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50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Trump Isn’t the One Politicizing Science Antimalarials seemed promising, then failed in trials. That’s how it’s supposed to work. By Joel Zinberg

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-isnt-the-one-politicizing-science-11607969209?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Politics has infected many issues over the past four years and has now reached the supposedly objective halls of official medicine. In an editorial for the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Misguided Use of Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19: The Infusion of Politics Into Science,” Dr. Michael Saag claims that “the politicization of the treatment” was more important than the science in promoting the use of the antimalaria drug to treat Covid-19. This evidence-free claim is contradicted by information in the same editorial and the scientific literature.

Dr. Saag doesn’t cite a single source to support his claim that President Trump’s April 4 promotion of the drug influenced physicians’ prescribing decisions. His claim that “no health official” in the U.S. government endorsed use of hydroxychloroquine is contradicted in his next sentence, which notes that the Food and Drug Administration approved an emergency-use authorization for hydroxychloroquine on March 28, one week before Mr. Trump’s comments. The FDA granted that authorization at the request of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or Barda, another U.S. government health agency.

Physicians prescribed hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 because they had reason to believe it could work. In the early days of the pandemic when there were no established therapies, clinicians noted the severe immune response that the SARS-CoV-2 virus elicited in severely ill patients. They began to deploy hydroxychloroquine because it has long been used to treat autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, with a good safety profile.

Hydroxychloroquine and its cousin chloroquine had also been studied as antivirals with activity against the similar SARS coronavirus and other viruses. Several encouraging preclinical studies and small clinical trials, including a French study published in March and cited by Dr. Saag, reinforced physicians’ willingness to try hydroxychloroquine.

“Trump Derangement Syndrome Persists” Sydney Williams

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“In stage three [of Trump Derangement Syndrome], one is ready to believe anything– anything pernicious or salacious, that is – about Mr. Trump and to reject anything he has done that might be good for the country, if only because of the man who did it.” Joseph Epstein Wall Street Journal July 9, 2020

                                                                                                                                      

While I have not fussed much over last month’s election results, I believe, despite the Electoral College certifying the election, that there was fraud and other shenanigans. How else to explain halted vote counting in swing states; election rules changed without authorization from state legislatures; unsigned mail-in ballots, etc. Can we really believe that a candidate who spent much of the campaign in his home received ten million more votes than did Barack Obama in 2012? Congress and state legislatures should ensure that voter laws are explicit and fair. One is left wondering, not only about voter fraud, but about the size of the turnout. Apparently 156 million people voted, or 66% of registered voters, the highest percentage since 1900 and twenty percent more people than in 2016! Now, Mr. Trump’s options are gone; nevertheless, when politics smell fishy, it is usually more than a week-old Mackerel in the trunk of a car.

 Last Friday’s lead editorial in our local paper, The Day, stated: “But Trump has caused profound damage, having convinced tens of millions of people who voted for him that Biden is not a legitimate president.” Whether the statemen is true or not, I do not know, but the hypocrisy of the paper’s editorial board is heavier than a London fog. They, and most of mainstream media, never condemned the “Resistance” that for four years claimed Trump was an illegitimate president. They avoided the subject of Mr. Biden’s noticeable deteriorating mental acuity and stayed away from the Hunter Biden scandal. The Day posits itself as independent. Their masthead reads: “The newspaper should be more than a business enterprise. It should also be a champion and protector of the public interest and defender of the people’s rights.” Sadly, the paper, like so many others, has become a defender of the progressive movement and a foe of the messiness that is natural to the democracy of a free and independent people. In looking for potential threats to liberty, the media has a habit of ignoring peril from the left, like the hairbrained schemes of stacking the Supreme Court and doing away with the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Wannabe tyrants do not alienate the media and reduce the power of government, as Trump has done with his sarcastic remarks to the press, and as he did in cutting regulations. Budding despots befriend the media, and they increase personal and government power through rules and regulations, like Governors Cuomo and Newsom.

From China, With Love Eric Swalwell is guilty of the foreign collusion of which he accuses Trump. by Debra J. Saunders

https://spectator.org/eric-swalwell-china-spy/

Washington

Sanctimony is proving to be a bad look for Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., since Axios reported on his ties with a suspected Chinese spy. Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, insinuated herself with a number of up-and-coming U.S. politicians between 2011 and 2015. Swalwell was the biggest fish.

The Chinese national’s efforts, Axios reported, included raising money for Swalwell’s 2014 reelection campaign. Fang also helped place at least one intern in Swalwell’s House office.

According to Axios, Swalwell did nothing wrong and was unaware Fang may have been working for Beijing until U.S. intelligence officials alerted him in 2015. Swalwell cut off all ties with Fang, who left the United States.

Problem: If you judge Swalwell by the standard he applied to President Donald Trump, he shouldn’t hold public office. Swalwell frequently met with an operative of a foreign government who was helping his campaign. When Trump campaign dons had one meeting with a Russian national with ties to the Kremlin, Swalwell called that collusion.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report concluded Trump’s campaign did not collude with Russia’s “sweeping and systematic” interference in the 2016 election. Didn’t matter. Swalwell still saw “strong evidence of collusion.”

Of course, House Republicans have started to demand that Swalwell surrender his seat on the House Intelligence Committee. As I write this, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has no such concerns.

I wonder why a national security apparatus that did not warn Trump about Russian mischief in 2016, even after he won office, nonetheless did warn Intelligence Committee member Swalwell and other elected officials in Fang’s orbit in 2015. And unlike the Russian probe, there were no press leaks at the time.

U.S. Announces Accountability For Iranian Officials Who Killed Bob Levinson Katie Pavlic

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/14/us-announces-accountability-to-for-iranian-officials-who-killed-bob-levinson-n2581507

The White House announced Monday that Iranian officials responsible for the death of FBI agent Bob Levinson will be designated for sanctions. 

“Today, the Department of the Treasury announced designations on two individuals from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security for their direct involvement in the abduction, detention, and probable death of Robert Levinson.  It is clear that not only were senior Iranian officials responsible for Mr. Levinson’s disappearance, but that they took deliberate actions to obscure their involvement through an extensive disinformation campaign,” the White House released in a statement. “With this announcement, the United States Government is initiating the first public actions against the Iranian government to hold them accountable for the abduction of Robert Levinson—the longest ever held American hostage.  The United States will relentlessly pursue all others involved as the investigation continues.” 

“Since the beginning of this Administration, President Trump has made it clear that Iran will be held accountable for its use of detention and hostage taking as a tool of “diplomacy” and that the United States will no longer accept Iranian excuses for what we know they have done to Mr. Levinson,” the statement continues. “No family should ever endure the pain the Levinson family has for nearly 14 years.  Iran is responsible and can end this nightmare by answering questions for which only they hold the answers.  Any future talks with Iran must include resolution to this case.  We stand by the Levinson family, and we will never cease in our efforts to bring justice for Bob and his family.”

Domenech: John Brennan And Intel Officials Are Lying To Us And The Media Pays Them To Do It By Evita Duffy

https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/14/domenech-john-brennan-and-intel-officials-are-lying-to-us-and-the-media-pays-them-to-do-it/

On “Fox and Friends” Monday morning, The Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech said President Trump’s options are very limited in his fight to win the 2020 elections, but that doesn’t mean Trump has to pretend the election was entirely fair or conducted without interference from media and Big Tech.

There were substantial examples of worrisome election fraud that are going almost entirely unnoticed by the corporate media, Domenech argued.

“My real concern is that going forward we don’t have the mechanisms in place to look into this to find out what happened and to the degree that there was either fraud… [and how] we can prevent [it] in the future,” he said.

Domenech cited the “massive media and big tech conspiracy,” which flagged the infamous Hunter Biden scandal as “Russian disinformation.”

Biden’s son is suspected of money laundering in China and the Ukraine, with evidence that his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, was aware of it and may be compromised.

Domenech pointed out that when the New York Post broke the story, big tech was actively “banning people [and] suspending people for sharing this New York post story that has been if not fully verified, something that is clearly not Russian disinformation.” The scandal “certainly should have been something that the American people were allowed to know about and share in advance of this election,” but they were deceptively not.

Highlighting the dishonesty, Domenech explained how corporate media employs intelligence officials who “signed on to this ridiculous letter claiming that this was Russian misinformation without a scintilla of evidence.”

‘Collusion’ vs. Collusion One can lie about “collusion” with impunity. But to speak the truth about collusion is to be smeared as “xenophobic,” “racist,” and “nativist.” By Victor Davis Hanson *****

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/13/collusion-vs-collusion/

Historians will dissect the origins and spread of the mass hysteria of Russian “collusion.”

The farce infected the media. It discredited the Democratic Party. And it warped the popular culture between 2015 and 2020.

“Collusion” destroyed what was left of respect for the Washington FBI, the CIA, and the liberal news media. When 50 former “intelligence” officers can attest, right before the election, that the Hunter Biden scandal emails are likely Russian disinformation designed to help Trump, then there is nothing much left of the reputation of our once best and brightest.

There are many theories of the origins of “collusion.” Some believe that Hillary Clinton, and her firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and Fusion GPS that hired Christopher Steele, simply sought a cover counter-narrative to hide her own illegally transmitted and received State Department emails and spin-off scandals.

At the time “collusion” took off, Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton were on the tarmac in Phoenix, sexual deviate Anthony Weiner’s wife was emailing with Hillary Clinton, and copies ended up on Anthony’s lurid laptop. The hacked DNC computers and all proof of supposed Russian “collusion” culprits had been mysteriously turned over by the FBI to the Clinton-friendly firm, Crowdstrike, for recovery of lost files.

There were other catalysts for the “collusion” mythology. By 2015, Democrats were embarrassed their Russian “reset” love fest had blown up in its face. Finger-wagging about human rights to a thug like Vladimir Putin—while being terrified of selling offensive weapons to beleaguered Ukraine—was a “talk-loudly-while-carrying-a-twig” prescription for disastrous humiliation.

The left-wing architects of reset, in their arrogance, went from “We can push the weak-hand of Putin” to “Putin is an omnipotent monster” in less than a year. In 2012, they acted as if they were Alger Hiss. By 2016 they were in full Joe McCarthy-mode, hunting for a Russian under every bed.

Putin, in his Mafioso-style thinking, had kept his part of the reset bargain. He had stayed inert in 2011, as promised in Seoul, South Korea, to aid Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. And in collusionary return, as also promised, Putin got missile defense in Eastern Europe scrapped and, as a bonus, a free hand in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Collusion Delusion

“Collusion” then had allowed befuddled Russian appeasers and naïfs to cover up, and recalibrate themselves as our new version of Cold War hawks. It was as if a supposedly geriatric, and anemic Russia suddenly had transmogrified back into the huge, and global-menacing Soviet Union—or as if the resetters’ own ridiculous placation could be erased by uncovering someone else’s sinister mollification.

But the chief catalyst for the “collusion” hoax was always hatred of the campaign, and then the election, of Donald Trump.

“Collusion” was, as the debased FBI agent Peter Strzok had texted, the “insurance policy” of the administrative state to keep the “smelly,” the “ugly folk,” and “dregs” where they belonged—far, far from power. The cartoonish Steele dossier was reinvented by a corrupt media to be some kind of George Kennan-like policy paper to destroy the Trump campaign, his transition, and his presidency.

Andrew Cuomo receives the Ted Kennedy award By J. Marsolo

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/andrew_cuomo_receives_the_ted_kennedy_award.html

Cuomo is a worthy successor to Teddy the Swimmer.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, the would-be dictator of New York state, who shut down schools, restaurants, churches, and many businesses,  was awarded and accepted the 2020 Edward M. Kennedy award thusly:

“I am honored to receive the 2020 Edward M. Kennedy Institute Award for Inspired Leadership. I learned about humanity, leadership and putting people first from the great Senator Ted Kennedy.”

Cuomo is a worthy successor to Teddy the Swimmer, who left Mary Jo Kopechne to die in submerged car that he drove into a pond. Teddy, who according to Cuomo, put people first, put Mary Joe Kopechne second as he swam away to meet with his handlers to lie and spin about leaving Ms. Kopechne to die.

Cuomo placed approximately 6,300 people infected with the China virus in nursing homes thereby infecting elderly patients. Over 6,400 residents of the nursing homes died from the China virus.  Cuomo, following the leadership and humanity he learned from Teddy, blamed the deaths on infected health care workers at the nursing homes.

Cuomo further showed his leadership and humanity when he denied that he ordered the nursing homes to take the infected patients:

“New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that nursing homes “never needed” to accept Covid-positive patients from hospitals in the state due to a shortage of hospital beds.”

Communist China’s Far-Reaching Espionage Efforts Threaten U.S. Under A Joe Biden Presidency

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/14/communist-chinas-far-reaching-espionage-efforts-threaten-u-s-under-a-joe-biden-presidency/

he Department of Justice has had Joe Biden’s son Hunter under its investigative microscope since 2018. Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California has come under scrutiny for his coziness, both personal and professional, with a known Chinese spy. China shows an increasingly deft ability to find weak spots in the U.S. government and big business, and exploit them to its advantage.

China’s ease in getting its way, of course, has been enabled by the U.S. media, which because of its rabid hatred of all things Donald Trump, in particular his hard line against China’s communist regime, put a virtual clamp on any bad news about Hunter Biden’s many questionable dealings there.

“Documents relating to Hunter Biden’s exploitation of his father’s name to enrich himself and other relatives through deals with China were among the cache published in the week before the election by The New York Post — revelations censored by Twitter and Facebook and steadfastly ignored by most mainstream news outlets,” wrote Glenn Greenwald at Substack.

“That concerted repression effort by media outlets and Silicon Valley left it to right-wing outlets such as Fox News and The Daily Caller to report, which in turn meant that millions of Americans were kept in the dark before voting,” Greenwald added.

The media’s behavior is bad enough. But the Democratic Party has been the real driver of the denial bus, insisting all along that questions raised about Hunter Biden and Swalwell’s China ties were “Russian disinformation” or “right-wing conspiracy theories.”

Now that the election is over, the media have at last been forced to admit the troubling truth: That Hunter Biden has been a willing asset of China’s communists, enriching himself and likely his family, including Joe Biden, in the process, is now clear.

MORE HEADLINES: DECEMBER 13, 2020

Trump Shows Up Army/Navy Game and the Crowd’s Reaction Says It ALL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEoLwE8CnO0
Tens of Thousands Rally in Washington to Demand Election Integrity https://www.theepochtimes.com/crucible-moment-tens-of-thousands-rally-in-washington-to-demand-election-integrity_3615888.html 
Texas GOP Chair Floats Forming Union of ‘Law-Abiding’ States After SCOTUS Election Ruling https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-gop-chair-floats-forming-union-of-law-abiding-states-after-scotus-election-ruling_3615194.html?
WSJ: Joe Biden’s Deputies Alarmed by Growing Tide of Migrants https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2020/12/11/wsj-joe-bidens-deputies-alarmed-by-growing-tide-of-migrants/
Tucker: Potential criminal activity hidden from Americans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a3Doee98SQ

Artist Plans Display Filled with Human Blood to ‘Confront’ Trump Supporters https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/12/11/artist-plans-display-filled-with-human-blood-to-confront-trump-supporters/

Trumpism Is On the March Whoever is inaugurated on January 20, the spirit of Trumpism, which is the spirit of America, is not vanquished. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/12/trumpism-is-on-the-march/

I confess that I do not usually read columns by David Axelrod, the former senior advisor and campaign strategist for Barack Obama. But I chanced upon “History will scorn the cowards who fear Trump,” one of his CNN columns that was linked at RealClearPolitics, and I glanced through it. It is the usual partisan anti-Trump stuff, full of animadversions about President Trump’s “appalling attempt to undermine democracy,” etc. No surprise there. And let us acknowledge that there are plenty of columns written from the opposite end of the political spectrum that are equally partisan. 

What interested me about Axelrod’s column was not its partisan nature—that, as I say, comes with the territory—but rather the heat and direction of its rhetoric. Axelrod is a canny writer, and his column is an artfully wrought statement, not so much for its argument—Trump and his supporters are terrible for challenging the election, etc.—but for its cunning deployment of utopian virtue signaling. “History,” he says at the end, will not only scorn Trump and all his works, but it will also honor those who “showed courage and fidelity to the rule of law during this time of trial.”

“History,” you see. I would like to know what History will think myself. I sadly acknowledge that I do not know. I am not privy to her secrets. Only people like David Axelrod (and his former boss, Barack Obama) know them, or pretend they know them, just as they know that they are on the side of the angels and that Donald Trump and his crew are nasty “authoritarian” dispensers of “blatant lies” setting a “chilling precedent” by daring to challenge the 2020 presidential election. 

Some people with a macabre sense of humor will find all this funny. They will chuckle as they juxtapose Axelrod’s talk of “fidelity to the rule of law” with the erupting boils of scandal surrounding what Rudy Giuliani apostrophized as the Biden Crime Family. They will smile when they recall Barack Obama’s refusal to enforce the country’s immigration laws when the state of Arizona attempted to police its Southern border. (“The rule of law? We’re beyond all that. We’re for the rule of virtue.”) And they will be rolling in the aisles with laughter when they contrast Axelrod’s high dudgeon about Trump’s efforts to contest the election with the behavior of Hillary’s supporters in 2016.