Mid-Week Post

A mid-week post on the twenty-ninth of February is as good as a post in the merry month of Smarch.



Monkees singer Davy Jones has died. He was sixty-six.



What Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty meant to say is that he never thinks before he speaks:

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty tried Wednesday to turn down the heat generated by his comments earlier in the week about preferring a lower dollar to a growing oil and gas sector in Western Canada.

McGuinty admitted he was "a bit surprised" by the extent of the blowback from his comments Monday, when he said Canada's high "petro-dollar" was bad for Ontario manufacturers and exporters.

"I think I should clarify ... we are very, very proud of the work that is being done by Canadians in every province and territory to strengthen our country," McGuinty told reporters.

"We have a strong sense of partnership with Canadians from coast to coast to coast."

The mea culpa wasn't enough for Alberta Premier Alison Redford. Her position is that the entire Canadian economy, and Ontario in particular, benefits from the oilsands.

She told an open-line radio show that she felt her province was owed an apology from the Ontario premier.

She suggested McGuinty's original comments were born out of the difficult financial situation his government is in.

 Why was he re-elected? Why?



Obama shows he is a soldier's president by jeopardising military medical benefits:

Just when America believed the US government health scandal couldn’t get worse, President Obama’s handlers go one step further—increasing service members’ and veterans’ medical premiums. This move is designed to push service members and veterans to opt out of Tricare and find a new insurance provider.

President Obama’s new medical proposal seeks to save $1.8 billion from the Tricare medical system in the fiscal 2013 budget and $12.9 billion by 2017, the latter amount adding up to 0.99% of the $1.3 trillion deficit for a single year built into Obama’s proposed budget. To accomplish this spending reduction, service members should expect a 30% to 78% increase in Tricare annual premiums for the first year. In five years, service members will expect an increase ranging from 94% to 345%.

The average annual salary for a four year single enlistee is approximately $34k. If that service member were married with dependents, the salary increases to approximately $42k. Are those numbers enough to make any sane person want to enlist today, knowing they will likely ship off to some foreign land to fight a losing war like that in Afghanistan? Are those numbers enough to justify risking one’s life–enough to afford an increased medical premium that could be raised by 78% just this year or 345% by the time their initial enlistment is over?


Make no mistake; the President is downsizing our military, and this new military medical initiative is one sure way he will see volunteers leave the military knowing their benefits are jeopardized. At a time when Iran threatens the free world, Afghanistan’s violence is on a rise, and North Korea remains unstable, is now the time to play with our service members’ well-being?

It's supposed to be a secret:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes there is a growing possibility Israel will attack Iran as early as April to stop Tehran from building a nuclear bomb, U.S. media reported on Thursday.

Given how this administration has given Israel the cold shoulder over and over again, I doubt this is a disinformation ploy but a deliberate wrench in the works.



For those who still don't get it, allow me to explain in the simplest way I know how: Iran is a mad theocratic state and Israel isn't. When even other Islamic states worry that Iran is a loose cannon, you know that nothing good can come from allowing it to obtain nuclear weapons.



Israel, on the other hand, is a stable and sane state where there is no state-sanctioned persecution of religious and ethnic minorities. The same could not be said about Iran. Israel has a civilian army because it has been threatened in the past. Iran's army has both volunteers and conscripts as young as fifteen years old. Israel provides food and medical aid to the very people trying to kill them. How many will benefit from Iran's alleged nuclear energy program?



Related:

This is the moment every sane person knew had to come, ever since Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski knowingly allowed the radical suicide regime of Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the modernizing Shah of Iran.  That was the single most self-destructive decision by any American President in modern history.  

Jimmy Carter empowered the first Islamic throwback regime since Kemal Ataturk modernized Turkey in the 1920s.

Since Khomeini, Islamic radicalization has only accelerated, culminating in the 9/11/01 attack on New York City. Obama's equally suicidal "Arab Spring" has now brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, instead of our long-time ally Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Obama knowingly chose to support Sadat's assassins.

So much for America's loyalty and word of honor.

In 2008, Barack Obama said he would meet Iran without pre-conditions. Discuss.





Also related: an Iranian convert to Christianity is sentenced to three years in prison for "Christian activities".

From a previous post: the editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics gives a self-serving explanation of why he printed - defended- an article arguing for infanticide:

As Editor of the Journal, I would like to defend its publication. The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris in defence of infanticide, which the authors call after-birth abortion.

The novel contribution of this paper is not an argument in favour of infanticide – the paper repeats the arguments made famous by Tooley and Singer – but rather their application in consideration of maternal and family interests. The paper also draws attention to the fact that infanticide is practised in the Netherlands.

Many people will and have disagreed with these arguments. However, the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises. The authors provocatively argue that there is no moral difference between a fetus and a newborn. Their capacities are relevantly similar. If abortion is permissible, infanticide should be permissible. The authors proceed logically from premises which many people accept to a conclusion that many of those people would reject.

Why would he be shocked that many would find this article- and its subsequent support- abhorrent? Oh, why, indeed?!



(With thanks)



And now, a song map.