Big bang theory

There's a lot of discussion in various locations where hunters and shooters collect about the cause of the ammunition shortages that have plagued these very same hunters and shooters.  Some people have claimed Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, the proverbial worst nightmare for many of those hunters and shooters, is buying up all that ammunition at the direction of his boss (this man) because they couldn't ram gun control down the, err, throats of all those people who don't like having stuff down their throats.  Others have speculated about the UN, or Nancy Pelosi, or the usual half-baked arguments about inconsistent state regulations.

We could have nice things

Casual Cruelties

There was a time when the United States dreamed and did big things, as a nation.  Americans went to the moon.  They spent tens of billions of dollars to keep north Vietnam from overrunning south Vietnam, according to the wishes (at the time) of the south Vietnamese.  Lyndon Johnson announced a war on poverty that initiated a whole series of experiments designed to help the poor and disadvantaged succeed, and he signed civil rights legislation that aggressively rolled back an apartheid state.  His successor, a died-in-the-wool conservative as crooked as Lombard Street on a foggy Friday night, launched the EPA and the Clean Water Act and acknowledged that society can't live in a synthetic environment, that the natural world is a reality and we're part of it.  "American made" was a term of pride and American bridges, highways and railways were engineering marvels, safe both because of the quality of the work and because we, the people, who'd formed our more perfect union, tasked some of us with ensuring that standards were upheld.  Living standards and social engagement grew to the point where everyone wanted to be American, and Americans lived longer than anyone.