MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Say, Whatever Happened To That New COVID Surge Everyone Was Freaking About?

Posted By on August 5th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/05/say-whatever-happened-to-that-new-covid-surge-everyone-was-just-freaking-about/

As recently as two weeks ago, the big story of the day was the coming surge of a new, highly infectious COVID variant, called BA.5. The Biden administration warned about it. Los Angeles county considered renewing its indoor mask mandate. The head of the World Health Organization said that “new waves of the virus demonstrate again that the Covid-19 [pandemic] is nowhere near over.”

Look at some of the headlines:

“BA.5 Will Cause ‘Even Greater Surge,’ Warns UCSF’s Wachter of Highly Infectious COVID Subvariant,” KQED, July 6
“The BA.5 COVID Surge Is Here,” New York Magazine, July 8
“Los Angeles could reinstate mask mandates as COVID cases rise,” CBS News, July 8
“As new COVID variants surge, White House urges caution, pushes boosters,” Boston Globe, July 12
“Experts rue simple steps not taken before latest COVID surge,” ABC News, July 13
“The ‘worst variant’ is here,” CNN, July 14

Well, the data from the Centers for Disease Control show that the number of new infections has remained pretty flat since late May and is now trending downward. In, fact, the rate of new infections appears to have topped out right when the media were playing up the coming “surge.”

CDC data show that the seven-day moving average for new cases peaked at 129,823 on July 17. It had fallen to 119,034 by Aug. 2.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Your Tax Dollars Went to China, Saudi Arabia and WHERE? Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on August 5th, 2022

https://mailchi.mp/b694bc49f90d/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-59147?e=0c8ccf8e98

BILLIONS SPENT ON PRIVATE BUSINESS DEALS IN HOSTILE NATIONS

Ever heard of the Export-Import Bank? It’s little-known, but it’s not like your local credit union. It’s part of the federal government and it spends BILLIONS of your tax dollars!

The bank is meant to finance deals that boost exports and small businesses when private capital can’t be found.  But most of the money goes to huge corporations like Boeing and General Electric – or to countries that are openly hostile to the United States! 

Since 2007, Chinese companies have received more than $6.4 billion even though the nation has the second largest GDP in the world – AND even though they’re threatening us over Taiwan! 

Russian companies, which often line the pockets of oligarchs, received $1.9 billion – even though Russia is fighting a land war in Europe and could be responsible for food and fuel shortages worldwide! 

Saudi Arabian companies took over $6.9 billion in financing – even though President Biden called them a pariah over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The icing on this awful cake? These deals and capital assurances are guaranteed by YOU, the American taxpayer. If any of this cash is lost in a country that’s economically or politically unstable, that’s tax dollars down the drain. 

With widespread turmoil around the world, we need to take a SERIOUS look at where we fund private business deals. 

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Miners Explore Amazon Basin To Support “Green” Energy; New York Times Horrified Francis Menton

Posted By on August 5th, 2022

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-8-3-miners-explore-amazon-basin-to-support-green-energy-new-york-times-horrified

The front page of today’s New York Times features a big article clearly intended to get the readers riled up about the latest environmental horror that must be stopped. The headline is “The Illegal Airstrips Bringing Toxic Mining to Brazil’s Indigenous Land.” Subheadline: “The Times identified hundreds of airstrips that bring criminal mining operations to the most remote corners of the Amazon.”

Wow, this is bad. The airstrips are “illegal.” The mining is “toxic,” and not only toxic but also “criminal.” And it’s all happening in the most pristine place left in the whole world, the “remote corners of the Amazon,” much of it inhabited by the most innocent of all innocent indigenous people, the Yanomami.

So what is driving this big rush of miners into these remote regions? Could so-called “green energy” — with its vast demands for raw materials like nickel, manganese, aluminum and iron — have anything to do with it? If so, you won’t learn anything about that from the Times.

The obvious purpose of this lengthy Times piece is to get you outraged about the criminal mining wildcatters now said to be swarming the Amazon jungle. The piece starts with research conducted by the Times, using satellite photographs, that has identified a large number of airstrips — close to 1300 of them — that have been carved into the Amazon jungle, and that are now being used to bring in supplies to support the development of new mines.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

SLEEPWALKING INTO WAR WITH CHINA- DAVID GOLDMAN

Posted By on August 5th, 2022

https://compactmag.com/article/sleepwalking-into-war-with-china

Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan marks the beginning of a new and dire strategic crisis with China. Whether by accident or design, the Biden Administration is sleepwalking into war with China—quickly, but not quickly enough for most Republican leaders. While the United States wasted $6 trillion or more in failed nation-building campaigns during the past 20 years, China focused its military resources on surface-to-ship missiles, modern aircraft, submarines, and electronic warfare measures on its coast. If we fight China on its home seas, we probably will lose.

“There is a fundamental asymmetry of strategic interest in Taiwan.”

There is a fundamental asymmetry of strategic interest in Taiwan between China and the United States. China is not a nation-state but a polyglot empire. Only 1 in 10 Chinese converses in Mandarin, the state dialect, according to a 2014 government study. Most speak one of 200 dialects. China is held together as it has been for thousands of years by a common tax collector in Beijing and the Mandarin bureaucracy, recast as the Chinese Communist Party. One rebel province—as Beijing views Taiwan—sets a precedent for many. Countless times in its long history, China has fragmented into warring provinces, encouraged during the 19th and 20th centuries by foreign powers.

Opposition to Taiwanese sovereignty is a raison d’etre of the Chinese state, and Beijing will go to war to prevent it. Beijing will tolerate the status quo, but not if it believes the United States is promoting Taiwanese sovereignty.

What makes Pelosi’s visit so provocative is her constitutional status as second in the line of presidential succession. A visit by an American vice president would, in diplomatic protocol, verge upon diplomatic recognition and crosses a red line; a visit by the next-in-line to the vice president touches that red line.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Decline and Fall of Newspapers By Charles Lipson

Posted By on August 5th, 2022

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/08/04/the_decline_and_fall_of_newspapers_147991.html

A few years ago, you would have unfolded your newspaper and read opinion and analysis like this. Those days are gone. Today, most of us get our news and commentary online, perhaps supplemented by network or cable television, although TV viewership is far smaller than in the days of  “The Big Three.” Buried alongside those iconic broadcasters is the public’s confidence in news from all sources. Only 16% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, only 11% in TV news. Those numbers keep sinking. Today, if Walter Cronkite ended his broadcast, “And that’s the way it is,” most people would just smirk.

How dramatic is this change in the way we get our news? What’s driving it? What have we gained and lost? And how do these changes affect our deeply divided nation?

The most important point is the most obvious: The changes are huge – and irreversible. One recent study shows that in our country of 332 million people, no newspaper has a print circulation of more than 1 million. Only nine have more than 100,000 subscribers. Among the 25 largest papers, only one showed an increase in circulation, and it serves a retirement community. It’s shocking, really, that a paper with less than 50,000 subscribers is among the nation’s largest.

The decline is relentless. Print papers are losing one out of eight subscribers every year. Their daily circulation, over 63 million at its peak in the 1980s, is now about one-third that size. Over 25% of all American newspapers have died in the past 15 years.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU: Last-Ditch Effort to Salvage Iran Nuclear Deal by Soeren Kern

Posted By on August 4th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18770/eu-iran-nuclear-deal

The European Union has presented Iran with a new draft text that aims to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. The document, which has not been made public, presumably offers additional concessions to coax Tehran into rejoining the agreement.

In May 2022, for instance, Iran reached a new dangerous and destabilizing threshold: its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% reached 42 kilograms, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In June, Iran removed 27 surveillance cameras from its nuclear facilities. The move came after the IAEA censured Iran for not answering questions about uranium traces found at three undeclared sites.

The EU’s continued appeasement of Iran also comes amid a violent crackdown against civil society in the country. Human rights groups have blasted the EU for its unwillingness to hold the Iranian government to account.

The EU appears to be sacrificing human rights on the altar of financial gain.

“If we simply cling to the idea that continued negotiations will somehow lead to resolution, we’ll be sleepwalking as we did with Russia, allowing a hostile power to take advantage of diplomacy while pursuing increasingly aggressive actions against us and our allies…. ” — Nicola Beer and Peter Neumann, “Iran: Time for a Plan B,” Politico, July 21, 2022.

The European Union has presented Iran with a new draft text that aims to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. The document, which has not been made public, presumably offers additional concessions to coax Tehran into rejoining the agreement.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Secrets of the Oligarch Wives

Posted By on August 4th, 2022

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Oligarch-Wives-Adam-Goldfried/dp/B0B4S9DTXQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RXUZV897PHUB&keywords=secrets+of+the+oligarch+wives&qid=1659603151&s=movies-tv&sprefix=SECRETS+OF+THE+OLI%2Cmovies-tv%2C61&sr=1-1

 

Murder. Corruption. Betrayal. A tell-all from the women closest to the oligarchs who put Putin in power, mistakenly thinking he would be a puppet president.

Directors

Adam Goldfried

Genres

Documentary

Subtitles

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is the Jewish Democratic Council Really Jewish – or Just Democrats? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on August 4th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18772/jewish-democratic-council

This organization — the Jewish Democratic Council — is misnamed. It recruits members and solicits money based on false advertising. It promotes itself as comprised of pro-Israel Jews. But the reality is that its leadership consists mainly of progressive Democrats who just happen to be Jewish. For them Israel, Iran and anti-Semitism are peripheral issues.

That is increasingly true of many Democratic Jewish voters who prioritize other concerns over Israel, over the growing threat of anti-Semitism from the hard left and hard right, and over other issues that directly affect the Jewish people.

[T]hey obviously do not want to hear the perspective of this Jewish Democrat, because the organization is more united behind social policy issues — abortion, gun control, the environment and the Supreme Court — than they are about Israel. I was told by two people who attended the event that the word “Israel” was never even mentioned….

I shake my head in frustration at why so many left-wing Jewish Democrats are willing to abandon Israel and continue to vote blindly for their grandparents’ Democratic Party without demanding that it marginalize its anti-Israel extremists.

We have no loyalty to the current Democrat Party, just as many of its most prominent officials seem to have no loyalty to so many of their Jewish supporters. We certainly should have no loyalty to organizations such as the Jewish Democratic Council that hides its true priorities behind the misleading label “Jewish.” There is nothing Jewish about their agenda, which is to elect Democrats regardless of their views on issues of direct concern to the Jewish community and Israel.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Communist China Deserves To Be Disrespected What, exactly, is the difference between Taiwan and the “People’s Republic”? Terence P. Jeffrey

Posted By on August 4th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/communist-china-deserves-be-disrespected-terence-p-jeffrey/

The American people last year bought $75 billion worth of cellphones manufactured in Communist China and $59 billion worth of computers.

We also bought more than $39 billion in Chinese-made toys and games, $24 billion in clothing and textiles and $19 billion in household appliances.

Over the course of the year, people in this country purchased $504.9 billion in goods from Communist China, while Communist China bought only $151.4 billion from us. The result was a $353.5 billion bilateral trade deficit — by far the largest trade deficit the United States ran with any country.

In fact, in every year since 1985 — the first year that the Census Bureau reported the U.S.-China trade balance — the United States has run a trade deficit with this Communist regime.

Now, the Chinese regime is vowing to conduct massive air and naval exercises in and above the waters surrounding Taiwan — an island it does not control, but over which it claims sovereignty.

Why is it doing this? Because U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had the temerity to visit Taiwan.

What is the difference between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China?

The people of Taiwan are free, and the people of the People’s Republic are not.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Woke Maine School Board Gets Busted for First Amendment Violation Conservatives learn to fight fire with fire. Lawrence Lockman

Posted By on August 4th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/woke-maine-school-board-gets-busted-first-lawrence-lockman/

The slumbering giant is stirring.

I’m referring to the no-longer-silent majority of Mainers who are beginning to understand that our state is in trouble.

Serious trouble. And it begins in our schools. Government-run K-12 schools.

We’re in trouble because we’ve allowed politicians and bureaucrats to transform these public institutions into indoctrination camps, churning out graduates who are unprepared either for the workplace or for further education. The dumbing down has been so successful that most Maine high-school graduates who apply for admission to local community colleges need to take remedial courses before they’re ready for entry-level college work.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Not only are most of our recent high-school graduates well below minimal expectations in reading, science, and math – they’re woke, and proud of it.

Barely literate in civics and profoundly ignorant of history, these kids are woefully unprepared for the obligations of American citizenship.

After years of K-12 indoctrination in the radical Left’s malignant narrative of America as a systemically racist nation, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s no exaggeration to say that many of these kids are better prepared for a lifetime of picketing and protests than for responsible citizenship – much less any acknowledgement or appreciation of American exceptionalism.