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October 2020

NY Gov. Cuomo Goes on Self-Congratulatory Book Tour As DOJ Probes COVID Nursing Home Deaths By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/29/ny-gov-cuomo-goes-on-self-congratulatory-book-tour-as-doj-probes-covid-nursing-home-deaths/

As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo embarked on a self-congratulatory book tour this week, the U.S. Department of Justice requested additional data from his administration on coronavirus deaths linked to nursing homes.

According to the New York Post, the DOJ’s inquiry could reveal if the state significantly undercounted the number of COVID-19 fatalities among the residents of more than 1,000 private nursing homes.

New York records provided in response to an August Justice Department inquiry indicated that a quarter of deaths in the state’s roughly two dozen public nursing homes weren’t disclosed to federal health officials, administration sources said.

New York indicated that about 400 residents of the state’s public facilities died from COVID-19, according to federal sources, who said that state facilities had only disclosed about 300 deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In total, the New York Health Department publicly reports about 6,720 deaths from the serious respiratory bug in nursing homes and adult-care facilities. But the true scope of New York’s tragic toll in nursing homes is expected to be much higher.

According to the AP, the state only counted residents who passed away on the nursing home premises but not those who were sent to the hospital. An AP analysis in August estimated that the state was likely undercounting such deaths by thousands.

With over 33,000 fatalities, New York leads by far all of the other states in the number of deaths by the coronavirus, while it is number four on the list of total COVID-19 cases in the United States.

The Democrat governor has denied accusations that his administration’s now infamous directive mandating that nursing homes accept patients diagnosed with the coronavirus contributed significantly to NY’s disproportionately large number of deaths.

Obama Can’t Get Past His Grudge Against Trump

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/29/obama-cant-get-past-his-grudge-against-trump/

Few politicians are as thin-skinned, petulant, and vengeful as Barack Obama—just ask Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn—and it’s obvious that Donald Trump still gets the best of him.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden head to Michigan this weekend to hustle votes in one of the three states that helped elect Donald Trump in 2016. Recent polls show Biden with a comfortable lead in Michigan, but Democrats are taking nothing for granted in the final stretch; Representative Debbie Dingel (D-Mich.) on Wednesday warned Team Biden that the race is tightening. “So many auto workers who I thought were going to go back to Joe Biden were very clear with me…that they were voting for President Trump.”

Enter the Anointed One. Obama already has been on the stump twice in Florida, attempting to bolster Biden’s flagging support among Hispanic voters, and once in Philadelphia. The former president was planning to stay out of the race, according to his longtime political consigliere David Axelrod, but Trump’s antics have forced Obama onto the campaign trail. “He doesn’t view it as a personal grudge match with Trump,” Axelrod told CNN last week, defending yet another breach of precedent and protocol by the 44th president of the United States.

But of course Obama’s last-minute campaign activity is completely about his grudge against Donald Trump. As much as the news media loves to portray Trump as the one who is easily rattled, it is actually Trump who very easily gets under Obama’s skin. The former president is fixated on the man who succeeded him, the political foe Obama repeatedly said would never win the presidency. Few politicians are as thin-skinned, petulant, and vengeful as Barack Obama—just ask Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn—and it’s obvious that Donald Trump still gets the best of him.

Covid-19 PCR Testing is Worthless As the New York Times finally admits. Jack Kerwick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/covid-19-pcr-testing-worthless-jack-kerwick/

While some of us who value thinking and science above politics have long known it, it seems that even the New York Times (and, by implication, all who equate its pronouncements with the Gospel) are beginning to realize that the much vaunted PCR test is essentially worthless.  

At the very least—and this is putting it undoubtedly too generously—it is anything but “the gold standard” of COVID-19 determiners that we have been led to believe it is.  In fact, it’s not even “the divining rod” that my martial arts instructor and USMC Lieutenant-Colonel Al Ridenhour, who has some experience working with deadly nuclear, biological, and chemical agents, once referred to it in a conversation with me.   

While some self-styled “fact-checkers”—who are invariably leftist partisans who are only interested in “fact-checking” the claims of those who dare to challenge their agenda—are accusing conservatives who repeat its assertion that the PCR test has a 90% false positive rate of “misinterpreting” the Times piece, there wasn’t any misinterpretation at all.

One American News Network (OANN), The Blaze, Red State, and Townhall Media are among the sites that have come under fire for having allegedly misread The Times.  The Health Feedback “fact-checker” states:

“The claim that the U.S. has an inflated COVID-19 case count due to the sensitivity of the diagnostic PCR test for the virus that causes COVID-19…is a misinterpretation of a New York Times news report…[which questions whether] PCR test results for the virus that causes COVID-19 are a practical way of informing an infected person what steps they should take after their diagnosis [.]”

The Truth About Obiden The truth and reconciliation commission we really need. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/truth-about-obiden-lloyd-billingsley/

“When this nightmare is over,” tweeted Robert Reich, “we need a truth and reconciliation commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.” The diminutive Clinton-Obama retread, with a JD from Yale, was expanding on an idea from MSNBC mouthpiece Chris Hayes.

He accused people who don’t take face masks seriously of “getting people killed,” and “the most humane and reasonable way to dealt with all those people, if we survive this, is some kind of truth and reconciliation commission.” Back in 2018, Hayes’ colleague Donnie Deutsch proclaimed that Trump voters were “like Nazis” and “If you vote for Trump, you’re the bad guy.”

The Democrats’ truth and reconciliation commission would be a series of Stalinist show trials, designed to make all Trump supporters non-persons, by any means necessary. This threat obscures the need for a real truth commission to look at actual lies, obstructions and deceptions. A good place to start would be the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

That was a convenient place to conduct gain of function research the National Institutes of Health banned in 2014 because of the prospect that a manipulated virus could escape the lab. The NIH sent more than $7 million to the Wuhan lab including $3.7 million in 2019. Spending U.S. taxpayer dollars calls for public accountability, but Dr. Anthony Fauci has been evasive about China’s role in the release of the coronavirus. A truth commission could find out what Fauci knew and when he knew it, and also have a chat with Nancy Messonnier of the CDC.

The Deep State From Inside Out Rich Higgins’ new memoir reveals just how murky is the swamp. Jack Cashill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/deep-state-inside-out-jack-cashill/

“The Trump administration is suffering under withering information campaigns designed to first undermine, then delegitimize and ultimately remove the President,” so wrote National Security Council staffer Rich Higgins in a May 2017 memo that ultimately landed on President Trump’s desk. Although the NeverTrumpers in the NSC did not succeed in removing Trump, they did remove Higgins.

The Higgins memo reportedly distressed National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, who had replaced Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in the position. McMaster ordered a probe that some described as “McCarthy-type” to identify the author. That search led to Higgins, a Flynn loyalist who had worked on the Trump campaign.

After his authorship was established, Higgins had to choose between resignation and termination, the latter coming with the potential loss of his security clearance. Higgins resigned and was promptly escorted out of the building.

An everyday guy from Boston, Higgins had started his career as an army bomb technician with a hands-on specialty in IEDs, worked his way up to become an anti-terrorism expert, and ended his stint in the Deep State as a national security expert in the Trump administration.

Here is one unnerving fact: Trump received only 4 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia. As Higgins tells the tale in his new eye-opening memoir, The Memo: 20 Years Inside the Deep State Fighting for America First, the staffers at the National Security Council were no more disposed to support the president’s agenda than were the District voters writ large.

Higgins tells his tale well. I downed the book in two quick gulps. It was that good, that readable, that prescient, and that essential. As closely as I follow events, before reading this book I had no real sense of just how deep and murky the swamp is.

China: Existential Threat to America by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16705/china-existential-threat

We can, of course, cooperate with a China that is a partner or a friend. We can even cooperate with a China that is a competitor; all nations to some degree compete. The question is this: Is China merely just a competitor? Can we, for instance, cooperate with a China that is an opponent or an enemy?

Multilateralism, the core ideology of the UN, is failing. Countries are bypassing the UN because they realize it cannot provide security. Countries are defending themselves.

China’s unrestricted warfare — a term Beijing has been using for at least 21 years — now includes biological attack.

In late January, US Customs and Border Patrol agents seized 900,000 counterfeit one‑dollar bills from China at the International Port of Entry in Minnesota…. By the way, counterfeiting another country’s currency is more than just subversion. That is an act of war.

Xi has always believed that China should rule the world. He has always believed he had to get the United States out of the way, especially because Americans promote ideals that are anathema to totalitarianism.

Beijing leaders know they are running out of time. It is really no mystery why they may feel this way. China’s demography is in the initial stages of accelerated decline. We know that China’s environment is exhausted. Think scarcity of water, despite all the flooding.

Up to now, the primary basis of legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party has been the continual delivery of prosperity. Without the assurance of prosperity, the only remaining basis of legitimacy is nationalism. Nationalism, as a practical matter, means military misadventure abroad.

A Chinese enterprise is now pouring about three billion dollars into Freeport in the Bahamas, 87 miles east of Palm Beach. I think that we are going to see, unless the US stops it, the People’s Liberation Army with a naval base 87 miles east of Palm Beach.

We cannot afford to have these consulates not only engaging in espionage but also trying to bring down the government of the United States…. Everyone wants to maintain friendly relations with every country, but we cannot maintain friendly relations with a country that is trying to subvert us in the way China’s been doing.

We cannot afford to lose any time giving grace periods to a regime that is relentlessly attacking us. We have to be concerned that an incoming president will do what every president has tried to do. That is the impossible: to attempt to develop cooperative relations with a militant Chinese state.

It is up to the President of the United States to change companies’ incentives. He can do that with the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Trump used that on TikTok. A US federal judge in the District of Columbia overturned, or at least stayed, his order, which means President Trump needs, first of all, to start thinking about not only the ’77 act but also the 1917 act, which is the “Trading with the Enemy Act ” because judges would have less scope for overturning a designation of that sort…. We need to do much more because China is not going to let us alone in our own hemisphere.

Because China killed 20 Indian soldiers on June 15, India has gone in a good direction, cutting off Huawei, cutting off TikTok, cutting off Chinese companies. We need to do the same thing. Remember, China declared a “people’s war” on the United States in May of last year. They told us we’re the enemy, so we might as well take them at their word.

In the Atlantic, there are two other places that China would like military bases. One of them is Walvis Bay in Namibia, and the other is Terceira, in the Azores. Terceira is home to the Lajes US Air Force base. The US Air Force has redeployed, basically making it a ghost base. From there, China could control the mouth of the Mediterranean, control the North Atlantic, put Washington, DC and New York at risk. I think it is up to the US Air Force to start putting people in Lajes, so the Chinese realize that they cannot take over the airfield. Its runway is almost 11,000 feet long. It can accommodate any aircraft and can threaten the United States. The Atlantic, which we have seen as a preserve, could very well become a Chinese lake.

In terms of whether there might be another biological attack or not, you have to remember that China has been sending seeds, unsolicited, to Americans, to people in Britain, to people in Taiwan. That could very well be an attempt to cause havoc in the United States.

The point here is, we have to be prepared for anything. We need to make a clear declaration in public that the United States will defend Taiwan because Taiwan is crucial to maintaining our Western defense perimeter…. Taiwan is absolutely critical because it protects us from a surging Chinese air force and Chinese navy, trying to get to Hawaii.

Picture Brightening for Republicans Keeping Control of Senate By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/10/29/picture-brightening-for-republicans-keeping-control-of-senate-n1106135

Prospects for Republicans maintaining control of the Senate appear a little brighter as there are some polls showing Republicans very competitive in two Midwestern battleground states.

John James, a rising star in the Republican Party, is closing in fast on incumbent Democrat Gary Peters and some polls show James within the margin of error. James has been aided by a large infusion of cash from Senator McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund and with the polls all over the lot, it may come down to Election Day turnout.

The other Midwestern state where some experts say the Senate race is still competitive is Minnesota. Republicans had targeted the Gopher State from the start as the incumbent, Democrat Tina Smith, has been a weak candidate. Republican hopeful Jason Lewis is gaining in recent polls and some Republicans, including Majority Whip John Thune, think he’s got a decent shot at an upset.

The Hill:

“I think that people are looking at the security issues if you live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs,” he said, referring to the belief among Republicans that Trump’s law-and-order message will play well with suburban voters concerned about the rioting and looting in the city after the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis in late May.

“You get to the rural areas and it’s real strong for the Republicans,” Thune added. “There’s always going to be a couple of surprises election night.”

Black Americans for Trump If around 30 percent of black Americans vote for President Trump, black America will not only rewrite the next political chapter but rewrite the entire political book. By Christopher Gage

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/29/black-americans-for-trump/

Will black Americans not only reelect President Trump, but also write a new chapter of American political history?

Yes, that’s quite a question—one of cosmos-bending proportions. And so are the figures undergirding that statement.

According to Rasmussen, black Americans plan to vote for President Trump in larger numbers than in 2016. That’s not surprising.

Yet, we are not talking just a point or two adding to that year’s eight percent total, but a whopping 31 percent.

On Thursday, Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll found 31 percent of black likely voters plan to vote for Donald Trump.

That number must be an anomaly, right? A typo?

Apparently not. That figure has surged since Monday’s 27 percent finding, in lockstep with black approval of President Trump in the last week rising from 37 percent, before peaking at 46 percent, and settling on Thursday at 38 percent.

Is China Funding the Phony Joe Biden Campaign? Does anyone doubt that the Democratic Party—if they thought they could get away with it—would accept Chinese money? By Karin McQuillan

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/29/is-china-funding-the-phony-joe-biden-campaign/

Joe Biden is running a profoundly phony campaign. Hillary’s defeat is famously blamed on her low-energy decision to not show up in the Rust Belt. But Biden isn’t showing up anywhere.

No candidate since George Washington has campaigned so little and with so few live supporters. Joe Biden is no George Washington.

How can Biden be a contender when he gets 30 supporters at his rallies and Trump attracts 30,000? Biden attracted 130 cars to hear him in must-win Pennsylvania. In Miami, Latinos for Trump organized a 30,000 car parade on their own.

In a rare joint appearance, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris went to Phoenix. Biden needs Arizona to win.  Zero supporters turned out to greet them. Zero. Video of the eerie empty scene was carried on a local news station only. The Biden campaign says they did not let the public know about the visit to avoid large crowds.

More oddities: The Democrats are not mounting a ground game. No volunteers knocking on doors. Very little effort to register new voters, either.

This strategy doesn’t pass the sniff test for an honest campaign.

The answer, as usual in politics, is to follow the money. President Obama never came close to the money supporting Biden’s campaign.

It’s ‘High Noon’ in America Just like the movie, Trump makes the last stand against violent outlaws. Joseph Hippolito

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/its-high-noon-america-joseph-hippolito/

“In the long run, November’s election demands answers to these questions: Do we begin the task of restoring the fundamental values on which the United States was built? Or do we allow a self-appointed coterie of arrogant totalitarians to build their “new order” on the bodies of the innocent?”

One of Hollywood’s greatest westerns provides a powerful metaphor for both the November election and the state of the nation.

Nearly seven decades after “High Noon” was released, the United States confronts the same kind of existential decision that Hadleyville, the movie’s fictional town, faced: Will the good citizens allow a band of violent outlaws seeking revenge to intimidate and dominate them, or will they support their marshal and fight?

The band of outlaws, in this case, is not Frank Miller’s celluloid gang. It’s the Left and its “progressive” ideology that permeates education, government, the arts, the church and much of the media. That ideology — which the Democratic Party proudly embodies — seeks to destroy the fundamental values providing the nation’s foundation.

Opposing the outlaws is President Donald Trump, who faces the same problem that challenged Marshal Will Kane (played by Gary Cooper): no support from the powers-that-be.

Kane’s commitment to stay and fight was rejected by Hadleyville’s mayor, judge, practically all the townsfolk and even his own wife. Trump’s commitment was rejected by his own party’s Establishment — the Bushes, Kristols, Kasichs, McCains and Romneys.

Yet unlike the movie, in which the townsfolk abandon Kane, Trump receives enthusiastic support from all demographic categories. That support represents contempt for a movement that wraps itself in the cloaks of “peace,” “social justice” and “tolerance” while subverting those values.