A new twist on an old parlor trick asks how many separated brown children does ICE need to cram into a cage before the odds tip that the penned infestation contains one shared birthday. Though the seemingly-low answer, 23, is found in obscure probability theory, we now have a real-world corollary.  While the calculus should be fairly straightforward, pundits are confused as to whether it was actually Dayton or El Paso that marked the 250^th domestic mass shooting in 215 calendar days.  Regardless, it is clearly more likely than not that there will be another one today.  (News just in: six police officers shot in Philadelphia.)  But what are the odds that three people who survived one mass shooting are caught together in another?  Apparently 100%.

Brothers Christopher and George Cook escaped the carnage at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Vegas two years ago only to revisit their horror – along with co-survivor Alicia Olive who they met via a Facebook support group – at last month’s Gilroy Garlic Festival. These events have become so commonplace now that it cannot be long before inquiries regarding one’s mass shooting status will routinely appear on mortgage applications and census questionnaires.

Since Columbine, it had become de rigueur for politicians to offer up “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of such high-profile tragedies.   But as the death toll inexorably mounted, the backlash from a frustrated polity – the vast majority of which supports gun controls – has seen elected officials deftly pivot to praising first responders.  It is a maneuver, one might think (especially after 9/11), difficult to assail, until, that is, one considers El Paso.  Weeks before the Walmart rampage, Patrick Crusius’ mother called the Allen, Texas police department to warn them that her dark and troubled son had purchased an AK-47 assault rifle.  Quizzically, the fuzz blithely shrugged “It’s no problemo, Ma’am.”  Then, after the bloodbath, Thomas Bartram drove his pickup truck plastered with racist stickers to a community center in the area and began to threaten nearby Hispanics with a knife and pistol.  Despite wearing latex gloves and a harboring a small mountain of white powder and bullets, law enforcement deemed the avowed Trump supporter to be of no threat whatsoever and sent him on his merry way.

While some hard-core Christians remain steadfast in their belief that these shootings are God’s punishment for a society that tolerates gay marriage, legalized marijuana and Colin Kaepernick, the bulk of Republicans have moved on from talk of crisis actors and false flags.  Despite an official talking points memo urging members to blame the Left and exonerate white nationalists, most are coalescing around the strategy of deflecting attention away from AK-47s, AR-15s and extended magazines by blaming instead the proliferation of violent video games amongst our impressionable youth.   The Left’s response is that these games are equally popular in dozens of other countries yet the carnage here is on a scale of its own.  Such fatuous logic would have us, by extension, ascribe the calamities of the World Trade Center and Malaysia Air 370 to the unfettered access to laptop flight simulators rather than radicalized Muslims pursuing martyrdom.

By way of contrast, New Zealand swiftly banned machine guns in reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings this March (as did Australia after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre), having already impounded over 10,000 such firearms.   Though Americans possesses 1,000 times the number collected by the Kiwis, we shouldn’t assume that retrieving them is an outright impossibility.  Australia, for example, confiscated 600,000 guns in a relatively short amount of time.  In the end, it’s really quite doable; merely inform the Trumpists that they need to surrender their assault rifles to their local police station or be put to death. But not, however, before they are forced to convert to Islam while being raped by hordes of filthy Guatemalans with the proceedings aired live during what used to be Tucker Carlson’s commercial slots on Fox.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amid the catastrophic blaze that took down a significant portion of Notre Dame Cathedral, there were claims that an image of Jesus Christ hovered in the flames.  Similarly, when Dr. Katie Bouman merged the capabilities of several long-range telescopes via a newly developed mathematical algorithm to produce the world’s first image of a black hole, some scientists claimed to see the visage of Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh.  Rather than deep space, her honor finds herself in deep shit after the FBI and IRS raided her house and offices at City Hall.  Pugh sold a half million dollars-worth of her unaccounted-for children’s books to the University of Maryland Medical System while a sitting board member and followed up as mayor by trading $300,000 in book sales to Kaiser Permanente for a $48 million city contract to provide health insurance to public employees.

Reputedly, Ms. Pugh is on suicide watch in a secret location. And while it might be difficult to believe, there is a silver lining in all this: The Washington state legislature just passed a bill that allows human bodies to be composted and used as fertilizer.  In other words, the mayor still has a chance to be of service to mankind.  For those of us over 50, we cannot help but recall Soylent Green, the 1973 futuristic thriller where the populace is secretly turned into eco-hued granola bars. Given the rapid evolution of technology, fanciful movie ideas (think: Dick Tracy’s walkie talkie wristwatch or Total Recall’s self-driving taxis) are now a reality.  So Soylent Green it is for the 7,800 Boy Scout troop leaders who have molested their charges since WWII.  After that, we can enjoy a cornucopia of Republican politicians and their fascist judges. And don’t fret if this fodder were to prove addictive (think: opioids) as God has provided a nearly inexhaustible supply of Catholic priests.

Never to be?  Such delusions are, admittedly, the bastard offspring of frustration and disgrace.  To wit: Congress remains unable to get Trump’s tax returns despite the documented fraud and tax evasion that forced his sister from the federal bench.  Conceding that Fox News and the White House were right all along that the Mueller investigation was a colossal waste of time.  Watching the self-immoliating jumble of Democratic presidential candidates drive an SUV full of our children’s hopes off a cliff like those lesbian moms in Mendocino. Just for once, once, couldn’t things work out like they did for that Rhino poacher in South Africa’s Kruger National Park?  Seeking to sell the animals’ horns to crazy rich Asians for as much as $4,000 per pound, the interloper was trampled by an elephant and subsequently eaten by lions. Poetic justice, indeed.

As I averred in my last missive, the Chinese are by far the most voracious consumers of American higher education; they make Felicity Huffman and Laurie Laughlin look like rank amateurs.  Sherry Guo’s parents coughed up $1.2 million to get her into Yale (she has since been given the toe) while another mainland family funneled $6.5 million in bribes through Rick Singer’s spurious charity to get their precious little jewel into an elite university.

But this is actually good news.  With National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow visibly impaired by his cocaine addiction, trade negotiations with China fell to Steven Mnuchin, the bumbling Treasury Secretary, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, an ardent nationalist hell bent on curtailing China’s penchant for intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.  Well, not until they’ve fully incorporated Boeing’s flawed 737 Max architecture and fatal anti-stall software. But in the end, if we are to make a dent in the $200 billion U.S.-Sino trade deficit we need to either continue bilking susceptible Chinese millionaires or stop buying their contaminated pet food and toxic drywall.

 

 

 

 

 

Controversy continues to swirl around the prisoner swap our government entered into with Al Qaeda; not only were the numbers lopsided, but we failed to receive any future draft picks as compensation.  Many are asking whether releasing five senior terrorists from Guantanamo Bay was worth securing the return of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured after deserting his post in Afghanistan’s Paktika province some five years ago.  Given that subsequent search and rescue missions took the lives of six U.S. servicemen, it is no surprise that Bergdahl is coming home to less than a hero’s welcome.  The vitriol has clearly been exacerbated by Bowe’s paterfamilias, what with the al-Zawahiri beard, Pashto dialogue, and direct Tweets to the Taliban.  Sgt. Matt Vierkant, a member of Bergdahl’s platoon, expressed the feelings of many when he groused, “I was pissed off then, and I am even more so now…  [He] deserted during a time of war, and his fellow Americans lost their lives.”  What we’re saying, then, is that Bergdahl’s behavior (going AWOL, recklessly precipitating the unnecessary death of military personnel) neatly mirrored that of his Commander-in-Chief (recall: George W. Bush).

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel swiftly rejoined that the five detainees would have been free agents after the 2014 season anyway, because according to international law, prisoners of war must be released upon the cessation of combat operations.  Nonetheless, experts continue to shake their heads in disgust while comparing the trade to the Pacers’ ruinous Danny Granger-for-Evan Turner deal.

As the San Antonio Spurs prepare to again be subjugated by the Miami Heat, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is breathing a sigh of relief; the hearing to exile Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling has been obviated by the team’s sale to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for a cool $2 billion.  Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban was already laying the groundwork justifying a no vote on Sterling’s ouster: “We’re all prejudice in one way or another. If I see a black kid in a hoodie [think: Trayvon Martin], and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street.”  To be fair, Cuban held no affinity for Sterling (who was, in the interim, diagnosed with dementia and diagnosed with dementia), but feared setting a precedent whereby any owner could be stripped of his own team if the content of private conversations was ever deemed not to comport with the ever narrowing constraints of political correctness.

The transaction comes at a propitious time; after three decades of stark ineptitude, the Clippers, with its all-star roster, has become a legitimate contender.   But if fans believe that the Ballmer era will bring a Yankees-style dynasty, they might be in for a rude awakening.  Ballmer’s tenure in Seattle saw Microsoft shares lose a quarter of their value while the S&P 500 notched a 5% gain.  Ballmer personally orchestrated the takeover of online advertiser aQuantive for $6.2 billion; five years later the acquisition was written down to zero.  And only now, that Windows XP is no longer supported, has Corporate America begun the arduous slog into Windows 7 (version 8 has proved a colossal flop).   Perhaps most telling, Ballmer failed to recognize the unambiguous migration from desktop computing to high-powered mobile devices (e.g. tablets and smart phones) and, as such, ceded the vast majority of that market to Google and Apple.  So while Mr. Ballmer will no doubt avoid the pitfalls visited by his predecessor, odds are neither he nor Sgt. Berghdal will be showered in tickertape anytime soon.