Election Watch

Jon Stewart on “Electile Dysfunction”

Jon Stewart is an interesting person. He’s indisputably an accomplished comic performer who has been remarkably successful at lampooning public issues and figures for decades.

I think his longevity comes from the fact that he’s committed to the moral requirement of the best type of comedy, which is to gently poke at what seems false about what the world takes as true, and to make fun of what is clearly bad about ideas, strategies, and policies that governments and media giants tell us are good.

Which is to say that I believe Jon Stewart strives to do just that, which isn’t easy, because it requires the performer to maintain an open, independent, and critical mind, while also working to maintain as large an audience as possible.

From what I’ve read about his history, Stewart began his stand-up career as a conventional liberal/leftist and continues to hold many of the sentiments of that viewpoint in his heart. But his brain has been troubled lately by the idiocy of the ideological left, and this has somehow energized him to satirize the left’s most obviously idiotic ideas. For a mainstream American celebrity, this is a dangerous game to play. But he decided to play it and has so far managed to make it work. I don’t know how he is doing in terms of the ratings algorithms, but he still has a job on mainstream media, and that, in itself, is a considerable accomplishment.

Don’t get me wrong. I am impressed by Stewart’s natural and hard-earned talents, and I admire his drive to build his comedic career on his version of what is – and is not – good and true.

The one thing I don’t like about him is that he sometimes seems to see himself as a public “intellectual,” like Jordan Peterson or Thomas Sowell or Ben Shapiro. As a well-known comedian who is accustomed to speaking about controversial issues, the level of his thinking is considerably more nuanced than, say, Stephen Colbert’s. But he’s way too conventional (timid?) in his thinking to rank alongside the truly great (which always means brave) ones like Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, and Bill Burr.

Still, in his own uncertain way, I see Jon Stewart as a challenger of mainstream morals and ideas and a successful entertainer willing to risk some of his popularity (and personal income) by working on the front lines of culture. And for that, he merits my admiration and respect.

Here’s an example, a piece he did Feb. 12 in his first reappearance as the host of “The Daily Show,” where he talked about the 2024 Trump vs. Biden rematch.

Trends in Wokeness 

Freddie deBoer on the Ugly Reality of the College Admissions Process 

“Let me stress one basic point,” writes my favorite self-proclaimed Socialist in a recent post, “You cannot make a competitive selection process equitable, as the entire point of competitive selection is to identify inequality.”

Read his entire argument here.

Wins and Losses in the Gender Wars 

Following threats of a lawsuit… 

A Minnesota school district is allowing the children of Muslim families to opt out of LGBTQ classes. Click here.

The Blue State vs. Red State Population War Continues

New York isn’t the only state losing entrepreneurs and high-income earners to lower-tax and lower-cost-of-living states like Florida and Texas. California is having the same experience. And for similar reasons.

California has the highest state income tax in the country. Californians with incomes over $1 million pay a whopping 13.3%. That’s on top of federal taxes for such people, amounting to the state and federal governments taking 50% of the income of the state’s most productive residents.

California is a beautiful state. In addition to its great climate, there are lots of reasons why one would want to live and work there. But if you are a high earner or an owner of a business that employs hundreds or thousands of people, this kind of taxation makes it very tempting to move to a state that is much less punitive with its taxes.

And people are moving away. A recent study indicates how much tax revenue income California is, in fact, losing every year and is likely to lose in the future as it keeps jacking up its taxes on the “wealthy.”

Gov. Newsom is not oblivious to the real-world effects of high taxation. But instead of dealing with the problem directly, he has reacted to the flight of wealthy people and companies from his state by trying to punish them with costly penalties. Which seems sort of third-worldish, don’t you think? Click  here.

On the Other Hand…

It’s not all bad news for New York. Gov. Kathy Hochul surprised many at the end of last year by vetoing two bills that would have driven more businesses and high earners out of her state.

One of the bills would have crippled non-compete agreements.

In my business (the digital publishing business), non-compete contracts usually don’t work. They are either written so tightly that they would be rejected as unreasonable or so loosely that they can easily be skirted by designing the new job in such a way that it falls outside the restrictive language.

Another way of putting it is that in my industry, the most valuable assets are inside individual people’s brains – their ability to conceive of interesting and salable ideas year after year or the ability to know how to sell those ideas to the public.

These are skills, not templates or blueprints or algorithms. They cannot be copied. Or codified. Or stolen. Or even defined.

But that’s my business. When it comes to technology businesses, what is often most valuable is knowledge – knowledge in the form of templates and blueprints and algorithms. Information that can be financially profitable for anyone that has possession of it. To protect against the widespread thievery of this kind of knowledge, we have laws to protect the investors, the creators, the distributors, and everyone else involved in turning a new technology into cash.

In explaining her veto, Hochul said she tried to negotiate a compromise with the legislature “to protect middle-class and low-wage earners while allowing New York’s businesses to retain highly compensated talent.” But progressive legislators weren’t interested.

The governor also vetoed a bill that would have required every corporation registered to do business in New York to consent to being sued in New York’s courts.

I know. That one sounds reasonable. But what a bill like this really does is create an industry of corrupt attorneys that make a living by suing out-of-state corporations that do business in multiple states. I’ve seen this in action. It has nothing to do with protecting consumers. It’s all about extortion.

Election Watch 

1. Back to My Prediction re the 2024 Election

Late last week, in response to special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified information, the Dept. of Justice admitted that Biden did, indeed, violate the law. And that the violation of that law is a criminal act.

Why, then, you might ask, didn’t Hur move to indict Biden, as the Dept. of Justice did in Trump’s case?

The answer, and this was stated repeatedly in Hur’s report, was that those who questioned Biden about the case believed that, because of his mental degeneration, he would not be convicted. Hur’s conclusion was that, in a trial, Biden would appear to any reasonable jury as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” rather than a man with a functional memory that broke the law intentionally.

This is good news for Biden, but an embarrassment for the media and the millions of voters that have been insisting that Biden is compos mentis. So now there is much debate among Democrats and the mainstream media about whether our president is fit to be, or even can be, elected to lead our country in 2024.

If you don’t believe me, read any issue of the NYT or watch any program on CNN that talks about the 2024 election.

What is happening is precisely what I predicted more than a year ago: Biden will not be the Democrats’ nominee. I said back then that his mental incapacity was already obvious to anyone that knew him, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others that are hoping for a Democrat victory. Biden cannot win against Trump this time around, but a slate consisting of Gavin Newsom and a prominent Black personality (not Kamala Harris) would have the best possible chance.

Why, you might wonder, would the press and the Democrat planners so blatantly abandon Biden after protecting him for so many years? The answer is that he refused to step down around Thanksgiving, which is when he was supposed to in order to give Newsom time to build momentum. And they realized that the best chance now of getting him gone will be at the Democrat National Convention in August.

2. Poor Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley always struck me as a B performer in the political arena – in every way. She’s not charismatic. She’s not commanding. And I’ve never heard her say a single thing that I thought was original or provocative. Still, I feel embarrassed for her for what happened last week in Nevada’s Republican presidential primary.

Because Trump was not on the ballot, she was considered the frontrunner. Yet voters resoundingly chose “none of the above” over her – making her the first presidential candidate from either party to lose a race to nobody.

3. News Like This Is Not Good for the Democrats

It seems clear that Republicans will be running on two wedge issues in 2024: rising crime and gutless law enforcement (which was a big part of their platform in 2020), and border security (a big part of Trump’s platform in 2016).

The Democrats are working furiously to tamp down the nationwide upset over Biden’s recent endorsement of a bill that basically puts back in place all of Trump’s policies. Meanwhile, the issue of skyrocketing crime, including violent crime and murder, is getting increased attention from the media. And not just the conservative media, because the stories are just too sensational to make them disappear. For example:

* Mike Gill, former Chief Operating Officer of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) during Trump’s administration, was fatally shot Jan. 29 during an attempted carjacking. Gill was parked on the sidewalk in front of his wife’s office, just a few blocks from the White House, waiting to take her home. After Gill was shot, the suspect continued the rampage, committing at least two more carjackings and one attempted carjacking, killing another victim.

* A group of young, male illegal immigrants that savagely attacked two NYC police officers on Jan. 27 were booked and immediately released under the city’s progressive “cashless bail” protocol. (Watch a video of the attack here.)

4. This Isn’t So Good, Either… 

For 138 days of 2023, 37% of the year, President Biden was away at a vacation spot or retreat, according to a report from The New York Post. In 2022, Biden was away for 38% of the year.

Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton wrote The Post to defend her boss: “The President works every single day of the week, whether he is in Washington, Delaware, Camp David, or anywhere else – and those around him and reporters who cover him closely know that.”

Representative Gary Palmer (R-AL) had a different perspective: “President Biden’s entire presidency has been a vacation from reality,” he said.

Trends in Wokeness 

This week, it’s all about the gender identity wars…

1. But He’s a Boy! I Don’t Want to Sleep with Him!

An 11-year-old, fifth-grade girl, on a 2023 JCPS-sponsored trip to Philadelphia and Washington, DC, was told by the trip director that she had to spend the night in a room with a male student who “identified” as a girl.

According to a complaint filed by her parents, the JCPS had told them that the boys and girls would be on different floors and would not be allowed to visit one another. “This practice renders it impossible for these parents to make informed decisions about their children’s privacy, upbringing, and participation in school-sponsored programs,” reads the demand letter.

Click here.

2. Woke Mom, Woke Clinic, Woke Judge, Broke Dad

It began with Dennis Hannon’s ex-wife treating their son as a girl at age three, calling him Ruby Rose, without telling Dennis. When the boy was five, she took him to a clinic, and a doctor there recommended starting him on puberty blockers.

When Dennis found out about it, he went to court. But the court decided against Dennis, chastising him for not supporting necessary medical care for his son because he didn’t agree with the treatment. A year later, after having spent all his savings, nearly $150,000, in the court battle, “Ruby Rose” announced that he wanted to go back to identifying as a boy.

Click here.

3. State Department Spends Billions on LGBTQ Dance Programs… in Peru!

The US is $33 trillion in debt, but the State Department isn’t worried about that. They are still spending billions of dollars they don’t have on Woke projects that don’t work. Much of the funds are being directed through an agency called the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund (CDAF), whose stated goal is “Strengthening democratic institutions and fighting disinformation; Protecting the environment; Human rights, refugees, and migrants; Building community through arts, sports, language, and technology; Fostering alumni network development.”

Click here.

4. The State of Justice in Woke England Today

“Something is going very badly wrong…”

Click here.

And, finally, this:

5. Mothers Sacrificing Their Kids for Status

Click here.

Conspiracy Watch 

1. Dominion Voting Machine Vulnerability Exposed in Courtroom Testimony 

Remember that crazy right-wing conspiracy theory that the Dominion voting machine, which was widely used in the 2020 election, was somehow rigged in favor of Biden?

In a Federal Court in Atlanta, GA, University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman testified that the machine was, in fact, able to be manipulated. He demonstrated by changing a machine’s totals using only a pen (borrowed, for effect, from Dominion’s defense attorney).

Here’s an interview with a journalist who was there.

2. The Jan. 6 “Insurrection”

At a House Republican press briefing last week to promote a resolution declaring that former President Trump did not engage in an insurrection, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) criticized attempts to remove Trump from the ballot and insulted reporters for their coverage of Jan. 6. Watch it here.

Conspiracy Watch

1. Is Taylor Swift a Psyop? 

In the middle of digging into my neck muscles, G, my massage therapist, said something about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce being some sort of “psyop,” and that, somehow, they were involved in fixing the next Super Bowl, and, somehow, that was going to affect the next elections.

I must admit… although I’ve seen the word in print in the past year or so, I never bothered to find out what “psyop” means. From the context, I took it to mean propaganda. But, since G is one of my three favorite sources of conspiracy theory, I presumed she was seriously alarmed. So I promised myself that I’d consult with my two other favorite conspiracy theorists, my Pilates instructor and my barber.

But before I could do that, I saw this editorial in the WSJ.

I found the WSJ’s piece to be reasonable and even convincing. It is hard for me to take this theory seriously, but I do think the paper’s editorial board missed the target when they suggested that Vivek Ramaswamy believes, as my therapist does, that this “fix” is actually something that is being orchestrated by some left-wing group.

What Ramaswamy says is exactly the opposite of what the left means when they call something a conspiracy theory. It is a much more rational explanation of why people on both sides of the political divide come to believe in things that seem hard to believe in, and why sometimes those things turn out to be true.

I’ve made this same point several times in conversations and even in previous issues. But understanding it requires an IQ above, say, 110, which is well above the average IQ of most journalists and politicians.

2. Ballot stuffing? Just another conspiracy theory? Or the real thing?

If it can happen in Bridgeport, CT, why not elsewhere? Click here.

Trends in Wokeness

1. The Brave Comedy of Malik Elassal 

I’ve said it before. The best comedy is brave, brilliant, and also unifying. This young stand-up is testing himself in all three areas, and he’s doing pretty well. Don’t you think? Click here.

 2. Walls are unnecessary! Except, well, except maybe for…

An example of the sort of deep thinking that is the backbone of Social Justice advocates. Click here.

3. How is this NOT an extreme form of child abuse?

Click here.

4. Finally, some good news… Math may not be intrinsically racist! 

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a pile of NYT issues, you’ve heard about the recent claims that mathematics should be eliminated from grammar school and high school curricula because people of color, as a group, score poorly on math tests. In this case, the proposition is that teachers should not have to prove a base-level understanding of arithmetic.

Conspiracy Watch 

What Really Happened to George Floyd? 

Three years after George Floyd died lying on the ground, face down, under the knee of Officer Derek Chauvin, some surprising and, for some, inconvenient facts are emerging. Facts that contradict my own impression of what happened that day, based on watching that gut-wrenching video of him screaming that he could not breathe, while Chauvin and the other cops on the scene blithely ignored him.

I believed that Floyd died from asphyxiation. I believed that Chauvin’s knee on his neck – for more than eight minutes – was an overt act of cruelty and racism. And I was disgusted by Chauvin’s attitude of nonchalance for the entirety of that time.

I wasn’t the only one. The clip went viral, and people all over the world were outraged. That led to the BLM riots that resulted in the destruction of more than a billion dollars in private property, the shuttering of hundreds of retail stores (many Black owned and operated), the murder of dozens of policemen and hundreds of civilians, mostly Black Americans, in the year that followed. And also to Chauvin being sentenced to 22.5 years in prison, during which he was stabbed 22 times by a fellow prisoner.

Since then, the wheels of justice have been slowly turning over the facts, including facts that question the way Floyd was handled, whether important exculpatory information was not allowed to be entered into court records, and – the one fact I thought we were sure of – that he died of asphyxiation.

Recently, some journalists have begun to publish information that was not available to the public at that time (including some that was available to the press, but not disclosed to their readers).

If, like I did, you “know” that George Floyd was a non-violent Black man maliciously murdered by a racist White cop, you should probably not read this article from The Free Press. It might be uncomfortable. And we wouldn’t want that.

Wins and Losses in the Gender Wars 

Women Against “Not-Women” in the Boxing Ring 

USA Boxing, the organization that regulates amateur boxing in the US, announced last week that trans-female (biological male) boxers, 18 and older, will be able to compete against women, so long as they have (1) “declared themselves to be women,” (2) “undergone gender reassignment surgery” (Just the bottom parts, oddly!), and (3) “taken hormone therapy (estrogen) for at least three months.”

The theory is that this triplet of requirements will reduce a transwoman’s athletic stamina, speed, and power to a level where he/she would be in the same category as a female, and, thus, would have no “unfair” advantage.

This is crazy. Since this topic became an issue, I’ve spent a bit of time researching the facts and reviewing the studies. To date, I haven’t found anything that supports this idea. Quite to the contrary, I’ve found nothing but facts and studies that prove that, although estrogen therapy can reduce the amount of testosterone in a male body, it cannot reduce by any significant degree all of the advantages that male bodies acquire during puberty, including bone density, fast-twitch muscularity, heart and lung capacity, and a few more things that I can’t remember offhand.

But that’s just science. And we know that science is just another tool of the hierarchy of privileged White males.

So, forget about science. Use your inner wisdom. See what happens when a transwoman fights a real woman in the same weight class.

For an extra gut-level, scientifically refutable insight, pay attention to the voice of the winner as he/she gloats about his/her crushing victory!

Click here.

Health Watch 

I Should Have Acted Sooner!

If you have never tried ski-boarding, you should know that, for beginners, at least, it’s easier than skiing in some ways, but worse in others. Like how hard you hit the ground if you fall.

Since I first tried ski-boarding about twenty years ago, I had this idea about creating a special snowsuit for newbies that would be lined with inflated tubes of air. It would look sort of silly but would protect the new skier and warn experienced skiers to stay out of the way. Still, because it would make the wearer look like the Michelin Man, I knew it would be a tough sell.

Well, that problem has been solved. Suzhou Yidaibao Intelligent Technology Co, a Chinese startup, has developed “wearable airbag clothing” that magically inflates only when the wearer begins to fall down, It is advertised as an aid to oldsters and others at risk in any sort of mobile activity, but I’m thinking of trying to get distribution rights for skiers.

Click here.

Are Oreos Better Than Statins? 

As I said in the introduction to my Jan. 19 extended coverage of the Hamas-Israel Conflict, I’m going to be publishing Special Issues on some of the recent – and more politically entrenched and emotionally charged – subjects that interest me. The idea is that it will allow me to devote more space in my regular weekly issues to subjects like business, investing, entrepreneurship, etc., that I have specialized in for decades.

The use of controversial and potentially lethal “drugs” – like COVID vaccines and statin medications – is one of the subjects that I will be covering at length in future Special Issues. But I couldn’t resist including a brief mention here of this article on statins in The Epoch Times by Nicholas Norwitz, who holds a doctorate from Oxford and is presently a Harvard scientist.

Click here to find out what he discovered by doing an experiment trying to manage cholesterol levels with… cookies!

(Thanks to CM, who sent this to me, saying, “Now here’s a replacement for statin drugs that I could go for!”)

Election Watch

Trump Must Be Reading This Blog

Donald Trump must be reading my blog, because he’s just predicted that Biden won’t be running against him in the 2024 election.

In a recent interview with Breitbart News, Trump said, “All you have to do is look at his credentials. When you compare him today to 15 or 20 years ago, he’s a different kind of a guy. The guy can’t talk. The guy can’t put two sentences together.”

If you have watched clips of Biden speaking, you know this is true.

In recent weeks, many poll watchers and pundits have been voicing their doubts about Biden. If you google “predictions that Biden won’t run in 2024” (or something similar), you’ll find dozens of them.

Here are three:

From The Economic Times: A senior JPMorgan Chase strategist has predicted that Joe Biden will bow out of the 2024 election. He has given reasons for this. He has also made other predictions. Click here. 

From Reuters: Biden is “not sure” he’d be running if Trump was not in the race. Click here.

From The Hill: Cornel West says he’s not sure Biden will make it to the election. Click here. 

The End of Western Culture 

Holiday Roadkill: Pro-Hamas Americans Shut Down Airports 

As reported in the Dec. 31 installment of “The Week That Perished” in Taki’s Magazine:

“On Dec. 27, pro-Hamas protesters in the US rolled out a nationwide airport blockade in which noble leftists fighting for the right of Muslims to rape and murder Jews linked arms and prevented entry to LAX, JFK, and O’Hare, keeping travelers from their flights….

“This capped a year in which ‘climate activists’ in the UK and Europe… made a cottage industry out of blockading highways, ‘slow-walking’ traffic on busy streets, defacing buildings, and vandalizing museums.”

The Associated Press responded to this by running a piece that argued that protests involving violence and the use of force are the most important facets of a well-functioning democracy.

Read more headline news from “The Week That Perished” here.

Are Americans Becoming Emotionally Dependent on Their Celebrities? 

In response to a recently published NYT piece by Anna Marks on Taylor Swift that suggested she was, or should be, bisexual, Freddie deBoer wrote:

“The NYT piece operates by conceding that Swift is known to have exclusively dated men and has never made a single statement suggesting that she’s anything other than heterosexual, then goes on to insist that she’s queer, whatever the fuck that term means in 2024. Marks does this in part by sketching some unconvincing readings of Swift’s lyrics and by laying out conspiracy theories that remind me of QAnon. But more, Marks simply insists that LGBTQ people need this, that the palpable longing for Swift to be gay… can somehow will Swift’s homosexuality into being.”

Continue reading here.

Health Watch 

DeSantis Gets Ahead of the Biden Administration on Prescription Medicine Pricing 

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act gave the US government the right to negotiate certain drugs for Medicare Part D participants down to a maximum of about $3,300 a year. The Democratic leadership was counting on this as an important talking point in the 2024 election.

Ron DeSantis has taken the wind out of those sails by securing permission from the FDA to import all sorts of prescription drugs from Canada at even cheaper prices. This could make a big difference in how much Floridians will be spending on medicine in 2024.

DeSantis’s strategy should be very popular among voters, but it’s not a done deal.

The current deal with the FDA will be in force only for two years. If DeSantis wants the cost savings to become permanent, Florida must “demonstrate the programs would result in significant cost savings to consumers without adding risk of exposure to unsafe or ineffective drugs,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said.

DeSantis said the state would begin the program by importing drugs to help people cared for by state agencies – e.g., the Dept. of Corrections and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities. The drugs would treat chronic health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and mental illness.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s Surgeon General, Has Called for a Halt of the mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines

The reason? He says that the shots Pfizer and Moderna said were “safe” are contaminated with plasmid DNA.

And plasmid DNA is not something you want floating around in your body.

Citing a paper published by the FDA in 2007, Dr. Ladapo presented the following concerns with respect to regulatory limits for DNA in vaccines:

* DNA integration could theoretically impact a human’s oncogenes – the genes that can transform a healthy cell into a cancerous cell.

* DNA integration may result in chromosomal instability.

* The FDA’s paper discusses biodistribution of DNA vaccines and how such integration could affect unintended parts of the body, including blood, heart, brain, liver, kidney, bone marrow, ovaries/testes, lungs, etc.

This wasn’t news for those of us that have been following the issue. Scientists and medical professionals have been talking about it for years.

Two Takes on Dems’ Efforts to Keep Trump Off the Ballots

Republican Senator Eric Schmitt calls the Colorado Supreme Court ruling to remove Trump from the state primary ballot “one of the most dangerous court rulings in US history.” He says that Democrats “completely lost their minds” when they realized that Trump’s lead against Biden was growing even after he was hit with all those criminal and civil charges. Click here.

Meanwhile, Bill Barr, who became an anti-Trump hero when he testified against him before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capital, has said that though he is “firmly against Trump’s candidacy,” he also believes that “efforts to knock him off the ballot are legally untenable, politically counterproductive, and, most ominously, destructive to our political order. The Supreme Court needs to act swiftly to strike down these foolish decisions.” Read his argument here.

What do I think?

Trying to stop a candidate from running for office through criminal and civil charges is a common political strategy one sees in Banana Republics and totalitarian states.

Talk about a “threat to democracy”! Democracy is not about woke values. It’s about a political system in which the citizens, and only the citizens, have the right to choose their leaders.

Health Watch 

More Bad News About Statin Drugs

As I’ve told you before, since I began researching statin drugs several years ago, I have yet to find any research indicating that taking them increases lifespan. “If it doesn’t do that, and yet has some unwanted side effects, why do it?” I asked my personal MD and my cardiologist. They both had the same answer: “It may decrease the chance that you will spend your last several years paralyzed by a stroke.” That made sense, and I promised myself I’d look for proof of it. But, so far, I haven’t done that research. Instead, I began taking them again, unsure of whether I didn’t want to know or I wanted too much to please my doctors.

A friend, BI, who is also on statins, sent me this piece, saying: “Some of the data is old. At the end are some more recent observations. It has me thinking about abandoning my statin regimen.”

Nurse Exposes Deadly Hospital Protocols 

To some, this nurse’s account of her experience working with COVID patients will sound alarmist and be dismissed as anecdotal. But if you have been following what we’ve learned (from reputable scientific studies) about COVID and its early treatments by hospitals, this interview should scare you.

Check it out here and let me know what you think.

Steve Kirsch Says He Has “Crystal-Clear Evidence” that the COVID Vaccine Is Deadly 

Steve Kirsch is a successful entrepreneur, inventor, and a philanthropic supporter of medical research. He’s also a COVID vaccine skeptic. He’s been writing about it for three years.

He’s not a doctor. Nor does he have a PhD in medicine. I’d call him an amateur researcher who has probably done more research into COVID-19 and the vaccines than 98% of the doctors and medical scientists in the country.

I’ve read dozens of articles by him over the last 12 to 18 months. He’s always seemed to be skeptical of talking points from government health officials, but also cautious about making definitive statements himself.

Recently, however, he has become convinced that the COVID vaccines are not only causing all sorts of heart- and vascular-related injuries and long-lasting symptoms, but that they may have been responsible for hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths.

One of the ways he came to this conclusion, he says, is by studying the data on “excess deaths” in countries all around the world since the vaccines were introduced. And he’s found that the number has skyrocketed.

Vaccine believers (and promoters) have attributed these excess deaths to other possible causes (including such absurdities as “global warming”). But as he explains here in talking about excess deaths in New Zealand, the connection is not compellingly explained by anything other than the COVID vaccines.

The End of Western Civilization 

In this series, I will be covering the many different but frightening and fundamentally connected events that are taking place all over the United States, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, in virtually all of Western Europe, and even, to a lesser extent, in Latin America. I see many of these disparate events as linked together by a new set of ideologies that derive from the same common cause: eradicating everything good from the Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian ideology and replacing it with primitive, tribal, and retrogressive ideas that, if they are allowed to continue, will put the world into a new Dark Age.

Here are some recent clips and tidbits:

Virginia Teacher of the Year Fired for Misgendering Student Remotely 

Peter Vlaming, a multiple-time Teacher of the Year, was fired after decades of teaching French because he wasn’t fully cooperative in pretending that a child suffering from gender dysphoria had been misgendered at birth.

Mr. Vlaming had successfully avoided the pronoun issue in class by speaking to the kid in the second person. What got him in trouble was speaking of him/her to other teachers in private. I know. You think I’m exaggerating or have it wrong. Check for yourself here.

Equity in Education 

The Minneapolis Dept. of Education is testing a new idea to promote racial equity: They are segregating math and writing classes by race!

“A lot of times within our education system, Black students are expected to conform to a White standard,” a Minneapolis administrator told the WSJ.

Meanwhile, the city of San Francisco is about to vote on whether eighth graders should be allowed to take algebra classes. Eighth graders used to take algebra until 10 years ago when the city administrators discovered that there was a racial hierarchy in terms of performance.

Migrant Attempts to Buy a Five-Year-Old 

Police in New York arrested Monji Jelassi, a 62-year-old Tunisian citizen, after a woman complained that he asked to “purchase” her daughter.

During an interview with the Buffalo Border Patrol, Jelassi admitted that he had entered the US illegally.

Instead of investigating and possibly jailing him as a dangerous pedophile, the arresting officers took a cue from the progressive leadership of the FBI and Justice Department in Washington and simply offered Jelassi a ride back to where he came from.

“Removing this individual… aligns with the interests of our law enforcement partners,” said Patrol Agent in Charge David Banks.

Banks didn’t respond to questions about how Jelassi’s home country will feel about having him back.

Health Watch 

The High Cost of Mediocre Healthcare in America 

The US spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world. And yet, it ranks 59th in the world in terms of life expectancy.

The longest-living populations are from Hong Kong, Macao, Korea, and Japan.

Those Asian countries/ cultures are followed by the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway) and most of the advanced Western European countries, such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, and even Ireland. Also, interestingly, the populations of many wealthy Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE) live relatively long lives.

All of that I can understand. Studies have shown a clear correlation between wealth and health.

However, there is also a handful of countries I didn’t expect to find in the top half of the list, including Estonia, Albania, Guam, and mainland China!

To make matters worse, life expectancy in the US in the last three years has gone down by three years. Which puts us below countries like Iran, Jordan, and Tunisia. (This is likely due to COVID and the COVID vaccines, but the Biden administration says it’s due to global warming!)

Will Dr. Fauci Be Next? 

According to questionable Italian and German news networks, Italy’s former health minister, Roberto Speranza, is being investigated for “omicidio.”

Recently, several emails were “discovered” that indicate that, from the very start of the COVID vaccinations, Speranza knew the shots were “killing people.” And yet, according to one probably unreliable source, he gave orders to local health authorities to conceal deaths and serious side effects in order to reassure Italian citizens of their safety and not jeopardize the vaccination campaign.

Trends in Wokeness

You Can’t Be More Au Courant Than This 

Since Biden was elected, many Republicans have been accusing the Justice Department and the FBI of being out of touch with the common sentiments of average Americans by classifying parents of school age children and conservative Catholics as “domestic terrorists.”

Progressives don’t see things that way. They prefer to think that these federal law enforcement agencies are merely keeping up with the latest trends in social justice, which they support.

One example: A recent email from the bureau to employees announced that “effective immediately… the FBI has officially adopted the LGBTQIA+ acronym in place of LGBT+.

“This change was proposed by Bureau Equality, one of our nine Diversity Advisory Committees, and approved by FBI executive management to help promote a more welcoming workplace for members of our LGBTQIA+ community.

“LGBTQIA+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/ Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/ Aromantic, plus,” the email explained. “The ‘+’ represents other gender, sexual, and romantic identities not covered by the letters of the acronym.”

Satan Enters Tennessee Elementary School 

Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, TN, is having its 15 minutes of fame after accepting into its after-school curriculum a chapter of The Satanic Temple.

According to a flyer posted by the group, the Chimneyrock Elementary After-School Satan Club “will not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology.”

On the contrary, a spokesperson said, the Satanic cult will teach children to “think for themselves.”

Meanwhile, in Jolly old England…

A neighborhood council in London decided to cancel its annual “Hanukkah lights installation” because it might upset “some of the newer residents” (i.e., Muslims), according to a leaked memo.

Wins and Losses in the Gender Wars 

Another Biological Boy Shows Girls What Biological Girls Are Capable of. 

A young Irish child recently secured a position in next year’s Irish Dancing World Championship by shrewdly changing his gender at the last possible moment from boy to girl.

After finishing a disappointing 11th place as a boy in a local contest, he entered a subsequent competition as a girl, and easily won first place with a “muscular, animated performance,” according to an unreliable source.

What is known for sure is that the young lass is on her way to competing against other young lasses.

Meanwhile, in DeSantis-land…

A new bylaw has disallowed public schools from allowing “biological” boys from participating “as a female” in female sports.

Policy 16.11.6 states that the “use of an ineligible student… may subject the school to a monetary penalty of a minimum of $100 per contest and/ or other sanctions.”

The first test of the policy was reported on when it was learned that a biological male had played more than 30 games of volleyball for Monarch High School, brilliantly performing by smashing opposing players with “her” powerful slaps.

On the Global Warming Front

UN to US: Eat Plant burgers to Save the Planet 

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) brought a zany idea to COP28, the recent climate change conference in Dubai.

The idea is that “the United States and other wealthy nations” should help ease global warming by “foregoing meat consumption in favor of plant-based diets, including plant-based faux meats.”

This, just months after the University of California, Davis, published a study that concluded that lab-grown or “cultured” meat is up to 25 times worse for the climate than natural beef.

The conclusion: “Results indicate that the environmental impact of near-term animal cell-based meat production is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production if a highly refined growth medium is utilized.”

The Biden Beat 

Recent Notable Moments from POTUS 

President Biden couldn’t make it to COP28. Apparently, he was too busy holding an auction for 44,000 acres of oil and gas drilling rights.

Then there was the text he sent calling for a cease-fire in the Israel/ Palestinian war, joking about tossing around the old “nuclear football” and referring to Trump as a “former governor.”

And Finally…

California City to Tell Israel What to Do 

In Oakland, CA, officials invited the community to a City Council meeting to talk about whether the city should “call for a cease-fire in the Middle East.”

According to one source, “Speaker after speaker took to the microphone to deny that any atrocities took place on Oct. 7 or to show support for Hamas. “Calling Hamas a terrorist group is racist and plays into the genocidal propaganda… that we should be doing everything possible to combat,” said one person at the meeting.