A Toast to California’s Secession

Robert Ringer has a "modest proposal"

There’s been a lot of talk recently about California seceding from the union. It’s akin to Hollywood celebs vowing to move out of the country if a Republican wins the White House. Meaning that it’s all bluster. Those who extol the virtues of the People’s Republic of California love to make hollow threats, but they possess neither the courage nor the financial resources to back them up.

If California were ever on its own, within six months of its “independence” it would be unable to function at even a survival level. Though it boasts the sixth largest economy in the world (larger than that of both Brazil and France!), there’s no economy big enough to keep a Marxist country afloat. This has been demonstrated time and again in such failed nations as Cuba, the Soviet Union, Mozambique, and every other country that has experimented with socialism/communism in any of its hideous forms.

The majority of California’s adult population consists of adult-children whose brains have never developed beyond adolescence. They cling to a stunted Woodstock mentality that makes them incapable of rational thought, which, if not addressed professionally, has the potential to be fatal. They live in an Oz-like land of constant frustration, which causes them to resort to tantrums and violence as the combined solution to every perceived problem.

The bottom line to all this is that a majority of Californians are not able to function as self-sustaining adults in the real world, so they irrationally dedicate themselves to the impossible task of trying to remake our imperfect world into a perfect world they create in their soiled minds.

Such an immature and naïve mental state can have dire consequences not only for the individual who is saddled with it, but for rational people of goodwill who live in the same societal space as they do. It’s dangerous to everyone, because those who are part of the Radical Left, in particular, employ lies, slander, and violence day-in-and-day-out in an attempt to achieve their impossible goal of creating the perfect world they envision in their minds.

I lived in Southern California for about 20 years, and I loved it for about ten of those years. It was a period when seemingly everything that happened was wonderful — meeting and marrying the most beautiful, kindest, most caring woman in the world, enjoying my four children as they progressed through grade school, middle school, and high school, rising from oblivion to the pinnacle of the book-publishing world by writing and self-publishing two New York Times #1 bestsellers, and much, much more.

But as we rolled into the eighties, the glitzy lifestyle of Los Angeles began to lose its appeal for me. Being surrounded by millions of Hollywood types and, worse, wannabe Hollywood types, became a painful daily task. I grew tired of seeing people with no visible means of support driving Rolls-Royces and living in rented mansions.

Above all, the left-wing political craziness and political correctness began to wear me down. I got tired of debating low-information people — and, worse, no-information people — and increasingly found myself withdrawing from the outside world.

I slowly faced up to the reality that people in Southern California had a collective mental disorder that caused them to talk and act in ways that was completely foreign to how the rest of the nation thought or behaved.

I remember many years ago Paul Newman saying that “Los Angeles is like a beautiful lady dying of cancer.” Notwithstanding his liberal credentials, Newman nailed it. For sheer luxury and beauty, it’s hard to beat Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, and Bel Air, but, with just a few exceptions, most of the rest of Los Angeles is a sewer.

I became convinced, and today am certain, that California cannot be saved. It long ago passed the tipping point, and is now a giant left-wing cauldron boiling over with hatred, intolerance, and violence. It’s gigantic GDP can’t save it, because when GDP in California increases, it always brings with it an increase in welfare benefits. The Sacramento beast has an insatiable appetite for vote-buying entitlements, regulations, and illegal schemes.

That said, given that the national debt can never repaid — and, in fact, is going to increase dramatically in the coming years — I favor killing two birds with one stone and settling our debt with our largest creditor, China, by giving it title to the state of California outright — lock, stock, and illegal immigrants. Then, let Sacramento figure out how to deal with its new Asian rulers who don’t take kindly to liberal ideas like sanctuary cities, rioting, and welfare fraud.

As I’ve written about before, it’s inevitable that the United States will ultimately break into several nations, but right now just getting the People’s Republic of California out of our lives and out of our pocketbooks would be a real boost to the average American’s morale.

So, with that delicious thought in mind, I invite you to join me in a toast to California’s secession — voluntarily or forced, I’m not particular.

SOURCE

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

An Oxymoron: 'The Left's Tea Party'



With the all of the protesting and rioting across the country since Donald Trump’s election, some in the mainstream media suggest that this is evidence of a leftist grassroots political movement akin to a “progressive tea party.” While there is little question these protests and riots attract a lot of media attention, is this really an organized grassroots cohesive movement? Not exactly.

There is a profound and fundamental difference between the Tea Party movement and the current leftist “resistance” temper tantrum. The Tea Party is truly a grassroots movement born out of serious individual concerns over the ballooning national debt, government regulations and the need to lower taxes — the very ideas of Liberty that lit the fires of the American Revolution. It is a melting pot of traditional socially minded conservatives and libertarians — both concerned about the loss of individual liberty and the growing creep of socialism. It was the passage of ObamaCare that saw the Tea Party come into its own as a truly potent political force that helped lead to GOP majorities in both the House and Senate. These Republicans took office with the goal of being reformers, not revolutionaries.

Leftist malcontents currently protesting and rioting aren’t interested in connecting with traditional American values, though they like to throw around terms like “un-American.” Quite the contrary; they see traditional American values as simply codes for racism, bigotry and sexism. To this leftist grievance class everything is about “equality” or the lack thereof — an inequity of outcome, not opportunity. In reality, what the Left is after is neo-Marxism. When they talk of a grassroots movement, they are speaking of the rise of a new proletariat. They seek a complete re-ordering of society around their leftist concepts of “social justice.” In reality, these protesters are hoping to birth a red revolution, not a reformation.

It’s individual freedom versus collectivism. American history has shown time and again that Americans prefer individual Liberty with its Rule of Law over and against collectivist tyranny and its rule of men. It seems to us there is no comparison between these movements, only contrast.

SOURCE

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

Navy’s Depleted Aircraft Will Take Years to Rebuild After Obama-Era Defense Cuts

Nearly two-thirds of Navy strike fighters unable to fly

The Navy's aircraft arsenal is so depleted it would take several years to rebuild the fleet even if the Trump administration allotted the funding needed to repair inoperable aircraft, according to a policy expert and former Air Force pilot.

John Venable, a senior research fellow for defense policy at the Heritage Foundation, cited a report released Monday that found two-thirds of the Navy's strike fighter jets are unable to fly due to maintenance problems exacerbated by several years of military budget cuts.

Thirty-five percent of grounded fighter planes are waiting for parts, while 27 percent are undergoing major depot work, according to the report published by Defense News. A full 62 percent of F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet strike fighters are out of service, a concerning figure because of the essential role the planes fill in the fleet's combat power.

In all, more than half of the Navy's planes are grounded, including some 1,700 combat transport aircraft, patrol aircraft, planes, and helicopters.

"The throughput right now is so far behind and has such a backlog that it'll take them several years to refit, refurbish, and repair the F-18s that are in unserviceable condition," Venable told the Washington Free Beacon. "They can't catch up even if the Trump administration gave them all the money they need."

Naval and Air Force pilots have been unable to train adequately due to a shortage of operable aircraft in both services, impacting readiness levels and depriving the military of pilots who are unable to log needed flight hours.

With five months left in fiscal year 2017 and a readiness deficit across all four military branches, Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) has advocated an emergency $26 billion supplemental spending bill that would direct some of the funds to readiness training for pilots.

Cotton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Monday the funding has become necessary after eight years of defense cuts under former President Barack Obama.

"Trying to cut our defense spending to get a peace dividend as we did in the 1990s or to pay off domestic constituencies as Obama did is a self-defeating effort," Cotton said during a panel at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

"Your enemies get wind of what's going on, their aggression becomes vulgar, and you have to pay more to rebuild the capabilities and capacity that you lost just to get back to where you were,” he continued.

Cotton said Congress needs to increase the defense budget by at least 15 percent in fiscal year 2018 to recoup the military’s losses.

SOURCE

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

Fake news about Trump nominee

People will believe silly things when it fits their ideological preconceptions. Even when they have been debunked and are contradicted by first-hand information and news reports.

A handful of mostly left-leaning publications repeated a British tabloid’s wild claim that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch started a “fascism forever club” in high school. This bizarre smear of Gorsuch was debunked by Snopes.  It was also debunked by teachers at his school, as liberal-leaning America magazine noted. And it was also debunked by a lawyer in National Review.

Neil Gorsuch is a well-respected judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he has been a judge for more than 10 years, without a hint of scandal. He was unanimously confirmed to the Tenth Circuit by a bipartisan vote, even as other, controversial judges faced filibusters. Nothing in Gorsuch’s judicial opinions or writings is in any way radical, nor does he have a history of saying radical things. Even lawyers like Radley Balko who detest President Trump think that Gorsuch is a well-qualified, judicious, and reasonable man who should be confirmed.

So there was no reason to believe this bizarre claim even before Snopes debunked it. But when I emailed two publications that repeated this bizarre claim, asking them to correct the error, one took a day to fix it, and the other one has yet to do so. Neither of the writers I emailed responded to my email. Even the publication that did fix its error dragged its feet for a day, then made the correction only after a law professor who writes blog posts for the Washington Post told them he planned to write about their false claim.

When a claim is debunked, and was implausible to begin with, those who made the claim should immediately correct what they have written – not drag their feet, or ignore emails pointing out the error. Internet rumors based on false claims like this tend to take on a life of their own. Gorsuch’s reputation is already damaged, since countless people have read these false articles or tweets linking to them.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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