Quotes of the week

“I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil.” – Benjamin Franklin

We’re with you, Ben. Only morons imagine an all-powerful government will be good to them. We know better. Soap Box

NOTE: Any Soap Box material written by Buddy may be copied and forwarded to family and friends. Material from other sources is usually copyrighted but likely can be shared so long as it is not changed or abridged and the publisher is properly credited, including a link to their site.

Buddy’s Soap Box

Preamble:

A quick thank you to those of you who email me expressing your support for Soap Box. For that I thank you. However, I had hoped a bit of back and forth dialogue would have developed by now, back and forth between those who share a similar perspective to ours, and those of an opposite or near opposite perspective. Two things seen to be impeding such a development.

Many people, regardless of their perspective, fear they might be cancelled in some way. If you feel so, simply comment under a “secret identity.” Buddy will understand.

We hope those with a different perspective aren’t afraid of commenting because they think we will cancel them. We won’t. We welcome arguments favoring such things as critical race theory or open borders. Let’s argue merits.

A patriotic Texas howdy from Buddy

The Arizona election audit is nearing completion. You know that if you watch One America News or read The Epoch Times. Otherwise, you are likely in woke darkness.

Soap Box is certain of two things. One, that this audit will render accurate and honest results. Second, that it will show that the presidential election in Maricopa County was rife with fraud, not just the minor fraud already admitted to, but rather a systemic and organized swindle carried out not by a few unscrupulous citizens, but by political operatives, including elected officials, who manipulated the results on a grand scale, stuffing or otherwise manipulating ballot boxes electronically.

One finding we expect is that there will be more electronic votes than paper ballots, a lot more. Another likely finding will be that votes for one candidate were switched to another. Far fewer, but discovered as well, will be votes by the dead, those no longer in residence, and those not citizens or otherwise ineligible to vote.

Whatever the Arizona audit’s outcome, it will be both definitive, decisive and impervious to challenge. If it renders what we expect, proof that President Donald Trump handily won Maricopa County, we and a majority of American voters will be vindicated as will our president.

If, on the other hand, the audit upholds the claim by Arizona election officials, the media, and assorted pundits, that the Maricopa County election produced a true and honest outcome, then Soap Box will accept the results and eat a lot of crow.

We don’t think we’ll be eating crow, but again, if we are wrong, we will accept the fact that we were wrong.

However, if it turns out the other side is wrong, don’t expect them to admit it.

Other Items of Interest

If Democrats thought the thousands of illegal aliens crossing our border were future Republicans, Biden would be building the wall faster than President Donald Trump ever did.

Dr. Anthony Fauci goes “quack, quack” in MSNBC interview with Chuck Todd. Turns out Fauci, while not yet seeing himself as God, nonetheless comes close, given that anyone who questions his utterances—even when they are contradictory—aren’t just attacking Fauci the man, they are attacking science and the truth. So says Fauci. This from a man who funneled our tax dollars to the Communist Chinese government biological weapons lab so the reds could enhance the killing power of viruses. And then Fauci lied about his involvement.  Such a man belongs in prison where he can think upon the several million people killed by his gain-of-function Chinese virus.

Kamala Harris imagines she has solved our border disaster, not by visiting the border, but by flying over it on the way to other countries. Her plan isn’t to finish the border wall. Rather, her plan is to end the conditions in those countries that cause mass migration. She thinks this can be done with $300 million, chicken feed compared to the billions our nation has already spent in those countries to address this selfsame problem.

Will her plan work? Nope. The $300 million, like all the millions before, will disappear into the pockets of politicians, both there and here. But let’s pretend the $300 million will be used honestly and spent wisely and that it will be enough to turn around everything that needs to be turned around to stop mass migration.

The problem is that, even if Kamala’s fantasy plan works, it will take years to yield the desired results. By the time that happens, there will be no one left to migrate. They’ll ALL be here.

Our town, your town, every town. Amid a contentious public safety disaster in Austin, the capital of Texas, a growing chorus of citizens are calling for city officials to reveal what they did with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that were wasted under the guise of subsidizing the homelessness crisis. Jacob Asmussen, Texas Scorecard, has the details.

“It’s time they show where they’ve been spending the money,” said Matt Mackowiak, co-founder of citizen group Save Austin Now. “Taxpayers deserve to know how $160 million were spent over fiscal years 2018-2020 and what we have to show for it.”

Where did all the money go? asks Soap Box. Answer. Into the pockets of countless “non-profits” created to feed on such money, with a portion then funneled to politicians via political contributions. That same thing goes on in most cities, including our own city of Arlington. Our city council created a “Tomorrow Fund,” a “foundation” to manage the millions of dollars the city receives from gas well leases on city property, a foundation, guess what, 100% controlled by the mayor and council. After giving $500 million to developers, the rest is being doled out to the non-profits that came out of the woodwork at the first scent of money. The term for this is “walking around money,” money “invested” in organizations that then support a politician’s reelection with cash contributions, door knockers, and reliable votes.

A similar dynamic explains in part what is happening on our border. Among the many nonprofits feeding at the trough are church organizations, most notable the Catholic Church, all happy to have reliable income streams.

The problem isn’t that morons vote. We outnumber the morons. The problem is that morons tend to vote more than once in the same election, even the dead morons.

Buddy recently wrote this to a friend: As for the elites, they are dependably dead wrong, have been for a long time, and more and more they are laughably wrong, nutty as any fruitcake. We, the common folk, so despised by the elites, vastly outnumber them, and we are far more blessed with a full measure of common sense, good old horse sense. The blinders are off. We see the elites for what they are. We hear their nutty pronouncements. We will beat such people. We will beat the elite idiot gaggle and, in the process, have a lot of laughs. The fight will be fun.

This week’s Aesop’s Fable: The Ass in the Lion’s Skin 

An ass once pilfered a lion’s skin which belonged to a great warrior.  He put it on and went towards his native village.  All fled at his approach, both men and animals, and he was a proud ass that day.  In his delight he lifted up his voice and brayed, but then everyone knew him, and his owner came and gave him a sound cudgeling for the fright he had caused.  And shortly afterwards a Fox, or more likely an OAN or Epoch, came up to him and said: “Ah, I and my friends knew you by your voice.”

Moral of the story: Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.

Highly Recommended

The following are excellent resources for those of us (way more than 75 million strong) who want full and honest news reporting. We’ll be adding to this list as we go along. Those who prefer filtered news—only the news deemed safe for them to know—can stay with the legacy media, such as it is.

New to list!
Need a free nonpartisan site that can make you a well-informed voter in elections at the local level as well as state and national? We recommend Ballotpedia.

Here’s a great way to join thousands—and eventually millions—of others who are letting their government representatives know their thoughts on pending legislation.  Heritage Action for America from the Heritage Foundation makes doing so super EASY! They do the research. They inform you. Then in almost the blink of an eye, you contact your federal or state representatives regarding pending legislation expressing your support or opposition.

Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) AARP is a shill for big government, AMAC isn’t.

Fox News and One America News (OAN) Cable channel

The Epoch Times print newspaper and web site/email updates

Dennis Prager  This man will help you find the mainstream conservative hiding inside you.

President Donald Trump’s Great America PAC is now up and running.  Give to this PAC or to individual candidates you know to be truly conservative. Money given to the Republican Party is money down a RINO hole. https://texasscorecard.com/state/legislative-priorities-tracker/

Texas Score Card https://texasscorecard.com/state/legislative-priorities-tracker/

Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute.

Project Veritas, Fun and informative hidden camera videos exposing the secret agendas of the left in their own words.

Columns worth reading

Each week under this heading, Soap Box will feature columns or intros to columns you can read in full elsewhere on the internet. Each of these columns pretty much express Soap Box’s views, else we’d not be sharing them with you.

Two columns this week.

In the first column, our good friend Paul Gleiser writes about the wokie elites and their dismal track record.  One would think that self-styled experts on everything would get at least some things right. But “not hardly,” as my little brother used to say.

In the second column, “Weight-Adjusted Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin Boosted Survival of Ventilated COVID-19 Patients by 200 Percent,” Tom Ozimek, writing for the Epoch Times, provides vindication for everyone, beginning with President Donald Trump, and including many others, Buddy included, who early on saw Hydroxychloroquine as a safe and effective instrument for beating the Chinese Wuhan virus.

How did Buddy know?. He can thank Edgar Rice Burroughs who created Tarzan. The Tarzan tales got Buddy interested in African colonial history and it was in that reading Buddy learned about the use of quinine in fighting tropical disease. A treatment safe through more than a century of use was, Buddy reasoned, still safe today. Buddy asked his doctor, “If I show symptoms of coming down with Covid, will you prescribe Hydroxychloroquine for me?” And my doc said, “Yes.”

Many people killed by the China virus would be alive today if Trump’s mention of Hydroxychloroquine had been given fair consideration for treatment of Covid.

FIRST COLUMN: The first thing we do, let’s get rid of the experts

by Paul Gleiser at You Tell Me Texas  

Published June 10, 2021 · Updated June 8, 2021

Eighty years ago, America’s military experts successfully executed the D-Day invasion on the beaches of Normandy, France. It was the largest amphibious military operation in history and it resulted in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Immediately following World War II our nation’s medical experts developed vaccines that effectively eliminated such terrible diseases as polio, tetanus, measles, mumps, chickenpox and about a half dozen others.

In that same period our nation’s infrastructure experts were designing and building the Interstate Highway System that connects the 48 contiguous states and makes interstate commerce efficient and low-friction.

While the interstates were getting built our aerospace experts were busy commercializing jet air travel and putting men on the moon.

There is no question that the 30 years immediately following World War II was a gilded age for American experts.

But the past 50 years? Well…not so much.

The actual experts that built post-war America have retired, died off and left the scene. They have been replaced not by up & coming protégés but instead by an elite “expertocracy” – as columnist Kurt Schlichter has dubbed them.

Almost to a person, members of the expertocracy hold degrees from elite universities – most from the Ivy League, live on one or another of the coasts, are avowedly liberal in their politics and are, generally speaking, devoid of much real-world accomplishment other than earning the credentials over which the elite media fawn. Rather than quietly, efficiently – and for the most part, anonymously – solving problems and getting things done, they instead spend enormous amounts of their time on cable TV news shows telling the rest of us how smart they are and how dumb we are.

All of which might be somewhat tolerable if their record was good. It’s not.

We have not had a decisive military victory since World War II. Our delivery of healthcare, while for the most part still technically competent, is a financial catastrophe. Thanks to Ivy-educated educrat experts, the current crop of college graduates is buried under a one trillion dollar-plus mountain of debt.

On the subject of education, our education experts have given us the massive, dystopic, dysfunctional hellhole that we call American public school. Other experts have given us Obamacare, the Iraq fiasco, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of China as a malign global threat, crumbling, crime-plagued cities and most recently Dr. Anthony Fauci and his ruinous – and we now know, unnecessary – coronavirus lockdown.

It is Lord Fauci who is, at the moment, the very face of the American expertocracy.

Through it all the experts have made themselves very rich while we who actually work for a living saw our real incomes decline for most of the past 30 years.

It’s time to throw the experts out. (We can start with Lord Fauci.) It’s time to change channels when they come on TV. It’s time, when they talk and that little voice inside us says, “Say what?,” to actually listen to that little voice. It’s time for fewer “experts” and more common sense.

Now there’s some expert advice.

SECOND COLUMN: Weight-Adjusted Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin Boosted Survival of Ventilated COVID-19 Patients by 200 Percent: Study

By Tom Ozimek in the The Epoch Times  June 9, 2021

A new study has found that the use of weight-adjusted hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and azithromycin (AZM) improved the survival of ventilated COVID-19 patients by nearly 200 percent.

The observational study, which hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, was based on a re-analysis of 255 patients on invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) during the first two months of the pandemic in the United States.

The researchers found that when the HCQ–AZM combination was given at higher dosages to treat ventilated COVID-19 patients, the risk of death was about three times lower.

“We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients,” the authors of the study noted.

“By using causal analysis and considering of weight-adjusted cumulative dose, we prove the combined therapy, >3 g HCQ and > 1g AZM greatly increases survival in COVID patients on IMV and that HCQ cumulative dose > 80 mg/kg works substantially better.”

While the authors acknowledged that patients with higher doses of HCQ had higher doses of AZM, they “cannot solely attribute the causal effect to HCQ/AZM combination therapy.”

“However, it is likely AZM does contribute significantly to this increase in survival rate. Since higher dose HCQ/AZM therapy improves survival by nearly 200 [percent] in this population, the safety data are moot,” they added.

Hydroxychloroquine—an anti-inflammatory and anti-malarial drug—has been one of the most contested treatments for COVID-19 throughout the pandemic.

A pharmacist displaying a box of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) tablets in his store in Hyderabad, India, on April 28, 2020. (Noah Seelam/AFP via Getty Images)

The drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1955 to treat and prevent malaria. It’s also prescribed for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

While the FDA initially granted HCQ an emergency use authorization (EUA) to treat COVID-19 in March 2020, the agency revoked it on June 15, 2020, because data suggested it was “unlikely to be effective in treating COVID-19” and that its potential risks outweighed the benefits.

The FDA’s turnabout came on the heels of a study by Oxford University in the United Kingdom that found HCQ underperformed its routine treatment protocols.

“Unfortunately, problems in research methodologies assessing the  effectiveness and risks of HCQ have left lingering doubts,” wrote Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, in an op-ed for The Epoch Times. “Those problems include questionable dosing.” Some, like Epoch Times contributor Roger L. Simon, have argued that studies around the use of HCQ to treat COVID-19 were politicized by opponents of former President Donald Trump, who advocated the use of the drug.