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‘Americans Should Be Concerned’: National Security Adviser O’Brien Issues Warning About China

National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien warned earlier this summer that Americans needed to be “concerned” about things that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was doing because they want “to know everything about you”—and they are willing to commit crimes to get the information they want.

O’Brien said that American leaders made the “greatest” foreign policy “miscalculation” since the 1930s in respect to believing that China would become a liberal democracy if they were brought into the global marketplace and given economic opportunities to thrive.

O’Brien said that the mistake was made because U.S. officials “did not pay heed to the CCP’s ideology.”

“Instead of listening to what CCP leaders were saying, instead of reading what they wrote in their key documents, we closed our eyes and our ears,” O’Brien said. “We believed what we wanted to believe—that the Party members were communist in name only.”

After highlighting the CCP’s communist ideology and the extreme human rights abuses they have engaged in, O’Brien said, “Americans should be concerned. We should be concerned not just for the people of China, but for ourselves.”

“Xi Jinping’s ambitions for ideological control are not limited to his own people. The CCP’s stated goal is to create a ‘Community of Common Destiny for Mankind,’ and to remake the entire world according to the CCP. The effort to control thought beyond the borders of China is well under way,” O’Brien continued. “Over the past decade, the Party has invested billions of dollars in overseas propaganda operations to great effect. The CCP has moved to eliminate ‘unfriendly’ Chinese language media outlets worldwide, and is close to succeeding. Nearly every Chinese language news outlet in the U.S. is either owned by, or works closely with the Party—and it’s making inroads into the English language media as well.”

O’Brien noted that China uses its whole of state of approach to acquire power, utilizing hardware, software, and social media platforms that it controls to manipulate the world to its liking.

“When the Chinese Communist Party cannot buy your data, it steals it. In 2014, the CCP hacked Anthem insurance, collecting sensitive information on 80 million Americans,” O’Brien said. “In 2015, the CCP hacked the Office of Personnel Management, which holds the security clearance information for 20 million Americans who work for the federal government. In 2017, it hacked Equifax, obtaining the names, birthdates, social security numbers, and credit scores of 145 million Americans.”

“In 2019, the CCP hacked Marriot, gathering information on 383 million guests, including their passport numbers. And in 2016, a Chinese company even bought the dating app Grindr to harvest data, including the HIV status of users, before the U.S. government forced a divestiture on national security grounds,” O’Brien continued. “These are just a few of the instances that we know about.”

“How will the Chinese Communist Party use this data? In the same way it uses data within China’s borders: to target, to flatter, to cajole, to influence, to coerce, and even to blackmail individuals to do and say the things that serve the Party’s interests,” O’Brien added. “This is ‘micro targeting’ beyond an advertiser’s wildest dreams. China, unlike advertisers, will not be stopped by government regulations. The Chinese Communist Party simply wants to know everything about you—just as it likes to know everything about almost every individual living in China.”

WATCH:

TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED VIA THE WHITE HOUSE:

Well, thank you Governor. That was an extraordinarily kind introduction and thinking of Kayla and her parents. We had them at the State of the Union. It was a very special occasion for the President and for all of us as Americans. What happened to Kayla should never happen to anyone, especially an American. Thank you for remembering her today and for the support you have given her family…

It’s great to be here in Phoenix. Congratulations on the TSMC factory that’s coming to Arizona. I can tell you there are 49 other governors that are a little jealous of Governor Ducey at this point. What a tremendous accomplishment for your administration, and it’s great for our national security to bring our supply chain home, especially when we’re dealing with critical technology, computer chips, dual-use chips, that are not only important to our civilian world—the phones we use, the computers we use, the dishwashers and refrigerators we use—but also to our military. You’ve also got some great aerospace companies who are doing work in Arizona that are going to benefit from having their suppliers so close to home. Congratulations, that’s great for the people of Arizona.

Wonderful to be here at the Arizona Commerce Authority. Congratulations to you, as well, for the excellent support you gave the governor and his administration in not only bringing the Taiwanese here, but I know many other manufacturing companies that are returning to America are coming to Arizona—great weather, sunshine. It’s wonderful again to be back here on the west coast. Other folks around the world are coming to Arizona and the American West and seeing that there’s a whole part of this country beyond Washington, D.C., and New York, and some of our bigger cities. I think that as manufacturing returns to this country, Arizona’s gonna be at the top of their list. So congratulations, Governor.

I bring you greetings from the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. I know he was here yesterday. It’s privilege for me to follow in his wake. I think there is some other good news, that you’ll be having the Vice President of the United States Mike Pence, my close friend, whose office is down the hall, will be here next week.

I appreciate the kind invitation to come discuss an issue of critical importance to American national security with you, Governor, and with your colleagues here in Arizona. The challenge of the Chinese Communist Party and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, and the threat that it poses to the United States and our allies is of critical importance to us right now. My remarks today are the first in a series of several speeches that will be given by senior Administration officials over the coming month on this matter. You will soon hear from Secretary of State Pompeo, you’ll hear from Attorney General Barr, and FBI Director Chris Wray on the subject.

America, under President Trump’s leadership, has finally awoken to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party’s actions and the threat that they pose to our very way of life. For decades, the conventional wisdom in both U.S. political parties, the business community, academia, the media, has held that it was only a matter of time before China would become more liberal, first economically and then politically. The more we opened our markets to China, the thinking went, the more we invested capital in China, the more we trained PRC bureaucrats, scientists, engineers, and even military officers, the more China would become like us.

It was under this premise that we welcomed China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 with vast concessions and trade privileges. We downplayed China’s gross human rights abuses, including Tiananmen Square. We turned a blind eye to China’s widespread technology theft that eviscerated entire sectors of the American economy.

As China grew richer and stronger, we believed that the Chinese Communist Party would liberalize and meet the rising democratic aspirations of its people. This was a bold and quintessentially American idea. It was born of our innate optimism and by the experience of our triumph over Soviet Communism.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be very naïve.

We could not have been more wrong—and this miscalculation was the greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s. How did we make such a mistake? How did we fail to understand the nature of the Chinese Communist Party?

The answer is simple: it’s because we did not pay heed to the CCP’s ideology. Instead of listening to what CCP leaders were saying, instead of reading what they wrote in their key documents, we closed our eyes and our ears. We believed what we wanted to believe—that these Party members were communist in name only.

Let us be clear, the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist organization. The Party General Secretary Xi Jinping sees himself as Josef Stalin’s successor. In fact, as the journalist and former Australian government official John Garnaut has noted, the Chinese Communist Party is the last “ruling communist party that never split with Stalin, with the partial exception of North Korea.”[1] Yes, Stalin – the man whose brutal dictatorship and disastrous policies killed roughly 20 million Russians and others through famine, forced collectivization, execution, and labor camps. As interpreted by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, communism is a totalitarian ideology.

Under communism, individuals are merely a means to be used toward the achievement of the ends of the collective nation state. Thus, individuals can be easily sacrificed for the nation state’s goals. Individuals do not have inherent value under Marxism-Leninism. They exist to serve the state; the state does not exist to serve them.

These ideas sound remote and outdated to us as we speak. They are, after all, old ideas—they were born a century and a half ago in Europe. They were implemented a century ago in Russia, and then they were discarded 30 years ago as the most costly failed political experiment in history. But in China, these ideas remain as fundamental to the Chinese Communist Party as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights do to us as Americans.

The Chinese Communist Party seeks total control over the people’s lives. This means economic control, it means political control, it means physical control, and, perhaps most importantly, it means thought control.

“In Classical Chinese statecraft,” Garnaut has noted, “there are two tools for gaining and maintaining control over ‘the mountains and the rivers’: the first is wu (武), weapons and violence, and the second is wen (文), language and culture. Chinese leaders have always believed that power derives from controlling both the physical battlefield and the cultural domain.”[2] “For Lenin, Stalin, Mao and now Xi,” Garnaut writes, “words are not vehicles of reason and persuasion. They are bullets. Words are for defining, isolating, and destroying opponents.”[3]

Propaganda plays a central role for the CCP. Beijing’s efforts to dominate political thought are stated openly and pursued aggressively. In 1989, the party began organizing itself around ‘ideological security,’ a term repeated frequently since then by CCP leaders. More recently, in April 2013, the Party issued a policy on what they call the “current state of ideology.”[4] It held that there should be, “absolutely no opportunity or outlets for incorrect thinking or viewpoints to spread.”[5]

So within China, this approach means mandatory study sessions on Communist ideology and the required download and use of smartphone apps that teach the so-called “Xi Jinping Thought.” It means complete control of all state media. Outside sources of information are banned—from foreign newspapers to Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. All content generated within China is censored. It means jailing everyone from citizen bloggers, to reporters, to lawyers, to activists and religious believers expressing any views contrary to the Party line.

And indeed, just recently, between January 1 and April 4 of this year, nearly 500 individuals were charged with crimes just for speaking out about the Wuhan coronavirus, its effects upon the Party, and the Party’s cover-up of the disease.[6]

The Chinese Communist Party reinterprets religious texts, including the Bible, to support communist party ideology. It locks up millions of Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities in reeducation camps where they are subjected to political indoctrination and forced labor, while their children are raised in Party-run orphanages. This process annihilates the family, the religion, the culture, the language, and the heritage of the people who are caught up in these camps. Under the Chinese Communist Party, information is tightly controlled and expression is constantly surveilled, so that it can be quashed or shaped by the state.

Americans should be concerned. We should be concerned not just for the people of China, but for ourselves. Because Xi Jinping’s ambitions for ideological control are not limited to his own people. The CCP’s stated goal is to create a “Community of Common Destiny for Mankind,” and to remake the entire world according to the CCP. The effort to control thought beyond the borders of China is well under way.

Over the past decade, the Party has invested billions of dollars in overseas propaganda operations to great effect.[7] The CCP has moved to eliminate “unfriendly” Chinese language media outlets worldwide, and is close to succeeding. Nearly every Chinese language news outlet in the U.S. is either owned by, or works closely with the Party—and it’s making inroads into the English language media as well. There are more than a dozen radio stations in cities across the country where Americans hear subtle pro-Beijing propaganda on their FM radio.

Recently, Chinese propaganda persuaded so many Americans that a U.S. solider had brought the coronavirus to Wuhan—as opposed to Wuhan sending the virus to the rest of the world (a complete fabrication by the CCP) that this soldier and her family needed a personal security detail to protect them from death threats. This situation occurred in Maryland.

On TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media platform with over 40 million American users—probably a lot of your kids and younger colleagues—accounts criticizing [the] CCP and Beijing’s policies are routinely removed or deleted.

Last week, Twitter announced the suspension of more than 23,000 CCP-linked accounts for spreading propaganda on Hong Kong and COVID-19. The latest suspension was in addition to August’s removal of more than 150,000 CCP accounts that were used to spread anti-American disinformation and to generate an illusion on Twitter of popular support for Beijing’s policies in the United States. These are just the accounts that Twitter caught. How many others are out there that are still undetected?

In March, the CCP expelled American journalists working for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, almost fully eliminating independent reporting from within China on the Wuhan virus.

In addition to influencing what information American citizens receive regarding China, the CCP is increasingly using its leverage to police American speech. When the University of California at San Diego hosted the Dalai Lama as a commencement speaker in 2017, Beijing banned Chinese students from visiting UCSD on government funds.

When the general manager of the Houston Rockets tweeted his support for the peaceful Hong Kong protesters, the CCP announced that the team’s games would not be covered in China, would not show up on Chinese TV, and then used its economic power to pressure others in basketball, including star players, to criticize the tweet on behalf of Beijing.

Under pressure from the CCP, Marriott, American, Delta, and United Airlines all removed references to Taiwan from their corporate websites. Mercedes Benz even apologized for posting an inspirational quote from the Dalai Lama on social media.

Beijing has used its financial might and its market access to pressure Hollywood into self-censorship, incentivizing directors and actors and producers to avoid topics that might not make it past the country’s censors in China. For example, the Japanese and Taiwanese flags were dropped from Tom Cruise’s flight jacket in the upcoming Top Gun sequel “Maverick.” MGM digitally changed the identities in post-production of the invading military from China to North Korea in the “Red Dawn” remake.

The CCP is also seeking leverage over individual Americans. The Party is collecting your most intimate data—your words, your actions, your purchases, your whereabouts, your health records, your social media posts, your texts, and they’re mapping your network of friends, family, and acquaintances.

The CCP accomplishes this goal, in part, by subsidizing hardware, software, telecommunications, and even genetic companies. As a result, corporations such as Huawei and ZTE undercut competitors on price and install their equipment around the globe at a loss. This actually has the side effect of putting out of business American manufacturers of telecom hardware and has made it very difficult for Nokia and Ericsson. Why do they do this? Because it’s not telecom hardware or software profits that the CCP is after, it’s your data, and they use “backdoors” built into their products in order to obtain that data.

When the Chinese Communist Party cannot buy your data, it steals it. In 2014, the CCP hacked Anthem insurance, collecting sensitive information on 80 million Americans. In 2015, the CCP hacked the Office of Personnel Management, which holds the security clearance information for 20 million Americans who work for the federal government. In 2017, it hacked Equifax, obtaining the names, birthdates, social security numbers, and credit scores of 145 million Americans.

In 2019, the CCP hacked Marriot, gathering information on 383 million guests, including their passport numbers. And in 2016, a Chinese company even bought the dating app Grindr to harvest data, including the HIV status of users, before the U.S. government forced a divestiture on national security grounds. These are just a few of the instances that we know about.

How will the Chinese Communist Party use this data? In the same way it uses data within China’s borders: to target, to flatter, to cajole, to influence, to coerce, and even to blackmail individuals to do and say the things that serve the Party’s interests. This is “micro targeting” beyond an advertiser’s wildest dreams. China, unlike advertisers, will not be stopped by government regulations. The Chinese Communist Party simply wants to know everything about you—just as it likes to know everything about almost every individual living in China.

In addition to propaganda and influence operations, the Chinese Communist Party uses trade to coerce compliance with its dictates. When Australia called for an independent investigation of the coronavirus’ origins and spread, the Chinese Communist Party threatened to stop buying Australian agricultural products and to prevent Chinese students and tourists from traveling to Australia. When Australia refused to relent, Beijing put these threats into force, imposed an 80% tariff on Australian barley exports.

International organizations are also part of China’s plan. China has sought leadership positions within many global bodies. China now heads four out of fifteen UN specialized agencies – that’s more than the U.S., UK, France, and Russia, the other members of the permanent five of the Security Council, combined. The PRC uses these leaders to force the international bodies to parrot Beijing’s talking points and to install Chinese telecommunications equipment in their facilities.

For example, when Zhao Houlin of the International Telecommunications Union took his post, he began to aggressively promote Huawei sales. Secretary-General Fang Liu of the International Civil Aviation Organization has blocked Taiwan’s participation in General Assembly meetings and covered up a Chinese hack of the organization. The Party has used China’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council to prevent criticism of its abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

The CCP’s reach extends to heads of international organizations who are not themselves Chinese officials. Under Beijing’s thumb, and at an unacceptable cost to human life, Director-General Tedros of the World Health Organization dutifully used Chinese talking points on the Wuhan virus. As late as mid-January, he claimed that there was no human-to-human transmission of the disease. He opposed international travel restrictions. And at the same time, Tedros praised China’s own domestic travel restrictions on Wuhan residents. In other words, they could travel overseas, but they couldn’t travel and potentially take the virus to Beijing or Shanghai. These CCP tactics in international organizations, as we’ve seen with the COVID virus, are a major concern not just to the United States, but to the world.

The good news is that under President Trump’s leadership, we know what the CCP is doing, and we’re calling it out. We’re taking decisive action to counter it across the board.[8]

First, President Trump prevented certain companies that answer to the CCP’s intelligence and security apparatus—such as Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei—from accessing our personal and private data.[9] The Administration also imposed restrictions on semiconductor technology from going to Huawei.[10]

Second, the State Department designated the U.S. operations of 9 Chinese state-controlled propaganda outlets as foreign missions.[11] These organizations are the mouthpieces of the Chinese Communist Party. This designation places reporting requirements and visa restrictions on these so-called media outlets.

Third, President Trump imposed export restrictions on 21 Chinese government entities and 16 Chinese companies complicit in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against the Uyghurs and other minorities, and we’ve blocked officials complicit in these abuses from travelling to the United States.[12] The Administration has also stopped the illegal import of goods produced by Chinese companies known to use Uyghur forced labor.[13]

Fourth, President Trump left the United Nations Human Rights Council to protest its cooptation by China.[14] He has terminated the U.S. relationship with the World Health Organization, because its response to the pandemic showed that it is entirely beholden to China.[15] Instead of funding the corrupt WHO in Geneva with over $400 million per year, the United States and our generous taxpayers will now send that money directly to where it is needed most—frontline health care workers serving in developing countries around the world.

Fifth, President Trump limited the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to use student visa programs to place its officers and employees in our colleges and universities to steal U.S. technology, intellectual property, and information.[16]

Sixth, the President moved to halt the investment of U.S. federal employee retirement funds into PRC companies, including Chinese military contractors and manufacturers of surveillance equipment used to oppress religious minorities.[17] He’s examining the opaque accounting practices of Chinese companies that are still listed on the U.S. stock exchanges.[18]

This week, the Defense Department is submitting to Congress a list of the People’s Liberation Army-linked companies with operations in the United States so that the American people are fully informed about exactly with whom they are doing business.

Now, these steps are just the start as America corrects 40 years of a one-sided, unfair relationship with that has severely affected our nation’s economics, and recently, our political well-being. Just like the tariffs that were imposed by the President due to unfair Chinese trade practices early in his Administration, there is more to come.

President Trump understands that lasting peace comes through strength. We are the strongest nation on earth, and we will not bend to the CCP. As the foregoing actions demonstrate, the Trump Administration is countering CCP malign activity. The Trump Administration will speak out and reveal what the Chinese Communist Party believes, and what it is planning—not just for China and Hong Kong and Taiwan, but for the entire world.

Together with our allies and partners, we will resist the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to manipulate our people and our governments, damage our economies, and undermine our sovereignty. The days of American passivity and naivety regarding the People’s Republic of China are over.

We will stay true to our principles—especially freedom of speech—which stand in stark contrast to the Marxist-Leninist ideology embraced by the CCP. Under President Trump’s leadership, we will encourage diversity of thought, resist efforts to police speech or encourage self-censorship, protect Americans’ personal data, and above all, continue to proclaim that all women and men are entitled by right of God to liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness.

As I close, let me make it clear – we have deep respect and admiration for the Chinese people. The United States has a long history of friendship with the Chinese nation. But the Chinese Communist Party does not equal China or her people.

To the Chinese Communist Party, I say, as the recent Phase One trade deal has shown, it is possible for our governments to have a productive relationship. We want good relationships with China, but we do not want those relations on the terms that are currently on offer from Beijing.

As Americans, I’m certain that we will rise to successfully meet the challenge presented by the Chinese Communist Party, just as we have responded to all the great crises over our history. President Trump is leading the way. And like President Trump, I believe that our best days as a country remain ahead of us.

Again, thank you for joining me here today. It’s a privilege to be here in Phoenix, Arizona. May God bless you; may God bless America.

The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

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Exclusive–Lonergan: The Left’s Border Wall Legal Strategy Is Failing


The Supreme Court’s recent decision that allows construction of the border wall to continue was a huge win for President Trump and his supporters. Beyond what it means in the short term, the decision revealed something that the mainstream media will never report: for all its energy and bravado, the left’s vaunted efforts to block Trump’s construction of the border wall have largely been a failure.

President Trump’s election victory in November 2016 was a political tsunami that sent the Washington establishment and the radical left into a state of shock. Since then, they have directed all their considerable resources to delaying or destroying Trump’s agenda. High on the list of targeted agenda items was “Build that wall,” the signature immigration proposal of Trump’s campaign.

The Nancy Pelosi-led opposition in Congress was the first wave of attack, opposing all White House efforts to earmark funding for wall construction. After a 35-day partial government shutdown over the funding, Trump reached a deal that included only a paltry sum for the wall. But he then declared a national emergency at the border, which enabled him to re-allocate $2.5 billion from the Pentagon budget to wall construction. At this point, the political battle became a legal one.

The anti-wall legal forces employed their time-tested strategy: shop the nation for the most left-leaning lower courts to get favorable decisions. These provide low-hanging fruit, as the activists can get consistent results from courts like the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit.

These tactics were meant to delay the wall for years, with construction blocked as meritless preliminary injunctions wound their way through the appeals system. While such delaying tactics might usually work, this time they hit a snag. The 5-4 conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled in July of last year to suspend the injunctions, allowing wall construction to go on until the Supreme Court finally decides the issue. The recent decision in Trump v. Sierra Club continued that suspension, prompting Justice Stephen Breyer to lament in his dissent that the decision “may operate, in effect, as a final judgment.”

A major reason the anti-wall forces are failing is that their arguments simply don’t hold water. As the Immigration Reform Law Institute’s brief in Sierra Club showed, in the National Emergencies Act and various military appropriations statutes, Congress clearly provided that the President, in an emergency, could transfer military funds to military construction projects, and that building a border wall meets the statutory definition of a “military construction project.” Whatever injunctions or other favorable rulings the left can get in their cherry-picked lower courts, a sober assessment of the law at the Supreme Court under its current composition was bound to go against them.

The other flimsy argument used in last month’s case was an environmental one made by the Sierra Club. Through its ACLU lawyers, it claimed that it had standing to sue because wall construction is causing irreversible damage to legally protected cacti and other desert wildlife, as well as sacred tribal lands of Native Americans in the region.

The problem is, military appropriation statutes were not written to coddle the aesthetic sensibilities of self-proclaimed “environmentalist” groups, so injury to those sensibilities give them no standing to sue. Indeed, the argument is a case of shameless projection coming from the Sierra Club. The kind of unfettered illegal immigration sought by the anti-wall lobby is dramatically more damaging to the environment than any limited construction project. Decades ago, the Sierra Club, in exchange for a large donation, agreed to ignore that damage. That is the dirty little secret it has been hiding with its virtue-signaling opposition to national borders.

There is overwhelming evidence that immigration-generated population growth is fueling an increase in energy demand and the waste product that accompanies it. Immigrants to the United States alone produce about four times more carbon dioxide in the United States as they would have in their countries of origin.

In the border areas specifically, illegal immigration does terrible damage to the environment. The impact of this unending migration includes watershed degradation, soil erosion, damage to infrastructure, loss of vegetation and wildlife, and escaped campfires. Committed environmental groups like the Sierra Club should be leading the charge against this environmental crisis. Instead, because money talks, they file lawsuits to enable it to continue.

Make no mistake, the well-funded anti-borders movement does not sleep, is not surrendering, and will be back to fight another day. Anyone doubting that should consider the comments of ACLU attorney Dror Ladin after their recent Supreme Court defeat. “The administration has admitted that the wall can be taken down if we ultimately prevail,” he said, “and we will hold them to their word and seek the removal of every mile of unlawful wall built.” Even though this decision on construction didn’t go their way, they will simply work to dismantle the wall after construction is completed. This is not a battle that will have a clear end, but one that requires constant participation from those who want to preserve their safety and our national sovereignty.

As long as the Supreme Court’s majority tilts conservative and the left’s arguments are built on sand, however, these purveyors of lawlessness will continue to come up short in their mission to delay and destroy.

Brian Lonergan is director of communications at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.

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PolitiFact Lamely Throws ‘Mostly False’ Flag at Dan Bongino Facebook Page

Matt Palumbo at Bongino.com took issue with the extremely biased nature of PolitiFact’s "Truth-O-Meter" in assessing "facts." The controversy? This week, President Trump signed an executive order to prevent illegal immigrants from being counted for the purposes of re-apportioning congressional districts after the 2020 census.
PolitiFact’s Tom Kertscher decided to warn America that the following claim was "Mostly False."
“California has six extra” congressional representatives “because illegals are counted” in the census.
This was counted as a "correction" of "Facebook Posts," not as a direct judgment of the Bongino website, described as "part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed."
Kertscher used the familiar liberal-media template of finding "no evidence" to support a conservative argument: 
We found no evidence to back a claim that California has six more House seats than it would have if people in the country illegally were excluded from the apportionment.
The claim "is off base," said demographer Dudley Poston Jr., an emeritus professor of sociology at Texas A&M University.
He and other experts say California likely has two to four more seats than it would without counting people in the country illegally.
This takes us back to the obvious point we have to make over and over again when it comes to these "fact checkers." They are taking exception to an estimate, which is not a hard fact. To disagree on an estimate on this scale should not rise to the level of "false news and misinformation." 
Palumbo effectively summarizes the tendentious nature of the PolitiFact method here: 
So to summarize, his case amounts to “I can’t find evidence for this, one sociology professor disagrees with the claim, and so do some unnamed experts that I’ll quote even though you have no idea who they are.” He then rated the claim “mostly false,” which just goes to prove how Kertscher assigns his “ratings” to claims before even trying to cobble together a rebuttal. Does he really think that “well actually California only has four extra representatives due to illegals, not six!” is a satisfying rebuttal to anyone who doesn’t want illegals counted in terms of determining representation (which is almost everyone)?
That sounds “mostly true” to me, but you have to understand Politifact’s partnership with Facebook to understand his true motivation. Kertscher and those like him at Facebook don’t want information like the narrative I’m spreading to gain traction, so they bring in a “fact checker” to do an “analysis” of the claim. That’s why Kertscher’s article makes many references to the fact that my article was posted on the Dan Bongino Facebook page, because once it’s “fact checked” the page gets a warning, thus throttling our traffic. It also means a warning will pop up over the article anytime someone shares it on FB, even though you can see that his fact check didn’t check any facts.
In fact, Bongino’s Facebook post is no longer available, but Palumbo’s previous article is. A search of "Bongino" at PolitiFact locates four "fact checks" in the last year or so….all of them Mostly False or worse. 
PolitiFact finds a reliably leftish expert witness to claim conservatives are all wet. In this case, "demographer Dudley Poston Jr." is not just a demographer. He’s been a repetitive small donor to the Democratic National Committee. 

via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

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Desperate: Biden grasps for Gretchen Whitmer as potential running mate


He’s desperate.

Faced with a slew of baggage-laden female black candidates for his running mate, each of whom could drag his ticket down, Joe Biden is reaching out and around the vaunted race box to consider Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan as his running mate.

According to the Detroit News:

Lansing — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer traveled to Delaware last weekend to meet with Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s first known in-person session with a potential running mate as he nears a decision, according to the Associated Press.

Whitmer, who is a national co-chairwoman for Biden’s campaign, visited the former vice president last Sunday, according to two high-ranking Michigan Democrats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to the AP because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The first-term governor of the battleground state has long been on his shortlist of possible running mates.

Two well-known Democrats in late July told The Detroit News that Biden’s campaign had vetted Whitmer as a potential running mate. At the time, Southfield attorney Barry Goodman, a member of both Whitmer and Biden’s finance teams, said his understanding was that the first-term governor went through a “full vetting.”

Presumably, she’s now in the contender’s ring because she can supposedly bring swing-state Michigan to the Democrats’ party. That’s more than the top three black candidates — former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Sen. Kamala Harris, or Rep. Karen Bass — can deliver, but like them, she’s got some impressive baggage of her own.

It’s a sign of desperation. Biden had already boxed himself in by saying he would pick a female candidate, and it’s well known that he so badly wanted a black female candidate in the era of BLM. The problem is that the three he picked were walking disasters.

Former NSC Advisor Susan Rice was a comfortable old shoe for Biden, having worked with her for eight years. But she’s also a lightning rod for conservative opprobrium, having lied to Americans about the 2012 Benghazi attacks on an American diplomatic installation, claiming it was just an overexcited crowd instead of a bona fide terrorist attack, and having unmasked dozens of innocent Americans caught up in an intelligence dragnet, quite an amazing abuse of government trust and power. She’s also famous for her toilet mouth and rudeness to opponents, and has no experience outside the beltway. She’s be comfortable for Old Joe, but would bring nothing but criticism to the party.

Then there was Sen. Kamala Harris, the dirty-cop prosecutor who slept her way to the top with California’s power-godfather, Willie Brown, accused Biden of being a racist during the debates, and got nowhere when she campaigned in Iowa. Her fake smiling was obvious to the Midwesterners who rejected her before she even got a chance to run in a primary, meaning she’d bring nothing to the party, maybe not even California, and worse still for Joe, she’s got the lean and hungry look, with likely realistic suspicions going around that she would seek Joe’s job.

There also was Rep. Karen Bass, whom he reportedly liked because, well, she’s likeable with an agreeable personality and reportedly no ambition to take Joe’s job as president, but she had a pretty terrifying history as a de facto agent of the Cuban Castro regime. She would bring nothing to the party with her California base, but would almost certainly ensure that Biden can kiss Florida goodbye.

That’s the best these Democrats have on offer and now Biden’s so desperate, he’s reaching outside the race line to presumably find someone who can add something to the ticket. He can’t find anything with this bunch. And let’s face it, the basement-bound Biden, with fading mental facilities is going to need some kind of help from a sidekick, which is where Whitmer can fill the bill.

Her problem: She’s also got baggage. I don’t have a good sense of how she is playing in Michigan — according to this survey, her popularity has risen, and she’s put out the wokester programs in line with the Black Lives Matter era, creating a re-education program for all state employees to address ‘systemic racism,‘ a problem for many voters right there. But based on what we have seen of her outside the state, she’s even more of a gift to Republicans for her horrible record on COVID.

First, she’s one of the blue state governors whose states had the highest death tolls and the worst response to COVID. The deaths in Michigan now stand at 6,524, with 95,470 total cases, a higher mortality rate than most states. Whitmer is one of five governors who seeded the nursing homes with COVID patients and then refused to rescind the order even when it became known that this was a death sentence. Her state is the one that had the crazed man with a mental health conditions beating an elderly man in a nursing home, signalling that the elderly are not being taken care of on her watch. That may be fine to her supporters in Michigan, but it’s no asset outside that state, which can clearly see the abuses happening.

Her COVID record beyond that is one of continuous lockdowns and closed schools, with some particularly harsh business shutdowns – she’s the one who banned the sale of garden seeds, and travel to one’s isolated country house on the lakes.

And then there was her husband, who, seeking to take advantage of a brief opening, tried to jump the queue in the line for a boat ride on the lake.

Does this sound like someone who’s going to bring in the votes for Joe? She’s the face of lockdowns and incompetence, a nursing home killer same as Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the picture of blue-state incompetence that has extended the COVID crisis in that state even as much of the world has been able to shake it off and get back to normal. Putting her on the Biden ticket will make Biden the face of permanent, extended lockdown as the presidential pitch to voters.

Sound like a plan?

Here’s one more problem for Joe:

Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who’s a powerhouse in the Congressional Black Caucus, says no dice on Gretchen Whitmer. 

“We know that we’re going to have a Black woman as vice president,” Waters told Essence in an interview. “Let me guarantee you this, based on everything that I know and understand, and the help that he has already gotten from the Black community … he can’t go home without a Black woman being VP.” 

Whitmer seems to be popular with Black voters but for Waters that’s not good enough. She wants a black female candidate or else. That’s potent because already Black voters are unenthusiastic about Joe. Seems that Joe can have Michigan with Whitmer, but he’s going to lose the black vote, same as all the other losses he would take with the problematic black female candidates – e.g., Florida.

Any questions as to why Biden can’t seem to decide? This is a sign of a campaign in trouble, and Biden’s got a load of bad candidates, all of them as baggage-laden as himself. If he can’t pick a running mate unless it’s someone who brings him nothing, he’s a goner. And his desperation is showing.

 

Image credit: Screen shot from WDIV television, via shareable YouTube. 

He’s desperate.

Faced with a slew of baggage-laden female black candidates for his running mate, each of whom could drag his ticket down, Joe Biden is reaching out and around the vaunted race box to consider Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan as his running mate.

According to the Detroit News:

Lansing — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer traveled to Delaware last weekend to meet with Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s first known in-person session with a potential running mate as he nears a decision, according to the Associated Press.

Whitmer, who is a national co-chairwoman for Biden’s campaign, visited the former vice president last Sunday, according to two high-ranking Michigan Democrats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to the AP because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The first-term governor of the battleground state has long been on his shortlist of possible running mates.

Two well-known Democrats in late July told The Detroit News that Biden’s campaign had vetted Whitmer as a potential running mate. At the time, Southfield attorney Barry Goodman, a member of both Whitmer and Biden’s finance teams, said his understanding was that the first-term governor went through a “full vetting.”

Presumably, she’s now in the contender’s ring because she can supposedly bring swing-state Michigan to the Democrats’ party. That’s more than the top three black candidates — former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Sen. Kamala Harris, or Rep. Karen Bass — can deliver, but like them, she’s got some impressive baggage of her own.

It’s a sign of desperation. Biden had already boxed himself in by saying he would pick a female candidate, and it’s well known that he so badly wanted a black female candidate in the era of BLM. The problem is that the three he picked were walking disasters.

Former NSC Advisor Susan Rice was a comfortable old shoe for Biden, having worked with her for eight years. But she’s also a lightning rod for conservative opprobrium, having lied to Americans about the 2012 Benghazi attacks on an American diplomatic installation, claiming it was just an overexcited crowd instead of a bona fide terrorist attack, and having unmasked dozens of innocent Americans caught up in an intelligence dragnet, quite an amazing abuse of government trust and power. She’s also famous for her toilet mouth and rudeness to opponents, and has no experience outside the beltway. She’s be comfortable for Old Joe, but would bring nothing but criticism to the party.

Then there was Sen. Kamala Harris, the dirty-cop prosecutor who slept her way to the top with California’s power-godfather, Willie Brown, accused Biden of being a racist during the debates, and got nowhere when she campaigned in Iowa. Her fake smiling was obvious to the Midwesterners who rejected her before she even got a chance to run in a primary, meaning she’d bring nothing to the party, maybe not even California, and worse still for Joe, she’s got the lean and hungry look, with likely realistic suspicions going around that she would seek Joe’s job.

There also was Rep. Karen Bass, whom he reportedly liked because, well, she’s likeable with an agreeable personality and reportedly no ambition to take Joe’s job as president, but she had a pretty terrifying history as a de facto agent of the Cuban Castro regime. She would bring nothing to the party with her California base, but would almost certainly ensure that Biden can kiss Florida goodbye.

That’s the best these Democrats have on offer and now Biden’s so desperate, he’s reaching outside the race line to presumably find someone who can add something to the ticket. He can’t find anything with this bunch. And let’s face it, the basement-bound Biden, with fading mental facilities is going to need some kind of help from a sidekick, which is where Whitmer can fill the bill.

Her problem: She’s also got baggage. I don’t have a good sense of how she is playing in Michigan — according to this survey, her popularity has risen, and she’s put out the wokester programs in line with the Black Lives Matter era, creating a re-education program for all state employees to address ‘systemic racism,‘ a problem for many voters right there. But based on what we have seen of her outside the state, she’s even more of a gift to Republicans for her horrible record on COVID.

First, she’s one of the blue state governors whose states had the highest death tolls and the worst response to COVID. The deaths in Michigan now stand at 6,524, with 95,470 total cases, a higher mortality rate than most states. Whitmer is one of five governors who seeded the nursing homes with COVID patients and then refused to rescind the order even when it became known that this was a death sentence. Her state is the one that had the crazed man with a mental health conditions beating an elderly man in a nursing home, signalling that the elderly are not being taken care of on her watch. That may be fine to her supporters in Michigan, but it’s no asset outside that state, which can clearly see the abuses happening.

Her COVID record beyond that is one of continuous lockdowns and closed schools, with some particularly harsh business shutdowns – she’s the one who banned the sale of garden seeds, and travel to one’s isolated country house on the lakes.

And then there was her husband, who, seeking to take advantage of a brief opening, tried to jump the queue in the line for a boat ride on the lake.

Does this sound like someone who’s going to bring in the votes for Joe? She’s the face of lockdowns and incompetence, a nursing home killer same as Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the picture of blue-state incompetence that has extended the COVID crisis in that state even as much of the world has been able to shake it off and get back to normal. Putting her on the Biden ticket will make Biden the face of permanent, extended lockdown as the presidential pitch to voters.

Sound like a plan?

Here’s one more problem for Joe:

Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who’s a powerhouse in the Congressional Black Caucus, says no dice on Gretchen Whitmer. 

“We know that we’re going to have a Black woman as vice president,” Waters told Essence in an interview. “Let me guarantee you this, based on everything that I know and understand, and the help that he has already gotten from the Black community … he can’t go home without a Black woman being VP.” 

Whitmer seems to be popular with Black voters but for Waters that’s not good enough. She wants a black female candidate or else. That’s potent because already Black voters are unenthusiastic about Joe. Seems that Joe can have Michigan with Whitmer, but he’s going to lose the black vote, same as all the other losses he would take with the problematic black female candidates – e.g., Florida.

Any questions as to why Biden can’t seem to decide? This is a sign of a campaign in trouble, and Biden’s got a load of bad candidates, all of them as baggage-laden as himself. If he can’t pick a running mate unless it’s someone who brings him nothing, he’s a goner. And his desperation is showing.

 

Image credit: Screen shot from WDIV television, via shareable YouTube. 

via American Thinker Blog

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This Election Is a Choice between Freedom and Slavery, Good and Evil


Ronald Reagan famously observed nearly sixty years ago: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same[.]”  The man could say so much with so few words.  (1) Freedom is an idea; (2) it belongs to anyone wise enough to recognize its value irrespective of race, color, or creed; and (3) it will be endlessly threatened at all times by those opposed to liberty.

Three generations later, and Reagan’s warning is uncomfortably prescient.  Before the Chinese coronavirus turned into a weapon for destroying freedom, we were already under attack.  For years, hate speech laws have been used to censor points of view and silence critics.  Public schools have replaced education with “politically correct” Marxist narratives, while Christianity is banned from public life and public squares.  Socialists attack words as violence so they may use violence against our words.  Wherever we look, the left has been nibbling away at liberty and pushing us toward gilded cages under their control.

Now the Democrats’ push to “fundamentally change America” is in overdrive.  A combination of their awareness that they have lost ground since President Trump’s election and a growing sense of urgency to speed up their revolution before his looming re-election has led them to throw all caution to the wind.  

What could have been seen as a moment for national unity just as WWII was for that generation of Americans, the present pandemic unleashed by China, has become nothing more than an opportunity for Democrats at every level of government to steal freedom in the name of security.  

Joe Biden talks openly of a “physical revolution” ahead.  

Barack Obama no longer pretends to be a moderate and instead openly trashes police officers as racists and murderers, chooses the side of Antifa anarchists destroying federal buildings and harming American civilians, and turns funeral memorials into political rallies demanding that new socialist legislation be pushed through Congress despite the will of the people.  

Mayor de Blasio has installed checkpoints to restrict free assembly and arbitrarily and capriciously shut down businesses and church services with fines exceeding ten thousand dollars, while openly encouraging Antifa and Black Lives Matter shock troops to run roughshod over New York City.  

Mayor Garcetti has empowered himself with the authority in Los Angeles to deprive individual homes of power and water should he find their owners in violation of any new rules he unilaterally creates.

The Democratic Party is furiously scrambling to use the pretext of public health to force “cheat by mail” voting schemes upon swing states within their control just in time to steal a presidential election in November.  

And Google and Facebook and Twitter have turned a health emergency into one more excuse for censoring free speech and depriving conservatives of having any voice in what is indisputably our modern town square. 

China released a virus upon the world, and Republicans and conservatives rolled up their sleeves and said, “Let’s get to work.”  Democrats and the socialists running their show grinned and said, “This is the perfect time to fleece Americans for everything they’ve got.”

If it feels as though we’re surrounded, that’s because we are.  For freedom-minded Americans, this is an unnerving time.  But that’s exactly the way it’s always been.  

As inspiring as Reagan’s words are, they leave out the chilling context that Lord Acton’s provide: “At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities[.]”  If the task of defending freedom seems daunting, if the odds of success seem narrow, if socialism’s darkness seems ever near, take strength that this has always been the price for freedom.  We are all of us at all times cut-off paratroopers far behind enemy lines.  Defenders of freedom will always be surrounded.  No battle will be final, no victory permanent, no peace respected by freedom’s enemies.  We will be forced to fight tooth and nail for freedom, or there will be none at all.  

I am convinced that the battle between good and evil is, at its heart, a fight between truth and deception.  Not falsehood, but deception.  Evil always comes in the form of an ideology that allows man to justify unspeakable acts and unconscionable harms.  

Auschwitz greeted each prisoner with the lie that “work sets you free.”  Buchenwald added to the insult by insisting that “everyone gets what he deserves.” 

Now Joe Biden’s Democrats spread fascism while calling themselves “antifascist.”  Democrat race-baiters and race-hustlers insist that “black lives matter” while doing everything in their power to kill black babies before birth and to deprive black Americans of their God-given freedom in return for cradle-to-grave government control and subsistence.  Democrat operatives unleash armies of domestic terrorists upon American cities, and then Democrat congressmen ignore all the mayhem, carnage, and murder they have caused by disregarding the visible destruction as nothing but “myth.”

Lies and arrogance have a tendency to topple empires.  Leaders mistake their offices for temples to be adorned and their orders as commandments to be obeyed.  Faith in institutions dries up while nobody is looking.  History is forgotten, and stupidity rises to rule the day.  

There is an antidote: freedom.  Its power to confront evil is immense.  Its protection of life is unmatched.  And it exposes socialism’s lies by drenching darkness with light.  But at all times, the cost of freedom will be borne entirely by its few, true defenders.  A line in the sand is small compared to the beach, but when enough of us come together, a line in the sand is all we need.  So take heart that you are not alone.  Find strength in those around you.  No matter what, hold that line.  

Hat tip to TimothyGKC.

Image: Ninian Reid via Flickr.

Ronald Reagan famously observed nearly sixty years ago: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same[.]”  The man could say so much with so few words.  (1) Freedom is an idea; (2) it belongs to anyone wise enough to recognize its value irrespective of race, color, or creed; and (3) it will be endlessly threatened at all times by those opposed to liberty.

Three generations later, and Reagan’s warning is uncomfortably prescient.  Before the Chinese coronavirus turned into a weapon for destroying freedom, we were already under attack.  For years, hate speech laws have been used to censor points of view and silence critics.  Public schools have replaced education with “politically correct” Marxist narratives, while Christianity is banned from public life and public squares.  Socialists attack words as violence so they may use violence against our words.  Wherever we look, the left has been nibbling away at liberty and pushing us toward gilded cages under their control.

Now the Democrats’ push to “fundamentally change America” is in overdrive.  A combination of their awareness that they have lost ground since President Trump’s election and a growing sense of urgency to speed up their revolution before his looming re-election has led them to throw all caution to the wind.  

What could have been seen as a moment for national unity just as WWII was for that generation of Americans, the present pandemic unleashed by China, has become nothing more than an opportunity for Democrats at every level of government to steal freedom in the name of security.  

Joe Biden talks openly of a “physical revolution” ahead.  

Barack Obama no longer pretends to be a moderate and instead openly trashes police officers as racists and murderers, chooses the side of Antifa anarchists destroying federal buildings and harming American civilians, and turns funeral memorials into political rallies demanding that new socialist legislation be pushed through Congress despite the will of the people.  

Mayor de Blasio has installed checkpoints to restrict free assembly and arbitrarily and capriciously shut down businesses and church services with fines exceeding ten thousand dollars, while openly encouraging Antifa and Black Lives Matter shock troops to run roughshod over New York City.  

Mayor Garcetti has empowered himself with the authority in Los Angeles to deprive individual homes of power and water should he find their owners in violation of any new rules he unilaterally creates.

The Democratic Party is furiously scrambling to use the pretext of public health to force “cheat by mail” voting schemes upon swing states within their control just in time to steal a presidential election in November.  

And Google and Facebook and Twitter have turned a health emergency into one more excuse for censoring free speech and depriving conservatives of having any voice in what is indisputably our modern town square. 

China released a virus upon the world, and Republicans and conservatives rolled up their sleeves and said, “Let’s get to work.”  Democrats and the socialists running their show grinned and said, “This is the perfect time to fleece Americans for everything they’ve got.”

If it feels as though we’re surrounded, that’s because we are.  For freedom-minded Americans, this is an unnerving time.  But that’s exactly the way it’s always been.  

As inspiring as Reagan’s words are, they leave out the chilling context that Lord Acton’s provide: “At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities[.]”  If the task of defending freedom seems daunting, if the odds of success seem narrow, if socialism’s darkness seems ever near, take strength that this has always been the price for freedom.  We are all of us at all times cut-off paratroopers far behind enemy lines.  Defenders of freedom will always be surrounded.  No battle will be final, no victory permanent, no peace respected by freedom’s enemies.  We will be forced to fight tooth and nail for freedom, or there will be none at all.  

I am convinced that the battle between good and evil is, at its heart, a fight between truth and deception.  Not falsehood, but deception.  Evil always comes in the form of an ideology that allows man to justify unspeakable acts and unconscionable harms.  

Auschwitz greeted each prisoner with the lie that “work sets you free.”  Buchenwald added to the insult by insisting that “everyone gets what he deserves.” 

Now Joe Biden’s Democrats spread fascism while calling themselves “antifascist.”  Democrat race-baiters and race-hustlers insist that “black lives matter” while doing everything in their power to kill black babies before birth and to deprive black Americans of their God-given freedom in return for cradle-to-grave government control and subsistence.  Democrat operatives unleash armies of domestic terrorists upon American cities, and then Democrat congressmen ignore all the mayhem, carnage, and murder they have caused by disregarding the visible destruction as nothing but “myth.”

Lies and arrogance have a tendency to topple empires.  Leaders mistake their offices for temples to be adorned and their orders as commandments to be obeyed.  Faith in institutions dries up while nobody is looking.  History is forgotten, and stupidity rises to rule the day.  

There is an antidote: freedom.  Its power to confront evil is immense.  Its protection of life is unmatched.  And it exposes socialism’s lies by drenching darkness with light.  But at all times, the cost of freedom will be borne entirely by its few, true defenders.  A line in the sand is small compared to the beach, but when enough of us come together, a line in the sand is all we need.  So take heart that you are not alone.  Find strength in those around you.  No matter what, hold that line.  

Hat tip to TimothyGKC.

Image: Ninian Reid via Flickr.

via American Thinker

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“Within Days I Was Able To Breathe”: NYC Democratic Councilman Says Hydroxychloroquine Saved His Life

"Within Days I Was Able To Breathe": NYC Democratic Councilman Says Hydroxychloroquine Saved His Life

Tyler Durden

Sat, 08/08/2020 – 15:00

An immunocompromised New York City Councilman who underplayed the severity of his COVID-19 diagnosis in April now says that it was actually much worse, and hydroxychloroquine saved his life.

Paul Vallone, a Democrat who represents Queens, says he took the drug along with a ‘Z-pack’ antibiotic and drastically improved within days.

"I couldn’t breathe, very weak, couldn’t get out of bed. My doctor prescribed it. My pharmacy had it. Took it that day and within two to three days I was able to breathe," Vallone told the New York Post, adding "Within a week I was back on my feet."

Though Vallone went public with his coronavirus diagnosis in an April 1 Twitter post, saying he was experiencing “mild symptoms,” his actual condition was considerably more severe. Vallone’s initial prognosis was particularly grim, as he also suffers from sarcoidosis, an auto-immune disease that attacks his lungs.

“We were in panic mode when I went down because I didn’t have a lot of immune response,” he said. “I needed something to stay alive.” –New York Post

Vallone’s brother, former City Councilman Peter who currently serves as a civil court judge in Queens, is now a believer in the drug.

"I guess all those doctors who are prescribing it are right. This drug is already on the market and the patent is up so it’s cheap. A new drug won’t be. So big money does not want this drug to be used. Always follow the money," Peter said in a May 12 Facebook post.

Paul, responding in the comments section, said "[It] saved my life."

Hydroxychloroquine, or HCQ, is a commonly used anti-malaria drug also used for decades to treat lupus and arthritis. It became covid-19 treatment non-grata, however, after President Trump touted the inexpensive drug earlier this year – admitting to taking a course as a prophylactic against the disease.

"You’d be surprised at how many people are taking it, especially the frontline workers before you catch it. The frontline workers — many, many are taking it," Trump said in May.

Studies on the drug have been mixed but mostly positive, with recent evidence pointing to significant results against COVID-19 when used early in the disease’s progression.

Paul Vallone reflected on his April diagnosis, saying "At that time, there was only fear and panic, he offered hope in a possible treatment when there was none. With my sarcoidosis and then my COVID symptoms, It basically saved me. For that my family will always be thankful."

via ZeroHedge News

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Donald Trump Signs Executive Order: Payroll Tax Holiday, Enhanced Unemployment Checks


President Donald Trump signed an executive order for a payroll tax holiday at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey on Saturday.

“The very important thing is that people want it and the people needed, actually,” Trump said, noting that Republicans and Democrats in Congress could not reach a deal.

The president said that the payroll tax holiday would apply to Americans earning less than $100,000 a year.

“If I am victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax,” he said.

Trump added that he might even “terminate” the tax or make permanent changes. A group of supporters joined the president at his press conference announcing the news and cheered as the president signed the orders.

“Biden probably won’t be doing that. You’ll have to ask him. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing,” he said, as his supporters chuckled.

The president also said he would provide a federal unemployment enhancement of $400 per week, but that states would pay for 25 percent of the cost. He also signed a moratorium on evictions and student loan payment deferments.

“The Democrats have obstructed people from getting desperately needed help,” Trump said.

The president said he would find ways to use existing funds already passed by Congress for coronavirus relief to help Americans fight the virus and the economic struggles from the lockdowns.

“We have the money to do a lot of things, money that was unspent, and we would do a lot of things with the money that was unspent,” he said.

via Breitbart News

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World’s Top Epidemiologists – Masks Don’t Work!

World’s Top Epidemiologists – Masks Don’t Work!

Tyler Durden

Sat, 08/08/2020 – 15:55

Authored by John Miltimore via The Foundation for Economic Education,

Denmark boasts one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the world. As of August 4, the Danes have suffered 616 COVID-19 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

That’s less than one-third of the number of Danes who die from pneumonia or influenza in a given year.

Despite this success, Danish leaders recently found themselves on the defensive. The reason is that Danes aren’t wearing face masks, and local authorities for the most part aren’t even recommending them.

This prompted Berlingske, the country’s oldest newspaper, to complain that Danes had positioned themselves “to the right of Trump.”

“The whole world is wearing face masks, even Donald Trump,” Berlingske pointed out.

This apparently did not sit well with Danish health officials.

From left to right: Professor Henning Bundgaard, Tamara van Ark, Anders Tegnell | Composite image by FEE (Rigshospitalet, Wikimedia Commons)

They responded by noting there is little conclusive evidence that face masks are an effective way to limit the spread of respiratory viruses.

“All these countries recommending face masks haven’t made their decisions based on new studies,” said Henning Bundgaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Rigshospitale, according to Bloomberg News.

Denmark is not alone.

Despite a global stampede of mask-wearing, data show that 80-90 percent of people in Finland and Holland say they “never” wear masks when they go out, a sharp contrast to the 80-90 percent of people in Spain and Italy who say they “always” wear masks when they go out.

Dutch public health officials recently explained why they’re not recommending masks.

"From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation," said Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark.

Others, echoing statements similar to the US Surgeon General from early March, said masks could make individuals sicker and exacerbate the spread of the virus.

“Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,” said Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment.

“There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.”

In Sweden, where COVID-19 deaths have slowed to a crawl, public health officials say they see “no point” in requiring individuals to wear masks.

“With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport,” said Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top infectious disease expert.

What’s Going on With Masks?

The top immunologists and epidemiologists in the world can’t decide if masks are helpful in reducing the spread of COVID-19. Indeed, we’ve seen organizations like the World Health Organization…

…and the CDC go back and forth in their recommendations…

For the average person, it’s confusing and frustrating. It’s also a bit frightening, considering that we’ve seen people denounced in public for not wearing a mask while picking up a bag of groceries.

The truth is masks have become the new wedge issue, the latest phase of the culture war. Mask opponents tend to see mask wearers as “fraidy cats” or virtue-signalling “sheeple” who willfully ignore basic science. Mask supporters, on the other hand, often see people who refuse to wear masks as selfish Trumpkins … who willfully ignore basic science.

There’s not a lot of middle ground to be found and there’s no easy way to sit this one out. We all have to go outside, so at some we all are required to don the mask or not.

It’s clear from the data that despite the impression of Americans as selfish rebel cowboys who won’t wear a mask to protect others, Americans are wearing masks far more than many people in European countries.

Polls show Americans are wearing masks at record levels, though a political divide remains: 98 percent of Democrats report wearing masks in public compared to 66 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Independents. (These numbers, no doubt, are to some extent the product of mask requirements in cities and states.)

Whether one is pro-mask or anti-mask, the fact of the matter is that face coverings have become politicized to an unhealthy degree, which stands to only further pollute the science.

Last month, for example, researchers at Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy responded to demands they remove an article that found mask requirements were “not based on sound data.”

The school, to its credit, did not remove the article, but instead opted to address the objections critics of their research had raised.

First, Do No Harm

The ethics of medicine go back millennia. 

The Hippocratic Oath famously calls on medical practitioners to “first, do no harm.” (Those words didn’t actually appear in the original oath; they developed as a form of shorthand.)

There is a similar principle in the realm of public health: the Principle of Effectiveness.

Public health officials say the idea makes it clear that public health organizations have a responsibility to not harm the people they are assigned to protect.

“If a community is at risk, the government may have a duty to recommend interventions, as long as those interventions will cause no harm, or are the least harmful option,” wrote Claire J. Horwell Professor of Geohealth at Durham University and Fiona McDonald, Co-Director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at Queensland University of Technology.

“If an agency follows the principle of effectiveness, it will only recommend an intervention that they know to be effective.”

The problem with mask mandates is that public health officials are not merely recommending a precaution that may or may not be effective.

They are using force to make people submit to a state order that could ultimately make individuals or entire populations sicker, according to world-leading public health officials.

That is not just a violation of the Effectiveness Principle. It’s a violation of a basic personal freedom.

Mask advocates might mean well, but they overlook a basic reality: humans spontaneously alter behavior during pandemics. Scientific evidence shows that American workplaces and consumers changed the patterns of their travel before lockdown orders were issued.

As I’ve previously noted, this should come as no surprise: Humans are intelligent, instinctive, and self-preserving mammals who generally seek to avoid high-risk behavior. The natural law of spontaneous order shows that people naturally take actions of self-protection by constantly analyzing risk.

Instead of ordering people to “mask-up” under penalty of fines or jail time, scientists and public health officials should get back to playing their most important role: developing sound research on which people can freely make informed decisions.

See the World Health Organization’s Latest Guidelines on Masks and COVID-19…

via ZeroHedge News

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DEEP STATE IS SCARED: Corrupt Leader of the Mueller Gang Andrew Weissmann Drafts Two Hit Pieces on AG Barr in One Day for Fake News Promotion

 

The New York Times released an op-ed yesterday by the most corrupt individual in US Deep State history, Andrew Weissmann:

Today, Wednesday, marks 90 days before the presidential election, a date in the calendar that is supposed to be of special note to the Justice Department. That’s because of two department guidelines, one a written policy that no action be influenced in any way by politics. Another, unwritten norm urges officials to defer publicly charging or taking any other overt investigative steps or disclosures that could affect a coming election.

Attorney General William Barr appears poised to trample on both. At least two developing investigations could be fodder for pre-election political machinations. The first is an apparently sprawling investigation by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, that began as an examination of the origins of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The other, led by John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, is about the so-called unmasking of Trump associates by Obama administration officials. Mr. Barr personally unleashed both investigations and handpicked the attorneys to run them.

The Atlantic also released an op-ed by Weissmann yesterday.  Crooked Weissmann says much of the same:

What is the American public to make of Attorney General Bill Barr’s congressional testimony defending his actions in the Trump ally Roger Stone’s case? During Barr’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Barr claimed the mantle of fairness and compassion, arguing that the career prosecutors were out of line in seeking a nine-year sentence for this first-time offender, who is a nonviolent criminal and 67 years old. Back in February, Barr had withdrawn the submission of career professionals for a seven-to-nine-year sentence and instead sought a sentence of at most three to four years. Two weeks later, a district judge sentenced Stone to 40 months of jail time, which Barr testified was a vindication in full.

Sound reasonable? Not in the slightest. As every experienced federal prosecutor would immediately understand, Barr’s position violates Department of Justice lawyers’ training, their obligations to the court, their duty under the U.S. sentencing guidelines, and the equal application of the law to all. I know—I was a federal prosecutor for two decades and a senior member of the special counsel’s office under Robert Mueller. Barr’s testimony amounted to an argument that the ends justified the means; it was fine to submit the revised sentencing recommendation so long as a court ultimately selected a sentence within that range.

What does this tell us? 

1. Weissmann and the Deep State are extremely scared of what is coming out in the Durham investigation.  Their crimes are finally under review.  President Trump knows that the crimes are devastating and, based on what we know, the Deep State doesn’t know what specific crimes they will be charged with.  This alone is scaring them to death because the Deep State knows what they have done and it is bad.

President Trump has pinned the following tweet in Twitter:

2. The New York Times and the Atlantic are digging in again.  They will not concede their errors in reporting totally dishonest messages from the Obama Deep State over the past four years especially.  These two entities are at the bottom of the bucket as far as fake news goes.

What we do know –

We know Andrew Weissmann is a crook.  He never should have been allowed inside the DOJ.  We reported on five of his actions back in March 2019 that cost tens of thousands of jobs and untold suffering by those in Weissmann’s way:

1 Audit firm Arthur Andersen and its 80,000 plus employees –

Sydney Powell was with Mark Levin on his show on FOX News and she described the actions taken by former FBI Head Robert Mueller during the Enron case in the early 2000s. Powell wrote LICENSED TO LIE: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice after seeing a core group of federal prosecutors break all the rules, make up crimes, hide evidence, and send innocent people to prison in the Enron case. When she saw them promoted to the top of the US legal system at the DOJ and FBI she had had enough.

Powell discusses how Mueller hand picked Weissmann wanting this corrupt attorney on his team –

Mueller and Weissmann made up a crime that resulted in the complete destruction of Arthur Andersen and the loss of more than 80,000 jobs for those employed by this corporation. This crime was eventually overturned by the US Supreme Court unanimously but it was far too late for all involved because the company was totally destroyed years before the Supreme Court decision.

2. Four Merrill Lynch employees –

Next, according to Powell, Mueller and Weissmann created crimes to indict four Americans at Merrill Lynch. They put these four individuals through ten years of “unmitigated hell”. Putting at least one of the four in solitary confinement.

3. General Mike Flynn and his lies that never occurred –

Move forward more than a decade and Mueller and Weissmann joined hands again but this time in the corrupt and unconstitutional Mueller Special Counsel team. Because of this, none of the crimes or corrupt actions taken against the President and those closest to him are legal or just.

This is of no concern to Mueller and Weissmann however. The first person they targeted was President Trump’s former National Security Advisor. Flynn was set up by former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and another corrupt agent in the White House. The notes they took as a result of their interview with the General were altered and the final notes (form 302’s) have not yet been uncovered. General Flynn was set up.

4. Paul Manafort’s crimes that the FBI earlier claimed were not crimes –

Paul Manafort was indicted on a number of crimes by corrupt Mueller and his gang. The problem with their initial indictment was that the actions under indictment were reviewed by the FBI previously and not considered crimes. The FBI interviewed Manafort in 2014 for the same crimes they indicted him on a few years later but neglected to press charges then because Obama gang members were involved.

Currently corrupt Obama appointed Judge Amy Berman Jackson has Manafort in solitary confinement for months now after putting a gag order on Manafort and then throwing him in jail. It’s a wonder what Manafort knows because Judge Jackson and the Mueller team want him dead.

5. Made up crime against numerous Russians and Russian companies –

Four out of five of the made up indictments in the Mueller investigation are Russians. As of mid-October 2018, the total number of individuals indicted was 37 individuals and three companies. We really don’t know and doubt that the Russians are even real. The individuals were indicted for posting stories on Facebook in Russian that Mueller says swayed the 2016 election towards Trump. The number of posts in Russian were less than a percent of a percent of posts recorded on Facebook during the period stated, part of which was after the 2016 election.

In the one case with Russians that has come to trial, with Russian Company Concord Management, is under indictment for a crime that the judge had to ask the Mueller team to define, because the so called crime is again made up.

In December 2019 in the Concord Management case it was uncovered that Mueller has a nude selfie on someone – we don’t know who, and his gang won’t tell how they got it, while running along with a special investigation created on a made up crime, where the individuals prosecuted aren’t even real.

These are only 5 incidences of the fake crimes and indictments by Weissmann and the Mueller team.

There are more (i.e. Roger Stone). It’s a shock that so many people believe that this thug Weissmann and his gang are legit. These people are crooks and hopefully their fears will soon materialize in indictments and prison sentences for all involved.

The post DEEP STATE IS SCARED: Corrupt Leader of the Mueller Gang Andrew Weissmann Drafts Two Hit Pieces on AG Barr in One Day for Fake News Promotion appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Meth Lab Discovered in San Francisco Hotel Used as Coronavirus Shelter


San Francisco police officers made two arrests after the discovery of a meth lab inside a hotel designated as a pandemic shelter.

San Francisco law enforcement arrived at the Civic Center Motor Inn around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday after receiving a call about a “strong chemical odor” coming from a room on the upper floor. Both police and residents were forced to wait for the arrival of a hazmat team.

“I was just, like, shocked,” said one guest, who told local Fox affiliate KTVU that a police officer knocked on her hotel door. “He’s like, there’s a meth lab right above your room, so we need you to evacuate, cause it could explode at any time.”

“Officers conducted an investigation and discovered chemicals in the room known to make narcotics,” said San Francisco Police Department spokesman Robert Rueca. “We believe this was isolated only to one guest room and two adults were taken into custody.”

A local business employee, identified only as “Sami,” expressed concern for the safety of these designated shelters. “I would like for the government to have a bit more of monitoring of the space,” he said.

“I do see that a place like this can be abused to be used for those kind of activities,” said Sami, “If you are housing people that are not there with a security deposit or anything that makes them liable, liability is key.”

The rooms were made available as part of an effort to house thousands of displaced or homeless people during the city’s coronavirus quarantine. San Francisco made more than 2,500 hotel rooms, 120 RVs, and 1,000 other shelter beds available for this purpose. Unfortunately, it has not been particularly effective in keeping the vulnerable population safe.

San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto responded to the concerns, explaining that the patrols had to end at the beginning of July:

The Sheriff’s Office provided patrol and response to calls for service at established SIP sites from March through June as part of our Safer Streets Program during the COVID shelter in place. Deputies responded to domestic disputes, overdoses, and persons in crisis and checked in on all sites every few hours. Patrols ended in July as we prepared for the lifting of health restrictions and the opening of the courts and regular services

Both suspects arrested on Saturday were registered guests at the hotel. They remain unidentified as of press time.

via Breitbart News

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