Fani Willis’s Affair: There Are Receipts The likelihood of recusal just increased. TECHNO FOG JAN 19

The explosive allegations that could possibly sink Fulton County’s RICO case against Donald Trump, et al. – that she is having an ongoing affair with Nathan Wade, the Special Prosecutor she appointed to persecute Trump – have now been corroborated. On January 8, attorneys for defendant Michael Roman (who faces various charges for challenging the 2020 election) filed this motion, alleging (in part) that Willis and Wade must be disqualified from the case due to ethical violations and prosecutorial abuses due to their affair. Specifically, the attorneys for Roman alleged that DA Willis and Wade: “have traveled personally together to such places as Napa Valley, Florida, and the Caribbean and the special prosecutor has purchased tickets for both of them to travel on both the Norwegian and Royal Caribbean cruise lines.” Those were serious allegations. And they were very specific as to the locations they traveled and Wade’s purchase of the tickets. It’s one thing to hear gossip from the Fulton County DA’s office… but how could Roman’s attorneys know all the particulars? Because there are receipts. They all come from Wade’s Cobb County divorce proceedings with his soon to be ex-wife, Joycelyn Wade. Joycelyn has sought to depose Willis as part of the divorce case, alleging that Willis has an ongoing affair with her husband and that Willis would have insight into Nathan Wade’s actions and the marriage itself – knowledge that would help the divorce court divide the marital assets and calculate spousal support. Willis sought a protective order to prevent her deposition and gave implied threats that Joycelyn was obstructing the DA’s investigation of Trump. Yet Willis never denied the affair. And so attorneys for Joycelyn Wade dropped today’s bomb, which included her husband’s credit card statements where trips were purchased for Willis. You can read it here. Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade has, according to his credit card statements, taken trips to San Francisco and Napa Valley, Florida, gone on a Caribbean cruise, Australia, Panama, and Belize. These trips all took place after he filed for divorce. And Willis – the boss of Nathan Wade, the woman who enriched him by appointing him as Special Prosecutor – joined Wade some of (if not all) of these trips. Here’s the rundown. April 25, 2023: Nathan Wade purchases Delta Airlines tickets for himself and Fani Willis. As part of this trip, they apparently traveled to Napa Valley and stayed at the Doubletree hotel. Let’s be clear - this is just the start of the documentation of the affair between Wade and Willis. Not only will more of Wade’s credit card statements be released, but there is a real possibility (we estimate at 70-30) that Fani Willis will be deposed as a witness in the divorce proceeding. She’ll be under oath, and her answers could very well force the recusal of herself and Wade from the Trump case. The Reactionary is a reader-supported publication. As we previously reported, there is a glaring ethical violation in Wade’s appointment, as it has served to pay for domestic and international trips for Willis, his supervisor. Compounding the violation is that Wade has been overpaid - his office allegedly receiving nearly $1 million since he was appointed to the case - and that he is, by all accounts, unqualified to prosecute this case. The Georgia Supreme Court agrees, observing a conflict of interest can “arise where the prosecutor has acquired a personal interest or stake in the defendant’s conviction.” Willis and Wade have by February 2, 2024 to respond to the motion by Roman’s attorneys. The court has set an evidentiary hearing on the matter for February 15, 2024. If I’m Roman’s attorney, I’m calling Fani Willis and Nathan Wade to the stand. There could be fireworks - if the court allows their testimony. Assuming they recuse themselves or are disqualified, what’s next? We figure it most likely that Fulton County, which has an expressed interest in prosecuting Trump, assigns the case to one of the other attorneys currently assigned to the matter. This would allow the case to go forward. Or, there’s the potential that an outside lawyer is appointed. That would be the best chance for dismissal, as there are serious concerns with using Georgia’s RICO statute to target Trump and the rest of the defendants. After all, Georgia’s RICO law emphasizes that it should be used to prosecute financial crimes or those involving injury to another - not for challenges to an election. Jonathan Turley explains: “Some prosecutors would likely balk at the tenuous connections used to sweep Trump into this grand conspiracy theory, which many critics believe Willis has pursued for political purposes.” We’re not sure Fani Willis would allow that. It’s a certainty that she’s already thinking of ways to have this case survive if she has to recuse. © 2024 Techno Fog 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe

Judging a Message By Its Messenger America's Partisan Cognitive Catastrophe

As I noted in our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex: Long before Covid arrived, I’d joked with friends that if the ever boasting and self-promoting President Trump discovered the cure for cancer, his detractors would rather forgo the treatment than acknowledge he’d done something of value for humanity. It’s probably an inevitable outcome of America’s two-party system that any president may become the object of hyperbolic loathing. In the nineties, Republicans obsessed about President Clinton’s faults, real and perceived. In 2003, the columnist and psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer coined the expression Bush Derangement Syndrome as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency—nay—the very existence of George W. Bush.” During the presidency of Donald J. Trump this syndrome became so virulent that it created a strangely binary posture in public affairs. If Trump expressed even mild enthusiasm for a policy, person, or thing, his opposition automatically rejected it. To be sure, Trump often threw gasoline on the fire with his vices, his bombastic personal style, and occasional buffoonery. The qualities that had once been viewed as showman’s schtick were widely deemed unacceptable in a US President. The court jester had become king, and it drove the lords and ladies at court mad. As anthropologists and psychologists have long understood, humans are hyper-social and tribal. Stanford Professor Rene Girard has pointed out that during times of stress and rivalry, we are inclined to ascribe blame not to a complex state of affairs, but to a particular person or group. Persistent problems and misfortunes build up negative psychic energy, which generates a collective yearning to destroy the person or persons on whom the blame is heaped. This process of scapegoating is amplified by what Professor Girard called mimesis—that is, imitation—the tendency to embrace an opinion or sentiment because everyone in a preferred group is embracing it. In trying to make sense of the world, we often look to those around us for cues to guide us in our perceptions and opinions. When presented with information, we all have a tendency to evaluate it in accordance with the identity of the messenger. People who identify themselves as conservatives tend to be automatically skeptical of any representation made by a messenger who is associated with the political Left. Likewise, people who identify themselves as liberals or leftists tend to be automatically skeptical of any representation made by a messenger who is associated with the political Right. I thought of this cognitive bias this morning when I stumbled across a 2017 study published by the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin titled More than 300,000 estimated victims of human trafficking in Texas. The report states: Approximately 79,000 minors and youths are victims of sex trafficking in Texas. Upon reading this, I was instantly reminded of the film Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, that was released on July 4, 2003. Apparently because the the producers and cast are widely associated with right-wing Christian circles, pretty much every legacy media film review panned it as a “QAnon Fever Dream” or a film “linked to QAnon” or a film championed by “supporters of QAnon.” In other words, instead of applauding the filmmakers for telling a dramatic story about an enormous organized crime (79,000 minors sex trafficked in the State of Texas alone), the MSM critics all panned it in the same programmatic and robotic way. Now we are seeing a similar cognitive bias happening with respect to the Israel Gaza conflict among many people who identify themselves as conservatives. After an estimated 1000 armed men identified as Hamas fighters committed mass murder and other atrocities against an estimated 1200 Israeli civilians, the Israeli Defense Forces launched a military offensive into Gaza. Most criticism of this military response has come from people, institutions, and outlets that we associate with the political Left. The Wall Street Journal was something of an exception with its report on December 30, 2023: The war in the Gaza Strip is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record. By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on the strip. Nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theaters and schools. Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair. It seems to me that the proper response to the mass murder—whether conducted by terrorists of Saudi Arabian nationality on September 11, 2001 or by terrorists who reside in Gaza—is to treat it primarily as a matter for law enforcement. I understand that mass murder committed by foreign nationals presents a major challenge to conventional law enforcement procedures. Nevertheless, at least trying to determine the identity of the culprits, their co-conspirators, and the their directors, and to bring these perpetrators to justice, strikes me as the more appropriate legal and moral response than blowing a densely populated urban area to smithereens. The military response in Gaza amounts to punishing 2 million people for the actions of 1000 murderers. Justifications for the military response range from “Israel has a right to defend itself” to the notion that the people of Gaza are suffering as a result of their allegiance to Hamas since an election in 2006. While it’s certainly true that Israel has a right to defend itself, the assertion makes me wonder why the IDF didn’t defend the country on October 7, 2023. The intelligence and military failure of October 7, 2023 strikes as unfathomably strange. As for the 2 million people of Gaza being accountable for the 2006 election: If it comes to war with nuclear-armed Russia, I hope the same reasoning isn’t applied to the millions of Americans who did NOT vote for Joe Biden. Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake. © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

The 30 Best John Hawkins Quotes TIFFINY RUEGNER JAN 19

I have been reading John’s work and tweets for a long, long time and making notes on my favorite quotes from his writing. I asked him what he thought about me making a best of quotes list from him and he said he liked the idea, as long as he could suggest a few of them to me. He did, although I did most of these! He also said it would be fun to release it on his birthday. Since that is today, here it is! Thank you for all the great work, John! 30) “I think you should pay for your own mortgage, birth control, and college loans. It's not because I'm conservative, it's because I'm an adult.” 29) “Whether a person is on the wielding or receiving end of the ax makes a lot of difference.” 28) “A rule without a way to enforce it is merely a wish.” 27) “Whenever rioters, looters, and thugs go up against civilized people, I'm with the civilized people.” 26) “Just about anything could conceivably be called hate speech, which is again, why liberals want to be the ones deciding what’s “hate speech” and what isn’t.” 25) "People are what they are for a reason, and rarely does love, a good talking-to, a reluctant trip to a counselor, or the gift of a book change them.” – 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know 24) “Gridlock doesn't stop the government from saving us, it saves us from the government.” 23) “The merit of an idea and the charisma of the people pushing it are often completely unrelated concepts.” 22) “Rarely is success an accident, but when it is, rarely does it last.” – 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know 21) “When people can't deal with the major issues in their life, they often become obsessive about minutiae as a distraction.” 20) “Change is not always for the better and progress is only a positive if you’re going in the right direction.” 19) “Life is a matter of having what you want and paying the price for it. The problem with politics is they leave off the last half of that.” 18) "Sometimes we get so caught up in appearing smart that we become afraid to ask the questions that will actually make us smart.” – 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know 17) “If you spend money you don't have to get what you want, the time will come when you don't have money for the things you need.” 16) “There are a number of sins you should avoid exactly BECAUSE they're a lot of fun.” 15) “‘I love you,’ ‘I was wrong,’ and ‘I apologize’ are powerful words. They can save marriages, deepen friendships, and change lives. Don't be afraid to use them.” – 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know 14) “Liberals are always instinctively aware that their ideas are incredibly unpopular, so they always want to take some already popular, loved vehicle and reimagine it to trick people into buying their ideas. It's like putting a razor blade in Halloween candy.” 13) “Accepting that you create most of the problems in your own life is the first step towards real freedom.” 12) “Unless you understand both sides of the argument, you don’t understand the argument.” 11) “When someone gets a person to do something morally shameful they don't get mad at him, they get mad at the people who won't go along with it.” 10) “You get what you value and you lose what you take for granted.” 9) “If someone couldn't tell what your priorities are by watching you for a week, maybe you're fooling yourself about your priorities.” 8) “At a certain point, it makes sense to stop trying to be the exception to the rule and just adhere to the damn rule.” 7) “Trying to persuade people who are content in their mediocrity that they can have a better life will only agitate them.” 6) “Liberals don’t want to have debates about right and wrong, good and evil, or even whether a policy works or not, they want every debate to be about whether you’re a bad person for saying something they don’t like.” 5) “I used to love the saying, 'If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.' It sounds great, right? The only problem is that, as it turns out, it’s not even remotely true. Worse yet, it encourages people to passively wait for someone else to give them a break. Most people who do that will grow old waiting for someone to come along and recognize their genius.” – 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know 4) “At its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.” 3) “There's no need to take revenge on mediocre people. Their mediocrity is their own punishment.” 2) “Gratitude is the most fleeting of human emotions.” 1) “When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn't worry about how many hyenas are in the way.”

Safety to the state

The story of Floris V came to an abrupt end on 27 June 1296, when he was assassinated by a group of his own nobles. There are several versions of what happened, and the motive. One Holland chronicler wrote that Floris was murdered by one of his ministers, Gherard de Valsen. Floris had, allegedly, ordered Gherard to marry one of his former mistresses. When Gherard refused, Floris raped his wife. If true, the murder was an act of vengeance. Other accounts say the killing was the result of a conspiracy among several nobles of Holland and Zeeland, including Gherard, Gijsbert IV of Amstel, Herman of Woerden and Jean de Renesse. All of these men had been humiliated or dispossessed by Floris. There are also suspicions of Edward I's involvement. Floris had taken large sums of English money, then broken faith and defected to the French. When Edward warned him of the consequences, Floris laughed off the king's threats. A letter written by Edward to the King of Germany, Adolf of Nassau, hints at what was afoot. He complains bitterly of the ingratitude of Floris, and beseeches Adolf to do nothing to harm the interest of the Count of Holland's heir, John. He added: “For we hope that rather in the person of the son than the father, safety to the state may be found.” John was in Edward's custody, betrothed to marry the king's daughter, Elizabeth of Rhuddlan. It seems Edward contacted the disaffected nobles in Holland, and a conspiracy was hatched to kidnap Floris and smuggle him over to England. There he would be forced to renounce the French alliance, or give up his title in favour of his son. And then it all got very messy. © 2024 History Stuff 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe

My upcoming interviews I prerecorded the first two today and will be live with Bruce de Torres on Saturday MERYL NASS JAN 19

Podcast with Angie Law today CHD-TV show with James Howard Kunstler today, to be aired Monday am, the 22nd TNT-Radio show with Bruce de Torres this Saturday the 20th

19 January 2024 PEREGRINUS JAN 19

Whilst the enemy sees us humble, he tries to inspire the mind with false humility, that is to say, an extreme and wicked humility. St. Ignatius of Loyola When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last. St. Philip Neri It is certain that a man who has no need of anyone has many friends: in my own experience I have found this to be very true. St. Teresa de Avila Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.

OPINION: President Biden cannot surrender U.S. sovereignty to the WHO - by Idaho's Senator Jim Risch This was just shared with me though it is 10 months old. I don't know if this op-ed was ever published. The censorship of our age is really something MERYL NASS JAN 19

https://www.risch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2023/3/opinion-president-biden-cannot-surrender-u-s-sovereignty-to-the-who March 14, 2023 Guest column submitted by U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho) The World Health Organization’s (WHO) track record over the last three years is nothing short of abysmal. When the Chinese government lied to the world in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO parroted and praised China’s officials. When it became clear China was covering up truths about the deadliest health emergency in a century, the WHO did nothing to hold it responsible. The WHO has failed in its core mission to protect global health time and again. Idahoans know this, the American people know this, and we all should be skeptical of any action the WHO takes to attempt to grow its power and influence. Any international body that wants to dictate our laws, especially one whose missteps have been as blatant and deadly as the WHO’s, rightfully deserves criticism and pushback. And yet, the Biden administration appears poised to sign a pandemics accord that would cede American sovereignty to the WHO without the Senate’s advice and consent. This would allow the WHO to create laws for Idahoans without giving anyone from Idaho the opportunity to deliberate or even vote on these changes. I will not let that happen. It is the Senate’s Constitutional duty to review and approve treaties, but the president is proceeding as though a legally-binding pandemic treaty will not require Senate approval. That is a huge mistake. In its current form, this agreement would have major implications for the U.S. and could massively increase our responsibility abroad. For example, some countries are aggressively pursuing language that would waive intellectual property (IP) protections for public health products. IP protections are foundational to the United States, and they are the reason for millions of life-saving medical breakthroughs. American innovation is the reason we have not one but three effective COVID-19 vaccines. The push to waive IP protections would slow – and could even prevent – game-changing cures from being developed in the first place. Another serious issue in the current WHO draft relates to so-called “common but differentiated responsibilities” for each country based on GDP. As COVID-19 made abundantly clear, pathogens do not respect boundaries. Regardless of wealth, every country has a responsibility to contain and respond to a virus. Yet the WHO is considering a provision that would allow countries below a certain income threshold to ignore that responsibility. While unethical and wrong, we should hardly be surprised – after all, the WHO failed to hold China accountable for hiding the truth about COVID-19 from the world. Like usual, the WHO also wants the United States to bear the financial burden of implementing this agreement. This draft would require the United States and wealthier nations to shoulder the cost of this treaty and the poison apples it bears. These are just some examples of how the WHO’s current draft will hurt the United States and enable a deeply-flawed global organization to impede our own sovereignty. No U.S. Senator should support the president in his effort to cede power to a global entity, let alone an entity that failed catastrophically to protect global health and instead empowered the Chinese Communist Party to cover up the original spread of COVID-19 that led to a global pandemic. Now is the time to ensure the Senate, not just the president and his chosen delegate, has a voice. To prevent the president from agreeing to anything without Senate approval, I am proposing a Senate rule change that would deny taxpayer dollars to implement any such agreement without the Senate’s consent. This resolution would prevent President Biden, or any future president, from ignoring the Constitution and surrendering American sovereignty to an unreliable, unaccountable WHO. Idahoans deserve a seat at the table for decisions of this magnitude. We must ensure that Idaho, and every state for that matter, has a say. That alone will ensure American sovereignty is not carelessly traded away by this administration. The Senate should adopt my resolution to protect the voices of all Americans in this treaty and every treaty to come.

Recent Consumer Report Reveals High Levels Of Plastics In All Food Categories - Is Poisoning Our Biosphere Via Geoengineering The REAL Cause? ANA MARIA MIHALCEA, MD, PHD JAN 19

I am reposting this article showing that all our food it contaminated with plastics. How did it get this way? This was an analysis done by a Harvard Professor and mentioned by Harald Kautz Vella - the filaments sprayed on the earth via geoengineering are made of phtalates. I also had posted the environmental filament analysis from France. Chemical Analysis Comparison of Hydrogel Filaments from C19 Shots and Environmental Geoengineering Sources - Project What Happened to Humanities Blood? This is what the environmental filament analysis (Morgellons) showed: Is there a correlation between poisoning our biosphere with toxic substances for geoengineering warfare purposes and all our food supply being toxic? Here is the article discussing the consumer report testing: By the time you open a container of yogurt, the food has taken a long journey to reach your spoon. You may have some idea of that journey: From cow to processing to packaging to store shelves. But at each step, there is a chance for a little something extra to sneak in, a stowaway of sorts that shouldn’t be there. That unexpected ingredient is something called a plasticizer: a chemical used to make plastic more flexible and durable. Today, plasticizers—the most common of which are called phthalates—show up inside almost all of us, right along with other chemicals found in plastic, including bisphenols such as BPA. These have been linked to a long list of health concerns, even at very low levels. Consumer Reports has investigated bisphenols and phthalates in food and food packaging a few times over the past 25 years. In our new tests, we checked a wider variety of foods to see how much of the chemicals Americans actually consume. The answer? Quite a lot. Our tests of nearly 100 foods found that despite growing evidence of potential health threats, bisphenols and phthalates remain widespread in our food. The Plastic Chemicals Hiding in Your Food By the time you open a container of yogurt, the food has taken a long journey to reach your spoon. You may have some idea of that journey: From cow to processing to packaging to store shelves. But at each step, there is a chance for a little something extra to sneak in, a stowaway of sorts that shouldn’t be there. That unexpected ingredient is something called a plasticizer: a chemical used to make plastic more flexible and durable. Today, plasticizers—the most common of which are called phthalates—show up inside almost all of us, right along with o ther chemicals found in plastic, including bisphenols such as BPA. These have been linked to a long list of health concerns, even at very low levels. Consumer Reports has investigated bisphenols and phthalates in food and food packaging a few times over the past 25 years. In our new tests, we checked a wider variety of foods to see how much of the chemicals Americans actually consume. The answer? Quite a lot. Our tests of nearly 100 foods found that despite growing evidence of potential health threats, bisphenols and phthalates remain widespread in our food. The findings on phthalates are particularly concerning: We found them in almost every food we tested, often at high levels. The levels did not depend on packaging type, and no one particular type of food—say, dairy products or prepared meals—was more likely than another to have them. For example, we found high levels in, among other products, Del Monte sliced peaches, Chicken of the Sea pink salmon, Fairlife Core Power high-protein chocolate milkshakes, Yoplait Original French vanilla low-fat yogurt, and several fast foods, including Wendy’s crispy chicken nuggets, a Chipotle chicken burrito, and a Burger King Whopper with cheese. Organic products were just as problematic: In fact, the highest phthalate levels we found were in a can of Annie’s Organic cheesy ravioli. Yet some products had much lower levels than others. A serving of Pizza Hut’s Original Cheese Pan Pizza, for example, had half the phthalate levels of a similar pizza from Little Caesars. Levels varied even among products from the same brand: Chef Boyardee Big Bowl Beefaroni pasta in meat sauce had less than half the level of the company’s Beefaroni pasta in tomato and meat sauce. "That tells us that, as widespread as these chemicals are, there are ways to reduce how much is in our foods," says James E. Rogers, PhD, who oversees product safety testing at CR. Read more about how CR tested foods for phthalates and bisphenols (PDF). The trouble is, there are so many ways these chemicals enter our food. Early efforts to limit exposure to them focused on packaging, but it’s now clear that phthalates in particular can also get in from the plastic in the tubing, conveyor belts, and gloves used during food processing, and can even enter directly into meat and produce via contaminated water and soil. There are few regulations restricting the use of these chemicals in food production, or requiring that manufacturers test foods for them. But our guide can help you learn how plasticizers get into your food, how to reduce your exposure, and how key changes by industry and regulators could make our food safer. The Problem With Plastic Chemicals Bisphenols and phthalates in our food are concerning for several reasons. To start, growing research shows that they are endocrine disruptors, which means that they can interfere with the production and regulation of estrogen and other hormones. Even minor disruptions in hormone levels can contribute to an increased risk of several health problems, including diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, birth defects, premature birth, neurodevelopmental disorders, and infertility. Those problems typically develop slowly, sometimes over decades, says Philip Landrigan, MD, a pediatrician and the director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College. "Unlike a plane crash, where everyone dies at once, the people who die from these die over many years." Another concern is that with plastic so ubiquitous in food and elsewhere, the chemicals can’t be completely avoided. And though the human body is pretty good at eliminating bisphenols and phthalates from our systems, our constant exposure to them means that they enter our blood and tissue almost as quickly as they’re eliminated. And plasticizers in particular can easily leach out of plastic and other materials. In addition, the chemicals’ harmful effects may be cumulative, so steady exposure to even very small amounts over time could increase health risks. All that makes it difficult to trace any particular bad health outcome—say, a heart attack or breast cancer—to the chemicals. And it makes it hard for regulators to set a limit for what is considered safe for any food. "As a first step, the key is to determine how widespread the chemicals are in our food supply," Rogers says. "Then we can develop strategies, as a society and individually, to limit our exposure." High Risks Even at Low Levels To help figure out the scope of the problem, CR tested a wide range of food items, in a variety of packaging. Specifically, we tested 85 foods, analyzing two or three samples of each. We looked for common bisphenols and phthalates, as well as some chemicals that are used to replace them. (Read more about these chemical substitutes.) We included prepared meals, fruits and vegetables, milk and other dairy products, baby food, fast food, meat, and seafood, all packaged in cans, pouches, foil, or other material. The news on BPA and other bisphenols was somewhat reassuring: While we detected them in 79 percent of the tested samples, levels were notably lower than when we last tested for BPA, in 2009, "suggesting that we are at least moving in the right direction on bisphenols," says CR’s Rogers. But there wasn’t any good news on phthalates: We found them in all but one food (Polar raspberry lime seltzer). And the levels were much higher than for bisphenols. Determining an acceptable level for these chemicals in food is tricky. Regulators in the U.S. and Europe have set thresholds for only bisphenol A (BPA) and a few phthalates, and none of the foods CR tested had amounts exceeding those limits. But "many of these thresholds do not reflect the most current scientific knowledge, and may not protect against all the potential health effects," says Tunde Akinleye, the CR scientist who oversaw CR’s tests. "We don’t feel comfortable saying these levels are okay," he says. "They’re not." The decision to allow these chemicals in food "is not evidence-based," says Ami Zota, ScD, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, who has studied the risks of phthalates. For example, one of the most well-studied phthalates is called DEHP. Studies have linked it to insulin resistance, high blood pressure, reproductive issues, early menopause, and other concerns at levels well below the limits set by American and European regulators. It was the most common phthalate that we found in our tests, with more than half of the products we tested having levels above what research has linked to health problems. In addition, Akinleye says that with exposure to these chemicals coming from so many sources—not only food but also other products, such as printed receipts and household dust— it’s difficult to quantify what a "safe" limit would be for a single food. "The more we learn about these chemicals, including how widespread they are, the more it seems clear that they can harm us even at very low levels," he says. This drawing is false, they should have airplaines spraying millions of tons of poisenous chemicals into our atmosphere as the top cause. Plastic Chemicals in Foods: What Our Tests Found Making Food Safer Growing concerns about the health risks posed by these chemicals have led U.S. regulators to meaningfully curtail the use of these chemicals in a number of products—but not yet food. For example, the federal government has banned eight phthalates in children’s toys. But, with the exception of a 2012 ban on BPA in baby bottles (extended in 2013 to infant formula cans), there are no substantive limits on plastic-related chemicals in food packaging or production. Although the Food and Drug Administration no longer allows certain phthalates in materials that come into contact with food, the agency updated its regulations only after those chemicals were no longer in use. And just last year, it rejected an appeal from several groups calling for a ban on multiple phthalates used in materials that come into contact with food. An FDA spokesperson told CR that in 2022 it asked the food industry and others to provide the agency with additional data about the use of plasticizers in any material that comes into contact with food during production, and might use that information to update its safety assessments of the chemicals. CR’s food safety scientists and others say such a reassessment by the FDA and other agencies is overdue and essential. “Since bisphenols and phthalates are hazardous chemicals, they should not be allowed at all in food-contact materials,” says Erika Schreder, the science director at Toxic-Free Future, an advocacy group. Supermarket and fast-food chains, as well as food manufacturers, should also be required to take action, Rogers says, and should set specific goals for reducing and eliminating bisphenols and phthalates from all food packaging and processing equipment throughout their supply chains. CR contacted certain companies in our tests that had products with the highest phthalate levels per serving, and asked them to comment on our results. Annie’s, Burger King, Fairlife, Little Caesars, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Wendy’s, and Yoplait did not respond to our requests for comment. Del Monte, Gerber, and McDonald’s emphasized that they abide by existing regulations. Gerber added that it requires its suppliers to certify that its food packaging is free of BPA and phthalates. Chicken of the Sea said it requires its suppliers to certify that neither products nor packaging has intentionally added BPA or phthalates, but it acknowledged that fish live in water that is often polluted with phthalates. More chemical companies need to step up, too, by creating safer, more sustainable materials. "We want things to be functional, but also nontoxic and biodegradable and renewable," says Hanno Erythropel, PhD, at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. That may be tough, he acknowledges, but it should be possible: An entire field called green chemistry is working to develop just these sorts of alternatives. In the meantime, see our advice on what you can do now to limit your exposure to these chemicals. My comment on making food safer: BAN GEOENGINEERING OPERATIONS AND PROSECUTE THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY!!!! Humanity United Now - Ana Maria Mihalcea, MD, PhD is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. © 2024 Ana Mihalcea, MD, PhD 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Big Government Republicans Are Having Their Moment DANA LOESCH JAN 19

You can’t be pro-family and pro-big government. These are opposing concepts and the latter seeks to displace the former as the base unit of society. You will not find an exception to this dynamic anywhere on earth or in history. Yet somehow big government, “compassionate” republicans think that the means justify the end because their particular end is more virtuous simply because it’s theirs. I once had a conversation as a guest on a podcast and the host proposed paying Americans to have more kids, like Hungary’s program (where the government also gave people minivans and paid mortgages to encourage a health birth rate). “So, welfare,” was my reply, not as a statement but an observation. Except the host didn’t see it that way. No, their cause was more just — more babies! More American babies! “How well has the welfare system worked here?” I asked, but never received a straight reply. The interview never aired. Sununu is proposing welfare. Instead of lessening the burden big government has placed on everyone with its absurd level of spending, the proposal is more government spending to do what families should have the financial freedom to do anyway were it not for insane government spending. And he has the audacity to call it an “investment.” What is the ROI here? Taxpayers never get back what they’ve paid in from entitlement spending and this is no exception. Government spending drives everything. And Republicans just committed to more of it in Congress.