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January 2021

Is karma coming calling for Killer Cuomo? By Thomas Lifson

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo may finally be facing a partial reckoning for sending elderly Covid patients back into nursing homes, thereby spreading the disease to the most vulnerable group of all, the elderly.  New York State also has the highest Covid death toll (42,000) but is only the fourth largest state by population. Yet Cuomo has written a book crediting his performance as magnificent and has enjoyed favorable media treatment, and until now high levels of public approval.  

Thanks to a report by New York Attorney General Letitia James, it is now on the public record that the Covid deaths among nursing home residents were undercounted by as much as 50%, mostly thanks to the trick of failing to count the deaths of those who were readmitted to hospitals and died there.

CNBC writes:

The investigation found that the number of Covid deaths among nursing home residents in some facilities rose by more than 50% when residents who died in the hospital are counted. The state’s official Covid-19 death toll in nursing homes, which stands at more than 8,700, excludes patients who died after being transported to a hospital.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced criticism for failing to disclose the total number of nursing-home residents who have died of Covid-19. In her sweeping report, James, also a Democrat, found that “many nursing home residents died from Covid-19 in hospitals after being transferred from their nursing homes, which is not reflected in D.O.H.’s published total nursing home death data.”

In my book, sending Covid patients into nursing homes, where the risk of disease spread and lethality was highest, was nearly criminal. I also note that there was a financial interest in killing off elderly patients, whose nursing home care in many cases fell to the State of New York, costing it tens of thousands of dollars annually per resident/patient.

1776 Commission Director: Abolishing the Commission Won’t ‘Get Rid of These Principles’ By Samuel Allegri

https://www.theepochtimes.com/1776-commission-director-abolishing-the-commission-wont-get-rid-of-these-principles_3677164.html

“The commission, in some form, will carry on.You could abolish the commission, but you can’t erase history, you can’t get rid of these principles. That’s what we’re dedicated to. And that’s what we will continue teaching and working to defend,” Spalding said at the conclusion of the interview.

Dr. Matthew Spalding, a professor of constitutional government and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College was interviewed by The Epoch Times’ program American Thought Leaders. He was the executive director of the 1776 Commission, created by executive order by former President Donald Trump.

The host of the program, Jan Jekielek, asked him some key questions highly relevant to the current intense political zeitgeist, allowing Spalding to cast lucidity on the partially forgotten, at least for the younger generations, ideals of 1776.

The new Biden administration has abolished the 1776 commission, a history-centered, patriotic education program that calls for remembrance of and upholding the nation’s founding principles.

Spalding spoke about the clashing points that juxtapose the New York Times’ controversial “1619 Project” and the United States’ founding history, along with the ideological and theological ramifications.

China’s Terrifying Return to Maoism By Doug Bandow

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/chinas-terrifying-return-to-maoism/

A recent report out of the U.K. reveals Beijing’s full-scale, wide-ranging assault on individual liberty in almost all its aspects.

O ne of the few issues on which Democrats and Republicans agree is that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has turned back toward Maoism. Xi Jinping’s regime is committed to eradicating the merest possibility that someone might have an independent thought.

The economy remains a socialist-market hybrid, while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made little effort to limit personal autonomy except where politics intrudes. However, just a hint of ideological disobedience now brings down the full weight of a vast domestic-security regime that spends more money than the People’s Liberation Army.

There are no easy policy answers for Washington. Repression is an essential part of today’s Chinese political system. It’s how current officials, starting at the top with Xi Jinping, retain their power, perquisites, wealth, status, and everything else that sets them apart from normal people. If there is an existential interest for the Chinese state, it is maintaining repression. The regime isn’t going to yield, irrespective of sanction, since its elites prefer power to anything else.

Violations of human rights are the norm in the PRC. In practice, civil liberties, free speech, and political freedom simply don’t exist there. China has essentially returned to the era of Mao Zedong, one of the CCP’s founders, who emerged atop the party after unceasingly brutal power struggles that shaped the party’s evolution.

The rungs on the CCP ladder were slippery indeed, as many once-dominant figures missed a step, plunging into the political netherworld below. Even Mao’s rise was sometimes interrupted. But he mixed determination, skill, and ruthlessness and ultimately outshone his rivals. He famously announced the creation of the People’s Republic of China in Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949, and was responsible for virtually every brutal step taken by the CCP in its early years.

Democrats’ Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act Shields Jihadists By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/democrats-domestic-terrorism-prevention-act-shields-jihadists/

You needn’t read far into this bill to hear the alarm bells.

H ow interesting that the familiar array of Islamist-apologist and left-wing groups, notoriously opposed to U.S. counterterrorism efforts, has lined up in support of congressional Democrats’ latest push for a “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act.” Could it be because the proposed legislation goes out of its way to shield domestic terrorists who are catalyzed by foreign jihadist organizations?

You needn’t read far into the bill to hear the alarm bells.

Section 2 provides a definition for “domestic terrorism.” Sounds sensible . . . until you remember that federal law already has a definition of domestic terrorism. The term is codified by Section 2331(5) of the criminal code. It’s been there for a long time, and it’s perfectly fine. So why would we need another one?

Obviously, Democrats are not defining but redefining. The point is not to clarify what is already clear about domestic terrorism. It is to carve out an exemption from the definition — specifically, to create a new safe haven for a very specific category of terrorist.

Under the longstanding Section 2331 definition, “domestic terrorism” means activities that occur primarily within the territorial U.S., that are “dangerous to human life,” that violate state or federal law, and that are intended to accomplish one of the following three objectives: 1) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, 2) to influence government policy by intimidation or coercion, or 3) to affect government conduct by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

Politics The uncomfortable truth about Black Lives Matter, Malcolm X and anti-Semitism History has told us that if you want to know a person’s truest nature, examine his attitude toward Jews Jake Wallis Simons

https://spectator.us/topic/uncomfortable-truth-black-lives-matter-malcolm-x-anti-semitism/

Fifty-five years ago, Martin Luther King delivered a speech to 50,000 Americans in which he demanded justice for persecuted Jews behind the Iron Curtain.

‘The absence of opportunity to associate as Jews in the enjoyment of Jewish culture and religious experience becomes a severe limitation upon the individual,’ he said. ‘Negros can well understand and sympathise with this problem.’

He then stated, in typically uncompromising style, that Jewish history and culture were ‘part of everyone’s heritage, whether he be Jewish, Christian or Moslem.’ He concluded: 

‘We cannot sit complacently by the wayside while our Jewish brothers in the Soviet Union face the possible extinction of their cultural and spiritual life. Those that sit at rest, while others take pains, are tender turtles, and buy their quiet with disgrace.’

This speech – released last week by the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCEJ) to mark Martin Luther King Day, and coming just days before we remember the Holocaust – feels particularly poignant in the newly radicalised atmosphere of 2021. Today’s activists in the Black Lives Matter movement would be wise to remember King’s words.

The Big Tech bullies Control who gets to speak, and you control the entire political debate Rod Liddle

https://spectator.us/topic/big-tech-bullies-facebook/

I was in the kitchen preparing the family’s dinner when the inauguration of Joe Biden was on TV, so I caught only mysterious fragments of his speech, over the noise of the blender and stuff. ‘I want an hour — an hour — with my own teen wolf,’ Joe seemed to say at one point. And then: ‘America, America, I give to you my vest.’ I raced through to the living room when someone announced that Garth Crooks was going to sing ‘Amazing Grace’ — good choice, Joe, I thought. Garth seems to have lost a little weight and indeed color, but he did a decent job.

It all went well enough, given the circumstances, and at no point did Joe ask why all those people were there and was it his birthday or something. A very self-regarding young woman appeared and read an awful poem, so I went back into the kitchen. Truth be told, I can’t bear the chest-beating pomposity of the Americans on occasions like this, and the kitsch and the confected emotion and the dire music. I think I preferred the nonagenarians of the old USSR standing implacably as loads of nukes trundled by. Certainly the Russians have the better national anthem.

Still, the BBC presenters seemed to like it, sobbing with happiness at every juncture. I hope the new director-general, Tim Davie, was watching the coverage and noted the somewhat different tone to that which accompanied the inauguration of Donald Trump four years previously. It was a close call between Auntie and CNN as to who could provide the most dementedly partisan coverage — the difference being that we don’t have Fox to offer a bit of balance.

“Sad and Scary”: Google Removes Doctors’ Senate Testimony Videos

https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson/status/1354580111849381888

Senator Ron Johnson

@SenRonJohnson

Social media censorship just ratcheted up to a new level. Google’s YouTube removed two videos of doctors testifying under oath at my US Senate hearing on early treatment of COVID. Another body blow to freedom of speech and expression. Very sad and scary. Where does this end?

Tracking Twitter’s Growth: Did Trump Ban Cause a Dip? By Kalev Leetaru

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/01/29/tracking_twitters_growth_did_trump_ban_cause_a_dip_145154.html

As COVID-19 began sweeping across the world last spring, Twitter experienced phenomenal growth with much of the planet’s population confined to their homes, helping the platform recover from a seven-year slump in daily tweet volume. As the pandemic has worn on, has Twitter continued to grow? How did the changes the platform made around the 2020 presidential election affect its growth and has its banning of Donald Trump caused it to lose users?

While Twitter itself does not publish detailed usage statistics, it is possible to estimate its growth from the daily random sample that it makes available of 1% of all tweets, which is highly correlated with its actual growth. Using this approach, the timeline below shows the estimated number of tweets per day on Twitter from Jan. 1, 2012 through Jan. 5, 2021 (gaps are days with missing data).

Since its peak in July 2013, Twitter was on a years-long decline through the end of 2018, but had begun slowly growing again over the course of 2019. Then, in the space of just two weeks in the middle of March 2020, as lockdowns swept the world, the platform grew by almost 100 million tweets a day, rising back to its July 2013 numbers.

The timeline below zooms into the Jan. 1, 2020 through Jan. 5, 2021 period, showing this phenomenal growth. Even as lockdowns eased across the world earlier this year, Twitter use did not decline, showing remarkable staying power. From Oct. 7-20, daily Twitter volume increased another 50 million tweets a day as all eyes focused on the U.S. election, then suddenly dropped by around 70 million tweets a day almost overnight on Oct. 21-22, and only began to recover on Dec. 17. What might explain this strange anomaly?

Gaslighting: Technocracy’s Preferred Weapon of War by Linda Goudsmit

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/25054/gaslighting-technocracy-preferred-weapon-of-war http://goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: http://lindagoudsmit.com

It is my opinion that the Democrat bill, For the People Act 2021 H.R. 1 – 117th Congress (2021-2022), a laughable title, is the fatal blow to free and fair elections, and the end of the United States of America as we know it.

In case you think I am exaggerating, consider this checklist:

● The coronavirus “pandemic” was an economic bioweapon designed to collapse Trump’s roaring U.S. economy, terrify Americans into submission, and justify mail-in ballots. The pandemic is and always was political medicine disguised as public health ✔︎

● The mail-in ballots augmented the digital interference via Dominion Voting Systems/software to steal the 2020 election ✔︎

● The stolen election installed China-centric puppet Joe Biden ✔︎

● Biden’s administration can now pack the court and enable imposition of the lethal For the People Act of 2021, which puts the Uniparty of corrupt Democrats, Republicans in name only (RINOs), and Americans in name only (AINOs), in control of U.S. elections in perpetuity ✔︎

● The globalist Uniparty will have succeeded in establishing planetary governance through “legal” means by duping the public with catastrophic humanitarian hoaxes that have deceitful names like “For the People Act 2021.” No bullets required ✔︎

I am witnessing the greatest, freest republic on earth being transformed into a technocracy that resembles communist China, the most oppressive regime on earth. The coordinated disinformation campaign of the Democrat/technocrat/globalist narrative is an orchestrated effort to make Americans believe the unbelievable, and accept the unacceptable.

The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics by Salena Zito and Brad Todd

A CNN political analyst and a Republican strategist reframe the discussion of the “Trump voter” to answer the question, What’s next?
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS • “Unlike most retellings of the 2016 election, The Great Revolt provides a cohesive, non-wild-eyed argument about where the Republican Party could be headed.”—The Atlantic
 
Political experts were wrong about the 2016 election and they continue to blow it, predicting the coming demise of the president without pausing to consider the durability of the winds that swept him into office.

Salena Zito and Brad Todd have traveled over 27,000 miles of country roads to interview more than three hundred Trump voters in ten swing counties. What emerges is a portrait of a group of citizens who span job descriptions, income brackets, education levels, and party allegiances, united by their desire to be part of a movement larger than themselves. They want to put pragmatism before ideology and localism before globalism, and demand the respect they deserve from Washington.

The 2016 election signaled a realignment in American politics that will outlast any one president. Zito and Todd reframe the discussion of the “Trump voter” to answer the question, What’s next?