So, Gideon's been at me to do this for a long time, and I finally got over my embarrassment enough to try it

/

I’ve been at this for 20 years now, and for much of that time I was able to easily defray the costs of maintaining the site: access to the MLS for real-time reporting of sales activity; a webmaste on retainer; etc., through real estate commissions generated by readers who retained my services. Those have pretty much dried up, yet the annual costs — in the $5,000 range — remain. I thought to run advertising, but after just two months the censors at Google informed me that the topi discussed here: global warming, kindergarten transvestites, COVID skepticism, and, generally, just “oooh, we’ve never been so offended in our lives!” So I was banned from AdSense.

In December, after forking over another $1,000 to the Greenwich Association of Realtors and facing another hefty round of fees this spring, I told Gideon that I was going to give it up. He urged this alternative, so what the hell, I’m trying it.

Here’s Gideon’s pitch, originally drafted in late December and finally seeing daylight today, however briefly. If you care to chip in, thank you. If not, that’s absolutely fine, but beware of Gideon ponding on your door on a dark and stormy night, demanding tribute.

        LET’S KEEP THIS BLOG ALIVE!

Do you read Chris Fountain every day? Is this blog the first thing you turn to in the morning? Does any other site even come close to providing this kind of crazy, funny, deadly-accurate content? 

Exactly. So, let’s keep Chris properly incentivized. This is “brother Gideon” speaking, the one who Chris seems to delight in poking fun at, but yes, even I can’t resist reading his damned blog several times a day. 

I haven’t been able to convince him to plaster the site with advertising, but he is letting me make a pitch for my idea of an annual fund-raiser. 

So, if you get $20 worth of enjoyment from this blog each year, I want you to click the PayPal link below. There are options to contribute more, especially if you really, REALLY love this blog, so please donate according to your level of Chris Fountain-caused happiness.

This is a once per year thing, so I won't bother you again till January 2025.

  • $19.95

  • $29.95

  • $59.95

  • Other (The sky’s the limit, be a Golden Benefactor!)

Okay, but what about Generalissimo Franco — he's still dead, right? (Updated)

/

VATICAN CITY — CNN journalists on the ground at the Vatican are reporting that behind closed doors, Pope Francis remains focused, sharp, and brimming with energy.

Though videos circulating online have purportedly showed Pope Francis to be dead and lying in state at Saint Peter's Basilica, CNN stated these videos were "deepfakes" and part of a right-wing misinformation campaign.

"Claims of the Pope being dead are completely ridiculous. Francis has so much energy, we can barely keep up with him," said Kaitlan Collins. "These videos use deceptive editing and clever angles to make it appear that Pope Francis is dead and lying in a casket. Bad-faith actors are attempting to deceive people in order to push Francis out of power. Off-camera, Pope Francis continues to be as mentally fit as ever."

UPDATE

The Bee’s on a roll today:

Is there a college student or recent graduate who doesn't believe this? (Updated)

/

UPDATE Let David Strom break the news to her and to her believers:

What is important is that money is an abstraction, and it is abstracted from value. Ultimately, the value of money is tied to the goods and services that can be purchased with it, so if you expand the money supply without expanding the goods and services, the only thing that changes is the dollar's value. Nobody gets any richer unless more actual wealth is created. 

That's why increases in the minimum wage are a fool's solution to a perennial problem: some people make more money than others, and people whose labor or contribution is low on the value scale--say, fry cooks whose sole skill is being surly while making fries--will not make sufficient money to satisfy their desires. 

People in Oakland are not poor because they aren't paid enough. They are poor because they produce little of value compared to those around them in one of the wealthiest places in the world--San Francisco and the Silicon Valley region. When you are competing with Googlers for resources, being a minimum wage worker is a real problem. You are competing for limited resources with people who can outbid you by a wide margin. 

That doesn't make you a bad person--although there are LOTS of bad people in Oakland, which truly IS a s**thole--it just means that you live in the wrong place and have the wrong skills and likely temperament to thrive there. Economically speaking, Oakland's land would be put to better use providing housing for people who are more productive, but economics is not the only factor in this world, nor should it be. 

Poor people have to live somewhere, and Oakland is where poor people live in the Bay Area. But their poverty will not be relieved by magic bullets like an increase in the minimum wage. If the wage goes to $50/hour, those people will become unemployed tomorrow, and businesses will bail immediately. 

"Stunning"? Hardly — it's always been known by everyone, on both sides

/

Another Greenwich girl speaks:

MSNBC host Jen Psaki makes stunning admission about liberal network’s coverage of Trump

MSNBC host Jen Psaki admitted Tuesday that her cable news network’s liberal-leaning audience only tunes in to watch coverage of President Trump that is “typically not going to be positive.”

Viewers of the embattled network don’t expect to hear favorable news coverage or commentary about the commander-in-chief, Psaki, the onetime press secretary for President Joe Biden, revealed during an appearance on “The Grill Room” podcast. 

“There’s obviously a rooted value in the kind of … that MSNBC viewers expect of like we’re going to talk about the opposition, and we’re going to talk about what the opposing party is up to, in terms of the Democrats, and we’re going to talk about future leaders and things,” she told Dylan Byers.

“And we’re also going to talk about Trump, and it’s typically not going to be positive. I don’t think anybody watching expects it to be positive, right? There’s not like a North Star thing written on a card, and everybody does it slightly differently, but I think that’s fairly the vibe.”

What’s unfortunate, and what’s caused the unbridgeable chasm between left and right is that all of the “reporting” they read and watch is slanted this way: all negative, all the time, blended with outright lies designed to frighten them” “they’re cutting my VA benefits!”; “Social Security is ending!”, ad nauseum.

But Psaki’s right: her people expect this, want this, and will listen to nothing that contradicts it.

Yeah, but it only costs a nickel a dose: where's the fun in that?

/

NEW STUDY – Ivermectin Shows Striking Anticancer Potential and Remarkable Safety

Largest review to date of ivermectin use in cancer patients finds no safety concerns, promising anecdotal reports, and strong preclinical evidence of tumor suppression.

Unless your memory was washed away during the lockdown, you’ll remember the ridicule, even the prosecution of doctors who suggested that ivermectin be used in the treatment of COVID. Its efficacy against that disease had not, and still has not been proven, but the focus of the medical authorities and the media was on the supposed danger of administering a drug that had already been used by hundreds of millions of people in the Third World to treat other illnesses, with remarkable results. Here’s the AMA warning doctors and the public against the drug and recommending three entirely useless procedures instead:

September 2, 2021, American Medical Association:

Why ivermectin should not be used to prevent or treat COVID-19

While ivermectin is an FDA-approved prescription medication used to treat certain infections caused by internal and external parasites, it is not authorized or approved for prevention or treatment of COVID-19.

“Using any treatment for COVID-19 that’s not approved or authorized by the FDA, unless part of a clinical trial, can cause serious harm,” says the FDA’s consumer update.

Taking a drug for an unapproved use can be very dangerous and misinformation that says it is OK to take ivermectin for COVID-19—or in large doses—is wrong, the FDA consumer update warns. Even approved levels of ivermectin can interact with other medications such as blood thinners. Overdose of ivermectin can also cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hypotension, allergic reactions, dizziness, ataxia, seizures, coma and even death.

The most effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 are to get vaccinated, wear a face mask, stay at least six feet from others in public places, wash hands frequently and avoid large crowds of people.

Learn more: It is vital that everyone get vaccinated against COVID-19. There are three COVID-19 vaccines currently available with two—Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—approved by the FDA through emergency use authorization.

The FDA recently granted full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. These COVID-19 vaccines are the safest, most effective way to protect against severe disease and death from SARS-CoV-2. Vaccination also helps protect individuals from the dangerous Delta variant.

Notwithstanding the AMA’s, Big Pharma’s and the rest of the medical establishments phony shouts of alarm about this “horse drug”, merits of ivermectin were known well before Dr. Fauci and his cohorts decided to cash in on more lucrative drugs:

February 15, 2017: Journal of Antibiotics:

Ivermectin: enigmatic multifaceted ‘wonder’ drug continues to surprise and exceed expectations
Abstract

Over the past decade, the global scientific community have begun to recognize the unmatched value of an extraordinary drug, ivermectin, that originates from a single microbe unearthed from soil in Japan. Work on ivermectin has seen its discoverer, Satoshi Ōmura, of Tokyo’s prestigious Kitasato Institute, receive the 2014 Gairdner Global Health Award and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with a collaborating partner in the discovery and development of the drug, William Campbell of Merck & Co. Incorporated. Today, ivermectin is continuing to surprise and excite scientists, offering more and more promise to help improve global public health by treating a diverse range of diseases, with its unexpected potential as an antibacterial, antiviral and anti-cancer agent being particularly extraordinary.

Introduction

The unique and extraordinary microorganism that produces the avermectins (from which ivermectin is derived) was discovered by Ōmura in 1973 (Figure 1). It was sent to Merck laboratories to be run through a specialized screen for anthelmintics in 1974 and the avermectins were found and named in 1975. The safer and more effective derivative, ivermectin, was subsequently commercialized, entering the veterinary, agricultural and aquaculture markets in 1981. The drug’s potential in human health was confirmed a few years later and it was registered in 1987 and immediately provided free of charge (branded as Mectizan)—‘as much as needed for as long as needed’—with the goal of helping to control Onchocerciasis (also known as River Blindness) among poverty-stricken populations throughout the tropics. Uses of donated ivermectin to tackle other so-called ‘neglected tropical diseases’ soon followed, while commercially available products were introduced for the treatment of other human diseases.

Many excellent, eloquent and comprehensive reviews covering the discovery, advent, development, manufacture and distribution of ivermectin have been published by those intimately involved with the various stages.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 It would be folly to replicate those here. Instead, it is the current status, beneficial global health impact and exciting future potential that ivermectin has to offer to human health worldwide that will be the focus of attention.

Today, ivermectin remains a relatively unknown drug, although few, if any, other drugs can rival ivermectin for its beneficial impact on human health and welfare. Ivermectin is a broad-spectrum anti-parasitic agent, primarily deployed to combat parasitic worms in veterinary and human medicine. This unprecedented compound has mainly been used in humans as an oral medication for treating filarial diseases but is also effective against other worm-related infections and diseases, plus several parasite-induced epidermal parasitic skin diseases, as well as insect infestations. It is approved for human use in several countries, ostensibly to treat Onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis (also known as Elephantiasis), strongyloidiasis and/or scabies and, very recently, to combat head lice. However, health workers are increasingly utilizing it in an unsanctioned manner to treat a diverse range of other diseases, as shown in Appendix 1.

The past: unmatched successes

Perhaps more than any other drug, ivermectin is a drug for the world’s poor. For most of this century, some 250 million people have been taking it annually to combat two of the world’s most devastating, disfiguring, debilitating and stigma-inducing diseases, Onchocerciasis and Lymphatic filariasis. Most of the recipients live in remote, rural, desperately under-resourced communities in developing countries and have virtually no access to even the most rudimentary of medical interventions. Moreover, all the treatments have been made available free of charge thanks to the unprecedented drug donation program.

Here was the real problem with ivermectin:

According to GoodRx, the price for ivermectin can range from approximately $33 to $91 for a course of treatment (the quantity of tablets will depend on the condition being treated and the prescribed dosage). The cost per individual tablet would then depend on the total number of tablets in the prescription.

Ask Gemini:

Q: What illnesses afflicting the poor in third world (or first world, for that matter) countries has ivermectin proved effective in treating?

A: Ivermectin has proven effective in treating several illnesses that disproportionately affect the poor, particularly in developing countries. These are often classified as Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). Here are some key examples:

  • Onchocerciasis (River Blindness): Ivermectin is the cornerstone of onchocerciasis control programs. It effectively kills the microfilariae (immature worms) that cause the debilitating itching, skin lesions, and eventually blindness associated with this parasitic disease. Mass drug administration (MDA) programs using ivermectin have significantly reduced the burden of river blindness in endemic communities.

  • Lymphatic Filariasis (Elephantiasis): Ivermectin, often in combination with albendazole or diethylcarbamazine (DEC), is used in MDA programs to eliminate lymphatic filariasis. While ivermectin primarily targets the microfilariae of the Wuchereria bancrofti parasite, reducing transmission, the combination therapies can also affect adult worms.

  • Scabies: Ivermectin is an effective treatment for scabies, a highly contagious skin infestation caused by mites. Oral ivermectin is particularly useful in cases of crusted scabies (a severe form) and in controlling outbreaks in crowded settings like nursing homes. Topical treatments like permethrin are also common, but oral ivermectin offers a systemic approach.

  • Strongyloidiasis (Threadworm infection): Ivermectin is a first-line treatment for strongyloidiasis, an intestinal worm infection. It is generally more effective and better tolerated than older treatments like thiabendazole.

  • Soil-transmitted helminth infections: Ivermectin, often in combination with albendazole, is used in MDA programs to treat other common intestinal worm infections like ascariasis (roundworm), trichuriasis (whipworm), and hookworm infections, which are prevalent in areas with poor sanitation.

It's important to note that while ivermectin has shown promise in laboratory studies against certain viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, current evidence does not support its widespread use for treating or preventing COVID-19. Major health organizations have not recommended ivermectin for this purpose.

In summary, ivermectin is a crucial medication for treating several neglected tropical diseases that affect impoverished populations worldwide, significantly improving their health and quality of life. Its effectiveness against these parasitic infections has been well-established through extensive use in mass drug administration programs.