Mark Byron

No-Brainers Along I-95

I recall a Mad election sticker set from the 70s. One of the stickers had a suit trying to put a square peg in a round hole with the caption "Help the Mentally Handicapped...Relect Your Congressman."

With that in mind, here's two headlines that came across ye old laptop as of late-

WR Jackson on keeping Vick: 'It's a no-brainer'

Biden says new gun laws should be 'no-brainer' for Congress after Newtown.

The first I agree with; with spread-option guru Chip Kelly heading to Philly, you'd be hard pressed to find someone better to run his system than Vick. You might think about taking a flier on Denard Robinson in the second round to get a second spread-ready QB or give the Jets a call about the availability of a certain little-used backup QB, but a healthy Michael Vick would be a solid option.

As for a certain little-used backup politician... it might well be a no-brainer as in a path-of-least-resistance play to go for some gun control legislation; it take a bit of thought to see some of the downsides of these regulations. For instance, if you limit folks to a six-shooter and the robbers hitting their house are packing 30-round clips, you'd better make each bullet count.

Of course, for most gun-control fans, such big clips are best left for the army and the cops, but by the time the cops come to the above scene, the guy with the six-shooter is suitable for conversion into hamburger meat if you have the right meat-packer; just work around the bullet holes, Jaime.

Some issues take time to think through; the easy answer is often not the best answer, since secondary issue you overlooked on a no-brainer review might be more of a factor than you counted on.

Related articles

Sensible Gun Control and Sensibility

No Such Thing as a Free IUD

The Obama team seems to keep flunking Managerial Econ. Here's their latest stab at trying to square the contraceptive circle-

As part of the new initiative, groups that are insured -- such as student health plans at religious colleges -- would be required to let their insurer know that certain participants would like contraception coverage. The provider would pay for the contraception separately.

"The insurer would then notify enrollees that it is providing them with no-cost contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies," an HHS statement on the new policy said on Friday.

The move would allow the religious organization to avoid paying for contraception.

Excuse me. Yes, they will be paying for it, for it's part of what the insurance company is paying for. Since the insurance company will be paying for contraception coverage, they will be factoring it into the price. The price will actually be higher, since the insurance company will have extra paperwork that mundane employers won't need.

The one way around having faithy groups picking up the tab is to have Uncle Sam do it for them, or have the folks buy contraceptive riders themselves.

Trust the B____ From Foggy Bottom

Gays adopt the Q word with pride while blacks will occasionally adopt the N word; could hard-nosed females be similary adopting the B word as a badge of honor?

On my way to lunch, I spoted a Hillary bumper sticker with the motto "Just vote for the [she-dog]". This Google search shows some 2008 stickers and T-shirts with that motto, but none of them were quite the one I saw, which didn't state a year. At least one Midlander seems to be thinking ahead to 2016.

Newt got called on the carpet for using that at her expense two decades ago; now, it's something of a complement to the left.

Hizzonor Passes On

When I taught finance, I always introduced the chapter on ratio analysis with Ed Koch's patented line, "How'm I doin'?", for a hard look at the accounting stats would often answer that question for a firm.

As for Mr. Ed, the answer is "not that well"; he passed on earlier today at 88. He was an honest liberal, honest enough to back Republicans on national-security issues when Democrats were clueless on terrorism and/or Israel.

One amazing thing about him is that he never married and never seemed to have a serious girlfriend or boyfriend. He was rumored to be in the closet for as long as that was an issue; in his first mayoral campaign, he was up against a young Mario Cuomo, so the slogan for Super Mario fans was "vote for Cuomo, not the homo." However, some people can be celibate and not be a priest or nun (that wasn't an option for a Jewish guy like Koch); Condi Rice and David Souter come to mind.

He was one of the more engaging politicians I can recall, always worth a stop if he was being interviewed. Not that I always agreed with him, but he always seemed to be a happy warrior and an honest one. Pray that God smiles on him going foward; he wasn't a "completed" Jew, but a fairly honest one, for what that will buy you at the Pearly Gates.

You Can Call Me Halal

Dearborn gets a lot of interesting news stories, given its large Arab population, from in-your-face evangelists making jerks of themselves at Arab festivals to midnight starts of football practice to accomodate Ramadan fasting.

The latest story was from an American staple, McDonalds. They've been making a point of serving halal chicken at their two Dearborn stores (and had a cooking set-up that passed Muslim muster), but occasionally have run out and used garden-variety fowl; that false advertising has set them back $700K when those oversights became public.

No, this isn't creeping sharia, just making folks live up to their advertising

Me So Antlery

Interesting story out linking a number of footballers and deer-antler extract. Ray Lewis is the poster-boy on this one, although he's denied being a user. The active ingreedient is a offshoot of HGH, so it sounds like something that would both be attractive to atheletes, especially when the "NFL said it is not detectable with the league's current testing methods."

Since Lewis is slated to retire after the Super Bowl, there's little the NFL can do if the story was true. Most punishments are suspensions, which would only have any weight if Lewis took some sort of coaching or front-office job.

The Tide players who are alleged to be on the stuff might be a different story.

Rhino horn's been long thought to be an aphrodesiac, but college football players shouldn't need any help on that front, especially their QB.

The Phantom Saboteur

Here's what I wrote on Monday-

The main Iranian nuke facility in Fordo seems to have had a massive explosion. News is spotty; Drudge links to a WND story, but there seems to be little mainstream collaboration. There's shades of the Egyptian-lynching-by-crucifix story that was covered in the anti-Islamist press but never confirmed outside of it; the story's a bit too good to be true, but could be true nonetheless.

As it turned out, my sniffer was right; it was merely a rumor with no basis in fact. There seems to a tendency to take stories that fit an anti-Muslim world-view and run with them if they seem truthy. The fact that broader media doesn't cover it can be written off as "this is stuff they don't want you to know about."

However, there wasn't any good reason for the MSM to cover up bad news about the Iranian nuke program. This news would call off the preventative-strike dogs for a while if the saboteur managed to save Israel a bomber run over look-the-other-way Arab neighbor's territories, so they would have had a vested interested in playing things up rather than downplaying it.

 

A Frodo in Fordo?

The main Iranian nuke faclity in Fordo seems to have had a massive explosion. News is spotty; Drudge links to a WND story, but there seems to be little mainstream collaberation. There's shades of the Egyptian-lynching-by-crucifix story that was covered in the anti-Islamist press but never confirmed outside of it; the story's a bit too good to be true, but could be true nonetheless.

If true, it could save the Israelis a trip into Iranian airspace. The WND piece assumes that Bibi is in a weakened state post-election, but I'm not sure if a new coalition would veto a strike if it was deemed proper; none of the proposed coalition members are particularly pacifist.

Fordo would almost seem like a good stand-in for Mordor from the Lord of the Rings. Ironically, it is a transposed letter from Frodo, the hobbit who melted down the Ring of Power there. Did we have a real-world Frodo earlier today, someone who sabotaged our modern-day Morgoth's road to destructive powers?