A Question For Reflection

As is usually the case on Sunday, I'm feeling reflective and have a question for my readers. Consider for a moment that you are president of the United States. Would you implement a policy that would likely solve a problem in our country if it was something you didn't like and, more importantly, was in conflict with your ideology?

My answer is yes. Being the president means you have to choose between something that is bad, awful and horrible. There are no good choices and I still contend that one cannot truly be a "good" president. You are either average, bad, or awful and that's entirely due to the broken down nature of reality. Our country is generally a mess and, in the final analysis, it's merely about damage control.

I realize this sounds pessimistic but I prefer to look at it as more realistic. I still maintain optimism through whatever comes our way because the other key element of our country is the devotion to Lockian principles of inherent liberty and freedom. From this springs innovation and prosperity. Despite our darker days and persistent problems, we somehow manage to rise to challenges and overcome them.

So, would you do what it took to overcome those challenges?

Chris Rock On Minimum Wage

Gay Germs!

Leadership On Gun Safety

Gander Mountain is a great example of the kind of leadership we need on gun safety from the private sector of our country. Given how many deaths occur reach year due to irresponsible adults, the idea of a gun lock giveaway is a welcome solution.

“When you start reading about them and you see that so many of them involve someone just leaving the firearm out and the wrong person gets it in their hand and it usually involves a child,” he said. “And if it was just either locked up in a safe or it was in a biometric safe in the case of a handgun or a trigger lock these accidents are all preventable,” said Steve Uline, Gander Mountain’s vice president for marketing.

This year they are adding hardware to the cause. Gander Mountain, which has 133 locations in 25 states, is giving away 50,000 gun locks until Sunday, April 6. The gun locks the company is giving away bar access to the gun’s trigger. Uline said the cost of gun locks, which start at $10, isn’t prohibitive considering most gun owners spend thousands on their guns. But gun owners fall into the mentality that accidents or tragedies won’t happen to them. “We felt that we were in a position to raise awareness to cut down on these accidents,” Uline said.

Way to go, Gander Mountain!

That's not all they are doing. They have also done admirable work raising firearm security awareness over the past year through social media and advertising; its leadership’s willingness to engage in a touchy debate is commendable. The retailer’s position — with rights come responsibilities — is something everyone should be able to agree on and, more important, act on.

The American Bro

This piece by John Saward is simply a masterpiece. His details of the modern American male are dead on right. Example...

Being flagrantly offensive, irritating people, making noise, commanding an audience—this is what fuels him; this is his required voltage. He is on the phone with someone named Ryan or Tyler or Kyle; he is saying “cunt” or “nigger” or “slut” out loud, then half-apologizing to no one in particular. "I GOT NO FILTER, BRO." He tilts his head and neck back, cackling at the ceiling, electrified by the degree to which he does not give a fuck, by this ability to appall other people, to make your mouth hang wide open like you were witnessing a wildfire. 

He is not saying words now but just grunting and ejecting "YOOOO" and "DUDE" in varying cadences, asking Ryan or Tyler or Kyle when they are getting there, what they brought, if they are pumped. He is pushing it to the limit, going hard, pouring Jäger into a plastic cup, making the conductor wait. All he can hear is his brain-engine humming, the bolts coming loose, people chanting his name. He is a renegade, he is looking women in the eyes for a period of time that blew past bold and is bordering on restraining order, but maybe this turns her on, he thinks; maybe he is dangerous, maybe he is going to walk over to her right now. He is alive to a degree that you will never be capable of, and he is scaring all the inhabitants of the universe back into their homes.

Far too many young men like this out there...

The Second Fort Hood Shooting

The silence from the Gun Cult after the SECOND Fort Hood shooting has been deafening and it's now clear why.

Military personnel who are not police officers are not allowed to carry privately owned weapons on Army bases. Soldiers on post must register their firearms, which Army officials said Specialist Lopez failed to do with the handgun he used in the attack. Fort Hood’s rules rely in large part on the honor system, and require all personnel bringing a privately owned firearm onto the base in a vehicle to declare that they are doing so and state why.

So, the idea of less regulation doesn't seem to be working well at all. In addition, this is yet another example of how the gun free zone lie is completely FUBAR. Obviously, there are plenty of guns on the base and no one is really checking for weapons. It is Texas, after all, so one would think this would deter psychos, right?

But it didn't and Specialist Ivan Antonio Lopez, 34, killed three people and wounded 16 others at Fort Hood before taking his own life on Wednesday. Lopez was being treated for mental health issues and was on SSRI medications. Ironically, he bought the gun that he used at the same gun store where Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan bought his weapon. He passed the background check just fine.

Once again, we are left with a clear illustration of how just how poorly our nation is dealing with the issue of mental health. Politico has an interesting piece about how the conversation about these incidents should shift from gun control to threat detection. I completely agree. If someone voluntarily submits themselves for psychiatric treatment, especially if they are suffering from PTSD and in the military, they should lose their ability to obtain a firearm.

Consider this horrible statistic: 22 veterans kill themselves every day. That's right around one death an hour. Clearly, we are not doing enough to help the mental health of our veterans. This is indeed a difficult task considering we have been at war for the last 13 years.

Mental health in our nation as a whole needs to be vastly improved. We have to begin by removing the stigma associated with it and encourage everyone to see a therapist on a regular basis. I have no doubt that if gains were made in this area, we would see less gun violence, especially in the arena of spree shootings.

The CIA Program That Started with a Dead Ox

The wisdom of crowds is a concept that arose in 1906, when British statistitian Francis Galton observed a competition at a fair where 800 people guessed the weight of a dead ox. No one got the right answer, but when he tallied all the guesses he was shocked to learn that the average — or maybe it's the median — was 1,197 lbs, just one pound short of the actual weight.



This is also how colonies of bees and ants appear to do quite intelligent things even though each individual insect is totally oblivious.

A few years ago the CIA started a program to use Galton's finding. "The Company" is infamous for weird and sinister programs. For example, MK Ultra, where they tried to use drugs like LSD to produce "Manchurian Candidates." Or Remote Viewing, where they had psychics using ESP and clairvoyance to spy on the Russians. Or waterboarding, where they tortured prisoners with simulated drowning, a tactic used by the Spanish and Flemish Inquisitions, the Gestapo and WWII Japanese war criminals, who were hanged for torturing Americans.

The program that came from the dead ox is not so sinister. Called the Good Judgment Project, it attempts to use the wisdom of the crowd to forecast world events. It's been running for three years now.

It consists of 3,000 ordinary people who answer questions on a website to estimate probabilities of future events. The astonishing thing is, this program is better at making forecasts than the professional CIA analysts who have access to classified documents.

Even more amazing, some of the individual participants are 30% better than the CIA at doing the CIA's job. How do they do it? Elaine Rich, a sixty-something pharmacist, says, "Usually I just do a Google search."

Even though that may sound impressive, it really isn't. The CIA -- and organizations in general -- are notorious for groupthink. They know what answers their bosses want to hear, because their bosses have already decided what they want to do, and they just want ammunition to back up the decision they've already made. This was especially true of the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war.

But there are less sinister reasons why a group of 3,000 folks from across the country might be better at doing this than the CIA.

First, they have no skin in the game, while the CIA is responsible for the safety of the American people. If a CIA analyst misses something a lot of people may die. Analysts feel that pressure, and will tend to perceive potential threats to be greater than they actually are. Also, the number of analysts devoted to each area at CIA is fairly small, and they all talk to and influence each other. It's only natural that they would drift toward a consensus, and all too often consensus is driven not by mutual agreement but by whoever shouts the loudest.

Sometimes there is just too much detail. With all those classified documents, analysts can get bogged down in minutiae that are much less important than they might seem. They can't see the forest for the trees.

Finally, no one cares if a CIA section predicts 10 doomsdays an hour and none of them ever happens, but everyone will be all over them if four guys die in an embassy attack that they failed to predict.

By the way, if you're interested the Good Judgment Project is accepting applications!

The Most Boring Spectator Sport. Ever.

There was once a wildly popular professional sport that is even more boring than football and NASCAR: pedestrianism. In the 1870s and 1880s huge crowds gathered to watch men walk around in circles 24 hours a day:

[For] six-day walking matches, the rules were pretty simple. They would just map out a dirt track on the floor of an arena — many of the matches took place at the first Madison Square Garden in New York — and the lap was about 1/7th or 1/8th of a mile. And you could only walk six days because public amusements were prohibited on Sundays. So beginning right after midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning, the walkers would set off and they would just keep walking until right up until midnight the following Saturday.

In an interview on NPR author Matthew Algeo talks about his book, Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America's Favorite Spectator Sport. Some highlights: it started when Edward Payson Weston lost a bet on the 1860 presidential election and had to walk from Boston to Washington for the inauguration; African-Americans were able to compete; trainers (incredibly, they had them) recommended their pedestrians drink champagne, because it was thought to be a stimulant. There were also gambling and drug scandals.

With the invention of the safety bicycle pedestrianism died out; bicycle races were much more interesting because — you guessed it — the crashes were much more spectacular, especially after six days of sleepless pedaling.

My Hair Is Not On Fire

Liberals are running around today with their hair on fire after yesterday's SCOTUS ruling on campaign contributions. The "end is nigh" because there is (gasp!) money in politics. I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked to find out the gambling is going on in this establishment!! Well, I have a few words for my friends on the left who think life, as we know it, is over.

Pay attention to the nuance of this case. If you read the SCOTUS blog link, you can see that there is more transparency now. There is also a larger playing field for individuals, not just mega donors, to get in the game. If liberals really want to have an effect on this issue, they need to push for transparency. Anyone who donates in whatever amount has to be disclosed in the most transparent way.

Consider as well how much money was spent to defeat the president and how it all amounted to zilch. Money isn't as much of a factor as you think given other influences in politics today. Look at the example of social media. Facebook and Twitter are free, right? Anyone can post a video on YouTube. This is what people look at these days and they are more of an influence on votes than millions of dollars of donations. Honestly, the mouth foamers about this law don't understand the digital generation.

This ruling also puts more power back in the hands of the parties and out of the hands of the mega donors. I predict we will see the decline of the Super Pac as a result of this decision.

So, liberals, chill the fuck out! Money has always been in politics and it always will. If you try to ban it, somehow it will find a way to spread around. Keep it out in the open and remove all limits and watch how its effect diminishes.

Foreign Princes Buying American Elections

The intent of the Founding Fathers in writing the Constitution is always heavily debated when cases go before the Supreme Court. The Court's decision today to allow wealthy individuals to spend infinite amounts of money to buy elections across the country is no different.

One of the reasons the Founding Fathers broke from Europe was the arrogance and corruption inherent in the hereditary ruling class of kings and noblemen. The wealth and influence of men like the Koch brothers -- hereditary oil barons -- and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson makes them the nobility of today.

These people expect everyone to treat them like royalty, pay them fealty and kiss their feet. Just last week Chris Christie and other Republican presidential hopefuls paid obeisance to Sheldon Adelson. During his paean to a foreign country in Las Vegas Christie made a catastrophic blunder by calling the Palestinian terroritories that Israel seized from Syria, Egypt and Jordan in 1967 and is still occupying "the Occupied Territories." When Christie was told of Adelson's displeasure he apologized instantly.

Adelson's casinos are involved with bribery and money laundering. He makes billions in Macau off Chinese gamblers. In the last election cycle Adelson spent more than a hundred million dollars to elect a Republican president. Adelson is currently on a crusade to keep online gambling illegal, suckering many Republicans and Christians to do his bidding. Millions of Americans are addicted to casino gambling, costing the US economy $50 billion annually. Stories about accountants and bookkeepers embezzling money from their companies and churches to feed their gambling habit are endless. Adelson profits from this addiction and misery; gambling and corruption are inextricably linked.

Adelson is essentially an agent of the Israeli government, spending his billions to get the United States to kowtow to Israeli politicians, regardless of what the best interests of the American people might be.

Did the Founding Fathers really write a Constitution that equates foreign princes like Sheldon Adelson using their wealth to buy elections across the United States to free speech?

What Is Your Alternative, Ms. Palin?

Sarah Palin recently called Paul Ryan's latest budget "a joke" saying "it is STILL not seeing the problem; it STILL is not proposing reining in wasteful government overspending TODAY, instead of speculating years out that some future Congress and White House may possibly, hopefully, eh-who-knows, take responsibility for today’s budgetary selfishness and shortsightedness to do so."

“THIS is the definition of insanity,” she continued.

Fine. Where do you propose cuts?

“You’d think one who is representing the mighty Badgers, who made it to the Final Four based on sacrificial work ethic and discipline that obviously pays off in the end, … would understand that future success depends on hard work and sacrifices,” Palin said.

Again, where exactly do you propose cuts?

There is plenty to cut, Palin argued, as “every omnibus bill is loaded with pork and kickbacks.”

Be specific. How much? What would happen as a result of the cuts?

“As my Dad would say after these April Fool’s announcements, ‘This would kill a lesser man.’ This out-of-control debt is killing our economic future,” Palin wrote.

How exactly?

Sarah Palin is a great example of how all conservatives have these days is criticism...even of their own party! They don't offer anything but strident language and hollow (and really, really played) talking points that appeal to fear. Considering our massive wealth and assets, the debt is a phantom menace and she is simply lying about our economic future.

Of course, she (and any other conservatives) are welcome to prove me wrong with substantive plans of their own:)

A Selfie With The President

The president has a good couple of days and the photo above shows that there is a spring in his step (even if he is a White Sox fan). Big Papi and 44...nice!

Wear What You Want

Rand Paul (Again) On Immigration

Rand Paul, on deportation.

The bottom line is, the Hispanic community, the Latino community is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue. They’re not going to care whether we go to the same church, or have the same values, or believe in the same kind of future of our country until we get beyond that. Showing up helps, but you got to show up and you got to say something, and it has to be different from what we’ve been saying.

Yes. Yes, it does. Time to change.

Seven Million

It looks like the Affordable Care Act has surpassed its revised goal and now has hit its original goal of seven million enrollees. The GOP has quickly shifted its talking points to issues of non payment and the coming economic apocalypse which will result from the ACA. We also have this poll from ABC and the Washington Post.

49-48, in favor. Wow.

As I have been saying these last few weeks, Democrats need to run proudly on the ACA and note that it's part of an overall plan to bolster the middle class (of which a minimum wage hike is a strong part). They do this and they hold the Senate in the fall and possibly narrow the gap in the House.

The Real Takers

When I was in college in the late 1970s the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota had a classroom outfitted with TV screens in front of every chair. A camera in the back was trained on professors who taught in the room and another camera over the desk was focused on a pad of paper they wrote on. About half my computer science classes were taught here, from introductory programming languages to advanced data structures and computer networking. 

It sounds charmingly primitive in this age of Skype and online degrees, but the point was not to save chalk; rather, it was to beam the course by microwave to remote sites where programmers working full-time could earn computer science degrees. This was the backbone of the U of M's UNITE Distributed Learning system. Communication was two-way; remote students could ask the professor questions through a mic at their end. Companies like IBM in Rochester and Univac in Roseville set up TV classrooms in their buildings. This saved the employees several hours a week because they didn't have to commute to the university in Minneapolis.

These classes were kind of annoying because of the inevitable interruptions from equipment glitches, but also because the remote students were just not with it. They were older, slower, and asked a lot of seemingly dumb questions. Fortunately, the cameras were pointed at the professor and didn't capture our eye-rolling.

Incredibly, not only did these companies pay to put these fancy electronic classrooms in their buildings, with the attendant costs for installing the microwave antennas and two-way communications, the salary of the camera operator, but they paid the employees' tuition.

That was then. This is now (from Paul Krugman at The New York Times):

A few months ago, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, and Marlene Seltzer, the chief executive of Jobs for the Future, published an article in Politico titled “Closing the Skills Gap.” They began portentously: “Today, nearly 11 million Americans are unemployed. Yet, at the same time, 4 million jobs sit unfilled” — supposedly demonstrating “the gulf between the skills job seekers currently have and the skills employers need.”

Back then if a company needed someone to do a new job, they often took an experienced, dedicated, hard-working and loyal employee and gave them the training to do it. These days too many companies fire those same experienced — and higher-paid — employees and hire someone cheap.

The U of M's UNITE system still exists, after more than 40 years. They use streaming video and podcasts instead, but they still pitch UNITE to companies who need technical people.

However, few companies these days invest in people. They demand prospective employees to invest tens of thousands of dollars of their own money, often accruing debt exceeding $100K, in education and training programs that companies need today, with no guarantee that the company will have any use for them in five or 10 years. Companies expect government to create secondary and vocational school programs to train employees for them in the specialty areas they need. At the same time they demand lower and lower taxes, while sending their profits to offshore tax havens.

And these same companies constantly demand that the government raise the H1B visa quotas. This program allows companies to hire "high-skilled" tech workers from countries like China and India. The reason "high-skilled" is in quotes is that what they're really after is "low-paid."

This is why the wage gap is getting so wide and so many middle-income Americans are failing. Companies are firing people in their forties and fifties who have spouses and mortgages and children with college tuition bills, and replacing them with American kids up to their eyeballs in college loans — often because their parents lost their jobs — or kids from India and China whose education was paid for by a foreign government.

The execs at these companies are selling America and Americans out, while jacking up their own salaries and reducing their corporate tax liabilities to less than nothing. Companies like Apple are giving federal and state governments no resources to run the schools the companies insist are needed produce useful workers for them.

Now. Who are the real takers?

Series Finale: How I Met Your Mother (Spoiler Warning)

Last night my family and some friends tuned in to the series finale of the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother. I have watched the show from the very first episode back in 2005 and have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

The show tells the story of Ted Moseby (Josh Radnor) as he recounts to his children (left) in the year 2030 how he met their mom in 2013 after 8 years of twists and turns. It was a very funny show that captured the essence of relationships, friendships, and cocktail culture set against the backdrop of New York City. Ted's friends were Marshall Ericksen (Jason Segel), his wife Lily (Alyson Hannigan), Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), and Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders). From the very first episode it was clear that Ted loved Robin but as the story unfolded we realized that she was not the mom. The character of the mother became almost mythical. Who is she? What actress will play her? When will she finally appear?

This season she finally did appear, played by the wonderful and gorgeous Cristin Milioti (left). As this ninth and final season unfolded, viewers started to get hints that perhaps the mother was no longer alive when Ted was telling the story in the year 2030. There were also hints that Robin and Ted, after not getting together, finally getting together, breaking up, and having a few flings would finally end up as couple.

Both of these rumors were confirmed last night in the finale. The mother (named Tracy McConnell) gets sick at some point in the year 2024 and dies. At the very end of the show, Ted's kids tell him it's been six years and he should go find Aunt Robin and be happy again. This ending has sent shockwaves all over the internet as a maudlin, terribly downbeat ending to a show that has been in their hearts for nearly a decade. My wife was very pissed off last night, yelling at the TV and putting her thumb way down. I realize it's just a show and these people are characters in a fictional world but it did have quite an impact on our house and with my friends.

Many viewers were like my wife and thought it was a terrible ending. We've looked forward for nine years to meet the mom and she's dead? We meet her this season, she's absolutely wonderful and she's dead? We've just got to know her and she's dead? Of course, the show goes to great pains to show that Tracy was a big part of Ted's life for 11 years and they had two wonderful children together. The problem is that we see that in such a short time span that we don't really feel that longevity nor the passage of time. This is where I can see their point.

Yet life is messy and people die. Marshall's dad died a few years ago. The show wouldn't be as beloved if it wasn't so realistic. It makes the character of Tracy and her love with Ted all the more tragic and, honestly, perfect. Add in that her character lost the love of her life to a tragic accident and it makes her death truly devastating...a somewhat dark life indeed with Ted and her children being bright rays of light. This sharp dose of reality made me appreciate the ending more than my family and friends. Sure, Robin and Ted weren't perfect and were often irritating but that's what most couples are like.

There is no such thing as a Hollywood ending in life, although some have argued that Ted ending up with Robin is the Hollywood ending and that might be the case. With How I Met Your Mother, the story was never really about Ted and Tracy. The title may say otherwise but it really was a love story about Ted and Robin and how they ended up together. Watch the very first episode and the very last one and that's exactly what you see. Everything in between was the messy shit that happens in life...the highs and the lows...the laughter and the tears...and how a close group of friends can be family.

What Does It Mean To Be A Volunteer?

No Such Thing As Obamacare

There is no such thing as ObamaCare. You can't sign up for ObamaCare. You're signing up for an Anthem (ph) policy or an Aetna policy, or a WellPoint policy. It is private insurance. And private insurance companies have been doing closed networks for years.

Senator Angus King, I-Maine, on the lying about the Affordable Care Act.