A Fine Friday Miscellany

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Ah, the stupidities come so thick and fast of late. It’s like the rain here in Texas, which has been pouring down with such intensity over the last few days that all the usual low-water flood-danger locations have been as any fool could easily predict flooded and closed to vehicle traffic. It rained so hard on Thursday morning that for the first time in ages, we skipped walking the dogs. Looked out at the flooded street, the flooded front walkway, rain coming down sideways, and the sky so dark that it looked like twilight already; nope not even the dogs were keen, especially Nemo the Terrier-God-Knows-What, who loathes and despises water with a wholly undoglike passion.

But social and political stupidities what a rich buffet was laid before us this week, even apart from the gross stupidity of deciding that the ostensible civil rights and good-will of what may be .03% of the general population that miniscule transgender portion of it supersedes the rights of women and girls in a public restroom/locker/changing room to be certain they are not being letched on by a perv who has twigged to the fact that if he only declares that he feels female on that particular day that no one will want to firmly escort his perverted ass out of said safe space. Yes, the Kennedy Administration vowed to put a man on the moon, the Obama Administration has put a man in the Ladies’ Room and damned if the pervy wretch isn’t insisting that he has a perfect right to be there. Progress, y’all. While the perv element may have witless friends in the form of various celebrities ostentatiously declaring that they won’t be performing in *insert the location here* because hate/failure-to-socially-advance/toleration-eleventy!! I am brought to wonder if their concerts were significantly less than sold-out, and this is a handy means of cancelling an event and putting a convenient cover over the economic failure of it all. And I am also reminded of the way that mobs came out to eat at Chick-fil-A, in response to an announced boycott because the gaystapo getting all (you should pardon the expression) butt-hurt over the Chick-Fil-A CEO mildly expressing personal support for traditional marriage.

Moving on to the massive idiocy reflected in this series of stories; that black people don’t want to go to national parks because of the trees! Treez! Eleventy! Because black people were hanged from TREEZ! And something should be done about Black Peeplez! not wanting to go out to visit national parks … which are full of those Nasty Hanging Treez! So it would seem that bringing out mega-busloads of urban Black Peeplez! to national parks to appreciate the lovely and bountiful scenery, the meadows, mountains and infinitely-varied landscapes isn’t really the solution to this urgent and lately-discovered social conundrum. It’s just another national-sized racial shakedown by the usual suspects. Yay. Another yawning and insatiable maw of racial resentment, on a national scale to be fed by … seriously, I hope that the American populace which still tracks as about %75 white (or something that at a squint would rate at %75 white) would be exhausted with indulging these freaks at this point. I know that I am. Wait until they find out that in many of these parks, it snows in the winter, and the snow is white!

And meanwhile, Venezuela is in the throes of collapsing in about every way that a nation-state can collapse, after having been lauded by the social justice warrior luvvie set for years. The pictures of what various families have by way of food in their house is absolutely heartbreaking, even more so than the pictures of empty grocery store shelves. There is a lot of ruin in a nation. And yet somehow, after reducing a wealthy South American country to absolute penury, the heirs of the man most responsible for that ruin – are among the richest individuals in that country.

And finally on to the mismanagement of a private liberal arts university called Burlington College, which apparently began as a small, fiscally-responsible place offering some specialty degree programs and a small student-to-faculty ratio to the more mature student, yet finished up by biting off more than it could chew economically, chiefly under the leadership of Jane Sanders, aka Mrs. Bernie Sanders. With the laudable intention to expand the physical campus, the endowment, enrollment, and degree programs, she led the way to acquiring a nice parcel of lakefront land with existing buildings from the local Roman Catholic diocese. But that strained Burlington’s fiscal resources beyond the breaking point and now the place is closing down entirely. Jane Saunders parted ways with Burlington College under the power of a hefty golden parachute sometime previous to this final debacle. While she and her husband are two entirely separate and distinct people, the fact remains that she as an administrator managed to make a bad but perhaps survivable situation infinitely worse and ultimately un-survivable. This tends to reinforce a feeling that the pair of them together do not have a very firm grasp on sound economic policies, since Bernie Sanders himself never actually managed to make a good living at all, until he got into politics.

I’m almost afraid to look at what will be in the news next week. Discuss.

37 thoughts on “A Fine Friday Miscellany”

  1. In reference to the full weight of the Federal government declaring that women and children in restrooms, locker rooms, and shower rooms are free fire zones for sexual assault by any male . . . and the complicity by silence by what claims to be an opposition party; it opens up field of discussion.

    If the regime AND the supposed opposition are making it clear that they are at open war with said women and children, at what point is the consent of the governed revoked and opposition at any level necessary legitimate. And what are the duties of both the women and children AND the men in their lives in such a situation.

    Discuss.

  2. It’s a puzzle, SB – and also a puzzle as to why the Fed-Gov would go all out for this. It’s not going down at all well, outside of a few media and political bubbles, as far as I can see.

  3. Target may be in a death spiral. News breaks today that they are suing 3 men who saved the life of a 16 year old girl who was being stabbed in their store. They intervened after she was stabbed and prevented further stabbings.

    Add this to their bathroom policy. Add that to their Canadian debacle. These guys can’t do anything right.

  4. Every day brings a new outrage. Security guard arrested for throwing a guy out of the women’s room in D.C. Bob Bennett’s dying words. Eagles Of Death Metal banned from performing in Paris venues after talking frankly about the massacre they witnessed…

  5. The Stoopid has become very strong lately…..

    It’s like 0bama is deliberately trying to goad a rebellion.

  6. “also a puzzle as to why the Fed-Gov would go all out for this.”

    Stray voltage. Noise. Chaff. Distraction.

    Why talk about troops in Syria, Kosovo, Libya, Iraq, …?

    Why talk about Solyndra, Benghazi, Aztlan, Eaglevale?

    Why ask about Richard Windsor’s real name or Lois Lerner’s back luck with hard drives or Outlook servers in bathrooms … ?

    No, let’s talk about trannys and teenagers and sex!

  10. It’s too bad Steve Jobs believed in “alternative medicine” until it was too late. There are a few pancreatic cancers that have better cure rates with surgery. His was one.

  11. Mike K.,

    It depends on dose and the cannabinoids involved. The dose may have been insufficient for Jobs. (a gram a day of cannabis oil is suggested). For cancers an equal mix of CBD and THC is suggested.

    Here is another anecdote. The woman found she could tolerate high doses if administered anally.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hUoyXKf81c

    BTW it is well known that endocannabinoids scavenge the body for cancer cells.

    So you have to ask yourself – Bob Bennett was known to have cancer – why wasn’t he pushing the Feds to reschedule cannabis so human trials could be done? Well he was old. And it is well known politically that the old are the last group most heavily against cannabis.

    “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck

    Bob was doing the best thing he could do to accelerate scientific change.

  13. To say that herbal medicine didn’t work for Jobs is like saying Cimetidine doesn’t work for headaches. It is a pill after all. Maybe he was taking the wrong herbs.

    It is quite humorous to see logic go out the window when the subject of cannabis is brought up. Well, logic is difficult. Watching a Cheech and Chong movie is easy. If you can stand that kind of humor.

  14. Here’s the link, direct from Pravda:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/gop-senator-bob-bennett-apologized-muslims-trump-while-deathbed-n576566

    Not sure what that’s got to do with weed. Perhaps he was really high? I dunno, I sampled some of that hydro before swearing off drugs, it was really good, but not enough so that I would be apologizing to the sons of Amin al Husseini.

    I suggested elsewhere that perhaps it may have been due to the opiates they often prescribe terminal patients. But that wouldn’t be fair. Millions end life suffering, without thinking to thank the modern version of the Third Reich. Those whose patience long ago evaporated with this sickness, voted to enshrine him immediately into the Cuck Hall Of Fame, insisting he was on the clock right up to the bitter end.

    Unless the whole thing is a hoax. Then my sympathies switch to the families of Barbara Satin and Stefonknee.

  15. “Prominent doctors who treat pancreatic cancers say the prognosis for the type of cancer Job’s had is 3 to 6 months but Steve lived for 20-years! What did Steve do right?”

    He cleverly contracted a papillary form of pancreatic cancer which is curable with surgery.

    With regard to the prognosis, significant differences exist between the main-duct type and the branch-duct type of tumor. This is because of the higher prevalence of cancers among main-duct tumors (7, 8, 22).The prognosis for resected, non-invasive IPMN is notably better, with a 5-year survival rate of 80–100%, than that of patients with invasive IPMN (5-year survival 40–60%), and, in particular, it is better than for ductal pancreatic cancers (7, 22, e1). Particular attention should also be paid to synchronous ductal pancreatic cancers and extrapancreatic neoplasias.

    No one in medicine expects the ignorant advocates of “alternative medicine” to know how to treat serious disease.

    For those interested in more information, I recommend Quackwatch.

  16. My dad had the same type of pancreatic cancer as Jobs. He had the surgery, and lived 16 good years. He wasn’t rich, he didn’t use herbal cures.

    That type of cancer is one of the best to get of the pancreatic type. It leads to higher survival rates.

  17. “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck

    And that’s how socialism comes to be accepted among the young. The Greatest Generation, which fought WWII and set up the containment policy against Communism, died off. Meanwhile, our schools stopped presenting that generations’ side of the story. Double whammy.

  18. Back door legalization. If somehow we get a different kind of administration and they decide to investigate, I’ll bet they find a dramatic increase in cannabis usage among children and pre-teens. Nothing takes the starch out of youngsters (of the targeted demographic) like regular use. I can remember my cousins and I laughing wildly, hearing my Mother and Aunt’s talk about how “the Commies were targeting our kids with this dope stuff” back in the seventies, as we headed down to the park to burn one.

    They were so obsessed with the “Communists” what the hell did they know? Haw-haw!

  20. The endocannabinoid system regulates EVERY system in the body. So why isn’t Big Pharma all over this? Well medicines for the endocannabinoid system don’t seem to work the way medicines for other problems work. Single compounds are not as effective (read that as “nearly ineffective”) as multiple compounds. It is called “the entourage effect”. You can look it up. Ratios are more important than purity.

    You have to think differently. Very hard for some people. Thar effect was noted about 100 years ago. “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck. Funny enough we know why that is. The brain is the most plastic (open to new information) when the body’s endocannabinoid production is high. Between the ages of 15 and 25. Thus he old saying – “never trust anyone over 30”.

    Of course way more study could be done. If the Feds weren’t strangling such studies with laws. So for now the medicine is underground. But the underground is finding out stuff. Parkinson’s disease. Alzheimer’s. Cancer.

    A close friend of my mothers was adamantly against cannabis. Until she started studying the literature. Now she is an advocate. She would be one of those over thirty people who are capable of assimilating new information counter to her beliefs. But that is uncommon.

    So why am I wasting my time with you? Well, what I write is not for you. It is for those who are not so closed minded. Who can think differently. And as people with your attitude die out the new views I have indicated here are prevailing.

    https://www.hotgas.net/2016/05/trump-100-medical-marijuana/

  23. “Seriously interested in the issue.”

    Really ?

    “Alternative medicine? Are you ignorant of 2-AG? CB1 and CB2 receptors? Anandamide?”

    No, I’m not “ignorant.”

    Marijuana does not affect cancer.

  25. There are a few dispensaries opening up around us. Their big selling point is they provide a safe alternative to treat chronic pain. It seems like taking a sledgehammer to a nail, but what do I know. The whole idea of the chronic pain epidemic is disturbing and a bit suspicious in the first place.

    As for curing cancer, it reminds me of about a decade or so ago when someone in my family had cancer. Everybody was saying drink pomegranate juice because they heard that a friend of friend of a relative drank it and was miraculously cured.

    It was all putting the cart before the horse. Pomegranate probably has anti-inflammatory properties which may help prevent cancer, but it isn’t going to be much help if cancer is already there, aside from providing a refreshing breakfast drink.

  26. I had a patient one time who was an advocate of “alternative medicine” and was treating his cancer of the rectum with celery juice. He was convinced that the failure to respond was because he had not taken enough celery juice. He was not appreciative of my efforts to save his life.

    I have no objection to patients using marijuana for the nausea of chemotherapy. I knew a guy who had used it at the advice of his son and said it was better than the drugs of the time. Smoking it worked better than the THC pills because it did not make him vomit. That is not the same as having any beneficial effect.

    There is a real risk of schizophrenia in adolescents using marijuana but in adults it just makes them stupid and passive.

    The dispensaries in Venice CA are near the art gallery where my daughter works. They are quite open about giving anyone who asks the drug. Creepy looking bunch of losers hanging around.

  27. In Illinois there is a list for what conditions qualify for medicinal marijuana. I don’t mean to be (too) cynical, but vaguely diagnosed pain and fatigue ailments like fibromyalgia seem to be the key to the clinics’ business plan. There’s a push to expand the list to include PTSD, irritable bowel syndrome, autism, etc. If they get autism on the list, that will be a windfall. According to some spectrum theories, every person would qualify.

  29. Well, of course, that’s the whole purpose of the exercise. “every body must get stoned” Just a few short years ago, it would have been beyond the pale to suggest that men share the bathroom with little girls. Now, criticize the concept and you’ll lose your job. Generations have grown up smoking the stuff, and the laws continue to cramp their style.

    I talked to a couple people in Holland about the legalized matter a few years ago. I wasn’t ready for the response I got. I went there thinking the place was a happy, high nirvana. What I learned is that it’s a very divided country, in many ways.

  30. “What I learned is that it’s a very divided country, in many ways.”

    Probably not as divided as Belgium. The Muslims have devastated Holland.

  31. Indeed. That was alluded to in one of the conversations. He spoke about owners of coffee shops, and what the proceeds are thought to finance. Saw a couple Flemish videos recently, one where Wilders spoke. Lot’s of unhappy campers in Western Europe these days. Troubles a-brewin’.

  32. They, for a while, put up a sign at our local store/gas station. that you may not use the ladies room if you are male. That was taken down quite quickly and most of us use whichever one is empty.

    Political correctness, in the sticks where I live, is not sticking.

    I am somewhat baffled by the whole thing. No one has men’s and ladies rooms at home, where both sexes share the crapper. Why the huge kerfuffle over the trans gender nonsense?

  33. Marijuana. I probably have a higher THC level than anyone, any of you know. One effect of very long term use, be 50 years now, is that regular pain is rare, very rare.

    I have not taken a pain killer in a decade at least, and that was Ibuprofen, for inflammation really.

  34. PenGun,I agree that this isn’t a problem in low populated rural areas, where a parent is likely to stand near the door as a child goes in (or a date while the dated one does); but surely even in your rural area you distinguish between private and public, domestic and commercial, etc. Don’t you also feel free to appear less covered in your home than the local Target?

  35. Even in heavily populated Sodom and Gomorrah’s such as New York and San Francisco, I’d still say the number of transsexuals and transvestites looking for friendly bathrooms are relatively low. But much the same as Obamacare isn’t really about health care, I don’t think the bathroom thing is about Le Cage aux Folles:

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/05/18/salons-todd-nickerson-on-pedophilia-im-not-a-monster/

    Think Georg Lukacs dream, becoming reality.

  36. For the Ladies visiting the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, they have some surprises awaiting in the powder room:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQHYp7p1SIg#t=314.697279

    Many years ago I had a neighbor who was in the Peace Corp, and he had spent time in Sub-Saharan Africa. After a couple beers he could be coaxed to relate “the public bathroom story” (if his mother wasn’t in earshot) I guess that’ll be next.

  37. To be honest, the issue of trans-sexuals is a deliberate distraction. The Federal decree [and that is what it is, under the Obama-is-Pharaoh Clause of the Penumbra Constitution] also specifically includes public and school locker rooms and shower facilities along with public and school restrooms. And specifically, someone is allowed to use whichever one “feels” right to the person at any given moment regardless of plumbing, dress, or actions.

    I am a retired Commissioned Peace Officer. 28 years. I have dealt with a lot of sex offenders and pedophiles. They are out there, and far more common than most people suspect. Would you want this person:

    https://pajamasmed.hs.llnwd.net/e12/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/womanenough4hillary.png

    in the locker room or shower room with your wife? Your 9 year old daughter? Do you think that they might feel “micro-aggressed”? “Macro-aggressed”? Or just plain threatened?

    Subotai Bahadur

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