Amazing Stories!

The U.S. Government acted in a rational manner - read all about it! On September 26 last year I wrote about the U.S. Commerce Department buying Boeing's specious argument that Canada's Bombardier had engaged in unfair trade practices by underpricing its new C100 jets in the U.S. market, of which Delta had just ordered 75. Not likely since Boeing had no models exisiting or planned in the the same size. Nevertheless, the Commerce Department sided with Boeing and dropped the hammer with a 300% tariff on the airliner. But wait!

The Commerce Department, however, merely makes recommendations to the U.S. International Trade Commission and that august body, in a surprise move, just ruled 4-0 against the recommendation and for Bombardier. It is almost too much to bear seeing a common sense decision coming out of DC. 

In the meantime, Delta got its revenge by placing a massive order for replacement big jets with Airbus instead of Boeing and now will get the C100s to boot. You would think Boeing would understand that it really hurts when you shoot yourself in the foot. 

They Hate You Because They Hate Me

Michael Brown has an excellent column in today's Townhall that focuses on the twin themes of evangelical hypocisy (it exists) and the hatred of Christians, and evangelicals in particular, by the media and "elite." It exists too. 

Brown starts with hypocrisy. As an example, he notes that evangelicals denounce gay marriage but turn a blind eye to rampant no-fault divorce in the church. Sanctity of marriage? An excellent example of self-impeachment by the witness. 

He gives several other examples but then makes the point that for every bad apple, many more are trying to do it right. True, but I would hasten to add that as Christians, we also know, or should, that all fall short of the glory of God. A church is a hospital for sinners. Jesus said He did not come to save those who are well but those who know they are sick. We are and always need to remember it. Our humility and compassion will increase proportionately.

Then Brown turns to the nonstop barrage of invective hurled at Christians. He quotes 
John McCandlish Phillips, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, who in 2005 noted, " ... how newspapers like the Washington Post and the Times told their readers that evangelicals and traditional Catholics were engaging in a “jihad” against America."

He further quotes Phillips' observation that:

“In more than 50 years of direct engagement in and observation of the major news media I have never encountered anything remotely like the fear and loathing lavished on us by opinion mongers in these world-class newspapers in the past 40 days. If I had a $5 bill for every time the word ‘frightening’ and its close lexicographical kin have appeared in the Times and The Post, with an accusatory finger pointed at the Christian right, I could take my stack to the stock market.”

It has not gotten better since 2005. Christians are now the functional equivalent of ISIS for the Left and it has infected the public arena. Life is unfair. 

But Brown reminds us of something said by Tertullian, one of the early Church fathers:

“We are charged with being irreligious people and, what is more, irreligious in respect to the emperors since we refuse to pay religious homage to their spiritual majesties and refuse to swear by them. . . . Christians are considered to be enemies of the State, enemies of the public well-being.”

Some things never change. The Church ar its best is always conter-cultural. Brown emphasizes this final point:

"Yes, it’s always those dangerous, untrustworthy Christians. This will always be the accusation against us as long as we march to the beat of a different drummer. Welcome to the club."

It's a badge of honor. May I do my best to always wear it well and act accordingly.

townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2018/01/11/is-evangelical-synonymous-with-hypocrite-n2433097

The DACA Stakes

Why are the Dems fighting so hard to get DACA enshrined in law? Same reason they have for years - they are mathmeticians. This country is now politically divided roughly 50/50 and it doesn't take much of a tilt either way to effectuate big changes - witness Trump. If the 800,000 so-called Dreamers are legalized and become voters, immigrants tend to break 70% Democratic when they vote, which may well be enough to tip Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina into the Democratic column in Presidential and Senate elections. If that happens, we become a permanently blue country regardless of what the sea of red representing half of the country wants. 

If this happens, and you thought Obama ruled, as opposed to govern, you ain't seen nothing yet. No state in the country will be immune from their reach, red or not. And Big Business won't care because they get a continuing supply of cheap labor if the Dems are in power and everyone is happy - except, of course, the rest of us who are unemployed or under-employed and over-regulated. The American Experiment is over and we become an EU-like socialist country. Texas and Idaho become no different than San Francisco or Seattle. Think about it. 

www.wnd.com/2018/01/trumps-daca-deal-could-flip-4-states-to-dems/

You'll be Glad to Know

... that although the Federal budget has been cut to the bone - the bone I tell you - we still have the National Mango Board with us. That's right, folks, we can rest easy:

"Thanks to a fee collected from mango importers by Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, the National Mango Board has an annual budget of $6.7 million ..." 

Phew! Our mangoes are safe - Trump didn't get them. 

The job of this august group of Protectors of the Mango? Why to increase awareness and consumption of mangoes in America! I have just done the first part; now it's up to you my friends to Save the Mangoes! Go thee forth and buy, buy these delicious tropical fruits and wolf them down with abandon - fresh mangoes,mango pie, mango bread, mango fritters, mango jam - the possibilities are endless. Democracy has been saved yet again and all for only $6.7M! We owe an immense debt of gratitude to Congress for this one. 

www.wnd.com/2018/01/national-mango-board-costs-americans-millions/

Hiding the Pea

Economics, the Dismal Science, posits that everything has a price and that includes single-payer health coverage, aka Government health insurance. Price may be expressed in dollars, but it is rather often found instead in diminished service. Take the airlines as an example. 

You can buy a cheap fare on Spirit or Allegiant Airlines but everything - and I do mean everything - is extra fare. You have the smallest and most cramped seats in the industry, on-board service is not on-board, and if your plane has a problem, oh well, enjoy the delay or the pleasure of a cancelation because there are no backup aircraft. But you got your cheapo fare! 

It's no different with health insurance. We began to get a taste of this with Obamacare. Remember the smiling President saying if you wanted to stay with your doctor, why you could! And costs would come down by an average of $2,100 per family. Woo-hoo! And that worked out how? Service got cut and prices for those who can pay went up, way up, but hey, there's "free" health coverage for all these people and ain't that great! Cue the brass band and confetti. Let's look at how the brains behind the shills intend to deliver "free for all" health coverage.

Betsy McCaughey, writing in Townhall, has pulled back the curtain:
The lead editorial in the current issue of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, by Stanford economist Victor Fuchs, claims the way to make universal health insurance affordable is to curtail use of mammograms, costly new drugs and diagnostic technologies.

Arguing that the U.S. spends nearly 18 percent of GDP on health care, while European countries spent about 12 percent, Fuchs and other single-payer proponents claim Americans are too enamored with high-tech care. The answer, the left says, is to go low-tech. That argument would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. Countries that limit use of technology, like the United Kingdom, have abysmal cancer survival rates.

That's right, basically everybody has the right to free, crappy medical care. If you can't get in for 4 months or more for the lump on your breast or that annoying cough that is really lung cancer, you are collateral damage so it's "free" for everybody else. Should you die as a result, well it's just one less mouth to feed. Oh, and any guesses what happens to income tax rates to pay for even crap coverage and the government deficits because there is not enough tax money to pay for all this? 

We need to have a real conversation on how to bring basic healthcare to those who really need it, but "free for all" care is a pipe dream and a vote-getting ploy by and for politicians, not you and me.

townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2018/01/10/singlepayer-a-danger-for-cancer-patients-n2432204

The Exclusionary Rule

Here we go again. I can't keep up anymore with everything that is racist, bigoted, homophobic, anti-LGBT, etc, etc. Basically, if you are alive and and especially if you are white, you are something bad -good at math, language, reading, and now even if you have a best friend. That's right, you are now "exclusonary" if you have a "best" friend because that implies a hierarchy (OMG!) of people in your life and that's (shudder!) discriminatory. Here it is right from the horse's (or another part of the horse's anatomy) mouth:

"Writing in US News, child and family psychologist Dr. Barbara Greenberg says “there is something dreadfully exclusionary” about the concept of a “best friend,” and notes some American and European schools already forbid kids from having them."

That's right folks, the ideal life is to be just jelly fish floating in the current, without purpose or sense. Except for our masters, of course, who make up all these assinine "rules." One of the signs of a decadent society is that we even put up with this intellectual garbage. OK Dr. Greenberg, you have had your 15 minutes of fame - go sit down!
www.thecollegefix.com/post/40715/

Trying to Slide One By

Ah, January! We sink into a post-Christmas torpor and watch an occasional football game, recuperate financially from Christmas, try to stay warm, and bemoan the gray skies. Life is put on semi-hold for awhile, almost like bears hibernating. Which is exactly why the Democratic Oregon Legislature set an election for one of their pet projects on January 23.

You should have received your ballot for Measure 101. This is a continuation of the Spendathon by the Dems and it proposes taxing health insurance premiums and hospitals  (who can pass it on to their patients) to fund the huge Obamacare expansion of Oregon Medicaid, including paying for abortions for anybody from anywhere at any time, no questions asked.  The Democratic Legisature put this on the ballot in January, aiming for a low turnout by hopefully catching Republicans napping in Hawaii or Arizona in order to bail the Dems out of their management malfeasance. Que? Remember the Secretary of State's audit report this Fall saying 37,000 people had received $191M in benefits they weren't entitled to receive? Then there is the $300M Oregon Obamacare website that never went on-line. But what's a half-BILLION dollars here or there? Coincidentally, just about the amount sought by Measure 101!

Leaving aside all the policy questions of how Oregon should spend its money, if Oregonians want to tax themselves into oblivion, then fine, but let's have elections designed to actually hear the voice of the people instead of quietly trying to slip one by. 

www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/07/oregon_finds_nearly_half_the_m.html

A Look Back and a Look Ahead

President Trump can be uncouth, unpredictable and unrepentant. He also delivered in 2017 a sterling new Supreme Court justice, tax reform that will help a lot of people and the economy, trashed volumes of awful Federal regulations, eliminated the Obamacare individual mandate, recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and a lot more. In fact, these would have been substantial accomplishments in a full 4-year term. It can fairly be said about him, "Don't pay attention to what he says; pay attention to what he does." All of which makes looking ahead to 2018 a very interesting proposition. 

It starts with China and Russia. Look for continued jockeying back and forth between the U.S. and these two countries. China is by far the more powerful. Russia's economy is red-lined trying to underwrite Putin's foreign adventures and military expenditures. His population continues aging at an unchangeable rate sapping the country's economic vitality more and more each year. Meanwhile, China, although suffering from the same predicament and having a huge demographic imbalance between males and females, has loads of cash in the bank to finance a massive military buildup, foreign adventurism, and the ability to eat trade losses to penetrate U.S. markets and pirate U.S. technology in many areas including military. 

All sides have too much to lose, though, to allow things to spin out of control, so look for moves and counter-moves. This is likely because these countries are increasingly believers that Trump can and will pull the trigger if necessary. Assuming that the refurbishment of the U.S. military continues, let the games continue. 

The wild cards are North Korea and Iran. The former is an extremely dangerous country because of its leader and nuclear weapons and missiles. The best result would be a Chinese-sponsored coup that takes out the current leader and installs a more predictable (and non-nuclear but pro-Bejing) regime. The price the U.S. would pay is the tacit understanding that the division between North and South Korea would continue, although we would be free to support our ally in the South. Considering the alternatives, that's not a bad deal.

The Green Revolution in Iran is stirring again and that is a very encouraging sign. In just the last few weeks unrest has become widespread throughout the country because of the poor economy, foreign adventurism (Syria, Lebanon and Yemen) and the heavy-handed suppression of freedom by the mullahs. President Trump is not Obama and he and a host of other government officials have already publicly given support to the demonstrators. It is not crisis stage yet but an indigenous rebellion that overthrows the evil theocrats would be a victory not only for the Iranian people, but an answer to a huge foreign policy problem for the region and the world that has been unresolved for decades. We need to be quietly moving some chess pieces to do what we can to move this one toward a successful conclusion. 

2018 may be the year that we see what President Trump is really made of as he may face tests unseen since Washington, Lincoln and FDR if either Korea or Iran, or both, go "hot." If he is a great chess player, though, two key pieces pieces may topple and a new game board more favorable to the U.S. may emerge. 

A Nice Way to Start the Year

An Alaska Airlines pilot understood what it's all about. As he explains it, he was in a quandary trying to decide which type of new countertops to use in his home remodelling project when he saw an article about a homeless 76-year old woman just released from a mental health facility living on the streets in Anchorage. Her family in Arizona was willing to take her in if she could get down there. 

Capt. Fredd Ripp said that when he read the story his realized that his head had been in the wrong place and decided to do something about it. He used one of his Alaska buddy passes and escorted her all the way to her welcoming family's arms in Tuscon. Ripp commented:

“Time spent with Virginia has pulled me out of my usual winter funk and has brought me great joy,” Ripp wrote to Cook’s family. “I plan to start volunteering at Bean’s [a local coffeeshop for the homeless].This is shaping up to be a great Christmas!”

Nicely done, Captain. Way to celebrate Christmas and start the New Year!
www.flyertalk.com/articles/alaska-airlines-pilot-helps-homeless-woman-reunite-with-her-family-over-the-holidays.html

At the Movies

Several good movies are out at the moment. The Darkest Hour and Dunkirk are excellent movies that illustrate what heppens when a nation (Britain) substitutes wishful thinking for cold-eyed analysis of an implacable foe (Hitler). I would recommend seeing them in the order above  as they flow together historically that way.

Wonder is another very good movie that follows a family with a badly deformed, but otherwise normal child, who is trying to make the jump from home schooling to a regular classroom. Kids can be brutal but kindness wins in the end. That said, however, there are a lot of realistic moments in between that most of us can relate to either as children or parents.

Happy New Year!