Tag: bankruptcy

Study: Absolutely NO excess deaths from COVID-19

4:15 pm

UPDATE: It appears the newsletter analysis that I linked to below was too hopeful for the authorities at Johns Hopkins, even though it was based on actual data. Mere minutes after I posted this they took it down, censoring this conclusion. Though I quoted a lot below, the article was much longer, included detailed graphs, and was thoughtful and thorough.

Positive news like this however must not be published. It must be squelched and silenced. We must live in fear, even if the thing we fear does not exist.

One of my readers below however found it on the Wayback Machine, here.

I have also embedded below the fold the webinar where the information censored was discussed in detail. In case Johns Hopkins or Youtube decides to censor this webinar also, another one of my readers below has downloaded it and made it available here. (It is very sad that a university now considers Orwell’s 1984 to be an instruction manual instead of a warning.)

Another reader has uploaded the file to Rumble, so I have embedded that video below as well.

Furthermore, another reader has provided me a high quality pdf of the original post, which I have uploaded and you can download here.

Original post:
——————————
A new analysis of the 2020 death statistics in the United States has revealed that despite the panic over COVID-19, the total number of deaths in all age groups — including the elderly — showed no change before or after the arrival of the virus.

This bears repeating, in bold and italics: There have been no excess deaths in 2020.

Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same. “The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals,” Briand said.

Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.

These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.

And yet, there have been so many COVID-19 deaths! How can the total number of deaths not be higher? The researcher looked more closely, and discovered (surprise! surprise!) that there was an unreasonable drop in other causes, matching exactly the increase in coronavirus deaths.

When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.

This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years. Interestingly, … the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19. This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19. [emphasis mine]

In other words, COVID-19 is just another type of flu-like respiratory disease, that is only appearing terrible because doctors and hospitals are incorrectly labeling many deaths as COVID-19 when in past years they would have labeled them based on the existing chronic illnesses the patient already had.

It has all been a scam, a Chicken Little scam induced by some very evil people in government to cause fear and panic in the general population. I leave it to my readers to figure out why.

Regardless, it is time for people to come to their senses. Let the worry warts cower in mindless fear in their basements. Rip off that mask, go back to living your normal American life, free and open, pursuing your happiness.
» Read more

85 comments

Summary of mass voter fraud in Georgia

12:30 pm

Summary slide outlining Powell voter fraud allegations

Doug Ross has assembled a straightforward series of infographics clearly summarizing the allegations of voter fraud in Georgia that are described in the 104 page lawsuit [pdf] filed yesterday by Sidney Powell.

The allegations are well summarized by the slide to the right. Make sure you review the rest of his slides at the link (which provide details for each bullet point). Even more important, read the whole filing at the second link. I have. The allegations are extensive, well documented, consistently favor Biden, and justify entirely a careful, detailed hand recount (not the fake recount the state did last week). If this is not done, then the state legislature will be justified in refusing to certify the election for president, denying any candidate its electors.

Make sure you take a look. Whether you are a Trump or Biden supporter, these allegations must be dealt with and either dis-proven or fixed, before any vote in Georgia can be certified.

Any objections to a full review by anyone, especially partisan Democrats, will prove a disgusting hostility to the most basic premise of democracy, a fair and legal vote.

21 comments

The coming purge

1:54 pm

Hitler's purge in 1934, the night of long knives
Hitler’s violent purge of his opponents in 1934: The Night of Long Knives.

I have just finished reading The Memo: 20 years inside the deep state fighting for America first. Written by military intelligence and national security expert Richard Higgins, it described his long and mostly fruitless effort in Washington to make our foreign military policy more effective.

In 2016, in desperation, he allied himself with Donald Trump, hoping that a victory by this very unconventional outsider might finally put Higgins in a position of some control.

It did not work out that way. At first the established players in Washington blocked his appointment. Eventually he managed to get an assignment at the National Security Council (NSC), but at a lower ranking than initially promised. Worse, the make-up of that council remained largely controlled by Democratic Party holdovers. As Higgins described things at the NSC in the first year after Trump’s inauguration:
» Read more

36 comments

New York: Oppression imposed because of almost no COVID-19 deaths

2:09 pm

In the last few weeks the Democratic Party governments that control the state and city of New York imposed new and incredibly oppressive new rules, clamping down hard on the freedoms of their citizens, as well as the ability of visitors and tourists to come there.

The justification used by Democrats Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio for these new edicts against freedom? Both claimed that an increase to 3% of what they called “the positivity rate” required more restrictions. This increase comes from increased detection of COVID-19 due to increased tests, but it does not mean there has been a significant rise in actual illness.

You need only look at the graph below to understand how unnecessary these new restrictions are.
» Read more

19 comments

Study: Asymptomatic and secondary infected individuals do not infect others

1:00 pm

A new study published in the journal Nature has found that people who are either asymptomatic or undergoing a secondary illness of COVID-19 are simply not infectious, and don’t give the virus to others.

In other words, it appears that the only time people can infect others is when they have the virus for the first time, and only when they are symptomatic. Lock downs and the use of masks by the healthy accomplish nothing. All you need to do is quarantine the symptomatic patient, as human societies have been doing for centuries and centuries.

To once again emphasize this point, wearing masks if you are healthy and not sick protects no one. Social distancing if you are not sick protects no one. Shutting down businesses, such as reducing capacities at restaurants so they can’t make a profit, protects no one. Curfews protect no one.

When you see someone on a hiking trail, it is not necessary to run ten feet off the trail, put a mask on, and bow your head away in fear and terror of that other person. That they are on the trail guarantees they are not sick. They can’t infect you. And that you are there also means you can’t infect them.

Burn the mask. Smile. Live like a human again. And most of all, stop being afraid all the time.

This very long quote from the study’s discussion section, with the important points highlighted, makes these conclusions very clear:
» Read more

43 comments

“I’d rather die from COVID than loneliness.”

5:53 pm

The toll on the elderly caused by the COVID-19 panic rises, and not because they have caught COVID-19.

According to an Associated Press story this week, an estimated 40,000 nursing home residents have died prematurely since March, resulting in a 15 percent increase in “excess deaths” at those facilities. “Nursing home watchdogs are being flooded with reports of residents kept in soiled diapers so long their skin peeled off, left with bedsores that cut to the bone, and allowed to wither away in starvation or thirst,” the AP reported. Adult children are shocked to find their once-healthy, active parents near death and in excruciating pain due to neglect.

One Tennessee woman recounted her heartbreak at seeing her mother for the first time in months: “The 79-year-old had dropped about 20 pounds, her eyes sunken and her legs looking more like forearms. Doctors at the hospital said she was malnourished and wasting muscle. There were bedsores on her backside and a gash on her forehead from a fall at the home. Her vocabulary had shrunk to nearly nothing and she’d taken to pulling the blankets over her head.”

Tens of thousands of similar accounts flood social media; a group of senior citizens staged a protest last month outside their Colorado nursing home, begging for permission to see their loved ones. One sign read, “I’d rather die from COVID than loneliness.”

I am sorry, but I am of same mind. When I am very old I would want to be able to see my loved ones, even at the risk of getting sick. But then, that has always been the case. The elderly are very vulnerable to any contagious disease. Yet, until this madness, we recognized that life must go on, and that the family must come first.

Not seeing relatives and keeping these helpless old people in the equivalent of solitary confinement is not kind, and in fact is downright cruel. And apparently it has led to a reduced level of care in many institutions, because no one from the family has been present to make sure that care is proper. (From experience with both our parents, if you don’t make your presence felt with the long-term care facility, your parents will not get proper care. They will get ignored.)

But no, we need to cancel Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and all family gathering. And we need to now close restaurants early, at 10 pm, because it is in that specific hour that COVID-19 becomes truly contagious and dangerous.

31 comments

The left is now reaping what it sowed

2:39 pm

A Democrat literally responds to Trump's 2016 victory
This is an actual Democrat’s
respond to Trump’s 2016 victory

For four years, since his election, Donald Trump has been met with a never-ending wave of hatred, hostility, and downright total opposition by the Democratic Party and its many very partisan supporters in the mainstream press, the academic community, and in the general public.

If you are conservative, I am sure you’ve all seen it. Not only has it been impossible these past four years to have a reasonable conversation with Democrats about Donald Trump, your opinions and thoughts are routinely treated with insulting contempt and scorn when you tried. Trump was a racist and evil, despite there being no credible evidence to that effect, and if you tried to find out what the evidence was for such a slander you were immediately slandered and called the same.

Trump himself has faced this same level of irrational hate continuously since his election. And it is irrelevant that he often descends to the same tactics. In the climate created by the left since the Obama administration legitimized the use of slander in political discourse, what other choice did he have if he wished to survive?

Lies in fact has too often comprised the only tactic used by the Democratic Party and the left since Trump’s arrival. » Read more

32 comments

Study: Children are so immune to COVID-19 that even after extensive exposure they test negative

1:35 pm

A new study has now confirmed what the very early research had suggested, finding that even when children are repeatedly exposed to the COVID-19 virus, they not only develop no symptoms, they also test negative to the virus.

The research, led by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and published in Nature Communications, showed that despite close contact with symptomatic infected parents, including one child sharing the parents’ bed, the children repeatedly tested negative for COVID-19 and displayed no or minor symptoms.

MCRI’s Dr Shidan Tosif said compared to adults, children with COVID-19 usually have very mild or asymptomatic infection, but the underlying differences between children’s and adults’ immune responses to the virus remained unclear.

In other words, children are completely immune from COVID-19. Moreover, they don’t even get infected, which means they can’t even give anyone else the disease. There is absolutely no reason not to reopen all schools immediately, allowing children to return to normal activity, without masks.

Granted this study only observed a single family, but its data must not be ignored. Note too that both parents also completely recovered, which is not surprising as this virus doesn’t appear to kill anyone unless they also have other very serious chronic illnesses. Just like the flu.

5 comments

Study: Cloth masks provide “statistically insignificant” protection

12:23 pm

The certainty of the COVID-19 panic: A large Danish study involving about 6,000 people has found that cloth masks provide “statistically insignificant” protection from infection.

From the paper’s conclusion:

The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection. [emphasis mine]

I highlight the last sentence to nip in the bud the claims I expect from the Chicken Little crowd that will point to that “50%” number as proof that masks work. The last sentence points out that a 50% reduction in infection rate is what you also get by washing your hands and avoiding already infected individuals. The masks themselves make no difference.

The study found that 42 people in the in the mask group got infected, compared to 53 in the non-mask group. Since both groups contained 3,000 people, the percentage infected for both groups was about 2%, with the mask group having slightly less infections.

It is important to note the real scale of the virus as demonstrated by this study. Out of 6,000 participants, all older than 18 with no current or prior symptoms, very few people got infected. No one apparently died.

The study notes that it did not look at the effectiveness of masks worn by sick people. It is possible that in that circumstance the mask could prevent the infected person from transmitting the virus to others, but that requires more study. However, having people wear masks in the presence of a sick person had been the practice where masks were used for decades. And it certainly makes more sense than making millions of totally healthy people mask themselves wherever they go, twenty-four hours a day.

Either way, this study illustrates again that the mask mandates being imposed by edict by political leaders have no basis in science. The mandates do not require proper use, and even if they did it is unrealistic to expect that proper use. And even if the use was proper globally, this study shows that the mask would accomplish nothing.

But hey, it is important to make feel-good gestures, even if those feel-good gestures are pointless and cause our focus to shift away from more important tasks, such as immunizing children from measles. So what children will die unnecessarily from the measles and rubella! We will feel safe.

6 comments

Scientists: Major measles outbreaks likely because of COVID-19 lockdowns

10:38 pm

According to a paper published in the peer review journal Lancet, there is a very high likelihood of major measles outbreaks among children worldwide in 2021 — resulting in many unnecessary deaths — due to the shut downs imposed because of the panic over COVID-19.

Lead author Professor Kim Mulholland, from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Chair of the World Health Organization’s SAGE Working Group on measles and rubella vaccines, said that many children have missed out on measles vaccination this year, making future measles outbreaks inevitable. …”The coming months are likely to see increasing numbers of unimmunised children who are susceptible to measles. Many live in poor, remote communities where health systems are less resilient, and malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency are already increasing.”

Professor Mulholland said the COVID-19 pandemic had also had a profound effect on the control of vaccine preventable diseases, with vaccination campaigns paused in the early months of 2020 and routine immunisation services greatly disrupted in many countries.

The WHO estimates that by the end of October, 2020, delayed vaccination campaigns in 26 countries have led to 94 million children missing scheduled measles vaccine doses. [emphasis mine]

Think about it. Because we and our governments panicked and shut down society to protect children from a virus that is not only not contagious among children, it also is practically harmless to them, many children will now die from diseases we know are highly contagious and we know can kill them.

And people accuse me of being heartless because I say the lock downs are senseless, irrational, and a bad idea.

8 comments

If election issues are not fixed, elected state Republicans must refuse to certify

4:49 pm

The Preamble to the Constitution

The Constitution is very clear: The actual decision on who should be elected President of the United States every four years is actually made by the state legislatures.

Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled to the Congress.

12th Amendment: The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President. … The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.

In other words, the state legislatures choose the Electors, and only when they are chosen can they vote for President. Furthermore, the winner must win a majority from the expected number of total Electors from all the states, which is presently 270. If not, the vote then goes to the House of Representatives in Congress, which votes not by each representative but by state, with each state’s caucus voting separately to determine the state’s vote (as per the 12th Amendment).

American tradition however for almost two centuries has been for these legislatures to let the popular vote of the state guide them on who to pick as Electors. If their citizens choose the Republican candidate, they picked Republican Electors so their states Electoral votes go to that candidate. If the citizens choose a Democrat, they did the same.

It is because of this tradition that we all assume the popular vote makes the choice. It really does not.

For two centuries, this system worked because everyone trusted the election process. While some fraud has always occurred at some level, at the federal level the counts have generally been carefully done and reliably tabulated. Even in the difficult election battle in 2000 it was clear that the effort was to get the actual count right, by both sides.

This trust is now gone. The number of errors, suspicious actions, and indications of fraud, all designed to steal votes from Donald Trump and give extra votes to Joe Biden, makes every single one of the contested elections in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin unreliable. Let’s take a look a just a small sampling of recent stories from each state, detailing rampant election fraud.
» Read more

38 comments

COVID-19 deaths plummeting worldwide

10:36 am

Chicken Little is wrong! From the journal Nature: The death rate from COVID-19 continues to plummet worldwide, for reasons that baffle some scientists.

As a result, it has taken researchers some time to determine whether the number of deaths per SARS-CoV-2 infection is really falling, particularly for older people, says epidemiologist Ali Mokdad at the University of Washington in Seattle. Mokdad and his colleagues have been monitoring global data, with a focus on the United States and Europe. A provisional analysis, he says, which includes data from the American Hospital Association, now suggests that the number of fatalities per infection might have fallen by 20%.

Intensive-care physicians say that treatment has improved, but not always in ways that are easy to pinpoint. Vijayaraghavan and others credit a shift in mindset. In the early days of the pandemic, COVID-19 was viewed as something frightening and new — and worthy of resorting to unproven interventions in a desperate act to save patients. “Unfortunately, a lot of the initial discourse was complicated by noise about how this disease was entirely different or entirely new,” says Vijayaraghavan. “This distraction caused more harm — we were all probably poised to go off track.” [emphasis mine]

The article, from this leftist-leaning science journal, is somewhat amusing in that it wrings its hands almost in despair at these encouraging numbers. It is like watching a group of people who refuse to see the elephant in the room. This quote from the article is especially revealing:

Vijayaraghavan credits the improvements in mortality at his institution to hard-earned experience, a better understanding of how to use steroids and a shift away from unproven drugs and procedures.

Marcus Schultz, an intensive-care specialist at Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, agrees, adding that it took time to realize that standard treatments were among the most effective. “In just half a year, I think we repeated 20 years of research in acute respiratory distress,” he says. “Everything was done again, and everything came with the same result.” [emphasis mine]

The virus is not nor ever was the deadly plague that journals like this sold it as. From the very beginning, the data showed it would be variation of all other respiratory illnesses, and that to panic over it was a big mistake. The virus is now doing what some reasonable but ignored scientists correctly predicted: it is dissipating and weakening with time, as such viruses always do.

But panic we did, and as a result many more died than was necessary, even as we destroyed the livelihoods of millions and reshaped our society from one that celebrates freedom and boldness to one that demands obedience and encourages fear.

17 comments

New study: Lockdowns & masks are useless and might even increase COVID-19 spread

12:03 am

A recently completed research study by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center and published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that strict quarantine, tightly controlled social distancing, and continuous use of masks did absolutely nothing to contain the spread of COVID-19, and might even have increased its spread.

First, the study used 1,843 Marine volunteers, individuals well trained to follow orders as well as the required procedures. Second, their quarantine took place at Marine facility under the supervision of the military. Both factors meant that the volunteers were going to follow procedures much more correctly than the general public.

Third, no one could enter the study without undergoing 14-days of quarantine beforehand, plus a test to prove they were negative of COVID-19 at the study’s start. The study itself was held in a tightly controlled quarantine campus run by the Marines.

The volunteers then had to follow this incredibly strict quarantine regiment:
» Read more

56 comments

The disputed elections must recounted properly, or the states should refuse to certify the results

3:11 pm

Signing the Constitution in 1787
The signing of the Constitution in 1787.

The amount of evidence that there was clear election fraud in the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin continues to build.

For example, in Pennsylvania a review of absentee ballots found that 100,000 had suspicious postmarks, with 23,000 apparently postmarked one day but then marked by the election authorities as having arrived the day before, an impossibility. Tens of thousands of other absentee ballots had similar problems.

In Michigan numerous residents and poll workers have signed affidavits describing blatant violations of election law and suspicious behavior. In addition, one contractor witnessed poll workers rescanning the same votes repeatedly, essentially double counting those votes.

In Wisconsin thousands of absentee votes were submitted in a manner that required no voter identification.

In Georgia there is evidence that the software used to count the ballots is corrupted, or was corrupted, ending up switching many votes from Trump to Biden in what they innocently claim was merely a “glitch.” Worse, this “glitch” in election software has now been found to be exist in other states as well.

The list above is only a small sampling of the numerous stories in the past week of suspicious and well documented incidents of voter fraud. The problems in these states appears widespread and systemic. The election results are thus suspect.

According to the Constitution, the real arbiters of the election are the state legislatures. » Read more

55 comments

Senate fails to fully fund manned lander for Trump’s 2024 lunar mission

10:30 am

The Senate appropriations committee’s budget recommendations for NASA, released yesterday, has refused to fully fund the development of the manned lander needed for Trump’s 2024 lunar mission.

The Senate Appropriations Committee released its recommendations for all 12 FY2021 appropriations bills today. The Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill provides NASA with $23.5 billion, $1.75 billion less than requested. The House-passed bill keeps the agency at its current level of $22.6 billion, so the final compromise likely will be somewhere in that range. NASA’s request for Human Landing Systems (HLS) for the Artemis program was particularly hard hit on both sides of Capitol Hill.

NASA had requested $3.4 billion for building the lunar lander in time for 2024. The House appropriated $628 million. Today’s Senate recommendation budgeted $1 billion. This practically guarantees that no manned lunar mission will happen by 2024.

None of this is a surprise. The politicians in Congress from both parties don’t really want to rush this program. For them it is better to stretch it out for as long as possible, spending mucho bucks in their states and districts. Nothing will be accomplished, but they will be able to tell their constituents they brought the jobs home.

Useless and empty jobs, but jobs nonetheless.

12 comments

Lock down madness prevents approval of cancer drug

9:47 pm

Because the FDA’s irrational fear of COVID-19, it has refused to do inspections required to approve a new drug (effective against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma). The result: The drug company’s application will expire on November 16, meaning that they will have to start all over, a process that could take years, while tens of thousands die annually unnecessarily.

Liso-cel, manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb, originally had its Food and Drug Administration (FDA) application accepted in February, but has yet to have one of its contracted manufacturing sites undergo FDA inspection due to the coronavirus pandemic. Not only is the drug’s approval contingent on the facility inspections from the FDA, according to multiple company executives, but its application expires on Nov. 16, meaning that if the plant is not inspected in the coming days Bristol-Myers may have to completely resubmit the drug’s application as a result.

While the first of two facility inspections occurred, the planned inspection of Bristol-Myers’ contracted Houston facility has not “due to COVID travel restrictions and health risks,” according to a Sept. 8 conference call with Citi biopharma analysts and the company’s chief medical officer.

…The drug, which in clinical trials triggered a positive response in 73% of patients and remission in 53% of patients, according to Bristol-Myers, must receive FDA approval by Nov. 16. If it fails to be approved, it must resubmit its application, further delaying its approval by months, if not years, potentially costing thousands of lives as a result.

Each year, approximately 77,000 Americans are diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and about 20,000 Americans die, according to the American Cancer Society.

I promise you, this story is one of many. A cold rational look at the unnecessary deaths caused by the thoughtless fear of COVID-19 would find without doubt that the cure was much worse than the disease. We are killing many more people from other far more serious illnesses because of our unreasonable terror at something quite comparable to the ordinary flu.

29 comments

Leftist election theft must lead to war, if only so freedom can survive

1:29 pm

Clinton supporter going insane after Trump victory
A Clinton supporter after realizing Trump has won

When Donald Trump won the election in 2016, entirely legally with no indication of any election fraud or errors, the Democratic Party, aided by its boot-licking minions in the press and its most radical supporters, all declared that they were now “The Resistance” and would devote their full effort to denying the result of that election. To them, Trump’s victory was illegitimate and invalid, simply because it was not the result they wanted.

And that has been what these Democrat partisans have done, for every moment of the past four years. They culled up fake scandals, the most blatant of which was their accusation that Trump was a Russian agent, a ridiculous accusation that has been proven false by their own hand-picked investigators. It was a lie, and even those willing to give it some credence for awhile know that now.

They then tried to impeach Trump, merely because he rightly called for a more thorough investigation into what appeared to be illegal payoffs from the Ukrainian government to the Biden family. We now know Trump’s concerns were entirely justified. Rather than impeach him, Congress should have been looking into investigating Joe Biden.

For four years the attacks were never-ending. While some criticisms of Trump were certainly valid, as they always are for any elected official, the stupidity, shallowness, and repeatedly proven falsehood of almost all of these attacks demonstrated the unwillingness of the left to simply accept an honest election result.

To them, the only election result that was acceptable was one in which they won.
» Read more

56 comments

And now we wait

12:28 pm

The American flag

Trying to predict the outcome of today’s election in today’s world of shallow emotions and partisan bickering is beyond impossible. The pollsters, generally favoring the Democrats, have for months slanted their results to favor Joe Biden. The conservative press, desperate to grasp at any straw, has in turn focused on the early voting numbers, broken down by party, to claim that Trump is leading.

I really don’t know which is right, at this moment. Moreover, there is a lot of evidence that we will not even have a result by the end of tonight.

However, I still would like to make some predictions, because there are some things we know are very likely to happen, regardless of who wins the election.
» Read more

105 comments

In Europe, the use of masks leads to more COVID-19 cases

9:28 am

It appears that the three European countries with the strictest mask mandates and the highest percentage of usage are also the three European countries experiencing the highest surge of COVID-19 cases, signaling once again that masks not only do not protect anyone from the virus, they could actually be contributing to its spread.

The Biden campaign and the Democrats are cynically cashing in on these pandemic fears. “We’re in a circumstance where the president thus far and still has no plan, no comprehensive plan,” Biden ranted at the debate. “What I would do is make sure we have everyone encouraged to wear a mask all the time.”

France, Italy, and Spain tried that. It didn’t work.

The European countries most obsessed with masks are doing the worst. Nearly universal mask wearing in those countries has done little to prevent a surge. Democrats have a weakness for wanting to be like the Europeans. But the only thing the Biden mask mandate would do is turn us into France. The French wore masks through the summer heat only to have three times the cases per capita and per day as the Americans who never adopted a mask mandate.

The author outlines the numbers. In France 78% of the population wear masks. In Italy the number is 81%. And in Spain it is as high as 86%. Yet all three have had the biggest recent surges in new cases since the mask mandates were imposed. Meanwhile countries where fewer than a third or less of the population where masks — Sweden, Norway, and the UK — the number of cases is far less, and for Sweden there has been no surge in cases at all..

While the author outlines the failure of these mask mandates to stop the virus’ spread, he does not note one component that might be contributing to the surges in these mask-obsessed countries. Masks if misused and worn when they are not sanitary, as is common when large numbers of people are required to wear them all the time, become pathogen bombs. Instead of blocking the virus (an ability that remains quite unproven), they likely become carriers of the virus, at the very place people breath.

But don’t worry. Though you might be increasing the chances of getting sick, you will “feel-good” about yourself when you put on that mask. It is a talisman that proves your wonderful virtue to everyone else, especially those evil people who have looked at the data and have decided to forego this pathogen spreader.

41 comments

Twelve graphs prove masks are useless against COVID-19

9:04 am

Link here. The graphs, covering many more regions, countries, and states then the similar graphs I have posted previously, show that masks have zero effect on preventing the spread of the Wuhan virus. In some places infections rose after mask mandates were imposed. In others they declined. And the pattern showed little difference between places with or without mask mandates. As the author notes quite correctly,

Masks are not merely a small inconvenience. They have inadvertently become a key impediment to returning to a more normal life, a desirable goal for those seeking to twist the pandemic for political and electoral purposes.

Masks dehumanize us, and ironically serve as a constant reminder that we should be afraid. People can now be spotted wearing masks while camping by themselves in the woods or on a solo sailing trip. They have become a cruel device on young children everywhere, kindergarten students covered by masks and isolated by Plexiglas, struggling to understand the social expressions of their peers. Face coverings are causing real harm to the American psyche, provide little to no medical benefit, and distract us from more important health policy issues.

The mask dogma had many cracks in it from the start. For one, the U.S. surgeon general and the Centers for Disease Control both previously said that “masks are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching coronavirus,” so they were already starting with a credibility deficit. Furthermore, many officials have been frequently caught without masks when they think the cameras are off them. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for example, has been caught doing this multiple times.

Take a look at the article and the graphs. They will make you feel really silly and stupid when you next put that mask on.

I say, throw the mask away. I don’t wear one, and won’t. I won’t bow to the scare tactics of politicians and incompetent and lying health officials. I have also found I pretty much can go anywhere I want without that mask. Almost no one questions me, and the few times someone has, I simply tell them I don’t wear for medical reasons, and they back off, leaving me alone.

If more people did as I do, so that those more timid began to see more people maskless and free, more people would be willing to do that same. We might actually begin to see people’s faces again, and live in a manner humans were meant to live.

28 comments

More evidence the number of COVID-19 deaths is greatly exaggerated

2:08 pm

The video report below notes that, according to CDC published data, almost all deaths now listed as COVID-19 deaths were actually caused by other factors.

Specifically, of the approximately 220,000 COVID-19 deaths listed so far, almost 94% were likely not caused exclusively by COVID-19, but by other chronic illnesses. While many of these other maladies, such as a variety of respiratory illnesses, probably worked closely in conjunction with the coronavirus to kill the patient, other illnesses were clearly the real cause of death. For example, the CDC says the 51,000 of today’s 218,000 COVID-19 deaths were caused by heart attacks or heart failure, not COVID-19.

If we subtract these coronary deaths, we are left with about 167,000 COVID-19 deaths. The CDC notes that of these, 88,000 were probably caused not by the coronavirus but by the flu and pneumonia. Hospitals listed them as COVID-19 deaths because the CARES act passed by Congress in the spring gives those hospitals a 20% bonus if they claim the death was COVID-19. This fact might also explain the almost complete lack of flu deaths this year, as listed by hospitals.

Based on this data, it appears that the coronavirus probably caused about 79,000 deaths, on top of the 88,000 flu and pneumonia deaths this year. These Wuhan virus deaths are probably excess deaths this year, but with an average age of 78 the deaths are still occurring almost exclusively among the aged sick, rather than the general population. For everyone else, COVID-19 remains relatively harmless, like the flu.

Interestingly, the CDC recently reported that in 2020 the total number of excess deaths is presently estimated at 300,000. Most significantly, the CDC also stated that
» Read more

66 comments

Europa Clipper to be delayed because of SLS bottleneck

10:06 am

Because Boeing will be unable to provide an SLS rocket in time for the planned 2024 launch of Europa Clipper, once the probe is completed NASA will be forced to put it in storage.

The problem is that Congress has mandated that the Jupiter probe be launched on SLS, but has only funded the first two Artemis launches to the Moon. Boeing will also need at least three years to build it, meaning that even if the money from Congress appeared today, it would likely not be ready for its ’24 launch date.

In terms of rocket science, right now, Europa Clipper can launch on a commercial vehicle, like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy or United Launch Alliance’s Delta-IV Heavy rocket, although the mission would then need a longer cruise time to reach its destination.

But in terms of the law, NASA’s hands are tied.

“Because of that, we’re planning to build the Europa Clipper and then put it into storage, because we’re not going to have an SLS rocket available until 2025,” Bridenstine said. “That’s the current plan. I don’t think that’s the right plan, but we’re going to follow the law.”

Though the common sense thing for Congress to do would be to release NASA from this mandate and allow the agency to pick the launch rocket, do not expect that to happen. Congress wants SLS because of all the pork it produces. They will not allow NASA to reduce its reliance on SLS one iota, if they can. Unless pressured publicly (which I think is NASA’s goal with this announcement), Congress will let Europa Clipper sit in a warehouse for years, at a cost of between $36 to $60 million per year, waiting for SLS.

2 comments

Joe Biden is just not qualified, for health reasons

12:29 pm


Biden as he forgets what truths we hold as self-evident.

I have previously argued that people should vote for Trump and Republicans across the board for two reasons:

Today I want to take a look at Joe Biden himself, to show that the man is simply not qualified to be president. I will not be arguing however that this lack of qualification is because his policies are wrong, despite ample evidence that they are.

Nor am I going to point to the recent pay-for-play scandal surrounding Biden and his family. The evidence is quite clear that Biden has used his position of power in government to exhort money from foreign governments while working against American interests in foreign policy.

I am also not going to talk about Biden’s past proven dishonesty, illustrated best by his first failed effort to run for president, an effort that was quashed because he was found to be a serial plagiarist (something that it appears he still does).

No, my argument is simpler. Joe Biden is exhibiting clear symptoms of failing mental health. It is increasingly obvious he really is unaware of what is going on around him, and this condition appears to be worsening at a frightening pace.
» Read more

33 comments

Studies: COVID-19 mortality plunging in hospitals

8:57 am

Two new studies have found that the death rate among COVID-19 patients has significantly dropped since the beginning of the epidemic in March.

[One] study, which looked at over 5,000 patients inside the Langone Health system, discovered that in the study timeframe, the mortality rate decreased from 25.6 percent in March to 7.6 percent in August—an 18 percentage point decrease from the start of the pandemic.

According to the data, the median age was seen to have decreased over time, meaning that as time went on, most patients infected with the CCP virus were younger. Although that change seemed to partially explain the decreased mortality rate, it didn’t account for all of it. “Even after risk adjustment for variety of clinical and demographic factors, including severity of illness at presentation, mortality was significantly and progressively lower over the course of the study period,” the study stated.

Patients of all ages experienced a decreased mortality rate. Among those, patients who were at or over the age of 75 saw the largest decrease, from just under 45 percent in the beginning of March to a under 10 percent in August.

The other study confirmed these results. Both suggest a range of factors, most of which centered on doctors learning more about the disease and thus treating it more effectively.

Overall the data confirms once again that COVID-19 is not the plague, and should not be feared in the same way. Yes, like the flu it can kill, but the conditions almost always require the patient to be very old and already badly weakened from other illnesses. For everyone else, the risks are far less, with the likelihood that if you get it, you will easily recover.

7 comments

Jewish pro-Trump convoy attacked repeatedly in New York

9:48 pm

They’re coming for you next: A pro-Trump convoy of Jewish New Yorkers was attacked repeatedly by hostile anti-Trump protesters during its trip through the city today.

Multiple disturbing video clips of the convoy posted on @NYScanner show crowds not taking too kindly to rows of vehicles with hoisted Trump 2020 flags. In one video, a man can be seen appearing to throw eggs at the convoy in Brooklyn. In another video, pedestrians can be seen appearing to throw rocks at vehicles displaying a Trump flag.

The hostility evidently lingered throughout the day. In multiple clips, people can be heard yelling expletives at the “Jews For Trump” participants.

One man – on a bike, no less – appears so incensed that the “pro-Trump” vehicles have congested traffic on the Brooklyn that he resorts to punching a window. In Manhattan, a woman was arrested for allegedly using pepper spray on the convoy, according to police.

Later, a scuffle broke out between the pro- and anti-Trump crowd in the middle of a street. Masked protesters could be seen in one clip converging on a vehicle doused in red paint as “YMCA” is blasting in the background.

“Go home! We don’t you here!” somebody in the crowd shouts. “Go back to Long Island!” another person shouts.

A video posted on Twitter shows a pro-Trump caravan led by former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani shows being pelted with eggs.

The worst story was the lead attack at the link. A family of seven, including four children, were pepper-sprayed when another car pulled up beside their Trump-festooned vehicle and sprayed them through the open windows.

This is supposed to be America, the land of free speech and free debate, where your right to express your political beliefs are defended by all. Sadly, for the left and those on the side of the Democratic Party, such tolerance is no longer acceptable. Instead, they celebrate storm-trooper tactics against all who disagree with them.

I hope everyone remembers this when they vote. Remember, they’re coming for you next.

21 comments

Rogozin shakes up Vostochny management, again

9:38 am

The head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, has reprimanded two and fired one high level managers running the construction of the new Vostochny spaceport in Russia’s far east.

Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin trekked out to the Amur Region in Russia’s Far East on Friday to check on how construction is proceeding at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. The answer was apparently, not real well. “Following the results of hearing reports at a production meeting at the Vostochny cosmodrome, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin reprimanded Andrei Okhlopkov, Director General of the Center for Operation of Ground-Based Space Infrastructure Facilities, and Vladimir Zhuk, TsENKI Chief Engineer,” Roscosmos said in a press release.

“Prior to that, by decision of Dmitry Rogozin, Evgeny Rogoza, General Director of the Vostochny Cosmodrome Directorate, was fired,” the document said.

The article then outlines the slow pace of development at Vostochny over the last few years.

This is not the first time Russia has shaken up the Vostochny management. Early shake-ups had included arrests and prosecutions due to corruption. None have apparently succeeded in speeding up development of this giant government-run project that in many ways reminds me of NASA’s SLS/Orion project. The delays are really a feature, not a bug, as the Russian government mostly wants to be able to claim it has created jobs, and really doesn’t care too much if they actually accomplish anything.

Eventually Vostochny will become operational. I have great doubts it will ever act to make Russia once again competitive in the international launch market.

Leave a comment

US sets new record of COVID-19 cases in one day

11:54 am

O no! We’re all gonna die! The United States yesterday set a new record of 77,770 new COVID-19 cases detected in one day.

Thursday’s numbers — 77,640 new cases — eclipsed the previous record set on July 29, when 75,723 new cases were reported, according to a tally by NBC News.

A total of 921 coronavirus-related deaths were also reported on Thursday. [emphasis mine]

I highlight the number of deaths to make the same point I have made repeatedly. Less than a thousand deaths with so many cases demonstrates again how this virus is relatively harmless to practically everyone who gets it. I am quite sure that of those 921 deaths, almost all were over seventy, and all were saddled with other very serious chronic illnesses that even without COVID-19, were on the verge of killing them.

Also, 921 deaths out of 77,770 cases calculates as a death rate of 1.2%. While this is much higher than the flu’s normal death rate of 0.1%, it almost certainly includes almost all flu deaths this year, since the CDC records practically none, something that is just not creditable. Moreover, there is ample evidence that the number of deaths that have been assigned to the coronavirus has been inflated, at least as much as 25%, so that higher number is certainly an overstatement. Moreover, it includes the epidemic’s earlier period, when the virus was more lethal and doctors were struggling to learn how to treat it properly.

To sum up, COVID-19 is merely a variation of the flu. It is weakening in strength. And it never was the plague our fear-mongering political class was claiming it to be.

Sadly, the story above does the same as all mainstream stories about COVID-19. It fails to mention these basic facts, and instead focuses on the increase in cases, as if that increase means millions more will die. It is all a lie, and disgraceful for anyone in a civilized society to do it.

But then, there are a lot of journalists today who have no self-respect, and are quite willing to do many disgraceful things for partisan and emotional reasons, rather than do their jobs properly.

52 comments

Space officials, from in and out of NASA, meet to plan Biden administration space policy

10:25 am

A group of senior space officials from both inside and outside of NASA held a closed door “war game” on October 20th, designed to plan out what they thought should be the space policy of the Biden administration.

About a dozen officials participated. Attendees included two former astronauts, Charlie Bolden and Pam Melroy, who have worked in space policy since their retirements. Bolden was NASA administrator under President Obama. Also participating were two former senior NASA officials—Mike French, chief of staff under Bolden, and Doug Loverro, a chief of human spaceflight for the Trump administration. Loverro was forced to step down in February and is now under investigation for improper contact with Boeing. The meeting also had participation from industry, including entrepreneur Rick Tumlinson and Marc Berkowitz of Lockheed Martin.

They claim that this is not at the behest of the Biden campaign, but what I see is a group of high-level bureaucrats from Washington gathering together to plan space policy strategy for Biden, with the expectation that should he win they will be well placed to inaugurate his policy for him.

The article did not name all the participants, but if any are presently working in the Trump administration or in NASA their participation in this “war game” was highly inappropriate. It is not their place to set policy, only to implement the policy determined by the elected president now in office.

Should Trump win on November 3rd, the attendance list of participants will thus provide a good guide on who not to hire, as well as who to fire should Trump’s new looser policy on hiring and firing take effect. These individuals have now signaled their partisan loyalties, and it isn’t with Trump or the Republicans. If any are part of his administration now they are wolves in sheep’s clothing, likely acting against his interests when no one is looking.

On this topic, I just bought this book “The Memo: 20 Years Inside the Deep State Fighting for America First,” based on this review, which states:

Higgins’ new book, “The Memo: 20 Years Inside the Deep State Fighting for America First,” is an eye-opening and unique book for a political memoir. It is not heavy on political wonkiness, policymaking stratagems, and personal vendettas typical of Washington, DC tell-alls. It is a refreshingly direct tale of a talented young man’s rise from the enlisted ranks of the military into politics and then policy-making, only to discover the realities of a brutal and seditious opposition fighting to preserve a decrepit, America-destroying agenda that culminated in an outrageous coup attempt against a U.S. president.

And while Higgins does “name names” in his book, when describing the subversion of the Trump agenda by those inimical to it, he does so only to drive home his larger point about the incredible obstacles President Trump has faced in orienting U.S. policies toward advancing his America-first agenda.

Seems very apropos at this moment in time.

3 comments

New Trump executive order suggests major house-cleaning should he win

3:19 pm

The Trump administration has just released a new executive order that would shift many federal managers from civil service positions, where they cannot easily be removed, into a new category that will allow the President to remove them “at-will.”

The order would create a new Schedule F within the excepted service of the federal government, to be composed of “employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions,” and instructs agency heads to determine which current employees fit this definition and move them—whether they are members of the competitive service or other schedules within the excepted service—into this new classification.

…Positions in the new Schedule F would effectively constitute at-will employment, without any of the protections against adverse personnel actions that most federal workers currently enjoy, although individual agencies are tasked with establishing “rules to prohibit the same personnel practices prohibited” by Title 5 of the U.S. Code. The order also instructs the Federal Labor Relations Authority to examine whether Schedule F employees should be removed from their bargaining units, a move that would bar them from being represented by federal employee unions.

The timing of this order is most revealing. If approved it will go into effect on January 19, 2021, the day before the presidential inauguration. This suggests that if Trump wins, he does not want a repeat of his first term, when many civil service employees worked to sabotage his administration and its goals. He wants the power to fire people in large numbers, especially those who are in a position of setting policy, sometimes policy that Trump, legally elected by the American people, opposed strongly.

Be sure that this change will be fought hard by the administrative state in Washington, as well as by their backers in the Democratic and Republican parties. And though it would also give increased power to Biden should he win, it would still be an appropriate change, as the elected president should be the person in charge, not some unelected bureaucrats buried in the DC civil service.

13 comments

Why Barrett’s confirmation went fast: Senate Republicans finally grew a spine

10:27 am

Link here. The author outlines all the ways the Democrats tried to duplicate their slander campaign against Brett Kavanaugh, then notes this:

The biggest difference is that Republicans simply weren’t playing with these attacks. Each and every one of these stories — and dozens of similar ones — was met with swift condemnation or yawns. Every single one.

It took a few decades of the left playing the exact same games with most confirmation battles, but finally, the right figured out how to render those attacks worthless. It’s not just conservative Americans, but the senators themselves who are playing this differently.

Rather than the Senate Judiciary Committee immediately responding to the Washington Post’s anti-Kavanaugh attack by bending to the will of the Democrats, this time they just didn’t care. As Democrats openly said on national television that they would do anything to stop Barrett’s confirmation, rather than act scared, the Republicans were not moved. They haven’t responded with outrage or drama, but just a steely resolve to get the nomination done. [emphasis mine]

Why it took Senate Republicans decades to figure out this basic premise, that the best way to deal with bullies and temper tantrums is to ignore them, is another question. It suggests that for decades those Republicans really liked bowing to those tantrums, because they really didn’t want to achieve any of the conservative goals their voters wanted and that they always campaigned on.

However, fake conservative senators like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker are gone, replaced with senators who are either more legitimately conservative (Marsha Blackburn) or faced with a tough reelection fight that forces toughness (Martha McSally). The result is that no Republican in the Senate is willing to play the Democrat’s game anymore. They can scream and kick and hold their breath, but on Monday Amy Barrett will be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

19 comments
1 … 40 41 42 43 44 … 76