CNN+ is shutting down after its launching just three weeks ago, the network announced in a Wednesday statement.
The platform is set to end operations by April 30, the network said in a statement. Andrew Morse, CNN’s chief digital officer and head of the streaming platform, decided to step down from his position.
“As we become Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN will be strongest as part of WBD’s streaming strategy which envisions news as an important part of a compelling broader offering along with sports, entertainment, and nonfiction content,” said Chris Licht, Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide. “We have therefore made the decision to cease operations of CNN+ and focus our investment on CNN’s core news-gathering operations and in further building CNN Digital.”
“This is not a decision about quality; we appreciate all of the work, ambition and creativity that went into building CNN+, an organization with terrific talent and compelling programming. But our customers and CNN will be best served with a simpler streaming choice.”
CNN+ launched on March 29. It’s shutting down on April 30.
Licht said CNN+ employees will continue to be paid and receive company benefits for the next 90 days, then be handed a six-month severance, he said.
The platform braced themselves for layoffs at the moment of its launching due to low subscription numbers, which caused the network’s parent company, WarnerMedia, to complete its merger with DiscoveryPlus, now known as Warner Bros. Discovery. The platform was slated to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in investments and projections.
Nearly $300 million had been spent on the service, Axios reported. It is unclear if CNN+ executives, including boss Andrew Morse, will stay with the service after investment cuts.
The platform had under 10,000 active daily users in its first month, though executives expected those numbers to reach near 2 million in the first year and 15-18 million in four years.
The platform hosted several of the network’s hosts, including Anderson Cooper, Poppy Harlow and Chris Wallace, who left Fox News in December to host a CNN+ show.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-04-21 13:01:192022-04-21 13:01:19CNN+ To Shut Down Less Than 5 Weeks After Launching
Since Russia attacked Ukraine two months ago, Western governments have been learning the hard way about the critical importance of energy to their national security. Germany’s 20-year, trillion-dollar “Energiewende” (Energy Transformation) has made its economy totally dependent on supplies of Russian natural gas and paralyzed its response to Russian aggression. French president Emmanuel Macron faces a tougher re-election fight this month thanks to soaring energy prices and failure to replace the nation’s aging fleet of nuclear power stations. The Biden administration is tapping America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to tamp down energy costs as inflation heads toward double digits.
As the West grapples with the energy implications of a hostile Sino-Russian alliance, the steering group of the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, whose members manage over $10.4 trillion of assets, issued a statement urging Western governments not to sacrifice climate goals for energy security. “The world is still heading for an excess of fossil fuel-based energy use that will vastly exceed the carbon budget needed to meet the 1.5° Celsius Paris agreement goal. This trend must be halted,” the United Nations-backed alliance said in its April 8 statement, arguing that “the national security argument for accelerating the net-zero transition has strengthened considerably.”
What, one might ask, is the standing of asset managers to opine on national security matters? They have no expertise in this domain. It turns out that their understanding of the economics of energy policy is defective, too.
The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance claims that development of new oil and gas reserves will lock in fossil fuel subsidies, exacerbating market distortions. In fact, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its 2021 net-zero report states that under its net-zero pathway, tax revenues from oil and gas retail sales fall by about 40% over the next twenty years. “Managing this decline will require long-term fiscal planning and budget reforms,” the IEA warns. Similarly, Britain’s Office of Budget Responsibility estimates that net zero policies will result in the loss of tax receipts representing 1.6% of GDP. So much for the fossil fuel subsidy myth. If fossil fuels were heavily subsidized, eliminating them would mean fossil fuel subsidies disappear. Instead, it’s tax revenues that would melt away to zero.
The net-zero investors cite figures for the decline in solar and wind energy costs. These numbers are based on so-called levelized cost of energy (LCOE), a metric that aims to measure a plant’s lifetime costs. Wind and solar power are intermittent, but LCOE metrics exclude the costs of intermittency, which increase the more wind and solar are put on the grid. Because wind and solar output responds to weather and not to demand, the value of this output declines the more installed wind and solar capacity is available. It was for these reasons that MIT professor of economics Paul Joskow concluded in a foundational 2011 paper that using LCOE metrics to compare intermittent and dispatchable generating technologies, such as coal and natural gas, is a “meaningless exercise.”
Wind and solar investors don’t need to understand the economics of the grid to make money – they are shielded from the intermittency costs their investments inflict on the rest of the grid, which is one reason why their views on energy policy can be taken with a pinch of salt. Their economic illiteracy does, however, make it easy for them to subscribe to the green fairy tale of 100% renewables. They’re not responsible for keeping the lights on – that depends on traditional power plants staying fueled up and ready to spin, which is what Germany can’t do without Russian gas. Adopt the net-zero alliance’s call for no new fossil-fuel investment, and the cost of energy is bound to spiral. And if the lights go out, politicians – not woke investors – get the blame.
Investors’ opinions on energy and national security would matter less if they didn’t have political power. Bloomberg opinion writer Matt Levine argues that asset managers of giant funds form a parallel system of government that exercises overlapping legislative powers with those of governments. These government-by-asset-managers, as Levine calls them, tell companies to do things they think are good for society as a whole, “making big collective decisions about how society should be run, not just business decisions but also decisions about the environment and workers’ rights and racial inequality and other controversial political topics.”
Foremost among these areas is climate policy. Although the Biden administration has set a net-zero goal, Congress has not legislated it, and it lacks the force of law. The absence of legislation passed by democratically accountable legislators, however, presents no barrier to government-by-asset-managers legislating climate policy for the companies in which they invest. “Investors are making net zero commitments for themselves and demanding that companies issue greenhouse gas reduction targets and transition plans for meeting those targets,” says the Reverend Kirsten Snow Spalding of the not-for-profit Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk and Sustainability.
Neither Spalding nor the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance make a case that forcing net-zero targets on companies will boost investor returns, demonstrating that this is not about investors’ traditional concerns – making money – but about pursuing politics by other means. In this, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is working hand in glove with woke climate investors. Commenting on the SEC’s newly proposed rule on climate-risk disclosure, Spalding says that for investors who have committed zero emissions by 2050, “this draft rule is absolutely critical.”
It’s no coincidence that SEC chair Gary Gensler chose Ceres to make his first appearance to talk about the SEC’s proposed rule. Of course, Gensler didn’t justify it in the same terms as Spalding. To have done so would have heightened the risk of the courts striking down the rule in subsequent litigation. Instead, Gensler attempted to justify the rule as bringing “some standardization to the conversation” and putting material climate information – the SEC issued guidance in 2010 on how companies should disclose such risks – in one place, saving investors the bother of piecing together the information from different sources. Gensler’s explanation, to put it politely, is an implausible one for imposing on corporate America what amounts to a parallel climate-reporting regime to the established framework of financial reporting. Whatever Gensler might say in public, the effect of the SEC rule – if implemented – would be to empower investors to impose net-zero targets on companies, to monitor progress in meeting them, and to hold company boards to account for them.
Unlike elected politicians, woke climate investors are not accountable for the effects of their climate policies: They exercise power without responsibility. This arrangement weakens America’s ability to respond to the geopolitical challenges of a revanchist Russia and an expansionist China. “We are on a war footing – an emergency,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm declared at the CERA energy conference in Houston last month. “We have to responsibly increase short-term supply where we can right now to stabilize the market and to minimize harm to American families.” Addressing oil executives in the audience, Granholm told them: “I hope your investors are saying these words to you as well: In this moment of crisis, we need more supply . . . right now, we need oil and gas production to rise to meet current demand.”
As Granholm suggested, woke investors have been trying to do the opposite. Despite the war in Ukraine, there has been no let-up in investor pressure on oil and gas companies to scale down their operations. Whatever criticisms might be made of the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Ukraine, it is responsible for taking the awesome decisions that war involves. Investors, by contrast, have no responsibility for the nation’s security and America’s ability to lead the West. By helping investors impose their desired energy policies on American oil and gas companies, the SEC is undermining the national security prerogatives of the Biden administration and eroding America’s ability to meet the challenges of a dangerous world. The SEC is playing in a domain that it has no business being in.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2022-04-21 11:57:592022-04-21 11:57:59Woke investors threaten the West’s security
Isn’t is odd that so many of the most vocal advocates of mass vaccination are also obsessed with drastically reducing the population of the planet? Hmm, I wonder if there’s a connection between the two?
Population decline is coming to America. Radical change is on the way.
Before the 1965 Immigration Act, the US was approaching zero population growth. The “land of the free and home of the brave,” as we call ourselves, has had below-replacement fertility since the early 1970s. We now see that fifty years of importing a new people merely delayed the inevitable. Immigration, which has slackened of late, is no longer a viable solution to either population decline or our mounting economic woes. Those of recent immigrant background have clambered aboard the below-replacement fertility bandwagon. Besides, there are not enough jobs to go around. Bottom line: Americans are having fewer children every year. In the 2020 year of Covid, twenty-five of fifty states had more deaths than births.
This is nothing new to demographers. But the New Normal has rocketed to public attention with a report titled Births: Provisional Data for 2020 from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The report has once and for all discredited a smug commentariat’s early predictions that the Covid-19 lockdown would lead to a baby boom. In fact, it has been just the opposite. Births were down significantly in December 2020, nine months after the lockdowns began. There is no doubt about it – the virus, the lockdown and its resulting economic shock caused millions of couples to delay having children.
From 2019 to 2020, the number of US births decreased 4%, from 3.75 million to 3.6 million. For the past six years (2015-2020) births have declined an average of 2% per year.
No ethnic or racial group was spared. In the same 2019-2020 period, the number of births declined among all: 8% for Asian-Americans, 6% for American Indian/Alaskan Natives, 4% for non-Hispanic Whites, 4% for non-Hispanic Blacks, 3% for Hispanics, and 2% for Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders.
The corresponding decline in general fertility rates among these groups was 9% for Asian-Americans; 7% for American Indian/Alaska Natives; 4% for non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, and Hispanics; and 3% for Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders.
There was a precipitous decline (8%) in the teenage birthrate (ages 15-19). Births to teenagers have been falling since 1991 and have declined 80% in the last 20 years. The government has long considered teen pregnancy a public health issue, as teenage births are usually out of wedlock, with subpar prenatal care and dim prospects for a stable family to rear children.
Most of these teenagers are scarcely getting by, with low skills and limited incomes, so this particular trend is not due to any improved economic status. Surveys show that today’s teens are less sexually active than their predecessors, have easy access to contraception and abortion, are ceaselessly tethered to their digital devices, vulnerable to a toxic popular culture centered on self-gratification and crushing peer pressure, while bedeviled by drug abuse, pornography, and a host of other distractions. Things have changed a bit since yours truly came of age!
In 2010, the average age of females at the time of the birth of their first child was 23. In 2020 it was 27.
In that 10-year span, there was a 6% birthrate decline for ages 20-24 and a 4% decline for ages 25-29. These are record lows. The 30-34 demographic declined 4%; ages 35-39, 2%; and ages 40-44, 2%. The birthrate for those aged 45-49 remained the same. As couples delay having children, the 45-49 window is where the biological clock runs out.
University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson has stated the obvious, saying: “The [US] birthrate is the lowest it’s ever been.”
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the overall US birth rate has fallen almost 20%. Yes, the population continues to grow, though in the last half-decade growth is at the slowest rate since the Census began in 1790. As the baby boom generation passes from the scene, there will be successively smaller generations to replace them. Slow growth will yield to no growth, then negative growth.
So America is ageing. Its population will start to decrease. While the elderly do not yet outnumber the young, we are ineluctably headed for that inverted demographic pyramid. Every day there are more elderly to take care of and fewer workers to support them.
Something’s got to give. The ageing of America is upon us just when decades of fiscal profligacy are coming home to roost. The US debt-to-GDP ratio is 127% and rising. In fiscal 2020 the US government collected $3.5 trillion in revenues, or $10,457 per person, while spending $6.6 trillion, or $19,962 per person. The US National Debt is $27.7 trillion and counting.
This fiscal madness is a grave threat to American family life. How? The US dollar is the world’s dominant reserve currency, so all countries hold dollars for trade. Reckless US spending inevitably weakens the dollar. Consequently there is a budding global dedollarisation movement.
Should that prevail and the dollar is replaced as the dominant reserve currency, dollar purchasing power will collapse. It’s called inflation. That, coupled with a shrinking workforce due to below-replacement fertility, will mean crunch time. An economic downturn? We ain’t seen nothing yet. The title of Pat Buchanan’s superb 2011 book Suicide of a Superpower comes to mind.
If you want to start a family, you should do so as soon as possible.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-04-21 09:51:412022-04-21 09:59:00Vaxtermination: The Deliberate Culling Of The Human Population?
An online dictionary defines the term “grooming” as “when a sexual or other kind of predator sets the stage for abusing another.”
Such a definition certainly applies to the gangs of Pakistani immigrants in the United Kingdom and Jeffrey Epstein who “groomed” and sexually abused underage girls.
Notwithstanding a ludicrous claim by a Republican political operative named Matthew Dowd that, “If Jesus Christ was alive today, he would be called a groomer,” such a charge is not only deeply offensive to the world’s Christians, it is utterly unwarranted.
Retired Navy Captain James Fanell, however, has coined a new and very apt application of the term when he described as “CCP groomers” prominent Americans who are setting the stage for the Chinese Communist Party to abuse all of us by obscuring – and enabling – its true, predatory and genocidal designs against our country.
This is Frank Gaffney.
The Secure Freedom Minute – the most interesting, informative and life-saving 60 seconds of your day.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2022-04-21 09:37:252022-04-21 09:37:25BEWARE: ‘The Communist Chinese Party groomers’
The NY Post is reporting Elon Musk said Netflix is shedding subscribers because its programming has been infected by the “woke mind virus” which has made the streaming service “unwatchable.”
Tesla’s billionaire boss was reacting to Netflix’s share price tanking in pre-market trading on Wednesday after the California-based company revealed it had lost 200,000 subscribers between January and March of this year.
The company expects that it will lose an additional 2 million subscribers by the end of the second quarter.
The Florida House of Representatives on Thursday [April 21, 2022] gave final passage to a bill that would dissolve Walt Disney World’s private government, handing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis a victory in his feud with the entertainment giant over its opposition to the state’s Parental Rights in Education law.
The move could have huge tax implications for the Walt Disney Co., whose series of theme parks have transformed Orlando into one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations.
For DeSantis, his refusal to back down to the megacorporation’s demands on sex and gender education, along with his boldness in defiance of COVID-19 lockdowns and other left-wing agenda items, has made him one of the most popular GOP politicians in the country and a strong 2024 presidential candidate.
The bill will now go to Florida’s Republican led House of Representatives where it is expected to pass. The bill will be signed by Governor DeSantis in the weeks ahead. Far-Left Disney messed with the wrong state and the wrong governor. #DeSantis2028!
Florida’s Republican-led Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that eliminates a special taxing district that allows Walt Disney Co. to govern the land where its theme park is located.
“The measure potentially delivers a blow to the company’s operations in the state,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The special district, created in 1967 and known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District, exempts Disney from a host of regulations and certain taxes and fees related to emergency services and road maintenance.”
RELATED TWEETS:
DeSantis showing GOP what to do when you have power—you use it to advance your agenda, strengthen your political base, and punish your enemies. https://t.co/HEpLnq3ShG
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of articles and books on energy, environmental and human rights issues.
TOPIC: Don’t Look Up! by Paul Driessen
GREGORY WRIGHTSTONE
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition in Arlington, Virginia and an expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.. He is the best-selling author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know. Gregory is a geologist with more than 35 years spent investigating the Earth and its processes. He earned an undergraduate degree from Waynesburg University and a masters degree in geology from West Virginia University.
TOPIC: Blood on the blades: are thousands of dead bald eagles too high a price to pay for “clean” energy!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Conservative Commandos Radio Show and AUN-TVhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngConservative Commandos Radio Show and AUN-TV2022-04-21 05:37:182022-04-21 05:39:37PODCAST: Blood on the blades! Are thousands of dead bald eagles too high a price to pay for ‘clean’ energy!
Todays blog comes from an article in LifeSiteNews.com. It seemed pretty important that you all realize the total disregard this administration has for our military. It disgusts me and I honor this U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who is an Oathkeeper. God bless him.
Here’s the Truth for Health Foundation video, about 1.5 hours long, with U.S. Army LTC/Dr. Peter Chambers’ story.
A U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and combat physician has described how fellow medics in the Army were told not to enter records of COVID jab adverse reactions into official databases.
“They either look the other way or they just say, ‘Well, I can’t do that. It doesn’t exist’,” said Dr. Peter Chambers, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, Special Forces Green Beret, and combat physician.
Chambers made the comments as part of the Truth For Health Foundation’s ninth online conference, which saw the announcement of the Foundation’s new global reporting system for COVID jab injuries.
Dr. Chambers’ jab reactions
Discussing the armed forces COVID jab rollout along with Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, the Foundation’s president and CEO, Chambers shed light on his recent experience as a taskforce surgeon for Operation Lone Star, a border security mission of the Texas military at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Chambers, a veteran of 39 years and a Purple Heart recipient, received Moderna’s COVID jab in January 2021, unaware of the potential side effects. He now counts himself as an advocate for the “vaccine wounded” due to the adverse reactions he experienced afterwards.
He swiftly developed “brain fog” of a kind which he had not experienced even while suffering aftershock from rockets while on active duty, and experienced loss of eyesight.
Following an eventual MRI scan, after bouts of vertigo, dizziness, and nausea which caused him to crash a truck while returning from night patrol, Chambers was diagnosed withdemyelination, a disease which affects the nerve tissue.
Army medics ‘told not to enter’ adverse events into database
He recounted how he had seen “multiple soldiers” also suffering similar side effects from the injections, along with “six soldiers that have been in the ICU,” and one soldier who was forced to take a second jab despite having suffered micro-clotting after her first.
Dr. Chambers took down the details from these service personnel and entered them into the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). However, he revealed to Dr. Vliet that “surgeons at the military hospitals were not letting them in. They were told not to enter people into VAERS.”
“Doctors told me personally in the active duty system that worked at Fort Sam Houston, that they were not to enter people into the VAERS system,” he added.
Due to the COVID jabs’ collective nature of being experimental vaccines, Chambers noted how “we can’t even enter it [COVID jab injuries] into our own defense, medical, epidemiological database.”
“We can’t even interpret that as a true diagnosis,” he said. “So when you try to speak to other positions, they won’t. They either look the other way or they just say, ‘Well, I can’t do that. It doesn’t exist’.”
Told to ‘pack bags’ over attempt to give informed consent
As taskforce surgeon for Operation Lone Star, Chambers had to fill out informed consent forms, as per Army regulations, for soldiers taking the COVID shots. Chambers noted how he had to “reinforce or confirm” whether soldiers needed the shot, while at the same time, his knowledge of the dangers of the COVID jab was growing.
Of the 3,000 soldiers he briefed, only six took the injection.
Challenged by a senior medical officer over this, Chambers said he was “told that I was to pack my bags and leave the border.”
As LifeSite has reported, Dr. Chambers later testified at a March 10 federal court hearing in Tampa in the Navy SEAL 1 v. Austin case. Chambers said he had been pressured into getting soldiers vaccinated and presented as an exhibit an instruction on religious exemptions that read: “Soldiers will try. Soldiers will fail.”
Praise for new vaccine reporting system
Having faced stern resistance against entering COVID jab reports into VAERS, Dr. Chambers warmly welcomed Truth for Health Foundation’s new vaccine reporting system – the Citizens Vaccine Injury Reporting System (CVIRS)™. “If the system that we have now in the government that they provide for us doesn’t work, then we the people have to provide something, because we still have to treat people,” he said.
Doctors “can’t just quit,” he added. “Not everything is COVID related.”
Chambers was the first person to use and register his vaccine injury on the Foundation’s new system, which is designed to be user-friendly and able to be completed in under 20 minutes. “This system was perfectly created for that, and I am honored to be the first person,” he added.
Help support our brave doctors and medical experts who are putting their livelihoods at risk simply by speaking the truth about COVID-19 here.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Save America Foundationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngSave America Foundation2022-04-21 05:18:372022-04-21 05:25:43U.S. Army Doctor Reveals Medics Were Told Not to Report Adverse COVID Jab Reactions
The United States is facing a mental health crisis, experts say, noting we’re in dire need of more mental health professionals
Nearly 1 in 3 — 27.3% — of American adults now struggle with depression and/or anxiety
This is the price society is paying for ill-conceived, irrational pandemic measures and nonstop fearmongering
To treat everyone, each of the 33,000 practicing psychiatrists in the U.S. would have to see approximately 3,000 patients a year — a patient load that simply isn’t feasible
Those of us who have not succumbed to irrational fear (or worked our way out of it) can act as a lifeline to others by sharing information that empowers rather than enforces fear, and by being role models in the way we live our lives
The United States is facing a mental health crisis, experts say, noting we’re in dire need of more mental health professionals. Christin Drake, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, writes:1
“Every day, people call my office looking for help: A loved one has not left their bed in a week. A father is experiencing panic symptoms while preparing his children for school. A young woman is using substances in a way that feels dangerous to her. These are not the worried well. They are people in crisis.
Their conditions are complex and acute, and require the expertise of a psychiatrist who can talk with them, assess possible medical causes for their problems, manage withdrawal, prescribe medications when needed, and connect with other providers … Before the pandemic, I could almost always help. I would be able to find time to meet someone for a consultation, or make a few calls to secure the right referral.
But now, my every available hour — even those that jut into my ability to meet my obligations to my family — is full. My colleagues tell me the same. They are starting work earlier, working later, contending with long waitlists and their own limits. All the while, patients in crisis are going without psychiatric help.”
Depression and Anxiety Are at All-Time Highs
According to the most recent Household Pulse Survey,2 conducted by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 27.3% of American adults now struggle with depression and/or anxiety, and that’s in addition to the 40 million Americans who report substance use disorders3 and the 14 million who have more serious mental illnesses.4
“There are about 33,000 practicing psychiatrists in the U.S.5 By my back-of-the-napkin math, if all of us were treating only people with depression or anxiety, each of us would have to see more than 3,000 patients a year,” Drake notes.6
In short, there aren’t enough practicing psychiatrists to handle the burgeoning tsunami of mentally unwell Americans. There also aren’t enough residency positions available to significantly expand the profession any time soon.
The Price of Fearmongering
While Drake doesn’t go into the causes behind the mental health crisis, it’s fairly obvious that this is the price society is paying for our government’s ill-conceived and irrational pandemic measures and the nonstop fearmongering. NPR contributor Kat Lonsdorf describes the constant fear of kidney transplant patient Jullie Hoggan:7
“While the surgery was successful and Hoggan is now vaccinated and boosted, she is still severely immunocompromised and has to take significant safety measures.
‘I’m so nervous. Like, my heart rate is through the roof when I’m out for anything,’ she said. ‘And I wonder if I’m ever able to be out safely again and be normal and go out to a store. Am I going to be feeling that forever?’
Hoggan works from home, rarely leaves the house, and when she does, it’s incredibly stressful. Her husband and college-age daughter both wear masks at home and have to be extremely careful about who they see and what they do.
Hoggan’s pandemic experience carries no violence and there have been no explosions or assault, which is why she has a hard time calling it trauma. But Arthur Evans, CEO of the American Psychological Association (APA), says viewing the world as unsafe can be a symptom of trauma.”
A Nebulous and Hard-to-Define Trauma
As noted by Lonsdorf, trauma typically involves some kind of life-threatening event or something that leaves you feeling fearful and/or helpless. Many who have religiously followed mainstream news over the past two years have clearly been traumatized, feeling as though death is imminent and there’s no escape. The death-dealing blow — in the form of an invisible virus — could come from anyone, including loved ones. No one was “safe” to be around.
What’s more, the pandemic wasn’t an isolated incident that could be processed and recovered from. Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychologist with expertise in collective trauma, likens the pandemic to a “slow-moving disaster” that “escalated in intensity over time” — and to this day doesn’t have a clear endpoint.8
Not everyone agrees that what we’re seeing is the result of collective trauma, though. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of “The Body Keeps the Score” — one of the most-sold books on Amazon during the pandemic — is hesitant to categorize the pandemic as a collective trauma.
He tells Lonsdorf,9 “We need to be very precise … because if we don’t know what we are treating, we may give the wrong treatment.” He believes we need “a new term, a new language” to accurately define our circumstances. “That’s really what I’m encouraging us to do — to really identify what is making us all feel like we’re barely hanging on,” he says.
Officials Are Unwilling to Let Go of the Fearmongering
Whatever we end up calling it, it’s clear that our government’s and media’s response to the pandemic has been a key causative factor behind this mental health crisis. It’s also notable that even though COVID-19 has become endemic in most parts of the world, causing few deaths, the pandemic has not officially been declared “over.”
In early March 2022, the World Health Organization said discussions about when and how to declare an end to the pandemic were underway, but that “we are not there yet.”10
Denmark, the Netherlands and the U.K. have functionally declared an end to their national emergencies by lifting all or most restrictions, but other countries, such as New Zealand and Hong Kong, are moving in the opposite direction, renewing lockdown orders amid fresh surges in COVID cases (i.e., positive PCR tests, which doesn’t mean people are dying or even getting seriously ill).11
Meanwhile in the U.S., April 13, 2022, the CDC extended for another 90 days the public health emergency that’s been in effect since the pandemic began. In tandem, President Biden extended the mask mandates for airplanes and public transportation until May 3.12
In alternative media circles, fear of the virus has been tempered by more clearheaded analyses of statistics and data, showing that the real-world risk is actually quite limited, and that there are highly effective early treatments available even if you do get infected.
My guess is that those who now, two years in, are still struggling with overwhelming feelings of fear and anxiety about the virus are the ones who for whatever reason weren’t exposed to these comforting data, or chose to dismiss them (which is what mainstream media told them to do).
And, if they persist in following the legacy media, there’s really no relief in sight for them. While many now accept COVID-19 as another version of, or addition to, the seasonal flu, and are going about their lives more or less as usual, the mainstream media are trying to pump up the fear level yet again with — you guessed it — another variant.13
This one is called “Xe.” It’s said to be a combination of two previous subvariants of Omicron and the most contagious form yet. “COVID-19 Could be Surging in the U.S. Right Now and We Might Not Even Know It,” a headline for Time magazine announced April 11, 2022, adding:14
“… as the country tries to move on from the pandemic, demand for lab-based testing has declined and federal funding priorities have shifted. The change has forced some testing centers to shutter while others have hiked up prices in response to the end of government-subsidized testing programs.
People are increasingly relying on at-home rapid tests if they decide to test at all. But those results are rarely reported, giving public health officials little insight into how widespread the virus truly is.”
Truth Is a Big Part of the Remedy
This fearmongering is again based on the lie that the PCR test can identify an active infection (it can’t), and the false idea that asymptomatic spread is a driver of infection (it’s not). Time magazine also promotes the false idea that the COVID shot is “extremely effective at preventing severe disease” and that Omicron causes milder symptoms only in “healthy, vaccinated people,” even though real-world data suggest otherwise on both accounts.
There’s no mention of the fact that the COVID shots may be responsible for more than 1.2 million injuries15 and are, by any metric, the most dangerous drugs ever to be released. There’s also no mention of the fact that most people are likely immune to Xe at this point, as it arose right on the heels of a major Omicron surge.
Even questions about remasking have popped up again. “Is It Time to Start Masking Again?” The Atlantic asked April 8, 2022.16 According to The Atlantic, in the face of new variants, we ought to prepare “by having good masks on hand — and being mentally ready to put them on again.”
It’s that kind of mental preparation to face death every day and the useless ritual of donning a mask that is driving people to the brink of their mental endurance. Masking was futile from the start, but that doesn’t stop the mainstream media — which gets its talking points from those trying to figure out how to shove The Great Reset down our collective throats — from pushing this worn-out and wholly unscientific narrative.
Totalitarianism Is Built Through Fear
Let’s face it, they need us to be fearful because, otherwise, they know we won’t comply with what’s coming next — digital identities, biosensors and emotional monitors, vaccine passports, the green new deal (which will virtually eliminate your ability to travel any significant distance), programmable central bank digital currencies (which will give the issuers complete control over your spending) and much more.
For The Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution to come to pass, the great masses must be willing to give up their freedoms and submit to more invasive surveillance and control, and for that, their fear of imminent death must eclipse all other concerns. For a description of how large swathes of society can be made mentally ill, on purpose, see the After Skool production above.
The good news is about half the population (in my estimation) have worked their way through the propaganda and no longer fret unnecessarily. Around the U.S., people are standing up to tyrannical and irrational COVID measures, be it mask and vaccine mandates or inhumane COVID rules in the hospitals.
In Tennessee, for example, a new state law will force hospitals to allow end-of-life visitations for COVID patients, so that they won’t have to face death alone.17 As noted by Dr. Jason Martin, an ICU doctor who’s been on the frontlines since the beginning of the pandemic, “End-of-life care in an ICU with COVID is terrible,” and watching patients die all alone, separated from their families “is a life-changing experience.”
Be a Role Model
There are no simple answers to the mental health crisis facing us, but putting an end to unnecessary fearmongering, I think, is a task that needs to be shouldered by those who still chose to work in mainstream media. On an individual level, it may mean shutting off MSM news altogether.
Those of us who have not succumbed to irrational fear (or who have worked our way out of it) can also act as a lifeline to untold numbers of people by sharing information that empowers rather than enforces fear, and by being role models in the way we go about our lives.
Don’t wear a mask to appease people’s fears. Let people see you smile. Be friendly and optimistic when in public. You never know how seeing you enjoy life might benefit someone who feels the world has become an unsafe and scary place.
In the long term, we need additional solutions — we need more qualified psychiatrists and therapists, for example — but in the meantime, we must do what we can, on an individual level, to ease the collective pressure, and we can begin by simply demonstrating that a different reality is possible.
The collective has been squeezed, mangled and brought to the precipice by a few in power. Many have been broken down in this process. It’s now time for the rest of us to take the reins and steward our fellow humans back to reality, back to sanity, by being firm yet kind, principled, ethical, truthful, rational and optimistic.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-04-21 05:00:082022-04-21 05:03:18The COVID ‘Side Effect’: Almost 1 in 3 Now Suffer Mental Health Crisis Driven by Public Health Policy Trauma
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the state could take action against Twitter Inc. for launching a poison pill defense to thwart an unsolicited bid by Elon Musk.
“Why would you reject the 20% premium?” DeSantis said Tuesday at a press conference, accusing the company of censorship. “I don’t think that was a rejection based on financial concerns or business judgment. They rejected it because they know they can’t control Elon Musk. They know that he will not accept the narrative.”
Watch Governor DeSantis explain how the Sunshine state will hold Titter’s Board of Directors accountable:
DeSantis announces that Florida is going to look at ways to hold Twitter's board of directors accountable for breaching its fiduciary duties to the state, which is a shareholder of Twitter stock. pic.twitter.com/DpKdMrHUkr
The Governor has a fiduciary responsibility to insure that Florida’s pension fund, and the companies the pension fun has invested in, increase the value of their stock to keep the fund solvent. Twitter’s stock has not performed well and dropped 10% on April 20th, 2022.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-04-20 20:19:582022-04-21 06:11:21Governor Ron DeSantis, ‘Florida is going to hold Twitter’s board of directors accountable for breaching its fiduciary duties’
The lesson of 1989 is that today’s culture and ideas are tomorrow’s politics and policies.
In August 1989, Poland’s parliament did the unthinkable. The Soviet satellite state elected an anti-communist as its new prime minister.
The world waited with bated breath to see what would happen next. And then it happened: nothing.
When no Soviet tanks deployed to Poland to crush the rebels, political movements in other nations—first Hungary, followed by East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania—soon followed in what became known as the Revolutions of 1989.
The collapse of Communism had begun.
‘Marx’s Ideological Heirs’
On October 25, 1989, a mere two months after Poland’s pivotal election, the New York Times published an article, headlined “The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges,” describing a strange and seemingly paradoxical phenomenon. Even as the world’s great experiment in Marxism was collapsing for all to see, Marxist ideas were taking root and becoming mainstream in the halls of American universities.
“As Karl Marx’s ideological heirs in Communist nations struggle to transform his political legacy, his intellectual heirs on American campuses have virtually completed their own transformation from brash, beleaguered outsiders to assimilated academic insiders,” wrote Felicity Barringer.
There were notable differences, however. The stark, unmistakable contrast between the grinding poverty of the Communist nations and the prosperity of Western economies had obliterated socialism’s claim to economic superiority.
As a result, orthodox Marxism, with its emphasis on economics, was no longer in vogue. Traditional Marxism was “retreating” and had become “unfashionable,” the Times reported.
”There are a lot of people who don’t want to call themselves Marxist,” Eugene D. Genovese, an eminent Marxist academic, told the Times. (Genovese, who died in 2012, later abandoned socialism and embraced traditional conservatism after rediscovering Catholicism.)
Marxism wasn’t truly retreating, however. It was simply adapting to survive.
Watching the upheaval in Poland and other Eastern bloc nations had convinced even Marxists that capitalism would not “give way to socialism” anytime soon. But this would cause an evolution of Marxist ideas, not an abandonment of them.
”Marx has become relativized,” Loren Graham, a historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Times.
Graham was just one of a dozen of the scholars the Times spoke to, a mix of economists, legal scholars, historians, sociologists, and literary critics. Most of them seemed to reach the same conclusion as Graham.
Marxism was not dying, it was mutating.
”Marxism and feminism, Marxism and deconstruction, Marxism and race – this is where the exciting debates are,” Jonathan M. Wiener, a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine, told the paper.
Marxism was still thriving, Barringer concluded, but not in the social sciences, “where there is a possibility of practical application,” but in abstract fields such as literary criticism.
A Strategic Shift
Marxism was not defeated. The Marxists had just staked out new turf.
And it was a highly strategic move. “Practical application” of Marxism had proven disastrous. Communism had been tried as a governing philosophy and had failed catastrophically, leading to mass starvation, impoverishment, persecution, and murder. But, in the ivory tower of the American university system, professors could inculcate Marxist ideas in the minds of their students without risk of being refuted by reality.
Yet, it wasn’t happening in university economics departments, because Marxism’s credentials in that discipline were too tarnished by its “practical” track record. Instead, Marxism was thriving in English departments and other more abstract disciplines.
In these studies, economics was downplayed, and other key aspects of the Marxist worldview came to the fore. The Marxist class war doctrine was still emphasized. But instead of capital versus labor, it was the patriarchy versus women, the racially privileged versus the marginalized, etc. Students were taught to see every social relation through the lens of oppression and conflict.
After absorbing Marxist ideas (even when those ideas weren’t called “Marxist”), generations of university graduates carried those ideas into other important American institutions: the arts, media, government, public schools, even eventually into human resources departments and corporate boardrooms. (This is known as “the long march through the institutions,” a phrase coined by Communist student activist Rudi Dutschke, whose ideas were influenced by early twentieth-century Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci.)
Indeed, it was recently revealed that federal agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars on programs training employees to acknowledge their “white privilege.” These training programs are also found in countless schools and corporations, and people who have questioned the appropriateness of these programs have found themselves summarily fired.
A huge part of today’s culture is a consequence of this movement. Widespread “wokeness,” all-pervasive identity politics, victimism, cancel culture, rioters self-righteously destroying people’s livelihoods and menacing passersby: all largely stem from Marxist presumptions (especially Marxism’s distorted fixations on oppression and conflict) that have been incubating in the universities, especially since the late 80s.
As it turned out, what was happening in American universities in 1989 was just as pivotal as what was happening in European parliaments.
Especially in an election year, it can be easy to fixate on the political fray. But the lesson of 1989 is that today’s culture and ideas are tomorrow’s politics and policies.
That is why the fate of freedom rests on education.
To advance the cause of freedom for today and tomorrow, please support the Foundation for Economic Education.
Correction: This article originally stated that Gramsci coined the phrase “the long march through the institutions.”
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-04-20 19:48:312022-04-20 19:48:31The New York Times Reported ‘the Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges’ 30 Years Ago. Today, We See the Results
Ending the Department of Education may seem like a radical idea, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds.
The debate over the federal role in education has been going on for decades. Some say the feds should have a relatively large role while others say it should be relatively small. But while most people believe there should be at least some federal oversight, some believe there should be none at all.
Rep. Thomas Massie is one of those who believes there should be no federal involvement in education, and he is actively working to make that a reality. In February 2021, he introduced H.R. 899, a bill that perfectly encapsulates his views on this issue. It consists of one sentence:
“This bill terminates the Department of Education on December 31, 2022.”
This position may seem radical, but Massie is not alone. The bill had 8 cosponsors when it was introduced and has been gaining support ever since. On Monday, Massie announced that Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) decided to cosponsor the bill, bringing the total number of cosponsors to 18.
Though it may be tempting to think Massie and his supporters just don’t care about education, this is certainly not the case. If anything, they are pushing to end the federal Department of Education precisely because they care about educational outcomes. In their view, the Department is at best not helping and, at worst, may actually be part of the problem.
“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” said Massie when he initially introduced the bill. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students.”
Massie is echoing sentiments expressed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, who advocated dismantling the Department of Education even though it had just begun operating in 1980.
“By eliminating the Department of Education less than 2 years after it was created,” said Reagan, “we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”
Before we rush into a decision like this, however, it’s important to consider the consequences. As G. K. Chesterton famously said, “don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”
So, why was the federal Department of Education set up in the first place? What do they do with their $68 billion budget? Well, when it was initially established it was given 4 main roles, and these are the same roles it fulfills to this day. They are:
Establishing policies on federal financial aid for education, and distributing as well as monitoring those funds (which comprise roughly 8 percent of elementary and secondary education spending).
Collecting data on America’s schools and disseminating research.
Focusing national attention on key educational issues.
Prohibiting discrimination and ensuring equal access to education.
Now, some of these functions arguably shouldn’t exist at all. For instance, if you are opposed to federal funding or federal interference in education on principle, then there is no need for the first and fourth roles. As for the middle two roles, it’s clear that we need people collecting data, disseminating research, and pointing out educational issues. But the question here is not whether these initiatives should exist. The question is whether the federal government should pursue them.
On that question, there’s a good case to be made that leaving these tasks to the state and local level is far more appropriate. Education needs vary from student to student, so educational decisions need to be made as close to the individual student as possible. Federal organizations simply can’t account for the diverse array of educational contexts, which means their one-size-fits-all findings and recommendations will be poorly suited for many classrooms.
Teachers don’t need national administrators telling them how to do their job. They need the freedom and flexibility to tailor their approach to meet the needs of students. It is the local teachers, schools, and districts that know their students’ needs best, which is why they are best positioned to gather data, assess their options, and make decisions about how to meet those needs. Imposing top-down national ideas only gets in the way of these adaptive, customized, local processes.
The federal Department of Education has lofty goals when it comes to student success, but it is simply not the right institution for achieving them. If we really want to improve education, it’s going to require a bottom-up, decentralized approach. So rather than continuing to fund yet another federal bureaucracy, perhaps it’s time to let taxpayers keep their money, and let educators and parents pursue a better avenue for change.
This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.
Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-04-20 19:33:492022-04-20 19:35:23Reagan’s Goal to End the Department of Education Is Finally Gaining Momentum
“I have this intense rage in me over the harm that was done to me…” — Julie, 27
When Julie woke up from her double mastectomy in the children’s hospital in Syracuse, she expected to feel elated. Instead, she only felt numb. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought. Years later, she looks back with anger at the “collaborative idiocy” that crushed her spirit, permanently scarred her body, and left her feeling empty, betrayed, and alone. Like so many victims of the mutilating treatments this White House calls “livesaving,” Julie will never fully get her life back. We’ve gone too far, the survivors of this movement are crying out. And no one, not even the president, is listening.
For Suzy Weiss, who tells their stories, the emotions must be difficult to contain. In a powerful piece called “The Testosterone Hangover,” Weiss is a witness to the pain of these trusting souls — women who were pushed along a path that would ultimately destroy their young adulthood.
Chloe was only 15 when her mother sat nervously in the waiting room, waiting for word on her daughter’s breast removal. Like so many of the teenagers sucked into this world, she was unhappy with how she looked and spent a lot of time on Tumblr, immersed in trans messaging. She remembers sitting on her bed at the tender age of 12, wondering if she was meant to live as a boy. Two years later, Weiss recounts, she was taking puberty blockers and testosterone injections. By June of 2020, she was wheeled into an operating room for a drastic surgery that she would regret for the rest of her life.
Eleven months later, she was still confined to her bed, struggling with the restrictions of “nipple grafts” and other side effects. She started to miss “being pretty” and made the brave announcement that she was going to detransition — a move that made her even more of an outcast at school. Today, she misses the feminine body that she left behind. “I was looking for a niche to fit in and a sense of fulfillment.” Now, she tells Weiss, “I don’t really believe in gender identity at all.”
Meanwhile, people at the highest levels of government seem fixated on casting our sons and daughters in these horror stories — even going so far as to force taxpayers to fund the harm. Congresswoman Mary Miller (R-Ill.), one of the many Republicans appalled by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra’s insistence that children are “entitled” to these treatments, pushed back. She demanded to know if it was “child abuse,” as the American College of Pediatricians has labeled it, to perform sterilizing surgeries on kids as young as 12. He refused to answer. “[The Biden administration is] doing nothing but engaging in extreme woke politics with children being their victims,” she said angrily on “Washington Watch.” “I can’t even think of enough bad adjectives to describe this. It’s evil, it’s insane.”
And the mainstream press is enabling it. Just this past week, the much-maligned PolitiFact, whose obvious political agenda has made its “fact-checking” a punch line, weighed in on the exchange between Miller and Becerra. “Miller said the Biden administration is ‘encouraging children to take chemical castration drugs and undergo surgeries,’ and ‘are lying to children by telling them puberty blockers are reversible…’ We rate this claim as FALSE.”
That’s news to the medical community, groups of which have openly admitted that puberty blockers are not “fully reversible.” The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) has warned repeatedly that “[l]ittle is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.” As experts repeatedly point out, several of these hormones are off-label drugs that haven’t been studied for their impact on children. But there are plenty of things experts do know about the side effects, including: “When puberty blockers are administered in early puberty and followed by cross-sex hormones,” SEGM notes, “sterility is expected.”
Even transgender activists — many of whom blazed this trail and underwent radical operations themselves — have been horrified at the rush to transition children. One, a doctor, is speaking out publicly — sounding the alarm that this wave is rooted in social influence, not genuine gender dysphoria. “I have these private thoughts: ‘This has gone too far. It’s going to get worse. I don’t want any part of it,'” said Erica Anderson, who, until recently was “on the forefront of transgender care.” He underwent dramatic surgery in his late 50s but believes strongly that the pendulum has swung “to an extreme.”
“A fair number of kids are getting into it because it’s trendy,” he told the Washington Post. “I think in our haste to be supportive, we’re missing that element… Teenagers influence each other.” Anderson thinks kids are leaning into gender treatments, hoping it helps with other psychological problems — and then struggle to dig out of the depression when it doesn’t. “I have a dictum: When in doubt, doubt,” she told the LA paper. “Questioning is a good thing. How are you going to find out if you are lockstep with whatever conclusion you come to first?”
Helena Kerschner, an outspoken detransitioner with one of the biggest platforms, is grateful for anyone who raises a red flag. “I had a ton of issues with my academics and my mental health, but I never really got help with that,” Helena said. “As soon as I said I was trans, it was all-hands on deck.” But after a year and a half on drugs, she started to cut herself. “The reality I was living was not lining up with the fantasy I’d had as a teen… It was a crushing and terrifying feeling.”
To her, this White House’s obsession with gender treatments is terrifying. “The fact that there [are] adults as high up as in the Biden administration putting out these claims that young people need to medically transition is really dangerous. There’s no logic to it.”
Fortunately for this generation, there are leaders like Mary Miller who will lay it all on the line to stop more Julies, Chloes, and Helenas from living this nightmare. When PolitiFact and the rest of the Left’s bullies come after her, she says, “I’m going to fight back. If they want to fight, they can bring it on. Because… I’m not backing down.” Thank goodness.
For more on the mountain of facts the Biden administration is covering up to force this issue, check out FRC’s paper by Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, “Transgenderism Has a Science Problem.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2022-04-20 19:21:402022-04-20 19:23:08The Lie of Biden’s ‘Lifesaving’ Treatment
Monday afternoon, airline passengers whooped and hollered when flight crews informed them the federal mask mandate was finally over. Crews and passengers responded to the news by ripping off masks mid-flight. Most commercial airlines and Amtrak quickly followed suit to drop their masking policies, as did rideshare services Uber and Lyft. Airlines “were urging that the mandate be lifted sooner,” said Dr. Andrew Bostom, clinical trial epidemiologist at Brown University.
The president who promised to shut down the virus has a strange way of showing it. “Had he been smart, Joe Biden could have owned that glee,” notedNational Review‘s Charles Cooke. “Instead, it came in spite of him, courtesy of a Republican-appointed judge.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the decision “disappointing” but when asked why airplane cabins should be subjected to harsher rules than the White House briefing room, she could only retort lamely, “I’m not a doctor. You’re not a doctor.” Who knew advanced medical degrees were required to form opinions on questions of law, justice, and public policy?
Meanwhile on “Washington Watch,” Bostom, who is a doctor, laid out the science. Since 2008, 14 studies (12 for influenza and two for COVID) have used randomized, controlled trials, which are “the gold standard [for] evidence,” to study whether “mass masking is an intervention which works” for airborne viruses. Bostom said the results of those studies are “uniformly negative.” Nevertheless, “public health authorities have managed to push through mandates,” he continued, essentially turning “the whole evidence-based paradigm on its head.”
Other science opposing the mask mandate concerns the airplanes themselves, which are armed with “highly efficient filtration systems” and “biocidal technology to kill a virus,” explained Bostom. For comparison, “in a restaurant, the air may recirculate through a filter about every 15 minutes. In an airplane, that’s every 30 seconds,” said Ken Klukowski, the attorney representing FRC Action in its own lawsuit against the mask mandate. According to a Defense Department study conducted last year, he said, “it would take 54 hours on an airplane to get infected” with COVID — three times longer than the world’s longest flight.
However, the basic question in the judge’s opinion was legal, not scientific. Klukowski explained, “the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)… sets forth the requirements that agencies need to meet when they’re putting legal obligations or restrictions on you and me.” “A broad body of Supreme Court precedent” holds administrative agencies to a standard of “reasoned decision making,” which the judge found was not met. Thus, “forcing people to wear masks on airplanes meets the definition of what the law calls arbitrary and capricious…. The judge did the right thing,” Klukowski concluded.
The mask mandate was soundly thumped by the gavel, but it’s not quite dead yet. The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced plans to appeal, “subject to CDC’s conclusion that the order remains necessary for public health.” Of course, given the CDC’s preference for political science, they may calculate that opposing the overwhelming weight of medical data is worth it to ingratiate the president with his base. The White House’s continued insistence on encouraging mask-wearing is “consistent with their zealotry, but it’s not consistent with the data,” noted Bostom, nor “with the desires, as you can see by the popular reaction, of the vast swath of the population.”
However, the DOJ has avoided requesting a temporary stay on the ruling, an unusual move which allows the judge’s decision to remain in effect for now. That could indicate the DOJ is tired of getting pummeled in court and wants to rest its sore ribs, that they expect to lose on appeal, and that they’re only appealing on their doubly-boosted boss’s orders. So too, the CDC could, as it has done before, stick its finger into the political winds and then “discover” that “the science has changed.”
In the meantime, honest citizens won’t get kicked off a plane because they can’t keep a two-year-old’s mask on, or struggle to read a book that’s half obscured by a cloth mask serving only to virtue-signal. Americans can board their flights with all the comfort their economy-class ticket allows. You are now free to breathe about the country.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2022-04-20 19:12:172022-04-20 19:12:48A 40,000-Foot View of Freedom
We came across an interesting tweet from Roland S. Martin, a journalist and former CNN contributor. Here’s the tweet:
I don’t give a damn what some grossly unqualified Donald Trump judge said, I’m double masked and wearing goggles on this Nashville to DC flight. I had COVID in December. Y’all can KISS MY ASS about me not wanting it again. And any fool saying they don’t matter is a damn liar. pic.twitter.com/cHJ9oUYWo4
We wanted to dissect Roland’s tweet to better understand who he really is.
Roland: “I don’t give a damn what some grossly unqualified Donald Trump judge said…”
Analysis: Roland hates Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle who was indeed appointed by President Donald J. Trump. Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle followed the U.S. Constitution and her ruling limited the powers of the federal government over we the people. Roland uses the word “unqualified” for U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle for the Middle District of Florida who ruled against the CDC.
NOTE: We are wondering what Roland would say about the qualifications of Ketanji Brown Jackson who couldn’t or wouldn’t define the word “woman” during her Senate confirmation hearing.
Roland: “I’m double masked and wearing goggles on this Nashville to DC flight.”
Analysis: Research reveals that prolonged use of Covid masks, homemade or N95, can cause anywhere from five percent on up to 20 percent loss of oxygen, leading to hypercapnia (excessive carbon dioxide in the bloodstream typically caused by inadequate respiration), panic attacks, vertigo, double vision, tinnitus, concentration issues, headaches, slowed reactions, seizures, alterations in blood chemistry and suffocation due to air displacement. According to Amesh A. Adalja, MD, and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Maryland, “wearing a mask day in and day out can lead to alterations in blood chemistry,” and that leads to “changes in level of consciousness.” A German neurologist, Dr. Margarite Griesz-Brisson, MD, PhD (in pharmacology), who specializes in neurotoxicology and environmental medicine, warns that oxygen deprivation from prolonged Covid-mask wearing can cause permanent neurological damage. She states in her research, “The re-breathing of our exhaled air will without a doubt create oxygen deficiency and a flooding of carbon dioxide. We know that the human brain is very sensitive to oxygen deprivation. There are nerve cells for example in the hippocampus, that can’t be longer than 3 minutes without oxygen – they cannot survive. The acute warning symptoms are headaches, drowsiness, dizziness, issues in concentration, slowing down of the reaction time – reactions of the cognitive system.” An article titled “Do masks actually work? The best studies suggest they don’t“, appeared in The Washington Examiner on August 12, 2021 stated: “Of the 14 Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) that have tested the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, three suggest, but do not provide any statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis, that masks might be useful. The other eleven suggest that masks are either useless — whether compared with no masks or because they appear not to add to good hand hygiene alone — or actually counterproductive. Of the three studies that provided statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis that was not contradicted within the same study, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than hand hygiene alone, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than nothing, and one found that cloth masks were less effective than surgical masks.”
NOTE: Roland is double masked and wearing goggles. This mean Roland is risking double hypercapnia (excessive carbon dioxide in the bloodstream typically caused by inadequate respiration), panic attacks, vertigo, double vision, tinnitus, concentration issues, headaches, slowed reactions, seizures, alterations in blood chemistry and suffocation due to air displacement.
Roland: “I had COVID in December.”
Analysis: On Instagram Roland on August 14th, 2021 posted this comment, “This ain’t hard, y’all. Get the damn vaccine!!!!” Our guess is that Roland was vaccinated before December and he still got Covid in December.
Roland: “Y’all can KISS MY ASS about me not wanting it again. And any fool saying they don’t matter is a damn liar.”
Analysis: It’s interesting to see a journalist tell his Facebook followers to “KISS MY ASS” and calling them fools and damn liars. Roland seems over the top and too emotional.
We thank Roland for setting the standard of being double masked and wearing a goggles. We’re guessing that the next time we fly we’ll be able to immediately recognize the Democrats because they will be, interestingly, exercising their freedom of choice by ignoring the judges ruling to not wear a face masks on aircraft.
That, as they say, is their choice.
BTW. Here’s Roland on April 3rd, 2022 without a mask in a very large auditorium:
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-04-20 14:25:172022-04-20 17:48:21How to recognize a Democrat on your next airline flight? Their the ones wearing a mask.
