WEIRD, AND JUST AS WE’VE SPENT A DECADE OR MORE MAKING IT LESS ATTRACTIVE TO BE A DOCTOR: America’s aging population is leading to a doctor shortage crisis.
Archive for 2019
September 7, 2019
NOT TIRED OF WINNING YET: US lifts ban on old-style light bulbs.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Wokescolds Go Batty Over Upcoming Joker Movie.
Back in the 1950s, a psychiatrist named Dr. Fredric Wertham published a book titled Seduction of the Innocent, which blamed the scourge of juvenile delinquency on the violence, sexual suggestiveness, and other bad things depicted in American comic books. His crusade was so successful that he almost destroyed the comic book industry. Other than the big characters like Superman and Batman, which sold well no matter what, the business limped along for a decade until Stan Lee and Jack Kirby breathed new life into it in the ’60s. Today, comic book properties are a billion-dollar business. And while Fredric Wertham died decades ago, he never really went away. His meddlesome spirit just skipped a couple of generations, dyed its hair pink, and started babbling about social justice.
To be fair, so did Wertham in the 1950s, a man George Will once accurately dubbed a “puritanical progressive.” But based on today’s SJWs, is there any other kind left?
I’VE NEVER SHOPPED THERE BEFORE, BUT THERE ARE STORES IN KNOXVILLE AND MARYVILLE: Rural King says it will ‘stand in support of Americans and the Second Amendment’ as other retailers change gun policies.
Flashback: “Liberals are the aggressors in the culture war (and not always for the worse, as the civil-rights movement demonstrates). What they object to isn’t so much the government imposing its values on people — heck, they love that. They see nothing wrong with imposing their views about diet, exercise, sex, race, and the environment on Americans. What outrages them is resistance or even non-compliance with their agenda. ‘Why are you making such a scene?’ progressives complain. ‘Just do what we want, and there will be no fuss.’”
WEIRD, GIVEN THAT THEY GET TO WORK WITH CUTE ANIMALS: Suicide risk for veterinarians twice that of general population.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Agile is a thing of the spirit (page 33).
That’s this month’s PragPub: Keeping It Light from the Pragmatic Bookshelf. As well as that article, I’ve just signed a book contract with them, more news on that as things settle down.
1969: IN 50 YEARS WE’LL HAVE FLYING CARS. 2019: This Imperial Star Destroyer Is the Longest LEGO Set Ever Made.
NO ONE SHOULD GET COCKY IN THIS ELECTION CYCLE: Trump will be re-elected because of left-liberal stupidity.
GIVING UP THE GAME: “Even before attorney Debra Katz took on Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s primary accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, as a client, she was someone the abusive and unscrupulous should have feared. At least, that’s how she was portrayed in the press:”
As it turns out, Katz wasn’t as opposed to a “highly politicized environment” as she maintained. “In the aftermath of these hearings, I believe that Christine’s testimony brought about more good than the harm misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanaugh on the court,” Katz told attendees at the University of Baltimore’s Feminist Legal Theory Conference this past April. “He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him. And that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine.”
Only someone with a lawyer’s gift for prevarication could fail to comprehend Katz’s meaning. In this textbook definition of the Kinsley gaffe, Katz has revealed that not only was she motivated to litigate the claims against Kavanaugh for the advantageous political effect they would have but that her client was, too. And what was that desired effect? Affixing an “asterisk” to Kavanaugh’s record so that his judgments and decisions would be regarded as animated by biases and prejudices and would be, therefore, suspect if not entirely illegitimate.
This is an admission entirely against interest, in part, because you do not have to announce the presence of an asterisk if it truly exists. The Democratic partisans who insist Justice Clarence Thomas has been similarly undermined are screaming into a void. His concurrences and dissents still carry as much moral and intellectual weight as any other justice. He still influences the evolution of legal thought as much as or more than his colleagues on the bench. His clerks still get confirmed to federal judicial appointments in striking numbers. The notion that Kavanaugh’s reputation had been irreparably tarred in some way by his confirmation hearings isn’t an observation. It’s a self-affirmation.
Read the whole thing.
THE SECOND SEASON OF STAR TREK: AT THE APOGEE OF THE ORBIT. My review of the second book in Star Trek historian Marc Cushman’s These are the Voyages series. Part one is here; watch for a recap of the show’s disastrous last season next week.
(Bumped.)
BAN ALL THE THINGS! “On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands. And I will ban fracking—everywhere,” vows Elizabeth Warren.
Flashback: Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?
Well, it’s a start, as Steven Chu, former President Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Vote for Warren — she’s put millions on unemployment, make America dependent on foreign oil once again and triple your fuel bills!
On Thursday after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela. Thank you, CNN, just for letting these people talk. Do it again next week? Please?”
And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”
QUESTION ASKED: How Will the Hong Kong Protests End?
THE CANCEL CULTURE TORPEDOES CIRCLE BACK AROUND: U. Alabama dean resigns after tweets tying American flag, police to racism resurface. “The tweets express disdain for the American flag, American law enforcement officers, and the opinions of ‘white people’ regarding racism in society.”
Ben Shapiro defended him against the firing, but added: “Also, those on the Left who are livid he lost his job should take a look in the mirror about the world they’ve built, and in which both sides will now play by their ugly rules.”
THIS WOULD BE DELIGHTFUL: Malik Obama, Brother of Barack, Floats Run for Congress Against Ilhan Omar. He’s a US citizen, and there’s time to move to Minnesota, but I rather doubt this will actually happen, alas.
THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS: Your Guide To The Crazy Things That Happened This Week Over Brexit.
DECOUPLING: Tariffs are no longer China’s biggest problem in the trade war.
Given the timing of the change in tone, it seems more likely that what’s making the difference is a realization on both sides that there’s another way this trade war could end – and that possible ending is one the U.S. is very unlikely to lose.
That alternate ending is summed up in one word: decoupling.
The decoupling push is quite different than any U.S. efforts to get China to open up more of its economy to American companies. Instead, it focuses on reducing America’s extremely heavy reliance on China for so much of its manufacturing needs.
Even if China’s economy weren’t so closed off to so many American goods and services, a strong argument has long been made that the U.S. needs to diversify its sources for imports. While finding those new sources wouldn’t necessarily do anything to dent America’s trade imbalances, it would reduce the risks of a major disruption to the U.S. economy based on disputes or other problems connected to a single foreign country.
Diversity is our strength.
MONICA SHOWALTER: Does Trump have something up his sleeve to help Boris?
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Republican college students keep their views quiet at times due to fear of lowered grades.