Red Eye

The best show on Fox News is Red Eye. Don't get me wrong, it is a terrible show but it is, nevertheless, the one show on the network where they strip away the veneer of seriousness of their fake news and essentially embrace the satire of their "news".

So I was up at 3am on Tuesday night watching the show... either because I was up very early ready to serve my community by plowing roads or because I had preemptively called in my absence for Wednesday and stayed up late to watch bad comedy like Glenn Beck and Red Eye. I won't say which.

One topic that was discussed was NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's expose of lax enforcement of existing gun laws at an Arizona gun show - he showed that you can get a gun with no background check even after admitting, at least with some dealers, that you likely could not pass one. I was struck by the hosts contention that Mayor Bloomberg was a "meddler". I found that ironic because this was the same network that feted James O'Keefe as a pioneer in a new form of investigative journalism. (In fairness to Mr. Grunfeld, I will acknowledge I do not know what he said about Mr. O'Keefe - but if you give me a chance to bet that he supported him... I am taking that bet in a second.)

I suppose the distinction they might make, with some merit I suppose, is that ACORN was receiving taxpayer money and, hence, were subject to the public scrutiny. That is fair enough but I would hope they would, in turn, concede illegal gun sales are also of concern to the general public because gun crimes are very often committed by guns that were unlawfully obtained.

Another ironic point that I observed was one panelist whose take on the subject was that criminals were supposed to be incarcerated - which I guess would have made lax gun laws and/or enforcement acceptable because only honest and trustworthy individuals would have access to the easy guns - and that maybe we actually do need tougher (enforcement of) gun laws if we do not just "lock'em up and throw away the key." It was amusing because he opined this about 1-2 days after this article appeared online:

GOP Lawmakers Paying Price for Tough-on-Crime Laws

Yes, it cost money to keep prisoners in jail (and to build new jails when you fill up your existing facilities)!! Who knew?!?

It seems Republicans only thought taxpayer money was used for useless programs like health care for poor people and unemployment benefits.

Now Oklahoma and other states are learning what (now ex-)California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger learned several years ago - governing costs money. And a budget deficit may not be a spending problem. In some cases, it actually could be a revenue problem.