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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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This news just in: Aging drug warrior Bill Bennett is still an idiot

By David McElroy · July 1, 2011

If you want to argue that people don’t have the right to do something, at least have the guts to be honest about it. Don’t pull a page out of “1984” and redefine words to mean whatever you want them to mean.

After U.S. Reps. Ron Paul and Barney Frank introduced legislation that would end the federal ban on marijuana (but allow states to decide for themselves on the issue), drug warriors have been apoplectic. The latest example is from former “drug czar” Bill Bennett, who argues in a piece he wrote for CNN that giving people the freedom to make their own decisions about drug use isn’t freedom, because people who are addicted to something aren’t free.

Even many conservatives agree that the war on (some) drugs is a failure. National Review, for instance, editorialized last week in favor of the proposal from Paul and Frank. But old drug warriors such as Bennett aren’t going to let facts get in the way of what they’ve devoted their careers to fighting for.

Personally, I’m strongly opposed to the use of recreational drugs. I think it’s a poor decision that leads to lousy outcomes for a substantial number of people. My own decisions about this are so conservative that I don’t even drink alcohol, which is a drug far more dangerous than weed. But freedom is about deciding that for yourself, not letting Bill Bennett decide what freedom means.

Once again, this is why the state needs to go away. People should be free to choose among competing systems of governance that are most likely to make them happy. Let Bennett and his friends go live in the police state they’ve built and are so in love with.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 1984, barney frank, bill bennett, cnn, drugs, freedom, marijuana, ron paul, war on drugs

For equality, we must redistribute eyeballs fairly, my friends

By David McElroy · June 30, 2011

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 7035, the Federal Eyeball Inequality Act of 2020.

Our great nation was founded on the principles of liberty and equality. Without liberty, we can’t be equal. Without equality, we can’t have liberty. So when some Americans are treated unequally, it’s an assault on the liberty of each and every one of us. We have a sacred duty to those Founding Fathers who fought and bled for our freedom to bring equality to every American.

Some may say that we are free and we are equal, because we see freedom and we see equality everywhere. But do we? Sadly, not all of us see those things equally — because not all of us see equally well. It is to rectify this incredible injustice that I beg you to join me in using the full moral might of this government to bring equal sight to all. To do less than pass this legislation is to confess before all of us that you hate equality and that you hate liberty.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

Idiotic idea of the year: Turn email over to the U.S. Postal Service

By David McElroy · June 29, 2011

Some people are addicted to the idea that government-enforced monopolies are a good way to get things done. They’re idiots. I don’t any way to be polite. Some ideas don’t deserve to be taken seriously. They deserve to be ridiculed and treated with contempt.

John C. Dvorak is an idiot. I already knew that before today, but he cemented his place in the Idiot Hall of Fame with a column he wrote for PC Magazine last week. Dvorak — who we’ll call The Idiot for the remainder of this article — has been trolling the Internet for years by making absurd predictions and saying factually inaccurate things, but I suppose the magazine keeps him around because people know who he is and because he at least gets people to come click on the site to view ads. This time, though, he’s into territory that I wouldn’t expect the Onion to go.

The Idiot has proposed that our email system would be better off if we turned it over to the U.S. Postal Service. No, I’m not kidding. No, he doesn’t seem to be kidding. No, it’s not April Fool’s Day.

I’m not going to demolish The Idiot’s argument. I’m not going to even go over it point by point. I merely bring it up to point of that as long as we live in a system that allows other people to rule over us, we are at the mercy of idiots such as Dvorak. If enough people agree with The Idiot, we could have our email — run by various companies competing with each other — taken away and turned over to government-sponsored employees.

Only an idiot could think that’s a good idea.

Note: I have friends who work for the USPS. Some of them aren’t idiots. Some are quite bright. It’s the monopoly top-down system that’s the problem.

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This is the face of a man who’s thrilled that the This is the face of a man who’s thrilled that the weekend is finally here. It was a very long (and productive) week, but the time has finally come that I have time to write and read and think. Late Friday night, I’m at the McDonald’s near my house with a Diet Dr Pepper and a MacBook. For me, it’s like Cheers without the booze.
Donald Trump has figured out who to blame for the Donald Trump has figured out who to blame for the the D.C. Reflecting Pool turning green. The dastardly deed was carried out by a specially trained squad of Antifa cats trained by the Far Left. It’s not his fault. Arrest all the cats! #satire #parody
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This little parody was inspired by my trip to buy This little parody was inspired by my trip to buy gas a little while ago. Even at a no-name brand, the price was $4.09. If I remember correctly, it was $2.29 a gallon at the same station on the day the war started. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of winning. 🤣
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After they had a late dinner, the cats are staying After they had a late dinner, the cats are staying up late for a chess tournament. Alex and Sam are playing first and they’ll switch up for the next games. Alex is the house champion, but Sam is giving him a run for his money tonight. 😺
The longer Sam is with us, the more often I see hi The longer Sam is with us, the more often I see him in confident poses such as this one. For a long time, he typically kept his tail a bit lowered and didn’t make eye contact very much (with the other cats or me). At this point, his tail is up and his eyes seem far more confident. That’s the way I see him Tuesday evening just before sunset — and it makes me happy.
I found a low-quality image Monday night of baby O I found a low-quality image Monday night of baby Oliver and Lucy on the bed together two and a half years ago. I loved the easy comfort they had with one another even back then, when Oliver was new to the household, so I did a lot of editing to turn it into an image worth sharing. Seeing this really makes me miss Lucy even more. The second photo of Oliver and Lucy is from May 24, 2025, about five months before her death.
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This is my current view as I look down toward my l This is my current view as I look down toward my lap. I was sitting in a chair in my bedroom when Oliver climbed into my lap. But because I was using my MacBook at the same time, the lap wasn’t good enough. He wiggled underneath the laptop until he had taken over my entire torso and forced me to put the computer down. He’s really good at getting the attention he wants.
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Once again, Oliver has decided he owns my chair. I Once again, Oliver has decided he owns my chair. I’m not allowed to use my desk until he’s finished napping.
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It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

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