By Nathan Barton

Good morning!  On this lovely Saturday, the Home Front is just really going through convulsions, as people are really upset and worried.

We aren’t supposed to, of course: guvmint will take care of us really, really nicely, from Ebola and the Caliphate and pollution and those bad guys down the street that want to shoot us up.  They really really WILL take care of us.  Really.

Like this.  Sure it was: ‘Flaw’ in Electronic Health Record Blamed for Medical Error Involving Ebola Patient.  This is the same wonderful system that is supposed to make sure that our medical records do NOT get lost, and that all our data is available when we need it.  Oh, yes, I’ve already been through a couple of examples of that, let me tell you.

Actually, some reporters at the White House today started asking real questions, like, “IF this is all under control, why are you having this press conference to warn us about everything?” and “If everything is working the way it is supposed to and we don’t have to worry, how did this guy from Liberia get to Texas in the first place and walk out of the hospital and expose another hundred people?”  And “What is really going on?”  Unfortunately, all they got is platitudes and “we know what we are doing.”  The talk shows were pretty much wall-to-wall Ebola today, and do you really blame them?  Especially when it turns out that the Secret Service has just revealed ANOTHER breach of security?

Mama’s Note: Do remember that Ebola is spread only through contact with blood and body fluids. Casual contact will not spread it, and taking care not to expose yourself to body fluids from strangers is probably the only precaution most people need to take. If you are a health care worker, you should already have that down pat.

On to other home front news:

More crime in zip codes with fewer guns.  Just as John Lott predicted a long time ago now.  As we spread gun ownership AND bearing those arms – being socially dressed!, we find that the bad guys don’t want to take as many risks. Not only is Chicago’s 60624 zip code the most crime-ridden in its county, it’s also the one with the fewest concealed carry firearm permits per capita.  And let us look at DC, New Jersey, and of course, the dear old People’s Democratic Republic of East Korea – oops, California.

Another bad cop story: Good thing this woman wasn’t armed, and good thing for him he wasn’t a “civilian,” eh? A former Louisiana police chief was given probation after an alleged sexual assault of a female prisoner and lying to the FBI.  Of course, the state may still prefer charges against him.  Right.

There is a good-cop, self-defense story. A Texan family faced with a home invasion responded properly: one of the grown sons told the three armed attackers, “Please don’t hurt the girls” (his sisters) before he opened fire on them, killing one and sending the other two fleeing, and the single shot the invaders got off went nowhere serious. Police are supporting the family and searching for the remaining thugs.

The Ebola Scare could push us further down into depression, if people really respond as negatively as the media (mainstream and alternative) seems to want us to.

And the economy is no better, really, no matter what the Mainstream Media claims. Newsmax is NOT doing the same thing as the Washington Post, hiding the real news: their headline was “Unemployment Falls to 5.9% as More Quit Job Hunt.” But the WaPo said that U.S. employers stepped up hiring in September and the jobless rate fell, basically lying through their teeth.  And it won’t get better, with stupid government tricks like this next one, so bad even another government agency doesn’t like it.

Small Business Administration is objecting to the proposed EPA Water Rule.  The EPA’s new “Waters of the United States” rule would increase permit costs between $19.8 million and $52 million each year.  And it would shut down thousands of mom-and-pop businesses producing sand, gravel, concrete, timber, and hundreds of other products.  If you thought that concrete was expensive NOW, just wait… I love it when government agencies fight among each other and the people win.

It isn’t just stateside, of course.  In Her Majesty’s realms, we find this. The nanny state on drugs?  In the UK, they plan to start forcing people who drink two or more glasses of wine or three pints of beer to take a drug that will “make” them stop at just one glass or pint.  That is supposedly 750,000 people (and I suspect that is an underestimate). At a cost of 400+ million dollars, and huge profits.  Disgusting, no?  And to add insult to injury, the government agency is charge of this has the acronym of NICE: National Institute for Care Excellence.  Rather: Nannies Insisting on Cruel Enterprises.

Mama’s Note: OOOH, shades of C. S. Lewis and the last book of his famous trilogy, “That Hideous Strength.” There is a government/ corporate entity in the story with exactly that NICE Acronym.

I really must laugh at the idea that anyone is going to successfully reduce the consumption of beer and wine in the UK, let alone force them to take some pill to limit it. What a truly sick joke.

Can government do anything right?  It seems not.  Consider no parking signs.  The “standard,” as negotiated by various governments in the Fifty States, is inevitably difficult to read and understand.  But when someone develops a new and startlingly better way of doing it, they are rejected by the various agencies because it is not standard.  Since it isn’t directly tied to safety but IS directly tied to enforcement (and therefore fines as revenue), I guess it is not important to most local governments and even considered a very bad idea.  So I would not hold my breath expecting this style of sign to appear in your neighborhood very soon.

Mama’s Note: Don’t have any parking signs out here, and very few in the little city to the north of me. All have been very clear so far. I think this is a big city problem, generally, and there really is a wonderful solution for anyone who is truly bothered by it. Move.

Big cities are more and more a big problem, and the coming chaos is going to be worse and last longer where large numbers of relatively dependent people are living on top of one another.