Future Possible Huge Embarrassing Failure

6 Other Things in Sharron Angle's Lock Box

You've seen the commercials. And yes, Sharron Angle is doing an impression of Al Gore's Social Security "lockbox" campaign promise. It's weird to say the least. To say that most, it's disgusting.

However, since it's campaign season and Angle is a Republican, I suppose we should expect her to do her best "moderate Democrat impression" to try to take votes away from Harry Reid. Will it work?

I bet it won't, if the world finds out about these other things, she has in her "lock box":

• A Beating Heart of The Old Man
• $40,000 in Nazi Gold
• An "Edited" Copy of the US Constitution
• An Enemies List (Zeke is #4, Ralston #2)
• Small bottle of Ron Paul's Blood 
• Loaded .357 Magnum with "journalist killer" Bullets

Social Security's Old Angle

5 Things I Don't Care About

Manhattan Mosque

I don't live in New York. I don't want to live in New York. I don't know anyone who died in 9/11. And I know that Islam is not responsible for 9/11. This is a manufactured controversy. Every time the discussion comes up, the Conservatives win.

Anybody's Divorce

Tiger Woods. Jim Gibbons. Sandra Bullock. Anyone's. And why should we? Are our lives that boring? Are actual news stories so complex now days, that they've been replaced with this trite crap?

The National Debt

Let me qualify that; the long-term national debt. We do have systematic structural long-term debt issues with our budgeting process. However, the wolf at the door right now is our current economy. It is disingenuous to infer that the current situation has anything to do with this debt. Or with Social Security. Or with illegal immigration.

2012

If I need to explain to you that a civilization that died out centuries ago, and had not yet invented the wheel, is capable of predicting future intergalactic calamity, you should probably stop reading this right now and go back to your X-Men comic books. And that is not a dis on X-Men. Excelsior!

Sharron Angle

I wasn't really concerned about our Biggest Little Wingnut™ , but now since she's announced she will debate Sen. Reid, I am double plus not afraid of her. By the way, she's going to lose.

Is "Obama a Muslim" Really What It's All about?

Today I saw online, on the radio and on TV multiple stories about Obama being a Muslim. Just like in 2008. Just like in 2009. Just like in 2011, for that matter.

All sane people know he was born in Hawaii and is a legal US citizen. Hawaii has produced a birth certificate.

So why does the GOP/Tea Party/Conservative Radio keep bringing it up? Simple: they aren't trying to convince America that he is a Muslim, but rather want to scare America into fearing Muslims in general.

Every time a liberal/progressive refutes the "Muslim" charge, they're in a sense, being taught that it's bad to be Muslim.

Remember during the 2008 election when Obama was accused of being: an "elitist" or a "socialist" or an "angry black guy" or a "terrorist"? It was like a laundry list of bad things. However, the campaigns for each of those sounded very similar. Lots of trumped up charges, crazy connections and plenty of the innuendo to go around. No facts. No proof. Just slander and ad hominem attacks.

But the Muslim charges different, isn't it. It would be hard to find someone who actually thinks that Islam is really a dangerous religion. Radical Islamists, did attack the US nine years ago, but so what? Radical Christians have attacked Americans many many times, including since then, including bombings (Atlanta Olympics), shootings( killed a doctor in a church? hello) and planning the overthrow of our country (just Google "militia"sometime).

It's not the "Islamist" part we should be paying attention to, it's the "radical".

However, every time somebody has another talk show or write a blog post about how Obama is not a "dirty rotten terrible horrible evil mean murderess crazy wild eyed" Muslim, the brainwashing will continue. You aren't meaning to think it, but it's still happening. And it might even be more insidious than having a rat cage on your head, Winston.

Soon even you, Keith Olbermann, will believe that it was Muslims that stole your bike in sixth grade, along with causing global warming and every other bad thing you can think of, real or imagined.

I'm not falling for it.

Sandoval and Rory

Ironically, the race between Brian Sandoval and Rory Reid for governor of Nevada is by far the most important race going on in the state.

Of course, since the national news media has been "trained" by both left and right to dial in on every "Majority Leader of the Senate" race, this time the Reid/Angle race, there isn't much buzz about the gubernatorial contest.

After the census is completed, the state Legislature will begin drawing the new election district lines. This is huge. Despite reports from the GOP, all signs point to the Democrats holding onto both the Assembly and Senate in the state, allowing them to draw the boundaries in their favor. Of course, without a friendly Democrat in the governor's mansion and many votes short of a veto proof majority, we can expect an ugly fight and a major compromise to get it done.

Furthermore, if Sandoval wins, there will certainly be  expected a rehash of the Gibbons Veto Fest of 2009 ub the 2011 session.  Sandoval has so far refused to sign the Chuck Muth "No Tax Pledge" form, which is a good thing, my cynical bones tell me that this might just be an attempt to court "the middle". After all, it's not like he's going to lose any supporters on the Right by not signing the pledge.

And if I was on Rory's staff, I would tell him to sign the damn pledge, forcing Sandoval to sign it. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and being 12% behind, 75 days from the election is a desperate situation.

So is Sandoval a secret Democrat? Who knows. Stranger things have happened (T Roosevelt, Justice O'Connor etc.). Like none of the media are pointing out, he has never actually been elected to any office, and has no legislative history to speak of. He could actually turn out to be the moderate that I think at this point, voters are looking for.

And the exact reason why the Sandoval/Reid race is getting so little coverage, a lack of controversial actors, is exactly why it should get more coverage. It's the most important race in the state.

Poem of Merit: Momma Grizzly Angle

There once was a bear named Sharron,

who infamously disliked sharing or caring,

She sat in her cave,

Never campaigning by day,

and only on Fox News ever appearing.

Zeke Reno

Arizona 2015

Okay.

Yesterday I blather on about how dumb we are en masse. Governments and individuals are often completely wracked by the effects of unintended consequences of laws/decisions.

Take Arizona for example. According to either side in the immigration debate, large groups of Latinos are leaving the state for Mexico or other US states. It is happening.

But what will the kong term effects be?

Good question.

Arizona certainly will feel a dramatic change in both it's tax revenues, and also expenditures. Arizona's business and personal income tax will take a hit on the taxpaying Latinos moving from the state. Obviously, convention businesses disappearing will also impact their state coffers, but only if this remains such a contentious issue in the next few years. The disappearance of potential property owner/renters will continue to soften the Phoenix/Tucson housing market and cause property values to decrease.

Not a good thing, considering Arizona is basically broke at this point (yeah, but who ain't?).

 On the other hand, there will be a corresponding drop-off in liabilities/payments by the state. Although I don't buy the whole "immigrants create all of the crime" arguments you hear from the Right, there are many social services and health care considerations that illegal aliens and first-generation immigrants (who are also leaving out of fear/revoltion) create. The decreased use of  hospital emergency rooms as a "free doctor visit" will certainly lower State and hospital overhead. The need for K-12 teachers will slow, as retirees again start to outnumber "families with kids".

Of course, as the joke goes, all of the hedges and trees in Phoenix will soon be overgrown from the lack of yard keeping. The "going rate" of many services including landscaping but also childcare/nannies, housekeeping and hundreds of other graymarket jobs will certainly rise, as licensed (and legal) non-immigrants fill in the missing spots. This might eventually cause a higher cost of living in Arizona, currently at 70% of US average, and eventually slow an influx of new residents to the state. Of course, there might be an influx of small contractors/daycare/landscapers to fill in those gaps vacated by the fleeing Latinos. I've have no idea.

How will wash out? That's a good question.

In politics, perception is more important than reality and since this is already a political football interpretation of the results of the Arizona law will be as contentious as the potential ramifications are being debated now.

The real result of the law I figure, will be that Arizona will slide even more to the right, more than any state in the nation. Even Texas. They will define themselves as the Ayn Rand conservative Wonderland, and will probably continue with other "controversial" legislation in short order. In fact, I have a feeling they're just getting started. And when they introduce legislation that bans all forms of taxes, all environmental laws and renames the Phoenix airport as "Rush Limbaugh Freedom Field", George Orwell will rise from his grave and run for governor of America's most dystopic state.

Oh yeah.
They'll also probably change the name of the state to Freedonia.

Groucho Marx will rise from the dead, and demand royalty payments.

We Can't Trust Ourselves. Really.

Referendums. Got to love them.
Maybe not.

It seems to me, that every time we ask the public a question be it a property tax cap or gay marriage, the drooling, uneducated inebriates of America come up with the wrong answer.

We know this.

And if you ask me, our "Founding Fathers" created our representative government, one that elects the people who make laws, versus a true democracy, for that simple reason. We are a bunch of idiots. Always have been, and always will be.

However, sometimes our representative government needs a kick in the pants. Perfect example: Arizona's immigration law. Whereas most of the knuckleheads in Arizona see the immigration problem as a personal issue (in other words, they don't like people speaking Spanish around them because it makes them feel dumb), there actually is an immigration problem in the United States.

And worst off, it's a political football. Both Republicans and Democrats have turned immigration into a wedge issue, therefore rendering actual change and reform impossible. Swing district Democrats are terrified to bring up immigration reform because they're afraid of losing white voters. Right now, there are no swing district Republicans in Congress, but in two years there probably will be. At that point, those Republicans won't want to talk about immigration reform because they think they will lose their "sympathetic" nonpartisan voters that elected them in 2010.

But Arizona has really changed the game, by making this a top-tier issue. The fires are burning hot on both sides, one side screaming "racist" and the other side screaming "lawbreakers". And because any concessions that are made, will be seen as a victory for the other side, nobody is prepared to budge.

The swing district congressman/woman prefer not to do anything, and in so the "veto proof majority" needed to enact reform is impossible to achieve. It's a stalemate, and in the meantime the fires get stoked ever higher and higher by the respective camps.

Arizona, through their state legislature, and backed strongly by their citizenry, has simply required that the government to enforces its laws. Nothing more nothing less. There's no mandatory racism requirement, but simply a requirement that law enforcement officers be obliged to ask the question "where you from, pal?" Our Customs and border patrol agents do it all day long. And more importantly, the checks and balances are obvious. Racial profiling and discrimination is still illegal in Arizona, and cops that abuse the law would certainly be on the hook for millions in lawsuits with an overreach interpretation.

But Arizona did it, and I don't doubt the US Supreme Court's eventual decision (barring a personnel change) will be in favor of the Arizona law as written. I'm not a jurist, but our Constitution does have language specifically detailing different classifications of statuses and even rights for people who are citizens or foreigners residing in the US. Don't worry, we'll all be experts on this soon enough.

So what's going to happen Zeke? What will be the financial/cultural impact upon Arizona and United States? Well, I'll tell you.

Tomorrow.

Sarah Palin Says So

Sarah Palin Says So

The Race That Wasn't

God knows the press is making a big stink about the Reid - Angle race, and why shouldn't they? After all, by being the Majority Leader of the Senate has become the number two name in the wingnut chance "Obama, Reid and Pelosi... blah blah blah" for so many months.

But seriously, does anybody think Sharron Angle REALLY has a chance of winning?

I don't. And I know better.

It's of course in the media's best interest to stoke the fires and pretend that this race is going to wind up neck and neck in November. Kind of like they did with Obama and McCain. Remember how that turned out? Landslide.

I'm not going to even bother pointing out all the crazy things as Sharron Angle believes, but I'll just say this: I can't find one living breathing person who thinks she's going to win, or more importantly, is planning on voting for. Including Republicans and independents. Not one.

Of course in our state of millions of people, statistically you will find people that believe in all sorts of crazy things. Bigfoot, alien abductions, Jim Gibbons governorship, etc. but when you get right down to it, it doesn't even take a very good bullshit detector to realize she's nuts. The public ain't that dumb.

"But Zeke. What about the polls?" Good point. The problem is, Southern Nevada and the rurals are not as familiar with angle as we here in Reno are. But sooner or later, thanks to the media frenzy. The truth will come out. And just like most Republicans, truth is always bad for their campaign.