Update no.689

Update from the Heartland

No.689

23.2.15 – 1.3.15

Blog version:  http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

To all,

Texas justice . . . ain’t it grand.  On Tuesday, a jury convicted Eddie Ray Routh, 27, of capital murder after killing former Navy SEAL Christopher Scott ‘Chris’ Kyle and Chad Hutson Littlefield at a Texas shooting range in 2013.  Routh plead innocent by reason of insanity, claiming to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and paranoia-schizophrenia.  The jury did not buy his argument.  I surmise most folks are familiar with Kyle’s story, so I do not need to waste anyone’s time.  Frankly, I am a little surprised the judge did not give Routh the punishment he deserved.

The following thread regarding vaccinations was extracted with permission from a parallel forum for public debate.  Hopefully, these thoughts will prove useful to others in this forum.

Contributor 1:

“Huh? Vaccinations are pretty much already required and almost universal. This laundry list of problems and issues is therefore pretty much already in place.

“I personally think that not vaccinating your kids is just monumentally stupid, but I can see the point of the parents who feel that way. I can also see the point of the people who resent being exposed to serious illness because of other people's choices.

“Like most things, this has to be a balance between competing needs and desires, in this case freedom of choice versus creating a hazard to others. A good friend has what I think is a good solution - kids who are not vaccinated are not allowed in public schools. There are lots of home-schooling opportunities and assistance, people who don't want to have their kids get vaccinated can take advantage of them.  That doesn't solve the total exposure problem, but it goes a long way toward cutting back on one of the main sources of transmission.”

Contributor 2:

“It's a complex issue, no doubt.  For others, a very binary choice on their part, for their children's future (for good or worse), and so-called ‘collective good.’

“Personally, keeping my kid (if I had one) out of public school for private school, would the best investment I could give the poor kids of today, who are pawns in a sick game of robbing them of independent thinking, programming them with the group-think of today (and tomorrow) often for political correctness.

“I really feel sorry for the kids today, because their adult lives of tomorrow, seem to me, may be much more difficult with less options for the kind of opportunities we once had.

“Cap Parlier had some thoughts on this matter of vaccination, in his current Update.  I intended on responding to a few items on his Update and hope to get to that tonight/tomorrow, but will send the Update out next.”

Contributor 3:

“What's the beef?

“If you choose to vaccinate, then theoretically you should be protected from all those that don't.  If you choose not to then that's your choice, but if you get sick you have yourself to blame.  Then there is the issue of all the toxic agitants like Thimerisol, Mercury, blood cells, etc. that can cause fatal or severely adverse reactions in some people.  How many Gardasil treatments have gone bad?  There was a story just recently of a 20-something nurse dead after a flu shot.

“There are risks everywhere in life, yet it seems the only lawful choice is to terminate a pregnancy...soon it may be lawful to kill your baby but not to refuse a vaccination.  Just more twisted, F'd up liberal groupthink.”

My contribution:

            The issue for me is far bigger than vaccinations – every citizen’s fundamental right to privacy.  Like so many issues – drugs, sex, rock & roll, abortion, et cetera et al – I hedge to the individual’s freedom of choice.  Personally, I think rejection of vaccinations is foolish, ill-informed and otherwise not a wise choice.  However, to be vaccinated is a private matter.  My earlier point, like all of these private choices, our choices have consequences and the public domain has obligations, e.g., quarantine should symptoms present and individual accountability.  Bottom line: we must get the State out of our private lives and choices.

Congress passed S. 1, AKA Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act [PL 114-xxx; S.1; House: 270-152-0-10(3); Senate: 62-36-0-2(0)] to enable the construction of the controversial Canadian oil pipeline across the Great Plains states to a Gulf Coast terminal at Port Arthur, Texas.  The bill was replete with the usual pork.  President Obama vetoed the bill (24.2.2015) and sent it back to the Senate, as he said he would.  This was only the 3^rd veto in his presidency.

            Article I, Section 7, Clause 2 of the Constitution does not specify whether the 2/3 vote in favor of override is a simple, super majority or an absolute super majority – the former being 2/3 of a quorum, and the latter 2/3 of the membership (seats).  It is my understanding of the Senate and House rules require an absolute 2/3 super majority.  Thus, the required votes in each chamber would be 67 in Senate and 290 in House.  They are short of the requisite vote count in both chambers.  It is not yet clear whether the congressional leadership will attempt a veto override.

            The strange thing in this whole affair . . . major segments of the pipeline have already been completed and are in operation.  Canadian oil has been flowing to Wood River oil terminal on the Mississippi River in Illinois.  The primary objective of the S.1 bill is authorization of a 36-inch pipe from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska, through Baker, Montana, to carry American crude oil as well as the Canadian product.  The environmental concerns have already been addressed and met.  To me, this appears to be just another political football being kicked back and forth within a divisive, uncooperative Congress.

In Update no.666, I illuminated the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2015 [PL 113-164; 128 Stat. 1867; 19.9.2014].  The subject of the earlier paragraph was actually § 149 [128 Stat. 1874] – the Syrian opposition support provision.  The subject of this paragraph is actually § 106(3) [128 Stat. 1868] of PL 113-164, specifically and solely the date – December 11, 2014.  In the political drama playing out before us on the congressional stage in Washington, the House rejected the Senate’s effort to pass a 20-day stop-gap funding of the Department of Homeland Security [H.R.240; House: 201-218-0-13(3)] on Friday, and then hijacked another bill (H.R. 33) to change the PL 113-164 § 106(3) date to 6.March.2015, which extends Homeland Security funding for one more week.  The Senate passed the bill by voice vote.  The House passed the H.R. 33 bill at 21:59 [R] EST Friday night [House: 357-60-0-15(3); Senate: voice].  The President has probably already signed the bill, buying Congress one more week.  The drama in Congress apparently hangs upon Republican objections to the President’s executive action regarding immigration reform [675].  The sad part of this whole ‘affair’ grows from the reality that Congress can negate, supersede, alter or otherwise amend the President’s initiative by passing a bill to reform immigration law.  Holding the government hostage for petulant political statements or leverage is simply wrong.  At least the President has the chutzpah to do something that needs to be done.  Congress cannot claim the same.

Former deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin and prominent Russian opposition politician Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov was assassinated by multiple gun shots on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow near the Kremlin, while walking home from dinner.  This was not just another murder in a big city.  To me, this is another dot . . . that reminds me too much of other similar nights – 29/30.June.1934, Nacht der Langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives); 1.December.1934, Sergei Mironovich Kirov assassinated and signaled the beginning of Stalin’s purges of the Soviet military & political leadership; and, 20.August.1940, Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, AKA Leon Trotsky, assassinated, the last of the Bolshevik ‘Old Guard.’  President Vladimir Putin denied any knowledge or involvement in the Nemtsov murder; of course, this is what dictators do . . . eliminate their opposition and claim their opponents did the crime to implicate them.  I continue to ask, how many more signs do we need?

News from the economic front:

-- Federal Reserve Chair Janet Louise Yellen testified before the Senate Banking Committee, “The employment situation in the United States has been improving on many dimensions.”  She went onto testify that if the economy keeps improving, the Fed “will at some point begin considering an increase in the target range for the federal funds rate on a meeting-by-meeting basis.”  Yellen subtly shifted the Fed's public discussion of the outlook for rates, away from assurances that rates would stay low and toward a discussion of when and how fast they would move up.

-- The People's Bank of China announced the reduction of its benchmark lending rate and deposit rate each by 0.25% to lower domestic companies' borrowing costs.  The one-year lending rate was reduced from 5.6% to 5.35% and its one-year deposit rate from 2.75% to 2.5%.  The action reflects Beijing's concern over slowing growth.

Comments and contributions from Update no.688:

Comment to the Blog:

“I cannot resist an attempt to boil down the issue of your very long comment thread to the ‘sound bites’ your other commenter claims are inappropriate.

“The more important issue is parenting. The important issue in parenting is not gender. Any child raised by one parent is by definition raised in a single-gender home. So what? The question is not what gender the parents are but how they parent. Addiction, abuse, and neglect are the overwhelming factors in poor parenting. No studies have found higher rates of those issues in a given sexual orientation. End of topic. The commenter's examples must be taken as a false generalization unless he or she can provide quantified evidence obtained in an objective study. Preferably, that study would be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

“The rest of that issue is a discussion of the First Amendment to the Constitution. If the institution of religion (which is not the religion in itself) is threatened by the existence of others' beliefs, that is the weakness of the institution and not a governmental responsibility. I will point out here what ‘regarding an establishment of religion’ meant in 1776. At that time, each nation had an ‘established’ religion. Our Constitution was novel in forbidding that practice. I would like to avoid establishing any religion or type of religion, such as Christianity.

“As an aside, I would like to point out that even the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) did not originally support man-woman monogamy as the only form of marriage. The founder of those religions married his half-sister (Sarah or Sarai) and had his first son with her servant, Hagar, at his wife's urging. Many other examples of non-monogamy and other violations of Victorian morality can be found in the Bible. Secular examples in other religions abound as well.”

My response to the Blog:

            Good parenting is good parenting regardless of the social factors.  Clearly, not everyone agrees.

            Keeping religion out of secular governance was/is a cornerstone of this Grand Republic.  That is not to say we are not respectful of the Creator.  There is a huge difference between spirituality and the influence of religion.  The challenge is always finding a stable balance.

            There are seriously contradictory examples in all religious texts.  There are also wise words worth our embrace.  We must filter what matters to each of us.

My very best wishes to all.  Take care of yourselves and each other.

Cheers,

Cap                        :-)