Disappointing Cavuto

Listening to Neil Cavuto do a piece praising the 4-day work week based on a British study that has shown that four days is somehow more productive than 5, and remote workers are more productive than those at the office. Really? Have those folks been on the roads at 2:00 in the afternoon on a workday?  I’m going to have to call him  on this one, he lacks the perspective to make such an endorsement. There’s no way workers are miraculously 25% more productive when literally left to their own devices: surrounded by kids, television, the refrigerator, PlayStation calling to them, and the dog at the door.  Not to mention that highly addictive cell phone burring on the dining room table. Decisions, decisions. Respond to the office email or check my watch list on eBay. And how exactly are they measuring productivity? It’s not manufacturing, so there’s no product to measure. Is this perhaps just more internet sleight of hand? In my experience, I have found my post-Covid attorneys, payroll specialists, customer service reps, insurance representatives, and accountants less responsive, more difficult to track down and speak to directly, and more content to communicate by email. It may be perceived as “work,” but to the consumer, it is less convenient, less timely, and certainly less efficient.

Science Spun

Yesterday I was barraged on my commute to work and the ride home by NPR in full attack mode, claiming Governor Ron DeSantis is introducing “anti-trans” legislation in Florida. NPRs premise is that early intervention with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatment, and surgery are all “gender-affirming” care that “saves lives.” To plead their case, they interviewed two mothers of trans children and one female endocrinologist who cited examples of intervention that allowed their trans-kids to “blossom” into their true selves and “thrive” while stating that the science supports gender affirmation treatment with a long history of documented success. Ahem. No, it does not. Granted, with politics creeping insidiously into the scientific literature, I’m sure you can find an article somewhere to support your thesis, no matter how far out of the mainstream it may be. And recall that in the field of psychology, the majority of data from studies in the field cannot be reliably reproduced. The respected journal Nature determined “over half” of the studies could not be reproduced, and NPR themselves reported that only 13 of 21 selected studies showed the ability to have the data duplicated. A large collaborative study found reproducibility in only 39 of 100 studies. In fact, European literature seems to have determined that those that underwent irreversible procedures were, in many cases, more likely to suffer from regret and suicide. And they’ve been at it a lot longer than we have. And whatever happened to the psychiatric community lecturing us about the development of the adolescent brain being incomplete until the age of 23?  So now we will allow children going through puberty, perhaps the most confusing time in their lives, bombarded with mixed messages courtesy of the internet, to make irreversible decisions about their bodies and their development. We don’t even allow those under the age of 18 to get tattoos, yet we are considering letting them make decisions about genital mutilation.  And how do you explain a Missouri fifth-grade grade peer group, where after one member “came out” as transgender, all the other females in the group suddenly decided they were transgender as well?  And then, a Missouri transgender clinic subsequently advised that the school must affirm all of them as transgender. Fifth graders are 11 years old, you idiots. Is there an adult in the room? Or maybe a medical professional without an agenda? It seems that all the professionals weighing in are specialists in the field of gender affirmation treatment or work in a facility that , offers gender reassignment interventions. Rarely do we hear from those who don’t benefit from promoting gender affirmation treatment, and almost always the self-anointed experts, or the parent pleading their case, is female. Why is that?  Is this fad or fashion? Yet another social media driven aberration spiking right along with the parallel increase in mental health issues associated with teenage girls and the rise of Facebook, Instagram and Tik-Tok?  With the proven fallibility of studies in psychiatry, the proven increase in anxiety and depression amongst teenage females, the groupthink cases of trans identity, and suppression of data contrary to the growing gender affirmation industry, perhaps DeSantis is a voice of reason in seeking to prevent knee-jerk reactions to implement irreversible medical procedures to treat a poorly understood phenomenon.

Morning Blues

Listening to the news while reading a recent WSJ article set me off on the wrong foot this morning. The article advises NY having 36% of its residents on Medicaid, a figure the state says we “should be proud of” because NY ranks 8th lowest in uninsured. Our enrollment has gone up 57% in the last decade. How is this sustainable? It annoys me to no end when I hear our politicians talk about how social security will cease to exist after 2035 without intervention to raise taxes or decrease reimbursement to providers. This after most recipients worked their whole lives paying into the system. But does anybody ever talk about reducing the Medicaid roll, cutting benefits, or reinstalling work incentives? Never. Why is that? If ever there was a government program rife with fraud and abuse…..that’s it. My head is exploding.

Contradictions

 It amazes me how we choose to apply discrimination in the name of equity wantonly. Recall equality relates to equal opportunity, whereas equity ensures equal outcomes. What could go wrong? We can now discriminate on the basis of race in college admissions, medical school admissions, and admission to pilot training programs in the airline industry. We are waiving tools to measure academic performance, no longer requiring students to take the PSAT, the SAT, MCATs, and LSATs, all proven yardsticks to predict academic success.  Advanced placement courses in high schools are being eliminated for being discriminatory towards students who can’t perform to the standards required for placement. Students like those in Baltimore where, despite an expenditure of $17500 per student, precisely zero students are grade proficient in mathematics. The democrat solution, of course, will be to throw more money at the problem despite studies showing no correlation between expenditure and performance or just eliminate the achievement tests altogether and push these kids through the system. Perhaps the Baltimore school superintendent needs additional incentives beyond their $444,000 yearly salary to improve academic performance. Just keep moving the goalposts. Like a recent study showing that Swedes are the happiest citizens on earth, the conclusion was we just have to change the definition of happiness, and we too can be just as happy. Really?  As comedian Billy Connolly once opined: “times may change, but standards must remain.

It Follows

Why wouldn’t china render support to Russia in its conflict with Ukraine? The US sees the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a proxy war, rallying support for Ukraine as a means to weaken our enemy, Russia, without putting boots on the ground. China certainly has done the calculus determining that this supply-side support is weakening the US, as it has already been made public the fact that we have depleted our javelin missile supplies sufficiently that it will take seven years to replace our stockpile. Somewhere within the CCP, I would imagine they have laid out a scenario where the US will not be able to come to the aid of Taiwan should China decide to invade. Low inventory coupled with a long supply line will prove our undoing. Be it balloons, North Korean missile tests,  Iranian nuclear programs, passage through the South China Sea, or support for our allies, we are being weighed, we are being measured, and, thus far, we have been found wanting. And our enemies are no doubt further emboldened by the indecisive, faltering Biden lead US administration.

Marital Subtrafuge

Loretta Lynn fans should take note of the new age definition of standing by your man. In certain political circles, it has become stand behind your man and, despite his obvious physical and or mental infirmities, give him a push into public office. You have to wonder about the motives of Gisele Fetterman and Jill Biden in supporting their obviously impaired husbands into positions of authority that they are not only incapable of executing but may have deleterious effects on their health and well-being. And if they felt this is their opportunity to climb the power ladder, doing it at the expense of their husbands and the electorate. Shame on them.

Mask Confusion

We spent two years wearing useless paper masks to protect us from the Covid-19 virus despite evidence suggesting that any mask other than an N-95 was next to worthless. Yet in East Palestine, Ohio, where the government just incinerated a trainload of volatile organic compounds and exposed an entire town to a mushroom cloud of carcinogens, I am yet to see a mask on anybody other than the clean-up crews. Sure, return to your soot-covered homes and drink the water that’s killing fish. “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” The nine most frightening words in the English language. But personal protective gear?  Masks? Not a word of guidance from the same government that brought you Covid restrictions and lockdowns. When the guys from the EPA are wearing HazMat suits with respirators and telling you everything’s okay, that’s your cue to run. 

Up, Up And Away

Can you believe this balloon debacle?  Apparently, they now suspect we may have shot down one of our own weather balloons. As Tucker Carlson hilariously opined, General Milley may have finally met an enemy he can defeat:  the National Weather Service. It’s now reached the point that I’m afraid to buy my wife a balloon for her birthday next month, fearing the Air Force, on orders from Dirty Joey, will blast it out of the sky. Or worse yet, repeat the Lake Huron disaster and miss on the first attempt and lob $400,000 worth of ordinance into my living room. One had to marvel at a retired general’s explanation of the miss by pointing out that they don’t routinely practice balloon engagement at Top Gun school. Time to change the curriculum, boys. And rather than send up a 137 million dollar F-22 to intercept, perhaps we should consider dragging a biplane out of mothballs and fight WWI technology with WWI technology. Surely the National Air and Space Museum can fire up a Sopwith Camel if they’re not too busy harassing Christians for wearing pro-life beanies.  And the administration’s excuses rank right up there with “the dog ate my homework.” I almost feel sorry for KJP. Almost. We went from “don’t worry, it happens all the time” to “it happened during the Trump Administration too.” Then came the revelation that “we were actually spying on the balloon” and “we’ve been tracking it since it left China.”Sure you have. The latest Biden proclamation was that it’s  just “not much” of an incursion. Traversing the continent from Alaska to South Carolina, pausing over “sensitive sites,” is not much of a breach. Sheesh. What exactly is the definition of a breach on Biden’s watch? We have also progressed from not shooting them down because it could endanger population centers on the ground to “if it flies, it dies.” And are they targeting the balloon or the contraption hanging underneath? One would suspect that they would attempt to recover as much intact hardware as possible by poking holes in the balloon to bring it back to earth gently, as opposed to picking up debris scattered underwater over a 7-mile path after a sidewinder blew it to bits. Or is it more convenient to obliterate the target rather than expose it for what it is? That way, China can continue claiming it's a weather balloon, and the Biden crime family can continue cashing Chinese checks. And what about the other three balloons downed over Alaska, Canada, and Lake Huron?  Why haven’t we recovered any of those pieces? In summary, I now have significantly less confidence in our military and our surveillance apparatus than I did in those halcyon pre-balloon days. And I have no confidence in the Biden Administration's ability to explain a crisis, much less recognize one.  Or do anything about it. 

Civil Rights

It should be equal rights and opportunity across the board, but it is not. Affirmative action belies that premise. You can't undo decades of segregation and prejudice by simply pronouncing all men are now equal. The infrastructure and mindset were not in place to make it so. Subsequent affirmative action was supposed to reinforce that leveling process. When it didn't, they tweaked it by dumbing down our long-standing meritocracy system in the name of diversity.  Those proponents of ever attempting to legislate pandering instant civil rights refuse to recognize that simply in enforcing the laws of our Bill of Rights and Constitution, those so empowered in the ranks of the oppressed were making their mark, albeit handicapped, advising their oppressors that they were their equals. Since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1872 and Johnson's 1964 civil rights legislation, the United States has moved aggressively and decidedly toward equal rights for all its citizens. Do prejudice and bias still exist in this American heterogeneous society? Of course, it does, but the passage of time and changing mindset has leveled the playing field profoundly. However, what prevails is the human condition and the ever-present malcontents and anarchists using the race card to ferment division.

State Of The Union

With each State of the Union address, our congress more and more resembles the British Parliament with its raucous give and take with the speaker. I’m unsure if that’s a good thing, but I’m pleased that the Republicans didn’t let Joe get away with the tired old “granny over the cliff” scenario.  But this morning, while sitting in my physician's office, I overheard two staff members ranting about none other than Trump, diagnosing him as having a pathological need to be the center of attention. Granted, his personality is abrasive to some, but which would you rather have, a domineering commander steering a country with energy independence, a robust economy, and her adversaries coming to heel or a dementia-addled puppet who has declared war on business, opened out borders, destroyed the energy sector and projects weakness to our adversaries. I just don’t get it. An hour and 13 minutes that started with a nod to bipartisanship then deteriorated into lies and misrepresentation with no path towards recognizing the half of America that disagrees with his agenda.  As our local conservative talk show host summed it up: I feel like an outsider whenever he speaks.

What Are We Thinking

So let me get this straight. We allow a Chinese surveillance balloon to pass over the entire continental United States from west to east, including a flyover of strategic missile sites in Montana, while we dither over what to do about it. Military officials actually congratulated themselves on figuring out the balloon’s true mission when they observed it “linger” over sensitive sites. Idiots. And it’s not like we didn’t realize it was coming. Why not shoot it down while it was over the Pacific Ocean after it violated our territorial waters?  No, that would make too much sense. Instead, we allow it to make landfall, then argue that we can’t shoot it down as the debris would pose a risk to population centers. And when asked by reporters about the precise location of the balloon, a pentagon official advised us that its location is “confidential.” When pressed further and asked if the public is not entitled to information as to the balloon’s location, that same official responded that we are welcome to “look up in the sky and see where the balloon is.” What a phenomenal level of arrogance to deflect from an equally astounding level of incompetence. Finally, after allowing the surveillance balloon to traverse the country and undoubtedly transmit reams of data back to the CCP, we shot it down off the coast of South Carolina. Geniuses. So rather than capture the electronics intact and find out precisely what it was and what data it was collecting, we obliterate it with a missile fired from an F-22 and spread the debris over an area measured in square miles in water 45 feet deep. Bravo, we scramble a state-of-the-art fighter jet to shoot down a dirigible so we could make a huge Chinese jigsaw puzzle. So now the Chinese can keep claiming it was a civilian meteorological instrument, you know because it’s important for China to know what the weather is like in Montana, they likely gathered all the surveillance data they needed to complete the mission, and they determined that when provoked, this administration will do absolutely nothing in a timely fashion. But tough guy, Joe from Scranton, got to puff out his chest and, with that steely-eyed look in his eyes, claim that he issued the order to shoot it down. That was after he had his pudding. But come on, man, Biden was in congress in 2001 when the Chinese forced down one of our  EP-3 surveillance aircraft after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet over international waters. They detained and interrogated the 24-man crew for a week, stripped the plane of its electronic surveillance equipment, and only allowed the aircraft to be returned after it was disassembled and shipped home in crates. Does he not recall this event, or is something else happening here?  So far, chalk this one up as a win for China. They get valuable intelligence, and we get scrap.