The Lancet study was reported, again, by Microsoft News application, and I quote:
The total fertility rate — or the average number of children a woman would have if she lived through all her reproductive years — declined from 4.7 live births in 1950 to 2.4 in 2017.
Meanwhile, the global population has nearly tripled since 1950, from 2.6 billion people to 7.6 billion, the report says. An average of nearly 84 million people have been added to the Earth’s population every year since 1985.
The phenomenon of refugees fleeing north that we have recently seen is related to climate change. It is plain. The temperature is going up and the people in the hottest places are fleeing– Central America is particularly prone to this phenomenon. People south of the narrow isthmus between the two Americas are probably fleeing south.
Michelle Obama has come out with a new book, and AP reports that she writes, (paraphrased): His body language at the last debate, stalking her around the stage, implies: “I can hurt you and get away with it.” This is the concept of impunity. When a sociopathic person does wrong and gets away with it (impunity), his or her behavior becomes steadily worse. This is extremely dangerous in the case of he who shall not be named because he has already gotten away with so much.
As a 64 year old person who sat through the House hearings on Nixon’s obstruction in the summer of 1974, with nothing better to do (I even recorded it) I find that in the twilight of my life I feel a strange sense of jamais vu. That’s right, the opposite of deja vu. This is nothing like then. Compared to this, the Watergate was a “pleasant dream.”
We officially entered the Twilight Zone AGAIN today with the White House repeating the doctored video of a White House aide trying to take the microphone away from a reporter during a press conference with the “President.” (He’s not a real President– he just plays one on TV.)
This doctored video, independently produced but ?retweeted by official sources, purports to show the reporter doing something he clearly did not do, either to many, many eyewitnesses, or to the original, or to a slowed down close-up. That the White House press secretary signed on to this obvious fabrication makes it complete: Everyone in the White House is a liar.
The doctored video attempts to back-up the White House’s explanation of why they took away the reporter’s press credentials afterwards– that the reporter TOUCHED the aide in a rude or assaultive (or any other) manner. That explanation was clearly false to everyone in the room. The real reason was that the “President” couldn’t handle the reporter’s sharp question asking why Trump called the refugee column advancing north from Central America an “invasion.” The reporter insisted on repeating the question and Trump simply couldn’t think of an answer that even made a complete sentence. Trump completely lost his temper and repeatedly demanded that the aide take away the reporter’s microphone.
The reporter politely refused to relinquish the microphone and maintained a firm grip upon his instrument of power. The aide attempted, without much success, four times to take it away, each time looking back at Trump to see if he would still insist. Then she ducked down, out of sight of the cameras.
If we’re going to just have a photoplay, as in “Reality TV”, why doesn’t Trump get actors to dress up as reporters and then he can call on them? I pine for those lost days, over fifty years ago, when President Kennedy handled news conferences on his own and really tried to lie convincingly to the press. He really tried to make the reporters like him and accept what he was trying to say. He went into great detail and, when he didn’t know the answer, he’d admit it. But this “President” can’t even handle five minutes of semi-hostile questions about his bald-faced, logic-free lies.
I suggest that every reporter from now on begin the questions with the same one that he couldn’t handle: Why are you calling a column of refugees an invasion?
Simultaneously, a man named Whitaker is suddenly the Attorney General of the United States. This makes no sense. This man has never been confirmed by the Senate to any post at least since 2004 and is obviously a shill for the Donald (he even admitted that he wanted to get a federal judgeship from Iowa, so he was trying to get Trump’s attention.) Worse, he’s committing an ethical breach by not recusing himself from the Russia investigation because he’s been beating the drums for a year or more about how the special investigator’s office is no good, very bad, really awful.
Whitaker is a lawyer but that doesn’t qualify him to be US AG any more than my having a driver’s license qualifies me for the Indy 500. He was obviously chosen to shut Mueller down– come to think of it, isn’t that an act of obstruction of justice?
Doesn’t matter. We’re in the Twilight Zone of impunity.
Risking repetition, I would like to once again recommend this article by famous/controversial economist Joseph Stiglitz in November’s Scientific American. I have been harping on the evils of income inequality for years, although I believe capitalism is an essential part of modern society. The article shows how “unrestrained” (actually, rigged) capitalism contributes to a feedback mechanism that worsens income inequality persistently and iniquitously– how there are two stable equilibria in the basic equations of our capitalism: equal society and grossly unequal (and worseningly so) society.
The problem is not “free markets” but rigging of markets and rules that favor some participants over others, leading to the accumulation of wealth by increasingly powerful entities. Attempts to control this problem began in the late nineteenth century in America with antitrust legislation, famously promoted by Theodore Roosevelt as the “Square Deal.” Repeal of Roosevelt’s innovations led to a maximum inequality in 1929 and probably were a major cause of the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. Then another Roosevelt, FDR, gave us the “New Deal” that lasted until Nixon’s corrupt dealings brought back rigging of the system. We all know what happened since then: median income has not increased, even as productivity increased, over the last 40 years, and lower strata have actually gotten poorer during this time.
In fact, with additional thought, we can see that the second equilibrium almost inevitably leads to unstable, overall impoverished societies that are prone to revolution, with disastrous results. The examples of Soviet Russia (after Imperial Russia collapsed from inequality) and the People’s Republic of China (after Republican China was destroyed by civil war after their relatively “calm” Republican revolution) in the last century show that when inequality reaches an unsustainable extreme (usually only after a long period of declining productivity and overall impoverishment) violent revolution occurs and unspeakable cruelties are visited upon those who previously benefited from and were protected by government.
The only way to prevent this type of disaster is to end the favoritism that accompanies political power amassed by individuals and giant corporations. For example, the US health system, despite being the most innovative in the world (partly due to capitalism), offers the least bang per buck of all developed societies (all thirty or so countries) in the world. Americans spend the most money per capita (meaning large payments by a few individuals and inadequate resources for the rest) and get the poorest results in life expectancy and quality of life. There are always a few outliers who can live to 100 despite being former slaves, but the money spent by rich people on medical care gives them a pronounced advantage.
This failure of our health care system is directly related to the roughly five hundred million dollars a year and 2732 lobbyists used by medical corporations and groups in lobbying for and against candidates and laws in our government. This is the rigging of the system that causes bad results– yet it seems impossible to remedy once it has developed.
Nothing could be simpler. But to convince yourself of that, you need to read the article– it’s not paywalled.
Here’s a quote from an answer on Quora that I found interesting(I hope he doesn’t mind because he has the bears behind him.) I’ll tell you more about it below.
Kenneth Cochran, Software developer, staunch advocate of the right to arm bears.
Let’s Hope Donald Trump Gets A Shellacking
She continues (again, on the Microsoft News feature version of a NYT article) “They’re not all supportive of Trump, but his language does give them ideas that then circulate online in extremist social media spaces.”
On the subject of “It’s Worse Than You Think”, reality suggests that “It’s Worse Than You Can Imagine.” DJT is either intentionally or willfully stoking the fires of division as hard as he can. He appears to be focused on a strategy of promoting civil war in this country between white and almost everybody else, possibly including Asians and even Native Americans.
Native Americans. People whose distant ancestors made the entire trek from Siberia to Alaska, and on to Tierra del Fuego, on foot, in small groups of fathers, mothers, and children, numbering no more than a thousand at a time, in search of a better land. (does that remind you of any current migrant treks going on in Mexico?)
(image courtesy of pixabay.com and geralt)
editor’s note: for those who bother to read the text below the fold, there will be an attempt to post, on average, once a day, but circumstances may dictate either no post at all or multiple posts and there is no guarantee that the average will asymptotically approach one.)
A piece in the Wall Street Journal explains why people are fleeing El Salvador on foot– in plastic sandals known as “flip-flops”, no less. The short summary is that it has something to do with the murder rate there, which is the highest in the world. Those committing the murders are members of the gangs who control the country: mainly MS-13 and Barrio-18. The minister of justice and security, Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde, said: [the gangs are so pervasive that] “you don’t know where the state ends and the criminal organizations begin.” That is an ominous statement for a country’s minister of justice to make.
Gangs are estimated to control 16% of El Salvador’s GDP, and they are the largest employer in the nation. They have an estimated income of $4 billion a year. More than 60,000 people work for the gangs in some capacity, and almost everyone who lives in the country is subject to their extortion rackets.
Reforming a situation like that would require an invasion and/or the allocation of billions of dollars, not to mention 50,000 soldiers– something only the United States could do. Unfortunately, we have a president who would rather preen and play politics than do anything about the suffering of millions of people in Central America for whom we are ultimately responsible.
We are at fault because Reagan broke El Salvador in the 1980’s. (Look it up on Wikipedia if you have time. I am old enough to remember the civil wars that raged in Central America at Reagan’s instigation with money from sales of missiles to Iran– see also my previous post about how Reagan colluded during the election with revolutionary Iran to coordinate the release of hostages only when he came into power.)
Unfortunately, the Wall Street article is behind a paywall, but you can catch a summary of the article (there is a great deal of detail) if you visit the “Microsoft News” website, which is a feature of Windows 10. Try the “world news” section. Not that I’m recommending it– it has many of the same features which could cause the same problems with which Facebook news feeds are plagued. It is possible that your settings (related to your previous clicks) are such that this article will not appear on your news feed if you try to find it on “Microsoft News” on your computer.
(illustration courtesy of pixabay.com and Public_Domain_Photography)
Conrad Theodore Seitz 