This is my first article in a few weeks because as you might know, I’ve been busy working on getting my new book, The God Bet, released. The premise of the book is that I will bet anybody a million dollars on which party God would vote for. It is getting good reviews, but so far I have been unable to add it to my “shop” page on Facebook. They rejected it and you won’t believe why. Here is the reason that they sent me:
“It looks like we didn’t approve your item because we don’t allow the sale of adult items or services (ex: sexual enhancement items, adult videos).”
Now, here is a link to the book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735532916
As you can see, there are no sexual enhancement items or adult videos related to the book cover. As most of you probably know, the cover is taken from Michelangelo’s famous painting The Creation of Adam, which is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It depicts God reaching down to give life to Adam, but on my book cover God is reaching out to cast a vote on stone tablets for the party He would support. There is a butt in the painting but it is entirely artistic and non-sexual. In fact, when I looked at the community standards that Facebook has posted it shows a bunch of examples of sexually suggestive pictures that are unacceptable, and then a picture that they say is artistic so it is acceptable. The acceptable example; a picture of Michelangelo’s nude sculpture of David.
The other thing that kept me busy this week was a trip to Las Vegas to visit some friends. It was very interesting to see how the casinos and the people inside were reacting to a disease that is only slightly more likely to kill you than a sharknado. The good news is that nobody was afraid of the coronavirus. People were mingling with each other, dancing together at the bar with a live band, high fiving, gambling, and drinking together. There was only one fear going around Vegas and I agree that we need to fight to end it. The real disease to fear is government licensure. You see, the way that the government controls businesses and takes away freedom is by issuing licenses to conduct business and then threatening to take those licenses away if they don’t do exactly what the government wants. This is why so few restaurants and bars are able to stand up to the government and open without restrictions. If they do, many states threaten to take away their liquor licenses, and most of their profits come from liquor sales. Proponents say that licensing is to protect the consumer, but in reality the free market already does that. If there really was a disease worth being afraid of and you opened your business, people would voluntarily stay away. Think about it. If there was a business that said they were open to people with ebola, would you need the government to take away a license to keep people away? No. And I doubt there was ever a very long waiting list to vacation at a leper colony.
The funny thing is, the people who actually push for licensing are the people who are already in those lines of work. As the brilliant economist Milton Friedman said, “If the real true function of licensing was to protect the consumers, you’d expect the consumers to be lobbying for licensure, but you will discover that it’s always the plumbers or the beauticians or the morticians… there isn’t an occupation you can name that hasn’t been down to the Statehouse trying to get licensure.” Why would businesses want licensing? Because it is a barrier to entry, so it keeps out competition. Less competition lets those who are already in control stay in control. The people who are hurt by licensure are competitors wanting to enter an industry and the consumers. In Las Vegas, the consumers are hurt right now because the casinos are afraid of losing their gaming licenses, so they are forced to require a bunch of silly rules. The one I thought was funny was that to walk through the hotels and casinos they required that you wear a mask, but if you were smoking you could keep the mask down. In a related story, I now smoke three packs a day.
The other big thing that happened this week was the Democratic Convention. I must admit, I didn’t watch it. I already knew what they were going to say. Trump is bad. Then the media would fawn over each speaker. I do have 2 observations, though. First, the media narrative that Republicans are turning on the president because John Kasich spoke is ridiculous. John Kasich spoke because he has a fragile ego and President Trump hurt his feelings 4 years ago when he beat him in the primaries. All his speech shows is that his hurt feelings are more important to him than his principles. He claims to be pro-life, but if he’s supporting Joe Biden he is not. He claims to be a fiscal conservative, but if he supports Joe Biden he is not. He has completely lost any respect from conservatives. If he had any backbone he would handle it differently. Ted Cruz, for example, has proven that he actually cares more about doing what is right than his ego. President Trump ripped on Senator Cruz relentlessly during the primaries 4 years ago. I’m sure his feelings were hurt by some of the brutal personal attacks, but Senator Cruz cares more about America than holding personal grudges, and has put the campaign behind him and become a strong ally of the president in conservative policies. I have gained a lot of respect and confidence in Cruz. John Kasich should toughen up and stop crying about sour grapes from 2016.
The second observation is that the Democrats actually did it. They nominated a guy that they admitted was corrupt just months ago. It wasn’t even the Republicans who were accusing Biden of being corrupt. It was his own party, the same Democrats who just picked him to top their ticket. You may not remember it because that isn’t how they framed it in the media. They framed it this way. “President Trump should be impeached because he tried to gain an advantage over his future political opponent, Joe Biden, by asking Ukraine to investigate him.” Think about what that’s saying. If Joe Biden didn’t do anything wrong, how would it be an advantage to President Trump to clear him? It wouldn’t. The only way it would be an advantage is if an investigation would uncover corruption. Democrats can’t have it both ways. Either they are saying that they impeached the president for trying to clear their candidate of wrongdoing, which doesn’t make sense, or they’re saying that their candidate is corrupt. Yet they chose him as their best. Remember that when you vote.
Steve Connally's Brain 