Category: Uncategorized

Are we only one of a few countries that allows pharmaceutical advertising on television? If you were not aware, in only New Zealand and the in the USA is pharmaceutical advertising allowed on television.
When I was in practice, I thought that this type of drug advertising was a bad idea. A bad idea? For whom? Certainly not for the drug makers, but rather a bad idea for the patients to be the first on the block to be taking these new drugs. (It was always my modus-operandi to wait on prescribing these new drugs until the experiences of others proved or disproved their effectiveness, and demonstrated their side-effects.) The drug advertising caused patients to implore their physicians to prescribe these expensive new drugs, which for the most part were only partially paid for by the patient.

I bring this up now because of what RFKJr has in mind.
From Townhall:
“One of Kennedy’s first orders of business would be to target pharmaceutical advertising, in which prescription drugs can be advertised directly to consumers or direct-to-consumer (DTC). The United States and New Zealand are the only countries permitted to do this. As part of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) priorities, the former Democrat said he would issue an executive order banning pharmaceutical advertising on television.”
Still from Townhall:
According to an analysis, Big Pharma would “almost certainly” see their drug sales take a hit from a DTC ban because the return on investment for the ads is significant, with “estimates ranging as high as 100-500 percent, depending on the drug”
From the Daily Caller:
“Spending on DTC pharmaceutical advertising in the United States ballooned to more than $7 billion in 2023, with ad buys on weight loss and diabetes drugs surpassing $1 billion for the first time.”
In my opinion another good idea from JFKJr.
12/4/24

Headline from Fox News:
“President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, after the first son was convicted in two separate federal cases earlier this year. The announcement was made by the White House on the evening of 12/1/24 . The pardon applies to offenses against the U.S. that Hunter Biden “has committed or may have committed” from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024.”

Think back, how many times over the past year or so did Joe Biden proclaim that he would not pardon his son, Hunter?
And now Biden’s pardoning of his son extend back to January, 2014? This makes me wonder if there more charges in the pipeline going all the way back to 2014? Could 1/1/2014 have anything to do with the Burisma shenanigans … to me, obviously ‘yes!’

How many times did White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre (KJP) vociferously state when asked about the President pardoning his son? … “No. No. It’s a no. It will always be a no. Biden will not pardon his son Hunter.”
In a way I feel somewhat sorry for KJP as President Biden has made her look like a blathering fool!

One wonders what Biden would have done about Hunter’s pardon if he had been reelected in 2024? Is his doing this on 12/1/24 this just another part of Biden’s revenge for his party stabbing him in the back? His obvious nepotism will hurt the Dems for years to come. How can anyone trust anything a Dem says in the future when the leader of their party has lied over and over again?

However this erosion of trust is extending beyond just the American voting public all the way to Dem supporters because of Kamala Harris.
From the Washington Examiner:
“Some Democrats are complaining as Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed campaign begs one-time supporters to dole out more funds to dig it out of the red. Harris made headlines for raking in a staggering $1.5 billion during her abbreviated campaign. But after the dust settled on her subsequent defeat at the polls earlier this month, the vice president made news again for running up $20 million in debt. Forced to send out a deluge of fundraising emails to cover the losses, the Harris campaign’s continued requests for donors to dig deeper nearly four weeks after the election has some of her colleagues saying the tactic could ‘erode trust.’ ‘I understand that the Harris campaign is in a very difficult position with the debt that they have, and so sometimes you just have to make practical decisions,’ Mike Nellis, founder of the Democratic digital firm Authentic, told Politico. ‘But yeah, I think that stuff like that erodes trust’”
How many big time Dem donors in the future will again be willing to invest millions and have their largesse be wasted? Does Kamala realize how much damage she is doing to future Democratic candidates by begging for more money after the fact?

Even though I know that Hunter Biden was guilty of a whole lot, his pardoning by his father will prove to be more than just a big-time erosion of trust for the Democrats.
From C&C:
“Hunter’s pardon opens the way for pardoning the J6 prisoners (and possibly others). It was a brilliant political move. Brilliant, that is, if Joe Biden were trying to help President Trump.”
Was this pardoning of his son and potentially helping President Trump, just another example of “Biden’s revenge?”
12/3/24

Is the 2024 election a turning point in the state of consciousness of the USA voters? As everyone is aware Donald Trump shellacked the Dem’s candidate. Does the trouncing of the Harris/Walz ticket indicate that the American voters have awakened from the semi-coma of 2020? (If one believes that the 2020 election was on the up-and-up, then the 2024 result would indeed represent a true reversal. However, I don’t and I think that the first hint of the American voter’s awaking actually began in 2016.)
This leads me to wonder when the California voters will wake-up. Thus far California is reliably blue, but what has just recently happened may be what is needed to wipe the sleep out of the eyes of Californians. What happened?
From the California Globe:
“On November 8, 2024, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed new special blend mandates for California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The new standards require that refiners produce, and retail gas stations sell, a new California special blend in 2025. The CARB contends that the new special blend is necessary to achieve carbon and methane emission reduction targets.
“By its own admission, the CARB projected that the new special blend could increase the retail price of gasoline by $0.47 a gallon… California regulatory and legislative actions could conservatively cost the California consumer an extra $222.00 to $449.00 a year for regular grade fuel, more for premium. To compensate for the expected increases in retail gasoline prices, the average Californian driving an internal combustion vehicle will have to earn an additional $600.00 to $1,000.00 a year in pre-tax income to “break even” with 2024 prices, depending on the grade of gas they purchase?”
Worse yet, still from the California Globe:
“A study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center found that the CARB underestimated the impact the new fuel standards would have on gas prices. The Kleinman Center expects the price of gas to increase 65 cents per gallon in 2025, 18 cents more than the CARB estimate.”

My question is whether or not California voters will continue to act like sheep and will continue to elect Democrats … or will the actions of the appointed, but non-unelected, CARB be a turning point in California.
One can only hope!
12/2/24

On Sept. 26 this year thirty-two-year-old André Williams of Houston, Texas, gave his mother the surprise of her life.
André was very thankful for the sacrifices his parents made to raise him and his siblings. His mother works in healthcare, and his father is an electrician; both worked hard to provide a stable and loving foundation for André and his two siblings.
In his youth, André enjoyed sports, art, and playing music at church, with his supportive parents encouraging him to follow his interests. Ambitious and hardworking, he quickly excelled in his career, working his way up the career ladder. He’s now been a program manager at Microsoft for three years.
“I’ve been successful in my life, through multiple things: through my career, through other adventures of my things that I’ve invested in, and things like that,” André said.

André didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk
After his mother had been diagnosed with progressive heart failure, André decided to pay off his mother’s mortgage. Since August of 2023 the young man had been saving up to pay off his mother’s mortgage.She had ten years left on a thirty year mortgage. After achieving his goal and getting together enough money to clear 10 years of his mom’s mortgage, André was planning to visit his parents’ home in Mount Vernon, New York. He was eagerly anticipating the moment he could place the check in his mother’s hands.
Unfortunately, Hurricane Helene threw a wrench in that plan.
The Surprise
Unable to see his parents in person, André created a video and sent it to his sister, asking her to play it for their mother on Sept. 27. He launched into the heartwarming message by thanking his mother for 32 years of “unconditional love” and unwavering support. “Nothing you’ve done is in vain,” he said in the video. Then, right before her eyes, he revealed the check that would pay off her remaining mortgage.
His mother, who had not been expecting any of this at all, put her head down and wept.
“She was very appreciative,” André told The Epoch Times, adding that she shed “a lot of tears” and felt “a lot of gratitude.””I think giving back to your parents is one of the greatest gifts you can give,” he said.

Kudos to André Williams! There aren’t many like him!
12/1/24

Recently from the New York Times an op-ed titled:
“Musk Wants to Cut $2 Trillion in Federal Spending. Is It Possible?”
Basically the NYT’s answer is, “No!” The conclusion of the op-ed states, “This means Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy will not need to win just one political fight to cut $2 trillion, but potentially hundreds or thousands of fights.”
I may be a contrarian, but my money is on Musk and Ramaswamy, and not on the NYT.
A recent op-ed, 11/20/24 in the Wall Street Journal, by Musk and Ramaswamy is quite interesting, and explains some of the various philosophies and tactics that they will use.
I found the following paragraph especially interesting formative:
“Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.”

Again without a second thought I am going with Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE over the pessimistic opinion of the New York Times.

11/29/24

One of the more amazing stories of the day came from a very small county in far southern Arizona.
From Daybreak Insider via the New York Times (NYT):
“As the elected treasurer in Santa Cruz County, Ariz., for more than a decade, Elizabeth Gutfahr’s job was to safeguard public funds for one of the state’s smallest counties. But while that money was meant for libraries, fire districts, schools and the like, Ms. Gutfahr siphoned off $38 million to acquire about two dozen vehicles — including Cadillacs and a Mercedes — buy real estate and renovate her family ranch, the Justice Department said this week. Ms. Gutfahr, 62, who held the post from 2013 through early 2024, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Tucson to one felony count each of embezzlement by a public official, money laundering and tax evasion. She could face up to 35 years in prison when she is sentenced in February (New York Times).”

I had never heard of Santa Cruz County before reading this piece. What kind of place is Santa Cruz County? In order to learn more about this place, I did a number of Google searches.
First off, it appears to be poor.
From Wikipedia:
The median income for a household in the county was $29,710, and the median income for a family was $32,057. Males had a median income of $27,972 versus $21,107 for females. The per capita income for the county was $13,278. About 21.40% of families and 24.50% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.% of those under age 18 and 23.2% of those age 65 or over.

Second: Owing to its border location the population of Santa Cruz County is mainly Hispanic. It is the smallest county by area in Arizona.

The third thing that I was interested in involved the political affiliation of Elizabeth Gutfahr, as the initial article from the NYT never mentioned if she was a Democrat or a Republican.
After multiple searches from different newspapers mainly in Arizona, the best I could learn was that Santa Cruz is a strongly Democratic county. In fact Santa Cruz County remains as the most Democratic-leaning county in Arizona.

Whenever I read about a possible crooked politician, to me it is usually immediately clear to which political party that politician is affiliated with … if he/she is a Republican, it is usually stated in the first sentence. Whereas, if he/she is a Democrat, that fact is usually hidden deep in the article or, as is often the case with the NYT, it is never mentioned.
Ergo, since the political party of Elizabeth Gutfahr is not mentioned and she resides in a heavily Democratic county, my suspicion is that she is … ? Hmmm!
11/27/24

For what it’s worth, the Dems are complaining about some of Trump’s picks for various cabinet positions. To paraphrase, “So and so is not qualified to be XXX.” My first response to this is, “Compared to Who?”
NB: the following has not been taken from the Babylon Bee!
From Townhall:
“Let’s take a look at current Biden HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
As the former Attorney General of California, Becerra is not a doctor and has no prior health experience. He’s a hardened, leftist zealot whose only record on health includes suing nuns in order to force them to provide birth control — a move that was found wildly unconstitutional and a blatant violation of their First Amendment rights. Eventually, the nuns were victorious at the Supreme Court.
Next, we move on to former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was chosen as Biden’s Transportation Secretary because he “likes trains” and could use allocated funding to pursue the left’s social justice agenda under the guise of “infrastructure.” Before getting the job and being confirmed by the Senate, Buttigieg’s only background in transportation was failing to fill potholes in South Bend, Indiana.
Both of these amateurs were confirmed by senators. I’m not going to get into the number of men pretending to be women, like HHS Assistant Secretary Richard “Rachel” Levine, who are stacked all over the Biden administration. They weren’t placed there because they knew what they were doing, instead, they satisfied the Democrats’ identity politics agenda and rejection of meritocracy, especially in a bureaucratic government.”

But these are not the only unqualified lulus. Look at some more of the unqualified random losers that Biden picked.
From X:
Jared Bernstein, Chair of Council of Economic Advisors – not an economist, Bachelor’s degree in music, masters in sociology

Mayorkas, DHS Secretary – no security background, lawyer, Asst U.S. attorney, Obama transition team

Jennifer Granholm, Energy Secy – no energy background, Michigan Governor

Gina Raimondo, Commerce Secretary – No trade background, Gov of Rhode Island

Deb Haaland, Interior Secy – New Mexico Congressman

All of the above are much more unqualified compared to Trump’s picks.

11/26/24

Those who have been reading my blogs for a while will recognize that over and over I have asked the same basic question … “Why do Democrats constantly seem to do things which only hurt the little guys?”
Which group does inflation hurt more than anybody? Obviously, inflation hurts those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder more than any other group. Those who are living paycheck-to-paycheck are devastated when the price of eggs, milk, and bread increase.
Which group is hurt the most when gas prices are sky-high? Again, those who are forced to live a great distance from where they work, because they cannot afford homes that are closer to where the jobs are. In the Biden years, it is not those who drive Electric Vehicles that are hurt when the price of gas is out of sight, but rather it is the little guy.
In years past these little guys, for whatever reason, voted for Democrats. Could it be that the little guys are waking up?

From the Epoch Times:
College graduates favored Republican candidates in every election but one from 1988 through 2004. That began to change in 2008 and accelerated in 2016 when Democrats gained a solid majority of 55 percent among college graduates and held it the next two elections.
At the same time, voters without a college diploma have increasingly voted Republican. The shift began in 2012, when Republicans gained two percentage points among this demographic, landing at 48 percent. By 2024, Trump had reached 63 percent support from those with a high school education.
A similar migration occurred in terms of income. In 2012, 60 percent of voters with household incomes less than $50,000 voted Democratic. By 2024, that number had dropped to 44 percent.
This election also marked a tipping point for upper-income voters. In 2024, a majority of households earning more than $100,000 per year voted Democratic for the first time since the data had been tracked. The Republican share from this group was 46 percent, the lowest ever.
In certain regions of the country there seems to also be a change.
The Blue Wall of industrial states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, had been solidly Democratic in presidential elections from 1992 until 2016, when President-elect Donald J. Trump won all three. Trump carried those states again in 2024.
Trump also eroded Democratic support in traditional party strongholds like New York, New Jersey, and California. While Harris carried all three by a comfortable margin, she gained a smaller share of the vote than either Biden in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Are these changes merely a reflection of a Harris being a poor candidate, or are those who actually work for a living (the ‘little guys’) starting to realize that the Democrats are not their friends?
11/25/24

On Sundays I write about individuals who are worthy of our praise and admiration. Shelley Luther is such a woman, as she recently got elected to a State House seat in Texas. These days women are getting elected left and right, so what is so special about this woman, Shelley Luther?
To understand let’s go back to March, 2020 when she was forced to close her hair salon and wasn’t given a clear date on which she could reopen. A local county judge continued to delay the date.
“When he finally pushed it back a final time I just woke up one day and I said, ‘I have to open; my stylists are calling me, they’re not making their mortgage,’” Luther said. Behind on her own mortgage, she reopened her shop in April, but she was arrested and jailed for seven days and ordered to pay $500 for each day the salon was open.
Dallas County Judge Eric Moyé said he would consider a lesser sentence if Luther admitted she was wrong and apologized for what he characterized as her “selfish” actions.
To that Shelley Luther responded, “I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I’m selfish, because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they’d rather feed their kids.
“So, sir, if you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.”
She was thus jailed. Eventually the state Supreme Court ordered that Luther be released after state officials, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, spoke out to support her. She was released from jail on May 7, 2020.
However, Shelley Luther wasn’t finished.
Luther later unsuccessfully ran for state Senate in 2020 then lost to an incumbent Reggie Smith in the 2022 Republican primary for Texas House District 62.
In 2024 she defeated Smith in the March primary and proceeded to the 2024 general election. She ran on issues such as border enforcement, election integrity, and the prohibition of sexual content in public schools.
“Shelley Luther will fight to preserve Texas values, and she won’t back down when things get tough,” her website stated.
On November 5, 2024 Republican Shelley Luther earned 77.7 percent of the vote, beating Democrat Tiffany Drake, who received 22.3 percent, in District 62.
Shelley Luther is to be admired as she is a poster child for perseverance and persistence.
11/24/24

As many of you are aware, I firmly believe that Joe Biden was fraudulently elected President in 2020. Back in 2020 when I went to bed late on election night (Pacific time), Trump was ahead by quite a large margin. When I awoke the following morning, Joe Biden had been “elected” President! A miracle? Both Mike Pence and the Supreme Court both ducked, and consequently we Americans have been punished by four years of incompetence in the White House. Over the last four years I have been told multiple versions of, “That’s life!,” and “You’re wrong; grin and bear it!”
However, just the other day I read an op-ed posted in Amac on 11/14/24 by Paul Ingrassia, a graduate of Fordham University and Cornell Law School, and a two-time Claremont Fellow. In his opinion there are multiple logical reasons to assume that, indeed, the 2020 election was fraudulent.
The title of Ingrassia’s rather long and comprehensive piece is:
“Donald Trump’s Win Against Kamala Harris Proves Beyond All Doubt That 2020 Was Stolen”
“Back in 2020 Trump and his supporters were vilified because they simply wanted Congress to carry out its constitutional duties to allow state legislatures to review the electoral process, and investigate very real allegations of fraud in a select number of precincts nationwide.  The idea that a presidential election can be stolen in an era and electorate as polarized as ours, is not a ludicrous assumption – quite the contrary.  As was observed in both 2016 and 2020, the presidential race could be decided by a few ten thousand voters dispersed across a handful of battlegrounds.  Really, in 2020, you can boil the election down to three particular counties: Fulton County in Georgia, Maricopa County in Arizona, and Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania, and find sufficient evidence of outcome-determinative fraud.  Three counties are theoretically all that it would have taken to steal the 2020 presidential election.
Had Republican auditors and state legislatures been allowed to carry out their jobs and conduct a thorough investigation into just these three counties, it could have theoretically been enough to win the election for President Trump.  In 2020, the combined electoral vote output of Georgia (16), Arizona (11), and Pennsylvania (19) was 46, meaning President Trump would have won the election if he carried all three – or even just Georgia and Pennsylvania, which would have gotten him to exactly 270.  Thus, the argument that the election was stolen based on systematic fraud in a handful of counties distributed across the country is not only logical, but exceptionally plausible.
The plausibility is heightened by the response by the Democratic Party – and broader Left wing political coalition – that rendered it verboten to even speak the words “election fraud” without suffering massive personal costs.  Usually, a telltale for nefarious activity is being bullied into not speaking about a particular subject.”

Ingrassia’s opinion is bolstered by the numbers of votes counted in 2020 compared to 2024. Basically the numbers come down to the fact that the combined vote of Trump and Harris – 148 million and counting – is about seven million less than four years ago, but far surpasses by wide margins every previous election in American history.
The argument that it was easier to vote in 2020 due to special laws (of dubious legality, mind you) enacted in the lead-up to that race, making it easier to vote from home or extending the election period,fails because 1) many of those laws (albeit in abridged forms) have not been totally repealed, as evidenced by the fact that this year’s election took place over many weeks and was not limited to a single day; and 2) Donald Trump, again, obtained more votes this year than he did four years ago. 

As it currently stands, Kamala’s 72 million votes (a number also likely inflated due to outstanding fraud in states like Arizona, Nevada, California, Pennsylvania, and New York) represents a 12.5 percent decrease over the four-year period.  If the trends were consistent, Donald Trump should have received only 66.5 million votes this year – instead, he is on pace to get about ten million more than that figure.”

My suggestion, if you are still dubious of Ingassia’s arguments that the 2020 election was fraudulent, is to read his entire piece, and then to let me know if you are then more or less convinced of the fraud of 2020.

11/23/24