Brown, Gay, Psuedo-Actor Jussie Smollett Guilty of FIVE Felonies

After about three years of litigation famous actor Jussie Smollett was convicted on December 9, 2021 of 5 felonies for constructing a phony hate crime that took place on January 19, 2019. 

While his sentence could be as much as three years in the hoosegow, legal analysts feel that it's more likely that the felon will be on probation for a couple of years after  creating a national sensation. 

We won't know until March 10, 2022 what his punishment will be. This means that a time span of 3 months will be required between his conviction and his sentencing. Perhaps this interlude is a requirement to enable the appeal process. Ordinary bad guys' appeals are made while they're sharing cells with other convicted felons. Smollett has also been able to converse with the presiding judge via Zoom from New York. Most convicted felons aren't allowed to leave the jurisdiction of the court.

Perhaps Smollett enjoys privileges that lesser mortals cannot. Maybe being on a popular television series inoculates him with an immunity to responsibility that others can't share.  

Wisconsin Senator Blames LBJ for Illegitimate Births

This article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel takes Sen. Ron Johnson to  task for holding LBJ era social programs responsible for the huge increase in unwed motherhood from that time to this.

Writer Daniel Bice points out that the unrelated Texan Johnson has been dead for fifty years, just in case you've forgotten. He admits that while births to unmarried women went from about 5% in the infertile sixties and skyrocketed to over 40% by 2019, there were many causes for the dramatic increase in addition to government subsidies for children born out of wedlock (and their mothers).

 As every sentient being realizes, when the government pays for things, more of those things are produced, not only aircraft carriers and interstate highways, but also children.

Bice says that some authorities point out that other factors are involved as well.

   There has been a rise in cohabitation, more permissive sexual mores, a decline in shotgun weddings, easier divorce laws, a drop in manufacturing jobs for males without college degrees and greater financial independence for women. 

The rise in cohabitation and more permissive sexual mores are basically the same thing but cohabitation isn't permitted by child support regulations. "Shotgun weddings" are frowned upon by law enforcement and the judicial system, which also determines the child support amounts and schedules. Divorced women aren't the problem in this issue, generally having been married before or after giving birth. He doesn't demonstrate how the effect of job loss among ignorant males and financial independence for women figure into a steady increase in illegitimacy, which is a ridiculous term for the birth of a child in what is supposedly a civilized society. All children are "legitimate".

His argument doesn't approach the real situation. Women, even teen-age Jezebels, have agency. They are able to make decisions about their life and act on those decisions. Women decide with whom and when they are going to indulge in sex. In spite of the easy availability of birth control products they choose to either risk pregnancy or seek it. A  certain percentage of women observe the happenings around them and decide that life will be economically easier for them with children and a government stipend. Not only that, financial independence means they won't have to put up with lazy Floyd leaving his dirty socks laying around after stumbling home from the saloon.    

Ivan Illich Talks About Medicine

As a member of the medical profession the individual physician is an inextricable part of a scientific team. Experiment is the method of science, and the records he keeps—if he likes it or not—are part of the data for a scientific enterprise. Each treatment is one more repetition of an experiment with a statistically known probability of success. As in any operation that constitutes a genuine application of science, failure is said to be due to some sort of ignorance: insufficient knowledge of the laws that apply in the particular experimental situation, a lack of personal competence in the application of method and principles on the part of the experimenter, or else his inability to control that elusive variable which is the patient himself. Obviously, the better the patient can be controlled, the more predictable will be the outcome in this kind of medical endeavor. And the more predictable the outcome on a population basis, the more effective will the organization appear to be. The technocrats of medicine tend to promote the interests of science rather than the needs of society. The practitioners corporately
constitute a research bureaucracy. Their primary responsibility is to science in the abstract or, in a nebulous way, to their profession. Their personal responsibility for the particular client has been resorbed into a vague sense of power extending over all tasks and clients of all colleagues. Medical science applied by medical scientists provides the correct treatment, regardless of whether it results in a cure, or death sets in, or there is no reaction on the part of the patient. It is legitimized by statistical tables, which predict all three outcomes with a certain frequency. 

The individual physician in a concrete case may still remember that he owes nature and the patient as much gratitude as the patient owes him if he has been successful in the use of his art. But only a high level of tolerance for cognitive dissonance will allow him to carry on in the divergent roles of healer and scientist.

Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, 1976 pg. 95