A Plan for Dealing with Northern Korea

Posted on 13 July 2017 by eehines

Ex-SecDef Robert Gates has one, as described by Gerald Seib in The Wall Street Journal.

Under the Gates approach, the US would make China the following offer: Washington is prepared to recognize the North Korean regime and forswear a policy of regime change, as it did when resolving the Cuban missile crisis with the Soviet Union; is prepared to sign a peace treaty with North Korea; and would be prepared to consider some changes in the structure of military forces in South Korea.

In return, the US would demand hard limits on the North Korean nuclear and missile program, essentially freezing it in place, enforced by the international community and by China itself.

This is a preview of A Plan for Dealing with Northern Korea. Read the full post (597 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

Charlie Gard and the British Government

Posted on 10 July 2017 by eehines

Or, Charlie Gard and sovereignty.

Charlie Gard is the baby with a rare genetic disease that has damaged his brain, probably fatally and soon. The baby’s parents want to be able to try alternative treatments, or in the alternative, be allowed to bring him home to die there with his parents who love him rather than encumbered by the state’s bureaucrats and representatives, his parents also by-the-way present, in an emptily sterile hospital room.

This is a preview of Charlie Gard and the British Government. Read the full post (334 words, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

Medicaid-Receiving Companies Object to the Senate Bill

Posted on 26 June 2017 by eehines

The Senate is proposing an overhaul of Obamacare and an improvement to the health coverage providing industry, and one of those improvements is a rollback of the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid and an eventual capping of Federal funds transfers to the States’ Medicaid programs. There are objections to this.

The primary objections are from insurers and hospitals, et al., who get a significant fraction of their income from the guarantees of Medicaid payments; they don’t want to have to compete in the open market. They prefer the supposed safety of that guaranteed income, paltry though it is, especially compared to the income available from a free market, and they don’t care what that “safety” costs those who must pay for it.

This is a preview of Medicaid-Receiving Companies Object to the Senate Bill. Read the full post (276 words, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

Vandalism

Posted on 25 June 2017 by eehines

Terrorist vandalism.

Islamic State militants bombed the historic Nouri Grand Mosque in Mosul late Wednesday, Iraq’s military said, destroying the site where Islamic State’s leader first announced the creation of a self-declared caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria.

They did it purely out of petty, venal spite. Blowing up the place served no useful purpose, not even in the twisted minds of these Daesh barbarians.

This is a preview of Vandalism. Read the full post (98 words, estimated 24 secs reading time)

Obstructionism

Posted on 23 June 2017 by eehines

…for the sake of obstructionism. And now the Progressive-Democrats in the Senate are getting blatant about it. They don’t want to help reform the health care coverage disaster of the last eight years, so to block Republican and Conservative efforts at reform, these Progressive-Democrats have decided to block everything in the Senate. Here’s Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) o the overall attitude:

What more could we do—hold Republican Senators by the arms to stop them from getting to the chamber? I think we’ll use every tool at our disposal.

This is a preview of Obstructionism. Read the full post (249 words, estimated 1:0 mins reading time)

Rhetoric

Posted on 15 June 2017 by eehines

There has been on Wednesday a deliberate, carefully targeted attack against a collection of Republican Congressmen practicing for a Congressional baseball game that was intended to be a bipartisan fund-raiser (the Progressive-Democrats were practicing their own team at another venue) that injured five, including the Republican House Whip who is the third most powerful House Republican, who was seriously injured.

In the aftermath we got Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) making a tendentious speech on the Senate floor proclaiming his regret over this shooting, and we got the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) making a similarly overwrought speech on the House floor. Both called for bipartisanship and expressed their sympathy for the shooting victims.

This is a preview of Rhetoric. Read the full post (427 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Timidity

Posted on 12 June 2017 by eehines

A group of perpetually-offended atheists, agnostics and freethinkers are threatening to sue a small Wisconsin town because of two welcome signs.

Here’s an example of the signs, which have been up 50 years or more:

The churches extend the welcome, not the town’s government in the name of any church or all of them.

Of what are these folks so terrified? There’s nothing stopping them from putting up their own welcome sign: “Atheists of Oconomowoc Welcome You.” If the town’s government objected to that, only then might there be an actual beef.

This is a preview of Timidity. Read the full post (182 words, 1 image, estimated 44 secs reading time)

A Party’s True Character

Posted on 11 June 2017 by eehines

A Party’s True Character

The Progressive-Democratic Party leader of the time, President Woodrow Wilson, said of segregation, “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.” The Progressive-Democratic Party also is the party of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is the party that made national minimum wage laws for the explicit purpose of keeping blacks on the plantation—literally—instead of migrating north and competing for jobs by being willing to work for less than white union members were.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is the party of racist and sexist affirmative action programs.

This is a preview of A Party’s True Character. Read the full post (523 words, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Some Thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

Posted on 4 June 2017 by eehines

Some information provided by Matthew Dalton in The Wall Street Journal is illuminating, if not in the way he—or the WSJ—might have intended.

The US’s willingness under the Obama administration to propose major emissions reductions and put money on the table helped solidify global consensus behind the deal. It also helped persuade politicians world-wide of the need to seek more ambitious cuts and channel more money into the fight against global warming, officials and experts say.

This is a preview of Some Thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord. Read the full post (560 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Medicaid Transfers

Posted on 31 May 2017 by eehines

It’s well understood that Medicaid badly wants reform. My own view is to give it back to the States by reducing Federal fund transfers to them until the transfers are zero, which also would eliminate Federal strings jerking the States to do everything the same way, the Federal way.

There are lots of paths to that end, and there are a number of other reforms that would help the situation at least a little. The House plan for repeal and replace of Obamacare, the first step of which was the American Health Care Act, has one such step, the repeal of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

This is a preview of Medicaid Transfers. Read the full post (371 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

A Plebe's Site

Quam bene vivas referre, non quam diu.

Tag Archives: morality