Innocent Bystanders

Stupid Voter ID Poll February 20, 2026

The voter ID brouhaha is decades old, with the right trying to get as close as possible to one legitimate vote per citizen, and the left claiming that any voter checks will disenfranchise the disenfranchised. The recent telephone poll commissioned by the University of Maryland and the Brennan Center for Justice provided some cannon fodder for the left:

Nearly 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens do not have a current (non-expired) driver’s license. Just under 9%, or 20.76 million people, who are U.S. citizens aged 18 or older do not have a non-expired driver’s license. Another 12% (28.6 million) have a non-expired license, but it does not have both their current address and current name.

[Emphasis theirs.] Pretty damning, save for the fact that this information is completely useless. Take the great state of Texas, for example (not gonna do every state, ‘cuz yeesh). In Texas, you can use an expired license for up to 4 years after expiration (if you’re older than 69, you can use it forever). I suspect the vast majority of expired licenses are less than 4 years past their expiry date, but how can we tell, because the stupid telephone poll doesn’t clarify it!?!

Because you can’t tell if the expired licenses are relevant or not, you have to disregard that category.

Texas also doesn’t care if your address isn’t current. That takes care of 11.5% of the 12%. The current name issue actually requires you to go to the DMV to get your license/ID changed. Bummer, but that’s part of getting married, divorced, or changing your name.

That pretty much wraps up all the cases identified in the telephone poll, save for:

…just over 1% of adult U.S. citizens do not have any form of government-issued photo identification, which
amounts to nearly 2.6 million people.

Texas has workarounds for people without ID, but I’m not sure how compliant those are with the SAVE Act. Everything else above is consistent with SAVE, which (by my reading) only requires that your IDs be generated in accordance with the REAL ID Act of 2005.

But let me just say this about that. The Democrats have established an amazing ground game to turn out their voters. They have databases of all of their voters, and volunteers are assigned to every block to knock on doors and make sure they get to the polls. Yet they have not volunteered to help a single one of these tragic individuals who does not have a photo ID.

The fact that they haven’t lifted a finger to help these people tells you exactly where their motivations for resisting the SAVE Act lie.

A Favorite Muppet Spoof February 19, 2026

Rejecting Modernity February 18, 2026

I’ve needed a new car for several years, but I couldn’t decide what to get. Something sportier than my minivan, for sure, but what? Then I heard that they were bringing the Honda Prelude back this year. I got really excited, because I owned a Prelude in the 80’s and loved, loved, loved that car.

So it came out, and I was disappointed. Didn’t look the same inside or out. Too much friggin’ connectivity, and I hate the screens that have replaced toggle switches and buttons on modern cars. So I resumed my frustrating search for the perfect ride.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I woke up one morning and said, “You know, I hate almost all the new car features. What I really want is an old Honda Prelude!”

Never considered it previously because I figured the 35+ year old Preludes would have 200K miles on them. But within 10 minutes of internet sleuthing I found a 1987 Prelude Si with less than 30,000 miles.

This Prelude, in fact; to be delivered soon:

Now that’s perfection.

Another Discouraging CBO Report February 17, 2026

The Congressional Budget Office’s 10-year projection came out this month (The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036). As usual, the projections are bleak. The revenue projections aren’t bad, but the spending projections are horrible. Here’s their overview chart:

As you can see, the historical averages were already unsustainable, with the outlays almost 4 percentage points above revenues. but from COVID onward, the situation is even worse and it never corrects.

So let’s take a quick look at the outlays:

Social Security has grown a bit, but is only 25% larger this year than in 1976. Major health care programs (Medicare (net of premiums and other offsetting receipts), Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program), however, have grown by 4.6X. Discretionary outlays have shrunk, but interest has doubled since 1976.

I remember writing one of these posts 10 years ago and expressing shock that interest payments were on track to surpass defense spending. Didn’t take long for that to happen, and according to this projection, in 10 years interest payments will be nearly double our defense spending.

I think the out-year GDP growth estimates they use might be low (~2%), but I doubt that the Outlay growth estimates are.

When Life Imitates Star Trek February 16, 2026

My daughter has been extolling the utility of AI assistance, but I’m just not comfortable with it. So we’ve now arrived at the classic Star Trek scenario: I tell her what I want, and she talks to the computer for me.

Far from being the absurdity we all thought it was, I think it’s the only way for me to move forward into the AI era.

Obligatory:

Investing, POTUS Style February 15, 2026

Back in April, the country’s CEO gave some investment advice:

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114308272725981913

THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT

Most other investment gurus were predicting doom and gloom, so how did those who followed his advice do?

Around 30% return in less than a year.

Far better than many a guru.

SoCal Measles Panic Porn February 14, 2026

I sure do love me some medical panic porn. And yesterday the NY Post came through for me with this gem:

World’s most contagious disease spreads in California as doctors issue warning about dark times

San Diego County health officials have issued a warning about “dark times” ahead as more measles cases are confirmed in Southern California.

Oh no! Measles must have exploded in San Diego County!! So exactly how many cases have they seen?

While there has yet to be a case of measles in the county in 2026…

Zero, huh? That’s quite a bit fewer than I was expecting. Well, then, how about LA? Measles showed its ugly face there, so what’s their count?

…another recent measles case involving an international traveler who arrived in Los Angeles and visited both Disneyland, Disney’s California Adventure Park and at a restaurant at a Disney hotel in Anaheim.

Oh. One case. Not really enough to get my blood racing. Surely Orange County can come through for me:

Orange County health officials recently confirmed a second case of measles involving a person who visited Disneyland…

So two for Orange County.

Let me tally this up real quick. We have 3 confirmed cases in 3 counties with a combined population of 16 million. One of the cases came from abroad.

Where are my promised “dark times?”

Another Crappy “Conservative” Meme November 11, 2025

Don’t know why I feel compelled to correct these misleading memes – probably no one takes them seriously anyway. Still, it bugged me enough to root me out of my hiatus and write this brief post.

Here’s the objectionable meme:

This meme is strictly true, in that at some point prior to Biden’s administration we did indeed have 17,194,000 people on SNAP (data here). It’s just that that particular point occurred prior to the Trump administration, the Obama adminstration, and the Bush administration:

Yep, you have to go all the way back to the year 2000 to get to that low a number, which happens to be the lowest it’s been in 45 years.

So, not a fair statement, and unworthy of the right.

When Meme Math Goes Awry September 6, 2025

Ran across this meme today and could naught but shake my head in despair for American education:

Maybe they meant the end of the year 10,000 years after you started saving them.

Comparing Deportations During Various Presidential Terms August 29, 2025

The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, presented this chart of deportations of Mexican illegal immigrants at a news conference (hat tip: Breitbart). Figured I’d put it here for future reference.

Seems like we need to go Clintonian on our current population of illegal residents.

Hurtling Towards Apocalypse(s) August 10, 2025

Between crazy AIs, robot hounds, and genetically engineered viruses, it seems that we’re bent on realizing all of the apocalyptic scenarios of science fiction classics of yore.

And it gets worse:

New “evolution engine” creates super-proteins 100,000x faster

A new platform developed at Scripps Research enables fast, scalable protein evolution—opening the door to new therapies and diagnostics, and to predicting resistance mutations across many disease areas.

Date:

August 8, 2025

Source:

Scripps Research Institute

Summary:

Researchers at Scripps have created T7-ORACLE, a powerful new tool that speeds up evolution, allowing scientists to design and improve proteins thousands of times faster than nature. Using engineered bacteria and a modified viral replication system, this method can create new protein versions in days instead of months. In tests, it quickly produced enzymes that could survive extreme doses of antibiotics, showing how it could help develop better medicines, cancer treatments, and other breakthroughs far more quickly than ever before.

That seems so great. What could go wrong?

I don’t have a problem with Scripps conducting this research, which I’m sure they do in a careful, responsible, and altruistic way. But I do have a problem with the same methods ending up in places like the Wuhan Institute. Or in the hands of some Earth First wacko. Or in the hands of one of the globalists with a woody for shrinking the population. Or in the hands of . . .