The VA Scandal as an Example of Why Single Payer Doesn't Work

It was not all that long ago that leftists were holding out the VA as a shining example of how successful a government operated, single-payer healthcare system can be in America.

Now, as those with half a brain suspected all along, the VA has been exposed to be nothing more than a rotten bureaucracy, with more people working to protect and expand that bureaucracy than to actually provide the service that the bureaucracy was intended to provide. 

They attempt to scoff and dismiss this as a faux-scandal, and claim that the people drumming on this are just playing politics and trying to gain political ground by pointing it out.  I have no doubt that many of the people bringing this to light have exactly that intent in doing so, and would be participating in the cover up, themselves, had they been in power when the scandal broke, but that is entirely irrelevant.

People died because VA executives were more interested in lying about long wait times so that they could make bonus money, than they were in actually, you know, FIXING THE PROBLEM WITH THE WAIT TIMES. 

The problem with single payer, government run systems is that the left sees them as a paragon of virtue, not corrupted by the drive for profit like private healthcare systems.  They are completely blind to the fact that:

1. 1.       Government cannot be a paragon of virtue any more than private industry, and in fact, does not have any driver to be such, other than the altruism of the people running the show.  If you’re relying on the altruism of people who have risen to the top of a government bureaucracy to ensure the virtue of your organization, then you will find, invariably, that that organization will not be virtuous. 
2.  
3. 2.       The same drivers that exist to drive a private corporation to profit, exist in a government bureaucracy in the form of cost cutting and budget management.  When you reward your top executives with bonus pay to make key performance indicator goals, you drive them to make those goals in any way they can in the same way that profit supposedly drives the same in private industry.  In private industry, however, the method to make those goals cannot be cutting services to clients, because they will simply go elsewhere, and the goals will not be met.  In Single payer, the method to make those goals is almost invariably cutting services to clients, because the driver of competition does not exist, and the primary objective of any bureaucrat is to protect and expand the bureaucracy at all costs, not to provide services.  The only way to avoid this is to rely on whistleblowers and the virtue of top executives.  Neither of those are good options, as proven by this VA scandal, where whistleblowers were ignored, and top executives were not virtuous.  40 people died waiting for services at just one VA hospital, while the bureaucrats lied on paperwork in order to hide the long wait times and still get their bonuses. 
4.  
5. 3.       A single payer system denies the user any recourse.  Similar to any other dealing with the government, including, for instance, the Department of Motor Vehicles, you have no other option.  You encounter surly, inefficient, slow service at the DMV, and when you complain about it, I’ve always found the response a refreshing bit of honesty.  Where else are you going to go?  What are you going  to do about it?  You HAVE to deal with us.  You have no other choice.  Now sit down in that chair right there and wait for your number, plebe.  The VA scandal has shown us that this is how it will be with government run medical services, also.  Where else are you going to go?  We don’t honestly give two hot shits about your “health problems.”  Shut up and we’ll get to you when we feel like it.  I’ve got paperwork to fill out to make sure I get my bonus.  Saving you gains me nothing.  This form gains me an additional 20% of my salary.  So sit down, and shut up, and if I’m lucky, you’ll die before I have to deal with you. 

This VA scandal is a perfect example of why single payer systems are cruelty defined.  The VA was held up as a paragon of the single-payer model only a paltry few months ago.  I agree.  It IS the model of single payer, by which we should all judge such a system.  It is exactly the paragon of the system that they tout.  Wait times and death by uncaring bureaucracy.  Cutting wait times by faking paperwork instead of actually cutting wait times.  Allowing people to die – to literally die – without care in order to protect and expand your bureaucracy, and your bonus check. 

To those of us with free-thinking minds, this is the logical result of putting the government in charge of health care.  To those among us who have consumed the “government uber alles” koolaid, this is a massive blow to their worldview, and I would expect them to attempt in any way possible to minimize the true impact of this scandal.  

OMG, You Guys, I'm Like, So Totes Racist and Stuff!

So NPR says that maybe, just MAYBE, racism might not be the ONLY reason that people dislike President Obama.  Holy fucking shit….

Let’s see…

He’s participated in turning an economic downturn into a decade-long recession.

He’s extra-judicially murdered American citizens.

He’s spoken down to me at every opportunity that he could find, telling me that I’m stupid, bitter, idiotic, angry, and flawed, all while explaining to me that my decision to work hard and become successful was not my doing, but the doing of his benevolent government that allowed me to be such, and that other people are owed their “fair share” of what I’ve earned for my family.

He’s given untold billions of dollars of your and my money to bankers that were little more than crooks, and failed business models in order to prop up his political allies, against our will and all the while telling us to shut up and take our medicine. 

He’s smuggled guns to Mexican gangsters, resulting in his becoming an accessory to the murder of an American LEO by his own laws, and told us that we were being childish for being upset about that.

He’s ignored attacks on American soil, and allowed American citizens and Marines to die on American soil, defending American soil, because actually doing something to help them would have hurt his re-election campaign. 

He has become insanely wealthy during his tenure as President, and at the same time, lectured me ad nauseum about how cruel and inhumane I am for not wanting to give away my hard earned wealth to take care of the indolent and stupid, all while his own family members starve in Africa and his aunt lives in poverty, on welfare, as illegal immigrant in the US. 

He has taken every opportunity that he can to whittle away at our Constitutional Rights, including those of security in our own possessions, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to trial and representation at trial, the 10^th amendment in its entirety….  I will not go on, but I don’t have the urge or the energy to write it all out.  Maybe commenters can help with a few more…

But yeah, really, the only reason I dislike him is totes because he’s black, you guys.  I’m racerist as fuck.  And stuff.    

I know, I know…  BUT BUSH DID SOME OF THOSE THINGS, TOO!!!! 

Yeah, I didn’t really like him, either…  So what does that make me?  A white, anglo-saxon, protestant male hater? 

Or just a person who disagrees with his President’s actions while in office?  

More on Elliot, the Coward.

Elliot was a coward.  He was a pathetic excuse for a man.  He had reasonably good looks, money, and came from a somewhat well-known family, and was still a virgin at 20 something, despite his best efforts.  His failure was that of a man too solipsistic to recognize that other people are more than just actors in his own personal drama.  He couldn’t understand why people didn’t like him, because he had no concept of what it meant to be likeable. 

Like so many other things in life, getting people to do things for you, and act in the way that you want them to act is more often an exercise in changing YOURSELF than it is manipulating those around you.  If you want to be valued, be valuable.  If you want to be liked, be likeable.  If you want to get fucked, be fuckable. 

Feminists claim that PUAs drove him insane.  PUAs claim that his lack of “game” drove him insane.

My guess is that his insanity is what drove him insane.  There was something wrong in his head, that kept him from recognizing that very simple truth.  But I also blame the lies told to us by feminism to a large extent.   If his insanity was pre-existing, his inability to reconcile between the lies he was told as to how things are, and the actual reality of things was certainly a trigger.   

It was the cognitive dissonance created in his head when he lived exactly the life that feminists wanted him to live – that of an emasculated, wussified, compliant white knight “nice guy” – and was rejected by women right and left because what feminism says women want, and what they actually WANT, are two different things. 

He could not wrap his diseased little brain around the fact that feminism is a lie, and always will be a lie, and that women who buy into the feminist line are lying to themselves as much as they are lying to anyone. 

A woman who is not a lesbian will want to have a relationship with a man.  The things that describe Elliot:

Solipsistic, selfish, weak, emasculated, whiney, compliant, groveling, bitter… the list goes on and on, but the point is that these things, which describe Elliot as a person? 

None of those things fall within the definition of a man. 

I don’t subscribe to the red pill/blue pill comparison that many men’s rights advocates use, mainly because by their definition I’ve always been red pill, and never understood how a person could so fully believe the lies that they are told daily that it defines their entire reality, but people like Elliot make me think that maybe they are on to something. Elliot lived the very definition of the blue pill life.  He allowed people to lie to him, and he believed those lies.  He was unwilling to see the truth through those lies, and as soon as the truth of reality had deviated so far from the lies that he thought defined reality that he could no longer explain it away, his entire view of the world fell down around him.

Feminism told him what women want, and it was a lie.  When following that direction failed demonstrably, and the people acting in exactly the opposite manner were achieving the result that he sought, instead of looking inward and discovering that he’d been lied to, he lashed out because “people weren’t acting the way they were supposed to.”  As if such a thing could ever exist.  People are people.  They act how they want to, not how they’re “supposed to.”  Always have. Welcome to Earth, motherfucker. 

Red pill/blue pill, indeed.    

The Saga Continues, and We Still Haven't Learned...

Judgy Bitch wrote up a good article on the shootings inCalifornia, more or less excoriating the feminist crowd for focusing on the women killed, and the misogyny in the manifesto written by the killer, thus ignoring the fact that men were also killed. The manifesto was also full of misandry, and basically, the killer was an unhinged nutbag, equal-opportunity hater, who was as angry at women for not doing his bidding as he was at men for not doing the same.

More specifically, the men that he was angry at seemed to be the much maligned PUAs (pick up artists).  It was a good article, full of good information, and it was specifically written from a standpoint of speaking out against the feminist reaction.    

I would like to take a wider view of the incident. 

Starting off, I want to make one thing clear:  the only person to blame for this is the person who committed the act.  Period.  The MHRM is not to blame.  PUAs are not to blame.  Feminism is not to blame.  No one is to blame here, save Elliot, the pathetic, cowardly failure of a man who sought fame through death and destruction, because he was impotent in his efforts to seek it by any other means. 

Second, that being said, there were definitely influences that caused Elliot to veer off the path of sanity.  No one knows for sure what the leading factors were (no one really understands crazy the way that crazy people understand it), but his own words speak to his anger about not being able to get women to respond to him in a way that he liked.  His writing seemed to be that of a supremely solipsistic person; one who saw all of the other people on Earth as bit actors in his own, personal drama.  The problems started when the bit actors started giving the wrong lines, and it drove him off the deep end. 

He had no idea how to act with people.  None, whatsoever.  He couldn’t fathom how he could possibly not attract a woman, and blamed women for not being attracted to him, and PUAs for taking all the women who might be.  But the problem was that his solipsism disallowed him to turn his gaze inward to understand what was turning people off to him.  My father used to have an apt saying, which was that if everyone is being mean to you, perhaps the problem is not everyone, but rather, you.    

As Tam to aptly put it over at her place, like many PUAs, he thought if he just put his tokens in the slot, and started doing the proper dance and twisting the right knobs, that the pinball machines that he saw women as, would dispense a high score and a bit of pussy at the end of the game.  What he had no concept of was the fact that women are not computer games, and there are no “cheat codes” that you can enter to make the game do as you please, as the PUAs so often claim.  The act of following the formula that the PUAs gave him made him all the more creepy. 

He was creepy and un-fuckable, and instead of recognizing that HE was the problem, he just kept entering the cheat codes that the PUAs told him would work, without recognizing that the PUA cheat codes reduce women to machines with glitches that can be exploited to make them do your bidding, instead of sentient, self-aware individuals with unique likes, dislikes, and preferences that cannot be “hacked” in the manner that PUAs claim they can be.  He could not accept that HE was the problem, and so he lashed out. 

He lashed out at the PUAs that “lied” to him.  He lashed out at the women who “denied” him, and he lashed out violently, because he knew that the news media, and people like us, would finally recognize his torture and speak about it ad nauseum for the next 6 weeks.  He would finally be somebody. 

I’m causing this.  You’re causing this.  We’re all perpetuating a system of withdrawal and temporary infamy that is particularly attractive to these unhinged monsters, because they get to be famous for being unhinged monsters.  They spent their entire lives failing at everything that they touched, and finally, at the end, the only thing that they can do to get the recognition that they KNOW they deserve is to follow a specific formula:

Get a weapon.  Write a manifesto.  Kill people.  Kill yourself.  Be famous.  Find release. 

Elliot is to blame for HIS actions, but we’re all to blame for the next guy who will inevitably do this again, because we’re perpetuating the cycle by even talking about it. 

Finally, I would like to point out that every single idea had by the Connecticut state legislature after Sandy Hook, including the magazine capacity restrictions, the various ban on aesthetic qualities of certain weapons, the registrations, and so forth, were in place in California, and still, in spite of that, this shootings, and hundreds of others, occur in California regularly.  Three of the victims in this murder spree were killed with a knife.  There is no feasible way that this could possibly have been prevented by any of the “common sense” gun control measures being proposed by the sundry politicians, who will certainly use this to gain political ground in their fight for control over the people’s right to keep and bear arms, and I know this for a fact because all of these measures are already in place in California.  The killer could have just used a knife.  

Memorial Day

I’m heading for the salt water again over Memorial Day Weekend.  Namely, the San Juan Islands, in the inland waterways of Washington State and British Columbia. 

I’ve been there before.  Several times as a boy, my Dad chartered a friend’s boat to take us Salmon fishing in the islands, and for Mrs. Goober’s and my 10 year anniversary last September, I took our boat out there and spent the weekend whale watching and touring the islands. 

This will be my first time fishing out of my boat in the San Juan’s.  I’ve boated there before in my boat, and I’ve fished there before in someone else’s boat, but never fished out of my boat. 

I’m taking a group of friends with me who are relying on my fishing knowledge to catch us some fish.  We’re mainly headed out for Ling Cod, but if we limit early enough on lings, we’ll probably go after halibut on the banks in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Weather permitting, of course.  Checking the buoy station on Hein Bank shows that 15 foot waves are not uncommon out there.  When the wave height is ¾’s your boat’s length, it’s time to go in.   

More importantly, though, while doing whatever it is that you're planning on doing over Memorial Day, stop for a while to think about why we have this holiday.  Think about the young men who died because their countrymen asked or demanded that they do so.  Think about the causes.  

Think about the bravery that these young men showed, standing against men that would maim and kill them, because we asked them to.  Or coerced them to, under threat of imprisonment and social ostracism.  

Consider the young boy, who, in a world without anti-biotics or any reasonable surgical capability, stood his ground against a redcoat volley, so that our country could exist.  For the unlucky one, who did not survive, is why this holiday exists.   

Do not forget the lions who were lead into battle by jackasses in Europe, using century-old infantry techniques against modern military technology, who were slaughtered wholesale, because we asked them to be.  

Or the men who faced terrible odds, but who climbed into their bombers, anyway, so that they could destroy darkness before it descended on this Earth, because we asked them to do so.  

Don't forget why we celebrate.  Yes, go fishing.  Go camping.  Stand before an assembly and give a speech on why men are evil and women are better.  Agitate for the socialization of our society, and the subjugation of every person in it.  Work in your yard with an extra day off work, and enjoy yourself, but understand WHY you are able to do these things; it's because generations of young men died, screaming in the bloody mud, to bring you the peace that you now enjoy.  

Grammar Nazi Stuff

I heard something interesting the other day. 

The whole "don't end a sentence with a preposition" thing was created by a dude who just wanted English, which was considered a sort of "low" language back in the day, to be more like Latin (and therefore mooch off of it's prestige). 

Essentially, it isn't really a rule of the English language, just something sumdood added back in the day that doesn't really work for English that well, with the stated goal being entirely irrelevant in today's world. 

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/grammar-myths-prepositions/ 

I say this not be a semantic busy-body, but because I honestly did not know that the rule about ending sentences with prepositions was a total myth that has perpetuated itself for some damn reason and will not go away. 

Also, splitting infinitives is totally cool, too. 

That, and starting sentences with "but" and "and" being verboten, which was another thing that was drummed into my brain in grammar school, is totally false

Life Gets in the Way

Posting has been a little light, I know.  Even for me. 

It’s been a little crazy around here for a bit.  Ever since the 3^rd of April when my heart decided to stop working right and start being a total fuckhead. 

Since then, I’ve been taking blood thinners, and some drugs to calm and normalize heart rhythms to keep me from stroking out.  I guess arrhythmia are bad about throwing clots, which was something I did not know until early last month.  Apparently, some 25 to 30 percent of strokes are caused by underlying heart arrhythmia.  So, yeah, I’m getting pretty good at bleeding, since it wouldn’t be like me to slow the hell down and be careful.  Remodeling the bathroom right now, and also getting the 4-wheelers ready for a poker ride this weekend.  Pounding nails and turning wrenches always leads to little cuts and scrapes, and mother, do they ever bleed when you’re taking blood thinners. 

"Xarelto!  So that you can bleed like a motherfucker out of a pin prick!
Ask your doctor today!"

Turns out that the arrhythmia that I have is very commonly caused by sleep apnea, so they sent me in for a sleep study, and turns out that I has it.  Apparently my breathing gets very shallow and irregular several times a night, causing my blood O2 levels to drop, which panics my brain, who shoots me with a dose of adrenaline, causes my heart to race like a formula one engine, until my blood O2 goes back up enough to calm it down, causing my breathing to get shallow and irregular until I get the adrenaline again.  Multiple times a night.  One can understand, when imagining it that way, why this has been hard on the Gooberticker. 

"Heh-heh, you just said 'hard on'!"

So Monday night I started CPAP therapy to fix the “shallow and irregular” part of my nighttime breathing.  It involves a mask that goes over my mouth and nose and a hose attached to a very fancy (read, fucking EXPENSIVE), humidifier-enhanced air compressor that forces compressed air down my lazy, stupid collapsed gullet and keeps my breathing from doing that stupid shit that causes me to slowly and painfully die over a period of years. 

All this, and I still have follow-ups, and the possibility of heart surgery later on down the road.  The total cost of this has already been enough to buy a new jet boat – glad I have good health insurance.  

"Mr. Goober, we just saved your life.  That will be ALL OF THE MONEY, EVER!"

Moar Fanboi!

To continue my squealing fan-girl man-love affair with Maynard James Keenan, here is a song that I played for Mini-Goob, my three year old daughter, while driving home from her grandparent’s house last night. 

She’s big into Disney princesses, because girl. 

So when she heard the words “Sleeping Beauty” in the opening verse, she demanded I play it again and again.  She’d never heard this song before.  She loved it.  She spent all morning doing her level best, in her toneless, pixy three year old voice, to sing every word she could remember, and made some up as she went along. 

The song, itself, is a good example of Maynard’s musical span – he can go from doing the best “metal scream” you’ve ever heard in songs like “Ticks and Leaches” to singing songs like this, where he sings of his experiences while sitting by the bedside of his dying mother while she was in a coma; the titular “Sleeping Beauty”.

Understanding that he’s speaking from personal experience, as he watched his mother die, lyrics like this have so much more meaning:

“Drunk on ego,

Truly thought I could make it right

If I kissed you one more time to

Help you face the nightmare

But you’re far too poisoned for me

Such a fool to think that I could wake you from your slumber

That I could magically heal you

Sleeping beauty”

In that one verse, he wields the core elements of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty,” with the magic of true love’s kiss healing all, mixed with the disappointment that reality is not a fairy tale, and the understanding of the futility of attempting to cheat death. 

What other artist is brave enough to put that sort of personal depth into his music, to share with the world? 

Delusional

I believe I can cure it all for you, dear
Coax or trick or drive or
drag the demons from you
Make it right for you sleeping beauty
Truly thought
I can magically heal you

You're far beyond a visible sign of your awakening
Failing miserably to rescue

Sleeping Beauty

Drunk on ego
Truly thought I could make it right
If I kissed you one more time to
Help you face the nightmare
But you're far too poisoned for me
Such a fool to think that I can wake you from your slumber
That I could actually heal you..

Sleeping Beauty
Poisoned and hopeless
You're far beyond a visible sign of your awakening
Failing miserably to find a way to comfort you

Far beyond a visible sign of your awakening
And hiding from some poisoned memory

Poisoned and hopeless
Sleeping Beauty

Tommy, Seriously, 18 Months is Not 2 Years

The more cynical side of me always thought that the claims about Benghazi being a spontaneous protest against an offensive internet video, as opposed to a coordinated terrorist attack (which it was) were designed specifically so that the question could be delayed long enough to get past the elections cycle, and that by the time the truth actually came to light, that it would have been long enough to declare it “old news.” 

Funny, that.

Seems sort of odd that an administration that still blames everything that is wrong with our nation on the Bush Administration (which left office 6 years ago, last I checked) thinks that something that happened 18 months ago is “old news.” 

By the way, Tommy, this didn't happen "two years ago," dude (to use your words).  Math is hard, I know.  But it seems like last semester when you were still in High School you should have learned about how many months are in a year, and how to count to 24, right?  

By the way, Joel makes a good point here - the Office of the President is kind of a prestigious one.  This means that you could, if you so desired, surround yourself with super-competent, super-smart people.  Really, you'd have your pick of the best of the best, any time you wanted.  So how is it that Tommy Vietor, who appears to be a crude, amateurish douchbro that speaks like he graduated from High School last year and wouldn't know professionalism if it bit both his ass cheeks is in such a prestigious position in the Administration?

I loved the 7 points at the end of the Washington Post Article, because they sort of answer that last question.  So much so that I’ve copied and pasted them here.  They made me smile. 

1. An error like Benghazi happens because multiple people have a hyper-partisan mindset that submerges everything to politics.

2. The staff reflects the boss. If the staff is rude, immature and callous, the boss almost invariably is.

3. The entire purpose of the video story and the delay in turning over documents was to get far enough past the events that someone like Vietor could say, “Old news.”

4. The Obama team doesn’t seem to associate the presidency with a particular level of decorum. Wear jeans. Put your feet up on the desk. Insult opponents. Use coarse language. (The president’s insightful analysis of the House budget was that it was a “stinkburger.”) When such arrogance pervades, mistakes — small and large — happen.

5. The attitude that hostile questioning is illegitimate breeds insularity and groupthink. (How dare they challenge my version of events!)

6.  A president is not the prisoner of bad staff. He hired the staff for a reason. He doesn’t fire them (e.g. Jay Carney) for a reason. They are doing what he wants.

7. It is never just one guy. Vietor’s behavior is hardly unique among current and former Obama staffers. Carney routinely insults the press, “dissembles” (as Jake Tapper described his “It’s not about Benghazi” excuse)

This Will End Badly, and They'll Be Lucky to Live Through it.

Those of you who are unfortunate enough to read my blog regularly will remember this closing statement in my estimation of “la affaire Bundy”. 

But I don’t think that this is over.  I don’t think it is over by a mile.  The first pitched battle was won by the protestors, but the government won’t let this stand.  They CAN’T let it stand.  What message does it send that they can be driven off their own land by armed protestors?  So they’ll be back, and once again in the long history of the west, blood will almost certainly be spilled over grazing rights.  There is nothing new here.  There is nothing new under the sun. 

I stand by my statement even more so now that I see this:  

My constituents have expressed concern that members of these armed militia groups:

1.      Have set up checkpoints where residents are required to prove they live in the area before being allowed to pass;

 2.  Have established a persistent presence along federal highways and state and county roads; 

3. Have established an armed presence in or around community areas including local churches, school, and other community locations.

Emphasis mine.  This is from a letter sent by Representative Steven Horsford to the local Sheriff’s office.  This letter is one of the singularly most ominous things I’ve ever read coming from an elected representative of our good country, because of what it says between the lines. 

What it says is that the federal government is working hard to manufacture a case to go back into Nevada, guns hot, just like I wrote that I feared that they would.  Because they can’t let this stand, folks.  They absolutely, positively can NOT let this stand.  Their arrogance and vanity will not allow for a group of mere peons to run them off their own land, and it is made worse by the fact that, right up until they start shooting, they are 100%, indisputably in the right in this situation. 

The reason that I say “manufacture” is because this letter from this representative is literally the only source of this accusation of militia types setting up checkpoints on the highways.  There is nothing on social media.  Nothing in the blogs.  Not one single annoyed or scared Nevada resident went on their Facebook page and wrote a screed about how they were stopped by a couple of gun-toting Cletii and interrogated about their residency status and asked for their papers.  The people of Nevada would not stand for this.  Someone would have started an incident by now.

Besides, this claim shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the people that we’re dealing with here.  Warren Myers writes about his “ideological Turing test” at his blog, and it is a fantastic point.

This gets me back to the notion I wrote about a while ago about people relying on their allies to tell them everything they need to know about their opponent's position, without ever actually listening to the opponents.

This topic comes up in the blogosphere from time to time, often framed as being able to pass an ideological Turing test.  Can, say, a Republican write a defense of the minimum wage that a reader of the Daily Kos would accept, or will it just come out sounding like a straw man?  

Essentially, he says that unless you can state your opponent’s position in a manner that he would agree with what you said as being his position, that you’re arguing from ignorance.  

I think what we’re seeing here is a leftist attempt to paint these right-wing militia types with the broad brush of their prejudices against conservatives, instead of understanding that these people are not conservatives at all.  The leftists driving this narrative have failed their ideological Turing test because they want to paint these “threepers” and “oath keepers” as their ideal bigoted, racist conservative, making the case that as soon as they get control of an area, they immediately start searching for undocumented brown people, when nothing could be further from the truth. 

This fails to understand that doing so would be a massive violation of several of the BIG TEN Amendments of the Constitution, which would be anathema to these essentially libertarian militia groups.  These are groups that would be more likely to take up arms against the Feds for setting up immigration checkpoints, than they would be to support the Feds doing such a thing, much less do it themselves.  The leftists driving this narrative are failing their ideological Turing test because they cannot even come close to stating their opponent’s position.  They just assume their cartoonish version of “brown people hating” conservatives fits everyone that disagrees with them, and paint them all with that broad brush. 

So as soon as I heard about this checkpoint thing, I smelled a rat. 

There is no evidence at all that this is happening, other than this letter, written by an elected official of our Federal Government. 

In this connected day and age, there would be some other source for this than just this letter.  Someone would have blogged about it.  Local news would have reported it.  Facebook would be alive with it.  SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, would have pitched a fit about this, but when you search it on the internet, you get a big huge pile of nothing (other than links to articles about this letter). 

They are positioning for the final strike.  People are fixing to die over this, and what an absolute travesty that will be: 

All over one racist rancher, with the shittiest understanding of property law that I’ve ever seen, who thinks he should have ownership over his landlord’s property because “reasons,” who managed to convince half the country that he had a valid cause – one worth dying over – and I am still convinced that that is exactly what is fixing to happen.   The Feds are starting to manufacture a case to go back in there, not over cattle, or land, or disputed grazing rights, but over violations of citizen civil liberties, and they will go in loaded for bear.

Men are about to die here.  Pay attention.  This is a very good example of “what not to do.” 

 I can only hope that this time, when the Feds go blazing in and start killing people, that the American Public actually gives a shit this time, instead of yawning and going back to sleep, like they did after Waco and Ruby Ridge. 

Not that these militia folk out there are the poster boys for the cause of freedom, right, and good.  They aren’t.  They are in the wrong, big time.  But they don’t deserve to get killed for it, and I fear that is exactly what’s going to happen.