The Lyin' Queen

This Town Ain't Big Enough

So, World Class prevaricator and serial fabulist Hillary Clinton breezed through Council Bluffs yesterday on her "We Need a Uterus in the Oval Office" tour...

"I ate at the Main Street Cafe. That's homespun and folksy, right? Right?"

...and in the course of her brief visit managed to tell a bunch of whoppers to the rubes who turned out to catch her shtick. In fairness, these are lies she tells everywhere she goes. She didn't even bother to come up with any new ones for us here in the Bluffs. Among other things, she said:

• "Gun violence kills 90 people every day, many of them children" -- she didn't mention that nearly two-thirds of those deaths were suicides, or that most of the rest were gang-related shootings, or that the vast majority of the "children" in her statistics are aged 18 to 19 (i.e., adults), or that none of her "common sense" ideas would do anything to help the situation
• "Gun show loophole" -- there is no gun show "loophole"
• "Universal background checks" -- a terrible idea that wouldn't do any good
• "Women should get paid the same as men for the same work" -- even the liberal-leaning Washington Post is calling bullshit on this lie, finally

She also hit several other tunes on the progressive hit parade, including raising the minimum wage (bad idea), "ending incentives for companies to ship jobs overseas"
(ban capitalism?), creating a "national infrastructure bank" to pay for fixing roads and bridges (in places where the locals won't do it themselves, I guess), and instituting universal pre-kindergarden (bad idea). She also claims to have a "comprehensive plan" to deal with the "drug epidemic," but of course offered no specifics. She didn't mention how she would pay for any of her ideas, either, but then that's par for the course for a progressive.

"New ideas? Why on Earth would I need any new ideas? The '90s were awesome!"

There was absolutely nothing in her remarks that would have sounded out of place from a Democrat running for president 20 years ago, 30 years ago, etc.

If recent polling is any indication, the more folks hear her talk about what she would do as president, the less favorably they view her.

And, of course, her staff persists in believing that if we only knew the "real" Hillary we'd elect her by acclamation...

Uh, no...

Things That Make Me Happy: Baseball Hoopla Edition

For the second consecutive year my beloved Kansas City Royals are part of major league baseball's postseason party. The last time the team accomplished that feat was the 1984/1985 seasons, so the rest of the world will have to forgive lifelong Royals fans if we revel a bit more in the silly hoopla than most fans would. And if we choose to puff our chests out a bit because the Royals had the best record in the American League this season, or because they're the only team from last year's American League playoffs to make it into the postseason again this year, that is certainly understandable.

The American League Division Series with the Houston Astros begins tonight at Kauffman Stadium, and I'm sure the pregame festivities will be at least as entertaining as last year's version...

Aircraft from nearby Whiteman AFB do a Kauffman Stadium flyover.

"It's okay to admit you want them to win, you know."

Of course I want them to win. It is just difficult for me to believe that they will. That's par for the course when you're a pessimist by nature...

Meanwhile, In the National Inferior League...

Last night saw the National League's Wild Card playoff game, in which the Chicago Cubs defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-0 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

I was rooting for Pittsburgh in that game in part because my best friend grew up in Pittsburgh and in part because the Pirates endured a playoff drought nearly as long as the one the Royals had to go through before breaking through two seasons ago. Last night marked the second consecutive year the Pirates lost the Wild Card game in front of their home fans. That's tough to take.

I was also pulling for the Pirates because I'm sick to death of hearing about the fucking Curse of the Billy Goat, which the announcers won't stop talking about until the Cubs are eliminated.

But for the moment I'm forced to become a Cubs fan, because now they're playing...

...these assholes.

Live-Action Cartoons

I try to avoid watching congressional hearings, which are usually tedious events even when the subject is something I care about. Every so often, however, something happens at one of these things that rivals the funniest stuff my heroes like Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck ever pulled off.

During a hearing on climate change yesterday, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas asked Aaron Mair, President of the Sierra Club, if his organization was willing to accept scientific data indicating that there has been no planet-wide increase in temperature for nearly 20 years. Incredibly, Mr. Mair declined to answer, and instead retreated into a particularly stupid version of the appeal to popularity fallacy...

"So, when confronted with actual scientific evidence...?"

"...the Sierra Club will continue hiding behind the debunked '97 percent' claim, yes."

Watch the whole thing. It is astonishing to me that someone so close-minded and anti-intellectual could become the head of a major environmental group. Then again, maybe it isn't...

Justice In the Afterlife

From the excellent comic strip Non Sequitur, by Wiley Miller, which you should read every day, as I do (even though Wiley is a squishy liberal).

Until Next Time...

Twenty-seven years ago today, British progressive rock band Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon dropped off of the Billboard 200 Album chart. Ordinarily, this section of the blog doesn't celebrate that sort of anniversary, but when DSOM dropped off the charts it was the first time in 741 consecutive weeks since its 1973 release (more than 14 years) that it wasn't among the Top 200 albums. Although it only occupied the No. 1 spot on the charts for a single week, it is the third-largest-selling album of all time, behind only Michael Jackson's Thriller and AC/DC's Back in Black (from which yesterdays' send-off was taken).

Although the song "Money" was more commercially successful as a single, "Time" is in many ways the most iconic song on the album. Today's send-off is a remastered version of it from 2011 that was included in the band's Discovery series of album re-issues. Enjoy...