Doesn’t Matter

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) doesn’t recognize the Juan Guaidó administration now attempting to govern Venezuela despite Thug-in-Charge Nicolás Maduro’s refusal to cede power.

But we are threatening, we are threatening intervention. We’re sending humanitarian aid that is in the guise of, you know, eventually invading this country and the people of the country don’t want us there[.]

The words of the Representative from the 5th District of Minnesota are breathtakingly arrogant, but they are unimportant, and I do not hear them.

Never Worked…Doesn’t

In Great Britain, unemployment is the lowest it’s been in over four decades, and employment is commensurately high.  But that’s a misleading datum.

[A]n astonishing 3.6 million adults have never been paid for work, official figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

That’s 10% of the (chronologically) adult population in Great Britain.  Of the “young adult” demographic—those in the 16-24 age range—a truly astonishing 71% have never worked for pay.  Not a single hour.

The British economy isn’t in the doldrums over Brexit or no-deal Brexit.  Not at all.

Running Left in the Primaries

Here is a short list of the far-left policies that memb5ers of the Progressive-Democratic Party are touting:

  • reparations
  • Medicare for all
  • legalize marijuana
  • Green New Deal
  • abolish ICE
  • wealth taxes
  • 70% income taxes
  • tear down existing border walls
  • peri-birth abortion

Here is a short list of the Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates for the 2020 election cycle who have actively, enthusiastically endorsed one or more of these policies:

  • Corey Booker
  • Kamala Harris
  • Amy Klobuchar
  • Julián Castro
  • Elizabeth Warren
  • Bernie Sanders
  • Tulsi Gabbard
  • Kirsten Gillibrand

These candidates will have to prove, in competition with each other, to primary voters that they really mean their endorsement(s) in order to get those votes for Party nomination.  That’ll play well—it’s even a necessary play—in the Progressive-Democratic States on the two coasts and Illinois.

But in order to win in the rest of the country, including swing States like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, the Party nominee is going to have to ignore those policies—voters in the rest of the country, including those swing States, not only are more interested in the economy and in their own safety and security, they actively oppose those far-left policies.

Here’s the question that flows from all of that: how can a candidate who supports those policies in the primary season and who then turns his back on them in the immediately following Presidential election season be trusted?  What’s the value of the word of a candidate who says one thing when its convenient on one day and who says the opposite the next day when that opposite is convenient?

Guild Monopolies

They live on in France, especially in the medical profession.

It seems that Thomas Mesnier, a La République En Marche! National Assemblyman, has committed the unpardonable sin of proposing that pharmacies(!—not even establishments like grocery stores) be allowed to sell over-the-counter medicines without the buyer first consulting a doctor and getting a prescription.  The medications Mesnier has proposed be salable without prescription include such dangerous drugs as paracetamol (the French version of acetaminophen), ibuprofen, non-codeine-containing cough medicines, cold medicines, allergy medicines, and the like.

The horror.

Here’s Guild Master National Order of Physicians President, Patrick Bouet:

We are not improving the health system by taking skills away from physicians and giving them to professionals who do not have their training. There comes a time when things have to stop.

No, what improves the health system is no longer wasting time and resources of guild members doctors on minor ailments that half the developed world considers their citizens smart enough and capable enough to deal with on their own, including purchasing minor medicaments for those minor ailments.  What improves the health system is leaving those otherwise wasted time and resources free to deal with the truly sick.  What improves the health system is no longer wasting time and money of those citizens—directly or through tax dollars—on consulting doctors in order to get access to minor medicaments for minor ailments.

What improves the useless sense of self-importance is the reservation of such trivial decisions to doctors.

Potty-Mouth Minds

Misbehaving HOAs strike again, this time one whose board members have dirty minds.  See this image.

A resident stuck with this HOA was threatened with a serious fine over this snow shadow in her parking space.  It seems her car was parked there during a snowfall, and when she drove away, this shadow was left (no tire tracks because the snowfall continued for a time after she drove away.  A “concerned” fellow resident squawked to the HOA.

The shadow, it seemed to some with pornography on their minds, resembled a phallus.  The HOA board members apparently shared that obsession.

The resident, refusing to be cowed by potty-mouths, pushed back, threatening legal action, and the obsessed ones folded, withdrawing their threats and dropping further action.

Phallus?  Right.  It looks like a cartoon’s version of a dog bone to me.