Is Shake Shack's IPO a good thing?

Tomorrow Shake Shack will go public. (Shake Shack, for those of us who don't keep up with the East Coast, is a very small chain of very small hamburger restaurants known for good food and extremely long lines.)

My feeling is, this isn't such a great thing. Here's why:

1) No first-mover advantage. There are a LOT of these kinds of places on the market already.
2) New Yorkers and Bostonians will stand in line for an hour for a hamburger. People in Ohio or Minnesota probably will not.
3) Their food might be "fast food" priced in New York City, but in Montana that's sit-down money.
4) There is NO guarantee McDonald's won't create a "hamburger boutique" chain within their own system. They've got the supply chain and - more important - the huge amount of money it would take to build a better-burger brand. (No, it wouldn't be "Mickey D's serves fancier food. They tried that shit and it didn't work. This would be a whole new label.)

America's greatest sniper vs. America's most famous sociopath

Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock was America's finest sniper. (This is the guy who put a round down the barrel of another sniper's scope, and also the guy who made a 2500-yard shot with a .50-caliber machine gun firing standard ammunition.) Don't believe raw numbers: when Gunny Hathcock was active, a kill wasn't official unless it was observed by a commissioned officer. He estimates he killed at least 300 enemy soldiers.

Chris Kyle you already know.

In Kyle's book, he claims to have enjoyed killing people.

Gunny Hathcock said he never enjoyed killing people; it was a job he did to protect his fellow Marines. MOST combat arms troops feel the same way.

The NFL will probably supply game balls next year

Brady was one of the instigators of the "each team provides its own footballs" rule, and this is how his team repays the league?

My feeling is, next season Wilson will be directed to ship 24 "lightly scuffed" (throw 24 balls and 1000 lbs sand in a cement mixer and tumble for five minutes) balls to each game under the same shipping regime as kicking balls are shipped, and both sides will use the same ball.

The original version of Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever"

Who among us wore bread bags on our shoes while growing up?

I didn't grow up rich either. No one in St. Maries, Idaho, grew up rich. In my family, we got one pair of shoes at the start of the school year, and we made them last.

But neither I, nor any kid in my school, ran around in the wet and the snow with fucking bread bags on our shoes. Those of us who could afford them had rubber overshoes, and the few kids who came from really poor families...well, that's what the Elks Club is for. (Fortunately for the Elks, they were only buying about five pair a year.)

Joni's "we was po but we was proud" act doesn't resonate.

When would the Patriots get a chance to deflate their footballs?

This is from the NFL rulebook:

Keys To The Matchup: Packers vs. Seahawks

From the Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/keys-to-the-matchup-packers-vs-seahawks,37791/

Green Bay:
• Given Marshawn Lynch's ability to break tackles, don't be afraid to put a seventh or even eighth man on him.
• Keep pressure on Russell Wilson by whispering to him that this is his contract year.

Seattle:
• Be prepared for Aaron Rodgers to quickly move outside the pocket and toward the direction of medical treatment.
• Consider benching Richard Sherman, who didn't once touch the football when the Seahawks met the Packers in the regular season.

Fine Penn State $1395 and erase almost all the rest of the penalties

I'm not going to rehash all the recent Penn State developments. Hit GD and you'll find them.

In the spirit of the thing, I have a suggestion.

Penn State built a monument to ol' See No Evil, Hear No Evil over there. It's a larger-than-life bronze statue of Joe Paterno that you can find pictures of online. This thing weighs 900 pounds.

Scrap bronze sells for $1.55 per pound. Multiply by 900 pounds and you get $1395.

I would be willing to erase every penalty, except the multimillion-dollar fine that still stands, if Penn State would cut up the Joe Paterno statue, melt it down, sell the metal as scrap, divide the proceeds among all the schools that played Penn State in football when Joe was alive for use in fighting child abuse, remove the rest of the monument with a bulldozer, never allow another monument to Joe Paterno to be erected anywhere, and never use the land the monument was on for anything ever again - including an outhouse.

That, my friends, is the only punishment that will mean anything to them.

The existence of this book diminishes us all

Some of Arpaio's former guests have compiled a book on surviving in his Olive Drab Gulag. It is available here:

http://abouttentcity.com/how-to-survive-tent-city/

Tax cuts were never intended to increase tax revenues, so stop saying that

The GOP's primary goal is to end social spending. The only way they'll ever accomplish that goal is to reduce revenues to the point where there's no money left for it, and the most time-proven way to reduce revenues is just to stop collecting so many taxes.