Voltaren (diclofenac) gives you heart attacks -- or does it?

Alternative U.S. brand names: Cambia, Cataflam, Zipsor, Zorvolex.

Between 1970 and 1990, I spent 20 years energetically involved in psychological research, with over 200 papers published in the academic journals to show for it eventually.  I stopped doing it and turned to studies of history instead when I became convinced that I was just about the only one doing serious psychological research.  I concluded that almost all of my colleagues were just playing clever games.  They were routinely failing to take the basic methodological precautions -- such as random sampling -- that that would enable their results to have any degree of generalizability.

Now many years later that conclusion has been resoundingly confirmed by the "replication crisis" -- the finding that up to 70% of the findings from psychological research failed to show up again when the relevant research was repeated, which was a complete blow to any claims of generalizability for the research findings concerned.

From quite early on, however, I had always had an interest in medical research.  I assumed that with the stakes being higher there the level of caution in the research would be better.  I even contributed a few papers to the medical literature myself.  And from 2005 to 2014  I ran a blog that took critical looks at the latest medical research.  I again found what I had found in psychological research -- a great lack of the precautions which would give you any confidence in the findings.  In fact, psychological research seemed more robust, in that larger effect sizes were generally demonstrated.  The tiniest effect in medical research seems to generate vast claims.  And the replication crisis has hit medical research too -- confirming that most medical findings are not representative of reality either.

And I am afraid that the latest piece of research (below) that I look at is just as hopeless. The authors did a lot of work and had available an excellent body of data but they took almost no methodological precautions whatever.  For epidemiological research to be assigned any confidence, alternative explanations for its correlations have to be ruled out.  That can never be conclusively done but reasonable confidence can be reached.  And at a minimum, the Big Five personality variables have to be controlled for plus the big seven demographic variables (Race, sex, age, education, income, IQ and self-assigned social class).  Any one of those factors can intrude into the findings.

Needless to say, I know of NOT ONE piece of medical research which has used all those controls.  One might have hoped that many studies would at least have incorporated controls for the big two demographics -- Income (where poverty has wide-ranging negative effect on health) and IQ (where high IQ has wide-ranging positive effects on health).  I know of only one study where those two variable were considered -- as part of a wide range of demographic variables. That study found that IQ accounted for more of the variance than all of the rest of the demographics put together.  So the importance of basic controls is beyond dispute.

The study below is also epidemiological.  It is an "emulated trial design" so displayed some caution but is almost totally lacking in real controls.  And, as such, one or more pesky "third" factors could have intruded into the results. The authors seem to have been so excited by the wonderful statistics made available to them by the authoritarian Danish state, that they abandoned basic caution.  Not even demographic controls seem to have been applied.

The issue with this study, as with many epidemiological studies, is to ask WHO it was who fell into the target group.  WHY did some people take Voltaren while other people took other drugs?  What put people into the category of Voltaren users?  Were they, for instance, poor people?  The study authors are silent on such questions.  Had they showed a reasonable level of research caution, they would at least have looked at the demographics for Voltaren use.  Had they found that Voltaren users were mostly poor people, we could have concluded that the study was just one of many which routinely show poor people to have worse health.  The absence of such information means, I am sorry to say, that the results are uninterpretable.

I know nothing about how Voltaren is perceived in Denmark and who takes it.  My only stay in Denmark lasted only for a matter of hours.  But I can offer an hypothesis for what lay behind the study results below based on my knowledge of how Voltaren is perceived in Australia, where I happily live.

And a crucial (and correct) thing that everybody tells you here  is that you cannot use Voltaren for much more than a week without risking an upset stomach.  And so good middle class people like me observe that warning. If we take it at all we take it only briefly.  But medical warnings often go in one ear and out the other, particularly -- you guessed it -- among poor people.  So I guess that Voltaren is used at some sort of conventional rate by incautious people, whereas more cautious (smarter?) people use other drugs.

So I suspect that the bad health outcomes in Voltaren users reflect the characteristics of its users rather than the characteristics of the drug.  There is no way of separating the two interpretations


Diclofenac use and cardiovascular risks: series of nationwide cohort studies

Morten Schmidt et al.

Abstract

Objective: To examine the cardiovascular risks of diclofenac initiation compared with initiation of other traditional non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, initiation of paracetamol, and no initiation.

Design: Series of 252 nationwide cohort studies, each mimicking the strict design criteria of a clinical trial (emulated trial design).

Setting: Danish, nationwide, population based health registries (1996-2016).

Participants: Individuals eligible for inclusion were all adults without malignancy; schizophrenia; dementia; or cardiovascular, kidney, liver, or ulcer diseases (that is, with low baseline risk). The study included 1 370 832 diclofenac initiators, 3 878 454 ibuprofen initiators, 291 490 naproxen initiators, 764 781 healthcare seeking paracetamol initiators matched by propensity score, and 1 303 209 healthcare seeking non-initiators also matched by propensity score.

Main outcome measures: Cox proportional hazards regression was used to compute the intention to treat hazard ratio (as a measure of the incidence rate ratio) of major adverse cardiovascular events within 30 days of initiation.

Results: The adverse event rate among diclofenac initiators increased by 50% compared with non-initiators (incidence rate ratio 1.5, 95% confidence interval 1.4 to 1.7), 20% compared with paracetamol or ibuprofen initiators (both 1.2, 1.1 to 1.3), and 30% compared with naproxen initiators (1.3, 1.1 to 1.5). The event rate for diclofenac initiators increased for each component of the combined endpoint (1.2 (1.1 to 1.4) for atrial fibrillation/flutter, 1.6 (1.3 to 2.0) for ischaemic stroke, 1.7 (1.4 to 2.0) for heart failure, 1.9 (1.6 to 2.2) for myocardial infarction, and 1.7 (1.4 to 2.1) for cardiac death) as well as for low doses of diclofenac, compared with non-initiators. Although the relative risk of major adverse cardiovascular events was highest in individuals with low or moderate baseline risk (that is, diabetes mellitus), the absolute risk was highest in individuals with high baseline risk (that is, previous myocardial infarction or heart failure). Diclofenac initiation also increased the risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding at 30 days, by approximately 4.5-fold compared with no initiation, 2.5-fold compared with initiation of ibuprofen or paracetamol, and to a similar extent as naproxen initiation.

Conclusions: Diclofenac poses a cardiovascular health risk compared with non-use, paracetamol use, and use of other traditional non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

SOURCE 

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Leftism as a Secular Religion

Dennis Prager

One of the most important books of the 20th century—it remains a best-seller 59 years after it was first published—is “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl.

Marx saw man’s primary drive as economic, and Freud saw it as sex. But Frankl believed—correctly, in my opinion—that the greatest drive of man is meaning.

One can be poor and chaste and still be happy. But one cannot be bereft of meaning and be happy—no matter how rich or how sexually fulfilled one may be.

The greatest provider of meaning for the vast majority of human beings has been religion. In the West, Christianity (and on a smaller scale, Judaism) provided nearly all people with the Bible, a divine or divinely inspired text to guide their lives; a religious community; answers to life’s fundamental questions; and, above all, meaning: A good God governs the universe; death does not end everything; and human beings were purposefully created.

In addition, Christianity gave Christians a project: Spread the Good News, and bring the world to Christ. And Judaism gave Jews a project: Live by God’s laws of ethics and holiness and be “a light unto the nations.”

All this has disappeared for most Westerners. The Bible is regarded as myth, silly at best, malicious at worst—there is no God, certainly not the morality-giving and judging God of the Bible; there is no afterlife; human beings are a purposeless coincidence with no more intrinsic purpose than anything else in the universe. In short: This is all there is.

So, if the need for meaning is the greatest of all human needs and that which supplied meaning no longer does, what are millions of Westerners supposed to do?

The answer is obvious: Find meaning elsewhere. But where? Church won’t provide it. Nor will marriage and family—increasingly, secular individuals in the West eschew marriage, and even more do not have children. It turns out, to the surprise of many, that marriage and children are religious values, not human instincts.

In the West today, love and marriage (and children) go together like a horse and a carriage for faithful Catholics, Orthodox Jews, religious Mormons, and evangelical Protestants—not for the secular. I know many religious families with more than four children; I do not know one secular family with more than four children (and the odds are you don’t either).

The answer to the great dearth of meaning left by the death of biblical religion in the West is secular religion. The first two great secular substitutes were communism and Nazism. The first provided hundreds of millions of people with meaning; the latter provided most Germans and Austrians with meaning.

In particular, both ideologies provided the intellectual class with meaning. No groups believed in communism and Nazism more than intellectuals. Like everyone else, secular intellectuals need meaning, and when this need was combined with intellectuals’ love of ideas (especially new ideas—”new” is almost erotic in the power of its appeal to secular intellectuals), communism and Nazism became potent ideologies.

With the fall of communism and the awareness of the extent of the communist mass murder (about 100 million noncombatants) and mass enslavement (virtually all individuals in communist countries—except for Communist Party leaders—are essentially enslaved), communism, or at least the word “communism,” fell into disrepute.

So, what were secular intellectuals to do once communism became “the god that failed”?

The answer was to create another left-wing secular religion. And that is what leftism is: a secular meaning-giver to supplant Christianity. Left-wing religious expressions include Marxism, communism, socialism, feminism, and environmentalism.

Leftism’s guiding principles—notwithstanding the principles of those Christians and Jews who claim to be religious yet hold leftist views—are the antitheses of Judaism and Christianity’s guiding principles.

Judaism and Christianity hold that people are not basically good. Leftism holds that people are basically good. Therefore, Judaism and Christianity believe evil comes from human nature, and leftism believes evil comes from capitalism, religion, the nation-state (i.e. nationalism), corporations, the patriarchy, and virtually every other traditional value.

Judaism and Christianity hold that utopia on Earth is impossible—it will only come in God’s good time as a Messianic age or in the afterlife. Leftism holds that utopia is to be created here on Earth—and as soon as possible. That is why leftists find America so contemptible. They do not compare it to other nations but to a utopian ideal—a society with no inequality, no racism, no differences between the sexes (indeed, no sexes), and no greed in which everything important is obtained free.

Judaism and Christianity believe God and the Bible are to instruct us on how to live a good life and how the heart is the last place to look for moral guidance. Leftists have contempt for anyone who is guided by the Bible and its God, and substitute the heart and feelings for divine instruction.

There may be a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam, but the biggest clash of civilizations is between the West and the left.

SOURCE

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Democrat-led cities now "Third world"

AGEING and defunct infrastructure in some of America’s cities has lead to a lack of basic services, leaving residents in what some have described as “third world” conditions.

About 50,000 Detroit public school students across 106 schools will start the school year this week without access to flowing drinking water from taps and bubblers after the discovery of elevated levels of lead or copper in the water supply.

It is the latest setback in the state of Michigan which is already dealing with the consequences of contaminated tap water in Flint and other communities.

With the taps turned off, Detroit students and staff will be relying on bottled water that will cost about US$200,000 over two months, after which the district will probably seek bids for a longer-term contract, said Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

Given the problems in other parts of the state, some students have long avoided the public water fountains. “There has been an undertone of not trusting the water to begin with,” Mr Vitti told The Associated Press.

The old plumbing and water infrastructure is decaying, becoming dangerous and local cash-strapped governments are struggling to find a solution.

Detroit is not the first major school district to switch to bottled water. The 49,000 student district in Portland, Oregon, turned off its fixtures in 2016 after a scandal over high levels of lead in the water at almost every school — a problem that took two years to fix.

Water at most schools in the 80,000-student Baltimore districts have been shut off for more than a decade.

Last year, Detroit mother LeeAndria Hardison, 39, saw brown water coming from fountains at the school attended by her teenage son.  “I’ve been sending water to school every day with his name on it — five bottles of water in a cooling pack,” she said. “He was only allowed to drink that water.”

The entities that provide and distribute Detroit’s drinking water — the Great Lakes Water Authority and the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department — said it meets and surpasses federal and state standards, and the district’s problems are due to ageing plumbing.

In response to a Reuters story about the water crisis in Detroit, one US resident whose Twitter profile describes her as living in Nashville, expressed dismay at her country. “WTF is wrong with country? We give tax cuts to the rich that explode the deficit & in Detroit we have kids in schools with no water. We are becoming a third world country. The greed is mind boggling,” she wrote on Twitter.

She is far from the only one to make the third world comparison.  Actor Alyssa Milano shared a Washington Post story about Detroit schools turning off their potentially dangerous water and was met with comments of equal anger from social media users.

“Corrupt and incompetent Democratic leadership for generations has turned the city of Detroit into a third world sh**hole,” replied a man from Ohio.

In Flint, Michigan, residents have been dealing with the issue of toxic water for more than four years.

The consequences of the problem are laid bare in a new book by journalist Anna Clark titled The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy. “America is built on lead. Networks of ageing pipes made from the bluish-grey metal bring water into millions of US homes,” she wrote. “But when lead, a poison to the nervous system, gets into drinking water — as happened in Flint, Michigan — the heavy metal can cause irreparable harm.”

In the US, only eight states require lead-in-water testing in schools and Michigan is not among them.

Stephanie Chang, a Detroit Democrat, said the inaction is disappointing given the serious health consequences of being exposed to lead. “It only makes sense to test water on a regular basis in our schools and in childcare centres and in other places where there are vulnerable populations,” she said.

SOURCE

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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)

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Obama bureaucrat critiques Trump health care

Once you get past the introductory Trump abuse (which I omit below), Donald M. Berwick makes an intelligently-stated case to the effect that American health care has been damaged by actions of the Trump administration. Like all Leftist writing, however his leaves out half the story.

He is probably right in saying that the administration has been hasty in winding back some aspects of Obamacare but he does not ask why.  His default explanation appears to be that the Trump adminstration is evil, a typically brainless Leftist claim.  What he takes no account of is that the Donks rammed through the ACA legislation with not one skerrick of bipartisan consultation or support.  They treated the GOP and its reservations as beneath contempt.  What did they expect of that?  What they now have to live with is the GOP treating their baby with contempt. It's not Christian but in the real world contempt breeds contempt. Conservatives often do turn the other cheek to Leftist attacks on them but the Left cannot expect that to go on forever.

And in his third point he says :"Modern health care, for all of its flaws, espouses and generally tries to act on science as its guide. Much of the US public is not so sure. The reasons for that doubt lie beyond the scope of this essay, but the effects on public debate and political positioning are strong"

He is right about that but again he glides over the causes of it.  The current "replication crisis" in medical and psychological research found that up to 70% of research findings were "unreplicable" or "wrong" in layman's terms.  What are people supposed to make of that?

And then, on top of that, we have the vast global warming hoax that goes on despite scientific findings against it purely on the basis that "the experts say so".  Throughout the world, the conservative side of politics mostly thinks global warming is a lot of hokum.  How can you expect respect for science in that situation?  It is thoroughly deplorable that science has become so disrespected but it is not conservatives who have created that disrespect.

His final point is that the intervention of government is needed to ensure proper healthcare for all.  He is probably unaware that libertarians challenge that.  In the Victorian era very good health insurance was available to the worker -- though friendly societies.  Most occupations had a body associated with a particular occupation to which they could subscribe for a modest sum.  And if the subscriber got sick he could go to the society doctor and get treated for free.

But there were always some feckless people who did not contribute and their plight caused a gradual intrusion into the issue by way of government hospitals being set up which would treat the uninsured.  And that binary system continues to this day in most countries.

In Australia, where I live, the contrast between the two systems is stark.  As with all "free" hospital systems, care is rationed in non-monetary ways, principally by waiting lists -- so much so that some people die while waiting. In my State (Queensland) there are in some cases even waiting lists to get on waiting lists.  There was one notorious case in Queensland where a man waited seven years for a cataract operation, during which time he could not see well enough to read and TV was rather mysterious too.  The impact on his life of such poor "care" was obviously severe.

But 40% of the Australian population is privately insured, despite the availability of the "free" system. They have heard many reports of what the free system is like.  And they get private care as good as anything in the world.  When I needed a cataract removed, I had private insurance so waited barely a week for an appointment to a private eye hospital and my treatment was brilliant. I experienced minimal discomfort both during and after the procedure.  And when I got a sudden and very painful attack of kidney stones I was on the operating table same day  -- and paid zero "deductibles". So there is an alternative to government healthcare and and it makes government healthcare look prehistoric.

But what about the 60% of Australians who do not take out private insurance?  Health insurance is very cheap in Australia -- from as little as $150 per month -- so even people in humble employment  can afford it.  Many people on low incomes choose to spend that $150 on beer and cigarettes instead but that is their choice.  They get the "free" government care.  And the Australian system is well settled and accepted. It is not a political football, as it is in the USA.  Any propositions to change it are greeted with widespread outrage.

So Dr Berwick would do well to broaden his horizons. Government healthcare is and always will be inferior healthcare.  It is best avoided.  Working on ways to get more people into private health insurance is the logical course to pursue.  Obamacare theoretically did that but in practice it has de-insured many -- with rocketing premiums and stratospheric deductibles.


When I served as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services, hardly a day passed—and never a week—without a direct request or instruction from a congressional office or White House official bearing on clinically relevant decisions, such as coverage for a new technology, payment levels for a care sector, interpretation of a Medicaid regulation, classification of a hospital as “rural” or “critical access,” measurement and reporting of quality, or, most famously, coverage for physician counseling on end-of-life care options. The private lobbyists were equally relentless, pleading their cases, usually for more money, directly or, more often, indirectly through congressional offices.

The politicization of decisions affecting clinical care was not confined to one political party. Conservative members of Congress pressed against almost every implementation detail of the ACA, with nary a single opening for rational, authentic inquiry about facts and logic. As quickly as they could, Republicans slashed the ACA investments in preventive care and services. Political opponents of President Obama promulgated uninformed and frankly ridiculous accusations about my agenda and beliefs as CMS Administrator but almost never engaged in any serious conversation about how to protect and improve the health of patients.

But also, one of the most liberal members of the Senate accompanied me to his technology-rich state in part to meet with a bevy of executives of medical equipment manufacturers, who explained the value of their products—in effect, a trade show for an agency head hosted by a US senator.

Purists might ask simply to “get politics out of health care.” That would be nice, but it is quixotic. Today, federal and state governments fund about 50% of all US health care (65% if coverage of government employees and various tax breaks are included).4 That proportion has increased from 31% in 1965.5 It would be inconceivable—indeed, irresponsible—for that level of public investment in any enterprise not to fall under government oversight, and, in a democracy, with such oversight authority come political pressures.

With government in the picture, politics has at least 4 on-ramps to health care.

First, and biggest, is money. Health care comprises almost one-fifth of the US economy. A nation that values entrepreneurship and protects private profits cannot expect that those motives will fail to engage the enormous financial opportunities through every possible channel of influence. The fragmentation of ownership, governance, and oversight of US health care makes it possible for a vast industry of political pressuring to flourish. With the US commitment, so far, to an enormously complex system of health care payment and provision comes the opportunity for every single organization with an economic stake in health care, whether motivated by private interest or public interest, to find multiple pressure points for influence.

Second is doctrine. The Federalists and Republicans at the birth of the nation became viciously divided as to the proper role of states and the central government. The North and the South became divided, and eventually fought a war, over attitudes toward slavery. Today, public discourse is also riven into factions according to deeply held beliefs about matters no less fundamental than human nature, individual responsibility, and the role of compassion in public affairs. Health care is an inevitable battlefield for that contention. The disputes take shape over laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and other governmental actions about assertions that reflect those underlying doctrines: assertions that health care is a human right; that richer people ought, through government, to help poorer people; that the rights of women should prevail over those of the unborn; and that health status is as much a collective responsibility as an individual one.

Third is trust in science and institutions. Modern health care, for all of its flaws, espouses and generally tries to act on science as its guide. Much of the US public is not so sure.6 The reasons for that doubt lie beyond the scope of this essay, but the effects on public debate and political positioning are strong. The current administration in Washington, exploiting public doubt, has in many scientific sectors, including medicine, weakened the commitment of agencies to use scientific evidence in exercising their duties.7 This has chilled action and research on such topics as environmental threats to health, US Food and Drug Administration guidance, and reports on risks from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.8 Weakening science through political action ultimately weakens care and harms patients.

Fourth, and finally, politics enters health care though attitudes toward solidarity. The commitment to mutuality—that government exists as a mechanism for acting on responsibilities for one another—is as deeply embedded in most other western democracies as it is fragile in the United States. The basic credo of physicians—to put the interests of patients before their own—at its best reflects a form of solidarity: that those who are fortunate are duty-bound to help those who are less fortunate. Opponents in Washington criticized me for making the assertion that in a civilized nation, the pursuit of health as a human right must be to some extent redistributional because poverty and ill health are correlated. That that logic could be questioned depends not on data—the data are incontrovertible—but rather on the degree of belief in the concept that ultimately, the nation is of one people, responsible in some measure for each other’s well-being, especially with respect to misfortunes not of a person’s own making. Government, and therefore politics, is the avenue for the expression or the negation of that sense of solidarity.

Physicians who want politics out of health care are going to be disappointed. If they value the principles to which they pledged as healers, then they ignore politics at their peril and their patients’. The sidelines are safe places for neither.

SOURCE

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The NYT article: Are Trump's enemies proving his conspiracy theories TRUE?

He always said dark forces were out to get him... now, after revelations of a ‘resistance’ inside the White House, the BBC's JON SOPEL asks if the President has a point

This treacherous article concludes with the self-justification that he or she is part of the ‘quiet resistance’ putting ‘country first’. But listen to an alternative argument. The country went to the polls. Nearly 63 million Americans voted for Trump, and by the rules of the electoral college he was the duly elected President.

And furthermore, no one can say he’s not doing what he promised. Renegotiating trade deals, tougher immigration laws, confronting North Korea, cutting taxes, exiting the Iran nuclear deal, winding back regulations, are exactly what he promised during the campaign.

As Sarah Sanders noted, while it may not always be pretty, Trump’s economic policies are paying dividends, with 200,000 new jobs created, salaries growing at their fastest rate in nine years, and unemployment at a historic low of 3.9 per cent.

So what legitimacy does the writer have in declaring that he or she is the guardian of US democracy? For better or worse, the ballot box is where elections are decided and in November 2016 the American people spoke.

More HERE

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Hate in Politics Today Goes Beyond Anything This Nation Has Ever Experienced

Charlie Daniels

To anybody who will admit the truth, the animosity and downright hate that exists in the political arena goes way past anything this nation has ever experienced before. The vitriol has grown to the point that party power comes before patriotism for many of these jaded partisans, to the point they will fight tooth and nail to defeat things that would be beneficial for the country just because it’s the opposing party’s idea.

They’d literally rather do harm to the people they are sworn to serve than lose any political ground. They develop hyperbolic phrases, “tax cuts for the rich, throw Grandma off the cliff” resorting to kindergarten claptrap, trying to inflate the situation into dire warnings of impending doom to intimidate and terrify the electorate.

The Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department have all been politicized, federal officials have been granted sweeping powers which is reminiscent of the motto of Lavrentiy Beria, head of Russian secret police under Joseph Stalin, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

We have two standards of justice in America now, as one side is being exposed to the most painstaking, needle in a haystack scrutiny, while the other side is being ignored, even exonerated, while anybody with enough gray matter to walk through a door without bumping his head knows that there’s way too much smoke in the Hillary camp not to be some fire somewhere.

The politicians who defend open borders, at least in my opinion, couldn’t care less about the illegals they so gallantly defend. They just look at them as future voters. Their ideas are so far afield, they can’t win in that arena, so the coordinated complaints against a wall that would go a long way toward preventing illegal border crossing of people, drugs, and no telling what else, is nothing more than importing a loyal political base.

All the passionate appeals from the Democrats about “separating children from their parents” is shouted from the rooftops by people who care not a whit about the millions of unborn children separated from their mother’s womb and from a chance at breathing every year.

If Donald Trump is guilty of treason, collusion with our enemies or any other offense that is detrimental to this nation, I want him tried for it.

Conversely, how can paying a foreign intelligence agent for a dossier filled with cloudy, unverified information, using it and laying the groundwork for the FISA court warrant to mount surveillance on American citizens not be worthy of further investigation?

And how can destroying thousands of documents that have been subpoenaed by Congress not be a crime?

And why has a former CIA Director – who was actually caught on television lying to a congressional committee – not been prosecuted?

Why has the Russian acquisition of America’s uranium under Obama-Clinton not been thoroughly investigated?

And why has Obama’s blocking of the records of Holder’s part in the Fast and Furious debacle not been unsealed?

Andrew America “was never that great” Cuomo, Obama, Hillary Clinton and the preponderance of the progressive elite are globalists. They think America needs to be overhauled, our wealth passed around and our military power blunted.

Before Trump, America, along with practically every other industrialized nation on earth was merrily tripping down the primrose path to globalism. Hillary’s election was to be the lynchpin, the long-awaited consolidation of power, the open borders and legalization of millions of illegal immigrant voters, the appointment of Supreme Court judges that would take care of any little details, that for one reason or another should fall through the legislative cracks.

The cock assuredness of a landslide Hillary victory made some people careless to the point that they left some loose ends, made some glaring mistakes, but never mind, when Hillary got in, there were no worries, everything would be buried so deep it would never be found.

Along comes brash, outspoken, abrasive, unafraid Donald Trump, and the corks went back in the champagne bottles, the balloons were not released, and the strategy hurriedly went from celebration to CYA and bring down this president before he can get the economy hopping, build up the military, move the American Embassy to Jerusalem, banish silly business-killing regulations and attract businesses back to American shores.

The proverbial square peg had inserted itself into the round hole, demanding that we put America first and threw a monkey wrench into globalist aspirations for the foreseeable future.

The resurgence of American manufacturing businesses, tax cuts, fewer regulations, a strong military and an “America First” attitude does not foster globalism.

Being a Bible-believing Christian, I hate globalism with a passion.

Globalism is the kingdom of the antichrist, and it happens when the nations of the world hand their sovereignty and power over to a person, masquerading as an angel of light, who seems to have all the answers to the world’s problems, but is actually the embodiment of evil.

That is the ultimate act of mankind putting their trust in other men rather than Almighty God.

That’s when the term “hell to pay” becomes a reality.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.

SOURCE

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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)

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President Trump’s Washington: The cliff-hanger that never ends

The above headline is from the Leftist "Boston Globe".  It gave me a laugh.  It's true that Trump stirs the waters every day.  Most days when I get up of a morning in Australia I just google "Trump" to start my day off well. When I see what he has been doing while I was asleep (Australia is in a time zone about half a day ahead of America) I am very often rewarded to read of some fresh outrage he has perpetrated on the Left.  So the "Globe" journalist is right. Trump does keep upsetting the Left more or less daily.  But exactly those things that bother the Left amuse me.  It is great to see Leftist pretensions punctured

The thing that has got the Left on tenterhooks now is the famous letter in the NYT, allegedly from a Trump insider.  Like Trump himself, I am not sure the writer actually exists.  It could be Soviet style disinformation -- a story that sounds true but was all made up for propaganda purposes.

But if it is genuine I am not sure that it need bother anyone. I have read the article and what it describes is in fact rather normal.  A President always has a lot of advisers to keep him on the strait and narrow.  Public policy decisions can have huge implications and you need a range of professionals on hand to make sure that the consequences of the decision are what you really want.  And there is no doubt that Trump needs such advice.  He us NOT a policy wonk nor is he an experienced politician.  What the excoriated article describes is pretty much what I would have expected.  The only novelty is to have it all decribed so frankly

I gather that the more famous shows from British TV do get a run in America so I imagine that some people reading this will be familiar with the "Yes, Prime Minister" series.  Margaret Thatcher regarded it as so true to life that she used to cancel cabinet meetings so all her ministers could watch it.  And what it describes is precisely a Prime Minister's advisers trying to protect an inexperienced Prime Minister from foolish moves. It is, if you like, prophetic of Trump.  Or, more likely, it was the inspiration behind the NYT article.

I have no idea how upset Trump really is about the article but I think he could well dismiss it as a good example of open government. He could even present it as showing that everything that he does is carefully checked by expert advisers

Every week is remarkable. Practically every day is bizarre. So how to describe days that are even more remarkably and bizarrely unprecedented than the last?

Surreal barely hints at the mind-bending dramatic spectacle of Donald Trump’s Washington this week.

It’s as if the reality television show that has consumed the nation’s capital for 20 months is working its way toward a jaw-dropping season finale, but the tension is never relieved. It’s the cliffhanger that won’t end.

The latest installment features a modern-day whodunit wrapped around the core of a constitutional crisis in the executive branch. Trump himself, in a tweet Wednesday night, penned what could be the title page: TREASON?

A parade of top officials came forward Thursday to deny that they were the authors of a scathing, anonymous op-ed in The New York Times that essentially called the president a national security risk. The denials landed amid a frenzy of speculation about the identity of the author.

Who wrote the anonymous Times op-ed? Here are some prime suspects
Here’s a brief look at some of the highest-level officials in the administration who might have a motive or an inclination to write the letter.

“Our office is above such amateur acts,” said a spokesman for Vice President Mike Pence.

“It’s not mine,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters while traveling in India.

“It is laughable to think this could come from the secretary,” said a spokesman for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

etc, etc, etc

But even with a range of other issues in front of them, few could get away from the speculation about who wrote the Times column.

“It probably won’t take long for us to find out who wrote it,” said House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. “The vice president — that was my first thought. . . . Could have been Coats, Pompeo. They denied they wrote it. By process of elimination, you come down to the butler.”

More HERE

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Obama re-emerges

I have just read right through Obama's "get out the vote" speech which clearly targets Trump.  Like most Leftist writing it shows zero attempt at balance.  It just presents everything in the  light most favourable to the Left. There is no room for "yes but"  in Leftist writing.  So, if you take everything as read, it all sounds very convincing.

I will just take one instance. He says that Trump is using fear and anger.  What an extreme denial of the facts!  There is certainly an avalanche of fear and anger in American politics today -- but it is coming from the Left towards Trump and his supporters. Nothing is coming from conservatives that is remotely like that.  So we see immediately how one-eyed Obama is.  His speech is largely composed of vague generalizations but sometimes even that does not rescue it from absurdity.

It's an absolutely typical Leftist bit of projection -- seeing in others what is true of yourself.  I have always said that if you want to find what is true of Leftists, just look at what they say about conservatives -- and this is a superb example of that.

So all that I can think Obama might be referring to is Trump's attempts to limit illegal immigration.  But is that motivated by fear?  The thing that pops up most in conservative news feeds is the frequent vicious crimes committed by illegals.   So yes.  Conservatives are angry about that but why wouldn't they be?  It could be a member of your family next. Surely we SHOULD get angry when innocent women get raped and murdered.

So again you see in that an example of how the Left only ever tell half the story.  Obama says conservatives are angry but fails to say why.  When we look at why they are angry we see that his condemnation of anger is in fact evil.  Does he really think it is OK to rape and murder?

Leftists do have a history of protecting criminals.  Look at the way Leftists in California tried to prevent the execution of the ghastly "Tookie" Williams.  The way that brute just wiped out weak little Asians seems to have been OK by them.  So it looks like Obama is in that category.  He isn't bothered by rape and murder either. He again displays his form as a psychopath.

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Trump's Moves on NATO, NAFTA Were Needed

The anonymous op-ed author complains about Trump's policies, but it was time for a change.

The anonymous New York Times op-ed from a “senior administration official” has generated a lot of heat, but it does seem overblown. Among that author’s complaints is how President Donald Trump is dealing with NATO and NAFTA. So what’s the real scoop behind Trump’s purportedly “dangerous” threat to pull out of the alliance and the trade agreement?

Let’s start by acknowledging that we have these powerful trade chips only because this president is willing to question how the status quo benefits America. As for NATO, its purpose was to deter aggression from the Warsaw Pact (really the Soviet Union and a collection of puppet states). Since the fall of the USSR, the alliance’s defenses have badly dwindled. This order of battle (it’s a Word document) shows just how numerically superior the NATO military was in 1989.

Today, the forces NATO can send are fewer in numbers, and there are significant problems with readiness. Then there’s the factor of Russia having geopolitical kompromat on some of our NATO allies. No wonder Trump has been delivering some tough messages to Canada and Germany for their lack of readiness. How bad is it? Germany’s “green” jet fuel grounded its fleet of Tornado attack jets, and Canada needed to borrow a replenishment oiler from Chile.

This type of nonsense is what President Trump is dealing with. The previous strategy of nicely asking allies to address the growing decline of NATO simply failed. Even our closest allies, like the United Kingdom, were dropping capabilities left and right. It was time to hit them with a figurative two-by-four.

The same applied to NAFTA. Mexico and Canada had been ripping off American workers in some areas, notably in the production of automobiles. Trump used the threat of an American pullout to get Mexico to come to the table to renegotiate NAFTA. Now, he’s using hardball to get Canada to rethink its barriers for dairy products, among other things.

This isn’t to say that playing hardball is coming without figurative casualties. On the contrary — standing up for oneself often involves short-term pain, whether the opponent is a schoolyard bully or a trading partner.

Those who think Trump is reckless should take a look at how Ronald Reagan handled arms control. He was willing to go for the complete elimination of a class of nuclear weapons, but when the Soviets wouldn’t negotiate in good faith, he improved our nation’s nuclear arsenal. Eventually, the Soviets caved and negotiated the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (which they are now cheating on) and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

Back then, there was a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth that Reagan would start a global thermonuclear war. Much of it was from Democrats and what was then the establishment Republicans. Thirty years from now, it’s a good bet that Donald Trump, like Reagan before him, will have proven his critics wrong.

SOURCE

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U.S. weekly jobless claims drop to near 49-year low

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment aid fell to near a 49-year low last week and private payrolls rose steadily in August, pointing to sustained labor market strength that should continue to underpin economic growth.

A man carrying a stack of job listings listens to a discussion at the One Stop employment center in San Francisco, California, August 12, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
The economy so far appears to be weathering an escalating trade war between the United States and China as well as tensions with other trade partners, including Canada, the European Union and Mexico, which have rattled financial markets.

This likely keeps the Federal Reserve on track to raise interest rates this month for the third time this year.

“The economy is in overdrive with jobless claims at lows not seen since the 1960s, and this gives the Fed the green light to raise interest rates later this month and take away some of the economy’s punch,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York.

The Labor Department said on Thursday initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 203,000 for the week ended Sept. 1, the lowest level since December 1969.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 214,000 in the latest week. The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 2,750 last week to 209,500, also the lowest level since December 1969.

Though there have been reports of some companies either planning job cuts or laying off workers because of uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s protectionist trade policy, that has not yet been reflected in the claims data.

Economists say given labor market tightness, employers were reluctant to lay off workers. The labor market is viewed as being near or at full employment.

U.S. stocks were trading mixed after the data while prices of U.S. Treasuries were slightly higher. The dollar was lower against a basket of currencies.

SOURCE

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The Party Of Free Stuff And Illegal Aliens Is Not The Workingman’s Friend

Democrats once passed themselves off as the party of the working guy; pro-union, pro-American manufacturing, pro-infrastructure and anti-communist, but today’s Democratic Party looks nothing like the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy.

In the age of Donald Trump Democrats have become, not the party of the American working man, but the party  Trump companies come backof free stuff and illegal aliens.

Leading Democrats, such as Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio have called for the abolition of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency – which would in effect open America’s borders to the entire world.

Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders has long-advocated debt-free college and the Democrats’ marquee congressional candidate, New York Democratic-Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made free college and Medicare for all hallmarks of her campaign.

Just this week the Democratic Party in Florida nominated Far Left Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum for Governor.

Gillum, an outspokenly progressive African-American, is the candidate of Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and Far-Left billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of the “Need to Impeach” super PAC.

According to reporting by The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Gillum’s campaign platform calls for a steep corporate-tax increase to pay for a billion-dollar boost in public-education spending, a repeal of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, Medicare for all, and a fifteen-dollar-an-hour minimum wage, abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the impeachment of the President.

On the national level Democrats have put stopping “climate change” ahead of jobs for coal miners – once the bedrock of the Democratic Party in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

And they’ve joined “Not In My Backyard” wealthy urban elites and back-to-nature whackos in campaigning against the Keystone XL pipeline and other infrastructure projects that would bring thousands of jobs to people working in the welding, construction, pipeline operations and other trades.

Perhaps worst of all, Democrats have become the party of the illegal aliens and unlimited immigration that has suppressed the wages and destroyed the quality of life for millions of America’s working families.

As Karen Zeigler and Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies noted in a 2015 paper, “Government data show that since 2000 all of the net gain in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal).”

This is remarkable, concluded Zeigler and Camarota, “given that native-born Americans accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the total working-age population.”

Now here’s the key takeaway from Zeigler and Camarota’s study: “Though there has been some recovery from the Great Recession, there were still fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.” (Emphasis ours)

According to research by Forbes contributor Chuck Jones, in the first half of this year, there have been 174,000 manufacturing jobs added to the US economy. This is almost as many as any full year over the past decade and should easily surpass any added during Obama’s administration as the economy recovered from the Great Recession.

CNBC analyzed the cumulative job growth in each industry since the president's November 2016 election to help gauge which industries are growing at the fastest pace.

At the top of the list, jobs in the mining and logging industry are up 13.5 percent since the election, well above the gains in construction and transportation, which made second and third place, respectively. Job growth in oil and gas extraction — which are included in the category — typically provide a boost to the headline number.

In the No. 2 spot, the construction industry is one of the hottest in the American economy in terms of employment and has been explicitly cited by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as an area of better-than-average growth.

Jobs in the trucking industry have climbed 4.6 percent since Trump's election.

This Labor Day, as TV commentators and newspaper editors cast about for heroes of the American labor movement to honor they should forget Samuel Gompers (the first and longest-serving president of the American Federation of Labor) John L. Lewis (early leader of the United Mine Workers and a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations) Walter Reuther (United Autoworkers President and leading liberal Democrat of the post-WWII era) or Eugene V. Debs (labor leader and Socialist candidate for President) and honor President Donald J. Trump for putting Americans back to work.

SOURCE

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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)

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Democrats don’t believe in democracy

The comments below are all too accurate.  Were it not for the fact that the military is always conservative, we would probably have had a Leftist coup of some sort by now

Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree elections are how you decide who’s in charge. That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.

The Mueller investigation is about removing President Donald Trump from office and overturning the results of an election. We all know that. There’s a pattern here.

The Democrats have rejected our system of government.

This isn’t dissent. It’s not disagreement. You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.

Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate. The Democrats lost Congress. They lost the White House. So what did they do? They began trying to run the country through federal judges and bureaucrats. Every time a federal judge issues an order saying the president of the United States can’t scratch his own back without the judge’s say so, that’s the civil war.

If Democrats are in the White House, then the president can do anything. And I mean anything. He can have his own amnesty for illegal aliens. He can fine you for not having health insurance. His power is unlimited. He’s a dictator.

But when Republicans get into the White House, suddenly the president can’t do anything. He isn’t even allowed to undo the illegal alien amnesty his predecessor illegally invented. A Democrat in the White House has “discretion” to completely decide every aspect of immigration policy. A Republican doesn’t even have the “discretion” to reverse him. That’s how the game is played. That’s how our country is run. Sad but true, although the left hasn’t yet won that particular fight.

When a Democrat is in the White House, states aren’t even allowed to enforce immigration law. But when a Republican is in the White House, states can create their own immigration laws. Under Obama, a state wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom without asking permission. But under Trump, Jerry Brown can go around saying California is an independent republic and sign treaties with other countries.

The Constitution has something to say about that.

Now we’re seeing what the pros do when amateurs try to walk in on them. They spy on them, they investigate them and they send them to jail. They use the tools of power to bring them down.

That’s not a free country.

It’s not a free country when FBI agents who support Hillary Clinton take out an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. It’s not a free country when Obama officials engage in massive unmasking of the opposition. It’s not a free country when the media responds to the other guy winning by trying to ban the conservative media that supported him from social media. It’s not a free country when all of the above collude together to overturn an election because the guy who wasn’t supposed to win did.

Have no doubt. We are in a civil war. This war is between conservative volunteer government and a leftist Democrat professional government.

Author unknown

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Federal Judge Reinforces Ruling-Class Privilege

For decades, government employee unions had been confiscating money from non-members and using it for political causes the non-members oppose. The U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to that in the recent Janus decision. Now a federal district court judge has made firing federal employees a more difficult matter.

On August 26, a Saturday, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson blocked provisions of three recent executive orders she claims “undermine federal employees’ right to bargain collectively.” The executive orders were aimed at promoting more efficient government and making it easier to remove employees for poor performance or misconduct. At present, it takes between six months and a year, or much longer. As we noted, John Beale of the EPA claimed to work for the CIA, but he performed little if any work for nearly 20 years. His ruse went undiscovered and EPA bosses gave Beale retention bonuses and continued to pay his salary after he had retired.

Other examples of poor performance and misconduct would include the federal employees and managers who let hundreds of veterans drop dead while awaiting care at a Phoenix VA facility. In 2013 IRS employees handed out $3.6 billion in fraudulent tax refunds and IRS bosses responded with $62.5 million in bonuses. No reports of anybody being fired.

True to form, the National Treasury Employees Union praised Judge Jackson’s action to make dismissal of federal employees more difficult.

This has nothing to do with collective bargaining. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, an Obama appointee once on that president’s short list for the Supreme Court, has set back the cause of government accountability, struck a blow against taxpayers, and reinforced the privileges of overpaid and pampered federal employees.

SOURCE 

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Amidst the Demo circus around Kavanaugh, Sasse gives a civics lesson

In the midst of a Democrat-created circus intent on obstructing as much of the Senate's confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, as possible, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) offered a timely rebuke and an insightful civics lesson.

In just under 12 minutes, Sasse outlined the constitutional roles of the three branches of government and followed that by explaining why the confirmation of judicial nominees has become so politicized — something the Founders never intended. Sasse diagnoses the root of the problem as the legislative branch having abdicated its constitutional power to career-minded, unelected bureaucrats within the executive branch agencies:

The real reason, at the end of the day, that this institution punts most of its power to executive branch agencies is because it is a convenient way for legislators to be able to avoid taking responsibility for controversial and often unpopular decisions. If people want to get reelected over and over and over again, and that's your highest goal — if your biggest long-term thought around here is about your own incumbency — then actually giving away your power is a pretty good strategy. ... And so, at the end of the day, a lot of the power delegation that happens from this branch is because the Congress has decided to self-neuter.

Sasse then eloquently noted how this abdication of power by Congress has ultimately undermined the voting power of every American citizen:

The important thing isn't whether Congress has lame jobs; the important thing is that when Congress neuters itself and gives power to an unaccountable fourth branch of government, it means the people are cut out of the process.

So, ultimately when the Congress is neutered, when the administrative state grows, when there is this fourth branch of government, it makes it harder and harder for the concerns of citizens to be represented and articulated by people, that the people know they have power over. All the power, or almost all the power, right now happens offstage. And that leaves a lot of people wondering, "Who's looking out for me?"

He then concluded by boiling down the only truly legitimate thing senators need to consider for deciding on Kavanaugh:

So the question we have before us today is not what did Brett Kavanaugh think 11 years ago on some policy matter. The question before us is whether or not he has the temperament and the character to take his policy views and political preferences and put them in a box marked "irrelevant" and set it aside every morning when he puts on the black robe. The question is, "Does he have the character and temperament to do that?" If you don't think he does, vote no. But if you think he does, stop the charades. Because, at the end of the day, I think all of us know that Brett Kavanaugh understands that his job isn't to rewrite laws as he wishes they were. He understands that he's not being interviewed to be a super legislator. He understands that his job isn't to seek popularity. His job is to be fair and dispassionate. It is not to exercise empathy. It is to follow written laws.

Ultimately, Sasse accurately articulated what really matters. The rest of the antics in the Senate yesterday were just the sideshow

SOURCE 

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With Jon Kyl, a ‘steady, respected hand’ back in the Senate, could Obamacare repeal and replace be back on the table?

Former Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) has been appointed by Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey to replace the late John McCain. With the new appointment comes a new opportunity for Republicans to complete one of their key 2016 campaign promises: To repeal and replace Obamacare before the 2018 midterms.

In 2017, despite promising to do so if elected and working for months on end, Congressional Republicans failed to pass legislation that would do away with the 2010 health care law signed into law by former President Barack Obama.

One piece of legislation to repeal key elements of the law failed by one vote in the Senate, the so-called “skinny” repeal. One of the missing votes was McCain’s whose rejection came as a shock to many observers.

Other legislation by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) failed later in Sept. 2017 with Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and again, McCain, opposed.

Since that time, Republicans lost the Alabama Senate seat, trimming their majority to a slim 51 to 49. If there were any vote to repeal and replace Obamacare on budget reconciliation, Republicans could only afford to lose one senator.

Senator Kyl could be a different story from McCain. Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning in a statement called him a “a steady, respected hand in the Senate who has the respect of his colleagues.”

So too might Senator Paul, if his objections to the prior Graham-Cassidy bill could quickly be taken into consideration and Republicans could rally together around a new consensus for repealing and replacing the health care law.

One thing is clear from the GOP’s standpoint, it’s worth taking a chance. Health care remains a primary concern for American voters headed to polls, and the failure to repeal and replace Obamacare remains one of Republicans’ and independents’ greatest disappointments with the current Republican-led Congress.

However, turning a new leaf, and bringing up the bill again — even if it means staying in Washington, D.C. in October — could provide the last, best chance to work on the legislation. The outcome of the midterms remains uncertain. Even if Republicans were to keep the Senate but lose the House, all possibility of working on one of their signature legislative promise would evaporate until at least 2021.

Reinstating the budget reconciliation procedure might take a bit of parliamentary juggling. Congress has already passed its budget for the fiscal year, but presumably, it could be amended via the same procedure before Sept. 30. Which is why there isn’t a moment to lose.

Senator Kyl’s first order of business, besides confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, should be sitting down with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Paul to see if something can be worked out on Obamacare before the elections to reset public perception of Congress as one that keeps its promises — before it is too late.

SOURCE 

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Destructive Leftist envy again

Another attempt to drive marginal workers out of the workforce.  Goodbye jobs for single mothers and others who need welfare payments.  Amazon will simply no longer hire them if this bill goes through

Sen. Bernie Sanders' criticism of Amazon peaked Wednesday as he and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced legislation to tax corporations for every dollar that their low-wage workers receive in government health-care benefits or food stamps.

The bill, pointedly called the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies, or BEZOS, Act, is aimed at shaming companies like Amazon and Walmart, whose workers rely on public assistance.

For months, Sanders has targeted Amazon, juxtaposing the wealth of CEO Jeff Bezos with reports that Amazon warehouse workers are paid less than industry averages and rely on food stamps.

"Our legislation gives large, profitable employers a choice: Pay workers a living wage or pay for the public assistance programs their low-wage employees are forced to depend upon," Sanders said of the proposed law.

For example, if an Amazon worker received $2,000 in food stamps, Amazon would be taxed $2,000 to cover that cost.

Amazon has previously called the Vermont independent's claims about working conditions in its fulfillment centers "inaccurate and misleading" and a spokesperson declined to further comment on the bill.

SOURCE 

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Why does the Left incessantly libel Republicans and conservatives as racists?

Dennis Prager gives a simple answer

The answers are as vile as they are obvious.

First, the left fears that unless blacks continue to believe Republicans are racists, they will not overwhelmingly vote Democrat. And if they don't, Democrats will not regain the White House for the foreseeable future. The same holds true for depicting Republicans and conservatives as women haters. There is no better way to persuade college-indoctrinated women to vote Democrat. And the same holds true for Latinos — Republicans must be continuously labeled "white supremacists" and "xenophobes" or they, too, may not reliably vote Democrat.

Second, though most intellectuals are on the left, the intellectual foundation of left-wing beliefs is unbelievably weak. Leftism is almost entirely emotion-based. That's another reason the left smears conservatives and tries wherever possible to prevent conservatives from speaking in the university, on the internet and by the many big businesses in the hands of people on the left: Since leftists cannot debate conservatives, they have to smear them.

America is the least-racist multiracial, multiethnic nation in world history. The left's constant need to locate racism where it doesn't exist is proof of this.

SOURCE 

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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)

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The Leftist trust in coercion again

Democrats began obstructing Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing less than five seconds into it on Monday, and several protestors were physically removed by police for aggressively trying to shut it down.

According to The Washington Examiner, Democrats and liberal protestors made the hearing so contentious that Kavanaugh’s young daughters —  Margaret, 13, and Elizabeth, 10 — were rushed out of the hearing on Capitol Hill.

The Examiner reports that a source said the two girls were rushed out by their mother, Ashley Kavanaugh, “as the hearing got ‘hot.'” It was very heated with Democrats and protestors losing their minds over the thought of Kavanaugh serving on the Supreme Court. “It was very unpleasant for young children,” said the source.

Democrats literally began the hearing by interrupting Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, less than five seconds into the hearing, largely refusing to allow him to even begin the confirmation process.

The hearing began at 9 a.m. ET, and Democrat committee members spent the first few hours grandstanding about how Kavanaugh — President Donald Trump’s pick to serve on the Supreme Court — will end the world.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., kicked it off by raising objections to the committee receiving over 400,000 documents relating to Kavanaugh’s work with past administrations, claiming that “was not enough.”

“We cannot possibly move forward,” Harris theatrically claimed, likely using the hearing ahead of her potential 2020 Democratic presidential run.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., jumped in soon after, and was also rude to Grassley by demanding he be given time to voice his concerns about Kavanaugh.

After every single Democrat interrupted Grassley and another protestor was kicked out every 15 minutes or so, Grassley knocked Democrats for using the hearing as a political stunt to create drama.

“We have said for a long period of time that we were going to proceed on this very day and I think we ought to give the American people the opportunity to hear whether judge Kavanaugh should be on the Supreme Court or not.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, defended Grassley, and ripped Democrats for their childish antics. “Democrats would be held in contempt of court if they behaved that way in a court of law. We have rules in the Senate. We have norms for decorum. Everybody as you pointed out will get a chance to have their say.”

It’s unfathomable and downright disturbing that Democrats and their ilk were so raucous and hostile on Tuesday that Kavanaugh’s own children had to leave the room over concerns that the protestors may get so hostile that they wouldn’t be safe.

Liberals are so determined to oppose Trump that they are unbothered by intimidating and making children feel unsafe at their father’s confirmation hearing. That is unacceptable, many would agree, and should never be tolerated.

SOURCE 

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Arizona Governor Announces Replacement for John McCain

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey named former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl as the late Sen. John McCain’s replacement on Tuesday.

Kyl served with McCain in the Senate from 1995 to Jan. 2013 before his retirement. Sen. Jeff Flake succeeded him. Kyl, 76, was the GOP minority whip before leaving office, which is the second-highest position in the Republican conference, the Arizona Republic reported.

Ducey made the announcement at a press conference from the Arizona capitol in Phoenix. “There is no one in Arizona with the stature of Sen. Jon Kyl,” Ducey said.

“I am deeply grateful to Sen. Kyl for agreeing to succeed his friend and colleague of so many years. Every single day that Jon Kyl represents #Arizona in the U.S. Senate is a day our state is well-served,” Ducey tweeted.
Kyl has agreed to serve out the remainder of the current session of Congress, which will conclude in December.

The governor expressed the hope that Kyl will stay on through the special election to fill McCain’s seat, which will take place in 2020. That election will be to fulfill the last two years of McCain’s term, which ends in 2022.

McCain’s wife, Cindy, expressed support for Ducey’s choice tweeting, “Jon Kyl is a dear friend of mine and John’s. It’s a great tribute to John that he is prepared to go back into public service to help the state of Arizona.”

Most recently, Kyl has been serving in the role of “sherpa” by guiding Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh through the confirmation process in the Senate.

SOURCE 

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Obama Prepares For The Campaign Trail, But Some Democrats Want Him To Back Off

Former President Barack Obama is preparing to stump for various Democrats as midterm elections near while some members of the party running for reelection are telling him to keep his distance.

Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota worry a surrogate like Obama could distract from focusing on their Republican opponents. Obama himself is keeping a wide berth from endorsing national campaigns in states President Donald Trump won in 2016.

“We’re not going to use any surrogates. Surrogates are fine but we don’t need them,” Tester told The Hill on Saturday.

Heitkamp was even more curt, saying “nope, no” to questions about the possibility of Obama visiting North Dakota. “He threatened to campaign against me once so I don’t think he’s coming out there,” she said.

Obama endorsed Richard Cordray’s campaign for governor in Ohio, for instance, but he has not yet endorsed Sen. Sherrod Brown’s reelection campaign. Brown frequently paints himself as a Trump opponent but a senator who will nonetheless work with the president on certain issues.

The senator’s Republican opponent, Rep. Jim Renacci, meanwhile is trying to depict Brown as a bitter political partisan obstructionist who is out of step for a state that supported Trump in the 2016 election.

Obama gave Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey similar treatment. The former president announced his support for two Keystone State House candidates, Madeleine Dean and Susan Wild, but left Casey off his list.

One Democratic strategist told reporters that the list of endorsements is a strategy designed to allow Trump to create foils.

“Both of those senators are doing well their respective states and they don’t exactly need Obama’s seal of approval. In fact, it might do more harm than good,” the strategist said. “Obama is still popular with certain folks in those states but he’s not exactly popular with some others.”

SOURCE 

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Sweden’s Universal Healthcare System Goes the Way of All Others

Sweden’s Universal Healthcare System Goes the Way of All Others
Proponents of socialized medicine like to remind Americans that the United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any other industrialized nation without necessarily getting the best results. Instead, they suggest emulating European welfare states with their national healthcare systems.

According to a report from Agence France-Presse, however, one of the crown jewels of the welfare state, Sweden, spends extravagantly on healthcare yet finds its prized universal healthcare system succumbing to the same forces that have doomed all other such programs, with waiting lists growing ever longer and doctors, nurses, and hospitals becoming ever scarcer.

Swedes, on average, pay over half their income in taxes, and their government’s healthcare spending is the third highest in the European Union. And what do they get for it?

AFP writes:

Swedish law stipulates patients should wait no more than 90 days to undergo surgery or see a specialist. Yet every third patient waits longer, according to government figures.

Patients must also see a general practitioner within seven days, the second-longest deadline in Europe after Portugal (15 days).

Try as they might, politicians cannot legislate away the law of supply and demand. With healthcare seemingly free, people tend to use more of it than necessary, driving costs up while failing to increase the supply of care. (In a free market, by contrast, higher prices would induce consumers to reduce their consumption and producers to increase their production, bringing prices back down.)

Thus, even the government’s seemingly modest goals for timely care, known as the “Healthcare Guarantee,” go unmet. As insurance executive Kent Andersson told the European news site The Local, “The Healthcare Guarantee isn’t a guarantee.”

Twenty-three-year-old Asia Nader, for instance, told AFP that she had to wait a year for surgery to repair a hole in her heart. A dental patient said he had to wait six months for a checkup. Prostate-cancer patients wait 120 days on average for surgery, but in one county the wait was as high as 217 days. Patients wait four hours on average to be seen in the emergency rooms of Stockholm’s major hospitals.

When patients do get to see doctors, they “complain about not being able to see their own regular general practitioner — and the ensuing lack of continuity — as a growing number of doctors and nurses are temporary hires employed by staffing companies,” notes AFP. Official numbers — which may understate the problem — suggest that 80 percent of the healthcare system is short of nurses.

Some hospitals are closing, while even new ones aren’t able to keep up with demand, reports AFP:

In Solleftea, the premier’s northern hometown with nearly 20,000 residents, the only maternity ward was shut down last year to save money.

With the closest maternity ward now 200 kilometers (125 miles) away, midwives offer parents-to-be classes on how to deliver babies in cars — which some have since done….

Frustrations peaked this year when it emerged that the bill for Stockholm’s over-budget state-of-the-art New Karolinska Hospital would tick in at 61.4 billion kronor (5.8 billion euros, $6.7 billion) — the most expensive hospital in the world.

And yet patients have had to be transferred to other overcrowded hospitals because some of the facilities are unusable.

Add to that the aging population and the recent influx of immigrants, and the cracks in the socialist edifice are becoming impossible to ignore, much to the chagrin of Sweden’s leftists. Lisa Pelling, chief analyst at progressive think tank Arena Ide, told AFP that Swedes’ lack of confidence in politicians’ ability to solve the healthcare system’s problems creates “a risk their faith in the welfare state will be eroded.”

Of course, governing parties, rather than admit socialism’s failure, are simply trying their same old tactics. The Social Democrats, who currently control the government, are promising to fix the system by spending even more money on it. Their main opponents, the Moderates, want to patch the system their own way by rewarding counties for reducing queues, a mandate that “critics say … just encourages doctors to prioritize easily-solved cases,” observes AFP.

There is only one sure way to fix the healthcare system in Sweden or any other country: Get the government out of the way and let the free market reign.

SOURCE 

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Reality



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Illegal immigrants who exploited Motor Voter to register in North Carolina still on rolls

Elvis David Fullerton has voted in 16 elections in North Carolina dating back nearly two decades. The only problem, authorities say, is he’s not a citizen and never should have been on the voter rolls, much less allowed to step into a polling booth to cast a ballot.

Mr. Fullerton, who is still a citizen of Grenada, is one of 19 North Carolinians the federal government indicted last month on charges of illegal voting. Yet even now, his name remains on the state’s rolls in Wake County, and local officials say there’s not much they can do about it.

“At this time I’ve not been made aware of any formal source to remove anybody,” said Gary Sims, elections board director in Wake, where five of the 19, including Mr. Fullerton, were registered. Three of them are still on his rolls.

Mr. Sims said an indictment or sworn affidavit isn’t even enough for him to begin an investigation, saying he needs a notification from an “official or formal source.”

Yet the indictments, which got only cursory attention nationally, do offer unprecedented insight into the contours of illegal voting in the U.S.

The first clear conclusion is that most non-citizens who sign up to vote appear to do so at motor vehicle bureaus. Of the 18 accused voters for which The Washington Times was able to find state records, all of them registered at North Carolina DMVs.

And of those 18, 13 were registered as Democrats, four as Republicans and one unaffiliated with a party. While a small sample, that does suggest Democrats may be benefitting more from illegal non-citizen voting than Republicans.

Mr. Sims, the elections official in Wake County, said he can’t begin a review of people the federal government says are voting illegally until a more “verifiable” source comes forward.

He said his main role in registration is to make sure people fill out their information correctly, and he said he relies on checks to clear his rolls of people who moved out of the area, or who have passed away. But Mr. Sims acknowledged none of those checks would catch non-citizens. “That really is managed by the North Carolina state Board of Elections,” he said.

Perhaps it’s time local officials take a more proactive approach, said Logan Churchwell at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which has done pioneering work in tracking down non-citizens on voting rolls, and which uncovered many of the names still registered in North Carolina last month.

“These are registrants facing federal indictments for election crimes. In the face of new law enforcement efforts, the standard operating procedure may not always apply,” Mr. Churchwell said.

He also said the fact that all of the registrants were listed as having signed up at motor vehicle bureaus pointed clearly at a flaw in the system: the Clinton-era National Voter Registration Act, more commonly known as the Motor Voter law, because it requires states to push voter registration on people who show up to conduct business at DMVs.

Non-citizens can easily sign up, either by accident or on purpose, and as Mr. Sims pointed out, there are no easy ways to skim them out of the pool.

“Incidents like this demonstrate why we need to put Motor Voter back on the table for reform — all of it,” Mr. Churchwell said. “Maintenance stagnation breeds voter roll bloat and can only harm confidence in the system as a result.”

The PILF released a report last week tracking 13 cities and counties with sanctuary policies, and counted more than 3,000 non-citizens who’ve been stripped from their voting rolls in recent years.

Those are usually people who either self-reported or were flagged as illegal voters, and it doesn’t capture the potentially hundreds of thousands of others who have not outed their unauthorized voting behavior, analysts said.

Federal officials declined to say how the 19 people in North Carolina came to their attention.

The court-appointed lawyer for Mr. Fullerton didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

Others among the 19 include Alessandro Cannizzaro, an Italian, was granted legal permanent residence in the U.S. in 1985, and applied for citizenship in 2003 — but was denied four years later. Still, in 2008 he swore he was a citizen when he registered to vote in Wake County, and did in fact cast ballots in 2008, 2012 and 2016, according to state records.

His name has been dropped from the voter rolls.

Yet another of the 19, Ramon Esteban Paez-Jerez, of the Dominican Republic, was ordered deported in 1988 but never showed up for his deportation. Instead he adopted a fake identity and managed to win citizenship under that name in 1999, prosecutors said.

The government didn’t divulge the fake identity in court documents, and The Times was unable to track his voting history — though prosecutors said he, too, was registered in Wake County.

Patrick Gannon, spokesman for the state elections board, said the indictments presented “somewhat of a unique situation” to officials. “We do not have a regular voter list maintenance process to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls, at least partly because there is no comprehensive citizenship database to rely upon,” he said.

SOURCE 

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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)

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Babies conceived via IVF are SIX TIMES more likely to have high blood pressure as teenagers (?)

As the father of an adult son conceived via IVF, I have some personal interest in this study.  On looking at it in detail, however, I doubt that the results are much cause for concern.  The "sample" size is small, there was apparently no attempt at random sampling and the average differences found are very slight.

Additionally, I cannot see that they have excluded the effects observed as being due to differences in the mothers rather than differences in the method of conception.  The authors claim to have controlled for differences in the mothers but it is not clear to me how to do that.  Mothers who have to resort to IVF would usually have subtle health differences that could have non-obvious effects.  The cause of infertility is quite often rather mysterious but it is there.

And the father cannot be omitted from consideration either. It can often be the father who is infertile (has a low sperm count or deficient sperm motility) and that could have complex ramifications. The father may have broader health problems that are passed on genetically. I presume the authors were careful enough to leave out conceptions due to ICSI, which is a whole different ballgame (no pun intended).

Those objections do however have the character of denying that any research into the method of conception is possible and I do not want to claim that so let us look again at the other problems in the study.  The sample size is not impossibly small but it very much at the low end of what we expect in delivering stable results.  And that doubt is sharpened when we look at the average differences in BP. 120/71, compared to 116/69, is a trivial difference and founding it on a small sample  makes it a trivial finding.

And the criterion for high blood pressure is very severe: more than 130/80.  In normal clinical practice that would count as being within the normal range.

And the lack of random sampling in assembling the study population is a very large lacuna. Unless you have some evidence that your sample is representative you cannot validly generalize from it. Hoping or assuming that it is representative reduces the study to a work of faith, not a work of science

So the study is interesting but far from conclusive.  I append the journal abstract


Thousands of children born each year by IVF could be at risk of serious heart problems in later life, a study suggests.

Scientists found signs of 'premature vascular aging' in children as young as 11 who had been conceived as a result of fertility treatment.

And by the age of 16 IVF children were six times more likely to have high blood pressure - a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes.

The scientists believe how embryos are fertilised and manipulated before they are implanted into a woman's uterus may cause small genetic changes that affect a baby's heart and circulatory system.

They warn that the soaring use of IVF 'may have come at a price' for many children, who could suffer cardiovascular disease as a result.

Children conceived via IVF have higher blood pressure readings

Researchers from University Hospital in Bern, Switzerland, tracked 54 seemingly healthy children who had been born via IVF, and compared them to 43 children born naturally.

They found at age 11 and 12 the IVF children had a 25 per cent narrower brachial artery - the major blood vessel in the arm - and their arteries had thicker walls.

The team then tracked the children for five years. At the age of 16 and 17 the IVF children were far more likely to have developed high blood pressure. They had an average blood pressure of 120/71, compared to 116/69 for the teenagers who had been conceived naturally.

Crucially, eight of those conceived via IVF had developed 'hypertension' - the medical term for high blood pressure, involving a reading of more than 130/80. Only one of the teenagers conceived naturally had hypertension.

The study bolsters the results of previous research which found mice born to IVF had heart problems.

SOURCE

Association of Assisted Reproductive Technologies With Arterial Hypertension During Adolescence

Théo A.Meister MD et al.

Abstract

Background: Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have been shown to induce premature vascular aging in apparently healthy children. In mice, ART-induced premature vascular aging evolves into arterial hypertension. Given the young age of the human ART group, long-term sequelae of ART-induced alterations of the cardiovascular phenotype are unknown.

Objectives: This study hypothesized that vascular alterations persist in adolescents and young adults conceived by ART and that arterial hypertension possibly represents the first detectable clinically relevant endpoint in this group.

Methods: Five years after the initial assessment, the study investigators reassessed vascular function and performed 24-h ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring (ABPM) in 54 young, apparently healthy participants conceived through ART and 43 age- and sex-matched controls.

Results: Premature vascular aging persisted in ART-conceived subjects, as evidenced by a roughly 25% impairment of flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery (p < 0.001) and increased pulse-wave velocity and carotid intima-media thickness. Most importantly, ABPM values (systolic BP, 119.8 ± 9.1 mm Hg vs. 115.7 ± 7.0 mm Hg, p = 0.03; diastolic BP, 71.4 ± 6.1 mm Hg vs. 69.1 ± 4.2 mm Hg, p = 0.02 ART vs. control) and BP variability were markedly higher in ART-conceived subjects than in control subjects. Eight of the 52 ART participants, but only 1 of the 43 control participants (p = 0.041 ART vs. controls) fulfilled ABPM criteria of arterial hypertension (>130/80 mm Hg and/or >95th percentile).

Conclusions: ART-induced premature vascular aging persists in apparently healthy adolescents and young adults without any other detectable classical cardiovascular risk factors and progresses to arterial hypertension. (Vascular Dysfunction in Offspring of Assisted Reproduction Technologies; NCT00837642.)
Central Illustratio

Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Volume 72, Issue 11, 11 September 2018, Pages 1267-1274

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The ACLU Stirs Against Cuomo

The New York Democrat is targeting the NRA, but gun rights have perhaps an unlikely ally.

Good news has emerged in the ongoing legal battle of New York Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s abuse of financial regulations to target the National Rifle Association. The American Civil Liberties Union has joined the fight — and it is siding with free speech.

We have noted the ACLU’s silence on select issues of free speech in the past, and Cuomo was prominently cited. We’re glad to update the record, but this is something that should have been done when Cuomo made the threats. The good news is that the ACLU doesn’t want the case dismissed, which means a favorable ruling could come. The bad news: The ACLU has taken a limited step, only supporting discovery, not the actual objective itself.

The fact is, though, once it goes to discovery, we’re likely to see the evidence that what the NRA claims is being done is actually happening. It’s a fair bet that when the NRA filed its suit, the corporate partners who ended relationships in the face of Cuomo’s intimidation campaign left behind some evidence.

Cuomo’s unapologetic attitude — all but daring somebody to do something about his campaign — will also likely have trickled down, and some aides will have stuff in their emails. This will, in a court of law, make it hard for any jury to find in the governor’s favor.

The fact is, even an injunction and a favorable jury verdict will not completely undo the harm that has been done. Even if the consent decrees for Chubb and Lockton are voided, those companies may not come back — because even with the vindication, the process has become punishment for having the temerity to oppose the Left, just as the “John Doe” investigations were used by leftist prosecutors in Wisconsin against allies of Scott Walker, and just as the IRS was used to stifle the Tea Party.

That said, the ACLU probably didn’t just act on principle. Recently, Louisiana told Citigroup and Bank of America not to bother trying to take part in financing a round of road construction due to the banks’ participation in a push for corporate gun control. In the ACLU’s release, it specifically stated that Cuomo’s actions could be replicated for use against Planned Parenthood or the Communist Party. The ACLU’s decision came eight days after Louisiana’s announcement and was part of a Friday news dump.

So while we can be grateful the ACLU is standing to stop government retaliation against those who exercise their First (and Second) Amendment rights, we also must not kid ourselves. Our constitutional rights are at grave risk.

SOURCE

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Walter E. Williams: Immigrants and Disease

The Immigration and Nationality Act mandates that all immigrants and refugees undergo a medical screening examination to determine whether they have an inadmissible health condition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has technical instructions for medical examination of prospective immigrants in their home countries before they are permitted to enter the U.S. They are screened for communicable and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, polio, measles, mumps and HIV. They are also tested for syphilis, gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases. The CDC also has medical screening guidelines for refugees. These screenings are usually performed 30 to 90 days after refugees arrive in the United States.

But what about people who enter our country illegally? The CDC specifically cites the possibility of the cross-border movement of HIV, measles, pertussis, rubella, rabies, hepatitis A, influenza, tuberculosis, shigellosis and syphilis. Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent in South Texas, warned: "What's coming over into the U.S. could harm everyone. We are starting to see scabies, chickenpox, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections and different viruses." Some of the youngsters illegally entering our country are known to be carrying lice and suffering from various illnesses. Because there have been no medical examinations of undocumented immigrants, we have no idea how many are carrying infectious diseases that might endanger American children when these immigrants enter schools across our nation.

According to the CDC, in most industrialized countries, the number of cases of tuberculosis and the number of deaths caused by TB steadily declined during the 100 years prior to the mid-1980s. Since the '80s, immigrants have reversed this downward trend in countries that have had substantial levels of immigration from areas where the disease is prevalent. In 2002, the CDC said: “Today, the proportion of immigrants among persons reported as having TB exceeds 50 percent in several European countries, including Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. A similar proportion has been predicted for the United States.” The number of active TB cases among American-born citizens declined from an estimated 17,725 in 1986 to 3,201 in 2015. That was an 80 percent drop. Data reported to the National Tuberculosis Surveillance System show that the TB incidence among foreign-born people in the United States (15.1 cases per 100,000) is approximately 13 times the incidence among U.S.-born people (1.2 cases per 100,000). Those statistics refer to immigrants who are legally in the U.S. There is no way for us to know the incidence of tuberculosis and other diseases carried by those who are in our country illegally and hence not subject to medical examination.

This public health issue is ignored by all those Americans championing sanctuary cities. The public health issue is also ignored by Americans clamoring for open borders, and that includes many of my libertarian friends. By the way, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when masses of European immigrants were trying to enter our country, those with dangerous diseases were turned back from Ellis Island. Americans hadn't "progressed" to the point of thinking that anyone in the world has a legal right to live in America. Neither did they think that it was cruel or racist to take measures to prevent our fellow Americans from catching diseases from foreigners.

But aside from diseases, there is the greater threat of welcoming to our shores people who have utter contempt for Western values and want to import anti-Western values to our country, such as genital mutilation, honor killings and the oppression of women. Many libertarian types make the argument that we would benefit from open borders when it comes to both people and goods. That vision ignores the important fact that when we import, say, tomatoes from Mexico, as opposed to people, to the U.S., they are not going to demand that we supply them with welfare benefits.

The bottom line is that we Americans have a right to decide who enters our country and under what conditions. If we forgo that right, we cease to be a sovereign nation. But that may not be important to some Americans.

SOURCE

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Democrats Are Leaving Their Party in Droves. Conservatives Should Pay Attention

Two thousand years ago, St. Paul found himself blinded by a bright light on the road to Damascus. The dramatic experience led him to stop persecuting his opponents and to take up new beliefs.

Today, many former leftists are taking their first steps on their own road to Damascus, and the right is not doing nearly enough to capitalize on this unprecedented mass exit from the left.

It all began just a few short weeks ago when gay New York hairdresser Brandon Straka posted a hard-hitting video explaining why he is no longer a Democrat or a liberal. Since then, his #WalkAway Campaign Facebook group has attracted more than 172,000 members. A multitude of videos from other WalkAways have been posted online.

Make no mistake, the left has been greatly rattled by all this. The left’s treatment of the #WalkAway Campaign mirrors the way it reacted to the Tea Party movement. First, it ignored it, hoping it would go away. Then it moved on to minimizing and attempting ridicule, which it has done with #WalkAway. Steven Colbert and others claimed that the #WalkAway Campaign is just run by Russian bots.

Having seen that fail, the next step was to try to co-opt it with its own movement.

Bill Scher wrote a piece in Politico inviting Republicans to become Democrats. The suggestion is that Never Trumpers should walk away from the GOP, get themselves elected as delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and thereby prevent the Democratic Party from going full-blown socialist.

Nearly every WalkAway has a unique reason for leaving the Democratic Party. Some of the most common reasons I’ve encountered are:

The Democrat Party rejects Christian values.

Liberal rhetoric on helping the poor does not match up with reality. For instance, Democrat-run Los Angeles now has 55,000 homeless people living on the streets.

The left frequently denounces the armed services, law enforcement, and the American flag. Many military veterans are outraged by this.

There are countless others. But the wellspring of the #WalkAway movement has less to do with policy than with the realization that Democrats and the left invariably use despicable methods to achieve their goals, and without remorse. To the left, winning is all that matters.

Consider these words from one WalkAway, Rebecca Meli, who posted on Facebook:

The left only cares about pitting us against each other to keep control and keeping people dependent on them. … This movement has gone right to my core. To have the privilege of watching people think for themselves and recognize the deceitful practices of the left and the manipulation of minorities has been like an awakening.

Another WalkAway, Amanda Velásquez, wrote:

I am tired of the narrative, tired of people who don’t let you speak even if you have proof of what you are talking about, they attack you and label you as racist, closed-minded, and so on.

Many WalkAways have said it was easier to come out as gay than to come out as a conservative or libertarian. Many have even lost friends and been ostracized by family members because they decided to leave the Democrat Party.

One man, Vlad, who grew up in communist Poland, posted a YouTube video in which he compared the methods of today’s American left to the old communist government in his home country.

This is an extraordinary opportunity for conservatives, and it is not likely to come our way again in our lifetimes. Many of these WalkAways come from surprising demographics—gay people, ethnic minorities, and others.

The left worked these communities hard in amassing its power, and it is incumbent on the right to reach out to these same individuals. With the left inching ever closer to total victory, the right cannot afford to shun those who are like-minded just because they previously found themselves on opposite sides of a debate. This is a golden opportunity.

The bright light has shone. The WalkAways are on the move. We at Potomac Tea Party are doing our part to affirm their courageous personal decisions.

What will you do to get other former Democrats to Damascus?

SOURCE

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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)

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