The Fight For American Freedom

On Saturday The Epoch Times reported the following:

The Sixth Circuit Court has denied the federal government’s motion to transfer the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) vaccine-or-test requirement lawsuit to a different court, while also rejecting the White House’s bid to dissolve a stay on the mandate, delivering a blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to press ahead with implementation.

In a Dec. 3 ruling, the Sixth Circuit Court denied the government’s motion to transfer the case to the Fifth Circuit and the D.C. Circuit, while also rejecting as “moot” the Biden administration’s attempt to overturn a hold on the mandate.

OSHA on Nov. 5 published an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) that would require private employers with 100 or more employees to impose a mandatory COVID-19 vaccinate-or-test policy. Under the rule, unvaccinated workers would also have to wear masks inside the workplace, with violators facing potential penalties of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per incident.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2 or the novel coronavirus.

After the OSHA rule was published, it triggered a torrent of lawsuits from Republican-led states, individuals, and businesses.

Those lawsuits were consolidated, and the 6th Circuit Court was selected by lottery to hear the case. The 6th Circuit Court includes 11 out of 16 judges who are Republican appointees.

The article notes:

The Biden administration then filed a motion on Nov. 23 to lift the Fifth Circuit’s stay on the mandate and get the case moved to a potentially more favorable court.

The Sixth Circuit Court’s Dec. 3 ruling denied both requests.

Rob Natelson, a former constitutional law professor, wrote in a recent op-ed for The Epoch Times that it’s likely the legal challenge to the OSHA rule will end up before the Supreme Court.

…The Fifth Circuit ruling described the OSHA rule as “fatally flawed” and said that the mandate would likely be declared unconstitutional.

In its Nov. 23 filing, the Biden administration argued that the Fifth Circuit panel erroneously interpreted the OSHA mandate, saying that “the speculative compliance costs and similar harms asserted by regulated parties cannot overcome the extraordinary harms to the public interest detailed above.”

“Simply put, delaying the standard would likely cost many lives per day, in addition to large numbers of hospitalizations, other serious health effects, and tremendous expenses,” White House lawyers alleged in the filing. “That is a confluence of harms of the highest order.”

Keep in mind that there is a lot of information coming out calling into question the effectiveness of the vaccine. If we are not sure the vaccine works against the current variations of the coronavirus, how does a vaccine mandate make sense? Is this about science or is this about control?

 

This Is Not Suprising

On Saturday, The American Thinker posted an article about the dwindling revenue going toward the Clinton Foundation.

The article reports:

According to Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton:

When one of the most recognizable nonprofits in the world loses 75% of its contributions over a four-year period, there are typically investigatory reports written into what has gone wrong. That isn’t the case with the Clinton Foundation. The Foundation received $62.9 million in 2016 but only $16.3 million in 2020, and very few people seem to have notice[d].

That is because most Beltway insiders know the Clinton Foundation’s primary purpose: to serve as a platform for Hillary Clinton’s political operation while lining the Clintons’ pockets by trading influence for money. That is why donations spiked when Hillary was secretary of state and most of the world thought she was destined to become president — and why they cratered after she lost.

The article continues:

It’s always been a political influence-peddling operation.  As Fitton notes, donations spiked when Hillary Clinton was riding high on the hog as President Obama’s secretary of state.  After she left office and lost the 2016 presidency to Donald J. Trump, she got “defunded,” big.  Trump cost the harridan a lot of baksheesh she had been counting on.  Issues & Insights has an excellent chart here demonstrating the trajectory along with a good editorial to go with it.

The Foundation, laughably enough, attributed the drop-off in donations to the pandemic.  Fitton shot that down with this:

This argument doesn’t explain the tens of millions the Foundation lost between 2016 and 2019 and ignores that charitable giving was up by 5.1% in America last year.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes a list of large honorariums paid to Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton for their speeches. Although the donations have dwindled, they are still coming in. The list of where the donations are coming from is very interesting. There evidently are some people who are betting that the Clintons still wield significant influence in American politics.

Does Corruption Matter?

On Friday, Just the News posted an article about Miranda Devine’s new book, “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide.” It seems as if a lot of things President Biden has said about his son’s business dealings are simply not true.

The article reports:

President Biden “lied” on the campaign trail “when he said that he knew nothing about his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings,” alleges Miranda Devine, author of “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide.”

Biden “met Hunter’s business partners from overseas multiple times” when he was vice president, including “Mexicans and Ukrainians and Russians and Chinese and Kazakhstanis,” Devine told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Thursday.

He met some of them in Beijing, others at Cafe Milano and the Naval Observatory, the vice presidential residence, in Washington, D.C.

Miranda Devine also stated:

“I think all you need to know about Burisma is that when Joe Biden stopped being vice president, Burisma cut Hunter Biden’s salary in half,” she added.

…She explained that Hunter Biden’s laptop, abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop, shows how much his and his father’s finances were intertwined, how they know “everything about each other’s business,” have “joint bank accounts, shared debit cards,” and how Hunter paid “for at least some of Joe’s sort of household bills — maintenance on his Delaware mansion.”

“[T]here are emails,” she continued, “where there are these overdue bills for Joe Biden’s Delaware mansion — whether it’s sort of fixing a retaining wall or painting a fence or fixing the shutters or replacing the air conditioning — you know, several thousand dollars for each bill from local Delaware contractors.

Contrast the lack of reporting on these scandals with the over-the-top reporting on imaginary Trump scandals. The media lost their interest in investigative reporting and objectivity long ago. Let’s hope they get enough of their focus back to at least report on how Joe Biden and his son Hunter managed to get rich on a Congressman’s pay.

Shouldn’t We Be Alarmed At This?

On Thursday American Greatness posted an article about a recent statement by President Biden about Israel’s Six-Day War.

The article reports:

Either Joe Biden’s faulty memory or his lifelong habit of padding his resume was on display Wednesday during a menorah lighting at the White House in celebration of Hanukkah.

During his remarks before the lighting, Biden bragged about “the many times” he’d been to Israel, and then decided to alter history and insert himself as an important player in the Six-Day War.

“I have known every — every prime minister well since Golda Meir, including Golda Meir,” Biden said to applause. “And during the Six-Day War, I had an opportunity to — she invited me to come over because I was going to be the liaison between she and the Egyptians about the Suez, and so on and so forth.”

This would be an impressive story, except Meir wasn’t Israel’s prime minister during the Six Day War of 1967 (she was PM from March 17, 1969 to June 3, 1974), and Biden was still in law school at the time, (where he ranked a dismal 76th in his class of 85).

Golda Meir became Prime Minister in 1969. Levi Eshkol was Prime Minister from 1963 to 1969.

The article at American Greatness quotes a National Review article from December 2 of this year.

The National Review article reports:

Biden did indeed meet Golda Meir in 1973 — six years after the Six Day War — but that is . . . not how the Israelis remember that meeting, at least according to a contemporaneous classified Israeli memo from that time:

Biden warned that Israel’s actions in the territories it had captured during the Six Day War, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were leading to “creeping annexation.”

Since he believed Israel was militarily dominant in the region, he suggested the Jewish state might initiate a first step for peace through unilateral withdrawals from areas with no strategic importance.

The official said Biden criticized the Nixon administration for being “dragged by Israel,” complaining that it was impossible to have a real debate in the Senate about the Middle East as senators were fearful of saying things unpopular with Jewish voters.

Meir rejected Biden’s call for unilateral steps, launching into a speech about the region and its problems (possibly the spiel Biden alluded to in his own comments years later).

The official added his own personal impressions regarding the young senator at the bottom of the document, saying Biden was full of respect toward the Israeli leader and repeatedly said he had come to learn, “and yet while speaking displayed a fervor and made comments that signaled his lack of diplomatic experience.”

In August 2021, The Washington Times reported:

You have to give President Biden credit for consistency. Unfortunately, he has been consistently wrong. As Robert Gates, former defense secretary in the Obama administration, once put it, Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Unfortunately President Biden is the person currently leading our country.

Will Future Reparations Be Paid?

In the past year of so, we have heard a lot about paying reparations to black residents of America because their ancestors were sold as slaves. But what about putting a nail in the coffin of modern-day slavery? On Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about modern-day slavery in China and the efforts by some Congressmen to end it.

The article reports:

Senate Democrats are blocking legislation that would prohibit imports from China made with Uyghur slave labor, in response to pressure from Biden administration officials who fear the bill would torpedo climate negotiations with the Chinese government, congressional sources told the Washington Free Beacon.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a bill sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) that has long been circulating in Congress and is backed by the human rights community and opponents of China’s forced labor camps, was included in a package of 25 amendments to the annual defense authorization bill, according to a list distributed by Senate leadership on Wednesday.

But Democrats excluded the amendment from a vote late Wednesday night, after members of the party privately objected to it, sources told the Free Beacon. Earlier in the evening, Democrats tried to use a procedural mechanism that would have allowed a vote on the act but stripped it from the final authorization bill, according to a hotline memo from Senate leadership.

The pushback from Senate Democrats comes amid efforts by senior Biden administration officials to quietly kill the bill over concerns it will hinder the White House’s climate agenda and limit solar panel imports from China. Presidential climate envoy John Kerry, among others, has been lobbying House members against the bill, the Free Beacon reported last month. The bill is widely backed by the human rights community and easily attracted Republican support in the narrowly Democrat-controlled Senate. Congressional officials tell the Free Beacon that the new opposition to the measure among Democrats is a product of the Biden administration’s lobbying efforts.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer offered conflicting explanations for the holdup on Wednesday, with his office initially suggesting to the Free Beacon that Republicans were blocking a vote on the amendment.

The anti-slavery act has “been on the list of amendments Senate Democrats proposed the Senate to vote on that the Republicans have been objecting to … so you should ask the Senate Republicans why they’re blocking the vote,” Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman told the Free Beacon.

The article concludes:

Michael Sobolik, a fellow in Indo-Pacific studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, said the Senate Democratic opposition to the amendment was the “latest episode in a series of concessions to the Chinese Communist Party.”

“With their words, the administration and its congressional allies insist that America can simultaneously cooperate and compete with Beijing,” said Sobolik. “By their actions, they are dismissing potential complicity in an ongoing genocide to pocket dubious climate concessions from a regime with a track record of lying and breaking promises. That’s the opposite of ‘responsible competition.'”

I wish we could afford to pay all of our representatives and politicians in Washington as well as China pays them.

What Were They Thinking?

Trending Politics recently posted an article about a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would establish a federal vaccination database. I guess when you want total control, you don’t worry about such things as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) laws.

The article reports:

The House of Representatives has passed a dangerous bill that would establish a federal vaccination database. Alarmingly, the radical Democrats accomplished this with the help of 80 Republicans, including Minority Leader and Speaker hopeful Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

“Eighty House Republicans voted with Democrats on Tuesday to pass the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act, which if passed by the Senate and signed into law would fund a federal vaccination database,” Breitbart reported.

“According to the bill, also called H. R. 550, the government would provide $400 million in taxpayer dollars to fund ‘immunization system data modernization and expansion,’ a system otherwise defined as ‘a confidential, population-based, computerized database that records immunization doses administered by any health care provider to persons within the geographic area covered by that database’,” the report noted.

The government bill would spend $400 million on an “immunization system data modernization and expansion,” a system it says is “a confidential, population-based, computerized database that records immunization doses administered by any health care provider to persons within the geographic area covered by that database.”

If you don’t think this law will be totally misused by the people in Washington, you haven’t been paying attention.

The article concludes:

“In a statement, the bill’s main sponsor, Democrat Rep. Ann Kuster (NH), said the system would be used to ‘remind patients when they are due for a recommended vaccine’ and identify areas with low vaccination rates to ‘ensure equitable distribution of vaccines,” Breitbart reported. “Notably, the bill has four Republican co-sponsors: Reps. Larry Bucshon (R-IN), James Baird (R-IN), David McKinley (R-WV), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).”

Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), one of the 130 Republicans to vote “no,” told Breitbart News on Wednesday that the legislation would enable the federal government to “track” unvaccinated Americans who “will be targeted and forced to comply with Biden’s crazy ‘global vaccination’ vision.”

“These systems are designed to allow for the sharing of crucial information and maintenance of records. Do we really trust the government to protect our medical records?” Miller said. “The bill’s author even bragged in her press release that these systems will help the government remind patients when they are due for a recommended vaccine and identify areas with low vaccination rates to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines. This was clearly a legislative tool to enforce vaccine mandates and force their Orwellian rules onto those who do not comply.”

Disturbingly, the federal vaccination database could also be abused to target Americans who value human rights and individual freedoms. As the Democratic Party has repeatedly demonstrated, there is no part of the federal government the extremist party isn’t willing to weaponize against their political enemies.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes a list of the Republicans who voted for the bill.

The November Jobs Report

On Friday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the November Jobs Report. The expectation was that approximately 535,000 jobs would be created. The actual number created was 210,000.

The article reports:

The situation itself is not that difficult to understand when you look at Main Street.  However, so many of the professional punditry class are confused because they only focus on the Wall Street economy, their only prism of reference for the last several decades.

Americans are preparing, cutting back and hunkering down from the Hurricane that is Joe Biden’s inflation.

Inside the jobs numbers, you will note the areas where consumer spending contraction first hits: retail, luxury, leisure and hospitality, is the area where November employment was flat or jobs were lost.   DUH!

The ‘retail sectorlost 20,000 jobs in November.  Think about that.  What usually happens in November?  People are hired to handle holiday seasonal shopping…. but they weren’t… why not?  The professional economic punditry cannot figure it out, so they avoid those questions entirely.  Those questions hold the key to unlocking the understanding.  Does the “pretending not to know things” ring familiar?

The damn jobs report is simply reflecting how Main Street USA workers, consumers, spenders and survivors live when gasoline, energy and food costs necessarily skyrocket.  The November employment results are a reflection of the blue collar prepper mindset.  This is not hard to figure out.   As long as inflation rages on, items that cannot be avoided, at a level that is two to five times the rate of wage growth, decisions are made that are based on checkbook economics.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes a graphic of the hurricane of inflation about to hit the middle class. It also includes a quote from MSM blaming the Delta version of Covid for the problem. Somehow the media would rather blame a disease than face the fact that the inflation the Biden administration is creating with runaway spending might be the problem.

Aren’t The Rules Supposed To Be For Everyone?

The Daily Caller posted an article on Wednesday that included a really good question asked by Peter Doucy.

The article reports:

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that new testing requirements might be required for all people traveling into the U.S., but with regard to new COVID-19 restrictions for illegal immigrants, Fauci said, “That’s a different issue.”

“You advised the president about the possibility of new testing requirements for people coming into this country, does that include everybody?” Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy asked Fauci at a briefing Wednesday.

“The answer is yes,” Fauci said. “Anybody and everybody who’s coming into the country needs to get a test within 24 hours of getting on the plane to come here.”

“What about … these border crossers?” Doocy pressed.

“That’s a different issue,” Fauci replied.

That would be comical if it were not so serious.

The article concludes:

President Joe Biden’s policy, which is being considered, would require all travelers entering the country, including U.S. citizens, to provide proof of a negative test regardless of vaccination status no more than three days before their flight, according to Fox News.

Biden announced new travel restrictions Friday from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi, due to the Omicron COVID-19 variant.

But anyone who comes through the southern border illegally is exempt from these requirements.

Let The Awakening Begin

On Thursday, Just the News reported that Victor Jimenez, a former spokesperson for Washington, D.C., Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser, has switched to the Republican party because of the policies of the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Victor Jimenez told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that until recently he “lead public information officer at [Bowser’s] office for community affairs” and worked prior to that in a similar role for Latino outreach.

“The reason I switched parties is because of everything that’s going on in the country right now,” Jimenez, an Afro-Dominican immigrant, told Carlson. “We see immigration through the roof right now, and that is affecting a lot of Hispanic families in my home state of Virginia. And those are people who are already struggling with making ends meet.”

Jimenez cited immigration issues as the major reason for leaving the Democratic Party, including what the considers party leaders’ unsuccessful efforts to get control of the record number of migrants attempting to cross the southern U.S. border.

“If you look at the southern border, we have thousands of people who are just waiting there,” he said. “And I’m not saying we have good people try to come into the country with good intentions, but we also have bad people coming into the country with bad intentions. People with illegal guns and drugs and people who are running from their law enforcement in their own country.

“Being Hispanic and Black, I should be Democrat by default. But I am going against their narrative and I feel like right now everything is crumbling for the Democrats.”

Mr. Jimenez stated that he voted for Glenn Youngkin in Virginia’s gubernatorial election.

The article notes:

Jimenez called the defeat of former Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe by Youngkin, a first-time politician and former businessman, “the beginning of the end” for the Democrats, and precursor for what could be a very painful 2022 election cycle for the party currently in power in D.C.

I doubt that we will ever see the ‘end’ for the Democrats, but I would celebrate the end of some of their policies.

Ruining A City Already In Peril

On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has created the first legal ‘shooting gallery’ for drug addicts in the city.

The article reports:

With just four weeks left in office, Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the country’s first legal shooting galleries Tuesday morning, calling them safe havens for addicts — shortly before five people overdosed at just one of the clinics on opening day.

“Overdose Prevention Centers are a safe and effective way to address the opioid crisis. I’m proud to show cities in this country that after decades of failure, a smarter approach is possible,” de Blasio said in a statement.

The nonprofit-run centers, New York Harm Reduction Educators on E. 126th Street in Harlem and Washington Heights’ CORNER Project on W. 180th Street, opened Tuesday.

There were five overdoses at the East Harlem site that saw 85 users inject drugs laced with fentanyl including heroin on Tuesday. 

This is not the way to deal with the drug problem. Also, this is a big change to make four weeks before leaving office.

The article concludes:

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), whose district includes Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn, called on the Department of Justice to block the sites, noting that under former President Trump the DOJ said such sites would violate the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Malliotakis wrote US Attorney General Merrick Garland Tuesday urging him to “take swift action to enforce federal law.”

The congresswoman cited a Jan. 2021 Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that determined it was a federal crime for a supervised injection site run by a Philadelphia nonprofit to allow consumption of illegal drug use at its location.

“Instead of focusing on the root cause of the drug epidemic, Mayor de Blasio is enabling drug cartels that continue to break our laws, smuggle illegal drugs over our border, and prey on our children,” Malliotakis said.

“Crime and fentanyl use are at record highs because of open borders, botched bail reform, and anti-police policies that keep releasing criminal drug dealers back onto our streets. Opening taxpayer-funded heroin shooting galleries is not a proper solution. These centers not only encourage drug use but they will further deteriorate our quality of life,” she said.

De Blasio has largely turned a blind eye to daytime drug sprees in major city hubs like the Garment District and the Triangle Plaza Hub in the Bronx.

It might be a good idea to acknowledge that a good deal of our drug problem in America is related to two things–an open southern border and the Chinese manufacturing and selling of fentanyl. Until we are willing to address those two issues, we will continue to have an addiction problem in America. Setting up ‘safe’ places to take illegal drugs does nothing to combat either problem. There is no law regulating illegal drugs or controlling what is in them. There is no guarantee that an illegally purchased drug will not contain a fatal does of fentanyl.

Changing The Vocabulary To The Ridiculous

The Hannity website posted an article today that featured a quote from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that indicates how the political left is attempting to change the vocabulary on the abortion debate.

The article reports:

Far-left Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighed-in Wednesday night on the issue of abortion; saying the US Supreme Court could move to “legalize forced birth” across the country.

“Reminder that Brett Kavanaugh *still* remains credibly accused of sexual assault on multiple accounts w/ corroborated details & this year the FBI admitted it never fully investigated. Yet the court is letting him decide on whether to legalize forced birth in the US. No recusal,” posted AOC on Twitter.

“Out of 9 justices, 3 were appointed by a man who tried to overthrow the US government (& elected via minority). Those 3 will decide whether the US will legalize forcing people to give birth against their will. Legitimacy requires consent of the governed. They are dismantling it,” she added.

Just a note–the charges against Justice Kavanaugh were dropped because there was no credible evidence to back them up. How quickly AOC forgot that. She has also overlooked the fact that the majority of Americans do not support unlimited abortion.

The article notes that there are a significant number of protesters in Washington because of this Supreme Court case:

The U.S. Capitol Police says its officers are arresting protesters for blocking roads near the Supreme Court.

“We are giving roughly 40 demonstrators warnings to stop violating DC Code § 22–1307- Crowding, Obstructing or Incommoding near First Street, NE and Constitution Avenue,” the USCP said in a tweet Wednesday.

“We have given the demonstrators three warnings and are now arresting them for violating DC Code § 22–1307- Crowding, Obstructing or Incommoding in an area where protesting is prohibited,” it added a few minutes later. “This does not affect the lawful demonstrators who are in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

People have never been forced to give birth against their will. In a sense, the difference between an abortion and what AOC calls a ‘forced birth’ is the fact that in a ‘forced birth’ the child is generally alive. So the problem isn’t giving birth–it’s whether or not the child is allowed to live. Pregnancy does not just happen. It is the result of decisions and actions. Sometimes it is accidental, but it can still be traced back to decisions and actions. To refer to having a child as a ‘forced birth’ is probably one of the dumbest things I have ever heard.

Sad, But Not Surprising

The transgender movement is a direct threat to women’s sports. A transgender woman can compete and win in women’s sports. A woman who transitions to a man will generally not do well in men’s sports. This is illustrated in a article posted yesterday at PJ Media.

The article reports:

Will Thomas was a moderately successful swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s swim team for three years. But then he took a year off, reemerged as transgender, and started dominating the women’s swim team.

“One of my big concerns for trans people is feeling alone,” he told Penn Today. “Even if you don’t pay attention to the news … [about] states proposing and passing vicious anti-trans legislation, it can feel very lonely and overwhelming.”

“The process of coming out as being trans and continuing to swim was a lot of uncertainty and unknown around an area that’s usually really solid. Realizing I was trans threw that into question. Was I going to keep swimming? What did that look like?”

He added, “Being trans has not affected my ability to do this sport and being able to continue is very rewarding.”

It may not have affected his ability to do his sport, but as a transgender he is competing against women who generally do not have the upper body strength that men do. He is competing in an unequal playing field where he has an unfair advantage. How many women will lose college scholarships in swimming to a transgender women?

This Comment Makes No Sense

The Patriot Daily Wire posted an article today about the accidental shooting on the set of the movie “Rust.” What happened was an awful mistake on someone’s part, but the information coming from Alec Baldwin regarding the shooting makes no sense.

The article reports:

In the aftermath of the seemingly accidental and fatal shooting that happened on the set of Alec Baldwin’s movie “Rust,” there are still questions regarding exactly what happened and who is at fault.

On Oct. 21, while filming on set for his upcoming western movie, Baldwin was given a gun for his scene. The scene involved drawing a revolver and pointing it at the camera, as The New York Times reported.

But then the gun fired, and hit cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in the chest and director Joel Souza in the shoulder. Hutchins, unfortunately, died from the gunshot.

Questions around the incident immediately followed. Why was there a live gun on set? Did Baldwin know it was loaded with live rounds? Why did seemingly no one notice there were live bullets in the gun before it was handed off to Baldwin?

In an interview clip released on Wednesday, Baldwin said that he did not pull the trigger.

This is an excerpt from the interview with George Stephanopoulos:

“Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger,” the actor told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

“So you never pulled the trigger?” Stephanopoulos pointedly asked him.

“No, no, no. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them. Never,” Baldwin answered.

Baldwin said he had no idea there was a live bullet in the gun and furthermore, he had no clue how live rounds of ammo even got onto the premises.

Reuters noted the full interview with Stephanopoulos will be released on Thursday, but some clips were posted on Wednesday.

This just isn’t reality. My sympathies go out to Mr. Baldwin who is obviously having a hard time dealing with what happened and the role he played in it.

As The Details Come Out

On Tuesday, NewsMax reported that Chris Cuomo has been indefinitely suspended by CNN after news of how he helped his brother with sexual assault accusations surfaced. The problem is not that he gave advice to his brother–the problem is that he used his resources as a newsman to gather dirt of his brother’s accusers.

The article reports:

The network said documents released by New York’s attorney general Monday indicated a greater level in his brother’s efforts than the network previously knew.

“As a result, we have suspended Chris indefinitely, pending further evaluation,” the network said.

The article concludes:

Chris Cuomo had previously acknowledged talking to his brother and offering advice when the governor faced the harassment charges that led to his resignation. But the information released Nov. 29 revealed far more details about what he did.

The anchor did his show Monday night without mentioning the topic. In the past, he’s said he’s never reported on his brother’s situation for the network and never tried to influence coverage. On-air in August, he said: “I tried to do the right thing,” adding he “wasn’t in control of anything.”

Cuomo interviewed his brother on the air a number of times during the first two months of the COVID-19 epidemic. It was a hit with viewers, although it violated CNN’s policy of not having Cuomo report on his brother, and was a programming choice that has grown worse with time and additional revelations.

The Democrat party in New York is changing. One indication of that is the waning power of the Cuomo family. One wonders who is going to come forward to fill the gap they have left. Unfortunately, I fear it will be the more radical elements of the party. It should be noted that Kathy Hochul, the current governor of New York, won her seat in the New York legislature in 2011 as a member of the Democratic Party and Working Families Party. Her biography lists her as a Democrat, but that is not her history. Please do your own research on the Working Families Party. They are not your father’s Democrat party.

Where Did Omicron Come From?

On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about the origins of the new variant of the coronavirus. As usual, what we are being told does not necessarily line up with the actual facts.

The article reports:

Last year, Trump complained frequently that the only reason America’s COVID case numbers looked so grim on his watch is because we did so much testing. There was logic to that, of a sort: Obviously the less testing you do, the fewer confirmed cases you’ll find. If you’re dejected by the misery around you, just close your eyes and pretend like it’s not there. What if Omicron has been spreading in hot spots across the globe but South Africa is the only country with its eyes open, doing the testing needed to detect it? Like the UK, they’re aggressive about genomic surveillance. It’s no surprise that they would detect a case of a new variant early while the U.S. still has no confirmed cases despite the fact that literally everyone believes the variant is already here.

If the variant didn’t originate in Africa but was merely spotted there first, the travel ban that’s been imposed on the southern part of the continent is essentially a penalty for being diligent about surveillance. Not great.

The news today from the Netherlands bolsters the possibility that Omicron didn’t originate in Africa, although what’s described here isn’t the earliest known case of the variant.

The article notes:

Three different European countries had Omicron on their turf before South Africa’s experts knew about it, eh? And at least one case in Germany was found in a person who hasn’t traveled abroad or been in contact with anyone who has, a smoking gun of local community spread. Are we looking at a European origin for Omicron?

Well, hold on. The earliest known samples to test positive from the variant came from four people in Botswana who tested positive on November 11. Botswana is an African country, of course, one that borders South Africa to the north. But there’s a catch about the four people who tested positive: They were … foreign diplomats. And Botswana hasn’t said which country they were from or where else they had traveled. Did those diplomats bring the virus in from their home country or did they pick it up while they were in Botswana? Hmmmm.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes charts and graphs that create more questions than answers. The only good news here is that so far medical experts are saying that the new variant is much less severe than the variants we have seen so far. If that is true, we can end our panic and get back to life as usual.

The Witch Hunt Continues

On Tuesday, Breitbart reported that former Presidential Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows is cooperating with the House Select Committee on January 6 after being threatened with jail time if he refused to cooperate.

The article reports:

However, Meadows said that cooperation had been long in the works, even despite threatening comments from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) touting a forthcoming January 6 committee decision on possible contempt charges for Meadows.

During an interview with Mobile, AL radio’s FM Talk 106.5, Meadows said Schiff’s remarks did not change anything and that he believed the Democrat-led January 6 Committee would be disappointed when they find former President Donald Trump and the West Wing did not have “advance knowledge” on the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he said. “We’ve been working on an accommodation, Jeff, for a long time. What I told them is if I can share with the committee non-privileged information that doesn’t waive the executive privilege that Donald Trump has put forth — it is not my privilege to waive, and I’m not going to be the first chief of staff to do that. At the same time, if I can come in and share non-privileged information that I have, I’ll be glad to do that. [I’m] not going to be compelled to do it. I will be glad to do that voluntarily but if we’re going to do that, if I’m going to do that — what I think they will find is Donald Trump or no one else in the West Wing had any advance knowledge of the security breach that was going to happen at the Capitol on January 6.”

So what is this really about? If you are an American who only listens to the mainstream media, you will be convinced by the time the mid-term elections are held that January 6th was an attempted coup organized by President Trump and his gang of hooligans. That is the goal. That is also the only way the Democrats have a chance of holding on to power in Washington. If you believe January 6th was a coup or an insurrection, why wasn’t anyone armed? Also, there is a person clearly seen in the videos urging people to go into the Capitol who has been identified but not arrested. Hmmm.

I firmly believe that the events at the Capitol on January 6th were a false flag operation. The swamp knew that Trump supporters would be in Washington in numbers. All a few instigators needed to do was to get some of those supporters to break into the Capitol. When you watch the video, you see the Capitol police using flash grenades on a peaceful crowd. You also see Capital police opening the doors to let people into the Capitol. It is interesting that after four years of peaceful Trump rallies, this attack on the Capital occurred. It did not fit the pattern and needs to be looked at in that light.