For those of you to whom government has become God, you might want to reconsider. Recent stories about the way public health authorities mishandled the COVID pandemic should make any sane person lose their government religion.
Public health authorities failed to anticipate the negative consequences of the lockdowns. Latest case in point: Strict lockdowns in the U.K. caused serious developmental problems in children, putting them five months behind academically and rendering the younger ones not ready for school. Some couldn’t even say their own name. In the U.S., the CDC lowered early development speech standards to hide the damage the lockdowns caused. In stark contrast, there was no learning loss in primary school students in Sweden where schools stayed open during the pandemic.
The lockdowns in the U.S. also weakened kids’ immune systems. Increased numbers are now showing up in children’s hospitals with multiple flu and respiratory infections, which is not normal and is directly attributable to the lockdowns preventing exposure to common viruses in the ordinary course of things.
The lockdowns also caused more alcohol-related deaths than would otherwise have occurred, as people drank more to deal with the stress of the lockdowns.
Despite a billion-dollar government propaganda campaign, it is now apparent COVID vaccines are not nearly as effective as the government would have you believe. A recent report from the U.K. showed that nine out of ten COVID deaths were among the vaccinated. Back in the U.S., the protection for children ages 5 to 11 receiving lower doses of Pfizer’s vaccine fell off rapidly, from 68 percent effectiveness to just 12 percent, a study showed. Moreover, vaccinated 5-to-11 year-olds have a greater chance of getting infected with COVID than the unvaxxed after just one month. Boosters are also showing what’s called ‘negative effectiveness’: People getting a booster shot are testing positive for COVID more often than those without a booster.
More studies have come in showing cloth masks are ineffective against COVID. In fact, one study actually found a “moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths.”
Public health officials continue revising the number of COVID death downwards, now admitting they overstated the numbers for a long time. The CDC reduced the number of pediatric COVID deaths 24 percent when it fixed a ‘coding logic error’. Whatever that means, it means they were wrong but quite content to scare the bejesus out of everybody – just like health officials in Massachusetts who had adopted a broad definition of COVID death, only recently deciding they needed a “truer picture” of COVID mortality. The death count went down by 3,700 after they narrowed the definition, no longer counting positive COVID tests within 31 to 60 days of death as a true COVID death.
The CDC finally gave up on COVID contact tracing, taking an overly long time to realize it was futile for an infectious respiratory illness that would eventually reach most of the population.
Finally, a group of scientists and scholars issued a statement blasting the government for promoting falsehoods about COVID and acting on shoddy research. The government’s role in all this “shattered the public’s trust in science and public health,” which will “take decades to repair,” they said.
Moral of the Story: the next time you’re tempted to put your faith in government, don’t. You’re better off thinking for yourself.
As pro-lifers try to protect the unborn from violence, they find themselves in the pathway of Leftist violence. If it isn’t Antifa being violent, it’s Black Lives Matter being violent or Leftists allying with pro-Palestinian activists in violence (campuses and beyond). But the complicit Leftist mainstream media zeroes in on two specific days in the space of four years to attack the right: the Charlottesville protest and January 6, where in both incidents, Antifa was involved. Well now, violence is being directed at pro-life organizations by pro-abortion activists.
Recall in Canada, that even though tens of thousands turned out in Ottawa to support the Freedom Convoy, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stirred fears of violence, and referenced Freedom Convoy supporters as “racists,”“misogynists” and even terrorists. But instead, peaceful, freedom-loving, law-abiding citizens chanted “freedom,” engaged in prayer, distributed food and set up bouncy castles for kids in freezing cold temperatures.
Leftists more readily employ violence, while searching for incidents of violence among the Right.
At least 23 pro-life organizations have reportedly been vandalized in recent weeks.
The pro-life organizations have been either firebombed or vandalized by radical pro-abortion activists, according to Catholic Vote:
Hollywood, FL — South Broward Pregnancy Center and Archdiocese of Miami Respect Life Ministry
Asheville, NC — Mountain Area Pregnancy Services
Manassas, VA — First Care Women’s Health
Alexandria, VA — Concerned Women for America
Reiserstown, MD — Alpha Pregnancy Center
Frederick, MD — BirthRight of Frederick
Frederick, MD — CareNet Frederick
Reiserstown, MD — Alpha Pregnancy Center
Buffalo, NY — CompassCare Pregnancy Services
Madison, WI — Wisconsin Family Action
Des Moines, IA — Agape Pregnancy Resource Center
Denton, TX — Woman to Woman Pregnancy Resource Center
Austin, TX — Trotter House
Long Beach, CA — His Nesting Place Home for Mothers & Children
Sebastopol, CA — Pregnancy Center Billboard
Eugene, OR — Dove Medical Clinic
Keizer, OR — Oregon Right to Life
Gresham, OR — Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center
Portland, OR — Southeast Portland Pregnancy Resource Center
Vancouver, WA — Options360 Women’s Clinic
Federal Way, WA — Care Net Pregnancy and Family Services of Puget Sound
Lynnwood, WA — Next Step Pregnancy Services
The attacks follow a leaked Supreme Court decision that revealed Roe v. Wade may be overturned this month. If overturned, abortion would no longer be protected by the federal government but would still be legal in many states.
Though President Biden campaigned on unity, Biden has not condemned a single one of the attacks, the RNC reported on Monday. Moreover, many establishment television networks refuse to cover the extremism:
Pregnancy centers are being attacked by violent pro-abortion terrorists.
Many of the attacks have been brutal and vulgar in nature. “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either,” vandals wrote on a Wisconsin Family Action facility…..
“Inflation is the bane of our existence,” President Biden lamented last week to talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. Unfortunately, he was referring to inflation’s effect on presidential approval ratings, not the plight of average Americans brutalized to pay for gas and groceries.
The president’s speech Tuesday to the AFL-CIO was another Team Biden pity party that hard facts were not permitted to interrupt.
CLAIM: Biden boasted that he “put America in a position to tackle the worldwide problem that’s worse everywhere but here: inflation.”
REALITY: Were Biden’s speechwriters using “Common Core” math that makes all bad numbers vanish? Inflation is 8.6% in America and 5.4% in South Korea, 5.1% in Australia, 6.8% in Canada.
CLAIM: Biden continued blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for price hikes here in America.
REALITY: National Public Radio reported earlier this year that “between 2019 and 2021, the US saw one of the biggest inflation-rate increases in the world, behind only Brazil and Turkey.” Inflation had increased fourfold under Biden — reaching 7% — before Russia invaded Ukraine. Wholesale price inflation last month was almost 11% — signaling worse times ahead for US consumers.
REALITY: Biden’s own policies have disrupted energy markets. The American Petroleum Institute issued a list of 10 steps Biden could take to reduce supply disruptions, including ending obstruction of permitting on natural gas projects, lifting development restrictions on federal lands and waters and ending Trump-era steel tariffs.
CLAIM: Biden apparently thinks that public raving can restore confidence in his leadership. He literally screamed at the AFL-CIO audience: “I don’t want to hear any more of these lies about reckless spending. We’re changing people’s lives!”
Biden brags that he cut the deficit — but US debt is actually rising, quickly
CLAIM: Biden boasted, “We opened schools and businesses that were shuttered.”
REALITY: It was the teachers unions that did more than anyone else to keep schools closed, and those unions have been an arm of the Democratic Party for decades. Democratic governors were far more aggressive in locking down state economies.
CLAIM: Biden portrayed his COVID policies as part of his economic success story: “We brought down COVID deaths by 90%.”
REALITY: More than 600,000 people have died from COVID since Biden became president, 50% more than died during the Trump administration. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was reporting more than 1 million new COVID cases a day in January. Biden had better hurry with his latest COVID victory lap since the White House forecasts up to 100 million new COVID cases this coming fall and winter.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-06-17 06:16:402022-06-17 11:21:35EXPOSED: 10 of Joe Biden’s LIES About U.S. Economy
On side note, I am sad that I did not make the list but I suspect it’s because Twitter permanently suspended my account with 225,000 followers for … wait for it. Tweeting about election fraud.
— Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org ☮️ (@froomkin) June 15, 2022
The National Science Foundation funded this along with far left billionaires. That means the US Government PAID to have a list made smearing Americans for questioning the validity of ballot harvesting and mass mail-in voting. Think about that. This is what communists do.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-06-17 05:56:332022-06-17 06:02:57U.S. Government PAID To Create List Of Americans Who Questioned Democrat Dogma
Recent stories about electronic voting machines don’t exactly inspire confidence.
We start in Georgia where a headcount in a county Democratic primary showed the machines were off by thousands of votes. The third-place candidate noticed the machines showed zero votes for her in most precincts. The hand recount showed this candidate, supposedly in third place, had actually received the most votes. The Secretary of State’s office admitted making programming mistakes that affected the machine results. How do you mess up so badly your machines can’t even count and are off by thousands of votes? And why should we have to rely on candidates – maybe if they’re lucky – finding mistakes in order to get accurate results in our elections? You might recall voting machines showed Biden with a 3,000 vote lead in Antrim County, Michigan in the 2020 election, but a hand recount showed Trump had actually carried the county by 3,700 votes, a machine-induced discrepancy of nearly 7,000 votes. There are also reports that machines in Georgia this year awarded votes to a candidate who was not even on the ballot in one race and showed zero votes for a candidate who actually got nearly half the votes in another race. Like I said, electronic voting machines do not exactly inspire confidence.
A county commission in New Mexico had so little confidence in their machines they just voted to get rid of them before the next election. An audit in New Mexico had found that Dominion Voting machines could fill in ballots all by themselves. The same thing was found in New York. A Dominion executive was caught on video in 2020 explaining to elections officials how to alter votes with Dominion machines and, further, that the machines cannot tell fake ballots from real ballots. Don’t forget: the first court-ordered forensic examination of a Dominion Voting machine in Antrim County, Michigan showed the machine deliberately created a 68 percent error rate right off the bat election officials could then fill in any way they want. Feeling confident yet?
You shouldn’t. A federal cybersecurity agency found nine vulnerabilities with Dominion voting machines allowing hackers to enter and install malicious code. While the agency said it had no evidence this has actually occurred in any election, it did find that, once the code was inserted in one machine, it could spread to all the machines in a jurisdiction.
There are federal standards electronic voting machines are supposed to meet but, according to one analysis, not a single voting system testing lab was accredited for the 2020 election and only two are accredited today. The logical conclusion is most places have no idea whether their machines meet federal standards or not.
Then these manufacturers have the nerve to claim their machines are proprietary and can’t be opened up for inspection. Elections are the public’s business, but it takes a court order to get inside these machines. The black box lack of transparency alone is reason enough not to trust these machines, especially when it’s not disputed the same technology has been used to steal elections in Venezuela.
In French presidential elections, voters cast paper ballots that are counted by hand. There’s no possibility machines will all magically stop counting in key places in the middle of the night with the results the next morning the opposite of what they had been the night before. It’s hard to argue with counting paper ballots by hand instead of machine. It’s looking like that’s what it will take to restore confidence in our elections in this country.
Democratic “Squad” members in the House voted against a bill Tuesday extending security for Supreme Court Justices despite spending a combined six figures on private security in 2021, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records and House Disbursements.
Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, as well as New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman are among the 27 Democratic members who voted against the approved security measure. Still, these lawmakers spent roughly $348,000 on private security in 2021.
The legislation comes as Republican-appointed justices get targeted by pro-abortion demonstrators after a leaked draft opinion showed the Court will likely overturn the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade. It passed in the Senate unanimously over a month ago and was introduced by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Democratic Delaware Sen. Chris Coons.
Bush, who has frequently called to “defund” the police, spent roughly $200,000 in campaign funds on security in 2021, Fox News reported. Ocasio-Cortez, who indicated she would not support the security bill since she is prioritizing gun control legislation, spent roughly $75,000 on private security in 2021, the outlet reported.
Pressley, who spent $14,000 from her Member Representational Allowance (MRA) in 2022 on security, spent roughly $63,000 of her MRA on security between May and December 2021, The Daily Caller reported. Tlaib spent under $3,000 on security in 2021 and Bowman spent more than $7,800 in 2021, Fox News reported.
“The lack of concern bordering on hatred for the families of the six judges appointed by Republican presidents is scary,” Republican Wisconsin Rep. Glenn Grothman told TheDCNF. “I can never imagine something so callous and uncaring being done if the shoe was on the other foot.”
Offices for Bush, Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for Pressley declined The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment and pointed to the member’s remarks after her vote claiming the Supreme Court has “put lives at risk,” alluding to the leaked draft opinion.
“While elected and appointed officials, including Members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices, do in fact already have protections when it comes to their security, abortion care providers and patients—who already face and will undoubtedly face persistent threats of violence and criminalization should Roe fall—do not,” said Pressley, the Boston Herard reported.
On May 5, a left-wing group called “Ruth Sent Us” leaked the addresses of the six Republican-appointed justices. The group, one of the several pro-abortion groups that published the addresses of the justices, claimed Monday it was not responsible for the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh since the man charged was white.
That man, Nicholas Roske, was arrested and charged last week after police spotted him outside Kavanaugh’s home with weapons, including a firearm.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-06-16 09:44:192022-06-16 09:47:00‘Squad’ Democrats Vote Against Security For SCOTUS Justices After Spending Small Fortunes On Private Security
In order to succeed in the Democrat (Nazi-eque) party, one must be actively and operationally antisemitic. The more vicious the Jew-hater, the higher your prestige and power in the party (ie Ilhan Omar). Every Jew still clinging to the Democrat are evocative of the knuckle-headed German Jews who invited uniformed Nazis to their charity dinners and then their malevolent successors, the kapos.
America’s prominent Jewicidal leaders are perhaps most responsible for the skyrocketing antisemitism in the United States because they refuse to confront our enemies.
Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams sits on the board of a foundation that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to an anti-Israel activist who has praised terrorists and encouraged violence against Jews.
Abrams joined the Marguerite Casey Foundation board in May 2021, business filings show. Roughly six months later, the foundation announced its 2021 cohort of “Freedom Scholars,” a group of “leading thinkers and scholars … in critical fields including abolitionist, Black, feminist, queer, radical, and anti-colonialist studies.” Included in the group was UCLA professor Robin D.G. Kelley, a leading Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activist who works with groups that collaborate with Palestinian terrorists.
Kelley, who received $250,000 through the program, praised the Palestine Liberation Organization—a U.S.-designated terror group—as “revolutionary combatants” and “models for those of us dedicated to Black liberation and socialism” in a 2016 article. Three years prior, Kelley encouraged Palestinians to use violence against Israelis, calling the notion that Palestinians should only protest non-violently a “bludgeon to beat down Palestinian organizations.” Kelley also advises
the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, a group that operates to advance the BDS movement on college campuses. The campaign’s fiscal sponsor, Al-Awda, works with Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas to grow BDS and routinely hosts convicted Islamic jihadists at its events, the Jerusalem Post reported in 2019.
Abrams’s role in funding Kelley provides a startling window into how the Democrat could handle the BDS movement and larger issues of anti-Semitism on Georgia’s college campuses should she defeat Gov. Brian Kemp (R.) in November. As governor, Abrams would appoint members to the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, which oversees the state’s public colleges and universities. Georgia legislators passed a law in 2016 that forbids the state from contracting a person or company that promotes a boycott of Israel, but a federal judge struck that law down in May 2021. Abrams opposed the law as a state representative and reportedly refused to meet with pro-Israel activists at the time.
It is unclear whether Abrams was directly involved with the grant to Kelley. When she joined the foundation’s board in 2021, she emphasized that a major part of her role would be determining “how the philanthropic network targets its contributions.” Neither Abrams nor the foundation responded to inquiries on her involvement with the Freedom Scholars program. Abrams has earned more than $52,000 from the foundation since 2020, her financial disclosures show.
In addition to Kelley’s anti-Israel activism, the professor has called himself a “communist for life” and argued that capitalism is inherently racist. The Marguerite Casey Foundation also awarded $250,000 to a pair of academics—Angelica Chazaro and Ananya Roy—who advocate for the abolition of prisons and private property, respectively.
The Democrats are systematically destroying this nation with unimaginable speed.
Oil, in some form, is in almost every product that is made. The government is out of control – run by traitors and scoundrels.
One commenter queried, “Do you think that it is a coincidence that we Americans are being conditioned for accepting food, gas, electricity baby formula and water shortages while restricting public gatherings and worship services? And government moving to confiscate your guns?”
Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in a recent interview that he does not believe another oil refinery will be built again in the United States, saying that government policies are a key reason why, as average gas prices continue to rise as of Tuesday.
“There hasn’t been a refinery built in this country since the 1970s,” Wirth said during Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions Conference on June 1 when asked about more refining being added in the Gulf of Mexico. “I personally don’t believe there will be a new petroleum refinery ever built in this country again.”
Wirth added: “Capacity is added by de-bottlenecking existing units by investing in existing refineries … but what we’ve seen over the last two years are shutdowns. We’ve seen refineries closed. We’ve seen units come down. We’ve seen refineries being repurposed to become bio refineries. And we live in a world where the policy, the stated policy of the U.S. government is to reduce demand for the products that refiners produce.”
Continuing further, Wirth said that the federal government’s current policy is to reduce the demand for oil, making it “very hard” in a company “where investments have a payout period of a decade or more.”
Wirth also asked rhetorically, “How do you go to your board, how do you go to your shareholders and say ‘we’re going to spend billions of dollars on new capacity in a market that is, the policy is taking you the other direction.’”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-06-16 08:02:012022-06-16 08:02:01Chevron CEO: There May Never Be Another Oil Refinery Built in U.S. Again
Horrifying. Look at what depraved degenerate authoritarians are exposing your children to.
Yet another unequivocal mandate for homeschooling. Any parent that keeps their child in government schools is unfit. Truly.
A Washington State public school parent claims their child was given a book in class called “Gender Queer” that features pornographic images and encourages students to explore their gender identity. It was allegedly assigned to students as reading material. pic.twitter.com/YWYiJBMSju
I can’t even share the book Gender Queer on Instagram without the post getting banned for sexually explicit content, but somehow it’s okay for kids. https://t.co/TT9pgpXZ5xpic.twitter.com/nWzW4WyfcG
Oregon nurse speaks out against public schools’ indoctrination
Kristen Stevens told Fox News Digital that she took her children out of Oregon public schools in order to avoid them getting indoctrinated.
Oregon schools in the North Clackamas District contain books with pornographic imagery, including imagery of sex acts, according to an online portal schools use to track books available for children to take out at their libraries.
Schools around the country use the program Destiny to track books taken in and out of its library. Fox News Digital obtained screenshots of inappropriate titles and books on gender ideology at most of the district’s schools.
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Destiny listed books in at least three high schools, Milwaukie, Adrienne C. Nelson, and Clackamas high schools that actually contain depictions of sexual activities, including oral sex. Some images are so graphic that they are being withheld from this story.
A mother in Oregon pulled her children out of the schools as a result of what she believed was indoctrination in Oregon schools.
“It’s not about how I feel. It’s about that the laws are being broken,” Kristen Stevens told Fox News Digital. “Children are being exposed to sexual content at an age that they’re not developmentally ready to be exposed to this. It actually can cause PTSD in a lot of these children.”
She warned that parents should pull their children out of public schools, else their children become indoctrinated and owned by the government.
“Pull your children out of school, it will not change. Starting next year, it will get worse,” she said. “It’s not worth handing your child over to the government to let them teach them sexually explicit content or to teach them the indoctrination… The next thing you know, you look at your child, and you no longer recognize them because they’re not your child anymore.”
Fun Home – High School
“Fun Home,” written by Alison Bechdel, follows the journey of a lesbian girl getting to know her sexuality. It contains images of lesbian sex as well as masturbation.
The book has made controversy in other verticals as well. When it was assigned for freshman reading at Duke University – a Christian student wrote in The Washington Post that he refused to read it because there is an “important distinction between images and written words… But viewing pictures of sexual acts, regardless of the genders of the people involved, conflict with the inherent sacredness of sex.”
The book was present at Milwaukie High School, according to Destiny.
[…]
Fun Home – High School
“Fun Home,” written by Alison Bechdel, follows the journey of a lesbian girl getting to know her sexuality. It contains images of lesbian sex as well as masturbation.
The book has made controversy in other verticals as well. When it was assigned for freshman reading at Duke University – a Christian student wrote in The Washington Post that he refused to read it because there is an “important distinction between images and written words… But viewing pictures of sexual acts, regardless of the genders of the people involved, conflict with the inherent sacredness of sex.”
The book was present at Milwaukie High School, according to Destiny.
Gender Queer – High School
“Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe depicts sexual acts and contains discussions on masturbation. “The more I had to interact with my genitals the less likely I was to reach a point of any satisfaction,” the book said.
In a scene illustrating sex, the caption states, “This would evolve into hip-thrusting while thinking of my latest gay ship.”
This book was present at Adrienne C. Nelson High School and Milwaukie High School, according to Destiny.
We are simultaneously being told that gender differences do not exist and that genders are so profoundly different that irreversible surgery is the only option.
Perhaps someone wiser than me can explain this dichotomy.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-06-16 07:43:212022-06-18 06:39:26Oregon School District Books Contain Pornographic Imagery Of Sex Acts [Warning Graphic Images]
We haven’t covered the Jan 6 committee circus much because there isn’t anything to cover.
Convening a committee, getting some airtime and then sending out fundraising emails is what congress members do in lieu of actually doing anything. Most conservatives have gotten wise to the scam, at least after a whole lot of committees that did nothing, but some liberals are still suckers for the “committee”.
Except it doesn’t matter. Don’t take it from me, take it from the chair.
The chair of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Monday night that the panel will not make any criminal referrals, even though its leaders have previously hinted at the possibility of doing so.
Even though they knew that it wasn’t going to happen.
But, much like the Mueller circus, you’ve gotta maintain the illusion that you’re spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money on something more than a glorified campaign ad running in prime time without having to buy airtime.
The trouble is that no one really cares. The only people watching the ad already have a strong opinion on it one way or another. And apart from that, nothing.
When pressed on the matter and whether the committee had ruled out the possibility of referring criminal charges, particularly for former President Donald Trump, Thompson replied: “We don’t have authority.”
He’s being honest, some other committee members aren’t because that would diminish the fundraising and posturing options.
The January 6 committee suggested GOP Rep Loudermilk had led rioters on a 'reconnaissance' tour before the Capitol riot. Now, Capitol police debunk theory. https://t.co/j8Zky2wcr1 and https://t.co/Fvw54XLki8
Do Psychiatric Meds and War Games Lead to Mass Shootings?
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out a more uncomfortable truth, which is that mass shootings are far more likely the result of how we’ve been mistreating mental illness, depression and behavioral problems
Gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are not the problem, because the more gun control laws that have been passed, the more mass shootings have occurred
97.8% of mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones,” as the perpetrators know legally armed citizens won’t be there to stop them
Depression per se rarely results in violence. Only after antidepressants became commonplace did mass shootings really take off, and many mass shooters have been shown to be on antidepressants
Antidepressants, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), are well-known for their ability to cause suicidal and homicidal ideation and violence
While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out a more uncomfortable truth, which is that mass shootings are far more likely the result of how we’ve been mistreating mental illness, depression and behavioral problems.
An article written by Molly Carter, initially published on ammo.com at an unknown date1 and subsequently republished by The Libertarian Institute in May 2019,2 and psychreg.org in late January 2021,3 noted:
“According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a mass murder occurs when at least four people are murdered, not including the shooter … during a single incident …
Seemingly every time a mass shooting occurs … the anti-gun media and politicians have a knee-jerk response — they blame the tragedy solely on the tool used, namely firearms, and focus all of their proposed ‘solutions’ on more laws, ignoring that the murderer already broke numerous laws when they committed their atrocity.
Facts matter when addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and more gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are NOT the problem. Consider the following: The more gun control laws that are passed, the more mass murders have occurred.
Whether or not this is correlation or causation is debatable. What is not debatable is that this sick phenomenon of mass murderers targeting ‘gun-free zones,’ where they know civilian carry isn’t available to law-abiding Americans, is happening.
According to the Crime Prevention Research Center,4 97.8% of public shootings occur in ‘gun-free zones’ – and ‘gun-free zones’ are the epitome of the core philosophical tenet of gun control, that laws are all the defense one needs against violence …
This debate leads them away from the elephant in the room and one of the real issues behind mass shootings — mental health and prescription drugs.
Ignoring what’s going on in the heads of these psychopaths not only allows mass shootings to continue, it leads to misguided gun control laws that violate the Second Amendment and negate the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens.
As Jeff Snyder put it in The Washington Times: ‘But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow.’”
The Elephant in the Room: Antidepressants
Thoughts, emotions and a variety of environmental factors play into the manifestation of violence, but mental illness by itself cannot account for the massive rise in mass murder — unless you include antidepressants in the equation. Yet even when mental health does enter the mass shooter discussion, the issue of antidepressants, specifically, is rarely mentioned.
The fact is, depression per se rarely results in violence. Only after antidepressants became commonplace did mass shootings take off, and many mass shooters have been shown to be on antidepressants.
Prozac, released in 1987, was the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) to be approved for depression and anxiety. Only two years earlier, direct-to-consumer advertising had been legalized. In the mid-1990s, the Food and Drug Administration loosened regulations, direct-to-consumer ads for SSRIs exploded and, with it, prescriptions for SSRIs.
In 1989, just two years after Prozac came to market, Joseph Wesbecker shot 20 of his coworkers, killing nine. He had been on Prozac for one month, and the survivors of the drug-induced attack sued Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac. Since then, antidepressant use and mass shootings have both risen, more or less in tandem.
In the two decades between 1988 and 2008, antidepressant use in the U.S. rose by 400%,5 and by 2010, 11% of the U.S. population over the age of 12 were on an antidepressant prescription.6
In 1982, pre-Prozac, there was one mass shooting in the U.S.7 In 1984, there were two incidents and in 1986 — the year Prozac was released — there was one. One to three mass shootings per year remained the norm up until 1999, when it jumped to five.
How can we possibly ignore the connection between rampant use of drugs known to directly cause violent behavior and the rise in mass shootings?
Another jump took place in 2012, when there were seven mass shootings. And while the annual count has gone up and down from year to year, there’s been a clear trend of an increased number of mass shootings post-2012. Over time, mass shootings have also gotten larger, with more people getting injured or killed per incident.8
How can we possibly ignore the connection between rampant use of drugs known to directly cause violent behavior and the rise in mass shootings? Suicidal ideation, violence and homicidal ideation are all known side effects of these drugs. Sometimes, the drugs disrupt brain function so dramatically the perpetrator can’t even remember what they did.
For example, in 2001, a 16-year-old high schooler was prescribed Effexor, starting off at 40 milligrams and moving up to 300 mg over the course of three weeks. On the first day of taking a 300-mg dose, the boy woke up with a headache, decided to skip school and went back to bed.
Some time later, he got up, took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage at gunpoint. He later claimed he had no recollection of anything that happened after he went back to bed that morning.9
The Risks Are Clear
The risks of psychiatric disturbances are so clear, ever since mid-October 2004, all antidepressants in the U.S. must include a black box warning that the drug can cause suicidal thoughts and behaviors, especially in those younger than 25, and that:10
“Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility (aggressiveness), impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric.”
SSRIs can also cause emotional blunting and detachment, such that patients report “not feeling” or “not caring” about anything or anyone, as well as psychosis and hallucinations. All of these side effects can contribute to someone acting out an unthinkable violent crime.
In one review11,12 of 484 drugs in the FDA’s database, 31 were found to account for 78.8% of all cases of violence against others, and 11 of those drugs were antidepressants.
The researchers concluded that violence against others was a “genuine and serious adverse drug event” and that of the drugs analyzed, SSRI antidepressants and the smoking cessation medication, varenicline (Chantix), had the strongest associations. The top-five most dangerous SSRIs were:13
Fluoxetine (Prozac), which increased aggressive behavior 10.9 times
Paroxetine (Paxil), which increased violent behavior 10.3 times
Fluvoxamine (Luvox), which increased violent behavior 8.4 times
Venlafaxine (Effexor), which increased violent behavior 8.3 times
Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq), which increased violent behavior 7.9 times
Depression Is Vastly Overdiagnosed
In her article, Carter also reviewed the clinical determinants for a diagnosis of clinical depression warranting medication. To qualify, you must experience five or more of the following symptoms, most of the day, every day, for two weeks or more, and the symptoms must be severe enough to interfere with normal everyday functioning:14
Sadness
Anxiety
Feeling hopeless
Feeling worthless
Feeling helpless
Feeling ’empty’
Feeling guilty
Irritable
Fatigue
Lack of energy
Loss of interest in hobbies
Slow talking and moving
Restlessness
Trouble concentrating
Abnormal sleep patterns, whether sleeping too much or not enough
Abnormal weight changes, either eating too much or having no appetite
Thoughts of death or suicide
The reality is that a majority of patients who receive a depression diagnosis and subsequent prescription for an antidepressant do not, in fact, qualify. In one study,15 only 38.4% actually met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria, and among older adults, that ratio was even lower. Only 14.3% of those aged 65 and older met the diagnostic criteria. According to the authors:16
“Participants who did not meet the 12-month MDE criteria reported less distress and impairment in role functioning and used fewer services. A majority of both groups, however, were prescribed and used psychiatric medications.
Conclusion: Depression overdiagnosis and overtreatment is common in community settings in the USA. There is a need for improved targeting of diagnosis and treatments of depression and other mental disorders in these settings.”
What Role Might War Games Play?
Aside from antidepressants, another factor that gets ignored is the influence of shooting simulations, i.e., violent video games. How does the military train soldiers for war? Through simulations. With the proliferation of video games involving indiscriminate violence, should we really be surprised when this “training” is then put into practice?As reported by World Bank Blogs, young men who experience violence “often struggle to reintegrate peacefully into their communities” when hostilities end.17 While American youth typically have little experience with real-world war, simulated war games do occupy much of their time and may over time color their everyday perceptions of life. As noted by Centrical, some of the top benefits of simulations training include:18
Allowing you to practice genuine real-life scenarios and responses
Repetition of content, which boosts knowledge retention
Personalization and diversification, so you can learn from your mistakes and evaluate your performance, thereby achieving a deeper level of learning
In short, violent mass shooter games are the perfect training platform for future mass shooters. Whereas a teenager without such exposure might not be very successful at carrying out a mass shooting due to inexperience with weapons and tactics, one who has spent many hours, years even, training in simulations could have knowledge akin to that of military personnel.
Add antidepressant side effects such as emotional blunting and loss of impulse control, and you have a perfect prescription for a mass casualty event.
On top of that, we, as a nation, also demonstrate the “righteousness” of war by engaging in them without end.19 When was the last time the U.S. was not at war someplace? It’s been ongoing for decades.
Even now, the U.S. insists on inserting itself into the dispute between Russia and Ukraine, and diplomacy isn’t the chosen conflict resolution tool. Sending weapons to Ukraine and calling for more violence against Russians are. Sen. Lindsey Graham has even called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Showing just how serious such a suggestion is, the White House had to publicly disavow it, stating Graham’s comment “is not the position of the U.S. government.”20
Graham, meanwhile, does not appear to understand how his nonchalant call for murder might actually incite murder. In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, he now wants to mobilize retired service members to enhance security at schools, and while that might be a good idea, how about also vowing never to call for the murder of political opponents? Don’t politicians understand that this could translate into some kid thinking it’s acceptable to murder THEIR perceived opponents?
As far as I can tell, mass shootings have far more to do with societal norms, dangerous medications, a lack of high-quality mental health services, and the normalization of violence through entertainment and in politics, than it does with gun laws per se.
There are likely many other factors as well, but these are clearly observable phenomena known to nurture violent behavior. I’m afraid Americans are in need of a far deeper and more introspective analysis of the problem than many are capable of at the moment. But those who can should try, and make an effort to affect much-needed change locally and in their own home.
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 Health2022-06-16 06:39:582022-06-16 06:47:3597.8% of Mass Shootings Are Linked to This
At a time in our countries history, with high computer and surveillance technology, it seems strange that the irresponsible culprit who deliberately released the possible reversal of the Roe vs. Wade decision from the Supreme Court has not been caught or even identified publicly. There has to be a forensic electronic trail.
The deliberate act of that release has placed huge security concerns for SCOTUS Judges and their families. There has already been an attempted assassination and/or kidnap attempt by a typical lunatic leftist. Since that leftists attempt there has been a virtual blackout of information by the MSM on the story. After all, the biggest threat to our national security, according to them, is white conservative males who are all linked, due to the color of their skin and their political beliefs, plus a belief in God, the constitution and a love of country, together as domestic terrorists and therefore a terrible risk to what they call a democracy as they are all too stupid to know we live in a constitutional republic and not a democracy.
However, due to their belief I just mentioned in the previous paragraph, there seems to be no end to their talents of detection in finding every person who attended the January 6th protest at the Capitol building. Just being there seems to be so serious a threat to their idea of national security that everyone must be arrested, mostly on trumped up charges, plus have their constitutional rights removed.
They are after all well versed in trumping up charges and lies. After all, look at the huge lie on the Russian collusion story. They also are so good at covering up their lies when found up which we see with the Hunter Biden laptop and the crime syndicate run by the mentally challenged usurper in the WH.
In their minds the 940 riots by ANTIFA and BLM which caused billions in property damage, thousands of injuries to law enforcement plus a whole load of deaths, were peaceful and just protests against a racist system that is evil and the cause of why America is such a terrible country. No arrests needed there. Nope. Nothing to see or worry about.
When we retake the House in November we must start investigative committees to investigate thoroughly everything these libtard enemies and traitors of our Constitutional Republic have done over the last 60 years if needed. Those investigations to include all the Clinton crimes, his obvious pedophilic tendencies, the corruption which runs deep in every alphabet agency starting with the CIA, FBI and ATF. We must fully investigate the joke that was the 2020 election. We must fully investigate the failures in our military by its leftist political leadership starting with General Mark Milley. We need to fully investigate the actions of that corrupt and leftist leaning Capitol Police Force and how that black Lieutenant Bird murdered a small white military veteran female Ashley Babbitt on January 6th was praised rather than investigated, arrested and charged. She presented no threat. She was unarmed. She was murdered plain and simple. Shot through a door. Just reverse the roles for example here. A white police officer shooting a small black unarmed female who offered no threat would have been vilified within an hour. His family details like his residential address etc. would have been linked. He would have been tried in the news media frenzy, found guilty and lost everything.
The elections two nights ago show that we, the people, have had enough. It is time for a moderate, historically middle of the road America, to come together and stop this madness. There will be pain. We will have to be brave. We will have to be resolute and strong but we need to fully cleanse the swamp once and for all and save our beloved Constitutional Republic for our kids and their kids. Saving America will save the world which has also lost direction without a strong America to lead from a position of strength.
This election season will be headed by Hispanic citizens as they are decent, God fearing, hard working, family loving people. The New Democratic Socialist party does not represent them or their vision of America. They want safe cities to raise their kids – like us. They want good schools that teach real education like math and English – like us. They want law and order and safety for themselves and their families – like us. They want a secure border – like us. They want freedom of speech, religion and the ability to peacefully protest – like us. They do not want their kids taught Wokism and sexual perversion from age 4 – like us. They do not want a radical and tyrannical government either left or right – like us.
Let’s show these leftists, socialists, communists and extremist anarchists that they will no longer be tolerated. They must be destroyed.
Isn’t America worth that? Aren’t our kids and their kids worth it?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Save America Foundationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngSave America Foundation2022-06-16 06:18:122022-06-16 06:18:12Seems Like A Filthy Lie To Me!
A flood of new stories shows we have widespread problems with our elections. Let’s start with the individual cases:
A former Congressman pled guilty to stuffing ballot boxes for the Democrats in Pennsylvania elections from 2014 to 2018. A Republican councilwoman in New York pled guilty to submitting multiple absentee ballots in her reelection bid last year. A Democrat County Supervisor was indicted on 82 counts of false statements, procedural violations, forgery, and more in connection with an absentee ballot scheme in Virginia. Three women pled guilty to illegal ballot harvesting for the Democrats in Arizona in the 2020 primary election.
A city councilman in L.A. County and five others were charged with election fraud after arranging for nonresidents to vote in the city council election last year. A judge threw out the election results and declared the councilman’s opponent the winner in the race by three votes. So, yes, detecting election fraud can change the outcome of elections, despite what the Democrats claim.
These individual cases are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s wrong with our elections.
A legal foundation found more than 8,000 people are registered twice or more on New Jersey’s voter rolls. One voter appears on the rolls six times!
The citizens group amassing the evidence for the documentary ‘2000 Mules’ told Arizona’s lawmakers mules inserted ballots into drop boxes in the state an average of 21 times during the 2020 election. How is such ballot trafficking possible? The group noted the problem starts with bloated voter rolls, which make fraud possible when ballots are mass-mailed to everyone on the rolls, including dead voters, people who have left the state, students who vote elsewhere, ballots sent to vacant lots, etc. That leaves a lot of ballots floating around out there that can be collected in apartment buildings and elsewhere, then cast illegally. See the problem?
A whistleblower told the filmmakers things are so bad in one Arizona town that voters are coerced into showing their ballots to controllers who demand they vote a certain way. People who want to run against the local machine are told they will be shot.
Another citizens group obtained official records showing 20,000 mail ballots were received after the legal deadline in Maricopa County, Arizona, enough to change the 2020 election results.
A citizen investigation based on government records found 36 percent of voter registrations in East Lansing, Michigan are inaccurate and 21 percent of ineligible voters cast ballots. Fifty ballots still get sent to a street that no longer exists. More than 1,700 votes were cast from dorms that were closed due to the pandemic at Michigan State University. Makes you wonder about other college towns, doesn’t it?
Another citizen investigation in Michigan led a Detroit official to admit ballots were received in the middle of the night in the 2020 election. He only admitted to 16,000 ballots arriving, but Michigan added 149,000 votes – 94 percent for Biden – the next morning. Nobody has explained where those votes came from. There is no good explanation.
Voters in Wisconsin are suing five cities in the state over the unlawful use of unmanned drop boxes in elections. The drop boxes, it is believed, are part of a thinly disguised, privately funded get-out-the-vote effort for Democrats run by government officials.
A citizens group in Georgia found 72 counties illegally destroyed drop box video surveillance tapes involving more than 180,000 ballots for the 2020 election. The group also found 56 counties illegally destroyed their electronic voting machine ballot images for the 2020 election in violation of state and federal requirements such records be preserved for at least 22 months.
Finally, a sheriff in Michigan is suing the Secretary of State, the state Attorney General, and the state police for interfering with his investigation into election fraud in the 2020 election. The sheriff alleges state officials confiscated documents, harassed his deputies, intimidated witnesses, and whisked away voting machines so they could not be examined. This should get interesting, because the sheriff has constitutional law enforcement powers independent of state officials.
Citizens and advocacy groups on the political Right are being criticized for taking an interest in election integrity. We’re being told we’re imagining things and being too aggressive. Our critics say the most ridiculous things like ‘there is no voter fraud’ and educating law enforcement on how to identify election fraud is somehow beyond the pale.
If we’re successful, we will return to free and fair elections in this country. If you’ve got a problem with that, I’ve got a problem with you.
Federal firearms dealers are getting their licenses revoked or not renewed by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms at a much greater rate since President Biden first came to office, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) said Wednesday.
“So it is definitely obvious that the Biden administration is targeting Federal Firearms Licensees because they are the link between manufacturers and people being able to access their Second Amendment rights,” he said.
Clyde, a federal firearms licensee who owns a store in his Athens district called “Clyde Armory,” said that “the motto of my company is we enable individual participation in the preservation of liberty” by giving people access to guns.
“They enable individual participation in the preservation of liberty, because that’s the only way a person, other than making one themselves, can get a firearm in his hands through a manufacturer is through a Federal Firearms Licensee,” he said. “So if you cut out the Federal Firearms Licensees, then you have denied the American citizens their right to keep in bear arms through not being able to buy a gun. So it’s a problem.”
According to Alan Gottlieb at the Second Amendment Foundation, his organization gets many calls from FFL’s every week telling his group the same story.
“Not so much just a revocation [of an FFl license], but also a fine and just being harassed. There’s a lot more of that going on under the Biden restriction than ever before,” Gottlieb said. “The last time anybody really did anything like that was under Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton figured less guns would be sold if there were less FFL dealers to start with, and so he went out to shrink the number of FFL’s.”
The National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Affairs says that Mr. Biden’s administration is running “Clinton playbook again – operating a ‘zero tolerance’ policy that is shuttering FFLs over trivial violations. This sort of schizophrenic policy-making could give the impression that this ‘strategy’ has been motivated by anti-gun politics rather than concerns about violent crime.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Save America Foundationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngSave America Foundation2022-06-15 05:59:262022-06-15 05:59:26ATF is revoking firearm licenses ‘at a rate of about 500% greater’ under Biden
Companies haven’t jacked up prices to even fully match the increase in their costs, let alone exceed them.
Another day, another disturbing price inflation metric.
The federal government just released the latest Producer Price Index (PPI), an index that tracks the prices of a basket of the typical inputs businesses rely on, like energy, warehousing, etc. It finds that prices rose 0.8% from April to May, and a whopping 10.8% from May 2021 to May 2022. The PPI is the Federal Reserve’s preferred metric of price inflation, and this latest update keeps it near a 40-year high.
To see just how extreme this trend continues to be, just check out this graph from Fox Business:
Of course, this latest update comes just one day after another alarming inflation update. Released Monday, the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed an 8.6% year-over-year increase in consumer prices. That metric imperfectly measures prices for a basket of consumer goods a typical US household might buy, and it too remains near 40-year highs.
What’s the significance?
Well, these updates offer more proof that rising prices are hurting American families, eroding paychecks, and bursting budgets. But we already knew that.
The really interesting insight here comes from comparing the producer price data to the consumer price data. Contrasting the two undercuts the progressive “greedflation” narrative that argues rising prices are in large part due to corporate greed.
“Inflation first rose because of other factors, like Covid and economic stimulus bills,” the New York Times writes in an article explaining what “greedflation” advocates believe. “But companies raised prices more than necessary to net higher profits. They knew they could get away with it because consumers no longer had a benchmark for what prices should be. And they did not face enough competition to keep prices down.”
Or, as Senator Elizabeth Warren argues, “profiteering” and “price-gouging” have driven higher prices because “they [can] get away with it because our markets lack competition.”
But this narrative has never made any sense. For one thing, corporations are no more “greedy,” aka profit-seeking, than they were 5 years ago or 10 years ago, when inflation wasn’t surging. What’s more, some sectors have seen much bigger price hikes than others. Are companies in some industries just less greedy than in other sectors?
“Greedflation” conspiracy theorists cite market concentration, i.e. monopoly power, as why companies can supposedly be what’s driving this. But, as MIT economist David Autor notes, market concentration hasn’t meaningfully shifted in the last two years… while inflation most certainly has!
That’s why a survey of top economists found that the vast majority reject the “greedflation” narrative out of hand.
What’s this have to do with PPI, CPI, and other inflation metrics?
The new data set put the nail in the coffin for the “greedflation” narrative.
Why?
Well, if companies were truly being greedy and just jacking up prices to make money, we would expect them to be hiking prices for consumers at a rate higher than their own production costs are going up. But these data sets actually reveal the opposite: consumer prices rose 8.6% while producer prices rose 10.8%—suggesting that, roughly estimating, companies haven’t jacked up prices to even fully match the increase in their costs, let alone exceed them.
Where’s the evidence of this rampant special surge in “greed” we keep hearing about?
It’s nowhere to be seen, of course, because the “greedflation” narrative was always a political talking point simply meant to deflect blame away from the federal government and onto Big Business, a popular boogeyman.
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)2022-06-15 05:31:412022-06-15 05:40:07More Alarming Inflation Data Undercut the Progressive ‘Greedflation’ Narrative
