Demonization of middle America has been going on for decades. From presenting them first as uneducated brutes (1980) to virulent racists today that hate diversity. Reason is simple, it created divide between urban and rural population that made it easier for Wall Street and political elites to outsource and gut out manufacturing, that was economics heart of America. Today those devastated communities are being ravaged by fentanyl and other drugs, again they are blamed as racist and deplorable for trying to address their own issues.
But now with migrants showing up in numbers to "sanctuary" cities we see how "welcoming" our Urban areas really are, it is easy to be pro illegal immigration if it is not on your doorstep
The veneer of society is thin. Our elites forget that no less than the French fops who mocked their own peasants - and lost their heads as a consequence.
THIS! So many in the west take Society and Civility for granted. They think it is the default, which I think it why they are so cavalier in playing with the foundations of society. They don't understand that the default is anarchy and chaos and humans had to carve out everything they have and fight to keep it. And oh so many societies have crumbled because the rulers told their people to eat cake.
This should be blindingly obvious. But we even have those absolutists on "our" side (Mr Durant?? take note) who magically -- and breathtakingly dangerously -- think that "hitting bottom" would result in reinvigorated Jeffersonian democracy rising from the ashes. If things get much more out of joint, look for our very own Mr Barbecue a la Haiti -- or worse. Probability of 1.0.
I think that it's clear that those in question are aren't sufficiently acquainted with reality to ever have been so engaged as to make divorce from it an appropriate term. It doesn't seem possible that they're all THAT stupid.
That's something that has always baffled me. It's as if they don't remember the decades of horror that came in the wake of their fantasy of "eating the rich." Not only The Terror, but also Napoleon's war on the rest of Europe.
I guess it's not surprising that their sympathies are with totalitarians.
I was baffled by leftists complete disregard of the historical disasters caused in large part by their ideas. How could they advocate policies that may sound good, but have failed spectacularly whenever implemented in the real world? I had a long running discussion (verbal and written) with a liberal relative who firmly believes in her cause.
I learned that liberals do not distinguish “means” from “ends”, and consequently don’t relate cause with effect. They believe in Doing the Right Thing, as determined by the cult leaders. Doing the Right Thing is the actual goal.
Bad results do not cause them to question Doing the Right Thing, since they already know Doing the Right Thing is just and moral. No observable bad consequences will make them question their beliefs. They invoke nebulous concepts such as structural racism to explain the failure to achieve utopia.
I finally gave up the discussion. I am convinced that they will continue to Do the Right Thing, even as the world burns around them.
Bruce this is on two of the topics in today article, the pandemic and the influx of undocumented Democrats.
I got this from a friend who is a retire nose and throat Dr.:
A southern border wall is a common-sense idea. Ask yourself – why do we lock our doors at night? We do so because an open door could be an invitation to a potential threat. An open border can allow multiple threats to enter the U S.
Illegal aliens possess a high burden of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV), malaria, polio, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), syphilis, gonorrhea, parasitic infections, and the deadly Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
Opioids coming across the border from Mexico are the cause of the deadliest U.S. drug epidemic ever. Between October 2020 and September 2021, another new record number of Americans, 104,288, died of drug overdose, with fentanyl accounting for at least 80,000 deaths. That is equivalent to a 737 Boeing crashing and burning and killing everybody on board every single day. Drug overdoses led by fentanyl is now the No. 1 cause of death for U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45 accordingto the CDC. Mexican drug cartels source their fentanyl precursors from China.
Thousands of illegal immigrant children with tuberculosis and polio infections are being released into American communities without treatment. 2,500 children with untreated infections were released into 44 states during 2023. The government says it can’t treat the children because they are in custody for a short time and treatment requires three to nine months.
Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries have emptied their jails to send people convicted of murder, rape and extortion here. Gang leaders then set up crime rings in America and cause the collapse of public safety.
You're right LP. Legal immigrants have to undergo health checks. The scary thing about illegal immigrant children is they are placed in schools next to kids who have been here. All of the diseases you mentioned are going to have a resurgence in the next few years unless we take action. If I had young children in public schools today, I would pull them out and homeschool for both health and quality of education reasons. The Biden administration is endangering us individually and corporately.
Running Burning Man, it's hard when you see jealousy of the wealthy on the right. I've much more often seen this attitude on the left. Sad. Divide and conquer.
Not jealous of wealth. I've got plenty enough for me. My rather obvious point was the Swells who live on Park Ave, You know, The Elites who are insulated, literally and figuratively, from the lives of regular folk, but who seem determined to tell those ordinary Americas how to live. Wealth is a predicate to live on Park Ave., but not to my point.
Explain LED light bulbs, reduced flow shower heads, EV cars only (in some states, for now), DEI in the cockpit & operating room, Project 1619 taught in public schools, removing statues of historical Americans, cancelling opinions and speakers with whom they disagree., etc. etc. etc.
Off topic Arizona girl but I remember you saying you were going off your phone in the new year. I plugged mine into the wall in the kitchen and it became a "land-line" from about 5 pm to 10 the next morning. Did it for a month. Slept better and didn't even miss it! When I returned it to the bed I was sorely disappointed and kicked it out of bed again where it has remained.
You are probably right - the wealthy and powerful elites are fine with just voting Democrat and having their chosen officials do the dirty work of managing the peons of America. That way they don't get dirt on their hands.
I hadn't made that connection before--that demonizing rurals was a way to justify shipping their jobs to countries with lower labor costs and fewer regulations.
I'm not sure that's true. All the job exporting took was the de facto penalty of the crazier environmental costs, supercharged by NAFTA. I think the demonizing occurred later -- with the societal breakdown that occurred.
To be honest, the demonizing of rural people by urban people is *ancient.* City life requires a different set of skills and offers a different set of opportunities, and urbans have always viewed people from the countryside as "uncultured rubes."
It was Aesop (from the 6th century B.C., if he was not simply a legendary source of the tales attributed to him) who told the fable of the city mouse and the country mouse.
But I think that, among Leftist elites, there would have been a feeling that rural whites *deserved* to lose their jobs as a result outsourced manufacturing.
"Over 107 billion people have lived throughout history. (There are roughly 7.7 billion people alive right now.)
Over the centuries, these billions of people have tried things, failed, learned, and tried differently. Sometimes, they found new solutions. And when you are born, you get to inherit the insights they learned by trial and error.
The cumulative lessons of those 107 billion people have been passed down to you. It is the greatest gift you will ever receive. We are smart not because of our individual genius, but because of our collective knowledge.
As the historian Niall Ferguson noted, “The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.”
Ancient indeed. For much of history from Athens on, where a simulacrum of democracy existed, the vote was reserved for a defined elite. Our experiment in universal suffrage is very new. Even when it is not "democracy" per se, e.g., Communism, a political order that allegedly was meant to turn the power over to the proletariat was always and always would remain rule by elites. That the Western countries and esp the US has managed to somewhat pull off a close version of universal suffrage for a few decades might just be an affront to human nature and history.
We may be the only two people who could do so, but I think that we can agree to disagree, sorta: That which you cite never went away -- but Mr Perot's Giant Sucking Sound was caused by economics. Not swells vs rubes.
"But now with migrants showing up in numbers to "sanctuary" cities we see how "welcoming" our Urban areas really are, it is easy to be pro illegal immigration if it is not on your doorstep"
How true.
I have posted this quote before: "Idealism is directly proportional to the distance you are from the problem." The left refuses to acknowledge this.
All political violence should be condemned and punished. It matters not whether you are anti white, anti black or anti jew. There is no " context " as to this issue. Unfortunately we no longer live in a world where equal enforcement of the law is the case.
I hear you but be VERY careful for what you wish. You can't get the worms back in the can -- unless you get a bigger can (and the can is already unhealthy) or kill some of the worms.
Highly unlikely, the non-left is too rules-bound and too comfortable to do anything. There might be an occasion of more BLM-style or Antifa street riots, but cops will probably be more visible and it'll die out quickly. We are on a long slow, somewhat comfortable slide into the gulag of going along to avoid pain
It's popular to champion the "they outsourced manufacturing and gutted the working class". The reality is the working class (me included) will always spend our money wherever we can buy it cheaper or better. Hence "Made in China, Mexico, etc". Most everything in your house right now was made somewhere else. Why? Because it's cheaper to make, cheaper to buy and we like the cheaper to buy more than "Made in USA". When we like the "Made in USA" more than cheap things will change.
The working class can no longer afford anything but the cheapest goods, because wages have not actually kept pace with inflation. The only reason that situation has been viable for as long as it has is because the elites have been able to import cheap goods for the working class to buy with their ever-shrinking dollar.
It wasn't the working class that made the decision to outsource manufacturing.
Manufacturing will always react to the marketplace. Given items of near equal quality consumers buy the cheaper regardless of where it's made. And it's made cheaper beyond our borders in almost all cases. I wish it wasn't true, but it is.
That's true NOW. But I think the outsourcing of manufacturing to the third world was not an inevitable reaction to the marketplace. It happened because our government made it profitable to do so.
my favorite is everyone wants to make $50 an hour, buy organic groceries and shop
at the farmers market (to support local, you know), virtue signal with their electric vehicles, and then they go off to the outlet malls to buy cheap fast fashion.
I bristle every time I hear a demographic categorized based on whether they have a college education. It devalues the person who does not have a college education and gives the impression that they are voting in ignorance. I am speaking as someone who has a college degree and we have three children, one is doctor of veterinary medicine, another has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and the third has a Masters degree. They each have different political views. People with a college degree are not a political monolith. I am also offended by the categorization of white rural citizens as bigoted. I have relatives in rural communities and they are kind, hard working people who have strong positive values.
I’m listening to the biography of Elon. An eccentric, on the spectrum genius. No fear of failure, embraces risk. Makes mistakes, apologizes and moves on. Works like a maniac. Doesn’t tolerate mediocrity. Can you imagine running six companies?
An explosion of a rocket is just an experiment in which important data are obtained. He’s undaunted.
I read it recently, too! I learned a lot. Musk’s “surge mentality” was an interesting point for me , and one that I have tried to apply in my own life to push forward areas that are stagnant.
Edison (more-or-less) on inventing the electric light bulb: I didn't have a thousand failures. I found a thousand things that didn't work. (Though you must admit that heavy rockets provide more spectacular data points!)
Musk is the modern incarnation of Ben Franklin. Not only is he a scientific genius, but he’s also battling an oppressive government determined to subjugate its citizens. As someone who watched Neil Armstrong place the first human footprint on the moon as a child, his Starship launch gave me goosebumps. The possibility that Musk’s brilliance and drive may replicate that feat on Mars should inspire every human being with the courage and confidence that whatever malady or “existential threat” Chicken Little hucksters like Al Gore bray about, they can be overcome. But only if visionaries like Musk are allowed to do so. Despite its stunning achievement, achieved at a fraction of the cost of its competitors, Space X is being hounded by Biden’s JustUs Department for “discriminating against asylees and refugees in hiring. The lawsuit alleges that, from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status”. The real reason is that he is a rogue that the Blob can’t control, at least not yet.
An explosion of a rocket is just an experiment in which important data is obtained. Each rocket launched outcome brings Elon Musk closer to success as he would define success. And, new discoveries.
The fool lost to Nocera, which made is doubly delightful. His arguments were idiotic, turning everything Henderson believed on its head. And embracing a strategy dreamed up by a middle school girl.
I wondered how many in McNeil’s casualty count were deaths where covid was present but not the cause. I seem to remember a scandal about hospitals deliberately misrepresenting covid deaths as a way to get more federal dollars.
The same way they were shrieking about the carnage at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, while just across the river, the major NYC hospitals were quiet and the vast complexes at the Javits Center and in Central Park were virtually empty. It was all calculated disinformation. From our own government.
A million dead, while a ‘big’ number is just marketing. Covid appears to be only .3% lethal when the population is looked at as a whole, but that’s just the average of two extremes, 3% in the over 65 group and .03% in children and adults under 30. Nothing justifies locking down kids from school just to ‘protect’ the elderly.let alone subjecting the entire breeding population to an experimental treatment we still don’t understand well the risks.
McNiel had a bit of a Lloyd Bentsen moment. “I knew DA Henderson. DA Henderson was a friend . . . blah blah blah.” And now he can be ridiculed for it just like Bentsen.
The Democrats have been at the center of nearly every major scandal in the last decade.
COVID lockdowns, illegal immigration, 1A violations, anti-semitism, DEI (actual racism), crime, inflation, election interference, defund police, etc.
A sympathetic MSM has been (fortunately) usurped by independent outlets like The Free Press and the consequences of leftist policies are no longer esoteric; EVERYONE is being affected. There is hope for a red tsunami this year, but I'm equally sure powerful leftist's sympathizers will pull out every stop.
We are truly at war with the soul of this country, and if you want to stop the decline, you MUST vote against the Left.
"Facing Audrey Could your child become a shooter’s victim? Could my child become a shooter? Parents of trans-identified kids demand “don’t keep us in the dark.”" https://www.pittparents.com/p/facing-audrey
Agree with everything you said except that the MSM isn't "sympathetic." They are the propaganda arm of the DNC. Nothing more. This is a war for the heart and soul of America.
“Democrats with press passes”. Absolutely true. I must give credit and attribution to radio talk show host Howie Carr for the phrase. It is hilarious when all in the MSM start parroting the same DNC focus grouped phrases.
To Joe Nocera on his powerful rebuttal to Donald McNeil’s Letter to the Editor. This back and forth represents the open dialogue that should have been happening (and continue to happen) regarding Covid restrictions and policies. If not for the infringement of our First Amendment rights, we might have had an open dialogue in real time.
Excellent point: and directly related to the first story about Dr Jay B at the Supreme Court, where genius Justice Jackson worries about this icky First Amendment hindering the government’s ability to control information.
"The new policy will see more than 2,000 migrants evicted by the end of April. (Approximately 11,000 migrants are currently housed in city-run shelters.)"
Go ahead, evict them. They will live on sidewalks and use homeowners' shrubbery, apartment building vestibules, store grates, and even the post office entrance as their toilets. Nice people and the city will supply them with sandwiches and tacos which, half eaten, will be tossed into gutters and become food for rats.
How do I know? Don't even get me started on what I and my neighbors went through for two years with our drug- and booze-addled Central American vagrants. How our community finally got rid of them I do not know. Fingers crossed; it's been over a year now since they, their litter, their diarrhea and vomit, and their stench are gone.
I watch the Chicago news closely. Never is it mentioned when the Migrants are evicted where do they go? By what means do they get money to pay for food, transportation, shelter? They aren't allowed to work so now what? If our government gives them money, for how long? And surely it's not enough to live in or near an expensive city.
Mine were too far gone to work. When they weren't fighting each other, urinating into the outdoor eatery down the block, or staggering over to my scanty property to relieve themselves of their bowels, they were passed out on the sidewalk, on my walkway, or on a neighbor's porch.
Look, I felt sorry for them, but their stinks were up my nose. Try scooping up and cloroxing beneath a forsythia bush (and elsewhere, every day). It's a foul task.
Anyone with the credentials to label themselves worthy of being listend to on public health policy, who NOW, in 2024, is condemning the Great Barrington Declaration is either dishonest, stupid, or being paid. Those are the three options. There is no fourth.
Farr's Law--the Bell Curve nature of pandemics--is a thing, yeah? The number of people who are infected and who either die or recover with immunity is the same whether it takes three months or three years to run through it. The end result is what they eventually decided to call Herd Immunity. Most of us, we now know, have relatively good natural immunity to COVID, if we had it, as nearly all of us have.
Interestingly, it was established at the outset of COVID, by looking carefully at several cruise ships and naval vessels where 100% of the people were exposed, that seemingly a third of the population probably had natural immunity at the OUTSET, presumably since there are, if memory serves, 6 OTHER coronaviruses, that cause the common cold, to varying forms of which we have all been exposed many times.
So the curve already had a good start at the outset.
And as stated, COVID was LESS DANGEROUS THAN THE FLU FOR HEALTHY PEOPLE UNDER 65 OR SO. How hard is it to keep people of retirement age out of circulation? Not hard. Not hard at all. How dangerous would it have been to keep working age people IN circulation when a disease that was less dangerous than the flu that shows up every year was making its rounds? Well, do we shut down every winter? No, we don't.
The Great Barrington Declaration was common sense. Anyone who denies it is, again, stupid, dishonest, or taking money from someone. I will assume the latter two in the case of this author.
And this is just one aspect of it. The other aspect is that OBVIOUSLY anything that could have been done to further lower mortality should have been done. Vitamin D supplementation should have been recommended everywhere and immediately. But as Pierre Kory states in his excellent interview with Tucker Carlson, Big Pharma is TERRIFIED of Vitamn D. Why? IT HELPS WITH NEARLY EVERYTHING.
He also points out that most "long COVID" is actually "long vaccine", and seemingly amounts to pharmaceutically induced chronic fatigue syndrome. These jabs seem to have killed outright AT LEAST 10 million people worldwide, and permanently screwed up the lives of perhaps five times that many people. This is the worst iatrogenic genocide in human history, by far. It is malpractice extended into outright murder by silence and complicity.
Returning to D, the "flu season" is basically Vitamin D deficiency season. It happens farther north in places where it just isn't possible to get enough sun to reach optimal levels, which seem to be much higher than what the--in my view--paid for hacks running the medical system recommend. Best guesses are in the 40-50 ng/ml range. This is not just for bone health, but immunity, emotional wellness, cancer resistance, and a large number of other things.
And anyone who fails to point to the utter and disgusting LIES about Ivermectin and HCQ is really an a-hole. A villain. The bad guy in any movie with bad guys. Both work as very effective zinc ionophores, and particularly in tandem with Z-packs for inflammation, and Vitamins A, C, and D, reduce death rates to near zero. And if the rates were ALREADY low, as they would have been among the under 65 facing a disease less dangerous than the flu, then EVERYTHING THAT WAS DONE WAS CRIMINAL AND ITS SUPPORTERS NOW ARE ACCOMPLICES TO A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
I could go on, but I have work to do. I personally came up with my own version of the Great Barrington Declaration several months before they did, because the logic was OBVIOUS. Anybody insulting those people now is an execrable douchebag. Period.
Brilliant, as usual. All they had to do was protect nursing homes and keep special store hours of the elderly and let the young do what they do. Instead they chose repression. And lying.
Does one need to know anything more?
One related but slightly off topic comment. The American Heart Association just pumped a "study" that intermittent fasting increases coronary mortality by 91%. Not only counterintuitive but apparently based on a laughable Chinese study. So we must ask "cui bono?" Our health and medical establishment is appearing more corrupt and foolish by the day.
I would suggest you listen to the Pierre Kory interview. He blames most of the corruption of our medical establishment on the corruption of the major journals, like the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, etc. Most of them are no longer credible. You have to fact check them, because they publish blatantly flawed research, that in most cases was designed to validate a predetermined outcome, which is the opposite of science.
Kary Mullis spoke often and very clearly about all this. The pandemic would have been different if he had been alive to comment on it, which is one reason why some small part of me wonders if he was exposed to an early version of COVID intentionally. He died of a respiratory virus in the autumn of 2019. That he would have excoriated Fauci and the NIH for using the PCR test diagnostically is really beyond doubt. He was doing it already, pre-COVID. He was also calling Fauci a crook, and doing so as the Nobel Laureate who INVENTED the test Fauci was abusing in a criminally anti-scientific manner. A credible case can be made that we never had a pandemic at all, and that the standards of care themselves, which were altered from previous best practices, were what did most of the killing. This case would be based on the extensive and indefensible use of the PCR test to bump up COVID numbers.
Everybody involved everywhere should have known better. We didn't know then what we know now, at least with certainty. But it's pretty clear anybody pushing the old lies now is a crook and rotten human being.
Don't forget that Covid is really a metabolic disease, affecting mostly those who eat a diet high in carbs and trans fats. The typical breaded-and-deep-fried crap washed down with liquid sugar. The few kids who died from it were so obese, they had type 2 diabetes.
We knew in March 2020 who was susceptible to it. But were there messages to avoid eating junk? Our mayor proudly posted a video of himself making a "cheesecake" where the main ingredient was a non-dairy whipped topping, i.e. trans fats and sugar.
The surge in the growth of Substack happened during Covid, and that's not a coincidence.
I won't claim to know what it is, but all diseases are more dangerous when they happen in bodies with high levels of systemic inflammation. I think one of the reasons many other nations like Japan and Norway did so well was simply that they were healthier overall. Logically healthy people should die at lower rates.
Today is a very sad day because a good and innocent man is going to jail precisely because we have a cowardly, useless Supreme Court, headed by a clown and populated by like thinking toadies. Peter Navarro did nothing that Democrats haven't done with impunity - gave the finger to Congress. But a corrupt and partisan Justice Department, abetted by their Stasi, arrested, charged and convicted him, in a Stalin-like sham trial. Roberts was asked to stay his prison term pending appeal and refused. So it's no surprise the Roberts is similarly indifferent to free speech arguments. Nevertheless, more and more Americans are awakening to the way the elites mock our rights. Right now we have structures in place that keep relative order and comity among us. But if they break down - and the indifference shown by the uniparty elites to the Bill of Rights glue that holds our society together is palpable - that society will disintegrate into tribal madness. And the first to reap that whirlwind will be the very elites - including those robed in black - who now think themselves immune.
Without Free Speech and Government Control, you have a government that will continue to ride over any rights the average person thought they had. You see it in Imminent Domain, Confiscation of funds and property by police with no charges to support. You see it in government trying to decide what you can drive and how. They want to control speech and that it must follow the government policies. What products you can buy and what you must give up to those unwilling to work or do anything for themselves. Hint, see drug addicts and perverts getting special funding, immigrants fed and supported while the American citizen is disregarded.
Yet, not to worry, it's those rural white people who think the government should function properly, they actually work, worship, believe in a better goodness, produce the things lazy folks consume, and are a true threat to the woke man is a women, whites are racist, Blacks can never be racist, immigrants deserve better than you process. What antiquated, right wing, super, duper MAGA thoughts they have and as the great cow, Hillary says; "should be someplace to send them to deprogram them". Dog whistle, lock their asses up.
I say let the cities burn from their own stupid Utopian policies, make sure you care for your family, and plan ahead as it does not look good for what use to be the Red Blooded American people and their desires. Elections have results and the cities are getting what they asked for, no sympathy here. Unfortunately, their stupid choices are carrying over to the rest of us who just want to be left alone to live.
Michigan is currently in the process of giving children born to immigrants Medicaid until age 21. I'm all for universal health care for our own citizens which these kids will be, but the kids born to citizens here don't even have guaranteed Medicaid until age 21.
Maybe we should all just stop funding the beast until they get the message? Except my experience tells me that my fellow citizens will just fulminate and continue to be abused. The men who stood on Lexington Green two centuries ago were made of much sterner stuff. Maybe diversity isn't our strength and importing shuffling third world'ers is for a reason.
"Let the cities burn" is as bad as "the rurals are all evil." Neither group is uniformly angelic or demonic, they're mixes of good and bad. I've lived in both and find people pretty much the same--friendly, helpful, and decent if treated with respect. The minority are flaming assholes, but I found as many of those in the country as the city.
Rurals "produce the things lazy folks consume." First, city folks work as hard as you do, they just do different things. Second, the cities buy the stuff rurals produce. Without city buyers, rurals would have no jobs. And without city taxpayers footing the bill, many rurals would be jobless anyway---the biggest employers in most rural counties are government institutions like junior colleges, USDA field offices, and prisons.
As for "the cities are getting what they ask for, no sympathy here," the taxpayers in the cities pay for a lot of the stuff that rurals enjoy--highways, farm aid, universal telephone service, the growing reach of Internet service in rural zones, and operating the many markets where rural farmers sell their goods.
Many cities are horribly mismanaged, but they're not full of bad people. Some are misguided enough to vote for that mismanagement, but they also have limited power to change it at this point thanks to shenanigans like extreme gerrymandering and scheduling elections to be inconvenient for everyone except union goons.
How about an honest discussion about the lives of elderly people locked in nursing homes many of whom are already “ locked down and neglected by family or have no family) versus the lives of children? I would argue that protecting children has the higher priority. Putting effort into trying to protect the vulnerable was doable and should not have been scoffed at by that arrogant NYTimes reporter. Calling the Great Barrington belittling names is an example of the disgusting way the govt and it’s media arm ( esp the NYTimes) squelched debate by the world renown and never before controversial authors at the most esteemed institutions. In fact they would not have had to write the GBD if open and honest debate occurred as was imperative at the time.
Is there really a difference if a person in a nursing home dies of urinary sepsis, congestive heart failure , or covid? The nursing home industry was only worried about the epidemic of empty beds that occurs when many residents die at the same time. Most nursing homes are very unpleasant environments to begin with and no one seems to write science articles in The NY Times about the neglect and abuse that goes on in these facilities every single day .
Protecting the vulnerable while letting young, relatively invulnerable people live their lives was the smart, moral and lawful approach. Yet our elected officials chose the stupid, venal and unconstitutional approach. Andrew Cuomo's order to place Covid infected people into nursing homes was the very definition of criminally negligent homicide. The fools we place in power killed, bullied and locked down with impunity. And our cowardly, panicked populace took it. With nary a whimper. Beyond pathetic.
Cuomo should have been prosecuted for murder for doing that. Since there is no statute of limitations on murder prosecutions, perhaps a valiant DA or fed will file charges someday. It was inexcusable when he had many other places in which to care for Covid patients.
Don't hold your breath. There was already an official investigation that supposedly exonerated him. Had he not been a sexual harasser, Cuomo would still be governor.
Gretchen Whitmer did the same. And continued to do so even after Cuomo and everyone else realized how catastrophic this policy was. This is the woman being touted as a probable candidate for president in 2028.
Can't hamstring the government? Sounds like the perfect way to protect, preserve and save democracy. I wonder if justice Jackson would allow the government to ban "1984" if it deemed the writings of Orwell as having the potential to hamstring Big Sister. We shall see where Kavanaugh and Barrett stand regarding whether and to what extent The Constitution and in particular the First Amendment limit government or if the government gets to decide when it will limit itself.
Please stop making me defend Fani Willis because I'm utterly tired of hearing about her and her stupid boring romance. But again, she was elected not appointed. That doesn't exempt her from being stupid. But she's not a DEI appointee like the other three. She campaigned for office and won. She has voters support in her own region. Whatever we may think of her voters' choice, that is democracy, not DEI.
She most likely benefitted from affirmative action. But in her current position she is still elected. Democracy doesn't mean people can't vote in stupid people. Look at Katie Britt.
I'm pointing this out because when you lump an elected official in with the DEI appointees, you weaken your argument to the Leftist numskulls and they can use this to pick apart your argument like you don't know she was elected. And people who voted for her feel they're under attack. I've seen it in comments on other platforms.
I was willing to keep an open mind till I know more how she rules. Sadly she's as stupid as her detractors say. Just a Democratic tool. She has no independent legal mind. Just a walking liberal/Democrat talking points.
Of course no liberal MSM or any Leftist or even normie liberals would admit now that Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett are actually moderates. All those cries and feamongering like apocalypse and end of days were coming when they were nominated. Both were portrayed as right wing nut jobs. Other than overturning Roe v Wade, they turned out to be the more moderate swing voters. And Trump appointed them! Oh the horror!
The true horror is Biden inflicting Brown-Jackson on us. Kagan and Sotomeyer are no better. I'm just counting the days when both turn their backs on women and throw women under the bus when they dismantle Title IX and tell women they must let men leer at them and flash them in women's locker rooms without their consent,
The "conservative" majority in the Court brought the problem to itself. Dobbs, much as it is probably good/proper interpretation of the Constitution, was an obvious screw up. 50 years of behavior tossed into the can. It was not a Dred Scot situation, but almost the opposite, taking from women the ability to have any say about their own bodies - in some states that is happening. Now some states with a hard no to any abortion and others with a hard yes to abortion so long as one of the toes is still in the mom. Privacy matters to most Americans and nothing is more private than dealing with pregnancy. Ugly as it was, Roe actually let a compromise develop over the decades. Overruling it brough foreseeable madness. Believe it or not, the Chief probably had the best and only practical approach. Too bad he could not get one of the right side with him.
I do not see trans issues getting the sort of constitutional protection you suggest. The issue has hit its peak and things are starting to retreat. There are very practical ways to draw the line to protect women - natal women - and the order of society along the lines of sex as it has always been. And I don't' think "queer theory" is going to be well received at the court. That is just mental illness masquerading as scholarship.
I take exception to your statement that a good/proper interpretation of the Constitution is an obvious screwup. The justices should be bound by the Constitution, even if that creates issues for the elected branches to sort out.
You take exception? Are you channeling Paul Newman in "Absence of Malice"? LOL.
My point is that sometimes discretion is the better part of whatever. There was a way to have the cake and eat it too. Could have avoided the social disruption while admitting that the constitutional underpinnings were flawed. And moved past it all.
You've got it exactly wrong. Roe did not let a compromise develop. Now a compromise can develop and is doing so through the state legislatures. The recent work on IVF in Alabama shows how that happens.
No, you are wrong. Precisely so. We've got 50 states, each making its own laws. That is closer to chaos than compromise.
Alabama shows the chaos within a single state. A bunch of whacko judges in battle with a frightened Republican state legislature. And even after the new legislation, the hospitals and IVF providers are not jumping back in to provide services. The new law has yet to be considered by the whack job judges. So providers, being on notice of the predilections of those judges are loathe to jump in and possibly expose themselves to some random county DA charging them with murder.
Roe had a compromise, tested in the courts through decades of litigation. It was the whack job state legislatures that kept pushing the envelop to eliminate or expand w/o limit. The S.Ct. just beat those attempts back. Roe/Casey was the national compromise. Dodd set the extremists on both side aflame.
Absent free speech, there would never have been a civil rights movement. The government prefers the status quo, and does so by force when it can. Justice Jackson is clueless if her main concern is not hamstringing the government from censoring speech.
Modern liberals support censorship at their own risk. They fail to understand that today they may successfully shut down opposition points of view, but tomorrow the tables can turn and see their own views censored. Everyone should support the enlightenment philosophy that all views, even the hateful and obnoxious ones, must be allowed. In its raw form, it is very much a self-interested position for everyone. The success or failure of an idea should be in the unfettered marketplace of speech and debate, not based on some government official deciding to shut down a speech they don't like.
This goes for pretty much ANY power you give to the government. When people vote to give the government power, they generally only think of the ways that the Gov will do things that they agree with. That is something we ALL need to be careful with.
It is embedded in our founding documents. Yet we appoint guardians of those documents who lack any real understanding of their meaning. Judges appointed by and drawing checks from the government are tainted from the start.
Demonization of middle America has been going on for decades. From presenting them first as uneducated brutes (1980) to virulent racists today that hate diversity. Reason is simple, it created divide between urban and rural population that made it easier for Wall Street and political elites to outsource and gut out manufacturing, that was economics heart of America. Today those devastated communities are being ravaged by fentanyl and other drugs, again they are blamed as racist and deplorable for trying to address their own issues.
But now with migrants showing up in numbers to "sanctuary" cities we see how "welcoming" our Urban areas really are, it is easy to be pro illegal immigration if it is not on your doorstep
The veneer of society is thin. Our elites forget that no less than the French fops who mocked their own peasants - and lost their heads as a consequence.
THIS! So many in the west take Society and Civility for granted. They think it is the default, which I think it why they are so cavalier in playing with the foundations of society. They don't understand that the default is anarchy and chaos and humans had to carve out everything they have and fight to keep it. And oh so many societies have crumbled because the rulers told their people to eat cake.
This should be blindingly obvious. But we even have those absolutists on "our" side (Mr Durant?? take note) who magically -- and breathtakingly dangerously -- think that "hitting bottom" would result in reinvigorated Jeffersonian democracy rising from the ashes. If things get much more out of joint, look for our very own Mr Barbecue a la Haiti -- or worse. Probability of 1.0.
I think that it's clear that those in question are aren't sufficiently acquainted with reality to ever have been so engaged as to make divorce from it an appropriate term. It doesn't seem possible that they're all THAT stupid.
And the left still venerates 1789 . And not because that's the first year of GWs presidency.
That's something that has always baffled me. It's as if they don't remember the decades of horror that came in the wake of their fantasy of "eating the rich." Not only The Terror, but also Napoleon's war on the rest of Europe.
I guess it's not surprising that their sympathies are with totalitarians.
Only "their totalitarians."
I was baffled by leftists complete disregard of the historical disasters caused in large part by their ideas. How could they advocate policies that may sound good, but have failed spectacularly whenever implemented in the real world? I had a long running discussion (verbal and written) with a liberal relative who firmly believes in her cause.
I learned that liberals do not distinguish “means” from “ends”, and consequently don’t relate cause with effect. They believe in Doing the Right Thing, as determined by the cult leaders. Doing the Right Thing is the actual goal.
Bad results do not cause them to question Doing the Right Thing, since they already know Doing the Right Thing is just and moral. No observable bad consequences will make them question their beliefs. They invoke nebulous concepts such as structural racism to explain the failure to achieve utopia.
I finally gave up the discussion. I am convinced that they will continue to Do the Right Thing, even as the world burns around them.
For Leftists, intentions are EVERYTHING. The actual results don't matter.
Because they admire mob rule I think.
Bruce this is on two of the topics in today article, the pandemic and the influx of undocumented Democrats.
I got this from a friend who is a retire nose and throat Dr.:
A southern border wall is a common-sense idea. Ask yourself – why do we lock our doors at night? We do so because an open door could be an invitation to a potential threat. An open border can allow multiple threats to enter the U S.
Illegal aliens possess a high burden of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV), malaria, polio, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), syphilis, gonorrhea, parasitic infections, and the deadly Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/6/12/129
One of the prime reasons to have border controls is to protect against inectious diseases, some deadly.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/16/half-of-migrants-piling-into-nyc-not-vaxxed-for-polio-top-doc-warns/
Opioids coming across the border from Mexico are the cause of the deadliest U.S. drug epidemic ever. Between October 2020 and September 2021, another new record number of Americans, 104,288, died of drug overdose, with fentanyl accounting for at least 80,000 deaths. That is equivalent to a 737 Boeing crashing and burning and killing everybody on board every single day. Drug overdoses led by fentanyl is now the No. 1 cause of death for U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45 accordingto the CDC. Mexican drug cartels source their fentanyl precursors from China.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/03/07/china-and-synthetic-drugs-geopolitics-trumps-counternarcotics-cooperation/amp/
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/fentanyl-seizures-border-continue-spike-making-san-diego-national-epicenter-fentanyl
Illegal aliens often don't undergo a medical screening at all prior to entry into the United States.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/level1/rmsf-mexico
https://nypost.com/2023/04/18/bidens-open-borders-are-bringing-contagious-diseases-to-your-neighborhood/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://highlandcountypress.com/border-surge-creates-tuberculosis-threat&ved=2ahUKEwikiaa3xoeDAxWYADQIHTEsAS8QFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3ceur4JCk3YhW5OEv83OOb
https://www.foxnews.com/health/deadly-rocky-mountain-spotted-fever-outbreak-california-likely-came-mexico-cdc
Thousands of illegal immigrant children with tuberculosis and polio infections are being released into American communities without treatment. 2,500 children with untreated infections were released into 44 states during 2023. The government says it can’t treat the children because they are in custody for a short time and treatment requires three to nine months.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jul/18/health-department-released-thousands-of-illegal-im/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/the_biden_administration_invites_in_illegal_aliens_infected_with_one_of_americas_greatest_killers.html
https://highlandcountypress.com/border-surge-creates-tuberculosis-threat#gsc.tab=0
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jul/18/health-department-released-thousands-of-illegal-im/
Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries have emptied their jails to send people convicted of murder, rape and extortion here. Gang leaders then set up crime rings in America and cause the collapse of public safety.
https://saraacarter.com/report-dhs-document-warns-violent-venezuelan-criminals-being-sent-to-u-s-border/
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/fact-check-is-venezuela-sending-prisoners-us-southern-border-as-texas-congressman-troy-nehls-claimed/
Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and loaded AK-47 rifle and loaded handguns have also been seized at the border.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/fox-news-us/10-ieds-found-us-mexico-border-cartel-gunfight
You're right LP. Legal immigrants have to undergo health checks. The scary thing about illegal immigrant children is they are placed in schools next to kids who have been here. All of the diseases you mentioned are going to have a resurgence in the next few years unless we take action. If I had young children in public schools today, I would pull them out and homeschool for both health and quality of education reasons. The Biden administration is endangering us individually and corporately.
The Dem/Soc don't give a damn about US citizens but they sure love the undocumented Democrats.
Indeed they do.
It’s coming Bruce, we are all tired!🇺🇸🇺🇸
That’s sort of happening now, in Haiti
To hear Trump talk Barbecue and him would be good pals.
Yeah! You suppose Jimmy Barbecue might show up to meet Trump in a ‘Haiti is Great Already’ T-shirt?
Or is that only for virtue signalers like Team Coco?
https://youtu.be/xDMPnDTMZpE?si=p0oJBCKA0nQCL6nG
To hear you talk highlights the delusions of chattering class.
You are a regular Robespierre.
Bloodlust!
I love it!
Running Burning Man, it's hard when you see jealousy of the wealthy on the right. I've much more often seen this attitude on the left. Sad. Divide and conquer.
Not jealous of wealth. I've got plenty enough for me. My rather obvious point was the Swells who live on Park Ave, You know, The Elites who are insulated, literally and figuratively, from the lives of regular folk, but who seem determined to tell those ordinary Americas how to live. Wealth is a predicate to live on Park Ave., but not to my point.
I don't have the impression that they are particularly interested in telling "ordinary" Americans how to live. But ok.
Not telling us how to live?
Explain LED light bulbs, reduced flow shower heads, EV cars only (in some states, for now), DEI in the cockpit & operating room, Project 1619 taught in public schools, removing statues of historical Americans, cancelling opinions and speakers with whom they disagree., etc. etc. etc.
Off topic Arizona girl but I remember you saying you were going off your phone in the new year. I plugged mine into the wall in the kitchen and it became a "land-line" from about 5 pm to 10 the next morning. Did it for a month. Slept better and didn't even miss it! When I returned it to the bed I was sorely disappointed and kicked it out of bed again where it has remained.
You are probably right - the wealthy and powerful elites are fine with just voting Democrat and having their chosen officials do the dirty work of managing the peons of America. That way they don't get dirt on their hands.
I hadn't made that connection before--that demonizing rurals was a way to justify shipping their jobs to countries with lower labor costs and fewer regulations.
I'm not sure that's true. All the job exporting took was the de facto penalty of the crazier environmental costs, supercharged by NAFTA. I think the demonizing occurred later -- with the societal breakdown that occurred.
To be honest, the demonizing of rural people by urban people is *ancient.* City life requires a different set of skills and offers a different set of opportunities, and urbans have always viewed people from the countryside as "uncultured rubes."
It was Aesop (from the 6th century B.C., if he was not simply a legendary source of the tales attributed to him) who told the fable of the city mouse and the country mouse.
But I think that, among Leftist elites, there would have been a feeling that rural whites *deserved* to lose their jobs as a result outsourced manufacturing.
"Over 107 billion people have lived throughout history. (There are roughly 7.7 billion people alive right now.)
Over the centuries, these billions of people have tried things, failed, learned, and tried differently. Sometimes, they found new solutions. And when you are born, you get to inherit the insights they learned by trial and error.
The cumulative lessons of those 107 billion people have been passed down to you. It is the greatest gift you will ever receive. We are smart not because of our individual genius, but because of our collective knowledge.
As the historian Niall Ferguson noted, “The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.”
Aesop was not only brilliant but his saying are eternal.
Ancient indeed. For much of history from Athens on, where a simulacrum of democracy existed, the vote was reserved for a defined elite. Our experiment in universal suffrage is very new. Even when it is not "democracy" per se, e.g., Communism, a political order that allegedly was meant to turn the power over to the proletariat was always and always would remain rule by elites. That the Western countries and esp the US has managed to somewhat pull off a close version of universal suffrage for a few decades might just be an affront to human nature and history.
We may be the only two people who could do so, but I think that we can agree to disagree, sorta: That which you cite never went away -- but Mr Perot's Giant Sucking Sound was caused by economics. Not swells vs rubes.
Ledgen has it that Aesop was thrown off the cliffs of Delphi for being an atheist.
Calling for executions, even in hyperbole, is a mistake and will lead to no good.
It'll lead to howls of laughter. Unless one is humor impaired and anal retentive.
"But now with migrants showing up in numbers to "sanctuary" cities we see how "welcoming" our Urban areas really are, it is easy to be pro illegal immigration if it is not on your doorstep"
How true.
I have posted this quote before: "Idealism is directly proportional to the distance you are from the problem." The left refuses to acknowledge this.
I'm stealing that.
Take it. The quote is over 100 yrs. old.
All political violence should be condemned and punished. It matters not whether you are anti white, anti black or anti jew. There is no " context " as to this issue. Unfortunately we no longer live in a world where equal enforcement of the law is the case.
I hear you but be VERY careful for what you wish. You can't get the worms back in the can -- unless you get a bigger can (and the can is already unhealthy) or kill some of the worms.
Whether we want it or not, I believe large scale political violence is coming.
Highly unlikely, the non-left is too rules-bound and too comfortable to do anything. There might be an occasion of more BLM-style or Antifa street riots, but cops will probably be more visible and it'll die out quickly. We are on a long slow, somewhat comfortable slide into the gulag of going along to avoid pain
It's popular to champion the "they outsourced manufacturing and gutted the working class". The reality is the working class (me included) will always spend our money wherever we can buy it cheaper or better. Hence "Made in China, Mexico, etc". Most everything in your house right now was made somewhere else. Why? Because it's cheaper to make, cheaper to buy and we like the cheaper to buy more than "Made in USA". When we like the "Made in USA" more than cheap things will change.
The working class can no longer afford anything but the cheapest goods, because wages have not actually kept pace with inflation. The only reason that situation has been viable for as long as it has is because the elites have been able to import cheap goods for the working class to buy with their ever-shrinking dollar.
It wasn't the working class that made the decision to outsource manufacturing.
Manufacturing will always react to the marketplace. Given items of near equal quality consumers buy the cheaper regardless of where it's made. And it's made cheaper beyond our borders in almost all cases. I wish it wasn't true, but it is.
That's true NOW. But I think the outsourcing of manufacturing to the third world was not an inevitable reaction to the marketplace. It happened because our government made it profitable to do so.
True.
Everyone wants to make $50 an hour and then go to Wally World and get a 5 pack of underwear for $2. That math/economic system just won’t work.
my favorite is everyone wants to make $50 an hour, buy organic groceries and shop
at the farmers market (to support local, you know), virtue signal with their electric vehicles, and then they go off to the outlet malls to buy cheap fast fashion.
One of the few benefits of the existence of Temu is that people can see what items actually cost to make in China, with only a little profit on top.
Granger movement was more than 100 years ago as were the railroad laws
I bristle every time I hear a demographic categorized based on whether they have a college education. It devalues the person who does not have a college education and gives the impression that they are voting in ignorance. I am speaking as someone who has a college degree and we have three children, one is doctor of veterinary medicine, another has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and the third has a Masters degree. They each have different political views. People with a college degree are not a political monolith. I am also offended by the categorization of white rural citizens as bigoted. I have relatives in rural communities and they are kind, hard working people who have strong positive values.
I’m listening to the biography of Elon. An eccentric, on the spectrum genius. No fear of failure, embraces risk. Makes mistakes, apologizes and moves on. Works like a maniac. Doesn’t tolerate mediocrity. Can you imagine running six companies?
An explosion of a rocket is just an experiment in which important data are obtained. He’s undaunted.
I read it recently, too! I learned a lot. Musk’s “surge mentality” was an interesting point for me , and one that I have tried to apply in my own life to push forward areas that are stagnant.
Edison (more-or-less) on inventing the electric light bulb: I didn't have a thousand failures. I found a thousand things that didn't work. (Though you must admit that heavy rockets provide more spectacular data points!)
Love him the best Billionaire on planet earth!
Musk is the modern incarnation of Ben Franklin. Not only is he a scientific genius, but he’s also battling an oppressive government determined to subjugate its citizens. As someone who watched Neil Armstrong place the first human footprint on the moon as a child, his Starship launch gave me goosebumps. The possibility that Musk’s brilliance and drive may replicate that feat on Mars should inspire every human being with the courage and confidence that whatever malady or “existential threat” Chicken Little hucksters like Al Gore bray about, they can be overcome. But only if visionaries like Musk are allowed to do so. Despite its stunning achievement, achieved at a fraction of the cost of its competitors, Space X is being hounded by Biden’s JustUs Department for “discriminating against asylees and refugees in hiring. The lawsuit alleges that, from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status”. The real reason is that he is a rogue that the Blob can’t control, at least not yet.
An explosion of a rocket is just an experiment in which important data is obtained. Each rocket launched outcome brings Elon Musk closer to success as he would define success. And, new discoveries.
Truly a rare bird.
If you mean Isaacson you're reading a polemic, not a bio.
Whoever thought up the idea of bussing migrants to the big cities is a political genius.
When NYC was the point of entry, the elites saw and experienced the effects of their policies. And had to defend them.
When the point of entry is some dusty ranch in the southwest, they don't see the problem and don't care.
You can thank Governor Abbott of Texas, Chris, and then Governor DeSantis.
Love the smackdown nocera gave the NYT weenie. Hey FP, at least you know you’re not ignored and it seems you get the msm agitated
The fool lost to Nocera, which made is doubly delightful. His arguments were idiotic, turning everything Henderson believed on its head. And embracing a strategy dreamed up by a middle school girl.
I wondered how many in McNeil’s casualty count were deaths where covid was present but not the cause. I seem to remember a scandal about hospitals deliberately misrepresenting covid deaths as a way to get more federal dollars.
The same way they were shrieking about the carnage at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, while just across the river, the major NYC hospitals were quiet and the vast complexes at the Javits Center and in Central Park were virtually empty. It was all calculated disinformation. From our own government.
And the hospital ship that arrived to such fanfare and then quietly went away because no one needed it.
Who were the people that Andrew Cuomo sent back to nursing homes?
The known sicks, Why?
A million dead, while a ‘big’ number is just marketing. Covid appears to be only .3% lethal when the population is looked at as a whole, but that’s just the average of two extremes, 3% in the over 65 group and .03% in children and adults under 30. Nothing justifies locking down kids from school just to ‘protect’ the elderly.let alone subjecting the entire breeding population to an experimental treatment we still don’t understand well the risks.
McNiel had a bit of a Lloyd Bentsen moment. “I knew DA Henderson. DA Henderson was a friend . . . blah blah blah.” And now he can be ridiculed for it just like Bentsen.
The Democrats have been at the center of nearly every major scandal in the last decade.
COVID lockdowns, illegal immigration, 1A violations, anti-semitism, DEI (actual racism), crime, inflation, election interference, defund police, etc.
A sympathetic MSM has been (fortunately) usurped by independent outlets like The Free Press and the consequences of leftist policies are no longer esoteric; EVERYONE is being affected. There is hope for a red tsunami this year, but I'm equally sure powerful leftist's sympathizers will pull out every stop.
We are truly at war with the soul of this country, and if you want to stop the decline, you MUST vote against the Left.
This is coming from a former lifelong Democrat.
Add to your list the “ medical “ scandal of transing of children
LOL I was just returning to say this
Me, too. Disa beat us to it.
Related: "Trans Medical Association Scrubs Child Sex Change Guidelines from Website"
https://www.dailyfetched.com/trans-medical-association-scrubs-child-sex-change-guidelines-from-website/
All the other associations follow the crazy bad and non-science WPATH guidelines.
And, we need to stop filling girls with synthetic testosterone:
"We May Finally See the Nashville Shooter's Manifesto After a Year of Delays"https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/03/20/we-may-finally-see-the-nashville-shooters-manifesto-after-a-year-of-delays-n3785056
"Facing Audrey Could your child become a shooter’s victim? Could my child become a shooter? Parents of trans-identified kids demand “don’t keep us in the dark.”" https://www.pittparents.com/p/facing-audrey
Agree with everything you said except that the MSM isn't "sympathetic." They are the propaganda arm of the DNC. Nothing more. This is a war for the heart and soul of America.
Sympathetic as in "nazi sympathizers" sympathetic
The ultimate quislings.
“Democrats with press passes”. Absolutely true. I must give credit and attribution to radio talk show host Howie Carr for the phrase. It is hilarious when all in the MSM start parroting the same DNC focus grouped phrases.
To Joe Nocera on his powerful rebuttal to Donald McNeil’s Letter to the Editor. This back and forth represents the open dialogue that should have been happening (and continue to happen) regarding Covid restrictions and policies. If not for the infringement of our First Amendment rights, we might have had an open dialogue in real time.
Excellent point: and directly related to the first story about Dr Jay B at the Supreme Court, where genius Justice Jackson worries about this icky First Amendment hindering the government’s ability to control information.
Her jurisprudence disgusts me
Ideological activism masked as jurisprudence
Amen
"The new policy will see more than 2,000 migrants evicted by the end of April. (Approximately 11,000 migrants are currently housed in city-run shelters.)"
Go ahead, evict them. They will live on sidewalks and use homeowners' shrubbery, apartment building vestibules, store grates, and even the post office entrance as their toilets. Nice people and the city will supply them with sandwiches and tacos which, half eaten, will be tossed into gutters and become food for rats.
How do I know? Don't even get me started on what I and my neighbors went through for two years with our drug- and booze-addled Central American vagrants. How our community finally got rid of them I do not know. Fingers crossed; it's been over a year now since they, their litter, their diarrhea and vomit, and their stench are gone.
But the rats remain.
We always have rats, it's called politicians!
"We always have rats, it's called politicians!"
And the most virulent strain is democRATs
And to top it all they crap all over the place and what’s worse we have to take it.
I watch the Chicago news closely. Never is it mentioned when the Migrants are evicted where do they go? By what means do they get money to pay for food, transportation, shelter? They aren't allowed to work so now what? If our government gives them money, for how long? And surely it's not enough to live in or near an expensive city.
I suspect that many are working. The explosive growth of an underground economy may be imminent
Mine were too far gone to work. When they weren't fighting each other, urinating into the outdoor eatery down the block, or staggering over to my scanty property to relieve themselves of their bowels, they were passed out on the sidewalk, on my walkway, or on a neighbor's porch.
Look, I felt sorry for them, but their stinks were up my nose. Try scooping up and cloroxing beneath a forsythia bush (and elsewhere, every day). It's a foul task.
Jesus you got to be kidding, which state you living in?
My guess is Cali.
Anyone with the credentials to label themselves worthy of being listend to on public health policy, who NOW, in 2024, is condemning the Great Barrington Declaration is either dishonest, stupid, or being paid. Those are the three options. There is no fourth.
Farr's Law--the Bell Curve nature of pandemics--is a thing, yeah? The number of people who are infected and who either die or recover with immunity is the same whether it takes three months or three years to run through it. The end result is what they eventually decided to call Herd Immunity. Most of us, we now know, have relatively good natural immunity to COVID, if we had it, as nearly all of us have.
Interestingly, it was established at the outset of COVID, by looking carefully at several cruise ships and naval vessels where 100% of the people were exposed, that seemingly a third of the population probably had natural immunity at the OUTSET, presumably since there are, if memory serves, 6 OTHER coronaviruses, that cause the common cold, to varying forms of which we have all been exposed many times.
So the curve already had a good start at the outset.
And as stated, COVID was LESS DANGEROUS THAN THE FLU FOR HEALTHY PEOPLE UNDER 65 OR SO. How hard is it to keep people of retirement age out of circulation? Not hard. Not hard at all. How dangerous would it have been to keep working age people IN circulation when a disease that was less dangerous than the flu that shows up every year was making its rounds? Well, do we shut down every winter? No, we don't.
The Great Barrington Declaration was common sense. Anyone who denies it is, again, stupid, dishonest, or taking money from someone. I will assume the latter two in the case of this author.
And this is just one aspect of it. The other aspect is that OBVIOUSLY anything that could have been done to further lower mortality should have been done. Vitamin D supplementation should have been recommended everywhere and immediately. But as Pierre Kory states in his excellent interview with Tucker Carlson, Big Pharma is TERRIFIED of Vitamn D. Why? IT HELPS WITH NEARLY EVERYTHING.
Here is that link: https://tuckercarlson.com/the-tucker-carlson-encounter-pierre-kory/
He also points out that most "long COVID" is actually "long vaccine", and seemingly amounts to pharmaceutically induced chronic fatigue syndrome. These jabs seem to have killed outright AT LEAST 10 million people worldwide, and permanently screwed up the lives of perhaps five times that many people. This is the worst iatrogenic genocide in human history, by far. It is malpractice extended into outright murder by silence and complicity.
Returning to D, the "flu season" is basically Vitamin D deficiency season. It happens farther north in places where it just isn't possible to get enough sun to reach optimal levels, which seem to be much higher than what the--in my view--paid for hacks running the medical system recommend. Best guesses are in the 40-50 ng/ml range. This is not just for bone health, but immunity, emotional wellness, cancer resistance, and a large number of other things.
And anyone who fails to point to the utter and disgusting LIES about Ivermectin and HCQ is really an a-hole. A villain. The bad guy in any movie with bad guys. Both work as very effective zinc ionophores, and particularly in tandem with Z-packs for inflammation, and Vitamins A, C, and D, reduce death rates to near zero. And if the rates were ALREADY low, as they would have been among the under 65 facing a disease less dangerous than the flu, then EVERYTHING THAT WAS DONE WAS CRIMINAL AND ITS SUPPORTERS NOW ARE ACCOMPLICES TO A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
I could go on, but I have work to do. I personally came up with my own version of the Great Barrington Declaration several months before they did, because the logic was OBVIOUS. Anybody insulting those people now is an execrable douchebag. Period.
While I'm at it, here is the Steve Kirsch interview: https://tuckercarlson.com/uncensored-the-vaccine-interview/
I did these debates daily--when I was between bans--for at least two years. NOTHING Fauci did stands up under even basic scrutiny.
Brilliant, as usual. All they had to do was protect nursing homes and keep special store hours of the elderly and let the young do what they do. Instead they chose repression. And lying.
Does one need to know anything more?
One related but slightly off topic comment. The American Heart Association just pumped a "study" that intermittent fasting increases coronary mortality by 91%. Not only counterintuitive but apparently based on a laughable Chinese study. So we must ask "cui bono?" Our health and medical establishment is appearing more corrupt and foolish by the day.
I would suggest you listen to the Pierre Kory interview. He blames most of the corruption of our medical establishment on the corruption of the major journals, like the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, etc. Most of them are no longer credible. You have to fact check them, because they publish blatantly flawed research, that in most cases was designed to validate a predetermined outcome, which is the opposite of science.
Kary Mullis spoke often and very clearly about all this. The pandemic would have been different if he had been alive to comment on it, which is one reason why some small part of me wonders if he was exposed to an early version of COVID intentionally. He died of a respiratory virus in the autumn of 2019. That he would have excoriated Fauci and the NIH for using the PCR test diagnostically is really beyond doubt. He was doing it already, pre-COVID. He was also calling Fauci a crook, and doing so as the Nobel Laureate who INVENTED the test Fauci was abusing in a criminally anti-scientific manner. A credible case can be made that we never had a pandemic at all, and that the standards of care themselves, which were altered from previous best practices, were what did most of the killing. This case would be based on the extensive and indefensible use of the PCR test to bump up COVID numbers.
Everybody involved everywhere should have known better. We didn't know then what we know now, at least with certainty. But it's pretty clear anybody pushing the old lies now is a crook and rotten human being.
Hear, hear...
Don't forget that Covid is really a metabolic disease, affecting mostly those who eat a diet high in carbs and trans fats. The typical breaded-and-deep-fried crap washed down with liquid sugar. The few kids who died from it were so obese, they had type 2 diabetes.
We knew in March 2020 who was susceptible to it. But were there messages to avoid eating junk? Our mayor proudly posted a video of himself making a "cheesecake" where the main ingredient was a non-dairy whipped topping, i.e. trans fats and sugar.
The surge in the growth of Substack happened during Covid, and that's not a coincidence.
I won't claim to know what it is, but all diseases are more dangerous when they happen in bodies with high levels of systemic inflammation. I think one of the reasons many other nations like Japan and Norway did so well was simply that they were healthier overall. Logically healthy people should die at lower rates.
Today is a very sad day because a good and innocent man is going to jail precisely because we have a cowardly, useless Supreme Court, headed by a clown and populated by like thinking toadies. Peter Navarro did nothing that Democrats haven't done with impunity - gave the finger to Congress. But a corrupt and partisan Justice Department, abetted by their Stasi, arrested, charged and convicted him, in a Stalin-like sham trial. Roberts was asked to stay his prison term pending appeal and refused. So it's no surprise the Roberts is similarly indifferent to free speech arguments. Nevertheless, more and more Americans are awakening to the way the elites mock our rights. Right now we have structures in place that keep relative order and comity among us. But if they break down - and the indifference shown by the uniparty elites to the Bill of Rights glue that holds our society together is palpable - that society will disintegrate into tribal madness. And the first to reap that whirlwind will be the very elites - including those robed in black - who now think themselves immune.
Well, at least he’ll get “three hots and a cot”….
He will be out in July and can be prima facie evidence of the two tiered justice system forthr campaign to return the White Houseto the Republicans.
Without Free Speech and Government Control, you have a government that will continue to ride over any rights the average person thought they had. You see it in Imminent Domain, Confiscation of funds and property by police with no charges to support. You see it in government trying to decide what you can drive and how. They want to control speech and that it must follow the government policies. What products you can buy and what you must give up to those unwilling to work or do anything for themselves. Hint, see drug addicts and perverts getting special funding, immigrants fed and supported while the American citizen is disregarded.
Yet, not to worry, it's those rural white people who think the government should function properly, they actually work, worship, believe in a better goodness, produce the things lazy folks consume, and are a true threat to the woke man is a women, whites are racist, Blacks can never be racist, immigrants deserve better than you process. What antiquated, right wing, super, duper MAGA thoughts they have and as the great cow, Hillary says; "should be someplace to send them to deprogram them". Dog whistle, lock their asses up.
I say let the cities burn from their own stupid Utopian policies, make sure you care for your family, and plan ahead as it does not look good for what use to be the Red Blooded American people and their desires. Elections have results and the cities are getting what they asked for, no sympathy here. Unfortunately, their stupid choices are carrying over to the rest of us who just want to be left alone to live.
Michigan is currently in the process of giving children born to immigrants Medicaid until age 21. I'm all for universal health care for our own citizens which these kids will be, but the kids born to citizens here don't even have guaranteed Medicaid until age 21.
Maybe we should all just stop funding the beast until they get the message? Except my experience tells me that my fellow citizens will just fulminate and continue to be abused. The men who stood on Lexington Green two centuries ago were made of much sterner stuff. Maybe diversity isn't our strength and importing shuffling third world'ers is for a reason.
military
That is why they are doing it. Get those kids used to it and when they are old enough to vote, you can use them to help you push through more laws.
You mean illegal immigrants, right?
And we now have a Justice of the Supreme Court who doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment. Maybe a woman can explain it to her.
I think that she was the one who didn't know what a woman was?
"Let the cities burn" is as bad as "the rurals are all evil." Neither group is uniformly angelic or demonic, they're mixes of good and bad. I've lived in both and find people pretty much the same--friendly, helpful, and decent if treated with respect. The minority are flaming assholes, but I found as many of those in the country as the city.
Rurals "produce the things lazy folks consume." First, city folks work as hard as you do, they just do different things. Second, the cities buy the stuff rurals produce. Without city buyers, rurals would have no jobs. And without city taxpayers footing the bill, many rurals would be jobless anyway---the biggest employers in most rural counties are government institutions like junior colleges, USDA field offices, and prisons.
As for "the cities are getting what they ask for, no sympathy here," the taxpayers in the cities pay for a lot of the stuff that rurals enjoy--highways, farm aid, universal telephone service, the growing reach of Internet service in rural zones, and operating the many markets where rural farmers sell their goods.
We need each other.
Many cities are horribly mismanaged, but they're not full of bad people. Some are misguided enough to vote for that mismanagement, but they also have limited power to change it at this point thanks to shenanigans like extreme gerrymandering and scheduling elections to be inconvenient for everyone except union goons.
What the hell is counter-disinformation complex even mean? Sounds like something goebbels would make up
Just trust unelected bureaucrats to determine what disinformation is, they know it when they see it.
they write it
How about an honest discussion about the lives of elderly people locked in nursing homes many of whom are already “ locked down and neglected by family or have no family) versus the lives of children? I would argue that protecting children has the higher priority. Putting effort into trying to protect the vulnerable was doable and should not have been scoffed at by that arrogant NYTimes reporter. Calling the Great Barrington belittling names is an example of the disgusting way the govt and it’s media arm ( esp the NYTimes) squelched debate by the world renown and never before controversial authors at the most esteemed institutions. In fact they would not have had to write the GBD if open and honest debate occurred as was imperative at the time.
Is there really a difference if a person in a nursing home dies of urinary sepsis, congestive heart failure , or covid? The nursing home industry was only worried about the epidemic of empty beds that occurs when many residents die at the same time. Most nursing homes are very unpleasant environments to begin with and no one seems to write science articles in The NY Times about the neglect and abuse that goes on in these facilities every single day .
Protecting the vulnerable while letting young, relatively invulnerable people live their lives was the smart, moral and lawful approach. Yet our elected officials chose the stupid, venal and unconstitutional approach. Andrew Cuomo's order to place Covid infected people into nursing homes was the very definition of criminally negligent homicide. The fools we place in power killed, bullied and locked down with impunity. And our cowardly, panicked populace took it. With nary a whimper. Beyond pathetic.
Cuomo should have been prosecuted for murder for doing that. Since there is no statute of limitations on murder prosecutions, perhaps a valiant DA or fed will file charges someday. It was inexcusable when he had many other places in which to care for Covid patients.
Don't hold your breath. There was already an official investigation that supposedly exonerated him. Had he not been a sexual harasser, Cuomo would still be governor.
I agree. I also have said he was a murderer.
Those policies almost broke me…I was screaming every day “WAKE UP YOU LEMMINGS!!!!!
Gretchen Whitmer did the same. And continued to do so even after Cuomo and everyone else realized how catastrophic this policy was. This is the woman being touted as a probable candidate for president in 2028.
Whitmer reminds me of that alien Diana in the old sci fi series V. Rip off the pretty mask and a true reptile lies beneath.
If I end up in a nursing home I wish to die as soon as possible.
The better option is death before nursing home. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. The older I am the more medically assisted suicide makes sense.
There’s dignity in natural death.
“Brown Jackson, a liberal justice appointed by President Biden”
Brown Jackson is as far from liberal as you can get. She is an activist progressive Judge which ignores the Constitution happily.
Yes, we do need to get some of these labels nailed down. Liberal does not mean Left or Progressive or Democrat anymore....if it ever did.
Plus she seems willfully stupid.
Can't hamstring the government? Sounds like the perfect way to protect, preserve and save democracy. I wonder if justice Jackson would allow the government to ban "1984" if it deemed the writings of Orwell as having the potential to hamstring Big Sister. We shall see where Kavanaugh and Barrett stand regarding whether and to what extent The Constitution and in particular the First Amendment limit government or if the government gets to decide when it will limit itself.
She is, most assuredly, an idiot. Her Hamstring comment along with he "I don't know whaat a woman is" are just the beginning of her stupid utterances.
She's a poster child for the error of DEI, Affirmative e Action, etc. She and Idiot Kamala are birds of a feather.
Add to that list Claudine Gay and Fani Willis.
Do they not realize they are hurting the best and brightest women and men of color who achieve by their excellence ?
Please stop making me defend Fani Willis because I'm utterly tired of hearing about her and her stupid boring romance. But again, she was elected not appointed. That doesn't exempt her from being stupid. But she's not a DEI appointee like the other three. She campaigned for office and won. She has voters support in her own region. Whatever we may think of her voters' choice, that is democracy, not DEI.
How exactly did Willis get into college and law school and pass law school in the first place.
Listen to her speech in the church. She is a poster person for all that’s wrong with DEI
She most likely benefitted from affirmative action. But in her current position she is still elected. Democracy doesn't mean people can't vote in stupid people. Look at Katie Britt.
I'm pointing this out because when you lump an elected official in with the DEI appointees, you weaken your argument to the Leftist numskulls and they can use this to pick apart your argument like you don't know she was elected. And people who voted for her feel they're under attack. I've seen it in comments on other platforms.
Good point!
I was willing to keep an open mind till I know more how she rules. Sadly she's as stupid as her detractors say. Just a Democratic tool. She has no independent legal mind. Just a walking liberal/Democrat talking points.
Of course no liberal MSM or any Leftist or even normie liberals would admit now that Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett are actually moderates. All those cries and feamongering like apocalypse and end of days were coming when they were nominated. Both were portrayed as right wing nut jobs. Other than overturning Roe v Wade, they turned out to be the more moderate swing voters. And Trump appointed them! Oh the horror!
The true horror is Biden inflicting Brown-Jackson on us. Kagan and Sotomeyer are no better. I'm just counting the days when both turn their backs on women and throw women under the bus when they dismantle Title IX and tell women they must let men leer at them and flash them in women's locker rooms without their consent,
A few thoughts:
The "conservative" majority in the Court brought the problem to itself. Dobbs, much as it is probably good/proper interpretation of the Constitution, was an obvious screw up. 50 years of behavior tossed into the can. It was not a Dred Scot situation, but almost the opposite, taking from women the ability to have any say about their own bodies - in some states that is happening. Now some states with a hard no to any abortion and others with a hard yes to abortion so long as one of the toes is still in the mom. Privacy matters to most Americans and nothing is more private than dealing with pregnancy. Ugly as it was, Roe actually let a compromise develop over the decades. Overruling it brough foreseeable madness. Believe it or not, the Chief probably had the best and only practical approach. Too bad he could not get one of the right side with him.
I do not see trans issues getting the sort of constitutional protection you suggest. The issue has hit its peak and things are starting to retreat. There are very practical ways to draw the line to protect women - natal women - and the order of society along the lines of sex as it has always been. And I don't' think "queer theory" is going to be well received at the court. That is just mental illness masquerading as scholarship.
Just my thoughts.
I take exception to your statement that a good/proper interpretation of the Constitution is an obvious screwup. The justices should be bound by the Constitution, even if that creates issues for the elected branches to sort out.
You take exception? Are you channeling Paul Newman in "Absence of Malice"? LOL.
My point is that sometimes discretion is the better part of whatever. There was a way to have the cake and eat it too. Could have avoided the social disruption while admitting that the constitutional underpinnings were flawed. And moved past it all.
You've got it exactly wrong. Roe did not let a compromise develop. Now a compromise can develop and is doing so through the state legislatures. The recent work on IVF in Alabama shows how that happens.
No, you are wrong. Precisely so. We've got 50 states, each making its own laws. That is closer to chaos than compromise.
Alabama shows the chaos within a single state. A bunch of whacko judges in battle with a frightened Republican state legislature. And even after the new legislation, the hospitals and IVF providers are not jumping back in to provide services. The new law has yet to be considered by the whack job judges. So providers, being on notice of the predilections of those judges are loathe to jump in and possibly expose themselves to some random county DA charging them with murder.
Roe had a compromise, tested in the courts through decades of litigation. It was the whack job state legislatures that kept pushing the envelop to eliminate or expand w/o limit. The S.Ct. just beat those attempts back. Roe/Casey was the national compromise. Dodd set the extremists on both side aflame.
I suspected you were a complete fool. This confirms it.
Appoint idiots and fools get idiotic and foolish judicial decisions.
Absent free speech, there would never have been a civil rights movement. The government prefers the status quo, and does so by force when it can. Justice Jackson is clueless if her main concern is not hamstringing the government from censoring speech.
Just real high quality stuff. Much better than some of the other things we’ve seen recently. Great!
Excellent work today, FP!
Modern liberals support censorship at their own risk. They fail to understand that today they may successfully shut down opposition points of view, but tomorrow the tables can turn and see their own views censored. Everyone should support the enlightenment philosophy that all views, even the hateful and obnoxious ones, must be allowed. In its raw form, it is very much a self-interested position for everyone. The success or failure of an idea should be in the unfettered marketplace of speech and debate, not based on some government official deciding to shut down a speech they don't like.
This goes for pretty much ANY power you give to the government. When people vote to give the government power, they generally only think of the ways that the Gov will do things that they agree with. That is something we ALL need to be careful with.
It is embedded in our founding documents. Yet we appoint guardians of those documents who lack any real understanding of their meaning. Judges appointed by and drawing checks from the government are tainted from the start.
There is not one powerhouse on that court on either side of the divide.
Clarence Thomas. That's why the left attacks him.
It’s a shame that he compromised himself ethically. He did that all by himself.
The censors do not intend to ever allow the tables to turn.