August, 2018, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Clueless In San Francisco, Clueless In Chicago, Clueless In The U.S.Senate

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) We have often wondered in this blog whether politicians are too dumb to understand how stupid they sound trying to explain away some of their actions or they think we are too stupid to see that they are blatant liars. A recent example of such behavior recently cropped up as it relates to U.S. Senator Cory Booker:

• Apparently the good Senator was over in the Mideast when he spotted a photo op.
• He stood with a group of people and physically held up a sign that read: “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go,” a slogan developed by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
• This group is a devoted pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activist group.
• According to the watchdog group, NGO Monitor, “USCPR is a national coalition of hundreds of groups working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy, and is a leader and mobilizer of anti-Israel BDS campaigns.”

Oopsie, if you want to be President, like Booker wants to be, maybe it is not a good idea pissing off the Jewish community around the world. His handlers quickly realized what a bad PR move this was and tried to explain it away.

One his handlers, Jeff Giertz, attempted to limit the political damage when he told JTA that: “he [Booker] didn’t have time to read the sign. From his cursory glance he thought it was talking about Mexico and didn’t realize it had anything to do with Israel.” Really, you think we are that stupid?! The sign only had eleven words on it. The sign had Palestine written on it. The Senator was physically holding the sign. Nine of the words were single syllable words. 

And you want us to believe the Senator “didn’t have time” to read the sign. If he does not have time to read a short, simple sentence he is holding in his hand, how can he ever be expected to have enough time to read and sign legislation that has more than eleven words, has many multi-syllable words, that likely affects many Americans if he should ever become President? Mr. Giertz, give us a break, we are not that stupid.

2) The Self Reliance Central website also recently checked in on the banning of straws that we have previously discussed:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/08/august-2018-part-2-political-class.html

Of course, it’s the liberals in the liberal state of California and its most liberal city, San Francisco, that are leading the charge to banning those deadly plastic straws. The state and local politicians think that banning plastic straws will help save the environment and cut down on the massive amount of human plastic garbage that is gathering out at sea. While these may sound like noble goals being put forth by the political class, they really are quite stupid:

• We have previously discussed the reality that replacing plastic straws with paper straws will increase the amount of energy need to produce those paper straws by eightfold, not an eco friendly alternative.
• The Self Reliance Central website points out that the local politicians and this plastic straw crusade has successfully pressured Starbucks to switch from plastic straws to new sipper lids for their products which would seem like a victory for the elimination of plastic straws crew and crusade.
• One problem though, the replacement sip lids “featuring a moulded sipper/lid combo used even more plastic than the previous combo.” i.e. the replacement of the plastic straws is resulting in more, not less plastic being used and discarded. 
• So at least from a Starbucks perspective, the politicians’ have actions have possibly made the plastic pollution situation worse. And it probably will not make a hill of beans difference either way since neither the United States, and certainly not San Francisco, fall into the top ten of worse plastic polluters in the world. The top ten polluters of plastic waste are all in the developing world:

So the politicians in California and San Francisco are trying to resolve a problem that they cannot resolve or probably even make the tiniest dent in. Until the rest of the developing world develops a passion and way to recycle their plastic litter, no way this major pollution issue gets resolved. But much like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titantic, the state and local California politicians devote time and energy to a problem they cannot resolve. Rather than fixing their failing schools, repairing their crumbling infrastructure, etc., problems that would immeasurably improve the lives of their constituents, they insist on expanding their nanny state powers to plastic straws while accomplishing nothing, as the following nanny state meme shows:


3) We often return to Chicago to review the latest shooting and crime statistics since they are always sad and overwhelming. As you read the following highlights from a recent CNN article by Jay Croft, Deanna Hackney, and Eric Levenson, keep in mind that the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois have some of the toughest, if not the toughest, gun control laws in the country:

• Over a recent weekend, over 70 Chicago residents were shot and a dozen died from their wounds.
• In one of the great understatements ever, Police Superintendent Eddie T. Johnson said,"It's no secret that we had an unacceptably violent weekend." 
• Victims ranged from young kids to the elderly.
• In just three hours from 1:30 am Sunday to 4:30 am Sunday, 30 people were shot and two were killed in 10 different situations.
• Johnson claims the shootings and violence are all gang related and the those in the community that know who committed these crimes need to come forward: "These shootings are not random, they're fueled by gang conflicts. We know who they are and we continue to send a message that it's OK to commit these crimes by not doing anything as a community. We are all supposed to be on the same side. CPD can be better, but this city can be better." 
• Mayor Rahm Emanuel also went through his typical diatribe but since after two terms in office he has been useless in the resolving this problem, I will pass on putting forth his empty words here except for this following bizarre rant, a rant that makes no sense: "You can talk about the weather, but the weather didn't pull the trigger. You can talk about jobs, and they count, but in parts of the city where there aren't jobs, people did not pull the trigger."

Huh? If people did not pull the trigger who did? The guns pulled their own triggers? This is the kind of nonsensical reasoning that has resulted in far too many deaths and shootings in the city of Chicago as the local political class shows how useless and clueless those in office are today.Clueless in Chicago, clueless in San Francisco, and clueless in the U.S. Senate. Sounds about right. More political class insanity to come.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

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Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w