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Legislation introduced on March 5 would strip COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers of liability protections, enabling Americans injured by the shots to sue the companies.

City Journal.

on the case when it comes to solving one of the most perplexing mysteries of our day: How can the economy be so good, and yet Americans think it’s so bad?

A recent Harris poll found that just 31 percent of registered voters believe that the economy is “on the right track.” That’s the same percentage (in the same poll) who said that Joe Biden is “showing he is fit to be president” rather than “showing he is too old.” Yet the press continues to assure readers that the economy is steaming along like a powerful locomotive.

“The economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good,” the New York Times’s Paul Krugman enthuses, as the American “economy continues to look like an amazing success story.” The title of a Financial Times article emphasizes the “strange lack of electoral reward for the success of Bidenomics.” CNN’s MJ Lee reports that the president himself is confused by the “significant gulf” between an economy that seems to be “humming along” and “the public’s stubbornly grim sentiment.”

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My, what a surprise.

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Recently approved vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for older adults may be linked to a rare nervous system disorder that causes the body’s immune system to attack its own nerves.

In a Feb. 29 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, health officials presented data that appears to show a slightly elevated rate of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) among people who received RSV vaccines by Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The Foundry.

Here’s my roundup of what I think are the six most prominent failures of the Biden presidency so far.

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As a partial government shutdown looms, the House Freedom Caucus has called on Republicans to oppose the ‘Swamp Omnibus’ bill, criticizing it for containing a ridiculous amount of pork. This government funding package is designed to prevent a partial shutdown set for Friday.

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A district court ruled Monday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission violated the First Amendment by attempting to force religious health care workers to provide gender-transition procedures.

In 2021, the Christian Employers Alliance filed a lawsuit against the EEOC over two mandates requiring religious employers to provide health insurance that covered gender transitions as well as forcing religious physicians to perform sex-change procedures or face charges of discrimination based on gender identity. The District Court of North Dakota ruled in favor of the Christian Employers Alliance, arguing that the rules would violate an employer’s or doctor’s religious beliefs.

Navy Matters.

One of the characteristics of WWII, which made the defeat of Germany and Japan a foregone conclusion, was the vast industrial capacity of the US and the ability to convert that capacity to wartime production needs. In contrast, today we lack the sheer foundation of industry and, for a host of reasons, the ability to convert what we do have to wartime needs and to scale up the capacity that we do have.

Why, you ask, can’t we scale up and convert the industry that we do have to wartime needs? As an illustrative example, recall that in WWII, auto manufacturers were able to convert from cars to tanks, aircraft, and other equipment. Ford Motor Company, for example, produced B-24 bombers and M-4 tanks, among other items. Conversion to wartime production was possible, in large part, due to the fact that civilian automobiles and military vehicles and aircraft used, basically, the same equipment. An M-4 tank wasn’t that different from an automobile. Bombers and tanks used radial engines which were, themselves, just automobile engines in a different shape than an in-line car engine. And so on.

Now, consider a modern Abrams tank or a B-2/B-21 bomber as compared to a typical automobile. There’s no comparison and little similarity! Turbine engines have little in common with car engines. Advanced armors have little in common with automobile sheet metal. Exotic materials like titanium, composites, etc. have little in common with sheet metal and run of the mill steel and aluminum. Forming, welding, and manipulating exotic materials requires exotic skills. Stealth coatings have nothing in common with automobile paint. Micron tolerances have nothing in common with automobile level tolerances. And so on.

Yes, given years of time to retrain workers, revamp factories, master advanced production techniques, and so forth, we could convert but we aren’t going to have years of time in a war. If we can’t convert quickly, we aren’t going to convert at all.

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The Biden administration has used secretive flights to transport migrants into the U.S., adding to the massive influx at the southern border, a Center for Immigration Studies’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit discovered.

The center’s Todd Bensman first reported that the FOIA suit discovered that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) approved secretive flights that last year alone transported 320,000 illegal immigrants from foreign countries into at least 43 different U.S. airports.

“This administration is both importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants,” Elon Musk posted on X while sharing a DailyMail.com story about the secretive flights.

“It is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11. Just a matter of time.”

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Think of it as evolution in action.

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When President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union speech on Thursday, the audience will include 17 relatives of Americans held captive or murdered by Hamas terrorists in Israel.

A list published Monday by the Families of the American Hostages in Gaza coalition named relatives of six hostages still held captive, two released captives and two hostages who were killed.

The family members will be guests on Thursday evening of a bipartisan slate of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Among the hosts are the speaker, Louisiana Republican Rep, Mike Johnson, and the minority leader, New York Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

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As military units increasingly depend on wireless communications in the combat zone, the Ukraine War is providing examples of how patterns of cell phone use can be mapped and provide targets for guided missile attacks. Military field headquarters have long known that they must restrict their use of wireless devices and, if possible, route communications via wire to a location hundreds of meters from the headquarters. From that remote location wireless transmissions can be made. If the enemy locates the wireless transmission site and attacks it with a missile, casualties and damage are minimized. It’s been known that field headquarters using wireless communications, including cell phones, makes the headquarters a missile magnet. The war in Ukraine confirmed that. The Russians were often the target of these missile magnet attacks because the Ukrainians were more careful with their use of cell phones in the field.

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After the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a state has no power to kick a presidential candidate off a ballot, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said he planned to “revive legislation” to prevent anyone guilty of participating in an “insurrection” from running for president.

Yeah, well, the problem they have is that Trump hasn’t even been formally accused of ‘participating in an insurrection’, much less found guilty of doing so. That dog won’t hunt.

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The federal government has used taxpayer dollars to fund services for LGBTQ refugees in Latin America over the past couple of years, federal grants show.

The State Department and the Inter-American Foundation, an independent federal agency, funded a trio of grants between August 2021 and October 2023 aimed at bolstering Costa Rica’s status as a haven for LGBTQ asylum-seekers, funding a project to help LGBTQ refugee entrepreneurs as well as teaching gay and transgender refugees how to use computers. The three programs collectively received almost $300,000 in federal funds.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers (CBP) at the San Ysidro Port of Entry made a massive bust over the weekend, discovering more than $11 million of blue fentanyl pills concealed in a car on Sunday.

At the San Ysidro POE around 8PM on Sunday night, a K-9 unit encountered a “37-year-old man driving a 2008 sedan applying for admission into the United States from Mexico,” a release from Customs and Border Patrol revealed over the weekend.

The K-9 unit alerted for drugs near the glove compartment and the vehicle was referred for further inspection, at which point “CBP officers extracted a total of 100 packages containing blue pills concealed within the vehicle’s dashboard and within the front passenger seats”.

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Illicit Iranian oil sales have hit $90 billion under the Biden administration, with the proceeds helping Tehran’s regional terror proxies fund an unprecedented wave of attacks on Israel, American forces, and Western shipping vessels.

Tehran’s sales to China, its top importer, have consistently crossed more than 1 million barrels per day during the past several months, a signal that the Biden administration continues its softline approach toward enforcing sanctions on the regime’s oil exports.

“Iran has managed to sell $90 billion worth of U.S.-sanctioned oil, setting new export records in the process,” according to the latest figures published by United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), a watchdog group that monitors Tehran’s illicit oil trade. “Ongoing hesitance to enforce oil sanctions on Iran has proven to be a defining characteristic of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy.”

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Violent crime is going down in Venezuela just as the United States has been hit with a rash of high-profile violent crimes by illegal immigrants.

It’s not hard to figure out why.

The killing of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Athens, Georgia, has become the latest and most prominent case of an American being killed as a consequence of President Joe Biden’s open-border policies.

The man being held in connection with the killing of Riley is Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant who reportedly entered the United States in 2022. Since his arrival in the U.S., he appears to have spent his time breaking various other laws and behaving like a general menace to society. He has been arrested for various serious crimes and repeatedly released.

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Remember when, in the immediate aftermath of the Ukraine war, Russian oil immediately traded down to a discount of as much as 30% below spot Brent as the entire western world suddenly found itself locked out of access to the most valuable Russian export (which also meant that China and India were the only natural buyers left) and the price of Russian oil had to reflect the explicit plunge in demand?

Well, that’s no longer the case because in the two years since the start of the Ukraine conflict, it became apparent that Western sanctions were merely a theatrical publicity stunt as the alternative – strict enforcement – would have sent oil prices soaring and that would be unacceptable to a Biden administration terrified of losing the November elections if and when oil and gasoline prices surges.

And as fear of enforcement became a non-issue over time, so did the discount of Russian oil to Brent, which brings us to today, and Goldman’s “chart of the week” which illustrates the collapse in the discount on Russian crude oil close to zero relative to Brent, according to the bank’s estimates using the most recent customs data for December.

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A recent study found that the majority of patients who suffered from long COVID during a time when vaccines and antiviral treatments were widely available were vaccinated.

Every day, in every way, I’m glad I never got vaccinated.

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It’s no surprise to readers of this site that metals are often worth more than fiat currency. Gold, silver, and other precious metals are known for their value. But sometimes fiat currency can’t even compete with zinc.

The US penny, which is primarily made of zinc, costs roughly three cents to produce and is only worth one cent according to the federal government. This is the opposite of what has happened historically. Generally, governments produce currency that is worth far more than the cost of producing it. Imagine printing a one hundred dollar bill which costs far less than a hundred dollars in materials and printing costs. The profit from this is called seigniorage. With pennies, the US government is practicing reverse seigniorage.

This loss of money from producing pennies is one of the arguments for abolishing the US penny. There are other arguments against the penny such as the claim that it’s worth so little compared to the typical American wage that it makes no sense to denominate prices in pennies, would anyone argue that the United States needs a coin worth half a penny?

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Dr. Clarice Saba, an otorhinolaryngologist in Brazil, developed sudden hearing loss in her right ear a week after receiving her first dose of the COVID-19 adenovirus vaccine.

“I did all the exams and could not find any other reason other than because of the shots,” she told The Epoch Times.

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The revelation that the U.S. intelligence community, under the Obama administration, sought the assistance of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Donald Trump’s associates before the 2016 election is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which the deep state will go to protect its interests and challenge its adversaries. (The Five Eyes countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.)

This bombshell, reported by a team of independent journalists, exposes a dark chapter in American political history, where foreign intelligence services were reportedly mobilized against a presidential candidate.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

Billionaire Greg Flynn, who made his fortune running one of the world’s largest restaurant franchise operations, is getting a new boost from sourdough loaves and brioche buns.

That’s because a California law that’s about to raise the state minimum wage at fast-food spots to $20 an hour from $16 offers an unusual exemption for chains that bake bread and sell it as a standalone item.

Governor Gavin Newsom pushed for that break, according to people familiar with the matter. Among the main beneficiaries is Flynn, a longtime Newsom donor whose California holdings include two dozen Panera Bread locations.

The specificity of the exemption has puzzled observers for months, especially after the governor told reporters last year that it came about as “part of the sausage-making” of politics. In response to detailed questions, Newsom’s office said the wage law was the “result of countless hours of negotiations with dozens of stakeholders over two years” — and will make a real difference for hundreds of thousands of Californians.

Flynn, who has been involved in business dealings with Newsom in addition to contributing to the governor’s political campaigns, said in a brief conversation that he didn’t play a role in crafting the bread exemption. He didn’t respond to requests for comment about his connections to Newsom.

Democrats never pass a law that doesn’t have loopholes for their favored allies.

UPDATE: California Governor Under Fire for Bizarre Minimum Wage Carveout That Benefits Donor

ZMan does a deep dive.

The term “deep state” has been overused and abused to the point where it is meaningless, but the concept behind it remains useful. Conceptually, it simply means the permanent state, the individuals and institutions that lie behind the facade of our democratic processes and institutions. Politicians come and go but there is a permanent managerial elite that runs the important institutions. The C.I.A., for example, does not change after a presidential election brings in a new president.

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Moments ago, two things happened: Biden’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released the first revision of Q4 2023 GDP, a number which is completely irrelevant as it looks at the state of the US economy more than 2 months ago as the calendar is now just weeks away from the start of Q2 2024… and bitcoin soared above $60,000, now less than $10k away from a record high. While it may not be immediately obvious, the two are actually linked. Let us explain.

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The image shows two well dressed middle class white women looking furtive, with one hiding a stolen handbag inside her coat.

Respondents noted that the typical demographic of organized retail thieves in big cities doesn’t correlate with the chosen image.

Another image used by the FBI showed a white man stealing something from a supermarket.

God forbid that the Woke bureaucrats should admit the truth, that most organized retail crime is committed by Shoplifters of Color. (Surely they could blame it on The Patriarchy somehow?)

According to the FBI’s own arrest record crime statistics, 52.7 per cent of robberies are carried out by blacks or African-Americans, despite the fact they only make up about 13 per cent of the population.

Even with a significantly higher population, whites in America only account for 44.7 per cent of robberies.

The significant majority of these robberies will also have been carried out by men, making the choice of well dressed white women even more bizarre.

When has actual reality ever successfully intruded on government policy?

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The following are just a few of the Biden family scandal items from the last three months — leading up to the Hunter deposition — that have received no coverage on ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening or morning shows, nor their Sunday roundtable shows:

If, of course, you’re keeping score.

The American Mind.

If there is one uniquely American institution still held in high regard, even as general trust in American institutions has cratered, it is the elected office of sheriff. The office of sheriff has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon tradition and centuries of English common law, but the sheriff who keeps the peace with a steely gaze and a steady hand, not in the interest of some far-flung ruler in a distant capital but at the request of his neighbors, is surely a uniquely American icon.

When you talk with elected sheriffs—as I am frequently blessed to do at the annual Claremont Sheriffs Fellowship and when I provide briefings to various sheriff departments around the country—you hear repeatedly two main points that emphasize why American faith in this storied office is not misplaced.

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Joe Biden administration officials admitted that six weeks into the undeclared war in Yemen, the US and UK strikes have failed to erode the Houthis military capabilities. The officials said the US is surprised at the Houthis’ military capabilities and that Washington has a limited understanding of how advanced their weapons systems are.

Somehow I am not surprised that they are surprised.

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Since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, a significant number of vaccinated people have reported various adverse reactions.

Some adverse events are widely acknowledged, like blood clots and myocarditis. Others are less publicly discussed but are still present in the research literature.

The Epoch Times reviewed the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the United Kingdom’s Yellow Card Reporting system, South Africa’s VAERS database, and numerous peer-reviewed studies, selecting the top reported adverse events with literature support. Their severity determines the order of the events.

UPDATE: Study Finds Hearing And Balance Disorders Among COVID-19 Vaccinated

UPDATE: Study Finds Increasing Time Between COVID Vaccine Doses Reduces Risk Of Myocarditis, Yet Cardiologists Raise Concerns

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Jesalyn Harper, a City of Reedley code enforcement officer, had to determine whether to turn off the power to a secret Chinese biolab in California in order to prevent a fire that inspectors had said was a risk.

But with the power off, the freezers’ contents would thaw, with potentially dangerous consequences. The biolab was full of thousands of vials of possible infectious pathogens.

She called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for advice.

“It was a very short-lived and frustrating phone call that ended with them hanging up,” said Ms. Harper.

She left the power on.

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Border Patrol agents — frustrated by the border situation — are reportedly concerned the Senate will undermine the impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

After the Feb. 13 House impeachment vote, five federal law enforcement agents said they worry Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will scuttle Mayorkas’ trial before it can begin, The Washington Examiner reported.

“I want to see our government take action!!” a California agent wrote in a text message to the outlet about the impeachment effort. “It took them long enough.”

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Washington is once again facing a potential shutdown. Funding for the federal government will run out in early March unless the House and Senate can bridge their differences and pass spending legislation.

At the same time, the city of San Francisco seems to have few problems doling out huge amounts to well-connected activist groups and hard-left ideologues.

While those two realities might seem disconnected, there are important links between them.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on Thursday that it seized 6.5 tons of methamphetamine at Eagle Pass port of entry in Texas. It is the largest seizure ever made at a port of entry in a single enforcement action.

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Very capable but very expensive … like shooting your enemies with golden bullets.

The Tomahawk missile has become an iconic part of the U.S. military inventory, but due to conflicts overseas and production issues at home, America is in danger of running out of the venerable missile.

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It may take more than 10 years for someone injured by a COVID-19 vaccine to receive a decision on whether their claim is eligible for compensation by the government’s vaccine compensation program—if they receive a response at all.

It only seems fair that if someone is injured by getting a vaccine that was mandated by the government, the government ought to pay appropriate compensation. But that compensation doesn’t dome out of the pockets of the bureaucrats that mandated the vaccine–heaven forbid!– but out of the pockets of the American taxpayer … i.e. you.

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President Biden traveled to the West Coast this week to raise money for his campaign. While there, he decided to spend some money, too. Yours.

On February 21, Biden announced that he was canceling $1.2 billion in federal student loans for 153,000 borrowers. That’s on top of more than $130 billion in student debt that he has canceled to date. The Penn Wharton school says that Biden’s efforts will cost a total of $475 billion over 10 years.

How awful is this policy? Ah, let us count the ways.

UPDATE: President Biden’s Transfer of Other People’s Debts To You

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Fact check true: For the first time in history spending on interest will exceed spending on defense.

I hear that Singapore isn’t run by morons, as the U.S. apparently is.

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Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell said on Wednesday she will not extradite a New York murder suspect back to the state because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg cannot be trusted to keep the man locked up, the New York Post reported.

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An injury on a high school girls basketball team is another reminder of why Title IX exists and why the definition of “sex” is not up for interpretation.

A high school girls basketball team decided to forfeit a game earlier this month after a male athlete playing for the other team injured one of the young women.

The game was between Collegiate Charter School of Lowell in Massachusetts and KIPP Academy in Lynn, Massachusetts. A male who identifies as female plays on KIPP Academy’s girls basketball team, and during the game, he wrestled with one of the other team’s female players for the ball. Video shows the female player from Collegiate Charter School of Lowell falling to the ground after the exchange and holding her back in pain.

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Buy those votes!  Buy those votes!

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Administration critics say these moves reflect the resurgence of a practice embraced by the Obama administration and rejected during Donald Trump’s presidency: “sue and settle.” The tactic is simple: An advocacy group sues a federal agency for failing to enforce laws or regulations. Agency officials and the plaintiffs then come to a private agreement and that deal is ratified by the courts via a binding consent decree.

The practice is common at every level of government. New York City, for example, is obligated to house and feed tens of thousands of migrants because of a consent decree it entered into to settle a 1979 lawsuit brought by advocates for the homeless. But it is most prevalent in the environmental field, where well-funded groups commonly sue the Environmental Protection Agency or the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior alleging failure to enforce provisions of the Clean Air Act or regulations regarding federal leases for energy production.

Although such consent decrees do not have the force of laws passed by Congress or regulations issued by the government that have gone through formal review and allow for public comment, they set the rules of the road. Critics say it has allowed government to advance policy goals that cannot be achieved through normal democratic channels.

The distinguishing characteristic of Democrats is that they avoid anything that smacks of actual democracy.

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Back in early 2022 just weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western officials began raising suspicions that the Islamic Republic of Iran was supplying arms, and especially kamikaze drones, to Moscow for use on the Ukrainian battlefield. This proved true, and allegations of Tehran supplying ballistic missiles soon followed.

Now, just days away from the grim two-year mark of the start of the major war, there are fresh reports of a dramatic escalation in Iran’s military supply pipeline to Russia. Reuters reports Wednesday that Tehran has provided Moscow with a “large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.”

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US state COVID-19 vaccine mandates didn’t significantly change uptake, and states with mandates actually had lower COVID-19 booster and voluntary adult and child flu vaccine coverage than those that banned vaccine requirements, an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data suggests.

Researchers from the University of Arizona at Tucson and Furman University in South Carolina parsed the data to identify changes in COVID-19 vaccination rates and COVID-19 boosters and seasonal flu vaccines in the 2 months before and after implementation of state-level mandates for targeted groups (eg, state employees). Baseline attitudes were collected before the vaccine rollout as part of the COVID States Project.

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A shocking ten million illegals have crossed the southern border into the US under President Biden’s watch so far. Thousands of lucky migrants who end up in the progressive hellhole of New York City could soon receive pre-loaded debit cards with amounts as much as $10,000 under a new controversial program launched by Democrat Mayor Eric Adams.

The New York Post reports Adam’s genius plan to give unvetted illegals taxpayer funds is set to begin with 500 families staying at the luxurious Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

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Your tax dollars at work — to laud violent Marxism and a cop killer for Black History Month.

PBS News Weekend on Sunday devoted its semi-weekly “Hidden Histories” segment to praise the militant Marxist-black power group the Black Panther Party, founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland.

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Earlier this month, I broke down the jobs report that was hyped as evidence that Bidenomics was working and found that at least 1 in 5 jobs being created were actually government jobs.

Worse still, 1 in 10 jobs added in January came from “employment in social assistance”. What was driving this sudden boom in welfare jobs? The real boom was happening on the border. Cities are being flooded with masses of migrants who need social workers to care for them.

New York City is cutting school lunches for kids while Denver is slashing funding for parks to be able to care for migrants. Some of the job growth in Bidenomics consists of the country, and states and cities going deeper into debt to provide more benefits for the illegal alien invaders.

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A record 7.3 million illegal aliens have crossed the southwest border under President Biden’s watch, a number which according to Fox News.is greater than the population of 36 individual states.

That figure is sourced from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which has already reported 961,537 Southwest land border encounters in the current fiscal year, which runs from October through September, and if the current pace of illegal immigration does not slow down, fiscal year 2024 will break last year’s record of 2,475,669 southwest border encounters — a number that by itself exceeds the population of New Mexico.

The total number of southwest land border encounters since Biden assumed office in 2021 is 7,298,486, CBP data shows.

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‘Numerous’ Nevada voters were shocked to discover that they voted in the Feb. 6th presidential primary, despite not having done so – the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

Las Vegas resident and registered Republican Daphne Lee told the outlet that her family checked the secretary of state’s website on Sunday to look up their voter history after hearing about the issue. The site showed that she and her family had voted in the primary despite none of them having done so. She attempted to opt out of future mail-in ballots and was unable to do so – with a message saying she was not currently registered to vote, and that her voting history no longer existed.

“It’s just so frustrating,” Lee said, adding “This makes everyone uncomfortable.”