How the Pharmaceutical, Insurance and Private Hospital Industries Continue to Fleece Sick Americans

Big Pharma, along with the insurance industry and investor-owned hospitals, has kept Congress from doing anything to ease the burden most Americans incur when they get sick. David Sirota has published a good article on this outrageous conspiracy.

Self-defense?

Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people with an AK-47 he illegally carried to a demonstration, claiming he killed them in self-defense, has now become the darling of Fox pundit Tucker Carlson. They are both disgusting piles of excrement.

Thanksgiving

Enjoy the interesting story in Atlas Obscura of how Thanksgiving became a national holiday. 

Oddly, the post Civil War South regarded Thanksgiving as an evil northern plot and for many years a number of states below the Mason-Dixon Line refused to observe it.

Having just spent three nights in the hospital with GI problems, I am thankful that I will be fully able to enjoy the Thanksgiving dinner the family has planned for tomorrow.

Dreadful news about the supply chain.

 Read the following article and weep: 

I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End

We are screwed because corporations controlling each link of the supply chain have no incentive to change the current structure, and strong incentives to keep things as they are.

Puritan China

Wired Magazine ran an article today on the Chinese government’s crackdown on teenage celebrity-worship. To American eyes, the government and the Communist Party appear to be attempting to create their own version of John Calvin’s 16th Century Geneva on the Yongding. Puritan rulers are often successful for a time until the people tire of compelled righteousness and revert back to their old indulgent ways. It is unlikely that the current leadership will live to see China blackslide into a more liberal nation, but it will happen, provided that we do not blow ourselves up or allow global warming to do us in.

Food Waste and Global Warming

Many years ago, I read of a charity in the Washington, DC area that held a memorable fundraising banquet to which they invited some well-heeled donors. After everyone had finished, they were informed that restaurants and institutional food services had previously discarded everything they had just eaten. Some of the food came from (choke!) dumpsters. I don’t recall whether that experience had a significant effect on contributions, but it dramatically illustrated how much food is wasted in the course of ordinary business.

A recent issue of Bon Appétit Magazine carried a disturbing article about how food waste contributes significantly to global warming due to the amount of atmospheric carbon it generates. It also suggests some actions we can take to reduce the waste and redirect food otherwise destined for landfills to institutions and people in need.

Humans throw away about 1.3 billion tons of food every year. That’s one-third of all the food in the world. If you loaded that year’s worth of discarded food on trucks, they would stretch bumper to bumper around the globe seven times.

Adam Schiff’s new book reviewed

Today Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Adam Schiff’s new book, Midnight in Washington, recounting the terrible events of January 6, 2021 and how the nation came to such a posture. Required reading. As far as I can ascertain, Schiff is a good and honest person; we should take to heart what he has written.