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COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Health Policy, Law, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Doctors and Patients or Bureaucrats: Who’s in Charge of Our Medical Care? with Andy Schlafly, JD

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Andy Schlafly, JD – https://www.americaoutloud.news/doctors-and-patients-or-bureaucrats-whos-in-charge-of-our-medical-care-2/

Political persecution through the legal system has become the new American justice. But it can work both ways – if we have the courage.

President Calvin Coolidge, a strong proponent of limited government, believed that “in order for the Constitution and self-government to survive, the people had to be vigilant in its preservation.” Covid-19 started a government and media censorship juggernaut. It is imperative that we all join to stop it in its tracks. The case currently being argued in front of the Supreme Court, Murthy v Missouri arose from – you guessed it – Covid. Missouri and other states assert that the government’s attempts to suppress so-called Covid misinformation went beyond mere public health information to suppression of speech via social media. At oral arguments, Justice Jackson seemed to feel that suppressing speech is the government’s job. To quote: “My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways.”  The First Amendment to the Constitution says the government cannot abridge freedom of speech. As Justice Brandeis wrote in the 1927 free speech case, Whitney v California, free speech is at the heart of a democratic society and the answer to alleged falsehoods is “more speech, not enforced silence.”

Medical freedom for doctors and patients is becoming a distant memory. Physicians are afraid to go into pain management for fear of being labelled a pill pusher. Patients with chronic pain are resorting to getting heroin on the streets rather than be put in a government database. Physicians are bullied by medical boards with the specter of losing their licenses for having valid alternative views regarding medical treatment plans.

Lawyers—who we all know can strike fear into our hearts—can be a big part of preserving our liberty. The legal fights to reign in government overreach are about more than Covid. Lawyers are here to help protect the rights of the individual citizens. They are our last defense against government oppression and corporate corruption. Lawsuits can amplify a few lone voices and let those in power get the message: Our bodies and minds belong to us, not to the government.

I love quotes. Let me give you a few of my favorites on this topic:

“Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.” Graham Greene

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”  Albert Einstein

“All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.”  Adlai Stevenson

“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”  Carl Sagan

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”  Thomas Jefferson

Attorney Andy Schlafly a wonderful friend of the show and general counsel to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is here today to discuss freedom of speech and a recent case headed to the Supreme Court.

Link to amicus brief PDF: https://aapsonline.org/judicial/aaps-amicus-murthy-v-missouri-2-7-2024.pdf

Bio

Andy Schlafly is general counsel to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He received a B.S.E. in electrical engineering and certificate in engineering physics from Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton, Mr. Schlafly briefly worked as a device physicist for Intel, then became a microelectronics engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He then attended Harvard Law School along with Barack Obama. For two years Mr. Schlafly was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Mr. Schlafly served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall Law School and worked for a large law firm before beginning private practice. Mr. Schlafly created the wiki-based Conservapedia in November 2006 to counter the apparent liberal bias in Wikipedia.

Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Law, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: How Illegal Immigration Impacts You with Andy Schlafly, JD

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast How Illegal Immigration Impacts You with Andy Schlafly, JD – https://www.americaoutloud.news/andy-schlafly-jd-illegal-immigration-and-how-it-impacts-you/

Over the last 12 months, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol – as they call it – encountered some 3 million people illegally crossing the southern border. The United States is a large and generous country but the immigration issue has many ramifications.

The psychological and actual damage to black and brown legal resident is incalculable. American citizens are living on the streets while illegal immigrants are being housed.

Since President Biden took office, 425,000 unaccompanied alien children crossed the border. We are paying millions to babysit them in our schools. Teachers are at their wits’ end as they try to teach an onslaught of students who can’t speak a word of English. Don’t despair, Gavin Newsom signed a bill (Assembly Bill 714) to each teachers how to teach illegal aliens. What about our already failing American students. Black students are performing horribly. I guess blacks have outlived their usefulness – their vote is in the bag.  Illegal aliens are the new oppressed person of interest.

And what about the criminals? New criminals crossing and previously incarcerated illegal aliens (407,983 convicted criminal aliens) are not always deported. Is this what we need with crime rising throughout the country?

My guest today is Andy Schlafly. He wrote an article in Townhall highlighting some effects on illegal immigration on employment, among other things. We’ll talk about this, medical censorship, and anything else that crosses our minds.

Bio

Andy Schlafly is general counsel to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He received a B.S.E. in electrical engineering and certificate in engineering physics from Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton, Mr. Schlafly briefly worked as a device physicist for Intel, then became a microelectronics engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He then attended Harvard Law School along with Barack Obama. For two years Mr. Schlafly was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Schlafly served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall Law School and worked for a large law firm before beginning private practice. Mr. Schlafly created the wiki-based Conservapedia in November 2006 to counter the apparent liberal bias in Wikipedia.

Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Real Americans and the American Oligarchy

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Driving across our country makes one appreciate this glorious and (dare I say) exceptional country. The diverse landscapes are a feast for the eyes. Food for the soul is the affirmation that most Americans love their families, treasure America, and enjoy their fellow Americans whether they be white, black, or somewhere in between.

Daily, the media dutifully inform us coastal and urban residents about gender fluidity, diversity training, and decarbonizing energy systems to avert the coming environmental Armageddon. When the media could not flog us with a juicy Covid-19 tragedy, they resurrect a tired but effective angst-inducing headline about the imminent big earthquake.

Why would the media-government complex want to demoralize its citizens and have them live in fear and anxiety even when a “crisis” has resolved? To make them rely on the government, rather than themselves for their day to day needs. To steer them from respecting the democratic republic formed by our Constitution to accepting government control of their lives. Fear lays the groundwork for unquestioning compliance.

Federal and state governments have used Covid as a justification to cross the line from public safety measures into tyranny. Despite the decreasing Covid cases, the national Covid emergency declaration was extended beyond March 1, 2022. The national emergency designation gives the President more than 100 special powers that can bypass legal procedures ranging from banking to public health and anything else the government wants to control.

Despite a long tradition of differing opinions regarding medical disease processes and treatments, the government discouraged such discussions regarding Covid. First, the Surgeon General simply asked us to help stop “misinformation” because it “pollutes our information environment.” A few short months later, the feds are demanding that social networks, search engines, crowdsourced platforms, e-commerce platforms and instant messaging systems send data and analysis on the prevalence of Covid-19 misinformation on their sites. Translation: divergent opinions will be censored once the government discovers how to do so. What happened to our respect for the marketplace of ideas?

If tracking our computer use doesn’t work, we have the National Patient ID, a single number issued by the federal government containing all the details of a person’s medical records from cradle to grave. The concept has been around for more than 25 years as part of HIPAA. However, Congress banned itself from funding such an undertaking. In 2019, Congress lifted the funding ban despite the very real possibility that a National Patient ID could allow for large-scale tracking of Americans through their healthcare records. What happened to the confidential patient-physician relationship based on trust and privacy?

Such government overreach and intrusion are becoming commonplace. We are perilously close to losing government of, by, and for the people. Our government is increasingly populated with close-minded lifelong bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci and the influential career politicians who are hardly the working man’s heroes like Nancy “let them eat ice cream” Pelosi. Universities—grooming our future leaders—have become politically imbalanced and intolerant of open discourse.

We hear about how the evil Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs who profited from political unrest are pulling the strings of their government. We are trending toward our own classic oligarchy, the rule by a few. We have our own wealthy idealogues who have transitioned from mere annoying elitists into toxic powerbrokers promoting their own agendas. Notables include Mark Zuckerberg (Meta/Facebook), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Washington Post), Bill Gates (Microsoft), George Soros (Open Society Foundation).

Meanwhile, runaway inflation is making it harder for Americans to afford basic necessities. Filling one’s automobile with gas is now an exercise in emotional and financial misery. The reaction of Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg and Vice President Harris are indicative of their disdain for the average American. Can’t afford gas? Buy a $45,000 electric car. This dismissive rhetoric does not comport with reality. In 2020, there were 286.9 million cars in the US with 1 million electric vehicles. Moreover, the electric grid absolutely could not support a sudden influx of electric vehicles, given the brown-outs across the country in winter and summer.

This political and powerful class of people want to change the way we live and think—whether we like it or not. We will never have as much money to buy political influence as do the American oligarchs. But we do have our voices. Parents are speaking up about  their schools’ curricula and toxic overtly racist policies that perversely segregate students by skin color and laws that bypass parental input into their children’s medical decisions. Physician office practices are changing to meet the needs of patients, not insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Physicians who have fought for open medical discussion about vaccine safety and efficacy are leaving their mark. CDC Director Walensky finally publicly admitted that the Covid vaccines do not stop transmission of the virus. Many physicians have gone from looking at their unvaccinated patients in horror to “I respect your choice.”

The oligarchs do not represent the real America. It’s up to us to carry on the legacy of American heroes who thought for themselves and bucked the system.

 

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, Uncategorized, What's New

Using COVID Fear to Divide and Rule

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In the 1960s anti-war activists adopted songs like the Eve of Destruction and For What It’s Worth as their anthems. Disenchanted youth feared that the world was on the verge of collapse; we were nearing the end of days. Concurrently, the civil rights activists were singing the hopeful “We Shall Overcome.” (Black folks singing an upbeat and emboldening song written by a white guy would be frowned upon today.) Both groups were buoyed by the blessing of free speech. Their voices were heard. Attempts at silencing them only made their voices louder and more widespread. Even people on the sidelines began to pay attention. 

The war ended, civil rights moved forward, and life went on. People wanted not to sing the same note, but harmony. Even Rodney King, whose 1991 beating was a lightning rod for riots against police brutality pleaded, “can we all get along?” Yes, we can. People have no appetite for or energy to waste on hating for sport. We have the freedom and sensibility to disagree and work toward peaceful coexistence—when we are free from government propaganda and media manipulation.

However, the political class thrives on discord. Since circa 360 B.C., the “divide and rule” concept was on the books. Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father knew that with division comes weakness. The Greek rulers were able to keep the various cultural and ethnic groups in check by keeping them in a constant state of conflict. The factions are so busy bickering and jockeying for favored status that they fail to see their government’s main objective is to stay in power, not to empower the populace. 

Enter pandemic, stage left. Politicians have used COVID not as an enemy, but an ally. After driving us to be preoccupied with our fear of COVID, the government is working its magic. Mask up and lock down! Why? Where’s the data? Don’t ask. Just comply. Now instead of the ancient emperors installing local overlords, the powerful have frightened people into spying on neighbors to root out maskless faces and those who dare cultivate their friendships.

Mixed messages keep us off guard. Amidst calls for national unity, a Public Broadcasting (paid with our tax dollars) Service attorney suggests locking up Trump voters and putting their children in re-education camps. And America’s sweetheart and former national news anchor, Katie Couric, recommended deprogramming Trump supporters.

Teachers’ unions keep their members out of classrooms while children are not getting sick from COVID, but are becoming emotionally unglued. According to the CDC, beginning in April 2020, children’s mental health visits to the emergency room increased by 24 percent in ages 5 to 11 and 31 percent in ages 12 to 17.

The same people calling for removing Washington and Lincoln’s names from schools because they were not “woke” enough are witnesses to the black and brown students falling behind their white counterparts due to long-distance learning. 

The triple-masked Dr. Anthony “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” Fauci continues to recommend that we do nothing for early symptoms of COVID-19, even though by now we understand the process of how COVID-19 makes people sick. For months, physicians have been speaking out about their success with early treatment of COVID with inexpensive, readily accessible existing medications based on science. Their recommendations have been largely ignored in favor of big pharma’s expensive drugs and vaccines. Waiting months for completion of mass vaccination does not help those who are currently ill. Worse yet, some have accused these doctors of experimenting on patients. However, our Hippocratic Oath compels us to treat patients with available, safe medicines rather than sit idly by and watch them die. (I would argue it is safer to repurpose drugs that have been around for 50 years than use a vaccine that has only been tested for several months.) 

Vigorous open debate—not re-education camps—is the answer to dealing with difficult issues. A difference of opinion does not merit name-calling or having scientific senate testimony removed from public view by YouTube as “misinformation.” 

Fomenting societal conflict as a means of control used to be done in secret. With complicit media, in plain sight the power brokers have used COVID their advantage. Physicians are added to the list of divided tribes: Fauci’s good soldiers versus the medical-political exiles (AKA resourceful thinkers without conflicts of interest or financial ties to big pharma).

Like the 60s song says, “It starts when you’re always afraid. Step out of line, the man come and take you away.” 

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Censorship Kills

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Election irregularities, Chinese spies seducing a congressman, and the shocking revelation that “Dr.” Jill Biden was not a real doctor briefly let us turn our attention away from COVID-19. Unfortunately, COVID is still here and has made it to Antarctica. COVID continues to directly or indirectly hasten deaths. Along with the arrival of two much anticipated vaccines is a new active variant. The effects of both remain to be seen.

For months we’ve heard that COVID is not like the flu. It is a different animal. It may leave the infected person with long term aftereffects. Given the potential problems, the FDA, CDC, NIH, HHS and the alphabet health agencies should be advocating for early pharmacological treatment and prevention. Instead, we are told to wash our hands, wear masks—which may or may not help—and to stay away from one another. Indeed, as California’s Health and Human Services Secretary admitted, the state’s order banning outdoor dining and closing playgrounds was “not a comment on the relative safety” of the activity but a tactic for keeping people at home. 

Stay home — although 66 percent of new coronavirus hospitalizations in New York were in people who had not routinely left their homes. Stay inside — although there are studies echoing observations during the 1918 flu pandemic finding that people who went outside had better outcomes. A recent Spanish studyshowed that 80 percent of patients with COVID had low levels of vitamin D. Another study found that people with adequate vitamin D levels had a 51 percent lower risk of dying from COVID. People at risk for vitamin D deficiency include those who have dark skin, are elderly or overweight, or stay indoors. Interestingly, these groups are particularly hit hard by COVID.

Simply put, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Any risk of taking proper doses of vitamins and minerals is dwarfed by the risks associated with COVID. Useful vitamins and minerals include zinc (inhibits viral replication), vitamin D3 and vitamin C, and quercetin (to help drive zinc into the cells). Additionally, melatonin, a hormone found naturally in the body that regulates our sleep cycle, also has significant anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and mitochondrial protective effects.

What are we to do if we get ill from COVID? While the numinous Dr. Fauci says we urgently need early treatments, existing effective treatments are largely ignored, discouraged, or even prohibited. The party line recommends doing nothing for symptoms of fever, coughing, or breathing problems other than rest, stay home, drink fluids, and monitor. The threshold for calling the doctor is appalling: coughing up blood, trouble breathing, chest pain, confusion, severe drowsiness, or “a blue tint to your lips or face.” Wait until you turn blue?! 

I have a better idea. Don’t just curl up in bed. Call the doctor right away and request pharmacological treatment, backed by evidence. Sadly, most potential patients are unaware of early treatment because Facebook, Twitter, and Google, the de facto arm of government communication, block the information or permanently delete the accounts of physicians who advocate for safe, effective treatments. 

They argue that the use of well-known medications is “off-label,” that is, prescribing a drug for a different condition or dose than the FDA had approved. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 20 percent of all prescriptions in the United States are for off-label use. This is often done when the “doctor has seen evidence that a certain drug works well for an off-label use.” For example, using a diuretic to treat acne or a chemotherapy agent as a preferred alternative to surgery for an ectopic pregnancy. Billions of doses of [censored] and [censored] have been safely used for over 50 years. Repurposing anti-parasitics as antivirals certainly is not out of the realm of medical innovation.

Sitting at my Apple computer that could have been built by Uighurs in Communist re-education camps, I received another email from someone lamenting that he was blocked from social media. No, it wasn’t for child porn (like the former political consultant right-hand man of congressperson Barbara Lee), but for advocating early treatment of COVID-19. These “cancelled” physicians are not receiving $37 million innovation grants, but are saving patients’ lives for a few dollars a treatment. 

The COVID horse is out of the barn. We need to tame it. Let’s start by educating patients, influencers, and policymakers about early treatment with [censored] and preventive measures such as [censored] and the proven uselessness, arbitrariness, and social and economic costs of [censored] that serve to make “poor people poorer” and erode trust in public health officials.

We silently watched as a shameless Nancy Pelosi played games with COVID financial relief legislation hoping to influence an election. Physicians and patients must not stand on the sidelines while political vultures feast on the carcasses of terminally lonely and depressed, drug overdosed, or financially ruined Americans.

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Medicine, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

What is Worse: Going Viral or Verbal Quarantine?

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As the death toll and cases of 2019- nCoV (aka novel coronavirus) infection rises, our curiosity increases as to the epidemic’s when, why, where, and how. Is the new virus naturally occurring, animal to human transmission, a bioweapon? “Official stories” aside, the world wide information highway is our best available tool to look for answers. The truth will eventually be revealed. As of the first week in February, folks are being quarantined as some 4,000 cases a day are diagnosed. And the physician who warned officials early on was verbally quarantined as a rumor monger, now has died of the disease.

Censorship has consequences not only for public safety but for shrinking the marketplace of ideas. Thus, with all the issues about which to educate ourselves, we should all be outraged at Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to censor “disinformation” on social media. Now her plan to “create civil and criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating false information” is limited to influencing elections. But once acquiesced to, censorship tends to metastasize to other areas. The paternalistic powers that be, worried that the unwashed masses will not be able to discern conspiracy theories from alternate positions, will determine your opinion for you.

Social media, while ubiquitous and public, are private speech. For years, social media platforms have “moderated” content using opaque algorithms that are finally coming to light. While safeguards were designed to eliminate dangerous or abusive content, certain viewpoints are more likely to be censored by Twitter and Facebook than others, perverting the marketplace of ideas.

Censorship has now infiltrated our routine social interactions under the guise of offensiveness. There was a time when the seven words you cannot say on television were blatant profanities. Now it’s like whack a mole trying to keep up with what we are allowed to say not only online but in polite mixed company. California tried to pass a law where someone using “he” instead of “she” could face a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail. It’s gotten to the place where animal lovers are offended if we call our dogs “pets” rather than our companions.

Most importantly, political opinions should go viral, not be quarantined. Many folks with opinions differing from those of the tribal chieftains find themselves whispering in dark corners like drug dealers. Actually, drug dealers in San Francisco have it better: they can sell drugs openly on the street without recourse. The LGBT tribe attempted to quarantine gay conservatives who did not fit the mold by cancelling scheduled #WalkAway town hall venues citing #WalkAway as a hate group. The hate? Encouraging LGBT folks to leave the Democrat party. Undeterred, they move the town halls to the streets. Scott Presler, a conservative gay man who is cleaning up inner cities across America, concludes that “what the left fears most is other people seeing that we exist.”

We have presidential candidates with disparate views from socialism to freedom from government regulations. We want Bernie Sanders to explain why public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries is something that would improve our lives in the long term and how that is consistent with our Constitution. Or Pete Buttigieg to defend abolishing the electoral college. What we don’t want is the power brokers quarantining those who do not bow to their orthodoxy. Why is it that CNN excluded Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (who is known for not being influenced by special interest groups) from its town halls despite her having higher poll numbers than participants Andrew Yang and Deval Patrick? Why did the Democratic National Committee change the debate rules for Michael Bloomberg but not for Julian Castro or Cory Booker?

When it comes to medical care, physicians want to be free to discuss all sides of any issue with patients. If a physician believes mutilating young children at the altar of transgenderism is wrong, she should be free to say so. If a physician wants to discuss the pros and cons of vaccination with his patients, his license should not be at risk.

If some physicians believe that single payer health care is wrong for the country’s medical care, we want a discussion—not to be labelled a heartless, cruel ignoramus. If we do not want medical decisions to be made by bureaucrats, do not want rationing, and do not want decreased medical innovation, we want the chance to present the facts. While rank partisanship keeps legislation that promotes personalized medical care from being brought to the House floor, Walmart and CVS are opening clinics staffed by nurse practitioners. We cannot let patients’ only options be big corporations or big government.

As Frederick Douglass said, “power concedes nothing without a demand…The limits of tyrants are proscribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.” We cannot cede our personal power to the government. Surely the government has its Constitutional duties, but just like with containing the 2019-nCoV virus, we still must wash our own hands and cough into our own elbows.

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