Daily News Roundup

Estimated Reading Time: 23 minutes

NOTABLE QUOTES

Victor Davis Hanson contributor to American Greatness: It would be hard for a Chinese or Russian strategist to come up with a record better than Biden’s to emasculate America’s military and radically reduce its global stature.

Drew Allen contributor to American Greatness: One thing is clear—the Democrats are once again falsely accusing Trump of crimes which Biden and Democrats have actually committed. It was Biden—not Trump—who committed a real quid pro quo when he withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for getting the prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden and Burisma fired. It was Biden, who likely exchanged secrets in exchange for favors—with Burisma and the Communist Chinese and likely countless others. The latest leaks don’t incriminate Trump, they incriminate the Democratic Party.

Aaron Kheriaty contributor to The American Mind: . . . fear has been weaponized to coerce individuals, families, and communities to cede their sovereignty and even make them forget they once had it. To help individuals, families, and small communities reclaim their sovereignty—their ability to self-govern—we must help people overcome their fear and find their courage.

Thomas Klocek contributor to American Thinker: The silent majority appears to be finding its voice. We are learning that we can impact the bottom line of corporate America. And that may be the only way to make them listen, that they should concentrate on business and not politics. We need to maintain the boycotts that are in process and perhaps start new ones when these corporations decide to spit in our faces for the sake of groups that make up less than 10 percent of the population. We need to continue to speak up, turn to God, and pray.

Daniel Greenfield contributor to Frontpage Magazine: When people make their personal lives public, they hand power to the Left.

Ellie Fromm contributor to ThePrickleyPear.org: As I grew up, my mother quoted Derrick Wilburn frequently to us: “you are a victim of three things – your own ignorance, laziness, or poor choices.” In other words, stop playing the victim card and take responsibility.

Dr. Thomas Patterson contributor to ThePrickleyPear.org: Physicians were once respected for their integrity. They could be stodgy and paternalistic sometimes, but they couldn’t be influenced or bought. Now medical doctors have morphed from being dedicated stewards of their patient’s health to “medical providers”, as government payers describe them. Most owe their professional loyalty to a hospital-based system that operates pretty much like any other business, with the bottom line always in view.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist: Holding Big Pharma and public health officials accountable for their vaccine falsehoods is a must. And Trump’s sizable influence among Republican voters could be instrumental in achieving it. Trump’s acknowledgment of the issue and a potential conservative response could give Republican politicos the push they need to investigate and punish these entities where appropriate. Yes, glossing over the shots’ side effects may appeal to a large swath of the electorate who are likely unaware of such issues. But this isn’t about doing what’s politically beneficial; it’s about saying what’s true and giving America the Covid reckoning it desperately needs.

Alexander Riley contributor to The American Mind: . . . here’s another intriguing thing about the FBI Hate Crimes data that is never properly reported by mainstream media. Whites are significantly underrepresented as perpetrators of hate crimes, and blacks are significantly overrepresented. Whites make up somewhere around 65 percent of the American population, but only 52 percent of hate crime offenders. Blacks are 14 percent of the overall population, but nearly 22 percent of hate crime offenders. It is of significant interest that when media sources do talk about the racial demography of offenders, they always do it in a way that insinuates that whites are disproportionately committing them, which is, as just indicated, utterly false.

Victoria Taft contributor to PJMedia: At a “pride” parade celebrating gay, trans, and +++ people in Seattle over the weekend, some were amused while others were shocked and thoroughly disgusted by a contingent of mostly male exhibitionists who rode bikes buck naked. The men, waving their dingle dangles and freak flags, rode bikes to strike a blow for pedal-philes everywhere — or something. They also think it’s really rude of you to notice and comment on it. . . Since it’s obvious that a main idea behind “pride” is being proud of same-sex attraction and the consummation of said attraction, sex is basically what a peloton of peddling perverts is all about. But don’t you dare question their motives.

TYRANNY IN THE NAME OF CLIMATE DOOM MYTH: GLOBALIST POLITICIANS & BIG BUSINESS ACCUMULATE MORE POWER & CONTROL

Payne: Millions of U.S. Jobs Are at Risk From Climate Policy

Five and a half. That’s the percentage of full- and part-time jobs in the U.S. economy attributable directly and indirectly to fossil fuels—a massive number, just under eleven million in total. Those figures are from a timely report demonstrating just how much the U.S. benefits from fossil fuel-related employment—and how much it stands to potentially lose a green-new-deal policies loom on the horizon. The analysis by consulting firm PwC carried out for the American Petroleum Institute found that the oil and natural gas industry’s “direct, indirect, and induced impacts” on the U.S. economy “amounted to 10.8 million full-time and part-time jobs and accounted for 5.4 percent of total U.S. employment in 2021.” The industry’s “total impact on labor income,” meanwhile, was valued at “$908.7 billion, or 6.4 percent of the U.S. national labor income in 2021,” while the total impact on US GDP the same year was “nearly $1.8 trillion, accounting for 7.6 percent of the national total.” Those economic benefits face an uncertain future as the Biden administration pushes aggressive green-energy policies that directly target fossil fuels. Critics say these anti-fossil-fuel measures also put the reliability of the U.S. electric grid at risk.

[…] Fossil fuels, of course, remain firmly embedded in the complex web of the U.S. economy. PwC noted that oil and natural gas exploration and production involve, variously, the mining sector, the manufacturing sector, the transportation sector, the utilities sector, and the wholesale and retail trade sectors.

Joe Trotter with the American Legislative Exchange Council said policymakers must tread carefully when looking to radically change something as critical and as massive as the U.S. energy industry.

Harsanyi: Electric Cars Are An Expensive Scam

The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation. Even the purported amenities and technological advances EV-makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology. Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, endless state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project. And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that government is promising to artificially limit the production of gas-powered cars.

THE CORRUPT & DANGEROUS U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES & THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE APPARATUS

Purnell: DOJ Rot Goes So Much Deeper Than Merrick Garland

If agencies are so powerful that their work to protect political allies and topple their challengers continues unabated by the electoral process, then we are not a functioning republic. […] . . . if the blame — and punishment — for the DOJ corruption revealed by whistleblowers stops with Merrick Garland or even Joe Biden, it will happen again. That’s because the Justice Department’s pattern of shielding the Biden family from the law wasn’t masterminded by either man. It happened because of career officials and bureaucrats, whose names most Americans don’t know, and whom Americans will never have the chance to vote out. They didn’t have to be told what to do.

JUDICIARY

Street: Court Reversal On Covid Vaccine Mandates Provides A Roadmap For Fighting Medical Tyranny

The 53-page opinion provides a framework for defeating mandates now and in the future. […] Last week, a three-judge panel on California’s Second District Court of Appeals revived a case brought by a group of Los Angeles firefighters who challenged the City of Los Angeles’ Covid-19 vaccine mandate. The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling that dismissed the case because the judge found the firefighters’ allegations regarding the safety and efficacy of the Covid shots implausible, ignoring the settled rule that, at the pleading stage, judges must accept all factual allegations as true.

(Disclaimer: I am one of the lawyers representing the firefighters in this case and the lawyer primarily responsible for drafting the appeal.)

Although unpublished, the appellate court’s 53-page opinion marks a pivotal moment in the fallout from Covid policy.

2024 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY CANDIDATES

Wegmann: Trump Plan To Bypass Congress and Starve ‘The Deep State’

Sources close to former President Trump say he has a plan for keeping Congress from ever again forcing him into “disgraceful” and “ridiculous” spending situations. If he returns to the White House, Trump will seek to resurrect authority that Congress stripped from the presidency almost a half century ago.

What President Nixon squandered, his campaign promises, Trump will restore, namely the impoundment power. “A lot of you,” the former president told a New Hampshire crowd Thursday, “don’t know what that is.” Indeed, few now remember it. Impoundment, if restored, would allow a president, in theory, to simply refuse to spend appropriations by Congress. More than just an avenue to cut spending, Trump sees that kind of authority as key to starving, and thus crushing, the so-called “deep state.” But such a move would fundamentally alter the balance of power, and any effort to restore the long-forgotten authority virtually guarantees a protracted legal battle over who exactly controls the power of the purse. Trump welcomes that fight. Some budget experts believe he won’t get anywhere.

2024 GENERAL ELECTION

USAWatchdog.com: “We’re In The Midst Of A Coup” – Martin Armstrong Warns NeoCons Will Rig 2024 Election

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong was forecasting “chaos” in 2023, and that’s exactly what we got. His cycle work says don’t look for it to get better anytime soon.“We have all these people who have been neocons for 30 years. Even Ron Paul said recently that the neocons have been waging war for 30 years and have not won a one single one. This is what they live for. Look at the clip of Lindsey Graham saying this is the best money we ever spent killing Russians. How can you take pleasure in that statement that this is the best money we ever spent killing Russians. This is not defense. These are the words of a psychopath in my mind…They are not about to accept anybody who is going to be against war. The neocons are in full control of the government—period. We are living in the time of a coup. The United States is not the free country you thought it was…” Armstrong also predicts that the neocons will rig the 2024 election so Biden (or some other neocon) gets a second term. Is there any way to stop this election rigging and fraud in 2024? Armstrong says, . . .

GOP ESTABLISHMENT

Showalter: Stench of bitterness? Liz Cheney complains ‘We’re electing idiots’

Months after that humiliating 37-point loss of her Wyoming congressional seat in to attorney Harriet Hageman, Liz Cheney apparently is still stewing. According to The Hill: Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) suggested Monday that the problem with American politics is that “we’re electing idiots.” […] So Harriet Hageman, the attorney who defeated Cheney in Wyoming’s special election by nearly 40 points, and who has since gone on to serve her constituents to their satisfaction according to polls; who has voted against Biden’s badly misnamed “Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023” porkulus bill and vowed to stop the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents to harass the public, and who has since challenged the weaponization of government and corruption seen with Hunter Biden, is an … “idiot”? The attorney whose most memorable headline summary upon her election to Congress was that she was elected to fight, not find the middle ground? She’s not a “serious person”? […] What we have here is a wretched picture of a “non-coping individual,” as the late great California historian Kevin Starr liked to put it. She bitter as heck about her election loss to Hageman, which has put an end to her capacity to wield power (Cheney really liked to throw around power) with the voters having the last word about it. She felt entitled to that seat as a “serious person” so anyone else who wins while she doesn’t is somehow, in that word Lenin was so fond of using on those who crossed him, an idiot.’

U.S. SENATE DEMOCRAT MAJORITY

Cleveland: Democrats Sidelined Grassley In Questioning Whistleblowers Because He Knew Way Too Much

No wonder whistleblowers want to talk to Grassley: They have no stauncher advocate. The release last week of the IRS whistleblowers’ testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee exposed numerous scandals implicating the Department of Justice and FBI both in extensive efforts to interfere in the investigation and prosecution of the president’s son and in a cover-up of the obstruction. But the details do something more: They reveal why Senate Democrats prevented Chuck Grassley from participating in the questioning of the whistleblowers — because the Iowa senator knew too much.

One week ago today, the House Ways and Means Committee released transcripts of the sworn testimony of two IRS agents who had worked directly on the criminal case against Hunter Biden. The committee also made public supplemental information the whistleblowers provided the committee following their testimony, namely the IRS agents’ claims that they neither saw, nor knew about, the FD-1023 summary detailing a confidential human source’s report that Hunter and Joe Biden each received $5 million in bribes from the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma.

BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA’S AMERICA LAST REGIME: THE FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION OF FOREIGN POLICY

VDH: Biden Abroad: The Moral and Material Collapse of U.S. Foreign Policy

The American post-Cold War order from the Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush administration is over. Barack Obama began its erosion with his tired lectures about the past sins of the United States. Obama empowered radical Islamists. He invited Russia back into the Middle East after a forty-year hiatus. He snored while Vladimir Putin swallowed large areas of Ukraine. He nonchalantly allowed ISIS almost to take over Iraq. And he authored the Libyan misadventure. Joe Biden has greatly amplified what Obama inaugurated. He accentuates the Obama-authored foreign policy disasters by his own family corruption.

If the U.S. had an honest media, a disinterested Department of Justice, and a professional FBI, the Biden family would likely be facing felony bribery charges and an impeachment vote for leveraging the interests of the U.S. for a few millions of Ukrainian and Chinese cash. Biden has forfeited any moral credibility America once had in sermonizing to the world about the advantages of transparent democracy.

Thornton: Still Appeasing After All These Years

Despite the Biden administration’s two years of cringing, futile negotiations with the Iranian theocrats, he’s back with yet another disastrous proposal–– an unwritten “understanding” regarding the mullahcracy’s efforts to build nuclear weapons. But the regime is close, perhaps mere months, to having enough enriched uranium at the purity needed to manufacture weapons. The current outreach, if successful, will lead to a much more dangerous Middle East, especially for our allies like Israel and Sunni Muslim states. The “understanding” as reported does nothing to fix the deep flaws in our foreign policy toward Iran for the last 44 years, particularly the failings of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in 2015 by the U.S. and six other world powers. The provisions of this new plan include pledges from Iran not to enrich uranium any closer to the 90% needed for nuclear weapons, along with the return of American hostages. As a down payment, Iran a few weeks ago received from Iraq $2.76 billion after Biden waived sanctions on the funds. But don’t worry, Iran will spend the windfall on “food and medicine,” an old bait-and-switch we saw Saddam Hussein pull on us after the first Gulf War. In return for our feckless generosity, Iran will

receive . . . […] And don’t forget, Iran has joined Russia and China in a triple alliance of our autocratic enemies.

BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA’S AMERICA LAST REGIME: THE FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA

(A must read) Chang: China’s Saboteurs Are Coming to America

There is now a Chinese invasion of the U.S. homeland.
Chinese migrants are entering the United States on foot at the southern border. Almost all are desperate, seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Some, however, are coming to commit acts of sabotage.
Many [Chinese], however, are short-circuiting the long waits at the consulates. At the southern border, Chinese migrants are entering the United States in unprecedented numbers.
Once here, the military fighters can link up with China’s agents already in place or Chinese diplomats.
How many of the PLA fighters have slipped into the United States this way? Some estimate 5,000, others 10,000. Those numbers sound high, but whatever the actual figure more are coming.
These are China’s shock troops. The concern is that, on the first day of war in Asia they will take down America’s power lines, poison reservoirs, assassinate officials, start wildfires, spread pathogens, and create terror by bombing shopping malls and supermarkets.

IS ATTORNEY – CLIENT PRIVILEGE IN JEOPARDY?

Felten: Trump and Attorney-Client Privilege

Trump may not be wrong if he thinks the Department of Justice, and Democrats more broadly, have demonstrated a willingness – an eagerness – to put the screws to lawyers representing him. It’s not just Evan Corcoran who looks likely to be called as a witness against him, but also Christina Bobb, who found herself under Justice Department scrutiny within months of joining the Trump legal team last year. Like Corcoran, Bobb was required to testify before a grand jury. Trump White House lawyers Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin were compelled to give evidence to a grand jury not once but twice, despite Trump asserting both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege. […] One experienced Washington litigator interviewed by Real Clear Politics, but who asked not to be quoted by name, is far less sanguine. He says it is all too common for prosecutors to try to get their hands on lawyer-client communications as it is. He worries the eagerness to pursue Trump is leading to the erosion of one of the most fundamental norms in Anglo-American law. “The protection of communications between lawyers and their clients is the foundation of our legal system,” he said, adding he was “shocked” by how thoroughly the privilege has been breached in the Trump case. […] Last year, Congress considered new limits on lawyer-client confidentiality. Lawmakers nearly passed legislation, the Enablers Act, that would have required attorneys to alert regulators and prosecutors of any fishy financial transactions by their clients. Lawyers would have been treated like bankers, required to do due diligence about their clients and report any “suspicious activities.” The legal profession went into overdrive, pushing back against what it saw as a threat to the privilege that distinguishes lawyers from other professionals, the privilege of confidentiality that makes attorneys more like priests than mere businessmen.

SAVE OURSLEVES & RESTORE OUR REPUBLIC

Greenfield: Politics and the End of Private Lives

What we call cancel culture, the Chinese called “internet hunting” by “morality mobs” who were enforcing a street-level Confucianism in Maoist fashion by destroying the lives of the offenders. It took Americans another decade to catch up to China. Cancel culture is more overtly ideological than internet hunting, but they are the common phenomenon of leftist mass societies where people inhabit anonymous collectives, displaced by technology and the collapse of definable communities, they form ad hoc groups to enforce social codes and burn witches. […] The internet has taken down all the doors. Making the private public is a core leftist program. The old hackers claimed that “information wants to be free”. Information is less free than it ever was, but people’s lives have become public property. The ‘free’ public services of Google, Facebook and others offer convenience in exchange for information. Family life and political participation leave a trail. Disputes spill out into their ugliness into social media. From the media to social media, everyone is invited to judge the private lives that have become public commodities. It took Americans longer to collectivize the personal than it did the Chinese. And we did it in a typically individualistic fashion. To paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, when collectivism came to America, it did so by . . . […] America was founded as a free society and has become a totalitarian state. Its monolithic institutions, state, corporate, academic, nonprofit, claim the right to control everything about their subjects from birth to death, a thousand forms and agenda items put the personal at the disposition of the public. A new revolution will make the personal, private once again. It is a revolution that can begin with us when we do not answer a question, fill in a form, turn over data or share our lives or scrutinize the lives of others who are not our family or our friends.

Kheriaty: Rebellion, Not Retreat

Fran Maier is right that we are now at a hinge in history—the end of an age and the beginning of something new. Anyone who thinks he or she knows exactly what will emerge next is probably wrong. Whatever is coming next, it will be a very different world from the one we’ve inhabited since World War II. I am quite certain that many things will get worse before they get better. Our societal institutions—governmental, educational, communications, media, medical, public health, etc.—have failed us. The degree of rot in these institutions makes reform or repair, in the short term at least, impractical. I believe our task is analogous to that undertaken by the Czech dissidents of the Soviet era. Many of us are familiar with Vaclav Havel, who became the first president of the Czech Republic after the fall of Communism and wrote the now classic essay, “The Power of the Powerless.” Maier mentions another Vaclav: a close friend and collaborator of Havel, Vaclav Benda is less well-known but no less important. In contrast to Havel, Benda was a faithful Catholic and remained grounded in his Christian convictions as he faced the challenges of his time and place. Some readers will doubtless wonder whether the historical analogy to a communist totalitarian regime might not be a bit overblown. Things may be bad, but they surely cannot be that bad. But consider, as Eric Voegelin taught us, that the common feature of all totalitarian systems is neither concentration camps, nor secret police, nor mass surveillance—as horrifying as all these are. The common feature of all totalitarian systems is the prohibition of questions: every totalitarian regime first monopolizes what counts as rationality and determines what questions you are allowed to ask.

DEMOCRAT PARTY MARXIST PLAYBOOK: CHILDREN ARE THE TARGET OF THE DARKENESS AFFECTING OUR NATION

Guzman: ‘My daughter was murdered by a gender ideology’: LA mom slams CPS after it took away her daughter and let her transition into a man – before she killed herself three years later aged just 19

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com in March 2022, Martinez accused her Los Angeles County school of encouraging Yaeli to take hormones and undergo gender reassignment surgery as a child, while failing to properly treat her severe depression. ‘The school was telling her to go to these LGBT groups behind my back. She went from questioning her sexuality to her gender,’ she said. At the hearing last week, Martinez said her daughter was murdered by a gender ideology’. ‘CPS took my daughter when she was 16 years old. It was helped by her public school counselor and LGBTQ group and another trans-identified girl.

Blake: Yes, Trans Exhibitionists Showing Their Junk To Kids Is Directly Downstream Of Redefining Marriage

Of course the slope was slippery. As naked men parade in front of kids and pride marchers chant “we’re coming for your children,” a few LGBT activists are beginning to worry that things have gone too far. For example, Andrew Sullivan, an early and ardent advocate for same-sex marriage, is unhappy about reaping what he has sown. And he should be — from sterilizing and mutilating children via “gender-affirming care” to flashing children at pride festivities, the LGBT movement is proving social conservatives right. Sullivan is repulsed and worried about a backlash, but he still denies any responsibility for the fruits of his labor. He argues his ideas needn’t lead to the illiberalism and radicalism his side is indulging. He is adamant that we could have, however uneasily, agreed to live and let live if the LGBT movement had taken his advice and closed up shop after its legal victories. He insists, “There is no slope in the case I made. There is a clear line: formal legal equality alongside cultural and social freedom on all sides.” He is wrong. Same-sex marriage was always a radical project with implications for all of society, which is why there is a direct line from Sullivan’s case for it to the extremism he now deplores. Same-sex marriage reduces the differences between men and women to a matter of personal sexual preference, rather than a fundamental ontological one upon which civilization is based. If the sex binary doesn’t matter in marriage, it doesn’t matter anywhere. […] Worse still, the false doctrine of “born this way” demands the grooming of other people’s children into rainbow identities.

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY MARXIST PLAYBOOK: PROMOTE & GLORIFY GENDER DYSPHORIA A MENTAL ILLNESS

Fromm: How Oppressed Can They Be?

Pride Month, also known in the Gregorian calendar as “June”, is a time for those outside of the overwhelmingly predominant heterosexual population and some who believe they are gender confused to celebrate their sexual or gender orientations. The celebration of these lifestyles and personal assignments ought to be in the privacy of their own homes, not in public and highly visible venues, such as restaurants, streets, schools, and even the White House. Why is this population defining themselves solely based on sexual practices or gender identities? Many believe that this ‘sets them apart’ and ‘gives them a sense of individuality’. Also, it’s increasingly common and acceptable to play the victim card in today’s social media dominated society. The victim card gives the belief that you are not responsible for poor choices because, it is claimed, you are oppressed by others. You are, therefore, exempt from doing harm to others because damage is or was done to you. Yes, true victims need to be helped and sometimes protected. However, I don’t believe those defining themselves as members of the LGBTQ+ group (or ‘community’) are victims of oppression in present-day America.

Revolver.news: NYT: Transgender suicide rate is off the charts — they blame everything except the dysphoria…

Often times, the New York Times will drop a truth bomb, and then go to great lengths to obscure it or explain it away if its inconvenient to The Narrative. Other times, the New York Times will display a stunning lack of curiosity as to why something is the way it is, if the answer tends to be inconvenient to their agenda. New York Times coverage of a recent Denmark study on transgenderism is one of those times… The Danish study found that transgenders have a markedly higher rate of suicide than normal people. The New York Times calls this study “the first in the world to analyze national suicide data for this group.” However, the results are not surprising to those who have been paying attention to the data on the topic of transgenders and suicides. According to Newsweek: . . .[…] The New York Times reports in an article by one Azeen Ghorayshi that the Danish study concluded that transvestites in the country “had 7.7 times the rate of suicide attempts and 3.5 times the rate of suicide deaths compared with the rest of the population.” Again, this is not surprising. What is also not surprising is the lack of curiosity the New York Times displays as to why the rates of suicide among that group may be so high — nowhere in the article do the words “dysphoria” or “mental illness” appear. […] The New York Times also omits the research that shows that the mental and spiritual health of the transvestite does not improve if he or she undergoes “gender-affirming care” involving brutal hormone suppression and supplementation regimens and even sex change surgeries that forever mutilate the genitals, and possibly other body parts, forever.

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE: CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

Piper: Senate Democrats Take One More Step Toward Socialized Medicine

It’s been less than a year since Democrats enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives Medicare the power to set the prices of certain medicines. Those price controls have yet to go into effect. But Democrats already want more. They’ve introduced new legislation that would amp up those price controls — and even permit the government to refuse to cover drugs in order to drive a harder bargain with pharmaceutical companies. As for the patients who would benefit from those drugs — or may even need them to stay alive? They may end up being collateral damage. The Democrats’ new price control gambit is the SMART Prices Act, introduced by Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Peter Welch, D-Vt., and 23 of their colleagues. They say their bill would “build on” the IRA. […] Then there’s the provision of the SMART Prices Act that would allow Medicare to create a national formulary of covered medicines. This proposed change could allow Medicare to decline coverage of an FDA-approved drug solely because of its cost. It wouldn’t matter if a doctor and Medicare beneficiary agreed that the drug was the best course of treatment. The federal government would have the last word. This sort of rationing is endemic to any socialized medical system, in which government puts a price on patients’ lives — and routinely decides that innovative therapies are too expensive to cover.

A CHURCH IN DECLINE

Queen: Is ‘The Sparkle Creed’ Proof of the ‘Decline of Christianity’?

Every so often, we hear about a progressive Christian leader who says something outrageous and downright heretical. The latest case is Rev. Rachel Small Stokes, pastor of Immanuel United Church of Christ in Louisville, Ky. The United Church of Christ is a far-left denomination; it’s actually the denomination where Barack and Michelle Obama attended church when they lived in Chicago — until his toxic pastor began hogging the headlines. In an undated clip courtesy of Woke Preacher Clips on Twitter (an essential follow), Stokes has her congregation stand and recite what she calls “The Sparkle Creed.” Here’s the text of the creed, which Stokes wrote herself in 2021: . . . […] But does all of this signal the “decline of Christianity”? Far from it. While the American church is sadly on the downslope, the church in places like Asia and Africa is on fire, the flames stoked by persecution. Besides, Christians know that, while we might lose some of the battles, God wins the war:

OTHER NEWS, COMMENTARY, OPINION

Ketersky & Alfonseca: Daniel Penny pleads not guilty in subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely; bail set at $100K

“Daniel Penny stands indicted for manslaughter after allegedly putting Jordan Neely in a deadly chokehold for several minutes until and after he stopped moving. I hope Mr. Neely’s loved ones are on the path towards healing as they continue to mourn this tragic loss,” said District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Penny, 24, pleaded not guilty to the charges and is free on $100,000 bail. His next court appearance is October 25. Penny was indicted by a grand jury on June 14.

Paterson: Politized Science Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

The Lancet was once a leading British medical journal. It was sober and medically exacting. It was so respected that it was often cited to settle controversial issues in the field of medicine. Today, it is a shell of its former self, shot through with leftist political ideology. A recent editorial called out the UK Home Secretary for her “appalling and shocking“ comments. Was it about a drop in research funding or disputed medical opinions or something else of direct relevance to medicine? No, the Secretary opined that new migrants to the UK possessed “values which are at odds with our country“ and brought “heightened levels of criminality“. Some might dispute such statements and some not, but how is this discussion pertinent for a medical journal? […] Horton and The Lancet are hardly alone in degrading medicine by politicizing it. Science and scientists are in reputational decline because, well, they deserve to be.

[…] Politicized science can lead to bizarre and harmful conclusions. There is now a movement against . . .

McKenna: NYC Mayor To Require ‘Mindful Breathing’ in All Public Schools

“We think that it’s just, air goes through your nostrils and you move,” Adams said Monday. “No, there’s a science to breathing,” From pre-kindergartners to high school seniors, students across the five boroughs will begin these daily exercises in the fall aimed at improving physical and mental health.

Sundance: U.S. Chamber of Commerce Hosts Former Acting CIA Director Mike Morrell for Discussion to Help Multinational Corporations Engage with Fourth Branch of Government

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a representative organization in the United States that lobbies Congress. The CoC represent the interests of the multinational corporations who use K-Street and J-Street in DC to write rules, regulations, policies and laws as part of their corporate control over U.S. wealth. That’s what the CoC does. That’s the entire purpose of the Chamber of Commerce. The CoC has long been in the background of our political discussions. During the Obama administration, the Dept of Commerce literally permitted the Chamber of Commerce to write U.S. trade language – physically write the words that go into U.S. trade deals with other countries. This was the era of maximum value for the CoC that saw their coffers swell, as multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations realized the CoC was in the business of literally controlling the U.S. capitalist economy. The arch nemesis of the CoC was President Donald Trump, who threw the CoC out of the room when decisions were being made about trade and economic policy.

Salgado: New Estimate: 200K Babies Saved From Abortion Since Dobbs

“[The] best guess that we have is about 200,000 children were born this year that would not have been born,” Lankford said. Thanks to the Dobbs decision. “That’s 200,000 kids. That’s 200,000 smiling faces on playgrounds. That’s 200,000 silly songs, starting in kindergarten. That’s 200,000 families that will be blessed with looking in the eyes of a child,” Lankford rejoiced. LifeNews noted that 200,000 “would be enough people to fill a city the size of Grand Rapids, Michigan; Vancouver, Washington; or Chattanooga, Tennessee.”

Pagones: At least 16 bodies pulled from Chicago waterways since 2022, promoting serial killer fears: ‘Not just a coincidence anymore’

The remains of 10 men and six women have been pulled from the Chicago River and Lake Michigan since the beginning of last year, prompting fears of a serial killer terrorizing the community. Patterns have been noticed as the bodies have piled up, with five men’s bodies recovered in the last six months.

“There’s too many coincidences,” Tracy Walder, former CIA and FBI federal agent told The Post by phone.

Senior: Artificial sweetener found in Diet Coke, Extra chewing gum and host of low-calorie food to be declared ‘possibly carcinogenic to humans’ in bombshell World Health Organization aspartame ruling

Aspartame — which entered the market in the 1980s — is also added to Mars’ Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks. The move will occur next month following a review by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), sources told Reuters. The IARC ruling is intended to assess whether something is a potential hazard or not, based on all the published evidence. It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume.

INTERNATIONAL

Putin Launches Kremlin Purge After Coup Attempt

Sergei Surovikin, a senior general who had previously supported Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, has not been seen since Saturday morning, when the rebellion began. The New York Times, citing U.S. officials, reported that Surovikin had prior knowledge of the mutiny, leading some to suspect that he is being interrogated about whether he helped to plan the rebellion. Surovkin, who had previously served as the leader of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before being demoted in January, was the main point of contact between Wagner and the Kremlin.

Moment ‘evil child trader’ is caught trying to take 11-month-old baby out of Ukraine to ‘sell for organ transplants’ after ‘paying his mother $1,000’

A charity worker and ‘evil child trader’ has been detained in Ukraine after he was caught red-handed seeking to take an 11-month-old baby abroad to ‘sell for organ transplants’. The man, 43, had allegedly given a $1,000 downpayment to the boy’s mother, claiming he would ensure the boy was adopted in the EU to live in safety away from the war. He offered the woman, from Zhytomyr, a total of $5,000 for the baby who he then intended to sell to traffickers for $25,000. Pictures showed the man detained with a female accomplice at the Ukraine-Slovakia border as he intended to cross with the child.

While this boy was saved, it is suspected the man had previously sold three other children on the pretext of taking them out of war-torn Ukraine and finding them adoptive parents abroad.

LaChance: Jordan Peterson Facing Legal Battle and ‘Remedial Training’ to Retain His License

Jordan Peterson’s legal fight against the College of Psychologists of Ontario, which has ordered him to undergo a social media re-education to keep his license, took center stage in an Ontario courtroom on Wednesday. At issue is a January letter Peterson received from the Ontario College of Psychologists demanding he undergo a “remedial” re-education for his controversial Twitter commentary or lose his license as a psychologist. The Canadian Constitution Foundation appeared in court on Wednesday to support Peterson in his legal battle against the regulatory college. The foundation on Wednesday argued that “professional regulators may not regulate off-duty conduct unless they can establish a clear nexus between that specific conduct and the legitimate interest of the profession. And where off-duty conduct engages a Charter right, like freedom of expression, regulators have a heightened duty to ensure they have given full effect to the Charter protection,” according to a June 21 news release.

UkraineMaps Threadreader: Current military situation in Paris (capital of France) and its surroundings.

Brown: Ireland Proposes ‘No Prayer Zones’

It would appear that the Irish government is making good on its promise. By all indications, it has made its decision about no-prayer zones around the country and has even released a map with the potential zones highlighted: Under legislation to be approved today, some areas will have over 20 places where people will face a fine of €2,500 or six months in jail for silently praying within 100m, if they are suspected of praying against abortion. […] What this means is that someone need only be caught, or suspected of engaging in prayer within approximately 3300 feet of the abortion providers on a map to have a run-in with the Garda. Not shouting, not blocking access, not waving signs, not engaging with patients or even speaking aloud. Violators who want to avoid a stay in the clink and a fine will have to tell the police that they are trying to remember where they left their wallet, fixing a stray contact lens, looking for an address, or thinking about what to have for dinner.

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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