Author: Henry Barnard

I am a voracious reader and also enjoy writing. I often have a very different point of view than the popular one. I do see value in debate, and thought it might add to the public debate on controversial issues if I were to express my contrarian opinions. I also started keeping my poems recently (I've written little pieces my whole adult life but never kept any); and I've been a photographer now for over 25 years. So I will be adding an occasional poem and hopefully interesting photograph to the blog along the way, just to spice things up.

Taiwan

Seems to be escalating rhetoric over the issue of China taking over Taiwan — escalating rhetoric on both sides, including some war talk coming out of Australia.

What makes this situation different now is that China may calculate the Biden administration is a paper tiger, and that calculation might induce them to act. They wouldn’t have make that assumption with Trump.

What a black swan an invasion of Taiwan would be, despite the issue being a real one now for decades! The “surprise” that everyone saw coming — eventually.

If there were an invasion of Taiwan by China, what would that circumstance induce North Korea to do?

Embarrassing

Current government in Washington is an embarrassment, particularly in regard to inept foreign policy. Whatever they do is based on ideology, not reason. It is often counterproductive, producing the opposite of what was intended. Witness their war on fossil fuels because of their climate-change ideology. It’s making fossil fuels more valuable as in pricier, not less.

Free Trade Isn’t Free

Backlit Agate

Love Locks

Little-Known Fact

Interesting and little-known fact about our federal government is that, until the income tax was introduced, the government paid for itself by imposing tariffs on foreign goods.

Free Trade Isn’t Free

Democrats think free trade — where the US doesn’t use tariffs to protect domestic industries, as Trump did with steel and aluminum — is good for the country, but they don’t get that it produces unemployment in those areas affected by cheap foreign imports, and what you end up with is a huge rust belt of poverty and hopelessness. Free trade isn’t free.

Nincompoop

Diverse Meals That Look Alike

Every meal I make looks identical. On top is a thick layer of leaf greens diced finely and sprinkled with real lemon juice. So what you see is this mound of green. Every dish the same. Because, from a nutritional point of view, those leafy greens are the all stars. They are in a different league than anything else. You do yourself a disservice not to include them in every meal…and in some quantity.

Which Camp?

Liquid Meals

Most people are more accustomed to chewing their food than having liquid meals, yet when the food is pulverized in a smoothie, it may be that digestion improves, as the food has already been broken down to a large extent and is therefore more accessible in terms of its nutrition.

Iodine

Which Camp?

Which camp are you in? I’m firmly in Beyond.

Beyond Meat

How To Eat

Like your life depended on it — because it does.

Hilary’s World’s Best Veggie Burger