A federal judge in New York granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday in favor of 17 health care workers applying for religious exemptions to the state’s COVID-19 mandate.
U.S. District Judge David Hurd’s injunction, which is effective statewide, temporarily bars New York State from forcing employers to fire medical workers seeking a religious exemption.
“The question presented by this case is not whether plaintiffs and other individuals are entitled to a religious exemption from the State’s workplace vaccination requirement,” Hurd wrote.
“Instead, the question is whether the State’s summary imposition of [the mandate] conflicts with plaintiffs’ and other individuals’ federally protected right to seek a religious accommodation from their individual employers,” he continued, adding, “The answer to this question is clearly yes.”
Hurd also left the door open for an appeal, writing, “Because the issues in dispute are of exceptional importance to the health and the religious freedoms of our citizens, an appeal may very well be appropriate.”
The New York State Department of Health issued an emergency regulation Aug. 26 mandating that most healthcare workers must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sept. 27 or face termination. On Sept. 14, attorneys with the Thomas More Society filed a suit on behalf of 17 Roman Catholic and Baptist medical workers, alleging discrimination and constitutional violation.
“With this decision the court rightly recognized that yesterday’s ‘front line heroes’ in dealing with COVID cannot suddenly be treated as disease-carrying villains and kicked to the curb by the command of a state health bureaucracy,” said Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher Ferrera, who represented the plaintiffs in the case.
“Some of these plaintiffs contracted COVID while treating patients, recovered, and were allowed to return to work with the same protective measures that were good enough for the 18 months that they were the heroes in the battle against the virus. There is no ‘science’ to show that these same measures are suddenly inadequate – especially when they are allowed for those with medical exemptions,” he added.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., defended the mandate in a Tuesday statement about the order.
“My responsibility as Governor is to protect the people of this state, and requiring health care workers to get vaccinated accomplishes that,” she said. “I stand behind this mandate, and I will fight this decision in court to keep New Yorkers safe.”
Marist’s new abortion survey suffers from misleading wording and results out of step with prior polling.
The mainstream press is seizing on a new Marist Institute poll as proof of the “extremism” of Texas’ ban on aborting babies with detectable heartbeats, but a prominent pro-life researcher argues that the poll has “significant problems” impacting its reliability.
The poll, conducted with National Public Radio (NPR) and PBS NewsHour, finds that only 32% of adults (and an equal percentage of registered voters) would support “a law that allows abortions, but only up to the time cardiac activity is detected about 6 to 8 weeks into pregnancy,” while 58% of adults and 57% of registered voters would oppose it.
Just 18% of adults and registered voters would support “a law that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who assists a woman in getting an abortion,” with 74% opposing it.
PBS NewsHour’s takeaway is that the “type of anti-abortion law enacted by the state of Texas last month is deeply unpopular with Americans.” The Texas Heartbeat Act requires abortionists to screen for a preborn baby’s heartbeat and prohibits abortion if a heartbeat can be heard, with exceptions only for medical emergencies. It has survived legal challenges so far thanks to a unique enforcement mechanism that “exclusively” empowers private citizens to bring civil suits against abortionists, rather than state prosecutions.
Writing at National Review, Catholic University of America research associate and Charlotte Lozier Institute associate scholar Professor Michael New identifies several reasons to question Marist’s findings.
First, he notes that while “every recent poll on the subject suggests that there is a consistent and significant difference of opinion on abortion between Republicans and Democrats,” Marist found “Republicans were only three points more likely than Democrats to support a bill similar to the Texas heartbeat bill.” White Evangelical support for pro-life laws was also abnormally low, indicating the respondents may not have been a representative sample.
Notably, the NewsHour report quotes two Republican respondents, one in Tennessee and one in New York, who it describes as “completely opposed to abortion” and “generally support[ive of] all anti-abortion laws,” but who opposed the heartbeat law. It quotes no Republicans who support the law.
New also notes that the poll question’s wording, referencing “a law that allows abortions,” likely elicited some “oppose answers” from pro-lifers who “would oppose any law that explicitly legalized abortion in the early stages of pregnancy,” despite the fact the Texas law “does not itself legalize abortion prior to the detection of a fetal heartbeat.”
New concludes that Marist, which annually partners with the Knights of Columbus to release polls with strongly pro-life findings, should have taken the results’ “abnormally low levels of support among Republicans and white Evangelicals” as cause for skepticism and “conduct[ed] another poll with better-worded questions.”
Whatever nationwide public opinion may be on the Texas Heartbeat Act, pro-life sentiment in the Lone Star State was strong enough to enable its passage in the first place, and a Rasmussen poll released last month found plurality support for the law among Texan likely voters, 46% to 43%.
‘There will be things that people can’t get,’ a White House official reportedly told Reuters.
A senior official in the Biden White House reportedly said that Americans can expect shortages to impact the Christmas season. “There will be things that people can’t get,” a senior White House official reportedly told Reuters.
Supply chain issues have been taking a massive toll on retail and transportation companies. Logjams have occurred at several ports, preventing ships loaded with goods from being able to dock. The situation is particularly dire at ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, which account for 40% of all shipping containers entering the United States.
On Wednesday, it was announced that the port of Los Angeles would soon be operating for 24-hour, seven-days-a-week operations with assistance from the federal government. The Long Beach port has been operating 24 hours daily for seven days for roughly the past three weeks.
Biden met with the heads of major retailers on Wednesday in order to address increasingly critical supply chain issues. The anonymous White House official reportedly told Reuters that Americans need to be “flexible and patient” in regards to empty shelves.
Inflation is projected to have a large impact on the Christmas shopping season as well. Last month, the Federal Reserve predicted a 2021 inflation rate of 4.2%, well above its 2% target. Inflation has also had an impact on wages and purchasing power. Labor Department data shows that Americans made 0.9% less per hour on average in August than they did one year prior.
As inflation reaches its highest levels since the 1980’s, the costs are showing up in vital industries. Gas prices have climbed to the highest point since 2014 while food and rent costs have also increased. In August, food prices jumped 0.9% after increasing 0.4% in the prior month.
“Inflation is no longer ‘transitory,’” said Sung Won Sohn, professor of finance and economics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “Supply-chain bottlenecks are getting worse. The logjam is unlikely to ease anytime soon despite the latest intervention by the White House.”
With all the attention on the pandemic, it’s amazing how little people still know about the novel coronavirus. Covid-19 is one of seven types of known human coronaviruses. Like the MERS and SARS coronaviruses, it likely evolved from a virus previously found in animals. These other known coronaviruses cause a significant percentage of colds in adults and children, and are not a serious threat for otherwise healthy adults.
All viruses accumulate mutations over time and the virus that causes Covid-19 is no different. Therefore mutations, now changed, are harder to identify and control.
How is Covid-19 spread?
This coronavirus, Covid-19 is mainly spread in large droplets by coughing and sneezing. This means that “the air” will likely not infect you, but direct contact with these droplets can lead to infection, and the surfaces where these droplets land can be infectious for about a week on average.
Because of this, everything associated with infected people could be contaminated and potentially infectious. You are unlikely to be infected unless your unprotected face is directly coughed or sneezed upon. This virus seems to attach to cell receptors in the nose and throat area. So, if your hands were to touch an infected surface, and you put your hands into or near your mouth or nose, infection could occur.
However, please keep in mind that exposure does not equal infection. In some persons, the virus is actually prevented entry.
An ounce of perspective
There have been many predictions, recommendations, and government mandates—many of which, in hindsight, have been completely wrong. For example, in the Spring of 2020, many “experts” were warning that millions of Americans would die from the virus. Thankfully, predictions like this have not become reality.
Every life is precious, and each casualty of Covid-19 is a tragedy. And we must never minimize the fallout from the pandemic. At the same time, it is critically important to align our perspective with historical records. The following data is the annual number for leading causes of death in the United States, provided by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in 2019:
Heart disease: 659,041
Cancer: 599,601
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 156,979
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,005
Diabetes: 87,647
Since these statistics were reported, the numbers have only increased. Contrary to the impression the news media creates, many more people die from these ailments each and every year—many of which are preventable through lifestyle choices. Additionally, according to a Harvard University Center for Ethics study, about 128,000 people die annually from drugs prescribed to them, even when they are taken as directed.
And when it comes to Covid-19 deaths and hospitalizations, the medical community acknowledges that these co-morbid conditions, like those above, greatly contribute to the mortality of Covid-19. So far, the government is not releasing transparent data that shows other factors in deaths they attribute to Covid. In late 2020, a county in Colorado reported two fatalities caused by gunshot as Covid deaths, because both parties had been diagnosed with Covid prior to their death.
We’re rightly focused on Covid-19 in this country, but let’s not be ignorant of the other statistics, which reflect needless human suffering. Many of these deaths are preventable.
We now have an opportunity to view our current pandemic from a different lens. The question then becomes, are you in panic-mode, reacting to the pandemic, or being proactive about your long-term health?
Reactive or proactive?
Obviously, we all are affected by the mass hysteria created with consistent media coverage, ever-changing government mandates, and vaccine confusion.
It is no secret that immunocompromised persons are more likely to have serious effects from any virus. On the other hand, those with younger and more robust immune systems generally get sick less, have less severe symptoms, and recover faster. Athletes generally have few symptoms, for obvious reasons.
So how does a person become immunocompromised?
Here are some definite contributors:
Consistent consumption of the “standard American diet” consisting of highly processed and refined foods which contain few nutrients, and often contain carcinogens.
Lack of adequate sleep
Uncontrolled stress and fear
Obesity
Sedentary lifestyle
On the flip side, there are ways we can strengthen our immune system.
7 ways to bolster your immune system
Do not live in fear. This will only weaken your system by producing massive amounts of cortisol.
Maintain adequate sleep.
Use colloidal silver products to wipe your hands and spray in your nasal passages and mouth. Wipe down seats frequented by multiple persons.
Consider adding supplements, Zinc, Vitamin D+K, Omega 3, Vitamin C, Phytonutrient Powder, and Immunoglobulin. Our clinic created a special Immune Protocol available at https://sherwood.tv/protect.
Eat real food containing plenty of fruits and vegetables. When selecting, use the following criteria: organic, grass-fed, hormone/antibiotic free, free range, wild caught.
Enjoy at least three hours of moderate exercise per week.
Become “health confident.” This means do not expect to get sick. Expect to be one of the healthy majority.
Our bodies have an amazing ability to protect us from the many dangers we face on this earth. As we re-emerge into more social interaction, it’s also the perfect time to make positive changes to your own lifestyle.
Drs. Mark and Michele Sherwood are the founders of a successful medical practice and help patients from around the world find the health they were created to enjoy, in every area of life. As bestselling authors, podcasters, movie producers, and media personalities, they founded Hope Dealers International to reach beyond their clinic. www.Sherwood.tv
“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”—Simone Weil, philosopher and political activist
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the so-called name of the national good by an elite class of governmental and corporate officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
We, the middling classes, are not so fortunate.
We find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes.
The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; roving TSA sweeps; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.
Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.
It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.
This certainly isn’t a constitutional democracy, however.
This overbearing Nanny State despotism is what happens when government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.
The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.
Almost every aspect of American life today—especially if it is work-related—is subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control.
This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.
Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.
In this way, “we the people,” sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, have allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.
The problem with these devil’s bargains, however, is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.
We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all—the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.”
In exchange for the promise of an end to global pandemics, lower taxes, lower crime rates, safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to lockdowns, militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.
In the end, such bargains always turn sour.
We relied on the government to help us safely navigate national emergencies (terrorism, natural disasters, global pandemics, etc.) only to find ourselves forced to relinquish our freedoms on the altar of national security, yet we’re no safer (or healthier) than before.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.
Yet when all is said and done, who is really to blame when the wool gets pulled over your eyes: you, for believing the con man, or the con man for being true to his nature?
It’s time for a bracing dose of reality, America.
Wake up and take a good, hard look around you, and ask yourself if the gussied-up version of America being sold to you—crime free, worry free, disease free and devoid of responsibility—is really worth the ticket price: nothing less than your freedoms.
The Biden administration is releasing enormous numbers of migrants into the U.S., often with little to no oversight.
At least 160,000 illegal immigrants have been released into the U.S., often with little to no supervision, by the Biden administration since March – including a broad use of limited parole authorities to make more than 30,000 eligible for work permits since August, Border Patrol documents obtained by Fox News show.
The documents give a partial snapshot into how the Biden administration has been releasing enormous numbers of migrants into the U.S., often with little to no oversight, supervision or immediate risk of deportation.
NEW/THREAD: According to Border Patrol documents provided by a source, the federal gov has released over 70,000 illegal immigrants into the U.S. since August 6, including 31,977 released via parole (temp legal status, eligible for work permits). 94,570 released via NTR since 3/20 pic.twitter.com/ag5OMsYw27
Since March 20, at least 94,570 illegal immigrants have been released into the U.S. with Notices to Report. Those who receive such a notice are only required to check in with an ICE office when they get to their final destination – which could be anywhere across the country. Those who check in are not deported or detained as their immigration proceedings move forward.
Meanwhile, since Aug 6th, the administration has released roughly 32,000 immigrants into the U.S. via parole – which gives migrants a form of legal status and the ability to apply for work permits.
Federal law says parole authority is to be used on a case-by-case basis for “urgent humanitarian purposes” and “significant public benefit.” Typically only a handful of parole cases are granted by officials, but the Biden administration has been using it more broadly, including in its parole of tens of thousands of Afghans into the United States as part of Operation Allies Welcome.
Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who served under President Biden, reviewed the documents and told Fox News that he believes the administration is abusing its parole authority.
“By law and regulation a parole shall only be granted on a case by case basis and only for significant humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. Neither of these appear to apply to the current situation,” he said, adding that the number of paroles brings into question the review and approval process.
“As a field chief, I don’t believe I ever approved more than 5 or 10 paroles in a year,” he said. “When I did, I ensured that the alien was monitored continuously and was detained or removed as soon as the circumstances allowed.”
The documents also show that since Aug 6, the administration has released an additional 40,000 illegal immigrants on their own recognizance. The documents also show that on one single day in Del Rio sector, 128 single adult illegal immigrants were released into the U.S. without ATD – which typically includes tracking by an ankle monitor or phone.
A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official told Fox that mechanisms like paroling, the use of NTRs and enrolling migrants in Alternatives to Detention (ATD) “provides mechanisms to require family units released from CBP custody to report to ICE within a specified time.”
The official also cited figures that show that between 2014 and 2020, 81% of those released into the U.S. did report in for their immigration proceedings.
The agency has not released its numbers for September, but in both July and August there were more than 200,000 migrant encounters, marking some of the highest numbers in two decades. Since then, migrants have kept coming in large numbers. According to the documents, Rio Grande Valley encountered 5,900 migrants in one week, while Del Rio encountered more than 2,900 in the same period.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has repeatedly claimed that the border is not open, reportedly warned officials of a worst case scenario of up to 400,000 encounters if Title 42 public health protections were ended.
Republicans have blamed the Biden administration’s rapid rollback of Trump-era border protections for the ongoing crisis at the border. The administration however has focused on an explanation emphasizing “root causes” like poverty, corruption and violence in Central America.
“The downturn in economies, the attendant rise in violence, the downturn in economies made more acute by reason of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the suppression of any humanitarian relief over the past number of years, and the pent-up thirst for relief among many different populations,” Mayorkas told Yahoo News this week. “I think an accumulation of factors contributes to the rise in migration that we’ve seen.”
It looked like finally, a judge was going to allow an audit of the results of absentee ballots in Georgia’s Fulton County from the 2020 Election. Unfortunately, today the judge dismissed the case.
Conservative Brief reported today that after months in the courts, the individuals who brought the suit were ineligible:
Henry County Superior Court Chief Judge Brian Amero has dismissed a lawsuit that alleged fraud in Georgia’s most populous county during the 2020 election.
The lawsuit, which was originally filed back in December, sought a review of roughly 147,000 absentee ballots in search of illegitimate votes.
In his order dismissing the case, Amero claimed the Georgia voters who brought the lawsuit “failed to allege a particularized injury” and didn’t have the legal standing to claim their constitutional rights had been violated.
“A judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit that alleged fraud in Georgia’s most populous county during the 2020 election,” the Independent reported. “The suit sought a review of some 147,000 absentee ballots in search of illegitimate votes, but no evidence emerged to justify such a broad search, the judge said.”
“Henry County Superior Court Chief Judge Brian Amero’s order dismissing the case says the Georgia voters who brought the lawsuit ‘failed to allege a particularized injury, and therefore lacked the standing to claim that their state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process had been violated,” the report added.
Who scared the judge off? Why wouldn’t the judge address these apparent issues in the early days before so much had been done? What caused the judge to change his mind on this case?
We’ve known for months that there were hundreds of thousands of ballots in Georgia missing chain of custody documentation making them illegitimate in the 2020 Election.
However, it looks like these ballots are going to remain in the results of the election in the county where Biden was given the win by a little over 10,000 ballots.
We also know that there were numerous criminal acts during the election that were identified in Fulton County alone, but nothing was ever done.
Most Republicans in Georgia and across the country don’t seem to care. They are blinded by greed or ignorant to the implications of giving up on our voting process.
Illegal ballots should never be included in elections. Republicans don’t know that or don’t care. Democrats don’t like elections. They gave up on the idea of holding elections in 2020. How much fraud will it take before anyone does anything to fix the basic foundation of our Constitution – that we elect individuals into office (They’re not appointed)?
Over 100,000 American workers are reportedly threatening to strike this week amid the supply chain crisis, citing “low staffing levels” and “burnout.”
The American workers who are threatening to strike work for Hollywood production companies, John Deere, and Kaiser Permanente, the Hillreported.
The threats to strike would add to the thousands more who have already been on strike, “including 2,000 New York hospital workers, 700 Massachusetts nurses and 1,400 Kellogg plant workers in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.”
President of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals Jodi Barschow told the Hill that Kaiser nurses are ready to strike over “pandemic-induced burnout exacerbated by low staffing levels.”
Kaiser’s proposals “show a profound disrespect for the frontline healthcare workers who are risking their lives during COVID,” Barschow remarked, noting any strike would “severely disrupt” the healthcare supply chain.
Our 3,400 workers were joined by over 20,000 others in authorizing strikes at Kaiser. Why would Kaiser push healthcare workers to strike? Why would they offer low wages and terrible staffing proposals during a pandemic?https://t.co/s5zvHC2Qyq
Kaiser’s senior vice president of human resources, Arlene Peasnall, responded to the threats by asking employees to tend to patients. “We ask that our employees reject a call to walk away from the patients who need them,” Peasnall said. “Our priority is to continue to provide our members with high-quality, safe care.”
John Deere is also experiences an employee mutiny over “cuts for new hires.” A strike for John Deere could mean 10,000 employees may not show up for work on Thursday and would be the first strike for John Deere in 30 years, the Hill reported.
Hollywood is also reportedly facing about 60,000 employees who are threatening to strike “after their union failed to secure a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Hollywood and streaming giants such as The Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. and Netflix.”
Apparently the film employees are frustrated with limited time for “meal breaks and sleep,” along with low wages. The Hill notes that if the strike is carried out, it would be “the largest walkouts in recent history.”
The threats of strikes come as state and federal coronavirus unemployment money has exasperated the employment market. The Biden-Harris administration admitted so on Tuesday to the New York Times. “Administration officials acknowledged on Tuesday in a call with reporters that the $1.9 trillion economic aid package President Biden signed into law in March had contributed to supply chain issues,” the New York paper wrote.
Labor shortages are not just impacting Hollywood production companies, John Deere, and Kaiser Permanente. The trucking industry is also facing labor shortages, which is contributing to the supply chain crisis at U.S. ports, where large amounts of containers are clogging up new freight deliveries.
CEO of Freight Right Global Logistics Robert Khachatryan exclusively told Breitbart News on Tuesday 62 ships were unable to unload their containers at California ports this week, delaying inventories for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The shipping congestion is so great that large companies such as Home Depot are chartering their own private vessels to drop freight at smaller ports. But with truckers in low supply to remove the containers from the ports, trucking companies are having a hard time retaining employees.
Old Dominion Freight Line will reportedly hire any driver with or without experience, KHQ NBC reported Sunday. Old Dominion held a job fair Saturday to “hire 10 line drivers who can haul several trailers across the state” while offering to train anyone who wishes to earn a truckers license.
As a result, the supply chain crisis due to a labor shortage, which may be exasperated by new strikes, is raising prices. In August, for example, inflation increased 5.3 percent compared to 2020. A Moody’s economist Mark Zandi told the New York Post Friday that inflation is costing American consumers an extra $175 a month.
The extra costs to consumers are reportedly going to be sustained until 2023, Coresight Research Founder and CEO Deborah Weinswig told Yahoo Finance Live on Tuesday.
“Let’s look at the math: It’s 14 days to get a container from APAC to the U.S. and 40 days for it to get back,” Weinswig explained. “And we have a complete container misalignment right now. So that’s 80 days, we’re talking, in our opinion — we’re probably looking at Q1 2023 before all of those containers get back and realign.”
The National Sex Education Standards’ updated 2020 guidance is featuring what many parents may consider to be disturbing, indoctrinating sex-related information that public school districts are teaching children from very young ages.
The new standards, according to the report, were conceived by the Future of Sex Education Initiative, a partnership between Advocates for Youth, Answer, and SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change that seeks to “create a national dialogue about the future of sex education and to promote the institutionalization of quality sex education in public school.”
What are the details?
According to a Tuesday report from the Federalist‘s Nick Bell, the sex education “blueprint” is steeped in “extremist sexual ethics” that are “designed to destroy children’s innocence” as well as undermine their Christian faith.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a 2016 report noted that approximately 40% of school districts across the country adopted the National Sex Education Standards’ 2011 edition — a less extreme version of its 2020 successor.
“The 2020 standards unequivocally endorse abortion at any time, teach the topic starting in sixth grade, and even force teachers to provide information on local abortion clinics to students in ninth grade,” Bell wrote. “The standards also insist that children must be allowed to choose their own gender and false pronouns must ‘be respected by the adults in their lives.'”
According to the new standards, children as young as kindergarten age should learn about gender identity, while third-grade students should learn about the role of hormone blockers for transgender youth. Teachers should also be equipped to explain masturbation to students as young as just eight years old.
It gets worse from there: Bell noted that sixth-graders — who are often 11 and 12 years old — “must define oral, anal, and vaginal sex as well as the benefits of withdrawing one’s penis before ejaculation during intercourse.”
Sixth-graders, the groups said, should also learn that people ought not “assume that people with a penis are boys and people with a vagina are girls,” and that they should never assume another person’s sexual orientation. Students of this age group, according to the guidance, should also attend LGBTQ rallies and challenge themselves and others on ways to combat homophobia. Sixth-graders would also engage in a card game in which cards ask whether various sex acts — “oral sex (mouth on genitals),” “anal sex (penis to anus)” — are considered abstinence.
For seventh-graders, anything but “sperm in vagina” would constitute abstinence, the guidance added, and teachers would demonstrate how to put on a condom.
A lesson for eighth-graders, the guidance added, would encourage anal and oral sex over vaginal sex in order to avoid pregnancy.
What else?
The new standards, according to the organization, were “written with a trauma-informed lens; have been infused with principles of reproductive justice, racial justice, social justice, and equity; address social determinants of health and how these can lead to inequitable health outcomes; and take an intersectional approach. This edition uses less cis and heteronormative language that reflects a broader range of relationships and identities.”
The updated standards also appear to place parental consent on the back burner and encourage children to demand respect from the adults in their lives when it comes to sexual choice.
“No one else is qualified to label or judge another person’s sexual identity, including their sexual orientation or gender identity, and it is important that the language and terms young people use to identify themselves is respected by the adults in their lives,” a portion of the report added.
Evidence is mounting that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, and key clues are being turned up by private citizens and internet sleuths, not the intelligence community, a key adviser to former President Donald Trump said.
Matthew Pottinger, who served on the Trump National Security Council, made the remarks during the Soufan Center’s Global Security Forum. While he said the natural origin theory is still possible, the lab leak scenario is becoming much more likely.
“I’ve looked at the ledger of circumstantial evidence on both sides,” Pottinger told author Lawrence Wright. “I would say that the list of evidence accumulating on the side that this was an accidental leak far outweighs the circumstantial evidence on the side that this time it was another natural origin.”
China has worked to thwart international investigators from getting to the bottom of the COVID origin mystery, Pottinger said. But Beijing may be no match for the global, crowdsourced inquiry that is combing through available evidence.
“The things that are emerging from the public space, from enterprising scientists and others who are digging into this, just really as private detectives … the circumstantial evidence is certainly accumulating pretty rapidly on the side of this having been an accidental leak,” he said.
One such detail was revealed last week by online sleuth group DRASTIC. That group released documents showing that EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak in 2018 unsuccessfully sought a Pentagon contract that involved dangerous “gain-of-function research,” or engineering of a virus to make it more transmissible.
Daszak, a longtime collaborator with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, has scoffed at the possibility that COVID-19 was created through gain-of-function research. But his group’s $14.2 million proposal to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sought to make bat viruses more dangerous by inserting spike proteins that could bind to human cells.
“I highly suspect that the intel community was not aware that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had submitted a grant proposal to create a virus very similar to the one that’s making us all sick,” Pottinger remarked.
Pottinger noted that the World Health Organization is attempting to conduct another inquiry in China related to COVID-19’s origins, but he said the U.N. agency likely was not up to the task.
“One of the things that we have to be honest with ourselves about is that global institutions, U.N. agencies, including the WHO, play an important role, but we often imbue them with responsibilities and authority that they don’t have and they never really can have because they’re not sovereign governments,” Pottinger said. “They are institutions that every country in the world, including China, have some stake in.”
The WHO-China study released in early 2021 deemed the lab leak hypothesis “extremely unlikely,” and meeting minutes with the Wuhan lab dismissed it as a “conspiracy theory.”
In July, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there was a “premature push” to dismiss the lab escape possibility, but the Chinese government has repeatedly shot down the suggestion of a second investigation.
