Drip, Drip, Drip

A friend once asked me if I could win an election for a regional candidate who wasn't well-known or particularly popular. I said, "Of course not.

"But what I can do, given enough time and money, is create a political climate that gives him a very good chance to win."

The important term is "political climate."  Fish swim in water. Birds fly in air space. Politicians and their political movements flourish when immersed in a favorable  stew of public attitude; that ragout is itself a mix of fashionable beliefs, ideas, misconceptions and general thinking which may or may not be within fifty parsecs of reality.

The base political climate of a country is largely a creation of its information sources, the "news." The media themselves are a mishmash of all that is good, the destruction of Richard Nixon, for instance. Or evil, perhaps exemplified by the destruction of Robert Bork.

Leading us to this morning's news, in the category of Wog-Bombing.  Now, "everyone knows" that when swarthy widows and orphans get bombed, Suspect No. 1 is Uncle Sam, the aspiring imperialist master  of all under Heaven.

The AP,  perhaps unintentionally and as a result of simple editorial ineptness, falls into the pit in its report of bad bombing in Syria. In a lead story it requires readers to endure five full paragraphs of detailed horror description,  geography, and an explanation that Doctors With Borders is sometimes called MSF.

Than and only then does AP reveal the first "W" of basic reporting: "Who?"

Turns out it was the Russians. At least the Brits say it was Putin's air force.

As most any readership study of the past fifty years will report, by the sixth paragraph of any new story readers will have flocked away by massive percentages and turned to the comics or the scores. And those people will have no reason not to believe the United States bombed the hospitals, maybe on purpose because, y'know, like, that's what Uncle  does.

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Not to let Reuters off then hook while I'm chastising the wire service which still helps feed me.  The Brit version of AP leads today with a piece on the replacement for Justice Scalia: "Republicans Gear Up for Supreme Court Battle after Scalia's Death," leaving readers to figure out for themselves that the opposite is also true and just as newsworthy. Democrats are also in gear.

Thus a fellow can be forgiven for the big thought that day-in and day-out, decade after decade, a water drip at a time, the political climate becomes a closed-circuit sewer

How to Think About Iowa (if you must) And It's Caucuses

Milk the cows, slop the hogs, pitch the hay, shovel the shit, go to church. Vote Republican and present yourself to the world as a paragon of fierce independence.  Picture it  this way ...

...and you'll have it mostly wrong.

 It was wrong  in 1930  when Grant wood painted it and still is.  About one year before  Wood touched his brush to this canvas  Herbert Hoover and his congress created The Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929 which said:  "If'n you can't sell your corn to actual people, never mind.  We'll buy it at a pretty fine price." A couple years later Franklin Roosevelt kicked the tax tractor into a higher gear and farmers never looked back.

That explains Bernie Sanders.

Yes, George, a Happier New Year to All of Us

For my friends and enemies:  I'm afraid I must insist that you read Mr. Wills' review of the year just interred. If it is credibly reported that you don't, I shall disappear you with my magic ring, even if it gets me suspended from 4th grade.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/goodbye-to-2015-a-year-of-absurdity-and-overreach/2015/12/30/16cdaa4a-ae6e-11e5-b711-1998289ffcea_story.html

Just another old Mossberg

I've sometimes mentioned my weakness for old Mossberg .22s, the price-point builds from mid-century. We  cheapskates who like them tend to be a little apologetic for the apparent penuriousness this implies.

But, then, there's my buddy Genius Jeff.

Once delivered to his shop as woodless and near-worthless junk.

A little case-hardening...

A little polish and blue work. 

All topped off with a period-correct tang peeper.

The wood speaks for itself on this Mossy Model L, a falling block, .22 rimfire single-shot with a lever that would have made John Wayne nod in approval.