Monthly Archives: August 2021

Common Sense

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Yesterday The Daily Wire reported that a federal judge has ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the Trump administration policy of having illegal immigrants wait in Mexico while their asylum requests are evaluated by the courts.

The article reports:

Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk ordered Biden to “enforce and implement [Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly referred to as ‘Remain in Mexico’] in good faith until such a time as it has been lawfully rescinded in compliance with the [Administrative Procedure Act] and until such a time as the federal government has sufficient detention capacity to detain all aliens subject to mandatory detention under Section 1255 without releasing any aliens because of a lack of detention resources.”

Considering the fact that our detention centers on the southern border of America are overcrowded, this is the compassionate thing to do.

The article notes:

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who filed the lawsuit with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, celebrated the win on social media, tweeting: “Big win for border security!”

“We just won our second immigration lawsuit against the Biden Admin! They unlawfully tried to shut down the legal and effective Remain-in-Mexico program, but Texas and Missouri wouldn’t have it,” Paxton’s office wrote in a tweet. “Together we sued, and just handed Biden yet another major loss!”

The judge’s order comes after Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released new statistics yesterday showing that the Biden’s border catastrophe worsened for the sixth consecutive month as U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended 212,672 illegal aliens—the worst month ever recorded by DHS, which was created in 2002.

This is a win for American sovereignty.

Maybe The Rules Weren’t Only For The Little People

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There was a bit of a ruckus recently about former President Obama’s birthday party. Americans were told it was scaled down from the original numbers, but the leaked photographs didn’t really look very scaled down. However, in a free society, anyone is entitled to have any birthday party he chooses as long as he is willing to accept the consequences of his decision. Well, the consequences arrived.

Yesterday The U.K. Daily Mail reported that 74 people on Martha’s Vineyard have tested positive for Covid-19 since former President Barack Obama’s 60th birthday on Saturday. Actually, testing positive isn’t that big of a deal–a lot of our test results are not accurate. The article also notes that as of now there is no connection between the sudden spike in cases and former President Obama’s party. If there were a connection, would we know?

The article reports:

But some of the island’s residents scoffed at the measures to create a COVID-free zone, given that partygoers were circulating between various events and locations, in a town raging with a Delta strain that spreads quickly. 

Even vaccinated individuals aren’t immune. Of the 48 people who tested positive last week, more than half were vaccinated, according to health officials.

‘I wouldn’t have gone to the party even if I was invited,’ one resident of Edgartown, who had a friend working at the party, told DailyMail.com. 

‘I’m sure some attendees went home with some extra luggage they didn’t pack or see. Stay tuned.’

It seems that we may need to re-evaluate the vaccine. Given the fact that the majority of the attendees at former President Obama’s birthday party were under the age of 70, I suspect there will be few, if any, hospitalizations or deaths. When we examine the extreme measures that the government has taken in reacting to this disease, it might be a good idea to consider that the vast majority of the deaths from Covid-19 occur in people over the age of 70. The rest of us, if we are basically healthy, have a very limited risk of serious complications from the disease.

Follow The Money

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As I have previously stated, I have wondered why the emphasis in dealing with the coronavirus is on vaccines (and now booster shots) rather than treatments and the natural immunity people have from having recovered from the virus. I think I have found at least part of the answer to that question.

One America News posted an article today with the following headline, “Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from COVID-19 vaccine booster market.”

The article reports:

Drugmakers Pfizer Inc, BioNTech and Moderna Inc are expected to reap billions of dollars from COVID-19 booster shots in a market that could rival the $6 billion in annual sales for flu vaccines for years to come, analysts and healthcare investors say.

For several months, the companies have said they expect that fully inoculated people will need an extra dose of their vaccines to maintain protection over time and to fend off new coronavirus variants.

Now a growing list of governments, including Chile, Germany and Israel, have decided to offer booster doses to older citizens or people with weak immune systems in the face of the fast-spreading Delta variant.

Late on Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized a booster dose of vaccines from Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc for people with compromised immune systems.

Pfizer, along with its German partner BioNTech, and Moderna have together locked up over $60 billion in sales of the shots just in 2021 and 2022. The agreements include supply of the initial two doses of their vaccines as well as billions of dollars in potential boosters for wealthy nations.

Going forward, analysts have forecast revenue of over $6.6 billion for the Pfizer/BioNTech shot and $7.6 billion for Moderna in 2023, mostly from booster sales. They eventually see the annual market settling at around $5 billion or higher, with additional drugmakers competing for those sales.

The vaccine makers say that evidence of waning antibody levels in vaccinated people after six months, as well as an increasing rate of breakthrough infections in countries hit by the Delta variant, support the need for booster shots.

Some early data suggests that the Moderna vaccine, which delivers a higher dose at the outset, may be more durable than Pfizer’s shot, but more research is needed to determine whether that is influenced by the age or underlying health of the people vaccinated.

As a result, it is far from clear how many people will need boosters, and how often. The profit potential of booster shots may be limited by the number of competitors who enter the market. In addition, some scientists question whether there is enough evidence that boosters are needed, particularly for younger, healthy people. The World Health Organization has asked governments to hold off on booster shots until more people worldwide receive their initial doses.

The article concludes:

There’s still a lot of uncertainty around how boosters would be rolled out in the United States. Still, it is possible or even likely that people will be boosted with different vaccines than they were originally vaccinated with. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is already testing mixed boosting, and other countries that have used so-called mix and match vaccination have not had problems with that strategy.

One factor that could curb prices is if the U.S. government continues paying for most or all of the shots administered in the country, rather than leave it in the hands of private health insurers. In that scenario, the government would still be negotiating prices directly with vaccine makers, and could use its buying power to stave off price increases.

Bijan Salehizadeh, managing director at healthcare investment firm Navimed Capital, said the U.S. government is likely going to want to keep paying in order to keep vaccination rates high and prevent new COVID surges, particularly if a Democratic administration is still in power.

“It’s going to be paid for until the virus disappears or mutates to be less virulent,” Salehizadeh said.

Whatever happened to herd immunity?

Why Were They Trying To Pass This In The Dead Of Night?

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Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about a vote in the Senate Wednesday night.

The article reports:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blocked an attempt by Senate Democrats to push through a federal election overhaul bill early Wednesday morning.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) brought the For The People Act, a bill critics say amounts to a federal takeover of elections, to the floor around 3:30 a.m. after the Senate had concluded 15 hours of amendment votes on a $3.5 trillion budget resolution. In the dead of night, Schumer sought to pass the federal overhaul of elections by unanimous consent, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Only one objection by a senator was required to stop the process. In a roughly 15-minute back-and-forth, Cruz tanked Schumer’s attempt to force the election bill through the Senate. Cruz blasted the bill in remarks on the Senate floor:

This bill would constitute a federal government takeover of elections. It would constitute a massive power grab by Democrats. It would disenfranchise millions of Americans and it would do precisely the opposite of its nominal title, ‘For The People.’ It is, instead, for the politicians because it entrenches politicians and ensures that the people cannot vote them out of office. It would strike down virtually every reasonable voter integrity law in the country, including voter I.D. laws supported by the overwhelming majority of this country, including prohibitions on ballot harvesting, again widely supported by people in this country. It would mandate that felons be allowed to vote, and it would automatically register millions of illegal aliens to vote. It would profoundly undermine democracy in this country, and for that reason I object.

The article notes:

Schumer’s failure to force the For The People Act through the Senate so far amounts to a failure for Texas Democrats who spent weeks pushing for the legislation, as well. On returning to Texas this week, state Rep. James Talarico touted his work in D.C. and said he is “confident” that the Texas Democrats’ lobbying would force Congress to pass the federal election bill.

“I’m home! Our quorum break shined a national spotlight on the TX voter suppression bill and pushed Congress closer to passing a federal voting rights act to override it. I’m confident they will,” Talarico said on Twitter.

Just for the record, our Founding Fathers purposely put election law in the hands of the individual states. The federalization of our elections is unconstitutional. Unfortunately the Democrats seem to have no problem shredding the Constitution. When President Biden extended the eviction moratorium, he admitted that it was probably unconstitutional for him to do that, but he figured it would take a while for the courts to sort that out. If the Democrats can pass the For The People Act, the damage may be done before anyone rules that it is unconstitutional. There is a reason it was brought up at 3:30 in the morning–the Democrats thought they could sneak it through before anyone noticed.

It has been said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. What happened Wednesday night is an example of that. Thank God for Ted Cruz.

 

Actions Have Consequences

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A news source called NTD posted an article on Wednesday about the impact of the eviction moratorium. NTD is a New York-based, global television network founded in 2001 by Chinese-Americans who fled communism. I think their perspective is very interesting.

The article reports:

Extended rent moratoriums and the slow distribution of billions in federal rent assistance are driving many small landlords to call it quits.

“Nobody wants to become a landlord anymore,” said Diane Baird, executive director of the Lake Erie Landlord Association. “And we have very few new people entering into the business.”

The Lake Erie Landlord Association represents landlords in northern Ohio, southern Michigan, and western Pennsylvania.

Jon Frickensmith, president of the South Wisconsin Landlord Association, told The Epoch Times, “Multiple landlords have told me they are selling out. They ask us how to get out of the business and how to get the tenants out of their houses. These are mom-and-pop operators, the kind of landlords that are willing to take tenants with bad credit or a criminal history. This will only add to the housing crisis.”

The vast majority of landlords in the United States are individuals, with most owning one or two rental houses.

The article notes:

The National Equity Atlas estimates that American landlords are owed more than $21 billion in overdue rent.

Don James, president of the Florida Landlord Association in Coral Gables, believes the moratorium is detrimental to renters as well as landlords.

“We as landlords cannot enforce our rental contracts and, this being a seller’s market, (it) is forcing landlords to sell their properties. This is going to cause shrinking of rental facilities, thus hurting renters.”

Mike Bodeis, president of the 450-member Port Huron Area Landlord Association, and himself the owner of 40 rental houses, told The Epoch Times, “It’s a myth that 3.6 million Americans may soon be made homeless. Two-thirds of them could be paying their rent, but are not because they choose not to. They did not choose to pay their rent or utility bills with all the stimulus money they received.

To illustrate, Bodeis said, “In one eviction, in which I personally participated, we took six flatscreen TVs out of the house. It’s all about priorities.”

I have seen this lack of priorities in action before. Poverty has a lot more to it than how much money a person makes. It has to do with learning to set priorities and make responsible decisions. After hurricane Katrina, residents in New Orleans received government checks of a couple of thousand dollars to provide for temporary housing–the government understood that much of the housing in New Orleans was uninhabitable after the hurricane. As soon as those checks were received, business at the strip clubs and riverboat gambling casinos increased rapidly. Many of the people who received those checks had never been taught to plan for the future or to be financially responsible. Many people who were out of work because of the Covid epidemic did the same sort of thing.

The problem of reckless personal spending has its roots in our culture, our education system, and our government. Our government sets the example of reckless spending; our citizens follow that example. Out schools do not teach basic life skills such as budgeting, basic financial planning, and personal responsibility. Our culture is one of instant gratification–the use of credit cards is encouraged, enormous education debt is encouraged, and many Americans have incurred more debt than they will ever be able to pay off.

Putting a moratorium on evictions is not the answer. Getting the money to the renters who need it and somehow putting guardrails around how the money is spent is what is needed.

Spreading Covid Throughout America

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The Epoch Times posted an article today about the Covid crisis at our southern border.

The article reports:

Four in 10 illegal immigrants released in a city last week near the U.S.-Mexico border tested positive for COVID-19, according to officials there.

“That was very high,” Pete Saenz, the mayor of Laredo, told The Washington Examiner.

Dr. Victor Trevino, the Laredo health authority, confirmed the numbers with the paper.

Officials in Laredo, a Texas city that is located across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, did not return requests for comment, but they offered a similar positivity percentage in a federal lawsuit last month.

Officials said in the complaint that Customs and Border Protection officials have been dropping off immigrants in the city despite large numbers of them testing positive for COVID-19, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

The surge in illegal immigrants crossing the border amid the COVID-19 pandemic presents a safety concern, Republican lawmakers and others argue.

“Americans are sick and tired of endless mandates while watching COVID-19 cases surge at the border,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said on Twitter this week.

The Laredo case numbers are the highest recorded along the border, but officials in McAllen said last week that out of 7,000 immigrants released by federal officers into the city the week before, 1,500 tested positive for COVID-19.

Americans are being threatened with vaccine passports while we are importing the coronavirus into our nation at the southern border. How does that make sense?

The article concludes:

On Thursday, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that “the border is not open” and that the agency is operating under Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for the pandemic.

“CBP is making every effort to remain within CDC guidelines and mitigate long periods of processing and holding to minimize potential exposure to our workforce, those in custody, and the community.  Once processing is complete, these individuals will be expeditiously transferred out of CBP custody,” the spokesperson said.

The lawsuit was dismissed on Monday after the parties entered an agreement.

Saenz told outlets that the agreement includes the city not accepting immigrants who have been dropped off by Border Patrol. Instead, the city is hiring a charter bus company to immediately bus them to other cities, including Austin and Houston.

“We entered into an understanding that we would drop the lawsuit, which we did, and then Border Patrol would deliver these migrants, about 200 or so per day, to a city facility that we leased and then we, in turn as a city retained a bussing company to transport these migrants farther north here in Texas,” Saenz told Border Report.

The statement that “the border is not open” does not ring true in view of the actual number of people crossing our southern border illegally. I wonder how many would be crossing if the border were open. Meanwhile, Americans are dying because of the spread of the coronavirus by illegal immigrants who are not subject to the same rules as American citizens.

Is The Misery Index Back?

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In the 1970’s Chicago Economist Robert Barro coined the phrase ‘misery index.’ The phrase was used to describe a number obtained by adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. During the Carter administration, that number ranged between 12 and 17 percent. During the Trump administration, that number ranged between 5 and 7 percent. I shudder to think where it is headed during the Biden administration.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about the current rate of inflation.

The article reports:

Inflation continued to surge in July, but appeared to settle close to the fastest pace in almost 13 years as the economy continues to emerge from the pandemic, the feds said Wednesday.

The Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index, which measures a basket of goods and services as well as energy and food costs, jumped 5.4 percent in July from a year earlier.

That’s the same as June’s 5.4 percent year-over-year rise in prices, which marked the biggest 12-month rise since August 2008, just before the financial crisis sent the US into the worst recession it had seen since the Great Depression.

Consumer prices rose 0.5 percent from the month prior, the Labor Department said.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected a 5.3 percent year-over-year spike in July and monthly increase of 0.5 percent.

The core consumer price index, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, rose 4.3 percent from a year ago, lower than the 4.5 percent year-over-year jump that the index saw in June, which marked the fastest acceleration since 1991.

The article concludes:

Federal Reserve officials have so far maintained their position that inflation is mostly temporary and will likely subside this year. They’ve cited this as a reason why they haven’t yet pulled back on their economic support measures like the bond-buying program.

Last week’s July jobs report showed that the country added a whopping 943,000 jobs in the month, more than expected, in a sign that the labor market recovery could finally be gaining steam.

Fed officials have said they will look for more confirmation of that in the next few jobs reports before a tapering of their financial support measures will be considered.

“I think this keeps taper talk on the table because inflation is staying relatively high and transitory may mean a little longer,” Minopoli said.

“If the supply chain kinks and businesses raising prices remains sustained, ‘transitory inflation’ might be a little less transitory than Fed Chair Powell will like and the hawks at the Fed may push a little harder on timing and speed of taper,” he added.

I remember the 1970’s–gas lines and all– and I don’t want to go back there.

The Real Cost Of An Open Southern Border

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The Heritage Foundation posted an article today about the real cost of the open-border policies of the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Six months into the Biden administration, the president’s border crisis has become far more than a national-security, humanitarian, and constitutional crisis. It represents one of the most substantial public-health crises facing the United States as we struggle to recover from the pandemic.

Driven by politics and ideological hubris, the administration remains committed to a nonsensical, inconsistent, and anti-science open-borders agenda that not only encourages record levels of illegal immigration but also needlessly jeopardizes the lives of American citizens.

In short, the administration is knowingly seeding border towns and cities with individuals who are actively carrying and transmitting the virus—people who have defied our laws and broken into our country while ignoring almost all basic guidance concerning COVID.

The article notes:

Under the direction of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a 17-year-old from anywhere in the world who illegally crosses our southwest border will be released and transported to any city in the U.S. where they can find a “sponsor,” regardless of their COVID status.

Yet while the country is navigating new COVID variants and rising infections, the Biden administration continues to play a dangerous political game with American lives. As the Rio Grande Valley area is reporting a 900 percent increase in COVID cases, the administration is currently releasing, on average, 80 percent of the families illegally entering the U.S. This fiscal year, Mayorkas has directed the release of more than 170,000 family members into local communities without testing for COVID, forcing those communities to take on the responsibility.

McAllen, along with local NGOs, has been forced to establish temporary shelters to address the massive flood of illegal aliens into their communities. McAllen’s mayor recently declared the city overwhelmed and over capacity. The COVID-positive rate among the illegal aliens released into McAllen is 15 percent.

We’ve learned in recent days of thousands of illegal aliens being detained under bridges in Texas, in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions, because CBP lacks the capacity to hold them anywhere else. These are among the most intense “super-spreader” events. Other pictures from inside CBP facilities show illegal aliens crammed into small areas like sardines, creating what amounts to an active COVID petri dish.

The article concludes:

According to the Reuters COVID-19 Tracker, COVID cases are spiking across Central and South America, the region driving the mass increase in illegal immigration. In Honduras, infections are at 99 percent of peak rate, with not even 10 percent of Hondurans vaccinated. Cases in Guatemala are around 72 percent of peak rate, with even fewer individuals vaccinated than in Honduras (about 7.2 percent). Only about 3 percent of Nicaragua’s population has received a vaccine.

Meanwhile, cases in the U.K. are falling, and more than 64 percent of the population is vaccinated. Cases are also falling in countries such as the Netherlands, Portugal, and the Czech Republic. Even in European nations where cases are rising, either the rate is low (Germany, 9 percent of peak rate; Poland, less than 1 percent of peak rate) or at least half the population is vaccinated.

The Biden administration has sparked an unprecedented crisis on our southern border. It has undone the effective policies of the previous administration that created the most secure border in American history.

Not only do the massive numbers of illegal aliens being apprehended at the border every month overwhelm our Border Patrol, but many are subsequently released into the interior because CBP simply does not have the capacity to detain, process, and deport them.

The Biden administration’s policies regarding immigration at the southern border have essentially been seeding the Covid epidemic in the United States. If every illegal immigrant with Covid infects 10 people, you will have a repeat of the pandemic. Even if the new variants are not as lethal as the original, that’s still a lot of Covid cases.

Our Current United States Senate Is Not Protecting Americans

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Just the News is reporting today that Senate Democrats voted down an amendment to prevent “…illegal aliens with criminal records from receiving conditional or lawful permanent resident status.”

The article reports:

The amendment was shot down 50-49 early Wednesday morning around 3am.

If adopted, the amendment would have established a “deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to prohibiting illegal aliens with criminal records from receiving conditional or lawful permanent resident status in the United States.”

It was proposed by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. All 50 Senate Democrats voted against it. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota missed the votes on all amendments.

Democrats are seeking to offer green cards to millions of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. through their budget reconciliation plan.

It’s time to look past the obvious about granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and talk about some of the subtle consequences. First of all, our current path to citizenship has been broken for years. It needs to be fixed. However, granting citizenship to people who have entered the country illegally will not fix it. We need an orderly – not overly expensive – method of immigration that allows for assimilation. Secondly, granting green cards to millions of illegal aliens puts downward pressure on the wages of lower-income Americans.  That is not a good idea. Thirdly, bringing in millions of people into a country all at once is not conducive to the assimilation of those people into the culture of that country. The only reason to bring that many people into the country at once is to change the culture and demographics of the country. Most Americans would not support that.

 

 

In What World Does This Make Sense?

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The Western Journal posted an article today about the Biden administration’s energy policy. About the kindest adjective for the policy I can come up with is illogical.

The article reports:

The Biden administration, which began its reign by turning off the spigot of oil flowing from North American sources, is now begging Middle Eastern nations for anything they can spare.

The White House on Wednesday released a statement by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in which Sullivan said the United States needs foreign nations to bail it out.

“Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery. The price of crude oil has been higher than it was at the end of 2019, before the onset of the pandemic,” the statement said.

The American Automobile Association on Wednesday said the average price of gasoline in the United States is $3.185 per gallon. That’s more than $1 higher than the average price of $2.183 from a year ago.

“While OPEC+ recently agreed to production increases, these increases will not fully offset previous production cuts that OPEC+ imposed during the pandemic until well into 2022. At a critical moment in the global recovery, this is simply not enough,” the statement continued.

“President [Joe] Biden has made clear that he wants Americans to have access to affordable and reliable energy, including at the pump.”

“Although we are not a party to OPEC, the United States will always speak to international partners regarding issues of significance that affect our national economic and security affairs, in public and private. We are engaging with relevant OPEC+ members on the importance of competitive markets in setting prices. Competitive energy markets will ensure reliable and stable energy supplies, and OPEC+ must do more to support the recovery,” the statement said.

I don’t mean to be cynical, but you could fertilize your garden with the above statement. The statement was made as a diversion from the policies of the administration that caused the price of gasoline at the pump to rise.

Some of us remember the gasoline lines of the 1970’s because we depended on Middle East oil rather than developing our own resources. The dependency influenced American foreign policy in a negative way. President Trump freed us from that dependency. President Biden is bringing us back to that dependency.

Is The Constitution Still Relevant?

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A website called Becker News posted an article on Monday about what is happening to  the January 6th defendants.

The article reports:

The Department of Justice has provided one of the first documented concessions that prosecutors are withholding potentially exculpatory evidence in court cases concerning January 6 defendants.

Acting United States Attorney Channing D. Phillips suggested on Monday that this is the motivation behind keeping more than 14,000 hours of documentary footage of the January 6 events out of the hands of defense attorneys and the public in United States v. Couy Griffin.

Griffin, a county commissioner for Otero County, New Mexico, was arrested for Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building and Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building, on January 19. The prosecution sought to waive the defendants’ right to a speedy trial.

The defendant was released on his own personal recognizance on February 5, 2021. On March 18, 2021, the United States filed a motion for a 60-day continuance of the proceeding, according to the court filing.

Why would the prosecution want to waive the defendants’ right to a speedy trial?

The article explains:

The government’s reasoning on the continuance motion was that the Capitol Breach investigation was so complex and sweeping that it would “make the immediate legal proceeding impossible, or result in a miscarriage of justice,” the prosecutors argued. The defense called the prosecution’s bluff. The U.S. attorneys did not want to give the defendant a speedy trial because they have other concerns.

“The same day, Defendant filed an opposition to the government’s motion, objecting to tolling of his constitutional and statutory rights to a speedy trial. Defendant asserted that there was nothing complex about his case, which ‘actually involves pictures of [him] with a bullhorn on the Capitol steps,’ argued that the government had mischaracterized its own ‘logistical and manpower burdens’ as a complexity created by the case itself, and essentially accused the government of weaponizing the STA ‘to strategically manage which trials and cases it wishes to put forward to the public first’,” the court filing states.

The obvious issue is a complication arising over the matter of potentially exculpatory evidence within the more than 14,000 hours of archival footage and other documentary evidence related to the January 6th events at the capitol.

The article concludes:

“What is obvious now in hindsight is that the Biden Justice Department prosecutors sought and obtained felony charges in many cases based on almost no meaningful review of actual evidence about what happened; it used fear and hysteria to justify doing so,” Shipwreckedcrew of Human Events observes. “Now they are being pressed to provide the evidence that is supposed to support the felony charges they brought, and are unable to do so in the timeframe required by law. So they are abandoning the cases on the best possible outcome available—the least serious of all federal crimes, ‘petty’ misdemeanors.”

“Now that the DOJ has gone down the path of exchanging guilty pleas to misdemeanors for some defendants charged with felonies, it will become more difficult to not do the same for a much larger number of defendants where the facts are substantially the same,” the Human Events piece added.

The Department of Justice appears to have politicized the charges against the Jan. 6 defendants for effect. This is not consistent with “justice,” this is the weaponization of the nation’s highest law enforcement agency to do the bidding of the dominant political party.

The treatment of those who entered the Capitol Building on January 6th is a blight on our justice system. The protesters should not have entered the Capitol or engaged in behavior other than peaceful protest, but the way they have been treated is much more typical of a third-world country than a representative republic.

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

It’s time we started following our Constitution.

The Oppressive Rock

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There are some really dumb things going on at our college campuses right now. It seems that the children we are sending to college have no concept of the real world and the fact that in the real world there may be people who say things they might not like.

Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about the removal of a boulder from the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

The article reports:

A large boulder has been removed from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after the Black Student Union and other racial justice activists complained about it being a “racist monument.”

What makes the rock allegedly racist? In the 1920s, a journalist once used a racist term to describe the large boulder.

The rock’s existence has apparently been oppressing students ever since.

Fox News outlined the “racism” of the rock, as claimed by student activists:

Chamberlin Rock, which rests atop Observatory Hill, is named after a 19th Century geologist and former university president, Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, whose work centered on glacial deposits, according to a bio on the university’s website.

But it was a reporter’s reference to the rock in a nearly century-old Wisconsin State Journal article that prompted the push for its removal.

In October 1925, the university had the boulder excavated and placed prominently atop the hill to honor Chamberlin, who would die in Chicago three years later. The rock was a rare specimen believed to be more than 2 billion years old, and before it was installed on Observatory Hill, only about a foot and a half was visible above ground, according to the article. It was believed to have been carried by glaciers from Canada to Wisconsin.

In the 1920s, a slang term used to describe large dark rocks included the N-word, and it appears in coverage of the rock’s installation.

University researchers did not uncover other instances in print where the rock was referred to with this word, but they said the Ku Klux Klan was active on campus at the time of the rock’s dedication, according to an article in the same newspaper published earlier this week.

How much did it cost the University to remove the rock? How much of that money could have been used for a scholarship for a worthy student? Racism is not acceptable–but it does exist–not to the extent that some claim, but it does exist.

Does The Vaccine Work Or Not?

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Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about breakthrough cases of the coronavirus in Massachusetts. The article notes that according to the Mayo Clinic vaccine tracker, Massachusetts is the second-most vaccinated state in the country. Vermont is first and Maine is third.

The article reports:

Data from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) released on Monday shows the average age of vaccinated individuals who have died from coronavirus is 82.5 years old and that 73 percent of those who died had underlying conditions.

The new data revealed 395 hospitalizations and 100 deaths have occurred from breakthrough coronavirus cases, according to a Boston Herald report. Breakthrough cases refer to individuals who have been infected with the virus after being fully vaccinated.

The article notes:

Massachusetts’ pandemic low occurred in June 2021 when the seven-day average of new overall cases was down to 64.

The department said in a statement that the latest breakthrough case numbers were “incredibly low” and “even lower” for those who were hospitalized or died.

“All available data continue to support that all 3 vaccines used in the US are highly protective against severe disease and death from all known variants of COVID-19,” DPH stated. “The best way to protect yourself and your loved ones is to get vaccinated.”

More than 4.3 million Massachusetts residents out of the state’s population of about 6.9 million have been vaccinated. One hundred breakthrough deaths, therefore, represent 0.002 percent of all fully vaccinated individuals.

The 82.5-year-old median age of the deaths is about five years older than the U.S. average life expectancy, which is 77.3 years old as of last year.

Every life is important, but the last sentence illustrates how ridiculous the fear-mongering about this virus is. If you choose to be vaccinated, that’s fine. If you have had the coronavirus, research indicates that you have immunity. There is no reason to be vaccinated. Take basic precautions–wash your hands, avoid sick people, and practice basic hygiene. However, don’t give up your freedom because of a pandemic that has a very low death rate.

 

 

The Damage Done And The Damage To Come

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The Epoch Times reported the following today:

The Senate on Tuesday morning passed the $1.2 trillion White House-backed infrastructure bill after weeks of debate, although it’s not clear whether the bill will advance in the Democrat-controlled House.

The measure, called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, was hashed out by a bipartisan group of senators and President Joe Biden’s administration. The bill, which passed 69-30, will include $550 billion in new federal spending over five years.

The 2,700-page-long bill invests $110 billion toward roads, bridges, and major projects; provides some $66 billion to passenger and freight rail; $65 billion to rebuild the electric grid; $65 billion to expand broadband internet lines; $55 billion for water pipes including replacing lead pipes; and more.

“It has taken quite a long time, and there have been detours and everything else, but this will do a whole lot of good for America, and the Senate can be proud it has passed this,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said about the bill.

While some have described the bill as “bipartisan,” several prominent Republicans have vocally opposed it and claimed it would hand a victory to Democrats in Congress ahead of a fraught 2022 midterm election season. Former President Donald Trump again pilloried Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who voted in favor of the measure, for giving the bill his blessing while publicly questioning the Kentucky Republican’s leadership capacity.

On Sunday The Conservative Treehouse reported:

Good grief these UniParty Senators are infuriating.  During this interview with Maria Bartiromo, North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer (U-DC) actually has the nerve to brag about $450 billion in infrastructure spending amid a phase-one bill that has $1.2 trillion in total.  What’s the other $800 billion dollars being spent on doofus?

Another of Cramer’s advocacy points is how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the bill; as if that’s a good thing.  Making matters worse, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer devised a process pledging that this part of the infrastructure bill (phase-1) will only advance if it is married to the House party-line legislation (phase-2) that will spend as much as $3.5 trillion MORE on climate change action, paid leave policies, health care expansion, and other progressive agenda items.

The insufferable republicans that support the phase-one bill (The DeceptiCon crew) are, by direct consequence, advancing the $3.5 trillion phase-two bill that is entirely a Democrat spending spree on the Green New Deal and other insane initiatives. Acckkkk… we desperately need a second party in DC.

The passage of this bill is expected to pave the way for the reconciliation passage of the $3.5 trillion Democrat budget resolution.

Yesterday Red State Observer reported:

The framework for a $3.5 trillion Democrat budget resolution includes plans to provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living in the United States via the filibuster-proof reconciliation process.

On Monday, Senate Democrats unveiled the budget framework, which includes a series of instructions for various Senate committees to craft specific plans. As such, the framework instructs the Senate Judiciary Committee to spend $107 billion in American taxpayer money on amnesty for illegal aliens.

The language of the framework is vague, asking the Judiciary Committee members to give “lawful permanent status for qualified immigrants.” Those who would qualify for such an amnesty remain unclear.

The cost of the amnesty to taxpayers is just slightly lower than Senate Budget Committee chairman Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) amnesty plan, which was projected to cost $150 billion.

Any amnesty plan crafted by Democrats is expected to give green cards, which lead to naturalized American citizenship, millions of illegal aliens eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), those working on U. S. farms, and those considered “essential” workers.

This bill is not a step forward for Americans. It is a giant step into more government control of our lives and spending that will create massive inflation.

Fox Isn’t What It Used To Be

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As much as the political left in America likes to slam Fox News are being entirely right wing, that has never actually been the case. Actually Fox News historically has been one of the more balanced news networks. That was then; this is now. As the control of the network changes, it has lost some of its willingness to report thoroughly on some matters.

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday about some creative editing done by Fox News.

The article reports:

President Trump appeared on Fox News for an interview with Dan Bongino last night.  Unfortunately, when the interview segment was posted to the Fox News channel, some specific words from President Trump were deleted from the interview segment.

Ironically the name of Dan Bongino’s show is “unfiltered.”  Alas when President Trump’s spokesperson, Liz Harrington, reviewed the tape she discovered the censorship and showed on Twitter [SEE HERE]  In the transcript below the emboldened section was removed:

President Trump said: …“it’s a disgrace what’s happening, and I don’t think the country is going to stand for it much longer; they’re disgusted.  You have a fake election; you have an election with voter abuse and voter fraud, like nobody has ever seen before. And based on that, and based on what happened, they are destroying our country.  Whether it’s at the border. Whether it’s on crime. I can say in plenty of instances including military, you look at the leaders of military, the woke leaders of military, we have to focus on our great military for what it’s supposed to be – to protect us against very powerful countries like Russia, and China, and others who don’t exactly love us.”

The edit, called a “jump edit” takes place at 09:03 of the presented video below:

 

The article concludes:

This is just as bad as Big Tech. They are putting President Trump’s honest statement, and the concerns of tens of millions of Americans, down the Memory Hole.

I guess it’s FILTERED after all, @dbongino.

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) August 8, 2021

It is sad that news organizations are editing things to avoid letting Americans know the truth. I guess it’s nothing new, but it is definitely bad for our republic.

 

Who Votes vs. Who Counts The Votes

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Joseph Stalin once stated, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” It seems that we have reached that point in America.

Yesterday Just the News reported:

A day after the November election, as Donald Trump and other Republican candidates clung to evaporating leads in Georgia, vote counters in Atlanta were confronted by a paper ballot known only by its anonymizing number 5150-232-18.

A Dominion Voting machine had rejected the ballot on election night because the voter had filled in boxes for both Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, an error known as an “overvote.” The machine determined neither candidate should get a tally, and the ballot was referred for human review.

The image of the ballot, obtained by Just the News, shows the voter messily scribbled a large blob in the box to select Trump as president while also putting a thinner check mark next to Biden’s name.  

At 6:10 p.m. ET on Nov. 4, 24 hours after the ballot was first scanned and rejected by Machine 5150, a panel of humans decided the vote should be awarded to Biden, with the notation “mark removed for Donald J. Trump.” You can see that ballot here:

Scores of additional ballots that same day had checks manually removed next to Trump’s name as well as many other candidates up and down the ticket — Libertarians, Democrats and write-ins alike — and the votes awarded instead to other candidates. 

The article concludes:

With such chaos and mismanagement observed by the state, some wonder whether any of the adjudicated ballots were counted correctly and consistently in Georgia’s biggest metropolis, or other major urban areas for that matter.

“Similar actions took place in Detroit, Philadelphia, Green Bay and other major urban centers in swing states where tens of thousands of ballots were interpreted and counted by review panels,” said Phill Kline, the former Kansas attorney general and head of the Amistad Project, which has filed lawsuits to gain transparency in elections nationwide. “This happens every year. But in 2020 laws requiring both parties to review this process weren’t followed. 

“With COVID as an excuse, election observers were kicked out of the counting room and private billionaires invited in,” Kline added, citing Mark Zuckerberg’s donations to election judges. “Americans deserve to know how this shadow government managed the election, and state election officials, rather than fighting efforts to understand what happened, should open the doors and support the effort to get at the truth.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes multiple instances of altering and miscounting ballots.

I suspect we are eventually going to find out that the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud. I do not believe that Joe Biden actually won. However, I would like to go on record as predicting that even if it is proven that Joe Biden lost, the Democrat talking point will be, “So what. It’s too late to do anything about it now.”

As American Citizens Are Losing Their Freedoms, Illegal Aliens Are Gaining Theirs

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On Saturday, Breitbart reported the following:

President Joe Biden continues promoting coronavirus vaccine mandates for American citizens, but the White House still struggles to explain why that standard is not applied to migrants crossing the Southern border.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki ignored a question Thursday asking if the administration wants to apply the same vaccine standards proposed for foreign visitors to migrants released into the United States.

Psaki said that “interagency working groups” are developing a plan for international travel but did not address migrants coming across the Southern border.

“Given where we are today with the Delta variant, we will plan to maintain existing travel restrictions at this point,” she said.

Since Breitbart News first brought up the issue of coronavirus-infected individuals crossing the border, the Biden White House has struggled to address the topic of coronavirus-infected migrants spreading the virus in the United States.

The article notes:

On Friday, the press secretary said the Department of Homeland Security is “taking steps” to help stop the spread of the coronavirus — but again only spoke about the mask requirement for migrants picked up by border patrol and government officials referring migrants with the virus to local health care.

“That is part of what as a government, steps we are certainly taking,” she said.

The White House did not respond to a follow-up question from Breitbart News about a possible vaccine mandate for migrants.

The Department of Homeland Security appears tacitly interested in addressing the crisis, as the Washington Post reported Department plans to offer vaccines to migrants in custody and even migrants facing deportation.

But there was no mention in the report of a vaccine requirement similar to the mandate for international travelers to the United States.

Meanwhile many American children cannot attend college unless they are vaccinated. In New York City, people will need vaccine passports to go to a restaurant or a Broadway show. The current administration is giving more rights to illegal aliens that it is giving to American citizens.

More Questions Than Answers

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There are two things that puzzle me about the insistence that all Americans be vaccinated against Covid-19. The first is the lack of emphasis on the methods of treatment that have proven to be successful–Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin, Ivermectin, Resveratrol, etc. Various combinations of these substances have been proven effective in treating even severe Covid-19 cases. The second thing that puzzles me is the total ignoring of the concept of immunity due to having recovered from the disease.

Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about a new study of Covid-19 cases and those who have recovered from the disease.

The article reports:

People who have recovered from COVID-19 retain broad and effective longer-term immunity to the disease, according to a new study.

Findings of the study, which is the most comprehensive of its kind so far, have implications for expanding understanding about human immune memory as well as future vaccine development for coronaviruses.

For the longitudinal study in Cell Reports Medicine, researchers looked at 254 patients with mostly mild to moderate symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection over a period of more than eight months (250 days) and found that their immune response to the virus remained durable and strong.

The findings are reassuring, especially given early reports during the pandemic that protective neutralizing antibodies didn’t last in COVID-19 patients, said Rafi Ahmed, director of the Emory University Vaccine Center and a lead author of the paper.

“The study serves as a framework to define and predict long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after natural infection. We also saw indications in this phase that natural immunity could continue to persist,” Ahmed said.

The research team will continue to evaluate this cohort over the next few years.

The article notes:

In following the patients for months, researchers got a more nuanced view of how the immune system responds to COVID-19 infection. The picture that emerges indicates that the body’s defense shield not only produces an array of neutralizing antibodies but activates certain T and B cells to establish immune memory, offering more sustained defenses against reinfection.

…Ahmed said investigators were surprised to see that convalescent participants also displayed increased immunity against common human coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-1, a close relative of the current coronavirus. The study suggests that patients who survived COVID-19 are likely to also possess protective immunity even against some SARS-CoV-2 variants.

“Vaccines that target other parts of the virus rather than just the spike protein may be more helpful in containing infection as SARS-CoV-2 variants overtake the prevailing strains,” Ahmed said. “This could pave the way for us to design vaccines that address multiple coronaviruses.”

The researchers said the study more comprehensively identifies the adaptive immune components leading to recovery, and that it will serve as a benchmark for immune memory induced by SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

This is good news.

Four Radical Proposals That Would Impact America If Enacted

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The Daily Wire recently posted an editorial about four radical Democrat proposals that didn’t get a whole lot of publicity.

These are the four proposals with some brief commentary from the editorial:

1. On March 3rd, 2021 the House of Representatives passed H.R.1, also known as the “For The People Act of 2021”. 

…Senior Legal Fellow Hans Von Spakovsky elaborated on the dangers of the bill in an article for The Heritage Foundation, which outlined three key reasons why the bill should be opposed:

First, the bill would “usurp the role of the states” in elections and ultimately damage the integrity of the voting process as a whole. Second, he argues that citizenship and identity should be authenticated before casting a ballot. And last, he stresses that it is not Congress’ job to try and fix election related issues since federal intervention would only make existing problems worse.

Those who oppose the Democrats’ “For the People Act” posit that the removal of identification requirements endangers America’s Republic, and should be condemned. Valid identification is already required to drive, drink, and purchase a firearm, and to maintain logical consistency, identification should be required to vote.

The fate of the bill will be decided by the United States Senate.

2. The “Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021”

H.R.8 — more commonly known as the “Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021” — was passed by the House of Representatives on March 11, 2021. The final tally was 227 votes to 203, with all but one Democrat member voting yes, alongside eight Republicans. 

The bill requires a federal background check for nearly every change of possession a firearm goes through, even those which are temporary or private. According to an analysis of the bill conducted by the NRA, simply handing a firearm to another person would, in many cases, become a criminal offense.

3. The Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021, or H.R.1446 is a bill that passed in the house on March 11th, 2021 with a final vote of 219-210. 

The bill was sponsored by Representative James E. Clyburn (D-SC) and aims to eliminate the “Charleston loophole” — named after the Charleston shooting in 2015 that left nine individuals dead inside of the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Charleston loophole is a term used to describe an event where an individual obtains a firearm after their mandatory background check takes longer than three business days to complete. The so-called “loophole” is possible because of an amendment to the 1993 Brady Bill made three days the maximum amount of time an uncompleted background check can prevent an individual from obtaining a firearm. 

The proposed bill would raise the firearm hold limit to a maximum of ten business days, meaning Americans could expect wait periods of over three times the length they experience now. 

4. When President Biden took office earlier this year, he wasted no time and released a flurry of executive orders that created new policies and reversed old ones. According to a Newsweek fact check, President Biden broke the record for the most executive orders in a president’s first week.

According to the Daily Wire’s Ian Haworth, when it comes to Biden’s “Executive Order on Strengthening Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act”, federal agencies will be directed to expand access to Obamacare and effectively work towards the long-term goal of achieving socialized medicine. 

The Democratic Party is by no means shy about socialized medicine being part of their radical agenda. On the official website of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) —  a prominent face of the Democrats — she “is an unapologetic advocate of Medicare for All, which would create a universal, single payer healthcare system.” Some might argue that Ocasio-Cortez is too far Left and doesn’t represent the entirety of the Democratic party, though. So, what about the sitting Vice President? 

In a 2019 op-ed for Medium, Vice President Kamala Harris — who was a Presidential candidate at the time — claimed that, “In America, health care should be a right, not a privilege only for those who can afford it. It’s why we need Medicare for All.”

Biden’s “Executive order on Strengthening Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act” is simply the Democrats taking another step towards making socialized medicine a reality. 

The article also mentions the rescinding of the Mexico City policy. The Mexico City policy prevented American taxpayers’ money from being used to fund abortions abroad.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. I don’t believe that this is the direction most Americans want for our country.

 

 

From A Friend Who Send Me An Email

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This appeared in my email today. I thought I would share it:

BRILLIANCE IN THREE PARTS

Part I:

A. Back off and let those men who want to marry men, marry men.
B. Allow those women who want to marry women, marry women.
C. Allow those folks who want to abort their babies, abort their babies.
In three generations, there will be no more Democrats.

Part II:

10 Poorest Cities in America (How did it happen?)
City, State, % of People Below the Poverty Level

1. Detroit, MI 32.5%
2. Buffalo, NY 29.9%
3 Cincinnati, OH 27.8%
4. Cleveland, OH 27.0%
5. Miami, FL 26.9%
5 St. Louis, MO 26.8%
7. El Paso, TX 26.4%
8. Milwaukee, WI 26.2%
9. Philadelphia, PA 25.1%
10. Newark, NJ 24.2%

(Now, watch closely… at no time will the fingers leave the hands…)
What do these top ten cities (over 250,000 pop.) with the highest poverty rate all have in common?

Detroit, MI – (1st on poverty rate list) no elected Republican mayor since 1961
Buffalo, NY – (2nd) hasn’t elected one since 1954
Cincinnati, OH – (3rd) not since 1984
Cleveland, OH – (4th) not since 1989
Miami, FL – (5th) has never had a Republican mayor
St. Louis, MO – (6th) not since 1949
El Paso, TX – (7th) has never had a Republican mayor
Milwaukee, WI – (8th) not since 1908
Philadelphia, PA – (9th) not since 1952
Newark, NJ – (10th) not since 1907

Einstein once said, ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’

It is the poor who habitually elect Democrats … yet they are still POOR.

Part III:

“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.” 
~ Abraham Lincoln

“Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him had better take a much closer look at the American Indian.” 
~ Henry Ford

An Amazing Comment

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On Thursday, Breitbart reported the following:

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” host Joy Reid stated that while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) should resign, he “did a much better job on the pandemic than Trump, even with all of the issues.” And “was a good crisis manager for what it was worth,” despite his many “issues, including nursing homes.”

…She later added that “If Cuomo gets impeached, he gets impeached. I literally don’t care what happens to him. He did a much better job on the pandemic than Trump, even with all of the issues. But then again, who didn’t? He was a good crisis manager for what it was worth, although clearly, there were many, many issues, including nursing homes. But again, you all worship Donald freaking Trump. You don’t get to complain.”

I guess the lady has a short memory. President Trump sent the hospital ship USNS Comfort to New York City to handle coronavirus patients. The ship sat empty and unused as Governor Cuomo sent coronavirus patients into nursing home. The Javits Center was also made available to coronavirus patients. Samaritan’s Purse also set up a field hospital in Central Park to treat coronavirus patients. None of these facilities ever reached capacity as Governor Cuomo sent the elderly with the coronavirus back into nursing homes. That is not crisis management–that is murder. Governor Cuomo’s role in the death of the elderly in New York will probably never be investigated because that investigation would lead to at least two other state governors who did the same thing–New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. It should also be mentioned that Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine took her mother out of a nursing home just as the directive to move coronavirus patients into nursing homes was going into effect. These people knew what they were doing and should be held accountable. However, until we have a ‘just’ Department of Justice, they will not be held accountable.

The Dog Ate My Homework

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article with the following headline:

What!?

The article reports:

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccine tests were conducted, as customary, with a control group; a group within the trial who were given a placebo and not the test vaccine.  However, during the trial -and after the untested vaccines were given emergency use authorization- the vaccine companies conducting the trial decided to break protocol and notify the control group they were not vaccinated.  Almost all the control group were then given the vaccine.

Purposefully dissolving the placebo group violates the scientific purpose to test whether the vaccine has any efficacy; any actual benefit and/or safety issues.  Without a control group there is nothing to compare the vaccinated group against.  According to NPR, the doctors lost the control group in the Johnson County Clinicial Trial (Lexena, Kansas) on purpose:

(Via NPR) […] “Dr. Carlos Fierro, who runs the study there, says every participant was called back after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccine.

“During that visit we discussed the options, which included staying in the study without the vaccine,” he says, “and amazingly there were people — a couple of people — who chose that.”

He suspects those individuals got spooked by rumors about the vaccine. But everybody else who had the placebo shot went ahead and got the actual vaccine. So now Fierro has essentially no comparison group left for the ongoing study.  “It’s a loss from a scientific standpoint, but given the circumstances I think it’s the right thing to do,” he says.

People signing up for these studies were not promised special treatment, but once the FDA authorized the vaccines, their developers decided to offer the shots. (read more)

The article notes:

Just so we are clear, the final FDA authorization and approval for the vaccines are based on the outcome of these trials.  As noted in the example above, the control group was intentionally lost under the auspices of  “the right thing to do”, so there is no way for the efficacy, effectiveness or safety of the vaccine itself to be measured.

There’s no one left within the control group, of a statistically valid value, to give an adequate comparison of outcomes for vaxxed -vs- non-vaxxed.

Whiskey – Tango – Foxtrot !!!  This is nuts.

That NPR article is one to bookmark when people start claiming the vaccination is effective.

How can the vaccine not be considered effective when there is no group of non-vaccinated people to compare the results to?

Somehow I don’t believe this fits the requirement of “follow the science.” Please follow the link to read the entire article. We are definitely being played.

Lying With Statistics

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On Wednesday The Locker Room (a website of the John Locke Foundation) posted an article with the following headline, “CDC hints at scope of Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths “not related to Covid-19”.” Wait! What?

The article reports:

On June 26, WLOS News 13 was told by DHHS spokesperson Kelly Haight that “The number of people hospitalized [for Covid-19] includes those who have tested positive for COVID and those admitted for other reasons, but placed on infection prevention precautions.”

Wait, what?

As part of our “Fog of Covid-19 Data” series last year, I wrote about the great uncertainty surrounding actual hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19. A snippet:

In regular conversation, a hospitalized COVID-19 patient would mean someone whose COVID infection is so bad it’s put him in the hospital. To Gov. Roy Cooper’s Department of Health and Human Services, however, it means someone who is in the hospital for any reason and who has tested positive for COVID-19. That’s a key distinction. I’ll explain.

DHHS admits no distinction between a hospitalization for COVID and hospitalization with COVID. Hospitalizations for COVID are the dangerous infections people rightly worry about. Hospitalizations with COVID are when people are in the hospital for other reasons — a chest ailment, a car accident, a medical procedure, etc. — and as part of the routine clinical assessment, they test positive for COVID.

How many people are in one group and not the next? It’s hard to tell from this vantage point. Counting the two groups together, however, only inflates the number and gives the impression that dangerous infections are higher than they are. How much higher, who can tell?

Sounds a bit disingenuous to me.

The article also includes the following:

The article concludes:

So roughly one-fourth of “breakthrough” Covid-19 hospitalizations (26%) and deaths (24%) were “asymptomatic or not related to Covid-19.”

Note: Just as it’s in the political interests of the CDC, DHHS, et al. to inflate the overall cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, it’s in the political interests of the CDC to downplay concerns about the vaccines by removing the inflation from “breakthrough” Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths.

Questions going forward

This revelation leaves several questions, however. Do “breakthrough” hospitalizations and deaths behave differently from other Covid-19 infections? Would that mean more inflation in “breakthrough” cases — or less?

How many of North Carolina’s Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths were “not related to Covid-19”? Is it more or less than one-fourth? We still don’t know.

All we know is, again, the official numbers are inflated. By how much, they still won’t say.

Covid is real. The question is how dangerous is it to the average American who is healthy with no medical issues.

 

Remember That Oath?

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When President Biden was sworn in as President, he took the following oath of office:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of  the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Note the part that says preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Yesterday Hot Air reported the following  regarding President Biden’s eviction moratorium:

This is the aspect of his moratorium chicanery that I find most breathtaking, the frank admission that he’s trying to exploit the legal process to extend a dubious executive order. Most everyone else has focused on the substance of what the White House did, replacing a certainly illegal moratorium order with a new one which they have every reason to know is almost certainly illegal.

And that’s appalling. But the problem could be solved if the courts reacted quickly by scheduling an expedited hearing on the numerous challenges to the new order. When the president is as candid as Biden is here in admitting that he’s gaming the judicial system to keep an illegal measure in place for as long as he can, they have a duty to stop him by putting all other business on hold to consider the merits of that measure. If they don’t, they’re letting him get away with it.

Look at it this way. If this court fight drags out for six months and SCOTUS finally rules that the new moratorium is also illegal, as everyone expects, what’s to stop the White House from drafting yet another moratorium that’s a tiny bit different from the previous one and litigating the lawfulness of the new order for six months after that? Biden is engaged in litigation that’s dilatory by design, which he admits. It’s essentially frivolous. The courts have to show him that that won’t work.

The article concludes:

“Specifically, and in blatant violation of his solemn duty to execute the laws faithfully, Biden has usurped Congress’s legislative authority and declared the power to legislate,” writes Andy McCarthy. “He is running roughshod over the separation of powers, which is the foundation of our constitutional framework, limiting power and preserving liberty.” His old boss Barack Obama did the same thing when he seized Congress’s immigration power to legalize DREAMers under DACA. But Obama didn’t face a recent Supreme Court ruling directly on point that should have steered him away from attempting such a thing. And his DACA order didn’t come pre-packaged with a dilatory legal strategy designed to keep the program up and running while meritless litigation played out in court. Even if, ah, it’s sort of worked out that way in practice.

He will not be impeached–the Democrats control the House of Representatives (and the powers that be are not fond of Kamala Harris)-but he should be.