Watching it Burn

Oakland is having a bit of a forehead smacking, "why the hell didn't I see this coming" moment. Notice how that article is suspiciously short in info on how the police force got that low? You see, two years ago the city council decided that the best way to trim the budget was to cut 80 officers off of the force, which was a little more than 10% of the standing force. Then the police announced that they wouldn't respond to burglary calls anymore.

Now, they are reaping what they have sown. Folks, California is a study in how not to manage a government, or how to help the people. Let's have some of the strictest gun laws in the United States, gut the police force, and then tell the honest citizens not to defend themselves. Let's also tax the hell out of the people, and then run the government into debt to the tune of at least $165 Billion, and perhaps as much as $335 billion for giggles. When Kipling wrote "The Islanders", he was writing about Britain, but he might as well have been talking the folk in California.

Thankfully, due to the grace of all-powerful Atheismo, I wasn't born in California. If I woke up tomorrow in California, and was informed that I now live there, I'd promptly pack my shit and leave. This is right after salting and burning the land I had slept on.

Kinda like this, except with 100% more intent.

 

I once spent a night by a lake up in the mountains, the temperature was about 20 degrees F and the wind was coming in directly off the lake. I had a quarter inch of ice built up on the windward side of my tent. I was shivering and bordering on hypothermia the entire night, unable to sleep, and I spent half of the night not wanting to get out of the relative warmth of my sleeping bag in order to urinate. My batteries in my flashlight had died while putting up the tent, so I spent the entire night pitting my will to endure against the time it would take for the sun to eventually rise enough to have light to start a fire. I was cold, miserable, tired, and the night felt endless. It was one of the most physically uncomfortable experiences of my life. I'd rather live through that night everyday for the rest of my life than to live in California. Period.
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Business Insider says that the new NDAA makes indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without due process easier. I'm not really surprised.