Fauci Admits It: Trump Was Right About ‘Living With’ COVID

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/29/fauci-is-now-copying-trump-on-covid/

Donald Trump, Oct. 21, 2020: “We’re learning to live with it. We have no choice.”
Anthony Fauci, Nov. 28, 2021: “We’re going to have to start living with COVID.”

How many times did former President Donald Trump say something that was dismissed as reckless, heartless, stupid, or flat-out wrong only to find out later that he was right? Whatever the number is, add one more.

Over the weekend, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, admitted that “we’re going to have to start living with COVID. I believe that’s the case because I don’t think we’re going to eradicate it.”

Fauci’s comment came amid rising cases in the U.S. and the new “Omicron” variant that has been spreading in South Africa and is apparently more resistant to vaccines. The World Health Organization declared Omicron as a “variant of concern,” and Fauci said it will likely land here.

But wait. Why would Fauci say that we have to start learning to live with COVID?

After all, Joe “Trust-the-Science” Biden said that “I will take care of this. I will end this. I will make sure we have a plan.”

Oops.

Reporters, Question Yourselves . By Debra Saunders

tps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/11/28/reporters_question_yourselves_146782.html

If you have any doubt about whether the White House press corps has a different standard for President Joe Biden than for former President Donald Trump, consider the press briefings that followed their first physicals as president at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Biden’s physical occurred Friday.

On reflection, Team Trump was too transparent when then Press Secretary Sarah Sanders brought Ronny Jackson, then physician to the president, to the briefing room podium where he answered press questions for nearly an hour in January 2018.

Here’s a sampling of some of the more egregious press questions.

— “Are you confident of his prostate health?”

— “There have been reports that the president has forgotten names, that he is repeating himself. Are you ruling out things like early-onset Alzheimer’s? Are you looking at dementialike  symptoms?”

(Jackson disclosed that Trump had been given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test and scored 30 out of 30.)

— “Do you have a life expectancy range for him based on his results?”

— “Did you see any evidence of bone spurs?” — a reference to the cause for Trump’s fifth Vietnam-era draft deferment. (Jackson said the medical team didn’t check for bone spurs.)

— “Did you take a waist measurement for the president?”

— Given Trump’s age, then 71, “Will you give cognitive testing in the future?”

— “Does he take any sleep aids?” (Yes, Ambien occasionally during foreign trips.)

— “How much sleep does he get on average?”

CNN sent Dr. Sanjay Gupta to the briefing. Gupta challenged Jackson for asserting that Trump’s health was “excellent” for his age, given that Trump was taking cholesterol-lowering medication and Gupta saw evidence of heart disease and borderline obesity. (Jackson credited Trump’s health to “great genes.”)

— “Does he watch too much TV?”

— “Do you have any concerns about the president’s use of Twitter?”

— “Is there anyone on the president’s medical team, such as a psychiatrist or psychologist, whose job it is to monitor the president’s emotional state or watch for potential psychiatric problems or indicators of those?” (“That falls upon me,” Jackson responded.)

Not all of the above questions are out of bounds, but the very number of questions about Trump’s mental state was over-the-top. If then Press Secretary Sarah Sanders’ plan had been to make the press look like a pack of jackals to the GOP base, she succeeded.

Antifa Member Who Took Axe to Senate Office Given Probation and his Axe Back: Jonathan Turley

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/11/26/antifa-member-who-took-axe-to-senate-office-given-probation-and-his-axe-back/

We have been discussing the continued incarceration of many individuals for their participation in the Jan. 6th riot.  Despite claims that the riot was an insurrection, the vast majority of defendants have been given relatively minor charges. Nevertheless, the Justice Department has insisted on holding many without bail and some have received longer sentences, like Jacob Chansley (aka “QAnon Shaman”) who was given a 41-month sentence for “obstructing a federal proceeding.”

Thomas “Tas” Alexander Starks, 31, of Lisbon, N.D., faced a strikingly different approach by the Justice Department. The self-avowed Antifa member took an axe to the office of Sen. John Hoeven’s in Fargo on Dec. 21, 2020. Federal sentencing guidelines suggested 10–16 months in prison but he was only sentenced to probation and fined $2,784 for restitution . . . he then reportedly mocked the FBI for returning his axe.  Others declared him a hero and Democratic politicians pitched in for his legal defense.

Starks was caught on videotape axing the door of the congressional office. He pleaded guilty to a single charge of destruction of government property.  The case has received little attention from the media outside of conservative sites.

Starks has made clear that he was neither apologetic nor deterred from the use of such violence. He has posted under the Facebook moniker, “Paul Dunyan,” an apparent reference to his preferred use of an axe as a form of political expression.  He displays the Antifa symbol and, while awaiting sentencing, reportedly wrote: “I am ANTIFA. I will always attack fascists, racial superiority complexes built around nationalism that promotes genocide to fuel a war machine is the worst humanity has to offer.”

It is reminiscent of the defiance shown by arrested Antifa member Jason Charter, who declared “The Movement is winning” after his own arrest.

Shanghai’s Data Exchange to fuel Fourth Industrial Revolution David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/2021/11/shanghais-data-exchange-to-fuel-fourth-industrial-revolution/

NEW YORK – Shanghai’s new Data Exchange began trading on November 26, in what might be one of the transformational events of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Initial data offerings include 20 products from China Eastern Airlines, Cosco Shipping, China Mobile Insight and other Chinese firms, according to the Exchange’s website.

The creation of capital markets in the West made it possible to mobilize the savings of the middle class to build the canals and railways that supported the First Industrial Revolution.

The 4th Industrial Revolution is being driven by data. The emergence of an efficient market in data has implications as profound as the founding of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in 1601, the funding of America’s public debt in 1790, or the financing of the debt of the Napoleonic Wars.

China’s emphasis on data as a factor of production breaks not only with Marxist economic theory but also with the classical English economics that Marx adapted. From the standpoint of economic theory, it is perhaps the most anti-communist innovation of the past century, and all the more remarkable as a programmatic statement of the Chinese Communist Party.

Value maximization

Here we go again Covid: Ghettos and lepers and O Mi Cron! Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/here-we-go-again-covid-ghettos-and-lepers-and-o-mi-cron/

Here we go again, Covid: Ghettos and lepers and O Mi Cron!

Congrats to Australia. Just coming out of 262 days of lockdowns. But wait. Here comes Omicron! And here comes government to save us. And sadly, so many want to be saved.

Australia has opened…sort of.

“However, stores selling non-essential goods won’t open until 80% of the state is double vaccinated and masks are required inside and out.”

Oh so the non-vaccinated will be the cause of keeping non-essential closed (I love that term – humans deciding that some are more essential than others – usually government employees are essential) Nothing like putting a mark of Cain or the sign of the leper on these people.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) declared a state of emergency Friday in response to a cold-weather surge of coronavirus infections and the threat of the newly detected omicron variant, making her state one of the first in the country to impose measures against the mutation that was recently sequenced in southern Africa.

Remember back 2 years? It started with a 2 week lockdown to flatten the curve. It’s all about the greater good. Dear self-righteous, sanctimonious, self-serving Liberals – you talk about caring for the other. Until the other makes you uncomfortable.  So you stood with the rules about lockdowns which wiped out the poorest amongst us. Their family businesses destroyed while all were advised to go the big box stores – it would be safer there. Really? It’s OK for hundreds to pile into Walmart – some having to take public transit to get there; you were OK with that. And the shutting down of houses of worship where people with addictions met regularly. But the liquor store and cannabis stores remained open. And suicide went up as did opioid overdose and mental illness.

Well, as we open up and let those non-essential people come back into the world, we are not done. Those unvaccinated! How dare they? We need to mark them with the Mark of Cain, or a leper. They shall not be allowed to be out and about with us!

Complete Madness In The Biden Administration: Energy Policy Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-11-27-complete-madness-in-the-biden-administration-energy-policy

Is President Biden doing anything right? To this observer, his policies range from at best merely incompetent, to at worst malicious hatred of the country and people whose interests he was elected to advance. Somewhere in between those two extremes we have Biden’s energy policy. In this arena, appropriate adjectives would be inconsistent, incoherent, and destructive. Don’t even attempt to make sense of it. To summarize in one word, it is complete madness.

I’m old enough to remember the 1970s, and the two “oil shocks” that occurred during that decade. A brief summary of the history can be found in this 2012 piece from Foreign Policy. By 1970/71, U.S. oil production had peaked and begun to decline. 1973 brought the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, and OPEC halted oil shipments to the U.S., Western Europe and Japan. By January 1974, crude oil prices on the world markets had “more than quadrupled” (from around $3 to $12 per barrel). Further constraints on supply in the late 70s, most notably a big drop in supply from Iran following the ouster of the Shah, were followed by a further tripling of the price, this time from about $12 to about $36 per barrel. Government efforts at price controls were largely unsuccessful at restraining prices at the pump, but did cause shortages and lines at gas stations that maddened consumers. Without adequate domestic oil supply, the U.S. became a supplicant to the big international exporters, mainly OPEC and Russia. As reported in that Foreign Policy piece, President Carter reacted by “mak[ing] energy independence the central ambition of his presidency.”

Energy independence was a bi-partisan goal of American Presidents and of the Congress, until President Obama came along. Obama had the opposite strategy. He had drunk the climate Kool-Aid, and thought that the right goals were to restrict the production of fossil fuel energy, which would cause prices to rise and thereby restrict consumption. The famous quote from Obama, uttered in 2008 during his first presidential campaign, was “under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket.” Although that statement specifically dealt with electricity prices, the same principle would apply as well to all energy prices. And Obama sought to put his strategy into practice, both by putting proposed “cap-and-trade” legislation before Congress, and by attempting to use his executive powers to restrict domestic fossil fuel development. However, the cap-and-trade legislation failed in Congress, and domestic “frackers” worked around Obama’s federal restrictions to greatly expand U.S. domestic oil and gas production, mostly on private lands.

Lighting Hanukkah Candles Under the Swastika’s Shadow By Daniella J. Greenbaum (12/12/2017)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/opinion/happy-hanukkah-candles-swastikas.html

Tonight, and for the next seven nights, millions of Jews around the world will light a menorah to celebrate Hanukkah. Akiva Mansbach will be one of them. But his isn’t just any menorah. In its multigenerational life, its light has also touched the darkness.

In Kiel, Germany, in 1932, Rabbi Dr. Akiva Posner and his wife, Rachel, lit the menorah and placed it on their window sill. Directly across the street was a Nazi flag.

One of the essential components of Hanukkah is “persumei nisa,” or publicizing the miracle — the miracle being the triumph of a small band of Jews, the Maccabees, who led a revolt and conquered their Seleucid persecutors in the second century before the Common Era. As tradition has it, when the Holy Temple was being rededicated and its golden menorah lit, there was only enough oil to last for one day. Miraculously, the small supply burned for eight.

The Talmud contains detailed guidelines of how to publicize the miracle, with extensive commentary on where the menorah would be most visible to people walking by. The rabbis also discussed foot traffic in marketplaces: They wanted to make sure that people lit their candles when pedestrians were flooding the streets.

There’s one more crucial detail the rabbis insisted on: In a time of danger, they said, the lighting of the Hanukkah candles can take place in one’s home, on one’s table, away from the gaze of the hostile outside world.

But this escape clause didn’t suffice for the Posners. In 1932, just before Hitler’s rise to power, their menorah shone brightly for all their neighbors to see. Its light — and the meaning behind it — was made all the more incandescent given the symbol of Jew-hatred hanging from the building across the street.

The poignancy of the juxtaposition didn’t escape Rachel Posner. She took a photograph of the menorah and the swastika. On its back, she scribbled in German, “ ‘Death to Judah’ so the flag says, ‘Judah will live forever,’ so the light answers.”

Rabbi Posner, Rachel and their three children left Germany for the Holy Land in 1933. Rabbi Posner managed to persuade many of his congregants to leave as well.

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: “NOBLESSE OBLIGE”

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

The words noblesse oblige refer to a sense of responsibility of the privileged few to act with magnanimity toward the less privileged – to be responsible for their welfare, but not necessarily to let them into their living rooms. While the term was originally associated with French-speaking British nobility in their treatment of natives in their colonial empire and serfs on their vast estates, it can be said to reflect a conspicuous self-righteousness on the part of today’s Progressive elites who want to preserve their status, while using taxpayer money to keep happy an expanding body of welfare recipients.

Elitism, we are taught, is un-American, yet it is a natural phenomenon. Every society produces elites. Tsarist Russia had theirs and so did the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany had its elite and so does Communist China today. Colonial America had its planters in the south and its merchants in the north. The Industrial Revolution, in the United States, produced the “Gilded Age” in the second half of the 19th Century, giving the Nation New York’s “four hundred,” made famous through the novels of Edith Wharton.

Elitism is inequitable when it becomes entrenched, as it is in despotic countries, like China, North Korea, Cuba and Iran. The top of the economic, social and political ladder should never be comfortable: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” spoke Henry IV in Shakespeare’s eponymous play. A free and democratic country should be open to new ideas and allow free expression. It should praise individualism, independence and self-reliance. It must encourage debate and recognize universal truths; it must commend honesty and integrity. The elitist class should be fluid, not static.

“Christians Enjoy No Rights in This Country”: The Persecution of Christians, October 2021 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17980/persecution-of-christians-october

Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old Muslim man of Somali descent, lunged at and repeatedly stabbed British MP Sir David Amess with a knife. Amess, 69, died soon after…. It is worth noting that, when it comes to severely persecuting and slaughtering Christians, Somalia is the world’s third-worst ranked nation, after Afghanistan (#2) and North Korea (#1) . — United Kingdom.

“The Christians are treated as slaves bounded to Muslims… Christians enjoy no rights, no dignity, and no protection in this country. The overall system of society is based on religious hatred against Christians and other minorities.” — Asif Muniwar, local human rights defender; International Christian Concern, October 12, 2021, Pakistan

[T]hree Christian workers died after Muslim emergency staff refused to rescue them because Christians are supposedly “ritually unclean.” Problems began when the Muslim employers of sewage worker Michael Masih, aged 33, threatened to fire him unless he entered a highly toxic sewer without any personal protective equipment or masks…. “An emergency team got to the sewer within 10 minutes but on arrival they looked down the pipe and could see the men but refused to save them. This was on account that they were choorah [dirty cleaners] and would cause the Muslims to become ritually impure.” — British Asian Christian Association, October 8, 2021, Pakistan.

“Many shops were looted after they set them on fire. Church of Christ in All Nation (COCIN) was also burned down…. “[M]any houses were set ablaze. Bulls used for farming were also killed.” A local eyewitness said the murderers were dressed in Nigerian army uniforms and traveling in two vans owned by the Nigerian army. — International Christian Concern, October 17, 2021, Nigeria, which U.S. Secretary of Antony Blinken just removed from its 2021 List of “Countries of Particular Concern”.

“[T]he herdsmen returned and shot [Dr. Habila Solomon, a medical doctor who also served as a Christian pastor] in his chest, killing him instantly. He was the reason why many people saw hope…. In the course of doing missions, God used him to provide drinking water, shelter, free education and feed the poor…. [and] also provided the [Muslim] herdsmen and their families with free medical care.” — Morning Star News, October 25, 2021, Nigeria.

“Nigeria’s government seems unable or unwilling to stop the growing carnage…. More Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria in the last year than in the entire Middle East. Unless we find our voice, what is happening in Nigeria will move relentlessly toward a Christian genocide.” — Former U.S. Under Secretary of Education, Gary L. Bauer, calling Nigeria a “killing field” of Christians;” The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom 2021 annual report; Nigeria.

Although the abduction, rape, and forced conversion to Islam of Christian girls and other religious minorities is rampant in Pakistan—with Muslim police, judges, and authorities often siding with the kidnappers and rapists—the nation is now witnessing record breaking numbers…. a nearly 300% increase from 2020…. This report comes on the heels of the Pakistani government’s rejection of an anti-forced conversion bill, which would have helped protect such minor girls. — Union of Catholic Asian News, October 14 and 18, 2021, Pakistan.

“My cross has been with me for 40 years. It is part of me, and my faith, and it has never caused anyone any harm…. At this hospital there are members of staff who go to a mosque four times a day and no one says anything to them. Hindus wear red bracelets on their wrists and female Muslims wear hijabs in theatre. Yet my small cross around my neck was deemed so dangerous that I was no longer allowed to do my job.” — NHS nurse Mary Onuoha, who had fled from Uganda to the UK for religious freedom; Daily Mail, October 5, 2021, United Kingdom.

“Why do some NHS employers feel that the cross is less worthy of protection or display than other religious attire?” — Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre; Daily Mail, October 5, 2021, United Kingdom.

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of October 2021:

The COVID Follies Play Again We are not yet done with the COVID follies, not by a long shot. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/27/the-covid-follies-play-again/

I was hoping I would never have to write about the Wuhan flu, aka COVID-19, again. I overdosed on it in days of yore. During the Great Panic of 2020, I wrote about it many times.  I really have nothing much new to add. 

Now, as then, I have been astonished that a disease that poses a serious threat to a tiny sliver of the population—some of the elderly, and those with underlying (new vocabulary word!) “co-morbidities” like obesity—should have caused such widespread panic, not to mention such an acrid authoritarian response from so many governments. I was also astonished, and correspondingly disheartened, by the alacrity with which people the world over turned themselves into sheep, allowing their elected representatives (where such existed) to herd them like cattle: docile, bovine, will-less. But that’s how it was. 

Now of course, everything has changed. We have a smorgasbord of vaccines with (we are told) something like a 95 percent success rate. We have a wide range of effective therapeutics, including the once-scorned (because Trump-endorsed) ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, not to mention monoclonal antibody treatment. Right around the corner, I am told, Pfizer and other members of the Big Pharma brotherhood will be offering a pill that (according to some) will cut hospitalizations and death from COVID by almost 90 percent. So the world is once again free, maskless, social. 

Just kidding. 

But why, you might ask, are we still masking up, locking down, and otherwise acting like savages who forgot yesterday’s human sacrifice and now are worried about what the angry, unpropitiated gods might do? 

I like to point out that the great, but under-remarked upon, thing about COVID is that it has all but abolished death from old age. Readers will remember that Florida motorcycle driver who was in a dreadful accident, poor thing, and was spread like raspberry jam across the highway. Nevertheless, assiduous EMTs, or maybe it was some junior assistant of Anthony Fauci, collected enough goo to perform the requisite test and, bingo, he, or it, “tested positive” and was put down at first as a death from COVID.