Footnote: I, Faucius About being late to the party, and other issues raised by readers about today’s “Anthony Fauci, Warmup Dictator” piece Matt Taibbi

https://www.racket.news/p/footnote-i-faucius

The piece published earlier today, “Anthony Fauci Was America’s Warmup Dictator,” prompted a few hot texts and comments that deserve responses. A common theme is that I need to own being late to the topic.

It’s true. Fauci, Covid, and treatment of people like fired podcaster Alison Morrow and censored Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Jay Bhattacharya, and Aaron Kheriaty are on my conscience. Intimidated by the science, I decided early to sidestep pandemic stories, and as a result blew off people who could have used support. Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger were the ones who knew to look up Jay’s name in the Twitter Files. Their focus on Covid turned out to be key in spotting the worst mischief in those documents, because so many pandemic-related removals were based on narrative rather than factual transgressions. Suppression of posts supposedly encouraging “vaccine hesitancy” created the template for true political censorship. This was the moment when platforms and government agencies learned to punish based not on what was written, but the state of mind of the writer, a next-level dystopian technique.

I had to start over to get through jargon-laden texts like the Slack chats of the “Proximal Origin” authors. Going back through pandemic chronology was embarrassing — I can’t believe how much I missed in real time — but also drove home how much olé journalism went on among people who supposedly covered the story every day. There was close to zero meaningful pushback in the early months to public messaging on a slew of issues like natural immunity, age-specific risk, and especially the monstrous infection mortality rate error that sent the country into a panic from which it still hasn’t really recovered:

So, yes, there was an awful lot that anyone paying even minimal attention should have known then, but many official deceptions are also only becoming clear now. An example is this past week’s Public/Racket story about Fauci’s “big tour” promoting zoonotic origin to the CIA, State Department, and White House.

Anthony Fauci Was America’s Warmup Dictator He institutionalized the purposeful lie, suppressed critics, mastered emergency politics, even sold himself as a sex symbol. Anthony Fauci gave the next monster a playbook Matt Taibbi

https://www.racket.news/p/anthony-fauci-was-americas-warmup?r=5mz1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Excerpt

Exposés in Public and Racket this week showed Anthony Fauci engaged in the bureaucratic version of witness tampering, using a dubious “Proximal Origin” paper he helped engineer to divert attention from the possibility that Covid-19, too, was a viral Frankenstein’s monster. Apart from a few conservative outlets, no one picked up the story. How screwed up is the U.S. right now? The nation’s top medical official for years worked in public and private to stifle investigation of our worst health crisis, which increasingly looks like a unparalleled man-made catastrophe. He’s going to skate on it, because upper-class America is now so deep into mass mental illness that it’s more likely to make a sex symbol of corruption than punish it.

DeSantis Highlights Danger Electric Vehicles Present To U.S. National Security And Economy

https://www.dailywire.com/news/desantis-highlights-danger-electric-vehicles-present-to-u-s-national-security-and-economy

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned in an interview over the weekend that the push from Democratic politicians to make everyone have an electric vehicle presents serious risks to U.S. national security and the economy.

DeSantis made the remarks during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” when asked about President Joe Biden joining the picket line with striking auto workers.

“They are going to really hurt the whole automobile industry. It is going to hurt jobs, forcing EVs,” DeSantis said. “A lot of people don’t want EVs, a lot of Americans can’t afford EVs. It will make our country more dependent on communist China which we definitely don’t need to be doing.”

“What they’re doing in California, Newsom and Biden have partnered up, they are requiring these big rigs to be electric,” he continued. “And so, we’re at the Port of Long Beach, this is very important to be able to move product for the entire country’s economy. These big rigs, they go, like 100 miles on an electric, then they’ve got to do a charge. It is totally, totally ridiculous. So, I’m going to come in as president, we’re going to reverse all of those Biden EV mandates, we’re going to save the American automobile.”

DeSantis said that forcing big rigs to become electric will “impact our supply chain” because they need to be recharged so frequently which will “hurt inflation, that will hurt our economy.”

“It’s putting ideology ahead of anything that’s practical, and I think the truckers were really excited we were there to shine a light on some of the insanity that’s going on out California,” he added.

Biden’s Continuing War on Energy Independence Brandon J. Weichert

https://the-pipeline.org/bidens-continuing-war-on-energy-independence/

The Biden administration is terminating the seven remaining oil leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). These seven leases represented the last vestiges of the Trump era of America’s energy dominance. With the termination of these seven leases, the Biden administration has signaled to the world that it’s going to kill affordable energy for Americans along with U.S. energy dominance in the name of “saving our planet.” And just what does president Biden think he’s saving our planet from? “Climate change,” of course.

Thanks to Biden’s short-sighted decision, energy analysts report that the United States will produce 140,000 barrels of oil per day less than previously. This means that American energy consumers can anticipate a concomitant increase in their average fuels costs. Not surprisingly, the ecochondriacs who dominate America’s political, media, and educational sectors today rarely take into account basic economics. In this case, the law of supply and demand. The cut in American energy production will force the U.S. to rely more heavily on unstable foreign sources of fossil fuels, such as those in Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela.

In September, the government of Saudi Arabia surprised the world when it chose to cut oil production. This move has spiked the price of oil on the world market. Many energy experts are projecting that the cost of oil could spike to $100 per barrel or more. Meanwhile, Russia, another major fossil fuel producer, has also decided to cut production. Tack on increasing demand from China, the world’s second-largest economy with one of the largest middle-classes in the world, and you’ve got the perfect storm of energy insecurity for an America thanks to the radical Biden administration climate agenda.

Who benefits from the increased price of oil? The very regimes that the United States has problems with. Although the Saudis are a longtime regional partner in the Middle East, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has long been fraught, even before 9/11. The Biden administration has become especially antagonistic toward the Kingdom over their human rights abuses. Yet, by cutting American domestic energy production, Biden is ensuring the U.S. will be even more dependent on this unstable, even distasteful ally.

House Republicans seek Jan. 6 treatment for Bowman over fire alarm

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/oct/1/house-republicans-want-jamaal-bowman-be-given-jan-/

House Republicans want Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who admitted he pulled a Capitol building’s fire alarm hours before a possible government shutdown, to get the same justice as the Jan. 6 protesters got for their 2021 breach of the Capitol to obstruct official business.

Mr. Bowman, New York Democrat, said in a statement Saturday night that he pulled a Cannon House Office Building fire alarm because he was “rushing to make a vote” and thought that activating the alarm would open a nearby door.

“I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today would not open,” he said. “I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door,” he said.

The alarm’s going off led to an evacuation of the building while police checked for a threat.

It was not clear Sunday whether Mr. Bowman’s setting off the alarm specifically delayed Saturday evening’s House vote on a Republican spending bill to keep the government from shutting down. But it theoretically could have and it unquestionably came while other Democrats were using numerous parliamentary tactics to delay a vote.

“I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused. But I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote,” Mr. Bowman said. “It was the exact opposite — I was trying urgently to get to a vote, which I ultimately did.”

Mr. Bowman said he also met with the Sergeant at Arms and the Capitol Police, at their request, and explained what had happened.

86% Of Americans Want Gov’t Spending Cuts, Including Most Democrats: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/02/86-of-americans-want-govt-spending-cuts-including-most-democrats-ii-tipp-poll/

The government narrowly avoided closing after Congress came to a last-minute, short-term political deal to keep it open for another 45 days. With soaring spending and exploding federal debt, the latest partisan dispute was inevitable. But Americans have a clear retort, according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll: Regardless of party, they want cuts in federal spending, and blame our dangerously soaring debt on Congress’s failure to do so.

The national online poll of 1,378 Americans, taken from Sept. 27-29, asked respondents two questions related to the current budget impasse. The first: “The national debt has exceeded $33 trillion. What do you believe bears the primary responsibility for this situation?”

The message from the poll, which has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points, was clear: Overall, 66% blamed surging debt on “excessive government spending,” followed by “insufficient taxation” (13%), “slow economic growth” (11%) and “unsure” (9%).

Concerning the Fate of Our Nation by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20002/concerning-the-fate-of-our-nation

It appears the Federal Reserve is playing Russian roulette with our nation’s interest rates.

JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon has looked at the potential future of Fed actions and is deeply concerned that it could raise rates as high as 7%. A Bloomberg News report observed:

“If the key rate climbed to 7%, it would have serious implications for American businesses and consumers. Already, economists put the probability of a US recession over the next 12 months at 60%.”

Suggested Plan of Action by U.S. Congress:

A comprehensive “Made in America Policy” to advance and encourage construction projects and job creation, science and medical research; with incentives such as tax credits, bonus depreciation and low-interest mortgages for first-time home buyers and low-cost housing developments.
Restore energy independence, with America as an energy-exporting nation.
Eliminate pork-barrel spending to reduce our $33 trillion national debt and related interest expenses.
Bribery payoffs, dark money and other criminality should be prosecuted.
Ballot bandits and ballot-harvesting are unlawful enterprises, and offenders should be held accountable.
Engage the U.S. military to reverse open borders policies. Mexico and drug cartels should be held accountable for fentanyl deaths and the invasion of illegal immigrants.

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.

‘Whenever They Want to Kill, They Kill’: The Persecution of Christians, August 2023 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20004/whenever-they-want-to-kill-they-kill

Muslims surrounded and murdered a Christian man. — newsintervention.com, August 22, 2023, Pakistan

Around 2 a.m., Muslim Fulani herdsmen launched a raid—the third of its kind on the same Christian majority village where people were sleeping after a long day’s work. They slaughtered 21 villagers. – Report, persecution.org, August 10, Nigeria

“Nigeria’s Middle Belt region that has been rocked by violence with tens of thousands of Christians killed over the past 20 years.” – Report, persecution.org, August 10, Nigeria

Muslims began yelling “Away with him!” Others grabbed the microphone from the pastor and “started tearing off pages of the Bible and Christian literature.” Now, gathered together, the Muslims began stoning him. – morningstarnews,org., August 1, 2023, Uganda

“Others were saying that Allah has granted to them authority to kill all infidels. Another Muslim sprayed what looked like acid [on Pastor Robert], while another hit him with a thorny object and stepped on the evangelist’s back and the stomach.” – Eyewitness, morningstarnews,org., August 23, 2023, Uganda

“[I]nfidels” cannot “preach in this town or come and mislead our people here… We are going to fight in the cause of Allah to kill all of you.” – Sheikh Hiisa Mubaraka, morningstarnews,org., August 23, 2023, Uganda

“There is an ongoing Genocide against 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh.

The blockade of the Lachin Corridor by the Azerbaijani security forces impeding access to any food, medical supplies, and other essentials should be considered a Genocide under Article II, (c) of the Genocide Convention: ‘Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.'” — Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, concerning Artsakh, an ancient Christian region under Azerbaijani control, luismorenoocampo.com, August 4, 2023, Azerbaijan

“Starvation is the invisible Genocide weapon. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.” — Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, concerning Artsakh, an ancient Christian region under Azerbaijani control, luismorenoocampo.com, August 4, 2023, Azerbaijan

“[T]he neighbors told her that they should let her [teenage] daughter marry their son so that she could convert to Islam and be led from the ‘delusion of their faith to the true religion,’ but if she refuses to convert, they have the right to do whatever they wish to her daughter.” – Report, pesecution.org, August 11, 2023, Egypt

The following are among the murders and abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of August 2023.

The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties Christopher Caldwell January 21, 2020

“In this landmark cultural and political history of the last half-century, Christopher Caldwell brilliantly dissects the new progressive establishment, and shows how the reforms of the sixties gradually devolved into intolerance, self-righteousness, and the antithesis of what had started out as naive idealism. A singular analysis by a masterful chronicler of the sixties dreams that have gone so terribly, but predictably, wrong.”
— Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Case for Trump

A major American intellectual makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, instead left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled—and ready to put an adventurer in the White House.

Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences. Even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high—in wealth, freedom, and social stability—and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations.

Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half century, taking readers on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycontin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules.

Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement is a brilliant and ambitious argument about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems—and drove it toward conflict.

From Oligarchs to Plutocrats by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20003/oligarchs-plutocrats

The disastrous consequences of oligarchs meddling in politics are too well known to need more attention here. But what about the plutocrats’ record? The question merits attention, because right now two American plutocrats are engaged in erratic attempts at solving two of the hottest international problems. Elon Musk, the owner of X (Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX, and reputed to be the richest on the man planet, says he has a plan to end the Russian war in Ukraine. For his part, George Soros, now operating through his son Alexander, is busy campaigning for a deal between Tehran and Washington to give President Joe Biden’s forthcoming election campaign the boost it badly needs.

George Soros has been engaged in his grand plan for bringing the Islamic Republic of Iran into the fold for almost three decades.

The scheme reached the peak of its success when the so-called “New York Boys” seized control of the executive branch of government in Tehran under President Hassan Rouhani, a British-educated junior cleric dreaming of leading the Islamic Republic into the “modern world”.

However, as might have been expected, the Soros scenario ultimately failed because “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has bigger dreams for the Islamic Republic. Khamenei believes that the West is heading south to decline while China, Russia and Iran have emerged as leaders for a “New World Order”. Now, however, we know that Khamenei’s leadership troika exists only in his fantasies. China and Russia treat Iran as an untouchable to be kept at arm’s length.

Will the plutocrat’s peace scenario work? I doubt it. Being anti-American and anti-Israel form the Iranian regime’s core identity.

In the 1920s, the American plutocrat Armand Hammer orchestrated a similar scenario with the newly-born Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin. He persuaded Washington to give the Bolsheviks a chance to learn the beauty of getting rich through capitalism and trade. Hammer won the argument and Lenin won the civil war that without the “Great Satan ” pumping money into his war machine, he would have lost.