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Ruth King

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Georgia’s Digital Delusions Sometimes, simple is best. Marking a paper ballot and putting it into a box is best, as activists in Georgia tried in vain to demonstrate. By Christopher Gage

By on November 25th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/24/georgias-digital-delusions/

In my local pub (when Boris Johnson permits one to attend), the march of progress continues its gloriously pointless pace. 

Rather than perform the rigmarole of walking up to the bar and telling blood and flesh you’d like an Old Fashioned, one can now avoid this outmoded nonsense. 

Indeed, this advancement took place before the specter of the Ambitious Flu, and social distancing. One can now shuffle through the pub doors, plant oneself into a quiet corner, pull out one’s iPhone, and order a drink through the app.

Yes, just a few taps of the thumb, and the drink arrives at one’s table without a word muttered. 

Of course, a human being still mixes the drink. And still carries it over to the table. 

Apparently, this is evidence of the unrelenting technological progression of enlightened beings. For decades, was ordering a drink in a bar akin to hopscotching across a minefield? Has technology saved us from the horrible inclemency of life?

If anything, this pointless sanitization of everyday humanity is the technological vanity of a species without cultural achievement since the turn of the century. 

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BOOKS, MEDIA Comments turned off

The New Woke Times By Sharyl Attkisson

By on November 25th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/24/the-new-woke-times/

An excerpt from “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism” by Sharyl Attkisson (Harper, 320 pages, $28.99)

There’s no more exemplary sign of the death-of-the-news-as-we-once-knew-it than the public unraveling of the New York Times, once perhaps of the most well-respected news organizations on the planet. The newspaper’s series of unfortunate, self-inflicted events, highlighted in a disastrous summer of 2019, led one insider to refer to the publication as “The New Woke Times.” A leaked transcript of a staff meeting following a string of public embarrassments punctuated the point.

I can’t help but think that the angst-filled newsroom at the New York Times might not have to expend so much effort dodging flak if management had allowed the paper’s public editor to do her job. The public editor was the internal ombudsman assigned “to help keep the Times and its coverage honest in an increasingly commercialized and politicized news environment.” This was the person assigned to address major public criticism and, to some degree, inoculate the newsroom from having to get mired so deeply in controversies over its coverage.

The position of public editor at the Times was first created after the Jayson Blair scandal. Blair was the Times reporter who resigned in disgrace in 2003 after it was discovered that his stories—some of them published on the front page—were fabricated and plagiarized. The controversy led to the resignation of Times executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd. The new public editor would serve as a check and balance to help uncover and remedy journalistic misdeeds sooner.

In May 2016, Elizabeth Spayd became the Times’ last public editor. During her relatively short tenure, she fielded criticism about controversies such as the Times’ increase in “native advertising,” meaning ads seamlessly worked into the fabric of the publication as if they were a news story. Spayd called the uncomfortable mix of commercials and journalism a proven winner in terms of revenue. She noted that “The vast majority of readers apparently find it un-objectionable.” She drew that conclusion in part, she said, because she had received few complaints about it. Actually, the lack of complaints might have been because most readers don’t recognize native advertising when they are reading it. That’s the whole point: it is advertising disguised as news.

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HUMOR AND SATIRE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

State Governor Frees All Drug Dealers To Provide Prison Space For Families Celebrating Thanksgiving

By on November 25th, 2020

https://babylonbee.com/news/oregon-frees-all-drug-dealers-to-provide-prison-space-for-families-celebrating-thanksgiving

SALEM, OR—To prepare for the influx of Thanksgiving rulebreakers, Oregon Governor Kate Brown has ordered all drug dealers to be freed from prison to make room for all the families who violate COVID restrictions. 

“Drugs are legal now anyway,” said Governor Brown. “I hereby pardon all drug offenders currently doing time in Oregon prisons. I can do that right? Whatever — I’m doing it. The real menaces to society are the families who try to gather with their loved ones to share food and give thanks. These violent science-deniers must be stopped!”

According to sources, Oregon State Police have been ordered to go door to door and round up all families trying to celebrate Thanksgiving. Any person or persons not found alone on a couch crying into a clamshell container of take-out food will be arrested on the spot.

Governor Brown has assured the public that this zero-tolerance policy will do something “very important and science-y” to stop the spread of bad sicknesses. 

“Losing Thanksgiving isn’t a huge loss anyway,” said Governor Brown. “Thankfulness makes people feel content which can inhibit social progress. We can’t have that! If we’re lucky we’ll find a reason to cancel it next year too!”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Impeach Joe Biden

By on November 25th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/11/25/impeach-joe-biden-2/

Even before Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination, the left was calling for his impeachment. Then they spent four years looking for excuses to drive him out of office. So, in the turnabout-is-fair-play department, perhaps it’s time to start making the case for impeaching Joe Biden.

Let’s first review how the left treated Trump’s win four years ago. Immediately, #resistance started trending on social media, as though somehow Trump had invaded the country. Protesters shouted “not my president.” Pundits speculated that he’d rigged elections in the battleground states he won. The entire country was then treated to years of fake news about how Trump supposedly colluded with Russia to steal the election.

Throughout it all, there was the constant buzz about Trump’s impeachment and a steady stream of stories such as:

“Could Trump be impeached shortly after he takes office?”

“People Are Searching Google for Ways to Impeach Donald Trump”

“Democrats Are Paving the Way to Impeach Donald Trump”

“Talk of Impeaching Trump May Be Premature, But Its Time Will Come “

These and countless other headlines ran before Trump’s inauguration.

Heck, the New York Daily News penned an editorial titled “Impeach Trump” that ran on March 2, 2016 – two months before he was the GOP nominee. The entire editorial consisted of one sentence: “It’s not too early to start.”

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EDUCATION, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Bribed: Subverting American Universities by Raymond Ibrahim

By on November 25th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16786/subverting-american-universities

More than one-third of the nearly $20 billion in foreign donations and contracts made to American universities between just 2014 and 2020 were never disclosed as required by federal law, according to “Institutional Compliance with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965,” a Department of Education report released on October 20, 2020.

Among those “gifts” were more than $3 billion from the Muslim Brotherhood’s number one state backer, Qatar; more than $1.1 billion from the chief disseminator of “radical” Islamic ideology, Saudi Arabia; and nearly $1.5 billion from China.

The reason U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has traditionally tended towards disaster may partly be — in addition to the elixir of wishful thinking — because policymakers and the advisors and analysts on whom they rely are products of programs in which benefactors are hostile to the United States.

A recent governmental report exposes the “purchased” influence foreign nations have on America’s most prestigious universities and, as a result, on what America’s current and upcoming generations of analysts and policymakers will think and believe.

More than one-third of the nearly $20 billion in foreign donations and contracts made to American universities between just 2014 and 2020 were never disclosed as required by federal law, according to “Institutional Compliance with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965,” a Department of Education report released on October 20, 2020.

Among those “gifts” were more than $3 billion from the Muslim Brotherhood’s number one state backer, Qatar; more than $1.1 billion from the chief disseminator of “radical” Islamic ideology, Saudi Arabia; and nearly $1.5 billion from China.

According to the report:

“[A]t least some of these foreign sources are hostile to the United States and are targeting their investments (i.e., ‘gifts’ and ‘contracts’) to project soft power, steal sensitive and proprietary research, and spread propaganda. Yet, the Department is very concerned by evidence suggesting the higher education industry’s solicitation of foreign sources has not been appropriately or effectively balanced or checked by the institutional controls needed to meaningfully measure the risk and manage the threat posed by a given relationship, donor, or foreign venture.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Obama Has ‘HOPE’ for a Third Term Through Joe- Bosch Fawstin

By on November 25th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/obama-has-hope-third-term-through-joe-bosch-fawstin/

Obama stayed in D.C. because he’s a political whore like no other.

Obama never left Washington D.C. He’s been as politically active as he’s ever been, he’s just in the shadows most of the time now. At least when he’s not peddling his latest collection of elaborate lies that he calls “memoirs”, with pompous titles. After trying to cripple the Trump administration before it got on its feet, by spying on it, and trying to attach the Russia hoax onto it, a hoax that Obama and his gang concocted, he now wants his gang back in power, through Joe. And he will do all he can to “help” his “old buddy”, Joe, do exactly what he would do. Exactly. Almost like a third term.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

If You Worked for the Trump Administration, You’re Not Welcome at Harvard Young totalitarians now demand that speakers pass their ideological litmus test. Richard L. Cravatts

By on November 25th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/if-you-worked-trump-administration-youre-not-richard-l-cravatts/

With the intellectually arrogant but now regular behavior common on university campuses, Harvard students last week circulated an open letter to President Lawrence Bacow and Harvard University deans and leadership proposing that Harvard take proactive measures to prevent Trump administration officials from securing appointments, fellowships, or speaking opportunities on campus.

Clearly indignant at the prospect of someone who worked for an administration they have loathed since inauguration day in 2017, the tendentious students expressed their grave concern “about the impact of the actions of this administration on fundamental democratic institutions.”

Even though these students obviously have found nothing of redeeming value in anything positive the Trump administration may have accomplished, their primary justification for calling for preventing “Harvard [becoming] a temporary home for officials from the outgoing administration” is Trump’s current legal challenge to the November 3rd election and the campaign’s claims that voter fraud and irregularities in many states should be challenged in court. That process, of course, is perfectly legal and is the constitutionally-permitted right of a candidate to launch, especially in an election like this one—with razor thin margins, new voting practices, mail-in balloting as a result of the pandemic, and evidence of blatant fraud and voting irregularities, just as it was in 2000 when the Gore campaign challenged the voting results for 36 days after election day.

Nevertheless, the Harvard students have no time to wait for an audit and full accounting of the November 3rd election, claiming that Trump’s failure to have already conceded eradicates completely his entire record as president, including all of those individuals who made up his administration.

“Most notably, in actively undermining faith in the electoral process and in refusing to concede the 2020 election,” the student’s letter reads, “the Trump administration has trampled norms of free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power that have defined our republic for over two centuries. These norms are crucial to the global well-being of democratic institutions.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Why Trump Will Win “Absolutely frightening” evidence of entrenched fraud. Joseph Hippolito

By on November 25th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/why-trump-will-win-joseph-hippolito/

During his campaign rallies, President Donald Trump proclaimed, “We got ’em all” or “We have it all!” In the coming weeks — if not days — Americans will find out specifically what he means.

Those specifics promise to shake Americans to their core by revealing years of entrenched political corruption reflected in electoral fraud.

Lawyer Sidney Powell is providing a preview. Powell, who apparently had been helping Trump’s legal team prepare a case against alleged election fraud, told Howie Carr, a conservative radio host in Boston, on Friday:

“We’ve got a number of smoking guns — and we may have to get witness protection for some of them. We have a lot of extremely solid evidence. It’s beyond impressive and absolutely terrifying.”

Among those smoking guns:

— Hillary Clinton used fraud to steal California’s Democratic Presidential primary four years ago from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “When people told him about it,” Powell said, “instead of exposing it, he sold out.”

— An employee of the Defense Department, in a conference call that included Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told government officials how to commit sabotage in their respective offices. “There were a couple of hundred people on that call,” Powell said.

— China, Iran, Serbia and Liechtenstein played key roles in interfering with the Presidential election.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Blizzard of Bogus Journalism on Covid Jeffrey A. Tucker

By on November 25th, 2020

https://www.aier.org/article/the-blizzard-of-bogus-journalism-on-covid/

This game of hunt-and-kill Covid cases has reached peak absurdity, especially in media culture. 

Take a look at Supermarkets are the most common place to catch Covid, new data reveals. It’s a story on a “study” assembled by Public Health England (PHE) from the NHS Test and Trace App. Here is the conclusion. In the six days of November studied, “of those who tested positive, it was found that 18.3 per cent had visited a supermarket.”

Now, if the alarm bells don’t go off with that one, you didn’t pay attention to 7th grade science. If the app had also included showering, eating, and breathing, it might have found a 100% correlation. Yes, the people who tested positive probably did shop, as do most people. That doesn’t mean that shopping gives you Covid and it certainly doesn’t mean that shopping kills you. 

Even if shopping is a way to get Covid, this is a very widespread and mostly mild virus for 99.8% percent of the population with an infection fatality rate as low as 0.05% for those under 70. Competent infectious disease experts have said multiple times that test, track, and isolate strategies are nearly useless for controlling viruses such as this. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Death by Lockdown Jeffrey A. Tucker (November 2—2020)

By on November 25th, 2020

https://www.aier.org/article/death-by-lockdown/

On March 28 – very early in the pandemic – AIER published an article that I felt at the time received far too little attention. “Drugs, Suicide, and Crime: Empirical Estimates of the Human Toll of the Shutdown” by economists Audrey and Thomas Duncan cited empirical literature on the human toll of economic devastation. 

This article forecasted more than 100,000 excess deaths due to drug overdoses, suicide, alcoholism, homicide, and untreated depression – all a result not of the virus but of policies of mandatory human separation, economic downturn, business and school closures, closed medical services, and general depression that comes with a loss of freedom and choice. 

These two economists demonstrated that as bad as a virus is, policies that wreck normal social functioning will cause massive and completely unnecessary suffering and death. Because the article was so well-cited, with references to all the available literature, I thought it would make a difference. But after it appeared, it was crickets. I was amazed. Here you have a beautiful piece of research that perfectly forecasted the nightmare being created by politicians and their advisers and it made no dent in the national narrative. 

Here we are seven months later and the worst has come true. These two economists should be considered prophets. Sure enough, the Centers for Disease Control has documented a shocking number of excess deaths not from Covid. 

Scott Atlas summarizes:

Hispanic: 40% excess deaths NOT Covid related 
Black: 46% NOT Covid related 
White: 38% NOT Covid related 
25-44: 77% excess deaths NOT Covid related 
65+: 39% NOT Covid related

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