News of the Week (March 3rd, 2019)

Posted on March 3, 2019 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for Mar. 3rd, 2019


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Firing Line Friday: Mobilizing the Poor

Posted on March 1, 2019 by The Political Hat

     There was once a time when it was possible to have an honest and civil debate, not just between two people who generally agreed, but also between people who, if the not-so-proverbial revolution ever came, each would have the other as the “first against the wall”. This allowed one to refine one’s own arguments while elucidating and understand the arguments being made on the other side. Even when debating someone with whom one generally agrees with, an honest discussion will do more to illuminate one’s position than preaching to the choir with bromides and pre-written soundbites.

     A perfect example of this was William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line” which ran from 1966 to 1999. In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, episodes will be posted her on (most) Fridays.

     To kick things off, the episode the pitted Buckley with “Rules for Radicals” author Saul Alinsky.

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South Africa: The Next Zimbabwe; The Next Venezuela; The Next Genocide

Posted on February 28, 2019 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: The pale scapegoat.

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

     Ah, when diverting attention from one’s own misrule to a handy scapegoat is more important than not misruling…

“Shockwaves are still being felt in South Africa after President Cyril Ramaphosa’s controversial announcement that the country’s constitution is to be changed to explicitly allow for the expropriation of land without compensation.

“Markets reacted negatively and the currency, the rand, has continued to plummet over the last week.

“This is because the plan has invited comparisons with the chaotic land reform programme across the Limpopo River in neighbouring Zimbabwe, which saw scenes of violent evictions of mainly white farmers.”

And they don’t care how much they hurt themselves and their families.

“During a session held this week in Cape Town’s Goodwood suburb one woman representing the South African Homeless People’s Association said: “Twenty-four years of liberal democracy [has] increased poverty.

“‘The masses are worse off because of the willing-buyer-willing-seller principle.”‘

“Another person who gave testimony said: ‘We are going to take the land, even if it means we’re going back to the dark ages. This country must be African. We are African.’

“A man wearing a T-shirt of the right-wing Freedom Front Plus party said that his Afrikaner people had been farming in the Western Cape for the past 300 years.

“‘When my forefathers came, they found no-one but the Khoi and the San. My people got what they have in this country not by theft, not by genocide, but by fair means.’

“Some land owners threatened war to defend their farms and their opponents vowed to respond in kind.”

_____________________________________________

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Amy Klobuchar’s Salad Days

Posted on February 27, 2019 by The Political Hat

     By now, it is well known that Minnesota Senator, and 2020 Presidential hopeful, Amy Klobuchar, has enjoyed eating a salad with… a comb. Aside from this being a sign that one is a psychopath, it illustrates how in Klobuchar’s case “Minnesota Nice” is her case, a “Minnesota Mean“, with her insane antics are coupled with how she treats her staff like… a used comb covered in ranch dressing.

     In a field of unhinged Presidential hopefuls, this certainly one way to stand out, abet not in a particularly useful way. It doesn’t help when you deal with your frustration by channeling the Spaceballs.

     Of course, it might be interesting to see her debate with her ideological nemesis…

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Does Time Grow Short For Nicolas Maduro?

Posted on February 26, 2019 by The Political Hat

     As Venezuela enters its “liquidation phase” of the revolution, growing international acceptance of the Venezuelan opposition, including by Maduro backers such as the People’s Republic of China, may mean that Maduro’s days in power might be limited, with an increasingly united front against him indicating that the aftermath might not be as chaotic as some believe. All this despite Maduro having to take de facto hostages.

     The breaking point might be Maduro’s reaction to people trying to bring food and aid to the starving millions of Venezuela by stopping incoming aid by violence, all while he throws a massive musical concert! This just might be the point when the violence and repression have moved far too many who oppose him than he couldn’t possibly stop it.

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Nevada Poised To Allow Hospitals To Tell You To F**k Off And Die

Posted on February 25, 2019 by The Political Hat

     The Nevada Soviet Legislature is considering a bill, SB189, which would allow doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat patients who want to try to stay alive if said doctor or hospital “[h]as  determined  that  the  treatment  of  care  would  not  be effective or is contrary to reasonable medical standards.”

     Why is the inclusion of “reasonable medical standards” important?

     Because it will allow doctors and hospitals to not only refuse treatment that doesn’t work, but to refuse treatment that does work by keeping a patient alive if it is that patients wish to not die due to lack of treatment.

“This is a bioethics meme known as “medical futility,” “futile care,” “inappropriate care,” or “non-beneficial care” — the bioethicists are still working on the best lexicon to get their policy goals enacted.

“…

“Futile care says maintaining life when the patients wants to stay alive is not an appropriate intervention in some cases.

  • Proclaiming treatment futile or inappropriate is a value judgment–not a medical determination — about whether the life in question is worth living, and/or worth paying to sustain. It essentially declares the patient futile.
  • Futile care decisions may be distorted by prejudice against disabled patients, the elderly, and other minorities.
  • Futile care involves collective decision-making that empowers strangers to make crucial decisions about a person’s life and death. It gives greater weight to institutional and professional values than to those of the patient and his or her family.
  • Futile care is a form of ad hoc health care rationing. That means an intervention considered futile in one hospital might not be in another.”

     In other words, if a doctor or hospital decides your life isn’t worth living, then they can tell you to f**k off an die.

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News of the Week (February 24th, 2019)

Posted on February 24, 2019 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for Feb. 24th, 2019


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Cultural Marxism is Real

Posted on February 22, 2019 by The Political Hat

     Despite Cultural Marxism having been repeatedly exposed, here and elsewhere, so many deny such a thing exists and accuse “global sewers of hatred” for creating this “mere right-wing ‘phantasmagoria’.” Allen Mendenhall, via the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, however, is able to show that Cultural Marxism is not only real, but a definable Theory based on actual academic and pseudo-academic work.

“Despite the bewildering range of controversies and meanings attributed to it, cultural Marxism (the term and the movement) has a deep, complex history in Theory. The word ‘Theory’ (with a capital T) is the general heading for research within the interpretative branches of the humanities known as cultural and critical studies, literary criticism, and literary theory—each of which includes a variety of approaches from the phenomenological to the psychoanalytic. In the United States, Theory is commonly taught and applied in English departments, although its influence is discernable throughout the humanities.

“A brief genealogy of different schools of Theory—which originated outside English departments, among philosophers and sociologists for example, but became part of English departments’ core curricula—shows not only that cultural Marxism is a nameable, describable phenomenon, but also that it proliferates beyond the academy.

“Scholars versed in Theory are reasonably suspicious of crude, tendentious portrayals of their field. Nevertheless, these fields retain elements of Marxism that, in my view, require heightened and sustained scrutiny. Given estimates that communism killed over 100 million people, we must openly and honestly discuss those currents of Marxism that run through different modes of interpretation and schools of thought. To avoid complicity, moreover, we must ask whether and why Marxist ideas, however attenuated, still motivate leading scholars and spread into the broader culture.”

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Quick Takes – Bernie Bust: Big Brother Taxes; Failed Trial Runs; Not Even Medicare

Posted on February 21, 2019 by The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: Back in the U.S.S.R.

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

     For a socialist who thinks that government should provide everything to the people, he sure wants to punish companies that don’t nod their head in agreement… particularly with his legislation “Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies, or BEZOS Act“.

“‘The bill would establish a 100% tax on companies equal to the benefits their employees are receiving. Covered public assistance program include Medicaid, Section 8 housing, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, for companies with more than 500 employees.’

“…

“The reality is that any plausible system of enforcement under legislation of this nature would in practice require big companies to ask a huge, new number of invasive questions of their employees in order to determine who is in their family or household and what federal benefits such people receive. And, by imposing costs on the company proportional to such benefits, it will strongly incentivize companies to find ways to avoid employing, say, single mothers who receive a lot of benefits. Preventing such discrimination, when the government is clobbering businesses over the head with economic reasons to engage in it, will require even further commitments of resources (And you know who doesn’t get federal welfare benefits? Offshore workers, and robots). To say nothing of the fact that audits of companies that employ a lot of people suspiciously not applying for federal welfare benefits would swiftly reveal companies that employ a lot of illegal immigrants (if you’re a liberal, just be thankful that nobody running the executive branch these days would think to do that). Any system of enforcement that tried to bypass the employer as information-gatherer would inevitably look like the e-verify system desired by immigration hawks.”

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The European Union Censors the Internet

Posted on February 20, 2019 by The Political Hat

     Article 11 and Article 13, proposals by the European Union to purportedly protect copyright, have achieved their likely final language, which is just as bad, if not worse than previously reported.

Article 11, in part, requires:

“Reproducing more than “single words or very short extracts” of news stories will require a licence. That will likely cover many of the snippets commonly shown alongside links today in order to give you an idea of what they lead to. We will have to wait and see how courts interpret what “very short” means in practice – until then, hyperlinking (with snippets) will be mired in legal uncertainty.

“No exceptions are made even for services run by individuals, small companies or non-profits, which probably includes any monetised blogs or websites.”

     So, mere excerpts such as the above quote will be illegal unless a tax/fee is paid. There is not exception for fair use. This makes transmitting ideas and information problematic as best, with the aim of being able to readily send anything down the memory hole with minimal ways of demonstrating such memory holing. However Article 13 is worse.

Article 13, in part, requires:

“Commercial sites and apps where users can post material must make “best efforts” to preemptively buy licences for anything that users may possibly upload – that is: all copyrighted content in the world. An impossible feat.

“In addition, all but very few sites (those both tiny and very new) will need to do everything in their power to prevent anything from ever going online that may be an unauthorised copy of a work that a rightsholder has registered with the platform. They will have no choice but to deploy upload filters, which are by their nature both expensive and error-prone.

“Should a court ever find their licensing or filtering efforts not fierce enough, sites are directly liable for infringements as if they had committed them themselves. This massive threat will lead platforms to over-comply with these rules to stay on the safe side, further worsening the impact on our freedom of speech.”

     This makes it impossible for small independent sites, including individual bloggers, to accept any content unless they “buy licenses”. Furthermore, it makes it impossible for you to have anything hosted unless it has been pre-approved as not violating copyright, which would be expensive and error-prone, making it at best legally endangering for any but the largest media and organizations since if anything is found to be violating copyright than the host of such content become directly liable.

     Article 13 presumes guilt and requires one to prove innocence, which is far beyond the means of most. Remind me again who won WWII?

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