Unicorns pooping gold bars, perhaps?

The Chargers are “paying $350 million” which they will recover by selling seat licenses and naming rights. That means, of course that they are not actually paying anything.

It’s unclear whether passing this idiocy will require a simple majority, or if the California law which says that tax increases require two-thirds majority will be in effect. A court recently ruled that special interest purpose taxes only require a simple majority, which to me sort of defeats the whole purpose of the law, but the impact of that ruling on this issue is unclear.

Preliminary polls show that the San Diego public is sufficiently gullible to go for any con job that is sold to them as “something for nothing.”  While just under 30% favored building a new stadium, 54% seem to favor this combination of the expansion that the convention center doesn’t want and the stadium that almost nobody wants. If it’s free we want it.

Inequality and Minimum Wage

I am in no way opposed to raising the minimum wage to $15 state wide. Hell, raise it to $20 if you want. Just don’t brag about having accomplished anything, because income inequality is not caused by the minimum wage being too low, and wealth maldistribution has even less to do with how much one gets paid for flipping hamburgers.

One person responded to an interviewer’s question about the raise by saying that his family could "go out to dinner once a month or so and vacation at Disneyland once in a while.”  Sounds about right. It’s not a Warren Buffet lifestyle, but it’s what now passes for an American dream. Dinner at Olive Garden and Disneyland.

That is today’s America. Dream small. Rail about super wealth of the rich and income inequality, and raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Pathetic.

War: The Great Distraction

We are told, this weekend, that our Special Forces killed the “number two man” of the Islamic State. My response is to ask what all of this is accomplishing for us. What is the end point in this war; a war which we have been fighting for so long and with such futility that we are no longer willing to even call it a war?

We have been pounding our chest for more than seven years now over our brilliant execution of Obama’s plan to win the war on terror by killing the top leaders of terrorist organizations, and where are we? The only thing we have accomplished is to expand the scope of the effort.

When it began seven years ago we were using drone strikes in Pakistan. Now we are using drones and air strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mali, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Somalia. And those are just the ones we know about.

I suspect the truth is that it doesn’t end because it serves someone’s interest for it to continue indefinitely. It serves as a distraction from the real reason that this nation’s government does not serve its people. It ends when the people of this nation refuse to be distracted by it.

Think About It

The symbol for the Democratic Party is a jackass.

Paul Krugman, Twit

Paul Krugman reminds us on his blog today that he also has a Twitter account, that he is doing some "direct postings" to it and that, "Some of the tweets are even substantive." I will restrain myself from suggesting that very little that he says anywhere is substantive (well, that restraint didn't last long), but will ask what kind of mind is it that thinks that a "substantive" thought can be expressed in 140 characters or less. I'm thinking that such a position requires a rather trivial mind, but what do I know? I'm not a Nobel economist.

Oh, Really?

Danica Patrick was asked whether she or her boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse was the better driver and, of course, said that she believed she is the better of the two. He finished third Sunday at Fontana; Danica was running 19th when she was wrecked. Furthermore, Danica ran what is now the Xfinity series for one year and finished 14th in the standings, in a year when only 15 drivers ran the entire schedule. Ricky ran in that series for two years and won the championship both years.

Someone is delusional, and it's not me.

Things I Read So You Don't Have To

Huffington Post has an article (yes, I know) entitled, “7 Things Everyone Over 40 Should Have In Their Kitchen.” I am 73 and have only one of the seven, and I’ll bet I am doing better than “everyone” who fills their list.

1. A seriously cushioned gel mat in front of the sink. They refer to this as “a lifesaver,” or at least “a leg and foot saver.” I certainly don’t have one, or need one, since I still work out in a gym and spend more time standing in front of the stove than the sink in any case. Have they never heard of automatic dishwashers?

2. Nomex Burn Guard oven mitts. Not only am I well over 40, but I have Parkinson’s Disease, and no, I don’t think so. They refer to these monstrosities as alternatives to “grabbing the nearest dish towel,” but I use perfectly good hot pot holders which are smaller, easier to hold things with, and occupy far less space in a drawer.

3. A non-electric can opener. That’s the one thing I have. I have never tried an electric can opener, and consider them idiotic.

4. Chafing dishes. Why suggest this to the “over 40 crowd?” This belongs to the “Miss Manners crowd” or to someone who is far more interested in appearance and style than in good food. I have no interest in serving up food from a steam table, having had enough of that when I was in the Navy.

5. Backup corkscrews. They suggest that “corkscrews have a way of disappearing.” Oh please. I’m old, not feeble minded. I’ve been using one corkscrew for 25 years, and it’s always right there in the second drawer down where I put it.

6. A knowledge of cookware and materials. Seriously? I’ve had that since I was in my twenties, and I don’t keep it in the kitchen (see the title), I keep it in my brain which is often in the bedroom or other parts of the house, and often is not in the house at all.

7. A window box of fresh herbs. Another thing that one can do in their twenties as easily as they can in their forties, so why is this offered as an “over forty” tip?

Apparently Arianna Huffington pays her writers at about the same rate that Joan Walsh does over at Salon.com.

Circular Firing Squad

Four times in the past week, on various crime dramas,
I have seen a couple of cops corner a criminal, get one on either side of him and both point their guns at him. Apparently they don't notice that they are also pointing their guns at each other which, it seems to me, is fraught with a certain degree of hazard.

Elections? What Elections?

There was an article in the New York Times yesterday headlined, “Republican Leaders Map a Strategy to Derail Donald Trump.”  It describes the various methods which “Republican leaders” are employing against Trump to “deny him the presidential nomination.”

Now, I am certainly no fan of that idiotic blowhard, but what part of democracy do these “Republican leaders” not get? What role do they believe it is that voters are supposed to play in a primary election?

Not that the Democrats are any better, really. The party has a nationwide database of voters and contributors, but that database is available only to incumbents. Members of the party who are running in a primary election against an incumbent Democratic office holder are denied access to these databases.

So Democratic voters think they are voting in a fair election, but they are not. They are voting in an election stacked in favor of the incumbent.

“You have a democracy,”  he said, “if you can keep it.”

Who Is The Major Power?

We have been in Afghanistan for fifteen years now, and we cannot really define why we are there with any believability, nor can we say when we are leaving. The Russians, on the other hand, after being in Syria for the purpose of restoring the Syrian government to a winning position in their civil war, have accomplished that goal in a matter of about six months and are sending their forces back home.

So which nation is a “major power” here? The one that was warning the other about the “quagmire” into which it was going to find itself, or the one which was and still is in a quagmire of its own?

Some would say that the Russian objective was “more limited,” which actually is a good part of my point; Russia had an objective, met that objective and is going home. If we have an objective in Afghanistan, it certainly has never been spelled out in any fashion that makes sense to any thinking, rational person.

Nor has any logical objective been set forth for our presence in Syria, because the effort to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State while helping Al Queda destroy Syria makes no sense whatever, especially given that we were carefully not attacking the Islamic State’s income-producing oil transportation system. Russia wiped it out in its entirety in about two weeks while we were castigating Russia for attacking Al Queda and accusing them of not attacking the Islamic State.

Maybe the problem is that the miracle F-35 has not yet arrived at the battle front yet.

Democracy?

It is sort of amazing to me the degree to which the governing establishment has become openly, downright brazenly, undemocratic. It proves the saying the “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The Democratic Party has 715 “superdelegates” who are free to cast their votes for the nominee of their choice at the convention; who are not answerable to the voters in any way. Granted, they usually vote for the candidate who has the greater popular vote, and they are a smallish minority of the 1200 or so votes needed for nomination, but why do they exist at all? Why does the party establishment feel the need to have a not insignificant number of votes controlled by the establishment, and able possibly to thwart the will of the voters?

Further, why has the party establishment chosen to make public that the overwhelming majority of those superdelegates have already chosen in favor of the establishment candidate and against the challenger, if not to create a discouraging atmosphere with which to reduce participation of voters who might otherwise champion the challenger?

The Republican Party establishment is even more energetic in its effort to thwart the will of its voters. It may well be that stopping Donald Trump would be a worthy cause, but that is not what democracy is about. He is receiving by far the greatest majority of votes, and the party establishment is openly seeking ways to deny him the nomination no matter what choice the voters make at the polls. They have even gone so far as to openly discuss rigging the nomination process (they call it “brokering”) at the convention to deny the choice of the voters if that choice turns out to be Donald Trump.

Someone once said that we had a democracy if we could keep it, and clearly we have not kept it, because the governing establishment no longer even pretends that the votes of the governed class really count. They no longer pretend that public opinion matters, and no longer bother to make the lies that they tell us believable.

Well, Now We Know

The San Diego Chargers not only resigned Antonio Gates, they did a two-year deal for $12 million. So now we know that General Manager Tom Telesco either doesn't have a clue, doesn't watch the games, or both. Gates' pass route running can best be described as, "clump, clump, clump..." I think he runs about 8.7 in the 40. The only time he caught passes last year was when the opponent forgot to cover him at all, because a defensive lineman with a bad knee can cover him.

What El Nino? Where?

Media which is hyperventilating about El Nino and about “El Nino-driven storms”  has pretty much reached the point of being completely detached from reality. So far this rainy season has not even been of normally wet parameters, and what they should be writing about is the degree to which El Nino has turned out to be a non-event.

California snowpack is at 83% of its normal depth. Overall the state has received 89% of normal rainfall, with 83% for San Diego. Reservoirs statewide which were at 64% of capacity are at 69% now. None of that paints a picture of any sort of cataclysmic deluge, especially since those normals include four years of severe drought.

The last “El Nino storm” which came through San Diego dropped .6” of rain in a two day period. In most years we would not even call that a storm. We would call it “some rain” and it would be reported in the weather segment of the news, not on page one above the fold.

The media runs around and finds one tree that has fallen down, or one stream that has left its banks, and then runs that film clip over and over, giving the impression that the entire state is underwater and/or buried in fallen trees, but these events happen every rainy season in this part of the country, even during drought years. Hell, I’ve seen Eucalyptus trees drop major limbs on a sunny, totally windless day.

Severe storms in the lower Midwest are being connected to El Nino, but I think that is an unwarranted assumption. There are more tornadoes than usual, but they are occurring on fewer days, meaning that there are more occurring in each storm system. That indicates that the systems are more intense, which is almost certainly due to the greater energy content of the atmosphere in general due to climate change. It’s doubtful that El Nino has anything to do with it.

I think the media is writing based on its expectations and its desire for excitement rather than based on any sort of commitment to an informed public.

Of Course He Did

Jimmie Carter resigned from the Southern Baptist Convention this year, a religious body of which he has been a member for all of his adult life; on the order of seven decades.

Why did he do that? Because the organization passed a resolution declaring that women are inferior to men and cannot hold a leadership role in the church. That means women cannot be a pastor or chaplain in a military or a deacon in a church. Jimmie Carter and his wife could not hold that position and left their life-long church.

The man is a giant. He is the standard to which members of the Democratic Party should be held.

Pro-what?

Democratic candidates were asked, “Is there a time when you think abortion should be illegal?” The answers were as typical and as revealing of the candidates as anything I’ve heard yet. Sanders replied, “No, I am very strongly pro choice.” Clinton answered, “I have been on record in favor of a late pregnancy regulation with exceptions for the life and health of the mother.”

The answers were as typical and as revealing of the candidates as anything I’ve heard yet. Sanders keeps it simple, direct and unequivocal. Clinton’s “on the record” is interesting, since someone who is habitually honest doesn’t gratuitously preface a statement with an offer of proof and, while wanting to be in line with the Democratic "pro-choice" position, her “life and health of the mother” thing is a favorite phrase of the “pro-life” crowd.

Since late term abortion is virtually never done for any reason other than “the life and health of the mother,” she favors prohibiting the procedure except when the reason for doing it is the one for which the process is almost always done. Her statement is, in fact, the sort of empty triangulation for which the Clintons are infamous. It gives her credit for being “pro-choice,” while at the same time giving her a foot in the “pro-life” camp.

Hillary Clinton has no guiding principles which direct her statements. She is guided in her rhetoric only by the number of votes she thinks she can promote.

Um, No.

There are many reasons to dislike the concept of Hillary Clinton in the White House, but to claim that it is a breach of the 22nd amendment is not one of them. Please, let's keep some small shred of sanity.

And You Expected Logic?

Sen. Bernie Sanders “could come out a winner in most of the weekend's presidential primary contests” according to a memo sent out by the Clinton campaign headquarters. Meanwhile, CNBC tells us that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton “each look to strengthen their front-runner status” in those weekend primary races.

Meanwhile, Democrats say that the low turnout in their primaries is due to Republican voter registration laws. That is kind of amusing, since they have been saying all along that those laws are racist, targeted at preventing black voters from voting, and are now saying that Hillary is winning because black voters are turning out in great numbers and are voting for her in droves, while it is the white voters who are producing disappointing numbers.

My wife says that it is illogical to expect logic in political discussions, but then she is a Democrat.

More About Two Parties

My wife commented that the Republican Party establishment is overriding the voters to oust Trump because otherwise they will lose the general election. Assuming that to be true, which I’m not sure it is, that still is oligarchy rather than democracy.

Republican voters have long had a set of overriding principles. I don’t happen to agree with those principles, but I rather admire their willingness to lose elections when needed to send a message to their elected representatives that they expect them to abide by those principles. “Do what we elected you to do or we will throw you out of office.”

Democrats not so much. For one thing, if you put five Democrats in a room you will get six or seven sets of overriding principles. In any case, if a Democrat is elected to office and acts like a Republican, the Democratic voters might complain but will reelect him rather than risk losing an election. “Vote for anybody so long as they have a D after their name.”

The Democrats have been playing a “divide and survive” game for years, dividing their voters into many factions, making it much less likely that they will get thrown out for their demonstrated inability to govern.

No two legislators run on the same issue, or set of issues, so voters are fragmented into small splinter groups rather than being united behind one unifying set of ideals. As a result, their voters don’t know what they want their legislators to do, and are therefor not disappointed when they don’t do it. They just know, because this is the one unifying theme of Democratic legislators, that they do not want Republicans to win.

Now the Republican establishment is moving to the Democratic model, splintering the voters by throwing a plethora of candidates at them and campaigning on the horror of a Hillary Clinton presidency, and when the voters seem to be doing their usual thing of unifying behind one candidate the establishment frantically tries to unseat the people’s chosen candidate. In a democracy, if the people want to choose a losing candidate the party would be obliged to allow them to do so, whereas in an oligarchy we have the open admission that the establishment does not want the common voters to be in charge.

And nominating a losing candidate might very well be a perfectly logical choice for voters wanting to send a message to its party leadership that they have taken the party where the voters do not want it to be and willing to surrender control of the executive for four years in order to send that message.

“What we are doing is not working and we need to stop doing it. Even if the new thing is wrong, at least it’s different, and we are not merely repeating the same stupidity,” is a valid message. Democratic leadership is rejecting that message somewhat more subtly than are Republicans, but both parties are vigorously rejecting it.

A Tale of Two Parties

The GOP establishment is frantically trying to thwart the choice of its voters by finding some way to “stop Trump” and nominate someone who is more acceptable to the establishment, but who would demonstrably be less acceptable to the voters because… Well, because whoever the establishment might choose, the voters have not been voting for him. This is not rocket science, really.

And not only are Republicans voting for the candidate that the GOP establishment does not want, they are doing so in record numbers. Turnout is unprecedented in every Republican primary so far.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, the establishment is firmly behind a candidate who is winning by somewhat less of a margin than they would have you believe, and who is thought to be “dishonest and untrustworthy” by 53% of those who voted in Democratic primary elections so far. Apparently a significant number of Democratic voters are willing to vote for someone who is “dishonest and untrustworthy,”  which I think does not speak well for party principles, but that’s a different issue.

The “superdelegates,” who do not answer to voters and which have no equivalent in the Republican Party, are almost 100% pledged to this establishment candidate. The Democratic National Committee scheduled the debates for the convenience of the establishment candidate, and the establishment is actively trashing both the person and the policies of the rebel candidate.

Meanwhile, turnout in Democratic primary elections is something close to a disaster, down anywhere from 35% to as much as 50% in every primary election to date from the last contested primary in 2008.

The media is trumpeting about how the establishment candidate currently has a lead that is larger by percentage than the lead Obama enjoyed at any time in the 2008 campaign, but that may be caused by the fact that most of the voters cannot stand the establishment candidate and have been convinced by the media and the establishment that the rebel candidate cannot win, and are staying home in disgust.

What the parties have in common is that neither of them is paying the slightest bit of attention to the voters and are, in fact, openly rejecting what the voters are saying to them. How this will play out remains to be seen, but this nation’s transformation to oligarchy is now complete.

Good for Minnesota

My senior niece lives in Minnesota and sometimes got a little weary of me ribbing her about Michele Bachmann, claiming that that district is an anomaly in the state. Minnesota is not, she says, populated by idiots, but is filled with very pleasant and intelligent people.

I have been pretty sure she was telling the truth given that she lives there and given that state’s two Senators, both of whom are not only sane but show signs of being extremely intelligent, and yesterday’s primary election provides further confirmation of her assertion.

Bernie Sanders not only won the state, he won it by a rather large margin, and not only did Trump fail to win, he came in third. Too bad about their winters. I guess between idiots and beaches and what Minnesota has… And yes, I speak from experience. I spent nine winters in Wisconsin and Minnesota is, if anything, worse.

Minnesota was, however, pretty much the only bright spot in yesterday’s mess. The media is overstating the case when they claim that Bernie is toast, and I think Hillary is exercising her proclivity for arrogance by writing him off and beginning her campaign against Trump. But let’s face it, we are more likely than not going to be faced with a choice between Hillary and Donald in the fall, which is much like being offered a dinner choice between horse shit and vomit.

On Minimum Wage

I have no objection to raising the minimum wage. There is no real proven downside to it, but I see no upside which is of sufficient significance to make it a major plank in the Democratic Party platform. The party’s emphasis on raising the minimum wage makes the Democratic Party the party of low expectations.

If Democrats were “fighting for working men and women” as they claim to be doing, but most certainly are not, they would be talking about bringing the $30/hr jobs and the $45/hr jobs back from overseas. They would be talking about restoring the power of the working class by reinvigorating labor unions and collective bargaining. They, including Bernie Sanders, are not even touching on those subjects.

Those $30/hr and $45/hr jobs began being lost to offshoring during a Democratic Clinton administration, resulting in no small part from a NAFTA treaty promoted vigorously by Hillary Clinton as well as her husband. Remember Ross Perot and his “giant sucking sound” claim? He was laughed at but he was precisely right.

Defenders of the policy of permanently making America a minimum wage economy claim that “those jobs are never coming back”  or that “those jobs cannot be brought back,”  but they have no cogent arguments as to why that is so. Those jobs can be brought back, but it would be hard, and this country apparently no longer does hard things.

In fact, the Democratic Party embraces the continuance of the offshoring of our economy with its support of “free trade”  as defined by the current extension of NAFTA to the Pacific Ocean nations; a pact known as the TPP.

Obama promised in his campaign that he would support labor unions, including a noteworthy statement that whenever there was a picket line, “I will be there at your side.”  It would not be unreasonable to assume he was speaking figuratively rather than literally, but he remained completely disengaged as the Wisconsin governor disbanded the unions in that state, offering not even token verbal support for the working class.

If Democrats were “fighting for working men and women” as they claim to be doing, they would be talking about ways to restore collective bargining so that employees would no longer be powerless when dealing with employers. They would be finding ways to eliminate the "right to work laws" which are passed by legislatures at the behest of business campaign contributors and not by voters.

One has to remember that when we “vote for the lesser evil” we are still voting for evil. The status of the working class is not going to change in this country until we throw evil out, both greater and lesser, and make it clear that we are demanding something better.