Then:

Now:

White people to the front#BrooklynCenter pic.twitter.com/M6voBJFGKZ

— Cat Hyde Кот Хайд (I'm just here for my ban)🖤🧡 (@KBoomhauer) April 14, 2021

Devoted to the cause or aren’t you? To the front, then, soldier!

Peaceful parenting is slowly but steadily gaining acceptance:

There is no greater power disparity than that which exists between parent and child. An abused wife can leave her abusive husband and take most of his stuff on the way out. An abused drug pusher can turn his contentious encounter with the police into a winning lottery ticket. But an abused toddler has nowhere to go, no one to turn to. A parent is a child’s custodian, not his owner. Hitting any person other than one’s own child is battery. If it doesn’t get the assailant killed, it will get him cuffed.

That it is done behind closed doors hardly grants it justifiability. To the contrary, if a parent is worried what the neighbors will think about the severity of the physical punishment he dishes out to his child, what’s going through the mind of the helpless child on the receiving end? That might makes right, and when he’s mightier than dad, dad can go pound sand, that’s what.

Relatedly, parents who put their children in daycare have no leg to stand on when their adult children ship them off to a nursing home to deteriorate in their dotage. Mom chose work when the kids needed her. Is it not natural, then, for the kids to choose work when she needs them? You reap what you sow.

To the objection kids these days are going off the rails on account of a spared rod, fair enough. But a shepherd’s rod isn’t used to hit his sheep, it’s used to guide them and protect them from wolves. With the perpetual rise in single-parent households and decline in homemaking as dual incomes have become increasingly necessary to materially support a family, parental neglect is a large and growing problem. Instead of mom and dad transmitting norms and values to their kids, the kids are being raised by the wolves in their internet devices.

GSS variables used: SPANKING(3-4), YEAR, POLVIEWS(1-3)(4)(5-7)

Twinkie on health care:

The fundamental problem with healthcare in the United States is three-fold. First, medical insurance is not a true insurance system – it is an entitlement system which guarantees a higher payout (in benefits) than costs paid. That is clearly unsustainable, because it rewards overuse. What will really fix the system is to de-couple health insurance from employment and then it should be made to become a true insurance system, whereby people pay out of pocket for primary care and then seek insurance benefit only for what today would be called “catastrophic” illnesses/injuries (the premium for which should be, in turn, quite inexpensive).

That sounds a lot like auto insurance. If companies provided auto insurance and in turn auto insurance covered oil changes and tire rotations, it’d be a lot more expensive, too.

What about the relatively novel subscription model? It has exploded from nothing to hundreds of primary care facilities in the span of a few years. Clients pay a physician something like $80 a month for all the visits, virtual consultations, common prescriptions, and basic operations the clients need. They get a subscription and barring something catastrophic occurring, they’re set. Some facilities accept insurance but many, maybe most, do not. With the ACA non-compliance penalty at zero, it’s a sensible approach for a lot of healthy people.

Twinkie continuing on costly CYA:

The second necessary fix is tort reform. As it stands now, any negative outcome for patients (whether caused by healthcare providers or not) is a lottery jackpot for them (and far more of a boon for medical malpractice lawyers). And these days there is A LOT of negative outcomes due to the poor health of the general public (which in turn is largely due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle). Not only does this increase medical liability costs for the providers, it dramatically increases the costs of healthcare provision by forcing the providers to practice “defensive medicine,” which reportedly eats up a third of the total healthcare costs in the U.S.

Twinkie’s third prong deals with bureaucratic overregulation:

The third fix is deregulation of medicine. People often complain that doctors get paid too much, but physician salaries are not what drive the increase in healthcare costs. Physician services account for roughly 20% of the total healthcare spending. Of that amount, about half is the cost of practicing medicine. In other words, actual physician income is 10% of the healthcare costs. Even if, say, you make physicians take a massive pay cut of 20%, it’s only going to reduce healthcare expenditure by 2%. What’s driving up the cost of medicine – as in the education industry – is the massive rise in “administration” (and compliance). For every doctor there is at a hospital, there is now an army of clerks and desk-bound staff who do byzantine regulatory-compliance and other paperwork. Practice of medicine today is extremely bureaucratic – even though it is notionally not government-run, it is largely dictated by government regulations and is run like a government-provided service. Until that is fixed, just as with education costs, healthcare costs will continue to balloon.

Medicare-for-all or the car insurance approach both strike this blogger as better than the current system. Politically, we demand both the best, most cutting edge care in the world and affordable coverage for all Americans. There is an inherent, unresolvable tension between these two demands.

MattinLA isn’t much encouraged by the integrity collapse of the major media over the last few decades. To the assertion that the neo-liberal establishment couldn’t get away with Iraq Attaq today, Matt wonders where I’ve been over the last year:

The insane lies they’ve gotten away with about this phony “plague” are a million times worse than those uttered during the Iraq war. And the damage incalculably worse. We are on the verge of full scale communism. If media skepticism was some sort of game changer, we wouldn’t be in this situation. I think we are past the stage where wry comments and dry irony can save us.

I’d call it totalitarian corporatism rather than communism. Fed money creation, strangulation of small retail operators, and severe disruption in the rental market–the eviction moratorium is still in place–have been great for large corporations. And now forever Covid vaccines promise new perpetual income streams for the pharmaceutical companies that own big shares of both major political parties.

If two years ago you’d been told that seeing a parent, going to church, or going to work would require explicit government approval, you’d have scoffed at the absurdity and yet here we are. Allowing for Matt presumably being in Los Angeles, which has been more restricted than just about anywhere else in the world over the last year, his is a tough point to argue against.

Almost Missouri suggests throwing Qaddafi to the scorpions was an even greater blunder than toppling Saddam Hussein was:

Obama’s and Hillary’s pointless and gratuitous war against Libya in order to show that lefties could make war too not only destroyed the cooperative government of a strategic country, it also served notice to every second- and third-tier power that the only sure way to prevent an arbitrary attack by the US is to make sure you have WMDs. None will be foolish enough to give up their WMD programs anymore.

Sounds pretty bad, and he didn’t even mention it opening up the migration floodgates from Africa into Europe.

Reacting to the revelation that close to half of African women bleach their skin, Paperback Writer offers the very sensible insight that people should accept themselves for who they are. After all, it’s hard to celebrate diversity if you won’t admit it exists:

There are good looking and bad looking people of all races. People really should accept their racial characteristics.

He can write that, can’t he? Is a white man criticizing black women for making their skin whiter cultural imperialism or fighting against cultural imperialism? Beats me.

If it is necessary to calibrate the climate, calibrating it through technology rather than by Luddism is the preferable way to go about it:

Microsoft’s billionaire founder Bill Gates is financially backing the development of sun-dimming technology that would potentially reflect sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect. The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), launched by Harvard University scientists, aims to examine this solution by spraying non-toxic calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into the atmosphere — a sun-reflecting aerosol that may offset the effects of global warming.

On the other hand, Bill Gates is critical of cryptocurrencies. Energy is a big cost to the blockchain:

If the sun provides less light, electricity will have to provide more! Elon Musk won’t go to Mars because his finance vehicles aren’t going to the moon, Gates will make sure of that! It’s the hundred-billionaires’ world, we’re just living in it.

The grass isn’t greener on the other side, it’s greener right where you are:

The corporate media deserves a lot of blame for indefatigably fanning the flames of racial discord as a matter of policy. Certain situations are sensationalized, others effectively ignored, and nothing is ever put in proper perspective.

But this also suggests decentralization and eventually political dissolution will have an ameliorative effect on race relations across most of the former United States. Localism will lead the way.

Just one-in-four Americans following–or not following–the Chauvin case from the sidelines have suspended judgment on the outcome of the trial until the jury deliberates and presents its verdict:

Sitting in judgment as a man’s life hangs in the balance would be hard enough when being presented, without distraction, with the best prosecutorial and defense cases assembled. To make that judgment based on a few news reports, gossip, or incomplete video footage as most Americans are doing is a task beyond the feeble faculties of any man or woman.

A nation of men, not of laws.

Put voter ID up for a national vote and it will win in a landslide:

Joe Biden may say it’s more restrictive than Jim Crow, but almost nobody believes him, including black Americans. Nobody does because it’s obviously not. Everyone knows it’s nearly impossible to function in modern America without photo identification. No bank accounts, no beer or cigarettes, no car rentals, no EBT or social security cards, no mortgage or apartment rentals, no airplane flights, no gun purchases, no prescription medicines, the list goes on and on.

Weaponized wokeism is when those with power oppress those without power in the name of standing up to the powerful in the name of the powerless. It’s a real mindfuck, and our corporate class has it down to a tee.

Coca Cola has a big problem with Georgian politicians enacted laws supported by Georgia’s elected representatives but no problem doing business in non-democratic countries like Saudi Arabia or countries that view minorities as a problem to be solved rather than a vulnerable group whose rights must be protected like China. Delta requires photo ID to board its planes, but that’s different because, well, because Democrats are even better on corporate bailouts than Republicans are!

These aren’t criticisms of Saudi Arabia or China. Let them manage their affairs as they see fit. But Woke Capital is the rot at the center of America’s social structure.

The percentages of people, by selected demographic characteristics, who describe those who display American flags on their homes or vehicles as “racist”:

One-in-five “very liberal” people view the American flag as a racist symbol, as do one-in-eight blacks and one-in-nine people under the age of 35.

The stars and stripes haven’t suffered the same fate as the Union Jack yet. But the stars and bars are done and dusted, the Gadsden flag is under siege, and even the Betsy Ross flag is in trouble. It’s on the radar.

Wency on how entrepreneurial evangelicals have outhustled corporate Catholics. Profiting from (and for!) the prophet:

A disciplined denomination ought to be able to staff itself better than a collection of guys trying to outhustle one another for congregants and donations. But in practice you get better pastors with the Evangelical model — that hustling at least draws leaders who can lead and sermonize. The Catholic and Mainline models both seem to be almost totally without discipline; anyone who finishes seminary more or less gets a job for life despite being incompetent or a total misfit for the job, and perhaps despite breaking some denominational rules or even breaking the law.

It’s drying up for both. A shame, for we could use as many good explications of how the new covenant meant an end to offering sacrifices as the country prepares to offer up a human sacrifice in another futile attempt to gain a fleeting spot of atonement for the perceived collective sins of white America.

Is the spirit of 1776 merely the cult of self by a different name? Dfordoom:

The cult of self is not only common, it’s the basis of the current model of western civilisation that began in the mid-18th century.

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” (which was formulated by Aleister Crowley) is not really much different from “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The United States was the first nation to be established purely on the cult of self.

And capitalism is a system that is based on abandoning any concept of morality or transcendence.

So you could describe the current model of western civilisation as fundamentally luciferian. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your point of view.

Chrisnonymous on why the expectation that a man’s wife will also be his best friend may be counterproductive:

If you are giving advice to a young man, I think “look for your best friend to marry” is bad advice. For one thing, it’s impossible for men and women to plumb the depths of their relationship fully without experiencing sex and co-habitation, both of which theoretically come after the decision to get married.

Much better than “friendship” as a criterion for marriage are things like (1) similar sense of humor, (2) similar family background, (3) stable family background, (4) similar expectations about the future, (5) similar attitudes to money and privacy…etc.

As for whether you should expect your wife to become your best friend, that also I would not say to a young man. Many men and women have dissimilar interests, and that is fine, but it also makes it very difficult to be “friends” in the way a man could be “friends” with a man of similar interests. In marriage, loyalty must be total and absolute. Friendships can suffer different degrees and contexts of loyalty. Interests, loyalty–there are many such differences between marriage and friendship that make the expectation of your wife being your best friend not very realistic or necessary.

The excerpt is part of a discussion thread in which the reliably astute Twinkie offers a different perspective in a series of highly recommended comments.