James Doogue

If you were to believe the mainstream media, there's been a rash of people self medicating with Ivermectin clogging up hospitals and risking their lives in the process. It's complete rubbish.

In fact an extensive search of the net didn't turn up any evidence of anyone ever dying of an Ivermectin overdose in the 70 year history of the drug.

As for clogging up ER departments in hospitals, let's have a look at one story which went viral around the world was first published by Oklahoma News 4.

' A rural Oklahoma doctor said patients who are taking the horse de-wormer medication, ivermectin, to fight COVID-19 are causing emergency room and ambulance back ups.'

That story excited the far-left once great Rolling Stone magazine that they picked up the story and ran with it.

'"Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says”

They didn't bother to seek any verification of the facts in the story which have since been totally debunked.

'The problem is, this alleged doctor made it all up.

Northeastern Health System’s Sequoyah branch that’s the focus of Rolling Stone’s article released a statement on its website claiming Dr. Elyea does not work at the hospital, and has not treated any patients for months.

But it gets worse…
The hospital also declared it hasn’t treated a single patient for ivermectin overdose.'
https://newspunch.com/hospital-debunks-rolling-stones-fake-ivermectin-poisoning-story-it-was-all-made-up/

As with stories like these, the original story goes viral, the debunking gets no coverage.

Naturally the left-wing The Guardian ran the original story here in Australia and around the world, using it as the basis for a major hit piece against Ivermectin. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/oklahoma-doctor-ivermectin-covid-coronavirus

Even after amending their story with a footnote acknowledging the story had been debunked, The Guardian still maintained the content, and the headline. 'Oklahoma hospitals deluged by ivermectin overdoses, doctor says'

It's likely that most Guardian readers didn't make it to the end of the article alerting to the fact the whole story was fake news. In fact they spent approximately 600 words still earning readers against using Ivermectin.

Yes the CDC and FDA have warned against taking Ivermectin without having it properly prescribed. They have also stated in weasel words that Ivermectin has not been proven in randomised clinical trials. They fail to mention the hundreds of successful observational trials carried out by critical care physicians actually treating Covid-19 patients.

Why would those professionals want to give a Covid-19 patient a placebo in an RCT, and risk their life, when they know Ivermectin works. That would be unethical.

What the CDC has actually said about using Ivermectin is:

- Taking large doses of ivermectin is dangerous.

- If your health care provider writes you an ivermectin prescription, fill it through a legitimate source such as a pharmacy, and take it exactly as prescribed.

- Never use medications intended for animals on yourself or other people. Animal ivermectin products are very different from those approved for humans. Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans is dangerous.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19

Ivermectin is being used in around 30% of countries badly effected by Covid-19, both for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Specific protocols have been developed by leading critical care specialists to cover all stages of Covid-19 from prevention, diagnosis and hospitalisation, to Long Covid.

These are explained at the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’ FLCCC website.
https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/i-mask-plus-protocol/

In the I-MASK+ Prevention & Early Outpatient Treatment Protocol for COVID-19 the FLCCC Alliance recommend just 0.3mg/kg dose to be taken with or after a meal twice per week as a preventative measure against Covid-19. They also recommend an immune fortifying regimen of vitamins and minerals.

The FLCCC Alliance has other levels of treatment for infected Covid-19 outpatients, and hospitalised patients. https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/

All regimes have been shown to work in the clinical environment by dedicated and caring critical care physicians and treating doctors. But the FDA, CDC, NIH, Australia's TGA and so on, have moved the goal posts to large RCT's which take many months, and cost millions of dollars. Which suits Big Pharma, who are only interested in developing treatments they can make billions of dollars from.

Meanwhile the CDC are happy to recommend to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) physicians a presumptive treatment of this 'dangerous'' Ivermectin for all immigrants from Africa, Asia and The Middle East.

- Ivermectin, two doses 200 mcg/Kg orally once a day for 2 days before departure to the United States. Which is the same dosage recommended by the FLCCC Alliance for prevention of Covid-19.
https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/guidelines/overseas-guidelines.html#pt-summary

The sooner the mainstream media stop demonizing Ivermectin, the sooner the Covid-19 pandemic can be effectively addressed.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:24 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 793 words, total size 6 kb.

This from Andy Garcia

Goldman Cuts U.S. Growth Forecast as Consumer Sees ‘Harder Path’

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:55 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 221 words, total size 2 kb.

This from David Nabhan

This political theater cum "pandemic” has unleashed the mindset of the least mentally grounded among us to force their same yoke of phobia, dread and dysfunction onto the necks of the rest of us. We're as deluded as they are now. Still, epidemics are episodes of pure terror impossible to misidentify. In 1829, for example, a cholera outbreak with 90% mortality swept through the Caucasus. Two thirds of Tblisi' s inhabitants fled, leaving Georgia's capital a ghost town. That’s a pandemic.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:29 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 91 words, total size 1 kb.

Steven Chase

"We are currently witnessing direct parallels in today’s society. ..weak, feminized men with little to no skills and no protection instincts, and overly agitated and aggressive females with no maternal instincts."
- from scientist John Calhoun and his seminal study: "Universe 25" in which he built the 'paradise for mice'.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:04 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 56 words, total size 1 kb.

Timothy Birdnow

Sorry to have been AWOL for a few days; I was in Nashville Tennessee attending the wedding of my nephew.

It was a wonderful event and a rather strange but nonetheless enjoyable trip.

My wife and I rode down with her sister and her family (which included my old friend Chuck). We rented a big SUV for the six hour drive, a hulking Ford Expedition, but STILL barely had enough room to squeeze everybody and everything inside. We were going for a wedding and so needed several changes of clothes as well as things we would need to look the part (makeup and hair stuff for the ladies, plus the usual extras required of the two girls in their late teens in attendance). My wife has trouble sitting for long periods, too, due to her medical issues, but there was nothing to be done. She sat in the second row of seats with all of our hanging clothes (my suit, her dresses, etc.) completely blotting out the view from the window. I was given the front seat since I am horribly prone to motion sickness (I once ruined a trip to the wineries in Augusta Missouri by vomiting BEFORE we even reached one of them!)

So, stuffed in like Vienna sausages in a can, we set sail for the Deep South.

Chuck drove while I rode shotgun, looking for hostile Indians or Mexican banditos. I knew better than suggest I drive; I would have been met with a universal shout of protest, and most likely someone would have clubbed me over the head and taken the keys; my eyesight doesn't make for much confidence in my driving, although I see myself as doing fine. Granted, so too did Mr. Magoo...

At any rate it was smooth sailing until we reached the Illinois/Kentucky border and the Ohio River. There was road construction and we sat at a standstill for a while, then inched along at turtle speed for an unacceptable time. But we eventually got through the bottleneck and was back on the road to Mandalay (or Nashville, rather.)

We were coming in early evening and wanted to stop for supper outside of town. We were quite surprised to find Nashville a compact city, with little in the way of exurbs or even suburbs. You just drove straight into town.

It was a beautiful skyline, shiny and new and bespoke great prosperity and vibrant youth.

We were staying at the World Omni next to the Country Music Hall of Fame, a beautiful hotel that was hideously expensive but was on site for the wedding. Since my nephew's party had booked enough rooms they gave a few upgrades to suites, and Mike very generously offered one of the upgrades to Cathy and me. It probably cost comfortably more than the mortgage on my first house per DAY! We were on the 18th floor and had an absolutely breathtaking view of downtown Nashville, and as we were on a corner suite we so could see a lot of the city sparkling below us. As I say, it was breathtaking! Floor to ceiling windows! We also had big screen televisions and an actual table to sit at.

Despite being so high up we could still hear the rowdy folks on the streets below. This is a major party town, and there was a lot of hooting and hollering and general merriment. I don't know if Nashville is always like this or if it was because it was a holiday weekend but it was like St. Louis on one of the big celebrations, people everywhere in the streets, party buses and peddle-bars going past (for those who do not know, peddle-bars are little trolly-like things that the people peddle to make move. They serve drinks as the patrons peddle from one drinking establishment to another.) It was WILD! I would have loved it when I was young.

At any rate Cathy and I needed to eat and went down to the honky tonk in the hotel, where we ran into a few extended family members who had been there for some time and were quite in the spirit of things (and we in fact so in the spirit they generously put us on their tab). We sat on an overcrowded bench. I was on the end when the bench collapsed, spilling myself and poor Cathy (who was sore enough from the trip and her medical treatments) to the ground hard. Luckily Cathy landed on me, which broke her fall (I was lucky too; I had a good soft concrete floor to break mine.) Now I'm a big guy but sheesh! I've never had a bench collapse on me before!

The waitress had been inattentive to that point. After that she was joannie-on-the-spot; it was a tough way to get service, but it worked. Thankfully nothing but my pride was broken.

At any rate, the next day Cathy and I were going to the Country Music Hall of Fame and explored that as long as Cat held out. We made it through one floor and then had to go back to our suite. But at least we got to do one touristy thing.

But then calamity struck; as we were starting to get ready for the rehearsal dinner (to which we had been kindly invited) I couldn't find my pants. My suit coat was there, my dress shirt, tie, socks, shoes, everything but the PANTS. This was a disaster, as I only had shorts otherwise.

I ran down to the shop that was on the first floor, but they had only dresses for women and no men's pants. I toyed with the idea of transgenderism momentarily, but alas there was no dress in my size.The woman working there told me there was a shop "not far" outside the hotel.

I hotfooted it out. I had half an hour to find a pair of pants and get dressed and down to the dinner.

Everybody else in Nashville decided to go pants shopping too. The city was partying like Mardi Gras and I had to went my way through throngs of revelers in a desperate search for the pants store. I went a LOT farther than "not far" and never did find that place. I did almost find a heart attack and shallow grave though as I was sucking for air like a trout thrown onto the bank of a river. I am not in the best of shape and my heart condition makes me prone to being winded anyway, and I was moving with great haste. My legs had turned to rubber too. I had to give up without finding that accursed place, and fight my way through a bunch of rowdy partiers to get back to our hotel.

Chuck had a pair of sweat pants with an elastic waist that looked almost like dress pants, and although they were about 18 sizes too small I managed to wriggle them up to where they were not visible under my suit coat. I was tighter than a hot dog in a skin. But I was able to pass as properly dressed - or at least properly enough.

I had to implant myself in those twice in two nights; it was like wearing a new skin. But at least it made me acceptable in polite company. I felt a little like Jethro Bodine, the dumb hick hobnobbing with the beautiful people, but what the heck!

Both events were beautiful. The dinner was held in one of the restaurants at the hotel, and it was a splendid affair with good food and an open bar. I imbibed some Jack Daniels and Coke, in honor of the place.

There were speeches. One was by the groom's sister, who when asked what it was like growing up with Mike said he was PITA. When asked what she meant she said pain in the ass! Everyone laughed at that!

The wedding itself was a short affair, done in the open garden at the Country Music Hall of Fame. The weather was a bit threatening but it never rained and we soon retired to a big outer chamber where they were serving drinks and hors de'oeuvres. Shortly thereafter we moved to the main ballroom - a massive hall with a full glass wall with a stunning view of the Nashville skyline. There we were served an utterly delicious meal. I had a kind of briskett that just melted in your mouth, along with au gratin potatoes and a nice salad. Some Mondavi cabernet accompanied it, although I was pretty much cocktailed out so stuck with just one at dinner (well, maybe two) and switched to Diet Coke.

The band was amazing. At least twelve members including a horn section, they played at top professional level and did not stop the entire night. They did a few country songs but played almost every genre, and had a light show and choreography to make for a performance, not a wedding gig. Just incredible! Everyone was up dancing, including my dear wife, who had to hold onto a chair for support but stayed on the dance floor through much of the affair. I went out a few times but mostly had to sit at my table; my legs were still rubberized from my Nashville sojourne downtown, and I was wearing pants that threatened to spit me out like a banana squeezed too hard at the end. I also am a horrible dancer, akin to a hippopotamus having an epileptic seizure. (When I was in high school I attended a dance at an all girls school, and a girl asked me to dance. Half way through she asked "are you drunk?" I had not been drinking, and haven't been dancing much since.)

At any rate Cathy had a marvelous time dancing on the floor, as did everyone else.

So yesterday the time came to bid Nashville adieu and we packed up the Expedition to head home. Funny; we could hardly get all the stuff in and barely squeezed it into the vehicle after great effort. It seemed like we had more stuff than we left with - we didn't, but it sure seemed that way.

Everyone was pretty exhausted. My pants never did make an appearance - they belong to Nashville now. Maybe they'll wind up being mistaken for famous pants and live in the Hall of Fame. At any rate they abandoned me and have gone on to glory.

I was very happy to get home and slept like a baby last night. The bed in Nashville was comfortable but too soft and my back hurt after a few hours in it. (Of course, falling off a bench didn't help.) I've been sleeping in my easy chair for months now so Cathy could have the bed to herself, and it was wonderful to get back into that old friend.

It was a fun trip. Saw a lot of her extended family and enjoyed some adventures. While I doubt I'll be going back any time soon, it was certainly a place I wouldn't mind seeing again.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:02 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 1863 words, total size 10 kb.

Dana Mathewson

American groups attempting to rescue U.S. citizens, SIVs and green card holders left behind in Afghanistan claim the U.S. State Department, not the Taliban, is preventing them from taking off.

Three different individuals involved in private evacuation efforts told Fox News that the State Department is "recklessly endangering American lives” with their delays.

Rick Clay, who operates the private rescue group "PlanB,” told Fox News that the State Department is preventing the flights from leaving Afghanistan. Clay has roughly 4,500 names on his manifest, 800 of which have been turned over to the U.S. State Department for vetting.

Two other American individuals separately involved in evacuation efforts made similar claims that the State Department is the sole entity preventing their charter flights from leaving Afghanistan. Fox News declined to name the two other people to avoid jeopardizing ongoing rescue efforts.

"This is zero place to be negotiating with American lives. Those are our people standing on the tarmac and all it takes is a f****ing phone call,” one of those individuals told Fox News.

"If one life is lost as a result of this, the blood is on the White House’s hands. The blood is on their hands,” that individual continued, adding: "It is not the Taliban that is holding this up, as much as it sickens me to say that it is the United States government.”

The same individual suggested that the State Department’s refusal to let the planes evacuate Americans is motivated, in part, by embarrassment that private individuals are rescuing Americans whom the U.S. government failed to evacuate.  [emphasis added]

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 02:18 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 319 words, total size 3 kb.

Dana Mathewson

In July of 2017, every member of the joint chiefs of staff met with newly-elected President Donald Trump for the first time. It didn't go well. "You're all losers," the president told them, according to Foreign Policy magazine account. "You don't know how to win anymore."

It was a harsh assessment, obviously though arguably true, the joint chiefs of staff are the nation's highest-ranking military officers. Their job is to follow the order of elected officials and protect the country, no matter how much their feelings may be hurt. But in this case, that's not what happened because the rules are different now. According to U.S. Army Major General Paul Eaten, the president's insults that day, and the similar comments he made in public, were a bitter humiliation for the nation's military leaders. They made it their mission to undermine civilian control of the Pentagon ever after. "I was really shocked by how many of my former colleagues voted for the former president and openly supported him," Eaten said. "But when [Trump] turned on the military, well, the military turned on him."

Keep in mind, that is not how democracy is supposed to work—military leaders report to the people you elect. Again that’s not what happened. Stories began leaking about the president, President Trump, ignoring classified intelligence about Russian bounties in Afghanistan. Where do you think those stories came from? They came from the Pentagon—it was payback. Then the military refused to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, even though they were ordered to do so by the elected president of the United States—again no civilian control of the military. When Joe Biden finally became president, on inauguration day, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, was so excited he couldn’t control himself. "No one has a bigger smile today than I do," Milley told Michelle Obama—sucking up like a child. "You can’t see it under my mask, but I do." The media people who have supported Biden from the very beginning -- including a former C.I.A. Director, there are many of those on TV these days-- also celebrated. They told us the adults were back in charge, they said. The orange man is gone—everything is going to be better now. [video clips follow in the original article]

[...]

Those clips are amazing to watch now because they consist of the most childish people in the country celebrating adulthood. But they look especially absurd in light of what we’ve just seen in Afghanistan. These days, Joe Biden's friends in the Pentagon and the "foreign affairs desk" at NBC News no longer think he’s an adult. He abandoned American citizens and got thirteen Americans killed, and suddenly they seem a little ashamed. Plus, he’s turned his back on the neocon project and that’s the greatest offense of all.

But the bigger question is why our media and the military were talking like this in the first place. "The adults are back in charge?" What does that mean, exactly? If you follow what our generals have been telling us for the past twenty years about Afghanistan, you quickly realize exactly what it means. "Adults," means people are willing who pretend that everything is going fine when in fact it is not going fine.

Consider that no matter how badly our mission in Afghanistan was deteriorating—we were never clear on what that mission was—but clearly, our strategy of pacifying the nation was falling apart. No matter how bad it got in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and its spokesmen repeatedly told us they were making incredible progress. And "progress" is the word they used again and again and again—almost as if they coordinated it. In 2005, the head of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid, told reporters quote, "over the three years that we’ve been operating there, [Afghanistan] has shown interesting progress." In 2007, the website "Task and Purpose" reported that another senior General, Dan McNeil, had a similar message. Quote: "I’d like to point out that there is significant progress in the forward move of the Afghan National Army."

 

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:07 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 722 words, total size 6 kb.

Dana Mathewson

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:52 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 320 words, total size 2 kb.

Dana Mathewson

Incredibly, Biden opened his remarks by saying, "As we head into Labor Day weekend, we have more evidence of the progress of our economy from last year’s economic calamity.” Someone needs to tell him the baseline is February of 2020. No one gets credit for reopening an economy artificially shut down by the government. Employees returning to their jobs and closed businesses reopening is not economic growth. And frankly, even those two things are not happening fast enough.

The only reason the economy did not completely collapse is because the economic fundamentals were strong. By continuing to blow out spending, the Biden administration is eroding the foundations of the U.S.’s economic strength going into the pandemic. Still, mumbly Joe wants us to celebrate 235,000 new jobs when over 700,000 were forecasted. Employers are not going to create many jobs when there are already more than 10 million open nationwide.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.2%. I hate to tell the president this, but to get back to even, it needs to hit 3.5% as it was in February of 2020. Biden wants you to know it is the lowest it has been in 18 months. How underwhelming. That coincides perfectly with the engineered recession brought on by COVID. Black Americans lost ground under Biden in August. Unemployment for blacks shot up from 8.2% to 8.8%. Under President Trump, it was at 4.5% pre-pandemic.

Biden tries to take credit for adding an average of 750,000 jobs per month for the last three months. These are not new jobs. Most are simply the same jobs people had before the pandemic. Talking about his administration’s record "job creation” is just gag-worthy to people who know better. His constant comparisons to 2020 are meant for stupid people. An empty suit could have created jobs when the shuttered blue states reopened after Biden won. Oh wait, one did.

Biden then blamed the jobs report on the Delta variant surge of COVID-19. This statement is the height of absurdity. Cases started to rise at the beginning of July. The reason employers are not creating more jobs is that they can’t fill the ones they have. The wage gains Biden brags about are artificial because employers are competing with unconditioned welfare and inflated unemployment benefits. Businesses are dealing with additional wage expenses as raw material expenses are rising. This situation is not sustainable, and the labor market will self-correct when the government-funded slush programs do.

The attempt to pivot is blatant. When Biden discussed the Delta variant, he shared that he will be unveiling a new plan next week to get the pandemic under control. Hopefully, Americans will see shortly that the virus is going to do what viruses do. Cases have peaked across much of the southeast, including Florida. They will peak and decline in other regions in a similar way. Just like colds and the flu, COVID will settle into a pattern whether we like it or not. If Biden shut up about shots and started talking about monoclonal antibodies, that would be an enormous help.

Perhaps his team believes returning to "defeating the virus” will turn Americans’ attention away from the fact the Biden administration just got their butt handed to them by a bunch of 8th-century goat herders. Or that under Biden’s orders, we abandoned American citizens in Afghanistan. It is a distinct possibility that this failure could lead to a hostage situation that dwarfs the one that began in 1979. Or that poor planning and a horrible strategy led to the death of 13 U.S. service members with dozens of others injured.

Maybe Americans will forget it is Biden’s fault when the inevitable terror attacks start. Or when Iran gets aggressive with the U.S. military equipment that our new "partners” the Taliban just shipped them. Or, God forbid, if something awful happens on the anniversary of 9/11.

Come on, man. Biden is giving a COVID speech because that will fix everything.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:32 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 720 words, total size 6 kb.

Dana Mathewson

The Taliban leader wanted no part of a Trumpian withdrawal. Until the weak Biden and his incompetent military advisors came to power, he was content to wait it out.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 04:10 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 83 words, total size 1 kb.

Dana Mathewson

In a move reminiscent of the moral panics against Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and rock ‘n roll in the 1950s, the Chinese Communist Party is vowing to get tough on effeminate men because "revolutionary culture” is in danger.

The Chicoms are a little vague on who or what constitutes "sissy men,” but the real goal of the directive is to eliminate pop culture influences from South Korea and Japan and reinforce traditional Chinese Communist Party views on morality.

The campaign is part of a larger program initiated by President Xi that he refers to as "national rejuvenation.”

Associated Press:

Broadcasters must "resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics,” the National Radio and TV Administration said, using an insulting slang term for effeminate men — "niang pao,” or literally, "girlie guns.”

That reflects official concern that Chinese pop stars, influenced by the sleek, fashionable look of some South Korean and Japanese singers and actors, are failing to encourage China’s young men to be masculine enough.

"Companies and the public are under increasing pressure to align with its vision for a more powerful China and healthier society,” offers AP. If true, the campaign is further indication that China is preparing to become even more aggressive on the world stage.

It’s really sort of pathetic. A great big grown-up country worried about effeminate men? Just to be clear, not all effeminate men are gay and even if they were, China’s outmoded notion of "masculinity” would be a huge problem.

It’s more than sissy men being an issue. Chinese Communists are looking to regiment all 1.4 billion people who live there.

Broadcasters should avoid promoting "vulgar internet celebrities” and admiration of wealth and celebrity, the regulator said. Instead, programs should "vigorously promote excellent Chinese traditional culture, revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture.”

Xi’s government also is tightening control over Chinese internet industries.

It has launched anti-monopoly, data security and other enforcement actions at companies including games and social media provider Tencent Holding and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group that the ruling party worries are too big and independent.

China recently made it illegal for anyone under 18 to play online games for more than 3 hours a week. It looks like the Chinese Communists want to outlaw fun for kids.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 03:56 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 464 words, total size 4 kb.

Dana Mathewson

Those of you who were under the impression that the government holding you down and forcing a needle in your arm—under threat of never being able to fly or buy groceries again—would be a bad development for individual liberty, take heart! The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is the authority on all things liberating, has declared that forced vaccinations are actually totally awesome or something.

"Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. They protect the most vulnerable, people with disabilities and fragile immune systems, children too young to be vaccinated, and communities of color hit hard by the disease,” the ACLU declared on Twitter.

They went on to opine,

Vaccine requirements also safeguard those whose work involves regular exposure to the public, like teachers, doctors and nurses, bus drivers and grocery store employees. And by inoculating people from the disease’s worst effects, the vaccines offer the promise of restoring to all of us our most basic liberties, eventually allowing us to return safely to life as we knew it, in schools and at houses of worship and political meetings.

When I put on my secret Orwellian decoder sunglasses and read it again, this is what was hiding under all that doublespeak: "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. WAR IS PEACE. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

 Strangely, nothing in the rant in favor of forcing citizens to act against their wills and consciences actually had anything to do with individual liberty—the very thing the ACLU was founded to protect. Individual liberty is the heart of the American experiment. It is written in our Declaration of Independence that the individual needs protection from the state. There is nothing in our founding documents stating that the state needs to be protected from the individual. The worst phrase to ever be included in our documents is "for the common good,” which directly contradicts the rights of the individual. It is the war between the common good and individual liberty that we are constantly struggling with, especially in the Age of COVID.

There are two types of people in this country: those who want individual liberty respected and those who want the individual sacrificed for the common good. There is nothing more insidious than the elevation of the common good over the rights of the individual. That philosophy has filled more mass graves around the world than any other. No one was sent to a gas chamber in a society that valued individual rights.

 

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 02:49 PM | Comments (26) | Add Comment
Post contains 451 words, total size 4 kb.

Chester McAteer

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:40 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 206 words, total size 3 kb.

Timothy Birdnow

As I'm going to be very busy over the weekend there will be minimal blogging. Dana and Jack will hopefully be able to keep you company.

Ciao!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:21 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

Warner Todd Huston

Totally hilarious. Liberals are now turning against their once sainted Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They are attacking her for not retiring during Obama's term and leading to this week's abortion ruling in the Texas case. Like always, liberals eat their own. IF she had retired, the libs could have gotten another leftist on the court and that would have made sure this week's ruling was never made.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:19 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.

James Doogue

In the UK they currently have 33,456 seven day average number of new daily Covid-19 infections, and a 7 day weighted average of 111 daily Covid-19 deaths.

The UK has a population of 68.3 million while Australia has 25.8 million. If we had the same ratio in Australia for our population that would be about 12,683 new daily Covid-19 cases on a 7 day weighted average, and 42 deaths per day on a 7 day average.

Australia's 7 day weighted average is currently running at less than 10% of the pro-rata numbers equal to the UK, at just 1,195 new cases and just 4 new daily deaths.

Sure that could rise, but it needs to rise 1,000% to equate to what the UK are currently experiencing.

The UK has quite rightly decided they are sick of destroying their economy and lives through lockdowns and restrictions. They have accepted that people will still become infected and die despite their very high vaccination rates. They will not go back to lockdowns.

About 10% of the entire UK population has been infected by Covid-19 and despite the media scare campaign they have concluded:

- Very few people become seriously ill when infected.

- A very small percentage die.

- Most of the seriously ill, and deaths are either very elderly, or have multiple co-morbidities.

- Costs of the lockdowns and restrictions are just not worth the lives saved.

Let's face it, if the average age of a Covid-19 death is around the average life expectancy, how many years of quality life is saved through lockdowns and restrictions, versus how many years of quality life they destroy for the entire population?

Only 58,210 Australians have been infected with COVID-19 in the the 20 months since the first infection. That's less than 0.23% of the population. That compares with 6.86 million in the UK or 10.4% of their population.

I would say the people in the UK have made an informed decision to open up their economy and society and accept the associated risks.

If Australia has to wait until we reach the same level of infections to come to the same conclusion, at the rate we are going, we will have lockdowns until the year 2096. That's 75 years before our politicians will make the same informed decision they have made in the UK.

When will sanity prevail? All we ever needed to do, and should have done, is isolate the vulnerable, take sensible precautions, boost our health care capacity, work on vaccines and treatments while learning to live with Covid-19.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:15 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 447 words, total size 3 kb.

Timothy Birdnow

Here is an article in Psychology Today that argues that there IS liberal bias in science, particularly in the social sciences.

From the article:

Liberals are particularly prone to biases when evaluating information with significance to relatively lower status groups (e.g., women, ethnic and racial minorities). Liberals, on average, are more egalitarian than conservatives and have stronger desires to protect relatively low status groups. Consequently, they demonstrate biases against any information that portrays low status groups unfavorably (e.g., as less skilled at math, less proficient leaders, less intelligent, or more violent) compared to high status groups, whereas conservatives treat such information more similarly.

For example, across a couple of sets of studies, people evaluated science on sex differences more favorably when women were portrayed more positively than men (e.g., as better drawers, less prone to lying, and more intelligent) than when men were portrayed more positively than women. And these tendencies were stronger as participants were more politically left-wing.

In an ongoing project I'm working on, psychology professors reported that they likely would be punished or ostracized by their peers if they reported data that portrayed women or racial minorities in an unflattering way or explained group differences (i.e., the underrepresentation or underperformance of certain groups) with any explanation other than discrimination. Many also asserted a high degree of confidence that discrimination is not the only cause of group disparities, and those who did so were more likely to report self-censoring their own views.

This bias among liberal social scientists likely explains—at least in part—various false positive findings and failed interventions. For example, the existence of implicit racial bias, which conforms to liberals’ preferences for discriminatory explanations for group differences, was once thought to explain disparate outcomes in various domains (e.g., educational and career outcomes). However, recent meta-analyses of this literature reveal that implicit bias may be virtually unrelated to discriminatory behavior. And despite serious efforts to create implicit bias trainings and interventions, there is little to no evidence that these have had or will have any positive effect. Cases of unreliable research like this plague the social sciences.

These false positives and expensive failed interventions (and their apparent basis in left-wing political bias) have caused mistrust of social scientists and higher education broadly. Moreover, a growing body of research has uncovered discrimination in academia against conservative scholars, further elucidating reasons for the stark political imbalance in the social sciences. Politically homogenous communities not only deter original thinkers from entering those communities but intimidate those within the community who might occasionally disagree. This can create false consensuses, the elevation of expedient but empirically inaccurate ideas, and the stifling of better ones.

Over the past several years, most organizations have become increasingly politically leftwing. This is not a problem in principle, but the ideological homogeneity of such groups can create environments that encourage groupthink, foster systematic biases, and suppress dissent. Left unchecked, politically homogenous communities can become engines for false narratives that create inefficient and unreliable bases for effective policy.

Just as experts can be biased in their research, manipulating methods and analyses to confirm their preferred hypotheses, organizations and policy-makers can be biased in their recruitment of research and expertise, selectively attending to (and ignoring) research to support their political agenda or bottom line. Organizations frequently apply scientific findings to policy-making prematurely on unjustified assumptions about generalizations from laboratory studies to real-life situations. Moreover, organizations and the broader public can tend to falsely equate scientific support with truth and certainty. In reality, when Scientific Report A says X, there is often Scientific Report B saying Y. People and organizations can then choose to believe whichever report is more convenient.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 681 words, total size 8 kb.

Timothy Birdnow

A federal court has rejected a legal challenge to Washington State's ban on conversion therapy for homosexual kids.

From the Christian Post:

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan issued an order Mondayruling against family therapist Brian Tingley, who sued Washington over its ban on therapy practices to help those with unwanted same-sex attraction.

In his ruling, Bryan rejected Tingley's argument that the law violated his freedom of speech or conscience.

"The Washington Conversion Law does not restrain the dissemination of information. It prohibits a licensed therapist from engaging in a specific type of conduct,” wrote Bryan.

"Plaintiff is free to express and exercise his religious beliefs; he is merely prohibited from engaging in a specific type of conduct while acting as a counselor.”

Roger Brooks, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom who represented Tingley in court last week, said in a statement emailed to The Christian Post that he believed all Americans "deserve the right to private conversations, free from government censorship.”

"Washington’s counseling censorship law targets people of faith and threatens to stand between Brian’s clients and the personal counseling goals they choose to pursue with his help,” stated Brooks.

"As the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recognized just last year in the Otto v. Boca Raton decision, laws like this Washington state law violate the First Amendment rights that all Americans rightly treasure.”

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:21 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 346 words, total size 3 kb.

Warner Todd Huston

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:57 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 240 words, total size 2 kb.

Timothy Birdnow

John McArthur's church has won in California.

The state of California and Los Angeles have agreed to pay $800,000 in legal fees to settle their lawsuit with John MacArthur’s church over COVID-19 lockdown rules.

MacArthur’s Grace Community Church of Sun Valley had been involved in months of legal battles with state and local officials over his refusal to adhere to ongoing lockdown restrictions.

Jenna Ellis of the Thomas More Society, who helped to represent the church, posted a statement on Twitter Tuesday celebrating the $800,000 settlement.

"We are very pleased to see Pastor MacArthur and Grace Community Church’s First Amendment protections fully vindicated in this case,” read the statement.

"It has been a hard-fought battle to preserve religious liberty and we hope that this result will encourage Californians, and all Americans, to continue to stand firm that church is essential.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to the settlement (its amount being $400,000) due in part to recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that overturned various public health measures in response to COVID-19 that specifically targeted houses of worship.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 189 words, total size 2 kb.