Thursday, March 31, 2022

FEC BELATEDLY FINES CLINTON, DNC

FEC BELATEDLY FINES CLINTON, DNC

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN DEMOCRATSHILLARY CLINTONRUSSIA INVESTIGATION

We have known for years that the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the fraudulent Steele “dossier” that badly damaged Donald Trump’s presidency. They laundered their payments to Fusion GPS through the corrupt Perkins Coie law firm, falsely describing them as payments for legal services. I have asked the question, on this site, whether that wasn’t obviously illegal, and whether criminal charges should have been brought against Marc Elias or others at Perkins Coie.

That isn’t going to happen, but long after it makes much difference the Federal Election Commission has fined the Clinton campaign and the DNC:

The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory.
***
A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.

Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term.

The FEC fined the Clinton campaign $8,000 and the DNC $105,000. Did they get their money’s worth, or what?

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/03/fec-belatedly-fines-clinton-dnc.php

Let he who is without crack-induced nudes cast the first stone

Let he who is without crack-induced nudes cast the first stone

What does President Biden know about the release of private photos?





hunter biden nudes
‘Self-Portrait’ by the celebrated artist Hunter Biden (Hunter Biden)










President Joe Biden often likes to tout his involvement in passing the Violence Against Women Act. So, naturally, the president was on hand to speak about the issue this week at an event marking the bill’s reauthorization.

With his trademark eloquence, Biden emphasized how the reauthorization took aim at revenge porn, which he described as “a new civil rights cause of action for those whose intimate images were shared on a public screen.”

“I bet everybody knows somebody,” the president explained, “that in an intimate relationship, what happened was the guy takes a revealing picture of his naked friend, or whatever, in a compromising position and then blackmails.”

True enough, Mr. Biden. Who among us, to pick a random hypothetical from the aether, has not had to face the scandalous repercussions of intimate, illicit photos surfacing after we left a laptop uncollected at a computer repair shop in the sleepy state of Delaware?

Cockburn shudders at the thought that such pictures, which could include anything from indelicate images of his sexual conquests and large appendage to his casual, right-before-bedtime crack pipe, might not only be seen publicly but also could carry potential consequences. And not just for him, mind you: that’s the thing people always lose sight of in matters involving revenge porn — when such photos come to light, it affects not just you but also your loved ones.

Why, Cockburn can only imagine how ashamed he would feel if, let’s call it what it is, filthy revenge porn in any way hurt the presidential aspirations of his former vice president father, or the lover-cum-sister-in-law of his deceased, war hero brother, or even the estranged stripper-mother of his drug-induced, Southern love child. To say nothing of the harm it would do to Cockburn’s own professional reputation among his Ukrainian financier buddies (who are going through a lot at the moment as it is). That the release of such photos should classify as a civil rights issue is putting it mildly!

Of course, as noted above, Cockburn is only imagining worst-case-scenario hypotheticals. There’s no way anything like this could happen to anyone in real life, especially someone as respected and admired as, say, the president’s son Hunter.

Indeed, according to one insider with intimate knowledge of Hunter Biden’s photo library, “Is it blackmail if you feel no shame about it?”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/hunter-biden-crack-induced-nudes-blackmail/

BANNING CRITICAL RACE THEORY

BANNING CRITICAL RACE THEORY

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Earlier this month, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed legislation intended to ban the precepts of Critical Race Theory from that state’s public schools. According to Campus Reform, Mississippi is the fifteenth state to enact such a ban.

The tricky thing, of course, is characterizing the teachings of CRT. The point is not to ban teaching about CRT, but rather to ban the pernicious doctrines that flow from CRT. Mississippi’s approach is simple and is based on the inherent racism of Critical Race Theory:

The new legislation states that public institutions cannot teach that any “sex, race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior” nor that individuals should be “treated adversely” on the basis thereof.

Furthermore, the bill prevents instructors from conducting a lesson that “compels students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to” the above description.

You wouldn’t think such legislation would be controversial, but CRT, enthusiastically endorsed by the nation’s teachers’ unions, does in fact teach that “whiteness” is a defect that makes whites inferior to other races. And it is commonly believed that women are superior to men–it is only masculinity that is “toxic”–or, at least, that was commonly believed when people could remember what women are.

It is rather comical to see liberals objecting to anti-CRT legislation because it infringes on free speech. Apparently this is the only subject on which the Left is still willing to stand up for the First Amendment. But CRT bans don’t inhibit teachers and administrators from voicing their beliefs like all other citizens, no matter how noxious those beliefs may be. It simply prevents them from using the public schools to indoctrinate our children in racist doctrines. The public schools are, after all, run by and on behalf of the public.

While I endorse bans like Mississippi’s, the only real defenses against an aggressive Left that has almost entirely taken over public education are 1) alert parents, and 2) local school boards. Parents need to know what is actually going on in their children’s classrooms, and voters need to turn out of office school board members who employ superintendents that promote or allow the teaching of racist, anti-American doctrines. The public schools won’t be cleansed of CRT until parents demand it.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/03/banning-critical-race-theory.php

Biden's Polls Drop Again Despite Strong Support for Russia Sanctions

Biden's Polls Drop Again Despite Strong Support for Russia Sanctions

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Despite strong public support for the sanctions against Russia that were imposed by the United States and NATO, President Joe Biden’s poll numbers continue to drift downward. Seven in ten Americans express low confidence in his ability to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and eight in ten believe gas prices are going higher and the war could eventually involve nuclear weapons.

The president’s overall approval declined to 40% after registering at 43% in January.

NBCNews:

“What this poll says is that President Biden and Democrats are headed for a catastrophic election,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinions Strategy, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.

The poll was conducted between March 18-22, before the president’s overseas trip, where he was to meet with NATO allies, visit with U.S. troops in Poland and deliver a major speech on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Joe Biden is not getting the “Rally around the president” poll numbers that have almost always appeared when the United States gets involved in a military conflict. While there are no active-duty troops involved, the U.S. has taken a very visible role in combating Putin and his expansionist policies.

The erosion in Biden’s approval rating has been across the board among key demographic groups, including Black respondents (from 64 percent approve in January to 62 percent now), women (from 51 percent approve to 44 percent), Latinos (from 48 percent to 39 percent) and independents (36 percent to 32 percent).

“You cannot get down to the low 40s in presidential approval, unless you have strained your own base,” said McInturff, the GOP pollster.

The question on the minds of political analysts on both sides is how these low poll ratings — and the war in Ukraine — shake out in terms of the Midterm elections.

CNN:

Rebecca Kleefisch, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin who is challenging Democratic Gov. Tony Evers this year, said the war in Ukraine and the resulting rise in gas prices only amplified the economic concerns that she is asked about constantly on the campaign trail.

“I wouldn’t even say that I’m wrapping these issues into current events,” Kleefisch said. “Affordability is one of the key issues that people think about and talk about with me every single day. You have to remember that gas prices began rising significantly before the war in Ukraine even began.”

The Wisconsin race is one of a handful of governor’s races in battleground states in which Republicans are seizing on any and all Democratic environmental policy-related decisions to make the case that those Democrats bear at least some responsibility for rising gas prices.

No matter what happens in Ukraine — with the exception of a “hot war” breaking out between Russia and NATO — prices will continue to climb and shortages will begin to crop up. In that case, “leadership” becomes a very nebulous and unimportant thing. Biden can get strong marks for “leadership” but that won’t help him and his party if gas is over $5 bucks a gallon and bread is $10 a loaf.

Related: How Biden Is Talking Out of Both Sides of His Mouth on Inflation

It remains to be seen how much credit Biden would get for a successful termination of the war for Ukraine. The bottom line is that Biden and the Democrats are still in deep trouble no matter what scenario plays out in Ukraine.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/03/27/bidens-polls-drop-again-despite-strong-support-for-russia-sanctions-n1584674?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=15803c7fc8c68b6fd1f0a5e7f4b59fc49df45d48335d4339ad60f7b0a0c7404d&recip=28668535

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

WHAT’S A WOMAN? WHO CAN SAY?

WHAT’S A WOMAN? WHO CAN SAY?

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN GENDER FOLLIES

Ketanji Jackson isn’t the only one who can’t tell you what a woman is. Sir Keir Starmer, leader of Britain’s Labour Party, apparently wouldn’t know a woman if he tripped over her in the shower. The Telegraph reports:

Sir Keir Starmer refused to answer the question of whether a woman can have a penis in the latest Labour Party confusion over the transgender debate.
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Speaking to LBC’s Nick Ferrari during a phone-in, Sir Keir, the Labour leader, was asked multiple times whether or not “a woman can have a penis”.

“I don’t think that discussing this issue in this way helps anyone in the long run,” he said.

“What I want to see is a reform of the law as it is, but I am also an advocate of safe spaces for women and I want to have a discussion that is… Anybody who genuinely wants to find a way through this, I want to discuss that with. I do find that too many people – in my view – retreat or hold a position of which is intolerant of others.

“And that’s not picking on any individual at all, but I don’t like intolerance, I like open discussion.”

But not so open, apparently, as to venture an opinion on whether women can have male genitalia. There are limits to openness, after all!

This topic has a history in Labour’s upper ranks:

The topic has been a point of division in the party for more than a year after Sir Keir said backbencher Rosie Duffield’s comment that “only women have a cervix” was “not right”.

Yvette Cooper and Anneliese Dodds, two of Labour’s frontbench MPs, both declined to give a definition of a woman on International Women’s Day earlier this month.

Gender confusion has become a fixture on the Left. Which, to the extent that it makes leftists into laughingstocks, is a good thing.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/03/whats-a-woman-who-can-say.php

Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and the GOP Revenge Conundrum

Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and the GOP Revenge Conundrum

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Few things will split the mood of the United States of America right down the political middle like Supreme Court justice confirmation hearings. Those who remember recent American history know that we have one Joseph Robinette Biden to blame for that.

Back before he was an addled guy who burped up streams of incoherence while playing president, Biden was a belligerent partisan who — like now — had zero self-control. His behavior during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas in 1991 remains a stain on the history of the United States Senate that wasn’t eclipsed until the hearings to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

As the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson got underway on Monday, I was waiting to see how it all played out on social media, and in the mainstream media.

Predictably, the NBC News organization was quickly there to defend Judge Jackson, and I responded with my trademark aplomb:

I also saw a lot of solid conservatives lamenting the fact that the Republicans involved in and observing the hearings aren’t being as rough on Judge Jackson as perhaps they should be after what happened in 2018.

This is something I’ve thought about in various political battles over the years.

Do we want to engage in political tit-for-tat with people whose tactics we truly despise? Seriously, every Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018 was an awful human being.

Then again, a point has been made in recent years by good conservative friends and colleagues of mine that we have to play by their rules if we’re going to be successful against them. It’s something that I’ve considered at length, especially since 2020.

I keep my own counsel when it comes to politics. My conservative activist bona fides are rock solid and rather immutable, so I don’t worry about others trying to make me out as going soft as I get older. My personal counsel on this — which I’ve written and spoken about at length — is that I don’t want to be like them. There’s a darkness in American leftists that I have no interest in empathizing with to win a few political battles.

Does this mean I think that we should be gentlemen and gentlewomen to a fault during these Supreme Court confirmation circuses?

Hell no.

Mitch McConnell should tell the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to use every arcane Senate trick that they can — and he knows them all — to make this process extremely difficult.

As Matt wrote earlier, there are some tough questions that need to be asked about Judge Jackson’s record on child porn offenders. It’s incumbent upon us in conservative media to keep that story out there, because the MSM sure won’t.

Keep fighting, but don’t become the worst that you see in your adversaries, that’s my advice. If nobody wants to take, I’m sure I’ll muddle through somehow.

At least I’ll still be listening to me.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/03/22/should-it-matter-that-judge-jackson-gives-light-sentences-to-child-pornographers-n1568490?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=15803c7fc8c68b6fd1f0a5e7f4b59fc49df45d48335d4339ad60f7b0a0c7404d&recip=28668535

GOT HALF A MIND TO RAMBLE

GOT HALF A MIND TO RAMBLE

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN 2024 ELECTIONBIDEN FOREIGN POLICYJOE BIDENRUSSIAUKRAINE

President Biden’s public appearances in Europe this week have made for a dangerous spectacle of debility and senescence. It does not serve Biden’s interest to take notice. The media have therefore pitched in to airbrush the spectacle.

That is the point Kyle Smith makes in the New York Post column “Media works overtime to clean up Joe Biden’s word salads.” In his Wall Street Journal Best of the Web column James Freeman offers the constructive practical advice that “The President should avoid public speaking.”

The White House has posted transcripts of Biden’s remarks in Europe here (March 24 press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels), here (March 25 remarks during visit with members of the 82nd Airborne Division in Rzeszów, Poland), and here (March 25 remarks on humanitarian efforts with President Andrzej Duda of Poland, also in Rzeszów).

Smith quotes Biden’s testament to his own prowess in response to “a bizarre question about how, assuming he is defeated when he runs for re-election, possibly by Donald Trump, he would stop the next president from undoing things he has done.” Smith paused here to observe: “Biden’s answer should have been, ‘That’s not how this works. Ex-presidents don’t get to tell their successors what to do, sorry. Re-elect me!’” But no. Biden showed he’s got half a mind to ramble.

The German reporter Smith quoted is Der Spiegel Brussels bureau chief Markus Becker. Markus is the kind of guy to whom Barack Obama was appealing when he appeared as a presidential candidate in Berlin with his speech of July 2008. (You can look it up.) Asked if there is anything Biden and NATO are doing to carve Biden’s work in stone to prevent from being undone by another president following the 2024 election, Biden held forth as follows:

I’ve been dealing with foreign policy for longer than anybody that’s involved in this process right now. I have no concerns about the impact —

I made a commitment when I ran this time. I wasn’t going to run again, and I mean that sincerely. I had no intention of running for President again and — until I saw those folks coming out of the fields in Virginia carrying torches and carrying Nazi banners and literally singing the same vile rhyme that they used in Germany in the early ‘20s — or ‘30s, I should say. And then, when the gentleman you mentioned was asked what he thought — and a young woman was killed, a protester — and he asked — was asked what he thought, he said, “There are very good people on both sides.” [See John Hinderaker’s post “Joe Biden, liar.”] And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going to be quiet any longer.

And when I ran this time — and I think the American press, whether they look at me favorably or unfavorably [sic], acknowledge this — I made a determination: Nothing is worth — no election is worth my not doing exactly what I think is the right thing. Not a joke. I’m too long in the tooth to fool with this any longer.

And so, we’re a long way off in elections — a long way off. My focus of any election is on making sure that we retain the House and the United States Senate so that I have the room to continue to do the things that I’ve been able to do in terms of grow the economy and deal in a rational way with American foreign policy and lead the world — lead the — be the leader of the free world.

So — but it’s not a — it’s not an illogical question for someone to ask. I say to people at home: Imagine if we sat and watched the doors of the Bundestag broken down and police officers killed and hundreds of people storming in, or imagine if we saw that happening in the British Parliament or whatever. How would we feel?

And one of the things that I take some solace from is: I don’t think you’ll find any European leader who thinks that I am not up to the job. And I mean that sincerely. It’s not like, “Whoa…” It’s that — that —

The point is that when — the first G7 meeting I attended, like the one I did today, was in Great Britain. And I sat down, and I said, “America is back.” And one of the — one of my counterparts, colleagues, a head of state, said, “For how long?” “For how long?”

And so, I don’t blame — I don’t — I don’t criticize anybody for asking that question. But the next election, I’d be very fortunate if I had that same man running against me.

There is more, and worse, in the transcript of this press conference and the other linked remarks.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/03/got-half-a-mind-to-ramble.php

Liberal Cities, Radical Mayhem: Democratic mayors and governors seem unable to stop the destruction of their own cities

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Liberal Cities, Radical Mayhem: Democratic mayors and governors seem unable to stop the destruction of their own cities.

by 

The “broken-windows” school of policing says that you can help maintain public order by taking care of even small examples of disorder—such as fixing broken windows. Liberals scorned that policy in the last decade as somehow racist. Well, in recent days we’ve learned that America’s left does have a broken-windows policy: Let rioters break enough windows and loot enough stores and maybe their righteous anger will be satisfied.

That’s certainly how it looked when the June sun rose Tuesday over the broken glass, looted storefronts, burnt-out cars, and vandalized buildings in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Madison and other American cities. Public officials let rioters exploiting the memory of George Floyd run wild in the streets. Even after nearly a week of violence, these and other liberal Democratic cities let lawless radicals harass and plunder almost at will.

In downtown St. Louis, four police officers were shot after midnight. “I believe some coward randomly shot at the police line,” said police chief John Hayden. A 7-Eleven was looted and set afire, but firefighters were deliberately slowed by protesters in responding. “We had people lying down in the street” and trash cans were placed as obstacles to block fire trucks, said fire chief Dennis Jenkerson.

In Philadelphia, city of brotherly vandals, gangs of rioters rolled through several neighborhoods Sunday burning businesses and cars. They returned for more on Monday, shutting down the highway that bisects the city at evening rush hour.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said a crowd of more than 100 surrounded a lone state trooper inside a vehicle and began rocking it. When two SWAT teams arrived, the crowd pelted them with rocks from the road and above. Police had to fire spray pellets, bean bags and tear gas to escape. . . .

This isn’t merely about damage to property. It’s about destroying the order required for city life. Non-criminals are afraid to go into these cities to make a living. The police pull back from active policing, which creates more opportunity for criminals, especially in poor and minority neighborhoods. Businesses that are finally starting to emerge from government lockdowns have new costs to absorb and more reasons for customers not to return.

What all these cities have in common is that they are led by Democrats who seem to have bought into the belief that the police are a bigger problem than rampant disorder. They are either cowed by their party’s left, or they agree that America is systemically racist and rioting is a justified expression of anger against it. They offer pro forma disapproval of law breakers but refuse to act to stop them.

The upshot is that a message is being received — even by those loudly posturing as woke at the moment — to the effect that you and your properties aren’t safe in big blue cities, and maybe even in medium-sized ones. All the talk about the reurbanization of America just went up, literally, in smoke. Thanks to the pandemic, cities were already looking like centers of disease. Now they’re looking like centers of violence, too. As I said earier, three decades of image rehabilitation for big urban centers has been undone in just a few weeks.

https://instapundit.com/377606/

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

MAN BITES DOG: DEMOCRATS PROPOSE MASSIVE FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDY!

MAN BITES DOG: DEMOCRATS PROPOSE MASSIVE FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDY!

BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN ENERGY POLICY

If you’re a glutton for misery, no doubt you’ve heard more than a few times from the climatistas about how we need to “end fossil fuel subsidies.” Supposed subsidies for oil, natural gas, and coal are actually minuscule when calculated on a per-unit-of-energy delivered to the consumer, and has little effect on consumer prices, unlike subsidies for wind and solar power, which are yuuuge on a per-unit-of-energy delivered, and they have large market price-distorting effects for electricity. If we simply “levelized” energy subsidies on a per-unit-of-energy delivered basis, wind and solar development would halt overnight, and oil, gas, and coal production would not change a bit in output or price.

So what’s the latest idea from the Democrats? Only the largest subsidy ever for oil, in the form of $100 per person monthly payments to assist Americans to buy gasoline. Up to $400 a month for a household of four. (Democrats are calling it a “rebate,” but in fact they aren’t rebating anything, since “rebate” would involves consumers paying the government in the first place.)

I’m guessing Democratic Party polling must find that high gasoline prices are killing them with voters, and that voters grasp which party consistently opposes domestic production of the energy supplies we actually use.

The Wall Street Journal expresses the appropriate snark: “The rebate idea deserves to die in the crib, but the spectacle of climate-change warriors suddenly trying to subsidize fossil-fuel consumption is almost worth it.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/03/man-bites-dog-democrats-propose-massive-fossil-fuel-subsidy.php

Quarantine Slaughterhouse: Numbers Are Coming in on Non-COVID Deaths During Lockdowns

Quarantine Slaughterhouse: Numbers Are Coming in on Non-COVID Deaths During Lockdowns

Greg Nash/Pool via AP

As the nation all-too slowly emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic nightmare we’ve endured for over two years, we are only beginning to get data back on the myriad horrors brought about by shortsighted policies that were forced upon us in the name of public health.

None of it is pretty.

One would presume that public health policy would protect or foster some sort of, you know, health. Alas, since the government is involved, words don’t always mean what they’re supposed to.

In the rush to mitigate the spread of the COVID virus, public health policy could have best been described as a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This was understandable and forgivable in the early stages of the pandemic when officials didn’t have any idea about what they were dealing with. As the pandemic wore on, however, it became more about exercising power than saving lives.

Take school shutdowns, for example. Teachers’ unions fought tooth and nail to keep schools closed, acting as if they were on the front lines in the battle of Fallujah and in mortal peril. The consequences for the kids were never taken into account. We’re just beginning to find out about some of the damage that was done. There is no way that the post mortem news on this subject is going to get any better.

Related: COVID-19 Has Exposed Teachers’ Unions as the Shakedown Artists They Really Are

We do have the first numbers in about specific non-COVID health-related issues, like alcohol-related deaths.

The New York Times:

Numerous reports have suggested that Americans drank more to cope with the stress of the pandemic. Binge drinking increased, as did emergency room visits for alcohol withdrawal. But the new report found that the number of alcohol-related deaths, including from liver disease and accidents, soared, rising to 99,017 in 2020, up from 78,927 the previous year — an increase of 25 percent in the number of deaths in one year.

That compares with an average annual increase of 3.6 percent in alcohol-related deaths between 1999 and 2019. Deaths started inching up in recent years, but increased only 5 percent between 2018 and 2019.

Gosh, who would have thought that locking people up, denying them contact with sick and dying loved ones, and bombarding them with constant predictions of imminent death would lead more people to drink? A nurse friend of mine alerted me to this problem several months ago, telling me that there were a lot of alcohol-related liver problems showing up at her large hospital as pandemic restrictions eased.

Two already dangerous health problems—disease and stroke—also saw increases during the first year of the pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal:

Mortality rates from heart disease and stroke rose 4.3% and 6.4% respectively in 2020, part of a larger wave of excess deaths in the first year of the pandemic, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open. Overall, the U.S. mortality rate jumped 15.9% that year, according to the analysis, which was based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Heart disease has long been the nation’s leading killer, and stroke is the fifth leading cause of death.

Recapping: Two already dangerous killers were practically given free rein, all in the name of making sure people didn’t die.

As the immortal Ronald Reagan famously said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'”

Anecdotally, I saw what quarantine did to my own mother. In February of 2020, she flew to Phoenix, visited my aunt, then rented a car and drove down to Tucson to see me for a few days. While here, she drove around to see friends, hit a couple of happy hours, and had a roaring good time as a thoroughly independent 81-year-old woman.

Put mildly, the quarantine isolation was not good to her, physically or emotionally.

After sitting at home during the first year of the COVID pandemic, her physical condition deteriorated to the point where she could barely get around her house on her own. Nothing specific happened other than loneliness and lack of activity. More than two years later, we’re trying to reverse that but we are not having much luck.

Think also about the long-term emotional damage done to people who couldn’t be with dying loved ones. I know two who went through it and it was beyond brutal.

Again, we’re only a few steps into this house of horrors:

It will take years for researchers to understand the full toll of Covid-19, from damage caused by the disease itself to the effects of the pandemic’s physical and social disruptions on other diseases. Many people were unable or unwilling to visit doctors or hospitals for health concerns other than Covid-19 early in the pandemic. They died at home, or got to hospitals too late. Many people have been under unusual amounts of stress, not as active or haven’t kept up with social and medical routines.

These are only numbers from 2020. The lockdowns and school closures extended well into 2021 in many places — especially those run by power-mad leftist government fetishists.

It would be nice to believe that the government really was acting in our best interest all along, but we’ve already discovered myriad examples of dishonesty on the parts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

One can’t help but wonder if a little more honesty from the bureaucratic petty tyrants might have saved even more lives.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2022/03/24/quarantine-slaughterhouse-non-covid-deaths-spiked-during-lockdowns-n1583804?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=15803c7fc8c68b6fd1f0a5e7f4b59fc49df45d48335d4339ad60f7b0a0c7404d&recip=28668535