They call this progress?

The New Neo Posted on by

As an official old curmudgeon, I hereby complain about the following:

(1) Company or agency answering messages that feature that same perky/happy voice (what’s she so pleased about?) reciting a long list of possible numbers to press for supposed help. The way it’s arranged, one has to stick with it, listen for a long time, and press a series of numbers in order to finally come to the one people usually want: agent. Or rather AGENT!!, which I often end up screaming over and over while I listen to her natter on.

(2) Self-service grocery checkout lines. I’ve already written about that, but it bears repeating because, as an old curmudgeon, I believe in being boring.

(3) Toilets that are too high and are shaped funny. Those of us who aren’t very tall, or who have bad backs, are in trouble with those things, which one can increasingly find in hotels and motels. Not good. At least I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one of these.

(4) Over-packaging when something comes in the mail.

(5) The fact that contributing to a charity guarantees that said charity will become your new bosom buddy, sending you a solicitation on a weekly basis.

(6) Phone calls or emails asking you to complete a survey after you’ve had a medical or dental appointment. Does anyone think the answers actually lead to better service?

(7) The increasing size and weight of cellphones. I have small hands, and various arm injuries, and holding those things has become more difficult. They still make a few smaller ones, fortunately, but not many.

(8) Chicklet keyboards on laptops. Hate them. Hate Apple. And yes, I had an Apple computer for four long years. Couldn’t wait to get rid of it.

(9) The increasing use of graphic symbols rather than words, to indicate various computer functions. Recognizing graphics is not my forte.

(10) Texting replacing phoning. I realize that a lot of people prefer texting, but I’m not one of them. I like the human voice and the personal contact. Texting is okay for short messgges like, “I’ve arrived at the restaurant.” But people use it for a lot more than that.

I could go on, but I’ll have mercy on you and stop here. But feel free to add your own peeves in the comments.

The abortion pill: legal issues

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve read quite a few MSM articles on the SCOTUS ruling about the abortion pill, and the reporting lacked so many of the details I was looking for that I ended up turning to law blogs and the plaintiffs’ brief to get any clarity at all. And even then, many questions remain in my mind.

Here’s a fairly good law blog article on the subject. An excerpt:

The Supreme Court on Friday night granted a request from the Biden administration and a drug manufacturer to put on hold a ruling by a federal judge in Texas that suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, part of a two-drug protocol used to end pregnancies in their early stages. The battle over medication abortions, which account for over half of all abortions performed in the United States each year, now returns to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which is scheduled to hear oral argument in the case next month. The order means that the drug will remain widely available while litigation continues.

Two justices indicated that they would have denied the requests. Justice Clarence Thomas did not elaborate on his reasoning, but Justice Samuel Alito penned a four-page dissent in which he questioned the need for the court to act now.

The decision only means that the pill won’t be blocked until the issue is decided later, on the merits. That should happen pretty soon, and then it might reach the Supreme Court on appeal. I think that this interim decision makes sense, because it’s a pill that’s been in use for nearly twenty five years, with FDA approval, and a short wait just preserves the status quo.

Plaintiffs contend, however, that FDA approval was obtained by skirting the usual rules for the process, and that subsequently removing even more of the original safeguards has made the pill dangerous. Do they make a good case for that? I suggest you read at least the first twenty pages or so of the brief, it’s quite interesting.

Abortion activists maintain that the suit is an effort by anti-abortion forces to prohibit a vast number of abortions, and that their goal is to ultimately end all abortions. I wouldn’t doubt it. Their goal is certainly to ban this drug, but – as with many lawsuits – it’s not the only thing they want. The court could fail to grant that request and yet grant another, which is to allow the drug to remain legal but to roll back the situation by replacing some of the safeguards that were only jettisoned in 2016 and then during the COVID years, such as (for example), having to actually see a doctor in person before being prescribed the drug, and being screened for gestational age of the pregnancy by sonogram (the reason for the latter is that the pill is increasingly dangerous to the mother with increasing age of the fetus, and women don’t always know how advanced their pregnancies are). These pills apparently presently account for half of all abortions in the US, and are only available up to 10 weeks (they used to only be available up to 7 weeks).

Here are the plaintiffs’ goals regarding that more limited element of the lawsuit:

The 2019 Citizen Petition asked the FDA to take the following actions to restore and strengthen elements of the chemical abortion drug regimen and prescriber requirements approved in 2000 to protect the health, safety, and welfare of women and girls:

• Reduce the maximum gestational age from 70 days to 49 days;
• Limit the ability to prescribe and dispense chemical abortion drugs to qualified, licensed physicians—not other “healthcare providers”;
• Mandate certified abortionists to be physically present when dispensing chemical abortion drugs;
• Require that the prescriber perform an ultrasound to assess gestational age, identify ectopic pregnancies, ensure compliance with FDA restrictions, and adequately inform the woman of gestational age specific risks, which rise with increasing gestational age;
• Restore the requirement for in-person administration of misoprostol;
• Restore the requirement for an in-person follow-up visit to confirm abortion and rule out life-threatening infection through clinical examination or ultrasonographic scan;
• Restore the 2000 label language that stated that chemical abortion drugs are contraindicated if a woman lacks adequate access to
emergency medical care; and
• Restore the prescriber reporting requirements for all serious adverse events, including any deaths, hospitalizations, blood transfusions, emergency room visits, failures requiring surgical completion, ongoing pregnancy, or other major complications following the chemical abortion regimen.

The 2019 Petitioners also asked the FDA to require a formal study of outcomes for at-risk populations, including the pediatric female population, patients with repeat chemical abortions, patients who have limited access to emergency room services, and patients who self-administer misoprostol.

There’s much much more at the link, too much to adequately cover here.

The 2019 petition described above was almost entirely denied by the FDA, which claimed this sort of thing:

In support of its claim that in-person dispensing is unnecessary, the FDA relied on the “small” number of adverse events voluntarily reported in the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) database to justify the elimination of this safeguard, even though the FDA had years ago removed the requirement for abortionists to report nonfatal adverse events.

If there’s no reporting requirement, how can the data be relied on? I don’t see that it can.

I want to repeat that I’m in favor of allowing the drug to be dispensed for now. I also think it will be difficult for any court to judge this case and ban the drug entirely, because doing that would rest on scientific data that simply isn’t there, and requires second-guessing the decisions of the FDA. You may not trust them, I may not trust them, but if courts grant challenge after challenge to the FDA’s medical judgment, it opens up quite the can of worms. The evidence for overruling the FDA;s medical judgment had better be plenty strong. Or, alternatively, the court could decide that the FDA didn’t follow proper procedures; that would be an easier way out, in the legal sense. If the case ultimately goes to SCOTUS, I don’t think they’ll vote for a full ban, although they may decide to put some of the safeguards back in place.

NOTE: I was for repealing Roe and leaving these decisions to the states; I think Roe was judicial overreach. But I’m not for national prohibitions on abortion or national requirements that all states allow abortion (such as Roe) unless either goal is accomplished by constitutional amendment rather than through the courts. I’m consistent in that approach.

The Alzheimer’s gene: to test or not to test, that is the question

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article about a woman whose mother died of Alzheimer’s, and who decided to get tested for the Alzheimer’s genetic marker in hopes it might reassure her, and discovered she actually has a double dose of the gene that predisposes people to Alzheimer’s. That news has thrown her into even more worry, although she has been doing more traveling to places on her “bucket list.”

I decided quite some time ago not to do genetic testing to see if I have genes for any diseases. I’m pretty sure I do, and I’m pretty sure I know what some of them are, and I already try (but sometimes fail) to live my life in ways that might prevent those diseases or at least stave them off longer. If there was a very effective early treatment for something, maybe I’d do the testing. But right now, no.

Alzheimer’s is one of those diseases about which we know quite a bit but not nearly enough. For example, even the genetic marker doubly possessed by the woman in the article – which reportedly makes her chances of getting Alzheimer’s eight to twelve times more likely than those with a neutral version of the gene (notice, by the way, that the figures are expressed in the difficult-to-interpret form of relative risk rather than absolute risk) – doesn’t make the disease a sure thing for her. It turns out that having the more dangerous gene does not mean that a person will get Alzheimer’s, and not having it doesn’t mean that a person won’t get it. It’s far more complicated, as the article I just linked explains.

For example:

But not everyone who has one or even two APOE e4 genes develops Alzheimer’s disease. And the disease occurs in many people who don’t even have an APOE e4 gene, suggesting that the APOE e4 gene affects risk but is not a cause. Other genetic and environmental factors likely are involved in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

The article goes on to list seven more genes that seem to affect Alzheimer’s, and it’s not at all certain that’s all there are. So the conclusion is:

Most experts don’t recommend genetic testing for late-onset Alzheimer’s. In some instances of early-onset Alzheimer’s, however, genetic testing may be appropriate.

Most clinicians discourage testing for the APOE genotype because the results are difficult to interpret. And doctors can generally diagnose Alzheimer’s disease without the use of genetic testing.

As the saying goes, old age is not for sissies.

The Biden family gets a pass so far on its corruption

The New Neo Posted on by

From Andrew C. McCarthy:

A lawyer for the whistleblower has reported that “preferential treatment and politics” have been “improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.”

Of course, that has to be true.

How else could Hunter Biden have been under investigation for so many years with no charges?

The gun offenses are so straightforward that they’d take a competent investigator five days, not five years, to wrap into a prosecutable case.

Some of the tax offenses, which stretch back seven years or more, are so undeniable that liens were placed on Hunter’s properties, and it has been widely reported that he borrowed millions of dollars from a crony to pay what he owed the government.

It gets worse.

The salient feature of the investigation is not Hunter Biden.

It is the Biden family — specifically, the question of why, when Joe Biden exercised significant influence over U.S. policy regarding several foreign governments, including such anti-American regimes as China and bastions of corruption as Ukraine, people closely tied to those governments believed it was in their interests to pay millions of dollars to Joe Biden’s unstable son, his smooth-operator brother, and other Biden relatives.

The long-awaited though always obvious answer comes from the IRS whistleblower: Political interference from the Biden administration has prevented investigators from taking basic steps they would take in any similar situation where millions of dollars of foreign money had been paid in blatant efforts to influence a U.S. official.

And here’s Jonathan Turley on the same subject. First, the title and subtitle: “These new facts make the Biden family the GOAT of corruption – The Biden family operated what could be one of the largest influence peddling efforts in history.” And this from a man not particularly given to hyperbole.

More:

For years, the Democratically controlled committees blocked any investigation into allegations of corruption and influence peddling by the Biden family. Before the takeover by the Republicans in the House, this whistleblower would have had little reason to seek protection from a Committee with demonstrably little interest in such allegations.

In fairness to the Democrats, both parties have used their power to shield presidents or political allies. However, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has now uncovered an array of new facts that are shedding light on what could be one of the largest influence peddling efforts in history. For a city where influence peddling is a virtual cottage industry, that is saying a lot. Even in this premier league of corruption, the Biden family is the GOAT.

The Bidens have long counted on an enabling media to tamp down coverage of corruption allegations. The most remarkable effort was successful burying of the Hunter Biden laptop before the election. The Bidens were able to get the media to buy into the effort. For many reporters, even the acknowledgment of this corruption would be a self-indictment of their own lack of curiosity and integrity.

Yet, there has also been a notable lack of perceptible movement in any of the investigations of the Bidens. Take the investigation of David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware. Weiss is looking into an array of possible crimes, including tax violations, unlawful work as a foreign agent, unlawful foreign transactions and other offenses. Many of these crimes are relatively easy to investigate, but the investigation has moved at a glacial pace.

Much more at the link.

It’s tiring and depressing to even think about these things, and about the fact that I believe they’ll get away with it. I keep repeating that like a broken record, I know. But that’s what I see.

More on the Hunter laptop letter from the fifty-one

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve reported on the basics of this already, but here’s more detail:

The extraordinary admission by career intelligence officer Michael J. Morell provides stunning evidence that the now-infamous letter from 51 security officials in October 2021 was not an organic intelligence community initiative but rather a political dirty trick by Blinken and the Biden campaign.

Jordan sent a letter demanding Blinken answer a series of questions about Morell’s stunning testimony, as lawmakers weighed the enormity of America’s top diplomat being willing to accuse a nuclear-armed superpower of interfering in the 2020 election without evidence. That letter included major snippets of Morell’s testimony.

Morell, who retired as deputy CIA director after a long and storied career and served as its acting chief, was on the short list in fall 2020 to be Biden’s CIA director when he became involved in the letter…

In a transcribed interview with the House Judiciary government weaponization subcommittee, Morell admitted he got involved with the letter at Blinken’s request and later received a call from the Biden campaign thanking him when Joe Biden used the letter and its false implication to blunt criticism of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings

The transcript of Morell’s interview showed he had no intent to write the statement and that Blinken’s “call triggered” his actions.

More at the link.

This is perhaps the most interesting part of Morell’s testimony. It’s his explanation as to why he did it:

“There were two intents,” he said. “One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue; and, two, it was [to] help Vice President.” When asked why he wanted to help Biden, he replied, “because I wanted him to win the election.”

Notice that he says that he and his confederates had “concern” that they wanted to “share with the American people” about the fact that Russians were “playing” on the issue – not that Russians had actually faked the laptop. Just that they might somehow take advantage of the reporting about the laptop. Plus, of course, that Morell wanted Biden to win, probably for personal reasons (to get the big job, and although he ultimately didn’t get it he certainly could not have known that at the time) and because isn’t it obvious that Biden would be a great president?

I found a comment at Ace’s that I think says it all: “I miss back when I was naive enough to think that something would happen because of something like this.”

And also this one: ” Is it a ‘bombshell’ if every single sentient human being already knew it? Just saying.”

Well, we didn’t know the details. But I never doubted it was orchestrated by people trying to boost Biden in the election; that’s a no-brainer. It’s really not even a surprise is that it was Blinken. It also wouldn’t be a surprise if Biden himself had called the guy.

Larry Elder enters the 2024 race

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s what he says:

“America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable. We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there. That’s why I’m running for President,” Elder wrote in an accompanying statement…

The conservative host, who is Black, has said that he believes that among the top issues in the 2024 election are inflation, energy, and border security. But he’s also emphasized that he wants to highlight the plight of children in America being born to parents who are not married and to target what he argues is “this lie about systemic racism.”

And how do the creative minds at the WaPo deal with this development, the entry of a black conservative into the GOP race? Why, with an article that starts with this headline: “A starkly diverse Republican field. An almost-certainly White nominee.”

A nominee as white as – Joe Biden? And what is so stark about this diversity? Why isn’t it – like the diversity among the Democrats – fabulous? (Yes, I know the answer.)

The article continues:

With his announcement, Elder joined a remarkably diverse field. He’s one of two Black men in the mix for the nomination (including, as will be the case throughout this article, the exploratory committee formed by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.)) and one of four candidates who isn’t a White man. Since 2000, only in the 2016 fields were as high a percentage of the declared candidates not a White man at this point in the contest. Of course back then, there were only three candidates in the mix on the Republican side and one, Hillary Clinton, on the Democratic.

That said, there is essentially no chance that Elder will be his party’s nominee. In fact, it’s almost certainly the case that the Republicans will, for the 43rd straight time, nominate a White man.

Every single president has been a white man except Barack Obama, and he was a half-white man. And yes, the Democrats managed to nominate a white woman once, Hillary Clinton. How’d that work out?

I, for one, do not care about the race of a candidate or a president. That makes me a dinosaur, of course. I predict that if Elder starts getting traction, Democrats will find a woman or group of women to come out of the woodwork and accuse him of sexual harassment. That’s the usual M.O. of the left in dealing with a black conservative. In fact, they already have this sort of thing to fall back on with Elder.

The Biden coverup

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s the crime and the coverup – and my cynicism tells me that there will be no consequences for either.

Ace has a good summary here. An excerpt:

Congress now has testimony from Mike Morrell — the CIA official who said nothing when his superior lied to Congress, and who later quit government to make big money working for a Hillary Clinton-connected “intelligence” company (Beacon) — that the entire lie [the letter from 51 former intelligence officials saying that the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation] was organized by our Secretary of State.

He called up his leftwing intelligence buddies and told them to lie.

I hear that Morrell says Blinken lied to some of the officials to get them to sign the lying letter, telling them it would not be used for political purposes. Blinken also told them that they had evidence that the laptop was a Russian op, which, of course, was a lie.

When you’re in power and you’re unscrupulous, you can get cooperation for the lies that will help you win elections.

More:

“We can prove that the entire purpose of this letter at the outset was to influence a presidential election with some of the most senior people who have ever been in our intelligence community using the imprimatur of their security clearances to pave the way for Joe Biden’s presidency,” Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast this week.

…

“Morell wanted to be Joe Biden’s CIA director, got a phone call from Tony Blinken, who was representing the Biden campaign, saying, ‘Gee, Mike, doesn’t this Hunter Biden laptop look like Russian disinformation?’?” said Gaetz.

“Morell testifies that then triggers him to be the ringleader of an enterprise to go to others and to put together a letter for the specific purpose of use by Joe Biden in the presidential debate … We can prove that and much more.”

The committee has also interviewed a former adviser to ex-CIA Director John Brennan and Obama White House alum Nick Shapiro, who cooked up the letter with Morell and delivered it to Politico.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will release a report in the next couple of weeks tracing the origins of the “Dirty 51” letter, showing it constituted corrupt interference in the 2020 presidential election.

Perhaps you noticed, as I did, that Joe Biden recently took his son Hunter on a junket to Ireland. My first thought was that Joe and Hunter must be feeling immune from facing any consequences for Hunter’s – and the Biden family’s – corrupt activities. Miranda Devine agrees, and her article contains more about the machinations to protect Hunter and his dad:

The IRS whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Lytle, alleged in a letter to Jordan and eight other House and Senate committee chairs that “preferential treatment and politics [are] improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.”

What’s more, the whistleblower has evidence that will “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee” — who is Attorney General Merrick Garland, according to congressional sources.

In sworn testimony to a Senate oversight hearing on March 1, Garland was grilled about the Delaware investigation into Hunter by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Garland was asked whether Weiss had “sought permission of another US Attorney’s Office, such as in the District of Columbia or California [both places where Hunter has lived], to bring [tax-related] ­charges? If so, was it denied?”

Garland replied that he did not know but went on to insist that Weiss has been “advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it necessary … He is not to be denied anything that he needs…

At no point in this whole sorry mess have I ever thought any of the Bidens would be prosecuted for anything. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Tenants’ rights gone wild in Oakland

The New Neo Posted on by

Why would anyone want to be a small landlord in a city with rules like this?:

Oakland is one of the last cities in the Bay Area hanging on to its eviction moratorium, which was introduced during the pandemic to protect tenants from eviction.

Many mom-and-pop landlords claim their tenants are taking advantage of the policy, leaving them at risk of losing their livelihoods…

Williams currently lives in the top unit of the duplex he’s owned for nearly 20 years. It is his only home. Renting it out was supposed to secure his retirement. But at the end of this month, he’s facing foreclosure.

He said for 10 years, his tenant in the bottom unit had paid $1,500 for the 3-bedroom, 1-bath, though the checks always came late or bounced.

But in March 2020, she stopped paying altogether.

“It’s a nightmare,” Williams told KPIX. “It’s an absolute endless nightmare where it’s ridiculous that we’re put in this situation for three years, with no conversation, or any kind of dialogue on how do we recapture our funds, other than we have to go to court to do that, or chase them or lose the money.”

I’ve known for years that, in the Bay Area, tenants’ rights make it nearly impossible to evict anyone. That was true even before COVID, and COVID only made it worse. Here are the Oakland rules as they stand now, at least on paper.

By the way, $1500 a month for a 3-bedroom apartment in Oakland is dirt cheap.

Those Trump vs. DeSantis polls

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m puzzled as to why anyone would pay attention to polls about Trump versus DeSantis at this point.

Trump is obviously going to be ahead of DeSantis at the moment. That may continue indefinitely and Trump may win the 2024 GOP nomination. But that situation may change, perhaps dramatically – and I’m not just saying that for the obvious reason that the 2024 primaries are a long way away. I’m saying it because DeSantis hasn’t even declared his candidacy yet, and I would wager that a huge number of potential GOP primary voters are mostly unfamiliar with him. And there has not yet been a face-to-face encounter between the two men such as happens in the debates, which should be telling.

I can guarantee one thing, though: if DeSantis does run, or even if he doesn’t, there will be plenty of Democrat crossover votes for Trump in the primaries in states where it’s permitted. And it won’t be because those people plan to vote for him in the general; it will be because they think he’s easily beatable. That’s sometimes a risky bet, but I think it’s one they’ll make.