News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.
Farming in the Central Valley of California, once the breadbasket of America, has almost ceased entirely because of environmentalist trying to protect a fish that may not even be a unique species, much less endangered.
In February 2014 I posted the following quote from the Herald and News in 2009:
“Thousands of people have also become unemployed or lost the ability to farm, which adversely affects both local and national economies.
“In addition to the California drought, there has been court-ordered protection of a 2-inch smelt fish that has stopped the pumping of water from the delta that is necessary for agriculture in central California. If it is listed as an endangered species, it’s likely that California agriculture, which supplies a third of the nation’s food supply, will be permanently changed.”
I also included the following vacation picture:
Fast forward to the present. One America News posted the following video on YouTube on November 27th:
Meanwhile, some of the most fertile land in the country lies idle. Common sense has taken a vacation.
The Daily Signal is reporting today that the United Nations Human Rights Committee drafted a memo saying that abortion and physician-assisted suicide should be universal human rights.
The article reports:
The United Nations Human Rights Committee drafted a memo saying that abortion and physician-assisted suicide should be universal human rights.
The memo, or “general comment” on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, calls for abortion to be decriminalized everywhere. Nations and states should “not introduce new barriers and should remove existing barriers [to abortion] … including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers,” it said, Crux Now reported Thursday.
To see where this is headed, we need only to look at a New York Times article from October 2016. The headline reads, “Dutch Law Would Allow Assisted Suicide for Healthy Older People.”
In the Netherlands, a country vaunted for its liberalism, a proposal to legalize assisted suicide for older people who are generally healthy but feel they have led a full life has stirred up an ethical storm in some quarters.
In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia for patients who were suffering unbearable pain and had no prospects of a cure.
Now, some critics say the country has gone too far with a proposed law that would allow people who are not suffering from a medical condition to seek assisted suicide if they feel they have “completed life.” Proponents of the law counter that limiting assisted death to patients with terminal illnesses is no longer enough, and that older people have the right to end their lives with dignity, and when they so choose.
Edith Schippers, the health minister, read a letter to the Dutch Parliament on Tuesday defending the measure. It is needed, she said, to address the needs of “older people who do not have the possibility to continue life in a meaningful way, who are struggling with the loss of independence and reduced mobility, and who have a sense of loneliness, partly because of the loss of loved ones, and who are burdened by general fatigue, deterioration and loss of personal dignity.”
We are in danger of creating a world where life has no value in itself–it only has value in how useful or convenient it is to the people around it.
To add to the picture of what is happening, The Daily Signal also reported today:
Get ready to watch one of the most heart-wrenching pro-life ad campaigns you’ve ever seen.
It’s called “Endangered Syndrome,” and in it, children with Down syndrome dress up as endangered species—pandas, polar bears, and lions.
Why?
Because like endangered animals, in many parts of the world, children with Down syndrome are becoming critically endangered, if not extinct. The point is simple—if we care so much about endangered animals, shouldn’t we also care about endangered humans, too?
Lincoln Brown posted an article at Townhall.com today about the impact of the lack of common sense in the Endangered Species Act.
Mr. Brown points out:
Despite the good faith efforts of wildlife officials in the State of Utah, members of the public, and even that evil moustache twirler known as the Energy Industry to improve Sage Grouse habitat, the bird may find itself listed as endangered in other states.
The unfortunate aspect of that is if it is listed as endangered in oh say Wyoming, it then becomes endangered everywhere, no matter what mitigation steps have been taken to upgrades its quality of life in Utah.
I had a conversation with one our county commissioners last week. As it turns out,. Sage Grouse and three obscure plants are just tip of the iceberg. I have been told that over the next few years, we can expect another 500 new species to become endangered over the next few years.
I am not in favor of putting animals at risk for extinction, but I would like to see some common sense in establishing what animals are endangered and exactly where they are endangered. Mr. Brown points out that in the western part of our country the Fur Fins and Feathers group routinely moves groups of animals around to balance animal populations. Bison, antelope and bighorn sheep are routinely located from areas that are overpopulated to areas the are underpopulated. It’s called common sense.
The danger in the lack of common sense in the Endangered Species Act is that the misuse of the act may prevent America from using natural resources that can be used without endangering any animals. We need to protect animals that are truly in danger, but we do not need to endanger Americans in the process.
Fast forward to the present. One America News posted the following video on YouTube on November 27th:
