Inflation, Damage Control, and the Big Lie

 Inflation has gotten ugly, and it looks like it is only going to get worse.
A friend, who drives an 18 wheeler for a living, says that in some places diesel is up to $6.00 gallon.
The democrats are trying to deny responsibility for any of this by telling the big lie which the press and big tech is dutifully parroting. They are claiming that Biden has absolutely no responsibility for rising gas prices or inflation.
The best lies are filled with half truths and there are a lot of those in the democrats talking points. Their claim that Biden did not ban domestic oil production is true. BUT Biden did ban fracking on public lands. Fracking is the only reason the U.S. regained energy independence. So no fracking, it's back to dependence on foreign oil. The second partially true claim is that oil companies can do fracking but are refusing to do so. Well this is kind of true, but what they leave out is this is due to a court challenge. So the oil companies challenged Biden's executive order and got a lower federal court to rule in their favor. But oil prospecting and drilling is an incredibly expensive operation. It is unlikely the oil companies will resume fracking on any federal lands until the appeals process is over. They are not going to risk setting up all that equipment only to be told they have to pull it all out again a year later.
Trying to claim Biden had nothing at all to do with any of this just isn't true. The other big claim is that it is all Putin's fault. This is fucking outrageous and only the dumbest people would buy into that, but some people are pretty fucking stupid. See, like an old Colombo detective show, the timeline just doesn't match. Putin invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022. Gas prices rose and inflation soon followed when Biden assumed office on January 20, 2021.
To sum it up, the democrats are blaming everything on greedy oil companies and Putin. But in both cases the timeline does not support them. Oil companies were ALWAYS greedy, so it is implausible that they suddenly decided all by themselves to pinch off domestic oil production just as Biden and the democrats took over.
There is a third, and overlooked piece of evidence that the democrats are lying. The green new deal. The green new deal is the Mein Kampf of the democrat party. It spells out exactly what they want to do. One of the main parts of it is to get America off of oil. Not as a long term goal, but as in NOW, ignoring the negative consequences.
Almost everything in the U.S. is delivered by truck. Electric trucks don't work. The batteries take a long time to recharge and they don't go as far as the diesel trucks.

Even if they forced people to buy electric cars, the diesel prices won't drop and food prices won't either. Welcome to inflation eternus.
This is why I despise the "greater good" philosophy the democrats operate under. They would literally force me and every other working schmuck into abject poverty if they thought it would benefit their idea of what the greater good is. To some of the most radical, like AOC, the extinction of humanity may serve the greater good of the planet. While that may actually be true, I don't want to volunteer to die or live in poverty for her agenda. Do you?

Trust the Science

  Why should I believe the government or "trust the science"? The king of science, Dr. Fauci, at first told people they didn't need to wear masks. When he later stated people do need to wear masks he got accused of being confused, but there was never any confusion. Fauci ALWAYS believed masks were effective and should be worn. His first statement was a deliberate lie, told for the "greater good" in order to preserve the mask supply for people in the medical field.
   Some people are OK with that. They are collectivists and are perfectly happy to cough their lives out on a ventilator for "the greater public good". Good for them if they want to be heroes of humanity, but as an individualist, I want to opt out. Fauci could have told the truth. He could have told people there weren't enough masks, and that people under 60 with no co-morbidities were at a very low risk of dying from covid. He could have told America's most vulnerable, the elderly, to mask up and avoid contact with other people as much as possible.
   Once mask production ramped up he then could have told people that the mask shortage was over and that it would be a good idea for everyone to wear one.
   So the next time I'm told "trust the science", if part of that means lying to me and putting me at risk for the "greater public good", fuck you and fuck off.

Alec Baldwin and gun safety

 Regarding Alec Baldwin's accidental killing of Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust.    
Would it really be that tough to conduct a one day gun safety course designed for actors?
  Unlike everyone else, actors actually do have to point firearms at other people for gunfight scenes. So actors should be taught to not only check their guns to see whether they are loaded or not, but should be taught to recognize what type of ammo is in the gun. They need to be able to recognize blanks compared to live ammo. They should be taught to check the barrel for obstructions. Actors should also learn the minimum safe distance to be from someone when shooting blanks at them.
  It appears that firing his gun wasn't in the script when Baldwin shot Hutchins. He was either confused or horsing around. Either way actors also need to be taught never to point their guns at people when it is not in the scene. The same goes for firing their gun, whether it's pointed at anyone or not.
  I understand there is supposed to be an armorer to take care of all that, but this creates a single point of failure, which we have seen here and on the set of The Crow, where Brandon Lee was killed.

Cancel Culture - cancel yourselves, and fuck off.

There is a new, and shitty trend, pushed by big tech and the SJW left. It is to deplatform, or "cancel" people with opinions they disagree with. This is censorship, and it sucks. The proponents smirkely try to rename it "consequence culture" as if censorship of opinions they don't like is now a good thing. Censorship has always been a giant, stinking turd, bending it into a circle and putting confectionery sugar on it does not make it a donut.

Big tech, which got exemption from lawsuits by claiming it was a "neutral platform" is now acting like a publisher. They "fact check" and censor posts, sometimes even booting posters whose opinion they don't agree with off their platform. The "fact checks" are often political and not accurate. When the Hunter Biden laptop story came out anyone who mentioned that immediately got deplatformed on the basis of "disinformation", so no more Facebook or Twitter 4 U! The worm must have turned, because with the FBI looking into the laptop, it's not so easy to claim the laptop and emails were not Hunter Biden's anymore. 

Another big no no was mentioning the possibility that COVID-19 came out of a Chinese drug lab. DISINFORMATION!!! So big tech was again deplatforming people, even though coincidentally there was indeed a drug lab in Wuhan, where the virus was known to have originated from. Whoopsie, looks like big techs so called "fact checkers" may have been wrong again.
Removing the voices of dissent is wrong and dangerous. It puts forward a myopic world view controlled by the billionaires of big tech and a rag tag group of SJW loudmouths. Liberals like Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz never supported censorship. They know that stifling speech is bad for the country.  

Public Safety, the enemy of freedom.

 There is a magic word politicians bring up whenever they want to shit all over the constitution and your rights. That word is "Public Safety". You hear it a lot when the issue of gun control comes up. "How do we thwart that pesky 2nd amendment", the politicians thought. It is thwarted when politicians, backed by anti gun judges, pass unconstitutional gun laws claiming public safety supersedes your rights guaranteed under the constitution. COVID-19 is a shining example of this. When the pandemic first came out we were all told we had to lock down and mask up for two weeks to "flatten the curve" so that hospitals would not be over run. This sounded so reasonable that no one objected. Then the two weeks came to an end, and the lockdowns and mask mandates got extended...indefinitely. 

One thing that was never stressed enough was that people under 50 with no co-morbidities were at almost no risk of dying from COVID-19. Yet these people were locked down with everyone else. In the case of COVID-19 one shoe did NOT fit all, but the government sure forced everyone to wear it.

The government chicken littles ratcheted up the fear, which kept the sheep placid and in line. When asked "when is this going to end?" by small businesses going broke and about to go under, the response was "when a vaccine is developed". It can take years, decades, sometimes never when it comes to new vaccines.

Landlords were also hurt as there was an eviction moratorium passed. Because of the lockdowns many people were out of work and could not pay rent. But you know what landlord still had to be paid? If you guessed big daddy government you would be correct! See, property tax is "rent" that landlords pay to the government. So while they got no rent from tenants, they were still expected to make property tax payments.

Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, Trump fast tracked vaccine development, and the Trump..errr Biden vaccine came out and is now available to all. So all the mandates got retracted right? Well, hooold your horses there Buckaroo, because the dreaded Delta variant is here. The panic pushers are again out in force. "It's more CONTAAAGEOUS!", they scream, while not telling you that if you've been vaccinated the chance of death is next to zero, and is low even for the unvaccinated.

Now the government is trying to bully the unvaccinated by pushing for vaccine passports. At this point the vaccine is available to anyone who wants it. If someone wants to take the risk of getting sick, that is their business. The people who don't want to get fatally ill can take the vaccine.

No more mask mandates and lockdowns. With the vaccine available to all it is long past time for individual freedom to supersede the chains of public safety.

COPPA and Youtube, a screwjob from Google and the government to you

I live an a liberal state and the people in it LOVE big government, the bigger the better. They have this Pollyanna viewpoint of big daddy government taking care of people via socialism.
Well, in theory that's wonderful, but big government also means a big jackboot. Like, say, chemically castrating someone for being gay.
Or fire bombing a building in a densely populated urban neighborhood.
What could go wrong there! 61 houses burned down? Oooops!
COPPA is a "for the children" law that in its face looks benevolent. But along comes youtube, and the government and Google got in to a dustup over COPPA.
So Google winds up having to shit out $170 million. But the people who are really going to get the screw from this are the youtube creators.
Google, not wanting to shit out more money to the government, is foisting the responsibility for this abortion on to the creators. Creators now have to try to figure out(and this is NOT clear cut) whether their content is for kids, kids and adults, or just adults. Kid content gets demonetized, no $$$ 4 U!! Oh but it gets even worse. Because if a creator's content they labeled as adult is deemed "kid directed" by the government, they can get slapped with a $42,530 fine, per video.
 While obviously Thomas the Choo Choo train is "kid directed" it can get fuzzy. Is a video with some toys in the background "kid directed"?
Maybe the solution is for creators to begin every video by saying "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck" to the sound of disco with animated dancing penises in the background.

Welfare, time for reform

 Mostly people on the left, but some on the right too won't like this. It's time to tighten up welfare. Usually when this is said people mean cutting the rolls. I don't mean that. I don't want to see anyone living on the street. However the state has been far too generous with welfare, and it's time to pinch it down.
 Right now you have welfare people living in apartments with separate kitchen, living room and bedroom. They have free health care, spending money, and food stamps too.
Meanwhile you have mid and low income working people sharing a house with multiple people. They have to share a bathroom, and kitchen, sometimes with over 5 other people. They are often stuck with a high deductible health care plan where if they get sick they have to pay the bill up to whatever the deductible is, which is usually over $1000 dollars. Maybe if they make a little more they get to live in a small studio, nowhere near as nice as what welfare people get for free.
 Who would ever want to get off welfare so they can live in a house stuffed with roommates, and get a crap health care plan to boot?
 The system needs reform. Welfare people should get the same housing college dorm students do. Tiny rooms with communal bathrooms/showers on each floor. Health care could be like an HMO, they could go to a state run clinic that hires doctors on the cheap fresh out of medical school. Free food should be basic staples, it could be distributed at the dorms. Money given out should be minimal, maybe enough for public transportation.
 Anyone who doesn't like this is free to get a job, there is certainly a lot more incentive to do so under that system than there is under the current one.
 "But what about corporate welfare?" Get rid of it. If a company can't float itself without taxpayer money, let it sink.