Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Wednesday, June 5. 2019Wednesday morning linksPfizer had clues its blockbuster drug could prevent Alzheimer’s. Why didn’t it tell the world? “Flying-V” airplane design promises fuel savings, but there’s a catch Last survivor of Sobibor death camp uprising dies, aged 97. Semyon Rosenfeld took part in famous revolt, in which Jewish prisoners turned on their Nazi guards; later moved to Israel Seventeen Year Old Netherlands Girl Legally Euthanized, Says Being Molested as a Child Made Her Life ‘Insufferable’ Euthanasia seems like a strange treatment for emotional pain. School Shooter Drills Terrorize Our Kids Pointlessly Paul Manafort to be Transferred to Notorious and Dangerous Rikers Island Jail – May Face Solitary Confinement Huh? Joe Biden Links Trump to Murders Of Black Transgender Women Trump Builds Immigration System That Doesn't Sap U.S. Wealth Donald Trump has done Britain a favour with his NHS grab The Left against Zion - On the intellectual left and Israel. The denunciation machine by J. Christian Adams - On the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Brexit Factions - Prime Minister Theresa May’s resignation further complicates Britain’s divorce with the EU. The Unfinished Business of the Cold War - A new global ideological struggle.
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Was thinking this morning that we're probably headed for a Cold War with China. We've been playing "engagement" with them since Nixon hoping they'll get rich and throw out the commie tyrants. It hasn't happened and now the tyrants are using technology to become more tyrannical.
The Pfizer article doesn't seem to either say or understand that the drug data was the property of Pfizer. The tone of the article was that "of course" third parties should be given that private property, for free.
It quotes some commie rat bastard "medical ethics expert" in support. The stench of socialism is getting strong in the USA, particularly in the foul WaPo. Some outside scientists disagree with Pfizer’s assessment that studying Enbrel’s potential in Alzheimer’s prevention is a scientific dead end. Rather, they say, it could hold important clues to combating the disease and slowing cognitive decline in its earliest stages.
Pfizer's researchers decided the likelihood of a breakthrough treatment was too dubious to risk investing several years and tens of millions of dollars, "some outside scientists" argue that of course time and money are no object when it's Pfizer's time and money. Overall, though, the article was (surprisingly) fairly balanced in presenting a straightforward explanation of why drug research is so difficult, but the opening few paragraphs had me suspecting the usual bashing the big, evil, greedy drug companies. And there's still the usual naïve "new studies show" reporting that accompanies every new hint of evidence that fails to pan out 99 times out of a 100, the suggestion that Pfizer has an Alzheimer's cure they're just sitting on when Pfizer itself is of the opinion that they have no such thing. Trump's threats of a Tariff on Mexican imports has awakened the Democrat and Republican base. No not the American people who suffer the most from unrestrained illegal immigration but big business who might lose some profit if the cheap Mexican car parts and other goods don't cross the border. Where was their angst for the suffering of the American people? And the Democrat talking heads have decided that their most powerful talking point about the tariffs is that it will be a hidden tax on the middle class!!!! WHOA! When did you EVER hear a Democrat worry about the cost of taxes on the middle class. My state recently doubled the tax on gasoline and they choose to do it in the middle of the night to sneak it past the voters. Not a peep about the cost to the middle class. I personally do not expect the tariff on Mexico to cost me a penny, but I can assure you that the tax on gasoline costs me a small fortune. Ironically the cost of illegal immigration costs me even more than the new tax on gasoline. Again not a peep from the talking heads about that. IMHO the worst possible outcome if Mexico chooses not to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and the tariff goes into effect is that all those jobs that left our country for Mexico will come back. Now that would be a win/win.
More self-identifying of those congress-critters that don’t really want a solution for the immigration crisis.
Seventeen Year Old Netherlands Girl Legally Euthanized, Says Being Molested as a Child Made Her Life ‘Insufferable’
Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt this morning quotes a Vanity Fair article regarding Jack Kerkorian's 2nd degree murder trial in Michigan QUOTE: Lead prosecutor Michael Modelski cites David Letterman jokes to exemplify the dangerous but seductive appeal of the machine. ..... Modelski believes that participation by a doctor in “killing” (even if it’s only assisting a voluntary suicide) is the first step in a dangerous continuum, a “slippery slope” leading from medically assisted suicide to medically encouraged suicide (of the poor and uninsured, say) to medically pressured suicide (of those whose lives are “not worth living” but expensive to sustain) to involuntary euthanasia (emphasis in the Jolt) —the same slippery slope that led in the thirties and forties to genocide. Modelski, a tall, saturnine fellow, is particularly passionate about this because, he tells me, his father’s father (who’d served in the Polish army) and one of his father’s brothers died at Auschwitz. And because the uncle who died was a twin, Modelski suspects he may have fallen victim to the kinds of medical experiments on twins that were pursued so obsessively by Dr. Mengele in the camps. I think there's also a connection between this and the current mania to surgically mutilate healthy bodies to 'correct' people's perceptions of their identity. I think what has happened here is; she got a lot of attention because of the sexual abuse that happened to her. She became addicted to all that attention and thus had to keep ramping up her game to keep getting the attention. And the threat (and of course the follow-thru) of suicide to "alleviate her pain" brought her the most attention. Her endorphins were working overtime and overwhelmed her common sense. Clearly she had some mental health problems and this was really a failure of the health care system.
It was Chesterton who saw in many forms of lunacy the combination of "an expanded, exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense."
Turns out the girl was NOT euthanised. She had inquired about it but was rejected because her case did not qualify.
She then decided to refuse medication and food, and died as a result, which does not qualify as euthanasia. By law someone who refuses medication and food can't be force fed in the Netherlands, a law I whole heartedly approve of. Joe Biden Links Trump to Murders Of Black Transgender Women:
Of course Joe does, and reinforces the belief that he's nuts. The Left against Zion: One more reason to not vote for Dems. SPLC: Used to get their mailings, until I returned one telling them I considered them a scam. Brexit: What a long,strange trip it continues to be... The Paul Manafort case is the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment. I have heard of MS-13 murderers getting off with less punishment.
This is an example of the "Lawfare" that the left uses to punish anyone who opposes them. If Trump and the DOJ fail to bring these leftists to justice this will only get worse in the future.
Update on Dutch girl is that she apparently starved herself to death rather than being euthanized.
The Dutch teen-ager applied for the assisted suicide but was turned down, apparently because the doctors thought she was too young and too mentally ill to understand the consequences of her actions, but that kind of story doesn't provoke the buzz the media feeds on. "Fake news" I believe is the term they use for these sorts of stories.
In this case I wouldn't call it fake news but facts lost in translation.
Dutch isn't exactly an easy language, and as the case in the Netherlands never made it past local news the article may well have held some language that wasn't "high Dutch" but inflected with local dialect. Add the differences in legal definitions between countries and some reporter may have misread and misinterpreted things. For example I'd not be surprised if in some countries a doctor decided not to force feed and forcibly medicate her despite her stated refusal of food and medication would be considered euthanasia, in the Netherlands it's not and the doctors did the right thing. In fact in the Netherlands doctors are allowed and even encouraged to assist people wanting this by giving them painkillers and relaxants so they don't suffer (but not in doses high enough to kill them). My father chose to die in this way several years ago, after consultation with his medical team, and with me and my sister (his last surviving relatives). He died peacefully in his sleep after 8 months of constant pain, being mostly bedridden from a stroke and a broken ankle that refused to heal despite many attempts by doctors to help him. Bill Nye: "If you don't do something about climate change you're a f$%ing idiot!! The world's on f$#%ing fire!!!"
# of democrats who voted for New Green Deal = 0 With regard to the blended wing airliner, in addition to the large amounts of movement around the roll axis, such designs tend to be dynamically unstable about the pitch axis. While this can be mitigated with active control systems (every fighter build since the F-16 has been unstable about at least one axis, the F-117 famously about all three, hence the "Wobbly Goblin" nickname) it's still going to have some wild performance around stall speed, making for some high-speed takeoffs and landings, requiring long runways....
Biden blaming Trump for whatever random bad thing happens: It was Snowball who destroyed the mill.
Trumps tariff threat aimed at Mexico:
Imagine if we leased busses to take the 3000-5000 illegals caught crossing our Southern border and drove them to the Canadian border and told them how to sneak across. Would Canada be angry with us? Would they threaten trade restrictions to make us stop? Would they allow this to go on for years and decades before they finally took action against us? Yet we are to somehow believe that Mexico is our friend and to threaten tariffs if they continue to fail to stop these immigrants and worse to assist them to illegally cross our borders is not treating them like the friend they are. Mexico is run by the drug cartels who bribe the elected and appointed officials and kill anyone who opposes them. The drug cartels are pushing the illegal immigrants across our borders and the Mexican government is complicit in this up to their sombreros. This is an invasion and over time it will weaken us and make us more vulnerable to our enemies. |