I am too lazy to find all the studies – find them yourself, if you want – but most people don’t realize just how much richer are the rich than the rest of us, and how much better they live.

This is a vet clinic, by the way.

We go down another marble floored hallway and we go to the second concierge: this one is bigger since people sit there to pick up their pets after being left overnight. I had no wait time to make another appointment and we were immediately out of the concierge with the cherry wood, granite, and pristine marble where we were able to see our unsullied reflections.

I remember my mom going to the free clinic and waiting 4-6 hours to be seen. And how terrible the standard of care there was.

In this country, we allow the rich to treat their pets better than we treat our most vulnerable people. It is just disgusting.

I generally read and even enjoy bad military fiction, but this is just too far. Too far.

Freedom Is Never Free – After the President closes Guantanamo Bay to hold civilian trials for the terrorists, some of them are relocated to Hell’s Gate Prison in West Texas. Until a group of fanatical sleeper-cell shock troops launch an all-out assault to “liberate” their jailed comrades. There’s just one problem: they don’t know that Army Ranger Lucas Kincaid is working at Hell’s Gate. With the town’s high school team held hostage and in danger of being executed one by one, Kincaid assembles a ragtag band of survivors and aging hardcore cons into a lethal fighting force to keep the unholy warriors from their deadly mission. And Kincaid and his men are on their own – everyone, from the President on down, orders Kincaid to give in to the terrorists’ demands. But warrior Lucas Kincaid, out-numbered and out-gunned, won’t back down. One thing’s for sure: when the enemy gets to Hell, they’ll know America sent them.

I am laughing over here. Damn. What in the hell.

“…to keep the unholy warriors from their deadly mission…”

This book. It really exists. It does.

What the what?

Does no one know any history?

Wikipedia shows Anne Applebaum graduated from Yale, among other esteemed institutions of higher learning. Therefore she should know that this theory that trade partners would not go to war was thoroughly debunked by the outbreak of WWI.

Pre-WWI was the first great era of globalization – after that, global trade actually fell markedly for a variety of reasons.

Anyway, I’m not here to declaim about global trade other than to note that often even very educated people aren’t all that smart.

The five idiotic things (most of) the Left believes:

1) That communism can work, just that no one has yet done it correctly.

2) That there are absolutely no identifiable racial genetic differences, even when this harms people medically (diabetes, heart disease, etc. all  have racial genetic differing etiologies).

3) That absolutely no human evolution occurred above the neck.

4) That spewing more data at people is likely to change their minds.

5) That cultural relativism applied outside of an academic setting has any real value, or leads to greater freedom.

This is harder, because there are so, so many idiotic things the right (and in this I am including Libertarians) accepts as doctrine, but here are five idiotic things (most of) the Right believes:

1) That evolution did not occur at all.

2) That profit/affluence determines someone’s moral worth (ends justify means outlook, essentially).

3) That beating/hurting/killing someone is likely to change anyone’s or any group’s mind.

4) That women are subhuman.

5) That markets are self-regulating, a natural occurrence, and if the government would just get out of the way, we’d have a laissez-faire renaissance of the antediluvian free market bonanza.

Note that often these aren’t explicitly-stated beliefs, as either they are too outré to be stated aloud or written down, or they are just the subconscious machinations of group id that lead to observed action. But nevertheless, this is a pretty good encapsulation – at least as a first draft – of the manias that drive both sides to do the things they do.