Roger Waters Had A Point

Americans send kids to school for two ostensible reasons and one that is shameful.  The two somewhat valid reasons are as follows:

"Bryan Caplan contests virtually every unchallenged premise we hold about our education system today. His new book, The Case Against Education: Why The Education System is a Waste of Time and Money, expands upon Americans’ growing skepticism about the value of a college education. He argues that formal education at all levels might be a raw deal not just for some people, but for our society in general.  To answer this, the George Mason University economist begins by discussing two major purposes of education: the development of human capital, and signaling. Human capital purists would argue that “virtually all education teaches useful job skills and . . . these job skills are virtually the sole reason why education pays off in the market.” On the other hand, he writes, the “signaling” theory of education suggests that “even if what a student learned in school is utterly useless, employers will happily pay extra if their scholastic achievement provides information about their productivity.”

Before we even get to the evil reasons for the current system, we'll debunk the first two. 

Development of Human Capital is useful, but only when there is a high ceiling.  Since Caplan is an economist, we'll discuss this in economic terms.  Human capital can only develop if it has a high return on investment.  Some does, most doesn't.  The local high school near where I live is a banner example.  They brag about having an engineering/robotics program where approximately 15 nerds out of a class of 250 can STEM themselves into a stupor and leave for college with a good 12 or so AP credits in their bags and suitcases.  As for the other 235...The place has a bit of a bad reputation.

The human capital development runs up against the problem of the non-blank slate.  I've done OK with the whole Edumucayshun thing, but everything I'm decent at involves something a recent relative of mine is pretty decent at as well.  My Maternal Grandfather taught math in college.  I do it for a living, my son does it one level above his current grade.  Is my family socialized to want to be good at math or do we just dole out the lucky sperm shots?  If you buy the second hypothesis, you are then enjoined to question whether spending money and time on education does anything other than broaden and make obvious pre-existing heritable differences. 

This brings us to our second ostensible purpose of a public education system.  It does the job that the nincompoops in ACME Inc's Human Resources Department aren't smart enough to do.  Rather than having to scout for capable actuaries the way The Detroit Tigers have to hit the road and find good pitching talent, MGM Grand can simply peruse resumes for graduates of UCLA or Harvard who have passed at least the first three actuarial tests.  This tells them who has the intellectual capability to subtly rig games of chance against an unsuspecting public. 

This gives universities an unfair monopoly on credentialling Amerika's prestige professions.  This is reinforced by The Grigg v. Duke Power decision.   Only rich, leftists in Silicon Valley and the NFL are allowed to give employees an IQ test.  They both call them something else, but the Wonderlic Test and the Google perspective  employee test measure pretty much the same sort of abstract logic that traditional IQ exams test.  So again, why couldn't Nationwide Insurance do what the Saracens Rugby Club from The English Premiership does and identify mathematical or sales ability at a young age and send them to Nationwide Academy? 

High cognitive skill professions such as actuaries, lawyers and high-end sales people could be trained more rapidly, less expensively and more completely by private professional academies.  It would skip the waste, administrative bloat and political indoctrination that gets rammed down the throats of college students.  Perfectly capable budding engineers and accountants would not be getting ripped off on tuition to subsidize Interpretive Dance and Lesbian Studies Majors. 

But a lot of this is just fantasy because of the 3rd, unspoken reason of why we have these schools.  They are jails in which children are incarcerated for the crime of being unwanted, inconvenient offspring of parents who are too busy being Homo Economicus to bother with the distractions implicit in good parenting.  Our schools are used unsuccessfully as surrogate parents.  Too many of our children are raised by a cynical, unconcerned managerial state.  In the end, when you need a well-educated doctor; karma has a way of paying you back for a dysfunctional and useless education system.  It's just God's way of telling us that even Roger Waters, could some days have a point.

Italy Rips Off The Mask of The Failed Elite

David Brooks noticed something and The New York Times even permitted him to.

Once upon a time, white male Protestants ruled the roost. You got into a fancy school if your father had gone to the fancy school. You got a job at a white-shoe law firm or climbed the corporate ladder if you golfed at the right club.  Then we smashed all that. We replaced a system based on birth with a fairer system based on talent. We opened up the universities and the workplace to Jews, women and minorities. University attendance surged, creating the most educated generation in history. We created a new boomer ethos, which was egalitarian (bluejeans everywhere!), socially conscious (recycling!) and deeply committed to ending bigotry.  You’d think all this would have made the U.S. the best governed nation in history. Instead, inequality rose. Faith in institutions plummeted. Social trust declined. The federal government became dysfunctional and society bitterly divided.

So then he has to explain why this all went in the opposite direction...

1. Exaggerated faith in intelligence.
2. Misplaced faith in autonomy.
3. Misplaced notion of the self.
4. Inability to think institutionally. 
5. Misplaced idolization of diversity.

So what is the end state of this.  Well, quite simply; a group of looters take over.  It ends like an overly verbose Ayn Rand novel, except that we never get to meet John Galt.  The looters pillaging Italy like a Carthaginian Army are ensconced in the EU Headquarters in Belgium. 

They claim to just love Democracy.  What they don't like are fickle voters who actually vote their own interests.  The European University system gives them an elite that they are all supposed to shut their yaps and follow.  They manage these people out of the goodness of their ever-loving hearts. 

Or not.  They run a Kakistocracy.  The recent Coup d'Etat in Italy shows us how Democratic Democracy really is.  You can always vote.  They just don't allow you to make certain choices and will pull the plug on you if you do.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Sunday barred a coalition of euroskeptic parties from forming a government despite a clear mandate handed down by voters earlier this spring. The move amounted to nothing less than a bloodless coup d’état and laid bare the naked contempt for the vox populi among the Italian and European liberal establishment. Talk about liberalism without democracy.

This brings us back around to David Brooks' root causes of elitist tyranny and failure.  If we apply an Alt-Right Translator to David's 5 Root Causes we get 3 fundamental flaws of Post-Enlightenment Western Democracy.

Exaggerated faith in intelligence combined with the inability to think institutionally translates into a Rejection of Traditional Aristocratic Hierarchy.  Brooks specially describes what the dope-smoking, jean-wearing, egalitarian campus rabble replaced.  These White Male Protestants who hived at the WASP-Nest Institutions were a Brahman Class.  They were privileged to be sure, but in return for that privilege they acted out of patriotism and noblesse oblige.

Misplaced faith in autonomy and a misplaced notion of the self map to a combination of toxic individualism merged with crowdism.  The individualism comes from the death of aristocracy.  You can't tell *me* what to do in an egalitarian society.  *I* don't have to take it from you.  *I* have rights and *you* have obligations. 

Then we get the crowd of identical individuals.  It's amazing how all these liberated individualistic units looked identical.  The Star Wars Clone Armies had more unique personalities.  These kindred non-spirits flock together and form a hostile, demanding, destructive crowd.  This is crowdism and it destroys anything or anybody that stands out above the norm. 

The misplaced idolization of diversity doesn't even need translation.  Now Brooks would never except the simple conclusion that diversity plus proximity equals conflict, but he does understand that we all need to stay the people God made us.  We need our society to work the way we built it. That cannot continue when we deliberately replace the population stock. 

So David tells us to look in the mirror honestly.  To accept our virtues as well.  Diversity Fetishism is dishonest self-hatred.  Here David Brooks is magnificently right.  God made me White and LeBron James Black for his own divine reasons.  Neither one of us has anything to feel guilty over on those grounds.  Ignore the Left.  It is #OKTOBeWhite.

It's also OK for average, working Italians to choose not to work for some anonymous German banking conglomerate.  They may like being Italian.  They might just get up in the morning, look in the mirror while shaving or brushing their teeth and feel pretty satisfied with what they see before them.  And what in the heck is a European anyway?  It has been meaningless ever since their failing, university-educated elite destroyed the morally binding concept of Christendom. 

Now they feel like they have to destroy what it is to be an Italian.  How long before the managerial state destroys what it is to be a human being?  It's a valid question now that the mask just got ripped off of the Italian "Democracy."  We now know it is nothing but a lie. 

The Magic Kingdom of Kieth Olbermann

Disney has officially decided that Rosanne Barr is truly The Wicked Witch of The West.  She made a racist tweet, which in turn tanked the DJIA; and also set off a massive CME which ended civilization as we know it.  Too damn bad I'm only joking about the Coronal Mass Ejaculation.  You see, comparing Valarie Jarrett to a character from a Planet of The Apes Movie is an act of unconscionable cruelty to the poor, defensive primates. 

Disney CEO, Bob Iger wasted no time in getting rid of any TV program featuring such an awful person.  He can now give the face time to the warm, outgoing and reasonable Kieth Olbermann instead. 

And how did officially official Conservatism Inc react?  It must be everything the #SJWs could ever have wanted.  It's a conquest worthy of Conquest's 2nd Law.  The official NRO editorial policy can now be best summed up by the following Kieth Olbermann Tweet. 

That's not possible, they cuck quite cuckingly.  National Review Online is standing athwart the steamroller of history yelling something or other about not ending up on the menu over at the Roadkill Cafe along with Awesome Possum and Flat Cat.  No, actually they've completely submitted to the will of SJW Sharia.  At least if Jim Geraghty is to be believed.

But maybe, just maybe, Geraghty is going rogue on this one.  Maybe he stepped out of line.  Nope.  He didn't.  He's following Lemming Extrodinaire David French straight over The Cuck Cliff.  Here's what David Surrender Chimp had to say on Twitter.   This after he went full Cuckasaurus Rex defending Randa Jarrar.

Official Conservatism is now in a state of utter dhimmitude to the liberal corporate aristocracy.  They are the Democrat Party's B-Side.  They keep shagging kicks and hitting the scrum sled hoping they can get a few minutes on the pitch the next time Senator Menedez pulls a groin muscle while visiting The Dominican Republic.  David French, Jonah Goldbrick and all the rest of our Nobel Conservative Lions are all pizza-face poseurs all wondering why the cool kids won't pencil them in on the team sheet.  But don't worry (((Jonah))).  Here's an appropriate pop culture reference.  We'll be laughing atwith you.

I Am Tommy Robinson

If you are emotionally and intellectually invested in the Alternative Right at all, you will be Tommy Robinson for at least 15 minutes.   "Who is Tommy Robinson?" This should give a good idea.

ENGLISH Defence League founder Tommy Robinson has been caged for 13 months for contempt of court, it can be revealed today.  The 35-year-old was arrested last week on suspicion of breaching the peace while at Leeds Crown Court.   Tommy Robinson was arrested outside Leeds Crown Court last week.  Robinson, whose real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon was listed on court documents, admitted committing contempt of court by publishing information that could prejudice an ongoing trial.  He was already on a suspended sentence for a previous contempt offence in Canterbury last year.  The right-wing activist was arrested during a protest on Friday outside the court with footage showing him being led towards the back of a police van and searched.  His arrest sparked a mass protest outside Downing Street as supporters called for his release.

Not all of us are important enough to get stuffed in the can for prtesting the destruction of what they grew believing in.  It takes a strong voice, an agile mind and a set of rocks that don't easily succomb to ideological weathering.  All of us will be assailed however.  Raise your voice against the satanic hyms of The Cathedral, and you will be shouted down and punished. 

Do not be deluded by your surroundings.  If you are Anglo-Saxon, then you are hated for being who God made you.  The beliefs of Mexican Intellectual José Vasconcelos are typical of those that drive this irrational hatred of The Alt-Right.  They will not be happy until The Tulio Barrs non-race is all that is left*.

Vasconcelos served as rector of the National University of Mexico, and president Alvaro Obregon appointed him as minister of public education from 1921-24. The next year he authored The Cosmic Race, an essay contending that the mixed race that inhabits the Ibero-American continent, is destined to become the first synthetic race of the earth, surpassing the four racial trunks: the Black, the Indian, the Mongol, and the White.  The basis of white civilization is fuel, explains the erudite Vasconcelos, who ran for president of Mexico in 1929. It served as a protection against the long winters. Then, it was discovered that its power could be used not only for warmth, but also for work; and the motor was born. On the other hand, the mestizo, the Indian, and even the Black are superior to the White in a countless number of properly spiritual capacities.

So if you fight athwart being forcibly turned into the Cosmic Race of Satanic Puppets, branded with The Number of The Beast; by the morally and culturally dead Managerial State then pack down low and hard and get ready for the shower of sh!t.  But the good news is is that this awakened those who became soporific after Donald Trump's 2016 victory.  It reminds us that only the dead will know the end of this war.  Rebel media and others are fighting back. 

This is not *just* about whether Great Britain is being turned into Not-So-Free Britain by Islamic Immigration.  This is about the right to dissent in a free society.  Voltaire spoke truth when he stated we are ruled by those who we are not allowed to criticize.  The managerial state is flexing its muscles and quaint boring rights like Habius Corpus or Freedom of Expression are being ground out like the remnants of a dying cigarette.  Lynchpin rights such as Freedom of Religion, The right to keep and bear arms are on the cutting line here in Amerika. 

All of this began, of course, with the extinction of Freedom of Association in the Demotic Western Democracies.  Once that cornerstone got taken out, the entire structure was destabilized.  We on the Alt-Right now fight against the sad and horrible day where it all goes down like The House of Usher.  In this fight we are all Tommy Robinson.  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

*-And you know what you can expect from a kid raised by parents who deliberately named him Tulio.‭

The Edmund Winston Pettus Bridge To Nowhere

The Edmund Winston Pettus Bridge was once said to lead to the promised land if people just kept their eyes on the prize.

The Edmund Pettus bridge became a symbol of the momentous changes taking place in Alabama, America, and the world. It was here that voting rights marchers were violently confronted by law enforcement personnel on March 7, 1965. The day became known as Bloody Sunday.

I'll just cut straight to the scary, Alt-Right !#RACISM! here.  The current trajectory of The African American Community is unsustainable.  They will suffer increasing pain, humiliation, emiseration and will grow up to hate the way a black African under caste grew up hating the majority in both Zimbabwe and South Africa. Why the pessimistic disrespect?  Let's take a look at the people who run branches of the NAACP.  Rachel Nkechi Diallo Dolezal is a pretty accurate example.

Former Spokane Chapter NAACP President Rachel Dolezal is now facing legal trouble that could land her behind bars. KHQ has confirmed that Dolezal, who legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016, is accused of 1st Degree Theft by Welfare Fraud, Perjury in the 2nd Degree, and False Verification for Public Assistance. Her potential punishment under RCW 74.08.331 could include up to 15 years in prison.  Because Dolezal changed her name, we’ll be referring to her as Nkechi Diallo. According to court documents, Diallo illegally received $8,747 in food assistance, and illegally received $100 in childcare assistance. Total restitution, according to the documents, is $8,847, allegedly stolen from August 2015 through November 2017.

Not only was she not really broke, she wasn't really Nkechi Diallo.  Furthermore, she was running an NAACP chapter while not really black. Absolutely nothing about this woman's life was ever genuine or honest.  So after people like MLK, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X actually fought, bled and died to liberate African Americans from an under caste status; they are actually choosing leadership that is less genuinely Black than Senator Lieawatha is Cherokee. And it gets painted with another layer of bull feces.  These leaders are chosen and upheld by the likes of Shaun King. Yes, Malcolm X has been replaced with Talcum X.


Why has this become such a festering snake pit?  As I've stated above, African Americans didn't used to have to import leadership from outposts of the White Supremacy Hierarchy such as the Punahuo Academy in Hawaii.  Are the only African American leaders standing between us and the pitchforks really at least 50% White?  The political and intellectual leadership of the African American are increasingly less black than Mr. Plessey from The Great State of Louisiana.

Maybe YouTuber Simone56 had a point when she described the current African American community using the metaphor "Rome is Burning".  The successor movement to the Civil Rights Movement seems to be The Divestment Movement. Romantic (Swirling) Exit, Economic Exit, Ideological Exit and Physical Exit are now considered the new Civil Rights frontiers they sail for.  But the tragic truth here is that Malcolm X was magnificently right.  They can talk about divestment right up to the point where they attempt to literally jump out of their own skin.  You are what God made you.

This will never actually work.  Too much jealousy exists within their ranks.  This is why Tommy Sotomayor gets more hatred directed at him than obvious scam artists such as Talcum X.  This is why Rachel Dolezal is given a greater leadership role in their community than Candace Owens.  This is the ultimate result of Leftist Politics in a Demotic Society.  Black Americans have been destroyed by their politically correct, SJW "friends".

The Mathematics Of The Kakistocracy

Le Chateau Heartiste highlights a very interesting question from the comments on one of his pieces.

Btw, what kind of democracy is it that the 2% has more power than the 98%?

I respond with a certain sadness to the query posed above.  My friends, it is not a Democracy.  At least it is not the bright and shining lie we were sold as Democracy.  It is a manipulated Kakistocracy.

Every so often, the betters who tell us what we are permitted to think mess it up.  They ask us what they really think expecting a different and less unpleasant result than you would get from say taking the temperature of a struggling Ebola patient in an ICU Ward. One example where the beliefs of those living in Amerika run afoul of The Gospel of The 2% involves the benefits of International Trade.  Reuters/Soros (Oops I mean Ipsos), had the temerity to ask...

Please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with each of the following... International trade hurts average Americans because it keeps wages down due to the cheaper costs of foreign labor?  3,397 Responses  Agree 69.4%  Disagree 30.6%

Here we have a clear and definitive divergence between what the overlords in the gilded capital want and the desires of the piddle-itch peasantry in the hinterlands.  And this is not the only major issue on which the desires and needs of the people diverge from the preferred status quo favoring those to the manor born.  By 40%, this poll reflects disagreement with the elite preference for unrestricted international trade.  If it accurately reflects the sentiment of the country, we've got a majority of 128 Mil; out of a population in the ballpark of 320 Mil that want their elite opinion to do the FOAD.

This begs an essential question.  How can these "leaders" get away with crap like this.  Democracy implies consent of the governed.  The governed just indicated that a huge majority of them want this particular policy direction reversed.  Shouldn't our elected representatives fear the popular reprimand?  They do fear a reprimand, but it's not a popular one. This is what our Democracy is responsive to.

Politico quoted Rowe threat to deny funds to GOP legislators who do not sign the discharge petition which will create an amnesty for at least 2 million DACA migrants, plus many of their chain-migration relatives.

Meanwhile, the peasants get itchy rectums in countries other than just the US of A.  In Sweden, The Swedes are questioning just how intelligent it is to import masses of people who are 180-degrees different culturally, religiously and racially than the usual member of Swedish Society.  This is diametrically opposite to what the Swedish governing class wants.

The Social Democrats, Politico reports, have "struggled to respond" to the Sweden Democrats' rhetoric on the issue, particularly in light of a recent spate of violence in Sweden's immigrant ghettos. Their lack of strength on the issue has actually caused Swedes to turn from the Sweden Democrat party; the group is facing a near 30% drop in support from the last election cycle.

Folks, this is an acid test.  Democracy is never about what the people want.  It is about what those skillful at manipulating the people want.  The Swedes, like the members of congress and the Amerikan voters; are all about to get railroaded.  It will be for their own good.  It will be because the elites care.  Actually, it won't.  But we all know this already and are patiently waiting until it all falls off the cliff and we can rebuild from the societal ruins.  Until then, they all just wanna be elected.

Life Lessons Outside The Safe Space

Do not lock your kids in a safe space.  They won't learn Jack about the world unless they participate in it.  When I registered my kid for another year of Spring Cal Ripken Baseball at the local park, I was completely unaware he was about to be taken to the University of Hard Knocks and edumahcayted tuition-free.  It happened three Saturday Mornings ago, and the lesson was a doozy. 

So my kid's team has their 2nd best pitcher on the mound and he's really only got his B/B- stuff.  The other side is good and disciplined.  They are sniping away and hitting his mistakes.  They have a five run lead with two outs in their half of the 2nd inning.  2 outs, runners at 1st and 3rd and the pitch count odometer is ticking over.  This was a do-or-die point of the game.  Either he'd wiggle off the hook and strand those runners or it just wasn't my kid's day that Saturday morning.  Class went into session.

The next hitter isn't a slugger, but he shows good self-discipline.  He runs the count, taking three balls and managing to foul off three fastballs that may-or-may not have been borderline strikes.  Finally the pitcher has begun to wear down.  You can see the sweatstains under the arms of his uniform shirt.  He dials up a hittable change-up in hopes of inducing a ground ball out and getting out of the pressure cooker.  It works.  The batter cracks a weak, routine grounder.  It was directly at the 2nd Baseman.  Therein lay the rub...

A competant, motivated infielder charges a routine grounder to 2nd.  Every step he gets closer to home before he gobbles the ball in his mitt is one more step the batter loses before he gets to 1st Base.  This is more time to step and make a good, careful throw.  Early bird gets the worm.  Or an easy out at 1st Base that kills off a nasty inning. 

This 2nd Baseman took things easy.  He stayed at his initial spot and let the ball roll towards him.  Before it got there, he glanced over and noticed the batter steaming over to 1st with an entirely different and more motivated attitude.  He knew, right there, that he had just had sex with the dog. 

He then panicked and tried to pick up the ball and throw with one, uncoordinated motion.  The throw bounced twice before the poor 1st Baseman could get a glove on it.  The batter was safe, the run was in, the runners were at 1st and 2nd.  Darwin, the evil futhermucker; hadn't finished burning that lesson on anyone's rear end with a heated cattle brand yet.

The pitcher was exhausted, the frustrated beyond words.  He had the body language going you'll see about halfway back in the line at the DMV.  The next hitter was muscular specimen at age before parents are supposed to be sending the young men to the gym to bulk.  He approached the plate the way a matador stares down a wounded, tiring bull with disdain and contempt. 

The pitcher knew he was dead if he threw a strike.  He knew it was his job to throw strikes.  He figured he'd cut down on the torture time and just pitch it right down Madison Blvd. and tell Hercules to put up or shut up.  Hercules put up - with the predictable, dreaded crack off the aluminum bat.  The ball arched a Mortarman's Parabola that carried the Right Field Power Alley by at least ten feet.  That helpless image of the outfielder's back as a ball sails long past his reach is a moment that just makes baseball, baseball. 

One lazy 2nd Baseman, one poor play on a ground ball.  Four runs score.  Game over.  The life lessons abound.

1) Lazy, unmotivated people win nothing.  They deserve nothing.  The pay raise goes to the guy who digs for it.  The future belongs to those who reproduce their families in order to attend it.  Life has competition.  Competition has clear winners and well-defined losers.  The losers get to chug down a well-defined beer bong filled with suck. 

2) If you don't choose to do what is necessary to win, someone else is more than happy to.  They will hold you in complete contempt while they spank you.  If you are like that 2nd Baseman; you will deserve the condign ridicule.  The fittest reproduce with the best and always get the most.  The world was designed that way.  No, Bernie Sanders, that isn't unfair.  It is a sign that God is up there active in his heaven. 

The simplistic account is that eighty percent of women are having sex, and twenty percent of men are having sex – a hell of a lot of sex.  It kind of feels as if it is true, it is emotionally true, but it is not literally true. The number of men and women getting sex is not hugely different. More woman are having sex than men, and substantially more women are having regular sex with a regular partner than men are having regular sex with a regular partner (reflecting substantial levels of polygyny), but not hugely more, the numbers are not all that different.  What, however, makes the simplistic account feel true, is that ninety percent of men never get to pop a virgin. Every man, except for a rather small handful of men, are getting sloppy seconds.

3) The world is filled with bullies and haters.  Like the poor, the King Richards will always be with us.  You will get what you are lazy enough and unmotivated enough to tolerate off the sons of bitches.  Or you could do what the 2nd Baseman should have done and shut it all the Hell down before Hercules could ever make it out of the on-deck circle.  The choice at some point will be yours.  Do what fate has assigned you.  Live well and with purpose in the moment God has seen fit to provide you with.  Give it all the hell you have to give it. 

You do get to pick your battles, but at some juncture in your life war will not be over just because you want it to be.  The bully will slam your back against the wall.  You dig in, or some poor underpaid sap digs your Pauper's Grave.  Life gives you the options of which.  Provided you have the fire in your heart and the will within your brain to choose survival.  Darwin enjoys eating the dumb bastards who lack either.  Perhaps with just a touch of Tabasco Sauce.

It was generous of God to give my boy the opportunity to learn that lesson in a forum where no nice, young children would actually have anything crushed beyond their feelings.  With a lesson like that on tap to be learned, who needs a freaking participation trophy. It doesn't have to be Cal Ripken Baseball, but get your children out in the world.  Lessons that good never get taught in an unrealistic safe space. 

Ya' Wanna' Bet On It?

So the SCOTUS got one right for a change.  It wasn't hard.  The case involved the issue of whether our Federal Government had the power to ban our individual stupidity.  Could they take the car keys away from the ignorant monkeys?  By a 6-3 margin, the SCOTUS wisely ruled that you should let the buggers crash.  Life has just become a little bit more like an IQ Test.  Your typical cash-starved Blue State now has a new, inexhaustible source of revenue - the power to tax stupid.

The Supreme Court on Monday opened the door to an unprecedented expansion of legalized betting on college and professional sports, striking down a federal law that forbade states from authorizing such gambling.  The decision set off a rush among states to put plans in place — a New Jersey racetrack said it would offer sports betting within weeks — and could revolutionize spectator sports, with some envisioning real-time wagering at baseball stadiums on whether the next pitch will produce a hit or an out.

The actual vehicle by which SCOTUS legalized sports betting involved a case that just as easily could have invoked the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  The PASPA law which grandfathered in La Cosa Nostra's desert numbers racket; was the worst example of the Managerial State.  Gambling must be regulated.  We secretly want to ban gambling.  We don't have the guts.  Therefore, we prevent people who haven't already regulated gambling from being able to effectively regulate gambling.  Since they couldn't regulate the vice, they couldn't sin.

The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was signed into law by President Bush in 1992 and went into effect in January 1993. It is also commonly known as the Bradley Act after Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey.  PASPA stopped new states from offering sports betting. Nevada was the only state that had state-sponsored betting. Oregon, Delaware and Montana were grandfathered in. Nevada legalized all forms of sports betting in 1949.  PASPA did not outlaw sports betting. Sports betting had already been illegal but the decision stopped the spread of sports betting in the United States by preventing states from regulating gambling.

I'd rather Dr. Righteous just show up and straight-up ban the oily, disingenuous sinners while he bloviates about how they're all gonna' buuuurnnn.  Be moral about being moralistic.  If something is bad, then the really smart guys from Harvard ought to be able to explain the utter badness to the simple folk like Little Ol' Moi. But no.  We go through gutless elocution designed to ban something while not explicitly banning something.  We get treacle like the pathetic lies we see spewed below.

The last thing the NCAA wants is anything that might lead to another point-shaving scandal like the one it experienced in 1951, Charles Clotfelter, a Duke University professor of economics and law who has written about sports and universities, wrote in a statement. He was referring to a college basketball gambling scandal.  The college sports business model depends on fans believing that unpaid players are motivated by the purest of competitive motives.

The SCOTUS should have nuked this odious sarcoma via the legal Writ of You've Got To Be Kidding Me.  So the turd-chucking howler monkeys couldn't resist the temptation of blowing up their paychecks on the wire.  Who am I to stop them?  Nobody. 

If suicide was regulated and proceeded in a legally-ordained standardized environment; would it be righteous?  Would it be more righteous than Dumb-Ass Jethro drinking 15 shots of Wild Turkey, starting his car in the garage and falling asleep now and forever?  It makes no difference.  Suicide is suicide.  Dead is dead. 

People who gamble are gambling.  People who gamble against organizations that get their mathematicians who design their Dutch Books from Stanford and MIT are going broke like the Hindenburg after some idiot just had to play with the matches.  Regulated or unregulated, they're still going broke.

So why do we have the e-vils of sports betting?  The same reason we have the opiod crisis and the Scots are drinking themselves into human Piddle-Puddles. Every man-jack one of us is going to die.  Under the Managerial State, they never get to live.  It's like PASPA.  It's dishonest.  It's gutless.  It has no real morality or reason for being. 

So I totally like what the SCOTUS did with PASPA.  Gambling may well be bad, but more of what makes life pathetic won't stop it.  If you want to know why people are sitting around betting on The Cubs vs The Braves instead of helping old ladies cross the street; ask Mick Jagger. 

A Man of Principle

Life is all about the choices we make.  We control the things we can control, we react as well as possible when life's game of golf dumps us in the rough or in the sand trap.  As The Wise and Perspicacious Thomas Jonathan Jackson once put it; "You do the best you can with what you have."

I am a living anachronism.  Like Daschiell Hammett's Sam Spade, I am a thing out of season.  I was created to be someone who doesn't fit the desired template of the society I live in.  This gives me options.  I can submit and cuck quite cuckingly, or I can insist upon myself.  I'll just be me, thank you.  That approach hasn't killed me quite yet.

I insist upon myself and eat my consequences.  In blogging, I've been deplatformed three times*.  Twice when blogs I wrote for were LBO'd by "allies"  who decided that I wasn't their flavor of the month.  In a 3rd incarnation, I was on a platform that got nuked by a well-funded DDoS attack.  Again I find myself with options.  They are what life is all about.

The Casual Observer would remark that banging my head against the censorship wall would get old after a bit, but then again, it's easily the hardest bone in my body.  Quit is a four letter word.  The society I live in is on the glide path to spectacular failure.  If I can't change its course I can perhaps record the path of descent so that future readers can follow the links and see what happened.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'm just too stubborn an asshole not to climb right back up on that pony and ride.  What some call stubbornness, I refer to as principle.  The people who don't carry through get carried off.  I can go away sad and bemoan the state of modern society. That, or I can stay and fight to the best of my ability.  I choose the latter.  I choose to be A Man of Principle.

*-As KoTM, RMJ and JPW all three.