Everything is "The Basics"

By Rich Kozlovich

See things in their simplest possible terms. Focus on the root of the problem. All problems are simple and have simple solutions. Like branches of a tree it’s the ancillary problems that keep getting attached to the primary problem that make it seem complicated. Destroy the root and the tree dies. The ancillary problems fall to the ground and take root as separate problems, which can then be easily overcome. Don’t let your ego or personal problems get in the way. 

The mind follows the heart, so the search for truth, and the defense of truth, is an unending task that must be a lifelong effort for those who write about issues, and my goal was has always been to search out what's true, publicize it, and be prepared to stand against the slings and arrows of the liars and corrupt self promoters, but, I never trained to be a writer.

I was a bugman for 40 years, who not only wasn't trained to be a writer, as I'm an autodidact, and beyond high school, where I was a lousy student, I have no formal training about any of the many issues I write about, whether it involves history, science, economics, domestic policy or, foreign affairs. 

When I started writing so many years ago I dealt with issues involving the structural pest control industry, challenging the claims, lies, and tyranny of the environmental movement and their catspaws in government against the use of pesticides, most of which only appeared in the newsletter I created for our local pest control association called Nuf Ced, which was sent out to the members, along with an e-newsletter I called Green Notes to a broader industry base.

I created Paradigms and Demographics in order to be able to expound on these issues more fully, and continued my efforts to defend the pest control industry's use of pesticides and the use of fertilizers by agriculture.   Here are my commentaries on  DDT, pesticides, the Endangered Species Act, and the list goes on, but P&D was still at that time foundationally a "green only issues" blog.  

Once again I expanded deciding P&D should be a pro-humanity blog .  It was increasingly obvious I couldn't discuss green issues without discussing leftism, as "green" is a sect of the secular religion we call leftism, which I've demonstrated in my commentaries.   Being anti-green is being pro-humanity, since to be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.  

In the beginning, and for some time, I struggled dotting every "i" and crossing every "t", spelling, grammar, etc, all the things writers are trained for.  While I lacked those skills sufficiently at the beginning, there were skills I excelled in.   What I didn't lack was the ability to see patterns, and see them more quickly than most.  To understand, logically define, and explain those patterns.   Those are all personal qualities, but all that only works if you  know the historical importance behind those patterns, and that takes work called reading.  Also, along with good intrinsic analytical skills, I spoke well.

A great many professional writers fail in all those skills, and entirely too many are infected in ideologies that prevent them from acquiring those skills.  Talent without character is wasted talent. And I'm convinced the vast majority of them never read a history book.  Writing skills can be learned, that's mechanical.  But the rest require integrity, and the willingness to follow the facts no matter where they may lead. 

Speaking and writing go hand in hand, and yet they're not the same.  Speaking well only requires having good information and the ability to present it logically.  Writing requires skill, so, I've worked hard to get as good at it as I can, and I'm happy to say I've been complimented on my clarity of thought and how well I present information.  An old and good friend recently commented, "you really are an organized thinker".  I found that particularly pleasant is he's a nationally known entomologist who I've known and admired for a large part of my life, who watched my "editorial" struggle.

I've often said over the years I see farther, deeper, and wider than most everyone else.  Not because I'm so much smarter than everyone else, but because I read so much more than everyone else.   When you've taken advantage of reading the many writers who are really brilliant, and the many writers who are really dumb, you get a much broader perspective.  And you have to read the dumb ones as well as the brilliant ones because you can't find out who the idiots are unless you read them, and you can't overcome their idiocy unless you know what idiocy they're promoting.  Furthermore, you need to keep reading the idiots because the foundational sand of their logic is always shifting, not to mention their "facts".  That's a truly unpleasant task in perseverance, and I hate it, but it is what it is.  

Much of my writing is devoted to trying to see below the surface and behind the curtain all the while maintaining a 30,000 foot perspective on issues.  Not only for my readers, but also for myself.  If I can't do that, I have nothing to say worth reading.  That's time consuming, and it's not easy.  

My approach to writing has been molded by some brilliant people.  Thomas Sowell for one, who I consider one of the finest thinkers in the world today.  His ability to take amazingly complex problems and simplify them so that anyone can understand them is absolutely brilliant.  He's in his 90's now, and his passing will diminish the world.  

He once observed in 2005: 

"Some ideas seem so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas seem so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operation of a free market is among the second kinds of ideas."

Defining capitalism versus socialism, and tyranny versus freedom in one paragraph.  How brilliant is that?

I read a lot of history, and I find a great many really good historians aren't really good story tellers.   Victor Davis Hanson, who not only has a great depth of understanding regarding historical events and people, he also has the ability to present information in a way that's not only informative, it's interesting.  Here's an excellent example.

He understands history is the story of mankind, and must be presented as a story, not as an audit of a ledger sheet.  I strive to do that with the understanding that you can't make an impact on people's minds unless you can touch their hearts.  If the heart believes, the mind will find a way to justify that belief.  

Conservatives win the battle of facts, we always have.  Leftists win the battle of emotion, they always have. To win the war you must win the battle of facts and the battle of emotion.  History is everything, as time and truth are on the same side.  That's foundational, not ideological!  If you keep tying past events into the issues impacting people's lives now, the war will be won. 

Read a lot, and take to time to read history books, think about what you read, and work to correlate that information with what we see going on in the world, as the patterns repeat over and over again.  

I've often quoted Ben Franklin who said truth will very patiently wait for us.  That seems perfectly reasonable and rational to me, but not to everyone.  One past president of our state association challenged me with that unendingly irritating canard, "what's truth"?  I had a respectable answer, but it wasn't definitive enough to prevent some kind of seemingly rational response.  That's one of the many things over the years that haunted the back of my mind unconscionably gathering, collating, and correlating bits of information to develop answers, and I have the irrefutable definition of what's truth.

"Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality.  Everything we're told has a historical foundation and context, and everything we're told should bear some resemblance to what we're seeing going on in reality. If what's presented to us fails in either category, it's wrong, and all that's left to do is to develop the intellectual response to explain why it's wrong."

There's no rational come back to that.  Either the history is accurate, or it's not.  Either the information is accurate, or it's not.   It's really that simple. So, what's the complication?  

The unwillingness for so many to accept truth over fantasy!  And that's a bigger problem than is realized, as the enemies of truth are legion.  The enemies of truth engage in an unending conspiracy to prevent the truth from being told by way of logical fallacies, projection, lies of commission, lies of omission, gaslighting, misdirection, twisted use of language, speculation, and unfounded scares.  Much of this corruption is promoted by government, academic, and the media.

Articles are great, but a writer can only put so much in an article, understanding requires reading books.  Articles are great at pointing you in the direction to which books to read, and that's necessary if you really want depth of understanding, and the ability to define and defend truth. 

My 15-Year-Old Daughter Died. I Recently Found A Box Of Hers — And What Was Inside Left Me Shaken.

Story by Jacqueline Dooley 

Editor's Note:  I'm not linking and listing individual articles in P&D any longer, but in this case I'm making an exception.  I find these kinds of articles more than just touching, they're lessons in life, lessons from those who've lived and experienced life at it's best, and it's worst.  As we age we take voyages into the past in our minds, sometimes the voyage is joyous, and sometimes not so much as we tend to go through the woulda, coulda, shoulda's of our life.  Are there regrets? If one honestly looks at their life, the answer must be yes.   If the answer is no, then they're lost souls, and their passing will in no way diminish the world.   I found this touching, and surely needs to be promoted, I hope you agree. RK

 

When my daughter Ana was 11, she was diagnosed with a rare cancer called inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT). Five years later, on March 22, 2017, Ana died from her disease. 

In those first months after Ana died, grief manifested as an ache in my chest and an inability to do much more than sit in my yard and watch the birds at my feeders. I stopped working for about six months, outsourcing my freelance marketing projects to subcontractors while I moved through life in a daze.

As each year passes, my grief shifts and changes. It never fades. It’s just... different. For me, surviving grief requires adaptation. It’s taken me a long time, but I’m finally OK with not hanging on to every single memory, ritual and symbol that reminds me of Ana.

As I approach the seventh anniversary of losing Ana, I don’t need or want to keep retelling the story of her death. I want to remember her life and the unique things that made Ana, well... Ana. There’s one memory, in particular, that is still sharp and clear in my mind — Ana’s imaginary world. She called it Arkomo.

Ana loved tiny things. She collected them like treasure : Minuscule stuffed animals. Shells that fit into the palm of her hand. The world’s smallest plastic frog. .....To Read More...

Hello World: It's Time to Wake Up!

By Robin Itzler

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me.  If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK

DEI: Is it DEI-ing or being replaced?

The executive-search firm Bridge Partners surveyed 400 C-suite and HR leaders at companies with a minimum of $25 million in revenue OR 250 employees to learn if they are sticking with DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies. They found that 66 percent of employers had increased their DEI spending. Still, that was down from the previous year of 77 percent. They also learned that about 25 percent of executives surveyed saw DEI programs as a fad.

Some companies are replacing DEI with words like “belonging” and “inclusion.” (Hey, what about MERIT?)

Events from around the nation:

• Arizona Republican Congressman Eli Crane, who is a Navy SEAL veteran, plans to introduce a resolution honoring Marine veteran Daniel Penny by awarding him a Congressional Gold Medal. This is the highest civilian honor that Congress can bestow.....To share your thoughts with Rep. Crane: Constituents only Phone: 202-225-3361 Write: 307 Cannon House Office Bldg., Washington, DC 20515
• Leftist news sites have Andre Zachary, the father of Jordan Neely, moaning about how he misses his son. The son he abandoned. The son he couldn’t be bothered to raise. The son with 42 arrests included charges of assault, attempted kidnapping, and violent behavior. Cry me a river! Although Daniel Penny was rightly found NOT GUILTY in the death of Jordan Neely, how many people will now not get involved as a Good Samaritan out of fear they would be charged by a crazed leftist district attorney? Most likely just those Americans living in blue states.
• Floyd Mayweather, the former US national featherweight champion Floyd Mayweather recently announced the Mayweather Israel Initiative. His goal is to have his “Floyd Mobile” visit every orphan in Israel during 2025 and deliver a special birthday gift. This announcement came following his appearance at a Standing Together (Chessed V’Rachamim) event in Israel. Mayweather wrote on his Instagram announcement: “Over the next year, every orphan in Israel will be visited by the Floyd Mobile and receive special birthday gifts. To all the widows and orphans: keep your heads held high as we honor the cherished memories of those who have passed.”

Standing Together is a charitable organization that includes Israel Defense Force bases and arranging trips for widows and orphans.

Last week and following this announcement, Mayweather was Christmas shopping in LONDON when a group of Muslim radicals surrounded him and his security team. They demanded to know why he supported Israel. Mayweather responded that he was proud to support the Jews.

Events from around the globe

Great Britain and Wales:  Muslims comprise 6.5 percent of Great Britain’s population. In London, they are 15 percent. In Wales, Muslims comprise 2.2 percent of the population. Yet now Muhammad is the top name for baby boys in Great Britain and Wales. Noah dropped to second place after coming in first in 2021 and 2022. Oliver remains at number three. For girls, Olivia came in first place for the eighth year in a row.

Argentina:  Under “Make Argentina Great Again,” President Javier Milei has: · Reduced inflation from a staggering 54 percent to a reasonable 2 percent. · On average, one to five government regulations are eliminated each DAY. · Reduced government ministries from 18 to eight.

• Created Argentina’s first fiscal surplus in 123 years.
• Uncovered how its government’s “poverty managers” were stealing approximately half the money meant for the poor. Thus, this meant that money designated for poor Argentinians automatically doubled—without increasing taxes.

Germany: About one in 20 Syrians live in Germany. The country’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees announced that it will freeze asylum processing for Syrians. Many Syrians came to Germany seeking refuge from Assad. Now the Federal Republic might investigate having them return since the dictator (and their reason for asylum) is now gone.

Austria: Is also freezing all new asylum applications and re-examining old ones according to Interior Minister Gerhard Karner. He told Visegrád 24:  “Family reunifications are suspended. I'm starting a deportation program to Syria."

Academic Research Estimating the Laffer Curve

 December 17, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Some people say the Laffer Curve is the economic version of Goldilocks.

But instead of being a story about whether the porridge is too hot, too cold, or just right, it’s a story about whether tax rates are too high, too low, or just right.

But I’ve never liked that analogy because it implies the revenue-maximizing tax rate is “just right.”

At the risk of understatement, we don’t want to maximize revenue for politicians.

The goal should be to set tax rates at the growth-maximizing level (raising the small amount of revenue needed to finance the legitimate and proper functions of government).

That being said, it is very instructive to examine research on the topic because even our leftist friends hopefully don’t want tax rates set so high that the government loses revenue.

As such, if the goal is revenue maximization, there’s a fascinating new study that has been published by the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

The authors, Marie-Noëlle Lefebvre, Etienne Lehmann, and Michaël Sicsic, wrote a summary of their study for VoxEU. Here’s the issue they addressed.

Capital income taxation has re-emerged as a pressing issue, particularly with rising income inequality. …However, capital income taxation also induces more behavioural responses than labour income taxation, thereby diminishing its efficiency. …In a recent paper…, we contribute to a deeper understanding of capital income taxation, both theoretically and empirically, by estimating the ‘Laffer rate’ on capital income tax for France. The Laffer rate is the tax rate above which increasing the rate further would compress tax bases enough to reduce government revenue. We express the Laffer tax rate on capital income using direct elasticity (capital income response) and cross-elasticity (labour income response) to the net-of-tax rate on capital income. …The Laffer rate on capital income depends not only on the direct elasticity of capital income to its net-of-tax rate but also on the cross-elasticity of labour income to the net-of-tax rate on capital income.

And here are their key findings.

…the 2013 reform provides valuable insights… We therefore go further…by estimating elasticities of capital and labour income with respect to marginal net-of-tax rates (MNTRs) of both labour income and capital incomes. This allows us to estimate sufficient statistics to implement the Laffer formula. …Ignoring cross-response, this estimate leads to a Laffer rate on capital income of approximately 57%. …Moreover, we obtain statistically significant and slightly positive cross elasticities of labour income with respect to marginal net-of-tax rates on capital incomes. …These results suggest that the cross-elasticity is more likely explained by the impact of capital taxation on the incentive to work and save: an increase in the marginal tax rate on capital reduces the benefit of earning additional income from activity in order to save. Accounting for this cross-elasticity reduces the estimated Laffer rate significantly, to about 43%.

For non-wonky readers, what the authors basically found is that the revenue-maximizing tax rate on capital income is lower when you factor in the combined impact of changes in capital income and labor income.

How much lower? It depends on the degree to which taxpayers change their behavior, which is captured in Figure 2 from the VoxEU summary.

This is very interesting research.

I’ll add two points.

First, I’d be interested in how they define capital income. That’s not clear from the VoxEU summary and the actual study is behind an expensive paywall.

Second, I want to emphasize that it is pointlessly destructive to try to set tax rates at or near the revenue-maximizing level. This is because enormous amounts of private sector income are lost in exchange for very small amounts of additional tax revenue.

Regarding that second point, here are some excerpts from a study I summarized about a dozen years ago.

…labor taxes could be approximately doubled before getting to the downward-sloping portion of the curve. But notice that this means that tax revenues only increase by about 10 percent. …this study implies that the government would reduce private-sector taxable income by about $20 for every $1 of new tax revenue. …

What about capital taxation? According to the second chart, the government could increase the tax rate from about 40 percent to 70 percent before getting to the revenue-maximizing point. But that 75 percent increase in the tax rate wouldn’t generate much tax revenue, not even a 10 percent increase. So the question then becomes whether it’s good public policy to destroy a large amount of private output in exchange for a small increase in tax revenue.

Here’s an even better explanation of why higher tax rates are a net loser for society, this one involving higher tax rates on labor income.

I’ll close with the observation that U.S. tax rates on capital income already are very high when you measure the tax bias against income that is saved and invested.

P.S. I have a three-part series (here, here, and here) on the prudent case for the Laffer Curve.

Ireland is Committing Genocide Against Itself

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog 

 

The obsession of the Irish government with falsely accusing Israel of genocide is only equaled by its determination to commit an actual genocide against the Irish people.

In its latest move, the Irish government has called for watering down the definition of genocide to be able to apply it to the Jewish State, but there is no need to water down the formal definition, the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, to charge Ireland’s government with ‘self-genocide’ or ‘autogenocide’ against its own people.

In the last 20 years, Ireland, a small nation of millions, has been overwhelmed by a mass migration of 1.6 million people. In 2023, there were 54,678 births in the Republic of Ireland and 141,600 immigrants. Birth rates dropped 5% in 2023 (hovering at 1.5 births per woman well below replacement rate) but the number of immigrants grew by 31%. And will grow further.


The most popular name for boys was Jack, among Irish parents, while the most popular name among non-European immigrant parents was ‘Mohammed’.

Churches are closing across Ireland and mosques are opening in their place. There were only 400 Muslims in all of Ireland in 1991. That shot up to 19,000 in 2002 and 83,000 in 2023. 3% of Ireland’s children are Muslim now and the numbers are increasing every year.

Some Muslims are impatient with those numbers and have been trying to hurry them along.

In November, an Algerian Arab began stabbing children outside a Catholic school in Dublin. A five and six-year-old girl suffered severe injuries. When a crowd gathered to protest the latest act of Muslim violence, a ruthless police and media crackdown quickly ensued.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the son of an Indian father, scolded that the Irish protesters had “brought shame on Dublin, brought shame on Ireland and brought shame on their families and themselves.” No shame was brought on those who had allowed Riad Bouchaker and a legion of foreign invaders like him to occupy Ireland, slaughter and displace the native population.

Media accounts emphasized that the Algerian Muslim stabber, Bouchaker, who needed an Arabic translator in court, was really an “Irish citizen” and condemned bigotry against him.

No mention was made in the media that Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire, the Catholic school attended by the children, was four blocks away from the ‘Dublin Mosque’ and the headquarters of the ‘Islamic Foundation of Ireland’ which had formerly been the Donore Presbyterian Church.

And no questions were asked about what this proximity to the largest mosque in the city might have had to the attack. Such questions, according to the government, are “disinformation”.

Bouchaker was only doing to Ireland’s children what the Dublin Mosque had done to a church.

One cannot fault the current Irish government for its Jihad over Israel. It’s really treating the Jews no worse than it treats the Irish. And if it expects Israel to lie down and die rather than stand up to Islamic terrorists that is the exact expectation that it (and not just it) has for Ireland.

And perhaps the Irish government is jealous that the Israelis refuse to follow in its footsteps.

The modern rebirths of Israel and Ireland were linked by common rebellions against British rule. Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel is the grandson of the Chief Rabbi of Ireland. His father, Chaim Herzog, Israel’s sixth president, was born in Belfast. His grandfather, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was both an enthusiastic Irish nationalist and Zionist. Rabbi Herzog became known as the ‘Sinn Fein Rabbi’ despite Sinn Fein being founded by Arthur Griffith who hated the fairly small Jewish community in Ireland so much that he had cheered on the Limerick pogrom.

The ideological heirs of those who prided themselves on driving the Jews out of Limerick have welcomed in Limerick’s multiple mosques. Muslims are now the second largest religion in Limerick. And history shows it will only be a matter of time until the second will become the first.

Israel and Ireland as modern states arose from 19th century nationalist movements seeking to restore the glorious past of diaspora peoples. Animated by writers, artists, linguists and poets determined to revive what many saw as dead languages and the dead past, Zionism and Celtic nationalism seemed to have much in common. But the outcomes have been very different.

Half the Jewish diaspora lives in Israel while the vast majority of the Irish diaspora still lives abroad. Israel is a technological pioneer while Ireland serves as a Big Tech tax shelter. Israel has fought and won wars against Muslim invaders while Ireland shamefully kneels to them.

The revival of Israel is an object of pride to Jews around the world, but Ireland remains little more than a tourist stop with little about its state to take pride in as a modern day nation.

And most damningly, Israel’s birth rate is double that of the Irish birth rate.

Israel could very easily have ended up like Ireland: a kleptocracy run by crooked club socialists doling out just enough social welfare to keep the population voting for them, a cafe cultural establishment whose literary and linguistic experiments had soured into a club of worthless worthies, and plenty of history for scholars to look back on but no future to look forward to.

And if the Israelis hadn’t spent the last century fighting for their lives, maybe it would have.

If Israel had been living next door to some dying socialist republics with nothing to aspire to beyond wrangling about their share of EU subsidies, maybe it would have also become a failed experiment with Labor and Likud as its Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, Amos Oz as its Joyce, and people who don’t bother with the national language, but just want to move to Europe.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) the Jews were cursed or blessed with their enemies.

Mediocre decline was never an option for Israel. More than the Jews, it is their enemies who will not allow Zionism to die out. And so Israel is in yet another war for the Irish government to deplore. The Irish were allowed to stop fighting while the Jews can never have any respite.

And so paradoxically they can also never die out.

The Jews and the Irish are both a little mad, self-destructive and prone to endless infighting. We ought to understand each other better, but true to form we do not when we most need to.

Israel is what the Irish nationalists once dreamed of before they became small petty men.

The poet warriors who go off to die for their homeland are not historical figures in Israel, they are friends and neighbors. Everyday life is a struggle for survival against enemies out to kill you. Each child born is a triumph. Keeping a shop going while serving in the war is heroic. And so everyone takes a break from the infighting and pulls together because life means something.

Ireland once had that. It no longer does. And by the time it does again, it may be too late.

Where the Irish government allows Arab Muslim invaders to murder their children, the Israelis refuse. The Irish government calls this genocide: the Israelis call it survival. The Irish nationalists have sold out their homeland and their people, and resent those who won’t.

A generation hence the Israelis will have sons in their homeland while the sons of Ireland will be everywhere but in Dublin, mourning a homeland lost once again to foreign invaders and traitors.

Ireland is facing its own genocide. And few dare to talk about it. In Ireland, hating the Jews is safe, but opposing Muslims is a crime. Israel is not Ireland’s problem: instead it ought to be Ireland’s model. And yet accuse Israel of genocide and you’re a national treasure, but accuse the Irish government of genocide and you’ll face smear campaigns and criminal charges.

There’s a genocide problem in Ireland. The blood of Irish children stains a nation. Israel’s worst enemies are outside it, but Ireland’s worst enemies are inside its own government.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading. 

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Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left tells the untold story of the Left's 200-Year War against America And readers love it.

“Plaintiff somehow equates use of an improper social security number as a disqualifying event…”

From the Dismissal of my lawsuit against Obama

Susan Daniels Dec 20, 2024 @ Susan's Newsletter

I was the Plaintiff, but I was not wrong. In 2012, I filed a lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, with documents proving that Barack Obama was using a stolen Social Security Number as president, a violation of federal law. My lawsuit contained an eighteen-page Complaint and eighty-three pages of documents supporting my allegations.

Obama, who originally had a Hawaiian number, began using a stolen Connecticut number in his mid-20s, likely to hide his past. A reliable source said that Hawaiian police were familiar with Obama and his sleazy encounters with drugs and old white tourists and they would have his original number. (For those who do not know, a person has only one number assigned to them in their lifetime, and no number is ever issued twice.)

The number he began using was issued to someone, likely a woman, who lived in Connecticut and was born in 1890. It was issued on March 28, 1977, when Obama was a fifteen-year-old student in Hawaii. It was possible that an eighty-seven-year old woman could have applied for a Social Security Number because it was not unusual for elderly women who never worked outside the home to use their husbands’ numbers. I have a letter from a woman born in 1896 asking for a number after her husband died. I suspect the woman, whose number Obama uses, needed government assistance and had to apply for a number for the same reason.

Documents claimed that he was born on 08/04/1961 and 1890 and his SSN was issued in Connecticut.

Despite the numerous documents and undeniable proof that I was right, I lost the lawsuit. A hearing was held but no one appeared from the Secretary of State’s office. I presented my case to Republican judge David Fuhry who had the the manners of a junkyard dog. He played the role of a defense attorney and cut the hearing short when an affidavit I was trying to enter was rejected by him because he said it wasn’t evidence.

His court reporter omitted information from the transcript and when I asked to see the video tape of the hearing or listen to the audio tape she said they didn’t do that. I challenged her about why they taped everything in the county municipal court over traffic tickets but did not do the same thing in Common Pleas Court. She said that is how they do it. Apparently, everyone thought I would go away after I lost.

But instead I have spent the last fifteen years studying Obama. Everything about Obama is a fraud and karma is finally catching up with him. No one cares now where he is or what he is doing. He threw his pal George Clooney under the bus by getting him to write an opinion piece for the NYT that denigrated Joe Biden as president.

When that backfired, Obama pointed the middle finger at Clooney. The Democrats want to blame Clooney for Harris’s loss. Obama doesn’t have the cojones to do his own dirty work, but Biden outsmarted Obama by endorsing the worthless and pathetically dumb Kamala Harris. Obama was so insulting to black men, trying to browbeat them into voting for a brainless loser, that many voted for Donald Trump. The shine has worn off the once-popular Barack and it is never coming back. Who would want Obama ever to rally for them again?

Will people forgive the deceit of the Obamas? Victor Davis Hanson said recently: “Barack Obama and fellow Democratic insiders abruptly engineered the withdrawal of his rival 2020 presidential candidates… The Obamas ignored or withheld from the public their own firsthand knowledge that Biden was suffering from signs of dementia.”

That will never be forgiven or forgotten.

“People are pissed at Obama,” says Lindy Li, a major Democratic fundraiser. “There are people who are now multi-millionaires as a result of the Harris campaign, and we know exactly who they are. Half a billion dollars went to just four well-connected Democratic firms. This whole thing is deeply incestuous … a boondoggle …. ”

Don't let their pre-election lies fool you. Once they moved Biden out Pelosi and Obama were going to slide Michelle Obama in as the candidate. Michelle couldn’t go after another black woman. It was a stroke of brilliance for Biden who hated the Obamas ever since they supported Hillary Clinton as the candidate in 2016 instead of him.

Michelle Obama proved her vitriol when, instead of supporting Harris, Michelle took her three days to congratulate Harris and refused to campaign for her. Laughably, Harris thought she was presidential material.

The Obamas, I’m sure, had plans for more parties of Wagyu beef and $150 bottles of wine at taxpayers' expense for their lowlife and degenerate friends. Don’t count on the Obamas throwing any parties at their own expense, unless it is a birthday party where they will be on the receiving end.

The Obamas are in Hawaii now for Christmas but don’t think for a minute they own the three-acre estate where “Magnum P.I.” was filmed. The property doesn’t belong to them and never did. The big lie was that they bought it in 2019. It has been owned by Obama’s pal, Martin Nesbitt, whose good fortune came along years ago with the name and money of billionaire Penny Prtitzker, sister of the Illinois governor.

Martin Nesbitt’s company, Waimanalo Paradise LLC, closed the sale for $8.7 million in 2015 and still owns it.

Nesbitt made enemies immediately over an old seawall. It is counter to the natural beauty of the coastline. From ProPublica (August 15, 2020): ”In Hawaii, beaches are a public trust, and the state is constitutionally obligated to preserve and protect them. But across the islands, officials have routinely favored landowners over shorelines, granting exemptions from environmental laws as the state loses its beaches.

“Over the past two decades, officials have awarded seawall easements to more than 120 property owners, who have sometimes paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to bypass rules designed to protect the public shoreline….

“Researchers estimate that roughly a quarter of the beaches on Oahu, Maui and Kauai have already been lost or substantially narrowed because of seawalls over the past century.

Not only did Nesbitt get permission to rebuild the wall, but was able to extend it by 250’. It is nine to eleven feet tall in some places. He paid $61,400 for the easement to build the $3.2 million seawall that now blocks the ocean view.

Other than the lack of interest the Obamas are not getting from the Hawaiian newspapers, no one cares they are there. Every move used to be photographed and stories were endlessly written about the restaurants they visited.

Here is the real Obama, the nasty man-child who can’t have his own way.

Most people have moved on because he is no longer in office and he doesn’t have anyone left to intimidate. But I think it’s time he paid. I proved that he fraudulently took the oath of office and that he lived the glory days and the car cavalcades as the worst president we ever had. He left the White House a millionaire and that’s our money. He got it under false pretenses and we want it back. It’s time he was charged with fraud and every asset he has be seized and those of everyone who helped him get into office illegally and stay their for eight years.

They charged Donald Trump with an assault by ditzy broad who said thirty years ago it happened in a department store filled with shoppers and staff but she could not remember the year, the date or what she was wearing. And Trump was found guilty of the non-crime. I can prove Obama lied about who he was and it’s time for us to demand that all the millions in dollars he acquired be confiscated by the government to help recover the billions of dollars he cost us.

Susan Daniels is a private investigator and the author of The Rubbish Hauler’s Wife versus Barack Obama: A True Story which is available on Amazon.com.

Politics like we have never seen.  Recommend Susan’s Newsletter to your friends.

 

Absolute vs Relative Risk

An exceptionally important medical statistic 

John Droz jr. Dec 20, 2024 @ Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues

In my last commentary, one of several key things I am recommending that RFKjr fix in the FDA, is how they portray effectiveness (of drugs, vaccines, etc.) to the public. Currently, the effectiveness that is almost exclusively shown is relative risk. I am advocating that absolute risk be shown. I cited two important examples where others have (so far unsuccessfully) made a case for the same thing:

Example 1: This position is stated in an important FDA advisory publication. A key conclusion (see page 60) is that the public is: “unduly influenced when risk information is presented using a relative risk approach; this can result in suboptimal decisions. Thus, an absolute risk format should be used.”

Example 2: The CONSORT 2010 Statement —Updated Guidelines for Reporting Parallel Group Randomized Trials states: “… presentation of both absolute and relative effect sizes is recommended…”

Since statistics is over most people’s heads, several readers asked me to explain the difference. OK, here goes…

I’ll use COVID-19 vaccines as a telling example. I put together three tables (below) based on two studies: here and here. (If you’d like further elaboration, here is an MD’s good discussion about those two studies.)

The first table shows the relative effectiveness of several popular COVID-19 vaccines:

Now most people would say that these are good numbers — and the ones above 90% are VERY good. That’s exactly what the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies want us to think… Now let’s fill out the next column: absolute risk…

Whoa! The absolute numbers are radically different — and MUCH less! What does this mean in the real world? A third variable might be the easiest to understand: how many people need to be treated (injected) to prevent ONE case of COVID-19?

This is called NNT (Number Needed to Treat = 1/ARR). Here is a study that delves into the merit of using NNT. The table below shows what NNT is for the same COVID-19 injections:

NOTE: The exact numbers here may be slightly different due to several variables, and are not important. What is significant is to see the extraordinary differences between Relative and Absolute Risk Reductions.

NNT Observation —

Let’s look at a real-world example… If citizens realized that roughly one hundred people had to be injected before ONE case of COVID-19 was prevented, would very many people have said:

“I’m willing to risk the known potentially serious side-effects of these injections, plus accept the fact that zero long-term studies have been completed, in the hopes that I’ll hit the jackpot and be the lucky one in 100± people who is prevented from getting COVID-19”?

The answer to that is why the FDA (and pharmaceutical companies) emphasize the Relative effectiveness number.

An Even Better Analysis —

Some very smart people said let’s take the NNT data one step further — and add the treatment cost to it! In other words, if two treatments have the same NNT, but one costs 10 times the other, shouldn’t we factor that in? Look at this fabulous COVID-19 table:

Compare two COVID-19 early oral treatment competitors: Ivermectin and Paxlovid. To get the same end result (save one life from COVID-19) we can spend $26 for Ivermectin or $206,705 for Paxlovid… Note also that cost and impacts of side-effects are not taken into account here. The side-effects for taking Ivermectin are very low, while the potential side-effects for Paxlovid are relatively high. In other words, the cost difference between Ivermectin and Paxlovid is likely MUCH more that what is shown in this table!

Takeaway —

My recommendation to RFKjr is that (as a minimum) BOTH Relative and Absolute numbers should be prominently displayed, as well as NNT. This is not some academic matter, as it has GREAT bearing on assuring that Americans are able to make an informed consent when they agree to an injection or to take a drug. Without the facts, we are severely handicapped in being a critical thinker.

PS — Here is an excellent two minute video that explains the difference between Absolute and Relative Risk reduction…

PPS — Just like here, there are more detailed explanations for each of the other 15± recommendations I made for RFKjr re the FDA and its EUA and Approval processes. Also just like here, the other recommendations make good medical and scientific sense.

---

Here is other information from this scientist that you might find interesting:

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Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

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Media Balance Newsletter (December 23, 2024)

Free, Twice-a-Month, What you won't find in one place, anywhere else. 

By John Droz, Jr., Physicist and Citizen’s Rights Advocate

Enjoy the latest edition of our free, critically thinking Media Balance Newsletter... We cover COVID to Climate, Elections to Education, Renewables to Religion — showing you what the mainstream media has revised or filtered out.  If you happened to miss it, here is the prior Newsletter. 

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Please let me know the email of anyone you feel would appreciate getting this unique and powerful information. 

 PS — My new substack site is now quite popular! Its focus is on the current lack of Critical Thinking relating to numerous societal matters (education, climate, energy, etc.). 

If you haven't already, signup for a FREE subscription. Enjoy and pass it on!

 Copyright © 2024; Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (see WiseEnergy.org; Election-Integrity.info & C19Science.info)

 

Cautious Optimism On The Demise Of The Green Energy Fantasy

December 21, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

It has been obvious now for many years to the numerate that the fantasy future powered by wind and sun is not going to happen. Sooner or later, reality will inevitably intrude. And yet, the fantasy has gone on for far longer than I ever would have thought possible. Hundreds of billions of dollars of government largesse have been a big part of the reason, going not just to green energy developers but also to academic charlatans and environmental NGOs to fan the flames of climate alarm.

It was three years ago, in December 2021, that I asked the question, “Which Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Green Energy Wall?” The “green energy wall” would occur when addition of wind and solar generators to the grid could no longer continue, either due to regular blackouts or soaring costs or both. Candidates for first to hit the wall considered in that post included California, New York, Germany and the UK. I wrote then:

All these places, despite their wealth and seeming sophistication, are embarking on their ambitious plans without ever having conducted any kind of detailed engineering study of how their new proposed energy systems will work or how much they will cost. . . . As these jurisdictions ramp up their wind and solar generation, and gradually eliminate the coal and natural gas, sooner or later one or another of them is highly likely to hit a “wall” — that is, a situation where the electricity system stops functioning, or the price goes through the roof, or both, forcing a drastic alteration or even abandonment of the whole scheme.

Three years on, it looks like Germany is winning the race to the wall. After a couple of decades of “Energiewende,” Germany has closed all of its nuclear plants and much of its fossil fuel capacity, with a huge build-out of wind and solar generation. How’s that going? The German site NoTricksZone posts today an English translation of a piece yesterday by Fritz Vahrenholt at the site Klimanachrichten (Climate News). The translated headline is “Two brief periods of wind doldrums and Germany’s power supply reaches its limits.” Excerpt:

From November 2 to November 8 and from December 10 to December 13, Germany’s electricity supply from renewable energies collapsed as a typical winter weather situation with a lull in the wind and minimal solar irradiation led to supply shortages, high electricity imports and skyrocketing electricity prices. At times, over 20,000 MW, more than a quarter of Germany’s electricity requirements, had to be imported. Electricity prices rose tenfold (93.6 €ct/kWh).

They avoided blackouts this time (barely) by importing more than a quarter of their electricity during the times of wind/sun drought. But the sudden demands for huge imports caused the spot price of electricity in the markets to soar, affecting not only Germany but also the neighbors who supplied the power. Vahrenholt provides this map indicating the prices reached during the December wind/sun drought:

€ 936.28/MWh is almost $1 per kWh. And that’s a wholesale price; retail would be at least double. By contrast, average U.S. electricity prices are well under $0.20/kWh.

Vahrenholt reasonably attributes the huge price spikes to elimination of reliable nuclear and fossil fuel plants, leaving Germany subject to the vagaries of the wind and sun:

The reason [for the price spikes]: The socialist/green led coalition government and the prior Merkel governments had decommissioned 19 nuclear power plants (30% of Germany’s electricity demand) and 15 coal-fired power plants were taken off the grid on April 1, 2023 alone.

From Wolfgang Große Entrup, Managing Director of the German Chemical Industry Association:

“It’s desperate. Our companies and our country cannot afford fair-weather production. We urgently need power plants that can step in safely.”

It is also clear from Vahrenholtz’s map how Germany’s sudden surge of demand affected the countries that supplied the imports on short notice — particularly Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Austria. Here is the reaction in Norway:

Norway’s energy minister in the center-left government, Terja Aasland, wants to cut the power cable to Denmark and renegotiate the electricity contracts with Germany. He is thus responding to the demands of the right-wing Progress Party, which has been calling for this for a long time and will probably win the next elections. According to the Progress Party, the price infection from the south must be stopped.

And the same from Sweden:

Swedish Energy Minister Ebba Busch was even clearer: “It is difficult for an industrial economy to rely on the benevolence of the weather gods for its prosperity.” And directly to Habeck’s green policy: “No political will is strong enough to override the laws of physics – not even Mr. Habeck’s.”

When the neighbors decline to continue to supply Germany with imports during its wind/sun droughts, then it will be blackouts instead of price spikes. We continue to move slowly toward that inevitability.

In other news from Germany, its auto industry is struggling (also from soaring energy prices, not to mention EV mandates), and its government has just fallen. Economic growth has ground to a halt. This is what the green energy wall looks like. Elections will be held some time in the new year.

I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that the world will wake up from the green energy bad dream before the damage turns to disaster. Our incoming U.S. administration seems to have caught on. Germany, sorry you had to be the guinea pig for this failed experiment.