Loads of Fun

Forest Park

It won’t happen.  But the politics will be fun.

And don’t think that this is anything but political.  Because both alder(wo)men stated by name are running for mayor.  French is only doing this because he’s gonna use Krewson’s opposition to kvetch to black voters about ZOMG WYTE RAYCISM LOL~!!!!!1

Because:

Cue Up the Excuse Machine (Drinking Game Included)

Downtown

Now that the FBI released 2015 violent crime data, the third parties made quick work of it.

And guess who comes in first.

Do you know what this means?  Starting tomorrow morning, and going through the rest of the week, and probably resuming for the first day or two next week, expect to hear these two excuses over and over and over and over and over again from City Hall, Civic Progress, the CVC, the P-D editorial page:

“The FBI’s own report has a caution against ranking, because numerous variables, extenuating circumstances, simplistic or incomplete analyses, misleading perceptions, adversely affecting communities, unique conditions, yadda yadda blah blah.”

“ZOMG St. Louis can’t annex like just about every other major city can!”

This should be our drinking game for the next seven days.  When you hear either one of these or a close enough variant, chug-a-lug.  I hope you all have a high tolerance for alcohol.

All the Time

Lamar

A Constitutional amendment to put the state on DST all year.

As if the USDOT and the Federal judiciary is going to sign off on us being an hour ahead of every state that borders us for about four and a half months out of every year.

The strange part here is that I can’t yet discern any hidden agenda or ulterior motive for why Mike Kelley is pushing this quixotic matter.

The Reluctant Neoreactionary

Boston

Angelo Codevilla, of all people.

Though it’s not accurate to call him a neoreactionary; all he shares in common with them/us/me is that he’s recognizing and accepting reality, which is more than I can say for most people.  The difference is that his is a lamentation, while we think we can adjust to and thrive in the return of civilizations-old reality.

Thrill Is Gone

Washington, D.C.

For the first time in his Presidency, the Senate has overridden a veto of President Baraq Obama.  With 97 Senate votes, it passed the Sue Saudi bill into law.  The only no vote was Harry Ass Reid, and there were two non-votes, names I don’t yet know.

Quit Digging

Los Angeles

You want a hot take?  I’ll give you a hot take.

The super rich are prepping because they fear the negative consequences of that which they are causing to begin with.  If they would just quit causing the problems, that would help a lot, and it would also negate the need for them to build expensive opulent bunkers.  But I have to stop myself and remind myself that it’s a moot point, because if they weren’t causing these problems to begin with, they wouldn’t be super-rich right now.

It’s one thing for an ordinary person to prep, because he is reacting to trends which other people cause and over which he has virtually no control either way.  The super rich, OTOH, have a really bad habit about creating problems, and then either running way from the consequences, or trying to unload the consequences off on someone else, or, now, hiding underneath them.  Hell, we’ve even had a recent movie (*) about the super-rich avoiding the consequences of their actions by doing the complete opposite of digging, and that might become reality in the coming decades.

Political Debating Is Useless, Part Too Many to Count

Hempstead, New York

I wrote in AR a few minutes ago:

By the end of the weekend, I predict that:

(1) Credible scientific polling will show that more people think that Hillary won the debate than Trump won the debate, probably by a significant to landslide margin

(2) Based off the debate, and again from credible scientific polling, the support needle will move somewhat Trump’s way.

As contradictory as it may seem.

How can we reconcile this paradox?

Easy. With what I have written in this space fairly often, and in other places, and have said to a fair number of people:

Political debating is useless and irrelevant.

That’s because political debates are (DUH) political, not academic nor Aristotelian.

Put the two together, and we learn that winning the debate and winning the politics of the debate are two different things.

As an example, even if the polls show that she won the debate compared to him by a 90-10 margin, him hitting her on NAFTA and trade issues means that he wins the politics off the debate, no matter what else happens in the debate. That’s because the politics of trade issues is important to crucial marginal swing constituencies; they don’t care about birth certificates or Venezuelan hood ornaments or Line 48B on tax returns.

On top of that, the forces which move needles in electoral politics are way more powerful than, and have nothing to do, with these charades mislabeled “debates.”

You may remember, especially if you are or once were a Ted Cruz supporter, that that was my rejoinder to the notion that his supporters peddled here about a year and a half ago (well before Trump announced) that he’d clean up in Republican debates. And I agreed at the time that he would, and as it turned out, he did well in them. If the debates were academic affairs, he would have won them in that way, too, because he already has a shelf full of trophies that he won in academic debates. But it would not have mattered, and as we can see, it didn’t matter. Because Cruz was eloquently debating on behalf of an ideology that is getting less and less relevant to fewer and fewer people.

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