The NYT fact checks RFK Jr: “Other than the U.S. version containing cyanide and arsenic, and still-wet rat turds, the Canadian and U.S. products are identical”

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"Mr. Kennedy has singled out Froot Loops as an example of a product with too many artificial ingredients, questioning why the Canadian version has fewer than the U.S. version," the Times' report read. "But he was wrong. The ingredient list is roughly the same, although Canada’s has natural colorings made from blueberries and carrots while the U.S. product contains red dye 40, yellow 5 and blue 1 as well as Butylated hydroxytoluene, or BHT, a lab-made chemical that is used 'for freshness,' according to the ingredient label."

My personal opinion of RFK is that he’s a fruit loop himself, and his campaign against childhood vaccines is nuts, but I am enjoying the consternation and panic the threat of his appointment is causing the professional grifters in the Capital;This, from Politico:

Washington’s lobbyists are stunned Trump chose RFK Jr.

They’re holding their fire and hoping Senate allies will block his confirmation as HHS secretary.

Lobbyists expecting a more conventional pick to lead the government’s $3 trillion health agency than Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the brash contrarian President-elect Donald Trump named on Thursday to take charge, are plotting how to stop the Senate from confirming him.

They’re also currying favor in case they can’t.

Kennedy has proposed tighter regulation of the pesticides farmers use to juice their yields, a reexamination of vaccine safety data, a ban on highly processed foods in schools and a remaking of the agencies making the rules around health and food.

That could pose a major threat to a broad swath of American industry’s bottom line. Lobbyists who hadn’t taken the possibility seriously say their phones are blowing up over Trump’s decision, and industry leaders are trying to quickly leverage any connections to Kennedy to mitigate the risk he could pose. More than a dozen who work for companies in RFK’s crosshairs said they’re telling clients to keep their cool. Their attitude is indicative of the confusion gripping Washington’s lobbying corridor, K Street, since Trump’s election earlier this month.

Companies don’t want to start off on the wrong foot with Kennedy by coming out “in an extremely adversarial posture,” said John Strom, special counsel at the law firm Foley and Lardner who advises health industry leaders on policy issues.

“It’s prudent to take a wait and see approach,” he said, echoing lobbyists working across health and food sectors.

One health industry leader, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the appointment, acknowledged they were caught off guard — they had thought Trump would pick former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal or former Surgeon General Jerome Adams — and hadn’t had any strategic conversations about opposing Kennedy.

“I knew he’d be part of the administration but thought it would be in a new role outside of the Cabinet,” the industry leader said. “We need to strengthen the CDC, and the public health infrastructure, not dismantle it as RFK has suggested.”

…. Companies would prefer to let their allies in the Senate, buttressed by years of campaign contributions and revolving-door hires, sideline Kennedy before they spend political capital to fight him.

If senators bow to Trump’s wishes instead and confirm Kennedy to lead HHS and its agencies, with their immense power over drugs, health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid spending and food safety, among other things, lobbyists don’t want to be on RFK’s bad side.

Other industry advocates figure they can at least slow Kennedy down enough to outlast him. There’s only so much he could do in four years, they believe.

“What they’re proposing to take on is at least a multi-year process,” Strom said.

Public health policy: the yokes on us

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Instapundit

THE SCIENCE HAS BEEN UNSETTLED: Study Finds Eggs Might Protect Brain Health And Lower Cholesterol. “For nearly half a century, people were advised to avoid animal products high in cholesterol, like eggs, butter, or cream, because these foods were thought to raise cholesterol levels in the blood, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease.”

Of course, a lot of the concern about eggs was rooted in politics. “When egg prices rose in the spring of 1966 and Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman told him that not much could be done, Johnson had the Surgeon General issue alerts as to the hazards of cholesterol in eggs.”

The second link leads to a 2011 NPR article with this interesting snippet:

FT Alphaville riffs today on the potential inflation-lowering effects of the release of 60 million barrels of oil reserves — and wanders into this passage from an LBJ aide, about how the president tried to fight inflation one product at a time:

Shoe prices went up, so LBJ slapped export controls on hides to increase the supply of leather. Reports that color television sets would sell at high prices came across the wire. Johnson told me to ask RCA's David Sarnoff [RCA was then a major TV manufacturer] to hold them down. Domestic lamb prices rose. LBJ directed [Defense Secretary Robert] McNamara to buy cheaper lamb from New Zealand for the troops in Vietnam. ... When egg prices rose in the spring of 1966 and Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman told him that not much could be done, Johnson had the Surgeon General issue alerts as to the hazards of cholesterol in eggs.

That's Joseph Califano, as quoted in Robert Samuelson's The Great Inflation and its Aftermath. Samuelson writes that LBJ couldn't hold back the inflationary tide:

The slight effects on individual prices and wages were overwhelmed by the emerging economic boom, which put upward pressure on all wages and prices.

Oh, such happy times!

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And remember this Jeff Bezos employee? Lock her up for her own protection.

No, I'm not tired of wining; in fact, I'm loving it

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Drill baby, drill!

President-elect Donald Trump tapped longtime fracking advocate Chris Wright to lead his administration’s Department of Energy, he announced Saturday.

Wright, the chief executive of oilfield services group Liberty Energy, helped launch the American Shale Revolution of the mid-2000s that significantly increased US production of oil and natural gas.

“As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new ‘Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace,'” Trump said in a statement.

Oil boss Chris Wright received significant backlash last year after claiming there “is no climate crisis.

Wright’s appointment to the Trump administration cabinet signifies the president-elect’s determination to boost fossil fuel production in the US, while rolling back green alternatives.

The Jim Cramer of left wing phony economists strikes again.

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From January 13, 2024, RawStory: (As reported in PJ Media)

'Disturbing scenario': Top economist sees apocalyptic future that MAGA doesn't understand

Krugman began a conversation with The New Republic's Greg Sargent by saying that Americans don't understand how essential immigrants are to the U.S. economy.

"It is something like maybe 8 million undocumented workers in the United States, something like 5 percent of the workforce," he said. "You say, OK, that would be pretty bad if we lose that, but how bad could it be? And the answer is that they are not evenly distributed.

"The whole food supply chain is reliant on people who are going to be rounded up and put in camps."

So, who is this “Top Economist”, and when did the Left begin describing economists by their preferred sexual positions? I can’t answer the latter question, but Krugman’s record for accuracy certainly reveals where he lies in the pantheon of economic seers.

Here’s one of his famous predictions:

November 9, 2016:

It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

And here’s a longer look at this “respected” economist’s track record from the publication BPR, published in January 2018:

His most recent one earned him 1st Place in President Trump’s 2017 Fake News Awards. This was Krugman’s prediction, on the day of Trump’s landslide victory, that the U.S. stock market would “never” recover. Since then, the Dow Industrials have set 94 new record closing highs, and is up 8,000 points. Nice call, Paul.

Earlier in 2016, Krugman created the term “Trumpenfreude” to predict that the Trump candidacy “would bring down the Republican Party in ruins”. As we know, the opposite happened, adding to the growing evidence that there may be few economists in Western Civilization who have been more incorrect than Krugman.

Then, in September 2017, Krugman blamed Trump for a “cholera outbreak” in Puerto Rico; only problem was that the Center for Disease Control stated, “There was no evidence of cholera in Puerto Rico”.

Here’s one, included for a laugh: Last June [2017], Krugman wrote that “tackling climate change in the way envisaged by the Paris accord….these days it looks pretty easy”. When is the last time you read something that naïve?

…. Krugman staked his reputation for years by championing the “economic successes” of “the European Project”. Here’s one of his classic (but wrong) lines from 2010: “The real lesson from Europe is … Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.” Shortly afterward, Europe erupted into a huge crisis nightmare of fiscal irresponsibility.

…. In 2003, he claimed California’s taxes are “now probably below average”, when California’s taxes were then ranked eighth-highest among 50 states, and headed higher. In 2010, Krugman falsified a quote by Newt Gingrich, deceived his readers about Obamacare by misrepresenting data contained in a report he quoted, and in 2011 praised Veterans Affairs Administration as a triumph of “socialized medicine”. Krugman ignored the glaring truth about U.S. debt in 2014 by calling it “distinctly non-alarming”.

When America’s oil-fracking industry started up, he predicted that the U.S. was going to be “just a bystander” in global energy markets. In 2012, “Wrong-Way” Krugman opined that the soon-to-default economy of Argentina will be “a remarkable success story”. He predicted in 2015, “the Puerto Rico story is one (that will) fall well short of utter disaster”, and said what will save their economy is “the saving grace (of) big government”.

Interestingly, Krugman won a Nobel laureate in 2008. How can this be, you ask? No surprise here, it has everything to do with politics and little to do with qualifications. There is a political answer: Remember other questionable Nobel laureates, including Yasser Arafat, Kofi Annan, Al Gore? And of course, Barack Obama who won the Nobel Peace Prize— he was nominated before his presidential swearing-in. How does that work?

PJ Media updates his resume:

In November 2020, Krugman confidently predicted a booming economy under Joe Biden. Four years later, we're still waiting for the boom. He also brushed off concerns about inflation, claiming in early 2022 that there was no need to worry. Needless to say, the skyrocketing prices that followed told a very different story.

Be afraid; be very afraid.

Pending on Swamp Vue UPDATED (!)

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Three acres, $1.895 million, just 21 days on market — see what professional staging can accomplish?

And, of course, top-of-the-line interior decorators:

UPDATE: Reader CT Tempest posted what I thought was parody of this listing’s description, but aside from the very funny picture he supplied of John and Yoko in a rowboat, it’s taken entirely from the actual writeup. The agent in question is apparently related to the seller, which is a good thing, because only a loving mother could excuse these sloppy pictures and worse prose. On the other hand, she may have cause to be proud: her son’s efforts have placed him high in the rankings of worst real estate copywriting in the Realtors Hall of Fame (or would, if there were one — unfortunately, he’ll have to settle for top place in FWIW’s own modest shrine to excellence.

Picture yourself in a boat on a pond, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. 7 Byfield Lane, nearly 3 acres in Mid-Country, with 5 bedrooms, 4 & a half bathrooms, pool, & hot tub offers you a day in the life! In 1973, Yoko Ono and John Lennon sailed their yellow submarine peacefully on a sea of green when they came to visit - rowing around the pond in a dingy that sits there today. Across the universe, this place stands out, a diamond in the sky. Imagine a big living room where you & loved ones can come together. Be a day tripper to the city or town with the Merritt or Ave minutes away yet still quiet enough to whisper words of wisdom. It needs updating, but with a little help from your friends, make it part of your long and winding road. Build to 6000+ sqft per FAR. or, ''Let it Be.''

photo courtesy of CT Tempest