Man Of Jackistan: Reason and Truth's Time and Place

Trump Approval Rating Rises Amid Coronavirus Crisis Rant #19 ( Opinion ) Originally March 24, 2020 Donald Trump ignored intelligence reports from multiple agencies in the months of January and February that warned of the coronavirus imminently infecting America, doing great damage to the economy and public health. The president publicly refuted the severity of the virus, famously called it a "Democratic hoax," and to this day despite having declared a national emergency continues to give bad advice about the illness, for example by claiming that chloroquine is a viable cure for COVID-19. And now, the president has begun flirting with the idea of reeling back the emergency measures meant to flatten the curve of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. It doesn't stop there, either. Here's a link to a video which very effectively displays some more examples of how he has totally mismanaged the crisis thus far. And yet, the president's approval rating has r...

More Red Flags Than A Chinese Communist Party Parade Rant #13 ( Opinion ) Originally March 17, 2020 Not to say I told you so, to those who either bought that this president had the skills to effectively manage a crisis, or the many who bet that the country would not face something seriously threatening for 4 or 8 years...without gloating or anything, please don't say nobody raised concerns about his ability to lead. Of the many, many, many warning sides in a sequence of more red flags than a Chinese Communist Party parade: When trump used a sharpie to draw obviously altered lines over a map to show (falsely) that a hurricane would hit Alabama--in line with an earlier, incorrect statement--his more cognizant supporters wrote it off as clearly not true, but insignificant (whereas his die-hard base adjusted their understanding of that hurricane's path, trusting trump over NOAA, the nation's premier meteorological agency).  Instead of admitting wro...

Q&A: "Are People Better Or Worse Off With All The Prescription Drugs We Have These Days?" Contains Subjective Input/Opinion Originally January 15, 2019 A lot of people have to think hard about this question, citing all the possible side effects of any given Rx as reason alone to criticize the scope of prescription drugs in the United States and elsewhere. Also, Big Pharma has some fairly shady marketing practices at times. Many believe that these companies made up disorders like Restless Leg Syndrome and ADHD just to sell pills, when the medical community clearly recognizes these as legitimate syndromes with particular treatments. Again, the marketing strategies employed by Big Pharma cross into shady territory all too often, but they don’t belong to some grand conspiracy that makes up mental illnesses in order to drug different-minded people into submission to the status quo… Before going off on some tangents that explore America's obsession with pharmaceuti...

The Vaccine-Autism Link...Or Lack Thereof Originally composed August 4, 2018 Editor's Note: The anti-vaxxer quandary will not go untouched, as I intend to devote a future article, possibly more, to dissecting the bizarre phenomenon. For now, this article explains the origins of the misconception and clarifies reality. All too often, many people-and smart ones, at that-speak as if factually about the link between vaccines and autism, citing a causal effect of the former on the development of the latter. In fact, 18% of Americans believe this link to exist, according to  a 2011 poll cited by  Time .  Meanwhile, virtually every major scientific organization has openly rejected this presumption. Googling "vaccine and autism" will quickly reveal this unified position among organizations ranging from: the federal government's Center for Disease Control (CDC); news outlets like  Discover Magazine , the  Washington Post , and  TIME ; online healthcare publi...