Chip 'em, Dan-O

Did I just hear Senator Schumer say we will use a "social security card biometric identifier?"

And you thought I was just kidding around when I said that for ease of administration the administrators think biometric ID is a really fun idea.

A little research takes some of the fun out of  mocking this because, so far, Senators Schumer and McCain are stopping short of the ultimate step. They're not quite ready to herd 320 million American citizens into the veterinary clinics for outpatient surgery. Vets? Sure. Who has more experience in slipping neat little computers/RF transmitters into flesh? Guernsey, Lhasa apso, citizen, what the Hell. Meat's meat.

The vote whores, or  immigration reformers if you insist, say for the time being  they can settle for a Social Security card that records your fingerprints or your digitized face. It will be a while before they announce that people are losing their cards and hiring top geeks to modify them and generally not playing nice.  And if you can chip a baboon for 80 bucks, max, why 80 times 320 million is only...



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The 1985 libertarian argument was: Want to reduce the illegal immigration problem? Start reducing the free stuff inherent in merely metabolizing in this country.   It  is also a good 2013 argument.

I see by the news that a bunch of U.S. Senators is to introduce a new immigration reform plan this afternoon.

Point One of said plan is that all is  "Contingent on securing the borders."

Making points Two through Infinity moot.

Actually securing the border is popular only among adult white heterosexuals  who have a pickup, three or more firearms, and a job  -- a political loser in other words.

H.L. Mencken on Gun (and everything else) Control

Each year about this time,  the Moon of the Shrunken Scrotum, I tend to stay  in my lodge,  near the fire, and spend time with the old writings. I owe these authors. Without them I would be someone else.

This morning it is H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), one of my primary sources on 21st Century politics. Here he discloses one of the reasons we veer so close to post-constitutional government and pixie dust economics.

He is discussing American literature as it existed in the earliest years of the 20th  Century. It was ponderous stuff requiring close attention and patience, but Mencken thought it was important. Or would have been if enough people paid attention. He wasn't optimistic about that.

"In the arts, as in the concerns of every day, the  American seeks escape from the insoluble  by pretending it is solved. A comfortable phrase is what he craves beyond all things...".

Gun Control and Language Control

Another parallelism, further demonstrating the increasing uselessness of the English language as a tool for expressing logical thought processes:

Semi-automatic assault weapon

Horse-drawn automobile
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