Monthly Archives: September 2021

Does Anyone Really Expect An Honest Election In California?

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that some Republicans showing up to vote in the California recall election are being told that they already voted.

The article reports:

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office said equipment was “replaced” at the polling center and that provisional ballots are a “failsafe option” for these kinds of glitches.”

“The voters who experienced this issue were offered and provided provisional ballots – the failsafe option to ensure no one has turned away from voting,” the statement said.

“Provisional ballots are regular ballots and once the eligibility of the voter is verified, they are processed and counted. After troubleshooting the issue, the equipment at the locations was replaced and voting continued.”

The provisional ballot does nothing to alter the fact that an illegal ballot has already been cast in the voter’s name. At best you have cancelled out the illegal vote, but you have not counted the vote of the legal voter.

I refer you back to an article I posted in August where I reported the following:

Yesterday KTLA Los Angeles reported that 300 election recall ballots were found in a vehicle where a felon was found passed out with drugs, a loaded firearm and multiple driver’s licenses one week ago, authorities said Monday.  How did 300 election recall ballots wind up in the same car? Obviously 300 ballots alone will not change the outcome of the recall election, but how many other questionable ballots are floating around the state?

There is no way I believe that the California recall election will be an honest election.

Showering Terrorists With Cash

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The Daily Caller reported yesterday that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will be sending $64 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan to address the “compounding effects of insecurity, conflict, recurring natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.” That makes my head hurt. How about sending $64 million in aid to America to house our homeless veterans and improve healthcare for our veterans?

The article reports:

The funding will come from USAID and the State Department, and will be distributed through the United Nations and independent aid groups, the agency said in a press release. The humanitarian aid will help provide vulnerable Afghans with “critically needed food, health care, nutrition, medical supplies, protection, hygiene supplies and other urgently needed relief.”

USAID also said it has created a Disaster Assistance Response Team to lead the U.S. government’s humanitarian response in Afghanistan and work with partners on the ground to provide assistance.

Does anyone actually believe that the money will be used for humanitarian purposes and not to arm terrorists in the Middle East?

The article concludes:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged Afghanistan’s neighbors to keep their borders open to refugees and promised to ensure the Taliban does not block humanitarian assistance, particularly to groups such as women and girls.

“The United States will also work with the international community to help ensure that the Taliban follow through on its commitments and advance unhindered humanitarian access, freedom of movement for aid workers of all genders, safety and security of humanitarian staff, and safe passage for all those who wish to leave Afghanistan,”  he said in a statement.

I think it’s time to remove the State Department from our government. They obviously do not work for us.

 

Hold On To Your Wallet

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Yesterday NewsMax reported the following:

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are trying to wrap up their proposal for $2.9 trillion in tax hikes, which would mean the largest tax increase in decades, in order to help pay for  higher spending in their ‘reconciliation’ package, Politico reported on Monday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the proposal is expected to include raising the corporate tax rate to 26.5% from 21% and enacting a 3-percentage-point surtax on individual income above $5 million.

House Democrats are also thinking about boosting the minimum tax on the foregn income of U.S. companies to 16.5% from 10.5%, as well as raising the top capital-gains tax rate to 28.8% from 23.8%.

This will be sold as a tax increase only for the rich. If you believe that, you have not been paying attention for the past thirty years. There are a few things to keep in mind when you hear about ‘tax increases for the rich.’ First of all, the ‘rich’ can afford tax accountants who will find ways to mitigate the tax increases. Second of all, raising capital-gains taxes discourages investment and has a negative impact on the 401k account of the average American, Raising the corporate tax only results in higher prices for consumers–corporations pass the cost of increased taxes on to consumers. The entire idea of ‘tax the rich’ is a socialist scam. It has been used all over the world to create class warfare and line the pockets of those in power who despite their wealth somehow manage to avoid the tax increases.

The article concludes:

Other details in a five-page memo being passed around about the Democrats’ plans include tightening estate tax rules and reducing deductions for some unincorporated businesses, as well as new limits on supersized individual retirement accounts, additional restrictions on deductions companies take for highly compensated employees, and new “wash sale” rules for those who own cryptocurrencies.

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the monetary value of the tax increases “includes $1 trillion in tax increases on individuals, $900 billion on corporations, $700 billion from drug-pricing policy changes, and $120 billion from tougher tax enforcement. Adding miscellaneous other changes and an assumption that the economy will grow reaches $3.5 trillion.”

White House spokesman Andrew Bates praised Neal’s proposals, saying that “this meets two core goals that the president laid out at the beginning of this process — it does not raise taxes on Americans earning under $400,000 and it repeals the core elements of the Trump tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations.”

Bates added that “the President looks forward to continuing to work with Chairman Neal, as well as the Senate Finance Committee and Chairman Wyden, as we advance the Build Back Better agenda.”

Some Semblance Of Sanity Comes To Britain

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Yesterday The Epoch Times reported that UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid has announced that Britain will not go ahead with the plan for vaccine passports.

The article reports:

The plan to mandate CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus vaccine passports for nightclubs and crowded events in England will not go ahead, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said on Sunday.

It comes after British lawmakers across the political spectrum voiced strong opposition to the plans this week.

Speaking on the BBC’s “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday, the health secretary said he “never liked the idea” of forcing people to show their papers in everyday activities, but the government was right to look at the evidence.

“What I can say is that we’ve looked at it properly and whilst we should keep it in reserve as a potential option, I’m pleased to say that we will not be going ahead with plans for vaccine passports,” Javid said.

The health secretary added that the government shouldn’t be doing things for the sake of it or because others are doing them.

“So many countries, at the time they implemented it, was to try and boost their vaccination rates and you can understand why they might have done that,” he said.

Javid said that England has so far been “very successful” with its vaccination rates, with 55 percent of 16- to 17- year-olds having had their first doses only a month after the jabs were offered to this age group.

The article concludes:

A number of European countries have introduced CCP virus status passports for settings including large events and restaurants.

The Scottish Parliament voted 68 votes to 55 on Thursday to support the implementation of CCP virus vaccine passports in Scotland’s nightclubs and other crowded venues.

A negative test for COVID-19 will not be accepted at this stage. The Scottish government said it was to boost vaccine uptake and to prevent limited PCR lab capacity from being overwhelmed by clubbers. The now-scrapped vaccine passport plan for England also wouldn’t have accepted negative test results.

According to official figures, CCP virus vaccination take-up rates across the UK’s four nations have been broadly similar.

As of Sept. 9, nearly 90 percent of the UK population aged over 16 have received the first dose of a CCP virus vaccine, and over 80 percent have received both doses, the government said.

Freedom is going out of style in a lot of the world.

Legal Or Ethical?

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President Biden has now instituted the vaccine mandates he said he would not put in place. Are vaccine mandates legal or ethical? One Canadian professor of ethics has gone public with her opinion on vaccine mandates after she was fired for not getting the vaccine.

Yesterday The Blaze reported:

An ethics professor in Canada gave what could be her final lesson at the university she has been employed at for the past 20 years. The lesson was regarding vaccine mandates. The professor’s employer has implemented mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, which she believes is unethical.

Dr. Julie Ponesse is an ethics professor at Ontario’s Huron University College, which is affiliated with Western University. Ponesse, who holds a Ph.D. in ethics, delivered an emotional message about vaccine mandates in a video that has since gone viral.

“Today, I’m going to teach you a short lesson on a universally accepted ethics of coercing people into medical procedures,” Ponesse said into the camera. “I’ll be the example.”

“My employer has just mandated that I must get a vaccine for COVID-19,” the professor said. “If I want to keep working at my job as a professor, I have to take this vaccine.”

“Here’s my conundrum. My school employs me to be an authority on the subject of ethics. I hold a Ph.D. in ethics and ancient philosophy and I’m here to tell you, it’s ethically wrong to coerce someone to take a vaccine,” she said. “If it happens to you, you don’t have to do it. If you don’t want a COVID vaccine, don’t take one. End of discussion. It’s your own business.”

“But that’s not the approach of the University of Western Ontario, which has suddenly required that I be vaccinated immediately, or not report for work,” she continued.

“I am facing imminent dismissal after 20 years on the job,” Ponesse said for not wanting to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The professor explained that she is not an anti-vaxxer, and that she has had “plenty of vaccines in my life.”

Ponesse noted she doesn’t work in a “high-risk environment.”

“I’m a teacher. I’m a university professor. My job is to teach how to think critically; to ask questions that might expose a false argument,” she stated.

Ponesse questioned the effectiveness of the vaccines, “Nobody is promising that I won’t get COVID, or transmit COVID if I get the vaccine.”

“I’m entitled to make choices about what does and what does not enter my body regardless of my reasons,” she said.

“This is my first and potentially my last lesson of the year,” Ponesse said as her voice cracked after getting emotional. “In the spirit of Socrates, who was executed for asking questions, this lesson will consist of only one question.”

The professor asked her students, “When a person has done the same job to the satisfaction of her employer for 20 years, is it right, or is it wrong to suddenly demand that they submit to an unnecessary medical procedure in order to keep their job?”

Please follow the link to read the rest of the article. The real danger in the vaccine mandate is that government power always increases and never increases. Are we going to be like China where couples were forced to abort their second child? Are we going to demand that anyone who does not follow the government mandate du jour be somehow excluded from society? This is a dangerous path.

Hopefully This Won’t Work

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Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about President Biden’s plans to get his legislative agenda passed.

The article reports:

Joe Biden is telling Democratic leaders in the House and Senate that he will lean on moderate Democrats in order to force passage of change to the Senate’s filibuster. He will also lobby hard to pass the voting rights bill that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he wants to vote on this week.

Biden and the Democrats want a “carve-out” for the electoral power grab known as the “For the People Act.” It would allegedly be a one-time exception to the filibuster and allow for a straight up-or-down vote on the bill, which Democrats mischaracterize as a “voting rights” bill.

Both Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have publicly come out against altering the filibuster and both have expressed doubts about the voter bill without substantial changes. But Biden apparently believes his powers of persuasion will work on them and other centrist Democrats.

Manchin will be a tough nut for Biden to crack. The West Virginia senator has been adamant about opposing any “tweaks” to the filibuster.

Make no mistake–this is a serious threat to our Republic. The U.S. Constitution specifically states that election policies are left to the states–they are not under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Unfortunately at this time, we have no guarantee that the Supreme Court will uphold the Constitution.

Rolling Stone recently reported:

Winning over the two Democrats who’ve declared their opposition to filibuster reform, Sens. Manchin and Sinema, won’t be easy. In April, Manchin wrote in an op-ed that he would not support tweaking or abolishing the filibuster, which he described as a “critical tool” to protect the interests of small and rural states like his. Sinema, for her part, likes to point out how often Democrats used the filibuster when they were in the minority during Donald Trump’s presidency. The filibuster, she wrote in June, “compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between opposing policy poles.”

Yet Sinema has broadly endorsed the need for voting-rights reforms, and Manchin says “inaction is not an option.” Congressional aides and anti-corruption activists who support the For the People Act say Schumer’s strategy has been to give Republicans every opportunity to work with Democrats on a compromise bill, and to allow Manchin the space to lead those negotiations, if only to show that Republicans won’t support any version of pro-democracy reform that Democrats come up with. “We continue to see that the Republicans are not willing to negotiate in good faith on these fundamental issues to protect our democracy,” says Tiffany Muller of End Citizens United.

First of all, we are not a democracy–we are a constitutional republic. If you really want to get to the root of our current political problems, you might want to take a look at the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This opened the door for the corruption we currently see–the illegal campaign money, the earmarks, the runaway spending, the power grabs, etc. The election reforms the Democrats want will make it even easier to cheat.

 

The War On Christian Organizations

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about a recent court case in Washington state.

The article reports:

When the Washington Supreme Court gutted protections for religious employers in a state antidiscrimination law, it threw down the gauntlet against both federal law and several federal appeals courts, according to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission (UGM).

The Christian homeless ministry is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review the ruling, and last week several prominent Christian service ministries, Washington state lawmakers, a third of the states and even a Muslim group joined its cause, filing friend-of-the-court briefs.

Bisexual lawyer Matthew Woods sued UGM for not hiring him for its legal aid clinic because he was in a same-sex relationship in violation of its lifestyle rules for employees. The state high court ruled UGM could only apply the rules to “ministerial” employees, not other staff.

Yet the Washington Law Against Discrimination has exempted religious nonprofits since its passage in 1949, and that protection was reaffirmed when sexual orientation was added in 2006, according to a brief by 19 Washington Republican lawmakers, mostly in committee and party leadership.

They cited more than 300 years of religious accommodations in military service, oath-taking, medical treatment, abortion services and civil rights, including the employment-focused Title VII, which recognizes religious employers’ First Amendment rights to only hire “coreligionists.”

The state high court showed “shocking antireligious animus” against UGM and endangered similar organizations as well as private schools and even houses of worship, who are “left without legal protection from intrusive and potentially ruinous employment-related enforcement actions and lawsuits,” the GOP lawmakers said.

These groups will suffer “an actual chilling effect” if they have to predict “which of their activities the Washington State Human Rights Commission or a secular court will consider religious.” They cited the controlling precedent of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with World Vision for firing technical and office employees who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.

This is actually a very simple matter. Would you expect a private company to hire someone who objected to the goals of the company? Would you hire someone who opposed fracking to lead a company whose business is fracking? There are many charitable organizations that operate according to Biblical principles. Are you willing to put these companies out of business when they are providing a much-needed service?

The article notes:

Franklin Graham also leads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Its brief says the obligation to proclaim the gospel “extends to all of its employees — from accountants to event planners to Rev. Franklin Graham himself — because every employee is a member of the Body of Christ,” and “every task is purposed for the furtherance of the Gospel, and accordingly, has eternal significance.”

The association was especially alarmed by Justice Yu’s concurrence, which characterized its right to hire coreligionists as a “right to discriminate” and urged religious organizations to only use faith in hiring decisions when “absolutely necessary and grounded in sound reason and purpose.”

A long line of cases makes clear that “civil courts are not equipped to second-guess a religious organization’s determination of whether a given employee or applicant is a coreligionist” without endangering First Amendment rights, the association argues.

We need the religious charities and the work that they do. The government has no business limiting their ability to conform to their religious beliefs.

Freedom Of Association On College Campuses

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Yesterday Legal Insurrection reported:

The editorial board of a Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) student newspaper slammed the student government and school administration for an early September decision to recognize the campus pro-life group, which the paper called “a danger to the student body.”

“CWRU does not care about its students. If they actually cared, they would have immediately considered concerns about the student body’s immediate safety and the broader school-community impacts, and they would have easily determined this organization to pose a danger,” The Observer editorial board wrote.

The pro-life group Case for Life seeks to “protect and promote respect for all life from conception to natural death” through education, outreach, and volunteering at local pregnancy centers. They have faced criticism and calls for denying their recognition since last year.

. . . . “It is not just that students have to worry about laws that impose on their bodily autonomy, but they also have to worry about being in an environment that is supposed to be safe but isn’t,” the students’ editorial reads. “Who could care less if someone is pro-forced-birth, but when that someone takes action to enforce that opinion on others—that’s when it becomes dangerous. “

The editorial continues to argue that CRWU’s approval of Case for Life is just another example of the attack on “reproductive rights,” referencing the new Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks.

Whatever happened to the concept of a university being a place of diverse ideas for the students to evaluate? It’s interesting that the newspaper is concerned about the laws that the pro-life people would impose on their bodily autonomy. The university requires a covid vaccine in order for you to attend classes there. Isn’t that imposing a law on their bodily autonomy? There seems to be a lack of logic here.

 

We Still Have Friends Who Remember

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Yesterday The Daily Caller reported that Buckingham Palace played the U.S. national anthem Saturday morning at the “changing of the guard” to commemorate 9/11. That is touching.

The article reports:

“Just as they did at Buckingham Palace twenty years ago to show solidarity with our US allies, the Band of the @WelshGuards this morning played the US National Anthem at changing of the guard,” tweeted the British Army in London.

Many American institutions are commemorating the 20 year anniversary of 9/11. The Boston College football team will wear special uniforms Saturday to honor a 9/11 hero. The Florida Gators will also be wearing patriotic helmets to recognize the 20 year anniversary.

The British have been dependable allies for a long time. Hopefully that will continue.

We Remember

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As we approach the anniversary of September 11, 2001, I wanted to remember that day with something positive. There was a time in 2006 when America and Russia were at least acting like friends. The story below reflects that time.

Remembering 911

aaaaasespt11This is a picture of the Teardrop Memorial, Russia’s gift to the United States in memory of 911. The monument To the Struggle Against World Terrorism was dedicated on September 11, 2006, by President Clinton.   It is located in Bayonne, New Jersey, at a place where the twin towers were visible.   To read the entire story of the monument and how it came to rest there, please follow the link to 911monument.com.    The website tells the story of what inspired the monument and how it came to be. This is another picture of the monument.    I stumbled on this monument in an article at the American Thinker. I visited the monument a few years ago. It is a sobering sight. You stand at the foot of the monument and look across the river at lower Manhattan to where the twin towers once stood.

911 Monument Dedication Ceremony, Sept. 11, 2006

Does Lying To Congress Matter?

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Issues & Insights posted an article today that asks a very valid question, “Report Shows Fauci Lied To Congress — So Why Does He Still Have A Job?” That is a good question.

The article reports:

COVID-19 czar Anthony Fauci has steadfastly denied that he helped fund gain-of-function research at China’s now-notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology. In recent testimony before Congress, he repeatedly denied ever doing so. But a new 900-page trove of information acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that’s not true.

It’s a huge story. Unfortunately, the mainstream media have essentially ignored it. New York Times? The Washington “Democracy Dies In Darkness” Post? CNN? Sorry, couldn’t be bothered, even though a 2015 study clearly referred to such research taking place.

It took an aggressive, left-leaning online investigative reporting site, The Intercept, to do the Big Media’s work for it by digging up the FOIA material. The mountain of papers are damning, showing clearly that a nonprofit company, EcoHealth Group, channeled federal grants from the National Institute of Health and Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to the Chinese government-run Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“The (U.S.) bat coronavirus grant provided EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans,” the Intercept reported.

“Alter bat coronaviruses” is the key phrase here, since it indicates gain-of-function experimentation, which even the Obama administration had tightly restricted.

Scientists with expertise in both viral research and government grant mechanisms call the latest evidence a smoking gun. A thread of tweets by Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard E. Enbright provides further scientific insight into what was going on.

“The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful,” Enbright wrote.

Broad Institute molecular biologist Alina Chan told The Intercept that the documents also make the lab-leak theory of the COVID-19 virus even more likely.

So why is the mainstream media ignoring this story? Because their darling Dr. Fauci might be partly responsible for a virus that has seriously damaged the economy of America and may have made a stolen election possible. It’s somewhat like a mother finding out that her son has robbed a bank. Obviously there must be some mistake.

Working Hard To Ignore The Will Of The Voters

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On September 8th, The Carolina Journal posted an article about some recent shenanigans in the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 2018, North Carolina voters passed a referendum to require voter ID. Logically that should have been the end of it–the voters have spoken, the people in charge need to listen. Well, it wasn’t the end of it. Later that year, the North Carolina legislature passed (and overrode a governor’s veto) another voter ID law. The law passed by the legislature was struck down in 2019 by a District Court. In 2020, the federal appeals court overrode the lower court’s decision allowing voter ID in North Carolina. As things stand now, the 2022 elections will require voter ID. Actually voter ID was used in one North Carolina primary election while the legal maneuvering was going on. That election showed increased voter turnout (disproving the argument that voter ID laws decrease turnout), and made the job of the people handing out ballots much easier. Voter ID made the election run much more smoothly. So where are we now?

The Carolina Journal reports:

In an astonishing and unprecedented power grab that will overturn 200 years of case law and prior precedents, Democrats on the state Supreme Court are preparing to disqualify and remove two duly-elected Republican Supreme Court justices from a case so they can nullify voters’ decision to amend the Constitution.

The case is NAACP v. Moore and the state Supreme Court’s Democrats are trying to remove two Republican members from the bench, so a new temporary four-to-one Democrat majority can erase two constitutional amendments – the cap on income tax, and the voter I.D. requirement – which were overwhelmingly passed by more than four million votes.

In a plan already underway, Democrats Anita Earls, Robin Hudson, and Mike Morgan would conspire to remove the justices while allowing Associate Justice Jimmy Ervin to vote AGAINST the move because he is the one Democrat currently on the court who will face re-election in 2022.

This is not just an inside-baseball rumor. It is in motion. On July 23, 2021, lawyers for the NAACP filed a motion to have two Republican members, Justice Tamara Barringer and Justice Phil Berger, Jr., both sitting members of the state Supreme Court, removed in the case.

The lawyers argue that they have a conflict of interest because Berger is the son of Senate Leader Phil Berger and Barringer was a lawmaker during the time these constitutional amendments passed the legislature by a 3/5ths majority.

After a while you have to wonder why Democrats are so threatened by voter ID. Picture identification is required for a lot of activities not related to voting–cashing a check, boarding a plane, entering a federal or state building, opening a bank account, buying a car, etc. There are very few people among us that do not have some sort of picture identification. Also, I believe that the voter ID law makes photo ID’s available at no cost. The only reason to oppose voter ID laws is that they make it more difficult to cheat. Do the Democrats think we are too stupid to figure that out?

Prepare To Lose Your Freedom

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The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday about President Biden’s plan to deal the with the coronavirus epidemic.

The article reports:

Ahead of President Joe Biden’s announcement Thursday about new COVID-19 measures, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that there may be new measures that will be imposed on unvaccinated people.

“There are six steps the president’s announcing, there will be new components,” Psaki told reporters on Wednesday. “Some of that will be related to access to testing, some will be related to mandates, some will be related to how we ensure kids will be protected in schools.”

When asked about how the new steps would impact Americans’ lives, Psaki said that “it depends on if you’re vaccinated or not.”

Psaki provided few details on what mandates could be imposed on unvaccinated Americans. On Tuesday, she told reporters on Air Force One that the federal government lacks the authority to mandate vaccines for everyone.

The article notes:

Data released daily by the CDC’s COVID-19 tracker suggests that the United States’ new cases and deaths may have hit a plateau or is on the decline. The seven day-average for cases as of Tuesday was 140,000 and deaths were 1,022, respectively, while as of Sept. 1, the seven-day average for cases was 156,000 and deaths were 1,141, respectively.

The president’s speech on Thursday could make reference to a recent announcement from the heads of several federal health agencies that third doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, or booster shots, would be provided around Sept. 20. However, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve the booster doses.

Already, Biden required all federal employees and contractors to get the COVID-19 vaccine or adhere to strict testing and social distancing protocols. He also ordered nursing homes to require their staff to get the vaccine to continue getting Medicare and Medicaid funding.

What seems to be coming down the pike is not Constitutional. Lawsuits need to be filed quickly. Hopefully we have enough freedom-loving judges in our justice system to put an end to this nonsense.

Ben Franklin once stated, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” We are there.

Telling The Truth

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Marc Thiessen posted an op-ed piece at The Washington Post yesterday. The piece is also available at the American Enterprise Institute website. The op-ed piece explains why President Biden should not go to Ground Zero on September 11th.

The op-ed notes:

Biden has no business setting foot in those sacred places on that hallowed day. I take no joy in saying this. As a general rule, I believe that when a president attends a ceremony on behalf of the American people, he is not representing himself but the office of the presidency. We respect that office, even if we do not respect the man who occupies it.

But this is different. Joe Biden is the president who surrendered to the enemies who attacked us on 9/11. He not only surrendered but did so with dishonor — leaving stranded behind enemy lines American citizens, legal permanent residents, and the majority of our Afghan allies who risked their lives to help us. Not by accident, mind you. Intentionally. He ordered the last US plane to take off from Kabul knowing that he was leaving them behind — even though he pledged not to leave until every American was out. He forced our NATO allies — who were in Afghanistan only because America was attacked on 9/11 — to do the same to their nationals and Afghan allies. This is a stain on the honor of our nation. At the very moment the bells ring at Ground Zero on 9/11, US citizens and allies will be hiding from Taliban death squads because of Biden’s shameful decisions.

In carrying out America’s retreat, Biden knowingly put the safety of US service members securing the airport in the hands of the Taliban and the Haqqani network — a US-designated terrorist organization — by refusing a Taliban offer to let the US military secure Kabul while we evacuated. The Taliban set up checkpoints where it prevented many Americans from reaching the airport, but it allowed a suicide bomber to get through — killing 13 Americans and injuring 18 more. On Saturday, those who died as a result of Biden’s blunder will rest in freshly dug graves, while those who survived will watch the ceremonies from hospital beds with injuries they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

As the evacuation took place, Biden repeatedly lied to the American people. He said no Americans were having trouble getting to the airport, which was blatantly untrue. He said the United States had no interest in Afghanistan because al-Qaeda was “gone” — when in fact al-Qaeda is deeply embedded with the Taliban. He claimed no allies were questioning the United States’ credibility, when many of our allies were aghast at his display of weakness and publicly pleading with him to extend his artificial deadline. He said that none of his military advisers had recommended leaving a residual force, when some had. He even asked the Afghan president to lie about how the fight against the Taliban was going, urging him to project a different picture “whether it is true or not.” And after it was all over, he still declared his Afghan debacle an “extraordinary success.”

Please follow the link to read the rest of the editorial. What is stated is true. President Biden has disgraced his office and disgraced America. We have lost our status in the world because of his dishonesty and his unwillingness to live up to our obligations to our allies to keep them informed of our actions and include them in our decision-making process.

A Dictator Or A President?

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Yesterday The U.K. Daily Mail reported that President Biden has requested the resignation of 18 Trump-appointed officials who are currently on military academy advisory boards. This is highly unusual as these positions are supposed to be apolitical and have specified terms.

The article reports:

Multiple people appointed to military academy advisory boards by Donald Trump are refusing to resign after the Biden Administration told them to quit or they’d be fired. 

Sean Spicer is one of those axed, and decried the other 17 terminations on his Newsmax show Wednesday.

Spicer hit out as fellow appointee Kellyanne Conway wrote in a tweet that Biden should resign instead, and a third board member Russ Vought –  former director of the Office of Management and Budget – asserted that he would carry out his three-year term. 

The article notes:

He (Sean Spicer) continued, ‘To put this in context. The Biden administration came into office and immediately ordered a stand down and a review for all of the military academies for some unknown still unknown reason. For almost a year we’ve been unable to meet, and then we get this email today. You have to ask why why would they want zero oversight during a challenging period where the academies are dealing with COVID. They’re navigating funding issues.’ 

Spicer then spoke directly to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who named him when addressing the resignations and said the appointees should be qualified and ‘aligned with the values’ of the Biden administration. 

Spicer, a US Navy veteran, responded by saying, ‘When you wear the uniform, you serve the commander-in-chief. We take an oath as officers to the Constitution, not to a party.’

He added, ‘Each of us chooses how we’re going to serve this country. I won’t ever question how anyone chooses to do that. I won’t question how you choose to do that, Jen. But don’t you dare ever minimize or question my service to this nation. You got it?’ 

Note Jen Psaki’s statement, “…appointees should be qualified and ‘aligned with the values’ of the Biden administration. ” Exactly what are the values of the Biden administration?

Obviously lawsuits will be filed, and will will see if the court system will uphold the non-partisan character of the boards involved.

Isn’t this the President that promised to unify the country?

 

The Truth Eventually Comes Out

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The American Thinker posted an article today about recent revelations concerning Dr. Fauci and his relationship to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The article reports:

Perhaps, at long last, the deadly reign of Anthony Fauci will come to an end. That’s because The Intercept, a hard-left publication, has revealed 900 pages of government documents definitively proving that Fauci used his position to fund gain-of-function research into bat viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“WIV”)—and then lied to Congress about it.

Since February 2020, the wizened Fauci has been the face of the government’s response to the pandemic. In the ensuing 20 months, Fauci was frequently wrong, incredibly arrogant, and deeply dishonest. Because he was the anti-Trump, though, we were stuck with him. Democrats, especially, appreciated how he dismissed treating COVID with time-tested and affordable medicines such as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin and, instead, insisted on masks, lockdowns, and mandated vaccines.

In July, during a Senate Health Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R. KY) directly accused Fauci of using his position to fund illegal gain-of-function research at the WIV. The Hill, which reported on the hearing, assured its readers that Paul was making “an unsubstantiated accusation.”

Fauci came out swinging in response to Sen. Paul’s accusation. “Senator Paul,” he said, “you do not know what you are talking about.” He also said, “If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.”

The article explains what happened at the Intercept after the Congressional hearing mentioned above:

The Intercept aggressively attacked Sen. Paul after the hearing. Glenn Greenwald, who founded The Intercept and then got the boot for being insufficiently totalitarian, posits that it was then that the outlet sought to bolster its attack on Rand Paul by filing a FOIA request against the National Institutes of Health.

What happened, instead, was that The Intercept received over 900 pages of documents showing that it was Fauci who lied. Richard E. Ebright, a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers, summarized what those documents revealed:

The article includes a number of screenshots of tweets about the documents.

This is one of the tweets:

The article concludes:

Last year revealed to Americans that our most lauded experts are idiots and, in the case of Fauci and Collins, highly culpable, dishonest idiots. Everything they told us has been proven wrong, from COVID’s origins, to the lockdowns and masks, to the attacks on affordable early treatments, to the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.

We’ve also learned that all Democrats and some Republicans who have political or administrative power will abuse it. Democrats also weaponized COVID to corrupt our elections and saddle us with a corrupt, senile president who has opened America’s borders, destroyed her economy, creating a glide path for Islamic extremists to come here, degraded America’s standing in the world, handed power to the Chinese, and, in all probability, will give a nuclear pass to Iran.

…And one more thing: Dr. Fauci needs to go to jail for the rest of his life because, through his funding illegal gain-of-function research, followed by his non-stop stream of dangerous lies, he has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans on his hands. Francis Collins can be his cellmate.

Lying to Congress is a crime. Does anyone expect the current Department of Justice to prosecute Dr. Fauci, the darling of the political left?

I Wonder What His Resume Looked Like

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Yesterday The Daily Wire reported that the Interior Minister of the new Afghanistan government is Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Taliban- and al Qaeda-aligned Haqqani network and a State Department “specially designated global terrorist.” For anyone who is unaware, the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al-Qaeda are the best of friends. We can expect the new Afghanistan government to reflect the interests of all three groups. Those interests include Sharia Law throughout Afghanistan and eventually throughout the world, women put back in the place they were under Sharia Law, and restoration of the Islamic  Caliphate that was the Ottoman Empire. The place where things will get interesting will be when the leaders of various factions have to decide exactly who will rule the caliphate.

The article reports:

“Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a long-time Taliban member who has been [the] leader of the group’s Shura or Leadership Council for about two decades, was named as prime minister. He is seen as an influential and respected on the religious side of the movement, rather than on its military side,” CNN reported. Not a single female leader was among those appointed, despite the Taliban’s reported newfound commitment to women’s rights.

“Two senior figures in the Haqqani Network, a US-designated terror group aligned with the Taliban and al Qaeda, will be in in the interim government. Both have been sanctioned by the United Nations and the US,” the outlet added.

Sirajuddin Haqqani is the Haqqani Network’s leader, CNN noted, and he is joined by his uncle, Khalil Haqqani, who was appointed “acting minister of refugees,” though it is not clear whether that refers to incoming or outgoing Afghans.

Sirajuddin Haqqani is wanted by both the FBI and the United States State Department, and he has a $5 million bounty from the U.S. State Department on his head, according to the FBI’s “Most Wanted” page,  which still lists his whereabouts as largely unknown.

Just for the record, Fox News reported the following yesterday:

According to the Afghan television network TOLOnews, the Taliban-formed government gave leadership positions to Khairullah Khairkhwa, Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Mohammad Fazl; all of whom were released in a 2014 deal between the Obama administration and the Taliban to free Bergdahl, whom the Taliban had held as a prisoner since 2009.

At least if anyone wanted to deal with these criminals, we know where to find them.

This Might Be Legitimate, But It Is Still Scary

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Yesterday Just the News reported that an Afghan refugee at Ramstein Air Base in Germany boarded a plane headed for America with blasting caps and other explosives materials in his carry-on luggage. The article explains that he was not a terrorist–he was working as contractor for the U.S. government when he was evacuated, and officials believe the materials were related to his work and not terrorism. Okay, but how did he get the explosive materials into Ramstein Air Base?

The article reports:

“TSA advised that during the physical search (full open) of the individuals baggage a German military member identified a suspicious item in the baggage,” the TSA memo stated. The explosives were taken outside the hangar, an ordinance team was summoned and the man removed from the entry line from the flight, the memo stated.

Though the man wasn’t suspected of ill intent, the incident is a poignant reminder that the rushed evacuation and processing of refugees from a country with significant terrorist sympathies poses risks, although officials stressed the pre-flight screening did in fact work as it should.

It was not immediately clear how the man got the explosive materials inside Ramstein, but officials said they were working on the hypothesis that he had brought them with him from Afghanistan during his evacuation.

Officials said the Pentagon was taking the lead investigating since the episode occurred on a U.S. military installation. The FBI, Customs Border Protection, TSA and Homeland Security were assisting the investigation.

This really defies logic. We evacuated thousands of Afghans from Afghanistan without vetting them thoroughly, while according to some sources leaving behind many of the people who helped us. We really have no idea who we evacuated, and it’s not like we can call up the Afghan government and ask about the people we are not sending to America. To say that the entire operation of ending the war in Afghanistan was botched is a great understatement. The people who planned the evacuation need to be unemployed quickly.

When You Leave Out The Details In Order To Defame Israel

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Jihad Watch posted an article today that included the following screenshot:

Wow. That’s awful. It’s very easy to sympathize with the mother. However, there is a whole lot more to the story.

The article reports:

On August 28, United States Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) ignited a firestorm after posting a claim on Twitter that Israel was dehumanizing Palestinians by not returning the body of an assailant who in June had attempted to ram a car into IDF soldiers before exiting the vehicle while wielding a knife. She was subsequently shot dead.

The assailant was Mai Afana, who had tried to kill Israeli soldiers, first with a car-ramming at a checkpoint and then with the knife she wielded after exiting the car, with which she intended to stab them.

Nevertheless, Tlaib wrote the following on the social media platform:

Meet Mai Afana’s mother, Khuloud, who is fighting to be able to bury her daughter & begin her healing. Mai was a mother, loving daughter & successful PhD student. She was killed by the Israeli government last June. Israel won’t release her body to her family.

“First, there is the obvious fact that Tlaib failed to even note that Afana had committed an act of terrorism.

In the current Palestinian culture, it is an honor to have your child die while killing or fighting Israelis. In fact, the group that rules the Palestinian territories pays families generously when one of their children is killed. Not returning the body of a terrorist is standard policy for Israel–experience tells them that returning the body will only result in more terrorism.

This tweet is an example of the way social media can be used to frame a story in a way that is totally misleading. In that tweet, Representative Tlaib is showing her support for terrorist activity. She sits in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Representative. That is not acceptable.

When The Media Totally Goes Off The Rails

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It must be difficult right now to hold a job in the mainstream media. Think of all the pretending you have to do–Joe Biden is a good President, Kamala Harris is qualified to take over as President if necessary, the 2020 election was not stolen, January 6th was the end of our Republic. And the beat goes on.

On Sunday, Newsbusters posted an article about a recent discussion that occurred on CNN.

The article reports:

As we have all learned from Joe Biden’s presidency, the phoniest/baloney-est claim from liberals is that they have a deep desire for national unity. There is no unity in compromise, only in surrender to the Left.

At the end of Sunday’s Reliable Sources, fill-in host John Avlon interviewed the PBS gasbag Ken Burns, asking him about national unity, and he’s as phony as Biden. This is CNN, so Avlon demands unity in exaggerating the January 6 riot:

AVLON: You’ve made the point in terms of the quest for unity, that at the end of the day, Americans usually can rally together when something catastrophic has occurred. Sometimes that’s what’s required to focus it on our underlying humanity. And yet, the attack on the Capitol on January 6 does not seem to have united us. Instead, there is remains an effort to rewrite even that recent history. So, what hope do you have about a path forward when we have not been able to unite around an attack on our capital, the worst and the first since the War of 1812?

BURNS: Yeah — it’s terrifying. This is one of the great crises along with the Civil War, the Depression, and the Second World War that we have in large measure because things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere entropy is loosed upon the world.

Somehow I suspect that neither one of these men has ever served in the armed forces.

The article concludes:

BURNS: And I don’t think there’s any right- thinking American — we can disagree on how you get things done — what the role of government is that I don’t think anybody wants this noble experiment to dissolve just when we have in our grasp the possibilities and the tools with which to solve these things. And we have looming ahead of us, this huge global threat of climate change that has to be addressed, and we can’t now permit the Flat Earth Society any more time.

The obvious question is who decides what the Flat Earth Society or its equivalent is. The left is convinced that the only path to unity is forcing everyone to agree with them.

Learning To Read Between The Lines

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Yesterday PJ Media posted an article titled, “How You Can Tell the Delta Surge in Florida Is Waning.” Keep in mind that the political left is attempting to destroy Ron DeSantis before he becomes either a presidential or vice-presidential candidate.

The article reports:

You can almost hear the wailing. If the media wants to keep up the COVID-19 panic porn, they will have to pick on a Democrat governor. Right now, Oregon Governor Kate Brown is seeing a significant surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in her state, just like Hawaii experienced concurrent with the red states in the Southeast. But if the media talks about Hawaii and Oregon, they have to point out that these states enforced some of the strictest restrictions and mask mandates, and cases surged anyway. That can’t happen.

The corporate media prefers to portray Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as incompetent and generally fails spectacularly. They consider him the most dangerous Republican in the mix for 2024 and will do anything to hamper his reelection chances in 2022. So as the Florida surge begins to decline, at least one outlet has taken to doing the media equivalent of “vaguebooking.” This story is like the post you see on Facebook where everyone knows whom a user is talking about, even if the user doesn’t mention a name.

NBC Miami published a story with the headline, “Mentor to Young Men Among 15 MDCPS Staff to Die of COVID in Ten Days.” For reference, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools have 33,179 total full-time staff, which means 0.045% of the staff was affected. I am not providing this statistic to minimize any death. The only person profiled in the report who passed away is a tragic loss for the school and community.

The article also notes:

Between 3,000 and 4,000 high-risk patients are being treated daily in Florida’s 21 infusion centers. That does not include treatment provided in private practice and hospital settings. Hospitalization rates decreased 20% following the implementation of the program in mid-August. As of September 2, 69% of the eligible population received the full vaccine series in Florida and 87% of those over 65 have. Dr. Patrick Lorimer either doesn’t understand the clinical progression of COVID-19 or didn’t read the story.

Patrick Lorimer criticized Governor DeSantis’ handling of the virus in a tweet included in the article. It also needs to be noted that all of the people who were treated and recovered will have some level of immunity. That will slow the spread of the virus.

This is another example of the media skewing facts in order to damage a potential Republican leader. Covid is serious, but if the media has to continue to tell us that this is a pandemic, is it a pandemic?

Coming To America If We Don’t Stop It

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The Conservative Treehouse is reporting today that Australia is setting a new policy for dealing with the coronavirus.

The article reports:

Apparently the internet has been turned off for people in Australia.  That is the only reasonable explanation for how their political leadership can keep claiming that vaccinated people cannot contract the COVID virus.

This claim is empirically refuted by every other nation who is seeing vaccinated people contracting COVID and “some” being hospitalized regardless of their vaccine status.

On a weirdly positive note, it appears they have abandoned the regional Australian plan of “COVID-ZERO,” which was a plan to lock-down the entire nation, on a state-by-state basis, until they never had a single case of COVID and then re-open society.

The article explains the new policy:

In a press conference yesterday from Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews proclaimed that vaccinated citizens in the state of Victoria will be allowed out of lockdown in the near future. However, freedom as defined by access to medical treatment, the ability to work, shopping, attending events and engagement in the economy writ large, will not be permitted for any non-vaccinated citizen. Anyone who is not vaccinated will remain in locked-down isolation as enforced by the state.

…The justification for withholding access to life in Victoria is based on a premise that vaccinated people do not contract COVID, therefore the coronavirus is a “virus of the unvaccinated.”  That statement is a completely false position.  As seen in the U.S., and all other nations around the world, the vaccinated population contracts COVID in the same way as the non-vaccinated.  Some studies have even shown the vaccinated population are susceptible to carrying higher loads of the virus than non-vaccinated individuals.

The vaccine provides zero-benefit from avoidance of the virus.  Any claim to the contrary is totally devoid of reality, science or empirical evidence.

In some nations -like Israel- there is more than a 90% vaccinated status, and yet the COVID virus is still infecting, spiking and creating large issues with hospitalization for those at greatest risk. A large percentage of that Israeli population is now triple-vaxxed; and yet the issues continue.   Conversely, in Sweeden and parts of the U.S, the economy and society is largely open, and the variant viruses are running through the vaccinated and non-vaccinated population without a significantly disparate outcome.

This is a degree of government control that should never be tolerated in a society that claims to be free. Unfortunately, we will probably see some sort of policy similar to this in America if the Biden administration gets its way. Notice that there is no allowance for those who have natural antibodies because they have survived the virus. Science be d***ed, the government wants control!

Fake News From The Mainstream Media

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Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about a recent article in Rolling Stone.

The Daily Wire reports:

A story circulating social media on Saturday — thanks to it being picked up by Rolling Stone and Rachel Maddow — claimed that hospitals in Oklahoma have been overwhelmed with people overdosing on horse dewormer, leaving gunshot victims in the lurch.

The story on its face was absurd, yet multiple media outlets pushed the claim, based on the word of a single doctor who gave an interview to KFOR. That doctor, Jason McElyea, claimed that the emergency rooms in Oklahoma “are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated.”

The first question that comes to mind is, “How many gunshot victims are we actually talking about?”

The article continues:

That, combined with an unrelated quote about hospital capacity, formed the basis of Rolling Stone’s article insisting people are ingesting Ivermectin — a drug that has approved uses for humans and animals — at such high rates they are overwhelming hospitals.

The only people who would believe that are journalists who learned Ivermectin is a popular horse dewormer and wanted to run with the narrative that people were taking that version of it to treat COVID-19.

The article concludes:

Stephanie Six, hospital administrator at NHS Sequoyah, told KXMX that the hospital had “not seen or had any patients in our ER or hospital with ivermectin overdose” nor did it have “any patients with complaints or issues related to ivermectin.”

She reiterated that McElyea hadn’t treated patients at the NHS Sequoyah emergency room in several months.

“I can’t speak for what he has witnessed at other facilities but this is not true for ours,” Six said. “We certainly have not turned any patients away due to an overload of ivermectin related cases. All patients who have come into our ER have been treated as appropriate.”

The story should have been viewed with skepticism from the beginning since fewer than 500 calls about Ivermectin have been made to poison control centers across the country.

It should cause all of us to pause a minute to wonder why some in the medical community (and the mainstream media) are so quick to condemn any possible cure for Covid that might be inexpensive and effective.