Filed under: Capitalism, Education, Election 2020, Politics, Progressivism, Socialism, The United States | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Education, History
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student government recently approved a resolution that calls for the removal of a statue on campus of Abraham Lincoln. The resolution claims that the statue is “a racist remnant of white supremacy.”
Have you looked recently at the cost of a four year college education? I just did and I was shocked. College professors often express the claim that they should be getting the same amount in wages as corporate CEOs. After all, most CEOs don’t have doctoral degrees!
“In order to create an inclusive and safe environment for all students, campus fixtures with racist remnants should be reevaluated and then removed and/or replaced on inputs from BIPOC students”
Well, most corporate CEOs make lots of money for their shareholders, which usually makes shareholders feel kindly towards CEOs. College students are presumably mostly over 18 years of age. and they have learned absolutely noting about one of our most famous and revered presidents.
Why is he revered, and why is he famous? No, he never owned a single slave. He was Commander in Chief of the Civil War, which was won by the Union, defeating the slave-holding South. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Racist indeed! These 18 to 20 year old students don’t even know who he was. That speaks volumes about the state of American education.
That should send every parent to every school conference and every school board meeting and throw in a few letters to your State education secretary. By the time they reach college level, they should have some basic facts of history down. You can’t expect even the doctoral level professors to go back and fill in what the should have absorbed in their past 12 years of American education.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Coronavirus, Democrat Corruption, Election 2020, Health Care, History, Media Bias, National Security, Politics, Progressives, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: COVID-19, Elderly Victims, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City.
As I was saying, thank goodness that it’s only a few days till the election. Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York State, has just announced that “I’m holding Trump Responsible for Every’ Coronavirus Death in this Country.” He actually said that on ABC’s “The View”
Governor Andrew Cuomo, undoubtedly thinking that he was doing the right thing, sent 6,300 Covid-19 elderly patients to nursing homes, assuming that the older folks would be better cared for by people accustomed to caring for the elderly. Dreadful mistake. One of the highest nursing home death tolls in the nation.
Cuomo has blamed everyone else, but not himself. Now he has settled on President Trump, because the Democrats are hoping that blaming Trump for all the coronavirus deaths will win the election for them.
On Tuesday, Cuomo was asked about a report from the Associated Press that his team had added more than 1,700 deaths to the count of those who died in nursing homes, bringing the total to at least 4,813. “I don’t know the details, frankly,” the governor answered, turning to an aide. Sgt. Schultz reporting for duty!
I guess there are examples in history of those who have denied something or other until their deathbeds. Does it work? I have no idea, but it’s quite clear that the governor made a dreadful mistake. Is it better to admit it or just deny forever. Trying to blame President Trump, however, is really dirty, extremely dirty, politics.
As I pointed out earlier, back when we first learned about the virus and it’s potential pandemic, Dr. Deborah Birx, presidential advisor with Dr. Anthony Fauci early on, said that if we were very, very lucky and did everything right, we might get only around 200,000 deaths from the pandemic. We’re at 213,000 now.
Democrats are desperate to blame Trump for the deaths, will it work? Probably with the Hollywood crowd, who seem to find it useful to proclaim their hatred for the President. I am thoroughly sick of Hollywood ‘”celebrities” and it will probably be a long time before I ever see a Hollywood movie again. British movies are usually better anyway.
Donald Trump, whether you like him or not, has done a very good job with the virus. (Including trying out the disease for himself and his family). He sought out the most recommended advisers, did everything he could to fulfill the needs of the Governors, who expressed their gratitude for his help. Forced the Auto industry to make ventilators, the military set up temporary hospitals in tents and stadiums, he sent our hospital ships to New York and to the West Coast. Has done what he can to help other countries as well, and is sharing what we have learned with the rest of the world. So all of the deaths from the coronavirus, are his fault?
As I was saying, politics gets pretty nasty in the final days of an election.
Filed under: Big Tech, Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Conservatism, Coronavirus, Democrat Corruption, Economics, Election 2020, Freedom, Health Care, History, Media Bias, Politics, Progressivism, Socialism, The United States | Tags: Big Tech, Covid-19 Coronavirus, The Election
The days close to an election get a little wild. Everyone is panicking. at least slightly, and frightened that the opposition will possibly win, so it’s getting nasty out there. Congress has called Big Tech in before them to have a little discussion about their interference in the election which has gone far beyond what is allowed or permissible. Or if the laws don’t control what they have done, Congress may have to fix the laws, which is completely within their power. Twitter is, of course the biggest offender, but the others are not far behind.
Corporations used to understand their role, but Big Tech has been called “masters of the universe” in jest so often that they may have come to believe it, to assume that their “fact-checkers” have some validity, or that their interference is fine because all their employees agree with them anyway. Congress does not agree, and if they need to fix the laws, Congress will do just that. Corporations used to have a clear idea of their role, which was to cooperate and stay out of it.
Democrats biggest claim is that Donald Trump is somehow responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, responsible for all the deaths, and it is all clearly his fault. So There! Au contraire. Back when the Chinese virus first arrived and we first began to understand what we might be in for, Dr. Deborah Birx who was adviser to the president along with Dr. Anthony Fauci said that if we were very fortunate and very lucky, we might have only somewhere around 200,000 deaths over the course of the disease. We are at 231,000 today, so perhaps we have done pretty well, while regretting every loss.
Democrats are now preparing to impeach Amy Comey Barrett. They don’t know what for yet, but they’ll find something. Which shows not how much they dislike the immensely competent and capable new justice of the Supreme Court, but that they do not understand the purpose of the Supreme Court and view it as a partisan organization, which they must control along with everything else. Their drive for control of the economy is insatiable, so perhaps the Bidens are not the only ones prospering from their time in public office.
I’m beginning to think we should change the qualifications to run for public office which should be adjusted a little more, and require some greater understanding of American history and contemporary economics. Kamala Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, remarked that his wife was going to be the President of the United States, so apparently they don’t think Joe Biden is going to make it through a full term either.
Be sure to vote, only once each, please. And take it very seriously, for it is a very serious matter.
ADDENDUM: One would think that businesses would understand that probably half of their customers would belong to the opposite party, and wouldn’t approve of being lectured to or their expressing their party line.
Filed under: Capitalism, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economics, Election 2020, Environment, Global Warming, History, Junk Science, Media Bias, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: Christiana Figueres, Climate Change, Elizabeth Warren
RECENT EARTH CLIMATE HISTORY
600 – 200 B.C.: An Unnamed Cold Period
200 BC to about AD 600: The Roman Warming
600 to 900: The Dark Ages Cold Period
900 to 1300: Medieval Warming
1300 to 1850: The Little Ice Age (two stages)
MODERN CLIMATE HISTORY
1850 – 1940: Especially between 1920-1940: Warming
1940 to 1975: Cooling Trend
1976-1978: Sudden Warming Spurt
1979 to 1998: +1º
1998 to 2011: +1º
The Medieval Warming period led to the Renaissance which began approximately in 1300 and ended approximately in 1700. A bountiful time, wine grapes grew in England, food was plentiful and there was a flowering of learning and art. Think Michelangelo, Raphael, and Copernicus among others. What I’m getting at here, is the idea that if we are facing climate doom, the world is going to die in 10 or 12 years if we don’t save it by stopping “fracking,” stop using oil and gasoline, and eliminating plastic bags. That’s what you get for listening to “celebrities” instead of studying up on the science.
I was an English Major, which means that I learned how to read hard stuff, and read a lot. That does not mean that I’m always right, much as I like to think so. Christiana Figueres, the General Secretary of the IPCC, was quite sure that the object of “climate change” was as a tool to get rid of Capitalism. Leftists do not like capitalism, which seems a bit strange, but economics is not their strong point. Capitalists to them are business CEOs and owners, and the “Rich”. The Left is entitled to be in charge because they are morally superior, it would be helpful if we all understood that.
Conservatives have long sneered at the Left because they were the Southern slave owners in the Civil War, but the Left has ended that accusation by electing the first black president, who served for two terms, which puts them back in the morally superior category. Global Warming, plastic bags, ending fracking, and giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens adds to their sense of superiority.
America is a nation of immigrants, as you know, which leads them to believe that immigrants are special, and just because they can’t be bothered to enter the country the legal way, shouldn’t keep them from sharing in the bounty of America. So Leftists care about illegal immigrants, which means hating I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and making sure that illegal immigrants get stimulus money. It is that mindset that makes them believe that if little immigrant children were kept in cages, it was obviously done by conservatives, contrary to the actual actions of the Obama administration. Once you get the “entitled to be in charge because they are morally superior” theme firmly in mind, it makes understanding all the other stuff simple. Or at least it helps.
Elizabeth Warren ranted that President Trump was trying to kill everybody in the world because he would not correctly address climate change, or something like that. The very slight warming we have had has brought enormous blessings to the world. The slight increase in the amount of CO² in the atmosphere has been a bounty for mankind for it is a natural fertilizer for plants. More bountiful crops mean the hungry are well fed and there is less starvation in the world. Forests grow more as well, and there is more wood for fuel and for building homes.
In case there is any confusion, Elizabeth Warren is calling her climate program “The Blue New Deal”. Don’t want any confusion with the Green thing.
Do make time to visit Climate Depot and Dr. Roy Spencer and the others listed in the sidebar. There’s an enormous amount of hype out there, and the best defense are informed citizens. Solar energy and wind energy are nice, when they aren’t killing birds, but they cannot provide the energy needed by a modern society. Just doesn’t work.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Conservatism, Coronavirus, Democrat Corruption, Election 2020, Foreign Policy, National Security, Politics, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: Debate 2020, Donald Trump, Joe Biden
The reports are in, President Trump had a very good second debate. It was inevitable that the Biden history of profiting from government office would become not just well known, but a major subject of discussion.
I have never really understood the Left’s fury with Donald Trump, yes, he defeated Hillary, who was going to be their first woman president, and those firsts are important ways to secure the reputation of the left. Unfortunately a good percentage of the population found Hillary a compulsive liar, and unfit for the office, and she lost. But their fury with Trump never dissipated at all, but grew steadily. The insults grew steadily, and the accusations ever swelled. He was not just an orange bad man, but worse than Hitler, and they have been steadily trying to accuse him of personally killing every single person who has died from the Corona Virus, because he did nothing, and didn’t even care if people died. The basis for this is that he tried to keep people from panicking from fear of contagion.
Joe Biden was trying to stick him with that last night, which is absurd. Covid-19 was an unknown virus when it first attacked America a few miles north of my house, when a man flew in from Wuhan, China to visit a relative in a nursing home, and infected many of the patients and staff. As soon as that was known, President Trump halted all flights from China to a huge outcry from the Left. Racist! xenophobe, Asia hating, and so on. but it undoubtedly saved many lives. His actions were prompt, he brought on the best known experts in Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National institute of Infectious Diseases and Dr. Deborah Birx, sent hospital ships to New York and Los Angeles. Governors asked for ventilators, Trump worked with U.S. Auto companies to get them in production. Soon people carrying the virus were coming in to the East Coast from Europe, and Governor Cuomo made the mistake of urging the sick elderly to be cared for in nursing homes, which he assumed would have better staff and equipment to deal with sick elderly people, which resulted in huge numbers of deaths. Cuomo hasn’t admitted to this day that he made a stupid mistake, and continues trying to cover up.
The point is that we didn’t really know anything about the virus, how it spread and how to prevent more people from contagion. We are still learning. President Trump, his wife and son have all been infected and recovered. To attempt to blame Donald Trump for all the Corona virus deaths is just low and disgusting.
Donald Trump has long been a successful businessman and understands the problems that businesses face, and promptly set about improving their situation by removing unnecessary regulations, and making it easier for business to do business.
One of the most interesting exchanges that nobody else seemed to think important was when Joe Biden accused Trump of being friendly with Kim Jong Il, the ruler of North Korea, who had nuclear weapons and was a dangerous enemy, as if that was somehow out of the line. Trump blandly explained that it was more useful to be able to have conversations with him than to treat him as an enemy. Better to be talking than shooting nukes at each other, or killing young American men, but Joe didn’t seem to understand the idea. The growing number of Arab nations who have agreed to consular relationships with Israel was not mentioned either.
In the meantime, Douglas Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband was heard bragging that his wife was going to be President of the United States. Now that is scary.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Anti-Trust Law, Dominnce in Search, Hi=Tech Industry, Restraint of Competition
The Department of Justice has filed a major anti-trust lawsuit against Google. The company has been under investigation for almost a year with dozens of Justice Department lawyers working in two groups, each studying a separate line of inquiry. The areas being investigated were Google’s dominance in search, and the company’s control over the online advertising ecosystem. Google controls over roughly 90 percent of web searches worldwide, and many rivals have complained that Google exerts its dominance by making its search and browsing tools defaults on phones running its Android operating system.
The WSJ writes:
The Justice department will allege that Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. is maintaining its status as the gatekeeper to the internet through an unlawful web of exclusionary and interlocking business agreements that shut out competitors. The government will allege that Google uses billions of dollars collected from advertisements on its platform to pay mobile-phone manufacturers, carriers and browsers, like Apple Inc.’s Safari, to maintain Google as their present, default search engine.
In other words, Google appears on hundreds of millions of American devices with very little opportunity for any aspiring competitor to make inroads. The Justice officials also said the lawsuit will take aim at arrangements in which Google’s search application is preloaded, and cannot be deleted, on mobile phones running its popular Android operating system. The government will allege that Google unlawfully prevents competitors’ search applications from preloaded on phones under revenue-sharing arrangements.
The company has been under investigation for almost a year with dozens of Justice Dept. lawyers working in two groups, each overseeing a different line of inquiry. If new made devices all automatically have Google as their search function, making money gets a lot easier.
Their advertising function needs work. It is always suggested that the big tech companies are collecting so much information about us that they can tailor their offers to what they know about us. If so, they’re not doing a very good job with me. I am a reader. I’m seldom without a book, and if not, happy to read the back of the cereal box. Their ads are unrelated to me, and frequently have me despising Google for always offering me things in which I have zero interest to interrupt the column in which I did have quite a bit of interest. They have polite little notes asking why I deleted this ad, but they don’t leave me enough room to really explain, if I so desired. That turns people off, and leaves them more resistant to responding to any online ad.
Some states are already preparing their own antitrust cases against Google. We welcome ads and offerings, even when we don’t want the product, at least in general, but don’t be bullies. It was just this kind of lawsuit from the Justice Department that broke up the AT&T monopoly. We’ll see if this will persuade the hi tech industry that they need to play fair and mind their manners.
It’s reported that Facebook successfully suppressed the reach of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his father and their alleged deal with Burisma by half, compared to anti-Trump stories from other publications. Twitter’s efforts to censor the story actually doubled the attention it received.
I don’t know about you , but I don’t want my views and my political ideas to be formed by companies irresponsibly meddling in politics, and I deeply resent their efforts.
Filed under: Big Tech, Big Technology, Capitalism, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Election 2020, Free Markets, Free Speech, Politics, Progressivism, Regulation, Technology, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: American Freedom, Big Tech, Censoring, Twitter
Corporate leaders used to rise through the ranks, much like the military, through gradually getting promoted to higher responsibility, if you were worthy. The first mass produced personal computers didn’t appear until 1977, and I imagine it took quite a few years before they were common. Jack Dorsey sent the first message on Twitter on March 21, 2006, and it was 2010 when they unveiled “promoted Tweets,” ads that would appear in search results as a revenue source. So there’s not a long history of learning how to behave in the American corporate world. Heretofore corporations went to great lengths to stay out of politics, partly presumably, because it was assumed that their employees would have differing allegiances and party preferences.
As Josh Hammer wrote at American Greatness this week:
The increasing brazenness with which the various Big Tech behemoths distort their search algorithms to hide conservative viewpoints, undermine conservatives through “shadow banning” and weaponize the sanctimonious and self-serving “fact-checking” cottage industry to suppress conservative voices has long been clear to those of us who, to use the parlance of the day, are “very online.”That kind of common sense is no longer the case.
The American people are becoming aware of the Big Tech efforts to control conservative viewpoints, and they are not happy. The demands for the federal government to step in and break up these companies is growing increasingly common. Facebook and Twitter ganged up against “the New York Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton, and is today the nation’s oldest continually operating daily broadsheet in galling fashion.” They broke an important story about Hunter Biden’s dealings with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and his efforts to get Burisma people in contact with the “right” people in Washington DC through his connections with his father. The Post is one of the nation’s largest daily newspapers by circulation, and no one actually seems to be denying the Post’s reporting.
The Senate prepared to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but they hastily responded that they would be happy to be there without being subpoenaed. Our Constitution usually deals with what the government may or may not do, and only the 13th amendment deals with the private sector at all. There are quite a few of our representatives in Congress who have already spoken out on this matter, and they are well aware that they have the responsibility of dealing with threats to our liberty. Suppressing the views of one of America’s political parties in the run-up to an election isn’t going to work. If they were paying attention, they might have noticed that as a whole, America’s responsible corporate leaders were not out playing politics. There is a reason for that.
ADDENDUM: They also seem to have a major problem with their “fact=checking”. I don’t know how they have arranged it, but they might start with someone who is highly literate and widely read. The current office holders don’t know the difference between a “trusted source” and someone of the correct (in their minds) political persuasion. In short, the fact-checking is embarrassing.
I apparently misspoke. They still may be subpoenaed. That remains to be seen. It’s clear that there is a lot of anger out there at Big Tech, and they might do well to be very cooperative. Apparently many of their employees really hate Trump, so they’re stuck between the proverbial rock and…Did you ever hear, ever? of employees demanding that management conform to their political preferences? We have a lot of ignorance of history, of the Constitution, and ordinary good manners there.
Filed under: Capitalism, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economics, Economy, Election 2020, Politics, Taxes | Tags: Election 2020, Federal Government, Reminder
…if so, you need to post a small sign next to wherever you will fill out your ballot. Ideally, nicely framed or embroidered to make it special. It should contain these words.
“The Federal Government Has No Money of It’s Own“
Whoever is promising you new beneficent goodies is attempting to make you think that your beloved federal government will give you something nice if you just elect them to office. The cost of what they promise will come out of your pocketbook because the federal government has no money of its own. Remember the stimulus Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump are arguing about? They are not raising it out of their own well endowed funds, they will raise your taxes to pay it back.
Every promise will be paid for by the taxpayers. Every bright idea. The only thing that makes your taxes go down is when regulations are eliminated, departments are eliminated, tasks are eliminated to make the government cost less to operate. Donald Trump is dumping regulations as fast as he can. As a successful businessman he is deeply aware of the problem of over-regulation, and once a regulation is on the books, they are hard to get rid of.
Once in office, members start thinking of themselves as “the ruling class”. At first they may feel grateful to you for allowing them to enter the august halls, to assume important elected office, but as time goes on they start feeling entitled, and so very important, and reporting back to you becomes a task, which they promptly push off onto subordinates, and the reports become less frequent as current affairs become more of interest.
America now divides itself ever more sharply into two classes, the smaller of which holds the commanding heights of government, from which it disposes in ever greater detail of America’s economic energies, from which it ordains new ways of living as if it had the right to do so, and from which it asserts that that right is based on the majority class’ stupidity, racism, and violent tendencies. Here I am quoting from Angelo M. Codevilla’s lovely book “The Ruling Class: How they Corrupt America and What We Can Do About It.” It was published in 2010, with an introduction by Rush Limbaugh and is available as an inexpensive paperback at Amazon.
Filed under: Conservatism, Democrat Corruption, Election 2020, History, Law, Politics, Progressivism, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Appellate Court, Notre Dame Law School, Supreme Court
Another strange day as we move ever closer to the election. Amy Coney Barrett appeared before the Judicial Committee, beginning the first step towards confirmation. So naturally a bunch of women turned up outside in “Handmaiden” costumes in reference to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel about women forced to be reproductive factories. Unpleasant book, dumb idea, don’t bother reading it.
If you are attracted to the idea, Amazon has “handmaiden” costumes for sale. Possibly in preparation for demonstrations? Halloween is coming up. As a demonstration against a candidate for the Supreme Court, it is not only beyond ignorant, but shows no understanding whatsoever of what a judge actually does, nor what the Supreme Court does. We do need to get our schools teaching a little history and civics. Which means that if you have kids in public school, you need to pay close attention to what they are learning. There are a lot of examples out there of kids being instructed on who to support in the upcoming election, which is not a teacher’s job.
It would be highly improper for a prospective judge to indicate in any way their feelings about issues that might come before the court. Judges don’t rule on what they like and don’t like. They consider all the implications of the precise case before them and how it relates to the Constitution of the United States of America.
There were, of course, questions about Barrett’s religious faith. She is a practicing Catholic, Some find that worrying, The first Amendment states firmly: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. “
I copied the whole thing because we seem to be deep into First Amendment territory right now, especially the “peaceably to assemble” bit. That’s where all the descriptions in the press came from. Peaceful protest.
Amy Coney Barrett is a splendid nomination, and will be an excellent addition to the Court.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economics, Election 2020, Foreign Polidy, Freedom, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: Donald Trump, Joe Biden
This is certainly the strangest election of my lifetime. For the last four years the politics have been vicious. The Democrats expected to win the last election with Hillary Clinton. They had counted on winning with the first woman president, and they had no idea how unpopular Hillary was. They carefully planted “evidence” of some kind of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians, that they were sure would sink his candidacy. Didn’t work. Trump won. Perhaps there is some case in the past of the losing party behaving so badly, but I’m unaware of it, and I thought I had a fairly good grasp of history.
Think back over the last four years. Before “Black Lives Matter” and before the riots and statue toppling. Donald Trump was attacked viciously from day one. He has been prominent for years, as a TV personality, as a builder, and simply as a personality in New York. Democrats reacted with fury. I’ve lived under quite a few presidents (don’t ask) and political partisans may not like the president of the opposing party, but I have never, never seen such viciousness.
Donald Trump is not one to suffer quietly under attack, nor to wait quietly for someone else to defend him. He responds. And he has found Twitter an easy way to respond. Some people object. UN-PRESIDENTIAL!! Presidents should be former generals, or sons of presidents, or a prominent governor, or, or. Just not. He has done a remarkable lot for the American people. And now Nancy Pelosi is trying desperately to find a way to declare the president so unfit from his bout with the Covid-19 virus that he is somehow incapable of performing the duties of the presidency adequately.
So what about Joe Biden? We know he was Barack Obama’s vice president, but we, as usual, don’t know much about vice presidents do. They own the record of the president they serve. So what’s the record of the Obama administration? Read it and weep.
Look at those carefully. Cost of living way up, federal debt way up, unemployment way up, median family income way down. That’s not partisan politics, but just what their policies produced.
Democrat efforts to blame Trump for all the deaths from Covid -19 were a complete failure. His reaction to the news from Washington State of the deaths of residents and staff in the nursing home visited by someone from Wuhan, China was prompt and decisive. He banned all flights from China to vast outcry from the Democrats who loudly accused the president of racism, attacks on Asian people, because they were a different color, that sort of thing. Democrats belive in “Global Warming” and the end of the Earth in the near future, probably because they have never bothered to study up on the science, and they fall for anything that seems as if it might be useful.
Because petroleum scientists have discovered a better way to find natural gas and extract it, we are no longer dependent on oil and gas from the Middle East, and we have plentiful supplies. Gas prices are the lowest in years, hovering mostly only slightly over $2 for a gallon of regular. The highest gas prices are found in California. Biden wants to ban Fracking, the very technology that has made us energy independent. The cost of energy percolates through everything we buy or do.
The “Green New Deal” advocated by AOC, would be a disaster for the economy, and accomplish nothing whatsoever for the climate. Joe Biden was eager to sign on, which is frighteing. Carbon Dioxide is a natural fertilizer for plants, and makes crops grow better. It is not the control knob for the climate, which has been changing for centuries and probably will continue to do so. We have had ice ages and warm periods, and the warm years are nicer. The climate seems to be controlled by the action of the sun. If you study up, you won’t fall for the climate catastrophists.
Donald Trump is doing a remarkably good job. He understands what he is doing, and how his policies will work to improve the lives of Americans. And they are working.
Filed under: Capitalism, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2020, Health Care, History, Media Bias, Politics, Science/Technology, The United States | Tags: COVID-19, Fact Checking, Internet Changes.
The internet is changing. Of course it is always changing, but the way in which it is changing is something new. The initial idea was that it would be an opportunity for what were formerly magazines available in bookstores or by subscription to have a second outlet, and far more would be available for free. It was assumed that the ability to reach so many people online would create advertising that could reach so many people that it would pay for everything.
Different people use the internet differently. I’m a reader, and am usually looking for information rather than entertainment. Others want to share their lives with their friends and the internet replaces a lot of phone calls and letters with the ability to include pictures and have lots of sharing. Some use it entirely for work, and get their entertainment from television or online movies. I’m looking for world and national news, politics, general information. I do not want to hear from Hollywood “celebrities” at all. If they make a good movie, I might go to a theater, but their abilities lean toward acting, not useful thought. “Celebrities” have name recognition and are “click-bait” for websites. So would-be celebrities no longer have to pay press agents, they only need to say something outrageous, and their utterances make “news.” I don’t want an internet that is all about people insulting each other.
Google has taken over control of advertising, and where ads can be placed on the page and where they can appear. Along with many others, I’m annoyed by ads that block or limit the piece I am trying to read. There are others who don’t like ads, so an industry has sprung up to make ads less frequent or even to make them disappear (for a fee). So, surprisingly there are ads for services that remove all ads, which has resulted in websites demanding that you block your ad removal service or they won’t let you read the piece you are reading. Google lets you block ads but wants to know why you are blocking them, I presume to try to discover your reasoning and figure out how to get around it.
Ads are not producing the revenue needed to pay for the staff of writers that the various websites have employed. You have undoubtedly noticed that the websites are asking you to subscribe to get the important pieces, which they will label to show that you can only read them if you have subscribed. The question now is if you will subscribe so you can read everything, and if the number of people who will subscribe is enough to pay the salaries and benefits of all the writers the website wants to employ, and helps to maintain the cost of having a website. Everybody’s expectations were perhaps a little higher then was justified.
How many websites do you visit each day, how many of those want you to subscribe? I visit about 20 websites each day. I could whittle that down a bit, but if you multiply the monthly cost of all for 12 months, and add it all together, it’s a fairly significant sum. Not going to happen. How will the internet develop to cope with all this? I spent a lot of years working in advertising, and some significant shifts from Google would improve things.
Tried tonight to watch a bit of the vice-presidential candidates’ debate. Different moderator, different tactics, but impossible to limit candidates to the assigned time. Kamala Harris has come equipped with many attack modes, most of them simply political attacks that are completely untrue. Many might believe your attack that President Trump did not respond correctly to the Covid -19 virus, but it’s just false.
The virus was unknown when it hit the nursing home in the next suburb to the north of my house, but as soon as it became known that a visitor who was returning from Wuhan, China had infected many of the residents, President Trump slammed a halt to all traffic from China. In January, which provoked screaming outrage from Democrats who accused him of racism and xenophobia. He promptly began a deliberate and thorough response to the needs of each state. We had to learn about the virus before we could do the right thing.
To try to blame President Trump for all the corona-virus deaths to date (and in the future) is absurd. Kamala Harris is attempting to use in the debate tonight all the party-line accusations the Democrats have come up with so far, most of them unfair or untrue. Many actions taken with care turned out to be unneeded (like the tent hospitals the military set up) that were not used at all. Ms. Harris is not projecting vast competency.
Joe Biden has spent 36 years in Congress as a likeable senator, without significant accomplishment, and 8 years as Barack Obama’s vice president. He is 77 years old, and appears to be afflicted by “senior moments” or some oncoming dementia which many find troubling for a future president. Many worry that Kamala Harris could become president for she doesn’t seem qualified. Biden’s family seems to have been significantly enriched by vice-presidential influence. In a political season, the charges will be many, and not all of them are true, as I’m sure you have noticed, and internet fact-checks aren’t significantly accurate.
Donald Trump has been attacked with the most vicious slanders that the Democrats can find. I can’t remember a campaign ever that has been so angry and so unfair. Trump is not one to suffer silently, and Twitter has been his major outlet. He slams right back. Many find his “tweets” “unpresidential”, which depends on your ideas of the proper words of a president. I’ve lived through a significant number of Presidents, but this campaign really is different. We are faced with a pandemic from Wuhan, China that has killed thousands across the world. We have had to learn about it slowly, step by step. Most of the rest of the world has suffered too. Stop and think about the toilet paper crisis.
The U.S. has had 7,640,890 confirmed cases. 214,947 deaths, and 4,958,850 Americans have recovered. Joe Biden tried to claim there were 200 million deaths, so you see how easy it is to get tangled up in the numbers. Two hundred thousand is still too many. Globally there have been 36,063,675 confirmed cases and 1,054.153 deaths while around 25 million have recovered.
Democrats are urging people to avoid the vaccines that may be available before the end of the year, because” Trump is involved”. That’s going too far. People are apt to fear vaccines, but when you understand the testing involved, our official guidelines are pretty trustworthy. There are protocols in the United States for vaccines to make sure that none are released before they have been thoroughly tested and are remarkably safe.
When you know your history, of pandemics and new medicines and new treatments, the United States ranks remarkably highly for such a big country. We have a really fine medical sector, and they do a pretty good job. Lots of diseases still out there, but they are working hard to conquer them. News today about planets that seem to be habitable, and perhaps even more habitable than this one. And now we have a Space Force, and what is next, and where will we go?
Filed under: Election 2020, Politics | Tags: Cato, Governor Rankings, Jay Inslee
“The Cato Institute has published their annual report on the nation’s governors. They say “Governors play a key role in state fiscal policy. They propose budgets, recommend tax changes, and sign or veto tax and spending bills. When the economy is growing, governors can use rising revenues to expand programs or they can return extra revenues to the public through tax cuts. When the economy is stagnant and budget deficits appear, governors can respond by raising taxes or trimming spending. “
“The report rates governors on their fiscal policies from a limited government perspective. Governors receiving an A are those who have cut taxes and spending the most, whereas governors receiving an F have raised taxes and spending the most. “
There were only four governors who received an A. New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu (R) received the highest score at 75. He Was followed by Iowa’s Kim Reynolds (R) with a score of 71, then Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts (R) 70. then Wyoming’s Mark Gordon (R) 66, followed by Arkansas’ Asa Hutchinson (R) with a score of 64.
If you don’t find your governor on this list, you may like to see the whole list from Cato, and find the score for your own state. You probably have a good idea about how your own governor will rate, or you just may want to confirm your own opinion.
There are only 4 A’s, 9 B’s, 13 C’s, 14 D’s, and 7 F’s. Our own Washington State Governor Jay Inslee (D) ranked dead last with a score of 18, and a resounding F. All the governors who received A’s were Republicans, all the governors who received F’s were Democrats. The Cato Institute is firmly Libertarian.
You can find the whole article here, and it’s really quite interesting and possibly useful, if you are getting sick of your state. There have been numerous articles on people leaving their state for a new and different one, and a little search should turn one up. Cato has used the same grading method since 2008. Republican and Democrat governors have had average scores around the middle of the range. When the economy is rowing and state coffers filling up, Democrats tend to increase spending, while Republicans tend to increase spending and cut taxes. Democrat governors often pursue tax increases to balance their budgets., while Republicans put more focus on spending restraint. There are some big budget gaps out there and we’ll see what happens.
American Elephants 