Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Update

Ivermectin Redux

Ivermectin was one of the drugs medically deprecated during the pandemic (sometimes called the “plannedscamdemic”) that had to be repudiated because, by U.S. law, if a traditional drug could treat a new contagion, no new drug could be rushed through the regulatory system. So a huge psychological operation went underway to repudiate the promising alternatives, such as HCQ and, yes, Ivermectin.

Paul Jacob has covered this at ThisIsCommonSense.org — this very website. In September 2021, for example, the “horse dewormer” propaganda was discussed in “Ingested Invective Rejected.” One of this site’s “Thought” features quoted from The War on Ivermectin (2024):

In 2022, Paul wrote about Dr. John Campbell’s reporting on Ivermectin, in “This Is Just Huge.” In that spirit, consult Dr. Campbell after that:

John takes Ivermectin (nine months ago):

“New positive Ivermectin evidence” (eight months ago):

“Ivermectin and mebendazole, 84% benefit in cancer” (four months ago):

And, three weeks ago, Dr. Campbell laid out the damage done by suppressing Ivermectin during the pandemic:

And Campbell is not alone in noticing the researched benefits of the drug:

Thought

Tecumseh

Any sale not made by all is not valid. The late sale is bad. It was made by a part only. Part do not know how to sell. It requires all to make a bargain for all. All red men have equal rights to the unoccupied land. The right of occupancy is as good in one place as in another. There can not be two occupations in the same place. The first excludes all others. It is not so in hunting or traveling; for there the same ground will serve many, as they may follow each other all day; but the camp is stationary, and that is occupancy. It belongs to the first who sits down on his blanket or skins which he has thrown upon the ground; and till he leaves it no other has a right.
Tecumseh to Governor Harrison (August 1810).

Today

Sacco & Vanzetti

On Tuesday, August 23, 1927, 36-year-old Nicola Sacco and 39-year-old Bartolomeo Vanzetti died on the same date and at the same location, executed after a lengthy, controversial trial for a murder and robbery, committed on April 15, 1920. The two were anarchists and Italian immigrants to America. The means of execution was the electric chair for both; the times of execution were between noon and 12:30 on that Tuesday.

Update

An Admission

The ongoing Fauci story keeps going on, and some elements of it are being solidified into Accepted Fact. What element? Conspiracy.

“Former Fauci adviser pleads guilty in US to conspiring to conceal COVID records,” is the Reuters title. The plea occurred last Tuesday, when “former adviser to infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci” formally admitted guilt for “conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The confessed criminal is named David Morens. “The 78-year-old had been indicted in April on charges related to what prosecutors said was a ⁠scheme to thwart public records requests received by the agency beginning in April 2020 related to COVID-19 research grants.

He faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced on November 12.

“By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did, and he will continue to do so,” Timothy Belevetz, his lawyer, said in a statement.

The plea came after Fauci, who led the NIAID for 38 years and became the face of the U.S. pandemic response, appeared before a Senate panel last month and repeatedly invoked his right against self-incrimination.

Dr. John Campbell reported on this two days ago:

Thought

William J. Locke

I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.
William J. Locke, Simon the Jester (1910).

Today

Car Starts

On August 22, 1902, the Cadillac Motor Company was founded — and on the same day Theodore Roosevelt became the first President of the United States to make a public appearance in an automobile, riding through the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in a Columbia Victoria electric car. Though TR’s public statement was supportive of the new technology, privately he referred automobiles “a trial” and “as distinct additions to the discomfort of living.”

His predecessor in office, William McKinley, had himself ridden in an automobile, but did not do so in public.

Also in 1902, the federal government bought a Stanley Steamer for presidential outings, the first automobile in general service by what the Founding Fathers referred to as the “general government.”

deficits and debt national politics & policies

The Forty-Trillionth

When Grover Cleveland — arguably the United States’ last non-“progressive” president — won his second term after a one-term hiccup named Benjamin Harrison, list makers and ordinal number enthusiasts faced a challenge: was Cleveland to be called the union’s 22^nd president, or the 22^nd and 24^th president?

The two-term presidents before him had all served their terms consecutively, but we spoke of each four-year term in office as the presidents’ respective first and second administrations. Historians and archivists chose the clunky 22^nd/24^th double listing for Cleveland, which brings us to the current president, formerly the 45^th and now the 47^th.

One presidency was just not enough for Donald Trump.

But what will he be remembered as? It is possible that his tombstone will have a forty-something on it, but the “th” may very well stand for “trillionth” — for under his watch the public debt of the federal government rolled over on Wednesday, past $40 trillion.

I remember when people held signs up emblazoned with “No Trillion Dollar Debt!” How “forty years ago” is that?

There’s an old law of liberty: people out of power demand freedom, people in power demand more power. Trump sounded more libertarian when running for office, and he seems to conform to a very old corollary of the law: politicians running for office protest debt, politicians in office add to it.

FDR is the grand example, yet it is Trump who may come to be identified with it.

“The unprecedented [sic] $40 trillion figure highlights competing administration priorities,” declares The Seattle Times, “from boosting the defense spending that the U.S. relies on to carry out President Donald Trump’s almost-6-month-old Iran war to lowering the cost of gas and groceries.”

Isn’t this mere Trump-bashing? For while Trump may someday receive the blame, in truth it belongs to both parties and almost all politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Congress, public debt, Trump, war

Thought

Galsworthy

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.
John Galsworthy, One More River (1933), first chapter.

Today

Haitian Revolution

On August 21, 1791, a Vodou ceremony led by Dutty Boukman turned into a violent slave rebellion, thereby starting the Haitian Revolution.

education and schooling election law

Tellingly Two-Faced

The Attorney General’s office in Washington wants it both ways.

That’s Washington the state, and I’m referring to an important case about the language state officials must use on the ballot to explain initiative measures to voters. The case (Arthur West, a citizen, v. Steve Hobbs, the Secretary of State) is now before the state’s highest court.

Democrats legislated that any initiative decreasing taxes must contain this wording on the ballot: “This measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).”

In fact, that assertion, by law, must be placed right before voters are asked to vote: Yes or No?

Even though it isn’t, well, true.

Consider Proposition 645, the initiative to repeal an income tax hike on “evil” millionaires: it doesn’t specifically cut any of these government service categories that voters are being told it does. That’s not even in dispute.

What spending legislators cut to compensate for decreased tax revenues is at the discretion of, obviously, those legislators.

Last week, the AG’s office argued in a different case heard in the same courthouse on the same day: “Indicating how funds in the general fund will be allocated in the future would be both inaccurate and misleading to the voters.”

Wait . . . that concedes Mr. West’s whole point in seeking an injunction against the now admittedly “inaccurate and misleading” anti-tax cut language.

On Monday, Citizens in Charge Foundation filed an amicus brief in the Washington Supreme Court explaining that the Evergreen State’s constitution permits only legislative acts “facilitating” the process.

“Misleading the public about the consequence of a ballot measure does not ‘facilitate’ its consideration,” we argue, “it undermines it.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* As president of Citizens in Charge Foundation, I made a legal declaration in this case, previously, surveying ballot language policies across the ballot initiative states and pointing out that this law makes Washington state an outlier.

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