Maternal deaths and the elephant in the room

Below is a judicious article from a medical journal that addresses a problem that should not be happening.  Why is giving birth in the USA so often fatal?  The article runs through the range of possible causes and notes that it is mainly a black problem, but not entirely so. And the various potential causes do make sense.  So, as with many social phenomena, it is reasonable to conclude that a range of factors contribute to the final outcome.  There are many things you can die from.

But there is an elephant in the room that is only obliquely mentioned.  One that could very well contribute to the deaths:  Obamacare.  Many people cannot afford the much higher premiums now demanded and there are even more people who are only nominally insured.  They have insurance but their deductibles can easily reach $10,000 or more -- which in effect means that they are not insured at all.  A lot of routine medical costs are way below $10,000 so no help with such costs is available.  And even costs below $10,000 can be hard to meet for a big family or for people with many calls on their funds -- such as working single mothers who have to pay for childcare. And some people are just  not good at saving so the effective absence of insurance to help with medical costs simply means that medical care is simply not sought by them on many occasions.

So there can be little doubt that many precautionary visits to the doctor are not made and many possibly revealing scans are not carried out. So problems are missed until it is too late.  Early diagnosis is universally advantageous but is not practically available.  So Obamacare should be called DeniedCare.  Someone should tell the "rebel" GOP senators who are blocking reform that they are killing mothers


In 2005, 23 US mothers per 100 000 live births died from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. In 2015, that number rose to 25. In the United Kingdom, the number was less than 9. In Canada, it was less than 7.

Very few wealthy countries saw increases over those years. Many poorer countries, including Iran and Romania, saw declines. But here in the United States, things got worse.

These numbers have been confirmed by independent research. Last year, a study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology found that the maternal mortality rate in the United States had increased by more than 25% from 2000 to 2014. This trend differed by state, however. Although California had shown some declines, Texas had seen significant increases.

Texas in particular has been the focus of much of the news on maternal mortality in the last few years. From 2011 to 2014, the rate doubled. Although we lack good data to tell us why, many have postulated that changes to family planning in the state coincided with this increase. In 2013, for example about half of the state’s clinics that provided abortion in addition to other reproductive health services were closed because of regulations passed against them. In 2011, the family-planning budget was slashed in an attempt to defund Planned Parenthood. Many clinics closed and more were forced to reduce their services.

Family planning matters. About 50% of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned and might lack preventive care that properly planned-for pregnancies might.

There’s more to this story than changes in regulations and family planning. Some of the increase is likely due to the growing prevalence of other chronic conditions. Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease likely contribute to maternal mortality, and trends for many conditions have been increasing over the last decade. Women are having children later in life than they used to, and some have more complex conditions. More women have caesarian deliveries, which can lead to complications. The opioid epidemic may contribute to maternal mortality, as well.

Disparities exist in maternal mortality as they do in other areas of health care. The increases we’ve seen are most noticeable in non-Hispanic black women. The number of deaths per 100 000 live births among black women is more than 3 times that among white women. In fact, for any state, the higher the percentage of black women in the delivery population, the higher its rates of maternal mortality. But racial disparities can only account for so much of the problem. Even if you look only at white women in the United States, the rates of mothers who die is greater than those in other developed countries.

The fragmented nature of the US health care system doesn’t help either. Too many people in the United States go without necessary care, because they lack access to care or avoid it because of cost. This is just as true of pregnant women as it is of everyone else. As many politicians argue that maternity care shouldn’t be considered essential benefits, some worry that coverage might get worse with reform.

It is possible that some of the increase in maternal mortality is due to better record keeping. States have been working to improve how they keep track of maternal deaths, as well as other causes of death, and better reporting would be reflected as increases in prevalence. It’s hard to imagine, however, that this increase in better records has been solely in the United States, and could account for all of the increases. There’s no reason to believe that all other countries would be keeping themselves in the dark. Moreover, the more universal and socialized health systems are less likely to have women, and their deaths, fall through the cracks and be missed.

Pregnancy and childbirth are risky. We don’t like to talk about it, but maternal mortality is the sixth most common cause of death among US women age 25 years to 34 years old. Proper maternal care helps to prevent morbidity and mortality, but that care is difficult when clinics close and insurance lapses. Medicaid can help to close the gap and often does with pregnant women, but even then, both physician services and mother’s finances are strained.

As with many things in health care, a rising tide would lift all boats. Efforts to improve the health of women in general would improve our rates of maternal mortality. Reducing levels of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease would achieve results. So would getting a handle on the opioid epidemic. But we’ve spent the last few years—if not more—focused on efforts to reduce infant mortality. Mothers may need a similar commitment.

SOURCE

******************************

The Truth About Capitalism

One of the chief objectives of globalism is to transfer wealth from rich nations to poor nations. To the equality-of-results crowd it sounds great, because they don’t understand that spreading the wealth actually makes everyone poorer.

The main reason I’m against giving handouts to countries who destroy themselves through their socialist policies is that it sends the wrong message. We should not lie to such countries about the morality and merits of capitalism. The greatest gift we can offer is to help them understand that freedom is not about security or equality; it’s about insecurity and inequality.

We should teach them that the price of freedom is self-responsibility, and self-responsibility means that no one has a right to a house, a car, a job — no, not even healthcare. What everyone does have a right to is exactly what others are willing to pay him, free of government interference.

Those who think otherwise are responsible for our $20 trillion national debt and a federal budget deficit that is projected to be in the area of $500 billion and rising. Economic security is not a right, but it sure is a formula for disaster.

If we continue to subsidize bankrupt nations around the globe, we will be encouraging them to believe that capitalism is about security and equality. That, in turn, will cause them to be disillusioned when they find out the hard way that it is not. If instead we focus our efforts on educating them to understand that capitalism is about freedom of choice, self-responsibility, and risk, we will be doing them a great favor.

Unfortunately, progressives (as well as many phony conservatives) do not seem to understand this, especially wealthy faux liberals who are immune to the effects of socialist policies in Washington. I was reminded of this a couple weeks ago when a casual acquaintance of mine invited me to a social gathering at his home. In a moment of temporary insanity, and after being assured that no members of Black Lives Matter, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the Communist Party USA would be in attendance, I agreed to drop by.

I tend to be a target at limousine-liberal gatherings, and, sure enough, a middle-aged gentleman of means came up to me and, from out of the blue, sneered, “Capitalism is the most evil system ever invented.” He obviously was trying to get my goat.

Displaying my finest George Will deadpan expression, I asked how an intelligent, successful gentleman like him had managed to arrive at such a fascinating conclusion. To which he groused, “Under capitalism, the poor are exploited by the rich.” Yikes — it was the ghost of Vladimir Lenin!

Masochist that I am, I asked him to define the terms rich and poor for me, but he simply waived aside my question as though it were frivolous. My acquaintance’s wife then intervened and admonished us that political discussions were forbidden in her house, thus preventing a Sunday afternoon homicide.

Darn. I didn’t even get a chance to see the expression on his face had I been able to lay this one on him: The gap between the rich and the poor is supposed to increase under capitalism! That’s right, folks. Like it or not, it’s built into the system.

But hold on: Also built into the system is the fact that almost everyone is better off under capitalism. Why? Because trickle-down economics really does work! Try finding a Republican politician who will admit to that.

The U.S. government’s own Census Bureau’s statistics confirm this truth. Average-income figures clearly show that during the Reagan years, almost everyone’s income rose significantly, while during the Carter years, most people got poorer. Does anyone seriously believe that voters kicked Carter out of office and gave Reagan two landslide victories because they were better off under Carter and worse off under Reagan?

What was in play during the Reagan years was the so-called invisible hand of the marketplace. When people realize they can reap financial rewards by providing better goods and services to others, they work harder and longer hours to do so. As a result, the economy prospers and everyone is better off.

On the other hand, the more government interferes with this natural process, the worse off everyone is. How far mankind has advanced is not a reflection of his true potential; it is his true potential minus government interference. Those who believe that a strong central government is needed to manage a nation’s economy simply do not understand the awesome power of the invisible hand of the marketplace.

Which takes me back to the growing disparity between the rich and the poor (setting aside, for now, the important question of who has the omniscience and moral authority to decide who should be slotted into these two categories in the first place). In a mythical, totally free society, if everyone were to start with nothing, some people would become “rich” while others would become “poor.”

Now, stop and think about that for a moment. Wouldn’t natural forces assure that the most successful people would become even more successful over time and thus increase the gap between themselves and those who have not been as successful? After all, they would be using the same talents, efforts, and self-discipline that made them better off in the first place.

I’d love to see the Trump administration set aside childish notions and tell the truth about this “income inequality” garbage. Of course the gap between the rich and the poor increases under capitalism. But that, of and by itself, does not harm anyone. (Remember, the pie is not fixed.) The only problem is the one caused by venomous progressive thinkers who have unilaterally decided that such a gap is not “fair.” Which, of course, is merely their subjective opinion.

Personally, I don’t think of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor as fair or unfair. It’s simply reality. However, I do believe the fact that successful people tend to become even more successful is fair, provided they achieve their success on a non-coercive basis. Why shouldn’t a person be allowed to become as successful as his talents and hard work will take him?

That said, I believe the first step toward regaining our lost freedoms is to totally defeat progressive subjectivism. Go-along-to-get-along conservatives need to come to grips with the reality that compromise does not work, because it encourages a lie, and lies simply do not work.

Of course, the progressive is free to think whatever makes him feel good at any given moment. However, he should not be allowed to force others to give up their freedom to accommodate his arrogant notion of one of the most abstract ideas known to man: fairness. Fairness is a subjective word, right up there with “social justice.”

To paraphrase the great Milton Friedman, the only social justice that makes any sense is for everyone to keep what he earns in a totally free market.

SOURCE

*******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

Border Patrol: Trump performs ‘miracle’ on immigration

A spokesman for the nation’s Border Patrol agents is telling the mainstream media what they don’t want to hear. The truth.

In an interview with C-SPAN, National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd spoke about the 53 percent decrease in the number of arrests for illegal crossings, hailing it as a “miracle” performed by Trump.

“As far as the Trump administration’s efforts on immigration, this is something they campaigned heavily on,” he said. “At six months, where we are on meeting those promises, we are seeing nothing short of miraculous. If you look at the rhetoric that President Trump has given, it has caused a number of illegal border crossings to go down. We have never seen such a drop that we currently have,” said Judd.

Much of the drop is attributable to Trump himself.  Under Obama, illegal crossings surged as women and children swarmed the US border to enter illegally, believing they would likely be given amnesty.  Border Patrol agents, used to illegals seeking to elude officers, found themselves overwhelmed by thousands of illegals who would sneak over the border, then walk to the nearest Patrol station to turn themselves in, believing they would be given amnesty.

That stopped once Trump won.

“(S)ince the fiscal year began in October, arrests are down two-thirds, from 66,712, a six-year record high, to 21,659 a six-year record low,” The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reported July 7.

SOURCE

**************************

"Lost" health insurance

A few weeks ago, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was going on and on about a “single insurance provider” that pays for 49 percent of all births, as well as full health care costs of almost 40 percent of all children in the United States. This single “insurer,” Maddow said, was the biggest “health insurance provider in the country by a mile.”

Maddow was talking about Medicaid, which, of course, is not “insurance” but “welfare.”

When we’re allowed to call things whatever we want in order to win an argument, there is a total breakdown in democratic politics, fair commerce and social interaction.

Thus, for example, until we get our terms straight, Americans will be forced to keep paying through the nose whenever they try to buy actual health insurance — because they aren’t buying health insurance; they’re paying for other people’s welfare. Washington will never be able to make it legal to sell real health insurance — because, if they try, the welfare recipients will mob congressional offices claiming that Republicans are murdering them.

There is no truth in any discussion of Obamacare. Currently, the most persistent lie is the claim that — according to scoring by the CBO! — 22 million Americans would “lose” their health insurance under the Senate health care bill. Turn on the TV right now and you’ll hear someone saying this.

“A new (CBO) budget score said 22 million more Americans would lose health coverage under this plan …”

— Poppy Harlow, CNN, June 27, 2017

“A score from the Congressional Budget Office … said the Republican bill to kill Obamacare would kick 22 million Americans off their health insurance.”

— Rachel Maddow, June 27, 2017

“The clock is ticking on the Senate health care bill as the CBO estimates 22 million people will lose their insurance.”

— Chris Hayes, June 26, 2017

HELLO? REPUBLICANS? ANY OF YOU GUYS WANT TO REBUT THAT? IT’S PRETTY EASY TO DO!

The actual CBO report says nothing of the sort. People citing the “22 million” figure didn’t read past the CBO’s headline-grabbing paragraph at the top of the “Summary” page.

In fact, the CBO merely estimates that — in the year 2026 — 22 million Americans who otherwise would have been forced by the Obamacare penalty to buy health insurance will choose not to buy insurance once the penalty is gone. By “people thrown off their health insurance,” liberals mean: “people who voluntarily decide not to have health insurance.” (More accurately, “people who choose not to prove to the government that they have health insurance.”)

To use the word “lose” here is absurd. It would be like saying that Nixon ending the draft meant that 50,000 American men would “lose” their military service. The poor lads would be forced to volunteer.

Last year, I chose to end my New York Times subscription. I wasn’t “thrown off” the Times’ subscriber list. In full possession of the facts, I made an informed decision that I no longer wanted to receive the Times — just as 22 million Americans (the CBO guesses) will make an informed decision in the year 2026 not to have health insurance, if given that option.

Redefining words like “insurance” and “lose” to mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean makes human conversation impossible. We can still grunt, howl and shiver when it’s cold, but we will no longer have the ability to communicate slightly more complex thoughts to one another.

The only solution is for the rest of us to impose a broken windows policy on the truth, demanding it in every walk of life. If liars continually get away with it, their lies will only become more preposterous and more enraging.

Illegal aliens are not “undocumented immigrants.” They’re not “immigrants” at all. Immigrants wait in line and jump through hoops to be here. They are invited, by us, to come. Illegals cut to the head of the line whenever the mood strikes them, without waiting for an invitation.

SOURCE

*****************************

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:  A bureaucratic monster that shafts the consumer

Imagine you have a dispute with your credit card company. Currently, you can go to an arbitration body, where the card company will almost certainly pay all your expenses, and you may get compensated in full, usually promptly. Now, thanks to a new rule, courtesy of the inaptly named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the regulatory agency unleashed by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, that won’t happen.

Instead, you’ll have to wait for trial lawyers to form a “class” that includes you, wait years while the lawyers do whatever it is they do, probably never see court, and then rejoice in a small refund, while the lawyers pocket millions. It’s what passes for “consumer protection” these days.

That’s the upshot of the CFPB’s new Arbitration Rule, which bans providers of unsecured personal credit from including mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts. Bureau Director Richard Cordray portrays the rule as a consumer protection measure, but the only beneficiaries will be his wealthy trial lawyer friends.

If consumers need protection, it’s from the CFPB. Thankfully, the Senate can provide consumers — as well as investors and entrepreneurs — needed regulatory relief by passing the Financial CHOICE Act (FCA). Among its many good features, it would repeal the CFPB’s authority to prohibit arbitration.

Such a move would be welcome. Mandatory arbitration cuts costs for everyone. According to the CFPB’s own study, it produces better results for consumers than class action lawsuits. For class action attorneys, however, those consumer savings mean less in fees. Trial lawyers, the same CFPB study found, benefit to the tune of over $1 million in a typical class action, while the average class member receives only $32.

Naturally, lawyers have bridled at mandatory arbitration, which functions as a private, contractual form of dispute resolution, and have lobbied for it to be banned. With the Arbitration Rule, Cordray is poised to grant them their wish. The rule will transfer wealth transfer from low-income consumers to rich lawyers, delay the settlement of grievances, and reduce payouts. So much for consumer protection.

This CFPB move underscores the urgent need to curtail the agency and other abuses wrought by Dodd-Frank. For starters, Congress should repeal the rule by using a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which requires simple majorities in both chambers. The House and Senate have 60 days to vote down the CFPB arbitration rule, so they need to move fast.

Congress made a big mistake when it gave the CFPB so much power under Dodd-Frank — power enhanced by its unusual — and unconstitutional — structure. There are few checks on its power. It is not accountable to Congress’ “power of the purse,” because it gets its funding from the Federal Reserve. Nor is the Bureau subject to any meaningful oversight from the president as head of the Executive Branch. This led a federal Appeals Court last year to rule that the CFPB’s structure is unconstitutional (the ruling was set aside and the case is currently being reheard.

If that sounds like the Bureau can act as it wants, it does — as it did when it finalized its Arbitration Rule. We can expect CFPB regulators to promulgate more arbitrary rules in the future.

Fortunately, the Senate need not wait for the courts to rein in the unaccountable CFPB. It can build on disapproval of the rule by passing the Financial CHOICE Act. The FCA would restructure the Bureau by making its director subject to presidential oversight and its financing dependent on Congress.

The FCA would also address other problems foisted on the American economy by the Dodd-Frank Act. For example, it would provide a better solution to the “Too Big to Fail” problem, which Dodd-Frank has made worse. By designating them as “systemically significant financial institutions,” Dodd-Frank has made big banks more entrenched. It also has subjected non-bank financial institutions to inappropriate regulation that has raised the price of insurance.

The crushing burden of rules from the CFPB and other financial regulators has been a huge drag on the American economy since the financial crisis, contributed to the slow recovery, and hit Main Street banks hard. The rate of closure among small and community banks has doubled since the passage of Dodd-Frank. Around 1 million Americans have been forced out of the banking system by higher fees as banks have struggled to pay the costs of compliance.

Yes, the Senate has a lot on its plate right now, but this is an issue that’s fundamental to American prosperity. A freely functioning financial system is essential to faster economic growth — and the creation of more jobs and economic opportunity. Congress can start by disapproving the CFPB’s new rule, and the Senate can go further by passing the Financial CHOICE Act.

SOURCE

*******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

Trump and civil rights

A prominent family member of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is defending President Donald Trump from attacks by Congressman John Lewis (D-GA.)



“We have come a distance. We made progress. But there are forces in America trying to slow us down or take us back,” Lewis said Friday on low-rated CNN. “I think the person we have in Washington today is uncaring,” Lewis said, adding that he believes Trump “knows very, very little about the history and the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement.”

That drew a sharp response from Dr. Alveda King, pro-life civil activist and niece of Martin Luther King.

King says Trump is “leading the charge for civil rights today for the little unborn persons in the womb who have a right to live.”

“He has surrounded himself with African-American leaders,” King said. “At the African-American museum, for example, he was knowledgeable of much of the history of African-Americans.”

Lewis also believes the 2016 election was rigged with secret computers, and that Trump is not really the President.

“I truly believe to this day that this election was rigged in his favor,” Lewis told low-rated CNN.

SOURCE

****************************

Disgraceful V.A. hospital in Manchester, N.H.

The Trump team has made a start on sorting out the V.A. but they have decades of rot to correct

This is what the US Department of Veterans Affairs says a four-star hospital looks like:

One operating room has been abandoned since last October because exterminators couldn’t get rid of the flies. Doctors had to cancel surgeries in another OR last month after they discovered what appeared to be rust or blood on two sets of surgical instruments that were supposedly sterile.

Thousands of patients, including some with life-threatening conditions, struggle to get any care at all because the program for setting up appointments with outside specialists has broken down. One man still hadn’t gotten an appointment to see an oncologist this spring, more than four weeks after a diagnosis of lung cancer, according to a hospital document obtained by the Globe.

And when patients from the Manchester Veterans Affairs Medical Center are referred to outside specialists, those physicians are sometimes dismayed by their condition and medical history. A Boston neurosurgeon lamented that several Manchester patients sent to him had suffered needless spinal damage, including paralysis, because the hospital had not provided proper care for a treatable spine condition called cervical myelopathy.

“Only in 3rd World countries is it common to see patients end up as disabled from myelopathy as the ones who have been showing up after referral from you,” wrote Dr. Chima Ohaegbulam , of New England Baptist Hospital, to a doctor at the Manchester VA in 2014.

But this hospital, the only one for military veterans in New Hampshire, is just 50 miles from Boston. And it’s supposedly one of the better VA hospitals in the country. Late last year, in fact, the veterans affairs department raised Manchester’s quality rating from three stars to four, putting it in the top third of the entire VA system.

Ratings can deceive. Inside the unassuming red-brick walls of the Manchester medical center is ground zero for an extraordinary rebellion led by doctors who say they have almost no say in how the hospital is run, lack tools to do their jobs, and witness chronic shortcomings in patient care. They say the four top administrators, only one of them a doctor, seem more concerned with performance ratings than in properly treating the roughly 25,000 veterans who go to Manchester for outpatient care and day surgery each year.

So far, 11 physicians and medical employees — including the hospital’s retiring chief of medicine, former chief of surgery, and former chief of radiology — have contacted a federal whistle-blower agency and the Globe Spotlight Team to say the Manchester VA is endangering patients. The US Office of the Special Counsel, the whistle-blower agency, has already found a “substantial likelihood” of legal violations, gross mismanagement, abuse of authority, and a danger to public health, according to a January letter to one of the doctors who alleged wrongdoing.

“I have never seen a hospital run this poorly — every day it gets worse and worse,” said Dr. Stewart Levenson, chief of medicine, an 18-year veteran of the hospital who is among the whistle-blowers. “I never thought I would be exposing the system like this. But I went through the system and got nowhere.”

On Thursday night, a spokesman for Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin expressed concerns about the problems relayed by the Spotlight Team.

“These are serious allegations, and while we cannot comment on the specifics due to patient privacy issues, rest assured that we will look into them right away,” said the VA press secretary in Washington, D.C., Curt Cashour.

Remarkably, leaders of the Manchester VA have confirmed many of the problems, from the fly-infested operating room — “an episodic issue,” said one administrator — to thousands of patients waiting indefinitely for specialist care, which the leaders blamed on the private company hired by the federal government to set up veterans’ appointments outside the hospital.

In a recent hourlong interview with the Globe, hospital director Danielle Ocker and her chief of staff, Dr. James Schlosser, also acknowledged significant cuts in services, such as the elimination of cataract surgery, as well as administrative glitches that further limited care.

For example: The hospital ordered a $1 million nuclear medicine camera in 2015 to replace a balky one, but never installed it because it was too big for the examination room. Without a reliable camera, the hospital in February stopped offering nuclear stress tests for heart disease risk, and bone scans that can detect tumors. The building is expected to be remodeled for a new camera in 2018.

But Ocker and Schlosser expressed surprise that so many members of the medical staff have reported the hospital’s problems to federal investigators. They said the hospital is addressing shortcomings and that patient safety has not been compromised. Ocker, a nurse, contended that Manchester boasts “a zero infection rate” in the operating rooms — a hospital spokeswoman said the unblemished record dates back to 2011 — and shared a veteran’s recent letter praising Manchester VA care.

Ocker also said she wanted medical staff to know that she and other leaders take their concerns seriously.

“My feeling is that if there are issues that we need to address, or if there are concerns, that we need to hear about them,” she said.

In many ways, the Manchester VA is under investigation because doctors became convinced that Ocker and other leaders were not listening. A number of problems date back years before Ocker arrived in 2015, and often reflected lapses in care that occurred when Manchester referred veterans to other VA hospitals or when multiple hospitals failed to coordinate follow-up treatment. But they are coming to the forefront now, in large measure, because one outspoken doctor went public about many patients that he believed had gotten subpar care. Patients like Robert McWhinnie.

McWhinnie, a Korean War veteran who lives in the small New Hampshire town of Gilmanton, relied mainly on a wheelchair to get around when he first visited Dr. William “Ed” Kois, head of Manchester VA’s spinal cord clinic, in July 2016. McWhinnie, who was 84 at the time, had long been a vigorous man who built much of the furniture in his house from maple trees on his land. But then his legs and arms grew weak, he had difficulty talking, and he became incontinent.

Kois immediately got alarmed when reading McWhinnie’s medical records.

They showed that the retired telephone cable splicer had undergone two surgeries at the VA hospital in Jamaica Plain to remove a tumor from his spine in 1995 but that the surgeon could not remove all of it, according to a copy of the records that his family shared with the Globe.

Over the next 21 years, McWhinnie went to the Manchester VA dozens of times for treatment of a variety of ailments. But no one had done imaging to find out if the tumor was growing again, even though regular monitoring was the standard of care after surgery on this type of tumor, according to his lawyer, Mark Abramson.

At least as far back as 2007, McWhinnie was gradually losing the ability to walk, the records indicate, something that could have been caused by a tumor pressing on his spine.

Kois “took one look at Bob, and he said, ‘Oh, my God, this is a disgrace. This man should have been taken care of,’ ” recalled McWhinnie’s wife of 63 years, Janice McWhinnie.

So Kois ordered an MRI and an X-ray and, sure enough, the tumor was choking McWhinnie’s upper, or cervical, spine. It had also grown too big to remove.

“They ignored him basically for 20 years and allowed this thing to grow and grow and grow,” said Abramson, who recently wrote the VA in Manchester and in Boston that his client intends to sue for negligence.

Hospital officials declined to comment, citing potential litigation.

For Kois, McWhinnie’s condition was sickeningly familiar. In his five years at the VA, Kois has compiled a list of at least 80 Manchester patients who were suffering from advanced and potentially crippling nerve compression in the neck, or myelopathy. Some, like McWhinnie, had undergone surgery at other VA hospitals and then relied on Manchester for subsequent care.

Kois said he complained about the situation to administrators and other doctors. He even organized a September 2015 conference at Manchester, where he told a roomful of doctors and other VA staff that patients were getting substandard spinal care.

Ocker herself gave introductory remarks at the conference. Yet, in the interview with the Globe, she said she only became aware of Kois’s concerns more than a year later when she heard that they were part of the federal investigation. She said she left Kois’s conference after welcoming guests and was never briefed on the content of his presentation.

“I did not hear that,” she said of Kois’s allegations.

Kois found a far more receptive audience the following year at the federal Office of the Special Counsel, which made his contentions about poor care a central part of its inquiry. After finding a “substantial likelihood” of wrongdoing, the office recommended a full-fledged investigation by the Veterans Affairs Office of Medical Inspector, which began in January.

The VA medical care system, which is used by about 6 million military veterans each year, has been stumbling since 2014. News stories reported that the Phoenix VA Health Care System had engaged in an elaborate scheme to hide the fact that sick veterans were waiting months to see a doctor, and that some had died before they could be seen.

As similar allegations surfaced at other VA hospitals and tens of thousands of veterans around the country were found to be waiting months for care, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki resigned.

“I can’t explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities,” he said, shortly before stepping down.

But Shinseki’s departure did not stop the drumbeat of scandal. Last year, nearly three dozen whistle-blowers charged that the VA hospital in Cincinnati had made budget cuts that forced out experienced surgeons, reduced access to care, and endangered patients’ safety. The head of the VA’s Ohio-based regional network then retired, and the Cincinnati hospital’s chief of staff was suspended and later indicted on criminal charges.

Now President Trump’s appointee as VA secretary, Shulkin, is vowing to stabilize the health care system. “We are still in critical condition and require intensive care,” Shulkin said at a May press briefing. Last month, Trump signed a bill into law to make it easier for whistle-blowers to come forward and for employees to be fired for misconduct.

SOURCE

*******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

Yale historian warns Trump’s rise perfectly mirrors frightening ascent of Fascism and Nazis in the 1930s

Typical Leftist cherry picking below.  He quotes a few bits he likes and leaves out the rest. He can't find much that Trump has said so he quotes Steve Bannon -- quite ignoring that Bannon is now out of influence with Trump.

He says that Trump’s showman style of populism is heavily influenced by Bannon. But Trump has been a showman for decades, long before Bannon was heard of.  You would have to go back a long way before you found a time when Trump was not in the news. Here's an example of Trump as a young man:



It is true that Trump's rise to power was rapid and Snyder  implies that Fascists rose to power overnight too.  But they didn't.  Hitler fought many elections before he was able to cobble together a minority administration in the "Reichstag". There is no comparison to Trump's sweep.

He does quote Trump as liking the prewar "America First" movement and implies that it was Nazi.  It was in fact the exact opposite. It was the chief anti-immigration and anti-intervention movement in 1930s America.  They were isolationists. The last thing they wanted was to march on any other county.

Snyder in fact just disproves his own argument.  He admits that America First was isolationist but then says that the 1930s Fascists were internationalists.  Che?  But they certainly WERE internationalists. Hitler tried to take over Russia.  Trump gets condemned for being too friendly towards Russia!

It is true that German conservatives gave Hitler some support but that was only because they saw him as a lesser evil than the KPD: the powerful German Communist party.  There was no such threat in America.  The Democrats trust in bureaucracy, not class war. It is in fact the Democrats who are the true modern Fascists.  Right into the war years, Hitler trusted in bureaucracy too.

And the guy below is a historian!  More accurately a fraud

Note that there have been many equally shallow attempts to brand Trump and his followers as being Nazi/ Fascist/ racist/ authoritarian.  As authoritarianism is my main area of academic expertise I have debunked all of them that I know of.  See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and  here.


Writing for The Guardian, Timothy Snyder warns that conservatives seem to be unaware that Trump is taking their governing philosophy into darker — and more violent — territory.

According to Snyder, Trump’s showman style of populism is heavily influenced by White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.

“Stephen Bannon, who promises us new policies ‘as exciting as the 1930s,’ seems to want to return to that decade in order to undo those legacies,” Snyder writes. “He seems to have in mind a kleptocratic authoritarianism (hastened by deregulation and the dismantlement of the welfare state) that generates inequality, which can be channeled into a culture war (prepared for by Muslim bans and immigrant denunciation hotlines).”

“Like fascists, Bannon imagines that history is a cycle in which national virtue must be defended from permanent enemies. He refers to fascist authors in defense of this understanding of the past.”

Noting that President Trump is not an “articulate theorist,” Snyder points out that the president gives Bannon’s dark vision a populist veneer that has historical parallels.

“During the 2016 campaign, Trump spoke of ‘America first,’ which he knew was the name of political movement in the United States that opposed American participation in the second world war,” Snyder explains. “Among its leaders were nativists and Nazi apologists such as Charles Lindbergh. When Trump promised in his inaugural address that ‘from now on, it’s going to be America first’ he was answering a call across the decades from Lindbergh, who complained that ‘we lack leadership that places America first.’ American foreign and energy policies have been branded ‘America first.'”

“Conservatives always began from intuitive understanding of one’s own country and an instinctive defense of sovereignty. The far right of the 1930s was internationalist, in the sense that fascists learned one from the other and admired one another, as Hitler admired Mussolini,” Snyder continued.

“One of the reasons why the radical right was able to overcome conservatives back in the 1930s was that the conservatives did not understand the threat. Nazis in Germany, like fascists in Italy and Romania, did have popular support, but they would not have been able to change regimes without the connivance or the passivity of conservatives.”

“If Republicans do not wish to be remembered (and forgotten) like the German conservatives of the 1930s, they had better find their courage – and their conservatism – fast,” the historian concludes.

SOURCE

****************************

As a Teen Cashier Seeing Food Stamp Use, I Changed My Mind About the Democrat Party

Mamaw encouraged me to get a job—she told me that it would be good for me and that I needed to learn the value of a dollar. When her encouragement fell on deaf ears, she then demanded that I get a job, and so I did, as a cashier at Dillman’s, a local grocery store.

Working as a cashier turned me into an amateur sociologist. A frenetic stress animated so many of our customers. One of our neighbors would walk in and yell at me for the smallest of transgressions—not smiling at her, or bagging the groceries too heavy one day or too light the next. Some came into the store in a hurry, pacing between aisles, looking frantically for a particular item. But others waded through the aisles deliberately, carefully marking each item off of their list.

Some folks purchased a lot of canned and frozen food, while others consistently arrived at the checkout counter with carts piled high with fresh produce.

The more harried a customer, the more they purchased precooked or frozen food, the more likely they were to be poor. And I knew they were poor because of the clothes they wore or because they purchased their food with food stamps. After a few months, I came home and asked Mamaw why only poor people bought baby formula. “Don’t rich people have babies, too?” Mamaw had no answers, and it would be many years before I learned that rich folks are considerably more likely to breast-feed their children.

As my job taught me a little more about America’s class divide, it also imbued me with a bit of resentment, directed toward both the wealthy and my own kind.

The owners of Dillman’s were old-fashioned, so they allowed people with good credit to run grocery tabs, some of which surpassed a thousand dollars. I knew that if any of my relatives walked in and ran up a bill of over a thousand dollars, they’d be asked to pay immediately. I hated the feeling that my boss counted my people as less trustworthy than those who took their groceries home in a Cadillac. But I got over it: One day, I told myself, I’ll have my own d–ned tab.

I also learned how people gamed the welfare system. They’d buy two dozen packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash. They’d ring up their orders separately, buying food with food stamps, and beer, wine, and cigarettes with cash. They’d regularly go through the checkout line speaking on their cell phones. I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.

Mamaw listened intently to my experiences at Dillman’s. We began to view much of our fellow working class with mistrust. Most of us were struggling to get by, but we made do, worked hard, and hoped for a better life. But a large minority was content to live off the dole.

Every two weeks, I’d get a small paycheck and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else. This was my mindset when I was seventeen, and though I’m far less angry today than I was then, it was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw’s “party of the working man”—the Democrats—weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation.

Some blame race relations and the Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights movement. Others cite religious faith and the hold that social conservatism has on evangelicals in that region.

A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s. As far back as the 1970s, the white working class began to turn to Richard Nixon because of a perception that, as one man put it, government was “payin’ people who are on welfare today doin’ nothin’! They’re laughin’ at our society! And we’re all hardworkin’ people and we’re gettin’ laughed at for workin’ every day!”

SOURCE

**************************

NYT won't publish defense of Trump's Russian contacts

Harvard law professor emeritus and prominent liberal author Alan Dershowitz said The New York Times won’t publish him because he’s offering an “alternative point of view” on the Trump-Russia collusion allegations.

Mr. Dershowitz told the Washington Examiner in an interview Monday that he’s tried to get in touch with the The New York Times’ editors, to no avail. He said he wanted to publish an op-ed last month arguing that President Trump likely didn’t attempt to obstruct justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey.

“I said that I thought the readers of the New York Times were entitled to hear or read the other side of the issue whether there were crimes committed,” he said. “And I really do think The New York Times does not want its readers to hear an alternative point of view on the issue of whether or not Trump administration is committing crimes.”

A Times spokesperson declined to comment, telling the Examiner that the paper does not discuss the editorial process for op-ed submissions.

Mr. Dershowitz has made headlines recently for arguing that there was likely no crime committed by Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 when he met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in order to get potentially damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Mr. Dershowitz has stuck by his claim that the younger Mr. Trump’s conduct was likely protected by the First Amendment.

Mr. Dershowitz‘s comments have been most popular among conservative news outlets, but his goal is to “get out in the liberal media,” he told the Examiner.

Unfortunately, his view is “not the narrative they’re pushing,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “It’s not that I’m not credentialed,” he added. “It’s that I don’t have the right point of view.”

SOURCE

Dershowitz's essay eventually appeared in the Boston Globe and was reproduced here yesterday

*******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

The Left Is a Greater Threat to America Than Putin

Dennis Prager

Last week, I tweeted, “The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.”

To my surprise, the tweet went viral. And while there were more likes than dislikes, 99 percent of the written reactions were negative.

Typical reactions were:

–“F— you.”

–“Move to Russia.”

–“Your very full diapers pose a very great danger, please change them.” That received 1,880 likes.

–“I’ve wiped s— off my shoes more trustworthy and patriotic than your sorry a–.” That received 606 likes.

You get the idea.

But it wasn’t the ad hominem insults that I found troubling. What was troubling was the low state of logical thinking that so many responses reflected.

This was exemplified by their reminding me how important a free press is to democracy (as if attacking the behavior of the media were the same as denying the need for a free press); their asking how many nukes the media have compared with Russia (as if a threat to lives were the same as a threat to a civilization); and their thinking that my tweet was about President Donald Trump (he was never mentioned, and the words were just as true when Barack Obama was president).

My tweet was about the Western left undoing Western civilization. My one regret is that I did not mention universities along with the media.

The tweet had nothing to do with the existence of a free press. Attacking what the media is doing is not the same as attacking the existence of the media—any more than attacking Trump is attacking the existence of the presidency.

With regard to Russia having more nukes than the media, those who noted this fact so missed the entire point of the tweet that it is almost breathtaking.

When one speaks about dangers to a civilization, one is speaking ideologically, not physically. Of course, if Russia were to unleash its nuclear weapons against the West, it would kill vast numbers of Westerners.

However, that would no more mean the end of Western civilization than the Holocaust meant the end of Jewish civilization. Civilization connotes a body of ideas and a value system.

Furthermore, a Russian nuclear attack threatening the West’s physical existence is an utterly remote possibility. Russian leaders, just as Soviet leaders before them, fear what is known as MAD (mutually assured destruction).

The real nuclear threat comes from North Korea and, above all, Iran, which constantly announces its intent to exterminate Israel. But while The New York Times cannot stop writing about the threat Russian President Vladimir Putin poses, it accuses Trump of “demonizing” Iran.

The real threat to Western civilization is Western civilization ceasing to believe in itself. And, in that regard, Russia poses no danger, while the left-wing-dominated media and universities pose an existential threat.

That’s why the most depressing of the negative reactions were those from people calling themselves conservatives. If conservatism isn’t about conserving Western civilization first and foremost, what is it about?

Students in college have voted the American flag off their campus. Where did these students learn their unprecedented contempt for America and patriotism, if not from their schools and the media?

European countries continue to welcome in millions of Muslims, adding to the tens of millions of Muslims already in Europe—many of whom, if not most, have no interest in adopting Europe’s values.

Do the critics of my tweet conclude nothing about the left’s role —meaning the role of Western media and academia— in promoting multiculturalism, the doctrine that holds that no cultural, religious, or value system is superior to any other?

At the University of Pennsylvania, its left-wing English department has removed its long-standing portrait of Shakespeare because he was white and male. Is that not a direct hit on Western civilization?

The left-wing prime minister of Canada has proudly announced, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” and that Canada is “the first postnational state.”

What produced him? Putin?

Is it Putin who is removing American flags from American campuses?

Is Putin destroying the notion of male and female?

Has Putin convinced half of America’s millennials that socialism is preferable to capitalism?

Did Putin convince Pope Francis that Islamic terrorists are no more of a threat to Europe than baptized Catholics who kill their girlfriends?

Is Putin the reason Oxford University students voted that Israel is a greater threat to peace than Hamas?

Putin is indeed a murderous quasi dictator. But all this contempt for Western civilization comes from the Western media and the Western universities.

The smoking gun was provided just two weeks ago in the media’s reactions to Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland, in which he called for protecting Western civilization.

Virtually the entire Western media said it was a call to protect white racism —because the media deem Western civilization to be nothing more than a euphemism for white supremacy.

That’s what my tweet was about.

SOURCE

************************************

A partisan rush to prosecute Trump

By Alan M. Dershowitz

When I taught law at Harvard, I always gave a final exam that included what is called “an issue spotter.” I presented a complex hypothetical case, often based on a real one, and asked the students to stretch their imaginations to come up with every conceivable crime that might be charged and every conceivable defense that might be offered. That was the first part of the question, and most students excelled at spotting the relevant issues. In the second part of the question, I asked them to use their judgment in deciding which, if any, of these crimes could realistically be charged and which defenses could realistically be offered. It was this part of the question that separated the very good lawyers, which included the vast majority of the students, from the truly exceptional ones. To be a great lawyer requires the exercise of judgment, subtlety, nuance, and an ability to predict what the courts will do.

I am reminded of these exams when I read op-eds and listen to TV appearances, some by my former excellent students, that apply only the first part of the test to the current legal situations confronting the Trump administration. These smart lawyers try to come up with every conceivable statute that an imaginative lawyer could identify, ranging from the Logan Act (which hasn’t been used in 215 years), to treason (which is narrowly defined in the Constitution), to obstruction of justice, to witness tampering, to violations of campaign financing laws (which are so vague and open-ended that half of America’s politicians would be in jail if they were broadly applied).

I have to admit that these lawyers show great imagination – imagination they rightly condemn when Republications play the same game, accusing Hillary Clinton of espionage and other open-ended crimes. But they show scant judgment or nuance in distinguishing what might be possible based on the broadest interpretation of the language and what is realistic based on court precedents, prosecutorial discretion, equal application, and simple justice. It is not that these lawyers aren’t brilliant. They are. It’s not their intellect I am questioning. It is the double standard they seem to be applying to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, in particular, and to the opposing party and their party, in general. The one factor that must never enter into prosecutorial judgment is partisanship, regardless how strong and even legitimate the negative feelings are about a political opponent.

It is tempting, because it is so easy, to comb the statute books in an effort to identify every conceivable crime that might be applicable to any given situation. As Harvey Silverglate wrote in his superb book, “Three Felonies a Day,” prosecutors play the following game: One names a well-known and controversial person, and the others search through the statute books to figure out which three felonies they committed on a given day. That is what prosecutors do when they are playing games. It’s not supposed to be what they do when they destroy a person’s life by indicting them.

Former FBI director James Comey understood the role of a prosecutor when he concluded that “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information” by Clinton. But after engaging in the first part of the criminal law exam exercise, he turned to the second part, involving judgment and concluded that “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” Silverglate shows that our criminal statute books are overloaded with crimes that can be expanded to fit any politician or businessman or any controversial figure.

Comey’s conclusion generated outcries of protest from Republican partisans who had played the same game that Democratic partisans are now playing when they demanded that if there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes, then a prosecution must be brought. But these zealots were wrong and Comey was right. (He was not right in making public his evaluation of the evidence and his finding that Clinton was “extremely careless [in her] handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” But that is a different matter).

Democratic partisans, who were happy with Comey’s conclusion not to prosecute Clinton, should be applying the same standards to Trump. No reasonable prosecutor would bring a charge of treason, tampering with witnesses, obstruction of justice, or violating campaign laws, based on the evidence that is now available. (It is possible that evidence may emerge of such crime. But based on what we now know, that is highly unlikely.)

So, let’s not treat the criminal justice system as a law school exam in which students are asked to catalog every possible violation of our accordion-like laws. But if we insist on doing so, let’s at least include the second part of the exam question: showing judgment and nuance in deciding whether to bring a case even if there is “evidence of potential violations of the statutes.” The rule of law cannot survive a double standard. What is good for the goose must be good for the gander, and what we applauded with regard to Hillary Clinton we must not condemn with regard to Donald Trump.

SOURCE

*******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

U.S. Allies Annoyed by Trump's Attention to Putin at G20 Dinner: ‘The Body Language, the Chemistry’

Maybe I have got a weird sense of humor but I found the report below to be hilarious. Trump's ability to upset conventional applecarts is superb. People niggle at the smallest things he does.  I personally think it is fabulous that the Presidents of two of the world's greatest countries get on well.  Surely peace with Russia is what we all want.

And it is an example of a promise kept.  Trump promised better relations with Russia on the campaign trail.  I suspect that Trump sensed from the beginning that Putin was just a patriot doing his best for his country who shared a disrespect for political correctness


The man who broke the news of President Trump's unofficial, one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a July 7 dinner in Germany said he found out about it from apparently disgruntled U.S. allies who watched the whole thing unfold.

Ian Bremer, a foreign policy analyst, author, and head of Eurasia Group, appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday to discuss the implications of the hour-long conversation between Putin and Trump where only the Russian translator knows for sure what the two men were saying to each other.

“Well, it's not surprising for leaders to have informal pull-asides when they have business to discuss in the context of these summits, but what is unusual is the length, the warmth in the context of what is already an unprecedented relationship between Trump and Putin,” Bremer said:

Many of the leaders that were in that room, including, you know, America’s most important allies were quite surprised. They found it unusual and noteworthy -- the body language, the chemistry, the fact that it went on for so long, and the fact that, of course, it reflected a much warmer relationship between Trump and Putin than he has with any of the other leaders in the room.

And I think in the context of a president who already has unnerved a lot of world leaders, making them wonder to what extent is the Trump administration committed to them, whether it’s on security or trade or climate or what have you – that’s really where the true uniqueness of this comes along.
Was any rule broken? “Morning Joe” anchor Mika Brzezinski asked Bremer.

“No, I don't think so,” Bremer replied. But not having two translators in such a situation is “extremely unusual,” he added.

"Putin didn't come to him. He got up. He went around the table, he sits down next to Putin. They're yucking it up. It’s very engaged, it’s very animated, it’s very connected. After a day and a half of summit, where he didn't do that with anyone else, any of his allies, and I think lot of people find that very disturbing.”

SOURCE

*****************************

Hypocrisy is routine for Democrats

And it doesn't bother them at all

If Elizabeth Warren didn’t have double standards, she’d have none at all. She claims to fight for minorities, but this rich white elitist lied about her ethnicity to steal a job from a minority.

She claims banks exploited the poor by giving them bad mortgages, but she raked in mountains of cash snatching up homes from foreclosed families and selling them for personal profit.

And how she’s been caught partying at an exclusive getaway with a Wall Street executive she claims to oppose.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), one of the Senate’s fiercest Wall Street critics, attended a Democratic donor retreat over the weekend hosted by former UBS bank executive Robert Wolf, who last year lashed out against politicians that target Wall Street for political gain…

…Warren’s office did not respond to a request for comment on her decision to attend Wolf’s event.

Warren didn’t make any public announcement over the weekend regarding her participation in the donor event.

She did, however, post pictures on Twitter of a town hall she held in Martha’s Vineyard prior to the dinner, noting that the event was “what Democracy looks like.”

Warren couldn’t seem to find the time to criticize him at the private retreat the way she does in her campaign events.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Elizabeth Warren makes Hillary Clinton looks honest and trustworthy.

SOURCE

********************************

Obsessive-Compulsive Democrats and Impeachment

The obstruction of Trump's agenda is the primary goal, but Democrats are hurting themselves just as much.

Who dares to deny that the circus-like atmosphere surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency is the most unusual political phenomenon in recent memory?

There is a lot of true craziness among the anti-Trump crowd. They criticize him for virtually everything, or nothing. Like the non-story involving Poland’s first lady, who set the anti-Trump world ablaze when, after her husband and Trump shook hands, she had the audacity to shake the hand of Melania Trump before greeting the president. Oh, the horror! And daughter Ivanka sat in for him briefly at the G-20 meeting wearing a pink dress with — gasp — bows on it!

Perhaps the best evidence of compulsive obsession (or is it obsessive compulsion?) and leftists losing their grip on reality was Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who wanted to impeach Trump before he was even sworn in.

Other evidence of the high degree of obsession — or at least amusing overstatement — comes from a survey by the drug and alcohol rehabilitation group Detox, which found, “Over 73 percent of Democrats would give up drinking for the rest of their lives if it led to the impeachment of President Donald Trump…” The survey did not provide a mechanism for assuring allegiance to the pledge.

It’s quite likely that many people who desire impeachment don’t understand what it is or how it works. Impeachment is a political remedy; it deals with breaches of public trust, or injuries done immediately to the society itself, by certain government officials, but not necessarily criminal activity in the traditional sense.

The grounds for impeachment require the significant likelihood that “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (crimes by public officials against the government) have been committed, according to Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. It’s not the appropriate solution for those dissatisfied with the results of an election, or the most fervent wish to be rid of a president some don’t like.

Impeachment doesn’t remove a president from office. It’s the first step in a rigorous two-step process; bringing formal charges against him or her, much like a grand jury indictment. Remember, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998, but went on to serve out his term as president because he was not convicted in step two, the trial by the U.S. Senate, requiring the affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of its members.

The only other successful impeachment of a president was Andrew Johnson, who was acquitted by the Senate in 1868. Richard Nixon likely would have been impeached and convicted over the Watergate affair, but he avoided impeachment by resigning from office.

The record for presidential impeachment shows it to be a difficult process without much success, as deliberately designed by the Founders.

Failures don’t impede Democrats in their efforts at futile goals, however. Obsession and compulsion are tough masters to defeat. It’s almost as if their real goal is just stirring up negative opinion among their faithful followers to interfere with the president’s agenda…

“If they had a good case based on real information, I think they would mention it by now and put their cards on the table,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group. He is also a former Pennsylvania state prosecutor and former counsel for the board of directors at the Legal Services Corporation. He added, “They don’t have high crimes and misdemeanors. They don’t have low crimes and misdemeanors.”

Despite any compelling evidence, or even evidence that isn’t compelling, leftist cohorts who have rallied to the idea include MoveOn.org, Democracy for America and other “resistance” groups, and a group of Congressional Democrats who either don’t understand the issues or the process or just seek recognition.

This list includes the aforementioned Rep. Waters, along with Texas Rep. Al Green, California Rep. Jackie Speier, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, Maine Sen. Angus King, Texas Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal. And let’s not forget Virginia’s own Sen. Tim Kaine, who actually mentioned “treason” regarding Donald Trump Jr.‘s fruitless meeting with a Russian attorney in June 2016.

After admitting nothing has yet been proved, Kaine said, “We’re now beyond obstruction of justice, in terms of what’s being investigated. This is moving into perjury, false statements, and even potentially treason.”

California Rep. Brad Sherman actually has introduced articles of impeachment, although the House Democrat leadership hasn’t fallen in line with that move. The effort is almost certain to fail because only one Democrat, Al Green, has signed on to it, and, oh by the way, it won’t go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress.

At some point, however, Democrats must chill down the rhetoric. Emotion and desire, however fervent and crushing they may be, must be put aside, an objective look at the actual case must be undertaken, and then they need to get back to performing the national service for which they were elected. Then again, since they’re utterly untrustworthy on handling any issue of importance, the nation would be better served if Democrats continued their obsessive spiral and failed to advance in the 2018 election.

SOURCE

*********************************

Full Repeal of Obamacare Has Always Been the Only Answer

Sen. Mike Lee (R.-Utah) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R.-Kan.) dealt a blow to Obamacare “repeal and replace” efforts last night when they announced they would not vote for the latest version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

Now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to schedule a vote to repeal major sections of the Affordable Care Act using the reconciliation process, but it still won’t be a full repeal.

Republicans made a commitment to the American people. They committed to repealing Obamacare, and Americans put them in office to do it. Now, Republicans have a chance to finally do the right thing for the American people. They must simply repeal every word of the ACA. A vote on a two-page repeal bill will end the needless quibbling and ongoing drama about the details of a bill that was never full repeal in the first place.

The Better Care Reconciliation Act only further embedded federal controls, federal infrastructure, federal subsidies and federal dollars of Obamacare into federal law. The Senate bill is not repeal. The House bill is not repeal. Both bills were designed for big insurers and big government. They aren’t bills to benefit patients, and they don’t restore health freedom or affordability. Any “replacement” bill that exchanges one federal program for another is not the right direction. Full repeal has always been the only answer. We call on the Senate to put a real repeal bill up for a vote.

SOURCE

***************************

A trip down memory lane



And they say Trump's foreign policy is naive! Trump has to pick up the pieces left by Democrat stupidity.

*******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

Genius of Trump enrages liberal media

The media is replete with fools with an unwavering media orthodoxy: Trump must be impeached, he’s unhinged, his character is all wrong, he’s crude, he’s rude, he’s putting family in charge of the country, he’s alone on the world stage, he’s cutting off Europe, he’s out of his depth with North Korea and China, he’s clearly in cahoots with Russia and Vlad Putin, he’s a weird night-time tweeter who simply should not be president. Barack Obama never behaved this way. Hillary Clinton would never have behaved like this as madam president.

The media’s conventional wisdom misses one glaringly obvious point: Trump is a completely unconventional President, just as he was a very different candidate vying for the Republican nomination and just as he was a very different contender facing off against Hillary Clinton. Understand this elemental truth, then put it aside as less important than matters of substance. The constant blather about Trump’s style and character, whether it’s in the media or at dinner parties, is propelling too many people into intergalactic irrelevance. And in space no one can hear you scream.

The genius of Trump is how he manipulates fools in the media to his own ends. During last year’s presidential campaign, mainstream media’s “get Trump” cov­erage backfired badly. The more the media dumped on Trump, the more coverage it gave him and the more it helped Trump win the presidency — not just with free air­time, estimated to be worth $US2 billion, but by feeding Trump’s message of a biased media. It’s the same now. Trump goes after the “fake news” media because he can and because it works. Trump speaks directly to his 34 million Twitter followers without being filtered by the media. This drives the media nuts, as it can’t game the system the same way.

As The New York Post’s Michael Goodwin said during a speech a few months ago, while left-liberal politics were baked into the journalism cake decades ago during the social revolution of the 1960s and 70s, what happened last year was something altogether worse. “As with grief, there were several stages” in journalists’ coverage of Trump, he said. They started out treating him like a joke, then, when Trump won the GOP nomination, the media got angry, especially because his battle with the media aided and abetted his rise. Since he won the presidency, the media has tried to get even, calling for Trump’s impeachment absent hard evidence. Having helped create the celebrity who became a president, the media seems to imagine it can bring him down too.

Trump’s message resonates because the media’s anti-Trump bias is still evident. Just look at the feverish reporting of the latest ABC/Washington Post poll this week. Trump’s six-month approval rating is at an all-time low, sitting at just 36 per cent, the lowest of any president in 70 years. Our own excitable ABC journalists added that the poll had a fine history of accuracy; it was out by only 2 per cent at the November presidential poll. No biggie unless you remember that being out by 2 per cent meant the poll failed to predict the 45th American President.

When former FBI boss James Comey gave evidence before the US Senate last month, there was fanatical condemnation of Trump by the unholy trinity of The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Cooler analysis might have noted that Comey refused to say Trump’s actions were an obstruction of justice. There’s no excited reporting of the poll that found 79 per cent of Republican voters backed Trump’s decision to sack Comey. Or of last week’s poll that found 60 per cent of Trump voters weren’t fussed by Donald Trump Jr meeting a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Clinton during last year’s campaign.

Attacking the media works for Trump for another reason: the cycle suits him. He tweets about “Low IQ Crazy Mika” and “Psycho Joe” from MSNBC Morning Joe. He posts hashtags like #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN — fraud news network. He posts spoofs on Twitter of him in a WWE professional wrestling match with a candidate wearing a CNN logo. The media responds: he’s juvenile, he’s encouraging violence. He’s un-presidential, petty and devaluing his office. A comedian quips: “Imagine a kindergarten principal tweeting: ‘The little f..ker punched me first’.” Sweet old actress Mia Farrow demands that the President “stop this nonsense”. Author JK Rowling quotes George Washington about silence being the best answer to calumny.

Then Trump strikes back. The media responds with more attacks and unwittingly, the outraged media and countless celebrities become his useful idiots, their frenzied loathing helping him to feed the message about media bias and disconnected celebrities. Then, the media ratchets up its Trump loathing even further when it realises he’s playing it like a hillbilly fiddler.

Indeed, if this continues for 3½ more years, the US President will look more like a masterful conductor of Wagner’s epic Ring cycle.

Constant entreaties for the US President to act more presidential fail to understand him. Trump is unlike anything America, or the world, has seen before. He makes no apologies and he’s not interested in changing. He celebrates his difference, tweeting: “My use of social media is not Presidential — it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again.” Normal programming cannot resume until the media starts reporting news and offering considered analysis rather than trying to get even with a modern-day President it helped create.

SOURCE

*****************************

"Secret" meeting with Putin was held in a roomfull of other people!

Donald Trump has lashed out at reports of his undisclosed encounter with Vladimir Putin at the G20 earlier this month, describing them as "sick".

The US and Russian leaders were in Germany for the summit, and came face-to-face for the first time at a two-hour meeting on July 7 – which was reported at the time.

It emerged on Tuesday that the pair had a second discussion, lasting about an hour, during a dinner for the Group of 20 heads of state and their spouses in Hamburg. The pair were joined only by Mr Putin's translator.

Mr Bremmer said the US president got up from his seat halfway through dinner and spent about an hour talking "privately and animatedly" with Mr Putin.

More HERE

********************************

Left-Wing Extremism Killed JFK and His Party

Election Denial is the latest left-wing conspiracy theory.

The Democrat Party now stands for one thing: accusing President Trump of being a Russian agent.

This bold new agenda has proven so enormously popular that the Democrats have wasted $40 million to lose four special elections. The Democrats are leaderless. Their base has become a roving mob of angry embittered sloganeers showing up at town hall meetings and random political events to scream hate. They threaten to kill the wives, children and dogs of Republican members of Congress.

Some, like James Hodgkinson, the Bernie Sanders supporter who opened fire at a Republican charity baseball practice, do more than threaten. They actually unleash all that simmering anger.

The Democrats are going into the midterm elections on a conspiracy theory. The theory is backed by their fake news media outlets at the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN. It just lacks any actual evidence beyond the sort of web of connections usually advanced by conspiracy theorists.

This is the second time that Democrats have embraced a conspiracy theory to escape reality. And behind that conspiracy theory lay the same unpleasant and inconvenient fact of left-wing extremism.

The Democrats couldn’t cope with the fact that a left-wing extremist murdered JFK. So they built a vast array of conspiracy theories that blamed the CIA, the Cubans and the “climate of right-wing hate” in Dallas. The Communist who killed JFK was just a “patsy” for one of those vast right-wing conspiracies.

But it was left-wing extremism that killed Camelot. It’s left-wing extremism that is killing the Democrats.

This time the assassin isn’t on the outside. The assassins of the Democrats are on the inside. They pushed the party so far to the left that its base now consists of the deranged left. It’s unviable outside its bicoastal and urban enclaves. So obviously the Democrats lost Wisconsin because of the Russians. Not because they had become entirely dependent for their political survival on the mass turnout of minority bloc voters who usually have low turnout rates. It was Podesta’s leaked emails that lost Pennsylvania.

But you can’t blame Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Keith Ellison for turning the Democrats into the party of Portland, Austin and Berkeley… but not America. You certainly can’t admit that waging war on nuns, police officers and small businessmen might have alienated a few voters.

It’s easier to invent a conspiracy theory so that you never have to address the real problem. And the real problem is the inability of the Democrats to shake the left-wing monkey maliciously riding on their backs.

Left-wing extremism has consequences. Presidents are shot and presidential elections are lost.

The Soviet Union spent generations blaming its economic failures on everything except its left-wing ideology. It drowned its lands in blood, filled gulags with slave labor and killed its own faithful to evade the simple fact that its left-wing ideology was the problem. The Democrats are desperately scrambling to blame everyone and everything except their left-wing ideology for their political destruction.

Conspiracy theories are the first refuge of failed political movements. When a movement can’t deal with the rottenness in its own ranks, it invents conspiracy theories to explain the ideologically impossible.

If Communism worked, the Soviet Union should have prospered. If Socialism worked, the Obama years should have led to an economic golden age. If the left’s theory of a New Majority displacing old white voters worked, President Hillary Clinton should be on her thousandth executive order by next Tuesday.

The left responds to failure in two ways. Either it blames it on an insufficiently hardline approach. The USSR wasn’t Communist enough. Obama compromised too much. Bernie Sanders should have been the candidate. If Bernie had lost, then a more uncompromising candidate like Jill Stein or Lenin’s pickled carcass would have won. And then to avoid a purity spiral and circular firing squad, it blames some outside force. The Dems blamed Hillary and she blamed them. They both agreed to blame a conspiracy.

The Trump-Russia conspiracy theory diverts attention from what really went wrong. It saves the Democrats from having to admit that they have a problem. And that problem is the left.

The Kennedy killing should have been a warning about the threat of the left. Instead the Democrats drifted further from JFK’s anti-Communist positions until they came full circle and blamed the anti-Communists for the murder of an anti-Communist by a Communist.

The 2016 election should have been a warning to the Democrats about the dangers of extremism. Their embrace of radical politics had marginalized them politically. But instead they found refuge in conspiracy theories. But the Trump-Russia conspiracy fails to answer why the Democrats have been losing election after election around the country, in state races and national ones, long before Trump.

Obama’s reelection was that rare triumph for the Dems in a string of national political disasters. These disasters had nothing to do with Trump or the Russians. The Democrats had become a radical party that was no longer capable of relating to the concerns and values of most of the communities of this country.

The premise that Hillary Clinton, a candidate whom most Americans rated as untrustworthy, could not have lost the election except through a conspiracy is a belief so delusional that it beggars belief. But it’s either that or admit that her embrace of every crazy left-wing idea that had become trendy in the party had killed any hope of a platform that would appeal outside Berkeley leaving her with nothing to run on except her charm and charisma. And that charm and charisma can’t be found with an electron microscope.

Now the Democrats are repeating the same disaster all over again. Instead of connecting with the voters on economic issues, they are pandering to their left-wing base with a Trump-Russia conspiracy theory. Most Americans won’t be voting based on conspiracy theories. And those who will are already a solid left-wing base. But the Dems would rather lose by going to the left than win by moving to the center.

The best evidence of the radicalization of the Dems is that they would rather protect their ideology from accountability than resurrect their political fortunes. Conspiracy theories are how radical movements find a way to have their ideological cake and eat it too. And that’s what the Dems are doing.

JFK conspiracy theories were born out of a refusal to come to terms with the threat of Communism, not just in Europe or Asia, but right here at home. 9/11 denial was born out of the same response to Islam. The conspiracy that ate the left’s brain now is election denial. The moon landing was faked. Bush did 9/11. And Trump didn’t really win the election.

Election denial is what happens when you not only deny that you lost the election, but why you lost. And as Gorbachev would be happy to explain to Tom Perez, that’s the surest way to lose for good.

SOURCE

*********************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************