Explaining the Left: Part II

Dennis Prager correctly highlights the Leftist hate of America below -- JR
   
The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, did Americans a favor last week. He provided that which is most indispensable to understanding anything: clarity.

“America … was never that great,” he announced.

In one sentence, the governor revealed the left’s true view of America. This is rare — because leftists are masters at hiding what they really believe.

For example, the left’s low regard for nonwhites is well-hidden under a mountain of “anti-racist” rhetoric. But people who consistently advocate lowering standards for blacks obviously do not think highly of blacks, and people who believe in separate black dorms and separate black graduation ceremonies obviously believe in a pillar of racism: racial segregation.

Another generally denied — if not hidden — left-wing belief is contempt for America. On a daily basis, the left describes America as xenophobic, misogynistic, imperialist, greedy and homophobic. And that’s on a slow day at The New York Times, MSNBC or your local university. Just last week, a New York Times column added “barbaric” to the left’s view of America.

But for some reason, the average American does not see all this as proof of the left’s contempt for America.

So, we have to rely on the occasional unguarded and unambiguous statement to know what the left really thinks.

Michelle Obama provided such a statement when, as her husband began racking up victories in early-voting states in the 2008 primary season, she proclaimed, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.”

Hillary Clinton provided her example during the 2016 election when she described half of her fellow Americans as “deplorables.”

Then-President Barack Obama provided his example in 2015 when he spoke about racism being “part of our DNA.” Now, you might argue that he was merely stating a truth, not expressing contempt. But that argument fails for three reasons:

First, America has developed into the least-racist multiracial, multi-ethnic country in history. Those who deny this have contempt for truth as well as for America. So much for DNA.

Second, can Barack Obama or anyone else on the left name a country or group in history that interacted with other races and was free of racism? Of course not. So, singling out America as having racist DNA is an expression of contempt for America specifically.

Third, how would Barack Obama or anyone else on the left react to someone saying, “Islamic civilization has racism in its DNA”? They would not only emphatically deny it; they would charge whoever said it with being Islamophobic. In other words, if one tells the truth about centuries of horrific treatment of blacks under Islamic rule, one is bigoted against Islam. But if one says America has racism in its very essence, racism that is still being passed unconsciously from one generation to the next, one is not an Ameriphobe?

And now, Cuomo tells an audience that “America … was never that great.”

Cuomo said publicly what virtually every leftist believes. No one — left, right or center — thinks the comment was idiosyncratic. If Cuomo had said, “America was never a sports-loving nation,” everyone would have assumed this was just an odd comment representing no one but him. The reason this comment hit such a powerful chord in American life is that just about everyone suspects he was saying what all his fellow leftists believe.

After all, we all know what young people are taught from elementary school through graduate school by their left-wing teachers: America is a racist country founded by racists; Americans committed genocide against the American Indians; whites have unique privileges because of America’s “systemic” racism; in the words of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist … front to back”; police are racist — both white and black cops shoot blacks because of racism; and “American civilization” and “Western civilization” are no more than euphemisms for white supremacy.

Now, why would anyone think the left has contempt for America?

Contempt for America is so central to leftism that there would be no leftism without it. Yet there remains an even more important question: Why? Why does the left — not liberals, who traditionally revered America — have such disdain for America? I will address this question in a future installment of this series explaining the left. America and the West cannot be saved unless those who cherish them understand what motivates those who wish to see them end.

SOURCE 

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Immigration Problem? Put Some ICE on It

President Donald Trump hosted an event at the White House Monday honoring the men and women of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection agencies.

"You are the patriots and you are the heroes," Trump told the assembled agents and agency personnel. "You keep us safe and you keep us free. I am honored every single day to serve as your commander-in-chief. I will never leave your side; I will never leave the fight."

It's a good thing, too. Both agencies are increasingly under fire by the Left and the media as the debate simmers over illegal immigration and how the government is supposed to handle it. According to leftists, the government shouldn't do anything at all about illegal immigration. In fact, they are calling for the outright abolition of ICE.

Don't underestimate the power behind that challenge. The proposal to dismantle ICE may have started as an offhand remark by Bernie Sanders's socialist padawan Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but it is now a mainstream Democrat plank. Likely 2020 presidential candidates such as Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris have all joined the call. And three House Democrats introduced legislation to follow through.

Leftists claim that U.S. border policies are harsh and inhumane, and their media lackeys dutifully go along, bending stories any way they can to fit that narrative. Take, for instance, the widely reported story of the illegal immigrant picked up by ICE while taking his pregnant wife to the hospital to have her baby. Conveniently left out of the reporting by virtually every major news outlet — at least the headlines or flashing TV alerts that most people see — was that the man was ducking an outstanding warrant issued for his arrest in Mexico on homicide charges.

Stories like this are meant to cast ICE as the villain, which then leads to further attacks against the agency. What many don't understand, however, is that ICE is the backbone of America's immigration enforcement. There would be (even more) chaos without it.

ICE is the principal agency for enforcing immigration laws inside the U.S., including the apprehension of illegal immigrants who have slipped past the Border Patrol; combatting the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and people into the country; and investigating immigration fraud schemes. ICE also protects immigrant communities by cracking down on criminal activity that takes place there. Gangs and other bad guys generally commit crimes in the communities in which they reside, making legal immigrants the victims.

There are other agencies that also handle some of these tasks, but they are already stretched beyond their limits. The sheer volume of cases is more than any single law enforcement agency can bear. Consider that last year over 700,000 people overstayed their visas. That is 300,000 more people than the number apprehended while trying to illegally cross the U.S. border with Mexico during that same period.

Take ICE out of the picture, and the whole immigration system would quickly unravel — which is exactly what the Left wants.

It has been said that Democrats and the Left care more about illegal immigrants than they do about American citizens. But even that's a stretch because they don't care about illegal immigrants, either. The leftist call for open borders is an attempt to break down American society by overwhelming our communities and our culture with bad people from foreign lands. Leftists discourage assimilation and the learning of English to help further that goal. Democrats see a fresh batch of voters they can hook onto the government dole and keep leftists in office.

But is this a political winner for Democrats? Not necessarily. As W. James Antle III notes, "House Republicans brought a pro-ICE resolution up for a vote to dare Democrats to vote against it — just 34 did, though 133 voted 'present' — while Trump brings it up often on the campaign trail."

People need to look beyond the rhetoric that demonizes ICE and support the agency's work to protect American communities from fraud, crime, and terrorism. Without ICE, American streets will not be safe. And that's why Trump's celebration yesterday was welcome.

SOURCE 

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Security clearances should terminate with government employment

I have always thought this.  It's usual in the private sector -- JR

The understandable furor ignited by the president’s latest Nixonian vendetta should not distract from a larger question: How is it that former officials retain privileged access to state secrets in the first place? Who benefits from this well-established practice?

The nation itself benefits, we are told. The argument goes like this: Allowing such individuals, now typically employed by universities, think tanks, and lobbying firms, to retain their clearances keeps them in the know should current officials wish to draw on their experience and expertise. Yet this, to appropriate a term that ex-CIA director John Brennan included in a New York Times op-ed penned in response to Trump terminating his own clearance, is “hogwash.”

In the unlikely event that current CIA director Gina Haspel needs Brennan’s advice on a question that her agency’s 21,000 employees can’t answer, all she needs to do is give him a call. Even without a clearance, he still has a phone. In the even more unlikely — make that wildly improbable — event that national security adviser John Bolton wishes to avail himself of the wisdom of Susan Rice, who held his job during Obama’s second term, he need only turn on the television or check newspaper opinion pages. As was the case when Bolton himself was pontificating on Fox News, her views are readily available, free of charge. And they will continue to be available even if, as reported, she is among those in line to have their clearances revoked.

So let’s have done with the pretense that allowing former officials access to classified information enhances national security. In reality, the practice has everything to do with the allocation and perpetuation of privilege.

According to the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal.” As a general proposition, that may be true. Yet in policy circles, men and women enjoying access to state secrets are more equal than the rest of us. Clearances confer status, readily convertible into access, influence, and opportunity, monetary and otherwise. The more exotic the clearance — up in the realm beyond Top Secret, for example — the greater the access and influence and the more attractive the opportunities.

To retain a security clearance after leaving government is to display an invisible badge declaring of the bearer: Although now on the outside, I’m still an insider. Whether intended or not, this arrangement divides citizens into two camps. In the one camp are those ostensibly in the know: members of the policy elite. In the other camp are the rest of us, knowing what we read in the papers, otherwise kept in the dark, and expected to comply.

If evidence exists to show that this arrangement yields more effective policy, I have yet to see it. Certainly the record of US policy in recent decades suggests otherwise. I am, however, certain that an arrangement allowing the few to have a say while casting the great majority in the role of spectators is antithetical to democracy.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A hallowed principle supposedly governs access to classified information. It’s called “need to know.” Under the terms of this principle, individuals are allowed access only to information that is essential to the performance of their assigned duties. But former officials have no official duties. Therefore, they have no “need to know.”

Allow me to propose another principle: Clearances should terminate with government employment, plain and simple. Adherence to this principle will deprive Trump (and his successors) of the opportunity to play politics with matters that should be above politics. If only in a small way, it will also contribute to restoring our democracy.

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Yet Another Study Finds That Economic Freedom Improves Lives

A new metastudy by Serbian think tank Libek confirms that countries wishing to increase their economic growth—and reap the many rewards that come from doing so—need to focus on advancing the economic freedom of their people.

Libek looked at 92 scholarly research studies that considered the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth. Eighty-six of them (93.5 percent) found a positive relationship.

That is not surprising, considering that economic freedom—the ability to direct one’s own life and make economic decisions for oneself—encourages and empowers people to make a better life for themselves and for their families.

The increased economic activity they produce shows up in measures of economic growth.

Still, the point cannot be made frequently enough, because economic freedom is still repressed in so many parts of the world.

The authors of the Libek metastudy think their findings are particularly relevant to their native Serbia.

The increase in economic-growth rates is very important for the Serbian economy. Serbia is the slowest-growing economy in the Balkans: Average growth rate in the decade after the recession (2008-2016) was only 0.83 percent annually.

At the same time, the unweighted average growth rate for other Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Romania) was nearly double that number, reaching 1.58 percent.

All but two of the other Balkan countries score higher than Serbia in The Heritage Foundation’s 2018 Index of Economic Freedom.

In fact, Heritage’s Index shows that on average, countries with the greatest increase in economic-freedom scores over 5-, 10-, and 20-year periods also have the greatest average annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

The Serbian think tank’s findings are not surprising, and policymakers in Serbia and around the world should take them to heart.

Advancing economic freedom is key to generating economic prosperity for the greatest number of people—in Serbia and everywhere else.

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Socialist logic

 

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Manafort guilty of what?

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement responding to the Paul Manafort verdict:

“Paul Manafort may have been guilty of crimes ten years ago, but the one thing he was not found guilty of was conspiring with Russia on the hack of the DNC and Podesta emails during the 2016 election, the only justification for the Special Counsel investigation.

There was no collusion. Now that this trial is over, it is time for Mueller to wrap up his investigation and turn his findings over to the Justice Department.”

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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Explaining Trump Hatred
   
The article below offers some reasonable thoughts but I think the reason behind the Trump hatred is rather simple.  In a "slowly, slowly" manner, the Left had got all of America to acquiesce to their ideas.  Even the GOP offered just a watered down version of Leftism.  Any shadow of patriotism, for instance was likely to be branded as "racism". And the Left insisted that America had a lot of problems needing big money to fix -- black education, for instance.  So Leftist hatred of their own country was well on the way to crippling America and reducing respect for it worldwide.  America as a punching bag was their aim and they were well on the way to achieving it.

Trump instantly overturned those hard-won "gains".  It was once again OK to celebrate America and remove the regulatory shackles that the Left had imposed on American business.  Trump revived real, traditional conservatism and insisted on a fair shake for America in trade, defense and much else.  No wonder the Left were outraged!  He had instantly undone decades of their work.

The cauldron of hate towards their own country that they always had in them now had one outlet and one focus, Donald J. Trump.  And we see daily what a cauldron of hate spills out of them.  The mask is off.  These people are not compassionate or tolerant.  That was always just a mask. They are vicious beasts, the children of the Devil


On May 22, 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks entered the Senate chamber and approached Charles Sumner, who was sitting at his desk applying a postal frank to copies of his “Crime Against Kansas” speech, in which he excoriated Sen. Andrew Butler for embracing “the harlot, Slavery.” Brooks beat the unsuspecting Sumner senseless with a dog-whip cane, sending him into convalescence for the next three years and ending what remained of “reasoned discourse” in the Senate. A half-decade later, the nation plunged into the Civil War, settling disputes on the battlefield that could not be addressed by a civilized exchange of views, which had been crushed by passions of the time.

Today’s passions explode from elites embracing harlots of hatred and denunciation sufficient to shock the sensibilities of any antebellum orator: Fake severed heads, assassination threats, enough F-bombs to obliterate America’s enemies, along with endless verbal assaults against President Trump saturate progressive bellowing. All of which is insane, of course: If only H. P. Lovecraft (Mountains of Madness) were around to help us cope. Absent that, we always have the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, though its entries apply to individual cases and not to entire categories of people losing their minds. What, then, can be said? What explains such unbridled hatred of President Trump? Here are a few suggestions.

* Trump is an outsider. Trump is not a normal Republican, or a normal Democrat, or a normal anything. He burst into the political scene late in his life, with few political obligations to anyone, least of all to entrenched elites in both political parties. Progressives have been accustomed to milquetoast Republicans for many decades; even Ronald Reagan didn’t depart from the script in ways that threatened the established order. And both Bushes, regardless of their occasionally bellicose policies, were eminently manageable; Bush I reneged on his No New Taxes pledge in a heartbeat and Bush II even expanded Medicare. Of course, both were still vilified, but, hey, that’s the leftist script. Plus, like most Republicans, they didn’t complain too much. Heck, they’re almost one of us! Trump isn’t.

* Trump fights back. The last thing leftist mudslingers expected was a Republican who would bring a cannon to a gunfight. In fact, President Trump’s loose twitter lips have punctured enough egos among his opponents to prod battalions of leftist potty-mouths to sue for copyright infringement. Donald Trump’s intemperate (and often ill-advised) responses to filthy onslaughts against him has had the effect of tarnishing his opponents’ brand names — especially in the media — by triggering even more extreme attacks. Before Trump, ideological hemophiliacs on the Left bled fashionable resentment with every minor cut, every perceived slight; now, here comes a guy who declares elite media as the “enemy of the people.” His denouncers are in full Keith Olbermann mode, now competing for an award that celebrates obscenity-screeching madness. Would be entertaining if it were not so sickening, so pathetic. And dangerous.

* Trump loves America. He loves the country, that’s it. No apologies, no equivocations, no “on the other hands” — he stands up for America, for ordinary citizens, for every skin color, from sea to shining sea. He stiffs welfare-state-besotted Euro-weenies, demands a level playing field in trade, and insists that government’s main concern should be for American citizens and not foreign lawbreakers either in China or across the Rio Grande. Progressives have contempt for America. They spit on the flag, despise at least half of our citizens, trash our history, sneer at capitalism, denounce our founders, the Declaration, the Constitution, and dismiss most Americans with a blizzard of acronyms. And then they wonder why Trump won. Go figure.

* Lib-Progs are spoiled rotten. They’ve had their way for the past half-century without serious interruption and still fully expect to transform the rest of the country to conform to the one-party systems they’ve clamped onto academia. A transformed America has no guns, no free speech, no boundaries, no conservatives, no Christians, a strictly controlled economic system, and a monstrous government in thrall to Lib-Progs’ lunatic climate cult and its grotesque commitment to infanticide. In short, totalitarianism. And then along came Trump.

* Lib-Progs’ entitlement complex. Nothing in life is a matter of merit, achievement, or individual responsibility; everything is a matter of administratively determined entitlement, with an arc of history thrown in. Both ensure that the country rumbles along in a direction culminating in rule by an elite corps of platonic guardians — liberal progressives controlling government, media, entertainment, academia, everything. In short, the country, history, owes them. And then along came Trump.

Although these suggestions offer hints to solving the Trump-hatred puzzle, one may still be left with a sense of incompletion, that something else still needs to be understood, an overlooked variable. Unfortunately, we may never understand such hatred completely, and even if we did, this knowledge may not thwart leftist plans for America. Normal cycles of politics will return liberals to government eventually; perhaps then, greater numbers of Americans besides the “deplorables” will more fully grasp what their self-described betters have in mind for them.

The only question is whether such a realization will arrive in time to save the country from those who despise Donald Trump and everything he stands for.

SOURCE

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Trump warns of 'terror, bloodshed and suffering' from the  Abolish ICE movement

President Trump lashed out at the Abolish ICE movement Monday and warned state and local leaders they must choose between anarchy or law and order as they pick sides in the fight.

He said those who continue to criticize U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its sister agency, Customs and Border Protection, are inviting “terror, bloodshed and suffering” upon their communities. And he particularly blasted officials in Portland, Oregon, where ICE officers say the mayor ordered his police to stand down as anarchist protesters blockaded the agency’s building in June, endangering employees and shutting down work.

“I ask you to join me in publicly expressing your support for the men and women of ICE and CBP,” the president said in an open letter to governors, mayors, state legislators and other officials.

He is slated to hold an event at the White House later in the day thanking ICE and CBP employees for their efforts in the face of growing criticism from the left.

Immigrant-rights activists have called for ICE to be abolished, erroneously blaming it for the family separations that resulted from the chaos surrounding the administration’s zero tolerance border policy this spring.

Some Democratic politicians have joined the activists in their call — though party leaders have avoided going that far, saying instead that the agency needs reforms.

ICE handles detention and deportation of illegal immigrants, as well as cybersecurity, counterfeit merchandise and combating child pornography. No firm ideas have been offered for how those responsibilities would be restructured if ICE were to be abolished. The leading Democratic bill calls for a commission to study the matter.

Mr. Trump has seized on the calls, predicting they will hurt Democrats in November’s congressional elections.

In his letter Monday he asked state and local officials to write letters, issue public statements and otherwise “give voice to our nation’s longstanding tradition of honoring the public servants who protect our communities and our way of life.”

He also asked those states and localities who refuse full cooperation with federal immigration officials to rethink their stand.

And he expressed aversion to the anti-ICE demonstrations some communities have hosted.

“Innocent Americans have watched as organized agitators defaced public property, obstructed the execution of our laws, slandered law enforcement personnel, blocked civilian access to public spaces and created a hostile environment for our officers, agents and support personnel,” Mr. Trump wrote.

SOURCE

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Pollster Who Predicted Trump’s Election Has Bad News For Democrats

Just about everyone in the mainstream media predicted that Hillary Clinton would easily win the 2016 presidential election over Donald Trump. Only a select few media pollsters and “experts” were able to see the silent majorities rising across the country for Trump — and one of them was Anthony Salvanto.

Salvanto, who serves as CBS News’ director of elections and surveys, accurately predicted that Trump would win the 2016 election — and he’s got bad news for Democrats hoping to retake the House of Representatives in November’s midterm election.

During an interview with the New York Post, Salvanto said he’s identified a major trend that Democrats will not like: The “blue wave” they are promising is increasingly looking less and less likely. In other words, he’s predicting Republicans will keep their majorities in both the House and Senate.

Salvanto told the Post that he has been focusing on trends rather than random surveys generated by media websites after a big event takes place. He explained that doing so allows him to focus on patterns, and what issues are either maintaining momentum or losing interest among large groups of demographically diverse people over a longer period of time.

Here’s what the Post reported:

For 2018, the CBS News Battleground Tracker has gathered a panel of nearly 5,700 registered voters. Almost all of them live in the 50 to 60 districts that might switch from Republican to Democrat, or vice versa, in November — the only races that matter, when it comes to control of Congress. Salvanto’s polling currently indicates that few House seats will change hands in November — and that the GOP could very well hold its majority in the House.

Of the nation’s 435 House districts, fully 85 percent will almost certainly stick with its current party affiliation come November, Salvanto projects.

Salvanto told the Post that the GOP will more than likely fend off the “blue wave” and keep their majorities in both the House and Senate.

“Right now I think this election looks like a toss-up. We see a Democrat pickup in the House of Representatives in the 20-odd seat range, but Republicans could certainly hold on to the House. Even though Republicans have not fared well in special elections so far this cycle, it does look like they will be turning out for the midterms. So far we do not see a large number of Republicans saying they will flip and vote for a Democrat.”

Salvanto said Democrats biggest problem is that they have nothing to run on aside from obstructing President Donald Trump. Salvanto’s horrible news for Democrats comes as the economy is booming under Trump.

The GOP tax cuts have played a big role in the millions of new jobs created, the stock market roaring, unemployment dropping to historic lows, and giving the president leverage to negotiate with other nations to solve many of America’s trade imbalances.

The tax cuts have also been very popular and helpful to American families across the country. Numerous studies have shown that roughly 90 percent of Americans will see an increase in their paychecks this year. The markets are at all-time highs, more than 6.6 million jobs have been created, and the U.S. in on pace to hit 3 percent GDP growth for the entire year for the first time in decades.

All of that coupled with Democrats being nothing but obstructionists is why the GOP will keep their majorities.

SOURCE

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Media Omit Key Detail About ICE Arresting Man Who Took Wife To Hospital For C-Section

On Saturday, dozens of media outlets reported that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested an illegal alien who was taking his wife to the hospital to deliver their baby — but they conveniently left out one key detail: the man was a wanted murder suspect.

Agents arrested murder suspect Joel Arrona-Lara when he stopped to get gas while taking his wife, Maria del Carmen Venegas, to the hospital so she could give birth.

Many media outlets ran with misleading headlines that conveyed a sense of brutality and inhumanity as the political Left is currently trying to demonize ICE. Many publications didn't even include the fact Arrona-Lara was a homicide suspect in their reports.

One of the only media outlets to report that Arrona-Lara was a murder suspect in the title and in the report was NBC News, which reported that ICE specifically noted that Arrona-Lara was arrested because of an "outstanding warrant issued for his arrest in Mexico on homicide charges."

The timing of the media's latest deception to demonize the Trump administration for political gain comes just two days after more than 350 newspapers wrote op-eds bemoaning President Donald Trump's attacks on the media for inaccurately covering news stories and for sometimes reporting blatantly false information.

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Bill Maher Asks Brutal Question Cakeshop Critics Can't Answer: `Is There Only 1 Bakery in Colorado?'

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. HBO comedian and liberal pundit Bill Maher proved that adage correct in an episode of his "Real Time" on Friday.

Maher first lamented the far-left denouncement of free speech in a surprising defense of polarizing Infowars host Alex Jones. "Everybody gets to speak," Maher said.

Maher's next bout of enlightenment may have been accidental. In a monologue that was meant to elicit laughs, Maher actually asked a question (whether in jest or not) that many people lambasting the Masterpiece Cakeshop would struggle to answer.

After the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips went all the way to the Supreme Court, he is in yet another asinine legal battle after refusing to bake a cake celebrating a person making a transgender conversion.

Note that Phillips has never refused service to customers based on their sexuality, or anything else. He refuses to bake a cake that would celebrate an event that conflicted with his beliefs - which includes same-sex marriage cakes, divorce cakes, Halloween cakes, etc.

"Remember the baker in Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for the gay couple, it went all the way to the Supreme Court? Now he's back in court because he wouldn't bake a cake for a couple celebrating - or somebody celebrating gender transition," Maher explained in his monologue.

He then went for some laughs despite the biting truth behind his quip. "Is there only one bakery in Colorado?" Maher asked. He also joked about "the big business opportunity" of opening his own liberal-themed bakery in Colorado.

But his question is actually spot on. How is it, exactly, that this one particular bakery has become embroiled in controversy again? A cursory search of bakers in Lakewood, Colorado (where Masterpiece Cakeshop resides) yields many alternatives for those needing to satisfy their bakery needs. Kogler's Bakery, Elegant Bakery, Sweet Ride Bakeshop, Cakes by Karen, Azucar Bakery, Designer Cakes Co., and Valhalla Cakes all make cakes in the Lakewood area.

And that was the simple result of a quick Google search. If a gay couple or someone celebrating a gender transition wanted a cake to specifically celebrate what they want, even the most rudimentary of online searches would've yielded countless other alternatives. If the effort to type in a quick search on their smartphone is too much effort, they have far more significant problems than a bakery refusing to make them a cake.

Based on the number of other bakers in the immediate area, it's hard to think of Masterpiece Cakeshop's woes as anything other than a targeted witch hunt against someone whose religious beliefs don't conform to far-left ideologies.

So to answer Maher, no, there isn't just one bakery in Colorado. Which makes it pretty obvious that people are specifically targeting Masterpiece Cakeshop.

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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Even Democrat "jokes" are hate expressions

Florida Democratic representative Alcee Hastings made a disturbing joke about no one trying to save a drowning President Donald Trump during a rally on Sunday.

Hastings was speaking at a rally in Sunshine, FL when he repeated a joke he heard from Ari Silver, the son of former Florida state legislator Barry Silver.

“I will tell you one joke,” Hastings said. “Do you know the difference between a crisis and a catastrophe?”

“‘A crisis is if Donald Trump falls into the Potomac River and can’t swim,'” Hastings said, retelling the joke. “‘And a catastrophe is anybody saves his ass.'”

The crowd cheered and whooped in delight at the joke.

SOURCE 

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Youth Unemployment Hits 50-Year Low Under Trump Admin

Before the 2016 presidential election, countless “experts” predicted economic doom and gloom if Donald Trump were to win.

Now, coming up on two years since President Trump took office, a chain of positive economic news could be summarized in four words: Experts are often wrong.

First, even the president’s opponents were forced to admit that everything didn’t fall apart the moment he took office. As Trump has frequently reminded his critics, unemployment numbers for blacks and Hispanics are near record lows, even as he’s attacked as an enemy of minorities.

Now, there’s even more good news for the Trump economy. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that young people are doing very well on the job front.

“From April to July 2018, the number of employed youth 16 to 24 years old increased by 2.0 million to 20.9 million,” the BLS said.

“The unemployment rate among young Americans fell to its lowest level in more than 50 years this summer,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Trump himself proudly shared that information via Twitter on Friday, in a post that was “liked” over 84,000 times.

Perhaps the most interesting observation is that many of the groups who have been reluctant to vote for Trump — black Americans and young people, for instance — are benefiting the most from his presidency.

The majority of millennials, 55 percent, voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election, according to an analysis of exit poll data from USA Today.

At the same time, a stunning number of younger Americans seem enamored by political promises that would almost certainly be disastrous for jobs and the country overall.

“(M)ore Millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country (44%) than in a capitalist one (42%). … The percentage of Millennials who would prefer socialism to capitalism is a full 10 points higher than that of the general population,” said a 2017 Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation/YouGov survey, which we reported on last year.

“It seems that the majority of America’s largest generation would prefer to live in a socialist or communism society than in a free enterprise system that respects the rule of law, private property, and limited government,” the foundation said.

Maybe it’s a cliched statement, but the youth in America might not know how good they have it. By almost every measure, life for Americans of all backgrounds is better than it has ever been and offers dramatically more opportunities compared with world standards.

The simple fact is that there are plenty of jobs for young people who want to make money and countless career options for almost anyone who is willing to show up and apply themselves.

Why so many young Americans are jaded and disenchanted despite living in a time of peace and opportunity may come down to a matter of messaging. If conservatives want to advance their ideas, communicating the principles that have made America great to the next generation is extremely important.

That may take a while … but pointing out how good things actually are in 2018 is definitely a strong start.

SOURCE 

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Fox News Breaks New Viewer Record, Swamps CNN’s Entire Brand

Though far from perfect, Fox News has nevertheless set itself apart from the rest of the mainstream media by providing more balanced and fair coverage of the political scene than their blatantly left-leaning competitors.

And it looks like they have been rewarded for that by American news consumers.

Fox News has been crushing their cable competition consistently for years, but especially within the past several months. Now, that domination appears to have been expanded to the internet side of American media consumption, where Fox has typically lagged behind its competitors.

In a news release from Fox, it was revealed that the network’s website outperformed that of chief rival CNN in terms of total page views for the first time ever.

On top of that, it was also revealed that FOXNews.com beat out other top brands such as CNN.com, NewYorkTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com in terms of engagement and time spent on the site by individual readers.

That revelation came from analytics data compiled in July 2018 by comScore, which showed that Fox had obtained roughly 1.5 billion total multi-platform views as compared to 1.4 billion garnered by CNN.

In addition, Fox also bested CNN for the fourth month in a row in terms of total page views, as Fox received about 1.45 billion compared to CNN’s approximately 1.22 billion total page views.

The release noted that FOXNews.com’s total multi-platform page views have increased by about 21 percent year-over-year, which now has them outperforming traditional legacy media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

To that point, Fox beat the website of The Times for the 7th consecutive month, this time by 457 million total page views.

Likewise, Fox beat The Post’s website for the 11th consecutive month by a margin of 887 million more total page views.

The FOXNews.com website now ranks third overall in terms of total unique visitors to the site — with 89.5 million unique visitors in the month of July — ranking higher than competitors such as The Times, The Post and CBSNews.com in terms of being a top-rated online news destination.

In this respect, Fox still trails CNN Brand and CNN.com, though Fox’s unique visitors total was up nine percent over this time last year.

However, Fox beat both versions of CNN in terms of time spent on the website by those visitors, as Fox ranked number one with almost 2.7 billion minutes, beating CNN Brand by 262 minutes and CNN.com by 491 million minutes.

The Fox release made it a point to highlight that they are the “most trusted source in news,” as per a recent Suffolk University/USA Today survey, and was the top-cited outlet as being the “most objective news source” in a 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey.

On top of that, the Fox News Channel consistently rates as a top-five cable network overall and has maintained their iron grip on the title of most watched cable news channel for 16 years running.

Based on the numbers of TV viewers and website readers, Fox is clearly dominating their competition, and they are doing so by living up to the mantle bestowed on them as being the “most objective” and “most trusted.”

Now, if only “fake news” outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the rest of the alphabet broadcast networks and legacy newspapers like The Times and The Post would consider being a bit more “objective” and trustworthy in putting out fair and balanced news reports like Fox, they may be able to reclaim the top spot in the media rankings from their better rival.

SOURCE 

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Ben Carson Calls Out Zoning Regulations for Driving Up Housing Costs

Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), wants to pare back Obama-era housing regulations that he says do not do enough to address the real driver of housing costs: zoning regulations.

On Monday, Carson announced that he was looking to revise the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which sought to combat housing segregation by requiring local governments to perform extensive (and expensive) reviews on how concentrated their neighborhoods were along class and racial lines, and then to develop action plans to create more "balanced and integrated living patterns." Local governments that failed to fulfill either requirement would be cut off from a number of federal housing grant programs.

Carson said on Monday that he wants to replace the 2015 AFFH with new rules that focus on increasing the overall supply of housing.

"I want to encourage the development of mixed-income multifamily dwellings all over the place," Carson told The Wall Street Journal, saying, "I would incentivize people who really would like to get a nice juicy government grant" to reform their zoning codes.

According to the Journal, Carson specifically called out Los Angeles for its strict single-family zoning rules that limit the number of housing units that can be built in the city. "Of course you're going to have skyrocketing prices that no one can afford," he said.

That Carson would want to reform the AFFH rule is not terribly surprising, given that he has been a critic of it long before he was appointed HUD secretary. As far back as 2015, Carson criticized the AFFH rule as an example of "social engineering" and "failed socialism." As HUD secretary, he has already taken steps to weaken it, such as pushing back compliance deadlines for local governments until 2020.

What is surprising, however, is Carson's suggestion that the AFFH be retooled to tie HUD grants to localities loosening their zoning regulations.

This is a complete 180 from Carson's 2015 criticism of the AFFH rule, in which the then-presidential candidate fretted that the Obama administration's focus on housing desegregation would do too much to undo local zoning laws.

"The [AFFH] rule would fundamentally change the nature of some communities from primarily single-family to largely apartment-based areas by encouraging municipalities to strike down housing ordinances that have no overtly (or even intended) discriminatory purpose—including race-neutral zoning restrictions on lot sizes and limits on multi-unit dwellings," wrote Carson in a 2015 Washington Times op-ed.

Carson's change of heart has raised eyebrows and even caused some commenters to question the sincerity of his new talk about tackling restrictive zoning rules.

Nevertheless, the shift in thinking at HUD—even if it is just a rhetorical shift at the moment—is still cause for cautious optimism, says Vanessa Brown Calder, a housing policy expert at the Cato Institute.

"I do think that shift in attitude at HUD is huge, and I hope that it translates into educating local municipalities that these things are related, zoning restrictions and housing affordability," says Calder. "It does sound like there is going to be some attempt made to connect HUD subsidies to relaxing or reforming zoning regulations, so that I think that could be really important."

That this might come in conjunction with a paring back of the Obama-era AFFH rule is heartening as well, says Calder, given both the costs and shaky legal foundations of the 2015 regulation.

The original AFFH, she notes, cost cities some $55 million in compliance costs. Indeed, these costs were burdensome enough that many localities decided it would be cheaper to just not comply with the rule and forfeit HUD funding.

The legal basis for the 2015 AFFH rule—which is based on the 1968 Fair Housing Act—is also pretty thin, says Calder. The 1968 law, she notes, is focused on eliminating racial discrimination by landlords, not on creating a delicate racial and income balance across whole cities, as is called for in the Obama administration's 2015 rule

"Zero times in the Fair Housing Act do they talk about segregation. That seems kind of damning considering that's what [the AFFH rule] is all about," Calder tells Reason.

Carson has so far avoided calling for an end to the AFFH rule altogether, instead suggesting that it be revised so as to reduce the overall regulatory burden on local governments. That approach is in line with many of the Trump administration's other deregulatory actions, which emphasize reducing and streamlining federal regulatory burdens, rather than eliminating rules in their entirety.

Nevertheless, any reduction in the regulatory state is welcome, as is anything that draws attention to restrictive zoning laws that have reduced supply and raised prices in cities across America.

SOURCE 

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Rand Paul: Trump Should Keep Revoking Ex-Obama Officials’ Security Clearances

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) is hailing President Donald Trump's decision to strip former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. But the Kentucky Republican doesn't think the president should stop with Brennan.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders accused Brennan, who led the CIA for most of former President Barack Obama's second term, of "lying." Brennan's "recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary," Sanders said, "is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation's most closely held secrets."

Sanders' remarks echoed the sentiments of Paul, who has spent weeks calling for Brennan, a harsh critic of Trump, to lose his clearance. Late last month, Paul wrote on Twitter that "Brennan and other partisans" should be stripped of their security clearances. He suggested Brennan has leveraged his clearance into gigs as a cable news talking head.

So it came as no surprise that Paul lauded Trump for taking away Brennan's security clearance. "I urged the President to do this. I filibustered Brennan's nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information," Paul said in a statement. "He participated in a shredding of constitutional rights, lied to Congress, and has been monetizing and making partisan political use of his clearance since his departure."

In an interview yesterday with WKU Public Radio, Paul said he wants other ex-Obama administration intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, to lose their clearances as well.

According to the Kentucky Republican, Clapper lied before the Senate Intelligence Committee when he was asked in March 2013 by Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) if U.S. intelligence was spying on American citizens. "When he was asked by Sen. Wyden if the NSA was collecting information on Americans, private information, he said no and that was a lie," Paul said. "Later, Edward Snowden revealed that they were collecting all Americans' phone information."

Paul has previously come down hard on ex-Obama administration officials. Last month, he suggested that Brennan, Clapper, and Comey were "bad apples that need to be dismissed from the swamp of Washington." And in April, Paul accused Rice of committing a crime by unmasking the identities of associates to Trump.

While Paul wants Trump to keep stripping security clearances, many former officials are making the opposite case. On Thursday, a dozen ex-intelligence officials blasted Trump's "attempt to stifle free speech." According to the officials: "Decisions on security clearances should be based on national security concerns and not political views."

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 values of the British political elite

There is a rather naive article from the LSE here which purports to present scientific evidence about the personal values of British politicians.  In its way, it is a careful piece of research and its conclusions are anodyne. Author James Weinberg tells us:

"Focusing on the two main parties in British politics, Labour and Conservative, we can observe significant differences on two higher order values (Self-Transcendence and Conservation) and three lower order values (Conformity, Tradition, Universalism), suggesting that Labour MPs are far more driven by a desire for justice and equality but also less motivated than Conservatives to sustain traditional ways of life."

These conclusions will surprise no-one with any knowledge of politics but they may be false.  They are all based on self-reports. The data behind the findings comes from asking politicians how much they value certain things.  In psychometric jargon it is a type of  Likert scale. But self-reports from Leftists cannot be trusted. As psychopaths do, they say whatever they think suits the moment.

One of the most amusing examples of that was during John Kerry's presidential campaign.  He was critical of George Bush invading Iraq.  And he justified that by an appeal to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia.  Talk about desperation!  Appealing to a centuries-old European treaty -- America didn't exist as a nation then -- would have to be one of the most unlikely things ever for a Leftist to do in justifying his policies.  But he obviously felt that it might get him some kudos. The treaty said that nations should not interfere in the internal politics of other nations.

America has of course never stuck by the Treaty of Westphalia. Theodore Roosevelt's invasion of Cuba in 1898 set the ball rolling on a whole series of conquests of the old Spanish empire by American Progressives: The Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico.  And in more recent times one thinks of Reagan's invasion of Grenada and Bill Clinton's bombing of Serbia -- etc.

But to me the most stark Leftist "flexibility" arose during my extensive survey research into authoritarianism.  Given their love of telling other people what to do, Leftists would have to be the quintessential authoritarians, starting from Napoleon with his police State and foreign wars.  And nothing could be more authoritarian than the various Communist regimes that besmirched the 20th century.  So when I asked Leftists in my surveys what they thought about various instances of authoritarianism, I was surprised to find great caution in the answers.  According to what they said of themselves, they were usually no more authoritarian than anyone else.

And perhaps most revealing of all, I made great efforts to get Communists to answer my questionnaires.  On a couple of occasions, their leadership authorized it but the comrades just would not do the task.  They knew how dismal their motivations were and did not want to reveal it.

So, in summary Leftists lie systematically and their responses to surveys tell you nothing real. James Weinberg's hard work was for naught.  You can guess the real motives of Leftists only from what they actually do.  And their policies uniformly have "unexpected" destructive effects.  Obamacare has destroyed or degraded health insurance for many Americans, for instance.  And the uniform destructiveness of Leftist policy outcomes can surely only be intended. They want to destroy anything they can in the world around them

More on Leftist dissimulation here -- JR

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Load the link below for a vivid picture of Leftist hate and rage

https://twitter.com/i/status/1028811129957625857

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The double standard of justice in the U.S. is risking the collapse of the entire system

The political world is waiting with bated breath for the outcome of Paul Manafort’s trial. The former one-time Trump campaign chairman is being prosecuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for various tax and bank fraud crimes, most of which occurred over a decade ago. Manafort is also facing charges in the District of Columbia for Foreign Agent Registration Act violations. In total, Manafort is looking at more than three centuries behind bars.

Many recall Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian election interference and if the Trump campaign colluded. Yet for some unknown reason, Mueller is vigorously pursuing Manafort even though none of the charges in Virginia or D.C. have nothing to do with Russia or the 2016 election.

Despite being on trial for nothing to do with Russia or the election by someone that is supposed to be investigating Russia and the election, Manafort is likely to spend more time in prison than rapists or murderers. Is that justice?

The mainstream media has reported authorities raided a compound last week in New Mexico and found malnourished children. But what really happened is much more sinister, and the actions of a local judge have called into question what the word “justice” means.

Siraj Wahhaj and his relatives, sisters Hujrah Wahhaj and Subhannah Wahhaj, his partner Jany Leveille, and brother-in-law Lucas Morten were taken into custody with 11 children after law enforcement raided their compound.

The children found to be in horrible living conditions and malnourished. What is more disturbing is according to one of the boys, he was taught to fire a rifle in preparation for a school shooting. The information takes the case well beyond child abuse. The case now takes a turn into possible terrorism.

On top of all that, a child’s remains have been discovered on the compound also. It is believed the body belongs to 3-year-old Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, son of Siraj Wahhaj. Siraj is already wanted for kidnapping the child in Georgia.

That makes the other four adults released accessories to that crime. So we have multiple counts of child abuse, possible terrorism charges, and accessories to kidnapping, surely the judge is going to keep the adults behind bars until the situation can be fully investigated.

That didn’t happen. Despite the danger posed to the children and the community, a judge granted bail with only a $20,000 bond. How does this happen?

Another miscarriage of justice took place in California last week. At a free speech rally in Berkeley on April 15, 2017. Unfortunately, like all public gatherings involving Antifa violence broke out. In an effort to suppress speech they disagree with, Antifa members attacked.

One of the violent thugs was a former Diablo Valley College professor, Eric Clanton. Clanton was captured on video smashing an individual on top of the head with a heavy-duty bicycle lock. The kind of lock with sharp edges that bolt cutters cannot cut. The individual struck immediately went down, and blood poured from the wound on his head.

Clanton would assault seven more people in the head and neck regions with the bike lock according to Berkeley police. Make no mistake about it, Clanton committed multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon.

Surely this type of behavior is not tolerated in California, right?

And you would be wrong. It is tolerated, and after the “punishment” handed down, it may encourage more violence. Despite having video evidence, the weapon, and the clothing used in the assaults, Clanton was allowed to plead guilty to misdemeanor battery, only getting probation. Clanton will have served a whopping four days in jail for multiple attempts to cave people’s skulls in.

How can the Justice Department sit on the sidelines when the State of California is going to allow the violation of civil rights? Yes, beating someone over the head with a deadly weapon to silence them is a violation of that person’s civil rights.

There is a problem with the U.S. justice system. Clearly, politics is playing a role when justice is supposed to be blind. How can someone that attempted to cave multiple people’s skull in and people involved in planning and training school shootings be on the streets, but Paul Manafort is such a danger to society he must be locked up in solitary confinement and potentially sentenced to hundreds of years in prison?

The U.S. justice system must get out of the business of politics before it finds itself completely untrusted by the majority of Americans.

SOURCE

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Since the repeal of “net neutrality” took effect on June 11, the U.S. internet speed has gone from 12th to 6th fastest in the world

FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced late last year that he would be repealing the Obama-era internet regulations known as “net neutrality.” Following this announcement, the internet went into an absolute frenzy of criticism.

Even from the day of the announcement for the repeal, internet speeds have steadily been increasing.

This is likely due to the fact that the repeal of net neutrality rules have allowed the market to dictate itself. This, in turn, has spurred competition and innovation which ultimately creates a better product for consumers.

The United States now trails only Singapore, Hong Kong, Iceland, Romania, and South Korea in overall broadband download speed.

SOURCE

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Britain’s Inability to Handle Last Year’s Flu Season Shows Perils of Socialized Medicine

Younger doctors who are flirting with support of government-run health care should consider some hard facts—including the unfortunate results such control would likely have for patients and doctors themselves. They should also look at the recent raw experience of Britain with a government-controlled health care system.

But first, let’s look at the most serious plan for government-run health care: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Act of 2017, which has the support of one-third of Senate Democrats.

Recently, Sanders, I-Vt., claimed that his bill would save more than $2 trillion over a 10-year period. According to the Associated Press, however, the senator “mischaracterized” the analysis upon which that estimate was  based, a major study of the cost of the Sanders bill by Charles Blahous, a former Medicare trustee, now at the Mercatus Center.

As the Associated Press’ fact check notes, the $2.1 trillion “savings” estimate rests on the implausible assumption—studiously ignored by Sanders and others—that hospitals and staffing levels would remain the same—despite an estimated 40 percent reduction in compensation for medical services.

Such a massive pay cut would guarantee, says Blahous, that doctors and hospitals would get paid for services “substantially below” their costs of providing the services. Thus, he warns, “ … whether providers could sustain such losses and remain in operation, and how those who continue operations would adapt to such dramatic payment reductions, are critically important questions.”

Yes, they are. Blahous’ findings are particularly relevant for young men and women entering medical school. As Kaiser Health News recently reported, a growing contingent of young physicians and medical students favor expanding the power of government officials to control medicine, and thus their professional lives.

After all, most students become doctors more out of a desire to care for patients than to make a lot of money. Sanders’ proposed pay cut, however, would likely price many doctors out of independent practice, as well as decimate larger medical systems—neither of which would benefit patients.

Medicare would ostensibly be the model for Sanders’ national health insurance program. Beyond lower payment levels, Medicare is governed by tens of  thousands of pages of rules, regulations, and guidelines.

The transactional or administrative costs that doctors and other medical professionals already incur in compliance with these reams of red tape are real, though they do not show up on Medicare or Medicaid budget documents. That is one reason why Medicare’s official administrative costs are deceptively low; the government shifts a large share of administrative costs onto medical professionals.

By 2030, America faces a physician shortage ranging from roughly 43,000 to 121,000, depending upon the assumptions. The crush of nonclinical administrative duties are today a leading cause of American physician burnout and accelerated retirements.

Ultimately, the Sanders bill, by reducing physician compensation while enlarging the power of Washington’s health care bureaucracy, would only make matters worse.

Young doctors—and anyone else considering government-run health care—should  look at the performance of the British National Health Service.

In a candid Oct. 12, 1975 interview with the London Sunday Times, then-Labor Minister David Owen, conceded:

The health service was launched on a fallacy. First, we were going to finance everything, cure the nation and then spending would drop. That fallacy has been exposed. Then there was a period when everybody thought the public could have whatever they needed on the health service- it was just a question of governmental will. Now we recognize that no country, even if they are prepared to pay the taxes, can supply everything.

Today, the British National Health Service is plagued with long wait times, delayed procedures, and an overstressed medical workforce.

A cursory survey of recent British news sources reveals a worrying trend in the delayed delivery and deteriorating quality of National Health Service health care. While British tabloids can be sensational, with bleeding ledes on hospital problems, sober British analysts are concerned.

Last winter, a particularly virulent strain of influenza hit Britain. British hospital wards are often overcrowded, but the crush of flu patients exacerbated the system’s persistent and underlying problems—inadequate staffing and insufficient resources. The British Medical Association’s quarterly survey of physicians found that 82 percent of respondents felt their workplaces were understaffed.

One doctor described the situation this way to the British Medical Association: “I came on to shift yesterday afternoon and there were patients literally everywhere. The corridor into the hospital was so busy we couldn’t have got a cardiac arrest patient through it into the resuscitation room.” He added, “To say staff were at the end of their tethers would be a complete understatement.”

National Health Service morale has been suffering, and British Medical Association surveys show that complaints about resources, understaffing, and perpetual physician vacancies have been constant.

Aggravated by the flu season, and budget constraints, the National Health Service cancelled some 50,000 “non-urgent” surgeries. The problem is that the urgency for a particular patient’s surgery is, or should be, a doctor’s clinical judgment. For example, surgery for a person to repair an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), for instance, may be delayed. But delaying an AAA repair is risking rupture, and patients with a ruptured AAA have a 90 percent mortality rate.

By March 2018, British emergency departments reached new lows, leaving 15.4 percent of patients waiting over four hours before being seen. This was far short of the goal of less than 5 percent of patients forced to wait over four hours.

When considering only major emergency departments, classified as Type 1 in the National Health Service, the rate increased to 23.6 percent of patients waiting longer than four hours to be seen. The British Medical Journal reports that this is the worst performance since 2004, when these metrics were first tracked.

Outside of emergency departments, the number of British patients waiting 18 weeks or more for treatment increased by 35 percent, which was an increase of 128,575 patients from about 362,000 patients in 2017, to over 490,000 patients in 2018.

Additionally, by March 2018, 2,755 patients had waited over a year to be treated, compared to 1,528 patients in 2017. In England, the National Health Service also broke records by canceling over 25,000 surgeries at the last minute in the first quarter of 2018—this was the highest number of last-minute cancellations in 24 years. Remarkably, this was after the British authorities initiated a series of reforms that started in 2016.

The British, of course, are responsible for their system and its results. They will, or will not, undertake reforms to reduce long queues, delayed care, and the consequent harm to  British patients.

It is naïve, however, to believe that Americans can avoid similar consequences—annual budget dramas, long waiting times, and scandalous care denials—by giving members of Congress and officials of the federal bureaucracy control over American health care.

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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THIS IS CNN: Leftist Guest Agrees 100% With Andrew Cuomo: ‘America Has Never Been Great'

A curious thing about the Left is that they are not patriotic but may be nationalist. The "Progressives" of just over a century ago certainly were (Croly, TR etc.). A patriot is simply pleased to be a citizen of his country. He likes his country. A nationalist, on the other hand, wants his country to dominate or rule other countries. The old American "Progressives", for instance, grabbed Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. So a nationalist is ready to go to war at the drop of a hat whereas the patriot needs a lot of persuading before he will go to war.

The two attitudes can however be mistaken for one another and that can cause considerable confusion. American Leftists these days clearly loathe their country. In the schools they teach the kids a whole lot of bad things (slavery etc.) about America but nothing that would make the kids proud to be American. And that is in fact basic to Leftism. A Leftist is someone who wants to "fundamentally transform" his country (In Mr Obama's words -- words which elicited an enormous cheer from his Leftist audience). The Leftist is fundamentally at odds with the realities of his country. So how COULD he be patriotic?

And yet the Left do appear to have been patriotic once.  People recall JFK exhorting young Americans with "Ask not what your  country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country:.  That seems pretty patriotic, does it not?

But it is not really. It is just the usual exhortation of Fascists to subjugate the individual to the herd. As Hitler put it: "Und wir wissen, vor uns liegt Deutschland, in uns marschiert Deutschland und hinter uns kommt Deutschland!". Or as Mussolini put it: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" (Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State). Troops to march willingly into the Left's wars of conquest is what the nationalist wants. JFK's speech was a survival of  nationalism, not patriotism. And he did kick off a war: Vietnam.


On Wednesday, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo said that America was “never that great”, and liberals are agreeing with him in droves. On CNN last night, we saw the scope of just how much that statement resonated with the left as political commentator Angela Rye agreed wholeheartedly with Cuomo.

Rye was in the middle of a debate with Trump campaign adviser Gina Loudon about diversity in the White House and things got off the rails pretty quickly.

Rye then addressed Cuomo’s comments and said she backs them 100%.

“America has never been great, and it’s not great because people like you come on and lie for the president of the United States and then tout, bring out your son as an example, you’ve got to be completely ashamed of yourself,” Rye said.

After the heated back and forth, Erin Burnett needed to end the segment before things got too ugly.

Right after the controversy, Cuomo’s office quickly backtracked and said that he “does” think America is great (lol)

“The Governor believes America is great and that her full greatness will be fully realized when every man, woman, and child has full equality. America has not yet reached its maximum potential,” Cuomo’s office said in response to the backlash.

Honestly, does anyone actually believe his garbage response?

SOURCE

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Fox Panel Erupts When Former Obama Official DEFENDS Gov. Cuomo’s Remarks

A segment on Fox News erupted on Thursday when Marie Harf, a former Obama administration official, defended New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s unpatriotic comments about America not being great. The segment was so intense that it resulted in Harf, a Democrat, shouting, “let me finish” when the four other panelists lost it on her for defending Cuomo’s disgusting comments.

During a segment on Fox News’ “Outnumbered,” the five panelists began discussing comments made by Cuomo on Wednesday during a bill signing, where he stunned the audience by point-blank saying “America was never that great.”

President Donald Trump, many liberal cable news pundits, and just about everyone else has condemned Cuomo for his absurdly disgusting comments — except Harf.

“I don’t think that Andrew Cuomo doesn’t believe this country’s great. I think that he was trying to turn the president’s slogan around on him and flubbed it,” Harf claimed, with many on the panel visibly disgusted.

“Andrew Cuomo didn’t flub anything,” panelist Katie Pavlich immediately fired back. “This is the pattern of Democrats over the past 10 years.”

Harris Faulkner jumped in and referenced a tweet she sent out on Wednesday after Cuomo’s comment. She said Cuomo should issue a real apology to the military for his disrespectful remarks.

" Tell that to every single active duty American service member; every military veteran of every war we have fought; every loving family member of every soldier, marine, guard, sailor, airman/woman who has died serving this nation.  Then, tell them how sorry you are."

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who appeared as a guest on the show, noted that if Trump had made comments similar to Cuomo’s, the liberal media would excoriate him for it.

“The thing I find fascinating about the coverage of [Cuomo’s remarks] is … if President Trump or any Republican had made a similar statement like that, there would be calls for him to resign,” Spicer said.

The panel erupted a few minutes later when Pavlich said she would find Harf’s defense more believable if Democrats “didn’t have a record over recent years of being unpatriotic.”

Pavlich cited a slew of examples of Democrats displaying unpatriotic behavior, including Hillary Clinton praising a child this week for refusing to stand during the national anthem and the Democratic National Committee supporting Occupy Wall Street, a far-left group that has burned the American flag.

Harf balked and couldn’t offer a logical argument to refute Pavlich. In response, Pavlich kicked it up a notch and asked Harf if she believes standing for the national anthem is a patriotic, to which Harf offered a head-scratcher of a reply.

“I think that the highest form of patriotism is protest,” Harf said.

While Cuomo’s comments were disgusting, Harf defending him and his unpatriotic stance will not sit well with many Americans, who agree with the president that the national anthem, flag, and country should always be respected.

Harf’s comments are indicative of where the Democratic Party is, and how many liberals have no issue trashing America to go after Trump.

SOURCE




Trump Foes Assail Mexican Restaurant Chain After Jeff Sessions Eats There

A popular Mexican restaurant chain in Houston faced such a backlash for serving Attorney General Jeff Sessions that its owners disassociated themselves from Trump administration immigration policy and disabled all social media accounts.

Sessions ate Friday night at the family-owned El Tiempo’s Montrose location, one of eight in Houston.

That night, someone posted a photo on the restaurant chain’s official Facebook page showing executive chef Domenic Laurenzo with Sessions and captioned: “We had the honor to [serve] Mr. Jeff Sessions, Attorney General of the United States. Thank you for allowing us to serve you.”

Soon after the photo with Sessions was uploaded on Facebook, a barrage of hateful comments and harassment directed at the Houston eatery began. The reaction prompted Roland Laurenzo to disable all social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, over the weekend.

In a later deleted follow-up post on Facebook, Roland Laurenzo wrote that El Tiempo served Sessions without “thinking about the political situations”:

El Tiempo does not in any way support the practice of separating children from parents or any other practices of the government relative to immigration. The posting of a photograph of the Attorney General at one of our restaurants does not represent us supporting his positions.

The secret service contacted us that a government official was coming to dinner at our establishment and his identity was not known until he walked through the door. The man came to dinner and he was served without us even thinking about the political situations. We were preoccupied with the secret service and catering to their wants and needs.

The only thing on our minds was serving great food and giving great customer service. It was posted without review or approval by ownership and this has lead [sic] to everyone jumping to conclusions that somehow we are involved in this political matter. We don’t approve of anyone separating parents and children.

Sessions was in town on government business, including a speech about violent crime and measures his Justice Department is taking to reduce gang violence, delivered to local law enforcement officials and federal prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.

“People are insulting us in such a dramatic fashion, and we feel like we don’t deserve it,” Laurenzo told KTRK-TV, the local ABC station. “At least temporarily I had it [social media accounts] taken down because I don’t want to be insulted, my children to be insulted, my family to be insulted.”

A silver lining for the restaurant chain: The outrage and calls for boycotts prompted folks across Texas to make a special stop at an El Tiempo restaurant, according to local news stations.

SOURCE

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Double Standard: Dem Candidate Uses Wildly Racist Language To Insult Asian Opponent

A minor Republican primary battle in metro Detroit, Michigan, has exploded into the national consciousness after a white candidate called her Asian challenger a “ching-chong” and belittled her supporters as immigrants who didn’t belong in this country, raising serious questions about the re-emergence of racism, anti-immigrant sentiment and the dark underbelly of ethnic animosity in the era of Trump.

Wait, wait, did I say Republican? Sorry about that one; what I actually meant to say was Democrat.

Oh, and I said “white candidate” too, didn’t I? She was actually black. Can’t believe I spaced on that one, as well.

And when I said that it “exploded into the national consciousness” and is “raising serious questions about the re-emergence of racism, anti-immigrant sentiment and the dark underbelly of ethnic animosity in the era of Trump,” what I actually meant to say was “literally nothing happened and nobody outside of Michigan even gave the slightest of craps about it.” It’s just a minor Freudian slip, after all. Could have happened to anyone.

Yes, even though Michigan state Rep. Bettie Cook Scott is apparently one of the most openly racist elected officials since the days when Robert Byrd would ask the dry cleaners to use extra starch on his hood because the point seemed to droop if he got too close to the burning cross, the only non-local coverage this awful human being has gotten in the past few days consists of minor write-ups in The Washington Times and other papers of that ilk.

According to the Detroit Metro Times, Cook called opponent Rep. Stephanie Chang a “‘ching-chang’ and “the ching-chong” to multiple voters outside polling precincts during last Tuesday’s Democrat state Senate primary.

“She’s also said to have called one of Chang’s campaign volunteers an ‘immigrant,’ saying ‘you don’t belong here’ and ‘I want you out of my country.’”

Just to make this even more disgusting, one of the people who heard Rep. Scott’s rants involving Asian people was Chang’s husband, who is black

Scott then went on to call him a ‘fool’ for marrying Chang.” Scott also said that it “disgusts her seeing black people holding signs for these Asians and not supporting their own people.'”

“These comments are offensive to all Asian-Americans,” Rep. Chang told the Metro Times. “It isn’t about me. It’s about an elected official disrespecting entire populations, whether they be Asian-American, immigrant, or residents of Sen. District 1 or (Cook’s) own current house district.”

Chang easily won the primary with 49 percent of the vote.

SOURCE

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'Surprise guest' Putin ruffles feathers with plan to attend Euroskeptic Austrian FM's wedding

Putin speaks fluent German so would be at home among the wedding guests.  And Austria has long been politically neutral so there is no reason to obstruct his visit

From security arrangements to choice of present to geopolitical implications, Western media is fascinated (and alarmed) by Vladimir Putin's decision to drop in on the wedding of Karin Kneissl – and some have demanded she resign.

Above all else, it appears that in almost two decades as an international political figure, this is the first time the Russian president has publicized his intention to go to a wedding party, much less one abroad. His long-time press secretary Dmitry Peskov insisted that Putin has visited foreign private events previously, but when pressed by reporters, struggled to recall a specific occasion.

Other Russian officials are also downplaying the significance of Putin's Saturday morning detour en-route to talks with Angela Merkel later the same day. The president's aide Yuri Ushakov said that Putin would "drop in to offer his congratulations," while Peskov presented the whole affair as a matter of common courtesy: Kneissl invited the Russian leader during his official visit in June, and Putin simply accepted.

But for the German-language press, the announcement of the "surprise guest" has been a bombshell.

Political scientist Gerhard Mangott told Austria's national broadcaster ORF that the very invitation of a higher-ranked foreign official, which was only made public on Wednesday was a "bold" violation of accepted diplomatic protocol by Kneissl. Others have noted that there appears to be no personal connection between the Russian president and the respected technocrat, who has been in her post for less than a year.

Putin is expected to arrive in Graz on his plane, travel to the location by helicopter, and there have also been reports of a planned carriage ride, though it is unclear if the Russian president will join the happy couple for that part of the ceremony. The local tourist board has complained of being inundated with calls demanding to know the exact route the wedding procession will take.

On the day following the announcement, light-hearted surprise had already been replaced by rancorous and shadowy theories about Putin's motivations for filling in his RSVP.

Putin chose Vienna as his first EU capital to visit following his re-election for a fourth term in March, while Austria has publicly offered to play the role of a go-between, and notably abstained from the diplomat expulsions connected to the Skripal case, undertaken by most of the European Union.

Meanwhile, Kneissl is unaffiliated with any political faction, but she is a principled Euroskeptic, and was handpicked by the Freedom Party, which enjoys official links with Putin's United Russia.

Meanwhile, Austria's Green MEP Michel Reimon has declared that Kneissl must resign for the sheer act of inviting the Russian president. That's one man not on the guest list.

SOURCE

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Army General Reveals John Brennan’s Sinister Plan To OVERTHROW President Trump

Speaking with Fox News, Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata said former CIA director John Brennan is a “clear and present danger” to the United States and wants to “overthrow” President Donald Trump.

He went on to say Brennan’s tweets disparaging Trump and calling for his removal are enough to revoke his security clearance and that Brennan is a Communist. (NOTE) John Brennan voted for a communist candidate in the 1970 and Tata believes he has supported that way of life since.

“He spied on American citizens and lied in front of Congress about that spying,” Tata said on “Fox & Friends.” “Question 29 on the security clearance form says, you know, ‘have you ever supported overthrowing the U.S. Government?’ All of you got to look at Brennan’s tweets and he supports the removal of this president, and right there — that’s enough evidence to get rid of his clearance.”

GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana also weighed in. In a clip played by Brian Kilmeade during his interview with General Tata, Kennedy stated Brennan is an embarrassment to the intelligence community and accused him of being politically biased in his professional dealings.

“I’ve made my feelings known about Mr. Brennan. I think most Americans look at our national intelligence experts as being above politics,” Kennedy said. “Mr. Brennan has demonstrated that that’s not the case. He’s been totally political. I think I called him a butthead and I meant it. I think he’s given the national intelligence community a bad name.”

“John Brennan is a clear and present danger and a threat to this nation,” Tata concluded. “He supports the overthrow of this particular president. And he needed to have his access to information revoked.”

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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Christian Baker Under Attack Again; This Time Over TRANSGENDER TRANSITION Cake

According to the Daily Caller, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission began new proceedings against Jack Phillips of ‘Masterpiece Cakeshop’ on behalf of a transgender complainant just weeks after he prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is another coordinated attack by the left-wing extremists who want to bully Christians into baking anything they ask for – even if it goes against what the baker holds as a religious belief.

Earlier this year, Phillips reigned victorious at the U.S. Supreme Court after declining to create a custom wedding cake for a gay couple. Now, according to this new report, he and his legal team have filed a lawsuit in federal court late Tuesday against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Here’s what his lawyers had to say:

“The state of Colorado is ignoring the message of the U.S. Supreme Court by continuing to single out Jack for punishment and to exhibit hostility toward his religious beliefs. Even though Jack serves all customers and simply declines to create custom cakes that express messages or celebrate events in violation of his deeply held beliefs, the government is intent on destroying him — something the Supreme Court has already told it not to do.”

Here’s how this whole fiasco started (via the Daily Caller):

The story behind the transgender

On the same day the high court agreed to review the Masterpiece case, an attorney named Autumn Scardina called Phillips’ shop and asked him to create a cake celebrating a sex transition. The caller asked that the cake include a blue exterior and a pink interior, a reflection of Scardina’s transgender identity. Phillips declined to create the cake, given his religious conviction that sex is immutable, while offering to sell the caller other pre-made baked goods.

“Colorado has renewed its war against him by embarking on another attempt to prosecute him, in direct conflict with the Supreme Court’s ruling in his favor,” Phillips’ lawsuit against Colorado says. “This lawsuit is necessary to stop Colorado’s continuing persecution of Phillips.”

In response to this story, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro had this to say, emphasizing the importance of keeping a Conservative Supreme Court:

If the political Left should ever gain a fifth vote on the Supreme Court, it will not be long before states across the country — and perhaps a Democratic Congress — would crack down on individual religious businessowners in blatant violation of the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of association, speech, and religion. Jack Phillips isn’t out of danger yet.

“Unreal. Colorado is STILL harassing Jack Phillips for not agreeing to use his baking skills to celebrate he disapproves of,” said one Twitter user:

SOURCE

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How Maine’s Governor May Be Saving Lives By Refusing To Expand Medicaid

The New York Times published an article describing Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s refusal to expand Medicaid in that state through Obamacare. LePage’s refusal defies a binding vote on a 2017 ballot initiative, when the state’s voters approved expanding the program.

The New York Times frames the refusal as both unwarranted legal malfeasance and as an assault on Maine residents’ health just to save money for taxpayers. This framing is not completely inaccurate. Directly defying the state’s voters is certainly unusual. On the budgetary front, the governor has repeatedly stated that the state needs to find the necessary funds (approximately $60 million annually) from sources other than new taxes or dipping into the state’s reserves.

But neither is the article framing complete. It leaves out relevant details about the expected health benefits, which distort readers’ understanding.

Here’s the Rest of the Story

The impression The New York Times leaves is of a leader indifferent to his citizens’ health. The implicit assumption is that expanding Medicaid is an unalloyed good for Maine, and only base or corrupt motives could explain not doing it. The Times expends no effort in examining the basis for that assumption. This is unfortunate, as there is a clear empirical correlation between expanding Medicaid and increased mortality.

To date, there is no generally accepted causation mechanism between expanding Medicaid under ObamaCare and the increase in the death rate, but the correlation is clear and unambiguous. Some have proposed a link between the increased mortality and an increase in opioid deaths due to Medicaid expansion. The U.S. Senate held a hearing on the subject and issued a report. The Medicaid-opioid link has not been accepted by public health academics so far, but neither have they proposed a convincing alternate explanation for the empirical connection between Medicaid and increased mortality rates.

Even without knowing the cause of the link between Medicaid and increased death rates, it is clear that the relationship exists. Therefore, it is possible that LePage, intentionally or unintentionally, is actually preserving the lives of his fellow citizens in the Pine Tree State. But one would never know this from reading The New York Times.

Let’s Compare Maine to New Hampshire

How much is LePage helping the residents of Maine? We can estimate the magnitude of the correlation between Medicaid and increased death by comparing Maine to its next-door neighbor.

New Hampshire expanded Medicaid in accordance with Obamacare immediately after the law was implemented in 2014. The two states are similar in many respects, with nearly identical populations, and relatively large rural populations.

New Hampshire is somewhat more urbanized than Maine, and wealthier, as one would expect from its proximity to Boston, which leads to better general health outcomes. However, the two states’ demographics are very alike, and their health trends have correlated well over the past several decades.

Mortality statistics for the two states can be generated from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) WONDER database, which uses the ICD-10 codes from 1999 through the latest data collected in 2016

Both states experienced a large increase in the mortality rate after implementing Obamacare. This was a nationwide trend, so the data from Maine and New Hampshire are not surprising. However, the difference in the rate of increase between Maine and New Hampshire is significant.

Prior to Obamacare, the 18- to 64-year-old all-cause death rate in Maine averaged 319 deaths per 100,000 in population (1999 – 2013 mean = 319.4; σ = 15.8). The mortality rate was trending upward at a rate of about 3.2 deaths per 100,000 per year. Subsequent to Obamacare implementation, the Maine death rate between 2014 and 2016 mean increased to 365.6 deaths per 100,000, a 2.9 σ increase.

While the Maine trends are a terrible window into the worsening health situation in that state, they look positively benign compared to the grim data from New Hampshire. Prior to Obamacare, the 18- to 64-year-old all-cause death rate in New Hampshire averaged 270 deaths per 100,000 in population (1999 – 2013 mean = 269.8; σ = 12.0).

The mortality rate was trending upward at a lower rate than Maine, about 2.4 deaths per 100,000 per year. But after implementing Obamacare, the New Hampshire death rate 2014 to 2016 mean increased to 329.3 deaths per 100,000, a 5.0 σ increase. The 2013 to 2016 death rate trend in New Hampshire is skyrocketing upward by 18.8 deaths per 100,000 per year.

In Maine, the mean death rate increased an awful 14 percent after Obamacare went into place, but the New Hampshire mean rate increased a truly catastrophic 22 percent. While New Hampshire had approximately 84 percent of the death rate of Maine from 1999 to 2013, this increased to more than 90 percent of the Maine death rate after ObamaCare and Medicaid expansion was implemented in New Hampshire.

It is easy to approximate the differential deaths New Hampshire suffered. If the mean death rate increase in New Hampshire had been limited to 14 percent in that state after ObamaCare, as was the case in Maine, the mean rate would have been 309 per 100,000 from 2014 to 2016. More than 500 Granite Staters died in those three years, who, statistically speaking, would still be alive today if New Hampshire’s mortality trend matched that of Maine.

In short, after fully implementing Obamacare, including the Medicaid expansion, New Hampshire residents have died in desperately large numbers, far in excess of the neighboring state, whose governor refused to expand Medicaid.

SOURCE

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Unemployment in Britain hits new 43-year low

8 years of Tory rule finally pay off

Unemployment dropped to its lowest level in more than 40 years in June as the rebounding economy created tens of thousands of new jobs.

The jobless rate fell to 4pc in the three months to June, the Office for National Statistics said, down from 4.2pc in the previous three-month period.

The number of unemployed Britons fell by 65,000 to 1.36m while the number in work increased by 42,000 to 32.4m.

This was driven by a rise in full-time work, rather than part-time. The proportion of part-time workers who want a full-time job fell to a nine-year low of 11.7pc.

Zero-hours contracts are also down, falling by more than 100,000 from 901,000 in December to 780,000 now.

SOURCE

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How Can I Cure My White Guilt?

This woman has been brainwashed to a degree which would make North Korea proud.  She badly needs some conservative friends

I’m riddled with shame. White shame. This isn’t helpful to me or to anyone, especially people of color. I feel like there is no “me” outside of my white/upper middle class/cisgender identity. I feel like my literal existence hurts people, like I’m always taking up space that should belong to someone else.

I consider myself an ally. I research proper etiquette, read writers of color, vote in a way that will not harm P.O.C. (and other vulnerable people). I engage in conversations about privilege with other white people. I take courses that will further educate me. I donated to Black Lives Matter. Yet I fear that nothing is enough. Part of my fear comes from the fact that privilege is invisible to itself. What if I’m doing or saying insensitive things without realizing it?

Another part of it is that I’m currently immersed in the whitest environment I’ve ever been in. My family has lived in the same apartment in East Harlem for four generations. Every school I attended, elementary through high school, was minority white, but I’m now attending an elite private college that is 75 percent white. I know who I am, but I realize how people perceive me and this perception feels unfair.

I don’t talk about my feelings because it’s hard to justify doing so while people of color are dying due to systemic racism and making this conversation about me would be again centering whiteness. Yet bottling it up makes me feel an existential anger that I have a hard time channeling since I don’t know my place. Instead of harnessing my privilege for greater good, I’m curled up in a ball of shame. How can I be more than my heritage?

Whitey

SOURCE

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TV poll: Majority says Constitution should protect hate speech

A majority of Americans said they believe the Constitution should protect hate speech even if it offends them, according to a new American Barometer poll.

The survey, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company, found that 63 percent of Americans polled said hate speech should be protected even when it is offensive.

Thirty-seven percent said the Constitution should not protect hate speech.

The poll did not find a major partisan rift on the issue. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans said they believed the Constitution should protect hate speech, and 60 percent of Democrats agreed.

Sixty-three percent of independents also said that hate speech should be protected.

"The American people support free speech. It's protected in our Constitution, but hate speech is destructive," Democratic pollster Carly Cooperman, a partner at Schoen Consulting, told Hill.TV's Joe Concha on "What America's Thinking."

"I think a lot of polarization we see comes from hate speech," she added. "I think there's a degree of fatigue when you think about the hatred that comes from that kind of language and it's divisive."

SOURCE

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Terrence Williams: Trump Owes Dogs Apology for Comparing Them to Omarosa

It isn’t unusual for someone to take offense at something President Donald Trump says in a tweet. But this time, the call for the president to apologize is for a different — and what some would call humorous — reason.

Trump is well-known for speaking off the cuff and hurling insults at those who lob their own insults at him and his administration.

Now, a new target is in Trump’s sights and it is someone he presumably held in high enough regard to place in a job in the White House. It is former reality television star Omarosa Manigault Newman.

After being fired from her White House posting, Manigault Newman went on to bash the man who gave her so much via “Apprentice” franchise appearances and the job in his administration.

Manigault Newman also wrote a book, “Unhinged” reportedly spilling the dirt on Trump and his White House. As could be expected, Trump took to Twitter to hit back at the nasty and highly refuted claims:

"When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!"

While many took issue with the president referring to her as a “dog,” the reason one man did was very different from most. Comedian and commentator Terrence K. Williams chimed in on Twitter with his own take on it:

"On behalf of the black delegation I want everyone to know that all black women don’t act like Omarosa. Donald Trump was wrong for calling her a Dog! Dogs are loyal! Trump should apologize to doggy community"

We certainly don’t condone calling human beings “dogs,” but it is part of the human experience for many to name-call and be called names. Anyone in the public eye, particularly one who is herself hurling insults, should be able to “take it.”

SOURCE 

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Piers Morgan Reveals ‘Appalling’ ‘#MeToo Moment’ With Omarosa: ‘One of the Worst Human Beings I’ve Ever Encountered’

As former White House aide Omarosa Maingault-Newman continues making the media rounds to promote her new memoir, she is encountering some resistance in her effort to disparage President Donald Trump.

Many of the president’s supporters and detractors alike have questioned the former reality television star’s credibility given her history of over-the-top antics.

Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Daily Mail editor Piers Morgan, who appeared on “Celebrity Apprentice” with both Manigault-Newman and Trump.

He described behavior that he said should make any serious discussion of the ousted Trump adviser’s book irrelevant.

In a behind-the-scenes encounter Carlson described as Morgan’s “me too moment,” the former CNN host said Manigault-Newman attempted to spark a sexual affair between the two in hopes of cashing in on the ensuing media attention.

“Her first gambit to me, day one, first challenge, she sidles up to me,” he said. “I’ve never even met this woman and she says to me, ‘We should have a showmance.'”

Morgan said he was not familiar with the term and was appalled when she described it to him.

“You know, on ‘The Apprentice’ everyone has sex together,” he said she told him. “So you and I could do that and then we could sell it and make lots of money.”

At that point, he said he immediately shut down the conversation, which led to verbal abuse and bullying throughout the remainder of her time on the show.

“She said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you gay?'” Morgan said. “I went, ‘No, just because I don’t want to have sex with you on the show that doesn’t make me gay.”

After that encounter, Morgan said he was in for “four or five weeks” of “unrelenting, five barrels of abuse, tirades, homophobic stuff.”

Looking back on her tenure, Morgan said it appears she “accomplished nothing in her time in the White House other than disrupting everybody.”

Morgan said he believes she spent her time in the administration planning new ways to publicize and monetize her experience.

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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