Asking The Greek Question Here

A while back, I posed the question that I think Europe should be asking re:Greece as well as themselves: How can you earn enough money to repay your debts?

This is a pretty simple question, one even an academic might be able to understand. I blogged about the Walmart crowd yesterday - many of them obese, covered in tattoos and speaking pidgin English. I couldn't figure out just what these people are supposed to do with their lives once academics raised the minimum wage to the point where machines were cheaper than hiring them. Meaningful work, at almost any wage, adds crucial value to life. An alternative of watching daytime TV (or worse) while collecting welfare is a living death.

These people are God's children, too, worth in His eyes as much as any of us.

In any case, that wasn't my primary thought while wandering the aisles of Walmart. Each one of those folks owes about $60K in government debt and that's just at the Federal level and doesn't include unfunded liabilities like Social Security.

What kind of idiot thinks these people are going to be able to pay that back or service our ever-growing debt? Who could be so unfeelingly cruel as to load them up with so much debt, without them really knowing or understanding? These are the people who will end up losing their jobs, having their bank accounts frozen and watching the elderly in their communities begging in the streets. Meanwhile, the academics running our government, both Republican and Democrat, will be smart enough to diversify their investments and escape the worst of it.

Really, what I thought as I watched a tough-looking hombre who was covered in skull and gun tattoos (who was shopping with his mommy) was, "Why shouldn't he get all those tats? If the women in front of him want to skip out of school in 8th grade and eat until they swell up like beach balls, why shouldn't they? If they want to live that kind of life, who has the right to raise wages until they can't find jobs and pile debt on them until we all go bankrupt and they take the worst of it?"

Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew, graduate of Harvard, explaining how if we renooberate the fenombulator of aggregate demand, taking into account marginal tax rates on unearned interest income credit due to subsidized marmot exports to key trading partners, you can see that the growth of our debt is sustainable for the near future.

After that, we're all hopelessly screwed, but that's OK, because he's got plenty of good investment options.

Walmart Defeats Yale

Yesterday afternoon, we went shopping at Walmart. There were plenty of obese, tatted-up folks, many speaking somewhat intelligible dialects.

In Los Angeles, they've decided to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. They did this because Very Smart People who are Academics with tenure at Ivy League Universities have produced graphs and charts and equations that say this is a good idea.

My own daughter, recently graduated from high school and possessing an abundance of ambition, is not worth $15. The store where she works right now would look into replacing here with machinery should they be forced to pay her $15. She's getting crucial experience, skills and confidence that will help her someday produce $15 and more per hour of value. Judging from appearances and speech, many of the Walmart shoppers had dimmer prospects.

What's the plan for people who can't or won't do what it takes to gain skills making them worth $15 an hour? Are they expected to just sit at home watching daytime TV all their lives?

I'd suggest that the Ivy League geniuses, after completing their elaborate journal articles, spend several days at Walmart and the DMV and ask themselves if their conclusions really make sense.

Because they don't to me.

Why Trump Wants To Be President

Pondering the circus that is our current presidential race, two thoughts struck be about The Donald's motives.

1. He loves to be on camera.
2. He saw how much money the Clintons made selling out the country to foreign interests and figured if a pair of dingbats like them could make 9 figures, he could make 10, easy.

In Case You Were Wondering

... 0350 is not a good time to get up.

The new Catican Guard recruits sleep in a crate downstairs. Once they're thoroughly house trained, they'll sleep with us. Early this morning, we awoke to what sounded like a puppy choking on something. Huge coughs from a very small dog scared us into going downstairs to check on them.

The thing to know is that going downstairs, even if it's at 4AM, starts a morning routine that cannot be undone. Doors are opened, little dogs are taken outside, food is served and a general good time is had by all. The fear that one of them had swallowed something dreadful overwhelmed our need for sleep, so down I went and up I stayed. It was all a false alarm, so I let my wife go back to sleep while I hung out with the little creatures.

Ouch.

Whatever they do, it's impossible to stay mad at them.

Trial By Jury

... owes a great deal of its existence to Henry II of England, circa 1160. Here's a good summary from the BBC.

I'm thoroughly enjoying Churchill's A History of the English Speaking People. As I read (listen to) it, I'm amazed at how narrow our understanding of history has become, at least as it was taught to my daughter in public high school. I know I've banged on this drum before, but I would bet that the only thing she knows about the subject was that white Europeans were racists. She would have no idea where our legal system arose.

Looking at the Wikipedia article on the Ashanti, the pre-European colonization African empire centered around modern-day Ghana, as far as I can tell, trials were an appeal to the chief and his buddies. Whatever complaints we may have about the American court system, I'd much rather face it than the king's counselors or the chief's shamans.

How does that legal system play into the white privilege that we're warned against by academia? It's all such a sad and narrow view of history. It seems to me that a much healthier way to learn history would be to appreciate the people that gave us what we use today, be that the internal combustion engine or jazz music. Maybe their faults can be forgiven with a little effort.

No Drought In San Diego

... as far as the local flora and fauna are concerned. A freak storm last weekend pushed us over 100% for the year. Since we average practically no rain at all from here to the end of the meteorological year, we're good for 2014-2015.

Click on the image for a more legible version.

What If Hillary Clinton Had Been A Kumeyaay?

The problem with oral histories is that they can be untrustworthy, particularly when there are few sources.

Listening to an ad on TV about our local Indian tribes and their casinos, I heard a bit about their long traditions and noble behavior and how they loved the land and lived in harmony with nature or something like that. It was all traditional Native American hagiographic claptrap. Triggered by my reading of Churchill's A History of the English Speaking People, which is blunt and straightforward, I began to wonder just how much of what we take for granted about American Indians is true.

Without writing, how much of what they "know" about themselves is accurate? How far back can reliable memory go when it's all handed down by story?

Imagine what the stories would have been like had Hillary Clinton been a Kumeyaay Chieftaness around 1200, prior to the arrival of the Conquistadores. She'd have run the tribe out of a server in her own teepee, sold out their interests for heap big wampum from neighboring tribes and then unleashed her own storyteller flacks to create utter nonsense about how she was noble and good and aligned with the planet and everyone who disagreed with her was part of the Vast Apache Conspiracy (VAC).

With a sufficiently effective terror apparatus, Chieftaness Hillary would have been able to make sure that only her versions of "history" survived.

Here, Chieftaness Hillary's spokes-shaman, Viper Who Lives In Filth, explains how accusations that she sold the tribe out for some goat skins and a bunch of sea shells is old news that no one wants to hear any more. The tribe really needs to talk about policies to move the Kumeyaay forward and stop wasting time on personal attacks.

I Could Post These All Day

Something to make you smile.

Leah taking instruction on door protocol from Head Catican Guard Bodie.

Meet The New Catican Guards!

After the tragic death of our Smaller Catican Guard, Ellie*, a few weeks ago, we decided to get another one as the Larger Catican Guard, Bodie, was very depressed. We auditioned two separate dogs and neither of them fit the bill. Yesterday, we drove up to Riverside to look at a Chihuahua mix puppy, which is what Ellie had been.

There were three in the litter and all of them were beautiful. When we arrived, a couple was adopting one of the three. We fell in love with the others immediately and ended up coming home with two, Leah and Lilly. Bodie is happy to have new recruits in the Catican and has already begun training them (primarily not to take his toys while he is playing with them).

We've got a few other things going on right now, so we have scheduled a gathering of the College of Cardinals a few weeks hence to select a new Maximum Leader. When we begin the Conclave, you will see black smoke arise on the sidebar of this blog until we have chosen one, which will be heralded by white smoke. In the meantime, the Catican Guards will continue their training and will maintain a respectful and preparatory posture in the Catican Compound.

Which means a lot of playing with toys, eating crunchy food and running about in joy.

Leah is the one looking at the camera. She has very long legs. Lilly, looking away from the camera, has more Chihuahua-like features.

* - I've not been a dog person since I was a child and hadn't owned one in about 40 years when we got Bodie. I was certainly never a fan of little dogs. Originally, I hadn't wanted to get Ellie when we first met her, but my wife talked me into it. My attitude towards little dogs changed almost instantly. Ellie, as far as I was concerned, hung the moon. I have loved pets in my time, but Ellie was beyond loved. I've never been so sad for so long at the loss of a pet. These two are beautiful and I love them already, but I there's only one Ellie in anyone's life and that's OK with me. I was blessed enough to share 5 years of my life with her. Thank you, God.

A War On Objective Reality

I missed the ESPYs when they were on TV, but my son, a sports freak, told me the whole thing was incredibly weird. ESPN has lost one of its viewers in him, save for when they broadcast actual sporting events. I finally saw a snippet of Bruce Jenner's speech and was shocked by the surreal incongruity of it all.

Bruce still has a man's face and a man's voice. He's got implants that look like breasts and he was dressed in an evening gown. As he spoke, you saw the audience listening in rapt attention to a man who had mutilated his body and drenched it in female hormones. They applauded like it was the politburo after one of Stalin's speeches - long and thunderous, no one wanting to be the first one to stop. My buddy Dean Riehm noted that Brett Favre looked puzzled at the whole thing.

@ktcat. Brett Favre clapped but looked rather perplexed as to why he was doing so. Haul him in! #ESPYAwards #ESPYS

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 16, 2015

The snippet I watched felt like tuning in to a speech at a lunatics' convention. I expected the next speaker to come out dressed like Napoleon and have a severe body tic. Maybe Tourette's Syndrome to go along with it. The other thought that jumped out at me was that if Bruce had thought he was a chicken and stapled feathers to his body, he wouldn't have won the ESPY. Message: It's OK to be insane, so long as it's about your crotch.

Elsewhere, Ben Shapiro, appearing on some TV freak show ESPY discussion as a panel guest, dared to call a transgendered guy, "Sir." Everyone went bananas and the transgendered dude threatened him. Ben was still able to make the ultimate point, as you can see here.

It's not just that we're embracing mental illness and delusion as a society, it's that most of us are fleeing from the enforcers of the mob that is fighting objective reality. The black guy on the panel who wasn't fond of Bruce Jenner's award made sure to let everyone know, in pathetic, abject surrender, that he thought Bruce was a woman, just like he should.

Bruce isn't a woman. Not in any biological sense of the word. He's playing dress up and American society is bowing down to him and agreeing that he is, indeed a woman.

Elsewhere, a Muslim man, well-connected with objective reality, gunned down 5 infidels. The post-modern progressives see no long-term threat in him, but an enormous one in people like Ben Shapiro. That's what happens when you discard objective reality.

How Can You Earn Enough Money To Repay Your Debts?

That's the question that no one is asking anywhere in the debt-ridden world. As we noted about Greece a while back, their primary industry is tourism. They sell postcards, sunglasses, hotel rooms, entrees and desserts, tour bus rides and so on. If they're going to take on more debt, they're going to have to answer the question, "How will we bring more customers into the country?" Instead, they're asking the question, "How can we borrow more money?"

Jim Jubak, one of my favorite financial commentators and one with a very level head, had this to say about the Greek deal;

The biggest problem with the deal, if there finally is a deal, is that the EuroZone has forced Greece down this road before and there is no reason to think that tax increases and cuts to government spending will stimulate growth in the Greek economy. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then this program is insane. This is a recipe for a contracting economy in Greece that will require more austerity that leads to even more of a decline in the Greek economy.

I love Jim, but this still doesn't ask the right question. What are they going to do earn more money? As  valued commenter Jedi Master Ivyan has noted after returning from a trip to Greece, the place is pretty wrecked and covered in graffiti. That means that the Greeks themselves are sabotaging their only real means of earning more money. If that's the case, then lending them any more money is a complete waste of time no matter what the PhD economists say.

This isn't exactly welcoming. 
"An eldery woman begs by the Bank of Greece headquarters in Athens."

History Books And Modern Greece

Making my way through Churchill's A History of the English Speaking Peoples, I'm currently around the year 1150.

Bonus tidbit: In the 900s, England was semi-conquered by the Danes and assorted Vikings. The Norman conquest in 1066+ put England in the orbit of the much more Continentally important French instead of the peripheral Danes and Norwegians. That was better for the English in the long run.

In any case, in history books like this one, the years sweep by quickly. You can go through 10-20 years of developments in no time at all. It gives you a much larger scope than that which you have in the time you live. Right now, a lot of people are worried about upcoming elections or Planned Parenthood butchering and selling baby parts*. Allow me to suggest that graphs like this one are much more important from a historical perspective.

Greece's population by age.

It's a mathematical fact that 20 years from now, the majority of Greece's population will be over 60. Unless they import a culture-changing number of foreigners, by 2035, Greece will be a 3rd world country regardless of what happens to their loans.

* - Guilty as charged.

Sunset Cliffs Sea

Yesterday was a typically beautiful day at Sunset Cliffs and this time, I took the trouble to snap a few photos. Below is my favorite of the bunch, kind of a brooding, yet hopeful sea. I left it large, so I think it's worth a click.

On a side note, I had scraps from a loaf of bread that I was throwing on the ground for the birds. That late in the day, there weren't any birds to pick it up, so it just lay there waiting for them. A woman was walking a really big dog in the area and when he caught sight of the bread scraps, he dragged her around trying to eat them. Whoops!

Enjoy.

Will They Make Foie Gras With It?

It turns out that Planned Parenthood has been harvesting organs from freshly aborted babies.

New undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted unborn children and admitting she uses partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts...

Nucatola admits that Planned Parenthood charges per-specimen for baby body parts, uses illegal partial-birth abortion procedures in order to get salable parts, and is aware of their own liability for doing so and takes steps to cover it up.

The buyers ask Nucatola, “How much of a difference can that actually make, if you know kind of what’s expected, or what we need?”

“It makes a huge difference,” Nucatola replies. “I’d say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.

This can't come as much of a surprise given that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was as much a eugenicist as any of the Nazis. Harvesting the unfit, err, unwanted for the good of the Volk, err, people, would have been something she supported with her whole liver, err, heart.

Now the only thing Planned Parenthood lacks is a catchy tune. May I be the first to recommend this one?


The subtitles in multiple languages give this tune a real sense of the diversity so crucial to modern progressives! Doesn't it make you feel inclusive?

The Greek Deal Made Personal

... in round, approximate numbers.

The EU is offering the Greeks $90B in new loans. There are 10 million Greeks. That works out to loaning each Greek $9,000. Each Greeks earns $25,000 per year. That makes the loan 36% of their annual income.

Greeks aren't having many babies. They have one of the lowest birth rates in the world and their population is aging and will soon be declining. They're primary source of income is tourism. They have a growth rate around 0% and an unemployment rate around 25%.

Summary

The rest of Europe is lending an aging, marginally employed pack of tchotchke salesmen an amount equal to 36% of their annual income. There's no indication their income is going to increase in the near future and the birth rates show you, in no uncertain terms, that their expenses are going to be rising considerably very soon as they have to take care of the elderly.

Not to worry, economists expect boom times in the lucrative postcard and sunglasses industries.

And Here Comes The Shock

Faced with a choice between a total collapse into a 3rd World country and capitulation to their European lenders so they can borrow still more money, Greece's negotiators have opted for the latter.

Greeks greeted news of a deal with creditors on Monday with a measure of relief mixed with much anger, particularly at Germany, after it became clear Greece will have to swallow more austerity that could fracture the government and spark a backlash.

A sleep-deprived Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will fly back to Athens to sell an agreement that ended up being tougher than proposals Greeks overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum on July 5.

So they voted a few days ago to reject the evil banksters' offers of settlement, showed defiance to their creditors, lost most of their foreign credit, suffered runs on banks, stores, gas stations and more, had their banks close down due to capital flight, watched their pensioners weeping in the streets because they lacked money for rent or food and now ...

Prime Minister Tsipras returns in triumph from negotiating holding an agreement harsher than the one they rejected in the election.

Maybe socialists, when confronted with the inevitable starvation and destruction "social justice" brings, can comprehend the basic nature of lending - that if you don't service your loans, you don't get any more money. And if there's one thing socialists always need, it's more money.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, commenters on the story are less sanguine.

• "By doubling down on Greece the EU is wasting another $90 billion. It is past time to let this ship sink."
• "I'm betting they'll be back in two years, flat broke and even deeper in debt."
• "Instead of admitting that the EU was a socialist failure and liquidating the failed experiment, the political elite foist more unpayable and uncollectable debt on the people of Europe. Never has the gulf between the socialist dreams of the European elite and the reality of their poison on the common European citizen been greater."

For me, the amazing thing is how the faithful continue to cling to the religion of social justice fascism in the face of harsh reality. Nowhere in the Greek news or interviews do I see anyone connecting producing with having. No one is saying, "We got into this mess because we don't make anything anyone wants at a price they're willing to pay." Instead, it's all politics all the time.

Crazy, man. Just crazy.

When It Comes, It Will Be A Shock

... to those who have been raised in the post-modern West. The payoff to this Ekathimerini piece on Greeks dealing with the latest financial crisis comes in the last paragraph (emphasis mine). It still is amazing to me that the Greeks have no idea where their problems came from and continue to blame "bankers" and think that their Disneyland lives will continue on as they have before.

In the affluent Athens district of Kolonaki, Areti Georgilis said her bookstore, with a gallery and coffee shop, is on the brink of collapse: Sales are down 90 percent in 10 days. She had to dismiss two of her employees last week.

“This week I have to make the critical decision of whether to stay open or think of another city in Europe,” she said in front of shelves stocking titles by French philosophers and Russian novelists. “Until now I was a healthy business. Now foreign wholesalers have decreased my discount and credit.”

Efstathiou, a pharmacist in Athens who didn’t want to give her first name, said her immediate concern is supplies.

“There are many medicines we don’t have enough of,” she said, pointing to a piece of paper with about 30 drugs listed. “But I’m not worried. I think we will be OK.”

That optimism is shared by Tsipras’s supporters, according to Iliadou in Thessaloniki.

She voted “yes” to creditor proposals for more austerity in the Sunday referendum to ensure Greece stayed in the euro and banks reopened. Most of her employees, who are under 30, voted “no ” with the majority.

“People who voted ‘no’ are completely relaxed and not expecting any consequences,” said Iliadou. “The devoted followers of Tsipras absolutely honor him and believe this will end in a few days.”

Britain And Rome

I picked up Volume 1 of Churchill's A History Of The English Speaking Peoples on Audible and am enjoying it thoroughly. Written in 1956, it is ignorant of those scourges of modern academia, diversity studies and political correctness. The writing is fresh and direct and Churchill doesn't clutch a string of pearls and faint at calling one group superior over another.

It's a good partner to The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (itself written between 1776 and 1789). Whereas one tells the story of Rome falling apart through decadence and civil war, the other shows the effects of that decadence on Rome's furthest province, Britain. The Romans pacified Britain from 51 AD to about 400 AD. Despite being continually beset by barbarians, Roman military might was able to defend Britain and allow the citizens to live peaceful and prosperous lives.

When troops were removed from Britain to serve in campaigns on the Continent, typically on one side or another in a civil war or to fight off barbarians encouraged by a Roman army weakened by civil wars, the Romanized British were no longer able to defend their borders. Britain itself would have been self-sufficient in defense, but the Roman Empire dragged them back into barbarism as a result of it's own collapse.

ISIS And Our Social Justice Warriors

... are members of fundamentalist religious movements, destroying cultural icons they hate.

There's a Wall Street Journal article today discussing how lots of Confederate war memorials are under attack with plenty of people in favor of pulling them down. Like ISIS smashing cultural monuments they hate, the SJWs are doing this as an homage to their gods. In the case of ISIS, it's Allah. In the case of the SJWs, it's themselves. It's an appeal to a higher power, the sacrifice of a defeated foe after a battle to appease a god.

In neither case can the religious zealots point to actual mechanisms by which this destruction will cause good things to happen. For the SJWs, after they're done wrecking the monuments and go back to binge-watching shows on Netflix, blacks in our inner cities will continue to be shot, robbed and raped in huge numbers. Black lives may matter to them, but it's hard to see how those lives will be any better afterwards. ISIS has a slightly better case in that their destruction is part of a war of extermination and is a message to their routed foes: Get out and don't come back!

On the other hand, what if the Social Justice Warriors are carrying out sort of a war of extermination as well?

Hmm.

Live And Let Die

In Portland, Oregon (pop: 580,000+), a bakery declined to make a wedding cake for a gay marriage. The owners cited their religious beliefs which defined marriage based on reproductive biology, one man-one woman. They were sued and a judge not only fined them $135,000, a sum sufficient to wipe out their small business, but placed a gag order on them so they could not talk about their beliefs on marriage within their store.

As a flint-hearted conservative, I'm used to the accusations that I am a social Darwinist, happy to watch the less fortunate die living in cardboard boxes under freeway overpasses*. As someone who believes in objective morality, I'm supposed to be closed-minded and judgmental, insisting that everyone live my way.

Progressives are supposed to be different. That's the whole selling point of the thing. They're all live and let live sorts, happy to prance about, handing flowers to everyone, their cars festooned with "Coexist" and "Arms are for hugging" bumper stickers.

I'm beginning to think that was all a lot of nonsense. When they use the legal system as a Gestapo to track down and destroy anyone who thinks differently from them, it seems that live and let live isn't exactly their motto. When the aggrieved gays chose to attack rather than go to any one of a large number of other bakeries in the Portland region, I'd say they're more the live and let die sort.

How very caring of them.

* - or even over freeway underpasses. I'm not picky.

Shanghai Composite - The Very Picture Of Volatility

You're in for one wild ride when you invest in Shanghai!

Lays Potato Chips Have An Evolutionary Advantage

At work, one of my buddies brings in boxes of assorted chips from Costco for all of us to share. By the time we get to the last few bags, all that's left are the Lays potato chips. Clearly, over a long period of evolution, Lays potato chips developed some kind of competitive advantage over the other chips. They must have, because they are able to evade their ecosystem's predators much better than the rest.

We're not sure what it is. They may have some kind of camouflage, a painful sting, a bitter taste, coloring like another kind of chip which is poisonous, it could be any number of things.

Have We Reached Peak Stupidity Yet?

Good Lord, I hope so.

SHOCKING: "According to the Census Bureau, 64 million Americans currently live in the bottom quintile." #fractions http://t.co/VjqlxpIG3d

— Andrew Klavan (@andrewklavan) July 7, 2015

That's the New York Times. Awesome.

I Blame The Confederate Flags

Chicago must be festooned with them.

It was another weekend of mayhem in Chicago with 46 shot and 9 killed. Looking for a news video on YouTube about the carnage, I found the one below from June, 2010. In between now and then, there have been marches and protests and riots and flags and monuments removed and nothing has changed.

Maybe it wasn't about the symbols and the talk after all. Maybe there's something bigger going on, like the obliteration of the traditional family and objective morality.

Nahhh. It's the Confederate flag. Once we get all of those things down and scrub all of the Confederate war memorials off the Earth, we'll be fine.

The Fruits Of Political "Compassion"

... can be seen in this letter to the Financial Times. Here's a tidbit.

Sir, Memory. No memory of life before the financial crisis; politics has dominated it ever since. But now I can hardly remember life before Friday night. Fear. I am terrified of tomorrow, all I now see is black. Uncertainty, leading us through our days, every remainder of hope for a brighter future being destroyed by the minute. I look at my three-year-old niece, I envy her ignorance, I envy her age. I am 21 years old and the past few days I feel tired by life. A referendum that supposedly gives me the right to define my future, seems to have taken it away.

There are hundreds of people queueing at the ATMs and petrol stations, there is silence in the streets, people’s faces are frozen. This is the reality since Friday night. There are, and have been for a long time, people literally starving. However, it seems that instead of their situation improving, the rest of us will have no different a fate.

That's what progressive compassion looks like in its final stages.

Family Roles

... vary greatly.

Our recent losses within the Catican Compound have underlined this. Our Maximum Leader lent whatever room she was in an air of grace, dignity and calm. She'd wander in and then lie down and idly watch what was going on. It was all peace and serenity.

Ellie, our 5-year-old Chihuahua-Cocker mix, provided spark and energy to us all. With her passing, everyone is mopey and lethargic. Part of that is our mourning, of course, and will fade with time. While Katie's death at 16 was sad, but expected, this one was a kick in the stomach. Several kicks, actually. You can't escape the feeling that something hugely important is missing everywhere you go. We're lacking the family member who wiggled just for the sake of wiggling*.

So that's where we are in this 4th of July. I hope yours is a lot better than ours.

* - Ellie had a licking fetish. When excited, she would lick whatever was handy - a part of your body, the seat of the couch or even just the air. She was always happy and full of fun.

Lizard In A Pot

I'm a bit shell-shocked today, so I'm posting photos and then going away. This little chappie was seen in our back yard. I left them large, so they might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Ellie, The Smaller Catican Guard, 2010-2015

This has been a pretty brutal week here in the Catican Compound. Her Serene Furriness had to be put down on Monday and her smaller Guard had to be put down today. While Katie The Cat was 16 and her passing was somewhat expected, Ellie was 5 and stricken with sudden, acute kidney failure. We never discovered the cause, it just wiped out her kidneys and that was that.

She was a Chihuahua-Cocker mix and weighed 12 pounds. She should have lasted another 10-12 years.

I'm at a loss for a eulogy right now.

On the way home from the groomers, looking mah-velous, dahling!

Ellie in her natural habitat. Being a nut on the couch.

Greek Collapse

When I worked at Catholic Charities, we used to get lots of elderly customers coming in for food who had too much month and too little money. When I saw the scenes below from Greece on YouTube and lots more like them elsewhere, my heart went out to these people.


It's going to get worse before it gets better. Since they chose not to have many children, there aren't a whole lot of young Greeks to take care of the elderly. Without pension checks, they're going to suffer a great deal.

When I was in Russia about 16 years ago, there were lots of elderly people begging on the street. Looks like that's coming back into fashion in Greece.

I could make snarky comments about the progressives and how they've excoriated "greedy" people like me for voting and arguing against welfare programs and big pensions, but these images are too sad for that. Suffice it to say that this is what happens when you separate earning from receiving, at least at the macro level.

Katie The Cat, 1998-2015

I had to put our Maximum Leader to sleep yesterday. Failing kidneys, a very unhappy pancreas and probable cancer on top of arthritis in her front knees made life worse every day. It was time and she was appreciative.

I'm a bit loopy right now from lack of sleep, emotion and a few other things, but I will say that over the last 16 years, she was a true friend through many tough times.

I remember one time when I was so poor I couldn't heat the house half the time, the outdoor temperature got down into the high 30s. That meant the indoor temperature was in the high 30s, too. She came to bed with me, stared briefly at me with a look of, "You've got to be kidding me" and crawled under all the covers and spent the night snuggled against my thighs for warmth.

Then there was the time she brought a mouse into the laundry room to play with it. She threw it up in the air and then caught it over and over. Until it landed in the hamper. Then she wandered off. Someone else found it in the hamper and shrieked...

We had an arrangement over the last 10 years. She was given one nighttime snack each night at a time of her choosing. People who heard about this thought I was crazy, but it worked for us. Any time she wanted, she would come into the bedroom and make some noise - pushing the door against the wall, plucking the carpet, whatever. I'd get up, go downstairs and give her a snack. Midnight, 1 AM, 2 AM, it didn't matter. If she came in and tried to do it again, she'd get a pillow thrown at her.

She always had a loud purr. I remember her sauntering down the hall to my bedroom, purring. It sounded like a freight train as it echoed off the walls. It was beautiful.

My wife was never a cat person and Katie was affectionate in her own way, which was to say that I understood her acts of love when no one else recognized them. She knew my wife needed something special and so would come out of the house every day to say hello when my wife came home. It truly touched her that this little cat changed the way she did things to let my wife know she was loved. A few head bumps, a brief pat and that was that, time to go inside for food. Katie was still a cat, after all.

Katie was a holy terror with the vet. She tore them to shreds every time they tried to take samples of any kind. My son and I would laugh and say, "3 dead, 2 wounded. The last one managed to pull the fire alarm as he sank to the floor, unconscious from loss of blood." She was all cat, our Katie.

Incidentally, that's where I took my nom de plume. K T Cat was Katie The Cat, her full, proper name. I liked the play on words as KT sounds like Katie.

I'm running out of coherence and I'm sure you've lost interest in the whole thing. Katie and I loved each other dearly. It was hard to see her go, but at the same time, it was the right thing to do.

I'll miss her ever so much.

Her last day, spending a little time in the garden.

Bodie, the larger Catican Guard, was a loving friend to the end.

The ECB Takes A Hard Line

... and the Greeks have drained their ATMs. The Greek government has shut down the banking system, too. Looks like I was wrong on this one. The ECB will go out for lattes after they whack the Greeks. I still don't know if they've decided to let the Greeks leave, though. After this, it seems like the decision has already been made by the Greek people who are trying to get their money out of the country as fast as possible.



Meanwhile, some Greeks are not getting the hint that the government is kaput.

On Athens’s rainy streets late Sunday, many ATMs had already been emptied. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s announcement that he would call a referendum on the economic terms that Greece’s creditors want for fresh aid sent many Greeks scurrying to bank machines over the weekend to grab what remaining cash they could.

“How can something like this happen without prior warning?” asked Angeliki Psarianou, a 67-year-old retired public servant, who stood in the drizzle after arriving too late at one empty ATM in the Greek capital. “I want Tsipras to tell me how I am going to make it through the week with €10 in my bag with rent coming up. It has never been as bad as this.”

Angeliki, dude, Tsipras has nothing. You might as well talk to the empty ATM.

Maybe Secession Is The Goal

... for the secular left.

Just think, they already view the people of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma as sub-literate, racist trash. In the words of the Journolist crowd, they're "NASCAR retards." If those states were forced, err, allowed to secede, the left would never lose another presidential election, would never lose control of the Senate or Congress and would soon have an unimpeachable majority on the Supreme Court.

Think that's crazy? Dig this.

Wow. @nytimes columnist writing in @TIME magazine: "Now’s the Time To End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions" http://t.co/miG7ChcjiH

— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) June 28, 2015

How well is that kind of thing going to go over in the South?

Update:

http://t.co/35NELyYBNT. A way around those pesky religious freedom laws: make sh*t up about 1st amendment that doesn't exist. @ktcat

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 7, 2015

It's Not The SSM

... it's the way it was done. Had California, for example, voted to approve SSM, I'd be unhappy, but not terribly so. If my fellow citizens want it and legally enact it, then I must render unto Caesar. I'm a Catholic who chooses to live in the US and I have to accept the outcome of elections.

When elections no longer matter because the government can make laws on whim and simply disregard the rules, the voters and logic, then I've got a real problem with that. That's happened over and over lately with ObamaCare, our now-open borders, gay marriage and much more. We voted against all of these things, but they happened anyway.

Or is the problem still my own because Caesar has decided to become a dictator?

It's On A Stick, Too!

We went to the Del Mar Fair to see Rend Collective deliver another fantastic concert performance. While there, we saw all manner of fair foods, but this one looked the best.

Bone-in pork chops already have a stick of sorts, but I guess you can never have too many sticks.

Appeasing The Gods

... is what the whole Confederate flag "crisis" seems like to me. Once we tear down and burn all Confederate flags and then smash all Southern war monuments, we will have ... what?

Driving past a Confederate flag or monument isn't causing anything at all. Our social ills are pretty well documented and none of them have Confederate memorabilia as a first-, second- or even third-order cause.

This is just a sacrifice to the gods of racial righteousness in the hopes of appeasing them that they might cause good things to happen here in America.

On the plus side, we must run out of books, flags, businesses and statues to smash and burn eventually. One would think that at that point, people will realize that our problems are still with us and will conclude that the causes lie somewhere else.

Quicksand Couch

Slowly, the smaller Catican Guard is pulled into the clutches of the Quicksand Couch!

Funniest Link Of The Day

Just click here and laugh.

Women's Soccer

... is, sadly for me, not as much fun to watch as men's soccer unless my daughter is playing.

Last night, my wife and I watched the US Women's team beat Colombia in the World Cup. Both teams were good and the US team played extremely well. Still, I kept waiting for a fast break or some laser shots on goal like I see in the English Premier League. None came. The game was so much slower than the professional men's games I watch that it finally became difficult to sit through. Women simply don't have the athletic skills that men have.

A discussion with friends about the differences between men's and women's professional sports led to someone noting that a French girl, Melissa Mayeux, has been placed on an MLB team's scouting list. We couldn't see that ever going anywhere. Speed, strength, stamina - she's physically outclassed by the guys.

Related, on a tip from someone I can't recall, I checked out the sprinting results from the 2012 Olympics and the New Jersey High School State Track Meet. Here are the comparisons between the fastest women in the world and the fastest high school boys in New Jersey.

100M: 2012 Olympic winner, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce would have finished second in the New Jersey high school boy's meet.

200M: Winner Allyson Felix would have finished 6th in New Jersey.

400M: Winner Sanya Richards-Ross would have finished a full second behind the 10th place New Jersey boy.

Finally, going back to baseball, a friend looked up the fastest pitch ever thrown by a woman. 69 MPH. That's Charlie Hough knuckleball territory. Not bad. Charlie Hough was a lot of fun to watch. Maybe not fun to catch, but he was fun to watch,

OPM's New Logo

They Might As Well Have Paid Off The Greek Loans

... because the ECB is lending Greek banks roughly the same amount of money and if the Greeks default, they'll never get it back. Dig this.

Greeks are pulling money out of their accounts at a dramatically quicker pace as the standoff between Athens and its creditors drags on, prodding the European Central Bank on Friday to raise emergency lending to the country’s banks for the second time in three days.

The lending level was extended another €1.8 billion ($2.04 billion), a Greek official said, on top of Wednesday’s upward adjustment of €1.1 billion. Steady withdrawals from banks all year have accelerated in the past week, according to Greek bank officials, rising from an estimated €400 million on Monday to an estimated €1 billion on Thursday. One Greek bank official said the trend continued on Friday with an estimated outflow of a little more than €1.2 billion.

That's over a billion Euros a day being pulled out of Greek banks. Don't worry, though, this isn't a bank run as it will take a full 30 days to exhaust bank reserves and 30 days might as well be next month which is a long time away when you consider how long it takes to get a latte at the cafe down the street while downloading the latest Kim Kardashian photos.

No, this is just normal business transactions and Greek banks just need some loans to tide them over. Meanwhile, the ECB could have paid the July Greek debt bills for a few billion more and gone back to the cafe until August.

A few days ago, I blogged that I was counting on the Europeans to bail out the Greeks because it was relatively inexpensive and allowed them to further postpone the day of reckoning. That may have been wrong-headed. It may be that the post-modern, subjectively moral, secular multiculturalists who run the big European institutions will postpone all decisions until it's too late. That's what's going on now. They may arrive at Greek default through sheer sloth.

The individuals pulling their money out of the country don't operate with the same languid speed and once out, they'll be difficult to tempt back into the country. A billion a day isn't chump change and you got to figure it's only going to accelerate.

That doesn't look like a jog to me, that looks like acceleration out of the starting blocks.

Needle Exchanges For Heroin Addicts

... is the subject of an article in today's WSJ. HIV and Hep C infection rates are on the rise as heroin addicts share needles with each other. In the article, needle exchange is offered as a solution.

A solution for what? Heroin addicts are pretty much doomed. If the HIV doesn't get them, other secondary effects from the heroin will. The problem isn't the HIV or Hep C, the problem is the heroin in the first place.

Maya Angelou And The Catawba

Pace our recent discussions about Shakespeare as a dead, white male who could be safely ignored because of his association with racist imperialists, I had planned to blog about how we could do the same to Maya Angelou as she was the beneficiary of similar racist imperialism.

When she died, Maya was living in North Carolina and enjoyed all manner of conveniences unknown to the Native Americans whose land she had stolen, if only through a long sequence of financial transactions dating back several centuries. Rather than do the right thing and return the land to the Native Americans, she lived there, a gross insult to the noble people who would have owned the land had they not been slaughtered or evicted. For all intents and purposes, Maya's as guilty as old Will.

The exercise researching the post was revealing. The Catawba Indians occupied that part of North Carolina when the Euros arrived. Here's a little bit about the Catawba.

Catawba warriors were known as the fiercest in the land. The tribe claimed at least eleven other tribes as enemies.

Why were they fighting 11 other tribes? One presumes that the Catawba were racist imperialists as well, otherwise conflict would have been unnecessary and/or resolved by negotiations. Despite this and despite Maya using their land without paying them for it, neither they nor Maya are castigated as the villains they must surely be.

Of course they're not. Maya Angelou was born into poverty and racism. She became a successful artist despite all kinds of disadvantages. The Catawba were doing what made sense to them to survive and flourish. William Shakespeare and the English were no different. We hate Shakespeare and the English, but admire Maya and the Catawba because we're supposed to.

Our political correctness mania isn't about dead, white males, it's about us. It's a way for people to preen and pose and put on airs of pious indignation, showing off for everyone else. It's a fashion statement, not an intellectual movement.

It's not a very attractive fashion statement, either.

If We Wore Ugly Shoes

... would future generations be justified in dismissing us and our achievements?

Yesterday's post about the campus thought police and ISIS lead to a discussion about white supremacist thought in the formative years of the European settlement of the New World. Commenter Ilion pointed out that feelings of group supremacy were pretty much universal, yet only the Europeans are singled out as vile racists. I'd suggest the feelings of superiority hardly mattered.

In reading journals of explorers and historical figures of the time, I don't recall their motivations being racial. Again borrowing from Ilion, they were much more likely to be nationalist than racist. After all, everyone knows the British are better than the French, right? Well, depending on which side of the Channel you were born.

If it didn't matter all that much to them, who are we to turn it into a litmus test? As far as I can tell, the British would have colonized New England whether the natives looked like them or looked like Mohicans or looked like Martians. It wasn't about skin color, it was about escaping poverty and finding new opportunities.

Carrying it one step further, going 200 years into the future, instead of being obsessed with race and sex, what if historians are obsessed with shoes? What can we expect when our fashionably dressed wear things like this?

Forget Shakespeare as a dead, white, imperialist male, 200 years from now no one will read the works of Maya Angelou because our footwear crimes disqualify us all.

The Campus Thought Police And ISIS

I never thought of this analogy before. It seems quite apt, particularly when you read this from Dan Henninger (excerpted below).

@campusreform Sounds a lot like ISIS. Destroy all culture from history that does not fit their way to see the world

— JOB (@Jon_Brenelli) June 16, 2015

Dan Henninger excerpt - RE: the new AP exams in history:

At one point the curriculum’s authors say: “Debate and disagreement are central to the discipline of history, and thus to AP U.S. History as well.” This statement is phenomenally disingenuous. From Key Concept 1.3: “Many Europeans developed a belief in white superiority to justify their subjugation of Africans and American Indians, using several different rationales.” Pity the high-school or college student who puts up a hand to contest that anymore. They don’t. They know the Orwellian option now is to stay down.

Bonus tidbit - Jerry Seinfeld bemoaning the political correctness enforcers:

When In Doubt, Bet On The Soma

Soma was a fictional drug that produced tranquil euphoria in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Virtually the entire population consumed it, mostly as a way of avoiding dealing with difficult problems.

Greece's debt problems are flaring up again. They've got big bills coming due in July and August and no way to pay them. The rest of the EU is demanding reforms as a condition for debt forgiveness or bailouts and the Greeks are fighting all but the most trivial of changes. Dig this.

Although public-sector numbers have been slashed, very few jobs were lost via redundancies: Most were shed via generous early retirement programs that now weigh on the pension system and are crippling the public finances. Meanwhile, Syriza (the dominant Greek political party who just won elections) has vowed to protect existing public-sector jobs, salaries and working conditions.

It sounds like chaos and devastation are about to hit Europe, but after watching this for a while, I'm coming to the conclusion that the abyss is still a ways off.

"Big" debts for Greece are not big debts for the EU. In July and August, the Greeks need to come up with less than $5B each month to stave off collapse. That's impossible for the Greeks, but practically nothing at all for the European Central Bank who could simply print the money so the Europeans could go back to their cafes and sip their lattes.

That's the way I'm betting. There will be lots of yelling and posturing, but in the end, the Europeans will take heavy doses of Soma, print some money and act like there was nothing to worry about after all.

The Best Live Band Is ...

Rend Collective?

Well, they're certainly in the top 5 for me. I've been going to concerts for over 35 years. I've seen everyone from Iron Maiden and AC/DC to the B-52s and Cheap Trick to Santana and James Taylor. Yesterday, I took my daughter to FishFest 2015 and saw a bunch of Christian bands and the performance that stood out was this group from Ireland.


That video only captures a portion of how much fun they are in concert. Fun was the operative word, for them and everyone else who played at FishFest. Included in the lineup were both the Newsboys and Toby Mac. They just killed it, too, but Rend Collective were simply fabulous.

Now if only we could get them to play at our local Irish pub, the Blarney Stone!

Transgendered, Transracial And Living With The Mentally Ill

When you live with someone suffering from an acute mental illness such as borderline personality disorder (read: borderline psychotic) or malignant narcissism, your natural tendency is to adopt their worldview. To do anything else is to invite constant battles over interpretations of events.

The narcissist will tell you how awesome they are in 800 different ways every day even though they may be quite ordinary or below average at whatever is being discussed. If you disagree with the narcissist, you'd best be prepared for an all-day, violent argument. Disagreement threatens the world the mentally ill person has created for themselves. It's an existential threat to them, so fights over even trivial items can go nuclear very quickly.

Such arguments exhaust the sane person and so you avoid them. If you can't escape the relationship, you become slightly crazy yourself, interpreting things through a variant of the crazy person's eyes.

That's where we are right now in the US with gender and race.

Bruce Jenner (is about to) cut off his genitals. He's consuming massive amounts of female hormones, had plastic surgery and dresses up in women's clothing. He demands we call him a woman and we all have to obey because crazy people tell us we should. If we disagree with them, they'll escalate the dispute to nuclear levels immediately and spend the day screaming at us.

If Joe Smith in Scranton cut off his hand, consumed a pint of rum a day, had a prosthetic attached to his arm and dressed up in a pirate costume, when he demanded we call him Captain Hook and treat him like a real pirate, we'd send for a psychiatrist. That's because Joe wouldn't be focusing on sex and sex (and race) is the focal point of the crazy people in the country.

Without a pack of crazy people willing to scream at us, we'd treat Joe like we should treat Bruce Jenner. We'd be sad and sympathetic, but we wouldn't call him a woman. Joe Smith would not be doing the things pirates do just as Bruce Jenner can't do the things women do. Ergo, Joe is not a pirate and Bruce is not a woman. They're guys who cut off body parts, consumed lots of drugs and dressed in costume.

Now we've got Rachel Dolezal claiming to be black and the crazy people are supporting her. Rachel is less a black than Bruce Jenner is a female. Bruce is at least saturated in hormones. Both dress in costume and both are altering their physical appearance. Like Bruce, she's not black, she's just crazy.

Life with the mentally ill gradually becomes untenable. Your friends aren't willing to crawl into the hole of insanity you've dug for yourself, so they slip away. Real world decisions need to be made that conflict with your adopted insane world view. You either destroy your life trying to live with the mentally ill person or you eventually give up, get away from them and return to normalcy.

That's where Rachel and Bruce have placed us. People across the Internet are all tumbling to the same conclusions - if race and gender is something you self-identify and there are lots of benefits to being a black woman when it comes to college admission, government contracts and the like, you'd be a total rube not to self-identify as a black woman.

The obsession with race and gender was always crazy, but we went along with it because crazy people were going to scream at us if we didn't. We've now reached the point where we choose to either further ruin our lives or escape the lunatics.

In all seriousness, I'm not sure which way to bet.

Truly, We Live In A Golden Age

Oh sure, we can no longer build nuclear power plants, hydroelectric dams, heavy-lift space rockets or train tracks, but who cares? This era is all about feelings, man. Just look at what we can do!

We can turn men into women.

We can turn same-sex couples into parents.

And now we can turn whites into blacks!

It's as if the teachers at my daughter's high school were shaping the modern era or something. They didn't teach her any concrete, worthwhile skills, but they did fill her head and the heads of all her peers across the country full of sex, race and gender like there was no tomorrow. Well, there was a tomorrow and that tomorrow is today. Whites into blacks. Amazing. What will they think of next?

This fellow might know what comes next. He's working hard to turn productive people into paupers!

What Can Kill A Narrative?

If you can shoot a narrative, then Baltimore has done it.

Baltimore's crime wave since the "racist" police force informally stood down rather than face possible jail time if an encounter with a thug gets out of hand.

Lots of people are getting hurt so the progressives can continue their fantasy of racist cops. Can we finally put that one to bed and let the poor devils who live in the violent neighborhood get some protection from the police?

An Update From The Catican

Recently, we had a scare with our Maximum Leader, which I shared on Twitter. I wanted to post an update for those kind souls who expressed sympathy.

KT is 16 and has arthritis in her front knees, but until now, she's been otherwise healthy. A month ago, she started drinking lots of water. We thought it was just greediness as she loves to be picked up and put on the bathroom counter so she can drink from the faucet.

A week ago, she started to have accidents in the bathroom. We don't have a litter box. Instead, we let her go outside whenever she wants and she's had no problems with that. The smaller Catican Guard, a chihuahua mix, occasionally has accidents in the house when no one is home and she's too scared to go outside. Our Maximum Leader's accidents were right where the little Guard had gone, so we figured that was just odor-induced.

A few days ago, she started throwing up much more than normal and became listless. We took her into the vet and everyone suspected that #1 killer of cats, kidney failure. Tests were run and while we were waiting, we discovered that dry food makes her throw up, but wet food seems to be fine. All of these symptoms match kidney failure.

Things looked bleak for Her Serene Furriness.

The tests came back yesterday. She's close to the beginning of kidney failure, but she's not there yet. No need for special diets, but she's eaten her last dry kibble and she's going to get all the water she wants. We installed a litter box upstairs in the bathroom to stop the accidents.

So far it's all working fine. She's back to her normal self and there have been no more accidents. The litter box is a total drag as she has decided it's far easier to go there then bother wandering outside. The clumping litter can't be flushed and she's tracking litter all over the bathroom. Still, those are solvable problems. Kidney failure is not. I'll take that trade any time.

Gushifud from now on? Awesome! 

Surf Photography

I had another blog post in mind until a friend at work turned me on to this. Enjoy!

Yellow

I left this one fairly large, so I think it's worth a click. It's a flower from my mom's garden. My mom is a very accomplished horticulturalist. She's the one who taught and inspired me to garden. Thanks, Mom!

The Atheistic, Nihilistic Despair Of Birdman

We watched the Oscar-winner, Birdman last night. I won't do a full review as I spent the morning experimenting with Haggen's store-made pork sausage. Like almost everything Haggen's has done since they took over the local Albertsons at the behest of the government, it was awful.

Forward!

Back to the movie observation.

There's a scene in it where the protagonist's daughter rails at him that he is nothing. He's not just a washed-up, has-been actor, he was never any good in the first place and he's utterly worthless. It's a key speech as everyone in the movie seems to have this very same opinion of themselves and all those around them. No one is happy.

As I watched it, my immediate reaction was, "No! You were made by a loving God who gave His only Son for your salvation! We are all loved, we are all important. In the eyes of God, as it should be with our own eyes, we are all equally loved and important, from the schizophrenic alcoholic on the street corner to the biggest movie star there is!"

My world-view is on the wane, however, and I don't expect to see it on the big screen, not even quietly mouthed by a minor character.

Oh well. That's progress, such as it is.

In other news, the feminist icon coed who ran around a campus carrying her mattress in protest over an alleged rape and whose world-view is ascendant, has released a sex tape. Forward, indeed.

The Houthis And The Battle Of Britain

I would argue that this saying is at the heart of our foreign policy: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." President Obama is a big fan of it.

It allows us to take a hands-off approach to events around the world. It allows us to cut our military and reduce troop levels. It is also utter nonsense.

In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe and the RAF battled it out over the skies of England in what became known as The Battle of Britain. The RAF won, but few today know what a close-run thing it was. At the start of the campaign, the Luftwaffe focused on destroying the RAF. They bombed airfields and did their best to bring the RAF out into the skies for massive dogfights. Not knowing how close they were to victory, they changed their tactics in midstream and chose to bomb cities instead, thinking they could drive England to sue for peace by killing large numbers of civilians.

Just prior to that shift by the Germans, the RAF had planned to pull out of Southeastern England. The airfields there were in ruins and they were paying too high a price to defend them. Had they pulled out, it would have meant that German aircraft and English aircraft would have needed the same amount of time to reach London and other key cities. Coastal radar installations would have been practically undefended and knocking them out would have blinded the RAF planners.

But for a single decision, the moral arc of the Universe bent towards Nazism.

Dig this from today's WSJ.

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia shot down a Scud missile fired into the kingdom as Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked several points in southern Saudi Arabia, the Saudi state news agency said Saturday, in the first time a Scud has been used in the monthslong conflict.

There is no moral arc at work here, just two nations - Saudi Arabia and Iran - at war through proxies. There is no guarantee the Saudis will win in the long run. There is no assurance that anything other than military might, the will to take casualties and the skill of the soldiers and commanders will make the difference. There is no arc of history at play here, just the same force of arms conflict from time immemorial.

We can be as understanding and open-minded as we like. The people of 1940 England were, too and they quite nearly lost the war.

Fear Not, Citizens, The Secretary Of State's Email Server Was Constantly Watched By Secret Service Agents!

Yeah, there were no problems with securing the home email server of our Secretary Of State. Definitely not.

U.S. officials suspect that hackers in China stole the personal records of as many as four million people in one of the most far-reaching breaches of government computers.

There's no way the Chinese would have been spying on the incompetent harpy woman who was 3rd in line for the presidency.

Investigators suspect that hackers based in China are responsible for the attack, though the probe is continuing, according to people familiar with the matter. On Thursday, several U.S. officials described the breach as among the largest known thefts of government data in history.

Next: A Schizophrenia Bundt Cake!

Over on Twitter, The Meanest Boss Ever shared this piece of idiocy with me following Bruce Jenner's mutilation into a semi-functional sex toy.

What passes for science these days. A color drawing with some axes and labels.

The dude has himself whacked in the groin, consumes insane amounts of female hormones, has various other Dr. Moreau treatments done to himself and the libertines fall all over themselves in paroxysms of joy, illustrating their support with pictures of gingerbread men.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

The best follow-on would be a schizophrenia Bundt cake. The outside could be decorated with images of faces and a little action figure could be put in the middle symbolizing the open and healthy dialogue between the schizophrenic and the disembodied voices. Note that we don't call them imaginary voices because that would be denying the schizophrenic's reality and who are we to do that?

Here's a Bundt cake for arachnophobes. Put the action figure in the middle of this and it's surrounded by spiders. Yay! Equality now!

Sexbot Voting Rights - The Cause Of The Future!

This has got to be Tweet of the Day:

Do social liberals sometimes wonder with fear or excitement what new cause they will be self-righteously promoting a few years from now?

— Chateaubriand ن (@Chateaubriand__) June 3, 2015

My immediate thought was voting rights for sexbots. It's the Daily Double for the libertines and progressives - it's wild, unfettered sex and voting rights for the easily-manipulated. Just think what you'll be called if you oppose it. You'll be a specieist, a prude, robotophobic, the opportunities are endless!

The future. It's going to be great!

It gives pleasure and votes for social justice. If you don't support this, you're a hater!