Post-election plans for the NHS

Given the current polling, it looks like the Conservative party might win an outright majority in the December 12 general election. If so, Brexit will almost surely pass in some form or other, leading to turmoil in the near future.

But I want to look at another major issue and that is the future of the National Health Service. It is widely assumed that Boris Johnson will put NHS privatization on the table as part of a bilateral trade deal with the US. Donald Trump has said in the past that he wants this.
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So much for editorial freedom

Much of the major media in the US is privately owned, by individuals, families, or corporations. These media love to insist that they have complete editorial freedom and that the owners do not exert any pressure on them as to what to write about and how. That is of course rubbish. In cases like Fox News, the owner’s wishes are explicit and manifestly followed. But in less overtly propagandistic outlets, editorial control by the owners is exercised more subtly. The editors are selected because their views conform to those of the owners, and that process filters all the way down the line.

But on some occasions, if the issue is important enough to the owner, even that thin mask of editorial independence is ripped away and the owner gives direct orders as to what the editorial line should be. We see that with billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s entry into the presidential race. He is the owner of Bloomberg News and he has made it very clear that his outlet should not criticize him. In an effort to retain a shred of credibility as a news organization, the editor says that they will also refrain from investigating other Democratic presidential candidates.

I feel sorry for the reporters at Bloomberg News. It is easy for outsiders to say that they should quit. I am sure that many are looking for other jobs where the control is less overt but the job market in media is tight.

Why I distrust US media coverage of foreign countries

(I came across this old blog post of mine from 2005 before I moved to FtB and thought I would repost it because it may explain why I am so skeptical of the way that the US media covers events in other countries. I have edited it slightly because I cannot help editing.)

In July 1983, I lived through a major upheaval in Sri Lanka where rampaging mobs raged through the streets looking for the homes and businesses and members of the minority Tamil community, killing and destroying everything in their path, with the government and the police just standing by doing little or nothing. There was strong speculation that the government had actually instigated and guided the events to serve their own political agenda, but since the government itself was doing the subsequent investigation, one should not be surprised that nothing came of it.
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Using anti-Semitism against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party

The UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has leveled charges against the Labour party that it has a serious problem of anti-Semitism within its ranks and that its leader Jeremy Corbyn and the top leadership have not done enough to combat it. Under the surface is the implication that Corbyn himself is an anti-Semite. Corbyn has responded.

Speaking the following morning, Corbyn said a future Labour government would be “the most anti-racist government you’ve ever seen”. He said: “Because that is what I’ve spent my whole life doing, fighting against racism, and I will die fighting against racism.”

He said he had made it clear that antisemitism is wrong. “Our party did make it clear when I was elected leader, and after that, that antisemitism is unacceptable in any form in our party or our society and did indeed offer its sympathies and apologies to those who had suffered,” he said.

Corbyn, just like Bernie Sanders in the US, has been a lifelong campaigner against racism and for human rights. But both have recognized the injustices suffered by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government and called for giving them the rights they deserve and it is this stance that has alarmed the Israel lobby in the UK and the US.
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More support for the crazification factor

Back in 2011, I posted about a 2005 blog post by John Rogers on the site Kung Fu Monkey who, based on the number of people who voted for Alan Keyes in the Illinois senate race against Barack Obama in 2004, decided that there is a 27% ‘crazification’ factor in the US electorate that represented the percentage of people who would vote for a totally unfit and even wildly nutty candidate purely out of tribal loyalty. (Whatever happened to Keyes? He ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1996, 2000, and 2008 but has been quiet recently.) The post was written facetiously but the idea caught on like wildfire and others started seeing evidence from other cases that provided support for that number.
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The dangerous game that ‘moderate’ (i.e., center-right) Democrats are playing

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs, warns that right-wing Democrats (who are labeled as ‘moderates’ and ‘centrists’ by the right-wing mainstream media) should realize that the critiques of their progressive rivals are feeding into right-wing talking points.

As the Democratic caucuses and primaries heat up, the candidates are starting to go after each other with greater ferocity. Sensing a potential victory in Iowa, Mayor Pete Buttigieg launched an ad that goes after proposals from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to make tuition free at public colleges and universities.
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Chick-fil-A alienates its right-wing Christian supporters

Some of you may recall the big Chick-fil-A controversy that emerged some years ago. The owners of this fast-food franchise are evangelical Christians who disapprove of homosexuality and opposed the efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. This made them the target of boycotts by the LGBT+ community but also the darling of right-wing evangelical Christians in the US who campaigned to have people eat there to show their support.

So I was surprised to read that the company has just stopped funding the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, two organizations that were prominent in also opposing giving equal rights to the LGBT+ community. The company has also contributed to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that strongly supports LGBT+ rights and is a group that right-wingers hate.
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But what are they going to do about it?

Yesterday I posted about my impatience with Republican congresspeople who seem quite willing to criticize Donald Trump’s words and actions in private while loudly praising him in public. Now come reports that top military personnel are also disturbed by his reckless interference into its workings and also saying so privately.

Tensions that have been mounting for months between some of the nation’s most senior military officers and President Donald Trump are boiling over after his decision to intervene in the cases of three service members accused of war crimes.

A long-serving military officer put it bluntly, telling CNN “there is a morale problem,” and senior Pentagon officials have privately said they are disturbed by the President’s behavior.
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Ohio leads again, and not in a good way

When it comes to placing restrictions on abortion, Ohio has the dubious honor of proposing the wildest ideas to the point of even demanding the impossible. Take the latest bill introduced in the state legislature.

A bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not exist in medical science – or face charges of “abortion murder”.

This is the second time practising obstetricians and gynecologists have tried to tell the Ohio legislators that the idea is currently medically impossible.
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Ohio’s move on ectopic pregnancies – where an embryo implants on the mother’s fallopian tube rather than her uterus rendering the pregnancy unviable – is one of the most extreme bills to date.

“I don’t believe I’m typing this again but, that’s impossible,” wrote Ohio obstetrician and gynecologist Dr David Hackney on Twitter. “We’ll all be going to jail,” he said.

But that is not the only dangerously idiotic idea in the bill.

In addition to ordering doctors to do the impossible or face criminal charges, House Bill 413 bans abortion outright and defines a fertilized egg as an “unborn child”.

It also appears to punish doctors, women and children as young as 13 with “abortion murder” if they “perform or have an abortion”. This crime is punishable by life in prison. Another new crime, “aggravated abortion murder”, is punishable by death, according to the bill.

Ohio: Leading the way in legislative callousness and stupidity.