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Ruth King

Biden suffers string of court setbacks as administration’s vaccine mandates are put on hold By Tierney Sneed –

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/biden-suffers-string-of-court-setbacks-as-administration-s-vaccine-mandates-are-put-on-hold/ar-AARjmcV

The Biden administration has suffered three major court losses since Monday morning, with orders freezing key federal government Covid-19 vaccine rules in certain parts of the country and, in one case, nationwide.

The latest blow came from a federal judge in Louisiana, whose order Tuesday afternoon halted across the country the administration’s mandate requiring that certain health care workers be vaccinated.

The order in the Louisiana case was delivered a day after the administration’s health care worker mandate had been blocked in 10 states by a federal judge overseeing a separate challenge filed in Missouri. And it came just hours after a separate Biden vaccine rule — aimed at federal contractors — had been put on hold in three states by a federal judge in Kentucky.

Meanwhile, a requirement that employees of larger companies get either vaccinated or tested for Covid-19 regularly remains frozen after a scathing appeals court order blocking the mandate earlier this month.

The administration has acted quickly to seek reversals of the orders blocking its vaccine rules.

“That threat to human life and health far exceeds the potential indirect harms to patients resulting from workers who may quit rather than receive the vaccine,” the Justice Department said in one such filing Tuesday, asking for an appeals court to reinstate the mandate that covers certain health care staff at providers that participate in Medicare and Medicaid.

Claims of an ‘erosion of our liberties’

The challenges put forward different arguments for why each vaccine requirement should be blocked, touching on the administration’s compliance with administrative law to constitutional claims about the federal government’s abilities to regulate vaccine participation.

In the Kentucky case concerning the mandate for federal contractors, US District Judge Gregory Frederick Van Tatenhove said Tuesday that the question before him was “narrow.”

Ben Weingarten If You Don’t Know What Time It Is, Get Out Of Politics Now If you don’t understand the stakes, and how fraught the situation is — that the ruling class seeks total power, is closing in on it, and will stop at nothing to achieve it — you are unfit to lead.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/01/if-you-dont-know-what-time-it-is-get-out-of-politics-now/

The defining political question of our time is this: “Do you know what time it is?”

The line, popularized by the Claremont Institute’s David Reaboi, succinctly captures the most essential of points: If you don’t understand the stakes, and how fraught the situation is — that the ruling class seeks total power, is closing in on it, and will stop at nothing to achieve it — you are unfit to lead. You ought to exit the playing field.

Knowing what time it is leads one to prioritize different ends and to pursue them using different means. Among those on the right, although more so in the chattering class than among activists, there appears to be a divide over the stakes inadvertently elucidated in some of the recent debates over national conservatism.

In the Wall Street Journal, Chris DeMuth and Matthew Continetti jousted over it. Continetti took issue with DeMuth’s argument endorsing national conservatism in part by claiming essentially that the movement captured so many schools of thought as to be incoherent, and that he favored his “conservatism without modification — constitutionalist, market-oriented and unapologetically American.”

I laid out what it is that unites national conservatives in a recent piece here at The Federalist — noting that a shared understanding of the stakes is inherent to the movement.

The idea that conservatism needs no modifier becomes questionable if conservatism — which has in many quarters focused on economic liberalism while ceding most everything else — is not conserving or doing everything it can to restore what it ought to in the face of a ruling class onslaught.

Head of Wisconsin election probe accuses two big-city mayors of cover-up, stonewalling The former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice leading probe singled out mayors of Madison and Green Bay.By Benjamin Yount

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/justice-gableman-accuses-madison-green-bay-mayors-cover-stonewalling-investigators?utm_medium=social_media&utm_source=mail_social_icon&utm_campaign=social_icons

A former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who is leading one of the investigations into the state’s 2020 elections says it’s clear to him there is a cover-up going on.

Former Justice Michael Gableman told the Assembly’s Committee on Elections on Wednesday that the state’s Elections Commission, its administrator, and the mayors of Madison and Green Bay have refused to answer any of his questions about the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, and continue to refuse to cooperate with the subpoenas issued in the case.

“[Green Bay Mayor] Eric Genrich and [Madison Mayor] Satya Rhodes-Conway have chosen to ignore the subpoenas issued by the Wisconsin Assembly because they have no intention of answering uncomfortable questions about what they did with the millions of dollars in Zuckerberg money that they took.”

The mayors have said in the past the Gableman’s subpoenas ask for too much information, or that it would take too long to comply with his requests.

Green Bay and Madison, along with Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha accepted nearly $9 million from the CTCL in 2020, ostensibly for coronavirus safety operations.

Gableman on Wednesday said the money, instead, went to a massive get out the vote operation in the state’s five largest, and most Democratic cities.

An Israeli doctor with Omicron met dozens of people. Just one tested positive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/world/middleeast/israel-omicron-surgeon.html

Elad Maor initially feared that he might have exposed hundreds of people to the virus when he became the first Israeli to test positive for the new Omicron variant on Saturday morning.

In the three days before his positive results, Dr. Maor, a cardiologist, had attended a large staff meeting at his hospital east of Tel Aviv. He had inserted stents into the arteries of 10 patients. And he had driven to a cardiology conference north of Tel Aviv, sharing the 90-minute car journey with a 70-year-old colleague, and lunched there with five others in a crowded canteen.

Dr. Maor, 45, had attended a piano recital with dozens in the audience, where his 13-year-old played a short piece by Stephen Heller, a Hungarian composer. And finally, last Friday night, Dr. Maor had eaten sea bass at the home of his in-laws, together with his wife and nine other family members.

But of these many people, most of whom had received three shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, only his 70-year-old colleague has so far tested positive for the Omicron variant in the five days since.

That number may yet rise, as the virus can take several days to show up in tests, and not every contact has been tested. But at least 50 people have already been screened with a P.C.R. test by Dr. Maor’s hospital, the Sheba Medical Center, and at least 10 of those have been tested at least three times.

The Covid Response Has Broken Our Trust in American Institutions By: Scott W. Atlas, MD

https://www.dailywire.com/author/dr-scott-atlas?utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=

I am hopeful that we are coming toward the end of the SARS2 coronavirus pandemic. Deaths are not likely to rise dramatically when cases sharply increase, a different pattern than in the initial waves. That “decoupling” between cases and deaths would be to a great extent due to the successful vaccination of those at risk to die, as well as acquired natural immunity. 

Unfortunately, it is unlikely the recurring hysteria and mismanagement by those in power will end so quickly.

After more than eighteen months of experience, there remains an almost bizarre lack of understanding that the virus will not simply disappear. Instead, on its way to becoming endemic, cases will continue to peak and ebb periodically, as they have done and continue to do in characteristic cycles all over the world and regionally in the United States. We must learn to live with the virus by offering vaccines to the vulnerable, aggressively exploring early treatments, while also accepting some risk, rather than employing failed, harmful restrictions on low-risk people every time the pattern recurs. Instead of recognizing the evidence, the flow of misleading information lacking perspective, policies counter to scientific data, and the absence of transparency continues.

The unscientific obsession with stopping all cases of COVID-19 continues, including the variants that all scientists expected as the virus mutates and becomes less lethal, without acknowledging the low risk for the overwhelming majority and what should be today’s protection of the most vulnerable to death.

Accountability remains absent from government leaders, public health officials, and scientists in failing to admit errors about lockdowns; some even distort their records and portray disastrous death tallies as “successes.” And now we witness an Orwellian attempt by those who advised what was widely implemented — lockdowns — to blame those who opposed lockdowns for the failure of the lockdowns.

The CDC and public health leaders still fail to visibly acknowledge and then educate the public about the natural immunity in recovered COVID patients or to incorporate that biological fact into our nation’s vaccine policies. The public needs to know that data continues to accrue showing natural immunity after SARS2 infection, like other infectious diseases, is probably superior to vaccine-related protection.

Public health officials and government leaders keep using wildly incorrect projections that instill fear and alarm the public, and when they’re wrong, they fail to acknowledge this fact.

Peter W. Wood :One Angry Nation, Two Wildly Divergent Explanations

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/29/one-angry-nation-two-wildly-divergent-explanations/

A review of Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury , by Evan Osnos

Osnos provides no insight at all into what is really happening among those of us who see ourselves as opposing a tide of illegitimate cultural authority backed by unfounded state power.

We Americans have become an angry bunch. On that Evan Osnos and I agree. Osnos is a staff writer for the New Yorker whose new book, Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury, surveys some of the same territory as my new book, Wrath: America Enraged. But on why we are angry and what it all means, Osnos and I diverge. Osnos sees in contemporary America “the failure of that mythology” that bound us together in “moral commitment, including the rule of law, the force of truth, and the right to pursue a better life.” I see in contemporary America not a failure of myth, but a change in character in which an older culture of self-restraint has given way to forceful expression. 

Osnos, whose other works include a flattering campaign biography of Joe Biden, blames ordinary Americans for indulging in a prolonged temper tantrum that has no real justification. My view to the contrary is that ordinary Americans are responding to the emergence of a ruling class whose contempt for them and for American civilization is nearly comprehensive. It is not that faith in “the rule of law, the force of truth, and the right to pursue a better life” has faltered. It is that faithful Americans now face the lawless use of state power, a duplicitous media, and rent-seeking by global elites. 

Osnos’ book is woven together of vivid tales of individuals in Greenwich, Connecticut (Osmos’ hometown); Clarksburg, West Virginia (where he had once worked for the local newspaper); and Chicago. He injects into almost all these stories his own disdain for the kinds of people who supported the Tea Party and eventually Donald Trump. The historical arc of Wildland is from the shock of 9/11 to the “insurrection” of January 6. He pauses at one point mid-book to observe:

Trump, the Tea Party, the NRA—they all made use of that rising unease of Americans who could not quite put a name to the anxieties they felt about the disordering of their world, about the puncturing of American invincibility, the browning of America, the vanishing of jobs to automation, the stagnation of their incomes. The language of force gained ground, Sarah Palin, in her appearances at Tea Party rallies and online, made frequent use of metaphors from the Revolutionary War and the world of guns. ‘Don’t retreat, reload,’ she liked to say.

Iran’s military gears up for Vienna talks by vowing to annihilate Israel By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/irans-military-gears-up-for-vienna-talks-by-vowing-to-annihilate-israel/

 Renewed negotiations over a return to or revision of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers from which former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018—kicked off in Vienna on Monday with feigned fanfare.

The Islamic Republic has made it clear that no agreement can be discussed, let alone reached, unless all sanctions hindering the regime’s operations are removed. It has also been engaging in double-speak, bragging about its strides in uranium-enrichment, on the one hand, while insisting that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, on the other.

Nobody buys the latter assertion, but the other parties to the JCPOA have convinced themselves that the interests of all concerned are best served through diplomacy. Never mind that Tehran refuses to allow American representatives anywhere near the room where the talks are being held. Washington is willing to have the mullahs dictate the terms of the entire arrangement, and let European, Russian and Chinese envoys enjoy face-to-face contact with their Iranian counterparts.

The Madness of Anthony Fauci Rather than own up to his disastrous policy and medical advice, Fauci instead is accelerating his messianic impulses.  By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/29/the-madness-of-anthony-fauci/

It’s nearly impossible to select the most maniacal comment made by Dr. Anthony Fauci in his nearly 70-minute interview with “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan that aired over the weekend. Joe Biden’s chief coronavirus advisor and miniature global menace spent more than an hour denying responsibility for his documented mistakes, bragging about his self-appointed role as the world’s doctor, hogging credit for the vaccines, and attacking anyone who has challenged his unrivaled ego and track record of failure.

Portraying himself as a victim rather than the cruel, megalomaniacal tyrant he is, Fauci took aim at Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Congressional co-sponsors of the “Fire Fauci Act,” which would zero-out the salary of the federal government’s highest-paid bureaucrat and audit Fauci’s correspondence and financial transactions during the pandemic.

While declaring, “I represent science,” Fauci humbly graded the scientific approach to the pandemic an “A+” while incongruently  warning about a “fifth wave” of the virus and explaining away one scientific stumble after another, from useless temperature checks to the need for bi-annual booster shots and randomly claiming the virus spread is “40 to 50 to 60 percent . . . asymptomatic.” 

Science!

Of all his alarming remarks, however, Fauci’s push to get experimental vaccines for babies and young children to market as quickly as possible is the most depraved. When asked by Brennan, who has spent the better part of two years asking Fauci how to run her life and the lives of 330 million Americans, when he expects vaccines for children between the age of six months and five years to be available, Fauci said he hopes the shots are ready by the beginning of next year. “I would hope it would be in the first quarter because the studies are being done right now on children from two to five and then from six months to two years,” Fauci told Brennan. “I don’t think there’s going to be an issue with efficacy. But when you’re dealing with children, it’s a very sensitive area. And that’s the reason why [it] may take a little bit longer.”

German Suicide Factory Says It Will Only Help You Kill Yourself If You’re Vaxxed By Haley Strack

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/29/german-suicide-factory-says-it-will-only-help-you-kill-yourself-if-youre-vaxxed/

Verein Sterbehilfe — the German Euthanasia Association — recently announced it will not help unvaccinated patients kill themselves. Now anyone seeking assisted suicide must submit proof of COVID-19 vaccination first.

“Euthanasia and the preparatory examination of the voluntary responsibility of our members willing to die require human closeness. Human closeness, however, is a prerequisite and breeding ground for coronavirus transmission,” the association said in a statement. “As of today, the 2G rule applies in our association, supplemented by situation-related measures, such as quick tests before encounters in closed rooms.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently announced “2G” restrictions that allow leisure activities only for individuals who are vaccinated or who have recovered from COVID-19. The rule applies in every area where more than three per 100,000 inhabitants are hospitalized with the virus.

“Some would say this is cynical, but probably by the end of this winter, pretty much everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, recovered, or dead. That’s the reality,” Health Minister Jens Spahn said at a press conference in Berlin last week.

The ban on physician-assisted suicide in Germany was lifted over a year ago, and Free Democratic Member of Parliament Katrin Helling-Plahr introduced a law in January that would regulate physician-assisted suicide.

“We want to set the record straight — everyone has a right to self-determined death,” she said at the time.

Take a Bow, DeSantis: Florida Reports Nation’s Lowest Daily COVID Cases Per Capita By A.J. Kaufman

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/11/29/take-a-bow-desantis-florida-reports-nations-lowest-daily-covid-cases-per-capita-n1537354

Florida currently has the lowest number of COVID-19 cases per capita in the United States.

The Sunshine State reported a daily average of 1,393 cases as of Friday, which is only six per 100,000, and a 2% decrease in the last two weeks.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has been slammed by partisan media critics since the pandemic began due to his opposition to government-imposed mask and vaccine mandates. Yet facts favor his decisions.

A buffoon named Chris King, who finished fifth in the 2018 Florida Democratic gubernatorial primary and is laughably running again in 2022, accused DeSantis of going on a “killing spree” for opposing mask mandates. Earlier this fall, the far-left rag Vanity Fair chose a huge “angel of death” headline to describe the successful governor.

They’ve yet again been proven irresponsible and wrong.

While Florida has the lowest amount of new cases in the country per capita, in states where draconian lockdown orders were issued by Democrat governors, coronavirus cases are surging.

Michigan, with two Democrat senators, and where progressive Gov. Gretchen Whitmer imposed some of the most controversial restrictions in America during the pandemic’s zenith, leads the nation in daily coronavirus cases per capita.