Political Review and Comment: May 2022

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Obama Talks About Using a 'Stand-in, a Front-Man' for a Third Term

Obama Talks About Using a 'Stand-in, a Front-Man' for a Third Term

By C. Douglas Golden December 15, 2020 at 7:52am

If you didn’t vote for Joe Biden for president, and the former vice president actually takes office on Jan. 20, you’re probably worrying yourself over the prospect that it’ll turn into a de facto third term for Barack Obama.

Well, if you listen to Barack Obama, you needn’t worry: It’s definitely going to turn into a third term for him.

Granted, when he appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” late last month, Obama didn’t say it in as many words. He couldn’t, because portraying Joe Biden as the Dmitry Medvedev to his Vladimir Putin might seem a bit … off to Americans. In fact, the way he phrased it meant that it mostly flew under the radar for a few weeks.

However, in an interview he did with late-night TV’s most obsequious Democrat booster, we were treated to some grade-A unintentional honesty.

Asked if he missed his old job when he looked at the headlines from the Trump administration, Obama mentioned that there were plenty of people who wanted him to have a third term. Alas, there was that pesky 22nd Amendment in the way, limiting him to two terms.

But wait! There’s a catch.

“If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a frontman or frontwoman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats, looking through the stuff, then deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking — I’d be fine with that,” Obama said.

“Because I found the work fascinating. Even on my worst days, I found puzzling out these big, complicated, difficult issues — especially if you’re working with some great people — to be professionally, really satisfying. But I do not miss having to wear a tie every day.”

There seems to be a genuine loathing among us conservatives when talk-show hosts or other entertainment figures bring Democrat politicians on for interviews and treat them with uncritical adoration. I’ll never get this, because if you want to hear Barack Obama say the quiet part out loud, the best chance you have is when you’ve got Stephen Colbert sitting across from him with puppy-dog eyes, feeding Obama softball questions at the same time he’s feeding his ego.

The exact situation Obama is describing would be difficult to pull off — although given his former second-in-command’s reliance on the teleprompter, Obama feeding Biden lines while the 44th president was in the basement in his sweats isn’t as far out of the question as you might imagine.

In a more general sense, however, the idea that a potential Biden presidency could be shaping up to be a third-term for Obama is something even the media is doing a grimace emoji over.

Biden has been crystal clear on two public policy goals: Signing back on to the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement. Both were signature moments (literally) of the Obama administration. Neither actually accomplished what it was intended to do: The Iran deal did nothing to deter Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon in the long run and the Paris accord will do little to reduce climate change.

When it comes to specific personnel, Biden wants to nominate Anthony Blinken — who played a role in plenty of Obama-era foreign policy disasters, including military intervention in Libya — as his secretary of state, according to The Associated Press. John Kerry, who ran the State Department during the second Obama administration, is in line to be Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate.

Do you think Joe Biden would be a puppet president?

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Biden's Slip of the Tongue Denigrates Our Entire Political System: 'Democracy Is Not Perfect; It's Never Been Good'

Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman under Obama, is Biden’s choice for the White House press secretary. Obama’s secretary of agriculture was former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. Biden’s secretary of agriculture, if all goes as planned, according to CNN, will be … former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. Obama surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy is set to become Biden surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy, CNN reported.

Ron Klain was Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president. Biden wants him to be his chief of staff again, this time for a more attractive office. Susan Rice, former national security advisor under Obama, is Biden’s choice to head up the White House Domestic Policy Council, the AP reported.

NPR noted that as of Saturday, of 16 Biden cabinet picks, 12 were Obama appointees. The best thing that could be said at this point is that Ben Rhodes, Obama’s unctuous deputy national security advisor and foreign policy bro, hasn’t yet been offered a job by Biden, although you get the feeling that might be just because no one’s reminded Biden yet.

One can express some happiness, I suppose, that Biden hasn’t gone the other way and chosen Rep. Ilhan Omar for a potential secretary of state. However, there are other competent liberal careerists that could fill out a cabinet who weren’t part of the 44th president’s team. A potential Biden administration is being filled with talent curated and nurtured by former President Obama. And, rest assured, they’re going to be answering his phone calls if they come — or rather, when they come.

Just before Obama got a bit too candid about that de facto third-term, Colbert and the former president had another curious back-and-forth. At about the 5:40 mark in the video above, Colbert mentioned that Michelle Obama had requested he stop calling her the former first lady or “madam first lady.” It’s just “Michelle” from now on.

“Mr. President, is there anything you’d like to say to me?” Colbert asked, implying maybe it was time for “Mr. Obama” or “Barack.”

“Nope,” Obama responded.

There was an awkward pause. Colbert licked his pen.

“You know what, I take that back,” Obama said. “You don’t have to call me Mr. President. You can just call me president.”

Yes, I get it. It was a joke. So was the third-term quip. Obama the comedian probably should have read the room a bit better.

The lost Barack Obama's interview on the Constitution

Barack Obama's Poor Understanding of the Constitution

The Founding Fathers were correct in the way they set up the Constitution.

By Heather Higgins US News and World Report

|Nov. 3, 2008, at 11:08 a.m.

This is interesting since Obama may actually be the one running the country.

Obama Would Radically Rework the Constitution

A 2001 interview of Sen. Barack Obama saying some pretty remarkable things about what he sees as the inadequacy of our Constitution has recently come to light. They go to the core of what this election is about and, even more fundamentally, what America is and may be.

It's perhaps good to remember first what makes America different from other countries. Unlike in other places that are defined by geography and ancestry, to be an American comes from subscribing to a particular set of ideas that are very, very different from those held in much of the rest of the world.

It doesn't matter where you are born or what race or ethnicity you are—anyone can become an American.

At the root of the American idea are the truths that our founders described as "self-evident" but that many people first take for granted and then fail to defend: that this country is based on faith in the uniqueness and capacity for self-determination of each individual.

That central idea came from a certainty that we were created by "nature's God" and that God—not government—had endowed each of us with rights, first among which were life, liberty, and property, the combination of which allowed the pursuit—but no guarantee—of happiness. (It is precisely because the power of this argument was understood that those who advocated slavery denied the full humanity of slaves.)

That understanding led them to create for the first time in history a government built out of and respecting these universal rights of man, a government that was "of, by, and for" the people, not the other way around. And it also led them to craft our Bill of Rights.

Obama in his interview disparages the Constitution as merely "a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf." He believes—and he's right—that changing this is the way to bring about "redistributive change."

But the founders were deeply purposeful and intellectually coherent in their definition of rights. Classically, rights are the lowest, most basic universal claims. Think of them as the ground rules for everyone, weak and strong, to respect each other and get on.

Their important characteristics are these: First, they exist outside of us, coming from God or nature, not government, and so are independent of the whims of government and cannot be either manufactured or, of even greater concern, extinguished when they get in the way of someone powerful. No one has to give us the ability to pursue happiness; it comes from within ourselves.

Second, they are timeless, applying regardless of whether it's 200 years ago or a thousand years in the future—governments can't use the excuse "well, that was then, but times have changed."

Third, they are universal, applying to everyone, not just some preferred subset.

And fourth, they are noncoercive, or negative: They delineate what others cannot deprive you of without due process of law. And they prevent you from being coerced.

The founders were not coldhearted. The very understanding of rights as the lowest obligation means that there are also higher obligations: You can't force someone to be a good Samaritan, but you can expect it of anyone decent. Those who give, give of their free will and consensually, not because the government forces it.

Rights don't exist in a vacuum; they carry corollary responsibilities that fall on the citizens who enjoy those rights. That understanding is precisely why volunteerism has such a strong tradition in this country; we knew caring for our neighbor was our responsibility as citizens, not the government's.

But Obama, like many leftists before him, is unhappy with the constraints of our Constitution. He wants to turn voluntary responsibilities and moral obligations that citizens choose to undertake into so-called affirmative rights. That idea is sugarcoated as "what the government must do on your behalf." But that sort of thinking—that government should do it—is precisely what saps volunteerism and helps explain why both the Obamas' and the Bidens' charitable contributions are so pitiful.

It's also important to remember that if the government is doing something for one person—"redistributive change" as Obama wants, it must do something to someone else—which is exactly what our Constitution specifically precludes.

But even more radically undermining of the American idea is Obama's idea that government can create new "rights." If Obama believes government can create rights, then that means he thinks governments can also take them away.

Of course, this is at the heart of the two philosophies between which we are being asked to choose in this election. Do you think as our founders did that rights—including to your own property earned by your own labor—come from the inherent value of individual persons (not government) and must be protected from government? Or do you reject that foundational American idea and instead think rights can be manufactured (and removed) by government for whatever it deems to be the greater good? No less than the American Idea is at stake.

Heather Higgins is a member of the board of directors for the Independent Women's Voice.

Tags: Barack Obama, 2008 presidential election, Constitution

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Subway shooting arrest.

An arrest is made in the shooting in the subway on Sunday that is excellent police work. Once the suspect was identified, he turned himself in through a minister. Naturally, the suspect has other violent arrest. The suspect is not that bad a person as he only had 19 arrests in 7 years. Should have been in jail awaiting trial. It is interesting that the suspect is black, and the victim was white. Yet we have not heard the usual rhetoric of racism, gun banning, witnessing violence and other accusations that we usually hear if the roles were reversed. Of course, the Manhattan DA, a George Soros funded person, will probably reduce the charges to gun possession that was accidently discharged. If you wish to travel the subways in today’s violence, and you are not eligible to carry a concealed firearm, better to take a taxi or other means of transportation. Better yet, move out of this and any blue state where the safety of you and your family may become perilous. These cities still want to defund the police.

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Is Ivermectin a Cancer Solution?

BY JOSEPH MERCOLA TIMEMAY 12, 2022 PRINT

It’s been vilified as being dangerous, useless or both, but extensive research shows that’s not true. This study demonstrates potential for its use against a broad range of cancers. Along with direct cytotoxic effects, it’s believed to help regulate the tumor microenvironment, mediating immunogenic cell death.

Story at-a-glance

· Ivermectin has notable antitumor effects, which include inhibiting proliferation, metastasis and angiogenic activity in cancer cells

· Ivermectin may target cancer in multiple ways, including inducing apoptosis and autophagy while also inhibiting tumor stem cells and reversing multidrug resistance

· Along with direct cytotoxic effects, it’s believed that ivermectin regulates the tumor microenvironment, mediating immunogenic cell death

· The development of an injectable form of ivermectin, or liposomal ivermectin, could help overcome some of its limitations regarding solubility, and open its use to a broader range of cancers

· Considering that the “war against cancer” has been ongoing for decades, with little to show in terms of lives saved, repurposing existing drugs with favorable safety profiles and notable anticancer effects — like ivermectin — makes sense

Ivermectin is a widely used antiparasitic drug that’s listed on the World Health Organization’s essential medicines list1 and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In low- and middle-income countries, ivermectin is commonly used to treat parasitic diseases including onchocerciasis (river blindness), strongyloidiasis and other diseases caused by soil-transmitted helminthiasis, or parasitic worms.2

The drug is also used to treat scabies and lice. It’s estimated that the total number of ivermectin doses distributed is equal to one-third of the world’s population and, as such, “ivermectin at the usual doses (0.2–0.4 mg/kg) is considered extremely safe for use in humans.”3

Ivermectin also has demonstrated antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties and made headlines for its potential role in treating COVID-194 — although much of the positive press has been censored and falsely labeled misinformation.5 Now researchers are highlighting another potential use for ivermectin, which is equally as exciting as its potential role in COVID-19 — as an anticancer agent.

Ivermectin’s Powerful Antitumor Effects

Ivermectin has notable antitumor effects, which include inhibiting proliferation, metastasis and angiogenic activity in cancer cells.6 It appears to inhibit tumor cells by regulating multiple signaling pathways, which researchers explained in the Pharmacological Research journal, “suggests that ivermectin may be an anticancer drug with great potential.”7

Their graphic, below, shows the multiple ways that ivermectin may target cancer, including inducing apoptosis and autophagy while also inhibiting tumor stem cells and reversing multidrug resistance. They stated that ivermectin “exerts the optimal effect when used in combination with other chemotherapy drugs.”8

Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207

Many may not be aware that scientists Satoshi ōmura and William C. Campbell won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for their discovery of ivermectin.9 The medicine is used to treat not only parasitic diseases like malaria but also shows promise for treating asthma and neurological diseases, in addition to cancer.

Along with direct cytotoxic effects, it’s believed that ivermectin regulates the tumor microenvironment, mediating immunogenic cell death — another reason for its promise as an anticancer agent.10 Research suggests the drug may be useful for the following cancers:11

Ivermectin Shows Promise Against Colorectal Cancer

A study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology specifically highlighted ivermectin’s potential to fight colorectal cancer, which is the third most common cancer worldwide.12 The drug was found to inhibit colorectal cancer cell growth in a dose-dependent manner as well as promote cell apoptosis.

Further, even at low doses of 2.5 and 5 µM, ivermectin inducted cell arrest in colorectal cancer, leading researchers to state, “[I]vermectin might be a new potential anticancer drug therapy for human colorectal cancer and other cancers.”13 Considering that the “war against cancer” has been ongoing for decades, with little to show in terms of lives saved, repurposing existing drugs with favorable safety profiles and notable anticancer effects — like ivermectin — makes sense.

The Pharmacological Research scientists similarly noted, “Drug repositioning is a shortcut to accelerate the development of anticancer drugs.”14 Not only has ivermectin been shown to permeate tumor tissues effectively, but it has a long history of successful use in humans. They explained that even when doses were increased, no serious adverse effects were found:15

“[T]he broad-spectrum antiparasitic drug IVM (ivermectin), which is widely used in the field of parasitic control, has many advantages that suggest that it is worth developing as a potential new anticancer drug. IVM selectively inhibits the proliferation of tumors at a dose that is not toxic to normal cells and can reverse the MDR [multidrug resistance] of tumors.

Importantly, IVM is an established drug used for the treatment of parasitic diseases such as river blindness and elephantiasis. It has been widely used in humans for many years, and its various pharmacological properties, including long- and short-term toxicological effects and drug metabolism characteristics are very clear. In healthy volunteers, the dose was increased to 2 mg/Kg, and no serious adverse reactions were found …”

Is Liposomal Delivery a Game Changer?

The development of an injectable form of ivermectin, or liposomal ivermectin, could help overcome some of its limitations regarding solubility and open its use to a broader range of cancers. The cancer immunotherapy treatment pembrolizumab, for instance, is approved to treat PD-L1-positive, triple-negative breast cancer, which accounts for only about 20% of cases.

As an immune checkpoint inhibitor, it works best in so-called “hot” tumors, which are already infiltrated by T cells. If ivermectin could be injected into the tumor, inducing T-cell infiltration into the area and inducing immunogenic cancer cell death, it’s possible that it could turn a “cold” tumor into a “hot” one, thereby making it more effectively treated.16

Biotech company Mountain Valley MD has developed a liposomal delivery system for ivermectin that they believe could dramatically widen its treatment potential. In an interview with Medical Update Online, Dennis Hancock, Mountain Valley MD president and CEO, explained:17

“So the business value proposition really simply is, we take the best-selling and best-acting drugs and expand their ability to be used on … more types of cancer on a broader spectrum. So you still need the cancer drug and what our Ivectosol does is it enables it to be used in a broader universe …

What’s really exciting about the work that Mountain Valley MD is doing is we’re enabling drugs that have already been proven in their efficacy and safety to do better and do more faster — so we’re not asking people to ‘wait five years and see’…”

Most of the research involving ivermectin for cancer to date involves oral or in-vitro administration. Mountain Valley MD is conducting preclinical trials using liposomal ivermectin for metastatic melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and possibly bladder cancers. They also have plans to produce liposomal ivermectin for use in human trials.18 In a news release, Mike Farber, director of life sciences at Mountain Valley MD, stated:19

“The extensive research supporting the drug ivermectin as effective in the inhibition of proliferation, metastasis, and angiogenic activity in a variety of cancers, and as an initiator of immunogenic cell death, is overwhelming. Imagine what is possible when you have the world’s only human injectable form of ivermectin that can be directly injected into a tumor or provided through more bio-available forms such as intravenously.

We believe this will be groundbreaking research with near-immediate application to be able to proceed directly to human trials based on the safety and efficacy of ivermectin.”

Ivermectin tablets packaged for human use. (Natasha Holt/The Epoch Times)

What About Ivermectin for SARS-CoV-2?

In the U.S., ivermectin has been vilified as a treatment for SARS-CoV-2, despite its impressive inhibitory effects on the virus.20 Even the FDA has a dedicated webpage warning “why you should not use ivermectin to prevent COVID-19.”21

It’s interesting to note, however, that Africa has a lower number of cases, severity of disease, hospitalizations and deaths than other areas of the world,22 which may be due to using prophylactic medications for endemic infections — ivermectin and others, such as sweet wormwood — that have successfully treated COVID-19.

For instance, a study from Japan demonstrated that just 12 days after doctors were allowed to legally prescribe ivermectin to their COVID-19 patients, the cases dropped dramatically.23 The chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association24 noticed the low number of infections and deaths in Africa, where many use ivermectin prophylactically and as the core strategy to treat river blindness.25 More than 99% of people infected with river blindness live in 31 African countries.

Aside from these observations, a study published in the March 2022 issue of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases found that treatment with ivermectin reduced mortality in COVID-19 patients — and to a greater degree than remdesivir.26

Another recent investigation by Cornell University, posted on the University’s preprint server January 20, 2022, found ivermectin outperformed 10 other drugs against COVID-19, making it the most effective against the Omicron variant.27 It even outperformed nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid), which was granted emergency use authorization against COVID-19 in December 2021.

Remdesivir costs between $2,340 and $3,120,28 and nirmatrelvir costs $529 per treatment,29 while ivermectin’s average treatment cost is $58.30 Do you think this has anything to do with ivermectin’s vilification?

Dr. Pierre Kory, who is part of the group that formed the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group (FLCCC) to advance early treatments for COVID-19, pleaded with the U.S. government early on in the pandemic to review the expansive data on ivermectin to prevent COVID-19, and to keep those with early symptoms from progressing and help critically ill patients recover — to no avail.31^,32

However, if you’d like to learn more about its potential uses for SARS-CoV-2, FLCCC’s I-MASK+ protocol can be downloaded in full,33 giving you step-by-step instructions on how to prevent and treat the early symptoms of COVID-19.

FLCCC also has protocols for at-home prevention and early treatment, called I-MASS, which involves ivermectin, vitamin D3, a multivitamin and a digital thermometer to watch your body temperature in the prevention phase and ivermectin, melatonin, aspirin and antiseptic mouthwash for early at-home treatment.

Household or close contacts of COVID-19 patients may take ivermectin (18 milligrams, then repeat the dose in 48 hours) for post-exposure prevention.34 Whether ivermectin’s potential as an anticancer agent will be stifled the same way it was for COVID-19 remains to be seen, but it appears to be a compound that’s worth watching as a potential powerful agent in the fight against cancer.

Originally published May 12, 2022 on Mercola.com

References

· 1, 2 WHO March 31, 2021

· 3 American Journal of Therapeutics: July/August 2021 – Volume 28 – Issue 4 – p e434-e460

· 4 In Vivo. Sep-Oct 2020;34(5):3023-3026. doi: 10.21873/invivo.12134

· 5 Trial Site News November 27, 2021, 3:52

· 6, 7, 8 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207

· 9, 20 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., Introduction

· 10 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., 2.1 Breast cancer

· 11 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., 2. The role of IVM in different cancers

· 12, 13 Front Pharmacol. 2021; 12: 717529

· 14, 15 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., Summary