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50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Is the ‘National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality’ just a start for the Biden Administration? By Eric Utter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/is_the_national_strategy_on_gender_equity_and_equality_just_a_start_for_the_biden_administration.html

Vice-President Kamala Harris proudly took to Twitter to announce that the White House has issued “the first ever National Gender Strategy.”

 No wonder she and President Biden haven’t had time to visit the border with Mexico.

The official document, adorned with a miniature White House under which the words “The White House” and “Washington” appear, is officially titled “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality.”

Rumor has it that administration officials also considered naming the vital strategic document “National Strategy On Gender Equality And Equity” before opting for “National Strategy On Gender Equity And Equality.” One unnamed official reportedly said heated debate ran on for many hours between those who thought one or the other title was itself more equal and equitable.

In any case, Americans should thank God — well, actually, Uncle Sam — that their federal government now has an official Gender Strategy. And the administration isn’t expected to take much time to savor its accomplishment before attempting to put together a comprehensive blueprint for the consumption of baked goods. Insiders say a “National Strategy On Pastries And Bagel Eating” could be unveiled as early as next month. And that, they say, could be followed by a program detailing a national strategy for the advancement of origami.

Some “MAGA” types, and other opponents of the administration, have mocked the creation of a “national gender strategy,” and have suggested that a strategy for dealing with China, Russia, Iran or North Korea would have been more pertinent, timely, and beneficial. Other critics claim that many Americans would have preferred the rollout of programs for dealing with the border crisis, economy, national debt, and ongoing pandemic with the subsequent loss of their personal liberty.

What ‘wokeness’ really means By Jarrad Winter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/what_wokeness_really_means.html

“I am an American. I have no skin color worthy of note, no particular geographical heritage I care to claim as my own. My race is called Freedom, my People come in every hue. I will stand with my brothers and sisters of all skin hues against every tyranny known to man. I will not back down. I refuse to be afraid. I’m an American, the most fearsome ethnicity ever devised.”

The tacit premise of Wokeness is that minorities are intellectually deficient and hopelessly oppressed by everything around them (thanks to the inherent racism of all White people and the irredeemably xenophobic the institutions that they created).

The problem with calling Wokeness an anti-racism movement is self-evident. Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow people are not dumber than White people. Some of my favorite brainy individuals could never be mistaken for a White Supremacists (except maybe by the delusional NPR).  Moreover, of all the minorities I’ve known and befriended during my lifetime, not a single one has ever expressed any belief that Whitey is on the hunt for them, rigging everything from Math to English against them. I’m the type to specifically ask questions like:

“Hey, Bro… with all the talk of racism everywhere, do you feel like your life is consumed by White folks oppressing you at every turn?”

The reason I’ve never received a “yes” answer to any such question is that I tend to have responsible friends — skin color in no way part of the equation. What Woke really rests on is people who don’t take personal responsibility, the victim mentality type.

John Durham’s Salad Shooter Knowingly concocting a fake narrative to fool the FBI and CIA is going to affect many Hillary Clinton campaign players, special counsel John Durham has let it be known in discovery. by George Parry

https://spectator.org/john-durhams-salad-shooter/

This is the sixth in a series of articles analyzing the federal grand jury indictment charging lawyer Michael Sussmann with making a materially false statement to the FBI’s General Counsel. The indictment spelled out Sussmann’s involvement in a thus-far uncharged conspiracy to create a false narrative that was calculated to demonstrate a secret channel of internet communications between the Trump Organization and the Russian Alfa-Bank.

Recently Sussmann’s lawyers moved for a bill of particulars alleging that the indictment lacks sufficient detail and clarity for their client to prepare his defense.

Special Counsel John Durham’s brief in opposition pointed out that the 27-page indictment amply satisfies the legal requirement that it need only include a plain, concise, and definitive written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged. Moreover, Durham’s opposing brief also points out that the prosecution has already provided the defense with ample clarification by way of expansive and massive discovery.

According to Durham, on October 7, the government “made its first production of discovery to the defense” which “included more than 6,000 documents, comprising approximately 81,000 pages.” The documents were “received in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to fifteen separate individuals, entities, and organizations — including among others, political organizations, a university, university researchers, an investigative firm, and numerous companies.”

The prosecution is also “working expeditiously to declassify large volumes of materials” which it expects to provide to the defense “[w]ithin approximately two weeks” which will include, “among other things,” the following:

More than 30 declassified reports of interviews conducted in the course of Durham’s investigation;
Emails and other documents shown to witnesses during the interviews;
Investigators’ notes taken during the interviews;
Transcripts of grand jury testimony for multiple witnesses;
The majority of the FBI’s electronic “case file” pertaining to its investigation of the now discredited Trump-Alfa Bank allegations which Sussmann is accused of presenting to the FBI’s General Counsel;
Emails, memoranda, reports, and other records obtained from “Agency-2” (identified elsewhere as the CIA), including “write-ups” of Sussmann’s meetings with CIA personnel in which Sussmann is accused of providing the false Trump-Alfa Bank allegations.

The slippery semantics of Anthony Fauci Fauci’s absolutist answer on gain-of-function research from May has proven to be false Stephen Miller

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/slippery-semantics-anthony-fauci-gain-function-coronavirus/

“I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China. However, I will repeat again: the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded ‘gain-of-function’ research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” 

That was Dr Anthony Fauci during a May 2021 congressional hearing. It kicked off a months-long national media effort to frame questions around gain-of-function research and US-taxpayer-funded virus manipulation as a Royal Rumble between Fauci and Senator Rand Paul.

When he testifies or sits for friendly network interviews, Fauci depends on semantics. He relies on the naivety of the interviewer and the audience, employing terminology and definitions he believes only he understands.

But like the ponytailed Chad in Good Will Hunting attempting to flex his big brain, Fauci’s arguments fall apart in front of the initiated.

Last week, Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director of the NIH, sent a letter to Congress saying that EcoHealth Alliance failed to report certain aspects of the experimental work it had been conducting in China on bats and bat-borne viruses. Tabak pledged that the NIH and Fauci’s NIAID would take administrative action, but not much more than that.

So Fauci’s absolutist answer from May has proven to be false. At the very least, the doctor needs to answer directly why he chose to deflect questions on gain-of-function research, something his own agency is claiming it had no idea was happening. How could have Fauci have denied back in May something so “categorically” if EcoHealth Alliance, run by Fauci ally Peter Daszak, had failed to report the full extent of their experiments?

When Fauci sat for a cozy Sunday interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, he once again deployed his semantic game on the interviewer. Stephanopoulos framed the revealing letter from Tabak as “critics pouncing”:

“Some critics and analysts have seized on that to say you and others have misled the public about US funding of this so-called gain-of-function research. The NIH says that’s false.”

Joe from Scranton? More like Bogus Biden His presidency is a slap in the face to the working class Amber Athey

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/scranton-joe-bogus-biden-inauthentic-presidency/

During the 2020 election, Joe Biden positioned himself as the Democrat who could win the working class from President Donald Trump. “Joe from Scranton,” as the media affectionately calls him, was bringing normalcy back to the White House.

I wrote last September that this characterization of the Syracuse law grad and lifelong politician was a sham: “Biden has built his career on being dishonest to working-class Americans,” I warned.

Ten months into his presidency, and this has proven true. Trump may love a good show  —”stay tuned!” — but it is Joe Biden who oversees the most inauthentic administration, one that is shockingly divorced from the lives of everyday Americans.

The country is currently facing a massive breakdown in the global supply chain, leading to shortages of goods and increased prices for consumers. My local grocery store boasted large gaps on food shelves Thursday morning. A friend of mine was unable to buy a simple coffee from Starbucks. Others have stumbled across even worse examples of the burgeoning crisis.

Inflation and shortages are no joke for working class families, who spend a larger percentage of their paycheck trying to keep their pantries stocked. The White House’s response, however, has been to deflect from how to fix the breakdown and instead mock Americans who are concerned that Santa may not be stuffing himself down the chimney this Christmas.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki snarked during a briefing this week that the supply chain chaos can be summed up by “the tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed.” Chief of staff Ron Klain asserted on Twitter that inflation and shortages are “high class problems.” Psaki previously insisted that families aren’t comparing the cost of goods to pre-pandemic prices, saying, “We all understand the American people are not looking at cost-to-cost comparisons from this year to two years ago; they’re looking at cost-to-cost comparisons to their checkbooks from eight months ago or 12 months ago.” She made a patently false claim that gas prices are “well in line” with recent decades.

Then there was the defensiveness with which the administration responded to backlash over transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg taking two months of “paternity leave” with his newly adopted children while ports are backed up with shipping containers. Those who rightfully pointed out that Buttigieg either should have come back to work early or that the White House should have installed a temporary replacement were accused of not supporting paid parental leave or of being homophobic.

Obama Gets Wrecked Over Lies About the ‘Culture Wars’ Katie Pavlich

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/10/25/obama-gets-wrecked-over-lies-about-virginia-governors-race-n2597954?utm_campaign=inarticle

Over the weekend, former President Barack Obama made a visit to Virginia and campaigned for flailing Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe. 

During a campaign stop in Richmond, Obama claimed Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin and conservative media are waging “phony” culture wars. 

Obama’s remarks came shortly after it was revealed a girl was raped at a Loudoun County school by a “gender fluid” boy wearing a skirt. The boy was then quietly moved to another school, where he allegedly assaulted another student. The Loudoun County school board, which has been pushing transgender policies onto children and parents, knew about the situation and covered it up. 

To say the least, Obama’s remarks were unwelcome, out-of-touch and quickly refuted. 

Schiff, Democrats Pivot Hard on Justice Department Election Interference Americans want, and expect, the Justice Department to operate free of political influence. But it is Democrats who torched the department’s credibility. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/25/schiff-democrats-pivot-hard-on-justice-department-election-interference/

For five years, U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) insisted, without evidence, that the Russians helped Donald Trump win the White House in 2016. Schiff, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), first seeded the collusion narrative in July 2016—the same month James Comey’s FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane—by falsely claiming Kremlin hackers confiscated thousands of emails off the Democratic National Committee’s server, correspondence damaging to Hillary Clinton.

From that point forward, Schiff leveraged his political power and newfound cable news stardom to perpetuate the lie that the 2016 presidential election was illegitimate.

So it’s beyond ironic that Schiff now sits on the January 6 select committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s latest weapon to annihilate TrumpWorld. After spending every waking minute during Trump’s presidency to conduct what author Lee Smith called The Permanent Coup, Schiff is flipping his coup-plotting script on anyone who questions the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency.

What’s even more ironic is Schiff and the January 6 committee members now accuse Trump’s former Justice Department officials of attempting to “overturn the results” of the 2020 presidential election. After all, no other government organization aided Schiff more in his bug-eyed crusade to take down Donald Trump than the U.S. Department of Justice. (Comey, it’s helpful to recall, bolstered Schiff’s now-debunked accusation that the Russians hacked the DNC email system.)

Crossfire Hurricane—which involved FBI informants, a garbage “dossier” sourced by a DNC/Clinton campaign operative, and illicit FISA warrants authorized by top Justice Department officials—morphed into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a two-year legal and political rampage that failed to unearth evidence of collusion but did plenty of damage to innocent people in the interim.

A cast of partisan characters—James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Bruce Ohr, Rod Rosenstein, Kevin Clinesmith, to name just a few—held over from Obama’s Justice Department animated the nonstop siege against Trump and anyone in his orbit.

Even after Trump appointed William Barr attorney general in the spring of 2019, the department continued to play political games. Barr announced in October 2020 that a report from John Durham, the U.S. attorney investigating the corrupt origins of Crossfire Hurricane, would not be released before Election Day.

Killer Cop Gets Off Light Minnesota does the Somali shuffle. By Lloyd Billingsley

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/25/killer-cop-gets-off-light/

Back in 2017, Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor gunned down Justine Ruszczyk Damond, who had called 911 to report a possible rape. In 2019, Noor was convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 12-and-a-half years in prison. On October 21, Judge Kathryn Quaintance resentenced Noor to just 57 months. These events invite a review of the case. 

The 40-year-old Damond, a dual citizen of Australia and the United States, heard a woman being assaulted and called 911. Officer Noor and partner Matthew Harrity failed to telephone Damond, who called 911 a second time to check on their arrival.

When Damond approached the police car, Noor suddenly drew his weapon and fired. The bullet struck an abdominal artery and the victim, who was to be married within a month, lost so much blood that prompt medical attention might not have saved her.

The Somali-born Noor, who had been on the force for two years, claimed he fired to protect the life of his partner. Three days after the shooting, Harrity claimed he heard a loud bang on the squad car. None of the forensic evidence showed that the victim had even touched the car. 

“The use of force was objectionable, unreasonable and violated police policies and training,” expert witness Derrick Hacker testified during the trial in April 2019. “No reasonable officer would have perceived a threat by somebody coming up to their squad.” Expert witness Timothy Longo told the court that a string of bad decisions led to the shooting death. “I don’t believe they were logical or rational at all,” Longo explained. “This was an unprovoked, violent response.” 

Noor’s attorney, Thomas Plunkett, told the court that what “really caused” the shooting was “the fear that continues to permeate our society. The police are afraid of the people, the people are afraid of the police.” The Minneapolis jury didn’t buy it. 

Six of the 12  jurors, including two women, were people of color. They took less than 12 hours to find Noor guilty of third-degree murder. Damond’s family was satisfied with the verdict, and the city of Minneapolis agreed to a $20 million settlement with the victim’s family. 

Noor’s cousin Goth Ali told reporters the sentence was “an injustice” and charged that Noor “didn’t get a fair trial.” The Somali-American Police Association (SAPA) said in a statement, “The institutional prejudices against people of color, including officers of color, have heavily influenced the verdict of this case.” In this case, the “officer of color” was the shooter, and the victim a person of pallor. 

As it turned out, Noor’s prison term was the average sentence for a cop convicted of a murder committed on duty. In Colorado, James Ashby received a 16-year sentence for killing Jack Jacquez after a confrontation in 2014. Roy Oliver, the Texas officer who shot Jordan Edwards, 15, was sentenced to 15 years.

On February 1, 2021 a Minnesota appeals court upheld Mohamed Noor’s murder conviction. On September 15, the Minnesota Supreme Court tossed Noor’s murder conviction, arguing that, since the officer directed his actions at a specific person, third-degree murder didn’t fit the case. 

COVID Statistics by Dummies for Dummies Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/10/covid-statistics-by-dummies-for-dummies/

“More mundanely, two problems attend the use of statistics. One is sheer statistical ineptitude among medical researchers and the media. A second is confirmation bias among researchers aiming for plaudits and publications rather than the truth. A bias common to many fields of inquiry; including, of course, most notably, to climate change.”

Statistics should be kept out of bounds to non-statisticians; most particularly, right now, to medical researchers and epidemiologists. I say this because of the statistical garbage they’re cobbling together and feeding to the gullible press. Incidentally, this is no disrespect to the press. It’s just a matter of fact not condemnation.

To wit, a headline in The Telegraph (UK): “Vaccinated people dying of Covid have average age of 85 and five underlying illnesses.” It turns out that this result came out of the Italian Health Institute which had examined deaths from COVID between February 1 and October 5, 2021. And the point? To show that deaths among the unvaccinated occurred at a younger average age of 78; to boot, suffering only four underlying illnesses. It’s worth a laugh.

How many 85-year-old Italians with five serious underlying illnesses survived the first waves of the virus? I suggest that the population of such people would have been seriously and disproportionately depleted. It is therefore unsurprising that their marginally younger and fitter septuagenarian cousins are more recently taking the brunt. Was this allowed for? I doubt it. Also, it is more likely that those aged around 85 are in protected care than those aged around 78. Was this allowed for? I doubt it.

I have seen research on people in hospital which is then extended to the broader population. For example, an observation (from a CDC study) that the unvaccinated are disproportionately represented in hospital beds was spun by the press to suggest that those vaccinated are less likely to be infected and thus less likely to pass on the disease. But if the vaccines work to reduce the severity of the illness, then there may be many more people out there who are vaccinated passing on the disease than there are unvaccinated people. Who knows? What we do know is that the population in hospital is unlikely to be representative of people not in hospital. Wrong population upon which to base any general conclusion.

Liz Peek: Biden vs. Americans – his priorities, like climate change, ignore top worries of most voters Joe Biden has suffered the worst ratings slide of any president since World War II

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-polls-ignoring-voter-concerns-liz-peek

“When a majority (52%) of middle-income Americans and of Independents (51%) think Biden has abandoned them, Democrats should hit the panic button and radically rethink their agenda. Unhappily for Joe Biden, a reboot seems unlikely, as does a turnaround in his ratings anytime soon.”

Joe Biden has suffered the worst ratings slide of any president since World War II. That is probably not the kind of history Biden hoped to make when he secretly met with White House chroniclers in March and asked them how to be a “consequential” president like FDR.  

Why has the country turned against Uncle Joe? Simple: Biden is ignoring voters’ concerns. 

Voters are worried about inflation, jobs, crime, education and our open border, while the Biden White House is laser-focused on climate change, transgender rights, racism and reducing inequality. 

In a recent CBS/YouGov poll, only 37% of respondents said Biden and Democrats are focused on issues they “care a lot about.” That’s not good. 

Joe Biden is not walking down this misguided path alone; he is hauling nearly every agency of his government right along with him.  

For instance, the FBI, instead of focusing on the surging murder rate in our nation, has been ordered to hunt down “domestic terrorists” among the parents rightfully objecting to the racist curriculums being taught to their children.  

The State Department, having abandoned hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan and grievously misplaying every encounter to date with China, recently took time out to celebrate “International Pronouns Day,” issuing an explainer about “Pronoun Proficiency.”