COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[Mark Rippetoe]

https://youtu.be/Aqg4n1zoSUo?si=RERPyUT8qgeWuBl1

Despite the fact that our friend here cannot tell you what this video link is about, it's a pretty good look at RFKjr and his potential usefulness in the next administration, and an excellent contrast with the previous clown show. Watch it.

[mkm5]

Despite the fact that our friend here cannot tell you what this video link is about, it's a pretty good look at RFKjr and his potential usefulness in the next administration, and an excellent contrast with the previous clown show. Watch it.

Apologies Coach, I should have stated I feel unburdened by what has been, and look forward to seeing some common sense in the health department!

[Mark Rippetoe]

Cracks in the wall are starting to appear, even in Chicago:

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status...38037384319153

[wal]

Of course not ALL researchers are frauds. Agree flu is generally worse for people, the infection fatality rate is certainly higher despite our (US) government killing a few hundred thousand with remdesivir.
Not all vaccines are bad, of course. I am speaking about the covid dna and mRNA shots specifically in this case.
Your regimen certainly helped. I'd be interested to see what your covid n-antibody assay would look like to see if you had a prior infection you don't know about.

Perhaps I did get covid, I had a hacking cough that just kept hanging on for weeks and I got antibiotics for it, but I still got negative results for covid with the test kits both for mouth swabs and nasal types.

[Mark Rippetoe]

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status...14564746973618

This is perhaps the most concise photo comparison of the two choices last week.

[Subby]

RFK as health and human services secretary.

I want his first day to be him in a leatherface mask with a chainsaw stalking the halls screaming "where's fauci"

[wal]

RFK as health and human services secretary.

I want his first day to be him in a leatherface mask with a chainsaw stalking the halls screaming "where's fauci"

The whole US federal system has gone feral and needs a health check. Unfortunately our federal government including the states need a Trump enema. First item on the agenda for Trump should be to strongly suggest to the Australian government to put our ambassador a drop kick of the first order on the first plane back to Australia come inauguration day.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It's very VERY bad, and it must be dealt with. Here's a cheery little piece from Denninger: No Excuses Accepted in [Market-Ticker-Nad]

All three.

House, Senate and Presidency.

There is thus no blocking of agendas. No bogus impeachments. No games.

Either tear down the medical monopolists and illegal invader problem -- all of it -- using existing statutory authority in 15 USC Chapter 1 and 8 USC 1324 and do it within the first few months or, by the time the House and Senate midterms start to be contested which is in the spring of 2026 Trump loses both.

The inflation monster is going to roar back on the field. It matters not if you were responsible or not; if you're in the left seat when the plane crashes its your fault whether you put the water in the fuel or the idiot on the ramp did it.

15 USC Chapter 1 has been litigated to the Supreme Court in the context of medical care and insurance and found valid. The defenses were attempted and failed. I've pointed this out for more than two decades now but nobody wants to take it on. You don't seek fines you indict and imprison doctors, pharmaceutical company executives, hospital CEOs and insurance firm officers, directors and executives. Every person seeking medical procedure, drug or device must pay the same price for the same thing irrespective of their "insurance" or who is paying the bill, "insurance" companies may not interfere in any way in pricing or otherwise (but may set their own reimbursements after you got the bill) and you must consent whenever it is physically possible for you to do so before you incur the expense. Read here; its all there.

On illegal immigration 8 USC 1324 is clear: Any entity or person harboring or assisting an illegal alien is subject to 10 or more years in prison. No fines, no games, you do it you are indicted and go to prison with no exceptions. I don't care what the excuse is -- its invalid. Do it and do it now. You do this and the entire problem is solved immediately because all the employers, landlords and state governments handing out gibs will stop as none of them are going to deal with a 10 year prison sentence and no, State government officials are not exempt from Federal Law.

There is plenty more but these two must be done immediately. The collapse of pricing -- cost of living -- has to happen. There is no way to catch up through wages which is irrelevant to anyone on fixed income anyway as the government cannot, and does not, actually index for (as an example) the doubling in food prices that has already happened in Social Security payouts. Further medical cost is wildly in excess of anything Medicare can receive from taxes and Medicaid is a pure give-away.

The math is clear; real world inflation hasn't been 20% over the last three years and change it has been closer to 50% and in many things you must buy like groceries it has been a clean double.

But let's assume its just 25% -- a few points above the government's official claim.

2% "Fed Inflation" - 2% productivity growth (long-term average reasonable expectation) - 3% real wage increases (that's 5% in "current dollars" given a 2% inflation rate) = 3% per year "catch-up" so you won't for eight years assuming that the real inflation rate is in fact 2%. If its 3% then the "catch up" time is 50% longer or 12 years. If the real inflation was not 25% but in fact is 50%, and it is, then you'll either be nearing retirement if you're in your 20s today or dead, and that assumes that over that entire period of time there are no more inflationary bursts from any cause whatsoever.

In other words that's not only not going to happen it is inevitably going to financially destroy Americans in size and lead to a revolt of some sort -- whether peaceful or quite-possibly not, particularly when the cost of borrowing is going to continue to increase for the next couple of decades so if you, as an average American, are "charging it" you're going to financially blow up with absolute certainty long before you catch up.

Either we collapse the cost-of-living and accept what comes from that in the asset markets (and yeah, it will be serious) or in the midterms the Republicans lose both houses and that's the end of the show because the Democrats will not take those steps. The root of the problem lies in these two places; there are plenty of others to be addressed but if these two are not done the rest doesn't matter.

Incidentally, if you want further evidence of the inflationary impact and how close the impending detonation is, and why it must be taken care of right now and criminal indictments must come in size, right now -- no excuses -- the single-month deficit spending was outrageous in October; last month CMS spending was up over 50% compared with the same month last year. The internals were even more-ridiculous; benefit payments under the supplemental trust fund were 243% last year's levels -- almost 2-1/2 times and hospital payouts were at 209% last year's figures for the same month.

Last chance folks, and it literally has to begin with no excuses -- and plenty of felony indictments -- on January 20th at 12:01 PM.

[Mark Rippetoe]

The Master Troll: https://x.com/LeadingReport/status/1857968083291251081

BREAKING: Trump’s team is reportedly exploring the possibility of deporting illegal aliens to Rwanda and other countries to prevent them from remaining on American soil.

Trump transition team compiling list of current and former U.S. military officers for possible courts-martial

The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.

Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said.

“They’re taking it very seriously,” the person with knowledge of the plan said.

The tyranny of the cry-bully - spiked

Whoopi Goldberg has claimed that Trump intends to make interracial marriages illegal, separate non-white wives from their white husbands and forcibly marry the white men to white women. I don’t know how vice-president-elect JD Vance, proudly uxorious husband to a beautiful woman of Indian heritage, missed that memo.

The most educated, as ever, are the dumbest. Students at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy were reportedly offered treats like ‘milk and cookies’ and ‘hot cocoa’, as well as Lego toys and ‘colouring and mindfulness exercises’ to take their minds off the election results. The Guardian, that bastion of mental excellence, has been offering free counselling to its journalists.

You can see the most entertaining examples of fit-witism on the excellent Rita Panahi’s Sky News Australia segment, amusingly called ‘Lefties losing it’. You get the impression that this type of behaviour may have started out as performative and a bit keeping-up-with-the-Owen-Joneses (more on him later). But just as fame is a mask that eats the face, emotional incontinence is a poison that eats the brain. It’s possible that these people are suffering from an actual thing called ‘disconfirmed expectancy’, a type of cognitive dissonance produced when new information directly contradicts an individual’s existing beliefs. This causes disciples to double down on the trounced worldview, much as followers of apocalyptic religious cults, disappointed when the aliens fail to land, say it’s going to happen next year instead.

[Mark Rippetoe]

More cracks in the wall. This was a very important election:

https://x.com/sfmcguire79/status/1857844537361662233

https://x.com/TheRabbitHole84/status...31407649595527

https://x.com/_johnnymaga/status/1858317158045872286

https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status...73839059898611

And if you voted Democrat you voted for this:

Oh, The Law Does Not Apply? in [Market-Ticker-Nad]

Yet the critical question is which votes should be counted? The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled before the election that mail ballots lacking formally required signatures or dates should not be included in official results. However, Democratic officials in Philadelphia and surrounding Bucks, Centre and Montgomery counties are ignoring that court order.

"I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country," Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat, said Thursday as she and other Democrats voted to reject a GOP-led challenge to ballots that should be disqualified.