There’s a clever image floating around the web with a few interesting observations.

We protect our politicians with guns.
We protect our politician’s children with guns.
We protect our “movie stars” with guns.
We protect our jewelry with guns.
We protect our money with guns.
We protect sports stadiums with guns.
But can the serfs have their children protected with guns?
Nope.

We “protect” them with a piece of paper that says “gun free zone”. It only works on the good guys though, as we’ve seen by real world experience, maniacs don’t obey laws against having a gun or committing murder. If things get ugly, we then call people who have guns to stop the mess in progress. But not before bodies have hit the floor. And we cannot protect our children, our precious children with the same things we use to protect our politician’s children? Or our money? Or our gold?

I’ve heard the same tired excuse-laden rationale, using the “Gunfight at the OK-Corral” garbage. Okay, if that would happen, why hasn’t it happened in those areas? Surely we must have our politician’s children (we may be sour on our politicians, but rarely are we sour on their children – unless it’s Bristol Palin, Guiliani’s kids, or the Bush twins)’s bodyguards stripped of their guns then, for their safety, ja comrade? No, we wouldn’t, because we know this makes them less safe. Let’s wise up and use what we know will work, what experience has showed us will work, and protect our children. But, we cannot do this, because some will repeatedly Ba like sheep, saying that they cannot tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf, and that both have teeth, and that teeth are bad.

Recently a Milwaukee Sheriff told people to take their own safety into their hands. Surely that was racist – SPOILER ALERT, the guy is black.

The reality is, when seconds count the police are only minutes away. In a brave act of public maturity, he told people this. People cry for “something to be done”, and when he suggested that the sheep learn to fight off the wolves, suddenly “something to be done” is unveiled to mean “something utopian that we like that has never occurred anywhere we’ve tired it, to be done”. There has been again hysterical outcry against this Sheriff.  What is the alternative? Waiting for the police. Even if we simply throw money at the problem, police officers cannot be everywhere. Murders and attacks still occur, and not just to “other people” and not just “really rarely”. It’s so rare we have buildings FILLED with these wackos, they’re called jails. This is why we have jails, they’re not filled with people who ripped the tags off of pillows, many of those in there earn a spot in the place by committing violent crimes. The naive and completely false idea that such people doesn’t exist dies on that hill.

What’s upsetting, is in this civilian defense debate, we have ideas that are guaranteed to work at the conceptual level better than the pious-rhetoric alternative, and have the track record to prove it – yet we have to discuss things on the terms of the ignorant idealists. Experience shows some alternatives work better than others. Yet, when people with stature and ignorance in these matters verbalize their intentions without regard to reality, we end up having to dignify some of this garbage, and put reality on a shelf. Guess what. Ignorance of reality will not protect you from its dangers, nor shield you from its consequences. Even if the person saying this is a former lawyer in public office with degrees from ivory tower institutions, wrong is wrong. Intelligence is an advantage, but absolutely no guarantee of success in anything.

Logic and Experience are the tag team champions of ideas, the heels of Idealism and Pious-Rhetoric have yet to record a victory in the real world, despite their massive T-shirt sales, especially amongst the elite. In few places is it so obvious and crystal clear, as in this topic. In few places is the cost so great that we are no longer talking inefficiencies in value to consumers, but talking about the blood of our own people.

As a former VTech student, the Newton tragedy is something that isn’t just shock TV to me. The VT tragedy launched my quest for knowledge on the things involved, and what I found is totally to the contrary of where the dialogue is now.

Many of the things that some of our members of the “intellectual class” have sold as solutions failed to prevent this or even make a dent. The maginot line looks like this:

CT already has an assault weapons ban, didn’t work.
CT’s 2 week waiting period didn’t work
CT’s pistol permit scheme didn’t work.
CT’s difficulty in getting a CCW license for law abiding citizens didn’t work.
The fact that the school was a “gun free zone” (only for good guys) didn’t work.
The “buzz in” system at the school didn’t work.
Apparently they had a lockdown drill system too.
None of those things worked in stopping this tragedy.

Makes me think we could just fix everything if we simply passed a law that made it illegal to break more laws, ja, comrade?

We’ve gotten to the point where WVU’s pamphlet on these events instructs students to throw things like backpacks and chairs, an admission that violence works in stopping violent acts in progress- but we (the law abiding and sane individuals) are not allowed to use the most effective violence, this is reserved for crazy people. Well, that, and our lovely elite politicians press and actors whose children go to schools with armed guards. We never hear about school shootings there. I mean we’re allowed to place guards in our banks, security at concerts to protect “singers” like Chris Brown, but our children? Nooo, nooooo, let’s just suspend our logic and pretend what’s good for the goose is poison for the gander.

Problems in the Chain
The ugly truth is that many of our ‘civilian” defense policies (Funfact: Police officers are also civilians, bro) were crafted by people sorely lacking in knowledge in these matters, and often times lacking in seriousness. See I was on a “school safety” committee of some sort back in high school. I attended one meeting. I asked them what the response team of the county SWAT team was in the event of emergency. The 3 other individuals in the room actually laughed at me. Some years later, I was watching Virginia Tech, my old college, on TV. Let me promise you this, “it couldn’t happen” at Virginia Tech. Not that place, not those nice people. Couldn’t happen there. Of all the places I’d EVER been to in my life, that place was at the bottom of my list for places such a thing could happen, and I lived in a nice neighborhood. Guess what? It did happen. For those of you who believe that bad things could never happen to you, let me tell you that your belief is silly and juvenile, an opinion not worth the oxygen you wasted in saying it.

Lockdown drills
Back in my high school we had a lockdown system. A lock down is where doors are locked on students, and they are cattle to the slaughter. It’s theoretically to reduce the deaths per unit time for however long it takes for help to arrive. Until that time, the shooter is free to move room to room. Shoot, the VTech shooter reloaded roughly 14 times during that event. Those locked down are totally at the mercy of the response time of whomever is brave enough to come in and attempt to use violence to stop the ongoing violence. But hey, I was the “crazy guy” for asking for a ballpark figure on how long that timeframe was, for asking about the most important part of the “plan”.

In a lockdown drill during gym, they locked us in the tennis court. I was as an overweight kid who could not climb that fence. I remember thinking to myself that I was cattle to the slaughter. A sibling who also went to the school was actually something of delinquent; not “bad neighborhood” deals drugs and steals cars delinquent, I mean lily white neighborhood delinquent that doesn’t show up to class on time and puts in a horrid effort in class. Should a “lock down” have happened, he would have simply run off the premises of the school, and survived.
When not listening to your system makes for better results, your system sucks and needs revision.

So in case you haven’t heard, Bob Costas decided that he was going to use his position on NBC’s football air time to spout off his opinion on laws effecting law abiding gun owners and not criminals who don’t follow laws in the first place, (referred to by people plugged into the media “crusade” groupthink everywhere as “gun control”). Once I heard Costas did this, as a guy who already didn’t like him very much, I knew I had to chime in.

Cue the Hulk-Hogan music brother, because you and the CaptianObvi-maniacs have waited too long for my reply!
(Theme song is below for those who were about to go to youtube.)

Why did this come up?
A Kansas City Chiefs player killed his girlfriend; then himself in front of his coaches. Pretty awful event, and understandably got attention in the press.

Now, a few years ago the meme would have been that this was caused by steroids. Before that it might have been transfats. Now I had assumed it would have been the concussions monster that got the blame, the latest in a long line of press-crusades. Now to be fair, I look at some of the concussions movement stuff as beneficial, and not in the “well we need “reasonable restrictions” on guns we’ve never used, written by people who don’t understand how guns work with a political agenda” category of quackery. But, some decided they would return their whipping boy issue instead. The “gun control” monster. But before I engage in several paragraphs of roundhouse kicks dismantling Costas’ derpery..
Allow me to beg your indulgence, and tell you why I can’t stand Costas.

So I’ve never really liked Bob Costas
1. When this blog was very young, one of my first items was going to be one by the exact title of this blog post. See Costas had gone on some whiny tangent on air about how butthurt he was about player celebrations. I would play the video but I honestly don’t care enough about the guy’s opinion to show it to you. And it’s exactly as I described anyway: Butthurt dribble.

NFL Players… These guys have to pass through how many successive filters at how many levels of play, just to wear a jersey in those organizations? A relative is friends with several very good athletes on college teams, all of them were “those guys” at the gym. None of them are in the NFL. Only one made it to the Arena leagues, and it’s merely because despite his combine numbers and hard work, he’s not quite NFL size. No fault of his own, and this career path is barred to him.
If one of those guys made it, he would have been considered lucky. Getting to start on a pro-team is amazing, and the average career lasts only about some ~3.7 years. Training year round, traveling, and you may never win a Superbowl, not end up in Canton in the Hall of Fame.
So you’re in front of a stadium full of screaming fans, and you record a good stat in a high pressure moment, the crowd erupts, your family at home is going nuts, people in your hometown who watched you as a tike are going wild, your team mates are ecstatic. For all you know the next play you have is your last. That’s just the game.
So you know what? I think those players are entitled to a little G-D celebration. At the least, I think they’re entitled to not having that decision possibly made for them by a pencil necked pantywaist like Bob Costas who has never been in their shoes, whose “pressure situations” amounts to making up his own lines because the teleprompter kicked off, getting more credo to his opinion than warranted just because he’s a talking head on TV.
“Know your role, and shut your mouth”

2. During the Olympics coverage (which was f**king awful this year FYI) 4 years ago, when talking to Alicia Sacremone who famously knocked out a fratboy on youtube by connecting a good hit to the button on his jaw, he went on a tangent about punching fratboys. It is the opinion on of this blogger that he really seemed to derive pleasure from this. Now I don’t really like fratboys, I say stuff like that, but I don’t get a stiffy and say “lol you’re so strong <3″ to girls who commit what some (in the politically correct crowd) might call assault on video. (Damn, didn’t think I’d frame it that way, did you?)
This sounded like a nerdy guy living out a fantasy.

I mean not that imagination is wrong, I have a fantasy, know what it is? (No, brain, shut up, not the one with Sophia Vergara, focus!)
Bob Costas not on air anymore, not reading a teleprompter without any passion like a meatpuppet. That’s my fantasy.

Act 2:

Laws effecting law abiding gun owners and not criminals who don’t follow laws in the first place, (“gun control”)
So the other day some journalist bloviated about this tragedy after it happened. She did what many over-empathetic and ignorant to reality creative writers turned “journalists” do… used her feelings and preconceptions to do her thinking for her. She tried to blame this whole tragedy on guns, that if there were no guns, this couldn’t have happened. Let me tell you why this is f**king stupid.

1) This one’s real F’n simple.A gun is a tool, nothing else. This idea was expounded upon by a scholar known to us as James Harrison.
“ “Somebody goes out and kills somebody with a knife, you going to blame the knife?” he asked. “Somebody goes out and kills somebody by pushing somebody in front of a train, you going to start cutting off the guy’s arms? You going to start blaming people’s arms now? It’s the person who did it who is responsible.”

2) The “Murder suicide in the US is so much higher, not like progressive Epcot-Europe (oft cited, rarely fact checked)!”
Ref: Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 37:3:371-376 (September 2009):
“…the incidence of murder-suicide in the United States and other western countries was shown to be stable throughout the previous 40 years.”
The US does not have significantly more incidences: “Coid reviewed 17 studies … that involved 10 nations and found that the murder-suicide incidence was surprisingly similar and constant. He found the incidence to be between 0.2 and 0.3 per 100,000.”

“[In the US,] The overwhelming weapon of choice of the perpetrator of a murder-suicide was a firearm. In the newspaper surveillance study, Malphurs and Cohen found that 85.8 percent of the perpetrators used firearms, whereas Hanzlick and Koponen reported 92 percent. … In England and Wales, Travis et al. sought to determine whether tougher gun laws had decreased the rate of murder-suicides. They found that the number of murder-suicides involving firearms decreased to 16 percent, but the overall murder-suicide rate remained constant. In their study, the primary method of homicide was strangulation (36%).”

3) Need I remind you that Chris Benoit strangled his wife, and son, then hung himself. No gun. OJ Simpson did not have a firearm, he managed to saw off the head of his wife and her friend. If someone has it in their head to commit a murder suicide, tools be damned, they’ll figure out how. Statistics show this. The problem is crazy people, not ropes, bridges, arms, cars, or bullets.

Funfacts for those who don’t follow these debates:
Actual gun owners who want to have their own freedoms protected? That’s just the gun lobby.
Never heard of a Gay Lobby, never heard of the various overlitigious groups that are part of the feminist lobby, there are no big labor organizations – but on one of the causes the right has, it’s merely a lobby, it’s JUST the NRA, when really like ~40% of Americans own guns . This idea sounds crazy to some (not all) of those who live in the Mediaburg in NY where gun ownership is verboten.

See they have 4 plans for dealing with crime in progress there.
1) Useless conjecture about socio-economic herpydur, which law is racist, and idealistic talk about tackling the root cause of poverty with tax payer dollars. Now I don’t shy away from those discussions, but those won’t prevent knives from cutting flesh, lets stop pretending they do.
2) Hope the police get there in time to do more than draw a chalk outline
3) Use barehands, and hope for the best. Nice plan for a strong physically fit male who has full control of their abilities, is not woken up at 3am and groggy, isn’t facing multiple opponents, none of them are armed, etc. But sucks for, oh, every other scenario.
4) Allow this violent crime to happen, and hope you survive. “I guess that drifter needed the money, it’s okay that I lost some memories of my childhood when my head hit pavement.”
5) Pretend it can’t happen to them, it just happens “to other people”
^ “progressive” logic. A caveman could have F7′d that idea and told them how dumb it was.

Costas part 2
So Costas goes on The Factor to defend himself.
He did have the guts to go up against the Big O (Bill O’rly) and state his case.
Now during this exchange, Bob tells the truth, that he believes that in a shooting such as the one in that theater by the orange haired lunatic, he would have hid in between the seats. Bill, a true man’s man, said he’d have shot back, cause this is ‘murica. Now Bobbie is free to make his choice, to use the “duck and cover” model. But to cut and paste this choice onto others is ridiculous. Some of us want a chance to end the encounter, to save our lives, or the lives of our families, and even save the lives of people like Bobbie who need to be rescued by those who were willing or able to do something about a mass murderer.

Be it some heavyset gentleman of southern decent wearing apparel that suggests his occupation involves the operation of a tractor trailer truck in the transportation of goods and services we Americans need – or an older woman pulling a handgun from a purse, or perhaps a split tongued young person with an ear that appears to be made almost entirely of metal producing their own gun to end the encounter, and lastly: A police officer using their duty sidearm –  these things could end a mass shooting or a crime. They can and do every day. Let’s get our heads out of the sand and pretend it doesn’t.

The idea of personal responsibility seems lost on Bob and many of those who agree with him. This KC player chose to shoot his lady (Who apparently weighed all of 100lbs, as a man of his size, he could have used his hands to harm her had a gun been unavailable). It can’t be the fault of the idiot who made the choice, thus they need to blame something else, their empathy for the maniacs becoming a vessel by which the lives of other Americans get impacted, and their choices to be responsible are stripped from them. But of course, more articles coming out of the left wing kneejerk anti-gun  journalism groupthink, voicing their ‘passionate’ opinion, doubling down on what they don’t know.

Hey Bob? You’re not a bad guy, you have good intentions, Legoguy Hair, and a talent for reading a teleprompter…
But stay in your F’in lane.

This post is actually an email response sent to my blog – it’s pretty good, so I’m going to use it un-cut! The writer shall be referred to henceforth as ‘The Game’.

While I believe that the presidential race is important, there are much bigger issues at hand that can be fixed to help with the national issues. The federal government (everyone who works for them that isn’t in the House, Senate, or White House) that handle the day-to-day are possibly the biggest roadblocks that we have. Lets start out with some math.

As an employee of the private sector, I get 12 Holidays off and 4 hours of Paid Time Off (PTO) every paycheck, roughly every 2 weeks. PTO is used for personal leave or sick leave, there is no distinction between the two – and in most private businesses, this is the case. Knowing there are 365 days a year, we can average out that there are 260.7 work days in a year (365/7*5). Subtract out my federal holidays, and that is 248.7. Subtracting my paid time off (12 days a year), its 236.7. Now if we take that and divide that out, I only work 64.85% of the days in any given year. This is standard inside of the private industry.

Federal employees get 10 holidays, but their breaks are a bit different. They get 4 hours of PTO and 4 hours of sick leave at the end of each paycheck (again, roughly every 2 weeks). If we apply the same math to this number, it looks like this. (((365/7*5) – 10) – 24)/365 =  62.10%. On the high end of the government spectrum, people get 8 hours of PTO, 8 hours of sick leave a pay check. The same math, the percentage looks like this: 55.53%

To put these numbers in perspective, that means that a public employee will work AUTOMATICALLY 2.7-9.5% less than a private employee. This does not count ‘teleworking’ or paid leave for other reasons.

While this number seems insignificant, see how quickly it can rack up. For every 1 million spent on government employees, they are spending 27,000-95,000 for works to do nothing.

Again, these numbers might not add up, but lets remember one thing: These are public employees, not private. If a private employee takes money for doing nothing, it hurts the company – but if the public employee does it, it hurts the people and ultimately the country.

But lets look at the public employees and their rise to power, or the numbers that give them that kind of power. Lets put this into a scenario: You have a large number of people covering a wide range of social classes, wealth, and education. The private sector is not hiring people fast enough, or doesn’t want to, and your unemployment numbers start to go up. You need people to get a job so the numbers will go down, but you cant tell private companies to hire. The best thing you can do is give tax breaks, but that only works so well. The better solution, and the one that is obviously taken, is to hire these people in the public sector: from low paid workers to higher education positions. The issue is that since private sector already got the best, the public sector is getting (mainly) what the private sector didn’t want.  This leads to the following:

-Low work output
-dysfunctional offices
-burden on the public
-bad work

What can we get from this? That the road to federal collapse is federal hiring of these people – the private sector rejects – who wouldn’t survive otherwise. Instead of having those high unemployment numbers because it looks bad, they would rather hire them, have the low numbers, and pay or it all later. When these folks only work at their reduced percentages listed in the first part of this, the federal government is only working at a third of the speed that it should be – which in itself is costing more than every dollar in spending over the past few decades.

THIS is the problem. While the oval office gets a majority of the attention, it is THIS that is causing the ruination of the country.

Well said.

Now imagine this - the money that goes to these government agencies? Goes through several filters and changes hands several times (losing some in the process, with money going to political allies and cronies), before it’s even handed off to the Bad News Bears. Where it goes is determined by silver tongued former lawyers who really have this mindset for business and economic prosperity:

Funfact: Market conditions matter, if people don’t want to hire more people, they won’t. Look at places where you have the liberal utopias, where Republicans can’t get elected, or do and get destroyed by legislatures. (See: The Governator, Arnold made it 6 months before the legislature took over.) Detroit has had endless tax increases to pay for entitlements, and it destroyed businesses there. That city is suffering as a result. Businesses are fleeing states like California and NJ due to taxes to go to freer states like Texas. This is not some abstract vacuum, this is the real world, this stuff happens in real time.

Some dinguses (some with high IQs and a sense of entitlement)  look at at our economy with the market-creationism mindset: “If government doesn’t just do the everything, then how do free markets exist?” They think picking winners and losers is a good idea. It’s an idea that’s as stupid as saying it’s greedy to keep your own money, but it’s virtuous to volunteer the money of others for pet causes you like. (Wait..)
Places like that are exactly the kind where businesses do not want to operate if given a choice in the matter.

How much damn money we waste:
-If we passed the Buffett rule, it would bring in enough money to run the government for 11 hours. 18 if you use obama’s math.
-If you soak the profits of health insurance companies, (Taking the wildly ideological “point” that profits are evil), it would pay for our healthcare system for 2 days. What you do for the other 363 is a mystery.
-If we took all the evil profits of Walmart and Exxon-Mobil, we would be able to pay for 4 days of government spending (2011).
-If we took every penny from the Fortune 500, it would only pay for half the stimulus, or about a month of spending.
-Take all the ad money for the Superbowl, we’d pay 36 minutes.
-If we took every penny over 250k made by people in the US, it would only cover 4 months of spending.
-If you took every dime from the 300 billionaires in the US and the 100 “almost billionaires” under them, we would make it 73 days.
-Estimates on the “cost per job created” (Temporary jobs) of the Stimulus runs between $250k, to $4.1million (if you believe the CBO).

Visually.
See that blue line? That’s what we spend.
See that red line? That’s our revenues.
After the tech bubble popped in 2000, and then we got 9/11 revenues fell short of the very rosy projections done by the CBO during the Clinton years. We also had a military to rebuild. But hey, check it out, those “evil” Bush tax cuts actually took in more revenue, grew the economy too (and the rich payed a greater share of their income) JUST LIKE such policies did under Reagan, JFK, and IIRC the last guy was Coolidge. But hey, facts are mean. We can obfuscate reality with politically correct and virtuous sounding language all we want – but it won’t make our economy grow faster the way letting people keep their own money will.

Clearly spending is a good idea, right? Hey, lets just raise taxes, that’ll fix everything right?

Being fast and sloppy - on average we only get about ~18%ish revenue of the GDP, with little regard of what the tax rates are. Solution: Lets just spend more money, even if the economy doesn’t grow as fast… because… slowing down the car means.. we’ll get somewhere faster…

The government is just a process of digestion for our tax dollars. By the time the grilled cheese sandwich of our money that’s taken from us gets filtered through government, the thing that is expelled from the anus of government is not quite what we remember. It looks like food to some, sure, but it’s obviously the losing alternative.

Even after close to a week of debate, the “Battleplan” for 2016 is not immediately obvious. Something like this is going to take more time and more debate than a week and a few papers. I’d planned on taking a shot at drawing up the battle plans myself but…

Reality:
- It’s very hard for a younger guy living in a single coastal blue state to sit here and design a platform and candidate that an entire nation’s Republican- and potentially Republican voters would show up for. I’m never a fan of “elites” (often self anointed  sitting in a room designing solutions for many, no matter how smart they are, or believe they are – I want plans by the many, not by the few.

So here’s what I think we should do. We should design a process by which we get to select from several people willing to take the job, with different opinions, stances, and takes. We would then give them time to show us their platform, we would watch them debate, see how they handle interviews. We would have votes in battleground/swing states too! Oh snap, that exists, it’s called the Primary, dontchaknow.

Parties lose elections, people seem to forget that the Dems were run out of town in 1994, and after the Election of Dubya, (twice), some sat there wondering if it was over for the DNC. History has shown that betting that the party would have died is stupid. Will the GOP change a bit? I hope so, I think we can evolve, I think we can adopt parts of Obummer’s ground game strategy. I think we should do a better job of communicating with a broader base of voters too.
I want to see how the primary shakes out. This is my fantasy ticket.

You want to see historic? First Robot VP. Breaking the aluminum ceiling.
Tech-cist voters might distrust Optimus, but no one is stronger on Defense issues than he is. Is he ready to step into the shoes should Rubio be unable to perform his duties? No doubt.

What you really came to see: Lemme tell you how I really feel about what happened.
-What the hell was this country thinking? This is a guy who had a sum total of 144 total days of Senate experience when he ran for office (and we have the results to prove it). This is a guy who was only known to us because of a speech in 2004 that looked unimpressive to me at the time, and is less so now. Here’s the sparknotes, it’s typical Obama. Seemingly “moderate” rhetoric packaged to low information voters that sounds beautiful, and it’s hopelessly idealistic. That’s what Obama is known for though, for talking about “visions”, which is applying expensive wrapping paper to age old political promises, with no hope or plan of delivering them. Won’t prevent him from spending tons of our money and wasting our f**king time doing it though.
Obama is the guy who tells his girlfriend how he might want to marry her some day – which is how he’s stringing her along to get what he wants. Dude isn’t saving up for a ring, he doesn’t want kids, he wants none of those things. Obama is not going to be the moderate Obama mask he wears for State of the Union addresses, we’re going to get the same crap we’ve been getting. Spoiler Alert for the next State of the Unions: It’s STILL Republican’s fault, and we need to waste more even money in Government programs “invest”.

-The guy had “do anything you want” majorities in the House and Senate for 2 straight years, the guy spent the sum total of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (1.5 Trillion) in deficit spending on “social programs  for 4 straight years, and we have nothing to show for it. An economy has recuperative powers all of its own, and sectors that can lead to new growth. You don’t always get to choose what parts of an economy are healthy and what aren’t. Right now we’re primed for growth in the Energy sector, we just have to say “lol okay”. But we can’t do that, because it’s “mean” or racist or something stupid like that. I find it amazing that the left is so married to the “economic creationism” models, as if prosperity in a sector just exists by throwing dollars at it like rain. It doesn’t work that way. We’re pissing away money at companies like Solyndra to start them up, and to subsidize their products that aren’t competitive in the market; and we’re subsidizing the costs of very expensive hybrid cars too. We’re pissing away money in technologies that just aren’t ready yet, when a relaxing of regulations could allow car manufacturers to sell the efficient diesel cars in the US that the Euros have access to. But no, we can’t have that, we have to try to let our Government play Dr. Frankenstien with areas of the economy that it has chosen to be winners.

- I believe the NFM (Non-Fox-Media, a large majority of the newspapers, late night shows, and every TV network but one.)  had a role in the re-election of Barry Soetoro (I mean, Barack Hussien Obama). This guy’s record sucks, and his administration is scandal ridden. If Obama was Republican, he may have even been impeached.

See here’s how press bias works. There is no mass conspiracy, there is no Illuminati  or any of the other things you may have heard from the Paulbots (That includes this “reptilian overlord” conspiracy. I’d say google that because I’m not kidding, but I’ll save you the trouble: It’s aliens.)  The Press is by and large, left sympathetic, right critical/skeptical. That’s about it. It’s ingrained into their culture, from the academic up to the pro leagues. That simple. It’s not some heinous design, they don’t sit around scheming on how to sabotage Republicans, it’s much less complex than that. However the results…

The CIA scandal with Valarie Plame? We had mountains of articles and hours of news coverage on it. Don’t know who Valerie Plame is? That’s because it was a nonscandal. Want to hear another one? Troopergate. CNN was all over this story in the lead up to the 2008 Presidential election. It’s such an issue that it’s been totally forgotten. But hey, Americans being left to die in a 6 hour firefight being watched on a livefeed in Washington, being denied air support several times? Then the Whitehouse comes out and lies about it for WEEKS? Who cares, Bigbird is more important.

Fast and Furious? 6 minutes of coverage on one network for a week sounds about right, even after the Attorney General of the US is historically held in contempt. Troopergate? Abu Gharib? Huge story for the left wing favorite NY Slime, weeks of front page news for them. Say, why aren’t we hearing about the poor now that Obama is re-elected? Stories about that always surface when we have an R in the Whitehouse. Why aren’t we hearing nightly reports about the troop death toll like we did during the Bush Administration? – we are still fighting in Afghanistan. No bitching about the thousands of Private Military Contractors left in Iraq  (that’s “mercenaries” in bed-wetting journalist speak) left to do the work in Iraq? I mean James Cameron so beautiful demonstrated the left’s opinion of PMCs in Avatar, why isn’t their use a story now? SEALs are being reprimand for assisting the development of a video game, but it’s okay that Whitehouse political appointees leaked sensitive information to Hollyweird writers to make a movie to make the f**ker look good? This is not a problem? The press is not jumping up and down over this? House Speaker Pelosi had low approval ratings when she was refusing to hold a vote on oil drilling during that gas crisis, but we’re hearing about the congressional approval rating now when they oppose Obummer. Say, what would the American people have said  if they found out Dubya tried to reform Fannie and Freddie, but the Democratic legislature refused? Would it have been harder to sell the “Boosh’s fault” meme? Can we have a story on that “obstructionism”, or do we only talk about it when it benefits the left? Don’t answer that, the answer is obvious and has been on display.

- Hey, what’s going to happen with Iran now that President “Tell Vladamir I’ll bend over for him have more leeway after the election” got re-elected? Is Vladamir going to get his leeway? Can Vlad put hair on Obama’s chest instead?

-We’ve already seen the layoffs begin in the private sector because of the costs of ObummerCare. Not well covered on MSNBC, but it’s occurring. See not only did or benevolent government make healthcare more expensive (by bolting the largest government bureaucracy ever conceived on top of 1/6th of the economy), they also redefined full time workers as anyone working 30 hours. The solution of businesses whose employees do not have create enough revenue producing activity to cover those cots of their employment? They will now be working 29 hours. This is great, we’ll all be “underemployed” making less money and paying more in taxes, (and paying more in the rising costs of college tuition) for the foreseeable future. This is our own try at the European socialist welfare state experiment. Hope everyone likes it.

-So when Obama says “compromise” on the “fiscal cliff’ (the thing we’re conveniently talking about now, post election, because Binders Bigbird and bayonets was more important before it) , does he mean we’re going to go the Romney-Route and slow the growth of government, vs cutting it, vs letting it grow at the astronomical rate it is now? Or is this code for what it meant last time, when Obummer told Republicans in 08 that “We won”, or in 2010 when he told them to “sit in the back”. Spoiler Alert: It means “do what Obama wants, and you’re getting smeared whether you do it or not next cycle.”

-So does this mean we’re going to approve that KeystoneXL pipeline now that Obama doesn’t need the donations from Hollywood’s environmental activists? (Millionaires are only bad if they provide people with jobs or are executives, not if they’re entertainers or athletes). Can we build another oil refinery or two, because we haven’t since like 1975? I mean this would reduce the cost of our gasoline, the costs of shipping goods and services up and down the economy. No? Great.

-So is the United States not racist anymore?

-Does Europe “like us”? Does this mean we’ll get more sanctions on Iran in the Useless Nations governing body? No?

- I’ve heard a really laughable meme being passed around the young default-democrat groupthink crowd lately. It’s simple, Republican voters are the dumb ones. I usually hear this from people whose knowledge of the Republican party begins at Jon Stewart, and ends with Facebook debates with this blogger. See, for members of many in the press and hollyweird, R’s are Will Ferrell’s W Bush, Todd Akin, etc. Often times the first time they hear an actual Republican speak unedited and unfiltered, is when someone like Michael Steele goes on MSNBC and is allowed to talk, and they find themselves saying “hey wait a minute…”

To the press, to the left, the only Republicans they want to talk about are the dinguses. There’s no interest in that Wisconsin Democrat Tammy The Socialist “lets defund the troops bodyarmor” Baldwin, or the guy in Virginia who said his Republican opponent’s military service made him “uniquely unqualified to serve”. Who can forget Hank “Guam Tipper” Johnson? Joe Biden’s election week gaffes? He made like 3. One of them was like “There’s not a day in office that I’ve been proud to be Obama’s VP.” Yep.

What about the embarrassingly ironic fact that many of Obama’s cabinet picks were denied due to TAX EVASION? That’s right, Tom Daschle, Richardson – some DNC heavy hitters, didn’t pay their own taxes. IIRC Sebelious didn’t either, but she has no problem with the Obamacare taxes. Funny that the party of “lets increase taxes” can’t pay its own damn taxes. (Not surprising when you find out conservatives donate more blood and more money to charities than do liberals). Btw: Tim Geithner who had issues paying taxes, same guy who was running the regulatory agency in the district that missed Bernie Madoff, is now our Treasury Secretary). But hey, Republicans are the dumb party. I mean Bill Clinton figured out how to work with R legislative majorities, Reagan and that “idiot” W figured out how to work with democrats in their legislatures – genius Obummer can’t figure it out, but Republicans are the dumb ones. This is a naive view that exposes the parochial nature of the view holder’s understanding of politics. When every bad guy Republican gets a spotlight and TV time, and the D’s get swept under the rug, and everyone of these kiddies favorite professors is a liberal (Diversity on campus: where you have zero republicans in your sociology department.), and all of their favorite pop culture figures are D’s, its’ easy to paint R’s as dumb.

Know what? I think I can accommodate this opinion. Lets do a social experiment, libs love these: Only people paying Federal income taxes should vote on how their money gets wasted ”invested” by government officials trying to look good to get re-elected. Lets see how the vote changes. Obviously, those ‘dumb” voters won’t be able to vote, surely the democratic party wouldn’t suffer, ja comrade? Ha!

The winner, by Technical KnockOut, and still, polling belt holder, Nate Silver.
Winners include, Barack Hussien Obama, and the “Free Shit Army” that voted for him.

As of right now barring a “Dewey defeats Truman” moment we’re looking at 4 more years of Obummer.
Big bird, binders, and bayonets have won.
To me, nothing really changes. I’m no fan of Obama or his message as he ran, while he was in office, during his campaign, and after this re-election. This was a screw up by the American people. To blame it on Mitt Romney and the NFM would be easy. The right gave up its role in the influencing of our culture, and it is now paying the price.

More articles to come. Because another winner of this election, is the “Right Wing Media”. Gasoline was just thrown onto that fire.

All anecdotes, no data from me yet
Sorry guys, no science, just stuff. I’m posting this as a live reaction before the results come in.

This experiment on polling and media, is, awesome. The left’s media machine or the “mainstream media” should be really renamed the “Non-Fox-Media” as a quick and lazy name. The truth is the right’s media is much bigger and more influential now than it was in 2008, that’s a fact. The two medias are telling two stories, in their polls and stories.
Rumblings say CNN is saying there’s record African American turn out in VA and OH.

The RWM (Right Wing Media, not to be confused with WMR, Willard Mitt Romney), is reporting massive, massive turn out in Republican strongholds, and very low turnout in Obama’s 08 areas.

I was also shown this data Re: Rasmussen’s voter ID numbers, when compared to the electorate of each cycle.

I see myself reacting two ways tonight.

Either this:

Or the reaction of this fellow, at 2:32.

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I just took a look at the DrudgeReport, RWM site, and saw this:

Exit Polls:  
R: NC, FL
O: OH, NH, PA, MI, NV
Toss up: VA, CO, IA

If that’s the case? Then Romney’s done. Romney needs to win OH, as well as VA, CO, IA.
IMHO Obama winning NH PA MI NV was expected. OH signals trouble. Granted, these are exit polls, it’s not over yet for either candidate. For all we know this race could go on for weeks, recounts, and legal battles.

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Exit polls 2:
R: NC, FL
O: NH, PA, MI, NV
Toss up: VA, CO, IA, OH

On the RWM, the memes being peddled are twofold. First is that exit polls have NEVER favored Republicans.
The second, is this image.

Answer: It depends on which turn-out model you use. It’s been used to determine the polling. Do you believe that the historically high record- Democratic turn out of 08 is going to repeat itself? Or do you believe that’s not the case?
Either way, bold predictions have been made.

On Wednesday, there will be eggs, there will be faces, there might even be recounts, we don’t know. It really is amazing how there are so very different takes on this race, the issues, etc. It’s no wonder that even those who have poured over polls and been following the cycle for all 4 years – find it hard still. As of right now I have two different posts, one for each candidate winning.

If you believe in the 2008 models:
-A friend’s been watching CNN, he commented that if you watch that network, Obama’s got this. Now CNN’s a clearly left leaning network, but less so than some others. On the Occutard Facebook page I recall seeing comments where some dumbass young liberals were accusing the network for being a “right wing puppet karl rove swift boat Boosh’s fault outfit” or some other drivel. If you have dumbasses like them accusing CNN of being a right wing outfit, they’re not a liberal kool aid network, at least not all the time, with all stories, all anchors, etc. Whether you’re “social science ivory tower” blue, or a “blue dog democrat”, odds are there’s a believe that Obama has this.
-If you believe the CBS/Quinnipiac/NYT polling with the +8 Dem Voter ID samples, Obama has VA, FL, OH, and might even pick off Georgia.  If you believe this model, Romney is finished. The strategists predicting Romney winning 279 EV or greater are just “in denial”. If this is the case, Obama more or less holds close to his electoral win of 08, narrower win in the popular vote.
-This is your map.

If you don’t believe in the 2008 2.0 models:
-You remember that Obama over-polled by about 1.65% on average in 2008 to begin with.
-You remember that in the places Obama personally campaigned in ’09-’11 cycles, it was really a death kiss for those candidates. The Dems really are 0 and 3 in the past 3 cycles.
- Then Romney wins either 279ish or more. It can range from a nail biter to a landslide. There’s convincing data for this case.
-Gallup has Romney up, but I’ve doubted Gallup so I’m going to Rasmussen, the firm I trust.
Rasmussen has Romney winning and/or Obama under 50 in NC, FL, VA, OH, NH, WI. They have MI, PA, and MINN staying Obama. I’d love to see Romney carry those states, but I think that’s kind of a pipe-dream.
-The enthusiasm gap is bad for Democrats, he’s way under 2008, these numbers look more like 2010. The race should not be close in Wisconsin, it appears it is in many polls. A tie race depending on who you go by.

Talking heads, models, and anecdotes
-Rove and Barone has R-Money winning this. George Will does as well. (To be fair, he’s a journalist, not quite the pedigree of the first two guys I mentioned. And there’s a ton of journalists on the left that believe Obama has this.)
The University of Colorado’s study has Romney winning the race, they’ve been correct since 1980 when they started.
-If you want to use the 94% correct anecdote of the Washington Redskin’s home game before the election, they lost to a 1-5 Carolina Panthers at home today.
-Obama’s early voting margin in 2008 in Ohio was the margin he won the state by. Remember that historically Republican candidates usually are a few points ahead in Ohio of their national polling. Republicans are doing very well in the early voting in this state, Dems nowhere near 2008. They’re also having problems filling rallies in that state for the D’s, the R’s are actually filling the damn things for a change. Keep in mind this is an Obama who could not fill the venue in the NC convention, and it had to be moved to a smaller arena.
-Republican turnout for early voting in crucial states is way above last cycle. Obama, way behind.
-There are now polls that have Mittens up 1 in Michigan, tied at 49 in Wis, barely down in PA, and leading in PA counties obama carried by double digits in 2008. Obama’s not breaking 50 in any of these. Even if undecideds break +60% for Romney, a historically safe guess, Obama’s in deep shit.
-Romney’s doing very good with independents and undecided voters, bad news for Obama.
-There are more polls this cycle than there were last time, many of them using old/odd turnout models. Some of them engaging in push-polling, (like the CBS/NYT poll, those firms being among the least accurate in 08, overstating Obama’s margin). If they overstated Obama’s margin in 08, surely, surely they aren’t now?
–If you use the same polls that have Obama winning (CBS/NYT/Quin), and then deflate the turnout models, Romney’s winning these states. Considering those polls were among the least reliable last cycle, overstating the D-turnout, and they’re using the same numbers this time- it would not be impossible to wonder if the polls are “wronger”.

-Now Nate Silver (liberal) of the NYT has Obummer winning this. Let’s be fair though, he may be liberal, but what about his model. He could be a martian-ist, a single issue voter that wants Newt’s moonbases, but if his model works it works. Now there’s a rumor that the Obama campaign shared their internal polls with Nate in 08 hence his accuracy. I disagree. You can do the math with his model yourself and get his results.

His model has the teflon-messiah winning. His model however, hinges on the accuracy of state polls, and it’s batting .200 in tough to call very close race states. (Factoring in inaccurate predictions in 08 in Indiana, and the senate races in 2010 particularly Nevada amongst others to arrive at the .200 number). Nate’s model also would have had issues in 2000 and 2004 as well if you want to give it a run with the numbers in that election. I give Nate kudos for having courage and believing in his model, he’s consistent. But I’m not sure how correct he is.

Prediction:
- Romney wins either 279 or more electoral votes. I hope to science I’m right.

6 steps to Orwellian labels
Now that more of the low information voter young liberals have begun paying attention to the race, I have to watch my newsfeed blow up with tons of these gems. (Note: I live in the North East, I’m a younger person, many friends are in academia or the arts fields). To say that Republicans or conservatives (the kiddies don’t differentiate) “hate” women is a baseless strawman argument, it’s like a lower-back tattoo for someone’s political gullibility. Here’s how it became a common meme in the discourse.

Step 1: Self important people have knighted several issues and causes as issues for a given number of groups they profess to support, as special. Said people are often social agitators, community organizers, some academics, members of the press, Hollywierd actors, etc. They take many shapes and forms.

Step 2: Those who disagree with the anointed’s stances on said issues, are thus against those people. Not merely against the policies or ideas on those issues, no, that’s not enough. Such opponents must actually HATE these people. Now assigning motives to people is a tricky business as is.. But in this game of jumping to conclusions, if you string together enough feel-good-ism-cliches, you MUST have said something smart.
Note: all/most of those “haters” have individuals close to them in their lives who belong to those groups. They must somehow hate those people too. If you’re a female conservative, you must hate yourself! And your friends. And your mother. and your co-workers.
Think about the absurdity of the charge now.

Step 3: Throw out logic, acquire communication skills. Now if you’re Andrew Sullivan, you can claim that racism is the reason why Obama would lose in 2012, because people who vote for a guy one year, and then 2/4yrs later vote against him SOLELY because they became racist in that period of time. Point out the coincidence that many of the states in are in the south (Also, many are not) and thus, it’s a new confederacy. If you make a case that has enough lipstick on it, idiots will believe it and repeat it. Especially if the author of said garbage is said to be especially wise.

Step 4: Throw out evidence. It is not important to actually know anyone who truly professes to hate these groups, there is a “they” (that you’ve never met or seen, just told about) that does. Is the “redneck’ thing a stereotype, or is it “true”? Never been outside of the North East? Must be true!

Step 5: Repeat this idea over and over and over again until it becomes a part of the discourse. When enough people believe it,  it can be used in verbal battle.

Step 6: Instead of having a real argument, opponents of remotely conservative-anything can now accuse said individuals of hating something, due to the distance of their opinion from the commonly liberal held group think’s ideas. Bush’s attempts to reform Fannie and Freddie pre-collapse were shut down by the Democratically controlled legislature, because it was somehow racist. (I’m not kidding.)
Mitt Romney, who does not favor massive and punitive tax hikes on “the rich”, which would slow the economy and would not likely close the budget-deficit gap (If you believe Liberal economist-God John Maynard Keynes anyway) must somehow hate the poor. Now that was a serious jump to conclusions, and a stupid argument for sure- but hey if the President says it, on the campaign trail, in an Election year,  it must be true, da comrade? After all, even the talking head that shares his ideology and wants to see him elected agrees!

Presto. Now even a no-nothing hollywood actor can be an expert on the issues after watching a few slanted news reports.
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Some on the left today use Government as their Church, academia’s material as their scripture, Hollywood types as their priests,  and Science as their God. Political correctness is the third commandment, skepticism of anything that can be painted as traditional is the 2nd, and total belief of left-wing ideology is the 1st.

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-I’m shocked by the amount of prejudice being showed to Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith. Why do the radical elements of Islam get a special place of privilege (due to political correctness) Yet mocking Mormonism is “funny”, allowed, and okay. Colbert has definitely done his part on this. See if someone says something that can be built into a diss at Islam after totally misconstruing it’s meaning  gently massaging it, becomes a firing offense (See: Juan Williams).

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-Apparently “We can do betta”, the line Romney used during the debates, is a Kennedy line. It’s an interesting thought. JFK was a wealthy guy, pro-military (created the Green Berets), pro-tax cuts (he instituted them during his administration, they worked), a Massachusetts guy, and someone with a Religion “problem” depending on who was bloviating. Romney’s all of the above. Now the two men are not perfectly analogous, (ex: JFK having been an adulterer) but there are similarities, and it’s amazing to see Romney attacked for some of that by modern day Democrats. One of their own beloved Presidents would not have flown in today’s party/media climate. It shows you just how far left they’ve lurched, despite the very loud repeated accusations of the other side doing this. The right was saying this about the left in 08, the message was not repeated by the “Balanced” media. When this lurch left resulted in a Republican resurgence in 2010, candidates elected on the promise of reducing size of .gov and spending, the “lurch right” meme appeared.

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- The fear mongering  on the young left Re: Social issues that Republicans have not had an interest in since 2008 is ironic, considering those knuckleheads thought radical Islam was a non-issue. Every time we show foreign policy weakness and a lack of seriousness to our problems, we bet the lives of Americans. A dead Ambassador paid the price for the administration’s incompetence in this area.

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- If Obama wins, he’ll do what, exactly? The guy had both houses in the legislature in super majorities for 2 years, glowing support from the American public, a free pass from the media – and he followed the liberal playbook. He spent the sum total cost of both Iraq and Afghanistan’s wars over 10 years, 1.5 Trillion as *DEFICIT* spending on top of our budget as a “temporary” measure to “help the ocominy”. He then spent this amount for 3 straight years. We now have higher unemployment than when he took office. Remember – you’re a millionaire when you make 250K, and refusing to alter or reform decades old bloated entitlement programs is “progress”. Somehow.

-This guy blew it when he had everything on his side. He then, as legislators in the Oval office often are – proved unable to work with “the other side’. Clinton did it, that “idiot” W bush managed to do it, Reagan did it, but the genius Barack Hussien couldn’t figure it out. He will never see such good favor again, and the only thing he did while had it, was give speeches and sign bills Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi put on his desk over the objections of the American people.

-The guy was constantly a day late on taking a stance on unfolding issues (Egypt’s revolution, the Gulf Oil disaster), waiting until public opinion had picked their side. He would then give a speech and do very little. He’d vote “present” moment after moment. This guy is constantly blaming – and not holding accountable - administration members, whether it’s Benghazi or Fast and Furious. But the press, who wrote hundreds of articles on Valarie Plame, who ran story after story on Abu Gharib – has no interest in scandals where American service members died.

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This administration should have been the end of the credibility of many liberal feel good ideas. That they were going to be transparent- when we’ve seen lie after lie on big scandals involving dead Americans. They were going to prop up a green energy sector. Didn’t work but they’ve got us on the hook for subsidizes  and we’ve lost billions in tax payer dollars – payoffs to campaign donors. They were going to uphold the Constitution, meanwhile their President is not enforcing laws on the books.

They got “their guy”, and they could have arguably done anything they wanted. It didn’t work. This should have discredited Liberals, instead they’ve found ways to blame things on Republicans, their default mode.

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This administration isn’t 20 points behind in the polls due to the compliant news media, and a lowering of standards. For things liberal, there are excuses from the intelligentsia. For things conservative, the bar is higher. 7 Minutes of delay by Bush on 9/11 was inexcusable to them. Obama’s repeated obvious mis-truths by the Obama administration for weeks was… somehow not inexcusable, and today it’s not even newsworthy. Major networks as of today have mysteriously not given it a second of coverage for close to a week leading up to the election.

Dan Quayle, H Bush’s VP was an idiot for miss-spelling potato, adding an E. Palin must have been an idiot, after all Tina Fey’s line “I can see Russia from my house” was attributed false to Sarah herself. But Joe Biden, who revealed the location of the bunker Cheney spent time in, had 2 gaffes today alone – nada. He had this gem the other day too:
‘There’s Never Been A Day In The Last Four Years I’ve Been Proud To Be His Vice President’”

Nothing? No blow up on this? And the media is fair, right? Only if you’re so far to the left that you find yourself agreeing with them a lot.

Here’s my quick reaction:
Like many debates, this one is going to take a few days and hindsight to really “Score” properly. Also expect some stupid October surprise. Obama’s campaigns have disqualified opponent after opponent before he got to the Presidential scene.

Let me first say, best overall moderator, hands down. By: *all* the metrics.

Zero:
Obama made the base feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. He did not look weak, he showed spine, he was aggressive. He continued the negatives on Romney angle and gave good soundbytes too at moments. Did the usual “that’s not true”, droned on a bit here and there. Didn’t have too many “uhs”, not too many stop and goes. He ran his offense.

RMoney:
I think Romney looked very Presidential overall tonight, his goal- so say some pundits. He did it, no doubt. The final closing remark looked like a State of the Union. Romney’s goal was to run the football, run out the clock, no interceptions, no fumbles.

What I thought:
-Personally I think it looks like anywhere between a draw and a Romney ass-kicking depending on who you were rooting for. “The 4th quarter” was all Romney’s. Any time the topic went to the economy Romney started putting up points. At times Obama sounded like a student who was caught trying to figure out an answer to a question that the Professor put on the test, but was not taught in class. If I was a Democrat I’d kinda be upset the foreign policy debate got sidetracked into some economic stuff, that had huge roles in the 2 other debates.

-Obama attacking Romney on GM was the interception of the night. Romney’s rebuttal was awesome. A community organizer wanted to debate a business man, on business. He got what he asked for, I think Romney won that exchange and may pick up points in Michigan. Obama had an unconvincing reply.

-Romney had good ‘indictments’ Re: China, The apology tour, Israel

-Romney played to moderates. Obama to his base. Romney also played it self, not wanting to be painted as “W BOOOSH” or a “War-monger” by the bedwetting sect of the media. He wanted to avoid all possible negative press, even if it meant having a less impressive performance. He accomplished that.

-Overall I think Obama kinda sounded like a desperate prick tonight. The problem is that he looked that way when compared to Romney. I think he went a little too far on the tone, he got really random on the negatives too. He doubled down. I don’t think that was wise, then again I’m not sure what else he could have done. I think his personal likeability numbers will continue to fall a bit.

Fin: Obama needed a blowout tonight, even if he “won” by the MSNBC scoreboard, it was most unimpressive. Not decisive.