We Made A Big Mistake

There's a huge breaking story out tonight regarding vax safety.

You may--I hope--recall the name Dr. Byram Bridle. Bridle, a viral immunologist at the University of Guelph in Canada, featured in a very lengthy post from mid April (which still makes interesting reading): Vax Hesitancy--Reasonable Or Not? 

On May 29th Bridle gave a blockbuster interview, just eight minutes long, on Canadian radio, and that interview could be a game changer.

What Bridle and some colleagues did was to file the equivalent of a FOIA request with a Japanese regulatory agency that had done a "bio-distribution" study on the mRNA vaccines, i.e., Pfizer and Moderna. What a bio-distribution study tells you is where the vaccine travels in the body. That study, which Bridle had translated, was an eye opener.

LifeSite has a lengthy article on this whole development: Vaccine researcher admits ‘big mistake,’ says spike protein is dangerous ‘toxin’

‘Terrifying’ new research finds vaccine spike protein unexpectedly in bloodstream. The protein is linked to blood clots, heart and brain damage, and potential risks to nursing babies and fertility.

What I'll do is present some introductory material from the article, but then I'll provide what amounts to a full transcript of Bridle's radio interview. The interview is actually basically a monologue by Bridle, and it's well organized. Following the transcript will be a Youtube of the interview (audio only).

Before any of that, I want to point out that in the interview Bridle talks only about mRNA vaccines--Pfizer and Moderna. Many may be under the impression that side effects are a feature only of J&J and AstraZeneca. That is definitely not the case. In this regard (and others) Bridle is in complete agreement with Sucharit Bhakdi. In fact, the findings that Bridle relates in the interview confirm exactly what we presented Bhakdi stating in Blood Clots And Beyond.

So, with that we turn to the LifeSite article and offer these brief excerpts that will lead into the interview transcript. The entire article is worth checking out:

Herd Immunity?

The other day the NYT featured a major article on gun sales in America: 

An Arms Race in America: Gun Buying Spiked During the Pandemic. It’s Still Up.

I won't go into the details. If you're interested you can follow the link. Or, you can read Steve Sailer's post on the article, which features extensive excerpts as well as Sailer's comments. The title of Sailer's post tells enough of the story to eliminate much of the guesswork from figuring out what's going on: Gun Sales Up 64%.

However, Don Surber has an interesting take on this today, and finishes his brief comments with a pointed question:

ITEM 2: More good Second Amendment news.

The New York Times complained, "An Arms Race in America: Gun Buying Spiked During the Pandemic. It’s Still Up.

"Preliminary research data show that about a fifth of all Americans who bought guns last year were first-time gun owners. Sales usually spike around elections, but the sheer volume is notable."

What's notable about that? What's notable is the sheer number of Americans who for the first time ever in their lives felt threatened enough to go through the government mandated hassles and purchase a firearm.

Here's what the article says about that. Of course it's slanted in some respects, but reflect on it:

UPDATED: More Evidence Of Demographic Woes In China

About a week ago we ran a post based on research by SinoInsider. That study pointed to evidence that China has been fiddling with its latest census numbers to conceal very bad demographic news. The numbers presented, according to this study, may have been intended to clumsily conceal the extent of the Covid disaster in China:  Is China Jiggering It's Census Numbers? And Why? At the same time, as we've emphasized in the past, the article affirmed that China has for decades been caught in a classic demographic trap. Despite its economic and technological progress, China is growing old before it grows rich, leaving an enormous portion of its population without provision for their old age. Meanwhile the numbers of the working age population continue to drastically shrink. Even worse, the birth rate among the working young also continues to fall, despite belated efforts to increase the number of births. That guarantees that the imbalance will only grow much worse in the future.

Today Fox News carries a story that, most likely, few will notice. Nevertheless, it's an important story as an indicator of how aware the PRC is of the scope of its demographic problem and of the dangers involved for China's future:

White Coat Supremacist

That's what Lloyd Billingsley calls Tony Fauci. I've harped on Fauci's lack of credible credentials for the position he holds. Below are links to three articles that amount to quite the expose of Fauci. The offered excerpts are brief, as compared to the full articles, so if you're interested ...

White Coat Supremacist Anthony Fauci Still Wears Yellow Beret

In 1968, newly minted doctor joined NIH to dodge medical service with the U.S. military.

Secret Probation? Wow--Thanks For Your Service!

After all, secret probation beats going to jail, right?

Retired FBI agent charged in “secret probation” scheme

DALLAS (1080 KRLD) - A retired FBI agent is indicted for allegedly scamming a woman out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Justice Department says William Roy Stone Jr., 62, convinced a Granbury woman in 2015 that she was on “secret probation” for drug crimes in “Judge Anderson’s Court” in Austin.

...

Stone gave the woman a series of conditions, including reimbursing him for expenses incurred; and that if she didn’t comply, she risked imprisonment and the loss of her children.

Stone ultimately convinced her to pay him about $800,000, which he used to buy cars and a house.

...

Stone was indicted earlier this week on a slew of charges, including wire fraud and false impersonation of a federal officer, and made his initial court appearance Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rebecca Rutherford.

If convicted, Stone faces up to 178 years in federal prison.

My bet--he won't get probation. Secret or otherwise.

Vidkun Quisling: Stop Calling Me A Barr!

Ha! I wish I could take credit for that, but I ripped off Don Surber. Hey, no shame in that, right? (For the younger generation: Quisling)

Anyway, H/T to my Dutch friend. This is self explanatory:

Tony Shaffer told me that Bill Barr called him personally and asked him to stop investigating 2020 election fraud.

Have you ever heard of an AG calling a private citizen and asking them to quit looking into something?!

Here's the full video 👇https://t.co/XrZqopyTen pic.twitter.com/4CJn79PJCW

— Chase Geiser (@realchasegeiser) May 28, 2021

Now, in fairness, what's actually said in the short video clip is that Bluto told Tony to turn everything over to the FBI. At least that's Shaffer's version. Implicit in that, of course, is the idea that, Hey, Tony my friend, back off and let the Bureau handle this! We'll handle this! 

As a follow on to the Covid post from yesterday, In Case You Had Any Doubts, do yourself a favor and read this Zerohedge piece that Ray SoCal linked in a comment. It works from a long article by another Nick Wade type guy--IOW, another former NYT guy (Michael Capuzzo) who's late to the game but does a good job documenting what's happened and is still going on--this time re the US Government's attempt to suppress Ivermectin--a drug that won its inventor the Nobel Prize and is one of the safest most widely effective drugs in the world:

"I Don't Know Of A Bigger Story In The World" Right Now Than Ivermectin: NYTimes Best-Selling Author

The hope is that, with the imprimatur of an honest to God MSM journalist, this story will now get the attention it deserves and will make others feel empowered to dig deeper.

Fascism

 

Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism.

I hope that definition of Fascism strikes a chord with readers. It represents the ideal of essentially all modern states. In terms of Meaning in History, what Fascism represents is the powerful urge of post Christian man to return to the compact unity--the "organic unity"--of "archaic" pre Christian cultures. Those cultures, and the states in which they were embodied, existed as compact, organic unities in which everything that we consider somehow separate were regarded as inseparable. Religion, politics, cultural expressions--it was all part of the organic expression of "archaic" man's self understanding as existing in a divinely instituted cultural unity. 

Dissent from any aspect of that unity was understood as rebellion against the whole. Thus, Socrates expression of free thinking and questioning required that he be executed. So, too, the Christian refusal to sacrifice to the official Roman gods was an act of rebellion against all things Roman--state, politics, religion.

The Christian insistence that God--understood as creator of all that exists and the sole father of all men--is knowable to human reason without societal, state, or cultural intermediation destroyed that compact unity. Within that compact unity man had felt at home. Christian faith--reasoned belief in the infinite creator God, as expressed by Paul in Romans 2--was a demanding way of life. In return for a reasoned understanding of man in the world under God, it demanded serious commitment and reasoned endeavor.

The final breakdown of Christendom faith as a unifying force for Western society in the late Middle Ages, leading to the religious wars of early modernity, led to post Christian man seeking an alternative. There really was only one alternative--an attempted return to the "archaic" vision of man in the universe. However, Christian faith made a return to the now naive worldview of paganism impossible for the modern nation states--although we see the attractive power of neo-paganism in our own culture. Instead, modern man was forced to formulate an alternate, competing ideology to Christianity--an ideology in the sense of being no longer based on a reasoned interaction with reality but an attempt to impose a man made reality on the world.

In Case You Had Any Doubts

I hope you don't have any doubts that Covid is a bio-engineered coronavirus, a joint project of the Chinese and US governments. Now, both of those governments are humongous bureaucracies, so obviously the components that were responsible could be narrowed down to a relatively few institutions within those governments. In fact, the responsible parties could be narrowed down to relatively few individuals--starting with Tony Fauci, since he provided the funding, and nothing of this sort happens without funding. It's fine to blame the Chinese, but let's be real--the US is very much to blame as well. Moreover, the coverup of Covid origins--which continues to this day, despite recent revelations--has also been a joint project. A lot of big money interests in the US are implicated.

As Karl Denninger notes today (So You Knew, You Cheated, And It Killed Millions):

Don't give me any of this bull**** about how we -- we being people in our government including the CDC, NIH and others -- didn't know either.  We did know.  In late November and early December.  There were reports of the lab being shut down and cell service interrupted along with deaths from atypical pneumonia.  Our government knew.  What's to determine now is exactly who knew both inside and outside the US, when did they know and what did they intentionally block or divert attention from that can plausibly be tied to the deaths that occurred.

The relatives and loved ones of those who died as a result of this stupidity are likely to want blood and if they do they should get it. This is a mass-slaughter comparable in impact to a genocide and should be treated accordingly up and down the line.

Read that last sentence again. Does that give you some idea of why the US is resolutely covering up Covid origins--still? Yes, this is about China but, No, it's not just about China.

By the way, Denninger points out something interesting that I hadn't been previously aware of:

Bull Who?

A strong indicator emerges that the Bull Durham "investigation" into the Russia Hoax really was just Bull Sh*t. The Washington Times looked into the DoJ expenditures report for the fake investigation (released Friday), and came up with this:

Durham reportedly spent just $1.5m during first six months of Trump-Russia FBI probe

Figure is allegedly less than 25% of what Robert Mueller spent during similar timeframe.

Obviously Bluto Barr, disgraced former AG, understood what was going on--essentially nothing. He's not stupid. He knew then, he knows now. And yet has the effrontery to appear in public and comment on the state of the republic.

Per the Washington Times:

Extremism Is In The Eyes Of The Beholder

H/T/ Jim

So the big question becomes, who's doing the beholding in the military? Because the Pentagon is looking to come up with new regulations to prosecute "extremism" in the military. What extremism are they beholding?

The Pentagon wants a new ‘reg’ for prosecuting extremism

Any country that has a large professional military and a huge intelligence and government legal establishment that cooperates in an Interagency community need to take great care to prevent those institutions from taking on lives of their own to further interests of their own--which may run counter to the interests of the society and culture within which they exist. Movements within the ruling establishment that seek to transform the surrounding culture and political structures as embodied in founding documents in ways that are resisted by major portions of the populace become extremely concerning when they are joined by organized groupings within the military. To such an extent, "extremism" so defined is a very real concern. 

But, again, the question is: who's beholding "extremism"? What extremist grouping is seeking to enlist the military to the cause of transformation or, alternatively, what extremist grouping is seeking to neuter the military to prevent it from resisting transformation?

With that background consideration, the Military Times reports:

The Defense Department has been rolling out initiatives to address the threat of domestic extremism serving in uniform since early this year, and now its next budget request hopes to throw some money behind them.

The proposal released Friday includes $30.8 million to enhance technology and manpower for training, screening and policy updates, including a big one: “the development of a punitive regulation on extremist activities.”

...

While commands can currently charge service members for espousing extremist views, or participating in extremist plots, through misconduct regulations in both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and a current DoD instruction covering extremist activities, this year’s renewed discussion about extremism has included calls for new, concrete guidelines and tools for commanders to hold troops accountable. Those millions in funding will also go to improving “vetting protocols and screening of public available electronic information (aka social media) and develop and deploy an Enterprise Case Management tracking tool for tracking activities of concern.”

A Pentagon spokesman recently refuted a report that the department was pursuing a contract with a private firm to troll social media for questionable service member activity on a mass scale, clarifying that social media is already part of existing screening and background check protocols.

Another $9.1 million will go to combating extremism and insider threats, according to budget documents, in the spirit of the findings of a report done after an attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, by a Saudi Arabian pilot trainee. That will include “enhanced federal capabilities in reporting; tracking extremism activities; and improved DoD accession processes.”

Many of these initiatives fall under an extremism working group that first met in April. So far, the group has been tasks with facilitating a study to take a look at the prevalence of extreme ideologies in the services, as well as to develop an official department definition of extremism, and to update training for transitioning troops, who are often targeted by domestic extremist groups.

It seems worth noting that this concern for "extremism" in the ranks is being driven by the same societal groupings that have propagated such conspiracy theories as that the January 6 Event constituted an armed White Supremacist insurrection--contrary to videotaped evidence--or that concerns for the integrity of elections is also part of a White Supremacist plot.

My own view remains that the current anti-extremist crusade will have an extremely detrimental effect on discipline within the military and, therefore, on morale, training, and preparedness. In particular, the military will likely result in extreme difficulty in re-enlisting qualified and high value personnel. My reasoning is based on the view that those demographics most inclined to pursue a professional military career will be least inclined to tolerate living within the anti-extremist narrative we are being subjected to currently. Conversely, those demographics most inclined to accept that narrative will be least inclined to pursue a professional military career.

Trouble ahead. It's time that the GOP and conservatives generally took note, before the military--with its politicized leadership--faces a major crisis.

Quick Fauci Update

My wife is recuperating nicely, and I'm ready to get out of my Devil's Advocate role regarding the Roberts Strategy. So ...

A quick Fauci update.

The latest story making the rounds concerns Fauci's 2012 advocacy for gain of function research on viral diseases. In the writings that have been unearthed he avoids that term, but it's clear that that's what he's talking about. He also disguises the scope of the research he was advocating for. For example, in a Washington Post article--A flu virus risk worth taking--he claims the big concern is new influenza pandemic, whereas in fact coronaviruses were very much part of the program. The significance of that is this. It's known that flu viruses do move from animal species to humans. However, to my knowledge that doesn't appear to be the case with coronaviruses--except for SARS Classic and Covid-19, both of which are now suspected to have been engineered in Chinese labs that also do bioweapon research.

Fauci's claim is that the risk of a natural pandemic is far greater than the risk arising from experimentation gone awry:

BOMBSHELL! Dr Fauci in 2012 wrote that “gain of function” research to juice up bat viruses was worth risking a pandemic: “the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks. It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature” @SharriMarkson scoop https://t.co/S7ILuzgnNw pic.twitter.com/iwyPCPctId

— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) May 28, 2021

Note, however, that Fauci doesn't attempt to quantify the relative risks--he just tosses that speculative statement out there.

In the WaPo article, too, a careful reading between the lines shows that Fauci is engaged in scientific puffery--he paints an alarming picture of the risk of "unprecedented" death tolls from a new naturally occurring pandemic, while slyly admitting that no one has any inkling when, if ever, that might occur:

More On The Roberts' Strategy--If That's What It Is

My presentation in Is The CJ Roberts Plan Working? has received some vigorous pushback in the comments. I've also pushed back vigorously. What I'll do here is elaborate a bit on the issues involved and also paste in the comments below.

Here's the nub of what I wrote yesterday about the "Roberts Strategy"--an admittedly speculative notion:

Back at the beginning of March I wrote a post that examined an idea that Shipwreckedcrew had put forward. The basic idea was that, in declining to involve the SCOTUS in legal disputes over the 2020 presidential election Roberts was pursuing an actual strategy--not just abdicating the SCOTUS' responsibility to uphold the Constitution.

Let me elaborate on that idea just a bit, to give Roberts the benefit of the doubt. There's no question that the SCOTUS could have stepped in--the Texas case in which numerous additional states joined would have been, IMO, perfect. From that standpoint the reasons given by the SCOTUS for sidestepping the case were unconvincing and harmed the prestige of the court by calling its judicial integrity into question. After all, what constitutional issue could be more fundamental and more important than one that called into question our entire electoral process? I discussed this aspect in the earlier post: Arizona Election Law Case In SCOTUS.

On the other hand, while the SCOTUS--in contrast to the executive and legislative branches--is supposed to be above politics, it simply is no longer possible for the Court to disregard political considerations--if that ever was possible. That is all the more true in that politics in America have become utterly toxic from a constitutional standpoint. The country is sharply divided, with the current regime narrowly controlling both the White House and Congress impugning fundamental concepts of the American order. What is the SCOTUS to do--plunge forward, or ...

Encourage the state legislatures to act by exercising their constitutional authority to regulate elections? That would return elections to regulation by the political branches of state governments, where the US Constitution placed the authority in the first place. The idea is that the putative Roberts strategy would support state legislatures taking charge of their own affairs--rather than the SCOTUS arrogating that authority to itself. In future, then, the SCOTUS would largely butt out of election law cases--the effect being to neuter much of the electoral lawfare we currently see in the federal courts. Voters at the state level would be able to express their views on their own states' election laws and their own courts at the ballot box. That HOPEFULLY is the significance of the SCOTUS--having previously declined to get involved in more sweeping election cases--now taking on a much more pointed case involving the swing state of Arizona.

That is not an argument for ignoring election law. What it is is an argument for accepting cases on a very narrow basis--when state law on its face violates some constitutional principle, not based on speculative concepts of disparate impact, such as we're seeing more and more. Those issues were not raised in the TX case that the SCOTUS sidestepped, but they are very much front and center in the AZ case--from a Dem electoral strategy standpoint the AZ case is a potential dagger pointed at the heart of their strategy.

As you'll see when you get to the comments pasted in below, I make the argument that it wasn't the SCOTUS' responsibility to save the GOP. Because let's face it--Trump did what he could to win reelection. The election was sabotaged not just by the Dems but by the GOP. We've seen that in state after state, during the post election squabbling. We're at the point now that the GOPers who sabotaged Trump--governors, legislators, AGs, SecStates--are now scrambling to fix their standing with the voters. Because they now realize that their strategy failed. They thought voters would be duped by the fraud, and accept a false loss by Trump. Instead, voters realize that the fix was in.

The justices at the SCOTUS aren't entirely stupid, nor are they entirely without political views. Some, especially Roberts himself, may have desired a Trump loss. That's as may be. The question is, was it the responsibility of the SCOTUS to rescue officials in GOP run states who failed live up to their own responsibilities? Arguably it was the greater responsibility of the SCOTUS to wait for the right case to try to put US election law back on a sounder constitutional basis. Also arguably--because I can't know this--they may have felt that the AZ case that was heading their way would provide that opportunity in a better way than the TX case would.

Now, here's an excerpt from an article today by John and Andy Schlafly--Election Audits Confound Never-Trumpers. In the first part of the article they make a strong case for the utter fecklessness--not to say perfidy--of the GOPe at the state level. The SCOTUS justices would have had to be fools not to have seen this, immersed as they had been in last minute election cases--they had a better overview than most of us:

Briefly Noted: Turley's Take On The DoJ Trump-No-Obstruction Memo

This is ancient history by now, but Professor Turley's interpretation is that the OLC memo pretty much blows then AG Barr's critics away. His critics, of course, were the usual suspects of the progressive Legal Left. Moonbats like Larry Tribe. This, of course, was one of the good things that Barr did, and you can find the full Turley article here:

Newly Released OLC Memo Shows Staff Lawyers Found No Basis For Obstruction Charges In Mueller Report

This is ancient history in a sense, but will hamper the continuing jihad against Trump. It confirms the poor view of Mueller and the faux impeachers. For our purposes I'll just quote from Turley's concluding paragraphs:

The controversy of Barr’s summary largely focused on a couple lines where he said that the underlying facts from by Mueller would not satisfy the elements of the crime of obstruction. It turns out that staff had made that conclusion as did some of us from existing and controlling case law. Moreover, Barr stated that the reason for the delay in the release was the removal of any grand jury material as required by federal law.

The released portions does not contradict Barr’s claim that he could not simply release a two-volume, 450-page report. One can fairly criticize aspects of that summary but the delay of the release of the report (and need for a summary) falls more squarely on Mueller. Past hearings established that Barr and Rosenstein told Mueller that they wanted his staff to flag grand jury material because Barr wanted to release the redacted report rather than a summary.  Mueller appears to have simply ignored that instruction from his superiors. As a result, a full review had to be performed with Mueller’s staff to remove grand jury material, which is mandatory under federal rules.  If Mueller had flagged and redacted the grand jury material, the redacted report could have been released without much delay as Barr preferred.

The memo also undermines the claims raised in the first impeachment of Donald Trump. I testified in that hearing and disagreed with my three co-witnesses (Professors Michael Gerhardt, Pamela Karlan, and Noah Feldman) who insisted that Trump had committed obstruction of justice. They were not alone. Democrats and the media paraded a letter from over 450 prosecutors who declared unequivocally that “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”  The actual prosecutors at Main Justice found that not only would the allegations not meet the standard for obstruction of justice but that it would still be the case even if Trump was not the President of the United States.  The contrast shows the danger of such gotcha letters. With thousands of professors and prosecutors, it is not particularly difficult to get hundreds of signatories to support one side or another in a controversy. The Justice Department does not prosecute by plebiscite and this is why.

Well, one may be allowed to dispute Turley's blanket assertion in his final sentence as expressing an ideal. I think we all know that that's certainly not the invariable reality--if by "plebiscite" we understand "public opinion" or "political pressure."

UPDATED: Briefly Noted: Is The CJ Roberts Plan Working?

UPDATE: I'm putting this update at the beginning because it tends to support what follows. Briefly, this.

The Soros SecState of AZ was declining to get involved in the AZ election law case discussed below--it's now before the SCOTUS and it deals with stuff like ballot harvesting. This is potentially a huge case with implications for the freedom of ALL states to police elections as they see fit. While CA would doubtless seek to continue its anti-election integrity ways, most states would not. So, since the failure of the SecState to defend AZ law could throw a monkey wrench into the appeal, the AZ Attorney General has formally jumped in to preserve AZ's interests in fair elections. This via TGP--this reads like a press release and appears as a quote, but I couldn't find a link:

On Tuesday, Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a Motion to Intervene with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the State of Arizona in the Democratic National Committee lawsuit challenging Arizona’s ban on ballot harvesting and statutes regulating out-of-precinct voting. Attorney General Brnovich is moving to intervene on this matter on behalf of the State because defendant Secretary of State Hobbs has announced that she does not support an appeal.

As noted in today’s filing, Attorney General Brnovich moves to intervene in this matter, assuring the State’s interest in retaining its “broad authority to structure and regulate elections,” is fully preserved and that there is no possible procedural hindrance to Supreme Court review of the matter. The Attorney General is empowered by Arizona law to seek intervention in federal court on behalf of the State.

********************

Back at the beginning of March I wrote a post that examined an idea that Shipwreckedcrew had put forward. The basic idea was that, in declining to involve the SCOTUS in legal disputes over the 2020 presidential election Roberts was pursuing an actual strategy--not just abdicating the SCOTUS' responsibility to uphold the Constitution.

Let me elaborate on that idea just a bit, to give Roberts the benefit of the doubt. There's no question that the SCOTUS could have stepped in--the Texas case in which numerous additional states joined would have been, IMO, perfect. From that standpoint the reasons given by the SCOTUS for sidestepping the case were unconvincing and harmed the prestige of the court by calling its judicial integrity into question. After all, what constitutional isse could be more fundamental and more important than one that called into question our entire electoral process? I discussed this aspect in the earlier post: Arizona Election Law Case In SCOTUS.

On the other hand, while the SCOTUS--in contrast to the executive and legislative branches--is supposed to be above politics, it simply is no longer possible for the Court to disregard political considerations--if that ever was possible. That is all the more true in that politics in America have become utterly toxic from a constitutional standpoint. The country is sharply divided, with the current regime narrowly controlling both the White House and Congress impugning fundamental concepts of the American order. What is the SCOTUS to do--plunge forward, or ...

Encourage the state legislatures to act by exercising their constitutional authority to regulate elections? That would return elections to regulation by the political branches of state governments, where the US Constitution placed the authority in the first place. The idea is that the putative Roberts strategy would support state legislatures taking charge of their own affairs--rather than the SCOTUS arrogating that authority to itself. In future, then, the SCOTUS would largely butt out of election law cases--the effect being to neuter much of the electoral lawfare we currently see in the federal courts. Voters at the state level would be able to express their views on their own states' election laws and their own courts at the ballot box. That HOPEFULLY is the significance of the SCOTUS--having previously declined to get involved in more sweeping election cases--now taking on a much more pointed case involving the swing state of Arizona.

I'll go into these issues a bit down below, by pasting in part of the earlier post which discusses the Arizona case that is now before the SCOTUS. For now, I want to simply question whether what we see happening in Arizona with regard to the AZ senate's audit of Maricopa County may reflect the effect of Roberts' strategy. 

Here's what interests me. We saw early on in the audit process that Dem election lawyers descended upon AZ and urged the Zhou regime's DoJ to get involved. That hasn't happened, so far. Why not? Is it possible that the Dem lawyers have come to the realization--perhaps as a result of the SCOTUS taking on the AZ case--that any legal challenge by DoJ of a state exercising its authority under the US Constitution would likely get fast tracked to the SCOTUS, and could result in a sweeping ruling that the Dems could bitterly regret? The AZ senate is pressing forward with its audit, despite continuing obstruction--the senate shows absolutely no signs of backing down, which may be encouraging audit and/or reform efforts in other states as well. Again, the question arises: Is Roberts' strategy having an effect? We can only hope so. The road forward would be messy and prolonged, but politics almost always is. We have in our constitutional order a political regime. Such a Roberts strategy--if that's what we're seeing--would recognize that fundamental constitutional fact by returning to the states the authority that the SCOTUS unwisely usurped. We shall see.

Now, here's a portion of the previous post:

For History Buffs: Operation Gladio

Any other students of Operation Gladio out there? Today at LifeSite there's an interesting article about Operation Gladio, with useful links, by a very prominent traditionalist Catholic writer, Peter Kwaśniewski. Kwaśniewski rights mostly about liturgical matters, and so he attempts to tie Operation Gladio into the current disasters facing the Church, especially in the Post V2 period. I won't go into that, except to note the significance of Kwaśniewski's reference to Masonry in Italy--many important clerics at the time of V2 (and more so now) were associated with the notorious P2 Lodge, despite the Church's centuries old ban on membership in Masonic organizations. Among those clerics it is reported that Annibale Bugnini--inventor of the New Order--was a member. 

Kwaśniewski suggests that the Vatican's involvement in Operation Gladio led to institutional blackmail from then until now. I won't get into that, nor will I comment on the obvious moral ambiguities involved. My purpose in pointing to this article is simply to note that the notion of a Deep State directing US foreign policy has deep roots in history--roots that many Americans are quite unaware of. And yet, without knowledge of these matters--which have ramifications in so many directions--it's next to impossible to understand modern history, whether secular or sacred or both intertwined.

Coincidences during the reign of Pius XII? Political background to Vatican II and liturgical changes

It seems at least plausible that the Holy See’s twentieth-century misjudgment of international relations, with the dangerous bed-partners to which it led, has more than a little to do with the ambiguities and silences in Vatican II

...

1947 was the year that Operation Gladio was started by the CIA to stop the spread of Communism in western Europe. Those who wish to read more about the operation will find a good introductory article here, but the summary is that the CIA generated funding for Gladio through conspiring with mafia groups operating in the international drug trade and, in order to launder the drug money, employed the Vatican Bank due to Article 2 of the Lateran Treaty of 1929, which permitted the privacy they needed.

These anti-Communist actions resulted in the funding of various terrorist cells to prevent Communist and anti-American parties from gaining electoral office in Post-War Europe, as well as some high-level assassinations. Gladio, in essence, is the European version of Operation Condor of South America and reminds one of how the CIA trained the Taliban in the 1980s during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 1948 saw the first election in which Gladio would interfere, when the Italian electorate were close to electing a Communist party to office.

Already in 1945, Pope Pius XII had met with William Donovan (former head of the OSS, precursor to the CIA, and chairman at the time of the American Committee on United Europe) about preventing the spread of Communism in Europe. Donovan was reportedly rewarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Sylvester due to his role as an anti-Communist crusader. Further, Pius XII is alleged to have worked with Alan Dulles, the first CIA Director (as well as a 33rd-degree Freemason and Council of Foreign Relations member) around the same time as part of Operation Paperclip, where over 1,600 German scientists were smuggled out of Post-War Germany to help in the development of US scientific endeavors, including defense and space capabilities related to rocket propulsion technology. I mention Dulles too because he was influential in reviving the Italian Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due (P2), which Mussolini banned during the 1920s and which would play an important role in Operation Gladio and seems likely to have played a role in shaping Vatican II as well. (It must never be forgotten that much of Vatican II’s agenda and strategy was determined by behind-the-scenes geopolitical negotiations; we know, for example, about the lengths to which the pursuit of Ostpolitik drove the Vatican.)

... 

Considering all of this, as well as what would later follow, is it possible that Pope Pius XII, in a sincere attempt to defend the Church against Communism, accidentally gave the Freemasons the leverage that they would need to (in effect) blackmail the Church and to make long-desired changes during Vatican II and beyond—especially by means of the liturgical reform run by Bugnini, a likely Freemason himself?

ER Re Audits, Fauci, Wuhan

Emerald Robinson is on a toot, er, tweet today. We all know the weaknesses of Twitter and related social media platforms, but when used well a single tweet can be a game changer for many people--it can give them just enough information in a convenient package to make their mind up. 

Robinson demonstrates this in a series of tweets this morning ranging over the only really important stories out there. For example, few of us any longer have the energy or time to really immerse ourselves in the details of the election fraud. We know it happened, but ...

What's important--as the Left knows so well--is the narrative. A few tweets can paint the big picture that's all most people really need or want:

Is China Jiggering It's Census Numbers? And Why?

SinoInsider--a site that is connected to Falun Gong--has published a very interesting (and lengthy) study of the latest PRC census numbers. As with all other matters statistical involving the PRC, census stats are subject to ... fine tuning by the authorities. For various reasons. 

The authors of this study

China’s Census Data Hints at Scale of COVID Coverup

cover a number of reasons behind what they believe are jiggered population statistics, but as you can clearly see their main contention is that the jiggering is primarily intended to cover up the extent of Covid related deaths in China.

For reference, China claims that the total Covid deaths amount to 4,636, as of May 12, 2021. A priori, that does seem difficult to accept. After all, China remains a country not only with an enormous overall population--somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.4 billion--but also a country whose population is older than average and where multiple generations live in crowded conditions. One would expect that older people and those most at risk would have suffered greatly, and that that would be reflected in very high mortality figures. Anything other than that result would logically attract inquiry and require some explanation.

The conclusion of the study is rather sensational. The authors believe that Covid deaths in China over the past year could exceed "8 digits". "Could exceed 8 digits" means that Covid mortality could be greater than 10,000,000. That's a lot of people. It's obviously also not a result that China would be proud of or would consider as reflecting well on the PRC--in other words, it would be a statistic that the authorities would regard as ripe for fine tuning or ... jiggering.

If the authors of this study are even remotely on to something, this is a very big story.

Lighter Blogging Ahead?

Let's get this out of the way. My wife will be having foot and mouth surgery this week. No connection--strictly a coincidence. The tooth extraction comes on Wednesday followed by toe fusion on Friday. As a result I'll be being helpful, taking over household chores that I wouldn't normally meddle with. We're not entirely sure to what extent and for how long my wife will be immobilized, but the new regime in place will slow my blogging down to some degree.

UPDATED: George Papadoploulos Puts His Entire Reputation On The Line

Hey, he said so--and it's about John Durham. Papadopoulos says Durham is "very real", "incredibly real", and that Durham will expose a conspiracy in the Obama administration--based on what Durham has learned about Joseph Mifsud. Durham is currently just waiting for the right moment, perhaps after the audit in AZ is finished.

"I would actually put my entire reputation on the line saying this…"

"I’m on the record of saying I put my reputation on the line regarding Durham."

Read it all at TGP.

I'm still skeptical. There was plenty of time to produce the Mifsud evidence. But I'll happily eat crow if it turns out to be true.

UPDATE: I want to be clear that my skepticism, as expressed above, only runs to Papadopoulos' expectations regarding Durham's supposed investigation. As I said, there's been plenty of time for substantial results, so I'm not optimistic. However, none of that means that I'm skeptical regarding Papadopoulos' accounts of what happened to him in London (events surround Alexander Downer), in Rome (events surrounding Joseph Mifsud), in Israel, and upon his return to the US (his dealings with the FBI and Team Mueller). I find his accounts to be believable in their essential details--even if they may be self serving in some respects. The self serving respects are to be expected from most witnesses. On the other hand, his accounts of his adventures as a dupe in the Russia Hoax have never seriously been contested--in my opinion. Think of him what you will, but that's not really the point.

NYT Warns Dems: BLM Is A Loser

Don't you luv it when liberals get bitten in the ass by their own hoaxes?

In a major story today the NYT seems to be warning Dems to back off the BLM hoax, because it's about to cost them dearly. An unspoken subtext--because it cuts too close to the ideological heart of the left--could be that years of White Privilege and White Supremacist hate narratives from the Left are coming home to roost. Riots? Sky high murder rates? It seems the NYT hasn't even heard of those aspects of the BLM phenomenon, but I'm betting everyone else has.

The story goes under this totally daft question:

Support for Black Lives Matter Surged Last Year. Did It Last?

The answer to that question could be said to run along these lines: You're joking me, right?

Support for BLM has, during the past year has absolutely cratered--and it didn't actually take long for that to happen. Quoth the NYT:

The reason for the drop seems to be shifting attitudes among Republicans and white Americans, two large and often overlapping groups.

Yes, white Americans are a large group--a very large group. So are Republicans or--worse for Dems--potential Republicans. Donald Trump demonstrated that truth in Election 2020 by attracting large numbers of Hispanics and, in a relative sense, Black men. Hang onto that bit about "overlapping groups", because you'll want to keep it in mind when you look at two graphs from the article.

The article is very much advocacy journalism, not just reporting. It's about desperately seeking some rationalization for this deplorable (!) development. In other words, as already seen--blaming the terrible polling numbers on deplorables: "Republicans and white Americans, two large and often overlapping groups."

Fauci Is Squirming

Polling is showing that Fauci is struggling with his credibility. The fact that, even on left wing shows where he's most likely to appear and be treated like royalty or a saint, he's being asked about the issues that Rand Paul has raised. The left media has likely been emboldened to question Fauci by exposés in New York magazine and most recently by liberal science journalist Nicholas Wade, as well as by liberal icons like pollster Nate Silver who has stated that Fauci has "gaslighted" the public.

Now I see Fauci slipping and letting the cat out of the bag to Politifact--as quoted by TGP:

UPDATED: Update On OSHA Reporting Mandates

A couple of days ago I noted--Could The Covid Regime Be A Boon For Lawyers?--that OSHA had ruled that employers who required employees to be vaxxed would need to report any adverse effects as workplace injuries.

Today, sundance has drawn attention to a new statement issued by OSHA. Note this well. OSHA is not saying that these are not workplace injuries--they are. OSHA is simply saying that it will not enforce its own regulations because they want everyone to participate in a medical experiment. They want everyone to be vaxxed.

Think about that. This is an experimental treatment that is known to cause serious side effects and injuries--including death. The legality of requiring employees to receive an experimental treatment of this sort is questionable in and of itself. But OSHA is saying any injuries caused by such a workplace mandate may be ignored. Read it here (h/t CTH):

OSHA – “DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations. OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.” (LINK)

I'm unaware of any legal challenges to the various aspects of the entire Covid regime, but I have to believe they're coming. For example, the anti-science mask mandates. The forced participation in a questionable experiment with known serious side effects. This is a crazy world we're living in.

UPDATE: Here's a good example of what's going on. I just saw this tonight, reported by Fox:. It seems that there are a "relatively few" reports that appear to link the Pfizer and Moderna injections to myocarditis in young people. Of course, "relatively few" is a relative term, and it's relative to who gets it. If you've got it, it doesn't seem like "relatively few". Anyway, the bottom line is, which would you prefer: A "mild" case of myocarditis or no case of myocarditis?

The Centers for Disease Control is investigating a small number of young adults and adolescents who may have experienced heart problems following a COVID-19 vaccine, though the agency stressed that it is unclear the vaccine is responsible. 

There have been "relatively few" reports of myocarditis and "most cases appear to be mild," but the COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group said it felt the potential issue should be communicated to providers. 

The CDC noted that mRNA vaccines, which are made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, are potentially causing the problem. 

Reports of myocarditis have been mostly in adolescents and young adults, are more common in males than females, typically occur after the second dose, and show up about 4 days after vaccination. 

So, all those universities requiring kids to get vaxxed? C'mon--no legal responsibility? Really? For God's sake, this is an experiment! 

Transparency And Constitutional Order

I'm not aware that the word transparency appears anywhere in the Constitution, but I'm pretty sure that most people would agree--in principle--that there is firm understanding that the government of our republic is supposed to deal with the people on the up and up. That understanding may be tacit, but my impression is that it's pretty firm. We all know that it's often honored in the breach, but it's the point behind the regular exposures of "hypocrisy" on the part of politicians and other public officials. If transparency in matters that affect the general public were not accepted as a fundamental principle nobody would be outraged by the lack thereof.

That understanding is also behind what's going on with the audits--or, attempted audits--of the 2020 election. The attitude is: If they don't have something to hide, then why are they jiggering with the process?

Then there's the Covid casedemic.

Just the other day I wrote a post about the VAERS reporting on vax deaths and injuries. It's well known that the VAERS data--being voluntary and not widely advertised among non-medical persons--is not terribly reliable, erring very much on the low side. Today, Off-Guardian has an interesting article that expose what can only be described as deliberate deception in constructing and applying statistics to measure what's going on with the Covid regime:

How the CDC is manipulating data to prop-up “vaccine effectiveness”

New policies will artificially deflate “breakthrough infections” in the vaccinated, while the old rules continue to inflate case numbers in the unvaccinated.

Many testing experts--including the now deceased inventor of the PCR test--have repeatedly pointed out the fact that the PCR test is being misapplied to identify Covid cases, both in principle and in the actual application. None other than Tony Fauci has openly admitted this. In fact, the author argues, the Covid pandemic is essentially a casedemic--a figment of bureaucratic statistical ingenuity:

Will A Woke Military Make War On Red America?

Within the past week I answered this question with a simple, No. Later, I elaborated a bit. Basically, my argument was and is that the demographics are all wrong for such an eventuality. The military is overwhelmingly--as in up to 70%--white and broadly conservative in orientation. The Left--as long as it retains control--may be able to destroy the disciplinary structure and effectiveness of the military, but it will do this by driving out irreplaceable human resources. But they will find few if any replacements--certainly not sufficient replacements. Snowflakes and street theater warriors are not interested in full time military duty. Period. In the meantime, if Lloyd Austin really tries to purge the military of "extremists", he will simply have returned large numbers of trained conservative warriors to civilian America. That's self defeating from a Leftist perspective.

Today Brandon Smith addresses this concern, shared by many. But he adds some data to fill the argument out. Below is an excerpt from the longer article:

UPDATED: FBI Analyst Arrested

UPDATE: This is just a really weird case. The time frame involved--suspended 2017, finally indicted 2021--suggests that the government was running up against the statue of limitations and its investigation had not discovered what, if anything, Kingsbury was doing with the documents. That was surely the focus of the investigation. Very strange, but sometimes people are.

H/T Jim.

While the FBI has spent years pursuing its Ahab-like hunt for the Great White Supremacist conspiracy, Kendra Kingsbury--an analyst in the Kansas City office--spent the years from 2004 to 2017 systematically combing through FBI files and taking home sensitive documents. Here's the weirder part--she seems to have simply retained these documents at home. The indictment makes no mention of her having sought to transfer the documents to third persons, whether for profit or out of ideological commitment. What was she up to? Further, these were not simply documents that she accessed in her ordinary work day--she went out of her way to access and accumulate these documents that she had no reason to even look at. Why?

The weirdest part, of course, is that the FBI seems not to have learned a whole lot from its past problems. Audit our file system for unauthorized access? Who, us? 

Here's the good news, which you can also read in the DoJ Press Release, below: After 13 years during which Kingsbury looted the FBI's sensitive files the FBI finally went to "great lengths" to investigate her and did so with "great diligence," "professionalism," and thoroughness. The Press Release says so, so I guess it's true. Better late than never, seems to be the idea. Awards for all.

Judge Orders Fulton County Absentee Ballots Unsealed

There's really not much more to the story for right now--except that the petitioners will be allowed to scan the ballots. Uh oh! Yeah, that's the real story. If you want more, go to Zerohedge:

Georgia Judge Decides To Unseal 2020 Absentee Ballots In Fulton County For Review

I assume this means that we'll learn that there was fraud--and lots of it. Of course we'll have to wait and see, and maybe there'll be more rulings, and etc. All these legal maneuverings, however, simply confirm what we all know happened. It doesn't really matter whether there are definitive findings of fact because nobody would be fighting so hard against electoral transparency if there weren't something to hide. Everyone knows that. Rasmussen's polling shows that--this hasn't been missed.

The way this worked is that the defendants--Fulton County and some other GA officials--were told to allow the petitioners to scan images of the ballots. They fobbed them off with crummy 200 dpi images, but the petitioners demanded images of no less than 600 dpi--and access to the ballots themselves. As of today the judge thinks that's reasonable and will issue an order next week establishing procedures for this process.

Similar Events Are Happening More Often

For details go to CTH:

New Hampshire Police Arrest Maskless Parents Attempting to Confront School Board – Following Arrests Board Cancels Meeting To Avoid Parents

The post is written in a mostly satirical style. Key sample:

A maskless rogue citizen could put a compliant society at risk of infection. They may not carry biologics they could carry a more alarming virus of wrong-thought against the interests of the state. Rogue citizen assembly at this critical juncture would be subversive to our new society.

Accompanying the article is a photo of police arresting and cuffing an elderly woman for attending a school board meeting maskless, i.e., disturbing the peace of mind of the variously authoritarian and anti-science inclined officials as well as neurotics in the community.

This is the kind of action by the police that will lose them the public support they rely upon. This is called foolishly picking the wrong side, because concerned parents will win the day against would be authoritarian school boards. But the actions of the police won't be forgotten. 

Liberals own this mess. America--certainly not Middle America--isn't ready for this type of police state.

ADDENDUM: It's a really bad look--and just when police need support, and from the type of people they're arresting. Do police think they're going to get the support they need from the politicians--and that very much includes school boards? Not very smart. Telling law abiding family people that "We serve and protect" is about politicians, not about them? That won't end well.

European Database of Adverse Drug Reactions

The European Medicines Agency is an agency of the EU that's in charge of evaluating medicines, including vaccines. As part of that responsibility it maintains the EudraVigilance system, which is charged with reporting and evaluating adverse reactions to medicines. I'm not able to tell you how that system works. In the United States reporting on adverse reactions to vaccines is done on a voluntary basis and is coordinated by the FDA and CDC through the VAERS database.

By way of comparison to what follows, the death toll for Covid vaccines in the US as reported in the VAERS database, as of 5/10/21, stands at 4,434.

This evening I found a link at FR which pointed me to this page, which appears to be an anti-vaxxing site:

10,570 DEAD 405,259 Injuries: European Database of Adverse Drug Reactions for COVID-19 “Vaccines”

Those totals are gleaned from the EudraVigilance reports for each of the four vaccines--which you can find by scrolling down to Covid-19 at this page. Note that there are four separate links:

UPDATED: Viganò On The Great Reset And The Covid Religion

From a recent statement by the Archbishop--thought provoking:

Archbishop Viganò in a recent interview: "The Great Reset is not only the last stage prior to the establishment of the reign of the Antichrist but it has acquired all of the connotations of a true religion, borrowing its language, creating ceremonies, appointing its own priests." 

"The rituality of the present pandemic is quite obvious, especially in the way they have wanted to give the vaccine a sacramental value, to the point of resorting to priests to promote it, even preaching that it is indispensable for salvation, identifying it as a moral duty... 

"Thus, in prohibiting the Holy Sacrifice to the true God & banning the administration of the true Sacraments, the new COVID religion has imposed itself with new hygienic rituals & new sacraments of health." 

Kudos to Emerald Robinson for putting this together. Could it be that the Archbishop and Ivor Cummins are basically talking about the same thing? I think it is. One approaches it from a religious standpoint, the other as an engineer.

 

Ivor Cummins: Variants Or Political Scariants

H/T to commenter Mike Sylwester for the link to this brand new (and brief--only 3 minutes!) video by Ivor Cummins. The interesting thing about this video for me is this. 

Cummins points out how childishly simple it is to demonstrate the statistical falsity of the fake news being foisted on the public. I'm not one who thinks that most science and medical reporters are innately stupid--I assume they can do basic research (use a search function in a browser) and check this stuff out. Same goes for politicians. In other words, they know they're foisting fake news on the public.

And that, to me, tends very strongly to confirm what Cummins is saying: This 'scariant' stuff is political. Which leads to the interesting question: To what end?

Whew! At Least He Wasn't Implicated In Criminal Charges

Second h/t of the day to a reader--first was re Kilimnik. 

Not implicated in the criminal charges--that's the point, isn't it? What isn't forbidden by the law is allowed, and honi soit qui mal y pense. It seems pretty pointless to even comment on this. It simply illustrates where we've arrived as an empire. The Daily Mail has all the news that's not fit to print in our own MSM. Wikipedia has the bio:

Louis Joseph Freeh (born January 6, 1950) is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001. Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was later appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton. He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.

What can I say? My career trajectory was different. OTOH, Freeh's career isn't much different than that of subsequent FBI Directors. Public service, private sector--in the big picture it all tends to meld into self service. There's a particularly shameless quality to both sides of this equation, but it's The Way We Live Now. Tom Wolfe is dead, so who will be the Trollope for our era?

For Russia Hoax Junkies

Can't get enough Russia Hoax? Suffering withdrawal symptoms? Aaron Maté has fix for you. His article yesterday at Real Clear Investigations details an interview with Konstantin Kilimnik, "the man cast as a linchpin of debunked Trump-Russia collusion theories":

Accused Russiagate 'Spy' Kilimnik Speaks -- and Evidence Backs His 'No Collusion' Account

Kilimnik

is breaking his silence to vigorously dispute the U.S. government’s effort to brand him a Russian spy and put him behind bars.

In an exclusive interview with RealClearInvestigations, Konstantin Kilimnik stated, "I have no relationship whatsoever to any intelligence services, be they Russian or Ukrainian or American, or anyone else."

Kilimnik, a longtime employee of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, spoke out in response to an explosive Treasury Department statement declaring that he had "provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy" during the 2016 election.

Obviously, I'm not in a position to pass judgment on whether or not Kilimnik has "no relationship whatsoever to any intelligence services". Beyond formalities, sometimes such a relationship is in the eyes of the beholder--in a manner of speaking. On the other hand, Kilimnik does "vigorously dispute" what little evidence the US Government claims fed into the judgment that he's a "Russian spy". Some of that evidence, while not exactly open source, seems distinctly non-sensitive. If the US government wished to expose Kilimnik as a fraud in that regard, it is in a position to easily do so.

An American Disgrace

Campus Reform has carried an interview with a prominent doctor at the Johns Hopkins Medical School--Dr. Martin Makary. In the interview Makary slams the closing of schools under the pretext of a Covid pandemic as "an American disgrace." Makary takes aim at his own profession, as well, criticizing doctors for submitting to non-scientific groupthink out of fear. 

Selections from the Campus Reform article:

Dr. Marty Makary — a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s prestigious School of Medicine and a Fox News contributor — [] during an interview with “Coffee With Closers” ripped public health officials’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

During the interview, Makary explained his thinking on herd immunity and his correct prediction that the United States would see a slowing of COVID-19 infections by April of 2021.

“What we’re seeing is a divergence in the data right now. You’re going to see two pandemics — one among at-risk people and the other is among young people who are healthy,” he said.

Makary also challenged Dr. Fauci’s representation of herd immunity.

“When people say we need to vaccinate 70-85% of the population in order to reach herd immunity — which is a quote you’ll hear again and again, especially coming from Dr. Fauci — that’s not true,” he remarked. “Because half the country has natural immunity from prior infection. And some doctors — especially the old school doctors — have dismissed that.”

Makary was particularly critical of medical officials’ decisions to close schools and slammed groupthink in the medical community.

“... “It’s an American disgrace. And I think what we’ve lost a little bit in the medical profession is to speak your mind. Too many people are worried about what folks are gonna think of you.”

The interview runs for 35 minutes:

Unfortunately, few prominent politicians have spoken out as forcefully.

Good News Today In Democrat Polling

I'm about to hit the road but I had to add this first: Do yourself a favor and read Monica Showalter today. Especially if you need a dose of optimism:

Democrats panic after internal poll shows Republicans sticking to Trump

The news is actually worse for Dems than the heading indicates. Showalter is largely quoting from a Washington Examiner article, so I'll add that quote. Dems had hoped that GOP infighting spurred by NeverTrumps would translate into voter apathy or lower turnout--but that's not happening:

Republican voters are united behind former President Donald Trump and enthusiastic about putting a check on President Joe Biden in 2022 as GOP infighting in Washington fails to translate outside the Beltway.

That is the conclusion of a fresh survey from veteran Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who measured Republican voters’ fidelity to Trump and their intensity as it relates to participation in next year’s midterm elections. Greenberg discovered that three-quarters of the Republican electorate takes its cues from Trump and GOP voters overall are, by 11 percentage points, more interested in 2022 than Democrats.

The data defy initial assumptions that Trump’s dominance over party affairs post-presidency, and headline-grabbing disagreements about this among prominent Republicans in Washington, would be a drag on GOP prospects in the next round of federal elections. Greenberg says the dynamic could sink Democrats running in key contests for the House, Senate, and governorship — in several states.

In a memorandum outlining the poll’s findings, Greenberg wrote that his team was “surprised by how much Donald Trump’s loyalist party is totally consolidated at this early point in its 2022 voting and how engaged it is.”

"Initial assumptions"? By whom? By the same people who assumed Trump couldn't win in 2016? What's really driving this is that Americans know that Zhou didn't win, and Dems know Americans know that. That's behind how engaged voters are. Dems had counted on deflating what they thought had to be a Trump bubble. Turns out it wasn't a bubble--it was built on some basic conservative convictions that are antithetical to a Left agenda. These are "movement conservative" convictions. They're the convictions about what constitutes a good life for human thriving that Trump appealed to with so much success.

These polling conclusions, as we've been arguing, are what's behind the panicked moves by Dems. But panicked moves won't change the dynamics that are driving the voters. The voters are reacting to woke Leftism and authoritarianism, to the palpable hostility to and desire to stamp out normality in America.

ADDENDUM: In light of Greenfield's finding, how do you think the continued persecution of Trump is going to play out? Dems just can't help themselves.

SWC Dismisses The 'Criminal' Investigation Of Trump In NY

Yes of course it's political. Shipwreckedcrew sets this up nicely:

...

Former President Donald Trump is probably the most investigated individual of the last 100 years.  Yet he’s never been charged with any criminal offense.

He has employed attorneys and accountants for four decades in connection with dozens and dozens of business ventures and investments.  As is likely true of any closely held and family-run organization like Trump Inc., the organization’s state and federal tax returns have been the subject of scrutiny for decades.

No investigation has ever led to evidence deemed strong enough to indict him for a crime.

...

The kinds of allegations that have been floating around that might suggest some kind of financial irregularities in the business and accounting practices of Trump Inc. involve allegations of fluctuating values assigned to various properties depending on the use for which the valuation was needed.  ...

If claims like those are truly the centerpiece of the investigation now underway, I say “full steam ahead.”  Waste all the time and New York taxpayer money you can get away with. Trump Inc. will line up a dozen accountants and attorneys to explain exactly why the appraisals were perfectly appropriate and legal as to each purpose for which they were obtained.

...  At some point, the realization is going to set in and they will realize that the reason he has never been charged or prosecuted is that he always obtained legal and accounting advice, and he followed it.

Wake me when it’s over.

At some point, too, a critical mass of the American public will catch on to the Left. We know from Trump's numbers in the last election how many there already are. More will join.