Too cute!

 

I had to laugh out loud while watching this.

Good dogs!

Peter

An unforeseen danger in a sleep supplement

 

I've used a melatonin supplement as a sleep aid for over a year.  I take one tablet at night before going to bed, and have found it helps me sleep more regularly, with less waking up in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, I may have to stop that.  A new report says melatonin can be a two-edged sword.

New research has linked long-term melatonin use with a significantly increased risk of heart failure, hospitalization and death.

An observational study from the American Heart Association (AHA) examined five years of health records of 130,828 adults with insomnia, half of whom used melatonin for at least one year. The other half did not take the supplement.

People who were prescribed other sleep medications or already had confirmed heart failure were excluded from the analysis.

The researchers found that long-term melatonin use in those with chronic insomnia was linked to a 90% increased chance of incident heart failure compared to non-users.

Additionally, participants who filled at least two melatonin prescriptions at least 90 days apart had an 82% higher risk of developing heart failure compared with those who did not use melatonin, according to the observational study.

A secondary analysis revealed that participants who took melatonin were nearly 3.5 times as likely to be hospitalized for heart failure and twice as likely to die.

There's more at the link.

What I found particularly depressing was that this study deliberately excluded people who "already had confirmed heart failure".  That would include me, after two heart attacks.  If melatonin increased cardiac risks to the extent reported in people with healthy hearts, what about folks like me with unhealthy ones?

I know a number of people who use melatonin as I do - some of them recommended it to me.  It does work as a sleep aid, in my experience.  However, no matter how effective it may be in the latter capacity, if it's going to add to the stress on my heart, I'm going to have to stop using it.

Have any readers had experiences that might bear out this report?  If so, please tell us about them in Comments.

Peter

Health update

 

I figured it was time to give you all an update on how my health situation is progressing (particularly those generous souls who donated to my fund-raising appeal).

My right kidney was removed on September 26.  It's been a long, slow recovery since then, with stringent restrictions on how much I can lift and what I can do.  The incisions (multiple) have been healing a lot more slowly than I'd like, and are still not fully covered with skin, but then they were very deep.  Also, as my surgeon has repeatedly pointed out, in one's late 60's one's body doesn't recover as fast as it did in one's late 20's!  Fortunately, the progress is all in the right direction, albeit a lot too slow for my impatient self.  With luck, I hope everything will be "skinned over" (if I can put it that way) by the beginning of December, when my other restrictions are scheduled to be eased.  That means I can get on with rehab and rebuilding my strength.

I've had a first consultation with a highly-rated local rehab facility, planning for post-operative reconditioning and extended work on strengthening my core and (hopefully) getting the muscles around my lower spine in better condition to support the surgery that's planned for that area.  It's going to take time to build up to three sessions a week, but I'm going to work at it.  Hopefully I'll combine stretching and conditioning (under supervision) with swimming and exercise bicycle/elliptical workouts.  I hope to start that in December, and plan to work on it for up to (and if necessary more than) a year, depending on what happens next.

I'm still undergoing tests to help the neurosurgeon decide what surgery would be most effective to address my spinal issues.  Unfortunately, the tests are uncovering complications that we hadn't expected.  On Monday this week I went to a neurologist for an electromyograph, both surface (using electrodes) and subcutaneous (using needles).  If I understood the technicians correctly, this is supposed to reveal current drop through the nerves and muscles, showing precisely which muscles are most affected by problems.  From that information, the neurosurgeon can deduce which part(s) of the spine are most affected, because it'll be the nerves flowing from it to the muscle(s) concerned that are the ones needing attention.  It's a bit complicated for a simple man like me (ahem), but I think that's the gist of it.  The test revealed definite deterioration since the last one I had, twenty years ago, but in different areas of the legs - which is not very helpful!

The test also revealed an additional nerve problem, peripheral neuropathy, which must now be tracked down to its source and taken into account when planning surgery.  I wasn't aware of that problem, but the neurologist explained it was because the level of pain from my already-damaged nerves was high enough to "mask" the lower-level pain and discomfort caused by the neuropathy.  What next?  Your guess is as good as mine.

(Oh - and further thanks to those of you who donated to my fund-raiser.  Monday's test billed at a cool $6,300 for a couple of hours being poked and prodded by two technicians and a neurosurgeon.  Thanks to you, that's no longer the financial headache it might otherwise have been.)

My next step, probably in early December, will be another consultation with my neurosurgeon, bringing together the results of all the tests I've been through over the last four months or so.  He'll tell me what he's diagnosed as a result, and the surgery he recommends to fix the problem(s).  At that point I'm going to put matters on hold locally, get full copies of all the tests and their results, and go see another neurosurgeon in DFW to get a second opinion.  Given the cost of this exercise and the potential for things to go wrong, I want to be very sure of my options before I move forward.  That will probably happen during the first quarter of 2026, after which we'll see what happens.

Thanks again for your help and support, and particularly for your prayers.  They're greatly appreciated.

Peter

Electoral fraud that preceded the election: hijacking the 2020 census

 

It seems that the 2020 census deliberately mis-apportioned state populations, which in turn led to mis-allocation of electoral seats per state.  Nice when you can fix the results before the election even begins!

Redistricting is a sum of blocks. Distort the blocks, and you distort the districts, the legislatures, and the House. This practice is not merely bad policy; it is plainly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court’s opinion in Department of Commerce v. House of Representatives (1999) made clear that statistical sampling for apportionment is illegal on statutory grounds. Abowd’s algorithmic manipulation is statistical sampling by another name, an unlawful substitution of estimated data for an actual enumeration required by the Constitution.

The proof arrived in March and May of 2022 when the Bureau’s own quality checks exposed a lopsided pattern. Fourteen states had statistically significant coverage errors, eight with overcounts and six with undercounts. The tilt was unmistakable. Democratic-leaning states were widely overcounted. Republican-leaning states were widely undercounted. Florida’s undercount was roughly three quarters of a million people. Texas’s undercount was on the order of a half million. Minnesota and Rhode Island kept seats they would have lost under an accurate count. Colorado gained a seat it did not deserve. Florida and Texas each missed multiple seats they should have gained. Analysts estimate the net effect was a shift of nine House seats away from Republican-leaning states and toward Democratic-leaning states. The Electoral College moved with them. More than $86 billion in federal formula funds followed.

. . .

The stakes are immense. The Census Bureau’s operations across a decade cost taxpayers on the order of $25 billion. Citizens paid for accurate data and received a noisy approximation that tilted representation and shifted money. Republican states are projected to lose almost $90 billion in federal funds across the decade as a result of the miscounts. Democratic states are projected to gain $57 billion. This is not a rounding error. It is a reweighting of national political power and public finance by mathematical fiat.

There's much more at the link.  It provides graphic evidence of what I can only presume is Deep State manipulation of our electoral machinery, to give their approved candidates and causes a built-in advantage even before a single vote is cast.  That situation still exists, and will govern national elections for the next half-decade or more until a new census can re-calculate our population and fairly apportion its distribution.  It means President Trump is fighting a built-in, institutionalized disadvantage in every election he and his party fight.

Food for thought.  Remember to get out and vote today!

Peter

Yet more evidence of how US taxpayers have been robbed blind by left-wing progressive policies

 

Two reports caught my eye over the weekend.  Just remind yourself as you read them that they are the fruit of four years of the Biden administration - and if President Trump is forced to back down on his policies (e.g. through losses in the mid-term elections, or court rulings) we'll be back in the same situation in no time.

First:  "SNAP’s Hidden Reality: 83 Million Citizens and Illegal Aliens Are Dependent on Food Aid Each Year".

The most frequently cited statistic about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is that about 43 million Americans rely on it each month to feed themselves and their families. That number is often used to justify the program’s scale and reach. But this monthly average hides a far more disturbing truth. Because of high turnover, the real number of Americans who receive SNAP benefits at some point during a given year is much higher. Federal data show that 52% of new enrollees leave within one year, and 67% within two years. That means that across twelve months, between 63 and 83 million unique individuals participate in the program. In other words, about 22% of the entire US population uses SNAP to buy food during any calendar year. This is not a small anti-poverty program. It is a vast, parallel food economy. The only way such numbers make sense is if many more illegal immigrants are benefiting from the system than politicians admit.

. . .

SNAP benefits are set to be suspended on November 1 if the shutdown persists, and states like California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington have each announced that their food programs for illegal immigrants will be suspended at the same time. These programs were supposedly distinct from SNAP, yet their funding halts when SNAP halts. That coincidence exposes the truth: the money, the systems, and the administrative pipelines are connected. States have long played a shell game, quietly routing federal funds into state-level programs for illegal immigrants. The shutdown has revealed the link.

The implications are enormous. If SNAP were truly separate from these state programs, the shutdown would inconvenience them, not paralyze them. Their paralysis proves a shared infrastructure, shared databases, shared eligibility systems, and, most troublingly, shared funding streams. This confirms what conservatives have long argued: state officials are using federal welfare mechanisms to subsidize benefits for illegal immigrants. It is not a clean firewall between programs. It is a revolving door.

There's more at the link.

Next:  "Nearly $200M in Direct Federal Grants Has Been Aimed at Expanding Programs to Serve Illegal Immigrants".

Illegal immigrants have benefitted from at least $197 million in direct federal healthcare-related grants since fiscal year 2021, according to new research from Open the Books. This figure does not include indirect spending on illegal immigrants via Medicaid, which was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be around $27 billion from FY 2017-2023, nor does it account for education spending that benefits illegal immigrants and their children, which amounts to an estimated $70 billion annually.

. . .

Health-related spending is principally directed towards programs serving the neediest members of society, such as the homeless, drug-addicted, or otherwise medically fragile. The expansion of programs to include illegal immigrants both encourages illegal migration into the United States and directs spending away from high-poverty Americans.

. . .

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150.7 billion per year [at] the federal state and local level. Meanwhile, this year’s budget reconciliation bill directs $45 billion to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s detention budget and nearly $30 billion to ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations over the next four years. The bill directs an additional $46.5 billion to border security infrastructure.

Again, more at the link.

So much for our taxpayer dollars.  So much for constitutional and legal provisions forbidding the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on those not entitled to such support.  The previous administration appears to have disregarded those provisions wholesale.  If these numbers don't demonstrate the absolute contempt that the progressive left wing of US politics has for taxpayers and regular citizens, then I don't know what will.

Even with all that President Trump has accomplished so far, we remain balanced on a knife-edge as far as our future fiscal policies are concerned.  If the progressive left gains control of the House and Senate during the 2026 mid-term elections, and/or if left-wing judges use the judicial system to block much of the President's program, then we're neck-deep in the financial dwang once again . . . and given how deep that noxious substance already is in our body politic, I don't know whether we'll be able to dig our way out again.  That's particularly troubling in the light of opinion polls suggesting that a majority of the electorate is not happy with the President's policies for one reason or another.  (Whether or not those polls are accurate is another question:  without knowing the exact statistics of who and how many were sampled, when and where, it's one I can't answer.)

It's up to all of us, individually and collectively, to keep up the pressure, encourage all those we know to think rationally and count their pennies (particularly those given to the taxman), and stop that from happening.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 284

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

I tend to be rather old-fashioned in my music tastes.  I'm unlikely to enjoy most songs written this century (with a few notable exceptions when composed and/or performed by older artists and groups, who were brought up to know what music was, as opposed to a noise!).  As for alleged rap "music", I refuse to dignify it with the label "music" at all.

However, there are always exceptions to every rule, and I came across one this week.  Shaboozey has been writing and performing songs since 2014, when he was only 19 years old.  His music "combines hip-hop, country, rock, and Americana", and he appears to carry off the blend with aplomb.

The track I listened to is called simply "Good News".  The lyrics may be found here, if you need them.  Give it a listen, and see what you think.

You'll find more of his music at his YouTube channel.  I plan to listen to more of it, to see how his undoubted talent develops.  This young man may have a serious musical future.

Peter