Civics Matters

The Gormogons Posted on by

“When I’m president, I’ll promise…”

For many years, GorT has been advocating that we need to improve our teaching of Civics in our schools. Never is it so apparent as during Presidential campaign season when we get to witness sitting Senators completely forget that they are in the legislative body of our federal government and promise one legislative act after another as part of their Presidential platform – many over-reaching, in my opinion, the bounds of the federal government. It typically ranges from various budget initiatives* and immigration practices to protection laws and taxes.

Kate Hardiman pens a great opinion piece in the Washington Examiner tackling the new Fairfax County (VA) policy allowing students in grades 7-12 to miss “one partial school day per school year” (not sure what defines a “partial school day”) in order to participate in “optional civic engagement activities”. Civic engagement is not defined by the policy so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. She makes great points:

  • what teenager wouldn’t want a half-day off school to do something that they get their parents to write that they want to do and then did. Note: they don’t actually really have to do said thing, the parents (or a forging teenager) just needs to say they did.
  • From an political spectrum perspective – liberal efforts tend to have more public protests/marches/etc. and therefore it may skew who is in school and become a greater divide between peers at a younger age. Add in the peer pressure of being the ones that would be in school, it may lead to participation by those not fully supportive (see below for more on this)
  • Ms. Hardiman also cites that protests and marches might not actually encourage authentic civic engagement.

 

She concludes by arguing that it would benefit the kids to have the schools focus on civics rather than supporting them missing school in the hopes that it could unite Americans above the divisions that current protests exacerbate.

If Fairfax County (or other school districts) want to allow this, I’d stipulate a requirement that any student participating in it must pass a comprehensive civics test appropriate for their school grade. And by this I don’t mean simple civics stuff. If an 8th grader is going to go attend the “March for our Lives” (supporting additional gun laws), then they should demonstrate a knowledge of the 2nd Amendment, the process by which Amendments to the Constitution occur, how laws get passed, an overview of current gun control laws, etc. in addition to general knowledge of the roles and responsibilities laid out by the Constitution for the three branches of government.

Have the school districts really thought out about how the kids will cover missed work and learning? Probably not. As a knee-jerk reaction, I’d guess they would say the students are responsible for determining what was missed and what they have to make up. So these students turn to their peers who attended for help. Now, the students who stayed in school and used the taxpayer’s money effectively and for its designated purpose, have to help those who missed to attend (or not) some political event that the students in school either didn’t agree with or weren’t allowed to attend. Maybe the school and teachers will feel for these students and go easier on them for missing class – setting up multiple standards for those who attend vs. protest. Imagine if a student is absent to protest something the teacher personally opposes – think that’ll go smoothly and without bias?

As an example, the Volgi, ‘Puter, and GorT attended a high school in the Washington DC area. The religion department our senior year decided that the class should take a field trip to witness the protests around the U.S. policies regarding the Contras in Nicaragua near the Capitol. As it neared, a number of students (rightly) pointed out a few things: (1) our presence at the protest could convey the support of our school (as many of us would wear school-logo/name clothing) for the protest – is the official policy of the school that we are in support of it? (2) a number of us were not in support of the protest and felt like this was coercive, (3) really, many in our class didn’t fully understand the full context of the political situation. As a result, and in some respects to the credit of the school, some students stayed home, many attended, and a few of us (‘Puter and GorT included) were told to sit in the library during the half-day “field trip” and write an essay about the Contras situation. GorT penned an essay (as did others) about why the field trip was coercive and wrong. Upon reflection, at least one religion teacher expressed an understanding that it might not have been the best idea and admired the students taking different stands on the event.

Civics matters. Far too many Americans are ignorant of how this country works – or more accurately, is supposed to work based on our foundational documents and laws. People should easily be able to discern Presidential campaign promises (from either side) that are legislative duties – and then go ask, “if these are priorities, why didn’t they champion them in Congress where they are sitting now?”. People should understand who controls the federal purse-strings and how that gets done – and why government shutdowns are solely the fault of Congress not the President.

But sure, let’s have our students miss more educational time and go marching around cities, waiving posters and signs, or sit at home for half-a-day playing X-Box. As GorT, Sr. has pointed out, American education is where it seems we aim to get the least for our money.

 

* Yes, I know the federal budget process starts with the President submitting a proposed budget to Congress but that budget is a request from the executive branch – Congress goes thru (or should go thru) a whole budgetary process where the President’s budget is, essentially, tossed out.

Are the Nazis on the Right or the Left? A Guide.

The Gormogons Posted on by

The Internet has a lot of useful things, but as we all know, it has a lot of nonsense as well. While that indeed is obvious, even reasonable people can—from time to time—get lost in trying to determine which is which.

A common theme we see on social media is the mistaken belief that Nazis fall on the right end of the American political spectrum. A great many sites attempt to correct this information, but generally fall into two categories: outlandish rebuttals that resemble spittle-flecked rants, or overly long and bone-dry lectures featuring just a little too much German to be quickly understood. This brief essay attempts to provide a quietly analytical resource for people of all political opinions but presented in a simple and straightforward manner.

Were the Nazis on the Left or Right?

If you are an American, the Nazis were technically on the political left, for reasons we will explore in a moment.

If you are from Europe or Asia, the answer depends on your sociopolitical outlook. We’ll explore that, too, in a moment.

Were Nazis Socialist?

The word “Nazi” is an abbreviation for the full name of the party: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which means the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party. The Nazis embraced socialism and placed it prominently in their name. Were you to ask a Nazi of 1922, 1934, or 1945 if he or she were a socialist, that person would agree immediately.

Yes, Nazis were socialist, and repeatedly and insistently said so.

A fair amount of retroactive spinning has landed in the last few years that attempts to question this. Even the Snopes.com page spends a good portion of its answer wiggling out of this simple explanation. The problem with a lot of this 21st Century analysis is that it uses current definitions of socialism to dispute the idea, rather than using the ideas in use at the time. Socialism and communism were not new ideas in the 1920s, but they were a lot better understood then, than 100 years later.

And more interestingly, most of the current explanations attempt to explain why today’s socialism is not the same socialism embraced by Nazism, instead of asking the more pressing question: why did the Nazis call themselves socialists? We will address this more in a little while.

Aren’t Nationalists Associated With The American Right?

Nationalism—the idea that the country comes first, before party—is frequently used by both the right and left in this country. Roosevelt certainly liked the idea of putting the country’s needs first, as did Trump in his 2016 campaign. But while the Nazis undoubtedly felt similarly about Germany, that’s not the root of the word they used!

Instead, the Nazis wanted to nationalize their socialism (as a verb), in the way that some governments have nationalized industries, healthcare, and education. The Nazis were the outgrowth of some local labor movements that banded together and nationalized their organization.

The fact they were ardent nationalists certainly helped popularize the idea that nationalism is a bad thing, but it is essential to remember that both ends of the political spectrum use nationalism, and generally for good. As the Nazi’s version of nationalism became unquestionably horrific, politicians in this country were quick to push the idea that “nationalism” is bad, to any degree.

This isn’t unique to either side: just as Democrats attack Republicans for nationalism about immigration, so too will Republicans recoil from Democrats’ talking points about nationalizing healthcare.

In short—the word nationalism is neither good nor bad, and neither attributable to the Left or Right by itself.

Does National Socialism Mean The Same Thing As Modern Socialism?

Earlier, we mentioned that a lot of contemporary sources paint complicated pictures, attempting to separate socialism from what the Nazis were doing. Many of these sources are journalists and reporters and aren’t historians or economists. The latter group are pretty well agreed that the Nazis were socialists.

But—and here is the issue—it’s the 21st Century who define socialism incorrectly. For a huge number of people in the world today, socialism refers to a democratically-elected welfare state, such as Denmark, or Britain’s Labour party, or Greece. These governments are in fact capitalist with structures implemented along socialist lines. As a result, modern writers frequently attempt to redefine what socialism is, rather than clarify how the Nazis viewed it.

The list of things that made the Nazis socialist is quite lengthy: they had socialized medicine, education, a centrally managed military with law enforcement powers, nationalized industry, restrictions on free trade, free speech, and association, central economic planning with price and wage controls, government-run media (including newspapers, radio, movies, and even television), a strong welfare state, and on and on .

Many European governments have these things, too. If that makes them socialist, then fine; however, you cannot have these things and dismiss the Nazis as socialists without seriously stretching the ideas of Marx and Engels.

If Nazis Were Socialist, Why Did Nazis Hate Communists?

Sooner or later, the discussion comes down to this question. Nazis engaged in a bloody battle against German communists; the Soviet Union, as well, battled the Nazis to an even more hellish level. The reason, many people believe, is because the Nazis were capitalist and therefore hated communists, and vice-versa.

The Nazis and German communists were each made up of socialists, although with a few differences. Both were opposed to the free-trade and libertarian principles of the Weimar Republic, and both recruited heavily from the same disaffected population of people hurt by the worldwide depression. They were two flavors of socialism, in head-to-head competition.

Due to the seeming success of the Soviet Union, the Nazis were often on the losing side of recruitment, and quickly stepped up an aggressive policy of discouraging the disaffected population from joining the communists. In 1927, the Communists had superior numbers in the German government, but were still forced to share power with the Nazis. On February 11th of that year, the Nazis staged a presentation in the Communist Party’s meeting hall, and provoked the communists in the audience. Nazi thugs in the crowd injured more than 200 of the communists, starting a long history of violence between the two groups; the Nazis, however, won the public relations campaign and saw their numbers swell.

As an interesting side note, the Soviets were instrumental in promoting the idea that, whatever Nazism is, it isn’t socialism. The premise that Nazis can’t be socialist because they attack communists goes back as far as 1928, with the Communist International declaration that non-communist socialists (that is, the Nazis) were effectively capitalist, as a direct result of the violence in 1927.

The Nazis hated the communists all right, but not because they were anti-socialist; they hated the communists because the communists had more power in government until the Nazis used violence against them.

So Why Do People Put Them On The Right?

Many Europeans place the Nazis on the Right, but not because they don’t know their history; they put them on the Right because this term has a different meaning in different places!

In America, the “Right” tends to be socially and fiscally conservative, which means classically liberal (or libertarian). The “Left” views government as having a major interest in protecting and improving the lives of its people, which means liberally progressive. This distinction is rapidly spreading through Europe, as well.

In traditional European political thought, dating back to the French Revolution, the Right tended to favor the establishment (the monarchy), and the Left promoted limited government. This notion spread rapidly through Europe. “Left” versus “Right” depended on the physical location in which you sat in Parliament.

Hence, the term “Right” tended to favor beliefs of a strong, central executive power, while the term “Left” was associated with a classically liberal worldview. Often, Americans tend to think of this European model as reversed, but it really is not. Many Europeans still using this model put the Nazis on the Right due to fascist control and would place Americans as a whole on the Left because of the Constitution.

The terms “Right” and “Left” became current in America in the 20th Century but we apply them quite differently than mid-20th-Century political historians. A socialist in America is invariably placed on the Left; a libertarian is on the Right.

When Americans began seeing Nazis referred to as being on the Right in European analyses, the assumption was made that Nazis, as fascists, must be like conservative Republicans. In fact, regardless of what one thinks of conservatives or Republicans, the Nazis would certainly have opposed them, and would have found much more common ground with the American Left. But before liberals become outraged, read the next question!

Why Does This Matter?

In some respects, it doesn’t matter at all: the Nazis were their own thing, and whether they met the goals of Marx or Engels or anyone else is immaterial—the Nazis had a peculiar and distinct ideology that was so perverted that any approach they took was a bad one.

However, reasonable people do not want to be associated with Nazis; as a result, the faster you can distance yourself from Nazism, the better. Fortunately, the only people who want to be associated with Nazis are, well, Nazis. Unfortunately, political groups mistakenly want to go further than this and associate their political rivals with Nazis. As a result, Americans on the Right and Left are quick to point a finger at the other side and declare them to be Nazis on a tiresomely daily basis.

Unless the other side is made up of actual Nazis, this probably is a bonehead approach to political expression.  Keep this in mind: the Nazis would hate the American Right, and they would just as surely hate the American Left. Hate them. To the point of trying to kill them equally, which indeed happened between 1941 and 1945.

But while it’s politically wrong to misuse the term either way, it’s especially wrong (technically and historically) to refer to the American Right as Nazis. It reveals a profound lack of historical knowledge and misunderstanding of socioeconomic theory.

The Silver Tsunami

The Gormogons Posted on by

Wow. The Czar got some actual mail the other day, and for a second, he had to check the date, as it’s been a while since anyone has sent anything. Fortunately, it was from Operative B, who had this to say on the Czar’s recent comments on the economy.

Your Majesty,

There is a phenomenon in the tech industry known as the “silver tsunami” or “gray tsunami”, which is defined as the impending and permanent departure, through either retirement or other means, of highly experienced and extremely capable senior engineers. This is not the same as the departure of financial managers, bankers, or other paper-hangers. It is a serious problem that currently has no solution.

It’s really simple: learning hardware design and engineering is hard work. Learning embedded software design and engineering is hard work. Learning firmware design and engineering is hard work. And all three skills are needed to turn out the highly complex and advanced systems that are needed to drive economic, commercial, and industrial productivity.

There’s a reason that all of these new technological wonders seem to be coming from companies located offshore: Americans became too lazy to spend the time to learn how to do the “hard stuff”. America is now reaping the seeds it planted by making it easier to go to a college or university, spend years in a curriculum leading to a useless “skill” while partying and protesting, and then feeding and clothing those graduates while they work as baristas at a local Starbuck’s.

Your friend who complains about not being able to find forklift operators is right, but for a reason he may not realize. For far too long, the “elite” have disdainfully looked down on anyone without a college degree from an ivy-league school. They use terms like “just a plumber” or “just a carpenter”, and then wonder why they can’t find someone to fix their pipes or re-hang a door

Some of us have spent decades advocating for a dual-track educational system: university and trade. In truth, a trade provides far more job security than a university degree in financial management. Plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, roofers, dental hygienests – these folks are needed all year long and all the time. They sometimes earn more money than some of the “professionals” and are in much higher demand: when you need a plumber, you need a plumber.

But to work in the trades, you have to put down your smartphone and pay attention to what you’re doing. You have to put someone else’s needs ahead of yours. Look at American K-12 schools, and you see more emphasis and attention to social and emotional “needs” than in teaching the skills needed to become functionally independent. When these children graduate from high school, they neither have the skills nor the emotional maturity to begin productive lives. Fewer and fewer students are entering STEM curricula because it’s hard, and too many of those who do enter STEM studies end up dropping out.
America is losing the skilled worker base that built the industrial and technological base that made America the wonder of the world. This “gray tsunami” will leave a less-capable society behind. And there doesn’t appear to be a tsunami of young workers willing to take up the challenge of replacing them.
The proof? When you can’t find anyone willing to run a machine as simple as a forklift…
Operative B

This is not wrong, but the Czar might quibble on the reason you can’t find a forklift driver: the simple reason is that they’re just not out there. They’re gone. We use to have a stockpile of people who could indeed do these things, as they weren’t particularly employable. But the economy is expanding so quickly that even these resources are dried up. They’re dried up because they’re all working.
This is of course a minor quibble, because (a) otherwise, Operative B is right about the priority of our resources, and (b) the explosive growth of Amazon and Wal-Mart have seen forklift drivers specifically skyrocket in demand.
Believe it or not, this was not foreseen. The Czar admits he was sympathetic to the Obama administration’s assumptions that these blue-collar jobs were gone, and simply were not coming back. However, Trump seems to have sputtered the manufacturing sector back into a flicker of life, and suddenly, yes, these jobs are needed again. And after 8 years of Obama and 8 years of Bush writing off the manufacturing world, yeah, we kind of agreed that kids should be looking elsewhere. Well, these jobs are back—and the workers? Well, they went elsewhere.

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid

The Gormogons Posted on by

If you’re like most Americans and are fortunate enough to have a 401(k), you probably noticed that it’s gone up by $2.6 million dollars for every hundred you have invested in it. The Czar exaggerates, of course, but returns right now are crazy-high. Some of you may be able to retire early enough to enjoy the fruits of your labor. The Czar isn’t sure, because the Gormogons don’t have 401(k)s; we simply give GorT a couple of bucks, and he travels back in time to 1740 and deposits our cash in a high-interest savings account at Drummonds in London.

Anyway, your investment strategy probably varies from ours.

The Czar knows a lot of people in all walks of life; for example, he happens to know a handful of professional recruiters—who do not (as far as he is aware) have any knowledge of the other. Two, in particular, say similar things: unemployment is ridiculously low.

One of these recruiters despises the economy; as a partner in a recruiting firm, he is seeing his revenues plummet to historic lows because he can’t find good candidates. Many of his clients are long-done with trying to find CEOs and CFOs: he’s desperately trying to find forklift drivers and mail-room workers. There are none to be found. He told us that he joked to a business owner that perhaps the candidates would need to be “active felons,” to which the owner shrugged and asked if he could manage that. The owner was serious.

Alas, when he is lucky to find a candidate for a client, there’s no guarantee the candidate will stay. He’s had some quit after a couple hours…because another recruiter call the candidate on his cell and offered more per hour.

Another recruiter we know said, at this point, if he calls a candidate at home and that candidate answers, he’s inclined to hang up immediately: if you can’t get a job in this economy, there’s probably a reason no one will hire you and he’ll quickly determine what you’re problem is.

That last one is not quite fair; as we said, we know a lot of people. Some of them are not working right now, and are hurting financially. The reasons are not because they’re ding-dongs, or drug-addled, or window-lickers; indeed, they seem to have some elements in common: they are in their 50s or 60s, worked in the financial sector, and became specialized in their jobs. Unless you can code a financial app in Python for a major website and are willing to work 60 hours a week without ever leaving the office, there’s not much room for you. Some of our acquaintances have been looking, actively, for months, but once you’re past 40, the financial world has little desire to meet you. The Czar will vouch for these folks: they’re trying incredibly hard to get back to work, but can’t get a second interview once the new Millennial bosses see candidates who could be their dad.

Despite these pains, overall the economy is running pretty smoothly despite media hopes, much as we predicted. And while the Dow is a terrible indicator on which to rely, it shows American industry is much stronger than it has been in years.

During the most-recent Democratic debates, we heard a lot of talk about “Economic Justice.” We had to research that phrase to find out what it means. And it means what you think it does: Democrat millionaires need taxes raised on the middle class to shift the burden away from, well, Democrat millionaires. Whatshisface Yang says, despite the increase in salaries and lowered taxes, Americans aren’t doing as well as they’d like in this economy.

True: if you’re a 50-something financial expert trying to find work in the world of Internet banking, or if you’re an executive recruiter trying to find a commission that will keep the doors open another week, things aren’t great.

But if you’re a forklift driver or mailroom worker, you might be enjoying opening your monthly 401(k) statement right now.

UK Elections Matter to America

The Gormogons Posted on by

Your Gormogons have long enjoyed the hospitality of the United Kingdom.

Our American readers probably don’t care much for or about the British elections, and whether Nigel Kennewick has held onto the Constituency of West Scrotshire, establishing an opportunity for a coalition with the New Conservative Democratic Liberal Reform Social Party. But this year is something different, and it’s definitely worth noting.

If you’re glancing at the usual news feeds, doubtless you’re aware it’s the End of All Civilization Ever, because random-coiffed Boris Johnson’s Tories defeated the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn—the latter being a neo-Leninist, terrorist-kissing, anti-Semitic homophobe, making the former the racist because he’s not in the Labour Party.

The usual news feeds are telling you this election is all about Brexit, and how every time they hold the same freaking election on the same topic, oddly it keeps tilting more in the direction the media don’t want it to go. If you’re an American, which our blog stats tell us most of you readers are, your reading of the UK elections is pretty limited to “Racist jackass with stupid hair inexplicably beats reform-minded, popular working-class hero in order to take Britain’s economy to the Dark Ages.”

You can already guess the Czar is about to take you in a different direction. You’re correct.

The news story is this: Britain’s “party of the working man” has embraced as many goofy Leftist tropes as possible, promising a wealth of free services to the younger generation, for which only the extremely wealthy upper percentages will pay. In exchange, the British economy—despite showing no signs of recession but every indication of increasing cash flow for the average person—is going to be corrected by locking it into a regulation-heavy system of government control.

If that sounds familiar, it should. If it doesn’t sound familiar, substitute “America’s” and “American” for the words in red, and you’ve got the same message the Democratic candidates are pushing for 2020.

The biggest difference is that the Brits got to vote earlier than we did, and the result as a tremendous trouncing of Leftist lunacy. Not only did Brits reject the Leftist vision, they did so in a landslide.

Another important factor: headlines are screeching that voter turnout was down from 2017. This is true, but here’s what the Leftist media is not telling you: the voter turnout is down by only 1.5 percent over 2017—and 2019’s voter turnout was 67.23 percent.

That means two out of three registered voters came out to tell Labour to get bent. In America, 61% voted in 2016. This is significant because an old rule of political science is that anytime voter turnout goes above about 60%, the voters are pissed off. Lower turnouts indicate complacency. In 2016, Americans voted mostly to keep Hillary Clinton out of power; reason enough, it seems, to be a tad angry.

But British turnout is a bit of an exclamation point.

What’s more, Labour lost 7.8% of its vote share overall, which is a landslide defeat. Constituencies across the country, some of whom have been progressive liberal since the 1930s, flipped to conservative. To put this in perspective, this would be like Boston voting for Trump. In short, Labour didn’t lose—it was severely crushed.

While this is all paper hats and Christmas crackers for England, this can easily serve as a bellwether for America’s 2020 election. Of course, there’s still almost a year left before Americans vote, which is plenty of time for Republicans to drive their party wagon right into a tree. But if the elections were held today, especially with swing-state voters increasingly annoyed with the Democrats in recent weeks, it’s pretty certain Republicans would hold the presidency and Senate.

So what happens next for Britain? If history is any guide—and it is—we can expect two things.

First, the British economy will begin to reform as it did under Margaret Thatcher, and Brexit will result in the UK become a world economic player again. Tax loads will lighten for the economy’s drivers, and general unemployment will go down. Unions will suffer terribly, and consumers will benefit from reduced prices on goods and services, as well as see incomes tick up.

Second, the media will report, as they did under Thatcher, that the economy is terrible and stagnant under all this “austerity.” Britain will become the laughingstock of the world, particularly among countries led by the Left, and everyone just hates Boris Johnson. He’s awful, for sure, and horror stories will abound about individuals or very small groups of people you don’t know slightly suffering under the new economy. Everything will be his fault. And he’s racist. And hates women. And basically, he hates anyone who voted for Labour in the past. And Brexit was a mistake and we all told you so, but you didn’t listen.

The Czar is continually amazed at how vilified Margaret Thatcher remains in British popular culture, even though by nearly every measure, she was one of Britain’s greatest leaders. Boris Johnson can expect the same treatment; let us hope he remains “not for turning,” as Ms. Thatcher did.

Lies vs Lies – Guest Post

The Gormogons Posted on by

‘Puter pointed out this thread on Twitter earlier today and given the nuances of Twitter, some of our followers couldn’t read it. While someone posted images of it back to Twitter, I reached out and @Popehat agreed that I could post a copy here. So the following is the content in its entirety.

I’ll repeat a point about how the law treats your lies very differently than the government’s lies, because the IG report about the Page FISA warrants shows why it’s important. The law is very strict about your lies and very lenient about the government’s lies. When the government lies in a warrant application, a defendant can challenge the resulting evidence through a Franks motion, named after Franks v. Delaware (1978). But the standard is very generous to the government and harsh to the defendant. A defendant must show that the government’s lie or omission in the warrant application was (1) intentional or reckless, not just negligent, and (2) material. (1) is hard enough to prove in a system where judges tend to take the word — and lame excuses — of law enforcement. But it’s (2) that is the real trick. In the Franks context, to be “material,” the lie or omission has to change the result. In other words, if the omitted information were added, or the lie deleted, the remainder of the information has to be insufficient to get the warrant. The problem is that the standard (usually probable cause) is so low that it tends to be easy to meet even with the lie deleted or omitted information included. So it’s rare for even a blatant lie or deceitful omission to be material, and thus overturn the warrant. Now let’s talk about what happens when you lie to the government. We’ve seen plenty of lying to the feds cases recently — usually under 18 USC 1001, false statement to the federal government. That crime also requires a showing of materiality. But a different materiality. In the false statement context, “materiality” doesn’t require the government to show that your lie made any difference, or deceived anyone. It just requires a showing that it’s the kind of information that could possibly influence the course of the government’s decisions. Hence your lies are criminal even if the government knew they were lies and they made not a second’s difference, but the government’s lies escape consequences unless they were actually determinative of the question. Every criminal lawyer knows this, it’s been the case for many years, and very few people give a shit. And so the system grinds on, noticed only when it catches up someone on our team.

Courtesy of @Popehat on Twitter. Link to tweet

The Supreme Court Does Not Suffer Fools

The Gormogons Posted on by

The Supreme Court of the United States, which is apparently an illegitimate entity since it was taken over by Donald Trump, is going to hear a Second Amendment case arising from the state of New York. This is interesting to the Czar because, as far as he can remember, every time the Court hears a Second Amendment case, the result is a landmark decision.

At issue is whether the City of New York can restrict its citizens from transporting firearms outside of a few, select locations such as gun ranges or hunting spots. This, as intended, limits how and where citizens of the city can carry firearms. That this is even in question is a surprise to the Czar: the law in unfair and benefits no law-abiding citizen, instead placing unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions. Frankly, this isn’t even a typical infringement issue: it’s a bizarre law that serves no practical purpose beyond hassling people. Were the City to replace “firearms” with “toasters,” the law would still be silly.

As you expect, lots of the usual people are freaking out about this. In some respects, they should: in the last couple of decades, each time a municipality attempts to place a surprise restriction on firearm owners, the Supreme Court winds up striking down a few other existing restrictions as well. In other respects, gun-control proponents should not be surprised: the Supreme Court has taken a dim view of gun control even when dominated by liberal justices. Our two most-recent justices were not present on the Court when the last few Second Amendment cases gave gun owners very welcome surprises.

Already, congressional Democrats and media sources are attacking the legitimacy of the Court, pointing fingers at the NRA for somehow controlling the Court’s decisions over the last twenty years. In the Czar’s view, this trend of pro-gun-rights decisions has nothing to do with the NRA, but in the Supreme Court’s growing intolerance of government overreach. Every decision on the Second Amendment seems to revolve around passage of a law that’s designed to extend a middle finger to law-abiding citizens, exploiting a word or phrase in the Court’s previous decisions to underpin a new restriction. This sort of stuff is exactly how the Court fights back against the contempt people show it.

The final decision should reach us in May, 2020, but the Czar already has a pretty strong sense of what the decision is going to be. What he doesn’t know is what else the Court will do to punish New York City for wasting its time.

How to Discuss Open Borders With Your Liberal Relatives At Thanksgiving Dinner

The Gormogons Posted on by

Dirty hippie Boomers and dumbass Millennials ruin everything good with their incessant politicization of everything, including Thanksgiving dinner. Well, turnabout is fair play. Torment your “progressive” relatives instead this year. 

Are you a citizen?

No, not you. Your friends, family, and acquaintances who insist that “borders are only lines on a map.” Are they citizens?

These are the kinds of questions that vex ‘Puter late into the evening as he downs Sterno shooters sitting in his dusty parlor clad only in his smoking jacket and panda fur slippers.* ‘Puter likes to sit in his parlor and contemplate the dusty, rotting, rat-eaten wedding cake which dominates the room’s Victorian decor.

“But ‘Puter,” you protest, “Of course my family, friends, and acquaintances are citizens!”

Not so fast. Work with ‘Puter here.

If borders are only lines on a map, there’s no nation of which to be a citizen. Further, if illegal aliens are just as entitled to be present in America as citizens, then what meaning does citizenship really have? Surely citizenship has lost most if not all its meaning when governments cannot exclude noncitizens from entering a nation.

Thus, if we are choosing to ignore citizenship, America should be allowed to deport *anyone* as punishment for *any* crime. After all, you have no more “right” to be in America than an illegal alien and no less.

Hey, Aunt Bertilda. If you and Gertrude, your spouse, are driving home tonight and get pulled over for DUI, welcome to the Democratic Republic of Congo! America’s got no space for criminals like you. Good enough for poor Africans, good enough for you. I’m sure Chad’s government and populace will warmly welcome Gertrude and you and afford you all the rights and protections America does. After all, borders are just imaginary lines and Western ideals prevail everywhere!

And cousin D’zhawhn (pronounced “John” (he’s named after his grandfather who spelled his name properly and is probably rousing from his grave to grab his M1 Garand and beat some sense into this hippie-spawned whippersnapper)), enjoy Laos when you get arrested protesting capitalism at your $75,000 a year school your dad pays for with the heavily taxed income he earns as a Wall Street investment banker! I’m sure you’ll adjust just fine to a communist regime which as you never tire of telling us all is far superior to capitalism. Since you’re already a vegan (obnoxiously so as all vegans are) you’ll love the local cuisine of grass sammiches on tree bark bread.

It’s only fair. Unless, of course, your no borders position is liberal virtue signaling and you haven’t thought it through fully if at all.

Now finish your apple pie and get the f*ck out of my house, hippies.

See you at Christmas!

*For those new to the blog, ‘Puter is solidly Team No Pants.

**Also, suck it, Czar.

Bar None. What’s a Tavern, and Where’s a Saloon?

The Gormogons Posted on by

Let’s just get to the questions you want answered in life: what’s the difference between a bar, a tavern, a pub, and a saloon?
A lot of these words are interchangeable, especially in the United States, so it will likely surprise none of you intellectuals who suspect there’s obviously some difference to warrant different words for what is degenerating into the same thing: a dark, noisy place jammed full of skanky IPAs, mis-sized flat-screen televisions showing college basketball, and some annoying group trivia game not asking sensible questions like “What’s the difference between a bar, a tavern, a pub, and a saloon?”

Here we go.

Bar—’Puter’s bar exam is the only bar he’s ever passed, and interestingly, the words are related: they’re both short for “barrier,” or a railing over which things (drinks or legal documents) can be served. In court rooms, it became the gate that separates the audience from the court proper, but in drinking joints, it became the long table on which you put your drinks. But, metonymy being metonymy, the piece of furniture became the name of the place. Technically, a bar can exist inside a restaurant, a catering hall, a night club, or dance hall; it’s a thing, not a place…unless you simply call the building it’s in a bar as well.

Tavern—This is the oldest business listed herein: the word itself is a mispronunciation of the Latin taberna, which in Italia was any kind of a store or retail shop, but was also the word for a place go get intoxicatus/a.

Pub—As most of you probably know, “pub” is a shortening of the phrase “public house,” which meant a licensed drinking establishment open to the public. Indeed, there is an oppositive to this: “private house,” or a bar open only to private members. If you run a pub in the United States, you are expected to serve food as well; while this is common in the United Kingdom or Ireland as well, it’s not assumed to be the case. Frankly, the number of exceptions either way is about the same: there’s a bunch of “pubs” that don’t serve food.

Saloon—Okay, this is an interesting one. Remember up there, a few seconds ago, when the Czar explained that a bar is the counter where you set your drinks? A saloon is the rest of the place: the booths and tables where you can sit and converse, maybe eat and play cards…while, you know, drinking. The word comes from the French salon, obviously, which was a sitting room. So, if you think about it, a tavern can have a bar and a saloon in it. But just as “bar” became the name of the place, “saloon” also became the name of the place. Only a pedantic snob like the Czar would say “Shall we sit at the bar, or in the saloon?”

Gin Mill—obviously, this is slang, but it’s good slang because a person first hearing it can figure out its meaning immediately: a mill is a place where stuff is made, and gin is a spirit.

Beer Hall—Finally, something the Germans can contribute: the Bierstube! The great thing about this phrase is that it means how it sounds: a really big room dedicated to beer. Picture a real Oktoberfest (and not a fake), and that’s a beer hall.

Inn—Well, there’s no doubt about this. An inn is a place where you can stay the night. Maybe you can get food. Maybe, if they have food, you can get a drink, as well. In olden days, inns basically provided you a bed and that was about it; however, as the concept of the motel popped up during the pilgrimages to the Holy Land, inn owners needed to compete. Rather than let you and that precious denarii slip out the door, imagine if your inn sold not just a bed, but food and booze? The more your guests ate and drank, the greater the likelihood they’d want to stay the night. Modern inns rarely offer beds and drink. But both types of modern inns honor this tradition by (a) serving liquor or (b) stealing your money out of your pants pocket while you sleep in your room.

Lounge—Does anything sound worse than a lounge? Picture carpeting, worn furniture, and a guy hopped up on Viagra trying to convince some bar fly that he can still drive his ’78 Corvette. But in reality, “lounge” is a word that serves multiple functions: when the saloon became the name of the business, lounge replaced it for the area with the tables. In a public or private house, the lounge is where the tables and comfy chairs were to be found. And, in hotels and motels (and inns!), the lounge was the seating area adjacent to the bar. It’s a really useful word; one supposes that since “lounge” has become the name for an establishment, we’re going to need another word to replace it for the section of a tavern with the tables and chairs. “Parlor” is our pick. What’s yours?

Tap—Ah, more metonymy. Many of your around the country are unfamiliar with the use of “tap” to describe a tavern, but it’s been around a long time. And not just in the States. In the Chicago area, the Czar remembers fondly the Hilltop Tap, which sat on the apex of one of Chicago’s rare hills. He never drank there, but recalls the Lorchowicz brothers stumbling out of there and their many misadventures, including one (true) story of one brother falling into his car and snapping off the radio antenna. Rather than properly fix it, he widened the hole and stuck in a doorknob as a replacement. Evidently it worked, as he continued for some time to drive his beige 1972 Dodge Aspen with a doorknob jutting up from the passenger side front fender.

Here’s the Real Impeachment Update

The Gormogons Posted on by

At this point, impeaching Donald Trump is little more than an obvious media stunt.

Although polls show that quite a few Americans support his impeachment, there’s a little reminder about polls that should pause anyone zealously hoping this means something: a little more than half of Americans who answer polls are Democrats. Of course they favor impeachment.

The Czar bases his claim on the fact that the majority of polls are conducted during the day, when more Republicans are at work or at dinner. Additionally, more Republicans don’t rely on home-phone landlines. This means that people who are at home during the day to answer a landline are Democrats. Ergo, you have a disproportionate number of Democrats responding to polls. The Czar, incidentally, isn’t making that up: it’s something pollsters seem to know.

The Czar would love to see the results of a poll targeted almost specifically at Democrats. This polls would consist of two basic questions:

  • What does it mean to be impeached?
  • What happens to a President who is impeached?

Of course, you know the answer to both. But we would be willing to bet a small number of dollars that a large swath of Democrat voters would honestly think that, if Trump were impeached, Hillary Clinton would become president. To them, and this explains a lot of the zeal, an impeachment is a constitutional do-over. The fact of a President Pence or, failing that, a President Pelosi are more likely than a President Hillary Rodham Pufnstuf—who isn’t within a million miles of the chain of succession—doesn’t seem to temper the impeachers’ enthusiasm.

The media do not seem to be interested in instructing them, either, even though they would benefit nothing from a successful impeachment and ousting of President Trump. That’s, of course, because the media love hating on Donald Trump. At last, they have what they crave: a bad guy who in responsible for everything they don’t like.

Then you have the Democrats themselves. “High crimes and misdemeanors,” which we hear once a week now, is increasingly like a nuclear fusion: something that’s always coming next year, regardless of which year you’re in. By the time you read this, there will be a whistleblower claiming a new allegation about the President that just…won’t…seem…to…work.

Not that there’s any risk of an actual impeachment. Democrats who are actually old enough (which is quite a few, of course) to understand how impeachment works are well aware of this. That’s why Speaker Judge Judy Pelosi keeps changing the subject or downplays the idea when asked. While the under-30 Democrats are clapping their hands and do believe in fairies, they aren’t actually old enough to know how this works. Here’s how the actual impeachment would go:

The House would vote to impeach (not narrowly, but by no means overwhelmingly). The Senate would not even bother considering a trial. Dead in the water. Done.

Plus, an investigation would be disastrous. You probably think that all this nasty stuff would be uncovered about Joe Biden. You possibly think that an awful lot of bad things would be revealed about President Obama. What you may not think: that a larger percentage of Americans think you’re correct. Yep: here’s a poll you won’t see—how many Americans solidly believe that Biden and Obama are linked to the Russia-tampering nonsense. Oh boy, that’s not zero.

One of the unspoken reasons for the Democrats’ refusal to charge forward with an impeachment is because the truths uncovered would be worse for them than for the Republicans. Why else are so many Republican politicians wanting to go forward? They have a pretty good inkling of what would happen to the Democrats, and they can’t freaking wait.

And here we are: the realization, increasing among many, that the Trump impeachment story is largely theater for the benefit of very few. So why do it? Because following the humiliation of the 2016 election, which nags at Democrats every single day, the straw to which they cling is Impeachment. A straw, incidentally, that they erroneously believe will put Hillary Clinton back in the White House.