#blood clot president

[reasonsforhope]

"The Biden administration on Thursday [August 15, 2024] released prices for the first 10 prescription drugs that were subject to landmark negotiations between drugmakers and Medicare, a milestone in a controversial process that aims to make costly medications more affordable for older Americans. 

The government estimates that the new negotiated prices for the medications will lead to around $6 billion in net savings for the Medicare program in 2026 alone when they officially go into effect, or 22% net savings overall. That is based on the estimated savings the prices would have produced if they were in effect in 2023, senior administration officials told reporters Wednesday.

The Biden administration also expects the new prices to save Medicare enrollees $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs in 2026 alone.

“For so many people, being able to afford these drugs will mean the difference between debilitating illness and living full lives,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, told reporters. “These negotiated prices. They’re not just about costs. They are about helping to make sure that your father, your grandfather or you can live longer, healthier.”

It comes one day before the second anniversary of President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, which gave Medicare the power to directly hash out drug prices with manufacturers for the first time in the federal program’s nearly 60-year history.

Here are the negotiated prices for a 30-day supply of the 10 drugs, along with their list prices based on 2023 prescription fills, according to a Biden administration fact sheet Thursday.

What Medicare and beneficiaries pay for a drug is often much less than the list price, which is what a wholesaler, distributor or other direct purchaser paid a manufacturer for a medication before any discounts...

The administration unveiled the first set of medications selected for the price talks in August 2023, kicking off a nearly yearlong negotiation period that ended at the beginning of the month.

The final prices give drugmakers, which fiercely oppose the policy, a glimpse of how much revenue they could expect to lose over the next few years. It also sets a precedent for the additional rounds of Medicare drug price negotiations, which will kick off in 2025 and beyond. 

First 10 drugs subject to Medicare price negotiations

Eliquis, made by Bristol Myers Squibb, is used to prevent blood clotting to reduce the risk of stroke. 

Jardiance, made by Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly, is used to lower blood sugar for people with Type 2 diabetes. 

Xarelto, made by Johnson & Johnson, is used to prevent blood clotting, to reduce the risk of stroke.

Januvia, made by Merck, is used to lower blood sugar for people with Type 2 diabetes.

Farxiga, made by AstraZeneca, is used to treat Type 2 diabetes, heart failure and chronic kidney disease. 

Entresto, made by Novartis, is used to treat certain types of heart failure.

Enbrel, made by Amgen, is used to treat autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. 

Imbruvica, made by AbbVie and J&J, is used to treat different types of blood cancers. 

Stelara, made by Janssen, is used to treat autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s disease.

Fiasp and NovoLog, insulins made by Novo Nordisk.

In a statement Thursday, Biden called the new negotiated prices a “historic milestone” made possible because of the Inflation Reduction Act. He specifically touted Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote for the law in the Senate in 2022.

Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement that she was proud to cast that deciding vote, adding there is more work to be done to lower health-care costs for Americans.

“Today’s announcement will be lifechanging for so many of our loved ones across the nation, and we are not stopping here,” Harris said in a statement Thursday, noting that additional prescription drugs will be selected for future rounds of negotiations."

-via CNBC, August 15, 2024

[deadpresidents]

After President Abraham Lincoln was shot during a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, several doctors who were in the audience and also enjoying the play rushed into the Presidential Box and began attending to the President. It was clear that Lincoln's wounds were almost certainly mortal, but the doctors still attempted to save his life. Originally thinking that the President had been stabbed, they soon found that he had been shot behind the left ear and the bullet -- a 43.75 mm ball which had been fired by John Wilkes Booth's .44 caliber Derringer -- had sliced through Lincoln's brain and lodged behind his eye sockets without exiting the skull. When Lincoln's breathing became more shallow, Dr. Charles Leale used his finger to remove blood clots from the wound, which immediately improved Lincoln's respiration.

The doctors decided to move Lincoln from the theater, but felt that the President's condition was far too weak to risk taking him back to the White House, which was several blocks away. A nearby saloon was considered just as unseemly of a place for the President to spend his last hours and likely die in as a theatre, so Lincoln was carried across the 10th Street to William Petersen's boarding house. When they brought Lincoln into the boarding house, they realized that the 6'4" President was too tall for the bed they found for him, so they laid him diagonally upon it.

It was obvious that Lincoln could not survive his wound, so the attending doctors simply tried to keep him comfortable in his final hours by clearing the blood clots in his skull that caused his breathing to become more labored. Throughout the night, the President never regained consciousness, but witnesses said that he looked peaceful as his life was drawing to a close. The only visible evidence of his mortal wound were the bloody pillows that his head rested on and the raccoon-like bruising around Lincoln's eye sockets due to the orbital bones fractured by Booth's bullet after it passed through his brain. Nine hours after he was shot, Lincoln died in Petersen's Boarding House at the age of 56.

Shortly after the President was pronounced dead, his body was placed in a coffin and transferred back to the White House in a carriage. Just a few hours later, one of the residents of Petersen's Boarding House, Julius Ulke, took a photograph (seen at the beginning of this post) of the room and the bed -- including a pillow soaked with the President's blood -- where Lincoln had died earlier that morning.

The room in Petersen's Boarding House where Abraham Lincoln died, pictured in 2007.

[miss-oranje-disco-dancer]

injections, inspections, detections, erections

pairing: leon kennedy/ashley graham

cw: smut, daddy kink, first time, medical stuff (needles mentioned)

summary: ...and no protection leon is a perv and he takes ashley's virginity, but it's 100% consensual (he just has very dirty thoughts about her...and they come true)

wc: 4.8k

ao3 link

It’s wrong. Leon knows this for a fact. If he believed in hell, he’d have his route there planned. He’s stuck in a catch-22 where he knows he’ll either have to give into his depraved mind and rub one out to the thought of Ashley in that tiny little schoolgirl skirt or pray that his dick goes soft eventually. He’s starting to think he might get a blood clot in his cock or it’ll get so hard it breaks off. Maybe there’d be a sexy nurse at the hospital to fix him up. Doesn’t sound so bad. He’s imagining some blonde girl, Ashley-esque and ingenue. Can’t get her off his mind.  

He should be happy to get some time off from work, but what is he supposed to do with the free time other than jerk off? And he swears he’s seen every video on the internet that’s even mildly erotic and decides the most interesting thing he can do is to clean up the mess he’s made of his apartment in the past couple of days. That’s when he finds the photo shoved into some pocket of whatever gear he was wearing in Spain. When he came home, he’d just dropped it in the doorway, immediately heading over to the couch to lay face down and get zero sleep. 

Now he’s holding the photo of Ashley, the one her dad handed him. Her daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Ashley calling him daddy. The thought makes his tip leak. Leon’s been holding off like a good little soldier for too long. But now, his right hand is covered in as much saliva as he can conjure up and his left is sweaty, gripping the photo. He’s almost proud of his aim when he watches cum paint her face. Not her real face, my god, that’d be fucking fantastic. 

Leon realizes the real mistake of this, which is that this is the only photo he has of her and now it’s covered in jizz. The guilt sinks in when he semi-successfully wipes the cum off the photo and he can see her face more clearly. He doesn’t want to degrade her like that. He remembers looking into her father’s eyes and shaking his hand, promising to save her when he was given this photo. The one he’s now desecrated, or baptized depending on how you look at it. Leon doesn’t know. He’s never been to church. 

It’s wrong. At least from some angles. But, then again, President Graham surely owes him something in return for saving his precious little girl. Aren’t you supposed to get virgins in heaven if you’re good? He’s not good, but is one too much to ask for, god? He’s been good, he swears, mostly good. And, really, she doesn’t need to be a virgin, but the thought of it really sweetens the deal. 

President Graham said he’d do anything for Leon - that was before he’d actually gone and gotten Ashley, but hey maybe Leon could ask a little favor of him now. Anything? Really? How about your daughter’s virginity? If that’s still available. Let her call me daddy for the night. 

Maybe he could bring it up as a joke and see if it goes over well. It’s wrong, though, so he doesn’t do it. 

Inevitably, he sees Ashley again when the lab brings them both in - for testing or for questioning or who the fuck knows what. Whatever it is, it’s under the guise of “making sure they’re safe”, but Leon’s not so bright-eyed about this whole saving the world thing the DSO pretends to do. They couldn’t be bothered to go see the plaga for themselves, so they’ve got the next best thing: Leon and Ashley, their little dissectables. 

The scientists don’t rip them open, but they’re sure as hell invasive. Drink this, lie down on the table, let us look into your insides with our fancy x-ray machine. The only thing Leon can think about is the fact that Ashley’s naked in the other room. At least, presumably, since he’s naked in this one. It’d be a nice thought if he had more covering him than a hospital gown and the medical staff wasn’t playing around with him like a Ken doll. Well, Ken, unlike Leon, doesn’t have anything to show down there. You know what they say , Leon thinks, if you’ve got it, flaunt it . He’s got nothing to be ashamed of in that department. In fact, he thinks he catches one of his nurses staring for a little bit longer than is medically necessary. It’s okay with him, though. 

They take saliva samples, hair samples, piss samples, blood samples. Leon considers the possibility that they’d ask for a fucking semen sample next, which wouldn’t be that hard for him to provide. But they don’t. He gets a knock on the door after his blood sample is done. 

“Sir? Are you decent?”

You tell me, Doc. Am I?

“Yep, you can come in.”

“This may sound a little bit unorthodox-”

Fuck, it’s the semen sample, isn’t it?

“But your friend is nervous about getting her blood drawn, and she agreed to let us take the sample if you came in and held her hand.”

Aw, little baby girl needs a big strong man to comfort her.

“Okay,” he says, trying to avoid feeling a little bit excited at the prospect of her needing him. 

Ashley perks up a bit when Leon comes in. She looks like she’d been crying. 

“Hey, Ash. You okay?”

“I just don’t like needles.”

As instructed, Leon walks over to hold her hand. 

“It’s okay,” he says, “you’re a big girl. You can do this.”

You’re my good girl, he thinks as he strokes the back of her hand. 

“All done,” he says when the doctor removes the needle, “you did a good job.”

He’s just being a good friend – a good man - so it shouldn’t feel the way it does, but when Ashley looks all shy about it, the words just feel different. 

“Can we go now?” Leon’s getting real impatient with the whole thing because he hasn’t eaten or jerked off in the past few hours.

“Actually, we’re going to have you both stay overnight.”

“What? Coulda told me that earlier, don’t ya think? Not like I bring my toothbrush everywhere.”

“We have toothbrushes and pajamas for both of you.”

They can spend money on pajamas, but can’t give him a raise. Bullshit. 

“No,” Ashley whines, “I need my blanket.”

“We have blankets,” the doctor ensures.

“No, it’s a special blanket, and my teddy bear.”

She’s too precious. Leon wants to feel sorry for, but he can’t stop thinking about how perfectly she fits into all his fantasies. Leon wonders what the teddy bear would think about what he’d do to her in her bedroom if given the chance. Would Ashley’s little girl toys wanna watch him fuck her brains out?

Ashley ends up calling her father to ask him to bring her things, “Daddy, please?” Leon hears her say.

Fucking hell. Daddy, please? That’s just cruel. Leon’s rock hard now and hoping they ask for a semen sample, but they don’t. 

Ashley’s dad can’t come, at least that’s what he says on the phone, which makes her cry. Leon wonders if that’s the truth or if he’s just letting her down easy. He doesn't have too much faith in government officials these days. If Leon was her daddy, he’d treat her better than that. 

Normally, Leon would be tired and reluctant to help. He’s got his own shit to deal with. But, now, Ashley’s face is buried in his chest and he’s rubbing her back. Is this what paternal instinct feels like? Is this what it feels like to be a dad, to be a daddy? 

The doctors give them the option for separate rooms, but Ashley says she doesn’t want to be alone. It makes sense, really, since they’ve barely been back for a week - Ashley’s probably dealing with the same shit Leon did in ‘98 which never fully went away. 

They must really wanna examine her - not in the way Leon does - because they give into her request to let them share a room, once Leon agrees, of course. For better or worse, it’s two beds in one room. 

It’s kinda fucked, in Leon’s opinion, that they tell Ashley they’re gonna take more blood from her during their little stay. Surely, that won’t keep her from sleeping at night. 

Leon tries to sleep. As he suspected, it doesn’t work for multiple reasons. One, he’s painfully hard, and two, Ashley’s squirming around in her bed, which squeaks when she moves. 

“You okay over there?” he says, which is just the polite way of saying, ‘ please shut up, so I can sleep’ . 

“No,” she turns to him, “I can’t sleep.”

“Try harder.”

“I can’t. I’m too scared.”

“Scared of what? No one’s gonna hurt you. And if they tried, I’m right here. I’m on the side closest to the door, so they’d have to go through me first.”

“I don’t want them to take more blood.”

He sighs. “I know, Ash, but you got through it last time. You can do it again.”

“Will you hold my hand again?”

“If it’ll help.”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. 

There’s silence for a moment and Leon’s hoping she’s finally passed out but then her little voice pipes up across the room again.

“Leon?”

“Yes?” he says, trying not to sound irritated. 

“Will you talk to me? I can’t sleep and I need something else to think about. Besides all this stuff.”

“What do you want me to talk to you about?”

“How about we play truth or dare without the dare?”

“So just ‘truth’?"

“Yeah. I mean, we could play with ‘dare’ as an option too, but I don’t want us to do anything crazy and get in trouble, you know?”

“Fair point.”

Leon doesn’t actually give that much of a fuck about getting in trouble; he’s really just hesitant to get up because he’s sporting an obvious hard-on.  

“So, I’ll go first, I guess,” Ashley says, “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

“Um,” Leon hesitates, “straight out the gate with that one…”

“Sorry. I just thought, you know, the nature of the game is to tell secrets and stuff, so it seemed like a good question to ask.”

“Yeah, it’s fine. It’s not an interesting story, but to answer your question, I was 16 when it happened.”

“Cool.”

“Mhm. So, now it’s my turn to ask you?”

“Yeah.”

“Same question.”

“You can’t ask the same question.”

“Who says I can’t ask the same question?”

“That’s how truth or dare works. You can’t just go around asking the same questions.”

“It sounds like you’re just avoiding the question. C’mon, I answered, so now it’s your turn.”

Ashley doesn’t meet Leon’s eyes, and he knows what she’s gonna say before she says it. 

“I haven’t yet.”

“You’re a virgin?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“Why do you assume I’d make fun of you? It’s not a big deal.”

Yeah, in fact, it’s hot as fuck, Ashley. 

“You don’t think so? I’m always worried that guys won’t like me because I haven’t gone all the way yet.”

“No, guys won’t mind it. Trust me.”

“I guess it’s my turn to ask you again… I’ll continue on the same subject - what’s your number, you know, like that kind of number?”

“The number of people I’ve slept with?” he asks though he knows that’s what she means. “Um, 7? I think.”

“Oh.”

“What? Did you expect it to be higher or lower?”

“I don’t know, really.”

“Okay… I guess I can’t ask you the same question this time. What have you done? Since you haven’t had sex, have you done other stuff?”

“Yeah, sorta. Just like, mostly, hand stuff or whatever, and I mean, I did some mouth… stuff to a guy once.”

“He didn’t reciprocate?”

“No.”

You got on your knees for him and put your pretty lips around his cock and he didn’t give you anything in return? That’s practically a sin. Is that what the whole ‘treat thy neighbor’ thing means? If you want your cock sucked, you should learn to eat pussy?“Really?” Leon asks, “Did you bite him or something? Were you really bad at it?”

“No, he… liked it… based on his reaction.”

Bet he did, Ash. I can only imagine.

“He should’ve done something in return then.”

“He said going down on a girl was gross.”

“He’s an idiot, then.”

“Huh? Are you saying it’s not gross?”

“Not at all. Complete opposite.”

“You like doing that?”

“Yeah, why? Is that surprising?”

Leon could eat pussy for breakfast, lunch and dinner and be a happy man. He’s never really understood how other men don’t like it. 

“I-I don’t know. I guess I hadn’t considered a guy being into that type of thing. If only I could find a guy like you.”

“What do you mean ‘a guy like me’? I’m right here.”

“Huh?”

“I said, if you want a guy like me, you have me, right here.”

“But that doesn’t - you don’t like me. Wait, do you like me?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Oh. Wow. You rejected me before, you know, when we were leaving the island, so I thought…”

“I rejected you? I rejected your job offer.”

“I wasn’t offering you a job. I was trying to flirt with you.”

“Oh.”

“It’s my turn now. Truth or dare,” Ashley says, sounding a helluva lot more excited about this game than she was a few seconds prior.

“Truth.”

“No, you’re supposed to choose dare.”

“You shouldn’t have given me the option, then.”

“C’mon please,” she begs, and Leon can’t help the places his filthy mind goes. Ashley, begging for him on her knees, he can see it. 

“Fine. What’s your dare?”

“Kiss me.”

“Come here.”

Ashley looks nervous, but she obliges. It was her idea anyway. 

“Should I-?”

“Get up here? Yeah, just climb up.”

He sees her hesitate. It is a bit awkward, admittedly. The bed isn’t made for more than one person.

“You won’t hurt me,” he assures her.

“Okay.”

Ashley climbs into his bed and Leon sits up a bit, pulling her properly into his lap. She lets him move her around like he’s playing with a doll, and it only makes him more excited. 

“What are you waiting for?,” he says, “You gave me the dare and now it seems like you’re the one chickening out.”

She’s clearly thinking about opening her mouth to say something, but she takes a deep breath and leans in for the kiss. Leon has one hand on her cheek and the other on her waist, toeing the line between touching her tits and touching her ass. He doesn’t want to scare her away, but he also can’t decide which he wants to cop a feel of first. 

Ashley’s clearly into the kiss. She’s the one pressing her tongue into Leon’s mouth in fact, but her hands don’t know where to go and it’s cute. Cute little virgin Ashley’s gonna have to get taught by her daddy. 

Leon breaks away and says, “You can touch me, you know.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere you want.”

There’s an unexpected flicker of mischief behind her eyes and he can tell exactly what she’s thinking about doing with her perfect little hands. She starts pawing at his shirt first, though. Good choice. Good girl.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he says, “I’ll take this off if you take that off.”

“Deal.”

Leon sighs in delight when he sees that Ashley’s not wearing a bra. Just as he suspected. 

“Beautiful,” he mumbles, which causes her to cover them up.

“Ah-ah,” he says, gently removing her hands, “that’s against the rules.”

And now he’s practically already touching them, so he runs with it, barely brushing across her nipples at first. It still gets a reaction out of her. 

He chuckles, making her shy away. “Why’re you nervous?” “I’m not nervous. I just feel- I don’t wanna act weird.”

“Act weird? By enjoying yourself?”

“I guess. I just don’t wanna make weird noises or, I don’t know, embarrass myself.”

“You’re not gonna embarrass yourself. Don’t worry.”

Leon’s honestly more worried that he’ll embarrass himself by cumming in his pants. 

Leon’s got one of her tits in each hand again, thumbs gliding over them. If she weren’t so nervous, he'd have one in his mouth already. It’s cute to see how she shivers after almost nothing. 

“Do you wanna lie down for me?” he asks, voice all sweet even though his thoughts are anything but. 

“Are we going to do it?”

“Have sex? Not yet, and not at all if you don’t want to. I was going to do something else… for you.”

He hopes she gets the picture, and it takes her brain a second to process, but she does.

“Oh, okay. We’ll switch places then?”

He nods and flips her over.

“Whoa!”

“Shh… We don’t wanna get in trouble, right?”

She nods.

“So you’re gonna be quiet, right?”

“I’ll try.”

“Ashley, I’m gonna need you to be a good girl and stay quiet if I’m gonna do this.” “A good girl?” her eyes glimmer when she asks. She likes it. He was so right about her. 

“You wanna be a good girl for me, right?” Leon wants her to call him daddy so badly, but he can’t risk fucking this up. He prays she’ll say it somehow, maybe by accident. 

“Mhm,” Ashley hums, relaxing a bit into the mattress. 

Leon wants to suck on her tits so badly he almost can’t help himself, but he needs to get his face between her legs before she has time to be embarrassed again. He has to do this right. Maybe if he does, he can do it again. He makes his way down her stomach with open-mouthed kisses. Once his mouth meets the waistband of her pajama pants, he looks up at her. 

“Mind if I take these off?”

“Okay,” she mumbles.

He slides them down and tosses them over to her bed across the room. Ashley’s panties are adorable, not sexy, but cute , and that makes him far more aroused.

“Sorry. I didn’t really prepare. I would’ve worn something nicer if I’d known.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he scoffs, breath tickling her skin. 

“What?”

“These,” he says, running his hands over the fabric, “are so hot you have no idea. I’m just sad I’m gonna have to take them off. Bet you look good under them, too, though.”

He really is sad. He wants to fuck her with her panties on, wants to cum all over them so she has something to remember him by.

“It’s nothing special. I wouldn’t get too excited.”

Leon doesn’t respond. Instead, he kisses her clit through the thin cotton that covers it, and she whines. He decides he’s done wasting time and takes them off. 

Leon marvels at the sight of her, “God,” he groans, not even thinking. 

“What?” Ashley panics and covers herself. “What’s wrong? Is it ugly?”

“Mm-mm. So goddamn gorgeous, can’t believe someone would pass up the opportunity to taste this.”

Leon’s words coax Ashley’s hands away from her core, so he’s able to spread her legs wider this time. He can already see how wet he’s made her and he can’t help but be proud. She said she didn’t prepare, but she did a nice job trimming down there. It’s not entirely shaved off, but it’s not like Leon gives a fuck. Even if she had a full bush, he’d still go right ahead. It’d be a little inconvenient that way though - getting hair in his mouth would make the process a little less smooth, but Leon’s not picky.

Before he gets his first taste, Leon gently rubs his thumbs over her thighs and her outer folds, eventually bringing one so close to her clit, but not right on it. He brings his mouth closer, so his warm breath fans over it, giving her just enough to make her beg.

“Please,” she says, voice cracking, sounds like she’d cry if he doesn’t do it. 

“Please what, baby?”

She can say anything and he’ll do it, but Leon’s not one to pass up the opportunity here. He’s gonna give her the chance to say it, to say what he really, really wants. 

Her voice quivers when she says it, but he sees that she’s got stars in her eyes when he looks up at her. 

“Please daddy?”

He’ll do anything for her at this point. He’ll go down on her, he’ll fuck her, he’ll withdraw every penny he has from the bank and hand it to her if she asks him like that. 

“Good girl,” he says before his mouth meets her skin. His tongue touches her clit and the noise she makes is obscene. 

Leon pulls away because he has to - they can’t get in trouble. Really, he doesn’t give a fuck if anyone sees him going down on her, he’d proudly show her off, but if they get caught, he’s probably not going to be allowed to continue. Unless that one nurse would be into a menage a trois situation. She gave him a slutty sort of vibe. He’s not gonna push his luck though. 

“Baby girl, remember what daddy said? You gotta be quiet while I do this to you.”

“Sorry, daddy.”

“No sorries, baby. Just don’t wanna have to stop if we get caught.”

She mumbles something incoherent, but regardless Leon’s mouth is back on her cunt, sloppily making out with it. She’s already soaking his face, and she hasn’t even cum yet. He can feel it in the way her thighs tremble that she’s close, though.

“I’m gonna… I’m gonna…” she says before she releases into his mouth.

He doesn’t need a warning, he groans into her core when she cums and he’d be embarrassed if he thought she was in any state of mind to notice. With the way her pussy’s spasming, he doubts she’s conscious of anything.

She practically kicks him away because she’s so oversensitive. He doesn’t tease her because he’s not trying to be mean to her tonight. Maybe some other time if she asks him in that cute little voice. He lifts his head and swipes a thumb over his lips, sucking her juices off his finger while he looks into her eyes. 

“I can’t believe you just did that,” she says, still breathless. 

“Did you like it?” He smiles at her. 

“God yes.” She throws her head back and wiggles around in excitement. Adorable.

“I’m glad.” Leon kisses her on the cheek as a goodnight. 

He doesn’t expect her to want to continue. 

“Now your turn,” she says.

“No, not tonight. Tonight’s your turn.”

“But, but,” she pouts and he’s already melting. If she’s smart she’ll use the ‘d’ word again and get whatever she wants from him. 

“But what, sweetheart?”

“I wanna do it…”

“Do what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“If you want something, you’ve gotta use your words.”

Ashley huffs, and breaks her innocent persona to say, “I want you to fuck me, Leon.” Leon blinks. Wow. Even if they’re not playing ‘daddy’ and ‘baby girl’, he never expected to hear Ashley say that. He considers chiding her, but decides against it. He asked her to tell him and she did. Fair play, Ash. 

“You sure?” He says, but he’s already spreading her legs again. 

“I’m sure.”

Leon sticks two fingers into Ashley. She’s wet enough that they slide in nice and easy despite her natural tightness. Leon sits up, ready to free himself from his pajama pants finally. When Leon’s cock arrives at the scene, Ashley’s gawking at it in the same way he imagines he ogled her tits. 

“What?” He asks, though he’s able to guess what she’ll say. He’s heard it before from other girls. 

“It’s big.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think it’ll fit?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it. We’ll just try our best.”

Ashley’s a strong girl, but he’s never seen such a look of determination on her face. It’s adorable, really. Cuter when Leon sticks the tip in and Ashley’s face scrunches up as she struggles to adjust to his size. 

“You’re doin’ so well for me, baby. It’s almost there,” he whispers into her ear. 

Leon struggles not to let out what he would deem a whorish moan.  He doesn’t wanna break the facade that he’s in charge, even though she absolutely has him wrapped around her finger. Not for long, though. Leon, with the help of his practiced agility, is able to get Ashley into his lap. He wants to hold her close like this. It’s like she can read his mind, the way she muffles her cries by burying her face in his shoulder. He rubs her back and whispers into her ear about how much of a good girl she is. 

Leon feels her pussy pulse around him, so he fucks her deeper, slower, too. He wants to savor the moment in case it’s all he gets. He tries to focus, wants to remember this for later when he’s jerking off to it, because he will jerk off to it. Maybe he’ll figure out how to convince her to send him a selfie, so he can cum on her face again. 

He can’t see her face when she cums, but he can feel her tears and hear her muffled sobs. In that moment it doesn’t matter how fucked up it might be, the thought of her crying from him fucking her is enough to push Leon over the edge. He realizes he shouldn’t have cum inside her a little too late. He apologizes, but it’s real half-assed because he barely regrets it. He’ll buy her Plan-B in the morning. Maybe they have an on-site pharmacy. He should tip whoever cleans this place since he knows the sheets are disgusting. 

Leon cleans Ashley up because he doesn’t want any of the staff to find the evidence if they examine her naked body again. Though Leon likes the thought of the nurse - the slutty one - seeing his cum dripping out of her pussy, he doesn���t want her to be embarrassed. He’ll probably jerk off to the thought of the nurse finding out. He imagines she’d get jealous and beg for him to do the same for her. 

Ashley wants to sleep in Leon’s bed, and he agrees to let her under the condition that they’ll put clothes on. If they fall asleep naked, he’ll wake up hard. He has to help her put on pajamas because her legs shake. Poor baby. He’s almost sorry he fucked her that hard on the first time. Hopefully she’s not sore. He cuddles her to sleep and it’s not out of obligation or pity. Leon’s might be filthy, but he has emotions too, and once his dick is finally soft, they come to the forefront. Daddies like to hug their baby girls too. Leon thinks cuddling is manly as long as he gets to be big spoon. 

The lady who made them stay overnight wakes them up and finds them in bed together. Leon tells her that Ashley got scared and makes sure to emphasize that she couldn’t sleep because they made her nervous when they told her she’d have to get more blood drawn. He tries to lay it on thick, make her feel a little guilty because he does feel bad for Ashley. As much as Leon wants to resist letting himself care on a personal level about anyone, he cares a lot about Ashley. It’s stupid. She was supposed to be a mission objective, someone he was supposed to protect temporarily, but now he wants to protect her forever. 

He holds her hand when she gets her blood drawn the next day and kisses her on the cheek in front of the nurse because he’s proud of his little girl and doesn’t care what others think. It makes Ashley blush, but he knows she likes it. 

When they’re finally done with their stint at the medical facility, Leon’s actually kind of upset. But Ashley puts her number in his phone with a heart next to her name and texts him when she gets home safe.

He’s pretty sure she’ll be receptive when he asks her to hang out again, maybe even go on a real date. He’s hoping that Ashley can sweet talk her dad into letting him get some more time off because now he’s got something - or someone - to do in his free time. President Graham’s got Leon by the balls and now he’s pussy-whipped over Ashley. Like father, like daughter. Father, not daddy. The president’s just her father, Leon is Ashley’s daddy. 

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Julia Doubleday

Last week, Jason Gale of Bloomberg put out an excellent piece about post-COVID brain damage, titled “What We Know About Covid’s Impact on Your Brain.”

The piece is broad and draws on dozens of studies to paint a concerning picture of Your Brain on COVID. It’s not the first piece to do so in the mainstream press, but it’s one of a small handful over nearly half a decade. Gale’s piece gathers evidence pointing to increased risks of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, cognitive impairment, worsening of previous psychiatric conditions, and significant drops in IQ.

The piece goes on to mention viral persistence, immune system disruption and blood clots as linked to the cognitive impacts of COVID- all three are key targets of ongoing research into Long COVID. It’s a wonderful summary to help people get a picture of the enormous amount of research pointing to brain damage following COVID.

It also begs the question: why is the public learning potentially life-altering information about a virus they’ve almost certainly contracted multiple times now from the economics section of Bloomberg? (Or from The Gauntlet, for that matter?)

As politicians pushed us all “back to normal”, a common refrain from the top was that we “had the tools” to deal with COVID, and that individuals could now make their own decisions about what sorts of risks they were comfortable taking.

I’ve written at length about the absurdity of attempting to individualize what is a collective problem. What was once a libertarian, far-right wing idea - disease control should be the territory of individuals, not society at large- was first promoted by Republicans, then mainstreamed by liberals in order to paint Biden’s failed vaccine-only herd-immunity strategy as a success.

As we settled into a cycle of endless waves of disease driven by rapidly evolving new variants, our government and public health bodies continued to promote the fantasy that everyone can make their own decisions about whether or not to get infected.

Of course, anyone who does make the “risk assessment” that catching COVID is unsafe for them is functionally shut out of society. It’s hardly a choice freely made, as the social and economic punishments for failing to “return to normal” continue to intensify.

But it wasn’t enough to snatch away free tests, vaccines and COVID treatments, all but eliminate the isolation period for active infections, and push people to view disease control as a personal responsibility. Along with instructing people to make their own “risk assessments” about COVID, our government also downplays, minimizes, and flat out denies the risks of recurrent infections.

For example: COVID causes cognitive damage. That seems like an important piece of information to give the American public while you encourage them to make risk assessments about whether to contract it every year, does it not?

What about parents deciding to send their kids back to schools with zero precautions?

Should they be warned that COVID carries a significant risk of brain damage following infection, before deciding whether it’s a good idea to let their children catch it twice a year?

And if that information is quite deliberately kept from the public by the same bodies failing to provide collective mitigations, are you asking people to make “risk assessments”, or are you just pushing them to catch COVID?

Let’s review what the public has been told about cognitive damage after COVID by the CDC, the President, the administration, and prominent media figures.

The CDC’s twitter account has never tweeted the words “cognitive damage” or “brain damage” in reference to COVID. On March 23, 2023, the CDC twitter account posted its only reference to “brain fog”:

"Common symptoms of Long COVID include fatigue, shortness of breath, fast heartbeat, & brain fog. If several weeks have passed since you had #COVID19 & you still have symptoms that interfere with your daily activities, talk to your doctor."

The current CDC Director, Mandy Cohen, has never tweeted the words “cognitive damage,” “brain damage” or “brain fog.” Neither has former CDC Director Rachelle Walensky.

In interviews, Mandy, like the rest of the administration, likes to keep it vague. Brain damage is certainly not on the talking points menu; no specific outcomes are. We are “living with COVID”. We “have the tools”. She encourages vaccinations and not masks, the tool that can actually prevent infection. In a 2023 media tour about “rebuilding trust” with the public, she repeatedly refers to the pandemic in the past tense although the pandemic is ongoing according to the WHO.

Here’s an interesting one: former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha has tweeted about COVID brain damage once: on June 17, 2021, ten months before he joined the administration. He’s since become a prominent minimizer who calls masking “fringe” and downplays post-COVID immune system dysregulation, but here’s what he had to say in June 2021:

"Important study out of UK

Worth your time

Researchers examined brain MRIs of people before and after they got COVID, matched with controls

What did they find?

Substantial loss of grey matter in those who had gotten but recovered from COVID

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v1 "

Wow! Seems like the kind of thing the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator would want to share with people, rather than never mention again.

And of course, the most subtle propaganda the Administration, fellow politicians, and CDC leaders employ is their refusal to mask or appear to mitigate COVID in any way. If each COVID infection carries a risk of brain damage, surely the Director of the CDC wouldn’t constantly show up in public spaces - including airport terminals- maskless?

The President famously wouldn’t even mask after testing positive for COVID, shortly before dropping out of his re-election campaign. He, certainly, has never talked about COVID’s effects on the brain (if indeed, he’s aware of them), instead using airtime to brag about defeating disease mitigation tools. “The pandemic is over,” he incorrectly stated in the fall of 2022, “if you notice, no one is wearing masks,” he went on to say, correctly identifying his success at stigmatizing COVID prevention.

Perhaps no single outlet is more responsible for the dishonest normalizing of continual COVID reinfections than the New York Times newsletter The Morning in the hands of David Leonhardt. During the mass death event of Omicron Wave 1, Dave was the main party responsible for the “omicron is mild” narrative (a lie) that spread round the world. This February, he “both sides’d” vaccinating children because, quote, “children are extremely unlikely to become seriously ill from Covid”. As recently reported by CBS News, up to 5.8 million kids have Long COVID.

Of course, it’s fantastic that CBS News is reporting on the damage that has been done to children by returning them to classrooms without upgraded ventilation or other mitigations. It would have been better if major media outlets had conveyed this risk before millions of children were disabled.

It’s also great that Bloomberg is reporting about the brain damage that can follow COVID, deep diving the research and putting forward three of the most compelling explanations for Long COVID. But how many people, nearly five years into the crisis, know anything about this topic? How many people who are three, four, five infections in, consented to these risks when they took their masks off?

Who is responsible for this ignorance? Is it not the public health bodies and politicians charged with responding to the virus?

In interviews and speeches, it’s not only cognitive damage that our elected leaders and public health officials fail to mention. President Biden has said the words “Long COVID” a handful of times publicly. Vice President Harris has never said them. Is this not bizarre to anyone who expects the Democratic party to convey scientific facts about the pandemic to the public? Is it not clearly an attempt to hide those harmed by the ongoing “let it rip” strategy from view?

When tens of millions of Americans are disabled by a virus on your watch, never uttering the name of the disease they have is deliberate, and leaves sufferers of Long COVID struggling with stigmatization in their personal lives. By enforcing silence around Long COVID at the top of the Biden Administration, in the CDC, and among media talking heads, the public is encouraged to doubt and dismiss the condition entirely.

If this administration is so certain the public would freely choose to ignore the millions suffering from Long COVID, the risks of infection including brain damage, the high rates of transmission in our communities, and continue to opt out of mitigations and mask wearing, why do they work so hard to hide all of the above?

Why do they, along with most other electeds on the Hill, pretend they have never heard the words Long COVID, refuse to acknowledge the ongoing toll of mass infection, and continue to push testing and data out of reach? Is this the behavior of leaders who are confident that the public has freely chosen to cruelly and deliberately abandon millions of people to long-term chronic illness, and to repeatedly risk joining them?

Or is it the behavior of leaders who know they are on borrowed time, sweeping the ever-growing body of evidence and ever-higher pile of victims under the rug while stubbornly repeating that “nobody is wearing masks”?

Scientists, advocates and reporters face an uphill battle getting information about the risks of repeated COVID infections to the public. It is uphill not because of the lack of studies, resources, victims, or voices, but because those who could do the most good continue to use their platforms to do the most harm. As long as the public receives the message from our leaders that recurrent COVID infections aren’t dangerous, the truth has a high wall of propaganda to hurdle.

Nevertheless, the truth continues to emerge via studies, articles, the people who’ve been harmed, and those who care. It’s unfortunate that our public health officials and politicians will be remembered for hiding the facts about COVID, rather than disseminating them.

[h0mocodes]

H 0 M O C O D E S 🌙

I figured I would talk a little about my life experiences beyond the spam posting of gifs ✨There is person with a story to tell 😭

My name is Dhyrek Grigorieva. Most just call me Derek. My partner thinks it's funny to mispronounce my name or call me comrade Zady 🤨 I'm 45 years old and I work as an administrator for CMS/SSA at a local hospital. I enjoy cookery (more specifically paleo/keto based), weightlifting & writing. I actually have four novels I am working on 😊

A lesser Evil which was a novel length witcher fan fic that I have removed all the copywritten stuff from & did a complete re-write.

Halycon is a classic cyberpunk series.

Quillington is a male queer Lovecraftian horror romance. It is written exclusively in Polari which was an English Pidgeon language used by gay men in Victorian/Edwardian period.

The Abysmal Horncall is Dracula but from the perfective of Draculas' wives.

I am also a musician. I make sample based lofi/cloud rap/vaporbient or drone noise music under the name h0mocides.

Music | h0mocides (bandcamp.com)

I'm creative but can also be very a bit standoffish with most people. I'm in decent shape; Average-height with olive skin, naturally dark auburn hair but the light makes it look darker with blue-gray eyes. I'm Serbian, well, to be specific my mother's side of the family are Bosnian and Balkan Jews who settled in Serbia. My father's family were from Hungary that came to work the molybdenum mines in Serbia. My extended family are Sicilian, Turkish and Hawaiian but I never met them. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood. I was raised by my mother; my father having left when I was young. I had a brother who killed himself about 2 decades ago. I have one stepbrother and two stepsisters; The sisters I have met twice. I feel like that was enough 🙄 My stepbrother is pedophile that made me sexual advances towards me, and I feel to some degree is a reason why I struggle with internalized homophobia. My stepfather...How do I describe him:

Well, insane but there's a bit more there to pick apart...

He believes in the great replacement theory

He believes that Jews are at the center of controlling the world bank (he doesn't see us as Jews because we don't present as he puts it 'New Yorker Jews')

He believes that America should not be a democracy but rather a Libertarian based theocracy

He believes in a strange Venn diagram where non heterosexual sex/gender meets with pedophilia and bestiality.

He supports project 25 and says there is no place in the modern age for faggots, embryo murders or California styled Bolsheviks.

He believes that the president is representative of God's will and no other religion than Jesus has a place in this great country.

So, simply put we don't see eye-to-eye. When my stepbrother was convicted of child sexual assault, he went off the deep end and then Trump appeared. I should note had it not been for a blood clot we later found out from text messages he fully planed on going to the J-6 rally to 'save America.' Won't shock you but he also is fatphobic and racist. The aforementioned was something he used to bully me about a lot which is why I yo-yo in-between BED and AFRID.

When I was 14 years old, we left Serbia because of the Bosnian War. Lived in Germany and the UK for a year. I loved living in the UK, but our solicitors fucked up and we were shipped to Canada but sadly they were over capacity for immigrants, and we were sent to Anchorage, Alaska while our claim was processed. We got citizenship and lived in Isla Vista, California, Yuma, Arizona and later Aurora, Colorado. That's where the rest of my mother's family is and I will post about it another time, but for obvious reasons I have nothing to do with them. My mother met her husband, and his family was from Tennessee; I lived here from 17-25 and then left for New York after series of bad events; Friends overdosing, physical abuse from my stepfather, etc. So, before the pandemic I was living in Floral Park, NY. I won't lie I was doing sex work, DJing and Mobile Messenger Service (those are the guys on bikes delivering documents to corps in NY). Then my mom got very sick. My lease was up so I decided to move back home briefly to take care of her. The intent was to move back to NY or CA but it didn't pan out that way. I actually almost moved to CA but that too is a post for another time. We found out what she had would later be called Covid related Tapia syndrome and Covid induced AFIB.

Within 5 days of arriving New York was shut down; I was rather lucky. I lived there from DEC 2019-MAR 2023. Sadly, my step and I had been on a long slow burn over issues with me accusing him of stealing money from my savings, creating credit cards in my name, stealing and destroying my personal effects and his issues with my religion (Rodnovery, or Slavic Native Faith), my clothing (apparently it looked 'too gay') and how I was flaunting the faggot shit. I will not make this already long ass entry long but just summarize. He attacked me and tried to kill me. Police were involved and watched until I safely got my stuff. My mother was beyond traumatized but I needed to leave for my safety, and I didn't want the stress to further impact her health. From March until August I was completely homeless without work or money living out of my SUV (mom was paying for it and buying me food secretly) under a bridge. I was talking to my new life partner, and I ran into my ex-boyfriend, Cory, who had me move in with him. Shortly later, Stephen and I went from boyfriends to partners and were in a position to move in together. I will say I love with living with him (despite the differences in our daily routines and our approach existing) but Christ on a stick I 🤬 hate Preakness apartments with unbridled passion lol 😖It has been interesting for two in love gay boys, one autistic with C-PTSD and the other with ADDHD moving in together building a life.

Sadly, the experiences of seeing murders, rapes, drug culture and gang violence along with my experiences throughout my life had a deeper impact that I realized. It was during that time I lived off of credit cards and recently the creditors have become particularly aggressive with litigation, but I am lucky that most have been charged off and I'm now with CCCS of Chattanooga which is helping me get back on track. I am pending 2 accounts to be added, on Oct. 4th I am going to court to see if one can be forgiven and 1 is with another agency so I am honestly making an attempt to fix my life and now that I am with a brilliant and loving man I feel hopeful but at the same time living in this Trump age is making us both consider our options. Japan, Scotland or Canada is on our short lists and we're going to Japan from Oct. 25th-Nov 15th so it's definitely a possibly. What a strange age to live in. Also, we're going to move out of Antioch in March as I literally hate this city 🖕 We have a few tours set up with nearby complexes at Tusculum, Stewart Ferry, Piccadilly and Heron Pointe.

Anyways, here's a survey to get to know me 💀❤️

Hobbies - I like Papier-mâché, Candle making and Walking

Have you ever collected anything? What was it? Yes, I collect enamel/button pins, vinyl stickers, vinyl's/cassette's.

How many relationships have you been in? 6-8, I think.

Turn ons - Confidence, Needing Me, Trust, independence

Turn offs - Ego, being the 'bitchy gay'

Favorite food - Riced Cauliflower Onigiri and ika sashimi

Favorite drink - Macha Latte and Water

Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Neither... I ama realist.

What is the most expensive thing you own? PS5, Gucci Shoes and SUV.

What is the cheapest yet most useful thing you own? knock off Plushes from China and maybe...my Tamagotchi lol

Text or call? Text...call if it is an emergency or our first time talking.

What is your definition of success? Being happy. Periodt.

Favorite song? VØJ, Narvent, KoruSe - Euphoria

Favorite artist? Yoshitaka Amano

Favorite flower? Chrysanthemums, Mushrooms & Ghost Flowers

What is the best gift you could receive right now? A kiss from Stephen

Do you like anime? Yes, but only 80s/90s magical girl, horror and cyberpunk. I absolutely hate harem, Isekai and mecha.

What was the name of the last book you read? Vampire Hunter D Volume 29: Noble Front

Do you believe world peace will ever exist? No, conflict and dominance is part of the human condition unfortunately.

Do you have any allergies? Onions, Dairy and gluten.

If you won a trip to Hawaii and you could take 5 people with you, who would those 5 people be? Stephen, Toby, My mom, Stephen's mom and best friend, Bree!

How many countries have you visited? 10 (Japan, South Korea, China, Iceland, Germany, UK, Canada, USA, Russia and Italy)

Do you consider yourself mature? LOL....No.

What is your favorite quote? “Transient guests are we.” ― Hideyuki Kikuchi

If you could live anywhere, where would you live? The place can be in an imaginary, fantasy, or the real world. If mythical I would love to live in Shangri-La, Toussaint from the witcher or maybe Night City from Cyberpunk 2077. IRL - maybe France or Portugal.

What were you like in 2013? A junkie. A Miss. I don't miss her.

If you could change one thing about society, what would it be? Get rid of all this MAGA bullshit.

Are you LGBT? Yes, Gay/Top.

What is the funniest joke you have ever been told? How does Darth Vader like his bagels? On the dark side.

What is your favorite animal? Narwhals, Cats and Goats.

What is one thing that everyone is bad at? Remembering shit.

What time do you normally sleep? How many hours of sleep do you usually get? 9-10. Maybe 6-7.

What is your favorite clothing store? Vapor95 and Incerun.

If you had the power to erase one person from the world so that nobody remembered him or her except you, would you, do it? First, it would be Donald Trump and hell yes, I would.

What do you fear the most? Losing Stephen. He's my heart.

If you could travel back to one year and relive it again, which year would it be? 2009. Would've kept clean and dumped Michael. He ruined so much for me.

What is the weirdest thing you have ever seen? RNC causing Grindr to crash lol.

What is something you will never forget? Grace and Compassion.

Is it harder to love or to hate somebody? I will say this quote ....Doug, you think killing is hard, huh? You wait in the bushes, the animal might outrun you or charge you. It's not easy to get your shot, hm? Try healing something. That is hard. That requires patience. You can break something in two seconds. But it can take forever to fix it. A lifetime, generations. That's why we have to be careful on this earth and gentle.

Coffee or tea? Both. Honestly.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Cohn at HuffPost:

The first-ever negotiations between the federal government and pharmaceutical companies have led to agreements that will lower the prices of 10 treatments, reducing costs for the Medicare program and for some individual seniors, the Biden administration announced early Thursday morning. This round of negotiations began in 2023 and took place because of the Inflation Reduction Act, the law that Democrats in Congress passed on a party-line vote and that President Joe Biden signed two years ago. The new prices are for drugs covering a variety of conditions, including diabetes and inflammatory illnesses, and are set to take effect in January 2026. The negotiation process is going to happen each year, with a new set of drugs each time. If all goes to plan, that means the scope of drugs subject to negotiated prices will grow each year, while the savings will accumulate.

“When these lower prices go into effect, people on Medicare will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs for their prescription drugs and Medicare will save $6 billion in the first year alone,” Biden said in a prepared statement, citing figures that analysts at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calculated and published on Thursday. “It’s a relief for the millions of seniors that take these drugs to treat everything from heart failure, blood clots, diabetes, arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and more ― and it’s a relief for American taxpayers.” Of course, those numbers refer to aggregate savings on drug spending. Figuring out what they will mean for individual Medicare beneficiaries is difficult, because so much depends on people’s individual circumstances ― like which drugs they take, or which options for prescription coverage they use. It also depends on knowing the actual, real prices for these drugs today, after taking into account the discounts that private insurers managing Medicare drug plans extract from manufacturers. Those discounts are proprietary information that the federal government cannot release.

Great news: The Biden Administration, pharmaceutical companies, and Medicare have negotiated hefty price reductions for 10 high-cost drugs, including Januvia, FIASP, and Entresto.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Alexei  navalny did not like tragedies. He preferred Hollywood films and fables in which heroes vanquish villains and good triumphs over evil. He had the looks and talent to be one of those heroes, but he was born in Russia and lived in dark times, spending his last days in a penal colony in the Arctic permafrost. A fan of “Star Wars”, he described his ordeal in lyrical terms. “Prison [exists] in one’s mind,” he wrote from his cell in 2021. “And if you think carefully, I am not in prison but on a space voyage…to a wonderful new world.” That voyage ended on February 16th.

Mr Navalny’s death was blamed by Russian prison authorities on a blood clot—though his doctor said he suffered from no condition which made that likely. Whatever ends up on his death certificate, he was killed by Vladimir Putin. Russia’s president locked him up; in his name Mr Navalny was subjected to a regime of forced labour and solitary confinement. Mr Navalny will be celebrated as a man of remarkable courage. His life will be remembered for what it says about Mr Putin, what it portends for Russia and what it demands of the world.

A man of formidable intelligence, Mr Navalny identified the two foundations on which Mr Putin has built his power: fear and greed. In Mr Putin’s world everyone can be bribed or threatened. Not only did Mr Navalny understand those impulses, he struck at them in devastating ways.

His insight was that corruption was not just a side hustle but the moral rot at the heart of Mr Putin’s state. His anti-corruption crusade formed a new genre of immaculately documented and thriller-like films that displayed the yachts, villas and planes of Russia’s rulers. These videos, posted on YouTube, culminated in an exposé of Mr Putin’s billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea coast that has been watched 130m times. Despite the palace’s iron gates, adorned with a two-headed imperial eagle, Mr Navalny portrayed its owner not as a tsar so much as a tasteless mafia boss.

Mr Navalny also understood fear and how to defeat it. Mr Putin’s first attempt to kill him was in 2020, when he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok smeared inside his underwear. By sheer good luck Mr Navalny survived, regained his strength in Germany and less than a year later flew back to Moscow to defy Mr Putin in a blast of publicity.

He returned in the full knowledge that he would probably be arrested. On the way back to confront the evil ruler who had tried to poison him he did not read Hamlet. He watched Rick and Morty, an American cartoon. By mocking Mr Putin, he diminished him. “I’ve mortally offended him by surviving,” he said from the dock during his trial in 2021. “He will enter history as a poisoner. We had Yaroslav the Wise and Alexander the Liberator. And now we will have Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants.”

Mr Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in jail on extremism charges. He turned his sentence into an act of cheerful defiance. Every time he appeared in court hearings via video link from prison, his smile cut through the walls of his cell and beamed across Russia’s 11 time zones. On February 15th, on the eve of his death, he was in court again. Dressed in dark-grey prison uniform he laughed in the face of Mr Putin’s judges, suggesting they should put some money into his account as he was running short. In the end there was only one way Mr Putin could wipe the smile off his face.

In his essay “Live Not by Lies”, in 1974, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel-prize-winning Soviet novelist, wrote that “when violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: ‘I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you’.” Mr Navalny understood, but instead of running he held his ground.

His great strength was to understand Mr Putin’s fear of other people’s courage. In one of his early communications from jail he wrote that: “it is not honest people who frighten the authorities…but those who are not afraid, or, to be more precise: those who may be afraid, but overcome their fear.”

That is why his death portends a deepening of repression inside Russia. Mr Navalny’s murder was not the first and it will not be the last. The next targets could be Ilya Yashin, a brave politician who followed Mr Navalny to prison, or Vladimir Kara-Murza, a historian, journalist and politician who has been sentenced to 25 years on treason charges for speaking against the war. The lawyers and activists who continue to defend these dissidents are also in danger. Since Mr Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, the number of prisoners has increased 15 times. Even as the remnants of Stalin’s gulag fill with political prisoners, professional criminals are being recruited and released to fight in Ukraine.

Mr Navalny’s death also casts a shadow over ordinary Russians. In Moscow and across Russia, people flooded the streets at the news. Before the police started to arrest them, they covered memorials for previous victims of political repression in flowers. Yet that repression is intensifying. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, 1,305 men and women have been prosecuted for speaking out against it. A wave of repression is also swallowing up people who never before engaged in politics. The president will shoot into the crowds if he must.

For the West, Mr Navalny’s death contains a call to action. Mr Putin considers its leaders too weak and too decadent to resist him. And for many years Western politicians and businessmen did much to prove that fear and greed work in the West, too. When Mr Putin first bombed and shelled Chechnya in the early 2000s, Western politicians turned a blind eye and continued to do business with his cronies. When he murdered his opponents in Moscow and annexed Crimea in 2014, they slapped his wrist. Even after he had invaded Ukraine in 2022, they hesitated to provide enough weapons for Russia to be defeated. Every time the West stepped back, Mr Putin took a step forward. Every time Western politicians expressed their “grave concern”, he smirked.

The West needs to find the strength and courage that Mr Navalny showed. It should understand that Mr Navalny’s murder, the soaring number of political prisoners, the torture and beating of people across Russia, the assassination of Mr Putin’s opponents in Europe and the shelling of Ukrainian cities are all part of the same war. Without resolve, the West’s military and economic superiority will count for nothing.

Western governments should start by treating people like Mr Kara-Murza as prisoners of Mr Putin’s war who need to be exchanged with Russian prisoners in the West or prisoners of war in Ukraine. They should not stigmatise ordinary Russians living under a paranoid dictator and his goons, or put the onus on ordinary people to overthrow the dictator who is repressing them.

The best retort to Mr Putin is by arming Ukraine. Every time America’s Congress votes down aid, Russia takes comfort. The leaders assembled at the Munich Security Conference, who heard Mr Navalny’s wife, Yulia, speak of justice for her husband’s death, need to stiffen their resolve to see through the war. For their part Ukrainian politicians must see that standing up for Russian activists and prisoners is also a way of helping their own country—just as Mr Navalny called for peace, for rebuilding Ukraine and the prosecution of Russian war crimes. Liberating Ukraine would be the best way to liberate Russia, too.

The voyage ends

After he had been poisoned, Mr Navalny returned home because he believed that history was on his side and that Russia was freeing itself from the deadly grip of its own imperial past. “Putin is the last chord of the ussr,” he told The Economist a few months before he took that last fateful journey. “People in the Kremlin know there is a historic current that is moving against them.” Mr Putin invaded Ukraine to reverse that current. Now he has killed Mr Navalny.

Mr Navalny would not want Mr Putin’s message to prevail. “[If I get killed] the obvious thing is: don’t give up,” he once told American film-makers. “All it takes for evil to triumph is the inaction of good people. There’s no need for inaction.”

Mr Navalny’s death has seemed imminent for months. And yet there is something crushing about it. He was not alone in believing that good triumphs over evil, and that heroes vanquish villains. His courage was an inspiration. To see that moral order so brutally overturned is a terrible affront. ■

[darkmaga-retard]

Did you know that military contractors created the experimental gene therapy injections that trick human cells into producing billions of toxic spike prions in the blood? Did you know that NIH owns 50 percent of the patents for the mRNA vaccines that Moderna and Pfizer pushed out on the populace? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is blowing the whistle on the whole operation, and should Trump win the presidency this fall, look for the crooks and criminals responsible for this plandemic tragedy to serve hard time in federal prison for it. In fact, Pfizer and Moderna were “paid to put their stamps on those vaccines as if they came from the pharmaceutical industry,” according to RFK Jr., because it was a military project from the very beginning.

Why would the military be involved in developing heart-crippling biological weapons of mass destruction that were distributed and injected into 270 million Americans?

There is a long history of the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) employing their People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to create biowarfare weapons, and now it appears that they partnered with National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use gain-of-function research to create Covid-19, create deadly vaccines to “prevent” it and its spread. Then, the CCP colluded with NIH and pretended that the pharmaceutical industry created the jabs to “save” everyone, even though the spike protein injections are military-grade biological weapons of mass destruction, designed to kill humans and were created for that reason by the military.

Never forget the United States used small pox virus as a biological weapon to wipe out the indigenous Native Americans, so if you’re thinking this coverage of mRNA jabs as biological weapons used by the U.S. military and Big Pharma against Americans is too far-fetched, think again.

[constantly-deactivated]

Nancy Pelosi Military Tribunal, 👇 Part I

(Due to the length of this article, I am separating it into parts. I will try to get the 2nd part published this evening.)

Thirteen hours over two days is how long it took Vice Adm. Darse E. Crandall of the United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps to present evidence against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom a 3-officer panel found guilty of treason, seditious conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit murder late Thursday afternoon.

In an opening statement, the admiral said JAG and the Office of Military Commissions had copious evidence linking Pelosi to crimes dating back to 1987 but, for time’s sake, would focus only on her most recent and egregious offenses, starting with a 2016 murder-for-hire plot to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. He said JAG was aware of many nefarious schemes to end Trump’s life–all of which were bungled or foiled–and had incontrovertible evidence tying Pelosi to four.  Moreover, Adm. Crandall told the panel he would prove beyond reasonable doubt that Pelosi in 2018 hatched a plot to kidnap Barron Trump to force Donald Trump’s resignation, so Pence would be the new president. Pelosi, Vice Adm. Crandall said, had even considered having Melania or Ivanka murdered in hopes of forcing a tormented Trump from office.

Furthermore, he said Pelosi shared responsibility with the late Gavin Newsom in locking down California and enforcing draconian vaccine mandates that sickened or killed countless residents of the Golden State. Pelosi’s “Covid crimes,” he intoned, violated the Constitution of the United States; they affronted the very people she had sworn to serve. But as persons withered and died—not from Covid but from the clot shot —and families grieved, Pelosi grew in wealth and power, immeasurably so. When she wasn’t wielding an iron fist, she was clutching the bottle, Vice Adm. Crandall said, and informed the panel witness statements and Pelosi’s own documents would give credence to JAG’s allegations.

“This woman isn’t even vaccinated,” Vice Adm. Crandall said, pointing at Pelosi. “We know this because we pulled her blood, and we can test. She eschewed her own mandates. Why? Because she knew the vaccines were dangerous, and we’ll prove that.”

When offered a chance to give her own opening statement, Pelosi, appearing sans counsel, pursed her lips and kept quiet. She was disheveled and seemed distraught, her shriveled, bony fingers visibly trembling as bloodshot eyes scanned the court.

Vice Admiral Crandall introduced a witness, a 29-year-old Latin male named Xavier Ramirez, who, having been sworn in, described himself as Pelosi’s former gigolo and “boy toy.” He testified under oath that he had regularly “entertained” Pelosi between April and July of 2016, usually at upscale hotels in the San Francisco area. Mr. Ramirez said he hadn’t documented each meeting, but guessed he saw Pelosi 15 times.

“I hope you were paid well, Mr. Ramirez,” Vice Adm. Crandall quipped.

“Very well,” the witness replied.

“I’ve never seen this man before in my life,” Pelosi shouted at the top of her lungs, her voice gravelly and hoarse.

The admiral reprimanded her outburst, saying she could either exercise decorum or be physically restrained.

“Mr. Ramirez, when we first spoke, you mentioned a specific meeting on a certain date. If you would, would you please repeat what you said, to the best of your recollection,” Vice Adm. Crandall said.

“It was July 21, 2016. Nancy was in a bad way because Mr. Donald Trump just accepted the Republican nomination. Trump this, Trump that was all she talked about. She paid me, so I listened. She was drinking, of course. Nancy likes to drink. She is a big drinker, a habitual drinker, to say it in a nice way. So, the more she drinks, the more she talks—”

“—While we appreciate your colorful tale, could you please be briefer, come to the point,” Vice Adm. Crandall said.

“The point, yes; she said she wanted to kill Donald Trump,” the witness said.

“Kill or have killed?”

“Well, have killed; she certainly wasn’t doing it herself. Nancy asked me do I know someone, because I am Cuban, I must know someone, she told me. And there I am thinking to myself why I should know a hitman just because I’m Cuban. I thought maybe she joked and asked if she was kidding, but, no, Nancy was dead serious. She offered me $25k cash in advance to find someone. Nancy said if I did, and it got done, I’d get $225K more and the person who kill Trump get $250K. Then she laughs and says to me if Trump has too much protection, she can do the daughter—you know, tall, pretty blonde, Ivanka.”

Vice Admiral asked if Mr. Ramirez had seen or handled the $25,000.

“I saw it come out of her purse. Banded stacks $1000 each. I saw it, I touched it, but I did not take. I told her, ‘You’re Nancy Pelosi, you must have powerful friends. I want nothing to do with this,’ and she tells me, and this I remember very well, ‘This time it has to be an outside party.’ I tell her flatly that’s not why I am here,” Mr. Ramirez explained.

“And I assume, Mr. Ramirez, the ‘services’ you performed for the defendant didn’t cost 25 grand,” Vice Adm. Crandall said.

Mr. Ramirez laughed. “No, I wish, but much less, and she paid me in advance.”

“Did you bring your concerns to the Secret Service, to the police?”

“Are you crazy? No. If she could kill Trump, I could get killed like a fly on the wall. When I left, it was last time I saw her,” Mr. Ramirez said.

“Yet the defendant claims she’s never seen you before today. But we know that’s untrue,” Vice Adm. Crandall said.

He projected onto a large screen television digital images he had obtained from the witness. One clearly showed Pelosi and Mr. Ramirez hugging in a hotel room; another showed them standing side-by-side, smiling at a camera. “These are ‘selfies’ you took in the defendant’s company, is that correct?”

“That’s correct,” Mr. Ramirez said.

“Why did you take them?”

“Bragging rights.”

Vice Adm. Crandall snorted. “I really don’t think that’s something to brag about, Mr. Ramirez. You’re excused.”

The admiral addressed the panel: “This alone is solicitation for murder, which in traditional courts carries up to a 20-year sentence. In this case, we’re talking about a presidential candidate. And we’re by no means done.”

As Soon as I get more I will post it.🤔

It's coming in parts so bear with me.🙏

[reality-detective]

Just to let you know things ARE happening behind the scenes, I'll leave this here 👇

Operation Warp Speed Architect Arrested

U.S. Army Rangers on Saturday arrested Operation Warp Speed architect Moncef Slaoui, the Moroccan-born pharmaceutical mogul who in May 2020 spearheaded the administration’s efforts to poison 300 million Americans by January 2021, a source in General Eric M. Smith’s said.

Slaoui largely flew under the radar throughout the Plandemic. The media seldom mentioned his name, focusing instead on publicly influential figures like Fauci, Birx, and Collins, articulate public servants who spoke better English. Our source said Slaoui was relegated to media obscurity because the administration thought he looked shady and that Americans wouldn’t trust him.

And Americans would have been right not to trust a man who spent 30 years as GlaxoSmithKline’s head of vaccines department and was working at Moderna when Trump picked him to helm Warp Speed. At the time, Trump called Slaoui “one of the most respected men in the world in the production and, really, on the formulation of vaccines,” but was merely parroting what subordinates Michael Pence, Alex Azar, Admiral Brett Giroir, and Robert Redfield told him. They and others, our source said, were part of a major conspiracy to deceive President Trump into putting Slaoui in charge of OWS.

Slaoui faced criticism for holding $10 million in Moderna stock options and working as an advisor to Brii Biosciences, a firm with sizable Chinese investments. To avoid a conflict of interest, he begrudgingly resigned from those positions, then began working with then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar—who praised Slaoui as “arguably the world’s most experienced and successful vaccine developer”—to hasten Warp Speed.

Our source said that Slaoui, despite resigning from Moderna, continued receiving payouts exceeding $56 million after the FDA granted Moderna emergency-use authorization on December 8, 2020.

However, the military was less interested in Slaoui’s financial motivations than his knowledge that Moderna’s experimental vaccine had killed 34 of 600 Phase II trial participants in June 2020. White Hats, our source said, now have a wealth of evidence—physical and digital documents authored by Slaoui—proving he knew the vaccine caused myocarditis and potentially lethal blood clots but never publicly disclosed that information, even after Trump personally asked him if the shots were truly safe and effective.

“We have a treasure chest of incriminating evidence on Slaoui. This guy was one of the biggest violators of the Plandemic. We got a letter he wrote to Pence, saying he knew vaccines would kill people and that they could blame Trump for pushing Operation Warp Speed on the public. We have tons more that will be made available when he faces a military tribunal and hopefully gets hanged. We had more than enough proof to get him,” our source said.

The arrest, he added, came after Gen. Smith talked with Colonel J.D. Keirsey, a White Hat council member and commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the U.S. Army’s premier light infantry unit and special operations force within the United States Army Special Operations Command.

On Saturday morning, Rangers bashed down the door to Slaoui’s 7,500-sq-ft home in Zebulon, North Carolina. One of his three sons, Hussein Mohamad Abdul Slaoui, was present and pulled a pistol on the Rangers. He was shot dead, and the Rangers took Slaoui into custody. He shouted, “sayantaqim li allah,” or “Allah will avenge me,” as the Rangers shoved him into a civilian vehicle.

“We got him. We got the bastard,” our source said. “He’s just one of many. But we’re chipping away at them.”

As an aside, Slaoui was fired from chairman of the board of directors of Galvani Bioelectronics, a subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline, in March 2021 after several young male employees accused him of sexual harassment.

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸⚔️🇷🇺 🚨

U.S. PRESIDENT BIDEN SLAMS RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PUTIN AFTER FAR RIGHT-WING RUSSIAN ACTIVIST ALAXEI NAVALNY'S DEATH IN RUSSIAN PRISON

📹 🤡 U.S. Great-Grandfather and Clown in Chief President Joe Biden slams Putin over the death of Far Right-wing political activist Alexei Navalny's death in a Russian prison, using his death as an opportunity to call for more funding for Kiev's failing war in the east of the country.

The U.S. President had nothing to say about the death of the American and Chilean journalist, Gonzalo Lira, in a Ukrainian prison just weaks ago, even after publishing videos earlier in the year begging the U.S. government to intervene before he was tortured to death. Sadly, he died as a result of untreated pneumonia in a Ukrainian prison hospital.

Alexei Navalny, though supported by Western governments and raised up as an "anti-corruption" activist, especially by the United States, was known in Russia as a self-described "certified nationalist" who called Muslims "flies and cockroaches" who needed to exterminated.

Navalny was serving a prison sentence of 19 years for offenses involving "extremism", with some early sources saying he died from a blood clot, losing consciousness after taking a walk and found by prison staff soon after. Prison medical doctors pronounced Navalny dead after arriving soon after.

Kremlin spokesperson, Dimitry Peskov told reporters Friday that medical personnel with Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) are "taking all the steps that need to be taken in such a situation," adding that medical personnel with the FSIN were investigating Navalny's cause of death and will inform the Russian President of their results.

#source1

#source2

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday released security video from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using footage provided exclusively to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to portray the riot as a peaceful gathering.

Carlson acquired the tapes as part of a deal for McCarthy, R-Calif., to win the Speaker’s gavel. When McCarthy was struggling to gather the votes to lead the House, Carlson used his program to list two “concessions” he could make to win over far-right Republicans.

“First, release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video — all of it,” Carlson, the most-watched host on cable news, said after McCarthy faced three failed votes. “So that the rest of us can finally know what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”

In the two months since McCarthy won the gavel, he has granted both. Carlson announced in late February that McCarthy had given him exclusive access to 44,000 hours of security video from the deadly riot before he unveiled some clips of the video on his show Monday night.

Carlson focused Monday’s segment on promoting former President Donald Trump’s narrative by showing video of his supporters walking calmly around the U.S. Capitol. He asserted that other media accounts lied about the attack, proclaiming that while there were some bad apples, most of the rioters were peaceful and calling them "sightseers," not "insurrectionists."

“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson told his audience Monday. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now-infamous ‘QAnon Shaman.’”

He continued: "More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim."

Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat that resulted in injuries to hundreds of police officers. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. About 140 officers were assaulted that day, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

Carlson also said on his show Monday that Democrats lied about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. He played video that he said showed Sicknick walking around inside the Capitol after the mob attacked him. “They knew he was not murdered by the mob, but they claimed it anyway,” he said.

Sicknick died of natural causes on Jan. 7, the day after he engaged with rioters outside the Capitol. An autopsy report determined that he died of a stroke at the base of the brain stem caused by a blood clot. Capitol Police have said Sicknick returned to his office after the riot and collapsed. Two men have been sentenced to prison for spraying him with a chemical irritant during the melee, and Sicknick’s family has contended that the fighting with rioters contributed directly to his stroke.

McCarthy’s controversial decision to hand over Jan. 6 video to Carlson is a new twist for one of the most scrutinized events in American history, which has produced countless hours of social media video, a sweeping Justice Department criminal investigation, a House Select Committee probe and a bipartisan impeachment of then-President Donald Trump alleging “incitement of insurrection.”

The video’s release after two years, on Fox News in prime time, highlights the influence of Carlson, who has downplayed and promoted conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, and the far right over the slim new House majority.

Carlson also said at the top of his show Monday that Fox had checked with Capitol Police before it aired any of the video.

“Their reservations were minor,” he said, saying Fox blurred a door inside the Capitol in response to the agency's request.

U.S. Capitol Police is not commenting publicly on the security video released by Carlson, but a Capitol Hill source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Monday that “the police thought there was an agreement" with the Committee on House Administration, not with Carlson's show, that Capitol Police would be given the opportunity to review all the clips that Fox was planning to air Monday night.

But "the show only allowed the police to review one clip late this afternoon and then did not allow them to review any of the other clips.”

NBC News has reached out to the Committee on House Administration for comment.

Carlson said he plans to air additional video on his show Tuesday night.

The episode presents thorny politics for McCarthy who, in releasing the video to Carlson, is reigniting a national debate over the failed insurrection that cost his party seats in the midterm election — and looms over the 2024 presidential contest as Trump leads the GOP field in pursuit of a comeback.

“Electorally, it’s not to their advantage to be on the side of insurrectionists. But hasn’t stopped them before,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.

McCarthy’s actions have sparked criticism from members of both parties and demands from news outlets, including NBC News, for access to the video. Some lawmakers say the video could be taken out of context to create a false narrative of what happened that day. Others worry it could expose the identities of police officers who defended the Capitol and subject them to harassment. And numerous Republicans say that security information should be protected and that all media should have equal access.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chairman of the Jan. 6 Committee, said in a statement after Monday's show that it was a “dereliction of duty for Kevin McCarthy to give Tucker Carlson carte blanche access to sensitive U.S. Capitol security surveillance footage from one of the darkest days in the history of our democracy.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said the video “should have been reviewed to make sure that they would not be used in a way that could harm law enforcement” before it was disclosed to anyone.

“I don’t quite know what Speaker McCarthy had in mind,” he said. “I think it’s appropriate to provide information to the public generally and not just to one network.”

McCarthy defended his decision, saying that he had accounted for security concerns and that his office had “worked with Capitol Police” to ensure that security concerns were “taken care of.”

“He’ll have an exclusive, then I’ll give it out to the entire country,” McCarthy said, adding that Carlson’s team is “not interested” in showing sensitive security video, such as images of exit routes. “We’re working through that. We worked with the Capitol Police, as well. So we’ll make sure security is taken care of.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a recent letter to colleagues that McCarthy’s decision “laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers,” accusing Carlson of using “his platform to promote the Big Lie, distort reality, and espouse bogus conspiracy theories about January 6.”

Some Republicans believe it is a mistake to reopen the Jan. 6 discussion, particularly after Trump-backed election deniers faced midterm defeats up and down the ballot in swing states.

“The 2022 election was a categorical rejection of election denialism. It cost Republicans the Senate and nearly kept them from winning back the House,” said Republican strategist Ken Spain, a former aide on the GOP’s House campaign arm. “With a razor-thin majority, House Republicans can’t waste a minute looking backward.”

Trump’s allies are looking for one thing on the video: vindication.

“We heard for two years how incredibly important this Jan. 6 committee was, how important all the evidence they collected was,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who mounted the first Senate objection to 2020 results that forced a vote, turning a sleepy ritual into a rallying point for Trump and his ardent followers. “Let’s see it. Let’s see the whole video.”

Hawley said that among the people at the Capitol, “I think the overwhelming majority were peaceful.” He added: “My friends on the left are melting down about this. ‘We can’t have that!’ Well, why can’t we? I thought it was critical that it all be put out there.”

“What’s on the tapes? I don’t know, but I’m interested to see them,” he said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the Jan. 6 security video “should be made public” or at least made available for “congressional oversight” because “that’s a very dramatic thing that happened one day in our country’s history.”

“What’s been investigated would be such a small percentage of it that a lot could be learned,” he said.

The release of some of the Jan. 6 security video comes two years after the attack, in which Trump supporters violently breached the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat. Trump, who on Monday night praised Carlson on Truth Social for airing the newly accessed footage, has persisted in his fabricated claims that the election was stolen from him, despite failing to produce evidence of substantial fraud. He has also persisted in defending many of the rioters as patriots.

In his letter to colleagues last month, Schumer warned that Carlson would use any clips from the riot to advance his own narrative. “If the past is any indication, Tucker Carlson will select only clips that he can use to twist the facts to sow doubt of what happened on January 6 and feed into the propaganda he’s already put on Fox News’ air, which, based on recent reports, he may not even believe himself,” Schumer wrote.

[beardedmrbean]

Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Ten U.S. drug manufacturers have agreed to participate in the initial round of the first-ever pricing negotiations between Medicare and the nation's pharmaceutical giants, the Biden administration announced Tuesday.

The highly anticipated Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program was set to enter its next phase after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services invited the drugmakers to voluntarily join the program in August.

The move comes as President Joe Biden seeks to fulfill a campaign promise to make prescription medicines more affordable for millions of aging Americans.

The drugs on the list are among the most commonly used to treat everything from heart failure, blood clots, diabetes, arthritis, and Crohn's disease, however, average Americans often cannot afford to buy the drugs, Biden said in August when the drug cost reform effort kicked off.

Previously, the White House said the drugs are among the top 50 prescription medications that seniors fill the most at retail pharmacies under Medicare Part D.

The companies electing to participate include Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Merck Sharp Dohme, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Immunex, Pharmacyclics LLC, Jannsen Biotech and Novo Nordisk.

Collectively, the companies' drugs brought in $50.5 billion from prescriptions covered under Part D between June 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023, with consumers paying $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs, according to a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services.

"Drug companies that manufacture these drugs have indicated that they will participate in negotiations with Medicare during the remainder of 2023 and in 2024, and any agreed-upon negotiated prices will become effective beginning in 2026," the statement said.

The pricing program is being funded through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which expanded Medicare's authority to negotiate out-of-pocket drug costs, including a $2 monthly cap on certain generic drugs used to treat chronic conditions, as well as a $35 price cap on insulin.

The pandemic-era legislation contains a broad range of actions to mitigate high drug prices, including a plan that adds commercial health insurers to a requirement that forces drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare whenever medicine prices rise faster than inflation.

Merck and Johnson & Johnson have filed multiple lawsuits in an effort to declare Biden's plan unconstitutional.

Biden has vowed to continue to pursue lower drug costs, arguing his pricing plan was working to help struggling Americans while the pharmaceutical industry raked in billions in record profits.

"There is no reason why Americans should be forced to pay more than any developed nation for life-saving prescriptions just to pad Big Pharma's pockets," Biden said at the time.

When the pricing negotiations conclude, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will announce the prices of the selected drugs on or before September 2024, however, the new drug prices won't go into effect until 2026.

From there, the government will select up to 15 more drugs covered under Part D for 2027, and up to 15 more drugs for 2028, including drugs covered under Part B and Part D.

The program will add up to 20 more drugs each year after that, as required by the Inflation Reduction Act.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Alberta's COVID-19 death toll more than 4 times higher than flu over past year - Published Sept 9, 2024

By: Jennifer Lee

A year's worth of respiratory virus data for Alberta reveals, once again, COVID-19 is far deadlier than the flu.

The death toll due to the two illnesses, combined, topped 900 over the past year.

More than four times as many Albertans died due to COVID compared to influenza.

Alberta's respiratory dashboard shows flu was responsible for 177 deaths while 732 people died of COVID-19 (between Aug. 27, 2023, and Aug. 24, 2024).

"This is continual evidence that COVID is not just another flu," said Craig Jenne, professor in the department of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Calgary, noting influenza is not a benign virus.

"This is the most we've ever lost to flu, and COVID has still put up many more deaths than flu. So these remain significant viral diseases in Alberta. They remain a significant risk to some Albertans. And unfortunately, and tragically, they continue to take lives at a really unacceptable rate."

While they're high compared to influenza, Alberta's COVID deaths are trending down from a peak of 2,409 during 2021-22.

As a critical care specialist in Edmonton, Dr. Shelley Duggan sees the toll the disease continues to take on Albertans.

"We're seeing people who have COVID and all of the sudden are coming into hospital with blood clots, heart attacks, strokes. So we still are very much living in a COVID world," said Duggan.

There were 3,348 flu hospitalizations, and 6,070 people were admitted with COVID in the past year.

The province counts hospitalizations where the illnesses are either a primary or contributing factor.

Duggan points out COVID-19 is not seasonal but it ebbs and flows through the year.

Unlike early during the pandemic, she doesn't admit many patients to the ICU for severe COVID-related pneumonia. Instead, she treats people for whom the disease has exacerbated other health problems.

"We also have that at-risk population [including] people on chemotherapy, people post-transplant — people really who are immuno-suppressed and are at risk — or the frail elderly who we see," said Duggan, the president-elect of the Alberta Medical Association.

Alberta Health data shows 632 of the people who died of COVID were ages 70 and up, 81 were between 50 and 69 and 15 were in the 20 to 49 age range.

Four children under the age of 10 died of COVID in the past year.

The provincial government's dashboard states influenza and COVID deaths are counted when the illnesses are the cause of death or a contributing factor.

"We still have a significant proportion of people who will die either directly from COVID or having COVID that is going to set in motion other things. So we still have to be cognizant of it."

Both Jenne and Duggan say reversing the slumping vaccination rates will be essential for the next respiratory virus season.

Just under a quarter of Albertans received their flu shot during the 2023-24 season, while 16.9 per cent were immunized against COVID.

"It's going to be very vital that people get vaccinated this year to protect themselves, of course, but to also protect the vulnerable and to protect the hospital system, because we are already overflowing," said Duggan.

Alberta stopped offering XBB COVID-19 vaccines as of Aug. 31, following a Health Canada directive, an Alberta Health spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Vaccines targeting more recent strains have yet to be approved by Health Canada.

A federal government notice to health professionals states that updated COVID-19 vaccines (designed to target the JN.1 or KP.2 strains) are expected to be authorized in time for fall immunization campaigns.

The province said more information on its upcoming immunization program will be made available in the coming weeks.

[association-of-freed-people]

Thought experiment: If Donald Trump had been reelected president, the vaccine(s) would've still sucked and been plagued with problems.

The big news outlets would've decried how shit they were (purely on the basis that they were supported by Trump, just coincidentally correct). Democrat voters would've followed suite, eventually leading to a left-leaning "antivax" movement (probably still decrying the right as "anti-science").

Trump supporters would've universally taken the vaccine, because they were Trump's vaccine(s). They would've been dealing with the horrid side effects of the vaccine(s) (strokes early on, blood clots and heart attacks more recently).

How Trump would've reacted to the vaccines being shit in that universe is something I cannot definitively guess.

There definitely would've been way more bizarro-world-esque differences between that timeline and ours, but this felt like the stuff I could predict with relative accuracy. Sound about right to you?

No, I don’t think so.

There was clearly a rift between fauci, the CDC, the NIH and the trump regime from the drop.

You’ll recall trump promoting certain treatment protocols and drugs that had shown promise only to be absolutely roasted by the cathedral.

The trump base was already loaded with skeptics, they were present going into it. It’s their nature. This is the same nature that produced trump in the first place.

In the early stages of this thing there were lines that were drawn in the sand almost immediately.

I think people fundamentally misunderstand what trump is as a political phenomenon. It’s not that a bunch of people followed him. He’s a product of a pleb rebellion, he’s the fly that people wanted to put in the ointment.

He was reluctant to do anything with respect to lockdowns or mandates and got roasted for that. He wanted to leave the response to the states. Roasted for that. Speaking for myself, I would have never injected them regardless because of the manipulations that were occurring with respect to changing definitions to suit the mRNA tech, the silencing of dissenting voices in the medical community and the complete lack of any effort to develop an official treatment protocol and what was an arguable effort to suppress the development of one.

I’ve seen others suggest the same as you, but given what I remember I don’t think that would have been the case at all. Fauci would have still danced for Pfizer and friends and the left still would have gone head over heels for daddy government, mandates and punitive action against anyone who should resist. Imo if trump would have won the friction from his office alone would have prevented the persecution from being as severe as it was. The employee mandate never would have happened for instance.

[spiritualdirections]

"For the first time, an oral contraceptive is going to be available over the counter, without a prescription. On July 13, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it has approved the contraceptive pill Opill. Many are praising the FDA’s decision as a significant step toward making contraception more widely available. Perrigo Company, the pill's Dublin-based manufacturer, stated that Opill will most likely be available in grocery and convenience stores, as well as online, in early 2024. Perrigo’s president and CEO Murray Kessler called the FDA’s decision “a new, groundbreaking chapter in reproductive health.”  "It may indeed be groundbreaking—but not for the reason Kessler believes. Contrary to popular myth, increased use of contraception is correlated to an increase in abortions. And despite what proponents claim, hormonal birth control has a damaging effect on both mental and physical health...Opill, like other forms of hormonal birth control, primarily consists of progestin, “a hormone that thickens mucus in the cervix to make it harder for sperm to enter the uterus,” according to the New York Times. Opill is said to be less effective than pills with both progestin and estrogen, yet defenders of the FDA’s decision say that Opill is still highly effective as long as it is taken at the same time every day."

The article makes the point, which everyone who studies this knows, that the pill actually increases nonmarital pregnancies, because the pill requires regular use, and the kind of people who are not disciplined enough to wait until marriage are often also not disciplined enough to take a pill every day. This version of the pill seems to require an extraordinary high level of discipline--it must be taken at the same time every day. "Unintended" pregnancies in the U.S. basically never occur because contraceptives aren't available, but because the couple does not use them properly.

The article also makes the point about the extensively documented link between the pill and depression, which I've blogged about before. It might have mentioned the link between the pill and blood clotting, which might be dangerous if the pill is taken over the counter and the user is not in touch with a doctor.

The article does not make a point that it easily could have, that this is a huge win for Big Pharma. Notice that it is the CEO who calls this "groundbreaking." I'm assuming the Biden administration will get its fair share of donations this cycle.

The article also does not discuss something that I think is relevant. Typical birth control pills are on the list of known carcinogens by the International Agency for Research for Canger (IARC), a project of the World Health Organization. They are in category 1, the same as tobacco. It's likely that the explosion in cases of breast cancer over the last 50 years is caused by increasingly widespread use of the hormones in the pill. The CDC says that using the pill increases a woman's chances of breast and cervical cancers by as much as 60%. As I wrote a few years ago, "It’s safer to smoke 5-8 cigars daily (relative risk of cancer 1.17; see Table 3)–which almost nobody does–than to be on the Pill (relative risk 1.24 for current users)." 

(The article does not say more about whether the reduced amount of estrogen is intended to make Opill less carcinogenic, but I can't imagine that we have sufficient data on this particular pill to determine this.)

The argument for having restrictions on tobacco sales is that tobacco causes cancer. The same argument should argue for at least the same restrictions on Opill. Defenders of the pill will point to studies that show the likelihood of cancer drops off once someone stops using the pill (as in the CDC link above); the likelihood of cancer also drops off once someone quits smoking cigarettes. Given these parallels, I would think that states would want to pass laws restricting over the counter sales of either carcinogen to minors.

The more people become aware that playing with the hormones in the body is not that safe, the more people will switch to using fertility awareness methods, which are natural and more in tune with the environment. But these natural methods don't make Big Pharma any money!