Functionality – Geopolitical and Intimate
We thick-headed humans have learned little of power and mercy, even with many of us professing to love Jesus (who just asked us all to be nice and wise to each other). Ancient Greece seems to have a better handle on the Frankenstein-like true nature of force, making...
Recycling Recycling
There's a cute series of advertisements populating basic cable these days, offered by the Ad Council, that encourage us to recycle our plastic containers of various sorts. The ads anthropomorphize plastic bottles, if you can believe it, to make obvious and ham-fisted...
Muzzling the Muzzlers
High dudgeon is in fullest exhibition following the Senate's rebuking Elizabeth Warren for repeatedly violating a rule prohibiting "besmirching the character and motives" of a fellow Senator (Attorney General candidate Jeff Sessions). The Senator has been "silenced,"...
Empowering Assholes
Children, from an early age, are taught to "play nice" with others. They are taught manners, they are taught to respect others and their things, they are taught that sharing is caring, they are taught that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, they are...
Authoritarian Impulses and Unforced Errors
Trump recently dropped a couple lulus that offer stark caution to the impulse many skeptics have had to soften their concerns. In full law-and-order mode, he put forth an assertion that the murder rate is the highest it's been in 47 years. His claim is demonstrably...
Gun Rights Lesson #244 – Guns Have More Rights Than Women
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "As A Woman, I Hope That One Day I Have As Many Rights As A Gun!" These words were written on a sign and held aloft by a marcher at one of the Women's Marches...
Insider Trading Writ Large
EDITOR'S NOTE: This guest article also appears on the Wikileaks Decrypted Blog. What do the 'accidentally' leaked Soros short positions tell us? The Hungarian businessman George Soros has a long history of using political influence to swing the markets in his favour,...
Gun Rights Lesson #313 – Treat Guns Like Driving
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "We register cars and require driver's licenses! We should regulate guns the way we regulate cars!" This argument is a hoot. The people who espouse it, it's safe...
Peak-Godwin
There's an old Internet adage called Godwin's Law that asserts that, if an Internet discussion goes on long enough, someone will make a Hitler reference. The time constant, i.e. the "long enough" limit, seems to have been getting shorter and shorter in recent years....
Other Elections Have Consequences, Too
Dear Democrats. Many of you are basing declaration of figurative war against Trump's Supreme Court nomination, Neil Gorsuch, both pre- and post- announcement, on the Senate's failure to confirm Obama's nomination, Merrick Garland. Some of you are claiming that the GOP...
Peak Dissonance
Donald Trump, proving yet again that, just when you think he's reached the acme of outrage-inducement, gave a "these go to eleven" poke to the political beehive with his immigration ban. I disagree with the ban, for reasons I'll go into at a later date, but what's...
Veganism and Progressive Politics
Every so often, a new example of "meat" made from vegan ingredients crosses my consciousness. The latest, a vegan brisket, prompted me to ask "Why?!" Why do people who advocate veganism look to create such things? Why are scientists trying to invent hamburgers that...
Step Stool or Smothering Blanket?
As the old gag goes, there are two types of people in the world: Those who divide people into two types and those who don't. Modern identity politics will tell you that there are dozens upon dozens of types of people in the world, including at least sixty-three...
When Did The Press Stop Listening?
In a vast churning sea of outrage at the Trump administration, a sea that, as Dilbert artist and blogger Scott Adams notes, is diluting individual outrages to where they are lost in the maelstrom, it takes some serious effort for one to stand apart. Steve Bannon,...
Steroid Crimes and Misdemeanors
As will increasingly be a question: the great baseball players whose careers coincided with the peak of the steroid era are being considered for admission into the Hall of Fame. Are they worthy? Like any debate on ethics, the answers are clear to child's logic at the...
Trump’s Deregulation
President Trump recently announced that his administration would be seeking to cut federal regulations by 75% or more. Should he manage this, the achievement would become the stuff of legend in small-government circles. Of course, nanny-staters, control freaks,...
When Words Matter More Than Deeds
That which we are seeing on the political landscape today, from President Trump's carnie-barker bluster to the non-compos-mentis rants by Ashley Judd and others at the women's marches yesterday, are rooted in a fixation on words over deeds. That fixation was greatly...
The Protectionist-In-Chief
The history books tell us that Donald Trump gave one of the shorter inaugural speeches in presidential history. The symbolism, in length, in content and in style, should not be lost. His brief and plain speech was a third shorter than Obama's two speeches and lacked...
Liberals In Exile
The title of this essay, cribbed from the penultimate sentence of a recent op-ed by conservative columnist Rich Lowry, embodies the essence of how the Left views itself today, the day after their collective nightmare was sworn in as President. The bitterness and sad...
A President, Not A King
Today, a man who is loved/hated by millions will replace a man who is loved/hated by millions as President of The United States. There is little doubt that the American President is the most powerful man in the world, but it behooves us to remember that his is not the...
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