We're All In This Together

Remember that sentiment of solidarity? Early in the covid pandemic (back when it was a pandemic, and not an endemic, which is what it is today), many people uttered those words to express that we were all equally affected by the threat of disease, the potential loss of loved ones, the restrictions, the government shutdowns.

We weren't, of course. Some of us were more vulnerable to disease than others. Some were more susceptible to serious illness or death, especially since very few people actually died from covid; most died from pre-existing morbidities that covid exploited. Some of us continued to go about our lives in relative freedom. Of course, we couldn't dine out or go to the movie theater or fly on an airplane in those initial "two weeks to slow the spread" (wink, wink), but we got take-out from restaurants, went to the park or on driving vacations (even though we were told to stay home), and generally lived our lives without fear. And some of us were fortunate enough to not see our jobs or our incomes affected by government fiat that arbitrarily picked winners and losers, with ramifications that are still being felt today in labor market and supply chain dislocations.

As The Curmudgeon said at the time, "We're not all in this together. We're in the same ocean, but we're all in different boats."

Well, now we're truly all in this together. And it really seems to be bothering some people. Allow me to explain.

For many months now, government leaders and health care officials have wielded vaccination like a bludgeon, using it to drive a wedge between the populace. And those who are vaccinated have been all too willing to play along, viewing themselves as somehow morally and even intellectually (I know; it's laughable) superior to those who are unvaccinated.

Have you ever read the Dr. Suess story, "The Sneetches?" It's very appropriate to the current situation. Here's a synopsis from Wikipedia:

"The ... story ... tells of a group of yellow bird-like creatures called the Sneetches, some of whom have a green star on their bellies. At the beginning of the story, Sneetches with stars discriminate against and shun those without. An entrepreneur named Sylvester McMonkey McBean (calling himself the Fix-It-Up Chappie) appears and offers the Sneetches without stars the chance to get them with his Star-On machine, for three dollars ..." The Sneetches who originally had stars, seeing that they're no longer unique, now look to have their stars removed to once again differentiate themselves, so McBean develops a machine to remove the stars, and they pay for the privilege. But then so, of course, do the newly-starred Sneetches. And so it goes, round and round, until pretty soon none of the Sneetches know who are the original superior breed, all of them are flat-broke, and McBean has all their money.

There are several morals and key themes to this story. One, of course, is that McBean is none other than Anthony Fauci. And in the end, he's going to be the only one who gets rich off this whole thing.

But the over-arching theme is that the star-bellied Sneetches - the vaccinated - consider themselves superior to those without stars. Why? Merely because they have a star on their bellies. There is nothing else special about them, but they preened over those stars as though they actually meant something. (The bitter irony is that they come to mean less and less with each passing week.)

In their efforts to discriminate against and shun the unvaccinated, the vaccinated claimed that they were now immune from infection. From serious illness, hospitalization, and death. That they were shrouded in an invisible shield, and could not spread infection to others, and were therefore morally superior to others in the great war against covid. They accused the unvaccinated of propagating the spread of the disease, prolonging the pandemic (even after the evidence clearly showed that it had become an endemic), threatening the lives of others, and overwhelming the health care system (which never really happened).

Of course, they were wrong. On all counts. (And the irony of their presumed intellectual superiority is how easily duped they were by "McBean," just like in Suess' story.)

They were apparently math-ignorant, for even the manufacturers of their majik potions stressed that the efficacy rate of their vaccines was only about 95%. That means that, of every 100 people who get the full vaccine, five of them may still get infected, if exposed. In other words, the vaccine only works in 95% of people. And indeed, breakthrough cases happened, though they were rare. (Five percent qualifies as "rare.") But for whatever reason, the vaccinated felt justified in maintaining their smugness, and that apparently led them to ignore math and claim that 95% = 100%.

Enter delta.

Delta was more transmissible than previous variants. And it proved more resistant to the vaccines. The breakthrough cases increased, and started to get press. "Gee, I guess our efficacy rate is only about 90-95%," said the vaccine manufacturers. Effectively, that's saying the vaccines are 90% efficacious, as you can really only claim the low end of the range. In other words, if you get vaccinated, you still have a 10% chance of getting infected. Those odds are important; we'll come back to them in a bit.

Moreover, vaccinated people were getting really sick. Being hospitalized. Dying. Not in huge numbers, mind you, and the vast majority of deaths - vaccinated or not - remain among those with serious co-morbidities and/or the very elderly. But it was happening, in sufficient numbers to get reported. And, since Delta hit about six months after the first people were getting vaccinated, it had to be acknowledged that the vaccines' efficacy wanes after about that period of time. So booster doses are required to maintain efficacy, much like flu vaccines, which require an annual dose. At first the necessity for boosters was denied by the vaccine zealots; then, it was grudgingly acknowledged; now, the vaccine zealots have become eager booster zealots. Hey, if you can't beat 'em ...

(To be fair, natural immunity wanes, too. I know at least two people who had covid in 2020, and got it again in 2021. And, they were sicker in 2021 than they were in 2020, presumably because in 2021 they had the Delta variant - I'm just guessing there; I don't know what variant they had. I do know that these are very healthy people with no apparent co-morbidities and strong immune systems. To that end, covid is like other coronaviruses, including the common cold: you can catch cold multiple times over the course of your life, too, but if you catch cold today, you probably won't catch cold again in a month. All this proves is that covid is just another coronavirus.)

Still, the vaccinated kept at it. They maintained the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" theme. They ridiculed those who chose not to get vaccinated, insinuating that they're uneducated Neanderthals who don't understand science. (In truth, not only do they likely understand science as well as, if not better than, their vaccinated counterparts, they clearly, in most cases, have superior math skills. I'd argue that many of the vaccinated couldn't pass a basic statistics course, from the evidence I've seen.)

Joe Biden pushed his mandate for employers, invoking an emergency OSHA order intended to apply to situations of such dire urgent threat to workplace safety that no alternative is available other than granting broad, authoritative powers to OSHA.

Never mind that businesses have succeeded in keeping workplaces safe for nearly two years now, as the immediate threat of the pandemic has ebbed into an endemic. Never mind that this "emergency" was so dire that Biden announced the mandate in September (just after the disastrous Afghanistan surrender - "hey, look over here!"), but wouldn't put it into effect for four months. Or that it was so urgent that, the day the Sixth District lifted the stay imposed by the Fifth District, OSHA announced that it would delay enforcement by yet another month.

Some "emergency."

Yes, the star-bellied Sneetches continued to point proudly at their stars - even though the stars had to be boosted in order to keep them from fading; the boosts themselves became a new virtue signal - and looked down their beaks at their star-less brethren. So much for, "we're all in this together," right?

Enter omicron.

There is no statistical infection-rate difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated with omicron. In fact, the director of the CDC recently reported that, of omicron cases in the U.S., 80% are among the vaccinated, and a third have received a booster dose. In other words ...

The vaccines are ineffective against preventing infection from omicron.

Now, the "experts" will tell you that the vaccines will keep you from getting very sick with omicron. Well, guess what?

You're probably not going to get very sick with omicron anyway.

In South Africa, where omicron first reared its ugly head, symptoms are mild and hospitalization rates are low. And the vaccination rate in South Africa is much lower than in the U.S. In the Kansas City metro, cases are near the Delta peak (which is about 80% of the November 2020 record level); the positivity rate is a whopping 38% vs. 34% at the Delta peak and 31% last January; yet deaths are at very low levels, in line with some of the lowest levels since covid first emerged.

The most common symptoms of omicron appear to be very similar to those of the common cold, or a mild flu. Forty percent of positive cases are completely asymptomatic.

Now, that could be, in part, thanks to vaccinated people getting infected, right? Well, that leads us to the point of this post:

A recent news report focused on vaccinated people who were infected with the omicron variant. They expressed surprise at how guilty they felt. Why? Because, previously, they'd felt so judgmental toward anyone who was unvaccinated, and got infected. They felt that those people deserved to get infected.

That it served them right.

Nice, huh? Yet we've seen it all across social media. An outspoken vaccine critic gets covid and dies, and the comments on their social media page are shockingly hateful. Laughing at them. Making fun of them. Referencing karma and the like.

Well, funny thing about karma - be really careful with it, because, as John Lennon sang, it's gonna get you - gonna knock you right on the head.

In this news report, the vaccinated people who got infected were saying that they realized that anyone can get covid, and that they shouldn't have been so judgmental.

In other words, they were coming to realize that we're all in this together. That the stars on their bellies don't mean a whole lot, in the grand scheme of things. Those stars are no more a differentiator than whether one is vaccinated against the flu, and you don't see people virtue-signaling over the flu vaccine, or attempting to brow-beat or ostracize others over their flu vaccination status.

And, now that omicron is the dominant covid variant, we can truly say that the flu is more severe than covid. (It probably always has been, for the vast, vast majority of us, who are under the age of 65 and don't have significant co-morbidities.)

Okay, now for those odds I promised we'd talk about. Anyone who's ever read The Curmudgeon knows he loves math. So here's some math, and it's pretty easy stuff.

If you run the numbers in terms of how many people have had covid in the U.S., and divide it by the population, then adjust it for the number of months that covid has been present in the U.S. and annualize that, your odds in any given year of getting covid are a bit less than 10%. That's with no vaccine. It's simple math, and the data is readily available: ((Total Cases / Population) / Months Since First Case ) x 12 = Annual Rate. (It actually works out to 8.4%, currently.)

Now, I would argue that there have been a lot of completely asymptomatic people running around who were never tested who had covid, which would influence the numbers higher. At the same time, in 2020, for political reasons, the testing protocols were manipulated to overstate cases, as The Curmudgeon has previously addressed, so those things may cancel each other out. (There are other complicating data, such as people getting it twice, but the incidence of that data would be statistically insignificant.)

In addition, as we've also previously discussed, other factors influence one's odds of getting covid. Population density is a biggie. Age, race, and gender all play a role. So, using The Curmudgeon as an example, a white male under 65 living in suburban Johnson County, Kansas probably has somewhat lower odds than the national average - maybe, I don't know, around 7-8%?

But, for arguments' sake, let's peg it at 10%, a nice, round, conservative number. Now, remember that post-Delta efficacy rate of 90-95%? For all practical purposes, with the vaccine, I have maybe a 10% chance of getting infected.

Same odds as if I'm unvaccinated.

And that's with delta. With omicron, by all appearances, my odds are higher. Even if I'm boosted. So ...

We truly are all in this together. Vaccinated or unvaccinated, boosted or unboosted. Stars on our bellies or no stars. We're all in this together. So there's no shame in getting sick. Just like it was before the vaccines - before covid, really. There was no shame in catching a cold, or getting the flu, or a sinus infection. It was just part of life. If someone got the flu, nobody said, "Stupid bastard should have gotten the flu shot." If your neighbor caught cold, you didn't say, "Serves her right for not wearing a mask to the store."

So if you're vaccinated, maybe it's time to get off your high horse - because maybe you've come to realize that your "high horse" was never that high. Maybe you've come to see that, at best, it's one of those mechanical horses outside the supermarket that you insert a quarter into to make it go. And at worst, it's a stick horse that you straddle, and gallop around the yard on while you scream, "Yee-haw!" If not - well, take a closer look at that horse.

Because if you insist on continuing to hang your virtue on the fact that you made the choice to get a vaccine - which, by the way, is your choice, and good for you if you made it; that's your business - you may soon find yourself having tested positive for covid, and realizing that, if the vaccine was the source of all your virtue, you have no virtue at all.

And if that happens, for the unvaccinated, let me admonish you not to succumb to the temptation to point to your star-less belly and say, "I told you so." Don't be guilty of the same sin you've complained about for lo these many months. Yeah, I get it; "they" were wrong to act the way "they" did. But two wrongs don't make a right. So be better than that.

Let the lesson for all of us be that we truly are in this together. Covid is now a common, seasonal coronavirus, like the common cold, and it's going to be with us forever. (Yet another gift from China that we're stuck with forever, like shrimp toast.) It'll continue to come and go. Some years will be worse than others. Nearly all of us will eventually have to deal with it. It'll be worse for some of us than others.

Fortunately, we now have treatments, which are even better than vaccines. Why? Because if I'm vaccinated, I can still get covid. But if I get it, vaccinated or not, I need to be able to overcome it with a treatment. Just like I can get the flu vaccine, but I can still get the flu, and if I do, I want to be able to take Tamiflu so I can get over it faster. (In fact, insert the word "flu" in the place of "covid" throughout this paragraph, and you'll see just how common covid is now.)

Only once we adopt this mindset will we truly put covid behind us - at least the fear part of it. To hell with Anthony Fauci, the CDC, the news media, the politicians, and everybody else who's trying to capitalize on that fear. Let's put Fauci back where he belongs - in the dustbin of bureaucratic obscurity. It's a false premise to say that we'll be past covid when we reach X% vaccination, because the vaccinated can very easily get covid. We'll be past covid when we figure out that covid is here, it's seasonal, it's treatable, and if we're really worried about it because we're in a particularly vulnerable population, or we're just worried about it for our own reasons, we have vaccines for it, that may help. But the bottom line?

We'll be past covid when we've figured out that it doesn't matter what X is, and when we've accepted that we're all the same, irrespective of which side of X we're on.

An Open Letter to AOC

Dear AOC,

We’ll give you a pass for your ridiculous claim that you represent “as many people, if not more, than Joe Manchin.” After all, ridiculous claims are your stock-in-trade, and you’ve demonstrated time and again that you suck at math.

(But for the record, Sen. Manchin represents more than twice as many people as you do.)

However, we would ask that you return to middle school and take a Civics class (as in government, not Honda cars), and don’t leave the classroom until you pass this time, because you clearly don’t understand how this whole thing works.

See, it matters not how many people one represents; it’s what those people want. Your constituents are probably all on welfare, and so the prospect of all the false promises of the Build Broke Better legislation sound good to them.

Sen. Manchin’s constituents, being hard-working folks, know better. They’ve been polled, and 75% of them oppose Build Broke Better. (Here’s some remedial math for you, sweetie: if he represents more than twice as many people as you do, and 75% of his constituents oppose Build Broke Better, that means that he represents more people who oppose Build Broke Better than the total number of people you represent.)

So you see, Sen. Manchin is doing what the people of West Virginia elected him to do: representing their interests. You claimed that he was guilty of “an egregious breach of the President’s trust.” Well, see, the President didn’t appoint him. He was elected by the people of his state. So it’s their trust that matters, not the President’s. This is one of the things you need to make sure you learn in that Civics class before you head back to D.C.

Another thing you need to learn is that, in a democratic Republic, you’re not always going to get your way. (Once you learn that, go back to Washington and explain it to your Squad Sisters – and Bernie, while you’re at it.) You say that the system needs to change, because one man shouldn’t be able to block a bill.

Well, that’s not what happened here.

Fifty Republican Senators firmly oppose Build Broke Better. And so does Joe Manchin, the lone voice of reason in the Democrat party (unless Kyrsten Sinema still opposes it; she’s kinda been lost in the shuffle since Sunday’s bombshell announcement by Manchin).

Here’s a little more remedial math – and I’ll go slow, because I know that I need to with you: there are 100 Senators. Fifty Republicans, plus one Joe Manchin, equals 51. Fifty-one is more than half of 100, so that’s a majority. And if a majority of the Senate opposes a piece of legislation, that piece of legislation fails, and “the system” is working exactly as the framers intended for it to work. One man didn’t block it; 51 people did.

I hope you do well in your Civics class. Try not to get too discouraged if it’s graded on the curve. Just do your best, and remember: those other kids may be smarter than you, but you’re a whole lot more entertaining.

Sincerely yours,

The Economic Curmudgeon

The Madness of Mad Money

You may have tuned in to the CNBC show, "Mad Money," starring Jim Cramer. Cramer has always been a highly entertaining guy - loud, bombastic, talks a mile a minute, and very opinionated. Sometimes to his own detriment.

Now, I used to kind of like Cramer. He's actually made me some money over the years with his stock picks. Based on his research, I bought Ulta and Ambarella, and did quite well in the former and pretty good in the latter. But he's also made some real dud calls - like urging people to buy Bear Stearns in early 2008. (Bear Stearns failed in March of that year.)

Cramer is a very smart guy, and generally a great stock-picker. His record, and his portfolio, speak for themselves (although he's undoubtedly made more money as a TV celebrity and off his personal brand than he ever did, or could have, in the markets; otherwise he'd still be working in the markets am I right?).

However, I have long been aware that Cramer either doesn't know jack about macroeconomics, or he simply doesn't care about the greater good where macroeconomic policy is concerned. We can now extend that to public health policy, and public policy in general, and in a frankly alarming way. But first, let's focus on the macroeconomic piece.

In 2007, Cramer went on an epic, on-air rant on CNBC, screaming that then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke should open the Fed's discount window - the borrowing till for banks - and cut the borrowing rate for banks to zero in order to save firms like Bear Stearns from failing. He predicted that, if the Fed didn't do that, those firms would indeed fail.

Well, Bear Stearns did. So, six months later, did Lehman Brothers. The rest of Wall Street, and much of the rest of the banking system, eventually had to be bailed out. So Cramer was right, yes? Yes, but ... so what? The Fed knew all that would happen, too. So Cramer wasn't omniscient; he didn't know anything that Bernanke didn't know. (Don't get me wrong; Bernanke didn't see the housing bubble forming, or the bust coming. Neither did Cramer, for that matter. I did. So I'm not defending Bernanke. I think he's an idiot. I'm just saying he knew what Cramer knew. So did anyone who was paying attention back then, because we were in the middle of a shyte-storm.)

So why didn't the Fed open the discount window, like Cramer wanted them to do, and cut the borrowing rate for banks to zero? Because ...

Saving those banks from failing isn't the Fed's job.

There's this thing called moral hazard. And it comes from letting huge companies take huge risks, then bailing them out instead of letting them fail when the risks go against them. It creates an incentive for them to keep taking huge risks, and it puts the taxpayer on the hook for it. (That's a gross over-simplification, but I don't want to take the time to expound on it.)

Why, then, did Cramer want the Fed to save those firms, if it isn't the Fed's job? Two reasons: one, he had a lot of buddies that worked there, from the corner offices to the trading floors. And they were all calling him, crying that they were going to lose their seven-figure-a-year jobs - never mind that it was because they made a bunch of risky trades that they probably didn't really understand when they made them. But they were afraid they'd lose their houses in the Hamptons, so they called their buddy Jim, who's on TV all the time, hoping he could persuade somebody, anybody, to listen, and help them out.

And the second reason?

Cramer makes money when the stock market goes up. So he wants it to always go up.

That's key. Cramer will say anything, advocate for anything, to try to prop up the stock market. Even if it's bad policy. Bad economic policy, bad fiscal policy, and now bad public health policy. Or just bad public policy.

(The Curmudgeon, on the other hand, has figured out that you can make money when the market goes up OR down. Seeing the market crash coming in 2008, he shorted the market, and made money while it was tanking.)

After the Great Recession was over, the Fed kept rates too low, too long, which is how the housing bubble got inflated to begin with; they did the same thing after the dot-com recession in 2000. So when Bernanke and Co. decided to start raising rates, Cramer went on another rant, screaming that they shouldn't do it, they should keep rates low - even though the economy was ready to stand on its own two feet, and continuing to keep rates that low would probably fuel another bubble.

Why would Cramer do that? Why would he advocate for bad - actually, dangerous - monetary policy?

Because he was afraid that, if the Fed began to raise rates, the stock market rally would end, and stock prices would stop going up.

In other words, Jim Cramer is nothing more than a prostitute, and his pimp is a rising stock market.

Now, recently, Cramer went even further off the deep end. He actually said that the government needed to just mandate covid vaccines for every man, woman and child - not just workers at companies with more than 100,000 employees. Not just government employees and contractors. EVERYBODY. And, get this - how would Cramer make sure that everyone complied?

He would have the military enforce this new mandate.

That's right, boys and girls. Jim Cramer would have armed American soldiers stand guard over you while someone sticks a needle in your arm. And I guess, if you tried to cut and run, he'd have the soldier shoot you.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Now, why would Cramer make that quantum leap into the realm of totalitarianism?

Simple: he made that statement the day the news of the omicron variant dropped, which sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 900 points on the day.

Never mind that we've since learned that omicron is much milder than delta (4700 cases in the UK; 10 hospitalizations; 1 death). Never mind that the Dow since recovered (in just ten trading days) to more than the level where it was prior to the omicron news.

Never mind that, of the 43 US cases as of a couple of days ago, 79% of them were among vaccinated people, and 41% of those vaccinated people had gotten a booster. So much for your vaccine mandate, Cramer, you stupid sack of ...

But I digress. See, Cramer is tired of seeing covid news cause big market drops. So he thinks if we just vaccinate everybody, covid will go away, and the market will go up forever. Well, I've got a few hard life lessons for ya, Jimmy-boy:

1. Covid ain't going away. Don't like it? Blame Fauci and his Chinese buddies; they created it. The vaccines aren't working - witness the data points listed above, and there's plenty more where that came from. Plus, they wear off. Your plan would keep the army pretty busy, I guess, because we'd be vaccinating every couple of months. And people would still get infected. And there would still be new variants.
2. As long as we have a media in this country, we'll have those market reactions, because the media is selling fear, and the market is buying. Maybe if your buddies on the trading floor were a mite bit smarter, they wouldn't freak out every time the media hypes something like omicron. The rest of us seem to have figured out that all of this fearmongering from the media (and hacks like Fauci) is much ado about nothing. Why does the market have to poop its collective diaper every time CNN projectile-vomits up some new covid crisis?
3. If you were a little smarter with your (and your viewers') money, you could profit from those dips. I bought stocks after the omicron dip, and I'm looking pretty good today. I jump in and out of the market on covid news, buying when these freak-out headlines send the market reeling, and taking my profits when it recovers, so that I have some cash on hand to jump back in.

Now, Cramer has taken it even one step further, if you can believe it: he just tweeted that "the government has a right to force you to obey."

Think about that for a minute. If you've read the same Constitution and Bill of Rights that I read, do you recall seeing anything about the government having rights? Doesn't the government exist to protect and defend our rights? Are governments endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights?

No. Because you know who their Creator is?

WE ARE, Cramer, you blathering, mindless, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, hopeless, heartless, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey poop!!!

(Yeah, I borrowed heavily there from Chevy Chase's rant in "Christmas Vacation," edited for decency. 'Tis the season, ho ho ho, and all that.)

So yeah, I can only assume that Cramer has gone finally and fully MAD; so hell-bent on arguing for any policy that will put a jack under stock prices that he'd advocate for his children to be sent to the gulag, if he thought it would result in a 10% pop in the FANGs.

Hey Jim, if you haven't figured out by now that markets go down as well as up; and if you can't figure out how to advise your audience what to do when that happens; maybe it's time to admit that you're over your head. It was a good ride, you milked it for all you could, but you've exposed yourself. You're clearly out of your depth. Hand the reins over to somebody who gets the big picture, the whole picture, and retire.

Before it's too late, and the grey matter goes so soft, you have trouble remembering what you were talking about. We've seen that happen quite a bit lately, and it's rather sad.

Not Who, But What

By now, you're probably aware that this year, we've seen about two million immigrants cross our southern border illegally - more than in 2018, 2019 and 2020 combined. Our southern border is completely open. Some illegal immigrants are met by border agents and released; many are "gotaways," who cross and run, not wanting to be confronted by agents (which should be of no small concern - what do they have to hide?).

These immigrants aren't just from Mexico and Central America, they're from the Middle East and Eastern Europe. I'm not prejudiced against people from those countries. But we have had people on terrorist watch lists that have crossed the border, along with people that have serious criminal records, some of whom have committed heinous crimes once in the U.S. And I have a problem with that. We also don't test anyone who crosses the border for covid - not a huge concern of mine, except that we treat our own unvaccinated and untested citizens like criminals.

Along with the people have come record amounts of drugs, including fentanyl. Through mid-May, more fentanyl was seized than in all of 2020, and that's just what was seized. Both the flow of people and the flow of drugs into the U.S. are controlled by Mexican cartels, which are making vast sums of money from this trafficking. (And some of it is truly human trafficking; women and children are being trafficked into the U.S. for slavery, including the sex trade, and along the journey they're being raped by the cartels that are trafficking them.) Yes, the cartels now control our southern border, and they're openly firing automatic weapons - real automatic weapons, not the AR-15s that the Left mistakenly refer to as automatic weapons - across the Rio Grande at our border agents, openly mocking the fecklessness of our leadership in combating them.

You may also be aware of the disastrous pull-out from Afghanistan that left 13 U.S. service men and women dead outside the Kabul airport, killed seven innocent Afghan children and an Afghan "friendly" in a drone strike that we were initially proudly told killed an ISIS suicide bomber, and left hundreds of U.S. citizens and Afghan friendlies stranded in-country after we were promised that we'd stay until they all got out. The State Department and military leadership don't really know how many are stranded, but it appears to be more than they're admitting.

And you undoubtedly know that, having just passed a trillion-dollar infrastructure spending bill through both houses of Congress, the Democrats are now pushing Joe Biden's massive $1.75 trillion (down from the original $6 trillion pushed by Bernie Sanders) "Build Back Better" plan, that would include a number of Socialist spending measures funded by the biggest tax increase since FDR, accompanied by the biggest expansion of IRS powers in history. The measure would weaponize the IRS the way the DOJ has weaponized the FBI against parents of schoolchildren, opening up audits to those earning less than $75,000 a year in an effort to squeeze every last dime out of American workers in order to feed the Washington bear (no wasted symbolism that the hungry animal I use in this simile is the California state animal, or the symbol of the Soviet Union).

On to more local trends. If you've watched the news lately, you've seen the images - they should be shocking to us, but I'm afraid they're not anymore - of a bunch of organized looters armed with guns, hammers and crowbars running out of a Nordstrom's in Walnut Creek, California and jumping into waiting getaway cars, then speeding off to safety, knowing that they wouldn't be prosecuted under that state's non-existent shoplifting laws. Similar crimes happened at Louis Vuitton and Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. This isn't the ghetto, folks. Walnut Creek is well outside of San Francisco. I was just through there a couple of months ago. It's as suburban as my hometown of Overland Park, Kansas.

In downtown San Francisco, Walgreen's, CVS and Target are closing stores right and left due to the shoplifting epidemic. The mayor, ever in denial, claims that the chains are closing those stores simply because they're unprofitable. I realize that she doesn't understand how business works, but it's hard to turn a profit when your shrinkage rate is skyrocketing. Who loses as a result of these closures? The elderly urban dweller who now has to walk many blocks to get her prescriptions in an ever more dangerous city, because her neighborhood pharmacy had to close.

In Los Angeles, "follow-home robberies" have become commonplace. In these crimes, thieves wait outside high-end retail stores until shoppers take their wares to their cars, then follow them home, and either block them into their driveways or follow them into their houses and steal the goods, along with other valuables. The thieves are armed, and threaten to kill the victims and their families, which have included children sleeping inside the home. At least one recent incident resulted in a shooting death.

The response of city officials? Don't attempt to evade or defend yourself or your property. Instead, be a "good witness." In other words, be a compliant victim. We'll eventually get around to prosecuting these criminals, most of whom are gang members. Yeah, LA has a great track record in combating gang violence. The gangs control LA like the cartels control the southern border.

Then, of course, there was the tragic story of the man who drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing and injuring a number of people. We later learned that he had a long rap sheet and several outstanding warrants, and was only free to do what he did - apparently intentionally - because of lax bail laws.

And also in Wisconsin, we have the entire Kyle Rittenhouse affair. One of the things we learned from his trial is that he was asked by a business owner in Kenosha to come and help protect his car dealership from rioters, because the night before, another dealership had been burned to the ground while police stood by, helpless to do anything, outnumbered by rioters. The Governor had refused offers from the President to send in National Guard troops to help protect Kenosha's citizens and property in the riots that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Why? A stubborn partisan pissing match.

So a Kenosha business owner was so desperate, having lost one of his businesses to arsonist, rioting thugs, that he asked a 17-year-old kid to help protect another of his businesses. And the ultimate outcome was that two men who attacked that kid, and threatened his life, died. If anything, their deaths are on the Governor's head.

***************

There's an excellent, and probably underrated, song by Living Colour called "Cult of Personality." It was released in 1988. Check out some of the lyrics:

Look in my eyes, what do you see?

The cult of personality

I know your anger, I know your dreams

I've been everything you want to be

I'm the cult of personality

Like Mussolini and Kennedy ...

Neon lights, a Nobel Prize

Then a mirror speaks, the reflection lies

You don't have to follow me

Only you can set me free

I sell the things you need to be

I'm the smiling face on your TV

I'm the cult of personality

I exploit you, still you love me

I tell you one and one makes three

I'm the cult of personality

Like Joseph Stalin and Gandhi ...

Neon lights, a Nobel Prize

A leader speaks, that leader dies

You don't have to follow me

Only you can set you free ...

The song is about celebrity, but on a political level. It mentions Mussolini and Kennedy, Stalin and Gandhi, in the same couplets, to illustrate that while one is seen as good and one bad, they were equally followed by the masses because of their larger-than-life personalities. They may exploit their followers, but still they're loved by them.

There are lyrical references to why we're drawn to these political figures: "I know your anger, I know your dreams ...", "I've been everything you want to be ..." (or appear to have been), "I sell the things you need to be ...". The song also speaks to the message delivered by politicians: "A mirror speaks, the reflection lies ...", "I'm the smiling face on your TV ...", "I tell you one and one makes three ...". And the reference to "a Nobel Prize" is most curious, as the song pre-dates Nobel Prize-winner Barack Obama's Presidency by years, yet he may be the ultimate example of the Cult of Personality among U.S. politicians.

The song issues a final warning in subtly shifting the line, "only you can set me free" to "only you can set you free." And that's the point of this post.

***************

So what does the song have to do with all the current events listed at the beginning of the post, and with the title?

Everything.

See, when we vote, we tend to vote for the person. It's been that way for a very long time. Remember "I Like Ike"? It wasn't, "I Like the Eisenhower Doctrine," or "I Like Modern Republicanism." It was about Ike the man, and it shouldn't go unnoticed that he was the first widely televised President. Known for his big grin, he was the first "smiling face on your TV."

It's gotten worse in the age of television. Viable candidates like Paul Simon of Illinois and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut were strong on policy, but never gained a lot of traction with voters, in part, I believe, due to the fact that they weren't all that telegenic. On the flip side, JFK was an enormously popular President, in spite of very limited experience coming into office (similar to Obama), and a scant track record during his short time as POTUS before he was assassinated - and a track record marred by some pretty spectacular blunders. But he was a really good-looking guy, with a fashion model wife, and there was all the mystique of "Camelot."

The point is that we vote for people, not policies, but policies are what we get. So maybe we should flip the script and think about what we're voting for, not who. (Forgive me, fellow grammar-Nazis.)

Now, easier said than done, right? Because after all, "the mirror speaks, the reflection lies." Nobody's going to say, "If elected, I'm going to let two million illegal immigrants across the border in my first ten months," or "A vote for me is a vote for unfettered crime!", or "You want riots in the streets? I'm your guy!"

But we're smart people. And we ought to be able to test the winds of change, read the writing on the wall, and get an idea of what might be coming. We also ought to be able to figure out the implications of one-party rule. We're seeing the damage it can do in just a very short time. I shudder to think how much worse it can get by January 2023. Thank God much of that time will be spent campaigning.

Now, at the same time, we have to set aside party-line partisanship. It may drive you nuts to think of having an R or a D in any office, depending on which side of the fence you've got your heels dug into. But think about it: did the fact that the last mayor of your city was from the party you despise really screw up your life? No? Then stop grousing about the outcome of that race and get on with your life, and focus on the stuff that really matters. I'll give you a hint, as a head start: blind partisanship for its own sake isn't among that stuff. Policy, that which affects you and your fellow citizens, IS that stuff.

So here's what it comes down to. Remember when Californians went to the polls to decide whether to retain Gavin Newsom as their Governor? Now, Newsom is a telegenic guy if ever there was one. He was running against Larry Elder, not the best-looking guy in the world, and Caitlyn Jenner, who ... well, I won't even go there.

Ultimately, California voted to keep Newsom. (That makes it sound like a decision to keep a pit bull that won't stop biting the neighbors, which is actually a pretty good analogy.) Or, as one of my friends rather bluntly put it, California said, "Govern me harder."

But is that the message Californians really sent at the ballot box? I'd argue that it's not.

Instead, Californians said, "I want looters to be able to run into the Nordstrom's in Walnut Creek with crowbars and guns, and steal as much stuff as they can carry out. I don't really care if it terrorizes the store clerks to the point that they decide to quit their jobs, or if it means that retailers have to raise prices so that I have to pay more for the stuff I buy. And the same goes for the high-end stores in Beverly Hills."

"I'd like to see the suburban shopping malls ringed with concertina wire." That's another recent development in the "Golden" State.

"I want CVS and Walgreen's to pull out of downtown San Francisco, even if it means little old ladies have to risk getting mugged because they now have to walk twenty blocks to get their arthritis scripts refilled. Better that than enforce shoplifting laws." The San Francisco DA is also facing a recall election. It'll be interesting to see how he fares.

"I like the idea of playing 'chase' with the gang-bangers in LA, having them follow me home from the store and try to break into my house and steal my stuff. It'll be like a video game. Don't worry, I'll be a good little witness. I'll even show 'em where I keep the good silver. They probably won't shoot my kids in their sleep." The actor Seth Rogen recently said - publicly - that this is just life in a big city, and people should get over it.

"I don't want to be able to mow my lawn with a gas mower anymore." That was a unilateral decision made by Newsom not long after he was retained in the recall vote: a ban on gas mowers in California, effective in a couple of years. But I'll bet they use gas machinery in his Napa Valley vineyard.

When voters in Wisconsin pulled the lever for Gov. Tony Evers, they said, "Why should Minneapolis get all the attention? We want riots in Kenosha, too! And we want Tony to stand up to the Bad Orange Man and refuse the National Guard, even if it means that teenage kids with AR-15s have to defend local businesses. We'll just count on the mainstream media to label those kids as white supremacists, and surely they'll be found guilty of murder, especially if the media leans on the jurors a little."

And, "We don't want restrictive bail laws. We're a progressive state. So what if a guy has a long history of breaking the law, including violent crime and even trying run someone over with his car? What's he gonna do, drive through a downtown Christmas parade or something. Ha! Ya, hey dere!"

Finally, when people marked their ballot for Biden and Harris, they weren't voting for those two. (Actually, most of them were voting against Trump more than for Biden. Biden couldn't even beat Bernie Sanders in the primaries without a lot of help from the Party Machine. And Harris was the ultimate identity politics pick, who had to bail on the 2020 Presidential campaign before the primaries even began, so unpopular was she among her own party's voters.) But no, they were actually saying this:

"I want a couple million immigrants a year to cross our borders illegally - I don't care from where - and I want them to bring all the fentanyl they can carry. Never mind whether they have a criminal record, are on a terror watch list, or have covid."

"I want to pay $3.40 a gallon for gas, not $2.15 a gallon. And while I'm at it, my Thanksgiving dinners have been way too cheap. I want to show how thankful I really am, by paying more for Thanksgiving dinner (and everything else) than I ever have."

"I want to have to wait to get the things I order for my kids for Christmas, or for that treadmill I bought. And I want to not be able to find what I need at the store. The Soviet Union shouldn't be the only nation in history that had bread lines."

"I want 13 of our finest to be killed due to incompetent military leadership, and I'm okay with innocent kids being killed in an errant drone strike."

"I want us to keep spending money until there's nothing left to spend, and if that means I get audited by the IRS, that's okay - I'm fine paying more in taxes, even though I only make $55,000 a year."

Now, you could argue, of course, that someone who voted for Trump voted for an insurrection. I'm okay with that, if you want to define an "insurrection" as a bunch of unorganized yahoos traipsing through the Capitol, taking selfies, all the while escorted by Capitol police, like so many docents guiding a rowdy tour group.

Or that they voted for more mean tweets. God, how I miss the mean tweets.

But they also voted for a strong economy. Cheap gas and energy independence. Low inflation. Secure borders. A President unafraid to answer questions, and who doesn't need note cards to do it, and will take them from any reporter. Who isn't told by his handlers what to do and say, and who to answer to, and when to turn his back on reporters and walk off stage. A President who has the respect of our allies and our enemies alike. Who has respect for our military, and for law enforcement.

A Vice President who doesn't cackle at the most inappropriate times. Who actually has a grasp of the issues such that he can intelligently answer a question. That doesn't embarrass us on the world stage. That, when tasked with handling a problem, doesn't avoid it instead. That doesn't need staged photo-ops with paid child actors to appear approachable and relatable.

So in 2022 and 2024, remember that you're not voting for the whom, but for the what. Don't focus on "the smiling face on your TV," because one and one does not make three. The mirror may speak, but the reflection too often lies.

Toward the end of the song, the lyrics speak this truth: "You gave me power in your own God's name." Don't forget that; they have no power but what you give them, and what you give, you can take back. Above all else, especially don't forget these words:

"You don't have to follow me,

Only you can set you free."

Much to Be Thankful For

I grew up not too far north of the poverty line. I never felt that we were "poor," but as I grew up, I was increasingly aware of what we didn't have, and that really hit home when I went to college. I joined a fraternity, and most of my fraternity brothers - and other friends - were from the well-to-do suburbs of Johnson County, Kansas, not the wrong side of the tracks in Newton, Kansas.

Once I got my act together, I busted my tail to make sure that my own family would never want for anything. Don't get me wrong; one thing that my family had when I was growing up was love, although we weren't without our flaws (sometimes it felt like we put the "fun" in "dysfunction"). And I always knew that love was the greatest gift I could give my family as an adult. But it was also important to me that we had an abundance of experiences, first and foremost. And yes, the creature comforts of life, and financial security - both present and future - were important to me.

Looking back on my youth, I'll never forget one Thanksgiving in particular. Now, my family always had the traditional dinner: turkey, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie - the whole nine yards. We did not do without in that regard.

But I knew that some did. And one year that became poignantly clear to me.

It was my senior year in high school, and I was working at a local grocery store. I happened to be working on Thanksgiving Day, but my shift would end in time to be home for Thanksgiving dinner that evening. I was sacking groceries, when a man stepped up to the cash register and placed a few items on the belt:

A Swanson's TV dinner; roast turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and some vegetable that I don't recall. A frozen pumpkin pie. Some store-brand whipped topping.

He was alone. That was his Thanksgiving dinner. If it had been up to me, I'd have invited him to our house for dinner, but it wasn't up to me, and I didn't. I probably should have anyway. I still think about him. The memory sticks with me, and I think about it every Thanksgiving, even 46 years later. There, but for the grace of God ...

***************

Fast forward to today. Like I said, I've worked hard to make sure that I'm not in that position, and never will be. Not everyone is so fortunate, and I'm thankful for how blessed I am every day. (Don't get me wrong; I'm not implying that that man didn't work hard - he may not have had the opportunities I've had. He may not have taken the risks I've taken. I don't know his circumstances.) But I worked plenty of factory jobs in my hometown, and even before I knew what I wanted to do with my life, I knew what I didn't want to do, and how I didn't want to live.

So as I entered that phase of my life in which I could be reasonably assured that, even should a calamity strike - the loss of a job, the stock market tanking, or some other unexpected risk - I wouldn't be living in a refrigerator box; that I would be comfortable no matter what, I suppose I developed a certain set of expectations. I guess I began to see a certain ordering of things in the world in which I lived.

Now, you may call that arrogant. You could certainly call it privileged; it is. It's also earned. I worked those factory jobs. Then, I went to college, worked hard to get a degree, paid back my student loans without complaining about them, worked even harder to get promoted, became a CEO, became successful, and wound up a far cry from the factory floor. Not by luck, and certainly not by family connections. By hard work.

Listen, I've visited Africa, on several occasions. I know I'm privileged. I know what extreme poverty looks like. I know how fortunate I am.

If you're reading this from the United States of America, I also know how fortunate you are. Do you?

I take for granted certain things. Like when I go to the grocery store, it's going to take me a few minutes to find my favorite cereal, because there are so many different kinds of cereal I can't find the box right away. That I'm going to have to take a picture of my toothpaste tube before I go to the store because there are so many different varieties, I forget which kind I always use (and I'm a creature of habit - just ask my wife, when she thinks I might like to try something new). That if I decide to start cycling again and want to buy a bike, I'll be able to find one, configured the way I want, in my size, without waiting for it.

In other words, as our friends across the pond would say, we're spoilt for choice. That fact was driven home when I brought a young man from Malawi to the U.S. for an internship eight years ago. The first time I took him to Target, he was overwhelmed by the choices he faced in selecting everything from toothpaste to deodorant to breakfast cereal to soda. Conversely, when I've visited Malawi, I've discovered the opposite. There, they refer to bath soap generically as "Lifebuoy," the way we refer to facial tissue generically as "Kleenex." Except while we do it due to the ubiquity of the brand, they do it because, when you go to a grocery store in Malawi, the only brand of bath soap you'll find is Lifebuoy. And not five different scents of Lifebuoy - just Lifebuoy. Likewise, they refer to toothpaste as Colgate, because if you want to buy toothpaste, Colgate is your only option.

However, when I've gone to a grocery store in Malawi - a third-world country, one of the poorest on the planet - I've always been able to buy Lifebuoy and Colgate. That's an important point in the context of today's post.

***************

I read a lot. Much of what I read is fiction, but it's fiction that makes me think, and I almost always learn something from it, especially about other places in the world. Early on in my reading, fiction and non-fiction alike, I learned about the Soviet Union - the gulags, the bread lines, neighbor spying on neighbor. It made me thankful not to live under a system like that.

In March 2020, my wife and I traveled to Hawaii over our anniversary. I had recently completed a round of work travel, and there was talk about some virus from China that was going around, but I didn't pay it too much attention. I did avoid Chinatown when I went to San Francisco, but that was about it.

Hawaii was crowded with tourists, as usual. Nothing different there. Many of the tourists were from Asia, which also isn't unusual. So this virus thing seemed like just another story for the 24/7 news media to latch onto for a few weeks until something else came along. Ha.

On our way back home, we connected through the San Jose airport. It was nearly deserted. We spent the night in San Jose to break up our trip, and we were practically the only ones staying in our hotel. Our shuttle driver told us that all of their conference business had dried up, and the hotel had laid off most non-tenured staff (note that San Jose is smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, and conferences are constant). When we got to the hotel, the restaurant was closed - not for the evening, but indefinitely - but we were able to eat in the bar.

That was our first indication that things weren't normal.

A couple of days after I got home, I went to the Target near our house, where I normally did our grocery shopping. As I pushed the cart through the aisles, I was literally laughing out loud. I know the word "literally" gets overused these days, so let me be clear: people probably thought I was crazy, because I was quite literally laughing out loud. The soup shelves were empty. Canned veggies and beans, empty. Tuna, empty. No flour. And paper goods? Forget it. No TP, facial tissue, or paper towels. Of course, no hand sanitizer or wipes, either.

Things remained that way for weeks, and I stopped laughing. At one point, I woke up at 5:00 am and went on a pre-dawn commando raid to find TP. My grocery shopping trips typically involved three stops to find everything on my list: Target, Wal-Mart, and the Price Chopper grocery store nearby. And even then, some items wound up not being found, like cream of mushroom soup or flour. I started buying things we didn't need when they were in stock and keeping them on hand in the basement, just in case. Not hoarding, just one package of that particular item.

I don't drink a lot of soda, but my soda of choice is Fresca. It's usually easy to find, as there aren't a lot of us Fresca-drinkers. But for a long period of time last year, there was a widespread Fresca shortage. It had to do with a combination of a shortage of aluminum and artificial sweetener, and the fact that Fresca isn't as big a seller for Coca Cola as its other diet sodas. Go figure.

I came to expect these things during that time. After all, the world's economy had been shut down in response to a virus that we've since learned is about as deadly as the 1958 or 1967 influenza outbreaks, neither of which led to shutdowns, mask mandates, or mass vaccination efforts. That led to near-term supply chain disruptions, which were to be expected. This was exacerbated by idiots who seemed to think that a respiratory virus would lead to an unabated frenzy of arse-wiping, inciting a need to hoard toilet paper.

Now, it's November 2021. It's been 18 months since the U.S. economy re-opened. And there is no longer any rational excuse, other than policy blunders, for the widespread supply chain disruptions that we continue to see. The chip shortages that result in delays of production of everything from new cars to refrigerators to toasters (yes, toasters) to plastic blanks for debit and credit cards, which have EMV chips embedded in them to help cut down on fraud.

Used car values have gone through the roof. You've been hearing about this, but below is some visual evidence to see just how acute it is:

This is data that I follow all the time, and I've never seen anything like it. It's quite extraordinary, and it's going to wreak havoc on used car lenders in a few years' time, because the cars they're going to be repossessing when loans go bad are going to be worth far, far less than the values they loaned on at purchase once things revert to the mean, as they always do.

We've all seen the images of the container ships stuck in the harbors off the West coast. We've been warned by our Vice President that it will take longer for our Christmas gifts to arrive this year. (Hey, she's gotta be good for something, it might as well be dispensing shopping advice. The VP on QVC.)

All of this is the result of bad policy decisions. I refer to it as "the unintended consequences of decisions made in the absence of forethought." Here's the scenario: there's a virus, and nobody pauses to think that it's really no worse, in the grand scheme of things, than the flu outbreaks of a few generations ago. (Tony Fauci thinks it is, because his research generated it, and he thinks his team created the mother of all viruses.)

So Fauci and a bunch of other government lackeys say, "Hey, let's just shut down the whole economy." No skin off their arses; they're the privileged class - and I mean truly privileged, in that they have access that the rest of us don't. So they don't think about the knock-on effects of that - the second- and third-order effects down the line of such a decision. That's why they call it a supply chain.

As a result, we once again see some stores having to limit purchases of toilet paper. That's okay, I guess, if it's what's needed to save us from the hoarders who associate respiratory viruses with pooping frequency and volume. But there are still the issues with cars, appliances, etc. I bought new garage doors this year, and it took five months for them to get in, when it would usually take a couple of weeks, according to my installer. I recently bought a bicycle, and while I was able to find what I wanted, I understand that a lot of people are struggling mightily to find bikes and other exercise equipment - especially indoor equipment, with all the people now working from home and not wanting to pay for gym memberships.

And I have a big problem with that. This isn't Malawi. And it isn't the Soviet Union. I didn't sign on for this.

Yeah, I sound privileged. So what? This is what I worked my tail off all my life for. So I don't need some overgrown kid living in his parents' basement playing on the Xbox they paid for, judging me for my "white (as if the color of my skin had screw-all to do with it) privilege" because I've worked all my life to earn the right to have a certain set of expectations about the order of the world in the country I live in - a concept that is foreign to him, because he hasn't worked hard enough to earn that right, and never paid attention in school, so doesn't understand the benefit of living in the country he lives in, nor the disadvantages of living under the Socialist regimes he regards as utopian.

And, I've voted to maintain this order. I'll have a post coming up on what we actually vote for when we throw that lever (okay, so nobody throws levers in the voting booth anymore). But I certainly didn't sign up for a regime of bread lines. And if we're headed that direction - in the immortal words of the Beatles, "don't you know that you can count me out."

But what's even worse than these supply chain issues is the Left's casual attitude toward them. We should be paying close attention to that, because it's the most insidious part of all this, because it's the part that most closely mirrors the regimes of the bread lines.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who would win the award for smugness if that trait were considered enough of a virtue to warrant an award, ridiculed the notion of a delay in the delivery of a treadmill, as an example of supply chain disruptions. I guess the Mom who's stuck at home because she's home-schooling her kids because she doesn't want their faces diapered, or doesn't want their impressionable brains stuffed with CRT, is just out of luck if she wants to squeeze in a quick workout during free period. Or the Dad who now works from home due to his employer's irrational fears over the virus can't stay fit during the winter.

And, more recently, a vacuous reporter on NBC suggested that, to help alleviate the impact of the highest inflation in 30 years (inflation, by the way, goes hand-in-hand with supply chain disruptions, and is a common denominator among all Socialist/Communist systems), that Americans celebrate this Thanksgiving without the traditional turkey.

That's right, drop the turkey to save money. (Or, you could just pick up a Swanson's turkey TV dinner for everyone attending your family gathering.) She suggested "an Italian feast" instead.

She went on to note that, if you announce to your guests that you're not having turkey this Thanksgiving, some of your guests may decide not to show, and thus you'll save even more money on the holiday get-together.

See, these smug pundits can easily afford to throw out this glib "advice," or to snarkily ridicule the ire we all feel at facing this brave new world of not being able to find the things that we've always just assumed would be there, when we wanted them. Why?

The New Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. boasts a state-of-the-art athletic center for employees of the Executive Office of the President, offering occupational health, physical fitness, athletic and recreational facilities. In other words, Jen Psaki doesn't need to worry about whether a treadmill shows up at her door in a timely manner, because you and I, as taxpayers, make sure that she has access to one any time of the day she wants to use it. She obviously doesn't exercise her brain, but she can exercise her body anytime she wants. (Heck, she can probably use the gym in the White House residence - you think Joe's working out in there?)

And that vapid NBC reporter? You can bloody well be sure that she'll be stuffing her otherwise empty head with turkey on Thanksgiving. (She doesn't make all that much money at NBC, but she's married to an anesthesiologist, so she came by her wealth the old-fashioned way.)

That may not sound insidious. But if you've studied the regimes in which bread lines and high inflation are the norm, you'll know to which class these people belong. They are the state (the state owns the media in those regimes, and if you think we're not moving in that direction here, you're not paying attention), and they would have the rest of us - bourgeoisie and proletariat alike - not only sacrifice what we have, what we've grown accustomed to, yes, what we've come to take for granted;

But to accept that sacrifice as the norm.

In fact, to see anything less than the acceptance of that sacrifice as something to be derided, an example of "privilege" to be winnowed from the rest of society like chaff from wheat.

Bollocks, I say.

We are the wheat, not the chaff. It should be perfectly acceptable to have a certain set of expectations based on the fact that we live in the eighth-richest country in the world. (The combined populations of the top seven are less than that of California.) Let's put this "privilege" notion to rest: if I lived in one of the poorest countries in the world, I'd have an entirely different set of expectations, and I'd accept them. My expectations are in part a function of where I live - yes, I'm blessed to live here. I didn't choose to be born here; it was the luck of the draw. But here I am, so I have a certain set of expectations.

Those expectations are also a function of the effort I've put forth to reach the point I've come to at this stage of my life. (Others are born into wealth. That's their business. More power to 'em.) I've earned - through the fruits of my labors - the right to a certain set of expectations. (Generosity is another piece of that equation, and it's another topic for another day.)

When I'm asked to expect less because my country has suddenly become poor through some unforeseeable event, like a war or a famine or a real pandemic or a widespread disaster, I'll be the first to step up and sacrifice. When I'm asked to expect less because I made a catastrophically bad financial decision, and I suddenly find my standard of living has been decimated, I'll accept the consequences of that, and adjust my expectations. When I'm asked to expect less because I suddenly and unexpectedly find myself facing astronomical medical expenses, and am unable to work to cover them, I'll accept that lot, and adjust my outlook accordingly.

But when I'm told I should expect less because a bunch of incompetent career bureaucrats in Washington who couldn't balance a checkbook and don't know a supply chain from a paper clip chain screwed up, made bad policy decisions, failed to foresee the consequences of the decisions they made in the absence of forethought, and created a situation in which my expectations cannot be met, I will not go quietly into that dark night.

So if I want to buy a treadmill, I bloody well expect that the model I want will show up at my door when I want it, and if Jen Psaki takes issue with that, I'll buy her a hammer and some sand, and provide instructions as to what she can do with them.

When I go to the grocery store, I expect to find everything on my list in one trip: toilet paper, facial tissue, paper towels, hand sanitizer, wipes, soup of every variety, tuna, canned veggies, beans, flour, pumpkin, Fresca, and meat.

And I will by God have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.

***************

Now, having said all that -

I am most thankful to live in the country that I live in, to be able to have the luxury to expect these things. I'm thankful to live in a country that affords equal opportunity - I don't expect, and never have expected, equal outcomes. I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to work hard and earn my way to a place in life where I don't really want for anything, and to have been able to provide for my family the experiences and comforts we've enjoyed. I'm thankful to have been able to invest for a secure future.

And I'm thankful that I'm able to have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Not in a Swanson's TV dinner, but real turkey, with all the traditional accompaniments.

If anyone is reading this and legitimately cannot have that this Thanksgiving, please send me a message. I'll do my best to remedy that situation.

And Justice for All, Part II

This post is a follow-up to the one I published after the acquittal on all charges of Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse, as you will recall, was found not guilty of murder, attempted murder, and recklessly endangering safety. The jury found that he acted in self-defense on all counts.

That earlier post recounted the trial, most of which I watched. It debunked numerous fallacies propagated by the media and internet trolls. It addressed the media coverage of the verdict, and some of the protests that followed.

This post will address a part of that reaction, drawing an important parallel. But before we dive in, let me first say this: I will probably be branded a racist for posting it. That's okay; pretty much everyone who dares disagree with the Left these days is branded a racist. And you needn't disagree with them regarding race. All roads lead there. Don't like the infrastructure bill? You're a racist. Upset about inflation? You're a racist. Opposed to wind turbines? Oh, you're definitely a racist.

But I'm sure I'll be labeled a racist just for agreeing with the verdict. Yet my agreement with it has nothing to do with the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse is white. (Again, so were the three men he shot.) It has everything to do with the facts of the case and the rule of law. For the record, in spite of the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse was asked to come to Kenosha - where several of his relatives live - to help protect a friend's business from rioters, I don't know that I necessarily agree with his decision to go there that night. One brave young man trying to stop a bunch of thugs from destroying property in a riot of that magnitude is like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.

Especially when the feckless Governor of Wisconsin rejected the President's offer to send in the National Guard to protect Kenosha's businesses.

So while I agree with the verdict, I don't necessarily agree with young Mr. Rittenhouse's judgement on that day. I don't know that I'd have advised him to go there. Yes, there were many people who went there to help protect property, and yes, some of them were armed. I don't know that I'd have advised any of them to do what they did. (Conversely, I definitely wouldn't have advised any of the rioters to go and do what they did, and if they hadn't been there, there would have been no need for anyone to go and protect property.)

Further, I've also been following the trial of the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery. Admittedly, I haven't followed it as closely, in part because it hasn't sucked the air out of the national consciousness the way the Rittenhouse trial did. However, from what I know of that case - from what I recall of the information available at the time of the shooting, and from what I've seen of the trial coverage thus far - I expect that the two white men who killed Arbery, a black man, will be found guilty of murder, and if they are, I will be in agreement with that verdict as well. That still probably won't be enough to allow me to turn in my racist card.

With that out of the way, let's recall part of the media's reaction to the Rittenhouse verdict. The mainstream (read: left-wing) media made it about race, of course. They claimed that it set back racial equality. (It wasn't just the media, by the way: Vice President Kamala Harris, who has turned out to be the worst pick since Ryan Leaf, said the same thing.) Part of the argument behind this was the tried-and-true "If Kyle Rittenhouse had been a young black man, the verdict would have been different" mantra. Never mind that, true or not, that assertion has naught to do with the Rittenhouse case.

Still, let's put it to the test.

Let me introduce you to a young man you've probably never heard of (I hadn't until this morning): Andrew Coffee IV. Coffee is a 27-year-old black man from Gifford, Florida. Note that the facts I present herewith come from a variety of news sources - I did not follow Coffee's trial, because to the best of my knowledge, it was not televised, nor did it receive widespread media attention.

In March, 2017, the Indian River County Sheriff's Office sent a SWAT team to Coffee's home. They suspected his father of dealing drugs, and they arrested his father at the front door after a brief struggle. Coffee testified that he was asleep at the time of the raid, and did not hear the deputies announce themselves. He never claimed they didn't announce themselves, just that he didn't hear them. He claimed that he first became aware that they were present when they broke out his bedroom window with a pole that subsequently detonated a flash-bang device.

Seeing the pole protruding through the window and having heard the bang, Coffee thought it was a rifle and that he was being robbed, and he fired a .45-caliber pistol out of the bedroom window two or three times.

Deputies returned fire, shooting more than a dozen rounds toward the bedroom window. At least one of those rounds hit Coffee's girlfriend who was lying in bed, 21-year-old Alteria Woods, killing her.

An earlier investigation cleared the officers involved in the incident. Coffee was on trial for one count of second-degree felony murder in the death of Woods (the argument being that his actions caused her death, though unintentionally, hence the second-degree tag), three counts of attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer by discharging a firearm, and one count of "shooting or throwing a deadly missile."

I could find no mention of the racial makeup of the jury. However, on the same day that Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted ...

Coffee was found not guilty on all five counts.

Now, it should be noted that he was found guilty on a sixth count: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. That one would be kind of hard to get out of; the facts of the case were that he did have a prior felony conviction; he was in possession of a firearm; and that is against Florida law.

But the fact remains that a young black man, with a prior felony conviction; living in a drug house (the raid turned up marijuana, crack cocaine, Hydromorphone, and oxycodone, ostensibly his father's); in illegal possession of a firearm; was exonerated by a jury that found he believed his life was in danger, and was acting in self-defense by firing the gun, even though ultimately someone died in the exchange of fire, and officers' lives were put in danger. Those odds would leave most in the liberal media to assume that he'd be found guilty, but he was not.

Again, justice was served, and our American jury system worked.

Now granted, it doesn't always work this way. But maybe, just maybe, justice is more color-blind than the media and the liberal politicians would have us believe.

You know what's different about the Coffee case?

• No MSNBC reporters followed the jury bus.
• There was no widespread media hysteria over the case in general, nor biased media reaction to the verdict. (For all its flaws, I doubt you'll see Fox News lambasting the decision as a travesty of justice.)
• There was no reporting that I could find of protests, let alone riots, in Gifford, Florida, by angry mobs who were upset with the verdict - much less in Chicago, New York, or Portland. (I suppose if news gets out of the guilty verdict on the firearm possession charge, the bored white kids in those cities may go bust a few windows, but with the supply chain what it is these days, the good Nikes are probably on a container ship in the Pacific.)
• Joe Biden isn't talking about the Coffee case. (If you asked him to comment on it, he'd probably think you were talking about an ice cream flavor.)

Back to the beginning of this post. I'll go back on record, and say that I agree with the verdict in this case, just as I agreed with the verdict in the Rittenhouse case. Although there were no winners in either matter, our legal system exists for a reason, and while it is not without its flaws, it has stood the test of time in providing justice for all, nearly all of the time.

And Justice for All

In case you've been living under a rock, Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all five charges against him. We'll get into what those charges were, and we'll talk a bit about the media circus surrounding the case and the verdict, and how they continue to get the reporting wrong, what the left really wants from our justice system, and other things related to this case.

But first, just in case any of my liberal friends are reading this - and assuming that, if that's the case, you're probably not going to read the entire post - I thought I'd run through some of the fallacies propagated by the mainstream media, internet pundits and trolls (sorry, that was redundant), your liberal friends, and other misinformed people.

Before I do that, let me say that I watched most of the trial, and what I missed due to work, I picked up watching coverage - not what the talking heads had to say, but actual footage from the trial, played later in the day. And for further information, I followed my usual practice of going to credible source information - not news media sources or conspiracy theory blog sites, but verifiable sources - to determine the facts. Also, I'm not a lawyer, but I've been in a courtroom a few times, and I have a bit of experience with legal proceedings, including the rules of evidence, albeit not in a murder trial. So all that forms the basis of the clarification I present below. Here goes.

1. Kyle Rittenhouse did not cross state lines with a gun. He did cross state lines, but the gun was already there. Let's be specific. Rittenhouse lived (I use the past tense, because who knows where he's going to have to move now) in Antioch, Illinois, and went to Kenosha, Wisconsin the day of the riots at which he shot three people, killing two and wounding a third. Look up Antioch on google maps. I'll wait. You'll see that it's right on the Illinois-Wisconsin state line. As in, you could literally take one step from Antioch, and be in Wisconsin. Now, Kenosha is a bit further from Antioch: 21 miles, to be exact. So yes, Rittenhouse did cross state lines. He traveled a whole 21 miles, from Antioch to Kenosha.
2. What business did Rittenhouse have in Kenosha, if he lived in Antioch? He went there just to cause trouble, knowing there were protests going on, right? (More on the reason for those protests in a minute.) Wrong. Rittenhouse lived with his mother in Antioch. His parents are divorced. His father, grandmother, and aunt live in Kenosha. His best friend, who bought the gun in question, lives in Kenosha. He worked in Kenosha. Look, I live in Overland Park, Kansas. It's right on the Missouri border. As in, you could literally take one step from Overland Park, and be in Missouri. I regularly shop at a Target in Missouri, about a mile and a half from my house. My wife and I eat out in Missouri frequently, and we never drive far to eat out. My daughter lives in a town in Missouri that's about 21 miles from my house, about the same distance as Kenosha is from Antioch, and I drive to her house regularly. Does that seem odd? Should my crossing the state line into Missouri be questioned?
3. To continue with this theme: there were riots the night before the shootings, and Rittenhouse went to Kenosha that morning, to see what he could do to help the community. He was photographed helping clean graffiti off the walls of a local high school - graffiti that included obscenities that, if you're any kind of decent human being, you wouldn't want your high school kid reading when he or she went to school in the morning. He and his friends agreed to return that night to help protect local businesses from vandalism, and were invited to help by at least one local business owner who knew them. Rittenhouse picked up his AR-15 when he got there, for personal protection. He also carried a first aid kit - which he used to help some people during the riots.
4. Now let's talk about the reason for and nature of the "protests." Kenosha police had shot a young black man named Jacob Blake. The officers were responding to a domestic complaint from a woman who had accused Blake of sexual assault and criminal trespass; he was at her home again, and there was a warrant outstanding for his arrest on those charges. Blake was armed with a knife, and he resisted arrest before the police shot him. They shot him seven times. Did they need to shoot him seven times? That was ultimately up to investigators to decide, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But before you express it, make sure you know all the facts. As recently as yesterday, after the Rittenhouse verdict, major media outlets were still reporting that Blake was unarmed - which is factually false - and that he was killed by police - which is also factually false; Jacob Blake is very much alive today. So don't buy the ongoing media narrative that these "protests" were sparked by police shooting and "killing" an "innocent," "unarmed" man. Beyond those false claims, whether the force applied was excessive is a perfectly valid question. But consider this. In December 2020 - after the Presidential election in which Joe Biden was elected, and in a state and county controlled by Democrats - the Kenosha County District Attorney (whose office prosecuted Rittenhouse) announced that officers involved in the shooting would not be charged. In October 2021, the Justice Department - the Biden Justice Department, mind you - decided not to pursue federal civil rights charges against the officer involved in the shooting, following its investigation into the matter.
5. As for the nature of the "protests," buildings and cars were burned, dumpsters were set on fire and pushed at people, fireworks and bricks were thrown at police. In the videos presented as evidence in the Rittenhouse trial, one of the individuals that Rittenhouse shot is seen setting at least one dumpster on fire and pushing it towards people (although well before the shootings occurred), and during the time that individual was chasing Rittenhouse and threatening to kill him, people can be seen in the foreground bashing cars for sale in a dealer's lot with baseball bats. Dear reader, these were not protests or demonstrations. These were full-on riots, complete with fires, destruction and defacement of property, and assaults on police and others. And it's unlikely that Rittenhouse was the only person present that wasn't from Kenosha, or from Wisconsin; we know that the "protests" of 2020 regularly turned violent thanks to professional agitators from across the country who traveled from one flashpoint to the next with the express intent of fomenting violence.
6. Oh, here's a particularly silly one: Rittenhouse's mother didn't drive him across state lines. She was working.
7. Rittenhouse legally owned the AR-15 used in the shootings. Wisconsin gun laws are really weird. Rittenhouse was 17 at the time of the shootings. At that age, he could not legally own a handgun; he'd have to be 18. But he could own a rifle - as long as the barrel met a minimum length requirement. Weird, right? I guess they don't want young people owning Uzis, or sawed-off shotguns. (I'm testing your knowledge: Uzis are illegal in the U.S. anyway, for reasons I'll explain momentarily.) The AR-15 that Rittenhouse owned and carried that night met the minimum barrel length requirement, thus he owned and carried it legally. So let me repeat for those not paying close attention: he did not own the gun illegally. He did not even cross state lines with it (it was at his friend's house, and he picked it up there).
8. For the sake of all that is holy, and I hate having to explain this for the umpteenth time, an AR-15 is NOT an automatic weapon! Automatic weapons are illegal in the U.S. Automatic weapons are what those who get their gun knowledge from John Wick movies call "machine guns." (An Uzi is a variant of a machine gun.) A single trigger press releases a number of rounds that is only limited by the capacity of the magazine, or when you let go of the trigger. In other words, when you pull the trigger, the gun keeps firing rounds until you let go of the trigger or run out of ammo. An AR-15 is a semi-automatic weapon, meaning that each time you pull the trigger, it fires one round. When you let go of the trigger, it feeds another round, and you have to pull the trigger again to fire it. One trigger pull, one round. "AR" does NOT stand for "automatic rifle." It stands for "Armalite," which was the manufacturer of the original prototype for the rifle that numerous manufacturers have now copied. And you know what it's used for more than anything else? Hunting. Everybody I know who hunts wild boar in Texas uses an AR-15. They use them because they're cheap, reliable, accurate and easy to service. So please, please, PLEASE, stop saying that AR-15s are automatic weapons. Don't be an idiot.
9. Joe Scarborough of MSNBC - who is an idiot - claimed, among other things, that Rittenhouse fired 60 rounds. The magazine capacity of his AR-15 is 30 rounds, so that means that he would have had to have emptied his mag, reloaded, and emptied a second mag. He did not. I believe he fired eight rounds, if memory serves. That should be neither here nor there, except that a) Scarborough is sensationalizing (surprise; he works for MSNBC) and trying to make Rittenhouse sound like the Vegas shooter, and b) Scarborough pretends to be a journalist, whatever the hell that is these days, and should thus report more responsibly. (And if he were a responsible journalist, MSNBC wouldn't hire him.)
10. Rittenhouse is not a white supremacist. He shot three people. They were all white. One of the people he shot and killed was ostensibly a BLM protester, yet he was throwing the N-word around liberally, but Rittenhouse wasn't. Just because Joe Biden called Rittenhouse a white supremacist doesn't make it true. (Let's face it, Joe said that he was Vice President for 36 years, and that there were 550 companies in the Fortune 500.) But more to the point, prosecutors had Rittenhouse's phone - all of his contacts, all of his social media sites, all of the websites he'd visited. If there was a single link to a white supremacist, or to a site or page related to white supremacy, don't you think that would have been front and center in the trial and the media?
11. On that note, let's turn to the silly "white power" sign. If you fell for that 4chan hoax, look up, quick: somebody wrote "gullible" on the ceiling. The hoax is this: the traditional hand sign for "okay," with the tips of the thumb and forefinger pressed together to form a circle, and the other three fingers raised, is actually a clandestine sign for "white power": the three upraised fingers form a "W," and the circle formed by the thumb and forefingers, along with the wrist below, form a "P." Google it. 4chan trolls specifically came up with this hoax to bait liberals: the originator of the hoax urged followers to propagate it, arguing that liberals would fall for it because "Leftists have dug so deep down into their lunacy." He's not wrong. Other 4chan white supremacy hoaxes include drinking milk as a sign of white supremacy, and adopting the polar bear as a symbol. Feel dumb? You should.
12. Rittenhouse is also not a member of a militia, "self-proclaimed" or otherwise, as many media outlets have reported.
13. As to the question of whether Rittenhouse had any business being there that night - did anybody? Was there a need for anybody to be rioting in Kenosha that night? Had there been no riots, Kyle Rittenhouse would have been at home in Antioch, and two men would be alive. Think about that.

Kyle Rittenhouse was, at the time, a 17-year-old kid from Antioch, Illinois, who went to Kenosha, Wisconsin where his family and friends lived - a mere 21 miles away - out of concerns over violent and destructive rioting. He was with friends that night, and he was armed with an AR-15 that he legally owned, and also carried a first aid kit that he used to help people who needed it. He carried the AR-15 in case he needed it to defend himself. And as it turned out, he did.

He was first chased by a guy named Joseph Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum, sadly, had only hours earlier been released from a local hospital after a suicide attempt. He had a history of mental issues, and had served time in prison for molesting pre-teen children. While in prison, he had numerous disciplinary infractions. At the time of the shooting, he faced charges of domestic abuse and skipping bail. None of this is intended to imply that Rosenbaum deserved to die; he did not. It merely paints a picture of a very troubled 36-year-old with a history of disdain for the law.

As noted earlier, video from that night shows Rosenbaum lighting a dumpster on fire and pushing it toward people. He also confronted a number of people who were carrying AR-15s and other rifles, getting right up in their faces and yelling, "Shoot me, n*****!" He was accompanied by another man, who was armed with a handgun, and that man's wife (both of whom the prosecution chose not to call as witnesses, and one of whom the prosecution will be trying for arson in January related to the night of the riots). In other words, Rosenbaum was engaged in very aggressive behavior.

Video shows him eventually chasing Rittenhouse, and testimony revealed that he yelled, "I'm going to f***ing kill you!" During the chase, video showed that he threw a plastic bag containing something - we don't know what, because the prosecution failed to produce it at trial - at Rittenhouse. He eventually cornered Rittenhouse by some parked cars, and when Rittenhouse turned and raised his gun, Rosenbaum reached for it. The prosecution claimed he wasn't close to Rittenhouse, yet, oddly, then went on to note that he had gunpowder residue on his hand, indicating that it was on or near the muzzle of the gun when the second shot was fired. (The prosecution also argued that, after the first shot, Rittenhouse could have stopped firing, but the fact that Rosenbaum was still grabbing for the gun when the second shot was fired disproves that.) Another witness testified that Rosenbaum was lunging for the gun. Ultimately, four shots were fired in quick succession, and Rosenbaum died.

After chasing Rittenhouse. After threatening to kill him. After cornering him. After having shown no fear of people with guns earlier. After reaching for Rittenhouse's gun, even after being shot once.

After that shooting, Rittenhouse began running toward where the police were. He was going to turn himself in. He knew he had shot Rosenbaum in self-defense. But he also knew that turning himself in was the proper thing to do, and wanted to avoid any further conflict. However, the rioters had other ideas.

Several of them began shouting that he had shot Rosenbaum, and a few of them gave chase. Mind you, Rittenhouse was running away from them, toward the police. His gun was pointed down, in a safe position. He was not facing them, pointing his gun at them - just as he hadn't been facing Rosenbaum until he was cornered by him and had no other option.

This is key, so pay attention: at no point did Rittenhouse play the role of aggressor with anyone. Up to that point, Rosenbaum had chased and cornered him. He shot Rosenbaum in self-defense. Then, as he ran toward police to turn himself in, rather than let him do that - rather than let police handle the matter - a bunch of the rioters decided to chase him down and take matters into their own hands.

Which begs the question: who were the vigilantes?

Video shows one man catching up to Rittenhouse and hitting him in the head, knocking his cap off. Then another man knocks him down from behind. Another man ran in and kicked him in the face, spinning him around. Rittenhouse fired at that man, but missed. In the trial, that man is only identified as "jump-kick man," so referenced because he launched his violent kick by leaping off his left foot and striking Rittenhouse with his right.

Only after the trial ended did we learn his identity - which the prosecution knew all along, but withheld from the defense, the court, and the jury. His name was Maurice Freeland. He actually contacted the prosecution and offered to testify - in exchange for immunity on charges of DUI with an underage passenger, disorderly conduct and domestic abuse, and THC possession. The prosecution declined. Maybe because they were afraid that, under cross-examination, it would come out that, thirty minutes before he kicked Rittenhouse and was shot at, he posted on Facebook, "Let's kill that white boy." His soon-to-be ex-wife believes the statement referred to Rittenhouse, that Freeland had seen him on the scene. So who was the racist? Who was the would-be killer?

While Rittenhouse was on the ground, another man, Anthony Huber, struck Rittenhouse in the head or neck with a skateboard. The prosecution made jokes about the lethality of a skateboard as a weapon. Imagine having someone swing an 8" by 32" board at your head, further weighted by trucks and wheels. Huber also grabbed Rittenhouse's gun, and pulled it away from him. He had it strapped around his body, or Huber might have taken it from him. While Huber was pulling on it, Rittenhouse fired once, striking Huber and killing him. For what it's worth, Huber also had a history of violence, having served time in prison for choking his brother, and having been convicted of domestic abuse and disorderly conduct.

Finally, Gaige Grosskreutz approached Rittenhouse while he was still on the ground, and Rittenhouse shot him in the arm, wounding him. Grosskreutz was able to testify at the trial, but the prosecution probably should have done a better job of vetting their witness: he testified that he pointed a handgun at Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse fired, wounding him. Defense counsel: "It wasn't until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him, that he fired, correct?" Grosskreutz: "Correct." An ex-marine who was at the riot to help protect property from the rioters picked up Grosskreutz' gun and checked the chamber, and found that there was a round in it. In other words, he was locked and loaded, and aiming at Rittenhouse. Grosskreutz further testified that, before he aimed the gun at him, Rittenhouse did not fire. He only fired when Grosskreutz brought the gun down and pointed it at Rittenhouse.

Grosskreutz also had a criminal record, including burglary, drunk driving, disorderly conduct, prowling, harassing an ex-girlfriend, hitting his grandmother in the face, and a number of sealed juvenile offenses. In addition, the concealed weapon permit for the loaded handgun he pointed at Rittenhouse was expired the night of the riots. Further, Grosskreutz had attended about 75 "protests" that summer, so if we're to question what Kyle Rittenhouse was doing in Kenosha that night, we should probably ask the same question regarding Gaige Grosskreutz. He claimed to attend these events - armed, but in his case, illegally - hoping to help people. Just like Kyle Rittenhouse. By the way, Grosskreutz is from West Allis, Wisconsin - which is more than 40 miles from Kenosha. About twice as far as Antioch. Did anyone question why he drove that far to be in Kenosha that night?

Note that everyone Rittenhouse shot, or shot at, not only attacked or threatened him, but had a criminal record and a history of violence. Again, that doesn't mean they deserved to die. But they were no strangers to aggression. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they attacked and/or threatened someone that night.

As for the charges, first let's talk about what Rittenhouse was charged with, then we'll address what he wasn't charged with, because - if you're liberal, and you're still reading this - that's what you're all worked up about.

In the case of Rosenbaum, he was charged with one count of first-degree reckless homicide. In the case of Huber, he was charged with first-degree intentional homicide. In Grosskreutz' case, he was charged with attempted first degree intentional homicide. He also faced two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety.

In each of the first three cases, the video evidence is clear: Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. Rosenbaum had threatened to kill him, was chasing him, had cornered him, and was reaching for his gun. Huber had struck him with an object that could certainly incapacitate or kill, and was also reaching for his gun, had a firm grip on it, and was pulling it away from Rittenhouse, attempting to take it from him. Grosskreutz was advancing on Rittenhouse, with Rittenhouse on the ground, and from a distance of three feet, was aiming a handgun at Rittenhouse when he fired, hitting Grosskreutz' gun arm and disarming him.

As for recklessly endangering safety, one of the cardinal rules of gun safety is to always be aware of what's behind your target. In the self-defense situations Rittenhouse found himself in, he didn't have the luxury of taking a lot of time to think about that. But the only bullets that didn't find their mark were those he fired at Freeland. Those were also fired in self-defense, and they may well have prevented Freeland from coming back and finishing the job he said he was going to do on Facebook.

Here's what Kyle Rittenhouse was not charged with:

• Being a white supremacist (he's not)
• Being a member of a militia (he's not)
• Being a vigilante (his behavior would suggest he wasn't; he ran away from his aggressors, not toward them, and if anything, three of them behaved as vigilantes - but in any event, he wasn't on trial for that, and I'm not sure there's even an applicable statute)
• Crossing state lines (not a crime)
• Crossing state lines with a gun (he didn't)
• Being driven across state lines by his mother (he wasn't)
• Illegally owning a gun (he didn't; the prosecution initially charged him with that, and it was dropped very late in the trial - more on that later)
• Owning an automatic weapon (again, don't be an idiot)
• Firing 60 rounds (don't be an idiot, Joe Scarborough has that covered)
• Being where he shouldn't have been (arguably guilty if it were a crime, but so was everybody present that night)
• Bad judgement (see previous point)
• Being out after curfew (also see previous point; the prosecution tried to include this charge initially as well, but the judge threw it out since everybody there that night was violating the curfew that had been put in place to quell the riots)

So that's it. At issue was this: did Rittenhouse murder or attempt to murder those men? Or did he act in self-defense? That's it, and that's all.

The jury did their jobs admirably, in spite of prosecutorial incompetence and misconduct, threats from the mob outside and the liberal media. Justice was served.

Media coverage of the verdict was predictable, and I'm not going to give it much further voice here. If you insist on watching MSNBC or CNN, you deserve to have your brain further addled by that drivel. I will allow myself the skewering of one MSNBC moron, but first let's look at just how professional that slimy organization is.

After a couple of days of jury deliberations, an MSNBC reporter was cited by police for running a red light near the courthouse. Why did he run a red light? To avoid getting left behind by the jury bus. Why? Because he was following the jury bus. Why? Because his producer in New York instructed him to follow the jury bus.

Do you have any clue just how wrong, how inappropriate, that is? This is jury intimidation. MSNBC claimed they had no intention of filming the jury. Really? Why even claim that? And why otherwise is it so important to stay that close to the bus, that you have to run a red light to avoid losing contact with it?

To his credit, the judge banned MSNBC from the entire courthouse for the remainder of the proceedings. But there should be further action taken.

After the verdict, I switched over to CNN and MSNBC, to watch the predictable melt-down over the decision reached by the jurors. On MSNBC, one talking head asked her three panelists, "What did this trial 'turn' on?"

The reporter on the scene in Kenosha actually gave an intelligent answer. He said it turned on 1) Rittenhouse's testimony, and 2) Grosskreutz' admission that he pointed his gun at Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse shot him.

Well, that was just too rational for the anchor, and she was having none of it, so she turned to her legal expert. Who proceeded to claim that the trial turned on ... the judge. Never mind that it was a jury trial; the judge didn't decide anything. No, she claimed the judge turned the whole case, on the basis of three assertions. I'll present them - and destroy them - below.

1. The judge didn't allow the prosecution to refer to those who were shot as "victims." Well, no sh*t. "Victim" is, legally speaking, a prejudicial term, in that it would prejudice the jury against the defendant. Why? A murder has victims. Self-defense does not. If I shoot you in self-defense, you're not the "victim" of self-defense, you're the person I shot in self-defense. If I murder you, you're the murder victim. Since the determination of guilt or innocence on the murder charge had not yet been made, the use of the term "victim" would presuppose guilt, violating the presumption of innocence until proven guilty that is a cornerstone of criminal law, and has been since we inherited our criminal justice system from the Brits. So for this idiot to whine that the judge disallowed the term to be used just shows that she's upset that he didn't allow the jury to be prejudiced against the defendant.
2. The judge did allow the "protesters" to be referred to as "rioters." Well, let's see - they spray-painted graffiti. They set dumpsters and buildings on fire. They damaged cars with baseball bats. They threw fireworks and bricks at police. They physically assaulted people. Peaceful protest, or riot? This "expert" may have believed that this prejudiced the jury against the riot - er, protesters. (Including Rosenbaum, who, again, set fire to a dumpster, and Huber, who assaulted Rittenhouse with a skateboard, and Grosskreutz, who pointed a loaded gun at Rittenhouse.) Or, you could simply view it as going where the facts take you.
3. The judge threw out the gun charge. Again, Rittenhouse owned the gun legally under Wisconsin law. It doesn't get any clearer than that. What's really odd is that he didn't throw it out until right before jury deliberations began, when all they had to do was measure the damn barrel on day one. The judge didn't seem to really understand the Wisconsin gun law, and admittedly, it is confusing. But the prosecution's case hinged on that charge - if Rittenhouse didn't own the gun legally, he couldn't use it legally in his own defense. And the judge waited until the end of the trial to even address the question of the charge. Had he addressed it at the beginning and thrown it out, there might have been no need to proceed with the trial. But again, apparently this "expert" took issue with the judge throwing out a charge that was, on the merits, baseless.

Of course, after the verdict, there were protests. Thankfully, they were peaceful, for the most part. Kenosha was unusually quiet. The only arrest was some woman writing on the courthouse steps with sidewalk chalk. Cue up "Sesame Street." In Chicago, of course, they broke into Neiman Marcus and stole stuff. In Portland, the protest became violent to the point that it was declared a riot - no surprise there. The biggest protest seemed to be in New York City, where a bunch of white kids marched across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. Most of them didn't even seem to know why they were there; it probably had a lot to do with whether or not they had jobs, and whether their Xboxes were working.

There's been a lot of talk since the verdict about how this sets back racial equality in the U.S. Curious, since Rittenhouse is white, the three people he shot were white, the defense attorneys and prosecutors were white, the judge was white, and I believe all but one of the jurors was white. One person I know believes that the media talking heads and politicos who are making these claims are extrapolating to the cause of the Kenosha "protests" to begin with.

Okay, maybe. But they forget that the vast, vast majority of the "protesters" who showed up last year in Minneapolis and Kenosha and Portland and Seattle and Chicago and Atlanta and New York and other cities were white, just like the kids in New York last night. I wonder how many of them are truly passionate about racial equality. I wonder how many of them have criminal records. I wonder how many of them purport to be there in the name of racial equality, while running around setting dumpsters on fire and yelling, "Shoot me, n*****!"

Or, it could have been, as claimed by some, that "if this had been a young black man, he'd have been found guilty." Perhaps that's true. I would note, however, that on that night in Kenosha, Freeland - a black man with a long rap sheet and outstanding criminal warrants - posted on Facebook, "Let's kill that white boy," then launched a violent kick to Rittenhouse's face. Rittenhouse fired at him in response. The outcome? Rittenhouse, a white kid, was charged with first-degree recklessly endangering safety, for shooting at Freeland. Was Freeland, a black man, charged with assault? Attempted murder, given his earlier threat? No. (And for the record, I'm not arguing that he should have been, I'm merely pointing out that maybe "the system" isn't always as inequitable as it's portrayed to be.)

I'm inclined to believe it's got just as much to do with those Leftist pundits' and politicos' current tendency to insert the words "racist" or "white supremacist" after about every fourth or fifth word that spills out of their incoherent mouths these days, to the point where those words may someday lose their meaning, which would be tragic, because real racism and white supremacy are indeed insidious - they're just not lurking behind everything that happens that the Left disagrees with.

The bottom line, though, is this: if you're liberal, you probably still believe that Rittenhouse is guilty. You didn't watch the trial, you don't understand the law, and you don't even care about the rule of law. Even if someone were to persuasively convince you that the rule of law had been followed in this case, you'd just argue that the law is unjust, and needs to be changed until you get your way. So keep believing what you want to believe - it's your right. Keep getting all of your knowledge from MSNBC.

And pray you never find yourself sitting on a jury bus, hoping to remain anonymous.