Observations: The Qando Podcast

Just about everything that can go wrong in Washington DC is going wrong. President Pence is gonna have a huge mess to clean up next year. Obamacare still can't be repealed. The health care system's a mess, but the only acceptable solution is apparently more government-provided health care. Too many people now just see government as the good daddy who gives everyone a pony on their birthday.

The news media has one currency, credibility, and they're squandering it by crying wolf about Donald Trump and attacking randos who post memes on the Internet. Donald Trump gave a pro-Western Civ speech in Poland, or, depending on who's reporting it, spouted off a bunch of White Nationalist dog whistles. Economics is not really a science. People don't trust experts. Oh, and it appears that the major networks have been falsifying their Nielsen ratings. Which sounds a lot like, you know, fraud.

This week brings us the sad story of a very ill baby in the UK, named Charlie Gard. His parents have raised $2 million to bring him to the US for an experimental treatment. The government has refused to allow them to do so, or even take him home to die. The government says that it's in the child's best interest to be left to die in the hospital. So, UK residents now know who owns their children. Meanwhile, in this country, the week's big news is that the president of the United States has engaged in a Twitter war with a couple of TV talking heads.

Technically, it's possible to have served in Afghanistan as an E-1 Private and now be a Sergeant First Class. We've been there for 15 years, and we have no clue when we'll leave or what victory is. Which is interesting to think about, considering we seem to staggering towards another war in Syria. BTW, what's the deal with new Saudi Crown Prince? He'll need to do something to replace that oil money. Have you hugged a fracker today?

Jim Lakely is our guest tonight, and we spend a lot of time talking about the climate, the Paris Accords, and suchlike. Lots of useful info about the environment and climate change. Oh, and Climate Change is a galactically stupid term.

James Comey is a giant of a man, who fearlessly bestrides the political landscape like a pouty, teenage girl. Unlike the President, who only tweets like a pouty, teenage girl. The Brits had an election. No one won. Happily, that includes aging commie Jeremy Corbin, who has never been right about anything, up to and including what the current time or date might be. Socialism, by the way, is the failure that we apparently can't help repeating. I guess we'll do it until we get it right. We don't really know what the American--or British, apparently--people want from their government. There's just an increasing dissatisfaction with how our governments work in the West.

Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord, although we weren't actually in it, since it was never ratified by the Senate. But, you know, he hates Mother Gaia. That doesn't change the fact that the climate science is settled...if by "settled" you mean "asserted without a falsifiable hypothesis or working predictive model". In fact, there's a lot of strange "science" getting published, like gender theory mathematics and whatnot. Meanwhile, Kathy Griffin posed for an unflattering picture of Donald Trump--or his head, at least--and now is complaining that we didn't all get the joke. Meanwhile, the DNC is being sued by Bernie Sanders supporters, because the DNC's nominating process was fixed. Like Superdelegates didn't already make that obvious.

Trump went to Saudi Arabia, and told Middle Eastern leaders to drive out terrorists. We'll see how that works. He also fondled the Palantir with Suruman. Then he went to Europe and a NATO conference where he shoved around the Prime Minister of Montenegro or something, then called the other NATO members freeloaders. Which, essentially, they are. The news media is worthless, but, soon, they'll have their impeachment victory. Or not. Meanwhile SJWs try to enforce their views on all of the rest of us. There was a terror attack in Manchester, England, though the motivation for this attack may never be known. Speaking of becoming useless, how's that Federal Judiciary working?

It's perfectly reasonable to believe that Donald Trump is unfit for the Presidency, and that trying t impeach him, after his legitimante election, is wrong, absent an actual and provable "high crime or misdemeanor". Also, his opponents are turning themselves into hysterical loons. Still, the cousin of this guys's wife, who knows a guy at the Justice Department, says Trump committed an impeachable crime. Taxation, of course, is theft. The federal government now has the power to control every aspect of your finances, who you can buy and sell to, who you can give your money to, and what drugs you can legally take. So, who owns you, again? Is it really...you?

Somehow, we've built a political system that's so insane, that some people thinks it's treason for the president to fire a bureaucrat who serves at the pleasure of the president. This is not helped by a having a president wh takes positive glee in epic-level trolling on Twitter. The Media's favorite source for stories now is a fellow named "Anonymous Source", who seems really well-informed. Turkey launched a home-grown missile, so we got that going for us, because they can totally be trusted with missiles. Hackers launched a worldwide ransomware attack. We could fix a lot of computer scams like this. But we won't, because it would be slightly inconvenient.

Steven Colbert tested conservatives' commitment to free speech this week. Many didn't pass. Hillary Clinton is convinced that she'd be president if only the election had been held on October 27th, before that meddling busybody Jim Comey butted in. Donors are suing the Democratic Party for not being, you know, democratic. The Republicans passed a big spending bill that made the Democrats happy, and a health care reform bill that will enable Democrats to tar the GOP with every hospital death that occurs in the future. Just how crazy IS Kim Jong-Un, and what, if anything, we can do about it?

The Fyre Festival in the Bahamas turned into a modern Lord of the Flies experience. Once again we were reminded that hate speech isn't free speech. We wonder why, if 25% of women are raped at college, any parent would send a child to college. When do people start pushing back against this creepy narrative? Socialism continues to fail so badly in Venezuela, that we're almost at the "That isn't real socialism" point. The Democratic Party is starting to split along ideological lines, like the Republican Party. New Yorkers remain surprised that the hicks in Flyover country wear shoes and receive dental care.

The week's big argument is that hate speech isn't protected hy the 1st Amendment. Which is a spectacularly stupid argument. The Antifa movement started to learn the difference between commie LARPing and actual street violence. The Trump Administration: He hasn't failed yet. So, that's good, I guess. Is the Berkeley city government in cahoots with the Antifa movement? Venezuela continues to collapse. Even the Russians managed to make Communism creep along for 70 years. Bill O'Reilly is out at FOXNews, so I guess there's no one left to look after The Folks.

United Airlines, soon to be known as Chinese Doctor Airlines, had an...incident this week. Why do waitresses in a flying restaurant have so much power, and why are airlines generally horrible? Trump dropped a MOAB on Afghanistan, causing an explosion of bedwetting over a bomb type that's been around for about 70 years. Sean Spicer won't be talking about Hitler and his Holocaust Centers any more. Oh, and pretty much everything the media tells you is wrong in some material way. Finally, weeping, college-age, SJWs are eventually going to end up as senior government officials. So, we got that going for us.

The weather forecast for Syria this week was partly cloudy, with a 100% chance of missiles. Perhaps this was part of a fiendishly clever plot by Vladimir Putin. Anyway, messages were sent. The same Democrats who supported eliminating the Senate filibuster in 2013 are now complaining that the Senate is dead, because Republicans finally did what they wanted to do four years ago. But, of course, the 17th Amendment killed the Senate long ago. Jared Kushner's body armor protected him in Afghanistan...while Steve Bannon's apparently didn't. There was terror attack in Sweden, committed by men whose names probably weren't Lars or Sven. Susan Rice's friends assure us that, after a comprehensive investigation, they've determined that their friend, Susan Rice, did nothing wrong.

Sure, taxation is theft, but you know what's more thefty? Civil asset fortfieture. California is considering having single-payer health care, in addition to, you know, seceding from the Union. You can't argue with Lefties, because they're impervious to it. And dishonest to boot. The Katie Hopkins article is still relevant. Politics is still downstream of culture. And the culture isn't doing too hot.

Cosmopolitan magazine argues that a satisfying sex life is just another transgression by the patriarchy. The GOP gave us a week of fail theater as the AHCA went down in flames. Fixing health care isn't all that hard, but rather than do that, we'll just go to single-payer. The Gorsuch nomination appears to be headed for a filibuster, but Harry Reid already gave us a fix for that, so Gorsuch will probably be confirmed, anyway. Once again, the West will pretend that this week's attack in London didn't show us another tragic failure of multiculturalism.

We're down a man this week, but Michael and Dale soldier on. We survey the vast island of craziness that Washington DC has become. We review the wreckage of what was one called "the rule of law", replaced now with with the policy preferences of individual judges. We note California's current attempt to legislatively suspend the 1st Amendment. Isn't watching the collapse of civilization fun? No. No, it is not.

Trump takes the Russian issue straight back at Obama. We see the results of 10 years of Republican thinking about Obamacare. The clock is ticking on economic reform. If you think getting rid of government entitlements is hard, wait until you ask people to pay for them. Leftists think that Nazi-punching--then running away--is perfectly acceptable. They keep poking the bear...but bear poking can be dangerous. People do stupid things on YouTube. Baseball is the only truly American game.

Steve Bannon says the Trump Administration's primary policies are Economic Nationalism and the Deconstruction of the Administrative state. Are those reconcilable? And what do they mean? Tax the robots, because they are gonna put us all out of work. Who's crazier over Trump, the Left or the Movement Conservatives? The 4th Circuit overturned Heller. Trump Trolls the press like a boss. Russian jokes.