Biden: Slip Slidin' Away

 President Biden "shows signs of slipping," the Wall Street Journal reported this week. Journalists Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes—no conservatives—spoke to 45 people who have met with the president and noticed his mental and physical decline. They recount, in detail, several meetings over the past year where Biden has been forgetful, confused, and out of it. The president, Linskey and Hughes report, "appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones."

No kidding.

You don't need the Journal to tell you that Biden is diminished. You need only to open your eyes. Go over Special Counsel Robert Hur's report into Biden's unauthorized removal of classified documents. Review Biden's Oval Office meltdown after Hur released his findings. Watch Biden try to sit at a D-Day commemoration in France on Thursday.

Or read, if you dare, the transcript of Time magazine correspondent Massimo Calabresi and editor in chief Sam Jacobs's recent interview of Biden. It appeared the same day as Linskey and Hughes's story.

This is the interview where Biden says—twice—that Russia invaded Russia. Where, immediately after saying, "I'm not going to comment," Biden says that "there is every reason" to believe Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the war against Hamas for political gain. Then Biden says that the 19 percent increase in prices since he became president is due to "shrinkflation" and that he could "take" the Time reporter who asks about his advanced age.

The weirdest moment comes when the reporters ask Biden to describe his second-term agenda. That's what we in the biz call a "softball question." And here—excuse the long excerpt, but it is necessary to grasp the full absurdity and danger of having this man continue to serve as president—is Joe Biden's response:

 To finish what I started in the first term. To continue to make sure that the European continent—I'll tell you, I got a call from Kissinger about 10 days before he died. And he used the following comment. He said that not since Napoleon has Europe not looked over their shoulder at dread with what Europe—what Russia may do, until now. Until now, you can't let that change.

The point is that we have an opportunity to have the decisions we make in the last couple of years, in the next four years, are going to determine the future of Europe for a long time to come. And so that's why we can not let NATO fail, we have to build that both politically and economically. And militarily, which we're investing significantly. In addition to that, I am desperately focused on making sure that we deal with the… what they are calling the south now. There are going to be a billion people in Africa in the next several years. We have to, we have to be a catalyst for change for the benefit, for the, for the better, we have to help them build back better, we have to help them.

We, on the climate side, have come along and we've done everything that is reasonably—and three other countries are the reason we're in the problem we're in. But what happens if all of a sudden, on the Amazon, they're starting to clear, vast swaths of land, cut down forests, etc. Back when Dick Lugar was alive, he and I started something back in the '90s, where we said—late '80s, excuse me—where we said to, in the Amazon, they said, look, if you, we’ll make a deal with you Brazil. You don't cut your forest, we'll pay you not to do it. We’ll pay you not to do it. We have to prevent— And that's why we're working so hard to make sure Angola can be in a position that they have more solar capacity than almost any place in the world, to help that whole continent.

That's why we want to build a railroad all the way—with others in Europe—all the way across the continent. So that you have, you have countries that have overproduction of agriculture and some that don't have it, but no way to get a transfer. There's so much opportunity in Africa. And we have to work it.

This is what we can look forward to in a second term? Working to make sure that Angola has robust solar capacity?

No mention in Biden's answer of inflation, home prices, nor interest rates. Neither the border nor achieving positive outcomes in Ukraine and Gaza makes his second-term list. There's not so much as a glance in the direction of the electric vehicle boondoggle. Instead, Biden mangles a quote from Kissinger and gets lost in a story of how he and Dick Lugar paid the Brazilians not to chop down trees.

In any other era, the White House, congressional Democrats, and the national Democratic Party would be in full-blown panic at the president's physical, mental, and political condition. But because we live in the era of Trump, Biden's allies have continued to deflect and downplay the deleterious effects of his age, his enduring unpopularity, and his haphazard, too-little, too-late, incompetent, and iatrogenic policymaking.

Biden is not just slipping personally. He's slipping politically. The polls have barely moved since May 31, when a New York jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records. Biden continues to run behind Trump, as he has since the fall of 2023. The reason the election is close is not that the public likes Biden. It's that the public is reluctant to send Trump back to the White House.

Now, with his personal condition becoming more noticeable and the Trump trial failing to move the polls massively in his direction, Biden has one more opportunity to reset the race. The debate scheduled for June 27 has become more important than I had thought. A triumphant performance might revive Biden's candidacy. But a flop could end his presidency.

https://freebeacon.com/columns/biden-slip-slidin-away/

Why should I take these medications?

 My one disappointment with Sensible Medicine, as we near the end of our second year, is that we don’t have more people writing from a patient perspective. I wrote one piece and Kristin Inciardi published a great one, but that is about it. Thus, I was thrilled to receive this one from John Horwitz. I am not sure what I should call it, a prose poem maybe? It doesn’t really matter; I do know it is great.

Adam Cifu

---

Many doctors tell me why I should take these medications. Some have told me that I will die if I do not take them.

They never want to know why I shouldn’t.

I had a heart attack and I now have moderate renal insufficiency. For my heart, they prescribe statins to lower cholesterol, beta blockers to slow my heart, anticoagulants to thin my blood, nitrates to dilate my coronary arteries, enalapril for hypertension, and prophylactic aspirin. Also on the list is duloxetine for my mood, esomeprazole for upper GI bleeding, and sildenafil for erectile dysfunction. For my kidneys there is empagliflozin, a selective mineralocorticoid antagonist, and an SGLT-2 inhibitor.

My primary, nephrologist, and cardiologist don’t communicate and soon I have side effects from every drug they have prescribed. Increased cholesterol, joint pain, loss of taste, headaches, too much potassium, irregular heartbeat, type 2 diabetes, and Fournier's gangrene.

The cardiologist orders a nuclear treadmill test, angiography, a dietary consult, and more medications to correct abnormal test results. Then there are more stents or open heart surgery. The nephrologist wants a kidney biopsy, a dietary consult, and orders more tests and medications. He is confused by unimproved test results, starts dialysis, and waitlists me for a transplant. The primary wants a social work consult and orders a norepinephrine dopamine reuptake inhibitor for mood enhancement before I have even been seen. The social worker thinks group cognitive-behavioral therapy is relevant because of my age.

After being shuffled from doctor to specialist to doctor to specialist, poked, prodded, medicated, analyzed, believed, doubted, examined, and cabbaged over a two year period — while spending a small fortune I could not afford and what remains of an ever dwindling life expectancy – I think I could have stayed with the healthy eating routine and daily exercise that used to work well for me.

Meanwhile I realized that the only reason for so many tests, surgeries, and medications was that there is no cure, no remediation, and no reversal of heart and kidney disease. All the medications did was muddy the test results and present conflicting evidence of relapsing or remitting symptoms. In the final analysis the test results were only a compilation of best guesses. Out of money, bedridden, disheartened by lack of progress, and greatly diminished, thoughts of suicide are welcomed.

So, what do I think?

I’m holding out for something better. Why don’t I skip the hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, surgical procedures, tests, years of dashed hopes, over and under medication, group therapy, and just enjoy the time I have left.

If YOU have something better, bring it!

No one is sure what the future holds, and perhaps some medication would be helpful, but the rush to overanalyze and prescribe for the elderly without asking what WE want seems to be the standard.

Everyone alive today will die - what many of us want (but are unable to articulate) is a guide on that journey.

And, when our time comes, we want to leave with dignity.

---

John Horwitz is retired, and his life is hard to do justice to in a few sentences... He has been a longshoreman, an ironworker, a truck driver, and a professional photographer.

https://www.sensible-med.com/p/why-should-i-take-these-medications

Fauci has made a mockery of science

 In Uncontrolled Spread, Scott Gottlieb, former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner, observed that the six-foot social-distancing rule was ‘probably the single most costly intervention’ recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that ‘was consistently applied throughout the pandemic’.

You might have expected such a significant intervention to have had a strong evidential basis. Yet in remarks made in January before the US Congress, though only made public last month, Dr Anthony Fauci, the lead Covid-19 adviser to Donald Trump and Joe Biden, described how the social-distancing recommendation came about:

‘It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be five or six or whatever. I was not aware of studies that in fact [supported the six-foot recommendation]. That would be a very difficult study to do. I think it would fall under the category of empiric. Just an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data or even data that could be accomplished.’

This was a curious admission coming from the man who described himself last year as ‘fundamentally about science’. In 2022, he said in an interview with a medical journal:

‘There are, in many respects, people who have complete disregard for facts, or distort facts, distort reality, deny data and make statements that are not at all backed by scientific information. What scientists have to do is just stick with the science and stick with the data. It is very frustrating when you’re dealing with individuals, institutions or groups that actually deny the reality or make statements that are not backed by facts. You can’t get rattled; just make sure you stick with the science.’

But did Fauci ‘stick with the science’? Of course not.

Earlier this week, when testifying before Congress again, Fauci walked back his ‘sort of just appeared’ remark: ‘When I say it was not based in science, I meant a prospective clinical trial to determine whether six-foot [distancing] was better than three [or] was better than 10.’ But where was that Faucian candour four years ago, when the rules about distancing dictated much of human interaction across the US?

The truth is, there was something resembling an evidential basis for the social-distancing rules. But if Fauci ever acknowledged the true origins of this policy, it would expose just how badly he bungled the Covid-19 pandemic – and how far away from actual science he and his fellow public-health officials strayed.

The data behind the six-foot recommendation were well-known to all the researchers involved with Covid-19 recommendations in the US, Great Britain and western Europe. It is inconceivable that Fauci or his boss, Francis Collins, were unaware of these data. They have been cited directly by the US CDC and the World Health Organisation (WHO) since the beginning of the pandemic.

By denying there was any basis to the six-foot recommendation, Fauci is trying to avoid discomfiting questions about one of the biggest scientific failures of the pandemic response – namely, the failure to take into account that Covid could be spread by airborne transmission, and not just by droplets.

The story of the six-foot separation recommendation emerged from work that began in the 1930s and continued during and after the Second World War. Researchers studying tuberculosis established that bacteria usually travel no more than three feet from an infected person and rarely more than six feet. For over half a century, six feet in the US, or its near equivalent of two metres in Europe, had been a well-accepted standard for distancing to avoid bacterial infections. When the Covid-19 outbreak began in 2020, the WHO recommended ‘at least’ three feet of separation, based on the same research.

Science is the process of developing a hypothesis – in this case, applying a six-foot rule to prevent Covid-19 transmission – making subsequent observations and, if the observations disprove the hypothesis, developing a new approach. The studies that Fauci now denies existed were part of the self-corrective process of science. The issue wasn’t that there were no studies involving six-foot distancing, it was that those studies did not pertain to Covid-19, and should have been recognised as irrelevant early on. Neither Fauci, nor the CDC, nor the WHO reexamined their information – they clung stubbornly to their initial pronouncements that six-foot or three-foot distancing would offer protection. That was anti-science.

Those early studies were about the droplet transmission of bacteria. Droplets are the relatively large particles you can see in a sneeze or a cough. The Covid-19 virus is much smaller than bacteria, and can travel much further and remain airborne for longer. That’s because Covid is transmitted primarily by aerosols, a much finer spray than droplets (comparable with invisible cigarette smoke). Despite ample documentation by aerobiologists (scientists who study airborne disease patterns) and other specialists, Fauci, the CDC and WHO were regrettably slow to pick up on the fact of aerosol transmission – with devastating consequences. At the outset of the pandemic, they had an obligation to establish whether the prior research on six-foot distancing applied to Covid-19. It didn’t – yet they behaved as though it did anyway.

The knowledge of aerosol transmission should have prompted an entirely different approach to Covid-19. Public-health officials could have encouraged relocating activities outdoors (in Chicago the mayor closed the beaches, but kept crowded bars open). Schools could have held classes outside rather than cancel them.

The importance of indoor ventilation was also downplayed. Many more ventilation systems could have been installed in homes, schools and offices. Too much time and money was spent on plexiglass barriers and surface disinfection instead. It turns out you didn’t need to scrub down your vegetables or wear gloves to handle your mail. For far too long, experts told us to worry only about droplet transmission instead of advising us on how to control aerosol transmission.

Fauci did not acknowledge the importance of aerosol transmission until at least six months into the pandemic. More than a year after the pandemic began, some scientists felt it necessary to call on the White House and implore Fauci and the CDC to update their ‘out of date’ Covid guidelines. Then and now, Fauci shifted blame to the CDC, which admittedly did not acknowledge the importance of aerosol transmission until nearly a year and a half into the pandemic. The WHO waited even longer – two years. At no point did Fauci or those organisations highlight the dramatic implications of this. They did no press conferences or public-advertising campaigns. This contributed to a misdirected response to the pandemic, especially in the second and third years. The relentless focus on social distancing by Fauci and Co made it difficult to change the playbook and concentrate on mitigating aerosol transmission.

Admitting error is a fundamental part of science – and admitting error isn’t Anthony Fauci’s strong suit. This week’s congressional questioning over six-foot separation rules was an excellent opportunity for Fauci to tell the truth about the misguided early advice. He could have explained that the rules had been generated decades ago and, as researchers quickly discovered, didn’t pertain to Covid-19. When it became obvious that the six-foot rule wasn’t protective, especially after the appearance of later Covid variants, science demanded that we throw out the rule and approach the pandemic differently. Yet Fauci and the CDC didn’t ‘do science’. They kept the six-foot rule until August 2022, presumably to avoid admitting error. That stubborn refusal to change course may have helped protect their professional reputations, but did it protect the public? Essentially, they put public relations ahead of more effective transmission control.

Nothing of lasting significance came from Fauci’s recent congressional testimony. The Democrats on the House subcommittee tried to butter him up (one Democratic representative gushed, ‘Thank you for your science’). The Republicans, meanwhile, were ill-prepared to ask important questions. They mostly fired politically motivated queries about improperly hidden emails and research funding. Whether his answers to those questions were honest or artful evasions means little in the long run in terms of public health or future pandemics. Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene deserves special mention for her opera bouffe. She refused to call Fauci a doctor and claimed he should be in prison, thereby earning him the sympathy of millions and virtually guaranteeing there would be no substantive examination of his science, motives or actions during the pandemic. Memo to Dr Fauci: send Representative Greene a Christmas card this year for her helpful performance.

It speaks volumes that no one from either the CDC or the WHO has come forward to refute Fauci’s claim that the six-foot separation recommendation arose out of thin air. The scientific papers from the start of the pandemic include references to those older studies and are in plain sight.

This is all too typical of the Covid-19 response. The ‘science’ that was presented to us was nothing of the sort. It was simply the consensus view of certain experts, given a rubber stamp of authority by key scientific institutions. All too often, that narrow view was wrong. This unscientific approach resulted in economically destructive lockdowns, disastrous school closures and a lethal inattention to the dangers of inadequate indoor ventilation.

Fauci and his collaborators at CDC and WHO certainly bear significant responsibility for each of those debacles. We can’t let him get away with trying to whitewash his legacy.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/06/anthony-fauci-has-made-a-mockery-of-science/

BlackRock Model Shakeup Spurs $4 Billion Growth-Stock ETF Surge

 

• Growth stocks play ‘pivotal role’ in earnings gains: BlackRock
• A trio of BlackRock ETFs saw billions in flows this week

One of BlackRock Inc.’s target allocation model teams is increasing its growth-stock exposure across developed markets, plowing billions into exchange-traded funds that track the sector.

The asset manager’s model rebalancing was behind a $2.9 billion inflow into the iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF (ticker IVW) and $1.4 billion into the iShares MSCI EAFE Growth ETF (ticker EFG), according to a person familiar with the matter.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-07/blackrock-model-shake-up-spurs-4-billion-growth-stock-etf-surge

"They Can't Afford To Lose Their Grip On The Levers Of Power..."

 by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Time To Jettison The Animals

“The old left had intellectual commitments that were false in interesting and theoretically stimulating ways. The new left demands adherence to lurid absurdities so preposterous that merely entertaining them induces nauseating neurological disorders.”

- Xenocosmography on “X”

The most astounding part of America’s “Joe Biden” three-plus-years thrill ride is that the Party of Chaos and Hoaxes was able to pretend until just a few days ago that this political phantasm could run for re-election. Now, regime insiders are forced to confess that they can’t hide it anymore. They spilled the beans as “unnamed sources” this week in a huge Wall Street Journal article. The president is going necrotic in full view of the whole world. His mind is gone. He looks ridiculous when he shuffles in front of the cameras. He utters obvious absurdities and lies. His wife has to lead him around like a dog on a leash. Everyone can see it. He’s got to go. ASAP.

The embarrassing ineptitude has been on view since the 2020 campaign, yet his handlers managed to flimflam half the country ever since, thanks to a news media captured by intel blob gaslighters and to half the country’s susceptibility to mass formation psychosis — fear driven thought disorder — that gave cover to treasonous actors seeking to save their asses even if they had to wreck the USA doing it. Who were these actors? The Clintons and the coterie around them, steeped in financial crime and sex trafficking; the Obama coterie of anti-white racists and bungling Marxists; the batshit-crazy Woke race-and-gender hustlers working to derange the merit-based social order (and get paid for doing it); the congressional grifters living off Pharma and Pentagon loot; the agency top bureaucrats who became a corrupt praetorian guard for all the above players, now desperate to evade accountability.

Everything they’ve done since 2020 has been in the service of covering up their crimes, and each hoax has just compounded the damage done to our country. The Covid-19 prank was pulled to enable mail-in ballot fraud so as to assure a permanent government-by-blob, of which the Democratic Party is now a mere tentacle. We don’t know yet whether the mRNA vaccine module of the prank was a deliberate effort to kill a lot of people or a grievous blunder by greedy drug-makers, or some wicked combo — with assistance from the WEF or China.

They can’t afford to lose their grip on the levers of power in the 2024 election — lose control of the Justice Department, the FBI, and the so-called “national security” apparatus, especially. The open border is just an effort to illegally import and enlist a vast wad of potential new voters to ensure an election victory. More than twenty states have “motor-voter laws” that automatically register anybody with a driver’s license. And these enrollees don’t even have to cast their ballot. Their names can just be “harvested” systematically, attached to voting documents, and bundled to be submitted for them. Millions have entered the country illegally since 2021 at “Joe Biden’s” direct invitation. There’s nothing hidden about this — but all you see is the learned helplessness of actual US citizens unable to stop it.

And yet, even that prank may not work to keep the Party of Chaos and Hoaxes in power. Designated candidate “Joe Biden” is obviously so far gone that even actual citizen voters under the mass formation spell can’t be counted on anymore. His poll numbers look abysmal. He’s scheduled to debate his opponent, the outlaw Donald Trump, on June 27. If his handlers allow that to actually happen, it will be like the unmasking scene in The Phantom of the Opera: brain-ringing horror, from sea to shining sea! Of course, an insult to the zeitgeist that severe will force the party leaders into some ‘splainin’, and I personally doubt they will be able to ‘splain their way out of it. Did all of you Democrats not notice?

The putative replacements for him — Newsom, Hillary, Pritzker, Whitmer, Harris — are political creatures at least as loathsome to voters as “JB” has become. And the obvious pitfall for Michelle O is that her husband looks like a wannabe American Caesar seeking a fourth term. What else have they got? Nothin’. Some utterly unknown governor they can primp up in a few months? Fugeddabowdit. They’ll have to run one of the loathsomes, take the “L,” and hope for the best, perhaps make a get out of jail “deal” with dealmaker supreme Mr. Trump.

Or, they could attempt another mighty prank: kill him. You can imagine they’ll try it, having exhausted all other gambits. If they succeed, and it doesn’t provoke an instant civil war, Mr. Trump’s faction has a pretty deep “bench” of capable figures who can step in and run against the Party of Chaos, Hoaxes, and now Murder. If the assassins botch the job, I wouldn’t want to be them on that dreadful day.

The bottom-line for now: “Joe Biden” is about to wave bye-bye. They’ve already put the question to him. He’s resisting. The one coherent thought in his failing mind is that he has pardon power as long as he is president. It’s not so much Hunter and that silly-ass gun case in Wilmington, which he’ll surely wriggle out of. It’s more about the brothers Jim and Frank and all the spouses and offspring who received wire transfers of Chinese money, Ukraine money, Russian money, Kazak money, Romanian money. . . .

If necessary, the party and its blob masters could bite the bullet and run the 25th Amendment on the old fraud, git’er done fast, down-and-dirty, virtually overnight any night now. More likely, they’ll “leak” some document from the blob vaults that incontrovertibly incriminates the president on one of the already well-trodden bribery angles. That is, they’ll pretend to discover that not only is “Joe Biden” hopelessly senile, but, turns out, he’s been crooked all along! What a shock! We never suspected ‘til now! Such a seemingly well-intentioned, kindly, patriotic old man! Stand by. It’s going to be a helluva month.

*  *  *

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/they-cant-afford-lose-their-grip-levers-power