SolaVirtus | In Pursuit of Virtue - October Edition

Long time, no see. Let’s see here…

After all of the ridicule heaped on Sarah Palin (who I am not in league with) for use of the concept “death panels,” it turns out Canada and England actually have them, and they can overrule family members and order the death of a terminal patient when “needed.” A Slate article from yesterday justifies the ability of a bureaucrat to end the life of those deemed unworthy to continue it with two arguments: other sick people might fit in the hospital where the sick person lies, and it taxes the public health care system. Shameful. Ours is a Brave New World.
Malawi is selling the presidential jet to feed its starving people. Would that our Dear Leaders would ever give up any part of the state apparatus for the good of the people…
The TSA doesn’t actually believe someone is looking to attack commercial airliners. They just want to touch your special parts anyway. In a similar vein, coming back from Thailand in August, I was extremely annoyed by the display of power that the lowly customs agents insisted on showing entrants to the US (citizens included). It really is not any of these people’s business why I was out of the country or what I did there or what I brought back or who I was traveling with. The overpowering smell in SeaTac airport upon arrival was of a police state. Apparently, I am not alone – and customs is ruining America for all sorts of people.
Related: 9/11 has cost us 500 more people a year killed in automobile accidents. THANKS BUSH.
Those silly petitions on the White House website evidently mean nothing and do nothing to stop the tide of power in our government.
If you are a racist, you should get on board with minimum wage laws.
Malala Yousafazi may be the cutest little girl you ever did see, and she recently told Obama and the UN to stop drone strikes. If you are not following her story, you should be!
Scientific research is erroneous 75-90% of the time, and I have two theories as to why. The first is scientific momentum, that creates a bias in the field that cannot be overcome by entrants looking to test another theory. No academic adviser is going to allow thought outside of their predetermined boundaries. The second reason is the use of statistics in analyzing the raw data. Most “scientists” are poor mathematicians and either misinterpret results, incorrectly calculate results, correlate incorrectly, or fail to notice that the phenomenon being measure is either subject to or a member of a black swan class.
Even lefties are starting to catch on: forcing more demand (personal mandate) on a limited supply of goods (healthcare insurance) is going to increase price severely. Obamacare is a system of forced redistribution, nothing more. The income tax was not working fast enough to eradicate “inequality,” and this is the logical next step. But here is a less biased view, still showing us how detrimental the program really is.
Read about Mises!
Hate Comcast? You probably really just hate the government.
Checks & Balances fail: “Between 1954 and 2002, Congress passed 15,817 laws. Of those, the Supreme Court struck down 103 — just two-thirds of 1%. Of the more than 1 million state laws passed during that same time period, the Court struck down 452; less than 1/20th of 1%. In any given year, the Supreme Court strikes down just three out of every 5,000 laws passed by Congress and state legislatures.”
Religion & War: “In their recently published book, “Encyclopedia of Wars,” authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod document the history of recorded warfare, and from their list of 1763 wars only 123 have been classified to involve a religious cause, accounting for less than 7 percent of all wars and less than 2 percent of all people killed in warfare. While, for example, it is estimated that approximately one to three million people were tragically killed in the Crusades, and perhaps 3,000 in the Inquisition, nearly 35 million soldiers and civilians died in the senseless, and secular, slaughter of World War 1 alone.”
Since the 50s, we have had diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia that have ensured oil is freshly headed our way. Those ties ended this week. The dominoes are beginning to fall, and a supply chain disruption like this one could be the initiation of our economy falling off a cliff…
Victimless crime constitutes 86% of prisoners in the US. Remember that we have 5% of the population on the planet and 25% of the prisoners. This is absurd. The War on Drugs must end.
I am surprised this one hasn’t happened more often in Western countries: Azerbaijan released election results before voting even started. You can be fairly certain the same thing is going on in the US. Yeah, I said it.
The unbreakable encryption I have talked about again and again may just have rounded a corner. Quantum encryption is the future, and the only possible truly unbreakable encryption.
Dr. Dre has ties to George Bush, NeoCons Inc., and the military industrial complezx. Whoa.
There is a jellyfish takeover going on, and scientists don’t know how to stop it!
The NSA tried to prohibit WaPo from releasing the names of companies that aid their surveillance.
Freedom of the press is in serious danger, thanks to the chilling effect that the Obama Administration has had on journalism. If you are not a cheerleader for more government and seek to expose any kind of corruption, you could be put in jail:
That the Shutdown didn’t show Obama to be the biggest child ever to those that are unwavering supporters of him is not surprising, but what did it say about government in general? Hint: They shut down websites even when it cost more than keeping them up, in an attempt to put the hurt on the people.