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February 2022

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The New York Times Makes A Stunning Admission About CDC Data On Vaccines

By on February 22nd, 2022

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2022/02/20/the-new-york-times-makes-a-stunning-admission-about-cdc-data-on-vaccines-n2603555

The New York Times made an eye-popping admission on Sunday regarding data collected by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Covid-19 vaccines.

In an article titled, “The C.D.C. Isn’t Publishing Large Portions of the Covid Data It Collects,” reporter Apoorva Mandavilli writes: “For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public.”

Mandavilli, who covers science and global health for the Times, reported that the agency has published “only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected” since the pandemic began, including data on booster efficacy for 18 – 49 year-olds, a tremendous chunk of the U.S. population.

Reasons listed include bureaucracy, sample size, and not being “ready for prime time,” but one that’s definitely set to raise lots of eyebrows is the claim that the data could be “misinterpreted” by Covid vaccine skeptics. 

From the report:

Last year, the agency repeatedly came under fire for not tracking so-called breakthrough infections in vaccinated Americans, and focusing only on individuals who became ill enough to be hospitalized or die. The agency presented that information as risk comparisons with unvaccinated adults, rather than provide timely snapshots of hospitalized patients stratified by age, sex, race and vaccination status.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

LET THEM EAT BUGS

By on February 22nd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/22/let-em-eat-bugs/

For those who haven’t heard, cattle and pork are threats to the environment. The farms that raise them are foul greenhouse gas offenders. Better, say our superiors, that we settle for a nice bowl of insects instead.

A recent New York Times opinion feature headlined “​​The Joy of Cooking (Insects)” looks at “​​our broken food system and the three chances you get to help fix it – and save the planet – every day.”

“​​A growing tribe of environmentalists, academics and entrepreneurs are arguing that edible insects must enjoy a wider acceptance to help create a more sustainable global food system,” says the Times.

“It’s time for bugs. Whether you regard them as agents of filth or sources of nutrition, integrating more of them into your diet … is among a suite of dietary changes that we urgently need to consider to deal with food insecurity, biodiversity loss and climate change.”

The World Economic Forum claims “eating insects could reduce climate change” since “our consumption of animal protein is the source of greenhouses gas.”

The same organization has also said “we need to start nurturing – and eating – weeds,” which “can be nutritious and tasty, if we know which ones to pick.” Again, the greenhouse gases emitted by animal farming is the reason we need to go on a North Korean diet. Just another sacrifice we have to make to keep Gaia healthy.

The phrase “let them eat cake” has been attributed to Marie Antoinette. Whether she or an unnamed “great princess” of France said it, its disregard for hungry and sometimes starving peasants was clear. The royal class was going to continue to dine sumptuously, at least until they lost their heads in the revolution, and the rest were going to have to do with less.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Notable & Quotable: Judge Ho at Georgetown on Ilya Shapiro ‘If Ilya Shapiro is deserving of cancellation, then you should go ahead and cancel me too.’

By on February 22nd, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-judge-ho-georgetown-racism-ilya-shapiro-cancel-supreme-court-black-woman-justice-11645471956?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

From prepared remarks delivered Feb. 15 by Judge Jim Ho of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to the Federalist Society’s Georgetown Law School chapter:

Months ago, I was scheduled to talk with you all today about a subject that I’m very passionate about. . . . But I hope you won’t mind that I’ve decided to address a different topic today instead. . . . I’m going to spend my time today talking about Ilya Shapiro, who was recently appointed to serve as executive director and senior lecturer at the Center for the Constitution here at Georgetown. As you all know, there is now a heated debate—first, over the content of a recent tweet that he made and then deleted, and second, over what, if anything, Georgetown should do in response to his tweet. . . .

Ilya has said that he should have chosen different words. That ought to be enough. . . . If you asked Ilya, I am sure he would say that he’s the one standing up for racial equality, and that his opponents are the ones who are supporting racial discrimination. You don’t have to agree with him—but it’s obvious that’s where he’s coming from. And yet I don’t hear Ilya trying to punish others for taking a different view on racial equality. . . .

About a year ago, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “The Importance of a Diverse Federal Judiciary.” I’m honored that the committee invited me, along with four other federal judges, to testify to express my own views on the topic, and I agreed to do so. Here’s what I said:

“Equality of opportunity is fundamental to who we are, and to who we aspire to be, as a nation. . . . But here’s the kicker: Once everyone has had full and fair opportunity to be considered, you pick on the merits. Both the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act make clear that it is wrong to hire people based on race.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The tyranny of high-status opinion How the woke left wrote the script for the Canadian state’s tyrannical assault on the protesting truckers. Brendan O’Neill

By on February 22nd, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/21/the-tyranny-of-high-status-opinion/

At first glance, it looked like one of the strangest, most incongruous moments of the great trucker uprising of 2022. There were the truckers and their working-class allies, in Ottawa, loudly agitating against Justin Trudeau’s vaccine mandates, when a bunch of hyper-woke, definitely not working-class counter-protesters rocked up to rail against this horn-honking throng. And what did they chant, these painfully PC counter-protesters? ‘Trans rights are human rights’, that’s what. As clear as anything, these supposed leftists, seemingly horrified by the sight of working-class men and women fighting for their rights, engaged in arguably the most striking non-sequitur of the 2020s so far – they brought transgenderism into an issue that has nothing whatsoever to do with transgenderism.

The truckers have said nothing about trans people. We have no idea what these pissed-off working-class drivers think about genderfluidity and all the rest. My hunch is that they think it’s nonsense. But we don’t know. This vast gathering of truckers and their supporters, which has so rattled the Trudeau administration and inspired copycat revolts around the world, is completely unrelated to sex changes and pronouns and the right of born men to beat women in sports and all the other things that fall under the banner of ‘trans rights’ these days. So, understandably, many people were perplexed by the counter-protesters’ chant. ‘I don’t think they are at the right protest’, said one observer. Memes emerged, saying: ‘Truckers: Freedom for all! Counter-protest: Trans rights are human rights. Truckers: What??’ What indeed.

And yet, at another level, at a deeper level, this weird, disjointed counter-revolt against the ‘revolting’ truckers actually makes sense. For what we had here was the shrill, noisy reassertion of high-status opinion against the supposedly low-status demands of the truckers for more freedom and better working conditions. This was the correct-thinking set staking its moral authority over the irritated truckers; the upper-middle-class guardians of approved ‘progressive’ thought pushing back against a pesky, old-fashioned, grassroots demand for liberty and respect. There was at least a semi-conscious element to this spectacular non-sequitur on the streets of Ottawa – the elite counter-revolters were essentially saying that identity is now more important than class, that issues like trans rights now thoroughly trump workers’ rights, and that being ‘left-wing’ no longer means supporting the masses against the state, but rather is about reprimanding the masses for their supposed wrongthink and siding with the state against the people.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Ignoring Budapest Memorandum Commitments to Ukraine by Gordon G. Chang

By on February 22nd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18260/ukraine-budapest-memorandum

To induce Ukraine to give up the nuclear weapons inherited on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S., Great Britain and Russia agreed to provide assurances. If Washington were to allow Russia to gobble up the rest of Ukraine, it would tell non-nuclear states they must have nuclear arsenals because they cannot rely on the nuclear weapons powers for security.

Biden’s threats have been unpersuasive and so far Putin has not been persuaded.

Biden immediately sanctioned the two regions but did not impose costs on the bad actor, Russia. He has promised further measures, but only after an invasion. Moreover, his sanctions are unlikely to be so severe as to force Putin to leave Ukraine. In fact, on the 15th of this month, Biden made it clear that sanctions would be less than regime-threatening.

It is now time for the United States to remember the promises made—those in writing and those made informally.

Putin, after all, will not stop at Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an emotional speech on the 21st of this month, made it clear that he believes Ukraine is a part of Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden must now demand that Moscow withdraw its forces from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and Donbas. The Kremlin has, among other things, violated the assurances it gave Kyiv in the Budapest Memorandum. Biden, however, has so far shown little inclination to hold Russia to its promises.

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