The Daily Gouge Archive, Friday, January 11th, 2019

On January 13, 2019, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Friday, January 11th, 2019…but before we begin, a few brief comments on the recent shooting in Houston of a 7-year-old Black child. We’d like to just mention her as a “7-year-old child”, but the Black racial animus sown and cultivated by the half-White Barack Hussein Obama has grown to proportions so endemic they don’t allow equality of coverage.

Strange as it seems, the initial comment from the racially-divisive, self-promoting Sheila Jackson Lee, as evil a persona as has ever, in our opinion, cursed the continent, that the murder of Jazmine Barnes may have been a hate crime was, for her, a measured response.

Yes, given the evidence at the time, it might have been a hate crime.

According to a local source, during the time a White male was placed at the scene of the shooting, and thus a White male was initially the suspect, the story was 24/7 all over the Houston news, even garnering national attention.

However, AFTER Houston authorities arrested two Black males for the shooting…

…the silence in the Houston Media was deafening!

But THIS quote truly takes the cake:

If you’re shocked anyone of any color could make such statement, you should be even more shocked a “legitimate” newspaper or MSM organization would feature it, let alone without any follow-up questioning or comment.

Still, given the fact the latest digital application we received for our annual security clearance for the Naval Academy Club still wanted our race, but contained male and female options for gender which couldn’t be selected, we’re way beyond being shocked.

Thus the pronouncement traditional masculinity is harmful and could lead to sexual harassment by the same group who deemed homosexuals, transgenders and pedophiles as psychologically sound doesn’t raise our blood pressure, but rather simply confirms our classification of Liberalism as a mental disorder.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, writing at AEI, Michael Rubin details…

Where walls work, part II

“Two years ago, I listed the growing number of countries which have come to embrace walls or fences along their borders in order to deter illegal immigration or to secure their borders from terrorism. The list then was already long: Algeria, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, India, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen.

At the time, I had omitted Ireland, which has committed to bring down its separation walls with Northern Ireland by 2023, and China (in 1997, I drove along the China-Tajikistan border fence high in the Pamirs). Egypt has built a border wall with Gaza, and continues to destroy tunnels beneath its border with Gaza. In 2015, Slovenia built a fence specifically to slow the tide of illegal migrants, which it now plans to expand. Iran is building a border barrier with Pakistan to curb drug smuggling.

Since my last compilation, the list has only grown. Iraq has now built a fence along its border with Syria, and France has also joined the club, specifically to control illegal immigration. Lithuania has built a barrier along one of its borders with Russia. Estonia, too, is joining the club. Norway, too, has built a border barrier along its frontier with Russia in order to stem illegal immigration. Part of this is motivated by fear of Russia but, especially in the case of Norway, controlling illegal immigration is also a factor.

None of this is meant to suggest that a border barrier with Mexico would be a panacea or would substitute for a more holistic policy to stem an illegal immigration problem. A wall with our southern neighbor might be an extreme solution but, to be blunt, had Democrats recognized the seriousness of the illegal immigration problem and the fact that many migrants are motivated not by fear but by economics, the impasse never would have become so polarized. Whether the cost of an enhanced border wall for the US-Mexican border would provide the most bang for the buck is a political decision. But, as argued in my 2017 post, it is simply counterfactual to suggest walls don’t work, a willful subordination of facts to the politics of the day. Put another way: Take Trump out of the equation, and a growing number of countries (and, in the case of Cyprus, even the United Nations) are weighing evidence and facts and concluding that border walls very much serve their stated purpose.“

Part I of Rubin’s list of places where walls work can be accessed through the link provided.

In a related item, courtesy of his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty records how…

Trump Makes His Case for a Border Fence

The best line from the president’s speech: “Some have suggested a barrier is immoral. Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences, and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside.”

The worst line from the president’s speech: “Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border.”

This is technically true, but this is unrelated to the security fence or wall at the heart of the dispute. The most recent Drug Enforcement Agency report concluded, “The majority of the flow is through [privately-owned vehicles] entering the United States at legal ports of entry, followed by tractor-trailers, where the heroin is co-mingled with legal goods.”

As I laid out yesterday, there’s a strong case for the wall, based upon the facts and accounts of those who work on the border and who volunteered for the duties of protecting Americans. Hyperbole and exaggeration aren’t just unnecessary; they’re counterproductive.

Since we’re on the subject of hopeless hyperbole, gross exaggeration and the completely counterproductive, in the Environmental Moment, again brought to us by his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty calls our attention to…

The Not-So-Pretty Fine Print of the ‘Green New Deal’

A ‘Green New Deal’ Would Cut the Military in Half, End 87 Percent of U.S. Energy, and Ban Cars

“Take some time to peruse the “Green New Deal” in writing.

The deal includes a plan to “cut military spending by at least half” and withdraw U.S. troops from overseas.

The United States military currently has 1.3 million active-duty troops, with another 865,000 in reserve, and 680,000 civilian employees. Green New Deal advocates haven’t laid out exactly how many fewer personnel the U.S. military would have if spending was cut in half, but a military that was half the size of the current one would leave about 1.4 million personnel out of work. And remember, advocates of the Green New Deal pledged to cut military spending in “at least half.”

When there are no U.S. forces stationed in Europe, South Korea, Japan, or the Middle East, how much safer do you think those places get? Do you think conflict is more likely or less likely once all U.S. military personnel leave? Do you think China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia become more aggressive or less aggressive? I thought warfare and explosions and firebombing generated a lot of carbon emissions, but maybe Green New Deal advocates think people being killed in a war on a massive scale would balance it out in the long run.

Under the Green New Deal, within eleven years, the United States would be required to eliminate not merely nuclear power — which does not directly produce any carbon dioxide or air pollution — but all natural gas. Natural gas currently provides about 32 percent of America’s energy, and nuclear power produces another 10 percent. The “Green New Deal” would also eliminate coal, which provides almost 18 percent of America’s energy, and liquid natural gas and oil, which generates another 28 percent.

In other words, within eleven years, the United States would need to replace about 88 percent of its current energy sources. This is not possible short of a societal collapse to agrarian subsistence. (At least the Renaissance fairs will remain the same.)

The Green New Deal calls for “replacing non-essential individual means of transport with high-quality and modern mass transit.” This is a wonky way of calling for a ban on cars. Who decides whether your car is a “non-essential individual means of transport”?

The Green New Deal also declares, “along with these steps, it will be necessary to electrify everything else, including transport.” Your gasoline-powered car would be banned. You would only be allowed an electric one, if you were allowed a car at all.

The Green New Deal calls for the federal government would become the “employer of last resort,” contending:

Other economists also estimate the cost of a program for the federal government as employer of last resort (ELR) would be relatively small, around 1-2% of GDP, because it corresponds with huge savings in unemployment insurance in a way that pays people to work rather than paying them to not work.

…Did you notice, by the way, that the Green New Deal would eliminate unemployment benefits? If you lost your job, your alternative would be to go to work for the government.

The Clean New Deal declares, “a British think tank recently put out a study saying that all fossil fuels could be eliminated in 10 years.”

But if you actually go and read that study, you’ll find near the end some glaring caveats:

The experience of tiny, affluent countries such as Denmark and Kuwait may be relevant for countries in a similar class (such as Belgium, Brunei, or Qatar), but less so for an India or Nigeria. Moreover, the sociocultural or political conditions behind transitions in Brazil and China, at the time military dictatorships and communist regimes (respectively), are incompatible with the governance norms espoused in modern democracies across Europe and North America.(Emphasis in the article, not from us!) Furthermore, history seems to suggest that past transitions—including many of the case studies presented here—are based on discoveries of new, significant, and affordable forms of energy (usually carbon-intensive) or technology, leading to abundance. Yet in the future, it may be scarcity and “stranded assets,” rather than abundance, which influences decisions.

The fact that enacting these changes would probably require a dictatorship or other authoritarian regime to suppress resistance seems like a pretty important detail, don’t you think?“

Here’s the juice: to those proposing it…

…the requirement for a dictatorship or other authoritarian regime to institute such a program while suppressing resistance is an asset, not a glitch!

In a related item, Best of the Web‘s Jim Freeman suggests…

If You Have to Ask How Much Socialized Medicine Costs…

Democrats know taxpayers will realize they can’t afford it.

“After dismissing for years the idea that Democrats’ health care plans would lead to a government takeover, new House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth on Tuesday asked Congress’ top economist to sketch out the options for a government takeover. The Kentucky Democrat also implicitly sketched out the political game plan: enact socialized medicine before patients and taxpayers understand what they’ll be losing.

In a remarkable document that assumes short political memories, longtime ObamaCare cheerleader Mr. Yarmuth acknowledges that the coverage and cost control promised by Affordable Care Act backers never materialized. Mr. Yarmuth admits that many Americans are still uninsured and still “struggle to afford their health care costs.” Rather than exploring ways to allow more market competition in a health care financing system long dominated by Washington policy, Mr. Yarmuth instead asks in a Tuesday letter to Congressional Budget Office director Keith Hall how Washington can control all of the financing. Specifically, Mr. Yarmuth asks for a report on the “design considerations that policymakers would confront in developing proposals to establish a single-payer system in the United States.”

At a 2013 congressional hearing Mr. Yarmuth crowed that ObamaCare “is putting customers back in charge of their health care.” It was a cruel joke for patients who had their choices of plans and doctors taken away by the 2010 law. But now Mr. Yarmuth and his fellow Democrats aren’t even pretending anymore—they want Washington in charge.

In Tuesday’s letter Mr. Yarmuth asks for many details about how a government-run system might be structured and administered. But ironically—given that he is supposed to be overseeing the federal budget and his letter is addressed to an economist—Mr. Yarmuth makes it clear that he’s in no hurry to be informed on one particular aspect of such a system: price.

…As he discusses the options for putting Washington in charge of all health care, Mr. Yarmuth doesn’t mention the government-run plan sponsored by Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders that is popular among House Democrats…The public-relations problem for the Sanders plan is that its Marxist sponsor didn’t quarrel with a staggering $32.6 trillion estimated taxpayer price tag. Instead Mr. Sanders argued that it would be worth it because he would cut overall U.S. health spending by radically reducing payments to doctors and other health care providers—even to levels below the cost of providing services—while somehow persuading them to continue practicing medicine in the U.S.…”