Why Americans love guns - interpreting for Europeans

Over the past year+ of lockdown, I have attained an unexpected view into the American psyche with respect to legal gun ownership. The summer of 2020 demonstrated to a lot of "regular" American people that

1. city, county and sometimes state governance was not particularly interested in safety for business owners and home dwellers,
2. local police were overstretched at best, and unable to respond in a timely and effective manner to widespread domestic insurgence, and
3. local political interest in protecting the populace was rather racially selective.

As a result, Americans are buying guns and ammunition. A lot of guns, and more ammunition than you can shake a stick at. A best guess^[1] is that 8.4 million Americans became gun owners for the first time in 2020.

If you hail from a gun-phobic country like... most of Europe nowadays, certainly including the UK and Germany, then this might all seem like paranoid insanity. It is anything but. In this blog I'm going to try to explain, to a UK mindset, why the American love of guns is actually very rational - and maybe something to emulate.

The American Gun Situation - Overview

If you want to understand how a very well-informed - albeit highly opinionated - USA gun owner thinks, particularly in regard to mass shootings, you need to read Larry Correia's 2012 blog post "An Opinion on Gun Control". His assertions have repeatedly been proven correct in the past 9 years. Go read that article, then come back here. As an optional exercise, you may like to evaluate the circumstances of this year's San Jose Valley Transport Authority mass shooting with Larry's assertions in mind.

Hopefully, you came away from that article with some understanding of the American gun owner mindset. Let me try to summarize in bullets (hah!):

• Gun ownership in America is much more heavily regulated, at both federal and state level, than you think;
• Mass shootings are highly publicised but a small fraction of overall gun homicides;
• Mass shootings occur almost universally in "gun free zones" because shooters are not stupid, and pick places where people won't shoot back;
• The various federal and state restrictions on firearm ownership ("no assault weapons!") since 1990 have been pointless and ineffective, except in provoking Americans to go out and buy a shedload more guns;
• Defensive gun use saves a lot more lives than offensive gun use takes (this surprised me too, but Larry's source is not exactly known for being a pro-gun camp);
• It is not practically possible to ban guns in America. Really, it isn't.

The Legal Situation

There is the perception in some countries that Americans can wander into their local Walmart, and wander out with a military-grade assault weapon. This is not an accurate statement of the facts. In fact, it's so far off base, it's wandering around the baseball stadium car park.

Suppose you want to buy a gun; that you are of the relevant age (18+ or 21+, depending on state); you are not otherwise disqualified from gun ownership by being a felon, illegal immigrant (yes! you need valid residence and identity documentation) or other locally disqualifying status such as being an accused domestic violence perpetrator.

You rock up to the gun store, browse the various firearms on display - currently, very limited - and pick one that suits your lifestyle and aesthetics. What happens now? You fill in the form for the ATF Form 4473, then - in many states - you leave the establishment and wait for them to contact you. Hopefully within the week, they will inform you that you have passed the checks, and you have 30 days to come in and formally pick up your firearm.

You also may have to, if this is your first firearm purchase, complete a state-defined written multiple-choice test, and there may be a required "waiting period" distinct from the 4473 check until you are allowed to take possession of the firearm.

So next time you hear a politician say "it is easier to buy a firearm than vote!" you know that they are talking complete bollocks.

Now you have a gun, what can you do with it? It varies depending on state. Larger weapons like rifles and shotguns can be taken hunting, can be kept in your house (there are often requirements by states on how they are to be secured) and in some states can be carried around outside ("open carry").

If you want a gun for self-defence in any location other than your home, then practically your only choice is a handgun. Here the states, counties and even cities in the USA have a patchwork of different requirements. Carrying around a (legally owned) handgun with you is referred to generally as "concealed carry", and there is a wide range of what's allowed - from "unrestricted carry" which means you don't even need a permit, to "restricted may-issue" in places like the Bay Area and New York city where they actually don't issue a permit unless you donate generously to the local sherriff's campaign. Allegedly.

Ammunition is generally easy to buy - if you can find it these days - with the exception of gun-hating states like California which restrict who can buy ammunition, where you can buy or import it from, and require background checks for purchaes.

Oh, and "assault weapons"? Go re-read Correia above - but in short, politicians are deliberately conflating a fully automatic ('selective-fire') rifle, exclusive to the military, with a semi-automatic (one bullet per pull of the trigger) rifle which happens to be the most popular kind of rifle in the USA. It turns out that you can't own a "machine gun" in the USA in practice - unless you buy a smuggled one illegally, which criminals do because they don't actually "obey the law".

That's how you get a gun, and what the major types of gun are - now, who's actually getting them?

Gun Ownership in the USA (it's everywhere)

People often make the mistake of underestimating gun ownership in America. They say blasé things like "you know, literally everyone has a gun!"

If you took that as an estimate, you'd be low by at least 20%. In 2018 the USA had more guns than people - 393 million guns compared to 325 million population. There have been a lot more guns bought since then, and guns don't really 'wear out', although they can rust and become unreliable. Note also that these numbers are only estimated, because of the general lack of registration of guns. My personal opinion is that it's a lot higher now; about 40 million guns were purchased in 2020, and we're probably on target to beat that this year if the supply can keep up.

About half of the civilian weapons in the entire world are held in the USA. And civilian weapons are 90% of the total, because there are many more civilians than military.

Obviously, many people have many guns, and many others have none, so it makes more sense to look at per-household gun ownership. This ownership is not distributed evenly. Republican states have a higher rate of household gun ownership in general; Alaska, Montana and Wyoming all have rates above 60%, whereas the populous northeast states are under 20%. But it's mixed - liberal Washington state has a similar ownership rate to redneck Texas (42% to 45%). Even hippie California has a 28% ownership rate, though my guess is that it's higher in the rural parts and lower in the heavily liberal Bay Area.

A joke goes that China's People's Liberation Army is the largest standing armed force in the world - but Texas has a much larger, better trained, and more heavily armed force which deploys in pickup trucks. I would estimate that there is somewhere in the range of 35-40 million firearms in Texas, handily beating the PLA's 28 million firearms. If Beta O'Rourke^[2] really does intend to take away guns in Texas, it's going to take him quite a while. I hope he has a big truck to carry them.

Even in the Bay Area, if you assume that ownership rate is half that of the rest of California, 1 in 7 houses have a firearm. And, since it's so expensive and bloody awkward to buy and supply it, they are probably not just owning the firearm because they like the look of it above their fireplace. (Why do so many homes in sunny California have fireplaces? Why? Why?)

Let's talk about sex, baby; and eth-ni-ci-ty

Sorry, Salt-N-Pepa, I couldn't resist.

Over many visits to shooting ranges, you get an idea of what kind of people - phenotypes - are interested in firearms ownership. Now, I'm only going by what I see locally (Bay Area in California), but it's told me a lot:

• The majority are white men, and generally older (40+). So far, unsurprising.
• There are more women than you might think. Most shoot handguns, but I've seen several shooting rifles including one who's shooting a heavy calibre (7.62mm or .308) with very tight groups at long distance. (Side note: intermediate calibre rifles like the infamous AR-15 are in fact the easiest firearm for smaller people to shoot: they have remarkably little recoil, so are easier to keep on target than a handgun or shotgun)
• Strongly represented ethnic groups: Hispanic, Korean and Chinese
• Under-represented ethnic groups: Black, Indian
• A number of men bring along their children (teens) - and in my experience, this happens disproportionately with Hispanic men. They're clearly interested in teaching their daughters to shoot.

Those people familiar with Bay Area Asian demographics might be thinking: Why Koreans? Well, let's talk about the Rooftop Koreans cultural meme. Back in 1992, the Los Angeles riots resulted (for complex cultural reasons) in Los Angelino criminals - primarily black - looting Korean stores. The Koreans had generally settled in the area in the 1970s-1980s and made a successful living with small retail businesses, but in '92 found rampaging mobs trying to loot and burn their livelihoods.

Korean men - at least, those born in Korea - all serve in the military. When you have a succession of unhinged dictators in North Korea, controlling a huge standing army and artillery, South Korea is going to make damned sure that its populace is trained in military skills and able to react quickly to an attempted invasion. This is not like the previous West German conscription where you had options for conscious objection, or the ability to volunteer in Civil Protection Services - in South Korea, you're going to serve in the active duty military for at least 18 months, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, they really don't care. Even famous actors have to do their part. It took until 2018 for South Korea to recognize conscientious objection as even a thing.

As a result, in Los Angeles the Korean male population had a) ready access to firearms and ammunition, because they were in America, and b) the training, discipline, and community coordination to mount an effective defence to looters. It's notable that in 2020 the LA rioters generally stayed well away from Korean businesses - because they knew that the Koreans would shoot them with no compunction, and the local police would not give a crap. Even USA-born Koreans get the indoctrination from their appa (father) about the potential threats to their family's prosperity, and their need to be able to defend the family from them.

Let's not forget Hispanics. The USA Democratic Party likes to think that, because Hispanics are generally lower on the income ladder, that they're sympathetic to Democratic social justice aims. In my experience, this is rather an optimistic reading. If you're struggling to make your way in the USA, as many of them are, the last thing you want is a criminal scumbag coming into your small business and robbing it because it's an easy way for him to make money - and so, you take protective measures into your own hands. And if it's a scumbag criminal Hispanic, you're going to be very relaxed about taking him out, even if he thinks you're his compadre.

Finally, and even The Guardian admits this, middle-class blacks are buying a whole lot of guns. When you see sustained riots in your community, and respected community members gunned down for having the temerity to resist violence, what are you going to think? Are you going to rely on the police? The hell you are. You're going to tool up to defend your family - whether you're a man or a woman.

How it Plays in Practice - Deaths

There are many guns in America, so there are a whole lotta shootings. The connection is undeniable.

There are lies, damned lies, and gun death statistics, but a good place to start is the number of homicides by firearm. You can see that it has kicked up in recent years, but it's about 10,000 deaths per year. Don't confuse this with the number of deaths by gun which is far higher (about 34,000 deaths a year) - because there's a lot of gun-induced suicide, and note that the higher the gun ownership rate in an area, the easier a suicidal person finds it to use a gun instead of hanging / tablets / car exhaust, etc.

Now, remembering our table of household firearm ownership, check out Figure 2 (state-by-state ranking of gun homicide rates) at the americanprogress.org site. Heavily armed Texas is #22. Liberal and lightly armed California is at #25. Those are two very big, populous states with a number of large cities. Liberal and disarmed Illinois (home of Chicago) is #9. Top ranking Montana and Wyoming are #37 and #38 respectively. Now, the overall picture is complex, and it's hard to compare state-to-state completely, but you should at least be convinced that just having a large number of guns doesn't inherently make a state more dangerous.

So Why Do Americans Own Guns?

Based on the ownership numbers, and noting the firearms death numbers, Europeans could be forgiven for assuming that Americans have to be insanely and irrationally paranoid to own all those guns. But as the saying goes, "you're not paranoid if 'they' really are out to get you."

Home defence

Americans do not like people breaking into their homes. Not at all. Over the years many US states - including highly liberal California - have passed laws stating in essence that if someone uses force to break into your house, you don't have to hide or retreat, or wait for an imminent threat of violence to you or someone else. You are presumptively allowed to shoot the invader, and when the police rock up, the worst they will do is temporarily confiscate your firearm (after giving you a receipt), and comment on your shot groupings.

Shooting home invaders who are actively fleeing the property is a little dicier legally (sorry, Tony Martin) but I suspect rural police forces are more tolerant in this regard. In rural Alabama I wouldn't be surprised if they helpfully drag the bullet-ridden body back over the property line into your yard before taking the crime scene photo. And then throw the corpse in jail for 20 years for felony robbery, just to make the point.

Bear in mind just how big the USA is. Even in crowded regions like the Bay Area, the population density is far below the UK's average. It can easily take 10-20 minutes for the police to reach you, even if they're available. Out in rural parts, that number could be half an hour, or much longer. If you have a crime problem, that's a very long time to wait. Americans are not inclined to wait.

Note that, although Antifa are happily rampaging in the center of major cities, there are very few suburbs where they'd try that on. Because the homeowners would shoot them - in many cases, with actual glee - and, again, the police really would not care.

Self defence

If you want one reason why Americans own handguns, self defence (the aforementioned concealed carry) is it. As Larry Correia noted:

Handguns are tools for self-defense, and the only reason we use them over the more capable, and easier to hit with rifles or shotguns is because handguns are portable. Rifles are just plain better, but the only reason I don’t carry an AR-15 around is because it would be hard to hide under my shirt.

Are Americans paranoid about being attacked while out in public? Maybe. But it certainly seems to happen a lot. See my Asian Lives Matter series for what happens in cities like NYC, DC, and San Francisco where handgun carrying is effectively banned. I assure you, these attacks will happen less in concealed-carry-permitting cities, because a bystander will pull out their weapon and shoot the attacker in short order. You will rapidly run out of motivated scumbags.

Take a look at what happened in the West Freeway Church of Christ in 2019. A scumbag pulled out an (illegal) handgun and started firing, killing two church members. A church member pulled out his concealed pistol and shot the scumbag dead, with a single shot to the head, doubtless preventing many more deaths. Interestingly, weapons had not been allowed in places of worship until shortly before then.

Incidentally, if you want to understand some of the issues around effectively using a handgun for self defence, read Correia's article on CCW training. Suffice to say, it's not something to be undertaken lightly.

The Gummint

And now we get to the real point of owning a firearm, and why so many have been bought in recent times.

The essential difference between the American and the British psyches, from my observation, is in their obedience to government. British people often don't like their government, and hold it in polite contempt, but with few exceptions they will still nearly all follow "the rules" even if the rules don't make sense, because - well, they are the rules, and they don't want to make trouble. As a demonstration, see the past year and the COVID restrictions.

Tell a rural American to follow a pointless and obnoxious government diktat, by contrast, and his or her response is very likely to be along the lines of "f*cking come and make me, you bastards." And if you do try to make him or her do it, there is not an insubstantial chance that you will get shot. Ask the Internal Revenue Service about their previous experience trying to collect taxes in places like the Ozarks, for instance.

I don't think most Europeans fully understand how serious many Americans are about having firearms to resist government tyranny. Part of the reason, of course, is the recurring incompetence and actual malice of US governmental institutions. Anyone dealing with the Social Security Administration, immigration authorities or - my favorite - the public school system quickly starts to understand some of this mentality. The government is not generally seen as benevolent, and it doesn't really matter which party the titular President belongs to.

Americans know what malevolent, unaccountable government looks like. They run into it with uncomfortable regularity at a small scale, and they don't like it, at all. It's not a stretch for them to think that the malevolence could scale up with a suitably "we know what's best for you" government. That's what the firearms are a brake on. If you doubt this, ask yourself why approximately eighty million firearms will have been purchased between March 1st 2020 and December 31st 2021. Government saying "we're going to tax, regulate and take your guns" a) is an overtly aggressive act, and b) shows that the government actually thinks that the current firearms are a barrier to them governing "effectively". And the last thing that most Americans want is "effective" government.

What the UK Could Learn

First, it was a mistake to peacefully give up nearly all guns. Probably an unavoidable one, given the media climate at the time, but there is now no practical way for the British population to resist government oppression. Maybe you don't think that's a problem for now, but sooner or later it will be. An unarmed population is remarkably tempting as a takeover target for self-favouring politicians. That's not true in places where they will overthrow you, shoot you, and stick your head on a fence post as a warning to others.

Second, stop respecting all the laws. Politicians make stupid laws, regulations and "emergency powers" impositions all the time. Tell them to get stuffed. Make the politicians and low-level clipboard-carriers fear the people, not the other way around. You think that a fluorescent-vested busybody going around the Alamo in San Antonio telling people to wear a mask outdoors is going to get any traction? He'd be lucky not to be thrown in the nearest pond.

Third, you're going to have to defend yourself and your family eventually. It seems clear that the police are more interested in prosecuting people for silly speech on Twitter than going after actual hard-core criminals, people smugglers etc. - well, you can do the former from an air-conditioned office, but the latter actually requires hard work and personal risk. So if you can't rely on the police to defend you, how are you going to defend yourself?

Fourth... oh, sod it. Just emigrate to the USA. Pick a suitable gun-favouring state, go to the local gun store and ask for help. It'll be the most liberating thing you ever do. Not to mention, it'll annoy Polly Toynbee.

[1] There is no national register of who-owns-which-guns in the USA, and that's very deliberate. A gun ownership register tells you where to go to confiscate guns should you be inclined towards a dictatorial rule.
[2] Actually "Robert Francis O'Rourke", known as "Beto". But I like "Beta" better.

Pandejos and the law of unintended consequences

Most of the readership will be familiar with the fact that California has a large population of "indocumentados" - immigrants of less-than-legal status, mostly from Central America, who supply a lot of the farming, factory and other close-or-below minimum wage labour. This has, historically, been encouraged by virtually every Californian politician in high office.

So you've brought in a large population of people who aren't that fluent with the language, actively avoid authority - police, INS, DMV etc. - and you've specifically told them that the rules, such as immigration law, don't apply to them. And now, there's a pandemic, and you want them to follow government-mandated rules on their business and personal lives.

How, dear reader, would you expect this to turn out?

Gustavo Arellano of the Los Angeles Times is in despair at the behaviour of the pandejos - a portmanteau of "pandemic" and the Hispanic pejorative "pendejo":

The earnestness and importance of the [COVID] messages don't matter: Everywhere I turn, my neighbors ignore the suggestions with gusto. Down the street are tents on front yards packed with people attending a birthday party. Over there is a taco truck where people chow down shoulder to shoulder, despite signs stating that all orders are to-go. Off in all directions, I hear music: live mariachi, conjunto norteño outfits, brass bands, and DJs, echoing from blocks away. Sometimes I can even catch the sermon of a Pentecostal minister who never bothered closing his storefront church to indoor service.

The combination of Gustavo's Puritan indignity at this behaviour, and his previous cheering-on of Latino extra-legal immigration (e.g. his relentless opposition to Proposition 187, is enough to make one wish for stronger bladder muscles. Gustavo has inadvertently cheered on a wipe-out of his favoured community's abuelos and abuelas:

In Los Angeles County, the Department of Health estimates that daily COVID-19 deaths among Latinos went from about 3.5 per 100,000 people in early November to 28 per 100,000 in January—an increase of almost 800 percent. In Ventura County, two zip codes in the city of Oxnard account for around 30 percent of all COVID-19 cases—and these spots just so happen to correspond with where farmworkers live and pick. In Orange County, Latinos make up 34 percent of the population but 44 percent of all cases and about 39 percent of deaths.

Why does California continue to have a high COVID infection and death rate? Because it imported a large underclass who never had to pay mind to government diktats, who live in crowded conditions that happily spread the virus, and who (though generally young and healthy) have brought in grandparents with diet-related comorbidities who are prime targets for COVID.

Trump won yesterday

No really, he did. Hear me out.

I'm not talking about the November 2020 election; I have no idea who actually won that. I will note that, if Joe Biden was confident that he won fairly, then he'd have motivation to ask a reputable organization to conduct a thorough investigation into the election's conduct and vindicate his win. But no, I'm talking about the effect of the Trump 2017-2021 presidency.

President Donald Trump managed to drive the media, Big Tech, Democratic party and sundry establishment members so mad with everything he did in those four years, that they abandoned any pretence at fairness and yesterday went on a concerted witch hunt to shut him off mainstream social media and choke off other social media that let him and his supporters communicate. The Democrats are trying to pass articles of impeachment and invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from the presidency before January 20th. The Capitol invasion was just the excuse - they've been talking about this for months, but only in the closing days of the presidency did they have the "courage" to do it.

[Side note for those who didn't take US high school civics: the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution talks about the US President being relieved of their role, voluntarily - and maybe temporarily, e.g. while undergoing medical treatment, or forcibly. The reason that it's being talked about now, with less than 2 weeks to go, is apparently (because I can't see this clearly in the text) it would prevent Trump from running for President again in 2024. It is interesting to note the the Democrats still think that Trump would be a material asset to the Republicans in 4 years time. If they really thought he was a loon and a loser, wouldn't they cheer him on for a re-run? Perhaps they remember Hilary Clinton cheering him on in the 2016 primaries, and are once bitten, twice shy.]

My personal opinion is that this was a Pyrrhic victory;

• the Dem/BigTech/DCSwamp has demonstrated to the world that they are still terrified of Trump;
• 70 million people voted for Trump in the most recent election, despite a 4 year coordinated campaign against him by the media (all but Fox), Establishment (Russia hoax and impeachment), Never Trump "Republicans", and recently Big Tech (Twitter and Facebook steadily increasing interference in his comms and with his supporters);
• he has provoked the Democrats to exhibit their gun-grabbing credentials to the point that there were more background checks for firearm purchases in the first 9 months of 2020 than in any previous year, and guns and ammunition are in unprecentended short supply despite manufacturers ramping up additional plants to meet demand. I hypothesize that most of these gun and ammo buyers don't vote Democrat - and with 8M+ new firearm owners in 2020, that's a big fraction of the election base who have been 'radicalized';
• the COVID crisis has demonstrated that Democratic leadership is completely happy to trash small business for no good reason, while fully funding their teaching and other union block to stay at home and "phone it in" at full pay rates, while governors and Senators get their hair done, eat at expensive restaurants, and generally display hypocrisy to an astounding degree.

Knowing a numbner of engineers and marketing folks at Twitter and YouTube, they are to a man non-gendered-person staunch left wing advocates, and the depth of their loathing for Trump is hard to over-state. I don't know Jack Dorsey or Susan Woiciki personally, but it would not astonish me if they had a similar attitude.

The Trump base will not go away because of the past week's changes. They're only going to get squeezed - and when you squeeze something hard enough, the internal pressure builds up until there is a "bang". JFK said those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. If the hotheads in the Democrat administration prevail, I fear that the "bang" is going to echo around the world.

I enjoy the "Monster Hunter" books of unreformed conservative author Larry Correia, but he knows a lot about guns and the gun-owning community, and his words from 2017's blog post "A handy guide for liberals who are suddenly interested in gun ownership" really resonate right now:

There is a saying that has long been common in my half of the country. There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty, soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. You can debate, vote, and go to court in order to get things changed. You only go ammo box when those other things no longer work, because once you do, there is no going back.

God willing, America never gets to that point, because if we ever go to war with ourselves again, then it will be a blood bath the like of which the world has never seen.

If the jury box doesn't defend the rights of 70M+ Americans, there's only one box left.

Derek Chauvin did not murder George Floyd

How do I know that Minneapolis Derek Chauvin did not murder George Floyd? Don't trust me, trust Washington County prosecutor Imran Ali:

Mr Chauvin and his estranged wife, Kellie Chauvin, were each charged in Washington County on Wednesday with six counts of aiding and abetting filing false or fraudulent tax returns and three counts of aiding and abetting failing to file state tax returns.
They are accused of underreporting their joint income by $464,433 from 2014 to 2019. This includes money Mr Chauvin made doing off-duty security work and weekend shifts at a restaurant.

Let's see: over 5 years that's $90K per year underreported. Note that this is a state prosecution, not federal. For some reason the federal tax agency (IRS) is not - yet - prosecuting Mr. Chauvin and his wife, but the state feels lucky. Minnesota's state income tax peaks at 9.85% for filing jointly, so we're talking about just short of $9k per year, or $45K for the full 5 years. Federal tax rate is much higher, but presumably the IRS is very relaxed about leaving $150K of back tax on the table, they're famous for their generosity.

Digest this: the BBC is running an entire article about a Minnesota citizen being chased for $45K back taxes, plus interest. Why, exactly are they doing this?

Rampant speculation: this is part of the prosecution strategy for the murder of George Floyd. Chauvin's defense attorney has no doubt pointed out the serious problems with trying to prosecute second-degree murder and manslaughter. The prosecution can't spontaneously downgrade the charges without causing riots, so needs to come to an acceptably harsh plea bargain. What's their leverage? Now, it's potential prosecution of Chauvin and his wife for tax evasion. I have no idea if the evasion charges are justified, but it doesn't really matter. If Chauvin rolls over and agrees to a reasonably harsh charge, these tax evasion charges will be downgraded. If he holds out, they will be ramped up and the prosecution will possibly go after other members of his family or friends.

Of course I could be wrong, there may be an alternate explanation of why this is featured on the BBC. It would be nice to see some actual analysis by the BBC of stories like these, but they seem happy to uncritically report whatever their preferred client organisations tell them, rather than perform journalism.

Diplomatic leak - USA ambassador to the UK

Followuing the leak of messages from the UK ambassador to the USA Sir Kim Darroch, your humble correspondent is pleased to report a rare coup [I'm totally making this up] of message intercepts from the USA's ambassador to the UK.

Let me repeat for the benefit of intelligence agencies, this is totally made up. If it turns out to be mostly correct, that's not my problem.

From: UKAMB Matthew W. Barzun 
Date: June 23 2016
Subject: Brexit

OK, I totally didn't see that coming. 

Are USA diplomatic personnel strictly liable for debts to UK bookmakers?
Asking for a friend.


From: UKAMB Matthew W. Barzun 
Date: July 10 2016
Subject: UK Conservative party leadership contest

Met with one of the Conservative leadership contenders, one Treesa May.
Polite, inoffensive, educated, terrible poker player. No chance she'll win unless
the Conservative party members have lost their senses. Mind, they picked
D Cameron previously, so who knows...


From: UKAMB Matthew W. Barzun 
Date: July 12 2016
Subject: Welcome to the new UK Prime Minister

Tell Barack to brush up a bit on the rules of poker, but he can take the UK to the
cleaners whenever he wants.


From: UKAMB Matthew W. Barzun 
Date: November 7 2016
Subject: Future diplomatic assignments

Everything's looking good from my end. Theresa is available for the ritual congrats
call whenever HRC wants. Thinking about a public leak of the convo - female Pres to
female PM, looks good to the voters both side.

Brooke's getting a bit tired of London and worried about the kids' accents. I hear
rumors that Janie H has had enough of Paris - any chance we could swap? Just a
thought.


From: UKAMB Matthew W. Barzun 
Date: November 9 2016
Subject: Fuck

Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. Fuck.

Any chance of a judicial review?

How's HRC taking it?



From: DCM Lewis Lukens
Date: January 18 2017
Subject: Testing

Is this thing on?

Any suggestions on format of messaging that DJT likes to hear?

Current assessment on the ground is that Theresa will spring an election on the country
in the next few months - and she'll cruise to victory, because the Opposition Leader
is a less hygienic and more socialist version of B Sanders. Going to put a few $$ on
a 50+ seat win at William Hill, anyone who wants in on the action pls send money in the
next diplomatic bag.


From: DCM Lewis Lukens
Date: June 9 2017
Subject: Predicting the future is hard

I don't have access to replies to UKAMB Barzun, what was the advice re his query
on UK bookmaker liability?



From: UMKAMB Robert Wood Johnson
Date: August 22 2017
Subject: UK catch-up

Anyone who says that they know what's happening with Brexit is a liar. This is
the shit-show of all shit-shows. Theresa managed to lose her majority to a guy who
would be pushed to win a minor role in Seattle politics.

Say hi to Melania!


From: UMKAMB Robert Wood Johnson
Date: Jan 15 2019
Subject: Clean-up

Had a friendly poker game with Theresa May (alleged national leader),
Olly Robbins (head of Brexit negotiations), and Philip Hammond (does
something with the UK Treasury, I hear). Cleaned up nicely. .

Hearing rumors about a leadership challenge if things go screwy before the March
deadline. Frankly, this lot couldn't score in a brothel if they had $100
bills jammed in their orifices, so who knows what they'll do.


From: Woody Johnson
Date: May 24 2019
Subject: Thank fuck for that

Theresa has finally thrown in the towel. Only about three Goddamn years overdue
but she was never a quick learner.

I had $1000 on Boris J as Brexit PM back in 2016, and intend to roll this over to
2019. Anyone else wants a piece of the action, you know the drill - cash up front.

Suzanne and kids are enjoying the increased buying power of the $. Tell DJT that
now is a great time to visit, if he can stand the weather....

Post Kavanaugh confirmation the Left loses its fecal matter

An hour or after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as the replacement for Associate Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court I decided to trawl Liberal Twitter for the reaction. I was not disappointed.

I never thought I’d feel like I did on election night again. Today feels like that. https://t.co/TNxQwmtNJw

— Ross Morales Rocketto (@RossMoRock) October 5, 2018

Yes, I'd imagine it did. I wonder why history seems to be repeating itself?

My message to sexual assault survivors: Thank you for your courage. Your voices have mattered. pic.twitter.com/nOwUEklBW8

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 6, 2018

Yes. They've given Republicans a significant boost in advance of the November mid-terms, where Democrats were previously indicated as performing well. Well done survivors! Bet you're pleased.

Is there like...some group crying and burning everything down party I can attend https://t.co/z6OXtlyfOg

— Kill-y Ellis 🔪🎃 (@justkelly_ok) October 5, 2018

The Democratic party?

This is what democracy looks like Mr. Trump. Citizens offering their feelings and opinions and demonstrating how the 1st amendment works! https://t.co/w7xz4TjR4u

— Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) October 6, 2018

Also, the republic's legislative branch function of selecting the members of the judiciary.

A dozen men,arms interlocked, chanting_Believe Women_standing firm as they prepare to be arrested.
I don’t know what it says about America that I just burst into tears watching this. Maybe because it’s a glimpse of an America we can create together.
Thank you brothers. https://t.co/Q34YIIODhJ

— Glennon Doyle (@GlennonDoyle) October 5, 2018

It says "men can be just as blind to facts and the principles of justice as women. Yay equality!" Also "what's with the red suit, Reverend, are you trying to attract attention to yourself rather than your celestial Boss?"

I Tweeted that the hand Brett Kavanaugh raised today may have been the hand he held over Dr. Ford’s mouth. @DouglasFBaldwin commented “womp womp”.
And that, ladies, is what Republican men think when you are sexually assaulted.
“womp womp”
Remember that. VOTE on Nov. 6 https://t.co/QUseiX538z

— Dana Gould (@danagould) October 7, 2018

Should we bring Bill Clinton's hands into the discussion then? How about (Heaven forfend) Joe Biden's?

I'm fine with making these cheap shots. The Democratic senators and associated mob who tried to lynch Brett Kavanaugh made this confirmation expensive enough for him and his family - and for Christine Ford, let us not forget. Let's have some symmetry.

BBC shilling for illegal immigration

I shouldn't be surprised at the BBC any more, but their article My life trapped in an American city was so egregious that I feel it deserves a thorough fisking.

My family and I migrated to Phoenix, Arizona, when I was eight years old. I'm now 22 and a student of engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso.
I'm not a criminal yet in a way I'm treated like one.

Well, your parents arranged to violate the immigration laws of the country in which you find yourself, so it's not surprising that the way you could be treated is analogous to the way that others who have broken the laws are treated. And I can't help but notice that you're not blaming your parents for this situation despite the fact that they explicitly arranged for it to happen.

El Paso has checkpoints around it where immigration officers ask for your documents, documents I obviously don't have. I can't leave the city or I risk deportation. Fortunately, my parents became US residents two years ago but, unfortunately, this isn't the case for my sisters, aged 25 and 18, and me.
When they got their papers they moved back to Phoenix in search of more job opportunities after four years of living here. But I risked putting my college education in jeopardy and getting deported if I crossed the checkpoint and was asked for my documents.

I also wonder whether your parents' immigration status would be jeopardized if USCIS found out that they were actively working to conceal other illegal immigrants - you and your sisters, specifically.

My parents visit me once every three or four months - because of work and other things they can't be here more often. But since they all moved I haven't seen my youngest sister. Her high school graduation was last month and I was unable to go even though everyone in the family was there. And I know neither one of my sisters will be able to attend mine.

On the other hand, you get a gratis US taxpayer funded high school education, and I can't help but notice a complete lack of gratitude for this.

I try not to complain since I'm the first of my parents' children to go to college. I feel very lucky. On the other hand, there are days when I'm just tired of it.
I feel like I don't have rights.

Well, you have all the regular rights of anyone within the United States, citizen or otherwise, as enumerated in the Constitution - in fact, a heck of a lot more than in Mexico. What you mean is, you don't have the right to be treated like a legal resident of the country - because you aren't. That's like me visiting Paris and complaining that I don't have the right to be treated like a French citizen. I'm not a French citizen, there's no prospect of me becoming one, and just because I'm touring the Eiffel Tower doesn't give me any rights to that status.

When they ask me "Why aren't you working? or "Why don't you drive?" I have to make them believe that I'm lazy. So they just stop asking. The truth is I'm unable to work or get a driving licence.
As soon as we crossed the border I had to assimilate myself. I learned English and as I was learning it as a child, our teachers would straight out say "Stop speaking Spanish. You're in America now". A few months later I would win spelling bees - compete against white people who only spoke English - and still win.

You've done a great job of learning the language: fantastic! Just curious: what did you learn about the laws of the country you're living in, and the need to respect them? Because that's also kinda important.

After the 2008 recession my dad, a civil engineer, couldn't find a job in Phoenix and we lost the house we had. So we had to go back to Mexico.
I had such a terrible time, it was probably the worst of my life. I was so Americanised that I didn't fit in. That's what they ask you to do to be accepted in the American culture. I had lost my Mexican identity. We were there for a year and a half before we came back.

Looking at your age (22 now) this looks like: left Mexico at age 8, returned to Mexico at age 12, came back to USA at age 13/14. Pardon me for scenting a certain amount of license with the truth here. At age 8 you'd be speaking fluent Mexican Spanish. After 4 years in the USA you'll certainly have an American accent, but you'll be immersed in an immigrant community and frequently hearing and speaking Spanish. The problem is, you didn't like being back in Mexico because it wasn't as nice as being in the USA - even with all the illegal immigration limitations you document so heavily.

I know so much history about this country, more than average US nationals, and I have so much respect for it seeing as I get myself involved in politics to help improve this country's current state. I involve myself more than citizens, people who should worry more about this nation given that it really is theirs.

I see. So you don't think that, for instance, politics in the USA should be reserved for those who are actually citizens and bear voting rights and responsibilities? In fact, by the sound of it, you consider yourself better informed and more responsible than they are? I can't imagine that generating any resentment at all.

It's difficult to dream in a country that, regardless of everything I've done, which is what most immigrants do, doesn't welcome you even if you've seen it as home for most of your life.

I've found the USA very welcoming to immigrants. But then, I came here by following the rules that the USA had laid down for immigrants. Almost as if Americans don't appreciate those trying to end-run around the rules that others are following. Go figure.

I understand that they have the right to choose to whom they grant citizenship. I just wish they would give me some sort of help. I've given up part of my culture, my roots, to be accepted here. I've already given some of me.
Why can't this country give something back?

What, like a free high school education? A community which is so attractive that you'd rather live there illegally than in your home country legally? Legal status for your older sister and parents? Yes, you've really been hard done over by the USA.

Three semesters from now, when I graduate, I may still be deported. And I may never see my sisters again until they can get papers, which by the looks of it will probably be in 12 more years.

You should go and talk to Indian or Chinese H1-B visa holders and ask them about their timelime to permanent resident (Green Card) status. They'd love to only have to wait 12 years. If you want to see your sisters again, you can always go to Mexico after you graduate. What you're actually saying is that you prefer the economic and educational benefits of living in the USA to seeing your sisters. That's a perfectly rational choice, but it's your choice, and it's a bit much to blame the USA for the situation that you can't have your cake and eat it.

You can't deny that this has affected me. This shouldn't be happening.

Right. Your parents shouldn't have repeatedly violated US immigration law in the first place to put you in this invidious position. And yet that doesn't seem to be your point, for some reason...

Pull your head out of your ass, girl. If you really want to stay in the USA, find an American citizen and marry them. I assume that's how your older sister got her residence status. It may be a sacrifice - you might already be in love with someone who's not a USA citizen - but you have to decide what's most important to you.

Any mentions of Peter Wang or Chris Hixson at today's Marches for Gun Control?

I've been watching the gun control march speeches and Twitter today for mentions of Peter Wang or Chris Hixson - I may have blinked and hence missed it, but it's safe to say that Peter's sacrifice saving 15 of his classmates, and Mr. Hixson's sacrifice for his students, have not been prominent in today's discussions.

Might this be because the organizers find distasteful any possibility that there might be glorification of the military in this event? Peter was a JROTC member, posthumously accepted to West Point military academy, and Chris Hixson was a military veteran.

This whole "March for Lives" thing stinks of politics. This is not a spontaneous grassroots reaction to a school shooting. There's a carefully directed message coming from a central organization somewhere, and it ain't from a bunch of Florida high school students.

An observation on premature escalation

Right now, I'd imagine that the editors of the major Western news outlets - with the exception of Fox News - are bemoaning how they forgot a key part of their classical education, notably the Aesop fable of the boy who cried "Wolf!" and in particular the advice:

"Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong!"

The first year of Donald Trump's tenure as President of the United States has been punctuated with the media throwing itself into fits of hysteria at any of Trump's actions which offended their sensibilities:

• "he's blocking Muslims from entering the USA! RACIST!"
• "his VP refuses to be alone with a woman who's not his wife. SEXIST!"^[1]
• "the Russians got him elected. TRAITOR!"
• "he has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. ISLAMOPHOBE!"

And so on. This was the natural continuation of the 8 year campaign against the Republican opposition, which reached its zenith with the attacks on 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Anyone remember binders full of women? Declarations that Romney as president would be the end of the world? Bill Maher does.

I have to admit, I had (and still have) considerable reservations about Donald Trump as a person. I'd be the first to admit that Donald Trump's tweets have been far from edifying on many occasions. But then, I never particularly believed that Barack Obama was all sweetness and light either - you don't navigate from Chicago community organizer to President of the USA without being willing to do some pretty distasteful things, and ally yourself with some pretty dubious people, and has been notable in failing to observe the convention that ex-Presidents don't comment on the deeds of the current President. Bill Clinton has some hugely admirable personal characteristics - read the late Barbara Olson's Hell To Pay for details - but seems to be significantly challenged vis-a-vis keeping his wang in his pants. G. W. Bush has a far from perfect personal history, although seems to have had a genuine spiritual conversion before becoming President.

What redeems Donald Trump, in my view, is the way he has played the media like a fiddle in the past 12 months. They have been consistently so eager to believe their own narrative, they've failed to sanity-check themselves, and now they seem to be left with a Russia-collusion investigation that's going to fizzle to nothing, a raving Hillary Clinton who's alienating more and more of her party with her insistence that nothing was her fault, and today's Raftergate where a reporter was so keen to believe that Donald Trump's audience in Pensacola was tiny that they didn't do a basic check to confirm.

If Roy Moore gets elected in Alabama's Senatorial special election on Tuesday, it's mostly going to be down to the fact that the central-USA population has decided that they don't believe a word that the media says. Moore seems to be a fairly distasteful candidate, but if you were a voter of average information level in Alabama then a natural tendency would be to assume that all the anti-Moore broadcasts were blatant lies, and if the media really doesn't want him to be elected then he's clearly the right man for the job.

[1] Yeah, Pence is looking pretty smart right now I'd say...

Hillary Clinton

Alleged comedian Jimmy Kimmel arranged for his staff writers to pen thank-you notes to Hillary Clinton, and - for a programme which people paid money to watch - had Miley Cyrus read them out live to Hillary.

At this stage you are down on your knees praying that this is a fake news post, but unfortunately I have to tell you that it is painfully real.

One note which particularly stuck with me - like a bad case of toenail fungus - was:

Thank you, Hillary, for always sticking to the issues even as people criticize you for superficial things like your hair, your wardrobe, and your appearance. You show girls everywhere that politics isn't a popularity contest — because if it were, you would have won by about 3 million votes.

Tell it sister! Politics is not a popularity contest.
Politics is a beauty contest^[1]. Hair, height, clothes are all relentlessly honed for appeal.
And Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.

[1] Not to mention that beauty contests are extremely political.

Dog poop smeared to no effect

An update to yesterday's post about San Francisco insanity: it seems that the idea of spreading poop on Crissy Field is not universally welcomed, and ironically the offending Patriot Prayer group have cancelled their rally. No data yet on how much poop was already spread...

Poop protest mastermind Tuffy Tuffington is no doubt gutted. Incidentally, could his photo be more hipster?

• Beard: check
• Heavily rimmed glasses: check
• Tattoos: check
• Beer (craft, no doubt): check

I hope he's planning to go pick up all the mis-directed poop this evening, though somehow I doubt it.

San Franciscans losing their sh*t about a right wing free speech event

This Saturday, the right wing group (but decidedly not a hate group) Patriot Prayer is holding a free speech rally at Crissy Field beach in San Francisco:

GGNRA acting general superintendent Cicely Muldoon said in the statement Wednesday that the park service “cannot deny a permit to anyone planning to exercise their First Amendment rights based on their political stance or beliefs.”

Must confess, I'd have preferred Ms Muldoon to say "should not" rather than "cannot" there, but I'll take what I can get.

The traditionally left-leaning San Franciscans are accepting this with resignation, realizing that the same principles protecting the speech of people they dislike also protect their own speech.

Kidding! They're going to cover the beach with dog crap:

Hundreds of San Franciscans plan to prepare Crissy Field, the picturesque beach in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge where rightwing protest group Patriot Prayer will gather, with a generous carpeting of excrement.

Well, I suppose it's better than leaving the poop on the city streets

Maybe it's a canine-/human-poop-borne virus that has rotted the brains of the San Franciscans to the point where they think that smearing feces across one of their own picturesque beaches is a great plan. Maybe it's all the weed. Maybe it's Karl the Fog. But my goodness, they have a serious problem there quite aside from the poop epidemic.

Luckily San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee (Democratic, astonishingly) is providing a firm moral lead to the city at this difficult time:

"The great American trend tolerating speech and opinions that we might disagree with will be celebrated this weekend in our city," San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said.

Oh wait, sorry, that was from the Mirror Universe. Actual quote:

"The shameful, anti-American trend of hate-filled extremist rallies will unfortunately be allowed to continue this weekend in our city," San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said.

Oh dear. Do you think someone should enroll him in Civics 101 and start walking him through the text of the First Amendment?

Apparently nearly the entire San Francisco Police Department will be on duty this Saturday. I hope they spend most of the time ticketing the poop-spreaders and making them pick up the mess. With their hands.

Teachers vs engineers

"If we paid teachers like we paid engineers, just think how far ahead we would be!"

If we assessed teachers on the results of their work like we did for engineers, just imagine the outcry from the California Teachers Association.

"Class X results in Maths have plummeted year-on-year compared to equivalent classes Y, Z taught by other teachers; class X's Maths teacher objectively sucks and should be demoted/fired."
"How dare you! Won't you think of the children?"

I've met some great teachers in California, but The System is very clearly working against them.

'Fearless' girl? Is that really the best adjective?

The famous "Charging Bull" statue in Manhattan has been garnering a lot of proximate press recently. Contrary to the belief of lazy journalists, it's not actually anywhere near Wall Street: check out the map, it's a good 600 feet away.

Last month, a temporary bronze statue "Fearless Girl" was placed opposite the bull, garnering all sorts of breathless praise by journos about the strong feminist message that it imparts. Since the Fearless Girl statue was created by the investment firm "State Street Global Advisors", I suspect that nothing other than their marketing department's desperate desire for publicity and their CEO's self-image were the main factors behind the project: since only 5 of their 28-strong leadership team are female, two of whom are in the traditional female bastions of HR and Compliance, one suspects that this is compensatory signalling. The statue's plaque:

Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.

confirms my suspicions.

The Charging Bull sculptor Arturo Di Modica is not amused:

"The placement of the statue of the young girl in opposition to 'Charging Bull' has undermined the integrity and modified the 'Charging Bull'" Siegel said. "The 'Charging Bull' no longer carries a positive, optimistic message. Rather it has been transformed into a negative force and a threat."

State Street Global Advisor and the statue artist Kristen Visbal may believe that this is a powerful message of feminine empowerment. However, if in real life you saw a 4-foot girl standing square against a charging bull, hands on hips in defiance, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't think her "brave" and "assertive"; words like "foolish" and "insane" would be more likely to pass your lips.

I'm reminded of Hilaire Beloc's Sarah Byng, whose illiteracy led her into a field containing a bull:

Alas! The young illiterate
Went blindly forward to her fate,
And ignorantly climbed the gate!
Now happily the Bull that day
Was rather in the mood for play
Than goring people through and through
As Bulls so very often do;
He tossed her lightly with his horns
Into a prickly hedge of thorns,
And stood by laughing while she strode
And pushed and struggled to the road.

State Street Global Advisor and Kristen Visbal should perhaps take the lesson that your perceptions of how the world should be, no matter how right-on, are much less important in pratice than how it actually reacts to you.

#MyPrimeMinister

Nice speech, Theresa. A solid kicking of the NATO under-spenders, emphasis of shared ideals and values with the USA, doubling down on Brexit. Careful warnings about excessive isolationism, hinting at reservations with the ideas behind today's Muslim visa ban. Repeated callbacks to Ronnie and Maggie; will Donald and Theresa be the new power couple?

It seemed to go down very well with the Republican audience. I'm guessing that Polly Toynbee will hate it. [I also suspect that Theresa doesn't give a shit what Polly thinks.]

Entrumpment FTW

Your humble correspondent finds it hard to explain the feelings arising from the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States, one Donald J. Trump. This "Entrumpment" has acted like a lens focusing the most demented of opinions and acts, and truly it has been the most wondrous of spectacles. Watching the collective losing of excreta of the liberal media today has been non-stop entertainment.

In the Bay Area, much attention was focused yesterday on a proposed attempt to complete a human chain across the Golden Gate bridge. The target date was today and it didn't work out quite as well as the organisers might have liked:

Even though the actual hand holding only lasted for one minute, folks who took part in the human chain say the memory will last a lifetime. Bridge officials say there were some gaps across the span on the northern side, so couldn't give the group credit for the first successful human chain, but for participants, it didn't matter, history was still made.

So even on the most Democrat-Republican polarising day for many years, and in the most Democrat-friendly city of the most Democrat-friendly state, they couldn't get 3000 people organised to form a human bridge. It's almost as if the Trump opposition doesn't have the practical conviction of their opinions.

Journalist ecomonic understanding makes me cry

The megalopolis of San Jose, CA has approved a rise in the minimum wage to $15 by January 1 2019. The usual suspects are weighing in approvingly, but my eye was drawn in fascinated horror to the way that the journalist (or press release author) expressed the financial changes expected:

Mayor Liccardo launched the effort last fall to follow the lead of five other cities in Santa Clara County and to come up with a regional approach to raise minimum wage throughout Silicon Valley.
City statistics show it would mean a $300,000 raise for 115,000 workers.

To which I can only say huh? Assuming they're on $12/hour now, they're working 100,000 hours per year?

What the author means, one assumes, is that each worker is going to benefit by just under $3 per hour, but that's a horrible way of expressing that statistic. And of course, the statistic itself is misleading. The workers are going to pay a varying amount of tax on that additional money, other benefits they are currently paid may change, and of course that assumes that otherwise their salary would not have risen at all by January 2019 despite the extra 2 years of experience and possible promotion they would have achieved by then.

But let's look at what the author believes is the downside of this measure - because they're trying to be even-handed, yes?

Some small business owners and non-profits worry raising the minimum wage would reduce their share of the economic pie. The result could either mean service reduction for non profits or price increases for mainstay businesses.

Or, you know, firings left and right for any worker whose skills aren't valued at $15/hour (plus additional costs) by the business they work at. Or businesses closing down because they're no longer economically viable. Or employers cutting existing worker benefits to offset the new costs. Heck, ask workers and business owners in Seattle how their new $15/hour minimum is working out.

You can just taste the disdain for business owners in the expression "reduce their share of the economic pie". Why exactly does the author think the owners have put in all the work and risk to create the businesses that create the jobs for these good people in the first place?

Always consider what happens when the shoe switches feet

The recent panic from the LGBT+ / Black / Hispanic communities about increased violence in the wake of Trump's victory has caused a sharp uptick in blogs and forum posts from various West Coast people, notably those of the transgender persuasion, claiming a new fear for the personal safety of them and their families. This seems to be based around the assumption that a Trump presidency will embolden the less savoury side of society prone to gay-bashing to perpetrate physical violence on them. Let's say, for arguments' sake, this is true: what should they do about it?

Larry Correia, author of the "Monster Hunter Nation" and related high-output high-sales fantasy book series, penned "A Handy Guide For Liberals Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership" which is as sympathetic to the political gripes of Hillary/Bernie supporters as the title suggests, but does provide a lot of good practical advice about how you can go about getting armed and trained in effective self-defence. Correia owned a gun store and did a lot of concealed-carry training before his literary career properly started, so seems to know what he's talking about.

What he really nails is the ever-increasing squeeze on firearms possession, gun ranges and ammo purchase that has been happening in Democrat-controlled states over the past few years, and why it's relevant now:

When the already super powerful government wants to make you even more powerless, that scares the crap out of regular Americans, but you guys have been all in favor of it. Take those nasty guns! Guns are scary and bad. Don't you stupid rednecks know what's good for you? The people should live at the whim of the state!
But now that the shoe is on the other foot, and somebody you distrust and fear is in charge for a change, the government having all sorts of unchecked power seems like a really bad idea, huh?

It's hard enough owning a gun in California anyway, but cities like San Francisco have taken it to extremes. They have used local law changes to force all the gun shops to close down. In last week's voting, there was a strong San Francisco representation pushing state Proposition 63 to make ammunition purchases harder and more expensive. The net effect is that you can guarantee that no-one in San Francisco is carrying a gun unless they're a law enforcement officer or a criminal.

Gay bashing is far from a new crime in San Francisco. Despite the city's image as gay-friendly, there are enough unreconstructed citizens who are not keen on public displays of homosexuality or trans people for there to be a significant risk of violence. Since these folk know that their victims won't be armed, they have no disincentive to engage in these attacks. But if there were a few well-publicised self-defence shootings in reaction to gay bashing attempts, you can bet that the rate of gay bashing attempts would decline rapidly.

For now, California citizens have to deal with the laws as they stand - and as Correia notes, those laws make it hard for law-abiding citizens to be armed effectively:

See, traditionally Democrats don't like the 2nd Amendment and historically have done everything in their power to screw with it. Your gun laws are going to vary dramatically based upon where you live. It might be really difficult and expensive for you to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights, or it might be relatively easy.
But you’re scared right now! Well, that's too bad. Because for the most part Democrats have tried to make it so that citizens have to abdicate their responsibilities and instead entrust that only [the] state can defend everyone... That doesn't seem like such a bright idea now that you don't trust who is running the state, huh?

Perhaps San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee could take time out from his crusade against the gun industry to ensure that his vulnerable constituents can defend themselves against the increasing violence in his city. I'm not holding my breath for this to happen, but if the LGBT+ community wants to be able to protect themselves then Ed might be a good target for their lobbying. "Mayor Lee, why don't you want the gay community to be safe in your city?". They could recommend that Lee work with past SF Democrat mayoral candidate Leland Yee to draw on the latter's expertise in firearms supply.

Silicon Valley in the Time of Trump

The past few days have given me a great view into how the famously liberal population of the Bay Area has taken the election of Donald Trump. "Not well" is fair, but a yuuuuge understatement.

Do you know what California's principal export is? Whine.

The Bay Area is probably the most pro-Clinton anti-Trump group outside the island of Manhattan, and the residents were never going to be entirely happy with a Trump victory. I predicted butthurt-ness, and was I ever right. However even I, with my jaundiced view of human nature, never expected the level of rage and opprobrium directed at Trump and his voting enablers. So far I've seen - not heard but actually seen written on group emails and forums - the following:

• claims of suicidal feelings, particularly from trans and gender-fluid folks;
• assertions that anyone voting for Trump needs to publicly denounce Trump's perceived opinions about Black Lives Matter, Hispanics, gays (wut?) and immigrants;
• statements that anyone voting for Trump needs to go work for another company;
• room-sized group hugs to support each other post-election; and
• claims that Trump and Pence wanted to electrocute people who were gay or trans.

Thank goodness Trump has elephant-thick skin, because there's probably enough libel in every Bay Area tech company's emails to pay for the building of another Trump Tower.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me was a bundle of complaints around the theme:

"I was hoping to teach my girls that, if you work hard and dream big, you can be anything you want to be. I would like to thank 2016 for putting me right."

It seems that a large number of people were going to use "Hillary as first woman president" as the totem for their children to show that the glass ceiling had been shattered. While I'm all in favour of showing children role models, is Hillary really the model you want to use?

I actually found it inspiring, in a way. The lesson I took from the election was that if you are a woman, even if you are a revolting and corrupt human being, you can make it to within a gnat's chuff of being the President of the United States, and your party organisation will happily screw over men to help you get its nomination. It wouldn't have taken much of a vote change in one or two swing states for Hillary to be elected, at which point I guarantee that no-one on the Dems side would be talking about upsetting the electoral college applecart.

Hillary is (of course) not happy and blames FBI Director Comey for her narrow defeat:

But our analysis is that [FBI Director James B.] Comey's letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum,” she said. “We dropped, and we had to keep really pushing ahead to regain our advantage — which going into the last weekend, we had."

She's right, of course. Comey's letter was quite possibly enough to cause Hillary voters in key states to stay home on polling day.

On the other hand, there were many other what-ifs, any one of which was probably enough to get her elected:

• what if she had actually achieved something of note as Secretary of State?
• what if she and Bill hadn't gone around the world soliciting hundreds of millions of dollars from various dubious countries and individuals?
• what if she were actually personally likeable?
• what if she'd not blown her chance to land a kill-shot on The Donald in the debates?
• what if she'd insisted that the DNC not put its thumb on the scales, and instead beat Bernie fairly in the nomination?

All these were in her control, so to blame solely Comey for her loss seems rather obtuse.

And on the flip side, what if Comey had taken the - apparently quite reasonable - step to indict her for her recklessness in running her own email server and exposing any amount of State classified material to any intelligence service worth its name? Isn't she grateful to him for not doing that, at least?

Trump triumphant

Blimey, he actually did it. Just how poor a candidate must Hillary have been, with all the media, technical, organisational and financial advantages she had, to go down so badly to Trump? I'm guessing that Hillary 2020 is not going to be a thing.

I continue to feel very comfortable in my prediction of an unprecedent wave of butthurt about to appear from the Guardian opinion pages (and indeed all other articles) and the BBC US correspondents.