Archive for 2023

HMM: US FDA staff raise no concerns about Otsuka, Medtronic blood pressure devices. “The surgery, known as renal denervation, is allowed in Europe and other parts of the world, but is not yet approved in the U.S., after initial studies of older devices used in the procedure failed key trials. The staff reviewers said the available safety data for the device made by ReCor, a unit of Otsuka Holdings, did not raise concerns, while pointing that there was limited long-term data. There was no specific comment on Medtronic’s device. ReCor’s device, a balloon-like structure inside a catheter, is inserted through a small cut into the kidney’s arteries and sends ultrasound energy to burn nerves that are believed to control blood pressure. On the other hand, Medtronic’s device is a spiral shaped catheter and generator combination that uses targeted radiofrequency energy to destroy select nerves.”

THROUGH. THEY FELL THROUGH THE SKY:  Large ice chunk falls from sky, damages Massachusetts home.

Okay, fine. It fell from the sky, where the goddess of global warming was storing it in an airplane, which she uses for making carbon and increasing her horribleness. There. Art thou happy? There is the prefered explanation of lefties everywhere.  Oh oops. The goddess of climate change. How heathenish of me.

YOUR OPINION IS NOT BASED ON THE TRUTH. EVERYONE, INCLUDING LEGISLATORS, HAVE LIED TO YOU: The Vexed Question Of Student Loans.

To put it bluntly: you’re being manipulated into taking a position that helps no one, but allows the left to farm their slaves for votes, while never freeing them. Bah.

OH, BEHOLD, MY SHOCKED FACE:  Chinese Economy a ‘Dead Man Walking’? Strategist Weighs In on Property Crisis. (VIDEO.)

It never was what it claimed to be. Because, you know, totalitarians lie, something our “smart” “elites” don’t seem to grasp.  But then the complete idiots thought taking out their main customers would make them stronger and richer. Something only a Marxist could believe. The result was unavoidable.

CHINA IS DONE. IT MIGHT BE SLOWER THAN IT SHOULD, BUT CHINA IS DONE:  VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Great China-American Abyss.

However, yes, we thought we could trade with China and seduce them to freedom. This doesn’t seem to work. I don’t think we can engage in partnership with the unfree and remain uncorrupted.

OPEN THREAD: Aren’t you glad you’re here with me, and not drinking in some honky tonk bar?

SOCIALISM HURTS. SO DOES THE TRUTH: The Mississippi Question is real, spectacular — and the UK is losing. “It was nine years ago when Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator, first suggested that the U.K. was poorer than any U.S. state but Mississippi. This came as an uncomfortable shock for many in Britain for whom Mississippi, as a byword for backwardness, conjures up clichés about the Deep South. Every time anyone has made the comparison since, there has been an indignant outburst from Britons keen to denounce the data.”

REPUBLICANS POUNCE: Ali’s tweet below is what happens when you believe, or at least pretend to believe, your own “intersectional” bullshit that requires you to think that all groups the left defines as oppressed are naturally allies.

It’s an updated, but even more ridiculous, version of the old Marxist belief that all workers naturally have solidarity with each other. Thus, for example, if American unions were excluding black workers, and black workers in turn eagerly served as strikebreakers, it was not because of racism or enmity but because they were being manipulated by capitalists. Believe it or not, this was, and maybe still is, the standard explanation for racist union policies in the labor history literature.