Saturday, January 18, 2025

Saturday Miscellany

First, from the annals of socialized medicine, Canadian style. The Toronto Sun reports the truth about the much-vaunted Canadian system:

Close to 15,500 people died waiting for health care in Canada between April 1, 2023 until March 31, 2024...via Freedom to Information Act requests across the country... the exact number of 15,474 is incomplete as Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador don’t track the problem and Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia only provided data on patients who died while waiting for surgeries – not diagnostic scans.


Second, some words of wisdom from Secretary of State nominee, Marco Rubio:


Marco Rubio says it was a "dangerous delusion" to believe "that all mankind was destined to abandon national sovereignty and national identity" to "instead become...citizens of the world."


"The postwar global order is not just obsolete—it is now a weapon being used against us."


Third, now that Meta has ended its fact-checking, and now that Joe Biden has denounced it for failing to promote leftist propaganda, Google is following suit. Sara Fischer writes in Axios:


Scoop: @Google says it won't do fact-checking —Days after @Meta said it would end fact-checking, @google is telling EU regulators it won't add fact-checks to its search results or YouTube videos, despite requirements from a new EU law….


Fourth, are we witnessing the twilight of the progressive left, not just in America, but around the world.


The New York Post offers this observation:


Lefty political parties across the world are now more unpopular than any time since the Cold War, a staggering analysis of recent elections shows.


The Left suffered a record-low average of just 45% of votes in dozens of ballots held globally last year, according to the analysis of 73 democratic elections, conducted by the Telegraph.


In the United States and Western Europe, progressives were even more unpopular — with the left-leaning parties securing only 42% of their respective votes.


Fifth, this week we have had the opportunity to see the Trump cabinet selections in action… testifying before Senate committees. Dare we say, for having watched bits and pieces of the testimony, they are uniformly very intelligent and capable. Like it or not, Trump has chosen an impressive crew. 


So, Trump has surrounded himself with such quality people. They are far less likely to allow themselves to be pushed around by the executive.


As for the shrieking harpies who tried to derail Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, Ann Coulter has this to say:


Wouldn’t you know it? Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s grilling by the Senate Armed Services Committee about his opposition to women in combat would have to come the very week that Los Angeles’ all-female leadership team was performing so masterfully at subduing wildfires. The way things are going, the fires should be out by Memorial Day.


Between the gals who just let about a third of L.A. go up in smoke and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the 5-foot-tall “combat veteran,” Hegseth had his work cut out for him. (Adding to his difficulty, women didn’t want Pete to solve this problem for them, they just wanted him to listen.)


Sixth, Vive la France, or some such. Progressive Parisians decided to host a group of refugees for a free event in a local theatre. Lo and behold, once ensconced in the theatre, they refused to leave. 


The Free Press has the story:


The Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, known for its progressive programming and “radical shows,” hosted a free event for refugees—and now they’re refusing to leave.


The event was titled “Reinventing the welcome for refugees in France.” And the “welcome” wasn’t so much reinvented as it was reenacted. The event entailed activists and academics giving talks to the migrants, the majority of whom hailed from France’s former West African colonies. But once the talks ended, the migrants decided to stay.


Now the theater, suffering from a decline in ticket revenue, may go out of business, as might the unaffiliated bistro next door: “They hang around outside my terrace, smoking joints and fighting among themselves.” Si triste.


In English, the meaning is: no good deed goes unpunished.


Seventh, The New York Post reports that New York state is leading the nation in expenses per public school pupil. The number is $36,000 per pupil.


The results, you can guess:


New York funnels more money into its schools than any state in the nation — with only mediocre results to show for it, a withering report released Friday reveals.


Spending on education has gone up — to a whopping $89 billion on New York school districts this academic year — even as both enrollment and test scores have plummeted, according to the analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission.


Isn’t it about time that we banned teachers’ unions?


Eighth, as though things were not bad enough at CNN, the network has just lost a defamation suit to a Navy veteran. To put it in context, the lawsuit follows ABC’s loss of a defamation suit to one Donald Trump.


Newsmax has the story:


A Florida jury on Friday found CNN liable for defaming a U.S. Navy veteran who helped evacuate people from Afghanistan after the U.S. military withdrew from the country in 2021.


Zachary Young, a Navy veteran who later worked as a security consultant, filed the suit in 2022. His legal action claimed that his reputation was destroyed by a network report on "The Lead with Jake Tapper" that claimed he exploited desperate Afghans by charging exorbitant fees.


The report included the use of his name and photo with a label stated that Afghan evacuees were caught in a perilous “black market.”


Reporting the news is one thing. Using your platform to defame your political opponents is quite another.


Ninth, from Bill Maher, on the connection between Trump and the Los Angeles fires:


Remember when we had a fire when Trump was president and he came and he said, you don't rake! We all did jokes about it. We got to get over this thing….Just because Trump says it doesn't mean it's automatically wrong. Did he have a point about that? 


Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso replied: "Of Course he did."


Maher replied:  Did Liberals let the city burn to the ground because they were contrarian to Trump? Of course they did.


Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.


No comments: