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Johnny Kramer writes:

House Republican Proposes VERY INTERESTING LANGUAGE To Amend The 22nd Amendment To Allow President Trump To Serve a Third Term | WLT Report

It would be changed to preclude anyone from serving more than two consecutive terms or more than three total terms, so it would only apply to Trump (at least for now, and probably forever since it’s unlikely that anyone will pull off becoming Grover Cleveland 3.0).

The post GOP Congressman Proposes Amending 22nd Amendment to Allow Trump to Serve Third Term appeared first on LewRockwell.

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John Leake

The post In the Agony of Defeat, Dems Grasp for Straws appeared first on LewRockwell.

An earlier version of this story was published by the author on his substack, here.

Let me begin this analysis by saying I’m not unbiased on this issue. As a friend of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for more than twenty years, and recently his authorized biographer [Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior], I closely followed his presidential campaign – and the ongoing attacks against him by the corporate-owned media.

Bobby isn’t “anti-vaccine,” nor is he a “conspiracy theorist,” two labels repetitively pinned on him when he isn’t being dismissed as a kook. The truth is, Big Pharma, Big Ag and the captured agencies that support their agendas are scared to death of what his policies portend – and they should be.

I should add that I didn’t support RFK Jr’s decision to abandon his independent candidacy and join forces with Donald Trump, and I told him so. I found it hard to believe that Trump was sincere about giving him a position where he could take on the money-driven public health system. But I was wrong about that. President Trump has kept his promise, and I hope that soon Kennedy will be confirmed to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the country’s largest civilian agency with more than 83,000 employees and annual budget of $1.7 trillion in 2024 (including Medicare and Medicaid, our largest health insurers).

Kennedy’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for January 29, as reported in The Kennedy Beacon.

So, what should you know about the importance of Kennedy’s appointment? First, consider some very disturbing figures. Sixty percent of American adults have at least one chronic health condition. Nearly half the population has high blood pressure. Fifteen percent suffer from type-2 diabetes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, almost forty percent of American adults are considered obese, and so are one out of every five children. One out of three individuals are turned down for military service because of their weight. One in every thirty-six kids are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, a drastic increase from one in 150 two decades ago, and the cause remains disputed and unknown.

Last year, the pharmaceutical industry distributed $31 billion worth of free samples to doctors. The same drug titans spent $4.7 billion between 1999 and 2018 on lobbying federal agencies and Congress. In 2024 alone, Big Pharma put out more than $5 billion on national TV ads, with their sales bringing in five times what they pay for commercials. Some of the peddled products are, of course, government-approved as effective and even life-saving, but the system is nonetheless ripe for corruption and in need of reform.

So is the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates 77 percent of America’s food supply and oversees the safety of almost $4 trillion of food, tobacco and medical products. The FDA receives 45 percent of its funding through “user fees” coming from pharma and medical device companies. Nine of the last ten FDA chiefs moved on to lucrative jobs in the pharmaceutical industry. Don’t these facts constitute a conflict of interest? Is it surprising that the FDA greenlights prescription drugs while often suppressing cheaper generic and natural alternatives? Should we be shocked that about one-third of citizens polled say they no longer trust our medical system?

Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” platform is not some pipe dream. Twenty years ago, he began shifting his attention from suing polluters to shaking the tree of an increasingly broken health care arena. It’s not made him popular among those who once lauded him as a champion of the environment, but his devotion to a better future for our younger generations remains paramount no matter the personal cost.

Overall, diet-related diseases are believed to be responsible for half of the deaths in the U.S. every year, and cost $383 billion to treat. One way that Kennedy wants to tackle this situation is where the federal government has leverage – with the school lunch and breakfast programs that our tax dollars pay for. Getting rid of ultra-processed foods such as sodas and packaged chips would be a starting point. Then there are products like fruit-flavored yogurt, fortified white bread and sweetened energy bars, additives that often exceed healthy limits on saturated fat, sodium and added sugars.

Amid a series of ongoing attacks on him, The New York Times did publish a guest opinion piece by a health care professional headlined, “What Kennedy Gets Right About American Health Care.” Its author, Rachael Bedard, wrote: “The nefarious influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health care is well established. There are many examples of drug makers funding advocacy groups and influencing regulators into approving ineffective or potentially harmful drugs, and then wining and dining doctors into prescribing those therapies to patients.”

What’s been fascinating to me as RFK Jr. ’s confirmation hearing approaches is the sudden spate of studies, policy changes, and new regulations that back up what Kennedy has been proposing.

It’s hard to say whether this is a belated, head-him-off-at-the-pass attempt to indicate that such things are already being addressed properly, but clearly Kennedy is waking up the consciousness if not the conscience of a nation. Look at the following recent events:

January 17: A Newsweek article reported that the Steak ‘n Shake chain of almost 500 restaurants will start cooking its fries in “100 percent beef tallow,” or animal fat, rather than vegetable oil. Kennedy had alleged in October that Americans are “being unknowingly poisoned by heavily subsidized seed oils” that fuel the obesity epidemic. He’d also pointed out that McDonald’s used beef tallow in their fries up until 1990, when they phased it out in favor of seed oils. (The American Heart Association has said there’s “no reason” to avoid them.)

January 15: The FDA banned the use of Red Dye No. 3 in food, beverages and drugs. The food coloring was outlawed from being used in cosmetics way back in 1960, after it was shown to be causing cancer in male laboratory rats. Food safety groups hailed the move as long overdue.

January 14: The FDA called for putting new nutrition labels for fat, sugar and salt on the front of food and beverage products, which the Times called, “a move aimed at changing eating habits associated with soaring rates of obesity and diet-related illness that are responsible for a million deaths each year.”

January 6: A federal analysis of numerous studies, published in JAMA Pediatrics, concluded that high exposure to fluoride in our water systems – long touted for reducing tooth decay – is linked to lower I.Q. scores in children. The New York Times conceded that “the report’s findings align in many ways” with Kennedy, who has recommended advising authorities to remove fluoride from drinking water.

January 6: A study published in Nature Medicine found that sugary drinks were tied to 2.2 million additional cases of Type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million cases of cardiovascular disease in 2020, especially where there’s been a sales increase in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

January 3: California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order aimed at limiting the availability of ultra-processed foods and reducing purchases of candy and sodas in food stamp programs that are made with synthetic dyes or additives. “The food we eat shouldn’t make us sick with disease or lead to lifelong consequences,” Newsom said in a statement. The Los Angeles Times headlined its coverage “With order, governor appears to be staying ahead of any new federal food policies.”

A month earlier, Senator Bernie Sanders echoed Kennedy in a tweet: “For decades, the food and beverage industry has made massive profits by enticing children to consume unhealthy products purposely designed to be overeaten.”

Notably, Kennedy hasn’t shied from differing with Trump aide-de-camp Elon Musk. He’s an advocate of weight-loss drugs, which RFK thinks should be banned in favor of exercise and alternatives that don’t pose worrisome side effects. He and Musk are on the same page about stopping the drug companies from spending tens of billions on TV ads, which has only been happening since the FDA in 1997 relaxed rules that let those companies summarize possible side effects. As the Times reported on December 23, 2024, “Research has found that the majority of the top-advertised drugs offer little to no medical benefit compared to existing treatments. Many cost tens of thousands of dollars per year.”

Kennedy even lambasted his prospective boss’s dietary choices. After being observed eating McDonald’s with Trump on his private plane the previous weekend, Kennedy did a podcast interview on November 12 during which he stated: “The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad,” Apparently referencing his own experience, Kennedy added: “Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison….You’re either given KFC or Big Macs” if you’re lucky, with the other possible options being “kind of inedible.”

When I read these comments, I wondered whether the vainglorious president-elect would now back away from his avowed commitment to Kennedy. But Trump moved ahead two days later in tapping him to lead HHS, saying he’d let RFK Jr. “go wild on food.” It’s not been smooth sailing since. He would need to work closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but has expressed his desire to “reverse 80 years of farm policy” by banning certain pesticides and ending the factory farming industry that he’d fought as an environmental lawyer. Crop engineering, Kennedy says, may have made our grains more resilient to drought and pests, but it’s also rendered them “nutrient barren.”

Make no mistake: the roadblocks Kennedy will face on January 29 are multi-pronged and formidable.

On January 15, former Vice President Mike Pence’s organization (Advancing American Freedom) called on senators to vote against him, because Kennedy had emphasized “a woman’s right to choose” and said during his presidential campaign that he’d support legislation to restore the protections in Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned during Trump’s first term. Pence’s letter deemed Kennedy’s position “completely out of step with the strong pro-life record of the first Trump administration.”

But Kennedy’s passion and commitment to our national health is nearly unmatched. To learn more about Kennedy’s history as an environmental advocate who eventually turned to public health, please see my 2023 biography, available through this Amazon link. You can also read a summary and review here at The Kennedy Beacon. And Jeff Hays’ documentary, based on my book, is here.

Next week, when Kennedy sits before the Senate Finance Committee, I’ll be watching intently, as I hope all of you will be. Will there be defections from the Republican or Democratic side? What will ranking member Chuck Grassley, who represents the corn-growing state of Iowa, do? In an interview before the election, he opined that there are ways to “make America healthy again” without “upsetting the way we produce food.”

What will committee chairman, Mike Crapo, from Idaho do? He has expressed support for Kennedy’s “prioritized addressing chronic diseases through consumer choice and healthy lifestyle.”

The committee can give either a favorable or unfavorable recommendation, or none at all. Republicans have a voting edge of 14-to-13. Which means it’s likely to be favorable, although most Democrats are expected to oppose Kennedy in a united front. That will hold true in the full Senate, where after debate on the floor, Kennedy needs 50 votes out of 53 Republicans in order to make it through.

Kennedy as head of HHS would be a game changer for those of us who care about our own health, and the health of our children.

This originally appeared on The Kennedy Beacon.

The post Our Public Health System Is Broken appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last December at  Trump’s luxury Mar a – Lago residence, President Elect Donald Trump intimated that Prime Minister Trudeau should become Governor of the 51st state of the United States of America.

This was no joking matter. Canada described as the 51st State of the USA signifies the outright Annexation of Canada.

In his  Inauguration speech on January 20, President Trump, referred to the deportation of illegal immigrants on the USA’s southern border with Mexico. Not a word was mentioned regarding America’s northern border with Canada. 

Jean Chrétien’s Letter to Donald. “From One Old Guy to Another”

A few days prior to Trump’s inauguration, former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien sent an open letter to Trump pointing to “The totally unacceptable insults and unprecedented threats to our very sovereignty from U.S. president-elect Donald Trump”. 

“I have two very clear and simple messages. To Donald Trump, from one old guy to another: Give your head a shake! What could make you think that Canadians would ever give up the best country in the world … to join the United States?

I can tell you Canadians prize our independence. We love our country.

We also had the guts to say no to your country when it tried to drag us into a completely unjustified and destabilizing war in Iraq. [March 2003]

But you don’t win a hockey game by only playing defence.

 All leaders across our country have united in resolve to defend Canadian interests.

Now there is another existential threat. And we once again need to reduce our vulnerability. That is the challenge for this generation of political leaders.

And you won’t accomplish it by using the same old approaches. Just like we did 30 years ago, we need a Plan B for 2025.

Yes, telling the Americans we are their best friends and closest trading partner is good.

But we also have to play offence. Let’s tell Mr. Trump that we too have border issues with the United States. 

We also want to protect the Arctic. But the United States refuses to recognize the Northwest Passage, insisting that it is an international waterway, even though it flows through the Canadian Arctic as Canadian waters. We need the United States to recognize the Northwest Passage as being Canadian waters.

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Jean Chretien’s above statement regarding Canada’s Northwest Passage is but the tip of the Iceberg.

The Creation of the 51st State is “Déjà Vu“. It Was Announced by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002

Following the creation of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) in April 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced unilaterally (without consulting the government of Canada) that NORTHCOM’s territorial jurisdiction (land, sea, air) extended from the Caribbean basin to the Canadian arctic territories and the North Pole. What this means is that the U.S. gave itself the right to deploy its military by air, land and sea throughout Canada, including it internal waterways.  (see maps below)

“The new command was given responsibility for the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, portions of the Caribbean and the contiguous waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans up to 500 miles off the North American coastline.

NorthCom’s mandate is to “provide a necessary focus for [continental] aerospace, land and sea defenses, and critical support for [the] nation’s civil authorities in times of national need.”

(Canada-US Relations – Defense Partnership – July 2003, Canadian American Strategic Review (CASR),

Announced by Donald Rumsfeld, Northern Command US sovereignty  regarding the deployment of  the US military (land, waterways, air) encompasses Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, from the Caribbean up to North Pole.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld boasted that:

“the NORTHCOM – with all of North America as its geographic command – ‘is part of the greatest transformation of the Unified Command Plan [UCP] since its inception in 1947.’” (See Journal Canada Defense Forces)

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click to enlarge

U.S Regional Commands in Six Regions of the World,

USNORTHCOM, USSOUTHCOM, USAFRICOM, USEUCOM, USPACOM, USCENTCOM

NORTHCOM’s stated mandate was to:

“provide a necessary focus for [continental] aerospace, land and sea defenses, and critical support for [the] nation’s [US] civil authorities in times of national need.” (Canada-US Relations – Defense Partnership – July 2003, Canadian American Strategic Review (CASR),

Canada and US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)

In December 2002, following the refusal of (former) Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to join US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) –which was announced unilaterally by the Bush Administration,  –, an interim bi-national military authority entitled the Binational Planning Group (BPG) was established.

Canadian membership in NORTHCOM would have implied the integration of Canada’s military command structures with those of the US. That option had been temporarily deferred by the Chrétien government, through the creation of the Binational Planning Group (BPG).

The BPG’s formal mandate in 2002 was to extend the jurisdiction of the US-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to cover sea, land and “civil forces”,  

“to improve current Canada–United States arrangements to defend against primarily maritime threats to the continent and respond to land-based attacks, should they occur.”

Although never acknowledged in official documents, the BPG was in fact established to prepare for the merger of NORAD and NORTHCOM,  thereby creating de facto conditions for Canada to join US Northern Command.

The “Group” described as an “independent” military authority was integrated from the outset in December 2002 into the command structures of  NORAD and NORTHCOM, both operating out the same headquarters at the Peterson Air Force base in Colorado. In practice, the “Group” functioned under the jurisdiction of US Northern Command, which is controlled by the US Department of Defense.

Jean Chrétien abruptly resigned in December 2003. Paul Martin, –who painted Jean Chrétien with  disdain– took over the position of Prime Minister, with a firm commitment to the Bush Administration’s’ USNORTHCOM project.

In December 2004, in the context of President George W. Bush’s visit to Ottawa, it was agreed that the mandate of the BPG would be extended to May 2006. It was understood that this extension was intended to set the stage for Canada’s “subordinate membership” in USNORTHCOM.

In March 2006, two months before the end of its mandate, the BPG published a task force document on North American security issues:

“‘A continental approach’ to defense and security could facilitate binational maritime domain awareness and a combined response to potential threats, ‘which transcends Canadian and U.S. borders, domains, defense and security departments and agencies,’  (quoted in Homeland Defense watch, 20 July 2006)

The BPG task force report called for the establishment of a “maritime mission” for NORAD including a maritime warning system. The report acted as a blueprint for the renegotiation of NORAD, which was implemented immediately following the release of the report.

On April 28, 2006, an agreement negotiated behind closed doors was signed between the US and Canada. 

The renewed NORAD agreement was signed in Ottawa by the US ambassador and the Canadian Minister of Defense Gordon O’Connor, without prior debate in the Canadian Parliament. The House of Commons was allowed to rubberstamp a fait accompli, an agreement which had already been signed by the two governments. 

“‘A continental approach  to defense and security could facilitate binational maritime domain awareness and a combined response to potential threats, “which transcends Canadian and U.S. borders, domains, defense and security departments and agencies,’ the report says.” (Homeland Defense Watch, May 8, 2006)

While NORAD still exists in name, its organizational structure coincides with that of NORTHCOM. Following the April 28, 2006 agreement, in practical terms, NORAD has been merged into USNORTHCOM.

\With the  exception of a token Canadian General, who occupied the position of  Deputy Commander of NORAD, the leadership of NORAD coincided with that of NORTHCOM. 
These two military authorities are identical in structure, they occupy the same facilities at the Peterson Air Force base in Colorado.

There was no official announcement of the renewed NORAD agreement, which hands over control of Canada’s territorial waters to the US, nor was there media coverage of this far-reaching decision. 

The Deployment of US Troops on Canadian Soil

At the outset of US Northern Command in April 2002, Canada accepted the right of the US to deploy US troops on Canadian soil.

“U.S. troops could be deployed to Canada and Canadian troops could cross the border into the United States if the continent was attacked by terrorists who do not respect borders, according to an agreement announced by U.S. and Canadian officials.” (Edmunton Sun, 11 September 2002)

With the creation of the BPG in December 2002, a binational  “Civil Assistance Plan” was established. The latter described the precise “conditions for deploying U.S. troops in Canada, or vice versa, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or natural disaster.” (quoted in Inside the Army, 5 September 2005).

The Demise of Canadian Sovereignty 

In August 2006, the US State Department confirmed that a new NORAD Agreement had entered into force, while emphasizing that “the maritime domain awareness component was of ‘indefinite duration,’ albeit subject to periodic review.” (US Federal News, 1 August 2006).

In March 2007, the US Senate Armed Services Committee confirmed that the NORAD Agreement had been formally renewed, to include a maritime warning system. In Canada, in contrast, there has been a deafening silence.

In Canada, the renewed NORAD agreement went virtually unnoticed. There was no official pronouncement by the Canadian government of Stephen Harper. There was no analysis or commentary of its significance and implications for Canadian territorial sovereignty. The agreement was barely reported by the Canadian media.

Operating under a “North American” emblem (i.e. a North American Command), the US military would have jurisdiction over Canadian territory from coast to coast; extending from the St Laurence Valley to the Queen Elizabeth archipelago in the Canadian Arctic.

The agreement would allow for the establishment of “North American” military bases on Canadian territory. From an economic standpoint, it would also integrate the Canadian North, with its vast resources in energy and raw materials, with Alaska. 

Nanasivik Naval Facility at Resolute Bay

Ottawa’s July 2007 decision to establish a military facility at Resolute Bay in the Northwest Passage was not intended to reassert “Canadian sovereignty”. Quite the opposite. It was established in consultation with Washington and Northern Command.

A deep-water port at Nanisivik  on the northern tip of Baffin Island was completed in mid-2024. It is expected to open up in early 2025 (see map below). 

The US administration was firmly behind the Canadian government’s decision. The latter does not “reassert Canadian sovereignty”. Quite the opposite. It is a means to establishing US territorial control over Canada’s entire Arctic region,  its internal waterways including the strategic North West Passage, which de facto under the jurisdiction of  US Northern Command (NORTHCOM).

There is an unspoken U.S. strategic and geopolitical objective behind the deep water port at Nanisivik, It’s the threat of Russia and China, largely in the sphere of “commercial traffic”:

With the signing of a memorandum of understanding [in November 2024], the United States, Canada and Finland are moving ahead on what military analysts see as a belated but much-needed answer to a mounting Russian and Chinese threat in the Arctic Ocean.

While the retreat of the polar icecap is steadily opening the region for commercial traffic and mineral exploration, the ICE Pact is largely driven by concerns over the Arctic capabilities of an increasingly hostile Russia and the rapidly growing presence of China.

Donald Trump’s intent to “buy Greenland”  is related to Nanisivik plan to control strategic water ways, through the Baffin Bay and the North West Passage, which in words of  Prime Minister Jean Chrétien belongs to Canada:

“We also want to protect the Arctic. But the United States refuses to recognize the Northwest Passage, insisting that it is an international waterway”.

“Integration” or  “Annexation” of Canada?

Canada is contiguous to “the center of the empire”. Territorial control over Canada is part of the US geopolitical and military agenda. It is worth recalling in this regard, that throughout history, the “conquering nation” has expanded on its immediate borders, acquiring control over contiguous territories and maritime rights. In regards  to the U.S., this concept of “contiguous territories” relates to Canada, Mexico and part of the Caribbean.(See the USNORTHCOM above which also includes Cuba and the Bahamas)

Military integration is intimately related to the ongoing process of integration in the spheres of trade, finance and investment. Needless to say, a large part of the Canadian economy is already in the hands of US corporate interests. In turn, the interests of Big Business in Canada tend to coincide with those of the US.

Canada is already a de facto economic protectorate of the USA. NAFTA had not only opened up new avenues for US corporate expansion, it had laid the groundwork under the existing North American umbrella for the post 9/11 integration of military command structures, public security, intelligence and law enforcement.

Canada’s entry into US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) was barely covered by Canada’s media.  USNORTHCOM was presented to public opinion as part of Canada-US “cooperation”, as something which was “in the national interest”, which “will create jobs for Canadians”, and “will make Canada more secure” (sounds a bit like “Trump rhetoric”)

Ultimately what is at stake is that beneath the rhetoric, Canada will cease to function as a sovereign Nation:

-Its borders will be controlled by US officials and confidential information on Canadians will be shared with Homeland Security.

-US troops and Special Forces will be able to enter Canada as a result of a binational arrangement.

-Canadian citizens can be arrested by US officials, acting on behalf of their Canadian counterparts and vice versa.

But there is something perhaps even more fundamental in defining and understanding where Canada and Canadians stand as a nation.

By endorsing a Canada-US “integration” in the spheres of defense, homeland security, police and intelligence, Canada –which refused wage war on Iraq in 2003– has also become a full fledged member of what George W. Bush’ called  the “Coalition of the Willing”, namely direct participation, through integrated military command structures, in the US-NATO war agenda in Ukraine, Central Asia, the Middle East and East Asia.

Canada  has no longer an independent foreign policy.

Under an integrated US North American Command,. Canada has been obliged to embrace Washington’s pre-emptive military doctrine, its bogus “global war on terrorism” which has been used as a pretext for waging war in the Middle East, South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

————————

Jean Chrétien

This article is dedicated to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, whom I had the opportunity of meeting in the context of an interview pertaining to the Canadian Economy on behalf of a TV Ontario Educational Programme with the support of the University of Ottawa.

He received our team at his office at the House of Commons, with smiles, hospitality and a wonderful sense of humour.

He is a man of the people, committed to peace and social justice, serving the interests of Canadians from his heart and his mind.

Censorship

An earlier version first published in 2005 under the title: Is the Annexation of Canada part of Bush’s Military Agenda? by Michel Chossudovsky was granted a 2005 Project Censored Award (Sonoma State University California)

A short version of the above article (2005) was submitted to the Toronto Star, It was accepted and confirmed for publication three consecutive times in the Opinion section. It was never published.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Canada’s Sovereignty in Jeopardy: ’51st State’, Déjà Vu appeared first on LewRockwell.

I honestly do not think Joe Biden ever had a chance to make sense of his four years as president. It is not merely his native stupidity, and Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s  execrable record on the foreign side seems evidence enough that he is through and through, all-over stupid. This does not distinguish Biden among American presidents, after all. No, the matter to hand is larger. If you assume the task of running an empire and the empire has profligately abused the world’s once-considerable reservoir of goodwill, anyone short of a philosopher king was bound to fail as America’s No. 46.

But American presidents do not fail and America altogether never fails. We all know this. The Success God has always reigned supreme in our republic, and it reigns without mercy now, even as our republic teeters. This creates a big problem when a president who has failed so miserably as Joe Biden takes his leave. You have to change the subject. You have to distract the great broad masses with matters of no consequence. You have to make things up and keep making them up at least until No. 46 is back home playing with his Corvette.

It becomes a little ridiculous, but Americans, of course, are well used to ridiculous at this point. We are not, I strenuously insist, a ridiculous people. It’s that those purporting to lead us, ridiculous themselves, have made the nation wherein we dwell act ridiculously and, so, look ridiculous.

Ridiculous! I come upon the word I seek. I read somewhere the other day, and if my editors will excuse me, I am not going to waste time looking it up, that Nancy “Look At All My Ice-Cream” Pelosi remarked that Joe Biden now “takes his place in the pantheon of American democracy.” See what I mean by making things up? See what I mean by ridiculous?

Joe Biden has hankered ardently after a “legacy,” the leaving of some lasting mark on America, something to get him some lines, maybe a chapter, in the history texts. He has succeeded on many fronts, even if this is upside-down to his intent. America is now complicit in a genocide that has us invoking President Jackson’s Trail of Tears. He bequeaths the danger of nuclear war and an economy—near to a magic trick, this—that clocks well in the statistics but has most of the citizenry in one or another way desperate.

These are the big, obvious features of Biden’s legacy. But, awful as they are, America’s plunge into unreality during Biden’s watch seems to me just as consequential for its enduring consequences. Joe Biden has led our nation so far out to sea we can no longer see the shore. We have lost contact with the world — a thought so inconceivable even a few years ago I find it odd to type these seven words.

The myths of America’s success and supremacy and goodwill collided head-on during Biden’s years with failure, America’s malintent, and the reality of a multipolar world neither Biden nor the policy cliques he commands (or that command him) can accept. Again, no other White House occupant could have done any better these past four years. Biden’s stupidity simply made the mess worse.

And so we witness Biden’s farewell amid a parade of ridiculousness.

■

David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, wrote a notable piece the other day under the headline, “We deserve Pete Hegseth.” He was remarking on the confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee of President-elect Trump’s nominee for defense secretary. Right up top Brooks lists the questions with which the next Pentagon chief will have to contend: the threat of another world war; the prospect of fighting multiple conflicts at once with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea; America’s hollowed-out industrial base; the military’s overall “insolvency,” a RAND Corporation term for the armed forces’ inability to match the tasks policy sets for it.

“Now, if you are holding a hearing for a prospective secretary of defense, you would think you might want to ask him about these urgent issues,” Brooks writes. “If you thought those kinds of questions would dominate the hearing, you must be living under the illusion that we live in a serious country.”

Wow.

Brooks continues with piercing acuity:

We do not. We live in a soap opera country. We live in a social media/cable TV country. In our culture you don’t want to focus on boring policy questions; you want to engage in the kind of endless culture war that gets voters riled up. You don’t want to focus on topics that would require study; you focus on images and easy-to-understand issues that generate instant visceral reactions. You don’t win this game by engaging in serious thought; you win by mere attitudinizing—by striking a pose. Your job is not to advance an argument that might help the country; your job is to go viral.

Brilliant, especially given it appears in The Times’s ordinarily wooden opinion pages. A soap-opera country is a country out of touch with reality, just as I say. It is a ridiculous country, the soaps being famously such.

Pete Hegseth, who failed to answer the most elementary questions about how the world is organized, is preposterously unqualified to serve as defense secretary. But never mind all that. His attacks on wokery, along with his boozing and dalliances with women, whatever the nature of either, made him the perfect blackboard for all the Bidenites on the Armed Services Committee to scrawl their credentials as virtuous culture warriors.

American ridiculousness: O.K., we have lived with this for years. But I simply cannot believe it has come to this level of irresponsibility. It is another feature of the Biden legacy, let us not miss. Brooks nailed this well.

But for all the pith he put into this piece, Brooks failed to address a couple of key points.

One, if we consider the potential crises Brooks listed, we must conclude Biden is responsible either for creating them — the danger of a new world war — or for making them greatly worse, as in the potential for multiple conflicts.

Example: One of the policy pursuits Biden et al. boast of most vigorously is the strengthening and expansion of U.S. military ties in the Pacific — with South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. They got this done, certainly. And the working assumption in this exercise is that China is fundamentally a hostile power and must be dealt with, at the horizon, militarily.

Tell me, does this count as diplomacy? Is this the wisest, most imaginative way of dealing with China? Do these revitalized military alliances, to put the point another way, make the world safer or more dangerous? How do they fit with the Biden–Blinken commitment, professed incessantly during the 2020 campaign season, that their foreign policy would put diplomacy first and leave military response as a last resort?

Two, Brooks would have done well to consider another reason, and the more important, the Armed Services Committee spent so little time examining Hegseth for his views on policy. To put the point simply, there is very little to discuss, as it does not matter terribly much, or not as much as it should, who runs the Pentagon. If the Biden regime made one thing clear above all others, it is that presidents and cabinet members are not much more than ritualized figures, the Deep State’s front men, whose function is not to determine policy but to present it to the public and the rest of the world. The imperium’s foreign policies do not change, one administration to another, if you have not noticed. Nothing to talk about, then. To me this is a feature of America’s post-democracy that manages to be ridiculous and frightening all at once.

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It seems that among the first orders of business at the beginning of each new Congress is to pass legislation protecting, promoting or pandering to Israel. And it doesn’t matter one iota which party controls Congress. Well, it happened once again.

One of the newly installed 119th Congress’s very first orders of business was to pass legislation attempting to protect Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant from arrest by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the crime of genocide.

I’ll let former CIA officer Philip Giraldi take it from here:

Donald Trump has been correct in understanding that Americans are tired of war in places that they cannot find on a map. In fact, Trump might well have obtained his margin of victory over Biden through voters who were attracted by his verbal rejection of the “stupid wars” that have proliferated in the past twenty-five years. But now that he has won, Trump is unrestrained and his darker side has been unleashed. His nominees for cabinet posts are nearly all aggressively Zionist and pro-Israel while also combative regarding both Russia and China. Trump himself has muddied the waters in the past several weeks by calling for resuming control of the Panama Canal to counter claimed gouging on tolls and Chinese engagement in its operations, has threatened “hell to pay” on the Gazans if they do not release the Israeli hostages by inauguration day, has called for annexing Greenland to improve US security, has not rejected recent Biden troop increases in Syria, has called for renaming the Gulf of Mexico, has proposed that Canada become the 51st state, and is reported to be discussing with the Israelis an attack on Iran. He and his spokesmen have also warned Russia that the US will provide more arms to Ukraine if Vladimir Putin does not agree to negotiations to end the Ukraine war “in one day” after Donald Trump is in office, though the president-to-be is now conceding that it might take longer. Trump has also repeatedly self-identified as the “most pro-Israel” candidate for public office, similar to the claims made by country club Catholic Joe Biden that he is a Zionist, as being close to Israel and American Jews currently serves as a sine qua non for those who are active in American politics.

The new GOP dominance of both the House and Senate means that the Congress will be on board to provide backup for the new Administration and it will also mean doubling down on the near total current submission to Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The new Republican dominated 119th Congress’s House of Representatives as one of its first official acts, one which has nothing to do with the United States, has just passed a bill by a 243 to 140 vote, with 45 Democrats joining the majority of Republicans. Representative Thomas Massie was the only member of the GOP caucus having sufficient integrity to refuse to vote in favor of the bill. [Emphasis added]

“The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” sanctions the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its attempt to serve arrest warrants on Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the crime of genocide. Travel to the US by members of the court will be banned and their personal property will be subject to confiscation. Any court officials attempting to arrest or investigate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are covered by the Act. The bill is now likely to pass through the Senate before being signed by Trump. Representative Brian Mast of Florida, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and co-sponsor of the legislation, commented that “America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally.” Mast, a legless Israeli army veteran who sometimes wears his IDF uniform to Congressional sessions, accused the court of antisemitism. He added that “This bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe… Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.” One assumes that there will be additional legislation to carry out the deportation of pro-Palestinian protesters, as Trump has several times promised, as well as further steps to criminalize all criticism of the Jewish state, making Israel yet again the big winner in the recent election. [Emphasis added]

In his missive, Giraldi added:

Trump’s call for a dramatic change of direction among the deeply entrenched political class in our country in order to avoid repeating the calamitous Afghanistan experience in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and over Taiwan is sound. But unfortunately, the MAGA remedy might well be as bad or even worse than the mess left behind by the Biden gaggle of policy makers, starting with the worst Secretary of State within living memory in the person of Israel’s latest lawyer Antony Blinken. Indeed, the utter failure of the past four years suggests looking ahead that the real danger that confronts Americans is that the often ignorant cabinet-level placeholders who proliferated under Biden appear to be largely duplicated under the incoming regime of President-elect Donald Trump.

Indeed.

From this column of December 5, 2024:

I have already warned readers about Trump’s appointments of the uber-Zionist warmongers Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security, Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, Elise Stefanik as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and uber-Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

Now we can add uber-Zionists Sebastian Gorka and Pam Bondi to this ignoble list. Judge Andrew Napolitano said that “to a man” Trump’s senior executive leadership picks are 60% Jewish and 100% Zionists. Trump is being true to his campaign promise to “make Israel great again.”

The Bondi appointment as America’s attorney general is especially noteworthy. Trump’s first selection for this position was Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. But after being announced as America’s next attorney general, the Zionist news media and political lobbyists pounced into action. You see, Gaetz is one of the very few members of Congress who is not on the Israel lobby payroll. The result: It only took a matter of days for Gaetz to be forced to withdraw his name from the nomination.

Enter Pam Bondi.

Bondi is a rabid, pro-Zionist zealot. She is also a radical anti-Bill of Rights zealot—especially the First Amendment. Bondi (along with Department of Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem) has every intention of stomping out the freedom of speech in the U.S.—especially that speech which denounces the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon and which supports Palestinian statehood.

In his interview with Max Blumenthal, Judge Nap and Max had this exchange regarding Bondi:

Napolitano: Aaron {Maté} and I have discussed at length the assaults on free speech by the Biden Administration, by members of Congress, like Elise Stefanic, as an example, who’s slated to become Trump’s Ambassador to the UN. I think you’ll agree with me that this is about to get worse.

Here is Pam Bondi, the designated to-be Attorney General of the United States, suggesting that demonstrators on college campuses should be deported at worst or interrogated by FBI agents at best.

Bondi video: Whether they’re here as Americans or if they’re here on student visas, and they’re out there saying, “I support Hamas,” you and I have seen that on all of these television shows. Frankly, they need to be taken out of our country, or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away when they’re saying, “I support Hamas,” “I am Hamas.” That’s not saying, “I support all these poor Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza {Such cold condescension}.” That’s not what they’re saying. So, I think their student visas need to be revoked. I think we need to reinstate President Trump’s travel ban immediately. There’s a lot of things that can be done to stop this. The anti-Semitism that is rampant throughout this country now. And it’s truly, truly heartbreaking to see what’s happening to all of our Jewish friends in this country.

I would like to ask Ms. Bondi what exactly is “truly, truly heartbreaking what’s happening to all of our Jewish friends in this country”? Are Jews in America being starved to death with blockades that deny them food and medicine? Are Jewish hospitals, schools and synagogues in America being bombed to smithereens by the nation’s military? Are Jewish children in America being shot dead in the head by army snipers? Are Jewish homes in America being bulldozed to the ground? Are tens of thousands of innocent Jewish men, women, children and babies being slaughtered like animals because of their race?

Napolitano: So, this woman who’s about to become the head of the Justice Department, and indirectly the head of the FBI, believes that, the First Amendment notwithstanding, the government can evaluate the content of speech and decide which political speech is worthy of praise, which is worthy of interrogation, and which is worthy of kicking people out of the country. Worse than anything Joe Biden’s DOJ ever imagined.

Blumenthal: Well, the Biden DOJ has helped set the stage for this. But let’s look at how Pam Bondi came into the position as Trump’s Attorney General nominee.

It was the downfall of Matt Gaetz, one of the few members of Congress who has not taken Israel Lobby money, who actually voted against one of the major aid supplementals to Israel, along with other members of the Freedom Caucus, mainly because it also was linked to Ukraine aid. But he did it. Matt Gaetz went down mainly because of this bizarre background he has and this saga that involved apparently sexual blackmail.

And Pam Bondi comes in. She’s welcomed by CNN. It appears Senate Democrats will let her slide through. She’s been a longtime corporate lobbyist for GM, Amazon, Uber and even Gulf monarchies. She’s a corporate tool, and so that’s why she’ll sail through.

But also, in the last hours of Matt Gaetz as AG nominee, the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League condemned him as an antisemite. And Pam Bondi appears; someone with a very clear record working under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who said he’ll be the most pro-Israel governor in America, of shilling for Israel and advancing Israel’s objectives politically and legally inside the United States on behalf of Tel Aviv, crushing the First Amendment and the rights of students and other Americans to organize against this genocide.

And what I think we’re going to see happen, and this is an agenda that’s been spelled out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, which was actually largely written by Christian Right activists, Christian Zionists, is to seek terrorism designations for groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine, the groups leading the demonstrations in the streets, and then to begin to actually prosecute them and de-bank their activists going to places like PayPal, Venmo and ordering them basically to block transactions of anyone who’s leading Palestine solidarity activity. I mean this is all spelled out. And Bondi seems to be the perfect person to advance this authoritarian, anti-freedom, unamerican agenda on behalf of Netanyahu and the Israeli apartheid regime.

You can mark it down that Trump’s Executive Order issued on his inauguration day protecting free speech will NOT apply to those who have the courage to tell the truth about Netanyahu and the Zionist State of Israel.

Napolitano: Is there anybody in Trump’s cabinet that’s not an ardent Zionist?

Blumenthal: I mean yeah; it’s MIGA; it’s make Israel great again.

As an aside, you really should watch Max Blumenthal’s courageous confrontation of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the Israeli genocide in Gaza during Blinken’s final press conference. Max is a warrior!

Plus, Trump’s Middle East envoy, a fellow billionaire real estate developer and golfing buddy Steve Witkoff, is even more radical in his uber Zionism than Trump—if that’s possible.

And based on Trump’s brief press conference in the Oval Office after his inauguration, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Trump and Witkoff plan to completely ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza and build expensive resorts and other commercial and private real estate ventures on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in Gaza. The slaughter and genocide in Gaza is nothing more than a rich man’s financial wet dream for making huge profits off the death and destruction of an entire people.

I haven’t had an opportunity to examine all of Trump’s initial Executive Orders, but I’m sure there will be several that I will applaud. I also expect Trump to toss political crumbs to his conservative base on select domestic issues.

However, foreign policy is owned by the War Party/Deep State/Zionist Israel, regardless of who sits in the White House. Donald Trump may not be a fan of Netanyahu personally, but he remains the most uber of Zionists.

For that matter, with few exceptions—especially on the Republican side of the aisle—the entire U.S. Congress is composed of uber Zionists. Looking at the new Congress’s first order of business, you can better understand why Congress gave Netanyahu 58 standing ovations during a 54-minute speech.

Israel owns them.

And by looking at Trump’s appointments to his new administration, it is obvious that Israel owns Trump too.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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In May 2017 the Russian president Vladimir Putin had an interview with Le Figaro. He explained his experience with policy preferences forwarded by U.S. presidents:

I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.

It took only two days for that to happen with the second presidency of Donald Trump. Instead of seeking better relations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, as he had promised during the campaign, Trump initiated a public ‘dialog’ with Russia that seems to make both of these aims impossible.

He posted on Truth-Social:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Jan 22, 2025, 15:46 UTC

I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin – and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL.” NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!

One wonders what the people in dark suits were thinking when they fed such bullshit to Donald Trump.

Russia did not ‘help’ to win the Second World War. It did win it. It was the U.S. and others who were merely helpful in doing so.

As Kremlin spokesmen Dimitry Peskov rightly replied:

“The main burden in the fight against fascism and the biggest price for the victory in the fight against fascism was paid by our country, the Soviet Union.” “The US did indeed help. It made a significant contribution. But there’s one caveat: America always makes money, for America it’s always about business,” Peskov emphasized.

The Soviet Union did not lose 60 million lives in that war but less than half of it – about 11 million soldiers and 15 million civilians.

Russia’s economy is not falling.

Even Reuters, which has anonymous sources speculate about Putin’s ‘concerns’ with the economy, has to admit:

Russia’s economy, driven by exports of oil, gas and minerals, grew robustly over the past two years despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia currently has a somewhat higher than usual inflation. But a shortage of labor has let to wage growth beyond the inflation rate and to a spread of general prosperity:

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the Reuters reporting, acknowledged “problematic factors” in the economy, but said it was developing at a high rate and was able to meet “all military requirements incrementally” as well as all welfare and social needs.

“There are problems, but unfortunately, problems are now the companions of almost all countries of the world,” he said. “The situation is assessed as stable, and there is a margin of safety.”
…
After contracting in 2022, Russia’s GDP grew faster than the European Union and the United States in 2023 and 2024. This year, however, the central bank and the International Monetary Fund forecast sub-1.5% growth, although the government projects a slightly rosier outlook.

Trump threat to put “high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States” demonstrates his plain ignorance. The only valuable product Russia is still selling to the U.S. is the enriched Uranium needed to run U.S. nuclear power plants. Trump can tax, tariff and sanction that as much as he likes.

He could also try to sanction other Russian energy exports. But those are double-edged measures:

Trump’s proposed tariffs and sanctions could also backfire on the United States and its allies:

• • Energy Prices: A reduction in Russian energy exports could spike global oil and gas prices, hurting Western consumers.
  • Geopolitical Realignments: Aggressive sanctions might accelerate the creation of parallel financial and trade systems outside of Western control, weakening U.S. influence.
  • Economic Blowback: American industries reliant on certain raw materials from Russia, such as metals for manufacturing, could face higher costs and supply disruptions.

No one in Russia, for certain not Putin, will take such Trump’s attempt to open negotiations seriously.

If Trump wants to achieve a peace agreement over Ukraine he will need to reject the neo-conservative dark suits’ opinions and find people who know what they are talking about.

Senseless barking at Moscow, as Trump has done so far, will be responded to with a rather bored yawn:

The Kremlin is not impressed by United States President Donald Trump’s threat to impose new sanctions against Russia if it does not agree to strike a peace deal with Ukraine.

“We do not see any particular new elements here,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian media Thursday. Peskov added that Trump “liked sanctions” and used them often during his first presidential term.

“Russia is ready for an equal and careful dialogue with the United States, which we had during Trump’s first term,” Peskov said, according to Russian independent media outlet Meduza. “We are waiting for signals that have not yet been received.”

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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Most Americans realize that the federal government is drowning in debt and that inflation is out of control.  But very few Americans can coherently explain where money comes from or how our financial system actually works.  For decades, bankers that we do not elect have controlled America’s currency, have run our economy into the ground, and have driven the U.S. government to the brink of bankruptcy.  The Federal Reserve is an institution that was designed to drain wealth from U.S. taxpayers and transfer it to the global elite.  Have you ever wondered why a sovereign nation such as the United States has to borrow United States dollars from anyone?  Have you ever wondered why a sovereign nation such as the United States does not even issue its own currency?  Have you ever wondered why we allow a group of unelected private bankers to run our economy?

Those are some very important questions.  Hopefully what you are about to read will open the eyes of many.  The truth is that our financial system is centrally-controlled and centrally-managed by a group of banking oligarchs who oversee a constantly expanding debt spiral which could come crashing down at any time.  If the American people truly understood how our system works, they would be protesting in the streets right now.  The following are 11 reasons why the Federal Reserve is bad…

1 – The Federal Reserve was created as a way to enslave the U.S. government.  In fact, the Federal Reserve system literally could not function without U.S. Treasury bonds.  Government debt is at the very core of the system, and our federal government is now trapped in a debt spiral from which it can never possibly escape because the system is operating exactly as it was designed.  Our national debt has been rising at an exponential rate, and that will continue to be the case until either the current system collapses or we adopt an entirely new system.

2 – The individual Federal Reserve Banks are not “federal” at all.  In fact, on the official website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, it is openly admitted that  Federal Reserve Banks “are not a part of the federal government” and that private banks “hold stock in the Federal Reserve Banks and earn dividends”…

The Federal Reserve Banks are not a part of the federal government, but they exist because of an act of Congress. Their purpose is to serve the public. So is the Fed private or public?

The answer is both. While the Board of Governors is an independent government agency, the Federal Reserve Banks are set up like private corporations. Member banks hold stock in the Federal Reserve Banks and earn dividends.

3 – Why does the Federal Reserve issue our currency?  The U.S. Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to issue our currency…

[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . .

4 – The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air.  I asked Google AI about this, and this is what I was told…

Yes, the Federal Reserve (Fed) creates money out of thin air by increasing the money supply. This process is called “creating money out of thin air” because it involves adding funds to the economy without printing currency.

5 – The Federal Reserve devalues our currency.  Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 96 percent of its purchasing power.  The truth is that just a two percent inflation rate will wipe out half of your purchasing power within a single generation.  In the chart below, you can clearly see that the beginning of the rapid rise of inflation in the United States coincided with the creation of the Federal Reserve.

6 – The Federal Reserve manipulates the U.S. economy by setting interest rates.  By moving rates higher or lower, the Federal Reserve has the power to create economic growth or to destroy it.  They have the power to inflate massive economic bubbles and to pop them.  Most Americans believe that our presidents “run the economy”, but the truth is that the Federal Reserve has far more control over the economy than the White House does.  As you can see below, every recession since World War II has come after a period of rising interest rates.

7 – The Federal Reserve also controls the national money supply.  They can pump trillions of dollars into the economy or pull trillions of dollars out of the economy without being accountable to anyone.  This can have absolutely disastrous consequences.  For example, inflation started getting wildly out of control after the Federal Reserve dramatically increased the size of the money supply during the pandemic.

8 – The Federal Reserve has become far, far too powerful.  Our financial markets swing up and down whenever a Fed official makes an important statement, and every man, woman and child in the entire country is directly affected by the decisions that the Federal Reserve Board makes.  Ron Paul once told MSNBC that he believes that the Federal Reserve has actually become more powerful than Congress…

“The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress.”

9 – The Federal Reserve is dominated by Wall Street and the New York banks.  The New York representative is the only permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, while the other members rotate.  The truth is that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been the most important of the regional Fed banks by far, and in turn the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been dominated by Wall Street and the major New York banks.

10 – The Federal Reserve has completely eliminated minimum reserve requirements for our banks.  Fractional reserve banking has always been a way that the bankers have conned the public, but now they have gotten rid of minimum reserve requirements altogether.  This is literally insane.

11 – The Federal Reserve is not accountable to the voters, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is flaunting the fact that he cannot even be fired by President Trump…

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had a clear, direct response when asked during a press conference Thursday if he would step down if asked to do so by President-elect Trump.

“No,” said Powell, whose term as chair ends in 2026.

When asked to elaborate and if he would be legally required to leave, he again said, “No.”

Powell later said it is “not permitted under the law” for the president to fire or demote him or any of the other Fed governors with leadership positions.

Powell’s term will eventually end, but until then he can do whatever he wants.

Shouldn’t we have some way to keep them accountable?

After all, they have an incredible amount of power over us, shouldn’t we have at least a little bit of power over them?

Nobody knows what is really going on inside the Federal Reserve, because we aren’t allowed to see.

Unfortunately, the truth is that they desperately do not want light to be shined on the elaborate “shell game” that they are running.

Have you ever wondered if it was just a coincidence that the personal income tax was implemented just about the same time that the Federal Reserve was created?

Why does the U.S. government have to tax us at all?

Prior to 1913, there was no personal income tax in this country.

If you take a few minutes to stop and think about it, an America where there is no Federal Reserve, no personal income tax and no IRS is not that hard to imagine.

If the U.S. government functioned just fine without all of them at one time, then why couldn’t the U.S. government function just fine without all of them now?

The system that we have now is clearly not working.  The Federal Reserve was supposed to guarantee that our system would be perfectly stable, but in reality our system has become much more unstable.

It is time for different thinking.  It is time for the U.S. government to take back control of our currency and to take back control of our economy.

For more than a decade, I have been on a crusade to bring the Federal Reserve system to an end, and many others have been pushing for the exact same thing.

Now that we have a new administration in Washington, perhaps they will be open to listening to us.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

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From the first day of his return to office Trump has been locked in a life and death struggle with the American Establishment.  In Washington, D.C., either the Democrat mayor or the Democrat judges that sentenced Trump supporters to prison on false charges are delaying or trying to prevent the release of the pardoned prisoners. As of time of writing on Thursday January 23, not all of the pardoned held in D.C. have been released. 

A Democrat Pennsylvania attorney general is trying to find a way to re-arrest the pardoned who live in Pennsylvania on state charges.

A federal district judge in Washington state has blocked Trump’s cancellation of birthright citizenship, an abusive process that allows immigrant-invaders to gain citizenship by getting into the US in order to give birth.  The judge claims, falsely, that this is a constitutional right that the US Constitution grants to immigrant-invaders. The US Constitution’s protections are limited to US citizens.

A number of Democrat governors and mayors have vowed not to comply and even to actively resist Trump’s border defense and deportation of illegal aliens.  Democrat Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said she would absolutely not comply with US Law. 

 Isn’t this what a Southern governor did 50 or 60 years ago when he stood in the schoolhouse door in defiance of President John F. Kennedy?  How is Maura Healey any different? Is it OK because it is a yankee and not a Southerner doing it?

Democrat Denver, Colorado, mayor Mike Johnston said he would call for civil disobedience to protest deportations.  Isn’t civil disobedience one of the charges leveled against the Trump supporters who protested the stolen 2020 presidential election?

The way the American system works is that the president can do whatever he wants as long as the Establishment agrees. But if the Establishment does not agree, the president cannot even keep his oath to defend the Constitution against enemies domestic and foreign. 

The Establishment surrounds the President. The Establishment is the Senate, House, judiciary, media, Wall Street and corporations, CIA, FBI, civil service, universities. Trump’s only support is the people who control no institutions, not even local school boards. The US military has been so corrupted by Obama and Biden that the US military might be unreliable as a defense of American values and Americans’ rights. We are faced with the possibility that American soldiers can find themselves at war with Russian soldiers in order to defend Washington’s rule of tyranny over American citizens.  American Exceptionalism cuts both ways.  It means not only hegemony over foreign peoples but also over American citizens.

With Democrats promising non-compliance and with judges blocking Trump’s every action, we are witnessing the institutionalized establishment’s blatant actions to block any hindrance on their power. The Establishment allowed Trump to return to office, because they are confident that they can block him from success and thus demoralize Americans and end for all time challenges to their rule.

Trump’s attorney general has directed Department of Justice prosecutors to investigate state and local officials who are obstructing Trump’s enforcement of US immigration laws.  It was the 12 years of Democrat presidents in the 21st century who filled up our country with illegal immigrant-invaders, diverting resources belonging to US citizens to support for immigrant-invaders, while American war veterans were left homeless in the streets, who filled up the Justice (sic) Department with advocates for immigrant-invaders. 

Ask yourself,  how are the prosecutors, recruited by Obama and Biden regimes to ride roughshod over traditional American citizens in order to advance Black Lives Matter, Antifa, sexual perverts, indoctrination of school children, DEI in place of merit, and “constitutional rights” for immigrant invaders, going to comply?  The answer is that they will “investigate” and conclude that there is nothing to investigate. They will, for example, resurrect the long dead 10th Amendment–the States’ Right Amendment destroyed by Abe Lincoln–and claim that the dissenting Democrat jurisdictions are merely exercising their 10th Amendment rights.

How are the DOJ prosecutors recruited by eight years of the Cheney/Bush regime going to comply when on their watch the Constitutional protections of US citizens became null and void in order to fight the completely invented “war on terror,”  which, in truth, was a fight for Greater Israel.

What Trump and his Attorney General need to understand is that there is no one in the Department of Justice who has an ounce of integrity and who is not anti-American.  The DOJ has not protected Americans’ constitutional rights for a quarter century and longer. Instead, the DOJ has been busy inventing rights for immigrant-invaders and criminals.

For Trump to move forward, the entire Justice Department has to be replaced. Trump has issued executive orders making it easier to fire civil service obstructionists of the president’s orders and the will of the people. But the civil service union is already at work relying on federal judges to block Trump’s executive order. The law suits will continue forever.  If Trump and his administration accept this prohibition on its ability to govern and keep its campaign promises, the corrupt American Establishment will have won.

Only Americans of my generation know that formerly, in those days when America was great, there were no public sector unions. There was no civil service union, no police union, no firefighters union, no teachers union. Public sector employees were employed to serve the public, not to extort the public by refusing to supply the services for which they were paid unless the public paid up more.

Somewhere along the way federal, state, and local governments found votes and campaign contributions ample reward for selling out the American people to public sector unions.  Now these unions are positioned to block Trump from making America great again.

Thomas Jefferson, the most pure of our Founding Fathers, said that every 200 years a nation has to renew itself with the blood of tyrants and patriots. He was correct in every respect except the 200 years. By 1860 when the US was not even 100 years old, the US Constitution was no longer respected by the Republicans in power. They wanted the tariff at all cost and sold out the US Constitution in order to get it by extraordinary violence and war crimes, all covered up by corrupt US historians who achieved approval and success by serving as court historians.

We have been witnessing, that tiny percentage of us that pays any attention, the Ruling Establishment’s unrelenting attacks on Trump’s appointees.  Tulsi Gabbard has been forced by the Establishment Senate to abandon her opposition to unlimited unconstitutional spying on American citizens by “security” and “intelligence” agencies in order “to protect” Americans by violating their Constitutional rights.   Amazing, isn’t it, that Americans are protected by the government’s violation of their Constitutional rights. Pete Hegseth’s appointment as Secretary of Defense is in trouble based on allegations by a vindictive former wife.

In my opening sentence I wrote that Trump was in his first hours already in a life and death struggle with the American Establishment.  Trump cannot win this war when the Justice (sic) Department, media, Federal judiciary, and US Congress are homes of America’s enemies.  

Americans having neglected Thomas Jefferson’s warning and that of President Dwight Eisenhower, the current Trump regime is America’s last chance. Trump is faced with a powerful and utterly corrupt American Establishment that has been in power since they got the income tax and the Federal Reserve passed in 1913. Effectively, 1913 was the last year of American liberty.

An Establishment in power since 1913 is institutionalized and many times more powerful than a mere president.

Trump and his supporters need to understand that the Establishment is institutionalized in the bureaucracies of his own government.

For decades Americans have been suffering violence from their government. It is way past time to send the violence back, in a double dose, to the criminal American Establishment.

If Trump and his government cannot bring themselves to the real challenge, America is lost. Trump’s agenda will spend four years tied up in law courts.

Democracy is the most effective system ever invented, not for bringing change, but for blocking it.

The Establishment intends to block every Trump change.

The post Trump vs. The Establishment, Who Will Win? appeared first on LewRockwell.

One of my favorite sentences in The Shawshank Redemption — a movie filled with some of Stephen King’s finest writing — comes near the end.  The protagonist, Andy, has broken out of prison and sent a trove of evidence to the press that implicates the crooked warden in multiple criminal conspiracies.  Sitting in his office as police sirens blare and officers beat down his door, the corrupt and abusive warden opts to take his own life.  Morgan Freeman narrates as Andy’s friend and fellow inmate, Red: “I’d like to think that the last thing that went through his head, other than that bullet, was to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him.”

Watching President Trump return to the White House in triumphant fashion, I couldn’t get Red’s observation out of my mind.  There are politicians and bureaucrats all over D.C. wondering how the hell Donald Trump ever got the best of them, and although they have no intention of taking the warden’s way out, all their plans to thwart Trump’s movement are dead.  Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, the corrupt lawfare gangs, the corrupt Intelligence Community, and the corrupt corporate news propagandists posing as “journalists,” along with the vast majority of the corrupt, unelected, and unconstitutional administrative state, are all flabbergasted that President Trump again sits in the Oval Office — despite eight years of nefarious and treasonous Deep State plots to throw him in some hellhole similar to Shawshank Prison.

Remember when Andy emerged from the sewage pipe covered in filth and stretched his hands toward God while rain poured down to cleanse his body?  So many MAGA voters are also looking toward the heavens and exultantly whispering, “Thank you, Lord.  Free at last.”

That’s no hyperbole.  Proving yet again that he is a man of his word, President Trump immediately pardoned the J6 political prisoners.  He pardoned pro-life Christians whom tyrant Merrick Garland had imprisoned for protesting abortion.  He promised to free every last victim of the Biden regime’s political persecution, and many have already been informed of their impending release.  Most of these prisoners were first-time “offenders” who were targeted for their personal beliefs.  They and their families endured legal costs, pre-trial confinement, malicious prosecution, judicial malfeasance, and egregiously unnecessary separations from their parents and spouses and children.  Most suffered for their principles.  Most were denied constitutional protections and even impartial juries.  Most were pressured to confess to crimes that they did not commit.  Many with longer sentences wondered if they would ever make it home.  Now they are free.

Joe Biden’s last act in office was to “pre-emptively” pardon members of the Biden Crime Family.  One of President Trump’s first acts back in office was to pardon Americans who never would have suffered had they been registered Democrats.  Four years of injustice make the return of justice all the more magnificent.

As a partial answer to the Uniparty parasites and Deep State saboteurs who wonder how President Trump perseveres and wins, this is how: he keeps his promises.  The criminals who have long run D.C. and the “mockingbird” media who protect their criminal friends still believe that the public regards Trump as a liar and the permanent bureaucracy as a trusted group of “experts.”  Reality is just the opposite.  The American people see in President Trump someone who will give them the unvarnished truth, and they find the permanent bureaucracy a loathsome cabal of backstabbers, charlatans, and tyrants who never hesitate to sell out their country for a quick buck.  Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and even government “scientist” Anthony Fauci all used their sinecures as “public servants” to become millionaires.  Meanwhile, workers in the private sector got poorer each year.  Government “service” is a magnet for psychopaths, sadists, and fraudsters who launder taxpayer dollars into their own piggy banks.

If the American people didn’t completely appreciate how corrupt the U.S. government is when Trump first entered politics, they certainly get it now.  Russia collusion was a lie.  Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop was real — as was the Biden Crime Family’s monetization of Joe’s office.  Impeaching President Trump because Joe Biden accepted bribes from foreign adversaries never made sense to anybody with a brain except Mitt Romney.  COVID did come from a lab.  Perforated masks don’t stop viral transmission but do make it difficult for people to breathe.  Economic lockdowns saved no one but killed tens of thousands of small businesses.  School closures saved no one but caused lifetime learning harm for an entire generation.  The 2020 election was neither free nor fair, and there is substantial evidence of electoral fraud.  Government censorship is real.  Mass government surveillance of our private communications is real.  Mainstream news reporters do lie.  And Americans can reclaim lost freedoms only if they reject government propaganda and think for themselves.

Read the Whole Article

The post Deconstructing the Deep State appeared first on LewRockwell.

This, as they say, is one of those weeks when decades happen. You realize that under the fiends fronted by “Joe Biden,” the US government became a demon-driven machine for wrecking lives, perverting the law, and demolishing all scaffolds of decent behavior. And now, it all has to be fixed, cleaned up, fumigated, rectified, rehabilitated.

Scores of executive orders flew out of the Oval Office, rescinding four years of “Biden” regime lunacy in every direction: Censorship, dead. . . Gain of function research, killed. . . CBDCs banned. . . CBP-app for aiding illegal migrants, discontinued. . . border fortified. . . homicidal alien mutts deported. . . World Health Organization, no thanks. . . Paris Climate Accords, fuggeddabowdit. . . DEI, vacated through all of government. . . Green New Deal, scrapped. . . “pride” in mental illness, cancelled. . . Ukraine War, headed for the negotiating table. . . all in four days and so much more coming.

The DEI flimflam is particularly illustrative of the hazards still lurking. The DC blob is desperate to hide its chaos agents by switching their job titles and shuffling them around to hidey-holes in obscure precincts of this-or-that bureaucracy. Being federal employees, of course, they all have searchable names and payroll accounts, so you may be sure they’ll be discovered wherever they’re hiding-out and placed, as ordered, on “administrative leave.” Since DEI was essentially a program to promote incompetence, these employees represent a monumental cargo of dead-weight. So, the next task will be finding a way under the civil service codes to cashier them for good. For instance, reclassifying their job status to render them fire-able.

This is sure to be a major friction-point for the so-called “resistance,” the huge cadre of “activist” Wokesters embedded in the agencies. Cue the army of Democratic Party lawyers who will be filing suits to prevent the chief executive from coherently managing the departments of the executive branch. But there’s a catch: this time, the White House will not be funneling scads of money directly to the NGOs that pay for these blob-adjacent lawyers, nor will they be able to redirect money out of the DOJ, FBI, and CIA for that purpose. The president may also find a way to interrupt the flow of money from foundations financed by malign freelancers such as George Soros and Linked-in founder and billionaire Reid Hoffman (who financed the E. Jean Carroll “rape” trial hoax and many more Democratic Party pranks ).

Another friction point: release of the pardoned J-6 prisoners is being loudly opposed by DC District federal judges such as Tanya Chutkan and Amy Berman Jackson. They don’t enjoy any privilege or prerogative for voicing prejudicial opinions about vacated cases, nor for failing to comply with paperwork needed to discharge them. They can be impeached for that in the House of Representatives. Or, if they actively obstruct releases, the new-and-improved Department of Justice might consider 18 U.S.C. § 242 – Deprivation of rights under color of law.

Meanwhile, goons at the DC jail detained pardoned prisoners unlawfully this week after years of the grossest mistreatment, including solitary confinement in basement “holes” without beds, blankets, or water, and direct physical assault that could be described as “torture.” All of this was countenanced by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, despite plentiful public reports of abuse over the past four years. That is, she knew all about it. This is an argument for finally rescinding Washington DC’s “home rule” status and placing the city and all its departments back under federal management.

Last night, Mr. Trump signed an order to declassify government files relating to the murders of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. Of course, the intel agencies holding these files have had a half-century to expunge anything in the files that might reflect poorly on the intel agencies — such as, the long-trafficked rumor that the CIA was behind the killing of all three. Why would you expect to get anything like that? How could the remaining material be anything but a cover-your-ass file? Well, now we shall see. At some point in his first term, Mr. Trump allegedly saw what was in the files and demurred from his promise then to release them. Was it too shocking? Or was it the well-groomed nothingburger described above?

That’s not to say that there’s any shortage of weird, tantalizing documentation around all those cases, inexplicable doings. . . sketchy characters like Oswald, Jack Ruby, Howard Hunt, Clay Shaw, Sirhan Sirhan, Thane Eugene Cesar, James Earl Ray, “Raul” (Ray’s alleged “handler”), Frank Liberto, Loyd Jowers. . . . and curious circumstances like the so-called “magic bullet” that supposedly exited JFK and wounded Texas Governor Connolly, and was later found oddly intact on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital. I guess we’ll find out shortly.

Now, we await the confirmation of Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Pam Bondi’s USAG nomination was held up for a week by peevish freshman Senator Adam Schiff, after she called him out for being censured last year in the House for “reckless” statements — that is, she reminded the committee and the public that Mr. Schiff is a chronic liar. There are rumblings that he will be kicked off the Senate Judiciary Committee (maybe not such a good fit for someone incapable of telling the truth). The preemptive pardon he received last week from “Joe B” might be tested through the courts in the years just ahead. The Judiciary Committee announced that it will convene an inquiry into the whole J-6 fiasco. Do you sense that there is much to discover in that hairball of enigmatic events, hidden actions, concealed motives, and buried evidence?

All this (plus a lot I left out) and the first week isn’t even over yet!

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

The post The Great Sorting-Out Begins appeared first on LewRockwell.

From the Tom Woods Letter:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) created a panic this week when it announced a pause in “study sections.”

Study sections, says Vinay Prasad, are “groups of mediocre scientists who decide which grants are funded.”

Prasad, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, is what I would describe as a moderate in the currently raging debates on various important health questions — he would not satisfy a lot of my readers overall, but he’s not a savage, he takes other perspectives seriously, and he treats dissident voices like yours and mine with respect.

His commentary on this subject is for that reason all the more valuable.

NIH, argues Prasad, “seeks mediocre ideas that tread along established lines and not highly novel views. It does a bad job of funding people who do truly transformational work…. Trump has paused study sections to allow future NIH director Jay Bhattacharya to revisit the priorities. This is completely normal and reasonable.”

After warning that the various woke priorities of the NIH are unlikely to survive a Trump presidency, Prasad notes that the “one type of diversity that NIH is not interested in funding is intellectual diversity. That’s probably a reason why they’ve had so much stagnation on intractable problems such as cancer and neurological conditions.”

To those who warn that the longer the pause goes on, the likelier it is that people will lose their research jobs, Prasad replies:

Some people say that if the pause, which is completely reasonable, continues, people will lose their jobs in research. Of course this is true. I suspect the pause will not continue for a great period of time, but, at the same time, some people in research need to lose their jobs.

The government cannot be a welfare program for everybody doing low quality, low credibility, irreproducible, low value of information research. It has to use public dollars in a wise way. That has absolutely not occurred in the past. A pause is necessary to tackle this intractable problem.

In many ways, Jay is the perfect person to tackle this problem. He’s not a laboratory scientist. He’s an economist. The difference between laboratory scientists and economists is that the latter are much better at thinking brutally and clearly about the trade-offs and expected payoffs of research. Jay has already been on record as saying he thinks the NIH is not willing to push the envelope. It doesn’t fund truly transformative work. I completely agree with him. And he should direct funding in that way….

And the American people that want the envelope pushed. They don’t want continued marginal drugs. They want new ideas. We have made no progress in Alzheimer’s disease in part because of the NIH’s dogmatism. I look forward to a renewed focus on a diversity of ideas in science research.

Finally, if academics want to take a sky is falling approach to every single thing Donald Trump does, they’re only going to exhaust themselves.

The issue here is not government science funding versus no government science funding. Episode #2400 of the Tom Woods Show, with Professor Terence Kealey, made the case for a complete separation of science and state.

I am saying here only that I think Prasad, who would not share my views on funding, is nevertheless correct that NIH bureaucrats have stifled scientific progress in the way they have allocated grant money.

Let’s see what happens under Jay.

The post The Health Sector Is in a Panic appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Monday, in their final hours in office, former President Biden’s team chose to issue a blanket pardon to a number of close political allies and family members. Among that group was former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci.

Fauci was pardoned “for any offense against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through the date of [the] pardon” relating in any way to his time as NIAID Director, on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, the White House covid-19 response team, or as Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor.

In the letter explaining the pardons, Biden defended the choice, saying, “baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.” Even when those individuals have done nothing wrong, Biden’s ghostwriters reason, “the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.”

Setting aside the fact that this was the exact tactic the political establishment used to try and tarnish Trump’s reputation, it’s revealing that the primary public reason presented for the pardons was to avoid investigations.

There are, of course, plenty of unseemly details about Fauci’s career that the political establishment would not like to see resurface in either the court of law or the court of public opinion. Many were detailed in RFK Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci, such as the secretive and deadly drug experiments on hundreds of HIV-positive foster children at New York City’s Incarnation Children’s Center between 1988 and 2002 and the experiment that locked the heads of Beagle puppies into cages full of flesh-eating insects.

If Fauci had come under the federal government’s microscope, episodes like those could have done much to stain the name of the man Biden recently dubbed “a true hero.”

The same goes for Fauci’s completely inaccurate projection of the danger posed by a strain of swine flu in the 1970s, along with the millions of dollars of damages the government had to pay out due to injuries sustained in the related swine flu vaccine experiments.

Fauci also made similar failed projections relating to the 2005 bird flu, the 2009 swine flu, and the 2016 Zika virus. In all these cases, the virus was nowhere near as dangerous as Fauci had claimed it would be. But his warnings did result in his department and other parts of Washington’s public health bureaucracy getting billions of dollars in new funding.

Of course, these episodes pale in comparison to what Fauci is now most famous for: overseeing the covid pandemic.

Early on, Fauci famously explained on TV that cloth masks cannot stop people infected with covid from filling the air around them with virus particles. He then completely reversed his stance and advocated for universal masking and government mask mandates.

He later claimed his earlier comments on television had been lies meant to trick the public into not buying masks to protect the supply of masks for healthcare workers who, in fact, used a different kind of mask. He then acted confused when much of the public stopped trusting him.

Fauci also went on record in early April 2020 calling for nationwide lockdowns—something he would later deny doing. When some states like Florida started to reopen months later, Fauci warned the governors they were taking “a really significant risk.”

It quickly became obvious to anyone who was actually looking that Fauci was completely wrong about the effectiveness of masking and lockdowns. But Fauci ignored the data and kept pushing for these measures into 2021, after the vaccines had become available.

Another fact that had become obvious early in the pandemic was that children posed little risk of contracting and spreading covid. Yet, Fauci pushed for school closures and later school masking long after both were clearly shown to be unnecessary.

Finally, Fauci made several high-profile claims about the covid vaccines that would quickly prove false.

But making bad projections and giving bad advice isn’t a crime. So why was the political class worried about Fauci being investigated by the Department of Justice? Because a federal investigation would likely have related to the speculation that Fauci played a role in bringing the pandemic about in the first place.

One controversial method for studying viruses involves artificially making the virus more transmissible or virulent. This so-called “gain-of-function” research allows for virus mutation or possible treatments to be analyzed much more quickly, but it brings the risk of a much more dangerous genetically-engineered virus infecting people if a sample leaks out.

We know that an NGO that gets funding from Fauci’s department bankrolled gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the laboratory in Wuhan, China, in 2017 and 2018. And that the same NGO had received federal funding while conducting gain-of-function research going back to 2014, when a three-year ban on using federal funds for such experiments had been implemented and when Fauci’s pardon happens to come into effect.

While there is no evidence that these experiments are related to the coronavirus that would eventually spread out of Wuhan in late 2019 and early 2020, there is still much we do not know about the extent of US involvement in similar experiments at the Wuhan lab around the time covid started to spread.

That fact, paired with the panicked and secretive behavior of Fauci and his colleagues after the first reports of covid started to emerge, has raised suspicion about the possibility of US government involvement in covid’s origin. Biden’s DOJ refused to investigate these matters. But after Senator Rand Paul got Fauci to explicitly deny, under oath, that his department had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, an investigation into the truth of the claim to determine if Fauci had committed perjury remained a possibility.

That was until Biden pardoned him Monday morning.

A federal investigation would have all but forced the media to revisit many of Fauci’s unseemly actions, failures, and possible crimes. That would have been uncomfortable for a political establishment that has embraced and celebrated Fauci for decades.

But the real danger of a high-profile Fauci investigation, from the political class’s perspective, would come if the public started to ask themselves why a bureaucrat with such a long track record of failure was embraced and celebrated by those in power. And why he enjoyed so much professional success before retiring with a net worth of more than $11 million.

Such questions could lead people to consider that maybe the decades of mistakes that transferred hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to public health agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and the crony healthcare system as a whole were not mistakes after all. That, perhaps, the federal public health apparatus is nothing more than a racket and that officials are professionally rewarded, not for keeping us safe, but for protecting and expanding that racket.

Those are the questions that could well have arisen had a federal investigation prompted a retrospective and examination of the career and conduct of Anthony Fauci. And that is why Biden had no choice but to pardon him.

The post Why Joe Biden Had To Pardon Anthony Fauci appeared first on LewRockwell.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs and SNRIs) have long been marketed as the magical solution to depression and anxiety, promising relief in a convenient little pill. But behind the glossy pharmaceutical ads and doctor endorsements lies a far more troubling reality. These drugs don’t just alter your brain chemistry—they can hijack your emotions, disrupt your life, and lead to consequences far worse than the conditions they claim to treat.

In fact, there’s a dirty secret of the SSRI antidepressants—they cause psychotic violence which typically results in suicide and sometimes in horrific homicide (e.g., mass shootings). Remarkably, this side effect was discovered throughout their clinical trials, covered up by the drug companies, and then covered up by the FDA after the agency received a deluge of complaints (39,000 in the first nine years) once the first SSRI, Prozac, hit the market.

Initially, the media would report on the prescriptions (SSRIs) mass shooters took. However, a gag order went out, it became impossible to know what medications shooters were on, and the topic became taboo to discuss. Fortunately, that recently changed (e.g., after an article I wrote compiling that evidence went viral, Tucker Carlson did a 2022 segment on it and prominent conservatives gradually like Matt Walsh and MTG began speaking openly about SSRI mass shootings).

Note: I recently learned through a CDC official that the CDC has been silently tracking what mass shooters are on and found the SSRI link continues but has not disclosed it due to political earthquakes this admission would cause.

The Toxicology Bell Curve

In toxicology, you will typically see severe and extreme reactions occur much less frequently than moderate reactions:

click to enlarge

Because of this, when a very concerning and unmistakable adverse reaction occurs (e.g., the COVID-19 vaccines causing sudden deaths in young healthy athletes), that suggests you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg and far less severe injuries are also occurring much more frequently. For example, one estimate found that of those vaccinated for COVID, 18% were injured, 0.93% were disabled, and 0.05-0.1% died, while another survey found 41% of those vaccinated were injured, with 7% being severely injured.

In the case of the SSRIs, the psychotic violence they can create, sadly, is also just the tip of a very large iceberg, and there are many less severe ways they warp your mind, body, and emotions.

The Hidden Side Effects of SSRIs

Many datasets show the harm SSRIs cause greatly outweighs any benefits. For example, in a survey of 1,829 patients on antidepressants in New Zealand:

•62% reported sexual difficulties
•60% felt emotionally numb
•52% felt not like themselves
•39% cared less about others
•47% had experienced agitation
•39% had experienced suicidal ideation.

In that survey, other less common reported side effects (in order of decreasing frequency) included: insomnia, nightmares, ‘Fuzzy’/‘zombie,’ jaw grinding, sweating, blurred vision, constipation, disturbed/restless sleep, anxiety, heart palpitations, difficulty thinking, fatigue/exhaustion, strange/vivid dreams, stiff muscles/joints, ‘Brain zaps,’ mania, excessive yawning, panic attacks, memory loss, decreased motivation, night sweats, and decreased appetite.

This list matches what I’ve seen in many other datasets (although others like feeling agitated, shaky, or anxious, indigestion, stomach aches, and diarrhea are also commonly reported).

Note: another major issue with SSRIs (which is unlikely to be detected on a symptom-based survey) is that SSRIs frequently cause bipolar disorder.

Psychotic Violence: A Suppressed Truth

When Prozac was first brought to market in the mid-1980s, the pharmaceutical industry had not yet convinced the world that everyone was depressed and needed an antidepressant. So, instead (given that SSRIs work in a similar manner to a stimulant like Cocaine) Prozac was initially marketed as a “mood-lifter.”

Likewise, in 1985 when the FDA’s safety reviewer scrutinized Eli Lily’s Prozac application, they realized Lily had “failed” to report psychotic episodes of people on the drug and that Prozac’s adverse effects resembled that of a stimulant drug. In turn, the warnings on the labels for SSRIs, such as anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia, hypomania, and mania, match the effects commonly observed with stimulant street drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine.
Note: a large survey of found 44% stopped a psych med because of side effects, a quarter of which were due to SSRI agitation.

In light of this, and SSRI violence commonly being blamed on a “pre-existing mental illness” I thus compiled numerous studies (including ones industry tried to bury) showing the drugs themselves cause violence. For example:

•A Cochrane review assessed 150 studies where healthy volunteers were given SSRIs and found approximately one-third of them deliberately omitted discussing SSRI side effects, and about half of the studies were never made publicly available (presumably to hide their concerning data). Ultimately, 14 of the 150 studies were eligible for meta-analysis (since enough information existed in them for the researchers to know what actually happened), and in these 14 studies, SSRIs were found to double the risk of suicide.

•In 2000, David Healy published a study he had carried out with 20 healthy volunteers – all with no history of depression or other mental illness – and to his big surprise two (10%) of them became suicidal when they received Zoloft. One of them was on her way out the door to kill herself in front of a train or a car when a phone call saved her. Both volunteers remained disturbed several months later and seriously questioned the stability of their personalities.

•Eli Lilly showed in 1978 that cats who had been friendly for years began to growl and hiss on Prozac and became distinctly unfriendly. Once Prozac was stopped, the cats returned to their usual friendly behavior in a week or two.

Note: the FDA hypothesized that SSRIs could reduce violence in some but cause an increase in violence in others. Likewise a review of 84 animal studies showed that reduced aggression upon treatment with SSRI was most commonly observed, but sometimes the animals instead became more aggressive.

Sexual Dysfunction

One of the side effects that I feel best illustrates the poor risk-reward ratio of SSRIs is sexual dysfunction—as not being able to have sex is quite likely to make someone depressed (and in some cases suicidal)—hence often completely invalidating the justification for taking an SSRI to “feel happy again.”

For example, a Spanish study of five of 1,022 patients on the most commonly prescribed SSRIs found:

•The drugs caused sexual disturbances in 59% of them and 40% considered that dysfunction unacceptable.
•57% experienced decreased libido.
•57% experienced delayed orgasm or ejaculation.
•46% experienced no orgasm or ejaculation.
•31% experienced erectile dysfunction or decreased vaginal lubrication.

Note: similar results have been obtained in other studies, and I’ve met many men and women who continued to experience sexual dysfunction long after they stopped the SSRI (as this dysfunction is often permanent).

What I find the most amazing about SSRI sexual dysfunction is that while psychiatrists tend to downplay or ignore it, they simultaneously market SSRIs to treat premature ejaculation—which is yet another example of the drug industry trying to have its cake and eat it (especially given that many of the SSRI manufacturers also sell drugs for erectile dysfunction).

Note: one reason this side effect is under recognized is that embarrassed patients often won’t report it unless they are specifically asked about it (e.g., in the Spanish study, while 59% of SSRI users reported sexual dysfunction, only 20% did so without prompting—something unlikely to be done in a drug trial aimed at getting a medication to market).

Emotional Blunting: Losing the Essence of Life

Once the SSRIs hit the market, I immediately noticed that SSRIs sometimes dramatically altered the personality of those who took them. For example, they often destroyed the drive people had to make something of their life—and in some cases, I sadly watched that derailment continue for decades. Likewise, I began to hear stories of people describing how their experience of life was deadened, often in a manner not too different from how the drugs “numb” your sexuality.

Some of the common stories included:

•Not having emotional responses to things you should have responses to. For example, I saw numerous cases of people being in unhealthy jobs or relationships, seeing a doctor for help with their depression, quickly being put on Prozac, and then wasting a decade of their life because Prozac (or another SSRI) removed their drive to leave that toxic situation. Likewise, I heard many people state that Prozac took away the joy they felt in life.

•Losing the depth and richness of life. This comment for instance, does an excellent job of illustrating that:

click to enlarge

Note: in psychiatry, this emotional anesthesia (not finding things as enjoyable as one used to) is known as “emotional blunting.” Depending on the study (e.g., those mentioned above) between 40-60% of those who take SSRIs experience this side effect, and it’s sometimes rationalized as a necessary trade-off for removing the emotional pain associated with depression.

One of the greatest problems with our society is the belief that the media has marketed to us that we should never have to feel negative emotions. In reality, they are a critical component of the human experience and are frequently necessary for our growth and identifying the correct direction for our lives. Unfortunately, to market depression (and SSRIs) it was necessary to pathologize normal facets of life and turn them into permanent illnesses requiring indefinite treatment.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Dark Side of Antidepressants appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Steve Kirsch

The post In California, we’ve vaccinated more elderly people with the COVID vaccine than there are elderly people in the state appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

BOOM! President Trump Ends “Executive Order 11246” from 1965, Liberals MELTDOWN! | WLT Report

The post Trump rescinds 1965 LBJ Executive Order requiring affirmative action in hiring federal contractors appeared first on LewRockwell.

In a historic move, President Trump has signed an Executive Order declassifying all files related to the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK.

But what does this really entail? What secrets have been buried for decades, and what does this mean for American history?

Meanwhile, the ATF was caught rebranding its Chief Diversity Officer in an alleged attempt to circumvent Trump’s orders, and Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame is seen smiling post-pardon.

Plus, we’ll cover CNN’s inauguration gag order, the latest MLB Hall of Fame results, and the 97th Academy Award nominations. Don’t miss this jam-packed episode of America’s Untold Stories!

Join Mark and Eric as they discuss the implications of Trump’s actions, the ATF controversy, and much more.

Watch America’s Untold Stories to uncover the truth behind the headlines!

The post America’s Untold Stories: JFK, RFK, MLK Files to be Declassified — Major Revelations? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Chris Sullivan:

They probably ought to put Jacob Hornberger in charge of the files.

I’ve got a feeling it will be somebody else.

The post rump Releases JFK Files & Bans Central Bank Digital Currency appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Alasdair Macleod

The post Will Comex gold face import tariffs? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

Daily Mail

The post CIA operative reveals mental disorder agency ‘actively seeks to hire’ because it makes for better spies appeared first on LewRockwell.