Archive for October, 2021
10th October 2021
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A new congressional report on the U.S. Navy “found that a staggering 94% of sailors interviewed believe that the surface Navy suffers from a crisis of leadership and culture.”
Increased administrative burdens (750 annual reports per ship, most of them useless) and training not related to combat have eaten into the time American sailors are able to devote to honing mission-critical skills.
“The noncombat curricula consume Navy resources, clog inboxes, create administrative quagmires, and monopolize precious training time,” the report warns. The report highlights America’s glaring unpreparedness at a time when America’s primary strategic competitor, China, is beefing up its navy, threatening U.S. allies and interests around the world.
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10th October 2021
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Able to leap tall metaphors with a single bound….
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Microbially Produced Fibers: Stronger Than Steel, Tougher Than Kevlar
10th October 2021
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The researchers also have shown that transplanting dysbiotic gut microbiota from a hypertensive animal into a normotensive (having a healthy blood pressure) one results in the recipient developing high blood pressure.
“This result told us that gut dysbiosis is not just a consequence of hypertension, but is actually involved in causing it,” Durgan said. “This ground work led to the current study in which we proposed to answer two questions. First, can we manipulate the dysbiotic microbiota to either prevent or relieve hypertension? Second, how are the gut microbes influencing the animal’s blood pressure?”
The sad fact is that most people would rather be fat than hungry.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Fasting Lowers Blood Pressure by Reshaping the Gut Microbiota
10th October 2021
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Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a troubling exposé on the crushing debt burdens that students accumulate while pursuing master’s degrees at elite universities in fields like drama and film, where the job prospects are limited and the chances of making enough to repay their debt are slim. Because it focused on MFA programs at Ivy League schools—one subject accumulated around $300,000 in loans pursuing screenwriting—the article rocketed around the creative class on Twitter. But it also pointed to a more fundamental, troubling development in the world of higher education: For colleges and universities, master’s degrees have essentially become an enormous moneymaking scheme, wherein the line between for-profit and nonprofit education has been utterly blurred. There are, of course, good programs as well as bad ones, but when you scope out, there is clearly a systemic problem.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Master’s Degrees Are the Second Biggest Scam in Higher Education
10th October 2021
Tom Veal does a deep dive.
Part I of this series looked at the original, pejorative meaning of the term “meritocracy” and the criticism directed at it by the term’s coiner, the English Baron Young of Dartington. What he meant by “meritocracy” might have been better labeled “sapientocracy”, rule by individuals of high natural intelligence. Part II examined the more recent, broader attack on a somewhat different notion of “meritocracy”. Progressive anti-meritocrats reject merit itself. It is unfair, they contend, to reward people for being “better on the merits” than others, because those merits ultimately derive from external circumstances, most notably the genes, upbringing and education passed on by successful fathers and mothers to their offspring. Worse yet, when preference is given to merit, competition ensues, blighting the lives of the competitors.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Meritocracy and Its Cultured Despisers (Part III)
10th October 2021
Merrick Garland’s Problems With His Son-In Law Just Got Worse
DHS Cancels More Border Wall Contracts as Crossings Surge
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10th October 2021
Unvaxxed Allen West Has COVID, Pneumonia, and Low Oxygen (Daily Beast) And they’re happy about that.
Johnson: Hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients ‘doesn’t mean there’s some massive crisis’ (NPR) Overwhelmed!
Brits May Be Forced To Take COVID Tests On Camera To Prove To “Health Advisers” They’re Not Lying
Small Businesses Navigate Ever-Changing COVID-19 Reality
871 Firefighters File Intent To Sue Over LA’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate
CDC Head Says She “Can’t Predict” When COVID Will End; Blames Unvaccinated
Sickout? Southwest Airlines Cancels 1,000 More Flights As Disruptions Increase
Military Struggles With Varying Vaccination Rates as Deadlines Loom
COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Plummet In Southern US, Rise In Northern States
Bill Maher: ’10 Years Ago … the Left Did Not Have a Crazy Section’ Now it’s nothing but.
Watch: Aussie Police Interrogate Citizen On His Doorstep Over 6-Month Old Anti-Lockdown Facebook Posts
Staggering Number Of US Troops Remain Unvaccinated As Deadlines Approach
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10th October 2021
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10th October 2021
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10th October 2021
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10th October 2021
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10th October 2021
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Late last month, several Orthodox Jewish residents of a New Jersey apartment building—all elderly, some handicapped—filed a federal lawsuit because their co-op board would not let doormen press the elevator button for them on the Jewish Sabbath.
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Yet though the solutions are easy, some are unwilling to make space for religious practice. In the present case, Kurlansky v. 1530 Owners Corp., the plaintiffs have alleged building policies and comments from co-op board members that, if proven true, can only be described as discriminatory. Some of the plaintiffs have alleged hearing co-op board members say that they did not want “too many of those types of Jews” in the building. The building—referred to as the Colony—provides, according to its website, a wide range of amenities, including concierge and delivery service. Yet service doormen are, allegedly, expressly prohibited from pressing elevator buttons for Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath.
The totalitarian impulse arises naturally.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Kept From Keeping the Sabbath
10th October 2021
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“Distrust of government isn’t baseless cynicism. It’s realism.” – Ben Shapiro
We have seen the truth of this aphorism made clear many times over the past year. Lawlessness on the part of the national government is virtually institutionalized. The latest example occurred earlier this week as the Justice Department declared parents protesting the institution of Critical Racism Race Theory being taught to their children as “domestic terrorists.” It is a clear attempt to criminalize political dissent, a process that began with the treatment of the January 6 protestors.
But in the larger sense, it does not matter whether those in government are Republicans or Democrats, your friends or your foes, or whether we are talking about government on the federal, state, or local level. You should never trust your government. Even (or perhaps especially) when you agree with their actions, never blindly accept them. Always check what they are doing and verify that they are doing what they said they would do – and that it is actually what should be done. Certainly that is what I do on the local level, where I am politically active and several local politicians are friends. They may be friends, but because they are politicians, I still don’t trust them.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: Distrust of Government
10th October 2021
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Five years ago, after Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, I set out in search of the origins of the word “xenophobia.” Its birthplace seemed obvious. In ancient Greece, it was said, a wise man combined “xénos” — which connoted both stranger and guest — with “phobos,” their word for fear. Since xenophobia was an eternal and ubiquitous human problem, it made sense that its origins lay near the start of Western civilization, when some Aristotle-like figure opened his eyes and spotted it before him.
All that, I discovered, was nonsense. The ancient Greeks — or the written record we have of them — never employed this term. Instead, in a historical moment with similarities to our own, the word emerged alongside troubles fostered by rapid globalization. And lingering by the starting blocks, off to the side, stood Jean Martin de Saintours.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Invention of “Xenophobia”
10th October 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
10th October 2021
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Following a Twitter outcry, a scientist was stopped from giving a lecture at MIT for reasons that had nothing to do with the lecture itself.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Why the Latest Campus Cancellation is Different
10th October 2021
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When President Joe Biden announced sweeping new vaccine mandates for 100 million Americans, he stated that these measures were necessary to “protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers.” But isn’t the vaccine itself supposed to be what protects the vaccinated? Not well enough, apparently. So whose interests are served by mandating a leaky vaccine that prevents neither infection nor transmission of a disease that is chiefly dangerous to people over 75 or with serious preexisting medical conditions?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Plague of the Poor
10th October 2021
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In other words, we’re all screwed.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Happiness in Early Adulthood May Protect Against Dementia
10th October 2021
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For years, advocates of ending American support for the government of Afghanistan pontificated that withdrawal would have no adverse consequences: That fractious country had no geopolitical significance. If the Taliban took it over, that would mean not much more than a jihadi conquest of Pluto.
In one sense, they were right. It has been a mere 40 days since Joe Biden ordered our soldiers to scuttle away like frightened rabbits, leaving billions of dollars of weaponry behind. Thousands of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, along with tens of thousands of Afghans who aided our armed forces, are trapped inside the Taliban’s domain. And already attention has drifted elsewhere. As I type this post, the “Latest Headlines” page on the Wall Street Journal’s web site lists 50 stories. Not one is about Afghanistan.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Defeat’s Darkening Shadow
10th October 2021
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
One of the strangest phenomena of our time is the whitewashing of the Chinese Communist Party by American liberals. Fifty years ago, everyone knew that the CCP was vicious, cruel and evil. But over the years, economic self-interest–the desire to take advantage of what is at best low-wage labor, and at worst slave labor–has triumphed over moral judgment. With hindsight, maybe Richard Nixon’s famous opening up of China and Bill Clinton’s admission of China into the World Trade Organization were mistakes. Donald Trump briefly tried to rationalize our relationship with the Evil Empire of the 21st Century, but that was too much for the establishment to take.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Chinese Communists Are Evil
10th October 2021
Politico.
To anyone who’s spent time in Democratic politics in the past decade, a certain type of young person will immediately be familiar: bright-eyed, old enough to drive a car but not old enough to rent one without insurance fees, maybe taking a gap year before starting college or else filling a period of post-graduation, pre-employment idleness.
They probably majored, or are majoring, in political science or public policy or whatever the equivalent area of study offered by their school is. Raised on a steady diet of West Wing optimism cut with a healthy dose of Veep pessimism, they’ve likely spent a summer or two sweating it out in Washington, D.C., cranking out esoteric policy memos for a junior member’s assistant deputy legislative director, or else doing research for a grizzled senior fellow at an upper-Massachusetts Avenue think tank. They might have a faded campaign button from some bygone presidential race dangling from their Fjällräven backpack — maybe for Bernie, or more likely for Pete.
Or Grievance Studies. They’re very into Grievance Studies.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on The Democrats’ Privileged College-Kid Problem
9th October 2021
“‘o traverse the world men must have maps of the world. Their persistent difficulty is to secure maps on which their own need, or someone else’s need, has not sketched in the coast of Bohemia.’
— Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Quotation of the Day
9th October 2021
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9th October 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
9th October 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
9th October 2021
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9th October 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
9th October 2021
Iceland stops using Moderna Covid-19 vaccine
Florida State Board Sanctions Eight School Districts For Defying Ban On Mask Mandates
One US State Already Has A De Facto ‘Vaccine Passport’ Requirement Just To Enter
Aussie Freedom Blogger Arrested At Home For Alleged ‘Breach Of Public Health Act’
Real-world data show that filters clean Covid-causing virus from air
“So Deeply, Deeply Wrong” – Lithuanian Without Vaccine Pass Describes Life Under Medical Tyranny
Survey Finds COVID Mandates Hurting Small Businesses
Southwest Pilots Union Sues To Block Airline’s Vaccination Mandate
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
9th October 2021
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“The question out there for parents and educators is why should our kids spend any time doing handwriting,” says cognitive scientist Brenda Rapp from Johns Hopkins University. “Obviously, you’re going to be a better hand-writer if you practice it. But since people are handwriting less, then maybe who cares?”
“The real question is: Are there other benefits to handwriting that have to do with reading and spelling and understanding? We find there most definitely are.”
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Handwriting Is Better Than Typing When Learning a New Language, Study Finds
9th October 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Vintage Skynet: AT&T’s Abandoned “Long Lines” Microwave Tower Network
9th October 2021
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Harnessing the ability of natural killer cells within our own immune system, researchers at Canada’s McMaster University have developed a new form of cancer immunotherapy.
The team engineered natural killer cells to not only attack cancerous cells — including in solid tumors, a problem for some other kinds of immunotherapy — that also to distinguish between those malignant cells and healthy cells that only look like them.
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9th October 2021
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Without lithium, the all-electric vehicles of today wouldn’t be feasible, and with an increasing demand for EVs expected to exhaust reserves on land by 2080, this might become inevitable. But there is another way to extract the vital element, or rather another place.
The oceans contain roughly 5,000 times more lithium than land, but at unconscionably small concentrations of roughly 0.2 parts per million (ppm). And a team of researchers has developed a new system capable of extracting concentrated lithium from seawater, according to a recent study published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on It’s Official. We Can Now Harvest Usable Lithium From Seawater
9th October 2021
Washington Free Beacon.
According to a Washington Free Beacon analysis, 2022 is shaping up to be the year of the bald weirdo. Of the 14 Senate Democrats seeking reelection, two are completely hairless on top. Sens. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) and Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) are both running in swing states, where they must win if Democrats are to have any shot at holding their slim majority in the Senate.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Analysis: Bald Weirdos to Play Outsized Role in 2022 Election
9th October 2021
Steve Sailer.
It turns out GPT-3 disproportionately associates Muslims with violence,
And as we all know, that couldn’t possibly be true because it’s a stereotype.
It seems that Artificial Intelligence software isn’t subject to Wokeness.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Can Islamophobic Robots be Forced to Attest That Islam Is a Religion of Peace?
8th October 2021
Joel Kotkin.
Driven partly by fear of infection, and by the liberating rise of remote work, Americans have been increasingly freed from locational constraints. Work continues apace in suburbs and particularly in sprawling exurbs that surround core cities, while the largest downtowns (central business districts, or CBDs) increasingly resemble ghost towns.
People who aren’t forced to work downtown will avoid doing so if possible. When given the choice of ‘urban density’ or space in the suburbs, the suburbs win every time.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Great Office Refusal
8th October 2021
Steven Hayward at Power Line.
Which brings us to the present moment, and the crusade being waged against my old graduate school classmate John Eastman. In giving legal advice to President Trump and Vice President Pence in the aftermath of the election, he can’t be charged with any plausible crime, so the mob is attempting an implausible one: that he was conspiring to overthrow our Constitution—essentially a coup. “A Trump lawyer wrote an instruction manual for a coup,” reads the breathless Washington Post headline, to give just one of the many many hyperbolic headlines. Beyond this, there is a crusade to have Eastman “investigated” by the California State Bar, which is clever lawyering, since the lawyers making the charge know there is no chance the California Bar would move to suspend or disbar Eastman (unless they completely cave to the mob, which I suppose is not impossible), but the general public doesn’t know this, so it is effective innuendo.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The Terrors of “Justice,” In Re: J. Eastman
8th October 2021
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So, it turns out that Karina Ruiz, the Latina dreamer who filmed herself accosting senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Nevada) aboard an airplane about her stance on immigration reform, is an immigrant rights leader, as per a Telemundo News report about nationwide protests calling for an immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
In previous reports over the Spanish-speaking press, Ruiz had insisted that it was a surprise encounter and that she took advantage of the moment to “let her voice be heard”. Quite the happenstance considering her prominence as a renowned immigration activist.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on ‘Innocent’ Hispanic Media Darling Actually a Full-Blown Activist
8th October 2021
White House Fakery Defended by Fact Checkers
LA Times Absurdly Skips Reporting on Hunter Biden’s Hollywood Art Show
Let’s Go, Brandon!
Hunter Biden Sells 5 Art Reproductions for $75K Each The phrase ‘thinly disguised money laundering’ leaps immediately to mind.
Biden Posts Worst Jobs Report Since 2020 Well, when you fire people because they won’t get vaccinated, this ought to come as no surprise.
Biden’s Taxes Hit Americans at the Top and Bottom
Biden Hits Record Low Approval Rating On Economy, Foreign Policy, Pronouncing Words, Standing Upright, Continence, Inflation, Math, The Alphabet, Remembering All The Animal Sounds, Respecting Personal Space (Ran Out Of Room, See Article For More) Babylon Bee.
Cartel Violence Spills Into US as Border Patrol Treats Gunshot Victims
White House Fakery Defended By ‘Fact-Checkers’
Biden Refuses to Take Reporters’ Questions After Jobs Briefing Apparently he has no answers.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
8th October 2021
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8th October 2021
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8th October 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
8th October 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
8th October 2021
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A new report out Friday finds that the number of concealed carry gun permits in the country rose 10.5% in the last year, growing to more than 21 million people.
Add to that the entire population of Texas, who now don’t need a permit for open carry. (Colt Peacemaker, here I come….)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Report: Concealed Gun Permits Grow 10.5 Percent, Past 21.5 Million
8th October 2021
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Immigrants who, like me, came here from totalitarian nations are warning us: we must open our eyes and realize we no longer live in a free country.
We slid down this slope so swiftly because what happened to us is unprecedented. Although the Biden administration is adding the state’s fat thumb to the Woke side of the scale, much of the Woke Regime’s crackdown to date was engineered by private entities: elite private universities and private corporations in media and in tech. This is a key point of differentiation between the Woke Regime and all the repressive kingdoms and empires in human history. Those imposed their restrictions from above, using the coercive authority of the state itself. We have gotten to the point, however, where large corporations and the groups whose preferences they channel and amplify intrude into every aspect of our lives to enforce the regime’s wishes—a degree of control the envy of any totalitarian tyrant of centuries past.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Breaking Free
8th October 2021
Babylon Bee.
Deeply needed.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Texas Introduces Express Lanes for Guys in Cowboy Hats Driving Lifted Pickup Trucks Alone
8th October 2021
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Cockburn was waiting to get his beard trimmed at the barber recently and found himself flicking through the latest issue of The Washingtonian, an outlet where fan-girling the Biden administration passes as journalism and a love of America’s dreary capital substitutes for a personality.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on The Washingtonian’s dreary, woke ‘best of’ list
8th October 2021
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Whistleblowers pay a heavy price for standing up for truth, for humanity, for life. Haugen is simply shoring up one elite path of several to more deceit, more suffering, more death.
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8th October 2021
John Stossel.
Jim Caruso, CEO of Flying Dog Brewery, calls his business a “First Amendment brewery.” That’s because he keeps going to court to defend beer labels.
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After six more years in court, he won again. The court said, “Banning a label for vulgarity violates the First Amendment.”
You’d think the bureaucrats would have known that, since the federal government already approved Caruso’s beers. In fact, every brewer in America must first submit every label to a federal bureaucracy called the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
Which makes me wonder: Why does every state need separate regulation?
I suspect the answer is: Bureaucrats want jobs, and politicians are eager to waste our money.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on There’s No Fun in Dealing With BEEReaucrats
8th October 2021
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Anyone on the right can look back at the last 50 years and see the long string of losses to the left. They have set the agenda and they have set the direction. A Republican made nice with China and took us off the gold standard. While Reagan won the Cold War and cut taxes, everything else on the domestic front went the Left’s way. Bush and Clinton both raised taxes. Deficit spending has been the way of the nation in almost every year I have been alive. We no longer need any sort of war to spend and spend. Each President of the last generation more than doubled the previous president’s debt.
The Left controls all the big companies, all the universities, and thanks to the administrative state, they write all the new rules that are effectively laws. From Sea to Shining Sea, the Left has moved from victory to victory, and the Right goes from defeat to defeat. I will admit we have made progress on guns, but that looks to be a lot less safe a win for the Right, than say Obamacare was for the Left.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Real Problem Is: We Are Losing
8th October 2021
ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.
Even now with the economy having problems at the retail end, people are more focused on the less tangible stuff like CRT or Covid policy. The massive Build Back Better bill stuck in Congress gets little attention. Regime media talks about it as a magic elixir so the crazies have something to chant, but otherwise they have left it alone. Twenty years ago, Conservative Inc would have been organizing a campaign against it, but today they cannot generate much interest in the thing.
One reason for this is that people have come to realize that caring about the economy, tax policy or government programs changes nothing. Those who vote Republican have come to terms with the fact that none of the things they want in terms of taxes and spending will ever happen, so they have lost interest. The far-left still dreams of the socialist paradise, but it is mostly a show of piety. Medicare-for-all may as well be unicorns-for-all and they probably know it.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Economic Stuff