The gods of diversity are killing the ‘golden age’ of medicine By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/the_gods_of_diversity_are_killing_the_golden_age_of_medicine.html

Those who came of age in the second half of the 20th century or later, have been blessed to witness a time of extraordinary medical progress. Now, though, thanks to academia’s mindless push for diversity, we are almost certainly on the precipice of a steep decline in the quality of medical care in America.

Beginning in the late 19th century, modern medicine brought us anesthetics and sophisticated germ theory that allowed safe surgeries, antibiotics, the understanding and treatment of chronic diseases, organ transplants, dramatically decreased maternal and child mortality, unimaginably successful treatments for cancer, vision-correcting surgery, and so much more. In the first world, the human life span roughly doubled compared to the lifespan people could expect just 150 years ago. It truly was a time of wonders and miracles.

As medicine grew more sophisticated, doctors’ standing in society increased. Medicine ceased to be an apprentice-type trade and became a high-cachet profession, with gratifying financial awards. By the middle of the 20th century and for several decades thereafter, medical schools were able to limit themselves to the best of the best from every college class. Sure, there were bad doctors, but even if they were bad, they were still smart. (Small consolation, of course, when you’re on the receiving end of malpractice.)

We conservatives knew that socialized medicine threatened all of this and we fought against it for decades. The moment the government takes over medicine, killing the profit motive, it begins rationing care. People have access to doctors; they just don’t have access to treatments that save or improve their lives.

Jen Psaki: Investigations for Thee But Not for Me By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/21/jen-psaki-investigations-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

It’s beyond ironic that the mouthpiece for a regime proceeding with yet another punitive and vengeful investigation into Donald Trump wants to be shielded from an inquiry into her own misdeeds.

Former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, much like her old boss, is a big fan of investigations.

From her perch at the podium in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Psaki routinely endorsed criminal, civil, and congressional inquiries into the events of January 6 and warned the individuals targeted—including Donald Trump and his former aides—that they must comply with the legal process. 

A reporter asked Psaki during her first briefing whether Joe Biden believed Trump should “be held accountable for the Capitol insurrection” on January 6. Calling the four-hour disturbance that afternoon an “horrific event,” Psaki said Joe Biden had spoken with lawmakers about how to proceed. “He is going to leave it to members of Congress to carry out their constitutional duty and determine what the path forward is,” Psaki announced on January 21, 2021.

Psaki later announced that Biden would not extend executive privilege to his predecessor related to the January 6 select committee’s inquisition, giving investigators carte blanche access to all of Trump’s records for most of 2020—most of which had nothing to do with January 6. “We are, we have been working closely with congressional committees and others as they work to get to the bottom of what happened on January 6th, an incredibly dark day in our democracy,” Psaki said in September 2021.

The Same Old, Same Old Deja Vu By Victor Davis Hanson

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2022/11/22/the-same-old-same-old-deja-vu-n1647817

Attorney General Merrick Garland has just announced the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith. But Smith’s team will not look into the Biden family quid pro quo syndicate nor its incriminating confessionals on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Instead, it will further investigate Donald Trump’s possession of presidential records that were hauled off from Mar-a-Lago, as well as his purported role in the January 6 “insurrection.”

We know the script that will follow because we suffered through it for 22 months and spent $40 million for it under Robert Mueller’s special counsel team.

First, the Smith investigation will bear no resemblance to special counsel John Durham’s probes. The media ignored Durham. His team did not leak to the press. And neither a Washington, D.C. nor northern Virginia jury was ever likely to convict any perceived enemy of Trump.

Second, upon the announcement of Smith’s legal staffers, the media will grow giddy that their resumes portend another “dream team,” “all-stars,” or “a hunter-killer team.”

Puff pieces will blanket the media. They will attest, just like “good Ol’ Bob Mueller,” that the former Obama Justice Department public integrity unit lawyer Smith is “an old hand,” “tough but fair,” “nonpartisan,” and a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.”

Weeks into the investigation, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or MSNBC will darkly inform their audiences that “unnamed sources close to the investigation tell us that “a bombshell” is about to go off.

Perhaps the “stunning development” will be similar to the fake “walls are closing in” scoop about the conspiratorial pinging in Trump tower from the Alfa Bank in Russia, or the “game-changer” Christopher Steele-fed, pee-pee, Moscow hotel room fable.

Attorney General Merrick Garland Is Attempting to Obstruct a Congressional Investigation By Greg Byrnes

https://pjmedia.com/columns/gregbyrnes/2022/11/21/attorney-general-merrick-garland-is-attempting-to-obstruct-a-congressional-investigation-n1647697

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate President Trump’s handling of government documents at Mar-a-Lago as well as January 6 needs to be thoroughly investigated and countered by the incoming GOP House of Representatives. They must study if this rogue Attorney General has committed impeachable offenses and, if so, act quickly to impeach him.

President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s loss of a 100% Democrat-controlled January 6th Committee to Republicans now has all the makings of a Constitutional crisis.

Rather than accepting that the other party is now in charge and allowing a peaceful transfer of investigative powers to the Republicans, the Democrats and the Justice Department have opted to break all norms to stop that. This is about more than Democrats losing control of their beloved “narrative.” The appointment of a special counsel will block the newly installed Republican House from investigating uncomfortable questions about the Justice Department and FBI’s behavior concerning the Capitol riot on January 6.

If there were embedded agents in some of the groups of bad actors responsible for the riot, why was no one warned of the impending attack? Or if they were warned, why did they fail to act? Why were law enforcement and the Justice Department so badly surprised by events? Why, despite President Trump’s offer of 10,000 troops in the weeks before the event, were law enforcement officials not pushing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Muriel Bowser to be forearmed and prepared? Or if they were warned, why did they fail to act?

Magic Cars The inconvenient facts about electric cars. by John Stossel

https://www.frontpagemag.com/magic-cars/

Politicians praise electric cars. If everyone buys them, they say, solar and wind power will replace our need for oil.

But that’s absurd.

Here is the rest of my list of “inconvenient facts” about electric cars.

“The future of the auto industry is electric,” says President Joe Biden. He assumes a vast improvement in batteries. Better batteries are crucial because both power plants and cars need to store lots of electric power.

But here’s inconvenient fact 3: Batteries are lousy at storing large amounts of energy.

“Batteries leak, and they don’t hold a lot,” says physicist Mark Mills.

Mills thinks electric cars are great but explains that “oil begins with a huge advantage: 5,000% more energy in it per pound. Electric car batteries weigh 1,000 pounds. Those 1,000 pounds replace just 80 pounds of gasoline.”

But future batteries will be better, I point out.

“Engineers are really good at making things better,” Mills responds, “but they can’t make them better than the laws of physics permit.”

That’s inconvenient fact 4. Miracle batteries powerful enough to replace fossil fuels are a fantasy.

“Because nature is not nice to humans,” explains Mills, “we store energy for when it’s cold or really hot. People who imagine an energy transition want to build windmills and solar panels and store all that energy in batteries. But if you do the arithmetic, you find you’d need to build about a hundred trillion dollars’ worth of batteries to store the same amount of energy that Europe has in storage now for this winter. It would take the world’s battery factories 400 years to manufacture that many batteries.”

Politicians don’t mention that when they promise every car will be electric. They also don’t mention that the electric grid is limited.

The Misuses of a Colorado Atrocity Redefining decency. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-misuses-of-a-colorado-atrocity/

When the news broke that an armed man had entered Club Q, an “LGBTQ” nightclub in Colorado Springs, at about midnight on Saturday, on the eve of something called the “Transgender Day of Remembrance,” and had proceeded to kill five people and wound at least twenty-five, one thing seemed all but certain. It was too early to know what had motivated the perpetrator, Anderson Lee Aldrich (who apparently was arrested last year, after a “brief standoff with law enforcement,” for making a bomb threat against his mother). But it seemed a safe enough prediction that the usual “LGBTQ” activists and their allies in the media would soon be spinning this atrocity to their advantage.

Sure enough, within a few hours, Colorado’s largest daily, the Denver Post, had posted an article in which one Elizabeth Hernandez linked the murders to “hateful rhetoric directed toward transgender people and the broader LGBTQ community.” The recently re-elected Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, stated Hernandez, “has been vocal against LGBTQ and transgender issues, including in a June tweet saying ‘Take your children to CHURCH, not drag bars’ and a 2021 speech on the House floor during which she warned of ‘young girls across America who will have to look behind their backs as they change in their school locker rooms just to make sure there isn’t a confused man trying to catch a peek.’” Hernandez also noted the controversy surrounding “all-ages drag shows at public libraries and other locations” and a Colorado librarian who was “fired from her job for planning LGBTQ youth programming.”

What do all of these specifics cited by Hernandez have in common? Simple: not a single one of them is about hatred for transgender people or anybody else. They’re all about legitimate questions of public policy.

The Inflation Reduction Act Comes for Medicare It will cut benefits and increase premiums, upsetting millions of elderly voters. By Casey B. Mulligan and Tomas J. Philipson

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-inflation-reduction-act-comes-for-medicare-ira-elderly-voters-payments-benefits-cuts-revenue-losses-subsidies-11669060307?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

President Biden has accused Republicans of scheming to cut Medicare. In fact it is his signature legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, that will lead to benefit cuts and premium increases for seniors. Medicare’s popular drug-coverage program is headed for a painful amputation.

The private plans participating in Medicare’s prescription-drug program, known as Part D, currently draw on three sources of revenue to finance prescriptions: out-of-pocket payments from patients, premium payments made by plan members, and subsidies from the federal government. In 2025, under the Inflation Reduction Act, both government subsidies and out-of-pocket payments by patients are scheduled to be cut sharply. The difference will have to be made up by premiums. But the statute inhibits this third revenue source, which is also subsidized, from increasing more than 6%. That’s hardly enough to cover inflation, let alone compensate for the other two revenue losses.

We estimate that beginning in 2025, plan subsidies—specifically, the reinsurance subsidies for the beneficiaries with the most drug spending—will be cut $30 billion, out of revenue that currently totals about $110 billion. With $30 billion less to finance prescription benefits, something will have to give. Plans currently have far too little profit to span the chasm that the Inflation Reduction Act opens between expenses and revenue.

Existing plans have room to cut benefits, although the original Part D statute limits their ability to do so. As plans are under no obligation to take a loss, their other choice is to exit the market, which from the patient’s perspective means that all the benefits disappear. In essence, the Inflation Reduction Act statute may prohibit Part D plans from being economically viable, even if it doesn’t explicitly ban them.

The Progressive Paradox on Marijuana Tobacco, bad. Vaping, bad. Marijuana, good, for some strange reason.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-progressive-paradox-on-marijuana-new-york-weed-kathy-hochul-john-hickenlooper-11669072860?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

New York state’s Cannabis Control Board voted Monday to approve its first 36 licenses to run marijuana dispensaries. It’s another big step toward legal pot sales, though the black market isn’t struggling to meet demand, as every nose in Manhattan can attest. Meantime, the paradox in progressive attitudes toward marijuana continues to grow like skunk weed.

A study published last week in the journal Radiology finds that smokers who used marijuana (often in addition to tobacco), instead of tobacco alone, had higher rates of emphysema, airway inflammation, and other conditions. “There is a public perception that marijuana is safe and people think that it’s safer than cigarettes,” one radiologist told the Journal. “This study raises concerns that might not be true.”

Where might people have gotten the idea that marijuana is safe? To blame politicians for this would vastly overstate their persuasive powers. Yet it’s remarkable how liberal politicians have tried to take a rhetorical puff to fit in with the cultural cool kids. On April 20, which is cannabis culture slang, Twitter was a veritable haze.

“Happy 4/20 Colorado! You’re my best bud,” said Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper.

As Shortages Persist Under Biden, It’s Time To Ask: Is This On Purpose?

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/22/as-shortages-persist-under-biden-its-time-to-ask-is-this-on-purpose/

Did the United States suddenly become a socialist basket case? It’s hard not to come to that conclusion after reading about the endless shortages plaguing the nation. Each of which President Joe Biden either seems clueless to resolve or determined to make worse.

Let’s start with the biggest one: the shortage of diesel fuel. While Biden was busy draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to tamp down gas prices before the midterm elections, the real worry was that supplies of diesel fuel have been running short.

Two years after the short-lived COVID lockdowns ended, diesel inventories continued to trend downward to their lowest levels since 2008. The cost for a gallon of diesel fuel is 46% higher than it was a year ago, according to AAA, and now costs more than $5 a gallon.

That affects every corner of the economy because, while passenger cars mostly use regular gasoline, diesel powers just about everything else that makes the economy move, and many homes, especially in the northeast, rely on heating oil – a related product – to keep their families from freezing to death.

The American Farm Bureau Federation tried to alert Biden to the scale of this problem weeks ago. “Our nation’s food supply is driven by diesel. High diesel prices are severely impacting our farmers and ranchers, causing increased costs to consumers, and adding to food insecurity.”

One big factor for all this: declining refinery capacity. After trending upward for years, it has fallen off each year since. A big reason: Biden’s war on fossil fuels.

“If you are a refiner forecasting billions in losses — and you require massive investments in order to keep your refinery operating safely and in compliance with the laws — you may very well simply make the decision to close down,” writes Robert Rapier in Forbes.

Elon Musk’s overturning of woke censorship is a wonderful thing. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/11/21/donald-trump-and-the-blue-tick-pricks/

So Elon Musk has done it. He’s brought back Trump. After conducting a Twitter poll on whether Trump should be unbanned – by far the most transparent thing the Twitter company has ever done – Musk and his minions pressed a few buttons and The Donald was back online.

Whether or not he’ll actually tweet again is another matter (he says he won’t). Regardless, Musk’s reinstatement of Trump’s account is a great blow against the tyrannical meddling of the worthy, woke, censorious fainthearts of Silicon Valley who have bizarrely come to exercise such extraordinary power over what may be thought and said in the 21st century.

The usual suspects are agog, naturally. There’s been a great relapse into Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump’s return will ‘plunge Twitter deeper into chaos’, says CNN. Jack White has melodramatically fled the Twitter hellscape. ‘Absolutely disgusting, Elon’, wept this rocker who’s strangely scared of other people’s words.

Sadiq Khan, London’s pint-sized Torquemada, issued a statement saying Trump ‘must not be allowed to use social media’. Mate, who do you think you are? Mayor of the world? ‘Freedom of speech is vital’, said Khan, ‘but’ – there’s always a massive, unsightly but – ‘it must be balanced against keeping other people safe to protect our democracy and society’. Do we really need to remind folk, in 2022, of Benjamin Franklin’s words, about how those who would ditch liberty for safety deserve neither? Khan would have banned Franklin, too. A free-speech extremist? Deplatform.

Against all these unhinged demands to keep Trump banned – forever, one presumes – we should remind people of just how undemocratic and outright imperious Silicon Valley’s banning of Trump was in the first place. It was the most sinister act of social-media censorship to date. And that’s saying something.