Worst Stock Market Opening Week EVER

Stocks close out week with worst start to year ever:

Hey, BO gets another "first" to add to his list!

He ought to be in big favor of this -- one of the best ways to decrease the scourge of "income inequality" is to take the Dow to zero! Ah, the utopian BO dream where the 99% are all fighting over rats to eat and he is golfing with Trump and Slick Willie laughing about the chumps that let him fix all that "inequality"!

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Promises, The Political Currency

A Republican Cure for Liberal Failures on Poverty - WSJ:

A good column by Speaker Ryan.

President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in 1964. Since then politicians have won votes by creating new federal programs, without bothering to check whether they work—because in the political market the currency is promises, not results. The federal government now runs more than 80 different antipoverty programs at a cost of about $750 billion a year. Yet 46 million Americans are poor today, and the poverty rate has barely budged: from 19% in 1965 to 14.8% in 2014. If you were raised poor, you’re as likely to stay poor as you were 50 years ago.

It's worth the read ... not very long. How many times have we heard some inflated figure on how much the Iraq war cost us and how it "bankrupted the nation"? Try 50 years of poverty programs that managed to lock tens of millions into a cycle of poverty,  despair, and violence while wasting something like $40 TRILLION inflation adjusted dollars over that period.

Oh, I know, GREAT deal for Democrats! Second biggest vote buying program in history -- with FICA/Medicare taking the TOP spot!

We have reached the point where we deserve the government we have because the government bought all our votes!

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Warming? CA Methane Leak, 6 Million Coal Cars?

A natural gas leak with seemingly no end | Marketplace.org:

I'd barely heard about this, but low and behold, "Climate Cast" on NPR talked of it yesterday.

On the show, and in this quote from here, they discussed it as being like "six coal fired power plants" -- one wonders if that is LIFETIME or one year? Six power plants each burning over a million cars of a coal in a year sounds WAY off to me, so it almost has to be lifetime.

O'Connor, of the Environmental Defense Fund said the gas gushing from Aliso Canyon is roughly equal to that emitted by six coal-fired power plants or 7 million extra cars. "I think we have found a regulatory gap," he said.

So one would think that if you were a warmist, this would be right up there with Exxon Valdez or BP and Deepwater Horizon in the gulf. Lots of people are being evacuated, planes re-directed, the governor has declared a state of emergency, it is going to be going on for at least MONTHS more and the end is uncertain! How can this NOT be a top news story??!!  I mean, come on, "Climate Change" is the "Greatest Challenge Facing our Generation"!

So I checked just a bit of "follow the money" just cuz I figure there has to be SOME explanation,  and "amazingly", governor Browns sister is involved with the owning company, AND, they have been very generous in donations to Brown.

Kathleen Brown was paid $183,000 last year as the director of Sempra Energy, according to a Wednesday report in the Boston Environmental Policy Examiner. She also managed to score $400,000 in stock in the much-maligned energy company, according to financial statements. 

Worse still, critics say, is the fact Gov. Brown owes a debt of gratitude to Sempra, as the governor has received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from his sister’s company.

I'm guessing we could find even more connections ... BO maybe? Who knows.

The beauty of environmental law, IRS audits, "coordination" under Citizens United, hate speech, sexual harassment and a whole lot of the other current "left wing causes/laws" is that they invert the old "innocent until proven guilty" idea and rules of evidence at that same time. They are like weapons that ONLY KILL YOUR ENEMIES! They are the very best sort of "smart weapon" in that they are "ideologically based".

It is rather ingenious really. Harming the environment is a BIG DEAL when it is made to be a big deal because it fits the left narrative or the "cause" is someone that hasn't greased the proper palms to the proper amount. But it is selective -- if you are the "right folks", or "pay appropriately", you get to avoid the issue. Getting your mind right and being on the "right side" (meaning left) has it's perks!

When you live in a single political party controlled totalitarian state, it is ALL about politics. When something bad happens, the FIRST question that is asked is: Which Tribe? Red or Blue. If red, go for the jugular ... if blue, then no matter how HUGE it is, sweep it under the rug.

It makes the "rules" a lot easier to understand!

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Liberal Theology, The Problem of Evil

The Liberal Theology of Gun Control - WSJ:

I'm getting pretty sick of this latest round of the endless gun control debate, but the linked article does a good job of pointing out how liberal theology makes sense -- to liberals. In the bigger context of how liberals think, this really does make sense.

First, liberals don't believe that there are evil people:

Put simply, today’s liberalism cannot deal with the reality of evil. So liberals inveigh against the instruments the evil use rather than the evil that motivates them.

Not criminals, not terrorists, not even the USSR in the cold war was evil. No doubt anyone who "seems evil" (with the exception of conservatives) had bad childhoods, people treated them unfairly, or they just lacked "the proper education". Liberals are CERTAIN that with just a wee bit more "education", they can fix ANYTHING! The following paragraph is in reference to liberal views on Reagan as he tried to end the USSR rather than do what the left wanted ... sign another fake "arms control" agreement:

Two things especially irked them: He’d called the U.S.S.R. the Evil Empire, and he was skeptical about arms control for the sake of arms control.

Liberals are fine with communism, crime, or even (amazingly) islamic extremism. They LOVE to "do things" though -- and "arms control" and "gun control" are the kind of thing they LOVE to do. They are things that tend to be counterproductive, but that is more than fine with liberals!

Bad regimes are like bad guys in this respect. They’ll take a deal they know has no teeth. But they will accept a genuine arms reduction only when the good guys put them in a position where they have little or no choice. 

This helps explain why, for example, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi turned over his entire nuclear program to George W. Bush—and why the Iranians happily agreed to a deal with President Obama that puts them on the path to a bomb. 

Meanwhile, we’ve just endured what may be the first successful ISIS-inspired attack on the homeland. And like her former boss, Hillary Clinton is demanding the government “take action now” on guns.

It isn't like those of us with a memory don't recall other "nuke deals" that we were told were just peachy and ended up going "boom" ... like BIG BOOM as in H-bomb! Here is old Slick talking like a true Clinton in '94 ... why is it that we conservatives are skeptics on what liberals say???

"Liberal" is about ending things like "the Constitutions" and replacing them with a totalitarian central government. That government may be communist, criminal, or even Islamic ... "liberals" are actually VERY LIBERAL on that issue! It is the POWER that they demand -- how it gets in their hands is "just mechanism".

In the meantime, they are fine with North Korea and Iran having nukes as well as terrorists and criminals having guns. They really aren't stupid, they are aware that terrorists and criminals don't follow laws, and bad regimes don't honor "agreements". Taking YOUR guns and de-stabilizing the nation and world plays into their hands, so they are all for it, and they will use any propaganda they feel will work to reach their goals. They never claimed to believe in anything other than power -- certainly not "truth" which is defined to be "whatever they say it is".

They do FIRMLY believe the last vestiges of the US and western civilization must be destroyed by ANY MEANS, because they are CERTAIN that once they start all over, they will definitely build utopia!

Utopia, "heaven on earth" is the end that justifies all means.

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Slick Willie Rape, Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

The rape allegation against Bill Clinton, explained - Vox:

A rather longish article from the progressive site Vox that essentially ends up at the obvious -- if you are going to take rape accusers seriously as Hillary and others have said, you would be FORCED to take Juanita Broadderick seriously.

But whatever the merits of that view, adopting it would be a big pivot for Hillary Clinton, given that just a couple of months ago she was tweeting, "Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported." There's no easy way to reconcile that view with her allies' dismissal of Broaddrick's allegations.

Such a thing must be like "intellectual rape" for "The Party" (TP-D), because they are the ones that USE force ... not the ones who are forced to face any truth, reality or reason! They are the definers of what we ought all think, and what they demand that we think includes massive inconsistency by design. They want it that way, and we all need to remember the immortal words from "Animal Farm" since their meaning is now regularly and obviously on display here in what used to be America.

"All animals are equal. Some animals are more equal than others!".

Obviously, Slick Willie is a "more equal animal" -- than say, Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby was ONCE in the same class as Slick Willie ... he was a famous black who was assumed to be liberal, so whatever his sins may have been, they were to be ignored -- and were.

But he fell from grace -- in pain over the massive killings of young black men and the wanton looting and lawlessness of those of his race in riots and violence, he raised his voice. He demanded that blacks take responsibility for their actions, and in the left religion, that is grievous SIN! Blacks are to be slaves on TP Plantation -- it is their role! For some uppity black like Cosby to have the gall to question the ruling of TP is a sin that must be punished!

Those on the right may be accused by "anonymous sources" and that is considered a "serious matter".  On the left, the aggreived can come forward, be known, submit testimony, and it is STILL ignored as "not important".

Some animals are more equal than others.

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Vox Explained

National Review Online:

I've seen Vox show up a few times on FB and other places now, and since I'm about to use a link from them in another post, I thought I'd check them out a bit.

Ezra Klein is the editor in chief of Vox. He is a PROGRESSIVE writer / blogger that worked for the WaPO doing "Wonkblog". He was an associate editor at American Prospect (progressive) and a contributor to MSBC and Bloomberg news ... if you follow the link in his name above you will to go the Wikipedia entry for him. He is VERY left wing.

The NRO article is quite long and exhaustive -- the basic purpose of Vox is "in depth reporting" kind of like National Public Radio. I suppose in their universe, both consider themselves "unbiased" in that they make the sound of one left hand clapping. As I like to say of NPR, "They cover both the left and the far left"!

After the linked article goes through a citiqueing a few Vox stories both positive and negative, it ends up with the following, which I agree with -- since we know their biases, we can likely glean quite a few unintended facts from them even with the bias, and it is ALWAYS good to have a reasonably deep understanding of the other sides arguments!

If you’re going to tell someone what they should think about something under the guise of “here’s what you need to know about” something, it really ought to include . . . everything you need to know about something. That’s nearly impossible, of course, which is why most people trying to persuade you are a little more upfront about it. This new venture isn’t going to do that, but that doesn’t mean it can’t sometimes be a useful resource and a helpful corrective.

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Loss and "Closure"

Link to WSJ Article

Ran into what I found to be a fairly short description of dealing with death and loss on WSJ that seems very worth of consideration for those of us forced to deal with this topic -- which is ALL of us until we exit this mortal coil.

Every person and every loss is unique. Some may want to have some sort of "closure" (no matter what the article says) ... possibly for "always", or they may change their mind on the topic in the same night ... both directions. Emotion, grief, loss, death -- these are not topics that lend themselves to pat answers or "one size fits all" templates for how they "should" proceed.

Be there for those that have lost that are grieving and try to support them in what they are going through as best you can understand what they need  -- and pray that there will be someone that does the same when it happens to you!

NEVER make statements like "You OUGHT to ..." Ought, should, so and so did, etc relative to someone dealing with loss are minefields. Just avoid walking into them.

OTOH, when it is you that is in grief, TRY to forgive those that are trying to help even if they are doing it horribly.  Even perfect support can at times fail miserably because ... well, because things like logic, rules, guidelines, reason, common sense, etc really don't count for much when facing the permanent (for this life) loss of part of one's very soul.

I liked the following paragraph even though I think it as well can be wrong in some cases. The article is worth the short read.

The reality is that closure is a myth. My personal and professional experience with those who have lost friends and family, including children, has taught me that going on with life is not the same as gaining closure. The wound of loss is a part of each person’s life forever. We continue to think about those dear to us, though perhaps not every day or with the same intensity. Recollection is sometimes provoked by a date on the calendar or, less predictably, by a sight, sound, aroma, melody or place that evokes the missing person.

Dunning-Kruger Effect Revisited

Revisiting why incompetents think they’re awesome | Ars Technica:

I ran into this and remembered that I had covered this in the past at this link. Since nobody read that one, I did some editing and am going to include what I wrote in this post. The basic idea is that in many areas people are "unconsciously incompetent", or basically "too stupid to know how stupid they are, so they assume they are intelligent".

As Darwin put it, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge". The Dunning-Kruger (DK) study seems to prove it and shows the following:

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

It seems obvious in looking at those that narcissists would be an extreme case -- and also not very likely to be trainable. Obama is pretty much the poster child. A quote from the linked article:

Dunning believes there are two key issues: first, critical thinking skills, applied to your own knowledge, as well as everything else, are vital. But, importantly, if you don't exercise critical thinking skills, they will fade, leaving you with a false impression of your own abilities.

Naturally, the Moose is immune to DK effects because the Moose is AVERAGE, and the problem with DK begins because people (as opposed to mooses) believe they are above average!

I maintain that the BIG problem with DK is "The Party (TP-D) Standard Knowledge". No need to think if you agree with "the 97%" as one recent supposed "expert" did before congress.  The left often likes to assert that such loss of critical thinking happens to "conservatives" with the "FAUX News Effect", but considering that most every other outlet plus the universities tend to lean left, they for some reason are never worried that their own "critical thinking" might have a small chance to atrophy.

We see a bit of that atrophy in the author of the column where he says:

That said, spotting an expert outside of one’s field is a task one can become better at. And that’s important, given just how much information, good and bad, is not available to people. For example, is the expert associated with a university (a good sign) or some 'think tank' (a bad sign)?" Again, though, this takes experience and expertise. Groups like think tanks try to give themselves the trappings of expertise in a move specifically designed to fool us into trusting their statements.

So why pray tell does grant money from a government or some very possibly biased other source going to a researcher at a university have less effect on what kind of research they do or the conclusions that they might come to than funding at a "think tank"? As I pointed out in the FAUX link above about "Media Matters", their whole schtick is looking for "conservative" bias. It would be a rare university indeed where you find any of THAT!

In any case, the following is copied from the 09 post that nobody read -- so I cheated!

We **ALL** fall prey to DK, since we are all OFTEN incompetent!  In fact, for ALL of us, our areas of incompetence VASTLY exceed those areas where we are competent, and the worst problem tends to be those areas where we are "unconsciously incompetent". We are too stupid to know that we don't know!

If you are more intelligent than the average person, you can commonly "make something up" that will sound plausible to all but the more intelligent or the better trained in some area that you happen to drift into. Even worse, if you couple high intelligence with argumentative ability, you are likely to intimidate even those who really DO know from pointing it out since you will STILL be hard to argue with / convince. (If you are REALLY bad, you will just call them "racist" if they point out where you are wrong!)

A near certain sign of a vast level of ignorance and high level of the DK  effect is the belief  that "Someone that was "smart" could explain this to me SIMPLY (meaning "simple" to the person that wants the explanation)". Often this comes with the corollary that "If it can't be explained (to the person) "simply", NOBODY  understands it very well and all views (certainly MINE!) are pretty much "equal"".  The simple answer to this is Quantum Physics -- geniuses like Feynman knew that if you weren't confused, you REALLY didn't understand it!

The core of this idea is viewing ones self as the center of the universe to an extraordinary degree -- why is it that all phenomena ought to be easily explainable to YOU (if indeed to ANYONE)? It is a piece of unfounded faith that shows extreme ignorance coupled with hubris, but remember, it is very possible to couple extreme ignorance with high intelligence. Narcissists are often exactly this case -- convinced they are the only one that really matters, and their special knowledge, opinion and perspective is really the only one that counts! Obama may be the greatest example of this in history!

High Dunning-Kruger and great communication skills is especially dangerous. "See Obama". Note, Reagan had great communications skills, but very low DK -- he clearly knew what he didn't know and acted accordingly. Bush had poor communications skills, and I'd argue a low DK problem as well -- he also was willing to bring in expertise that he knew exceeded his and support them. BO has no clue about economics, mideast history, running car companies, what it takes to win against terrorists, or apparently even Constitutional Law, which was SUPPOSED to be his specialty!  -- but no matter. He is absolutely convinced he can do all of them because he has a law degree from Harvard and worked as a Community Organizer for awhile!

Very much thought about this and the term "chilling" doesn't really do it justice!

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Sowell, BO's Theater, Gun Marker

Showman-in-Chief - Thomas Sowell - Page full:

For an EXHAUSTIVE view on the studies, surveys, research, etc relative to guns, and the huge difficulty of making any sense out of it statistically, I recommend this.

The Second Amendment was plain and clear in the US Constitution for over 200 years, but by 2008, our nation was so screwed up that the Supreme Court had to get involved to "interpret" the plain text of the Constitution lest it be taken to mean "our soldiers can carry guns". Even then, it was 5 to 4 -- when a nation goes dim, it seems to go very dim very fast!

The president used to be sworn to uphold that Constitution, especially after the SCOTUS has recently ruled, but BO doesn't care about anything in that old document -- separation of powers, limited powers, rights of citizens, etc ... BO is certain he is THE supreme authority, and since "The Party" (D) is not going to stand up for their oaths of office either, the lawless regime slithers on.

TP is not going to rest until the guns in private hands are rounded up, one way or another, because their power will never be total until that happens, and they are not going to stop short of TOTAL POWER!

However, this is WAY past "statistics". As Jefferson said; "No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms". Without the rule of law, we are down to the bitter end of the freedoms that our founders bequeathed us. They understood that freedom is NEVER free, and unfortunately, either the last ember left here will finally die, or it will be "refreshed with the blood of patriots".

In the meantime, the Sowell article is excellent reading -- oh if only Sowell could have been our first Black President, we would be a great nation once more!

Those who have been marveling at Donald Trump's political showmanship were given a reminder of who is the top showman of them all, when President Barack Obama went on television to make a pitch for his unilateral actions to restrict gun sales and make a more general case for tighter gun control laws. 

It was beautifully choreographed, like a great ballet, and performed with consummate skill and understated eloquence. First of all, the scene was set with a room full of people who had lost loved ones to gun violence. A father whose son had been gunned down made a long introduction before the president showed up, walked down the aisle and up on to the stage to growing applause. 

As political theater, it put Donald Trump's rantings in the shade.

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Auto-Brewery, Gut Induced .40 BAC

New Yorker Beats DUI Charge With Auto-Brewery Syndrome Defense:



I did a LITTLE bit of checking. I'm not ready to completely sign up for this one, but it does appear that there really may be a rare condition documented where people spontaneously brew ethanol in their guts! Stranger still, at least some of these people can apparently regularly walk around with Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) like .40 that would make most of us comatose or DEAD!

I’m in touch with about 30 people who believe they have this same syndrome, about 10 of them are diagnosed with it (…) They can function at alcohol levels such as 0.30 and 0.40 when the average person would be comatose or dying. Part of the mystery of this syndrome is how they can have these extremely high levels and still be walking around and talking. 

Definitely a case of completely USELESS news, but given how strange the supposed "real news" is these days,  even I like a bit of "news of the weird".



I'm not very a very credulous person ... my guess is that in the vast majority of these cases (maybe all), the root is a really crafty closet long term alcoholic that can REALLY hide their booze.





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Fragility, Hope, Blame, Packers

Green Bay Packers- Is it Time to Blame Rodgers? | isportsweb:

The BIGGEST message I take from the Packers regular season is that having a top flight football team is UNBELIEVABLY hard and whenever you have one, it is FRAGILE!

The Pack had not been swept by the division at home since 1968! I was FLOORED ... we had a number of teams during the '70s and '80s that lost to St Norbert's School for Blind Girls by more than two touchdowns in exhibition games! Yes, yes, we always give thanks for the Motor City Kitties, and how hard it is for them to play when their paws are cold, but wow. 1968!

It ought to be clear by now that NOBODY has a clue as to what all went wrong with the offense, but the fact is that early in the year Rodgers was playing GREAT and he got a tremendous amount of credit for that (too much), so it is really only fair that now he is starting to get some blame:

At the end of the day, the buck stops with the quarterback. Every game, Rodgers is missing open receivers and making plays no Packers fan expected to see this season. In Week 17, he had two opportunities to put together a drive to tie the game with his team down by 7 points in the fourth quarter. During the first possession, Rodgers called a crucial timeout because he was unable to get his offense ready to snap the ball on time. Without calling that timeout, the Packers would have had an extra 40 seconds on their last possession. 

On the next play, Rodgers threw an ugly interception in the end zone when it looked like James Jones made a strong break towards the pylon and had a chance to catch the ball in the end zone. Instead the ball was thrown softly and far behind Jones, giving him no opportunity to make the catch. The final drive ended in a Hail Mary due to the wasted time out, and the Packers did not end up as lucky as they were in Detroit earlier in this season. The result: second place in the NFC North.

One of my theories is that given the Packers situation now, Rodgers extreme hatred of interceptions is working against him. He's losing fumbles for TDs trying to "safely make something happen". Favre would have slung it in there come hell or high water. NOTE, I've OFTEN lamented that Favre was WAY too much over on the "sling it" side, but I'm afraid that given the tattered line and the receivers that aren't going to get the separation that Arod wants to see, he needs to err a bit more on the "gun it" side if we want to win a playoff game.

Reason says that we lose to the Redskins somewhat pitifully -- amazingly, if you take the 2nd half of the season, Kirk Cousins is high seed QB and Rodgers is low seed!

Of course, my hope never dies, especially after the end of the Detroit game. The true optimist says. the last time we lost the NFC N, we won the Superbowl!

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Shoot Y'all Qaeda, Occupy Whatever

Dwight and Steven Hammond, the Oregon Standoff, and the Problems with Mandatory Minimums - The Atlantic:

I have a good deal of sympathy with the plight of 73 year old Dwight Hammond and his middle aged son Steven going back to prison. My understanding is that they wanted to lie low and were not all that thrilled with the demonstrations for them, and are completely not on board with the "occupation". I doubt hardly anyone other than the Bundys support the "occupation".

The middle east is burning down, N Korea is testing H-bombs, and his BOness is making law by fiat in direct opposition to the Constitution. Do we really care if some nuts took over some remote outhouse in the middle of the winter?

Oh, yeah, they are "right wing", so therefore "terrorists" -- this is a MUCH bigger problem than non-Islamic acts of direct violence carried out by people who happen to follow the Muslim religion which has NOTHING to do with the acts of violence ... did I mention it would be HORRIBLE to call acts by such people "Islamic", it might lead to a BACKLASH!

Did you hear that there are **ARMED** RIGHT WING TERRORISTS OCCUPYING A FEDERAL BUILDING!!! OMG! ... There was a MILITIA involved (in the march, not the occupation)! Can we call in the Army, Navy, Marines, NSA, CIA ... hell, call in the entire ALPHABET!

The linked article makes the obvious point that why the hell is the left not realizing that the Hammonds are victims of MANDATORY SENTENCING ... which the left is supposed to HATE!

But sadly, the Atlantic left wing itself, so doesn't understand that consistency is not an issue! Mandatory sentencing is bad for BLACKS, but the Bundy folks are WHITE, and did you know they are RIGHT WING! No sentences for Blacks, shoot the damned right wing whites! Why not?

“While federal management of public lands is legitimate and occupying a federal facility is unjustified,” a left-leaning publication might have editorialized, “it’s easy to see why the Hammond case struck some observers as unjust. The notion that judges are there to exercise discretion based on context––that it’s odious to force them to give severe sentences even when they judge them to be ‘grossly disproportionate’––is exactly what criminal-justice reformers have long argued. There have been bipartisan reforms on this issue before. Let’s abolish all mandatory minimums for good through the civic process, not counterproductive armed protests.”

The linked column also introduces something that makes sense -- "Red Tribe" and "Blue Tribe". After electing a man who claims his main identity is as a "Luo Tribesman", is it any wonder that our nation has descended from a being a Republic of Laws rater than men to a couple of warring tribes?

The blogger Scott Alexander once argued with more detail than I can quote here that “if you’re part of the Blue Tribe, then your outgroup isn’t al-Qaeda, or Muslims, or blacks, or gays, or transpeople, or Jews, or atheists—it’s the Red Tribe.”

We live in a nation where the federal government charges a 73 year old guy with TERRORISM for burning a few acres of land that nobody cares about for reasons that are at least sane. Not only that, he goes to trial, gets convicted, but the judge makes his sentence short in view of the "crime" .... BUT, the government has to have it's full pound of flesh, so they send him back to prison for 5 years, and that brings in some nutcases that are ticked off.

The fact they are ticked off is pretty understandable -- the fact that they decided to occupy a remote building is what makes them nutcases -- but nutcases that are causing WAY less of an issue than Black Lives Matter folks shooting, blocking interstates, occupying precinct houses, rioting, looting, etc.

Like WAY LESS problem!

I don't agree with the occupation, but the majority of this nation seems to be every bit as insane as the guys out in the boonies in the outhouse!

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British Doctor Strike, Private vs Public

Britain set for first mass strike by doctors in 40 years | Reuters:

Nothing like a Doctor strike to kick off a new year on a good foot:

Ninety-eight percent of more than 37,000 junior doctors had voted to take part in industrial action, including strikes, in protest against the new employment contract proposed by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

 I'm not in the mood to a waste too much time lamenting the rapid decline in the US health system -- anybody that paid any attention, knew it would happen, and it has -- it will continue! But time for a few words I guess.

If you look through this article you will see that Britain has a Public Health System and a Private Health System, and that the Public System is "very popular". At first, this may seem hard to understand, but one needs to ask the question; "Are there more sick people or healthy people"? Fortunately, for a large part of people's lives, their health insurance is like their car insurance -- they don't use it very often, and when they DO it is for smaller claims.

As long as all you need the healthcare service for is "standard stuff", "Post Office Medicine" is just fine (when they aren't striking), and thankfully, for the bulk of the population during most of their lives, that will be all they need. Since half of the people make the median income or below, and they tend to not be taxed very much, they get "free healthcare", it is all that they need, and they don't have to worry about it! So at least half the population LOVES IT -- and no doubt at least 10-20% above that like it too.

So how in the world can a private system continue to work and even expand in the same country if Public Healthcare is so good?

Well, because people get sick -- and sometimes, chronically sick for long periods of time. A woman from England worked in Rochester for years because her mother had emphysema and had watched way to many people die because they could not breath in the public health ward with 5-10 beds in a large room, and not enough staff to cover. We also had people working here that came from Canada for treatment, and it is not unusual at all to see a Canadian license plate when you do through a clinic parking lot.

British life expectancy for males is 79. It is hard to get good data for "white, no criminal record, etc" life expectancy in the US, but this chart shows that for even the top half of the income level in the US, you were looking at 85 to even pushing 90 at the very top. US stats (gun deaths for example) are HEAVILY biased by our largely Democrat controlled big city cesspools of crime and depravity. For "rural / suburban, some college, middle income and over, stable family, etc", our numbers are quite a bit better than we are often led to believe.

But this is changing. The top 10% here, in Canada, in England, in Saudi Arabia, etc **WILL** get the "top care in the world" wherever that ends up being. It MAY stay here -- Mayo is certainly gamely TRYING to be a "Destination Medical Center" -- sometimes it is ALL we hear about here in Rochester, and BILLIONS are being spent on that effort.

However, that is ONLY for the top 10%, and even moving to be just the top 1%. The rest of us are now getting used to DECLINING life expectancies. For those of us in the upper 50% of the income grid we already have declining quality of care at HUGELY higher costs, to the tune of many thousands of $$$$ more each year ... not some whimpy "10-20% rise" as there used to be complaints about. No, now we are into the paying $5-10 THOUSAND vs a few hundred in the pre-BOcare rape times.

Our lives will be shorter, but at least most will enjoy them less, so we can take some solace in that. BO seems to have ushered in the "Suicide Generation" with the rates of middle aged white guys killing themselves at levels that were headline news when the guys dying were gays with AIDs. People really cared about AIDs.

Middle aged white guys with no meaning left in their lives? Let's be honest, nobody even wants to hear about it!

The USSR was a great place for "equality" -- everyone was poor! We also know that it wasn't really "everyone" "The Party" is "more equal than others". The Party Chairman can even just get up on national TV and declare new laws because he feels strongly about it. As one time, Americans would have been outraged -- now, we trudge along with our heads down like so many sheep.

Perhaps North Korea or Iran will settle it for us, but I have a strong feeling that our well deserved exit is going to be longer and excruciatingly painful to watch.

BTW. If you do go off and look at the top linked article, they will mention "anti-social hours", you can Learn about anti-social hours in this link. The short version is "it's hours outside of "8-5" weekdays in England.

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Assortive Marriage

The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality - The New York Times:

Marriage is a giant problem for the left since it is adaptive -- meaning "it works" to create better health, greater happiness, better outcomes for children, better societies and communities, and yes, higher incomes and wealth. I've covered this in more detail before.

It is also exceedingly old news that the biggest determinants of wealth and poverty in the US are:

1. Delaying having children until after marriage
2. Finishing High School
3. Staying married to the same spouse

The left doesn't much like to talk about these facts because their idea is that people have no responsibility for outcomes in their lives and the job of government is to randomize incentives and disincentives so people end up in the same economic state no matter what choices they make.

Naturally, like all ideas of the left, reality continues to cause them problems. It turns out that when it comes to marriage, once you have created a whole bunch of highly educated career women, they have a nasty tendency to marry some guy that is similar to them in education and income! Who could have imagined such a thing! They call this phenomenon "Assortive Marriage"

The numbers show that assortative mating really matters. One studyindicated that combined family decisions on assortative mating, divorce and female labor supply accounted for about one-third of the increase in income inequality from 1960 to 2005. That result is from the economist Jeremy Greenwood, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and other co-authors.

This is startling news to "liberals". It "creates inequality", DAMN!

They don't indicate what they want to try to DO about this ... for fairly obvious reasons. Arranged marriages maybe? 100% tax rate on one partner working over a certain income level? Since they WANT higher income women, perhaps they will declare that the husband of a woman that makes over say "$50 or $100K" can't work -- or just gets taxed at 100%?

No doubt their fertile minds are hard at work to make all equally miserable!


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Rahm, Blue City Canary

Why the Rahm Story Matters - The American Interest:

A good one from Walter Russel Mead.

The biggest problem with Democrat policies is that they don't work for anything but buying votes. They run cities, states and nations into bankruptcy, destroy families, create rampant crime, violence and corruption and destroy productivity -- but other than that, oh, did I mention they are good at buying votes?

The whole article is worth a read, but the closing is right on target.

The increasing fragility of blue cities and states is the biggest problem the Democratic coalition faces. Those who hope that demographic change will create a “permanent Democratic majority” need to think about arithmetic as well as demography. The numbers don’t add up for blue cities. The governing model doesn’t produce the revenue that can sustain it long-term. Making cities work—enabling them to provide necessary services at sustainable cost levels while achieving economic development that rebuilds the urban middle class—is the biggest challenge the Democratic Party faces. As Mayor Emmanuel is learning, that is a daunting task.

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