Wednesday, November 30, 2022

So, the Secret Service's Rental Vehicles Went Up in Flames in Nantucket

By  Matt Vespa | Townhall.com


Photo: Charles Dharapak

Joe Biden absconded to the bougie confines of Nantucket Island for Thanksgiving, which wasn’t without drama. No, I’m sure Hunter didn’t hit the crack pipe—but the Secret Service’s rental vehicles went up in flames during the trip. It’s just another sign that this presidency is a walking disaster—not even Joe’s elite protective detail is safe from the hex that follows this man. Our friends at Hot Air covered this story first, but this incident could have been more severe if an attentive employee at the Nantucket airfield didn’t notice the cars going up in smoke. The Secret Service parked the vehicles at the airport when the fire erupted and almost reached the facility’s fuel depot (via Fox News): 

President Joe Biden's rented Secret Service vehicles burst into flames in a parking lot Monday, just one day after he left his Nantucket vacation. 

Biden spent Thanksgiving on the ritzy Massachusetts island with his family last week. The Secret Service rented five vehicles from Hertz to carry the president and his family, and all five of them caught fire in the parking lot, according to footage first obtained by the Nantucket Current. 

Footage shows firefighters spraying down the smoldering remains of one vehicle's engine block. The five vehicles included a Chevy Suburban, Ford Explorer, Infiniti QX80, Ford Expedition and a Jeep Gladiator. 

[…] 

"At approximately 5:22 am Airport shift staff observed an active fire in the rental car overflow area through the Airport's Closed Circuit Television System," the airport said in a statement to the Current. "Staff activated the Alert system and responded to the fire in Airport-3, where they were met by responding units from Nantucket Fire Department and Nantucket Police Department." 

[…]

The Bidens stayed at a waterfront compound along Nantucket Harbor. The family members on the trip included Ashley and Hunter Biden. The family has a more than 40-year tradition of spending Thanksgiving on the island.


It’s excellent news that no one was injured or killed in what could have been an inferno of an event, but given the failing economy, the high inflation, the spike in crime, and the overall deteriorating condition we find ourselves in—Biden’s Secret Service detail’s vehicles exploding is par for the course. Can anything go right for Biden?


HERE IS THE VIDEO.


Super Bowl MVP Puts Balenciaga on Blast - and Puts Kim Kardashian to Shame

By Teri Christoph | RedState.com

AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

It’s a rarity these days for a celebrity, particularly from the sporting world, to make a bold statement on the moral decay festering in popular culture, so Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp deserves praise for taking on the child fetishists at Balenciaga. As RedState’s Brandon Morse reported last week:

Balenciaga, the high-end fashion brand, released a photoshoot that includes children in the photos. Upon closer inspection, you can see some very odd things about the bears the children are holding.

For one, the bears are clearly dressed in bondage garb, including studded leather bracelets and fishnet shirts.

You’ve probably seen the photos by now, including the one that shows an innocent little girl clutching an extremely ugly teddy bear made uglier by the adult-themed accessories adorning it; the girl is in a room full of wine glasses, bondage gear, and other paraphernalia meant to shock. She, of course, doesn’t understand the meaning behind it, but the adults behind the campaign surely did.

Bad actors like Balenciaga need to be shamed publicly and relentlessly. Kupp did just that, calling for the fashion house to be held responsible for their disgusting campaign.

Pro-tip for Kim Kardashian: This is the only appropriate response to this situation.

Kardashian, in sharp contrast to Kupp, put out a mealy-mouthed declaration that while she was “shaken” and “disgusted” by the images, she was merely going to “re-evaluate” her relationship with the brand.

‘I have been quiet for the past few days, not because I haven’t been shocked and outraged by the recent Balenciaga campaigns, but because I wanted an opportunity to speak to their team to understand for myself how this could have happened,’ the Los Angeles-born celebrity said in a statement on her Instagram page.

She continued: ‘As a mother of four, I have been shaken by those disturbing images. The safety of children must be held with the highest regard and anything against it should have no place in our society – period.’

She subsequently reissued the statement that saw some of the wording changed using stronger language adding: ‘any attempts to normalize child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society – period.’

“Any attempts to normalize child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society – period.” She should have stopped there. She didn’t. Kardashian went on to completely negate her chastisement of the disgusting ad campaign by blathering on: “As for my future with Balenciaga, I am currently re-evaluating my relationship with the brand, basing it off their willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with — & the actions I am expecting to see them take to protect children.”

In other words, she’s hoping this story gets overtaken by another news cycle so she can keep milking the Balenciaga cash cow. It’s yet another Strongly Worded Statement issued by a faux-outraged celebrity that is, in fact, utterly meaningless. Not that we expected better of a Kardashian.

Balenciaga has apologized for the misguided and depraved campaign they developed, but it’s going to take a lot more Cooper Kupps of the world to speak up and denounce the exploitation of children to bring about real change. Kim Kardashian, for her part, has shown she has the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair.

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Tim Pool hosted Kanye, Milo and Nick Fuentes on his show...it didn't last long

  JOHN SEXTON | Hot Air.com

I saw that this was happening earlier this evening and questioned whether I wanted to write about it here. Do I really want to give oxygen to a guy like Nick Fuentes who has demonstrated that he’s a racist and an anti-Semite? Well, it turns out I needn’t have worried because 25 minutes into what was supposed to be a 2-hour conversation, Kanye bailed and Milo and Fuentes followed. As Tim Pool said later, “It was all hype and then all nothing.”

Kanye pulled the plug the instant he was challenged on some of his claims that Jewish people, collectively, were the source of his troubles. My old boss at Breitbart, Joel Pollak, already has a story up about it titled: “WATCH: Kanye Canceled — by Kanye; Walks Out of Tim Pool Interview When Asked to Defend His Antisemitism.”

Pool allowed West to express his views, largely uninterrupted, for the first fifteen minutes of the broadcast…

West claimed that it was “beautiful” that people could see how Jews — whom he referred to as “Zionists” at one stage — cancel people…

Pool expressed empathy for West’s experience of being canceled: “I think they’ve been extremely unfair to you.”

“Who is ‘they’, though?” West replied. “We can’t say who ‘they’ is, can we?”

“Corporate press,” Pool replied.

Fuentes interjected: “It is ‘them,’ though, isn’t it?”

Pool replied: “No, it’s not.”

And that was it. At the very first sign of resistance Kanye got up and left. Here’s a video clip of the final exchange.


Moments after Ye left, Milo said he needed to check on him and also left. Fuentes who had been trying to argue the point left as well. Tim Pool and his co-hosts then spent the next hour talking about what happened.

So maybe this turns out to be a very good example of why you should allow people with extreme views to talk. Certainly in this case they didn’t come out of it looking too good. Indeed it’s hard to imagine what they thought was going to happen. The dinner with Trump is big news specifically because Fuentes was there. This was obviously going to be discussed. Did Kanye think no one was going to push back on bringing a holocaust denier to the dinner?

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Pool said. He continued, “What do I even do? Other than ask him, please elaborate on this. Are you referring to individuals or are you quite literally blaming an entire group of people for that fact that powerful individuals are causing you harm?”

Later Pool added, “If Kanye is going to say these things and them immediately start getting involved with Fuentes, that only amplifies the accusations made against them. But I guess if they genuinely believe these things, that’s who they are.”

That’s clearly who Nick Fuentes is and based on tonight it seems like Kanye holds some of the same views. Here’s the full video which runs for about 2 hours.

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READER'S COMMENTS

I have no idea as to who Tim Pool or Nick Fuentes are.

And I wouldn't know a Kanye West song if I heard one. All I know about him is that he has an ex-wife that I wouldn't want to get near.

I really don't remember much about Milo either, except that he became a household name in conservative journalism circles in the 2018 election cycle.

My wife reads People Magazine, so I should probably ask her.

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RELATED ARTICLES

Trump adviser on the Ye/Fuentes dinner at Mar-a-Lago: 'The master troll got trolled'

BY JOHN SEXTON | Hot Air.com


(AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

NBC News published a story today promising the “inside story” of the Trump dinner with Kanye and Nick Fuentes. The general tone of this is that Milo Yiannopoulos set this up as a kind of troll of Trump. And of course Trump didn’t help himself by making a big show of the dinner at his club.

“We saw everybody in the dining room get up and start applauding, and then the president entered,” Fuentes told NBC News. “He greeted us, and he invited Ye into dinner and Ye said that he wanted to bring us with him to the table. So we walked in and Ye took some pictures with some of the guests in the dining room and then we sat down at the table.”

So when the dinner took an unexpected turn with Kanye asking Trump to be his running mate and Trump in turn telling him he would lose if he ran and also insulting his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, there were plenty of witnesses around to see it happen.

As for adding Fuentes to the mix, everyone agrees Trump didn’t know who he was but Milo, who has been acting as an adviser to Ye, obviously did know who he was and knew that his presence would make this a big story. A trump adviser said “Kanye punked Trump” but it was really Milo who set this up.

“The master troll got trolled,” the adviser said. “Kanye punked Trump.”…

“I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with,” Yiannopoulos told NBC News.

“I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abusedthe people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end,” he added.

And, Yiannopoulos said, he arranged the dinner “just to make Trump’s life miserable” because news of the dinner would leak and Trump would mishandle it.

As you might imagine, Trump was not happy about the negative story and also reportedly had the sense that he’d been set up.

Trump fumed afterward that Ye had betrayed him by ambushing him. “He tried to f— me. He’s crazy. He can’t beat me,” Trump said, according to one confidant, who then relayed the conversation to NBC News on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump’s ego was bruised by Kanye who, I think it’s fair to say, has an equally massive ego. But what really happened here is that Milo set this up knowing it would explode and Trump would be left explaining why he was having dinner with an anti-Semite like Fuentes. And of course Trump can say he didn’t know but that just raises the next question which is why is the former president having dinners with complete strangers? It doesn’t seem very professional or smart and clearly it backfired in this case.

On the other hand I’m honestly not sure how any of this was supposed to help Kanye. It sort of makes me wonder if Milo isn’t doing this for his own personal reasons which have nothing to do with Ye’s plans to run for office. Or maybe he just assumed there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Except, as we found out last night, bad publicity seems to be the only kind Ye and Milo can get out of this whole thing.

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POT MEET KETTLE: Mitt Romney Calls Donald Trump a “Gargoyle” Hanging Over the Republican Party After “Disgusting” Trump-Ye-Fuentes Meeting

By Cullen Linebarger | Gateway Pundit


As predicted, former President Donald Trump’s dinner with controversial rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) and white nationalist Nick Fuentes set off a raging inferno last week yet to fully dissipate. Now leading Trump-hater Mitt Romney has emerged from his snake pit to weigh in.

On Monday, Romney told NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur he found the meeting “disgusting.” He went on to brag about impeaching Trump twice and not wanting him “hanging over our party like a gargoyle.”

Romney neglected to mention that Ye was supposed to meet Trump alone and the former president had no idea Fuentes would show up or who he is.

But who expects full honesty from a man who stabbed Trump in the back after Trump tried to put aside their past differences?

Trump attempted to bury the hatchet between them back in 2018 when he endorsed Romney’s run for U.S Senate. Romney happily accepted the endorsement and used the then-president’s generosity to get elected.

Let’s now do a thought experiment on who the real gargoyle of the GOP really is. Trump launched his first run for political office in 2015.  In 2016 he took down a loaded Republican field for President. He then pulled off the greatest upset in American political history when he defeated Crooked Hillary Clinton in the 2016 General Election.

Mitt Romney? He ran for President twice and lost badly both times. In 2008, he lost in the Republican primaries to arguably the most infamous RINO of all time, the late Senator John McCain of Arizona. He then struggled to win against a weak GOP field in 2012 and Barack Obama destroyed him in the 2012 General Election.

As President, Trump fulfilled many long-held promises that establishment Republicans simply used as bubba bait for the base. Some of these fulfilled pledges included renegotiating NAFTA, moving America’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, cracking down on illegal immigration, and partially repealing Obamacare.

His achievements do not end there, however. Trump rebuilt the American military which Obama gutted during his reign. He also pushed through one of the largest tax cuts in American history, which provided relief to all American families. Furthermore, his judicial appointments proved the best in American history. Without Trump, Roe vs Wade remains on the books and our nation loses thousands more unborn children in the process.

Trump’s greatest accomplishment, however, was not starting another war. He was the first President since Ronald Reagan not to send American forces off to die in foreign lands. The deep state and the globalist politicians loathed Trump for this more than any other policy. The reason for this loathing is because Trump cost them billions of dollars. Any doubt this helped lead to his first impeachment?

Romney’s “accomplishments” include impeaching a duly elected Republican president twice for personal reasons and helping deliver Biden’s leftist agenda.  He even voted for Biden’s radical Supreme Court nominee who cannot explain what a woman is! He also refused to support fellow Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee in his election versus Never-Trump grifter and deadbeat Evan McMullin.

Whether or not he returns to the Oval Office, Trump can forever hold his head high for his immeasurable accomplishments as president. Romney just needs to retire from public life for good.

Monday, November 28, 2022

America's moral decline started 60 years ago

By William Haupt III | The Center Square contributor

Students and faculty recite the "Pledge of Allegiance" during an assembly at the Crystal Boarding School in Crystal, N.M., on the Navajo Nation. -  John Locher | AP file photo

"Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. What a Utopia." – John Adams

The English Reformation took place in 16th-century when the Church of England broke from the authority of the pope. In 1527, when King Henry VIII requested an annulment and Pope Clement refused, Parliament abolished all papal authority and King Henry VIII became head of the Church.

This led to two centuries of violent disputes over religion. Anyone who refused to join the Church of England was denied civil liberties and rights. Freedom of religious worship was one of the major driving forces that drove people from Europe, especially England, to the ports of Plymouth Harbor.

Most of our founders were Christians and opened and closed each day of the Convention with a prayer. When they were writing our Constitution, they agreed there would be no national religion.

"Our rights to happiness don't come from government but a higher source – God." – John Dickinson

From our founding, through a Civil War and two Great Wars, Americans toted their bibles and guns into the bloodiest of battles to defend liberty, freedom and democracy around the world. After World War II, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a melancholy Christian, added "one nation under God" to the pledge of allegiance.

It was not until 1962 when the New York school board approved an optional prayer to open class that prayer in school was challenged. Sixty years ago this week, in Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court declared school prayer unconstitutional. Engel became the lexicon to admonish all school prayer.

"Any prayer in our classrooms, voluntary or not, is a lesson in bad civics." –Steven Engel

Since the Supreme Court banned organized public school prayer, over the years this has been linked to numerous social ills and an increased decline in respect for authority in the classrooms. Sociologists agree, eliminating school-prayer put America on the road to moral and spiritual ruin.

Since our founding, in schools across the U.S., students stood at attention with their hands over their hearts reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This tradition reminded students of the greatness of our nation and that America was "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette that making students recite the Pledge of Allegiance violated the First Amendment. This ended a tradition of 165 years. Today, it is common to see half of a class sitting down during the Pledge of Allegiance.

Former NFL player Colin Kaepernick cited this case 73 years later to justify kneeling during the National Anthem. This outraged many Americans, including President Donald Trump, who still believed the promotion of good citizenship is a legitimate goal that should not be undermined for any reason.

"Every person in this nation has an obligation to honor the blessings of America." – Harlen Stone

Since the mid-1960s, every traditional American institution has been targeted for racism and bias toward some obscure group and considered unjust. All American traditionalism is called obsolete since it does not support declining moral standards of young Americans and is insulting to identity groups. There is something wrong with everything that made America the greatest nation on earth.

Since the federalization of union education in the 1970s and Common Core, teachers spend far less time teaching U.S. history, English, literature, sociology and civics, music, and art. Instead schools fixate on social justice, environmentalism, CRT, LGBT relationships and having safe sex. And this has led to declining test scores, social violence, and lost respect for America and her institutions.

Most universities have become secular seminaries for the dissemination of liberalism. Aside from indoctrination, students are learning little about living in traditional America. For example, one can earn a B.A. without taking one class in basic civics, U.S. or world history, or even in government.

"Students spend more time at parties than classes and still find ways to graduate." – Cinda Chima

Young people have been taught that morality and good citizenship are nothing more than personal choices. Recently, a New York college professor told a Post reporter, "Children today don't think morals are facts." He noted, “They've been taught morals are nothing more than your personal opinions."

Today's public school students are taught marriage is marriage and gender has nothing to do with it. Children can be raised by two mothers, or fathers or a single parent. A father nor a mother has nothing unique to offer a child. And single parent households can live off of government handouts.

It is a mortal sin to mention the "Bible" in a classroom. There are no moral truths because there is no religious basis for morality. During the Enlightenment, the Bible guided our founders in crafting Americas institutional values. Today they are being guided by a socially acceptable woke culture.

"Wokeism is a religion without salvation. Once canceled out you're banned forever." – A.E. Samaan

This last election proved that young voters, trendy women and identity groups do not care or vote for policy issues that are destroying the economy and are threatening their security. Election data from Edison Research shows the right to abortion on demand was the driving force for millennials, identity groups, and white female college graduates to vote for Democrats this last election. These groups also believed in canceling student loans, socialized medicine, and federalizing elections.

Democrats have held an advantage in every midterm or presidential election since the late 1990s. This year, citing Biden's stimulus spending, extended unemployment checks and his support for legalizing same sex marriage, Gen Z and young millennials showed a pronounced shift toward the Democratic Party. This group also showed the highest increase in voter turnout over last election.

Daniel O’Connell wrote, "Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong." At one time, Americans are taught to rely on their feelings to determine how to behave and what to believe in and what was wrong. Today, instead of being given moral guidance to develop a foundation for their moral future, children are being taught that anything is OK as long as you feel good about it. They are told it is OK to break the law if you feel it's unjust, and morality is a personal choice uncontrolled by society.

If we consider the issues that drove Gen Z and millennials to the Democratic Party last election are considered immoral, un-American, unreligious, and most were even illegal not that long ago, it is disturbing that we are witnessing the moral decay of American society and no one is doing a thing about it. Loss of respect for traditional values and out of control immorality destroyed Rome and it can happen here.

"There can be no high civility without a deep morality." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunday, November 27, 2022

2 House Races Remain Uncalled, Republicans Lead in Both

By Allen Zhong  | The Epoch Times

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R) speaks about close race, presumed win

Two House races still have not been called more than two weeks after Election Day.

The Republican Party is expected to strengthen its majority in the lower chamber of Congress when those two races are officially declared as GOP candidates are leading in both contests.

In the redrawn 13th Congressional District in California, John Duarte, a Republican Party candidate, received 50.2 percent of the total votes as 99 percent of the votes have been tabulated. Democrat candidate Adam Gray trailed Duarte by 593 votes, less than 0.5 percent.

There’s no automatic recounting law in California.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) already declared victory and her Democrat opponent Adam Frisch has conceded. Boebert leads Frisch by 554 votes, less than 0.5 percent.

The race has not been called because Colorado law requires an automatic recounting when the difference is less than 0.5 percent.

With these two seats being added to the Republican majority, the GOP would have 222 seats in the U.S. House while the Democratic Party would have 213.

According to data compiled by the Cook Political Report, Republican House candidates received more than 3.3 million popular votes than their Democratic counterparts in the midterm elections.

Out of the total 106.6 million votes, Republicans beat Democrats with an advantage of 50.8 percent to 47.7.

Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, wrote on Nov. 14 that the Republican Party—with a 4.9 percentage point advantage at that time—would normally gain 20–30 seats in the House, but didn’t gain as many seats as anticipated.

“Simply put, Republicans picked up the votes they needed, just not where they needed them most. Clearly something or someone intervened, affecting the outcome of the election in the places that mattered,” he wrote.

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Emeritus Michael Barone believes House Republicans won the popular vote because the turnout in Central cities worked against the Democrats.

The popular vote didn’t give the Republican Party more seats because of redistricting, and Republican voters are more concentrated than before, he said.

However, the advantage in popular votes indicates the Republican Party could have a hopeful 2024.

“Republican House candidates won 58 percent of the popular vote in the South and 53 percent in the Midwest, two regions that together account for 298 of the 538 electoral votes. Duplicating that support is one way an unproblematic Republican nominee could top 270 electoral votes in 2024,” he wrote.

With President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in the White House and the U.S. Senate still being controlled by the Democrats for the next two years, the Republican majority in the House can hardly move forward with its policy agenda.

However, it’s most likely the Republicans will launch more investigations into the executive branch after January.

The House Oversight Committee will investigate President Joe Biden and his alleged involvement in his son Hunter’s foreign business deals, Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced on Nov. 17.

Contrary to the president’s claims, the elder Biden was directly involved in Hunter’s international business dealings, Comer said, citing whistleblower evidence.

“This is an investigation of Joe Biden, the president of the United States, and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family’s international business schemes,” he said at a press conference.

Comer, who is the incoming Oversight Committee chairman, claimed that the Biden family “flourished and became millionaires by simply offering access to the family.”

“This committee will evaluate the status of Joe Biden’s relationship with his family’s foreign partners, and whether he is a president who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars and influence,” Comer said.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that the House of Representatives could begin an impeachment inquiry against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas when the new 118th Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2023.

Saturday, November 26, 2022

Kari Lake Files First Lawsuit Over Midterm Election Results

By Sarah Arnold |Townhall.com

AP Photo/Matt York

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake filed the first lawsuit against election officials in Maricopa County, claiming that laws were violated after it took over a week to get the midterm election results. 

Lake is requesting the court to provide records on how they counted the votes during the November 8 midterm elections, in which she has publicly cast doubts that her Democrat opponent Katie Hobbs won the Arizona election fairly. 

The defendants listed in the suit include Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder, and other officials. Lake is alleging that there were misprinted ballots that were not readable by voting machines, the mixing of counted and uncounted ballots, and long lines at polling locations that discouraged voters from casting ballots.

“Given instances of misprinted ballots, the commingling of counted and uncounted ballots, and long lines discouraging people from voting, as demonstrated in the attached declarations, these records are necessary for Plaintiff to determine the full extent of the problems identified and their impacts on electors,” the lawsuit reads.

Earlier this week, GOP Arizona attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh also filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County election officials alleging “errors and inaccuracies” in the management of certain polling places and the counting of ballots in the election.

In a letter, Arizona’s attorney general office said that the county must answer for the issues voters experienced while voting on Nov. 8.

“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa County's lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” the letter reads.

Meanwhile, Lake has yet to concede to Hobbs, saying “if we give up now, we will no longer have a country.”

"Would you get on a plane if HALF of the engines didn't work?" Lake asked, adding “would our friends in the media be able to broadcast their nightly propaganda if HALF of their studio equipment was not working?”

Friday, November 25, 2022

Oh, So That's the New Argument to Bring Back Mask Mandates

By Matt Vespa | Townhall.com

AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s reign of terror is finally ending next month when that demented little elf finally retires, leaving an ugly legacy of distrust, science fiction, and outright lies. Fauci has been one of the go-to experts on infectious diseases, but COVID has imbrued what was once considered a sterling record of public service. Fauci and his cronies have done more to erode the public trust in our institutions, and it was all over a virus with a 99.8 percent survival rate. They treated this as a super Ebola pandemic. None of the doomsday projections regarding the death rate came true, and their containment protocols were based on shoddy data or outright falsehoods. And they’re responsible for the appalling regression in math and reading scores as these medical fascists shut down schools, triggering a secondary mental health crisis among teenagers that has yet to reach its peak.   

Now, these same people want to bring back mask mandates and social distancing over concerns about so-called long COVID, that’s government-speak for we want to control you again (via NY Post):

Masks and social distancing should be mandated or encouraged in public to protect people from possible “long COVID”, according to a new report commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services. 

The report by the independent research agency Coforma, published Monday, was based in part on interviews with more than 60 people — including patients dealing with lingering COVID-19 symptoms, as well as their caregivers and health care providers. 

The recommendations included establishing public policies that purportedly protect “everyone from long COVID” – including the reinstatement of a mask mandate.

According to the document, jurisdictions dropping mask mandates some two years into the pandemic has made life difficult for those struggling with long COVID.

At a presser this week, Fauci continues pushing the vaccine, a settled issue. Those who wish to get the shot have already done so, while the skeptics have not been jabbed. Medical professionals like Fauci have yet to realize that most of the country has tuned them out. We’ve moved on as a society, enjoying life with COVID as it’s now endemic like cold/flu season. You’re not going to boost the vaccination rates anymore, folks. And we sure as hell are not going back to mask mandates and social distancing.

_________________

A Reader's Comments:

Once more with feeling. An N95/K95 or surgical mask is designed to stop 95% of particulate and/or mist droplets larger than 0.3µm. No matter how well fitted to the wearer's face, even if it was glued to the skin around the edges, it cannot stop a roughly spherical virus that's 0.1µm~0.12µm in size. It's like dropping large olives, large acorns or shooter marbles through a chain link fence. They * Sail * Right * Through. The reason surgeons and their teams, doctors and nurses suturing or dressing open wounds wear masks is to prevent them from exhaling/spraying droplets of saliva into said open wound or incision. They are NOT worn to prevent either medical staff or patients from transmitting or contracting any disease.

It's meaningless Virtue Gesticulation Kabuki played out on the public stage to reinforce to the weak that they must obey our kind and benevolent, totalitarian government apparatchiks.

_________________

RELATED ARTICLE

WaPo: The Vaccinated Now Account for a Majority of COVID Deaths

By Jim Hoft | Gateway Pundit

Posted with Permission by Techno Fog

There’s a remarkable concession appearing in The Washington Post today:

“a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine.”

The latest data shows that 58% of COVID-19 deaths in August 2022 were from people who were vaccinated or boosted. Based on past figures and the current trends, we can reasonably estimate that the number of vaccinated/boosted COVID-19 deaths will only rise. (In September 2021, the vaccinated accounted for 23% of COVID-19 deaths; in January/February 2022, the vaccinated were 42%.)

This is what happens when you rush ineffective and dangerous vaccines.

The FDA’s promises of efficacy – 91% for the Pfizer vaccine and 93% for the Moderna vaccine – were always based on hope, not data. So too were the promises of safety. At the time of the official approvals, both Pfizer and Moderna hadn’t submitted any type of long-term numbers on effectiveness. Their trials were polluted with the unblinding of participants and their safety studies are “ongoing.”

Now, we’re seeing efficacy numbers plummet within months of vaccination. The pandemic is of the vaccinated. The boosters? They’re to the benefit of the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical companies, as they mask the true problems with the two-shot vaccines.

Even with these numbers, the outgoing Anthony Fauci continues to vouch for the jab, stating the data “overwhelmingly show the effectiveness of vaccines.”

This is the same man who demanded school closures, inserted himself into the 2020 election by criticizing Trump’s COVID-19 response while complimenting China, and criticized Governor Ron DeSantis for reopening Florida’s schools.

All the while, Fauci was lying to the public about COVID-19 origins. In May of 2020, he told National Geographic that COVID-19 “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.”

What he didn’t tell us was that he and US government clients were sabotaging and shutting down research and fact finding into the lab leak theory. What he didn’t say was that internal communications among himself and Francis Collins and Jeremy Farrar, revealed through a FOIA request by Jimmy Tobias, discussed “accidental lab passage in animals” and how the Wuhan lab was the “Wild West” and why the lab leak was a serious possibility.

Maybe we’ll get the truth once Republicans take power. Fauci has promised cooperation but be assured he’ll continue to be the slippery little doctor. Then there’s the lawsuit against the Biden Administration where Fauci is being deposed. It’s a bit more difficult to evade questions from seasoned attorneys who have you for eight hours.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

What You Need to Know about the Colossal Mess of FTX

 BY JIM GERAGHTY | National Review

Founder of FTX Trading Limited, Sam Bankman-Fried, speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., December 08, 2021.(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

On the menu today: Over the course of November, you’ve probably noticed increasingly dramatic coverage of the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. It turns out that the disheveled young so-called genius running one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges and a major cryptocurrency hedge fund — a man once touted as the next Warren Buffett — was making it all up as he went along, like Bluto Blutarsky in Animal House. In other words, the cryptocurrency titan who was previously the Democrats’ second-biggest donor after George Soros now looks like a younger, nuttier Bernie Madoff.

Sam Bankman-Fried: Crook, Nut, or Both?


I haven’t written one of these explainers since the GameStop brouhaha. If I’m writing an “explainer,” there’s a good chance I needed the subject explained to me.

Let’s start at the very beginning, because as Maria Von Trapp reminded us, that’s a very good place to start. A cryptocurrency is a money-like asset that is designed to be used on computer systems and electronic banking, but that is not backed by anything like a government or a bank. Theoretically, anything could be used as currency. Back in grade school, you probably used Halloween candy as a lunchroom currency in early November — two small bags of M&Ms equaled one Snickers bar. Unlike the shell beads, coins, paper, and other objects used as currency throughout history, cryptocurrency is not tangible or physical; it only exists electronically. But if two people agree that the cryptocurrency has a particular value, they can use it to buy or sell goods or services. Or someone can buy a cryptocurrency and hold onto it like a stock or other asset, hoping it rises in value.

Right now, the most widely held cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin, Etherium, Tether, USD Coin — which, as the name would suggest, is pegged to the dollar — and BNB.

Back in 2017, Sam Bankman-Fried noticed that Bitcoin was bought and sold at significantly different prices in different countries’ markets — sometimes 60 percent more than the lowest priced markets. He bought Bitcoin in the markets where it was the cheapest, and then resold it in South Korean markets at a much higher price, what he nicknamed “the Kimchi Premium.” After a month, he launched his own trading house, Alameda Research.

Bankman-Fried founded FTX, which is short for “Futures Exchange,” in 2019. “In creating FTX, I wanted to build a platform for professional traders like me, while also bringing crypto trading to the mass market and first-time users,” he later said. He and his team had considerable experience with a lot of other big-name financial firms and tech companies such as Optiver, Susquehanna, Google, and Facebook. In other words, those who invested in and with the exchange believed that this team knew what they were doing.

As a cryptocurrency exchange, FTX allowed customers to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, such as conventional — some would say, “real”– money or other cryptocurrencies. As with all currencies, the value of any given cryptocurrency is determined by what people — the market — collectively believe it is worth. If you have bought your morning coffee with U.S. dollars for your entire life, you likely feel confident that the coffee shop will accept payment in U.S. dollars tomorrow.

Every currency is maintained by a sufficiently widespread belief that the currency is currently worth something and will continue to be worth something in the foreseeable future. A currency’s value crashes when people no longer believe it is worth much, or worth anything at all.

FTX grew spectacularly fast. By March 2021, FTX had bought the rights to rename the home of the NBA’s Miami Heat as the “FTX Arena.” You may recall the Super Bowl commercial from this past February featuring Larry David, with the joke being that David didn’t understand cryptocurrency and thus was passing on investing in the next big thing — a pretty funny irony in light of recent events.

In August, Sam Bankman-Fried was on the cover of Fortune magazine, with a headline asking if he was the next Warren Buffett. He was touted like the other tech-industry boy-wonder geniuses, the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg — a disheveled and casual wunderkind who had apparently discovered some key business secret or truth that had eluded the rest of us.

Sam Bankman-Fried does not look like the most powerful man in crypto. Friendly and rumpled, with an unruly halo of curly hair, the 30-year-old widely known as SBF has an affinity for League of Legends, fidget spinners, and other trappings of nerd culture. But underneath the goofy facade is a trading wunderkind whose ambition knows no limits.

An MIT physics grad, SBF honed his trading skills at renowned quant shop Jane Street Capital before launching a successful firm of his own, Alameda Research. In 2019 he founded crypto exchange FTX, hailed by some as the best derivatives platform ever built.

As recently as September, FTX was believed to be worth $32 billion. In addition to running the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Bankman-Fried continued to run Alameda Research. This is like having the same person running the New York Stock Exchange and Bridgewater Associates, to pick a market and a hedge fund that are familiar to most people.

If you’re like me, you’ve felt like you didn’t really understand what the heck cryptocurrency was and didn’t bother investing in it. Well, our inability to understand these things really paid off in this case.

At the beginning of November, the website CoinDesk reported that “Bankman-Fried’s trading giant Alameda rests on a foundation largely made up of a coin that a sister company invented, not an independent asset like a fiat currency or another crypto. The situation adds to evidence that the ties between FTX and Alameda are unusually close.”

This may not be legal; reportedly, “the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are examining whether FTX improperly used billions of dollars of customer funds to prop up a trading firm that he also founded, Alameda Research.” In other words, people gave money to the FTX exchange thinking they were investing in various cryptocurrencies, and it was instead being used to support the bottom line of the cryptocurrency hedge fund.

The CoinDesk report also led to lots of people in the financial and tech sectors wondering how much of FTX and Alameda’s financial assets were based on non-crypto, tangible financial assets. The fear was that the company’s financial assets were largely cryptocurrency, and thus capable of losing value quickly and with little warning.

About a week later, FTX entered negotiations with the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, seeking to be acquired by the larger exchange. The initial assessment from Binance was that FTX still had value, but it had a “liquidity crunch” — it couldn’t turn its cryptocurrency assets into real-world-currency assets fast enough. But about a day later, Binance suddenly changed its mind, backing out of the deal and ominously declaring that, “The issues are beyond our control or ability to help.”

That was a giant flashing neon sign that FTX had some sort of terrible problems lurking beneath the surface.

FTX has since filed for bankruptcy, and John Jay Ray III, who is running what’s left of the company, declared in the bankruptcy filing that basically no one at FTX left any records of what they were doing, and may well have never understood what they were doing when they were actually doing it. Ray wrote:

I have over 40 years of legal and restructuring experience. I have been the Chief Restructuring Officer or Chief Executive Officer in several of the largest corporate failures in history. I have supervised situations involving allegations of criminal activity and malfeasance (Enron). I have supervised situations involving novel financial structures (Enron and Residential Capital) and cross-border asset recovery and maximization (Nortel and Overseas Shipholding). Nearly every situation in which I have been involved has been characterized by defects of some sort in internal controls, regulatory compliance, human resources and systems integrity.

Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.

Remember, this is the guy who cleaned up Enron!

Bankruptcy filings are not often entertaining reading, but this one stands out because it basically makes FTX look less organized, professional, and disciplined than the fraternity in Animal House. Where the institution doesn’t look chaotic, it looks like a giant scam:

  • “Many of the companies in the FTX Group, especially those organized in Antigua and the Bahamas, did not have appropriate corporate governance. I understand that many entities, for example, never had board meetings.”
  • “The FTX Group did not maintain centralized control of its cash. Cash management procedural failures included the absence of an accurate list of bank accounts and account signatories, as well as insufficient attention to the creditworthiness of banking partners.”
  • “The FTX Group’s approach to human resources combined employees of various entities and outside contractors, with unclear records and lines of responsibility. At this time, the Debtors have been unable to prepare a complete list of who worked for the FTX Group as of the Petition Date, or the terms of their employment. Repeated attempts to locate certain presumed employees to confirm their status have been unsuccessful to date.”
  • “Employees of the FTX Group submitted payment requests through an on-line ‘chat’ platform where a disparate group of supervisors approved disbursements by responding with personalized emojis.”
  • “Corporate funds of the FTX Group were used to purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisors. I understand that there does not appear to be documentation for certain of these transactions as loans, and that certain real estate was recorded in the personal name of these employees and advisors on the records of the Bahamas.”
  • “The FTX Group did not keep appropriate books and records, or security controls, with respect to its digital assets.”
  • “One of the most pervasive failures of the FTX.com business in particular is the absence of lasting records of decision-making. Mr. Bankman-Fried often communicated by using applications that were set to auto-delete after a short period of time, and encouraged employees to do the same.”

That last one makes you wonder if Bankman-Fried didn’t want to leave any paper trail of what he was doing with other people’s money. The much-celebrated wunderkind now looks like either a crook, or a nut, or both:

“Mr. Bankman-Fried, currently in the Bahamas, continues to make erratic and misleading public statements. Mr. Bankman-Fried, whose connections and financial holdings in the Bahamas remain unclear to me, recently stated to a reporter on Twitter: “F*** regulators they make everything worse” and suggested the next step for him was to “win a jurisdictional battle vs. Delaware”

Many on the right are wondering if Bankman-Fried got away with it for so long because he was exceptionally generous to the Democratic Party, and lots of people on the left wanted to believe the image he offered.

In August, Politico described Bankman-Fried as “one of the biggest donors in Democratic politics. . . . [He’s] one of just a handful of donors who spent $10 million-plus backing President Joe Biden in 2020, and in the last year, he’s hired a network of political operatives and spent tens of millions more shaping Democratic House primaries. It was a shocking wave of spending that looked like it could remake the Democratic Party bench in Washington, candidate by candidate. Looking ahead to the 2024 election, he has said he could spend anywhere from $100 million to $1 billion.”

When you have $1 billion, you can buy a lot of friends who don’t want to look too closely at how you made your fortune. NBC News reported:

In just two years since Bankman-Fried’s first political donation, his money hired dozens of top-flight lobbyists and political operatives, made major investments in newsrooms like ProPublica and Semafor, and made him the second-biggest Democratic donor of the 2022 midterms, behind only the 92-year-old financier George Soros. He said $1 billion would be a “soft ceiling” for his spending in 2024.

Apparently, there’s no proof to the rumor that the Ukrainian government invested heavily in FTX, with some folks on social media spinning a conspiracy theory that the Ukrainians gave to FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried gave money to Democrats, and Democrats and the Biden administration sent U.S. aid to Ukraine. FTX was a partner in helping the Ukrainian government convert donated cryptocurrencies to fiat money.

But the story is bad enough as is, without crazy rumors of elaborate global money-laundering. It is believed that more than a million people have lost the money they invested in FTX, an estimated $8 billion or so.