Internet Censorship Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about a Laura Ingraham interview with Doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi about what they have learned about the coronavirus through their testing and what they believe about what measures should be taken to prevent the spread of the virus.

The article includes the following video:

The doctors had originally placed a video on YouTube explaining what they have learned, but YouTube took that video down. The video was taken down because it did not agree with official WHO policy (which incidentally does not have a great track record for being truthful or helpful).

The article at The Gateway Pundit reports:

Doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi said their facilities have tested over 5,200 patients for the coronavirus throughout the county, making up for over half of all testing in Kern County. According to their data, the death rate of the coronavirus is similar in prevalence to the flu. And they believe only the sick and elderly should be quarantined and that businesses should open. They also revealed that the state of California is pressuring doctors to pad the COVID-19 numbers.

These two doctors are not the only medical professionals stating that the nationwide lockdown is not the answer. It is becoming obvious to many medical professionals and many others that we have made a mistake by shutting down the entire country and need to reopen it.

The article at The Gateway Pundit also includes a longer video by Dr. Erickson explaining what the doctors have learned about the virus and why they believe that the current lockdown is not the right way to protect Americans.

Social Distancing Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today detailing how the country of Sweden has handled the coronavirus outbreak. Sweden tried a totally different path than most of the world, and the results are astonishing.

The article reports:

Reporter Johan Norberg joined Laura Ingraham on Thursday to discuss the Sweden’s ‘controversial’ policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike other Western countries progressive Sweden, of all places, decided to leave their economy running and let the disease run its course while the population reached herd immunity.

The Swedish plan appears to be working.
Sweden, a country of 10 million, now has 2,152 reported coronavirus related deaths.
New York, a state of 19.85 million, now has 20,861 reported coronavirus related deaths.

Sweden is actually seeing better results than several of its European neighbors.

On Thursday Sweden’s chief epidemiologist announced the Swedish strategy appears to be working and that “herd immunity” could be reached in the capital Stockholm in a matter of weeks.

The article concludes with a portion of the transcript of the conversation:

Laura Ingraham: We found out that herd immunity will be reached in about 2-3 weeks in Sweden. I mean, then they’re kind of done.

Johan Norberg: That’s why we shouldn’t make too many comparisons to cases and deaths right now. Because almost every other country except Sweden has just postponed deaths. They won’t avoid them because there is still no argument that has been made that suddenly this disease will go away after their lockdowns are over. I mean if they’re waiting for a vaccine that could take over a year if we’re lucky. It could take several years. And no society can be shut down completely and shut down the economy for more than a year without ruining society and the economy entirely. And that will kill many more people than the virus does.

Herd immunity is the best solution to this virus. It seems that because of our lockdown, we may have delayed reaching that point. However, because we are being told that the virus does not like heat or humidity, the virus may exit the southern United States before the south faces the long term health consequences of the lockdown.

Be Careful What You Wish For

CNS News posted an article today about the upcoming appearance of Robert Mueller before the House of Representatives.

The article notes:

Be careful what you wish for, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Tuesday night:

“Listen, it is not a good day for America, but Bob Mueller better be prepared. Because I can tell you, he will be cross-examined for the first time, and the American people will start to see the flaws in his report.”

Republicans have many unanswered questions about the scope of Mueller’s investigation, including the process leading up to the FISA warrant on Carter Page and when Mueller’s team learned that there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

Meadows said Democrats have courted Mueller “just so that they can harass the president” and keep the collusion/obstruction narrative going for political reasons.

Meadows predicted that Mueller’s testimony will “backfire” on Democrats.

Mueller, in his only public comment on the report, said it speaks for itself and he would have nothing to add beyond what is in it.

But “Congress has questions that go beyond the report,” Rep. Schiff told CNN Tuesday night:

“So we have any number of questions about the counter-intelligence investigation, and the role of the counter-intelligence agents within his team to questions about some of the prosecutorial decisions that were made. We have fact questions about some of the statements that are made in the report, so there are any number of issues that we wish to cover with him,” Schiff said.

So what about the questions some of the rest of us have:

  • How was the investigation team chosen?
  • Why was the investigation team composed solely of Democrat campaign contributors and in one case a lawyer who had worked for the Clintons?
  • Why was someone put in charge of investigating the President right after the President had rejected his job application? Was he expected to be objective?
  • Why did the Mueller Report totally ignore Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, etc.?
  • Why was an unverified dossier used as the basis for a FISA Warrant?
  • How many attempts were made to place undercover agents in the Trump campaign?
  • Why were charges against Paul Manafort that had been deemed not worth prosecuting more than ten years ago suddenly brought to life again?
  • Why did the investigation look equally into both campaigns?
  • Did the report include the fact that the Democrats never allowed the FBI to examine their computer servers that they claimed the Russians had hacked?
  • When did Robert Mueller realize that there was no collusion between President Trump and Russia?

Those questions might make for an interesting hearing. I would be willing to watch that on C-SPAN.

Reaching For Fairness

Yesterday The Daily Wire reported the following:

On Monday, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys representing teen track star Selina Soule and two other minor female track athletes submitted a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights seeking an investigation into sex discrimination. The complaint specifically challenges the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) policy allowing biological males who identify as female to compete in girls’ athletics, ADF announced in a press release sent to The Daily Wire on Monday.

Per the CIAC policy, Soule was forced to compete against female-identifying biological males in a high-stakes track competition where two transgender sprinters beat the field, taking first and second place by significant margins; Soule landed in 8th place, missing an opportunity to compete in front of college coaches by two places.

“I am very happy for these athletes and I fully support them for being true to themselves and having the courage to do what they believe in,” Soule told host Fox News host Laura Ingraham in February. “But, in athletics, it’s an entirely different situation. It’s scientifically proven that males are built to be physically stronger than females. It’s unfair to put someone who is biologically a male, who has not undergone anything in terms of hormone therapy, against cis-gender girls.”

“Throughout the 2018-19 track season, males consistently deprived the female athletes who are part of the complaint of dozens of medals, opportunities to compete at a higher level, and the public recognition critical to college recruiting and scholarship opportunities,” an ADF news release said. “The complaint notes that CIAC’s policy and its results directly violated the requirements of Title IX, a federal regulation designed to protect equal athletic opportunities for women and girls.”

I will admit that this is a new issue to me. Transgender was not common when my children were in school. It does seem to me that adolescent girls and adolescent boys are different physically. Generally boys have more muscle mass and more upper body strength. That makes competition between the sexes uneven. If a male transitioning to female is allowed to compete against women, he has a physical advantage–he will generally be taller with more muscle mass. That seems unfair to me. The only logical solution is to set up athletic events specifically for transgender students. Otherwise the athletes are not competing on a level playing field.

Slowly The Truth Continues To Drip Out

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today that featured some remarks made by Devin Nunes on the Laura Ingraham Show. The article includes a video of the discussion.

These are the main issues discussed:

(1) The targeting/framing of Michael Flynn and the positioning of a false narrative around innocuous Russia contacts. (2) The use of Joseph Mifsud as an asset by the CIA/FBI running a counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. (3) The Trump Tower meeting as organized by Fusion-GPS.

But there is a more troubling statement in the discussion:

Additionally, for the first time Devin Nunes confirms that it was Robert Mueller who blocked delivery of documents to the House investigative committees.  While this might be old news to CTH readers, this confirms our earlier research.  It was Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein who were protecting DOJ interests by using the Russia-probe as a shield.

That’s why Chicago U.S. Attorney John Lausch was essentially an exercise in futility (and he was never heard from).  With Nunes confirmation that Mueller used his probe to keep congress away from documents adverse to his interests…. that increases the likelihood Mueller deployed the same strategy with IG Michael Horowitz (as earlier reported); and only after Mueller was completed was the IG office allowed unfettered access to evidence…. hence, the delays.

Somehow I don’t think Mueller was an objective Special Counsel. We seem to learn something every day that questions his objectivity in the investigation of something that never happened and that he probably knew never happened very early in the investigation.

What Many Americans Believe

Last night during her show, Laura Ingraham ran a Twitter poll to see how many people in her audience disagreed with the Senate’s move to block President Trump’s emergency declaration to build a wall on our southern border.

This is a screenshot of the poll results:

Her audience is conservative, but I still think the margin is very interesting. Senators might consider this poll when making their decisions this week.

The Problem With Boycotts

Boycotts are a peaceful means of protest. If enough people get involved, they are effective. But in order to be effective, the people encouraging them need to have a fairly good read on public opinion. Focus groups before boycotting would probably be a good idea. In recent years, we have seen a number of examples of boycotts that failed because the people behind the boycott were not in tune with popular opinion.

Recently boycotts of the sponsors of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham have been attempted. All have failed. Some sponsors left the shows, but generally speaking, new sponsors appeared. A few years ago there was a boycott of Chick-fil-A because its founder supported traditional marriage. That was a massive failure. I drove for an hour to go to a Chick-fil-A during that boycott, and I am sure other people went out of their way to show their support. Anyone is free to boycott anything for any reason. However, it is interesting to me that the boycotts of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Ingraham (and Chick-fil-A) were all attempts to stifle free speech. In a sense, the boycott of In-N-Out is an attempt to intimidate people making political contributions.

As much as I want to see transparency in the money in politics, the boycott of In-N-Out is one reason why releasing the names of donors to political causes might be a really bad idea in today’s political climate. Last week there was an attempted boycott of In-N-Out  because they donated money to the California GOP. So how did that go? The American Thinker posted an article today about that boycott.

The article reports:

Ashley Reese of The Slot writes that she’s “never been more insulted by a burger” in her life. 

She should have known, she says, that this revelation was coming.  After all, she knew that In-N-Out “hid Bible scriptures on their soda cups and burger wrappers,” and that “reeks of GOP.”  But what’s perhaps most telling is that her indignation continues even though she is quite aware that the chain also donates to Democrats, including $80K “this election cycle to Californians for Jobs and a Strong Economy, a committee focused on electing business-friendly Democrats to the State Legislature.”

In-N-Out quickly addressed the “controversy” in its having donated to Republicans with the following statement: “For years, In-N-Out Burger has supported lawmakers who, regardless of political affiliation, promote policies that strengthen California and allow us to continue operating with the values of providing strong pay and great benefits for our associates.”

To a reasonable observer, that statement suggests balance, not a partisan agenda.

But, Reese whines, “that doesn’t make me feel better, you guys!”

When did Bible verses become insulting? When did Bible verses become associated with one political party? What happened to the fact that our legal system in America is based on the Ten Commandments in the Bible?

The article concludes:

This boycott will be no more successful than the Chick-fil-A boycott, I predict, likely for the same basic reason.  As Jaime Regalado, emeritus professor of political science at California State University, Los Angeles describes, “[t]he stomach overrules the mind … a cheap, good-tasting burger is hard to dismiss politically.” 

But the premise of left-wing activists for this boycott is even more radical than the boycott of Chick-fil-A, given that In-N-Out’s only crime is that it is beholden to the non-ideological goal of “providing strong pay and great benefits” for its employees and appears to seek bipartisan solutions to attain such progress legislatively.  That is, in fact, what many Americans in the political center want.   

It’s as if the universe is providing us with yet another metaphor for just how radical and intolerant the left is rapidly becoming, and how leftists would rather scream more loudly into their ideological echo chamber than appeal to anyone outside it.

I don’t want to give the Democrats any worthwhile ideas, but I think they are in need of a good focus group.

While The Media Was Focused On Russia…

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the Awan brothers, the three Pakistani IT workers who worked for a number of Democrats in Congress.

The article reports:

Just when you thought the case surrounding the Awan brothers could not get any darker, a new piece of news emerges. Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer revealed to Laura Ingraham, who filled in for Tucker Carlson Thursday evening, the Pakistani IT staffers were sending sensitive information to the Muslim Brotherhood

The article also includes a video of an interview of Lt. Col. Shaffer by Laura Ingraham. You can watch that video here.

The video is also available at The Gateway Pundit article.

The bottom line here is that members of Congress employed people who should not have been given security clearances and paid them exorbitant amounts of money. Debbie Wasserman Schultz continued to employ one of the Awan brothers up until the point he was arrested.

This is an obvious national security issue that should be investigated.

 

An Astute Observation

The Daily Caller posted an article today about a statement made by Bob Ross, president of the Maryland Prince George’s County NAACP, about the impact of President Obama’s amnesty program.

The article reports his comments on the impact of illegal immigrants:

“67 million — almost 68 million when you round it — spent on illegal immigrants children’s education [in Maryland],” Ingraham (Laura Ingraham) noted. “What is your reaction to that?”

“It’s a lot of money, and our resources can’t handle it here in Prince George’s County,” Ross said. “We’re fixing to lose about $68 million statewide, on the local level we’re losing about $10 million of school funding. So, I don’t know how we’re going to handle this, the cost factor.”

…“You have to stand up for what’s right,” he continued. “After the Selma March and what we went through as a people, we have to continue the fight. Like I said before, we’re not going to the back of the bus again. We already been on that route.”

“Do you think they should be sent back home?” asked Ingraham. “Or should they just be educated in all these communities, despite the cost?”

“If they follow the process and go through the legality to remain in the country, they should remain,” Ross said. “But if the process says they have to return, then they have to return.”

“Our kids have dreams too,” he pointed out. “I want to be real clear about that. They keep saying: the DREAMers, DREAMers, DREAMers. We have dreams also. Every child that is native-born in this country has a dream. We should not have to sacrifice for newcomers that are coming in and not followed the process.”

The bottom line here is simple. The influx of illegal aliens into America is going to overload our federal programs. Adding five million Americans at one time puts a tremendous burden on our schools, labor market, and other resources. It also makes it more difficult for Americans who are here legally to find jobs and support their families. Bob Ross has figured that out. Hopefully, more Americans will realize that very quickly.

A Gay Feminist Speaks Out About Duck Dynasty

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article about some comments made by Camille Paglia, a social critic and openly gay, dissident feminist, about the recent dust-up about the statements made by the Duck Dynasty patriarch, Phil. What she said is the most cogent statement I have heard from the left side of the political spectrum.

The article reports her comments:

“I speak with authority here, because I was openly gay before the ‘Stonewall rebellion,’ when it cost you something to be so. And I personally feel as a libertarian that people have the right to free thought and free speech,” Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, said on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Thursday.

“In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality — as I one hundred percent do. If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again they have a right of religious freedom there,” she added.

…“To express yourself in a magazine in an interview — this is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades,” Paglia said. “This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960’s that have been lost by my own party.”

…“I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenility,” Paglia said. “This is not the mark of a true intellectual life. This is why there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. Why the graduates of the Ivy League with their A, A, A+ grades are complete cultural illiterates, etc. is because they are not being educated in any way to give respect to opposing view points.”

“There is a dialogue going on human civilization, for heaven sakes. It’s not just this monologue coming from fanatics who have displaced the religious beliefs of their parents into a political movement,” she added. “And that is what happened to feminism, and that is what happened to gay activism, a fanaticism.”

The lady obviously understands the need for two sides of a discussion. We need more people who are intellectually honest on both sides of the political spectrum.

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One Reason You May Not Be Hearing The Entire Truth In The Mainstream Media

Yesterday Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard reported that CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, who has been covering the Operation Fast and Furious scandal for CBS News was screamed at by the White House and Justice Department for reporting on the story. Ms. Attkisson was interviewed on the Laura Ingraham show, the transcript of the interview is posted in the Weekly Standard article.

The article reports:

Ingraham: So they were literally screaming at you?
Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”

Finally, Attkisson notes that the White House is claiming that a thorough investigation of the scandal is unwarranted:

[The White House and Justice Department] will tell you that I’m the only reporter–as they told me–that is not reasonable. They say the Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, the New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.

This may explain why CBS is the only news outlet that has actually asked questions about Operation Fast and Furious. I think it is particularly interesting that the reporter was accused of being biased because she has pursued the story. Wouldn’t she have been biased if she had chosen to ignore the story?



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