Fun with words

 From my friend Ray Kachab.

----------------------------------------------

Will glass coffins be a success? Remains to be seen.

 
What’s the difference between a hippo and a zippo? One is really heavy, and the other is a little lighter.

 
Hear about the new restaurant called Karma? There’s no menu - you get what you deserve.

 
I went to buy some camouflage trousers yesterday but couldn't find any.

 
What do you call a bee that can’t make up its mind? A maybe.

 
I tried to sue the airline for losing my luggage. I lost my case.

 
Is it ignorance or apathy that's destroying the world today? I don't know and don't really care.

 
I wasn’t originally going to get a brain transplant, but then I changed my mind.

 
Which country’s capital has the fastest-growing population? Ireland. Every day it’s Dublin.

 
I saw an ad for burial plots, and I thought, “That’s the last thing I need!”

 
Need an ark? I Noah guy.

 
You’re not completely useless, you can always serve as a bad example.

 
I broke my finger last week. On the other hand, I’m okay.

 
Don't spell part backwards. It's a trap.

 
Did you hear about the guy who got hit in the head with a can of soda? He was lucky it was a soft drink.

 
To the mathematician who thought of the idea of zero. Thanks for nothing!

 
Son: "Dad, can you tell me what a solar eclipse is?” Dad: "No sun.”

The Wuhan Lab leak hypothesis – historical perspective from the Epoch Times

 Hans Mahncke and Jeff Carlson at the Epoch Times provide their perspective about the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another illustration of why Government cannot be trusted. The same goes for others with an agenda, including the media and scientists.

--------------------------------------------

A recent assessment from the U.S. Energy Department found that the COVID-19 virus likely emerged from a Chinese laboratory. News of this development has caused major media organizations to sharply pivot in their coverage of the origin of the pandemic.

Previously, any information about a lab origin was rigorously avoided, but now corporate media organizations are reporting on the likelihood of a lab origin as if their suppression of the evidence over the past three years had never happened.

One media organization that did cover the origin story from the outset is The Epoch Times. In April 2020, Epoch TV broadcast a documentary on the lab origin that continues to stand the test of time. In dozens of investigative articles published during the past three years, The Epoch Times has laid out the overwhelming evidence for the lab leak scenario. The paper also published a detailed timeline that captured over 200 data points indicative of a lab origin.

In short, information pointing to a lab leak, which the corporate media claims to be new, isn’t new at all.

The high likelihood of a lab origin was known from the early days of the pandemic but was suppressed by a combination of corporate media, science journalists, and social media companies. The originator of this massive campaign of disinformation and suppression was Dr. Anthony Fauci, who in early February 2020 organized a meeting that would become the start of a coverup of lab leak evidence. The media’s new narrative that a lab leak scenario has only recently become more likely, because of the emergence of new information, is false. The information on a lab origin was always readily available and shows that, from the very beginning, the lab leak theory was the only viable theory.

The most obvious evidence, which has always been available, is that a highly unusual coronavirus with engineered-looking features appeared on the doorsteps of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the world’s premier laboratory for coronavirus engineering. This peculiar coincidence didn’t escape the attention of politicians or journalists at the time, nor did it escape the attention of a handpicked group of scientists who Fauci had selected to assist in the coverup.

“Given the scale of the bat CoV research pursued [at the Wuhan Institute of Virology] and the site of emergence of the first human cases we have a nightmare of circumstantial evidence to assess,” Dr. Ian Lipkin, one of those scientists, wrote in a Feb. 11, 2020, email.

Equally troubling, is that the Wuhan lab was overseen by a senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official, Yuan Zhiming. While it’s expected that Chinese organizations such as the virology institute are run by the CCP, in this case, Fauci’s organization, the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID), knew before the pandemic that the Wuhan lab was directly connected to the CCP. It was also known by Fauci and NIAID that Yuan was both the CCP’s representative at the lab and in charge of biosafety.

On Feb. 9, 2020, shortly after the global emergence of COVID-19, the director of NIAID’s stateside laboratory, James Le Duc of the Galveston National Laboratory, emailed Yuan to alert him to the fact that Le Duc suspected that COVID-19 had leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“If there are weaknesses in your program, now is the time to admit them,” he told Yuan, and also asked Yuan a series of probing questions in connection with the suspected lab leak. While Le Duc didn’t receive a reply, it doesn’t appear that Le Duc pursued the matter further.

Another director at the Wuhan lab was Dr. Shi Zhengli, whose history of reckless coronavirus experiments was well known at the time of the outbreak, not only to NIAID but to anyone who searched for her many publications on the internet. Her obsession with coronaviruses began in 2003, shortly after the original SARS outbreak.

Shi’s tenure from 2004 to 2019 with the Wuhan lab paints an alarming picture of ever more dangerous experiments, with ever more advanced biotechnology being conducted at the facility. Crucially, some of that biotechnology came from the United States and its transfer to China was directly facilitated by Fauci.

Specifically, Fauci enabled Shi by conferring prestigious NIAID grants that were understood by potential Western collaborators as a seal of approval. Again, this information was always in the public domain, and wasn’t, recently uncovered.
The Rise to Prominence of the Wuhan Lab

In 2007, Shi published a paper on how to manipulate bat viruses to allow them to attack human cells. In 2008, Shi’s soon-to-be collaborator, Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, received a grant from Fauci’s NIAID to collect bat viruses with the goal of examining them for their potential to infect humans.

In 2009, the U.S. Agency for International Development established PREDICT, an early pandemic warning program that would later form a collaboration with Shi’s WIV. In 2010, Shi showcased the facility’s increasing technical prowess, by manipulating SARS viruses to increase infectiousness for humans.

The wider public first became aware of the dangers of such gain-of-function experiments in 2011, when Fauci funded an experiment that created an airborne version of the H5N1 avian influenza. Dismissing the public outcry about the grave risks of such experiments, Fauci argued in a Washington Post op-ed, titled “A Flu Virus Risk Worth Taking,” that while labs could now create dangerous viruses that didn’t exist in nature, the benefits outweighed the risks in the form of insights gained.

However, there’s no evidence that these experiments provided any civilian benefit: the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t averted, nor was a vaccine developed in advance. Instead, scientists used these types of experiments to raise their profiles and boost their grant allocation.

“The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,” one scientific critic later noted,

At about the same time that Fauci-funded scientists were manipulating dangerous viruses to make them airborne–and, therefore, highly transmissible between humans–another Wuhan scientist, Tian Junhua, a virologist at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention started collecting bats from remote locations in China for further study at the Wuhan CDC. That meant that as of 2012, there were two separate groups of scientists in Wuhan—Shi Zhengli’s group and Tian’s group—who were fully immersed in bat virus collection and manipulation.

Tian would later acknowledge that he captured about 10,000 bats without taking any safety precautions and that he was often sprayed with bat urine and blood. To what extent NIAID was involved with Tian isn’t known, although it is known from numerous co-authored publications that Eddie Holmes, a British virologist with close ties to both Fauci and the Wuhan lab, collaborated with Tian in the run-up to the pandemic. Holmes would later collaborate with Fauci on the fraudulent Proximal Origin paper, which Fauci used to advance his natural origin narrative.

Shi made a big scientific breakthrough in 2013 when her team isolated a SARS-like coronavirus that could target human ACE2 cell receptors. In 2014 Shi had another breakthrough when was awarded an NIAID grant via Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak, in 2016 and 2019, was recorded bragging about the advanced manipulation of SARS viruses carried out at the Wuhan lab.

Raised International Profile

The prestigious NIAID project raised the international profile of the WIV, which in turn opened the doors to collaboration with Western gain-of-function pioneers, as well as providing access to U.S. biotechnology. As a result, the so-called godfather of gain-of-function, Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, started collaborating with WIV’s Shi on a study that was published in November 2015.

The Shi and Baric experiment resulted in the “synthetic construction of chimeric mutant and full-length” SARS viruses. Put in simple terms, they had manufactured artificial viruses put together by combining parts of different viruses.

That experiment immediately caused an outcry from other scientists who warned that the coronavirus experiments at the WIV may cause a pandemic.

It’s worth noting that after public outcry over making the avian flu virus airborne, as well as after a series of lab accidents at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, President Barack Obama had instituted a national moratorium on gain-of-function experiments earlier in 2014.

While Fauci’s collaborative Wuhan lab project, titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, didn’t explicitly call for gain-of-function experiments to be conducted in Wuhan, by 2016, such experiments were being conducted under the umbrella of an NIAID grant. When an NIAID program officer discovered in May 2016 that the lab was conducting prohibited gain-of-function work, funding was temporarily halted. However, within a few weeks, the work was restarted.

It isn’t known why NIAID reversed itself after initially suspending the work. Daszak personally thanked NIAID for lifting the ban.

With the gain-of-function pause out of the way, Shi and Daszak continued their quest to experiment with ever more dangerous viruses. A 2017 WIV thesis supervised by Shi detailed how the institute performed experiments that replaced parts of SARS viruses without leaving any traces.

As Shi’s work became more risky, a 2017 article published in the journal Nature warned the scientific community about possible lab leaks from the WIV’s new biosafety level 4 laboratory. The article further questioned whether it was possible to maintain the required openness of information in China to be able to conduct high-risk experiments.

What the author didn’t know at the time was that the institute didn’t conduct its coronavirus experiments in biosafety 4 labs, but instead performed the risky work in low biosafety level 2 labs. This information was uncovered in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic.

A Smoking Gun

The true smoking gun however relates to events that unfolded in 2018. While these events weren’t known to the general public at the time of the outbreak in 2020, they were known to the U.S. government—because they involved the U.S. government. They were later disclosed to the public in September 2021 via a whistleblower who provided a trove of documentary evidence.

That evidence shows that in 2018, the Wuhan lab, Daszak’s EcoHealth, and the University of North Carolina’s Baric collaborated on a research project with the goal of inserting human-specific furin cleavage sites into SARS virus backbones.

In other words, the WIV had a blueprint for making a highly unusual virus that looks exactly like the highly unusual COVID-19 virus that emerged in Wuhan just two years later.

The Daszak–Baric–Wuhan lab project was pitched to the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for funding, but was rejected by Pentagon scientists because of concerns that the gain-of-function experiments would create a pandemic virus. While the rejection has been cited as a reason to dismiss the smoking gun evidence, the chairman of the Lancet’s COVID commission, Jeffrey Sachs, revealed that the work had already been done by the time the project was pitched for funding.

This isn’t an unusual occurrence in the area of science funding and aligns with the fact that the blueprint was highly detailed, indicating that, at a minimum, preliminary work was being done while the project was being pitched for funding.

At the same time that Shi and Daszak were trying to obtain funds from DARPA, they also created a synthetic virus that showed extremely high infectivity when tested in mice that mimic human cells.

They did so using Fauci’s grant.

Deleted Database

The following year, Shi Zhengli published several more studies showcasing the Wuhan lab’s prowess. But in September 2019, the institute suddenly took its entire database of more than 22,000 virus samples offline.

This database of samples had been put together to help scientists trace the source and spread of novel viruses but was taken down at about the time that COVID-19 likely began its destructive global journey.

After the database was taken offline, a sequence of strange events unfolded in Wuhan. The virology institute was reportedly shut for a number of weeks in October. At the same time, the U.S. consul general in Wuhan reported that the city was hit by an unusually vicious flu season. Hospitals also marked a significant increase in traffic. Three lab workers from the virology institute were also said to have been hospitalized with a COVID-like illness.

Huang Yanling, a researcher at the institute who was speculated to be “patient zero,” suddenly disappeared from public view, and her profile on the institute’s website was immediately scrubbed. By November 2019, “U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region.”

Varying reports put the date of the first confirmed COVID-19 infection on Nov. 17, Dec. 1, or Dec. 8 in 2019.

Notably, all of these infection dates precede the timing of the alleged animal–to–human jump of COVID-19 at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market, as would later be claimed by Fauci-funded scientists.

Daszak, who appears to have been unaware of unfolding events, confirmed in a Dec. 9, 2019, interview that the Wuhan lab was experimenting with coronaviruses, some of which “get into human cells in the lab.”

By Dec. 31, Daszak had changed his tune when he tweeted a 19-tweet thread claiming that the Wuhan outbreak was the result of a natural virus. The timing is notable as Wuhan authorities didn’t report any problems until the day of his tweets. The statement made by Chinese authorities also didn’t specify that a virus was involved, only stating that they had ruled out common bacterial and viral pathogens.

It appears likely that Daszak realized what had happened at Shi’s lab and was preemptively shifting the blame to nature.

It’s important to note that Daszak’s thread was written at a time when no one outside of China knew anything about the virus, let alone its origins. Just a few weeks later, on Jan. 27, 2020, Daszak emailed a response to David Morens, a colleague of Fauci’s at NIAID, providing talking points “for when” Fauci is “being interviewed” regarding COVID-19. In the email, Daszak informed Morens that “NIAID has been funding coronavirus work in China for the past 5 years through” a grant to Daszak.

Fauci Made Aware

Fauci was scheduled to participate in a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services news conference the next day, Jan. 28. The department had requested that Fauci’s talking points for the news conference be submitted by 8:30 p.m. Washington time on Jan. 27.

Among the preliminary talking points that were sent internally to Fauci was an email from Fauci’s chief of staff, Greg Folkers, noting that “folks we fund” include “Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric, and lan Lipkin.” Folkers went on to inform Fauci of Daszak’s earlier same-day email conversation with Morens, telling Fauci that “NIAID has funded Daszak’s group for coronavirus work in China for the past 5 years.” Folkers also cut and pasted Daszak’s email to Morens in the email he sent to Fauci.

While he almost certainly was aware much earlier, we now know with certainty that Fauci knew no later than Jan. 27, 2020, that NIAID had funded bat coronavirus work at the Wuhan lab, including gain-of-function experiments.

Then, on Jan. 31, 2020, Jon Cohen, a writer at Science Magazine who had ties to Fauci, wrote an article pushing the Natural Origin narrative that cited many scientists funded by Fauci’s NIAID in the process. However, Cohen’s article contained an indirect link to a 2015 paper proving that the NIAID under Fauci had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. It was this disclosure that would lead to a secret teleconference on Feb. 1, 2020.

Despite Fauci’s later repeated denials that he had never funded gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab, the 2015 paper clearly states that “Research in this manuscript was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease.” We also know that Fauci saw the 2015 paper that was indirectly linked in Cohen’s article because Fauci sent the paper to NIAID’s then-principal deputy director, Hugh Auchincloss, on the morning of Feb. 1, 2020.

“It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on,” Fauci told him.

Auchincloss, who is Fauci’s successor at NIAID, responded later that day.

“The [2015] paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).”

A Secret Teleconference

Almost immediately after the Science article was published in the early evening of Jan. 31, 2020, Fauci began sharing it among colleagues at NIAID and with Jeremy Farrar, the head of the UK’s Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest pharmaceutical trust. Fauci also forwarded the article to Kristian Andersen, an NIAID-funded scientist from Scripps Research, noting that it was “of interest to the current discussion.”

In a prelude to the hastily convened Feb. 1, 2020 teleconference, Andersen and Fauci discussed the virus’s unique genomic sequence, with Andersen telling Fauci that the virus looked engineered. This topic of discussion would be carried into the teleconference the next day with one participant emailing other participants: “We need to talk about the backbone too, not just the insert?”

The mention of the virus backbone is particularly important because in 2018, as previously noted, the WIV, Daszak’s EcoHealth, and Baric collaborated on a research project with the goal of inserting human-specific furin cleavage sites into SARS virus backbones. During the teleconference, at least two presentations were made, with Andersen telling Fauci’s group that he was “60 to 70 percent” sure the virus came from a laboratory. Edward Holmes, a scientist who worked for and with the head of the Chinese CDC from 2014 to 2020, told the teleconference group that he was “80 percent sure the virus came out of a lab.”

Paper Promoted Natural Origins Narrative

On the same day that Andersen and Holmes were telling Fauci that the virus likely came out of a lab, they, along with two other members of the teleconference group, completed a draft research paper that promoted the natural origins narrative. That paper, Proximal Origin, published on Feb. 16, 2020, would be used by Fauci, along with other scientists and the media, to promote the natural origins narrative, while simultaneously condemning any lab leak theories as conspiracy theories.

We now know through recently released emails that our earlier research-based theory that Fauci was instrumental in prompting the drafting of the fraudulent Proximal Origin paper was indeed correct.

Members of Fauci’s teleconference group would later claim that their acceptance and promotion of the natural origin theory began over a period of weeks and months following the teleconference, once they had a chance to more fully examine the evidence. But the fact that four members of the teleconference group finalized a draft of the paper that would be used to promote the natural origins narrative on the same day as the teleconference shatters the group’s excuse. They realized that the COVID outbreak had almost certainly originated from a lab directly funded by Fauci’s NIAID—and set about constructing a natural origins theory that would be used in their attempt to disguise the pandemic’s origin.

Another important data point disproves the group’s claims. Just two days after Fauci’s teleconference, on Feb. 3, Fauci’s group attempted to mislead the White House on the virus’s origins. White House Director of Science and Technology Policy Kelvin Droegmeier had directed the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), to “help determine the origins of 2019-nCoV.” Andrew Pope, a director at NASEM, organized an in-person conference to discuss the White House’s request.

The NASEM meeting, scheduled for 2 p.m. on Feb. 3, included a 10-minute presentation from Fauci and also included Daszak and Andersen. Although the NASEM meeting took place just two days after Fauci was told that a lab leak was likely, this information wasn’t disclosed to NASEM. Instead, Fauci and his scientists actively promoted their false natural origin narrative.

Meanwhile, Fauci’s efforts to shape the Proximal Origin paper to fit his desired narrative continued. During a Feb. 4 email exchange among Fauci, Farrar, and Fauci’s boss Dr. Francis Collins, Collins pointed out that while the draft of the paper argued against an engineered virus, serial passage was “still an option.” Fauci appeared to share Collins’s concerns, noting in a one-line response: “?? Serial passage in ACE2-transgenic mice.”

Serial passage is a process in which a virus is manipulated in a lab by repeatedly passing it through human-like tissue such as genetically modified mice that mimic human lung tissue.

The reference by Fauci is notable, given that during the Feb. 1 teleconference, at least three of the paper’s authors had advised Collins and Fauci that the virus may have been manipulated in a lab through serial passage or by genetic insertion of certain features. Eleven days later, on Feb. 16, 2020, “Proximal Origin” was published online. The paper argued aggressively for a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. But curiously, the published online version omitted any mention of the ACE2-transgenic mice that Fauci had initially flagged in his Feb. 4 email to Collins and Farrar.
‘Very Destructive Conspiracy’

Collins wrote Fauci several months later on April 16, 2020, telling him that he had hoped that Proximal Origin would have “settled” the virus’s origin debate, but that it apparently hadn’t, since Bret Baier of Fox News was reporting that sources were confident the virus had come out of a lab. Collins asked Fauci whether the NIH could do something “to help put down this very destructive conspiracy” that seemed to be “growing momentum.”

Fauci told Collins that the lab leak theory was a “shiny object” that would go away in time. However, the next day, Fauci decided to personally take direct action to shut down any investigation into a lab leak when he categorically dismissed the possibility of a lab origin of COVID-19 during an April 17, 2020, White House press conference.

Fauci cited the “Proximal Origin” paper–that he had helped edit and shape–as corroboration of his claims. Despite his personal involvement in the paper’s creation, Fauci feigned independence from Proximal Origin, telling reporters that he couldn’t recall the names of the authors.

At about the same time, the U.S. State Department opened its own investigation into the origin of the pandemic; a task force on the matter was led by David Asher. When Asher asked the National Institutes of Health to provide its expert views on the matter, he was given a copy of Proximal Origin, the paper which Fauci and the head of the NIH had shaped to advance their coverup of the origin.

Fauci’s intervention was highly effective, since corporate media interest in the lab leak theory quickly waned. It didn’t resurface until May 2021, when former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade published an article discussing the likelihood of a lab leak. Wade noted that Fauci controlled “a large portion of the funds available for virological research in the Western world. A virologist keen to continue his career would be very attentive” to Fauci’s wishes.

Wade’s words aren’t mere hyperbole. Fauci and NIH controlled $32 billion in annual grants to the scientific community, controlling the careers of countless scientists in the process. In the months that followed Fauci’s Feb. 1, 2020, conference call, Fauci’s NIAID awarded several of the scientists who helped establish and publicly support the natural origin narrative more than $50 million in taxpayer-funded grants.

With the exceptions of Fauci’s coverup efforts, which became known in June 2021 when his heavily redacted emails were released as a result of Freedom of Information Act litigation, and the 2018 DARPA project that a whistleblower leaked in September 2021, every fact laid out here was publicly known at the time of the outbreak of the pandemic.

While any honest media organization could have easily ascertained and reported these facts, that they didn’t is almost as immense a scandal as Fauci’s coverup.

The gas stove furor and the flawed study that started it

Blair King discusses why the study that created the anti-gas crowd is fatally flawed. There is no evidence that gas stoves should be banned for health reasons.

BK is a Professional Chemist with an Interdisciplinary PhD in Chemistry and Environmental Studies with an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Biology.

Once again, those driven by agenda and power as opposed to what is good for the Country, are using selective flawed statistics to mislead the rest of us. About the only thing you can count on from this ilk is dishonesty.

Here is BK's perspective.

---------------------------------------------

The news has been full recently with stories about the risk of childhood asthma caused by natural gas stoves. As someone who specializes in risk assessment and has experience with indoor air chemistry this seemed like it was right up my alley. As I went digging through the research; however, I discovered that the research seemed less about providing a good scientific examination of the topic and and more about generating a lot of headlines and press discussion of the topic.

The furor is all derived from a recent study published in an open-source journal called Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States (Gruenwald et al., 2022). The paper itself doesn’t present any new data but rather applies a rather arcane type of mathematical attribution analysis (Population Attributable Fraction or PAF) to the results from a ten-year-old meta-analysis that summarized work from the 80’s and 90’s. Needless to say, the paper absolutely doesn’t advance the science in any useful manner and appears designed instead to induce political change rather than inform policy.

Two of the authors of the paper are Talor Gruenwald and Brady A. Seals. Many of us are familiar with these names as they both work for the Rocky Mountain Institute. For those not familiar RMI is:

an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit organization of experts across disciplines working to accelerate the clean energy transition and improve lives.

Now I’m not going to slag the RMI as it really does do good work. But it is absolutely fair to note that two authors who work for an organization that is dedicated to transforming the global energy system to secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all might not be the totally objective scientists you want doing your research on natural gas stoves.

Before we get too deep into evaluating the data used in the paper, I think it is pretty important we start with a little background on the critical statistical tool used in this paper (PAF). As described in the literature PAF

is an epidemiologic measure widely used to assess the public health impact of exposures in populations. PAF is defined as the fraction of all cases of a particular disease or other adverse condition in a population that is attributable to a specific exposure.

That sounds like a pretty useful measure but there is a hitch. PAF has been around since the 1950s but a Google Scholar search of the term finds less than 17,000 hits. From an academic perspective, this tells you a lot about the technique. A statistical tool in epidemiology (a field that publishes thousands of papers a year) that has been around for 70 years and only appears in a few thousand papers must have some issues, and PAF absolutely does. The big complaint is that PAF doesn’t work when there are multiple confounding variables. The challenge for academics unfamiliar with the tool PAF is

found in many widely used epidemiology texts, but often with no warning about invalidness when confounding exists.

So let’s consider Asthma as a disease. According to the American Lung Association Asthma can be caused by: Family History (genetics), Allergies. Viral respiratory infections in youth, Occupational exposures. Smoking, Air pollution and Obesity. Do you know what a statistician would call each of those SEVEN different causes of asthma? Confounding variables! So here we have a statistical analysis that is invalid when used in the presence of confounding variables and we have a disease that can be caused by a half dozen other factors, that are not controlled for in the analysis.

Reading the Gruenwald et al paper carefully, one discovers the terms “confounding” and “variable” do not appear. It is thus possible the authors simply did not recognize the issues with this statistical tool for this type of analysis as that omission would typically result in a bench rejection in most well-respected journals.

Another challenge with this paper is the data used to derive its conclusions. The research for this paper started with an evaluation of the academic literature. The authors started where most authors on this topic start. With the 2013 Meta-analysis of the effects of indoor nitrogen dioxide and gas cooking on asthma and wheeze in children by Lin, Brunekreef and Gehring. This is a seminal paper on this topic and I have seen it cited numerous times by those opposed to fossil fuel stoves. The major problem with the paper is that it is old. While it was written in 2013, it relies almost entirely on research articles from the 1980’s and 1990’s. From the perspective of indoor air assessment that is like the Stone Age. A look at the supplementary material for the work shows that most of the studies included were, by modern perspective, very small and had little statistical power.

Given that knowledge the authors of Gruenwald et al., looked for newer work and but unfortunately found no new data. Why? Because

Full manuscripts (n = 27) were independently reviewed…none reported new associations between gas stove use and childhood asthma specifically in North America or Europe.

So there were 27 major studies they could have included in their analysis but the authors deliberately limited their inputs by requiring the work be done entirely in North America and Europe because they were looking for “similarities in housing characteristics and gas-stove usage patterns”.

By making this editorial choice the authors managed to exclude the definitive research on the topic: Cooking fuels and prevalence of asthma: a global analysis of phase three of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC). The ISAAC study was

a unique worldwide epidemiological research program established in 1991 to investigate asthma, rhinitis and eczema in children due to considerable concern that these conditions were increasing in western and developing countries. ISAAC became the largest worldwide collaborative research project ever undertaken, involving more than 100 countries and nearly 2 million children and its aim to develop environmental measures and disease monitoring in order to form the basis for future interventions to reduce the burden of allergic and non-allergic diseases, especially in children in developing countries

The ISAAC study collected data from 512,7070 students between 1999 and 2004. It has incredible statistical power due to its massive sample size and one of its signature conclusions was:

we detected no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.

Arguably, in any study to evaluate the “Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States” a massive, recent, international study that showed that there was no evidence of an association between natural gas as a cooking fuel and asthma might be considered relevant. But no, that landmark study was ignored in this analysis.

Even worse…and I can’t believe I am saying this, even the seminal meta-analysis by Lin, Brunekreef and Gehring barely met their standard. Of the 41 papers evaluated in that meta-analysis the Gruenwald et al authors chose only to consider 10 (those where all subjects were from Europe or the US). The limitation of relying solely on European and US data was nominally due to the “similarities” between housing characteristics in the US and Europe but it further degraded the statistical power of their analysis

Now I am not speaking out of school when I point out that houses in the US are really not more comparable to European homes than homes in Australia or Japan. Anyone who has ever travelled to Europe can attest to how similar their housing design is to US building and frankly American houses are not all that comparable either. I would argue that the differences between houses in Nevada and New Hampshire would greatly exceed the differences between those in Nevada and Australia. Thus, it is fair to ask whether imposing this restriction was really about maintaining internal consistency of the data or whether other factors might have played a role?

To conclude, I can only restate that the Gruenwald et al paper seems to have some clear challenges that would typically preclude it from consideration in a policy-making process.

• Its underlying data is of low statistical power.

• Its conclusion is directly contradicted by more recent studies with significantly greater statistical power. and

• It relies on a statistical tool that is considered invalid in situations with confounding variables yet it is being used to analyze an association that is absolutely rife with confounding variables.

Put simply, this is not the study I would rely on to make a major policy change that will affect millions of people and will cost billions to implement. As to its conclusion: are 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the US attributable to cooking with natural gas? Based on the points above, that conclusion is almost certainly not the case.

The once great Stanford Law School

 Woke and cancel is alive and well at the Stanford Law School - thanks to nobody willing to do anything about it.

For some time, the judicial system has suffered from abuse by elements of the legal profession. Stanford and its ilk are helping to accelerate the dysfunction.

Here is Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan at the Wall Street Journal.

-----------------------------------------

Stanford Law School’s website touts its “collegial culture” in which “collaboration and the open exchange of ideas are essential to life and learning.” Then there’s the culture I experienced when I visited Stanford last week. I had been invited by the student chapter of the Federalist Society to discuss the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on which I’ve served since 2018. I’ve spoken at law schools across the country, and I was glad to accept this invitation. One of my first clerks graduated from Stanford. I have friends on the faculty. I gave a talk there a few years ago and found it a warm and engaging place, but not this time.

When I arrived, the walls were festooned with posters denouncing me for crimes against women, gays, blacks and “trans people.” Plastered everywhere were photos of the students who had invited me and fliers declaring “You should be ASHAMED,” with the last word in large red capital letters and a horror-movie font. This didn’t seem “collegial.” Walking to the building where I would deliver my talk, I could hear loud chanting a good 50 yards away, reminiscent of a tent revival in its intensity. Some 100 students were massed outside the classroom as I entered, faces painted every color of the rainbow, waving signs and banners, jeering and stamping and howling. As I entered the classroom, one protester screamed: “We hope your daughters get raped!”

I had been warned a few days before about a possible protest. But Stanford administrators assured me they were “on top of it,” that Stanford’s policies permitted “protest but not disruption.” They weren’t “on top of it.” Before my talk started, the mob flooded the room. Banners unfurled. Signs brandished: “FED SUCK,” “Trans Lives Matter” (this one upside down), and others that can’t be quoted in a family newspaper. A nervous dog—literally, a canine—was in the front row, fur striped with paint. A man with a frozen smile approached me, identified himself as the “dean of student engagement,” and asked, “You doing OK?” I don’t remember what I said.

The protesters weren’t upset by the subject of my talk—a rather dry discourse on how circuit courts interact with the Supreme Court in times of doctrinal flux. Rather, I was their target. While in practice, I represented clients and advanced arguments the protesters hate—for instance, I defended Louisiana’s traditional marriage laws. As for my judicial decisions, among the several hundred I’ve written, the protesters were especially vexed by U.S. v. Varner. A federal prisoner serving a term for attempted receipt of child pornography (and with a previous state conviction for possession of child porn) petitioned our court to order that he be called by feminine pronouns. As my opinion explained, federal courts can’t control what pronouns people use. The Stanford protesters saw it differently: My opinion had “denied a transwoman’s existence.”

When the Federalist Society president tried to introduce me, the heckling began. “The Federalist Society (You suck!) is pleased to welcome Judge Kyle Duncan(You’re not welcome here, we hate you!). . . . He was appointed by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Embarrassing!).” And so on. As I began, the heckling continued. Try delivering a speech while being jeered at every third word. This was an utter farce, a staged public shaming. I stopped, pleaded with the students to stop the stream of insults (which only made them louder), and asked if administrators were present.

Enter Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion. Ms. Steinbach and (I later learned) other administrators were watching from the periphery. She hadn’t introduced herself to me. She asked to address the students.

Something felt off. I asked her to tell the students their infantile behavior was inappropriate. She insisted she wanted to talk to all of us. Students began screaming, and I reluctantly gave way. Whereupon Ms. Steinbach opened a folio, took out a printed sheaf of papers, and delivered a six-minute speech addressing the question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

What could that mean? While the students rhythmically snapped, Ms. Steinbach attempted to explain. My “work,” she said, “has caused harm.” It “feels abhorrent” and “literally denies the humanity of people.” My presence put Ms. Steinbach in a tough spot, she said, because her job “is to create a space of belonging for all people” at Stanford. She assured me I was “absolutely welcome in this space” because “me and many people in this administration do absolutely believe in free speech.” I didn’t feel welcome—who would? And she repeated the cryptic question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

I asked again what she meant, and she finally put the question plainly: Was my talk “worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes?” Again she asserted her belief in free speech before equivocating: “I understand why people feel like the harm is so great that we might need to reconsider those policies, and luckily, they’re in a school where they can learn the advocacy skills to advocate for those changes.” Then she turned the floor back over to me, while hoping I could “learn too” and “listen through your partisan lens, the hyperpolitical lens.” In closing, she said: “I look out and I don’t ask, ‘What’s going on here?’ I look out and I say, ‘I’m glad this is going on here.’ ” This is on video, and the entire event is on audio, in case you’re wondering.

The mob’s leader, a young woman, then addressed the crowd: “I want to ask that half the folks walk out in protest and the rest of us, let’s tone down the heckling slightly so that he can get to our questions.” I didn’t see how I could continue, so after the partial walkout, I dispensed with my prepared remarks and opened the floor. That went poorly, and the plainly hostile questions were the least of it. Students hurled abuse, including vile sexual innuendo; some filed past me spitting insults (“You’re scum!”). Two U.S. Marshals decided it was time to escort me out.

Two days later, Jenny Martinez and Marc Tessier-Lavinge, respectively the law school’s dean and the university’s president, formally apologized, confirming that protesters and administrators had violated Stanford policy. I’m grateful and I accepted. The matter hasn’t dropped, though. This week, nearly one-third of Stanford law students continued the protest—donning masks, wearing black, and forming a “human corridor” inside the school. They weren’t protesting me; I’m long gone. They were protesting Ms. Martinez for having apologized to me.

The most disturbing aspect of this shameful debacle is what it says about the state of legal education. Stanford is an elite law school. The protesters showed not the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse: That one must meet reason with reason, not power. That jeering contempt is the opposite of persuasion. That the law protects the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker. Worst of all, Ms. Steinbach’s remarks made clear she is proud that Stanford students are being taught this is the way law should be.

I have been criticized in the media for getting angry at the protesters. It’s true I called them “appalling idiots,” “bullies” and “hypocrites.” They are, and I won’t apologize for saying so. Sometimes anger is the proper response to vicious behavior.

Citizens using guns to defend themselves and others

 From the Crime Prevention Research Center.

-------------------------------------

Defensive Gun Uses By People Legally Carrying Guns: 20 Cases During November 2022.

Wyoming, MI, November 1, 2022 (WOOD TV)

The attempted robbery happened around 7:15 p.m. Tuesday at Olympic Market on S. Division Avenue between 35th and Wexford streets. Wyoming Department of Public Safety Lt. Rory Allen said the three people tried a “takeover robbery” at the store — essentially, trying to physically overwhelm the shopkeepers with force or numbers.

The clerk, who was the only person in the store, was surrounded and fought back, Allen said. The clerk ultimately pulled a handgun and fired one shot. The 15-year-old was hit in the chest…

Allen said the clerk, who was not injured, is cooperating with investigators. He owned the handgun legally and had a license to carry it…Rachel Van Gilder, “Police: Clerk shot 15-year-old in ‘takeover robbery’ attempt,” WOOD TV, November 2, 2022.

Mobile, AL, November 1, 2022 (WKRG)

According to officers, three victims and two suspects were shot during the incident. Officers said they were called to the 8000 block of Zeigler Boulevard, near Glenn Acres and the Zeigler Boulevard and Shillinger Road intersection in regards to a shooting.

When officers arrived, they found three victims who had been shot inside a vehicle. The victims told officers they were approached by two people who were armed and demanded the victim’s things. The two subjects began firing in the air, which is when one of the victims shot at the two. The two subjects then shot the three victims and the car multiple times. The subjects ran from the scene before officers arrived. The victims were transported to the hospital but had no life-threatening injuries…Summer Poole, “5 people shot in Zeigler Blvd attempted robbery: Mobile Police,” WKRG, November 2, 2022.

St. Paul, MN, November 1, 2022 (Star Tribune)

Deandre L. Buckner, 28, of St. Paul, died shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday off Payne Avenue on the western edge of the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood, police said.

A 20-year-old man was quickly arrested near the shooting scene on suspicion of murder.

However, Ramsey County Attorney’s Office said in a statement late Friday afternoon that “we declined to file charges in this incident due to facts uncovered in the police investigation that strongly support a self-defense and defense-of-others claim by the person who fired the fatal shot.”…Paul Walsh, “Prosecutors cite self defense, won’t charge man in fatal shooting this week in St. Paul,” Star Tribune, November 4, 2022.

St. Louis, MO, November 2, 2022 (KMOV)

Around 11 a.m. neighbors said they heard several rounds of gunshots and then heard a woman screaming. Police confirmed the woman’s downstairs neighbor shot her in the leg. He then barricaded himself in his unit forcing the SWAT team and negotiators to come out…

Ward and another neighbor said if it wasn’t for a Good Samaritan down the street, with a weapon, they don’t know if the woman victim would’ve been okay.

“I will certainly never forget seeing. It’s like a real-life hero in action. Very responsible gun owner, did everything right. I saw him creeping down the street. He was just wanting to keep everyone safe,” the neighbor explained.

YoVan Young, who works for First Choice Heating and Cooling, was working a job about a block from where this shooting happened. He said he had his gun on him and his first reaction when he heard the victim screaming for help, was to head that way…

Young said he ran over to the victim and helped her get behind a car for safety because the suspect was still shooting. Young said he fired some warning shots at the suspect, took his belt off, and used it as a tourniquet on the victim’s leg to slow her bleeding down…Jenna Rae, “Good Samaritan saves South St. Louis woman after being shot by her neighbor,” KMOV, November 3, 2022.

Chicago, IL, November 5, 2022 (CWB Chicago)

The stakeout of the business in the 300 block of East 69th Street paid off around 3:26 a.m. Saturday, when the employees saw someone cut a hole in the perimeter fence and crawl onto the property, prosecutor Kenneth Flesch said.

Several employees watched as the intruder grabbed a tire rim from the property. Then, they moved in and confronted the man, identified as George Perkins.

Perkins swung a crowbar at three of the employees, prompting one to pull out a gun and fire shots into the air, Flesch said. But at least one of the bullets went somewhere else — into Perkins’ shoulder…

The employee who shot Perkins said he fired into the air because Perkins was resisting, Flesch said, but the employee was long gone when police arrived, and no charges have been filed against him…CWB Chicago Staff, “Business employees shot an early morning burglar, then waited more than 2 hours for Chicago police to show up: prosecutors,” CWB Chicago, November 6, 2022.

Newberry, FL, November 9, 2022 (My CBS 4)

The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office says they do not plan to charge a person who shot and killed their neighbor.

A spokesperson says the shooting happened after a dispute between two neighbors, but they believe the shooter acted in self defense.

The Sheriff’s Office says this happened around 9:30 Wednesday morning on Southwest 87th Avenue in Newberry.

The Sheriff’s Office says the person fired at their neighbor after being assaulted.Aaron Adelson, “Fatal shooting in Alachua County believed to be self defense, Sheriff’s Office says,” My CBS 4, November 9, 2022.

Topeka, KS, November 11, 2022 (Topeka Capital-Journal, 13 WIBW)

Dustin E. Oats, 42, was fatally shot on November 11 at S.W. 29th and Villa West Drive. The case is listed as apparently being justifiable.

According to TPD, officers were dispatched to 29th and Villa West Drive at 5:43 p.m., and upon arrival, they located a man with a life-threatening gunshot wound. He was transported to a local hospital where he was later pronounced deceased…

Officials also said upon completion of the case, it will be sent to the DA’s office with the possibility of self-defense consideration in this incident.Alex Carter, “1 killed in SW Topeka shooting,” 13 WIBW, November 11, 2022.

Philadelphia, PA, November 11, 2022 (6 ABC)

It happened at 5:30 a.m. in the 3900 block of Coral Street in the city’s Port Richmond section.

Sources tell Action News the driver was stopped at that location when he was held up by an armed man.

The driver, who has a license to carry, fired on the suspect who then ran off.

Police found the suspect a few blocks away…6 ABC Digital Staff, “Uber driver turns tables on attempted robber in Port Richmond,” 6 ABC, November 12, 2022.

Gonzales, TX, November 11, 2022 (The Gonzales Inquirer)

Lt. Jason Montoya of the Gonzales Police Department said at about 7:11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 11, GPD officers responded to Walmart, 1114 E. Sarah DeWitt Drive, regarding a call about shots fired. Upon arrival, officers made contact with a male complainant who said another man whose identity he knew pulled a firearm and pointed it at him, stating, “I am going to kill you.”

The complainant advised police he drew his weapon and fired at the subject, but at that time, it was not known whether anyone had been struck by a bullet…

Surveillance video appears to support the complainant’s and witnesses’ statements. Following his release from the hospital, Nicoletti was arrested early Sunday morning in Shiner and transported to the Gonzales County Jail. His bond was set at $250,000. The name of the individual who fired the gun has not yet been released and no charges have been announced against him yet.Lew K. Cohn, “Shiner man arrested after Walmart shooting incident,” The Gonzales Inquirer, November 13, 2022.

Seattle, WA, November 11, 2022 (Local 12)

A young woman made two harrowing attempts to escape a violent pimp — including jumping out a third-story window — before being rescued by a ride-share driver who engaged in a gunfight with the man, prosecutors in Seattle said…

“H.A. felt safer in the middle of a busy highway, practically naked, at night than being within arm’s reach of the defendant,” Gauen wrote. “Surveillance video from a nearby business has corroborated H.A.’s account of what happened.”

The ride-share driver stopped and told H.A. to get in his van. Burt pursued them, shooting at the van, Gauen wrote. The ride-share driver was also armed and fired back over several blocks until he was able to get onto Interstate 5 and meet police at a gas station. No one appears to have been struck by the bullets, but the van’s windshield was riddled with holes.

Police arrested Burt as he was leaving the rental home with the other women, the documents said. He faces charges that include human trafficking, promoting prostitution, assault and drive-by shooting, but given the “expansive reach of the defendant’s egregious behavior,” additional charges are likely, Gauen wrote…Gene Johnson, “Police: Ride-share driver gets into shootout with pimp while saving trafficking victim,” Local 12, November 13, 2022.

Ardmore, AL, November 14, 2022 (WAAY 31 ABC)

A man suspected in two Monday night robberies was shot and killed by a witness, according to the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office.

James Lee Henry, 53, of Collegeville, Pennsylvania, is accused of robbing a Circle K in Athens before heading to a service station in Ardmore and ordering the clerk to give him money at gunpoint.

According to the sheriff’s office, “a Good Samaritan (former U.S. Marine), legally armed with his personal protection weapon, observed the robbery outside the front door. Upon Henry exiting the store, the Good Samaritan gave several verbal commands for Henry to drop his gun; however, Henry did not comply. Instead, Henry pointed his weapon at the Good Samaritan and, upon doing so, was immediately shot.”…

Citizens in Ardmore are thankful for the veteran’s quick actions. One worker at a nearby restaurant told WAAY 31 that he feels safe knowing people can use their right to bear arms to protect others…Josh Rayburn and Nicole Zedeck, “Former Marine shoots, kills man suspected of two Limestone County robberies,” WAAY 31 ABC, November 15, 2022.

Tucker, GA, November 15, 2022 (WSB-TV)

Police say two people were shot inside a moving company warehouse in DeKalb County Tuesday afternoon…

Investigators say a 38-year-old man and his 22-year-old employee, Cameron Randle, were arguing about money.

During the argument, Randle pulled out a gun and shot his boss. The older man then pulled out a gun and returned fire, striking Randle…

Detectives say once released from the hospital, Randle will be charged with aggravated assault. They determined the 38-year-old man’s actions in returning fire was justified and will not be charging him…Sophia Choi, “Shootout over money leaves 2 injured at DeKalb furniture moving warehouse, police say,” WSB-TV, November 15, 2022.

Dayton, OH, November 18, 2022 (Dayton 247 Now)

Crews were called to the scene of 3100 block of Valerie Arms Drive at 12:46 p.m. on Friday afternoon.

Montgomery County Sheriff Rob Streck told Dayton 24/7 Now that the victim was inside his residence, when he heard what he believed to be a saw on metal outside of his home.

“He had been a victim before of catalytic converter crime, he exited his residence, came out and confronted someone who had sawed off his catalytic converter. When he confronted that individual he told them to stop, and that he was going to call the police,” said Sheriff Streck.

At that point, the victim was approached and attacked by the suspect.

“During the fight, there was a gunshot where the suspect was shot in the leg with non-life threatening injuries, he was removed to a local hospital. Our victim is still on the scene cooperating with authorities 100% and obviously we’re still at the beginning of this investigation,” said Sheriff Streck.

Sheriff Streck says that his office is investigating the shooting as a self-defense incident…Lydia Bice, “Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office investigating shooting on Valerie Arms Drive,” Dayton 247 Now, November 18, 2022.

Chicago, IL, November 23, 2022 (WGN-TV)

A woman shot a man in the head, who was attempting to get in her car, early Wednesday morning on the South Side — according to Chicago police.

Just before 2:10 a.m., police said four male suspects exited a black sedan in the 1300 block of East 89th Street and one of them attempted to open another vehicle armed with a handgun.

The driver, a 23-year-old woman and valid concealed carry holder, fired a shot striking the man in the head. Police said she then fled from her vehicle on foot and was shot in the left arm…Andy Koval, “CPD: Woman shoots man attempting to get in her car on South Side,” WGN-TV, November 23, 2022.

Atlanta, GA, November 23, 2022 (WSB-TV)

Atlanta police said the shooting occurred at 588 Trabert Avenue NW outside of Super Sound Studios, which is owned by Atlanta rapper and actor T.I.

Police said one of the property owners saw two men with guns trespassing on the studio’s property. The property owner confronted them and the confrontation escalated.

The property owner and two men began firing at each other. One of the suspect was shot in the leg. Police said the man was alive, conscious and breathing and he was taken to the hospital…WSBTV.com News Staff, “Man shot outside recording studio owned by T.I., police say,” WSB-TV, November 23, 2022.

Jackson, TN, November 23, 2022 (WBBJ TV)

On Monday, the department stated that 29-year-old John Eric Henderson, Jr. was shot by another person on November 23 near Old Humboldt Road near Jeremiah Drive.

Police say through video “that captured elements” of the incident, it was found that the shooting was self-defense…

Last week, Jackson police reported that the shooting originally started as a road rage incident on Passmore Lane near the Highway 45 Bypass.

Those involved continued northbound on Old Humboldt Road, leading to a verbal altercation and to shots being fired.Tristyn Stoop, “JPD: Northwest Jackson shooting was self-defense,” WBBJ TV, November 28, 2022.

Theodore, AL, November 25, 2022 (Fox News)

A pair of Alabama shoplifting suspects were booked into jail after they allegedly tried to steal merchandise from a Tractor Supply Co. store but were subdued when customers intervened, including one who opened fire on the getaway car…

The scene unfolded before 9 a.m. on Black Friday in the town of Theodore, a few miles south of Mobile, when suspects Troy Brown and Toby Priest allegedly attempted to steal expensive merchandise from the agriculture and hardware store, according to the outlet…

The car wasn’t able to go far, however, due to a different customer pulling out a firearm and shooting out one of the getaway car’s tires…

The car was later found abandoned with at least one flat tire on U.S. Highway 90, according to WPMI…Emma Colton, “Alabama Tractor Supply customers thwart alleged shoplifters, open fire on getaway car’s tires,” Fox News, November 29, 2022.

Midland, TX, November 26, 2022 (News West 9)

At about 8:30 p.m. Saturday, November 26, 2022, officers with the Midland Police Department were dispatched to the DK Convenience Store in the 5800 block of W. Interstate 20 in reference to shots fired…

During the investigation, it was discovered that Galindo fired his gun at two males, one of which returned fire in self-defense, striking Galindo…Marcus Risen, “MPD responds to shooting Saturday night,” News West 9, November 27, 2022.

Raleigh, NC, November 27, 2022 (Fox 8)

An adult male was shot on Sunday night shortly after 7:20 near the Regal movie theater at North Hills.

Officers said the victim, who was the shooter’s son, was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Police also said the shooting was an isolated incident, as the suspect and victim knew each other…

The suspect also said he did not want to shoot the victim but “he started assaulting me and my wife.”

As of Wednesday, the suspect has not been identified and no one has been arrested.

The caller added to police that he believed his son was having a mental health episode.Chloe Rafferty, Kathryn Hubbard, Kayla Morton, and Rodney Overton, “‘I just shot him’: 911 call details weekend shooting at North Carolina mall,” Fox 8, December 1, 2022.

Billings, MT, November 30, 2022 (KTVQ)

Brusard is charged for a Nov. 30 incident outside the Montana Club restaurant that ended in gunfire.

Prosecutors allege Brusard was a customer at the restaurant when he began yelling and threatening others near the restaurant entrance. A witness said Brusard retrieved a handgun from a vehicle and threatened to shoot when another customer shot Brusard in the chest.

The person who shot Brusard has only been identified in court records by the initials R.P. That person has not been charged.Q2 News Staff, “Bond set at 20K for man shot outside Billings restaurant,” KTVQ, December 8, 2022.

An Anti-Defamation League gets it wrong about left wing vs. right wing murderers

John Lott at the Crime Prevention Research Center has a new research piece "The Anti-Defamation League’s Absurd Claim that 100% of Domestic Extremist Murders were Committed by “Right-wing Extremists,” most murders were actually committed by people who should be classified as “Left-wing Extremists”

Here is the link.

Here is an excerpt.
------------------------------------------------
The Anti-Defamation League has a new report titled: “Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2022.” They claim that all the murderers of the 25 people murdered by extremists in 2022 were “right-wingers,” which they describe as white supremacists, anti-government extremists, QAnon extremists, and other right-wing extremists. Their report has been getting extensive uncritical news coverage. In fact, most of these murders were committed by either an environmentalist or a nonbinary “socialist.” Are those the views of “right-wingers”? Our data is available here.

For Lexophiles

No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can't put it down.

I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

Did you hear about the crossed-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils?

When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.

When chemists die, they barium.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went, and then it dawned on me.

I changed my iPod's name to Titanic. It's syncing now.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool .

Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

This girl today said she recognized me from the Vegetarians Club, but I'd swear I've never met herbivore

I know a guy who's addicted to drinking brake fluid, but he says he can stop any time.

A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

When the smog lifts in Los Angeles U.C.L.A.

I got some batteries that were given out free of charge.

A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail.

A will is a dead giveaway.

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

Police were summoned to a daycare center where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

Did you hear about the fellow whose entire left side was cut off? He's all right now.

A bicycle can't stand alone; it's just two tired.

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine last week is now fully recovered.

He had a photographic memory but it was never fully developed.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye.

Acupuncture is a jab well done. That's the point of it.

Those who get too big for their pants will be totally exposed in the end.