News round-up: The Oscars boycott and other insignificant headlines

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The inanity of ethanol subsidies explained

Before I begin this entry, I just want to state that I am not a business graduate. I don't have an MBA from Bentley University. I'm just a 46-year-old tax-paying schlub with a BS in Geography that I earned what feels like a century ago. But, I like to think I've learned a thing or two about how the world works during my life thus far—which is why I'm so deeply disturbed and flummoxed by Donald Trump's defense of ethanol subsidies.
On this subject, Trump is to the Left of most environmental nutcases, including Al Gore. Even President Barry has not coddled the industry as much as Trump is proposing to do. Did I mention this is disturbing?
I'm a free market über alles kind of guy. A laissez-faire marketplace is like the Constitution to me. That in a nutshell is to say, don't fuck around with it. There is no way to improve on the original template, so let it be.
The market should be left alone to determine the winners and losers, in accordance with natural law, in the style that nature operates. A business or industry must succeed based on its own merits and strengths.
Think of it this way: There are two factors determining the health of a business in the free market. You have the consumer base and the investors. Both are vital to the health of a business. If you have investors but no consumer base, you will find that the business will suffer a fall in shares on the stock market as stockholders lead a revolt against it. If you have a good customer base but no investors, you will have a short-term profit margin, but it cannot be sustained without private backers.
The ethanol industry finds itself without a customer base, because it is expensive and, in the long run, it ruins motors. Ethanol is not fit to fuel the combustion engine; the combustion engine was not built to accept it. The industry has no investors because when it takes four barrels of gasoline to produce three barrels of ethanol, you don't have to be a genius to work out the negative enterprise value. Not to mention that it takes food off the plate of human beings and feed away from animals to produce a questionable fuel. Yet, because Iowa and the rest of the Midwest is corn-producing country, you have to sedate the hicks in power with promises that you will prop up their pork.
The ethanol industry is as establishment as they come. Yet Trump, supposedly the "anti-establishment" candidate, is defending it. Either he really has no intention of increasing subsidies to ethanol, in which case he's lying to the people of Iowa, or he's serious. In either instance, he's in trouble on the subject.
Now let's talk about subsidies. Most people would be inclined to ask, "OK, if you haven't got investors, then what's wrong with government subsidies to take their place?" What's wrong is that it costs tax dollars that are better spent elsewhere. And subsidies keep alive an industry that would be doomed to fail without them. It does not abide by natural law. Darwinism must be allowed to operate in the business world as much as it does in nature, or you cannot trust the quality of the product nor the integrity of the business offering it to you.
For instance, when Ford was allowed, in a robust marketplace, to produce quality cars, that's exactly what the customer got. Ford's strong profit margin attracted investors and the car manufacturer became a giant. Compare this with the Soviet car Lada, which during the '70s and '80s was a pile of junk on wheels. The Russian government told its car industry AvtoVAZ to produce cars for the proletariat. AvtoVAZ said it could not produce high-quality without the requisite profit platform. The government responded that it did not care, just that it had to produce. So AvtoVAZ produced crap. If all that matters to a business is quantity, that is a good sign that it is being manipulated by big government. Once the Russian Federation allowed for a free marketplace, AvtoVAZ could concentrate on quality.
Does the average American citizen want their Fords, Hyundais or Nissans to be turned into Ladas that won't start or poop out in the middle of the freeway? Then ethanol is the way to go.
To sum up, you must have the one, which is the customer base, and the two, the investors or stockholders, to ensure a successful business. If you replace two with three, government subsidies, you will have a business on life-support. This is the future of industry in America?
There is a lot wrong with the marketplace. Competition is its lifeblood, but we have private industries constantly swallowing up each other to the point where competition is an afterthought. For instance, when I was 19, I got my first bank account with a local bank called BayBank. BayBank merged with Bank of Boston in 1996 to become BankBoston. Then BankBoston was acquired by Fleet, which had also merged with Shawmut Bank. Finally, in 2004, Fleet merged with Bank of America. From the years 1989 to 2007, I had dealt with four changes of bank. Then I settled my accounts with them and left. No customer should have to go through that.
Mergers happen too often these days. It seems like the current business climate encourages it, but when companies keep merging and grow bigger as a result, they become all the more powerful, therefore unaccountable—not as beholden to either their customers or their investors, and the less competition exists as a result. Again, I'm no business expert, but it seems to me that the free market suffers in a time of high M&A (mergers & acquisitions) activity.
Sorry for the tangent, dear reader, but that had to be said. You can't even trust the private sector to regulate the business environment the way it should be. Everyone wants leverage they can't afford. That's why we had the financial crash of 2008.
I don't know what Donald Trump is going to do regarding ethanol. He's gotten himself into a fix and he'd better figure a way out of it. I don't want the "nationalist agrarian populism" that Mark Levin calls it. Like him, I want conservatism, and, for conservatives, there is only one option for the delivery of goods and services to the population: The free—not subsidized—market.

Word to Trump: Americans need a bismuth, not an ipecac

Did you hear the "great" news? Sarah Palin has endorsed Donald Trump's campaign! 
Ummm ... yeah. 
Can anyone tell me, honestly, why this woman is still politically relevant in any way? Palin's time has come and gone. She had her rise to fame as John McCain's pit-bull veep, trying desperately to put a right-wing stamp on his campaign, to no avail. She appeared on FOX News for years, until Roger Ailes made the rather savvy decision to not renew her contract with the network. She previously opined that we must stand by our "North Korean allies" and admitted that she can't remember any newspapers that she supposedly reads.
Whose hearts and minds are still won over by this outspoken hockey mom who has not only exhausted her fifteen minutes of fame, but beaten it into submission? What can she possibly lend to Donald Trump's presidential bid? If the aim was to have it laughed at and mocked even more mercilessly than it already is, then I think Palin's endorsement will go a long way towards that end.
Is there a market among conservatives for Sarah Palin? Yes, there are the types who, when they're not hunting, sit in their boxers with one testicle hanging out the side and salivating at her image, going "yeah, yeah, I like Sarah Palin. She's really good. She's really strong. Yeah, yeah!" But I'm talking about genuine conservative people here, not oversexed (or sex-deprived) functional illiterates or guys who fear having their heterosexual credentials questioned—usually by the same saggy-nutted geniuses—if they dare to say they don't favor her.
Well, call me what you want, but I have to ask: Can the Tea Party/Real Conservative establishment do no better than Palin? Honestly, we have to roll her out again to smile for the cameras and give rambling, bewildering speeches? It's as if the grass-roots conservatives have absolutely no-one else to turn to, despite a 2014 mid-term election that gave us new blood. If the endorsement has to be female, then why not  Mia Love or Joni Ernst?
Instead, I can hear the grass-roots types saying, "We need to give Trump a prominent female conservative endorsement. So, let's see, who've we got? Michelle Bachmann? Nah, people might not remember her. I guess we gotta go with Sarah Palin. Get on the phone to Wasilla!" Gee thanks! Just what Trump needed. Just what we all needed.
This is BS. It's like the Republican establishment constantly forcing weaklings like Bob Dole and Mitt Romney on us. They say, "we're gonna give you Jeb Bush!" We say, "Pass the cyanide."
I like Sarah Palin on many of the issues. Ninety-nine percent of them, in fact. She was an honest governor, claiming some of the lowest gubernatorial expenses and turning down a pay raise. She's a loyal mother, a strong-willed woman, and I wish her no harm whatsoever. If she can successfully re-invent her image, she can continue to successfully contribute to the conservative movement.
That's the problem, however. Her image. She rubs off as a bimbo, which may be unfair. But things are what they are. Like the aforementioned Bachmann, she appears like a hair-twirling simpleton singing "la-de-da." She'd be more effective at the podium if she played her flute rather than engaging her vocal cords.
For a woman with traditional values, I called foul straightaway given daughter Bristol's premarital pregnancy. And, man, these same values did a world of good for Track, who was recently arrested for punching his girlfriend and then holding a rifle to her head. Yes, I'm judging. It's what normal people do. These are closet skeletons and they do count.
I don't want to hear what Sarah Palin has to say about Trump in Iowa while her loser of a son is being arraigned for domestic violence in Alaska. What does it say when this woman wants to control conservative debate and election campaigns with her speeches and endorsements, respectively, but is apparently unable to control her idiotic family?
Palin ought to know better than to blame President Barry for Track's despicable actions. Track himself is to blame. His mother needs to get in his face and dress him down for the shame and embarrassment he has caused her. Yes, Obama cares nothing about our veterans; he is, without a doubt, the worst of the worst Commanders-in-Chief we have had in office. But blaming others for someone else's actions is the hallmark of liberalism. How is blaming the President for her son's warped mind indicative of conservative values?  Track needs to grow up and learn what it is to be a man, PTSD or no PTSD. 
In fact, Track's behavior is not the first time the Palin household has witnessed some downright wild behavior not exactly befitting of conservatives. In September 2014, America's best-known white trash clan, having been introduced to us in lurid detail via the Lifetime channel's Life's a Tripp, was engaged in a free-for-all fight at a birthday party for Palin's husband, Todd. Track, Bristol, Willow and Todd himself were all involved in the fracas, according to police.
Speaking of reality shows, what is it with some conservatives and the type of people that get their own programs? Some Louisiana backwoods moron with a beard down to his kratsh by the name of Phil Robertson said he saw Jesus in a duck-call whistle and before you know it, we're introduced to yet another family that no doubt gives the United States of America such a fine image worldwide. For a while, conservatives couldn't stop talking about Duck Dynasty and what a great confirmation of traditional American values it represented. When's Robertson's endorsement of Trump going to come, I wonder?
Honestly, who is the Tea Party/Real Conservative/Grass-Roots folks going to dig up next to represent them? Someone with brains, the sophisticated élan to use them, and a family that isn't a freak show, I can only hope. They may want to try that.
Ted Cruz is looking better and better, day by day. With Trump forcing another birther issue, raising a stink over loans Cruz used to win his race in Texas for the Senate as well as the definition of "New York values", calling Cruz "nasty" just because he won't coöperate with Senate Leader Fishface, and pushing ethanol for some bizarre reason, I am seeing the wheels come off the Trump campaign. Now, Palin, a has-been with significant baggage, has announced that she's gonna "stump for Trump"? Good grief!
If Donald Trump is the pink bismuth that the country is desperate for, Sarah Palin is the ipecac.
It's time Mr. Trump changed his campaign strategist, and damn quickly at that.

Trump needs to dispense with the "look, squirrel!" tactics

Let me make sure I understand this.
U.S. Navy ships are corralled in Iranian waters, nine of our men and one woman are captured, and they are made to apologize and admit to being at fault while being taunted as they had to take their footwear off and get on their knees. The female sailor was made to wear a hijab while in Iranian custody. Our mush-head Secretary of State John Kerry apologizes as well and then thanks the psychotic mullahs in charge for their coöperation in setting the Navy sailors free.
Two questions: One, how exactly did the U.S. ships stray into Iranian territory? Are we to believe that they did not possess any charting equipment, including GPS? Two, how did the Iranians so easily capture our ships and sailors? Did the Navy not put up a fight? I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. Given the clandestine relationship between President Barry O. and the bearded basket-cases in charge of the Persian nation, you can't help but wonder if this was engineered, the Dear Leader's attempt to make Iran look strong while humiliating America.
North Korea is acting up—its inbred leader having decided he needed world attention, as he occasionally does—having exploded something underground, enough to cause an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, which they claim was an H-bomb.
We have a brave Philadelphia cop, Jesse Hartnett, ambushed by a radical Muslim convert or—quite possibly—a Black Lives Matter (Only When White People Are Involved) member in disguise. But, I think we should take the shooter at his words, as he claimed that he did it because American policemen enforce laws that stand contrary to Koranic law. Worse yet, mayor Jim Kenney said, in response, that the attack had nothing to do with Islam.
So, with all this and more going on in the news, I'm supposed to be worried about Ted Cruz's eligibility for President? I don't think there's any question about it. Cruz's mother was a U.S. citizen. Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada but was registered at the American embassy. Yet, Donald Trump wonders "how the courts would rule on it".
I am bored to death with this birther garbage. It accomplished nothing in terms of removing Obama from office. All we got from the President was his small-form birth certificate, which didn't tell us much, and neither Congress nor the courts pursued it. Now Trump is pushing this again with Cruz.
I understand why, on two levels: Trump needs a strategy to pull away from Cruz, who is his only real competition for the GOP nomination, and he may be doing Cruz a favor by forcing him to address this now before the liberal media forces the issue.
I understand it, but I am sick of being told to chase squirrels and stare at shiny objects. This does us no good, distracts from the real issues, and takes the focus off what an abject failure the President and his administration have been for the past seven torturous years. The whole debacle over Cruz's eligibility is all for naught. Any reasonable person can determine that the man is an American—not a Canadian—citizen. I don't give a damn if Cruz even did have a Canadian passport at one point. He has an American one now.
Can we have real issues on the agenda, not speculation about the courts delaying the rightful Presidency of a good man and American citizen? If the courts didn't challenge Obama, as he had an American mother, why would they second-guess Cruz?
My advice to Donald Trump is to keep doing what he does best: hammering away at the issues regarding illegal aliens, trade and the economy which made him so popular in the first place. I know he has to go after Cruz at some point—the two candidates have got to start competing with each other now that the race is beginning to heat up and the field starting to dwindle—but there are other ways of doing it. Challenge each other on Constitutional knowledge, on domestic policy, on foreign policy ... it's all good.
Give me a break with this whole birther issue. That ship has sailed. Trump needs to get over it already. I also don't want to hear any more about these loans Cruz took out during his bid to represent Texas in the Senate. His rival, David Dewhurst, was loaded, and Cruz needed a financial edge. It's called politics.
Mr. Trump should not risk imploding his campaign on this nonsense. He is coming dangerously close to conservatives standing against him, as evidenced recently in Myrtle Beach.
It's time Trump addressed real issues again. Real issues.

Charlie Hebdo and free speech, part two

Last week, the world marked the one-year anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Formerly a magazine with a small readership who only those in the know had heard of, the politically charged monthly tome of cartoons was catapulted to worldwide fame after the attack—and the rally on its behalf in favor of freedom of speech and expression.
Pundits everywhere said that while Charlie Hebdo perhaps should not have made a cartoon image of Mohammed, promising 1,000 lashings if the readership did not laugh, it had every right to do so and did not deserve the carnage unleashed by the offended party.
Now the magazine has made the news again, as it has published a striking cartoon that gets straight to the point:

The cartoon has been condemned for postulating that the three-year-old boy who drowned off the coast of Turkey last summer, Aylan Kurdi, would have grown into a man not unlike the sub-human filth that rampaged across the wide plaza of Cologne's Hauptbahnhof station, raping and tormenting women just after New Year's. As we have since found out, this hasn't happened just in Cologne, but has gone on in cities all across Germany. Stockholm, Sweden's main city, is the rape capital of Europe, if not the world, due to the Nordic nation's own sheltering of vulnerable elements from the unstable Middle East.
Granted, the French, when translated, states: "What would have become of the little Aylan had he grown up." But I think the cartoon is about more than that. If not for the text, it could be seen as a commentary on the effect that the image of the drowned Aylan had on the sensitivities of Western European countries. Suddenly, Europe couldn't take in enough pitiable Muslim migrants, as if to make up for the horror of the deceased Aylan on that beach in Turkey.
Except for the fact that Aylan's father, Abdullah, did not want to be in Europe. He opined, soon after the tragedy, that the Canadians dragging their feet on his asylum application was to blame and that the Gulf Arab states needed to step up.
Angela Merkel has been shown up for the pretend conservative that she is. Not only does she worship at the altar of the European Union, but for a national leader who once opined that multiculturalism had "failed," it certainly appears that she cannot change the ethnic composition of Germany fast enough. She is an embarrassment to her country, and to her party, the Christian Democratic Union, in which a deep schism is starting to form, all thanks to her. Support for the CDU has fallen while that for the Alternative for Germany party has risen.


   "Was war das? Nein, mein Gesicht sieht nicht wie eine Kartoffel!" (What was that? No, I am not a potato-face!)
I can be persuaded that Charlie Hebdo went too far in picking on little Aylan. No-one has the right to say whether, as a young man, he would have fit in with European society or remained aloof and prone to Islamic extremism. I do not blame his family for the subsequent outrage they have understandably expressed. However, as I've noted, take away the text and the cartoon takes on a different meaning.
Besides, once Aylan had grown up, there might be no white women left in Europe anyway, as they will have migrated themselves or been long since subjugated by the jihadis that nobody in power had the courage to do anything about—as the media refused to report on the problem, the head of the police ignored the assaults and filed no reports, the mayors thought the native women were to blame in not being culturally sensitive to the newcomers, and the heads of state believed it was simply a matter of educating the migrants on the cultural values of Europe.
It is worth remembering that Charlie Hebdo criticizes all religions, including Catholicism, in what is—still—a majority Catholic country. Did any world leader or anyone in the media intelligentsia squawk when the magazine chose the following as one of its covers?


  "Pedophile bishops! Made from the cinema, like Polanski!"
Did they, hell!
Dear reader, it is time to stand by Charlie Hebdo once more. In what they see as an affrontery to their liberal impressionabilities, people are condemning free speech. This is "hate speech". We require "safe space" legislation against this kind of thing. Blah-de-blah.
What they conveniently forget is that the magazine is solidly left-wing and takes a predictably "nothing is sacred" attitude.
Charlie Hebdo was a tad intemperate in its references to Aylan Kurdi. Nonetheless, let us not, in the space of only one year, go from rallying in their defense to condemning them. This is schizophrenia; and this is what ought to alarm us more than any cartoon.

President Barry crying does not equal compassion

So, the President put on a soap opera-quality acting performance on Monday while announcing his 229th executive order restricting gun availability. While referencing the Sandy Hook tragedy, the Dear Leader stopped to shed the kind of tears that remind me of a certain reptile.
For those of you unfortunate enough to have brains that flicker with candlelight, leading you to believe that the current occupant of the White House was in any way sincere about this, I do not have words rich or expressive enough to convey how sorry I feel for you.
Did Obama cry when Kate Steinle was shot dead by a five-times deported illegal alien lowlife? He ignored the news and said nothing. Did he weep when American reporter James Foley was decapitated by ISIS? He was seen laughing ten minutes after his appearance at the podium as he went to play golf. Did he shed any tears in the wake of the San Bernadino terrorist massacre? No, he just visited the community on the way to yet another vacation. Was he passionate in defense of free speech and expression this time last year when the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo were attacked? Hell, there wasn't even any American representation to speak of at the subsequent rally.
Maybe if we didn't have a President who excuses gun felons and violent illegal immigrants, who encourages open borders and sanctuary cities which harbor criminals, and packs the courts with liberal judges and advocates sentencing reform which sets free violent criminals who've used weapons that go bang-bang, we wouldn't have to fret about gun control. Perhaps if this President did not spend so much time pitting citizens against each other, showing contempt for our police forces and debasing our nation's military, guns would not be an issue.
A civil society is one that respects the freedom of the law-abiding while not having to worry about the consequences that such liberty entails. When you work against a civil society, you can hardly be surprised when violence occurs. The women of Germany know this only too well. Do you think the mayhem that ensued when hundreds of male "migrants" stormed the space outside the Hauptbahnhof station in Cologne, raping and assaulting every female they found, would have continued for much longer if one—even just one—of those said females was armed? Exactly.
Barry O. said that gun violence "happens on the streets of Chicago every day". What he, of course, failed to mention is that Chicago, like the rest of Illinois, is supposed to be a gun-free zone, with some of the strictest anti-gun legislation in the country. You see, criminals don't really dig on what something is "supposed" to be. It defeats the point of being a criminal.
The President wants to ensure that guns do not end up in the wrong hands. Like Mexican drug cartels? Now I wonder which administration was responsible for that fiasco, known to us as "Fast and Furious"? Yet, for those of us on anti-depressants, we may be barred from getting an equalizer with which to protect ourselves. Is this not discrimination?
The Second Amendment was not a suggestion or an afterthought to the Bill of Rights. The rights of a suitably armed populace was insisted upon, early in the ratification proceedings, by New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Madison, Adams and other founders grew to appreciate the integral need for the issue to be addressed in the establishment of the Constitution.
The Second Amendment states, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." So, where exactly is the trouble for gun-control zealots in understanding the plain English of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" and "shall not be infringed"?
If you think the Second Amendment is outdated and written by trigger-happy, slave-owning old white men, then we might as well get rid of the First. We are, in fact, doing just that with "hate crimes," "safe zones" and the nascent rise of an untouchable state religion—Islam. Worship as you please, but don't criticize those adherents to "the religion of peace". If you dare to do so, Attorney General Lynch will school you on compassion and tolerance with FBI, ATF and IRS agents at the ready to ensure you never again forget your place.
And who even cares about the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth or Tenth Amendments? In fact, I can think of only one Amendment, the Third, that has not been violated. This is about soldiers being quartered in houses without the either the soldier's nor the homeowner's consent. Yeah, more 18th century white guy silliness. They'll get around to abusing this sooner or later, I have no doubts.
Look, I'm not saying the previous president didn't have a horrifying lack of regard for the Constitution either. George W. Bush allegedly called it "just a goddamned piece of paper." But you can see articles on Slate and Daily Kos kvetching about that, pretending to be upset over that put-down of our national document. Obama violates articles and amendments hither and tither with one executive order after another. Crickets. Brainless New Left commies everywhere regard Obama as a hero. Hey, he's just doing what he has to do. Immigration reform, climate change and gun control have to be accomplished somehow and if Congress is too slow to act, then hell with our representatives. (Not that they're a damn shred of good, albeit.) 
Yet nowhere does the Constitution state that executive orders shall act as alternatives to Congress' rightful place to decide matters of national precedence. They are intended to facilitate management of the Executive branch during any President's term. That is all.
You can think what you want when it comes to the issue of guns and violence and what constitutes mental illness, another can of worms entirely. Just don't pretend this boob in the Oval Office is a hero, unless never letting an opportunity go to waste is your idea of heroism.

Edit: I've thought of another example of Obama's caring and compassion. Do you remember him giving a bouncy shout-out to one of his friends in the press corps while announcing the terrorist massacre at Fort Hood?  This president needs to calm down and stop being so sensitive, y'know? Crap happens.  Mostly as a result of him and his Stasi-like minions, but let's never mind that.