Category Archives: Politics

Regrets are a Waste of Time by Michael J. Hurd

Posted on by
Reply

Barely a week goes by when a client doesn’t bring up something he or she regrets. Often it’s in the form of, “I wish I had that situation to do over again. I’d do it differently.” But, other than being a learning experience, regrets are pointless.

What do you regret about the situation? That you made a mistake? If you made a mistake, then there was an error in your reasoning or knowledge that you have since corrected. Otherwise, how would you know it’s a mistake? To regret making an error in reasoning or lacking knowledge is equivalent to expecting yourself to be infallible. Expecting infallibility — defined as the impossibility of error — is irrational. So again, regrets are pointless.

There are also situations where people regret something that made sense at the time, but from their present vantage point, they would not do. A big example of this is a marriage or a relationship. OK, so what was bad about the marriage? “Well, it wasn’t bad at the time. We were very much in love and had years of good times. But it didn’t last.”

I then ask, why regret what was good or right for the time? If the spouse had passed away, but the marriage was fabulous, you wouldn’t conclude, “We had 20 fantastic years but she died prematurely. I wish we had never met.” It’s just as irrational to say, “We had 20 fantastic years but eventually one (or both) of us changed as people and our needs changed. So I wish we had never met.”

People regret lesser things too. “I spent thousands of dollars on expensive vacations ten years ago. I wish I had that money back now.” OK, but could you afford the vacations at the time? “Yes.” Did you enjoy them? “Thoroughly.” So why are they worthy of regret?

Our emotions (rarely challenged or brought into consciousness) sometimes create regrets. They project onto ten or twenty years ago our current needs or desires. Because what they wanted ten or twenty years ago isn’t the same thing they want or need today, they automatically assume everything they did back then was wrong. Things can be right for their time.

Of course people make mistakes. It’s possible to conclude, “What I did or thought back then was wrong, and this is why. This was my error, denial, or evasion.” Honesty with yourself is paramount!

People who are committed to growth do better with this issue. There’s a term in psychology called the “self-actualizing” personality. The self-actualizing person operates on the premise that life is a continuous process of growth, knowledge, achievement and new understanding. Once certain things are learned or affirmed as true, as general principles, they stay that way. Wisdom is possible, as is objective knowledge. But wisdom and knowledge can improve and expand with age. There will probably always be errors along the way.

To a self-actualizing person, none of this is depressing or burdensome. So many people who get depressed are dragged down by their own assumptions. They feel as if they shouldn’t make mistakes, or they cannot recover from whatever goes wrong. They feel as if life should somehow be effortless existence, where even thought is no longer required. These are the people who yearn for heaven, or nirvana, or utopia in all its various forms.

But if your attitude is that life is full of continuous growth and challenges, then you don’t have this problem. You don’t need utopia. While you don’t always welcome or like what develops, you embrace it as part of what is, and you take it from there. Living in the real world is your challenge, your joy and a thing for you to master. Not a thing to be escaped.

Candace Owens and the Founding Fathers

Posted on by
Reply

Wars are fought over land and money—never ideology. Ideology is what those that are in power use to convince those beneath them that they should be willing to lay down their lives on behalf of. Virtues and values are never practiced by those that demand we die for it.

From the Declaration of Independence:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Writes Ayn Rand on ideology:

“A political ideology is a set of principles aimed at establishing or maintaining a certain social system; it is a program of long-range action, with the principles serving to unify and integrate particular steps into a consistent course.”

“It is only by means of principles that men can project the future and choose their actions accordingly.”

“Anti-ideology consists of the attempts to shrink men’s minds down to the range of the immediate moment, without regard to past or future…above all, without memory, so that contradictions cannot be detected, & errors or disasters can be blamed on the victims.”

“In anti-ideological practice, principles are used implicitly and are relied upon to disarm the opposition, but are never acknowledged, and are switched at will, when it suits the purpose of the moment. Whose purpose? The gang’s.”

“Thus men’s moral criterion becomes, not ‘my view of the good—or of the right—or of the truth,’ but ‘my gang, right or wrong.’ ” [“The Wreckage of the Consensus,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal]

Nina Jankowicz, Verifiably EVIL

Posted on by
1

This woman, America’s lunatic Disinformation Chief, is a walking obscenity. American Marxism and American Nazism have fused into one wretched creature. She is actually commanding Twitter to allow “verified users” to alter the tweets on nonverified users whenever they feel like it. She, of course, is a verified user. And she wants the Biden regime to determine who qualifies and does not qualify as a verified user. By what right does she do this? In our weakness, especially over the last 2-3 years, we have allowed this brazen type of tyranny to metastasize into what is now, quite literally, cultural cancer.

We are no longer living in America. Not if something this monstrous could even be on the government’s radar. No election is going to solve this.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Evils of Socialized Medicine

Posted on by
Reply

Bernie Sanders wants to bring socialized medicine to the U.S. To be fair to Bernie, though, that is probably the position of nearly every Democrat. As a reminder of why socialized medicine (like socialism generally) is one of the worst ideas in world history, here are two stories that happen to be in the news in the U.K. today.

First, former Secretary of Health Jeremy Hunt is blowing the whistle on Britain’s National Health Service, which he ran for six years:

Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, has described how the service he led for almost six years was at times a “rogue system” suffering from a cover-up culture that failed patients and staff.

Hunt…says the NHS’s fear of transparency and honesty about avoidable deaths and mistakes is a “major structural problem” that still needs to be tackled.

In his new book, Zero: Eliminating Unnecessary Deaths in a Post-Pandemic NHS, he reveals how civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care tried to block him from reading patients’ letters of complaint and even told him he could not send apologies to harmed families. Before he changed the NHS stance he says there were “meetings held behind my back to work out if they could dissuade me from such a thoroughly dangerous idea”.

It is one example of what Hunt calls an “omertà around avoidable deaths” within the service and a widespread fear that being open about problems would damage public confidence in the NHS.

The ultimate fear in a government-run system.

Failed managers were often recycled into new jobs, he says, where they continued to make the same mistakes.

He says he was “shocked to his core” by the failures in care, which included 150 avoidable deaths a week in England.

Hunt also refers to the problem of lack of emergency care, with “patients who have dialled 999 waiting hours for ambulances and admission to A&E departments.” And this:

One in nine of the population in England is now on an NHS waiting list for routine surgery, a total of 6.4 million people.

The kind of rot described here is typical of government bureaucracies and is therefore entirely predictable. The second story has to do with dentistry: “Nine out of ten NHS dental practices in England closed to new routine patients.”

Across England, some 86.3 per cent of dentists are not accepting new patients who are seeking a routine check-up. Of those, 42.4 per cent state explicitly that they are not accepting new adults.

A further 43.9 per cent will only accept them with a referral from a dentist, which is likely to reflect the need for advanced dental services only, such as complications or surgical extractions.

For children, 78.7 per cent of dentists are not accepting new routine patients.

How can this be? What irrational incentives would cause dentists to shun new business?

[Louise Ansari, the national director at Healthwatch England] said the issue was compounded “by a confusing dental contract that doesn’t incentivise dentists to take on new patients, particularly ones that may require extensive treatment. And it is the most vulnerable people in our society, including children, disabled people and those on low incomes who are bearing the brunt”.
***
[T]he latest data published by NHS Digital in February suggested about 65 per cent of adults had not been seen in the last 24 months.

Dentists are abandoning the profession:

The British Dental Association urged ministers to “wake up” to the crisis facing NHS dentistry, warning that about 3,000 dentists had already left the NHS since the start of the pandemic.

They blame what they call a “discredited contract” between dentists and the NHS, which effectively limits the number of treatments a dentist can offer each year. The system funds care for little over half the population, while perversely incentivising dentists to take on simpler cases as they are rewarded the same for one filling as ten.

In America, people become dentists mostly because they can make very good money. They compete for new business, as more patients mean more income. If a dental practice attracts more business than the existing number of dentists can handle, they can hire younger dentists and make more money still. The result is that people in the U.S., at all income levels, generally have better teeth than people in the U.K. and most other European countries.

Socialism destroys everything it touches.

John Hinderaker

One Rule for Us, Another for Them

Posted on by
Reply

Politico recently reported that the Supreme Court will probably overturn Roe v. Wade. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted that the leak was a “call to arms,” and for progressives, it meant protests, threats, and property destruction.

White advocates are divided on abortion. There are pro-lifers who may oppose it because some people think it is eugenic. A white advocate might defend abortion for the same reason. However, that doesn’t mean extreme leftists would think he was an ally. There will be no separate peace.

Antifa activists are not divided. “We support abortion rights and reproductive freedom,” reads one of the “Points of Unity” for the antifa “Torch Network.” A masked and menacing antifa “black bloc” joined a pro-choice rally in Seattle.

In Wisconsin, someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of a pro-life group, Wisconsin Family Action. An activist also spray-painted the antifa slogan “All Cops Are Bastards” and “If abortions aren’t safe, then you aren’t either.” A group called “Jane’s Revenge,” named for the pre-Roe group of abortionists called “Jane’s Collective,” claimed responsibility via a said the attack was a “warning” that there could be more extreme methods, and that “anti-choice establishments, fake clinics [meaning crisis pregnancy centers], and violent anti-choice groups” must be dismantled within 30 days. It says it is “not a declaration of war” because “war has been upon us for decades.”

Mr. Evans says he would be “very surprised if this was not a legitimate attack.” Police are still investigating. The group sounds so extreme it may be a hoax, but at least one verified Twitter user praised the attack before losing or deleting her account. Her publication’s Samuel Alito (the author of the Court’s draft opinion), Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts. Television host Joy Behrar said the protests would teach Justice Samuel Alito about “freedom of choice.” Mother Jones dismissed the “tone police” who suggest such tactics are immoral or ineffective. Many verified Twitter users promoted or defended protests, even though demonstrations at the homes of Supreme Court justices is a federal crime.

Gregory Hood

Given the Alternative, What’s So Bad About a “MAGA King”?

Posted on by
Reply

“MAGA King” is supposed to be an INSULT?

At least President Donald Trump WANTED to make America great. This sociopath wants America to be destroyed — and 100 percent of his daily efforts are directed toward that effort. Yes, he’s demented. He’s doing the handiwork of the people he works for, in our corporate and medical oligarchy. But he’s still alert part of the time, and that alert part of him knows exactly what he’s doing. And he’s doing it gleefully.

I will take a MAGA King 30 trillion times over a petulant, tyrannical, inept, satanic, demented, puppet-weasel, pitiful despot hellbent on destroying the greatest republic and civilization in all of human history.

But that’s just me.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Empire of Bioweapon Lies

Posted on by
Reply

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, / You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone no sound of water. Only / There is shadow under this red rock, / (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), / And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land: I. The Burial of the Dead, 1922

This glimpse of “fear in a handful of dust” already ranks as one the prime breakthroughs of the young 21st century, presented this week by Chief of Russian Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Force Igor Kirillov.

The provisional results of evidence being collected about the work of U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine are simply astonishing. These are the main takeaways.

  1. U.S. bioweapon ideologues comprise the leadership of the Democratic Party. By linking with non-governmental biotechnology organizations, using the investment funds of the Clintons, Rockefellers, Soros and Biden, they profited from additional campaign financing – all duly concealed. In parallel, they assembled the legislative basis for financing the bioweapons program directly from the federal budget.
  2. COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, as well as Merck and Gilead – of Donald “known unknowns” fame, and affiliated with the Pentagon – were directly involved.
  3. U.S. specialists tested new drugs in the Ukraine biolabs in circumvention of international safety standards. According to Kirillov, acting this way “Western companies seriously reduce the costs of research programs and gain significant competitive advantages.”
  4. According to Kirillov, “along with U.S. pharmaceutical companies and Pentagon contractors, Ukrainian government agencies are involved in military biotechnology activities, whose main tasks are to conceal illegal activities, conduct field and clinical trials and provide the necessary biomaterial.”
  5. The Pentagon, Kirillov pointed out, expanded its research potential not only in terms of producing biological weapons, but also gathering information on antibiotic resistance and the presence of antibodies to certain diseases among the population in specific regions. The testing ground in Ukraine was practically outside the control of the so-called “international community”.

These findings, amply documented, suggest a vast “legitimized” bioweapon racket reaching the highest levels of the American body politic. There’s no doubt the Russians plan to thoroughly unmask it for the benefit of world public opinion, starting with a War Crimes Tribunal to be set up this summer, most probably in Donetsk.

An ongoing U.S. bioweapons program in Ukraine was one of the Top Three reasons that led to the launch of Operation Z, side by side with preventing an imminent NATO-managed blitzkrieg against Donbass and Kiev’s desire to re-start a nuclear weapons program. These are Top Three red lines for Russia.

The strength of the collected evidence may directly correlate with what was largely interpreted as a carefully measured Victory Day speech by President Putin. The Kremlin does not bluff. It will certainly privilege the meticulous presentation of – bioweapon – facts on the ground over grandstanding rhetoric.

The return of Nord Stream 2

Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyaniskiy announced Russia’s demand for an open meeting of the UN Security Council to present further evidence related to U.S. biolabs in Ukraine. Even if the meeting would be vetoed by the U.S., the evidence will be entered by Russia on the UN records.

These developments provide an extra indication there’s absolutely no space left for diplomacy between Russia and the U.S./collective West, as Polyaniskiy himself suggested when commenting the possible accession of Ukraine to the EU: “The situation has changed after Mr. Borrell’s statement that ‘this war should be won on the battleground’ and after the fact that the European Union is the leader in deliveries of arms [to Ukraine].”

It gets worse. The next chapter is Finland’s drive to join NATO.

The Americans gamble that Finland – and Sweden – joining NATO will totally discredit Putin’s Operation Z as having accomplished next to nothing strategically: after all, in the near future, potential U.S. hypersonic missiles stationed in Finland and Sweden will be very close to Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

Meanwhile, Russian unmasking of the bioweapon racket will drive a toxic section of American political elites to turbo-charge their warmongering. It’s all following a carefully calculated script.

First, these bioweapon-supervising “elites” ordered the massive Kiev shelling of Donbas in early February. That forced the Kremlin’s hand, pushing it to launch Operation Z.

We should always remember that the ultimate goal in the U.S. plan of training Ukrainians for war since 2014 was to alienate Germany from Russia – as Germany de facto controls Euroland economically.

Imperial control of the oceans allows the Empire to strangle Germany at will into subservience by cutting them off from Russian energy – as the British did to Germany in WWII when Britannia ruled the waves. The Wehrmacht could not supply their mechanized army with fuel. Now, in theory, Germany and the EU will have to look to the seas – and total U.S. dependency – for their natural resources.

The remote-controlled Kiev regime dominated by SBU fanatics and Azov neo-Nazis is making it even harder – by shutting off all natural gas from Russia through Ukraine into Europe, reducing the flow by more than one third.

That translates as U.S.-enforced blackmail to force the EU to increase the Ukro-weaponizing against Russia. The practical consequences for Germany and the EU will be dire – in terms of shut down industries and cost of home heating and electrical power.

Russia, meanwhile, will rely on a bolstered Pipelineistan maze to China and East Asia as well as high-speed rail to transport all its natural resources.

Blowback against the Americans though is not off limits. Stranger things have happened. If gas transit to Europe via Ukraine is totally cut off, there are no alternatives. And that – assuming there are working IQs in Berlin – would open the way for a renegotiation on the future of Nord Stream 2.

As the head of the Energy Development Center Kirill Melnikov notes, “the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline is practically idle and one of the Nord Stream 2 lines is also ready for operation though the German regulator has not issued permission for its launch yet.”

That prompted Melnikov to a priceless comment: “If purchases remain the same, Germany will probably need to urgently allow the launch of one of the Nord Stream 2 lines in order to replace the Ukrainian transit route.”

No one ever lost money betting on the astonishing stupidity permeating EUrocrat decision levels. Even facing economic suicide, the EU is desperate to “abandon” Russian oil. Yet a full ban is impossible, because of energy-deprived Eastern Europe.

Every impartial energy analyst knows replacing Russian oil is D.O.A., for a number of reasons: the OPEC+ deal; the ghastly divide between Washington and Riyadh; the never-ending JCPOA renegotiation, where the Americans behave like headless chickens; and the crucial fact – beyond the understanding of EUrocrats – that European oil refineries are designed to use oil from the Urals.

So just when we thought we could enjoy the summer by watching Europe commit hara-kiri, it’s time to stock up on those Aperol Spritz. Get ready for a new hit series, season 1: Inside the American bioweapon racket.

Pepe Escobar