Monthly Archives: September 2021

The transition from summer to fall has been a challenging one for those of us with a progressive bent. Many of us feel fed up with the pace of our battle against COVID-19. Many of us blame those who refuse to get vaccinated or take basic safety precautions.

You could watch the frustration seep through in President Joe Bidens speech last week. Commentary on Twitter was immediate: Dad was turning the car around. The commander in chief had had enough.

What makes it incredibly more frustrating is that we have the tools to combat COVID-19, and a distinct minority of Americans supported by a distinct minority of elected officials are keeping us from turning the corner, Biden said.

But he was only the most prominent example of a trend. Good-natured talk show host Jimmy Kimmel suggested that hospitals not treat people who decided against vaccination. Delta Airlines announced it would charge employees who didnt get vaccinated an extra $200 per month on their health insurance. News outlet after news outlet pumped out stories about the hospitalized unvaccinated, struggling to breathe and regretting their choices.

The frustration makes sense. I sympathize with the anger. But during this virus-riddled time, we cant allow the pandemic to melt our minds.

We should not want people who disagree with us even if that disagreement takes the form of refusing a vaccine or mask to forgo health insurance or medical care. We should not want them to suffer, even if we feel the temptation. And we should be exceptionally cautious about translating frustration into policy. Its a short leap from making health insurance more expensive for an anti-vaxxer to making it unaffordable for someone with pre-existing conditions like high blood pressure or obesity. Its a short leap from doctors refusing to treat unvaccinated patients to doctors turning away gay, lesbian or transgender patients.

Folks on the right have a history of excluding or denigrating people of different genders, colors, religions or sexual orientations. Extreme supporters of former President Donald Trump have turned that exclusion into a white nationalist cause. This past and present has created an enduring young voter problem for conservatives. No one should be eager to replicate that strategy.

We support progressive causes for a reason: Theyre good for everybody. That means Republicans, Democrats, independents, anti-vaxxers and vaccine scientists alike. (Yes, the wealthy may pay more in taxes, but those funds will go to strengthen the country as a whole.) When we forget the motivations behind greater equality and stronger social programs, we forfeit any moral high ground and might as well hand the keys over to our ideological opponents.

Im not exonerating pro-virus leaders. The political figures I dubbed the disinformation caucus a couple of weeks ago bear heavy responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in. Im not forgiving viral news media outlets that spread science fiction posing as science fact. We should all demand accountability from public figures. But we should not wish harm on anyone.

Kansas desperately needs an expanded Medicaid program. But we are a red state, which means that many of those covered under the program would presumably be conservative. Perhaps theyre socialists or libertarians or luddites. Thats OK! No one in their right mind would propose that only progressives qualify.

Expanding Medicaid helps Kansas precisely because it helps a broad swath of our population. It will help those in rural and urban areas. It will help men and women. It will help our families and friends, hospitals and communities. That help, in turn, strengthens our entire society even the folks who dont use the program.

Remember Ayn Rand.

The objectivist philosopher and author of unreadable doorstops was outspoken in her disdain of government benefits. Yet she used Social Security and Medicare. While its easy to make fun of her for that, the programs were and are meant to help everyone of retirement age. (To make herself feel better, Rand seems to have regarded the benefits as restitution for prior tax payments.)

We do face a truly tough choice. Hospital capacity. If COVID-19 positive patients take up every ICU bed in a facility, what kind of harm does that do to other people including vaccinated people who arent able to access care? An Alabama cardiac patient, for example, was turned away from 43 facilities because they didnt have space. Ray DeMonia later died in a Mississippi hospital more than 200 miles away from his home.

There are no simple answers here. Those running hospitals are making difficult decisions daily. Those refusing vaccines will have to decide if their conscience can handle the burden. But I cant accept that excluding our fellow human beings, regardless of their short-sightedness, is a workable solution. We shouldnt even wish to do so.

The long-term solutions remain the same. Vaccines, masks, testing, distancing and following basic public health advice. Did I mention vaccines already? They are the way out, for progressives and conservatives alike. Because while we shouldnt ration care based on beliefs, the virus wont discriminate either.

Perhaps government-issued mandates will end the pandemic more quickly. I hope so. But in the meantime, we cant allow our frustration to overwhelm our humanity.

See the rest here:

Progressives beware: Don't let values become casualties of the pandemic - Kansas Reflector

What happened and why

This year marked the 50th anniversary of President Nixons decision to unilaterally close thegold window. The impact of this move can hardly be overstated. It triggered a tectonic shift of momentous consequences and it changed not just the global economy and the monetary realities, but it also shaped modern politics and severely affected our society at large.

In July 1944, representatives from 44 nations convened in the resort town of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to figure out how the global monetary system should be structured after the end of the war. The US took the clear lead during these talks, exploiting the considerable leverage it had over other countries devastated by WWII or even still occupied by Germany. After all, at that point, Americans were the creditors of the world and had accumulated tons of gold throughout the 1930s and during the war, as the US was widely seen as a safe haven amid the conflict and uncertainty that prevailed at the time.

Thus, theBretton WoodsAgreement was born, under which the U.S. pledged to convert into gold any dollars brought by other countriescentral banks at a rate of $35/oz, while the currencies of the other participating countries were to be convertible into USD at a fixed rate. What this meant in practice, was that the USD became the dominantreserve currency and the fundament of entire financial system of the West, while the gold peg was reduced to amanaged version, through artificial price controls, that was always doomed to fail.

Indeed, the Bretton Woods system didnt last long. It wasnt fully implemented until 1958 and by the mid 60s it was already obvious that its days were numbered. The US gold stockpiles were dwindling as European central banks soon began redeeming their dollar claims, and there were real fears that US gold holdings might eventually be exhausted. Also, the Bretton Woods system, even though it wasmanaged and much weaker form of the classical gold standard, did still at least partially keep government spending and deficits in check, something that Nixon resented, especially with a view to the next election.

And so, on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced his decision close thegold window, and end the convertibility of USD to gold. He thereby severed the final link between the US currency and any real asset that backed it and gave rise to the new era of totally unrestrained fiat money, that could be manipulated, printed and distributed on the whim of state central planners. In one fell swoop, money lost whatever integrity and reliability it had left and it was turned into a purely political tool, if not a weapon.

In his televised address to the nation and to the world, President Nixon justified his decision by claiming thatprosperity without war requires action on three fronts. We must create more and better jobs; we must stop the rise in the cost of living; we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators.

As we all know by now, none of these goals were meat. In fact, the result of this unilateral move to extinguish the last vestiges of the gold standard achieved the exact opposite, on all fronts. It unleashed decades of inflationary policies, turbulence in currency markets, and it laid the foundations for an economic and financial system that is dangerously unstable, fragile and fundamentally unjust. All these implications are plain to see today, but the Presidents actions were celebrated by the US establishment of the time. The Dow Jones Average rose the day after the address, while the New York Times unreservedly expressed its support, by writingwe unhesitatingly applaud the boldness with which the President has moved on all economic fronts.

And yet, there were a few voices that spoke out, for common sense and Reason. As the Cato Institute outlined,Milton Friedman wrote in his Newsweek column that the price controlswill end as all previous attempts to freeze prices and wages have ended, from the time of the Roman emperor Diocletian to the present, in utter failure. Ayn Rand gave alecture about the program titledThe Moratorium on Brains and denounced it in her newsletter. Alan Reynolds, now aCato senior fellow, wrote in National Review that wage and price controls weretyranny necessarily selective and discriminatory and unworkable. Murray Rothbard declared in the New York Times that on August 15fascism came to America and that the promise to control prices wasa fraud and ahoax given that it was accompanied by atariff increase.

At the time, many opponents of the truly free market tried to shut down and stifle any and all dissenting views, dismissing all these concerns as hysterical overreactions and alarmist nonsense. That reaction is not unfamiliar to us today. It is lifted from the same playbook that is still in use, and the same strategy is being deployed against anyone who criticizes the grand designs of central planners or warns against the obvious consequences of their reckless policies and short-sighted fixes to long-term economic and monetary problems.

Read the original post:

50 Years Since The Closure Of The 'Gold Window' (Part I) - OpEd - Eurasia Review

We love a bit of self-care and the last year at home has given us an excuse to look after ourselves inside and out. Each week, we ask the celeb lot to share their self-care Sunday routines, because taking care of yourself is more important than ever.

This week it's all about Selling Sunset's Mary Fitzgerald, the glam LA real estate agent who makes selling million pound houses seem like a doddle. She's hilarious, sassy and extremely loyal to the other girls at The Oppenheim Group.

She tied the knot with French husband Romain Bonnet during the season two finale and even managed to sell a house on the same day. Get a girl who can do both, tbh.

Mary caught up with heat to talk about filming secrets, make-up favourites and the book that changed her life...

We can all agree that Selling Sunset is explosive, glamourous and downright addictive, but what's the tea we don't get to see at home?

Mary laughs, "What happens behind the scenes is probably juicer than what you see on screen because they have to tone it down!"

"There's also a lot of properties, sales and buyers that I'm working with that isn't on the show. You guys see about 10% of what I do, because they want to see the biggest, most glamorous home. So if it's like a $3 million cute home, it's like, 'we have this one over $10,000,000 one here, so we're gonna focus on that one'."

"So, I could close maybe 10 or 15 deals this year, and they'll show one. They just pick what they want and then also, they edit down a lot," she explains. "We film so much, and we have no idea what they're going to actually edit it down to. So there's a lot that goes on that just people don't see."

Ugh, we'd do anything to watch the outtakes. ANYTHING.

Do the Selling Sunset cast have a viewing party? The answer is YES.

"They normally let us watch it a couple of days before it airs because we don't know what happens in scenes when we're not there. They kind of give us a little warning about what's going to come out. Sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad and you're like, 'Oh my god, no, that happened? I'm so mad!' But for the most part, it's just kind of a warning."

"We'll typically throw a party like a little viewing party for all of our friends and family. Then I don't really watch it back other than that, but other than my wedding, I've occasionally gone back and rewatched my wedding. It's a little better than pulling out a wedding album! It's just an emotional moment, so I'd do that twice a year or something."

Who needs a wedding tape when you have Netflix, eh?

"I love a massage or facial. I turn off my phone and watch TV and just kind of try to go brain dead, as my brain just goes and goes and goes all the time. It's really nice just to turn everything off and just chill or just watch a movie. I also get in my infrared hot sauna and I try to use my Babble app and learn French while I'm in there."

Mary always looks imaculate on screen, so we need to know, does she do her own make-up?

"Yeah, pretty much unless we do interviews and then and then they provide hair and makeup for us. But a lot of the girls have their hair makeup done every day. I just don't have time for that."

As for her go-to products?

"My favourite foundation is the Lancme Teint Idole Ultra Wear Long-Lasting Foundation (27.60). It literally stays on forever. It looks so good and it just stays on. If I go get a facial, they're like, 'what do you have on your face? It's really hard to get it off!' which is amazing as we're always running around and it's so warm here and it just does not move. It doesn't look super thick or anything either."

"I like Buxom Lip Gloss (4.99), it's so nice and plumping and Too Faced Better Than Sex (19.20) for mascara!"

"Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read that years and years ago and it just made a huge impact on me. It's a long book and you have to be very dedicated to read it, but it's a classic and I think it was just very inspirational. It just changed my way of thinking."

"If negativity is coming your way, unless you really did something to deserve it, most of the time it's a projection from the other person because they feel insecure in themselves. It's not about you personally. I try and always remember that and it always helps me to process things better without getting hurt or mad about people doing or saying things."

AMEN.

Show youre currently binging? I watched StartUp on Nextflix recently and loved it.

Go-to cuppa? I love dirty matcha lattes, which is like matcha hot matcha latte with a shot of espresso.

Go-to loungewear brand? Queen's Park Sleepwear.

Favourite candle? My older sister actually makes candles, the brand is called Vintage Road.

Saffron Barker talks bronzer hacks, marathon training and her go-to 4 foam cleanser

Abbie Holborn talks great advice, ice chambers and the 3.49 treatment she swears by for healthy hair

WhatEmWore talks styling tricks, career advice and the 3 moisturiser she swears by

Mary recently opened up about Chrishell and Jason's new romance and admitted, "I never saw it coming!"

Selling Sunset's Chrishell Stause and Jason Oppenheim confirmed their relationship in an Instagram photo dump captioned "The JLo effect" and we've been obsessed ever since.

"I never saw it coming because obviously she was married and so happy and he's always been a commitment-phobe. She's very serious in relationships, so I didn't even think about that and we're all just good friends," Mary told heat.

Follow this link:

Selling Sunset's Mary Fitzgerald talks filming secrets and the long-lasting foundation she swears by - Heat