We two make banquets of the plainest fare;
In every cup we find the thrill of pleasure;
We hide with wreaths the furrowed brow of care
And win to smiles the set lips of despair.
For us life always moves with lilting measure;
We two, we two, we make our world, our pleasure.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) American author, poet, temperance advocate, spiritualist
Poem (1900-05), “We Two,” st. 2, The Century Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 1

Collected in Poems of Power (1902)

When I speak of “the sinner,” I do not mean the man who commits sin: sins are committed by everyone or no one, according to our definition of the word. I mean the man who is absorbed in the consciousness of sin. This man is perpetually incurring his own disapproval, which, if he is religious, he interprets as the disapproval of God. He has an image of himself as he thinks he ought to be, which is in continual conflict with his knowledge of himself as he is.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 1, ch. 1 “What Makes People Unhappy?” (1930)

Seek not to be rich, but Happy.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 89 (1725)

From Madame Blavatsky and theosophy to Alice Bailey and The Externalisation of the Hierarchy to Nordangård and Temple of Solomon, you won't want to miss this fascinating exploration of the occult roots of the ascendance of Mark Carney and the globalist agenda.

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Justice without strength, and strength without justice: fearful misfortunes!

[La justice sans force, et la force sans justice: malheurs aflreux!]

Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist, philosopher, essayist, poet
Pensées [Thoughts], ch. 15 “De la Liberté, de la Justice et des Lois [On Liberty, Justice, and Laws],” ¶ 18 (1850 ed.) [tr. Calvert (1866), ch. 12]

(Source (French)). I could find no other translation of this. See Pascal (1670).

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1863-11-19), “Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg [Gettysburg Address],” Pennsylvania

MORE: Well … I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their own public duties … they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

Robert Bolt (1924-1995) English dramatist
A Man for All Seasons, play, Act 1 (1960)

Speaking to Wolsey about why he opposes Henry taking a new wife, even if the alternative is another civil war.

Bolt's 1966 film adaptation uses the same line.

PLAN, v.t. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Plan,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

Originally published in the "Cynic's Word Book" column in the New York American (1906-02-22).

Our waiting is not nothing. It is something — a very big something — because people tend to be shaped by whatever it is they are waiting for.

Barbara Brown Taylor (b. 1951) American minister, academic, author
Sermon (1995), “Waiting in the Dark,” Gospel Medicine

Bean longed to be able to talk these things over with someone — with Nikolai, or even with one of the teachers. It slowed him down to have his own thoughts move around in circles — without outside stimulation it was hard to break free of his own assumptions. One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.

Orson Scott Card (b. 1951) American author
Ender’s Shadow, ch. 21 (1999)

In your prayers do not babble as the gentiles do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard. Do not be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

[Προσευχόμενοι δὲ μὴ βατταλογήσητε ὥσπερ οἱ ἐθνικοί, δοκοῦσιν γὰρ ὅτι ἐν τῇ πολυλογίᾳ αὐτῶν εἰσακουσθήσονται. μὴ οὖν ὁμοιωθῆτε αὐτοῖς· οἶδεν γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὧν χρείαν ἔχετε πρὸ τοῦ ὑμᾶς αἰτῆσαι αὐτόν.]

The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
Matthew 6: 7-8 (Jesus) [NJB (1985)]

No Synoptic parallels.

(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
[KJV (1611)]

In your prayers do not babble as the pagans do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard. Do not be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
[JB (1966)]

When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long. Do not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.
[GNT (1976)]

When you pray, don’t pour out a flood of empty words, as the Gentiles do. They think that by saying many words they’ll be heard. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows what you need before you ask.
[CEB (2011)]

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
[NRSV (2021 ed.)]

In 2023, police services in Canada recorded a sharp rise in hate crimes, with 4,777 incidents reported, up 32% from 3,612 incidents in 2022. This marked the third sharp increase in four years. Overall, the number of police-reported hate crimes has more than doubled in the last four years.

Total sales in the food services and drinking places subsector increased in January, rising 0.2% to $8.3 billion.

The combined operating revenues of private and public nursing and residential care facilities in Canada grew by 7.6% from 2022 to reach $43.3 billion in 2023. With an ever-increasing proportion of the Canadian population being aged 65 years and older, demand for these services has continued to rise in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, as active COVID-19 cases have decreased, pandemic-related restrictions have eased and day-to-day operations have begun to more closely approximate their pre-pandemic norm.

National data on the value added in exports for 2023 are now available. The national data on the value added in exports for 2021 and 2022 have been revised.

Our warfare focused Coffee Break: The impossible dream of a national missile shield and the implications for Trump's Golden Dome

Guest Post by Alex Berenson

The New York Times takes 2025’s measles hysteria past 10, all the way to 11. And the fact it published falsehoods to do so doesn’t seem to bother it.

Sometimes you can’t let the science get in the way of The Science (TM).

Or the truth get in the way of a good woke-shaming exercise.

To ensure diverse opinions, The New York Times offers many types of insufferable lefty columnists, including feminist, environmentalist, literaryish, and Southern. The categories are not exclusive. If readers are really lucky, a writer can be all four at once!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Margaret Renkl. She usually offers readers tales of daisies blooming with a side of Trump hate. They’re as scintillating as you imagine.

Renkl is 63. Renkl just got a measles vaccine. I know this because — as her contribution to the media hysteria over a measles “epidemic” that is actually part of a predictable once-every-five-years cycle — she described getting jabbed in a piece called, Why I Got the Measles Vaccine at Age 63.

Why indeed? Especially since Renkl acknowledges she was in fact vaccinated against measles as a kid. Honest answers would include:

1: I was looking for something to write about and I figured my odds of Guillain-Barre syndrome were low.

2: I needed to virtue signal and I was afraid to vandalize a Tesla, so many cameras, ugh.

3: I’m weirdly scared of measles, and all these articles have triggered me.

Now any of those columns would have been funny and interesting. So, no.

Instead Renkl offered a tortured justification about how her childhood vaccination might not protect her from measles, though she didn’t bother to check if she still had antibodies before getting the shot. That would have been too much trouble (and might have killed the column).

No, Renkl mainly wanted us to know: she’s a good person. A very good person. Better than anyone who voted for Donald Trump, for sure.

My own safety wasn’t my chief concern. Doing everything I can to protect my fellow human beings who cannot be vaccinated… seems to me to be the only moral thing to do for anyone living in close community with other people. And that’s almost all of us.

Community is a concept that the MAGA movement is working overtime to undo…

Yes, getting a measles shot – even if you may already have antibodies against measles, even if you are not at any meaningful risk of getting measles – is THE ONLY MORAL THING TO DO, PEOPLE.

And here I thought it was a pointless waste of medical resources.

I am obviously not a moral person. I apologize. Please excuse me while I find a dog to kick.

—

(More proof I’m not a moral person. I am kinda funny sometimes, though.)

—

All of this would be typical Times wokeness, except that early in the column Renkl and her editors showed us just how much they care about facts. In her second paragraph, she wrote that when her first child was born in 1992:

There was no reason for his pediatrician to warn me that I needed to keep him away from anyone who wasn’t vaccinated against other deadly infectious diseases. Before the internet deluded people into believing that an online search was commensurate with a medical degree, vaccination rates were high enough in this country to provide de facto herd immunity.

What Renkl wrote wasn’t just wrong or mistaken. It was the opposite of the truth.

For months, legacy media outlets have tried to fan hysteria around a new American measles “epidemic.” In reality, this year’s increase is predictable. Even “Your Local Epidemiologist,” a woke Substacker, acknowledged this a week ago, explaining that “Measles cases surge every five years for reasons we don’t fully understand.”1

Nor have American childhood vaccination rates changed much for decades. They rose a bit during the 2010s, and have fallen a bit since 2020. Given how much public health experts lied about lockdowns, masks, and the mRNA Covid shots, the surprise isn’t that rates are down — it’s that they’re not down more.2

The big falsehood in the paragraph, though, is one Renkl may not even know is a lie.

The worst measles epidemic in the last 40 years took place in, wait for it, 1989 and 1990, when over 45,000 Americans were infected — almost 200 times as many as have been infected so far this year. A number of children died, too.

The outbreak received modest media attention, though nothing like the hysteria that Renkl and the gang have piled on this winter. The reason may have had something to do with the fact that the outbreak was centered in poor black and Hispanic communities in New York City — groups that reporters did not view as appropriate targets for vaccination shaming campaigns (unlike Mennonites or Orthodox Jews).

—

The epidemic lasted through 1991, when almost 10,000 Americans got measles. Even in 1992, the number was 2,200 — more than the last five years combined.

So, yeah, Renkl doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

But when has that ever stopped a woke public health scold before?

The more interesting question: Why didn’t Renkl’s pediatrician mention measles 33 years back? (Assuming any part of that conversation happened.) And the answer is that the doctor probably viewed the risk as no big deal — a minor threat to be avoided through vaccination if possible, but not hardly worth upsetting a new parent over.

My, how times have changed.

Expect the Times and Renkl to correct their mistakes and return to reality on the 12th of Never.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Appearing on Face The Nation Sunday, Senator Rand Paul told viewers that the Education Department hasn’t done enough to justify its existence and President Trumps is right to end it.

When asked by activist anchor Margaret Brennan whether low-income schools would continue to receive federal subsidies if the Department is closed, Paul responded “I think the bigger question is, if we’re sending all this money to Kentucky and all the other states, why are our scores abysmal?”

“Why do two-thirds of the kids not read at proficiency? Why do two-thirds of the kids or more not have math proficiency?” Paul further urged.

“It’s been an utter failure,” Paul continued, adding “I’d leave it back to the states. It has always been a position, a very mainstream Republican position, to have control of the schools by the states, send the money back to the states, or, better yet, never take it from the states.”

“When I talk to teachers, they chafe at the national mandates on testing, they think are not appropriate for their kids,” the Senator explained, adding “They think they waste too much time teaching to national testing. The teachers would like more autonomy, and I think the teachers deserve more autonomy.”

Paul reasoned that he would rather have “a guarantee that my kids can read and write and do math” than worry about the federal government throwing billions of dollars at education without a coherent plan.

“The number of dollars has gone up exponentially and our scores have gone the other way,” he said, adding “So dollars are not proportional to educational success. What I want is success.”

“I think there are innovations we can do where there’s more learning via some of the best teachers and we pay them more. I would like to have an NBA or NFL of teachers, the most extraordinary teachers, teach the entire country, if not the entire world,” Paul asserted.

Elsewhere during the interview, the Senator spoke about pitching a plan to Elon Musk for reclaiming over $500 billion in federal funding that the previous Congress approved.

“This goes to another huge legal question. Can the President impound money, or does he have to send it back, and we approve the cuts through recission? And this is going all the way to the Supreme Court also,” Paul said.

“Can Secretary Rubio pause the spending? On that issue, I think they will win. You will be able to pause spending,” Paul further commented, adding “It is my personal belief we should adhere to the law as it is now. That is send it back and have Congress confirm it. It’s a simple majority vote. It’s called rescission. I did mention this to Elon Musk. He seemed enthusiastic.”

*  *  *

Guest Post by Kyle Becker

“Enough is enough. RFK Jr.’s proposal to kick drug ads off TV isn’t radical—it’s responsible. And it’s long overdue.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, is pushing a plan to ban pharmaceutical ads from television. He’s right to push for it—and not just because the U.S. is one of only two countries on earth that allows such advertising (the other being New Zealand).

America’s health system isn’t just flawed; it’s harming public health, distorting journalism, and fueling Big Pharma’s malignant influence over our daily lives.

Let’s start with the obvious: TV drug ads aren’t designed to inform—they’re designed to manipulate. The formula is always the same. Cue soft lighting and sappy piano music. A sad, listless person pops a pill and suddenly life is vibrant again. They’re running through fields, laughing with family, walking dogs across idyllic bridges.

Then, in a breathless voiceover, the side effects come tumbling out like a legal disclaimer roulette wheel—stroke, heart failure, suicidal thoughts. The goal? Make viewers want a drug before they even talk to their doctor. It’s emotional coercion dressed up as health education.

This completely inverts how medicine is supposed to work. Health care decisions should be made inside the exam room, not in a 60-second marketing spot. Patients should go to their doctors with symptoms, and those doctors—armed with clinical training and knowledge of the patient’s full health profile—should decide whether a drug is even necessary.

Many issues could be better addressed through lifestyle changes, diet, supplements, or preventative care. But instead, America has normalized a pill-for-everything culture, supercharged by the fact that doctors are often nudged by patients demanding whatever drug they saw advertised last night during a commercial break.

This isn’t just bad medicine—it’s dangerous. And it’s no accident.

Big Pharma isn’t spending billions on advertising because it cares about your health. It’s doing it because the return on investment is enormous. Studies estimate the ROI on direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug ads ranges from 100% to 500%, depending on the drug. In 2025 alone, pharmaceutical companies are projected to spend over $5 billion on national linear TV ads, according to iSpot.tv. That number balloons even higher when you include digital and streaming. Just a handful of blockbuster drugs—like Skyrizi, Jardiance, and Ozempic—are burning through tens of millions in TV ads every month.

This revenue isn’t just padding Big Pharma’s pockets—it’s quietly buying influence in the media. Nearly 31% of ad minutes on major nightly news broadcasts in 2024 came from pharmaceutical brands. That means a huge portion of media budgets depend on the very companies they should be holding accountable. And surprise, surprise: when Big Pharma misleads the public, many news outlets are either silent or hesitant to report critically. The financial conflict of interest is baked in.

We saw the worst-case version of this during the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel mRNA shots—rushed to market under emergency use—were sold to the public as miracle solutions. Government officials and media outlets claimed these vaccines would “stop infection,” “prevent death entirely,” and “end the pandemic.” Younger, healthy individuals were told they needed them for everyone’s safety, despite already low statistical risk. None of these claims held up. As the data evolved, we learned the vaccines offered some reduction in severe disease, but not sterilizing immunity. Yet the media rarely corrected course.

Why would they? Pharma ads were paying the bills. Meanwhile, federal workers were mandated—and many private sector employees coerced—into getting injections under false pretenses. Billions of dollars flowed to Big Pharma. The American public was misled.

This pattern of deception is not new. Pfizer alone has paid billions in legal penalties over the years for unethical marketing, off-label promotion, and other violations. The most infamous: a $2.3 billion settlement in 2009—the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history at the time. Yet companies like Pfizer, AbbVie, and Johnson & Johnson still enjoy a polished image on TV, thanks in part to relentless ad spending and regulatory leniency.

RFK Jr.’s plan, while legally uphill, is not without precedent. In 1970, President Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, which banned tobacco ads from TV and radio. Cigarettes were legal, yet too dangerous to promote on air. The same principle should apply here. Just because a drug is FDA-approved doesn’t mean it should be marketed like soda. Approval doesn’t equal infallibility—just ask anyone who took Vioxx or OxyContin.

Critics, including the Wall Street Journal, have framed RFK’s proposal as a personal vendetta. That’s both lazy and misleading. In reality, there’s wide bipartisan and public support for reining in pharma ads. The American Medical Association called for a ban back in 2015. A STAT/Harvard poll found that 57% of Americans support banning TV drug ads. Even hosts on CNBC—hardly anti-business—agreed the ads are unnecessary. “Don’t you think doctors should prescribe it if you need it?” asked Joe Kernen. Exactly.

The pharmaceutical industry’s defenders like to invoke the First Amendment, claiming that banning ads would be unconstitutional. But commercial speech does not enjoy absolute protection. Under the Central Hudson test, the government can regulate ads if it has a substantial interest, the regulation directly advances that interest, and the restriction is narrowly tailored. Protecting public health from misleading pharmaceutical marketing clears all three hurdles. Even if a full ban doesn’t survive, tighter restrictions—like banning ads for certain drug classes, or requiring full price transparency—could pass muster.

More importantly, even the threat of a ban could pressure drugmakers to change course voluntarily. They did it before in 2008, when criticism led to updated self-regulatory guidelines. If Kennedy’s push forces them to rethink their practices, that alone is a win.

Pharma companies will no doubt fight this tooth and nail. But that’s not a reason to back down—it’s a reason to press harder. We’ve allowed an industry with an immense profit motive to shape our health decisions for too long. The result? A country drowning in prescriptions, mired in chronic disease, and confused about who to trust.

Enough is enough. RFK Jr.’s proposal to kick drug ads off TV isn’t radical—it’s responsible. And it’s long overdue.