The forces against "America First" policies

Sundance reports in the Conservative Treehouse,

President Trump delivered remarks today during a White House Opportunity and Revitalization economic group meeting. [Video and Transcript Below] What is the axiom that needs to be continually referenced when contemplating the forces aligned against President Donald Trump? “There are trillions at stake“.

President Trump is single-handily navigating U.S. interests amid a landscape where the entire BIG CLUB is aligned against him. All but a handful of DC politicians are owned by Wall Street’s BIG CLUB (Donohue and McConnell); multinationals & allied media. Meanwhile, to enhance their self-interests/plans, the ‘Occupy’ left-wing Democrats have abandoned all prior positions and joined a tactical alliance with Wall Street in the hopes of removing President Trump. These are the forces against all ‘America First‘ policies.

Trump to the press today:

So we need help from Mexico. If Mexico doesn’t give the help, that’s okay, we’re going to tariff their cars coming into the United States.

Trump continued...

The other thing is — because Mexico is such a big source of drugs, unfortunately — unfortunately — now we have China sending fentanyl to Mexico so it can be delivered into the United States. It’s not acceptable.

...We’re going to give them a one-year warning. And if the drugs don’t stop, or largely stop, we’re going to put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars.

So if Mexico doesn’t do what they can do very easily — apprehend these people coming in — and they can do it in a much more humane fashion. Why should they walk up 2,000 miles and then be brought back? They can stop them right at their southern border, right where they come into Mexico. And they have unbelievable immigration laws where they have the right to do it. The most powerful in the world. As good as you can have. And they’re going to do it. And if they don’t do it, we’re going to tax the cars. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to close the border.

But we’re also going to do something having to do with tariffs on drugs. Because not only are hundreds of thousands of lives a year being ruined in our country, but numbers of people are dying that you wouldn’t believe. I mean, we’ll lose one military personnel and it’s a front-page story. And yet, we have 100,000 people. People don’t even know the number. They say 77,000; they say 72,000. Any number they give, you can guarantee to raise it. And if the drugs don’t stop, we’re going to put tariffs on. It also costs our country at least $500 billion through our southern border — $500 billion.

Read more here.

Why is life expectancy of Americans continuing to decline?

Roger L. Simon writes at PJ Media,

...Despite all the miraculous advances in modern medicine, a large percentage of which emanate from American laboratories, the life expectancy of our citizens has declined for the second year in a row, according to the Centers for Disease Control. This is unprecedented in recent times. Principle reason? We all know it -- drugs. 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017 alone, up from 63,000 in 2016.

Is Hezbollah responsible for all of this? Of course not. Some are coming over the Mexican border, some arriving from China and some from who knows where. But Hezbollah has no doubt been involved with enough of the supply to give it credit for a death count way in excess of those who died in 9/11. That was slightly less than three thousand people and certainly did not move the actuarial tables the way the opioid scandal does year in and year out, not even close.

So props to Barack Obama. Not only did his Iran Deal enrich the mullahs' coffers so Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard could murder tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands in Syria, it primed the pumps for the Hezzies to keep on drugging Americans as well.

Will the wall cure this? Again, of course not, not by itself. It will only do some as yet undetermined amount. And Hezbollah, as we are learning, has plenty of experience tunneling under walls -- though there are those who have experience dealing with those tunnelers.

Nevertheless, the objections to building a wall along our Southern border are ludicrous. The five billion dollars, though large to us private citizens, is a trivial number in the federal budget, well worth the money if it saves even one life. It will undoubtedly save a lot more than that.

Pelosi and Schumer must know that. Well, maybe not. They certainly don't act that way, on or off TV. They seem like blind political automatons. Desperation for partisan advantage is its own kind of Alzheimer's disease.

Read more here.

Drug use by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs

Kara Swisher writes in the New York Times,

Over the past year, at lunches with various Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, I have been told at least four times that magic mushrooms will help me become a better reporter (maybe) and three times that Ecstasy will make me a nicer person (doubt it). I have also been offered several chances to microdose on LSD (pass!) and now that it is legal in California, weed, weed and more weed in every conceivable delivery method (yum, gummy bears!).

And, of course, ayahuasca, a brew made from plants that includes the hallucinogen DMT. The well-known tech exec (who, like most people I interviewed for this article, asked not to be named, for obvious reasons) who urged me to try it with him was nearly ecstatic on the subject. “It is the thing to reach the next level of innovation,” he said. “And you don’t throw up that much.”

He had me until vomiting. Thanks, but no thanks.

Last week The New York Times reported that some on the board of Tesla were worried that the company’s founder and chief executive, Elon Musk, “has on occasion used recreational drugs.” Some were blaming the possible use of Ambien for a series of his ill-conceived and possibly actionable tweets.

Now Burning Man, the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, is about to begin. Techies and many others will flock there to look at art, dress in costumes, burn things and perhaps discover the next great start-up idea with the help of a tiny bit of ketamine.

...It is all, another tech worker said, about the “intellectualizing of drug use as a stimulant for the brain.”

...“It is all about finding a technology to improve biology,” said Mr. Pollan.

Read more here.

Drugs, terrorists, and our addictions

Dan Miller in Panama writes,

Most heroin consumed in America enters across our southern border.

hat’s the border that Trump wants to close and Hillary wants to keep open for the Mexican criminal cartels, rapists, other criminals and potential Democrat voters; U.S. citizen or non-U.S. citizen? What difference it make now? Just play Catch and Release.

Heroin is not the only “recreational” drug transiting our southern border.

The author quotes an article by Joseph Wouk,

[D]eeper and more alarming than the Venezuelan homicide toll, there appears to be an imminent threat to the entire Western hemisphere from partnerships between Venezuelan drug traffickers and terrorist networks like Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups that act a proxies for Iran.

Together, terrorism and illegal drugs represent a significant export for Venezuela. Iran and Venezuela partner together to move terrorist cells and drugs to hubs in the United States and throughout North America.

Hezbollah’s annual budget of more than 100 million dollars is provided by the Iranian government directly and through a complex system of finance cells scattered around the world, from Bangkok and Paraguay to Michigan and North Carolina.

Far from being the passive beneficiaries of drug-trafficking expats and sympathizers, Hezbollah has high-level officials directly involved in the South American cocaine trade and its most violent cartels, including the Mexican crime syndicate Los Zetas. Hezbollah’s increasing foothold in the cocaine trade is facilitated by an enormous Lebanese diaspora.

At the same time, the U.S. administration continues to purchase 10% of its oil (roughly 300 million barrels per year) from Venezuela, the same entity that it sanctioned in 2011 for shipping gasoline to Iran.

This is all happening while terrorist groups are regularly connecting to drug cartels in the region, and forging a deepening narco-terror machine that in turn is funding terrorist activities.

Read more here.

Do you have any doubt he means what he says?

El Chapo re-captured

Now should he be extradicted to Supermax in Colorado? That's what Geraldo Rivera thinks.

Drugging kids who have had severe trauma

The Denver Post begins a four-part series today on foster children being prescribed psychotropic drugs. Many are prescribed anti-psychotic drugs to deal with trauma from abuse or neglect, even though they have no evidence of psychosis.

Read more here.

A drug to help us learn?

Takao Hensch, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, is studying a drug that may make it dramatically easier for grown-ups to absorb new skills and information — almost as if they were seven years old or younger.

The key ingredient here is valproic acid. Normally, it's used to treat neurological disorders like seizures and epilepsy, and various other mood disorders. But Hensch claims it may help restore plasticity in the adult brain.

In a new experiment, Hensch used valproic acid to bestow the gift of perfect pitch to a group of adult males between the ages of 18 to 27. Here's now NPR describes it:

Hensch gave the drug to a group of healthy, young men who had no musical training as children. They were asked to perform tasks online to train their ears, and at the end of a two-week period, tested on their ability to discriminate tone, to see if the training had more effect than it normally would at their age.

In other words, he gave people a pill and then taught them to have perfect pitch. The findings are significant: "It's quite remarkable since there are no known reports of adults acquiring absolute pitch," he says. [NPR]

It's a fascinating development, and one that could theoretically help adults acquire new skills and talents at a later stage in their lives. Of course, the side effects — if any — will still need to be studied closely, particularly on a cellular level. "I should caution that critical periods [of development] have evolved for a reason," says Hensch, "and it is a process that one probably would not want to tamper with carelessly."