The White House Prepared for a Pandemic A September 2019 report laid the groundwork for Operation Warp Speed.By Joel M. Zinberg and  Tomas J. Philipson

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-white-house-prepared-for-a-pandemic-11597792593

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched the Democrats’ broadside against the Trump administration’s Covid-19 response. “Our current federal government is dysfunctional and incompetent,” he told virtual conventioneers Monday in a recorded speech. “It couldn’t fight off the virus. In fact, it didn’t even see it coming.”

The report was produced by the Council of Economic Advisers at the behest of the National Security Council’s biodefense team. It detailed the large health and economic losses that could happen from flu pandemic in the U.S. The report discussed how the lack of private market incentives had led to underinvestment in developing and using innovative technologies that can quickly produce vaccines for a new virus.

Influenza vaccines have primarily been manufactured in chicken eggs for the past 70 years. The process is too slow to produce a new vaccine for a novel, unexpected virus and impairs the vaccines’ efficacy against the flu. Public-private partnerships created under a 2006 statute led to the development of newer, faster manufacturing techniques. But these vaccines are more expensive and haven’t been widely adopted.

The main issue is that vaccine developers aren’t rewarded for innovation. Their research-and-development and investment costs for improved vaccines are recovered only through sales that occur in the unlikely event that a pandemic occurs—there have only been four flu pandemics the past 100 years—even though vaccine innovation provides benefits from risk-reduction before any pandemic. Vaccines have insurance value today that provides protection against possible future damage, regardless of whether a pandemic occurs. That means the social return from innovative vaccines is greater than their private return to developers.

‘She Has No Role’: Biden Condemns Ousted Women’s March Organizer Linda Sarsour after Her DNC Appearance By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/she-has-no-role-biden-condemns-ousted-womens-march-organizer-linda-sarsour-after-her-dnc-appearance/

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden condemned the views of former Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour, who has been repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism, after she participated in a Democratic National Convention council meeting on Tuesday.

Sarsour, a Muslim activist who endorsed Biden after he announced Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) as his running mate last week, spoke at the DNC’s “Muslim Delegates and Allies Assembly” on Tuesday, sparking disapproval in light of her history of controversial comments on Jews and Israel. 

“Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel and a vehement opponent of anti-Semitism his entire life, and he obviously condemns her views and opposes BDS, as does the Democratic platform,” Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said, according to CNN’s Jake Tapper. “She has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever.”

Bates then pointed out that the official Democratic platform says, “We oppose any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.”

The march’s co-president Tamika Mallory, who was similarly ousted over anti-Semitic controversy, also spoke at the DNC at a virtual meeting of the Democratic Black Caucus on Monday.

History Keeps Proving John Kerry Wrong By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/history-keeps-proving-john-kerry-wrong/

The former secretary of state continues peddling foreign-policy falsehoods.

I t took approximately 20 seconds for former secretary of state John Kerry to drop the first flagrant lie in his Democratic National Convention speech on Tuesday, when he claimed that the Obama administration’s so-called Iran deal had “eliminated the threat of an Iran with a nuclear weapon.” It didn’t get any better from there.

Kerry knows well that sunset provisions in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) provided Iran’s government with a pathway to building nuclear weapons in a few years. He knows well that Israel uncovered a giant cache of documents with instructions on how to jumpstart a program to build a nuclear arsenal, which undermined both the spirit and the rationale of the nonproliferation agreement Iran signed. He knows that Iran was developing ballistic-missile programs meant to deliver nuclear weapons.

Kerry’s big accomplishment was to destroy a sanctions program that was working, thereby saving the Islamic Republic from economic ruin. This allowed the Islamist government to strengthen its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Yemen, and Iraq.

DOJ Says More Than 200 Face Federal Charges Under Operation Legend

https://www.theepochtimes.com/more-than-200-charged-with-federal-crimes-under-operation-legend-doj_3466551.html

More than 200 people have been charged with federal crimes among the nearly 1,500 people arrested as part of an initiative aimed to stem violent crime in major inner cities, the Justice Department (DOJ) stated on Aug. 19.

The figures represent the latest numbers of law enforcement actions taken since the start of Operation Legend in early July, which has since been expanded to numerous cities around the country, Attorney General William Barr said.

As part of the operation, about 217 people were charged with federal crimes and nearly 400 firearms have been seized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Barr said. The nearly 1,500 people arrested were mostly arrested for violent state crimes, which include more than 90 homicides.

Numbers from Indianapolis, which was added to the program just last week, aren’t included, the DOJ stated.

Over the past few weeks, the DOJ announced several moves to show its commitment to cracking down on violent crime across the country. That led to Operation Legend, a law enforcement program in which federal resources are surged to inner U.S. cities to assist local and state law enforcement officials to tackle violent crime and restore public safety.

Ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleads guilty in Durham investigation by Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ex-fbi-lawyer-kevin-clinesmith-pleads-guilty-in-durham-investigation

The former FBI lawyer charged in U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation of the investigators pleaded guilty Wednesday to a false statements charge for fraudulently altering a CIA email to obtain surveillance against a former Trump campaign associate.

Clinesmith, who worked on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server as well as on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane inquiry and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team during the Trump-Russia inquiry, admitted that he falsified a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority to wiretap Carter Page, who had been a foreign policy adviser to now-President Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Judge James Boasberg, the presiding judge in the criminal case against Clinesmith (and also the presiding judge for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), accepted the plea during the hearing conducted by phone before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Clinesmith, 38, claimed in early 2017 that Page was “not a source” for the CIA when the CIA had actually told the bureau on multiple occasions that Page was indeed an operational contact for them. Durham submitted a five-page filing to the federal court on Friday, noting Clinesmith was being charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(3) for “False Statements.”

Anthony Scarpelli, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a Durham team member, appeared for the Justice Department. Clinesmith’s lawyer, Justin Shur, was representing him on the call.

The judge asked Clinesmith if he agreed everything outlined in Durham’s criminal information court filed Friday against Clinesmith was true, and he replied, “Yes, your honor.”

‘Winning Has Come Through Revolts’: A Black Lives Matter Activist On Why She Supports Looting By Rob Wildeboer, Chip Mitchell

https://www.wbez.org/stories/winning-has-come-through-revolts-a-black-lives-matter-activist-on-why-she-supports-looting/398d0f3f-73d0-4f2e-ae32-04cceba0d322

The Sunday afternoon shooting by police of Latrell Allen, 20, in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood led to a standoff in that community between residents and officers. By evening the tension had eased, but overnight and into the early morning hours Monday, looters hit Chicago’s wealthiest shopping district on North Michigan Avenue.

Looting earlier this summer grew out of large protest marches downtown. This most recent looting was different, and it’s exact genesis remains unclear. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said,“This is not legitimate First Amendment-protected speech. … This was straight-up felony, criminal conduct,” but some activists disagree. WBEZ talked with Black Lives Matter organizer Ariel Atkins on why she supports people looting and looting as protest.

What’s your take on the police shooting in Englewood and the subsequent looting downtown?

Ariel Atkins: A lot of people are really attacking our pages. They’re like, ‘Oh, you support the looters.’ And yeah, we do, 100%. That’s reparations. And like however people choose to protest, especially if it was definitely in line with what happened with the shooting, which would be powerful to see people reacting … without organizers just being like, ‘We’re angry and this is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna take the power back.’

I feel like these stores, these Macy’s, these Guccis, the PNC Banks, they’re not here for us. The city puts way more money and investment into spending time and protecting their spaces and making sure that they exist. And yet our people are constantly being pushed out of the city. … Unemployment is incredibly high, like we are in an incredible situation, and the fact that anybody gives a s*** about these businesses over what is happening in this city right now and the pain that people are in and the suffering that is taking place, I don’t care. I will support the looters ‘till the end of the day. If that’s what they need to do in order to eat, then that’s what you’ve got to do to eat.

‘Something Is Not Right’ With Biden, Obama White House Doctor Claims Jack Hadfield

https://thepoliticalinsider.com/something-is-not-right-with-biden-obama-white-house-doctor-claims/

Dr. Ronny Jackson, the official White House doctor under President Barack Obama, just spoke out to say that “something is not right” mentally with Joe Biden.

‘Every Time I See Him Is That He’s Just Lost’

Doctor Jackson spoke to Donald Trump Jr for the President’s son’s upcoming book entitled, “Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden and the Democrats’ Defense of the Indefensible.” Jackson said that the best way he can describe Joe Biden would be that “every time I see him is that he’s just lost.”

“I won’t make any particular diagnosis about dementia,” Jackson added. “But what I will say is that something is not right,” he continued, arguing that Biden is getting so bad that he is “not comfortable” with him becoming president.

Huge Media Double Standard

Jackson said there was a complete double standard among the media when it comes to reporting the “gaffes” of Biden versus commenting on the supposed fractured mental pysche of President Trump.

“To my knowledge, the president has never made one single flaw in anything he said that would ever lead anyone to believe that he has any cognitive issues whatsoever,” Jackson said, but “Vice President Biden does it every single day. So much so they won’t even let him speak anymore! And nobody says a damn thing about it. It’s crazy; it’s hypocrisy at its highest.

Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian of Azerbaijani Descent the Like of Schindler By Nurit Greenger

https://newsblaze.com/world/eurasia/abdol-hossein-sardari-an-iranian-of-azerbaijani-descent-the-like-of-schindler_167034/

The subject of this story, first published March 22, 2014, was recently brought up by the Consul General of Azerbaijan to the United States West Coast. The reason for his interest is that the hero of this story, Abdol Hossein Sardari, was Iranian, of Azerbaijani descent.

The story of Abdol Hossein Sardari is about the moral compass of right thing to do, no matter what, when there is a calling.

Abdol Hossein Sardari reminds us of Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler was an ethnic German industrialist, a German spy, and member of the Nazi party. Schindler has also been credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, by employing them in his factories, which were located in what is today Poland and the Czech Republic.

Abdol Hossein Sardari served as an Iranian diplomat in Paris, and he used his position to save the lives of many Jews from the Nazis’ deadly claws.

Fariborz Mokhtari, Ph.D. discovers the rather covert Abdol Hossein Sardari story

Fariborz Mokhtari, Ph.D., born in Iran, a retired professor of political science from the University of Vermont and at Saint Michael’s College. Fariborz read the book ‘The Persian Sphinx: ‘Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution‘ by Abbas Milani, (The Puzzle of Hoveyda), which tells the story of Iran’s Prime Minister Amir-Abbas Hoveyda*, the longest-serving – 13 years – prime minister in Iran’s history. After the Iranian Revolution, or the 1979 Revolution, Hoveyda was tried for “waging war against God” and “spreading corruption on earth” and was executed.

In Milani’s book Dr. Mokhtari read about a mentioned rumor that there was an Iranian diplomat who worked in Paris and helped Jews escape the wrath of the Nazi’s methodical Jew killing machine. That diplomat was Abdol Hossein Sardari, Amir Abbas Hoveyda’s uncle. Noting, while studying at the Sorbonne University, in Paris, France, Mr. Hoveyda, who later became Iran’s prime minister, frequented his uncle’s Parisian residence.

Curiosity led Mr. Mokhtari to contact the publisher of the book who directed him to the author, who then directed him to three people who were able to tell him the entire story about the young Iranian diplomat, Abdol Hossein Sardari, a son of an affluent Iranian family who was assigned to join Iran’s diplomatic ranks in France.

As this fascinating story goes, Mr. Sardari was a social butterfly who threw many parties that attracted the crème de la crème of the Parisian and beyond society as well as high ranking Nazi officers.

When Mr. Sardari realized what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in Europe, he wanted to save lives. He started to use the connections and influence he collected throughout his social life, including the ones he had made with the influential Nazis who attended his parties. Over a period of time he issued hundreds of fake Iranian passports that enabled Jews to flee Europe to a safer place, to Iran.

It is believed that Abdol Hossein Sardari issued some 500 fake passports. Considering that a single passport was often issued for entire families, or at least to mothers and their children, the 500 passports may very well have saved over 2000 Jews. Indeed, a Gestapo document claimed/complained that the Iranian diplomat had managed to save over 2000 “stateless people” by granting them Iranian documents.

Mokhtari’s Pride in Sardari’s Heroism

Mr. Mokhtari takes pride in Sardari’s heroism, equating his deeds to Schindler’s.

In 2002 Mr. Mokhtari began to write his book, ‘In the Lion’s Shadow: The Iranian Schindler and His Homeland in the Second World War‘, published in 2011.

Democrats Electrify Party With Showcase of Irrelevant Dinosaurs on Day Two of the DNC Liz Shield

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/19/morning-greatness-democrats-electrify-party-with-showcase-of-irrelevant-dinosaurs-on-day-two-of-the-dnc/

Did anyone watch day two of the DNC? John Kerry and former president Bill Clinton, credibly accused of sexual assault were headlining. Someone wake me up.

It really struck me how meaningful it was that Colin Powell and the holy ghost of John McCain were featured.  Other “Republicans” have appeared or are scheduled to appear: failed presidential candidate John Kasich,  former GOP New York Congressman Susan Molinari (also a former Google employee and current Atlantic Council member), former N.J. Governor Christine Todd Whitman and Silicon Valley denizen Meg Whitman.

Of course we know these “Republicans” would characterize themselves as “moderates” but the Democrats have taken a hard left turn: radical climate policies that would decimate the economy and put thousands and thousands of people out of jobs; they’ve moved from “safe, legal and rare” to keep the post-uterus fetus comfortable while a woman decides if she wants to let her baby survive; medicare for all including illegal aliens; open borders; a nuclear Iran; and empowered China and free college. What exactly is the overlap between a “moderate” Republican and the left-wing nutter policies of the 2020 Democrats?

Democratic National Convention hosts imam from Islamic extremist institution By Jackson Richman

https://www.jns.org/democratic-national-convention-hosts-imam-from-islamic-extremist-institution/

The Democratic National Convention hosted an imam from an Islamic extremist institution on Sunday.

Noman Hussain, imam of ISM Brookfield in Wisconsin, was one of the religious leaders who took part in the convention’s “Interfaith Welcome Service.”

Hussain is a scholar at the Texas-based Qalam Institute, whose officials have advocated “the use of female sex slaves, the killing of adulterers, and incite hatred against Jews and other non-Muslims,” according to the Middle East Forum.

One of the Qalam Institute’s courses, “The Prophetic Code,” warns Muslims to strive for “cleanliness” and “purity,” so that they “do not resemble the Jews.”

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The Democratic National Convention did not respond to a request for comment about Hussain’s affiliation with the Qalam Institute.

In 2012, Hussain shared a cartoon of an Israeli soldier appearing innocent on TV without it showing the soldier mercilessly shooting people in Gaza.