WORLD NEWS
Biden promises US help for Russian ally
Armenia can count on Washington to help it achieve a “normalization of relations” with Azerbaijan, the leader said
US President Joe Biden pledged on Thursday to support Armenia’s “sovereignty and security,” a week after more than 100 of Yerevan’s troops were killed in clashes with Azerbaijan’s forces. While multiple US officials have declared their support for Armenia, the White House also provides military aid to Azerbaijan.
“We will continue to support the Armenian people’s democratic aspiration, sovereignty, and security,” Biden’s message to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan read, according to the Armenian media.
The message, marking Armenia’s Independence Day, continued with a promise by Biden to “redouble our diplomacy so Armenia can look to a prosperous and peaceful future, which includes normalization of relations with neighbors.”
N Korea denies sending weapons to Russia, tells US to ‘shut up’
Pyongyang denies US claims of weapons sales to Russia amid war in Ukraine, condemns Washington’s ‘reckless remarks’.
North Korea says it has never supplied weapons to Russia and has no plans to do so, condemning US claims of arms transfers for the Ukraine war as an attempt at “tarnishing” the country’s image.
In a statement released by the Korean Central News Agency on Thursday, an unnamed North Korean defence official said the United States and other hostile forces
Bank of England raises interest rates to 2.25%, its highest since 2008
Monetary policy committee signals that inflation risks outweigh short-term threat of recession
The Bank of England has raised interest rates by 0.5 percentage points to 2.25% in an attempt to combat soaring inflation amid the cost of living crisis.
Threadneedle Street raised its key base rate for the seventh consecutive time, judging the risk of inflation becoming persistently embedded in the economy outweighed the short-term danger of recession.
U.S. NEWS, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
Is the Jan. 6 committee even legitimate? U.S. appeals court has doubts
Just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s partisan committee that she ordered to “investigate” the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol announced its next staged “hearing” will be held Sept. 28, a court opinion has cited doubts about its legitimacy.
It came in an unusual ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
It affirmed the dismissal of a fight by the Republican National Committee against a subpoena from Pelosi’s committee, which is partisan because she refused to seat GOP members nominated by their own party and instead hand-picked two Republicans whose opposition to President Donald Trump is well-established.
The committee largely has accepted only testimony that could damage Trump, and it has refused to delve into the evidence that officials responsible for the Capitol’s security, include Pelosi, refused President Trump’s offer of National Guard troops for that day.
The case was dismissed because the committee withdrew its subpoena for detailed RNC information, making the case moot.
Typically in such cases a court essentially releases a short order that the case is dead.
In this case, however, the court went much further, citing significant constitutional questions now left unresolved because of the committee’s decision to run away from the fight.
“The subpoena sought various documents held by Salesforce.com, an RNC vendor, regarding fundraising emails sent by the RNC to its supporters,” the judges wrote. “The RNC claimed that disclosure of these documents would reveal sensitive information about its digital strategy, so it sued to prevent the disclosure.
“The RNC argued that the committee was not lawfully constituted and that the subpoena violated the First Amendment.”
While the case was on appeal, Pelosi’s committee suddenly “reversed course.”
“It withdrew the subpoena, promised not to renew it, and moved to dismiss the appeal as moot. … Because the committee caused the mootness and thereby deprived us of the ability to review the district court’s decision, and given the important and unsettled constitutional questions that the appeal would have presented, we vacate the district court’s judgment.”
The court cited a previous case that included a decision to vacate a lower court’s judgement over a party’s “avoidance of constitutional questions.”
Just the News which posted the court’s order online, said the judges “went out of way to acknowledge RNC’s appeal raised important issues and also took a dig at Democrats for vacillating.”
The report said, “The appellate judges went out of their way to acknowledge the RNC’s concerns about the subpoena raising important issues and that the lower court’s ruling needed to be reversed.”
U.S. appeals court says Trump criminal probe can resume classified records review
The U.S. Justice Department can resume reviewing classified records seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home pending appeal, a federal appellate court ruled on Wednesday, giving a boost to the criminal investigation into whether the records were mishandled or compromised.
The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by federal prosecutors to block U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s stay barring them from using the classified documents in their probe until an independent arbiter, called a special master, vets the materials to weed out any that could be deemed privileged and withheld from investigators.
Ron DeSantis reveals ‘consent form’ signed by Martha’s Vineyard migrants
Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., appears in the video for ‘Sweet Florida’ by Johnny Van Zant and Donnie Van Zant in April 2022. (Video screenshot)
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office responded to a class-action lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants who were flown to Martha’s Vineyard last week by publishing a “consent form” in multiple languages purportedly presented to the plaintiffs.
The form reads: “I agree to hold the benefactor or its designed representatives harmless of all liability arising out of or in any way relating to any injuries and damages that may occur during the agreed transport to locations outside of Texas until the final destination in Massachusetts.”
The lawsuit, filed in the District of Massachusetts, alleges DeSantis and others “designed and executed a premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme centered on exploiting this vulnerability for the sole purpose of advancing their own personal, financial and political interests,” Fox News Digital reported.
President Trump to Sean Hannity: “I Think They Took My Will” During Mar-A-Lago Raid (VIDEO)
President Donald Trump gave more insight on the raid of Mar-A-Lago during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night.
During the interview, President Trump revealed that he thinks the FBI also took his will during the raid of Mar-A-Lago.
Outrageous!
FBI agents raiding Mar-a-Lago in August might have taken former President Donald Trump’s will, Trump said on Sept. 21.
“They took a lot. I think they took my will. I found out yesterday, I said, ‘where is it?’ I think they took my will,” Trump said on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
The FBI has referred inquiries on the raid to the Department of Justice, its parent agency. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
NY Attorney General Letitia James Sues Trump, His Three Children, for Alleged Fraud
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, on Wednesday took the dramatic step of filing a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump and his three grown children, accusing them of undervaluing properties to gain better rates on loans, insurance policies, and taxes.
James’s lawsuit is a civil case, not a criminal case. It aims to bar Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump from serving as executives at any company in New York, or to bar the Trump Organization from buying any commercial real estate or obtaining loans from financial institutions in New York for five years.
The lawsuit is the result of a multiple-year investigation by James and comes less than 50 days before the mid-term elections.
Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, said the lawsuit is not focused on the facts, nor the law.
“[R]ather, it is solely focused on advancing the Attorney General’s political agenda. It is abundantly clear that the Attorney General’s Office has exceeded its statutory authority by prying into transactions where absolutely no wrongdoing has taken place,” Habba said in a statement.
“We are confident that our judicial system will not stand for this unchecked abuse of authority, and we look forward to defending our client against each and every one of the Attorney General’s meritless claims,” she said.
Donald Trump Jr. was more to the point, tweeting, “The bullshit Dem witch-hunt continues!” His tweet accompanied a video of James vowing to sue Trump.
Stacey Abrams: Fetal Heartbeat a ‘Manufactured Sound’ to Outlaw Abortion
Georgia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams aired her abortion extremism this week when she suggested fetal heartbeats are a “manufactured sound” designed to control a woman’s body.
“There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks,” she said before a panel. “It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people men have a right to take control of a woman’s body.”
Abrams was undoubtedly taking aim at the 2019 Georgia law that banned most abortions in the state after doctors can detect a fetal heartbeat, which usually happens around six weeks.
Since most women do not learn of their pregnancy in the first six weeks, the law effectively bans all abortion in the Peach State. Though the law faced numerous hurdles, it finally went into effect this year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Speaking with CNN, Abrams promised that abortion will be “front and center” of her campaign.
“Women deserve full citizenship in the United States and certainly in the state of Georgia, and they are being denied that because of Brian Kemp’s 6-week ban,” said Abrams. “We are driving not only doctors and nurses out of the state, we’re likely going to drive jobs away. And that should be terrifying to anyone regardless of your political persuasion.”
A recent poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and University of Georgia Survey Research Center found Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has widened his lead over Abrams while Republican Herschel Walker has overtaken Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock in the U.S. Senate race.
“Kemp received 50 percent, Abrams received 42 percent, and six percent of respondents said they were undecided,” Breitbart News reported. “The grim results for Abrams led to one pro-Abrams pollster opining on social media that the AJC, Georgia’s largest newspaper, had published ‘bad polling.’ Evoking one of Abrams’ top issues since her first gubernatorial loss in 2018, the pollster added, ‘This seems a lot like voter suppression by poll.’”
Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for Secret Service records related to the investigation of Hunter Biden’s gun, reportedly disposed of in a dumpster in Delaware (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:22-cv-02841)).
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after United States Secret Service (a component of DHS) failed to respond adequately to a March 25, 2021, FOIA request for records or communications about the reported purchase, possession, and disposal of a firearm owned by Hunter Biden found in a Delaware dumpster circa October 2018.
Judicial Watch is investigating whether and how the Secret Service intervened for Hunter Biden in an incident involving a gun owned by him.
In October 2020, The Blaze reported that in October 2018, Hunter Biden’s handgun was taken by Hallie Biden, the widow of then-presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Beau. In 2021, Politico reported:
Hallie took Hunter’s gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone.
Delaware police began investigating, concerned that the trash can was across from a high school and that the missing gun could be used in a crime, according to law enforcement officials and a copy of the police report obtained by POLITICO.
But a curious thing happened at the time: Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.
“The Secret Service and the Biden administration apparently are in cover-up mode for Hunter Biden. Whether its Hunter Biden’s laptop, his business practices and travel, or these documents related to the careless disposal of a gun in a dumpster near a high school, this administration continues to put up unlawful roadblocks to any effort to investigate the activities of the Biden family, particularly Hunter,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
What’s Going On? Ohio BP Explosion Kills Two, Fourth Gas Plant Explosion Since June
Two employees were killed last night in an explosion at the BP Toledo, Ohio refinery.
The BP Toledo refinery was “safely shut down” in response to Tuesday night’s fire where two employees died.
The cause of the fire is not yet known.
BP said on Wednesday two of its staff were killed after sustaining injuries in a fire at its 150,800 barrel-per-day Toledo, Ohio, refinery.
“The fire was extinguished last night and refinery was safely shut down and remains offline,” a company spokesperson said.
“All other staff is accounted for and our employee assistance team is on site.”
The cause of the fire is not known, but leaking fumes from a crude unit may have caused the ignition in another unit at the facility, a source told Reuters.
The first report surfaced at 6:35 PM on the WTVG14 abc website
The refinery has been operating for over 100 years on a parcel of land that covers 585 acres and processes approximately 160, 000 barrels of crude oil a day.
This is the fourth fossil fuel disruption/explosion since June in our nation.
Reuters shares that Freeport, Texas, LNG was taken offline on June 8, 2022, and will not return to service until mid-November per “Upstream Energy Explored”.
Freeport, Texas provides 20% of all U.S. LNG processing and one of the largest US exporters in the nation.
On July 7, 2022, in Fort Bend County, near Houston, Texas, an explosion occurred to a natural gas line. The fire was quickly extinguished.
On August 24, 2022, Illinois and its surrounding states experienced a major disruption in fuel distribution from a shutdown at the BP facility in Whiting, Illinois. BP experienced an electrical fire at its facility which necessitated an immediate shutdown. This facility supplies a major international airport, distribution centers, automobile and manufacturing region and seaway corridor for the Great Lakes Region.
BP resumed operations on September 16, 2022. Hopefully the backlog will quickly dissipate.
At a time of high inflation, two major fossil fuel production facility shutdowns, previous explosions and disruptions, it begs the question: Why are we experiencing so many major disruptions in our natural fossil fuel supply production/distribution facilities?
Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, has struck again, allegedly kidnapping a 10-year-old girl from her parents simply because the parents questioned her treatment and use of a questionable drug that allegedly caused their daughter’s brain to swell (encephalitis). The parents reportedly did not refuse treatment or go against the doctor’s advice, but simply wanted to take their daughter to a different hospital to get a second opinion.
The doctor refused, had security guards intervene to stop them from taking their daughter home, and now the State of Missouri has taken custody of the child giving them full legal liability-free rights to experiment on her with whatever drugs they want, without getting the parents’ permission.
Over the years we have covered multiple stories of medical kidnapping involving Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City which has now apparently become so routine, that a Missouri State Senator has introduced a new bill to stop the hospital from kidnapping people’s children.
Earlier this year (2022), Missouri State Senator Mike Cierpiot introduced a bill to protect families from having their children “abducted by Children’s Mercy Hospital.” The Missouri Times covered the story here.
Excerpt:
For Cierpiot, the matter is personal. From the floor, he discussed his own family’s struggle with a Children’s Division that he said gave far too much power to hospitals, such as Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, over the fate of Missouri families.
He recounted how after a day of shopping last year, a new mother took her baby out for the first time. While adjusting the car seat straps the newborn developed a bruise on its side, and the parents likely overreacted by taking the child to the hospital “just to be safe.”
It was then that Children’s Mercy got a SAFE-CARE provider involved. After viewing some photographs of the child’s bruise, a doctor diagnosed that she “suspected signs of child abuse.”
After two days of bringing both of their children in for X-rays and exams, doctors only found the one bruise on the one child and no abuse on the other child. The next day, child welfare services showed up with law enforcement officials to take the newborn from his mother’s arms. (Full story.)
Here is a 9-minute video of his explanation of the bill given in the Senate Committee, where he relates how the abuses of Children’s Mercy Hospital have affected his own family members where a 3-week-old infant was medically kidnapped and taken away from the parents for 3 months, and how when he contacted several local attorneys, they stated that they have created a phrase about Children’s Mercy Hospital:
The term is “abducted by Children’s Mercy Hospital.”
Imagine that. It’s a real thing. “Abducted by Children’s Mercy Hospital.”
This most recent medical kidnapping is covered by Rebel News, who interviewed the mother who then contacted us, so we thank Rebel News for taking interest in this story which we are republishing here.
Here are a couple of our previous stories about Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City:
- Hannah and Jaxon Adams. Jaxon was medically kidnapped at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City when his parents asked for a second opinion, and Hannah was also later taken away from her parents by CPS. Full story thread here.
- Brianne and baby Serenity in the NICU at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. Serenity was born prematurely with health conditions, and when the parents wanted to transfer her to a different hospital, the newborn was medically kidnapped and never went home with her parents. Full story.
Action Item: If you live in Missouri, please contact your State Representative and ask them to support Senator Mike Cierpiot’s bill SB 1216. Apparently the legislative sessions in Missouri run from January through May, and on 4/27/2022 it was heard by the S Seniors, Families, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee. (Source.)
Margaret Cole Hughes, Director of European Adoption Consultants (EAC), earlier this year accepted a plea deal from the U.S. Department of Justice to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and one count of making a false statement to the Polish Central authority in front of Federal Court Judge James Gwin in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Ohio. (Source.)
Defense attorneys admitted in court filings that Cole is still in business after making $200 million over 40 years from selling 8000 children through fraudulent international adoptions. According to Judge James Gwin, the FBI protected Cole’s child trafficking network for 40 years and failed to investigate her. Instead, it was the State Department that investigated Cole. (Source.)
Cole’s stepson, Robert E. Hughes III, still works for the FBI. He was assigned to investigate her case by Andy McCabe, who at the time, was Acting Director of the FBI. (Source.)
Defense attorneys said the evidence against their client would have filled the Library of Congress.
Cole is wanted for child trafficking fraud in Poland. (Source.)
Margaret Cole Hughes, 75, began her three-month prison sentence in Alderson Federal Prison as a result of her plea deal. It is located in the resort area of Greenbriar, W. Virginia. (Source.)
Meanwhile, according to Congressman Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, a whistleblower has come forward exposing how the FBI is manipulating cases related to the January 6 Capitol riot to create “the illusion” that domestic violent extremism is a widespread problem in the United States, and that the FBI’s pivot is coming at the expense of other serious crimes, most notably the investigation of child sexual exploitation.
“The whistleblower disclosed that the FBI is sacrificing its other important federal law-enforcement duties to pursue January 6 investigations. The whistleblower recalled, for example, being told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.” (Source.)
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
Pompeo: ‘The Chinese Communist Party Has Declared Economic War on America’
During Wednesday’s “The Ingraham Angle,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lamented executives in the U.S. financial sector.
Host Laura Ingraham played a video of Citibank CEO Jane Fraser warning about the possible consequences of pulling back from China.
“When we look at the clients that we serve, many of them are multinational clients in China,” Fraser said. “And we see that there is a high degree of interdependence. We’ve got to take a strategic view in America as to where it is that we need more strategic independence and to build that in a thoughtful manner. But also in a way that doesn’t cause crises, economic crises.”
Pompeo reacted by noting that Fraser and others in high finance had not acknowledged the “economic war” the Chinese had declared on the United States.
“[I] will tell you, it also sounds an awful lot what I heard from Chinese leaders, Chinese leadership saying, ‘Oh, we’re so connected, it’ll be really bad for you.’ This is precisely the wrongheaded thinking that for 40 years didn’t recognize that the Chinese Communist Party has declared economic war on America, they stoke their economy on the back of America, and we allowed them to do it.”
“I hope our senior financial leaders will begin to truly understand that they are American companies with American interest and do the things that will defend American freedom and put real trust on the Chinese Communist Party to begin to behave,” he added.
Data From Zillow Shows Home Prices Dropping In Blue Areas, Rising In Red Areas
Data from Zillow showed home values dropping in blue areas across the country.
Zillow is well-known American tech real-estate marketplace company that was founded in 2006.
Home values dropped 10.59% in San Jose, 7.8% in San Francisco, and 7.36% in Austin.
Home values in red areas have risen.
Data shows Americans are fleeing blue states and heading to red states.
America is on the move like never before. Some would say at a tectonic level and for many the driver is as much political as it is economic. The top five states seeing a mass exodus are all Democrat-controlled. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois lost a combined 4 million residents between 2010 and 2019. Conversely, a recent study by U-Haul reported that the top five states to see the greatest influx of new residents include the Republican-led states of Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona.
“With a focus on creating the best possible environments for businesses, workers and families to succeed, states led by Republican governors are seeing more and more people become residents,” said Republican Governors Association Deputy Communications Director Mike Demkiw. “People are desperate to escape the heavy handed, regulation ridden big government approach pushed by liberal governors.”
The growing American divide, however, isn’t just between states—it’s also county to county. When urban centers across the country were besieged by rampant crime—including riots and civil unrest last year—many residents took that as their cue to flee as the Covid-driven work-from-home phenomenon became the new normal. For many urbanites, looking for a permanent way out meant migrating to the suburbs and even to rural communities.
Specifically, many Californians have fled to Texas.
So many residents have left California that U-Haul announced they had run out of trucks to accommodate all the movers in January.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
New Study Says Smart Thermostats “actually slightly increased electricity and gas consumption”
Earlier this summer, research revealed that smart thermostats could be damaging local power grids. Since utility companies, regulators, and others continue to warn that American power grids are already extremely vulnerable and prone to blackouts (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), perhaps utility companies should stop encouraging customers to invest in them at least for the time being. In fact, some experts claim that upgrading U.S. power grid “could cost $2 trillion between now and the year 2050”. Additionally, smart thermostats being controlled by utility companies have created dangerously hot temperatures in Colorado and Texas homes (see 1, 2).
Nevertheless, last month, smart thermostat proponents gleefully announced that some researchers have concluded that smart thermostats provide a little bit of energy savings. More recently, a new study revealed the just the opposite.
From MSN:
Daily on Energy: A new finding that smart thermostats may not save energy at scale
SMART THERMOSTATS MAY NOT SCALE UP: An important new study finds that “smart” thermostats do not have a statistically or economically significant effect on energy use.
The problem occurs when the technology is “scaled up” and distributed to a broader population, John List, an economist at the University of Chicago and one of the lead authors of the study, circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research Monday, told Breanne in an interview.
This is what List describes as a “voltage drop,” or the phenomenon of something failing to achieve its intended objectives upon its expansion (as well as the title of his new book). List, who is also the chief economist for Walmart and has worked for other companies, such as Uber and Lyft, is known as a pioneer of field experiments in econometrics.
The findings: Popular smart thermostat devices, such as the ecobee and the Nest, advertise annual savings of up to 26% and 27%, respectively, on consumers’ annual heating and cooling bills.
But the new study—which examined data from 1,379 households over a period of 18 months—found major discrepancies between these statistics, which assumed certain behaviors, and their actual use by the general public.
Instead of saving energy, in fact, researchers found the devices actually slightly increased electricity and gas consumption, by 2.3% and 4.2%, respectively.
In the case of home thermostats, the problem wasn’t necessarily one of usability: In fact, researchers observed, nearly all users with the smart devices programmed them almost immediately, and many did so with energy savings in mind.
The problem was how often, and to what extent, users deviated from the devices’ programmed schedules: Users were more likely to override the devices’ scheduled setpoints in ways that used more energy – i.e. when cooling, they set temperatures colder; when heating, they set them warmer.
Ultimately, researchers found “little to no evidence” that the smart thermostats reduced household energy consumption.
And, “[viewed through] the lens of climate mitigation, our results provide little justification for the amount of subsidies directed towards smart thermostats; such technologies have no impact on energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions,” the study concludes.
When designing the devices, engineers modeled their estimates based on best case scenarios, List explained.
HEALTH
Bears Don’t Get Diabetes, May Provide Secret to Curing the Condition
Every year, hibernating bears are able to feast, pack on a huge amount of weight and then lie around for months — all without suffering the health consequence of diabetes. Now researchers are closer to understanding their secret.
Scientists with the Washington State University Bear Center say they’ve zeroed in on eight proteins that appear key to keeping hibernating grizzlies diabetes-proof.
Those eight proteins also have human counterparts — which means the findings could eventually lead to a better understanding of diabetes in people, and possibly new medications, experts said.
Type 2 diabetes, by far the most common form of the disease, occurs when the body can no longer use the hormone insulin properly. Insulin helps move the sugars from food into body cells to be used for energy. When people have diabetes, those sugars end up accumulating in the blood.
There is a precursor to type 2 diabetes called insulin resistance, where body cells gradually lose their sensitivity to insulin and can’t easily take up sugar from the bloodstream.
In humans, obesity and inactivity are major risk factors for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
Then there are hibernating bears, who dedicate a large portion of their lives to overeating, packing on pounds and being almost completely sedentary.
“If you saw this in humans, it would be very medically concerning,” said Blair Perry, a researcher at Washington State who worked on the study.
It turns out that bears do develop insulin resistance during hibernation. However, their blood sugar and insulin levels remain stable, and they do not progress to diabetes. And by the time spring rolls around, and bears are out and about again, their insulin sensitivity has been restored.
Understanding how, exactly, a bear’s body achieves that feat could have important implications for humans, Perry said.
He also noted that research on hibernating bears could have broader implications: Despite months of couch potato-like living, bears also show no negative effects on muscle or bone mass — another health consequence that sedentary humans face.
American Kids Are Medicated More Than Ever
Children in the U.S. are being plied with powerful drugs to treat mental health concerns. The medications, however, don’t get to the root of the problem and often create new problems of their own — symptoms that are then treated with more medications.
According to mail-order pharmacy Express Scripts, prescriptions for antidepressants for teenagers increased 38% from 2015 to 2019, while such prescriptions for adults rose 12% during that time.1 Note that this was prior to the pandemic, during which social isolation and other fears may have pushed some children with mental health issues “over the edge.”2
Significantly higher rates of suicide-related behaviors, including suicide ideation and suicide attempts, also corresponded to times of increased COVID-19-related concerns,3 the end result being that even more children have likely been prescribed psychotropic drugs compared to in 2019, before the pandemic.
Night Owls at Greater Risk for Diabetes, Heart Trouble
If you’re constantly burning the midnight oil, you may be setting yourself up for type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
When compared with folks who go to bed early and wake with the sun, night owls are more likely to be insulin-resistant, a new study finds. When the body doesn’t respond well to the hormone insulin, blood sugar can build up in your bloodstream, eventually leading to type 2 diabetes.
What’s more, “night owls” get less exercise and burn less fat than “early birds,” allowing fat to build up in the bloodstream, which can set the stage for heart disease.
The study demonstrates the importance of the timing of sleep in addition to duration and quality of sleep, said Dr. Seema Khosla. She is medical director for the North Dakota Center for Sleep in Fargo, and chair of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Public Awareness and Advocacy Committee.
For the study, 51 people without heart disease or diabetes were categorized as night owls or early birds based on their natural sleep cycle, or chronotype. Study participants ate a controlled diet and fasted overnight while their activity levels were monitored for a week. The researchers also measured insulin sensitivity and took breath samples to analyze how well folks used fat and carbohydrates for fuel.
Early birds were less likely to become insulin-resistant, and they used more fat for energy at rest and during exercise than night owls, the study findings showed.
What you can do
Night owls can take steps to improve their health and sleep habits, said study co-author Steven Malin, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology and health at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
“People who are late chronotypes who wish to try and align their body with work schedules and so forth can take small steps toward shifting to be an early bird,” Malin said. “Go to bed 15 minutes earlier and wake up 15 minutes earlier, [and] in time depending on how things are going, this can expand another 15-minute window,” he suggested.
Another tip? Get outside when the sun is shining as this can prompt your body’s circadian system to reset. Circadian rhythm is your 24-hour internal clock that controls the release of the hormone melatonin to encourage sleep.
The study was published online Sept. 19 in the journal Experimental Physiology.
“Respecting our circadian rhythms is important, but so is recognizing when we are creating more issues with sleep deprivation and bedtime procrastination,” said Khosla, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“While this research certainly is interesting, there is still much to understand about how chronotypes impact health,” she said.
Poorly timed sleep is compounded when you don’t get enough sleep, added Dr. Alon Avidan. He’s the director of the University of California, Los Angeles Sleep Disorders Center and played no role in the study.
“When night owls have to wake up early to get to work or take their kids to school, they end up not getting enough sleep,” Avidan said. Lack of sleep sets the stage for memory and thinking issues on top of the other health risks associated with being a night owl, he explained.
“Sleep duration and sleep regularity are important,” Avidan said. “This means going to bed and waking up when it coincides with the dark-light cycle where you are and getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night.”
Exposure to blue light from devices before bed can also make matters worse, he noted, because blue light tells cells to stay awake. “Blue light is very stimulating and inhibits melatonin and causes sleep delays,” Avidan added.
Sleep chronotypes aren’t set in stone, said another expert who was not involved with the study.
Change yours by aiming for consistent, uninterrupted sleep, even on the weekend, said Joseph Henson, a research associate at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.
Consider eating breakfast as soon as you get up and try to eat lunch at the same time every day, Henson said. Get as much natural light in the morning as possible and try exercising in the morning, he advised.
“Carefully monitor your caffeine intake and try to avoid consuming large amounts in the hours before bed, and avoid eating your main meal late in the evening,” Henson said.
Make sure your bedroom is quiet, dark, relaxing and at a comfortable temperature, he added.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
‘Black and Latino populations experiencing significantly greater air-pollution impacts than white populations’
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is considering new regulations to ban the sale of all diesel semi-trucks by 2040 to fight climate change and rectify a legacy of racist practices, according to a CARB report released on Aug. 30.
The proposal would require medium and heavy-duty trucks entering ports and railyards to be fully electric by 2035, according to the report. CARB believes that such freight vehicles should be banned because the diesel emissions that come from such vehicles disproportionately affect low-income and minority communities due to racist zoning policies.
“Decades of racist and classist practices, including red-lining and siting decisions, have concentrated heavy-duty vehicle and freight activities in these communities, with concomitant disproportionate pollution burdens,” the regulators stated. “CARB has legal and moral obligations to lessen these burdens.”
CARB must vote on the proposal to ban diesel semi-trucks on Oct. 27. The proposed regulations would also require state and local government vehicle fleets to be fully electric by 2027, according to the report.
“Black and Latino populations experiencing significantly greater air pollution impacts than white populations,” CARB added. “Communities in and around ports move much of the nation’s freight, and so experience pollution on a national scale in their neighborhoods.”
California passed a new regulation on Aug. 25 that will require 100% of new cars sold in California by 2035 to be electric, up from the current 12%. Interim targets also require 35% of vehicles sold in the state by 2026 to produce zero emissions, rising to 68% by 2030.
California aims to enforce its rules by penalizing automakers up to $20,000 per vehicle if they fail to meet the state’s sales quotas.
The state hopes that these measures will significantly raise the amount of EVs on the road which will help curb emissions and accelerate its ongoing green energy transition.
The Pressing Problems of Water Scarcity and Water Pollution
One key environmental threat facing mankind today is the increasing lack of potable water, worldwide, thanks to a combination of water pollution and scarcity. Infrastructure — especially in the U.S. but also elsewhere — is also in dire need of repairs and upgrades
During a single week in September, 2022, E.coli contamination was found in Baltimore, toxic arsenic levels were discovered in New York City, and in Jackson, Mississippi, 180,000 people are left without running water due to a water system breakdown
Hazardous water pollutants include but are not limited to arsenic, fluoride, nitrate, pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and microplastics
In San Francisco, wastewater from 37 sewage plants has turned the San Francisco Bay a murky brown, and dead fish litter its shores. The cause for the die-off is a toxic algae bloom, triggered by the nitrogen and phosphorous from the feces and urine in the discharged wastewater
NASA mapping of groundwater storage trends for the earth’s 37 largest aquifers reveals 21 aquifers have already exceeded their sustainability tipping points and are being depleted, and 13 of them are considered “significantly distressed, threatening regional water security and resilience”
COVID RELATED NEWS
CDC: Omicron COVID Boosters for Kids to Be Available Mid-October
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects COVID-19 vaccine boosters targeting circulating variants of the virus to be available for children aged 5-11 years by mid-October.
The CDC said in a document released on Tuesday that it expects to make a recommendation in early- to mid-October on the use of the new bivalent vaccines in the group, if they are authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The Pandemic Is “Over,” But the Feds Aren’t Giving Up their Emergency Powers
On 60 Minutes last Sunday, President Biden declared “the pandemic is over,” but quickly added “we still have a problem with COVID, we’re still doing a lot of work on it.”
Biden then reiterated: “But the pandemic is over” and his evidence was the fact “no one’s wearing masks. Everyone seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing, and I think this is a perfect example of it.”
Biden’s prevaricating position that “it’s over” but “we still have a problem” is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the regime when it comes to covid. After all, the Biden administration still enthusiastically supports the Pentagon’s vaccine mandates and in the federal courts the administration continues to push for a variety of federal mandates including air-travel mask mandates and various federal education programs such as Head Start. The feds still want forced vaccines for federal contractors. Travel to the United States still requires proof of vaccination. The federal government is even expected to announce “at least one additional extension to the current emergency.”
In other words, the administration certainly isn’t acting like the “pandemic is over” in terms of actual policy.
Nevertheless, Biden in his public comments is contradicting the experts on which the administration relied so heavily to fan the flames of the regime’s beloved Covid Panic. As Fortune’s Erin Prater showed this week, the usual guardians of covid “science” are hardly in agreement with Biden that the pandemic is over. Michael Osterholm at the Center for Infectious disease Research says it too soon to tell if the pandemic is over. Biden’s comments were “not well thought through,” Osterholm says. Meanwhile, Georges Benjamin of the American Public Health Association says that the president “clearly misspoke” and “we need to be really clear that the pandemic is not over.”
At least these people are being consistent. According to the CDC’s own statistics, more than 300 people have died of covid per day in recent weeks, and “community transmission” is still listed as high in most of the US. Daily new cases are still where they were throughout much of 2020 and 2021.
It’s not hard to see why the administration has suddenly forgotten about all the alleged science that policymakers repeatedly flogged to demand support for countless state and federal mandates for forced vaccines, lockdowns, and business closures. The regime’s current ruling coalition, the Democratic party, is afraid of losing big time in the November elections, so it also wants to tell people about how wonderful everything is. If there were not an election two months from now, it’s safe bet we’d instead be hearing all about how terrible the pandemic is.
But, there is an election, and that means Biden has to be out there talking about how the pandemic is no big deal, that everyone should stop complaining about inflation, and that things are fine.
Winning elections, after all, requires at least somewhat aligning the party’s public positions with existing public opinion in the lead up to election day.
And that’s exactly what Biden is doing. There aren’t enough committed freak-out-about-covid ideologues left to assure the party of victory. Only in certain left-leaning strongholds does a sizable portion of the voting public actually regard “the pandemic” as a priority. Yes, one will continue to encounter many true believers in the Bay Area, or in New York City, or in Martha’s Vineyard. And, naturally, this attitude prevails in countless University towns across the nation, where, amazingly, university pencil pushers are still enforcing vaccine mandates. Pandemic panic also remains popular among corporate elites whose primary concern in 2022 is apparently all about being loyal soldiers for the regime.
In most of the real world, however, which includes at least half the American voting public, people have long since moved beyond this. Virtually no one is wearing masks anymore, isolating in case of “possible exposure,” or lining up to get the next booster. That sort of thing may seem normal in California or at City Hall in Chicago, but few ordinary people are listening to the usual harangues offered up by health bureaucrats anymore.
More importantly, it’s extremely unlikely that were Biden to go on television and announce that “the pandemic is really bad now, guys!” that many people would listen.
So, we’re now seeing the pandemic end exactly the way we expected it to. According to the government-funded hive of health researchers, the pandemic is still not over, and they’re still saying “not so fast!” But in, practice, the pandemic is over because people believe it is over.
Back in 2020, we here at Mises.org published a column called “Pandemics Are Over When the Public Decides They’re Over,” exploring this phenomenon of the disconnect between the “official” pandemic, and the pandemic in practice. The conclusion was exactly what the title suggests. If the public is finished going along with the regime’s “pandemic measures,” the pandemic is functionally over. As The New York Times explained in May 2020:
pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.
“When people ask, ‘When will this end?,’ they are asking about the social ending,” said Dr[.] Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins. In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease
Or, as Scientific American put it in March of this year:
“Every time people walk into stores without masks or even just walk into stores for pleasure, they’re indicating they think the pandemic is winding down, if not over,” [historian of pandemics Marion] Dorsey says. Whether or not there is an official declaration of some kind, “I don’t think anything really has a meaning until, as a society…, we act as if it is.”
Author and historian John M. Barry, who wrote one of the most definitive chronicles of the 1918 pandemic—The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History—has come to a similar conclusion. A pandemic ends “when people stop paying attention to it,” he says.
Not even the “medical” end of a pandemic is as simple as it seems, however. Given that covid is unlikely to disappear, the question remains as to whether or not infections and deaths are at “stable” rates, or whether herd immunity has been reached. Either would suggest an end to a pandemic, but it’s not straightforward. As noted at mises.org by Dr. Michel Accad:
while herd immunity may indeed be a real phenomenon that can take place under certain circumstances when populations are subjected to a contagious disease, it is important to recognize that herd immunity is not a concept that has any practical value for setting public health policy.
For one thing, there is no objective way to establish that herd immunity has been achieved, since a “stable” rate of new infection is a subjective notion. What is a stable or tolerable rate of infection for me may not be so for you.
So, short of a disease fully disappearing, there’s no clear definition of when a pandemic is gone.
They’ll Still Cling to Their Pandemic Powers
True believers in lockdowns and forced vaccines, however, will likely continue to debate under what conditions people can be “permitted” to live their lives without intervention from health experts. Moreover, as we’ve seen, the regime isn’t relinquishing its newfound powers.
Yes, people are bored with the current emergency, and they’re not listening anymore. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be hoodwinked by the next “emergency” whether the crisis is one of racism, a lack of abortions, or the climate. This is why the administration will keep suing in federal court to keep alive its prerogatives to impose vaccine mandates, border closures, mask mandates, and more. The regime may have admitted that people aren’t listening about covid at the moment, but that doesn’t mean the regime will willingly give up one ounce of power.
That is, expect the current president—and all future presidents, too—to insist they can still rule by decree with impunity whenever there is an “emergency.” When exactly is there an emergency? Whenever federal politicians decide there is one. Our job is to assume they are lying.
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