More on Fauci

 A couple of days ago I wrote about Tulsi Gabbard’s document dump showing Anthony Fauci was at fault in the Covid scandal. He was funding gain of function research at the Wuhan lab and lied about it under oath.

Now comes news that he and his attorneys were begging President Biden for a pardon for Fauci up until the day Trump was inaugurated to replace Biden. It seems Fauci knew he had broken the law and was desperate for absolution.

So … we know he perjured himself before Congress and it’s likely he was indirectly responsible for thousands or millions of deaths, without intent to do so, meaning manslaughter in most jurisdictions. Fauci badly needed that pardon, and dementia-ridden Biden gave him one … a travesty.

Enjoying the USA

Image courtesy of Stephen Green posting at Instapundit.

News from Peru

A column at Townhall reports that it appears Keiko Fujimori will win the runoff to be Peru's next president. She is conservative, US educated, and part of a wave of conservative leaders taking office in Latin America recently.

Keiko is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, the former president who did for Peru what Augusto Pinochet did for Chile, clean up a leftist mess and massive corruption. Neither was much constrained by human rights niceties. Much of the mess subsequently returned, Peru has had nine presidents in the last decade.

When we visited Peru, the DrsC liked the country. I wish them well.

Friday Meme Fest

Both are guilty.

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Fauci ... As Bad As You Thought

Hooray for Tulsi Gabbard, outgoing Director of National Intelligence. She just posted the following on X.

Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements within the Intelligence Community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus’ lab-leak origins, and lied to Congress while under oath in 2024. It’s time you know the truth.

What we've all suspected turns out to be the truth, Fauci was a self-promoting weasel. Tulsi we will miss, I hope her husband recovers.

'Master Negotiator' vs. nth Generation Rug Merchants

Now that we know the details of the Iran war MOU, almost all the commentary I've read thinks no deal would have been preferable to this deal. I'm willing to let the 60 days play out before declaring it a total disaster. 

It doesn't look like our negotiating accomplished anything beyond what our bombing did. I am disappointed with this outcome so far, with a final assessment to come later.

I fear we'll conclude Donald Trump is a Master Negotiator primarily in his own mind. I'd love to be proven wrong.

The Queen of the Tetons

You know I ramble on about "the high country" and our patch of aspen forest. We don't get a lot of bear action here, because the mountains up behind our place are hunted National Forest, and the bears keep their distance. I'll bet the mule deer appreciate that even more than we do. 

I'm talking about bears because I want to link you to a poem, written by a longtime friend and posted by the other DrC, about the mama grizzly called 399. She was maybe the most famous real bear ever. 399 lived to a ripe old age and raised lots of cubs, including the quadruplets who really put her on the map. 

To quote the boast of another equally famous (if less real) bear - Yogi - 399 truly was "smarter than the average bear." Cubs get killed by male bears, and she'd often keep her brood near enough the highway to scare the males away. How she'd learned that was "safe ground" nobody knows. It did help make her famous, of course.

She was finally killed on a nighttime ramble by a motorist she probably scared the cr*p out of by stepping in front of his vehicle. I foolishly wish we could have made her wear a harness out of reflective tape, but she'd have torn it off instantly. 

Grizzlies are the apex predators throughout most of their range, except for us human recent arrivals. Individual grizzlies can learn to fear humans, but it isn't instinctual with them, and most don't learn.

Anyway, go read Sunni's poem about 399. It was good enough to leave me misty-eyed.

Seeing Is Believing

There have been several reports of Europeans over here for the World Cup expressing delight with what they've experienced. Their itineraries have taken them to places other than huge cities and national parks,  out into what you and I consider the "real America."

Air conditioning, unlimited soft drink refills, Bass Pro Shops, monster truck stops (Buc-ees and similar), free ice and large restaurant portions - what's not to like? But maybe just as important, s. p. a. c. e - wide roads, open fields, big cars and trucks, large homes, room to breathe and feel free. I guess they are also impressed we didn't have to build new stadiums to hold the games, as have most host countries.

The DrsC have visited well over 100 countries, enjoyed many of them, and still feel our spirits lift as we return home - every darned time. Our retirement checks would reach us nearly anywhere we chose on this globe, and yet we call home a couple of acres of Wyoming aspen forest that we share with the mule deer.

I hope some football fans go home and share the word that the real USA is amazing.  Our government won't always please them; as the world's superpower we can't please everybody. But the place, our lives, the space, it is darned wonderful.

When the third world hordes overrunning Europe make life miserable there, we'll start to get some European refugees who won't have to try too hard to fit in.

Something We Should Emulate

Sweden, long considered very liberal on immigration, has become somewhat more prescriptive about behavior expected of immigrants. See this UnHerd column for more on Sweden's new approach.

To most Swedes, however, the new law — which grants the government the power to revoke residence permits from foreigners guilty of petty crime or wrongdoing— makes perfect sense. 

The new legislation corrects ... unfairness by giving the government tools to act against migrants who fall short of serious criminality but who are persistently disorderly.

It hits directly at people who go underground to circumvent immigration rules, wrongfully claim sickness benefits, rack up debts, and otherwise show contempt for what Sweden’s Minister for Migration, Johan Forssell, calls “the effort to do the right thing”.

Way to go, Sweden. Might we not consider a similar law for recent immigrants? 

Pest Control

When I see a particularly pithy, on-target statement of where we are, I like to share it with you. Today's example is the title of an editorial from Issues & Insights.

Trump’s Iran Deal: Americans Wanted Something Done Short Of Ground Troops, And They Got It.

Public opinion never supported a ground invasion of Iran, and Trump heeded that limited mandate. Three and a half months is no quagmire, no forever war.

While much has been made of destroying Iran's navy and conventional air arm, seemingly no one in the region feared either much. The same is true for Iran's standing army. 

The threat Iran poses is ideological subversion of other nation's citizens, plus an asymmetrical warfare threat: covert forces and missile strikes. It is unclear how much those have been degraded. Somewhat, obviously.

Given the unwillingness to absorb the casualties necessary to exterminate the ideology the IRGC represents, we may have to do this all again, some few years downstream. The Israeli term for these recurring needs is "mowing the grass." 

I'd Americanize the label to "weed abatement" or "pest control." The analogy is relatively apt.

This Western Exterminators logo comes to mind.

The Rape Gang Report

A Member of Parliament - Rupert Lowe - has chaired a committee which investigated the rape gang problem in the United Kingdom. It was much more massive than previously thought, the behavior was uglier than previously reported, and the failure to protect these girls casts a very dark stain upon the British police and prosecutorial personnel. 

The entire Rape Gang Inquiry Report is at this link. Here are some key findings summarized by a reader.

1) This was a nationwide, not merely local, phenomenon. (40% of country involved)
2) The scale was enormous, more than anyone dared to think. (250,000 victims)
3) As has been reported, the vast majority of perpetrators were Pakistani Muslims.
4) Vulnerable girls were targeted using a consistent method.
5) The police, and other institutions, knew what was happening and ignored it.
6) Those in these institutions did so because they were afraid of being called 'racist'.
7) Parts of the foster and orphan care system became exploitation hotspots.
8) Multiple offenders explicitly linked their treatment of these girls with their own religious and cultural beliefs, and the girls' white ethnicity.

It is alleged that PM Sir Keir Starmer, as former Director of Public Prosecutions, issued 13,000 warning letters to rape suspects who were set free. London Mayor Sadiq Khan stoutly maintained there was no evidence of rape gangs in London and downplayed them elsewhere in the UK.

Dear old Blighty has become a sick society, seriously in need of a massive purgative. A cleansing to flush out of office all who stood by and did nothing. And a denaturalization and deportation of all those who can be shown to have participated.

Weird Pharmacological Science

Research in Australia finds a copper based drug called Cu(ATSM) makes dramatic improvements in the condition of mice with Alzheimer's. It apparently restores the brain's ability to get rid of waste byproducts. The study, published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience reports:

By improving the pumps, the brain can finally clear out the trapped waste. Over 56 days, the treatment reduced toxic amyloid-beta by 42% and improved spatial learning by nearly 44%.

Cu(ATSM) is a copper compound with anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties that has already progressed to clinical testing for conditions like Parkinson's and ALS.

It is early days, but this testing of the drug in humans (i.e., "clinical testing") sounds promising for early off-label use. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Putting Off Unpleasant Reality

Writing for Substack, Sherman Criner cites a Pell Institute survey which found the following.

Only 44 percent of American high school students expected to earn a bachelor’s degree in 2022, down from 72 percent in 2002. The study also revealed a parental gap among high school students, with only 33 percent of first-generation students aspiring to a bachelor’s degree in 2022, compared to 60 percent two decades earlier.

High schoolers are not systematically abandoning college as an option. Rather, when read in conjunction with the Pell Institute’s findings, they seem to believe that higher education has less of a comparative advantage.

If young people are still enrolling at consistently high rates, are they so skeptical? (see below for my answer as to the enrolling)

The internet has effectively dismantled the cultural bottlenecks that historically upheld the fiat value of a college education.

Everyone overlooks a major reason kids go to college when not especially interested in any particular career. Simply, to postpone the otherwise head-on collision with icky adulthood. College enables the extension of adolescence into the early twenties. 

As opposed to an 8 to 5 job five days a week, 50 weeks a year, they do college 32 weeks a year, with frequent breaks. The school day averages 3 hours in-class daily for 15 hours per week. 

Hanging out with age peers and little adult supervision, experimenting with sex, alcohol, and drugs. Imagine how long four years seems in prospect to someone who has lived only 18 years ... it's a near-eternity. 

This was brought home to us recently when a young woman who is a protege of the other DrC graduated from nursing school and accepted a fine job. She then complained of not liking the drudgery and responsibilities of "adulting." 

In her mid-20s, she'd put it off longer than 4 years. In her case, more like 6 years.

Some Things Don't Change

Both men were problematic with women.

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

Birthday Greetings

Happy Birthday, Mr. President ... born on Flag Day. Welcome to your 80s. I'm a few years older than you and what lies ahead won't be the most fun you've ever had. 

Various bits and bobs around your carcass will begin reminding you of all the years you've enjoyed. Some will hurt, some won't work as well as they did, others will surprise you by soldiering on without a hitch.

Mental acuity can go on undiminished, and what you are doing - using your mind basically non-stop - is probably the best thing you can do to stay sharp.

Stylistically, we couldn't be more different. OTOH, I support nearly all of the many programmatic things you've accomplished. 

You've got maybe another 30 months in office. Hang in there and keep punching. We've got your back.

Profiling DSA

Bonchie who writes for Red State, tweets a comment I'd share with you.

When you realize DSA members are just a bunch of people who failed at everything, refused to get real jobs, and then decided leeching off taxpayers was the next best thing, their entire ideology starts to make more sense.

DSA = Democratic Socialists of America. It is a way to make a living playing on the guilt felt by the undeserving well-off who are burdened with suicidal empathy. 

Deportation Rap

Power Line's John Hinderaker has a video from somewhere in Britain, of a young woman rapping "deport, deport, deport the effing lot." It is very much NSFW, not for your maiden aunt's ears. 

It is the voice of working class Brits, on the subject of third world immigration. They have to put up with the immigrants' very unBritish ways, and sexual misbehaviors. The elite have little contact.

Starmer's government had better walk very carefully, they're on thin ice.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's Meme and Let Die.

Agreement with Iran?

We are told Iran and the US are close to a memorandum of understanding, heading for an agreement. I will believe it when both sides agree it has happened, I'm not holding my breath.

I will consider it good deal as long as both sides meet their obligations under its terms, a period that may be measured in mere minutes, or may be longer. 

Do you sense I have essentially zero trust in Iran to keep agreements? You are correct. Their track record sucks. 

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A successful deal is one that benefits both parties. If Iran were an ordinary country, a cessation of hostilities, sanctions and blockade would be a good deal for them. But it's not ordinary.

The IRGC is instead a jihadist religious movement whose goal is a world living under Sharia law and honoring the Prophet. This treaty will be a giant step backwards, away from their avowed goal, a really bad deal from their perspective, I believe. 

Hating Harder

Kurt Schlichter writes bitterly funny political and social commentary that is often quotable, including this posted at Instapundit by Stephen Green.

The answer to the problem of Third World barbarians murdering UK subjects is apparently for the ruling class to hate UK subjects even harder.

It is bitterly hateful when the untermenchen protest your leadership performance, especially when you finally accept the fault is yours. They will insist on rubbing your nose in the mess.