Via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Editor’s Note:

Ever gone out to an inexpensive buffet and marveled at the vast display of freshly prepared, hot food just waiting to be devoured? You choose the perfectly fried tempura shrimp—that unbeknownst to you—may have been mixed with a binding enzyme called transglutaminase—otherwise known as meat glue. This is not an unlikely scenario as meat glue—though banned in the European Union—is classified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as “generally recognized as safe.”

In the book, “A Consumer’s Guide to Toxic Food Additives” authors Bill and Linda Bonvie reveal the many additives lurking in our everyday food and outline ways we can identify and eliminate them from our diets. Following on the heels of our excerpt about the health implications of carrageenan, this one is sure to “stick” in your mind.

Meat Glue—Pink Slime’s Far More Sickening Sibling

Back in 2012, an ABC news lead story about Pink Slime (called in the industry by the more appetizing name, “finely textured beef”) struck a chord of disgust in the meat-eating public.

Petitions were formed to get the product out of the school lunch program, and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver conducted pink slime demos where he put beef scraps in a washing machine and then soaked them in ammonia and water.

Right before the slime hit the fan, however, ABC news affiliates spilled the beans about another underground meat practice. It was the use of an enzyme called transglutaminase, or, as it’s more commonly referred to, meat glue.

Now, even though meat glue has the potential to be a lot more hazardous to your health than pink slime, for some reason, the public couldn’t quite seem to wrap its head around it in the same way.

While some stories appeared in the press at the time, there were no petitions or consumers calling on the FDA or USDA to do something about it. In fact, some big-name chefs even came out in praise of meat glue.

For example, Wylie Dufresne, who was both chef and owner of the super-pricy Manhattan eatery wd~50 (which closed in 2014), was quoted in Meat Paper as saying he had “concocted all manner of playful and bizarre food products with meat glue, including shrimp spaghetti, which he made by mixing salt, cayenne, deveined shrimp, and meat glue in a blender.”

“Meat glue,” Dufresne declared, “makes us better chefs.”

However, even if you’re dining at an elegant establishment like wd~50, you may want to think twice about eating “glued” food. That’s one of the problems with this stuff—the appearance of food in which it has been used can definitely be deceiving.

How to Fake a Steak (or Eggs)

Since 2016, a certain restaurant chain has been using the catchy slogan “You can’t fake steak” in its TV commercials. While we can’t say whether or not that particular chain’s steaks are the real McCoy, the fact is that the slogan is wrong: You can indeed fake steak—by simply using a little meat glue.

At one time, transglutaminase was manufactured entirely from the clotting agent extracted from pig or cow’s blood. Now, it’s typically made by cultivating bacteria to do the job. Most of the meat glue supplied to the food industry comes from none other than Ajinomoto—the company that brought MSG to America.

Like MSG, Ajinomoto claims that transglutaminase is “ubiquitous in nature … typically found in various plants and animals.” Where MSG is concerned, that premise really doesn’t hold much water, as “bound” glutamic acid found in things such as meat, mushrooms, or tomatoes is quite different than the free glutamic acid added to food. Now, new research has found that this might also apply to transglutaminase sprinkled on meat or seafood.

What meat glue does is to allow restaurants and manufacturers to get away with one of the most devious forms of food fakery. Even the meat industry, when it defends transglutaminase, has to acknowledge that it can be used to fool diners. Meat glue is used much more often to “fake a steak” than to make gourmet shrimp noodles, as chef Dufresne did. By sprinkling the enzyme on various scrap pieces of meat, chicken, or seafood, and then binding it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerating it for several hours, you can turn out a picture-perfect filet mignon, solid piece of chicken, or a top-dollar-looking filet of fish.

Even experts can’t tell the difference.

If you’ve ever attended a banquet or a convention, or maybe even dined in a restaurant, and were served an expensive-looking steak or sushi at a bargain price, you may have wondered how that came to be. The answer is either that the restaurant owner is losing money with each meal or, more likely, that there’s a bag of meat glue in the kitchen.

The fake food industry has also found use for meat glue in a product bizarrely called “JUST Egg,” something that contains no trace of eggs. But along with brain-damaging amino acids, you will find transglutaminase listed on the JUST Egg label—yet another excellent reason to read food ingredients carefully no matter what brand names the products are given.

A Pathway for Pathogens to Get Inside Your Dinner

Fakery aside, meat glue could be contributing to the growing epidemic of food poisoning that hits millions (the CDC puts the number at 1 in 6 Americans or around 48 million every year).

That’s because pathogens, like Escherichia coli, Listeria, and Salmonella (with many strains now antibiotic resistant) mostly appear on the surface of meat. When the outer surface is seared, even if the meat is eaten medium rare or rare, that bacteria have most likely been killed.

When multiple pieces of meat are combined, however, those pathogens could be lurking in the center. Surfaces of the meat that once were on the outside are now in the middle. If you haven’t cooked that meat thoroughly inside and out, you could be in for big trouble.

On an Australian TV exposé of meat glue several years ago, an expert in microbiology commented that “the amount of bacteria on a steak that’s been put together with meat glue is hundreds of times higher” than your average piece of unglued meat. The same is true for chicken and fish.

Now, if you ask the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture], and certainly Ajinomoto, you’re going to hear that meat glue is perfectly safe. Sure, there’s that little problem of bacterial contamination, but these US consumer protection agencies appear to be quite confident that restaurants know that glued meat needs to be cooked thoroughly.

The USDA calls it TG enzyme, and gives instructions for cooking stuck-together meat that sounds exactly the same as what it would tell you about cooking all types of raw meat. As far as the FDA is concerned, there’s really no problem with Ajinomoto making its own determination that transglutaminase is generally recognized as safe, or GRAS.

Back in the late 1990s, the USDA received several petitions from both Ajinomoto and another company called AMPC about expanding the use of TG enzyme and attempting to get the consumer labeling (in the supermarket) to be as innocuous as possible.

Both companies got just about everything they wanted. Meat glue can now be used in meat products across the board—both the kind the USDA calls “standardized” and “non-standardized.” (This refers to what’s called a “standard of identity”—a legal description of what it takes for certain foods to be able to use a name such as hot dogs, milk, cheese, bread, etc. For example, if you want to sell something called “Salisbury steak,” it must contain at least 65 percent meat, among other requirements.)

In the case of meat glue, the agency had to change the standard of identity for numerous items like breakfast sausages, frankfurters, and bologna in order to allow for the use of the enzyme. Additionally, it was also approved to be used as a “binder” (something added to food to thicken or improve texture) for “certain meat and poultry products.”

As a result, it’s quite possible that manufacturers are putting it to uses way beyond faking expensive cuts of meat.

Perhaps one of the most important reasons you need to go out of your way to avoid this badditive has to do with a more recent discovery—one that might help explain the explosion of gut and digestive troubles that are plaguing so many these days.

Read more here…

Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A male powerlifter who identifies as a woman just set a new world record—in women’s powerlifting.

In the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s (CPU) championships from Aug. 10 to Aug. 17, Anne Andres lifted 597.5 kilograms or 1317 pounds, according to advanced results.

This weight was at least 440 pounds more than the top-performing woman, SuJan Gill, lifted.

Mr. Andres, a 40-year-old, gender transitioned at 20 years old, after going through male puberty, according to an Instagram post.

“[I] didn’t touch a barbell in my entire life until seven years ago,” he said in the post. “In theory, I will be representing Canada at IPF Masters Worlds in October 2024. Unless I get hurt, I will win by a good margin.”

Mr. Andres attributes his record-breaking lifts to a strong training ethic, not strong hormones. He has always had deficient testosterone, he said in another post.

“My test [testosterone] is lower than almost every human on this planet,” he said. “It was low during puberty, it is non-existent now. These are the first tests you run as a transwoman to find out how much you need to suppress. Didn’t take much. So, not exactly valid.”

He added that he has gone through “menopause” three times.

Women’s Sports Gives Support

For the most part, women in Canadian powerlifting have supported his participation in the sport, he told The Epoch Times in an Instagram message.

At the North American Powerlifting Federation, women wore transgender flag socks to support him, Mr. Andres said.

“I highly recommend ignoring me entirely and focus on the women who I have been allowed to share the platform with,” Mr. Andres said. “My opinion is worthless. The women who want me there are the ones who matter.”

Ms. Gill, who got second place, agreed.

“My view is that everyone is forgetting that Anne Andres is a human being with emotions, and a desire to be accepted, as we all are,” she told The Epoch Times in an Instagram message. “As a fellow human being, I chose to support her, as she chooses to support me and all of our fellow lifters.”

Qualifying the statement, Ms. Gill added that she doesn’t know “the science behind transgender athletes and if they have biological advantages.”

She declined comment on any potential physical advantage Mr. Andres may have.

Scientific studies show male biology provides powerful athletic advantages.

Government studies found that men outperformed women by about 36.8 percent in their separate Olympic weightlifting events.

Studies also show that men have significantly more skeletal muscle mass than women, especially in the upper body.

Male puberty gives boys such a physical advantage that high school boys often outcompete female Olympians in many sports.

“I train very, very, stupidly hard,” Mr. Andres said in an Instagram post.

Gender Gains

Some women have expressed outrage that transgender-identifying men now compete in women’s sports.

Canadian women’s sports coach Dr. Linda Blade condemned Canadian sports groups for failing to preserve women’s sports in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Dear Sports Federations in Canada. It’s not hard to have two sports categories and be 100 percent inclusive,” she said.

The CPU’s policy on transgender powerlifters allows any man who says he is a woman to participate without getting surgery, hormone therapy, or a history of transgender identification.

“Individuals participating in development and recreational sport should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify and not be subject to requirements for disclosure of personal information beyond those required of cisgender athletes,” the group’s site reads.

In March of 2023, male powerlifting coach Avi Silverberg identified as a woman and broke the women’s world record for powerlifting.

Mr. Silverberg hasn’t commented on his action. He has no record of identifying as transgender.

While male biological advantage may be extremely visible in powerlifting, it’s present in other sports too.

Former world champion tennis player Martina Navratilova condemned the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) for opening the sport to transgender-identifying men.

“Women’s tennis is not for failed male athletes—whatever age,” Ms. Navratilova said. “This is not right and it is not fair. Would this be allowed at the U.S. Open this month? Just with self-ID? I don’t think so.”

In an odd change in tone, CNN‘s Jake Tapper finally admitted that former President Donald Trump was right and Joe Biden was wrong during the 2020 presidential debates when Trump said that Hunter Biden “made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow.”

Citing a fact check from the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler (!?), Tapper noted that “Hunter Biden admitted in court in July that he was, in fact, paid substantial sums from Chinese companies,” and that “Hunter Biden reported nearly 2.4 million income in 2017 and 2.2 million income in 2018, most of which came from Chinese or Ukrainian interests. But this — and this directly goes against what Joe Biden said in the debate in 2020 with Donald Trump,” Tapper said.

Watch:

CNN’s Jake Tapper: “Trump was right.. Biden was wrong.” pic.twitter.com/IYaa2NPVT2

— Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) August 18, 2023

Former Democratic Rep. Andy Levin of Michigan then dove in to provide cover for Joe Biden, claiming “Well, I think dads sometimes and parents sometimes have blind spots about their kids, for sure, and the President may be no exception. But nothing has tied the President to any of Hunter Biden’s dealings. There’s no whiff of him being involved or him being implicated in it.“

Which Tapper let him get away with, as opposed to mentioning:

• “Can You Ring Your Dad?” Joe Biden Spoke Directly To Hunter’s Business Partners Dozens Of Times
• Tucker’s Explosive Devon Archer Interview, Admits Joe ‘Knew That Business Associates’ Were On Call
• House Republicans Release Bank Records Showing Over $20 Million In Payments To Biden Family, Associates
• A Decade Of ‘Deals’: The Definitive Timeline Of The Bidens’ Influence-Peddling

Then there’s former Biden business associate, Tony Bobulinski – who flipped on the Bidens, confirmed that the “Big Guy” (of ‘10% for the Big Guy’ fame) is Joe Biden, and that he met with Joe Biden twice in LA in 2017 as part of the vetting process for him to run a joint venture with Hunter and his Uncle Jim Biden, an a Chinese energy company (CEFC), which would end up netting them millions of dollars in exchange for no obvious products or services.

Then again, this is CNN we’re talking about. Just admitting that Trump was right is a huge baby-step in the right direction.

Authored by Megan Redshaw, JD via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

According to a new peer-reviewed ecological study, a natural experiment occurred when the government of Peru authorized ivermectin for use during the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in evidence of the drug’s effectiveness and ability to reduce excess deaths.

The paper’s results, published August 8 in Cureus, found a 74 percent reduction in excess deaths in 10 states with the most intensive ivermectin use over a 30-day period following peak deaths during the pandemic. When analyzing data across 25 states in Peru, researchers found these reductions in excess deaths correlated closely to ivermectin use during four months in 2020.

When ivermectin was available without restriction, there was a fourteenfold reduction in nationwide excess deaths. Once access to ivermectin was restricted by the government, a thirteenfold increase in excess deaths was observed in the two months following the limitation of its use. The findings align with summary data from the World Health Organization for the same time period in Peru.

Ivermectin is a widely-known and inexpensive treatment against parasitic diseases. Scientists believe the drug can also bind to the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, limiting its morbidity and infectivity.

Peru Promoted Then Restricted Access to Ivermectin

Before Peru implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the country relied on mitigation strategies such as lockdowns and therapeutics to control the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, as did many other nations.

The Peruvian Ministry of Health, on May 8, 2020, approved ivermectin widely for use prompting 25 states in Peru to implement inpatient and outpatient treatments with ivermectin to different extents and in different time frames. Additionally, through the Mega-Operación Tayta (MOT)—a national program led by the Ministry of Defense—Peru’s government began distributing ivermectin on a wide scale.

Through a partnership with 11 other government agencies, MOT aimed to reach every targeted region with rapid response teams to detect COVID-19 cases, administer ivermectin, and provide food to encourage people to isolate for 15 days. Shortly thereafter, MOT began distributing the therapeutic to everyone identified as high-risk, regardless of whether they tested positive or were symptomatic for COVID-19.

The government of Peru independently tracked daily COVID-19 deaths and all-cause deaths through numerous Peruvian national health databases, allowing researchers to calculate excess deaths. Additionally, they extensively tracked data for deaths and other public health parameters allowing analysis of the potential efficacy of interventions such as ivermectin during the pandemic.

When President Francisco Sagasti took office on Nov. 17, 2020, the government stopped distributing ivermectin and made it available only by prescription. This made the drug significantly more difficult for people to obtain and allowed researchers to see nationwide changes in daily excess all-cause deaths before and after restrictions went into place.

Impact of Ivermectin on Excess Deaths

Excess all-cause deaths were calculated from the total deaths recorded for January through February 2020. During this period, monthly all-cause deaths fluctuated with a mean value of 5.2 percent and a standard deviation of 3.8 percent. By May 2020, total deaths fluctuated by more than double the baseline value calculated in January through February.

An analysis of excess all-cause deaths was performed state-by-state for those aged 60 years and older to establish the date of peak excess deaths during the pandemic’s first wave. Decreases in excess deaths from the peak date of death to 30 and 45 days afterward were tracked. The 25 states were then grouped by the extent of ivermectin distribution: maximal distribution—occurring through operation MOT, medium, and minimal.

Results showed that the 10 MOT states had a sharp decrease in excess deaths after reaching peak values—with a 74 percent drop at 30 days and an 86 percent drop at 45 days after the date of peak deaths. For 14 states that locally administered ivermectin, excess deaths dropped by 53 percent at 30 days and 70 percent at 45 days.

In Lima, where ivermectin treatments were delayed until August—four months after its initial pandemic surge in April—excess deaths only dropped by 25 percent at 30 days and 25 percent at 45 days after peak deaths on May 30.

According to the study, mean reductions in excess deaths 30 days after peak deaths were 74 percent, 53 percent, and 25 percent, respectively, for the maximal, medium, and minimal states that distributed ivermectin. Forty-five days after peak deaths, mean reductions were 86 percent, 70 percent, and 25 percent.

The researchers noted that ivermectin distribution may have yielded such positive numbers due to the drug’s ability to both prevent and treat COVID-19 when distributed to an at-risk population on a greater scale.

Read more here…

As Hurricane Hilary churns 235 miles south of the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula, moving northwest at 16 mph, the National Hurricane Center warned of “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” across the Southwestern United States. 

“Heavy rainfall in association with Hilary is expected across the Southwestern United States, peaking on Sunday,” NHC wrote in an advisory, forecasting total rainfall amounts between 3 to 6 inches, with some areas expected to receive as much as 10 inches of rain. Those areas are portions of Southern California and Southern Nevada. 

On Saturday morning, Hilary weakened from a very dangerous Category 4 with winds of 130 mph to Category 3 status, with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph. 

National Weather Service posted tropical storm warnings across Southern California, affecting 42 million people — for the first time since Nora in 1997. 

Ahead of the storm’s arrival, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo called up the National Guard. 

“These Guardsmen will be put in place to provide support to southern counties, which may be significantly impacted by flooding.

 “As the state takes the necessary steps to prepare for flooding and severe weather, I strongly urge all Nevadans to do the same,” Lombardo said in a written statement.

NHC’s latest trajectory and warnings about the storm:

A newly updated forecast of the “catastrophic flooding impacts are expected late tonight through early Monday” for Southern California and Nevada. 

The Weather Prediction Center warned entire “Towns could get cut off” due to mudslides and landslides: 

The heavy rainfall combined with high winds expected at elevation could lead to mudslides and landslides, which would be exacerbated where trees uproot within saturating soils. Debris flows and rock slides are a given considering the volume of rainfall expected. The overall combination of effects could block and undermine roads, particularly sensitive areas such as sections of U.S. 50 in NV. Towns could get cut off. Given the overall uniqueness of this event and expected impacts, the High Risk for areas of southern CA remains justified. The main change was the joining of the two separate High Risk areas and some slight westward shift of the risk areas in CA, NV, UT, and AZ and some northward stretching of the threat areas to account for the slightly accelerated guidance.

Stefanie Sullivan, a forecaster with NWS, said a tropical storm to come off the ocean and make landfall in California is “exceedingly rare.” The last time this happened was in 1939. 

Via intelligent.com,

As colleges and universities across the country face lower enrollment rates and soaring costs due to inflation, many have taken steps to reduce their spending by cutting certain majors and areas of study. For example, last year, the University of Alaska cut programs including sociology, creative writing, and environmental science.

Since many of the degree programs on the chopping block are within the liberal arts, which stereotypically do not lead to high-paying careers, we wanted to find out if Americans agree that low-paying degree programs should be eliminated.

Our survey of 1,500 respondents revealed that:

• 51% of Americans agree that public colleges should stop offering degree programs that lead to low-paying jobs

• 4 in 10 say students in programs that lead to low-paying jobs shouldn’t qualify for federal financial aid

• Gender studies, art history, religious studies, and ethnic studies are among the degree programs Americans would most like to see eliminated

More Than Half of Americans Say Public Colleges Should Stop Offering Degrees That Lead to Low-Paying Jobs

Twenty-five percent of respondents said that they believe public colleges should stop offering all low-paying degrees, while 26% would like them to stop offering some low-paying degrees. Gender studies (38%), art history (30%), religious studies (20%), and ethnic studies (19%) were at the top of respondents’ lists of degrees they’d like to see colleges stop offering.

There are just a few areas of study that Americans agree are necessary, even if they do lead to low-paying jobs. The degrees that the fewest number of respondents chose to eliminate included teaching (5%), psychology (5%), and social work (7%).

Proponents Say These Degrees Are a Waste of Students’ Money

When asked why they agree that colleges should stop offering certain degree programs, the top answer given was that they are a waste of students’ money. Write-in responses included sentiments such as “Cost of living,” “They charge too much for these degrees,” and “With today’s increasing inflation, higher paying degrees are necessary in order to survive”.

Those Against Eliminating Degrees Say Students Should Have the Freedom to Choose

Of the 49% of Americans who do not agree that colleges should eliminate low-paying degrees, the top reason given was that students should have the freedom to choose what they study.

43% Believe Students in Low-Paying Degree Programs Shouldn’t Get Federal Financial Aid

More than 4 in 10 respondents agree in most or all cases that students in low-paying degree programs shouldn’t qualify for federal financial aid. 54% of this group say this is because these students are unlikely to repay any loans they receive, and 50% say it’s a waste of federal dollars.

The top degree programs respondents would like to see eliminated from federal financial aid are again gender studies (32%), art history (23%), ethnic studies (20%), religious studies (18%), and classics (18%).

Both Political Parties in Favor of Eliminating Low-Paying Degrees

Interestingly enough, this seems to be an issue on which people from both sides of the political spectrum can agree. There were no notable differences in opinion on eliminating low-paying degrees or removing access to federal financial aid when looking at respondents identifying as Republicans vs Democrats.

An Expert’s Take on Low-Value Degrees

Professor and higher education consultant, Diane Gayeski, offers her view of so-called “low-value” degrees: “The question about how degrees lead to various job outcomes is quite complex, especially at the undergraduate level. The purpose of most bachelor’s degrees is primarily to teach students how to learn and think in a particular way based on a discipline.

“While many degrees certainly do lead to specific job outcomes, an undergraduate degree is aimed at building more general skills and perspectives that lead students to be better able to pursue work, think critically, and also to be prepared to be engaged and informed citizens who can appreciate the breadth of the world that will unfold around them.

“When I was a dean, in my welcome message to incoming first-year students, I told them the purpose of college was to enable them to have fun. That got their attention! And by that I meant that the collection of experiences would help them be prepared for work that they’d find satisfying and sustainable, and to enjoy the many pleasures of life.

“If they studied art history and Italian, they’d have a much better time if they got to go on a business trip to Italy some day. If they took courses in sociology and politics, they’d understand the news and be able to use their influence to impact their communities. If they took courses in finance, they might be better able to leverage their savings to afford a better lifestyle.

“Surprisingly enough, many of the majors that people scoff at are those that prepare individuals for the most influential and highest-paying jobs. The best majors to prepare someone for law school are English, history, philosophy, and political science. One of my college’s most successful alums was an art history major whose skills in curation and historically inspired designs led to her being the VP for marketing and product innovation for an internationally famous boutique home goods company.

“There are real ethical problems with eliminating majors that lead to ‘low paying’ jobs. Who will become our next kindergarten teachers, social workers, or medical technicians?

“We need to re-frame the way we think about college education as a path to the rest of one’s life. It’s not the bullet train that takes you from one destination to the next quickly and cheaply. That train has a very limited purpose and once you get to that first destination, what’s left? Rather, we should view an undergraduate degree as a well-stocked backpack with tools that can be pulled out and implemented so that many different circumstances can be accommodated with ease and pleasure,” Gayeski finishes.

Methodology

This survey was commissioned by Intelligent.com and conducted online by the survey platform Pollfish from September 12 to September 13, 2022. In total, 1,500 participants in the U.S. were surveyed. All participants had to pass through screening filters to ensure they met quality standards. For full survey results, please contact heidi@intelligent.com.

Just days after we wrote about a massive traffic jam in downtown San Francisco that was the fault of a new wave of driverless Cruise robotaxis, the California DMV has ordered the size of the newly expanded fleet of vehicles to be cut in half.

The new restriction was hastily put into place after a Cruise robotaxi collided with a firetruck late last Thursday in San Francisco. 

The California DMV also said it is investigating recent “concerning incidents” surrounding the vehicles, with the agency ruling that it can have no more than 50 driverless taxis operating during the day and 150 at night, pending the outcome of the investigation. 

In a statement Friday the DMV said the restrictions won’t be lifted until the company takes “appropriate corrective actions to improve road safety.”

Cruise wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter last week: “One of our cars entered the intersection on a green light and was struck by an emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene.”

“Our car contained one passenger who was treated on scene and transported via ambulance for what we believe are non-severe injuries,” they continued. 

At the time, despite the green light, the firetruck’s lights and a forward facing red light were activated, the report says. ABC had video of the accident. 

Recall, we wrote days ago that one day after the state implemented a massive expansion of the robotaxis, it was faced with a 10-car driverless traffic jam in San Francisco. 

The 10 taxies “blocked two narrow streets in the center of the city’s lively North Beach bar and restaurant district”, according to a report from Yahoo Finance, which said the robotaxis “might as well have been boulders” because nobody knew how to move them. 

The jam clogged up Vallejo Street and two corners on Grant, as human drivers were unable to maneuver around the automated vehicles, the report says. The robotaxis sat with their parking lights flashing for 15 minutes before “waking up” and eventually moving on. 

“Our houses in North Beach are made of sticks,” said Aaron Peskin, who represents North Beach on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He tried to allay his fears that robotaxis could jam the streets close in the event of a major emergency or fire where people needed to evacuate an area. 

The California Public Utilities Commission less than two weeks ago voted 3 to 1 to allow the robotaxi expansion. The vote didn’t come without controversy, however, as the report noted there was significant pushback on the idea from the mayor’s office, which claimed that Cruise has a laundry list of fixes it must implement before the taxis are ready for primetime. 

It looks like they were right…

Authored by Steve Milloy via RealClear Wire,

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and the media pointed the finger at climate change as responsible for the dozens of deaths and tremendous property loss resulting from the Maui wildfires. They’re pointing in the wrong direction.

Dry grasslands, windy conditions and one or more sparks were all it took to put Maui ablaze. As usual with natural disasters, what happened is not really predictable so no one is to blame for the event itself.

But that’s where blamelessness ends and government culpability begins.

The grasslands that the wildfire blew through did not dry overnight. The area where the wildfires occurred has been in moderate to severe drought. Drought conditions are a significant risk factor for out-of-control wildfires.

Though lightning strikes can ignite wildfires, most wildfires are touched off my some human activity, a downed power line, a negligently extinguished campfire or arson. In May 2022, Maui officials investigated arson as the cause of wildfires that had been set all over the island. 

So the Maui government had actual knowledge of drought conditions and constructive knowledge that arson was a possibility. Yet no warning was issued to the public or emergency plans made for the possibility of wildfire until it was too late on August 9. 

The primary responsibility of government is to keep its citizens safe. Government was tragically asleep on Maui.

But there is a lesson related to climate in all of this.

The Biden administration has taken an all-of-government approach to climate. Every federal agency has got some sort of initiative either aimed at emissions reduction or alarming the public about the alleged dangers of climate change.

Just about a year ago, Democrats rammed the Inflation Reduction Act through Congress on a party line vote. The law authorizes the spending of $369 billion on various climate initiatives ostensibly aimed at reducing emissions via wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles.

But the reality of spending that much money on “green” technology is that it will not make the slightest dent in global emissions. Even if you believe that emissions drive “climate change”, emissions cuts from Inflation Reduction Act spending will be exceedingly small and irrelevant. China is right now planning and building more than 300 coal plants that will be in operation way before any Inflation Reduction Act emissions cuts come to fruition.

So the federal, state and local governments will be busy and focused on spending scads of money on projects that will have no effect on weather or climate, including tragedies like the one that just befell Maui.

Worse though, is the distraction that is part-and-parcel of the all-of-government approach to climate.   

Instead of recognizing that natural disasters, whether related to human activity or not, have always happened and will continue to happen, and that serious emergency planning for what’s could happen is obviously needed everywhere, all levels of government are distracted by climate and the money that can be handed out to special interests.

Maui has sued Big Oil alleging culpability for global warming. For full disclosure, I am identified in the lawsuit as helping out the defendants. No doubt Maui will tack on the wildfire tragedy in its claim for damages.

But the lawsuit  is just a political sideshow. Dozens are dead in Maui. Although the government had knowledge of what could happen, no one was warned of the danger until it was too late. Maui should sue itself.

Steve Milloy is a senior legal fellow with the Energy and Environment Legal Institute.

With Republican support for the proxy war in Ukraine continuing to erode, Bill Kristol and fellow warmongering, neocon colleagues have launched a $2 million campaign to rally GOP voters and legislators to the lost cause — and specifically, to Biden’s request that Congress approve another $20.6 billion in Ukraine war funding.

While top congressional leaders are expected to back Biden’s request, more and more Republican legislators are saying “enough is enough.” 

Kristol routinely spawns new political entities to advance the neocon agenda. In this case, a group called Defending Democracy Together — an anti-Trump 501(c)(3) of which Kristol is president — has itself spun out an entity called Republicans for Ukraine. It’s a textbook example of astroturfing — the term that describes a political drive that fosters the illusion of widespread grassroots support for a particular political position. 

Both organizations are led by Kristol and Sarah Longwell, a Never Trumper who is also the publisher The Bulwark, a neocon website she cofounded in 2018 with Charlie Sykes and — there he is again — Bill Kristol. Defending Democracy Together’s other projects include “Republicans Against Trump,” “Republicans For Voting Rights,” “Republicans For The Rule Of Law,” as well as a pro-immigration entity and another that promotes alarmism about Russian tweets. 

Kristol and Longwell’s hopeless effort to materially change the Ukraine poll numbers centers on a collection of video testimonials from self-identified Republicans who want the US government to redistribute even more wealth to Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman in the name of fighting Russia — as if American security had anything at all to do with which government controls the Donbas region.  

The ad campaign will be delivered on television, billboards and online. A TV spot will run during the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, August 23. 

We are Republicans for Ukraine.

We are amplifying the voices of Republicans who believe that the United States should be a steadfast friend to democracies like Ukraine and a fearsome enemy to aggressive dictatorships like Russia. pic.twitter.com/hRclhf2m3e

— Republicans for Ukraine (@GOP4Ukraine) August 15, 2023

Longwell told the Washington Post that the “real drop-off in support for Ukraine” is one the most “alarming trends” of the past two years. An August CNN/SSRS poll found that 71% of Republicans oppose new funding for the Ukraine war, while 62% of Democrats support it. 

Compounding our schadenfreude over the neocons’ mounting Ukraine misery, Longwell adds, “It was alarming in the focus groups to see so many Republican voters talk about Ukraine or [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky in disparaging terms.” 

Perpetuating an establishment-fertilized fiction, the Washington Post credulously refers to Kristol’s clique as “a conservative group.” However, rank-and-file Republicans are increasingly realizing that foreign interventionism springs from a decidedly non-conservative belief in the power of government central planning — a belief that rank-and-file Republicans resist in most other fields of endeavor.

As George Will wrote way back in 2005, “Conservatism seems to be saying government can’t run Amtrak, but it can run the Middle East.” Not so much anymore: The Kristol-backed Iraq war sapped Republicans’ interest in interventionism, not only in the Middle East but in Ukraine and beyond.   

Authored by Matt Kane via American Thinker,

Establishment politicians and mainstream media have fought harder than on any other issue to convince the public that voter fraud is a conspiracy theory.  But unconstitutional changes to state election laws, unsupervised ballot drop boxes, voting machine errors, mathematically improbable voter turnout, and other examples of outright voter fraud that were denied a chance to be presented in court between the 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration can’t simply be chalked up as coincidental.  All those things occurring simultaneously make the fraud seem coordinated.  

In response to the most recent indictments, Trump’s attorneys indicated they finally have a platform to “fully re-litigate every single issue that occurred during the 2020 election,” of which there were many.  The most important issue in America may finally get its due.  

Trump’s 2016 victory was fueled by flipping the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania from blue to red.  Pennsylvania and Michigan had not voted for a Republican in a general election since 1988, while Wisconsin hadn’t voted for one since 1984.  Those three states delivered Trump the necessary electoral votes to become president.  It also sent a signal that blue strongholds were no longer a “given” after the people of those states were fed up with delivering victories for politicians who never went on to deliver results for them.

In addition to “Hillary Clinton’s blue wall,” Arizona and Georgia were also viewed as potential swing states that Trump needed to retain as previous Republican nominees did to have any chance at victory.  Twenty sixteen made it clear that those states would again decide the 2020 election.  Suspiciously, after America was forced to anxiously await the results for days following election night, those five states all “flipped” to Biden despite Trump outpacing his record 2016 turnout by even greater margins.

Even as mathematically improbable-without-being-previously-counted percentages of ballots favoring Biden continued pouring in on November 4, Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger concluded that with voter turnout already exceeding the 2016 total by 400 thousand votes, and Trump leading by over 105 thousand votes with just 2% of the vote left to count, there simply were not enough outstanding votes for Biden to win the state.

Coincidentally, as Raffensperger began stating this on live television, his connection to the program was disconnected.  But when he returned, Raffensperger doubled down.  Questioned by NBC News panelists, he said, “Even if one of the candidates got the remaining 100%, it wouldn’t be enough to change the result.”

Despite this determinative revelation, Raffensperger later switched gears when he told the January 6 committee, “If you looked at all the numbers, it never added up to anywhere near what could throw the election in doubt,” completely contradicting his previous claim in the process.

In Michigan, a recent report exposed the scheme that delivered Biden with unprecedented amounts of ballots in the early morning hours of November 4, which included an excess of 800 thousand ballots being sent to non-qualified voters.  Michigan was allegedly decided by 154,188 votes, making the results more than questionable.

In March of 2022, former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gabelman’s investigation unearthed a nursing home exploitation scheme so egregious that his suggested remedy was decertifying Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes.  Even Assembly speaker Robin Vos, previously an election fraud denier, conceded that “widespread fraud” had occurred.  Later, the state Supreme Court determined that the absentee ballot drop boxes through which 2 million votes were submitted during the election were actually illegal.  The majority opinion described the outcome as “obtained by unlawful procedures,” as Wisconsin was decided by just 20 thousand votes.

There were concerns regarding Pennsylvania’s voting procedure long before any votes were even cast.  The Keystone State’s Senate Republican Caucus and the Republican Party strongly argued that the state Supreme Court extending the deadline to count ballots violated the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause by taking away the Legislature’s authority to “set the times, places and manner of federal elections.”  This was ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court just prior to Justice Barrett’s confirmation.  This led to a 4-4 decision, which results in a “stay.”  Had this been heard after her confirmation, it is likely Barrett would have ruled against the extensions that led to Biden’s constitutionally questionable “comeback.”

But of all the suspected fraud in 2020, Arizona was the first state that raised suspicions in real time.  Despite not voting Democrat in a two-candidate presidential election since 1948, Fox News shockingly called the state for Biden after just 27% of the vote was reported.  This sparked a forensic audit that concluded that the number of illegal votes exceeded Biden’s alleged 11-thousand-vote victory fivefold.

When vote-counting was inexplicably halted on Election Night, Trump led all these states by six figures.  A combination of any three of these states holding would have secured him a second term, which is why Democrats fought so hard to steal them.

But even putting state-specific statistics aside, a basic analysis of election history signals the improbability of Biden receiving the number of votes he allegedly did.

Every general election since 2004 has seen between 120–130 million total votes.  The 2020 election reportedly saw 155 million votes.  There were roughly 168 million registered voters in 2020, which means that voter turnout in 2020 was an astonishing 92%.  This is statistically improbable when you consider that countries such as Australia institute compulsory voting, which mandates that citizens vote or pay a fine.  Yet its most recent turnout rate was in the high 80s.  America voluntarily outpacing a nation that financially penalizes non-voters does not pass the smell test.

Though transformational candidates can generate an uptick in voter turnout, a previously failed, two-time-primary-losing candidate such as Joe Biden is not likely to be the one who does this.  He ran in 1988 and 2008 and never won the hearts of voters.  He dropped out of the 1988 race after he was caught plagiarizing, and twenty years later was rejected by the party base again before being plucked off the scrap heap by Obama.  After serving as vice president, his public image only worsened as it became clear he was the same old Joe Biden, except he now exhibited cognitive limitations.  He won just one bellwether county and fewer than 500 total counties compared to Trump and Obama, who won roughly 2,500 and 900, respectively.  Yet as it stands, it is said Joe Biden received the most votes in American history.

President Trump did not try to “subvert” the election, nor did he secretly know he lost.  Any beyond-surface-level inspection of the 2020 election reveals its fraudulency.  Trump was not only allowed to dispute an election he felt was fraudulent, but as president was constitutionally obligated to do so.  That is the opposite of criminal.  In fact, he is one of the only public officials willing to uphold the oath he swore.  Trying to imprison him for this not only is a tall task, but also puts them at risk of allowing him to publicly prove that “The Big Lie” is the real “Big Lie.”

The evidence exists for Trump to finally prove that his over two-year-old claims are valid.  All he must do now is present it.