Yesterday It Was RECESSION

Yesterday, the markets were swirling lower and "experts" were saying it was due to the impending recession coming because of tariffs.  This morning, the markets look to recover all that was lost yesterday.  I don't see any reports where experts say that the recession is no longer a threat, though.  The point is that whenever the stock market goes down, the media's so called experts tie it to President Trump. When the market goes up, Trump is never mentioned. 

No one knows for certain why the market moves as it does.  The experts are just offering educated guesses.  Still, it would be nice to think that these folks are at least honest in those guesses.  Using the stock market as yet another way to bash President Trump for political reasons is a waste of our time.  

So Tell Us Your Proposal

We're back in the twilight zone again in the gun control debate.  A crazed shooter who had failed a background check for buying weapons started shooting people in Odessa, Texas the other day.  As soon as it happened, the usual drumbeat started.  This is all President Trump's fault, we were told by the media.  Then it turned out that the shooter was actually a left wing Democrat with a Beto O'Rourke bumber sticker on his truck.  That story line immediately disappeared.  Instead we got the one in which Republicans are trying to hide behind the Second Amendment to block any "common sense gun safety measures."  That's the current line on MSNBC and CNN.  But here's the problem:  as usual, we never get told just what constitutes "common sense gun safety measures."

Think about it.

Universal background checks is a biggie insofar as gun control talking points go.  It has a major problem, however.  Almost all gun purchases in the USA are already subject to background checks.  The Las Vegas shooter who killed over 50 got all his weapons legally and passed background checks.  The same was true of many of the other recent shooters.  Then there's the people like the Odessa shooter who failed background checks but still got the weapons he needed for his attacks.  The truth is that of the last 10 mass shootings, not a single one would have been stopped if we had universal background checks.  Indeed, other than creating paperwork, bureaucracy and red tape, there's nothing to indicate that background checks actually work.

Another big point from the gun control lobby is that we need to ban assault weapons.  That too has a problem  In the 1990's we had an assault weapons ban.  There was no appreciable drop in shootings when it was in place.  In fact, that was the main reason why the ban was allowed to expire without being renewed.  It didn't work.  Over 95% of all gun shot wounds come from hand guns, not rifles or shotguns.  Assault weapons sound bad, but they are rarely used in crimes.

But what about banning extra large magazines.  If the shooter has to stop to reload more often, we will see fewer shots fired and more chances for escape or to take out the shooter.  That may sound good, but it just doesn't take very long to change magazines.  A shooter could get 10 magazines that hold ten bullets each or five that hold 20 and there's not an appreciable difference in how long it would take to get off 100 rounds.

There are silly proposals like Old Joe Biden's today in which he called for banning all magazines that hold one or more bullets.  That's basically every gun out there.  I doubt Old Joe even understands that.  This is a guy who says he was a "hunter".  Either his mind is going (very possible) or the only thing he ever hunted for was a good bargain at the local liquor store.

So here's the problem.  Each of the usual proposals is fatally flawed.  None of them would work to reduce gun deaths.  As a result, the gun control lobby just stopped mentioning specific proposals and they talk about common sense gun safety laws.

If there are actually proposals short of gun confiscation that could reduce gun fatalities, I'm sure that a majority of Americans would support them.  On the other hand, if the gun control issue is one that is just used by the Democrats to try to bludgeon their opponents while not helping solve the problem, then it's time for them to just shut up about it.

Worse Than Hypocrisy

Have you ever seen a story where something someone said twenty years ago is used against them politically? If you pay attention to the news at all, the answer to that question has to be YES.  All kinds of nominees for judicial or executive positions in the government are regularly scrutinized with regard to their past statements.  We've all seen some person questioned because he or she wrote a sentence or two in an undergraduate paper while in college that by today's standards is considered not politically correct.  The same is true of reporters and other public figures.  All manner of people have had problems due to things they said in the past (whether or not the problems were deserved.)

Now, things have supposedly changed depending on the target.  Recently, an editor of the New York Times was exposed for having sent some very anti-Semitic messages a few years ago.  The Times claimed to be horrified not at the messages, but rather at the thought that anyone would look into the blatant bigoted bias of its editors and reporters.  A new group is actually being formed to systematically look into the backgrounds of the reporters and editors at mainstream media outlets in order to expose bigotry, sexism, racism or the like demonstrated by those folks.  The result is a meltdown by the powers that be in the mainstream media.  They're fine with exposing others, but if someone wants to expose them, it's an attack on the First Amendment.

I wonder if these people have ever looked at Media Matters.  That's a site that exists just to attack any conservative in media.  They seem to have no limits on the matters they "investigate".  Why should a mirror image site investigating liberals/progressives in media be improper if Media Matters is fine?

I should be used to the total hypocrisy of the mainstream media.  In this case, however, their conduct is so far beyond ordinary hypocrisy that I am still shocked by it.

Is Omar About To Lose It?

For the last few years, Ilhan Omar has been the subject of a number of reports regarding her personal scandals.  She has been alleged to have fraudulently married her own brother so that he could get a visa to come to the USA.  She has also been alleged to have violated campaign finance laws as well as tax laws.  Her anti-Semitic and bigoted words have been thrown back at her.  And through it all, she has remained a darling of the far left mainstream media.  Any attack on her, no matter the truth, is denounced as racist.  But now, that support may be ending.  It seems that her latest alleged scandal could be bringing Omar down.  The congresswoman was named as the other woman in a divorce action brought by the wife of one of Omar's campaign consultants.  Omar has refused to comment on the allegations claiming that even the questions are inappropriate.  Still, it seems quite possible that the married Omar had an affair with one of her staffers who himself was married.

Here's Omar's problem in a nutshell.  So far, Omar's actual husband has said nothing regarding the scandal.  It's one thing to stay quiet to protect his wife from the consequences of tax or immigration fraud.  It's something entirely different to protect his wife from the consequences of her cheating on him with one of her employees.  That doesn't play quite as well.  Omar's husband may be only too happy to hit his wife in revenge for cheating on him.

There's still no definitive proof one way or the other of which I am aware regarding the allegations of cheating.  One thing is certain, though, Omar has no cards to play on this one.  If her husband confirms the charges, she is in deep trouble.  It's not that her constituency will evict her from office just because she cheated on her husband, but rather that this will likely start a cascade of all the other scandals being believed.

let's hope that this disgusting bigot is ousted from Congress after this term.

For Beto, Complete Defeato

I happily watched as that Democrat doofus, Beto O'Rourke has failed miserably in his run for the presidential nomination.  This was a guy who was up near the top of the heap when he decided to run.  He had glowing articles written about him in places like Vanity Fair and other left wing pop news sites.  Then America got to see the guy.  We saw him getting a haircut.  We saw him at the dentist.  We saw him just about everywhere besides his bathroom and his bedroom.  We watched him flap his arms as if he were trying to take flight.  We watched him jump on tables to address smaller and smaller crowds.  We watched him "relaunch" his campaign and when that didn't work, we watched him "relaunch" his campaign a second time.  We never heard a coherent argument from the guy why he ought to be president.  All he did was show us his life and throw out applause lines (or what he thought would be applause lines) by taking more and more outrageous left wing positions.

Today, there was a new development.  For the first time, there was a national poll (by IBD/TIPP) in which Beto got a grand total of 0% support.  That's right NO SUPPORT.

It's time for O'Rourke to leave the race.  America really doesn't want to see his daily embarrassment as he starts rivaling Bill DeBlasio for the candidate with the least support.  

Old Joe's Defense: "Details Don't Matter"

After days, weeks and months of Old Joe Biden flubbing lines, mangling words, making up stories of his past and just plain getting things wrong on the campaign trail, the Biden campaign is out with a new defense.  The new line is that details don't matter; America has to look at the big picture.  Biden says that the details won't matter when he, as president, makes a decision on whether or not to go to war.  Really, the guy actually said that.....in public, no less.  Let's follow that one through.  Suppose, God forbid, there's a major terrorist attack by the remnants of ISIS and Biden decides that America must retaliate.  The only thing is that Biden forgets some details like which terror group is responsible or where the leaders of that group are located.  Does he launch a war on the wrong group or at the wrong place?  And if he does, does he then tell the country that he just got a few details wrong?  Is he freaking kidding?

This has to be the lamest excuse ever heard in American politics.  If it's not the lamest, it's certainly bad enough to make it into the hall of fame for lame excuses.

Tariffs And Other Taxes

I heard three different reports this morning about how the fact that the stock market futures are down by 0.75% today shows that the President's China trade policy is a failure.  The only rational response to this drivel is "Huh?"  Think about it.  The market goes up and down every day.  Despite scores of people who tell us why it has moved (always after the fact), no one knows for sure.  A move of less than 1% is not unusual.  Sure, we would rather see the market up 0.75% than down 0.75%, but such a move is hardly a big one.  So there's really no reason why the usual sort of move down in the futures means much of anything.  It's certainly not proof of the effect of the China trade policy.  At most, it means that some money managers are nervous about trade policy, but even that is a big stretch given the actual evidence.

The reality is that we are many months away from knowing if the trade policy will ultimately succeed and the extent of such success.  All we have now are opinions from biased sources.  The reality is that anyone who "reports" that a normal-sized one day move in the stock futures is definitive proof, is actually someone who has a conclusion without proof and is looking for something, anything to try to bolster that position.