In an increasingly polarized political climate, media has taken clear sides. No one in Manhattan confuses the skew of the New York Times with the New York Post.

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) now allows pharmacists to prescribe it.

The reason is because it needs to be administered within 5 days and in modern health care, you are lucky to get an appointment within 2 months - unless you have the same health insurance politicians give themselves. So FDA wants to make it possible for pharmacists to provide it and bypass the morass politicians created in health care.

On the heels of the Supreme Court making a somewhat bizarre ruling that undid another bizarre ruling - Roe V Wade in 1973 found that abortion could not be illegal under the 14th Amendment, the 2022 ruling found that the 14th was irrelevant to abortion - there are concerns about new abortion limits and bans being put into place by states.

When Germany made political hay out of abandoning nuclear power, they had a secret safety valve - Russian gas. Natural gas is wildly profitable because the solar and wind they adopted instead of nuclear needs full-time on-demand backup. And it costs them nothing politically.

Former President Obama threw $72 billion at solar power companies because he believed if government threw enough money at technology, he could accomplish what scientists and engineers had not for the previous 50 years.

It is difficult to imagine the motivation of Russia in attacking Ukraine yet again. Thanks to European reliance in Russian natural gas and food, they probably felt untouchable.

If so, it was a reasonable gamble. After the last fight in Ukraine, Germany and Europe so desperately wanted to avoid conflict with Russia they ignored their own environmental laws and promised to fast-track a pipeline that went from Russia to Germany, bypassing Ukraine entirely. They were already buying a large percentage of their food from the east because, with a wave of the pen, a large amount of Russian food became "certified" organic - and Europe does no surprise spot testing to see if food really only uses ancient pesticides and genetic engineering techniques.

When people from more normal states ask me about living in California, I tell them all the good things and the weird things people hear are true.

When it comes to science, though, it's all weird. We charge more for cars that help nothing in emissions, we have 100,000 cancer warning labels on everything from coffee to corkboards, and we have to get exemptions from EPA to have unlimited natural gas pollution because we mandate and subsidize solar that doesn't work. We can't allow rich people in Malibu to have brownouts but want to have poor people pay for their solar.

Some of the problem with infant formula is due to COVID-19 and the resulting supply chain issues, but the other problem America has during this crisis with domestic formula is that we have tariffs and restrictions on imports that have nothing to do with safety. Democrats claim it is Trump, everything is Trump, while doing nothing about it for the past 17 months but now declaring more government will fix it.

Protectionism is designed to make imports unprofitable and favor domestic companies. Unlike "buy American", which appeals to emotion and is fine marketing, protectionism gives mandates and therefore subsidies to companies, which means higher prices.

In this case, it also means when there is a 40 percent shortage, infants at risk.

As a new century dawned just over 20 years ago, a new war began, this one on expectant mothers. Companies, and their paid influencers, began to trot and even fund "studies" which correlated whatever they were selling to some positive outcome. Organic food meant better grades, abstaining from coffee meant higher IQ, you name it and someone was blastly already worried mothers will fear and doubt.