Tag: oppression

Senate introduces its version of Trumpcare

9:36 am

Failure theater: The Senate today introduced its version of an Obamacare replacement, and proved once again that the Republican leadership in Congress has no interest in repealing Obamacare and the parts of that law that make it economically unsustainable.

The most popular provisions of Obamacare are kept in place in the bill, including language allowing children to stay on a parent’s health insurance plan until age 26 and preserving coverage for people with pre-existing illnesses.

The bill does repeal some of Obamacare, but without freeing the insurance company from the requirement to accept anyone, whether they are sick or not, makes it impossible for the entire health insurance business to make any profit. It also does not appear that this bill frees insurance companies to offer any kind of insurance they wish, including the popular and less expensive catastrophic insurance plans that Obamacare banned.

The problem here is that the Republican leadership is timid. They fear the squealing of pigs, and thus attempt to come up with plans that will please those pigs. The result? A mish-mosh that no one likes and that solves nothing.

Update: The Senate’s own freedom caucus speaks: Senators Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul reject Senate bill, as written.

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A congressman acts to limit competition in solid rocket motor production

9:08 am

We’re here to help you! Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-California) in March introduced a new bill that requires U.S. companies building solid rocket motors to purchase the oxidizer from within the U.S.

That oxidizer, ammonium perchlorate, is only available from one Utah company, a company that also happens to belong to a member of the Washington establishment.

Some in industry are arguing the legislation is an earmark to help a now struggling business — American Pacific, owned by the Huntsmans of Utah — with political ties to the Trump administration. Jon Huntsman, former two-time Republican presidential candidate, is tapped to be the next ambassador to Russia.

And if the legislation passes as part of the fiscal year National Defense Authorization Act, the business would be propped up, but potentially at the expense of a larger solid rocket motor industry and the U.S. government, sources interviewed by Defense News argued.

Essentially, this bill would give Jon Huntsman’s company a monopoly and would likely increase the cost of making solid rocket motors.

The article is very detailed. While on the surface it sure looks like a case of crony capitalism, it is a bit more complicated. Demand for ammonium perchlorate has dropped since the shuttle was retired, causing Huntsman’s company to struggle. While it could be argued that this bill is an effort to save this company as well as encourage new American companies to form, there are many factors described in the article that suggest this isn’t going to happen, including this tidbit:

The other factor is the price for [ammonium perchlorate] will improve naturally when the government has more demand in roughly six years when NASA’s Space Launch System kicks off in full and the nuclear missile fleet is refreshed, so a solution that is more temporary could be in order, several sources suggest.

Since it is doubtful SLS will ever “kick off in full,” it is unlikely that demand for solid rocket motor oxidizer will ever rise as predicted. A better solution would be for Congress to mind its own business and let the market function normally. There are other companies in Europe providing this oxidizer, and the competition would force Huntsman’s company (as well as other new American companies) to innovate to stay competitive.

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Trump administration continues to clean house at EPA

9:14 am

The Trump administration this week announced that it will not renew the appointment of 38 scientists to a key EPA science panel.

All board members whose three-year appointments expire in August will not get renewals, Robert Kavlock, acting head of EPA’s Office of Research and Development, said in the email, which was obtained by E&E News.

Because of the need to reconstitute the board, EPA is also canceling all subcommittee meetings planned for late summer and fall, Kavlock said. “We are hopeful that an updated BOSC Executive Committee and the five subcommittees can resume their work in 2018 and continue providing ORD with thoughtful recommendations and comments,” he wrote in urging departing members to reapply.

As the article notes, some Democratic pigs are squealing over this, but the Trump administration is only following the law. And considering how political and anti-business the EPA has become in recent years, a full review of all committee members seems entirely appropriate and reasonable.

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British government to loosen regulations on space

9:34 am

The British government is about to propose new regulations on space to allow the operation of commercial spaceports while establishing a licensing system for the launch companies that will fly from those spaceports.

These new regulations are likely the legislation the government announced it was preparing back in February. I suspect they are, like other recent legislative proposals, trying to fit the square peg of private enterprise into the round hole of the Outer Space Treaty.

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Illinois facing budget collapse

11:56 am

Leftist governance: Having now gone three years without an official budget and having expenses exceeding revenues by large amounts on a monthly basis, Illinois now faces a budget collapse.

A mix of state law, court orders and pressure from credit rating agencies requires some items be paid first. Those include debt and pension payments, state worker paychecks and some school funding. Mendoza says a recent court order regarding money owed for Medicaid bills means mandated payments will eat up 100 percent of Illinois’ monthly revenue.

There would be no money left for so-called “discretionary” spending – a category that in Illinois includes school buses, domestic violence shelters and some ambulance services

More here. Essentially, this state, run for decades by Democrats (and Republican helpers) and their union buddies, has unfunded pension liabilities that make it impossible to pay its real bills. I saw this happen in New York City in the 1970s, after almost a century of one-party Democratic rule. Watch it happen again here, as well as in California and several other radicalized blue states. They have decided to go full socialist, and as such are guaranteed societal failure.

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It’s the hate, not the violence

1:50 pm

The last few days have probably been the ugliest I have ever seen in American culture. Not only was an attempt made to commit mass murder against a group of Republican elected officials, the response from too many mainstream Democrats has generally been tone deaf and even supportive of the violence. Worse, the violence appears to be on-going, with no sign of relief.

My list is hardly complete. The stories above are only a small sampling of the ugly stuff I have read since the shooting on June 14. The best I have seen from some Democrats is a hint that maybe they have let their rhetoric get out of hand, but even here they often backtrack to blame Republicans and only Republicans for the shooting.

Are Republicans innocent here? No. The coarseness of language and increasing anger I have seen from both sides in the past six months has been appalling. Rather than respond strongly but intelligently and with civility, too many Republicans have decided they can be as harsh and as coarse and as vicious as the Democrats.

Nonetheless, the bulk of the coarseness and viciousness and violence falls mainly to the Democratic and liberal side of the political spectrum. You need only scan this list of attacks against conservatives since in the past year, many of which I have noted here on Behind the Black. The left has been getting increasingly violent, with no protest by the left’s leaders in the Democratic Party. Even an attempted mass murder seems insufficient to cause much horror or shame in Democratic and leftwing circles.

The key to all this however is the single word I have highlighted in the fourth headline link above. That word is “hate.” What is motivating all of this violence and ugliness is hate, a blind irrational emotion that now prevents these people from looking at reality coolly. Trump is “evil.” He is a “nazi.” He is an “anti-Semite.” He is “racist.” He wants to “kill sick people.”

None of this is true. Trump is surely not the most ideal person to be our president at this moment of time, but he is also not any of the terrible things the left is accusing him of being.

Facts and rational thought however no longer matter to the left. They hate, and their hatred can now be used to justify almost any act, including an attempt at mass murder. This is beyond the pale, and it is turning the left into everything it has said it opposes for the past century: bigoted, hateful, violent, and oppressive. They had better cool their minds down a bit or else they will find themselves in the middle of hellstorm, targets themselves, with no way to control it.

One more thought. Right after the Tucson attack on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011, I noted the disgusting inflammatory language of the left. They demanded civility from conservatives, while simultaneous calling for their murder. I said then that they had better tone down their rhetoric or face a firestorm that they themselves might not survive.

This behavior must stop. Violent and angry rhetoric can and will cause violence. And it probably has, considering the fact that a large number of the random violent acts in recent years have actually been committed by deranged individuals with liberal, not conservative, leanings. This is not to say that I blame the left for this violence, but that the left has as much of a responsibility as the right to think carefully about what it says, before it says it. Otherwise, they might find that they have made their less rational followers more angry than they ever imagined, or can control.

Or as Michael York says to his Nazi friend at the end of this scene from the 1972 movie, Cabaret. “You still think you can control them?”

We are now six and a half years later, and instead of toning down their rhetoric, the left has escalated it to violence and murder. They have embraced their hate, and it is making them insane.

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Senate to hold third hearing on commercial space

9:17 am

The Senate next week will hold the third in a series of hearings, organized by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), to examine the state of the present partnership between the government and the private sector.

Like the previous hearings, the witnesses cover a wide range, though most this time represent companies in the private sector (including Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX). It appears that what Cruz is doing is using these hearings to get as much feedback from as many private companies as possible, so that their preferences will dominate any decisions Congress eventually makes.

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More news from fascist Evergreen State College

10:43 am

The mob riots at Evergreen State College in Washington state have unveiled a number of new facts about that publicly funded leftwing indoctrination mill:

The source of the documents in the first link said this, “I feel compelled to come forward with evidence that the school has allowed student groups (at best) or domestic terrorists (at worse) to indoctrinate freshman into their extremist ideology,” The article also gives a sense about the distribution of these documents and the violent, fascist, leftwing, and anti-American philosophy they promote across many campuses.

From the second article is this tidbit: “Evergreen employees have not given a single dollar to a Republican congressional candidate since 2012.” Since the administration of Evergreen has also been very supportive of the leftist mob that threatened anyone who disagreed with them with violence, the political donations give a nice sense of where the Democratic Party is going.

Finally, one more story today about this fascist university: Evergreen State professor: ‘I have no way of knowing whether it’s safe for me to return’

Durning a recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Tonight on Fox News, Professor Bret Weinstien claims that “the college has never acknowledged the danger they put us in,” and that, as a result, “I have no way of knowing whether it’s safe for me to return.”

“Their assurances that it is safe don’t mean anything,” Weinstein said, adding: “Not that they’ve offered them.”

Weinstein noted that he had received “tremendous support” from outside Evergreen State, and “quite a bit of support, privately,” from within the school. Publicly, however, “only one other professor” at Evergreen has come forward to support Weinstein.

But other than that, it’s a great place to send your kids to be educated.

Update: One more story from Evergreen: Students accuse Weinstein of hiding behind Jewishness

What a cesspool of bigotry.

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How NIMH policy effects research

8:24 am

The uncertainty of science: A policy change in how the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awards grants during the Obama administration has had a profound influence on the research of mental-health in the United States.

An analysis by Nature suggests that the number of clinical trials funded by the NIMH dropped by 45% between 2009 and 2015. This coincides with the agency’s launch, in 2011, of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) — a framework for research on the mechanisms of mental illness. The NIMH’s roll-out of RDoC included asking researchers to focus more on the biological bases of behaviour — such as brain circuitry and genetics — than on the broader symptoms that clinicians typically use to define and classify mental illness.

The NIMH’s embrace of fundamental research has infuriated many clinical researchers, who see it as an attempt to invalidate their methods — and say that there is scant evidence to support the idea that using RDoC will lead to greater insight or better treatments for mental illness. Many of these researchers also note that NIMH funding for clinical trials has declined steadily over the past decade, adding to the perception that the agency now favours research that uses the RDoC framework.

Read the article. I have no idea if the change in NIMH policy is a good or bad thing. What disturbs me however is the federal government’s overall top-down control over mental-health research. Rather than obtain funding from many different sources — which would allow for the greatest flexibility and the most creativity — this research field appears to depend almost entirely on NIMH grants. Thus, the particular preferences of that agency dictates the nature of the research, whether or not its preferences are right.

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Using math to protect the Washington power structure

8:58 pm

What could possible go wrong? A group of mathematicians have written software designed to prevent the gerrymandering of congressional districts, and are offering that software as a weapon for the courts to force states to revise the districts, even though those districts were created by fairly elected state legislatures.

Leaning back in his chair, Jonathan Mattingly swings his legs up onto his desk, presses a key on his laptop and changes the results of the 2012 elections in North Carolina. On the screen, flickering lines and dots outline a map of the state’s 13 congressional districts, each of which chooses one person to send to the US House of Representatives. By tweaking the borders of those election districts, but not changing a single vote, Mattingly’s maps show candidates from the Democratic Party winning six, seven or even eight seats in the race. In reality, they won only four — despite earning a majority of votes overall.

Mattingly’s election simulations can’t rewrite history, but he hopes they will help to support democracy in the future — in his state and the nation as a whole. The mathematician, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has designed an algorithm that pumps out random alternative versions of the state’s election maps — he’s created more than 24,000 so far — as part of an attempt to quantify the extent and impact of gerrymandering: when voting districts are drawn to favour or disfavour certain candidates or political parties.

There are numerous problems here, all of which center on my basic disbelief in the non-partisan objectivity of these scientists and their work.

First, note the first example used. Mattingly proudly shows how his software demonstrates that Democrats could have won more districts in North Carolina. In fact, if you read the article, he claims that the district revisions produced by his software (producing more victorious Democrats) creates fairer districts than the districts created by the state’s fairly elected Republican legislature. Moreover, it was the Republican redistricting that prompted this mathematician to write the software.

Funny how he never felt compelled to do this when it was Democrats controlling the legislatures and gerrymandering the congressional districts to their benefit.

Second, he has offered this software to the courts as evidence to overrule the redistricting done by fairly elected legislatures. In other words, this software will be used to justify letting unelected experts decide how congressional districts should be shaped, not elected officials picked by voters.

Third, note who has expressed interest in using this mathematician as a witness to win its lawsuits:
» Read more

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Imans in UK refuse to say prayers for terrorists

4:24 pm

It is about time: More than 130 Muslim religious leaders in the United Kingdom are refusing to perform funeral rites for the terrorists who attacked people this past Saturday on London Bridge.

The decision by the Muslim leaders was seen as an “unprecedented” move because the funeral ritual is typically performed on a deceased Muslim no matter the person’s past actions. The group of religious leaders have urged others to join them in declining to pray for the dead killers.

“We, as Muslim imams and religious leaders, condemn the recent terror attacks in Manchester and London in the strongest terms possible,” the Muslim leaders said in a statement. “Coming from a range of backgrounds, and from across the U.K.; feeling the pain the rest of the nation feels, we have come together to express our shock and utter disgust at these cold-blooded murders. We are deeply hurt that a spate of terror attacks have been committed in our country once more by murderers who seek to gain religious legitimacy for their actions. We seek to clarify that their reprehensible actions have neither legitimacy nor our sympathy.”

So, does this mean they had no problems with performing rites for the terrorists of earlier attacks, such as at Westminster earlier this year and the July 7 attacks several years ago? Meh.

I must say that though this is the right response on their part, I am not very impressed. For more that two decades the Islamic community in the west has sat on its hands, making believe they have nothing to do with Islamic terrorism, or quietly supporting it by non-action. They are suddenly realizing now that people are losing patience with them, and that their safe havens in the west are now increasingly threatened. Most politicians might still be mouthing platitudes of “We have to all get along,” but the public is increasingly angry and demanding action, even if it means kicking every Islamic practitioner back to the Middle East.

Thus, though I do not like attacking people with such broad strokes, I can understand why it is happening. And the Muslim community has no one to blame but themselves.

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Fascism at Emerson College

9:22 am

Link here. This includes threats of violence, blacklisting, and bad grades for conservative students. One student has left the school after one year because of the harassment.

The worse aspect of this however is that most of the ill-treatment is coming from students. While the administration simply looks the other way, these future leaders of our society harass, oppress, and attack a dissenting minority, merely because of their opinions.

Even so, the very fact that the administration seems to care so little about reigning in this fascist behavior should be a reason for parents and college-bound students to consider attending a different college. As the student who is fleeing the school noted in the second link above:

She’s said she feels disappointed with [Emerson President Lee] Pelton’s response to her situation and a lack of serious consequences for the students involved. “When it comes to the bigger picture, is the school responding well? No. Not really. They don’t feel the need to stand up for us, because they aren’t too many of us,” she said.

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Another proposal for dealing with the Outer Space Treaty

10:02 pm

Link here. The author has made an interesting analysis of my earlier essay on this subject, and come up with what I think is a very intriguing and most encouraging idea:

Government establishes a legal framework for enforcing law. So, rather than allow nations to make claims of territory, let us instead allow private enterprises to go to the Moon or elsewhere, stake a claim, and then, to establish a legal framework for resolving any disputes that arise, choose the government under whose legal jurisdiction their claim will reside. No governments would appropriate territory. They would merely be lending their courts to render judgments on legal disputes arising outside their territories. That would seem to satisfy Article 2. This scheme would not require a new Treaty but could probably be implemented via United Nations resolutions. [emphasis in original]

I actually like this, as it puts the power in the hands of the citizens or companies, allowing them to pick the nation to which they wish to align.

What I find most encouraging however is that the subject of the Outer Space Treaty is now becoming a major issue worth discussing, by many others. I have my ideas, others have theirs. Either way, the issues and weaknesses of the treaty are now being debated, and people are proposing solutions. In the fifty years since the treaty was signed it has previously been impossible to generate this much discussion on this issue. (Believe me, I have tried.) That others are now responding and proposing alternative approaches means that maybe the time has finally arrived where this problem will be dealt with.

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Hoax “penis as concept” paper finally retracted

11:19 pm

It only took ten days, but the journal Cogent Social Sciences has finally retracted the hoax paper it published entitled “The conceptual penis as a social construct.”

In retracting the paper, the journal merely stated, “This article has been retracted by the publisher. For more information please see the statement on this article.”

That statement was filled with a lot of excuses and platitudes about “working closely with the academic editorial teams of all our journals to review our processes,” but little apparent recognition that the hoax demonstrated without question that quality of the gender studies field is simply crap. In fact, it appears the goal of their reviews isn’t to question the quality of the academic research, but to establish policies that will prevent another hoax. As far as they are concerned, it is okay to publish this exact same junk, as long as its authors sincerely believe it to be true.

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Coalition of leftwing states and cities to uphold Paris climate treaty

11:12 am

The squealing of pigs: A coalition of leftwing states and cities has formed to uphold the Paris climate treaty from which President Trump has withdrawn.

Thirty cities, three states, more than 80 university presidents, and more than 100 companies are part of a growing group intending to uphold the Paris Agreement, the climate-change accord that President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the US would be exiting.

The group is being organized by the billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg.

The coalition plans to submit a plan to the United Nations that commits to greenhouse-gas limits set in the Paris Agreement, according to The New York Times. It is negotiating with the UN to form its own National Determined Contribution — a set of emissions standards for each participating nation under the Paris Agreement — that is accepted alongside the other countries in the accord.

There is one big problem with this effort. It is plainly forbidden by the U.S. Constitution, which states in Article 1, section 10 that “No state shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation. … No state shall, without the consent of Congress, … enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power.”

But then, I am not surprised. The left, led today by the Democratic Party, has shown itself in recent years to either be completely ignorant of some basic Constitutional laws, or eagerly willing to defy or ignore them.

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California’s bankrupt house industry, crippled by government

9:20 am

Link here. I can’t quote anything because I’d have to quote the entire article, filled as it is with endless nuggets describing how California’s liberal government policies have made its housing industry unaffordable and dysfunctional. Worse, the solutions proposed by that state’s legislature appear generally to be more of the same, higher taxes, more regulation, and increased restrictions on where and when anyone can build.

As the first commenter at the link says, “Think the Soviet Union.” For California’s future I think Venezuela.

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California passes single payer health plan, without a way to pay for it

10:27 pm

Running out of other people’s money: The state senate of California today passed a single payer health plan, essentially proposing to take over the health industry in that state.

It is estimated that the proposal will cost California $400 billion per year, which is twice more than three times that state’s annual budget. A Massachusetts study claims the government health plan can be paid for by adding additional taxes, including 15% payroll tax, but I am exceedingly skeptical. When have any of these kinds of studies ever correctly predicted the true cost of a government program? In truth, never. The cost is always higher than predicted, and the revenues raked in by taxes always less.

The article at the second link about the study has this interesting tidbit about the typical California voter:

The first-ever question to Californians on the topic by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that the vast majority of state residents were in favor of a universal, government-run health care system — as long as it doesn’t raise their taxes. But the prospect of paying the government for health care through new taxes caused support for the proposal to fall from 65 percent to 42 percent.

Another poll, commissioned by the nurses’ union, found that 70 percent of Californians were in favor of a universal, single-payer health care system — a percentage that dropped to 58 percent after those surveyed heard arguments from the opposition about the cost.

In other words, Californians want this stuff given to them, for free. They are living in a fantasy world, which might explain the behavior of their government, dominated by pie-in-the-sky Democrats.

Despite this, I expect California to pass this bill, and then find they can’t pay for it. They will then demand that the U.S. government bail them out.

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Did the Pentagon give ULA $27.4 million for work already done?

5:32 pm

Corruption: It appears that a Department of Defense $27.4 million contract awarded to ULA on May 16 to develop new avionics for its rockets was for work already completed by the company.

The government award to ULA reinforces the notion that, traditionally in aerospace, the government pays for rocket upgrades. But it is also curious because of its timing—for work to be completed two years from now. Based upon information in an article written by two ULA engineers and published in Advances in the Astronautical Sciences Guidance, Navigation and Control, the avionics system has already been upgraded. Moreover, the February 5, 2016 launch of a GPS satellite for the Air Force marked the first launch of the common avionics system.

“The launch of GPS IIF-12 in February 2016 represents the culmination of several years of development work to update avionics hardware and flight software as well as simulation and test environment tools,” the research article states. “Common avionics addresses the challenge of parts obsolescence any program with the longevity of (this one) must face. ULA has taken advantage of this opportunity to design and produce a more affordable solution for vehicle control that will also expand the capability of our launcher fleet.”

A call into the Air Force for an explanation resulted in no response at all.

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15 absurd over-reactions to Trump’s withdrawal from climate treaty

4:49 pm

Link here. Though Trump’s rejection of the climate deal is only tangentially related to the federal budget, it definitely has caused a lot of pigs to squeal. I especially like #13 from the leftwing American Civil Liberties Union, because it encompasses every absurd aspect of the modern left’s methods of debate:

Pulling out of the Paris Agreement would be a massive step back for racial justice, and an assault on communities of color across the U.S. — ACLU National (@ACLU) June 1, 2017

Read them all. And remember that these reactions came only an hour or so after Trump made his announcement. Expect even more silliness from the left in the days to come.

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Trump exits Paris climate agreement

1:39 pm

As he had promised during the campaign, President Trump today announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate treaty that Obama had agreed to (but was never ratified by the Senate).

More here.

Despite Trump’s moderate liberal leanings on many issues (budgets, healthcare), it does appear that when it comes to the environmental movement’s corruption of science and overuse of regulation he is quite willing to do things that will upset the elitist ruling class that has done such a bad job of ruling for the past two decades.

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Trump to keep U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv

9:08 am

President Trump today signed a waiver allowing him to keep the U.S. Israeli embassy in Tel Aviv, rather than moving to Jerusalem as he promised repeatedly on the campaign trail.

This is not the most important political story of the day, but it illustrates what we can expect from Trump. In the end, he backs down under pressure from the Washington elitist community. For example, even though his proposed federal budget suggested a willingness to cut the deficit and eliminate whole agencies, I have doubts he will succeed in getting Congress to agree to any of those cuts.

This is also why I have not yet posted on the various rumors claiming that he plans to exit the Paris climate treaty. Until I actually see him do it, I do not believe it.

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Washington State legislators move to defund Evergreen State College

10:36 am

Couldn’t happen soon enough! Republican elected officials plan to introduce legislation this week that would strip funding from Evergreen State College, where mobs of leftist demonstrators have taken over the campus and threatened anyone who disagrees with them with violence, all with the tacit approval of the college’s administration.

The bill, spearheaded by Republican State Representative Matt Manweller, will be introduced alongside a letter to the state Human Rights Commission requesting an investigation into potential civil rights violations on campus surrounding the incident. Manweller and his colleagues are also discussing the possibility of revoking $24,000,000 in annual funding to Evergreen State College, but pledge that all students on campus will remain eligible for full financial aid from the state, should the bill become law. …

Manweller made clear that he places the blame for Evergreen’s current situation squarely on the shoulders of administrators, arguing that they created the conditions for controversy through their unquestioning embrace of social justice and failure to condemn the excesses of student protesters. “It is incredibly frightening that the administration at Evergreen would tacitly support Brown-shirt tactics we have not seen since 1930s Germany. That they would allow students to threaten professors and other students based on their race is simply horrifying,” Manweller continued. “The administration bears direct responsibility for this situation. They hired the professors who have elevated the pseudo-science of ‘social justice’ to a religious movement. Now all dissent is crushed by threats of violence or actual violence.”

Considering that the state legislature in Washington is split, with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans the Senate, I suspect that it will be difficult to get the funding stripped. However, if they do it will be a sign that we might have finally begun to turn a corner.

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Academic invents new non-oppressive physics to protect minorities

10:10 am

This paper is not a prank: A feminist gender studies academic from the University of Arizona has invented a theory of “intersectional quantum physics” to fight the oppression of Newtonian physics.

Whitney Stark argues in support of “combining intersectionality and quantum physics” to better understand “marginalized people” and to create “safer spaces” for them, in the latest issue of The Minnesota Review. Because traditional quantum physics theory has influenced humanity’s understanding of the world, it has also helped lend credence to the ongoing regime of racism, sexism and classism that hurts minorities, Stark writes in “Assembled Bodies: Reconfiguring Quantum Identities.”

What is also important is that this college researcher, who also has an appointment in the culture and gender studies department at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, got her paper published in a journal published by Duke University Press. Below is her full abstract. I dare you to tell me what it means.

In this semimanifesto, I approach how understandings of quantum physics and cyborgian bodies can (or always already do) ally with feminist anti-oppression practices long in use. The idea of the body (whether biological, social, or of work) is not stagnant, and new materialist feminisms help to recognize how multiple phenomena work together to behave in what can become legible at any given moment as a body. By utilizing the materiality of conceptions about connectivity often thought to be merely theoretical, by taking a critical look at the noncentralized and multiple movements of quantum physics, and by dehierarchizing the necessity of linear bodies through time, it becomes possible to reconfigure structures of value, longevity, and subjectivity in ways explicitly aligned with anti-oppression practices and identity politics. Combining intersectionality and quantum physics can provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people, for enabling apparatuses that allow for new possibilities of safer spaces, and for practices of accountability.

I also dare you to build a rocket using this new physics. I also wonder if anyone can tell the difference between this legitimate paper and this fake one.

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North Korea fires another ballistic missile

6:11 pm

North Korea today conducted its ninth ballistic missile test this year, all of which have been in violation of UN sanctions.

The missile, presumed to be a Scud type, was launched eastward from the vicinity of Wonsan, Gangwon Province, at around 5:39 a.m., according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). “The flight distance is around 450 kilometers,” it said.

As a Scud, the missile would likely not have the capability of carrying a heavy payload, like a nuclear bomb. Nonetheless, with each test North Korea gains knowledge on how to do exactly that.

For a detailed look at the people building North Korea’s missile program see this article from yesterday: Kim’s rocket stars – The trio behind North Korea’s missile program

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Dog sits on editorial board of seven medical journals

4:16 pm

An Australian professor wondered if he could get his dog Ollie picked to be on the editorial board of a number of medical journals, and was astonished to discover seven who agreed without reservations.

Ollie’s owner is Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy at Curtin University in Perth. Ollie likes to watch Mike working on his computer, and Mike gets a lot of emails from predatory journals. Wondering just how low these journals would go, he put together a curriculum vitae for his dog – detailing research interests such as “the benefits of abdominal massage for medium-sized canines” – and sent it off to a number of these journals, asking for a spot on their editorial boards.

Remarkably, the vast majority accepted Ollie without demur, and her name now adorns several journal websites. Ollie is a trailblazer, Professor Daube says, being the first dog ever to get on the editorial board of a journal.

“What makes it even more bizarre is that one of these journals has actually asked Ollie to review an article. It’s entitled “Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumours and their management.” Some poor soul has actually written an article on this theme in good faith, and the journal has sent it to a dog to review.”

The article provides a nice look at the problems facing the modern peer review journal field.

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Son of Democrat VP candidate charged for attacking pro-Trump demonstrators

11:06 am

The civility of Democrats: The son of Democrat vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine has been arrested and criminally charged for his participation in violent attacks against pro-Trump demonstrators at the Minnesota state capital on March 4.

To get a flavor of this civility, read this from the police reports:

During the rally, protesters arrived at the Capitol. Most were peaceful but some (more than 10) were wearing face and head coverings, and wearing goggles. Rally participants tried to physically block the stairs leading to the rotunda where the rally was taking place. Protesters pushed and shoved trying to get down the stairs, then began employing smoke bombs, tear gas (aka mace), and fireworks. Several people, identified in police reports, had to be treated by paramedics due to the effects of tear gas.”

A Minnesota State Trooper observing the crowd from the west staircase saw Bueckert spray several people with tear gas. Bueckert then ran up the stairs to the second floor. About 30 seconds later, the trooper saw Bueckert “run back down the stairs, pushing through the crowd and punching people at the bottom of the stairs.” The trooper grabbed Bueckert and placed him under arrest. Bueckert resisted the arrest and the trooper later discovered he suffered a broken thumb from the struggle.

It appears that Kaine’s son was one of the 10 wearing masks, and tried to flee when police moved in.

Note that though I have not posted anything about the Republican candidate in Montana who attacked a reporter, I do not condone that candidate’s behavior either. The reporter might have been rude and trespassing, but violence as a response is inappropriate. That such violence is beginning to be acceptable to both sides is another sign that civilization is dying and that we are heading for a new dark age.

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Construction begins on the European Extremely Large Telescope

10:47 am

On Friday the European Southern Observatory broke ground in Chile on the construction of the European Extemely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which when finished in 2024 will be the largest ground-based telescope in the world.

The mirror will be 39 meters across.

Meanwhile, construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope remains stalled. It was originally supposed to be operating before E-ELT, but that is becoming increasingly doubtful. Its builders can’t get Hawaii to approve a building permit, and they haven’t yet been willing to admit that they will never get permission to build there.

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Connecticut: sinking in debt with a fleeing population

4:40 pm

Running out of other people’s money: Connecticut, run for years by Democrats, is sinking in debt with a population that is shrinking as people flee.

The administration of Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat who has been in office since 2011, projects a budget deficit of more than $5 billion over the next two years, thanks to generous pension benefits and the burden of servicing its big debt, plus falling tax revenue due to the exodus of large employers and residents reaching retirement age.

Its budget woes, as well as concerns that they will be repeated year after year, helped lead General Electric in 2015 to consider moving its headquarters out of the state. Last year, it did exactly that.

The state’s population is falling: Its net domestic out-migration was nearly 30,000 from 2015 to 2016. In 2016, it lost slightly more than 8,000 people, leaving its population at 3.6 million. Indeed, recent national moving company surveys underscore the trend, showing more people leaving Connecticut than moving in. In 2016, the state also saw a population decline for the third consecutive year, according to Census Bureau estimates.

One of the companies, United Van Lines, reported that of all their Connecticut customers, 60 percent were leaving compared to 40 percent who were moving there. Only three other states had higher rates of people moving out – New York, New Jersey and Illinois. One out of five of those leaving said they were retiring. [emphasis mine]

Isn’t it interesting that the four states with the most people leaving are four states that have been largely run by Democrats for decades. And in those cases where Republicans have been in charge, they have taken the moderate go-along-to-get-along approach, essentially rubber-stamping the high spending and high tax agenda of the Democrats that dominate the political region.

Unfortunately, it is this agenda that dominates Washington and the federal government, and the Republican leadership there seems quite willing to do the same as the moderate Republicans in this states. Worse, we don’t have another country we can escape to.

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California single-payer $400 billion healthcare plan approved by state committee with no funding

3:01 pm

Running out of other people’s money: A California legislative committee yesterday approved a single-payer state healthcare plan that is estimated to cost $400 billion, twice the state’s entire annual budget, without indicating how they intend to pay for it.

Details, details! Who cares about how one pays for an entitlement program? The point is to pass it, and let your great-granchildren figure it out. In this case, however, the problem is so large that it’s impossible to do without the funding in place first, because of the need to pay providers for goods and services. California hardly has an extra $200 billion laying around, and even if it did, it would need to shore up its collapsing pension system first. The state is also on the hook for a $100 billion high-speed rail system whose funding is still unclear. Democrats don’t have much idea about how to pay for their current priorities, let alone their seizure of the health-care sector. [emphasis in original]

The leftists in California want to secede from the U.S. Maybe we should let them, since that state is about to go bankrupt and I am sure most Americans in the remain 49 states don’t wish to stuck with the bill.

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