Social media is all about getting as many stupid people as possible together so they can bellow at anyone and everyone. Giving the dumb fraction a veto over the rest of us will go down as a primary reason the West collapsed. Here’s example eleventy billion.

The Jaguars have apologized for their mascot using the Ebola epidemic to mock the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Terrible Towels during Sunday’s game between the teams at EverBank Field on Sunday afternoon.

Jaxson de Ville held up a handwritten sign during the fourth quarter of the game that read “TOWELS CARRY EBOLA” while carrying a yellow Terrible Towel in his right hand. Jaguars president Mark Lamping said the team had no prior knowledge of the sign and is handling the matter internally.

“Improvisation and humor have both been key elements to the character of Jaxson de Ville, especially when he performs at home games,” Lamping said. “On Sunday, the person who has played Jaxson de Ville over the past 20 seasons made an extremely poor decision in that regard.

“The team was unaware of this inappropriate sign, which was hand-made by Jaxson during the fourth quarter of yesterday’s game, until after it had been displayed. We are handling the matter internally and taking it very seriously. We extend our sincerest apologies to anyone who was offended.”

Apologizing to people for their stupidity is madness. Spending a minute of time on what was a silly joke at a football game should be solid evidence at a commitment hearing. The correct response here was “go fuck yourself” when the scolds and pests complained about the mascot. But, that would require perspective.

Curtis Dvorak has been playing de Ville since the mascot’s inception in 1996. The picture of the mascot holding the sign went viral and drew the ire of many on social media Sunday night.

Ebola is a viral disease that is highly infectious and spread by contact with bodily fluids. It has a mortality rate of nearly 90 percent. According to the World Health Organization Ebola response roadmap update from Friday, there have been nearly 8,000 probable, confirmed or suspected cases of the disease in the African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

There has been one confirmed case of Ebola in the United States, in Dallas.

Think about the intended audience of this column. These are people so intensely stupid the writer is required to explain what Ebola is to them. Frankly, if they are that stupid, what are the chances they can read?

On Twitter, I subscribe (follow) to feeds like Mashable because it is so full of Cult craziness. There’s always good material there. It’s why I used to read TN Coates. These blog posts don’t write themselves. Well, sometimes they do, but you get the point. In my twitter feed I saw this gem from Mashable.

Climate change could affect the ratio of human males to human females that are born in some countries, a new study from Japan suggests. The researchers found that male fetuses may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Since the 1970s, temperature fluctuations from the norm have become more common in Japan, and at the same time there has been an increase in the deaths of male fetuses relative to the number of deaths of female fetuses in that country, according to the study.

Over this period, the ratio of male to female babies born in the country has been decreasing, meaning there have been fewer and fewer male babies born relative to the number of female babies born.

Got that. Your lawn mower will result in a race of Amazons enslaving men!

There’s one of these “studies’ every day it seems. All are intended to add another log to the scare fire these strange sub-cults use to fuel their movement. Smoking used to be like this. Twenty years ago I recall reading scare stories about how smoking was making everyone’s dick small. I like how Mashable puts a pic of a retarded looking kid at the top of the story. Nice touch.

This reminded me of this I saw in Maggies Farm last week.

Last week’s People’s Climate March drew 400,000 people onto the streets of Manhattan and a great deal of international attention to a subject of dire urgency. But some were skeptical about the event’s overall significance. “The march slogan was, ‘to change everything, we need everyone,’ which is telling, because it won’t change everything, because it didn’t include everyone,” wrote David Roberts of Grist. “Specifically, it won’t change American politics because it didn’t include conservatives.” True enough.

First off, the picture is classic. Imagine instead of sunflower standards they had eagles clutching a bundle of wooden rods and their shirts were black instead of orange. Same crowd, different uniforms. Second, overstating the crowd size is common with these neo-fascist groups. It’s argumentum ad populum with a lusty “or else” tacked onto it. Notice also the use of the word “conservative” to mean those outside their movement.

If there weren’t such a stark divide between American conservatives and almost everyone else on the question of the existence and importance of climate change — a divide that can approach 40 points on some polling questions — the political situation would be very different. So if any progress on climate change is going to be made through the American political system — apart from executive orders by Democratic presidents — it is going to have to somehow involve convincing a lot of conservatives that yes, climate change is a threat to civilization.

The stark divide between “conservatives and almost everyone else” is another way claiming they are an ascendant movement about to sweep aside the deniers, accept for the recalcitrant conservatives. Hitler used the same phraseology with the Jews. It’ easy to forget that he was not talking about gas chambers in the 1920’s, but he still had plenty of scapegoats. It is a tactic that dates to the dawn of written history. The fact that the deniers are a sizable majority suggests these people are following the path of The Seekers.

How do you do that? The answer has more to do with psychology than politics.

The practice of tailoring a political message to a particular group is commonplace, of course. But the climate activist community has broadly failed to understand just how differently conservatives and liberals see the world on certain issues, and, as a result, just how radically different messages targeting conservatives should look.

The first step would be to recognize “conservative” is a world like capitalism. It is used by the hive minded as a label for those outside the hive. In this case, it simply means non-liberals.

“Although climate scientists update, appropriately, their models after ten years of evidence, climate-science communicators haven’t,” said Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale who studies how people respond to information challenging their beliefs. Luckily, social and political psychologists are on the case. “I think there’s an emerging science of how we should talk about this if we’re going to be effective at getting any sort of movement,” said Robb Willer, a sociologist at Stanford.

They should probably start by talking about the fact global warming has been on a two decade pause. They should also think about why all of their predictions have been wrong.

It’s worth pointing out, of course, that for many conservatives (and liberals), the current debate about climate change isn’t really about competing piles of evidence or about facts at all — it’s about identity. Climate change has come to serve as shorthand for which side you’re on, and conservatives tend to be deeply averse to what climate crusaders represent (or what they think they represent). “The thing most likely to make it hard to sway somebody is that you’re trying to sway them,” said Kahan.

This reminds me of how liberals, when exposed to Eric Hoffer’s True Believer, think he is talking about “right-wingers.” It is certainly true that most of us think the warmists are more than a bit nuts. They latched onto to something that is a mix of Old Testament prophesy, new age paganism and political fascism. Facts and evidence are not important to these people. It is about identity. That’s why they are the ones in the uniforms in that picture.

I have had some dealings with crazy people and I’m not just talking about working for politicians. My first experience was with a friend of my mother who became convinced she was “the Madonna.” It was unnerving to hear someone say they were the mother of Jesus and be serious about it. What was more unnerving to me is the sense I got that she sort of knew she was saying crazy stuff. The look on her face said to me that she was not entirely sure what she was saying, why she was saying or if any of it made any sense. The strange cadence suggested she was hearing the words as we were hearing them.

Later in life, I’ve bumped into this a couple of times. In every case, the person appears to be unsure about their own sanity. That is, they say things that they suspect are crazy, but they are not sure. That’s why they always have that strange delay in their speech. They say something and then wait for the reaction, unsure if what they just said makes any sense. That’s always struck me as the true horror of insanity. If the crazy person is unaware of their insanity, they are not tormented by it. That’s usually not the case. The insane are tormented by the thought they may be losing their minds.

That always comes to mind when the Cult publishes a gender-bender story like this one.

It had been a relatively quiet policy debate until the full-page ad appeared in the local newspaper. “A male wants to shower beside your 14-year-old daughter,” it said. “Are you OK with that?”

The ad, placed by a socially conservative group in Minnesota, was meant to snap attention to a proposal to allow transgender students to play on teams based on their preferred gender rather than the sex assigned to them at birth.

It appears to have worked. More than 100 community members flooded a meeting this week near Minneapolis, and thousands more sent e-mails. In response, the quasi-public body governing high school sports in Minnesota decided to delay a vote on a new policy covering sports participation by transgender students. Members of the board of directors said they needed more time to study the issue.

The policy, which they now plan to vote on in December, was an attempt to grapple with a question that has bedeviled many states: How do you deal with the growing number of children identifying as transgender who want to participate in the highly gender-specific worlds of high school sports and extracurricular activities?

Way back when the Cult stopped using the word sex to mean male and female and started improperly using the word “gender”, I know we were headed for trouble. Back then, the madness was about denying the obvious differences between boys and girls. Hilariously, they claimed that sex was a social construct, not a biological one. In order to mask the madness, they changed the language. If you let the lunatics control the language, everyone eventually sounds like a lunatic. That way, the lunatics no longer have to wonder if they are the crazy person in the room. Political correctness is a form of self-medication.

The fact that “growing number of children identifying as transgender” does not set off any alarm bells in the Cult speaks volumes. Science tells us that human beings evolved very slowly over thousands of generations of trial and error. It does not happen overnight. Therefore, “new” traits and new “trends” are never new. Either we just discovered a way to notice or we are kidding ourselves, pretending the old is new. In the case of children suffering from the mental disease of “transgenerism” the latter is the most likely answer. Turning a mental disorder into a fad is almost as crazy as thinking you are the off-spring of a human-alien coupling.

Those crazy people I references at the start have been handed control of society. Now it is the sane who are tormented, wondering if they are the ones losing their minds because they don’t think reality is infinity negotiable. If you don’t want a homosexual taking your son into the woods, you’re a child abusing nut. If you think your daughter should not be forced to shower with the boys, you”re a sexist. If you punch a woman in the face, you’re a misogynistic monster, but if you come to that woman’s aid, you’re also a misogynistic monster.

In the madhouse of modern America, this makes sense, What’s wrong with you?

I was updating my fantasy football roster and saw this from Yahoo News. Not having read the article, but knowing Yahoo is run by liberal lunatics, I thought it would be worth some laughs. The author is someone I’ve never hear of not did I recognize his face. I entered his name into the nearest google machine, which I keep handy for such occasions. It turns out that Matt Bai is a leading voice in American politics. How about that?

Anyway, here is what the leading voice in American politics has to say about what republican voters want.

So I’ve been catching up on all the latest accumulation of Washington wisdom — or, at least, all the wisdom that I can accumulate in a Twitter feed — and now I totally get why no one other than Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or the reincarnated Pat Buchanan can possibly win the Republican nomination in 2016. (Actually, Pat’s alive and well — it’s just that he’s on the McLaughlin Group. My bad.)

You see, the party’s base voters — the ones who turn out to vote in primaries and caucuses — are too completely off the rails to nominate a mushball like Jeb Bush or Chris Christie! Get real — those guys can’t make it through the primaries talking about immigration reform and bipartisanship and blah-blah-blabbedy-blah. They’d get dismantled in the early states, just like that “maverick” John McCain and that liberal Mitt Romney!

Oh. Hang on.

Here’s what some commentators and conservative bloggers seem to be forgetting: Old-line, establishment Republicans have managed to wrest the nomination in every election since Ronald Reagan left office, and there’s really no reason to think it’s any less plausible in 2016. In fact, if a Bush or a Christie decides to go all in, the smart move probably isn’t to be more doctrinaire, but actually less so.

Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that Hillary Clinton is a candidate for president and her party’s presumed nominee in 2016. (And just so we’re clear, I’m not saying the granddaughter with whom she left the hospital, beaming, this week is actually a robot baby secretly manufactured in China to address certain deficiencies in “warmth” reflected in her internal polling numbers. That’s crazy. I’m not saying that.)

If that’s the case, most conservatives, fiscal or social, are going to be thinking about one thing as the primaries draw near, and it isn’t Common Core; it’s how to keep another Clinton out of the White House. Chances are activist favorites like Paul and Cruz will have to spend more time then trying to persuade voters that they’re electable than Christie will have to spend trying to convince them he’s merciless toward immigrants.

I got tired of the leading voice in American politics at this point. The only reason to post this is to point out that hive minded people like the leading voice in American politics have no idea what’s going on outside the hive. They also have a binary view of the world. There’s inside the hive (liberal democrats) and outside the hive (not liberal democrats). When they peak outside at the world through their telescope, they see a world of bad people (Tubby, Jebby) and really bad people (Cruz, Paul, Buchanan). The fact that there are vast differences between Tubby and Jebby, not to mention the gulf between Buchanan and Paul and Cruz, is lost on the leading voice in American politics.

There’s no fixing this. People who join cults, political or otherwise, don’t do so because they are searching for truth. They seek belonging and self-obliteration. Blurring the lines between themselves and the group, like zebra on the plains of Africa, is what brings them peace of mind. You can’t talk them out of their comfortable hiding place. Republicans and conservative who keep going on liberal TV shows and welcoming liberal advocates to cover their campaigns are delusional. The hive will never give them a fair hearing. They can’t. It’s not how a cult works.

I’m fond of calling the Republicans “GOP Inc.” and I like to throw around the term “Conservative Inc.” a lot too. The latter is easy to see. Michelle Malkin, a nice women I’m sure, has made a tidy living repeating mindless platitudes on TV. She’s just a spokesmodel for Conservative Inc. Her job is to move product. She does that through TV appearances, blogging, radio, twitter and so forth. Ann Coulter also churns out turgid books and columns aimed at selling Ann Coulter who also sells TV shows, radio spots, etc. The whole thing is a racket and a very lucrative one.

Another less obvious one is the consultancy rackets. Karl Rove has made himself millions dispensing bad advise to GOP candidates. The big money though is in selling hope so his army of fellow consultants can get paid by campaigns. Getting your buddies to tell National Review readers that Ed Gillespie has a prayer in his Senate race, means more money for Ed Gillespie to spend on consultants, ad buyers, pollsters, etc. It’s a lot like how the stock market used to work. They called it the churn.

This is an egregious example.

The new Quinnipiac poll of the New Jersey Senate contest shows Jeff Bell only 11 points down to Cory Booker, 51 to 40 percent, among likely voters. It goes without saying that a race can move a dozen points in the final five weeks of a campaign—especially when a little known challenger (but one who’s well-regarded by those who do know of him) is taking on a pro-Obama incumbent who’s barely above 50 percent in an anti-Obama, anti-incumbent year. (Obama’s approval in New Jersey is hovering around 41 percent.)

But take a further look at the poll results. Booker leads Bell, 51-40. Seventy-six percent of Booker supporters and 84 percent of Bell supporters say their mind is made up. Do the math. Among those whose mind is made up, Booker leads Bell 39 to 34 percent.

So Booker’s hard lead over Bell is a mere 5 points. He’ll outspend Bell over the next month. But money can’t buy you love. Sometimes, it can’t even buy you votes. If New Jersey flips in November, we’ll remember this Quinnipiac poll as Jeff Bell’s fire bell in the night.

First off, it is obvious click bait. I saw it on Drudge so it means a few million hits on The Weekly Standard site. Pitching an unwinnable race in New Jersey is not going to help Jeff Bell, but no one cares about him anyway. The real pitch is for the “wave” theory. “If Bell has a shot, imagine what your local GOP candidate could do with just a few dollars more from you!”

It’s all about moving product. Books, magazines, TV shows and the massive consultancy racket that finances the mandarin class.

I have never had a foreign policy or a world view on foreign policy. I’m very interested in the world and all of its weirdness, but I’ve never been all that interested in how our rulers interact with it. They are going to do whatever they want to do, regardless of what I have say about it. I try to keep up and read some trusted sources on the issues of the day, but I find most of it boring. The history of the Khorasani Arabs seems interesting, but I have no interest in why we may or may not be bombing them. My default assumption is our rulers are upset with them.

This column by Kevin Williamson brought that home to me as I read the comments section. I have opinions about our foreign adventures. I have some assumptions about what we should and should not do. I have some opinions on the people and nations of the world. But, I have no philosophy of foreign policy. I’m not even sure if I fall into any of the convenient buckets. Some of the comments in that NRO column strike me as insane. Others seem sort of reasonable. The last bit of his post is what strikes me as the most sensible starting place for my post.

If I thought that the United States could be Switzerland, I’d be tempted to import that foreign policy: Trade with everybody, get rich, and be armed to the teeth in case you have to keep the global riff-raff at bay. But the United States is not a tiny, landlocked, Alpine country noted for its excellence in banking and watch-making. But I am in the market for some creative thinking about how to use our economic weapons — from trade to our newly abundant energy supply to the fact that the elites of every country, including our bitterest rivals, want to send their children to college here — to supplement what we’re all calling “boots on the ground” now. I would not object to dispatching some serious green-eyeshade types to the Pentagon to figure out how it has come to pass that we’re still spending far too much money on defense while seemingly cutting all the wrong spending.

And while I sympathize with Jonah Goldberg’s view that “National Honor Matters,” I am very open to the prospect of simply buying off those who can be bought. While the prospect may rankle, if doing so means lower expenditures in treasure and blood both, consider Sun Tzu’s advice to those in his time who resisted the use of spies, considering the proposition either too expensive or dishonorable: Failing to make use of available advantages, “simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.”

What I am most in the market for is a foreign policy that marries a humane and prudent vision of our national interest to the operational competence necessary to ensure that we do not spend decade after decade scrambling to react to the mistakes of the immediate past. So far, I’m not buying what anybody’s selling.

It seems to me that before you can start shopping for a foreign policy, you might want to start thinking about the reality of the world, that foreign world for which we need a policy. “Humane and prudent vision of our national interest” sounds great, but you have to figure out what it means to have a humane policy while you’re figuring out the national interest. I think I could sum up my criticism of the ruling class approach to the world as ignorant, naïve and devoid of a sense of self. In other words, the reason the rulers have failed is their understanding of the world is wrong and their understanding of themselves is delusional.

So, where to start?

Celebrate Diversity: For a very long time now the Left has been chirping about the glories of diversity. It seems to be waning now, but that’s not because the world has suddenly become homogenous. The world is a big diverse place with all sorts of local weirdness. Most people are not like us. They don’t live like us and they don’t think like us. As much as it hurts modern America feelings, big chunks of the world don’t like us. Their reasons may be justified or just plain crazy, but there’s not much we can do about it. In all probability, trying to do something about is why they hate us.

Recognizing it is half the battle. The other half is the why. Despite what the Left has been preaching, science and observation tells us the people of the world are not all the same after all. Africa is as it is because it is full of Africans. It’s full of Africans because the humans there evolved in that place for 50,000 years. As crazy as this may sound, Africans are built for Africa, not Iceland. That means they are good at being Africans, but not very good at being an Icelander or a Texan. The same is true of China, Japan, Turkey, Iran, etc.

What we consider weird, these people consider normal. It is what they know. A thousand generations of Bantus have been nothing but Bantus. Thinking they will suddenly become Minnesotans just because we showed up is a good way to make enemies. Respecting people for what they are is not “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s the reality of the world. It is also the foundation for a “humane and prudent” understanding of the world.

We have a past: Anytime I participate in a debate over foreign policy, I get the sense that my fellow citizens have amnesia. I mentioned in that thread on NRO that we have been bombing the Fertile Crescent for two decades and people seem surprised by it. Desert Storm was launched in 1991. We actually started flying combat missions in 1990. That’s a long time to have been dropping ordinance on people. We try hard to only kill the bad people, but we have killed a lot of people who did not think they were all that bad. Maybe they were, maybe not.

It really does not matter if we think they got what they deserved. The people of the world have judged us on out deeds, good and bad. Our system of government means we get a change in leadership every eight years and that means we have reneged on a lot of deals, in addition to killing a lot of people. The Kurds know we are an unreliable partner, just as we know the French are duplicitous backstabbers. The point is we have a history and we have a reputation. Our national interest is served best when we can see ourselves through the eyes of the people on whom we doing the foreign policy.

Most of us just want to have normal lives: Back in the Bush years, the neoconservatives used to go on at length about national greatness and the new nationalism. The stripped down version is that a nation must act like we expect a good citizen to act in his community. It is a mix of moral obligation and self-regard. Tromping around the world doing good works will invigorate the populace to do even greater things at home and abroad. Foreign policy is not just another public policy. It is the basis for a moral philosophy that will define the nation and the citizens.

The trouble with this, in addition to be completely wrong, is that almost all people just want to live their lives. They don’t look to their rulers for a sense of identity. Americans, still mostly Anglo-Saxon, prefer it if their rulers leave them alone. Even the more hive minded around the world tend not to care very much for greatness, unless it puts money in their pocket. Since the national interest of any nation is those things that benefit the people of that nation, going around the world inviting trouble can never be part of a prudent and humane foreign policy.

I don’t know how you build a unified foreign policy off these three pillars, but I think it is a good place to start. Maybe there are other or better principles. I don’t know. The point is you can’t shop for a foreign policy unless you have some idea why one is better than the other. You have to have a starting point in order to make the necessary comparisons.

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I’m sympathetic to much of what libertarians have to say on economic matters. I think, for the most part, they have it right on regulation and taxes. Both are most likely to be used as levers so that one group can gain an advantage over the other. Like everything else about the state, they are necessary evils that should be kept to a minimum. On the other hand, libertarians have everything about human nature exactly backwards. Humans are not rational actors and we should never want to be. A land run by robots will be a bloodbath.

The thing about libertarians is they suffer from many of the same defects as liberals. Chief among them is their moral preening. There’s no better (worse?) example than Nick Gillespie from Reason Magazine. The ridiculous outfit is excusable as you have to have a gimmick on TV. The smug self-regard is another. I read this and think he must be an awful person to be around or have as a neighbor.

As one of the folks (along with Matt Welch, natch), who started the whole “Libertarian Moment” meme way back in 2008, it’s been interesting to see all the ways in which folks on the right and left get into such a lather at the very notion of expanding freedom and choice in many (though sadly not all) aspects of human activity.

Indeed, the brain freeze can get so intense that it turns occasionally smart people into mental defectives.

No one gets into a lather of expanding freedom and choice. That’s just signaling so the reader knows he is in the presence of the anointed. The fact is, hardly anyone pays much attention to libertarians. The reason is life is not a math problem nor is it an economic problem. Public debate is about what kind of society we wish to have and that means culture.

To wit, Damon Linker’s recent essay in The Week (a great magazine, by the way), which argues that the outcomes of U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Libya disprove libertarianism, in particular, the Hayekian principle of “spontaneous order.”

No shit. Linker is being super-cereal here, kids.

Nick is a 50-year old man. There’s simply no reason to write like a teenager. Putting that aside, the observable reality of the Middle East is, in fact, a perfect case against libertarianism. Remove a central authority with the willingness and ability to enforce the rules and you get Lord of the Flies with camels and swarthy guys firing Kalashnikovs. The same is true of Africa and South America. Big chunks of Eurasia too. It turns out that the only people capable of pulling off anything close to libertarianism are Anglo-Saxons.

But, that’s noticing and that leads to the great bogeyman that haunts the dreams of the libertarian weirdo – culture. Africans prefer a form of government that is based on neopatrimonialism. South Americans have always preferred autocratic rule, often by military men. Russians love their czars. Economic systems spring from culture. Culture and genetics dance the dance within the bounds of their geography to make the people we around the world. No words on a sheet of paper will change that natural realty. Libertarians have to reject that and embrace the same universalism of the Rousseau-ist cults. Otherwise, they may as well rejoin the Old Right.

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Amongst gun nuts, New Jersey has a shabby reputation. The gun laws there would make Hitler blush. It’s why Tubby has zero chance of winning the GOP nomination is 2016. Here’s a good example of the nutty gun laws in the state.

 A New Jersey man was arrested after police say he shot down a neighbor’s remote control drone.

According to investigators, officers with the Lower Township Police Department were called to a home in the 1000 block of Seashore Road on September 26th to investigate the report by a resident that his remote control helicopter (drone) was shot down. Investigators say the resident was taking aerial photographs of his friend’s home, which is under construction.

While doing so, the resident told police he heard several gunshots as he simultaneously lost control of the drone. After retrieving the drone, the resident observed multiple holes in it that were consistent with a shotgun blast. The resident called the Lower Township Police Department and when officers arrived, he directed them to the area where he heard the shots coming from.

After an investigation, police say they determined 32-year-old Russell J. Percenti allegedly fired the shots that brought down the drone. Percenti was arrested and charged with Possession of a Weapon for an Unlawful Purpose and Criminal Mischief. The shotgun used to shoot down the drone was seized by police. Percenti was released after posting bail.

First off, we will see more of this. Cheap flying gizmos with cameras means every dickhead in the neighborhood will have one. In the not too distant future some jerk-off will have a drone spying on the woman next door and her husband will throttle the guy. The reason the general IQ has fallen is modern technology has allowed the stupid to escape the natural consequences of their genetics. At the tail end of the technological revolution, assholes get to easily reach out and share their asshole-ishness with the rest of the world.

What gets gun nuts going is the homeowner who shot down the drone gets charged with “Possession of a Weapon for an Unlawful Purpose.” What in the hell is that? Unless they can prove the guy bought the gun so he could shoot down that idiots drone, they are making stuff up. This is why the cops are out of control. We have mountains of vague laws like this. Every day in the precinct, the chief says, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.

As a gun owner and a normal person, I’m fine with local ordinances about discharging firearms in residential areas. I’m also fine with the man pulling the trigger being held responsible for the deeds of the bullet. If the idiot flying the remote control copter wanted to sue, fine. Giving the shooter a fine for discharging a firearm is fine too. This is not a criminal matter. This is guy getting pissed off at his neighbor who is a raging dickhead. But, this is New Jersey.

All that aside, technology is about to invite a whole new layer of trouble in our lives. Assholes like the the guy flying the spy camera is going to become a big problem and people will inevitably demand a solution from the state. Frankly, I don’t know the right answer. If I see a remote control gizmo flying over my property or even over my head, I’m taking it down if I can do it. If I find the guy controlling it, he’s having a very bad day. I’m sure I’m not alone. Banning the sale and use of these things, including for police departments, is probably a good idea.

President Obama spoke at a Ku Klux Klan rally today.

Hello, CBC!  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Everybody, have a seat.  It is good to be with you here tonight.  If it wasn’t black tie I would have worn my tan suit.  (Laughter.)  I thought it looked good.  (Laughter.)

Thank you, Chaka, for that introduction.  Thanks to all of you for having me here this evening. I want to acknowledge the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Chairwoman Marcia Fudge for their outstanding work.  (Applause.)  Thank you, Shuanise Washington, and the CBC Foundation for doing so much to help our young people aim high and reach their potential.

Tonight, I want to begin by paying special tribute to a man with whom all of you have worked closely with; someone who served his country for nearly 40 years as a prosecutor, as a judge, and as Attorney General of the United States:  Mr. Eric Holder.  (Applause.)  Throughout his long career in public service, Eric has built a powerful legacy of making sure that equal justice under the law actually means something; that it applies to everybody — regardless of race, or gender, or religion, or color, creed, disability, sexual orientation.  He has been a great friend of mine.  He has been a faithful servant of the American people.  We will miss him badly.  (Applause.)

This year, we’ve been marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.  We honor giants like John Lewis — (applause); unsung heroines like Evelyn Lowery.  We honor the countless Americans, some who are in this room — black, white, students, scholars, preachers, housekeepers, patriots all, who, with their bare hands, reached into the well of our nation’s founding ideals and helped to nurture a more perfect union.  We’ve reminded ourselves that progress is not just absorbing what has been done — it’s advancing what’s left undone.

Even before President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, even as the debate dragged on in the Senate, he was already challenging America to do more and march further, to build a Great Society — one, Johnson said, “where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.  Where no man who wants work will fail to find it.  Where no citizen will be barred from any door because of his birthplace or his color or his church.  Where peace and security is common among neighbors and possible among nations.”  “This is the world that waits for you,” he said.  “Reach out for it now.  Join the fight to finish the unfinished work.”  To finish the unfinished work.

America has made stunning progress since that time, over the past 50 years — even over the past five years.  But it is the unfinished work that drives us forward.

Some of our unfinished work lies beyond our borders.  America is leading the effort to rally the world against Russian aggression in Ukraine.  America is leading the fight to contain and combat Ebola in Africa.  America is building and leading the coalition that will degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.  As Americans, we are leading, and we don’t shy away from these responsibilities; we welcome them.  (Applause.)  That’s what America does.  And we are grateful to the men and women in uniform who put themselves in harm’s way in service of the country that we all love.  (Applause.)

So we’ve got unfinished work overseas, but we’ve got some unfinished work right here at home.  (Applause.)  After the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, our businesses have now created 10 million new jobs over the last 54 months.  This is the longest uninterrupted stretch of job growth in our history.  (Applause.)  In our history.  But we understand our work is not done until we get the kind of job creation that means everybody who wants work can a find job.

We’ve done some work on health care, too.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed.  Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we’ve seen a 26 percent decline in the uninsured rate in America.  (Applause.)  African Americans have seen a 30 percent decline.  And, by the way, the cost of health care isn’t going up as fast anymore either.  Everybody was predicting this was all going to be so expensive.  We’ve saved $800 billion — (applause) — in Medicare because of the work that we’ve done — slowing the cost, improving quality, and improving access.  Despite unyielding opposition, this change has happened just in the last couple years.

But we know our work is not yet done until we get into more communities, help more uninsured folks get covered, especially in those states where the governors aren’t being quite as cooperative as we’d like them to be.  (Applause.)  You know who you are.  It always puzzles me when you decide to take a stand to make sure poor folks in your state can’t get health insurance even though it doesn’t cost you a dime.  That doesn’t make much sense to me, but I won’t go on on that topic.  (Applause.)  We’ve got more work to do.

It’s easy to take a stand when you’ve got health insurance.  (Laughter and applause.)  I’m going off script now, but — (laughter) — that’s what happens at the CBC.

Our high school graduation rate is at a record high, the dropout rate is falling, more young people are earning college degrees than ever before.  Last year, the number of children living in poverty fell by 1.4 million — the largest decline since 1966.  (Applause.)  Since I took office, the overall crime rate and the overall incarceration rate has gone down by about 10 percent.  That’s the first time they’ve declined at the same time in more than 40 years.  Fewer folks in jail.  Crime still going down.  (Applause.)

But our work is not done when too many children live in crumbling neighborhoods, cycling through substandard schools, traumatized by daily violence.  Our work is not done when working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate, even as corporate profits soar; when African-American unemployment is still twice as high as white unemployment; when income inequality, on the rise for decades, continues to hold back hardworking communities, especially communities of color.  We’ve got unfinished work.  And we know what to do.  That’s the worst part — we know what to do. 

We know we’ve got to invest in infrastructure, and manufacturing, and research and development that creates new jobs.  We’ve got to keep rebuilding a middle class economy with ladders of opportunity, so that hard work pays off and you see higher wages and higher incomes, and fair pay for women doing the same work as men, and workplace flexibility for parents in case a child gets sick or a parent needs some help.  (Applause.)  We’ve got to build more Promise Zones partnerships to support local revitalization of hard-hit communities.  We’ve got to keep investing in early education.  We want to bring preschool to every four-year-old in this country.  (Applause.)  And we want every child to have an excellent teacher.  And we want to invest in our community colleges and expand Pell Grants for more students.  And I’m going to keep working with you to make college more affordable.  Because every child in America, no matter who she is, no matter where she’s born, no matter how much money her parents have, ought to be able to fulfill her God-given potential.  That’s what we believe.  (Applause.)

So I just want everybody to understand — we have made enormous progress.  There’s almost no economic measure by which we are not better off than when I took office.  (Applause.)  Unemployment down.  Deficits down.  Uninsured down.  Poverty down.  Energy production up.  Manufacturing back.  Auto industry back.  But — and I just list these things just so if you have a discussion with one of your friends — (laughter) — and they’re confused.  Stock market up.  Corporate balance sheet strong.  In fact, the folks who are doing the best, they’re the ones who complain the most.  (Laughter and applause.)  So you can just point these things out.

But we still have to close these opportunity gaps.  And we have to close the justice gap — how justice is applied, but also how it is perceived, how it is experienced.  (Applause.)  Eric Holder understands this.  (Applause.)  That’s what we saw in Ferguson this summer, when Michael Brown was killed and a community was divided.  We know that the unrest continues.   And Eric spent some time with the residents and police of Ferguson, and the Department of Justice has indicated that its civil rights investigation is ongoing.

Now, I won’t comment on the investigation.  I know that Michael’s family is here tonight.  (Applause.)  I know that nothing any of us can say can ease the grief of losing a child so soon.  But the anger and the emotion that followed his death awakened our nation once again to the reality that people in this room have long understood, which is, in too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement.

Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement, guilty of walking while black, or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.  We know that, statistically, in everything from enforcing drug policy to applying the death penalty to pulling people over, there are significant racial disparities.  That’s just the statistics.  One recent poll showed that the majority of Americans think the criminal justice system doesn’t treat people of all races equally.  Think about that.  That’s not just blacks, not just Latinos or Asians or Native Americans saying things may not be unfair.  That’s most Americans.

Draw whatever conclusions you like.

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