This document is part of an archive of postings by John Ray on Dissecting Leftism, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written.
This is a backup copy of the original blog
Below is the backup of this blog for July, 2024. To access the backups in earlier years, click here
July 31, 2024
Harris’ ‘Equal Outcomes’ Is Dangerous To Your Rights
“There’s an attack right now on diversity, equity, and inclusion… where supposed, so-called extreme leaders are suggesting it’s a bad thing to care about and pay attention to inequities, to say DEI is a bad thing, when in fact, if we want fair outcomes, we must understand what are disparities and then accommodate and adjust for those disparities, if we want equal outcomes.”
That was Vice President Kamala Harris outlining her vision for equity and “equal outcomes” at a panel at Hampton University in Virginia in Sept. 2023.
Equity sounds like such a benign concept, often confused with its sister word, equality. But the two words have very different meanings.
Equality is equal opportunity under the law. Where every American can achieve according to their abilities and the work they put into it regardless of race, color, creed or religion.
Equity means equal outcomes. Where every American is allocated the same amount of wealth regardless of their achievement, effort or value they add.
Harris understands this important distinction because she stated, “if you don’t start on the same base — everybody can have an equal amount — you’re still not going to end up on the same base, right? If we want equal outcomes, we need to take into account not everybody starts out on the same base. And we have to make adjustments.”
Why does this matter?
Because this is no different than Karl Marx’s “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs” in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme.
This is the presumptive Democrat nominee for president, Kamala Harris, on record as supporting equity over equality, where she declared that she wants to “put equity firmly at the center of our economic policy,” as she told U.S. Department of Treasury in Dec. 2021.
While it should not come as any surprise that the left favors redistribution of wealth and the right less so, it used to be rare for a candidate to so blatantly declare the desire to use government to force “equal outcomes.” But post-fundamental transformation neo-Marxism is the new normal and Kamala Harris’ support for equal outcomes should not surprise.
When taken in the context of the insistence by the left that they are “defending” democracy, it is important to remember that true democracy can be explained as two big kids coming up to a third kid and voting two to one to take his bicycle, which was why the Framers settled on a constitutional limited government instead with the separation of powers and property rights duly protected under law.
Vice President Harris’ constant refrain about reimagining the world “unburdened by what has been,” as she told administration officials at the Eisenhower Office Building in March 2022, clearly demonstrates her willingness to use draconian measures to achieve equity through forced redistribution by a government unmoored from constitutionally restrictions.
In this broader context it becomes more obvious that using government to achieve equal outcomes ends the precept of equal treatment under the law, since when outcomes are unequal, whether on the basis of race, sex or something else, the government must, per Harris, “adjust for those disparities.”
Equal outcomes means that the doctor who sacrificed and went to school for a decade receiving extensive training while sacrificing the first thirty years of his or her life to become a brain surgeon should be compensated the same as a drugged out high school drop-out who contributes nothing of value.
Equal outcomes means that the inventor who poured his heart, soul and wealth into creating a new way to convert hydrogen into fuel for private vehicles should have that invention forcibly taken away by the government and made free for anyone to use with the inventor getting no extra compensation or value for his dedication, investment and sacrifice.
Equal outcomes means that everyone playing in the National Basketball Association gets paid the same as anyone in any other job. But, since the decision of who gets to play in the NBA will be made based upon a talent-blind selection system, it is doubtful that anyone would watch it anyway.
Equal outcomes means that the student who studies to get grades to allow them to go to the college of their choice will then be put into a weighted merit-free lottery of all students to determine admissions.
So, under this equity equation why would anyone strive to achieve?
They wouldn’t. This is why societies which try to force equal outcomes fail.
What Kamala Harris and her ilk won’t tell the voting public is that she supports unconstitutional affirmative action college admissions standards which discriminate against Asian-American and white students in clear violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment.
She won’t tell you that equity is the excuse for lowering qualification standards so that underrepresented groups can qualify for a job that they physically cannot perform. In fact, the entire Diversity, Equity and Inclusion movement is designed to force hiring quotas that have little to do with the ability to succeed in the job in clear violation of the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment on the same basis.
And it should surprise no one that a candidate chosen for the Vice Presidency due to the color of her skin and sex, should embrace the same standard that led to her ascension.
Kamala Harris is the completion of the fundamental transformation of America. The only question is whether the country reject her radical ideology — or embrace it.
https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/harris-equal-outcomes-is-dangerous-to-your-rights/
*****************************************************Don’t Expect New Sanctions on Russia to Do Anything
Although, in the wake of attacks by Iran-supported groups in the Middle East, a senior White House adviser claimed that “extreme sanctions” had throttled the Iranian energy sector, a New York Times investigation reported that the country was still exporting billions of dollars of oil. The investigative report—complete with substantial photographic evidence of sanctions evasion by oil tankers coming from Iranian ports or transshipping oil to other tankers at sea—blows a big hole in the White House narrative of effectively ratcheting up the pressure on Iran for its proxies’ attacks on U.S. military activities in the region.
The Times reported that the end-run around sanctions is occurring by the tankers, insured for liability by a U.S. company, spoofing their GPS locations by broadcasting fake locations while picking up oil at Iranian ports or transferring Iranian oil to other nations’ tankers at sea. Shipowners willing to violate the sanctions get a premium on their normal commissions and importing countries choosing to ignore them—in this case, China—get oil at a cheaper price than normal.
Similar evasion has occurred with trying to limit Russian exports of oil in the wake of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In that case, because Russia is such a big oil producer, the aim was not to choke off all its oil exports—which could have resulted in a sustained elevation in the world price of oil, thereby endangering the election prospects of certain Western politicians—but to create a price ceiling under which only Russian oil could be sold. Enforcing this price ceiling regime is difficult too. Spoofing tanker locations and oil transfers at sea can also help hide the origin of Russian oil to evade the price ceiling. The Times also found spoofing on cargoes of sanctioned Venezuelan oil exports.
And economic sanctions on oil exports are not the only ones that can be flouted. Sanctions can be unilaterally imposed or multilaterally promulgated by a cartel of countries. Unless a single country imposing the sanctions has a monopoly (is a single seller) or a monopsony (is a single buyer—in which case unilateral sanctions might substantially raise or lower the price of the product, respectively, thus hurting target country—unilateral sanctions usually are merely symbolic to indicate displeasure with target by the sanctioning nation. Getting other countries to go along with sanctions to form a sanctioning cartel—as the United States normally attempts—can increase the price effects but rarely can completely cut off the target from importing or exporting target products because of the evasion techniques, including those above.
Multilateral sanctions take more time to coordinate and implement than unilateral sanctions and may bite for a while, but then most target countries learn ways to substantially evade them over time. The sanctions against Russia for its invasion (and likely the ones to be imposed for the death of dissident Alexei Navalny), and on Iran and Venezuela for behaviors the United States doesn’t like, have all had some economic effect, but they cannot be evaluated for success solely by short- or long-term economic pain inflicted. They have in fact not radically changed those countries’ actions.
Economic sanctions are economic punishments used to achieve political ends. Even if the sanctions are comprehensive (on all exports and imports of the target nation), very multilateral with many countries participating, and thus inflicting excruciating economic pain for a time, they often fail politically. Sanctions are usually more successful with limited goals—for example, getting a target nation to stop a minor specific behavior. They are usually unsuccessful in achieving major changes in target policy or governance.
Some of the most severe sanctions ever deployed did not compel Saddam Hussein to rescind his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, have not yet motivated Vladimir Putin to withdraw his invasion force from Ukraine, and have not caused Iran or North Korea to end their nuclear programs and behave better internationally. Sanctions from abroad may have had some role in getting South Africa to abandon apartheid, but forces internal to the country were the driving force behind it.
So, if economic sanctions can have a high cost to both sanctioning and target nations and don’t have a high success rate in achieving major political goals, why do countries—especially the United States, the leading user of such tactics—still use them? The answer is that sanctions have symbolic value. In the sanctioning country, imposing sanctions to show concern about the target nation’s policy to the watching international community—and, most importantly, to important internal political audiences—is often a middle ground between a seemingly lame diplomatic protest and an over-the-top military or covert attack on the target.
Many times, policymakers choosing the Goldilocks option of sanctions may not even believe the measures are likely to achieve their political goal or even, considering likely rampant evasion, cause much economic distress on the target; nevertheless, they are relatively sure that the purported economic punishment will serve the symbolic goal of showing that they are “doing something” about the target’s outrageous behavior. The sanctions for Navalny’s death aren’t really aimed at Russia, then; they’re aimed at you.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14847&omhide=true&trk=reltitle
*******************************************July 30, 2024
J.D. Vance is right, ‘we’re not having enough children’ and plummeting fertility is a ‘civilizational crisis’
“There aren’t enough babies being born in our country… This is a civilizational crisis, and if we’re not willing to spend resources to solve it, we’re not serious about the very real problems that we face.”
That was Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) in 2021 before he was elected in 2022, speaking at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Future of American Political Economy Conference in Alexandria, Virginia, addressing declining fertility rates all around the world that threaten population and economic collapse.
He’s right.
First on the numbers, the amount of newborns is definitely declining, the latest birth rate numbers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows, to 1.61 live births per woman in 2023.
That’s even lower than it was in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, when it was 1.63 babies per woman, according to CDC data, as the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Europe all continue experiencing significant declines.
The drop in fertility has been a long term trend, from 3.6 babies per woman in 1960 to 1.61 babies per woman now in 2023 after birth control was approved by the FDA in 1960, and combined with women going to college, entering the labor force and deferring child-rearing or foregoing it altogether.
Why is this a problem?
If women have fewer than two babies each, the population has to decline, fewer than one and it collapses, and if they have no babies, within a very short generation the human race will go extinct. It’s that simple.
In the meantime, the collapse of institutions is easy enough to witness, with labor shortages for schools, health care, postal workers and so forth as the Baby Boomer retirement wave continues.
And it’s breaking the budget with comparatively fewer taxpayers, with the explosion of the U.S. national debt, now $34.99 trillion. Since 1963 through 2022, the percent growth of revenues has averaged 6.9 percent a year to its present level of $4.65 trillion, according to data compiled by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
In the meantime, mandatory spending including net interest owed on the national debt has grown an average 8.87 percent a year to its current level of $4.64 trillion.
And discretionary spending has grown an average 5.5 percent a year to its current level of $1.735 trillion.
In fact, since 2011, discretionary spending has only grown 1.99 percent a year.
Meanwhile, since 2011, mandatory spending grew an average 7.7 percent a year.
And revenues grew an average 7.26 percent.
In fact, the entire discretionary budget of $1.736 trillion for 2023 could be eliminated right now — eliminating every department, agency and firing every federal employee including the military — and the budget would still not be balanced as the debt grew by $1.855 trillion in 2023.
In the meantime, Social Security will grow from $1.346 trillion to $2.37 trillion in 2033 amid the Baby Boomer retirement wave, a 76 percent increase.
Medicare will grow from $821 billion to $1.84 trillion, a 124 percent increase.
Medicaid will grow from $608 billion to $928 billion, a 52 percent increase.
These are the drivers of the budget, accounting for 52 percent of all federal spending by 2033. Once interest and other mandatory spending is accounted for, mandatory spending will account 77.8 percent of all federal spending, up from its current level of 72.7 percent.
The reason is simple, as the percentage of the working age population over the age of 65 continues to rapidly increase — since 1960, when the FDA approved birth control, it has gone from 16 percent of the population to 26 percent of the population and rising — and with it the $34.5 trillion U.S. national debt, data from the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury shows.
At the same time, as the growth rate of the working age population participating in the civilian labor force has dramatically slowed down thanks to plummeting fertility, so has nominal economic growth, Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis data shows.
There are two simultaneous outcomes that emerge. First, as the population rapidly ages, so too do Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid expenditures that seniors depend on explode.
In the meantime, thanks to slower growth, revenues will continue not to keep pace with expenditures. Revenues will increase from $4.6 trillion in 2023 to $7.4 trillion, a $2.5 trillion or 51 percent increase over ten years. But expenditures will grow even faster, with outlays growing from $6.37 trillion in 2022 to $9.9 trillion by 2033, a $3.7 trillion or a 55.4 percent increase over the next decade.
The White House Office of Management and Budget projects the national debt to skyrocket to more than $50 trillion by 2033, but that’s low-balling it. The debt has grown by about 8 percent a year since 1980 once recessions and wars are factored. At that rate, it should be about $65 trillion to $70 trillion by 2033 and $100 trillion by 2037 or so, well north of 200 percent debt to GDP.
The reason is because there are comparatively fewer taxpayers versus those receiving benefits as the structural deficit widens due to the drop in fertility.
But that’s enough to make your eyes bleed. Imagine it more simply: If a village has 100 people, 50 men and 50 women, and they only have one child per couple, the next generation will only have 50 people, and 25 the generation after that, who will need to take care of 150 older villagers. It’s unsustainable, and is precisely the trajectory we are headed for.
The saying goes, when you less of something, you tax it, and when you want more of something, you subsidize it.
Towards that end, Vance in 2021 supported a proposal by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would dramatically expand the child tax credit to $6,000 per child under the age of 13 for single parents, and $12,000 per child under the age of 13 for married couples.
Vance said of Hawley’s proposal at the time, “Lot of ideas out there for how to directly help parents instead of giving them only one option. This is a good one.”
That works out to $78,000 of tax credits for single parents and $156,000 for married parents over the first 13 years of the child’s life, a double incentive not only to have children, but to go further and get married.
And on the Charlie Kirk podcast in 2021, Vance further summarized his thoughts that incentives should be used to encourage family formation, stating, “So, you talk about tax policy, let's tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good… If you are making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you've got three kids, you should pay a different, lower tax rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don't have any kids. It's that simple.”
At the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023, former President Donald Trump also expressed support for what he is calling “baby bucks,” stating, “We will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom! I want a baby boom! You men are so lucky out there — you are so lucky, men.”
Another approach might be to simply front-load the tax credits into the child’s earlier, pre-school years, for example, $40,000 per baby, with $20,000 upfront and $4,000 a year for each of the following five years. The idea would be to foster a baby boom. Additional consideration could be given to incentivizing marriage, say, an additional $10,000 upfront for married couples having new children.
That could reduce the overall cost, although it would still be costly, $450 billion for every 10 million new babies, assuming equal amounts of single and married households. But that’d still be cheaper than the Hawley proposal, which might come out to $1.17 trillion for every 10 million new babies. It also might be more effective, if by front-loading the credits it results in immediate attempts at child-rearing.
Either approach would ultimately pay for itself, since individuals who work ultimately end up paying in excess of either $50,000 or $117,000 in taxes over their careers. And what we get in return is a growing, more robust generation of Americans.
Currently, about 3.7 million babies a year are born. But with incentives, that can be increased quickly.
It would be inflationary, for certain, as it was in the postwar baby boom. But so are labor shortages that contribute to supply shortages. Overall, a declining population could be deflationary long term, which has its own set of problems as was seen during the Great Depression. And rather than other proposals for universal basic income so that people can work less to pursue hobbies, by focusing on boosting family formation, the goal is to build the next generation of doctors, engineers, plumbers, farmers and so forth. We need not sacrifice our society’s emphasis on education.
To have a sustainable, highly educated country and economy, we need a sustainably growing population that is not dependent on foreign immigration. And as the average age of immigrants continues increasing — the median age of immigrants in 2022 was 47 — at best it is a temporary offset but ultimately contributes to the aging population.
Other alternatives including banning birth control and defunding colleges and universities might be a political lead balloon, not be successfully implemented and destroy the political party that adopted those policies.
It’s all about incentives. And the consequences for not getting the mix of incentives right appears to have dire consequences. In short, if we want to continue to be a growing, prosperous country, it’s time to get busy!
********************************************************
In Brief
* Trump maintains narrow polling lead over Harris: It’s officially the morning after, and Kamala Harris is still Kamala Harris. That’s the finding of the RealClearPolitics average of polls, which shows Donald Trump at 48.9 and Harris at 46.2. That’s nearly a two-point lead for Trump, which is a marked contrast from the final polls before the 2020 election, which had Trump trailing Joe Biden by 3-4 points. Put another way: It’s essentially the difference between a narrow electoral loss for Trump and a landslide victory for Trump. It’s also important to note that Harris polling better than Biden isn’t news. She was already polling better than Biden in multiple polls before she announced her candidacy a week ago. Late last week, Rasmussen, which is historically among the most accurate pollsters, had Trump ahead of Harris 50-43, while a Wall Street Journal poll had the two candidates essentially within the margin of error. But even that poll raised the red flags, noting, “Harris faces significant headwinds. Her tenure as vice president is closely tied to a Biden administration record that includes a chaotic southern border, rising prices and protracted wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.”
* Google accused of omitting Trump assassination attempt in search results: Google is allegedly suppressing search results for the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. When searching Google for “assassination attempt on,” the field would autocomplete a number of famous figures like Ronald Reagan, Bob Marley, or Gerald Ford. But Google tellingly failed to produce Trump among the names listed. This has led to backlash on social media, with the tech giant being accused of engaging in election interference. Republican Senator Roger Marshall (KS) promised that he will “be making an official inquiry into Google this week.” Meanwhile, a spokesman from Google claimed that no “manual action was taken on these predictions.” Rather, the algorithm uses “protections” to prevent Autocomplete from producing things “associated with political violence.” The spokesman added, “We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date. Of course, Autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time, and they can still search for anything they want to.”
* California gig workers win: The California Supreme Court just handed a big win to gig workers and a blow to Big Labor. The issue was the passage of Prop 22 back in 2020, which allowed individuals like Lyft and Uber drivers to maintain their worker status as independent contractors rather than being forced to be full employees of these companies. Democrats and Big Labor fought to have Prop 22 overturned, claiming that it was unconstitutional. As independent contractors for Lyft or Uber, these companies would not be required to provide benefits as they would if they were employees. Democrats claimed that this hurt these workers. However, independent contractors noted that forcing them to become employees hurt their freedom to work at their own pace and on their own schedule. The court agreed, issuing a unanimous ruling upholding Prop 22. This ruling has national implications, as Kamala Harris and congressional Democrats want to eliminate independent contract work within the gig industry nationwide by forcing gig workers to be recognized as employees.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108848-monday-below-the-fold-2024-07-29
*******************************************July 29, 2024
The Deceived vs. the Indoctrinated
The American public has been subjected to massive propaganda efforts by both our government and our media for years. It’s important to understand the impact this has on the current presidential campaign.
That starts with understanding the difference between deception and indoctrination.
Those who have been merely deceived may be surprised when the deception is exposed. They may even be angry. But they will change their positions when confronted with facts that contradict them.
The indoctrinated will not.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “indoctrinated” as “accepting a set of beliefs without question, refusing to consider any others.” For the indoctrinated, those beliefs become part of their identity; they will not let go of them, even when faced with contrary evidence or explicit falsehoods.
Millions of Americans have been propagandized to believe that former President Donald Trump is “literally Hitler” and “a threat to our democracy”; that he will “destroy this country” or “start World War III.” You can provide all the proof to the contrary you want; it will not change their minds.
I’ve had conversations with friends and loved ones who profess to be terrified about the possible perils of another Trump presidency. In those, I point out just some of the actual conduct of the Biden administration:
— Imprisoning Americans and depriving them of their constitutional rights to due process
— Collaborating with Big Tech companies to censor truthful information about the 2020 elections, the origins of COVID-19, the United States’ role in funding gain-of-function research at the international virology laboratory in Wuhan, China, the efficacy of drugs like ivermectin in treating COVID-19, and the illness and deaths caused by the mRNA vaccines that were forced upon Americans
— Fabricating allegations of Trump’s “collusion” with Russia in the 2016 election, lying to a federal court to obtain illegal surveillance warrants and spending upwards of $35 million to “investigate” allegations they already knew were false
— Calling sexually explicit and criminal content on Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation,” and keeping it from the American public when they knew it was truthful, in order to impact the 2020 presidential election
— Prosecuting Trump for possession of allegedly classified documents but refusing to prosecute President Joe Biden for the same conduct
— Weaponizing the legal system against the administration’s political opponents
— Actively preventing the enactment and enforcement of laws that protect election integrity (for example, requiring identification and proof of citizenship before voting)
— Botching the withdrawal from Afghanistan and leaving thousands of American citizens and Afghani allies behind, as well as billions of dollars in military material and ammunition left for the Taliban
— Two major wars and $175 billion in taxpayer dollars given to Ukraine;
— Allowing approximately 10 million migrants to cross the border illegally in the past three and a half years, flying and busing them all over the country, housing them and given them monthly stipends, all at taxpayer expense
— Choking off our own energy production, sending the costs of fuel — and thus, everything else — skyrocketing, and creating the worst inflation we’ve had in more than 40 years
What reaction do I get? Blink … blink … “But Donald Trump …”
That’s indoctrination.
I’ve heard other attempted explanations. “Well,” the argument goes, “maybe people don’t care because these events primarily affect those with whom they disagree politically.”
But if that were true, they would be irate when confronted with the negative impact on populations they do purport to care about. For example, the illegal importation of millions of migrants has diverted resources away from America’s poor, our homeless, veterans and those dealing with substance abuse and mental illness. The presence of millions of illegal immigrants also inflates housing costs and depresses the job prospects for America’s working poor, including Blacks and single parents. And inflation affects everyone.
It doesn’t matter.
More compelling proof can be found in Democrat voters’ reactions to the events of the past three weeks that uniquely affected them:
First, Biden’s disastrous performance at the first presidential debate on June 27 exposed the ugly reality that their own party and the press had been lying about the president’s declining mental faculties for years. Had Democrat voters known about Biden’s condition in 2020, they could have chosen a different candidate.
It doesn’t matter.
Second, despite Biden’s adamant insistence that he was staying in the race, the Democratic Party forced him out in a de facto palace coup, had him issue a bland statement on X/Twitter and kept him in seclusion for almost a week.
It doesn’t matter.
Third, they just unilaterally substituted a new presidential candidate — Vice President Kamala Harris — without any participation by the party’s voters at all.
And by the way, this is the third time the Democratic Party has played fast and loose with internal electoral processes to install a candidate over the wishes of their voters, who wanted Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 and favored a different vice presidential running mate in 2020.
With few notable exceptions (Black Lives Matter and some donors), none of this seems to matter to Democrat voters.
Harris is already out on the stump, and we’re being treated to glowing press coverage featuring cheering crowds, and puff pieces promoting the many “firsts” associated with her impending victory: the first woman president, the first Indian American president, the first Jamaican American president, the first African American president. (OK, Jamaica is not in Africa, but that doesn’t matter, either.)
Republicans need to understand that they are dealing with a population in which a substantial number are completely unreachable, even by the most unassailable arguments. To reach the rest, the focus of Trump’s campaign must be not on irrelevancies like Harris’ former love life or her lack of children, but on her lack of qualifications, her incompetence and the disastrous policies she favors.
The proof of that — at least for those who aren’t indoctrinated — is ample.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/108801-the-deceived-vs-the-indoctrinated-2024-07-25
*************************************************Trump Calls Tech Support
This weekend, a former Manhattan real estate developer and one-time crypto critic will be in Nashville to speak at Bitcoin 2024, the world’s largest bitcoin conference.
As Forbes reports, “Trump will give a 30-minute keynote address Saturday during the conference’s final day, in a speech that will likely attempt to court voters and capitalize on support he has already received from key cryptocurrency figures like the Winklevoss twins” of early Facebook fame.
Times have certainly changed.
Indeed, it would’ve been hard to imagine, just 10 years ago, that a 78-year-old Republican presidential nominee would be beating the hip, cool, trendy party of Barack Obama at its own technology game. But here we are.
“A sea change is underway in the tech industry,” write Robert Bellafiore and Jon Askonas at City Journal. “It is increasingly not just permitted, but downright fashionable, for technologists to reside on the political right. Moments after the Trump assassination attempt, Elon Musk ‘fully endorse[d]’ the former president. In the following days, venture capitalist and PayPal alumnus David Sacks spoke at the Republican National Convention, leading venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz announced their support for Trump, and Trump tapped former venture capitalist J.D. Vance as his running mate. A new Trump super PAC enjoys the backing of Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, the Winklevoss twins … and Musk himself.”
We might also consider a recent comment from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he of the infamous infusion of nearly half a billion Zuckerbucks into the 2020 election to help get out the vote in the Democrat-controlled urban areas of the narrowly decided swing states. Perhaps, having seen the error in his ways; and perhaps, having seen the electoral writing on the wall; and perhaps, wanting to hedge his bets should a Republican-controlled Congress in 2025 seek to do away with the Section 230 protections that allow social media sites like Facebook to censor conservative speech while enjoying the legal protections of platforms as opposed to publishers — perhaps, given all these factors, Zuck thought it might be wise to send a shoutout to the assassination-dodging, fist-pumping former and perhaps future president.
“Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” said an admiring Zuckerberg recently, adding, “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”
According to Trump’s brief Bitcoin 2024 speaker bio, he “announced his support for the American Bitcoin industry in May 2024, advocating for financial freedom and the growth of the U.S. Bitcoin industry on the global stage.” That seems to be the message, then: One party regulates and thereby oppresses innovation and entrepreneurship, while the other party deregulates and thereby encourages the same.
But it’s not just financial freedom; it’s also freedom of speech. The Left’s sordid history of suppression has always irked us, and it likely turns off technologists, too. Big Tech’s dirty work on behalf of the Democrats reached its zenith in the election-rigging censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. But things began to turn in 2022, when Elon Musk purchased Twitter and thereby established a free-speech beachhead on social media.
Today, even the history-rewriting, Harris-protecting, Trump-hating shills at Axios are sounding the Trump-Tech alarm:
A significant chunk of the tech industry’s money and power is lining up behind former President Trump. … Silicon Valley was once solidly Democratic, with just a handful of Republican outliers. Now its red camp is growing and throwing around its weight. … Venture capital billionaires Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each will make donations to Trump’s re-election effort [and] are following hot on the heels of Elon Musk’s announcement that he would endorse Trump and form a PAC to aid his campaign.
Not to be lost in all this is the Trump campaign’s other tech proponent. While he’s most noted for his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance is not only the first Millennial to appear on a major party’s presidential ticket; the retired Marine and Yale Law grad is also the second venture capitalist to do so, Mitt Romney having been the first.
As Bellafiore and Jon Askonas write: “Republican megadonor and Vance mentor Peter Thiel, of PayPal and Palantir, has long been the exception proving the rule of tech’s alignment with liberalism. Not anymore. The nascent ‘tech bros for Trump’ movement demands an explanation.”
That explanation involves the tech industry doing what it should’ve done long ago: protect its own interests as a growing industry. They continue:
The Trump-Vance ticket has shown a far greater openness to new technologies. Trump can tout a track record of cutting regulations. He has promised to “Make America First in AI” by, among other things, creating “industry-led” agencies to oversee AI development. He will speak at a major Bitcoin conference later this month. For his part, Vance hails from the venture capital scene, reported owning six figures’ worth of Bitcoin in his public financial filings, and has taken a strong public stance in favor of open-source AI.
If Donald Trump retakes the White House, it’ll be in large part because he patiently went to work in the past four years growing the Republican base — whether they be blacks or Hispanics or blue-collar workers or safety-conscious suburban moms.
As for Big Tech’s longtime dalliance with the Democrat Party, perhaps they’ve finally been mugged by reality.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108815-trump-calls-tech-support-2024-07-26
*******************************************July 28, 2024
The Shadow Primary: Biden Ends Campaign, Installs Harris As Party Nominee With NO Votes To ‘Save Our Democracy’
It's so offensive when Democrats slander Republicans as a threat to democracy. They are a threat to the Left, no more
President Joe Biden delivered a rare Oval Office address on July 24 withdrawing from the 2024 presidential campaign and leaving the Democratic Party nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he has already endorsed and who appears to have secured enough support among the party’s convention delegates when they meet next month. Biden said, “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.” So, in order to “sav[e] our democracy,” and to unite the country, Biden said it was necessary to unite his party, many of whom were calling for him to be replaced as a candidate — without voters having any role whatsoever in the decision. This was a speech Biden could have delivered last year, before 14.6 million Americans voted for him in the 2024 Democratic Party primaries — who are now disenfranchised. In fact, about 35 percent of Democrats wanted Biden to stay in the race in the latest AP-NORC poll taken July 11 to July 15. Biden could have cleared the way for an open seat, but he said he wanted to run for re-election and, importantly, Democrats wanted to avoid a divisive primary that would have lowered their chances of winning the general election. So, how to remove Biden but without a primary full of in-fighting? Skip it and then, if necessary, anoint the replacement when there is little to no time to mount a credible challenge the presumptive nominee. This was a shadow primary. How democratic.
“[T]he sacred cause of this country is larger than any one of us. Those of us who cher[ish] that cause cherish it so much. The cause of American democracy itself. We must unite to protect it. In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor… So, I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation.”
That was President Joe Biden, delivering a rare Oval Office address on July 24 withdrawing from the 2024 presidential campaign and leaving the Democratic Party nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he has already endorsed and who appears to have secured enough support among the party’s convention delegates when they meet next month.
Biden added, “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.”
So, in order to “sav[e] our democracy,” and to unite the country, Biden said it was necessary to unite his party, many of whom were calling for him to be replaced as a candidate — without voters having any role whatsoever in the decision.
This was a speech Biden could have delivered last year, before 14.6 million Americans voted for him in the 2024 Democratic Party primaries — who are now disenfranchised. In fact, about 35 percent of Democrats wanted Biden to stay in the race in the latest AP-NORC poll taken July 11 to July 15. Biden could have cleared the way for an open seat, but he said he wanted to run for re-election and, importantly, Democrats wanted to avoid a divisive primary that would have lowered their chances of winning the general election.
So, how to remove Biden but without a primary full of in-fighting? Skip it and then, if necessary, anoint the replacement when there is little to no time to mount a credible challenge the presumptive nominee.
This was a shadow primary. How democratic.
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Minor parties can save the West
‘Blame Farage for the Tory wipe-out!’ Or so went the rather limp voices in the UK, grasping for excuses following the massacre of globalist politics led by Rishi Sunak.
The desire for sensible conservative and libertarian-minded policy is on the rise, as is the renewal of cultural affection and nostalgia for decades past which appear to us now as the last flush of sunset chased over the edge of Parliament by the long night of left-wing rule.
So, why didn’t the conservatives win? Why isn’t the UK preparing for an age of economic liberalism and spiritual restoration? Why is Keir Starmer – the most radical socialist in a hundred years – strutting around Westminster preening his flock of Marxists?
Don’t blame Nigel Farage.
Blame the soggy wet Tories who valued their power above the needs of the people.
Blame the seat-warmers at the top in ‘safe seats’ who preyed on the long and grand history of the party as security against their reckless and activist politicking.
Blame a sad chain of leaders who refused to carry out Brexit because they, and their ministers, were miffed about spending five minutes standing in line to have their passports stamped instead of fighting to protect British waters from EU trawlers.
Blame the voters who stayed home, happy to watch democracy crumble while billions around the world pray that one day they may have the opportunity to vote.
And blame the voters who did show up, but lacked the courage to vote for principle and instead chose the faux safety of establishment.
If conservatives are to take one lesson from the activist Left, it’s this … we have to fight, as they do. Passionately. Relentlessly. Without fear.
Social media is full of people – nameless people – insisting that democracy is an illusion. Their message? That your vote means nothing. So don’t bother. Stay home. Keep quiet. Separate into whispering groups at the corners of the soon-to-be censored digital realm. There is no future in this approach. Certainly not with both parties cracking down on social media.
Disparaging the vote is usually an expression of despair.
Allow me to assure you of this… Your vote does count. Your vote has power. Provided it is used.
Just as a thousand people in the street can frighten a Parliament, 20 million people at the ballet box can flip a government.
Had UK conservatives voted for Reform, Nigel Farage would have the Opposition. He may even have the government. But they did not. They stayed home. The vote was split not by minor parties, but by a lack of courage.
The disparity between voting share, as raised by Reform to the fury of the Left, is valid. There is something wrong with a political system where the Liberal Democrats can win 3.5 million votes and take home 72 seats, while Reform UK wins 4 million votes but only holds 5 seats. No question, Farage has a point.
There is a similar problem where the disparity of population is such that the towering cities of our nation, where half the residents are new to this country and still finding their feet, hold policy power over the regional areas – the generational farms, growers of our food, and custodians of the natural landscape. Those who have never sown a field should not dictate the tax on a bag of wheat.
Democracy has always been a balancing act to make sure the brutal force of the majority does not overwhelm the rights of the individual and that the cities do not cannibalise the regions with their misguided virtue.
Keeping these scales balanced means the system must be reviewed. It is a review conducted when the public suspects something has gone wrong.
That said, it is interesting that the British press is full of conservatives lusting after Australia’s preferential voting. They assume, wrongly, that preferences would have saved the Tories – or boosted Reform. Neither is true – doubly so in an optional voting system where the most politically radical and enthusiastic show up to vote, which is disproportionately populated by the Left and sectarian groups who deem it a spiritual requirement rather than a democratic calling. It is a behaviour that has entrenched identity politics to the detriment of the wider community.
Australia knows from experience that preferential voting was implemented by the major parties – the uniparty – for its protection. It is a system that seeks to guarantee the supremacy of the establishment, no matter how poorly they perform or viciously they ignore their principles. Unless voters show courage…
While Nigel Farage may not have won as many seats as he would have liked, he did win seats. First-past-the-post makes it easier for minor parties to tip the balance of power and scare the heck out of conservative movements that abuse their legacy.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/minor-parties-can-save-the-west/
***************************************************What to expect in this weekend’s Venezuelan elections
Venezuelans will gear up to vote in what has devolved into an unfair and unfree presidential election Sunday — one that nonetheless offers its citzens the best chance in a decade to get rid of the twenty-five-year-old Chavista regime that brought the oil-rich nation to its knees.
Nicolás Maduro, the man who, among other things, caused a forty-two-place drop in Venezuela’s Press Freedom Index in ten years, will be facing Edmundo González. González, a little known diplomat who served in Algeria and Argentina, became the opposition’s unitary candidate after the government banned María Corina Machado from running. Though “inabilitated,” as Venezuelans put it, this election continues to be a Maduro versus Machado match.
Were the election to lead to Maduro’s exit, the biggest political and economic crisis in the Western Hemisphere — which caused the departure of close to 8 million citizens — would be at the beginning of its end. If not, expect the same story to continue, including the expanding — and Maduro-weaponized — migration crisis, which is affecting countries from Chile to the United States.
Three of the best trusted pollsters in Venezuela show González leading by around twenty to thirty percentage points. If democracy was a reality, the results would surprise no one. The question is: to what extent is Maduro prepared to cheat?
Over the last year, the Venezuelan autocrat has imprisoned half of Machado’s inner circle, used his security forces to harass opposition leaders, tinkered with the voter rolls and disenfranchised millions of its citizens residing outside of the country. On Friday, a flight carrying several former national leaders who were on their way to Venezuela to participate as electoral observers was prevented from taking off from Panama.
“Copa [Airlines] plane carrying [former Panamanian] president [Mireya] Moscoso and other former presidents heading to Venezuela has not been allowed to take off from [Panama’s] Tocumen while they remain on board, due to the blockade of Venezuelan airspace,” said José Raúl Mulino, the Panamanian president. Later that day, nine Spanish deputies were retained and then deported after landing in the Venezuelan port city of La Guaira.
So who’ll be observing? Democracy-loving Chinese officials, the do-nothing UN and a barebones Carter Center mission that will not even check how the votes are counted.
Though Venezuelans still have some hope left, the odds benefit Maduro. He controls the institutions, has survived international sanctions and has ample experience in quashing popular discontent. Yet it would also be foolish to completely rule out a potential transition. For the first time in decades, the opposition is firmly united behind a savvy popular leader with a clear objective. Chavismo, meanwhile, seems mired in divisions.
Maria Corina Machado, one of the most outspoken opponents of chavismo, won the opposition primaries by a 93 percent landslide in October. She toured the country and turned the Venezuelan people from a disillusioned mass into an energized and well-oiled political movement.
Machado’s charisma has been well documented, but her political prowess is also worth noting. She effectively united a fractious opposition, and when Maduro banned her from running, she outmaneuvered the regime into accepting González’s nomination.
For years, Chavismo has kept power thanks to limitless oil money and a stubborn base of supporters. Today, they have neither: Venezuela’s economic collapse eroded their support and sanctions made it harder for them to keep their cronies happy. The swift and ruthless purge of key power players earlier this year showed there’s simply not enough money to keep all leaders happy.
The 2024 election offered Maduro’s best bet to solve the problem. His regime wagered it could “win” an election against an atomized opposition and a disillusioned citizenry, allowing countries to remove sanctions and let the flood of money solve all the internal disagreements within the regime. Yet that clearly hasn’t happened.
One wing of Chavismo seems to be willing to do anything to stay in power, as they have little prospects in a post-Maduro Venezuela. Another wing seems committed to keep power, but are more open to negotiate a settlement if that includes some guarantees and impunity for them. The election is putting this coalition to the ultimate test.
So, what can observers expect? The opposition will get more votes, that we know. What we don’t know is how Maduro, the electoral council and the military react to the electoral defeat.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/what-to-expect-in-this-weekends-venezuelan-elections/
*******************************************July 25, 2024
Huge applause for Netanyahu's speech to Congress
“In the heart of the Middle East, standing in Iran’s way, is one proud, pro-American democracy—my country, the state of Israel!”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting Washington amid the Israel-Hamas war, spoke these words Wednesday to enthusiastic applause during an address to a joint meeting of Congress that some Democrats boycotted.
Several Democrats chose not to attend as an act of protest against Israel and its war with Hamas.
Hamas has rejected every proposal for a cease-fire that allows for the release of hostages held by the terrorist group.
“I want to thank you for giving me the proud honor of addressing this citadel of democracy for the fourth time,” Netanyahu told lawmakers.
Netanyahu thus became the foreign leader who has spoken to Congress more than any other in history. Israel’s prime minister previously had been tied with Winston Churchill, the celebrated British prime minister, with three appearances before Congress.
Netanyahu began by accusing Iran and its allies of aggression and “barbarism” against Israel, Western allies, and other Arab nations.
“America and Israel must stand together,” he said to a standing ovation, “because when we stand together, something very simple happens: We win, they lose.”
After praising the actions of the Israeli military for rescuing over 130 hostages, Netanyahu introduced Noa Argamani, one of four hostages rescued in a daring special forces operation. He also welcomed the families of American hostages still in captivity.
“When I met with [these families] again, I promised them this: I will not rest until all of their loved ones are home,” he said.
Netanyahu praised President Joe Biden for “tireless” support of Israel and promised that America’s stance with Israel during her “darkest hour” will “never be forgotten.”
Other celebrated guests included four soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, a paratrooper officer who emigrated from Ethiopia, an injured tank commander, an infantryman who lost a leg fighting Hamas, and a sergeant named Ashraf who serves with one of Israel’s Muslim defensive units. Netanyahu celebrated their spirit, unity, and dedication:
“Like Ashraf, the Muslim soldiers of the IDF fought alongside their Jewish, Bedouin, Christian, and other comrades in arms with tremendous bravery,” Netanyahu said, over applause.
Netanyahu reaffirmed the post-World War II, post-Holocaust promise of “Never Again,” saying that “after Oct. 7, ‘Never Again’ is now!”
The Israeli prime minister heaped scorn on those protesting in favor of Hamas on college campuses and elsewhere, contending that those who support the brutal rapes and murders of parents and children “should be ashamed of themselves.”
“They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians,” Netanyahu said. “Between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas.”
He then outlined a report from U.S. intelligence citing Iranian funding for anti-Israel protests in the United States. “They want to disrupt America,” he said.
“These protesters burn American flags, even on the Fourth of July—and I wish to salute the fraternity brothers of the University of North Carolina who protected the American flag against these anti-Israel protesters.”
Amid the standing ovation and cheers that followed, many lawmakers in the audience began to chant “USA! USA!”
“For all we know, Iran could be funding the anti-Israel protests going on right outside this building—not that many, but they’re there, and throughout the city,” Netanyahu said. “Well, I have a message for these protesters: When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising and promoting and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.”
“Some of these protesters—it’s amazing, absolutely amazing,” he quipped, “some of these protesters hold up signs proclaiming ‘Gays for Gaza.’ They might as well hold up signs saying ‘Chickens for KFC’!”
Netanyahu called out protesters who chanted the ethnic-cleansing slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!” but don’t “have a clue which river or sea they’re talking about.”
“They not only get an ‘F’ in geography, but an ‘F’ in history,” he said.
Netanyahu reaffirmed Israel’s commitment to securing a historic home for the Jewish people, dating back 4,000 years to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying: “It’s always been our home. It will always be our home.”
He didn’t slam only the anti-Israel protesters on American university campuses, but also their administrators. He said that Harvard, UPenn, and his own alma mater, MIT, “couldn’t bring themselves to condemn the calls for the genocide of Jews.”
Antisemitism is the world’s oldest hatred. For centuries, the massacre of Jews was always preceded by wild accusations. We were accused of everything from poisoning wells to spreading plagues to using the blood of slaughtered children to bake Passover matzos. These preposterous antisemitic lies led to persecution, mass murder, and ultimately to history’s worst genocide, the Holocaust.
Just as malicious lies were leveled for centuries at the Jewish people, malicious lies are now being leveled at the Jewish state. The outrageous slanders that painted Israel as racist and genocidal are meant to delegitimize Israel, to demonize the Jewish state, and to demonize Jews everywhere.
No wonder we’ve witnessed an appalling rise of antisemitism in America and around the world. My friends, whenever and wherever we see the scourge of antisemitism, we must unequivocally condemn it and resolutely fight it without exception.
Netanyahu rebuffed the International Criminal Court’s claim that Israel has starved civilians in Gaza, citing 500,000 tons of food that has been shipped in.
“If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it,” he said, “it’s because Hamas is stealing it.”
The prime minister warned that bowing to calls for a cease-fire “before the war was won” would allow Hamas to continue perpetrating additional acts of terror against Israel and civilians in Gaza. He reaffirmed that he would never allow a premature conclusion.
Netanyahu cited the analysis of Col. John Spencer, military historian and professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Spencer’s investigation into urban warfare throughout history concluded that Israel had taken more steps to prevent civilian casualties (beyond those required by international law) than any other nation in history.
Netanyahu argued that Israeli soldiers “should not be condemned for how they’re conducting the war in Gaza, but commended for it.”
He warned that the threat of Islamist terrorism from Iran and its proxies is not limited to Israel but looms over the entire Middle East, Western powers, and the United States. He cited assassination attempts, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and open calls for war with the U.S.
“My friends, if you remember one thing from this speech, remember this,” Netanyahu said. “Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory. That victory is in sight.”
He added:
This war could be over tomorrow if Hamas surrendered and released all of the hostages. But if they don’t, Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’ military capabilities, end its rule in Gaza, and bring all of our hostages home. That is what victory means, and we’ll settle for nothing less.
Netanyahu called on America to “give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster,” echoing Churchill’s calls for U.S. aid during World War II. He also painted a picture of a civilian-run, demilitarized Gaza Strip similar to Japan and Germany after the Allies’ victory in 1945.
And he thanked former President Donald Trump for his staunch support of Israel and Jerusalem as the nation’s capital, and for brokering the Abraham Accords—calling on that peace agreement to be the bedrock of an “Abraham Alliance” among Israel and friendly Arab nations in the Middle East.
Netanyahu concluded by praising the alliance between the United States and Israel, vowing:
Israel will always be your loyal friend and your steadfast partner. On behalf of the people of Israel, I came here today to say: Thank you, America!
Thank you for your solidarity, thank you for standing with Israel in our hour of need. Together, we shall defend our common civilization. Together, we shall secure a brilliant future for both our nations.
May God bless Israel, may God bless America, and may God bless the great alliance between Israel and America forever.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/netanyahu-almost-drowned-standing-ovations-congress/
************************************************A very unfit president
Doctors who watched Joe Biden 's address to the nation tonight have revealed the subtle clues about the president's health. They warned his lack of blinking may suggest a neurological issue. His dry mouth and stiff hands implies cognitive decline. They also highlighted his generous application of makeup - likely to mask his pale skin
Virginia neurologist Dr W Chris Winter picked up on the 81-year-old's low blink rate.
He said the president blinked fewer than 10 times per minute on average, well below the average of 15 to 20 that most people experience. 'Low blink rate can be a sign of Parkinson's Disease... an earlier sign of the disease,' Dr Winter added.
Many medical experts have previously suggested Biden's apparent cognitive decline could be due to his suffering from an early form of the condition, especially after it emerged a Parkinson's doctor regularly visited the White House during Biden's tenure.
Dr Ernst von Schwarz, a cardiologist in California, said Biden's 'dry mouth, fixed stare, very little... hand movements and gestures... could be signs of cognitive decline' caused by his age, or 'a neurodegenerative condition' such as dementia.
Despite having nearly four days of practice, the president flubbed several lines and at times spoke so quietly that white noise could be heard during the broadcast. Dr Winter said a low voice was another warning sign of Parkinson's.
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On Economics, Kamala Harris Skews Left of Bernie Sanders
We don’t have much from Kamala on either the economy or the Federal Reserve, but what we do have says she’d be substantially to the left of Biden.
On the Fed, Kamala was one of just 13 senators (including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts) to vote against Jerome Powell’s nomination as chairman because he’s not inflationary enough. As vice president, she mostly just pushed the Fed to focus on diversity.
On the broader economy, Harris mostly toed Biden’s line as vice president, so we have to go pre-Biden. As senator, Kamala was rated by the nonpartisan GovTrack as the most liberal U.S. senator—to the left of Warren or self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders.
Kamala scored a 7% from the National Rifle Association and a 4% from Club for Growth, meaning she’s a gun-grabbing tax hiker. The New York Times described her as a “pragmatic moderate,” which means she’s a raging communist.
In the Senate, Kamala pushed left-wing causes from affirmative action to sanctuary cities to a $10 trillion climate change plan.
She voted against Trump’s tax cuts. And she voted against the Trump administration’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement, because it didn’t “confront climate change.” The one thing she has liked is the forever wars.
We’re in the biggest presidential succession crisis since at least 1968. We don’t even know if Biden is of sound mind. So maybe Kamala will be president tomorrow. Or maybe donors will dismiss her out of the race altogether.
What we can say is that everybody currently on the radar on the Dems’ side would be as bad or worse than Biden. There are still centrists in the Democrat orbit, such as Joe Manchin, John Fetterman, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But with left-wing donors in charge, though, none of them are in the running.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/23/kamalas-economics-left-of-bernie/
*******************************************July 24, 2024
Democrats’ diversity dogma means Kamala Harris is the only way forward
The Democrats face an exquisite diversity, equity and inclusion dilemma of their own making. They will have to pick a woman of colour, Kamala Harris, as their presidential candidate 2.0.
With DEI ingrained in their political DNA, even as great swathes of America are having second thoughts about diversity dogma, the Democrats can’t risk choosing anyone else to face off against Donald Trump in November – even if another candidate was more likely to win. That’s why, if Democrats stick to their DEI religion, their convention next month must be a coronation, not an open contest.
Back in February, when it was clear to many that Joe Biden was too infirm to be President, let alone up for another four years in the White House, New York Times journalist Ross Douthat was way ahead of the pack: “If (Biden) drops out and doesn’t endorse his own number two, he’d be opening himself to a narrative of identitarian betrayal – ageing white president knifes first woman-of-colour veep – and setting his party up for months of bloodletting and betrayal, a constant churn of personal and ideological drama.”
Having been dragged out of the race, Biden has done what all good DEI Democrats do: endorse a person as the next US commander-in-chief in large part because she ticked the two top boxes on the identitarian checklist.
This is not some wacky partisan myth. Biden was open about his reasons for picking Harris as his VP. “If I’m elected president … I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a, pick a woman to be vice-president,” he said in March 2020. Biden told a room full of black journalists in August 2019 that he would prefer as his running mate someone “of colour and/or a different gender”.
The dilemma for the Democrats – and their progressive boosters in the media – is doubly exquisite. Having been exposed as liars about Biden’s competence to run for a second term, they will now likely be complicit in a second big lie – that Harris, if chosen as the new candidate, was picked because she is the most competent Democrat to lead the next administration.
Harris is a Californian liberal, most comfortable campaigning on abortion rights and rallying black, young and progressive voters. How well will she resonate with voters in rust-belt swing states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio where cost-of-living struggles feature ahead of progressive shibboleths? Especially with Trump’s running mate JD Vance hailing from Ohio.
On paper, Harris has notched up an inspiring list of firsts. Even as a diversity pick, one might reasonably have expected her to pick up requisite experience and skills along the way. Not so much. Even some on Harris’s own side of politics have remarked on how underwhelming she has been as Biden’s understudy. The failure at the southern border is her biggest legacy as VP.
But in Democrat-land, Harris remains the perfect DEI pick for president.
Even if Harris proves herself as president, it won’t put to bed concerns that DEI has led us down a merry path where good people who lack DEI credentials are overlooked and discriminated against.
There is a growing backlash against DEI for two reasons. Sidelining merit is a dumb idea, no matter how fine the intentions behind giving the less competent a leg up. Once upon a time, at least, DEI advocates argued that if you define merit broadly enough, you could meet quotas without worrying whether the pool of available DEI candidates with the requisite skills was big enough. Not now. Quotas and targets are all-consuming.
DEI is patently bad for those it aims to help, too. Witness questions being asked about the role gender played in Biden’s 2022 appointment of Kimberly Cheatle as head of the Secret Service. Appointed by Biden in 2022, Cheatle is ultimately responsible for one of the biggest failures in the history of the American secret service, when a 20-year-old man tried to assassinate Trump, leaving one man dead and others, along with the former president, injured.
Prominent conservatives are calling Cheatle a “DEI hire”. “Somebody really dropped the ball,” Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, said. “You’ve got basically a DEI initiative person who heads up our Secret Service. This is what happens when you don’t put the best players in.”
There are questions, too, as to whether a female Secret Service agent on stage with Trump was the right pick to protect the former president.
Meghan McCain, daughter of former senator and Republican presidential nominee John McCain, pointed to a video spreading across social media from Trump’s Pennsylvania rally where the female agent appears to fumble with her gun.
“You need to be taller than the candidate to protect them with your body,” McCain said on X. “Why do they have these short women – one who can’t holster a gun apparently – guarding Trump? This is embarrassing and dangerous.”
Questions about the role DEI played in this catastrophic fiasco should depend on the circumstances. No wet-behind-the-ears rookie, Cheatle has been with the Secret Service for a couple of decades. But when DEI takes centre stage, as the Democrats have ensured, it’s open season to question the competency of anyone who ticks DEI’s favoured identity boxes. It may not be fair but it is inevitable. Worse, it’s logical, even if the DEI faithful struggle to see reason.
Take, as another example, Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, who, by the way, told us last year that “80 is the new 40” when asked about her boss’s competence to lead.
Was Jean-Pierre appointed because she’s a gun press secretary – or because putting another black woman out front for the Biden administration would boost the President’s DEI cred?
The Democrats’ entanglement with DEI is happening at a time when the diversity project is unravelling elsewhere. There are now almost daily reports that companies and other institutions are done with DEI.
Last month it was Tractor Supply, a rural retailer that sells animal feed and workwear. The company announced it’s getting rid of DEI jobs. Last week came reports of Microsoft laying off staff in charge of DEI initiatives. Goldman Sachs has tweaked its admissions policies for something called its Possibilities Summit. Previously for black college kids only, now whites are welcome. How about that?
This growing anti-DEI push received help from the highest place when the US Supreme Court last year pointed out the bleeding obvious – that permanently entrenching positive discrimination was unfair. Though that case concerned university admission policies, the logic that unravels DEI applies everywhere. Except, it seems, in progressive quarters where DEI remains a religious sacrament.
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What irony: Democrats open new line of attack on Trump: his age
Hypocrisy comes so easily to the Left
In a twist, President Biden’s exit from the race now makes Donald Trump the oldest man ever to win his party’s nomination.
The irony isn’t lost on Democrats, who after aggressively playing down concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity are seeking to flip the script on their GOP opponent.
“The American people are rightly concerned that the Republican Party has nominated Donald Trump, a 78-year-old convicted criminal,” said James Singer, a spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
Age has been heavy on the minds of voters in a race that was, until Sunday, between the two oldest presidential candidates in history -- shattering the record they set when they ran against each other four years ago.
Biden, 81, was to be the oldest presidential candidate if he was on the ballot this year. But with his withdrawal, 78-year old Trump is now positioned to top the record set by Biden in 2020, when he won the Democratic nomination at the age of 77.
“Donald Trump is now officially the oldest presidential nominee of a major political party in American history. Meanwhile. Vice President Harris is doing her thing,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), 53, wrote on X.
With the rise of Harris, 59, the expected Democratic nominee, and Sen. JD Vance, 39, recently selected as Trump’s running mate, the spotlight has now shifted to Trump’s age as many voters have yearned for alternatives to gerontocracy in Washington.
“It’s not about age, it’s about competence, and Kamala Harris has proven to be just as incompetent and ineffective as Joe Biden,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Leavitt pointed to Harris’s handling of immigration policy under the Biden administration.
Biden stepped aside after failing to quell Democratic concerns about his age, fitness for office and ability to win in November. His age was central to the Trump campaign’s attacks against the octogenarian president.
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Secret Service director resigns amid anger over Trump shooting
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday amid bipartisan outrage over her agency’s failure to stop a 20-year-old gunman from opening fire on former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally.
Cheatle’s departure came after a blistering congressional hearing in which she offered minimal new information about the July 13 assassination attempt in western Pennsylvania, which marked the Secret Service’s most stunning failure since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
The director vowed to get to the bottom of what she acknowledged was a colossal security lapse, but politicians on both sides of the aisle said her assurances didn’t inspire confidence and urged her to step down.
Cheatle in an internal email told employees she was resigning “with a heavy heart,” saying she didn’t want calls for her to quit to become a distraction. “The scrutiny over the last week has been intense and will continue to remain as our operational tempo increases,” she wrote. “However, this incident does not define us.”
Cheatle’s hearing performance “was awful. It was all secret and no service,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee who had joined Republicans in calling for her resignation. “She answered none of the questions that the American people have.”
The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), said “there will be more accountability to come.” “The Secret Service has a no-fail mission yet it failed historically on Director Cheatle’s watch,” he said.
Ronald Rowe, the agency’s deputy director and a 24-year-veteran of the service, will serve as its acting head, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. Rowe previously led the Secret Service’s legislative affairs and held a top role in the office of protective operations, a division that oversees the work most commonly associated with the agency.
A number of investigations are under way into how Thomas Matthew Crooks fired at least six rounds from the roof of the American Glass Research building roughly 400 feet away from where Trump spoke, killing one spectator, critically injuring two others and leaving Trump with a graze wound to the ear. A Secret Service sniper team shot back, killing Crooks, whose motive remains a mystery.
Cheatle in her testimony acknowledged that Crooks had been identified as suspicious more than an hour before the shooting. Pressed by politicians, she said that Secret Service agents had received several notifications of a person acting suspiciously.
The director declined to elaborate on those communications. She also declined to say how Crooks got on the roof, or whether authorities sought to approach him after he was initially identified as suspicious. In one exchange, she suggested that the security team with Trump before he went on stage didn’t know that the former president was facing an active threat.
Her resignation marks an abrupt and unhappy end to a Secret Service career three decades in the making.
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July 23, 2024
God bless America: Aftermath of an attempted assassination
Qanta Ahmed (who is a Muslim)
Seated on the South Lawn of the White House on 15 September 2020, we couldn’t help but stand as President Trump arrived on the Balcony, leading the three Middle East leaders into the afternoon sun. We were about to witness the signing of the Abraham Accords bringing Israel into peace with Bahrain and UAE that day, and soon after, Morocco and Sudan. I was seated towards the edge of the 600-strong crowd, surrounded by donors sporting Presidential Seal cufflinks, tribute to their deep pockets and deeper still networks.
Next to me Batsheva, doting aunt of a Jared Kushner senior White House staffer, began reciting a soft prayer. Hearing the Hebrew, I enquired about the prayer. She was incanting the Jewish Bracha (blessing) uttered when one sees a king. I wanted to join in. Following her lead phonetically, we prayed together, one an American Jewish woman, one an American Muslim woman, both understanding our President to be our leader.
In the years since that moment of hope and light, President Trump has faced first ridicule, then derision, then dehumanisation and censure; silenced on mainstream and social media, bound in a litany of legal cases, convicted in my city of New York and finally today, targeted for assassination.
As an American and a Muslim, I pray for the full recovery of our former and likely future President and his family. I pray for my nation, the United States, a generous home to me for over 30 years. And as a Muslim I am bound to follow the example of our Prophet as we are reminded in the Islamic Hadith (Sahih Muslim 1828) to pray to our Maker for whomever is given charge of our nation beseeching of our Creator, ‘Whoever is given charge over my nation and he is gentle with them, be gentle with him.’ In other words one prays that the Almighty ‘might treat the ruler as he reigns’. (I remembered this prayer when King Charles III was crowned and wrote about that in this column).
Tonight, I remember the other part of this prayer.
‘Oh Allah, whoever is given charge over my nation and he is harsh with them, be harsh with him.’
There has been harshness within our nation. There has been harshness directed at our great nation’s former president.
We are collectively responsible as a nation for this appalling moment, led astray by a recklessly vitriolic far-left which has co-opted the remnants of the Democratic party. Today, the generous and hopeful America I first moved to in 1992 is unrecognisable.
Consumed by narcissism, extreme left woke neo-orthodoxy and an obscene marriage (maybe not only of convenience but also perhaps of infatuation) with virulent Islamism, the Democratic party that President Bill Clinton once led has been largely devoured.
In the void remaining, President Trump and his supporters have relentlessly been ridiculed, ostracised, dehumanised and demonised. This Frankenstein left calls Trump Hitler even as they celebrate, sanction and refuse to condemn breathtakingly virulent dehumanisation of America’s Jews since 7 October unleashing an astonishing licence for public hate speech, hate crimes and acts of hate towards America’s Jews. All of this has contributed to these highly combustible moments we must now face as virulent antiSemitism flows in our colleges, schools and campuses in the guise of anti-Zionism while espousing blatant allegiance with US designated Foreign Domestic Terrorist Organisations including Hamas and Hezbollah.
Today’s events were not possible without extreme speech.
Extreme rhetoric in our nation has led to this moment. Islamist jihadist ideology I have examined for decades reveals the power of extreme speech and how it dehumanises, how it diminishes integrative complexity, how it devolves into us versus them, good versus evil, and binary constructs until – having successfully laid the groundwork in the previous absolute dehumanisation of ‘the other’ – there remains only the elimination of the other.
Who knew? While I was busy studying radicalisation in the foothills of the Hindu Kush in North-West Pakistan, or in the lands of Yazidism and the valleys of the Zagros in Iraqi Kurdistan, big-budget radicalisation was unfurling right under my nose here in America’s most moneyed zip codes.
America the Beautiful is approaching almost a decade of intense domestic political tribalism, poisonous identity politics and, thanks to Covid, a deeply frayed social fabric. Indeed, such a fraying of the social fabric characterises the aftermath of all pandemics, as the brilliant counterterrorism intellectual Brian Michael Jenkins clearly delineates in his work Plagues and Their Aftermath: How Societies Recover from Pandemics. This frayed fabric tends to persist – spoiler alert – not for decades but centuries in the wake of global plagues.
Extreme speech with its binary simplicity feeds a ravenous news cycle straining to capture an ever-diminishing attention span targeted by massive bot-farms financed by national and international malignant actors. The result: fraught with tension, suspicion, alienation and frightening hate, Americans are separated gaping chasm by gaping chasm.
As the prayer in the Hadith reminds us, our leaders at this moment will indeed be judged harshly by our Maker for our leaders have treated all of us harshly. They have manipulated us with extreme speech, silenced debate, and censured the target of their hatred, President Trump, who has been throughout captive like a moth to a flame in an incandescent crucible of their animus.
This harshness is exemplified by a government which shows compassion only to a rarefied elite, yet denies it to the everyman upon whom it only rains scorn; a compassion cultivating the rabid anti-Semite at the expense of the disempowered American Jewish citizen. When we cannot protect the most vulnerable minorities in our nation – the Jewish people – it must be said – we may not be able to protect our most empowered citizens, our former and future president.
Language, Foucault has argued, furnishes the building blocks of a particular reality. Language is the battlefield across which power struggles are waged. And it is to language we must now turn.
America’s origins were inscribed in some of the finest language to define a democracy. We must now turn to our founding documents and tenets: one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Melania Trump in her letter after the assassination attempt wrote that our ‘gentle nation is frayed’. Be gentle with my nation. God Bless America. God have mercy on us all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/god-bless-america/
*******************************************************World politics: Worth a chuckle and a tear
Judith Sloan
I tried to lose interest in UK politics but when you have been following events in that country for literally decades, it’s hard to withdraw. To say that the Tories in that country were a disappointment is to understate the point – completely pathetic, I say.
I was neither surprised nor particularly disappointed when the Tories were slaughtered at the recent early election brought on by Rishi Sunak, who acted like the turkey voting for an early Christmas.
To be sure, Labour’s Keir Starmer didn’t actually get a mountain of votes, proportionately speaking, but with first-past-the-post voting, he now has a commanding majority in the House of Commons. There is not one Tory-held seat left in London.
(By the way, I’m no fan of first-past-the post voting, although it’s very easy to understand. How is it defensible that the LibDems could get over 70 seats when it polled proportionately less than Reform which secured only five seats? The best option is voluntary preferential. Voters can mark just one candidate but if there are other candidates that they don’t mind, they can mark them 2, 3 etc. I’m also OK with compulsory voting because that takes the extent of turnout out of the equation.)
Of course, by the time Sunak received the baton, it was too late to rescue his party from its dire position. Years of bossy left-leaning dictates coupled with a complete failure to control immigration, both legal and illegal, had well and truly put paid to the Tories’ electoral prospects.
It’s hard to pin the blame on just one person but I’m sticking my pin in Boris. He was the man who had campaigned for Brexit; he was the man who had won a landslide electoral victory by capturing all those Red Wall seats that had never been held by the Tories; he was the man who blew it all up.
His love affair with the green hoax led to a series of bizarre decisions that alienated many ordinary voters. To see him prancing around the Cop climate conference in Glasgow with the equally appalling Cop Minister, Alok Sharma (who has been rewarded by being made a member of the House of Lords) was a dismal sight. (I blame Boris for convincing ScoMo to commit the Coalition to Net Zero 2050, a strategic political mistake if there ever was one.)
All that crap about electric vehicles and phasing out of petrol/diesel ones; about replacing perfectly adequate gas boilers with noisy and inadequate heat pumps; about subsidising extremely expensive offshore windmills; and about eating less meat and cycling or walking everywhere. The list goes on.
Let’s face it, most adults have had a gutful of being told what to do by their parents. They don’t appreciate having another version of their parents bossing them around and imposing additional costs on them.
Of course, the obvious point here is that the Keir Starmer government will be even worse on this score. He hardly had time to get his feet under the desk when Ed Miliband, new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero – pause for groan here – cancelled new oil and gas projects in the North Sea.
Mind you, the Tories had dragged their feet on this, going for years without approving any new projects before finally relenting towards the end of their term. Miliband has also approved some massive solar factory on England’s green and pleasant land.
But when voters have had enough of an incumbent government, their main concern is to boot it out rather than carefully analyse the alternative. In due course, the British public may become equally appalled by the Labour government that has clear bossy tendencies, possibly even worse than the Tories. For example, Starmer has already pulled forward the date of exit for internal combustion cars to 2030. But this realisation will take a little while to emerge.
It is interesting to take a look at what has happened over the ditch – not our ditch, their ditch (the Channel) – after the snap parliamentary election called by President Macron. If single-round/first-past-the-post voting is bad, the French two-round system is even worse. Having secured the most votes in the first round, the conservative Marine Le Pen – hatefully called ‘far right’ by her enemies and the press – was dudded when the ragtag team of left-wing parties ganged up to work the system to their advantage.
Of course, playing electoral games doesn’t alter the opinions of the very large number of French voters who want to see the borders controlled and common sense policies introduced, particularly on climate.
In the meantime, the left is likely to engage in a fight to the death for electoral spoils given that not everyone can be a winner. These sorts of coalitions have a habit of falling apart, often over quite minor issues. At this stage, no decision has been reached about who should be the prime minister, with Macron’s man offering up his resignation and Macron refusing to accept it. In other words, things are not going well, even from the start.
What is perhaps even more concerning is the suite of policies that the left regard as non-negotiable: a reduction in the retirement age; a massive lift in the minimum wage; more public servants; and price freezes on food, energy and transport. And these are just the main ones.
Given that France has not run a budget surplus since 1973, when I still wore my hair in pigtails, this list of demands is absurd. The current budget deficit France is running – well above 5 per cent of GDP – is in clear violation of the EU fiscal rules, which is really saying something given Macron’s love affair with the EU.
It will be a case of being alert to the political and economic instability likely to overcome France in the coming months and years. As Henry Ergas has pointed out, it’s likely to be a return to the volatility of the de Gaulle years and the possible end of the Sixth Republic.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/world-politics/
*******************************************July 22, 2024
Rise of the new Republican Party under Donald Trump
The writer below seems unaware that the 10% tariff idea is perfectly orthodox economics. Economists accept that there are some reasons not to have pure free trade and their preferred tariff in that case is precisely what Trump says. He is a graduate in economics, after all
I give more background on Trump's tariff ideas below:
http://jonjayray.com/trumpism.html
Trump says he will put a tariff of 10 per cent on all imports into the US. If he did that it would hurt the American economy, raise prices for all American families and damage the less well off more than the affluent. Trump is the leading candidate for president and his most repeated and earnest commitments deserve to be taken seriously. Biden is also a tariff protectionist. Yet it’s likely Trump looks on the universal 10 per cent tariff as merely the first play in a negotiation. This approach is maddening and destabilising and yet it’s not as inherently incoherent as it first looks. The integrating idea is Trump’s vision of nationalism.
Trump also said this week that he thought Taiwan should pay the US for security protection, that the US gets nothing from Taiwan and has no inherent reason to protect Taiwan. Trump’s overall theme, taken up strongly by Vance, is that allies are free-riding on the US. Inconveniently, that’s substantially true. And it includes Australia.
In truth, Taiwan, as an exemplary democracy, deserves support. Further, it would be disastrous for the US position in Asia, for the whole of Asia, if China conquers Taiwan and can project its military power across Japan to the south and all the way east to Hawaii.
The US interests are enormous. John Bolton, president Trump’s national security adviser, wrote in his White House memoir that there was always a strong chance Trump would sell Taiwan out in exchange for a deal with China’s Xi Jinping.
Yet here again, Trump is unpredictable on both the upside and the downside. The Chinese understand, and have certainly been told, that if they take actions that humiliate Trump and make him and his administration look weak and beaten, or even credibly threaten such action, then all bets are off.
The pro-Trump case among hawks is that America will be stronger under Trump than under any possible Democrat. A Trump Republican administration will spend more on defence than any Democrat would. The economy will be more robust. America’s enemies will be more worried about what Trump might do if they push him too far.
Not only that, Trump has helped create the situation in which the whole US political class is critical of China and sees the Chinese Communist Party as America’s adversary. It’s one thing to do a trade deal with China. It’s another thing altogether to cede Taiwan to China.
More concerning than anything, Vance has said he doesn’t care what happens in Ukraine. Trump has opposed US aid to Ukraine and his foreign policy surrogates talk of the Europeans financing Ukraine’s military resistance to Russia. Trump also, rather bizarrely, has claimed he’ll end the Russia-Ukraine war in a single day, in the time between his presumed election in November and inauguration in January.
That’s completely unbelievable. What Trump plainly has in mind, and it’s probably what Biden in fact has in mind as well, is freezing the conflict and getting a ceasefire, which becomes a peace agreement. This would be bitter for the Ukrainians for they would have lost Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine forever. However, if they were given real security guarantees, such as EU and NATO membership, they could feel that they’d preserved their nation.
Trump’s first term, before he disputed the election result, is mostly reassuring on substance. The economy did well. America was strong. No ally was abandoned or betrayed. And no one much messed with America.
But Trump had conventional Republicans in the key cabinet positions. That’s less likely to be the case this time. The first evidence for that is the selection of Vance as vice-president. In 2016 Trump chose Mike Pence, a sober, responsible, reliable established Republican governor.
Yet it’s also fair to say that Vance has about as much experience going into the vice-presidential candidacy as Barack Obama had when he ran for president.
Many conservatives across the Anglosphere have become national security conservatives, putting the need for a manufacturing base and for control of key supply chains above the efficiencies that free trade and just-in-time supply chains offer. Vance is a bit beyond that. Initially he was highly sceptical of Trump, but now he has embraced Trump as someone who works for his type of community.
On the other hand, Trump’s tax policies were very sympathetic to Wall Street interests that Vance is inclined to denounce. Vance wants to inherit the MAGA movement, so he’s very unlikely ever to defy Trump. Unfortunately, part of the price of getting inside the Trump tent, for Vance at least, has been to buy into the toxic fiction that the 2020 election was unlawfully stolen from Trump.
Yet speaking at the RNC, Vance stressed that sometimes he persuaded his colleagues and sometimes they persuaded him. He communicated openness to change. The Trump-Vance ticket at one level therefore offers a great deal of uncertainty.
But in reality most presidential tickets are like this to some extent. In 2020 Biden ran as a centrist yet has governed as an increasingly left-wing progressive. Trump-Vance may be no more fundamentally unpredictable than Biden was.
Trump won’t want America to be pushed around and he won’t want it humiliated by having its closest allies attacked. All presidencies, and all foreign policy, are transactional to some extent. With Trump this will be naked, perhaps extreme.
The Trump campaign has not produced any ads from Biden’s woeful performance in the TV debate three weeks ago because they actually don’t want to push Biden out of the race. But if the Democrats get their act together and find a better candidate, the US could be at a fundamental fork in the road: progressive liberalism versus national conservatism, as starkly delineated as any time in history. Perhaps this is the most important election after all.
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Hillbilly elegist a considered voice for outsider America
Vance is a populist but populists can make importat points. And when an ill-effect is the result of good intentions, it is still right to point out the ill-efffect
Everyone’s talking about Vance this week. That’s quite a feat given the major dramas concern a senile old Democrat refusing to step aside for a younger, competent candidate, and an assassination attempt against Donald Trump so close that a tilt of his head would have left him dead. A Secret Service failure of such mammoth proportions understandably raises questions about recklessness, at the very least.
Those going crazy about Vance, one way or another, see another Trumpian-styled saviour or another Trumpian devil. It’s cartoonish. Vance is more complicated than that. His policy positions from Ukraine to globalisation and the role of government most certainly deserve scrutiny. He’s not a neat fit for Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or even Trump.
His critics don’t like his lack of political experience. What they don’t address is this: what have the vast numbers of long-in-the-tooth experienced politicians done for American politics in recent decades? Except in many instances to ensure their disconnect from their own country?
The 39-year-old cleanskin gave an electrifying address at the Republican National Convention on Thursday. His pitch to the American heartland was authentic, compelling. “When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico,” Vance said.
When he was in high school, Vance noted, Biden backed a China trade deal and the US invasion of Iraq.
“And at each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan and other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war,” he told the packed stadium in Milwaukee.
Watched by millions more outside that stadium, Vance beseeched Americans to be “united in our love for this country and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas”.
Trumpism was never about Trump. It’s not about his chosen running mate, either. It’s about people left behind by elites on both sides of the political divide. That said, it won’t hurt that Vance is smart, handsome and young – the first millennial to feature at the top of the Republican ticket – and he hails from the downtrodden de-industrialised American heartland. That’s why so many are going back to his memoir.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was a wild success when it was published in June 2016 just months before Trump won the November ballot.
Back then Vance wasn’t a politician. He was a guy in his early 30s who worked in finance and penned a gritty, gut-wrenching memoir about growing up in a de-industrialised part of America. Vance was among the millions of American outsiders cast adrift by an elite culture, left behind by Wall Street and ignored by Washington.
He grew up poor in the midwest rust-belt of Middletown, Ohio, and spent summers with his mother’s family, a ragamuffin crowd of Kentucky hillbillies. There is an alcoholic father somewhere, and a revolving door of deadbeat men who hooked up with his drug-addicted mother.
And a smoking, cursing, loving grandmother – his Mamaw – who extracted him from a destiny where kids leave school early and end up jobless and hopeless. Where teenage pregnancies are rife, along with broken homes, crime, addiction and violence. Against all odds, Vance joined the military, served in Iraq and went to Yale law school.
During Trump’s election campaign in 2016, everyone was interested in the bestselling Hillbilly Elegy. A New York Times review in August that year praised Vance for advancing an important conversation about the causes of dysfunction among America’s white underclass.
“Mr Vance has inadvertently provided a civilised reference guide for an uncivilised election, and he’s done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans,” wrote Jennifer Senior from The Atlantic.
Vance ticked the top four boxes on the checklist of modern privilege, wrote Senior. He was white, male, straight, Protestant. But she pointed out that those boxes told you very little about Vance – and indeed many like him: “His people – hillbillies, rednecks, white trash, choose your epithet (or term of affection, depending on your point of view) – didn’t step off the Mayflower and become part of America’s ascendant class.”
“Poverty is the family tradition,” wrote Vance. White privilege was always a poor choice of words for Vance, and people like him who grew up in rust-belt towns and rural parts of America where blue-collar industries were dying. His life gave him authority to describe a broader social decay within a hillbilly culture where “learned helplessness” had taken root. His story about a substratum of American society untethered from personal responsibility resonated with its frankness.
Peak wokeness was just around the corner. The day before Netflix released Ron Howard’s movie version of Hillbilly Elegy featuring Glenn Close and Amy Adams, staff at Penguin were having a big cry – as in literally crying their eyes out during a staff meeting where they complained that their employer was publishing Jordan Peterson’s Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.
In many ways, Trump picking Vance as his running mate makes perfect sense. Though Trump is not mentioned in the book, or the movie, Vance’s bootstrap story of survival and success explains why millions of Americans, left behind by globalisation and other elite obsessions, sided with a wealthy insider who campaigned for the working class as a shameless outsider.
Trump used three words during the 2016 campaign that resonated the most: “Drain the swamp.”
In the years since, Biden and the Democrats have done little to settle that sentiment. Neither has the other side, hence Trump’s takeover of the GOP.
It’s true that Vance described Trump as “unfit for office” in a column he penned for The New York Times in August 2016. But to understand why Vance is on the Trump ticket, one needs to move beyond an excitable media reaching into the past for “gotcha” moments. What matters is not that Vance has changed his mind about Trump. What matters more is the other stuff that Vance said that the media isn’t reporting.
Writing two months after Hillbilly Elegy was published, Vance recalled his grandma – Mamaw – reminiscing with pride about World War II.
“We did it,” she beamed when speaking to Vance some 50 years later. “We freed the whole world from tyranny.”
Yet when her grandson enlisted weeks after the US invaded Iraq, she called Vance a “grade A-idiot”. Though proud of serving his country, Vance wrote that “war is about more than service and sacrifice – it’s about winning”.
While tyranny was defeated in Europe many decades ago, “Americans today look at a Middle East that is humiliatingly worse off than when we found it,” he wrote.
Vance understood that the human cost of that humiliation fell hardest on Republican strongholds. The military is filled with men and women from the south, from rural communities, with whites making up a disproportionate number of those killed or injured in action. Add in the failure of Department of Veterans Affairs to care for those who returned.
“The Republicans never addressed the anger of their own voters,” wrote Vance.
But Trump did, Vance said in that New York Times column, some seven years before the man from Ohio entered congress. Trump spoke to those furious with a political elite that sent their children “to fight and bleed and die in Iraq”.
There is a lasting scepticism among many Americans towards spilling blood and treasure on foreign soil with no hope of winning.
This week, Meet the Press host Kristin Welker tried to ping Vance for something else he said years ago. As Trump took the mantle from Barack Obama, Vance wrote nice things about the former president. The NBC host thought she’d found a skeleton in Vance’s closet. It was amateurish stuff.
“The president’s example offered something no other public figure could: hope,” Vance wrote in The New York Times in January 2017.
“I wanted so desperately to have what he had – a happy marriage and beautiful, thriving children. But I thought that those things belonged to people unlike me, to those who came from money and intact nuclear families. For the rest of us, past was destiny.”
“On Jan. 20, (2017) the political side of my brain will breathe a sigh of relief at Mr Obama’s departure. I will hope for better policy from the new administration … But the child who so desperately wanted an American dream, with a happy family at its core will feel something different. For at a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams. For that, I’ll miss him, and the example he set.”
Vance told the NBC host that he stood by his comments, that admiring a good husband, a good father, has nothing to do with politics.
Once you read Hillbilly Elegy, and go beyond clickbaity headlines about Vance, his meteoric rise to become Trump’s running mate is not hard to understand and admire.
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July 21, 2024
Why I am more convinced than ever that Trump has the strength and bravery to save Ukraine and end this appalling war
By BORIS JOHNSON (Former British PM)
It was the moment when Donald Trump won the November presidential election. I don’t mean the fateful decision to turn his head, which saved him from death by a quarter of an inch.
We are not talking about the miraculous fact of his survival, at 6.11pm in Butler, Pennsylvania, when tens of thousands of horror-stricken admirers saw him go down, with blood streaming from a head-wound whose significance was at first worryingly unclear.
No, the moment of truth, perhaps of revelation, came a few seconds later when the Secret Service agents were trying to bundle him horizontally — without his shoes — from the scene. It was then that Donald Trump showed his character.
He confirmed in a flash, not just his theatrical instincts, but also his courage. Having just been struck by a high-powered rifle bullet, he did not allow himself to be passively carted away. He took command of the situation. Wrestling himself free from his security people, flouting their safety protocols, he raised himself up until he was sure the crowd could see him.
Pumping his fist, he urged his supporters to ‘Fight, fight, fight’; and in so doing, at the moment when it really counted, he surely proved the most important fact of all: that he is made of the right stuff.
He knew that there was one thing far more important than his evacuation from the scene, and that was showing America that the assassin’s bullet had not prevailed against him — either physically or psychologically.
That photo, with the police officers arranged in what art historians would call ‘heroic diagonals’, and with Trump’s blood-streaked face and hand at the apex, has already become, in the minds of many Americans, the defining image of this campaign. That is because of the message it sends.
This is Trump saying to America and to the world, I will not be bowed, I will not be beaten.
More important still, that image says to Americans, with me as your leader, YOU will not be bowed. YOU will not be beaten. That is why the gesture has thrilled the hearts of his fans — and perhaps even some others.
I believe that indomitable spirit is exactly what the world needs right now, and exactly what is needed in the White House.
**********************************************
Former President shows strength and humility at RNC acceptance speech
“I'm not supposed to be here tonight, not supposed to be here.”
That was former President Donald Trump’s assessment of the near-fatal assassination attempt against him on July 13 at his Butler, Pa. campaign rally, that it was a miracle he was still alive, as he accepted the Republican Party nomination on July 18 in Milwaukee, Wis.
As the crowd chanted, “Yes you are!” Trump insisted he should be dead: “But I'm not [supposed to be here] and I'll tell you. I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God. In watching the reports over the last few days, many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was.”
At his first speech since his brush with death, Trump recounted that but for referring to a chart on illegal immigration, where he turned his head at the last second, and “if I had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin's bullet would have perfectly hit its mark and I would not be here tonight. We would not be together.”
Trump’s humble retelling carried over into the rest of the speech as he softened his attacks on President Joe Biden and offered a less partisan style speech, stating, “I am running to be President for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”
That set the mood for the remainder of Trump’s speech: This is a man on a mission to finish what he started when he began running for President the first time in 2015 and won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, overcoming incredible odds.
Illegal immigration has never been worse, with 8.1 million southwest border encounters since Biden took office in Jan. 2021, the most in American history over comparable time intervals. In part, it is that stat that explains Trump’s decision to run for office again, and it is definitely that stat that saved his life.
To address it, Trump says he will finish the border wall that began under his watch. He will reinstitute the Remain in Mexico policy that Biden ended. And he plans to undertake a massive deportation operation.
To garner international support for the policies, Trump promised to once again leverage economic aid and tariff threats against countries that do not cooperate with U.S. policies on trade, immigration and fighting the drug cartels.
On foreign policy, Trump once again warned not just his supporters by all Americans and indeed the entire world that we are on the brink of nuclear war: “our planet is teetering on the edge of World War III. And this will be a war like no other war because of weaponry. The weapons are no longer army tanks going back and forth shooting at each other. These weapons are obliteration. It's time for a change. This administration can't come close to solving the problems.”
On the campaign trail, Trump has supported pursuing a diplomatic strategy specific to Ukraine to achieve peace — if possible — and to avoid the worst as the war there continues to escalate.
Trump also threatened Hamas to return all American hostages currently being held before he returns to office or “the entire world, I tell you this, we want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office… or you will be paying a very big price.”
On the economy, Trump referenced inflation 14 times, and promised to reduce costs on food and energy by boosting production, and also with tax relief including no tax on tips, regulation cuts and lower interest rates. On the latter, interest rates might come down all on their own as the economy overheats, Americans max out their credit cards and prices cool, with the unemployment rate already rising, from a low of 3.4 percent in April 2023 now up to 4.1 percent in June.
A lot of the speech was largely boilerplate from Trump campaign rallies as the former president occasionally broke into adlibbing, but the overall moment was well-crafted, including a touching tribute to Corey Comperatore who lost his life at the Butler, Pa. rally while he was heroically shielding his family.
Following the assassination attempt, Trump’s rhetorical challenge was to meet that moment, to relate what happened to him and to show that he was okay, and that he was back. As the tempo of the speech shifted to more upbeat and animated in the second half as Trump really got into the swing of it, the American people were treated to a candidate who is fully able and motivated to lead the country he loves.
Trump showed strength.
At Butler, Pa., Trump told the assembled crowd to “Fight!” and in Milwaukee, Wis. he started to show how he intends to do that on the campaign trail with a message that can resonate not just with Republicans, but also independents and Democrats who might be on the fence. America’s leadership is currently weak, but Trump is strong — and America needs to be strong.
**************************************************
Leftist desperation after the Trump shooting
Conservatives are calling for MSNBC anchor Joy Reid to be taken off the air after she shared inflammatory theories about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Reid, 55, angered critics on two occasions after a gunman shot Trump in the ear, including sharing a video to X implying that he was not even shot at all.
And after President Biden tested positive for Covid days after the assassination attempt, Reid said on a broadcast that Biden's brush with the virus was as heroic as Trump's reaction to narrowly avoiding a bullet.
Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk led the criticisms of Reid's remarks, as he called on MSNBC to 'take Reid off the air' for her 'outrageous, insane, defamatory' theories.
She appeared to imply it was a staged event that allowed Trump to 'pose' for the iconic photo of him pumping his fist in the air - which Kirk said would mean Trump's 'campaign and the Secret Service colluded to kill two people in a fake assassination attempt just so Trump could have a photo op.'
*************************************************
Whoopi Goldberg attacks Kai Trump's rousing RNC speech about grandfather Donald - urging viewers 'not to fall for it'
She is not in the best position to allege deception. She has adopted an Ashkenazi surname instead of her own much more mundane name. Does she really have any Jewish ancestry? The Ashkenazim are brilliant and heroic. She has no right to that name. She defiles it
And what is this about "humanizing" Trump? Is she saying that Trump is subhuman? In the light of history, that's not the wisest thing for a black to say
Whoopi Goldberg didn't hold back when sharing her thoughts about Kai Trump's Republican National Convention (RNC) speech, urging voters 'not to fall for it.'
Donald Trump's 17-year-old granddaughter took to the stage on Wednesday night, telling viewers he was 'just a normal grandpa.'
However the 68-year-old host of The View called out the teen's stirring speech; arguing it was a trick to 'humanize' Trump - particularly after Saturday's assassination attempt.
'I know his grandchild was up on the thing and they're trying to humanize [Trump] and change your idea about who this guy is,' Whoopi said on Thursday's episode of the ABC talk show.
'Don't fall for that.'
Kai, who is the daughter of Donald Trump Jr. and his ex-wife, Vanessa, took the stage on the third night of the RNC in Milwaukee.
'The media makes my grandpa seem like a different person, but I know him for who he is. He's very caring and loving, he truly wants the best for this country,' the teen said.
Kai, who is the eldest grandchild of Trump, described him as 'just a normal grandpa.'
'He gives us candy and soda when our parents are not looking,' she said.
'He always wants to know how we're doing in school. When I made the high honor roll, he printed it out to his friends how proud he was of me.'
She then commented on the Saturday's attempted assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, calling Trump an 'inspiration.'
‘A lot of people have put my grandpa through hell, and he's still standing,’ she told thousands of cheering GOP delegates. 'Grandpa, you are such an inspiration and I love you.'
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July 18, 2024
Trump, Not the Left, Embodies Unity Message and Looks to Build Strong Middle-Class Coalition
Just days after surviving a near-deadly assassination attempt, former President Donald Trump kicked off the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Monday night by selecting a vice president who was once a vocal critic of his in 2016 and extending an invitation to a union chief to speak at the convention.
The devastating events of last Saturday are still reverberating through the nation, as Americans grapple with the chilling reality that less than an inch of space prevented former President Trump from death or grave injury over the weekend. Thankfully, Trump emerged from the horrific shooting unscathed except for a grazed ear and kicked off the Republican National Convention less than 48 hours after surviving the attack.
While prominent Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have used Saturday’s assassination attempt to do everything from attack the Second Amendment to blame Trump himself for the attempt on his life, Trump appears to be focused on unifying Americans regardless of identity politics, something the left is failing miserably to do.
In a grave example of misinformation, President Joe Biden appeared to double down on at least partially blaming Trump for Saturday’s horrific shooting in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. Biden appeared to blame Trump for incendiary rhetoric, bringing up an utterly out of context statement Trump made about a “bloodbath” for the auto-industry if he lost the election. Trump did in fact use the word “bloodbath” at a March rally to describe the situation if he loses in November, but Trump was speaking about the U.S. auto industry becoming a “bloodbath” if he loses, nothing else. Biden however, apparently had either not been briefed and corrected on the bloodbath statement or did not care that it was out of context because he told Lester Holt that Trump, “talks about bloodbath if he loses”.
While the left is busy blaming Trump for finding himself in the crosshairs of an assassin, Trump appears to be forging ahead, focused on building a strong coalition of working-class voters this November and embodying a unity message the left is not.
First, Trump announced Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate from a shortlist that included Florida Senator Marco Rubio and others. Vance, a 39-year-old self-made man from a modest background and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” was highly critical of Trump eight years ago during the 2016 election. However, Vance now says Trump ended up being a great president and he believes his judgement was partially clouded by the mainstream media’s attacks on Trump back in 2016.
In a Fox News interview after being announced, Vance responded to Sean Hannity’s probing questions about negative statements he made about Trump back in 2016. “I don’t hide from that, I was certainly skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016”, Vance told Hannity. “But president Trump was a great president, and he changed my mind. I think he changed the minds of a lot of Americans, because again he delivered that peace and prosperity.” While left-wing pundits like to claim Trump relentlessly criticizes or punishes those who disagree with him, Trump bypassed other vice-presidential picks in favor of a man whose opinion of the former president changed significantly over the past eight years. That’s not the move of someone with a fragile ego, in fact it is quite the opposite.
Then there was Monday’s closing speech at the Republican National Convention, which came from an unlikely source in the form of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. O’Brien seized on the opportunity to rail against big business and declared that the Teamsters are, “here to say we are not beholden to anyone or any party”.
In his address to the RNC, the first to come from a Teamsters president in the organization’s history, O’Brien declared, “we will create an agenda and work with a bipartisan coalition, ready to accomplish something real for the American worker. And I don’t care about getting criticized.”
While not endorsing Trump, O’Brien congratulated Trump for being willing to listen to other points of view. “President Trump is a candidate who is not afraid of hearing from new, loud and often critical voices”, O’Brien said. “And I think we all can agree, whether people like him or they don’t like him, in light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough S.O.B.”
For years now, a series of worrying polls have put Democrats on notice that Trump is making significant inroads with groups Democrats have long depended upon, including independents working-class whites, minorities and young people. Days after surviving a vile attack on his life, Trump is embodying unity in a way that goes far beyond words. Through his actions – nominating a vice president who was once highly critical of him, inviting the Teamsters to speak at the RNC, and consistently reaching out to groups Democrats believe belong to them alone – Trump is standing up for a unified middle-class, regardless of labels.
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‘Fight!’ Poll shows 74 percent say Trump acted with bravery and defiance after assassination attempt
That was former President Donald Trump’s immediate statement to his supporters at the tragic Butler, Pa. campaign rally on July 13 that claimed the life of Corey Comperatore as he shielded his family and injured Trump and two others, letting everyone know that he and America were going to be okay following the assassination attempt.
And it did not go unnoticed. 74 percent of registered voters said Trump acted with bravery and defiance, including 94 percent of Republicans, 56 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of independents. 68 percent say he has urged unity and calm, including 88 percent of Republicans, 49 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independents.
As for causative factors 64 percent agreed that “[T]he core message of Biden campaign and the Democratic party that Trump is a threat to democracy and freedom and a dictator has gone too far,” including 80 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents.
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Navarro released from prison, to make return to Republican National Convention tonight
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to former White House advisor Peter Navarro being released from federal prison:
"The political prosecution and imprisonment of Peter Navarro for having the audacity to claim executive privilege in response to a Congressional subpoena has come to an end. It is astonishing that the Biden administration would choose to prosecute a political opponent with all of the inherent risks to our nation that it entails in order to put someone in jail for four months. This same Justice Department, which prosecuted both Navarro and former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon, for failing to testify to Congress, over their executive privilege claims, at the same time, is led by an Attorney General claiming executive privilege in defiance of a Congressional subpoena and found in contempt of Congress. Naturally, Biden's DOJ is refusing to prosecute itself for violating the very same law, exemplifying the current two-tiered justice system. Thankfully, Peter Navarro survived his prison sentence and will be making a triumphant return as a political martyr to the public stage at the Republican National Convention tonight."
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Trump and I Have Proved Conservative Policies Work, Virginia’s Governor Says
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said both he and former President Donald Trump have shown that “commonsense conservative leadership works.”
Youngkin, a onetime businessman elected in 2021, said Monday night at the Republican National Convention that under President Joe Biden’s administration, Americans are facing 7.5% mortgage rates, while their raises can’t keep up with 30% increases in grocery prices and a 40% jump in the prices at the gas pump.
“Tonight, America—the land of opportunity—just doesn’t feel like that any more,” Youngkin said. “But eight years ago, there was an outsider, a businessman who stepped out of his career to rebuild a great nation, with the strongest economy, the mightiest military, energy independence, unlimited opportunity, lifting up every American. That outsider businessman was Donald J. Trump, and he will do it again.”
Youngkin said that the 2024 election “could not be more simple” and cast it as a contest of strength versus weakness and common sense versus chaos.
He also promoted his own record in Virginia, where he was the first Republican governor elected in 12 years.
“President Trump proved that commonsense conservative leadership works. It works for America,” Youngkin said. “We are proving it in Virginia, too, with $5 billion in tax relief, backing the blue, slashing red tape, declaring loudly that ‘yes, parents matter,’ and creating lots and lots of jobs. We were just named America’s top state to do business.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/15/youngkin-says-he-trump-proved-conservative-policies-work/
***************************************************Trump looks to appeal to Reagan Democrats and independents with Vance pick
Vance
Former President Donald Trump wants to engineer a landslide in 2024. In 1972, 1980, 1984 and 1988, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush won monumental 49-state, 44-state, 49-state and 40-state landslides in their respective re-election and election bids.
Eventually earning the moniker, Reagan Democrats, the appeal was to working class Americans who were underrepresented by elites in both political parties. It was critical to Trump’s narrow win in 2016, picking up the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and in 1992, it was a great deal of the reason why Bush lost with Ross Perot in the general election and Patrick Buchanan in the primary eating a great deal of those voters who were not being adequately represented by the Republican administration.
In 2020, those voters did not fully turn out for Trump, who although he improved on his 2016 showing, could not overcome the economy temporarily jettisoning 25 million jobs during Covid lockdowns, and Trump went on to lose Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and also losing Georgia and Arizona in President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win.
To restore and broaden the Trump coalition, he is going back to his 2016 playbook in selecting his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and with a selection of convention speakers who were once adversarial to Trump, whether model Amber Rose or Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien (who didn’t endorse but whose appearance also green lights members to vote for Trump), but also in his determination to campaign in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and other blue states that have not supported a Republican candidate for president in a long time.
Vance agrees with Trump’s positions on trade, illegal immigration and foreign policy, supporting tariffs on Chinese goods, closing the U.S. southern border and opposing U.S. intervention in Ukraine. He also comes from humble origins in a working-class family, and whose personal story of self-determination and serving his country in the Marines and now the Senate, plus his youth — he’s only 39-years-old — makes him an able-bodied heir of the Trump legacy.
As for the convention, instead of putting on nothing but supporters, Trump has opted for at least a few speakers who looked at Trump and discovered he wasn’t who or what his opponents and media said. Vance, who was once highly critical of Trump, also fits this mold.
Trump is making a play for blue states. If the broader strategy works, it will do so by winning the so-called Reagan Democrats who Reagan’s successors took for granted, and could be a landslide and also prove pivotal to helping Republicans get elected in Congress. Trump will need larger majorities to get anything done.
It’s a higher risk strategy — some Republicans and conservatives were offended by the Rose and O’Brien appearances at the convention, for example — but also one that can produce a higher reward when voters get to the ballot box.
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July 17, 2024
Another deletion
Google have deleted another of my posts here -- dated 16 June. It is still available on that date here:
http://jonjayray.com/covjun24.html
************************************************Physically unfit, under-qualified agents with a diversity-obsessed boss chosen by Dr Jill Biden!
Consider what happened when Donald Trump was shot on Saturday night.
The initial response was by the book. Brave agents piled on him to protect him from further bullets. They kept him down until they were told the shooter had been killed.
But they had no idea if others shooters were involved and, as they escorted him off the podium, they left him badly exposed, partly because some of the agents were not tall enough to give him proper cover.
If there had been a second shooter they would have had a clear line of sight as Trump fist-pumped the air.
There was even more chaos by the time they reached Trump's SUV. Far from the efficient, speedy exit all those years ago outside the Washington Hilton for Ronald Reagan, it took too long to get him in the vehicle and even longer for it to depart.
Agents were darting about, some running in circles, clearly not sure what to do. One, overweight and looking panicked, pointed her gun all over the place. Another had trouble holstering her pistol. A third found time to put on her sunglasses and straighten her jacket.
Perhaps it was just a coincidence – but when Trump entered the Republican National Convention hall in Milwaukee on Monday night, his security detail was made up almost exclusively of tall, chunky men.
The Secret Service endlessly game-plans and practises evacuations. 'Get him and go' is the simple guidance. The Secret Service likes to regard itself as the global gold standard for the protection of public figures. Not after Saturday night.
But what happened after Trump was shot is the least of its problems.
How the shooter ever managed to get any shots off in the first place has the makings of the biggest crisis of modern times for the Secret Service.
Security experts are still baffled that a roof top overlooking the presidential podium, just over a football-field away and with an elevated, unobstructed view of Trump, could have been left unguarded so that the shooter could make it on to the roof and then, unhindered, position himself for his assassination attempt.
The Secret Service has yet to offer a credible explanation for this. Instead its director, Kimberly Cheatle, incredibly appeared to tell ACB News on Tuesday that health and safety protocol was to blame.
'That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,' she said.
Cheatle and her acolytes have also been busy throwing local law enforcement under the bus.
The warehouse on top of which the shooter clambered (we still don't know exactly how) was outside the Secret Service's perimeter of responsibility, she claims. It was the job of local police to secure it — and it's true that local law enforcement has some questions to answer.
It's been revealed that a local police counter-sniper team was stationed inside the warehouse. They were using it as a 'watch post' to scan for threats.
Pity nobody thought of having a look at the roof of the building they were occupying since its location and view overlooking the rally made it the most obvious threat. Perhaps the Keystone Cops were on duty at the weekend.
Local police also failed to react to people on the ground around the warehouse shouting that there was somebody, possibly with a rifle, on the roof, a few minutes before he started firing. Several videos provide convincing evidence to confirm this — and of the police's lackadaisical response.
'Look, they're all pointing,' one man is heard saying as he pans his smart phone from the stage to the roof of the warehouse, where a figure is seen crawling. 'Yeah someone's on top of the roof — look!'
The police don't seem to react, though there are reports that one local cop climbed a ladder leaning against the warehouse wall (used by the shooter?). He saw the would-be assassin when his head reached roof level — and quickly ducked back down the ladder when the shooter trained his AR-15 on him, before he then turned back unimpeded to take his shots at Trump.
Another report extraordinarily claims that local police noticed the shooter on the roof 26 minutes before he opened fire, and even took a picture of him.
Clearly, the police incompetence on depressing display during the Uvalde school massacre shooting in Texas two years ago was not a one-off.
But the Secret Service cannot be allowed to pile the blame on a police force in rural Pennsylvania with no expertise or experience in protecting high-profile targets.
It is the job of the Secret Service to devise and give final approval for the security blueprint covering events like Saturday's rally. It is the responsibility of the Secret Service to ensure all vulnerable points are covered, inside and outside their specific perimeter, even when local police provide the manpower.
Above all, it was incumbent on the Secret Service to ensure that such an obvious security weakness as the warehouse was properly policed. One drone with infrared sensors would quickly have spotted the shooter, probably before he even made it to the roof. If that drone had been equipped with offensive capabilities, the shooter could have been taken out long before he ever managed to pull his trigger.
But we understand no drones were deployed. Why not?
It would seem the Secret Service under Director Cheatle has had other priorities. A former Secret Service agent told me privately that she quit because field agents were understaffed (working 60 consecutive days with no time off).
Money has instead been diverted to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). Investment in new technology, including state-of-the-art drones, was also sacrificed at the altar of DEI.
Director Cheatle was appointed two years ago by President Biden with the blessing (perhaps even active support) of his wife Jill.
Cheatle had been on the Biden family's security detail when Joe Biden was Vice President. Jill Biden is obsessed with DEI, like most leftwing pseudo-academics. Cheatle talks more about reaching 30 percent female agents by 2030 than she does about protecting those under her agency's tender care. Her ambition is all over the Secret Service website.
When I was a White House correspondent in the 1980s, the Secret Service was part of the US Treasury Department, a hard taskmaster.
Now it is part of Homeland Security, whose boss, the hapless Alejandro Mayorkas, is also 'passionate' about DEI. He also assures us the Southern border with Mexico is secure.
The standards and governance of the Secret Service are clearly less rigorous than they once were. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at the weekend has made that painfully obvious for all to see.
No doubt its shortcomings will be revealed in agonizing detail by the numerous congressional committees about to investigate it. I'd be surprised if Cheatle survives the scrutiny.
She could always return to be head of 'global security' at PepsiCo, from whence she came. They're big on DEI there too — but the consequences are less profound for American democracy.
***************************************************
Thomas Matthew Crooks' lonely world: Donald Trump shooter went from popular 10-year-old to secretive loner
Today, through a trove of pictures and the accounts of family friends, Dailymail.com can give the first real glimpse into the childhood of the boy who would grow up to try to kill a president.
He went from the 'normal little boy' who liked to play soldiers and miniature golf, to the increasingly disturbed young man who grew his hair long, isolated himself from friends and became plagued by mental health disturbances that led some to believe he was either bi-polar or schizophrenic.
It was a journey that ended catastrophically at Trump's campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday when Crooks, 20, took aim at the former president hitting him in the ear, killing one member of the crowd and seriously injuring two others.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one person who knows the family well said, 'He was a cute kid, maybe a little bit off, maybe a little bit of a loner.
'But in the past couple of years he started suffering what we all suspected was mental health issues.'
From the 'normal little boy' who liked to play soldiers and miniature golf, to the increasingly disturbed young man who grew his hair long and isolated himself from friends
The friend, who has known the family throughout Crooks's childhood, continued, 'We never knew for sure if he had been diagnosed or if he was being medicated but he started growing his hair long, he withdrew.
'There was nothing super alarming but looking back of course you question what was missed? His father was a psychologist.
'I'm not blaming the parents but did he suppress something? Was there some denial there? Was there anything hidden?'
Crooks, known as Tom to his family, grew up in the Bethel Park suburb where his family still live with his parents and older sister, Katherine, 22.
He attended Abraham Lincoln Elementary School from 2009 to 2014, before moving on to Neil Armstrong Middle School 2015 to 2016, then Independence Middle School 2017 to 2018, and ultimately Bethel Park High School from which he graduated in 2022.
Seen in pictures across the years it is impossible to look at the face of the little boy who poses in yearbook picture after yearbook picture in his polo shirt and glasses without straining to see some foreshadowing of the change that, friends say, overtook him in the end.
In one, under the banner of 'Follow your Dreams' he is dressed in combat gear, the innocent costume of so many little boys now cast in a more sinister light by the act he would ultimately commit.
But as a child, he was, friends say, if not exactly outgoing then certainly apparently 'normal.'
One said, 'He was definitely very intelligent that's something that was always clear. He was in the math club; I think that was the only club he was part of other than the gun club later, and he won quite a big scholarship for math.'
In early photographs he is surrounded by friends, on costume days or mini-golf outings.
Later he is at the edge, peaking round a bandstand pillar or kneeling at the end of a line with a basketball and his peers.
Contrary to what one 'friend' has publicly claimed in recent days those who spoke with DailyMail.com insist he did not dress in hunting or camouflage gear but instead was always smartly turned out in a polo shirt and pants or shorts.
A source said, 'He was always smartly dressed. He came from a good family – his mother is a very nice woman, and his father is actually very accomplished. I believe at one point he was earning between $300,000 and $500,000 a year.'
Today the modest family home, a small brick bungalow in a quiet suburban neighborhood sits under the watchful eyes of law enforcement and the world media.
It gives little indication of its owners having any significant wealth.
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July 16, 2024
ALG Praises Trump Choice Of J.D. Vance As Running Mate
Good to see the skepticism about Ukraine. American aid is just prolonging the war. Putin is ready for an armistice. It's time for Zelensky to to come to the party. The bloodshed has got to stop. And Trump is the one to stop it
I am myself very pro-Indian (been there 3 times) so I am pleased to see that Vance is married to a very accomplished Indian lady. I have also known impressive Indian ladies
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising former President Donald Trump’s choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his Vice Presidential running mate:
“President Donald Trump’s choice of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his Vice Presidential running mate demonstrates the President’s commitment to growing the Make America Great Again movement for decades to come. J.D. Vance is a warrior for the forgotten middle-class. Vance is in alignment with President Trump’s willingness to change our international trade policies to meet the needs of American workers, and has demonstrated a healthy skepticism over how U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent in Ukraine. Americans for Limited Government strongly supports the ticket of President Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance.”
https://getliberty.org/2024/07/alg-praises-trump-choice-of-j-d-vance-as-running-mate/
*******************************************************Tucker Carlson: All the Right People in Washington ‘Against’ Trump’s VP Pick
Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson told Republicans gathering in Milwaukee on Monday that Americans should “be thrilled” by Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick.
Earlier in the day, as the Republican National Convention opened, Trump posted on social media that he had chosen Sen. JD Vance, an Ohio Republican, as his running mate in the Nov. 5 election.
“So now JD Vance is the VP pick, and I think every person who pays close attention has got to be thrilled by that,” Carlson said in a speech to convention delegates.
“And if you don’t know much about JD Vance, I’m not even going to make a case for [him],” the former Fox News host said.
Vance, 39, became a celebrity after writing the bestselling autobiography “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis,” published in 2016. A venture capitalist, he won election to the Senate in 2022.
“I’m going to tell you what I just saw, which is that every bad person I’ve ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against JD Vance,” Carlson quipped to the convention audience, referring to recent speculation by liberal media outlets and others that Trump would pick the conservative Ohio senator.
Carlson said Vance’s enemies are establishment politicians who support U.S. involvement in “pointless wars.”
“Every single one of those people, in a line that would extend from Milwaukee to Chicago, was lined up over the last week to knife JD Vance,” Carlson told the RNC audience. “Not on personal grounds. I mean, he’s a perfectly nice guy. He’s like one of the only members of the Senate with a happy marriage.”
The criticism of Vance came “because they thought he would be harder to manipulate and slightly less enthusiastic about killing people,” Carlson said. “That’s it. That he would be an impediment to their exercising power.”
“And boy, they went after him in a way I’ve just kind of never seen,” Carlson said.
Carlson went on to describe what he sees as a “spiritual battle” America faces in light of the attempted assassination of Trump at a campaign rally Saturday evening in Pennsylvania. The gunfire wounded the former president in the right ear, narrowly missing his brain, seriously wounded two attendees, and killed a third.
“There is no logical way to understand what we’re seeing now in temporal terms,” Carlson told the crowd. “You just can’t.”
“These are not political divides. There are forces, and they’re very obvious now, … whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction,” he said. “And there are the rest of us who … are not always certain we’re right, but we know that that’s bad. And we’re against that.”
Carlson predicted that voters in November will return Trump to the White House because the former president showed “strength” Saturday night when he raised his fist and mouthed the word “fight” repeatedly after being shot as Secret Service agents sought to carry him offstage.
“Trump’s going to be president because he’s brave,” Carlson said. “Period.”
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Trump classified documents case dismissed
Washington: Donald Trump will no longer face trial for mishandling classified documents after a federal judge he appointed threw out the case, ruling that the prosecutor overseeing the charges was improperly appointed.
In a major win for the former US president days after his attempted assassination, Judge Aileen Cannon – who was appointed under Trump’s administration – filed a court ruling on Monday dismissing the charges.
The move is the second significant legal victory for Trump in as many weeks, following the US Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents and ex-presidents substantial immunity from being prosecuted for official acts that took place while in office.
Conversely, it is a major blow for Special Counsel Jack Smith, the former war crimes prosecutor who charged Trump last year after highly sensitive documents were found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Those documents included information relating to nuclear programs and military vulnerabilities, and to intelligence that should have only been shared with the “Five Eyes” countries, including Australia.
“Upon careful study of the foundational challenges raised in the motion, the court is convinced that Special Counsel’s Smith’s prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme – the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers, and the role of Congress in authorising expenditures by law,” Cannon concluded in her 93-page order.
Smith’s office said it would appeal Cannon’s decision, which legal experts have slammed. The Trump-appointed judge has long been criticised for making rulings that appear to favour the former president. She has also been accused of unnecessarily delaying the case with long, drawn-out proceedings.
In response to the decision, Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor and president of Citizens for Responsible Ethics said: “This is a lawless, outlier decision with no basis in statute or case law. It is deeply dangerous for accountability and checks and balances going forward. This decision should and assuredly will be appealed immediately.”
But the ruling was welcomed by Trump and the many Republicans descending in Milwaukee this week for the party’s national convention.
Trump will be formally appointed as the Republican presidential nominee at the event on Thursday, but his vice presidential running mate was expected to be announced as soon as Monday (local time).
“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts,” Trump posted on social media.
The classified documents case is one of four trials the former president was due to face. He has also been charged over election interference in Georgia and Washington DC – but both cases have been delayed – and he was recently convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal ahead of the 2016 election.
However, his legal team has long considered the classified documents case to be the strongest one, partly because it related to acts that took place after he left office.
The documents in question were taken after Trump left the White House in 2021 and were stored in boxes all over his Mar-a-Lago resort, including “in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room”.
Trump has long maintained his innocence.
US President Joe Biden has also been investigated by a separate special counsel over his own handling of classified documents. However, that case was dismissed and the special counsel noted in his findings that Biden’s age and hazy memory would make it challenging to secure a conviction.
“At trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury as he did during our interview of him: as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” he wrote in his 388-page Justice Department report released in February.
****************************************************
Jack Smith’s Other Big Trump Case Could Go Down In Flames After Judge Finds His Appointment ‘Unconstitutional’
A judge’s Monday decision finding special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment “unconstitutional” will almost inevitably end up before the Supreme Court, potentially dooming Trump’s Jan. 6 case along with his classified documents case.
Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not have the authority to appoint Smith, a private citizen who was also never appointed by the president nor confirmed by the Senate, to prosecute the case against Trump. Cannon’s decision to dismiss the classified documents case — which comes just weeks after the Supreme Court agreed that former presidents have immunity for official acts committed in office — is good news for Trump that will not be limited to the prosecution in Florida but will likely impact Smith’s other prosecution of Trump in Washington, D.C.
“The Mar-a-Lago documents case has long been considered the strongest one against Trump,” former federal prosecutor Joseph Moreno told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “With this decision, it is now indefinitely prolonged and may even fall away.”
Smith will appeal the ruling, his office said Monday. Smith could appeal Cannon’s ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will take time and will likely result in a circuit split that would make a Supreme Court review almost certain.
“Although Judge Cannon will, no doubt, be attacked by the Left as a political hack who is doing Trump’s bidding, this would be a grossly unfair characterization,” John Malcolm, vice president for the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government and former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Criminal Division, told the DCNF.
Malcolm said Cannon’s 93-page ruling “should be judged on its merits, not on whether someone likes or dislikes the outcome of this particular case.”
“Indeed, the appointment of special prosecutors vested with almost unlimited authority and without any input from the legislature was one of the grievances cited against King George III in the Declaration of Independence and is the reason why the Constitution’s Appointments Clause was crafted to give Congress a role in the appointment of special prosecutors,” he told the DCNF. “Cannon’s opinion points out precisely why Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith violates the Constitution, since Congress never passed a statute giving Garland such authority.”
Trump’s case brought by Smith in Washington, D.C., where Trump was indicted on four counts for alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, will likely be impacted by Cannon’s decision.
“Technically [District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan] is not bound by Cannon’s decision, and based on her hostility to Trump in the past she likely will not follow it,” Moreno told the DCNF. “But this allows Trump to raise the same issue and, again, knowing that the Supreme Court will ultimately back him.”
The D.C. Circuit previously rejected the argument Cannon accepted when it ruled on a challenge to special counsel Bob Mueller’s appointment in February 2019. This means Cannon’s ruling likely won’t have an immediate effect on Trump’s other case, Malcolm told the DCNF.
“That is the law in the D.C. Circuit, where the Jan. 6 case is pending,” he said.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/07/15/judges-jack-smiths-appointment-shakes-up-trump-federal-cases/
************************************************July 15, 2024
Leftist rage on display after attack on Trump
They are just full of hate. Video here:
**********************************************
Of Course Trump Got Shot — It Just Took One Nutjob Taking Democrats Seriously
Many of the individuals you will see condemn the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in the coming days will be outing themselves as liars.
Most of them, we’d hope, are not lying with their condemnations. Everyone should agree that such an egregious act of violence, aimed at destabilizing the entire American political system, is heinous and indefensible.
They will, though, be exposing that they’ve been lying for years about what they believe Donald Trump is.
“Threats to democracy” in this country are countered with murderous violence. The United States was founded when our ancestors launched a full-scale war against the British Empire for denying colonists representation. When slaveholders sought to continue dehumanizing an entire race of people, pro-freedom Americans solved that by killing hundreds of thousands of men. When Islamic terrorists flew planes into buildings and killed thousands of Americans, it triggered a decades-long series of bombing campaigns, invasions and proxy wars.
So, if Donald Trump really is a threat to the entire existence of America, of course someone would try to shoot him. Just last week, the influential left-wing magazine “The New Republic” published a cover that portrays Trump as Hitler. Nobody would bat an eye at the suggestion of assassinating Hitler before he committed the Holocaust. In fact, individuals who tried to assassinate Hitler are lionized as courageous heroes.
Obviously, Trump is not Hitler, or an existential threat to the republic — and the vast majority of the talking heads and politicians who have been selling that for years know it. They have been lying, and each person who earnestly believes their lies and has the means to commit violence has the potential to be a threat like the shooter today.
All it takes is one person to buy what those talking heads have been selling. Just one crazy person out there taking them literally, and America comes face to face with ultimate tragedy.
If the people screaming “threat to democracy” believed their own hype, they wouldn’t be condemning this shooting. They’d consider it an appropriate response to a country-threatening force of evil. That’s how you know they were lying.
If they believed their own hype, they also wouldn’t be running a half-witted octogenarian slated to lose every single swing state as their only opposition.
When the news around this vicious act begins to die down in a few weeks, pay close attention to which Democrats start trotting out the “threat to democracy” line again. It will absolutely happen, and they will again be lying. When they do, they will be asking for another tragedy like what happened today in Pennsylvania. They already primed the pump for this one.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/07/13/donald-trump-assassination-attempt-pennsylvania-democracy/
*******************************************************Our Brezhnev, Our Pravda, Our Soviet Union…
Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. But like most Russian apparatchiks who excessively smoked, drank, and gained weight, he aged prematurely. Also like them, his disabilities never led to his abdication.
By Brezhnev’s late 60s and early 70s, he was too ill to travel abroad or make public appearances. Indeed, his debility left the Soviet Union without a real leader for the final six or seven years of his tenure.
Brezhnev got away with it because the Soviet state-controlled media doctored photos and videos to attest to his supposedly vigorous health and constant hands-on involvement.
“Journalists” sent out false communiques. They spun narratives that Brezhnev was robust, hale, and working long hours on behalf of the Russian people. Any dissenting journalists who sought to report the true, sad state of affairs were in danger of losing their jobs, freedom — or even their lives.
Instead, the “reporters” of Pravda (“Truth”), the official print megaphone of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, wrote lies about Brezhnev’s busy workdays. Pravda’s handlers spun fables about the respect (and fear) the rest of the world held for such a dynamic leader — even as Brezhnev became an ill virtual recluse.
The cynical Russian people shrugged because they had long been accustomed to their lying media and the falsehoods they peddled. And besides, Brezhnev was a doctrinaire Stalinist communist. So his job was not to rock the boat or upset the Russian communist hierarchy.
Instead, he reigned over the penultimate Soviet “era of stagnation,” while an ossified communism increasingly destroyed all incentives and hope, leaving the Russian people poor, cynical, and helpless.
Something similar has happened to a calcified America under President Joe Biden. Like the late-stage Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only. He has outsourced his administration to a vestigial hard-left apparat from the Obama years.
Now, Biden can no longer even perform his assigned ceremonial tasks of putting a moderate veneer on radical, nihilist agendas that are stagnating the country.
Yet our Pravda journalists have sworn to the American people that, in private, the reclusive, three-day-a-week Biden outpaces the energy and drive of those half his age. Obsequious staffers plant stories in the Soviet-like ears of reporters about Biden’s singular dynamism.
Any dissenters are publicly demonized as peddlers of “cheap fakes.”
When Biden’s reclusiveness prompts too much gossip that he is near senile, he is wheeled out for a staged interview that must be edited before release. Or he answers questions secretly shown to him in advance.
On sporadic occasions where the state media and the Biden nomenklatura cannot control events — such as rare presidential debates or international summits — our Pravda media go into overdrive to convince the public that what they see and hear is not real.
In the end, Brezhnev could not even hobble to the May Day dais to celebrate communism’s national holiday.
He soon reached the point that his debilities were so manifest that even his hirelings and the media could not hide them. He then vanished from public view, leaving the Russian people with no idea as to who was running their communist nation.
Then one day, Soviet propagandists announced suddenly but matter-of-factly that the dynamic Brezhnev had died and that his successor, Yuri Andropov, was now brilliantly running the Soviet Union.
Biden, too, is at that point of stasis. He cannot do press conferences, town halls, debates, or real interviews. To do so would confirm to the public the truth: that Biden is too cognitively challenged to continue his presidency.
And yet the cloistered Biden can no longer hide during a campaign season with his accustomed three-day workweek.
The media has done its best to continue its Orwellian ruse. They claim that Trump interrupted Biden (he did not) in the recent debate and that he lied (if so, not as much as did Biden). Sometimes, the press corps just blurts out that an inert, left-wing Biden is still preferable to a dynamic, conservative Trump.
What is next for our increasingly Soviet state?
We will continue to be lectured on the vigor of Biden — until one day we aren’t, when Biden either steps down — or worse.
Then, our Pravda will likely present the new official narrative. They will convince us that his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, is an underappreciated genius whose past portfolios led to solving the border crisis and renewing American dominance in space.
One day, the same reporters who swore Biden was a virtual Socrates behind closed doors and then suddenly just confessed he was not when their lies were no longer operative will sing the praises of our new comrade leader — the brilliant, accomplished, eloquent, and articulate Harris.
**************************************************
Eerie Parallels: Trump’s Shooting Echoes Teddy Roosevelt’s in 1912
The former president with a larger-than-life personality—out of office for four years and with a long list of enemies—campaigns for another term and has a close call with a would-be assassin.
The former president, despite visible bleeding, not only survives the attempt on his life, but exhibits a strong show of strength, rallying his supporters. But the inflammatory rhetoric aimed at the candidate was even blamed for inspiring “vicious minds” to engage in political violence.
It was just after 8 p.m. on Oct. 14, 1912, when former President Teddy Roosevelt—seeking a nonconsecutive third term—was exiting the Gilpatrick Hotel to go deliver a speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium. Then, a former saloonkeeper, John Schrank, pulled a Colt .38 revolver just about five feet away and shot Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet was blunted by a folded-up 50-page speech and a thick eyeglasses case.
While the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump late Saturday afternoon occurred north of Pittsburgh in Butler, Pennsylvania, the 45th president will deliver a speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee—the same city where Roosevelt went on to speak for 84 minutes after taking a bullet.
In the case of Trump, the bullet grazed his ear, and the would-be assassin was fatally shot by Secret Service agents at the scene.
When Roosevelt was shot, his supporters called for killing the shooter. Several leapt on him and landed several punches. Roosevelt said, “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him.”
The attempted assassin was brought face-to-face with his target, and Roosevelt asked Schrank, “What did you do it for?” Schrank didn’t answer, so Roosevelt said, “Oh, what’s the use? Turn him over to the police.”
Roosevelt initially didn’t see any blood and presumed the bullet didn’t penetrate. A nearby doctor told the driver to get the former president to a hospital, but the former president said, “You get me to that speech.”
At the Milwaukee Auditorium, Roosevelt told the stunned audience, who in the absence of TV or social media would hear the news for the first time, “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
In a line perhaps comparable to Trump’s pumping his fist to reassure his Pennsylvania audience on Saturday, Roosevelt gained a rousing ovation from the Wisconsin crowd affirming, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”
Earlier in 1912, Roosevelt—a former Republican president, who served from 1901 to 1909—lost his bid for the GOP nomination when he challenged his successor, President William Howard Taft. Roosevelt ran as the candidate of the Progressive Party, which was nicknamed the Bull Moose Party.
The two assassination attempts have many parallels, but many differences as well. Perhaps most evident is that the Roosevelt shooting was at close range and with a revolver. The Trump shooting was at long range with an AR-style rifle.
The nature of the wounds were also different. A bullet fragment was lodged between Roosevelt’s ribs not far from his heart, but doctors determined it was best not to remove it. The bullet on Saturday grazed Trump’s right ear, and left a bloody face. Roosevelt was shot just before his political rally, while Trump was shot during his rally.
After the Trump assassination attempt on Saturday, much of the anti-Trump rhetoric has come to the forefront, as Democrats and many media outlets have claimed that he’s an “existential” threat to democracy, and even compared him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Political opponents and many newspapers of the era said Roosevelt was a power-hungry traitor to his country for breaking the tradition of serving two terms, according to History.com.
In his Milwaukee speech with a blood-soaked shirt, Roosevelt said: “It is a very natural thing, that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers.”
The assertion was somewhat borne out by Schrank’s diary, which said afterward: “I did not intend to kill the citizen Roosevelt. I intended to kill Theodore Roosevelt, the third termer.”
It was Roosevelt’s final presidential campaign. A former vice president, he had ascended to the presidency after the assassination of President William McKinley. He served out most of what would have been McKinley’s second term, and was elected in his own right in 1904.
Roosevelt lost the 1912 election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, but his third-party candidacy finished in second place, outpolling incumbent Republican Taft.
************************************************
July 14, 2024
Leftist rage on display after attack on Trump
They are just full of hate. Video here:
**********************************************
Of Course Trump Got Shot — It Just Took One Nutjob Taking Democrats Seriously
Many of the individuals you will see condemn the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in the coming days will be outing themselves as liars.
Most of them, we’d hope, are not lying with their condemnations. Everyone should agree that such an egregious act of violence, aimed at destabilizing the entire American political system, is heinous and indefensible.
They will, though, be exposing that they’ve been lying for years about what they believe Donald Trump is.
“Threats to democracy” in this country are countered with murderous violence. The United States was founded when our ancestors launched a full-scale war against the British Empire for denying colonists representation. When slaveholders sought to continue dehumanizing an entire race of people, pro-freedom Americans solved that by killing hundreds of thousands of men. When Islamic terrorists flew planes into buildings and killed thousands of Americans, it triggered a decades-long series of bombing campaigns, invasions and proxy wars.
So, if Donald Trump really is a threat to the entire existence of America, of course someone would try to shoot him. Just last week, the influential left-wing magazine “The New Republic” published a cover that portrays Trump as Hitler. Nobody would bat an eye at the suggestion of assassinating Hitler before he committed the Holocaust. In fact, individuals who tried to assassinate Hitler are lionized as courageous heroes.
Obviously, Trump is not Hitler, or an existential threat to the republic — and the vast majority of the talking heads and politicians who have been selling that for years know it. They have been lying, and each person who earnestly believes their lies and has the means to commit violence has the potential to be a threat like the shooter today.
All it takes is one person to buy what those talking heads have been selling. Just one crazy person out there taking them literally, and America comes face to face with ultimate tragedy.
If the people screaming “threat to democracy” believed their own hype, they wouldn’t be condemning this shooting. They’d consider it an appropriate response to a country-threatening force of evil. That’s how you know they were lying.
If they believed their own hype, they also wouldn’t be running a half-witted octogenarian slated to lose every single swing state as their only opposition.
When the news around this vicious act begins to die down in a few weeks, pay close attention to which Democrats start trotting out the “threat to democracy” line again. It will absolutely happen, and they will again be lying. When they do, they will be asking for another tragedy like what happened today in Pennsylvania. They already primed the pump for this one.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/07/13/donald-trump-assassination-attempt-pennsylvania-democracy/
*******************************************************Our Brezhnev, Our Pravda, Our Soviet Union…
Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. But like most Russian apparatchiks who excessively smoked, drank, and gained weight, he aged prematurely. Also like them, his disabilities never led to his abdication.
By Brezhnev’s late 60s and early 70s, he was too ill to travel abroad or make public appearances. Indeed, his debility left the Soviet Union without a real leader for the final six or seven years of his tenure.
Brezhnev got away with it because the Soviet state-controlled media doctored photos and videos to attest to his supposedly vigorous health and constant hands-on involvement.
“Journalists” sent out false communiques. They spun narratives that Brezhnev was robust, hale, and working long hours on behalf of the Russian people. Any dissenting journalists who sought to report the true, sad state of affairs were in danger of losing their jobs, freedom — or even their lives.
Instead, the “reporters” of Pravda (“Truth”), the official print megaphone of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, wrote lies about Brezhnev’s busy workdays. Pravda’s handlers spun fables about the respect (and fear) the rest of the world held for such a dynamic leader — even as Brezhnev became an ill virtual recluse.
The cynical Russian people shrugged because they had long been accustomed to their lying media and the falsehoods they peddled. And besides, Brezhnev was a doctrinaire Stalinist communist. So his job was not to rock the boat or upset the Russian communist hierarchy.
Instead, he reigned over the penultimate Soviet “era of stagnation,” while an ossified communism increasingly destroyed all incentives and hope, leaving the Russian people poor, cynical, and helpless.
Something similar has happened to a calcified America under President Joe Biden. Like the late-stage Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only. He has outsourced his administration to a vestigial hard-left apparat from the Obama years.
Now, Biden can no longer even perform his assigned ceremonial tasks of putting a moderate veneer on radical, nihilist agendas that are stagnating the country.
Yet our Pravda journalists have sworn to the American people that, in private, the reclusive, three-day-a-week Biden outpaces the energy and drive of those half his age. Obsequious staffers plant stories in the Soviet-like ears of reporters about Biden’s singular dynamism.
Any dissenters are publicly demonized as peddlers of “cheap fakes.”
When Biden’s reclusiveness prompts too much gossip that he is near senile, he is wheeled out for a staged interview that must be edited before release. Or he answers questions secretly shown to him in advance.
On sporadic occasions where the state media and the Biden nomenklatura cannot control events — such as rare presidential debates or international summits — our Pravda media go into overdrive to convince the public that what they see and hear is not real.
In the end, Brezhnev could not even hobble to the May Day dais to celebrate communism’s national holiday.
He soon reached the point that his debilities were so manifest that even his hirelings and the media could not hide them. He then vanished from public view, leaving the Russian people with no idea as to who was running their communist nation.
Then one day, Soviet propagandists announced suddenly but matter-of-factly that the dynamic Brezhnev had died and that his successor, Yuri Andropov, was now brilliantly running the Soviet Union.
Biden, too, is at that point of stasis. He cannot do press conferences, town halls, debates, or real interviews. To do so would confirm to the public the truth: that Biden is too cognitively challenged to continue his presidency.
And yet the cloistered Biden can no longer hide during a campaign season with his accustomed three-day workweek.
The media has done its best to continue its Orwellian ruse. They claim that Trump interrupted Biden (he did not) in the recent debate and that he lied (if so, not as much as did Biden). Sometimes, the press corps just blurts out that an inert, left-wing Biden is still preferable to a dynamic, conservative Trump.
What is next for our increasingly Soviet state?
We will continue to be lectured on the vigor of Biden — until one day we aren’t, when Biden either steps down — or worse.
Then, our Pravda will likely present the new official narrative. They will convince us that his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, is an underappreciated genius whose past portfolios led to solving the border crisis and renewing American dominance in space.
One day, the same reporters who swore Biden was a virtual Socrates behind closed doors and then suddenly just confessed he was not when their lies were no longer operative will sing the praises of our new comrade leader — the brilliant, accomplished, eloquent, and articulate Harris.
**************************************************
Eerie Parallels: Trump’s Shooting Echoes Teddy Roosevelt’s in 1912
The former president with a larger-than-life personality—out of office for four years and with a long list of enemies—campaigns for another term and has a close call with a would-be assassin.
The former president, despite visible bleeding, not only survives the attempt on his life, but exhibits a strong show of strength, rallying his supporters. But the inflammatory rhetoric aimed at the candidate was even blamed for inspiring “vicious minds” to engage in political violence.
It was just after 8 p.m. on Oct. 14, 1912, when former President Teddy Roosevelt—seeking a nonconsecutive third term—was exiting the Gilpatrick Hotel to go deliver a speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium. Then, a former saloonkeeper, John Schrank, pulled a Colt .38 revolver just about five feet away and shot Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet was blunted by a folded-up 50-page speech and a thick eyeglasses case.
While the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump late Saturday afternoon occurred north of Pittsburgh in Butler, Pennsylvania, the 45th president will deliver a speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee—the same city where Roosevelt went on to speak for 84 minutes after taking a bullet.
In the case of Trump, the bullet grazed his ear, and the would-be assassin was fatally shot by Secret Service agents at the scene.
When Roosevelt was shot, his supporters called for killing the shooter. Several leapt on him and landed several punches. Roosevelt said, “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him.”
The attempted assassin was brought face-to-face with his target, and Roosevelt asked Schrank, “What did you do it for?” Schrank didn’t answer, so Roosevelt said, “Oh, what’s the use? Turn him over to the police.”
Roosevelt initially didn’t see any blood and presumed the bullet didn’t penetrate. A nearby doctor told the driver to get the former president to a hospital, but the former president said, “You get me to that speech.”
At the Milwaukee Auditorium, Roosevelt told the stunned audience, who in the absence of TV or social media would hear the news for the first time, “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
In a line perhaps comparable to Trump’s pumping his fist to reassure his Pennsylvania audience on Saturday, Roosevelt gained a rousing ovation from the Wisconsin crowd affirming, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”
Earlier in 1912, Roosevelt—a former Republican president, who served from 1901 to 1909—lost his bid for the GOP nomination when he challenged his successor, President William Howard Taft. Roosevelt ran as the candidate of the Progressive Party, which was nicknamed the Bull Moose Party.
The two assassination attempts have many parallels, but many differences as well. Perhaps most evident is that the Roosevelt shooting was at close range and with a revolver. The Trump shooting was at long range with an AR-style rifle.
The nature of the wounds were also different. A bullet fragment was lodged between Roosevelt’s ribs not far from his heart, but doctors determined it was best not to remove it. The bullet on Saturday grazed Trump’s right ear, and left a bloody face. Roosevelt was shot just before his political rally, while Trump was shot during his rally.
After the Trump assassination attempt on Saturday, much of the anti-Trump rhetoric has come to the forefront, as Democrats and many media outlets have claimed that he’s an “existential” threat to democracy, and even compared him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Political opponents and many newspapers of the era said Roosevelt was a power-hungry traitor to his country for breaking the tradition of serving two terms, according to History.com.
In his Milwaukee speech with a blood-soaked shirt, Roosevelt said: “It is a very natural thing, that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers.”
The assertion was somewhat borne out by Schrank’s diary, which said afterward: “I did not intend to kill the citizen Roosevelt. I intended to kill Theodore Roosevelt, the third termer.”
It was Roosevelt’s final presidential campaign. A former vice president, he had ascended to the presidency after the assassination of President William McKinley. He served out most of what would have been McKinley’s second term, and was elected in his own right in 1904.
Roosevelt lost the 1912 election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, but his third-party candidacy finished in second place, outpolling incumbent Republican Taft.
************************************************
July 14, 2024
So many of us are thankful that President Trump was not seriously harmed by the attempt on his life
The horrible divisions that the insane Left have created among Americans bear their evil fruit
The shot went so close to killing him that many will see a protective hand behind his survival
Any Christians who were skeptical of Trump's candidacy will be unlikely to be skeptical now
**********************************************
UK: Yes. Labour will go Woke
Now that Labour has won an enormous majority the dogs of woke be released. As if on cue, Prime Minister Keir Starmer used his maiden speech to boast about his party’s world-leading share of LGBT MPs and praise race grievance-monger Diane Abbott. He also appointed the woke one-two punch of Bridget Phillipson as Education Secretary and Anneliese Dodds as Equalities Minister.
Both have incurred the ire of J.K. Rowling because they prioritise the rights of biological males who think they are ladies over the right of women to female-only spaces. This foreshadows the surreptitious manner in which, for the the next five years, Labour will push what I call ‘left-liberal extremism’ —walk softly (talk about ‘centrist’, ‘country over party’, ‘bringing people together’) but carry a big woke stick.
As Matt Goodwin has commented, the woke belief system is not just a sideshow. It threatens the very foundations of Western civilisation. Starmer, as Goodwin notes, is likely to toss red meat to Labour’s radical woke interest groups because he lacks the budgetary headroom to drive growth, boost public spending and increase pay.
His large majority also means he will have to contend with querulous progressive backbench MPs who include Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) such as Nadia Whittome - who has vowed to push gender self-identification ‘no ifs ands or buts’, and described open debate as ‘an effective rollback of assumed equality.’
This doesn’t mean Starmer is suddenly going to start saying ‘transwomen are women’ or Britain is ‘systemically racist’. He knows the British people are not woke. In my own surveys, two-thirds oppose woke policies while we have already seen, in Scotland, how a large majority break against woke policies when they become aware of them.
Instead, Keir Starmer’s stated aim is to shoot down the opponents of this cultural revolution as ‘divisive’, thus running interference for woke left activists in the civil service, schools, universities, public sector bodies, galleries and other institutions.
Already, in her opening speech to civil servants, Lisa Nandy, new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has made clear she will drop a ban on rainbow lanyards and other political messaging because ‘the era of culture wars are over’ and ‘[our] entire focus is on the work of delivering change – not lanyards’ (read: green light for culture war activists).
This will be paired with discreet (‘walk softly, big stick’) measures, such as appointing woke ministers to key redoubts in the culture war (such as Dodds and Phillipson), while suggesting that similarly self-identified ‘woke’ activists and supporters of Black Lives Matter take control of Labour’s efforts to curtail illegal immigration.
While the Conservatives did little to combat woke, the differences with Labour are important. The Tories mounted a weak and unfocused effort to rid schools, the civil service, and the NHS of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology, failing to stop to these ideas in the wider Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda.
While 2019 Tory MPs such as Caroline Noakes, Crispin Blunt, Theresa May and Dehenna Davison were openly woke, many of their peers were not and some, such as Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman and Oliver Dowden, were willing to combat this poisonous belief system.
The knowledge that the government was at least somewhat opposed to this agenda meant woke activists in the public sector could not fully let rip. But that leash came off when Labour won its enormous majority at the general election, on July 4.
What is woke? Don’t let the left fool you by arguing it is an empty epithet, that it is just about “being nice” or “tolerant”. In fact, it is an analytically and empirically robust concept —a distinctive political tradition or ideology in its own right.
As I explain in my new online course on Woke, and my new book Taboo, woke refers to the making sacred of historically marginalised race, gender and sexual identity groups.
It is a belief system that results in a prioritising of equal outcomes and protecting minorities from emotional harm. Its supporters claim this is about ‘being kind’ but the reality is that, today, kindness to one group, such as biological males who identify as female, entails being unkind to another, such as biological women who want to protect women’s sport and spaces.
Likewise, assailing ‘whiteness’ in the name of making minorities feel welcome is an attack on the identity of the ethnic majority. Punishing people for politically incorrect speech or chilling their freedom of expression might make a few sensitive minorities feel better, but will embarrass and annoy more confident minorities while stifling the majority group’s traditions and free speech.
These are conflicts of group interest in a democracy, not open-and-shut ‘rights’ issues – which is the way the woke media class and elite institutions frame it.
The view of minorities as sacred began with the anti-racism taboo in mid-1960s America, which was the ‘big bang’ of today’s moral order. Then, over time, the magic was borrowed by feminists, gays, and later trans activists to create new taboos in our society around sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, and more.
While proportionate norms against racism and prejudice are important, taboos are tripwires that activate our disgust reflex, reducing complexity in our society to binary and simplistic debates in which those who deviate from the new, stifling orthodoxy are silenced or stigmatised as racist, sexist, homophobic, and so on.
These stigmas are the ‘North Star’ around which today’s moral system revolves. Until we undo that, cancel culture, gender ideology, critical race theory, and routine attacks on the history and collective memory of Western societies like Britain will not just continue; they will accelerate and intensify.
As African-American writer Shelby Steele, who lived through the civil rights struggle, recalls, in the 1950s African Americans in the South had to kowtow to whites, who at that time held the cultural power.
But from the 1960s whites had to genuflect to African Americans, who had acquired cultural power because whites had confessed to having mistreated African Americans. This was an unavoidable response to the dismantling of racial segregation.
In order to recover moral authority, Steele writes that white people and American institutions had to virtue signal they were ‘good whites’ by praising minorities, denigrating their fellow white Americans, or adopting policies like affirmative action, which arguably do more harm than good to African Americans.
We see this, for example, in studies which shown how white liberal progressives in America dumb down their speech when speaking to African Americans, tiptoeing around groups they revere as sacred rather than treating them as equals.
The power of identity stigmas, like kryptonite, can be used to disable opponents, rending them radioactive to others. The political left, whether radical or liberal, drew on newly sacralised minority groups like African-Americans as a source of meaning and direction for their politics.
But this also meant they could borrow cultural power from minorities and use it against the right. In other words, the moral revolution brought about by the race taboo did not just involve a transfer of power from white to black; it also involved a shift of moral authority from right to left.
When a party is in government they make the laws, and when an ideology has cultural power it makes the norms. The new cultural order gave the left the authority to use epithets like racist, sexist or transphobe to shut down democratic debate in numerous policy areas. Immigration, crime, education, health or any other sphere of policy that could plausibly be associated with race or sex thereby came to slant left.
The fear of being irradiated by the kryptonite of the race taboo – and thus socially ostracised – could even turn conservative politicians into useful idiots, such as when Theresa May called the Conservatives the ‘nasty party’ and pushed the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda as a way of deflecting the charge of racism levelled at her government by progressive media because of its efforts to cut immigration.
In this way, as I argue in Taboo, the political left’s strategy across the West has been to launder its illiberal ideas by badging them as liberal. Who could possibly be opposed to ‘anti-racism’, ‘inclusion’, ‘diversity’, or ‘trans rights’, they ask?
Those who try to argue against such policies are smeared as racists, Islamophobes, transphobes, or simply ‘hateful’ figures. We saw this, tragically, with the grooming gangs scandal, where public officials routinely failed to act against Pakistani Muslim gangs that preyed on young, white, working-class girls for fear of being seen as ‘racist’.
In fact, the cultural left deploys a ‘radioactive velvet glove’, involving both a carrot and a stick. The carrot is that you get to think of yourself as a good person if you agree with this new moral order; the stick is you are cancelled if you are dare disagree
https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/yes-labour-will-go-woke
****************************************************The Tory elite class is in CLOUD CUCKOO LAND
Ever since their historic defeat at the general election, more than a few members of the Tory elite class have decided to leave reality for Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Despite Nigel Farage and Reform having just fired a bazooka at the Conservative Party’s electorate, winning over millions of disillusioned conservatives, one member of the Tory elite class after another has since lined up to warn their party that any association with Faragism would be the final kiss of death.
Writing in The Times, former Conservative Party leader William Hague, who never won an election himself, warns his party against “appeasing populist rhetoric”, “simplistic and nationalistic solutions”, and brands Faragism “a dead end”.
Andy Street, who just lost the West Midlands mayoralty to Labour, likewise warns the Conservative Party it would be “very, very foolish” to adopt a “Reform-light agenda”, which would only push them “down an electoral cul-de-sac”.
And then there’s former leader Theresa May who, after squandering the biggest electoral opportunity in modern times, in 2017, has proclaimed Nigel Farage “is not a Conservative” and should never have any role in the Tory party.
Are these people for real? Are they serious? Do they not realise what just happened to their party?
Or are they simply more interested in signalling their elite values to other members of the Tory elite rather speaking to their wider party and the country?
I say all this because I think they need a reality check. So here it is. Nigel Farage and Reform just completely blew apart the only electoral coalition the Tories have managed to assemble since Thatcher that was capable of delivering a big majority.
And Farage did this —as I warned for years he would— by reaching out to all those disillusioned and disgruntled 2019 Tories who took a punt on the Conservatives five years ago but now wish they never had. Just look at the data.
Farage and Reform, according to Lord Ashcroft’s post-election polling, poached nearly twice as many 2019 Conservative voters as Keir Starmer and Labour. He cannibalised close to one-quarter of the entire Conservative Party electorate.
YouGov’s polling is even more striking. Fully one-quarter of the Conservative Party’s 2019 electorate defected to Reform while just one-tenth switched to Labour.
Put another way, while one in ten 2019 Tories switched to Labour, one in four went to Reform.
The blunt reality is that more 2019 Conservatives switched to Reform than the number who switched to Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined.
Yet if you read recent commentary by the Tory elite class —endorsed by pro-Labour analysts who rather like the idea of the Tories becoming indistinguishable from the Labour Party—then you’d think that the very opposite is true.
You'd think the Tories must do all they can to avoid Faragism and focus instead on winning back all those Labour and Liberal Democrat voters in the big cities and leafy shires who, we are led to believe, might actually consider voting Tory in 2029. Are these people out of their minds?
It is Nigel Farage, nobody else, who presents the greatest threat to the survival of the Conservative Party. And, as we learned last week, he is now also hitting the Tories in other ways, too.
By tearing off the biggest chunk of the Tory vote, Farage just indirectly cost the Conservatives 150 seats while leapfrogging ahead of them to become the main opposition in nearly 100 seats.
He not only displaced the Tories across northern England, which really matters given Labour has re-emerged as the dominant force in Scotland, but has done so while becoming far more competitive in Wales, picking up seven in ten former Brexit Party voters, one in three Tory Leavers, nearly three in ten of all Brexit voters, one-fifth of the working-class, and nearly as many middle-aged men as the Tories.
https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/the-tory-elite-class-is-in-cloud
************************************************July 11, 2024
The great coverup
The Democrats are rallying around Joe Biden while the rest of the country wonders out loud about the extent of his degeneration and decline. Biden’s mental health has become the talking point in the US, if not the whole the world. That other “d” word, dementia, is trotted out routinely. In political terms, it’s worth remembering dread and doom also start with “d”.
It’s an almost perfect mix of denial and derision. The DNC has tried to rally the troops. Big and powerful Democrats have come out, hand on heart, declaring Biden a man untroubled by the ravages of age, while other senior colleagues who urge Biden to withdraw his candidacy receive calls politely and then not so politely telling them to please stop talking about Biden’s neurological shortcomings.
It’s not working.
Questions were asked directly of Biden as to his state of cognitive function on Sunday in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on America’s ABC network.
Had the President undergone “specific cognitive tests and have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?”
“No one said I had to,” Biden replied. “No one said … No. I’m good.”
It wasn’t reassuring. Biden’s descent into geriatrics could not have been more marked if Joe and Jill were seen patiently waiting outside Arby’s for the early bird specials to kick in.
When directly asked if he would undertake cognitive testing and release the results publicly, Biden baulked and claimed that, as President, he does a neurology test everyday. No, Joe. That’s the lunch menu.
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham went a step further in calling for mandatory presidential cognitive testing of a type he probably does not know exists but is a standard, quick diagnosis tool in gerontological medicine around the world, known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (MoCA).
“All nominees for president going into future should have neurological exams as part of an overall physical exam … Let’s test Trump. Let’s test Biden. Let’s test the line of succession”, the 68-year-old Graham told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, local time.
“This is a wake-up call for the country,” he added. “We need to make sure that the people who are going to be in the line of succession are capable of being commander-in-chief under dire circumstances.”
Graham believed Biden was in denial and posed all manner of perils for the smooth functioning of the executive branch, saying: “This is a dangerous time for the American people to have somebody … leading the ship of state who seems to be compromised.”
Asked if Trump, 78, should have the test, too, Graham said: “Yes, yes, I think both.”
But Trump did have a version or a form of the MoCA in 2018 and we know this because in the Donald’s own words, he “aced” it.
The precise results? We don’t know if the 30-minute MoCA test ran from go to whoa or was truncated in some way. What we can safely conclude from Trump’s test is that the baseline for determining a POTUS’s neurological health or otherwise is now set at him or her remembering five unrelated nouns in a passage of speech read out for a minute containing around 60 nouns. If you can remember five of the 60, congratulations, you can be president of the United States.
Trump proudly repeated his noun mantra for the camera four times to a startled Fox News journalist: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”
“It’s actually not that easy,” Trump said. “But for me it was easy.”
Telling the story later, Trump got the doctor’s name wrong. But at least he did it. Biden is refusing.
One wonders how Biden would handle a MoCA. I don’t want to be unkind but if the leader of the free world can’t perform the same basic memory functions I’d expect of your average adult Labrador, then it might be time for a long lie down. But that’s where we are now. Pass the Adderall and the Penny Pads.
Biden’s speech celebrating the 75th anniversary of NATO in DC on Tuesday was said to be a great opportunity for him to recover after the debate. The general view after the speech was that Biden had been “strong” and “confident”. The talk earlier from some Democrat sources had been that Biden’s NATO speech was his last chance at a recovery from the disaster of the first presidential debate. That race has been run. Shutting the gate now after the horse has not only bolted but fled, galloping wildly, only to appear as a dot on the horizon briefly before vanishing altogether three weeks ago is a fool’s errand.
It does raise the delicious though unlikely event that the presidential debate could be scrapped in favour of televised cognitive testing where Presidents Biden and Trump line up and work through a series of exhaustive word association tests, mnemonic exercises and building things with blocks before a live television audience.
Then it’s onto the physical trials. Jenga at 20 paces. Hungry, Hungry Hippos moderated by Sean Hannity. And as the two men quibbled over Biden’s golf handicap at the first debate, Bingo Bango Bongo over 18 gruelling holes at the local pitch and putt. Winner takes the White House.
It could lead to the resurrection of free-to-air television if handled properly. Or it could end up in a fully blown civil war in the US. Either way, circling the wagons around Biden, with or without cognitive testing, should be shouting, if not screaming, to all senior Democrats, including Joe and his wife Jill, that when questions of the President’s mental decline are being asked directly during a softball interview, it is a sign time is up. Or to quote a line from Joseph Heller’s parody of US government and academia, Good As Gold: “Don’t force anything mechanical, never kick anything inanimate, and don’t fart around with the inevitable.”
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Biden administration agrees to ship 500-pound bombs to Israel
The US will soon begin shipping to Israel the 500-pound bombs the Biden administration had previously suspended, ending a two-month pause it had imposed in a bid to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, US officials said.
The decision came as the Israeli army said overnight on Wednesday it had completed its mission in Shujaiya, a neighbourhood in the east of Gaza that had been the scene of violent fighting for two weeks.
The bombs “are in the process of being shipped”, and are expected to arrive in Israel in coming weeks, an administration official said. Heavier 2000-pound bombs meant to be part of the same shipment were still on hold, the official added. The US announced in May it had held up one shipment that included 2000-pound bombs and 500-pound bombs. Israel sent a ship to Charleston, South Carolina, to pick up the shipment before the decision was made.
President Joe Biden’s decision to hold delivery of certain types of bombs marked an escalation of tensions between his administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Mr Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza, where more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed since last October, according to Palestinian officials. The figure doesn’t specify how many were combatants.
The US suspension came in response to Israel’s plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah without what the Biden administration regarded as a credible plan to protect civilians. More than one million people had taken shelter there, fleeing fighting in other parts of Gaza.
Mr Biden had described a major operation in Rafah as a “red line”, but not one that would lead to a total cut-off of US arms supplies.
“Our main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza,” a US official said. “Because our concern was not about the 500-pound bombs, those are moving forward as part of the usual process.”
The Israelis had argued they needed heavy bombs to destroy tunnels. US officials said that was outweighed by US concerns about potential civilian deaths when such large bombs are used in densely populated areas.
Axios reported last month that the 500-pound bombs would be shipped soon. During its Rafah operation, Israel seized control of the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, achieving one aim of the war by cutting off what it said was a key route for smuggling weapons. The operation forced a majority of the displaced Gazans in Rafah to flee the city.
At least 46 Palestinians were killed on May 26 during an Israeli airstrike in Tal al-Sultan, a refugee camp in Rafah. The White House said the strike didn’t cross the “red line” the President had drawn in March during his MSNBC interview.
“This is an example of the administration folding their hand. They were called out on their bluff of Rafah and now they’re relenting,” said Seth Binder, director of advocacy for the Middle East Democracy Centre, a policy institute in Washington.
A State Department spokesman said on Monday it believes the Rafah operation caused fewer civilian casualties than previous phases of the war. Israeli officials have in recent weeks signalled a shift to a lower-intensity phase of the war. Some security analysts said the perceived reduction in civilian deaths could be because of a slower pace of strikes in recent weeks, rather than a change in Israel’s approach to targeting.
“There’s not much evidence of that, but certainly some evidence the operational tempo is lower,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department official and now a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group.
Reducing civilian casualties continues to be a challenge for the Israeli military in Gaza. An Aair strike on Tuesday in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, near the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killed at least 25 people and wounded 50 others in a school where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, Palestinian health officials said.
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ALG Urges Yes Vote on SAVE Act
July 10, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the House to pass H.R. 8281, the Safeguard American Voting Eligibility (SAVE) Act:
“There is no excuse not to pass the Safeguard American Voting Eligibility Act. The sacred right to vote by citizens which so many have fought for from Selma, Alabama to remote corners of the world where freedom has continued to be won, is under attack. Rep. Chip Roy is right when he says, ‘Federal law currently PROHIBITS states from verifying citizenship status during registration for federal elections. The SAVE Act requires proof of citizenship to register and would remove non-citizens from voter rolls. What are Democrats fearful of?’
“The answer is simple. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrat members of Congress oppose democracy by seeking to destroy the one-person, one-vote constitutional principle, through annihilating chain of custody of live ballots and engaging in a deliberate campaign to register illegal aliens to vote as they enter the country and sign up for free stuff from the government.
“Joe Biden has stated many times that this election is a battle for the soul of America. He is right and protecting the fundamental principle that American citizens have a unique franchise to determine the direction of the country is essential to maintaining our freedom and liberty.
“Americans for Limited Government strongly urges a Yes vote on the SAVE Act.”
https://getliberty.org/2024/07/alg-urges-yes-vote-on-save-act/
************************************************July 10, 2024
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All change: Britain's general election produced a result no less seismic for being predicted
MELANIE PHILLIPS
King Charles invites Sir Keir Starmer to form a government
Here are my initial thoughts on the results of Britain’s general election.
The most significant results are: Labour 412 (up by 211), Conservative 121 (down by 250), Liberal Democrats 71 (up by 63), Scottish National Party 9 (down by 38), Independent 6 (up from zero), Reform 4 (up from zero), Green 4 (up by 3).
Labour’s enormous overall majority of 170 seats means that it can broadly do whatever it wants because it faces a fractured and weak opposition.
However, the country did not express any enthusiasm for Labour. The party achieved less than one third of the popular vote — the lowest of any governing party in modern history, and even less than the 40 per cent secured by the hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2017. Yesterday’s Labour share of the vote had hardly changed from the last general election in 2019.
The country remains wary and suspicious of Labour and the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer. What voters were determined to do was get rid of the Conservative party, whose share of the popular vote accordingly imploded. Some 11 Cabinet ministers were swept away along with swathes of other former MPs, leaving a pitiably small rump of Tories in parliament to face the jubilant and crowded Labour benches. The Conservative party — previously known as Britain’s “natural party of government” — is now in the wilderness for the forseeable future.
The Reform party led by Nigel Farage achieved extraordinary success from a standing start. Despite the high bar against third parties set by the British electoral system — and despite some deeply questionable candidates, the result of a campaign thrown together at a moment’s notice with next to no organisation or party discipline — Reform won four seats, putting Farage himself into parliament for the first time.
The significance of this achievement, however, goes much deeper than the number of seats the party actually won. Reform did enormous damage to the Conservatives (and more than a little to Labour too) by the high numbers voting for it, costing the Tories no fewer than 180 seats. Reform is now a serious insurgency on the pattern of “populist” insurgencies against a monolithic political establishment that we have seen developing in Europe.
A deeply ominous development is the emergence of an Islamic sectarian vote, with four previously Labour-held seats lost to independent candidates whose pitch — in a British general election concerning British national interests — was about Gaza and “Palestine”.
Although even Labour “moderates” generally side with the international “human rights” and “humanitarian” establishment which is virulently hostile to Israel, British Muslims are angry that Starmer supported Israel’s defence against Hamas after the October 7 pogrom. As a result, Labour candidates have been harassed and intimidated by Muslims and other anti-Israel types and lost votes in yesterday’s election.
In the Birmingham Yardley constituency Labour’s Jess Phillips, who only narrowly kept her seat under pressure from this “Gaza” lobby, was met with boos and jeers as she made an angry acceptance speech in which she denounced the “aggression and violence” in “the worst election I have ever stood in”. All this is entirely foreign to British democratic traditions and does not bode well.
So what is likely to be the outcome of this election?
This is a deeply paradoxical result. Starmer has an unassailable majority in parliament, but must now govern a country that has not embraced his agenda. To his credit, he detoxified the Labour party to make people feel it was safe enough to give it their vote — which they needed to do to achieve their principal objective to get the other lot out. But now he has to win hearts and minds. This will be a tough call.
He inherits a country with severe structural economic, social and cultural problems. He has made promises which he won’t have the money to deliver. Crises with which Rishi Sunak unsuccessfully struggled, such as stopping the migrant boats in the English Channel, collapsing public services and rising lawlessness and anarchy on the streets, all now land in Starmer’s lap.
He also inherits an appalling epidemic of Jew-hatred, which will undoubtedly worry him greatly — not least because he has Jewish family members, and because he is a decent man. However, dealing properly with antisemitism will mean acknowledging the symbiotic link between the Palestinian cause and Jew-hatred — which, as a man of the left, he has never done — and standing up to both the Muslim community and the far left, constituencies which are represented within his own party.
Buoyed by the success of the “Gaza” election campaigns and by the refusal of the authorities to stop the pro-Hamas intimidation and disorder on the streets, Islamic sectarianism is now likely to increase. A Muslim bloc has emerged which is likely to demand not just policies hostile to Israel but measures to adapt aspects of British society to Islamic requirements.
Starmer will be less hostile towards Israel than the far-left or the Muslim bloc are demanding; but since his instincts remain those of the radical human rights lawyer he originally was, he is unlikely to stop the demonisation of Israel that oozes from every pore of the liberal establishment (including the Foreign Office) and which is fuelling the harassment of Britain’s Jews.
Moreover, while he will be economically cautious he’ll let rip on the “culture wars”. The result will be more transgender abuses of children and women and more demonisation of white people and British “colonialism”. He’s also likely to outlaw “Islamophobia” — which could have an even greater chilling effect on necessary discussion of Muslim antisemitism or Islamic terrorism than is currently the case. The rumour that the veteran “human rights” ideologue Harriet Harman is to become head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission in place of Baroness Falkner, who has bravely tried to counter the transgender lunacy, chills the bone.
Starmer is also committed to an insane acceleration of the already ruinous Net Zero target, and to developing “ever closer” ties with the EU which will further stifle the entrepreneurial freedoms that Brexit enabled but the Tory government never delivered.
With this agenda, the Labour government will be as one with the entire administrative state and the entire cultural and intellectual establishment — precisely the dogmatic cultural tyranny against which millions of Europeans and Americans are in revolt.
And so what of the Tories? They will now descend into civil war. Indeed, it’s already started, with different factions accusing each other of having lost the country.
The fact is that for decades the Conservative party has failed to articulate basic conservative values — conserving what was best and most valuable in British and western culture. Ricocheting between liberal universalists and free market ideologues, the Tories persisted in the lie that the welfare state could coexist with reduced public spending; they broke their promise of controlling mass immigration; they failed to break the grip of the administrative state to take advantage of Brexit; they were largely supine in the face of the transgender lunacy and anti-white racism; they were paralysed in the face of widespread anarchy on the streets; and they failed to protect Britain’s Jewish community against attack.
So when it comes to opposing Labour’s agenda, the Tories will have nothing to say because they helped enable much of it.
Meanwhile Nigel Farage, who has now achieved what he set out to do in pulverising the Conservative party, will be moving onto the next part of his agenda — taking the fight to the Labour government in order to bring about the reconfiguration of British politics, by reconnecting it with the British mainstream and recovering the true centre ground, that he has long envisaged.
Farage — the true and only begetter of Brexit — is the most consequential politician of the post-Thatcher period. He has his own flaws. His free market principles line him up with the wing of the Tory party that disappeared inside its economic tunnel vision. And his tendency towards international isolationism and indifference towards defence are alarming.
But he speaks for millions by his promotion of the independence of the nation within borders that are properly policed and with immigration kept to manageable levels, and his defence of a culture based on its own history and traditions enshrining fairness, social order and a grounding in reality that people can recognise as a shared national endeavour and that they can call home.
Unless the Tories acknowledge that this is the ground they have so disastrously abandoned — and unless they become committed to promote and defend it — they’re finished.
On the steps of Number Ten, Starmer said he would govern “unburdened by doctrine”. A disillusioned and sceptical nation is about to see just what he thinks that means.
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Haley Releases Delegates, Urges Them to Back Trump Ahead of RNC Convention
She was very popular so this is good. Aiming for Veep?
Former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley announced on July 9 that she is releasing her 97 delegates and urging them to support former President Donald Trump.
The move comes days before the Republican National Convention when the 45th president is set to be nominated as the party’s 2024 presidential candidate.
“The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity,” said Ms. Haley in a statement.
“We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt, and get our economy back on track,” said the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Ms. Haley went on to call on her delegates to back former President Trump at the Republican National Convention, which will be held July 15–18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Politico first reported the news.
The former candidate will not be attending the convention.
“She was not invited, and she’s fine with that,” Ms. Haley’s spokesperson, Chaney Denton, told The Epoch Times.
“Trump deserves the convention he wants,” Ms. Denton said. “She’s made it clear she’s voting for him and wishes him the best.”
In May, a few months after suspending her presidential campaign, Ms. Haley announced she will be voting for former President Trump.
She said that she wants a “president who would support capitalism and freedom. A president who understands we need less debt, not more debt.” While former President Trump “has not been perfect on these policies,” she said, he is preferable to President Joe Biden.
Ms. Haley also urged the GOP frontrunner to “reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him.”
After dropping out of the race in March, Ms. Haley continued to receive a notable share of votes in Republican primaries around the country. She notched 20 percent of the vote in the primaries in Maryland, 18 percent in Nebraska, and 22 percent in Indiana.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/haley-to-release-delegates-to-trump-ahead-of-rnc-convention-5682895
************************************************July 09, 2024
Electorates are increasingly being divided between those supporting the status quo and those who want radical change
Politics in the 21st century are witnessing a new type of divide. Rather than being between the Left and the Right, electorates are increasingly being divided between those supporting the status quo and those who want radical change.
Joe Biden exemplifies how the political establishment that formed in the 1980s and persisted through the 2000s is on its last legs. Biden, clearly ill and delusional, struggles to fulfill the responsibilities of the president of the United States, much like the old consensus fails to meet the demands of the 21st century. Despite calls for change, Biden remains resolute in his intention to shape the future, mirroring the establishment’s desire to maintain the status quo.
While the mainstream media has only recently started to question Biden’s performance, younger voters have long been disillusioned with his performance and the status quo he represents. Gen Z and Millennials desire more radical actions from Biden, such as raising the national minimum wage, implementing single-payer healthcare, and supporting “Palestine” over Israel.
Biden, who comes from an older generation of Democrat leaders, is interestingly serving as a bulwark against these radical ideas. The same Democrat establishment that stole the 2016 Democrat nomination from democratic socialist Bernie Sanders has been working overtime for the past five years to protect Biden from his left flank in an effort to maintain its ideological influence on national affairs. Biden’s history of moderation may even explain why so-called or former conservatives like Stuart Stevens, Joe Scarborough, and Tim Miller have been some of the biggest Biden cheerleaders during his four years in office.
Another development from the past two weeks that reveals the division between status-quo statists and change-makers is the loss of Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good to the Swamp-backed state senator John McGuire. While one can levy justified critiques of Good’s management of the Freedom Caucus, he is a conservative stalwart whose voice is greatly appreciated in Congress.
Why did such a strong, prominent conservative lose a race in a red district? Two words: Donald Trump. The septuagenarian endorsed McGuire, ostensibly as payback because Good endorsed Ron DeSantis at the beginning of the Republican primary.
I call BS on this explanation. Over the years, Trump has shown immense forgiveness to those who have initially shown reluctance toward his candidacy. Consider J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, David McCormick, and more. Why could he not extend this forgiveness to Good?
I suspect that this endorsement by Trump is just another step in his long march toward currying favor with the establishment. This past week, Trump even denounced the anti-statist Project 2025, claiming he knew nothing about it.
Trump’s preference for stability over change is consistent. He endorsed primary challengers against Thomas Massie in 2020, recently called for Chip Roy to be primaried, and supported Mike Rogers for a Michigan Senate seat over Freedom Caucus cofounder Justin Amash. Both Trump and Biden are favoring continuity over disruptive change.
A similar pattern is observed in France. In the recent snap elections, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally received the highest share of votes at 33.1%, running on an anti-immigration platform. This outcome has shocked the French political establishment and might force Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party to collaborate with the left-wing New Popular Front to prevent Le Pen’s return.
The election results also reflect an age-based divide. Older voters (70+) showed significant support for Macron’s coalition (32%) and Le Pen’s RN (29%), with less support for the New Popular Front (18%). Conversely, younger voters (18-24) gave only 9% of their votes to Macron’s coalition, 33% to RN, and 48% to the New Popular Front. This indicates a greater polarization among younger generations, similar to trends in the United States, where the youth reject bipartisan centrism embraced by older generations.
The growing political polarization presents both challenges and opportunities. While it is good that the youth are rejecting the entrenched political establishment and its antiquated ideas, it also suggests a future marked by even more disunity and discord.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108305-new-divisions-2024-07-09
*****************************************************In Brief: Joe Biden Is Not a Decent Man
Even as they attempt to force him out, Democrats are still praising the sterling character of the president, especially in contrast to Trump. But that’s always been a lie. …
We can dismiss the claim that his administration has been a great success, an astonishing disconnect with the reality of an inflation-ridden economy, open border, and a world in chaos on his watch, that is nonetheless ritually repeated regularly on the left-wing news channels. But Democrat partisans actually think they are on firmer ground in affirming that he’s a great guy — and therefore a stark contrast to Trump, whom they denounce as personally evil — even as they come to grips with the fact that he lacks the mental acuity to be the leader of the free world.
But the notion that “Scranton Joe” is a nice guy is as wrongheaded as the claim that he’s mentally competent or a brilliant leader.
Tobin begins with Biden’s demeanor and adversarial relationship with the truth.
The one constant about Biden has been his essential meanness, which, when combined with his well-known predilection for telling tall tales about his own life, is a formula for slander of all those who are not materially contributing to his success.
He recounts his lies even about the man involved in the traffic accident that tragically killed his first wife and daughter. Biden’s grief, says Tobin, “is to be pitied,” though his lies about it are “despicable.” LIkewise despicable was his family’s treatment of another family that lost a loved one in an accident caused by Joe’s brother Frank, who was egged on by Joe’s son Hunter.
Tobin moves on to the fact that “the evidence of his meanness in his public life has been just as abundant.” That includes plagiarism for speeches, smearing of judicial nominees, and the personal destruction of a woman — Tara Reade — “the woman who has accused him of sexual misconduct.” He continues:
Even as he showed us just how unfit he was to be president during the debate with Trump, he also gave the nation more reasons to doubt his good character. Recycling the lie that Trump claimed the neo-Nazis at the 2017 Charlottesville rally were “very fine people” is standard Democrat rhetoric. But a decent politician would have dropped it since even Snopes labeled the claim as “false” only a week before the debate.
But Trump, scream Biden’s supporters. And they have a point, concedes Tobin, though he concludes:
But, unlike Biden, Trump has never claimed to be a paragon of virtue. In fact, he has enjoyed his “bad boy” reputation, and a lot of voters love him because he doesn’t dissemble about it.
But whatever one can say about Trump not being an example of a virtuous public figure, Biden’s reputation as a good guy is as unfounded as any assertions of his greatness as a leader.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108296-in-brief-joe-biden-is-not-a-decent-man-2024-07-09
************************************************July 08, 2024
Change of direction
As you will see below, I have stopped posting here about Covid and have reverted this blog to its original purpose of examining Leftism critically. My posts about Covid are now going up on a special new blog for that purpose called COVID WATCH
The change is the result of the fact that Google, who host this blog, have got very energetic in deleting my posts about Covid, so I need to put them up on a site that is out of their reach. There are a LOT of skeptical reports coming out now about Covid and the responses to it so I want to be able to refer to them.
The new blog includes some posts that Google have censored in the past
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Is Trump a Fascist?
It's almost a conditioned reflex for Leftists these days to call Trump s Fascist. But they generlly just spit it out without making any real argument to support their claim. So the Leftist guy writing below is a refreshing change. He actually defines what he means by Fascism. And it is in part an accurate definition.
His basic problem is that he simply has no awareness of history -- no idea of what Fascism was when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini invented it. And a lot of national leaders of his time followed in Mussolini's footsteps, Franco, Pilsudsky, Salazar, Horthy, Peron and a certain Mr. A Hitler
So what WAS Fascism, historically? It was socialist. Mussolini was a respected Marxist intellectual. Is Trump a respected Marxist intellectual? I think you can see the problem.
The one thing the Fascists believed in and pursued is state power. As Mussolini defined his creed: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato".
Trump by contrast, is a fairly traditional American conservative, with a committment to capitalism, patriotsm and individual liberty. He has never even tried to maroon his political opponents on remote islands (as Mussolini did) nor has be sent them to concentration camps, as Hitler did. And he has gained power exclusively by way a democratic election, which neither Hitler nor Mussonini did. Mussolini gained power via the famous "March on on Rome"
So in good Leftist style, the writer below is simply blind to the facts. He cannot see the difference betweeen a popular conservative and a dictator. He puffs up trivialities into major issues: Very Leftist.
Mainstream media have treated President Biden with prejudice and arrogance. Quite a few Democrats, reacting to this, treat any mention of President Biden’s fitness as disloyalty. This is mistaken, if understandable.
One source of the negative energy is Trump’s fascism. Focusing on it will not answer the question of what Democrats do, but will help us to understand the context in which the discussion is taking place. By fascism I just have in mind (1) the cult of personality of a Leader: (2) the party that becomes a single party; (3) the threat and use of violence; and (4) the big lie that must be accepted and used to reshape reality: in this case, that Trump can never lose an election.
Much more could be said (as I have done elsewhere), but it is the official big lie and the threats of violence that are dangerous to those whose job is to report truth. Trump is on the record as regarding reports as enemies of the people. What should I make — a journalist might ask — of Trump’s talk of arresting journalists? When not confronted, such questions become self-realizing fears.
That’s the subtle version. Meanwhile, those higher up in corporations might like the ratings Trump brings, or like Trump himself. And so it is easiest to keep things personal — give Trump time, on the self-deluding logic that he will discredit himself, and focus on Biden’s age rather than his achievements. For reporters it can feel like the work is being done when only Biden is at the receiving end of criticism — whereas, in fact, the ground has been shifted by fascism, or by the inability to confront it.
And so fascism spreads and settles in our minds during this, the crucial period between Trump’s first coup attempt and his second. The Biden administration is being held to standards, while the previous Trump administration is not; and Biden personally is being held to standards, while Trump as a person is not. This helps to generate a fascist aura. There must be something special about Trump such that he is different from others: a Leader beyond criticism rather than just an indebted hack or a felon from Queens or a client of a Russian dictator.
It should seem odd that media calls to step down were not first directed to Trump. If we are calling for Biden to step aside because someone must stop Trump from bringing down the republic, then surely it would have made more sense to first call for Trump to step aside? (The Philadelphia Inquirer did). I know the counter-arguments: his people wouldn’t have cared, and he wouldn’t have listened. The first misses an important point. There are quite a few Americans who have not made up their minds. The second amounts to obeying in advance. If you accept that a fascist is beyond your reach, you have normalized your submission.
When media folks describe discussions among Democrats as chaos and disarray, they are implicitly suggesting that it is better for a leader of a party to never be questioned. (Why, after all, is being part of an array a good thing?) An obvious point goes missed: Democrats can say what they want, because none of them is afraid. And that is good! Governor Maura Healey can express her dissent and Joe Biden can express his frustration with her — but no one is worried about her physical safety.
Trump, by contrast, controls his party through stochastic terror, threats issued through social media that his cult followers can be expected to realize. Republicans leave politics because they fear for themselves and their families. Those who remain all obey in advance. That is new, and it should not be normal, and it should not spread any further. But it becomes normal when we treat discussions, and not coercion, as abnormal.
Rachel Reeves: 'I'll rip up rules on planning within days'
Well blow me down! This is the last thing I would have expected to hear from a British Labour party minister. It is almost Trump-like. Whether she will be able to stick to her guns is the question. It will be very good for Britain if she manages it
Rachel Reeves will declare war on Britain's planning system today. Vowing to take the 'difficult decisions' needed to boost economic growth, the new Chancellor will use her first major speech to reveal that the Government is beginning its assault on the planning rules.
Before MPs break for the summer at the end of the month, councils will be issued with mandatory targets to clear the way for hundreds of thousands of new homes.
And ministers will begin work on controversial plans to weaken protections for some parts of the green belt to make room for development.
Ministers are also looking to relax planning rules for major infrastructure projects, such as the installation of hundreds of miles of new electricity pylons needed to link up wind and solar farms to the grid.
Ms Reeves will today declare that, with the public finances already stretched, boosting Britain's sluggish economic growth is the 'only route to improving the prosperity of our country'.
She will say last week's landslide election win gives Labour a 'mandate' for radical change – and will insist that planning reform is among the 'first steps' needed to 'fix the foundations of our economy, so we can rebuild Britain'.
'Our manifesto was clear: Sustained economic growth is the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people,' she will say. 'Where governments have been unwilling to take the difficult decisions to deliver growth – or have waited too long to act – I will deliver.
'It is now a national mission. There is no time to waste.' Ms Reeves was appointed as Britain's first female Chancellor on Friday, and warned that there was 'not much money around'.
But union leaders, who have bankrolled Labour for decades, are already pushing her to open the spending taps.
Unite boss Sharon Graham said there was scope for the Government to borrow tens of billions of pounds to 'invest' in the economy and public services. She urged Ms Reeves to scrap Labour's tight fiscal rules and pour billions into Britain's 'crumbling public services'.
'We are going to have to borrow to invest,' she told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. 'We have not got time to wait for growth. 'People are literally hurting out there and we are going to have to borrow to invest – our crumbling public services need money.'
Ms Graham's intervention is the first warning shot from the Left – and an early sign that the Labour leadership may find it hard to resist reverting to its tax-and-spend traditions.
The union boss warned that new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer 'won't have a lot of honeymoon period' unless he delivers quickly.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, on the same programme, called for a 'decisive break with austerity'.
Sir Keir yesterday began a whistle-stop tour of the UK with a visit to Scotland, where he promised an 'immediate reset' of relations with the devolved administrations.
Tomorrow he will travel to the Nato summit in Washington where he will seek to reassure leaders that his Government can be trusted on defence despite ditching Rishi Sunak's pledge to raise military spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
Labour's decision to target the planning system immediately is likely to bring it into conflict with both countryside campaigners and those communities that feel they are already at the limit of development their area can take.
It could also trigger a backlash from some of its own MPs who represent a swathe of constituencies across southern England where planning reform has been resisted for years.
During the election campaign, one Labour official said the party was prepared to 'flatten the whole green belt'. This was denied by Labour.
Ben Houchen, Tory mayor of Tees Valley, said promising rapid growth on the back of planning reform could become 'a noose around the Labour Party's neck'.
He added: 'How keen are the Labour Government to tinker with environmental regulations which is one of the largest delays in the planning system?'
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7 July, 2024
European Medicines Agency Top Scientists Acknowledge mRNA-Based Spike Protein a Potential Threat with Myocarditis
TrialSite has chronicled many dozens to nearly a hundred studies involving myocarditis and COVID-19 vaccines. Chronicling a growing body of quality evidence that a circulating spike protein likely represents a problem, at least in some relatively rare number of cases. Yet mainstream science in North America as represented by academic medical centers, apex federal health institutions and physician societies have avoided the free spike protein question despite growing evidence. It is for this reason that even though TrialSite questions many of the assumptions underlying the conclusions in a recent paper authored by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) top scientists, it’s nonetheless a breakthrough that the esteemed group of authors has opened up the discussion, acknowledging a potential problem with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and free spike induced cardiovascular injury.
Alessandra Buoninfante, Ph.D., Scientific Officer, and colleagues at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) first and foremost, wield quite a bit of influence in the European continent when it comes to regulation of drugs and vaccines.
In this latest review article in NPJ Vaccines, the four authors acknowledge that the available evidence reveals that COVID-19 mRNA vaccination is associated with a greater risk of myocarditis, but emphasize the risk remains far greater with COVID-19 infection.
While the high-level EMA operatives emphasize a benefit/risk ratio overwhelmingly favoring use of the vaccine versus the risk of COVID-19, they nonetheless open up the door to take on the mRNA vaccines.
In this latest paper, the scientific leadership from this powerful regulatory body declares that to date, no definite mechanism for vaccine-associated myocarditis has yet to be identified, necessitating ongoing epidemiological, clinical and non-clinical research. And they introduce select examples of the mRNA vaccine-triggered free spike protein as a possible culprit.
According to Buoninfante and colleagues prior to the availability of COVID-19 vaccination, COVID-19 patients faced approximately 16 times the risk for myocarditis relative to patients without COVID-19. What is the basis for this claim? Boehmer, T. K. et al. Association between COVID-19 and Myocarditis using hospital-based administrative data — United States, March 2020–January 2021. That observational; study was limited however and was not designed to establish any causation.
One glaring issue with this underlying study the European regulators use for their evidence is that the risk estimates from the study reflect the risk for myocarditis among persons who received a diagnosis of COVID-19 during an outpatient or inpatient health care encounter and do not reflect the risk among all persons who had COVID-19. This point cannot be glossed over.
The vast majority of COVID-19 infections (90-95%) were mild to moderate with no clinic encounter. In fact, many cases were asymptomatic. So TrialSite must challenge the underlying premise based on this point alone, not to mention other risks for misclassification as well as other biases.
Buoninfante et al, also point to matched analyses from medical records (Dec 2020 to May 2021) from the largest healthcare organization in Israel. Cited as Barda et al. study according to the authors revealed that “COVID-19 vaccination was associated with an elevated risk of myocarditis (risk ratio, 3.24) compared to unvaccinated and SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with a substantially increased risk of myocarditis (risk ratio, 18.28) compared to uninfected.”
The Israeli reports the mortality rate involving myocarditis to be less for those vaccinated compared to persons with viral infection-related myocarditis.
Plus they refer to a more contemporary study result in Husby et al. suggesting that the relative risk of heart failure within 90 days was 0.56 and 1.48 for myocarditis associated with vaccination and COVID-19 disease, respectively. Again, multiple limitations and the observational nature of the study raises the specter of association but not causation.
The authors use these selected studies to conclude that “myocarditis associated with COVID-19 disease, myocarditis after vaccination with SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines occurs less frequently and in addition is associated with a better clinical outcome.”
Real World Recognition
The authors which include pharmacovigilance experts from EMA also point to the likely uncertainty in all the numbers. Among other reasons in trying to identify an accurate background incidence rate in healthy people and the actual number of vaccine-associated cases. Cases are likely underestimated in pharmacovigilance systems.
Estimating the extent of potential under-reporting in the pharmacovigilance systems is influenced by public awareness, the disease severity spectrum, demographics, and/or local practices and other factors beyond the regulator's control.
A Breakthrough Spike Protein Discussion
Interestingly the European Medicines Agency scientists raise the specter of implication of free spike protein as a potential culprit, and this is a big deal given a growing body of literature and mostly silence from mainstream science in North America.
For example, Buoninfante and colleagues point out that “despite not being systematically screened and checked for in myocarditis samples, the spike protein could be a key player in the etiology and/or progression of the disease.”
The speculation suggests, according to the European regulators, that “the spike protein (expression) could directly contribute to inflammation of the endothelium and cardiac tissue. Detailed antibody- and T-cell multiplex cytokine response profiles of 16 subjects who developed post-vaccine myocarditis within the first week after vaccination appeared to be indistinguishable from those generated from vaccinated control subjects and only a modest increase in cytokine production linked to innate cell response was observed.”
Yet they point to “elevated levels of full-length spike protein unbound by antibodies were detected in the plasma of these myocarditis subjects, whereas no free spike was detected in asymptomatic vaccinated control subjects citing Yonker et al. Correlating with cardiac troponin T levels as well as innate immune activation with cytokine release was the unbound spike.
The authors cite Avolio et al noting that the spike protein may interact with and trigger “dysfunction of cardiac pericytes” not to mention contribute to endothelial inflammation in mice as reported in Robles et al.
Moreover, EMA’s authors cite Roltogen et al and Ogata et al “demonstrating the presence of spike antigen post second COVID-19 mRNA dose in circulation longer than originally anticipated.”
Going back to Yonker et al., the European regulatory establishment in the form of this paper acknowledges vaccine-induced myocarditis may be directly explained by an “unbound circulating spike protein, not in inducing immune hyperactivation, but in contributing directly to the effects recorded in myocarditis subjects.”
Summary
While EMA”s Scientific Officer along with Marco Calaveri Head of Anti-infectives and Vaccine and other high ranking colleagues continue to suggest the risk of myocarditis in association with COVID-19 infection remains far higher than via mRNA vaccination, the evidence they depend upon isn’t designed to make such claims while the influential, we would argue powerful group offers the scientific world an important opening in this recent review—they embrace the unfolding scientific evidence that a mRNA COVID vaccine-induced spike protein may be doing damage. Calaveri as with many making this claim do not consider time ordered exposures: SARS-CoV-2 infection followed by vaccination, vaccination followed by infection, and repeated sequences.
This makes it impossible to claim infection alone causes myocarditis. With infection alone, there have been no published clinically adjudicated cases of myocarditis. There have been no fatal cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection before vaccination where myocarditis was identified on autopsy. This is a breakthrough given that for at least a couple years now in reviews of substantial amounts of literature industry, government and academia continue to lag behind more independent scientists critically scrutinize the mRNA-induced spike protein in the context of vaccine injury, including myocarditis.
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4 July, 2024
Major Medical Journal Publishes Article Showing Negative Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines
BY DR RAPHAEL LATASTER
I don’t like to say things are huge, but this is huge. As promised, my own little article on COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness (where the jab increases one’s chance of Covid infection, hospitalisation and even death) has been published in a major medical journal, the Australian Journal of General Practice. Published by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, AJGP is literally the medical journal for general practitioners (family doctors) in Australia. Also discussed in what became an epic and frank discussion amongst several Australian health professionals are vaccine injuries and ‘Long Covid’ potentially being ‘long jab’.
This all started with Tindle’s article in AJGP earlier this year, which contained scarcely believable quotable quotes like: “Because COVID-19 vaccines were approved without long-term safety data and might cause immune dysfunction, it is perhaps premature to assume that past SARS-CoV-2 infection is the sole common factor in long Covid.” He declared that “COVID-19 vaccination per se might contribute to Long Covid, giving rise to the colloquial term ‘Long Vax(x)’”, since the “spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 exhibits pathogenic characteristics and is a possible cause of post-acute sequelae after SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 vaccination”. Not to mention the “class switch to IgG4 antibodies”, which Tindle thinks could lead to autoimmunity and cancer.
With the editorial team apparently happy to publish on the jab potentially causing immune dysfunction, I thought this could be my chance to once again bring up negative effectiveness in a major medical journal. Indeed, it accepted, and here is what I spoke about:
I cite several articles apparently displaying some sort of COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness, including one published by NEJM, another published in a Lancet journal and the little discussion involving myself in the BMJ. In the worst cases, the vaccines’ effectiveness drops to zero, and even turns negative, within mere months.
I cited the JECP4 articles, which show “that issues with counting windows have likely led to exaggerations of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and safety estimates, for both the clinical trials and later observational studies”.
I also pointed to Fürst et al., a recent study revealing “strong evidence for the healthy vaccinee effect”, countering any excuse involving the idea that sicker people are the ones getting vaccinated. A pretty silly excuse anyway, since most adults took the jab.
I conclude: “All this makes it plausible that the COVID-19 vaccines have always had an effectiveness that was very low, zero, or even negative, with inadequate methods allowing for a highly exaggerated effectiveness initially – an exaggeration that is lessened with time. It is, as Professor Tindle noted, possible that the vaccines could be causing immunosuppression. With the ubiquitousness of the vaccines, and the fact that some vaccine mandates are still in place, to say nothing of the upcoming Senate inquiry into excess mortality, I suggest we investigate this further.”
Awesome, huh? But wait, there’s more. A few more follow-up articles were published by AJGP, one involving Liu and Macartney (from the influential pro-jab Liu et al. study I’ve ‘refuted’, publishing forthcoming), with the usual attempts to “counter the unsubstantiated assertions that COVID-19 vaccination is causally associated with Long Covid”, customary claims that the jab “saved millions of lives” included.
Okay, so that bit of propaganda wasn’t so exciting, but another follow-up was also published, by Murnane. They were also concerned about “spikeopathy” and declared:
Professor Tindle’s concerns about ‘Long Vax(x)’ very much echo conditions I have observed working as a general practitioner. I have seen patients present with Long Covid symptoms post COVID-19 vaccine without prior COVID-19 infection. I have also observed patients with Long Covid that has been acquired post COVID-19 infection, who have experienced a worsening of their symptoms post COVID-19 vaccination. This is consistent with studies that have shown a worsening of symptoms in 21% to 31% of Long Covid sufferers post COVID-19 vaccination.
They also shared that they “personally suffered from a COVID-19 vaccine injury leading to dysautonomia, small fibre neuropathy, thyroiditis and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)”.
Finally, Tindle was granted the opportunity to wrap things up. He apparently agreed with my “case counting window concerns”, observations of negative effectiveness and the healthy vaccinee effect, countering Liu et al. Tindle is all of us when he opines that the “amount of spike protein from the vaccine is likely many fold greater than that from infection with virus because of stability mutations introduced into the vaccine mRNA, and the tissue penetrance of spike protein mRNA into a far more diverse set of tissues than infection”. In response to Murnane, Tindle claims that other GPs echoed similar concerns, about ‘Long Covid’ being “a side effect of the Covid vaccination”, and mentions the persecution of doctors who dared to speak out. Ending by questioning if the jabs are truly beneficial for all, Tindle even boldly noted that earlier “posts implicating COVID-19 vaccines were removed by the site moderators”. Things are changing. We’re winning.
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From Solzhenitsyn to US Governors: No Lessons Learned
This year marks half a century since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation appeared in English. Northwestern University professor Gary Saul Morson calls this work “the masterpiece of our time,” and there’s a backstory here.
After visiting the Soviet Union in 1919, California journalist Lincoln Steffens proclaimed, “I have seen the future and it works,” a claim repeated by many Western luminaries during the 1930s, as Malcolm Muggeridge recalled in Chronicles of Wasted Time. Solzhenitsyn showed how the USSR didn’t work, except as a vast prison camp, and confirmed that the first Communist state was much worse than anybody imagined. In some quarters, the revelations did not receive a warm welcome.
While the courageous Solzhenitsyn was being hailed around the world, U.S. President Gerald Ford declined to meet with the author. During an October 1976 debate, Ford proclaimed “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” As this confirmed, ignorance and reality dysphoria are not new problems in America. Had other politicians given Solzhenitsyn’s work the attention it deserved they might have gone easier on the people during difficult times.
Independent peasants known as “kulaks” resisted the collectivization of agriculture. During Stalin’s campaign to eliminate the kulaks as a class, as Solzhenitsyn noted, food was confiscated and even fishing in the rivers was prohibited. Jump ahead to January, 2020.
The CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier announces that a “novel coronavirus” has arrived stateside from China and will spread across the country. Quick to proclaim a state of emergency was California governor Gavin Newsom, who considered a statewide ban on freshwater sportfishing.
Newsom told the anglers “we are not cancelling the fishing season. We just want to delay, not deny, that season.” But he presented no scientific evidence that anglers on the state’s remote rivers and lakes posed a danger to public health.
The governor also closed nearly all beaches in southern California, including beach bathrooms, piers, promenades, and beach bike paths. In early April, 2020, police arrested a solitary paddleboarder near the Malibu pier. Gov. Newsom and his aides failed to show how a single person on the water posed a threat to public health. The governor also ordered many businesses, including wineries, to shut down their indoor operations, but he exempted Napa County from the state’s monitoring list.
That’s why the governor’s own PlumpJack Winery, purchased with Gordon Getty, remained open. Napa County is also home to the upscale French Laundry restaurant, where Newsom and lobbyist colleagues partied sans masks, which the governor demanded for ordinary people. None of the highly restrictive rules for private gatherings were in force for the governor and his friends. In similar style, while many of the state’s government schools were shut, Gov. Newsom’s four children received in-person instruction at an exclusive private school in Sacramento County.
Across the country in New York State, elderly patients, the group most vulnerable to Covid, were forced into nursing homes where thousands perished. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) boss Dr. Anthony Fauci, who claimed to represent science, didn’t want to talk about it.
From the nursing home victims on down through school shutdowns and the ban on paddleboarding and fishing, the government pandemic regime reflected an authoritarian mindset more than any quest to keep the people safe. As Solzhenitsyn noted, the Soviet Communist Party elite enjoyed special powers and privileges, so it’s more a matter of degree than kind.
Stalin set out to eliminate the kulaks as a class and murdered millions. American President Gerald Ford tried to free Eastern Europe with his mouth. American politicians such as Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo, in alliance with government bureaucrats such as Dr. Fauci, caused vast damage to the people while claiming to keep them safe. From the Red Terror to white coat supremacy, it’s all about memory against forgetting.
3 July, 2024
Large Korean Study Finds Neuropsychiatric Symptoms Linked to Long COVID
Researchers from Kyung Hee University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea investigate any evidence that SARS-CoV-2 infection is linked to short-and long-term neuropsychiatric symptoms.
The Korean-led team capitalized on the Korea nationwide cohort involving 10,027,506 (discovery) individuals plus the Japanese claims-based cohort involving 12,218, 680 (validation) to estimate the short-term (<30 days) and long-term (?30 days) risks of neuropsychiatric outcomes after SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with general population groups or external comparators (people with another respiratory infection).
This propensity score matching study led to the conclusion that in both the short and longer term, COVID-19 is elevated with risk of neuropsychiatric symptoms as compared to persons in Korea and Japan infected with another respiratory condition.
What symptoms and conditions emerge in this long COVID population as measured by propensity score matched outcomes in the 30-plus day cohort? Myriad neurological-based conditions:
Guillain-Barré syndrome
Cognitive deficit
Insomnia
Anxiety disorder
Encephalitis
Ischemic stroke
Mood disorder
Are there any mitigating factors, interventions reducing risk of these neuropsychiatric symptoms linked with long COVID?
According to the study which has its limitations and is not designed to prove causation factors ranging from mild severity of COVID-19, increased vaccination against COVID-19 and heterologous vaccination could be associated with lower long-term risk of adverse neuropsychiatric outcomes in the targeted populations.
The time attenuation effect was the strongest during the first six months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, and this risk remained statistically significant for up to one year in Korea but beyond one year in Japan, according to the authors’ entry in the peer-reviewed journal nature human behavior.
Thanks to the validation cohort with Japanese data, the authors were able to replicate the findings. The authors point out that their “findings contribute to the growing evidence base on long COVID by considering ethnic diversity.”
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A top Republican is demanding the Pentagon explain why it tried to hide taxpayer dollars sent to China for risky virus research
A new Defense Department report shockingly revealed the agency lost track of millions of taxpayer dollars sent to the adversary of the US.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is now demanding Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explain what exactly happened, according to correspondence exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com.
Paul says he's 'deeply concerned' over the Pentagon report finding the department couldn't determine whether it sent money to China for pathogen research.
'It is unacceptable that DoD cannot account for the full extent of taxpayer funding it has spent on pandemic pathogen research at Chinese research laboratories,' Paul wrote to Austin.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has requested files from the Pentagon regarding their use of taxpayer dollars to fund pathogen research in China. Paul has been investigating the origins of COVID for years and was shocked over the Pentagon's neglect in tracking funding to foreign countries
The Republican requested Sec. Austin turn over files relating to the Pentagon's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) that funded Chinese pathogen research, similar to the research done on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the COVID pandemic.
The senator has been vigorously investigating the origins of COVID and former White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci for his role in the pandemic and its policies.
Now he is examining the Pentagon's role in using 'American taxpayer dollars for risky virus research in China and other foreign countries.'
'This lack of oversight represents a significant gap in our national security and undermines public trust in the DoD,' Paul said.
Previously, the senator disclosed to DailyMail.com how Fauci still receives a taxpayer-funded 24/7 US Marshal security detail despite not being a government employee.
'The only other person probably getting his level of security would be the president, vice president, maybe cabinet members, and a few members in leadership in the House and Senate,' Paul told DailyMail.com.
Paul has also been outspoken in accusing Fauci of obfuscating the origins of the virus.
The Republican has twice sent referrals to the Justice Department for Fauci's prosecution, telling DailyMail.com 'he committed a felony by lying to Congress saying he didn't fund gain and function research. He's still saying that.'
'It is annoying that he's still out there crowing how great he is, when really his philosophic opinion that gain-of-function research is worth the risk is something that I think history should remember, and I'm going to do every bit of making sure that history remembers that he was philosophically in favor of the research that I believe allowed millions of people to die from this lab leak,' Paul told DailyMail.com.
Last month, the Kentuckian grilled several eminent doctors during a Senate hearing on the origins of COVID and definition of gain-of-function research.
The hearing became heated as lawmakers and witnesses sparred over the good that could come from the research that enhances viruses to make them more effective.
And Paul said if Republicans gain control of the Senate in November and he gets committee power, his first action will be to subpoena those files.
'The most important information is the NIH deliberation over what is, what is not gain-of-function,' he told DailyMail.com. 'They won't give us the information.'
Those documents will truly reveal whether Fauci lied to Congress about whether he was overseeing the dangerous research method, which he previously denied doing before the Senate, Paul said.
Still, the reputation damage to US public health officials is done, he added.
'We have public health officials that appear to be more salesmen for Big Pharma, than they do objective scientists, and that still is a problem,' Paul told DailyMail.com.
'It's led to a great deal of distrust, much more distrust over what the government tells us, than ever before,' he said.
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Jury Awards $687,000 to BlueCross BlueShield Scientist Fired for Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine
A federal jury has awarded $687,000 to a research scientist who was fired from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee for refusing to comply with the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Tanja Benton, who had worked at the firm for 16 years when she was fired, was awarded $177,240 in back pay, $10,000 in compensation, and $500,000 in punitive damages, according to a document made public by the federal court in eastern Tennessee on June 30.
Company officials told Ms. Benton in August of 2021 that she would need to be “fully vaccinated” to keep her position, according to her lawsuit. Ms. Benton refused, saying aborted fetal cell lines were involved in the development of the COVID-19 vaccines and she couldn’t “in good conscience consume the vaccine, which would not only defile her body but also anger and dishonor God.”
BlueCross BlueShield said her position involved “regular external public-facing interactions” so she couldn’t keep it. While Ms. Benton said her position became fully remote in 2020, BlueCross BlueShield said it would have involved some in-person interaction with clients.
Ms. Benton was told to pursue other positions within the company and applied for two. But she was fired on Nov. 4, 2021, and was told five days later that, “Unfortunately, all positions require the vax now,” according to an email entered in the case.
Her lawsuit charged that BlueCross BlueShield violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says an employer may not “discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment” because of that person’s religion. Employers can disregard religious exemption requests if they can prove accommodating them would create an undue hardship.
BlueCross BlueShield “cannot prove that allowing Plaintiff to continue her employment as a Bio Statistical Research Scientist without being vaccinated for COVID-19 constitutes an undue hardship,” the suit stated. The company “also cannot show that it made any good-faith efforts to accommodate plaintiff’s sincerely held religious beliefs.”
BlueCross BlueShield also was accused of violating the Tennessee Human Rights Act, which bars discrimination by employers at the state level.
“We’re disappointed by the decision,” Dalya Qualls White, chief communications officer for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, told The Epoch Times in an email. “We believe our vaccine requirement was the best decision for our employees and members, and we believe our accommodation to the requirement complied with the law. We appreciate our former employees’ service to our members and communities throughout their time with our company.”
A lawyer representing Ms. Benton didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, presented with the case, cleared Ms. Benton to sue her former employer.
Company lawyers had argued the firm would be unduly burdened by providing Ms. Benton an indefinite exception despite her role as a “public-facing employee.” The lawyers said she couldn’t have continued to work remotely indefinitely.
The company also asserted that Ms. Benton didn’t hold a sincerely held religious belief and “denies that the COVID-19 vaccine was derived from aborted fetus cell lines, which is verifiably false,” according to the company’s filing.
Johnson & Johnson used cells derived from an aborted fetus in the design, production, and testing of its COVID-19 vaccine. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines also utilized the cells in early testing. The companies have said the final products don’t contain aborted fetal cells.
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2 July, 2024
Pfizer About To Find Itself In Court Again
Pfizer Inc. previously admitted it behaved improperly in not reporting major clinical trial safety issues during the original COVID-19 “vaccine” trials because they claimed the US FDA were aware of what they were doing, therefore, it was OK. That is a very creative defence
But momentum is building to bring Pfizer, Moderna and “health experts” like Fauci to justice.
Grilling of Dr. Fauci goes on before US Senators and admissions of misinformation (read “lies”) are now flowing…..there was no science to support lockdowns, masking or social distancing.
The “experts” didn’t even bother to look at the science according to Dr. Scott Atlas who was part of the Trump Covid task force team.
We know better now and nobody should be so easily fooled again (think Bird Flu).
Now details are emerging of the specifics of the Kansas State lawsuit against Pfizer Inc. over the COVID-19 “vaccines”.
A Substack by Carl Heneghan of June 27th details the main alleged points which may be summarised as follows:
· Pfizer misled the public in relation to its claim of “safety and efficacy”
· Pfizer used confidentiality agreements to conceal critical data relating to the safety and effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine
· Pfizer used its confidentiality agreements with the US government and others to conceal, suppress, and omit material facts relating to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, including the safety and efficacy of the vaccine
· Pfizer used an extended study timeline to conceal critical data – the study was repeatedly delayed
· Pfizer has not honoured its promise to release safety data
· Pfizer destroyed the vaccine control group
· In its press release announcing emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer did not disclose that it had excluded immunocompromised individuals from its COVID-19 vaccine trials
· Pfizer knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis and did not properly report these in a timely manner
· Pfizer’s February 18, 2021, press release also did not disclose other adverse effects on the reproductive systems of women who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine
· Pfizer’s study on pregnant women failed and the results are secret
· Pfizer misrepresented and concealed material facts relating to the durability of protection provided by its COVID-19 vaccine
· Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine would prevent transmission even though it knew it had never studied the effect of its vaccine on transmission
· Pfizer worked to censor speech on social media that questioned it’s claims.
These alleged crimes have been well known for some time but now they will be tested in a court of law.
Unvaccinated Police In Australia Fired Two Years After Covid Mandates Dropped
Two years after the Covid mandates ended, the West Australian Police Force has fired nearly 20 unvaccinated police officers and public servants for refusing to get the jabs.
A legal challenge against the mandates, brought by WA Police officer Ben Falconer and staff member Les Finlay, had previously secured an injunction preventing the force from firing unvaccinated staff until the matter had been settled in the courts.
However, a Supreme Court ruling that then-WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson’s Covid vaccination directive was “valid and lawful” brought an end to the injunction in April. WA Police announced the resumption of disciplinary action against 17 affected employees immediately after the hearing, with all 12 police officers and five staff having now been sacked.
Falconer was the last to be formally notified of his dismissal on Friday, for disobeying the Commissioner’s vaccination directive. Despite no prior history of disobedience, Falconer refused the jabs due to his concerns over the safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccines and the way in which mandates violated the bodily integrity of officers and staff.
While Deputy Commissioner Allan Adams said that Falconer’s dismissal was “regretful”, Falconer maintains that refusing Covid vaccination is the “best decision I’ve ever made”. Falconer, a Senior Constable who served in the force for 15 years, says that the sacked police officers had over 150 years of policing experience combined.
The firings come amid staffing shortages and low morale, with WA Police turning to overseas recruitment to prop up its frontline forces.
In April this year it was reported that WA Police was well short of its target of recruiting 950 new frontline officers by mid-year, with only 450-500 having signed on.
Opposition leader Libby Mettam (Liberal) said that in the past four years, there has been a “mass exodus of police with nearly 1,000 officers resigning” from the roughly 7,000 strong force.
Police Commissioner Col Blanch admitted that the force saw a “significant” reduction in police numbers after the Covid pandemic, with 570 officers leaving the force in 2022, of which 473 were resignations and 97 retirements.
WA Police was asked to provide comment along with up-to-date recruitment, resignation and retirement figures, but did not respond prior to publication deadline.
The Labour Government has blamed market forces for WA Police’s struggles with retention and recruitment. However survey data collected by the WA Police Union in 2022 showed that 77% of staff exiting the force claim poor work culture and dissatisfaction with management as their reasons for quitting.
Another union survey of members conducted in 2022 found that morale in the force is at an “all-time-low”, with almost two thirds (64.6%) of respondents describing morale as “poor”. This is more than double 28.2% who said the same in the last poll in 2017. None of the 1,966 respondents described morale as “excellent”.
A majority of respondents complained that their workload had increased, and half or more complained of fatigue, management problems, unpaid overtime and rostering issues.
Nearly three quarters (71.4%) of respondents said they’d used the WA Police mental health services, with 36.6% of service users reporting their experience was “very negative” or “negative”.
Public sector census data obtained under Freedom of Information by the Liberal opposition showed that in 2023, less than half (47.1%) would recommend their agency as a workplace, compared to almost 70% for the public sector overall.
Some of this discontent appears to be driven by the force’s Covid response. In an unauthorised survey of WA Police staff initiated by former officer Jordan McDonald, who resigned over vaccine mandates, employees said they felt “bullied” into getting vaccinated and complained about resources being diverted away from traditional policing towards the state’s Covid response.
In 2022, WA Police began an international recruitment drive to fill vacant frontline positions, with the aim of recruiting 750 officers from the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and New Zealand over a five-year period. WA Police has also been creative with its recruitment campaign at home, appealing to lonely hearts on hookup app Tinder.
The WA Police Union said it supports the overseas recruitment drive but characterised it as a “band-aid solution”.
“It’s only a matter of time before these new recruits obtain permanent residency and become familiar with the many cultural and organisational issues in WA Police,” the union said in a media statement.
The WA Police Union was approached by unvaccinated members for assistance with their industrial action resisting the mandates, but Falconer, who was a member, says the union’s response was “hostile”. The union also declined to provide information and comment for this article.
Unvaccinated WA Police staff had been on paid leave since the Covid vaccine mandate came into effect in December 2021 until their recent dismissals, an arrangement that Falconer has called “fiscally irresponsible”.
In an essay posted to social media platform X, Falconer said that the South Australian Police Force responded to the situation better. Unvaccinated SA Police officers were allowed to use accrued leave until the mandates dropped, after which they were allowed back to work “without ever being stood down and no disciplinary action taken whatsoever”, he said.
“I could have been back at work from June 2022 [when the mandates were dropped] and there were plenty of administrative tasks that could have been done with remote access to police systems if allowed to work from home,” said Falconer, who said he informed WA Police more than 30 times of his willingness to return to work.
Former police officer of 27 years Lance French, who was also fired this month for not complying with the Police Commissioner’s 2021 Covid vaccination directive, said that he too had informed WA Police numerous times that he wanted to return to work since the mandates were dropped.
Now that his two-and-a-half year legal fight has come to an end, Falconer said that he will take some time out to consider his next career move.
French expressed gratitude for the support of his wife, family and colleagues, opining on social media that while “the trajectory we are heading (as a society) is not good,” he was appreciative for “the legislative and judicial structures enabling our lawful challenge of Commissioner Dawson’s… draconian order to undergo a medical procedure”.
WA Police officers and staff are not the only Australian workers still experiencing repercussions from the Covid mandates, even after most of the public have well and truly moved on.
In January of this year, Queensland Health was criticised for continuing to discipline and fire healthcare workers for failing to comply with vaccination directives issued in late 2021.
More than 50 unvaccinated firefighters remain banned from returning to work in Victoria despite critical staffing shortages, and mandates remain in place for some nurses, midwives and doctors around the country.
The Australian state and territory governments’ coercive Covid vaccination mandates have come under fire recently with AstraZeneca’s admission that its vaccine can cause deadly blood clots, and with mounting vaccine injury claims.
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1 July, 2024
The Great Lockdown Swindle
Written by Alex Kriel
Many people will remember the Covid policy response as a nightmare involving: reduced access to medical treatment, businesses closures, disrupted schooling and fear generated by Government brainwashing.
After the event, it is always worth doing a ‘cui bono‘ (who benefits) exercise to identify who benefited, especially since the hopeless mainstream media have largely failed to do this.
Counterintuitively, the über-wealthy owners of 0.1% of wealth in the United States, increased their net worth by a staggering $6.4 trillion over the 2022-2023 pandemic period.
With their net worth growing from $12.1 trillion to $18.5 trillion, a pretty cool $20 million per head for approximately 300,000 people.
This outcome is counterintuitive since the lockdowns temporarily wrecked the economy and had a significant negative impact on Government debt, which ballooned due to staggering budget deficits. All things being equal, you would expect stock markets to move lower under these circumstances.
In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of extreme money printing though the stock market exploded and the benefit from this explosion accrued primarily to the über-wealthy, who hold most of the financial assets.
Regular folk without significant financial assets tended to get left with the rough end of the stick in the form of elevated inflation.
We covered the link between money printing and financial asset values in a previous note (‘Where did the money go?‘), the chart below shows that money printing (red), moves in almost exactly the same way as the size of the wealth owned by the wealthiest 0.1% (blue). Both axes are in trillion (millions of millions).
You could credibly argue that the aim of monetary policy seems to be to prop up the value of the financial assets held by the über-wealthy. Within the group of über-wealthy, gains were not evenly distributed.
The world’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos, made over $90 billion in paper gains over the first nine months of 2020 due to an increase in Amazon’s share price. A large part of this was thanks to lockdowns, which closed down the bricks and mortar competitors and diverted tens of billions of dollars to Amazon, whose sales growth doubled from around 20% to 40% towards the end of 2020.
Another group which seemed pleased with the lockdowns was that of the social engineers who had since the 1970s wanted to redesign society, including to reduce or even eliminate growth.
The Chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab co-authored a book, COVID-19:The Great Reset.
The book calls for significant parts of the lockdown response to be made permanent; the book’s cover makes clear that he wanted to leverage Covid for the purposes of introducing massive societal change.
They say that you should never let a good crisis go to waste, but what if rather than waiting for a good crisis, some interest groups created or simply exaggerated a crisis?
One thing that has become clear over the recent past is that the über-wealthy have access to enormous lobbying power via their foundations.
A large foundation can comfortably spend around $400 million a year on lobbying (philanthropy). As we discussed in our note on green money, the resources of the oligarch foundations dwarf the funding available to regular political parties.
In addition to having access to foundations, the über-wealthy have significant media reach in their own right. This is what several high profile business leaders said in 2020 about the coronavirus:
As we now know, the global infection fatality rate (IFR) was 0.03% for the under-60s: this was not the existential threat that it was made out to be. The fact that Covid was not an existential threat and that the infamous Imperial model was significantly overstated was clear from March 2020, as soon as the Diamond Princess figures came in. Professor Levitt identified that the Imperial model was massively overstated (I was able to help him correct some small errors in the calculations).
We can identify a small group of über– wealthy who on an ex-post basis enjoyed rapid and large increases in wealth as lockdowns favoured their businesses whilst disadvantaging competitors.
Furthermore, the eye watering money printing significantly raised the value of pretty well all financial assets. Finally, a group of social engineers who wished to see a “Great Reset” involving reduced consumption also seemed well pleased with lockdowns, the WEF website carried gushing articles about the benefits of lockdowns.
It could be that the quotes above from Schwab, Soros and Gates were alarmist as they were made in the heat of the moment. I was always dubious about this explanation: Bill Gates’s quote was the earliest from February, but the others were later and after actual data were available.
These individuals are very wealthy and must presumably be highly numerate and able to accurately assess risks. They would also have access to the best available researchers and sophisticated databases. It feels unlikely that they would get simple ratios significantly wrong, in my opinion.
In any event, a credible case could be made to say that some vested interest groups wanted to see a terrible overreaction to Covid, provided that this was accompanied by enough money printing.
It is worth remembering that the pre-existing pandemic response plans explicitly excluded lockdowns as a policy option:
In other policy areas, I have noticed a pattern whereby high profile oligarchs float a policy idea, which subsequently becomes Government policy years later (more about this later).
I am not making accusations, but identifying interest groups that either benefited financially or achieved the policy response that they wanted.
Worryingly, the issue of lockdown effectiveness is being largely ignored, even though Professor Ioannidis et al. have convincingly shown that lockdowns achieved next to nothing.
There is a danger that various interest groups are ensuring that this topic is not addressed so that they can repeat lockdowns in the future.
Crime requires three elements and we have all three in lockdowns: motivation ($6.4 trillion increase in net worth), method (enormous lobbying resources) and opportunity (venal politicians). Is this too conspiratorial?
University of Hong Kong Pediatric Specialists Identify Mechanisms Driving Vaccine Induced Myocarditis
Aggregated data recently suggests that Natural Killer (NK) cell activation by mRNA COVID-19 vaccine contributes to the pathogenesis of acute myocarditis in genetically and epidemiologically vulnerable subjects.
This is the conclusion of a study funded by the Hong Kong Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) 2020/21 and the CRF Coronavirus and Novel Infectious Diseases Research Exercises
Patrick Ip, a specialist pediatrician at University of Hong Kong and colleagues collected and analyzed samples from 60 adolescents with vaccine-related myocarditis: these including pro-inflammatory cytokines, cardiac troponin T, genotyping, and immunophenotyping of the corresponding activation subsets of NK cells, monocytes, and T cells.
The findings, compared with samples from 10 vaccinated individuals without myocarditis and 10 healthy controls, the study team in investigating the rare, but real vaccine-related acute myocarditis they pursue a clearer understanding of precise mechanisms based on their hypothesis that natural killer (NK) cells play a central role in its pathogenesis.
In a previous epidemiology study, the authors found a significant increase in the risk of acute myocarditis with rapid onset (median only 2 days) following vaccination with Pfizer’s mRNA-based vaccine (BNT162b2), particularly among male adolescents, especially after the second dose. But what are the underlying immune mechanisms involved? What follows is a summarized breakdown.
What’s the observation in this study?
The Hong Kong-based physician specialists and scientists observed very high levels of serum cytokines pivotal for NK cells in post-vaccination patients with myocarditis.
What was particularly noticeable in male patients and those individuals receiving their second jab?
Other than KIR polymorphism, the NK cell-specific eQTLs DNAM-1 (CD226) and FuT11 were also known to be key determinants of NK cell activities.”
What about after a third dose—why a lower incidence of myocarditis?
The authors of this study cannot be certain about why the cases of myocarditis are lower after a third jab.
They propose one possible answer: that this dose’s administration occurs during the longer time gap between the second and third doses of the vaccine. Could it be that genetically vulnerable subjects would have already developed the complication after the second dose. If not, the likelihood of developing myocarditis after the third dose would be low. More research would be needed to elucidate these and other possibilities.
Core hypothesis
The authors of this study find evidence backing their core hypothesis: NK cells serve a key role in the cause of rapid-onset of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine-induced acute myocarditis.
The Hong Kong-based research team now offers world-novel insights into the fundamental immune mechanisms associated with rare, but very real, and potentially deadly, side effects.
The authors assume the growth in adoption of the use of mRNA vaccines meaning these findings raise implications for “designing improved mRNA vaccines that would have minimal NK activation effects.”
Physicians must be aware of patients who not only have a history of post-vaccination myocarditis but who are also genetically susceptible. Thus, clinicians can be more proactive, acting earlier with sound medical advice, and based on these insights close monitoring could very well be warranted before and after receiving a similar mRNA vaccine.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Is Trump a Fascist?
It's almost a conditioned reflex for Leftists these days to call Trump s Fascist. But they generlly just spit it out without making any real argument to support their claim. So the Leftist guy writing below is a refreshing change. He actually defines what he means by Fascism. And it is in part an accurate definition.
His basic problem is that he simply has no awareness of history -- no idea of what Fascism was when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini invented it. And a lot of national leaders of his time followed in Mussolini's footsteps, Franco, Pilsudsky, Salazar, Horthy, Peron and a certain Mr. A Hitler
So what WAS Fascism, historically? It was socialist. Mussolini was a respected Marxist intellectual. Is Trump a respected Marxist intellectual? I think you can see the problem.
The one thing the Fascists believed in and pursued is state power. As Mussolini defined his creed: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato".
Trump by contrast, is a fairly traditional American conservative, with a committment to capitalism, patriotsm and individual liberty. He has never even tried to maroon his political opponents on remote islands (as Mussolini did) nor has be sent them to concentration camps, as Hitler did. And he has gained power exclusively by way a democratic election, which neither Hitler nor Mussonini did. Mussolini gained power via the famous "March on on Rome"
So in good Leftist style, the writer below is simply blind to the facts. He cannot see the difference betweeen a popular conservative and a dictator. He puffs up trivialities into major issues: Very Leftist.
Mainstream media have treated President Biden with prejudice and arrogance. Quite a few Democrats, reacting to this, treat any mention of President Biden’s fitness as disloyalty. This is mistaken, if understandable.
One source of the negative energy is Trump’s fascism. Focusing on it will not answer the question of what Democrats do, but will help us to understand the context in which the discussion is taking place. By fascism I just have in mind (1) the cult of personality of a Leader: (2) the party that becomes a single party; (3) the threat and use of violence; and (4) the big lie that must be accepted and used to reshape reality: in this case, that Trump can never lose an election.
Much more could be said (as I have done elsewhere), but it is the official big lie and the threats of violence that are dangerous to those whose job is to report truth. Trump is on the record as regarding reports as enemies of the people. What should I make — a journalist might ask — of Trump’s talk of arresting journalists? When not confronted, such questions become self-realizing fears.
That’s the subtle version. Meanwhile, those higher up in corporations might like the ratings Trump brings, or like Trump himself. And so it is easiest to keep things personal — give Trump time, on the self-deluding logic that he will discredit himself, and focus on Biden’s age rather than his achievements. For reporters it can feel like the work is being done when only Biden is at the receiving end of criticism — whereas, in fact, the ground has been shifted by fascism, or by the inability to confront it.
And so fascism spreads and settles in our minds during this, the crucial period between Trump’s first coup attempt and his second. The Biden administration is being held to standards, while the previous Trump administration is not; and Biden personally is being held to standards, while Trump as a person is not. This helps to generate a fascist aura. There must be something special about Trump such that he is different from others: a Leader beyond criticism rather than just an indebted hack or a felon from Queens or a client of a Russian dictator.
It should seem odd that media calls to step down were not first directed to Trump. If we are calling for Biden to step aside because someone must stop Trump from bringing down the republic, then surely it would have made more sense to first call for Trump to step aside? (The Philadelphia Inquirer did). I know the counter-arguments: his people wouldn’t have cared, and he wouldn’t have listened. The first misses an important point. There are quite a few Americans who have not made up their minds. The second amounts to obeying in advance. If you accept that a fascist is beyond your reach, you have normalized your submission.
When media folks describe discussions among Democrats as chaos and disarray, they are implicitly suggesting that it is better for a leader of a party to never be questioned. (Why, after all, is being part of an array a good thing?) An obvious point goes missed: Democrats can say what they want, because none of them is afraid. And that is good! Governor Maura Healey can express her dissent and Joe Biden can express his frustration with her — but no one is worried about her physical safety.
Trump, by contrast, controls his party through stochastic terror, threats issued through social media that his cult followers can be expected to realize. Republicans leave politics because they fear for themselves and their families. Those who remain all obey in advance. That is new, and it should not be normal, and it should not spread any further. But it becomes normal when we treat discussions, and not coercion, as abnormal.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/fascist-froth
*****************************************************Rachel Reeves: 'I'll rip up rules on planning within days'
Well blow me down! This is the last thing I would have expected to hear from a British Labour party minister. It is almost Trump-like. Whether she will be able to stick to her guns is the question. It will be very good for Britain if she manages it
Rachel Reeves will declare war on Britain's planning system today. Vowing to take the 'difficult decisions' needed to boost economic growth, the new Chancellor will use her first major speech to reveal that the Government is beginning its assault on the planning rules.
Before MPs break for the summer at the end of the month, councils will be issued with mandatory targets to clear the way for hundreds of thousands of new homes.
And ministers will begin work on controversial plans to weaken protections for some parts of the green belt to make room for development.
Ministers are also looking to relax planning rules for major infrastructure projects, such as the installation of hundreds of miles of new electricity pylons needed to link up wind and solar farms to the grid.
Ms Reeves will today declare that, with the public finances already stretched, boosting Britain's sluggish economic growth is the 'only route to improving the prosperity of our country'.
She will say last week's landslide election win gives Labour a 'mandate' for radical change – and will insist that planning reform is among the 'first steps' needed to 'fix the foundations of our economy, so we can rebuild Britain'.
'Our manifesto was clear: Sustained economic growth is the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people,' she will say. 'Where governments have been unwilling to take the difficult decisions to deliver growth – or have waited too long to act – I will deliver.
'It is now a national mission. There is no time to waste.' Ms Reeves was appointed as Britain's first female Chancellor on Friday, and warned that there was 'not much money around'.
But union leaders, who have bankrolled Labour for decades, are already pushing her to open the spending taps.
Unite boss Sharon Graham said there was scope for the Government to borrow tens of billions of pounds to 'invest' in the economy and public services. She urged Ms Reeves to scrap Labour's tight fiscal rules and pour billions into Britain's 'crumbling public services'.
'We are going to have to borrow to invest,' she told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. 'We have not got time to wait for growth. 'People are literally hurting out there and we are going to have to borrow to invest – our crumbling public services need money.'
Ms Graham's intervention is the first warning shot from the Left – and an early sign that the Labour leadership may find it hard to resist reverting to its tax-and-spend traditions.
The union boss warned that new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer 'won't have a lot of honeymoon period' unless he delivers quickly.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, on the same programme, called for a 'decisive break with austerity'.
Sir Keir yesterday began a whistle-stop tour of the UK with a visit to Scotland, where he promised an 'immediate reset' of relations with the devolved administrations.
Tomorrow he will travel to the Nato summit in Washington where he will seek to reassure leaders that his Government can be trusted on defence despite ditching Rishi Sunak's pledge to raise military spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
Labour's decision to target the planning system immediately is likely to bring it into conflict with both countryside campaigners and those communities that feel they are already at the limit of development their area can take.
It could also trigger a backlash from some of its own MPs who represent a swathe of constituencies across southern England where planning reform has been resisted for years.
During the election campaign, one Labour official said the party was prepared to 'flatten the whole green belt'. This was denied by Labour.
Ben Houchen, Tory mayor of Tees Valley, said promising rapid growth on the back of planning reform could become 'a noose around the Labour Party's neck'.
He added: 'How keen are the Labour Government to tinker with environmental regulations which is one of the largest delays in the planning system?'
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7 July, 2024
European Medicines Agency Top Scientists Acknowledge mRNA-Based Spike Protein a Potential Threat with Myocarditis
TrialSite has chronicled many dozens to nearly a hundred studies involving myocarditis and COVID-19 vaccines. Chronicling a growing body of quality evidence that a circulating spike protein likely represents a problem, at least in some relatively rare number of cases. Yet mainstream science in North America as represented by academic medical centers, apex federal health institutions and physician societies have avoided the free spike protein question despite growing evidence. It is for this reason that even though TrialSite questions many of the assumptions underlying the conclusions in a recent paper authored by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) top scientists, it’s nonetheless a breakthrough that the esteemed group of authors has opened up the discussion, acknowledging a potential problem with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and free spike induced cardiovascular injury.
Alessandra Buoninfante, Ph.D., Scientific Officer, and colleagues at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) first and foremost, wield quite a bit of influence in the European continent when it comes to regulation of drugs and vaccines.
In this latest review article in NPJ Vaccines, the four authors acknowledge that the available evidence reveals that COVID-19 mRNA vaccination is associated with a greater risk of myocarditis, but emphasize the risk remains far greater with COVID-19 infection.
While the high-level EMA operatives emphasize a benefit/risk ratio overwhelmingly favoring use of the vaccine versus the risk of COVID-19, they nonetheless open up the door to take on the mRNA vaccines.
In this latest paper, the scientific leadership from this powerful regulatory body declares that to date, no definite mechanism for vaccine-associated myocarditis has yet to be identified, necessitating ongoing epidemiological, clinical and non-clinical research. And they introduce select examples of the mRNA vaccine-triggered free spike protein as a possible culprit.
According to Buoninfante and colleagues prior to the availability of COVID-19 vaccination, COVID-19 patients faced approximately 16 times the risk for myocarditis relative to patients without COVID-19. What is the basis for this claim? Boehmer, T. K. et al. Association between COVID-19 and Myocarditis using hospital-based administrative data — United States, March 2020–January 2021. That observational; study was limited however and was not designed to establish any causation.
One glaring issue with this underlying study the European regulators use for their evidence is that the risk estimates from the study reflect the risk for myocarditis among persons who received a diagnosis of COVID-19 during an outpatient or inpatient health care encounter and do not reflect the risk among all persons who had COVID-19. This point cannot be glossed over.
The vast majority of COVID-19 infections (90-95%) were mild to moderate with no clinic encounter. In fact, many cases were asymptomatic. So TrialSite must challenge the underlying premise based on this point alone, not to mention other risks for misclassification as well as other biases.
Buoninfante et al, also point to matched analyses from medical records (Dec 2020 to May 2021) from the largest healthcare organization in Israel. Cited as Barda et al. study according to the authors revealed that “COVID-19 vaccination was associated with an elevated risk of myocarditis (risk ratio, 3.24) compared to unvaccinated and SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with a substantially increased risk of myocarditis (risk ratio, 18.28) compared to uninfected.”
The Israeli reports the mortality rate involving myocarditis to be less for those vaccinated compared to persons with viral infection-related myocarditis.
Plus they refer to a more contemporary study result in Husby et al. suggesting that the relative risk of heart failure within 90 days was 0.56 and 1.48 for myocarditis associated with vaccination and COVID-19 disease, respectively. Again, multiple limitations and the observational nature of the study raises the specter of association but not causation.
The authors use these selected studies to conclude that “myocarditis associated with COVID-19 disease, myocarditis after vaccination with SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines occurs less frequently and in addition is associated with a better clinical outcome.”
Real World Recognition
The authors which include pharmacovigilance experts from EMA also point to the likely uncertainty in all the numbers. Among other reasons in trying to identify an accurate background incidence rate in healthy people and the actual number of vaccine-associated cases. Cases are likely underestimated in pharmacovigilance systems.
Estimating the extent of potential under-reporting in the pharmacovigilance systems is influenced by public awareness, the disease severity spectrum, demographics, and/or local practices and other factors beyond the regulator's control.
A Breakthrough Spike Protein Discussion
Interestingly the European Medicines Agency scientists raise the specter of implication of free spike protein as a potential culprit, and this is a big deal given a growing body of literature and mostly silence from mainstream science in North America.
For example, Buoninfante and colleagues point out that “despite not being systematically screened and checked for in myocarditis samples, the spike protein could be a key player in the etiology and/or progression of the disease.”
The speculation suggests, according to the European regulators, that “the spike protein (expression) could directly contribute to inflammation of the endothelium and cardiac tissue. Detailed antibody- and T-cell multiplex cytokine response profiles of 16 subjects who developed post-vaccine myocarditis within the first week after vaccination appeared to be indistinguishable from those generated from vaccinated control subjects and only a modest increase in cytokine production linked to innate cell response was observed.”
Yet they point to “elevated levels of full-length spike protein unbound by antibodies were detected in the plasma of these myocarditis subjects, whereas no free spike was detected in asymptomatic vaccinated control subjects citing Yonker et al. Correlating with cardiac troponin T levels as well as innate immune activation with cytokine release was the unbound spike.
The authors cite Avolio et al noting that the spike protein may interact with and trigger “dysfunction of cardiac pericytes” not to mention contribute to endothelial inflammation in mice as reported in Robles et al.
Moreover, EMA’s authors cite Roltogen et al and Ogata et al “demonstrating the presence of spike antigen post second COVID-19 mRNA dose in circulation longer than originally anticipated.”
Going back to Yonker et al., the European regulatory establishment in the form of this paper acknowledges vaccine-induced myocarditis may be directly explained by an “unbound circulating spike protein, not in inducing immune hyperactivation, but in contributing directly to the effects recorded in myocarditis subjects.”
Summary
While EMA”s Scientific Officer along with Marco Calaveri Head of Anti-infectives and Vaccine and other high ranking colleagues continue to suggest the risk of myocarditis in association with COVID-19 infection remains far higher than via mRNA vaccination, the evidence they depend upon isn’t designed to make such claims while the influential, we would argue powerful group offers the scientific world an important opening in this recent review—they embrace the unfolding scientific evidence that a mRNA COVID vaccine-induced spike protein may be doing damage. Calaveri as with many making this claim do not consider time ordered exposures: SARS-CoV-2 infection followed by vaccination, vaccination followed by infection, and repeated sequences.
This makes it impossible to claim infection alone causes myocarditis. With infection alone, there have been no published clinically adjudicated cases of myocarditis. There have been no fatal cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection before vaccination where myocarditis was identified on autopsy. This is a breakthrough given that for at least a couple years now in reviews of substantial amounts of literature industry, government and academia continue to lag behind more independent scientists critically scrutinize the mRNA-induced spike protein in the context of vaccine injury, including myocarditis.
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4 July, 2024
Major Medical Journal Publishes Article Showing Negative Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines
BY DR RAPHAEL LATASTER
I don’t like to say things are huge, but this is huge. As promised, my own little article on COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness (where the jab increases one’s chance of Covid infection, hospitalisation and even death) has been published in a major medical journal, the Australian Journal of General Practice. Published by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, AJGP is literally the medical journal for general practitioners (family doctors) in Australia. Also discussed in what became an epic and frank discussion amongst several Australian health professionals are vaccine injuries and ‘Long Covid’ potentially being ‘long jab’.
This all started with Tindle’s article in AJGP earlier this year, which contained scarcely believable quotable quotes like: “Because COVID-19 vaccines were approved without long-term safety data and might cause immune dysfunction, it is perhaps premature to assume that past SARS-CoV-2 infection is the sole common factor in long Covid.” He declared that “COVID-19 vaccination per se might contribute to Long Covid, giving rise to the colloquial term ‘Long Vax(x)’”, since the “spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 exhibits pathogenic characteristics and is a possible cause of post-acute sequelae after SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 vaccination”. Not to mention the “class switch to IgG4 antibodies”, which Tindle thinks could lead to autoimmunity and cancer.
With the editorial team apparently happy to publish on the jab potentially causing immune dysfunction, I thought this could be my chance to once again bring up negative effectiveness in a major medical journal. Indeed, it accepted, and here is what I spoke about:
I cite several articles apparently displaying some sort of COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness, including one published by NEJM, another published in a Lancet journal and the little discussion involving myself in the BMJ. In the worst cases, the vaccines’ effectiveness drops to zero, and even turns negative, within mere months.
I cited the JECP4 articles, which show “that issues with counting windows have likely led to exaggerations of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and safety estimates, for both the clinical trials and later observational studies”.
I also pointed to Fürst et al., a recent study revealing “strong evidence for the healthy vaccinee effect”, countering any excuse involving the idea that sicker people are the ones getting vaccinated. A pretty silly excuse anyway, since most adults took the jab.
I conclude: “All this makes it plausible that the COVID-19 vaccines have always had an effectiveness that was very low, zero, or even negative, with inadequate methods allowing for a highly exaggerated effectiveness initially – an exaggeration that is lessened with time. It is, as Professor Tindle noted, possible that the vaccines could be causing immunosuppression. With the ubiquitousness of the vaccines, and the fact that some vaccine mandates are still in place, to say nothing of the upcoming Senate inquiry into excess mortality, I suggest we investigate this further.”
Awesome, huh? But wait, there’s more. A few more follow-up articles were published by AJGP, one involving Liu and Macartney (from the influential pro-jab Liu et al. study I’ve ‘refuted’, publishing forthcoming), with the usual attempts to “counter the unsubstantiated assertions that COVID-19 vaccination is causally associated with Long Covid”, customary claims that the jab “saved millions of lives” included.
Okay, so that bit of propaganda wasn’t so exciting, but another follow-up was also published, by Murnane. They were also concerned about “spikeopathy” and declared:
Professor Tindle’s concerns about ‘Long Vax(x)’ very much echo conditions I have observed working as a general practitioner. I have seen patients present with Long Covid symptoms post COVID-19 vaccine without prior COVID-19 infection. I have also observed patients with Long Covid that has been acquired post COVID-19 infection, who have experienced a worsening of their symptoms post COVID-19 vaccination. This is consistent with studies that have shown a worsening of symptoms in 21% to 31% of Long Covid sufferers post COVID-19 vaccination.
They also shared that they “personally suffered from a COVID-19 vaccine injury leading to dysautonomia, small fibre neuropathy, thyroiditis and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)”.
Finally, Tindle was granted the opportunity to wrap things up. He apparently agreed with my “case counting window concerns”, observations of negative effectiveness and the healthy vaccinee effect, countering Liu et al. Tindle is all of us when he opines that the “amount of spike protein from the vaccine is likely many fold greater than that from infection with virus because of stability mutations introduced into the vaccine mRNA, and the tissue penetrance of spike protein mRNA into a far more diverse set of tissues than infection”. In response to Murnane, Tindle claims that other GPs echoed similar concerns, about ‘Long Covid’ being “a side effect of the Covid vaccination”, and mentions the persecution of doctors who dared to speak out. Ending by questioning if the jabs are truly beneficial for all, Tindle even boldly noted that earlier “posts implicating COVID-19 vaccines were removed by the site moderators”. Things are changing. We’re winning.
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From Solzhenitsyn to US Governors: No Lessons Learned
This year marks half a century since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation appeared in English. Northwestern University professor Gary Saul Morson calls this work “the masterpiece of our time,” and there’s a backstory here.
After visiting the Soviet Union in 1919, California journalist Lincoln Steffens proclaimed, “I have seen the future and it works,” a claim repeated by many Western luminaries during the 1930s, as Malcolm Muggeridge recalled in Chronicles of Wasted Time. Solzhenitsyn showed how the USSR didn’t work, except as a vast prison camp, and confirmed that the first Communist state was much worse than anybody imagined. In some quarters, the revelations did not receive a warm welcome.
While the courageous Solzhenitsyn was being hailed around the world, U.S. President Gerald Ford declined to meet with the author. During an October 1976 debate, Ford proclaimed “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” As this confirmed, ignorance and reality dysphoria are not new problems in America. Had other politicians given Solzhenitsyn’s work the attention it deserved they might have gone easier on the people during difficult times.
Independent peasants known as “kulaks” resisted the collectivization of agriculture. During Stalin’s campaign to eliminate the kulaks as a class, as Solzhenitsyn noted, food was confiscated and even fishing in the rivers was prohibited. Jump ahead to January, 2020.
The CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier announces that a “novel coronavirus” has arrived stateside from China and will spread across the country. Quick to proclaim a state of emergency was California governor Gavin Newsom, who considered a statewide ban on freshwater sportfishing.
Newsom told the anglers “we are not cancelling the fishing season. We just want to delay, not deny, that season.” But he presented no scientific evidence that anglers on the state’s remote rivers and lakes posed a danger to public health.
The governor also closed nearly all beaches in southern California, including beach bathrooms, piers, promenades, and beach bike paths. In early April, 2020, police arrested a solitary paddleboarder near the Malibu pier. Gov. Newsom and his aides failed to show how a single person on the water posed a threat to public health. The governor also ordered many businesses, including wineries, to shut down their indoor operations, but he exempted Napa County from the state’s monitoring list.
That’s why the governor’s own PlumpJack Winery, purchased with Gordon Getty, remained open. Napa County is also home to the upscale French Laundry restaurant, where Newsom and lobbyist colleagues partied sans masks, which the governor demanded for ordinary people. None of the highly restrictive rules for private gatherings were in force for the governor and his friends. In similar style, while many of the state’s government schools were shut, Gov. Newsom’s four children received in-person instruction at an exclusive private school in Sacramento County.
Across the country in New York State, elderly patients, the group most vulnerable to Covid, were forced into nursing homes where thousands perished. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) boss Dr. Anthony Fauci, who claimed to represent science, didn’t want to talk about it.
From the nursing home victims on down through school shutdowns and the ban on paddleboarding and fishing, the government pandemic regime reflected an authoritarian mindset more than any quest to keep the people safe. As Solzhenitsyn noted, the Soviet Communist Party elite enjoyed special powers and privileges, so it’s more a matter of degree than kind.
Stalin set out to eliminate the kulaks as a class and murdered millions. American President Gerald Ford tried to free Eastern Europe with his mouth. American politicians such as Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo, in alliance with government bureaucrats such as Dr. Fauci, caused vast damage to the people while claiming to keep them safe. From the Red Terror to white coat supremacy, it’s all about memory against forgetting.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14969&omhide=true&trk=rm
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Large Korean Study Finds Neuropsychiatric Symptoms Linked to Long COVID
Researchers from Kyung Hee University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea investigate any evidence that SARS-CoV-2 infection is linked to short-and long-term neuropsychiatric symptoms.
The Korean-led team capitalized on the Korea nationwide cohort involving 10,027,506 (discovery) individuals plus the Japanese claims-based cohort involving 12,218, 680 (validation) to estimate the short-term (<30 days) and long-term (?30 days) risks of neuropsychiatric outcomes after SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with general population groups or external comparators (people with another respiratory infection).
This propensity score matching study led to the conclusion that in both the short and longer term, COVID-19 is elevated with risk of neuropsychiatric symptoms as compared to persons in Korea and Japan infected with another respiratory condition.
What symptoms and conditions emerge in this long COVID population as measured by propensity score matched outcomes in the 30-plus day cohort? Myriad neurological-based conditions:
Guillain-Barré syndrome
Cognitive deficit
Insomnia
Anxiety disorder
Encephalitis
Ischemic stroke
Mood disorder
Are there any mitigating factors, interventions reducing risk of these neuropsychiatric symptoms linked with long COVID?
According to the study which has its limitations and is not designed to prove causation factors ranging from mild severity of COVID-19, increased vaccination against COVID-19 and heterologous vaccination could be associated with lower long-term risk of adverse neuropsychiatric outcomes in the targeted populations.
The time attenuation effect was the strongest during the first six months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, and this risk remained statistically significant for up to one year in Korea but beyond one year in Japan, according to the authors’ entry in the peer-reviewed journal nature human behavior.
Thanks to the validation cohort with Japanese data, the authors were able to replicate the findings. The authors point out that their “findings contribute to the growing evidence base on long COVID by considering ethnic diversity.”
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A top Republican is demanding the Pentagon explain why it tried to hide taxpayer dollars sent to China for risky virus research
A new Defense Department report shockingly revealed the agency lost track of millions of taxpayer dollars sent to the adversary of the US.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is now demanding Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explain what exactly happened, according to correspondence exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com.
Paul says he's 'deeply concerned' over the Pentagon report finding the department couldn't determine whether it sent money to China for pathogen research.
'It is unacceptable that DoD cannot account for the full extent of taxpayer funding it has spent on pandemic pathogen research at Chinese research laboratories,' Paul wrote to Austin.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has requested files from the Pentagon regarding their use of taxpayer dollars to fund pathogen research in China. Paul has been investigating the origins of COVID for years and was shocked over the Pentagon's neglect in tracking funding to foreign countries
The Republican requested Sec. Austin turn over files relating to the Pentagon's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) that funded Chinese pathogen research, similar to the research done on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the COVID pandemic.
The senator has been vigorously investigating the origins of COVID and former White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci for his role in the pandemic and its policies.
Now he is examining the Pentagon's role in using 'American taxpayer dollars for risky virus research in China and other foreign countries.'
'This lack of oversight represents a significant gap in our national security and undermines public trust in the DoD,' Paul said.
Previously, the senator disclosed to DailyMail.com how Fauci still receives a taxpayer-funded 24/7 US Marshal security detail despite not being a government employee.
'The only other person probably getting his level of security would be the president, vice president, maybe cabinet members, and a few members in leadership in the House and Senate,' Paul told DailyMail.com.
Paul has also been outspoken in accusing Fauci of obfuscating the origins of the virus.
The Republican has twice sent referrals to the Justice Department for Fauci's prosecution, telling DailyMail.com 'he committed a felony by lying to Congress saying he didn't fund gain and function research. He's still saying that.'
'It is annoying that he's still out there crowing how great he is, when really his philosophic opinion that gain-of-function research is worth the risk is something that I think history should remember, and I'm going to do every bit of making sure that history remembers that he was philosophically in favor of the research that I believe allowed millions of people to die from this lab leak,' Paul told DailyMail.com.
Last month, the Kentuckian grilled several eminent doctors during a Senate hearing on the origins of COVID and definition of gain-of-function research.
The hearing became heated as lawmakers and witnesses sparred over the good that could come from the research that enhances viruses to make them more effective.
And Paul said if Republicans gain control of the Senate in November and he gets committee power, his first action will be to subpoena those files.
'The most important information is the NIH deliberation over what is, what is not gain-of-function,' he told DailyMail.com. 'They won't give us the information.'
Those documents will truly reveal whether Fauci lied to Congress about whether he was overseeing the dangerous research method, which he previously denied doing before the Senate, Paul said.
Still, the reputation damage to US public health officials is done, he added.
'We have public health officials that appear to be more salesmen for Big Pharma, than they do objective scientists, and that still is a problem,' Paul told DailyMail.com.
'It's led to a great deal of distrust, much more distrust over what the government tells us, than ever before,' he said.
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Jury Awards $687,000 to BlueCross BlueShield Scientist Fired for Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine
A federal jury has awarded $687,000 to a research scientist who was fired from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee for refusing to comply with the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Tanja Benton, who had worked at the firm for 16 years when she was fired, was awarded $177,240 in back pay, $10,000 in compensation, and $500,000 in punitive damages, according to a document made public by the federal court in eastern Tennessee on June 30.
Company officials told Ms. Benton in August of 2021 that she would need to be “fully vaccinated” to keep her position, according to her lawsuit. Ms. Benton refused, saying aborted fetal cell lines were involved in the development of the COVID-19 vaccines and she couldn’t “in good conscience consume the vaccine, which would not only defile her body but also anger and dishonor God.”
BlueCross BlueShield said her position involved “regular external public-facing interactions” so she couldn’t keep it. While Ms. Benton said her position became fully remote in 2020, BlueCross BlueShield said it would have involved some in-person interaction with clients.
Ms. Benton was told to pursue other positions within the company and applied for two. But she was fired on Nov. 4, 2021, and was told five days later that, “Unfortunately, all positions require the vax now,” according to an email entered in the case.
Her lawsuit charged that BlueCross BlueShield violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says an employer may not “discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment” because of that person’s religion. Employers can disregard religious exemption requests if they can prove accommodating them would create an undue hardship.
BlueCross BlueShield “cannot prove that allowing Plaintiff to continue her employment as a Bio Statistical Research Scientist without being vaccinated for COVID-19 constitutes an undue hardship,” the suit stated. The company “also cannot show that it made any good-faith efforts to accommodate plaintiff’s sincerely held religious beliefs.”
BlueCross BlueShield also was accused of violating the Tennessee Human Rights Act, which bars discrimination by employers at the state level.
“We’re disappointed by the decision,” Dalya Qualls White, chief communications officer for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, told The Epoch Times in an email. “We believe our vaccine requirement was the best decision for our employees and members, and we believe our accommodation to the requirement complied with the law. We appreciate our former employees’ service to our members and communities throughout their time with our company.”
A lawyer representing Ms. Benton didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, presented with the case, cleared Ms. Benton to sue her former employer.
Company lawyers had argued the firm would be unduly burdened by providing Ms. Benton an indefinite exception despite her role as a “public-facing employee.” The lawyers said she couldn’t have continued to work remotely indefinitely.
The company also asserted that Ms. Benton didn’t hold a sincerely held religious belief and “denies that the COVID-19 vaccine was derived from aborted fetus cell lines, which is verifiably false,” according to the company’s filing.
Johnson & Johnson used cells derived from an aborted fetus in the design, production, and testing of its COVID-19 vaccine. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines also utilized the cells in early testing. The companies have said the final products don’t contain aborted fetal cells.
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2 July, 2024
Pfizer About To Find Itself In Court Again
Pfizer Inc. previously admitted it behaved improperly in not reporting major clinical trial safety issues during the original COVID-19 “vaccine” trials because they claimed the US FDA were aware of what they were doing, therefore, it was OK. That is a very creative defence
But momentum is building to bring Pfizer, Moderna and “health experts” like Fauci to justice.
Grilling of Dr. Fauci goes on before US Senators and admissions of misinformation (read “lies”) are now flowing…..there was no science to support lockdowns, masking or social distancing.
The “experts” didn’t even bother to look at the science according to Dr. Scott Atlas who was part of the Trump Covid task force team.
We know better now and nobody should be so easily fooled again (think Bird Flu).
Now details are emerging of the specifics of the Kansas State lawsuit against Pfizer Inc. over the COVID-19 “vaccines”.
A Substack by Carl Heneghan of June 27th details the main alleged points which may be summarised as follows:
· Pfizer misled the public in relation to its claim of “safety and efficacy”
· Pfizer used confidentiality agreements to conceal critical data relating to the safety and effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine
· Pfizer used its confidentiality agreements with the US government and others to conceal, suppress, and omit material facts relating to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, including the safety and efficacy of the vaccine
· Pfizer used an extended study timeline to conceal critical data – the study was repeatedly delayed
· Pfizer has not honoured its promise to release safety data
· Pfizer destroyed the vaccine control group
· In its press release announcing emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer did not disclose that it had excluded immunocompromised individuals from its COVID-19 vaccine trials
· Pfizer knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis and did not properly report these in a timely manner
· Pfizer’s February 18, 2021, press release also did not disclose other adverse effects on the reproductive systems of women who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine
· Pfizer’s study on pregnant women failed and the results are secret
· Pfizer misrepresented and concealed material facts relating to the durability of protection provided by its COVID-19 vaccine
· Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine would prevent transmission even though it knew it had never studied the effect of its vaccine on transmission
· Pfizer worked to censor speech on social media that questioned it’s claims.
These alleged crimes have been well known for some time but now they will be tested in a court of law.
https://principia-scientific.com/pfizer-about-to-find-itself-in-court-again/
*************************************************Unvaccinated Police In Australia Fired Two Years After Covid Mandates Dropped
Two years after the Covid mandates ended, the West Australian Police Force has fired nearly 20 unvaccinated police officers and public servants for refusing to get the jabs.
A legal challenge against the mandates, brought by WA Police officer Ben Falconer and staff member Les Finlay, had previously secured an injunction preventing the force from firing unvaccinated staff until the matter had been settled in the courts.
However, a Supreme Court ruling that then-WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson’s Covid vaccination directive was “valid and lawful” brought an end to the injunction in April. WA Police announced the resumption of disciplinary action against 17 affected employees immediately after the hearing, with all 12 police officers and five staff having now been sacked.
Falconer was the last to be formally notified of his dismissal on Friday, for disobeying the Commissioner’s vaccination directive. Despite no prior history of disobedience, Falconer refused the jabs due to his concerns over the safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccines and the way in which mandates violated the bodily integrity of officers and staff.
While Deputy Commissioner Allan Adams said that Falconer’s dismissal was “regretful”, Falconer maintains that refusing Covid vaccination is the “best decision I’ve ever made”. Falconer, a Senior Constable who served in the force for 15 years, says that the sacked police officers had over 150 years of policing experience combined.
The firings come amid staffing shortages and low morale, with WA Police turning to overseas recruitment to prop up its frontline forces.
In April this year it was reported that WA Police was well short of its target of recruiting 950 new frontline officers by mid-year, with only 450-500 having signed on.
Opposition leader Libby Mettam (Liberal) said that in the past four years, there has been a “mass exodus of police with nearly 1,000 officers resigning” from the roughly 7,000 strong force.
Police Commissioner Col Blanch admitted that the force saw a “significant” reduction in police numbers after the Covid pandemic, with 570 officers leaving the force in 2022, of which 473 were resignations and 97 retirements.
WA Police was asked to provide comment along with up-to-date recruitment, resignation and retirement figures, but did not respond prior to publication deadline.
The Labour Government has blamed market forces for WA Police’s struggles with retention and recruitment. However survey data collected by the WA Police Union in 2022 showed that 77% of staff exiting the force claim poor work culture and dissatisfaction with management as their reasons for quitting.
Another union survey of members conducted in 2022 found that morale in the force is at an “all-time-low”, with almost two thirds (64.6%) of respondents describing morale as “poor”. This is more than double 28.2% who said the same in the last poll in 2017. None of the 1,966 respondents described morale as “excellent”.
A majority of respondents complained that their workload had increased, and half or more complained of fatigue, management problems, unpaid overtime and rostering issues.
Nearly three quarters (71.4%) of respondents said they’d used the WA Police mental health services, with 36.6% of service users reporting their experience was “very negative” or “negative”.
Public sector census data obtained under Freedom of Information by the Liberal opposition showed that in 2023, less than half (47.1%) would recommend their agency as a workplace, compared to almost 70% for the public sector overall.
Some of this discontent appears to be driven by the force’s Covid response. In an unauthorised survey of WA Police staff initiated by former officer Jordan McDonald, who resigned over vaccine mandates, employees said they felt “bullied” into getting vaccinated and complained about resources being diverted away from traditional policing towards the state’s Covid response.
In 2022, WA Police began an international recruitment drive to fill vacant frontline positions, with the aim of recruiting 750 officers from the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and New Zealand over a five-year period. WA Police has also been creative with its recruitment campaign at home, appealing to lonely hearts on hookup app Tinder.
The WA Police Union said it supports the overseas recruitment drive but characterised it as a “band-aid solution”.
“It’s only a matter of time before these new recruits obtain permanent residency and become familiar with the many cultural and organisational issues in WA Police,” the union said in a media statement.
The WA Police Union was approached by unvaccinated members for assistance with their industrial action resisting the mandates, but Falconer, who was a member, says the union’s response was “hostile”. The union also declined to provide information and comment for this article.
Unvaccinated WA Police staff had been on paid leave since the Covid vaccine mandate came into effect in December 2021 until their recent dismissals, an arrangement that Falconer has called “fiscally irresponsible”.
In an essay posted to social media platform X, Falconer said that the South Australian Police Force responded to the situation better. Unvaccinated SA Police officers were allowed to use accrued leave until the mandates dropped, after which they were allowed back to work “without ever being stood down and no disciplinary action taken whatsoever”, he said.
“I could have been back at work from June 2022 [when the mandates were dropped] and there were plenty of administrative tasks that could have been done with remote access to police systems if allowed to work from home,” said Falconer, who said he informed WA Police more than 30 times of his willingness to return to work.
Former police officer of 27 years Lance French, who was also fired this month for not complying with the Police Commissioner’s 2021 Covid vaccination directive, said that he too had informed WA Police numerous times that he wanted to return to work since the mandates were dropped.
Now that his two-and-a-half year legal fight has come to an end, Falconer said that he will take some time out to consider his next career move.
French expressed gratitude for the support of his wife, family and colleagues, opining on social media that while “the trajectory we are heading (as a society) is not good,” he was appreciative for “the legislative and judicial structures enabling our lawful challenge of Commissioner Dawson’s… draconian order to undergo a medical procedure”.
WA Police officers and staff are not the only Australian workers still experiencing repercussions from the Covid mandates, even after most of the public have well and truly moved on.
In January of this year, Queensland Health was criticised for continuing to discipline and fire healthcare workers for failing to comply with vaccination directives issued in late 2021.
More than 50 unvaccinated firefighters remain banned from returning to work in Victoria despite critical staffing shortages, and mandates remain in place for some nurses, midwives and doctors around the country.
The Australian state and territory governments’ coercive Covid vaccination mandates have come under fire recently with AstraZeneca’s admission that its vaccine can cause deadly blood clots, and with mounting vaccine injury claims.
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1 July, 2024
The Great Lockdown Swindle
Written by Alex Kriel
Many people will remember the Covid policy response as a nightmare involving: reduced access to medical treatment, businesses closures, disrupted schooling and fear generated by Government brainwashing.
After the event, it is always worth doing a ‘cui bono‘ (who benefits) exercise to identify who benefited, especially since the hopeless mainstream media have largely failed to do this.
Counterintuitively, the über-wealthy owners of 0.1% of wealth in the United States, increased their net worth by a staggering $6.4 trillion over the 2022-2023 pandemic period.
With their net worth growing from $12.1 trillion to $18.5 trillion, a pretty cool $20 million per head for approximately 300,000 people.
This outcome is counterintuitive since the lockdowns temporarily wrecked the economy and had a significant negative impact on Government debt, which ballooned due to staggering budget deficits. All things being equal, you would expect stock markets to move lower under these circumstances.
In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of extreme money printing though the stock market exploded and the benefit from this explosion accrued primarily to the über-wealthy, who hold most of the financial assets.
Regular folk without significant financial assets tended to get left with the rough end of the stick in the form of elevated inflation.
We covered the link between money printing and financial asset values in a previous note (‘Where did the money go?‘), the chart below shows that money printing (red), moves in almost exactly the same way as the size of the wealth owned by the wealthiest 0.1% (blue). Both axes are in trillion (millions of millions).
You could credibly argue that the aim of monetary policy seems to be to prop up the value of the financial assets held by the über-wealthy. Within the group of über-wealthy, gains were not evenly distributed.
The world’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos, made over $90 billion in paper gains over the first nine months of 2020 due to an increase in Amazon’s share price. A large part of this was thanks to lockdowns, which closed down the bricks and mortar competitors and diverted tens of billions of dollars to Amazon, whose sales growth doubled from around 20% to 40% towards the end of 2020.
Another group which seemed pleased with the lockdowns was that of the social engineers who had since the 1970s wanted to redesign society, including to reduce or even eliminate growth.
The Chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab co-authored a book, COVID-19:The Great Reset.
The book calls for significant parts of the lockdown response to be made permanent; the book’s cover makes clear that he wanted to leverage Covid for the purposes of introducing massive societal change.
They say that you should never let a good crisis go to waste, but what if rather than waiting for a good crisis, some interest groups created or simply exaggerated a crisis?
One thing that has become clear over the recent past is that the über-wealthy have access to enormous lobbying power via their foundations.
A large foundation can comfortably spend around $400 million a year on lobbying (philanthropy). As we discussed in our note on green money, the resources of the oligarch foundations dwarf the funding available to regular political parties.
In addition to having access to foundations, the über-wealthy have significant media reach in their own right. This is what several high profile business leaders said in 2020 about the coronavirus:
As we now know, the global infection fatality rate (IFR) was 0.03% for the under-60s: this was not the existential threat that it was made out to be. The fact that Covid was not an existential threat and that the infamous Imperial model was significantly overstated was clear from March 2020, as soon as the Diamond Princess figures came in. Professor Levitt identified that the Imperial model was massively overstated (I was able to help him correct some small errors in the calculations).
We can identify a small group of über– wealthy who on an ex-post basis enjoyed rapid and large increases in wealth as lockdowns favoured their businesses whilst disadvantaging competitors.
Furthermore, the eye watering money printing significantly raised the value of pretty well all financial assets. Finally, a group of social engineers who wished to see a “Great Reset” involving reduced consumption also seemed well pleased with lockdowns, the WEF website carried gushing articles about the benefits of lockdowns.
It could be that the quotes above from Schwab, Soros and Gates were alarmist as they were made in the heat of the moment. I was always dubious about this explanation: Bill Gates’s quote was the earliest from February, but the others were later and after actual data were available.
These individuals are very wealthy and must presumably be highly numerate and able to accurately assess risks. They would also have access to the best available researchers and sophisticated databases. It feels unlikely that they would get simple ratios significantly wrong, in my opinion.
In any event, a credible case could be made to say that some vested interest groups wanted to see a terrible overreaction to Covid, provided that this was accompanied by enough money printing.
It is worth remembering that the pre-existing pandemic response plans explicitly excluded lockdowns as a policy option:
In other policy areas, I have noticed a pattern whereby high profile oligarchs float a policy idea, which subsequently becomes Government policy years later (more about this later).
I am not making accusations, but identifying interest groups that either benefited financially or achieved the policy response that they wanted.
Worryingly, the issue of lockdown effectiveness is being largely ignored, even though Professor Ioannidis et al. have convincingly shown that lockdowns achieved next to nothing.
There is a danger that various interest groups are ensuring that this topic is not addressed so that they can repeat lockdowns in the future.
Crime requires three elements and we have all three in lockdowns: motivation ($6.4 trillion increase in net worth), method (enormous lobbying resources) and opportunity (venal politicians). Is this too conspiratorial?
https://principia-scientific.com/the-great-lockdown-swindle/
***********************************************University of Hong Kong Pediatric Specialists Identify Mechanisms Driving Vaccine Induced Myocarditis
Aggregated data recently suggests that Natural Killer (NK) cell activation by mRNA COVID-19 vaccine contributes to the pathogenesis of acute myocarditis in genetically and epidemiologically vulnerable subjects.
This is the conclusion of a study funded by the Hong Kong Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) 2020/21 and the CRF Coronavirus and Novel Infectious Diseases Research Exercises
Patrick Ip, a specialist pediatrician at University of Hong Kong and colleagues collected and analyzed samples from 60 adolescents with vaccine-related myocarditis: these including pro-inflammatory cytokines, cardiac troponin T, genotyping, and immunophenotyping of the corresponding activation subsets of NK cells, monocytes, and T cells.
The findings, compared with samples from 10 vaccinated individuals without myocarditis and 10 healthy controls, the study team in investigating the rare, but real vaccine-related acute myocarditis they pursue a clearer understanding of precise mechanisms based on their hypothesis that natural killer (NK) cells play a central role in its pathogenesis.
In a previous epidemiology study, the authors found a significant increase in the risk of acute myocarditis with rapid onset (median only 2 days) following vaccination with Pfizer’s mRNA-based vaccine (BNT162b2), particularly among male adolescents, especially after the second dose. But what are the underlying immune mechanisms involved? What follows is a summarized breakdown.
What’s the observation in this study?
The Hong Kong-based physician specialists and scientists observed very high levels of serum cytokines pivotal for NK cells in post-vaccination patients with myocarditis.
What was particularly noticeable in male patients and those individuals receiving their second jab?
Other than KIR polymorphism, the NK cell-specific eQTLs DNAM-1 (CD226) and FuT11 were also known to be key determinants of NK cell activities.”
What about after a third dose—why a lower incidence of myocarditis?
The authors of this study cannot be certain about why the cases of myocarditis are lower after a third jab.
They propose one possible answer: that this dose’s administration occurs during the longer time gap between the second and third doses of the vaccine. Could it be that genetically vulnerable subjects would have already developed the complication after the second dose. If not, the likelihood of developing myocarditis after the third dose would be low. More research would be needed to elucidate these and other possibilities.
Core hypothesis
The authors of this study find evidence backing their core hypothesis: NK cells serve a key role in the cause of rapid-onset of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine-induced acute myocarditis.
The Hong Kong-based research team now offers world-novel insights into the fundamental immune mechanisms associated with rare, but very real, and potentially deadly, side effects.
The authors assume the growth in adoption of the use of mRNA vaccines meaning these findings raise implications for “designing improved mRNA vaccines that would have minimal NK activation effects.”
Physicians must be aware of patients who not only have a history of post-vaccination myocarditis but who are also genetically susceptible. Thus, clinicians can be more proactive, acting earlier with sound medical advice, and based on these insights close monitoring could very well be warranted before and after receiving a similar mRNA vaccine.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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