Displaying posts published in

December 2021

THE WOKE CONSTITUTION

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-woke-constitution/91832/

To those who wonder why the Founding Fathers made the United States Constitution so difficult to amend, we commend the series the Boston Globe is publishing under the headline “Editing the Constitution.” It reckons that our national parchment “is undergoing massive changes in the Supreme Court” and that it’s “time to put the founding document in the hands of the people.”

Bah, humbug, we say. It adds up to one of the most cockamamie compendiums that’s ever been compiled in respect of the 8,000 or so words of the compact that every officer, judge, and legislator of the federal, state, and county governments must be bound by oath to support. If Geo. Washington, James Madison, and the boys ever happened onto this issue of the Globe, they’d fall out of their knee socks.

The series starts with a proposed rewrite of the first two amendments. Freedom of speech would get diluted to freedom of “expression” and have to be “consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses.” The Globe would throw in a previously unenumerated freedom — “association” — but require all rights to be resolved in accordance with the principles of “equality” and “dignity.”

Then the Globe adds another new liberty — the “freedom from religion.” It says: “Both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion shall be respected by the government.” Notice the subtle — or, hey, not so subtle — suggestion that religion is some God-awful pest. The words “free exercise” are freely exorcised. And the disestablishment by Congress of religions established by the states would no longer be prohibited.

Our political divide is no longer between Democrats and Republicans By Shari Forst

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/our_political_divide_is_no_longer_between_democrats_and_republicans.html

It’s between crazed Marxists and the rest of us—and the way to change things is at the ballot box.

We are all aware of the deadly and avoidable crime wave plaguing cities that Marxists run. I am sure the people that live in these communities have been complaining. After all, how could they not? We have had two years of a rolling criminal snowball that has grown to ginormous proportions.

I noticed the uptick in the crime in New York in January 2020 when the “Bail Reform” law went into effect. Slowly on the local news, you heard about someone coming up the steps from the subway and getting cold-cocked in the face, elderly people getting thrown down and beaten, and other violent street crimes.

It grew from there and, after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the kerosene was thrown on the previously slow-burning fuse. The Marxists tried telling us the crime wave was due to the pandemic but I knew—and believe others did too—that it started weeks before the first case of COVID was reported in the United States.

Like a cancer, the effects of these policies took a while to spread and then accelerated quickly. The same pattern was repeated across America as other cities implemented “Bail Reform” and defunded their police departments. All the while, George Soros and other Marxist billionaires hell-bent on destroying this country helped install District Attorneys who refuse to prosecute criminals and judges who put repeat violent offenders back on the streets. Add in governors emptying prisons in the name of Covid and—voila!—instant anarchy.

I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t care how much money Soros and his cabal put behind someone. I would never vote for anyone who advocates for emptying prisons and so-called “Bail Reform” or anyone backed by organizations such as Color of Change or The Tides Foundation. Still, enough people voted for these lunatics to give them power. Now, though, the same people regret their votes, yet no one is listening to them.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed recently spoke out against the smash-and-grab robberies that are now becoming commonplace. What’s interesting is that, when it was just the local small businesses, no leftists seemed to care. When it was retailers for people in the lower- to mid-level economic strata (e.g., Walmart, Target, and CVS), leftists shrugged their shoulders. But when it’s Nordstrom’s, Louis Vuitton, or the Apple store, now elected officials are paying attention.

Gen. Flynn Persecutor Judge Emmett Sullivan Pivots to January 6 Defendants Under the Biden Junta, federal judges become the Democrat equivalent of Soviet commissars. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/gen-flynn-persecutor-judge-emmett-sullivan-pivots-lloyd-billingsley/

One week after his arrest, January 6, defendant Robert Geiswein was indicted by a federal grand jury. As Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness, Geiswein “has been behind bars ever since, denied bail while Judge Emmet Sullivan delayed his trial on numerous occasions.” Embattled Americans might recall Sullivan from the trial of Gen. Michael Flynn, President Trump’s pick for national security advisor.

“We should always remember that our country, was built upon Judeo-Christian values and principles,” Flynn told the Republican convention in 2016. Hillary Clinton, Flynn said, “put our nation’s security at extremely high risk with her careless use of a private e-mail server.” On the other hand, “Donald Trump recognizes the threats we face and is not afraid to call them what they are.” That would be radical Islamic terrorists.

The “composite character” David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama did not want Gen. Flynn to become national security advisor. Obama then targeted Flynn to facilitate action against Trump.

In the course of his duties, Flynn came into contact with foreign nationals under routine surveillance by U.S. intelligence. American citizens in such encounters are normally redacted, but Democrats duly “unmasked” the identity of Gen. Flynn and leaked the information to the establishment media, a “10-year felony,” according to former prosecutor Trey Gowdy.

Samantha Power, the composite character’s ambassador to the UN, made seven unmasking requests for Flynn. CIA boss John Brennan, a Gus Hall voter in 1976, made two requests to unmask Flynn, with intel director James Clapper putting in three. On January 12, 2017, vice president Joe Biden requested to unmask the Trump pick.

FBI  boss James Comey set a perjury trap for Flynn, which led to charges of lying to the FBI. The establishment media presumed Flynn guilty, a tool of Russia, a traitor and so forth. The case wound up in court under federal judge Emmet Sullivan, a 1991 appointee of George H.W. Bush to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. In 1994, President Clinton appointed Sullivan United States District Judge for the District of Columbia.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Targeting a cause of ALS. Scientists at Tel Aviv University have developed an experimental molecule that breaks down the protein TDP-43, a key cause of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). TDP-43 causes motor neurons to degenerate. The new molecule enabled motor neuron activity to be restored and opens the door to an ALS cure.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-university-breakthrough-touted-as-key-to-reversing-als/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27221-8#Sec46

Slowing dementia. Tel Aviv University scientists have made progress in developing a treatment using the NAP peptide to counter Alzheimer’s and other neurological conditions (see here previously). Their new compound dramatically decreased the excessive buildup of the protein tau, which misfolds in Alzheimer’s patients.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-drug-candidate-slows-alzheimers-causing-protein-in-mouse-brains/

https://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(21)01630-9/fulltext

Blood test for early cancer detection. An Israeli-led team of scientists have developed a blood test that analyzes fragments of DNA to determine the impact of the immune system. The test is like a liquid biopsy and can detect cancer early in remote tissues, e.g., bone marrow, lymph nodes and other organs.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-say-new-test-can-gauge-vaccine-response-before-antibodies-form/   https://elifesciences.org/articles/70520

Identifying high-risk hospital patients. Tel Aviv University Professor Noam Shomron has developed an AI tool that interprets routine hospital blood tests to assess patients at danger levels in the case of blood infection.  The tool is shortly to be trialed at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/life-saving-israeli-tech-helps-id-patients-most-at-risk-from-blood-infections/

Designing antibodies to fight disease. Israel’s Biolojic Design is developing an AI platform to generate antibodies that have specific targets and biological effects. It instructs the immune system to precisely attack the causes of disease, such as the mechanism underlying autoimmune disease, cancer or diabetes.

https://www.biolojic.com/  https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3922316,00.html

Smart bandage to heal wounds. Professor Hossam Haick’s lab at Israel’s Technion Institute (see here previously) has developed a smart suture-less dressing that binds the edges of a wound together, wards off infection, and even digitally reports on the wound’s condition to the surgeon.

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/11/25/israeli-innovation-novel-antibacterial-surgical-cut-band-aid-monitoring-healing/  https://www.israel21c.org/a-smart-polymer-that-would-heal-wounds-without-sutures/

Mitral valve replacement. Israel’s TruLeaf Medical, part of Israel’s Allium Medical (see here) has developed a Transcatheter Mitral Valve Replacement (TMVR) solution to save the lives of numerous Mitral Regurgitation patients worldwide. The device has already completed animal studies and is set to be tested in humans soon.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3924605,00.html  https://www.truleaf-medical.com/

Paint additive helps prevent listeria. Israel’s Bio-fence (see here previously) has completed a study showing that its antimicrobial paint additive extends the power of disinfectants. A major Israeli sausage manufacturing plant completely wiped out listeria after applying Bio-fence’s paint coating.

https://www.israel21c.org/new-paint-additive-protects-surfaces-from-deadly-pathogens/

Preventing glaucoma. Israel’s Ophthalmic Sciences has developed IOPerfect – the world’s first AI-based contactless intraocular pressure (IOP) measuring device. It allows those at risk of going blind from glaucoma, to measure their eye pressure anytime and anywhere and communicate the results to their doctor.

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech/israeli-company-says-novel-ai-device-could-help-prevent-adult-blindness-688544  https://op-sci.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAQKplraP4M

How bacteria evade antibiotics. Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered that some bacteria enter a “disrupted” state when attacked but not destroyed by antibiotics. A different chemical is then needed to “finish them off”, otherwise they can eventually recover and reproduce. See also here.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-lab-finds-out-why-some-germs-dodge-drugs-opening-door-to-life-saving-fix/  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MXRVJqbhN7-Zcm8j_WLZJkjqvgSUTvRG

Less antibiotic wastage. An AI tool from Israel’s Technion Institute helps combat antibiotic resistance. It reduced ineffective antibiotics prescribed for urinary tract infections by 35%. The tool was trialed by Israel’s Maccabi Health Management Organization (HMO) and will now be used for other infection types and HMOs.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/35-fewer-patients-given-wrong-medicine-thanks-to-israeli-ai-tool/

Seaweed can protect against Covid. (TY Hazel) Researchers from Tel Aviv University have found that Ulvan, extracted from the “sea lettuce” algae, Ulva, could help stop coronavirus from infecting human cells. The team is still working on identifying the specific chemicals in Ulvan that counter Covid infection.

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/could-seaweed-save-humanity-from-covid-19-687775

https://peerj.com/articles/12398/

“Alexa – watch my mother”. The home monitoring system Vayyar Care (see here previously) is soon to be available as part of Alexa Together, a new subscription service from Amazon.  If Vayyar Care detects a fall, it contacts an urgent response emergency helpline. Alexa will also send a notification to the designated caregiver.

https://www.israel21c.org/vayyar-teams-with-alexa-to-aid-seniors-who-fall-at-home/

We are not mice.  Excellent article about Israel’s Quris (see here previously) which has developed the ability to test new medical treatments on a human simulation chip. Watch the video where Quris founder (Israeli Nobel Prize winner) Aaron Ciechanover explains the problem with previous “mouse model” testing methods.

https://www.israel21c.org/no-animals-harmed-in-new-chip-drug-tests-that-are-faster-and-cheaper/

A 3D-printed ear. The mouse model is still useful for developing groundbreaking medical innovations. Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute combined organ printing and tissue engineering to create a mouse implant that replaced ears that failed to develop in the womb. Can’t wait to hear if it works in humans too!

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/israeli-researchers-create-an-ear-from-nothing-688471

Healthcare platform for research. Israel’s Lynx MD has developed an environment which allows scientists to access and analyze massive amounts of real-world anonymized medical data. It has recently joined forces with leading health organizations to collect real-world data from patients hospitalized with Coronavirus.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3924888,00.html   https://www.lynx.md/

Doctors restore sight of blind Israeli-Arab woman. 60-year-old Hanan Awad from Nazareth had been blind for 20 years due to a severe corneal disease. Doctors at Israel’s Beilinson hospital restored her sight with an implant combining an artificial cornea and a piece of her shin bone. After 3 months, the bone was removed.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/12/15/blind-woman-regains-eyesight-at-israeli-hospital-using-artificial-cornea-carved-from-her-shin-bone/

100 doctors come to Israel’s aid. Masa Israel Journey has brought 100 doctors to Israel to help relieve the pressure in parts of the Healthcare system. The Fellows come from countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Lithuania. The Masa Doctors program has brought almost 1,000 qualified doctors to Israel.

https://www.jns.org/masa-brings-100-plus-young-doctors-to-israel-to-aid-health-care-system/

Today’s 8th Graders Won’t Have to Take the SAT If They Apply to Harvard By Janet Lorin

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-17/harvard-drops-standardized-test-mandate-for-several-more-years

Harvard College is dropping its requirement for SAT or ACT scores for future applicants as young as those currently in 8th grade.

“Students who do not submit standardized test scores will not be disadvantaged in their application process,” William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at the Ivy League school, said Thursday in an emailed statement. 

The pandemic has altered the way colleges evaluate applicants. Several others, including Columbia University, Amherst College and Cornell University, previously announced the tests would be optional for current high school sophomores, and the University of California system scrapped them entirely. 

The current admissions cycle is the second for which students have been able to apply to Harvard without needing standardized tests. The scores are one factor among many considered, Harvard said in the statement. The school, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, also announced that it had accepted 7.9% of the 9,406 students who applied under its non-binding early action program.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer: Open the Books

https://mailchi.mp/11de579bd01a/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-58709?e=0c8ccf8e98
OUR WALL STREET JOURNAL OPEN LETTER TO MR. AND MS. TAXPAYER
Our open letter to Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer published as a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal today…

In January, Democrats plan to bring back the so-called Build Back Better Bill.

If your Congressman and your Senator vote for it, that vote says everything you need to know about who she/he represents. And it is not you.

Here is what your Congressmen and Senators say the bill costs: $1,750,000,000,000.

However, the permanent cost—as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office — to fund this pork-filled so-called Build Back Better Bill is up to $4,730,000,000,000.

So much for the president’s claim that this bill is “free” or “costs nothing.” 

Do the politicians really think we are that stupid?

How Our Federal Overseers Do Science By George Leef

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-our-federal-overseers-do-science/

Emails between Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci show a coordinated campaign against the Great Barrington Declaration.

Phil Magness, that irrepressible foe of statism, managed to obtain emails between White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci and NIH director Francis Collins in which they hatch an attack on the Great Barrington Declaration. (The GBD was authored by three well-known epidemiologists, arguing that the best approach to COVID was not locking down, but targeted protection for the truly vulnerable.)

Dissent from the federal government’s chosen strategy was quite unwelcome. “There needs to be a quick and devastating takedown of its premises,” Collins wrote in reference to the GBD. Real scientists would investigate the premises first, then decide if the declaration should be subject to a “takedown,” but no such thing ever happened. The authors were disparaged, their motives impugned, their conclusions ridiculed, but one looks in vain for anything like a scientific counter-argument.

It’s enough to make you suspect that the real objective of Fauci and friends was expansion of government authority rather than protection against disease.

Against ‘World History’ By Stanley Kurtz

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/12/27/against-world-history/

It’s good to study other cultures; that’s not what progressive educators want.

With culturally leftist school­ing only lately ranked as a top-tier political issue, conservatives have yet to take full measure of the woke education threat. Beyond better-known dangers such as critical race theory, the 1619 Project, action civics, and lessons in gender fluidity lies the “world-history movement” — educators bent on forming a generation of “global citizens” who reject both American patriotism and any sense of indebtedness to our Western heritage of liberty.

For decades, the world-history movement has quietly advanced in the slipstream of higher-profile changes in curriculum. The battle over National History Standards for the United States in the mid 1990s — a breakthrough mo­ment for the education Left — focused on the U.S.-history component of the proposal. Critics largely ignored the equally troubling, and thoroughly globalist, National Standards for World History. The 2014–15 battle over the College Board’s revisionist AP U.S. History and AP European History frameworks did much to highlight their globalist underpinnings. Yet widespread adoption of the still more radical AP World History course went largely unnoticed.

This fall, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem rejected draft state-history and civics standards that mandated political protests (“action civics”), short-shrifted high-school U.S. history, downplayed America’s British heritage, and left the role of religion in American history largely unacknowledged. Yet no one even noticed that the draft standards’ adoption of the College Board’s AP World History approach had ef­fectively eliminated the study of West­ern civilization from South Dakota’s schools.

How Biden Blew It By Charles C. W. Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/how-biden-blew-it/

It is tough to find a modern presidency that has collapsed as swiftly as this one.

I t didn’t have to be this way.

If he had wanted to, President Biden could have fulfilled the promises that he made during his campaign and set himself and his party up for a successful 2022. He could have ignored the hollow passions of Twitter and cable TV, lowered the temperatures that so mar our quotidian politics, and delivered the quiet, limited, competent leadership that he promised during his inconspicuous run for the office. Recognizing that his party enjoyed only the barest of congressional majorities, he could have scaled back his lofty ambitions and ensured that his own focus and the focus of the public at large were as tightly aligned as possible. He could have narrowed his initial COVID bill, eschewing the entreaties to go big and limiting the scope of its relief to the desperate alone. He could have made the bipartisan infrastructure bill a centerpiece, rather than an afterthought, of his first year. He could have grasped that, because federal power is so limited, his role in fighting the pandemic would be exclusively oratorical. He could have understood that people care deeply about illegal immigration and gotten serious about limiting it, even as he struck a kinder tone. Having realized that inflation was clearly not set to be “transitory,” he could have directed the sum of his efforts toward alleviating it. And, while he was doing all that, he could have paid attention to the details that his job throws up in abundance — particularly in the foreign-policy realm — and thereby avoided the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan that drove a stake through his presidency within six months of his taking his oath. A little more humility, a greater willingness to say “no,” and a more acute understanding of why he won in the first instance would all have gone a long way.

12 Times Joe Biden Completely Made Up Stories, Lied, Or Said Something Crazy Lots of politicians are big, fat liars. Joe Biden is merely one of the most obvious. By Jordan Boyd

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/16/12-times-joe-biden-completely-made-up-stories-lied-or-said-something-crazy/

President Joe Biden has a long list of slip-ups in his political history, and his first year in the White House was no exception. In addition to bumbling through national addresses and mixing up the titles of world leaders, Biden infamously misremembered his past, lied, and even made up several stories to score points with his audience. Here are just a few of such incidents.

1. Joe Biden’s Made-Up Amtrak Story

At a 50th-anniversary event for Amtrak in Philadelphia, Biden said that when he was vice president, a train conductor congratulated him for traveling 1.5 million miles on Amtrak. A Fox News report out on May 5, however, pokes holes in the president’s account.

“When I became vice president, one of the Capitol Hill newspapers estimated that I had taken more than 7,000 round trips on Amtrak over my career,” Biden said. “I think that’s an exaggeration. I’m going to rely on those two conductors. … One of them was a guy named Angelo Negri.”

Biden continued, telling the audience Negri estimated Biden had traveled 1.5 million miles on Amtrak trains around his fourth or fifth year as vice president, which would have been in 2013 or 2014.

“My mom was sick, and I used to try to come home almost every weekend as vice president to see her,” Biden said. “I got on the train and Angelo Negri came up and he goes, ‘Joey, baby,’ and he grabbed my cheek like he always did. … He said, ‘Joey, what’s the big deal? One-point-three million miles on Air Force Two? Do you know how many miles you traveled on Amtrak?’ I said, ‘No, Angie, I don’t know.’ He gave me the calculation and he said ‘You traveled 1.5 million miles on Amtrak.;”

As Fox News pointed out, however, an obituary for Negri says the conductor retired in 1993, decades before Biden’s supposed story took place, while he was still a senator from Delaware. Biden’s mother died in 2010.