Monthly Archives: December 2021

Biden, Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Health Care

IN PHARMA’S FIELDS THE RUMORS GROW

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IN PHARMA’S FIELDS THE RUMORS GROW

In days of yore (a term used here for the very first time in all of Prudence’ writings) DOCTORS were much revered and obeyed for their advice, in part for their licensed acceptance by their profession and peers, and just as much in part for their ethical standards to which they had sworn as had been their ethic for days and centuries of even greater yore.  They also possessed various elements of arcane knowledge to which the average supplicant of their curative powers was not privy.

Those days are gone thanks, most specifically, to the Great COVID Reset during which the politicization of medicine… of MEDICINE… has been completed.

Inadvertently, President Trump fed this beast upon the advice of both good and somewhat black-hearted advisors, many of whom are now billionaires.  Hapless Joe Biden has not only ridden the beast of politicization, but has whipped it into frenzy. “Politicization” can nearly be defined as the “monetization” of medicine, which has been going on for a long time, primarily, in the U. S., since the Johnson administration.

Many countries have provided “universal health care” while the United States has done so only stepwise, retaining as much innovation and private initiative as possible, resulting in the greatest industrialized health care system in the world even since Medicare, while the beast nibbled away, digesting philosophies and dollars with equal rapacity.  There are vestiges of independence and competition remaining, which enables our remarkable responsiveness to medical needs in comparison to most state-run “health-care” programs.  Unfortunately, competition and independent excellence are increasingly perceived as problems by the “nattering nabobs of negativism”1 whom we continue to re-elect.

The hitherto ethical boundaries that defined and protected our phenomenal medical care systems, have nearly disappeared.  Where “doctors” in general were once automatically trusted because of their ethical standing, more commonly, now, doctors are forced – and their patients just as much – to provide certain treatments at certain rates of contact for costs dictated by federal agencies.  The most egregious of these trends is crystallized by the Pfizer and Moderna and other injections purported to “protect” us from Covid-19 and variants thereof.

“Medicine” has attempted to protect itself through a principle known as “informed consent.”  The old “Hippocratic Oath” was too close to a religious oath, for one thing, and, as the ability of medical technology has improved to a point of sidestepping many life-threatening conditions (ie. Heart bypass and valve-replacement surgeries) ever-larger medical consortiums have seized upon “informed consent” to reduce their liability for bad outcomes.  Extraordinary promises require extraordinary defenses.

Consequently, patient-customers are presented with various forms of Informed Consent or “waiver” forms on even fairly simple procedures.  Contained within each is the promise by the patient to pay for any part of the cost that is not covered by either government or semi-private insurance.  Despite the fact that they have just agreed to the indemnification of the provider from bad results of whatever set of procedures are being ordered, what patients mainly recall about the forms ritual, is that he or she has agreed to pay.  The “waiver” part, though, helps contain the costs of “malpractice” insurance for the provider(s).  More on malpractice, later.  Let’s look, first, at how governments, and politicians and political appointees, are mandating medical procedures.

It’s fairly clear, now, two years after the fact, that sloppy, or, God forbid, intentional procedures in the Wuhan, China Virology Institute caused the recently engineered SARS-Cov-2, novel coronavirus to spread rapidly in the city and across the Hubei Province of which it is the capitol, and from there across the globe.  Sadly, the Dr. Anthony Fauci-led National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases – NIAID – funded gain-of-function research through research company, Eco-Health Alliance, a “non-profit” headed by British scientist Peter Daszak.  Eco-Health remains non-profitable as it funds research in various places around the world, including Wuhan, from grants it obtains from entities like the National Institutes of Health, within which lie the NIAID and Dr. Fauci.  That sentence means what it says.

“Gain of Function” means that a natural bat coronavirus was modified, or engineered in the Wuhan laboratory to enable it to readily infect humans and “humanized” mice for research purposes, but it is a matter of intent.  If some Communist dictatorship intended to create a bio-weapon – just saying – it would cause the exact same engineering to go forward.  Any outside source of the funding needed for such engineering or research would, if it had half a wit, deny any connection to such a sharp, 2-edged sword.  This may account for argumentativeness on the part of the world-renowned Dr. Fauci during testimony in Senate hearings on the coronavirus.  He certainly has half a wit.

For those Americans who carefully limit themselves to certain news sources, the participation of the NIAID in development of Covid-19 is just a rumor, nothing more.

Another rumor that is very widely known… and repeated by numerous official sources, is that President Trump’s “warp speed” regulatory changes and funding produced three very effective “vaccines” against Covid-19 in record time.  Millions are convinced that the rumor is true.  But how could modified RNA technology have been applied to this novel coronavirus so rapidly?  Well, “Moderna,” a little-known Cambridge, Mass. Pharmaceutical company just happened to be working on such a rumored “vaccine” against the SARS-Cov-2 novel coronavirus IN THE WUHAN INSTITUTE OF VIROLOGY in late 2019 before the rest of the world had even heard of the disease.  What a fortunate coincidence.  Almost as if they had been preparing for the “lab leak” that put Covid-19 on the world stage, when the President called upon “science” and business to work together on an emergency search for a vaccine against the deadly worldwide pandemic, why they were more than halfway there!

Miracle of miracles, not just Moderna but Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson / Janssen were also able to develop “vaccines” in record time that were able to be “approved” by the FDA for emergency use, right AFTER the 2020 federal elections, since approval before November 3rd would have yielded bad optics.

Unfortunately, Trump was as much in the dark about the legal and illegal machinations of the NIH, CDC and NIAID as the rest of us.  He simply recognized the need for a vaccine to stem the disease and believed that what the pharmaceutical industry and Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx and the FDA were calling vaccines actually were vaccines.  Trump is a do-er, not a doctor, taking the best advice he could get.  He had no idea how thoroughly corrupted federal health agencies were by “big Pharma.”  Even the FDA whom we trust to protect Americans from bad foods and unproven drugs, is populated almost completely by former pharmaceutical-industry hacks.  So, we can put that rumor to rest.

The other rumor we can finally bury is the “vaccine” status of the modified RNA injections that are, even now, being mandated by businesses and governments, willy-nilly.  They’re not vaccines… they are stimulants.  They stimulate one’s cells to create non-infectious “spike” proteins that are similar to Covid-19 spike proteins.  There very quickly develops a flood of “foreign” spike proteins that the body does its best to get rid of.  If, while the flood of foreign proteins are sloshing around, one is also exposed to the Covid-19 spike proteins, well the body will get rid of them, too, during its stimulated get-rid-of-foreign-spike-proteins-phase.  It’s ingenious, really, and it can reduce the number of Covid-19 proteins (viruses) that are able to infect a person’s cells.  This provides some time for the body’s immune system to finally begin creating defenses against Covid.  For most who are exposed following an MRNA injection, the resulting Covid infection will be somewhat milder than it would have been if never injected.  However, the MRNA injections do not cause the body’s immune system to create T-cells and B-cells that will confer virtually life-long responsiveness to Covid proteins, and rapid immune defenses to them.  They do, however, practically guarantee the emergence of mutations – the dreaded “variants” – by mass-injection programs during a pandemic.

Since the body is good at filtering out foreign proteins, the MRNA injections wear off in a few months, leaving injectees vulnerable to future exposures to Covid-19, and with no built-up immunity or rapid immune defenses, possibly more vulnerable than if never injected.  There is some evidence that natural immunity function, itself, and natural immunity to Covid-19 following infection and recovery, may be impaired by MRNA injections.  Natural immunity to Covid is 5 to 25 times stronger than the temporary “immunity” conferred by MRNA injection, so it seems a shame to weaken it with future MRNA shots.  Apparently our politicians know better than scientists and doctors what is “good” for us.

As part of “warp speed” development of the MRNA injections, pharmaceutical companies were granted immunity from suits due to bad injection reactions up to and including death.  This is interesting.  The same people who shy away from you if you are not “vaccinated” and who rush to get their children “vaccinated” with MRNA injections, want gun manufacturers to be made fully liable for the use of their products, yet many, many more people die from pharmaceuticals and bad reactions to them, and from bad drug interactions, than from gunshots – many more.  The MRNA injections, themselves, account for upwards of 45,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of bad reactions that have yielded debilitating effects, including paralysis.  “Give it to our children!” some people cry.

One of the greatest, life-changing effects of MRNA injections, is the creation of dozens of new billionaires from governments’ purchasing of these “free” shots.

Malpractice insurance is no problem for big Pharma, but it is for most treatment providers.  Throughout medical school and residency, future physicians are schooled in the employment of “best practice” when diagnosing or treating patients both medically and surgically.  Best practice is a doctor’s only defense against charges of “malpractice.”  Hence, defensive medicine is the best practice: every test that might illuminate and inform a doctor’s next step or recommendation or prescription, must be employed lest a key piece of “best practice” be overlooked, creating malpractice vulnerability.

Throughout medical education, “best practices” are taught, tested, drilled and tested again and again.  The advancement of medical knowledge is not as rapid as it may appear.  It takes time and extensive trial and error: studies, “teaching hospital” trials, even for surgical improvement, before a new procedure among dozens that comprise complex surgery or cancer treatments and every other interaction with doctors and laboratories, may be accepted as a “best” practice.  To a great degree, the defensibility of the procedure contributes to its “best” designation.  Also crucial, however, is the predictability of result in the majority of patients.

When new procedures are finally tried and used, the old “informed consent” firewall is duly presented and signed.  Progress is made, somewhat better methods and, presumably, results manifest, the patients recover, possibly faster.  Because of testing and trials with careful analyses of results written up for peer review and duplication of results in similar patients, “informed consent” is genuinely “informed.”  Insurance companies and their attorneys have been satisfied that coverage should, properly, be extended to cover the new procedure or device or development.  What ever the patient now consents to has been deemed “safe” enough and effective enough that the overall risk to the insurors can be quantified as low enough – and, thus, to the patient – that they’ll “cover it.”  The provider institution and every clinician who will be part of the new whatever, is also able to be insured, and PROTECTED so long as the insurable “best practice” is employed.  Are MRNA injections a “best practice?”  Who the Hell even knows?  Evidence is accumulating that they are NOT.

The cost of progress is not small.  Research and trials are financed, oftentimes by the pharmaceutical industries.  Many changes require new drugs or new formulations of drugs, and their new aspects and applications must also be tested, whether under real treatment conditions or in research programs at medical schools, among other venues.  Doctors are “educated” in large part by and thanks to pharmaceutical manufacturers.  All of their professors have been, too.  Best practice is as much best prescription as best action.  And doctors and institutions like pharmaceuticals that have been “approved” by the “independent” Food and Drug Administration (FDA); they form a large part of “best practices.”  If a malpractice suit is brought against any provider, his, her or its only defense, all things being normal, is that “best practices” were employed, documented, and witnessed by other professionals.  Every medical student knows this: it helps cement their trust of “Pharma.”  Their products are predictable in effect and “approved.”

Now and then, however, a drug is approved only for “emergency” use or for “last resort” use.  This is because there has not been sufficient testing on enough populations to gain full FDA approval.  Typically the emergency demand for such a drug is from a fairly small population, each of whom signs a quite different “Informed Consent” form that makes clear the experimental nature of the drug in question and its “emergency use only” designation.

Where does this leave all the brilliant people in the medical industry when the subject is the “emergency use only”-designated Covid-19 MRNA injections?  Are they impressed or confused by the description of the injections as “vaccines?”  Surely that can’t be so.

Are they blinded by the CDC’s daily recommendation to be “vaccinated” by these experimental chemicals, regardless of the mounting evidence of the rapid decline of such “protection” from Covid that they offer?  Impossible.  They’re all very smart, very careful professionals.  Are all the providers of the injections offering informed consent forms to every guinea pig…. ahhm, recipient of the experimental shots?  Well, no, how could they when the data from testing has not been released by the FDA?  Clearly when people roll up their sleeves they are consenting to the injection, but not because they are well-informed of the risks.  In fact, by calling the shots “vaccines,” they have been MIS-informed by every official health-care agency or department in municipal, state and federal governments, including the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci and the NIAID he heads, the FDA and thousands of Doctors nationwide and even worldwide.  Even the President and his predecessor and a host of other politicians are on the same misinformation train: they all refer to these weird biologics as “vaccines.”

People fundamentally trust vaccines.  Vaccines protect the recipient from diseases like polio, Rubella, chicken-pox, diptheria and tetanus.  Vaccines can protect against pneumonia, tuberculosis and shingles.  They confer “natural immunity.”  Someday, we hope, there will be an actual vaccine that protects against Covid-19; people will want to get that shot.  Unfortunately we don’t have one… not yet.  We have Modified RNA injections that don’t confer immunity and provide only temporary protection from the worst effects of infection.  They’re NOT vaccines.  OMG.  Is money a factor?

“Medicine” has crossed an ethical line, as if to catch up to the dozens of ethical and legal lines politicians and governments cross every day.  Across the country hospitals are literally firing highly trained and experienced doctors, nurses and others who are declining to receive the experimental MRNA injections.  This seems stupid, on the face of it.  Why would smart professionals fire other smart professionals over an experimental shot the safety and efficacy of which the former group cannot describe to the latter?

Do you know who else is being fired?  Police officers, firefighters, Army, Navy, Marine and Special Operations troops – all expensively trained and needed.  What kind of idiots would do that?

Speaking of crossed lines, did you know that life-saving surgeries are being denied to people who are not the recipient of these weird injections?  God save us. 1. With thanks to the late Spiro Agnew.

Biden, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2021, Race, Representation, Trump

TIME NOT ON OUR SIDE

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Time may not be on our side.  One cannot overview the world and our political circumstances… and the calendar, without realizing a little fear for where things might go from here.  Where is that?

Let’s look at some of the pressures building up.

First, the political time-line.  Mid-term elections are the historic relief valve for sometimes hasty or confused political decisions made during presidential elections two years earlier.  There certainly were those in 2020.  Because the national conscience is so, well… impacted by beliefs concerning the 2020 elections – stolen or not stolen – the release of tensions in the 2022 mid-terms is a little harder to predict than what a lot of pundits are trying to foresee.  Most are making judgements on “normal” political considerations and it doesn’t seem Prudent to do so.

The weird eminence that most have already discounted, but who is the key to millions of voters’ decisions, is Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.  She has been a unique Speaker, at least.  For decades she has appeared to be simply a fierce partisan and has been appreciated, if not revered, by partisan Democrats who were happy to be “winning” barely-understood battles through her slick machinations.  By rights, she should be at the end of her career, and she probably is, but it’s a career that descended into a previously unrecognized socialism starting under Obama and deepening with hatred under Trump.  In those 12 years, Democrats became uneasy.  While enjoying victories Nancy engineered, no matter how messy, Dems also became concerned about the leftward lurch, yet had no other port in which to seek refuge.  Over the Trump years, leftist hatred for “America First” left many Democrats adrift.  What are they going to do in 2022?

If “centrist” or “American” Democrats abandon the Pelosi-led leftists (not that Pelosi was elected to lead the leftists: she has run, skipped twisted and kneeled as needed to stay ahead of them) will they suddenly vote Republican?  That doesn’t seem Prudent.  Will they fail to vote in standard numbers?  That question forces Prudence to wonder about what “the Black vote” might do.

Blacks have slowly been drifting away from their Democrat plantation, with an interesting increase in that trend in 2020.  Despite Covid, Blacks did well economically under Trump since 2017.  Despite, also, a perpetual anti-Trump media blitz accusing Trump of racism, Blacks could see that his policies helped all races.  Like all underdogs, Trump was seen somewhat sympathetically by Blacks who understood too well how prejudice hurts.  Have Blacks been treated better by increasing leftism?  Were they advanced by BLM-led riots and Antifa hatreds that damaged so many black businesses and jobs?  Have they been helped by Democrats’ union-led resistance to school choice?  Has weakening public safety served Black families or neighborhoods in any way?  Are they particularly likely to “reward” Pelosi’s weird coalitions with more power, more votes?  That doesn’t seem Prudent, either.  But, will they vote for anyone else?

So, on the backdrop of multiple failures of the “Biden” administration and severe economic news, what will be the “shape” of the change in fortunes for our two parties?  Over the next 11 months, how virulent will the Pelosi Left become?  Clearly their anger has been kindled by the loss of legislative momentum thanks to West Virginia Senator, Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator, Kyrsten Sinema.  Even 3 counties of Maryland would like to become part of West Virginia.

In 2020 we suffered through months of cultural destruction and destructive rioting and looting and economic despair in numerous cities.  Many strange, leftist mayors and governors have been exposed as feckless, ignorant and ideologically foolish.  Americans are practically fleeing their jurisdictions for states that seem to honor the Constitution more.  Yet the Pelosi House insisted on passing the enormous, so-called “Build Back Better” bill that would have transformed fundamental freedoms and democratic-republic structures created by the Constitution.  Against the backdrop of systemic failure at the southern border and the flood of illegals swept into the country by administration policies, the congress spent inordinate time on the “BBB” plan and the pointless “January 6th” commission.  Not a word is spoken in congress about what Americans are truly upset about, not least of which is the southern border.  With that legislation apparently doomed, what will the 117th Congress do to improve Democrats’ re-election chances in 2022?  Most options are likely to do damage to the republic at least domestically.

_________

Internationally, the Biden bindlestiffs have made a mockery of leadership and of honesty.  Without fundamental honesty, there are no diplomatic maneuvers that will work, almost regardless of what’s at stake.  In matters of war and alliance, conditions, tensions, and opportunities for gross, deadly errors, can spiral out of control quite abruptly.  Let’s look at the simplest area of tension: Iran.

The postulate is the following: Iran hates the United States as much or more than it hates Israel.  Iran is a theocracy determined to correct spiritual wrongs to the point of suicide.  To correct those wrongs, Iran will use nuclear weapons.  The inherent danger is that first the Obama regime and now the Biden regime DON’T BELIEVE THESE THINGS.  That is, they’d rather believe that Iran is as rational as other nations, desirous of better living standards for its people, better economic conditions internally, and willing to negotiate to achieve those ends.  All this talk about “death to America” and wiping Israel off the map is just talk, just posturing.  Because they don’t believe the United States can be guided by religious concepts of good and evil, neither can any other nation.  The United States can show them how love is better than hate and kindness and generosity will prove that the U. S. can be a reliable partner in seeking a better life for Iranians.

As the imbecilic John F. Kerry, onetime Secretary of State once said: “Would that it were, would that it were.”  For a man who has but the mildest relationship with truth, he places a lot of faith in the words of Iranian negotiators.  He apparently believes that Iran is enrichening Uranium purely for domestic power production… to improve the standard of living for Iranians.

Trump, to his America-first credit, had a sense of when he was being lied-to, and that extended to Iran.  He recognized that the “Iran Nuclear” agreement (never proposed as a nation-binding Treaty because it would never pass the Senate) was a pack of lies, which, naturally, Biden has been begging Iran to renew under his administration.  Iran has refused, so far.  With all the cash and lifting of sanctions that Obama and Biden have given them, the Iranians no longer need to negotiate further concessions under the agreement – they received what they needed for free.  Now it is merely a matter of time before Iran starts issuing nuclear-backed threats toward Israel, which the Biden regime will perceive as opportunities to go “back to the negotiating table.”  To their credit, Israel (and other nations in the Mideast) will take steps to prevent an Iranian strike.  The U. S. won’t, failing to realize that Iran will likely strike both the Little Satan and the Big Satan simultaneously. 

PRUDENT JUDGMENT: VERY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION.

The next simplest, as in somewhat more complicated, problem area is the Western Pacific, including both Taiwan and North Korea, but also India, unfortunately.  Here is the postulate: China intends to take over Taiwan; China virtually controls what North Korea does at any point; China will not move against Taiwan if it believes the U. S. will fight for Taiwan’s independence; China is beginning to think that the U. S. will not make any serious moves to stop China (the Biden family’s compromised position vis a’ vis China is a factor, here); and, finally, North Korea will make some sort of military moves against South Korea at the same time, seriously complicating United States’ response to the Taiwan crisis.  There has been shooting along the frontier of China and India within the past 18 months.  It is not inconceivable that China would stir that pre-heated kettle at the same time or before, that it moves against Taiwan.  This feint would likely involve Pakistan, as well, another nuclear power that hates India.  Every nation in the arc from the Arabian Sea to Qinzhou will suddenly be seeking a side in the conflict.  The failure of the U. S. to decisively defend its allies will transform the entire region and its oceans… and world trade.

PRUDENT JUDGMENT: EXTREMELY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION.

Finally, of the 3 hottest spots, Ukraine and Russia are preparing for some level of shooting.  The U. S., thanks to Obama and Joe Biden’s family, has meddled in Ukraine for years.  Ukraine is a big country that encompasses wide swaths of fertile land, great waterways, warm-water coastline on the Black Sea, huge coal deposits and iron ore, manganese ore, and other ores, which yield a large steel industry, heavy machinery manufacturing and, its greatest political weakness, a natural, relatively unimpeded pathway for oil and gas products to be transported to Western Europe.  The same can transport armies, too.

For more than a thousand years the Russian people have had strong cultural and religious ties to Kyiv, now the capitol of Ukraine, and to Crimea, Odessa and Sevastopol.  Strategically, the naval value of Crimea is perceived as so crucial to Russia, as with the USSR, that taking the Crimean peninsula “back” from a recently independent Ukraine was worth the international condemnation.  It’s a done deal and will never be negotiable.

In addition, the industrial heartland of Ukraine in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnetpropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya, covers much of eastern Ukraine from the Dneiper River to the Russian border.  Russia depends on many of the manufacturers in the region for not just machinery, but military and aerospace equipment.  Not having complete control of them is a sore spot.  Further, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson districts have significant Russian populations and Russian-speaking populations, which has formed an excuse for Russian regulars posing as irregulars or subversives, to create an enclave of sorts with a militarized line facing Ukrainian army regulars.

Sensing weakness and indecision from the Biden administration, and determined to not have Ukraine join NATO, Putin and the Russian Federation is looking for the opportune time to, in effect, take control of eastern Ukraine, if not all of Ukraine, by military force or forced federation.  When they move, what will Biden do?  Both Democrats and some Republicans have made tough-sounding statements about standing firm with Ukraine as if the status of Ukraine were a vital national interest.  Perhaps it is.  But setting up a line of U. S. troops to deter Russia seems unduly provocative.  If the situation were reversed and the Russians were placing troops to deter the U. S. from taking over cartel-dominated Mexico, let’s just say, we would certainly not find that a reason to stand down, would we?

What seems “small” to most Americans, in geopolitical terms, could place us in a hot confrontation with a huge nuclear power, 4,000 miles from our border, where both the land location and the naval one make us the underdog.

PRUDENT JUDGEMENT: VERY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION, and more dangerous than it appears.

____________

The shift away from “America First” thanks to the 2020 “elections,” has caused friends and foes, alike, to re-evaluate their relationships with the U. S.  The brutal withdrawal from Afghanistan, apparently executed by military idiots and a bumbling president, has changed strategic calculations by many nations.  The English-speaking world no longer reveres the U. S. as the leader of their coalition, and certainly does not respect Biden as it did Trump.  A strong, pro-national leader is not only respected, but understood by other nations, including adversaries.  There is a profound logic to leadership that clearly is patriotic and who speaks clearly of his – or her – intentions.  No nation likes surprises, internationally, nor confusing messages.  Every leader can make clear judgments about clear leaders, even about those they view as opponents.  This is not our current situation.

It has been said many times that the most dangerous circumstance is when other nations are unsure about what America will fight for; it is yet even more dangerous when America, itself, is unsure.  God save us.

Culture, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2021, Religion

LEX SINE VERITAS

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Pick a meaning, any meaning.

For all the efforts at controlling language and the meaning of words, new words and new lies, the actual purposes behind the “Great Reset” or “Build Back Better,” or behind “equity” and “anti-racism,” “social justice” or “vaccine” can be clearly seen and understood.  Indeed, it is amazing how quickly actual Americans can grasp the truth should it be placed before them.  We do have to overcome the problem of various media outlets – digital, broadcast, print – being so wedded to agendas, even “narratives,” that truths and facts that belie them must be suppressed.  Some will literally purvey the opposite of those truths in order to defend their adopted positions.

The impact of a dishonest “press” is immense.  The value of a “free press” in a republic cannot be overstated; a large part of that value is informed skepticism of those in power.  Implicit in that value is honesty… truthfulness.  The historic tendency of government types to arrogate ungranted (by ‘we, the people’) powers, is legendary.  In the presence of tyrannical government an obsequious press makes good business sense; an investigative, “muck-raking” press is in danger.  Our present circumstance provides a lens through which to view the nature of “news” and information-media, today.  But a bit of historical perspective, first.

No functional constitutional republic has ever been successfully subverted by socialist tyranny, or fascism.  There have been many constitutional republics by description, but they were, or are, responses to earlier military or revolutionary governance periods.  Their populations never have shared beliefs in economic or moral philosophies; their factions have not been able to compromise for the national good.  Some do exist today, having rejected mainly socialist/fascist tyranny –those for the decades since the Second World War.

The United States is the oldest and most successful of them, all.  This nation grew from primarily Christian sources.  Despite a history of conflicts in Europe, competing royal “houses” and kingdoms, the moral philosophy of Europe was part of every country, as was, essentially, economic philosophy.  The greatest “inventions” to come out of Judeo-Christian Europe were democracy, banking, double-entry accounting, and civil structure like courts and republicanism.  In other words, the means for civil order and dispute resolution among disparate peoples were imported to the New World.  The concepts of the Magna Carta, parliamentarianism and private property, trade and profit, and of social welfare, were planted in America’s soil.  Combined with a sense of freedom and individuality abetted by physical separation and insulation from Europe, all the components of a new way to govern and organize were here.  Enter the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

However, like any contract or covenant, the Constitution is only as good as the integrity of its “parties.”

The “Founding Fathers” could never have conceived of the divisions that have been created since 1789.  Divisions, or “factions” in the 18th century were more, well, practical than those that have erupted since the mid-nineteenth century.  Madison and others were developing a people-up granting of power to a limited government.  The alternatives were monarchy and militarism.  The “world-view” was formed within a basically Christian belief structure.  It was obvious – essentially unquestioned – that people would strive for freedom.  It was equally obvious that individuals would exercise responsibility for themselves and their families.  There were no alternatives and no concepts of alternatives.  That a large minority of Americans might agitate and even riot FOR the imposition of tyranny, was an idea virtually no one held upon the ratification of the constitution.

No one should hold it today, either, but here we are.

Since the Garden of Eden, mankind’s ability to dilute the Thesis with Antithesis has proven artful, intricate and continuous… until Marxism.  For thousands of years humans have managed to compare their individual sins to those of others that seemed worse, placing the former, psychologically, more on God’s side than the latter, yielding levels of tolerable civilization and sanction that enabled generally better conditions and real “progress.”  Looking back, the wise observer can see that great evils were unleashed as monarchical and theocratic institutions grew in sophistication and military prowess.  Each advance in technology enabled advances in control of populations and economies while fitfully improving living conditions.  As communications became individualized and less architectural, via printing, so did the growth and refinement of grandiose theories of control.  Theories of government, economics and philosophies spread from many minds, not just religious or powerful ones.  Western civilization entered a period of revolution that has not ended.

The concepts of Communism represent the final step of antithesis, or opposition to the Word of God.  Most avowed Marxists are too ignorant to know that Marx, himself, proclaimed the existence of God and his, Marx’, declared opposition to God.  Marx was destined for Hell, in his own words.  His mission was going to be realized through revolution based on economics and he defined “oppression” based on owners of production, as a class, and workers, as those oppressed, as a class.  It was too neat and could not destroy freedom, either economically or spiritually.  It did provide the basis for the death of 100 Million to 200 Million people – murderous enough to disprove Marxist theory, one might conclude.

The ability to subvert freedom, which is to say, to subvert the Constitutional Republic known as the United States of America, required a long-term plan on 5 fronts: education, religion, elections, law and communications.  The means to accomplish Marxist subversion did not exist until the digital age, or, essentially, since 1980. 

The “Press” had been transmuting itself since Watergate, moving closer and closer towards advocacy for leftist points of view.  As leftists are wont to do, owners of leftist media became more concerned with the social/political change that would encourage more widespread leftism among the population, than about the business aspects of their publications.  As a group they were ready for the ability to shift America to the left.  Computerization and, since 1983, the internet, completed the needed toolkit.  News and web-based information has both proliferated and become less-trusted since then.  Indeed, Americans are divided, in one way, simply by the name of the news source we watch or read.  News has become a matter of belief and, sadly, hatred.

Education has enjoyed over 100 years of subversive transformation, first as so-called “public” education and, as leftists and anti-Christians took over teaching and the certification of teachers, states’ licensing and teacher education at the college level, private education became infected, too.

We are reaping that whirlwind, now manifesting in the epidemic of transgenderism and public policies of removing parents from the education and even development of their children.

Our system of laws is the fundament of our successful survival as a Constitutional Republic.  Further, EQUAL justice under the law, which is to say, equal application of the laws, is our basis for equality of individual citizens and for the basic honesty of our business and other contracts.  Interleaved amongst all of our legal relationships is equal responsibility of every adult, parent, employee or business owner, public employee or elected official, to follow the laws and bear the consequences of their actions, good or bad.  With the grossly tilted elections of District Attorneys who so disagree with law enforcement as to ignore crimes rather than prosecute them, and with elected officials, even Presidents, who blithely ignore the Constitution they swore to uphold, the rule of law has become tattered and misshapen and, now, only barely the basis for the protection of citizens or their civil rights.  Watching riots and un-restricted looting in many cities, promulgated by a political hatred for a president and by communist efforts to dissolve society, and specifically NOT resisted by municipal and state elected authorities, leads any observer to wonder what directives or orders from elected authorities or their police forces even are worth. Mob violence and threats of violence, as in the weird case of George Floyd, penetrates into courtrooms and juries.  When they cannot uphold the laws, then any citizen might wonder whether the laws he or she doesn’t agree with may also be ignored?

As for law, itself, we are staring down a steep slope toward social disintegration.  Without equal application of the laws, there is only tyranny.  When illegal aliens are not held even to the laws that govern citizens, but to looser ones, or where individuals arrogate the power to undo legislated legal codes and refuse to enforce laws of their own choosing, as many District or State’s attorneys are now doing, there is only tyranny or anarchy – sadly, the goal of militants amongst us.

Subverting elections became a science in 2020.  The leftist media uniformly deny that the election could possibly have been stolen; “there is only the occasional error or attempted voting by a few ineligibles, but nothing of any significance.”  Subverting elections is almost the perfect crime.  Not only are there but a few weeks in which to investigate and examine “evidence” that has passed through many hands, and the same short period within which to files lawsuits against people who are only tangentially responsible for pieces of the evidence and who have no interest whatsoever in helping a complainant find evidence against their employer(s), but there is equally as much intransigence among courts and jurists who may have to run for their positions and who can’t / won’t avoid political realities.

Added to the built-in difficulties and limits to the ability to bring a case, are the media who have already proclaimed a winner, particularly when the winner is on “their” side.  Immediately upon “calling” a race the media are aligned against a challenger who claims the election to be fraudulent.  After all, everyone “knows” that claiming fraud is merely a right wing conspiracy theory.  Who wants to be seen as helping those crackpots – or, in the case of Donald Trump, that crackpot above all?  Careers are on the line, small and large.  In a presidential election, cases must be brought in multiple states all within a 5- to 6-week window.  Once an election result is “certified” by the state involved, the likelihood of proving statewide fraud or even fraud in a few cities, is essentially gone.  If a state IS found to have certified a fraudulent total, there exists no mechanism of enforcement – or agency of enforcement – to require deeper investigation or recalculation or re-certification of its votes.  A perfect crime, and all the criminals are hapless bureaucrats.

All of the “new disintegration” of America is both abetted and celebrated by modern media.  Even social media – ostensibly non-press – must be included in this wave of anti-Americanism and anti-Christianity.  Because media companies have their butts on the scales, the information that screen-addicts absorb is tilted severely leftward and anti-morality.  Social media, combined with the mostly leftward tilt of cable and broadcast “news,” leave large swaths of Americans receiving partial, yet “comfortable” information that need not threaten even the oddest beliefs.

So, on the 5 key institutional frontiers, while things look far from rosy, there are scattered bright spots.  Disappointingly, churches are largely becoming more liberal, more “politically correct,” when what is needed is a more unified adherence to gospel.  The jury is out on the mid-term success and survival of organized Christian churches.  Because of this, the same question applies to Western civilization.  The role of the United States of America and its citizens, is exceptional.  As we rush to dis-avow that role, we seem oblivious to the consequences to the whole world and to ourselves.  God bless us and save us, everyone.

Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2021

THE VELOCITY OF CARBON

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Masking won’t help…

In terms of money, economists measure the health or activity of an economy using “velocity” of money in an economy.  There are a thousand measuring tools measuring the same parameter, whether it’s investment dollars generating new production or a change in policy like a tax cut or increase that either releases money to or sucks money from, an economy.  Supply-chain snags can certainly reduce the velocity of money; building road, rail or air infrastructure can speed it up.  If you’re seeking real understanding of this kind of velocity you’ll have to ask someone else: I know only how rapidly $20 bills move out of my pocket these days, converting themselves to a few coins in a blink of an eye.

Let’s talk about the climate… a place where velocity is never discussed as a “good.”  It’s always “bad,” and it’s everybody’s fault, which means “climate change” by today’s – or this morning’s – definition, is going to increase a lot of financial velocities while slowing or stopping others.  These effects will affect everybody and his or her $20’s like we’ve never seen.  In any case, the velocity of “change” in the Earth’s climate seems to always be too fast, potentially the end of humanity, often in a very small numbers of years, and the result of conservative politics.  That is, unless the “conservative” in question is neither European nor English-speaking.  The Earth knows.

Very quickly, climate change discussion centers on carbon: carbon dioxide, carbon-based fuels, “carbon-neutrality” by 2030, 2050 or next week.  Anyway, the other day, at a point when no other useful actions were possible, Prudence led to an interesting question about climate that we’ve never heard asked: “What is the velocity of carbon in the Earth’s climate-economy?”  And this will be followed in most people’s minds with, “What the Hell is wrong with this person?  There’s no such thing as carbon velocity.”  Ahhh, but there is, my friend… there is.

The Earth has about as much carbon on it as it has ever had.  A lot of it is buried deep underground, but a lot more is in the biosphere between, say, 20 feet below ground and, maybe, 200 feet above ground, although with 1,000-foot high rise buildings we’re certainly stretching those limits.  Then, there’s the ocean – definitely part of the biosphere, so… cripes!  We live in a gigantic biosphere!  And, it’s carbon-based, which is to say that molecules with carbon in them are the fundamental building-blocks of life, including seaweed and us.

Now, the CLIMATE we all live in has been “changing” for billions of years, which is a very good thing.  The simplest example of a climate-change “good” is the endings of ice-ages, of which there have been several.  Humans were impacted by only the last couple of them: they’re not very frequent, thank goodness, and the impacts of the last one are still with us, even being enjoyed by us, like the Great Lakes, Cape Cod and so forth.

For the average ersatz vaccine-loving supplicant to climate-change fears, the movement of carbon from safety underground to horrific, polluting, crime above ground is a cumulative, onrushing white-man-caused threat to life.  Why, the USGS (U. S. Geologic Survey) tells us that upwards of 36.5 TRILLION TONS of carbon spewed (probably, “spewed”) into the atmosphere worldwide in 2019!  That is a hu-u-u-u-ge number, but there are lots of huge numbers involved when measuring worldwide things.  A small amount was in the form of methane, other ethanes, ordinary “anes” and the majority of it from CO2 which is a lot heavier than average, breathable air.  Fortunately for all concerned, plants “breathe” CO2 in and oxygen, O2 out.

“Oh, my Gawd!  Everybody stop breathing!”  Also, stop mowing your lawn, heating your homes, cooking, refrigerating, making plastics, driving cars and trucks and, for God’s sake, stop flying back and forth around the world on those terrible jet planes… just stay home.

Quite a bit of CO2 derives from cute little woodland creatures that, since Walt Disney gave them names, we must love and protect, along with every other sort of elk, antelope, bison, bear, reindeer, POLAR bears, for heaven’s sake, whales, dolphins, dogs, cats, protected tigers, elephants and, of course those evil cattle who do little but eat and fart, don’t you know?

Still more comes from rotting vegetation in the normal cycle of plant life and the bacteria and bugs, termites and ants that live off of the trillions of tons of IT.  Government types, those who really like to apply rules for living to most everyone else – rules derived from superior intellects like theirs – hold, without fail, concepts of perfection for humanity and how humanity should live, among which are rules against eating animals that Disney may have named or which provide substantial amounts of nutrition for sub-perfect humans, nutrition those same humans may be “taught” to live better without.

Just the same, carbon in various chemical combinations moves into and out of the atmosphere at rates that could be measured, extrapolated, closely estimated, and measured again for more or less controllable impacts humans might want to have.  Except no one asks the velocity question.  There are no grant millions for calculating how fast carbon churns in what kinds of weather, over what kinds of land or waters. Or, in what levels of the atmosphere.  Grants are plentiful if researchers – or advocates – can add to climate panic; only a level of panic enables political control, after all, which is a large part of making grant monies available: find out something that makes specific political or taxation controls possible.  If you find out something else, give it a good leaving-alone.

No matter how carbon moves around, whether from volcanoes seen and unseen, or burning forests to yield cropland, or propelling planes at 35,000 feet, or burning trash at ground level, moving trucks and things, or, pushing ships with both vital and frivolous container loads, joy-riding passengers or militaries setting off to war, not all climatological consequences are of the same value.  Some are just plain pollution, spreading dirt where we live in ways that we could control if the value were better understood.  Others are “necessary evils,” tolerated, temporarily, for lack of cleaner alternatives.  Over the past 130 years, say, humans have quite consistently moved away from “dirty” ways to improve life and living standards, towards much cleaner ones.  Only a relative handful of people on Earth burn cattle dung to keep warm – too many, and a very controllable problem – but a handful.

Cars and trucks get phenomenally better mileage compared to 40 or 50 years ago, as do even those jet planes at 35,000 feet.  More and more electricity is generated without coal, and “scrubbers” can mitigate particulates and sulphur compounds, which are actually bad to have in the air, along with some CO2, making even coal much cleaner.  New buildings are built to be far more thermally efficient.  New lighting and electronics are far more efficient, too.  Watch for the impact of solid-state batteries in making almost everything electrical more efficient, including cars and trucks.

The point is, CO2 in the air is not, per se, a bad thing, but if you ask the average, fearful, climate-change crybaby what he or she is afraid of and the answer will be that we have to stop spewing CO2 or else the world is going to end… possibly even before illegal aliens and polar bears get the vote!

In a sense, we are constantly reminded that the CO2 from last year, and the year before that, and before that, and ever since the first automobile burned gasoline, is hanging over our heads ready to destroy the PLANET, including my daughter’s recycling science project!  All it will take to tip the balance is for a few more Trump voters to drive through drive-up windows for a cheeseburger and some Freedom Fries, when they could have had a hand-picked kale salad.  The time to act is now, now, now!

But it isn’t, is it?  The CO2 building up in the atmosphere, I mean.  It churns around, dissolving into bodies of water, like oceans, of which there are a lot, and if not dissolved right away, generally CO2 sinks down to near ground level because it’s quite a bit heavier than air.  This, alone, is a good thing, because that’s where most plants that we can eat, grow.  Whoever thought of this system was a very smart Dude.

Mankind, however, is both brilliant and ignorant, wise and foolish, scientific and superstitious, and clean and dirty.  We used to think that God had provided convenient sewers in the form of rivers, but we have become smarter about that foolishness – we could be and will be much smarter about that.  We used to think the atmosphere was a big river to dump effluents into, too, but we’re coming around quickly on that foolishness.  Politically, however, we are being propelled to ever greater foolishness over CO2, not because we can “save the planet” and keep ocean levels and weather right where WE want them by limiting it, but so that we can, politically, control how people live, prodding them ever closer to the perfection models government-types have clung-to since Miss Hannigan’s 4th grade terrarium with the turtle in it.

Just like fraudulent COVID-19 statistics, if the government and compliant media focus on single numbers, a lot of fear can be ginned up, quickly modifying sovereign individuals’ actions, beliefs and willing abandonment of freedoms… like the number of COVID “cases,” as they “spike” from time to time.  Most are simple positive results from testing, and what they have detected are remnants of spike proteins, mostly not actual infections.  If you run enough cycles of PCR tests you can detect a lot of “cases.”  Everyone can be made to change his life through the police-power of the state or municipality because of largely meaningless numbers like these.  Fixating on how much CO2 goes into the atmosphere is much the same.  That we should be happy it’s there, for the most part, is never part of the news.  Do you have any concept of where we’d be without global warming?

Respecting our home planet by not dirtying its air and water is a noble thing to do – not from baseless fears but from purpose.

There are satellites watching the whole earth, now, measuring CO2 for places where it comes from and goes to at different times of year.  These are fine data to have and will, little by little, improve recommendations for spewing less CO2 .  Which we probably should… spew less, that is.  But we never will, or never will fast enough, if we don’t adopt a worldwide perspective on being clean or dirty in how we live, prosper and move ourselves and things about, starting with how cleanly we can generate electricity.  This will have to include nuclear power at its best, for urban areas, and solar collection and energy storage at its best in rural areas.  Cleaning up the planet need not, and should not require forcing people into cities, for example, or forcing ever tighter regulation on freedom (quite the opposite) or directing whole economies from a dictatorial, tight-control top.

It does involve honest education and a recognition that fouling where we live is anathema to both God and to humanity.  Economic mobility is prime in terms of balancing needs and wants and increasing qualities of life.  That comes from freedom.  Any “plan” for defeating – pick any – COVID, inflation, climate change, crime, ignorance, poverty in every other country in the world, that also includes restricting personal freedom or sovereignty, is the absolutely wrong move to accept.  A political party that identifies with restricting freedom and which villainizes those who don’t, does not deserve any American’s vote.