It’s Thursday, February 21st, 2013….and here’s The Gouge!

We begin the day with “The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same”, particularly when it comes to ill-conceived, hastily-enacted and poorly-crafted Progressive political policies.  Case in point: the ongoing-onslaught against the 2nd Amendment:

The Assault Weapon Panic

 

 

.…Testimony before Congress revealed that most “assault weapons” in the hands of criminals were obtained through illegal channels. [97] The testimony is consistent with the National Institute of Justice’s research findings based on studies of felons in state prisons. The NU study, authored by sociologists James D. Wright and Peter Rossi found that only sixteen percent of criminals had obtained their most recent handgun from a gun store. (The figures included purchases by legal surrogates, rather than directly by the criminal.) Wright and Rossi, who had begun their research as firm proponents of gun control, concluded that no set of controls on retail purchases, and probably not even full scale gun prohibition, would reduce criminal use of guns. Wright and Rossi suggested that lawmakers concerned about gun crime directly target the black market in criminal guns, and leave the legitimate retail market alone. [98] Not surprisingly, Wright believes that the consequences of current “assault weapon” legislation on street violence are likely to be ineffective. [99] He warns that gun controls aimed at ordinary citizens are less likely to reduce the pool of criminal guns than to provide organized crime with lucrative new business. [100]

The supply of semiautomatic weapons in the United States is already more than sufficient to supply the market for stolen guns. Even if by some miracle the government manages to confiscate all the legally and illegally-owned semiautomatics, criminal resupply will be easy. A competent backyard mechanic can build a fully automatic rifle. (In a full automatic, bullets continue to fire as long as the trigger stays squeezed.) Indeed, Afghan peasants, using tools considerably inferior to those in the Sears catalogue, have built fully automatic rifles capable of firing the Soviet AK-47 cartridge. [101] Illegal home production of handguns is already common; a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms study found that one-fifth of the guns seized by the police in Washington, D.C., were homemade. [102] If organized crime can perform the complex laboratory chemistry necessary to produce cocaine, there is little reason to believe that organized crime cannot perform the simpler mechanical task of manufacturing illegal guns of any description.

When asked about the effects of the recent Los Angeles ban on certain types of “assault weapons,” Crips Four Trey gang member Rick (Li’l Loc 2) Hardson stated, “Well, a gun is illegal . . . So what? . . . Everything [gangs] do is illegal.” [103] Social workers who work with gang members and some L.A. police officers also seem to doubt the effectiveness of the recent Los Angeles ban. [104] “assault weapon” legislation benefits gangs, partly because it disarms their potential victims, but more importantly because it gives them another illegal commodity to deal.

Handgun prohibition has failed in Washington, D.C. and Chicago to affect criminal misuse of handguns. National prohibition of new machine guns in 1986 has failed to stem the availability of machine guns to criminals. Why will controls or bans on semiautomatics succeed when similar controls on handguns and automatics have failed? Given the current social context of firearms misuse, it seems unlikely that any “assault weapon” legislation will curb criminal misuse of proscribed firearms or reduce homicide. [105] In California, the homicide rate rose from 10.4% in 1988 to 11.9% in 1990, after California had adopted an “assault weapon” ban and made long guns subject to a 15 day waiting period; the rise in the California homicide rate has been steeper than the rise in the rest of the United States. In Boston, the homicide rate rose 46% the year after the city enacted its “assault weapon” prohibition.

http://www.guncite.com/asw.html#97

To borrow a phrase from the Bard, “Aye, here’s the rub: this article was written in October….1991!  The rest is well-worth reading, not only as a source of information to refute the mindless arguments of the Brady Bunch, but as a reminder Liberals are nothing if not doggedly determined to eviscerate the Constitution.  And absent a massive Conservative revival within the ranks of the GOP, time is on their side.

One thing’s for certain; as this next headline, courtesy of Breitbart.com and Carl Polizzi confirms, when it comes to supporting and defending the Constitution against its enemies, specifically the domestic, most urban areas shouldn’t expect support from their local sheriff:

San Diego Police Chief: We Can Disarm Americans Within a Generation

 

Constitution?  WHAT Constitution?!?

By the way, courtesy of Bill Meisen, here’s one more bit of 1st Amendment free expression in support of the 2nd you won’t see featured on the Evening News….or anywhere else in the MSM:

Our concern lies not with the opinions of the Political Class, which are always formulated to consolidate their continued clasp on power; but that the attitude of far too many mindless Americans seems to be:

Since we’re discussing mindless Americans, one in particular is featured in this next forward from Bill Meisen:

Kerry: Budget impasse a challenge for US diplomacy 

 

Secretary of State John Kerry says the greatest challenge to U.S. foreign policy is not emerging China or Middle East instability. It’s Congress.

In a speech Wednesday at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Kerry cited the adage that “we can’t be strong in the world unless we are strong at home.” He called the budget impasse a threat. The State Department has said automatic spending cuts would jeopardize $2.6 billion in aid, security assistance and other international programs.

Kerry said legislators need to avoid “senseless cuts.” Otherwise, he said his credibility as a diplomat might be damaged. Kerry said, “Think about it: It’s hard to tell the leadership of any number of countries that they must resolve their economic issues if we don’t resolve our own.”

Yeah, Lurch; you’re biggest credibility problem is….

….Congress.

Speaking of turncoats, they’re the subject of Walter Russell Mead’s latest blog (Via Meadia), as featured in The American Spectator:

Key Democrats Turn on Obamacare

 

 Powerful Democrats who helped write and pass Obamacare subjected the new law’s chief  administrator to withering criticism at a Senate hearing yesterday. Gary Cohen, the director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, testified before the Senate Finance Committee, and the Democrats on the committee—from its Chairman Max Baucus to Senators Ron Wyden, Bill Nelson, and Maria Cantwell—tore into him. Kaiser Health News has more:

Wyden pressed Cohen to help find ways to resolve a glitch in the law which may result in the denial of federal assistance to millions of Americans of modest means who could be priced out of family health coverage at work….

“We’ve got millions of people—working-class, middle-class people—who are going to be pushed into a regulatory health coverage no man’s land,” Wyden said. “They are unable to afford the family coverage through their employer and ineligible for the subsidy that could be used by dependents on the exchange.”

And that’s just one senator. Each had his or her own complaints about different parts of the law’s implementation, from its elimination of funding for insurance co-operatives to the failure to meet important deadlines. The criticisms came fast and furious:

“You are overwhelmed by the details and technology, I get that point…. It seems as if the agency is taking pages out of the law,” she [Cantwell] said….

“The people of Florida are going to suffer,” he [Nelson] told Cohen. “I want someone to be held accountable for this.”

Unfortunately for America, Bill was safely reelected to another 6-year term in 2012.

The about-face of these Democrats is a phenomenon worth pausing over. Many formerly supportive constituencies have grown wary of Obamacare in recent weeks as we’ve learned more about the effects it will have on the health care system. But these Senators’ 180-degree turns are something more severe.

The fate of the Democratic party in America over the next decade is tied to Obama’s healthcare reform. If it is seen to be a success, America could trend Democratic for the foreseeable future. If it fails, liberalism as we’ve known it will take a massive hit. But, so far, support for Obamacare has been waning instead of waxing. Even a recent piece by Talking Points Memo that placed the blame for Obamacare’s potential failure on Republicans noted that the law’s unpopularity with the public at large was the number one threat to its success. Democrats are getting nervous and consequently are trying to put some distance between themselves and the ACA.

We don’t blame them for trying, but it may be a futile effort. For better or worse, their fates are now tied to that of Obamacare.

Not if they can somehow blame it on the Republicans for failing to permit the implementation of an otherwise perfect plan!

Next up, courtesy of Tom Bakke, Victor Davis Hanson details Dimocrats vision of a….

Brave New World

 

The Revolutions We Missed

Sometimes societies just plod along, oblivious that the world is being reinvented right under their noses. In 2000, one never saw pedestrians bumping into themselves as they glued their noses to iPhones. Thirteen years later, it is almost rare to see anyone on the street who is not stumbling about, networking or texting. Yet most of us are scarcely aware of the collective effect of that odd habit repeating itself millions of times over each day, of millions of books not read, of “hellos” not offered, of brains wired to screens rather than the physical world about them. When cars once drifted into your lane, you assumed a DUI; now their drivers are most likely texting.

Cars, of course, look about the same as they did thirty years ago. But we just assume now that they almost never break down. Up until 1980 I used to see them with hoods up by the side of the road almost every five miles or so. Today, entire notions such as points, plugs, tune-ups, and carburetors have simply quietly passed away for most motorists. The old jalopy with 100,000 miles on it was junk; the new Accord with 150,000 miles has another easy 250,000 to go. The world changes while we snore.

Lazy Money

No wonder, then, most of us are still not quite aware of how vastly different the world of 2013 is from even 2008. Take interest: not long ago most Americans assumed that when they retired, their 5-7% interest rate on passbook savings would provide some sort of income. Not now. There is scarcely a 1% return. In fact, most accounts lose money. The interest is not even matching the rate of inflation. Will we soon be charged by the banks for “protecting” our deposits?

At some unspoken moment, we shrugged and silently accepted Ben Bernanke’s world, along with the thousands of ways that his Federal Reserve Board has radically changed our lives. Those at retirement age are not stepping down, not when they have a bad/worse choice of receiving no interest income or putting their life savings in the stock or bond market. Our fathers may have retired at 58; we will be lucky to quit at 70. Is there even such a thing as retirement anymore?

No wonder that unemployed young people are endlessly circling the airport with nowhere to land, given all of us old planes perpetually taxing around on the crowded runways below. To understand the effect of no, or very low, interest, think of the billions of dollars in cash that are silently transferred from those who have saved to those who have no cash. The former receive little or no interest from the banks. The latter take out mortgages or car loans at historically low interest rates.

Did the president ever mention this revolution, among his boilerplate of “millionaires and billionaires,” “pay your fair share,” and “fat cats”?

Does it really make all that much difference whether you are a doctor at 70 who religiously put away $1,000 a month for thirty years, compounded at the old interest, and planned to retire on the interest income, or a cashless state employee with a defined benefit pension plan? The one might have over $1 million in his savings account, but the other a bigger and less risky monthly payout. Suddenly the old adult advice to our children — “Save and put your money in the bank to receive interest” —  is what? “Spend it now or borrow as much as you can at cheap interest”?

Them and Us

I think it was around 2009 when an entire new vocabulary entered the American popular lexicon. Where did the 1% versus the 99% come from? From where did the new financial Mason-Dixon line arise — good below $250,000 in annual family income, very bad above it? When did the 47% — or is it the 50%? — pay no federal income taxes?

At some magical point, the rich became not the successful, the skilled, the well-inherited, the lucky, or the hardworking, but “them”:  the suspect, the damned even, even as the lifestyles of the rich and famous became ever more sought after.

There are not just the rich and poor any more, but now the “good rich” (e.g., athletes, rappers, Hollywood stars, Silicon Valley grandees, Democratic senators, liberal philanthropists, etc.) and the “bad rich” (e.g., oil companies, CEOs, doctors, the Koch brothers, etc.). The correct-thinking nomenklatura and the dutiful apparat versus the kulaks and enemies of the people.

The president in his State of the Union damns the “billionaires with high-powered accountants,” as a friendly Facebook pays no state or federal taxes, as a George Soros walks away with $1.2 billion in speculation profits (in three months, no less!) by betting against the Japanese yen, and as a Jesse Jackson, Jr. gets caught stealing from a campaign fund to buy a $43,000 Rolex (was not a $1,000 one enough?). I thought Soros at his age knew when he had made enough money?

We shrug at all this. A president who thunders to the nation that we must be on guard against the “well-off and well-connected” heads south to Palm Beach to meet his $1,000-an-hour golf pro, while Michelle and the family go west to hit the slopes at “downright mean” Aspen, where no one accepts that they’ve reached a point where they’ve made enough money, or that there was any time when it was not good to profit.

Something strange has insidiously happened to the old notion of hypocrisy. Does it even exist any longer?

Or do we shrug and just accept it as rebranded medieval penance? Obama gets to golf with zillionaires because in soaring cadences he attacks them — and all for us?

Jack Lew takes his $1 million bonus from a federally bailed-out Citigroup and invests his stash in his offshore tax haven in the Caymans because he will be a progressive, raise-your-taxes secretary of Treasury — and because Barack Obama has castigated those who took bonuses from a federally bailed-out money-losing company and derided offshore tax havens in the Caymans?

Chris Hughes is a cutting-edge, gay progressive who buys the New Republic because his Facebook portfolio does pretty well without owing taxes? Is that how it works now?

Have we come to the point where we expect John Kerry’s populist rhetoric to explain why he can feel no pain over dodging taxes on his yacht or marrying into the big money that he used to warn against? John Edwards can lounge around in his ugly mansion precisely because of his “two Americas” choruses?

When did we expect the elite to enjoy their wealth and to rail against its acquisition, to lumber around on four legs in the barn with the animals and strut on two in the kitchen with the overseers? Do Levis and t-shirts mean it’s okay for Google to offshore its profits? Does “Earth in the Balance” mean you can walk away as a guilt-free liberal with $100 million in petro-profits from a sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic sheikdom?

The End of the Law

When did the idea of citizenship largely disappear? There is now little argument over the nomenclature of “illegal alien,” “undocumented worker,” or “unregistered resident.” About three or four years ago, all those rubrics simply became irrelevant.

Most police forces won’t turn over any foreign national stopped for DUI to immigration authorities (e.g., do you really think Obama’s illegal-alien uncle will be deported for drunk driving?). The student body president of the local university not only bragged that he was an illegal alien, but dared anyone to do anything about it — to the loud applause of the university president. If an illegal alien can walk into Congress without fear of deportation, then there is no longer any sense of legal/illegal, or even amnesty/deportation.

“Comprehensive immigration reform” is likewise a silly construct. It does not exist any more. The truth is that we will allow “a pathway to citizenship” for those who broke the immigration law but who have been here a few years, who are working, and who have not been arrested. And, likewise, for those who broke immigration law but are not working, have just arrived, are on public assistance, and have been arrested, we will mandate neither citizenship nor deportation — but just allow a perpetual limbo of residence. When proponents of amnesty declare pathways of citizenship predicated on a fine, or on learning English, or on returning to the back of the line, we know both that they will never audit such requirements and that it would not matter much whether they did. There is now just a sort of nothingness.

So what does it matter whether one is legal, illegal, holds a green card, holds no green card, is in line for citizenship, or is in line for deportation? There is no deportation; there is no real border anymore; there is no federal immigration law. All these are but states of mind, talking points of politicians without meaning.

In or around 2010, these rubrics finally disappeared, buried under the rhetoric of “nativist,” “racist,” “the borders crossed us,” and the reality of the new demography and emerging Democratic constituencies. Try to deport an illegal alien with a felony conviction and instead six hours later on television we will see helpless dependent children cast adrift by the nativists. Eleven to fifteen million foreign nationals, and ten or fifteen million of their American citizen offspring, represent voters that have made the immigration-debate rhetoric and policy superfluous, a revolutionary fact that most have napped through.

The New American Army

Suddenly one moment, women were eligible for combat duty at the front line: no congressional vote, no national bipartisan panel with white papers of pros and cons, no in-depth Pentagon study, no national dialogue. There was an executive order — and that was that.  Get over it.

Why then are women not eligible to play in the NFL or the NBA? Or are they, in theory? Yet something tells me that we will see a 140-lb. female SEAL in hand-to-hand combat with a 220 lb. Pashtun tribesman before we will see a female quarterback dodging defensive ends.

Are enemy linemen more dangerous than the Taliban?

Or is the assumption that women can in theory both play quarterback and go mano-a-mano against Mullah Omar’s thugs, but whether they do depends on whether they can meet male standards? One moment we had assumed that most men had about 30-50% more body strength than do women, and perhaps in most cases a more venomous aggressive streak. In the next blink, all that mattered not at all — or was it the sort of sexist fact that we kept silent about?

What is in store for those Neanderthal frontline infantry who object to the new rules? Apparently male reactionary combat soldiers of small units who for various reasons are not willing to entrust their lives to women at the front line are dead wrong. And they are so dead wrong that they can leave the military if they don’t like the new statutes.

And if they leave the military, their presence either won’t affect combat efficacy, or will in fact improve it. Really?

Because we have effective and aggressive female Blackhawk pilots who risk getting shot down and killed or captured, de facto we must have no problem finding female SEALS who can rip the throats out of jihadists with no more difficulty than pushing the fire button in the chopper above. Yet we suspect that some of the female soldiers who can’t quite meet the existing male standards of physical prowess for combat units will argue that the bar is set artificially too high and is an irrelevant construct, given that 21st century knives, kicks, and choke holds are so passé and just the sort of artificial talking points that the sexists erect.

We all expect that in the near future there will be gender equity lawsuits, and sexual harassment writs — and we fear lurid stories of captured and killed women at the front that will shock us in the years to come. And we will continue to sleep, in the manner that we will soon whisper: “Wow, Iran finally got their bomb, after all”; or “Hmmm, that Korean missile got sorta, kinda close to Maui”; or “Wouldn’t you know it — they’re back to hanging female doctors from light poles in Kabul”; or “Whoa — 550 shot in Chicago this year?”

The New Normal

When did 7.8% unemployment become the new normal? After 49 months above it? What happened to a “jobless recovery”?

Are we always to borrow $1 trillion a year? Will the national debt always rise, never decline? Did $4 a gallon gas become the new normal — a small price to pay for more windmills and solar panels?

Suddenly, college is not the pathway to the upper-middle class, but a risky 50/50 proposition that just as likely can lead to a $100,000 plus, 8% student loan debt, no job, and five years in the parents’ spare bedroom. Who ever objected to tuition climbing at twice the rate of inflation? One day there were sparse dorms, and the next rock-climbing walls; one day deans and provosts who at least taught one class, the next diversity czars with scores of assistants. The more kids can’t pay for college, the more college looks like Disney World.

The new America is a society where 50% pay federal income tax, and for 50% April 15 is an occasion for a tax refund or credit. I grew up with my parents dreading the date; now I see signs offering all sorts of “tax refund” sales. When did disability insurance merely become an extension of unemployment insurance?

There Is No Media

About four years ago, the media just dissipated. Gone, buried. Did we notice our newsreaders are virtual government employees? The media is a Ministry of Truth where spokespeople vie for superlatives — a living “god,”  a man who creates tingles in our legs and is pictured as a “messiah” on our magazines. Each sermon is a new “Gettysburg Address,” each gesture is Lincoln’s, each new Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton part of the new Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals.”

Journalists are now Photoshoppers of news: Guantanamo once bad, now good; we all grew to stop worrying and to love Predators; renditions, the Patriot Act, and preventative detentions must have gone with George W. Goldstein.

Those noisy free-for-all press conferences are now like Xerxes’s court at Persepolis, where toadies compete with kowtows. “Investigative reporting” is how some reactionary, enemy-of-the-people hacks dig up dirt on a progressive like Sen. Menendez or Susan Rice. The video maker sitting in jail and the 16-year-old American who was vaporized were reactionary troublemakers — and that is all ye need to know.

Brave, New World

Panta rhei — “everything is in flux” — Heraclitus says. The world we knew is not the one we wake up to after a short nap. January 2009 now seems like a far-off dream, in a way that 2016 may be a nightmare.

Only if you advocate for an America as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, another member of The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight states what to everyone else was painfully obvious:

Debate co-chair: ‘Mistake’ to have Candy Crowley moderate presidential debate

 

For his next trick, Frank Fahrenkopf, aka Frank Scheisskopf, will finally admit the decision to engage raging Leftists as moderators for the GOP primary debates was also a….”mistake”!

Congratulations Frank:

Next up, this week’s winner of the B. Hussein Obama “The Ego Has Landed” Award for excruciatingly excessive narcissism:

Kim Kardashian: If I was a man I’d want to have sex with myself

 

Not without makeup.  Whatever; we’d still suggest she….or he….wear a condom!

Which brings us to the Lighter Side….

Finally, we’ll call it a day with this late-breaking story in the Medical Section, courtesy of our favorite crop-duster, Bill Meisen:

Let ‘Em Rip: Study Finds Passengers Passing Gas Mid-Flight Healthy

 

Hopefully the TSA will now allow passengers to bring gas masks on board flights. A new study finds that breaking wind while one is flying is healthy and recommended.

AFP reports that Danish gastroenterologist Jacob Rosenberg got the idea for the study after dealing with flatulence from several passengers during a flight from Copenhagen to Tokyo. “(Holding back) holds significant drawbacks for the individual, such as discomfort and even pain, bloating, dyspepsia (indigestion), pyrosis (heartburn) just to name but a few resulting abdominal symptoms,” the study stated.

Despite giving the all-clear for passengers to “just let it go,” researchers warned that pilots shouldn’t let one rip while in the cockpit. “On the one hand, if the pilot restrains a fart, all the drawbacks previously mentioned, including impaired concentration, may affect his abilities to control the plane,” researchers said in the study, according to AFP. “On the other hand, if he lets go of the fart, his co-pilot may be affected by its odor, which again reduces safety onboard the flight.”

….The study also found that the average person passes gas up to 10 times a day and that a woman’s fart smells worse than a man’s.

A little factoid, the truth of which The Lovely Jenny will never admit; then again, TLJ doesn’t “fart”, she “fluffs”!

And for those of you confused by our reference to crop-dusting, we’d never heard the term either:

But suffice it to say henceforth, we’ll be alert for two things on every flight: individuals uttering any variant of “Allahu Akbar”….and those walking down the aisle with a cell phone pressed against their bum!

Magoo