And James Corden? Really? They couldn’t find a real journalist to lob softballs and carry Joe’s water? There’s enough lapdogs out there, he needs to do some real interviews.
🇲🇦🇮🇱 #BREAKING Reports coming out that Morocco and Israel will establish direct air flights between the two countries [I have been tweeting that we will see movement in relations between the two]
Pelosi says all these peace deals are just “distractions.”
And she’s lying about the numbers too.
Wolf Blitzer: "How much credit do you give the president for these peace agreements?"@SpeakerPelosi: "Good for him for having a distraction on a day when the numbers of people who are affected and the numbers of people who are dying from this virus only increases." pic.twitter.com/uanVmNPlNd
“Court Of Appeals Denies Texas Democrats’ Bid To Expand Mail-In Voting”
“The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a lower court’s preliminary ruling that would have required the State of Texas to expand mail-in voting to all eligible registered voters. The Texas Democrat Party claimed that denying universal mail-in voting in Texas is age discrimination.
Texas allows mail-in voting for voters who are age 65 or older, voters who will be out of the county during the voting period, disabled or ill voters, and people incarcerated but eligible to vote. Absentee voting is allowed, as in other states. For absentee voting, a voter has to request a ballot. Democrats want to move to universal voting by mail, with registered voters receiving a ballot by mail automatically, without the step of requesting one.
The 5th Circuit’s majority said the state’s law did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on age discrimination because it merely conferred an extra benefit on older residents, rather than limiting the right to vote for younger Texans.
“A law that makes it easier for others to vote does not abridge any person’s right to vote,” the majority wrote.
The three-judge panel was split 2-1. A reference was made to the coronavirus pandemic in the dissent. Democrats, not wanting to let a crisis go to waste, have used the excuse of the coronavirus as a reason that voters should just vote by mail for the November election. This ruling by the Court of Appeals is just the latest concerning voting in the upcoming election. This ruling doesn’t end the lawsuit, either. The case will be sent back down to a lower court to rule on the Democrats’ remaining arguments.”
“L.A. Protesters Try to Break Into Hospital Where Two Officers Are in Critical Condition After ‘A Cowardly’ Shooting”
“Two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies are fighting for their lives after they were shot multiple times at point-blank range in an ambush, authorities said.
Crowds of protesters blocked the entrance to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, where the wounded officers were in a critical condition, police said. Some protesters chanted “we hope they die,” the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter. A witness told ABC7 that some had tried to break into the hospital’s emergency room.
The shooting happened at around 7 p.m. Saturday at the Metro Blue Line station at Willowbrook Avenue and Compton Boulevard, not far from the Compton sheriff’s station.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department shared video of the incident in a post on Twitter that shows a person open fire through the passenger-side window of the patrol car in Compton.”
—-
“Videos posted on social media showed a group of protesters gathering outside the hospital where the wounded officers were taken.
In one clip, a man who identifies himself as Kevin Wharton Price of the Africa Town Coalition refers to the injured deputies as “two of America’s most notorious gang members.”
Other clips showed the group being confronted by officers outside the hospital when they tried to get inside.
In a tweet late on Saturday night, the sheriff’s department said protesters were blocking the entrance and exit to the hospital the wounded deputies were at.
“To the protesters blocking the entrance & exit of the HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM yelling “We hope they die” referring to 2 LA Sheriff’s ambushed today in #Compton: DO NOT BLOCK EMERGENCY ENTRIES & EXITS TO THE HOSPITAL,” the tweet said. “People’s lives are at stake when ambulances can’t get through.””
Never become part of the story you hack. NPR should fire her.
(1/3) #LASD Century Sheriff’s Station Watch Commander reports the following:
After deputies issued a dispersal order for the unlawful assembly of a group of protesters blocking the hospital emergency entrance & exits, a male adult protester refused to comply & cooperate…
(2/3) During his arrest, a struggle ensued at which time a female adult ran towards the deputies, ignored repeated commands to stay back as they struggled with the male and interfered with the arrest…
(3/3) The female adult, who was later identified as a member of the press, did not identify herself as press and later admitted she did not have proper press credentials on her person. Both individuals have been arrested for 148 P.C.
“Surprise, Surprise: Data Reveals Where the Majority of Biden’s Donations Came from – and It’s Bad News for Dems”
“The conservative group Take Back Action Fund is sounding the alarm on millions of political donations made to former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. According to the group, more than half of the 2019 contributions Biden received on the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue came from unemployed people, Fox News reported. That number has increased in 2020, particularly in light of the pandemic.
The organization decided to look at data from 2019, before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, to get a better idea of what donations were like at a time when the unemployment rate was relatively low – around four percent. Last year, 48.4 percent of ActBlue’s donations were from “unemployed.”
“After downloading hundreds of millions of [dollars in] donations to the Take Back Action Fund servers, we were shocked to see that almost half of the donations to ActBlue in 2019 claimed to be unemployed individuals,” Take Back Action Fund’s president, John Pudner, told Fox News. “The name of employers must be disclosed when making political donations, but more than 4.7 million donations came from people who claimed they did not have an employer. Those 4.7 million donations totaled $346 million ActBlue raised and sent to liberal causes.”
The numbers are ticking upwards as 2020 continues on, with more than 50 percent of donations coming through ActBlue being gifted by those who are unemployed.
Data from WinRed, the Republican Party’s version of ActBlue, the number of unemployed people who made donations to President Donald Trump sat at four percent. This year the number is 5.6 percent.”
Data from the Take Back Action Fund showed that a VERY high percentage of unemployed people donated to the Biden campaign pic.twitter.com/bnbVXeoBrH
“Pudner took particular issue with ActBlue’s lack of verification, something he says could be foreign contributions, which are illegal.
“It is hard to believe that at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was less than 4 percent, that unemployed people had $346 million dollars to send to ActBlue for liberal causes,” he said.
Of particular concern is that “4.7 million donations from people without a job,” Pudner said.
According to Take Back Action Fund, ActBlue allows unverified credit cards to be used for donations. This can create a loophole, something that was seen in 2008. People would buy prepaid gift cards and use those gift cards to make their donations. It was a way for donors to skirt donation limits. But, Pudner believes foreign entities could use this loophole to directly meddle in America’s presidential elections.”
———–
Ah yes…. the same scam Obama used to rake in unverified millions.
“August jobs numbers showed impressive hiring gains in nearly every sector of the economy. None more so than government.
The public sector added 344,000 jobs last month – including 95,000 permanent state and local jobs, 11,000 permanent federal jobs, and 238,000 Census jobs — giving government workers the second-lowest unemployment rate in the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And yet Democrats, under their latest $3 trillion-plus pandemic stimulus plan, want to dump almost $1 trillion into state and city coffers — the sector of the economy that LEAST needs more federal help.
Here’s why the left’s plan is so wrong-headed, starting with these August figures:
Another way of describing the imbalance is that throughout the pandemic, a private sector worker has been twice as likely to face the indignity and financial hardship of losing a job than a government worker (8.1% versus 3.5% job losses), according to the BLS data. This is because most government workers have one privilege that almost no one in the private sector has: lifetime tenure.
Federal employees have received an especially sweet deal. Virtually none have gone without a paycheck.
It’s true that a significant portion of the 344,000 government jobs created in August are temporary Census positions, and that overall, government employment is 831,000 below its February level. But compared to other industries – especially the hard-hit food and drink sector, where employment is 2.5 million below the February figure, and professional and business services are down 1.5 million – government workers can’t complain.
The new jobs numbers undermine the logic or fairness of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s demand for what would be by far the largest bailout of any institution in American history.
Her $3 trillion-plus stimulus plan would have taxpayers write a nearly $1 trillion check to states and cities (on top of $225 billion in federal aid already sent), showering money on what’s already one of the healthiest sectors.
Yes, there are many states in dire financial straits. But this is mostly a result of less- than-stellar leadership by governors including Andrew Cuomo of New York, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. They locked down their businesses like a prison cell for months, obliterated their tax base (and still are doing so), and went hog wild on spending. New York state has a $30 billion 2020-21 budget deficit, Cuomo admitted in July. Now they plead poverty and demand a Pelosi bailout largely paid for by other states.
But wait . . . States including Texas, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, and South Dakota have already balanced their budgets this year. Why should residents of these states be penalized for fiscal misbehavior in other states? That’s called enabling.”
“AG Barr Rips National Media as a ‘Collection of Liars’ Over Riot Coverage”
“Wrapping up a three-day tour in Chicago, Phoenix and Cleveland Friday, Attorney General Bill Barr took on the media during an exclusive interview with Townhall.
“They’re basically a collection of liars. Most of the mainstream media. They’re a collection of liars and they know exactly what they’re doing. A perfect example of that were the riots. Right on the street it was clear as day what was going on, anyone observing it, reporters observing it, it could not have escaped their attention that this was orchestrated violence by a hardened group of street fighting radicals and they kept on excluding from their coverage all the video of this and reporting otherwise and they were doing that for partisan reasons, and they were lying to the American people. It wasn’t until they were caught red-handed after essentially weeks of this lie that they even started feeling less timid,” Barr said on the flight back to Washington Friday afternoon.
“The press has dropped, in my view – and I’m talking about the national mainstream media – has dropped any pretense of professional objectivity and are political actors, highly partisan who try to shape what they’re reporting to achieve a political purpose and support a political narrative that has nothing to do with the truth. They’re very mendacious about it,” he continued. “It’s very destructive to our Republic; it’s very destructive to the Democratic system to have that, especially being so monolithic. It’s contributing to a lot of the intensity and partisanship.”
For months major news networks have portrayed riots across the country as “peaceful protests.” CNN ran a chyron of a reporter standing in front of a burning Kenosha business that read, “Fiery but mostly peaceful protest.”
“It’s funny that you had record numbers of police being injured during ‘peaceful’ protests,” he said. “You know usually in protests, you have large numbers of injured rioters and a modest number of injured law enforcement. I’m talking about back in the 90s and 60s, 60s to the 90s, nowadays very few rioters get injured, very few and hundreds, even thousands of officers have been injured.”
But while most of what Barr classifies as “national media” has failed to report the facts on the ground about recent unrest, he credits a small number of journalists who have worked to find and publish the real story.
“I think there are a handful of reporters in the mainstream media that still have journalistic integrity, and there are some, but the overwhelming majority don’t have it anymore,” Barr said. “The people who do cover the Department do understand some of the issues. But, on the other hand, some of them have essentially adopted the same methods and ploys as what I refer to more generally as the national media and that is they’re not because, probably somewhat because, of their own orientation and but also what their editors say, they’re not really interested so much in what really happened but in pursuing a preformed narrative that suits some kind of ideological agenda. That’s what it’s all become.””
“New York City was locking down. Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted to say when and how it would happen.
After Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents in a March 17 news conference to prepare to “shelter in place,” Mr. Cuomo dismissed the mayor’s plan in a television interview while his aides blitzed City Hall with calls.
“The phones were ringing off the hook,” recalled Freddi Goldstein, the mayor’s press secretary at the time. “They said, ‘[The mayor] sounds crazy. He’s scaring people. You have to walk it back. It’s not up to you. It’s not your call.’ ”…
Instead of the abrupt shutdown Mr. de Blasio called for, Mr. Cuomo had his own plan: a gradual closure tailored to avoid panic and encourage public compliance. Millions of people continued to pack commuter trains and subways in the five-day span between Mr. de Blasio’s “shelter in place” comments and Mr. Cuomo’s eventual shutdown order.
By the time “New York on Pause” took effect at 8 p.m. on March 22, about 25,000 New Yorkers had tested positive for Covid-19. The virus soon would push the state’s hospital system to the brink and kill more than 30,000.”
“Based on the preponderance of evidence, there is now little question that the virus that has caused the worldwide pandemic likely came from a laboratory in China. The question remains whether an accidental leak was a consequence of biological warfare experiments by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Chinese government collaborated with the World Health Organization to downplay the threat and make the case that the virus appeared to not be transmitted from human to human, but rather from animals (primarily bats) to humans. There is also the question of why China cut off all domestic flights between Wuhan (population, 11 million) and Beijing and Shanghai, but not between Wuhan and Europe and America.
There are also questions about the role of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, in directing U.S. grant funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the nature of the experiments that funding supported. With that, I am calling for an investigation of NIAID’s controversial research collaboration with China regarding the origin of the COVID-19 virus. A Senate committee or Justice Department investigation would be a good start. I have written a series of articles on this topic, which you can find here.
As a summary, I have compiled this following list of evidentiary data points that could serve as the starting point for whatever entity takes on this very necessary investigation:
On April 27, 2020 it was reported that the National Institutes of Health, presumably with the authorization of President Donald Trump, suspended spending on the remaining $369,819 of a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, a long-time scientific collaborator with Chinese scientists, in particular, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Not privy to the actual facts related to the decision, that action precipitated outrage in the mainstream media and among some representatives of the scientific community.
Here are those facts.
Ten days earlier, during a press briefing by the Coronavirus Task Force, the following exchange took place between a White House correspondent and the President (1:10:57 – 1:11:33):
Question: “U.S. intelligence is saying this week that the coronavirus likely came from a Level 4 lab in Wuhan. There is also another report that the NIH under the Obama Administration in 2015 gave that lab 3.7 million dollars in a grant. Why would they give a grant like that to China?”
President Trump: “The Obama Administration gave them a grant of 3.7 million. I have been hearing about that. And we’ve instructed that any grants that are going to that area we’re looking at it literally about an hour ago and also earlier in the morning. We will end that grant very quickly.”
On April 19, 2020, Michael Lauer, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Deputy Director for Extramural Research, wrote to EcoHealth Alliance’s vice president for research, Kevin Olival stating:”
“EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. is the recipient, as grantee, of an NIH grant entitled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” It is our understanding that one of the sub-recipients on this grant is the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“WIV”). It is our understanding that Wuhan Institute of Virology studies the interaction between corona viruses and bats. The scientific community believes that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans likely in Wuhan where the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from Wuhan Institute of Virology of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of Wuhan Institute of Virology from participation in federal programs.
While we review these allegations during the period of suspension, you are instructed to cease providing any funds to Wuhan Institute of Virology. This temporary action is authorized by 45 C.F.R. § 75.371(d) (“Initiate suspension or debarment proceedings as authorized under 2 C.F.R. part 180”). The incorporated OMB provision provides that the funding agency may, through suspension, immediately and temporarily exclude from Federal programs persons who are not presently responsible where “immediate action is necessary to protect the public interest.” 2 C.F.R. § 180.700(c). It is in the public interest that NIH ensure that a sub-recipient has taken all appropriate precautions to prevent the release of pathogens that it is studying. This suspension of the sub-recipient does not affect the remainder of your grant assuming that no grant funds are provided to WIV following receipt of this email during the period of suspension.”
On April 21, 2020, Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, responded by email to Lauer:
“I can categorically state that no funds from 2R01 AI110964-06 have been sent to Wuhan Institute of Virology, nor has any contract been signed. Furthermore we will comply with NIAID’s requirements, of course.”
On April 24, 2020, Lauer notified Daszak that the NIAID, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, has elected to terminate the project “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence”, funded under grant R01 AI110964 because “NIH does not believe that the current project outcomes align with the program goals and agency priorities.”
On June 23, 2020, in response to a question by Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) regarding the reasons for the cancellation of the EcoHealth Alliance grant, Dr. Fauci said (5:32:20 – 5:34:03):
“It was cancelled because the NIH was told to cancel it. I don’t know the reason, but we were told to cancel it.”
In July 2020, Lauer sent the EcoHealth Alliance a letter stating the agency was reinstating the grant, but also instantly suspending it again pending the completion of certain actions, which the EcoHealth Alliance considered “impossible and irrelevant conditions”:”
“Legal Insurrection has been following the news related to the Wuhan Coronavirus since early January of this year.
While difficult to find in the midst of China-based, anti-Trump media, reports have surfaced that the pathogen originated in a virology laboratory in Wuhan, China (the epicenter of the pandemic).
Now a Chinese virologist who has reportedly been in hiding for fear of her life says she is planning to share the scientific evidence to prove COVID-19 was man-made in a lab in China.
Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a scientist who says she did some of the earliest research into COVID-19 last year, made the comments Friday during an interview on British talk show “Loose Women.”
When asked where the deadly virus that has killed more than 900,000 around the globe comes from, Yan — speaking via video chat from a secret location — replied, “It comes from the lab — the lab in Wuhan and the lab is controlled by China’s government.”
She insisted that widespread reports that the virus originated last year from a wet market in Wuhan, China, are “a smokescreen.”
I recall the initial Chinese efforts to contain the virus. They were a mixture of panic, stage-craft, and distraction. It could be argued that they were designed to scare the people of Wuhan out of the country, to spread the virus around the globe.
Yan indicates that her life and her work were erased from official Chinese records.
She claimed that ahead of fleeing her country, her information was wiped from government databases and that her peers were ‘told to spread rumours about her’.
‘This is some common sense for Chinese people’, she said. ‘We know under Chinese government [they are at risk]
‘They deleted all my information and also they told people to spread rumours about me, that I’m a liar, I don’t know anything, I just killed a hamster in the lab. They will try to control my family and friends and then suddenly I don’t exist.’
Yan was one of the first to recognize the potential for human-to-human transmission.”
“L.A. Sheriffs: NPR Reporter Arrested For ‘Interfering’ With Cops As They Tried To Control BLM Protests Outside Hospital”
“A Los Angeles National Public Radio reporter was arrested early Sunday, Los Angeles County Sheriffs said, after she “interfered” with police trying to prevent alleged Black Lives Matter protesters from storming the hospital where two severely wounded L.A. County Sheriffs deputies were taken following a horrific ambush attack.
Saturday night, two sheriffs deputies, a 31-year-old female and a 24-year-old male, were shot in what law enforcement officials are calling an “ambush attack,” according to earlier reports from The Daily Wire. The pair were sitting in their parked vehicle outside of a train station when they were approached by a suspect who opened fire without apparent cause, leaving the two deputies severely wounded.
The two deputies were taken by ambulance to a local hospital. While the deputies were undergoing emergency surgery, alleged Black Lives Matter protesters moved to block the hospital’s entrances and exits as part of a demonstration. “Witnesses later said that the far-left activists, who shouted outside that they hoped the deputies died, attempted to storm the emergency room where the deputies were taken,” The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported Sunday.
A number of protesters were arrested in the altercation.
Los Angeles crime reporter Scott Schwebke first noted, early Sunday, that L.A.’s ABC affiliate had captured the arrest of a reporter, later identified as KPCC’s Josie Huang, on video. The footage shows deputies taking Huang to the ground and handcuffing her before taking her away in a police vehicle.”
““After deputies issued a dispersal order for the unlawful assembly of a group of protesters blocking the hospital emergency entrance & exits, a male adult protester refused to comply & cooperate,” L.A. County Sheriffs tweeted, explaining why Huang was detained. “During his arrest, a struggle ensued at which time a female adult ran towards the deputies, ignored repeated commands to stay back as they struggled with the male and interfered with the arrest.”
“The female adult, who was later identified as a member of the press, did not identify herself as press and later admitted she did not have proper press credentials on her person. Both individuals have been arrested for 148 P.C.,” they noted.
California Penal Code Section 148(a) PC specifically prohibits knowing resisting or interfering with a lawful arrest or other emergency action by a known member of either law enforcement or an emergency medical team.”
The catastrophic fires that have immolated millions of acres of forests in the Golden State were preventable, and for decades, everyone knew what had to be done.”
“Millions of acres of California forest have been blackened by wildfires this summer, leading to the usual angry denunciations from the usual quarters about climate change. But in 1999, the Associated Press reported that forestry experts had long agreed that “clearing undergrowth would save trees,” and that “years of aggressive firefighting have allowed brush to flourish that would have been cleared away by wildfires.” But very little was done. And now fires of unprecedented size are raging across the Western United States.
“Sen. Feinstein blames Sierra Club for blocking wildfire bill,” reads the provocative headline on a 2002 story in California’s Napa Valley Register. Feinstein had brokered a congressional consensus on legislation to thin “overstocked” forests close to homes and communities, but could not overcome the environmental lobby’s disagreement over expediting the permit process to thin forests everywhere else.
Year after year, environmentalists litigated and lobbied to stop efforts to clear the forests through timber harvesting, underbrush removal, and controlled burns. Meanwhile, natural fires were suppressed and the forests became more and more overgrown. The excessive biomass competed for the same water, soil, and light a healthier forest would have used, rendering all of the trees and underbrush unhealthy. It wasn’t just excess biomass that accumulated, but dried out and dead biomass.
What happened among California’s tall stands of Redwood and Ponderosa Pine also happened in its extensive chaparral. Fire suppression along with too many environmentalist-inspired bureaucratic barriers to controlled burns and undergrowth removal turned the hillsides and canyons of Southern California into tinderboxes.
In 2009, after huge blazes wiped out homes and forced thousands to evacuate, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich observed: “The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today.”
In 2014, Republican members of Congress tried again to reduce the bureaucracy associated with “hazardous fuel projects” that thin out overgrown forests. True to form, the bill got nowhere thanks to environmental lobbyists who worried it would undermine the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the law that requires thorough impact assessments ahead of government decisions on public lands.
In a blistering report published in the California Globe on how environmentalists have destroyed California’s forests, investigative journalist Katy Grimes interviewed Representative Tom McClintock, a Republican who represents communities in and around the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California. McClintock has worked for years to reform NEPA and other barriers to responsible forest management.
“The U.S. Forest Service used to be a profitable federal agency,” McClintock told Grimes.
Up until the mid-1970s, we managed our national forests according to well-established and time-tested forest management practices. But 40 years ago, we replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect. Ponderous, Byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to save the environment. The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts and our federal agencies ever since.
But these zealots have not protected the forests. They have destroyed them. The consequences are far-reaching. “
“The cityscape resembles the surface of a distant planet, populated by a masked alien culture. The air, choked with blown ash, is difficult to breathe.
There is the Golden Gate Bridge, looming in the distance through a drift-smoke haze, and the Salesforce Tower, which against the blood-orange sky appears as a colossal spaceship in a doomsday film.
San Francisco, and much of California, has never been like this.
California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place many have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived.
Monica Gupta Mehta and her husband, an entrepreneur, have been through tech busts and booms, earthquakes, wildfire seasons and power outages. But it was not until the skies darkened and cast an unsettling orange light on their Palo Alto home earlier this week that they ever considered moving their family of five somewhere else.
“For the first time in 20-something years, the thought crossed our minds: Do we really want to live here?” said Mehta, who is starting an education tech company.
It would be difficult to leave. They love the area’s abundant nature and are tied to Silicon Valley by work and a network of extended family members, who followed them west from Pittsburgh. But Mehta says it is something she would consider if her family is in regular danger.
“Yesterday felt so apocalyptic,” Mehta said. “People are really starting to reconsider whether California has enough to offer them.”
This is the latest iteration of the California Dream, a Gold Rush-era slogan meant to capture the hopeful migration of an old nation to a new, rich West. For generations, the tacit agreement for California residents resembled a kind of too-good-to-be-true deal. Live in the lovely if often drought-plagued Sierra, or beneath the beachfront Pacific Coast cliffs, and work in an economy constantly reinventing itself, from Hollywood to the farms of the San Joaquin to Silicon Valley.
But for many of California’s 40 million residents, the California Dream has become the California Compromise, one increasingly challenging to justify, with a rapidly changing climate, a thumb-on-the-scales economy, high taxes and a pandemic that has killed more here than in any other state.”
————–
They’ll just blame Trump. Everything bad is his fault.
For now Joe Biden’s best hope is that some Emerald City media lackey does not play the role of the tiny dog Toto, rip away the curtain, and reveal the tiny man and his machinery behind the projection.”
“Media bias is not new.
In addition to the Russian collusion hoax and the phone-call impeachment farce, who can forget the marquee media toadies of JournoList and the release of John Podesta’s email trove?
Or the moderator Donna Brazile’s primary debate questions, leaked through CNN, or Candy Crowley’s hijacking of a debate as moderator-turned-real-time-hack “fact-checker”?
Nothing then is new to the media’s fusion and collusion with the “progressive party.”
Yet never in American history have mainstream journalists not merely promoted a candidate but actively fused with his political candidacy to the point of warping, fabricating, and Trotskyizing the news and indeed history itself.
The trope of a vast charade to create an illusionary powerful figure out of nothing is an old one in fiction, Hollywood and television. We remember “The Great and Powerful” Wizard of Oz fakery, a formidable screen image created backstage by gears and levers operated by a tiny man “behind the curtain.” Similar is the famous scene in an episode of the old Star Trek series, depicting a near comatose on-air John Gill used as a televised prop by his puppeteers, in a utopian federation project gone haywire.
But reality has outdone art with the Biden campaign. The concoction is holistic, from the mundane construction of a fantasy, on-the-go candidate to the supposed middle-of-the road old Joe Biden from Scranton radiating an aura of kindness and moderation in times of plague, panic, and protest.
Bunker Illusions
For six months, Biden has run a Zoom campaign on the pretext of mandatory quarantines—our current version of a 19th-century, stationary presidential candidate, who campaigned by spitting out wit and wisdom while immovable on his front porch.
Biden has conducted no free-wheeling, unscripted press conferences. He will not do extended one-on-one interviews with a disinterested journalist. He rarely will even try Trump-like cameo appearances on CNN or MSNBC to answer unscripted questions from supporters. His press events instead are Orwellian, requiring a media mass suspension of disbelief.
The questions are canned. They are submitted in advance by “journalists,” whether formally or via electronic chatter. The inquiries are obsequious—seldom a word about Hunter Biden, China, Biden’s troubling racist remarks, his handsy past, his scary cognitive lapses, or his “contract” with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Instead the softball, known-in-advance inquiries are in spirit carried over from the Obama years, phrased in the manner of “Were you outraged enough by Trump’s outrage?”
Biden’s Oz functionaries seemingly are always experimenting with all sorts of screen props. The trick is to discover how best their challenged candidate can square the circle of completing sentences and remaining semi-coherent, while not giving away the game that his illusionists are feeding him answers to synthetic questions.
When asked point-blank on Fox News by Brett Baier whether Biden used a stealth teleprompter, his national press flak, T.J. Ducklo would not answer with a simple yes or no. Instead, he went on the attack, with the fossilized accusation that right-wing Fox News asks too many partisan questions.
So we were left with a de facto “yes”: Biden does read off a stealthy teleprompter when answering canned press questions—and gives the impression he does not.
But Biden, like the mirage of the Wizard of Oz, nonetheless can’t always keep the curtain closed.
When he strains to see the teleprompter that sits just behind, and thus out of sight of, his camera lens, he slips and mutters “bring it closer”—reminding any who watch, except the media that helps collude in these orchestrations, that the question asked is not a serious one, but a prompt to facilitate the proper nonspontaneous response.
Yet even then Biden cannot act out the part of the Star Trek federation’s addled Gill without someone either giving him the prewritten answer on the teleprompter or writing it out for him in real-time. Sometimes if Biden is not reading a hidden teleprompter script, he looks down in panic for notes or his smartphone instructions in ways that only expose the sheer ridiculousness of this faux media-staged event.”
“You would think that with the miracle of modern technology and the insistence on transparency in government affairs, it would be possible for both the American people and the American president to share the same baseline on certain important facts.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t take account of the role of the mainstream media as the self-appointed protectors of the people. The press can promote any agenda they choose and destroy any person who gets out of line. Needless to say, Donald Trump gets “out of line” every day — he marches to the beat of his own drummer, as Thoreau said, and the press can’t stand it. So they engage in a near constant attack to destroy him and his presidency.
Jeffrey Goldberg’s reliance on unverified anonymous sources for his Atlantic hit piece accusing the president of being disdainful of slain American soldiers by calling them “losers” and “suckers” is a typical tactic. The media exploit and exacerbate public misperceptions of Trump that they themselves planted in the first place. Did Trump call John McCain a loser? Undoubtedly. Has he ridiculed the generals who have gotten us into forever wars that have cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers? Yes, frequently. But is there any evidence he said the things Goldberg alleges? Yeah, the testimony of five sources so brave they won’t go on the record with their complaints — claims that have been refuted by 19 real people with real names who were actually with the president in France when the alleged incidents occurred.
Of course, the media don’t stop with the initial hit job. Without missing a beat, they use the refuted stories by Goldberg and others to create the illusion that there is a united front of opposition to Trump. Showing interviews with random soldiers or veterans saying they are not “losers” promotes a “party line” version of the truth that is intended to shame the administration, and especially weak-kneed Republican senators, into bowing to the far-left agenda. But it is not news, and it is not fair.
The New York Times, NBC, and the rest of the major media have taken it upon themselves to adopt the role of the guardians of orthodoxy. Their goal is to create the illusion that mainstream America hates Trump just as much as the media does. That requires amplifying any story that attacks Trump and ignoring those that benefit him. This has been going on for five years now. You’ve seen the numbers. More than 90% of all news coverage about Donald Trump is negative. Satan gets more respect.
As a journalist, I have no problem condemning the repressive and manipulative tactics of the Washington press corps, but the good news is there are ways around their attempts to suppress the truth. First of all, there is social media. That’s why Trump loves Twitter. He can tell his own story, and he does, but of course the media vultures circling his Twitter feed every day eagerly pounce on any typo, misspelling, or politically incorrect pronouncement. Typically, more people will hear the media’s denunciation of the president’s tweets than will read the originals and decide for themselves. Again, it’s evidence of how news reporters see themselves as the wall between the people and the president.
The only other broad avenue for the people to get unbiased information is from a few news shows that don’t toe the liberal line — most notably “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News. Since the riots began at the end of May, Carlson has taken it upon himself to expose the corruption of not just the media but the liberal elected establishment that has implicitly endorsed violence, racism, and disorder in the name of what is perversely called social justice. I’ve called Carlson a modern-day Cassandra because his clear-eyed assessment of the danger America faces has been met with scorn, denial and derision. But name-calling, advertising boycotts, and continued threats of violence against him and his family have not deterred Carlson from his declared mission to be “the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.”
In that regard, Carlson has long used his show to ferret out information hidden in the bowels of government and get it to the people — bypassing the media guards who increasingly see it as their sworn role to restrict the free exchange of ideas. On Carlson’s Sept. 1 show, author Chris Rufo discussed his research into how critical race theory has infiltrated the federal government. I was shocked by just how bad the situation is, something we would never learn from CNN or MSNBC.
“It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government,” Rufo told Carlson. “What I have discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.””
~ Notably, the sheriff’s department does not currently have body cameras, though funding has been approved, and the department is due to receive them in the coming months. The only known video evidence of the arrest is via Huang’s phone and other local news crews that recorded the arrest, which showed five deputies on top of a woman who did not appear to be physically resisting arrest.
Executive Editor of KPCC and LAist Megan Garvey took to social media as she went down to the women’s jail and worked to get her reporter released, an effort that caught the eyes of journalists and reporters across Southern California. ~
AJ, your 8:00, if rule #1 is never to become part of the story, rule #2 is look to see if there is another side to the story before running with a story. It would seem that the arrest of that reporter was quite inappropriate, as Donna links above.
It was clearly a chaotic situation, and the deputies were understandably on edge. She said she was trying to back up when they ordered her to do so “but there was nowhere to back up” to.
After it was confirmed she was with the media and was trying to comply, charges should at least be dropped.
But in the aftermath, it is important to hear both sides of these scuffles, as I think has been made clear.
The LA Times account, based on video from the evening, is pretty thorough.
~ (The Sheriff’s) account was directly contradicted by videos Huang shared on Twitter, which showed that she did not intervene in the man’s arrest but instead was filming from a distance. As deputies take her to the ground, she can clearly be heard identifying herself as a reporter with KPCC and screaming for help. ~
Wandering Views 
Lot’s to talk about today….
Busted….
https://twitter.com/mbracemoore/status/1304606612477403136
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And James Corden? Really? They couldn’t find a real journalist to lob softballs and carry Joe’s water? There’s enough lapdogs out there, he needs to do some real interviews.
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Anybody else would be getting a Nobel.
Add them to the list of accomplishments.
————–
Pelosi says all these peace deals are just “distractions.”
And she’s lying about the numbers too.
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Too bad. 🙂
https://hotair.com/archives/karen-townsend/2020/09/11/court-appeals-denies-texas-democrats-bid-expand-mail-voting/
“Court Of Appeals Denies Texas Democrats’ Bid To Expand Mail-In Voting”
“The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a lower court’s preliminary ruling that would have required the State of Texas to expand mail-in voting to all eligible registered voters. The Texas Democrat Party claimed that denying universal mail-in voting in Texas is age discrimination.
Texas allows mail-in voting for voters who are age 65 or older, voters who will be out of the county during the voting period, disabled or ill voters, and people incarcerated but eligible to vote. Absentee voting is allowed, as in other states. For absentee voting, a voter has to request a ballot. Democrats want to move to universal voting by mail, with registered voters receiving a ballot by mail automatically, without the step of requesting one.
The 5th Circuit’s majority said the state’s law did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on age discrimination because it merely conferred an extra benefit on older residents, rather than limiting the right to vote for younger Texans.
“A law that makes it easier for others to vote does not abridge any person’s right to vote,” the majority wrote.
The three-judge panel was split 2-1. A reference was made to the coronavirus pandemic in the dissent. Democrats, not wanting to let a crisis go to waste, have used the excuse of the coronavirus as a reason that voters should just vote by mail for the November election. This ruling by the Court of Appeals is just the latest concerning voting in the upcoming election. This ruling doesn’t end the lawsuit, either. The case will be sent back down to a lower court to rule on the Democrats’ remaining arguments.”
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Disgusting.
https://www.newsweek.com/los-angeles-officers-critical-condition-shooting-1531552
“L.A. Protesters Try to Break Into Hospital Where Two Officers Are in Critical Condition After ‘A Cowardly’ Shooting”
“Two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies are fighting for their lives after they were shot multiple times at point-blank range in an ambush, authorities said.
Crowds of protesters blocked the entrance to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, where the wounded officers were in a critical condition, police said. Some protesters chanted “we hope they die,” the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter. A witness told ABC7 that some had tried to break into the hospital’s emergency room.
The shooting happened at around 7 p.m. Saturday at the Metro Blue Line station at Willowbrook Avenue and Compton Boulevard, not far from the Compton sheriff’s station.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department shared video of the incident in a post on Twitter that shows a person open fire through the passenger-side window of the patrol car in Compton.”
—-
“Videos posted on social media showed a group of protesters gathering outside the hospital where the wounded officers were taken.
In one clip, a man who identifies himself as Kevin Wharton Price of the Africa Town Coalition refers to the injured deputies as “two of America’s most notorious gang members.”
Other clips showed the group being confronted by officers outside the hospital when they tried to get inside.
In a tweet late on Saturday night, the sheriff’s department said protesters were blocking the entrance and exit to the hospital the wounded deputies were at.
“To the protesters blocking the entrance & exit of the HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM yelling “We hope they die” referring to 2 LA Sheriff’s ambushed today in #Compton: DO NOT BLOCK EMERGENCY ENTRIES & EXITS TO THE HOSPITAL,” the tweet said. “People’s lives are at stake when ambulances can’t get through.””
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Rule #1.
Never become part of the story you hack. NPR should fire her.
———–
———–
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Where’s the majority of Biden’s money coming from?
I mean besides China…. 🙂
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/09/13/surprise-surprise-data-reveals-where-the-majority-of-bidens-donations-came-from–and-its-bad-news-for-dems-n2576113
“Surprise, Surprise: Data Reveals Where the Majority of Biden’s Donations Came from – and It’s Bad News for Dems”
“The conservative group Take Back Action Fund is sounding the alarm on millions of political donations made to former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. According to the group, more than half of the 2019 contributions Biden received on the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue came from unemployed people, Fox News reported. That number has increased in 2020, particularly in light of the pandemic.
The organization decided to look at data from 2019, before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, to get a better idea of what donations were like at a time when the unemployment rate was relatively low – around four percent. Last year, 48.4 percent of ActBlue’s donations were from “unemployed.”
“After downloading hundreds of millions of [dollars in] donations to the Take Back Action Fund servers, we were shocked to see that almost half of the donations to ActBlue in 2019 claimed to be unemployed individuals,” Take Back Action Fund’s president, John Pudner, told Fox News. “The name of employers must be disclosed when making political donations, but more than 4.7 million donations came from people who claimed they did not have an employer. Those 4.7 million donations totaled $346 million ActBlue raised and sent to liberal causes.”
The numbers are ticking upwards as 2020 continues on, with more than 50 percent of donations coming through ActBlue being gifted by those who are unemployed.
Data from WinRed, the Republican Party’s version of ActBlue, the number of unemployed people who made donations to President Donald Trump sat at four percent. This year the number is 5.6 percent.”
“Pudner took particular issue with ActBlue’s lack of verification, something he says could be foreign contributions, which are illegal.
“It is hard to believe that at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was less than 4 percent, that unemployed people had $346 million dollars to send to ActBlue for liberal causes,” he said.
Of particular concern is that “4.7 million donations from people without a job,” Pudner said.
According to Take Back Action Fund, ActBlue allows unverified credit cards to be used for donations. This can create a loophole, something that was seen in 2008. People would buy prepaid gift cards and use those gift cards to make their donations. It was a way for donors to skirt donation limits. But, Pudner believes foreign entities could use this loophole to directly meddle in America’s presidential elections.”
———–
Ah yes…. the same scam Obama used to rake in unverified millions.
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Give them nothing.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/12/the_last_thing_states_cities_need_is_a_taxpayer_bailout.html
“August jobs numbers showed impressive hiring gains in nearly every sector of the economy. None more so than government.
The public sector added 344,000 jobs last month – including 95,000 permanent state and local jobs, 11,000 permanent federal jobs, and 238,000 Census jobs — giving government workers the second-lowest unemployment rate in the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And yet Democrats, under their latest $3 trillion-plus pandemic stimulus plan, want to dump almost $1 trillion into state and city coffers — the sector of the economy that LEAST needs more federal help.
Here’s why the left’s plan is so wrong-headed, starting with these August figures:
Unemployment by Industry
Leisure/hospitality: 21.3%
Mining: 12.4%
Transportation: 11.3%
All-industry average: 8.5%
Government: 5.7%
Banking and finance: 4.2%
Another way of describing the imbalance is that throughout the pandemic, a private sector worker has been twice as likely to face the indignity and financial hardship of losing a job than a government worker (8.1% versus 3.5% job losses), according to the BLS data. This is because most government workers have one privilege that almost no one in the private sector has: lifetime tenure.
Federal employees have received an especially sweet deal. Virtually none have gone without a paycheck.
It’s true that a significant portion of the 344,000 government jobs created in August are temporary Census positions, and that overall, government employment is 831,000 below its February level. But compared to other industries – especially the hard-hit food and drink sector, where employment is 2.5 million below the February figure, and professional and business services are down 1.5 million – government workers can’t complain.
The new jobs numbers undermine the logic or fairness of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s demand for what would be by far the largest bailout of any institution in American history.
Her $3 trillion-plus stimulus plan would have taxpayers write a nearly $1 trillion check to states and cities (on top of $225 billion in federal aid already sent), showering money on what’s already one of the healthiest sectors.
Yes, there are many states in dire financial straits. But this is mostly a result of less- than-stellar leadership by governors including Andrew Cuomo of New York, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. They locked down their businesses like a prison cell for months, obliterated their tax base (and still are doing so), and went hog wild on spending. New York state has a $30 billion 2020-21 budget deficit, Cuomo admitted in July. Now they plead poverty and demand a Pelosi bailout largely paid for by other states.
But wait . . . States including Texas, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, and South Dakota have already balanced their budgets this year. Why should residents of these states be penalized for fiscal misbehavior in other states? That’s called enabling.”
———–
And that’s what Dems do.
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A collection of liars.
Sounds about right.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/09/11/exclusive-ag-barr-rips-national-media-as-a-collection-of-liars-over-riot-coverage-n2576070
“AG Barr Rips National Media as a ‘Collection of Liars’ Over Riot Coverage”
“Wrapping up a three-day tour in Chicago, Phoenix and Cleveland Friday, Attorney General Bill Barr took on the media during an exclusive interview with Townhall.
“They’re basically a collection of liars. Most of the mainstream media. They’re a collection of liars and they know exactly what they’re doing. A perfect example of that were the riots. Right on the street it was clear as day what was going on, anyone observing it, reporters observing it, it could not have escaped their attention that this was orchestrated violence by a hardened group of street fighting radicals and they kept on excluding from their coverage all the video of this and reporting otherwise and they were doing that for partisan reasons, and they were lying to the American people. It wasn’t until they were caught red-handed after essentially weeks of this lie that they even started feeling less timid,” Barr said on the flight back to Washington Friday afternoon.
“The press has dropped, in my view – and I’m talking about the national mainstream media – has dropped any pretense of professional objectivity and are political actors, highly partisan who try to shape what they’re reporting to achieve a political purpose and support a political narrative that has nothing to do with the truth. They’re very mendacious about it,” he continued. “It’s very destructive to our Republic; it’s very destructive to the Democratic system to have that, especially being so monolithic. It’s contributing to a lot of the intensity and partisanship.”
For months major news networks have portrayed riots across the country as “peaceful protests.” CNN ran a chyron of a reporter standing in front of a burning Kenosha business that read, “Fiery but mostly peaceful protest.”
“It’s funny that you had record numbers of police being injured during ‘peaceful’ protests,” he said. “You know usually in protests, you have large numbers of injured rioters and a modest number of injured law enforcement. I’m talking about back in the 90s and 60s, 60s to the 90s, nowadays very few rioters get injured, very few and hundreds, even thousands of officers have been injured.”
But while most of what Barr classifies as “national media” has failed to report the facts on the ground about recent unrest, he credits a small number of journalists who have worked to find and publish the real story.
“I think there are a handful of reporters in the mainstream media that still have journalistic integrity, and there are some, but the overwhelming majority don’t have it anymore,” Barr said. “The people who do cover the Department do understand some of the issues. But, on the other hand, some of them have essentially adopted the same methods and ploys as what I refer to more generally as the national media and that is they’re not because, probably somewhat because, of their own orientation and but also what their editors say, they’re not really interested so much in what really happened but in pursuing a preformed narrative that suits some kind of ideological agenda. That’s what it’s all become.””
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Despite their efforts to revise history, Cuomo owns this. It’s all on him.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuomo-covid-new-york-coronavirus-de-blasio-shutdown-timing-11599836994?st=8r08bdtk52w3ynk
“New York City was locking down. Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted to say when and how it would happen.
After Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents in a March 17 news conference to prepare to “shelter in place,” Mr. Cuomo dismissed the mayor’s plan in a television interview while his aides blitzed City Hall with calls.
“The phones were ringing off the hook,” recalled Freddi Goldstein, the mayor’s press secretary at the time. “They said, ‘[The mayor] sounds crazy. He’s scaring people. You have to walk it back. It’s not up to you. It’s not your call.’ ”…
Instead of the abrupt shutdown Mr. de Blasio called for, Mr. Cuomo had his own plan: a gradual closure tailored to avoid panic and encourage public compliance. Millions of people continued to pack commuter trains and subways in the five-day span between Mr. de Blasio’s “shelter in place” comments and Mr. Cuomo’s eventual shutdown order.
By the time “New York on Pause” took effect at 8 p.m. on March 22, about 25,000 New Yorkers had tested positive for Covid-19. The virus soon would push the state’s hospital system to the brink and kill more than 30,000.”
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Fauci has to answer some questions…
“Call for an Investigation of NIAID’s Collaboration with China on the COVID-19 Virus”
https://ccnationalsecurity.org/call-for-an-investigation-of-niaids-collaboration-with-china-on-the-covid-19-virus/
“Based on the preponderance of evidence, there is now little question that the virus that has caused the worldwide pandemic likely came from a laboratory in China. The question remains whether an accidental leak was a consequence of biological warfare experiments by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Chinese government collaborated with the World Health Organization to downplay the threat and make the case that the virus appeared to not be transmitted from human to human, but rather from animals (primarily bats) to humans. There is also the question of why China cut off all domestic flights between Wuhan (population, 11 million) and Beijing and Shanghai, but not between Wuhan and Europe and America.
There are also questions about the role of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, in directing U.S. grant funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the nature of the experiments that funding supported. With that, I am calling for an investigation of NIAID’s controversial research collaboration with China regarding the origin of the COVID-19 virus. A Senate committee or Justice Department investigation would be a good start. I have written a series of articles on this topic, which you can find here.
As a summary, I have compiled this following list of evidentiary data points that could serve as the starting point for whatever entity takes on this very necessary investigation:
On April 27, 2020 it was reported that the National Institutes of Health, presumably with the authorization of President Donald Trump, suspended spending on the remaining $369,819 of a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, a long-time scientific collaborator with Chinese scientists, in particular, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Not privy to the actual facts related to the decision, that action precipitated outrage in the mainstream media and among some representatives of the scientific community.
Here are those facts.
Ten days earlier, during a press briefing by the Coronavirus Task Force, the following exchange took place between a White House correspondent and the President (1:10:57 – 1:11:33):
Question: “U.S. intelligence is saying this week that the coronavirus likely came from a Level 4 lab in Wuhan. There is also another report that the NIH under the Obama Administration in 2015 gave that lab 3.7 million dollars in a grant. Why would they give a grant like that to China?”
President Trump: “The Obama Administration gave them a grant of 3.7 million. I have been hearing about that. And we’ve instructed that any grants that are going to that area we’re looking at it literally about an hour ago and also earlier in the morning. We will end that grant very quickly.”
On April 19, 2020, Michael Lauer, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Deputy Director for Extramural Research, wrote to EcoHealth Alliance’s vice president for research, Kevin Olival stating:”
“EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. is the recipient, as grantee, of an NIH grant entitled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” It is our understanding that one of the sub-recipients on this grant is the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“WIV”). It is our understanding that Wuhan Institute of Virology studies the interaction between corona viruses and bats. The scientific community believes that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans likely in Wuhan where the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from Wuhan Institute of Virology of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of Wuhan Institute of Virology from participation in federal programs.
While we review these allegations during the period of suspension, you are instructed to cease providing any funds to Wuhan Institute of Virology. This temporary action is authorized by 45 C.F.R. § 75.371(d) (“Initiate suspension or debarment proceedings as authorized under 2 C.F.R. part 180”). The incorporated OMB provision provides that the funding agency may, through suspension, immediately and temporarily exclude from Federal programs persons who are not presently responsible where “immediate action is necessary to protect the public interest.” 2 C.F.R. § 180.700(c). It is in the public interest that NIH ensure that a sub-recipient has taken all appropriate precautions to prevent the release of pathogens that it is studying. This suspension of the sub-recipient does not affect the remainder of your grant assuming that no grant funds are provided to WIV following receipt of this email during the period of suspension.”
On April 21, 2020, Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, responded by email to Lauer:
“I can categorically state that no funds from 2R01 AI110964-06 have been sent to Wuhan Institute of Virology, nor has any contract been signed. Furthermore we will comply with NIAID’s requirements, of course.”
On April 24, 2020, Lauer notified Daszak that the NIAID, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, has elected to terminate the project “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence”, funded under grant R01 AI110964 because “NIH does not believe that the current project outcomes align with the program goals and agency priorities.”
On June 23, 2020, in response to a question by Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) regarding the reasons for the cancellation of the EcoHealth Alliance grant, Dr. Fauci said (5:32:20 – 5:34:03):
“It was cancelled because the NIH was told to cancel it. I don’t know the reason, but we were told to cancel it.”
In July 2020, Lauer sent the EcoHealth Alliance a letter stating the agency was reinstating the grant, but also instantly suspending it again pending the completion of certain actions, which the EcoHealth Alliance considered “impossible and irrelevant conditions”:”
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“Chinese virologist plans to release proof COVID-19 was made in Wuhan lab”
““It comes from the lab — the lab in Wuhan and the lab is controlled by China’s government.””
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/09/chinese-virologist-plans-to-release-proof-covid-19-was-made-in-wuhan-lab/
“Legal Insurrection has been following the news related to the Wuhan Coronavirus since early January of this year.
While difficult to find in the midst of China-based, anti-Trump media, reports have surfaced that the pathogen originated in a virology laboratory in Wuhan, China (the epicenter of the pandemic).
Now a Chinese virologist who has reportedly been in hiding for fear of her life says she is planning to share the scientific evidence to prove COVID-19 was man-made in a lab in China.
Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a scientist who says she did some of the earliest research into COVID-19 last year, made the comments Friday during an interview on British talk show “Loose Women.”
When asked where the deadly virus that has killed more than 900,000 around the globe comes from, Yan — speaking via video chat from a secret location — replied, “It comes from the lab — the lab in Wuhan and the lab is controlled by China’s government.”
She insisted that widespread reports that the virus originated last year from a wet market in Wuhan, China, are “a smokescreen.”
I recall the initial Chinese efforts to contain the virus. They were a mixture of panic, stage-craft, and distraction. It could be argued that they were designed to scare the people of Wuhan out of the country, to spread the virus around the globe.
Yan indicates that her life and her work were erased from official Chinese records.
She claimed that ahead of fleeing her country, her information was wiped from government databases and that her peers were ‘told to spread rumours about her’.
‘This is some common sense for Chinese people’, she said. ‘We know under Chinese government [they are at risk]
‘They deleted all my information and also they told people to spread rumours about me, that I’m a liar, I don’t know anything, I just killed a hamster in the lab. They will try to control my family and friends and then suddenly I don’t exist.’
Yan was one of the first to recognize the potential for human-to-human transmission.”
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More on the hack from NPR.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/la-sherffis-npr-reporter-arrested-for-interfering-with-cops-as-they-tried-to-control-blm-protests-outside-hospital
“L.A. Sheriffs: NPR Reporter Arrested For ‘Interfering’ With Cops As They Tried To Control BLM Protests Outside Hospital”
“A Los Angeles National Public Radio reporter was arrested early Sunday, Los Angeles County Sheriffs said, after she “interfered” with police trying to prevent alleged Black Lives Matter protesters from storming the hospital where two severely wounded L.A. County Sheriffs deputies were taken following a horrific ambush attack.
Saturday night, two sheriffs deputies, a 31-year-old female and a 24-year-old male, were shot in what law enforcement officials are calling an “ambush attack,” according to earlier reports from The Daily Wire. The pair were sitting in their parked vehicle outside of a train station when they were approached by a suspect who opened fire without apparent cause, leaving the two deputies severely wounded.
The two deputies were taken by ambulance to a local hospital. While the deputies were undergoing emergency surgery, alleged Black Lives Matter protesters moved to block the hospital’s entrances and exits as part of a demonstration. “Witnesses later said that the far-left activists, who shouted outside that they hoped the deputies died, attempted to storm the emergency room where the deputies were taken,” The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported Sunday.
A number of protesters were arrested in the altercation.
Los Angeles crime reporter Scott Schwebke first noted, early Sunday, that L.A.’s ABC affiliate had captured the arrest of a reporter, later identified as KPCC’s Josie Huang, on video. The footage shows deputies taking Huang to the ground and handcuffing her before taking her away in a police vehicle.”
https://twitter.com/TheChalkOutline/status/1305030195066236928
———-
““After deputies issued a dispersal order for the unlawful assembly of a group of protesters blocking the hospital emergency entrance & exits, a male adult protester refused to comply & cooperate,” L.A. County Sheriffs tweeted, explaining why Huang was detained. “During his arrest, a struggle ensued at which time a female adult ran towards the deputies, ignored repeated commands to stay back as they struggled with the male and interfered with the arrest.”
“The female adult, who was later identified as a member of the press, did not identify herself as press and later admitted she did not have proper press credentials on her person. Both individuals have been arrested for 148 P.C.,” they noted.
California Penal Code Section 148(a) PC specifically prohibits knowing resisting or interfering with a lawful arrest or other emergency action by a known member of either law enforcement or an emergency medical team.”
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Thank the environuts….
“Environmentalists Destroyed California’s Forests
The catastrophic fires that have immolated millions of acres of forests in the Golden State were preventable, and for decades, everyone knew what had to be done.”
“Millions of acres of California forest have been blackened by wildfires this summer, leading to the usual angry denunciations from the usual quarters about climate change. But in 1999, the Associated Press reported that forestry experts had long agreed that “clearing undergrowth would save trees,” and that “years of aggressive firefighting have allowed brush to flourish that would have been cleared away by wildfires.” But very little was done. And now fires of unprecedented size are raging across the Western United States.
“Sen. Feinstein blames Sierra Club for blocking wildfire bill,” reads the provocative headline on a 2002 story in California’s Napa Valley Register. Feinstein had brokered a congressional consensus on legislation to thin “overstocked” forests close to homes and communities, but could not overcome the environmental lobby’s disagreement over expediting the permit process to thin forests everywhere else.
Year after year, environmentalists litigated and lobbied to stop efforts to clear the forests through timber harvesting, underbrush removal, and controlled burns. Meanwhile, natural fires were suppressed and the forests became more and more overgrown. The excessive biomass competed for the same water, soil, and light a healthier forest would have used, rendering all of the trees and underbrush unhealthy. It wasn’t just excess biomass that accumulated, but dried out and dead biomass.
What happened among California’s tall stands of Redwood and Ponderosa Pine also happened in its extensive chaparral. Fire suppression along with too many environmentalist-inspired bureaucratic barriers to controlled burns and undergrowth removal turned the hillsides and canyons of Southern California into tinderboxes.
In 2009, after huge blazes wiped out homes and forced thousands to evacuate, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich observed: “The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today.”
In 2014, Republican members of Congress tried again to reduce the bureaucracy associated with “hazardous fuel projects” that thin out overgrown forests. True to form, the bill got nowhere thanks to environmental lobbyists who worried it would undermine the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the law that requires thorough impact assessments ahead of government decisions on public lands.
In a blistering report published in the California Globe on how environmentalists have destroyed California’s forests, investigative journalist Katy Grimes interviewed Representative Tom McClintock, a Republican who represents communities in and around the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California. McClintock has worked for years to reform NEPA and other barriers to responsible forest management.
“The U.S. Forest Service used to be a profitable federal agency,” McClintock told Grimes.
Up until the mid-1970s, we managed our national forests according to well-established and time-tested forest management practices. But 40 years ago, we replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect. Ponderous, Byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to save the environment. The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts and our federal agencies ever since.
But these zealots have not protected the forests. They have destroyed them. The consequences are far-reaching. “
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And thank your politicians….
For the first time in a decade, more people are leaving Cali. than are moving in.
https://www.chron.com/news/article/As-dangers-rise-many-fear-their-California-Dream-15562708.php
“The cityscape resembles the surface of a distant planet, populated by a masked alien culture. The air, choked with blown ash, is difficult to breathe.
There is the Golden Gate Bridge, looming in the distance through a drift-smoke haze, and the Salesforce Tower, which against the blood-orange sky appears as a colossal spaceship in a doomsday film.
San Francisco, and much of California, has never been like this.
California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place many have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived.
Monica Gupta Mehta and her husband, an entrepreneur, have been through tech busts and booms, earthquakes, wildfire seasons and power outages. But it was not until the skies darkened and cast an unsettling orange light on their Palo Alto home earlier this week that they ever considered moving their family of five somewhere else.
“For the first time in 20-something years, the thought crossed our minds: Do we really want to live here?” said Mehta, who is starting an education tech company.
It would be difficult to leave. They love the area’s abundant nature and are tied to Silicon Valley by work and a network of extended family members, who followed them west from Pittsburgh. But Mehta says it is something she would consider if her family is in regular danger.
“Yesterday felt so apocalyptic,” Mehta said. “People are really starting to reconsider whether California has enough to offer them.”
This is the latest iteration of the California Dream, a Gold Rush-era slogan meant to capture the hopeful migration of an old nation to a new, rich West. For generations, the tacit agreement for California residents resembled a kind of too-good-to-be-true deal. Live in the lovely if often drought-plagued Sierra, or beneath the beachfront Pacific Coast cliffs, and work in an economy constantly reinventing itself, from Hollywood to the farms of the San Joaquin to Silicon Valley.
But for many of California’s 40 million residents, the California Dream has become the California Compromise, one increasingly challenging to justify, with a rapidly changing climate, a thumb-on-the-scales economy, high taxes and a pandemic that has killed more here than in any other state.”
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They’ll just blame Trump. Everything bad is his fault.
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Biden and his flying media monkeys. VDH nails it again.
“Biden, ‘The Great and Powerful’
For now Joe Biden’s best hope is that some Emerald City media lackey does not play the role of the tiny dog Toto, rip away the curtain, and reveal the tiny man and his machinery behind the projection.”
“Media bias is not new.
In addition to the Russian collusion hoax and the phone-call impeachment farce, who can forget the marquee media toadies of JournoList and the release of John Podesta’s email trove?
Or the moderator Donna Brazile’s primary debate questions, leaked through CNN, or Candy Crowley’s hijacking of a debate as moderator-turned-real-time-hack “fact-checker”?
Nothing then is new to the media’s fusion and collusion with the “progressive party.”
Yet never in American history have mainstream journalists not merely promoted a candidate but actively fused with his political candidacy to the point of warping, fabricating, and Trotskyizing the news and indeed history itself.
The trope of a vast charade to create an illusionary powerful figure out of nothing is an old one in fiction, Hollywood and television. We remember “The Great and Powerful” Wizard of Oz fakery, a formidable screen image created backstage by gears and levers operated by a tiny man “behind the curtain.” Similar is the famous scene in an episode of the old Star Trek series, depicting a near comatose on-air John Gill used as a televised prop by his puppeteers, in a utopian federation project gone haywire.
But reality has outdone art with the Biden campaign. The concoction is holistic, from the mundane construction of a fantasy, on-the-go candidate to the supposed middle-of-the road old Joe Biden from Scranton radiating an aura of kindness and moderation in times of plague, panic, and protest.
Bunker Illusions
For six months, Biden has run a Zoom campaign on the pretext of mandatory quarantines—our current version of a 19th-century, stationary presidential candidate, who campaigned by spitting out wit and wisdom while immovable on his front porch.
Biden has conducted no free-wheeling, unscripted press conferences. He will not do extended one-on-one interviews with a disinterested journalist. He rarely will even try Trump-like cameo appearances on CNN or MSNBC to answer unscripted questions from supporters. His press events instead are Orwellian, requiring a media mass suspension of disbelief.
The questions are canned. They are submitted in advance by “journalists,” whether formally or via electronic chatter. The inquiries are obsequious—seldom a word about Hunter Biden, China, Biden’s troubling racist remarks, his handsy past, his scary cognitive lapses, or his “contract” with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Instead the softball, known-in-advance inquiries are in spirit carried over from the Obama years, phrased in the manner of “Were you outraged enough by Trump’s outrage?”
Biden’s Oz functionaries seemingly are always experimenting with all sorts of screen props. The trick is to discover how best their challenged candidate can square the circle of completing sentences and remaining semi-coherent, while not giving away the game that his illusionists are feeding him answers to synthetic questions.
When asked point-blank on Fox News by Brett Baier whether Biden used a stealth teleprompter, his national press flak, T.J. Ducklo would not answer with a simple yes or no. Instead, he went on the attack, with the fossilized accusation that right-wing Fox News asks too many partisan questions.
So we were left with a de facto “yes”: Biden does read off a stealthy teleprompter when answering canned press questions—and gives the impression he does not.
But Biden, like the mirage of the Wizard of Oz, nonetheless can’t always keep the curtain closed.
When he strains to see the teleprompter that sits just behind, and thus out of sight of, his camera lens, he slips and mutters “bring it closer”—reminding any who watch, except the media that helps collude in these orchestrations, that the question asked is not a serious one, but a prompt to facilitate the proper nonspontaneous response.
Yet even then Biden cannot act out the part of the Star Trek federation’s addled Gill without someone either giving him the prewritten answer on the teleprompter or writing it out for him in real-time. Sometimes if Biden is not reading a hidden teleprompter script, he looks down in panic for notes or his smartphone instructions in ways that only expose the sheer ridiculousness of this faux media-staged event.”
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“Under the Media’s Berlin Wall of Truth Suppression”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/14/under_the_medias_berlin_wall_of_truth_suppression__144190.html
“You would think that with the miracle of modern technology and the insistence on transparency in government affairs, it would be possible for both the American people and the American president to share the same baseline on certain important facts.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t take account of the role of the mainstream media as the self-appointed protectors of the people. The press can promote any agenda they choose and destroy any person who gets out of line. Needless to say, Donald Trump gets “out of line” every day — he marches to the beat of his own drummer, as Thoreau said, and the press can’t stand it. So they engage in a near constant attack to destroy him and his presidency.
Jeffrey Goldberg’s reliance on unverified anonymous sources for his Atlantic hit piece accusing the president of being disdainful of slain American soldiers by calling them “losers” and “suckers” is a typical tactic. The media exploit and exacerbate public misperceptions of Trump that they themselves planted in the first place. Did Trump call John McCain a loser? Undoubtedly. Has he ridiculed the generals who have gotten us into forever wars that have cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers? Yes, frequently. But is there any evidence he said the things Goldberg alleges? Yeah, the testimony of five sources so brave they won’t go on the record with their complaints — claims that have been refuted by 19 real people with real names who were actually with the president in France when the alleged incidents occurred.
Of course, the media don’t stop with the initial hit job. Without missing a beat, they use the refuted stories by Goldberg and others to create the illusion that there is a united front of opposition to Trump. Showing interviews with random soldiers or veterans saying they are not “losers” promotes a “party line” version of the truth that is intended to shame the administration, and especially weak-kneed Republican senators, into bowing to the far-left agenda. But it is not news, and it is not fair.
The New York Times, NBC, and the rest of the major media have taken it upon themselves to adopt the role of the guardians of orthodoxy. Their goal is to create the illusion that mainstream America hates Trump just as much as the media does. That requires amplifying any story that attacks Trump and ignoring those that benefit him. This has been going on for five years now. You’ve seen the numbers. More than 90% of all news coverage about Donald Trump is negative. Satan gets more respect.
As a journalist, I have no problem condemning the repressive and manipulative tactics of the Washington press corps, but the good news is there are ways around their attempts to suppress the truth. First of all, there is social media. That’s why Trump loves Twitter. He can tell his own story, and he does, but of course the media vultures circling his Twitter feed every day eagerly pounce on any typo, misspelling, or politically incorrect pronouncement. Typically, more people will hear the media’s denunciation of the president’s tweets than will read the originals and decide for themselves. Again, it’s evidence of how news reporters see themselves as the wall between the people and the president.
The only other broad avenue for the people to get unbiased information is from a few news shows that don’t toe the liberal line — most notably “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News. Since the riots began at the end of May, Carlson has taken it upon himself to expose the corruption of not just the media but the liberal elected establishment that has implicitly endorsed violence, racism, and disorder in the name of what is perversely called social justice. I’ve called Carlson a modern-day Cassandra because his clear-eyed assessment of the danger America faces has been met with scorn, denial and derision. But name-calling, advertising boycotts, and continued threats of violence against him and his family have not deterred Carlson from his declared mission to be “the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.”
In that regard, Carlson has long used his show to ferret out information hidden in the bowels of government and get it to the people — bypassing the media guards who increasingly see it as their sworn role to restrict the free exchange of ideas. On Carlson’s Sept. 1 show, author Chris Rufo discussed his research into how critical race theory has infiltrated the federal government. I was shocked by just how bad the situation is, something we would never learn from CNN or MSNBC.
“It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government,” Rufo told Carlson. “What I have discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.””
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There has been video released showing that the arrested reporter identified herself as a reporter up to seven times.
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https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/reporter-arrest-account-backed-by-video-goes-against-la-county-sheriffs-department-version/2427557/
(she was wearing her press pass around her neck)
~ Notably, the sheriff’s department does not currently have body cameras, though funding has been approved, and the department is due to receive them in the coming months. The only known video evidence of the arrest is via Huang’s phone and other local news crews that recorded the arrest, which showed five deputies on top of a woman who did not appear to be physically resisting arrest.
Executive Editor of KPCC and LAist Megan Garvey took to social media as she went down to the women’s jail and worked to get her reporter released, an effort that caught the eyes of journalists and reporters across Southern California. ~
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AJ, your 8:00, if rule #1 is never to become part of the story, rule #2 is look to see if there is another side to the story before running with a story. It would seem that the arrest of that reporter was quite inappropriate, as Donna links above.
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DJ,
So even if she did, and there’s no way to know that’s what’s around her neck, does that give the reporter the right to interfere with an arrest?
NO!
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It was clearly a chaotic situation, and the deputies were understandably on edge. She said she was trying to back up when they ordered her to do so “but there was nowhere to back up” to.
After it was confirmed she was with the media and was trying to comply, charges should at least be dropped.
But in the aftermath, it is important to hear both sides of these scuffles, as I think has been made clear.
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The LA Times account, based on video from the evening, is pretty thorough.
~ (The Sheriff’s) account was directly contradicted by videos Huang shared on Twitter, which showed that she did not intervene in the man’s arrest but instead was filming from a distance. As deputies take her to the ground, she can clearly be heard identifying herself as a reporter with KPCC and screaming for help. ~
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-13/deputies-arrest-radio-reporter-covering-protest-outside-hospital
At the least, it should prompt a review on how it was handled.
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