Filed under: Domestic Policy, Environment, Humor, News, YouTube | Tags: Doesn't Take Much Snow, Snow in Seattle, The City of Seven Hills
Here in the Seattle area, we are recovering from a winter snowfall. It made the national news in USA today. Had a snarky message from an old friend in St. Louis, who had just talked to another friend from home in Idaho who said they had about four feet of snow on the level. Seattle made the national news on the basis of 2 to 3 inches! Fact! Seattle is a city famously built on seven hills. They plowed down some, and nobody counts anyway, but the problem is that there are slopes in every direction, and even small amounts immediately turn to ice. Lots of car crashes in every direction.
However, just across the mountains to the east the same winter storm produced a blizzard west of the Tri-Cities, and 1,600 dairy cows died in the blizzard. Hit the dairy farmers hard. They were not expecting such conditions. They prepared for the snow, but it just wasn’t enough. Cows normally do fine out-of-doors. Snoqualmie Pass was closed all day by avalanche and snow danger.
Filed under: Crime, Domestic Policy, Economics, Health Care, News, News of the Weird, Pop Culture | Tags: Alex Berenson, From His New Book, Hillsdale College's Imprimus
From the new issue of Imprimus from Hillsdale College:
Alex Berenson is the author of Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence
The following is adapted from a speech delivered January 15, 2019 at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington D.C.
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Seventy miles northwest of New York City is a hospital that looks like a prison, its drab brick buildings wrapped in layers of fencing and barbed wire. This grim facility is called the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Institute. It’s one of three places the state of New York sends the criminally mentally ill—defendants judged not guilty by reason of insanity.
Until recently, my wife Jackie—Dr. Jacqueline Berenson—was a senior psychiatrist there. Many of Mid-Hudson’s 300 patients are killers and arsonists. At least one is a cannibal. Most have been diagnosed with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia that provoked them to violence against family members or strangers.
A couple of years ago, Jackie was telling me about a patient. In passing, she said something like, Of course he’d been smoking pot his whole life.
Of course? I said.
Yes, they all smoke.
So marijuana causes schizophrenia?
I was surprised, to say the least. I tended to be a libertarian on drugs. Years before, I’d covered the pharmaceutical industry for The New York Times. I was aware of the claims about marijuana as medicine, and I’d watched the slow spread of legalized cannabis without much interest.
Jackie would have been within her rights to say, I know what I’m talking about, unlike you. Instead she offered something neutral like, I think that’s what the big studies say. You should read them.
So I did. The big studies, the little ones, and all the rest. I read everything I could find. I talked to every psychiatrist and brain scientist who would talk to me. And I soon realized that in all my years as a journalist I had never seen a story where the gap between insider and outsider knowledge was so great, or the stakes so high.
I began to wonder why—with the stocks of cannabis companies soaring and politicians promoting legalization as a low-risk way to raise tax revenue and reduce crime—I had never heard the truth about marijuana, mental illness, and violence.
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You might want to read this one. The whole issue is here, and you can subscribe to Imprimis at the end. I have enjoyed my subscription. Only comes once a month, and it’s completely free.
Filed under: Art, Entertainment, Heartwarming, Music | Tags: Guitarist Richard Smith, Scott Joplin, The Entertainer
July 2018, Nashville. A Chet Atkins Convention: Richard Smith plays Scott Joplin, with Tommy Emmanuel in attendance.
Filed under: Capitalism, Cool Site of the Day, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Free Speech, Freedom, Heartwarming, Liberalism, Media Bias, Politics, Pop Culture, Progressives, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: Advertising Lessons, The Kids from Covington, The Stupidity of Gillette
This has been a day of extraordinarily bad behavior by the Left, provoked, as Joy Behar admitted, by Catholic kids wearing MAGA hats because the women on The View hate Trump and want him gone. A wee bit of Honesty.
It’s hard to remember that only a couple of days ago, the controversy was all about Gillette Razors and their attack on men and “toxic masculinity.” Turned out that the art director was a radical feminist well known for her hatred of men. The puzzle was why on earth a famous razor company would approve such a commercial, but it seems that many businesses in our current climate have never learned the lessons of time and experience and do not have the sense to recognize that a wise business dealing with the American people does not choose to do politics instead of business, nor chooses to alienate half the country and all of their customers.
A competitor recognized the opportunity presented. And good for Barbasol.
And even a watch company saw a chance to speak out at Gillette idiocy!
Companies invest a lot of money in their advertising, hoping to please potential customers. Consider this a lesson in how it is done.
Filed under: Art, Entertainment, Music | Tags: David Hobson, The Holy City
This is an old one, but I love it. Enjoy.
Filed under: Blogging, Energy, News of the Weird, Technology, Television | Tags: Aaargh! Internet Connection!, Cone-Fall, Windstorm
Sorry about the light blogging. We had a windstorm, The street sweeper came by yesterday, and we were delighted with the pristine streets. Today they are covered with leaves, needles, branches, cones, everybody’s grass clippings, and anything else that was loose and movable by a brisk wind. You have to feel a little sorry for the street sweeper – he must feel really good about making a neighborhood all shining and clean, and then this!
The windstorm took out our internet provider for hours, and by the time we got our connection back, it was too late to be up even for night owls. Looks like I’ll have to sweep up a bushel or so of douglas fir cones. Nothing new for the Pacific Northwest.
Oh hell, the internet connection just went out again.