02/23/17

A Dangerous Medical Cover-Up

By: Cliff Kincaid | America’s Survival

WARNING: occasional graphic language. Dr. Paul Church speaks about the power of the LGBT lobby and “unprecedented censorship” in the medical profession and scientific establishment. He was fired for objecting to hospitals glorifying the male homosexual lifestyle through “gay pride” events. Not even Fox News would have him on the air to talk about his ordeal at the hands of the LGBT movement and its supporters. Dr. Church also discusses the safety of the blood supply.

09/13/16

Why Hillary Continues to Lie

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

Why does Hillary Clinton continue lying and covering up her various activities, whether it is her pneumonia, or the fact that she regularly sent and received classified information on a private, unsecured server, or that she traded favors, influence and access as secretary of state for large payments to her husband or her family’s foundation? It is because if she told the truth, she would never be elected president, and would almost certainly end up behind bars.

When asked why she decided to keep secret the medical diagnosis she received on Friday, she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night that “I just didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal. It’s just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you’re a busy, active person, you keep moving forward.” If Hillary hadn’t been caught by a bystander’s cell-phone camera nearly collapsing as she was being helped into her limousine, we probably still wouldn’t know about her pneumonia. Her lack of transparency on this matter has forced the liberal media to acknowledge Hillary’s health issues, which have fueled much speculation about other possible ailments she may be hiding.

With the release of the notes on the FBI investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified material, and the Bureau’s interview with her, it becomes more and more apparent that she is trying to run out the campaign clock without admitting to her many lies. When Hillary first explained the use of her private server, she said it was a matter of convenience, so that she could use just one device. But the FBI summary reveals that there were actually 13 mobile devices she used, plus several iPads. At least one, maybe two, of the phones were destroyed by a hammer.

CNN reports that Mrs. Clinton told the FBI she could not recall, or did not remember, at least 39 times during her interview. Alex Griswold, writing for Mediaite, gives more details into 40 examples of Mrs. Clinton’s unbelievable memory hole, based on what she told the FBI.

Apparently, according to Griswold, the FBI interview indicates that Mrs. Clinton “could not recall any briefing or training by State related to the retention of federal records or handling of classified information.” She also claimed that she didn’t remember what the “(C)” represented on many documents she handled, even though it is regularly used by the State Department to denote information classified at the confidential level. “Clinton stated that she did not know what the ‘(C)’ meant at the beginning of the paragraphs and speculated it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order,” states the FBI notes.

Yet Mrs. Clinton’s signature can be found on a classified information non-disclosure agreement that she signed upon taking the position of secretary of state. The agreement states, “Classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communication. I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government.” In other words, it doesn’t matter if there were headers or other markings. It’s her job to recognize classified information, in whatever form. Former prosecutor Andy McCarthy pointed out that this signed document indicates that Mrs. Clinton did, in fact, receive training on the use of classified information. “The simple fact, so familiar in Mrs. Clinton’s case, is that she’s lying,” writes McCarthy.

“Clinton did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not be on an unclassified system,” states the FBI file. This shows the light touch treatment that FBI Director James Comey’s department gave Hillary Clinton during the investigation. It was not enough to simply state publicly to the nation that Mrs. Clinton was “extremely careless” with classified information—an indictment was clearly warranted. And it seems suspicious that the FBI interviewed Mrs. Clinton last, not first—and only about72 hours before announcing the FBI’s decision not to indict. The fix was clearly in.

Breitbart News investigated potential conflicts of interest between Comey and the Clintons, and found some very intriguing connections. For example, they report that Comey made more than $6 million in compensation from Lockheed Martin during the last year he worked for them, which was 2010. That is the year that Lockheed Martin became a Clinton Foundation donor, and also “won 17 approvals for private contracts from the Hillary Clinton State Department.” There were other such situations that qualified as, at the very least, the appearance of conflicts of interest.

Comey’s brother, Peter, was a senior director for DLA Piper, “the firm that performed the independent audit of the Clinton Foundation in November during Clinton-World’s first big push to put the email scandal behind them.”

Comey, a deputy attorney general for two years during the George W. Bush administration who was appointed FBI Director by President Obama in 2013, had not disclosed these personal or professional relationships when he announced that Mrs. Clinton should not be prosecuted for her mishandling of classified materials.

The Democrats, and the media, are asking citizens to accept, on blind faith, the many lies of Hillary Clinton—including the gigantic cover-up that is the Benghazi scandal. Voters are supposed to accept Hillary’s lie that she didn’t send or receive classified information with headers or markings, and that she only deleted her emails related to yoga or her personal life. As McCarthy points out, “A great deal of classified information is not marked at all.”

The latter lie—that she had turned over all of her work related emails—has been blown apart by the news that the FBI has handed over 14,900 Hillary Clinton emails that it salvaged during its investigation into Hillary’s server. “Actually, the FBI recovered tens of thousands,” said Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “This first batch of 14,900 that we’ll be getting in the next couple of weeks is only one disc of seven cds full of emails. There are thousands still out there. We’re going to get every single one of them, I assure you.” He said that the 14,900 deal directly with Mrs. Clinton.

It is impossible to know what information these many emails contain until they are released, but until then the existence of Clinton emails that may have been work-related yet deleted calls into question Mrs. Clinton’s honesty and integrity.

Mrs. Clinton and her faithful media supporters are working together to cover up the malfeasance of Hillary Clinton and downplay her many lies. It is difficult and frustrating for them at times. Despite the media’s complicity in covering for Hillary, the truth continues to shine through.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

09/12/16

The Fall of Hillary Clinton

By: Cliff Kincaid | America’s Survival

First they said she was “over-heated.” Then it was pneumonia. The diagnosis that Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s disease cannot be easily dismissed. It seems she does have symptoms of the disease, or something associated with it. There are several weeks remaining in the campaign, providing an opportunity for the media to try to be objective in their news reporting and finally do their jobs. Or will they double-down on defending Hillary and attacking Trump?

09/12/16

Hillary Health Scare Finally Becomes News

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

On Saturday, The Washington Post ran a story saying Donald J. Trump was a sexist for questioning whether Hillary Clinton looked healthy and fit. One day later, its email service known as “The Post Most” carried the news by Chris Cillizza, “Hillary Clinton’s health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign,” after she almost collapsed when leaving a 9/11 memorial service.

But it gets better than that. Just a few days earlier Cillizza, who is also an MSNBC political analyst, had written a story, “Can we just stop talking about Hillary Clinton’s health now?”

Phrases like “eating crow” and “egg on their faces” easily come to mind. But this particular controversy is more instructive than an “I told you so” from those questioning Mrs. Clinton’s physical and mental fitness for office.

Obviously, the critics were right and the Post was wrong. But don’t look for any apologies from the paper that brought down Republican Richard Nixon and covered up for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008.

Anybody paying attention knows that the Post is a liberal paper. But the cover-up of Mrs. Clinton’s health problems, and the attacks on Trump and other critics for raising this as an issue, demonstrate how utterly dishonest the paper has been about this issue. The public’s right-to-know was served by the video of the “overheated” Mrs. Clinton in a state of near-collapse. Even The New York Times was forced to post the video on their website. She was propped up and had to be helped into a car.

Citing FBI documents released in the Clinton email investigation, which noted her concussion, light work schedule and memory loss, we previously urged Post columnist Ruth Marcus to look into the matter, saying, “As a staunch Democrat, Marcus should be leading the calls for her to withdraw from the presidential race, for Mrs. Clinton’s own sake and the sake of the party.”

But Marcus was more interested in trying to discredit Trump’s new deputy campaign manager, David Bossie.

Citing evidence of liberal media bias, we called attention to the cancellation of Dr. Drew Pinsky’s show on CNN’s sister network HLN after he questioned Mrs. Clinton’s health.

The Washington Post has a stable of reporters who could have investigated Hillary’s health problems. But rather than do that, it ran the first Cillizza piece and then a story by Matea Gold and Jenna Johnson that was titled, “Republicans warn that Trump’s critique of Clinton’s ‘look’ fuels accusations of sexism.”

In their 1,500-word article, the reporters said that “some of Trump’s surrogates have gone even further than him, promoting unsubstantiated or debunked theories about Clinton’s health.”

Unsubstantiated or debunked? Really?

These are two “national political reporters” for the paper who used dubious sources to defend Mrs. Clinton from alleged “sexism” when they should have been digging into the story. It took a Clinton stumble and virtual collapse to finally get the facts into the paper.

What we are witnessing here is something that goes beyond knee-jerk partisan bias. Instead, the controversy involves marshalling the resources of a major newspaper to attack those who are raising the questions that the paper itself won’t tackle. This was a cover-up that didn’t stem from incompetence or laziness. Rather, it was a deliberate effort to intimidate those doing the research and the work that the press should have been doing.

The first explanation was that Mrs. Clinton was overheated, even though the temperature was around 80 degrees with low humidity. Then we were told by her doctor that her “cough related to allergies” has been complicated by “pneumonia,” which she was supposedly diagnosed with on Friday, and that she will rest and be back to normal soon.

Why should this latest explanation be believed?

What we do know with certainty is that the critics and the skeptics were correct, and that the liberal media defenders of Mrs. Clinton were wrong.

Those who refused to investigate Mrs. Clinton’s health problems have no credibility.

Another big loser in the controversy is the Snopes.com website, which purports to debunk falsehoods and insists that the claim made in a popular video by retired Dr. Ted Noel that the former First Lady may have Parkinson’s disease is false.

Strangely, Snopes declared, “We have not tried to make the case that Hillary Clinton does not have Parkinson’s disease (in point of fact, we don’t think that case even needs making).” It claimed Dr. Noel had exaggerated her “perfectly ordinary and explicable” health problems into Parkinson’s and that his motivation “was purely political.”

The trouble with this declaration, issued on September 9, is that the events of 9/11 have raised even more questions, and that those who were questioning her health have been proven correct. Simply put, Mrs. Clinton and her associates cannot be believed.

Political motivation or not, the issues raised in the Noel video are worth taking seriously, if the notion of “professional” journalist means anything.

Snopes admits the existence of an email to Hillary Clinton from a top aide about a drug called Provigil, which can be used to treat excessive sleepiness in patients with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. But the Snopes response includes the curious statement, “Are there Wikileaks e-mails indicating that Clinton specifically asked staffers to research Parkinson’s drugs? No (check for yourself).”

But what does that prove? Why would a staffer send an email of this nature to Clinton in the first place? Was there another email requesting the information that was destroyed? Will it be released by WikiLeaks in the future? We just don’t know.

Whether the drug is specifically for Parkinson’s or not, the official website for Provigilsays it is a prescription medicine “used to improve wakefulness in adults who are very sleepy due to one of the following diagnosed sleep disorders: narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), or shift work disorder (SWD).”

In addition, research shows an association between Parkinson’s disease and narcolepsy.

“Clinicians who treat people with early-stage Parkinson’s disease should be on the lookout for symptoms of narcolepsy as many such patients are likely to develop excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) as their illness worsens,” says a website known as the Psychiatry Advisor.

These are from simple Internet searches, designed to show that the questions in the Noel video are not beyond the realm of possibility.

The diagnosis that Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s disease cannot be easily dismissed. It seems she does have symptoms of the disease, or something associated with it.

There are several weeks remaining in the campaign, providing an opportunity for the media to try to be objective in their news reporting and finally do their jobs.

Or will they double-down on defending Hillary and attacking Trump?

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

09/11/16

10 Pictures of Hillary Clinton Wobbling and Then Collapsing Today That Legacy Media Will Never Show You

My piece on Hillary today is up at RWN: BREAKING: Hillary Clinton Has Medical Emergency At 9/11 Memorial… Whisked Away [VIDEO]

By: Doug Ross

They now claim it’s “pneumonia“, but Hillary has had a longstanding and persistent cough that has defied treatment and couldn’t possibly be a months-long case of walking pneumonia.

In short, Hillary is very ill. She can’t stand up without supporting herself using railings, stools, tables, chairs, her mysterious Epipen-equipped handler, and — of course — Huma Abedin.

Her latest health scare involved collapsing into her wheelchair lift-equipped van, nearly knocking herself out.

Of course, the media are doing their level best to cover it up.

Via Mike Cernovich, I’ve come across two separate videos that show Hillary wobbling twice, unable to support herself and finally collapsing. The snapshots are quite telling:

Here’s another angle:

As Bill Clinton has admitted, Hillary’s health problems are “very serious.”

His wife appears to have little to no muscular strength, exceedingly poor balance and coordination, and — worst of all — a pathological disease called “Liar-itis“.

Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News.

02/26/16

THE SHAME OF SUBSTANDARD CARE: SHADOW ECONOMIC CRISIS (Part 3)

By Sharon Sebastian

It is rare that politicians step into the nightmare of shame that is today’s nursing home industry in an effort to protect the innocent and condemn an industry rife with greed and substandard care.

“Nursing homes are rapidly becoming nothing other than legalized scams…a place to ‘warehouse’ the elderly, suck away their money, treat them like children, let them die, and then take in another from the waiting list.” – Former Iowa State Senator Dennis Black

Senator Black’s lament reveals the desperation of families across the nation.

“It is hard for people to accept reality about people being abused. Out of sight, out of mind. Unless it happens to you, people do nothing about it. My experience has been extremely heart wrenching. I did not really know the man. He was not even a constituent. I just stepped in and tried to help.”

In a nation that prides itself on quality health care, first-hand investigations and extensive research reveal a shameful truth that must be brought out of the shadows. While embedded as a journalist for years in the elder care system from hospitals to nursing homes, what became evident was a broken system of care for families and their elderly loved ones. In a system where too frequently profits trump care, the results are ugly, inhumane and often deadly.

What the Iowa Senator details, in addition to deficient care, is a great moral collapse undergirded by greed in today’s America. The continuing degradation of the nursing home industry is forcing a crisis of conscience. Senator Black speaks of a man, a father, a grandfather and a U.S. veteran:

“America needs to know that he is but one of untold or unknown numbers of people who are being ‘farmed’. They represent a certain amount of cash and assets, and are seen as such by the money changers who only see them as a cash crop. He was just a ‘throw-away’ person that this system of DHS [Department of Human Services] has deteriorated to in Iowa and apparently across the nation. We allow our elderly to be placed in confinement in a nursing home at $6,000 per month, drain them of their life’s savings and assets, medicate them into a stupor of near comatose…” Sharon, I can’t go on with this. It brings back too much from my experience and memory. [But,] I can’t put it away, because my buddy is six feet underground, placed there without the truth being told.”

Senator Black continues:

“I am not broad-brushing the entire nursing home industry. Readers know who the good and the evil are, for you have either experienced it with your elders, or had reliable verification of the travesties that occur to others. Frankly, I’ve been exposed to an epidemic of abuse that emanates from the fact that ‘the bottom line’ is the first statistic viewed by the management of these [nursing home] corporations… As always, the almighty dollar dictates.”

Families in every state across America feel abandoned as government policies fail to adequately regulate the multi-billion dollar nursing home industry. Contract fraud is rampant. An average of $5,000 is paid monthly for each resident’s care. Yet, the shortage of actual services rendered to patients often reveals a theft that would not be tolerated in other businesses. With no one taking account, nursing homes regularly cutback on staff, nutrition and supplies (such as toothpaste and diapers) in order to shave costs. Savings stolen from patient care are applied to bottom-line profits for the owners who are reaping a reported financial boon of billions of dollars during a down-economy. The average nursing home administrator’s salary is over $100,000 annually.

What would be condemned or prosecuted just outside of the doors of nursing homes goes unchecked once inside. Prosecution of abusers is rare to nonexistent in the majority of cases where people are subjected to physical harm. Physical assaults, mental taunting and emotional bullying occur regularly to frail, defenseless victims and go unpunished. America cannot consider itself a civilized society when our aging and fragile parents and grandparents are left in the hands of bullies and predators without protection or relief.

The first critical step is strict enforcement of the laws that are on the books, both financial and criminal. Closing down what some call “houses of horror” is another. Marjie Lundstrom of The Sacramento Bee reports that the California State Attorney General’s Office filed involuntary manslaughter charges against a nursing home in suburban Los Angeles: “Two registered nurses on staff also were charged with felony abuse. Public officials in neighboring South Pasadena continue to press the Attorney General’s office for criminal charges against another nursing home – a facility the local police chief denounced as a “cesspool” and a “community menace.”

What Senator Black and others may not know is that many nursing homes owners reward nursing home administrators with thousands of dollars in bonuses if they can get a four-or-five-star rating from State and Federal inspectors. Akin to the atrocities that have gone on in the Veterans Administration and its treatment of our veterans, nursing home managers have become adept at hiding the ongoing neglect and abuse during inspections. First-hand experience reveals that inspectors are easily fooled or choose to look the other way.

With a nursing home dependent on profits, a good rating from government inspectors, even when false, attracts customers and potential investors. To affect the bottom line or mollify stockholders, nursing homes cut services and care to increase profits. What is at stake is quality-of-life and, oftentimes, life itself. Prioritizing cost cutting over basic care is endemic throughout the industry. The result, according to Whistleblowers, is that people suffer or die. The good deserve credit, whereas the bad remain profiteering merchants of misery.

Every ten years a study comes out proclaiming that nursing home “care” is every bit as shameful as it was ten years prior. That pattern remains unbroken. Conditions have worsened since U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) wrote a letter to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services over a decade ago after reviewing an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General. Senator Grassley complained that: “…facilities are given too many ‘free passes’ to correct deficiencies… Surveyors’ noted that in most instances a facility would, as an initial matter, correct the deficiency only to revert back to its “old ways” once a follow up review is completed.”

Grassley further adds and recent investigations reveal that surveyors state that: “…patients and/or family members are rarely interviewed; administrative and medical records are rarely reviewed; valuable information is routinely recorded incorrectly; and the word of the facility is often taken at face value over that of a resident and/or family member. As a result of these inherent procedural failures, complaints are rarely substantiated and serious quality problems are therefore not corrected. Despite years of reports, evaluations, and investigations, the surveyors that we interviewed portray a bleak and dismal situation in America’s nursing homes. The surveyors themselves are demoralized when blatant quality of care deficiencies and findings are watered down, substantively altered, and/or blatantly ignored or dismissed. These surveyors have raised enormously disturbing issues for anyone who cares a wit about the very health and safety of frail nursing home residents.”

Senator Grassley asserts that government ratings’ systems are unreliable and misleading since nursing homes are allowed to “self-evaluate” as part of the government’s five-star system of ranking. Families are unable to discern which are the good ones and which are bad.

Grassley denounces Medicare’s rating s as notoriously outdated and incorrect: “The concerns include questions about the integrity and reliability of the information provided to the public through the Nursing Home Compare [Medicare] website. A plan of attack is needed to restore the integrity of the system… The survey process, I am sure you will agree, is meant to improve the quality of care for residents, not to ignore it, gloss over it, and most of all, not make it worse. If the survey and certification process is not working–and it looks like it is not–it must be fixed.”

Owning and running nursing homes is based on a financially strategic decision where making a profit is central. Some open their doors to provide a decent service to meet a critical need. For others it is an ugly, get-rich scheme off the backs of families and our most vulnerable members of society. Dr. Charlene Harrington, has researched nursing home standards and regulations for more than three decades. I posed questions to Professor Harrington:

Q. How do nursing homes cut their operational costs? Is it by chronic understaffing, cutting supplies, and poorer quality meals?

A. There is really only one major way to cut costs and that is to cut staffing especially RN staffing since it is the most expensive. The chains often have very low supplies and equipment and spend little on meals but they can’t go much lower on those [food] expenditures.

Q. If sufficient funds are paid [average $5,000 per month nationwide] and insufficient care is provided, is that fraud against the government and those paying thousands of dollars monthly per resident for the promised quality care that is most often advertised by these companies?

A. Yes, that is fraud and false advertising and there have been a number of legal actions on this, but unfortunately not enough to put the bad companies out of business.

The book, “Aging Warning: Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental and Financial Minefields details how widespread substandard care is and provides insight on how families can protect themselves and their loved ones medically, mentally and financially.

Nursing homes are licensed by the State to provide quality care and protection for their residents. As a care facility, they have a greater calling to decency, morals, ethics, kindness, and patience – in addition to appropriate levels of skill and training. Yet, the system is corrupt. A symbiotic arrangement exists between many in the billion dollar nursing home industry and politicians. Whistleblowers report that State and Federal politicians’ pockets are lined as lobbying occurs across party lines. Wealthy owners’ with deep pockets buy influence from both sides of the aisle to influence legislation favorable to the industry. Quality skilled long-term nursing facilities are an important part of the future. Along with families, ethical nursing home owners must demand a purging of the fraud and corruptness that permeates the industry.

Without the public holding government overseers accountable, conditions will continue to worsen inside nursing homes. Expect overcrowding, understaffing and the hiring of less skilled personnel handling more patients, including an increase of those with brain diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Our elderly and their families face a dismal future unless strict enforcement of criminal and civil laws inside of nursing homes becomes a reality nationwide.

Daily, people are being physically hurt, emotionally traumatized and bullied. The vulnerable must be protected. Ongoing suffering at the hands of predators must stop. A quality level of services must be rendered. The shame on this great nation will manifest itself as a grievous moral and financial crisis that could have been avoided — if only the warnings were heeded.

Take action. Email this article, and the links to this 3-part series posted below, to your representatives in Congress and the legislators in your state.

Related articles in series:

Epidemic of Dementia: Shadow Economic Crisis (Part 1) by Sharon Sebastian

FDA and the Spread of Brain Diseases: Shadow Economic Crisis (Part 2) by Sharon Sebastian

Sharon Sebastian, author of the book, “AGING: WARNING– Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental & Financial Minefields,” is a columnist, commentator, and contributor in print and on nationwide broadcasts on topics ranging from healthcare, culture, religion, and politics to domestic and global policy. Sebastian’s political and cultural analyses are published nationally and internationally. Website: www.AgingWarning.com

02/5/16

FDA AND THE SPREAD OF BRAIN DISEASES: SHADOW ECONOMIC CRISIS (Part 2)

By Sharon Sebastian

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), charged with the mandate to protect the public’s food supply, openly admits its liability in the deaths of Americans, mostly in the form of heart attacks. That is far from the full story. What the giant government agency hides is its culpability in the recent rise in brain diseases that continue to claim both memory and lives.

A broad alert from the FDA should read:

Research links processed foods to a proliferation of deadly brain diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Studies reveal a food ingredient is connected to memory loss that impacts learning acuity in schoolchildren and lessened productivity in the workplace among adults.

The FDA concedes that under its watch it has allowed so-called “Frankenstein oils” to permeate Americans’ processed food supply. On public record, the FDA states that partially hydrogenated oils (and their derivatives, trans fats), have caused thousands of heart attacks and deaths annually. The FDA would like it to be old news, swept under the rug. What the FDA hopes to bury from public knowledge is that the “killer oils” have proven to be more deadly than disclosed.

The bad oils that have been fed to Americans for over five decades have now been linked to the increase in deadly brain diseases. In an official release, the FDA admits that the laboratory-engineered oils cause “memory loss” without telling the full story to the American public of a scientific link to long-term, physical damage to the brains of people of all ages. The FDA’s admittance of wrongdoing evades full disclosure. The agency remains conspicuously mute on the recent scientific link of the oils to the sudden increase of incurable brain diseases. An early symptom, of which, is memory loss.

Among the scientists interviewed in the newly released book, “AGING: WARNING – Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental & Financial Minefields,” Dr. Beatrice A. Golomb, a renowned researcher at the University of California, San Diego, provides insight:

Are “partially hydrogenated oils” and their derivatives, trans fats, toxic?
If “toxic” is defined by the ability to confer harm, then yes, overwhelmingly evidence indicates that trans fats/partially hydrogenated oils are “toxic”.

These oils are notorious in scientific circles for being bad for the body; what is the mental impact?
The brain has a few important functions. One is regulation of mood. One is regulation of behavior (e.g. to control irritability/aggression). One is regulation of cognition [ability to think]. Our data have found trans fat [partially hydrogenated oil] consumption to be adversely linked to each of the three.

Does this loss of memory indicate loss of brain cells?
Evidence shows that trans fats increase inflammation (brain inflammation is bad for memory) and increase oxidative stress, the kind of damage that antioxidants protect against – which is bad for memory – it can kill cells, and it can impair cell energy which can kill cells. But these effects can also impair function without killing cells.
How does memory loss in young, working Americans, due to their consumption of these fats, [partially hydrogenated oils] impact their lives?
That was not an aspect of our study. But certainly, less favorable memory function is expected to translate to less favorable performance in school and in the workplace. Less favorable performance can constrain career choices, affect job performance, and thus influence career trajectories.

What is the value, if any, for using industrially-fabricated oils in our processed food supply?
I used to tell my patients that trans fats improve the shelf life of the food, but reduce the shelf life of the person.

Of critical note is that the deadly oils will remain in the American processed food supply until mid-2018. An excerpt from the aforementioned book, provides further details on how these oils are linked to the build-up of a sticky and deadly protein scientifically known as beta-amyloids. Beta-amyloids wreak havoc as they flow through the cardiovascular system to the brain and eventually attack brain cells:

“A build-up in the brain and blood vessels of a protein plaque called beta-amyloids may be spurred or exacerbated by a build-up of bad cholesterol. Bad cholesterol is accelerated by – how does the FDA put it – by an ‘industrially produced’ food ingredient that the FDA allows to permeate the food supply. Converted in laboratories, they are known as partially hydrogenated oils or PHOs. When deadly beta-amyloids attack and disintegrate brain cells, ‘memory loss’ first occurs, then overtime, oxygen flow is diminished, limbs become incapacitated, bodily functions shutdown and eventually death occurs.”

It is the classic description of death due to most forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s.

Though brain diseases have existed over time, the documented increase per capita in memory related disorders has sounded alarms. Research points the finger at the very ingredients that, for decades, have permeated processed foods: partially hydrogenated oils. These oils have long been banned in other nations from Europe to Asia. Yet, the FDA looked the other way as major processed food manufacturers glutted the American food supply with the “killer oils.”

An outcry by health advocates forced the FDA to announce a total ban of the oils effective as of June 18, 2018. Until mid-2018, buyer beware. The “phantom oils” remain in a vast array of processed foods as an active ingredient that is being fed daily to American families.

Though a staggering 1 in 3 seniors reportedly dies with dementia, the loss of mental capacity, whether dementia or Alzheimer’s, does not automatically occur with aging according to experts.

“Alzheimer’s [dementia] is not a normal part of aging.” — Alzheimer’s Association.

If not age, researchers queried, what is mentally derailing increasing numbers of people? It is jokingly said when a person’s body goes physically or mentally awry: “Was it something I ate?”

Diseases are caused by either genetics or the environment. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, family-inherited, early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease accounts for less than 5% of Alzheimer’s cases worldwide. Based on those extremely low statistics, researchers zeroed in on an environmental cause. In their sights are industrially-modified oils.

For almost twenty years, food activists voiced alarms that the laboratory-contrived oils remain stuck in arteries and veins far longer than oils from natural food sources. Under assault, the FDA has begrudgingly initiated a ban to slowly withdraw from processed foods the numerous forms of the oils that still saturate the marketplace. While not identified as the cause of Alzheimer’s, partially hydrogenated oils are linked to the acceleration of the build-up of the cell and nerve killing, sticky proteins — beta-amyloids — that turn into plaque and clog the brain. Beta-amyloids are the hallmarks of Alzheimer disease. Findings of top scientists are detailed in the book.

As a government agency, the FDA fails to “use reasonable care” on behalf of the American people. For decades, its inactions resulted in deaths and mental and bodily harm to millions. By law, the inactions by the FDA would be categorized as “depraved indifference” or “gross negligence.” At minimum, it is a “reckless disregard” for human life.

The damage imposed by the FDA proves costly, especially for middle-income families. An excerpt from the article “Epidemic of Dementia: Shadow Economic Crisis” explains: “The rapid increase in dementia and other brain diseases is occurring at a time when middle-income American’s discretionary spending is being tapped out. For growing numbers of families nationwide, long-term health care costs, both inside and outside of the home, are unsustainable.”

The FDA functions under outdated laws that give wide leeway to corporate food giants. Charged with overseeing the overseer, it is Congress that must act to plug the loopholes:

“Corporations that are supposed to be regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may also be aided and abetted by the FDA as food corporations are allowed to ‘self-regulate’. The FDA allows major processed food manufacturers to designate their products as being ‘Generally Recognized As Safe.’ It is known by the acronym GRAS. Under the practice of GRAS, the FDA depends on the processed food industry to be its own overseer, its own inspector. Essentially, what that means is that the processed food industry is on the ‘honor system’. It is eerily akin to the tobacco industry when cigarettes were once promoted as being good for your health.”

In addition to PHOs that are consumed daily, the U.S. FDA allows other ingredients and toxins into the American food supply that are banned in other parts of the globe. Processed food manufacturers continue to pack the processed food supply with chemically manipulated ingredients that negatively impact young and old alike.

Taste biotechnology companies today have chemicals aimed at binding artificial flavors to taste bud “receptor cells” on the tongue. They are meant to ‘manipulate and trick’ the mind as substitutes or catalysts for heightened sugar, salt or other flavor sensations. With more patents in the pipeline, competition to stimulate your taste buds through both chemical and natural ingredient-alterations is expected to be fierce.

Will taste bud modifiers that reportedly “trick the mind” have a damaging impact on the developing systems of the very young and the fragile systems of aging Americans? Will the FDA do sufficient testing to determine if mind-altering chemicals will have a long-term, negative impact on consumers’ health regardless of age? If the past indicates the future, the FDA may again remain on the periphery as processed food companies continue to spoon-feed chemically-modified food and drink to unsuspecting consumers.

The charge against the FDA is malfeasance against the American public. As one major toxin is slow-walked out of the processed food supply, a stream of new, laboratory-engineered chemicals and toxins are set to permeate the marketplace. Why is the FDA loath to alert U.S. families that many of the chemicals and ingredients found in the food on their dinner tables, in children’s school menus, in fast foods, on grocery shelves, and in hospitals and nursing homes — are banned elsewhere around the world?”

Recent findings of the damaging impact of lab-modified partially hydrogenated oils come decades too late for the afflicted, dying, and loved ones lost to brain and heart diseases. Instead of a full explanation of the harm done and harm still to come, the FDA’s message remains: “Sorry about that memory loss and all of those heart attacks.” Having admitted guilt without consequence, it remains business as usual as the FDA continues to bow to corporations’ profits over citizens’ health. The determining question is — do Americans care?

Note: The 3-part series of articles on a Shadow Economic Crisis by Sharon Sebastian is presented after years of research and interviews with top professionals and scientists in various fields.

Upcoming article:

The Shame of Substandard Care: Shadow Economic Crisis – (Part 3) by Sharon Sebastian

Related articles:

Epidemic of Dementia: Shadow Economic Crisis (Part 1) by Sharon Sebastian

Scamming Alzheimer’s by Sharon Sebastian

12/31/15

Lifting the Ban on Gay Blood: Life and Death

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

With the public focused on the holidays, the FDA has lifted the ban on gay blood. Where’s the coverage? What this means is that the five million Americans a year who receive blood transfusions could be exposed to the AIDS virus or other infections in the diseased blood of sexually active homosexuals. Do you or your loved ones want to die in order to advance the gay rights agenda? Watch this show to find out how to protect yourself.

05/28/15

New York Times Still Deceiving About Obamacare

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

The New York Times is at it again. In a front page story in Tuesday’s print edition, the Times is dishonestly pushing an argument that they hope will result in a favorable Supreme Court decision for President Obama’s so called Affordable Care Act. The mantra repeated over and over again is this: those four words in the Obamacare law—“established by the state”—were actually an accident, a drafting error. And those words, according to the Times and all of the sources they chose to comment on it for the article, are being misinterpreted by some who want to, shall we say, “degrade and defeat” the law.

The plain language of the law is that subsidies were only meant for those who purchase their plans through exchanges set up by the individual states. But that’s not what the Times and their sources want you to believe. Even if the Times were to admit that is the plain meaning based on the language in the law, their argument is that it still wasn’t the intent of the lawmakers and staffers who composed and approved of the legislation.

So now comes the Times, a month before the Supreme Court is planning to announce its decision, with a front-page article that is dishonest on many levels. If you are doing a news story, as opposed to a not-so-carefully disguised editorial, you would seek opposing points of view. In reading this article, you find that there is not one person among those interviewed who even knew that there was an issue regarding subsidies as they related to state exchanges versus the federal exchange.

First, the Times posed the questions: “Who wrote [those four words], and why? Were they really intended, as the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim, to make the tax subsidies in the law available only in states that established their own health insurance marketplaces, and not in the three dozen states with federal exchanges?”

Then it states: “The answer, from interviews with more than two dozen Democrats and Republicans involved in writing the law, is that the words were a product of shifting politics and a sloppy merging of different versions. Some described the words as ‘inadvertent,’ ‘inartful’ or ‘a drafting error.’ But none supported the contention of the plaintiffs, who are from Virginia.”

If this were a real news story, and not a front-page editorial disguised as a news article, these reporters would have sought out the opinion of people who disagree with those “more than two dozen Democrats and Republicans involved in writing the law.”

I cited the evidence in a column last March when the King v. Burwell case was being argued, and the same narrative was being pushed at that time by the Times and other liberal news organizations. I linked to a National Public Radio (NPR) article that had actually practiced journalism by talking to one of the plaintiff’s lawyers in this case; he pointed out that regarding this supposed drafting error, “those words are in the bill 11 times.”

I also cited an article published in Politico, two months before the bill passed in 2010, that cited then-Senator Ben Nelson’s opposition to a federal exchange: “Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Monday that he would oppose any health care reform bill with a national insurance exchange, which he described as a dealbreaker.” If that isn’t clear enough, Politico added this: “Nelson could have deprived House Democrats from securing what they have increasingly viewed as a must-have—a national exchange rather than a series of state exchanges.”

My column cited an American Spectator piece that details Nelson’s position on this issue. And then there’s Jonathan Gruber. As I wrote at the time: “And don’t forget Jonathan Gruber. He was one of the architects of Obamacare, and a close adviser to President Obama. He received millions of taxpayer dollars, from various states and the federal government. Gruber is the person who said that passing Obamacare depended ‘on the stupidity of the American voter,’ and that it was ‘written in a tortured way’ in order to deceive the voters about all the taxes they would have to pay. Regarding the subsidies being paid only to state exchanges, Gruber said that was ‘to squeeze the states to do it [to set up exchanges].’”

So there you have it. After reading what Gruber said, what Politico wrote months before the bill became law, how NPR reported it, and what Sen. Nelson told Greta Van Susteren, it becomes clear that the Times is editorializing, and not reporting, in a front-page story intended to influence a Supreme Court decision.

I suppose it’s possible to read the Times article, and read the evidence cited in my article, and conclude that the Times is telling the truth, and respecting its readers’ ability to hear two sides of this story and decide for themselves. On the other hand, maybe not.

05/6/15

Please don’t fall

By: T F Stern
T F Stern’s Rantings

Early yesterday morning the phone rang as a customer needed a locksmith to come get the keys out of his car. He was at a gas station about a mile away and the keys were in the ignition.

My back has been giving me grief on and off for the past several weeks; but a simple lockout job shouldn’t be a problem, or so I thought.

I threw on clothes from the day before and was there in only a few minutes. His was the only car at the gas pumps, a 2005 Ford Focus. The fellow greeted me with a heavy Caribbean accent explaining that he’d bought the car this past week and didn’t know it had auto lock when the doors closed.

Glancing at the driver side door handle it was clear that it no longer functioned, at least not from the outside as it was unhooked. I asked him how it got broken and how he’d been getting in.

“It was like that when I bought the car so I get in through the passenger side. Is it very expensive to fix?”

My plan did not include taking a door apart to repair previous damage, not with my back as I set about fitting a door key. With electric locks it would unlock the whole car and I could be on my way in no time.

That was a great idea too…

The door key fit perfectly except it didn’t unlock the whole car, just the driver door, the one that wasn’t going to open since the outside door handle wasn’t attached to anything. There was no lock on the passenger side thanks to Ford’s engineering staff trying to save a few bucks on each unit.

The only other outside lock was on the trunk; glad my key fit so nicely. When I popped the deck lid I explained that my back was out and that he would need to push the back seat down by triggering the latch which holds the seat backs firmly to the frame.

“I’ve already had to do that once”, as he laid the seat backs down and slid into the car. He then unlocked the other doors and I opened the rear driver’s side door so he could exit the car.

“Please don’t fall”, I half way laughed as he tried to figure the best way to glide out of his awkward position, “With fabricated media coverage coming out of Baltimore someone would swear that a White guy just beat up a perfectly innocent Black guy and shot him in the back.”

Fortunately, perhaps not the most efficient choice of words; but fortunately the fellow was familiar with the news item referenced and had a good sense of humor. Beyond that he was extremely grateful for being able to get on his way without further damage to his car; he’d fully expected me to break out a window or some other drastic measure knowing the door handle didn’t work.

Aren’t there enough problems in this country; illegal immigration, unemployment, an economy so bad it matches that of post WWII, and foreign terrorists on our own soil who don’t appreciate the 1^st Amendment?

Thank goodness we have the 2^nd Amendment and two terrorists found out the hard way that you don’t mess with Texas.

So why did some nitwit have to fabricate a story to further enflame racial divide by saying she saw and heard a White cop shoot an unarmed Black man in the back?

Summertime is just around the corner, that time when folks tend to get agitated more quickly and do stupid things. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail as our nation struggles to find its way in spite of our challenges.

This article has been cross posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government, & The American Constitution”.