Authored by Jeremiah Hosea via Substack,

A dignified life, or dehumanized technocracy — which would you prefer for your children?

As you may have noticed, I do enjoy lists. I suppose they appeal to my sense of order. The following is a list of fundamental principles that were strangely, as if by hypnosis, abdicated during the Convid Scamdemic.

I hope you enjoy, as do I, the novelty (at least for this Substack) of presenting this particular list in countdown format!

8. Do Not Trust the Government — how anyone could not understand this principle by now is beyond me. You don’t need to refer to ancient history to reach this conclusion. You don’t even need to have read Machiavelli (although I highly recommend you do). Just look at recent history and you will be provided with numerous examples indicating that no private citizen should ever trust the government.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was even invoked by some of the poison pushers during Covid in patronizing efforts to assuage vaccine hesitancy. It was mentioned dismissively as though it were something that happened a million years ago and would never happen again. Yet every thinking person should take stock of this nightmarish event. It was medical torture that transpired over the course of 40 years and was presided over by the CDC. Yes — the same CDC.

Politically, since the turn of the new millennium, we have been treated to a continuous barrage of psyops and wars, wars and psyops. The dubious nature of the 2000 election, the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11, the lies about WMDs that resulted in catastrophic war in Iraq, the total bailout of the banks in 2008 with not as much as a life-raft for the people, the Flint Michigan water crisis, the annihilation of Libya — we could go on and on and on in reciting examples of negligence, malfeasance and heinous actions carried out by our government irrespective of which political party held the presidency at the time. (I insist they are one party pretending to be two.)

How could one claim to have observed history and then fail to notice that virtually every major government project done in opposition to an enemy whether literal or abstract, from all the senseless catastrophic wars against regimes to the fruitless and counterproductive “War on Drugs” and then “War on Terror”, have been entirely negative in both nature and results?

Whenever the government announces (or doesn’t announce) it is embarking on some grand new endeavor, usually something catastrophic is underway.

During Covid, I didn’t just see people fail to be suspicious of a government that had thoroughly earned our distrust, I had the even more harrowing experience of witnessing people I had known previously to be “critical thinkers” suddenly devolve into people incapable of any critical thought whatsoever.

7. Don’t Trust Major Corporations, Especially Big Pharma aka Big Harma — what is a corporation? It is an instrument designed to maximize profit in the marketplace. In capitalism ruthlessness, relentlessness and an amoral approach are all considered admirable traits.

The willingness of a corporation to poison, pollute, injure or even kill is requisite to compete in the upper echelons of the market place. Major corporations do not have a track record of admitting fault or confessing guilt. They do not have the tendency of “taking things down a notch” for the sake of the environment, or human dignity or being reasonable. The ends absolutely justify the means and therefore, nothing is off-limits in the pursuit of maximizing profits. If there is collateral damage, or if a few fines need to be paid along the way — so be it. That will all be neatly filed and tucked away under the label of “the cost of doing business.” This description shouldn’t shock anyone — I am merely describing the spirit of capitalism and the spirit of corporatism.

Big industry from the military industrial complex to Big-Agra is thoroughly out of hand, but there’s something particularly disturbing about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry as it pertains immediately to our health, the health of our children and the health of our families and communities. We should all be more than concerned that the oath stating, “first do no harm” has been jettisoned entirely.

Giving legal indemnity to corporations (especially ones with felony backgrounds) is a recipe for guaranteed disaster. There should be a law against making such laws. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 which gives liability protection to vaccine manufacturers needs to be overturned immediately and put in its historical place as an anathema to the proper drafting and passing of laws.

6. The Right to Question — the right to question should be unquestionable. We claim to value education and up until recently intellectual curiosity was considered a good attribute. When Covid came along all the sudden “doing your own research” aka reading was suddenly being demonized. Who has ever heard of such a thing? And how can the people discouraging critical inquiry consider themselves to be the intelligent ones? It’s adjacent to the question, “when were the censors the good guys in history?”

Questioning is good. Robust dialogue is good. The notion of sterilizing mistakes or incorrect ideas out of discourse is totalitarian. In fact, clarifying and the correcting of mistakes usually offers a great opportunity for education and enlightenment. Moreover, to attempt to gain an understanding even to venture into the taxonomy of an unfamiliar field or discipline does not mean that the inquirers suddenly become professionals in that field — no reasonable person would suggest that. It is simply to have gained some understanding in a new area. This is a good process and not a negative one.

As my friend Ryan Cristian of Last American Vagabond ( TheLastAmericanVagabond.com ) says at the end of every program, “Question everything.”

5. Freedom to Associate — the government has no right whatsoever to prevent us from seeing our families or friends when we are not engaged in criminal actions and are not meeting to engage in criminal conspiracies. Lockdowns (which varied in severity from country to country and county to county) were a flagrant violation of our natural rights. Just as the government cannot protect us from any act of God — the notion that they can protect us from a respiratory ailment by restricting our movements is not only blatant overreach, it’s medically and scientifically without merit.

The falsehood of the “asymptomatic carrier” was the fraudulent basis for movement restricting policies. It should be accepted, however, that policy makers have no influence, no sway whatsoever in regard to the virome. Even if they did, a declared emergency should not be grounds for the suspension or removal of our rights. Yet what transpired during Covid and the lack of resistance from the public that went along with it, has set the stage for future abuses.

4. Freedom of Religion — I feel an enormous spiritual feeling but I do not identify with any particular religion or religious text. My beliefs, however, as well as the beliefs or non-beliefs of every individual are irrelevant — our country, like every free society, allows for freedom of religion. It is not the job of the mayor, governor, president or any appointed or elected official to arbitrarily suspend the fundamental right to worship and practice one’s religion.

It makes no sense to impose policies to protect a religious person from illness, when most religions are rooted in the concept of preparing the practitioner for death. For most religious people their religious practices are part of their well being. It is not up to power brokers to determine when devout persons can practice their religions or when congregations can congregate.

Allowing liquor stores to remain open while churches and mosques were ordered closed, highlights the perfectly baseless and arbitrary nature of lockdown policies. (I cringe when I use the word “allow” because We The People should have never “allowed” the state to have as much as an impression that they could impose any of this unfounded rubbish.)

Just prior to Covid, religious exemptions for vaccines required to attend school were overturned in New York and California. (Looking back, that was a red flag and helped set the stage for the bio security State that was about to emerge.) How is that possible? How can the government arbitrarily decide that their rule is more powerful than your religious belief and conviction to God Almighty? Who do they think they are? Religious exemptions should never be overturnable.

3. Haste Makes Waste — Haste makes waste is a truism. It is well known that it is better to be well prepared than rushed. It’s a principle also known as the 6 P’s — proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.

It’s better to be a well-rehearsed band than an under-rehearsed band. It’s better to be a well practiced basketball team (like the Spurs) than a team that hasn’t practiced enough. It’s better to be a well-prepared actor than an unprepared actor. It is better to have an experienced surgeon and not a medical student. Everyone knows that haste makes waste, yet somehow this axiomatic principle was disregarded in the case of “Operation Warp Speed.”

“Warp speed” implies mistakes. It implies lack of regulation and oversight. More than imply, it means — no long term safety data. It means rushed-to-market. It means “safe and effective” is inherently a lie because they didn’t have sufficient time to confirm its safety or effectiveness.

It’s mind numbing that not only did supposedly intelligent people insist that such a massive undertaking (Operation Warp Speed) could be executed without any noticeable reduction in quality, but then proceeded to aggressively insult and gaslight those who raised this most obvious concern.

Despite the notion that anyone who refused the experimental injections was doing so based on elaborate conspiracy theories, I spoke to many people who told me firsthand that their hesitancy or outright refusal was based on the simple fact that the whole thing was done too damn fast.

2. Body Sovereignty — sovereignty over one’s own body is the most fundamental of fundamental rights. It is the right from which all other rights emanate. If your body sovereignty is compromised, you are a compromised individual and you are not a free person. You may aspire to freedom, but you are not free.

Mandating Covid “vaccines” (products falsely marketed as such) was a violation of the Constitution†, the Nuremberg Code†† and first and foremost natural law. No person should be forced to eat anything, watch anything, participate in anything — least of all an invasive medical procedure — against their will. It’s incredibly sad that this has to be discussed or debated whatsoever in the United States or any modern society for that matter.

1. No means No — I have most certainly emphasized this in previous articles. I will exercise here the literary technique known as sufficient redundancy and reiterate that — No is the most important word in the dictionary. No is sacrosanct.

We teach our children, and rightfully so, that they always have the right to say No. If something doesn’t feel right — No. If you don’t feel safe — No. If you are being asked to compromise your dignity — No. The word — No — by itself, is a complete sentence. This principle, of always having the right to say No, does not have an expiration date. It’s not just for children. It is fundamental to human dignity.

It is an abomination, that the right to say No was violated across the whole of society. What a terrible example for our children, and if we don’t change things now — what a terrible inheritance for them as well.

Authored by James Bovard,

Blindfolds and systemic deceit are the death of self-government…

President Biden has been derided for being a Potemkin president, a figurehead in a vast charade portraying him actually running the government.  Biden was forced to withdraw from the presidential race after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in June.   But is a Potemkin presidency being followed by a Potemkin election?

Biden’s expulsion from the presidential race did not herald the arrival of truth. Most of the media still tolerates pervasive secrecy on prime issues of the 2024 campaign.

In bygone times, elections were about self-government.  Nowadays, voters merely have a cameo role to sanctify the nearly boundless power of officialdom.  Every year, the federal government slaps a “secret” label on trillions of pages of information – enough to fill 20 million filing cabinets.  And since the government is automatically benevolent (if a Democrat is president), there is no need to trouble citizens with the grisly details of how they are being served.

At the same time Special Counsel Jack Smith is racing to fling all possible dirt at Trump before Election Day, each week we learn of new cover-ups designed to deceive Americans about how badly they have been misgoverned:

1. Biden administration has mostly succeeded in covering up the crime wave by illegal aliens ushered into the nation since 2021. Former Border Patrol Sector Chief Aaron Heitke testified to Congress last month that the Biden administration hid the adverse impact from deluging U.S. cities with illegal aliens, including those with terror ties.

2. The National Archives announced on Wednesday that it would delay until after the election the release of potentially damning records on Vice President Joe Biden’s dealings with his son and foreign wheelers-dealers – records that have been sought for more than a year by conservative lawyers and activists.

3. Biden’s Justice Department sought to bury all the tax charges against Hunter Biden but were thwarted thanks to courageous IRS whistleblowers.  Hunter’s guilty plea last month to the tax charges confirms that the Justice Department’s offer a wrist-slap plea bargain to Hunter last year was a shameless obstruction of justice.

4. Biden’s FBI last year created “a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers,” Newsweek reported. FBI whistleblowers have exposed the politicization of an agency that even secretly targeted traditional Catholics who prefer to hear mass in Latin. But the vast majority of FBI surveillance and entrapment abuses remain shrouded.

5. Team Biden is covering up both Trump assassination attempts. Biden appointees have stonewalled bipartisan congressional investigations into the abysmal Secret Service failures at Butler, Pennsylvania.  The Justice Department has indefinitely delayed hearings for Ryan Routh, the 58-year-old guy caught waiting to shoot Trump on his Florida golf course.  Delaying proceedings against Routh assures that Americans will not learn before the election whether the would-be assassin had ties to the CIA, Pentagon, State Department or other agencies that assisted Routh with his massively-publicized campaign to recruit foreign soldiers to fight for Ukraine.

6. The Biden administration continues covering up almost everything regarding its support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.  The best info Americans have received was thanks to a young military computer technician who leaked revelations that the Ukrainian military was in far worse shape than Team Biden claimed. Americans have been forced to pay hundreds of billions of dollars but are left in the dark regarding Biden administration machinations that risk pulling this nation into World War Three.

7. The House Oversight Committee this week subpoenaed DHS for its records on Tim Walz’s possible ties to the CCP after being contacted by a whistleblower.  There is zero chance that the Biden administration will release any of those records before Election Day.

8. Political convenience is practically the sole determinant of what Americans are permitted to learn nowadays.  After Biden dropped his re-election bid, the administration disclosed records showing that his son Hunter sought U.S. government handouts for Burisma when Joe Biden was Vice President.  That scandal was buried until Joe Biden was no longer politically relevant.

Is censorship the biggest X factor for this election? Four years ago, the presidential election may have been swung by the coverup of the damning revelations in Hunter Biden’s laptop.  The FBI and the CIA hustled to censor and defuse that story with false rebuttals in October 2020.  According to multiple federal court rulings, federal agencies tampered with the 2020 election by censoring millions of comments by Americans who raised doubts about the trustworthiness of mail-in ballots and other election procedures. Federal judge Terry Doughty noted that  “virtually all of the free speech suppressed was ‘conservative’ free speech.”  A federal appeals court issued an injunction prohibiting federal officials from acting “to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce . . . posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”

But the Supreme Court refused to recognize that the censorship victims had any legal standing and canceled the injunction.   Americans will likely have no idea how many muzzles and blindfolds were secretly attached by federal agencies and federal contractors before Election Day.

Don’t expect journalists to suddenly get hot to thwart those Biden cover-ups. When the media shrouded Biden’s mental debility, it directly endorsed de facto secret rule. How much effort has the New York Times or Washington Post or National Public Radio exerted to reveal who is actually exercising the supreme power nowadays? Exposing that issue could derail Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign so it is ignored. But ​​​​​Biden is as oblivious as ever. When asked by a reporter on Thursday about the situation in the Hurricane Helene storm zone, Biden replied that those states “are getting everything they need. They are very happy across the board.”

Earth to Uncle Joe?!?

But as long as Donald Trump is not elected next month, most of the Washington media doesn’t care who is in control. If the Wizard of Oz was a contemporary political campaign story, the media would overwhelmingly side with the guy behind the curtain.

As long as the Wizard recited “Orange Man Bad,” the media would cover up all his abuses.

But “informed consent” is a mirage if the feds blindfold voters.

As long as Team Biden keeps a lid on its worst outrages until Election Day, Democrats can snare four more year to abuse the Constitution, the law, and the American people. Unfortunately, self-government is not retroactive.

In what promises to be a major milestone in more than two-and-a-half years of war, Russia is closing in on the capture of a vital industrial asset: a Ukrainian coal mine that’s a cornerstone of the country’s steel industry. 

Owned by Ukrainian firm Metinvest, the modern facility — opened in 1990 — is Ukraine’s largest mine for producing coking-coal, a specific grade used to fuel blast furnaces. It’s near the village of Udachne, about 10 kilometers west of the city of Pokvrosk, which is itself a key supply hub in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. Per the latest reports, the Russian army is reportedly just 8 to 12 kilometers east of Pokrovsk. Defensive lines have already been dug to Pokrovsk’s west, so Ukrainian units will have positions to drop back to if Pokrovsk falls.  

In an interview with The Economist, analyst Andriy Buzarov noted that the Russians don’t have to actually occupy the mine to remove it from Ukraine’s economic equation: They can do that by severing its power or destroying the principal road used to haul its product westward.  

Steel is one of Ukraine’s principal industries, accounting for about a third of exports before Russia’s invasion. At that time, Ukraine ranked 14th in global steel production; by last year, it had fallen to 24th place. This year, Metinvest expected to unearth 5.3 million metric tons of coal in the mine near Pokrovsk. 

Oleksandr Kalenkov, the head of Ukraine’s metals and mining industry lobbying group, explained the implications for the country’s steel industry when the mine falls under Russian control, telling Reuters it could slash projected 2025 steel production by upwards of 80%:

“We could make up to 7.5 million metric tons of steel by the end of the year and, for next year, we saw an increase in production to over 10 million, but if we lose Pokrovsk, then … we will fall to 2-3 million tons.”

It’s not just a matter of Ukraine switching to imports of the specialty-use coking coal. “We don’t know where to get coal if Pokrovsk is seized,” Urkraine coke association Ukrkoks head Anatoly Starovoit told Reuters. “It is difficult to bring it in by importing; today it is not so easy to bring it in by sea.” That’s because Ukraine’s ports are geared toward exports, to say nothing of military hazards. 

The handwriting was already on the wall...but Ukraine’s pending loss of this vital industrial asset will only accelerate growing Western resignation to the inevitability of a negotiated end to the bloody, US-led proxy war with Russia. 

Authored by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer via American Greatness,

Ronald Reagan’s query to the American people in his October 28, 1980, debate with incumbent President Jimmy Carter was so simple and so devastating that it is still employed today: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” While most Americans are far worse off today than they were four years ago, with rising prices, inflation, a hollow economy, and unchecked immigration, so too are the U.S., its allies, and its partner’s national security interests, which are far worse off than they were four years ago.

Four years ago, there was stability in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. Now Europe’s “long peace,” that is, no major war in Europe since 1945, has been shattered by Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine. This war has resulted in the deaths of over one million humans and the displacement of millions more. The Middle East is roiling with conflict due to Hamas’ October 7, 2023, unprovoked attack on Israel and its consequences—the Iranian-backed Houthis interdiction of international shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon and ultimately unprecedented attacks from Iran against Israel with drones and missiles. The Indo-Pacific is rife with unrest principally due to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) hyper-aggression against key U.S. allies and partners like India, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, and against the American people themselves.

The cause of this instability is the Biden-Harris administration’s ideological obsession to “manage America’s decline” and the subsequent policies they adopted in the last almost four years. The Biden-Harris administration failed to deter the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This war is a humanitarian nightmare for all concerned; it is a stalemated conventional conflict, evincing an intensity of combat not seen in Europe since 1945. The war also entails the risk of nuclear escalation, the tremendous cost of which the U.S. and its NATO allies would not escape. In addition, this administration has fundamentally failed to support Israel by not holding Iran to account—even worse by providing Tehran the funding to expand their terrorism against Americans.

However, in the pantheon of Biden’s failures, it is towards the PRC that the Biden administration has made its greatest foreign policy fiascos. The Biden-Harris administration has continued the failed “Engagement” policies with the PRC that have aided the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at a time of great peril. The Biden-Harris administration ignores the existential nature of the CCP threat because it seeks to continue the Engagement school of thought through what we call the Biden-Harris administration’s “neo-Engagement” policy.

With the exception of the Trump presidency, Engagement has been the dominant U.S. approach to the PRC since Bill Clinton. It asserts that the PRC is not an existential threat to the U.S. Far from it—the Engagement school contends the Sino-American relationship should be cooperative. Any troubles may be addressed by more cooperation with the PRC and accommodation of the interests of the CCP to sustain that cooperation. In essence, the Engagers are appeasers. Unfortunately, their arguments are ubiquitous and dominate U.S. foreign policy toward the PRC. Engagement dominates Wall Street, foundations, think tanks, universities, media, Silicon Valley, K Street, major law firms, and government. Even after the fiasco of allowing a PRC intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance balloon to fly over the entirety of America and the conga line of Biden-Harris cabinet officials traveling to Beijing to kowtow before Xi Jinping, the nadir was the November 2023 meeting between Biden and Xi near San Francisco. Beyond the obsession by Biden-Harris to resume military-to-military exchanges despite the People’s Liberation Army’s increased threatening behavior, 400 of America’s richest business leaders attended a dinner with the PRC’s dictator—Xi Jinping. These “titans” of America’s economy gave the CCP dictator two standing ovations while Xi explained his vision of tyranny—on American soil—and how the American business elite could help him sustain it.

The failed Biden-Harris neo-Engagement policies have allowed the CCP to escape the costs of its many decades of misrule but also provided the window for the CCP’s hyper-aggression over the last four years. Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration has overseen and done nothing as the PRC built over 300 nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) silos in central and western China, upgraded the submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) aboard their sea-based leg of their triad, expanded their ballistic missile submarine production facilities, and introduced a new nuclear bomber, the H-20. This aircraft very closely resembles the B-2 stealth bomber.  Additionally, the Biden-Harris regime has sat by as PLA Air Force H-6 bombers have for the first time flown nuclear bomber profiles with their Russian Long Range Aviation counterparts into the Alaskan Air Defense Identification zone.

By every metric, the CCP is flexing its strategic muscles by expanding its nuclear arsenal and strategic reach.  The PRC continues to agress relentlessly against U.S. national security interests. While the pace of their aggression is quickening, the Biden-Harris administration is cutting the size of the Department of Defense. For example, Biden-Harris continues to decommission more warships than it builds, as demonstrated by their Fiscal Year 2025 budget that procures just six warships, the lowest number of any budget submission since 2006.

This degradation of America’s maritime power is especially pernicious as the situation in the South China Sea, near Scarborough Shoal or Sabina Shoal, is dramatically worsening. Likewise, the PLA is increasing its pressure on Taiwan through unceasing operations to prepare for an invasion. In the past month, the PLAAF violated Japanese territorial waters for the first time ever. Moreover, the PLAN and Russian Navy sailed into the Gulf of Alaska, while it has been confirmed that PLA is supplying Russia with military weapons to aid Moscow in its war against Kyiv. There are also credible reports, including from the South Korean Minister of Defense, that the North Koreans are directly aiding the Russian war effort.

In his famous debate with Carter, Reagan also asked Americans if they believed America was as respected and whether America was as strong as four years ago. Once again, the answer to that question today is no. America was far more respected by its foes and was stronger four years ago than today. America was seen by its key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific as a far better, more reliable, and more confident ally than today. The result is that a Harris presidency would continue these neo-Engagement policies to embolden enemies and continue to punish allies and partners. Only a Trump presidency will end failed policies of neo-Engagement and return the U.S. to the Reaganesque certainty of the previous Cold War that “the U.S. wins, the CCP loses.”

***

James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure. The views expressed are their own.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) now covers forty years worth of data for how Americans households spend money.

That data includes how much the average “consumer unit” surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau spends on health insurance, which like many other things in the economy, has seen significant cost inflation over the past four decades.

The following chart, via Political Calculations blog, shows how that cost has changed from 1984, the first year for the CEX, through 2023, the latest, whose data was just released last month.

As you’ll see, over the past 40 years, there has been one major factor that has altered the trajectory for how much American households/consumer units pay on average for health insurance coverage.

Back in 1984, the first year for the CEX, American household consumer units paid an average of $370 for health insurance.

That figure grew steadily over the following years and by 2000, the average cost of health insurance for a U.S. household has risen to $980.

From 2000 through 2010, the average cost of health insurance grew faster, reaching $1,826 by 2010.

Had the 2000 through 2010 growth trend continued, we estimate the average amount American households would pay for health insurance in 2023 would be $2,927.

But it didn’t, thanks to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in 2010.

It was implemented over several years, going into full effect in 2014.

The claimed goal of the law, as suggested by its name, was to make health insurance more affordable for Americans.

In 2023, the average cost of health insurance paid by American households has more than doubled what it was in 2010.

At an average $4,049 per household, this expense is more than 38% higher than the trend that existed in the decade before the Affordable Care Act became law.

The chart also indicates the cost “curve” for health insurance has bent upward since 2021, which has inflated more quickly over the last few years following 2020’s coronavirus pandemic.

Political Calculations blog will be featuring other aspects of how American consumer spending has changed over the past four decades using the latest CEX data in the weeks ahead.