Going For The Brass

Hopefully the cartoon is self-explanatory, but we'll add that we support Simone Biles' tough decision to step aside from Olympic competition. Her gymnastic feats not only break the laws of physics, they flirt with serious injury or death if she's unable to perform less than perfectly.

She didn't let anyone down, and we wish her nothing but success and mental peace in the future.

THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS IN THE WORLD?

Interested in "Following the Science" about Covid? Because here's the science: there is a safe, cheap, effective treatment and preventative that could have prevented millions of Covid deaths and serious infections. Science has known this for over a year but the news has been, and continues to be, suppressed by politicians, "experts," the news media, and social media censors.

We didn't need to shut down (or at least could have re-opened far sooner). We didn't need to be subjected to nonstop panic-stoking from the government and the media. We didn't need to crush the American work ethic, nor did we need to throw election laws to the wind last year because of the "special circumstances." And God knows we don't now need untold trillions of "Covid relief" dollars to come back from this needless (but fully intentional) nightmare.

The truth of this is incontestible. The reason it's happening and who's behind it - still a mystery - is surely one of the most important and urgent issues for which we should all be demanding answers right now.
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Why is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Covid Treatment?
By David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper
Wall Street Journal July 28, 2021 12:34 pm ET

The Food and Drug Administration claims to follow the science. So why is it attacking ivermectin, a medication it certified in 1996?

Earlier this year the agency put out a special warning that “you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.” The FDA’s statement included words and phrases such as “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death” and “highly toxic.” Any reader would think the FDA was warning against poison pills. In fact, the drug is FDA-approved as a safe and effective antiparasitic.

Ivermectin was developed and marketed by Merck & Co. while one of us (Mr. Hooper) worked there years ago. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering and developing avermectin, which Mr. Campbell and associates modified to create ivermectin.

Ivermectin is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. Merck has donated four billion doses to prevent river blindness and other diseases in Africa and other places where parasites are common. A group of 10 doctors who call themselves the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance have said ivermectin is “one of the safest, low-cost, and widely available drugs in the history of medicine.”

Ivermectin fights 21 viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. A single dose reduced the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in cells by 99.8% in 24 hours and 99.98% in 48 hours, according to a June 2020 study published in the journal Antiviral Research.

Some 70 clinical trials are evaluating the use of ivermectin for treating Covid-19. The statistically significant evidence suggests that it is safe and works for both treating and preventing the disease.
In 115 patients with Covid-19 who received a single dose of ivermectin, none developed pneumonia or cardiovascular complications, while 11.4% of those in the control group did. Fewer ivermectin patients developed respiratory distress (2.6% vs. 15.8%); fewer required oxygen (9.6% vs. 45.9%); fewer required antibiotics (15.7% vs. 60.2%); and fewer entered intensive care (0.1% vs. 8.3%). Ivermectin-treated patients tested negative faster, in four days instead of 15, and stayed in the hospital nine days on average instead of 15. Ivermectin patients experienced 13.3% mortality compared with 24.5% in the control group.

Moreover, the drug can help prevent Covid-19. One 2020 article in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications looked at what happened after the drug was given to family members of confirmed Covid-19 patients. Less than 8% became infected, versus 58.4% of those untreated.
Despite the FDA’s claims, ivermectin is safe at approved doses. Out of four billion doses administered since 1998, there have been only 28 cases of serious neurological adverse events, according to an article published this year in the American Journal of Therapeutics. The same study found that ivermectin has been used safely in pregnant women, children and infants.

If the FDA were driven by science and evidence, it would give an emergency-use authorization for ivermectin for Covid-19. Instead, the FDA asserts without evidence that ivermectin is dangerous.
At the bottom of the FDA’s warning against ivermectin is this statement: “Meanwhile, effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 continue to be to wear your mask, stay at least 6 feet from others who don’t live with you, wash hands frequently, and avoid crowds.”

Is this based on the kinds of double-blind studies that the FDA requires for drug approvals? No.
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Mr. Henderson, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, was senior health economist with President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Hooper is president of Objective Insights, a firm that consults with pharmaceutical clients.

Derailed Train of Thought

Yeah, he really said all that

I'm still in "looking aghast from the sidelines" mode, but felt like it was time to post a little something to remind people that I'm not dead, dying, nor incarcerated. Yet. Plus, this will give us a nice clean slate for the comments area, where intelligent and well-informed people are still posting the best chat on the Internet.

And despite my ongoing sabbatical, I still hear the drumbeat of ongoing news. Although it might just be my throbbing headache. 

• Nancy Pelosi is single-handedly choosing the (ahem) "bipartisan" members of a committee to investigate the January 6th Patriots Picnic in Washington, which Dems and the media are breathlessly calling "the most deadly assault on the Capitol in 200 years." A ludicrous thing to say, even though it was the most deadly event in Ashli Babbitt's life.

• The Dems look likely to pass Bernie Sanders' 3.5 Trillion Dollar (actually 5.5 Trillion) spending bill soon, meaning the value of Monopoly money is about to surge when measured against the buying power of the American dollar.

• The Olympics are allegedly taking place in empty stadiums, which is a pretty good metaphor for the lack of enthusiasm people are feeling for the event. Personally, I've given up caring about the USA teams because there's been so much political nonsense and so many personal anti-American demonstrations on and off the field leading up to this event.  Here's a wild idea: in the future, howzabout we ask athletes if they have any problem with showing respect to the American flag before putting them on Team USA?

• Although it almost looks like a hint of sanity, I'm not getting my hopes up too much over the fact that Joe Biden ("The Most Popular Man Ever To Run For Office!") keeps seeing his approval ratings fall, recently hitting the 50% mark. Even more telling is a recent poll that shows a majority of Americans (Conservatives, Liberals, and Independents) now view our nation's future pessimistically, with actual optimism falling a full 20 points since May. Nice job of uniting the country, Joe!

• Federal officials have already apprehended ("Welcome to the United States! Here's a plane ticket and some walking around money!") over 1.1 million people crossing our border with Mexico this year. We know that the Democrats' goal is to alter voting demographics permanently, but just how much impact can these "immigrants" have? Here's a fun fact: if you put all of those people in one place and called it a state, it would immediately have a greater population than nine of our existing states do. 

Of course, the Left's goal isn't to create a new state, but rather to ship just enough of those people to existing states to change the demographics, cause redistricting, and sway elections (at the same time the Dems are coincidentally trying to federalize elections to ban voter IDs). Currently, our military is being used to fly these intruders to all 50 states rather than, oh, carpet-bombing our southern border. Which strikes me as a damn shame.

• On a personal note, I'm currently recovering from a very uncomfortable urinary tract infection. I won't go into details, but as a gesture of solidarity, I will never again participate in a weenie roast.

Knock-Knock Jokers

Okay, this cartoon isn't subtle and we're not even sure that it's funny. But Joe Biden's call for the United Nations to investigate (and eventually "control") racism and white supremacy in the United States is beyond the pale. If there is a less racist country than ours in the United Nations, we'd sure as hell like to know what it is.

But no, our alleged president is now saying that racism is at its worst since the Civil War, owing in part to the fact that Texas wants to pass regulations to help ensure honest elections. And it's worth noting that what the media is calling the Texas "voter suppression" law would actually institute less-restrictive voting practices than those in Joe Biden's home state of Delaware.

As a case in point, one of the worse-than-lynching proposals in Texas is to offer drive-thru voting for the convenience of the disabled, but NOT to jam those drive-thru polling locations with able-bodied people who just don't want to get out of their idling, fossil fuel-burning, pollution-belching cars. And somehow this common sense policy is considered racially discriminatory, which raises an interesting question: how are people who allegedly can't get photo IDs legally driving cars?!

But facts don't matter. The Dems have decided to run with the imaginary racism football as far as they can go with it - including, apparently, asking the members of the United Nations to adjudicate our nation's morality while failing to stop ethnic genocide and slavery within their own borders. An idea so insane and offensive that it rockets past hypocrisy and should instead be considered just cause for Joe Biden's immediate removal from office.

Sunny And Sharing

Readers- In a complete change of pace, I'm posting materials by other people today. The cartoon is just one that I saw online and liked for obvious reasons...

The other piece, written by political blogger Darryl Cooper, is the best summation I've seen explaining why so many of us currently feel the way we do. This should be mandatory reading for those on the other side who think, wrongly, that we're the delusional ones. Note that this was written as a series of tweets, each of which appears in a new paragraph here.

Darryl Cooper on the 2020 Election and its Fallout

I think I've had discussions with enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 

Most believe some or all of the theories involving midnight ballots, voting machines, etc, but what you find when you talk to them is that, while they'll defend those positions with info they got from Hannity or Breitbart or whatever, they're not particularly attached to them. 

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc). 

These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them. 

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. 

This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion with Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake. 

At first, many Trump people were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen. 

We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying. 

Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year. 

Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin. 

This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. 

GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 

It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of government as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate people who don't stand for the Anthem. 

They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 

The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 

This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true. 

They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots. 

They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories out of whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. 

Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution. 

Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn't just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump people expected shenanigans by now. 

Re: "fake impeachment", we now know that Trump's request for Ukraine to cooperate with the DOJ regarding Biden's financial activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request. 

Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares? 

Goes without saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr's laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn't have been banned. 

Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. 

The reaction of Trump people to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by people who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. 

And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew. 

Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real. 

Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in Direct Messages!). 

Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 

Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere with them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say,  with good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? 

It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too. 

Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system.

They knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct.

Let's do a final review:

a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1 

b) The press is part of the operation, 

c) Election rules were changed, 

d) Big Tech censors opposition,

e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged,

f) Trump is banned from social media. 

They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their government is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation and will observe no limits to keep them from getting it. 

Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive. 

Alive And Kicking Back

This seemed like a good time to remind everyone that I'm not dead, wounded, or imprisoned at Guantanamo, nor is this blog "gone." It is simply appearing very sporadically, much like coherent sentences coming out of Joe Biden's mouth.

My experiment with backing away from politics continues. Oh, I still read the Wall Street Journal and occasionally peek in to see what Tucker Carlson is rightfully angry about. But I'm not following myriad stories beat-by-beat, and I'm using all of that saved time to accomplish...well...not much yet. Hey, redefining yourself doesn't happen overnight (except for hungover people who discover the "morning after" that their sexual orientation wasn't what they thought it was).

So I'm mostly attacking chores with varying degrees of success:

• I mowed my lawn. Which sounds dull, but mowing a lawn in Texas in July is basically playing Russian roulette with heatstroke.

• Related to the Texas heat, there are reports that our state's electrical grid may get spotty in the coming days and weeks. Bringing my Covid-prepper mindset to the problem, I've purchased a number of rechargeable camp fans and a portable solar panel so that in case of a power outage, the Jarlsberg family (including dogs) can at least enjoy hot breezes until the air conditioning comes back or we just flat out die.

• Speaking of air conditioning, the unit has stopped working in daughter Jarlsberg's car. Fortunately, I found a Youtube video about how to fix the problem and was assured "you can do it in 15 minutes even if you've never done it before." I'd like to think that it's part of my charm that I'm still stupid enough to believe that sort of thing. My efforts came to naught and I'm taking the car in for repair tomorrow. And if they try to bill me for three hours of work, I'll refer them to the Youtube video as a negotiating tactic.

• I've started sorting through dusty boxes of paperwork and memorabilia to prepare for a possible interview which may go into a real, intended-for-broadcast documentary about an unusual business venture I was part of many years ago. The enterprise received national attention for a while and, despite allegations to the contrary, was not promoting Satanism. And that's really all I can say because I signed a non-disclosure agreement. Wait, am I allowed to say that? Well, it's too late now.

• And for no particular reason other than that it's Friday, let's enjoy a quick round of "O Caption, My Caption." And no, I don't know what the heck this thing really is other than it was a medical illustration...

Wham On Wry

To better explain why I'm taking some time off from politics, I wanted to create a graphic which would illustrate my current mindset. And I couldn't think of any better metaphor than a carnival "high striker" game in which a heavy mallet blow sends a weight soaring upwards, the goal being to ring the bell at the top. Now imagine that the game is my level of anger about the news. I'd reached a point (and I'm still there) in which every news item rang my bell every freaking time.

Cackling Kamala Harris going to a border (but not the problematic border) to address illegal immigration without ever mentioning border security? BANG - shwoop! - CLANG!

News that Ivermectin, when properly administered, reduces Covid deaths by 62% and transmission by 86% - but there's still nobody talking about it (and the millions who died unnecessarily)? CLANG!

The NFL running an ad that proclaims "Football is Gay. Football is Lesbian. Football is Beautiful. Football is Queer. Football is Life. Football is Transgender. Football is Tough. Football is Bisexual. Football is Accepting. Football is Everything. Football is for Everyone." CLANG!

A U.S. Olympic athlete (in the highly-regarded sport of "hammer throwing") turns her well-toned ebony back on the American flag at an event because it doesn't speak for her? CLANG!

A Biden administration member attempts to blame the Florida condo collapse on "climate change?" CLANG!

In the face of a growing wave of violent crime, Democrats claim that it's Republicans who are defunding the police? CLANG!

And so on and so on and so on. Each incident sends my temper skyrocketing and leaves a fresh dent in an already well-worn bell. Which is why I decided to take an extended time-out. And so far, it feels pretty darn good.

Have I given up hope that things can get better? Absolutely not! But they're not going to get better in the immediate future, so I'd like to use that immediate future to enjoy myself as much as possible. And part of that enjoyment will be continuing to communicate with you here, about whatever goofiness is on my mind, or whatever amusement I can cook up for you. And I can't commit to any kind of schedule, but just know that I'm not disappearing. 

Nor can I completely ignore politics.  As a case in point, I just found out that our family dentist - who we've used for decades - is closing his practice. He loves what he does, but just can't take the bureaucratic BS anymore. The straw that finally broke the camel's back: in order to keep his practice open, he was being required to take classes teaching him how to recognize and fight sex trafficking. Presumably so he could call Kamala Harris (ha!) if a decaying van overpacked with weeping children comes screeching to a halt outside his door and a dust-covered Latinx Coyote rushes in to ask, "How motch to make the cheeldren's mouths preety?"

CLANG!

And One More Thing....

Have a glorious Independence Day weekend and celebrate what is still the greatest nation on Earth!