Biden's claims on the economy are pure malarkey

By Rich Lowry

When President Joe Biden says something isn’t inevitable, it is time to count on it as a dead-lock guarantee.

The president’s handling of events has been poor and the same with his policies. But nothing has been quite so bad as his snakebit, maladroit, poorly informed, dishonest attempts to spin away the miserable results of his governance, especially on the economy.

If he says the border is not a crisis, there must be people crossing the Rio Grande en masse and getting admitted into the United States and bussed to locales around the country in shocking numbers.

If he says the Afghanistan withdrawal was an “extraordinary success,” it must have been a shambolic embarrassment that left Americans behind, despite Biden’s assurance that would never happen.

If he says the pandemic is effectively over, as he did last July, it must mean a new wave of the virus is about to send case counts soaring.

Even if none of these things had happened and Biden never said a word about them, he would have torched his credibility on the economy alone. He’s produced a steady, ongoing farrago of false assurances and blame-shifting that has amounted to a master class in not convincing anyone of anything, except to tune out whatever he says.

According to Biden, things are never as bad as they seem, and by the way, even if they are, they are definitely not his fault.

The mantra from the president and his team now is that a recession is not inevitable, which, on its own terms, is not the most reassuring message. Something may not be inevitable and still be possible or even much more likely than not.

The rule-of-thumb definition of a recession is two quarters of negative GDP growth. In the first quarter, GDP contracted 1.4%, and an Atlanta Federal Reserve forecast pegs second-quarter growth at around 0, or on the knife’s edge of a second negative quarter in a row.

In other words, what Biden insists is “the fastest economy in the world” may be hardly growing at all.

If the United States does dip into a recession, we can be sure that Biden will be among the last to acknowledge it, just as he and his team pooh-poohed rising inflation as long as they could. It may be that “not inevitable” ends up being the new “transitory,” a wishful claim that says more about the people making it than underlying conditions.

Biden is serving up large helpings of what he famously called “malarkey” in his 2012 vice-presidential debate.

He likes to maintain that he cut the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars when, in reality, the deficit had already been forecast to come down after the surge of pandemic spending — and his COVID relief bill added substantially more deficit spending than there would have been otherwise.

He’s called the idea that his COVID bill fueled inflation “bizarre” (while conceding that you could perhaps argue that it had a “marginal, minor” impact). Yet former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers famously predicted that the massive bill could stoke inflation, and Biden himself name-checks Summers as an economic authority.

Walking on a Delaware beach while on vacation, Biden upbraided a reporter for saying, truthfully, that economists are saying that a recession is more likely than ever. The president joked that she sounded like a Republican before lapsing into his rote line that a downturn isn’t inevitable.

Biden likes to insist that Americans can “handle the truth.” Yes, they can, and the truth is that poor Biden policy choices have worsened economic conditions, as shortages disrupt the workings of the economy and inflation eats away at paychecks. Americans can acknowledge all this — indeed, feel it every day — while not liking it or being willing to tolerate it.

All indications are that Biden himself is the one who can’t handle the truth.

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Infection Without Vaccination Gives Immunity: Study

Having two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine has been linked with negative protection against symptomatic infection with the disease, scientists say, while a previous infection without vaccination offers around 50 percent immunity, according to a study analyzing the Omicron wave in Qatar.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 15, examined the Omicron wave in Qatar that occurred from around December 2021 to February 2022, comparing vaccination rates and immunity among more than 100,000 Omicron infected and non-infected individuals.

The authors of the study found that those who had a prior infection but no vaccination had a 46.1 and 50 percent immunity against the two subvariants of the Omicron variant, even at an interval of more than 300 days since the previous infection.

However, individuals who received two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine but had no previous infection, were found with negative immunity against both BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron subvariants, indicating an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 than an average person.

Over six months after getting two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, immunity against any Omicron infection dropped to -3.4 percent.

But for two doses of the Moderna vaccine, immunity against any Omicron infection dropped to -10.3 percent after more than six months since the last injection.

Though the authors reported that three doses of the Pfizer vaccine increased immunity to over 50 percent, this was measured just over 40 days after the third vaccination, which is a very short interval. In comparison, natural immunity persisted at around 50 percent when measured over 300 days after the previous infection, while immunity levels fell to negative figures 270 days after the second dose of vaccine.

These figures indicate a risk of waning immunity for the third vaccine dose as time progresses.

The findings are supported by another recent study from Israel that also found natural immunity waned significantly more slowly compared to artificial, or vaccinated, immunity.

The study found that both natural and artificial immunity waned over time.

Individuals that were previously infected but not vaccinated had half the risks of reinfection as compared to those that were vaccinated with two doses but not infected.

“Natural immunity wins again,” Dr. Martin Adel Makary, a public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Twitter, referring to the Israeli study.

“Among persons who had been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, protection against reinfection decreased as the time increased,” the authors concluded, “however, this protection was higher” than protection conferred in the same time interval through two doses of the vaccine.

Source

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Australia: Alarming warning over new Omicron sub-variants on the rise across the country with fears infections will rise - and no one is safe

Health authorities have issued a warning over a new Omicron subvariants on the rise across the country as experts expect they will soon become the dominant strains.

Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 have been both detected in Queensland and NSW, with cases rising in recent months.

On Thursday, authorities from both states on issued an alert amid concerns the variants could result in a wave of new Covid cases.

'It is expected the Covid-19 sub-lineages BA.4 and BA.5 will become the dominant strains in coming weeks,' NSW Health tweeted.

'This is likely to result in an increase in infections, including in people who have previously had Covid-19.'

In a similar warning, QLD Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard estimated the variants would become the main strain within 'two weeks'.

However, he stressed that intensive care admissions remains low for all strains of the virus, which was a testament to the efficacy of vaccines.

'We must stress that all Covid-19 variants can cause severe illness, especially in vulnerable people,' Dr Gerrard said.

'We strongly encourage Queenslanders to remain up to date with their boosters, particularly those over 65 years of age and those with impaired immunity,' he said.

'This virus will continue to mutate so we all need to remain vigilant and responsive by staying home when sick, washing your hands regularly, keeping your distance from others where possible and wearing a face mask when you can’t.'

Source

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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I have been in hospital for most of today so no blogging today

COVID Exposed the Medical-Pharmaceutical-Government Complex

In college, I took a Latin American Politics and Development class. When discussing Latin American medical care, Professor Eldon Kenworthy presented a deeply countercultural idea. Echoing a journal article by the scholar, Robert Ayres, Kenworthy maintained that building hospitals there costs lives. If, instead of erecting, equipping, and staffing gleaming medical centers, this same money and human effort were devoted to providing clean water, good food, and sanitation, the public health yield would be much greater.

United States medical history bears out Ayres’s paradox. The biggest increases in U.S. life expectancy occurred early in the Twentieth Century, when people had increasing access to calories and protein, better water and sanitation. Lives lengthened sharply decades before vaccines, antibiotics, or nearly any drugs were available, and a century before hospitals merged into corporate systems.

Incremental American life span increases during the past fifty years reflect far less smoking, safer cars and jobs, cleaner air and less lethal wars more than they reflect medical advances. Books like Ivan Illich’s “Medical Nemesis” and Daniel Callahan’s “Taming the Beloved Beast” echo Ayres’s critique. But PBS, CNN, B&N, the NYT, et al. censor such views.

The American medical landscape has changed radically in the forty years since I learned of Ayres’ observation. America spends three times as much, as a percentage of GDP, on medical treatments as it did in the 1960s.

By 2020, America devoted 18 percent of its GDP to medicine. (By comparison, about 5 percent goes to the military.) Adding the mega-costs of mass testing and vaccines etc., medical expenditures might now approach 20 percent. Although the United States spends more than twice per capita what any other nation spends on medical care, American ranks 46th in life expectancy. U.S. life expectancy has flatlined, despite growing medical spending and broadened medical access via the vaunted Affordable Care Act.

Though medicine’s high-cost and relatively low yield are right in front of anyone who thinks about their medical experiences and those of people they know, most never connect the dots; more medical treatments and spending are continually advocated and applauded. There’s a regressive “if it saves—or even slightly extends—one life” medical zeitgeist/ethic.

As most medical insurance is employer-based, most people don’t notice annual premium increases. Nor do they see the growing slice of tax revenues used to subsidize Med/Pharma. Thus, they continually demand more stuff, like IVF, extremely high-cost drugs, sex changes, or psychotherapy, as if these were their right, and free. To say nothing of these treatments’ limited effectiveness.

As all are required to medically insure and to pay taxes, one can’t simply opt out or buy only those medical services that one thinks justify their costs. With massive, guaranteed funding sources, aggregate medical revenues will continue to climb.

Thus, the Medical-Industrial-Government Complex has become a Black Hole for today’s wealth. With great money comes great power. The Med/Pharma juggernaut rules the airwaves. Nonexistent until the 1990s, hospital system and drug ads now dominate advertising. By being such big advertisers, Med/Pharma dictates news content. Analysts who point out that lavish medical expenditures don’t yield commensurate public health benefit have small audiences. Med/Pharma critics can’t afford ads.

Medicine has fed Coronamania. The TV news I’ve seen during the past 27 months painted a very skewed picture of reality. The virus has been misrepresented—by the media and government, and by M.D.s, like Fauci, often posing in white jackets—as a runaway train that’s indiscriminately decimating the American populace. Instead of putting into perspective the virus’s clear demographic risk profile and the very favorable survival odds—even without treatment, at all ages, or promoting various forms of contra-COVID self-care, including weight loss—the media and medical establishment incited universal panic, and promoted counterproductive mass isolation, mass masking, mass testing, and treatment with ventilators and expensive, often harmful anti-virals.

Later, mass injections were added to the “COVID-crushing” armamentarium. While the shots created many billionaires, and greatly enriched other Pfizer and Moderna stockholders, they failed, as Biden and many others had promised, to stop either infection or the spread. All of the many whom I know who have been infected in the past six months were vaxxed.

Many—whose voices are suppressed by mainstream media—observe that the shots have worsened outcomes, by driving the development of variants, weakening or confusing immune systems, and causing serious near-term injuries.

Further, people blindly, ardently believed in the shots simply because they were marketed as “vaccines” by bureaucrats wearing medical garb. Despite the shots’ failure and the failure of other “mitigation” measures like lockdowns, masking, and testing, many refuse to concede that Med/Pharma has had much—overwhelmingly negative—influence over the society and economy and public health during Coronamania. Nonetheless, many billions of dollars have been—and are still being—spent to advertise shots that most people don’t want.

The COVID overreaction has to some extent also piggy-backed on TV programs that have, for decades, glorified medicine in TV shows like Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby, M.D., Medical Center, MASH, Gray’s Anatomy, and House. Wearing white coats connotes virtue, just as did wearing white hats in Western movies.

Given the cumulative PR onslaught of the ads and shows, medicine is widely seen as more effective than it is in real life. A few years ago, I heard some woman-in-the-street say, during a TV news clip, “If they make me change my doctor, it will be like losing my right arm.”

Many hold such polar views. Medicine is the new American religion. Given such fervent belief in medicine’s importance and the sense of entitlement regarding expanding medical treatments, government and insurance money is relentlessly overallocated to medicine.

Do these expenditures improve human outcomes? During the first Scrubs episode, resident J.D. complains to his mentor that being a doctor was different than he had envisioned; most of his patients were “old and kind of checked out.” His mentor responds, “That’s Modern Medicine: advances that keep people alive who should have died a long time ago, back when they lost what made them human.”

This largely describes those said to have died with COVID. Most people have disregarded that nearly all who died during the pandemic were old and/or in poor health. Most deaths have always occurred among the old and ill. Occasionally, sitcoms keep it realer than real people do.

Aside from not helping much and misspending resources, and extending misery, medicine can be iatrogenic, i.e., it can cause illness or death. Hospital errors are said to cause from 250,000 to 400,000 American deaths annually. Perhaps medical personnel try to do a good job, but when the bodies of old, sick people are cut open or dosed with strong medicine, stuff happens. Even well-executed surgeries and many medications can worsen health.

Further, though few know it, a brew of excreted medications and diagnostic radionuclides daily pours down drains across the United States and world and ends up in streams and rivers. For example, the hormones in widely-prescribed birth control pills feminize and disrupt aquatic creatures’ reproduction. There are books about all of this, too, though such authors never appear on Good Morning America.

Faith in medical interventions also lessens individual and institutional efforts to maintain or improve health. If people didn’t abuse substances, ate better, and moved their bodies more, there would be much less demand for medical interventions. And if people spent less time working to pay for medical insurance, they could spend more time taking care of themselves and others. Overall, America could spend a fraction of what it spends on allopathic medicine and yet, be much healthier. There are also plenty of books about this.

Given its place at the center of American life for 27 months, and counting, COVID has been—and will be—used to further intensify the medicalization of individual lives, the economy, and society. By exploiting and building an irrational fear of death, the Medical Industrial Complex will promote the notion that we should double—or triple—down on medical and social interventions and investments that might marginally extend the lives of a small slice of the population. Or, in many instances, shorten lives.

But most people who live sensibly are intrinsically healthy for many years. Given enough nutritious food, clean water, and a decent place to sleep, most people will live a long time, with little or no medical treatment. While intensive medical interventions can marginally extend the lives of some old, sick people, medicine can’t reverse aging and it seldom restores vitality.

If the media were honest brokers, the COVID mania would never have taken hold. The media should have repeatedly pointed out that the virus only threatened a small, identifiable segment of a very large population. Instead, captive to its Med/Pharma sponsors, the media went full-frontal fearmonger and promoted intensive, society-wide intervention. Social, psychological, and economic catastrophe ensued.

Additionally, many doctors who could have spoken against the COVID craziness stayed silent so as not to jeopardize their licenses, hospital privileges, or favored status with Pharma, or just because they were schooled in allopathic orthodoxy and hold fast to that faith. Props to those courageous few who broke ranks.

The Med/Pharma/Gov establishment, including the NIH and CDC, hasn’t saved America during 2020–22. To the contrary, COVID interventions have worsened overall societal outcomes. These net harms should have inflicted—and, depending on longer-term vaxx effects, may yet inflict—a big black eye on the Medical Industrial Complex.

If so, Med/Pharma will spend tens of billions of PR money to distort what’s happened for the past 27 months, and to portray well-paid medical personnel, administrators, and bureaucrats as selfless heroes. Many gullible Americans will buy this slick revisionism, including its portrayals of healthy-looking people walking in slow motion on beaches or across meadows in golden light, accompanied by a contemplative solo piano soundtrack.

Source

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

<a href="https://edwatch.blogspot.com">http://edwatch.blogspot.com</a> (EDUCATION WATCH)

<a href="https://antigreen.blogspot.com">http://antigreen.blogspot.com</a> (GREENIE WATCH)

<a href="https://pcwatch.blogspot.com">http://pcwatch.blogspot.com</a> (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

<a href="https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/">http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/</a> (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

<a href="https://snorphty.blogspot.com/">http://snorphty.blogspot.com/</a> (TONGUE-TIED)

<a href="https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/">https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/</a> <b>(IMMIGRATION WATCH)</b>

<a href="https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/">https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/</a> (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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Covid encore performance for Justin Trudeau

Multi-jabbed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has Covid for the second time this year. Trudeau announced his latest helping of Covid on Tuesday, saying:

‘I’ve tested positive for COVID-19. I’ll be following public health guidelines and isolating. I feel okay, but that’s because I got my shots. So, if you haven’t, get vaccinated – and if you can, get boosted. Let’s protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves.’

How unlucky can a jabbed, re-jabbed, and double-boosted guy get? It was only five months ago that Trudeau announced:

‘This morning, I tested positive for COVID-19. I’m feeling fine – and I’ll continue to work remotely this week while following public health guidelines. Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted.’

Covid likes Trudeau like Canadian truckers like their freedom.

Trudeau, you may remember, is the West’s jabber-in-chief who slammed the unvaccinated as racist, misogynistic, science deniers who should be shunned. He told Quebec television back in December 2021:

‘We are going to end this pandemic by proceeding with the vaccination. ‘We all know people who are deciding whether or not they are willing to get vaccinated, and we will do our very best to try to convince them. However, there is still a part of the population (that) is fiercely against it.

‘They don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist. It’s a very small group of people, but that doesn’t shy away from the fact that they take up some space.

‘This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people?’

That was before Trudeau proved the efficacy of the vaccine by going and getting Covid. And then getting it again, just to underscore the point.

Someone needs to ask the Canadian Prime Minister how the pandemic is supposed to end when feministic, anti-racists who believe in science/progress keep getting infected? Do we tolerate these people?

Imagine getting four polio vaccines and still getting polio. Twice. In five months. You’d start to ask questions, wouldn’t you?

Not Prime Minister Trudeau. No sir. Sticking to the Covid script like a day-old face mask sticks to your chin, the PM insisted he felt okay ‘but that’s because I got my booster shots’.

Ah. Of course.

‘I have contracted the virus I was supposed to be vaccinated against, but I am glad I received the vaccination that didn’t work because imagine how bad I would be if I had not!’

I love how Justin Trudeau has a parallel universe with which to compare things. How does he know his symptoms would have been worse were it not for all the jibby-jabs?

Thanking the vaccine that didn’t stop you from getting sick under the belief you’d have been worse had you had not had the injection – once, twice, three, four times – is delusional.

And this was an encore performance!

I got Covid without ever having been on the end of a government-sponsored needle, and I felt fine.

I know, I know. Just imagine how much finer I would have felt if Pfizer’s mRNA technology had been coursing through my veins!

Trudeau doesn’t miss a chance to use the vaccine’s failure to prevent him from getting Covid to urge people to get the vaccine to prevent them from getting Covid. ‘Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted,’ he wrote after getting Covid on Tuesday.

He wrote the same thing after getting Covid on February 1. ‘Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted,’ he tweeted at the time.

In other words…

‘I got jabbed and still got Covid. Everyone, please get jabbed.’ And, ‘Hey guys, you know how I got jabbed and still got Covid? Well, I got even more jabbed and got even more Covid! Everyone, please get jabbed.’ (Probably.)

If you’re not laughing, you’re not thinking.

Except for the millions of Canadians whose lives have been impacted by draconian restrictions and mandated vaccinations, this is no laughing matter.

At the time of writing, it was still illegal for unvaccinated Canadians to board a train or a plane. They might catch or spread Covid, you see.

And yet here is the heavily vaccinated Mr Trudeau catching Covid spread by heavily vaccinated leaders at the Summit of the Americas in California last week.

Meanwhile, Canada’s other vaccinated Justin (Bieber) has been diagnosed with Ramsey Hunt Syndrome – a disease most common in men aged 60 or over. His video set social media into a fit with #vaccineinjuries trending for days while ‘Justin Bieber face’ is the top Google suggested search.

(Calm down Fact-Checkers. We’re not saying the vaccine caused it – the Twitter mob is. For those wondering why we put this warning in, the Fact Checkers have been so active on the Bieber vibe that they even added a warning to this obviously satirical article in the VancouverTimes.)

Don’t panic. If you want to avoid getting Covid, just do what Trudeau says. ‘Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted.’

It’ll definitely work. Maybe.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/covid-encore-performance-for-justin-trudeau/

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Right masks boost virus protection: study

Healthcare departments across Australia need to more selectively procure respirator masks to encourage stronger compliance among frontline workers, researchers say.

The finding follows the federal government signing off on an extra $760 million to help states and territories in the ongoing fight against COVID-19.

Existing commonwealth-state funding arrangements were set to expire in September but were extended on Friday by three months.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the pandemic “clearly isn’t over yet and it would be very brave to suggest that you can make that projection”.

Study author Irene Ng, a consultant anaesthetist at Royal Melbourne Hospital, said healthcare workers often do not comply with recommendations for using respirators, particularly N95 respirators.

“Explanations for non-compliance include the lack of standardisation of donning and doffing techniques, and design features of respirators that reduce comfort and usability,” Dr Ng said.

Some 378 health workers completed a comfort and usability survey, which formed the basis for the study.

The overall fit test pass rates were 65 per cent for semi-rigid cup respirators, 32 per cent for the flat-fold models, 59 per cent for the duckbill respirators and 96 per cent for three-panel flat-fold designs.

The latter was therefore the obvious choice for administrators and state and federal health departments when considering how to maximise respiratory protection.

Australia’s coronavirus-related death toll continues to rise, with more than 100 fatalities announced over the weekend including 48 in Victoria.

Source

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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WHO chief 'believes Covid DID leak from Wuhan lab' after a 'catastrophic accident' in 2019 despite publicly maintaining 'all hypotheses remain on the table'

The head of the World Health Organisation privately believes the Covid pandemic started following a leak from a Chinese laboratory, a senior Government source claims.

While publicly the group maintains that ‘all hypotheses remain on the table’ about the origins of Covid, the source said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), had recently confided to a senior European politician that the most likely explanation was a catastrophic accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, where infections first spread during late 2019.

The Mail on Sunday first revealed concerns within Western intelligence services about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists were manipulating coronaviruses sampled from bats in caves nearly 1,000 miles away – the same caves where Covid-19 is suspected to have originated – in April 2020. The worldwide death toll from the Covid pandemic is now estimated to have hit more than 18 million.

The WHO was initially criticised for its deferential approach to China over the pandemic, as well as a willingness to accept Beijing’s protestations that claims of a laboratory leak were just a ‘conspiracy theory’.

However, in the absence of any compelling evidence of ‘zoonotic’ spread – the process by which a virus leaps from animals to humans – it is now adopting a more neutral public stance.

Dr Tedros updated member states on the pandemic this month, admitting: ‘We do not yet have the answers as to where it came from or how it entered the human population.

‘Understanding the origins of the virus is very important scientifically to prevent future epidemics and pandemics.

‘But morally, we also owe it to all those who have suffered and died and their families. The longer it takes, the harder it becomes. We need to speed up and act with a sense of urgency.

‘All hypotheses must remain on the table until we have evidence that enables us to rule certain hypotheses in or out.

This makes it all the more urgent that this scientific work be kept separate from politics. The way to prevent politicisation is for countries to share data and samples with transparency and without interference from any government. The only way this scientific work can progress successfully is with full collaboration from all countries, including China, where the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were reported.’

Last year, the WHO established the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (Sago) to outline which studies would be needed to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2 – as Covid is scientifically known – and to ‘create a global framework for studying the origins of emerging and re-emerging pathogens’.

An original probe into the outbreak by the WHO was resisted fiercely by China, leading to a report that concluded the SARS-CoV-2 virus probably passed to humans from a bat via another unidentified species.

But after 14 nations including the UK, US and Australia criticised its findings as being heavily compromised, Dr Tedros admitted the report’s flaws and ordered the new process.

The Government has taken a cautious approach to apportioning blame for Covid – something that China-sceptics attribute to a fear of offending Beijing.

However, American intelligence has placed the secretive Wuhan laboratory at the centre of its analysis.

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that workers at the institute had fallen ill with Covid-like symptoms in autumn 2019 – weeks before the alarm was raised, and said that as part of military projects its scientists were experimenting with a bat coronavirus very similar to the one that causes Covid.

A WHO spokesman said: ‘Dr Tedros has been consistently saying all hypotheses remain on the table as scientists pursue their work.’

Source

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FDA study understimates risk of heart problems from Covid

“Severely flawed” is a cardiologist’s verdict on a peer-reviewed study funded by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggesting possible risks of developing myocarditis and pericarditis after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

The recent FDA study published on June 11, 2022, used health insurance databases to identify myocarditis or pericarditis hospitalizations occurring in people aged 18 to 64 years, 1 to 7 days after a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

The authors found that though only 12 to 14 percent of the studied cohort were 18- to 25-year-olds, 33 to 42 percent of the myocarditis or pericarditis events occurred in people of this age group, suggesting that this age group may be linked with these vaccine adverse events.

“These results do not indicate a statistically significant risk difference between mRNA-1273 (the Moderna vaccine) and BNT162b2 (the Pfizer vaccine), but it should not be ruled out that a difference might exist,” the authors wrote in the study.

However, cardiologist Dr. Sanjay Verma told The Epoch Times that the study “using a 7-day limit for clinical endpoints” for myocarditis or pericarditis events after vaccination was “severely flawed.”

Verma, who practices in Coachella Valley, California, has been seeing many more heart problems since the vaccines rolled out.

“Continued increased risk [of myocarditis or pericarditis]” was found by the Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC)’s Reports (MMWR) “even at 21 days after vaccination,” Verma wrote in an email.

Explaining that spike proteins have been found in blood circulation even four months after injection, “there is no medical justification for a 7- or 21-day cutoff,” he said.

Further, a British pre-print led by researchers from the University of Oxford found “continued increased risk of myocarditis after the booster,” which was not assessed by the FDA study.

Verma pointed out further issues in the study, stating that it does not include 12- to 17-year-olds, “who are the highest risk cohort.”

The same CDC MMWR report also found that the 12- to 17-year-old cohort has “2 to 3 times increased incidence compared to the 18- to 29-year-old cohort,” the doctor explained.

After the second dose, males aged 12 to 17 years had an incidence of 22.0 to 35.9 myocarditis or pericarditis cases out of 100,000 as compared to males aged 18 to 29 years who had an incidence of 6.5 to 15 cases out of 100,000, demonstrating that teens have a higher risk than adults.

Verma also added that “the study does not account for those who may have died before hospitalization,” who would not be “included in insurance claims database.”

Nonetheless, the cardiologist noted a “tremendous improvement” in the study for using health insurance databases as compared to prior FDA studies that exclusively relied on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which would most likely result in a lower incidence of cases.

“Overall, the findings of the study are interesting, but the above limitations likely yield significant underestimation of the true risk of myocarditis or pericarditis after COVID vaccination.”

“Public safety and ethical post market pharmacovigilance warrants more robust active longitudinal follow-up to ensure informed consent and appropriate risk stratification counseling,” Verma concluded.

Source

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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Florida surgeon general at odds with FDA panel decision on COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo disagrees with the FDA's decision to administer the COVID-19 vaccine for kids under the age of 5. The FDA's advisory panel met on Wednesday for a second time to determine whether the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is safe for young children.

Over 400 children under 5 years old have died from coronavirus, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Medical professionals in Florida have mixed reactions to vaccinating young children. Ladapo is one medical professional who emphasizes his opposition based on the data.

"We expect to have good data that the benefits outweigh the risks of any therapies or treatments before we recommend those therapies or treatments to Floridians. That is not going to change. I don’t think that is particularly radical. I think it’s very sensible," said Ladapo. "From what I have seen, there is just insufficient data to inform benefits and risk in children. I think that’s very unequivocal."

Jill Roberts, an associate professor at USF Health who watched the FDA meetings, feels as if young Americans were behind the curve on vaccinations compared to adults during the pandemic.

"The next time we're facing a pandemic, we cannot have a kid’s vaccine lagging 18 months behind the adults," Roberts told WTVT. "So you cannot use data from an adult vaccine and then apply it to your kids. It just doesn't work. They're too small. Their dosage is totally different. So we can't do that. The next time we have a pandemic, we really have to start all these things up at once."

On the other hand, Florida researcher Matt Hitchings, who tells WTVT that he will be first in line with his young children, says that the data shows more of a positive than a negative conclusion.

"This vaccine needs to be available so that parents can make the choice they want to make to feel comfortable," said Hitchings.

Young children must take three shots for the Pfizer vaccine while the Moderna vaccine requires two doses because they use different concentrations. Doctors must consult their children's pediatricians.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/florida-surgeon-general-odds-fda-panel-covid-19-vaccine-children-5

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Fauci admits 'not enough data' to show recommended boosters for 5-year-olds work

Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted Thursday that even though the Biden administration recommends that everyone over the age of 5 gets a booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, there is currently insufficient evidence to prove that the boosters actually lower rates of hospitalization or death in children.

During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked Fauci if he was aware of any studies that showed a reduction in deaths or hospitalizations for children who had received boosters.

"Right now, there's not enough data that has been accumulated, Senator Paul, to indicate that that's the case," Fauci stated. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases began to explain that he thinks the basis for the recommendation had to do with looking at morbidity and mortality of children in different age groups, when the senator cut him off.

"So there are no studies. And Americans should all know this. There are no studies on children showing a reduction in hospitalization or death with taking a booster," Paul said.

Paul, who is also a doctor, noted that the only studies that had been done were antibody studies, which he argued were not enough to prove a vaccine's efficacy. He claimed that just because a vaccine produces antibodies, that does not mean it is necessary. To illustrate his point, he argued that a person could get 10 boosters and get antibodies from all of them, but that does not mean a person needs to get 10 booster shots.

Fauci, who testified virtually because he currently has COVID-19, called Paul's hypothetical "somewhat of an absurd exaggeration," but Paul claimed that this is basically what the government is doing.

"That's not science. That's conjecture. And we should not be making public policy on it," he said.

Paul recognized that "there is probably some indication" that boosters are beneficial for older people who have health risks if they get COVID-19, but that this is not the case for younger people. To the contrary, he said the vaccine could be risky for younger people. Paul pointed recent reports of an increased risk of myocarditis in males age 12 to 24 who get a second dose of a vaccine.

The Republican senator also accused the government of withholding data about pediatric COVID-19 cases. Paul was particularly interested in the number of children who had previously been infected with COVID-19 who later died or were hospitalized from it.

"The answer may be zero, but you're not even giving us the data," Paul said.

Fauci did not answer the question, but stated that the "optimal degree of protection" after infection is to then get vaccinated, referring to reinfection possibilities from the omicron variant.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fauci-data-recommended-boosters-five-year-olds-work

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Russian economy overcoming sanctions, Putin says

Putin is obviously putting the best face on things but I am guessing that he is pretty right. Sanctions rarely achieve much and Russia is a huge country with all sorts of resources, including a very resourceful population

St Petersburg: President Vladimir Putin has declared that Russia’s economy will overcome “reckless and insane” sanctions, while condemning the US for acting like “God’s own messengers on planet Earth”, at the country’s showpiece investment conference.

On Friday (Russia time), Putin began his address to the St Petersburg International Economic Forum with a lengthy denunciation of countries that he contends want to weaken Russia, including the US.

He said the US “declared victory in the Cold War and later came to think of themselves as God’s own messengers on planet Earth.”

Russia came under a wide array of sanctions after sending troops into Ukraine in February. Hundreds of foreign companies also suspended operations in Russia or pulled out of the country entirely.

Putin said trying to damage the Russian economy “didn’t work”.

“Russian enterprises and government authorities worked in a composed and professional manner,” he said. “We’re normalising the economic situation. We stabilised the financial markets, the banking system, the trade system.”

Russia’s projected inflation rate has fallen marginally, but the current projected annual rate of 16.7 per cent is still too high, he said.

Putin also vehemently defended his country’s actions in Ukraine. Russia has contended its neighbour posed a threat because of its desire to join the NATO military alliance.

“In the current situation, against a backdrop of soaring risks and threats, Russia’s decision to conduct a special military operation was a forced one,” the Russian leader said.

“It was very hard to make it, but it was forced and necessary. It was a decision by a sovereign country that has an unconditional right, based on the UN Charter, to defend its security.”

Putin predicted Russia’s success in Ukraine after more than 16 weeks of fighting.

“All of the special military operation’s objectives will definitely be attained,” he said. “This is predetermined by the courage and heroism of our warriors, the consolidation of Russian society, whose support gives strength and confidence to Russia’s army and navy, the profound understanding of the rightness and historic justice of our cause.”

Russia also “will accept any of the choices” the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine make about their futures, Putin said.

There’s been consistent speculation that the separatist territories will hold votes on joining Russia, similar to when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Separatist leaders of the two areas have expressed the desire for such a referendum.

Russia recognised the two areas as independent states days before sending troops to Ukraine, a move none of its allies have so far repeated.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/europe/russian-economy-to-overcome-reckless-sanctions-putin-says-20220618-p5aup1.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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Australia: New 'sticky' Omicron variants taking over

Two new Omicron variants are set to become the most dominant in NSW as a result of their "growth advantage" over previous strains, according to a new report.

The new variants— BA.4 and BA.5 — are set to overtake the previously prevalent BA.2 variant in coming weeks, the NSW Health respiratory surveillance report said.

"It is anticipated that in coming weeks the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-lineages, first identified in early April, will become the dominant strains," a NSW Health spokesperson said.

"And will likely be associated with an increase in infections."

Virologist Stuart Turville from the University of NSW's Kirby Institute said BA. 5 was "stickier" than its predecessors because of differences in its spike glycoprotein, which influences how the virus engages with cells.

"BA.5 doesn't look to be a big seismic shift like we saw with BA.1 and BA.2 in comparison to Delta," Professor Turville said.

"[But] the thing we're keeping an eye on with BA.5 is that it's starting to like tissue that pre-Omicron variants like ... it likes proteins on the lung.

"What we want to know now is does it like it as much as Delta and pre-Omicron variants or is it just a bit of a shift from BA.2?"

Infectious disease experts say there is evidence the Omicron sub-variants are effective at reinfecting people with previous infections from BA.1 or other lineages.

There is also concern these sub-variants may infect people who have been vaccinated.

However, there hasn't been a link to an increase in disease severity just yet, although this is being closely monitored, according to the NSW Health report.

Hospital and lab surveillance noted an early start to influenza season this year as well as a rapid increase in reported cases, raising concerns for strains on essential services.

University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine and Health Professor Elizabeth Elliott said there was no doubt "chaos" would be caused by the emergence of new variants in the winter flu season.

"Hospitals are already struggling with the load. And kids are not exempt. We recommend flu and COVID vaccines for all eligible," she said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-17/new-covid-omicron-variants-become-dominant-in-nsw/101162684

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Fed accelerates rate hikes, but still too little, too late to stop crushing inflation

If the administration returned to balanced budgeting there might be a hope of inflation being temporary but huge excess spending is locked in so whatever the Fed does inflation will continue -- JR

By Robert Romano

The Federal Reserve on June 15 once again hiked the Federal Funds Rate — the rate at which the central bank lends to financial institutions — up another 0.75 percent to 1.5 percent to 1.75 percent, following 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent rate hikes at its March and May meetings.

That came after the January meeting when the Fed left its rate at 0 to 0.25 percent, even though inflation was already running north of 7 percent.

The acceleration of the Fed’s rate hikes, after tepid expectations of just 0.25 percent increases at each meeting, now stand out as an admission that the central bank thinks it was wrong. That, in sum, the central bank waited far too long to begin the process of ending the emergency measures enacted to mitigate the economic impacts of the Covid pandemic lockdowns.

A quick gander at the Fed’s economic projections tells the tale. Just in Dec. 2020, the Fed was projecting just 1.7 percent Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index inflation for 2021. It came it at 3.87 percent. In Dec. 2021, it was projecting 2.7 percent for 2022. So far, it’s already up to 6.3 percent as of April 2022.

When compared to a separate measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, now at 8.6 percent, compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, similarly, since inflation first rose above 5 percent in June 2021, the Federal Reserve has kept its policy rate far below that of the inflation rate.

Just in Nov. 2021, the central bank was confidently promising the inflation would be “transitory”: “Inflation is elevated, largely reflecting factors that are expected to be transitory… an easing of supply constraints are expected to support continued gains in economic activity and employment as well as a reduction in inflation.”

A month ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed was not even considering a 0.75 percent rate hike, telling reporters on May 4, “Seventy-five basis points is not something the committee is actively considering.”

And yet, a month later, that is exactly what the Fed did.

Meaning, the Fed has not only been consistently wrong about the state of the economy, it is not even a reliable source of information about what its own policy posture actually is on a month-to-month basis. It doesn’t even know what it wants to do.

Of course, the American people have noticed the inflation, as their money doesn’t go as far as it used to. Real average hourly earnings are down 3 percent from May 2021 to May 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The inflation itself is little wonder. Congress spent and borrowed more than $6 trillion to fight Covid after Jan. 2020: the $2.2 trillion CARES Act and the $900 billion phase four legislation under former President Donald Trump, and the $1.9 trillion stimulus and $550 billion of new infrastructure spending under President Joe Biden.

As a result, the national debt has increased by $7.2 trillion to $30.4 trillion since Jan. 2020, of which the Fed monetized half, or $3.4 trillion, by increasing its share of U.S. treasuries to a record $5.7 trillion while the M2 money supply has increased by $6.3 trillion to $21.8 trillion, a 41 percent increase, since Jan. 2020.

To be fair, one exigent event is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which unquestionably disrupted global grain supplies, with Russia and Ukraine accounting for one-third of all wheat exports, and the world’s oil and gas supply, since Russia is a top producer.

And, the Fed knew about the war in March and May when it did its tepid 0.25 and 0.5 percent rate hikes.

Still, the supply crisis has not improved. Production slowed down in 2020 in response to the Covid lockdowns, demand picked up sooner than expected, but when it comes to agriculture or oil and natural gas production, both are still below pre-Covid levels. Whether rates are rising slowly or very fast, if we don’t boost production soon, it might not matter where the Fed sets the interest rate, inflation will still get worse. Stay tuned.

https://dailytorch.com/2022/06/fed-accelerates-rate-hikes-but-still-too-little-too-late-to-stop-crushing-inflation/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=0a651e7d-fa73-49e2-be87-2fc2fa2e0f5c

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The Emergence of Neo-Fascism in Public Health

Fascism is the art of hiding the truth behind a facade of wholesome virtue. It is, presumably, as old as humanity. Mussolini just gave it a name—hiding his authoritarian ideas behind the drainage of swamps, village renewal, kids in school, and trains running on time. The 1930s picture of Nazism was not broken windows and old men being beaten in the street, but happy smiling youths working together in the outdoors to rebuild the country.

Putting such labels to the present time is dangerous, as they carry a lot of baggage, but it also helps to determine whether the current baggage we had thought was progressive is actually regressive. Those happy smiling youths of the 1930s were actually being trained in the arts of self-righteousness, denigration of wrong-think, and collective obedience. They knew they were right, and that the other side was the problem. Is that familiar?

The societal changes of the past two years have been defined by, and led by, ‘public health.’ So it is right to look for public health analogies in the past to help understand what is happening, what the drivers are, and where they might lead. We have witnessed our public health professions and the associations that represent them call for active discrimination and coercion over medical choice. They have advocated for policies that impoverish others, whilst maintaining their own salaries, controlling normal family life, and even dictating how they can mourn their dead.

Hospitals have refused transplants for those who made unrelated medical choices the hospital did not like. I have witnessed them refuse a family access to a dying loved one until they accept injections they do not want, then allow immediate access thereby confirming it was not immunity, but compliance, that was sought.

We have all seen prominent health professionals publicly vilify and denigrate colleagues who sought to restate principles on which we were all trained: absence of coercion, informed consent, and non-discrimination. Rather than put people first, a professional colleague informed me in a discussion on evidence and ethics that the role of public health physicians was to implement instructions from the government. Collective obedience.

This has been justified by ‘the greater good’—an undefined term as no government pushing this narrative has, in two years, released clear cost-benefit data demonstrating that the ‘good’ is greater than the harm. However, the actual tally, though important, is not the point. The ‘greater good’ has become a reason for the public health professions to annul the concept of the primacy of individual rights.

They have decided that discrimination, stigma, and suppression of minorities is acceptable to ‘protect’ a majority. This is what fascism was, and is, about. And those who have promoted slogans such as ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ or ‘no one is safe until all are safe’ know the intent, and the potential outcomes, of scapegoating minorities.

They also know, from history, that the fallacious nature of these statements does not impede their impact. Fascism is the enemy of truth, and never its servant.

The point of writing this is to suggest that we call a spade a ‘spade.’ That we state things as they are, we tell the truth. Vaccines are a pharmaceutical product with varying benefits and risks, just like trees are wooden things with leaves on. People have rights over their own bodies, not doctors or governments, in any society that considers all people of equal and intrinsic worth.

Stigmatization, discrimination, and exclusion on the basis of healthcare choices, whether for HIV, cancer, or COVID-19, is wrong. Excluding and vilifying colleagues for differing views on the use of safe medications is arrogant. Denouncing those who refuse to follow orders conflicting with ethics and morals is dangerous.

Blindly following government and corporate dictates simply to comply with the ‘group’ has nothing in common with ethical public health. These all have more in common with the fascist ideologies of the past century than with what was taught in the public health lectures I attended. If that is the society we now wish to develop, we should be up front and state this, not hide behind facades of false virtue such as ‘vaccine equity’ or ‘all in this together.’

Let us not get tied down with political niceties of ‘left’ and ‘right.’ The leaders of Europe’s two main fascist regimes of the 1930s emerged from the ‘left.’ They leaned heavily on public health concepts of ‘greater good’ to weed out the inferior thinkers and non-compliers.

Our current condition calls for introspection, not partisanship. As a profession, we have complied with directives to discriminate, stigmatize, and exclude, whilst blurring requirements for informed consent. We have helped remove basic human rights—to bodily autonomy, education, work, family life, movement, and travel. We have followed the corporate authoritarians, ignoring their conflicts of interest and enriching them whilst our public has become poorer. Public health has failed to put the people in charge, and has become a mouthpiece for a small, wealthy, and powerful minority.

We can continue down this path, and it will probably end up where it did last time, except perhaps without the armies of others to overthrow the monstrosity we supported.

Or we can find humility, remember public health should be a servant of the people and not the instrument of those who seek to control them, and remove the monster from our midst. If we do not support fascism, we can cease to be its instrument. We could achieve this simply by following the fundamental ethics and principles on which our professions are based.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-emergence-of-neo-fascism-in-public-health_4535485.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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Fully Vaxxed and Boosted Dr. Fauci Catches COVID

Maybe this will convince people that vaccienations are useless against Omicron. His symptoms are mild but that is typical of Omicron

On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), tested positive for COVID-19 on a rapid antigen test, according to a statement from the National Institutes of Health.

Fauci is fully vaccinated and has been boosted twice. He is reportedly experiencing mild symptoms.

“Dr. Fauci will isolate and continue to work from his home,” the statement reads. “He has not recently been in close contact with President Biden or other senior government officials. Dr. Fauci will follow the COVID-19 guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and medical advice from his physician and return to the NIH when he tests negative.”

Dr. Fauci is the architect of the nation’s COVID-19 response and was once the most trusted figure when it came to the novel coronavirus. However, his repeated contradictions and deceptions have resulted in Americans losing confidence in our health institutions and prompted calls for his firing.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/06/15/breaking-fully-masked-vaxxed-and-boosted-dr-fauci-catches-covid-n1605758

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Imperial College London research finds Omicron not boosting protection against reinfection

New research has found people who caught Covid in the first wave of the pandemic get no boost to their immunity if they catch Omicron.

A study of triple vaccinated people looked at how infections from different Covid strains affected people’s immune response, to help inform future vaccine development.

While three doses of the Covid jab help to reduce the severity of the illness from Omicron, previous infections can affect how the body responds, researchers say.

Imperial College London Professor Rosemary Boyton, who is a co-author of the study, said “if you were infected during the first wave, then you can’t boost your immune response if you have an Omicron infection”.

The study also found that being infected with Omicron did not boost protection against that strain.

“When Omicron started flying around the country, people kept saying that’s OK, that will improve people’s immunity. What we’re saying is it’s not a good booster of immunity,” Prof Boyton told The Guardian.

The study followed 731 triple vaccinated healthcare workers in the UK from March 2020 to January 2022. Each person had a different Covid infection history.

Researchers found that regardless of previous infections, immunity against Omicron waned a few weeks after third Covid jab.

They also found those who caught Omicron did have increased protection from other variants but it only offered a limited boost of protection from another Omicron infection. But in those who had the original strain of the virus - the response was weaker.

The team said those who caught Covid in the first wave of the pandemic did not gain a boost to their immune response after catching Omicron.

This study has raised concerns about what the future holds, with these findings suggesting people are not building up their immunity against the virus.

“We’re not getting herd immunity, we’re not building up protective immunity to Omicron,” study co-author Professor Danny Altmann said, reported The Guardian.

“So we face not coming out the other end of infections and re-infections and breakthrough infections.”

Actor Hugh Jackman has tested positive for Covid for the third time, after performing at the Tony Awards in New York City.

Jackman’s positive Covid result came less than 24 hours after he and co-star Sutton Foster and the ensemble cast of The Music Man performed a set at Radio City Music Hall for the 75th Tony Awards.

The Wolverine star took to social media to share the news, explaining that Max Clayton will take over his role in The Music Man while he recovers.

He also thanked all those who are understudies for their work and helping the show go on.

The Aussie actor had previously missed performances of the musical due to Covid. Over the Christmas period when Jackman contracted the virus for the second time some shows had to be cancelled.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/world/the-rolling-stones-cancels-amsterdam-concert-after-mick-jagger-tests-positive-to-covid/news-story/8b7bc68bd4126655557897790313f512

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The Subordinate Citizen

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

I recently led a group of about 100 citizens to tour Israel for nearly two weeks. Before returning to the United States, all participants had to indicate their vaccination status and take a COVID-19 test for reentry.

Anxieties swept the group as Israeli testers swabbed them.

Anyone testing positive would have to delay his return. That quarantine would entail spending thousands of dollars in finding scarce hotel accommodations, additional living expenses, and rebooked airline tickets—depending upon the length of the mandatory sequestration.

Contrast the tens of thousands of foreign nationals now mustering to cross illegally into the United States again this summer. They follow the already 2 million who have entered the country unlawfully since Joe Biden became president.

Does any foreign national worry about being tested for COVID-19, much less fear being turned away if he tests positive or for lack of proof of vaccination?

Or do we scrutinize far more carefully U.S. citizens entering legally their own country than we do noncitizens crossing our borders unlawfully?

For that matter, the government is still determined to fire thousands of federal workers and U.S. military personnel who refused the new mRNA vaccinations. Most citizens who were not vaccinated feared that the inoculations were either possibly dangerous to their health or ineffective in preventing COVID-19 infections or would not necessarily lead to herd immunity.

Are 2 million nonvaccinated foreigners arriving unaudited from impoverished countries less of a threat during the pandemic than fully audited American citizens employed by the federal government? Why would we fire unvaccinated Americans but welcome equally unvaccinated noncitizens?

The Biden Administration blasted the Trump southern border wall and canceled all further funding.

Yet it just appropriated $40 billion to Ukraine to ensure that it does not lose its border war against Russian aggression.

That is a tiny percentage of the federal budget. But the aid is full of symbolic irony, nonetheless. The multibillion-dollar appropriation would have more than covered the completion of the entire wall along our own southern border.

An outside observer might conclude that the U.S. government intends to uphold the universal idea of national sovereignty, internationally recognized borders, and the security of citizens inside their own country—as long as they are not American citizens.

There are currently over 550 “sanctuary” jurisdictions established by state and local governments. They aim to prevent federal immigration authorities from deporting illegal aliens, including tens of thousands detained by law enforcement for committing additional crimes.

The nation has not experienced such blatant nullifications of federal laws since the efforts of pre-Civil War Southern states—or the 1960s southern governors who defied federal efforts to enforce U.S. civil rights legislation.

So, can any citizens now simply vote to declare their hometown or local county immune from federal legislation?

That is, can a city or county nullify as it pleases the IRS tax code, endangered species laws, or federal gun registration legislation?

Or is nullification only permissible in the interest of non-citizens and lawbreakers?

These asymmetries also transcend noncitizens.

We have developed entire classes of American elite citizens who are not subject to the enforcement of the law—at least as it is applied to others either less influential or ideologically incorrect.

Federal prosecutors sought to jail Lt. General Michael Flynn for six months for not telling the truth to federal agents.

They put another Trump subordinate, George Papadopoulos, in jail for two weeks for lying to federal prosecutors.

Recently the FBI stormed into an airport to arrest former Trump advisor Peter Navarro for contempt of a congressional subpoena.

OK, defying federal law has consequences. Or does it?

Former Obama Administration Attorney General Eric Holder brazenly defied congressional subpoenas and was found in contempt—an historic first.

Did the FBI ever arrest Holder, much less as he boarded an airplane?

James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, confessed he flat-out lied under oath to a congressional committee.

So did former Central Intelligence Agency cheif John Brennan—twice!

Andrew McCabe repeatedly lied to federal investigators as acting director of the FBI.

Were any of them arrested or tried in the manner of Flynn, Papadopoulos, or Navarro?

If not, what then is left of the foundation of U.S. citizenship—universal equal treatment under the law?

There are lots of reasons why the looming November midterms will likely see historic levels of pushback against the Biden Administration, Democratic candidates, and the entire progressive agenda.

Take your pick of the many self-induced Biden disasters, among them hyperinflation, unaffordable gasoline, out-of-control crime, and foreign-policy humiliations.

But one reason why voters are furious is rarely expressed.

Americans feel that ordinary citizens like themselves who follow the rules are treated more harshly by their own government than are both non-citizens and our own progressive elites.

And they are right, and they are angry, and we will hear from them very soon.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14206

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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The Great California Exodus... to MEXICO: Thousands flock south of the border to escape the crippling cost of living under Biden and Governor Gavin Newsom

Thousands of Californians are fleeing to Mexico amid the soaring cost of living in the golden state. Americans taking advantage of work from home are reaping the benefits of US salaries, while living off Mexico's cheaper lifestyle.

Others are living in Mexico, while commuting to work in the US. But critics have argued that the influx of Americans in cities south of the border has begun to price out local Mexicans.

It comes amid a wider exodus of Californians to other states across the US, including Texas, Washington, and Arizona.

Many feel forced out by rocketing inflation in the golden state that has gas, grocery, and living costs soaring under Governor Gavin Newsom.

'I would say at least half are coming down from California,' Darrell Graham of Baja123 Real Estate Group told CNBC while speaking about the real estate trends he has seen.

'Suddenly the cost of taxes, the crime rates, the politics, all the things that people are unhappy with in California are are coming down to Mexico.

Travis Grossi, a content creator who moved to Mexico in 2020, paid $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood, while in Mexico his rent became $850 per-month for two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a shared pool, and 24-hours a day security.

'We were able to cut our budget in half, which allowed us to really focus on our careers and the things we wanted to do artistically without having to just hustle, and hustle, and hustle, every day, every week to just meet the bare minimum,' Travis Grossi, told CNBC.

Monthly rent in Mexico can average as little as $430 per month, while rents can average as high as $1,500 north of the border in San Diego.

The population of California continues to shrink, as residents flee the state's high cost of living and rising crime.

California's population declined again in 2021 for the second consecutive year, state officials said in May, the result of a slowdown in births and immigration coupled with an increase in deaths and people leaving the state.

Critics point to the steady stream of people leaving California as an indictment on the state's policies, which are set by Governor Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats in the state legislature.

About 280,000 more people left California for other states than moved here in 2021, continuing a decades-long trend.

With an estimated 39,185,605 residents at the end of the year, California is still the most populous US state, putting it far ahead of second-place Texas and its 29.5 million residents.

But after years of strong growth brought California tantalizingly close to the 40 million milestone, the state's population is now roughly back to where it was in 2016 after declining by 117,552 people this year.

Though the life is good for California ex-pats living in Mexico, the trend has begun a process of gentrification that is pricing out local Mexican citizens who aren't paid in US dollars.

'Certain neighborhoods are now becoming too expensive for Mexican citizens to live in because most of the time people that are actually buying the property developments are being able to do so because they either make money in US dollars, or because they are working remotely,' said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy institute.

Exactly how many Californians have relocated to Mexico have not been documented, but as of 2019 it was estimated that at least 1.2million Americans lived in the country.

The trend comes as average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the US has risen to $5.014 as grocery costs saw the highest surge in a year since 1979.

Gas prices are up $1.94 from this time last year, spiking 50 cents in the last month alone, according to the AAA Gas Price Index.

The national average passed the $5 mark for the first time in history over the weekend, and President Biden deflected blame for soaring prices to Russia once again.

Meanwhile the cost of groceries rose 11.9 per cent from this time last year, the sharpest increase the country has seen since Jimmy Carter was president.

The Labor Department's report on Friday showed the consumer price index jumped one percent in May from the prior month, for a 12-month increase of 8.6 percent - topping the recent peak seen in March.

The new figures released on Friday suggested the Federal Reserve could continue with its rapid interest rate hikes to combat what has been coined 'Bidenflation,' and markets reacted swiftly, with the Dow shedding around 600 points.

Markets continued to drop during early trading on Monday, as fears of a recession grow stronger.

The runaway inflation rates are hurting American wallets outside of the gas station, most notably at the grocery store.

Grocery costs have increased at staggering rates, and are expected to only keep climbing as the crisis continues.

The price of eggs has risen 32% and poultry is up 16.6% since the year began, following a bird flu outbreak in January that killed off roughly 6% of commercial chickens.

Embargoes against Russia have also led to increases in the prices of grain-based foods, while fats and oils are up 16.9%, and milk is up 15.9%.

As inflation-borne production costs climb, producers and retailers alike have indicated that they will be forced to continue hiking prices.

Overall, global oil prices are rising, compounded by sanctions against Russia, a leading oil producer, because of its war against Ukraine.

In addition, there are limits on refining capacity in the U.S. because some refineries shut down during the pandemic.

The combined result is seeing the cost of filling up surging, draining money from Americans who are facing the highest rate of inflation since 1981.

Surveys show that Americans see high inflation as the nation's top problem, and most disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy.

A top UK economist scolded the Federal Reserve Bank on Sunday, suggesting that the current inflation could have been avoided but for the naivete, or arrogance, of the central bankers who dismissed rising prices as temporary.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10912339/Thousands-flock-Mexico-escaping-crippling-cost-living-Biden-Governor-Gavin-Newsom.html

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The federal government is sitting on 22 million acres of farmable land during a global food crisis. Biden should tap it.

The federal government continues to pay farmers not to farm on some 22 million acres of farmlands that are a part of the voluntary Conservation Reserve Program, established in 1985 to address soil erosion and other environmental impacts caused by farming, even as the global supply crisis, the war in Ukraine and bad weather are all combining to reduce global agriculture production in 2022, threatening starvation in the third world.

In any given year, before the Covid supply crisis or the war in Ukraine, 9 million people were already starving to death each year, according to global health estimates by the United Nations and the World Food Programme.

Now, that crisis could get even worse, as global wheat production is taking a major hit, according to the latest data by the Department of Agriculture in May: “Global production is forecast at 774.8 million tons, 4.5 million lower than in 2021/22. Reduced production in Ukraine, Australia, and Morocco is only partly offset by increases in Canada, Russia, and the United States. Production in Ukraine is forecast at 21.5 million tons in 2022/23, 11.5 million lower than 2021/22 due to the ongoing war.”

Recently, wheat has been particularly hard hit, with U.S. wheat production down 15 percent since 2019, from 1.93 billion bushels in 2019 to 1.64 billion in 2021, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to a March Department of Agriculture release on prospective plantings, 2022 will be the fifth lowest area planted since 1919: “All wheat planted area for 2022 is estimated at 47.4 million acres, up 1 percent from 2021. If realized, this represents the fifth lowest all wheat planted area since records began in 1919.”

Just on June 7, Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, told Reuters that the current global food crisis could kill just as many people as Covid. To date, almost 7 million people have died globally from Covid.

Sands warned: “Food shortages work in two ways. One is you have the tragedy of people actually starving to death. But second is you have the fact that often much larger numbers of people are poorly nourished, and that makes them more vulnerable to existing diseases… It’s not as well-defined as some brand new pathogen appearing with distinctive new symptoms. But it could well be just as deadly.”

Meaning, millions more could starve — more than usual — if global agriculture production does not soon catch up to demand.

So, what are we doing about it? On May 11, President Joe Biden told the nation that U.S. farmers were “expanding production and feeding the world in need” this year. But so far, Biden only pointed to a federal insurance program to incentivize farmers in the short term to engage in double cropping, whereby fields are planted twice in a season and harvested early.

That might help. But what about the 22 million acres that the federal government is sitting on as a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program? Why aren’t we tapping that as is already allowed under federal law?

Specifically, 16. U.S.C. section 3833(b)(1)(B)(i)(I)(cc) allows the Secretary of Agriculture to allow for farming on lands in the Conservation Reserve Program when there is a drought or another type of emergency: “The Secretary… shall permit certain activities or commercial uses of established cover on land that is subject to a contract under the conservation reserve program if… the Secretary… includes contract modifications … without any reduction in the rental rate for … emergency haying, emergency grazing, or other emergency use of the forage in response to a localized or regional drought, flooding, wildfire, or other emergency, on all practices, outside the primary nesting season, when… the Secretary … determines that the program can assist in the response to a natural disaster event without permanent damage to the established cover…”

We have all of the above. There’s a drought in the southwest United States presently. There’s too much rainfall in North Dakota. There’s also the overall global supply crisis and the war in Ukraine.

Overall U.S. agriculture production has been down, with planted acres recently peaking at 319.3 million acres in 2018, according to data compiled by USDA. In 2019, amid flooding, it was down to 303 million acres planted, 310 million acres planted in 2020 during Covid and 317 million acres planted in 2021.

And that is far below the level of farming that used to take place here. Acres planted actually peaked in 1932 at 375 million acres planted. That was right before the Dust Bowl of 1934, which drove planting down to 339 million acres planted before recovering to 361 million acres planted in 1935.

Then, with the advent of suburbs, agriculture production took further hits in the 1960s, when annual land planted was down to less than 300 million acres. It experienced a resurgence in the 1970s and then peaked again at 361 million acres planted in 1981.

Those numbers took a big hit, though, after the 1985 Conservation Reserve Program was established. In 1985, before the program took effect, 353 million acres were planted. In 1986, that number immediately dropped to 338 million acres planted. And in 1987, it was down to 315 million acres planted.

If there ever was a valid basis for President Biden and the USDA to take exception to the Conservation Reserve Program, this is it. These farmlands should be planted before it is too late. My worry is that we will look back on this situation in a year or so and ask, “Why didn’t we plant more?”

https://dailytorch.com/2022/06/the-federal-government-is-sitting-on-22-million-acres-of-farmable-land-during-a-global-food-crisis-biden-should-tap-it/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=1a6b7b6b-7d89-466c-9e4d-faad68f7d3ef

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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The Sovietization of American Life

One day historians will look back at the period beginning with the COVID lockdowns of spring 2020 through the midterm elections of 2022 to understand how America for over two years lost its collective mind and turned into something unrecognizable and antithetical to its founding principles.

“Sovietization” is perhaps the best diagnosis of the pathology. It refers to the subordination of policy, expression, popular culture, and even thought to ideological mandates. Ultimately such regimentation destroys a state since dogma wars with and defeats meritocracy, creativity, and freedom.

The American Commissariat

Experts become sycophantic. They mortgage their experience and talent to ideology—to the point where society itself regresses.

The law is no longer blind and disinterested, but adjudicates indictment, prosecution, verdict, and punishment on the ideology of the accused. Eric Holder is held in contempt of Congress and smiles; Peter Navarro is held in contempt of Congress and is hauled off in cuffs and leg-irons. James Clapper and John Brennan lied under oath to Congress—and were rewarded with television contracts; Roger Stone did the same and a SWAT team showed up at his home. Andrew McCabe made false statements to federal investigators and was exempt. A set-up George Papadopoulos went to prison for a similar charge. So goes the new American commissariat.

Examine California and ask a series of simple questions.

Why does the state that formerly served as a model to the nation regarding transportation now suffer inferior freeways while its multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project remains an utter boondoggle and failure?

Why was its safe and critically needed last-remaining nuclear power plant scheduled for shutdown (and only recently reversed) as the state faced summer brownouts?

Why did its forests go up in smoke predictably each summer, as its timber industry and the century-old science of forest management all but disappeared from the state?

Why do the state’s criminals so often evade indictment, and if convicted are often not incarcerated—or are quickly paroled?

Why are its schools’ test scores dismal, its gasoline the nation’s highest-priced, and the streets of its major cities fetid and dangerous—in a fashion not true 50 years ago or elsewhere today?

In a word, the one-party state is Sovietized. Public policy is no longer empirical but subservient to green, diversity, equity, and inclusion dogmas—and detached from the reality of daily middle-class existence. Decline is ensured once ideology governs problem-solving rather than time-tested and successful policymaking.

In a similar fashion, the common denominator in Joe Biden’s two years of colossal failures is Soviet-like edicts of equity, climate change, and neo-socialist redistribution that have ensured (for the non-elite, in any event) soaring inflation, unaffordable energy, rampant crime, and catastrophic illegal immigration. Playing the role of Pravda, Biden and his team simply denied things were bad, relabeled failure as success, and attacked his predecessor and critics as various sorts of counterrevolutionaries.

Biden rejected commonsense, bipartisan policies that in the past kept inflation low, energy affordable, crime controlled, and the border manageable. Instead, he superimposed leftist dogma on every decision, whose ideological purity, not real-life consequences for millions, was considered the measure of success.

The Caving of Expertise

Entire professions have now nearly been lost to radical progressive ideology.

Do we remember those stellar economists who swore at a time of Biden’s vast government borrowing, increases in the monetary supply, incentivizing labor non-participation, and supply chain interruptions that there was no threat of inflation? Were they adherents of ideological “modern monetary theory”? Did they ignore their own training and experience in fealty to progressive creeds?

What about the Stanford doctors who signed a groupthink letter attacking their former colleague, Dr. Scott Atlas, because he questioned the orthodoxies of Dr. Anthony Fauci and the state bureaucracies—who we now know hid their own involvement with channeling funding to deadly gain-of-function research in Wuhan? Did they reject his views on empirical grounds and welcome a give-and-take shared inquiry—or simply wish to silence an ideological outlier and advisor to a despised counterrevolutionary?

Or how about the 50 retired intelligence “experts” who swore that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not genuine but likely Russian disinformation? Did they really rely on hundreds of years of collective expertise to adjudicate the laptop or did they simply wish to be rewarded with something comparable to a “Hero of Woke America” award?

Or what about the 1,000 medical “professionals” who claimed violating quarantine and protective protocols for Black Lives Matter demonstrations was vital for the mental health of the protestors? Or the Princeton creators of a video identifying Jonathan Katz as a sort of public enemy for the crime of stating that racial discrimination of any sort was toxic?

Career Advancement, Cowardice, and Membership in the Club

There can be no expertise under Sovietization; everything and everyone serves ideology. Our military—especially its four-star generals, current and retired—parroted perceived ideologically correct thought. Repeating party lines about diversity, white supremacy, and climate change are far more relevant for career advancement than proof of prior effective military leadership in battle.

The ultimate trajectory of a woke military was the fatal disgrace in Afghanistan. Ideologues in uniform kept claiming that the humiliating skedaddle was a logistical success and that misguided bombs that killed innocents were called a “righteous strike.” Afghanistan all summer of 2021 was to be Joe Biden’s successful model of a graduated withdrawal in time for a 20th-anniversary commemoration of 9/11—until it suddenly wasn’t.

Pentagon decision-making increasingly privileges race, gender, sexuality, and green goals over traditional military lethality—a fact known to all who are up for promotion, retention, or disciplinary action.

How predictable it was that the United States fled Kabul, abandoning not just billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weapons to terrorists, but also with Pride flags flying, George Floyd murals on public walls, and gender studies initiatives being carried out in the military ranks. Ask yourself: if a general during the Afghanistan debacle had brilliantly organized a sustainable and defensible corridor around Bagram Airfield but was known to be skeptical of Pentagon efforts to address climate change and diversity would he be praised or reviled?

The elite universities in their single-minded pursuit of wokeness are ironically doing America a great favor. For a long time, their success was due to an American fetishization of brand names. But now, most privately accept that a BA from Princeton or Harvard is no longer an indication of acquired knowledge, mastery of empiricism, or predictive of inductive thinking over deductive dogmatism.

Instead, we now understand, various lettered certificates serve as stamps for career advancement—proof either of earlier high-school achievement that merely won the bearer admission to the select, or confirmation that the graduate possesses the proper wealth, contacts, athletic ability, race, gender, or sexuality to be invited to the club.

Universities’ abandonment of test scores and diminution of grades—replaced by “community service” and race, gender, and sexuality criteria—has simply clarified the bankruptcy of the entire higher education industry.

Our “diversity statements” required for hiring at many universities are becoming comparable to Soviet certifications of proper Marxist-Leninist fidelity. Like the children of Soviet Party apparatchiks, privileged university students now openly attack faculty whose reading requirements or lectures supposedly exude scents of “colonialism” or “imperialism” or “white supremacy.”

Faculty increasingly fear offering merit evaluation, in terror that diversity commissars might detect in their grading an absence of reparatory race or gender appraisals. The result is still more public cynicism about higher education because it is apparent that the goal is to graduate with a stamp from Yale or Stanford that ensures prestige, success, and ideological correctness—on the supposition that few will ever worry exactly what or how one did while enrolled.

We have our own Emmanuel Goldsteins who, we are told, deserve our three minutes of hate for counterrevolutionary thought and practice. Donald Trump earned the enmity of the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the IRS. Now Elon Musk and his companies are suddenly the targets of the progressive state, including repartees from the president himself. To vent, the popular Soviet directs its collective enmity at a Dave Chappelle or Bill Maher, progressives who exhibit the occasional counterrevolutionary heresy.

Cabinet secretaries ignore their duties—somewhat

understandable given their resumes never explained their appointments. What binds a Pete Buttigieg, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Jennifer Granholm is not expertise in transportation, border security, or energy independence but allegiance to an entire menu of woke policies that are often antithetical to their own job descriptions.

“Diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” started out as mandated proportional representation as defined by the state allotting spoils of coveted admissions, hiring, honors, and career advancement by race and gender percentages in the general population. The subtext was that federal and state governments imported and incorporated largely academic theories that alleged any disequilibrium was due to bias.

More specifically, racial and sexual prejudices were to be exposed and punished by morally superior castes—in politics, the bureaucracy, and the courts. There was never any interest in detailing how particular individuals were personally harmed by the system or by the “other,” which explains the Left’s abhorrence of racially blind, class-based criteria to establish justified need.

Reparations

In the last five years, American Sovietization has descended into reparatory representation. Due to prior collective culpability of whites, heterosexuals, and males, marginalized self-defined groups of victims must now be “overrepresented” in admissions, hiring, and visibility in popular culture

As the Soviets and Maoists discovered—and as was true of the Jacobins, National Socialists, and cultural Marxists—once radical ideology defines success, then life in general becomes anti-meritocratic. The public privately equates awards and recognition with political fealty, not actual achievement.

Were recent Netflix productions reflections of merit or ideological criteria governing race and gender? Do the Emmys, Tonys, or Oscars convey recognition of talent, or of adherence to progressive agendas of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Does a Pulitzer Prize, a Ford Foundation grant, or a MacArthur award denote talent and achievement or more often promote diversity, equity, and inclusion narratives?

Consequences of Failing Up

Where does woke Sovietization end once accountability vanishes and ideology masks incompetence and malfeasance?

We are starting to see the final denouement with missing baby formula, epidemics of shootings and hate crimes, train-robbings reminiscent of the Wild West in Los Angeles, Tombstonesque shoot-up Saturday nights in Chicago, spiking electricity rates and brownouts, $7 a gallon diesel fuel, unaffordable and scarce meat, and entire industries from air travel to home construction that simply no longer work.

Everyone knows that the status of our homeless population in Los Angeles or San Francisco is medieval, dangerous, and unhealthy. And everyone knows that any serious attempt to remedy the situation would cause one to be labeled an apostate, counterrevolutionary, and enemy of the people. So, like good Eastern Europeans of the Warsaw Pact in the 1960s, we mutter one thing under our breath, and nod another publicly.

Behind all our disasters there looms an ideology, a creed that ignores cause and effect in the real world—without a shred of concern for the damage done to those outside the nomenklatura.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14198

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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