Alternative History

     Two weeks into the Trump era and depending on how a person chooses to look at things, it's been a pure debacle or its been an amazing spectacle of a politician actually doing the things he said he would do on the campaign trail. Its odd the amount of gnashing of teeth Trump has caused when you consider his actual moves are well within what any Republican president and most Democrats would do. A temporary travel/refugee ban on countries in a war zone has been a regular practice since at least 1979 and Obama himself did it in 2011 for longer than Trump will. The decision to apply it to legal, green card holding immigrants (if that was the intention, I've read conflicting things) and other people already approved to come to the U.S. is insanely cruel and certainly gives ammunition to people who just think it's racist. Aside from that element it's a perfectly mainstream order. The Supreme Court nomination, federal worker hiring freeze, regulation roll backs, threatening the UN and building a border fence are things that any Republican would claim to do. The border fence was actually approved back in 2007, I believe, it was just never funded.

     Its possible that any Republican would generate the same amount of anger from the left that Trump has, protesting being a liberals number one leisure time activity, but there is no way to know for sure. What the reaction has shown clearly though is that people have no sense of history beyond the currentness of their own lives and no sense of what role a President really has in the long term direction of the country.

     After all, when you look back on history, aren't almost all Presidents objectively failures or at best a non-entity in history? Lets examine!

     The first group of Presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe) were important as Presidents but the bulk of their fame comes from their role in the founding of the nation. Their presidential activities often don't measure up to their revolutionary achievements.

     The second group (Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Filmore, Pierce, Buchanan) is mostly forgettable. The notable exception is Andrew Jackson, whose terms are fascinating in many ways but whether he was good or not depends on if a person thinks the Trail of Tears was an abomination of cruelty or if it was an act that saved thousands of Native Americans from getting slaughtered by militia type groups in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc. Plenty of support for both sides of that argument. Hard to argue 4,000 dead natives was a smashing success.

     Then we come to Lincoln. Winner all around

     Fourth group (Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, Cleveland again, McKinley) are all post Civil War reconstruction presidents and aside from Grant being seen as a war hero and poor James Garfield getting assassinated, none of them were much to read about.

     Then we get to Teddy Roosevelt. By popular acclaim he seems to be viewed as a good President  and while I think you could argue a strict examination of his policies would make him less popular today than he is, he did begin in some ways the progression from a civil war era nation into what we see today. He goes on the good list.

     Now we are getting to a modern age of Presidents. Group Five (Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover) Taft was moderate but Wilson had overtly racist policies, was weak on WWI and was in charge for prohibition. Harding was caught up in bribery and affair scandals while generally being ineffective and died with a year left. Coolidge is well liked by Conservatives but dislike by Liberals and generally didn't make huge waves. Hoover supported prohibition and had shanties named after him. Three failures in this bunch.

     Now that we are in the very modern time, lets quickly categorize the rest:

FDR: While I personally find FDR destructive to the nation, he was successful in that he campaigned on a bunch of left wing stuff and successfully implemented it.
Truman: WW2, Marshall Plan, NATO. winner.
Eisenhower: even. nothing majorly good or bad. Korean war notwithstanding.
Kennedy: Died to soon to have a major accomplishment. Cuban Missile Crisis was partly his making.
Johnson: Failure. Vietnam and the war on poverty have been dismal and cancel out whatever good came from great society laws. Spied on MLK.
Nixon: Failure.
Ford. Even.
Carter: Failure
Reagan: Success, in the same way FDR was a success driving progressive liberalism, Reagan sparked a conservative resurgence.
Bush: even.
Clinton: even. Successful economy driven by a Republican Congress almost wiped out by sex scandals and the failures in Somalia and Rwanda.
Bush 2: Failure. Strong 9/11 response but having a Republican dominated Congress led to no noticeable conservative redirection of the government.
Obama: Failure: Obama gets a failing grade because so much of what he did that liberals love was implemented by executive order and have been wiped out in just a few days of a Trump presidency. FDR on the other hand was able to cement his leftist agenda in laws that have withstood the test of time. Obama is destined to go down in history like JFK, inspiring to millions but without much foot print legislatively.

    So what does it all mean? By my count we have 10 Presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Lincoln, Roosevelt, FDR, Truman and Reagan) who can be considered "good" or "effective". We have 7 (Wilson, Harding, Hoover, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Obama) that can be considered failures. That leaves 28 that either didn't do anything notable, died before they had time to shine or were just too mixed a bag to judge as good or not.

     That brings us back to liberal anguish. Ideologically speaking they view the government as a force that needs to be harnessed to compel the people into "just" and "decent" behavior. With a colossal narcissist/douche like Trump in the office they can only envision a future full of misery and injustice. They view every action as some sort of fascist plot (proving that they also don't know what fascism is) and they freak out. This reaction is in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. The United States has been a force for good since the day it was born. While not every moment of our history has been sparkling it has always been on an upward projection, despite 35 of 45 Presidents being do nothings or actively bad.

     What that should tell us the people of the US living their lives and participating in local government have far more impact on what kind of country this is than whatever suit lives in the White House. This is by design, the President was never meant to have a King-like impact on the day to day character of the United States, only the people can determine that. While the chief executive can do some inexplicable things, they are only temporary and are subject to correction by the voting public. If this wasn't the case, then the list of forgettable names and outright scumbags surely would've doomed this country long before Trump weaponized twitter.

   

   

Can't Spell Stupid Without E.U.

If it wasn't abundantly clear what a fraud the European Union was, it has become increasingly clear this week.

The good people of the Great Britain have quite correctly come to the realization that the E.U. "deal" is a crock of shit and have managed to get a referendum vote to remove the anchor from their collectivist throat.

Doing what any spineless organization does, the E.U. leaders in Brussels have offered the Brits a special deal to try and keep/bribe them from leaving. Regardless of whether or not the deal is any good, I assume it isn't, the whole situation just illustrates that the entire E.U. endeavor is a fantastic lie from start to finish.

Just look at how the basic tenants of the E.U. have been undermined. All nations are supposed to follow basic rules concerning fiscal responsibility, migrant movement, etc. based on the leftist wet dream of collective responsibility and accountability. How has that been going?

Poor countries, led by Greece but occasionally joined by Portugal, Spain and Ireland, have flagrantly spent themselves into near oblivion, running up debt margins that are unsustainable. The repercussions have been essentially nothing and the rich E.U. nations have been forced to subsidize the Greeks through loans. Despite this, the Greek people had the bravery to reject austerity measures from the E.U, as conditions for the loans. They got the loans anyway.

Next was the Middle East refugee crisis. Most E.U. nations admitted some refugees and almost immediately regretted it. After attempting to stop the flow of people into their countries, the richest E.U. nation, Germany, decided to strong arm everyone else into accepting tons of new people. The experiment has gone terribly and some nations are now unilateral preventing or removing refugees from their countries.

Now we have the British, just by threat of leaving, get a "special deal" to keep them in line. Why are they special? Isn't the E.U. good for everyone? If it had any principles or authority wouldn't there be some mechanism for keeping countries in line? This is like Abe Lincoln deciding to give the South more slaves to keep them from seceding.

Just to recap; poor countries can intentionally bankrupt themselves and rich countries without any repercussions, rich countries can unilaterally drive such important policies as immigration over the objections of all the other countries just because they want to and certain countries, based on nothing, can get special sweetheart deals just by threatening to leave.

What kind of crackpot confederation is this? The Greeks and the Brits should both run screaming for the exits the second they get the chance. Being a part of collective exploitation makes no practical sense for anybody.

And you stole your flag design. Poorly. Real clever.

A Hardy Problem

Dallas Cowboys DE Greg Hardy sent the media into a frenzy this past week by seeming to show no remorse at all about being suspended for four games because he beat the hell out of his girlfriend, threatening to kill her and throwing her on a pile of rifles. Hardy made some odd remarks about Tom Brady's wife and a video was released where he was rapping surrounded by strippers.

Clearly Hardy hasn't and isn't going to change because he got suspended for a while without being convicted of anything. There were of course calls for him to be suspended forever or until he showed enough contrition for his actions. Some media types saw Hardy's continuing presence in the NFL as an affront to women everywhere, as if by letting Hardy return the NFL is complicit in his actions.

The argument that Hardy should not be allowed to play is baffling and exposes the problem with how poorly equipped society and the judicial system is to deal with people who exist in the margins. People who are squeaky clean are good to go with no stigma. People like Charles Manson get to die in jail and we all think this is justice. But what do we do with people like Hardy, who have not been convicted of anything but are reprehensible, or people who have been convicted but have served their time?

What possible good does it do the country to bar these people from working in their field of expertise? Is the world any better off now that Ray Rice can't find work? Or was the nation improved by the dentist who killed that lion having to shut down his practice? Of course not. All that does is put people who were safely self sufficient (and their kids) at risk of going broke and becoming a burden to the state. This is especially true in the Hardy case. What secondary career is he going to get into if he can't play football? I'm sure he doesn't have an MBA laying around waiting for him to start using. It seems almost guaranteed that an asshole like Hardy will get into trouble if he has to try and find a new way to earn a living.

People will of course complain that playing football is a privilege and shouldn't be open to people who behave like Hardy and that to allow him to play rewards his behavior. This is pure nonsense. Professional sports is one of the few merit based institutions left and you only get to work there if you prove yourself to be deserving every week. Also, you can punish people without making it impossible for them to work.

It seems that people today, especially in the media, are so focused on being the first to be outraged over everything that they simply can't think logically. No matter how many people think that banning Hardy from the NFL is justice, banning him doesn't mean he simply vanishes in a puff of smoke, never to offend our fair senses again. He, like all the other people who live in the grey area of life, will continue to exist in the country and they can either be a positive or negative element. As a country we should be more interested in assembling a judicial system that works to the benefit of the country rather than creating additional burdens. If people commit crimes they should be tried and punished and possibly jailed but when they are finished with that we should demand that they do work as much or more than their fellow citizens so they can pay us all back for the cost it took to process them through the legal system. True justice for Hardy would be forcing him to play for the Cowboys during the day for 12 million and then making him clean the stadium at night for minimum wage. Garnish both wages if you want, that would be just and proper, but don't ban them from working. All that does is victimize all the rest of us by forcing us to subsidize their continued existence through government aid.

Now That We Know - S5E1 - THE WARS TO COME

Now that all of season 5 of Game of Thrones has finished assaulting our sense of decency, lets review all the episodes and see if knowing the entire picture makes the individual episodes any better or worse.

 "The Wars to Come" - *SPOILERS, BOOK AND SHOW*

OPENING: The opening credits and previously on last roughly half my life. Cersei flashback doesn't play a role in the rest of the season unless I'm missing something. Does clue us in to Myrcella's fate though. No need to cut your thumb that deep for a psychic reading either, just a prick will do.

KINGS LANDING: Jaime seems oddly ambitious about the family legacy he previously gave away. Does support his motivation for sneaking into Dorne, I guess. Relationship with Cersei is pretty much gone at this point. P90Lancel makes an appearance and pretty much announces that he's going to tell everyone about Cersei's crimes at some point. This makes Cersei's cavalier attitude with the Loras/Margarey/High Sparrow situation more baffling. Chekovs birthmark gets put on the shelf and the ham-fisted way its compared to Dorne foreshadows perfectly the nightmare that is the Dorne plot.

PENTOS: The Tyrion and Varys banter is a nice light touch in a dark season. Glad it came back at the end. Not sure why Illyrio Mopatis isn't in the episode. Did the actor die? I'm not googling it. Varys speech about how he supports Daenerys is longer than the amount of time Tyrion and Daenerys spent together in Mereen. I feel like this is the first of the power=cruelty speeches we get this year.

MEREEN: The CGI for tearing down that harpy looks expensive. I think we could've lost that scene and paid for a Strong Belwas, no? Stalwart Shield getting killed by a harpy are our first signs that the Sons of the Harpy are a killing machine (with popular support) and that the Unsullied are not near as good as advertised. I was originally annoyed by the Grey Worm/Missandei stuff but knowing that Grey Worm disappears after getting stabbed makes it more palatable. Boring speech on fighting pits. One of many. I didn't realize until now that Daario is the smartest person in Mereen. The dragons seem wild in this episode yet pretty under control when they get fed a noble later in the season. Maybe Quentyn has been doing some secret training.

THE WALL: Ah Snow, why did you train Olly so well? Its bizarre that it takes 10 episodes to get Sam and Gilly on the road. She's actually pleading not to be sent away after explaining that everyone hates her. Just odd. Melisandre has that smug look rocking and asks about Jons virginity. Maybe shes just nuts. I forgot Stannis was trying to get the wildlings to fight for him all the way in ep. 1. Without the Mance glamouring/Rattleshirt plot, the whole Mance plot is meaningless. I wonder how many people Stannis burns alive before Shireen? THE COUNT: 1. (Mance)

THE VALE: Sweetrobin fighting is the best part of the season. He would have died of seizures though. This Dark Sansa ploy is complete nonsense knowing how she ends up. Brienne makes it clear that she considers her debt to the Stark girls paid and wants no more to do with it. I believe she changes her mind but ultimately she does in fact give up that duty. Littlefinger doesn't give us much but his plan makes no sense.

 DOES ANY ONE SAY THE TITULAR LINE? Yes! Mance says it to Stannis right before he burns. "I wish you luck in the wars to come."

 ATROCITIES? One. Burning Mance. Although book readers know Cersei kills her friend in a well shortly after the flashback. Not on screen, so it doesn't count.

ANYONE SEE A GREYJOY? Nope.

 RESULT: About what I remember but it is surprising to see how many plot points dragged on the full 10 episodes. Also, the Tyrell/Littlefinger plots go unresolved.

Can't-or

Mid-term elections are so much more fun than Presidential year elections. Occasionally you see incumbents really have to work to not get ousted in primaries or the general election.

Eric Cantor found out the hard way just how special mid-terms can be as he pulled off a feat few people think is possible.

He got fired for being a shifty, rat-faced liar.

That's pretty hard to do in Washington but somehow Cantor managed to take the lofty position of House Majority Leader and alienate everyone so badly that a college professor, of all people, and a wave of sickly/horny South American child refugees were enough to get him his ass kicked by someone named Dave Brat.

Its hard to believe that just a few years ago Cantor was a Tea Party favorite that some people (including me) thought might be good for the White House. Then Cantor, as well as the no good disgrace that is Kevin McCarthy, dedicated his life to becoming John Boehner's acolyte. Out went the small government, tea party ideals. All he did was push for amnesty and make excuses as to why they can't stop President Obama's obvious constitutional power violations.

Those are bad enough but his biggest flaw, in my mind, is that he went along with Boehner in trying to stifle dissent.They supported any incumbent who was on their team no matter how liberal they were. Along the way they spiked some good conservatives who could have really helped a moribund Congress make some real changes. His decided to be John McCain to Boehner's Mitch McConnell.

Luckily for all of us, the good people of Virginia took the weak minded impostor out behind the woodshed with the family shotgun. Hopefully the sound will reverberate all the way out to California, Ohio and Wisconsin (yes, Paul Ryan, you) in time to motivate a significant attitude change in leadership. Obama still has two years left to wreak even more havoc like he's done along the border. The least you guys could do is try and stop him.

The Crazy World of Vic Ortiz

Victor Ortiz had himself another fight this weekend and did some pretty Victor like things.

The fight seemed to be going his way, despite being penalized for trying to bludgeon Josesito Lopez's brainstem while he was down. Then, in a way that must have made Money Mayweather smile, Lopez broke Ortiz's jaw in two places leaving Ortiz unable to close his mouth or even stop the river of blood that spewed forth from it. Ortiz ended the fight by quitting on the stool.

On the surface, it seems like Ortiz pulled a coward's move. Then you look at his jaw and the forgiveness sets in. Had Ortiz not caved in to Chino Maidana I doubt that this would be seen in such as harsh light.

It does make you wonder what exactly to make of Ortiz. Sure he's quit on the stool twice. But when he's in the ring he seems to have no trouble with getting hit repeatedly. The popular consensus on the web today is that Ortiz is just nuts and that may be true. His propensity for violence and uncontrolled rage in the ring are striking, especially when compared to his Spicolli-esque, laid back attitude out of the ring.

I think most people are over-thinking the subject. I think Ortiz is just as nuts as any other fighter but not any more so. Maybe less so given his ability to accurately judge what the end result of the Maidana fight would be (him going blind) and acting accordingly. He has two problems that amplify each other. The first one is that he doesn't know how not to get hit. Lopez, drilled him repeatedly with power shots as did Mayweather before him, and Berto before him, and Maidana before him. His second, and more troubling issue is that his only response to adversity is escalating violence. Hit him hard and he tries to hit you harder, if he can't and you keep hitting him he starts to go a little nuts out of frustration and begins rabbit punching, wild hooks and if none of that works he'll just try and break your jaw with the top of his head.

He's not totally unlike another ring-nut, Andrew Golota. Both of them are fighters who have no ability to adjust and reattack in the face of adversity. They both only know how to escalate what they are already trying until it reaches its predictably ridiculous apex. It's tempting to classify Golota as a more dirty fighter but punching a guy in the nuts repeatedly is probably less dangerous than flying headbutts and vicious hits to the back of the head.

I suspect that if Ortiz fought Lopez 10 times he would win 9 of them and the discussed rematch will probably go Ortiz's way. That won't change the fact that he's just an incomplete fighter right now. I don't think the coward label will stick to him just because the Berto fight was so brutal and his jaw was broken so badly against Lopez that it doesn't compare to the Maidana fight. If he doesn't defend any better or learn how to set up combinations though, Ortiz will always be a victim of his own limitations and frustrations which will no doubt lead to more and more bizarre incidents.

Of Mice and Milbanks

Dana Milbank chose to chime in on Indiana's GOP Senate primary yesterday and the argument presented is as logically unsound as I've seen in quite some time. Clearly Milbank is distraught over the prospect of incumbent Dick Lugar losing his primary to challenger Richard Murdock. That's not too surprising, Milbank is a liberal and Lugar is an old school moderate Republlican while Murdock is a tea party backed, fiscally conservative state treasurer. It's such an ill-argued perspective that it needs to broken down a bit, argument by argument.

1. Voting for Mourdock in Unpatriotic
Milbank's biggest argument is that Lugar has worked for years to end nuclear proliferation, recently working with president Obama to update his signature Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act which uses American money to pay for the removal of nuclear weapons agreed to in other treaties, like all the SALT treaties. The problem with this is twofold. First of all, the idea that supporting nuclear nonproliferation means you should go unopposed for your life is asinine. I'm sure Mourdock is against other nations nuking up as well, perhaps just by other methods. The second problem is that Lugar is working to enforce Obama's ludicrous nuclear policies. The President has made it a point to cut defense spending an unilaterally slashing our own nuclear stockpiles while the Russians do nothing. He is also allowing Iran to arm up and doing nothing to help solve the issue of potentially rouge nuclear weapons in failing states in Pakistan and North Korea. Lugar is simply enabling Obama to score public relations points for a horribly flawed foreign policy. Did Lugar receive anything for working with the President? Tougher stances on Russia, Korea or Iran? Less cuts to our own stockpile? Nope.

2. Dick Lugar is a Conservative. No! He really, Really IS!
No sir, he is not. The 77% conservative rating from the American Conservative Union that Milbank touts as proof is really not very good. Combine that with Lugar's approval of the START Treaty, the assault weapons ban and the Dream Act show that Lugar is not opposed in any way to a big spending, massive federal government. Milbank also cites Lugar's opposition to Obama's massive stimulus programs as proof of his conservatism but he fails to mention Lugar's support for President Bush's massive failure of a stimulus program the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This shows Lugar to be more of a political opportunist than a principled politician who sticks to his guns. If Milbank wants to make the argument that Lugar should stay because moderates are good then that's a different argument. He should not be making the patently false argument that Lugar is a conservative while Mourdock is a nut. Mourdock is a conservative while Lugar is a moderate.

3. Mourdocks is Playing Dirty Politics While Lugar Is Pure as Fresh Snow
Give me a break. Politics is a rough business and Lugar knows that full well in his three decades in office. Milbank dislikes Mourdock ads which shows Obama praising Lugar because it cuts off the end where it says that the praise was for the Nunn-Lugar Act. This is irrelevant. Being Obama's favorite Republican senator is bad under any context. The President's policies have been so detrimental to the economy that no Republican senator should work with him on anything until some of the more pressing issues are addressed. To leave off the end isn't a lie or dirty in any way. if Lugar doesn't want things like this showing up in commercials then he shouldn't take photo ops with a deeply unpopular president that he is enabling. Milbank goes further down the rabbit hole by using a Lugar press release bragging about the Nunn-Lugar act as proof that Lugar is committed to substance while Mourdock's support from Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Grover Norquist is proof that he isn't. Right. Using Lugar's own words against him and accepting support from popular conservatives is shady business indeed. What Milbank does unintentionally is show why Lugar needs to go. Lugar is such an entrenched, D.C. establishment Republican that he hasn't even lived in Indiana for over 30 years. Yet during all that time in the Senate all Milbank or Lugar can tout is the Nunn-Lugar Act from 1992 and revised in 2006. In this long and convoluted argument Milbank points to no other legislation or action that would give a person reason to vote for Lugar. Lugar himself seems not to be able to produce anything other than that as well. In a political season where the number one issue is undoubtedly the economy, a person would think that a seasoned politician like Lugar would be bringing out the long list of his accomplishment that stimulated the economy instead of his "protecting the world from nukes" portfolio. I suspect the reason for this is that Lugar doesn't really have a pro-growth platform to show off.

I would personally argue that the fact that a vacuous, vapid thinker like Milbank came to Lugar's defense is proof positive that Lugar needs to go. It's not dirty politics or even particularly sad. President Obama, supported by people like Milbank, has taken the country in such a radically left direction that the people are revolting and going further right in response. This creates a climate where people like Dick Lugar,Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett can no longer pretend to be conservative while voting like a liberal. You see the same thing in the Democratic party where Nancy Pelosi has done her best to drum out all the Blue Dog Democrats in favor of far left candidates. All of this is simple politics and nothing else. Milbank is just a simple mind who sees the tides changing against his team and is lashing out.