The Gormogons

The Czar seems to be enjoying the Olympics this time around more than in recent years. And he knows why.

No, it isn’t the hysterical hypocrisy of the Opening Ceremonies lecturing us on environmentalism when Brazil is burning down its rain forests to distract from its fatally toxic drinking water. It’s not even the stomach-churning injuries that seem to be happening, resulting in sudden upsets.

The coverage is better.

He’s like the Alex Trebek of sports—incessantly condescending, and not nearly as smart as the people he talks to.

But for Comcast customers, there’s an alternative. The Царица discovered early Saturday morning that if she pushes the ‘C’ button on the remote, it brings up a list of all Olympic events going on at that moment, whether or not televised by NBC. Select a sport that’s listed, and Comcast streams you live coverage from the Internet, with no Bob Costas. We watched the men’s team archery, narrated by Australians, and it was sublime.

Word must have been catching on, because by Sunday afternoon, there were many buffering delays. A lot, actually. But watching your coverage interrupted for 5 seconds (you miss nothing when it returns, since it picks up where you left off) is an easy price to pay. And when that was over, we switched to dressage.

Comcast has finally done something exactly right by its users, and the Czar nods his approval.

Update: Operative B writes in to advise that DirecTV is offering a similar streaming option, proving the carriers understand viewers’ frustrationsxwith NBC. Bravo, B!

Did you know that 93% of the $1.2 trillion student debt is owed to the United States government? Yeah, it turns out that the United States is the biggest student lender by far. Why? Because they’re making a killing: in fact, 37 percent of federal assets are student loans, about $3.2 trillion.

So when Democrats talk of the “student loan crisis,” you have to realize this is like a used car dealer saying that too many people owe him money.

Of course, Democrats want to have the government pay everybody’s way in college; apparently, that 93% should be 100% in their mind, and you can understand why: with such a huge return on profit, it would be best, really, if nobody knew how much the government was making off bad student loans.

Folks, the government doesn’t want to end student debt: it wants to monopolize the profits off it.

Keep this in mind when you hear politicians claim that college costs are too high, and yet everyone must go to college. This is a perfect confidence trick: you’re buying into a system that no one will, at some point, be able to escape.

Also, that 37% hides an awful lot of government spending. It that went away, well, you might realize how much our deficit was really running.

Our beloved Operative SMR writes in that he and his wife were recently shoplifting in Ikea, and was delighted to find we have a product for sale there.

Lest you doubt him, here’s the photo:

“I always wondered where you shopped to outfit the castle,” he said.

Indeed, the product in question is a sink cabinet with two drawers. Here’s the sink:

The cabinet has two drawers, which when opened reveal the infinitude of the crawling chaos. The assembly directions have no words of course, because Hello Kitty has no mouth. And yet she screams.

You know, the Czar has always said if you see a Hello Kitty image, you know two things.

First, that we are responsible for it, to our own evil ends.

Second, that you paid twice as much as you should have.

Of course, if you purchase that over-priced Hello Kitty item at Ikea, well, you probably paid a great deal more than twice its value.

GorT is steamed.  Hopping mad.  P.O.’d  Really f**king angry.

This nation has a set of laws.  They should apply equally across everyone – regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. etc.  So while we’re fighting for equality, we should all keep that in mind, right?

Let me cite 18 U.S. Code § 793(f):

Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

It should be plainly clear by FBI Director Comey’s statements this morning that Secretary Clinton violated this law.  This is the issue – plain and simple.

Thousands of other government employees and contractors live by this and many other statutes covering this material.

Others, including Bryan Nishimura by this very same administration, have been prosecuted and sentenced for similar offenses.

Secretary Clinton repeatedly lied, including statements under oath in front of Congress, when one considers what Director Comey divulged this morning.

By not prosecuting this crime, what message and precedent are we allowing to be set?  Can some government contractor set up an email server in her house and direct potentially classified emails to it?  Can another government employee read classified materials and ask a co-worker to strip the markings off of it and resend it on an unclassified email system?

No.

There is a reason for classifying material and information.  Maybe the rules and statutes are cumbersome or misaligned with current technology, but the rules are in place.  If people are bothered by these rules, work within the system to change them.  This is why Edward Snowden is a traitor and Hillary Clinton is a yet-to-be-prosecuted criminal.

One simple question for the Presidential debates this fall:

Secretary Clinton, do you believe that all U.S. laws and statutes apply equally to all citizens?

Nihil agis, nihil moliris, nihil cogitas quod non ego non modo audiam sed etiam videam planeque sentiam.

Operative B swings by the Castle bar last night but declines to drink anything, He does however throw this out:

Anti-Brexit news media nervously tapping fingers wondering when this sort of destruction will come to Britain…and, maybe more importantly, what happens when it doesn’t.

Okay, so you’ve read it and concluded that most of the world—not just the United States—is in a bad way. In fact, you would reasonably conclude that things are worse elsewhere in the world: the chauvinism of France returns, the itch for German control over the region, and Russia’s never-ending quest for legitimacy and respect. Worse, the ridiculous return of anti-Semitism shows that Europe would rather hate Jews and the rumors of minor monetary control than address the widespread Islam that is, in fact, coming to supplant or kill them.

Basically, Europe is out of control and seeking to over-control itself. Brexit is part of that reflection: fed up with Brussels (as you rightly identify it) and the sudden realization that any post-Roman European superpower inevitably turns to poop, the English and the Welsh have decided to hit the road. Not surprisingly, the Scots and Northern Irish (long living off handouts), want to stay with the EU under the fantasy that wealthier nations will spot them another twenty quid until they, you know, get around to writing a résumé and applying for mid-management at that bank down the road.

And we can talk Trump, too, and his nationalist tone about taking things back, making things great again, and putting things first again. The piece you just read already covered how all these things are related: Author Sohrab Ahmari terms it a rise in “Illiberalism.”

The cause of that—and this is the Czar taking a long view here—is the struggling death of Leftism. Since the French Revolution, Leftism has failed to deliver on any of its claims. When it turned into Bohemianism, then Communism, then Progressivism, then Socialism, Fascism and Nazism, and all the way down to Bernie Sanders, the numbers were never in its favor.

Bernie Sanders is a great example. He and Hillary Clinton are the pinnacles of what passes for liberal leadership in this country: had any other candidate besides the illiberal Donald Trump survived the primaries, and it’s highly probable that we’d see a landslide vote against the Democrats in November. Know why the Democrats are running candidates so weak that even a mess like Donald Trump is holding his own? Because they’re tapped out. They have no one better than these two losers.

All across Europe, North and South America, we see socialism failing. Austerity, Austrian politics, and no-confidence votes are a visible Thatcherite sign than we are indeed running out of other people’s money. Leftism has failed, and the average person isn’t buying it.

As a whipsaw, though, the reaction has been the opposite: aggressive attempts at central control. Britain leaves the EU? Hysterical (and often hysterically funny) reactions about doom and gloom. “The markets will fail!” Prices fluctuate and return to normal. “Markets struggle to come back from Brexit!” Prices begin ticking upward as British stocks become more valuable. “Market valiantly battles against Brexit’s effects!” Please.

The destruction of political correctness is a good thing, but instead we’re getting political offensiveness in the other direction. Candidates are saying whatever the hell the want to say, and consequences don’t seem to matter. This is equally bad.

Don’t be too joyful about the death of liberal progressivism, though: the responding rise of nationalism isn’t good for freedom, as Ahmari explains. Liberal progressivism might be dying, but it plans to take most of us with it. In fact, it may become more dangerous as it senses it’s cornered. We’re seeing that with the daily deluge of illegal executive actions, double secret probationary regulations passed by unseen bureaucrats, and judicial legislation.

Liberal progressivism is on its way out, but what comes after could easily be worse.

The Czar is a giving Czar, and it warms his heart to see someone as famous and respected as Uncle Jay—the Big Guy, and the guy who should have gone into gritty, rage-filled urban hate rap instead of fiber optics—supplicating in such a worthy and professional manner as this:

Dear Uncle Jay,

You’re right that the key word for traveling to Brazil is “don’t.” Of course, that makes it sound like you shouldn’t travel there at all; in reality, (1) you shouldn’t travel to South America at all and (2) the word don’t really applies to everything related to Brazil.

This actually is Rio. This may not be one of the Olympic sports, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see this at some venues.

Brazilians, on the other hand, are great for parties. The Czar strongly recommends befriending a Brazilian if you like to eat, drink, roller skate, dance, and basically repeat this every hour until four or five in the morning. These people do not quit.

It has been decades since the Czar went to Rio, though, so let’s see what we remember. Your high school Spanish will be just as useful to you here as when you went to Cozumel, by which we mean totally useless. Brazilians, as you already know, speak Portuguese, not Spanish. Portuguese is an interesting language that’s half-Spanish and half-arrogance. It has a lot of shushing noises, which is linguistically interesting: since Brazilians spend about two-thirds of their day inebriated, they simply modified the spelling of their language to reflect drunken slurs.

Helpful phrases:

• “These are not my drugs, therefore you can keep them.” — Não minhas drogas; portanto, você pode mantê-los.
• “Waiter, my seafood is threatening me.” — Garçom, meu frutos do mar me ameaça.
• “What can I drink that won’t kill me?” — O que eu posso beber que não vai me matar?
• “If I drink this caipirinha, will I still have two kidneys in the morning?” — Se eu beber esta caipirinha, vai ainda tenho dois rins na parte da manhã?
• “Get me on the next flight home.” — Quero que o próximo vôo do avião casa.
• “No, I’m Canadian.” — Não, sou canadense

Don’t worry about pronouncing the Portuguese correctly: just read it loud and in a drunk voice. They won’t understand you, but that’s because they’re too hammered themselves. “Vamos roller skating,” they’ll say in sympathy.

The Czar is also familiar with Brazilian cooking, being something of a grill-master himself. The Brazilian method of cooking is quite simple: subject thick cuts of meat—python?—to extremely high heat until the food is charred black on the outside and bloody raw in the middle. If you look carefully, you might find some medium-well fibers of meat between the two, but these will be utterly soaked in salt.

The heat is unbearable in Rio, but clothing is totally optional. Actually, the bigger and hairier you are, the less you want to wear. The Czar guesses for a mostly shaved Sasquatch guy your size, Jay, you should wear an eyepatch in place of a thong. Surprisingly, that won’t be the most surprising thing you’ll see someone wear.

Everyone talks about the gigantic statue of Jesus up on the hilltop, but what they don’t tell you is that, over the last 50 years or so, the statue has totally turned itself around so it looks away. It would be a Vatican-sized miracle, but no one admits it because it reflects nothing but shame on the city. Hey, if you had to gaze down on that mess, you’d at least squint.

Anywhere you go, look for the nearest exit and use it.

Fortunately, you’ll be traveling there with fiber optic cables, which is good because you can use them to strangle the hotel clerk when he arrives in the middle of the night to perform his customary turn down service and leave something minty on your pillow. Don’t worry about the body: murder is not only sanctioned there but positively encouraged. If the authorities ask, simply say what all Brazilians say and claim you thought he was a poor person. You’re off the hook, and you can just leave the body where it is. There will be no air-conditioning in your room anyway, and within moments his corpse will be swollen with bottle fly maggots, so dumping it won’t matter.

For the last 50 years or so, the Czar has become increasingly convinced that the Olympics are just a huge joke that we’re not getting…so the organizers are choosing even dumber locations each time. “Let’s pick a disease-infested pithole that’s corrupt, filthy hot, and has no transportation or clean lodging.” “How about Rio? Chicago said no.”

The Czar has written a lot of great stuff over the years, all of which has been useful to you, and some of which probably saved your lives. Like today: the Czar woke up and realized you need to read a lengthy piece about staining your carpets.

A dog is a great way to do this because dogs are a never-ending and always surprising source of bodily fluids; sometimes dogs can produce emanations that are difficult to identify, at least as far as from what orifice they originated. Even a small dog of particularly robust constitution is able to produce several quarts of goo without any warning. Semi-colloids of a biological color, for example, make up this category, but don’t forget the exotic muds and rare earths they bring in on their paws even in dry conditions.

However, the Czar is not interested in this type of staining, but in good, old-fashioned carpet stain.

Several manufacturers produce a variety of good stain finishes, ranging from oil-based to gallons of solid white latex eggshell finish. You could spend some time handcrafting realistic wood grain patterns in for a natural look, or just dump gallons of stain all over the carpet and storm away, angry at what the world has done to you. In most cases, justifiably angry; but don’t overlook the possibility you deserved it. But we digress.

It’s best to start with a single color, light-hued carpet, although there’s nothing wrong with experimenting on an area rug if you’re just starting out. Open the cans of stain—from experience the Czar recommends no less than a gallon of stain for every 36 square feet. Begin by gently brushing (“feathering”) a little stain into the carpet in a W-pattern, continuously increasing the amount of stain until you basically pour the whole quantity onto the area. If the stain has trouble adhering to the carpet, just stop and give it “tooth” by sanding the carpet with a 100-grit paper. This will roughen up the carpet fibers and increase adhesion by the stain.

Yes, it seems ridiculous to mention this, but be smart about where you start: every so often, even intelligent people stain themselves into a corner and realize they have to walk across their hard work to get to the exit. If the door is in the middle of the room, or the ceiling, do the edges first and work your way from left-to-right until you bottom out at the top of middle. This last step is essential and it’s important not to get it wrong.

As you wind down toward the end, you might have a little extra stain left in the bottom of the can. Don’t waste this: unlike paint, of which you should save a half-pint in case you ever need to do a touch up, stain doesn’t really go bad on carpets and hides wear and tear well. You don’t need to save any, so carefully disconnect the fuel pump from the injectors, taking care to remove the fuel pump fuse, and connect the fuel return line. Disconnect the pressure regulator vacuum line from the carpet, and connect the cleaning kit to the fuel pressure test port. Let the engine run for about 10 minutes, allowing the cleaner to cycle through the injectors.If the engine stops, it’s because the cleaner is exhausted. Then, reattach the fuel pump power supply and pressure regulator vacuum hose, and you’re good to go.

Your stained carpet should give you a lifetime of filthy enjoyment, and as a side benefit, will enjoy better gas mileage.

Operative B writes in, expressing a concern shared by millions right now:

What’s the difference? The difference is, unfortunately, the President himself.

Barack Obama is a polarizer. He has repeatedly encouraged the Left to express outrage and contempt, which they unfailingly do. And the Right obliges by curling up into a defensive ball every time something happens.

It can be a massive tragedy, but it can also be a minor event. It could even be a whacky professor kicking down his own door until the neighbors call the police. No event can go without Barack Obama pointing the finger at Republicans and demanding they step aside. Disunity and isolation is his bag because it has always served him well,

This divisiveness won’t go away with his departure to sunnier climes next January, for the Left has a taste of this and wants more disunity. What will it take? Well, for one, the Right needs to stop apologizing for everything.

Think about this: no matter what shooting occurs, there follows blame against conservatives and demands for gun control. And what do conservatives do? They go on Twitter and Facebook and post gun facts, infographics explaining the differences between automatic and semi-automatic, and condescendingly try to point out how gun laws work.

And none of this works on liberals any more than an ad for a one bedroom apartment in Lesotho grabs your attention. Why? We’ve said it many times: facts, reasons, debate, analyses, and so on never work on people who don’t want to listen; they just want to react with visceral emotion. Explaining whatever the hell you’re telling them only pisses them off more.

The Czar does not mean to sound so puerile, but ultimately the only thing that will resonate with them is jamming it back in their faces. When a liberal says the AR-15 is an assault rifle, don’t come back with a legal explanation of marketing terms—tell them to go ████ themselves. Shock them. Make them realize their opinion has no power over you. Make them realize they are just yapping little dogs.

Liberals have become so screechy because Barack Obama gave them a sense that someone is listening to their never-ending tantrum. Yes, it means playing their game. But playing that game is something liberals never do well, and it’s easy to beat them at their own strategy. Isolate them. Divide them.

Don’t debate, don’t argue, and don’t attempt to be clever with a put-down Anything that lengthens the tantrum strengthens the tantrum. Tell them to go ████ themselves and walk away.

Things will change pretty quick.

GorT has made it pretty clear that most of the GOP candidates that were in the campaign weren’t appealing and Donald Trump is no different.  I believe he’s a clown that enjoys the spotlight of attention.  I’m sure he has some well-intentioned ideas and plenty that are complete burning trash heaps but he’s not appealing at all to me.  Maybe the most appealing part of Trump is that he isn’t a career politician and therefore would bring an outside view to things in Washington.  But I don’t think it is the right kind of view.

And given our limited political system, the other side of the aisle is even less appealing: I fully believe the Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of what is wrong with our political system – she really hasn’t worked a private sector job that she had to work to earn, she’s been tied to so many sketchy at best and criminal at worst scandals that it’s embarrassing that she’s the leading candidate, and her leading challenge as to “why me” is that she could be the first woman President.  And then we have Bernie Sanders who has, almost literally, done nothing in his 26 years in the United States Congress.  Sure, he’s voted on key bills and made some speeches, and rattled the sabers on various issues.  But there is no substantial effort that he personally drove.  His affinity for free-<insert something here> is mind-numbingly out of touch with the socio-economic system in place and with the global economy of which our country is a part.

GorT seriously believes that the GOP is undergoing a change – liberals and democrats will call it “imploding” – whatever term you wish, it is changing.  And almost regardless of where it goes, I think it is time that America begin thinking of a more diverse political party system.  Beyond Republican and Democrat.  Beyond the “Independent” title (which Bernie Sanders used to have).  The Libertarian party is getting noticed since it is largely conservatives that are unhappy with the Republican candidate.  Having said that, I don’t think it will be long until the Democrat party has similar issues.  The back and forth between Sanders and Clinton is illuminating and when you compound that with the weakness of other candidates (minus some of the second-tier candidates).  Just look at the data from FiveThirtyEight below – Clinton is disliked more than George W. Bush EVER WAS.  And do you remember that era?  The “anyone but Bush” campaigns?  The Democrats haven’t had an improvement in presidential “dislike” ratings since the 1980s going from Mondale to Dukakis.

It would be an interesting dynamic within the legislative body to have four, five, or more discrete parties that would coalesce in different ways around different issues.  I suspect that it would shake loose some of the gridlock that has developed in the last decade.

But for the here and now, what could be the near-term outcome of voting for a non-major party (R or D) candidate?  Many will argue that it would be a lost cause and I get that.  But I wonder if it serves a longer play: will it inspire and motivate a change to (a) the types of candidates put forward by the major parties and (b) the ideas of other parties becoming more major players.  Change has to start somewhere.

In the end, GorT is going to write in, ‘Puter and the Czar for the Presidential ticket and then urge them to select the Œcumenical Volgi as the Secretary of State (his international knowledge is unbounded), Dr. J for the Surgeon General, The Mandarin for the Secretary of Defense (gut boots to our enemies!), and GorT would willingly serve as the Director of National Intelligence.

Not much provocation is required to launch the Czar into a rant about people’s driving habits. Likely, you share as much loathing for the typical driver as does the Czar. Indeed, some years ago, we suggested that the perfect intelligence test would be to put a candidate behind the wheel of a car; the longer he or she travels without a bonehead error, the higher your intelligence is ranked.

Except we would all fail in minutes. Whether it’s a total stop before making a right-hand turn, blocking a lane at a blind merge, or pulling into the left lane only to slow down, we all do things that irritate other drivers and make the driving gods shriek in horror.

Parallel parking is another story. Look, the Czar learned parallel parking with a horse and wagon in the steppes of Russia and was consistently able to parallel park a 1969 Chevrolet Impala 327 in one try. But even today, he will unabashedly drive 50 more feet to find a spot to drive into instead of a close one in which he could parallel park.

Does this sound like you? Guess what—it’s probably not your fault. If you can park your car in a diagonal slot, you have the necessary skills to parallel park easily.* So why is it so difficult?

Because the rules and tricks you were taught years ago don’t work anymore. The problem isn’t with you, it’s with the cab forward design of modern vehicles that prevent you from knowing where the foxtrot your bumpers are, where the four corners of your vehicle are, and how close or far you are to the people in front of and behind you. You basically sit in a bubble, and as far as you can tell, your hood ends with your dashboard and steering wheel.

“Czar, wouldn’t it be awesome if someone updated the rules of parallel parking using modern cars, and taking into account the differences in vehicle heights, and realizing cars don’t have bumpers, and providing instructions for whether the parking space is on the right or the left side of the road?” Of course it would, and the Czar obliges, for today the Czar is a kindly one.

Okay, so you can follow along, the Czar wants you to imagine a parking space between two parked cars. The front car is the one that will be in front of you when parallel parked; the back car is the one that will be behind you when you have parked. Got it?

Here’s what you do.

1. Find a spot long enough for you to fit. How do I know? Pick a spot that’s five feet longer than your car. You can probably eyeball this very accurately, but if you’re in a new or different vehicle, this can be dicey. So do this:
   1. Pull up alongside the spot (or really slow down) and center your vehicle next to the free spot.
   2. If you can see the front car’s whole back end through your front windshield, you’re got enough room up front.
   3. If you can see the back car’s whole front end in your rear windshield by glancing over your shoulder, you’ve got enough room in back.
      1. That’s for a spot on the right. For a spot on the left, make sure you can see the front car’s whole back end out your side window.
      2. Look over your left shoulder: if you can see the front end of the back car in your rear windshield, you’re more than good. Just don’t use your side mirror for this.
2. Pull up so your car is about two feet apart from the front car. How do I know? The distance between your cars should be the same as if you were parking in a parking lot. As long as your side mirror doesn’t smack his, you’re probably at a good distance.
3. Stop when your front bumper is lined up with the front car’s front bumper. Shift into reverse but keep your foot on the brake. How do I know? When your steering wheel is pretty much lined up with his steering wheel, your front bumpers are close enough. Now if you’re in a long pickup truck and the front car is a Honda Fit, you probably need to pull up more.
4. Turn your wheels all the way toward the curb but keep your foot on the brake. In other words, if the parking space is on your right, crank your wheel all the way clockwise. How do I know? As long as you turn the wheel toward the curb, you’ve got this mastered.
5. Take your foot off the brake so the car begins to back up. When the car reaches a 45° angle, put your foot on the brake. How do I know? Use the side mirror away from the curb. When you see the back car’s front license plate centered in your side view mirror, your car is perfectly at 45°. Also, do not let your steering wheel start to spin back in the opposite direction: keep it cranked all the way toward the curb.
6. Keeping your foot on the brake, turn the steering wheel all the way in the other direction. How do I know? This should be obvious by this point. But most drivers who screw up parallel parking seem to want to turn the wheel while letting up on the brake. This pulls your car out of position at the worst moment and winds up putting your car too far from the curb. If you routinely find yourself too far from the curb, it’s probably this step you’re screwing up.
7. Let your foot off the brake, and let the car begin to turn into the spot. How do I know? Actually, there’s not much you can worry about. If you obeyed the prevoius three steps, the car is basically parking itself at this point. As before, don’t let your steering wheel start to turn in the other direction.
8. When your car has cleared the front car, put your foot on the brake. How do I know? Look at the rear license plate on the front car. If it’s centered in your side window, you have cleared the front car. Of course, this is true if the spot is on the right. If the spot is on the left, you won’t need this trick because you can see from the driver’s seat that you aren’t hitting the front car.
9. Keeping your foot on the brake, turn the steering wheel all the way to the other direction. How do I know? This step is just to land the car nicely on the spot with the wheels pointed slightly toward the curb.
10. Let off the brake and let the car straighten out a little bit. How do I know? When you can see the back car in both your side mirrors, you are straight.
11. Stop. You are parked. Put the vehicle in park and turn off the ignition.

Okay, you followed the above, and you find your car is still too far from the curb. Before you plead that you followed the step above about aligning the mirrors, that’s okay— sometimes the second step is the cause and it can be tough to figure out the distance between the two cars, especially when you’re in a tall SUV and the car is some little Smart speck. In fact, it can also happen if you didn’t initially notice the car in front of you is also far from the curb. After all, the above tricks line you up with the front car. If he’s wrong, you’re wrong.

But if that happens—if you’re way more than six inches out from the curb—take the Czar’s advice: don’t keep driving up and backing up and driving up and backing up, hoping you can “saw” your way closer to the curb. It will be faster and easier to just pull out and start over. Really.

* Conversely, if you have trouble diagonal parking, you’re probably never going to master parallel parking, so yeah—it is your fault.
** No, the Czar found artwork and modified it slightly. He wishes he could thank the original artist, but does not know who it is. No, it isn’t you, either, so don’t write in.

A couple of grabs from the mail bag today, and up first is Operative SMR, who used to write in quite a bit before he got bored with us:

Let ’s hope it works. The Czar fully expected Volgi to come stumbling down the castle stairs with his printed* copy of the post demanding to know where we thought two examples could ever hope to prove that literary criticism isn ’t the utter hole of leftist depravity we know it is. So far, that hasn ’t happened; however, the Czar is encouraged** to see so many commentators rip into millennial hacks. “Back in our day, whippersnappers, we had an actual man to fight. Throwing down against pajama boys? Please.” And some such.

* Scrivened, actually.

** Of course, it isn ’t the Czar ’s job to brighten anyone ’s day. And we only encourage you to toil harder.

Oh, here ’s one from JAB that went to ‘Puter and us, but of course writing to ‘Puter is a total waste of time. You want to chat with ‘Puter? Try Twitter—his attention span is long enough for 140 characters. But JAB ’s question below ran out ‘Puter ’s patience after the word login.

JAB must not nearly be as surprised as she seems that much of leftist bandwagon jumping tends to result in unforeseen consequences and logical disconnects. Actually, now that the Czar thinks of it, most bandwagon jumping of any sort results in unforeseen consequences and logical disconnects. Take it from a Chicago sports fan.

’Puter is unavailable to comment, as he is too happy to see the words ‘penis, ’ ‘nekkid ’ and ‘scholong ’ in this post. GorT wasn’t mentioned, but he’s happy knowing the words ‘penis, ’ ‘nekkid ’ and ‘scholong ’ will drive up our traffic by 140%.

Backlash can be a good thing, which is wonderful because there has been so much of that lately. Yes, you’re well aware of how Target’s stock prices have been negatively affected by their un-PR decision to remove the figurative doors from their literal restrooms, and how Hillary Clinton is dropping the perennial Republican War on Women tactic because her campagin staff discovered it costs her votes.

Being a literary critic is easy. Maybe too easy. And there may be growing recognition that literary criticism needs to leave the 9th Grade.

Yes, yes, Volgi—the Czar knows it’s the size of a mosquito, but even a large lump of meat like ‘Puter will swat at a mosquito. And if enough start to bite, the big man will go inside for a while. So this is good news.

As you know, the Czar loved The Jungle Book remake to an unexpectedly high degree. So he did catch a written piece, written a short while before the movie even came out, trashing the picture.

The preview took the premise that no one should see The Jungle Book because its original author, Rudyard Kipling, was a racist piece of colonial filth trash, and the movie’s very existence was a heteronormative noble savage antianthropological embarrassment, and under no context would it be beneficial for people to see it. This was put out on a website so far left the Czar dare not link to it in the event he accidentally promotes it. Suffice to say, Rudyard Kipling was the embodiment of racist evil, and The Jungle Book was a tool to corrupt.

The article’s comments, however, took a different viewpoint. Indeed, the metacritics’ responses were horribly condescending; these weren’t ordinary folks chiming in to disagree, but well-written antitheses excoriating the author for writing a near self-parody of classic deconstructionist word porn. And the one comment that registered most with the Czar was a comment along the lines of “Your piece would have been better received by literary critics in 1968.”

Exactly.

Roughly about the same time, another (surprisingly unrelated) individual wrote a critique of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories, damning them for their racism, lack of diversity, heteronormative white supremacist tropes, and colonial oppression. Right, the popular kids’ books (and rightfully successful line of toys).

The backlash here has been spectacular as well—not from AM radio hosts, but by other literary critics who are beginning to sound quite similar.

And here is the similarity: it’s okay to dislike a book because its themes do not meet your particular mindset. But it’s not okay to dismiss the work because it’s the product of the past. This is indeed a massive shift in literary critique, which cheerfully embraced any leftist nonsense starting in the 1950s and continuing right up until today.

The problem is that much of this isn’t literary criticism; it’s simply discounting something in favor of political propaganda. It’s not that this book isn’t good, you understand, just that it isn’t leftist enough. Sure, Macbeth shows how monarchy is inherently corrupt, but it won’t convince people to adopt socialism.

That’s just not criticism, and it seems people are starting to tire of it. Possibly it’s because today’s literary leftists are too insipid to understand how to really treat their subject with the veneer of credibility. Really: we’re down to ripping on The Jungle Book and Thomas the Tank Engine stories because they’re not inclusive enough? This is just time wasting.

There’s still a lot of work to be done in producing good quality criticism, as the Volgi would pause in his reply to us long enough to agree enthusiastically, but there is a quietly seismic shift in the nature of the critique. Look, you can’t ban Mark Twain stories because he uses the N-word. In fact, you can’t condemn a book for accurately capturing the language and ideas of the time.

Some of this stems from science fiction, particularly those critics now influenced more by Star Trek than Jacques Derrida. Science fiction has long made a tiresome cliché out of making some futuristic society a simplistic and transparent satiric of a modern social concern. And it’s okay to judge it based on its success at doing so.

What you waste our time in doing is taking something from the past, whether it’s Kipling, Tom Sawyer, or James the Red Engine, and judging it by modern stereotypes. After all, doesn’t Karl Marx fail because he didn’t anticipate BitCoin? Shouldn’t we dismiss Greenpeace because we rarely hunt whales? And why vote for Hillary Clinton, given that her daughter went for a traditional heterosexual lifestyle?

See, it doesn’t go the other way. You can’t say an old book is bad because it didn’t anticipate your modern political views. You might think so, though, if you buy into the debunked jingoism about History having a Right Side: let’s condemn the whole Isle of Sodor because they should have seen LGBT and Islamism coming back in 1911 and anticipated this.

Perhaps in 50 years, we’ll finally see coherent and logical criticism as being the norm again. Perhaps, then, we can look back at 20th and early 21st Century literary analysis and wonder whether any of it is remotely valid—like how we view Freud or Decadence. Or even maybe, we could say “Yes, Kipling wrote from the conviction that the British Empire was powerful; but what does that have to do with his story?”

Mrs. Doubtfire weighs in on President Obama’s “a tranny in every stall” campaign promise. Unrelatedly, ‘Puter wouldn’t mind Mrs. Doubtfire pinching off a loaf in a stall next to him.

President Obama’s Department of “Justice” sent North Carolina a letter last week defending the rights of the mentally ill to piss and crap wherever zhey want because Title VII and Title IX, or something.*

As all other problems of note have been solved, the Department of Justice has turned to the critical issue of defending the rights of enschlonged, mentally ill trannies pissing upright in ladies’ restrooms next to young girls.**

‘Puter’s would like to note for the record the following facts:

• Gender dysphoria is classified a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
• Nowhere in the text of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does the word or concept “transgender” appear.
• Nowhere in the text of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act does the word or concept “transgender” appear.
• As noted in the letter, the EEOC has magically discovered that when Congress wrote “sex” in Titles VII and IX of the Civil Rights Act, Congress really, for true meant to say “sex and enschlonged, mentally ill trannies,” because it’s just so obvs.
• As further noted in the letter, several courts have lost their ability to read plain statutory language, and have bought into the EEOC’s discovery that “sex” and “enschlonged, mentally ill trannies” are synonyms.
• As further further noted in the letter, other courts have deferred to the EEOC’s reading of Titles VII and IX of the Civil Rights Act because Chevron, abdicating their constitutional duty and violating their oaths.

So, the Department of Justice naturally says North Carolina must repeal recent legislation requiring people to use the bathroom associated with the sex noted on their birth certificate because it discriminates against enschlonged, mentally ill trannies, thus violating Titles VII and IX.***

‘Puter doesn’t even know where to begin. The word or concept “transgendered” appears nowhere in the statutes Justice cites in support of its “Free Willy (in the women’s loo)” diktat. But hey, SJWs are fired up that men in drag can’t traumatize nekkid, vulnerable women, so who cares about language? Do the right thing, man! Ignore the Constitution, and make up the statute you wish existed! YOLO, amirite?

Also, Justice has no authority on its own to order a state to do anything. If Justice thinks its interpretation of the Civil Rights Act is correct, it should sue. If not, it can shut the [heck] right up. For too long Congress has permitted courts to overstep their constitutional boundaries, mostly because Congressmen are chickensh*ts who care more about reelection than serving their constituencies.

If Congress had any balls, it would pass clarifying legislation saying “The Civil Rights Act makes no provision for transgendered people. Any inconsistent, rule, regulation, or case law is hereby invalidated.” But Congress won’t do that. Congress let the courts decide on abortion and gay marriage because Congress has no balls. Why would it be different here?

Look, America and enschlonged, mentally ill trannies worked out the bathroom issue for decades without the need for the federal government’s “help.” There wasn’t a rash of mobs beating up good-faith trannies relieving themselves in the ladies’ room. The vast majority of people don’t hate trannies, they pity them for the difficult mental illness with which they are stricken, and have accommodated them in their restroom preferences.

It’s a shame an overreaching Obama Administration feels the need to press an out-of-step SJW agenda at the expense of women’s safety, but that’s where we are. We now are told to believe mental illness should be normalized, and enshclonged, mentally ill trannies must be afforded the status of protected class like racial minorities.

America is a stupid place.

* ‘Puter notes the person responsible for the letter is the “Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General.” ‘Puter is not making this title up. If your organization is so large you have a Principal Deputy Assistant anything, it’s too big. Start by firing everyone with Principal Deputy Assistant in their job titles.

** May ‘Puter suggest the Department of Justice look into the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee for violations of national security surrounding her use of a prohibited non-secure, private server?

*** Before you get your knickers in a twist and embark on an SJW witch hunt, ‘Puter understands the real issue isn’t the occasional, good-faith tranny sneaking into the women’s room, pinching off a loaf, and quietly leaving. The real issue is the real potential for abuse by sexual predators of the Department of Justice’s requirement that anyone who claims to be an enschlonged, mentally ill tranny be given unfettered access to places where women are naked and vulnerable.

Thanks to all the loyal readers who peppered the Czar with concerns and complaints about our site’s performance recently. The Czar wants you to know that (a) he reads every one of them and (b) he’s not the freaking technical support hotline.

That said, the Czar annoyed the heck out of GorT, and GorT decided that early 21st Century technology was too primitive for his tastes. Yes, yes, he got the whole “traditional setup like Colonial Williamsburg” vibe, but decided that enough was enough. Like the Amish who may have built him in the future, GorT upgraded the whole site to 24th Century technology. It now runs on an OctalQ-Core quantum mesh wave processor.

Oh, there will be some adjustments. GorT is working on getting the cool fonts back. Fonts go bye-bye by the mid-23rd Century, and finding a t3xt-to-font converter is tough to find, even for him.

But hang in there. The new server is at least 800 bazillion gloons faster than the old one, we can say without exaggeration. And links to our historic brilliance are back in high fashion, thanks to his hard work.

GorT does all this work for you without getting paid. Or sleeping. Or eating. Or breathing.

The Czar hasn’t been neglecting his mail, but the question below was a pretty tough one from Operative B. Donald Trump, despite all his massive failures as a logician, poses a reasonable question: why not just chuck NATO, or at least force Europe to pay their fair share?

Well, there’s no question that historically, NATO has been a positive driver in the huge eradication of communism from every except China, Vietnam, Cuba, and American college campuses. The United States could have pushed the Soviet Union out of Europe on its own, sure, but having Europe engaged so heavily made it a lot easier. Libertarians who want the United States to be a limited National Guard force consistently fail to realize that between 1812 and today, most of the wars we fought defensively on started over there somewhere, and not in Utica or Reno. Having bases in Europe, with American troops co-trained with Europeans, worked demonstrably well in staving off Soviet incursions not just in Western Europe, but in oceans all over the world. Any reasonable person concludes that NATO, up to 1989, was worth every penny in saving lives.

But what about after 1989? Sure, Putin is a criminal thug, but he’s not really the same thing as global communism, is he? Do we really need to spend billions on NATO submarines, air forces, and ground troops just because Putin is an old-school mobster with nuclear weapons he’d sooner sell than launch? Can’t those forces be better deployed against the War on Terror?

That’s a lot of maybes. Yet the biggest reason people think NATO is a useless mess of red tape is because—under President Obama—that’s precisely what it is. Under other presidents, NATO remained a powerful check against Putin’s expansionist plans. Don’t take it from the Czar; take it from someone who knows both sides of the problem personally:

If it weren't for NATO, the Baltics would have been overrun by Putin long ago. Georgia & Ukraine could have been protected, and should be.

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) April 22, 2016

That’s a whole lot of rebuttal right, there. Without NATO, Europe would already look a lot different. For crying out loud, even a military moron like the President understands this. He would have shredded NATO years ago and dumped the money into gun control legislation if he could have—instead, he sent a carrier group to the North Atlantic—which is being buzzed by Russian warplanes practicing bombing runs, if you can believe it.

Georgia and the Ukraine are proof enough that Putin is a conquering bastard bad guy, no different than the Soviets before him in Afghanistan, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. And rolling into Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are not just possibilities to a Russian—they’re necessities. The history of all three countries (and yes, Finland’s too) is replete with invasions from Russia or the Soviets. It’s what they do.

NATO? Absolutely critical in 2016. Unfortunately, it’s been handcuffed by a slow-to-act President. Yes, the Democrats agree Bush is on the hook for doing nothing about Georgia, but Georgia isn’t a NATO member. Neither is the Ukraine—but Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are, and guess why they were so quick to join?

All right, if the Czar can’t convince you that NATO is a critical component to United States foreign interests, we can at least move on to who pays for it.

Who does pay for NATO? This is a tough question to answer because NATO has been part of American military structure for so long that it’s difficult to really separate. And NATO is funded in different ways, by different rules. And what a country pays to be part of NATO is not always what a country spends on NATO, either. It’s a mess.

But a couple of key points: first, the United States does not pay the “lion’s share” of NATO. In fact, across the different funding mechanisms, the United States pays only about 22% of the organization. Yes, no one pays more than us (Germany pays the second most, Italy third, and so forth). But this is based more on population than anything: typically, dues are assessed as 2% of GDP; this means no matter what, the United States pays more than Canada. Or Britain.

However, other countries can and do pay more than than 2% based on need. Poland and Estonia—both fearful of Russian expansion efforts—authorized themselves to pay over this amount. Surprisingly, so does Greece—but a few countries are also paying less than ever on NATO: Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy… and the United States, which has been slowing down how much it’s been contributing.

So yes—it’s tough to say exactly how much the United States spends on NATO at any given moment, but—follow along, Mr. Trump—we don’t pay substantially more than our fair share. And as long as we want to keep Russia out of Europe, and we do, we need NATO. And when it comes to international organizations, there are few better examples of a decently run organization.

Now, how about we ask a better question: why are Americans paying the same amount to fund the United Nations? And why are we paying more than everyone else to fund its peacekeeping operations?

Alternate title: Semper ubi sub ubi. Ask any Latin 101 student as it is beneath the Czar’s dignity to translate such a puerile pun.

Around some cerebral circles in the conservative corners, a discussion about UBI is circulating. Shorthand for Universal Basic Income, it’s an approach being seriously considered by a handful of European countries as a wholesale substitute for their bloated, corrupt welfare systems.

Given that the United States also has a bloated, corrupt welfare system, people on the Left and the Right are wondering if the UBI model could work here. In effect, the entire welfare support system is eliminated—unemployment, food stamps, disability, basic welfare allowances—and every American citizen simply gets a flat check from the government to be used as desired. An allowance, really.

Of course, as others have pointed out, a flat check won’t work for everyone: folks with multiple disabilities and mouths to feed will warrant a bit more than a upper management executive living in a downtown condo. And in short order, we’ll be back to the old system. So are there any benefits?

The Left likes it because it technically expands welfare to include everyone: rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. No one receives welfare anymore (it’s a co-op stipend!), and everyone has skin in the game. There are no stipulations, so if you want to blow your check on Xbox games, do so. Consider it a stimulus. But if you’re poor, that’s it: you don’t get another one until next month.

The Right likes this idea because it reduces the never-ending tax payout from the upper economic tiers. Basically, we spend less on welfare by doing so, and greatly simplify the rules at the same time. Since there are no stipulations on how you spend your stipend, you thereby eliminate corruption. Dump it all on booze or BMWs, if you want—because that’s where it ends.

The Libertarians seems to crave this idea because you now eliminate layers of government, prevent government minders from insisting on means testing, drug tests, auditing, and whatnot. You get your check every month and that’s that.

However, the Libertarians have discovered the one hook that makes this entire discussion moot. It matters not a jot if you like this idea or are opposed to this idea: it isn’t going to happen because it will require a substantial downsizing of government.

For bureaucrats, this isn’t some idle discussion about reforming entitlements or eliminating spending waste. SNAP, WIC, EITC, housing, etc., aren’t just cash transactions—they’re massive jobs programs employing tens of thousands of people. If UBI becomes a real thing, hey—we’re not going to need a lot of these folks, anymore. Actually, you could do UBI with a skeleton staff and a good computer and printer to roll checks out of it.

No matter what job transfers are created or administrative support roles are planned out as a result of UBI adoption, you will only be able to support a fraction of the thousands of departmental drones lurking in federal building basements. They’re going to be the first deserving takers of UBI as soon as they hit unemployment status.

In some respects, we shouldn’t care about them. Heck, the whole point of UBI is to help people like this. They can live, poorly, off UBI until the private sector absorbs their massive numbers the way it managed to absorb the defense industry layoffs in the post-Cold War 1990s.

That’s not the point, though: UBI is not going to happen because no candidate in any branch will be comfortable sponsoring the bill that will lay off tens of thousands of federal workers. It’s one thing to talk about eliminating departments during the campaign speeches, but this is a pittance compared to our social programs which account for almost a trillion dollars in spending per year.

It’s not that the Czar favors keeping our bloated, corrupt social welfare programs intact—it’s that he’s too cynical to think UBI will get further than academic consideration.

Perhaps we are wrong: perhaps Finland will discover how to roll with that punch, which will let other countries around the world anticipate this problem and accommodate it. And in 2024, when America has seen how it works, we can talk more seriously about it then.

Until then, the many benefits and many bad things that will follow with UBI are nothing more than idle chatter.

GorT is an engineer – he enjoys building and fixing things: software, hardware, woodworking, etc.  In that light, GorT relishes consistency.  From his Jesuit education, an inconsistent platform or argument was always viewed as an easy target.

So with the current news about Hillary Clinton referring to an “unborn person” not having Constitutional rights this past weekend, I wondered the following: if someone believes that scientific models are essentially the proof of anthropogenic climate change then what do they believe when it comes to the scientific (biological) models that show that when a human sperm fertilizes a human egg in healthy conditions creates a human life…a person?  Is that science insufficient?

The Planned Parenthood Illinois Action’s Diana Arellano, manager of community engagement, said Sunday that Clinton’s comments undermined the cause for abortion rights.  Her comment “further stigmatizes #abortion,” Ms. Arellano said in a tweet. “She calls a fetus an ‘unborn child’ & calls for later term restrictions.”

Well, I guess use it when it suits your argument….

The Czar wishes to offend everybody today.

Obviously, the dead of Brussels are a tragedy, and the wounded have our strongest hopes for a full recovery. The Czar does not intend to mock them, but will certainly criticize the hell out of the European mindset.

Yes, we should get right to the first item: the absurd insistence that Muslim immigrants be unquestionably welcomed into the community has made it easy, relatively speaking, for the bad guys to hide. The Czar noticed an all-too-familiar attitude among the neighbors of the Brussels terrorists: they didn’t want to say anything out of fear of stereotyping.

Of course this is a problem, but it’s also a problem if Muslims are prejudged unfairly as well. You can argue this back and forth—like we are here in the States—but ultimately this isn’t the major problem since the influx started decades ago unchecked. It’s not even in the top 5.

A bigger problem than that? Let’s start with typical European reaction. The Czar shares his contempt with many on Twitter who noticed that the largest social media reaction wasn’t over the tragedy, or what could be done to prevent the next attack, or whether something should have been done…it was over whether a French-flagged Baymax hugging a Belgian-flagged Baymax was the more heartfelt response versus the guy who Photoshopped a picture of Brussels at night with red, orange, and black colors in the skyscraper windows.

Call us mad with rage, but when you put up cute memorials of empathy all over social media by the millions, you’re basically making a commercial for ISIS. Look how many millions of people ISIS reached with a couple of simple bombs: people all over the world are providing free press and showing that they were very upset by it. Time was a local terrorist attack frightened thousands; now, it can frighten millions.

The ability of the European to roll over for people of moral depravity remains as astonishing to us now as it did thousands of years ago when Mongols raged through the East. Is any group more easily intimidated than Europeans? It’s hard to say.

Another problem is with institutionalized law enforcement cultural incompetence. To be fair, Belgium has a comparatively token force. Indeed, the Czar would not be surprised if he postulated correctly that the number of people fighting terrorism in Rhode Island exceeded the number of people fighting terrorism in all of Belgium. The Belgians literally do not have enough people—and probably won’t ever—have enough to fight all the terrorists coming into Belgium.

But other countries do, and this vexes the Czar. The Turks warned Europe that at least two of the Brussels terrorists were in central Europe—no one stopped them. Basically, as long as they were targeting Belgium, they were Belgium’s problem. It’s hard to fathom this, except to say that European unity and community is nothing more than a shrugged puff of smoke. How many countries did the terrorists visit on their way to Belgium? Who cares, seems to be the European answer. After all, if there’s one thing a European hates more than the foreigners coming to kill him, it’s the next village over and their different football club.

There’s also the issue of weapons control. Europeans love to rant about Americans and their wild west love affair for Tombstone-style shootouts and Valentines Day massacres, and how any civilized country would follow the European model of prohibition. However, whether it was the long-barrels used in Paris or the explosives used in Brussels, it seems that only people who have trouble arming themselves in Europe are the critics of American values.

Finally, and the Czar will have the most fun with this one, the Europeans seems to have two default setting choices when confronted with terror. Either they completely bow down in obedience to the most intimidating group in the room, or they become militant national socialists. Of course, our media paints this as a “disturbing rise in Right Wing hate groups,” but of course this is shorthand for a “predictable rise in Left Wing bullshit.”

As the Europeans continue to paint touching murals, hoping that the terrorists hit the next country over next time while ignoring their neighbors carrying Kalashnikovs and fertilizer into the apartment behind them, and dust off their brownshirts, the sad reality is that the terrorists picked Europe as a primary target for a bunch of reasons.

Alas, those reasons are thousands of years old.

I was listening to Bill Kristol talk to Robert Putnam about what’s gone wrong in the country over the past few decades (you should too), and I thought of three things that they touched on only lightly if at all.

The first was patriotism. For a discussion which spent tons of time on the value of community, and Putnam’s horror at the constriction of the circle of “us,” there was no mention that to build a consciousness of community, you need to hold it up as worthy (not perfect, but worthy). Since the late ’60s, the American left has signed onto the proposition that our country is unworthy in its history, its institutions, its liberty. Whether as an organized conspiracy against whichever minority is being emphasized, an exemplar of whatever pejorative is being hung on free markets (Capitalism! Neoliberalism!), or a force for ill around the world, the only good they seem to see in the country is its having produced their enlightened selves who can demolish the it and replace it with the eternal order of Justice they’ve Gnostically intuited the rules for erecting. But first, everything must go!

This tendency has leached into the right, as well, from the paleo-conservative rage at social upheavals to the libertarian impulse to pull down governmental institutions in the absence of civil-society substitutes while attacking the moral systems needed to ensure ordered liberty in the absence of coercion.

And I suspect, as de facto anti-Americanism has become the order of the day in liberals’ worldview, it’s coming to the mainstream right, appalled by the thirty to forty percent of their voters, whom they’d held sentimentally to be the equivalent of the yeoman farmer, who prove wiling to back a cheap and transparent demagogue who manifestly believes not a whit in the American constitutional order, liberty, or anything beyond his own compulsive self-aggrandizement. As I’ve mentioned before, most people on the lower end of society are not contemptible (though of course, many are). And their support for Trump may be a sincere expression of rage against the situation they find themselves in, largely shaped by faraway cultural, political, and economic panjandrums. But the form of their protest is dangerous to a degree I suspect they don’t know. Not least because our “educators” have failed to educate them in civics and…patriotism. (As for the better-educated Trump backers, one merely boggles.)

Patriotism properly understood is not ethnonational chauvinism. Patriotism is that attachment to the country that, in the case of the United States, generally combined sentiment with an understanding, however basic, of our distinctive history and institutions, which we considered (gasp) good. And even (horrors!) better than most everything else on offer. To repeat: this is not merely a sentimental whim, but a historical and political-philosophical case, however distilled down into folk wisdom and cute stories about the Founders. (The distillation is not cynical: if you want to get your millions of fellow citizens whose IQ is below eighty to get the importance of transparency and courage in sustaining a republic, little George and the cherry tree and Barbara Fritchie are going to get you there in a way that handing them a copy of The Federalist Papers never will. There’s a reason centuries of  faithful, illiterate Christians knew their faith from stained-glass windows.)

The second factor is the diminution of religion. Again, in terms of social cohesion, religion is the vehicle by which we are most profoundly reminded of our duties to our fellow man. And it’s the primary vehicle for imparting the moral codes which allow people to live successful lives absent legal coercion.

If you want a factory owner to keep the lights on out of a sense of duty to his employees, you’re more likely to find it resonate in one who’s an elder at his church or a regular in his synagogue. The non-religious can of course be moral in this regard, but having a belief system which insists upon the non-negotiable, absolute, intrinsic worth of persons, and regards your decisions relative to them to be an ultimate criterion of judgment of your worth, creates an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual requirement to support and sustain the real people you know, not just “the people” in the abstract. (And, yeah, yeah, of course there are professedly religious people who are craven and wicked, whited sepulchers. And sincere believers who fall short. But c’mon, that should go without saying.)

By the same token, if, for example, you want to reverse the decline of the working-class family, you’d better find some way to return some stigma and meaning to the terms fornication, adultery, and divorce. If there’s a better way to do this than religion, human society hasn’t produced it. (See for example, the long Wesleyan revolution in working-class English mores, which only now seems to be over.) Secondarily, make partying reprehensible. (Uncool! Joyless scold! I can put whatever I want in my body! I know, I know…)

Finally, I was struck by Kristol & Putnam’s lack of discussion of what may be the single greatest social upheaval in our times, the mass entry of women into the salaried workforce. While the dropping of barriers to entry was a logical (and I think laudable) blow for equality, the expectation that women would become wage-earners seems to have been a second-order effect on a massive scale. It may have produced massive goods (from personal fulfillment to the putting of many more excellent brains in the service of solving problems), but as with everything else in life, there were massive tradeoffs, which we’re still reticent to discuss lest it be taken as lunatic attempts to “return women to the kitchen.”

Of course, whether some (many? most?!) married women would prefer to be “in the kitchen” raising their children full-time and/or free to perform the panoply of charitable and culture-sustaining jobs their grandmothers did is an open question that, for similar reasons, can’t be asked.

But in terms of American prosperity, we’ve now got, effectively, twice as many people chasing if not the same number of jobs, then considerably less than twice the number of jobs. And this has wage effects. And while at the upper end of the economy, where there’s lots of money to go around, it’s less pronounced. But we have gone very quickly from a second earner in a household being an exception to its being a relative necessity—and perhaps an absolute one at the bottom of the pay scale. And this has not only economic-inequality effects but places enormous strains on family formation and sustenance.

Simultaneously, the no-fault divorce revolution (originally sold to relieve the lot of a small number of women in hard-case straits) and the embrace of sexual libertinism by the culture at large (again, often proposed in feminist terms) blew up the nuclear family. Anyone in Generation X can remember how this went up and down the economic ladder, but more recently, the haves have regrouped and keep their families intact at considerably higher rates. Among the working class: carnage.

This problem, being both economic, cultural, and political in nature is not amenable to any obvious or easy solution. Likely the tectonic plates of the culture will shift in some new direction, taking politics and economics along for the ride, and we can hope it is in a socially cohesive direction.

To improve our sense of community (and desire to improve it), we need a sense that the community is worthwhile. We need a self-restraining populace that’s not merely atomized subjects cowering before the Orwellian state or aren’t Huxleyan slaves to their own transitory desires and vices, but citizens filled with a constructive sense of righteous behavior and love of neighbor. We need to fix our families. Because women are and always will be the center of families, solutions to its problems may well come from the armies of women who’ve achieved impressive and glittering academic and professional successes, but see past the feminist and economistic fallacies that they’re just interchangeable cogs whose greatest ability is to win rat races.

Putnam is right. Our sense of community is narrowed and frayed. What can one do? Well, here’s a suggestion for a first step. If you’re a metropolitan sophisticate, hop in a car, drive an hour out of your city and pull into a Taco Bell or a McDonald’s. Stifle your epicurean horror, order something with a cup of coffee or a soda you can nurse, and just sit there for an hour. Look at your fellow customers, your fellow Americans. Maybe eavesdrop a bit. Put yourself in their shoes. And then think, how do we all—“they,” “we”—get us all moving in the right direction again? Someone, somewhere will happen on a right answer, someone else another, and so forth; and it’s our duty to our fellows to find them and put them into practice.

America’s broken, and it’s not the rabble’s fault. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Who broke America? Smug bureaucrats, smirking media types (print, radio, and TV), condescending professoriate, and detached politicians of both parties broke it.

How did they break America? They broke America by forgetting the most important term of America’s social contract: leave me the fuck alone.

Up until the 1960s, America had pretty much held true to this fundamental principle. Sure, Democrats went batshit crazy in the 1930s, passing big government program after big government program to beat the Great Depression, but few if any of them intruded into the private lives of Americans.*

Civil rights activists convinced America in the early 1960s the only way to end state-sponsored racial discrimination was to use federal power to force states to jettison the not-quite-slavery-but-still-pretty-awful Jim Crow laws. The civil rights activists were morally correct, but unleashing federal government to usurp states’ Constitutional prerogatives had unintended consequences.

Dirty, nasty hippies and other Boomer miscreants leaped at the chance to use federal power to cram down all manner of intrusive laws on Americans.

“Hey, man, Earth Day was a great excuse to get stoned, be a lazy sack of dung, and strum my out-of-tune guitar on the quad. Let’s have Earth Day every day!” Goodbye states’ rights, hello EPA (and the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, RCRA, and CERCLA).

It was only a short hop from yesterday’s draft-dodging, tree-hugging, Boomer stoners to today’s crappers that can’t adequately flush a turd, or light bulbs in name only (CFLs), or endangered avian species emulsification systems (wind turbines).

“Hey, man, the people totally need, like, free health care. They do it in Europe, so why not here?” Goodbye, state’s rights, hello ObamaCare.

It was only a short hop from yesterday’s one-worlding, acid-dropping, university-bombing radical hippies to today’s intrusive, federally mandated, bank-breaking, family-bankrupting, worse-than-the-status-quo, one size fits none, Rube Goldberg, insurance scheme.

Emboldened by the lack of pushback to its unconstitutional refusal to smack down the federal government’s breach of the Constitution’s federal framework, the Supreme Court embarked on a now half-century long march through America’s cultural heritage, unilaterally declaring divisive social issues such as abortion and gay marriage the law of the land.

“Hey, man, we totes know states are moving towards legalizing abortions, society’s never been more mobile, and there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution about it, but we found a hitherto unknown right to privacy hiding right there in the really cool penumbras!”

“Hey, man, we can totally see states rapidly legalizing gay marriage, but screw it. We want in on the fun, too. So, TEH GHEY MARRIJ 4 EVREE1 BCUZ ALL TEH FEELS!!1!!eleventy!!!”

And let’s not even get ‘Puter started on the ruin Boomer “progressives” have wrought in America’s once great universities. Critical Race Theory, political correctness, and Fill-in-the-Blank Studies majors are refuges for intellectually incurious proto-fascists bent on imposing a new world order (motto: This time, it’ll be different!) by brainwashing the easily led and shouting down anyone who dares disagree with their morally retarded pipedreams.

A pox on the current campus correctness climate! Screw Black Lives Matter. And damn “professors” like Melissa Click whose scorched earth campaign against the First Amendment is as short-sighted as it is loathsome.

But enough ranting for the moment. What do environmental regulations, ObamaCare, abortion, political correctness, and gay marriage have in common? They are government intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

Americans can’t make up their own minds on divisive social issues anymore. Government has done so and will do so for them, whether Americans like it or not. America is not supposed to work like this, and Americans viscerally know it. Government is supposed to be our servant, not vice-versa.

When Americans dare speak truths, such as “Islamic societies are the leading enablers and exporters of terrorism in the world,” we are called Islamophobes by our government, by our “educators,” and by our media.

When Americans dare speak truths such as “abortion always ends a human life,” we are called anti-science woman haters by our government, by our “educators,” and by our media.

When Americans dare speak truths, such as “government has no right to snoop through my email, or to rummage through my phone, without a warrant” we are called terrorist enablers by our government, by our “educators,” and by our media.

Americans are tired of politicians’ empty promises to restore the appropriate balance of power between the citizens and its government. Currently, it’s the government and its citizens.

Frankly, ‘Puter doesn’t give two craps if a family of gay black men and their adopted transgendered children worship Satan in their ramshackle trailer in the Appalachian foothills, drinking nothing by Mountain Dew and eating nothing but Cheetos, so long as ‘Puter’s not paying for it and everyone’s a consenting adult. And you shouldn’t care, either, so long as the gay married Satanists with weird kids, Cheetos-stained fingers, and rotten teeth return the favor.

But far too many of us won’t return the favor, Democrat or Republican. We’re obsessed with using an ever-metastasizing federal government to enforce our will on others, and it’s poisoning us and our country.

So, here America sits in 2016, looking over the steaming manure pile that is our current presidential contest.

On one side, a socialist and a slightly-less-socialist Vagina-American haggle over how much more intrusive government ought to be in order to cram down “progressive” values on unwilling Americans. Sure, you might not like progressivism now, but with just the right amount of jackbooted thugs standing on your throat, you’ll learn to love it.

On the other side, Captain Hairdo and his merry band of thuggish, Know-Nothing followers argue for a bigger government, huge and classy, to cram down allegedly conservative views on unwilling Americans. Sure, enlarging government to use as a tool of oppression is just about the least conservative thing ever, but hey, the other guys are losing, amirite?

And here in the vast middle sit Americans, angry as Hell, who want nothing more than to be left the fuck alone. Get out of our houses. Get out of our churches. How dare you tell us for whom we must bake cakes? How dare you deign to tell us our religious beliefs must bend before your equally religious belief in Government, the Supreme Good? How dare you dictate the types of toilets and lightbulbs we must use? Who do you think you are?

You do not know how to live our lives better than we do. You have no idea of who we are, whom we love, or what we think. You are not our betters, morally, spiritually, or intellectually. You are our employees, plain and simple.

Now shut your [gosh-darned] mouths, do your overpaid government jobs, and get the Hell out of our houses.

* It took the biggest of big government programs, World War II, to resuscitate America’s flatlined economy. Well, that and the destruction of every major industrial power’s manufacturing capacity. When you’re competing in a global economy against countries recently bombed back to the Stone Age, it ain’t exactly hard to succeed.

Operative SM writes in with a sadly true observation:

You’re very welcome to the job, although interestingly the job description here for “water polo team” exactly matches that of “alligator wrangler.” That’s not an accident, but an unfortunate necessity given the amount of overlap between the two roles.

Where were we? Yes—local politicians.

The Czar has long advocated for a two-party system; unfortunately, the two we have aren’t the two we need.

The proliferation of Republicans in local government—even though many are Democrats or simply un-partied liberals who know they can’t get elected in a red county without calling themselves Republican—is an important first step.

Here’s why: we need to starve out Democrats from non-urban areas. Actually, it would be great to starve out Democrats from there, too, but that’s not practical for the foreseeable future. Instead, starve them out of areas where they can affect people in other areas, such as townships and counties, and certainly at the state level. We’re seeing this slowly, yes, but this is often just a generational thing.

Once Republicans have effectively pushed out the Democrats from larger geographic areas, we can move to a two-party system. Evidently, the Republican voters can’t wait: the Republican party needs to split between its two philosophies.

The first party, which can easily keep the name Republican, is more like a Whig party: some governmental regulation, considerable spending on non-essential ideas (hey, a non-essential program gave us the Internet. And wireless. And Velcro. And lots of cool stuff we take for granted), and a strong military. All for it, to some extent.

The second party, which needs a new name, is more small-l libertarian: removal of the government in most areas, huge reduction in spending, emphasis on completely free trade, and a reduction in overseas military power. All for it, to some extent.

These two parties make the most sense for getting things done. And they are considerably opposed in principle, but either one benefits the people. Maybe in 2020, you vote for the second group because you want taxes dramatically reduced; maybe in 2024, you vote for the first group because Russia is getting a little bold and it’s time to make them a little more cautious again.

What we can’t abide is forcing these two opposing groups together because the alternative are Democrats—who are now openly and progressively socialist. This battle between common sense and utter stupidity is wasting our country away, exactly as intended back in the 1910s when Wilson got into office.

So while we both dislike local politicians always finding a way to raise our taxes and increase time and money on goofy stuff, at least we’re able to put leashes on these guys at some point. When Democrats get into office, sorry: the dogs are in charge.

We’ll save you a cold clammy spot right next to the off-smelling pool.

The Czar has been a big supporter of Bhutan since he first thought about it, around five minutes ago. Bhutan is a large country just to the right of Turkey, or at least that’s how it looked on Google Maps when we zoomed into it. It could be smaller.

Bhutan is funny because it’s actually pronounced འབྲུག་ཡུལ, and not “Bhutan” at all. Its nickname is the Thunder Dragon Kingdom, which you have to admit is pretty awesome. There’s even a dragon on the flag, in case you forget. That’s way better than Nepal, which suffers under the nickname of the Fungus Kingdom, but when you show up late, you get what’s left. Bhutan is tucked away in a mountainous part of the world, so probably has fantastic skiing.

Bhutan isn’t really a nice place, and insists its various minorities and religions all look and dress and talk the same way, so we suppose they’re liberals. Wikipedia informs us that Bhutan is divided into dzongkhags, whcih may or may not be subdivided into thromdes or geos. Thromdes elect Thrompons, whereas Geos elect gaps, mangmis, and various tshokde members. Gewogs are subdivided into chiwogs, and frankly we’re sick of the whole thing. It’s like reading some Tolkien bullshit.

The Bhutanese people are divided into Ngalops and Sharchops, but also some Lhotshampa can be found. They’re probably subdivided as well because this is Bhutan we’re talking about.

There are lots of animals in Bhutan, like langurs, dholes, and hispids, who are in turn subdivided into sambars, bingpos, and thronkhus, unless an electoral muftig is convened. That’s just the fauna; the plants are even worse.

Actually, there isn’t much about Bhutan that isn’t ridiculously over-complicated. It’s the Byzantium of the Himalayas.

The Bhutanese people will happily tell you about their rich and varied cultures, their wonderful food and customs, and a whole bunch of other stuff that’s impossible to verify, but every country says stuff like that. Can you imagine if there was an honest country? You know, one that said something like “Our national food is the yuzmit, which is a root vegetable paste that tastes like a combination of glue and hobo ass, and frankly everyone hates it.” Because that would be something.

Dig into a traditional Bhutanese meal, with… um… worms, and something that looks like pig bile. Is that a bowl of maggots in the center? Apparently you eat it with wooden spoons and hot peppers.

The Czar also, just now, looked up some traditional Bhutanese customs and festivals on some tourism website, but he couldn’t read any of the words so he stopped bothering. Look, let’s not kid ourselves, here. Bhutan is not a place you’re probably ever going to go.

At this point, it is a three-person race.

Dr. Ben Carson continues on his book tour, enjoying the limelight but not sure what to do with it. He’s contributing nothing at this point.

Gov. John Kasich at this point is simply trying to become a running mate to one of the other three candidates.

That leaves Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, and inexplicably Donald Trump.

Pundits are enjoying themselves over Rubio’s well-coordinated attack on Trump, joining on-stage forces with Cruz. And the ever-compliant news media is following Trump around like good lickspittles, giving him way more attention and time than he deserves.

But it’s all too little, too late. By Iowa, it was clear that Trump is defying all political science reality by having more than 2 percent support. The Czar understands that the real attention was on a Cruz comeback by that point, but these candidates’ consultants were kidding themselves if they thought Trump’s double-digit numbers were not a threat. They could have started blasting him then, when it was easy. But they didn’t, and they let him New Hampshire. That set a dangerously greased alleyway for Trump to slide into South Carolina and Nevada; now, Rubio is facing the real possibility that he could lose Florida.

Screw that. Rubio should be realizing, as Cruz recently did, that he could lose the whole thing. Finally, at least, we’re seeing Rubio and Cruz expose the nonsense candidacy of Trump for what it is, and pulling very few punches. But is there enough time?

The Czar honestly does not know.

This is a two-fer post from GorT as both topics fall into the subject line.

Topic 1: Justice Scalia’s Replacement

My personal take on this is that the Senate Republicans screwed up but did nothing illegal or unconstitutional.  Specifically, I think they should have sat back, quietly reflected on Justice Scalia’s work and patiently wait for President Obama’s nominee.  At this point, if they oppose this nominee, they could not bring the matter to the floor and wait.  Yes, there would be a political price that they might pay, but the Constitution provides no timeline or requirement for the Senate to act.  Of course, it’s also a gamble as to who wins the election and what sort of nominee they will put forward.

Having said all of this (and made multiple attempts in email debates, twitter exchanges, and Facebook posts), I will say that one idea I came across yesterday suggested an interesting, alternative process that we should follow.  I’m not sure if it could ever be pulled off given the long history of the current process but I’d like to see it tried.  Instead of the President starting the process, the Senate begins by “advising” the President of a list of candidates they would recommend.  The President then takes that advice and submits a single nominee to the Senate for confirmation (“consent”).  If the President chooses one from the list, the process should be streamlined.  However, if the President opts for an alternate candidate of his or her own choosing, the process we are familiar with continues.

Regardless, those attacking the Senate for doing something unconstitutional are flat out wrong.  They fail to provide any factual basis for their claims.

Topic 2:  Apple, the FBI, and the San Bernardino Terrorists

Many people are touting Tim Cook’s efforts to forestall the FBI with regards to their processing of the iPhone that was in the possession of the San Bernardino terrorists – mostly in the name of protecting citizen’s data from prying government eyes.  First, I’m not advocating that the government should have unfettered access to our data.  Second, assuming that the government is organized and competent enough to collect all of our private emails, phone calls, web history, etc and do something with is the subject of conspiracy theorists.  Third, and really the meat of my argument, let’s look at the facts and details behind the request by the FBI.

The request asks Apple for three things:

1. Apple will bypass or disable the auto-erase function whether or not it has been enabled;
2. Apple will enable the FBI to submit passcodes to the SUBJECT DEVICE for testing electronically via the physical device port, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or other protocol available on the SUBJECT DEVICE; and
3. Apple will ensure that when the FBI submits passcodes to the SUBJECT DEVICE, software running on the device will not purposefully introduce any additional delay between passcode attempts beond what is incurred by Apple hardware.

It is of note that the FBI did NOT request Apple to decrypt the data or the iPhone.  They provided an avenue where Apple can guarantee that the ONLY iPhone affected is the one that is of interest for this case:

The SIF will be loaded on the SUBJECT DEVICE at either a government facility, or alternatively, at an Apple facility; if the latter, Apple shall provide the government with remote access to the SUBJECT DEVICE through a computer allowed the government to conduct passcode recovery analysis.

It is also worth noting, as Apple is defending their stance on behalf of their customers, that the iPhone was the property of the terrorists employer: the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.  The department has given the FBI permission to access the device.  The device was purchased with taxpayer funds, so one could also argue that the phone is the property of the people of San Bernardino.

There is plenty to target the US Government over but this isn’t one of them.  In GorT’s mind, Apple should comply with the court order and do so specifically for the single iPhone in question at their facility.

Mark Spahn of West Seneca, New York, mused the following;

After which the Czar blew beer out his nose.

Update:

Ooh, mein Zar, you made it seem that those words of musing were mine. They were not; they were a quotation (indicated by the indentation [that doesn’t come over on a text-only email!—Czar]) from someone else, in a comment to an essay on Steve Sailer’s website.

By a weird coincidence (synchronicity!) the number of the comment was 19. For the significance of that number, do a search on “islam 19.”

I find that comment #19 has since been renumbered to #20. The comment’s author is one “Auntie Analogue”.

Let’s leave credit where it is due.

A lot of hay has been made recently about the “diversity in Tech” – both for racial minorities and for women.  Reporting out on these statistics makes me uneasy (and not for the reason you might think), there is trouble in how it is getting presented.

First: why it makes me uneasy.  Any sort of measurement like this raises the specter of quotas.  Saying that 25% of a company’s technical staff are women or 7% of its management staff are black in the context of diversity implies that something should change.  Say, for a moment, that this company is a start-up and has been in existence for less than three years.  There is no heritage of generational or national diversity issues – in fact, one could argue that it was created in an era where that is at the forefront of many people’s minds.  Let’s also posit that no one in the company harbors any bias and their hiring practices are fair – wouldn’t they then be hiring the best talent for the roles needed?  My point being, if we doubt that can take place then quotas will drive it.  And if quotas become the norm, how far do we apply it?  What about professional sports where many team rosters are skewed where racial minorities are the majority.  Should the Superbowl winning Denver Broncos have a certain percentage of white, Hispanic, black, and Asian players?  Most would argue not, that physical talent should win out.  Exactly my point: in the corporate world, the best talent for the job at hand should win out.

So what do we do about it?  First, stop reporting out on these percentages – or at least stop doing it without contexts like:

• Only 20% of computer science graduates are women (if a company has 43% women in its computer-science-based technical staff, it is exceeding the demographic of 20% CS majors in the United States*).
• In 2014, 4.5% of undergraduate Computer Science degree earners were black.  6.5% were Hispanic.

Second, start addressing the problem at the core: education and society.  If the goal is to diversify the population  doing certain technical jobs** then we should begin in elementary school by laying a strong foundation to aid children and give them the tools to achieve those goals.  We should stop blocking charter schools and voucher programs that aim to provide better educational options to less fortunate communities.  We should encourage and reward teachers that continue to push and grow in their curriculae.  I’m not advocating that everyone has to learn to code or build microprocessors in grade school rather, we should be laying a strong foundation so that when kids are in middle school and high school, those interested and so inclined can start learning specific skills.  We should demand that we get the best quality education for the money.

From a societal perspective, we should be careful in the stereotypes presented.  Entertainment outlets are chock full of references that imply that girls aren’t as smart, that those interested in science and engineering aren’t “cool”, that reading and learning is for losers, etc.  This is slowly changing and I see differing views in my kids’ generation which gives me hope.  We should stop accepting a “minimal acceptable” quality for our educational system.  Instead of creating academic calendars where the minimum number of “required academic hours” are met – why not exceed it?

Basically, complaining about symptoms does us no good.  Arguing that a high-end tech company doesn’t have some percentage of some racial, gender, etc. group does us no good as the likely implication is that they should just hire more of that group and less of

Yesterday, Mark Spahn of West Seneca, New York, asked for the hundredth time where all these American apologists for Islam—particularly Barack Obama—find reference to the Islamic Golden Rule.

!وعليكم السلام
Very good work, Remsleep, although to be strictly fair, Mark Spahn (of West Seneca, New York) was looking for the exact quote. And the closest the Sahih Muslim gets is “Whoever wishes to be delivered from the fire and to enter paradise should treat other people as they wish to be treated themselves.” That’s the literal translation, and not exactly what President Obama said—and thus was Mark’s further point that the President is misquoting Islamic texts, which is a big no-no for anyone of any faith.

So you’re both right.

Patty-Patty Buke-Buke! WRONG!

So National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson wrote an acute piece on some of the continuities between Donald Trump’s supporters and those of Pat Buchanan in 1996 (there’s probably a link to Perot in ’92, but his appeal was more technocratic and less splenetic). The resentful psychology of a man trying to prove his manhood and needing scapegoat for his undeserved situation Kevin draws is acute, and indeed was very much the case with the Buchanan campaign. For you kids who came in late and missed the opéra bouffe of the ’90s, here is a piece which I couldn’t find anywhere on the internet, but which, fortunately, was in the bottom of my file drawer. (We used to use paper, kids. I know, lulz.)

It’s dated and specific, and I don’t even know if the man himself would agree with all of it these days, but for your edification (and entertainment—there are some good lines and the writing’s characteristically deft)…

Stupid and Contagious

P.J. O’Rourke

Rolling Stone

April 18, 1996

There’s a voice you can hear any night of the week in half the cities of the world, in Dublin, Sydney, Liverpool, Chicago, in Southie in Boston, on Fordham Road in the Bronx, in any place named Molly McWhatall’s or Micky O’Soforth’s or nicknamed the Bucket of Blood. It’s the voice of a big man with a well-thumbed nose and beef-tinted cheeks. He wears a tan raincoat, and there’s a tweed on his bean the color of, and as clean as, a welcome mat. Booze spills over the edge of his glass. Gut spills over the edge of his belt. You can hear him all the way at the other end of the bar even on open-mike night with three drunk fiddlers, a tin-whistle artist and a 200-pound tenor performing “The Wild Colonial Boy.”

“It’s the Jews that have all the good jobs,” says the Whiskey Warrior. “Took them all when we weren’t looking. Why, a man used to be able to get a job paying 50, 60, no, a hundred dollars an hour at any factory just for loading boxes on a truck, till the Jews took all the jobs away. But do you think the Jews work those jobs themselves not on your life. Who ever saw a Jew lift anything heavier than a $20 bill? No, they sold the jobs to illegal immigrants, they did, little brown foreigners all over the place who’ll work so cheap that come payday, they line up and give the bosses money back. I’d build a wall right across the whole of Mexico, if it was me. Call it the Great Wall of Chicano. Or just make English the official language. That’s all you have to do. They wouldn’t even know that talking Spanish was illegal, because the law’d be in English. So they’d all go to jail instead of taking our jobs away. Something that never would have happened if all these companies hadn’t started hiring women—women executives this and women vice presidents that and women chair-broads of the board. Women can’t stand up to the Jews and the foreigners. They aren’t aggressive enough. They don’t have the old tallywhacker swinging back and forth between their knees. And what about our taxes that the women and foreigners and Jews have been raising to buy black helicopters for the United Nations? …”

Well, I’m a mick myself, a had harp from the inevitable big, rowdy family. I have more uncles than most people have coat hangers in the front hall closet. And I’ve been hearing the Whiskey Warrior all my life—from the other end of the bar and, indeed, from the other end of the dinner table. I know that fellow holding up the mahogany in O’Soforth’s. Let’s call him Pat. Hell, let’s call him Pat Buchanan. And let me tell you a few things about the boy.

In the first place, he’s a Democrat. I know Pat says he’s not, but it’s more of his malarkey. He’s a Democrat of the old-fashioned sorehead, ignoramus school. He attacks corporations for laying off employees. Does Pat think the corporations should just keep the employees hanging around, making butt prints on the office photocopier and using their desktop PCs to visit paramilitary Web sites? Or maybe the government should decide who gets fired. That works so well at the post office. And Pat is outraged by big corporate profits. Sure, the economy always performs brilliantly without them. What does Pat think happens to profits? That money couldn’t just go right back into the economy or anything. Somebody, probably with a stein on the end of his name, must be hoarding all the cash so that it can all be smeared with chocolate by National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored performance artists. Maybe the government should decide how big profits should be. That works so well with the post office, too. Pat hates free trade. Now, there are few things all economists agree upon, except that all other economists should be sewn up in a sack with Michael Milken. But every half-sane economist on earth says that free trade benefits the great mass of humanity. Dumping NAFTA and GATT and pasting huge tariffs on goods form slanty-eyed places would bloat prices, destroy export industry jobs and devastate Pat’s own blue-collar constituency—and serve them right for voting for the drip. Nor does Pat want to reform Social Security and Medicare. Just let the cost of living allowances balloon and the government trust funds shrivel, and when we retire we’ll all get $10,000 a month, and reduced-rate seniors’ bus fare to go to the doctor will cost $7,500.

Pat Buchanan is a big-government guy. He’s the loudest advocate for federal expansion since Hillary Clinton tossed her cookies in the health-care fiasco. And pat not only wants the government to keep doing what it’s doing wrong, he wants it to do a lot of new wrong things besides. He wants to take solemn, indeed sacred, moral questions such as abortion and marriage and turn them into muddy political footballs. He wants to run the pigskin horde of government through intimate and confidential territories of our lives—religion, sex, culture, language. Next, no doubt, he’ll try to make all Ten Commandments into federal laws. House bill HR 7085—Honor They Father and Thy Mother. Knock, knock. “FBI here. Talk to your mom like that again and it’s 25 years to life.”

This is not conservatism as I know it. You can call Pat Buchanan a lot of things—fascist, statist, cryptosocialist, jerk—and that’s what you should call him. But don’t try to put Buchanan in the same online chat room as Barry Goldwater and Lady Margaret Thatcher unless you have your V-chip installed.

Conservatism means faith in the individual, in every individual, even if that individual has a funny name and comes from way far away.

Conservatism means belief in private property because individuals can have no substantive freedom unless they are secure in the ways and means of their lives. Buchanan’s economic nationalism would tie your property rights to hare-brained patriotism: No U-turn on red—except for American cars.

Conservatism means trust in religious and moral traditions because vast numbers of people have accepted these traditions voluntarily and because their acceptance has withstood the test of time. There’s no place in modern, pluralistic conservatism for the legal denigration of one set of traditions and glorification of another. People have to work that out for themselves, among themselves. And there’s no such thing as instant traditions—however much the Christian Coalition may want to create some. Nor can religion and morality be effectively imposed form the outside unless Buchanan thinks he’s Moses descending with the tablets form the mount (and given his record on anti-Semitism, I don’t think so).

And conservatism means belief in the free market. Not because the free market is virtuous or fair—it’s not. The free market is just information. It tells us, to the penny, what people will pay for a thing. Buchanan’s tacit pleas for a Soviet-style industrial policy disparage the free market. He might as well disparage arithmetic. “A lot of our schoolkids are having trouble remembering the seven-times-seven thing,” Buchanan could say. “This is hard on them. We need to change that. Elect me and I will make seven times seven equal 50. It’s fairer for the kids.”

Shut up, Pat. And listen to me. I spend some time down at O’Soforth’s myself, filled wiht coffin varnish and beating the air with my jaw. Let me give you my own beery vision of the good life. I want that great tavern, that giant saloon which is America, to be filled wiht all kinds of people of each creed and hue, of both sexes and every proclivity, people with diverse tastes, aims, ambitions, ideals and ideas, and plenty of immigrants among them. And I want them all shouting. I want to watch them battle for their points of view, fight their fights with society and each other. I want to see each one of them trying to make the nation over in his or her own image.

And what a bar brawl it is—polemics tossed, dialectics shattered, chairs of empiricism smashed over heads of ideology, aged prejudices heaved through windows of young opinion, theories given the bum’s rush by facts. But I want this to be a private free-for-all, a duke-out among independent citizens. And Pat Buchanan insists on getting the government involved. Pat, the big sissy, keeps wanting to call the police.

The Czar cannot remember anyone being excited about the Iowa caucuses, given they’re (a) caucuses and (b) in Iowa. But last night’s event was just as much fun as a national election, but doubled.

Silly and deadly. Thanks, Iowa! And just when we thought you were bored with us.

Another surprise was Rubio being less than a percentage away from tying Trump, due to what’s reported as a large number of Trump supporters defecting to Rubio at the last minute. Quite a few people predicted this (we didn’t), saying that gag candidates are great for a laugh, but when it comes time to pull the lever, you wind up going with a guy you trust more. And more Trump supporters trust Rubio, apparently.

A third surprise for us was how badly Jeb Bush did. We never thought he’d finish in the top three, but he wound up below Rand Paul. Hell, our own ‘Puter as many delegates as Jeb Bush, and he’s not even running. He can barely walk.

If the Republican turnout and voting wasn’t impressive enough (where the hell were you people in 2012?), you have the Democrats to watch as well.

Two things could have gone wrong for Hillary Clinton: a poor showing by her, or a strong showing by Sanders. And she got both, so much so that her victory—if it even is, pending a possible recount—is insignificantly small, and Sanders’ turnout is significantly large. Donors are going to dump money on Sanders now, and voters are going to switch.

Clinton was never a strong horse in New Hampshire, and she’s certain to lose there by a landslide; however, with Iowa’s results, that gap could become even more ridiculous. Which of course means that she’s going into Nevada and South Carolina with 0-2 score, and with her support dropping further. With no hint of exaggeration, this is really bad for Hillary Clinton and may be insurmountable. Bernie Sanders’ supporters may indeed be reasonably optimistic.

This could all change of course, and Hillary could cakewalk to an easy nomination in March: it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that the Clintons will unleash their war machine on Sanders and go utterly low-ball. But we’ve seen her screw this up terribly before, and there’s no reason to think she can’t do so again.

The bottom line is this: the first shot in the 2016 elections was fired yesterday, and it nearly guarantees a wild ride for both parties. We could get a historically memorable election again, and you’re going to want to be part of it.

Your Czar is concerned with your health, and naturally has asked his Czarist Imperial Surgeon’s Office to prepare a bullet point list on how you can best protect yourself against the Zika virus, which is known as the MERS, H1N1A, or more commonly, Ebola. Zika has now killed over 500 trillion people in your neighborhood today alone, particularly in the Americas somewhere. Do not be one of the statistics, and do not even read the statistics.

Avoid places where Zika is known to congregate, such as door knobs.
If you see Zika on the ground, do not pick it up.
Avoid eating Zika or place Zika near your mouth. Under no circumstances should Zika be inserting anything up your nose.
Do not open the door for Zika. Do not believe its lies. If someone shows up at your door, even if it’s your sister, it could be Zika. Call the police immediately.
If Zika calls on the phone, do not attempt to engage it in conversation (especially if he has a North American Liberian Chinese accent). Hang up and call the police. Experts recommend changing your phone number frequently to minimize calls from Zika.
If you see Zika hanging around a playground or school, run out and scream warnings to the kids to get inside. Watching television is the safest activity for kids during this crisis.
If you see or hear anyone talking about Zika, it could be an invasion. Call the Army and tell them to start shelling. If you see something, say something.
Do not pet the mice. Actually, this is more true for the Hanta virus, but you can’t play it too safe.

The movie 13 Hours does not mention Hillary Clinton in any way, but viewers are apparently plenty wise whom the movie is about. Liberals aren’t likely to see the movie either way, but you can tell whether they agree with the content by how they treat Michael Bay in the coming weeks.

If the movie is having a powerful effect on the Clinton campaign—and by simple exclusion, that must be a negative effect—you can expect the following:

• Michael Bay? He’s not much of a film maker.
• Michael Bay? Isn’t he wanted for some crime somewhere? Drugs, sex, or something else?
• His stuff was never that good.
• He’s only liked by a small percentage of red-necked yokels who like ‘splodey stuff.
• Michael Bay has never enjoyed success as a film maker.

We’re finally getting to the real debates. Senator Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina are already off the main stage; Gov. Chris Christie, Gov. John Kasich, Gov. Jeb Bush, and Dr. Ben Carson are already moving to the edges and seemed either desperate for attention (Christie, Bush) or were showing clear signs of resignation (Kasich, Carson). Carson in particular seemed disoriented on a couple of points.

The real battle was between Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, and Senator Marco Rubio.

Overall the debate came off as a one-one-one between Trump and Cruz, with Rubio interjecting his new “angry mode” personality as often as possible. Cruz was quite masterful in his delivery, while Trump ranged from pretty cogent to disastrous. More the latter, really—at some points (especially early in the debate), he looked like an Art Bell long-time listener, first-time caller.

Much of the discussion after the debate seems to revolve around an exchange between Cruz and Trump regarding New York “values.” Cruz insulted Trump (and New York City residents) by claiming Trump is characteristic of Manhattan: spoiled, liberal, and out-of-touch with America. Trump replied with a non-rehearsed rebuttal about the great strength New York displays in adversity.

On the one hand, a lot of political pundits seem to agree that Trump delivered a powerful comeback, and basically won the debate; Cruz, on the other hand, just wrote of New York and indeed insulted most of the East Coast. The Czar notes that nearly all the people on this side of the argument are, well, East Coasters.

Twitter, on the other hand, seems to agree with Cruz: New Yorkers love to bad-mouth America, but when the tables are turned, New Yorkers sure don’t like it. It seems that the America between the two coasts very much agrees with Cruz.

The bottom line is this: Cruz is right. Residents of New York City are overwhelmingly anti-Republican, and Trump has long lived in that world. New York City does not represent conservative American interests. If Cruz just lost New York City’s vote, it will cost him only the half the population of Staten Island. With an electoral system, he’d never win New York anyway.

If Trump bested Cruz on this point, it will win him nothing. Nothing.

Overall, the most interesting debate so far. As we see candidates drop out, they will improve. Kasich’s going-through-the-motions delivery, Christie’s off-putting and overly defensive potshots, and Carson’s bewildering inconsistency on important topics (spot on in some cases, nonsensical in others) will see them drop out soon.

And why does Jeb Bush bother to show up?

North Korea hates being ignored. And with all this talk of war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Russian declaring (finally!) that America is a threat to its ridiculous interests, the Norks are getting a little itchy, ya know?

A good fix for this is to set off some sizable explosion, even non-nuclear (but it wouldn’t surprise the Czar if there was some nuclear fission going on), and call it a successful hydrogen bomb test. The Czar will only say if it was a fusion bomb, then it was the smallest ever. Congrats on the miniaturization, guys!

Hey, China—do something about that Korean uncle of yours!

But there’s more to North Korea than this, and the Czar wants to explain it all.

China doesn’t like North Korea. In fact, she absolutely hates those morons to the south, and very likely dislikes them more than Americans do (largely for racial reasons: Americans like Koreans just fine, but the Chinese—ehh, to them, the Koreans are less than ideal humans, racially).

But here’s what China really sees: North Korea is a cash cow just waiting to be exploited. Beach front property, basically abandoned.

China doesn’t like North Korea—what it likes is what America did to South Korea after the Korean War. For a minimal investment of time and cash, America transformed Korea from a war-torn hole in the ground to a major economic power, with millionaires and billionaires, all in a few years.

China wants that, oh, so badly. China sees an eventual North Korean powerhouse, unified with South Korea, ordering billions of dollars worth of products and services…from China, and not America.

So China keeps North Korea close as a phenomenal long-term investment. Yes, China would be happy to see the Kim government collapse and a new North Korean government go begging to the world. Not enough to cause this to happen of course: that’s not how China works. China plays a long game (see Hong Kong and Taiwan), and wants their puppets to come to them.

After all, China sees how spectacularly terrible Russia tries to acquire property: the whole world hates Russia, puts them under sanctions, and punishes them economically. China’s economy is paper-thin, and she can’t afford any of that. So they wait patiently for North Korea to fall on its own.

No, she doesn’t want North Korea as a new Chinese province; she merely wants a reliable trading partner like the United States has with South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. A source of external income. A lot of income. Business only.

Alternatively, China can also wait for the United States to lose interest in South Korea. That hasn’t exactly happened yet, but we’ve been closer to that than ever. As Obama’s America retreats from Asia, China is expanding her influence. And she would strongly prefer a world in which South Korea decides to do serious business with China.

Really, it’s all about the money. Eventually, yes, North Korea will collapse. China hopes peacefully, but it would be okay with America or some other country doing the damage to them. After all, rebuilding a war-torn country is worth cash, too. But if one sleepy morning, the North Koreans decided to hang up their stupidity and join the 20th Century, well, China could have building supplies, men, material, coffee, cigarettes, liquor, porn, and whatever a new country needs in trucks in just a couple of hours. Before the Americans get there.

In other words, China doesn’t like North Korea because they’re both dingbat communists: China sees North Korea as a multi-billion-dollar fixer-upper. And she will tolerate Drunk Uncle Nork as long as she has to until he vacates the house and that deal signs. Even if it takes another 60 years.

Mark Spahn, an infidel from West Seneca, New York, spotted a weird little story on another site in which a couple of younger folks stood in a public place and invited passers by to “Ask A Muslim” anything they wanted. Mark had some thoughts about that, as well as the article itself.

In his Morning Jolt of December 28, Jim Geraghty wrote, in the context of populism’s enragés:

If you drop out of high school, or only have a high-school education, you will have a difficult time getting ahead in life. That’s not a value judgment or snobbishness, it’s just a reflection of who’s hiring and what they’re paying. This is the case today, it has been the case for quite some time, it will be that way for the foreseeable future, whether the next president is Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton, or someone else. We can argue about whether employers overvalue a college education or require it for jobs that don’t really need it, but the mentality of the hiring class is unlikely to change quickly. If your definition of “Making America Great Again” is to somehow return to an age where a high-school education was sufficient to live the good life, you’re going to be disappointed.

His condemning high-school grads to permanent Morlock status is not unrealistic, given present realities, but it misses a couple factors that need to be brought in.

First, as my mother, a teacher, used to point out, the high-school diploma was once considered a ticket to entry-level white-collar, as well as blue-collar, employment. It represented a minimum standard of literacy, numeracy, and the rudiments of punctuality, discipline, etc., employers expected. This state of affairs unhappily no longer obtains. The meaning of a high-school degree has been devalued, both by external factors (the increasingly competitive economy) but internal ones as well, principally the collapse of elementary and secondary education. The latter is more to blame, to my mind, as if you go into any prosperous town’s high school, you’ll see new computers, well-outfitted science labs, etc. I suspect there’s literally no impediment to the median (or below-average) student from one of these school’s getting an entry-level training position in any corporation, other than the corporation’s college-degree requirement which is there to protect the company from having to consider or hire kids from the other public schools with metal detectors, automatic promotion, and illiterate graduates.

Second, there’s the fact that corporations (and the government) have largely turned those entry-level, training-wheel white-collar jobs into unpaid internships. This is a huge problem if you’re bright and poor. But leave that aside.

Third, there’s underlying demographic—and moral—problem. Unlike Lake Wobegon, half of our children are below average. What are these people to do? The last few generations’ answer, Go to college!, doesn’t work, it turns out. We can paper over the failures of secondary education with remedial “college” work, but because this is (a) done on one’s own dime, (b) relies on virtues (the aforementioned punctuality, diligence) not inculcated by the schools (and the culture!) these folks graduate from, and (c) requires toleration of years’ more school, you get an enormous dropout rate. And more student debt. A secondary problem is that we’re on a credentialization treadmill. High-school diploma becomes worthless? Everyone go to college! Well, now, turns out we’ve got a lot of college grads who aren’t that bright and who basically boozed and screwed their way to the minimal requirements of a business or education degree at Middle Nowhere State, and they’re really not who top employers want. So, hmm, the really good jobs we’re looking for suddenly require an MBA or a master’s degree… Ad infinitum.

So, as good ol’ V.I. famously asked, what is to be done? I dunno. But I suspect reforming secondary education and/or allowing employers to use IQ tests would save millions of people millions of man-years wasted in schools where they don’t really want to be. The larger and more difficult problem is how we can provide people on the left-hand of the bell curve the ability to earn a good living and therefore have meaningful lives. They know they’re not going to live on Central Park South. But they don’t want to be treated like garbage, and they don’t want the lower end of the wage scale constantly eroded for the convenience of the high earners.

To keep the Republic going, we’ve got to keep one eye on the principle that all men are created equal, and that a janitor is as fully an American as a hedge-fund manager. If we allow either group to view their interests as permanently antagonistic to the others’ the democratic project is over, and we’re back to the ancient bedeviling European agony of class. (And, secondarily, since we’ve gone multicultural, the rest of the world’s demon, tribe.)

The really troubling possibility is that we may simply have reached the end of our ability to provide people with meaningful work. It’s not just blue-collar people who face bleak prospects in terms of meaningful lives. The attenuation of religion is likely central to the problem, but it’s not everything. It may just be that in a huge, anonymous country, with an enormous amount of leisure time (whether funded by wealth or welfare), people are just lost. Look at the high-achieving résumés of some of the folks at the dingbat New Age camp Matt Labash visits. Consider the surfeit of print and words these days and its implications for trying to establish any kind of common culture. Intellectually, we may end up as balkanized and narrowcasted as today’s TV audiences. Sure, universities churn out die-hard fans of the equivalent of the Big Three Networks, Social Justice, Sexual License, and Statolatry, but anyone who’s really smart knows they’re just broadcasting reruns of overpraised shows that couldn’t sustain their premises the first time around. (Even there, the university is a troubled institution, kept afloat by gargantuan, government-subsidized tuition, that can’t convincingly articulate its own mission, sustain a common high culture, or employ the grad students it educates.)

Top to bottom, we have a crisis of meaning, and as always, the poorest get hurt the most easily. If we can’t find a way to provide solid, gainful employment for people with fewer than sixteen years of classroom education, we need to rethink our educational system, our labor market, and perhaps aspects of our culture. I am no populist and I agree strongly with Geraghty that throwing meaningless slogans at the problem is a despicable form of political exploitation. But I can’t either in good conscience say, “Well, if you don’t go to college, whaddya expect,” likely because I live in flyover country among plenty of good citizens and good people who weren’t cut out for college by temperament, ability, or money, and are manifestly struggling to find a means to improve their lives and those of their children. If the credentialed turn their back on their less-educated fellow citizens, the former don’t deserve the support of the latter.

Most Americans—and by far, most—think Democrats’ current college plans are laughable at best. A few coastal clusters, to be sure, think both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have great ideas, but most people are just shaking their heads and wondering what the hell they’re thinking.

College administrators know precisely what to do with federal dollars pouring into their bank accounts. Same thing they always do with money.

In fact, what Hillary Clinton fails to acknowledge is that federal money pouring into colleges from grants, student loans, and other sources is effectively the cause of high college tuition. Anyone taking a few moments to look into the breakdown costs of college tuition finds a lot that’s objectionable, from eclectic offerings like Lesbian Studies to nonsense high-staff departments containing the word Diversity in their titles. Colleges have been receiving so much money they literally can’t find plausible places to spend it anymore: a sure sign of a bubble ready to collapse.

Hillary Clinton of course will pay for this with that seemingly endless supply of free money, the “rich,” who by this point must consist of anyone still employed full-time by a company.

Doesn’t Clinton realize that spending money to reduce costs is like putting a fire out with sprayed gasoline?

Bernie Sanders is no better. He wants to make public colleges tuition free. Free college! But of course, this only is true for public colleges, which comprise 33% of all colleges and universities in the US. Sanders intends to pay for this with $70 billion a year in taxes, which is about $111 million per school per year. This won’t cover it, of course, any more than it helped public grade and high schools improve by giving them huge dollar amounts in the 1990s.

Sanders also intends to find this money by raising taxes on the “rich,” Evidently, he also didn’t read The Giving Tree to the end, because ultimately the tree was cut down and died.

As a result, Americans are baffled: don’t Clinton and Sanders realize the rich will never be able to pay for all of this?

The Czar theorizes that the problem is even more basic: neither Clinton nor Sanders have any idea what college actually costs.

America: Mrs. Clinton, what does college actually cost a student per year?

Clinton: I have no idea. It’s been years since Chelsea went, and we had a donor pay for all of it.

America: Guess.

Clinton: If I had to guess? A college freshman would pay, with room and board, probably $50,000 an hour. That’s what I charge for some speeches. That seems fair.

And Bernie Sanders would play like some scene from Rain Man:

America: Senator, what does college actually cost a student per year?

Sanders: Who knows! A thousand dollars.

America: Um. Okay, what does this candy bar cost?

Sanders: A thousand dollars.

So when Clinton talks about raising all this money, she doesn’t realize it’s a hell of a lot of money. She has no concept of what college actually costs, how much people pay, how hard it is to save, and how any of it all works. Forget paying a year of tuition: Clinton would have less financial difficulty buying a university. This is a person so far off the deep-end in to the world of the filthy rich that none of this means anything to her.

And Sanders is the opposite extreme. He assumes a mere $70 billion will eliminate $1 trillion in student debts, the same way your bank agrees to accept a shiny new quarter in lieu of paying off your entire mortgage balance, because he’s still living in the groovy 1960s, dude, where college was only a few hundred bucks a semester and you could pay for it working part time as a soda jerk. Far out, man.

Americans are right to shake their heads in disgust at the Democrats’ utterly clueless college plans; it isn’t that they really believe America’s wealthy have all this cash: it’s that they have no idea how much cash any of this really is.

Operative JTS writes in after a couple of years—he’s been on a project to travel every road less taken in order to end the nonsense of inequality—to say, well, hello:

Well, we’re incapable of bad work, so that should be easy. But thanks for recognizing the bold move Lincolnshire has made.

If only we could actually have that showdown between the governor and Democrat-led Congress, because the state is dying quickly. For readers outside Illinois, the Republican governor has refused to spend any non-essential funds on any program until the Democrats agree to reduce spending. They can basically pick what they want to reduce spending on—but they have intentionally been dodging and avoiding the showdown, or have shown up merely to leave in false outrage over the idea that no state can spend more than it takes in in revenue. The Democrats simply want taxes raised; the governor has pointed out that if the tax rate was 100%, we still couldn’t pay for it all.

Anyway, stay off those other blogs. Some of them are, well, rather weird.

You haven’t heard of Lincolnshire, Illinois, and likely don’t care to know much about it. It’s a nice, northern suburb of Chicago, with nice homes, good schools, and a Jewish population so large its residents kiddingly refer to it as “Lincohenshire.”

They did something monumental today that won’t get much play in other states, and might not get the notice it deserves even in Illinois. Today, village trustees voted 4-1 in favor of banning mandatory union dues within its borders.

Illinois has been a right-to-work state for a long time, but that doesn’t mean you can avoid dealing with the unions. If you join a union—and many industries are still effectively closed to non-unions in Illinois—you’re getting your pay docked to cover your union dues. Unless you live in Lincolnshire.

To be clear, this is no different than what Scott Walker did as governor of Wisconsin; but this is Illinois, where unions long held complete power. As a union member, you’re free to pay your own dues with your own money. Or you can just not pay and effectively quit the union: that’s between you and your union. In Wisconsin’s case, the unions found they could’t remotely cover the workload required to collect their own dues, and further discovered a massive number of members just stopped paying.

The lone dissenting trustee wasn’t even opposed to the idea—she simply felt that for this move to be effective, it must happen at the statewide level. The Czar agrees: the measure is mostly symbolic since Lincolnshire is a small community. But interestingly, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan also agrees, saying that federal labor law requires this to be a statewide measure, not a municipal one.

The unions, naturally, have been howling. While they don’t have enough members to collect their own dues, they apparently have plenty to pack into the village hall and interrupt proceedings. Even so, trustees were unswayed because, hey, let’s face it: everybody but the big dopes understand that unions are finished. They’ve outlived any sense of usefulness and are responsible, at least in Illinois’ case, for the massive financial debts on the taxpayers.

A legal challenge is sure to follow, especially when the overly Democrat Attorney General is basically giving them the legal challenge on a platter. But if survives—even in a modified form—expect hundreds of Illinois municipalities to follow. Outside of Chicago and its Cook County suburbs, unions are practically invisible. Statewide, taxpayers have been fed up with Chicago’s many unions for decades and this is first substantive strike back ever.

Good luck, Lincolnshire. We’re pulling for you.

One supposes not many kids came dressed as an Indian squaw unless assigned at random by a lazy teacher, but whatever.

Many readers of a certain age recall well their grade school days, and will likely remember the handful of days spent celebrating one’s heritage. This was about three days out of the year when kids were encouraged to be proud of their ancestry. The Greek kids brought in baklava and dolmades for the others to try. The lone Indian kid brought in saffron rice and naan bread to share. The German kids brought in pretzels and root beer. The Irish kids were allowed to bring in rock-hard soda bread, but most of them showed up with whiskey. Like every day.

The classrooms would be decorated with hand-drawn flags of all nations. Posters would feature a crudely sketched map showing cities, with photos clipped from National Geographic or sliced right out of family home encyclopedias and overly glued to the posterboard showing pastoral scenes with native dancers.

This was easy to do when your last name was Markellos, Srinivas, Mueller, or McNulty; you probably knew their parents who were equally proud of their heritage, and could even predict which nationality the one or two mixed-heritage kids would select. Przybylo was Polish/Hungarian, and she’d bring in kielbasa slices. Gomez was Mexican/Lithuanian, and he’d bring in tamales that everyone would be grossed out by until they tried them.

Maybe your neighborhood was different, but the odds are more likely you were all Gundersons and Andersens and Engstroms in your class. We get that. In which case, you were assigned and ethnic group to research and present.

The Czar’s kids are baffled by this chauvinism. They, and all of their friends, are blends of the most outrageous combinations of nationalities. It’s not uncommon to run into people half-Jamaican, half-French today, and more common to meet younger people who give their nationalities in eighths and sixteenths. The idea of a nationality is rapidly fading away, unless you or your parents are more recent immigrants.

America is naturally like that: grandma and grandpa were strict Italians. The kids all married good Italian boys and girls. The grandkids? Well, they married American kids with mixed-heritage parents, and now the first great-grandchild is named Rocco Nucci, but is technically equal parts Italian, Welsh, Irish, Swedish, Turkish, Laotian, Brazilian, and Mexican.

When asked his nationality or heritage, Rocco will—like the Czar’s kids—proudly announce “American.” And grandma Nucci, who once swore her kids would never marry those filthy Swedes or Turks, weeps with joy over that answer. It shows up in census boxes already, when respondents check multiple boxes other than “White/European descent.”

This sounds nice, but here’s where it all falls apart. In today’s age, that self-identification is a real problem for liberals. It’s tough to pigeon-hole a kid into identity politics when his or her understanding is just so encompassing. “Can’t you be a little more, you know, Mexican?” Because we’re still a long way from being a multi-generational society of mutts, emphasis is overwhelmingly placed on selection. Barack Obama, as you know, is black. Except genetically, he isn’t: he’s neither white nor black but an in-between.

When Dr. Ben Carson and previously Herman Cain were presidential candidates, their “blackness,” whatever that means, was immediately called into question by folks who supported a person who was just as white as he was black. Today’s kids—when they grow to voting age—will probably think that stupid. Their kids, in another 20 years, will be completely lost as to what the hell was going on at the turn of the century.

The fact is that identity politics has reached its useful end among the country’s psychology. The Left knows it, too: and instead of pushing race or whiteness all the time, they’re grasping at gender, at how Hispanic someone is (including whether they’re white Hispanic or black Hispanic), at how Muslim some one is, at how trans or cis someone is. The more they subdivide categories into subcategories to push identity politics, the more you can tell it’s failing.

Ultimately, the kids are right. We are Americans. And the grandkids of today’s immigrants (legal or otherwise) will think so, too. By then, the Left—or whatever remains of this dangerously cartoonish farce of a political psychology—will be worried about how ginger someone is. At how Presbyterian someone is.

Hello Kitty says the New York Times editors and their prettied-up gun confiscation agenda can kiss her soft, cute kitty ass. Two times. Real hard.

Mass shootings are awful. Politicized mass shootings are worse. The New York Times editorializing on politicized mass shootings is worst of all.

‘Puter awakened this morning, dreading opening the New York Times, knowing full well the hallucinogen induced alternate reality he’d find there. Yet, like The Czar to an open bar, ‘Puter was irresistibly drawn in.

Unsurprisingly, the New York Times editors blamed the San Bernardino shooting on the lack of gun control. Even less surprisingly, the New York Times editorial was rank with misinformation, falsehoods, and outright lies.

‘Puter would like to take a few moments to apolitically (maybe, if ‘Puter’s meds hold up) point out a few of the errors, falsehoods, and assumptions the editors make. Let’s begin, shall we?

NYT: “America’s gun violence shifted Wednesday to San Bernardino, Calif., where at least 14 people were killed and at least 17 wounded.”

‘Puter: This is true, ‘Puter guesses, as far as it goes. But the editorial only goes as far as it needs to because going further would result in an uncomfortable truth for liberals. Yesterday’s attack doesn’t appear to be random “gun violence.” The more facts that come to light, the more the attack seems to be Islamist terrorism.

The perpetrators were two Muslims, man and wife, who just returned from the birthplace of Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia. The attack was well planned. The perpetrators took time to purchase combat style clothing, make pipe bombs, acquire firearms and ammunition, and purchase GoPro cameras to film their carnage. These are not the acts of thuggish criminals. They are the well-planned acts of terrorists.

For a leading national newspaper to call likely Islamist terrorism “gun violence” is misleading and it is cowardly.

NYT: “The ultimate question grows with each new scene of carnage: Are these atrocities truly beyond the power of government and its politicians to stop?”

‘Puter: Yes. Yes, New York Times editors, these atrocities are beyond the power of government and its politicians to stop.

The concept that government can’t stop evil people bent on doing evil isn’t particularly controversial except, that is, among those who worship at the altar of Big Government. Murder’s been illegal for as long as governments have existed, yet we still have murderers. Similarly, theft, rape, and kidnapping have been illegal for centuries, yet we still have thieves, rapists, and kidnappers. Government laws banning activities stop nothing, they merely penalize the banned acts. Evil people are still going to do evil. It’s that simple.

And as for politicians stopping atrocities, ‘Puter would point the editors to the acts and failures to act of one President Obama in Syria. President Obama didn’t stop the ongoing Syrian atrocities, he arguably caused the ongoing Syrian atrocities through his unique brand of ineffective leadership coupled with post-modernist, post-colonialist, America-hating beliefs.

‘Puter would also like to mention, since the editors seem to have forgotten, former New York State Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver was just convicted in federal court of seven counts ranging from honest services fraud, extortion, and money laundering. You’d think the editors would recall Mr. Silver’s issues since the newspaper published an extensive article on it three days ago.

‘Puter pities the New York Times editors. It must be shattering to see your false god of Big Government and its high priest politicians laid low by world events. Think about it from the editors’ perspectives. The New York Times worked overtime dragging President Obama to election in 2008 and reelection in 2012 by ignoring flaws that would’ve doomed any Republican candidate. And what did they get in return? Not much. A failed attempt at nationalizing health care, a failing attempt at a half-assedly nationalizing health care, no new gun laws, a wounded middle class, a rickety economy, and awful cities. But hey, gay marriage, amirite?

Liberals, including those residing in the Punch Sulzberger Memorial Editorial Suite and Abortion Clinic high above Manhattan, have seen their faith shattered over the last eight years. They elected the most liberal president and Congress in modern memory, and things have only gotten worse than they were under the antichrist George W. Bush.

‘Puter figures liberals are in one of the five stages of grief, probably somewhere amidst denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. ‘Puter doesn’t expect they’ll ever make it to acceptance that their Utopian pipe dreams of perfecting man through fascistic government practices is dead.

NYT: “Those who reject sensible gun controls will say anything to avoid implicating the growth in the civilian arsenal.”

‘Puter: What specific “sensible gun controls” have been rejected? Name them, please.

We have mandatory background checks for firearm purchases. We have laws governing legal concealed carry of firearms. We have laws preventing felons and the mentally ill from purchasing or possessing firearms. We have laws imposing greater punishment for gun related crimes. We have laws amounting to a de facto ban on ownership of automatic weapons. Some states (like ‘Puter’s) even have laws banning certain firearms based on irrelevant characteristics. What more would the editors have us do?

‘Puter, like his readers, knows exactly what the editors would have us do. The New York Times has been a full-throated advocate for repeal of the Second Amendment for years. See, Americans can’t be trusted with firearms, unless of course they’re the sort of Americans the liberal elites think should have firearms.  Here’s a few helpful rules of thumb for you.

If you’re a cop, you should totally have all kinds of guns, because cops protect white liberal elites. Too bad about all those poor brown people, you should’ve been born white. Stupid proles.

If you’re one of our bodyguards or the nice fellows who stand in our lobby to keep the little people away from us, you get to have guns. It’s important that we Intellectual Superiors™ avoid contact with you Deltas. Your stupidity might rub off on us, and you all wear khaki. Oh no, we don’t want to play with Deltas.

If you live in a red state, or Big Government forbid, Texas (*involuntary shudder*), no way you should have any guns. Your Jesus-y sky god probably commands you to slaughter innocents and drink their blood, at least that’s our understanding of Catholicism after talking to noted expert on all things Catholic Maureen Dowd.

‘Puter hopes these pointers help you see the error of your ways and the obvious superiority of the New York Times’ plan to eliminate private ownership of guns (except for them).

NYT: “[Improve mental health access and care] is the familiar line trotted out by Republican politicians after every massacre, as if unfettered access to high-powered weaponry — which they and the gun lobby have made possible — is not a factor in this national catastrophe.”

‘Puter: Actually, it was the Founders and the United States Constitution that cemented the human right to own firearms for self-defense in our nation. It wasn’t Republicans and the “gun lobby”* who wrote the Second Amendment.

At least, ‘Puter assumes the editors are writing about the Second Amendment, though it’s difficult to tell. ‘Puter thinks “unfettered access to high-powered weaponry” is Liberal-speak for “the right to keep and bear arms.” It’s tough to keep the lingo straight these days, what with “white privilege,” “microagressions,” “cisnormative,” and other made up words the Left insists have meaning.

‘Puter would also like to note that Americans do not currently have “unfettered” access to “high-powered weaponry.” As noted above, there are all kinds of laws at the federal, state, and local levels restricting ownership of and rights pertaining to firearms.

Also, ‘Puter humbly requests his betters at the New York Times define for him exactly what they mean by “high-powered weaponry.” ‘Puter’s simple mind cannot comprehend this meaningless and undefined term. Do the editors mean a Barrett .50 BMG? Do they mean ‘Puter’s .50 black powder rifle? Perhaps a .22 caliber revolver? A single shot, break action 20 gauge? An M1911? ‘Puter can’t narrow down the possibilities without some assistance from the assembled geniuses in their echo chamber high above Manhattan’s madding holiday crowds.

Maybe ‘Puter missed the “unfettered” legalization of “high-powered weaponry,” as a result of which the editors are bitterly disappointed in America. If ‘Puter had only known “high-powered weaponry” was freely available throughout this great nation, he totally would’ve hit the Black Friday Amazon sales on reclaimed 16 inch gun turrets from an Iowa class battleship.** Who doesn’t want a firearm that hurls a projectile the weight of a Volkswagen bug (2,700 pounds) 10 miles or more to hit and obliterate a target?

Or maybe – just maybe – the New York Times editors are full of crap. That’s more likely, isn’t it, than believing the self-proclaimed smartest people in the room are unaware of basic Constitutional jurisprudence and firearms laws?

NYT: “Congress’s Republican leaders are betting they can brazenly go through another election cycle without enacting gun safety laws.”

‘Puter: ‘Puter would like to note for the record the following.

Democrats controlled the House and Senate from January 2009 through January 2011. These also happened to coincide with President Obama’s (D-Chicagoland Thugocracy) first two years in office.

ThinkProgress, a reliably conservative website, notes the following mass shootings occurred between January 2009 and January 2011:

• January 8, 2011. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head when 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire on an event she was holding at a Safeway market in Tucson, AZ. Six people died, including Arizona District Court Chief Judge John Roll, one of Giffords’ staffers, and a 9-year-old girl. 19 total were shot. Loughner has been sentenced to seven life terms plus 140 years, without parole.
• August 3, 2010. Omar S. Thornton, 34, gunned down Hartford Beer Distributor in Manchester, CT after getting caught stealing beer. Nine were killed, including Thornton, and two were injured.
• November 5, 2009. Forty-three people were shot by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. Hasan reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, killing 13 and wounding 29 others.
• April 3, 2009. Jiverly Wong, 41, opened fire at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York before committing suicide. He killed 13 people and wounded 4.
• March 29, 2009. Eight people died in a shooting at the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, NC. The gunman, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, was targeting his estranged wife who worked at the home and survived. Stewart was sentenced to life in prison.

So, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi could have at any time during this two year Pax Democratica introduced and passed legislation restricting firearms. They did not.***

And why didn’t Democrats introduce and pass even more restrictive gun control legislation nationally? In part, it’s because Americans hate overly restrictive gun control laws. Take a gander at these Gallup polls, current and historic. While Americans support reasonable gun control, the reasonable gun control Americans support looks nothing like what the New York Times and its liberal acolytes proselytize for.

An even more likely reason for liberal Democrats failing to pass gun control when they had the chance is because gun control arguably lost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election. Gun control is toxic in certain states Democrats must carry to win national elections, and it’s just getting more toxic as Americans realize government not only can’t protect them, government may actively and maliciously harm them.

Were the New York Times editors being honest, the sentence at the top of this section would’ve read: “Congress’s Republican leaders are rationally betting they can go through another election cycle without enacting the additional confiscatory and unnecessary gun safety laws we liberals prefer, because stupid Americans don’t agree with us and will punish Democrats at the ballot box.”

NYT: “Congress has allowed the domestic gun industry to use assorted loopholes to sell arsenals that are used against innocent Americans who cannot hide.”

‘Puter: Please permit ‘Puter to once again from the New York Times’ Liberal-speak to English:  “Americans can legally purchase firearms. We don’t like the firearms Americans can purchase. Plus, we’ve effectively disarmed law abiding citizens in most blue states and nearly all major American cities making them sitting ducks for evildoers. Therefore, it’s all the Republicans’ fault!”

‘Puter would also note the editors once again refuse to define their terms, specifically “loopholes” and “arsenals.” ‘Puter assumes the editors would claim lack of space. ‘Puter finds it more likely that if the editors defined terms, Americans would laugh in their faces.

NYT: “Without firm action, violent criminals will keep terrorizing communities and the nation, inflicting mass death and damage across the land.”

‘Puter: Let’s assume for the sake of argument that without (yet again undefined) “firm action,” mass shootings that would make the Marine Corps’ assault of Tarawa look like a Sunday stroll in the park would increase in a geometric fashion.

What specific remedies do the editors recommend?

A ban on firearm ownership except for law enforcement? Chicago and DC had such laws for years. As a former resident of the greater DC Metropolitan area during Mayor for Life Marion Barry’s halcyon crack smoking days, let ‘Puter tell you disarming the law abiding didn’t work. DC was a hellhole during the early and mid-1980s. And ‘Puter’s pretty darned certain you could go around Chicago and ask its residents about the awesome, totally safe climate Chicago’s de facto gun ban created. Gun bans don’t work.

New York State, under the expert leadership of Governor Andrew Cuomo, passed the misnamed SAFE Act immediately after the Sandy Hook massacre. The SAFE Act was ill-conceived at the time it was ramrodded through the legislature and signed into law. It banned cops from carrying firearms that were capable of accepting more than seven cartridges in a detachable magazine. It requires registration of all “assault weapons.” And what has New York gotten for its trouble? A public that has roundly ignored the law. Practically no one has registered their “assault weapons,” justly fearing New York will next confiscate such weapons. No need to help the state screw you over.

So, outright bans don’t work and overly restrictive laws are ignored. What’s the answer? We don’t know because the New York Times’ legal eagles refuse to tell us. ‘Puter finds “trust us, we know what we’re doing” to be an unconvincing argument, especially when made by the folks who think President Obama’s lawless tenure has been the bee’s knees.

So what’s our takeaway from ‘Puter’s little screed? Just this.

Liberals want to take away your right to keep and bear arms even if it means repealing or ignoring the Second Amendment, but they’re afraid to say so because they know it’s electoral death.

And it speaks to the New York Times editors’ cowardice that they won’t make their real argument in print, preferring instead to cover it in undefined terms, moral indignation, and liberal pieties.

* ‘Puter assumes the editors mean the NRA, the “he who must not be named” of the Left. Did you know if you say “NRA” three times in front of your mirror on Halloween zombie Charlton Heston shows up, kills you, and puts a gun in your cold, dead hands? At least that’s what the editors told me.

** Note the blast waves from the USS New Jersey’s (BB-62) guns deforming the ocean hundreds of feet off her starboard. Dang, the United States knew how to build weapons of war back then. Hats off to the men and women who designed and built these monsters back during World War II. And even more hats off to the men who crewed these mighty ships.

*** Instead, America got the abortion that is ObamaCare, currently failing and dragging the entire health care industry down with it. Well done, Democrats. Well done, indeed.

Speaking of GorT, he did the Czar a really big favor recently. Stuck for a vacation spot, the Czar complained that all the good places really worth taking the kids to were pretty much not all that great anymore.

“Well, you know,” GorT replied, “The advantage of time travel is that you can visit places when they were pretty cool. Or when they become cool.” The Czar asked for an example, and the lengthy robot replied that the Czar should take his boys to 1984.

The Czar agreed, and we spent a wonderful time in the Summer of 1984. The boys appreciated the optimism the country had, and the fact that most people were happy to have paying jobs. Jerkiness was quite low, compared to today, and they thought it was incredible that so many good movies were in theaters right now. And the Czar thought about this, and asked them what things they would tell their young friends about the 1980s. The Czar was surprised they didn’t mention the fashions (good and bad), or the overly feathered haircuts. Here’s what they came up with:

• Televisions were a lot smaller than you’d expect. Even in a big family room, the biggest television was this boxy little 20-incher.
• Also, there were only like five channels.
• They were practically giving gas away.
• Cars were boxy and square, with a lot of sharp edges and not a lot of crash padding. If you got into an accident, you would probably not do very well.
• There weren’t as many old people around.
• Churches are crowded! There were more services on Sunday, too, than today.
• People seems to really like using maps and seem to give pretty good directions to places. No one uses GPS here.
• There sure was a lot of different stuff on the radio. A lot of different channels to listen to, even though reception is pretty bad everywhere.
• Where are the recycling bins?
• Parking spaces seem a lot wider. Like you could open a car door and not ding the door next to you.

“Settled Science” – if it isn’t a term of ridicule, it should be.  Anyone who claims that with regards to Anthropogenic Global Warming or more broadly, climate change is a fool and likely failed high school level science.

Stay with me here as we walk through the “science” from those favoring human-caused climate change.  We all agree – on both sides of this argument – that the Earth’s climate is a complex system.  So some have argued that models show what will happen to the Earth.  And as they learn more about the system the models get updated and new results are computed.  Fine.  No issue there*.

But what NOAA and others supporting human-caused climate change haven’t told you is that they have also changed the data.  Really.  And it’s all publicly available for you to verify that they did as much.  I could understand some data changing in the far past when we didn’t have accurate temperature readings but the type of data I’m talking about is for specific weather stations with modern temperature sensors.

Here is a case in point:

A station in Siberia (Zyrjanaka) had the following temperature data for the year 1940 reported by NOAA in 2012:

YEAR   JAN   FEB   MAR   APR MAY  JUN  JUL  AUG SEP   OCT   NOV   DEC
1940 -29.7 -34.8 -22.2 -10.5 2.9 14.6 16.3 11.2 1.0 -11.8 -26.9 -35.5

And here is the same station for the same year (1940) reported by NOAA in 2015:

YEAR   JAN   FEB   MAR   APR MAY  JUN  JUL  AUG  SEP    OCT   NOV   DEC
1940 -31.1 -36.2 -23.6 -11.9 1.5 13.2 14.9  9.8 -0.4  -13.2 -28.3 -36.9

So for some reason between 2012 and 2015, NOAA decided that it was actually 1.4 degrees C cooler in 1940 at that station. Maybe the device wasn’t that accurate so let’s look at a more modern difference. Let’s take the year 2010. Either there should be no change between 2012 and 2015 (because modern temperature sensors are pretty darn good and probably haven’t improved that it would change more than a tenth of a degree in accuracy since 2010) or we should see the same adjustment applied for some unknown reason that NOAA hasn’t explained.

Same station’s data for the year 2010 as reported by NOAA in 2012:

YEAR   JAN   FEB   MAR   APR MAY  JUN  JUL  AUG SEP   OCT   NOV   DEC
2010 -38.1 -33.7 -24.  -11.4 9.3 14.4 21.5 11.7 3.8  -8.2 -24.9 -32.1

And here is the same station for the same year (1997) report by NOAA in 2015:

YEAR   JAN   FEB   MAR   APR MAY  JUN  JUL  AUG  SEP    OCT   NOV   DEC
2010 -39.0 -34.6 -25.0 -12.3 8.4 13.5 20.6 10.8  2.9   -9.1 -25.8 -33.0

Hmm, now it’s only 0.9 degrees C colder. In fact, if you look at the adjustments made, it is almost a year-by-year specific change that is non-linear and has no coherent reasoning on their page that describes any changes (i.e. stations being moved, etc.).  The differences, if you plot them, look like this:

How “data” can change like this baffles me.  And this is only one station.  Keep in mind, that we only have temperature readings for about 50% of the land mass of the Earth.  Which means we only have temperature readings (with some adjustments that NOAA deems) for about 14.5% of the Earth’s surface.  And the distribution of temperature sensor coverage is not uniform – there are pockets in various climate regions that are largely missing.  Keep in mind, we do have satellite coverage of a greater surface area – this is the data referenced when you hear skeptics refer to the “pause” in warming.

Maybe I can adjust the data on some of my income….I don’t think it was measured accurately.

From JAB.

Hey there — just wondering if y’all in the Castle are paying attention to the shenanigans going on in some of this nation’s finest institutions of higher education? [Hint- nothing to do with imparting knowledge.]

In brief:

1. Yale students had a hissy-fit about a Halloween costumes they might find offensive, and then further embarrassed themselves by attempting to stifle an event focused on free speech. One young woman screamed the f-word at a faculty member, seeming not to understand that the word is pretty much universally considered massively offensive. Apparently, Yale students are differently-abled when it comes to recognizing irony.
2. Vanderbilt students are agitating for a political science professor to be fired because, following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, she wrote an opinion piece critical of radical Islam. Apparently, today’s Vanderbilt students are unable to grasp the meaning of the word “ opinion.” Back when I attended dear, old alma mater, this was not the case.
3. Meanwhile, at Ithaca, Claremont-McKenna, University of Minnesota, among others, the youths are holding protests and chanting stuff along the lines of: “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Prof-I-Don’t-Like has got to go!”
4. And then there’s the University of Missouri, where the chancellor & president have both resigned following …the football team’s threat that they wouldn’t play on Saturday.

Actually, that’s an over simplification of the Missouri story, which began after the student body president, who is black, reported that someone shouted a racial slur at him. A black grad student started a hunger strike to draw attention, students camped out in protest and black members of the football team refused to participate in any football activities. And much more.

Shouting a racial slur at anyone is, of course, a completely crass and boorish thing to do, but to my knowledge, no one accused the now-former-president Wolfe of shouting the slur. It seems that students felt he didn’t take the charge seriously enough, and subsequently demanded that he sign a statement confessing his “white male privilege” and then resign. Wolfe apologized and resigned, giving every indication that he was suffering from a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, meaning he must have felt an affinity with his accusers.

Now, had Your Czarness’ humble correspondent been president of Missou, I would have made the following statement on Monday:

The Czar has been pretty well out of it lately. Sure, there was a time change—for you, you gain and hour of sleep and the worst that happens is you get hungry an hour earlier. When a Gormogon goes through a time change, he winds up in some bizarre century. And that’s nothing compared to a dimensional stasis change.

So with that, he’s been preoccupied. However, Operative B has contributed a couple of items worth your time:

Yeah, it’s been falling apart a lot longer than that. And while the Czar is tempted to say fortunately other events occur which push things back a little bit, the reality is that these correcting events are often quite catastrophic.

But on the other hand, the so-called Overton Window is really a window: you can go in or out. And conservatives have made monumental strides in waking Americans the hell up. But there’s so much more to go that it’s difficult to see how far we’ve come. Think back to the late-1960s or early-1970s for a sense of how far we’ve come back.

The Czar isn’t the only one dealing negatively with the time change, it seems.

Operative B has some good observations here:

The Czar thinks you have it right. And this War on the Big Banks is nothing new for Democrats: it’s another page written out of the New Deal playbook. Have Bernie adjust his New England accent a bit, put him and Hillary on a scratchy recording, and you can hear Franklin and Eleanor kvetching about those awful Big Banks, and those evil speculators, and how the middle class needs a break.

Also, your history is good—do you think Franklin Roosevelt would be in favor of personal retirement accounts? Or is this something the government should manage for you?

Once again, the Progressives are trapped in 1932. What astonishes us is how many younger folks seem to be nodding their heads.

If you totally missed the debates last night and were only skimming news about them today—or, one supposes, you did see the debates and were skimming headlines anyway—you would be forgiven for thinking nothing happened on the debates except for an epic collapse of media dignity. And you’d be forgiven because that’s precisely what occurred.

You know how the Czar says that the MSM is a 14-year-old girl? Totally true last night, as the moderators exhibited the worst traits of one. Their kangaroo court finally backfired last night, as one-by-one, the candidates pointed out the entire media is basically a liberal teat sucking brood of piglets.

CNBC opted to have three moderators—it doesn’t matter what their names were at this point—who were shrill, exposed nerves of Democratic support. This wasn’t about the Republicans at all: it was a Me Me Me show, all about your wonderful moderators, who ought to be as well-known as any Hollywood A-listers, household names that all of you should worship, and boy, were they going to put these ugly, stupid Republican bastards in their place!

That was the plan, anyway. The moderators talked over the candidates, flagrantly interrupted, argued with them Candy Crowley-like over trivia, eye-rolled, sighed, sniffed, and were pretty much a kangaroo court held in a high school commons area. The Czar is not exaggerating; if you watched the debates, you understand the Czar’s premise that CNBC took a serious hit to its credibility. Ratings for that network will sag further, momentarily, and executives there probably won’t fire or even apologize for the three assholes who moderated the thing, but you can bet management is meeting today to talk about serious spin control. So far they haven’t done it—CNBC put out a whiny little message this morning that maybe the GOP needs to toughen up a bit; even so, each of the three moderators has been curiously absent off social media.

The bottom line is that the Democrats will probably also insist on serious rule changes if they ever plan to debate on CNBC. The Republicans will likely never go to that network again for a long time. The problem wasn’t that the moderators exhibited poor behavior here and there, like CNN; the problem was that their badgering, hectoring, and teenage-like angst over everything was constant.

Senator Ted Cruz went first, pointing out how obviously bad the moderation was. Senator Marco Rubio went further, saying that the biggest SuperPAC in the world is the mainstream media. Donald Trump—who was refreshingly downbeat in this debate—initially squandered his closing statement to boast about how he and Dr. Carson forced CNBC to change the format of the debate—but it was a successful ruse to get one of the thin-skinned moderators to snidely correct him on that point. Except, of course, Trump was correct about his claim, and Trump called the moderator a liar on air. Twice.

But the turning point was Governor Chris Christie. When Governor Jeb Bush stupidly stumbled through an incoherent and utterly non-conservative answer on the urgent need to regulate fantasy football, Christie went nuts. To riotous applause, he spelled out all the very real dangers facing America today, here and abroad, and accused the moderators of planting a fantasy football question in there because they were terrified of the Republicans on stage when it came to real issues.

Yes, this was an applause line, but it changed the entire debate. Suddenly, instead of Jeb Bush needling Marco Rubio, or John Kasich poking Donald Trump, the entire stage turned on the Democrats. Precisely what was needed: Rubio built on that, saying that there were all good candidates on this stage, any of whom was superior to the Democrats entire line up. Kasich agreed that the Democrats were intellectually bankrupt, Christie pointed out the large overlaps the Republicans share, which make them terrifying to socialists, and so on. Just about all of them used their closing statements to either berate the media’s cowardice of Hillary Clinton, or to stipulate that the Republicans are putting forth ideas and not tired socialism bullet points.

Christie put the moderators on the defense. And this is overdue: the media has been pulling the GOP’s strings the entire time. While—as the Czar mentioned earlier this week—the Democrats are triangulating and coordinating, the GOP is making fun of Trump’s neckties. Christie got the far-too-many candidates talking about the Democrats, and it got kind of scary at last. And indeed, even the liberal media heads are all talking about it (even if the Washington Post idiotically sided with the moderators).

Time to go: Kasich (who is apparently only running against Donald Trump), Huckabee (nothing new; just his old tentpole preacher act), Paul (anything you liked about Paul, Ted Cruz is able to deliver), and Bush (who looked awful last night and exhibited the real desperation his campaign is facing).

Moving up: None. All other candidates basically held their ground.

‘Puter hasn’t written much lately. He’s been awfully busy at work. But ‘Puter’s always thinking. It’s what he does best. Or, at least, what he does least poorly.

Hillary, Benghazi, and Republican Idiocy

Hillary “won” the Benghazi Committee hearing by (1) not choking on her own tongue and (2) not reprising her “Angry Hillary” persona featured in the past hearing.

Hell, Hillary could’ve walked in, got buck nekkid, had three-way sex with Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin on top of a pile of previously undisclosed classified emails to Ayatollah Khamenei from her homebrew server and Republicans still would’ve lost.

Here’s how a successful hearing would’ve gone:

• Every single Republican on the committee cedes his or her time to Rep. Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor.
• Gowdy proceeds to cross-examine Hillary Clinton for the next ten hours, with permitted interruptions from each of the Democratic committee members in turn.
• Gowdy reads the 100 or so emails to and from Sidney Blumenthal. Gowdy introduces documents showing Blumenthal’s business clients got favorable deals from the Libyan government, in all likelihood because of his relationship with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.
• Gowdy walks through each of the 600 separate requests from Ambassador Stevens for improved security at the diplomatic compounds in Libya. “Let me read you this email, Mrs. Clinton. *reads email* Did you receive this email from Ambassador Stevens? No? Why not? Who did?” Repeat this with each of the 600 emails. Finish with a version of “So you were responsible for everything that happens in the State Department, including security, and none of these 600 requests rose to your level of review? I find that difficult to believe.”
• Gowdy reads Mrs. Clinton the email to Chelsea from September 12, 2011 stating Mrs. Clinton believed the attack on Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Gowdy then rolls a montage of every single Obama administration official blaming the attack on YouTube video. “Mrs. Clinton, were you lying to your daughter in this email, or were you lying to America afterwards?” After Mrs. Clinton answers, finish up by rolling the tape of Mrs. Clinton standing in front of the four coffins at Dover Air Force Base blaming the Benghazi attacks on a YouTube video.
• Gowdy sums up. “Mrs. Clinton, our review of evidence shows the following. You lied repeatedly about having provided all relevant emails to this committee. You lied to the American people about the cause of the Benghazi attack. You recklessly disregarded or presided over people who recklessly disregarded the safety of an American diplomat. You utterly failed in your job as Secretary of State.”

Republicans didn’t have a chance yesterday. They’re playing by the old rules, and refuse to adapt to the current battlefield. Here are the facts.

• Democrats will lie, cheat, and steal to retain the presidency, even if it means installing a lying, untrustworthy, vindictive Hillary Clinton.
• Media is a synonym for Democrat. Treat every media member as a hostile witness. You should be asking them the questions, not the other way around. Ignore their questions if you must, and talk about what you want to talk about. Call them out publicly on their bias. “Mr. Gowdy, people say …” “Wait a minute, Andrea Mitchell. Which people? I won’t answer questions posed by hypothetical people. If you think that, say so, and I’ll answer your question.”
• Americans don’t want a long, drawn out story about Hillary Clinton lying. We’re dumb and have short attention spans. If you can’t summarize a scandal in a sound bite (true or false), don’t bother holding hearing. Try, “Hillary lied, Americans died.” Or how about, “No American blood for a Clinton presidency.”
• Americans trust emotion over logic. You need to still be logical, but couch it in emotional terms.
• Most Congressmen aren’t nearly as smart or telegenic as they believe themselves to be. Leadership should’ve chosen carefully who they wanted to be the face of this work. I’d’ve had more women on the panel. There are plenty of great women Republicans (like Rep. Roby who was on the panel) who would’ve loved the job. It would’ve had the added advantage of defanging the “poor Hillary, ganged up on by the White Male Patriarchy” angle I’ve heard.

In short, Republicans lost yesterday because they’re playing a different game than the Democrats, and even were the Democrats playing the Republicans’ game, the Republicans are playing by outdated rules.

Debt Ceiling

Here’s the dirty little secret on the debt ceiling. The Republicans have to vote to raise the debt ceiling since they keep passing continuing resolutions, funding the government at current levels where borrowing is necessary to meet the approved expenditures.

If Republicans want to get serious about the national debt, fine. Here’s how to do it:

• Pass a gosh-darned budget. Make Obama veto it repeatedly, if necessary. Refuse to pass any more continuing resolutions.
• Insist any budget be balanced. A balanced budget amendment would be nice. If you must raise taxes, do so. But do so across the board. No sticking it to “the rich,” who now apparently include couples making $200,000.00 or so. Make everyone pay something.
• Require all government agencies to adopt zero baseline budgeting. Justify all your activities and all your employees each year. If you can’t, you get less money. Just because the State Department got eleventy gajillion dollars in last year’s Seventh Floor Plastic Surgery and Homebrew Server budget doesn’t mean it should be automatically funded again this year.
• Require all government agencies to attribute to households the value of government aid programs (food, shelter, medical) as income in calculating poverty statistics, evaluating need. Explain to Americans that individuals receiving $30,000 to $50,000 per year in government aid without working aren’t poor. They have hard lives, but they’re not poor.
• Pass permanent legislation permitting the Treasury Department to issue debt sufficient to roll over maturing debt previously issued. Require all new debt issues to be authorized by act of Congress.

The national debt is so high because Democrats and Republicans both have spent beyond America’s means for years. Worse, Congress borrowed for current year expenditures like entitlements, not long term capital items such as highways, bridges, utility upgrades and hardening, etc.

Democrats certainly aren’t going to fix the problem. Handing out “free” crap to everyone and sticking our kids with the bill is their bread and butter. It’s up to Republicans, but ‘Puter has little hope.

Student Loans

If you take out student loans, you are a moron. College right now, especially if you’re going for a degree in Undecided or Fill-in-the-Blank Studies, is a fraud. The odds are low of you getting a salary bump large enough to cover the years of indentured servitude you’ll endure in service of your debt.

The federal government now holds or guarantees about $800 billion in student loan debt out of the $1.3 trillion outstanding. The average student now owes $28,400 in student loan debt. Effectively, none of this debt can be forgiven in bankruptcy. The current default rate on student debt is now 11.8% officially, but that’s light. Over 30% of student loans are either in deferral or forbearance, meaning the loans are due, but the debtors are currently excused from paying, usually because of an Obama administration program used to game the true default rate by treating nonpayments as “in forbearance.”

Yet people keep telling their kids, “Son, take out $80,000 in non-dischargeable student loans to get a philosophy degree. Your employment prospects after graduation will be bleak, you’ve got a 40% chance of being unable to repay them, and you can’t ever get rid of the debt. But hey, college, amirite?”

Parents ought to be boycotting colleges, or at least bargaining with them to get tuition down to an affordable rate for them. Better, students should consider their alternatives. Get a job for a few years, save your money, then head back to school. Think about community college alternatives, or even night school while working. Join the military and attend college on the GI Bill afterwards. Learn a skilled trade. The country can use more skilled carpenters, plumbers, and electricians.

If you want to be a writer, skip college. Go write. Find a mentor. If you want to be an actor, skip college. Go act. Find a mentor. If you want to start a business, skip college. Go work for a business of the type you want to start. Learn everything you can about the business, then make the jump.

‘Puter doesn’t hate colleges. Colleges are great when they hew closely to their mission of education. It’s the high cost (fiscal and life) and the political indoctrination that give ‘Puter pause these days.

Anyway, that’s enough of ‘Puter ranting for now.

‘Puter’ll be back when the day is new, and he’ll have new ideas for you. You’ll have things you’ll want to talk about. ‘Puter will too.

Goodbye.

Castle visitors can be all ready for the holidays with our brand new selection of Christmas wraiths. Welcome your holiday visitors into your home by decorating your doors with any of these lovelies!

Be bold! The PhantomWarning looks completely solid, but lacks a face and voice. Place her anywhere your decorating needs require and enjoy the sudden start as your friends and family catch her out of the corners of their eyes. But that’s not all! The PhantomWarning can (randomly or on a pre-set timer) point an accusing finger at one or more of your guests. Maybe they’ll blurt out a long-held secret! Maybe it will be hours of laughter! Put a Santa hat or foam reindeer horns on her head, or if you have kids, you make her the most terrifying Elf-on-a-Shelf ever!

Go with the subtle effect. Why overstate? The Spectral 200 is subtly transparent, and makes a great, feminine overlay to any of your other door decorations. Ideal with a red bow, or gentle fir boughs crossed at the neck, your friends will be impressed with the graceful, timeless elegance of a faceless horror gently weeping and sobbing as they spread yuletide joy and warmth. Was she murdered? Unfinished business? Does she seek justice or bloody revenge? Entertain their guesses, award the most creative interpretation and start a new holiday tradition.

Playful and funny, but still quite respectful, the SpookMeister is sure to sell out fast. With his goofy eyes and mischievous grin, he’s there to remind you that the Birth of Our Lord can still be light-heartedly terrifying for one and all. Makes a great pop-up stocking stuffer, and can be baked into mince pies or a Marzipan, or even wrapped up as a gag gift. Spooky could also be used for Halloween, probably, if you’re not overtly religious or don’t mind mixing up your holidays. Makes a great throw rug, dog pull toy, or commercial food prep cutting surface. Color safe and easily fits through most walls or other solid surfaces.

New! Just added this year, his eyes will bobble and wiggle to the beat of your favorite music. Music player not included, but for best results position SpookMeister within 5 feet of your music source.

For the more traditionally minded, don’t overlook our budget-priced BansheePlus model. Totally invisible until he shrieks, put him in your hedges or bushes by the door. When visitors arrive, he can visibly pop up and screech with 85 dB of painful fright. A mournful wail is sure to remind your guests of the trials and tribulations of the Three Kings, or his shadowy form will evoke sentiments of the manger. Shrieks can be set to Damned, Abandoned Wail, Lonely Moors, Disco, David Byrne, or Random.

Note: all our Christmas wraiths can be found in our gift shop seasonal aisle or purchased from this website to the left. Happy Holidays from your fiends, the Gormogons.

As loyal readers know, the Czar does unpleasant things so you don’t have to, such as watching political debates. And while the Czar is traditionally pretty brutal to the Republican candidates after a debate, he is certain to include the Democrats in his collective rage after one of theirs. Indeed, last night’s Democratic debates were awful. Truly terrible.

Did you miss them? No big deal—allow the Czar to summarize the entire thing: “The wealthiest 1% of the country is killing the middle class through big banks and their income inequality ties to Wall Street!” Questions to this answer could include what their first terms could be like as president, their ideas on gun control, thoughts on the Washington Nationals, or who the hell Lincoln Chaffee is. The Czar could not believe that three of the five candidates were trying to use the Franklin Roosevelt 1932 playbook. Apparently, Democrats think that Republicans and their 1980s ideas are so out-of-fashion; you should consider their 1930s retro ideas as avant garde.

Yeah, there’s no doubt Hillary Clinton was in total control. She either fielded every question, or got her opponents to turn every question into a comment about her. While the media is painting her as cool, collected, and masterful, the reality was she was shrill, short, often rude, and prone to her suddenly psychopathic laugh that she cuts off abruptly. Her command of the facts was faulty, and she seemed uncomfortable whenever Bernie Sanders commented about her political inconsistencies. But make no mistake—she had everyone talking about her and she seemed like she was entertained by her opponents. She will see an uptick in polling after this.

Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders tried to Trump the debates, shouting, yelling, spitting, and basically insisting he was the friendliest totalitarian you ever met. Folks watching the debate with the Czar agreed he came off as weird—his strange accent, dandruff on his shoulders, and explosive non sequiturs did not endear him past his own supporters. And like Trump, he’s probably seen his numbers go as high as they’re going to go.

Martin O’Malley understood that this was his moment to get national attention, and did his best to do so by looking at the cameras when he answered. But he was given very little speaking time—CNN mis-moderated the debates and let Clinton and Sanders talk over each other with long paragraphs—and said very little that differentiated himself from Clinton or Sanders (he seems politically between the two). He was quite aggressive in his criticisms of Clinton, but didn’t do as much as Sanders did in this regard. He probably was the most forceful he’s ever been, but compared to Sanders, he looked tepid.

Surprisingly to the Czar, Jim Webb demonstrated (in his few opportunities to speak) that he’s done research, rejects the liberals’ bumper-sticker applause-line mentality, understands Republicans’ issues with the candidates, and thinks the party has gone too far left. What surprises the Czar about this is that we thought such Democrats vanished in the mid-1960s. He’s almost a Kennedy-esque Democrat who should easily appeal to party loyalists while pulling in the independents without fully terrifying Repubicans if he wins. So of course, he will be blown out of the primaries.

Finally, and most finally, Lincoln Chaffee blinked at the bright lights and whined a fair amount about the unfair questions he was getting about his dubious political decisions throughout his career.

Basically, it’s going to be Hillary Clinton after all. At this point, the Czar doubts Biden will even run now that he’s seem Clinton’s formidable temper. On the other hand, Sanders and O’Malley gave the Republicans a ton of good leverage to use against Clinton, and better yet, demonstrated that some of the obvious lines of attack against her were easily blocked and parried. Instead of wasting time with those, Republicans can make her squirm on a bunch of other topics, too.