54° 40' or fuggetaboutit.

Since President Trump picked on PM Trudeau a few days back, the meme machines have gone into overdrive once again. 

A lot of gags hang on the idea of Trump annexing Canada, making it into the 51st state ("Gay North Dakota" etc.). Of course the New York Times, which hates Donald and loves Justin (and both his dad and his "dad"), was mad at Trump. In other news, rain is wet.

It led me to wonder -- what if, not by war but some more peaceable means, Canada did become part of the United States? What would that look like politically? Would it be good for either country?

If Canada was admitted to the union as a single gigantic state, it would become our largest one population-wise, but only barely: With 40.1 million citizens, it would just beat out California's 39.5. However, it would be able to throw its weight around in Washington, because like the Golden State it would have 52 members of the House and 54 electoral votes. 

What if we admitted the Canadian provinces and territories as 13 individual states to split its power? Then it would likely dominate the Senate with a reliable club of 26 Canuckcaucus senators. 

This could be a good deal for Canadians. All of the authority, none of the responsibility. 

Nor would it necessarily be a bad thing for the original fifty, even with Canadian socialism. 

While we may dislike all the Trudeaus here, and clearly a lot of Canada do too, somehow they kept and keep winding up at 24 Sussex. But obviously we are also very good in the USA at sending dunderheads to higher office. We used to joke about the French minority calling the shots for the vast hinterland, making them learn French, but wherever you go in the USA, for Spanish you may marque dos. Unhinged and unaccountable bureaucrats make crippling rules without warning or voter input in both nations. Is there any real difference anymore? 

Canadian Mark Steyn calls his native land the Deranged Dominion, but it was the United States legal system that served him with years of torment and a bad free-speech judgment. He probably suffered more at the hands of Americans thanks to that than he ever did in Canada, even including time spent shoveling snow. Our healthcare system is morphing into socialized misery -- or fascistic misery, with companies in cahoots with the government, and patients getting screwed. Euthanasia can't be far behind, and if the system keeps getting worse, may be welcomed. ("It beats doing all this paperwork!") So can Americans even claim to have benefits of liberty superior to those in Canada? 

I wonder sometimes. 

I wonder if we would all be one huge country now if, as could very easily have happened, the American colonists had lost or given up in the dark years following the signing of the Declaration. 

I'll end with this promise: If it all somehow does come together into the United Canadian States of America, I swear that as Prime President I will enact my goal of refusing to allow any state that does not normally and naturally get ice to have an ice hockey team in the NHL. You have my word. 

The worst workers in America.

You may have heard my kvetching in this space about our elites being unable to perform what their jobs require of them, although they certainly keep busy pestering people about things that are none of their business. Health officials ruin health, teachers don't teach, entertainers don’t entertain, and the only thing Boeing means anymore is the sound of things popping off their aircraft. 

But by far the most unproductive members of society are journalists. Some still dig in and get the facts, but most of them just want to be editorialists, swaying public opinion by smearing enemies and disregarding unpleasant information. The bottomless failure of the current vice president being presented as endless victory and the complete lack of curiosity in mainstream reportage is astonishing. 

Since the early twentieth century, journalists have had a commie streak. Why not? Common jealousy would ensure that the bulk of readership would enjoy seeing the wealthy get tweaked. But two things have changed to make the situation far worse: 

1) Rich commies are considered "one of us" by the media, and so only to be covered favorably; and 

2) The media doesn't care what we think now. 

I've heard older people bemoan the fact that there's no Walter Cronkites anymore; Uncle Walter's reputation as a fair newsman has survived even his at best foolish (and at worst treasonous) public assessment of the failed Tet Offensive. Still, by comparison to today's reporters, who ought to be demanding Kamala Harris answer serious questions about policy for her campaign but just play songs of love like the freaking Mambo Kings, Walt was a fair newsman. 

The massive failure of our current crop of top dogs is an insult to dogs, and I can only hope that someone in the left end of the media (95% of them) will be embarrassed enough to demand Harris have a real press conference. In the old days, even reporters who were playing for a team would not want to be caught looking biased. I'm not sure you can shame the current useless crop any more than you could shame cheerleaders for rooting for their team. They're too corrupt or too dumb to care. 

Their new slogan.

 

Comedy and shame.

So what does this 1984 film have to do with our current moment?

Eh, I don't know. 

No, seriously, hold on. First, I want to say that I have never seen any of the Police Academy movies, which is strange because when I was a teenager it was exactly the kind of movie that I would have been coerced into seeing, most certainly on video, on some random summer day when none of my friends had any better ideas. But somehow I dodged that bullet. Not to pick on the movie -- some actors and comics I respect were in it -- but I had always heard it was about a lowbrow as you could get. 

Here I am, writing about it all the same. What happened was, I was reading through some cinema history and found out -- which I don't think I knew -- that Alan Ladd's son, Alan Ladd Jr., was a movie producer. He produced Police Academy. Then he won an Oscar as a producer on Braveheart. He also produced The Brady Bunch Movie. Cinema is the weirdest business on earth.

That made me curious enough about the original Police Academy to go to Wikipedia and the entry on the movie. I also discovered that in 2016, Bill Clinton copped to loving the series, saying of his marriage: 

“We rarely disagreed on parenting, although she did believe that I had gone a little over the top when I took a couple days off with Chelsea to watch all six Police Academy movies back-to-back.”

I don't know how I missed this quote in 2016, but it might have gone over my head because I hadn't seen the movies. I just figured they were dumb fun. 

But it was Bill, so I should have known better. 

I knew full well that it was movie law in the early 1980s that every comedy had to have a hooker in it. So of course Bill Clinton would love those movies. In the first picture the Mandatory Hooker commits fellatio from inside a lectern on a man giving a speech before a large crowd. Twice.

And he watched this with his daughter? 

Picturing the heartfelt lesson there: "Remember, sweetheart, this is how a woman gets ahead. And the man she loves, too, come to think of it." 

Do you think those scenes were ever on Bill Clinton's mind when he was doing one of his heartfelt addresses to the American public? 

This was the man who turned the Oval Office into the Oral Office, let us not forget.

Which brings us to the present moment. 

First, I learned that the inspiration for the film came from an actual event in San Francisco, where a motley crew of academy cadets were trying and failing to secure a film site. Producer Paul Maslansky was told that the police academy had to accept all applicants, however ludicrous, and keep them until they quit or officially washed out. And that made me think of the current lawlessness in San Francisco and the desperation of our cities to get anyone to join the police force after so many experienced cops quit or retired during the Defund Police nonsense of recent memory. 

Also in San Francisco, although not as mayor until 1996, was Willie Brown, without whose help and guidance none of us would have ever heard the name Kamala Harris. And indeed, Ms. Harris seemed to take the role of Mandatory Hooker in this little comedy, using her wiles to advance her career as a prosecutor in the state of California. Ferocious ambition and courtesan skills are an odd but not unheard of combination. But even Willie thinks she's out of her depth. I say she's in so far over her head she'll need a bathysphere to speak at the convention next month. 

Anyway, there it is -- sex, politicians, hookers, poor parenting choices, bad police recruiting, and comedy. Many people have been saying that the 80's movie that we should be scared of seeing in real life is The Terminator, with all the AI stuff around. But it actually turned out to be Police Academy. 

Grilled.

The spot of heat wave we had here and about the country last week has dissipated, and the early summer weather is now quite delightful. I'm sure the panic mavens that were forecasting a world afire last week will moderate their statements now, and be more rational next time. Ha! he jokes. 

Our idiot governor issued the usual birdbrained take, her office calling the heat "record-setting." It was not, in any significant way. Even if one does not stretch back to the many hot summers of the past, when the temperatures often hit triple digits in New York City, just in 2016 we had the so-called Heat Dome descend on the United States that gave us days of miserable heat. We did not even come close to that kind of heat.

Maybe last week had supposedly the hottest June days in recorded history? I doubt it with every fiber of my being.   

New York remains the dimwitted Me Too! kid brother of California; whatever boneheaded thing its worshipped brother does, New York wants to do the same. We all know what this is really about. Hochul is one of those softheaded geniuses who want us to give up our gas stoves and gas cars to save the planet. She'll never personally give up anything, of course. She can't explain how we're supposed to get ten times the electrical power we have now to charge up all the electric cars and stoves without burning fossil fuels or splitting atoms. Solar is a joke, especially in places like New York where the snow covers the panels when you most need the juice, and wind is an ecological and barely viable generator of electricity. 

Don't ask questions. Just tremble in terror and vote for her again. 

As it turns out, I think it's propane that she really wants to give the old heave-ho to. Why? Because then no one will ever see her party playmate Chuck Schumer do anything this stupid again: 

Our senior senator, ladies and gentlemen, "cooking" a raw hamburger patty with cheese already on it on Father's Day. One of the most powerful men in the country, playing at being "just plain folks" with a gas grill. I guess the Global Warming was so bad, he figured the sun would cook the burgers all on its own. I wonder if someone drew the grill marks on the wienies.

The biggest wienie in the picture is him. 

Better to get rid of all the peasants' grills than let something that humiliating get out again. Burn the grills! Save the Earth! Save Schumer's face! Save their phony baloney jobs! 

🌞🌞🌞

If you are in a hot spot this summer, allow me to recommend a recipe my family used to keep hydrated on the hottest days of summer. My dad, who stopped working outside despite heat or cold, would cool off with this beverage my mom made. We never had Gatorade in the house -- we had something better. 

Mom probably got the recipe from Welch's.

🍇Juice of 4 lemons

🍇2 cups Welch's grape juice concentrate (no sugar added)

🍇3/4 cup sugar

🍇Water to fill to 2 quarts (4 cups+)

Drink that nice and cold with a towel soaked in cold water on the back of your neck. Makes a new man of you. 

I'm not dissing Gatorade, which has been a real lifesaver in our family when people have gotten overheated or woozy from illness. But how does it match up against the Grape-Aid? 

Well, two quarts of standard Gatorade has 1,013 calories, versus 904 for the grape juice, sugar, water, and lemon juice punch. The Welch's is a little lower in carbs and higher in potassium, which helps the fact that it's lower in sodium than Gatorade (both important electrolytes). It's got vitamin C out the bazooty, which Gatorade does not have. It's also less expensive than Gatorade, but not by a huge amount.

If you don't mind squeezing a few lemons, try the Welch's. I think it tastes better than Gatorade. It would probably make a fine cocktail with some vodka, if that's how you want to go. Put a little cocktail umbrella in it and thumb your nose at Global Warming, Climate Chaos, Kathy Hochul, Chuck Schumer, and all the other foolishness. Cheers!

Vote the Fuzz Line!!

After several heavy think pieces, I need to decompress this whole blog and think of something cheerful. 

Like, the presidential campaign.

Now, I know what you're thinking. But wait. Here's my pitch. 

What do we have running this year? A feeble old crook and a man so tarnished by his enemies that it may be impossible to overcome. Plus a wacky independent with a dead brain worm and probably Jill Stein, the Harold Stassen of the Green Party.

I say: Vote Izzy. 

Yes, my dog Izzy. Why? Because he loves all Americans, not just the ones who vote for him. He really does like everybody, unlike my previous dogs, who were a bit more selective. And as I've noted before, all the people like him, unless they have an issue with dogs. That's why Izzy is America's Sweetheart. Plus, he's as handsome as you could want. Lookit dat face! 

Killer slogan

The Constitution doesn't demand that candidates for president be human. But, you may say, isn't Izzy too young? Candidates have to be at least thirty-five. 

Well, he just turned three. By normal accounting that would be twenty-one in dog years. He's a large size dog, though, so the chart runs older for him. So he's ... addition, carry the one, divide by pi ... 

All right, all right, he's just twenty-eight. Ask yourself, though: Can we really wait another four years to put this nation back on the right path? Of course not. 

Besides, lookit dat face! 

So remember, if you're not voting as I am, then just pencil in Izzy. He'll give you a lick on the nose for it! I'm not sure any of the other candidates running this year would. Well, maybe the incumbent. 

Upside-down world.

It's hard not to feel like the world has been turned completely on its head. We have a government in the United States that seems to despise its citizens, monetary policy that makes money worth less daily, militaries that can't win wars or defend the nation, government agencies intended to protect Americans that target Americans, fathers who abuse children and mothers who kill them, schools that teach everything but what they're supposed to teach, recycling programs that stuff landfills, and a ruling class that does not rule and has no class. Sometimes it appears that the airheads are all rising to the top by nature of their empty heads, because that's what seems to be in charge. And sometimes that's the optimistic view. The worse view is that only some of them are stupid; the smart ones are all evil. 

We know in our hearts that things are upside-down and have always been, even if it makes no rational sense -- if things always seemed wrong, why would we expect something better, something right? I find the supreme example of this inversion in the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, where we see that everything is a cruel funhouse image of what it ought to be. The religious class that ought to love God instead persecutes Him. He is betrayed by a kiss, a sign of love, and abandoned by His friends. The Roman authority tries to administer justice by scourging the man declared innocent -- I find no fault with this man, so we'll beat him half to death. The crown Jesus deserves is not the crown of thorns He gets; He is exalted, but by being lifted aloft on the scornful, torturous cross. Everything is a cruel mockery. 

It informs me that while life may get better in many ways, we just can't escape the grip of evil on our own. And now, in this utterly unprincipled era, we find less hope that there is anything to fall back on, any law on the basis of which we can hope for justice among men. 

But we have hope. St. Francis of Assisi, they say, saw the world upside-down, or perhaps right-side up by being upside-down. Writing in The Crisis, Michael Warren Davis notes: 

St. Francis called himself the Jongleur de Dieu—God’s court jester—precisely because his virtue was so absurd by the standards of our own convention. But to say that he looked foolish in the eyes of the world is an understatement. His charity gave as much offense as any sinner’s meanness. St. Francis’s spirituality demands such uncommon virtue it’s offensive to common decency.

The most famous take on the Jongleur in the English language must be from our old friend G. K. Chesterton from his book about the saint, who explains that the jongleur is not a juggler so much as a tumbler or acrobat, and Francis came out of the darkness of despair from his crushed dreams of being a noble knight as if he'd been turned on his head:

Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently came back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque simile of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands.

This may have given him a unique perspective:

This state can only be represented in symbol; but the symbol of inversion is true in another way. If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence. There is a Latin and literal connection; for the very word dependence only means hanging. It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged the world upon nothing. If St. Francis had seen, in one of his strange dreams, the town Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely the other way round. But the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high citadel would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and more in peril. It is but a symbol; but it happens to fit the psychological fact. St. Francis might love his little town as much as before, or more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered even in being increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being merely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved, he would be thankful to God Almighty that it had not been dropped; he would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars. Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified head-downwards.

We can rail against the upside-down world, but we ought to remember that in the end it is destined to be flipped and placed on a firm foundation as it ought to have been from beginning. That is the hope, that is the divine expectation. 

Dis-inspirations?

This has to be the most bizarre thing I've ever seen used as an inspirational quote online. 

At first this seems like just another Yeah, yeah, think big and be big -- I heard that from Fred Flintstone. But it got worse the more I thought about it. 

First of all, there's no proof that this quote comes from Machiavelli, although Forbes notes that it's often attributed to him. I looked through Bartlett's and the Oxford quotation book and checked in with Quote Investigator and all of Machiavelli's works on Project Gutenberg but had no luck finding it attributed to him or anyone else. Granted, Machiavelli wrote in Italian, and that makes it harder to track down an English translation. But my search under subject words as well as authors convinced me that whoever said this first, it was probably not everyone's favorite Italian diplomat. 

Second, do we really want to draw spiritual growth from a man like Niccolo Machiavelli? He wasn't exactly writing Chicken Soup for the Soul. His most famous book, The Prince, was the birth of Realpolitik as we know it -- basically, how to shiv the right people at the right time for coldblooded profit. The Rules for Radicals of its day. For example, he tells this inspiring tale of Old Syracuse: 

Agathocles, the Sicilian, became King of Syracuse not only from a private but from a low and abject position. This man, the son of a potter, through all the changes in his fortunes always led an infamous life. Nevertheless, he accompanied his infamies with so much ability of mind and body that, having devoted himself to the military profession, he rose through its ranks to be Praetor of Syracuse. Being established in that position, and having deliberately resolved to make himself prince and to seize by violence, without obligation to others, that which had been conceded to him by assent, he came to an understanding for this purpose with Amilcar, the Carthaginian, who, with his army, was fighting in Sicily. One morning he assembled the people and the senate of Syracuse, as if he had to discuss with them things relating to the Republic, and at a given signal the soldiers killed all the senators and the richest of the people; these dead, he seized and held the princedom of that city without any civil commotion. 

Mind you, he's not telling us about Agathocles in the hope that we will emulate him (unlike Radicals author Saul Alinsky, whose book is a how-to guide). Niccolo just wants to tell us the practical problems facing one who usurps power by force. 

Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.

So kill everyone who might oppose you all at once and start raiding the treasury over time to make new friends. There's a big plan for you. Small plans don't stir the soul! 

Whether Niccolo could be considered a force for evil or just a "straight shooter, telling it like it is," may be argued. Nowadays it would be the latter, but in the past there was no question that he was a bad man. 

Older readers, or readers of older works, might recall that one of the names for the devil is Old Nick. And writers like Samuel Butler in his satirical poem Hudibras made the connection clear:

Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick,

Though he gave his name to our Old Nick.

The devil had a big plan too, as I recall. 

So I just found it astonishing that inspirational memes for yoga moms would include a quote from a man historically considered a tricky bastard in the non-birth sense of the world. Then again, if you've ever had to deal with yoga moms in a homeowners' association, maybe you'd think it's not really such a reach. 

Escape.

My wife and I have one crucial goal for 2023: Escape from New York. 

I used to be proud to be from New York State, I truly was. I was born here, grew up here, went to school here, got married and settled down here (mostly in the city itself, now north of that, west of the mighty Hudson). I liked everything in the state, from the excitement of the city up to the gorgeous countryside in the north and the hardworking cities of the west, three of which are so tough they have survived despite being in the top seven snowiest cities in the entire nation. It was a state worth being proud of. 

Now? It's a dump and I want out. 

It's not the winters. Yeah, they are tough here, but the spring and fall are so gorgeous that I am willing to suffer the cold and frozen precipitation. 

Who doesn't like salt trucks doin'
doughnuts on the cul-de-sacs?

And it's not that the city is becoming an unlivable nightmare of crime and filth, as I have avoided going into the five boroughs for a couple of years now and see little chance of having to go there again soon. 

No, it's that the state has become irredeemably stupid and corrupt. 

We were not a one-party state until recently. Our last Republican governor left office in 2006, and our last Republic Senator in 1999. The state senate was last run by Republicans in 2018 and may never be again. I'm not saying those guys were not corrupt and stupid (several were brought up on charges); I am saying that when it's a one-party apparatus there's no one able to hold anyone accountable. That's where we are now. Since Pataki left Albany we've had two Democrat governors resign in shame, and yet the people are content to pull the D lever no matter what now. So we're on our way to becoming California: Cold Edition.

Speaking of which, every stupid idea doomed to failure that comes out of that West Coast Feudal Empire finds some traction here. Fortunately the obsession with light rail and bullet trains hasn't taken over New York yet -- who wants a bullet train from New York to Buffalo? 

But: Outlaw the sale of gasoline powered cars? Check! Close nuclear plants? Checkarooni! Hey, where's the electricity going to come from to power all those electric cars, let alone the rare minerals needed for the highly polluting batteries? Don't bother us with details! We're too busy giving ourselves a 29% pay raise because we work so hard and we deserve the highest pay in the nation! And they also love to crush small businesses with taxes and regulations, because that always helps, especially in economic downturns.

Stupid to the point of belligerence. I'd say childishness, but children have a reason to know nothing. These morons not only know nothing, they don't even suspect. 

You may not believe this, and I would have to make a better case than I can here, but New York's decline began with the end of the Erie Canal as a major shipping course after the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959. 

I'm serious. It's hard to believe in a Manhattan where nothing is made but lies, debt, and bad musicals, but New York City once led the nation in manufacturing, and all those cold, snowy cities upstate thrived on the Erie Canal. What do we have now? Rochester, which is sinking as fast as its ko-dependent company Kodak; Buffalo, where the steel industry left and everything else is hot wings and government graft; Utica, which can't even keep a single-A ballclub anymore; Albany, whose only industry now is bull. Even Junior's Cheesecake is now made in New Jersey. It's been a long decline for the Empire State, but with the current irreplaceable leadership it looks like the rest of the slide to third-worldism will come pretty fast. 

Many things were out of New York's control, but now it seems like everything is out of control in New York. Meanwhile, the state government thinks it can fix the climate. So, we have to leave. This much dumb in one place is likely to open a black hole of stupid that will suck in everything around it. It breaks my heart, but the New York state of mind is insane. 

Monday go to memein' time!

Some Thanksgiving memes go get you sparked up for the Thanksgiving week. Clip, share, throw away, I don't care. Hope you laugh.

I have my doubts about some of those dishwasher commercials. And how much water do they think we're using to rinse a few dishes, a 55-gallon drum?

Okay, this last one's not Thanksgiving, but I've been hoping to put this together for a long time.

heh

Pie R expensive.

Here's a handy chart to help with voting issues tomorrow. Bear in mind that this is 100% accurate, or at least as accurate as the graphs and charts shown to feed us panic and outrage by those who profit from them.

Take New York's ballot proposition #1 -- thank God, the only statewide ballot issue this year. It sounds very useful on the surface: "CLEAN WATER, CLEAN AIR, AND GREEN JOBS Environmental Bond Act of 2022". Well, yay! Even evil Republicans like clean water and clean air. And we know that, due to the various raids on the state treasury over the years, there never seems to be enough dough to fix the ancient water systems that feed clean water to populated areas. I have a friend who works in the sewers in New York City -- we'll call him Norton. Norton says they still occasionally dig up wooden pipes that were laid down in starting in the early 1800s. (You can see some of the sort here.) His crew dries them out and slices them, mounts the slices on plaque boards, and awards them to guys who are retiring. So even in death those old pipes serve a useful purpose, unlike most live politicians.

So sure, let's borrow some dough to get that clean water and -- clean air? What's that for, giant dehumidifiers with dust filters? There are only two ways government can clean the air: regulate factories out of existence, as has been done in New York State*, and replace coal power plants with nukes, and New York State is shutting down nuclear plants. So, what is this ballot proposal supposed to fund? And what's this "green jobs" stuff? And what's it all supposed to cost? 

"To address and combat the impact of climate change and damage to the environment..." it starts, and here we go.

The purpose of this proposal is to authorize the creation of state debt and the sale of state bonds in the amount of up to four billion two hundred million dollars ($4,200,000,000) for certain capital projects for the purpose of making environmental improvements that preserve, enhance, and restore New York's natural resources and reduce the impact of climate change.... 

I remember when $4.2 billion was a lot of money.

How do they plan to blow spend the money? 

restoration and flood risk reduction not less than one billion one hundred million dollars ($1,100,000,000); open space land conservation and recreation up to six hundred fifty million dollars ($650,000,000); climate change mitigation up to one billion five hundred million dollars ($1,500,000,000); and, water quality improvement and resilient infrastructure not less than six hundred fifty million dollars ($650,000,000).

How much for herding unicorns to get their magical farts to run turbines? Because there will be mandates to kill fossil fuel power generation, which is working so brilliantly in Europe. Why is "climate change mitigation" the #1 most expensive item? What the hell is that supposed to mean? 

I love how they slip "jobs" into the name of the bill, to get people to think "I might find work from this!" rather than "The government is taking my money to pay some other slob to show up!" Does no one recall how Obama's "shovel-ready jobs" boondoggle went down? There was something to shovel, all right, but it had nothing to do with infrastructure. 

Not one voter in a hundred will read the text of this ballot proposal beyond the title, so how do you think they will vote? I've seen signs around town promoting this ballot initiative, no doubt by the grifters who stand to make a fortune from it. I have not seen one sign saying "This will cost more than five billion bucks (including interest) for less than $100 million of value," which would be more accurate. No one will even know about it until election day, except for pests like me. So there goes a few more billion down the old wooden wastepipes.** We get broker and our energy supply gets more expensive and less reliable. The fat pigs at the trough get fatter. Sounds great.

I know this kind of crap goes on everywhere, but I have to get out of this state. New York in a more advanced state of stupidity, cynicism, greed, and decay. 

——

*Governor by accident Hochul has been obliged to try to bribe memory-chip company Micron with $5.5 billion of our money to try to get 9,000 jobs (maybe) upstate (eventually). Maybe if the state hadn’t done such a great job of screwing natural-born powerhouses like Kodak and General Electric, we wouldn’t be so desperate. (The companies themselves deserve a lot of blame, but manufacturing in New York is like running a triathlon with an anchor on your back.)

**I was not aware myself that of the last big environmental boondoggle, Pataki’s 1996 $1.75 billion proposition, about $182 million still has not been spent. So… they can’t figure out who needs those bribes before they authorize more? The environmental crisis is so acute that we can wait 26 years to do something? As Instapundit says, I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.

Two faces.

It's said that Henry VIII, king of England and all that, fell in love with his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, before he'd even met her. He had gazed upon her portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger and got all worked up. I recall hearing that Hank the Ocho was so thrilled when Anne's ship arrived that he rode his horse right up the gangway in excitement. 

She looks nice.

It fell apart quickly. Will Cuppy, in The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, puts it this way: 

"Anne of Cleves had been much admired in the Low Countries, but in England she just wouldn't do. The way she got herself up, they thought she was playing charades. Anne of Cleves couldn't play or sing like Anne Boleyn. She could only spin, and nobody asked her to spin. Henry had seen her portrait by Holbein. She was a picture bride. Cromwell, who had helped arrange the wedding, was beheaded nineteen days after the divorce."

Cuppy says in the footnote, "Henry should have beheaded Holbein instead." 

I don't want to be picking on Anne of Cleves, whose looks may not have been all that Holbein made her out to be, but whose brother was a leader of Protestants in Western Germany. Henry was eager to make an alliance with them. However, with her lack of English skills and yes, her looks not being what that fat bastard was hoping for, Henry said screw the alliance and it was soon off to wife #5, and Cromwell's head in a basket for good measure. 

But that's not why I bring up any of this. Paul Begala is credited with the notion that politics is show business for ugly people, and that's why I thought of poor Anne of Cleves. In show business, most people who aren't character actors are expected to be good-looking, but in politics, you can be ugly. In fact, some of them abuse the privilege. However, I've noticed that more politicians are trying to gussy themselves up for the campaign season than in years past. 

The literature that stuffs the mailbox and the online ads show much more appealing people than the ones we see out pressing the flesh. The problem is, because these are local guys and gals working retail politics, we know what they look like. A touched-up photo from 1999 isn't fooling anyone.

Of course, their opponents will gladly use more realistic visuals of these politicians, rendered in horror-movie black-and-white, with narration by murder-show enthusiasts. Sometimes you can't even tell it's the same person.

This goes for everyone in the stupid game of politics, so I'm not singling any party out. And because politics is stupid, maybe these gimmicks work, although it would have to be on the most easily swayed independent ninnies. I loathe our state's senators, and it has nothing to do with their looks; one is passable and the other looks like a gnarled catcher's mitt with glasses perched atop an enormous baked ham. They're both liars, socialism-for-thee-but-not-for-me creeps who would run over the bodies to get on camera even if the blood from the train wreck was still flowing. I wouldn't trust either of them to manage nap time at a preschool. Half the children would die and the rest found wandering across town five days later.

My point today, though, is that if you went by campaign literature, our political class would be a collection of fine-looking youth, happy warriors, and genial sages; to go by their opponents' literature, you would move away from them on the subway platform. We have to stop paying so much attention to looks, or the political class will keep treating us like morons. 

♔📖♔📖♔📖

COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: We all know the mnemonic to recite the ends of Henry VIII's wives: 

Divorced, Beheaded, Died

Divorced, Beheaded, Survived

Well, one of my all-time favorite book titles came from that, a youth novel by Barbara Williams published in 1987. If anyone out there has read it, I'd like your review; I never got a copy. The plot:

During a summer tour of England, two troubled teenagers--Lowell, upset by the remarriage of his mother, and Jane, a diabetic struggling to cope with her illness--come to terms with themselves and each other.

The title: Beheaded, Survived. 

I've had days like that. 

Pour one for the big guy.

Readers of a certain age will remember President Jimmy Carter's beloved but somewhat bumbling kid brother Billy Carter. Billy seemed much more like a good ol' boy than his big brother, and that in an era that honored rural down-home working folks.

Typical of Billy, though, he got in trouble. He once peed on an airport runway in full view of the press; worse, he got a $220,000 loan from Libya after registering as a representative of the country. That led to a Congressional investigation into Billy's influence peddling, which kind of ruined his good-ol'-boy-ness. It's not a good look for American small business owners and sons of the soil to represent OPEC nations. 

But while Billy's star was in the firmament, he inspired and recommended a beer called Billy Beer, sold in fine stores everywhere. 

Sure, the Secretary of the Treasury signs the money, but does he get to sign beer cans? No way.

Anyway, I've come up with a real winner of an idea. There's a little-known relative of the president, a son named Hunter, and I hear he likes to have a drink or two himself. I think we can make a deal to get him to endorse something like Billy Beer, maybe a malt liquor. Maybe a "fortified" malt liquor, you know? The way some delicious wines like M/D 2020 and Wild Irish Rose are fortified. And of course he would be paid in Fredcoin, the world's most Fred-like crytocurrency. 

Here's a mock-up of the label:

Trying to think of a good slogan, like "It'll Get You There" or "Throw Away Your Laptop and Forget Your Troubles" or "It's Like Kissing Your Sister-in-Law." I'm sure we can come up with something better. 

I'll be reaching out to the younger Biden soon to see what we can work out. Apparently Congress is just great with influence peddling now, so I doubt anyone will give him a problem on that end. And you know, they tell me that this Hunter fellow is a successful painter, which is great. My bathroom could use a fresh coat -- maybe we can add that to the deal.

Vote Socialism, Freeze in the Dark.

Got a little message from our utility company the other day, the people whom we rely on for our gas heat and stove and water heater and electricity. 

All the years I've lived here, through times of pricey fuel and reasonable fuel, I've never seen a message like this. So let's ask: Can you explain the high prices in more detail? 

The rising cost of natural gas supplies has increased customers’ natural gas and electric winter bills for Orange & Rockland (O&R) and the rest of New York State’s electric and gas utility companies.

The cost of natural gas has been driven upward as:

Demand for the commodity has risen,

Exports have increased, and

Supply is limited. 

These and other factors have caused a decline in the amount of natural gas in storage in the United States.

So, I looked to the Web to ask, Why could exports have been increased? Why is supply so limited? And the first hundred hits were all of the Don't Blame Us CYA variety of government data spewers and their flunkies in the press, along with environmental groups that are dancing in the cold for the high price of natural gas and petroleum. So I checked some of the sites of people actually in the business of natural gas production and sales, like Shell. I was surprised but not shocked to see that China is the world's largest importer of liquefied natural gas, which means that once again China's activity is helping ruin things for the rest of us. The United States leads the world in LNG exports, but it seems like we could use some of that stuff closer to home right now. I'd rather we had more fuel of our own and less cheap crap available in Walmart.

Then there's the problem of Europe getting its gas cut off by Russia because of the sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine. "Europe demand for LNG sets off global competition for supplies," says the International Energy Agency, and that "Russia’s continued curtailment of natural gas flows to Europe has pushed international prices to painful new highs". Gee, didn't someone give Russia a kind of backhand green light to invade Ukraine? I seem to recall something like that.

Of course, European leaders who have been bragging about dropping nuclear energy and going to solar and wind while really running everything on Russian natural gas are in for a colder winter than we are. How much does woodfire contribute to global warming? 

So long, Black Forest; nice knowin' ya. 

Speaking of which, New York closed its Indian Point nuclear power plant last year -- seems like we could have used some of that nice, clean, cheap nuclear-generated electricity this winter. Thanks, Governor Cuomo! Another win for you!

 

We could have been drilling for more natural gas, I suppose, but we're not supposed to do that anymore. Some folks like to say, "We can't drill our way to lower gas prices." And yet we're told that our high prices now are due to low supply. Gosh, doesn't that mean... help me out here... that if we made more supply by drilling... gas would cost... could it be?... LESS? Man, math is hard.

So, since O&R can't get more fuel, its only answer for us is "managing usage." In other words, freeze in the dark. 

Some of the tips they give are fine, and worth doing even when fuel is inexpensive. Get your heating system inspected and cleaned? Sounds great. But it's not free. It's another expenditure when homeowners are being stretched by inflation, but maybe it would pay for itself in fuel savings. Maybe. Also: tighten up insulation, switch to LED lights, use smart thermostats, and so on. That stuff is free, right? 

You ever get the feeling that the world is being run by the stupidest, most vile people imaginable? Some are just stupid; some are just vile; most are a happy combination of both. Vote them out before we aren't allowed to do it anymore.

Get out the dopes.

I see Google is getting into its usual act, trying to make it easier for people who are too dumb to vote to get out and vote. 

The company would deny that it's trying to get only one particular kind of voter -- Leftist -- just as it would deny that its search results skew toward liberal media sources on any topic. But we know. 

Leftists, who think they are smarter than us idiots, somehow always do things to try to get the least-informed people to notch a ballot, and do it as many times as possible. This has been going on since the big Democrat machines of the Boss Tweed era, but has been institutionalized since Bill Clinton's Motor Voter Act of 1993. The idea then was to latch on to dumdums who wouldn't cross the street to vote but had to go to the Motor Vehicles department in their state, and get them to register to vote. It was opposed at the time by Rightists, but not very strongly, because no one wants to say that people who couldn't care less about voting should be discouraged from doing so. 

Well, I'll say it. 

MTV got on the bandwagon back when its M stood for Music (I think now it stands for Moron). Back in 1990 the station promoted the Rock the Vote nonprofit to get know-nothings off the sofa and into the voting booths. It was nominally nonpartisan, but we all know the way dummies who think the government exists to rob from the rich and give to everyone else will vote -- "Robbing selective Peter to pay for collective Paul," as Kipling put it. Back then it was assumed that all the rich people were white-shoed Thurston Howell IIIs, who would be made to pony up so college students and dropouts alike could have a cornucopia of free stuff. 

Things look rather different now. The rich people are all into radical chic and the nation is a lot farther in debt -- and the welfare state has expanded far beyond the fever dreams of FDR. 

An uninformed -- or worse, misinformed -- population is not fit for representative government, and this was a key reason public education was accepted nationally. But now we find that public education is becoming a large source of misinformation for youth. Some things voters ought to know but don't include:

✅ How government spending and debt affects the value of money itself;

✅ How rich people hide their money to keep it safe from taxation in ways the middle class cannot do;

✅ How the middle class is the only thing that keeps serfdom at bay, by having the wherewithal to stand up for itself;

✅ How the rotten history of any other country on this earth compares to that of the United States;

✅ How bills really become laws in the current degraded state of Congress (see for example the monstrosity called Obamacare)*;

✅ How much harder life is for the ignorant;

✅ How stable marriage is the best defense against poverty for men and women;

✅ How education has been directed toward frivolous tribalism and away from important facts -- facts of life that continue to operate whether we are aware of them or not.

Unfortunately, the more our stupid citizens (and others), educated in terrible schools, get out there and vote, the more stupid government we are likely to have. The basics of civilized society are not that hard to master, and yet somehow people can get through graduate school and know nothing about them. Alas!

*For example, how Charles Rangel introduced a spending bill in the House (where all spending bills must originate) with the friendly and anodyne title of "Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009"; the bill got to the Senate where it was completely stripped of its title and all its innards, stuffed as full of pork and socialism as a Thanksgiving turkey, then reconciled with the House under its new monstrous form -- a Trojan House virus, if you will -- to pretend that the spending bill originated in the people's House as demanded by the Constitution. It should have been thrown out by the Supreme Court just for that. 

St. Prez.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." I think that can be said for the president. Absolutely nothing is going right for this man and his passel of pointy-heads, and everyone knows it. One suspects that even they know it, although if they admit it, it would be like saying, "Yeah, the emperor is naked, so what?" And then it gets even worse. 

They can't even do propaganda right. Say what you will about Obama, his people could do propaganda. Here's the famous St. Obama photo, the first of many where the president just happened to have his head inside a halo in news shots:

And here's Ol' Joe's people trying the same trick. 

The thing is, that doesn't look like a halo. The first thing I thought of was:

Which, no offense to Art Garfunkel, is not a halo. In a flash I thought the Prez had let his hair-plug maintenance get out of control in the hope of holding on to the youth vote. But alas, it seemed like the attempt to put the ring of holiness around President Biden instead put his head on a platter. Which, as much as we love St. John the Baptist, is not the kind of image a president wants to project.  

I'm sure that Trump's people tried to put out pictures like that, but the wire services wouldn't have run them anyway. He was in the Lyndon Johnson position -- Johnson who famously said, "If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'" 

Well, there's no point in pretending we're electing saints to any political offices. I think most politicians are working for the other side, IYKWIMAITYD. 

Kafka IRS.

Just over a week ago I ran what I called a work of art in Pointillism, designed to reflect my frustration while on hold with the Internal Revenue Service. 

I would like to point out that the United States government, through its collection agency, is proving to have that incredible combination of malice, inconsistency, and incompetence that makes for the worst kind of authority. Their stupidity has now cost me money and is likely to cost me more that I don't really owe, just to make them go away. 

In a nutshell:

1) I got a return for tax year 2020, but huge bill for 2021. Hmm... what changed between 2020 and 2021? Note that my wife was unemployed a good hunk of 2021 but was not collecting unemployment insurance or any other compensation in that time. We figured we'd be getting a return again, but no. In fact, with the money we'd paid out for various emergencies at the end of 2020, we were unable to pay the tax in a lump.  

2) When my accountant filed my taxes, he instituted an easy payment plan that the IRS will allow. You can pay whatever you are able per month, as long as it's paid up in a reasonable time. Downside: It requires a processing fee of $225. When you file your taxes, he told me, the IRS reviews the application and lets you know in 30 days if it accepts the plan.

3) So I waited to hear whether plan was accepted. I waited through April and May and most of June. 

4) In mid June I received bill from the IRS with penalties and fees and threats, demanding the whole amount. I sent an anxious text to my accountant, who failed to get back to me for a couple of days, so I texted him again. He assured me I must have misread the letter, so I emailed him a copy. Then he told me he could not help, because maybe the IRS screwed up, but he is not allowed to discuss my return with them. I thought the main point of having a CPA do your taxes was to have someone to act as an interlocutor with the IRS if things went sideways, but apparently not. 

5) I tried to deal with it by phone, but could not get through to the IRS. I'm sure my call is very important to them, but after spending almost an hour running into telephone trees like George of the Jungle, I decided to try the online contact option. Isn't that always easier? If you want help from Amazon (for example), you're much better off contacting them by email.

6) BUT, to deal with the IRS online, I had to prove my identity with driver's license, birth certificate or passport, Social Security card, a phone bill with current address--at least two serious forms of ID and one not-so-serious. All this to access ID.me system that they use, in a country where requiring an ID to vote is considered the equivalent of murder. I mean, I appreciate the IRS trying to keep scammers from getting my information, but I had trouble finding my birth certificate and my passport has expired. When I finally got it all scanned in, entered, and done, I had to wait for a video callback on my computer. Wait time was almost two hours. I hung around working for an hour and change, but had to take the junior dog out to pee (40 minutes left on the clock). We were outside for five minutes, and when I came back the call had bailed for "unknown" reasons. 

7) Back to the phone! I tried to call and after half an hour of weeding through branches got thrown off phone tree for call volume. How about that.

8) And I just gave up. I called the banker and arranged to have money removed from my piddling IRA to pay the bill. Four days later it was set, and I paid the IRS online immediately (that didn't require proof of identity). I didn't even try to fight the penalty and interest charges at that point. I was afraid they'd keep rolling up the charges and ruin our credit rating. 

9) Two days later I got a letter from the IRS that claimed to contain a payment voucher (although it says nothing about how much to pay or how much is owed) and/or an inquiry voucher (to mail in if I have a question, because it's 1920, I guess). I have no idea if this means that they have now approved the payment plan although I just paid off the balance in full. However, it may mean that even though I have just paid it all off, the IRS may think I also owe them the $225 fee for the payment plan I did not use. I would bet that whole $225 that I will get a bill from the IRS for $225. 

The IRS is like some kind of pagan god. It is inscrutable, it has a bad reputation, it may be appeased with massive sacrifices but it may not accept them as adequate anyway, and it can easily destroy a human being -- or at least a middle-class sucker with no resources to fight them--and that's when it's just being stupid, not actively evil. 

A sane country would have adopted a flat-tax plan, which would require a simple form and probably 1/100th of the employees, but that would leave no room for graft and political favors. The Internal Revenue "Service" should be abolished, the empty buildings destroyed, and the grown sown with salt so nothing can ever grow there again. 

Endorsement deal!

Welcome, friends, to another little chat with Fred, founder of everyone's favorite cryptocurrency, Fredcoin. Well, anyone who is anyone, that is. 

I'm happy to report that we have an endorsement from very high up--as high as you can get in this country. It is so gratifying to know that people do pay attention, you know? That they do see when you're working hard and doing things right. And here at Fredcoin, we never fail to not do things wrong. That's why, if loving us is wrong, you don't want to be right. Right? 

Anyway, here is the endorsement: 

I would like to thank the late President Woodrow Wilson for endorsing Fredcoin, even though he hated the Constitution more than any other president until the modern era, and even though he is dead. Wilson and I share something in common, in that my image is on Fredcoin, and his was on the famous $100,000 treasury note issued in 1934. 

That puts us both in select company with another famous American, the great Art Linkletter. 

Which will be worth more ultimately, the Fredcoin, the US Treasury Note, or the money from the Game of Life? It's a footrace at this point.

Meanwhile, I am hoping to get the coveted endorsement from Mr. Linkletter, the beloved entertainer who died in 2010. That would really send the value of Fredcoin soaring. Keep your fingers crossed, Fredcoin fans!

Opening schmeremonies.

If it were up to me, I would ignore the Winter Olympics this year. I certainly support Team USA, and I don't blame the athletes for going to the Games when the policy of the United States did not request that they boycott. But considering what a plague the host country has been and also has unleashed upon the world, I kind of feel like I wanted to sit this one out. 

Of course the Chinese Death Virus, a.k.a. COVID-19, which China accidentally set free and made sure spread throughout the world by allowing international flights out of Wuhan, is reason number one why the Olympics should have been left to die this year. About as bad as the spread of the virus was the spread of totalitarianism that came with it, prompting would-be banana republic dictators to seize emergency powers without end. As Jim Geraghty wrote, even before the pandemic, “We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.” 

Then there's the Uyghur slave labor situation. Is Chamath Palihapitiya right, that no one cares about the Uyghurs? No, of course not; anyone would be moved by the horrifying stories about these persecuted people. My sympathies were dampened for a while because the first Uyghurs I ever heard of were fifteen who had been captured by American forces and sent to Guantanamo in the early part of the War on Terror. However, China persecutes a lot of people, including Christian and Falun Gong practitioners and pretty much anyone who isn't Han, so it's easy to want to see common cause made for all those on the pointy end of the CCP spear. 

Of course, the saber-rattling against Taiwan and the crushing of Hong Kong haven't made the Chinese look nicer on the world stage. Nor has the new space race, including weaponized satellites and anti-satellite satellites, and the new nuclear race, including hypersonic missiles, made anyone get the warm fuzzies over the nation, either. Is this all meant to scare the world into compliance, ensure nationalist enthusiasm at home, or both? Or something more? 

And China's theft of intellectual property, which costs American companies alone something like $50 billion annually, not to mention the accompanying security risks, has never been and will never be seriously addressed by the CCP. They like it just fine.

The rampant corruption of American institutions, including colleges and universities and the government itself, by China is pretty well known but very seldom addressed. Even a Congressman who was (allegedly but almost certainly) banging a Chinese honeypot spy has been allowed to remain on the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism. When would this have been allowed in any sane era?

Which brings us to: Our worst problem may not be our enemies, but that we have the lousiest, dumbest, most laughable elite in the history of the nation, as is probably true throughout the West in the history of the world. Say what you will about the Spanish Inquisition, but remember that it came on the heels of overthrowing foreign conquerors. Spain went from a poor half-client state to a world power in a matter of decades. They were serious about fighting for themselves. Today in the West we have the Randy defense -- lie helplessly on the ground like a slug.

At least it is not likely that Xi or even Putin will start something serious during the Games, so there's that.

Anyway, what I saw of the opening ceremonies looked okay. It's always the same kind of thing. March of Nations was done to a sort of classical music's greatest hits --William Tell Overture, Pomp and Circumstance, Skater's Waltz, Bolero... I expected actor John Williams to appear and introduce the Polovtsian Dance Number 2 by Borodin.

But anyway, I did not have control of the remote, so the Opening Ceremonies were on. I was playing with the dogs, and killing pigs in Angry Birds Journey, which I will probably be doing as the Olympic Games continue. Too bad Nielsen can't register Watched But Indifferent at my household.

Newstalgia.

The 1954 film White Christmas isn't going to be running on a full-day marathon this year on AMC, but it's definitely on the schedule. I've wondered how this VistaVision classic had become so popular with viewers nowadays, when it had barely been seen on TV for decades. It's not a bad movie and it has some great songs, but why now?

The more I think of it, the less I think it has to do with the film's virtues, and more to do with the reasons for the current adulation of PBS painter Bob Ross (died 26 years ago) and PBS child friend Mr. Rogers (died 18 years ago). And that is: Because our culture today sucks eggs. 

It's no surprise that people my age and older find that the culture sucks. Ever since all the arts got targeted at people under thirty, everyone over thirty is obliged to find that these kids today blah blah blah. But I think that the kids themselves feel that they have terrible culture, and prefer to seek out things from a better one. Things like kindness without irony. Romance without the expectation of instant gratification--or the beartrap of sexist accusation. Calm without a horrific storm. Entertainment, in other words, without a sucker punch.

I've heard people my age say the reason kids are so unhappy is because their music sucks. Well, a lot of the music from my generation sucked too, but most of the singers weren't swearing like Bowery bums or threatening everybody or, worst of all, using AutoTune.

Why do we have such a horrible culture? A few reasons. One is the long-held belief dating at least to Freud that the more awful something is, the more true it must be, since everything we do is meant to conceal the awful truth. Or something like that. Also, there are rewards for shocking the jaded, but that ratchet effect has been going on for a long time. There's not much room left on the jack. And finally, we live with a culture that has the idea that everything--that's the total in totalitarianism--has to support THE MISSION. So every book, movie, TV show, etc. has to have some propaganda in it. At the very least, even for people who are 100% behind THE MISSION, that means all entertainment is injected with a dose of homework. Who wants that after an exhausting day? 

My feeling is that this stuff is going to continue until some bright publisher or producer realizes that there's a strong market for new stuff that satisfies the way these cultural items of the past do. I think the infamous Hallmark movies are doing that now, which is why the fans of those aren't all the people that the intelligentsia expect--trailer-park yahooettes. It's much more widespread than that. 

We need some kind of culture that is fit for common consumption, that is not soaked in propaganda. The products of our current culture are in effect designed to put decent people at one another's throats all the time. How long are we going to support garbage like that?