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Ruth King

Was COVID-19 Our Neutron Bomb?By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/28/was-covid-19-our-neutron-bomb/

In the 1970s and 1980s, furor arose over our possible use of the “neutron bomb” that macabrely would “kill people, but not destroy property.” The logic of the perverse weapon was that on allied and friendly European ground, outnumbered defensive NATO troops might radiate and destroy invading masses of Soviet armored troops by periodic detonations of low-yield thermonuclear shells, rockets, and bombs. 

The ensuing blasts of heat would sear flesh, but would lack commensurate repercussion power to destroy most structures and buildings, and leave far smaller toxic radiation trails. In eerie Strangelovian terms, once the enemy was finished off, returning friendly troops and populations could sort their way among the mass dead to find their infrastructure intact—without “collateral” damage or fear of serious radiation sickness. 

In some ways, COVID-19 was our neutron bomb. When we reach the now politically incorrect, taboo term “herd immunity” through vaccinations and antibodies, and when the virus ceases to be a pandemic, the lethal tally may have exceeded 600,000 Americans. 

If so, the nation will have lost more countrymen than were killed in World War I and World War II combined—with thousands more suffering disabilities, from “long haul Covid” to stress and psychological impairment from losing livelihoods and lockdown cabin fever. 

Americans have additionally suffered likely over $15 trillion or so in economic damage from the lockdowns, lost labor, soaring healthcare costs, and the silent killers of substance, familial, and spousal abuse, along with missed medical procedures and surgeries, aborted K-12 schooling, depression, and suicides. It will take years and millions of hours of scholarship to tally all the losses and damage. 

Biden Lied And 105,334 People Died

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/01/biden-lied-and-105334-people-died/

” Biden deserves none of the credit for the gains we’ve made against COVID-19 since he took office. But if he wants to blame Trump for every virus death that happened before Jan. 20, he should take the blame for every one that’s happened since.”

During one of his presidential debates last year when about 220,000 people had died from COVID-19, Joe Biden said that “anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.” So should Joe be looking for another job, now that more than 100,000 have died in just the two months that he’s been president?

Biden said, after all, that he had a plan on “day one” as president to tackle the disease. He was going to move “heaven and earth” to save lives, etc., etc. But since Jan. 20, there have been 105,334 deaths attributed to the coronavirus as of Saturday, according to the COVID Tracking Project. That means that one-fifth of all the COVID-19 deaths have occurred just since Biden took office.

Now Biden is busy casting blame for why the disease continues to claim lives, while repeatedly lying about what he inherited from President Donald Trump in order to make his own efforts seem more heroic.

On Thursday, Biden again claimed that he inherited no vaccination plan when he came into office.

“Were moving in the right direction,” he said, “despite the mess we inherited from the previous administration, which left us with no real plan to vaccinate all Americans.”

It’s been a constant refrain of his administration.

Voting Rights at the Supreme Court The Justices have a rare chance to clarify federal election law.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/voting-rights-at-the-supreme-court-11614553224?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Election laws have become a dangerous political flashpoint, as Americans recently learned the hard way. On Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear a potentially landmark case (Brnovich v. DNC) that offers an opportunity to restore the Voting Rights Act to its original purpose.

At issue is Arizona’s requirement that voters cast ballots on election day in their assigned precinct and its ban on ballot harvesting by outside groups. A majority of states require in-precinct voting, and 20 or so limit ballot harvesting, which allows third parties to collect ballots in bunches. Both rules are intended to bolster ballot integrity.

Democrats say this violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits states from adopting voting qualifications, standards, or practices that result in “denial or abridgement” of the right to vote “on account of race or color.” But they provide no evidence that Arizona’s rules limit minorities’ ballot access.

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to stop states from disenfranchising blacks with underhanded methods like poll taxes and literacy tests. But Democrats now argue that any state regulation that makes it a little harder for anyone to vote violates the law—even if it applies equally to minorities and whites.

Academic Freedom Is Withering Surveys of faculty opinion show the growing extent of political discrimination and cancel culture. By Eric Kaufmann

https://www.wsj.com/articles/academic-freedom-is-withering-11614531962?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Academic freedom is in crisis on American campuses. Last year, the National Association of Scholars recorded 65 instances of professors being disciplined or fired for protected speech, a fivefold increase from the year before. Yet many of academia’s defenders brush aside worries about dismissal campaigns and the lack of ideological diversity as little more than a collection of anecdotes cherry-picked to feed a right-wing moral panic.

My new report for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology gives the lie to these claims. Based on eight comprehensive surveys of academic and graduate-student opinion across the U.S., Canada and Britain, it buttresses the findings of numerous studies to provide hard data on the absence of viewpoint diversity and presence of discrimination against conservative and gender-critical scholars. High-profile activist excesses are mere symptoms of a much wider problem of progressive authoritarianism. Roughly 1 in 3 conservative academics and graduate students has been disciplined or threatened with disciplinary action. A progressive monoculture empowers radical activist staff and students to violate the freedom of political minorities like conservatives or “gender-critical” feminists, who believe in the biological basis of womanhood—all in the name of emotional safety or social justice.

Political discrimination is pervasive: 4 in 10 American academics indicated in a survey this summer that they would not hire a known Trump supporter for a job. In Canada, the share is 45%, while in Britain, 1 in 3 academics wouldn’t hire a Brexit supporter. Between one-fifth and half of academics and graduate students are willing to discriminate against right-leaning grant applications, journal submissions and promotion cases. On a four-person panel, this virtually guarantees that a conservative will face discrimination.

Rachel, Rachel Is this the world’s most unsalutary health official? Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/rachel-rachel-bruce-bawer/

If you consult the mainstream news media on a regular basis, you’ve probably heard that last Thursday was a red-letter day in American history – an occasion for dancing in the streets from Bangor to Burbank, and for socially distanced champagne toasts from Key West to Ketchikan. Why? Because, for the first time ever, a transgender nominee for a government office was up for Senate confirmation. That nominee was Dr. Rachel Levine, President Biden’s pick for Assistant Secretary for Health.

Is Rachel a great, or even a competent, physician? Who cares? It’s 2021, and Rachel is trans!

Rachel’s birth name was Richard, though there’s no way you could tell that from, say, Wikipedia. (In fact, on the “talk” page for Rachel’s Wikipedia entry, you can see anxious contributors earnestly debating how to deal with the ticklish fact that Rachel had a bar mitzvah, not a bas mitzvah.) Now aged 63, Rachel transitioned a decade ago and was divorced a couple of years later. Neither Rachel’s ex nor their two children appear to have attended the hearing.

Importantly, Rachel is not only a trans person; Rachel is a trans activist, a self-described champion of transgender youth. Meaning what? Meaning, among much else, that Rachel supports giving puberty blockers to children who say they’re the opposite sex, and is open to ordering “gender-confirmation” surgery to kids under age 18 with or without parental permission.

Rachel’s last job was as Health Commissioner in Pennsylvania. There were national headlines when it emerged that Rachel’s mother had been removed for her safety from a care home even as Rachel was ordering elderly hospital patients who’d tested positive for COVID back into nursing homes. Like Andrew Cuomo’s similar move in New York, this action doubtless contributed to the state’s elevated toll of COVID deaths in such establishments – a matter that Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) brought up at the hearing.

But hey, Rachel is trans!

Because Rachel’s appointment broke a glass ceiling, the Democrats treated the hearing as a celebration. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had to spoil the party. Noting Rachel’s support for puberty blockers and the “surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia,” Sen. Paul, who is a physician, pointed out that genital mutilation is internationally considered “a violation of human rights” and that “80 to 95% of prepubertal children with gender dysphoria” snap out of it “by late adolescence” if left alone. This being the case, asked Sen. Paul, “do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?”

Biden’s Latest Verbal Slip Might Be His Most Disturbing Yet By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/02/28/bidens-latest-verbal-slip-might-be-his-most-disturbing-yet-n1428963

Conservative media has been calling out Joe Biden’s cognitive decline for a long time. During the presidential campaign, we were the ones sounding the alarm bells while the mainstream media covered for him. At times it was amusing, yet also a bit scary. This man is running for president? The most powerful position in the world?

Now, it’s just scary.

On Saturday, Joe Biden did it again. While attempting to list off the names of several Democrats, even he was surprised by his own forgetfulness.

“… and Representatives Shir-Shirley Jackson Lee, Al Greene, Sylvia Garcia, Lizzie Penelley, ugh, uh, excuse me, Pannill, and, ugh, what am I doing here? I’m gonna lose track here,” Biden wondered aloud. Her name is Sheila Jackson Lee… and she’s hardly forgettable. But his remark, “What am I doing here?” was very telling. Of course, we’ve all been wondering that for weeks. What is Joe Biden doing there in the most powerful position in the world?

Okay, obviously he wasn’t referring to the presidency there, but still, that off-hand remark was a stunning admission from Biden himself that he was aware of his scattered mind.

Citing Wikipedia’s capture by the left, site’s co-founder launching free-speech-friendly competitor Larry Sanger blasts increasingly woke Wikipedia’s whitewashing of socialist and communist human rights atrocities as “propaganda.”

https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/wikipedia-co-founder-launching-competitor-website-upset-about-pro-socialism

A co-founder of Wikipedia is launching a competing website as a free-speech-friendly alternative to what he views as the increasingly monolithic left-wing bias of his former organization.

Last May, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger wrote an op-ed on his personal website titled “Wikipedia is Badly Biased” claiming that Wikipedia’s neutrality policy — known as  “NPOV,” or neutral point of view — “is dead.”

Now, when schoolchildren visit the Wikipedia website to look up answers to questions about the meaning of socialism, “they’re going to find an explanation that completely ignores any conservative, libertarian, or critical treatment of the subject,” Sanger told “Just the News AM” television program. “And that’s really problematic. That’s not education. That’s propaganda.” 

Sanger referred to a Fox News report last week by Maxim Lott, which noted, “The two main pages for ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ span a massive 28,000 words, and yet they contain no discussion of the genocides committed by socialist and communist regimes, in which tens of millions of people were murdered and starved.”

Wikipedia’s socialism page claims, “The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century,” Lott reported, but it “ignores a man-made famine in which Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin commandeered the food from regions like Ukraine and Kazakhstan, leaving millions to starve to death even as the Soviet Union exported grain to foreign countries.”

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Dozens of Israeli innovations, products and programs were launched in the two weeks since the last newsletter. But the important launches included Tel Aviv University’s satellite to measure cosmic radiation; new medical devices; the TAU Artificial Intelligence training center; the project to build a gas pipeline to Egypt; plus, many hi-tech and financial-tech products and programs.  Meanwhile, the blossoming of Israeli trees and blooming of red anemones in the south coincided with the re-launch of Israeli museums, malls, hotels and more, as millions of Israelis celebrated receiving their newly launched fully-vaccinated certificates.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Astonishing vaccination results. (TY WIN) Over 50% of all Israeli citizens have now received at least one Covid-19 vaccination, with 3 million (nearly one-third) having had both. The Pfizer vaccine is shown to be 95.8% effective in preventing new Covid-19 infections and nearly 99% effective in preventing serious illness.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/02/21/pfizers-covid-vaccine-99-effective-at-preventing-serious-illness-death/
 
Breakthrough in fighting resistant myeloma. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have overcome the resistance of the most aggressive forms of multiple myeloma. In a trial of 41 patients at 15 Israeli hospitals they discovered that Cyclosporin A neutralizes the disease’s resistance to cancer-killing proteasome inhibitors.
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/uncovering-anti-myeloma-resistance-files
 
Blood cancer treatment trial succeeds. (TY Nevet) Israel’s Gamida Cell (reported here previously) published the results of its Phase 3 trial of omidubicel (previously NiCord) in blood-based cancer patients. The treatment resulted in faster blood count recovery, fewer bacterial and viral infections, and fewer days in the hospital.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hope-grows-for-blood-cancer-patients-as-cell-therapy-firms-key-trial-succeeds/
 
Innovations in Life Sciences. On 2nd Mar, the JNF is hosting a webinar featuring Israeli and US innovations in the Life Sciences. It includes the Chief Scientific & Medical Officer Prof. Dror Mevorach of Israel’s Enlivex Therapeutics – developer of COVID-19 “cure” Allocetra.  Registration required; donations are welcome.
https://www.jnf.org/events-landing-pages/us-israeli-innovations-in-the-life-sciences-part-2
 
A healthier alternative to antibiotics. Tel Aviv University researchers have developed a biological antibiotic derived from human monoclonal antibodies, as an alternative to traditional chemical antibiotics. The antibodies were taken from a recovered tuberculosis patient and were shown to kill TB bacteria – still a major global issue.
https://english.tau.ac.il/news/antibiotics-alternative-2021
 
Just one drop of blood. (TY UWI) Ben Gurion University researchers have invented a miniaturized micro-electrode sensor that accurately checks clozapine levels in a tiny sample of blood obtained by a simple finger prick. Clozapine treats schizophrenia but the sensor is the basis for monitoring many other chemical levels.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/ben-gurion-university-researchers-develop-novel-method-for-personalizing-dose-of-schizophrenia-drug-clozapine-301228713.html
 
Unique medical approval for a wristwatch. Israel’s CardiacSense has received the European CE Mark for its medical-grade wristwatch that continually measures heart rate and arrhythmias. It is the first time an official regulator has approved such a device. CardiacSense has distribution agreements worth some $100 million.
https://www.cardiacsense.com/news/cardiacsense-medical-grade-watch-receives-ce-mark-for-continuous-detection-of-atrial-fibrillation/  https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3892750,00.html
 
Calm in a pandemic. Israeli-founded Dendro Technolgies and its Calmigo handheld device (reported here previously) are helping to make life less stressful for those struggling to cope in a coronavirus world.  The US Veterans Administration is giving Calmigo free to veterans and the IRS have even approved it as tax deductible.
https://www.israel21c.org/a-new-handheld-device-aims-to-calm-panic-attacks-fast/
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hillels-tech-corner-calmigo-anxietys-kryptonite-651770
 
Off the hook. Surgeons at the Baruch Padeh Medical Center near Tiberias saved the eye of a fisherman who accidentally speared himself with his own fishhook. The delicate operation included cutting the hook, releasing the eye tissue and repairing the eyeball. The doctors were optimistic of restoring full visual function to the eye.
https://worldisraelnews.com/fishermans-eye-saved-after-being-speared-by-his-own-hook/
 

Where Are All the Retractions of the Brian Sicknick Story? By Julie Kelly

ttps://amgreatness.com/2021/02/27/where-are-all-the-retractions-of-the-brian-sicknick-story/
The Capitol Police officer did not die after being attacked by Trump supporters with a fire extinguisher on January 6. Yet news organizations and lawmakers refuse to correct the Big Lie.

Law enforcement officials, according to several news reports, now are searching for someone who allegedly released bear spray into a crowd of police officers January 6 outside the Capitol building. The suspect might have sprayed the chemical at Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died January 7 reportedly from injuries sustained in the chaos. 

“In a significant breakthrough in the case, investigators have now pinpointed a person seen on video of the riot who attacked several officers with bear spray, including Officer Sicknick,” the New York Times reported Friday night.

With that one sentence, the Times buried for good its own original account of what happened to Sicknick—the now-debunked claim Trump “loyalists” beat him to death with a fire extinguisher. The Times seeded the fabricated story in a January 8 article; the paper “updated” the article—in reality, a retraction—on February 12 after pressure from a few outlets, including American Greatness.

The “bear spray” assault is just the latest change in the slowly unraveling mystery surrounding Sicknick’s untimely death. (He was 42.) His grieving mother told the Daily Mail last week she believes her son died of a stroke and isn’t sure if any sort of repellent spray caused it. The D.C. Medical Examiner’s office, in what can only be interpreted as a cover-up, refuses to release any autopsy or toxicology report, even though Sicknick was cremated weeks ago.

The public, and his family, may never know exactly how he died.

The ‘World’s Largest Bookstore’ Gets Into the Censorship Business Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/27/the-worlds-largest-bookstore-gets-into-the-censorship-business/

Amazon’s decision to remove Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally isn’t about a P.C. company removing one book—it is a challenge to the fundamental principles underlying American democracy.

Just a week ago, I received an email from Ryan Anderson, who was recently tapped to lead the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and who wrote When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment for me at Encounter Books back in 2018. A reader who had tried to order his book from Amazon reported he was unable to find the book listed on the site. I looked myself and, yes, that reader was correct. Other books by Anderson are listed, as are various books on the “transgender” phenomenon, including a now out-of-print title that purports to rebut When Harry Became Sally. But the book itself is nowhere to be found. 

How odd. The book was controversial when it was first published—the New York Times devoted not one but two columns to abusing it. But it sold well and, outside the precincts of wokedom, it was regarded as what it is: a thoughtful, compassionate, and well-researched discussion of the devastating psychological costs of embracing the latest fad of sexual exoticism. 

What happened? Was it an accident? A little digging showed that, like the Earl of Strafford, Amazon’s motto was “Thorough.” It was not just that a book that had been listed and sold by Amazon for the last three years was “out of stock” or “unavailable.” It had disappeared without a trace, more or less like Nikolai Yezhov standing next to Josef Stalin in that notorious photo by the Moscow Canal. One day he is seen smiling next to the great leader. The next day he is gone, airbrushed from history.

So it was with When Harry Became Sally. Amazon had pushed it into the oubliette; the book was gone, “canceled” by the wardens of wokeness at Amazon. Further inquiries show that it was also gone from the Kindle store and from Audible, the audiobooks emporium that is owned by Amazon. As of this writing, the book is still available at Barnes and Noble and other emporia, including at the Encounter Books website.