Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Go Get That Huge Part of Yourself That You Probably Don't Know Is Missing

Most animals in shelters haven't done anything to deserve being there, under the gun, with their clock ticking. They will give you so very much and ask so very little in return.



Go find your friend and save their life.

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Net Neutrality Has Been In Effect For One Month. Are You Dead Yet?

dailywire
ByMichael J. Knowles
July 20, 2018

Or did the tax cuts already kill you?

 

It’s been just over one month since “net neutrality” regulations officially ended, flinging civilization back into the Paleolithic hellscape of 2015. In those waning days of the Obama administration, government bureaucrats took control over the Internet by classifying it as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act, giving the Federal Communications Commission sweeping power to regulate Internet service providers as if the three dozen some-odd ISPs in the United States were the second coming of the Ma Bell telephone monopoly.

After just three short, halcyon years, President Trump’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai repealed the burdensome regulations on December 14, 2017. Hollywood celebrities leapt to the defense of their countrymen not already dead from tax cuts and declared the Internet over. Some insisted the rule change would lead Twitter to charge users per tweet. The ACLU warned the repeal could lead to “erosion of the biggest free speech platform the world has ever known.”

Bye, Internet! You had your moments. #NetNeutrality — Martha Plimpton (@MarthaPlimpton) December 14, 2017

On July 19, Democrat politicians across the country made one final push to stop the “net neutrality” repeal before it was too late. Congressman Adam Smith tweeted, “The Trump FCC’s repeal of #NetNeutrality starts today. I’m calling for a vote in the People’s House to #SaveTheInternet.” Democrat House colleagues Barbara Lee and Nita Lowey, among others, posted similar warnings and calls-to-action. Unfortunately for the digital doomsday prophets, the new policy had already gone into effect more than a month earlier on June 11. The skies did not darken; the earth did not quake. The repeal date came and went last month with little fanfare. The Internet survived. Twitter didn’t start charging per tweet. The World Wide Web persists un-eroded.

Despite overwhelming public support, the Trump @FCC’s repeal of #NetNeutrality starts today. I support a vote to #SaveTheInternet! pic.twitter.com/diViaOb08g — Nita Lowey (@NitaLowey) July 19, 2018

The Democrats’ “net neutrality” narrative never made any sense. The “net neutrality” regulations made the Internet less free. Moreover, they were an aberration without which the Internet expanded and developed marvelously for decades. If Democrats wanted to keep the Internet the way it had always been, they would have campaigned to repeal the regulations. But the Democrat hysteria over “net neutrality” was never about preserving the Internet we all knew and loved; it was about grabbing ever more power.

Catastrophe is always imminent, according to the Left. They warn of disaster but promise to save us if we’ll only give them a bit more power and a bit more money. In his 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, psychologist Leon Festinger found that doomsday cultists wake up the morning after Armageddon, not in disbelief, but even firmer in their convictions. The reason is that the end of the world is never averted; it’s only ever postponed. A failed prediction or two will not suffice to disband the cult. In order to leave, one must first recognize the flaws in the belief system itself.

The Democrat Party will continue to peddle the same old Kool-Aid, through the midterm elections and beyond. Armageddons will come and go, the cultists will remain, and those fortunate few who recognize the internal illogic of their own ideologies will walk away.


Read More: Democratic Party Internet Trump Administration



Thank You Mr Knowles and DailyWire. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Equates Ending of Slavery To Electing Democrats

Pretty much what you'd expect from a Socialist. Turn the truth inside out and stand it on its head.

dailycaller
scott morefield 7/21/18

Socialist congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seemed to compare Democrats winning elections to the abolition of slavery during a Kansas campaign speech Friday.

“I learned that Kansas was founded over the struggle of the conscience of this nation,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Wichita crowd of over 4,000 people, as reported by Breitbart. “It was when we were deciding who we wanted to be as a country. It was when we were deciding who we wanted to be with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The people who were … leading this nation said, ‘You decide’ to the people.”

“‘Are we going to be a slave state or are we going to be a free state?’ And it was in 1861 that the people of Kansas decided that we were going to be a free nation,” she continued. “Back then, the people of Kansas were the tipping point for the future of this nation. Today, they are again.” (RELATED: Socialist Darling Trips Over Herself As She Takes Her First Steps On The Campaign Trail)

Ocasio-Cortez, who has been campaigning with fellow socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders to help elect Democrats in Kansas, made the remarks during a speech on behalf of Democrat James Thompson, who is running against GOP Rep. Ron Estes. Estes defeated Thompson in a 2017 special election.

The New York congressional candidate then went into a laundry list of government giveaways, including “Medicare for all,” free college tuition, and a “living wage,” before finishing with another reference to slavery.

“But what this moment requires of us, just as it was in 1861, what this moment requires of us is for everyday people to do more than they have ever done before to reclaim the soul of this nation,” she said.

Follow Scott on Facebook and Twitter.

Tags : alexandria ocasio cortez democrat party slavery



Thank You Mr Morefield and the DC

Hell In Nicaragua, Venezuela, And Cuba Puts Democrats And Their Beloved S-Word On The Spot In Florida

American Thinker
Monica Showalter 7/21/18

Democrats have been feeling their oats with socialism these days, basking in the wins they've gotten. The ascent of Democratic Socialists of America member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a Democratic congressional primary in New York, has given them a new battery. Ocasio's their new "it" girl.

But it might not play the way they think it will play beyond New York. Sure, Bernie Sanders and Ocasio herself are out campaigning in Kansas (which has a "progressive" tradition that even the white half of President Obama's family was part of).

But let them try that in Florida now.

That's the thinking of longtime Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer (who is center-leftish) in a column warning that Democrats had better start blasting socialist hell-holes Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua to the south of our border in Florida, or else. He writes:


If Democrats want to win the Hispanic vote in Florida – a key swing state – in upcoming elections, it won't be enough for them to say that President Trump locks up immigrant infants in cages, sides with Russia's President Vladimir Putin against U.S. intelligence agencies and heads one of the most corruption-ridden administrations in recent U.S. history.

Democratic candidates will need to speak out much louder about the crimes against humanity that are taking place in Nicaragua and Venezuela, and denounce Trump's refusal to consider asylum petitions from large numbers of people fleeing the horrors of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba.

Apparently, the counteracting influence of the Florida's Puerto Ricans, some of whom blame President Trump for the locally corrupt response to Hurricane Maria instead of the socialists they voted for back home, isn't enough. And it may be that some are putting the blame where it belongs anyway.

Two countries, which are closely watched by Florida's immigrant population, are getting absolutely hellish as a result of socialism: Venezuela and Nicaragua. Cuba already is an awful place.

Venezuela, which was so praised by Sanders in the past, is already well known, and no, we have not seen anything negative about it from either Bernie or Alexandria.

Don't even imagine that either will bring up the horrors of Cuba – we already know they'll be touting Cuban relations.

The other festering boil of socialism is Nicaragua.

It's getting really bad there now; it looks as though an all-out civil war is getting underway; and yes, the news is starting to cover it.

Here are a few headlines, and man, I had my choice of them when I hit Google:

Student protesters say Nicaraguan forces "shooting to kill"

Nearly 300 dead in Nicaragua protests since April: UN

Costa Rica installs shelters for Nicaraguan migrants

Nicaragua's bishops to pray for exorcism amid Ortega crackdown

'Pack Up and Get Out': Nicaraguan Unrest Shakes U.S. Expat Community

Hiding in Nicaragua, Ortega's battered opponents plan comeback

Crazy. The violent final call of socialism in that region. It happened during the Reagan era, too, but there was a Soviet and Cuban element of support at the time. With that less of an element now (I'm not sure about Russia), the socialists are simply fighting like cornered rats, and it's vicious and bloody.

That presents a problem for Democrats, who are all in for socialism, and saying nothing, as Oppenheimer suggests. After all, other stories have headlines like this one that ran today: "Democratic socialism surging in the age of Trump."

Yet Oppenheimer has a poll showing that Republican Gov. Rick Scott is beating Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson handily in the Senate race, and Nelson is a moderate Democrat, the kind who are winning races around the country in isolated special elections.

His problem is that Democrats as a whole just keep keeping it silent, hoping no one will notice the socialist meltdowns in those countries, while Bernie and Alexandria continue to tout openly the wonders of socialism and all its free stuff.

Oppenheimer doesn't get to the half of it as he warns:


If Democrats don't pay more attention to Florida's Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan voters, and make a bigger effort to win them over, they will risk losing key congressional and Senate races. They might even lose the state – and, perhaps, national – elections in 2020.

And Florida is a key, key, key critical swing state indeed for Democrats. So will they speak out about socialism, or keep succoring it and coddling it as Florida's denizens look on? Democrats know it's a problem, which is why they keep silent. Watch Democrats let this roll right out of their hands as their love for socialism trumps their need for Florida votes. They've got a choice: Florida, or socialism, and they can't seem to bring themselves to extricate themselves from this tar baby other than through an uncomfortable silence. In Florida, that's not going to cut it.


Thank You Ms Showalter and American Thinker.

Saturday, July 21, 2018

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Progressive Scorned

American Thinker
Steven D. Vivian
7/20/18


Since the presidential election of 2016, nary has a day passed without loudly professed "outrage": Madonna daydreams of blowing up the White House; an undulating pink sea of pussy hats marches for ill defined goals; a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. is reportedly removed from the White House; Berkeley Antifa manlets smash windows and start fires; House majority whip Steve Scalise is nearly murdered and others wounded by James Hodgkinson; high-ranking "Russiagate" FBI investigators are revealed as deeply partisan. White House officials are menaced in public, egged on by Democratic lawmakers and activists. Trump-supporters – or those thought to be – are physically attacked. Meanwhile, movie stars and comedians engage in escalating one-upmanship of Donald Trump-hatred – and hatred of Trump voters.

Before the election, progressives seemed merely condescending snobs, as when Bill Maher and his audience laughed when Ann Coulter predicted that Trump would earn the Republican nomination. After Trump's nomination, progressive snobbery was inflected with scorn, as when Hillary wondered, "Why aren't I fifty points ahead?" One answer – among many – is that she can't mask her loathing of that "basket of deplorables." The WikiLeaks release of emails confirm her loathing, as when her campaign manager wrote: "[S]he is beginning to hate everyday Americans." The rejection of Hillary Clinton, the anointed one, shocked not only her – it shocked the entire Democratic political class and its media collaborators in New York and Hollywood.

Now, in the summer of 2018, progressive snobbery has mutated into misanthropy. Many progressive causes – full employment, withdrawal from international trade deals, a fresh response to North Korea – have been tackled by Trump. The fear of displacement by a despised president is at the heart of progressive rage. Hell hath no fury like progressives scorned.

Bill Maher, high priest of the Smart Set, despises the working class for its rejection of Hillary Clinton. On his June 8, 2018 broadcast, he hoped that the economy "crashes" so Trump will lose in 2020. Maher's misanthropy is instructive. As Americans find their footing in a much improved labor market, Maher roots for disaster: lost jobs, lost health insurance, lost homes, aborted college educations, divorces, more opioid deaths. Maher's scorn was predictably applauded by his audience of trained seals. If Maher's wish comes true, many who applauded Maher will be unemployed and worse, though Maher will demand that they shut up and keep applauding.

Maher's misanthropy is simply hatred disguised – poorly disguised – as moral superiority. We see that hatred in him, in Hillary Clinton, and in the partnership of legacy media and Hollywood's figures of conscience: Steven Colbert, Kathy Griffin, Michael Moore, Peter Fonda, Rob Reiner, etc.
The government's response to illegal immigration has especially inflamed progressive rage. We are bombarded with alarming images of children separated from their parents and shabby propaganda from Time magazine, with its cover of Trump gazing down at a little girl who was separated from her mother – except that the little girl was not. We hear demands that ICE be abolished.

More than any other issue, immigration reveals the chasm between the progressives and the working class. For decades, most Americans of all ethnicities have wanted lower immigration numbers only to be told they're racists. As Rob Reiner tweeted on January 21 of this year: "GOP frightened to death of the browning of America. They will lose this last big battle of the Civil War. Diversity is our strength." Reiner's hypocrisy is remarkable. He praises diversity while fleeing it: he resides in Malibu, California, the population of which – according to the 2010 census – is 87.4% non-Hispanic white.

Beyond making claims of bigotry, progressives trot out the old "immigrants do jobs that Americans won't do." Having suffered during the Great Recession, that treacle gained little working-class traction. The working class must also endure finger-pointing lectures about their stupidity, as when they're told mass immigration doesn't dampen wages. Even during hard times, so goes the argument, high levels of immigration defy the laws of supply and demand. By a virtuous miracle, millions of unskilled, illiterate aliens flood the labor market, and working class wages don't suffer. This suspension of supply and demand must confound the cheap labor lobby, which agitates for more H1-B and H2-B visas and defends the absurd diversity visa lottery.

Even in the current economy, much recovered from two years ago, unemployment in June went up even as more people entered the job market. Why? Because the population simply grows faster than the job market, and most of the population is driven by immigration, legal and illegal.

At least on that issue – cheap labor – the Business Roundtable and can join hands with Michael Moore, "critic" of capitalism.

In due time, the federal government will reunite illegal alien parents with their children, but immigration will still demand attention. As summer gives way to fall, progressives engage in radical chic by loud demands for open borders, though their position is hardly new. On July 3, 1984, the Wall Street Journal declared: "If Washington still wants to 'do something' about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders." Another cheap labor argument that progressives can cheer. How a welfare state survives open borders is a trifling detail to be worked out later.

What's next in the immigration wars? In the short term: more failed bills in Congress, more finger-pointing, and more moral exhibitionism. Interparty tensions will intensify. As the 2018 midterm campaigns heat up, progressives will grow more emboldened and confrontational. There are signs of this now: the Democratic establishment is anxious about the surprise primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young Democratic Socialist. America's most famous socialist, Bernie Sanders, remains a national figure, and his supporters still seethe at the alliance of CNN and the Democratic establishment. Out on the West Coast, Kevin de León, competing for Dianne Feinstein's Senate seat, defeated Feinstein in a vote in the California Democratic Party's endorsement. De León is a major architect of California's sanctuary state movement. And speaking of California, Senator Kamala Harris has emerged as a progressive powerhouse, claiming that California is the future of the nation. This is chilling, as California is the most impoverished of our fifty states. California looks increasingly third-world: the ultra-wealthy moral superiors smirking down upon the growing masses of poor. How this vision plays in the Rust Belt remains to be seen.

As the midterm election season peaks, Trump-hatred will not be sufficient to unite the Democrats. The establishment and progressives will battle for the party's future, and emotions will run high, especially if the economy remains strong. Prestige, power, money, careers – all are at stake. The establishment and progressives might very well turn on one another, fangs bared, and eat one another alive: Democraticide.


Thank You Mr Vivian and American Thinker.

End The Mueller Investigation

american thinker
By J. Marsolo

Robert Mueller's indictment of twelve Russians for hacking the DNC's computers and releasing emails and documents is the latest and best reason to end the Mueller investigation.

The indictment does not charge that any member of the Trump campaign was involved with the Russians. Rod Rosenstein said the Russian hacking of the DNC and release of emails had no effect on the 2016 election. If there were any evidence of Trump involvement with the Russian hacking, then surely it would have been in this indictment.

The authorization for Mueller's appointment states:

b) The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then-FBI Director James B. Comey in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017, including: (i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and (ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and (iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).

So no links, no coordination, no collusion, and no effect on the election.

Mueller's indictment of Paul Manafort deals with financial issues from 2005 that have nothing to do with Trump and the election. The indictment of General Flynn has nothing to do with the election, and Flynn's plea should be withdrawn and charges dismissed.

The charge that Russians hacked the DNC computers should have been and should now be investigated by the FBI. We now know that because of Peter Strzok and the corrupt FISA warrants based on the Hillary-paid for dossier, the Obama FBI did not conduct a fair, honest investigation.

But now, Lisa Page and James Baker resigned; Bruce Ohr was demoted; Andrew McCabe was fired; Peter Strzok was removed from the FBI investigation and demoted; and, most importantly, Comey was fired.

Since these persons are no longer involved in the investigation, the FBI should be able to conclude the investigation. The results then should be made public and action taken, if necessary, by the president and Congress, such as sanctions.

The Russian hacking of the DNC is not a matter for a political prosecutor like Mueller, with a staff of Hillary- and Obama-supporters masquerading as investigating attorneys in search of a crime or misdeed to pin on Trump. Again, collusion, links, and coordination are not crimes for a prosecutor to investigate.

The timing of the release of the indictment is further evidence that the Mueller investigation is politically motivated to damage Trump. It was released during the week of the Strzok testimony that highlighted the corrupt Obama FBI-DOJ investigation. Worse, it was released on the eve of President Trump's visit to Britain and to meet Putin. This allowed the Dems and media to continually demand that President Trump raise this issue with Putin. Evidently, the Dems and media have forgotten, or do not care, that because Mueller chose to criminally indict the Russians, they are presumed innocent under our Constitution.

Now the Dems and media and the McCain-Bush Republicans are upset because President Trump said at the press conference with Putin that he questioned the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence agencies about the Russian "interference."

Given what we have learned about the efforts of the Obama FBI, the Obama DOJ, and Clapper and Brennan, all working to undermine Trump and help Hillary, it is more than reasonable to question the findings of this bunch that constituted our "intelligence" services. The Dems and media routinely challenged and questioned the findings of our CIA regarding the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But now this same bunch acts shocked that President Trump questions the conclusions about Russian interference.

Russians hacked the DNC, with no effect on the election, to release information about Hillary that we already knew. It did not involve the Trump campaign. This is the bottom line of the Mueller investigation. We knew this before the Mueller investigation. There is no charge of "links and/or coordination" with the Trump campaign because there is no evidence of it. End this waste of taxpayer funds.


Thank You Mr Marsolo and American Thinker.

The Story of A Professional Delusion: Do Psychiatrists Believe Their Own Words?

madinamerica

The Story of a Professional Delusion: Do Psychiatrists Believe Their Own Words?

Niall McLaren


On February 24th of this year, a conference was held in Sydney, Australia which featured a number of prestigious local and overseas speakers as well as former psychiatric patients. Titled Mental Health in Crisis, it was intended to provide a forum for well-researched alternative views on the state of modern psychiatry. The next week, most of the speakers went to New Zealand for further seminars in five cities. During that week, a newspaper published an article quoting Prof. Peter Gotzsche, director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, whose research showed that antidepressants are a dangerous and relatively ineffective class of drugs, and who recommended they should be severely restricted. In his view, general practitioners should not be authorised to initiate them, and they should not be given to children or adolescents. On March 9th, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) issued a press statement strongly criticising the article. In particular, it stated:

The prescription of antidepressant or antipsychotic medications is something that a psychiatrist only ever does in partnership with the patient and after due consideration of the risks and benefits (emphasis added).
As described on MIA, I lodged a lengthy complaint with the RANZCP, alleging that, as the responsible officials, the president and board had breached their own code of ethics at a number of points; in particular, the claim about prescribing habits was patently false. This has gone back and forth and, predictably, my complaints have been dismissed. On June 29th, the incoming president of the college wrote to me:

The (original press) statement also acknowledges… the careful consideration given when prescribing medications.
That is, he essentially repeats the false claim that drugs are “only ever” prescribed after a friendly discussion between the caring doc and the grateful patient. Some months ago, I published the results of a pilot study on my 176 active files, which showed that psychiatrists hardly ever give information to patients regarding the risks of their drugs (I would have thought that any psychiatrist who was still breathing would know this: patients are routinely thrown to the ground and jabbed despite their furious objections or tearful pleading. Part of his defence was that psychiatrists have good intentions).

This reminds me of another rather fractious interchange I had with the well-known psychiatrist Ronald Pies. Readers may recall that some years ago, in his role as editor of the online publication Psychiatric Times, Dr Pies penned a fulmination against the “narrative” of the “chemical imbalance” hypothesis of mental disorder:

I am not one who easily loses his temper, but I confess to experiencing markedly increased limbic activity whenever I hear someone proclaim, “Psychiatrists think all mental disorders are due to a chemical imbalance!” In the past 30 years, I don’t believe I have ever heard a knowledgeable, well-trained psychiatrist make such a preposterous claim, except perhaps to mock it. On the other hand, the “chemical imbalance” trope has been tossed around a great deal by opponents of psychiatry, who mendaciously attribute the phrase to psychiatrists themselves… In truth, the “chemical imbalance” notion was always a kind of urban legend- – never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.
In a comment (since deleted), I suggested that perhaps Dr Pies had spent the last thirty years holed up in a cave in Patagonia because patients tell me that all the time: “The other psychiatrists said I have a chemical imbalance of the brain and I have to take drugs all my life.” I don’t believe patients make that up and I don’t believe the trope originated with them: it came straight from psychiatrists in their latter-day role as purveyors of chemical bliss.

To continue, earlier this year, I published an article1 which showed that all claims made on behalf of ECT by the RANZCP have no basis in fact. A newspaper article based on the same figures scored me a complaint, which was rather difficult to understand because all I did was collect figures from different advocates of ECT to show their claims are self-contradictory.

Similarly, in July 2017, the Australian Human Rights Commission held an enquiry into the Convention on Torture, whose full name is Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and to which Australia is a signatory. I submitted a paper (mine is No. 3) which showed firstly, that detained psychiatric patients met the Convention’s definition of detained persons; second, what was done to them amounted to “treatment” and third, the patients themselves often said their treatment felt like torture.

Needless to say, this provoked yet another complaint that I was dragging the noble name of psychiatry in the mud, that psychiatrists are terribly nice people with good intentions who would never dream of torturing people. That may be convincing to somebody who doesn’t know psychiatry’s ghastly history,2 but anyway, the Medical Board dismissed the complaint in under 24 hours (I must say I never take complaints personally because I know it’s not me that they dislike, just what I’m saying).

Finally, an intensely personal essay3 in the influential Lancet Psychiatry extolled the virtues of psychiatry’s biopsychosocial model, originally developed by the psychiatrist George Engel. Linda Gask, a psychiatrist who does not conceal her own mental problems, concluded:

…the biopsychosocial model is, and remains, a model for the whole of medicine — not just psychiatry.
This is a little alarming. First, George Engel was not a psychiatrist, he was a gastroenterologist. Granted, he had a dual appointment with the department of psychiatry and had undergone psychoanalysis, but that’s not the same. Second, he did not write for psychiatry but for general medicine. All his case examples are medical. Finally, and damningly, in 1998 I showed that his ‘biopsychosocial model’ wasn’t a theory, nor a model, nor anything, because Engel never actually wrote it.4 Indeed, in 2004, I went so far as to say that any psychiatrist who claimed there is a biopsychosocial model is committing scientific fraud,5 but Dr Gask and all Engel’s fervent disciples manage to brush that off.

Let’s pause to look at these facts:
  1. Very senior psychiatrists repeatedly insist that psychiatric drugs are “only ever” prescribed after a friendly chat involving “due consideration of the risks and benefits…” However, everybody knows that every day in every town in the world, mentally troubled people are wrestled to the ground and injected, but if they complain, they will get more, not less, drugs.
  2. A very influential psychiatrist bursts his boiler over the calumny that a “knowledgeable, well-trained… well-informed psychiatrist” would ever use the expression “chemical imbalance of the brain.” Tens of thousands of psychiatrists actually do use it, as do drug companies, family doctors and just about everybody else. A Google search yields 1,180,000 citations in 0.48secs.
  3. Certain psychiatrists in Queensland take vigorous exception to the public being told that Australia uses ECT 600% more than New Zealand, even though on every conceivable demographic factor, the populations are the same. The only difference between the two countries is that the surge in ECT in Australia is almost entirely in private practice, and New Zealand has no private psychiatic industry. Even though the RANZCP code of ethics explicitly forbids exploiting patients, private hospitals charge what they like (the only figure I have is $620 per shock, which would be a shock in its own right). Queensland uses ECT 1000% more than the British National Health Service, and it is all but banned in Italy, where it was invented, but apparently none of that counts as evidence of exploitation.
  4. Psychiatrists object bitterly to the idea that anything they do could count as torture because their intentions are honorable. A considerable proportion of psychiatric patients don’t actually like being locked up, trussed up and/or stripped naked and injected with powerful, psychoactive chemicals which induce a wide range of exceedingly unpleasant, long-term and/or dangerous side effects, and/or shocked, and liken their experience to torture, which brings them under the purview of the Convention on Torture because, very foolishly, the Convention defines torture as what the recipient feels about it, not what the perpetrator intends by it.
  5. Large numbers of psychiatrists around the world think that a model that was never written licenses both their immense and essentially unaccountable power over people who have broken no laws, and their outrageous fees.
Okaaay. Houston, we have a problem.

On the one hand, we have a bunch of ideas that Blind Freddy can see are either idiotic or completely false, and on the other, we have a very large group of highly educated, mostly intelligent, mostly sober and well-behaved people who swear by them.
Is there a tablet for cognitive dissonance? Thanks, I’ll take two.
Talking of cognitive functions, let’s try a little exercise in epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge. The goal is to assign each of the above statements to an epistemological category. We’ll go through them in reverse order, starting with No. 5. This one interests me greatly. How can anybody read Engel’s work and come away with an idea that matches the power and scope of, say, the modern synthetic theory of evolution? Or the standard model of physics? Or plate tectonics? Immunology? It’s ludicrous because it simply isn’t there, but I think the answer is that psychiatrists are too scared to look at the truth, which is that they don’t have a model of mental disorder.6 Instead, they clutch Engel’s pseudo-model to their chests like a security blanket. Standing in a group chanting “We believe, oh Engel, we believe,” is much less scary than asking: “Do I really know what I’m doing?” That is, it’s just another example of believing a comforting lie rather than confront a scary truth, which is terribly human. Human, but hardly edifying.

No. 4, torture. Oh dear, do any humans ever believe they are doing bad things? A few, but most of humanity’s more egregious crimes against itself have been committed in the pursuit of noble ideals. Hitler’s plan in his war for Lebensraum was to wipe out 30 million Slavs in the first year but that was noble because his Aryan races ranked higher in the cosmic order than mere Slavs. And in his final testament, his notorious Table Talk, he fully expected that the world would be grateful for his sideline in getting rid of the Jews. Ernst Rüdin, psychiatrist and architect of the T4 Program, which sterilised and murdered hundreds of thousands of mental patients, and prototype of the Final Solution, did not believe he was doing anything wrong: he explicitly ordered that their deaths should be easy. Even Stalin thought he was doing the proletariat a favor — well, those that survived. As Kenneth Clarke said in another context:

They suffered from that most terrible of delusions, they believed themselves to be virtuous.
Psychiatrists firmly believe that leaving a mental disorder untreated is a very much worse sin than locking a person up and pumping him full of drugs that they know will shorten his life. Why do they believe this? You’d have to ask them, but I expect they would say something like, “Have you no humanity? Think of the poor schizophrenic huddled in a doorway in winter.” Indeed, but there are plenty of poor people huddled in doorways and nobody bothers much about them. I think we could class this as an example of psychiatrists not taking the effort to sort out what’s good for them (lots of busy hospitals stuffed full of patients, lots of conferences in nice resorts, research grants and so on) and what’s good for the man on the receiving end of the needle. But who cares about him anyway, we all know he’s nuts.

As an aside, Rüdin’s very successful efforts to sterilise and murder pre-war Germany’s population of people diagnosed with schizophrenia had no effect on the post-war incidence of the condition, which is a problem if you want to believe it’s all genetic.

No. 3, about ECT, is easy:

It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. (Upton Sinclair)
If you can earn up to $250 for about two minutes of “work” by believing ECT is the greatest, only a fool or a churl wouldn’t believe it. That is, psychiatry’s fascination with ECT is a simple case of Skinnerian positive reinforcement (if you’re rewarded for doing something, you’re more likely to do it again). It means that if we stopped paying people for giving ECT, it would soon die out.
No. 2. Ah, the good Dr Pies. I detect a touch of professional jealousy here. He doesn’t like the naive reductionist biological approach favored by the likes of Thomas Insel7 8 as he believes he’s more sophisticated than that, but even he can see that when the NIMH disburses its $1.5 billion a year, the lion’s share goes to basic biological research and his side hardly gets a look it. So he stamps around the place, banging lecterns with his shoe and growling to whoever will listen, but guess who keeps his newspaper afloat? That’s right: drug companies.

And so we arrive at Number 1: Why would a sensible person thrice deny the empirically-established fact that psychiatrists hardly ever give any information about their drugs, and the little they do give is sugar-coated and highly misleading?

Option No. 1A: They’re idiots.

Let’s assume they don’t have the brains to analyse a complex question and arrive at the right answer. They’d get lost crossing the street. No, we can dismiss this because they passed medical school. How, we don’t need to know.

Option No. 1B: They’re sheep.

If in order to get your ticket in psychiatry, and get a job, and keep it, and be able to go to conventions and have people talk to you, and have people sit through your lectures without walking out, and get your papers published, you have to believe that black is white, what do you do? That’s right, you go with the flow. Listen to the words of the esteemed Brother Chomsky:

Still, in the universities or in any other institution, you can often find some dissidents hanging around in the woodwork—and they can survive in one fashion or another, particularly if they get community support. But if they become too disruptive or too obstreperous—or, you know, too effective—they’re likely to be kicked out. The standard thing, though, is that they won’t make it within the institutions in the first place, particularly if they were that way when they were young—they’ll simply be weeded out somewhere along the line. So in most cases, the people who make it through the institutions and are able to remain in them have already internalized the right kinds of beliefs: it’s not a problem for them to be obedient, they already are obedient, that’s how they got there. And that’s pretty much how the ideological control system perpetuates itself in the schools.9
I’d say it’s a case of the echo chamber effect, where a group of people sit in a circle and a man says to the woman on his right: “The woman on my left just said that everybody she’s spoken to agrees the emperor is wearing wonderful new clothes, so I’ll agree. Pass it on.” Nobody has the courage to stand up and state the obvious.

Option No. 1C: They’re deluded.

A delusion is a fixed, false belief, out of context with the healthy subject’s cultural, social, educational and intellectual background.
Alert readers will be aware that this immediately leads to the conclusion that reality is simply a shared delusion; conversely, it’s not a delusion if enough powerful people say it isn’t. Enough powerful people are saying that psychiatrists only ever prescribe drugs after due blah blah, so it’s true and it isn’t a delusion and anyway, who’s objecting? You are, young woman? Listen to me, girly, you’d better think carefully before you say too much more, just think about your career and your kids ending up on the street. So what’s the truth about the emperor’s new clothes? That’s better. Don’t forget it.

That’s not really a delusion, more like a cult where a few charismatic people dominate a much larger number and control their thinking and everybody’s too insecure to challenge them. Psychiatry as a cult? I think somebody has already suggested that.

Option No. 1D: They’re talking shit.

Tucked between truth and falsity there is a further epistemological category, defined as bullshit. The person who talks shit has no regard for truth; it is an instrument for him, to be wielded and abandoned as the moment suits him. His utterances are neither true nor false but are designed to sway the audience on an emotional level. Mr Donald Trump is a master bullshitter. He says any bit of shit that comes into his head. If the crowd roars, he laughs and repeats it but if they don’t react, he immediately forgets it and moves to something else. He remembers the bits that got a cheer and the rest didn’t exist; if you say it did, that’s fake news (lies).
I have argued that psychiatry is stuffed full of bullshit10 and, at first glance, the “only ever” statement appears to qualify. However, the essence of a bullshit statement is that it is neither true nor false, it is a non-propositional form to which those logical categories don’t apply: “Make America Great Again.” “My country, right or wrong.” “Would I be here if I didn’t love you?” “Our wonderful sportsmen.” It doesn’t actually say anything that can be pinned down, which is the entire point. But this statement, that psychiatrists only ever prescribe blah blah most certainly can be pinned down. It’s been pinned down, and it’s been proven false. It may have started as bullshit but it ended up as crap.

Option 1E: They’re lying.

Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth.11

I believe this is what happened. The people responsible for this travesty looked at the truth (that psychiatrists hardly ever tell the truth about their drugs) and realised they didn’t like what would flow from that fact getting loose. So they removed it and substituted a falsehood (only ever) whose consequences they could live with. On July 6th, I sent a letter to the newly-installed president of the RANZCP, reiterating my allegation that the claim was false, and that everybody involved knew it was false:

For myself, I am forced to conclude that senior officials of the college lied, lied again, and are now trying to conceal their lies. I believe that the broader membership of the RANZCP would agree with me, as would any reasonable member of the general public. I believe that any person found guilty of such behaviour would not be a fit person to hold office in the RANZCP, and I am sure most members would agree with me.
In view of the repeated failure of officials of the RANZCP to follow its approved procedures, I see no cause to believe that they have acted in good faith in this matter, nor that they have any intention of doing so. Accordingly, I shall refer the matter to the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission, under which the RANZCP is registered.
By the time you read this, that complaint will have been lodged. Meantime, let’s go back to the question posed in the title: Do psychiatrists believe their own words? I think they do because, crammed in their little intellectual echo chamber, the overwhelming majority don’t have the courage to question anything in case it brings the wrath of the profession down on their heads — or in case it affects their incomes. For a mainstream psychiatrist, there’s only one thing worse than realising you’ve been in an echo chamber all your career, and that’s being kicked out of it.

The last word goes to the inestimable Richard Feynman, in his 1974 lecture Cargo Cult Science:
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool… I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist… I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is more than just not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you may be wrong, an integrity that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists… (emphasis added)
Show 11 footnotes

Thank You Dr McLaren and MIA.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Trump Has Been Set Up, Framed and Relentlessly Persecuted By The American Intelligence Community

dailycaller 
Sidney Powell, former federal prosecutor
7/19/18

The frenzied furor and fomented outrage over President Donald Trump’s reluctance to express blind trust for our “intelligence community” defy reason and reality. In their choreographed cries of contempt for Mr. Trump, the “left’s” increasingly shrill proclamations of political apocalypse make “Chicken Little” look rational. At least we’ve moved on from the impending annihilation from the nuclear war with North Korea.

Power is the only thing leftists worship, and they are unraveling in front of our eyes without it. They can’t control Mr. Trump. That alone drives them insane. They have no policies that work. Cities and states they control are criminal sanctuaries and bankrupt cesspools. Check out San Francisco, Portland and Chicago.

Each of the president’s remarkable accomplishments — from unprecedented high employment, our booming economy and the tax cuts to his historic summit with Kim Jong-un — highlights their abject failures and serves to prick their narcissistic egos. The country is doing better without them every day. Even worse, they are desperate to keep their countless crimes and abuses covered up.

We know that there are many honorable, dedicated and legitimate members of our multiple intelligence and law enforcement agencies who strive to protect us the right way every day. So, why might any of us not just declare blind trust for our “intelligence community” writ large? Let me count the ways.

Aside from the fact that former CIA Director John Brennan does not even attempt to conceal his loathing of Trump, it was none other than Brennan who had the CIA spying on members of Congress—indeed the entire Senate Intelligence Committee. Surely, there were others in the Agency who helped him. How many like Brennan are still there?

Ironically, while Brennan is coming apart at the seams over Trump’s progress in a diplomatic relationship with Putin, it is Brennan who supported a communist—voting for Gus Hall as none-other than president of the United States.

Then there’s Director of National Intelligence [DNI] James Clapper—the second Trump-loather only recently departed from the top of the “IC.” Mr. Clapper is the guy who had the NSA collecting all possible data on all Americans and then lied to Congress about it.

Even more important, according to Mr. Comey’s own memos leaked to the New York Times, combined with Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s “note to self” within minutes of Trump’s inauguration, we know that Brennan, Clapper, Obama, Comey, Rice, counter-terrorism advisor Lisa Monaco, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Vice President Biden, met in the Oval Office just before Comey went to brief the president-elect. Not only did they decide to limit information about Russia to be shared with the incoming team, they dispatched Comey to set up Mr. Trump for the media explosion of the entire false narrative and Steele dossier.

On January 6, 2017, on instructions from Clapper, Comey met one-on-one with Mr. Trump in Trump Tower. Comey “executed the session just as [he] had planned.” He dropped the bombshell of only the “salacious” details of the Steele dossier. He ran to his car to write down the details of the conversation, then he reported to Clapper and possibly Brennan, one of whom leaked it to CNN. Comey’s briefing provided the very “news hook” they all knew the media wanted to run with the existence of the unverified, Clinton-bought-and-paid-for dossier.

That remarkable setup, by the highest members of our “intelligence community” and Obama himself, sparked the media firestorm of the Trump-Russia-collusion lie that has besieged the Trump presidency to this day. Indeed, that was its purpose—if not impeachment.

Don’t forget Peter Strzok — the FBI’s lead investigator for the “intelligence community”— hardly the epitome of trustworthiness. Strzok is the self-avowed despiser of Trump and any possible Trump supporter. Strzok is the epicenter of the Clinton email “investigation,” the Russia narrative, and the Mueller team until last July. Discoveries of his innumerable venomous expressions of hatred for the president “clouded” the Clinton email investigation and compelled his removal from the Special counsel team. Even more egregious conduct compelled his physical removal form the FBI.

I almost forgot. Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and Yates, aided by others in the “intelligence community” more recently including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, obtained multiple FISA warrants to spy on members of the Trump team. All those applications were based primarily on the Clinton-bought-and-paid-for Steele dossier of lies.

We wouldn’t want to omit Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor, who tripled the unmaskings of Americans during 2016 — grossly abusing the government’s surveillance apparatus to target the political opposition.

Sally Yates, of course, used those unmaskings to set up General Michael Flynn who was simply doing his job. She got him fired from his new position as President Trump’s national security advisor, had FBI Agent Strzok ambush Flynn in an interview, and McCabe may have helped tee him up with false allegations for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

And there’s more. As the chief judge of the super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found in an opinion heavily redacted but unclassified last year, the Obama/Comey/FBI’s rank abuses of raw surveillance data of Americans extend back to 2015 (when Trump announced—if not further). The court found egregious Fourth Amendment violations by the FBI and that it had given private contractors (probably Fusion GPS—Steele dossier creators—and Clinton-connected CrowdStrike) wrongful unlimited and unsupervised access to that data. The court so distrusted the FBI itself that it took access away from it, and NSA Director Admiral Rogers proceeded to eliminate the use of “about queries” completely.

What was it Senator Schumer said? Cross our intelligence community and they have six ways from Sunday to pay you back? That’s not an endorsement of trust, but rather of fear. Now we know how the-man-behind-the-curtain keeps Schumer in line.

Trump must be close to pulling back that curtain and exposing the “petty men” who “peep about to find [themselves] dishonorable graves.”

At that moment in Helsinki, for Mr. Trump, the question of choosing between Vladimir Putin (ex-KGB despot) and Mr. Trump’s own experience of being set up, framed and relentlessly persecuted by the American “intelligence community” to this day, must have felt like the choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Either would destroy him, and no matter what he said, the Left would shriek the sky is falling yet again

Indeed, one must wonder if our president really feels there is anyone he can trust.

Sidney Powell, former federal prosecutor and veteran of 500 federal appeals, is the author of “LICENSED TO LIE: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.” She is a senior fellow of the London Center for Policy Research and senior policy adviser for America First.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.



Thank You Mr Powell and the DC.

Virginia Govt Officials Not Happy With First School District To Arm Teachers

They're not happy because it takes away one more leg of their Virtue Signaling stool in order to make children safer from people who've been poisoned with mind control drugs.

dailycaller
rob shimshock education reporter 7/19/18

A school district voted unanimously to become the first Virginia county to permit armed teachers, but Virginia government officials are not pleased.

The Lee County School Board decided earlier in July to arm teachers in its 11-school, 3,200-student school district, but face backlash from Virginia’s Department of Education and attorney general, according to The Washington Post Wednesday.

“[There are] one or two people out in the community that are not for it, and I think it’s probably from an anti-gun standpoint, really,” Lee County School Board member Rob Hines said. “But people can have concerns about it. We have concerns about it. We just think that, financially, it’s our best option and we have to do something.”

The board believes 50 out of Lee County’s 700 school employees will be responsible for concealed weapons in September after going through psychological evaluations, background checks and summer training. Virginia state law forbids the presence of firearms on school property, but the Lee County School Board will attempt to classify the armed employees as “conservators of the peace” to gain exemption. (RELATED: Alabama Superintendent: Metal Detectors Weren’t In Use On Day Of School Shooting)

“We recently found out about this scheme, and we’re looking into it,” Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring’s spokesman, Michael Kelly, told WaPo. “It’s troubling to learn that people are putting so much time and effort into getting around the law and getting more guns into schools when the focus should clearly be on creating a safe, welcoming learning environment.”

Kelly said that Virginia “clearly prohibits guns in schools” barring a few small exceptions.

“Lee County did not approach the department for guidance or technical assistance before the local school board took this action,” Virginia Department of Education spokesman Charles Pyle said. His department is examining the school district’s decision in light of “relevant statutes.”

Fourteen states have armed teachers and 16 more states give school boards discretion over arming teachers as of March, according to VICE News. Virginia is not listed as one of those states.

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Thank You Mr Shimshock and the DC.   


see also; 

Akathisia

Akathisia: A Tribute To Homicide, Suicide, and Other 'Random Acts' of Psychiatrically CAUSED, 'Mental Health'.



How many more children have to be murdered before America finally wakes up and understands that Psychiatric drugs are not fit for human consumption? 


Following courtesy of Leonie Fennell

1: ‘Antidepressants and Violence; Prof. David Healy et al, here or download here.
2. ‘Suicidality, Violence and Mania Caused by SSRIs; Dr Peter R Breggin here.
3. Drugs associated with violence. Here.
4. The Systemic Correlation Between Psychiatric Medications and Unprovoked Mass Murder in AmericaJeanne M. Stolzer Here.
5. Case Histories As Evidence. David Healy et al. Here.
6. SSRIs and Involuntary Intoxication Defense. Wade C. Myers et al. Here.
7. Fort Hood Shooters. Donald J Farber, Attorney at Law. Here.
8. Prescribed drugs and violence: a case/noncase study in the French PharmacoVigilance Database. Rouve et al. Here.
9. Antidepressant-induced akathisia-related homicides associated with diminishing mutations in metabolizing genes of the CYP450 family. Lucire et al. Here.
10. Precursors to suicidality and violence on antidepressants: systematic review of trials in adult healthy volunteers. Bielefeldt et al. Here.
11. Suicidality and aggression during antidepressant treatment: systematic review and meta-analyses based on clinical study reports. Sharma et al. Here.
12.  Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors versus placebo in patients with major depressive disorder. A systematic review with meta-analysis and Trial Sequential Analysis. Jakobsen et al. Here.
13. Antidepressants and suicide among young women in Sweden 1999–2013. Janne Larsson. Here.