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Pope Fauci versus today’s Galileo Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/pope-fauci-versus-todays-galileo/

“Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science,” cried the infallible Pope Fauci. “All of the things I have spoken about, consistently, from the very beginning, have been fundamentally based on science. Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people.”

“Inconvenient truths”, he says, when questioned about the source of the Chinese Virus, the wearing of masks, lockdowns and vaccinations. So sure of himself is this Pope that no one is allowed to disagree, by religious fiat! Ahh another Pope Urban VIII; the Pope who silenced Galileo for the audacity to suggest that the earth was not the centre of the solar system. For those of you uneducated on Galileo versus Pope here is a brief history.

On April 12, 1633, chief inquisitor Father Vincenzo Maculani da Firenzuola, appointed by Pope Urban VIII, begins the inquisition of physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the sun, which was deemed heretical by the Catholic Church. This was the second time that Galileo was in the hot seat for refusing to accept Church orthodoxy that the Earth was the immovable center of the universe. The first time was in 1616.

On June 22, 1633, the Church handed down the following order: “We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo… have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world.”  “We order that by a public edict the book of Dialogues of Galileo Galilei be prohibited. Galileo agreed not to teach the heresy anymore and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It took more than 300 years for the Church to admit that Galileo was right and to clear his name of heresy.

Four Pillars of America What are the pillars of the American idea? By Robert Curry

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/10/four-pillars-of-america/

At my alma mater, I was privileged to study The Three Pillars of Zen with Huston Smith, a friend of the author, Roshi Philip Kapleau. Kapleau made it clear in his timeless classic that Zen Buddhism has three pillars. 

Using the idea of pillars as an analytical tool worked wonders for Kapleau. What if we were to follow his example, and ask what are the pillars of the American idea?

Two pillars come instantly to mind: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Even American Progressives would be hard pressed to deny these two are central to the American idea. After all, Progressives have spent more than a century attacking them. They began their project of fundamentally transforming America—that is, putting an end to the founders’ America and replacing it with an all-new Progressive country occupying that part of North America once occupied by the United States—by attacking the principles of the Declaration and setting to work dismantling the Constitution. 

If those two founding documents weren’t at the core of the American idea, why would the Progressives bother expending such an enormous effort to get rid of them? Progressives have been willing to pay an astonishing price of destroying American higher education—and much else—in an attempt to reduce these two founding documents to no more than mere curiosities of America’s early history.

Because of what the Progressives have accomplished, a few remarks about the Constitution and the Declaration are in order. 

They are not what they once were to us. The words are still there, but the nation that once embodied them has been changed away from them. The federal government we have today in America is not the government limited by the Constitution the founders envisioned. Instead, it is precisely the ever-expanding centralized government the founders tried to prevent. We call it “the federal government” though it is no longer “federal” in the founders’ meaning of the term. The 10th Amendment promised Americans the federal government would be a limited government; the great 10th Amendment is a dead letter today. 

To say the government in Washington, D.C. is no longer the government envisioned by Washington and the other founders is to say America no longer uses the Declaration of Independence as its guiding star. After all, the Constitution, great as it is, is properly understood as the founders’ brilliant attempt to design a new form of government according to the principles of the Declaration. To discard the founders’ design is to abandon the founders’ principles.

The Progressives have rejected those principles from the beginning of their effort to transform America. Here is what Woodrow Wilson, the very model of a modern Progressive, thought of the Declaration’s claim that we have unalienable rights:

No doubt a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere vague sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle . . .

Is Jill Biden staging a little coup? By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/is_jill_biden_staging_a_little_coup.html

Kamala Harris’s short tenure in the Veep’s office, in its own way, has been even more disastrous than Biden’s equally short tenure in the Oval office. We all knew Biden would be a bumbling fool, but thanks to the power of the pen and the executive orders the radicals on his staff have been writing, he’s been incredibly effective. In six months, he’s dismantled America’s security, economy, and sanity. Meanwhile, Kamala has failed at the one thing for which she was responsible: Bringing control to the border. Now, some are wondering if that failure was orchestrated in the White House and if Mrs. Jill Biden was responsible.

We know that Kamala’s failed: Not only hasn’t she been near the border but she’s also done nothing to change the border status quo. Now, on her first trip out of the country, she’s been insulted and humiliated wherever she’s gone. She’s appeared unprepared, confused, and stupid. It’s embarrassing for America but equally embarrassing for Kamala. Meanwhile, Joe and Jill are basking in the love of European leaders delighted to deal once again with someone who will send American money their way and ask nothing of them.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty thinks that the White House might be forcing failure on Kamala (who’s an easy mark):

On the latest Editors podcast, I floated the somewhat-tongue-in-cheek theory that Joe Biden has set Kamala Harris up to fail, a passive-aggressive form of revenge for her shivving him in that first Democratic presidential-primary debate.

Back in March, Biden announced Harris would “lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.” He said Harris was “the most qualified person to do it.” She’s actually probably among the least qualified people in the White House to do it, considering almost everyone on the National Security Council has more hands-on experience in international diplomacy and security, and Biden’s domestic team includes Susan Rice. 

Why Did George W. Betray Team GOP? By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/why_did_george_w_betray_team_gop.html

“In 2020 I boldly declared that Trump was the only thing standing between our country, the American people, and socialism.  I turned out to be correct,” said George P. Bush in announcing his candidacy for Texas attorney general.

Nearly 75 million Americans agreed, but his uncle, George W. Bush, was not among them.  It is likely that if George W. had said what George P. did, the Democrats could not have “harvested” enough votes to put their man over the top.  But he didn’t.  The result, as George P. pointed out, “was over 30 trillion dollars in total spending and 6 trillion in next year’s annual budget.”  And that is just the fiscal damage.

In the year 2000, some 50 million people elected George W. Bush president.  Despite his failings, almost all hung with him and re-elected him in 2004.  They understood that politics is a team sport.  They may not have loved their captain, but they understood he was better for the country than the other guy.   The sports enthusiast Bush is, one would think he’d get the concept of teamwork.

He did not.  At least, he did not seem to.  In his bestselling campaign book, Battle for the Soul, Edward-Isaac Dovere gives us a glimpse into what Bush was doing and saying to sabotage Trump and betray the millions of Americans who had backed both men during their presidencies.

“The two presidents hadn’t talked much in the months since Obama left office,” writes Dovere of Bush and Barack Obama, “though their staffs, along with Clinton’s and George H.W. Bush’s, were on email chains that featured rapid-fire Trump mocking and consoling one another over the state of the republic.”  As someone who voted for both Bushes, reading this made me cringe.

Dovere cited some choice lines from a speech Bush made in October 2017, hosted by the George W. Bush Institute in New York City.  For those who need a refresher, here is the passage that warmed the hearts of Democrats everywhere:

How We Came to Celebrate Racism Once Again By Philip Carl Salzman

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/06/11/how-we-came-to-celebrate-racism-once-again-n1453820

While in past centuries, Americans and Canadians held negative and thus racist views of blacks, and discriminated against them, today the official government policy in both countries is that whites should be viewed negatively, and be discriminated against. Rules have been put in place in government offices, in industry, education, media, and throughout to indoctrinate against whites and in favor of “people of color,” as well as to benefit “people of color” and marginalize whites.

To illustrate, here is a brief excerpt from a recent article in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association: “Whiteness is … a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which ‘white’ people have a particular susceptibility. … Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples.” 

Governments, universities, and corporations have mandated that “people of color” get priority in hiring and promotion. Merit, encompassing achievement and potential, is now rejected as a criterion for personnel selection. Skin color is now the primary criterion of worth. 

Minorities are caught up in this racism. The tiny minority of Jewish citizens, who were never considered white until it became a bad thing, are now regarded as hyper-white, having all of the bad qualities of whites (such as Nobel prizes?) and deserving of nouveaux pogroms, in America! Anti-Semitic hate crimes have skyrocketed since the Democrat Party has made street politics popular. Asian Americans, a good-sized minority, made the mistake of being the most successful category economically and professionally. For this, they have been designated “white-adjacent” and condemned to be criticized and excluded for achieving more than their “fair share.” 

Hydroxychloroquine, a year later, 3 times higher survival rate. Trump was right.

https://joannenova.com.au/2021/06/hydroxychloroquine-a-year-later-3-times-higher-survival-rate-trump-was-right/

The world faced the greatest global health crisis in one hundred years, but it’s taken a whole year to write up a small study that shows hydroxychoroquine could improve the survival rate of people on ventilators by a factor of three, and that the dose matters.

If anyone says “but this is not a big study”, that’s exactly my point. Why is it so hard to get a large study of a drug that was already known to be useful against SARS-1 fifteen years before SARS-2 arrived. A drug that even the President of the US was talking about in the earliest days? In January 2020 we already knew that the three drugs that were “fairly effective” were  Remdesivir, Chloroquine and Ritonavir. On February 13, the South Koreans were already recommending hydroxychloroquine and telling us the anti-virals should be “started as soon as possible”. We had that head start, we threw it away.

Apparently the kings-of-compassion in the commentariat would rather see deaths than admit Donald Trump was right. And the experts in Pharmaceutical Giants only cared about the profit line.

And so it comes to pass, finally, that we find out what happened to 255 patients in May 2020 who were treated for Covid in a hospital in New Jersey. Sadly, 78% or 201 patients are described as “expired” — as if they reached their use-by dates. It was that bad. Just 54 survived. Only 3.5% “walked out of the hospital”. These were very sick people.

The research team hunted through the data to try to figure out what was different about the group that survived. But mostly the “alive group” and the “expired group” were similar. The research team considered many different risk factors like their blood pressure, weight, age, and conditions like diabetes. They trawled laboriously through all the medications they were given as well. Convalescent plasma (blood from survivors) was one of the few things that helped, boosting survival by a factor of two. But one drug combination finally stood out even more and that was Hydroxychloroquine and and Azithromycin. (Essentially very similar to The Zelenko protocol).

The WHO, funded by taxpayers in the West, long after these patients were saved, was working to stop HCQ from being used.

Biden to Harris: Disaster 1 to Disaster 2 Steve Feinstein

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/biden_to_harris_disaster_1_to_disaster_2.html

That “President” Biden is an unmitigated disaster as our chief executive is so painfully apparent to everyone that it hardly seems necessary to point it out.  Nonetheless, just briefly consider:

Catastrophic Governance

His policies — anti-energy, anti-business, anti-military, anti-America First — have wrecked the economy, driven gas to over $3.00/gallon, given us the absolute worst illegal immigration crisis in our history, and bankrupted the country. In a warped way, it’s kind of impressive that he’s done that in only a bit over four months.

Leadership Vacuum

No one believes Biden is calling the shots, He’s totally malleable to behind-the-scenes operatives, acting in a confused, unknowing fog, reading as best he can from the teleprompter, and hiding behind his weird “I’ll get in trouble if I answer any more of your questions” excuse.

Made America Weak Internationally

The ayatollahs from Iran, Russia’s Putin, and Xi Jinping of Communist China are licking their chops at the prospect of having their way with poor ‘ol Joe.

Family Corruption

Has there ever been a “First Family” with anywhere near the decades-long, indisputable record of dishonesty, financial misdealings, and outright graft that even approaches that of the Bidens?

Diminished Mental Capacity

For those among this readership who have a compromised older family member, it isn’t merely the grotesquely obvious signs of dementia that mark Biden as severely limited. It’s the more subtle behaviors that betray his overwhelming incapacity. A clear example occurred just recently when the ever-admiring and forever-excusing liberal media caught up with Biden as he was eating an ice cream cone. Breathlessly shouting out, “What flavor?” the media proceeded to float a softball his way, asking if there was any possibility that the Republicans might compromise with him on his infrastructure proposal.

Letters from a D.C. Jail The rule of law for anyone involved in the events of January 6 has been flipped on its head by the U.S. justice system; defendants are presumed guilty before proven innocent. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/10/letters-from-a-d-c-jail/

This week, five Republican senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding his office’s handling of January 6 protesters. The letter revealed the senators are aware that several Capitol defendants charged with mostly nonviolent crimes are being held in solitary confinement conditions in a D.C. jail used exclusively to house Capitol detainees.

Joe Biden’s Justice Department routinely requests—and partisan Beltway federal judges routinely approve—pre-trial detention for Americans arrested for their involvement in the January 6 protest. This includes everyone from an 18-year-old high school senior from Georgia to a 70-year-old Virginia farmer with no criminal record.

It is important to emphasize that the accused have languished for months in prison before their trials even have begun. Judges are keeping defendants behind bars largely based on clips selectively produced by the government from a trove of video footage under protective seal and unavailable to defense lawyers and the public—and for the thoughtcrime of doubting the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

The rule of law for anyone involved in the events of January 6 has been flipped on its head by the U.S. justice system; defendants are presumed guilty before proven innocent. The right to a speedy trial and the right to participate in one’s own defense are ignored, as are other constitutional protections.

Prosecutors insist the alleged crimes committed by Capitol protesters—unlike similar or more egregious crimes committed by leftist protesters last year—are exceptionally heinous because the acts resulted in an “attack on our democracy” and interrupted the official business of the U.S. Congress.

The Justice Department and federal judges also continue to lie in court about the number of fatalities from January 6 in order to make the event seem far worse than it actually was. A Senate report issued this week also repeated the falsehood that “seven individuals, including three law enforcement officers, lost their lives.”

But federal prosecutors and Beltway judges—many of whom were involved in the nonstop criminal hunt against President Trump and his associates for four years—are wasting no time doling out severe punishment for those who dared to challenge the incoming Biden regime.

Take, for example, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, the judge who refused to dismiss the case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn even though both parties sought to do so. Sullivan is presiding over a handful of Capitol breach cases. Last month, he denied a request made by Jonathan Mellis, behind bars in the D.C. jail since February awaiting trial, to attend his father’s funeral in Virginia. Mellis faces several charges including allegations he attempted to strike a police officer with a stick. (Again, this is based only on evidence presented by the government. Nothing has been contested in court.)

Beijing’s Lies Matter Chinese communists nurture BLM to destabilize America. Joseph Hippolito

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/beijings-lies-matter-joseph-hippolito/

One year after George Floyd died in the custody of Minneapolis police, one year after riots ravaged the nation in his name, the founder of Black Lives Matter’s chapter in nearby St. Paul quit.

“After a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding black families, and they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis,” Rashard Turner said in a video May 26. One week later, Turner provided specifics in an interview with Fox News.

“When you call for a moratorium on charter schools, that is a direct attack on black families, on black children,” Turner said. “We know that charter schools are creating opportunities. Anyone who is in opposition to school choice, charter schools, I would say they’re racist.

“I was an insider in Black Lives Matter, and I learned the ugly truth.”

That ugly truth goes beyond BLM’s professional hypocrisy. It extends to an even uglier truth: BLM knowingly plays a pivotal role in China’s quest to attain geopolitical and ideological supremacy by destabilizing the United States.

BLM’s role is so pivotal that many of the group’s leaders and affiliated bodies have relationships with organizations that are connected to China through fronts or diplomatic contacts.

“Black Lives Matter is a Communist organization 100 percent, tied to foreign Communists and directly to the Communist Party of China,” said Trevor Loudon, an author and filmmaker from New Zealand who has studied Marxist movements for more than 30 years.

BLM embodies Mao Zedong’s quest to foment revolution through race, as he succinctly stated:

“The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and thrived with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people.”

Mao took that approach because China had neither an industrialized working class nor an organized labor movement.

Resisting Racial Demagoguery Tulsa Opera stands up to composer Daniel Bernard Roumain—and its concert commemorating the city’s massacre shines in his absence. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/tulsa-opera-daniel-bernard-roumain

Composer Daniel Bernard Roumain has made a good career leveraging his skin color. He writes pieces with titles like “i am a white person who ____ Black people.” He argues that orchestras should “focus on BLACK artists exclusively” [punctuation in the original]. He has solicited funding for a work written “EXCLUSIVELY for BIPOC [black, indigenous, and people of color] members of ANY orchestra.”

When a percussionist on Roumain’s Facebook page suggested that such a work would be divisive, Roumain told him to “speak less and try to listen and learn and understand more.” BIPOC musicians “FACE racism everyday” from their white orchestral colleagues, Roumain added. In fact, Roumain argues, white musicians’ contracts should be term-limited as reparations for “decades of benefitting from orchestral racism.”

Roumain’s racial-justice profile has earned him a seat on the boards of the League of American Orchestras and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, as well as a faculty position at Arizona State University. He has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall and is working on film, TV, and opera scores.

He likely seemed a natural choice, then, to write a piece to commemorate the centennial of a race riot in Tulsa. That explosion of violence, from May 31, 1921, to June 1, 1921, followed a still-undetermined incident between a 19-year-old black male and a 17-year-old white female. Tulsa officials tried to protect the male from a possible lynching; armed black residents circled the jail where the teen was being held as another line of defense. Gunfire broke out around the jail, killing 10 whites and two blacks. In retaliation, white rampagers looted and set fire to hundreds of homes and businesses in the black section of Tulsa called Greenwood. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to ashes, leaving thousands homeless. A 2001 report by the Tulsa Race Riot Commission confirmed 26 black and 13 white deaths from the riots; unofficial estimates put the death toll at several hundred. Many more were wounded.

Tulsa Opera planned a concert called Greenwood Overcomes as part of the city’s riot centennial events. Eight black opera singers, accompanied on the piano by Metropolitan Opera assistant conductor Howard Watkins, would perform the works of 23 living black composers, as well as traditional songs and spirituals. Tulsa Opera commissioned four new works for the concert, the first commissions in its history.

Roumain received one of those commissions, and it was a peach: writing a short aria for mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. Graves’s Metropolitan Opera debut as Carmen in 1995 received rousing acclaim, drawing international attention to her full-bodied vocal tone and smoldering stage presence. She would be the biggest star of the Tulsa concert; any composer would jump to have her perform his work.