Month: August 2023

We have seen numerous false conclusions made by covid studies over the course of the past few years, with the majority of them relying on assumptions rather than scientific data.  In the majority of cases, these studies attempt to paint conservatives and unvaccinated individuals as a danger to others or a danger to themselves, with a clear political bias in favor of Democrats and pro-vaccine advocates.  In other words, the studies fit the data to support their preconceived notions – The exact opposite of science.

Leftists are abuzz this week on social media in light of a newly published study funded by Yale University suggesting that Republicans in Florida and Ohio died at a rate 43% higher than Democrats.  This is proof, they claim, that Republicans were wrong about covid mandates and vaccinations and they are paying for it with their lives.  Except, this is not reality.

First, to be clear, every major study on covid deaths puts the median Infection Fatality Rate at 0.23%.  Meaning, on average 99.8% of people are under no serious threat from the virus.  This vital stat is never mention in the Yale study (or in the media, for that matter).

Yale uses excess mortality data at the county level, coupled with voter registration records to form conclusions on covid death rates in correlation with party affiliation.  Published at JAMA Network under the title ‘Excess Death Rates for Republican and Democratic Registered Voters in Florida and Ohio During the COVID-19 Pandemic’, it relies on a data drought rather than a complete set of statistics to form its conclusions.  Let’s go through the failings of the study one by one….

1)  For example, the study admits that it did not have access to the cause of death for the individuals involved.  Individual-level vaccination status was not included in the available data.  They simply assume that excess deaths were in fact covid related deaths.

2)  The study does not include data on vaccination status at the individual level.  Meaning, they had no proof that excess deaths in Republican counties were unvaccinated people.  Again, they merely assume that this is the case.   

3)  The study also admits that research before the COVID-19 pandemic has found evidence of higher death rates in Republican-leaning counties than Democratic-leaning counties.  Meaning, death rates are supposedly higher within Republican counties regardless of covid.

4)  The study did not find a significant difference in death rates between Republican and Democrat counties in Florida.  It only found such differences in counties in Ohio.  Already, this suggests a failed premise given it was only applicable in one state.  

5)  The study excluded voters registered as independent and third party (Why?).  Around 41% of American voters identify as politically independent according to Gallup polls.  Would their inclusion in the study dilute the results contrary to the study’s obvious political bias?

6) The study gathered excess death data from May 2021, around the time they argue most US adults would have access to the covid vaccines. This is a narrow snapshot in time rather than a comprehensive look at Republican and Democrat deaths over the full length of the pandemic and vaccinations.  It should be noted that infections and fatality rates started plunging months before the vaccines were introduced widely to the public.  This is not a factor the study takes into consideration.     

7)  Out of the four age groups included in the study, Republicans only had higher excess deaths in two of them (and only in Ohio).  The study briefly glosses over the fact that Democratic voters had significantly higher excess death rates compared with Republican voters for the age group 65 to 74 years.  That is to say, the baseline theory that Republicans have more covid deaths is debunked by the study’s own data.  

Where does this leave us?  To summarize, the Yale study is incomplete and in some ways self contradicting.  In some age groups, Democrats had more excess deaths than Republicans.  In Florida, there was no significant difference in deaths between Republicans and Democrats.  Yet, Yale jumps to a politically charged conclusion in favor of Democrats anyway.  Why?

A cursory glance at Yale University’s medical departments and their relationship to Pfizer should give people pause before accepting this study at face value.  Pfizer has donated tens of millions of dollars over the past two decades to Yale, including the building of a $35 million medical research center and millions in covid research related grants in the past few years.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has also given millions to Yale specifically for covid research.  Both Gates and Pfizer have a vested monetary and political interest in pushing a pro-vaccine message.  Beyond that, the vast majority of Yale faculty political donations go to Democrat candidates.  Yale is a Democrat run university, so it’s not surprising that they would fund an incomplete study that favors Democrat narratives. 

The lesson here?  Science is being politically weaponized, and every single new claim from such institutions needs to be thoroughly examined rather than taken at face value.        

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

By an 88-11 margin, the Senate votes to spend $886 billion on defense spending. The details show much graft that both parties seem happy with.

A proposal this week to modestly cut the already needlessly high and wasteful Pentagon budget failed miserably says Responsible Statecraft in its take Senate Bails Out the Weapons Industry Once Again.

Press coverage of yesterday’s passage of the Senate version of the annual Pentagon spending bill, known formally as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), has mostly focused on the looming battle over “culture war” provisions included in the House version of the bill, including measures that would constrain the Pentagon’s ability to promote diversity, fight racism in the ranks, and promote reproductive freedom and LGBTQ rights.

Meanwhile, neither chamber did much to question the Pentagon’s soaring budget, which could reach $1 trillion over the next few years if current trends continue. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have cut the Pentagon budget by 10 percent failed by a vote of 88 to 11, suggesting that the vast majority of members are perfectly happy throwing $886 billion at the Pentagon and the Department of Energy (for nuclear weapons work), with few questions asked and few strings attached.

There are endless examples of contractors overcharging the Pentagon and fleecing the taxpayer. Sen. Warren mentioned just a few in this week’s hearing: paying $1,500 for a medical device that could be purchased at Walmart for $192; giving Boeing $70 for a pin that was worth four cents; and paying $1,800 for vaccines that normally cost $125. And as 60 Minutes noted after interviewing former Pentagon procurement official Shay Assad, “[t]he Pentagon, he told us, overpays for almost everything – for radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.”

The Pentagon’s $52,000 Trash Can

Please consider The Pentagon’s $52,000 Trash Can

Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3 Sentry, a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner. When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer a “commercial” item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to keep its price at previous levels, according to a weapons industry source who spoke to RS.

In 2020, the Pentagon paid Boeing over $200,000 for four of the trash cans, translating to roughly $51,606 per unit. In a 2021 contract, the company charged $36,640 each for 11 trash containers, resulting in a total cost of more than $400,000. The apparent overcharge cost taxpayers an extra $600,000 between the two contracts.

In another case, Lockheed Martin hiked the price of an electrical conduit for the P-3 plane as much as 14 fold, costing the Pentagon an additional $133,000 between 2008 and 2015. 

Jamaica Bearings — a company that distributes parts manufactured by other firms — sold the Department of Defense 13 radio filters that had once cost $350 each for nearly $49,000 per unit in 2022. The apparent markup cost taxpayers more than $600,000 in extra fees.

The investigation also revealed that Raytheon Technologies had raised the price of Stinger missiles from $25,000 to more than $400,000 per unit. “Even accounting for inflation and some improvements, that’s a seven-fold increase,” Shay Assad, a former Pentagon acquisitions official, told 60 Minutes.

About half of the Biden administration’s $842 billion Pentagon budget request goes to contractors. In 2022, roughly 30 percent of military spending went to the “big five” weapons makers, which include Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.

Pentagon Price Gouging

Senator Warren harps about price gouging frequently and most of it is nonsense. When it comes to defense spending she is correct for a change.

Please play the following video by Responsible Statecraft. It’s a real eye opener.

More Than the Next 10 Nations Combined

The Peter G. Peterson foundation puts a spotlight on defense spending in US Spends More on Defense Than the Next 10 Nations Combined

Defense spending accounts for a sizable portion of the federal budget and the United States vastly outspends other nations. In determining the appropriate level of such spending in the future, it will be important to evaluate whether it is being used effectively and how it fits in with other national priorities.

Support From All Corners

The U.S. needs to restore our defense-industrial base in order to produce munitions, and transform our military to one that can successfully help Asian countries repel a Chinese assault.

Both of those things will cost a lot of money. https://t.co/RU5NK2gG8u

— Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@Noahpinion) July 29, 2023

Mind-Boggling Reasons

Human extinction is going to require an increase in defense spending.

— Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@Noahpinion) July 29, 2023

Noah Smith: “Human extinction is going to require an increase in defense spending.”

OK, that’s a sarcastic comment. But how the hell are we supposed to pay for this?

Deficit? Did You Say Deficit?

Please note Republicans Push for More Military Spending in Debt Deal as They Decry Deficit

Republican lawmakers who oppose the debt-ceiling bill argue it doesn’t do enough to cut spending or reduce the deficit. Yet when defense is concerned, many argue the government ought to be spending more, not less.

Under the deal passed by the House on Wednesday evening and sent to the Senate, defense spending would get the 3.3% increase the president proposed for the coming year — even as other programs are cut. Defense hawks are pushing for an even bigger boost, and Senator Lindsey Graham has proposed an amendment to the bill that would increase defense spending to keep up with inflation.

“When I hear Republican leaders say this budget deal fully funds defense, I laugh,” the South Carolina Republican told reporters Wednesday.

The administration’s $886.3 billion national security budget request for fiscal 2024 provides the biggest-ever defense spending increase and also one of the largest peacetime budgets when adjusted for inflation. The US would be spending more on defense than the next 10 nations combined.

The Permanent Push for More Military Spending

Please consider The Permanent Push for More Military Spending Includes Submarines, Missiles, and Now Icebreakers.

Allegedly we have gaps on Icebreakers, Submarines, Artificial Intelligence, Rapid Defense Experimentation, Science and Technology, Nuclear Submarines, NATO, China, Missiles, and
Space.

Republicans defend this as a jobs creation mechanism.

I would rather spend money building infrastructure than fighting wars and wasting hundreds of billions of dollars stationing troops all across the globe.

But there is no choice. Democrats want Bidenomics and free money for social spending, and Republicans do not give a damn about wasting massive amounts of money on defense.

The inevitable consequence is the worst of both worlds, and in this case by an 88-11 vote.

By a 100-0 margin, they are all hypocrites on something.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) last week signed a plan into law that allows foreign nationals with work permits, some of whom are illegal aliens, to become police officers in the state.

Federal law currently forbids non-US citizens to serve as police officers and deputies.

The new law states that “… an individual against whom immigration action has been deferred by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services under the federal DACA process is allowed to apply for the position of police officer, deputy sheriff, or special policeman, subject to specified requirements,” according to a summary of the legislation.

The legislation was passed in June by the Illinois House and Senate, where Democrats hold a supermajority.

Meanwhile in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law last year which authorizes recently-arrived border crossers to become cops and police American citizens.

The law only  requires that officers have a federally issued work permit, which are regularly given out by the Biden administration to illegal aliens released into the US after crossing the southern border.

Illinois Rep. Mary Miller (R) raged against the new law, tweeting over the weekend: “At 5 p.m. yesterday, when no one was paying attention, Pritzker signed a bill to allow illegal immigrants to become police officers, giving non-citizens the power to arrest citizens in our state,” adding “No sane state would allow foreign nationals to arrest their citizens, this is madness!”

“People who are breaking the law by their presence here can now arrest American citizens. You know the other blue states are watching and getting ready to implement this idea as soon as they can!” Miller continued. “We either address this border crisis or allow our country to descend further into a Leftist dystopia.“

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The University of Virginia wrongly fired an employee who refused to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a new ruling.

Today in “your tax dollars at work” news, the state of Oregon has found out that $9 billion it has doled out to help its salmon population (yes, the fish) has failed to produce any discernable results.

And to think, that’s perfectly good money we could have sent to Ukraine!

A new report from NBC affiliate KGW8 this week noted that “hundreds” of projects the Columbia River Basin has undertaken – including “habitat restoration to bounty programs on other fish that prey on salmon” – have all failed to produce results. 

The revelation came from a Oregon State University co-authored by Bill Jaeger, an applied economics professor at the university. His research was recently published in the journal PLOS One. 

His study looked at 50 years of salmon return data from the lowest dam on the Columbia River. The study found that before the dams went up, 16 million salmonids returned to the basin each year. By the 2010s, that number had fallen to 1.5 million. 

“For a long time, there have been questions about the effectiveness of a wide range of activities taken to try to restore salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin. We do not find evidence of an increase in wild fish,” Jaeger said. 

The salmon are facing pressure from “hydro, habitat, harvest and hatcheries,” he added, noting there have been “steep declines” in coho, chinook, sockeye and steelhead populations because dams block fish from swimming upriver. 

“Many of those species listed since the 1990s under the Endangered Species Act are ones for which the numbers have declined and continue to be of great concern,” Jaeger added. 

He railed on the egregious spending’s lack of impact: “Cost effectiveness was a term that was occasionally used in a report but was never really undertaken as a serious methodology for determining where to spend money. The operations and the administration of these projects could have done a lot more to do serious cost-effective analysis to determine which of these activities seems to be generating more bang for the buck.” 

He concluded: “I’m not sure how useful it is to talk about whether the money was wasted or not. That’s behind us. I think what one can do, and what one should do, is look at this evidence and ask ‘what should we be doing differently going forward?’” 

Cue up another $9 billion, we guess…

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former President Donald Trump has cast the upcoming Republican party’s presidential debates as a contest for second place in the party primary, with the winner potentially getting to be his 2024 running mate.

Mr. Trump, who has opened up a wide lead in the RealClearPolitics Republican presidential primary polling average, has repeatedly suggested he sees no need to debate the other Republican candidates in the primary field. Mr. Trump still hasn’t said whether he will attend the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Aug. 23, but encouraged the rest of the field to duke it out in a Monday post on his Truth social media account.

“Let them debate so I can see who I MIGHT consider for Vice President!” Mr. Trump wrote on Monday.

The former Republican president holds the support of 54 percent of Republican primary voters in the latest RCP polling average. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holds the second place spot in the polling average, still trailing by more than 35 points on average. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has taken the third place position at 4.9 percent in the RCP average, overtaking Mr. Trump’s 2016 and 2020 running mate, former Vice President Mike Pence.

At a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, July 29, Mr. Trump suggested he stands little to gain even if he performs well at the debate. He said he mostly stands to be “abused” with “terrible questions” from the other candidates and from Fox News, which is set to host the first debate and which Mr. Trump has said has been a “hostile network” toward him.

“If I agree to do the debates I get hit by a hostile network, but I also get hit by all these guys—and they are professional politicians, I mean they’re not stupid people, they just happen to be at zero—and they say, ‘What about this, President Trump? What about this?’ And I look at the guy and say, ‘You’re at zero, you’re asking me these questions,'” Mr. Trump said.

The former president eventually put the debate question to his rallygoers, many of whom shouted “no” when he asked if he should attend.

While Mr. Trump leads in the polls, he’s facing several criminal charges that could upend his campaign, including federal charges for mishandling classified documents. Mr. Trump has characterized the classified documents case as an act of election interference by President Joe Biden and his Department of Justice. Mr. Trump’s trial in the classified documents case is set to begin in May of next year, well into the primary election process.

Debate Requirements

In order to qualify for the first debate, the Republican National Committee is requiring candidates to poll at least 1 percent in three national polls, or poll at least 1 percent in two national polls and at least 1 percent in two of the four early voting states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina. Candidates must also have at least 40,000 unique donors, with at least 200 donors per state in 20 states or territories. Lastly, candidates must sign a pledge to support the eventual Republican presidential nominee if they do not win the primary contest.

As of Sunday, Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Ramaswamy have qualified for the first debate, as has Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), former Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Republican South Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Mr. Pence has met the polling criteria but has yet to reach the donor criteria. Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has also met the polling requirement, but not the donor requirement. Republican Miami Mayor Francis Saurez, businessman Perry Johnson, conservative talk radio host Larry Elder, and former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) are also still working to qualify for the first debate.

DeSantis, Ramaswamy Not Interested in VP Job

Even if Mr. Trump’s comments about using the Republican debate to pick a running mate were taken at face value, Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Ramaswamy have already indicated they’re not interested in the opportunity.

“I don’t think I’m a No. 2 guy. I think I’m a leader, governor of Florida. I’ve accomplished a lot,” Mr. DeSantis said in an interview with the Wisconsin Right Now podcast earlier this month. “I think I could do more staying there than being VP, which doesn’t really have any authority.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly jabbed at Mr. DeSantis so far in the primary cycle, calling him “DeSanctus” and “DeSanctimonous.” The former president has also taken credit for Mr. DeSantis gaining his governorship in Florida and has described Mr. DeSantis as “disloyal.” Mr. DeSantis has, in turn, claimed Mr. Trump has moved to the left on issues like federal spending, abortion, and crime and now only gives lip service to his “America First” agenda.

Mr. Ramaswamy has also indicated he’s not interested in holding out for a job in a future Trump administration

“I will be helpful to this country in whatever way I can, but I would not be No. 2 or member of an administration,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in a July 13 interview on the Clay & Buck Show podcast. “I just don’t think that’s the right way for me to make the maximal positive impact on this country.”

Mr. Trump has indicated he’s amenable to bringing on Mr. Scott in some form in a future administration.

“Tim is very good,” Mr. Trump said in a July 16 interview with Fox News. “I mean, I could see Tim doing something with the administration, but he’s right now campaigning, and I’m sure Tim and everybody else would say I’m only interested in one [position], but Tim is a very talented guy and you have other very talented people.”