sangetsu03 comments

Cruise ship owners and other such operators and businesses got millions upon millions of bailouts IMMEDIATELY and used it to cover the losses incurred 

I am opposed to bailouts, if a business is viable enough to return to profitability after an unforeseen shutdown, banks should be more than willing to loan them money and/or roll over their current debt. In regard to bailouts, the amount cruise ship operators received was far short of the losses they suffered. And, once again, the inflation caused by these bailouts has, at the least, negated their short-term benefit. These businesses operate on razor-thin margins as the best of times.

in case no one is aware, shootings and gun related crime significantly decreased after Florida began its “shall issue” CCW program. This was largely due to two things, first, permit holders were required to understand when using deadly force in self defense was legal (in most cases it isn’t), second, many would-be shootings were prevented when the likelihood of victims shooting back increased. A surprising number of women are permit holders in Florida. An old soldier once told me that a gun makes you anyone’s equal. In the 19th century it was said “God made man, Samuel Colt made them equal.”

Other nations had paid furloughs and enhanced unemployment benefits.

And what has been the effect of these benefits? Inflation at multi-decade highs, with no end yet in sight. For every dollar paid for furloughs and enhanced unemployment benefits, we seeing several dollars in lost value. I was in America last month and the amount of inflation is staggering. Pretty much everything in Japan aside from gasoline is now cheaper than in America. The cost of the pandemic benefits paid by other nations is already at the point of causing more harm than good. Japan handled the pandemic better than any other developed country except for Sweden.

We created liberal democracies to end hereditary rulership. And yet we find that liberal democracies around the world are populated with political family dynasties. I think Frank Herbert said “It isn’t necessarily that power corrupts, but that it attracts the corruptible.”

Sports are supposed to be apolitical, a contest between individuals and teams. If you want to compete, you are supposed to leave your politics, religion, and personal beliefs off the court. Everything has been politicized today, from beer to swimsuits, and we have too few places to escape.

This is another step toward increased polarization when we already have too much. There should be no political distinctions between any groups or races, in a free and liberal society justice must be blind, colorblind in particular. We have seen decades of social progress (however slow) torn down in two or three years. I fit in the legal definition of “first nations” or “native-American” in my home country, despite the fact I look more like Ryan Gosling than Jay Silverheels. I am “entitled” to benefits and educational opportunities that white Americans are not. These additional benefits have not improved the lot of my relatives on or off the reservation, and they serve to prove that the rest of society has such low expectations of native-Americans that they can’t be expected to have the ability to fend for themselves. Tell a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth, and too many people today now believe that they have no influence over the course of their lives, that they are doomed to fail unless they are put in front of the line.

Where? can you give a reference where the IPCC says so based on the evidence presented here? Obviously pretending less data gives a better idea of the situation makes absolutely no sense.

IPCC AR6, AR5, and AR4. Read the reports themselves, the summaries are political.

The Summit was nothing but another dog-and-pony show in which our so-called leaders could pose for the cameras, make pointless speeches, and avoid doing their jobs at home.

A proper cure addresses the cause, not the symptom Japan is a small country with limited resources, and most of the country’s jobs are in the crowded metro areas. People have neither the time, money, nor space to raise families. This isn’t a problem which can be solved by policy, mandates, or money. Animal populations also have upward and downward cycles influenced by resources and environment, not by their systems of government or economic policy. The government needs to adjust its policies to reflect economic reality, and not found them on a Ponzi scheme system which requires an ever greater amount of money be collected from an ever shrinking pool of taxpayers.

America’s social policies have turned it into an atomic dumpster fire, America is the last country which should be giving Japan advice on social policy.

In this case, Gorsuch is correct. If we look at the results of the actions taken by governments and compare the results, we see that those who enacted few or no restrictions (like Sweden and Japan), fared no worse (or arguably better) than those which enacted heavy regulations. The most recent studies on masks (such as that in the Cochran Report) showed they were all but pointless, and even the Danish and Bangladeshi studies performed during the pandemic showed minimal efficacy. The entire world is feeling the effects of the policies enacted by governments during the pandemic, which resulted in sky-high inflation, increases in crime, violence, and suicide, and great harm to school children who were denied proper education.

The IPCC itself says their is no evidence for the increase in the frequency or intensity of severe weather events. But we can’t go even a single day without another doom-and-gloom climate change article. At least the IPCC reports follow a rudimentary form of peer review, unlike the study in conducted by the scientists in the article. Let’s not forget that the claims of more than 70% of science papers published over recent years cannot be replicated, meaning more or less that they are bollocks.

There have always been guns in America, but mass shootings used to be very rare. That being the case, we can’t blame the presence of guns for the increase in mass shootings, it makes no logical sense. What has increased in-step with mass shootings is the increase in the prescription of psychotropic drugs used to treat depression and anxiety. If we look back at mass shootings going back to and including Columbine, we find the shooters had one thing almost entirely in common, all had been prescribed psychotropic medications.

Listed side effects of these drugs “may include suicidal and/or homicidal ideation.”

When I was a student in school, kids with ADHD, anxiety, or depression weren’t medicated, they simply had to get by as they were, and in nearly all cases, they did. But in those days we didn’t hear “ask your doctor” advertisements on radio and tv 24/7 and the pharmaceutical industry wasn’t the largest and most powerful advertiser in the media.

The link between drugs and violence is not unknown, pharmaceutical companies have paid billions to the victims of mass shootings, though of course, you’ll never read that in the news.

Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest shareholders of news media companies, including Fox News, they are also the largest shareholders of Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, etc. The very people who own the pharmaceutical companies also own the media, so we can’t expect the media to report negatively on Big Pharma, can we?

We do have a problem in America, but it is not guns, it is drugs. More than half of Americans take prescription drugs. America has only 4% of the world’s population, but consumes nearly one-third of the world’s opioid prescription opioid production.

“American way?” What exactly is that? Nothing but individualism. America is not, and has never truly been a capitalist country. When FDR was debating with his peers about his “New Deal,” in 1930, they blamed capitalism for the Great Depression. FDR himself said “It isn’t that free markets have failed in our time, but that they haven’t yet been tried.” If the America of the early 20th century wasn’t capitalist by FDR’s standards, what can we call it today?

Today in America people are not free in the sense Americans like to define that term. You cannot open a lemonade stand today without a license or temporary permit. Every product and every service is regulated, from compressed air and bottled water to nuclear reactors. America has become the most highly taxed country in the world. Between federal, state, county, and city taxes, sales taxes, transfer taxes, energy and utility taxes, etc etc etc, in the end most of the money people earn ends up in the hands of the state. As for personal freedom in America, the pandemic showed what a fallacy that was. Here in Japan we had much greater personal freedoms than in America. Japan was not fining and/or arresting people for breaking quarantine or curfew, was not fining businesses for not closing or allowing diners to eat indoors, and did not allow the firing workers for not wanting to get vaccinated.

Robert Louis Stevenson said in the 19th century that Britain and America were becoming socialist without realizing it. And today, when welfare is America’s largest expenditure, people claim that America’s problems are the fault of capitalism? That’s rich. And since capitalism can’t logically be the culprit, what could it be? Robert Louis Stevenson could tell you.

What “climate wrecking?” Food production has increased, contrary to what Kerry himself predicted (we were were supposed to suffering catastrophic shortages of coffee and cocoa by now, but instead are actually growing more). Climate change was supposed to cause increasing deforestation and spread deserts, but forests have instead increased in size, and deserts have shrunk by nearly 15%. Polar bears were supposed to be on the verge of extinction, but now we find that polar bears have so greatly increased in numbers that overpopulation has become a problem. The only “climate wrecking” going on is being done by politicians like Kerry who are causing people to choose between heat and food, and a great transfer of wealth from the world’s poor to Kerry himself and his wealthy friends.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not expect 1.5 degrees of warming in the near future, and that is then body who has produced the information used by policy makers. The WMO is not an authority on climate, as climate and weather, believe it or not, are two distinctly different disciplines. Not that the IPCC has had a stellar record with its prognostications, according to their own data, temperature changes over the last 30 years have not increased outside their own declared margin on natural variability. And no, JT, this post is not off-topic.

My grandfather told some stories about the war. He was a genuine survivor who spent 3 years fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific. He was one of only 2 survivors from his entire outfit. He shed no tears over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and why should he? A government represents the will of its people, and therefore the people must suffer the consequences of the choices of their government. What did Hitler say when the Soviets were overrunning Berlin when his High Command asked permission to evacuate civilians? "The people gave me my mandate, so their fate should be the same as mine." Tyranny, corruption, and war are not the fault of tyrants, crooks, and, the bloodthirsty, but of the people, who have shirked their responsibility and suffered tyrants, crooks, and the bloodthirsty to have their way. Millions were killed by the Japanese during the war, yet all we hear about the war in Japan today are stories of the A bomb survivors? That isn’t right.

The American FAA is still using decades-old technology in air traffic control systems, apparently the billions spent annually on air traffic control in America are looted by contractors, bureaucrats, and politicians. American air traffic controllers are still using post-its and paper cards to label air traffic, and the government is blaming airlines for delays and cancellations

To combat inflation they will print and deficit-spend more money, enact more regulations which will further drive up energy prices, and push more of their manufacturing to China. Given that these people have done nothing but drive the world’s economies off a cliff, and embolden Putin to invade Ukraine, put Taiwan in China's crosshairs, does anyone have any faith in them?

Activism is not entertainment, and people want be entertained, not indoctrinated. To quote Jar Jar Binks, Disney is in “deep bantha poo doo,” having lost billions in just the last few months. People aren’t buying what Disney is selling, and either Disney starts giving people entertainment they are willing to pay for, or chapter 11 is on the horizon. Most of the world is not on the lunatic fringe, but all of Disney’s writers and producers are.

Given the fact that tattoos are almost nonexistent within Japan’s recruiting pool, the measure is pointless, and the act of making it a matter of debate is a waste of time. The real problem is the declining birthrate, and that is what first needs to be addressed. But solving problems isn’t something politics is good at, problems are profitable, solutions are not.

The entire world is feeling the consequences of America’s economic “policies.” When America added more than 40% to it’s money supply to fund pandemic handouts (which largely into the pockets of government workers unions and the politically-connected), the cost of commodities priced in dollars (which is all of them) skyrocketed. Most of the inflation we are suffering from in Japan is a result of American economic and energy policies. And what is America promising to do? More of the same. The other member of the G7 need to tell America to get its house in order, and to begin with, America needs to get its spending under control. But that is not likely to happen when there are votes to buy, and kickbacks needed to fund election campaigns

Cannes and the surrounding area is quite beautiful, and cycling along coast is a wonderful pleasure. The food is also amazing, the fruits and vegetables grow quite large in the Mediterranean climate.

The only annoying time is when the show dogs crowd the airport in Nice with their private jets, fill up the ports with their yachts, give themselves awards for how well they can write and read fiction, and, as their jets and yachts are idling, complain about how “the world is burning” from climate change.

They should move their self-congratulatory orgy to New Jersey, where they would fit in better.

The Olympics has become a money machine, this happened with it was opened to professional athletes and corporate advertising. What was a “pure sport” event of pure competition because a thoroughly corrupt event in which corporations and policymakers extort bribes and fleece taxpayers. The solution is simple, return the Olympics to what it once was.

Let me see, Ghosn was held a year without charge, and would have been in custody for more than 2 years before going to court on his first charge. And once convicted or acquitted of that first charge, he would have to remain in custody and wait for a court date for his second charge, and so on. This means that he could have spent nearly a decade in custody even if acquitted on all charges.

Normally I am a supporter of Japan’s tough criminal justice system, but in Ghosn’s case, I didn’t see any justice, only spite. There was never a good case to be had against Ghosn, if there had been, he would have been tried more quickly, and this entire dog-and-pony show would have been avoided.

“Multiple cases?” I know of only one in Japan.

How did we get to where we are now? Inflation is out of control due to the policies of Yellen and her boss, people are seeing the value of their wages, savings, and pensions being destroyed. And the only solution Yellen and her boss have is more of the same policies. If a catastrophe is to happen, we can have a big one now, or a far bigger one in the future.

People are learning the hard way that their leaders and policmakers can’t find their own backsides with both hands and a flashlight, that every dollar doled out in pandemic relief has been more than wiped out by inflation. Our leaders and policy makers have so mismanaged our economies that public and private debt have reached unprecedented levels. They have manipulated money supplies and interest rates to buy campaign contributions and votes, have amassed fortunes for themselves and their friends, and they still haven’t had enough.

They need to be cut off.

What changed is my understanding of how deeply corrupted are our governments, and the reinforcement of my understanding of how Big Pharma controls America. Has anyone in Japan noticed that during the worst parts of the pandemic, deaths in Japan fell to 22,000 fewer than 2019, but today, after getting some 80% of the population vaccinated, excess deaths are now more than 20% over what they should be?

How can it be that in 2020 when fewer people than normal were dying that the government enacted preventative measures on a massive scale, yet today, when we have seen 200,000 excess non-COVID deaths over the last 2 years, the government is doing nothing at all?

My distrust of the media was also reinforced when they deleted or edited any post, or banned any poster who said vaccines didn’t stop the transmission of COVID, which was astonishing because the nomenclature which was released with the vaccines said very clearly “May not stop the transmission of the novel coronavirus.”

What a lot of people have learned is the economic consequences of state “aid.” America added some 40% to its money supply to fund pandemic relief programs, causing inflation on a massive scale, and for every dollar spent on aid, far more than a dollar in value will be lost. The economic harm of the government response to COVID is becoming worse than if they had done nothing at all.

I also learned that the CDC are incapable of telling the truth. More than a year ago, the UK was forced to admit that instead of the 155,000 COVID deaths screamed about in the headlines, only 12,000 people, average age, 82, died directly from COVID. Rachel Walensky promised that the CDC would soon release their data on how many Americans died “from” COVID as opposed to “with” the virus. 17 months later, this information still hasn’t been released.

Another thing I have learned is that “science” has nothing to do with data or facts, and can be bent or twisted to support whatever policy or ideology the state wishes to push.

So we an expect ticket prices to rise. But then the prices of everything have risen under Biden. The only positive thing about Biden’t regulatory and monetary policies is that people are getting a lesson in economics. They are learning that there is no such thing as a “free lunch,” and that the costs of these measures weigh most heavily on lower income earners.

Atmospheric methane levels have been decreasing for a number of years.