Periscope (October 29, 2019)

• The Democratic plan for a 42% national sales tax

  A 42% national sales tax (known as a valued-added tax) would generate about $3 trillion in revenue. But it would destroy the consumer spending that’s the backbone of the U.S. economy. A tax of that magnitude would be like 42% inflation, wrecking consumer budgets and the many companies that depend on them, from Walmart and Amazon to your local car dealer.

  As usual, the Left has a plan to take and redistribute that will destroy society, forcing us further into the decay cycle where we are "mass mobilized" by war or militarization in preparation for war. The Right likes to grow healthy people; the Left likes to assemble a mass and force them to keep the empire running. Sane people side with organic growth and natural selection instead of mass conformity and ideological obligation.

• Majority of Germans want Turkey kicked out of NATO: survey

  NATO serves in theory as an organization to defend Western Europe. Turkey, on the other hand, finds most of its loyalty in the middle east. While it was strategically important to have Turkey be a buffer zone, it never made sense to have them in NATO, and in the aftermath of Trump's withdrawal from parts of Syria, Turkey has shown that its ambitions lie -- yet again -- with establishing an empire spanning Europe and the middle east.

• China's ocean waste surges 27% in 2018: ministry

  Cynical people, or those who view all humans as self-serving in inverse proportion to their awareness of the world beyond themselves, would say that if one group managed to rise above the rest, it should keep its secrets and avoid transferring them to the rest, who by reason of not discovering these things are probably incompetent at understanding them. The rise of the third world in the postwar Leftist push for diversity has brought a worldwide environmental crisis. In the future, the first world will need to focus on self-sufficiency so that it can leave the third world alone, avoiding the crises of pollution, migration, and political instability that inevitably result from meddling.

• Federal Income Taxes and Federal Spending Both Set Records in FY19

  The Trump years have introduced several new doctrines. One is his foreign policy doctrine of supporting our own interests and leaving the rest of the world to bear the burden of its own chaos, making us stronger as other parties self-destruct, while empowering local allies to do what is necessary with military aid. Now we see the Trump domestic doctrine which is, as he expressed during his campaign, to raise revenues by dropping taxes and increasing economic activity. It works; the higher federal spending mostly reflects the three-quarters of our budget which goes to entitlements, which are now stretched to deal with non-contributors from illegal alien and underclass groups.

• Jury awards nearly $20 million to police sergeant told to 'tone down your gayness'

  Another judgment intended to "send a message" simply saddles the consumers with high bills. Police departments do not want to go the way of the UK police, which accepted homosexuals and shortly afterward, seemed to spend a lot of their time marching about with rainbow flags. While not promoting a competent officer for his homosexuality seems out of line, asking him to keep it personal is not.

• Technology biased against black patients runs rampant in hospitals

  "Biased against Black patients" in this case means that it was designed used a dataset of mostly white patients, so did not reflect the differing biology of Black patients. Our society has to make a choice: either race does not matter and we can use the mostly-white dataset without being "racist," or race does reflect an underlying biological, including intellectual difference, and therefore results will always be unequal without any bias involved. In the same way, society can either argue that different groups are biologically different and therefore we receive benefits from having diversity of genetics, or that groups are the same underneath the skin, in which case there are no benefits to diversity. Even more, they have to address the fact that if a society becomes racially-mixed genetically, the benefits of having different genetics are erased, and if we are the same under the skin, we just committed genocide for no gain.

• 50 years after internet conception, dark side stirs fear

  So much is shouted online that moderate voices are drowned out and extreme viewpoints are amplified, spewing hate, misinformation and abuse, he contended.

  More likely, the internet revealed just how much of an echo chamber our society had become, and when the echo chamber pushed back, it enabled a rise in contrary opinion. Along with this came "digital urbanization," or anonymity making people just as abrasive as they are in big cities, and engineers have trouble telling the difference between the two.

• America’s Middle Class Is Addicted to a New Kind of Credit

  Why are protests in the "yellow vests" model breaking out around the world? Probably for the same reason that Millennials endorse socialism and consumers are only spending on necessities: the more you create a centralized system, the more you serve that system, and the more that system extracts from you. People think they want more free stuff from government, but what is really making them broke is that free stuff from government. Much as Margaret Thatcher predicted, we have run out of Other People's Money, especially as Generation X went Galt's Gulch and Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly living in cheap apartments, working do-nothing jobs, and spending most of their time loafing. There is no point slaving away for a system that simply takes it all and wastes it on the same things (civil rights, entitlements, wars for democracy, red tape, nanny states) that already make life nearly unbearable. And yet when it comes time to vote, the voters start preening and navel-gazing and doing whatever they think makes them look intelligent and aloof, which simply furthers the cycle. No one likes modern society; we like technology, but the lifestyle we have to lead has become so toxic that people are existentially miserable, not forming families, and retreating from public life. Now we see why advanced societies fail: they start organizing themselves, but do not know when to stop, which causes a cycle in which people in order to build their individual careers adopt previously working methods and push them too far, at which point society centralizes around an external objective -- symbolism, ideology, markets, power -- and forgets that it is an organic thing which must care for itself internally. These protests are the death knell of liberal democracy and its tendency to always push further to the Left toward feminism, globohomo, diversity, socialism, and pluralism.

• Lost empire that ruled Mesopotamia for 200 years ‘wiped out by apocalyptic dust storm’, experts claim

  A formula for suicide: famine, invasion, and perhaps, having over-extended oneself. What makes us think that we do not face the same risk in the present day? Oh, right, technology, but if that fails anywhere in its supply chain, the whole technological empire unravels. And then what?

• Humanity's homeland found in ancient Botswana

  This sounds tempting until you realize that the study is being used to talk about climate change. These statistical assessment look at too little of the picture and draw too broad conclusions. In my view, it is more likely that modern humans appeared outside of Africa but then flowed into Africa and Asia where they interbred with similar populations. The rise of humanity took many steps, and probably never had a keystone event like they one they are estimating from branching DNA.

• 'This is the golden age': eastern Europe's extraordinary 30-year revival

  Eastern Europe initiated a renaissance by rejecting the Leftist policies that the West endorses. The West, with more wealth to burn, adopted these same policies because democracy always shifts to the Left, and it felt less initial suffering because it adopted them in gentler forms and had more wealth to waste before it felt the sting of unrealistic policy. Now, the West is finally feeling the pain of its stupidity, while the East, having rejected that stupidity, finds itself rising.

• China's Obesity Rate Triples in 10 Years

  Modern society causes blōt. The more we externalize our decision-making to a centralized authority, the less we remember to care for ourselves. In turn, our environment becomes hostile, so we turn toward passive activities behind locked doors so that we do not have to deal with the mess out there. The same blōt that afflicts the West will strike anywhere that people adopt modern behaviors.

• Judge reopens Covington Catholic High student's defamation suit against Washington Post

  New ruling allows Nick Sandmann and his legal team to get more information from The Washington Post, potentially affirming that the Post intended to categorize Sandmann as a "racist" without having looked at the accuracy of reported facts in the case much at all. If this "defamation by negligence" approach wins, it will force the media to be more careful about the implications it makes regarding the intention of people upon whom it reports. This will not diminish free speech, since it simply installs accountability; you can still publish whatever you want, but you can be sued if you make convenient assumptions without investigating properly. In other words, journalists would have to actually do their jobs instead of writing political propaganda.

• Risks of cannabis use for mental health treatment outweigh benefits

  Slowly we find out how "medical marijuana" is an illusion created simply to get weed legalized back in the 1990s in California. The pro-pot movement switched from demanding hemp clothing to arguing that marijuana could help ease pain, calm minds, and fight cancer. Now we are seeing that this whole idea is worse than the anti-vax movement, which at least resists over-prescription of vaccines, and is simply a con job.

• Man with rightwing links tries to burn French mosque, shoots two

  In response to a recent Muslim attack, an elderly person possibly suffering from a fatal disease tries to burn a mosque and shoots two people who came to stop him. One can see the "tit-for-tat" pattern of ethnic attacks here which shows that the underlying problem is diversity itself.

• Planned event reignites debate about libraries’ role as forum for free speech

  Feminist who criticizes the transsexual movement as denying the essence of womanhood gives speech in public library; the usual neurotics and armchair agitators demand it be canceled. This shows us that in a diverse society, we have too many competing special interests to even have a productive discussion on any topic other than the milquetoast. We have reached peak diversity, and now are seeing just how vast the damage has become.