Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Alfie
- MAGA
- Kanye
- Iran
- Finland
- Pinks
- Alfie. The single payer British National Health Service murdered another child last week by withholding lifesaving treatment and going to court to refuse his parents the freedom to pull him from the murderous public employed bastards and take him out of country for emergency treatment. The hospital is Alder Hey. British police got themselves involved with threats against critics of the hospital and NHS who are “too abusively” objecting to the impending murder of the child by a government agency. So much for free speech in Great Britain. The child was a critically ill 23-month old who was on life support. The hospital went to court in opposition to the parents plans to remove the child and take him to a Catholic hospital at the invitation of Pope Francis. The Vatican offered to cover travel and treatment expenses. A UK High Court ruled that the hospital actually owned the child and ordered the parents to allow the hospital to kill him. This is precisely what Sarah Palin was talking about in 2009 with her blasting away at O’BamaCare’s Death Panel, the IPAB. Democrats run around all day and night selling single payer health care as a way to control costs. But single payer health care never saves any money. Not only is it more expensive, but it prohibits family members to provide other options for care. Single payer only saves money by refusing to pay for care, leading to hideous outcomes like this and others, where parents and family members are prohibited from find and providing alternative care. We saw such an outcome in Florida in 2006 with the court-ordered murder of Terry Schiavo by her former husband. Why is it that the courts are coming down on the side of death these days? The EU Court of Human Rights rejected the parents attempt to get them to override the UK High Court and order a transfer. For its part, the British government deployed law enforcement around the hospital following reported threats of removing the child by force. Alfie Evans joins several other special needs children murdered by the NHS via the technique of not only withholding medical care, but also making sure that parents and family members are not able to remove the children from their heartless bureaucratic clutches. This is the very definition of the banality of evil. It is the future the left, socialists, democrats have in mind for us and our families. Those at the top of the political food chain will not be so bound by these artificial limits, as they will have access to an alternative system of health care where cost is not a consideration. Never forget that the Nazis started killing the special needs Germans first following adoption of their single payer, nationalized health care system in the 1930s. They expanded the scope of government sponsored murder to other inconvenient people and then to so-called Enemies of the State. They started out like the NHS is currently doing. Slippery slope, anyone? http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/04/27/alfie-isaiah-charlie-children-mandated-die-parents-wishes/
- MAGA. A NY citizen lost his lawsuit against a bar in Manhattan over its refusal to sell him a beer. His offense? He walked into the bar wearing a Trump MAGA hat. He was also physically removed from the club afterwards. He sued for discrimination based on his political views. The judge was a local NY judge in Manhattan. The local NY Bar lawyer pointed out that only religious beliefs are protected under NY’s non-discrimination laws. She ended with the observation that “… supporting Trump is not a religion…” The lawyer is probably correct as Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in any privately-owned place of public accommodation only on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. Political belief is not mentioned. This opens an interesting new front in the gay wedding wars. Perhaps Christians can deny their services to politically inspired gays on the basis that they are statistically likely to be democrats. Problem with doing this is the same thing that ESPN, Target, the NFL and other “woke” businesses are finding out, when you get woke, you go broke, mostly by alienating half your prospective clientele. But it sure does seem odd that a business can toss you out on the street for wearing a red MAGA hat, but you have to bake a cake or build a flower arrangement when a pair of politically inspired gays show up at your front door demanding your services. https://hotair.com/archives/2018/04/29/judge-bake-cake-not-serve-beer-someone-maga-hat/
- Kanye. Rap star mogul Kanye West entered the political wars over the last couple weeks with a tweet in support of Candace Owens, a black conservative. He then went farther and expressed his support for President Trump, which targeted him for summary execution and economic destruction by the democrat-led leftist mob. Chicago based Chance the rapper expressed his support for Kanye but bailed quickly after stinging criticism from the mob. Kanye then doubled down and started tweeting Thomas Sowell quotes, making conservatism among blacks cool again. This couldn’t be worse news for democrats, as one of their pop icons is starting to refer to the democrat plantation for blacks as an actual, honest to God plantation. After a week of the festivities, Trump polling among black males doubled to 22%, which is high enough to literally destroy the democrat party. West went on to speak about thinking for himself; about the democrats abandoning the poor black communities in Chicago. For his part, Trump was ecstatic and welcomed his new supporters to his side of the political wars. I ran across a piece a few weeks ago that described how Trump won the real estate wars. The author’s conclusion was that he bankrupted his opposition and suggested that Trump has that goal in mind for the democrat party, the media, and his organized opposition. Break the democrat stranglehold on blacks and you destroy the democrat party. Make it cool to vote Republican, and you annihilate them. Final point was an observation out of Limbaugh last week that Trump operated successfully in the three of the toughest real estate markets in the US – NYC, Atlantic City and Las Vegas – and seems to be completely clean. We indeed live in interesting times. http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/04/27/chance-rapper-generations-chicago-democrats-no-regard-black-schools-neighborhoods-lives/
- Iran. Ever since Jimmy Carter’s Middle East peace agreement with Anwar Sadat, US foreign policy has been a choice to stand in the way of Israel acting in support of what it believes to be its best interests. This usually meant that Hezbollah, Fatah, Arafat, the PLO, Iraq, among others would murder some number of Israelis in the most hideous manner possible, and Israel would be limited to a politically correct, Foggy Bottom approved “measured” response. US leverage was controlling weapons sales to Israel. Things got so bad during the O’Bama regime that Israel started turning to Russia for some weapons. It also forced them to create a quite capable defense manufacturing establishment in country. Under the Trump administration, those limits on Israel’s actions no longer exist. And their enemies know it. So do the rest of us. Latest recipient of this was a series of night attacks on multiple military bases in Syria, including bases run by Iran. The explosions were massive with multiple secondaries, large enough to register on seismic instruments. A Legal Insurrection piece on attacks has the targets munitions warehouses owned and operated by Iran. There were 26 reported killed, many of them Iranians. Iran is in a bit of a tight spot here, as Israel controls the skies over Syria. The new Russian air defense weapons do not appear to be doing much to slow them down so far. And the Israelis are taking steps to destroy Iranian weapons in Syria before they can be used against them. Second Iran story comes out of Israel when Prime Minister Netanyahu presented the results of half a ton of secret documents they obtained from Iran. The documents demonstrate Iranian lying about their nuclear program (they have one), and their efforts to go live with working weapons before their time is up. Note that Iran has worked closely with Kim Jong Un of North Korea on weapons and ICBM technology for many years. Trump’s negotiations with the Norks is also aimed at Iran. https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/04/explosions-at-iranian-missile-depots-in-syria-measure-2-6-on-richter-scale/
- Finland. Finland ended its two-year long experiment with Universal Basic Income (UBI) last week. UBI is high on the democrat wish list of goodies to hand out. What better way to purchase votes than to be Santa Claus 365 days of the year? The Finland experiment was not actual UBI as it only paid from the list of unemployed. The pilot was intended to end after two years from the beginning, though funding for it was denied in January. The government has so far refused to publish any results pending analysis of what happened during the trial. From a standard economic worldview, UBI couldn’t be a worse thing to do, as it would visit the destructive effects of free money currently confined to the inner cities to the entire population. I also follow a web site called the Futurist. The remaining writer there has proposed what he calls DUES, which ends up being a form of UBI. His theory (which I agree with) is that the penetration of technology is profoundly deflationary. And that penetration accelerates over time. He explained the 2008 crash as forced by that deflationary pressure, though it was the housing bubble that triggered it. It is the reason that the couple trillion-dollar Quantitative Easing the Federal Reserve did for years after the crash did not trigger the expected inflation. His DUES is essentially a dividend provided by printed money based on technological penetration into the economy. I have not yet figured out how to reconcile my basic Friedmanite monetary worldview with the newer DUES worldview. It could very well be that they are mutually exclusive, which is why I pay close attention to UBI experiments. http://www.singularity2050.com/
- Pinks. One of the (many) foolish things Alaska did nearly 30 years ago was pass a statewide ban on aquaculture (fish farming) for finfish (salmon, pollock, halibut, etc.). The ban is essentially a protectionist measure intended to protect commercial fishermen here in Alaska from competition by fish farming here in the state. The problem with this like all other protectionist laws, is that we do not operate in a local marketplace. Rather, salmon sales are a worldwide marketplace and by demanding and backing this sort of legislation Alaskan commercial fishermen ensure they have no other options in that marketplace other than pulling salmon from the sea. Today, farmed salmon makes up over 70% of all salmon sold worldwide. In response to this competition, Alaskan commercial fishermen have cranked up commercial hatcheries, particularly with pink salmon which only spend a year in the salt water, so that they can maximize yearly poundage caught and sent to market. Think of this as salmon ranching. Problem is that there is a carrying capacity in the North Pacific, as there is only so much natural food available for the billion additional hungry mouths. Pink salmon fry are out-competing other salmon who spend much longer in the salt water – kings, silvers and chum – for available food, driving their numbers down in Prince William Sound. That concern is starting to be raised against yet another requested increase in hatchery output, and the reaction by commercial fishermen has been nothing short of laughable. They deny there is a problem. They do not support gathering data. They call names and conduct personal attacks on their critics. All of these are things that they have long accused resource development companies of doing as commercial fishermen publicly oppose those new projects using fears of negative impact to salmon returns. Yet they appear to be negatively impacting mixed stock salmon returns just to put a few more dollars in their back pockets. They have become what they claim to hate most. Ironic. https://craigmedred.news/2018/05/03/hungry-mouths/
More later –
– AG