RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/is_america_s_doctor_a_good_choice_to_head_the_centers_for_medicare_and_medicaid.html

Mountebanks peddling miracle cures in the Old West would often pretend to be qualified doctors. 

It is rare to come across mountebanks now, rarer still for qualified doctors to peddle miracle cures.  But Dr. Mehmet Oz – a former cardiothoracic surgeon, famed purveyor of ‘medutainment’ on his T.V. show, and the man President-elect Donald Trump has nominated to administer Medicaid and Medicare – has been doing so unchecked.

On his show (that ran from 2009 to 2022) and on numerous other occasions, Dr. Oz has hyped dubious medical “miracles” and recommended cures that range from the anodyne, to the bizarre and dangerous. 

Here’s a partial list: a bar of lavender soap in bed to relieve restless leg syndrome; green coffee bean extract and raspberry ketones for weight loss; red onions, endives, and sea bass to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer; a poop primer for self-assessing overall health; 200 orgasms annually to extend life expectancy by six years; selenium supplements to prevent cancer; colloidal silver for the common cold; and a supplement containing human chorionic gonadotropin (a placental hormone) for weight loss.

In fact, the AMA Journal of Ethics has called Dr. Oz “a dangerous rogue unfit for the office of America’s doctor,” earned by virtue of his show.  In 2014, a Senate hearing on weight-loss scams chided him and told him to use his immense influence responsibly.

Yet, his dubious recommendations are not the only reason Dr. Oz is a questionable choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency that spends $2.6 trillion annually. 

The following are of greater concern:

·    Potential conflicts of interest will likely bias Dr. Oz’s decisions, for he has significant investments in healthcare and pharma companies, including the UnitedHealth Group, a critical CMS partner; in Amazon, which runs a Medicare-linked online pharmacy; and in Domino’s Pizzas, Pepsi, and U.S. Foods, makers of products linked to lifestyle diseases.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-coming-fight-to-abolish-dei

There is a great clanging and clamoring around the offices in Washington, D.C. and Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Political operatives, policy wonks, and opposition figures are all planning for the arrival of the second Donald Trump administration.

I’ve spoken with many of the people in the president-elect’s orbit who are planning how to staff Cabinet departments and set a new tone on the administration’s first day. Much of our discussion has focused on the approach to DEI, or “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

While the officials in Trump world are all committed to abolishing DEI in theory, they have yet to settle on a practical approach for doing so. With this in mind, I’m writing this open letter to Trump’s incoming Cabinet, outlining how to shut down DEI and win the fight for public opinion.

The first step is to understand how DEI bureaucracies became embedded in the federal government. That is the result of actions by two presidents: Barack Obama, who issued Executive Order 13583, which laid the groundwork for many national “diversity” initiatives; and Joseph Biden, who signed Executive Orders 13985 and 14035, which entrenched DEI principles into every federal department and routed billions of dollars toward advancing this ideology throughout American society.

Having understood this history, Cabinet officials must work with President Trump to rescind President Obama and President Biden’s executive orders.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/11/californias-next-crime-wave-fuel-theft/

Editor’s note: This has been excerpted with permission from the Pacific Research Institute. To read the entire report, click here.

Here are a few examples:

On Sept. 27, an Inland Empire resident drove away from her job at an area hospital when her pickup truck puttered to a stop. An investigation showed her tank had been drilled and emptied.
A Valero Station in Fremont lost tens of thousands of gallons of diesel to thieves using a device to bypass pump security and transfer fuel into a specially configured pickup truck on July 10.
On July 2, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office charged two men with an alleged fuel theft scheme involving $90,000.00 in diesel fuel thefts.
On March 1, East Bay law enforcement reported a “rash of destructive gas thefts by drilling gas tanks.”
Most recently, on Nov. 21, thieves in Otay Mesa near San Diego pumped 3,000 gallons of stolen fuel from a Circle K station. This was a loss of $16,000 for the station.

Gasoline prices in California are one area where the rules of supply and demand don’t apply to price. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, since 2005 per capita use of gasoline has dropped by 2 billion gallons per year – a net drop of 15% over nearly 20 years. They attribute this decline to improved fuel economy and the increasing use of electric vehicles. For advocates of the idea that commercial and personal vehicle use is one of the primary contributors to climate change, this is welcome news. It certainly has improved local air quality in California’s most smog prone regions.

Yet, for California’s tax collectors, this is very bad news indeed as projected 202-/2025 fuel tax revenues are just north of $7 billion and should, according to basic economic laws, drop along with consumption. The California Air Resources Board recently adopted an updated Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is estimated to increase gas prices by 47 cents per gallon or more.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/the_beginning_of_the_end_of_dei_in_the_private_sector_and_our_universities.html

Ferraris are priced between $250,000 and $600,000, but it’s not enough to have the money to buy these pricey Italian sports cars.  The company’s Diversity and Inclusion Charter demands that buyers and their families pass “social status” background checks to “ensure they fit the mold of the brand and its desired image.” 

Talk about cultivating “inclusivity!”

In a similar charade of ‘woke’ virtue signaling, luxury car maker Jaguar unleashed a futuristic ad in a pinkish palette featuring men posing as women. There are no cars in it, so it’s no surprise that it landed like a lead balloon and joined the pantheon of duds like the Bud Light ad featuring trans activist Dylan Mulvaney in a bubble bath.

The Bud Light ad sparked a consumer backlash on social media, including calls for boycotting the beer brand.

In Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America, Charles Gasparino called the Bud Light fiasco the “desecration of a great American brand.”  The book—which opens with an account of an incredibly farcical discussion at Goldman Sachs over whether ordering Chick-fil-A sandwiches is sufficiently woke—exposes many such woke/DEI debacles and the brand destruction they wreaked.

Fortunately, the efforts of people like Gasparino (a seasoned business reporter who knows what makes companies succeed or fail) and anti-DEI campaigner Robby Starbuck are paying off. Moreover, the resounding victory of President-elect Donald Trump—who made a campaign pledge to dismantle “divisive,” “un-American” DEI programs—has catalyzed a corporate retreat from leftist “wokeness.”

After Starbuck told Walmart he was investigating their DEI practices, the retail chain – America’s largest private sector employer, with over 4,600 units in the U.S. – announced plans to end its DEI initiatives.  It has agreed to drop the term ‘DEI’ and instead focus on “Belonging for All.”  Not only that, it will stop financing events aimed at influencing children sexually; scrap the Corporate Equality Index, a benchmark created by the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) to monitor LGBTQ+ policies; remove gender-neutral terms such as Latinx from documents; end a program incentivizing suppliers who hire LGBTQ+, racial minorities, and women; discontinue racial equity training; and stop funding the Center for Racial Equity.  Walmart will no longer sell products such as chest binders marketed, among others, to “transitioning” children.

https://www.thefp.com/p/assads-fall-humiliates-washington-biden-obama-trump-iran-syria?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

According to President Joe Biden, the end of Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny in Syria was made possible by his administration’s foreign policy. Speaking from the White House on Sunday in a televised address, he said, “For years the main backers of Assad have been Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, but over the last week their support collapsed, all three of them, because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office.”

Try not to laugh.

Biden attributes the woes that have befallen this alleged “Axis of Resistance” to “the blows Ukraine [and] Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense with unflagging support of the United States.”

This isn’t just a deceptive telling of recent history. Biden has it backward. While it’s true that Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia are weaker today than they were when Biden was inaugurated as president, it’s not because Biden had the foresight to unleash the Jewish state against America’s enemies in the Middle East. It’s because Israel defied Biden’s efforts to restrain it. Syria has toppled its tyrant in spite of the Biden administration, not because of it.

When Israel took the very steps that have weakened Iran and its proxies, it was greeted by threats and disapproval from Washington. On September 24, at the UN General Assembly, Biden pleaded for Israel to accept a diplomatic solution. “Since October 7, we have also been determined to prevent a wider war that engulfs the entire region,” he said. This was three days before Israeli air strikes killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-yorks-government-is-the-real-villain-in-the-daniel-penny-trial

Now that Daniel Penny has been acquitted of the absurd homicide charges against him, perhaps New York City and State officials can be put on trial. They are responsible not only for the death of Jordan Neely, the drug-addicted schizophrenic whom Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused Penny of recklessly killing, but for the assaults on and killings of hundreds of New Yorkers by mentally ill vagrants whom politicians allow to roam the streets. Yet according to Bragg and his office, it was Penny who needed to be imprisoned, for the safety of city residents, for having protected his fellow citizens from a potential murderer.

For now, the heroic male virtues of chivalry, self-reliance, and initiative have been vindicated, in the face of government’s effort to snuff those values out. How much longer those traits will survive under elite pressure remains to be seen. New York officials should take the Penny acquittal as a wakeup call, however. Their authority may be slipping away, a development adumbrated by last month’s national election results.

The Daniel Penny homicide trial was a travesty of justice. On May 1, 2023, a psychotic, wildly gesticulating vagrant burst into a New York subway car as it travelled beneath Manhattan’s SoHo district. The new arrival, Jordan Neely, started screaming that he wanted to return to jail and was ready to die. Some eyewitnesses recalled that the 30-year-old Neely threatened to kill the straphangers.

The passengers were terrified, and rightly so. New York’s seriously mentally ill residents are time bombs who regularly explode. They push subway riders in front of moving trains; above ground, they club, shoot, and stab their victims. Three weeks after the May 1, 2023, subway incident, another street denizen slammed a woman’s head into a subway car, paralyzing her for life. This November 18, a 51-year-old vagrant with the inevitable long rap sheet and seeming immunity from extended incarceration went on a stabbing rampage throughout Manhattan, slashing to death a 36-year-old construction worker, a 67-year-old man fishing in the East River, and a 36-year-old woman sitting on a park bench. As recently as December 1, a screaming female pushed a 43-year-old man onto the subway tracks in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She has not been apprehended, but it is a virtual certainty that she, too, has had numerous run-ins with outreach workers and the police that resulted in no long-term confinement.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/10/bidens-pardon-a-smokescreen-for-corruption/

Joe Biden has carefully cultivated his image as an empathetic man of the people. In reality, his career has been marked by a relentless pursuit of wealth for himself and his family. His son Hunter Biden was central to these schemes, operating as the family “bag man” for various influence-peddling operations overseas.

As such, Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter is not an act of mercy or justice or even paternal loyalty but a cynical maneuver to shield both Hunter and Joe Biden from responsibility.

Its brazenness has moved even Joe Biden’s most ardent defenders to condemnation.

Double Standards and the “Rule of Law”

After all the pious talk invoking the “rule of law” during the years-long prosecutions of Donald Trump, Hunter’s pardon shows that there has always been a parallel set of rules, through which the powerful and politically favored can escape scrutiny. This case is also a reminder of how the rule of law can be perverted not only by being too harsh but also by being too solicitous.

The media have feigned shock at his pardon, but they should have known better. Even before he was facing charges, Hunter’s job as a highly paid board member of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, was absurd on its face. He had no relevant skills or qualifications justifying a $50,000 monthly salary—except, of course, his last name.

Similarly, the revelation that Hunter involved his father in business meetings with individuals from Kazakhstan and other foreign nations gained little traction among the media or official Washington. The media even dismissed the infamous “10% for the big guy” email found on Hunter’s laptop, which strongly implies a quid pro quo arrangement between Hunter and his dad.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/09/bidens-paranoid-pardons-and-leftist-morality/

Pardoner-in-Chief

Joe Biden has now established two precedents in presidential history.

First, he “pardoned” his own son Hunter.

No prior president has ever tried that shameless act, which is an affront to the entire hallowed notion of “equality under the law.”.

Second, he did so in a way that no president has rarely, if ever, pardoned anyone.

Hunter, a convicted federal felon awaiting sentencing, was gifted by his father a blanket exemption from federal prosecution over the entire past decade (2014-2024).

Biden thus exempted Hunter from a series of much-discussed past criminal activities and provided further pardons for any federal criminal exposure occurring over the last ten years—yet to turn up.

Given the Biden suppression of the justice system and the media’s complicity in hiding the Biden family’s criminality, it is quite possible that in the next few years, disinterested prosecutors might finally expose Hunter Biden’s long-suppressed, sordid career. And that could mean possible criminal exposure for three generations of Bidens.

Third, in the remaining waning 40 days of his now nonperforming presidency, Biden threatens to establish yet another presidential precedent. He contemplates issuing pardons to a variety of controversial cronies, bureaucrats, and officers—even though none of them have yet been indicted or even are under federal investigation.

Worse, Biden completed his shameless trifecta by breaking his serial pledge, voiced at least six times, and most prominently as a 2024 campaign plug, unequivocally not to pardon Hunter Biden.

That performance-art braggadocio was serially greeted—by design—with glee in the media.

On spec, the vow supposedly contrasted Biden’s “reverence for the rule of law” with a purportedly legally insubordinate Trump.

Biden would put the law above family. Trump, in contrast, was supposedly chronically questioning the morality, fairness, and legality of his own five criminal and civil indictments over the campaign cycle—some of them (i.e., Bragg, Smith, Willis) demonstrably with the full knowledge of, if not coordinated by, the Biden White House.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/08/312542/

I always found the literary critic Harold Bloom (1930-2019) distinctly curate’s-eggish. You ask, “How is your egg this morning, curate?” “Good in parts,” comes the reply. But Bloom made one observation that stuck with me. Lots of literature, Bloom wrote somewhere, deals with the phenomenon of falling in love. But equally poignant is the story of falling out of love.

Bloom was thinking primarily of personal romance. However, the emotional dialectic he limned works itself out on the larger stage of political life as well. There is a certain mystery about both sides of the process. The public’s enthusiasms are as fickle as they are extravagant. What explains the infatuation with figures like Barack Obama? In retrospect, it is possible to offer more or less plausible explanations. Obama’s race, his smooth, non-confrontational manner, and his ability to dress up radical policy proposals in an emollient jelly of seeming common sense all help explain his political success.

Obama has occupied an enviable place in the magic circle of celebrity since his first election in 2008. It persisted through Donald Trump’s first term and for most of Joe Biden’s. There were signs that Obama’s star was fading during the later stages of Kamala Harris’s disastrous campaign. Trump’s resounding victory on November 5 crystallized the eclipse. Speaking at a “Democracy Forum” last week, Obama attempted to wheel out his old standby: that Republicans were in the habit of “weaponizing” the DOJ and other institutions in order to steal elections and cement their hold on political power. “One side tries to stack the deck and lock in a permanent grip on power,” he said, “ either by actively suppressing votes or politicizing the armed forces or using the judiciary criminal justice system to go after opponents.”

There was a time when Obama might have gotten away with such antics. Not anymore. His blatant act of projection was instantly called out and ridiculed. Quoting the remark, Miranda Divine spoke for the Zeitgeist when she observed that “It’s over for Obama. The spell is broken. Donald Trump vanquished him, Biden, Harris, the Bushes, and the Cheneys. All of them, with a spring in his step.” The commentator John Gibson offered a pithier précis of Obama’s comment: “Shorter: I accuse them of doing what we did, and they must be stopped.”

https://www.startribune.com/100-year-old-pearl-harbor-survivor-recalls-confusion-and-chaos-during-japanese-bombing-83-years-ago/601192005

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — Ira “Ike” Schab, a 104-year-old Pearl Harbor attack survivor, was so determined to stand and salute during a remembrance ceremony honoring those killed in the Japanese bombing that thrust the U.S. into World War II some 83 years ago that he spent six weeks in physical therapy to build the strength to do so.

On Saturday, Schab gingerly rose from his wheelchair and raised his right hand, returning a salute delivered by sailors on a destroyer and a submarine passing by in the harbor. His son and a daughter supported him from either side.

“I was honored to do it. I’m glad I was capable of standing up,” he said afterward. “I’m getting old, you know.”

Schab is one of only two servicemen who lived through the attack who made it to an annual observance hosted by the U.S. Navy and National Park Service on a grass field overlooking the harbor. A third survivor had been planning to join them but had to cancel because of health issues.

The Dec. 7, 1941, bombing killed more than 2,300 U.S. servicemen. Nearly half, or 1,177, were sailors and Marines on board the USS Arizona, which sank during the battle. The remains of more than 900 Arizona crew members are still entombed on the submerged vessel.

Dozens of survivors once joined the event but their attendance has declined as survivors have aged. Today there are only 16 still living, according to a list maintained by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. Military historian J. Michael Wenger has estimated there were some 87,000 military personnel on Oahu on the day of the attack.

Schab agreed when ceremony organizers asked him earlier this year to salute on behalf of all survivors and World War II veterans.

“He’s been working hard, because this is his goal,” said his daughter Kimberlee Heinrichs, who traveled to Hawaii with Schab from their Beaverton, Oregon, home. “He wanted to be able to stand for that.”

Schab was a sailor on the USS Dobbin at the time of the attack, serving as the tuba player in the ship’s band. He had showered and put on a clean uniform when he heard the call for a fire rescue party.