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December 2020

Lost Innocence? Let’s not misread the moment. Bruce Bawer

http://Lost Innocence? Let’s not misread the moment. Tue Dec 15, 2020 Bruce Bawer

It used to be that every time something big and unpleasant happened to America – Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, the JFK assassination, Watergate, 9/11 – there would ensue a spate of articles about how America had finally lost its innocence. This year’s apparently successful election fraud, too, feels like one of those occasions.

To be sure, the fraud was not a stand-alone event but the culmination of several years of Democratic chicanery, beginning with the effort to destroy Trump’s campaign and continuing with the attempt to bring down his presidency. During these years, one public figure after another was held up to us as a hero and then shown to be yet another Big State sewer rat.

So fast-moving have events been during the age of Trump that it can be hard to keep track of all the betrayals – some of which, though just a couple of years old, feel as if they took place in the distant past. Remember the gut punch that was Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the Russia probe? Remember when you thought Jim Comey was a good guy who’d pull back the curtain on the Clinton crime family and bring Hillary to justice? Remember being assured by people you trusted that Bill Barr and John Durham would get to the bottom of the Russia hoax? The other day, when Texas AG Ken Paxton took his election-fraud case against four other states to the Supreme Court, were you among those who expected the three Trump appointees to join Alito and Thomas in stopping the steal?

Yes, the Trump administration has yielded one triumph after another. But living through it has also meant experiencing one crushing disappointment after another. It’s been hard not to feel that the swamp was too deep even for Trump to drain, and that, by dreaming otherwise, we were being hopelessly naïve.

For heaven’s sake, not only did Barr, after promising to deliver a long-overdue reckoning, drag his heels on the Russia probe; it now turns out that during the entire campaign season he’s known about investigations into the Biden clan that, if made public, would almost certainly have reduced voter support for Joe to a point that would’ve made the election steal impossible.

New York Times Attacks Election Skeptics How the fourth estate has turned into Biden’s fiefdom. Tue Dec 15, 2020 Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/ny-times-editors-brook-no-claim-biden-election-joseph-klein/

The New York Times editors reached a new low of hypocrisy with their December 11th editorial entitled “The Republicans Who Embraced Nihilism.” Failure to embrace Joe Biden as the legitimate president-elect is tantamount in their eyes to embracing a nihilist rejection of America’s democratic process itself. That’s not surprising given the editors’ hysterical warning before the election that Trump’s re-election campaign “poses the greatest threat to American democracy since the Second World War.” Forget about the real threats posed by nuclear-armed Communist nations and global Islamist terrorism. President Trump is the existential threat to the country, the editors exclaim. Fueled by their hatred of Trump, it’s not much of a leap for the Times’ editors to do what they can to help push Biden over the finish line by whatever means necessary.  

The Times editorial began by bemoaning widespread Republican support for Texas’s failed constitutional challenge to the results of the presidential election in four other states where Joe Biden was declared the winner. But most of the editorial was taken up with attacking Republican supporters of President Trump more generally for daring to question the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s purported election victory. The editors descended into lobbing false accusations that such Republicans are engaging in “election denialism,” “undermining the rule of law,” an “assault on truth,” and “anti-democratic tendencies.”.

The real nihilists and election deniers are the Democrats and their shills in the media, who refused to accept Donald Trump as the duly elected president of the United States in 2016 or to acknowledge the legitimacy of his presidency. Obsessed with their hatred of President Trump, these deniers wouldn’t recognize the truth if it slapped them in the face. They were complicit in undermining the rule of law and democracy by concocting and pursuing endless bogus charges against Trump, starting with the Russian collusion hoax. The New York Times has been a leading generator of fake news hit jobs against the president.

The EU And Brennan Lament Fakhrizadeh’s Demise Fakhrizadeh had planned the nuclear “Final Solution” to the Jewish State. Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/eu-and-brennan-lament-fakhrizadehs-demise-joseph-puder/

Once again the European Union (EU) has shown its hypocrisy by lamenting the assassination of Iran’s nuclear project chief, Moshen Fakhrizadeh. Peter Stano, the spokesperson for Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, tweeted that: “The killing of Moshen Fakhrizadeh and others is a criminal act and runs counter to the principle of respect for human rights that the EU stands for.” He was echoing former CIA Director John Brennan, an Obama appointee, who tweeted that, “this was a criminal act and highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation and a new round of regional conflict.” The EU officials expressed their condolences to the family members of the individuals who were killed, while wishing a prompt recovery to any other individuals who may have been injured.

Significantly, when the EU does condemn Iran’s radical regime, it is a half-hearted condemnation. Specifically, when the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for the “elimination of the Zionist entity” last May, the EU responded to Khamenei’s threat by stating that, “Such statements are totally unacceptable and represent a deep source of concern. They are also incompatible with the objective of a stable and peaceful Middle East region pursued by the EU.” Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, responded to the EU statement, saying that, Khamenei did not just bring into question Israel’s legitimacy, he wrote explicitly about ‘eliminating the Zionist regime’ which goes from denying the Holocaust to promoting one. The gravity of his remarks is not reflected in the EU reaction that should go beyond words.”

This Is Susan Rice Meet Joe Biden’s choice to lead the White House Domestic Policy Council.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/susan-rice-discover-networks/

On December 11, Joe Biden named Susan Rice to lead his White House Domestic Policy Council. Rice’s consistent track record of dishonesty, prevarication, and poor judgment stretches back decades.

By the time she graduated from Stanford University with a degree in history in 1986, Rice was already a committed leftist with a heart and mind full of racial grievance. That year, she wrote an 86-page book titled A History Deferred, which claimed that because most U.S. students were “taught American history, literature, art, drama, and music largely from a white, western European perspective,” “their grasp of the truth, of reality, is tainted by a myopia of sorts.” “The greatest evil in omitting or misrepresenting Black history, literature, and culture in elementary or secondary education is the unmistakable message it sends to the black child,” Rice elaborated. “The message is ‘your history, your culture, your language and your literature are insignificant. And so are you.’” Published by the Black Student Fund — an advocacy group for which Rice interned — A History Deferred served as a guide for elementary- and secondary-school teachers who aspired to teach “Black Studies” from an Afrocentric perspective.

In 1985 Rice was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and subsequently attended New College, Oxford, where she earned a master’s degree in philosophy in 1988 and a Ph.D. in the same discipline two years later.

Praising the Dictator Robert Mugabe

While at Oxford in 1990, Rice wrote a 426-page dissertation praising, as “a model and a masterpiece in the evolution of international peacekeeping,” the 1979-80 British peacekeeping operation that had led to the political ascendancy of Zimbabwe’s bloodthirsty Marxist dictator, Robert Mugabe. In her dissertation, Rice lauded Mugabe as a “pragmatic, intelligent, sensible, gentle, balanced man” who possessed considerable “patience and restraint.”

Politicizing the Rwandan Genocide

Rice served on the Bill Clinton administration’s National Security Council from 1993-97, and as Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997-2001.

Wisconsin Was the Electoral College Tipping-Point State, Again

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/wisconsin-was-the-electoral-college-tipping-point-state-again/

The 2020 election was decided for Biden by just 43,000 individual votes in three states.

T he Electoral College formally convened in the 50 states and the District of Columbia on Monday and elected Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States by a vote of 306 to 232.

Biden beat President Trump by 4.3 percentage points in the national popular vote, but if you want to understand how close the election really was, you need to look at the states that put him over the top in the Electoral College: Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia.

Biden carried each state by a fraction of one percentage point: 0.63 points in Wisconsin, 0.3 points in Arizona, and 0.24 points in Georgia. If Biden had lost all three states, the result would have been a 269-269 Electoral College tie. This would have thrown the presidential election to the House of Representatives where each state delegation would get one vote. And House Republicans will hold a majority in the delegations of a majority of the states, so tossing the election to the House would have resulted in Trump’s re-election.

Essential Facts About COVID-19 James D. Agresti

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/14/essential-facts-about-covid-19/

Given the spread of misinformation about COVID-19, Just Facts is providing a trove of rigorously documented facts about this disease and its impacts. These include some essential facts that have been absent or misreported in much of the media’s coverage of this issue.

This research also includes a groundbreaking study to determine the lethality of COVID-19 based on the most comprehensive available measure: the total years of life that it will rob from all people. This accords with the Centers for Disease Control’s tenet that “the allocation of health resources must consider not only the number of deaths by cause” but also the “years of potential life lost.”

On one hand, these facts show that:

The average death rate for people who contract COVID-19 is well below 1% and is much closer to that of the seasonal flu than figures that were commonly reported by the press.
The average years of life lost from each COVID-19 death are significantly fewer than from common causes of untimely death like accidents and suicides.
The virus that causes COVID-19 is “very vulnerable to antibody neutralization” and has very limited ability to mutate, which makes it unlikely to take masses of lives year after year like the flu and other recurring scourges.

This Is Not America

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/15/this-is-not-america/

What is the United States of America? A society of elitists vs. the rest? A culture that’s given up on itself? A land of censorship? A nation in which policies and orientation are not merely matters of disagreement but causes of internal and irreconcilable turmoil? It was supposed to be none of these. But today it seems a foreign place, with more in common with the many dystopias of literature than anything the founders of a free nation ever imagined.

Just a single quick scan through the blogs and aggregators of the Internet makes us wonder who and where we are as a nation:

Many of those who hold political, economic, and cultural power favor the system of China, where a single-party autocracy “led by a reasonably enlightened group of people” who live privileged lives plan and execute a top-down national plan the entire country is expected to follow without objection.
At the same time, this class believes it is its job to oversee the decline of America.
Voter fraud and election theft have become normalized nationally rather than confined to big cities run by Democrat political machines.
Voters have put prosecutors who refuse to prosecute into office all over the country. It seems to be one man’s objective to foul our communities so completely that we’ll eventually go begging for tyrants to save us.
The Constitution is being tread upon by sort of tyrants we’ll be asking for in the name of keeping us healthy.
Voters have also put a team in the White House that will be beholden not to the country and Constitution it will swear to protect but to China.
Most of both the media and academia have become naked propagandists for one party rather than objective dispensers of news and even-handed educators.
Corporate America is becoming increasingly captured by woke forces and climate zealots, which makes life harder on the middle and lower classes.
Identity politics and a “social justice” are splitting the nation into warring tribes.
Our freedoms to speak and worship freely are being diminished almost daily.
Dissent from hard-left orthodoxy is punished by job loss, ostracization, and on occasion violence.
Rioters, looters and domestic terrorists are being coddled and even encouraged by the media, academia, and rotten-to-the core politicians.
As Pat Buchanan wrote last week, “we are two nations, two peoples seemingly separated indefinitely. Can a nation so divided as ours, racially, ideologically, religiously, still do great things together, as did the America of days gone by, to the amazement of the world?”   

With U.S. Senate Runoffs Near, Georgia’s Not Prosecuting Its Unprecedented Number of Double Voters By Paul Sperry

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/12/13/with_runoffs_near_georgias_not_prosecuting_its_unprecedented_number_of_double_voters_126356.html

More than 1,700 Georgians were singled out for illegally casting two ballots in 2020 elections — including last month’s hotly contested presidential race — but their fraudulent votes weren’t canceled out, according to state election officials. And so far, none of the cheaters has been prosecuted, raising concerns about continued fraud as Georgia prepares to vote again in twin U.S. Senate runoff elections next month.

The majority of double voters were Democrats who cast an absentee ballot either by mail or drop box and also voted in person on Election Day, officials said, which is a felony under state law.

The highest share of offenders were from Fulton County, which includes Atlanta — many of whom were allowed to cast a second ballot by poll workers, officials said.

Hundreds of workers assigned to county poll sites were recruited and trained by the Democrat-run Georgia chapter of the ACLU and a minority-owned temp agency run by Democrat donors, according to documents obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Most of them were young and inexperienced.

Before the election, the ACLU urged anyone “threatened with prosecution” over double-voting allegations to contact the chapter for legal assistance. It is now signing up poll workers for the Jan. 5 runoff races. And the temp agency, Happy Faces Personnel Group, remains under contract with the county to supply workers for that critical election, despite complaints from poll managers and poll watchers that its recruits were “poorly trained” and “highly partisan.” The Georgia runoffs will determine control of the Senate.

Kremlin-backed hackers breach US Treasury and Commerce: by Tyler Van Dyke

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/foreign-government-backed-hackers-breach-u-s-treasury-report

A “sophisticated hacking group” backed by the Russian government reportedly infiltrated the Department of Treasury’s systems and stole information related to internet and telecommunications policymaking as part of a broader campaign that also hacked the Commerce Department and other government agencies.

The FBI is investigating the attacks and is looking into the Russian hacking group APT29, also known as Cozy Bear, as a potential culprit, according to the Washington Post. The foreign-backed hack was first reported by Reuters. An FBI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the bureau “is aware of today’s reporting and is appropriately engaged, however, we decline to comment further.”

As a result of the hack, the National Security Council held a meeting at the White House on Sunday.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed the incident in a statement but did not suggest who was behind the attack.

“We have been working closely with our agency partners regarding recently discovered activity on government networks,” the agency said. “CISA is providing technical assistance to affected entities as they work to identify and mitigate any potential compromises.”

SolarWinds, an IT company, runs network management systems that were breached by the hackers, as first reported by the Washington Post.

Trump Isn’t the One Politicizing Science Antimalarials seemed promising, then failed in trials. That’s how it’s supposed to work. By Joel Zinberg

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-isnt-the-one-politicizing-science-11607969209?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Politics has infected many issues over the past four years and has now reached the supposedly objective halls of official medicine. In an editorial for the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Misguided Use of Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19: The Infusion of Politics Into Science,” Dr. Michael Saag claims that “the politicization of the treatment” was more important than the science in promoting the use of the antimalaria drug to treat Covid-19. This evidence-free claim is contradicted by information in the same editorial and the scientific literature.

Dr. Saag doesn’t cite a single source to support his claim that President Trump’s April 4 promotion of the drug influenced physicians’ prescribing decisions. His claim that “no health official” in the U.S. government endorsed use of hydroxychloroquine is contradicted in his next sentence, which notes that the Food and Drug Administration approved an emergency-use authorization for hydroxychloroquine on March 28, one week before Mr. Trump’s comments. The FDA granted that authorization at the request of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or Barda, another U.S. government health agency.

Physicians prescribed hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 because they had reason to believe it could work. In the early days of the pandemic when there were no established therapies, clinicians noted the severe immune response that the SARS-CoV-2 virus elicited in severely ill patients. They began to deploy hydroxychloroquine because it has long been used to treat autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, with a good safety profile.

Hydroxychloroquine and its cousin chloroquine had also been studied as antivirals with activity against the similar SARS coronavirus and other viruses. Several encouraging preclinical studies and small clinical trials, including a French study published in March and cited by Dr. Saag, reinforced physicians’ willingness to try hydroxychloroquine.