Those who say that all cultures are equal never explain why the results of those cultures are so grossly unequal.--Sowell
In April, U.S. auto sales were down 6.1 percent. That was the worst decline in 8 years.
Car sales are down in Germany. Car markets in Europe continue to struggle with new EU emission regulations that began last September. These regulations have been the main scapegoat for an industry in Europe that clearly has been grinding to a halt for months now, with manufacturers claiming that the regulations have caused production and sales bottlenecks.
The economics of self-inflicted wounds.
Amazing stuff on the internet. This is a take on the current world situation from a pro-Russian website I found:
"The Empire has suffered painful defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, but one has to admit that these are “tough” countries to crack. The Empire also appears to have lost control of Libya, but that is another complex country which is very hard to control. We also saw all the pathetic huffing and puffing with the DPRK. But, let’s be honest, the USA never stood a chance to bully the DPRK into submission, nevermind invading or regime-changing it. Syria was much weaker, but here Russia, Iran and Hezbollah did a world class job of repelling all the AngloZionist attacks, political and military. Besides, I for one will never blame Trump for not listening to Bolton and not triggering WWIII over Syria (yet?)
WashPo recently counted 10,000 lies by Trump but an economist, looking only at the first one hundred economic "falsehoods" WashPo listed, found 27 out of 100 Trump comments to be "defensible if not unimpeachably accurate." So WashPo is lying?
Apparently this is the Year of the Cicadas, an every seventeen year event. This, and Trump too. Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
Trump's discussions with Putin is allowing a vicious dictator to seem to be a sensible, reasonable man compared to us.
An end to the Aids epidemic could be in sight after a landmark study found men whose HIV infection was fully suppressed by antiretroviral drugs had no chance of infecting their partner. The success of the medicine means that if everyone with HIV were fully treated, there would be no further infections.
And, on the Ebola front: The death toll from an Ebola outbreak in Congo rose above 1,000 on Friday, with attacks on treatment centers continuing to hamper efforts to control the "intense transmission" of the second-worst epidemic of the virus on record. "Attacks on treatment centers."
An interesting discussion recently with a businessman from Canada who has a new Corporation that he has registered in the United States rather than Canada. The reason he did so was the Canadian system demands that all of his papers be duplicated in French and this was so expensive and so annoying and the Americans were so much easier to deal with that he just moved the company here.
Mayor Pugh is out in Baltimore, not because she behaved criminally and unethically but because she was too obviously corrupt; she put all of the others at risk.
Wal-Mart has 440 Satanic items on its online catalog.
There is growing use of “diversity statements” to making hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions. “Professors and other faculty members are asked to pledge their commitment to 'equity' and 'inclusion' and to demonstrate how they have acted to fulfill this pledge in the past,” Christian Schneider wrote in a New York Post op-ed. The University of California demands that all professors applying for tenure-track positions “write a statement on their commitment to diversity, showing, for example, their ‘record of success advising women and minority graduate students,’” reported by something called RealClearInvestigations. At Vassar, tenure-track candidates have to report their “contributions to social justice.” Applicants at the University of Minnesota-Duluth must “demonstrate ability to support the university’s commitment to equity and diversity.” Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington and the University of Nebraska all instruct their professors on how to write effective diversity statements….Faculty at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences were recently required to submit reports detailing their actions in support of “diversity, inclusion and belonging.” The teachers’ ability to demonstrate "wokeness" will affect the assignment of future bonuses, per the school’s dean.
We don't know if they have to memorize chants or anything.
On this day in 1970, at Kent State in Kent, Ohio, 28 National Guardsmen fired into a group of antiwar demonstrators on the Kent State University campus, killing four students, wounding eight, and permanently paralyzing another.
Taking a Bullet
The LA Times had a big article on the California "bullet train." The high-speed rail network would transform California as it connected Los Angeles with San Francisco — cleaner air, less congested freeways and airports, and more limited suburban sprawl with a whole new style of housing around rail stops.
When California shifted its bullet train plan into high gear in 2008, it had just 10 employees to manage and oversee design of the largest public construction project in state history. It would take them only 12 years to bore under mountains, bridge rivers and build 520 miles of rail bed — all at a cost of just $33 billion. But significant portions of this work have been flawed or mismanaged, according to records reviewed by The Times and interviews with dozens of people involved in the project. Ten years after voters approved it, the project is $44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule.
$44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule.
There seems to be a distinction between the abstract plan and the practical implementation. Plans call for the trains to share commuter tracks, moving at much slower speeds and being subjected to delays. The agency originally estimated it would cost $332 million to buy up properties to build the route. But cutting through orchards, vineyards and dairies with vast and sophisticated irrigation and trellis systems proved profoundly more complicated than was expected. The land acquisition is now budgeted at $1.5 billion and tied up in endless litigation. In 2016, engineers said they had to dig a 13.5-mile tunnel through the Diablo Range because their earlier plans cut too close to the San Luis Reservoir. But boring through the unstable mix of hard sandstone, weak shale and boulders has put the estimated cost of that single stretch between $5.6 billion and $14.4 billion.
Even Morocco, with an economy just 4% the size of California’s, managed to build high-speed rail linking Casablanca, Rabat and Tangier.
Oh, well.
But the incentives for building the line is instructive.
The rail authority’s consultants are politically powerful and made major contributions to support the 2008 political campaign for the bullet train bond. They have staffed their ranks with former high-level bureaucrats, and their former executives have occupied key government posts.
Engineering and construction firms contributed $837,000 to the bond campaign, second only to the $1.6 million spent by various unions, according to a Times review of campaign filings. WSP, a professional services firm, put $107,000 into the campaign. There was no organized opposition to the bond measure. It passed with 52.7% support.
The key phrase here is "There was no organized opposition to the bond measure." Here a select few campaigned for a project that would benefit only them. And they were generous; they only wanted enough to get rich on. The rest of the project they gave to us.
In April, U.S. auto sales were down 6.1 percent. That was the worst decline in 8 years.
Car sales are down in Germany. Car markets in Europe continue to struggle with new EU emission regulations that began last September. These regulations have been the main scapegoat for an industry in Europe that clearly has been grinding to a halt for months now, with manufacturers claiming that the regulations have caused production and sales bottlenecks.
The economics of self-inflicted wounds.
Amazing stuff on the internet. This is a take on the current world situation from a pro-Russian website I found:
"The Empire has suffered painful defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, but one has to admit that these are “tough” countries to crack. The Empire also appears to have lost control of Libya, but that is another complex country which is very hard to control. We also saw all the pathetic huffing and puffing with the DPRK. But, let’s be honest, the USA never stood a chance to bully the DPRK into submission, nevermind invading or regime-changing it. Syria was much weaker, but here Russia, Iran and Hezbollah did a world class job of repelling all the AngloZionist attacks, political and military. Besides, I for one will never blame Trump for not listening to Bolton and not triggering WWIII over Syria (yet?)
But Venezuela?!
No Hezbollah or Iran backing Maduro there. And Venezuela is way too far away from Russia to allow her to do what she did in Syria. In fact, Venezuela is in the proverbial “backyard” of the USA and is surrounded by hostile puppet regimes. And yet, tonight, it appears that the US puppet Guaidó has failed in his coup attempt." (emphasis unchanged)
WashPo recently counted 10,000 lies by Trump but an economist, looking only at the first one hundred economic "falsehoods" WashPo listed, found 27 out of 100 Trump comments to be "defensible if not unimpeachably accurate." So WashPo is lying?
Apparently this is the Year of the Cicadas, an every seventeen year event. This, and Trump too. Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
Trump's discussions with Putin is allowing a vicious dictator to seem to be a sensible, reasonable man compared to us.
An end to the Aids epidemic could be in sight after a landmark study found men whose HIV infection was fully suppressed by antiretroviral drugs had no chance of infecting their partner. The success of the medicine means that if everyone with HIV were fully treated, there would be no further infections.
And, on the Ebola front: The death toll from an Ebola outbreak in Congo rose above 1,000 on Friday, with attacks on treatment centers continuing to hamper efforts to control the "intense transmission" of the second-worst epidemic of the virus on record. "Attacks on treatment centers."
An interesting discussion recently with a businessman from Canada who has a new Corporation that he has registered in the United States rather than Canada. The reason he did so was the Canadian system demands that all of his papers be duplicated in French and this was so expensive and so annoying and the Americans were so much easier to deal with that he just moved the company here.
Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss America are all Black women.
Mayor Pugh is out in Baltimore, not because she behaved criminally and unethically but because she was too obviously corrupt; she put all of the others at risk.
Wal-Mart has 440 Satanic items on its online catalog.
There is growing use of “diversity statements” to making hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions. “Professors and other faculty members are asked to pledge their commitment to 'equity' and 'inclusion' and to demonstrate how they have acted to fulfill this pledge in the past,” Christian Schneider wrote in a New York Post op-ed. The University of California demands that all professors applying for tenure-track positions “write a statement on their commitment to diversity, showing, for example, their ‘record of success advising women and minority graduate students,’” reported by something called RealClearInvestigations. At Vassar, tenure-track candidates have to report their “contributions to social justice.” Applicants at the University of Minnesota-Duluth must “demonstrate ability to support the university’s commitment to equity and diversity.” Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington and the University of Nebraska all instruct their professors on how to write effective diversity statements….Faculty at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences were recently required to submit reports detailing their actions in support of “diversity, inclusion and belonging.” The teachers’ ability to demonstrate "wokeness" will affect the assignment of future bonuses, per the school’s dean.
We don't know if they have to memorize chants or anything.
On this day in 1970, at Kent State in Kent, Ohio, 28 National Guardsmen fired into a group of antiwar demonstrators on the Kent State University campus, killing four students, wounding eight, and permanently paralyzing another.
Taking a Bullet
The LA Times had a big article on the California "bullet train." The high-speed rail network would transform California as it connected Los Angeles with San Francisco — cleaner air, less congested freeways and airports, and more limited suburban sprawl with a whole new style of housing around rail stops.
$44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule.
There seems to be a distinction between the abstract plan and the practical implementation. Plans call for the trains to share commuter tracks, moving at much slower speeds and being subjected to delays. The agency originally estimated it would cost $332 million to buy up properties to build the route. But cutting through orchards, vineyards and dairies with vast and sophisticated irrigation and trellis systems proved profoundly more complicated than was expected. The land acquisition is now budgeted at $1.5 billion and tied up in endless litigation. In 2016, engineers said they had to dig a 13.5-mile tunnel through the Diablo Range because their earlier plans cut too close to the San Luis Reservoir. But boring through the unstable mix of hard sandstone, weak shale and boulders has put the estimated cost of that single stretch between $5.6 billion and $14.4 billion.
Even Morocco, with an economy just 4% the size of California’s, managed to build high-speed rail linking Casablanca, Rabat and Tangier.
Oh, well.
But the incentives for building the line is instructive.
Engineering and construction firms contributed $837,000 to the bond campaign, second only to the $1.6 million spent by various unions, according to a Times review of campaign filings. WSP, a professional services firm, put $107,000 into the campaign. There was no organized opposition to the bond measure. It passed with 52.7% support.
The key phrase here is "There was no organized opposition to the bond measure." Here a select few campaigned for a project that would benefit only them. And they were generous; they only wanted enough to get rich on. The rest of the project they gave to us.
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