An Even More Interesting Open Thread and other scary stuff...

Thanks to Koshkat, we have an interesting topic for discussion:

How do you define censorship?

No introduction or explanation. I have a clear definition, but what do you think?



Halloween Tradition:
What is your tradition for Halloween? I remember as a kid, it was THE best holiday ever. Even better than Christmas morning. We got to run around the neighborhood demanding candy...CANDY...from all the adults...AND they have to give it to us or face the threat of a trick! It was the perfect extortion plan. What could be better than that? Okay, so you had to wear a scratchy costume with a stupid plastic mask that you couldn't really see through that could cause bodily harm that sometimes required...ugh...a sweater, but CAAAAANNNNDDDDYYY! And you could wear lots and lots of red lipstick and EYE SHADOW and adults couldn't say anything even if it was blue!!!

Thousands (well, it seemed like thousands) of children running willy-nilly from house to house conspiring as we went along as to which house was giving the best treats! And free CAAAANNNDDDYYY everwhere you went. And every once in while there would be that special house that gave out full-sized Hershey chocolate bars! Full-sized!!! Yeah, and then there would be those houses that gave out fruit (what was up with that?) that could have been laced with razor blades or homemade popcorn balls that might have been filled with dangerous poisons like vitamins, but who ate those anyway, right? It was glorious. Of course we always had to have dinner first, but who could eat when you knew...KNEW...that all you had do to was suffer through dinner and then...well...CAAAAAANNNNDDDYYYY was waiting just for the taking! Ah, fun times.

And what is better on Halloween than more stuff about Ebola:
You know the doctor in New York City who devoloped Ebola that caused Govs. Cuomo and Christie to institute that mandatory quarantine? Well, it appears that his voluntary quarantine was not as he orginally described. He said that he self-quarantined himself in his Harlem apartment taking his temperature, however, now it is being reported that was all a big lie. It turns out the cops checked his Metrocard activity and discovered his travel schedule. So I am sure that the bowling alley that had to be shut down for decontamination has a case to sue him. Let the games begin.

Oh, and the nurse who was forcibly detained at Liberty Airport in New Jersey and quarantined is now in Maine. Now,the Governor of Maine has taken action to mandate a mandatory quarantine in Maine. As would be expected, the nurse has filed suit because she has been treated unfairly. Is it so unreasonable to ask that those who have had direct exposure to actually be responsible enough to limit their field of exposure for 21 days just out a sense of sensible caution and not to cause general panic?

On a finally note:

I would just like mention that it has now been two years as of October 10, 2012 since we lost our dear Lawrence Hawk (a/k/a LawHawkRDF and LawHawkSF) and may I speak for all us that he is still very much missed...

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Interesting Question Open Thread

I have an interesting question for you tonight. Take a look at the image below. This was handed out as part of a vocabulary test recently to sixth graders. Do you think this is appropriate material to be giving them or not? Thoughts?

I will share my thoughts after you all have a chance to voice yours.

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EBOLA and other headaches

I really did not want to have to discuss this again. But, are you panicked enough yet? Well, I'm not, but, if Govs Cuomo and Christie need an issue to rally the electorate...hey, who am I to judge. No doubt you have heard that Govs. Cuomo (D/NY) and Christie (R/NJ) conspired together to mandate a mandatory quarantine for anyone entering their respective atates who come from West Africa.

Firstly, I would think that common sense would say that if you have been in West Africa and been actively treating Ebola patients that volunarily limiting one's contact with the general public and travelling by subway should be limited for 21 days and that this should not be an unreasonble request. However, I am not sure exactly how state governors have the authority to mandate a quarantine since I would think that our airports fall under federal jurisdiction. [I mean, if Gov. Perry is condemned for being forced to activate his National Guard to protect his southern border, how is it that Govs Christie and Cuomo do not face the same criticism?] Though I understand that in election year, one with a political agenda must appear to be proactive and it may be politcal advantageous. But seriously, can't we do better than this?

A tent with no runnng water, no shower facility, and no other electronic capabilty other than a cellphone to communicate. What was Gov. Christie thinking? Is there anyone with a functioning brain actually in charge?

Oh, yeah, no one has brought this up, but I will. The CDC, that government body that is tasked with spending the taxpayers money to developing a solid protocol for combating real biological threats to humanity, would actually spend their time and valuable resources on issues other than fantasy threats like - Zombie preparedness And we wonder why our confidence in our goverment agencies is at an all time low and we are unprepared for any solid protocol for a real-life contagion. How much did this cost the taxpayers? I just wonder how much we paid for this? Is there any wonder why we have lost confidence in our government agencies and their preparedness?

To be accurate, both Governors have backed off their mandate to forcibly mandate a quarantine at the behest of President Obama. However, who is really in charge of the message? My panic is only that no one is willing to present a clear message.

Any thoughts?

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Idiocy Repeated Is Still Idiocy

Stop me if you heard this before, but Hillary just said, “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses [sic] create jobs.” I guess she got a hold of Obama’s “you didn’t make that” playbook. Morons.

Before we take Hillary’s idiocy apart, consider the following facts: there are 140 million jobs in the US. Of those, 120 million were created by private sector firms. The other 20 million are government jobs, which only exist because of funding obtained from taxing the other 120 million employees and the businesses that employ them.

Businesses in the United States invented almost everything you touch or use every single day. Sometimes, the government got the ball rolling, like with the internet, but their invention languished until the public got involved when private firms realized they could make a buck improving the internet. Even things the government “built,” like the nation’s highways, were actually built by private contractors. Heck, there were more private contractors making sure the military could function in Iraq and Afghanistan than there were soldiers.

So at best, Hillary’s statement is backwards: “Don’t let anyone tell you the government is capable of creating jobs.” But she didn’t say that because she’s an idiot. Instead, she said the same moronic thing Obama did. She said that the only people who can create jobs are the ones who actually create jobs without the help/aid of the private sector. She forgot (or ignored the fact) that the private sector is the group that responds to consumers, which is the primary reason for jobs to exist. She forgot (or ignored the fact) that without being able to skim private sector money, there would be no government. Even the communists depended on taxes taken from capitalists to keep their sclerotic system running.

Hillary went further too. First, she wrongly equated business with “trickle-down economics.” The two are not the same. Moreover, she said of “trick-down economics” that “That has been tried and failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.” Again, she’s ignorant at best. Reagan’s economy was the best the US has had in a hundred years. Her own husband presided over a second great economic period which also was based on the same trickle-down economics she now claims “failed rather spectacularly.” In fact, all of our best economic periods have involved the principles of “trickle-down economics,” and our worst have been the result of liberal economic meddling away from these so-called trickle-down principles. Obama and Carter are the worst for a reason: their passion for big government... LBJ didn’t send us into a generational economic malaise by accident, it was his passion for big government. FDR never did manage to dig us out of depression without all of our competitors literally being put to ruins; his efforts to force the economy out of depression with big government failed year after year.

Hillary either doesn't know this or is intentionally ignoring it. Either way, she's an idiot.

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Stuff Like This Makes My Head Hurt...

Like the title says, stuff like this makes my head hurt. You probably haven't been paying much attention to the plight of the transgendered community or all-women Ivy League schools, but this is the sign of our times. I realize that this subject may be uncomfortable for some of you, but issues like this are becoming more and more prevelant in our "gender fluid" new world order. This time it's at Wellesley College in Boston.

For a little background, Wellesley is one of the traditional all-women's ivy-league colleges and is part of the "Seven Sister Schools" - Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College - all founded in the 19th Century. So you can imagine that they take their feminism really seriously. For the five school that remain "all woman", they now admit transgendered students - males who identify as female, females who identify as males and everything inbetween except males who identify as...well...male.

So here's the story. A female student who identified as male metriculated into Wellesley College as a freshman and asked to be referred to as "he" and as this NYT article indicates "he" was mostly accepted as a "he". So far so good until as a sophomore, he decided to run for the student-government position of the multi-cultural diversity coordinator who would be "responsible for promoting 'a culture of diversity' among students and staff and faculty members." That's when he suddenly found out exactly what happens to a white male who wants to run for a student government position at an all-women's college. When three others who signed up to run for the same position dropped out, the women at the college started a campaign calling for all to "abstain" from voting. And, dear Lord, this is what the leader had to say:

“It wasn’t about Timothy,” the student behind the Abstain campaign told me. “I thought he’d do a perfectly fine job, but it just felt inappropriate to have a white man [emphasis added] there. It’s not just about that position either. Having men in elected leadership positions undermines the idea of this being a place where women are the leaders.”

Seriously, as if being transgendered isn't enough to prove one's street cred in diversity, he is now being discriminated against because he...is...a...white...man. It's feminist insanity at its best or worse. This poor "man" not only has to deal with negotiating a hostile, confused world as a transgendered person, but NOW he has to contend with man-hating femini-nazis too. Like I said, it just makes my head hurt...

As a side note: Hillary Rodham Clinton graduated from Wellesley in 1969. God help us.

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Idiocy and Ebola... Huffpo Style

So I found myself following a link which promised an educational article about Ebola. Sadly, it turns out the article was at HuffPo, so the chances of learning much fell to zero. Ultimately, the article told me nothing except that some woman thinks protective clothing is hard to wear. That's it. Well, actually, the article also told me again how poorly leftists “reason”... it’s just not natural to them.

I don’t remember the name of the woman who wrote the article and I don’t really care, but she spent several pages whining about how hard it is to put on, wear and then remove the protective suits that hazmat teams wear. None of that was particular shocking. Finally, she came to her conclusion. This is where it got stupid. First, she began her conclusion by claiming that our response to Ebola has “drawn out the true vulnerabilities in the health care system.” Interesting. Up to this point, the article has not addressed this issue in any way, so this conclusion comes from out of the blue and you should take it with a grain of salt.

So what does she tell us? Well, she begins by noting that we spend trillions of dollars on healthcare, but we spend it all wrong. Oh no! See, we don’t spend it on “population health.” Sadly, she never tells us what that means or how we misspend the money. So her point is lost at best.

Next, she proclaims that Ebola “should not be a threat to American citizen.” Heck, I agree! And if we kept it from entering the country, then it wouldn't be. But that's not her point. Instead, she says it shouldn't be a threat because we have clean water, information, a means to educate ourselves, proper hand-washing procedures and protective suits.

Ok, hold the phone. Apparently, our little airhead doesn’t realize that this single case of Ebola came from Africa via a man who lied to get on an airplane. It didn’t spring up in the US because we let our water get dirty, because we failed to educate the population about the safe handling of anything, or even from a dirty American toilet seat. So how does any of the above change what happened, much less cause it? It can't, so she's wrong... again. The only reason Americans are facing a possible Ebola problem is because no one has bothered to contain the disease by quarantining the carriers. Funny how she never mentions that. In fact, see how she continues:

“We have the technology, and we certainly have the money to keep Ebola at bay. What we don’t have is communication. What we don’t have is a health care system that values preventative care...”

“Preventative care”? WTF?! Is she really saying that the reason that two or three Americans have Ebola is not because they were infected by the man from Africa but because our insurance-based system doesn’t pay for people to engage in preventative care to prevent Ebola? Would Ebola screening and mammograms have done anything to change this result? Hardly. Again, she's a moron.

It gets worse:

“... What we don’t have is an equal playing field between nurses and physicians and allied health professionals and patients.”

Huh? How does that matter? This is union bullship and has nothing to do with how the Ebola virus works. The lack of communication that failed in this instance was the CDC failing to provide proper guidance to basically everyone who asked them, and that’s on Obama and his team... not some made up lack of unionization of nurses or socialization of hospital structures. If you want to make that kind of claim, you damn well better have at least a grain of evidence.

She continues blathering:

“What we don’t have is a culture of health where we work symbiotically with one another and with the technology that was created specifically to bridge communication gaps.”

Really? It’s interesting that every doctor I’ve ever visited has worked symbiotically with their nurses and staff. Where isn't this true? Again, the real problem here was the CDC and Team Obama politicizing this issue, not some phantom lack of communication among the hospital staff.

“What we don’t have is the social culture of transparency, what we don’t have is a stopgap against mounting hysteria and hypochondria, what we don’t have is nation[sic] of health literate individuals.”

This is so typical of the left. First, note that her position would be entirely flipped around if Bush had been president. Then she would talk about the failure of the evil Bush Team to protect the poor stupid public. But with Obama in charge, she goes the other way and blames the public for making a big deal about what's been done to them. That's calling blaming the victim. And keep in mind, this woman is herself making a big deal about this. In fact, she’s taken an isolated incident which has affected only a handful of people and would have been far less if the CDC had done their jobs, and she’s using that to recommend an unrelated wholesale restructure of the health care industry. That's called exploitation. That's called generating hysteria.

Also, isn’t the word “hysteria” sexist? The left has made this claim in the past.

Finally, our politicized ditship says the following:

“We don’t even have health-literate professionals. Most doctors are specialists and are well versed only in their field. Ask your orthopedist a general question about your health -- see if they can comfortably answer it.”

Wow. First, every specialist I’ve ever met also has basic medical knowledge. Secondly, it’s so painfully obvious that queen ditship doesn’t understand the concept of specialization. Specialization is a way to improve the breadth and depth of skills available. By letting people specialize, you let them focus on areas that a GP simply wouldn’t have the time or skill to do. There is nothing at all wrong with this. In fact, only a retard would say that a cancer doctor must also know how to perform plastic surgery or set bones or handle pediatric indigestion. Humans specialize so that everyone can cover manageable areas and together create a much stronger healthcare system, a system that covers more areas and in greater depth than would be possible without specialization... every field does this. A system that didn’t have specialization is a system that wastes training, wastes skills, and results in lower quality service. And pointing at a plastic surgeon and saying, “He’s not skilled at fighting Ebola” is as stupid as pointing at a waiter and saying, “He’s not skilled at writing computer code!” But ditship doesn’t realize that because her mind is weak and politicized and she's anti-doctor.

And you know what? Even if she was right about any of this, and she isn't, the cost of changing all of this is astronomical compared to quarantining the 2-3 people with the disease... "quarantine" is a word she never uses, by the way. Think about it. Putting 3 people in a hospital isolation ward for a month will cost a fraction of the trillions it would cost to remake the system as she wants it... and which changes aren't in any way justified by this Ebola event.

Sadly, articles like this will continue to get the mouth-breathers at Huffpo to rail against the parts of the healthcare system that work while hypocritically excusing the failures of their God Obama and his politicized, incompetent CDC team. Leftists suck.

Thoughts?

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An Open Thread, the Opera...

Sorry, ladies and gentlmen, but I am little under the weather this evening so I will make this brief. And no, it is not Ebola. And anyway, that was last week's crisis. We are moving on to new, more improved crises for this week.

Here's one as we move into the final stages of "Election 2014". Obama is clearly panicking as he has already started throwing in everything he can think of at his potential election crisis. Now he wants to be fully evolved on the issue of same-sex marriage and has announced that the Constitution supports same-sex marriage. I do not disagree with him, however he should have evolved long ago for this not to look like such an obvious political play.

Speaking of political plays, or operas in this case, here is our newest NYC crisis: The Metropolitan Opera opened their new season tonight with a production of a new opera called "Klinghoffer" and has the entire city in an uproar. As explained in a Huffpo article, the opera "explores the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jewish passenger in a wheelchair by members of the Palestine Liberation Front during the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship".

Needless to say the family of Mr. Klinghoffer is outraged that the Palestinian terrorists who murdered their father in cold blood, are given a voice at all and especially at one of the most respected institutions in NYC. There have been calls for months from all quarters of the city to cancel the production because of its anti-Semitic overtones which has culmanated in a huge protest at Lincoln Center tonight which included former Mayor Guiliani. He stated, and I think that he is right in this:

“The Met, and those who decide to go see this production, have every right to do so, and it would be hypocritical and anti-American for us to interfere with that, and to stop that,” Mr. Giuliani said at the rally. “They have that right. But we also have a right, just as strong, and just as compelling to point out the historical inaccuracy and the historical damage this contributed to.”

He has a point and one that he has made before. In 1995, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani expelled Nobel Peace Prize winner and Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat from a concert at Lincoln Center for UN leaders because of the Palestinian attacks on the Achille Lauro. As I recall, Giuliani said that Arafat could be in the city because he was a delegate to the UN, but he couldn't enjoy himself while here. It became a huge headache for the President Clinton who called it an "embarrassing breach of diplomacy" and then invited Arafat to the WH for tea. But that is exactly why I liked Giuliani. He was brave enough to cause such a breach to do what was right.

So talk amongst yourselves and I will join in when I can.

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Wake Me Up Before You Vote Vote

I saw an odd headline the other day about Michelle Obama. According to the headline, she was encouraging “women and minorities” to “wake up,” like some sort of call to arms. This struck me as an interesting appeal, especially given Obama’s track record with both groups. But it turns out that wasn’t what she meant. She literally meant to wake up and not to sleep through voting day. Good grief.

To start with, let me laugh at Michelle Obama having to tell her supporters to get their lazy butts out of bed. That really adds to the stereotype of her followers being lazy and useless, and it explains why they aren’t more successful. Seriously, what normal person needs to be told to get out of bed by their leaders? The pathologically lazy is about all who come to mind.

She did try to expand the point a bit to include those who simply aren’t paying attention, but that hardly makes it better. Basically, she wants her supporters to go grab their sleep nephews or college dorm mates, their indifferent aunts and neighbors, and the rest of their lazy families “who are like, no, I ain’t going to vote, or I couldn’t wake up.” So I guess laziness runs in families. Anyway, nice grammar, lady.

But let's look at the bigger picture, shall we? Let us assume Madame O actually meant “wake up and realize what is happening to you.” This is a rather ridiculous thing for her to say. Do you know why? Well, consider her behavior and her husband's record and you'll see.

First, Madame O has spent her time suckling off the taxpayers. Five star hotels. Shopping in the most expensive shops around the world. Taking Air Force One to restaurants. This woman has lived like Marie Antoinette on steroids. For her to claim that somehow these poor, supposedly-oppressed women and minorities should support her is borderline insane. Imagine if Warren Buffett made the same appeal! Not to mention, they already support her! Every penny of the social security they collect from the few who work and every dollar of the benefits the rest get that gets taxed goes to pay Michelle's lavish lifestyle. So her appeal to wake up really should be met with, "What the hell are you doing with my hard-earned money?"... and maybe a guillotine.

Then there’s her husband. He has presided over a collapse in minority employment, minority household incomes, and minority net worth. They took the brunt of the housing bubble because they owned the subprime homes and nothing was done to bail them out. They were tricked by liberals into getting worthless degrees in African American or Gender Studies which left them unemployable and with vast debt. Liberals run the schools that seem to specialize in not teaching minority kids to read and write or do math. And Obama has done nothing to shake any of this up, even as middle class white parents are pushing their kids into charter and private schools at amazing rates. To the contrary, he's tried to block the door to save his teachers union buddies. He didn't fix the housing issue either, preferring instead to send trillions to the nation's largest banks. He's done nothing to help small (minority) businesses get credit either.

From the ranks of identity politics, he’s presided over the collapse of the black Congressional district under the Civil Rights Act with nary a genuine peep. He’s watched helplessly as voter ID laws quickly spread around the country. He’s whined, but done nothing else, as Affirmative Action basically has been strangled by the Supreme Court. He did appoint a black guy as Attorney General and an Hispanic chick to the Supreme Court, but neither is all that competent and won't make anyone proud. Beyond that, his minority appointments have been few and far between, and the White House continues to pay women far less than it pays men, not to mention it fought the extension of benefits to gays for as long as Obama thought he could. And look at Hispanics. He’s made all kinds of false promises to them!

So what exactly has Obama done to help minorities? We know what he’s done to crush them, but what has he done to help? The answer is nothing.

You know, Michelle is right, it is time for minorities to wake up and to see that Obama and the democrats are not their friends. So yeah... wake up. Oh, and get out of bed and get a job.

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New York State of Mind and other Ebola-related stuff...

It has been awhile since I have reported on the state of New York. Like so many other states, we are well into the 2014 midterm election cycle. We will be either re-electing Andrew Cuomo or moving in another direction with Rob Astorino (R).

So far, Cuomo is leading by double digits, so I do not expect Astorino to win. But then again, Cuomo won't talk or debate anyone, but he is pushing a new party - the Women's Equality Party...yeah. Hey, his three daughters and current mistress Sandra Lee (Food Network star) are advertising a new political party in New York. Yeah, I feel better now.

But in other news, we have a new mayor. Oh, I know you think that Bill DeBlasio has been our mayor since January 1, 2014, but you'd be wrong. Actually he is being held hostage by Al Sharpton. Ugh. It's not it wasn't predictable. So here's the poop. Mayor Bill decided he wanted his wife to be an important part of his administration. Yey. So he appointed his wife, Chirlane to head (unpaid) the Mayor's Fund To Advance New York. So far, so good. But then she appointed as her highly paid assistant at $170K a year to be Rachel Noedlinger. Okay, not bad...well except that Noedlinger was Al Sharpton's second in command at his National Action Network. Okay, still not so bad.

But then, it has come to the attention of the press and everyone else that Ms. Noedlinger has some issues. [Surprise, surprise] As a potential highly paid employee of the city of New York one has to fill out a full disclosure form. And as always it is not what is disclose that is the problem. It is what is NOT disclosed.

First, when one applies for a city government position, one must reside in New York City. So, Noedlinger, who, like Al Sharpton, lives in New Jersey. She received a special waiver because of her son who she claimed had been in a so damaged in a car accident that he couldn't be moved. Well, he apparently was injured yet played on his high school football team. Strike One.

Next it was revealed that she forgot to inform anyone that she lived with her boyfriend who is a convicted felon - attempted murder. Now, he's served his time...but then he punched out a cop in a routine traffic violation. Oops. Then it was reported that he was stopped for another minor traffic violation while driving without a valid driver's licence (her car) and while driving under the influence of...well, a herbal substance...with Noedlinger's son. Strike two and three

Oh, that's not all. Noedlinger forgot to reveal that she has a tax lien and owes $800 worth of parking violations in NYC. Strike four and five.

Now anyone who fills out these forms and was hired by the City of New York would face immediate dismissal for any one of these disclosure failures. But not Noedlinger. The Mayor is standing by his man...Al Sharpton. Deblasio has proclaimed that there is nothing to see here and refuses to talk to the press. Deblasio has declared that there will be no other discussion and the new age of Al Sharpton has begun. Where is Mayor Bloomberg when we need him. Oh, he is back in control of Bloomberg, Inc. It turns out he really, really likes being a billionaire! Who knew?

In other news - Ebola...the saga continues.

It has been reported that a second nurse who was exposed while administering to Michael Duncan in Dallas has been diagnosed with Ebola. Now this is somewhat different because she just took a little round-trip plane trip to Cleveland with the blessing of the CDC. Now, one would think that any reasonable person who had been exposed to a highly contagious disease would self-quarantine or maybe the CDC would require them to be quarantined. But apparently these times are not reasonable. To her credit, she did seek clearance from the CDC who okayed her travel. Yet, as has been revealed, she travelled with a low-grade fever to and from Cleveland...on an airplane with the blessing of CDC. Because she is now not in good shape, she has been moved to Emory in Atlanta. And Frontier Airlines is scrambling to inform the people who flew, crewed and clean out the plane that made seven flights after she flew on it. By the way, no one has stated how long the Ebola virus hangs around on surfaces after exposure. I am SO glad the CDC is on top of this stuff.

I was recently asked what my greatest fear is. Without thinking, I immediately answered "irony". When asked what that meant, I really couldn't respond coherently. I sputtered for a few minutes and then responded that it was those "knock on wood" statements that we make. The "I could/would/should nwver" or "it could/would/should NEVER happen. But, after thinking for a few weeks, I finally can respond coherently. It is those moments when we proclaim that this could never happen and then it does. Like right now. The President has claimed for months along with the CDC that we have nothing to fear from Ebola because it...could/would/should...NEVER...happen here. Oh, the sad irony.

As an aside - I finally realized that my fear of irony was born during 9/11. The early morning of September 11, 2001, the weatherman on my radio station proclaimed "...there is no other way to say it, folks. It's gonna be a PERFECT day!" I can't recall a more imperfect day in my life...

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The Democrats Won't Win By Losing

One of our readers referred me to an interesting article last week. The article was at Politico and it was titled “Good News, Democrats, You’re Going to Lose!” The gist of the article is that the Democrats will be better off losing the Senate to the Republicans, as appears inevitable. The article makes some interesting points, but ultimately it is just sour grapes and it relies on biased assumptions.

According to the article, the issue is this. The Republicans will win the Senate. Far from being upset by this, the Democrats should be ecstatic because “the Democrats will get to kick back with a large tub of buttery popcorn and watch the Republican soap operate hit peak suds.” Specifically, the author thinks the Tea Party candidates will turn the Senate into a “sit-com” as “grandstanders like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz” go to war with the GOP leadership. This will push the Republicans to the loony fringes and turn the public off. Hence, in 2016, the public will be ready to embrace the Democrats with big sloppy wet kisses.

As proof, the author claims that Mitch McConnell has mapped out a confrontational strategy with Obama, whereby the Republicans will include all kind of fringe things in budget bills and dare Obama to veto them. He also claims that while the Republican leadership has defused the worst landmines in the primaries, they’ve done this by papering over their differences with their fringe. Finally, he notes that the Republicans no longer even talk about the things they normally stand for like cutting taxes.

I would add that, superficially, there is additional support for this in proclamations by fringers like Mike Huckabee who threatened this week to leave the GOP for failing to obsess enough about gays and abortion.

So this all sounds reasonable, right? Well, no.

The problem with this idea is that it fundamentally misunderstands much of what is going on. For starters, when has the opposition not mapped out a confrontational strategy against a president from another party... especially such an unpopular president? This idea means nothing, especially as McConnell is far too savvy to be pulled into anything stupid. In fact, even the author notes that the GOP leadership killed off any more shutdowns. So why should we believe that once McConnell controls the Senate, with few Tea Partiers in the Senate, that McConnell will suddenly let them run wild or embrace their lunacy to keep the peace? Don’t forget, this is the man who just successfully defended himself against the combined weight of every single Tea Party group in the country to win a crushing win in his primary.

Next, the author completely underestimates the importance of what happened in the primaries. The leadership didn’t rid itself of the fringe by “papering over” their disagreements! Ha! They went to war with the fringe -- Ted Cruz even whined about fringers being carpet-bombed by the evil leadership. The result was a party that crushed its fringe and retook control over itself. Not a single Tea Partier won a victory in this primary over an establishment candidate. And the effect has been dramatic. Indeed, since the end of the primaries, notice that you hear almost nothing but whimpers from the likes of FreedomWorks and the nutjobs who lost. Most disappeared back into the woodwork and the rest are busy trying to salvage their fundraising. Even Cruz has barely said a word against the party in months.

So what about calls to break away? Going into the primaries, the fringers genuinely thought they had the backing of the people. But the primaries exposed them as what they are – a fringe, even within the GOP. They know now that forming a separate party would do nothing but make them even less relevant. So now we know that not only can the party afford to lose them, but they can't afford to leave the party. This has become a paper threat.

For these reasons, this author is flat out wrong if he believes the GOP will stage a civil war. Not to mention, the Senate isn’t that kind of place anyways. The Senate is not a democracy and the Senate leader has too much power for a couple of malcontents to cause any real trouble. All they can do is talk, and the GOP leadership has an effective strategy to neuter that now.

As for not talking about tax cuts, the reason is that no one is listening to that issue. The Republicans have failed to sell the benefits of tax cuts for too long and the issue has gone cold. Instead, the public is worried about a lack of job, the cost of healthcare, the damage of Obamacare, the effects of the failure of Obama’s presidency, and protecting our society from intruders and foreign diseases and foreign religious nuts. You don’t talk tax cuts in that atmosphere.

The author also takes a shot at the GOP for failing to implement the recommendations of their post-2012 “autopsy,” but again, that shows a lack of knowledge. All the autopsy really said was that the GOP needs to implement a better technological approach to voter outreach. That has nothing to do with controlling the Senate.

This whole article strikes me as biased sour grapes. This author has a leftist view of the GOP as hopelessly fringey and he just assumes the GOP will act like Huffpo’s worst nightmare says they will. But the GOP is much better controlled and far less fringey than it was in 2012. Moreover, political parties have ways to hold their worst instincts in check when they assume power. Look at the Democrats, who squandered a supermajority in 2008-2010 because they were afraid to pull the trigger on anything. Look at Newt in the 1990s, who could have taken Reagan’s ideas to an extreme as all the think tanks on the right wanted, but who mainly tinkered with House procedures and then passed only a handful of truly significant bills.

I’m not saying things will go well or that talk radio will stop its fratricidal war against the GOP, but I am saying that the GOP is highly unlikely to implode through extremism because (1) it killed its extremists, and (2) the natural instinct of parties in power is to pander to the public to get more power, not go on an ideological revolution... and Mitch McConnell is too old school and savvy not to know that.

Thoughts?

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Ebola

Let's just get this out of the way. Ebola is a scary disease with a 10% to 75% survival rate (or for those with a "glass half empty" attitude - 25% to 90% death rate). The virus may be acquired upon contact with blood or other bodily fluids of an infected human or other animal* and the incubation period is 2 to 21 days.

The typical symptoms with known exposure are "sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat". This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. There is no specific treatment for Ebola and though it is still in the experimental stages, there is no vaccine available. -Info from www.WHO.int

The virus was identified in 1976 and I have casually followed various Ebola outbreaks since I read "The Hot Zone" in the early'90's (weird hobby, I know). The current vast and wide outbreak in West Africa has been growing exponentially for months and statistics state that nearly 9000 have been effected and over 4000 have died so far and it does not seem to be letting up. From what I have observed over the years, past outbreaks have been detected and quarantined/isolated quickly with usually about 300 people dead by the time it burns out. Why this has gotten so out of control is mind-boggling.

Now for the bad news - Unless you have been living off the grid for the last few weeks, you no doubt know that the US had it first domestic death from an Ebola infection in Dallas. The victim was a Liberian national travelling to the US after known exposure for which he did not disclose when leaving Liberia. And now, one of the nurses who cared for him has now been diagnosed and has the dubious honor of being our first domestic infection with at least 70 others at risk. There is a lot of speculation and a lot of accusations as to how the emergency room personnel screwed up by not recognizing his symptoms as Ebola. Let's be honest. What were the odds that a man walking into a hospital in the US - ANY hospital - would have been immediately identified as a patient with Ebola. Some of the other accusations are just ridiculous, so I won't even go there.

But what is the most disturbing is that, even though the epidemic was growing in West Africa, the CDC had no plan until Dallas. I guess I have always assumed that they operated like the team in "Criminal Minds" where they activate their special units of experts trained in highly infectious diseases who would swoop in, set up perimeters, create quarantine centers and issue mandated (and proven) protocols. You know, the special government agents in hazmat suits would know exactly how to handle and disinfect the victim's living quarters and isolate those who had been exposed. I guess I was wrong. Since they are among the same goverment agencies who allowed someone to run around the WH because they forgot to lock the front door, I'm guessing expecting them to secure our borders from potential pandemics would be too much of a stretch.

All that being said, now is not the time to lay blame, or to become hysterical. This really isn't the time that we root for our leadership to fail even though the likelihood of being exposed to Ebola are very low. But on the bright side, there will be time to lay blame for the upcoming 2016 election cycle...if we survive.

*Interesting fact - Fruit bats are natural carriers of the Ebola virus. So if you see a fruit bat wearing a cowboy hat...run.

UPDATE: While I was writing this, it was reported that there were three suspected Ebola patients who were taken to or showed up at Belleview Hospital in NYC...

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Seeing Red In Colorado

I’m always wary of speaking too soon, but it seems that a lesson is being taught in Colorado right now, and the result will be a strong showing for the GOP. That lesson? Drop “the culture war.”

For years now, Colorado has been drifting further and further into Democratic ranks. Frankly, it’s become a blue state. The reason for this is a combination of an influx of Californians who are morons and vote for the moron party and the fact the GOP excels at turning off voters. How has the GOP done this? By turning into a cult.

Look, when I grew up out here, Colorado was very conservative in the sense that Reagan was conservative. Coloradans believed in small government, limited regulation and a right to be left alone. But at the same time, they favored strong defense and law and order. In terms of values, they liked traditional values but with a live and let live flavor which meant you didn’t impose them on others. Essentially, we wanted to be left alone so long as we didn’t bother other people or cause problems. We wanted to be safe, but free. We trusted business, but we also trusted a small, focused government to regulate them. And we didn’t want to control our neighbors. This was the atmosphere in Colorado.

In the 1990s, things began to change. For whatever reason, we suddenly got an influx of Religious Right groups, like Focus on the Family who still have headquarters here. These people quickly took over the GOP and changed it. Suddenly, the live and let live attitude was replaced with a paranoia that wanted the government to make sure nothing untoward was happening in the neighbor’s bedroom. Economics vanished from the Colorado GOP agenda. People fled the party in droves. Even in Colorado Springs, which sits in the most conservative county in the country, Democrats suddenly became competitive for city council because people couldn’t stomach the obsession with gays and abortion and forcing prayer on public schools. They were worried instead about little things like roads and taxes.

In addition to this problem, the GOP also managed to pick up some fringers like Tom Tancredo whose only issue was his visceral hatred of Mexicans... and Republicans who disagreed with him.

The result was a GOP that became irrelevant and was becoming less relevant every year.

Suddenly, however, it looks like the GOP will win a Senate seat again as Cory Gardner appears ready to defeat Democratic marshmallow Mark Udall. The Denver Post even endorsed Gardener this last weekend. The GOP looks set to win the governorship too. And it looks like they will hold onto a House seat the Democrats had targeted; the Democrats announced this weekend they are cancelling $1 million in ads to help former state House speaker Mark Romanov try to defeat incumbent Republican Mike Coffman. That is a sure sign they think the race can no longer be won.

So what happened? Well, each of these Republicans has abandoned the whole insane culture war stuff. Both Coffman and Gardner have endorsed allowing over-the-counter sales of birth control, i.e. “the pill.” The reasons for this are twofold. First, as a policy matter, easier access to birth control has demonstrated that it will lead to a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies, which means fewer abortions. So this really can be seen as a way to reduce abortions. Secondly, this immunizes the GOP candidate from attacks that he wants to ban birth control. In fact, the reason the Post endorsed Gardner was that Udall has been blasting him with only one issue: CORY GARDNER WANTS TO BAN BIRTH CONTROL!!, and the Post called this dishonest. And with Gardner not talking about abortion at all, his campaign has resonated.

Similarly, Coffman has embraced the idea of allowing the pill to be sold over the counter (this is a GOP idea which is spreading fast even as it brings out calls of “RINO” as Bobby Jindal discovered when he became the first to try it) and he’s renounced his former support of the “personhood” amendment, which would ban abortion and do some very bad things.

Our gubernatorial candidate, Bob Beauprez, has run as a moderate while pounding away on Democratic Governor Hickenlooper’s signing of extremist anti-gun rights bills and some anti-capital punishment stuff. Hickenlooper is generally a moderate, but he stuck his neck out on those issues and now he’s paying for it. And Beauprez can capitalize on this because he’s focused on that rather than ridding the state of gays and abortion doctors.

This is an amazing turn around for the moribund Colorado GOP. And the message is clear: the public will support GOP candidates when they come across as normal and not fringey. And fringey doesn’t even mean moderate, it just means not being obsessed and showing priorities that align with those of the public. Indeed, neither Gardner nor Coffman is pro-abortion. They just don’t talk about the issue. And they don’t lump it in with birth control as Rick Santorum does, and they don’t foam at the mouth about how evil it is and they don’t cry about it in debates.

So the moral is that you can have religious conservative values or libertarian conservative values or whatever conservative values, just so long as you don’t foam at the mouth about them and so long as you don’t oppose things the public will never surrender (like a right to birth control). Win the public on the public’s terms and save the fringy stuff for later once you’ve won the public’s trust to see more of your agenda put into place.

That is what has saved Colorado from being a totally blue state this cycle. That can help the GOP fix a lot of its problems nationwide.

Thoughts?

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Caption This - Joe Biden Apology Tour Edition

Oh, that wacky Joe Biden. Just when we thought we were safe, he had to open his big trap. Okay, we haven't heard from Joe Biden in while. And apparently for good reason. When he opens his mouth invariably he inserts his foot.

This time he was speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School where in the course of his speech, he implied that Turkey and the other regional allies have supplied "or facilitated" the growth of ISIL and other extremists in Syria. He even went all folksy about how President Erdogan of Turkey was "an old friend" and that he admitted to Biden that Turkey screwed up by allowing foreign fighters to cross into Syria.

It is just fine to tell "the truth" however, when trying to create a coalition to help defeat ISIL and global terrorism in general, insulting entire regions probably is not a wise move. Biden is marketed as a savvy politician and an expert in foreign policy, yet he has had to apologize to Turkey, UAE, and Saudi Arabia for his remarks. At best, his diplomatic skills are just amateurish. And, as tech savvy as the this Administration is, they cannot seem to grasp that when someone from the Administration makes these kinds of statements anyplace, even at the hallowed hall of Harvard Kennedy School, it will be heard by more than just those who attend.

But they don't understand that the words they choose matter. Earlier in the month, Biden referred to bankers as "Shylocks" which got the Anti-Defamation League's backs up. Then he used the outdated imperialist term "the Orient" which got the Asian-American's backs up. [But then Harry Reid didn't help when he jokingly remarked "...I don’t think you’re smarter than anybody else, but you’ve convinced a lot of us you are" and “One problem I’ve had today is keeping my Wongs straight.” in Vegas to the Asian Chamber of Commerce.] Maybe Joe Biden just can't help himself.

So, fearing that he may have to chew on more shoe leather, let's get ahead of the game. I mean, we haven't made light of "Ol' Joe" in a while, so let's have some fun. Maybe if we come up with just the right statement he can use that will insult everyone in the world all at once, he can just make one big apology and get it over. Then just maybe the world will be a much more cooperative, happy place. Let's do this for "World Peace", People!

So, here's the photo. Do your stuff for sake of all mankind...er...humankind!

By the way, I hear from "The Management" that there may be prizes for the best caption that may (or may not) include a no-expense paid vacation to anywhere in the world you want to pay to go!

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It's The End of the World As We Know It...

Of all the things to write about, I have decided to turn once again to Micheal Savage. Why? Because Savage has given us a dire warning that should shake us to our very cores: we have one month left to save the country!

Savage has written a new book. In it, he apparently claims that from the moment of his election, Obama set out to cause an American Civil War by letting in a "flood of Central American illegal aliens and the entry of the Ebola virus to the U.S." Savage sees this as the "worldwide left... attempting nothing less than a socialist takeover of the world economy and global politics." He even claims that Biden admitted this when he stated the other day that the "post-World War II order is literally fraying at the seams." He then pounces:

“What was he trying to say?” Savage asked. “Was he playing like he’s suddenly discovered what he’s done to the country? And now he’s triangulating his opposition to make believe he’s the savior? It’s not just a joke,” he told WND. “We’re at the end of the road here.”

Hence, we must impeach Obama now!

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

Ok, let me point out first and foremost that if you believe anything Savage says, then you are probably a paranoid moron. Sorry, but it's true. Now let's take down this particular idiocy.

(1) When Obama took office, he had no idea that there would be a flood of Central America kids shipped north. So how likely is it that this was all part of some nefarious plan to cause a civil war? Oh, that's right, facts don't matter to the paranoid. Further, there were only about 30,000 of these immigrants. Compared to the two million immigrants the US adds each year, that's not even noticeable. Moreover, they're kids. Are we to believe that an "army" of 30,000 Hispanic children will undo the US? If that can happen, then we've got bigger problems than Obama.

(2) Biden is a big enough fool that anyone who looks for meaning in his words is an idiot. And to take something Biden said that's actually sort of right and to then spin it into an admission of some secret plot Biden is aware of is just downright moronic. No one... no one will ever make Biden part of their conspiracy. So if this is the best Savage has to support his claim, then he clearly pulled his claim out of his butt.

(3) Savage hasn't noticed, because I guess his bunker doesn't have much access to the real world, but the worldwide left no longer exists. It has devolved into a series of small whiner groups who each want separate things and don't really have a plan to get any of it. He also seems to have missed the fact that every leftist cause is imploding the world over. China, the last communist regime, declared that to get rich is glorious. Go capitalism! Whoops. The big socialist Eurozone has imploded in mess of budget cuts. Venezuela went socialist and they don't even have toilet paper anymore. Leftist politicians are on the run in Brazil and Argentina. Environmentalism collapsed in Copenhagen, thanks to Obama's indifference. Feminists pushed hard for laws requiring equal pay and that didn't happen... anywhere. The third world has rejected almost all of Western leftism as "cultural imperialism." The left was pushed out of the Middle East entirely as it was replaced with Islamic-based governments. And so on.

(4) If Savage really is worried about all of this, why is he trying to stop the civil war? Shouldn't he be hoping for the civil war, since the civil war will give him a chance to defeat Obama and restore America to its Ebola-free glory? Oh wait... Savage doesn't actually want that. He just wants to sell you his book. As an aside, Savage goes out of his way to claim that he didn't write this book to make money because, by gosh, he doesn't need the money. snicker snicker Yeah, sure.

You know, the only reason I actually wrote about this was just to point out how far Savage has descended into retardery. There is so much to be upset about with Obama that I wish people with the power to reach the public would do an honest job of pointing those things out. The economy stinks and Obama's policies have made things worse, especially if you are young, poor or black. Obamacare made medicine more expensive for everyone, did nothing to improve quality, and only improved access marginally by giving it out for free -- something that could have been done without all the disruptions. He's done nothing to improve education. He's done nothing to improve race relations. He's done nothing to heal any of the rifts this country has. He's done nothing to improve our standing overseas. He's gotten us into wars that seem both endless and pointless the way they are being fought, which means soldiers are dying for no apparent purpose. He's done nothing to secure people's homes or pensions. He's done nothing to make Wall Street bailouts less likely or to free up credit for Main Street or to make life easier for small business.

This is what we should be focusing on with Obama, not some fantasy plan to cause a civil war in the US, not some paranoid idea that he wants to give us all Ebola by bringing a handful of patients here for treatment, not nebulous paranoid claims about Obama being a secret Muslim or imposing black power or some other bit of racist paranoia.

When you have someone as inept and disastrous as Obama, you don't need to invent paranoid fantasies to rally the public against him. And if you want proof of this, consider the fact that his approval ratings crash when Obama is in the news, and they rise when fringe-Republicans are in the news attacking him. This isn't hard folks... it just doesn't make Michael Savage any money.

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Ben Affleck Is An Idiot...

I don't often (if ever) agree with Bill Maher, but I have to rant in his defense. Bill Maher and Sam Harris are trying to make a valid point. Radical Islamist cannot be ignored just because there are a billion "moderate" Muslims in the world who wish no one harm and that liberals are dangerously hypocritical if they ignore it. If only 20% of the supposed 1.5 billion global population of Muslims are "radicals", then that is over 300,000,000 radicals. to put that in perspective, that is just about the population of the US in the last census. Please listen to this exchange on Real Time:



The point that Maher and Harris are trying to make is that liberals fail miserably by not speaking out about this. If they champion equality for women and homosexuals, and yet fail to speak out about what conservative and radical Muslims do to subjugate both, they fail miserably. But, according to Ben Affleck, because not every single Muslim is radical and wants to kill then no one should criticize Islam at all. If we want to start "the conversation" about what is truly right and wrong, then we cannot allow leftist idiots like Ben Affleck to shut down any discussion or frankly, to even allow them to ba a part of the conversation. They are useless because they shut the conversation down with their moral equivalence and their sheer idiocy.

Let me be honest. In my opinion, Ben Affleck is an idiot...a liberal idiot and a dangerously stupid one at that. He argues even though neither Ben Harris nor Bill Mayer are stating that ALL followers of Islam are terrorists, that anyone who criticizes Islam is Islamaphobic and that anyone who wishes to stop Islamic-led terrorism, is a bigot and racists just because they dare to criticize beheadings, stonings, gentital mutilations, and the attempted assasinations of young girls who wish to learn to read. Seriously, why is anyone asking Ben Affleck for his opinion anyway? He's an actor - an over-protected, over-pampered, over-paid, body-guard protected, only has a high-school diploma...ACTOR.

Okay, I have ended my rant.

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Open Thread

Due to a lengthy weekend, I must sadly leave you with an open thread today. Share your thoughts. Tell us what you see in the news. Is Ebola coming to get you? Are you sure?

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Caption This - The Cup-gate Edition

Okay, what can I say. I missed so much while communing with nature. Wars have been "declared" sort of. Well, Obama has finally gotten religion about global terrorism though he did blame the "intelligence community" for not making him take seriously enough.

And Amal Alamuddin, a well-respected internationally reknowned criminal defense attorney and human rights advocate married...an actor. It has been on the front page of the New York newspapers for 6 days and counting. Wow, you'd think that George Clooney finally got married!

And someone actually jumped the fence and walked right in the front door of the White House and ran around for a while. Not before decking a female agent and causing the Secret Service director Julia Pierson to resign earlier today. Of course it is really absurd that no one bothered to actually lock the front door. And all this after a subversive 2-year-old slipped through the fence and was immediately surrounded by the entire WH Secret Service detail with guns drawn only a few week ago.

Oh, and wait, there's this - long-time champion short-stop and all-around nice guy Derek Jeter played his last game for the New York Yankees this week. It's a sad day for baseball.

And who can forget this! Chelsea Clinton had a girl - Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky. Awww, we love babies and what better for the former and future Presidents Clinton than to welcome their first grandchild! Mazel Tov!

But this...THIS is what is the craziest!

I call it "Cup-Gate"! Do they have a Starbucks on Air Force One now? Sweeeeet! And I thought they had special china cups and saucers and stuff on AF1. I hope he recycled that paper cup after he finished with it! Well, at least he didn't hand it to one of the saluting Marines, right?

Anyway, let's have some fun. How would you....CAPTION THIS!

But as always, feel free to change the subject because we have no rules here.

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More Shock Numbers That Don't Shock

We’ve spoken before about numbers that were meant to shock you, but which really don’t amount to much when you think about them. A couple more numbers like that were released last week, with predictable results.

● Lazy Bastards Surround Us!

The first number sounded horrible: 23.2% of adults between the ages of 25-54 are not working. That’s 28.9 million people!! This naturally brought calls of laziness and predictions that American competitiveness has come grinding to a halt. As you might expect, this is garbage.

For starters, only 6.1% of the public is unemployed. That works out to about 9.5 million people. But they aren’t all unemployed because they are lazy. Some genuinely can’t find work. Some are between jobs. Some are going back to school. Indeed, only 775,000 are classified as “discouraged” and another 2.1 million are considered “marginally attached to the labor market.” That works out to 2.8 million you could call lazy or defective in some way, which is only 0.9% of the population.

So who are the other 6.3 million unemployed? Well, they are a combination of people who just lost or quit their jobs or are new to the work force (e.g. recent graduates). They are around 4% of the population and those people being unemployed is considered natural for an economy as typical of labor market shuffling.

So who are the rest of these 28.9 million people? Well, another large group are stay-at-home mothers. According to Pew, 29% of mothers are stay-at-home mothers. That works out to around 24 million mothers. Add those people to the unemployed and you’ve got more people than the “28.9 adults” figure meant to scare you. Then you can add people who have returned to college and those who are wealthy already.

Obviously, these numbers are all rough estimates, but the point should be clear. When you realize that 6.3 million unemployed is considered a natural number for any strong economy, and when you factor in stay-at-home mothers, suddenly this claim about adults not working falls on its face. The real problem is the 2.1 million who are “marginally attached” to the labor market and the 775,000 who are “discouraged.” Those people need to change. Other problems include stagnant or falling wages, economic insecurity, and a lack of a career path. Those are legitimate criticisms. Pointing to some imagined 28.9 million adults who aren’t working and labeling them as slackers doesn’t help.

● Dirty Immigrants Are Everywhere!

The other shock number warned us that the immigrant population had reached “the highest point in 93 years” and that “41 million” people living in the US were born overseas! We have been invaded!

Oy.

Let’s blow a hole in this one right away: 41 million people is only 13% of the population. That’s hardly earth shattering. In fact, that’s rather near our historical average, so again, there is no reason to panic.

And while many used this as an opportunity to continue their anti-Mexican rhetoric, the truth is that the Mexican population in the US fell 1% since 2010 and Mexican immigration continues at net zero or below. Indeed, of the 1.4 million new foreign-born persons who moved to the US since 2010, most came from South Asia (373,000), India (250,000), China (217,000), and the Dominican Republic (112,000).

So not only are we not awash in immigrants, but they aren’t even Mexicans. And screaming “41 MILLION PEOPLE!” and “MOST IN 93 YEARS!” doesn’t change the fact it’s only one in ten people... which hardly warrants a panic.

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