Can PIIGS fly ?

EUROPHRENIA

by G. Lira

According to the dictionary, schizophrenia is “a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.”

In Europe, they’re having the same thing—only writ large: It’s not that the political/financial leadership of Europe is at odds with the people—it’s that they’re two minds locked in a single body, struggling for control.
 In the one hemisphere of this divided brain, the political/financial leadership is convinced the European Union is something devoutly to be wished—no matter what the costs, no matter what fortune and the people throw up in opposition.
 In the other hemisphere of the europhrenic brain, the people of Europe overwhelmingly do not want integretation “at all costs”. In some parts (a lot of parts) of Europe, they don’t want integration at all.
 Now, like a lot of schizophrenics, europhrenia has been latent over the past dozen years—since the 1999 monetary union, as a matter of fact—because everything’s been going great guns.
 This is natural—and completely predictable: You ever see a schiphrenic have a break-down when he’s happy, high, and just got laid? No you do not—he only has his little “episode” when he’s stressed.
 Same with europhrenia: Everything was copacetic between 1999 and 2008—though there were signs of the disease. In fact, lots of unmistakable signs of europhrenia:
• No country ever voted for monetary union—ever. European monetary integration only ever happened by either government diktat or the legislature overriding the will of the people.
 • Switzerland is not a eurozone member because, although the political leadership rather desperately wanted in on the union, legally the only way to do such a monetary union is through a Swiss-wide referendum—and the Swiss political leadership knew that they would lose any such referendum.
 • In the nations where the European Constitution was put to a vote in 2005—Spain, France, Holland, Luxembourg—the results were so embarrassing that the other countries retreated on a referendum. In Spain, the Yes vote won—but in the lowest voter turn-out in Spain ever—while in France and Holland, the Constitution lost by resounding margins. And this was back in 2005, when everything was booming. In the end, rather than face the electorate, the European Constitution was superceded by the Treaty of Lisbon—a work-around that short-circuited the democratic process, and got the European leadership what it wanted.
 These examples are to emphasize one and the same thing:
The people of Europe never wanted total European integration, not even in the best of times—whereas the European leadership adamantaly insisted upon it.
 Now, we are no longer basking in the golden glow of good times: On the contrary, Europe is facing a nasty solvency crisis. 

Do you see a pattern ?

The Age of consent around the world

This table should only be used as general guide - please also read the notes at the bottom of this page.

Country		Male-Female Sex	Male-Male Sex	Female-Female Sex
Afghanistan		18/Married	Illegal	Illegal
Albania		14	14	14
Algeria		16	Illegal	Legal
American Samoa		15?	15?	15?
Andorra		16	16	16
Angola		12/15	Illegal	Illegal
Antigua and Barbuda		16	16	16
Argentina		13/16	13/16	13/16
Armenia		16	16	16
Aruba		16	16	16
Australia	ACT	16	16	16
Australia	NSW & Norfolk Is.	16	16	16
Australia	NT	16	16	16
Australia	Queensland1	16/18	18	16
Australia	SA	17	17	17
Australia	Tasmania	17	17	17
Australia	Victoria	16	16	16
Australia	WA	16	16	16
Austria2		14/16	14/16	14/16
Azerbaijan		16	16	16
Bahamas		16	18	18
Bahrain		16/Married	Legal	Legal
Bangladesh		?	Illegal	Illegal
Barbados		18 (but 16 if married)	Illegal	Illegal
Belarus		16/18	16	16
Belgium		16	16	16
Belize		16	Illegal	Legal
Bermuda		16	18	16
Benin		?	Legal	Legal
Bhutan		18	Illegal	Illegal
Bolivia		14f/16m(must be married)	16	16
Bosnia		16	16	16
Botswana		16f/14m	Illegal	Illegal
Brazil3		14/18	14/18	14/18
Brunei		16/18	Illegal	Legal
Bulgaria		14	14	14
Burkina Faso		13	13	13
Burma/Myanmar		16/18	Illegal	Legal
Burundi		18	Illegal	Illegal
Cambodia (Kampuchea)		16	?	?

No bumping for the bumper cars

Advance, Britannia! Er, Strike That. Drive Slowly Around in Circles, Britannia!

"When Sir Billy Butlin introduced bumper cars to Britain more than 80 years ago, it can be assumed he expected holiday makers to have fun on the fairground ride bumping into each other."

By Daniel Foster   

No bumping in the bumper cars:

Staff at all three Butlin resorts in Bognor Regis, Minehead and Skegness are instructed to ban anyone found guilty of bumping into each other in the electric cars equipped with huge bumpers.

Bemused customers who assume that the ‘no bumping sign’ is in jest are told to drive around slowly in circles rather than crash into anyone else for fear of an injury that could result in the resort being sued.

Telegraph columnist Michaal Deacon, who has just returned from a holiday at the Bognor Regis resort, said the experience was like “trundling round an exitless roundabout”.

“I’m not convinced that the dangers were great, given that the bumper cars were equipped with bumpers,” he said. “Seat belts, too. There were no airbags for the drivers, but it can be only a matter of time.”

among these "... rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

In Honor of Jack Kevorkian

By Tibor R. Machan

Jack Kevorkian died. He was unjustly demonized for standing up for the right to assisted suicide, often referred to as Dr. Death. But he also had a movie made about him recently, starring Al Pacino, titled “I knew Jack.”

Dr. Kevorkian’s case epitomizes the radical difference between American conservatives and American classical liberals. American conservatism, by all rights, ought always to include a radical dimension, one that guided the pen of Thomas Jefferson as he composed the Declaration of Independence, but too many conservatives fail to see this. One of the central, if not the central, principles of this document is that everyone has the right to life, simply be virtue of being human. Among the rights that the founders held to be self-evident–for purposes of the Declaration, to be precise–is the right to one’s life. As the Declaration put it, “all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

No sophistry can obscure the fact that by the lights of the American founders everyone has a natural right to his or her life. This means that what one does about one’s life–cultivate it, wastes it, sacrifices it for a cause, develops it, etc.–must be one’s own choice. (It is not whether it is right to do something that is up to one but whether to do it!) Having a right means just that: he or she who has it has a sphere of personal authority or jurisdiction wherein what one does, provided it doesn’t violate another’s rights, is one’s own decision, be this a sound or unsound, a good or bad decision.

The paradox of sovereignty

Government by the ‘experts’

 

“The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands. . . . The power of the legislative, being derived from the people . . . [is] only to make laws, and not to make legislators.”

                                     “Second Treatise of Government”

— John Locke

Here, however, is a paradox of sovereignty: The sovereign people, possessing the right to be governed as they choose, might find the exercise of that right tiresome and so might choose to be governed in perpetuity by a despot they cannot subsequently remove. Congress did something like that in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.

The point of PPACA is cost containment. This supposedly depends on the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, which is a perfect expression of the progressive mind, is to be composed of 15 presidential appointees empowered to reduce Medicare spending — which is 13 percent of federal spending — to certain stipulated targets. IPAB is to do this by making “proposals” or “recommendations” to limit costs by limiting reimbursements to doctors. This, inevitably, will limit available treatments — and access to care when physicians leave the Medicare system.

The PPACA repeatedly refers to any IPAB proposal as a “legislative proposal” and speaks of “the legislation introduced” by the IPAB. Each proposal automatically becomes law unless Congress passes — with a three-fifths supermajority required in the Senate — a measure cutting medical spending as much as the IPAB proposal would.

This is a travesty of constitutional lawmaking: An executive branch agency makes laws unless Congress enacts legislation to achieve the executive agency’s aim.