Libertarian Leanings

500,000 Preventable Deaths

In his article describing how a single point failure destroyed America's National Pandemic Plan, Dr. Steven Hatfill calls on Congress to demand accountability. 

This incompetence and intentional interference in science and medicine must never be allowed to happen again! Congress must, for once, put aside Partisanship.
There needs to be Criminal Justice.
There needs to be Medical Justice.

Dr Hatfill is a specialist physician and a virologist.  He has a military background. He has separate master’s degrees in microbial genetics, radiation biochemistry, and experimental pathology.  He studied the Ebola Virus at the US Army Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.  He had a front-row seat.

I watched in disbelief as a small number of senior federal employees defied orders and their oaths, only to join forces with a biased mainstream media and clueless State Governors, to systematically ignore and destroy a validated National Pandemic Response Plan that had its origins and testing in 2000 1, crafted into its final form in 2005, and updated in 2017.

In response, the Americans whose lives have been tragically disrupted and permanently altered, need to have an accountability of what went wrong and who was involved in the decisions that financially ruined millions of individuals and businesses, crippled the US economy, facilitated the preventable death of over 500,000 of our citizens, and destroyed all confidence in our medical research institutions and government.

[...]

Although the US system for COVID testing was broken, physicians could still make a provisional diagnosis based on symptoms, history, and clinical suspicion. Hydroxychloroquine was FDA-approved for other conditions, and the physician-directed outpatient use of HCQ would dramatically reduce hospital overloading. Drug safety was not a concern. It was proven safe even for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Adverse cardiac effects were not a major factor in the billions of HCQ doses given for other medical conditions in the past. ⁷

In 2010, under the Obama Administration, Dr. Rick Bright, PhD had been brought into the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). With an emphasis to improve US domestic vaccine production capability, in 2016 he was assigned as a Health and Human Services (HHS) Deputy Assistant Secretary for Preparedness as well as the Director of the BARDA.

On 23 March, Rick Bright received notice that HHS Secretary Azar directed him to establish an Expanded Access Investigational New Drug (IND) authorization for HCQ through BARDA. This would make any of the drug stored in the National Stockpile, legitimized for the treatment of COVID-19 outside of a hospital setting. In emails, Bright expressed indignation over his exclusion from the actual HCQ decision process. ⁸

In his Whistleblower Complaint, Rick Bright states his concern was the risk of irregular heart rhythm fatalities in patients taking HCQ. However, Bright was a PhD scientist; he was not a physician and he lacked training in cardiology and human pathology. He seemed unaware that millions of patients had been taking HCQ for other conditions over the years, in much higher doses and for longer periods of time than the short 5-day course of therapy proposed for early COVID-19 treatment. He also seemed unaware that evidence was building that in some patients, the COVID virus was attacking the heart.

On 24 March, Dr. Janet Woodcock, MD, (the FDA’s Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research), quickly reached out to advise Rick Bright. In place of obtaining an IND as directed by his superiors, she advised Bright to submit an application for an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for hydroxychloroquine instead. This is curious because Dr Woodcock was a physician and an internal medicine specialist with subspecialty training in Rheumatology. Consequently, she would have been quite familiar with the extraordinary safety profile of HCQ when given to hundreds of thousands of Lupus, Scleroderma, and Rheumatoid Arthritis patients for over 50 years, often in much higher doses for much longer times than the proposed dosing for early COVID-19 cases.

The issuance of her proposed EUA would predominantly restrict the use of HCQ to hospitalized patients. ⁷ Yet the early clinical data showed that HCQ was the most effective in outpatients where it prevented the need for hospitalization in the first place.

• In a legal document, Rick Bright makes a blatant admission of insubordination to multiple layers of leadership including the White House, HHS Secretary Azar, and Dr. Robert Kadlec, MD, the Assistant HHS Secretary for Preparedness and Readiness.
• Bright states the following in his Whistleblower Complaint: …“instead of a Nationwide Expanded Access IND protocol. Implementing the EUA was a compromise position, to rein in HHS leadership’s initial campaign to make the drugs available to the public outside of a hospital setting-” ^{8 (page 43)}

Unauthorized to speak to the press, Bright then reached out to biased media outlets to express his inaccurate belief that chloroquine and HCQ were dangerous drugs. ⁸ By the time President Trump revealed that he had taken HCQ, Bright had already primed the mainstream media to over-react to any negative reports on the drug, including reports that were grossly inaccurate or not even peer-reviewed.

 

Confirmed: The FBI Is The Law Enforcement Arm of The Democrat Party

House Republican lawmakers pressed Attorney General Merrick Garland to explain why the 2017 shooting that nearly killed Representative Steve Scalise and several GOP colleagues was officially designated by the FBI as “suicide by cop,” instead of domestic terrorism.

The Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Alexandria prosecutors all deemed the attack as domestic violent extremism targeting Republican members of Congress.

The FBI, however, privately determined the attack was “suicide by cop.” The designation was not made public until a congressional hearing last month.

Republicans have fumed over that determination, saying it downplays the shooter’s political motivation, which would make the incident domestic terrorism.

“This is clearly one of the cases where I think it needs to be reclassified because I think the evidence is very clear and many members of Congress could have lost their lives,” Rep. Robert Aderholt, Alabama Republican, said at the hearing Tuesday. “It is a very important issue for all members of Congress, whether Democrat or Republican.”

Unfortunately, it seems the ideological leanings of the attackers make quite a difference. 

The shooting, which targeted Republicans practicing in Alexandria, Virginia, for the annual congressional baseball game, was carried out by a lone gunman who had made numerous social media posts backing far-left causes and the presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent.

James Comey's refusal to push for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton back in 2016 was the first clear sign that our corrupt FBI has become the law enforcement arm of the Democrat Party.  The zeal with which the organization has pursued individuals who were in Washington, DC on January 6th, provides further confirmation.

Paul and Marilyn Hueper, owners of Homer Inn & Spa, woke with a start at 9 a.m. April 28 when a dozen armed FBI agents kicked down their front door in an investigation associated with Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s stolen laptop, which was taken during the Jan. 6 siege of the nation’s Capitol.

[...]

Paul said he repeatedly asked to see a search warrant but was denied until two and a half hours had gone by. During that time, he was separated from his wife.

“We sat there really for the first hour, not knowing what’s going on,” Paul told the Bird’s Eye View. “They never offered for us to be comfortable,” he added, “It was very harshly done.”

Paul said the agents ransacked the house and left a huge hole in his front door, which they offered to replace.

[...]

Marilyn said she tried to be respectful but couldn’t help but laugh.

She asked to see some identification, at which point agents quickly flashed their badges.

“I couldn’t read it fast enough to know what it was,” she said of the badges. She then asked to see a warrant and was told that she “would get to see it” later.

When repeatedly told she was the woman in the photo, Marilyn responded by saying “I would like to know how I split myself into two locations because I didn’t know I had this power.”

The first photo agents showed her was very fuzzy and depicted a woman wearing a similar coat with a similar hairstyle. They then showed her a photo of the woman’s face.

She told them, “Oh that’s obviously not me. Why didn’t you show me that photo to start with?” The woman in the photo has detached earlobes – Marilyn’s are attached, she said. Plus, the woman was wearing a sweater that Marilyn said, “You couldn’t pay me to wear.”

The agents suggested that she was lying and not cooperating, she told Bird.

At no point was the couple read their Miranda rights or charged with any crime, and the agents left after three hours without offering an apology. They also took Marilyn’s phones and laptop, she said.

Apparently the terrorist designation allows the FBI to dispense with all those niceties like Miranda warnings, search warrants, and any other constitutional rights to which one might mistakenly think one is entitled.  What a wonderfully effective weapon for the FBI to apply to political opponents of their Democrat sponsors.

And so unlike the treatment of left-wing rioters and arsonists in Portland, Oregon.  Charges against 90% of them were dropped.  Keep in mind that the only shooting and killing in Washington on January 6th was done by a member of the Capital Police whom the DOJ cleared and refuses to identify, and the victim was a protestor, an unarmed woman Air Force veteran. 

Expect nothing to come of Attorney General Garland's promise to raise this "suicide by cop" designation with the FBI. 

Defense Files Motion For a New Trial

Eric Nelson, attorney for convicted murderer Derek Chauvin, has filed for a new trial, arguing that the court "abused its discretion" when it refused to sequester the jury, and also arguing that a juror was guilty of misconduct.

“The defense kept asking for full sequestration, and the judge kept denying it,” Mr. Tamburino said. “Then we had the shooting of Daunte Wright. Then we had congresswoman Maxine Waters. And the defense kept asking for full sequestration, and it kept being denied. That’s a strong argument.”

Legal experts said the defense’s case was strengthened by the revelation Monday that Mr. Mitchell, known as juror No. 52, wore a “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” shirt and a “Black Lives Matter” hat, as shown in a photo posted in August on social media, possibly at a march in the District.

On the jury questionnaire, Mr. Mitchell said he answered “no” when asked whether he had “participated in protests about police use of force or police brutality.”

“I think they asked if I attended any protests for George Floyd or anything for police brutality. My answer was no because I hadn’t,” Mr. Mitchell told WCCO-TV. “This particular march was more so for voting, voter registration. Getting people out to get out and vote for the presidential election that was upcoming a couple months afterward. … This was the only thing I attended.”

The rally, which took place on the anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, was also billed by the National Action Network as the “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks,” and featured speeches by several Floyd siblings.

“It was also advertised as a protest against police use of force, specifically, ‘Get off our necks,’” Mr. Tamburino said. “He wore a T-shirt. There were Floyd family members speaking at that rally as well as people in support of the family for Jacob Blake and Breonna Taylor. So clearly he should have disclosed that. He didn’t.”

Cops Are Leaving The Force In Droves

Hamstrung by budget cuts and policy changes, vilified in anti-police protests, officers across the nation are resigning and retiring at record rates.

An estimated 5,300 officers quit or retired from the New York Police Department last year, 200 or more cops have left the Seattle force, and in the nation’s capital, the union reports that the 3,700-strong Metropolitan Police Department is down 300 badges since the D.C. Council enacted sweeping police reforms last summer.

“Officers are leaving at an alarming rate, and crime is spiking in a lot of different areas,” police union chairman Gregg Pemberton told The Washington Times on Tuesday.

In Baltimore, the department has lost nearly 300 officers since last year, leaving detectives “overwhelmed with their caseload because they, too, are short-staffed,” said the leader of the local Fraternal Order of Police.

“This has a direct effect on the crime fight because there is barely enough time to answer the 911 calls, let alone look for violent offenders,” Mike Mancuso said.

The mass exodus began in the months after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody last May, sparking protests over racism and police brutality across the nation, along with calls to “abolish” and “defund” the police.

Paul Beakman Jr., former president of the Fraternal Order of Police Western New York Lodge 103, called the movement to defund police “one of the most ill-thought concepts ever.”

Whether or not defund the police is an "ill-thought concept" depends upon what proponents of it are trying to accomplish.  Let me go out on a limb and suggest that the protection of black lives, or any other lives, is not among their goals.

Is The Mainstream Media Dying?

If it is, it's not happening fast enough for my money.  Matt Taibbi and Ben Bradlee, Jr. debate the topic.

Griffiths: Thanks, Ben. Now, Matt, we're going to give you the last word. Be it resolved: The mainstream media is dying and that's OK. You've been arguing in favor of the motion.

Taibbi: In the best-case scenario, I would hope that the mainstream media didn't die or lose its authority. But I think we're heading into a situation where something has to change dramatically.

We’ve talked about news deserts in this country. We've lost thousands of local newspapers since the early 2000s. The situation has resulted in a major class schism in journalism, because so many of those local news reporters in those smaller papers — these aren't rich people. They're not children of privilege. They don't have a lot of money, but they served a very valuable role in small communities and they reported on things that were important to ordinary people. And also, they were in touch with the people in their own community because they live there.

What's happened with the disappearance of those types of organizations is that the only thing left is the national news media, which increasingly — and I watched this process happen because I've been in the business — it's increasingly made up of people like me who are upper-class white folks from big cities of the coast, of the East Coast and California.

If you go on the plane on the campaign trail, most of the people on the plane now are graduates of Ivy League universities. They live in rarefied areas of expensive, cosmopolitan neighborhoods. Socially, they see themselves as being the same people as the politicians they're reporting on. That's a terrible situation. I think that it's an underrated problem within modern news media. It's lost some touch with mass audiences — in part because they're no longer the people who are covering the affairs of ordinary people.

Deperno Law and Dominion Voting Systems

Documents up . . . https://t.co/8VUtiYFiwZ

Internet connections, on-board modems, unauthorized programs, and flipping votes.

If I can do it, do you think China can figure it you? https://t.co/JcMUugNQb7 pic.twitter.com/aFY7D2Y1qN

— Matthew S. DePerno, Esq. (@mdeperno) May 4, 2021

Deperno Law Office claims to have evidence of Dominion Voting Systems corruption. Video demonstration at the link.

Good Question

Did anyone ever interview this person?pic.twitter.com/G3cUtfREqb

— Lawyerforlaws (@lawyer4laws) May 2, 2021

Imagine Being a Cop

Look at what this cop had to deal with in LA. This is the environment we’ve created by demonizing police. pic.twitter.com/7uPNgRjfzn

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 3, 2021

Arkansas Ends Sales Taxes on Gold and Silver; Additional States May Soon Follow

The following article was provided by Jp Cortez, Policy Director for the
Sound Money Defense League

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(May 3, 2021) Little Rock, Arkansas –  By signing sound money legislation today, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has officially ended sales taxation on gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bullion and coins– thereby setting an example for legislators in New Jersey, Maine, Ohio, and Tennessee, who are still considering similar measures in their own states this year.

Arkansas’s Senate Bill 336, originally introduced by Sen. Mark Johnson and Rep. Delia Haak, enjoyed tremendous popularity, passing through the state Senate 30-1 before passing out of the state House unanimously by a vote of 93-0.

Backed by the Sound Money Defense League, Money Metals Exchange, and grassroots activists and coin dealers in Arkansas, Senate Bill 336 will allow Arkansas investors, savers, and small businesses to acquire precious metals without being slapped with sales and use taxes.

The Arkansas sales tax exemption takes effect on July 1, 2021.

Meanwhile, similar bills are still pending in Ohio, Maine, Tennessee, and New Jersey as the national backlash against taxing constitutional money continues.

Governor Hutchinson signs Senate Bill 336 alongside
sponsors and supporters of the measure

Including Arkansas, 40 U.S. states now fully or partially exempt gold and silver from sales taxes. That leaves 10 states and the District of Columbia as the primary jurisdictions that still harshly penalize citizens seeking to protect their savings against the serial devaluation of the Federal Reserve Note.

States have been removing sales taxes from monetary metals for the following reasons:

• Taxing precious metals is unfair to certain savers and investors. Gold and silver are held as forms of savings and investment. States do not tax the purchase of stocks, bonds, ETFs, currencies, and other financial instruments, so it makes no sense to tax monetary metals.

• Levying sales taxes on precious metals is illogical because gold and silver are inherently held for resale. Sales taxes are typically levied on final consumer goods. Precious metals are inherently held for resale, not “consumption,” making the application of sales taxes on precious metals illogical and especially inappropriate.

• Taxing gold and silver harms in-state businesses. It’s a competitive marketplace, so buyers in states with precious-metals sales taxes often take their business to neighboring states that have eliminated or reduced sales tax on precious metals. Investors can easily avoid paying $136.50 in sales taxes, for example, on a $1,950 purchase of a one-ounce gold bar. Therefore, levying sales tax on precious metals harms in-state businesses, who will lose business to out-of-state precious metals dealers.  Coin conventions also tend to avoid the sales tax states.

• Taxing precious metals is harmful to citizens attempting to protect their assets. Purchasers of precious metals aren’t fat-cat investors. Most who buy precious metals do so in small increments as a way of saving money. Precious metals investors are purchasing precious metals as a way to preserve their wealth against the damages of inflation. Inflation harms the poorest among us—including pensioners, Arkansans on fixed incomes, wage-earners, savers, and more.

Jp Cortez, policy director for the Sound Money Defense League, explained that “the vast majority of states realize that taxing sound money harms in-state investors, in-state businesses, and even state revenues.”

Cortez continued: “by eliminating taxes on the purchase of gold and silver, Arkansas citizens can protect themselves against inflation, while citizens in the few states that still tax sound money are punished for trying to preserve their wealth.”

Having eliminated sales taxes on the monetary metals, Arkansas will rise from dead last in the Sound Money Index to 30th place among the 50 states.

 

Jp Cortez is the Policy Director for the Sound Money Defense League, a non-partisan, national public policy group working to restore sound money at the state and federal level and publisher of the Sound Money Index.

Raucous Reception for Romney

A loser showed up at the @UtahGOP Convention today—well deserved! pic.twitter.com/3gNcebZZLm

— Dan Scavino🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) May 1, 2021

James Lindsay

The purpose of Critical Race Theory is to turn America against itself. That's it.

— James Lindsay, sits very, very strongly (@ConceptualJames) May 1, 2021

Indeed. That's it.

Biden's First Address

The full transcript of Joe Biden's first address to a joint session of congress:

Madame Speaker, Madame Vice President, No president has ever said those words from this podium, and it's about time.
 
The First Lady, the Second Gentleman, Mr. Chief Justice.
 
Members of the United States Congress and the Cabinet – and distinguished guests.
 
My fellow Americans.
 
While the setting tonight is familiar, this gathering is very different – a reminder of the extraordinary times we are in.  Throughout our history, Presidents have come to this chamber to speak to the Congress, to the nation, and to the world.  To declare war. To celebrate peace. To announce new plans and possibilities.
 
Tonight, I come to talk about crisis — and opportunity.  About rebuilding our nation — and revitalizing our democracy.  And winning the future for America.  As I stand here tonight — just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration.  100 days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis.
 
The worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.
 
Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation: America is on the move again, turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity. Setback into strength.
 
Life can knock us down, but in America, we never stay down.  In America, we always get up.  And today, that's what we're doing: America is rising anew, choosing hope over fear, truth over lies, light over darkness.
 
After 100 Days of rescue and renewal, America is ready for takeoff.  We are working again, dreaming again, discovering again, leading the world again.  We have shown each other and the world: There is no quit in America.
 
100 days ago, America's house was on fire.
 
We had to act.
 
And thanks to the extraordinary leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer – and with the overwhelming support of the American people – Democrats, Independents, and Republicans – we did act.
 
Together — we passed the American Rescue Plan — one of the most consequential rescue packages in American history.  We're already seeing the results.
 
After I promised 100 million COVID-19 vaccine shots in 100 days – we will have provided over 220 million COVID shots in 100 days.

The Rebuttal

The full transcript of Senator Tim Scott's response to Joe Biden's first address as president:

Good evening. I’m Senator Tim Scott from the great state of South Carolina.

We just heard President Biden’s first address to Congress. Our President seems like a good man. His speech was full of good words. But President Biden promised you a specific kind of leadership. He promised to unite a nation. To lower the temperature. To govern for all Americans, no matter how we voted. That was the pitch. You just heard it again.

But our nation is starving for more than empty platitudes. We need policies and progress that bring us closer together. But three months in, the actions of the President and his party are pulling us further apart.

I won’t waste your time tonight with finger-pointing or partisan bickering. You can get that on T.V. any time you want. I want to have an honest conversation. About common sense and common ground. About this feeling that our nation is sliding off its shared foundation, and how we move forward together.

Growing up, I never dreamed I’d be standing here tonight. When I was a kid, my parents divorced. My mother, my brother, and I moved in with my grandparents. Three of us, sharing one bedroom. I was disillusioned and angry, and I nearly failed out of school. But I was blessed.

First, with a praying momma. Then with a mentor, a Chick-Fil-A operator named John Moniz. Finally, with a string of opportunities that are only possible here in America.

This past year, I’ve watched COVID attack every rung of the ladder that helped me up. So many families have lost parents and grandparents too early. So many small businesses have gone under. Becoming a Christian transformed my life — but for months, too many churches were shut down.

Most of all, I am saddened that millions of kids have lost a year of learning when they could not afford to lose a day. Locking vulnerable kids out of the classroom is locking adults out of their future.

Our public schools should have reopened months ago. Other countries’ did. Private and religious schools did. Science has shown for months that schools are safe. But too often, powerful grown-ups set science aside. And kids like me were left behind. The clearest case for school choice in our lifetimes.

Last year, under Republican leadership, we passed five bipartisan COVID packages. Congress supported our hospitals, saved our economy, and funded Operation Warp Speed, delivering vaccines in record time. All five bills got 90 or more votes in the Senate. Common sense found common ground.

In February, Republicans told President Biden we wanted to keep working together to win this fight. But Democrats wanted to go it alone. They spent almost $2 trillion on a partisan bill that the White House bragged was the most liberal bill in American history! Only 1% went to vaccinations. No requirement to re-open schools promptly. COVID brought Congress together five times. This Administration pushed us apart.

Another issue that should unite us is infrastructure. Republicans support everything you think of when you think of ‘infrastructure.’ Roads, bridges, ports, airports, waterways, high-speed broadband — we’re all in! But again, Democrats want a partisan wish list. They won’t even build bridges... to build bridges!

Less than 6% of the President’s plan goes to roads and bridges. It’s a liberal wish-list of Big Government waste... plus the biggest job-killing tax hikes in a generation. Experts say, when all is said and done, it would lower Americans’ wages and shrink our economy.

Tonight we also heard about a so-called “Family Plan.” Even more taxing, even more spending, to put Washington even more in the middle of your life — from the cradle, to college. The beauty of the American Dream is that families get to define it for themselves. We should be expanding options and opportunities for all families — not throwing money at certain issues because Democrats think they know best.

“Infrastructure” spending that shrinks our economy is not common sense. Weakening our southern border and creating a crisis is not compassionate.

The President is abandoning principles he held for decades. Now, he says your tax dollars should fund abortions. He’s laying groundwork to pack the Supreme Court. This is not common ground.

Nowhere do we need common ground more desperately than in our discussions of race. I have experienced the pain of discrimination. I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason. To be followed around a store while I’m shopping. I remember, every morning, at the kitchen table, my grandfather would have the newspaper in his hands. Later, I realized he had never learned to read it. He just wanted to set the right example.

I’ve also experienced a different kind of intolerance. I get called “Uncle Tom” and the N-word — by ‘progressives’! By liberals! Just last week, a national newspaper suggested my family’s poverty was actually privilege because a relative owned land generations before my time. Believe me, I know our healing is not finished.

In 2015, after the shooting of Walter Scott, I wrote a bill to fund body cameras. Last year, after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, I built an even bigger police reform proposal. But my Democratic colleagues blocked it. I extended an olive branch. I offered them amendments. But Democrats used the filibuster to block the debate from even happening. My friends across the aisle seemed to want the issue more than they wanted a solution. But I’m still working. I’m still hopeful.

When America comes together, we’ve made tremendous progress. But powerful forces want to pull us apart. A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic — and if they looked a certain way, they were inferior. Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them — and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor.

From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress. By doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal.

You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country. It’s backwards to fight discrimination with different discrimination. And it’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.

I’m an African-American who has voted in the South all my life. I take voting rights personally. Republicans support making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. And so do voters! Big majorities of Americans support early voting, and big majorities support Voter I.D. — including African-Americans and Hispanics. Common sense makes common ground.

But today, this conversation has collapsed. The state of Georgia passed a law that expands early voting; preserves no-excuse mail-in voting; and, despite what the President claimed, did not reduce Election Day hours. If you actually read this law, it’s mainstream. It will be easier to vote early in Georgia than in Democrat-run New York. But the left doesn’t want you to know that. They want people to virtue-signal by yelling about a law they haven’t even read.

Fact-checkers have called out the White House for misstatements. The President absurdly claims this is worse than Jim Crow. What is going on here? I’ll tell you. A Washington power grab.

This misplaced outrage is supposed to justify Democrats’ sweeping bill that would take over elections for all 50 states; send public funds to political campaigns you disagree with; and make the bipartisan Federal Elections Commission... partisan! This is not about civil rights or our racial past. It’s about rigging elections in the future.

And, no — the same filibuster that President Obama and President Biden praised when they were Senators, that Democrats used just last year, has not suddenly become a racist relic just because the shoe is on the other foot.

Race is not a political weapon to settle every issue the way one side wants. It’s too important.

This should be a joyful springtime for our nation. This Administration inherited a tide that had already turned. The coronavirus is on the run! Thanks to Operation Warp Speed and the Trump Administration, our country is flooded with safe and effective vaccines. Thanks to our bipartisan work last year, job openings are rebounding.

So why do we feel so divided and anxious? A nation with so much cause for hope should not feel so heavy-laden. A President who promised to bring us together should not push agendas that tear us apart. The American family deserves better. And we know what better looks like!

Just before COVID, we had the most inclusive economy in my lifetime. The lowest unemployment ever recorded for African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans. The lowest for women in nearly 70 years. Wages were growing faster for the bottom 25% than the top 25%. That happened because Republicans focused on expanding opportunity for all Americans.

We passed Opportunity Zones, criminal justice reform, and permanent funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities for the first time ever. We fought the drug epidemic, rebuilt our military, and cut taxes for working families and single moms like mine.

Our best future won’t come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams. It will come from you — the American people. Black, Hispanic, white and Asian. Republican and Democrat. Brave police officers and Black neighborhoods. We are not adversaries. We are family! We are all in this together.

And we get to live in the greatest country on Earth. The country where my grandfather, in his 94 years, saw his family go from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.

So I am more than hopeful — I am confident — that our finest hour is yet to come. Original sin is never the end of the story. Not in our souls, and not for our nation. The real story is always redemption.

I am standing here because my mom has prayed me through some very tough times. I believe our nation has succeeded the same way. Because generations of Americans, in their own ways, have asked for grace — and God has supplied it.

So I will close with a word from a worship song that helped me through this past year. The music is new, but the words draw from Scripture.

(May) the Lord bless you and keep you,

Make His face shine upon you

And be gracious to you…

May His presence go before you,

And behind you, and beside you…

In your weeping and rejoicing,

He is with you...

May His favor be upon (our nation), for a thousand generations

And your family... and your children…

And their children.

Good night, and God bless.

Defamation and The New York Times

James O'Keefe talks about Project Veritas's case against the New York Times.

In the court of public opinion, the NYT claims to speak facts.

In the court of law, where your butt is under oath, the NYT admits it’s News section is “opinion” commentary.
pic.twitter.com/4TKX6LJia4

— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 28, 2021

Politically Speaking, America Has Become a Third World Nation

Sad but true, though economically we still have a ways to go before we hit bottom.  RedState's shipwreckedcrew reports on further evidence of third world style corruption of our federal government, as if we needed any.  Tucker Carlson -- Are US Citizens Who Attended the January 6 Protests Now on the "No Fly List"?

VIDEO PROOF THAT I AM ON A NO-FLY LIST: pic.twitter.com/TajBPNroH3

— Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes) April 27, 2021

I can't say that I've ever heard of Nicholas J. Fuentes, but ProPublica thinks he's a white supremacist, as they said in a report that identified people who attended the infamous January 6th protest in Washington, D.C.

Several other of the participants ProPublica and FRONTLINE identified from video have direct links to the white nationalist movement, which has seen a resurgence of activity during the Trump era.

One was Nick Fuentes, an internet personality who streams a daily talk show on DLive, an alternative social media platform. Fuentes, who marched in Charlottesville during the 2017 white power rally there, speaks frequently in anti-Semitic terms and pontificates on the need to protect America’s white heritage from the ongoing shift in the nation’s demographics. He has publicly denied believing in white nationalism but has said that he considers himself a “white majoritarian.”

Fuentes, who spoke at pro-Trump rallies late last year in Michigan and Washington, D.C., said he was at the rally on Wednesday but didn’t follow the mob into the Capitol. One group of Fuentes’ supporters, who call themselves the Groyper Army, was filmed running through the Capitol carrying a large blue flag with the America First logo.

At any rate, yesterday Fuentes was prevented from booking a flight and getting on a plane in Chicago. Later, he said that he found out that the airlines had contacted TSA who advised that he was not allowed to board.  But why?

According to another Tweet on Fuentes’ timeline, he had an encounter with an airline for not wearing what the airline considered a proper mask on December 4, 2020. But Fuentes claimed that he took eight flights between December 4 and January 7, suggesting that the December 4 episode did not seem to hinder his travel prior to the January 6 protests.

Don’t mistake my questioning what might be happening to Fuentes with an endorsement of everything Fuentes has said and done while advocating his particular brand of political views.

But Fuentes has not been arrested or charged with any crime.  He is under no court order or otherwise subject to judicial supervision.

If Fuentes has been placed on the “No Fly List” by federal law enforcement based on his expressed political views, then he has been deprived of “liberty” without “due process” in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Due process requires “notice and opportunity to be heard” before the government can take steps to interfere with your constitutional rights. 

If you were to ask if I think the Biden administration would strengthen its grip on power by denying citizens their rights, I would answer yes, they would do it in a New York minute.  They did steal an election, after all.

Collusion

“These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship is ‘private’ – as the documents show collusion between a whole group of government officials in multiple states to suppress speech about election controversies.” https://t.co/nuNmm7c2dj

— Kerry 🇺🇸 (Gab: kerry2017) (Parler: k1erry) (@K1erry) April 27, 2021

Corporate Media's Corner of the Swamp

Glenn Greenwald writes, not only is there no accountability for corporate media types who peddle U.S. Intelligence Community propaganda, quite the opposite is true.  "[T]he more aggressively and recklessly you spread CIA narratives or pro-war manipulation, the more rewarded you will be in that world."

On Monday, CNN made clear that this dynamic still drives the corporate media world. The network proudly announced that it had hired Natasha Bertrand away from Politico. In doing so, they added to their stable of former CIA operatives, NSA spies, Pentagon Generals and FBI agents a reporter who has done as much as anyone, if not more so, to advance the scripts of those agencies.

Bertrand's career began taking off when, while at Business Insider, she abandoned her obsession with Russia's role in Syria in 2016 in order to monomaniacally fixate on every last conspiracy theory and gossip item that drove the Russiagate fraud during the 2016 campaign and then into the Trump presidency. Each month, Bertrand produced dozens of Russiagate articles for the site that were so unhinged that they made Rachel Maddow look sober, cautious and reliable.

Corporate media has always had a leftward bias, but it has grown more pervasive and obvious as the Democrats have become increasingly captive of the radical left.  You might say corporate media are now "card carrying" members of the Swamp.

And this is how the Swamp works.

Natasha Bertrand has spent the last five years working as a spokesperson for the alliance composed of the CIA and the Democratic Party, spreading every unvetted and unproven conspiracy theory about Russiagate that they fed her. The more loyally she performed that propagandistic function, the more rapidly she was promoted and rewarded. Now she arrives at her latest destination: CNN, not only Russiagate Central along with MSNBC but also the home to countless ex-operatives of the security state agencies on whose behalf Bertrand speaks.

Once again we see the two key truths of modern corporate journalism in the U.S. First, we have the Jeffrey Goldberg Principle: you can never go wrong, but only right, by disseminating lies and propaganda from the CIA. Second, the organs that spread the most disinformation and crave disinformation agents as their employees are the very same ones who demand censorship of the internet in the name of stopping disinformation.

Hat tip to Mollie who retweeted this,  Read the rest here.

Learning to Fight Back

I’ve wondered if it’s worth sharing “my story.” I’m a pretty private person so it feels weird to share. But I think it’s worth it bc we all need encouragement that ordinary ppl can do something about what’s happening to our country. So, why do I talk about Woke stuff?

🧵

— Grace, culture war refugee (@graceisforyou) April 26, 2021

Here is a PDF of the unrolled Twitter thread.

There Is a Certain Logic to "Defund The Police"

I think you're onto something. https://t.co/3Pq5nD1OEJ

— Tom Bowler (@TDBowler) April 27, 2021

More importantly, it would be a unionized federal police agency beholden to the Democrat party.

And Just Like That...

Vaccinations are are in full swing.  Drug companies — and their investors — are making their money. 

NOTHING TO SEE HERE...

Former director of CDC is now CEO of the foundation that funds FACTCHECK. org’s vaccine fact checking program. Roughly 15% of said foundation’s assets are J&J stock.

Bless your heart if you think factcheck .org is an unbiased source of vaccine information pic.twitter.com/Ijq3sojHmV

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 24, 2021

Early on in the "pandemic" it so happened that I was due for my annual physical.  During my discussion with the doctor, I asked if he would prescribe hydroxychloroquine in the event that I caught the corona virus.  I had seen the video with Dr. Zelenko, and I had decided.  If there was even a small chance that HCQ could alleviate the worst of the corona virus symptoms and by doing so, save my life, I wanted some.  My doctor told me he was not permitted to prescribe HCQ for corona virus.  And this is in "Live Free or Die" New Hampshire.  (My emphasis in the following.)

New Hampshire
On April 3, [2020] the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services issued an emergency order regulating the prescribing and dispensing of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in the state.

The order prohibits the prescribing or dispensing of prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for the prevention of COVID-19, and establishes a quantity limit of 30 days only for patients who were not already established on either medication. Patients already established will not be limited to a 30-day supply.

It was not the answer I expected.  I was really asking my doctor what he thought about HCQ as a corona virus treatment, and would he prescribe it even if he had his doubts about it, if I was convinced it would help me.  His answer implied that there would be consequences if he prescribed it for me.

Not only could you not get any HCQ, you could barely get information about it.  Consider the experiences of Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist and cardiologist, and professor of medicine at Texas A&M.

McCullough explained that from the beginning of the pandemic, he refused to let his patients “languish at home with no treatment and then be hospitalized when it was too late,” which was the typical treatment protocol being discussed, promoted and offered across the west.

He thus “put together a team of doctors” to study “appropriately prescribed off-label use of conventional medicine” to treat the illness and they published their findings in the American Journal of Medicine.

“The interesting thing was, (that while) there were 50,000 papers in the peer-reviewed literature on COVID, not a single one told the doctor how to treat it,” he said. “When does that happen? I was absolutely stunned! And when this paper was published … it became … the most cited paper in basically all of medicine at that time the world.”

With the help of his daughter, Dr. McCullough recorded a YouTube video incorporating four slides from the “peer-reviewed paper published in one of the best medical journals in the world” discussing early treatments for COVID-19. The video quickly “went absolutely viral. And within about a week YouTube said ‘you violated the terms of the community’” and they pulled it down.

Now, there are three different vaccines for corona virus available, and as we approach 600,000 U.S. corona virus deaths, so is hydroxychloroquine.  I just checked.

Had HCQ been available and appropriately prescribed, up to 85% of those U.S. deaths might have been avoided.