Climate of Deceit

A growing number of commentators are starting to note (something that was obvious during the debate, but apparently missed, based on style rather than substance) that pretty much everything that both Kamala and the moderators said during the debate was false (the only thing they can be credited with is the cats and dogs of Springfield, the denouement of which story may not yet have occurred). Further, almost everything Trump said was true.

So, after conceding the debate, conservative commentators in retrospect are starting to understand that they misconstrued the debate at the time.

A partial list: Kamala cited FBI crime statistics showing a decline in violent crime. Trump noted that the FBI stats were fraudulent, as many jurisdictions don't report. Further, blue cities like New York lower charges from felonies to misdemeanors and release criminals without bail, all of which skews the FBI statistics, even if the statistics are reported.

But the kicker in this one is that the Biden administration, on taking office, altered the way in which the FBI collects crime statistics. Reporting has been reduced as jurisdictions around the country sought to implement the new system. The number of reporting districts has been down by double-digit percentages ever since the changes. FBI stats have been regarded as unreliable for the last 3+ years. So, she not only knowingly used bad data, but data that has been unreliable during the entirety of this administration.

Take another point: An increase in fracking and natural gas production under the Biden administration, for which Kamala claimed credit. The Biden administration tried to shut down fracking, and couldn't quite succeed. Manchin of West Virginia got a provision in the IRA that required approving leases for natural gas and fracking, to offset spending on green projects, a provision which Biden/Harris opposed. So any increase in fracking that she might have taken credit for occurred in spite of Kamala rather than because of her.

Plus, the coming online of leases approved during the Trump administration appears to have been the underlying cause of the increases in natural gas production Kamala cited. So it appears Trump was largely responsible for something she takes credit for. Would one equate this with a claim of stolen valor on the political front rather than the military front? I think so. Claiming credit for something accomplished by your predecessor. But that has been a quintessential characteristic of the Biden/Harris administration, exceeded only by the blame they assign to Trump for problems they themselves have created.

A third point: Trump's comment on abortion in the 7th, 8th, 9th month and infanticide by neglect. The moderator got that one wrong in "correcting" Trump that no state in the Union allowed such practice. Of course, Tim Walz's Minnesota allows that, and something like 8 cases of such infant deaths have occurred after infants survived attempted abortions. That may have been one of the reasons Kamala selected him. The only quibble one might make is that Trump said "kill," and you can claim that the babies are not outright "killed," only allowed to die—passive rather than active infanticide. A profound moral difference between the two, you see. Or so the Democrats would have it.

Now the Kamala campaign has kicked in further with the case of a Georgia woman's death that Kamala blames on the state's ban on abortions after 6 weeks of gestation. The woman in question was reportedly at 20 weeks (a couple of weeks short of viability, almost at the third trimester). Since Georgia banned such an abortion, the woman went to North Carolina for an abortion. She arrived late for her appointment at the clinic, so instead of performing the abortion, they gave her the medication for a medical abortion (mifepristone and misoprostol). She had retained placental products after the medically induced abortion, became septic, went to a Georgia hospital, where there was an overnight delay in performing a D&C, and the patient died on the table during the D&C, apparently of sepsis.

Kamala calls this a death from the "Trump abortion ban" in Georgia. Of course, had the patient not requested an abortion but carried the pregnancy to term, that would have been life-saving, almost certainly, for both her and the baby. And, had she not become pregnant with an unwanted pregnancy, none of this would have happened. (Blaming the victim, of course, but isn't that the Democrat's favorite pastime in the recent news cycle?)

Beyond those possibilities, I would say there was malpractice at the Georgia medical facility with an inadequate assessment of the patient's status and the urgency of care. Part of the problem is the lack of continuity of care, e.g., getting a medical abortion in one state and returning to another state for ongoing care. That could potentially be due to her having to go to another state for the abortion, and so may be attributed to the inconvenience resulting from the Georgia law. There could have been a failure on the part of the abortion clinic regarding full information about the potential complications of the medical abortion, how to recognize them, and how to seek follow-up care if complications occurred. There may have been undue delay by the patient in understanding the severity of her circumstances, or difficulty in accessing care, and she may have received substandard care.

Apparently, there is an implication that the Georgia law would ban a D&C under these circumstances, and that the delay in performing the D&C was due to fear on the part of Georgia physicians that they may be complicit in an illegal abortion. However, there is nothing in Georgia law that would in any way implicate the Georgia physicians in criminal activity for performing a D&C for retained tissue following a medical abortion, whether in another state or in Georgia itself, and the physicians would be well aware of this.

I would suggest another possibility. That the patient or her doctors may have had difficulty getting approval for the procedure from her insurance company. That is now a common cause of delayed medical care. I practice in Georgia. I had a case a week ago of a patient with type 2 diabetes in pregnancy, at 4 weeks, who had been on an oral agent and a GLP 1 analog prior to the pregnancy with good blood sugar control. The patient had to stop the GLP 1 1 analog due to the pregnancy and had to start insulin treatment immediately.

High blood sugars in the first 8 weeks of gestation can result in severe neonatal deformities such as cardiac, craniofacial, or limb anomalies that can be devastating and life-threatening. It took a week to get her insurance to approve her insulin, which she could not afford without insurance approval. Further, the insurance company refused coverage of the continuous glucose monitor I prescribed, which is an essential part of the management of insulin-treated diabetes in pregnancy.

So as of today, she has not received approval for this modality to assist her management. We provided her sensors for the DEXOM 7 (of which we have few), but hers was the most pressing need pending authorization by her insurance. Meanwhile, her sugars were in the 200-300 range, whereas optimal control in early pregnancy is blood sugars constantly below 120. She was on Oscar, an Obamacare product. She got the insulin in a week, only thanks to the extreme efforts of clinic personnel to get the insulin coverage approved. This is another way in which federal healthcare endangers patients.

So again, Trump was exactly correct about how deficient the Federal Insurance marketplace (Obamacare) is, and how it needs to be vastly reformed at a minimum. (It has been improved since it was originally implemented, but far from adequately.) The architects of this system were idiots.

Further, the rules of the marketplace essentially derive from Medicare. Indeed, all private insurance is provided based on what Medicare covers, and is directly linked to the Medicare pay scale. We already have de facto Medicare for All, and it is really bad. Every time you have to wait for prior authorization for a medication, a device, or a procedure, or have what the doctor prescribed denied by your private insurer, the reason is due to Medicare regulations, which are followed by all. Extending Medicare to all would not solve these problems of delay and denial that Kamala claims would result from Medicare for All. What would happen is that what greater efficiencies exist in the private sector would disappear, and the whole system would grow more unresponsive.

Further, the reason we have the system we have today is specifically BECAUSE of Medicare. When Medicare was first implemented, there were no controls on costs. Whatever bills doctors or hospitals sent in were paid. The result was that medical inflation skyrocketed. Medicare ushered in the Golden Financial Age of Medicine that pushed Medicare expenditures to 10 times their anticipated amounts. Under the Reagan administration, attempts to control Medicare costs began, and the regulatory burden has grown ever since. So what Kamala wants to apply to everybody didn't work with seniors. Even with the controls that make the system almost impossible to deal with, and vastly increase the costs of care delivery, the Medicare system is going bankrupt. So, sure, let's extend a failing system to everyone. Great idea.

*Sorry for the soapbox distraction.

Kamala calls this death in Georgia a death due to the Trump abortion ban, facially false and inflammatory. All of this while calling for civility in political discourse.

I have a little more extreme take on the debate given these circumstances. In my view, it was a very obviously coordinated attempt, by the Kamala campaign and ABC, at a political assassination. Not a physical assassination, as attempted by the Florida or the Pennsylvania shooters, but an attempt to deliver a knockout blow to the Trump campaign, to delegitimize it entirely before the nation. To that extent, it was also a near miss.

All that was required was an agreement between the Kamala campaign and ABC to do a few things: Never fact-check Kamala. Let her say whatever she wanted about Trump without challenge. (When she wasn't spouting vague platitudes to dodge questions she was smearing Trump with lies. That was her whole debate strategy, and it was truly pathetic. All while promising daydreams that sound more like nightmares.)

An "opportunity" society? That is a stale leftover from some long-forgotten campaign. Give $50,000 to those who for the first time open small businesses? Imagine the graft. It would be vast. A distribution of money to chosen voters to buy elections until forever. Just like student loan forgiveness. The opportunities for corruption are mind-boggling. All done with the idea of buying votes. Harris was allowed to freely dispense nonsense while the moderators fact-checked everything Trump said, calling him on everything they could.

And, lastly, the agreement, spoken or not, entailed avoiding questions about certain topics, such as Kamala's time as San Francisco DA or California Attorney General, or her brother-in-law's potential illegal behavior. Those are specific questions on material issues that could get Kamala into very hot water with her Black supporters. Well, now pretty much all of those things have been confirmed as true, although they were obvious during the debate.

So it was not just the mendacity of what Kamala said. Nor that, along with the mendacity of the moderators. But also the mendacity of what was not asked and not said. This was like giving Kamala the opportunity to take shots at Trump with an AK 47 at 50 yards while outfitted head to toe in Kevlar and surrounded by bodyguards. Surprisingly, she missed. She is even less competent than I thought.

I would say that Kamala and ABC have pretty much blown up the future of presidential debates, given the perfidy of the Democrats and the Media (redundant). But the Climate of Deceit goes of course much deeper. The most strident issues of our time are all only deceit. Hoaxes. Fraudulent, top to bottom.

I am not talking about the Russia Hoax, the Jan. 6 hoax, the impeachment hoaxes, the Hunter laptop hoax, the Wuhan lab hoax, the Fauci-Collins hoaxes on COVID origins or management of the pandemic, the vaccine mandate hoax, etc., etc. Those have come and gone and we are still here. At least most of us.

I am referring to the existential threat hoaxes that are gifts that will keep on giving to the Democrats/Progressives/Wokesters, forever and anon.

First is the Climate Hoax. Second is the Transgender fraud. The first is the greatest hoax the world has ever seen, and it has already been completely imbedded in the structure of our society, with potentially disastrous consequences. The second is an attempt to force madness on the population at large, with malice aforethought, with the point of decimating normality and destroying the entire idea of reality. Neither bodes well for the nation or the world. Continuing with the Democrats in control of our government will ensure that this madness continues to be thrust upon us.

But that's another post.

Before going, I would just point out that the pattern I suggested in a prior post has been continued by Kamala. Barack Obama chose the one senator who was less competent than himself. Then Biden picked the one senator that would be HIS anti-removal insurance policy, a person even less competent than himself (how is that possible, you ask? I can only say, look). Now Kamala has picked the, dare I say it, weirdest Looneytoons character she could find in the country, for her VP pick. Josh Shapiro is far too competent, likable, and would overshadow Kamala from the outset. She was, I suspect, very uncomfortable choosing him because of her insecurity. So we continue downhill rapidly as each presidential candidate, more horrible than the one before, selects his or her running mate. Tell me I'm wrong.

I was surprised by the polls in Minnesota, however. I thought surely the good folk of Minnesota would be delighted to have Walz out of their state, and assumed the support for Kamala would rise in Minnesota with Walz as her running mate. I assumed this might play out like when Lyndon Johnson lost his first senatorial race in Texas to Pappy Daniels, the sitting governor. In that case, Johnson announced his returns too early, and Daniels' supporters dug up the needed votes to edge Johnson out. Yes, the election was stolen from Johnson. But the supporters of Daniels were just trying to get him out of the state... Turns out, it looks like the good folk of Minnesota are more concerned about the welfare of the country as a whole.