Drug Prices Haven’t Been Going Up The myth that they have drives Biden’s proposals for price controls, which would throttle innovation. By Joel Zinberg

https://www.wsj.com/articles/drug-prices-havent-been-going-up-generics-inflation-caps-biden-costs-innovation-11640533671?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Build Back Better may be dead, but its proposed drug price controls will likely reappear: negotiating prices for high-cost drugs in Medicare and price controls for most drugs limiting price increases to the annual inflation rate.

President Biden insists such controls are needed because pharmaceutical companies are “jacking up prices on a range of medicines.” He promises “to end the days when drug companies could increase their prices with no oversight and no accountability.” Yet while inflation has skyrocketed under Mr. Biden, drug prices are lower than when he took office. As the consumer-price index over the past year rose 6.8%, the largest increase in 39 years, prescription-drug prices fell 0.3%.

Mr. Biden and other pharmaceutical critics have mistakenly focused on increases in the list prices set by companies. But the actual prices consumers pay, after various discounts and rebates, are considerably lower than list prices, and changes in the two measures differ substantially. Insulin, with large increases in list prices over the past few decades, has become the poster child for unreasonable price increases. Yet net prices have increased much more slowly or not at all.

The best measure is the consumer-price index for prescription drugs, or CPI-Rx, which measures price changes in a large basket of drugs over time, accounting for discounts and most rebates. Another strength of the CPI-Rx is that it accounts for price declines that occur when consumers substitute cheaper generic versions for brand-name drugs. Too often, Mr. Biden and others focus on a few high-priced drugs and fail to consider the entire market.

THE CHOICE IS OURS: What will it be? Victor Sharpe

https://drrichswier.com/category/culture-war/

A timeless paean for peace, written millennia ago by the Biblical Jewish prophet Isaiah, appears on a wall across the street from the entrance to the building in New York City ironically housing that most unholy and unjust organization: the United Nations. The delegates from every part of the world walk by it but most see and understand it not. The words include:

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift-up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Isaiah 2:4.

On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson once wrote:

Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not.

In a perfect world, Isaiah’s words should be paramount. But this is not a perfect world; it never has been. Jefferson knew it, and it may sadly be much delayed before it yet becomes such a world as envisioned by Isaiah. All we can do is strive mightily to bring the world to a better place than it is now.

But the first two decades of the 21st century do not augur well for humanity. It is, therefore, prudent to maintain personal and national defense against all who harbor ill will and genocidal ambitions against us.

How ‘The Chosen’ embraced the best of Hollywood and showed it what people really want by Thomas Hibbs

http://www.thomashibbs.org/25907/the-chosen

You wouldn’t know it from the Hollywood buzz machine, but on the first weekend of the month, in a limited release, the film Christmas with the Chosen: The Messengers raked in 8.45 million viewers and came in fifth at the box office. Originally scheduled for a limited three-day release, it has now been extended through Christmas, even while being made available via streaming.

For those who don’t know the work, the short film is an offshoot of one of the most successful crowdfunded streaming projects in history, The Chosen, a retelling of the Gospels that focuses on the backstories of many of the major characters. Projected for seven seasons, with two already available online and a third set to begin filming shortly, crowdfunding has supported the $10 million to $18 million cost for each season.

The success of the streaming series and the Christmas film demonstrates the ongoing market draw for shows that celebrate, rather than ignore or denigrate, traditional faith. Yet many films in this subgenre offer nothing beyond predictable, polemical plotlines.

The original God’s Not Dead, released in 2015, set the pattern, with predictable characters and story. The central conflict is between an overbearing atheist professor who is forcing students to sign a God is dead statement and a rebellious Christian student. The latest installment (God’s Not Dead: We The People) is even more polemical as it shifts, following a strain of contemporary evangelicalism, in the direction of putting faith in the service of direct political advocacy.

The Chosen is different. Accompanied by Bible study-guides and created by Dallas Jenkins, whose father penned the Left Behind book series, the series and the film might seem to be more of the same. Yet, Jenkins repudiates the notion that this is a “stick-it-to-Hollywood thing,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Inspired to become a film-maker after watching the Jack Nicholson film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and who likens The Chosen to rich character-driven dramas like Friday Night Lights, Jenkins combines the best of Hollywood with the best traditional storytelling techniques.

The series and spinoff film pose the question what might it have been like to have encountered the person of Jesus in the course of ordinary daily life, to have lived, dined, traveled, laughed and mourned with him. And what might it have been like to begin to wonder about the strange capacities of knowing, healing and forgiving of this otherwise seemingly ordinary human being. The result is a captivating human drama invested with deep spiritual significance.

The Chosen series, whose episodes have been viewed more than 312 million times, is unique. It is sympathetic to faith in ways that Hollywood finds difficult. Yet in its openness to the best of Hollywood and in its avoidance of culture wars and political diatribes, it is atypical of faith-based films.

Its popularity is a good sign for our culture and for art. It reflects our exhaustion with politics and our longing for meaning that transcends ideological battles.

Especially in the faith-based audience, there is a hunger for depictions of faith that include, rather than rule out, doubt. In one episode, Peter — here portrayed as a desperate fisherman with a gambling problem and mounting debts — complains to God, on behalf of the Jewish people: “You can’t decide whether we’re chosen or not.”

Viewers also want to see complex depictions of the struggle with evil in the depths of the human soul. While Hollywood continues with some regularity to produce fantastical and absurd stories of exorcism, the story of Mary Magdalene, in the inaugural episode of The Chosen, is a compelling and chilling account of what it might mean to be in the grip of evil. Her eventual encounter with Jesus fills her and the audience with surprise and awe.

The brilliance of The Chosen is to take the most influential story of all time and to make it fresh, not by altering it to suit contemporary fads, but by inviting us to inhabit the perspectives of Jesus’ contemporaries. In its use of indirection and in its focus on surprise and wonder, The Chosen adopts both the method of the Gospels and the tools of genuine art. It thus opens a fresh path, one with lessons for both faith-based and mainstream Hollywood filmmaking.

New York surrenders to the woke revolution By Stella Paul

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/new_york_surrenders_to_the_woke_revolution.html

I teared up a bit today as I passed the American Museum of Natural History, where an iconic statue of Teddy Roosevelt atop a horse had entranced New York children since 1940. Now only a scaffolding covered by tarp can be seen, as the “racist” statue is prepared for banishment to North Dakota. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter riots, the New York City Council voted unanimously to remove the statue, which depicts Roosevelt leading a Native American and an African. As descendent Theodore Roosevelt V helpfully explained, the statue is “problematic in its hierarchal depiction of its subjects.”

Perhaps Teddy is better off in North Dakota because he’d be aghast at the cowardly state of his beloved New York. Roosevelt belonged to an America that relished bold, confident action. Today, the museum which celebrated Teddy as “the man in the arena” and placed statues of explorers Lewis and Clark and Daniel Boone atop its façade now demands vaccine passports from five-year-olds before they’re allowed to enter. An engraving on the museum’s front praises Teddy as “A great leader of the youth of America In energy and fortitude In the faith of our fathers In defense of the rights of the people.” Today, the youth of America can receive enforced vaccine experiments inside the museum, then proceed to the exhibits on Viruses and Vaccines, where they will be terrified into further submission.

Teddy isn’t the only legend who’s been hurled into oblivion by the New York City Council recently. Thomas Jefferson also isn’t good enough for the Council worthies, who disappeared his statue from their chamber, where it had stood for over a hundred years. The author of the Declaration of Independence was condemned as a pedophile slaveowner with no redeeming qualities, but I think the Council was uneasy having the Founding Father whose motto was “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God” looking over their shoulder.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Parents Shouldn’t Decide What’s Being Taught in Schools By Isaac Schorr

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nikole-hannah-jones-parents-shouldnt-decide-whats-being-taught-in-schools/

Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator and curator of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, said she did not “understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught” in schools, during an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday.

“I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science. We send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have an expertise in the subject area. And that is not my job,” she continued.

Hannah-Jones, who has promoted the integration of the controversial 1619 Project into public-school curricula, also decried the “outsized voice” of white parents in education policy, though she didn’t offer any examples.

The comments echoed Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s infamous gaffe during a September gubernatorial debate in Virginia. McAuliffe had declared that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Discussing McAuliffe’s position on Sunday, Hannah-Jones lamented that he was “panned,” for it, but defended him, arguing “that’s just the fact.”

Ironically, Hannah-Jones also submitted that schools “should teach us how to think, not what to think,” a common refrain of McAuliffe’s opponent, Republican governor-elect Glenn Youngkin — who relentlessly attacked McAuliffe for the gaffe — on the campaign trail.

Hannah-Jones’s interlocutor, Meet the Press‘s Chuck Todd, concurred with her that “at the end of the day, this politicizing of this, it’s clearly been weaponized.”

As first year ends, Biden faces lengthy checklist of unfinished business, slumping approval By Aaron Kliegman

https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/bidens-checklist-promises

What the president said he’d do — and what he actually did

President Joe Biden entered office with an ambitious agenda. He promised the American people that he would unite the country, defeat a pandemic, rebuild the middle class, and make the U.S. a respected force for good around the world.

He finishes the year with a large list of unfinished business, and slumping approval. The Real Clear Politics average of polls show 53% of American disapprove of the 46th president’s performance, compared to just 43% who approve.

Here’s a checklist of some of the president’s biggest promises and where they stand.

COVID-19

Days before the 2020 election, Biden told a rally in Cleveland that the COVID-19 pandemic would end on his watch. “I’m never going to raise the white flag and surrender,” he said. “We’re going to beat this virus. We’re going to get it under control, I promise you.”

In June, Biden declared victory over the virus. “On July 4, we’re going to celebrate our independence from the virus, as we celebrate our independence of our nation,” he said.

Less than a month later, however, the Delta variant of the virus surged across the U.S., and cases continued to pile up. The Biden administration responded at the end of the summer by announcing vaccine mandates for federal workers and contractors, health care workers, and large private businesses. Those mandates have been struck down repeatedly in federal courts, with judges deeming them unconstitutional.

Last week, the Omicron variant accounted for 73.2% of all new COVID-19 infections in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In less than a month, Omicron overtook Delta as the primary COVID-19 variant in the country, causing cases to spike nationwide.

The economy

10 Democrats who could run in 2024 if Biden doesn’t By Julia Manchester

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/586948-ten-democrats-who-could-run-in-2024-if-biden-doesnt

The 2022 midterm elections are less than a year away, but questions are already being raised about what the Democratic ticket will look like in 2024.

The White House has repeatedly said that President Biden intends to run again in 2024, but political watchers point to the fact that Biden would be 82 years old at the start of a second term. He was already the oldest individual to be inaugurated when he was sworn in in January.

On top of that, Biden is facing a stalled agenda on Capitol Hill, declining approval ratings and a continuing pandemic.

Here are 10 Democrats who could run if Biden doesn’t in 2024.

Kamala Harris

Vice President Harris would seem like the most likely pick to run in Biden’s place if he does not run. Many viewed Biden’s pick of Harris as his vice presidential pick as a signal that Harris was being prepped to succeed Biden down the line as a presidential candidate and leader of the Democratic Party.

A hypothetical poll of a future Democratic primary without Biden conducted by Morning Consult showed Harris leading the field with 31 percent support among the party’s potential primary voters. Still, Harris has had to contend with negative coverage throughout the course of her first year as vice president. Recently, a number of Harris staffers have departed her office, although some had previous plans to leave by the end of 2021.

Despite the 2024 chatter, Harris said in an interview last week that she and Biden have not discussed whether he will run again in 2024.

“We do not talk about nor have we talked about reelection, because we haven’t completed our first year and we’re in the middle of a pandemic,” Harris told The Wall Street Journal.

The Top 10 Worst UN Actions of 2021

https://civicrm.unwatch.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=2408

10. UN Review Praises Slave-Holding Mauritania’s Human Rights Record

When Mauritania came up for a mandatory UNHRC review of its human rights record, UN Watch exposed the farce of how 85% of country statements actually praised the slave-holding state’s record. North Korea commended Mauritania for its “promotion and protection of human rights”; China welcomed Mauritania’s “strategy for accelerating growth and prosperity”; Cuba praised Mauritania’s efforts to “increase the quality of life of its population.”

9. UN Rights Council Ends Yemen Investigation After Saudi Pressure

Yemen’s civil war has killed 100,000 people and displaced 4 million, and atrocities are widespread. Yet in October, the UN’s top human rights body voted to end its investigation of war crimes in Yemen. Diplomats reported an intense Saudi campaign of incentives and threats against council members preceding the vote—including an offer of financial support to Togo, and a threat against Indonesia to restrict their citizens’ visits to Mecca. Saudi Arabia’s military is a key figure in the Yemen war, along with Iran.

Hatred for the Christian Cross by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18071/hatred-for-christian-cross

“Under no circumstances is a human permitted to wear the cross.” Why? “Because the prophet — peace and blessings on him — commanded the breaking of it [the cross].” — Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Tarifi, Saudi expert on Islamic law, YouTube, May 8, 2013.

One Pakistani shoe-seller placed the image of the cross on the soles of his shoes so that the crucifix could be trampled with every footstep.

Despite being called “people of the book” — a view apologists for Islam tend to strain — both Christians and Jews are, in the end, also classified as infidels (kuffar; singular, kafir). Thus Koran 5:51 warns Muslims against “taking the Jews and Christians as friends and allies … whoever among you takes them for friends and allies, he is surely one of them”—that is, he too becomes an infidel. Koran 5:73 declares that “Infidels are they who say God is one of three,” a reference to the Christian Trinity; Koran 5:72 says “Infidels are they who say God is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary”; and Koran 9:30 complains that “the Christians say the Christ is the son of God … may Allah’s curse be upon them!”

The final word on both Christians and Jews was “revealed” in Koran 9:29: “Fight those among the People of the Book who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and who do not embrace the religion of truth [Islam], until they pay the jizya [monetary tribute] with willing submissiveness and feel themselves utterly subdued.” With that, their fate was sealed; like all other infidels, Christians and Jews were to be warred on until “subdued”.

While attacks on people would of course be worse than attacks on inanimate religious symbols, appeasement, sadly, seems only to encourage these outbursts of hate.

2014: After Muslims were granted their own section at a cemetery, and allowed to conduct distinctly Islamic ceremonies, they began to demand that Christian symbols and crosses in the cemetery were offensive and that they should be removed or at least covered up during Islamic funerals.

“At this hospital there are members of staff who go to a mosque four times a day and no one says anything to them. Hindus wear red bracelets on their wrists and female Muslims wear hijabs in theatre. Yet my small cross around my neck was deemed so dangerous that I was no longer allowed to do my job.” — Mary Onuoha, a 61 year-old Christian woman who escaped her Nigerian homeland to Britain in 1988 in order to worship freely and was “bullied” out of her London job as a nurse for refusing to remove her small cross necklace; Daily Mail, October 8, 2021, United Kingdom.

Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt mauled a young Christian woman, Mary, to death after they saw her cross.

Also in Egypt, Ayman, 17, a Christian student, was strangled and beaten to death by his teacher and fellow students for refusing to obey the teacher’s demand that he cover his cross. When the school’s principal was informed of the attack, he ignored it and “continued to sip his tea.”

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

https://mailchi.mp/9069ce42b2cf/trailblazing-israels-good-news-newsletter-to-26th-dec-21?e=cf31c34057

At the end of the civil year, Israelis continue trailblazing. Medical successes include amorphous calcium to treat coronavirus; completed trials of a Parkinson’s treatment; remote heart monitoring of babies; rollout of a next-generation X-ray machine, IVF support for UK mothers and vital signs monitoring for 50 million users. Israeli initiatives have improved the prospects for women and Christians, typhoon victims in the Philippines, cybersecurity, pollution-free energy and an end to world hunger. Technological trailblazing has produced game-changing nano-materials, vertical farms, pizza-making robots, sustainable packaging and micro turbines. The UAE is promoting Israeli technology, unemployment is down and the demand for Israeli skills is at an all-time high. To cap it all, an Israeli has won two World swimming gold medals, Ukraine has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli archaeologists made some earth-shattering discoveries.  For the road ahead, Israel is definitely on the fast track.  See the amazing details below.   Michael Ordman

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Covid is not what it seems. Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have found that coronavirus patients have damaged mitochondria in the blood, but not in the lungs. They now urge a medical re-think, in that it is the immune system that needs treating and that antioxidants may be more effective than respiratory medications.  
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-urges-rethink-of-covids-nature-indicates-antioxidants-may-help/
 
Amorphous calcium to treat Covid-19. (TY Hazel) 18 COVID-19 patients hospitalized with moderate or severe symptoms were treated with Amor-18 from Israel’s Amorphical (see here previously). All recovered and were discharged in a few days. https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/article-689543  
https://www.amorphical.com/ongoing-clinical-research/
 
Parkinson’s treatment success. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Pharma Two B (see here in 2015) has successfully completed the Phase 3 human trial of its P2B001 treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. The trial met its primary and key secondary endpoints, and the company can now prepare for US FDA approval.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-689352
 
$5 million grant to test Alzheimer’s treatment. Israel’s ImmunoBrain Checkpoint (see here previously) has been awarded a grant of $5 million over 3 years to support human clinical trials of IBC-Ab002, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Development was based on Weizmann Institute immune system studies.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/immunobrain-checkpoint-awarded-5-million-us-nia-grant-for-phase-1b-alzheimer-s-disease/  
 
Monitoring babies’ hearts at home. (TY Hazel) The partnership between Israel’s Datos Health and Israel’s Sheba Medical Center has progressed to at-home monitoring of babies born with complex heart malformations. Babies monitored include in the Palestinian Authority, Gaza, Iraq, Kurdistan, and Cyprus.
https://www.israel21c.org/babies-with-fragile-hearts-now-can-be-monitored-remotely/  
https://datos-health.com/
 
Link between sleep and the gut. Scientists at Haifa University and the Technion Institute have found a link between bacteria in the gut and sleep patterns.  Those that eat fatty foods tend to be night owls, whereas those that have a high fiber diet tend to be early risers.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/gut-tweak-can-make-everyone-a-morning-person-israeli-poop-analysis-suggests/  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34695305/
 
3D digital X-ray imaging. Israel’s Nanox (see here previously) has delivered the first of its next-generation X-ray machines to Israel’s Shamir Medical Center in Tzifrin. The Nanox.ARC uses low-radiation X-rays to produce high-resolution 3-D digital images, previously only available from expensive CT scans.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/first-in-world-pilot-of-new-x-ray-machine-to-fast-diagnose-covid-pneumonia-687614
 
Preventing errors in the ICU. The virtual reality simulator from Israel’s DecideVR identifies decision-making errors by doctors in medical treatment in intensive care units (ICU). The platform, developed by Professor Alex Mintz, formerly of Herzliya’s Reichman University, currently focuses on life-saving cardiovascular decisions.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3925317,00.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1juJL6YSX0
 
Helping to tackle infertility in the UK. Israel’s AiVF (see here previously) has received regulatory approval to sell its IVF analysis platform product in the United Kingdom – one of the largest IVF markets in Europe. It can predict, without the need for a biopsy, whether a given embryo is genetically suitable for transfer.
https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-tech-to-help-tackle-infertility-in-uk/
 
The selfie that could save your life. Israel’s Binah.ai (see here previously) has come a long way in the last 18 months. Some 50 million customers of the world’s top insurance companies now use Binah’s remote health and wellness monitoring platform to measure vital signs, from the changes in the reflection of light on facial skin.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/this-selfie-could-save-your-life/