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.