“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller
WC Turck
A Deadly Gamble-
Revolution and Beer, Sept. 30, 2015
"The Syrian crisis illustrates Putin’s precarious position precisely. First, the historic correction of oil prices, affected by a sluggish global economy, de-escalation between Iran and the West, the end of supply-chain disrupting wars, Fracking and OPEC’s assault on Fracking’s profitability, carbon emission initiatives and green technology threatens Putin’s economy and security. More than 2/3 of the Russian economy is based on oil revenues. Low prices are devastating to Russia, exactly the opposite of America’s consumer-based economy. Tensions in Syria with the insertion of Russia’s military appear to have driven a spike in oil prices, opening October 1st at nearly $47."
WC Turck is an author, artist, playwright and talk radio host in Chicago. He has been called the most dangerous voice on the Left.
"The mainstream reaction to the forced resignation of John Boehner as the Speaker of the House has been a kind of weary admiration. He fought the good fight against the extremists in his Republican caucus, the narrative goes, but his solid Midwestern virtues (he’s from Ohio) were ultimately no contest for the extremism of the Tea Party. This interpretation is far too generous to Boehner, whose failures, political and substantive, were due mostly to cowardice. The tragedy of Boehner is that he could have been a great Speaker, even on his own terms, but instead his legacy is one of almost complete failure."
The Man Who Would Not Sit Down-
National
The New Yorker, Sept. 28, 2015
The New Yorker, Oct. 15, 2015
"Ramos occupies a peculiar place in the American news media. He has won eight Emmys and an armload of journalism awards, covered every major story since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and interviewed every American President since George H. W. Bush. (He’s interviewed Barack Obama half a dozen times.) But his affiliation work against him. In June, when he sent a handwritten letter to Donald Trump, who had just launched his Presidential campaign, requesting an interview, it was no dice. Univision had cut its business ties with Trump, including its telecasts of the Miss U.S.A. and Miss Universe beauty pageants, after Trump accused Mexico of sending “rapists” to the United States. Trump posted Ramos’s letter on Instagram, crowing that Univision was “begging” him for interviews. The letter included Ramos’s personal cell-phone number, which Ramos was then obliged to change. In the weeks that followed, Trump produced a stream of provocative remarks and proposals about Mexicans and immigration, giving the national immigration-policy debate the hardest edge it has had in generations. Now Ramos really wanted to interview him."
Ben Carson's Scientific Ignorance-
The New Yorker, Sept. 28, 2015
"It is one thing to simply assert that you don’t choose to believe the science, in spite of a mountain of data supporting it. It’s another to mask your ignorance in such a disingenuous way, by using pseudo-scientific, emotion-laden arguments and trading on your professional credentials. Surely this quality, which reflects either self-delusion or, worse still, a willingness to intentionally deceive others, is of great concern when someone is vying for control of the nuclear red button."
Stop Calling Ted Cruz a Conservative-
Salon, Sept. 29, 2015
"The people of Texas owe America an apology. They elected Ted Cruz to the United States Senate, and now the country is forced to endure his presence throughout the interminable election season. Cruz has worked diligently (and successfully) to become the least liked human being in Congress. Judging by last night, he’s hated most by his Republican colleagues, who, once again, blocked his inane efforts to shut down the government unless it defunded Planned Parenthood."
Elizabeth Warren's Speech on Civil Rights-
Boston Globe, Sept. 27, 2015
"US Senator Elizabeth Warren said Sunday that 50 years after the Civil Rights Act opened many opportunities and protections to black Americans, not enough progress has been made in voting rights, economic justice and anti-violence efforts.
In prepared remarks for an appearance Sunday at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate, Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, said violence against blacks has drawn new national attention with the deaths of people at the hands of police, and other incidents such as the Charleston church shootings."
WC TURCK
Sell It Somewhere Else, Trump-
Revolution and Beer, Sept. 30, 2015
"The Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, who pretends to be an economist rather than a propagandist for corporate greed, loves the tiered delusion of Trump’s so-called plan. Moore feels that it is even an improvement to Rand Paul’s 10% flat tax giveaway to the rich. EARTH TO TRUMP AND MOORE: We already have both a tiered income tax and a flat tax. The current system looks like a bump, with the poor rightly paying little income tax, just fees and consumption taxes, with hits on soda, cigarettes, another one on soda, a county sales tax, a local sales tax…With monumental burdens on the middle. As for a flat tax; the wealthy and corporations after subsidies, LLC dodges and deductions pay a flat tax of ZERO!"
Kissinger Poisoned the Middle East: America is Living in a Quagmire of His Making
Salon, Sept. 30, 2015
"The 92-year-old Kissinger has a long history of involvement in Iran and his recent opposition to Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, while relatively subdued by present Washington standards, matters. In it lies a certain irony, given his own largely unexamined record in the region. Kissinger’s criticism has focused mostly on warning that the deal might provoke a regional nuclear arms race as Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia line up against Shia Iran. “We will live in a proliferated world,” he said in testimony before the Senate. In aWall Street Journal op-ed co-authored with another former secretary of state, George Shultz, Kissinger worried that, as the region “trends toward sectarian upheaval” and “state collapse,” the “disequilibrium of power” might likely tilt toward Tehran."
"GasFrac is one of a growing number of companies, including giant GE and the oil services firm Halliburton that are pioneering technological improvements to mitigate some of the environmental downsides to the process that has spurred a North American energy boom. Besides GasFrac's water-free method, other companies are working on ways to use recycled frack water or non-potable brine in fracking. Some are working on replacing harsh chemicals used in the process with more benign mixtures, or to cleanse water that's been used in fracking. Other innovators are looking to replace diesel-powered drilling equipment with engines or motors powered by natural gas or solar energy, and to find ways to find and seal leaks that allow methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to escape."
Professional Hoax-busters on Planned Parenthood, Anti-vaxers and the Dis-information Age-
Hopes and Fears, Sept., 2015
"In today’s fast-paced news culture, misinformation and disinformation are spread with a click, often before authenticity and credibility are verified. Sometimes it's harmless and funny, like The Onion fooling Fox News. But in other cases, this type of behavior is not only irresponsible but also incredibly dangerous. To understand this culture of deception, Hopes&Fears gathered four experts on hoaxes, falsehoods, rumors and pseudoscience."
Is Capitalism Rigged?
Excerpt from Robert Reich's upcoming book.
"Few ideas have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a “free market” existing somewhere in the universe, into which government “intrudes.” In this view, whatever inequality or insecurity the market generates is assumed to be the natural and inevitable consequence of impersonal “market forces.” What you’re paid is simply a measure of what you’re worth in the market. If you aren’t paid enough to live on, so be it. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of people are unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they have to work two or three jobs and have no idea what they’ll be earning next month or even next week, that’s unfortunate but it’s the outcome of “market forces.”
Interview with PJ O'Rourke-
Salon, Sept.24, 2015
On Trump, Coulter, The National Lampoon, and The Self-Destruction of the GOP
"Since at least the mid-‘80s, O’Rourke has tried to stake out a zone on the libertarian-conservative wing of the Republican Party. It might once have been accurate to describe that position as “embattled,” but now, in a party eviscerated by antiabortion fanatics and gun nuts and thinly veiled racists – a party in danger of being devoured whole by Donald Trump – it barely exists at all. So maybe I wanted to gloat, or just to find out whether O’Rourke has any better idea about what’s going on than I do."
Film- Hitlers' Unholy Alliance with American Business-
This documentary uncovers the unholy alliance between Nazi Germany and some of the biggest corporations in the US — companies which were indispensable for Hitler to wage war. Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer; James D Mooney, the General Motors manager; and Thomas Watson, the IBM boss were all awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle — the Nazi's highest distinction for foreigners for their services to the Third Reich.
Ben Carson's Scientific Ignorance-
The New Yorker, Sept. 28, 2015
"It is one thing to simply assert that you don’t choose to believe the science, in spite of a mountain of data supporting it. It’s another to mask your ignorance in such a disingenuous way, by using pseudo-scientific, emotion-laden arguments and trading on your professional credentials. Surely this quality, which reflects either self-delusion or, worse still, a willingness to intentionally deceive others, is of great concern when someone is vying for control of the nuclear red button."
Stop Calling Ted Cruz a Conservative-
Salon, Sept. 29, 2015
"The people of Texas owe America an apology. They elected Ted Cruz to the United States Senate, and now the country is forced to endure his presence throughout the interminable election season. Cruz has worked diligently (and successfully) to become the least liked human being in Congress. Judging by last night, he’s hated most by his Republican colleagues, who, once again, blocked his inane efforts to shut down the government unless it defunded Planned Parenthood."
Elizabeth Warren's Speech on Civil Rights-
Boston Globe, Sept. 27, 2015
"US Senator Elizabeth Warren said Sunday that 50 years after the Civil Rights Act opened many opportunities and protections to black Americans, not enough progress has been made in voting rights, economic justice and anti-violence efforts.
In prepared remarks for an appearance Sunday at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate, Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, said violence against blacks has drawn new national attention with the deaths of people at the hands of police, and other incidents such as the Charleston church shootings."
WC TURCK
Sell It Somewhere Else, Trump-
Revolution and Beer, Sept. 30, 2015
"The Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, who pretends to be an economist rather than a propagandist for corporate greed, loves the tiered delusion of Trump’s so-called plan. Moore feels that it is even an improvement to Rand Paul’s 10% flat tax giveaway to the rich. EARTH TO TRUMP AND MOORE: We already have both a tiered income tax and a flat tax. The current system looks like a bump, with the poor rightly paying little income tax, just fees and consumption taxes, with hits on soda, cigarettes, another one on soda, a county sales tax, a local sales tax…With monumental burdens on the middle. As for a flat tax; the wealthy and corporations after subsidies, LLC dodges and deductions pay a flat tax of ZERO!"
International
Al Jazeera, Sept., 2015
When it comes to other countries' wars, the U.S. is by no means an innocent bystander.
Mint Press News, Sept. 23, 2015
"CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou returns to join Mnar Muhawesh on “Behind the Headline” to go into greater depth on Saudi Arabia’s role in manufacturing terrorism by re-writing the entire religious history of Islam and engineering hadeeth to serve its own political & oil interests.
The effects of these efforts to re-write the history of a faith of over 1.5 billion people to suit the Saudi political agenda that limit women’s rights, promote radicalism and tyrannical leadership –are rippling across the region and the world, through radical groups like ISIS and the Nusra Front."
LiveLeak, Sept. 26, 2015
Whatdoesitmean.com, Aug. 27, 2013
Israeli World News, Sept 24, 2015
Local
Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 26, 2015
"The Chicago Police Department has routinely spied on activist groups during the past six years police records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show — including union members, anti-Olympics protesters, anarchists, the Occupy movement, NATO demonstrators and critics of the Chinese government."
Thought
Kissinger Poisoned the Middle East: America is Living in a Quagmire of His Making
Salon, Sept. 30, 2015
"The 92-year-old Kissinger has a long history of involvement in Iran and his recent opposition to Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, while relatively subdued by present Washington standards, matters. In it lies a certain irony, given his own largely unexamined record in the region. Kissinger’s criticism has focused mostly on warning that the deal might provoke a regional nuclear arms race as Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia line up against Shia Iran. “We will live in a proliferated world,” he said in testimony before the Senate. In aWall Street Journal op-ed co-authored with another former secretary of state, George Shultz, Kissinger worried that, as the region “trends toward sectarian upheaval” and “state collapse,” the “disequilibrium of power” might likely tilt toward Tehran."
National Geographic, May 21, 2015
Professional Hoax-busters on Planned Parenthood, Anti-vaxers and the Dis-information Age-
Hopes and Fears, Sept., 2015
"In today’s fast-paced news culture, misinformation and disinformation are spread with a click, often before authenticity and credibility are verified. Sometimes it's harmless and funny, like The Onion fooling Fox News. But in other cases, this type of behavior is not only irresponsible but also incredibly dangerous. To understand this culture of deception, Hopes&Fears gathered four experts on hoaxes, falsehoods, rumors and pseudoscience."
Is Capitalism Rigged?
Excerpt from Robert Reich's upcoming book.
"Few ideas have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a “free market” existing somewhere in the universe, into which government “intrudes.” In this view, whatever inequality or insecurity the market generates is assumed to be the natural and inevitable consequence of impersonal “market forces.” What you’re paid is simply a measure of what you’re worth in the market. If you aren’t paid enough to live on, so be it. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of people are unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they have to work two or three jobs and have no idea what they’ll be earning next month or even next week, that’s unfortunate but it’s the outcome of “market forces.”
Interview with PJ O'Rourke-
Salon, Sept.24, 2015
On Trump, Coulter, The National Lampoon, and The Self-Destruction of the GOP
"Since at least the mid-‘80s, O’Rourke has tried to stake out a zone on the libertarian-conservative wing of the Republican Party. It might once have been accurate to describe that position as “embattled,” but now, in a party eviscerated by antiabortion fanatics and gun nuts and thinly veiled racists – a party in danger of being devoured whole by Donald Trump – it barely exists at all. So maybe I wanted to gloat, or just to find out whether O’Rourke has any better idea about what’s going on than I do."
Film- Hitlers' Unholy Alliance with American Business-
This documentary uncovers the unholy alliance between Nazi Germany and some of the biggest corporations in the US — companies which were indispensable for Hitler to wage war. Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer; James D Mooney, the General Motors manager; and Thomas Watson, the IBM boss were all awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle — the Nazi's highest distinction for foreigners for their services to the Third Reich.
Film- The Oligarchical Bush Family-
The Oligarchical Bush Family of Generational Treason from the Nazi SS and Adolf Hitler to Osama bin Laden. The journalist in this video is providing factually true evidence. The oligarchical Bush family of generational treason reaching back to the namesake of the two Bush presidents, George Herbert Walker. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. In the same manner that Prescott Bush traded with the Nazi industrial complex against the United States during WWII, so too did both Bush presidents with the Carlyle Trading Group and Bin Laden family. Unbeknownst to the Saudi Arabian 911 hijackers, was that a number of those same enemy combatants were also psychologically conditioned CIA jackal assets
So a “good guy with a gun” decides to save the day when he witnesses a car jacking. He fired several shots, managing to land only one shot at the victim’s head and missing the carjackers completely. Our hero then proceeded to collect his shell casings and fled the scene. Police are still looking for our ammosexual hero.
So my question now would be, is he still a “good guy”? How do you tell the difference?
Followers of this blog and of my facebook page know that I’m not a fan of anecdotal evidence because it’s meaningless. So why am I posting this story? Because this anecdotal story lines up perfectly with the data, as well as a couple of experiments done to see how effective armed citizens are at saving the day with their binkies.
Remember when a pro-gun group repeatedly reenacted Charlie Hebdo shootings with all of the victims armed? SPOILER ALERT: they all died in every reenactment they did. Well, except for the one time one of the armed victims chose to flee instead. That guy survived the reenactment. All of the Rambos died over and over again, but their ammosexual fantasies of being heroes were impervious to the evidence and survived.
Another simulation done by researchers at Mount St Mary’s University produced the same results.
Study after study after study (I can do this all day, but you get the point) show that owning a gun makes you much more likely to be a shooting victim. Or a perpetrator, since you’re more likely to shoot yourself or someone you know with your gun, than you are to stop crime.
The FBI reports an average of about 25o “justifiable homicides” each year. Remember, George Zimmerman was recorded as a “justifiable homicide”, but I’m willing to go with the 250 number. So for 250 instances of people defending themselves, we have the highest homicide rate in the developed world. For 250 instances of people defending themselves,we have about 1,000 children shot every year.
In order to entertain the ammosexual hero fantasies of about 35 million American households, we have a situation where those nutters are feeding the “illegal” gun market. We know that the size of the “legal” gun market and the “illegal” gun market are inextricably intertwined since all guns start out “legal”.
We accept the unacceptable because a minority of us are literally deluding ourselves. I’m sorry to break it to you ammosexual, but you’re not Rambo and you never will be. You’re much more likely to be the sad sack who shoots their toddler in the face. The studies are very clear on this.
Here’s the funny thing. When I was fact checking the story I started this post with, my search came up with another story of another carjacking, also in Houston. This one was only a little over a month before the first story. In this story, the ammosexual was the guy whose car was being jacked. He decided that it would be a good idea to open fire on the carjacker. Wanna know how it ended? With both the carjacker and the ammosexual receiving freedom bullets, and the car wrapped around a cement post. Awesome. Thankfully, no one else was caught in the crossfire.
Does pulling out your binkie and firing off rounds to save your fucking car make you a good guy? It’s a car. You’re shooting at a person, and risking the accidental shooting of other people. For a car.
We don’t have “good guys” with guns. We have delusional “dumb guys” with guns. If they were smart, they would have done unbiased research on whether owning a gun was a good idea before making that choice. The evidence is clear, and you can’t possibly hang your hat on a handful of debunked NRA “studies” because you like what they’re telling you. The ratio of studies telling you that guns are awesome are roughly in the same proportion to legitimate studies, as the “cigarettes are awesome” studies were to those legitimate studies. When the ratio is 10 or 20 studies to 1, telling you that gun ownership is a bad idea, you’re not “responsible” by definition.
That’s how you present an anecdotal story. It has to be accompanied by data, otherwise you’re doing it wrong and you’re deliberately disinformning yourself.
John San Juan
...on George Zimmerman
He really is the poster child for a society in which increasingly conspicuous, flagrant and matter of fact displays of personal and institutionalized racism, the prominence of "gun assholes" as a powerful and vocal archetype, the proliferation and increased immunity of killer cops, and a deeply broken justice system are seemingly our most protected features. That some low IQ prick is gloating over getting away with murder says far less about him than it does about a country in which this s*** is now rewarded. In a day and age in which only the very biggest bigots are martyred and courted by a new breed of politician hell bent on pandering to the most explicitly ugly sector of our populace, I can't see any scenario in which this guy WOULDN'T be publicly smug. He is 100% symptom and 0% cause, and if he is kicking himself it is only because he was apparently a year or so ahead of his time and has consequently missed out on being explicitly fawned over by the likes of Huckabee and Cruz.
Dr. Conrad Chao
Regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum, we all expect physicians to speak in a truthful and informed manner with regard to their area of expertise, health and health-related interventions. This is an ethical imperative if one is to claim the title of physician. It is therefore reprehensible for so-called doctors Carson and Paul to shirk their responsibility to acknowledge and endorse the incontrovertible evidence in the medical literature regarding the efficacy, safety, and appropriate timing of vaccines in an informed and professional manner. While it might be marginally acceptable for a lay person such as Trump to be ignorant or confused about the facts regarding these issues, for a person who claims title as a physician to either attempt to speak authoritatively while ignorant of the facts, or worse, to deliberately mislead the public for personal gain, is an unacceptable lapse of professional ethics. People expect physicians to render expert opinion without regard to personal gain and we trust that physicians will be both knowledgeable and honest with regard to delivering advice in their area of expertise. Or could it be that brain surgeons and ophthalmologists actually are ignorant of the basic facts regarding vaccines? If that is the case they should either learn the truth and promulgate the truth or else shut up. Primum non nocere.
The Oligarchical Bush Family of Generational Treason from the Nazi SS and Adolf Hitler to Osama bin Laden. The journalist in this video is providing factually true evidence. The oligarchical Bush family of generational treason reaching back to the namesake of the two Bush presidents, George Herbert Walker. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. In the same manner that Prescott Bush traded with the Nazi industrial complex against the United States during WWII, so too did both Bush presidents with the Carlyle Trading Group and Bin Laden family. Unbeknownst to the Saudi Arabian 911 hijackers, was that a number of those same enemy combatants were also psychologically conditioned CIA jackal assets
Correspondence
The Bitchy PunditSo a “good guy with a gun” decides to save the day when he witnesses a car jacking. He fired several shots, managing to land only one shot at the victim’s head and missing the carjackers completely. Our hero then proceeded to collect his shell casings and fled the scene. Police are still looking for our ammosexual hero.
So my question now would be, is he still a “good guy”? How do you tell the difference?
Followers of this blog and of my facebook page know that I’m not a fan of anecdotal evidence because it’s meaningless. So why am I posting this story? Because this anecdotal story lines up perfectly with the data, as well as a couple of experiments done to see how effective armed citizens are at saving the day with their binkies.
Remember when a pro-gun group repeatedly reenacted Charlie Hebdo shootings with all of the victims armed? SPOILER ALERT: they all died in every reenactment they did. Well, except for the one time one of the armed victims chose to flee instead. That guy survived the reenactment. All of the Rambos died over and over again, but their ammosexual fantasies of being heroes were impervious to the evidence and survived.
Another simulation done by researchers at Mount St Mary’s University produced the same results.
Study after study after study (I can do this all day, but you get the point) show that owning a gun makes you much more likely to be a shooting victim. Or a perpetrator, since you’re more likely to shoot yourself or someone you know with your gun, than you are to stop crime.
The FBI reports an average of about 25o “justifiable homicides” each year. Remember, George Zimmerman was recorded as a “justifiable homicide”, but I’m willing to go with the 250 number. So for 250 instances of people defending themselves, we have the highest homicide rate in the developed world. For 250 instances of people defending themselves,we have about 1,000 children shot every year.
In order to entertain the ammosexual hero fantasies of about 35 million American households, we have a situation where those nutters are feeding the “illegal” gun market. We know that the size of the “legal” gun market and the “illegal” gun market are inextricably intertwined since all guns start out “legal”.
We accept the unacceptable because a minority of us are literally deluding ourselves. I’m sorry to break it to you ammosexual, but you’re not Rambo and you never will be. You’re much more likely to be the sad sack who shoots their toddler in the face. The studies are very clear on this.
Here’s the funny thing. When I was fact checking the story I started this post with, my search came up with another story of another carjacking, also in Houston. This one was only a little over a month before the first story. In this story, the ammosexual was the guy whose car was being jacked. He decided that it would be a good idea to open fire on the carjacker. Wanna know how it ended? With both the carjacker and the ammosexual receiving freedom bullets, and the car wrapped around a cement post. Awesome. Thankfully, no one else was caught in the crossfire.
Does pulling out your binkie and firing off rounds to save your fucking car make you a good guy? It’s a car. You’re shooting at a person, and risking the accidental shooting of other people. For a car.
We don’t have “good guys” with guns. We have delusional “dumb guys” with guns. If they were smart, they would have done unbiased research on whether owning a gun was a good idea before making that choice. The evidence is clear, and you can’t possibly hang your hat on a handful of debunked NRA “studies” because you like what they’re telling you. The ratio of studies telling you that guns are awesome are roughly in the same proportion to legitimate studies, as the “cigarettes are awesome” studies were to those legitimate studies. When the ratio is 10 or 20 studies to 1, telling you that gun ownership is a bad idea, you’re not “responsible” by definition.
That’s how you present an anecdotal story. It has to be accompanied by data, otherwise you’re doing it wrong and you’re deliberately disinformning yourself.
John San Juan
...on George Zimmerman
He really is the poster child for a society in which increasingly conspicuous, flagrant and matter of fact displays of personal and institutionalized racism, the prominence of "gun assholes" as a powerful and vocal archetype, the proliferation and increased immunity of killer cops, and a deeply broken justice system are seemingly our most protected features. That some low IQ prick is gloating over getting away with murder says far less about him than it does about a country in which this s*** is now rewarded. In a day and age in which only the very biggest bigots are martyred and courted by a new breed of politician hell bent on pandering to the most explicitly ugly sector of our populace, I can't see any scenario in which this guy WOULDN'T be publicly smug. He is 100% symptom and 0% cause, and if he is kicking himself it is only because he was apparently a year or so ahead of his time and has consequently missed out on being explicitly fawned over by the likes of Huckabee and Cruz.
Dr. Conrad Chao
Regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum, we all expect physicians to speak in a truthful and informed manner with regard to their area of expertise, health and health-related interventions. This is an ethical imperative if one is to claim the title of physician. It is therefore reprehensible for so-called doctors Carson and Paul to shirk their responsibility to acknowledge and endorse the incontrovertible evidence in the medical literature regarding the efficacy, safety, and appropriate timing of vaccines in an informed and professional manner. While it might be marginally acceptable for a lay person such as Trump to be ignorant or confused about the facts regarding these issues, for a person who claims title as a physician to either attempt to speak authoritatively while ignorant of the facts, or worse, to deliberately mislead the public for personal gain, is an unacceptable lapse of professional ethics. People expect physicians to render expert opinion without regard to personal gain and we trust that physicians will be both knowledgeable and honest with regard to delivering advice in their area of expertise. Or could it be that brain surgeons and ophthalmologists actually are ignorant of the basic facts regarding vaccines? If that is the case they should either learn the truth and promulgate the truth or else shut up. Primum non nocere.
