Speaking of snow, I did get the trusty RAM 1500 back from the body shop last week after it had some incipient rust taken care of. It goes into my mechanic’s shop later this week for an oil change, tire rotation, and undercoating, the undercoating an annual ritual to help prevent rust from eating away at the trusty RAM 1500. (I didn’t do that for the trusty F150 and I lost it due to rust that was inexpedient to fix as it would have cost more than the F150 would be worth even if it was in pristine condition.) While undercoating does help prevent rust, there are places here and there where it isn’t nearly as effective, so bodywork is required to deal with any rust. And so it was with the trusty RAM 1500. I am doing what I can to make it last another 10 years as buying a new pickup to replace it isn’t within the budget of yours truly.
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The coming week is my last week of work for 2024 as I will be on vacation for just shy of three weeks to close out the year. It’s a slow period for the company I work for so there usually isn’t any reason for my boss to deny my vacation request.
What will I be doing during my time off?
Anything I want.
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If it is true that Syria’s Assad has been driven from power, then Iran has a problem. Considering Iran has been bolstering the Assad regime for decades, the loss of Syria cuts off the Iranian regime “from its proxy armies and likely ended any influence Tehran will ever have in the region.”
Iran and Russia have been moving their forces out of Syria, with the Russian navy having moved it’s ships out of Syrian ports. Hezbollah, an Iranian puppet, is also moving out of Syria, though one of the few places they can go, Lebanon, isn’t all that safe for them either, particularly since Israel has eliminated “a generation of leaders from Hezbollah, wiped out much of its deterrent value, and might have weakened the terrorists enough for Lebanon to wrest its sovereignty back from Tehran.”
There’s also this: Putin offered Assad asylum and he is now in Moscow.
But of course.
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It is unfortunate that the once Great Britain is bent on committing suicide, one Leftist step at a time. And I do not mean suicide in a metaphorical sense. It appears there is legislation in the works to allow medically assisted suicide in the UK.
The British are of late more than usually intent on self-destruction. The Labour government of Sir Keir Starmer, having swept to power on an anemic numerical vote with the mandate to be something, anything but the Tories, has set to with admirable gusto, taking up consideration of whether the people it notionally represents should in fact literally go kill themselves. Kim Leadbeater, the member of Parliament for Spen Valley, in October proposed a private member’s bill legalizing “medical assistance in dying”—that is, doctor-abetted suicide—and this proposal looks set to become law.4.1 percent? That seems quite high to me. One has to wonder what it is in Belgium? There’s also this:
The internal affairs of distant nations are not our usual hat, but occasionally diseases of the body politic are catching. And there are many fascinating and appalling aspects to this twist of law. Our learned friend Daniel Hitchens has admirably chronicled and written against the many merely human perversities of the bill just passed, including its lack of provisions for the undeniably mentally ill. The Canadian iteration of MAiD has in purely empirical terms been a catastrophe—that is, if you think the state should not be addressed toward killing its own citizens: Physician-assisted deaths accounted for 4.1 percent of all deaths in Canada in 2022.
Some 70 percent of Britons fear that people will be coerced into medically assisted suicide, and 62 percent think more information is needed about the bill under consideration...The issue of coerced suicide is something that has been brought up again and again and I have to say that it is a big concern of mine.
I don’t like the idea of MAiD. If made too easy people may kill themselves over a transitory event that, with a little time and/or help, would pass. I have to wonder how many of the suicides in Canada in 2022 may have been of that type?
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This isn’t a surprise, but I am happy to see it.
Federal judge orders FDA to release over a million pages of Pfizer’s trial documents they wanted to keep hidden for 75 years.
Is there a smoking gun in those documents Pfizer wants to bury?
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a high-profile case brought by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT).A lot of people want to know more about the COVID-19 vaccines, particularly about any adverse reactions to the vaccine, either short or long term, as well as any contraindications that the vaccine should not be administered to a patient. Under the Emergency Use Authorization, Pfizer was immune from lawsuits by patients or their families if the vaccine had adverse effects, including the death of patients. So is this action really aimed at Pfizer or at the FDA and what it knew about the adverse reactions to the mRNA vaccine being pushed upon the public, in many cases against their will as a condition of remaining employed.
The decision mandates the FDA to release the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) file for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine no later than June 30, 2025.
The case stemmed from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the PHMPT, which sought comprehensive data related to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
The FDA initially claimed it would need up to 75 years to process and release the requested documents. However, the Court, presided over by Judge Mark Pittman, rejected this argument, citing the importance of government accountability.
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In his ruling, Judge Pittman ordered the FDA to produce the “emergency use authorization” file, underscoring that with the pandemic’s conclusion, there is no longer a valid reason to withhold the information.
The FDA has already produced over a million pages of documents in response to the lawsuit. However, the plaintiffs argue that the agency continues to withhold critical information.
The people want to know and have every right to.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow will be returning, the preparations for Christmas continue, and where I am not going to allow Monday to “harsh my mellow”.