National Review has a new "feature." It tells me my ad blocker is preventing it from functioning properly. Yes. I use one. So I turn it off. Then I get the same message. Not impressed.
It tells me to login. But doesn't show a login screen!
So because it remembers that the ad blocker once blocked it won't allow me to log in. I paid $50 a year for this.
This analysis of the unholy alliance of the left and Muslim exremists by Charles Lipson of U of Chicago is very good. But the defense of Western civilization toward the end is outstanding. Especially three paragraphs toward the end that highlight the huge difference western/Christian values made in...
1) Lifting mankind out of poverty was due to Western (Christian) values and actions.
The idea that the West is responsible for the world’s poverty has a [small] core of truthful criticism next to a mountain of lies. One doesn’t have to apologize for colonialism to note that almost everyone on planet Earth lived in grinding poverty until the cumulative effects of industrialization began to take hold after 1800. That process began in northwestern Europe and gradually spread across the world, lifting income, health, diet, and life expectancy. Where it failed was in countries racked by civil unrest or governed by rapacious regimes that didn’t provide public order or secure property rights and stole the revenues needed to provide essential public goods.
As for human liberation, no societies voluntarily ended human bondage [slavery] until the West did it, mostly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Britain spent enormous sums stationing its navy off the African coast to prevent the transshipment of slaves, which had been captured and sold by local tribes. Britain gained nothing financially from that effort; it did it for moral reasons. In America, “free states” in the North and Midwest abolished slavery well before the Civil War. The war itself ended slavery, though blacks were still oppressed for another century by Jim Crow laws (in the South) and segregation (everywhere). Those practices were always inconsistent with the Western ideal of human equality and were finally outlawed in the mid-1960s by the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
It’s high time Americans went beyond revulsion and defended their basic, liberal ideals and the constitutional democracy founded upon them. We don’t have to accept the mantle of “oppressors” because of events that happened long before we were born, for which we are not responsible, and from which we never profited. We don’t have to accept the damning slur that our success is due to “privilege” rather than hard work, time-tested values, and a good education. The greatest “privilege” is not inherited wealth or status. It is being raised in a stable home by loving parents, living in an orderly community, and growing up in a country where each of us is free to pursue our own goals and define ourselves as we choose.
Traitor king - Edward VII told Germans where France's defenses were weak. Over 100,000 British soldiers died as a result. This was after he abdicated - gave up - his throne and was again Duke of Windsor.
Who can imagine that a king - an ex-king - would knowingly cause the deaths of his subjects?
“If they had known that a member of the Royal Family had helped to supply information that led to that rout, to Dunkirk, that led to that evacuation, it would have been utterly galling.”
... The military secrets given to the Nazis by Britain’s former King are seen as being instrumental to Germany’s invasion of France.
Dr Lownie explained: “When the attack comes, it is the very weak spots that the Duke has identified, which the Germans actually attack.”
This was disclosed in 2022 in a British TV show.
I wonder who left cocaine in the White House. Secret Service tracked down grandmas in Kansas who spent 5 minutes in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. But they say they won't be able to find who did it. Yeah, sure. Tough assignment.
Indeed they are too busy on the Jan. 6 investigation to look into unimportant things like crimes committed in Joe Biden's White House.
Am I the only person on crutches? In three weeks on crutches I have only seen one other person - in the doctor’s office - on crutches. It’s not fair (whining).
Three weeks ago on 6/10 I fell on my injured hip (more of the history below) with all my 175 lbs. Oh, my. I was a half block from home and had to be picked up by car; I couldn’t walk. An hour plus in urgent care and (my blood pressure was 70/something) 5 1/2 in the ER. “Nothing broken; all the hardware is in the right place. It’s soft tissue damage and will (or should?) heal. My goal was to be mowing the lawn in a week. Ha!
The trip to doctor 10 days later was the one-year check on my knee replacement (pretty good) and I show up on crutches!
Yesterday after 19 days I was starting to go around the house using one crutch, which means 90% weight bearing and occasionally 100%. Two crutches when going places. And I am a semi invalid - long naps. But even with that progress my hip still says “uncomfortable" with every step!!. A few more days to walking. Current goal: mowing the lawn in a week.
History: In 2008 I fell riding my bicycle down a steep hill in the rain a few blocks east of Bill Gates’s office in Redmond (before he retired). I refused help from passersby, but it took me a few minutes to move my butt 3 feet to the curb so I accepted a ride to my car. Next to Evergreen Hospital. But when they saw I had smashed the acetabular (hip socket) they sent me to Harborview Hospital in Seattle. Waited a day in traction. 6-hour surgery. 6 days in the hospital. We hired a cabulance to get me home (“but your insurance won’t pay for it”). Then 7 days without leaving home. I was so weak that they didn’t put me on crutches, but I used a walker as crutches. I have never seen another person doing that. The walker is an amazing combination of light and strong, but it’s not designed to carry one’s weight. (I got excellent care at Harborview.)
Three months off work and 3 months on crutches, non-weight-bearing. When I returned to work I worked in the morning and slept in the afternoon. By Christmas that part-time schedule cost me 200 hours of work at my expense. After 5 months I quit making progress; surgeon didn’t believe me on my next check, but on the one after that he showed my on the X-ray that my injured side was 3/8 inch shorter. After 10 months to Valley General in Renton for full hip replacement. Another month off work and 2 months on crutches again. But this time I was 50% weight-bearing. It’s a big difference to be able to stand with weight evenly divided instead of the strong leg having to do all the work. Using crutches after hip replacement is unusual. It was because they did a bone graft. Another: Why didn’t they tell me before!?
Three months after the second surgery I gave up the cane and walked on my own. Maybe a month after that I realized that no one was noticing how I walked. I had no limp; didn’t expect that. That was a big victory!
I only worked another 6 months until I retired. Did no business trips those 6 months versus several per year. At that point Boeing had moved so much work to California that meetings that used to be a 15-mile drive became a 2-day trip.
For the 14 years since I have kept walking every day. I am slower and go at my own pace but am a little jealous of people who obviously are on longer walks. And I love to walk beaches which always are uneven and require more energy. Bonus: I saw three bald eagles across the street this morning. Two landed in a tree 200 feet away, but I failed to get a pic.
Gov. Jay Inslee logic: Shut down electric power plants at the same time you require more use of electricity.
He is rejoicing the shut down of the state's last coal-fired power plant in Centralia, WA in 2025. How will Puget Sound Energy cope? It gets 14.5% of its electricty from Centralia. 2025 is not far away. What will they do? They say they are studying options in Seattle Times 5/30/2023. (PSE provides electricity to 1.1 million customers - households and businesses - in Western Washington.)
So in the future we will have less electricity from coal. Less electricity from natural gas. Less from hydroelectric dams. Gov. Jay also wants to tear down four dams on the Snake River that provide hydroelectric power. Less electricity.
You say: solar and wind will provide more than enough. But the sun doesn't shine at night. And the wind? On and off. And the dream of batteries storing energy and providing it at night is a dream. For all the talk no one has done this at the scale required. Oh, Germany has some batteries... Yes, building toward 1 per cent of the load (and for several days of outage). For all their talk the UK is in the same situation. More on this below.
So we need power plants that can run at any time, not dependent on sunlight or the wind, as back up to solar and wind.
The next step by Jay Inslee logic is to require stopping use of gasoline, natural gas, biomass and any source that can emit CO2. And replace them by electricity - of which there will be less.
Electric cars required, not gasoline-powered. Cooking by natural gas: make it illegal. Heating by natural gas? No. Must be electric.
Uh... Gov. Jay, how will you keep the lights on and the cars running?
Frances Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian blog did an in-depth study on the energy storage problem - storing power for when solar and wind provide no power. It is the source of data on Germany and UK. See The Energy Storage Conundrum at Global Warming Policy Foundation.
[https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/lack-of-energy-storage-makes-renewables-only-grids-a-pipedream/]
The Washington Legislature finally passed a law to continue that crack, heroin, meth and fentanyl possession and use remain illegal. It was a close call; if no action was taken by June 1 drugs would have been wide open. Oregon did so two years ago and it's ugly.
The law they passed is cumbersome; an incredibly simple fix was available. But they did something.
But the Seattle Demos are mourning the lost opportunity. They wanted full legalization.
Fentanyl kills - the Demos want its use fully legal.
Heroin kills - the Demos want its use fully legal.
Methamphetamine ruins lives and families - the Demos want its use fully legal.
Danny Westneat leads the mourners at Seattle Times
Another Amazon, Costco, Starbucks, AT&T Cell or Boeing? - Not in Washington
Washington politicians inherited an incubator for successful business start ups. And they are determined to destroy it. What??
WA has no income tax -- one of only six states -- and a good workforce. Entrepreneurs want these conditions, so they come here and succeed - not all, but more than elsewhere - and a few grow up here and return here, like Bill Gates.
Washington politicians want an income tax and want it so badly that they ignore the fact the our constitution does not allow a graduated tax on property and income is property. Oh! They say this is an excise tax, not income tax. But the IRA says it is. And all 49 other states says it is.
Our leaders are determined, but the "State Supreme Court will rule against it next month." Not likely, sadly. They always rule in favor of the Seattle big money.
Goodbye entrepreneurs; Tennessee is ready for you.
