The Real America

A fascinating look into the Real America...wow.

Libertarians Chances

A recent piece over at Politico posits the question...does the Libertarian party actually have a chance this year? I think they do if they do a couple of things.

First, focus on the micro issues where the libertarian ideology actually works in reality. Education, which should be reformed from the local level outward, is one example. Legalizing all drugs is another.

Second, lose this nonsense.

If they can get the wingut out of their movement, they might actually peel away voters from both the Democrats and the Republicans.

When A Man Gets A Fever

Trump's Delegates Are....White Nationalists?

Donald Trump’s delegate ineptitude stumbles into white nationalism

Hoo boy...

The Challenge of One Size Fits All

The biggest challenge facing the gun rights position today is the one size fits all nature of 2nd amendment interpretations over the course of the last few decades. At the heart of this, is the concept of responsibility (individual versus societal) that dogs most issues of the day.

Defenders of gun rights fight for looser government regulations and champion easier access to firearms. By taking this position, they open up the door to a wide range of individuals, some of whom are irresponsible with firearms. Unfortunately, gun rights activists view this action as having a negligible on our society. Given that mass shootings have become the norm and toddlers shooting people  at the rate of one per week, I find this view most troubling and, quite frankly, heartless.

They also view these irresponsible people with firearms as being islands in our culture and any detrimental effect as being exclusively the fault of said person. Of course, this is the problem with the entire liberal versus conservative ideological wave length. Liberals tend to recognize that when you deal with a large group of people (aka the general public), a significant number of them are not intelligent, mature, or responsible. This is why liberals favor regulation and government control on a whole host of issues, not just guns. These irresponsible people are a drag on our society that inhibits progress. Conservatives, on the other hand, would rather leave the issue of responsibility with each person and let “free will” rule the day seemingly not caring about the effects nor our collective responsibility to society.

So, the biggest challenge facing the gun rights position today is the same one facing many of the other issues of the day. By loosening regulation on the financial sector, health care, the energy sector, and guns, people will behave in an irresponsible fashion and destroy lives. Because we live in a society where people are in a constant state of interaction, less regulated people will hurt or kill other people. It’s just that simple.

Dwarfed?

I was sitting watching my son play baseball the other day when the conversation with a fellow parent turned to politics. We talked for a bit about the election and then she said something that cracked me up.

"I just have this feeling that Trump is going to win."

I asked her on what she based her assertion.

"I don't know...just a feeling."

She was certainly not a Trump supporter as she told me she would be voting for Hillary Clinton and truly despised Trump's comments about women. Yet her comments made me wonder where all this "Trump feelings" stuff originates. I think part of it is his celebrity but I'll have a post about that in a few days. Most of it is merely slippery slope fallacy...he won the GOP primary when no one thought he could so therefore he will win the general when no one thought he could.

I don't think my fellow baseball parent is aware of the massive infrastructure advantage that Hillary Clinton has right now. The political world is, however, and it's pretty amazing.

Through the end of last month, the period covered by the most recent FEC filings, Trump’s campaign had spent less than a third as much Clinton’s ($57 million to $182 million) and had assembled a staff about one-tenth the size of her (70 employees to 732), with a fraction as many offices (Trump last month paid $101,000 in rent vs. $328,000 for Clinton), the analysis found.

Does Trump think he can get out the vote in a general election without field offices?

Polls A Go Go

I find it most interesting that everyone seems to be focusing on national polls (of registered voters no less..pee-yew) and not on the state by state polls. National polls don't really matter. It's the individual state polls that matter. And anyone that thinks this race is tightening ought to take a look at what Arizona and Georgia look like.

Here are some other notes about polls...

Nate Silver went on a pretty hilarious Twitter rant about polls in May. And a great mea culpa from Silve as well.

Speaking of 538, here's some great insight on the whole Trump supporters are in the closet meme.

Where are the Emperor's Clothes?

Welcome To Louisville

The Greatest Answer Ever On Quora

The question asked was...

Is it true that there are some "no-brainer" gun control laws that should be passed?

And the answer was this...

I own guns. I like guns.  I can conceal carry (though may or may not).  I enjoy hitting up the range and shootin' 'em.  I do believe there exists a right to gun ownership in this country.

But I also think the ease with which one can acquire massive amounts of military-grade lethality in this country is flat-out stupid, and don't believe there's anything in the Bill of Rights that entitles me to purchase and own a .50 caliber sniper rifle loaded up with armor-piercing rounds.

Slippery slope be damned, there does exist such a thing as reasonable gun control legislation, just as there exist some very unreasonable guns.

For shits and giggles I went down to my local gun store the other day to see what they were up to as I expected there was some amusement to be had there post-Newtown.  Indeed, there was.

While I was there, I literally witness shop staff taking the price tags off of AR-15s and other semi-automatic assault rifles, replacing them with significantly marked-up prices.  Ammo shelves were empty, save for the odd box of cheap range ammo.  Walls that had, a few weeks ago, been covered inch-to-inch by every imaginable type of assault rifle lay bare - people had come in and bought out every damn thing they could, certain they had to do so before the government swooped in to snatch up their right to do so.  You'd think the zombie apocalypse had begun (especially since all the anti-zombie explosive rounds had been among the first to sell-out).  At most, you might have found an antique rifle to buy.  Oh... and that actual .50 caliber sniper rifle that was selling for $15,000 and had been on the shelf for about a year?  Someone finally bought it just the other day.

I'm sorry, but while I don't doubt there are plenty of reasonable gun owners who genuinely enjoy the things for recreational purposes or even for what they represent technologically (as I like to consider myself to be), there are also some batshit crazy paranoid types far too eager to treat guns as the end all be all, along with some shamelessly opportunistic types giddy at the prospect of making money off the aforementioned crazies (the shop staff and owner, with whom I have rapport, admitted being near giddy each time a mass shooting takes place - they don't fear legislation because they know attempts at it usually fall apart, plenty of loopholes are left in place, and they sell out of every damn thing in the store no matter how much they mark it all up each time people freak out [such as after Obama first got elected, after Obama got reelected, after Aurora, after Newtown, etc]).

And I'll eagerly go on record saying that, when I went to take my classes to get my concealed carry permits, the overriding reason I ended up feeling like I wanted a concealed carry permit is because those other people in the class were going to have one.  While I primarily wanted them to make going to the range or out to the desert to shoot an easier affair, most everyone else there expressed genuinely feeling like they needed to conceal carry before the United Nations took away any opportunity to do so or Obama himself came kicking in their doors to take away their guns  (and wives and children, I suppose).

As much as some would like to say "the left" or the Feinsteins and Obamas are dictating the gun control debate and set to trash the Bill of Rights, the fact of the matter is the types of people I've described above, as well as the more sophisticated types taking advantage of the people I've described above, have actually been the ones dictating the gun control debate, passing the legislation at the federal and local level, and ensuring there's no shortage of truly devastating and lethal weaponry available and just about anyone can get their hands on the stuff.

Check out this guy:

This weapon doesn't seem like something anyone could carry around with them wherever they went. What if I told you, though, I could have it under my jacket in line behind you at Starbucks? A few seats down from you at the movies? In the car next to you at a stoplight? Walking alongside you at the mall? It's a Sig Sauer P556 "pistol" - yes, it's considered a pistol. One can carry it concealed (though it is almost 2ft long) as they would a pistol. Yet one can also use a 30-round magazine with 5.56 NATO rifle rounds and fire off those rounds as quickly as they can pull that trigger with that thing.

The average person would not look at that thing and consider it a pistol, much less suspect it's the type of weapon anyone would be allowed to "conceal carry" at will in public, but thanks to the ways laws are written and manufacturers work with those laws it is.

It's easier for me to go buy a .50 caliber sniper rifle than over the counter allergy medication; with a few easily-acquired attachments and accessories (that require absolutely nothing but money to buy) I can turn just about any semi-automatic assault weapon available (and there are tons available) in to one capable of firing at near fully-automatic rates; the only limit to how many rounds of ammunition I can acquire is how many I can afford, and I can feed those rounds in to weapons with belts and drums and high-capacity magazines that enable me to fire off dozens and even hundreds of rounds before having to reload. 

I can assure you the licensing process that allows me to carry multiple concealed weapons - such as the "assault pistol" in the photo - in most every state is less stringent than getting a drivers license and easier than getting a license to cut hair. And if I simply want to own assault weapons without attempting to conceal-carry them, there's really no licensing process at all. None at all. 

Sure, there's a 2nd Amendment. Sure, there are practical reasons to own guns. But to deny the absurdity behind how easily anyone can get guns and what types of guns they can get is irrational; to suggest no reasonable attempts at limitation and regulation exist is also irrational.  Existing laws are already insufficient and far too lax, and at the same time manufacturers are able to circumvent them so effectively they might as well not exist; pro-gun legislators and the gun-lobby have purposefully ensured states and municipalities either can't pass laws, or can't effectively enforce whatever laws they do manage to pass. 

Again, I don't doubt reasonable gun owners exist and, again, I hope to consider myself one of those people.  At the same time, however, after many years circulating among  gun owners and participating in that culture and network, I simply have to admit I've spent a fair amount of time surrounded by people I'd consider to be fairly irrational when it comes to gun laws and those people and the lobbies representing them have had a far greater impact on existing laws in place than anyone attempting to restrict ownership or what is available for ownership.

The vast majority of weapons available today were designed to kill people.  Their express purpose is to facilitate and enable the effective and efficient killing of people.  Sure, there's the odd hunting rifle or shotgun round that kicks ass at bringing down ducks, but the measure of most any semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapon and round is how effective it is as "stopping", "neutralizing" and killing a person.  You won't ever hear the folks snatching up weapons down at the gun store touting a particular brand's ability to effectively put holes in paper targets or fly down range with true aim.  They sell that "double tap" ammunition (that actually fires two projectiles per cartridge) for your handgun so that single shot can put two bullets in a person; they sell "The Judge" - a revolver that fires out shotgun rounds - so one can still yield extreme force and lethality with as small a weapon as possible; they sell those high-capacity magazines so you can blast off round after round in rapid succession in the hopes you take out the bad guy, despite however bad your aim might be.  These weapons' and accessories' designs, techniques, methods and technologies were borne and perfected on battlefields for use between armies, and just about anyone can easily employ them on the streets here at home.

Existing gun laws are not only inadequate, but absurd; existing gun laws are not only failing to protect, but just about facilitating obscene amounts of violence as pro-gun lobbies go out of their way to ensure each contains loopholes and workarounds that render them obsolete; existing gun laws are not taking weapons off the streets but rather encouraging manufacturers and retailers to find creative ways to enable just about anyone with sufficient money (which often isn't even that much) and a pulse to posses killing power and destructive ability beyond anything the authors of the Constitution could have ever imagined.  And when some point to the failure of existing gun laws to effectively curb violence, don't let them convince you it's because gun laws stand no hope of ever accomplishing anything.  Allow yourself to consider the possibility that existing gun laws haven't done enough to this point because gun proponents have ensured they can't be effectively implemented, people can easily avoid any jurisdictional enforcement they don't like, manufacturers can easily work around whatever laws that might exist, and concerted efforts are made by groups like the NRA to make any legislation impotent as they then point to that impotence as a reason to not have the laws in the first place.

It's high time the militia gets well-regulated, and we acknowledge there are absurd degrees of firepower beyond easily accessible to everyone.

Number One answer in the question.

Over 62,000 views.

Over 1,000 upvotes.

Fuck you, Gun Cult. Your trolling and swarming will not stop the majority of the people in this country that want to live in a safer place. As Mr. Dunlap noted, we are on to you.

And we will never stop until you are completely fucking neutered.

About That Debt...

Paul Krugman's recent piece on where Trump gets his support is sheer brilliance. The part I especially enjoyed was this.

The Trump solution would, among other things, deprive the world economy of its most crucial safe asset, U.S. debt, at a time when safe assets are already in short supply.

Right. US debt is still one of the safest assets in the world despite what foams out of the mouth of the old lady debt hystericals.

And I'm still waiting for those debt collectors to come a callin' by the by...:) (he said, wondering the people who caterwaul about our debt even understand who owns it).

When Did Optimism Become Uncool?

Good question. Given reality, it makes no sense.

Job growth has been strong for five years, with unemployment now below where it was for most of the 1990s, a period some extol as the “good old days.” The American economy is No. 1 by a huge margin, larger than Nos. 2 and 3 (China and Japan) combined. Americans are seven times as productive, per capita, as Chinese citizens. The dollar is the currency the world craves — which means other countries perceive America’s long-term prospects as very good.

Pollution, discrimination, crime and most diseases are in an extended decline; living standards, longevity and education levels continue to rise. The American military is not only the world’s strongest, it is the strongest ever. The United States leads the world in science and engineering, in business innovation, in every aspect of creativity, including the arts. Terrorism is a serious concern, but in the last 15 years, even taking into account Sept. 11, an American is five times more likely to be hit by lightning than to be killed by a terrorist.

Even with all of my concern about gun violence, I still think we, as a planet, are in a far better place than we have EVER been. The rest of the article speaks to many of the reasons why and also delves into the specific facts about behind the pessimism. Very much worth the read.

Not Shocked At All

From my Sunday Times...

Wind Chimes

Fighting Back

Mexico fights back against 'The Clown'

'bout time!!

Still Not Over 2004

Liberals are classic hand wringers and Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination has only made it worse. Thankfully, we have Michael A. Cohen to calm everyone down.

Four years ago, Mitt Romney lost the presidency by 5 million votes. So for a Republican to win in 2016, the party nominee has to find a way to increase the number of GOP voters. The problem for Trump is that he’s moving in the opposite direction. Take for example, Hispanic voters. In 2012, Romney lost them 71-27 percent. Trump today has an 81 percent unfavorability rating among Hispanics. Among African-Americans it is 91 percent. Considering that nonwhite voters made up 28 percent of the electorate in 2012 — and could be an even higher percentage this year — that means Trump starts the campaign at a huge, nearly insurmountable disadvantage.

There's also this line of thought...a very fallacious line of thought...that goes something like this: No one thought Trump could win the nomination and he did. So, that means that if no one thinks he will win the presidency, he will win the presidency.

Somewhere Chris Mooney is massively rolling his eyes...:)

Today's Lesson: 2nd Amendment

Pants Pooped!

So, Quinninpac released a poll that showed Hillary Clinton only one point ahead of Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania and four points behind in Ohio. The media and pretty much everyone else has spent the entire day yesterday pooping their pants over the fact that Donald Trump might actually win this thing.

Except that he won't.

In many ways, this poll is a good thing for Hillary Clinton and the voting public in general. If she wants to truly kick his ass, she is going to have to take the angry, old white male vote (see also: the only people really supporting Trump) seriously. A poll like this shows if she fucks around and doesn't start working on her negatives, it could be closer than everyone would like. It also puts the fear of God into people and will motivate even more of them to vote.

Of course, looking at one poll (of registered, not likely voters) is a big mistake. The average of all of the polls gives a better indication of where the race is really at. The Florida polls shows Clinton up by four points. Ohio average has her up three points. Pennsylvania average has her up seven. With the latter, Trump has never led in any of the polls so he really has no chance there.

Keep watching the averages. they aren't really moving that much and that's a good sign for Hillary Clinton.

The Trump Flip Flops Begin

Donald Trump is going to start flip flopping like a frog on a skillet as he pivots before the general election, but today we'll focus on the thing that Trump said completely differentiated him from every other candidate in history: he is really rich.

Remember how Trump said that he would self-fund his campaign, and he wouldn't owe other billionaires anything?

Guess what? He lied! 

Donald J. Trump took steps to appropriate much of the Republican National Committee’s financial and political infrastructure for his presidential campaign on Monday, amid signs that he and the party would lag dangerously behind the Democrats in raising money for the general election. 

He's pretending that he has to do it because the Democrats would win if he didn't. The reality is that he's doing it to cash in. He is going to make money running for president. How is this possible?

Donald Trump hasn't actually spent any money on his campaign. He has been lending it money. Now there's a huge difference: by lending money to his campaign, he can have the campaign repay the loans at a later time, with interest.

Furthermore, a huge amount of his campaign expenditures are paid to Trump owned companies (like his airplane). Trump companies have been charging his campaign to fly him around the company, bringing him home every night to sleep in New York instead of in hotels on the campaign trail. Trump's campaign is paying him for office space in Trump Tower, for meals in his restaurants, etc. Trump's companies' services are much more expensive than other companies' because they're so "luxurious."

When other people start donating money to the Trump campaign (and some suckers have already been doing it!), Trump can use that money to repay the loans he made to the campaign, with interest. Trump will profit handsomely off the nitwits who swallowed his lies about self-funding.

Also remember how Trump said that candidates like Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton are beholden to Wall Street because of their close relationships with Goldman Sachs and other banks? Trump just announced who his main fund-raiser is: Steven Mnuchin, who formerly worked at Goldman Sachs and at a firm funded by George Soros. Like Trump, Mnuchin donated to Clinton. And Mnuchin says he has been a personal friend of Trump for 15 years.

So, contrary to everything Trump promised, he's getting into bed with Republican billionaires like Sheldon Adelson who contribute to the Republican Party and who just endorsed Trump, and with Wall Street moneymen.

Oh, but he has to in order to beat Hillary, you say? Well, then, how is he any different than any other politician? It was clear from the beginning that Trump would never be able spend the hundreds of billions of dollars required to run for president (he's actually not very rich -- he's only like the 122nd richest person in America, between two other trust-fund babies you've never head of).

Trump has been conning voters for months about self-funding, knowing full well that in the general election he'd start using other people's money to run, and pay himself back all his loans at a profitable interest rate. That's just smart business, right?

This leads us into Trump's taxes. Trump says that he can't release his taxes because his taxes since 2009 are being audited (he's been audited every year since 2002). Trump hasn't released anything about his taxes at all, and when he does people will be outraged.

My guess is that Trump doesn't pay much in taxes. I'm betting that the vast majority of his personal living expenses are being paid for by the company (since he does business in his own home), so I'm guessing he personally pays nothing for food, rent, travel, entertainment, TVs, cars, furniture, etc., because those are all "business expenses."

Furthermore, I'm betting those phony "business expenses" are used to reduce his company's tax burden. Which means the American taxpayers are footing the bill for Donald Trump's lavish lifestyle.

Finally, I'm guessing that Trump does not pay himself much of a salary. Instead, I'm betting that the majority of his income is paid to him in forms that are counted as capital gains. Which means stock rewards, qualified dividends and other rich-man gimmicks that regular human beings can't take advantage of.

Being rich was supposed to the thing that made Donald Trump a legit candidate. But it turns out it's all just a scam to make Trump richer.

The Man Baby

Of course, Trump is merely an extension of the right wing blog commenter mentality. They are all man babies.