COVID studies: The Retractions

 

Retraction Watch monitors retractions of peer-reviewed articles/research that don’t hold up under scrutiny. It’s utterly damning to see the sheer number of peer-reviewed reports -- on COVID -- retracted – always after the damage is done: 

We’ve been tracking retractions of papers about COVID-19 as part of our database. Here’s a running list:

Retracted

“5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells,” published in Biological Regulators & Homeostatic Agents on July 16, 2020, withdrawn on July 24, 2020. Our coverage here.

“A Case Series of Stent Thrombosis During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” published on May 27, 2020 in JACC: Case Reports; retraction date is unknown.  Retracted as a duplicate publication by journal error.

“A Comparison of Early Rehabilitation in the Intensive Care Units of Patients With Severe COVID-19: A Propensity Score Matching Analysis,” published November 10, 2022 in Cureus; retracted on April 4, 2023.

“A data-mining based analysis of traditional Chinese medicine in diagnosing and treating COVID-19,” published on June 24, 2021 in The Anatomical Record; unknown when retracted.

“A deep learning model and machine learning methods for the classification of potential coronavirus treatments on a single human cell,” published on October 17, 2020 in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research; retracted on August 16, 2021.

“A Discourse Analysis of Quotidian Expressions of Nationalism during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chinese Cyberspace,” published on September 8, 2020; retracted on April 12, 2022.

“A mechanistic analysis placental intravascular thrombus formation in COVID-19 patients,” published on April 25, 2020 in Annals of Diagnostic Pathology.  Retracted on June 22, 2020 as a duplicate publication by journal error.

“A meta-analysis of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) antibody treatment for COVID-19 patients,” published on August 20, 2021 in Therapeutic Advances in Chronic Disease; retracted on November 21, 2021. See our coverage here.

“A Model Based Analysis for COVID-19 Pandemic in India: Implications for Health Systems and Policy for Low- and Middle-Income Countries,” preprint possted on June 12, 2020 in medRxiv; retracted on August 18, 2020.

“A psychosocial exploration of body dissatisfaction: A narrative review With a focus on India during COVID-19,” published on July 29, 2021 in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health; retracted on January 19, 2023. 

 . . .

The rest of the list is here.  (Links via the original article)

RELATED:   Ben Bartee at PJ Media: “Peer-Reviewed Study: 'The Higher the Number of Vaccines Previously Received, the Higher the Risk of Contracting COVID-19' “

And American Greatness has more: click here. 

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America’s Fundamental Transformation

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Sundance at Conservative Treehouse posted a piece on how America suddenly went off the rails, and it’s persuasive.  Here’s a big chunk of it:

. . . As some continue to say with jaw agape, WTF happened?

The answer “why” is not complicated…. not complicated at all.

In 2008, the ‘activists’ took control of government.

In January of 2009, the leftists, community organizers and activists took control of the systems they had opposed for the preceding 50+ years.

In January of 2009, and inflection point took place; an inflection point that no one realized in forethought, scale or consequence.

Starting in 2009, all of the systems of federal government were now under the control of the people who previously fought against the systems of federal government.  Everything since is an outcome of that inflection point; that’s why everything flipped.

All of it, and I do mean every scintilla of the thing; every single granular detail and example you can put in front of me can be traced back to that moment when the activists were no longer outside government railing against the corrupt system they hated.

Starting in January of 2009, the activists took power over the United States government, and every outside institution, including media, necessarily and ideologically followed that inversion.

Starting in 2009, the systems and institutions of the U.S government now came under the control of the radical activists.

In the eight years that followed, the mission of every institution was changed.  Government was weaponized on behalf of the leftist activists who now took control of it.  Everything thereafter is a consequence of this change.

When I use the word “suddenly”, it is only for understanding the inflections point that came as a consequence.  In actuality, the severity of change inside each institution took place over several years.  That’s why the intensity of the weaponized and corrupt systems became worse over time.

As each institution was infiltrated to become more aligned with the mindset of the activists, the institutions became more radical in their targeting and weaponization.

The activists went from being outside government to being inside government.

Suddenly, the left-wing supportive media changed mission priority from railing against corrupt government, to defending the corrupt weaponization of govt.

Suddenly, the FBI went from targeting domestic threats, to targeting only the domestic threats defined as against the interests of the left-wing activists.

Suddenly, the outside activists went from being defined as social elements creating turmoil, to social elements now being defended and even promoted.

This is why we see outside activist groups like the Dream Defenders, New Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and more recently ANTIFA, as protected and supported by the activists inside government now in control of the systems and institutions.

All of the social, cultural and political dynamics that changed traditional “liberalism” are easily understood once you realize and accept that activists took control of the power centers of the U.S. government.

Everything that followed, including our current state of social and political turmoil, is simply a natural conclusion of that fundamental change.

The radical activists are now in control of the institutions of power.  This core shift is what created the dynamic of a very visible two-tiered justice system.  Each institution was weaponized and continues to be weaponized against those who are not aligned with the activist ideology. . . .

Read the entire piece here.

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Remembering on Memorial Day

 

Memorial Day:  vintage Trump message

click to embiggen

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Debt Ceiling: bad news

 

JD Rucker at The Discern Report saw it coming:

The debt ceiling battle may be over. We’ll know for sure Wednesday when the vote is scheduled, but it seems Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy may have come together. Considering the most basic and obvious elimination of fruitless spending — 87,000 IRS agents — was NOT addressed, this seems like a huge loss for patriots.

McCarthy will herald spending cuts, but they won’t be in the same ballpark as the absolute overhaul that is necessary to give this nation any hope for the future. Instead, we will continue down our path to unavoidable Modern Monetary Theory crushing the country into oblivion. . . .

McCarthy caved.  Another win for the Uniparty.

Read the rest of the report here. 

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Memorial Day weekend

 Gary Varvel cartoon:

Remember our fallen warriors this weekend.

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Bilderberg’s Agenda for Global Control

 

 

William F Jasper at The New American reports on last weekend's Bilderberg meeting:

Bilderberg’s 2023 Agenda for Global Control:
AI, CBDC, China, Censorship, and More

What do the would-be Masters of the Universe have planned for us for the coming year? Economic collapse? A new digital currency? Expanded surveillance state? Global food shortages? Energy grid collapse? Pandemic 2.0? We do not know precisely, but we can get a general idea of the ugly agenda the globalists are pursuing from the just-concluded Bilderberg meeting. This is the annual ultra-secretive, ultra-high-level assembly of the world movers and shakers . . .

They are all in on the Great Reset, their grand plan to “reset” humanity, as Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have infamously proposed and are relentlessly promoting. Don’t be fooled by false claims that Bilderberg and WEF are competing organizations. While the WEF is the larger, flashier organization, with its annual Davos extravaganzas of billionaires, presidents, and prime ministers, it is a junior partner to Bilderberg in the globalist scheme of things. Almost all of the Bilderbergers are also WEFers . . .

Bilderberg sits atop (or near the top) of the globalist pyramid of power, devising, revising, promulgating, and coordinating the latest blueprints for their developing New World Order. 

The report includes the agenda and the roster of attendees. Click here.

# # #

 

Radical Green New Deal predictions

 

Jack Hellner at American Thinker debunks some “global warming” myths: 

Here are some of the destructive policies of the radical greenies that are based on predictions, not scientific data:

The destruction of energy-producing companies that produce reasonably priced energy.  (They clearly don't care about the harm to the poor and middle class by high inflation.)

The promotion of the highly flammable pollutant lithium while seeking to control CO2, a non-pollutant clear gas that makes plants grow and allows the world to be fed.

Spending trillions on carbon capture.

Selling worthless carbon credits so people like John Kerry can pretend they care as they fly in their private jets.

Outlawing gas stoves, furnaces, lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, and gas grills.

The destruction of fishing and killing of whales by wind farms.

Read the rest here.

RELATED:  Edward Ring at American Greatness just published “The Corruption of Climate Science”;  click here.

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Wind & solar renewables: pointless

 

Bryan Leyland at The Telegraph UK explains why renewable energy sources (wind and solar) are never going to achieve "net zero".  I missed this column when it appeared a few weeks ago, but it's still current.  And it's still a pipe dream:

Many governments in the Western world have committed to “net zero” emissions of carbon in the near future. The US and UK both say they will deliver by 2050. It's widely believed that wind and solar power can achieve this. This belief has led the US and British governments, among others, to promote and heavily subsidise wind and solar.

These plans have a single, fatal flaw: they are reliant on the pipe-dream that there is some affordable way to store surplus electricity at scale.

In the real world a wind farm’s output often drops below 10 per cent of its rated “capacity” for days at a time. Solar power disappears completely every night and drops by 50 per cent or more during cloudy days. “Capacity” being a largely meaningless figure for a wind or solar plant, about 3000 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar capacity is needed to replace a 1000 MW conventional power station in terms of energy over time: and in fact, as we shall see, the conventional power station or something very like it will still be needed frequently once the wind and solar are online.

The governments of countries with a considerable amount of wind and solar generation have developed an expectation that they can simply continue to build more until net zero is achieved. The reality is that many of them have kept the lights on only by using existing fossil fired stations as backup for periods of low wind and sun. This brings with it a new operating regime where stations that were designed to operate continuously have to follow unpredictable fluctuations in wind and solar power. As a result operating and maintenance costs have increased and many stations have had to be shut down.

In fact it's already common to see efficient combined-cycle gas turbines replaced by open-cycle ones because they can be throttled up and down easily to back up the rapidly changing output of wind and solar farms. But open-cycle gas turbines burn about twice as much gas as combined cycle gas turbines. Switching to high-emissions machinery as part of an effort to reduce emissions is, frankly, madness!

Much more at the link here.  But try sharing any of these facts with a green zealot.  It may be that only after unimaginable damage and suffering resulting from reducing access to energy that the greenies will wake up.  Maybe not even then . . .

# # #

Crushing the enemy

 

Kurt Schlichter published a column on the expanding GOP field of presidential candidates.  And in the course of his run-down of the GOPe “festival of losers,” he sums up what’s at stake when commenting on Tim Scott

Tim Scott is a nice guy with a nice story and a nice demeanor who does not take pleasure in crushing his enemies, which means that he will not aggressively seek to crush his enemies, and the crushing of our enemies is the key requirement of a Republican nominee in 2024

The enemy hates us, and it is dead serious about converting its hatred into policy. From legalizing crime to weaponizing the government against us, from disenfranchising us at the ballot box to disarming us in our homes, to gagging us on social media and leveraging the regime media to hide the truth and amplify the lies, this is a cold war where we become serfs if we don’t win. It’s not the time for Team Use Your Inside Voice. The enemy holds every major institution; if you are worried about collateral damage to the institutions that seek to enslave us – or worse – then you don’t have the stones to flatten them and their current occupants. And that’s what we need to do.:

Read the full column at Townhall here.  And as always, Schlichter is entertaining even when he’s dead serious.  And even when I don't agree with everything he has to say (especially with respect to Ron DeSantis).

# # #

Call them what they are: communists

 

John Green at American Thinker considers the various terms used to describe the "fundamentally change America" insurgents, i.e., liberals, progressives, leftists, and Democrats:

None of those labels adequately describes those who are actively working to undermine America's founding principles.  Let's stop denying the threat and call them what they are: communists.

I was a child of the Cold War.  We learned the evils of communism in history and social studies at school.  I never thought we'd be talking about America as a communist country — yet we leave people in power who are moving us in that direction.

Let's examine what communism is.  Communism is the establishment of a communal society, in which the state controls the means of production and the populace works for the welfare of the commune — not the welfare of individuals.

Personal freedom must be sacrificed for the commune.  In the last three years, the government has attempted to take away our property rights, our rights of association, our freedom of speech, and our freedom to manage our own medical decisions — all for the good of the commune.

In communism the state controls production, dictating what will be produced and when it will be produced.  The government determines what crops can be grown and what they will be used for (e.g., food or renewable energy).  In recent years, the demands to nationalize the financial and energy industries have become increasingly loud.

Read the column here.  I am not sure if this country is being moved in that direction, or if we are already past the tipping point.

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Relocate the DC swamp dwellers

 

 

Chip Bok cartoon via Townhall 

Roger Kimball published a fairly long column over the weekend, “Abandon the Swamp” at American Greatness.  Here are two paragraphs summarizing Mr Kimball’s solution to the ongoing progressives vs conservatives crisis:

The focus should be on eclipsing Washington, D.C. as the seat of government. It has long been obvious to candid observers that there is something deeply dysfunctional about that overwhelmingly Democratic, welfare-addicted city. It is a partisan sinkhole. Jefferson wanted the capital moved from New York to Washington in part to bring it closer to the South, but also to place it somewhere that was officially neutral. There is nothing neutral about Washington today. The city has some impressive architecture and urban vistas. They should be preserved and staffed as tourist attractions. But the reins of power should be relocated.

The more I think about our situation, the more I believe the only hope for the republic is to downgrade the place of Washington in our public life. The business of Washington is to make government bigger—forever. That is not what the people, who pay for it, want. Legitimacy is draining out of our governing institutions at an alarming rate. Stanching that debilitating flow requires that we redirect our attention away from the greedy puppet show in Washington to the true source of legitimacy, which is with the people.

“The greedy puppet show.”  Fits right in with Sundance’s scenario that all of the DC political construct is a “Potemkin Village”, maintained to provide us plebes with the “Illusion of Choice.”  Read Mr Kimball's column here.

# # #

Heather Mac Donald and "the Pursuit of Equity"

 

Some readers describe Ann Coulter as a flame-thrower, and her columns are always provocative, whether you agree with her or not.  However, at TakiMag she’s just reviewed Heather Mac Donald’s book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. And the review is excellent – and informative:

“No Biggie, Just the End of Civilisation”

. . . It seems that in the hysteria that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020, we agreed to destroy all of Western civilization — law, music, art, education, policing, science and medicine — to make up for black people not doing well on standardized tests.

Mac Donald cites not hundreds but thousands of institutions that have flung aside standards in order to more fully dedicate themselves to the sole, driving purpose of our nation: boosting black people’s self-esteem.

And her review concludes:

Luckily, learning to identify and treat disease isn’t such a big deal at today’s medical schools, anyway. Instead, the faculty are charged with teaching about “systems of power, privilege and oppression.” More than half of the top 50 medical schools now require students to take courses in systemic racism, Mac Donald notes. I’m sure that will be a huge relief when doctors miss your brain tumor.

In 2021, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced that it would spend $2 billion … to find a cure for brain cancer? Parkinson’s disease? Heart disease? NO!!! The $2 billion would go to promoting “diversity and inclusion in science.”

In 2022, the National Cancer Institute, funded by you, taxpayer, decided to change its mission from conquering cancer — and really, who cares about that? FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS! — to guess what? Yes!!! Promoting diversity! Instead of Outstanding Investigator Awards being granted solely on the basis of merit, the gender and race of the researchers would have to be considered.

All this has done wonders for the morale of doctors. Mac Donald quotes one cancer researcher: “It’s the end of the road for me as a Jewish male doctor.” A UCLA doctor told her that the smartest undergraduates in science labs are saying, “Now that I see what is happening in medicine, I will do something else.”

In response to this dystopic future, Mac Donald asked an oncologist, “When would white and Asian male scientists fight back? How much longer would they continue to allow their hard work and accomplishments to be disparaged and sidelined?”

He emailed back: “We value our jobs. We need our jobs. Our peers will turn on us. Speak out, lose job forever, be quickly forgotten and abandoned.”

That’s why, Mac Donald says, it falls to the rest of us to never shut up about the tearing down of standards, to put forth “unapologetic defense(s) of color-blind standards,” and to “relentlessly provide the data that explain the lack of racial proportionality in meritocratic institutions.”

To paraphrase Orwell: If there is hope, it must lie in the uncancelable.

Read the whole column here.

# # #

Armed Forces Day

 

Today is Armed Forces Day.  A couple of weeks ago, Patriot Post ran a tribute to Sgt Alvin York, the World War I hero celebrated in the film Sergeant York, with Gary Cooper in the title role.  Here’s the conclusion of Mark Alexander’s article:

In January 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, in a Memorial Day address at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, York said: “Liberty and freedom are so very precious that you do not fight and win them once and stop. They are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them!”

He added, “I think any man who talks against the interests of his own country ought to be arrested and put in jail, not excepting senators and colonels.”

It is well he is not witness to the disgraceful state of leftist “leadership” today, which disparages our nation and the American Liberty he and so many others have fought to defend.

Read the rest here.

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Every state is now a border state

 

Douglas Andrews at Patriot Post reports that

Governor Greg Abbott and his fellow Texans are under siege. So much so that he’s written an urgent letter to his 49 fellow governors to ask for their help. The letter begins:

President Joe Biden’s negligent disregard for America’s national security hit another devastating milestone last week when his Administration ended Title 42 expulsions. Since taking office, President Biden has willfully refused to enforce our nation’s immigration laws while systematically dismantling every effective border security policy that previously led to the lowest number of illegal border crossings in decades. The resultant surge in illegal immigration and transnational criminal activity is a direct consequence of these misguided actions, and yet President Biden further jeopardized our nation’s security by ending Title 42 expulsions on May 11, 2023.

Abbott then notes that while the flood of illegals hits Texas first, it doesn’t stay in Texas. “Emboldened Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal enterprises,” he writes, “profit off this chaos, smuggling people and dangerous drugs like fentanyl into communities nationwide.” Synthetic opioids including fentanyl, as the CDC reported Wednesday, killed 75,000 Americans in 2022.

Abbott’s message has apparently taken hold, as 24 Republican governors have responded.  . . .

Ohio’s governor is one of them.  Support includes human assets, equipment, vehicles, and the like.  The full report is here.

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Davos on Steroids

 

Jordan Schachtel at The Dossier reports:

The world’s most powerful and influential geopolitical voices are meeting from Thursday to Sunday in Portugal to navigate several global crises (many of which they’ve helped to facilitate), and oddly enough, the corporate media has no interest in reporting on this secretive gathering of powerful figures.

The attendees list for this year’s infamous Bilderberg Meetings has just been released, and just like years prior, global heavyweights inundate the 2023 roster. The list includes America and Europe’s top spy chiefs, several heads of state, and some of the world’s most powerful business executives.

. . .

If you are familiar with the names on the participants list, you will find that they largely subscribe to a globalist, hyper-interventionist worldview, making the annual Bilderberg confab an echo chamber of ruling class ideologues. . . .

Among the participants are CEOs or top officers of Pfizer, Microsoft, Google, ChatGPT, and the President of the World Economic Forum.  Read more about the participants and some of the agenda here.

There’s more background on Bilderberg here.

# # #

AF Branco: the Russia hoax and the corrupt media

A F Branco cartoon via Townhall:

# # #

George Washington's Mother

 

For Mother’s Day, Paul Kengor at American Spectator reviewed a biography of George Washington’s mother, and below is an extract from it:

Mary Ball Washington, America’s First Mother [Harper, 2019]

Craig Shirley’s biography is a character study
of the strong woman who raised our first president

“My great age, and the disease which is fast approaching my vitals, warn me that I shall not be long in this world. I trust in God that I may be somewhat prepared for a better.”

So said a weak Mary Ball Washington, mother of America’s first president, George Washington, to her son in March 1789 as she lay dying from cancer at roughly age 80 (her exact age unknown). Her son had come to bid America’s first mother a final goodbye. He told her about this significant new office that he was assuming for his country — to which all 69 electors had unanimously chosen him on Jan. 7. The only president ever selected unanimously.

“But before I can assume the functions of my office,” he told the frail old woman, “I have come to bid you an affectionate farewell.”

The 57-year-old Washington continued, “So soon as the weight of public business, which must necessarily attend the outset of a new government, can be disposed of, I shall hasten to Virginia, and—” Here, the mother interrupted the son: “—and you will see me no more.” . . .

Mr Kengor closes his review:

And as Shirley shows, the relationship between the two was “laden with difficulty” for both of them. It was a struggle for anyone to have much affection for Mary. Shirley describes Mary Ball Washington as “self-centered and acquisitive,” “tutoring and fashioning” her son but also “driving and admonishing” him. She was not a warm lady and, frankly, was hard to feel warm about. She was not easy to like. She was a cold woman, austere, and herself quite a character — an odd one. And Craig Shirley’s book provides far more than a history of her and her son. He provides a character study that fascinates.

But whatever her personal shortcomings, this woman raised a president, our nation’s first. He was our first president and Mary Ball Washington was our first mother — one who needs to be remembered, and perhaps particularly so for America’s annual celebration of Mothers’ Day. Get this book and read and learn and remember.

Read the entire review here.

# # #

 

BRICS 101

 

Daisy Luther at Discern Report provides a good overview of the BRICS alliance.  Here’s her opener:

BRICS Is Expanding:
Here’s Why That’s Very Concerning for the US

You may have heard the term “BRICS” when reading about world affairs and wondered what it was all about. As we watch the American dollar and economy lose power on the world stage, this alliance could quickly move to take its place, especially as other countries that used to be allied with us move over this bloc.

As a matter of opinion, I think that on the global stage, BRICS is a union we should watch, as there are several large economic powers involved that aren’t exactly friends of the United States of America. Should this group continue to grow, it’s possible that it could dramatically affect us with regard to world trade. And that’s at the very least.

What is BRICS?

BRICS is an economic alliance that has been around since about 2001. Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs coined the acronym BRIC to represent the original countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. By 2010, South Africa had been added, bringing us to the current acronym.

. . .

For many years, the United States has been a primary global economic power, but as our star shines a little less brightly due to our economic difficulties, poor governmental management, and less than stellar relationships with several other countries, BRICS seems poised to step into the position our nation once held.

. . .

But…the union seems intent on expanding, and other nations are in the midst of an application process. Multiple countries have asked to become a part of the bloc.

The nations that have formally applied for acceptance into the cooperative are:

• Algeria
• Argentina
• Bahrain
• Egypt
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Saudi Arabia
• United Arab Emirates

. . .

Read the rest here.

# # #

Open borders and the Cloward-Piven strategy

 

Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge reported:

Tens of thousands of migrants rushed across the US-Mexico border this week as the pandemic-related asylum restrictions were lifted at midnight Thursday. 

"A record-setting 83,000 migrants crossed our border illegally this week — equivalent to a full capacity Dallas Cowboys football stadium," said Fox News' Bill Melugin. . . .

Wayne Allyn Root graduated from Columbia University in 1983.  He’s posted an excellent piece at his website on why the Biden administration pushes its open border policies: those policies are speeding up the deliberate destruction of America, by updating the Cloward-Piven strategy:

This open border disaster is not a “Johnny-come-lately” story.

It is a plan that was created many decades ago by leftist radicals’ intent on destroying America.

. . .

These Columbia University radicals (and traitors) had a plan named Cloward-Piven. It was named after two Columbia University professors – the husband-and-wife team of Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

The plan was simple – get as many people as possible on welfare, food stamps, and a hundred other government welfare programs. Get so many on the government dole, that the economy is overwhelmed, destroyed and collapses under the weight of the exploding national debt.

. . .

At this point, Americans would be in so much pain and so frightened, they would beg government to save them. And that is how they would “fundamentally change America forever.” Remember those words? They came out of the mouth of Barack Obama. He learned those words and this plan at Columbia.

. . .

Except Cloward-Piven has been updated. It’s now 100% about the border. If you can’t get everyone in America on welfare to explode the debt, overwhelm the economy and collapse the country, open the border and invite the whole world in.

And that’s what’s happening.  Click here for the full article.

# # #

Donald J Trump rally tonight UPDATE: Postponed

 

A previous trump rally in Iowa

Donald J Trump holds a rally later today (8pm Eastern, 7 pm Central) in Des Moines, Iowa.  To watch the livestream on Right Side Broadcasting Network or Rumble, click here.  Tune in early for coverage of guest speakers.

UPDATE:  Tornado watch in Iowa this evening, so the MAGA rally has been postponed.  

# # #

George Carlin on rights vs privileges

George Carlin got it right -- and many years ago.  Seen on Bookworm Room:

# # #

 

Restrict Act ~ Another muzzle on free speech

Emmy Griffin at Patriot Post explains the “Restrict Act”, presently gaining support in the Senate:

RESTRICT stands for Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats That Risk Information and Communications Technology, and of the several bills presented to the Senate on the issue of social media abuses, this one has the most popular support.

. . .

However, one thing to take into consideration is that when crafting legislation that restricts or bans TikTok, other social media companies need to be part of the calculous as well. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, and others all data-mine their users. It’s a good rule of thumb that if a product is free, the actual product is you, the user. In this case, data-mining and microphone-tapping are used to provide users with targeted ads. It is an invasion of privacy, albeit one that mostly feels innocuous — for now.

The RESTRICT Act would delegate regulation to a bureaucrat in the executive branch. The secretary of commerce would be given carte blanche to make several decisions that are troubling, to say the least. According to Senator Rand Paul: “The bill’s application is far from limited to Tiktok or other internet-based companies. The third section of the bill would enable the Secretary of Commerce to investigate any business that is in any way subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign adversary to determine if its transactions ‘pose an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States.’ Though the bill already designates China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba as foreign adversaries, the RESTRICT Act also empowers the Secretary of Commerce to unilaterally add any other country to this official enemies list.”

The current secretary of commerce, Gina M. Raimondo, has already stated that banning TikTok would be a politically deleterious move for the Democrats. In an interview, she said, “The politician in me thinks you’re gonna literally lose every voter under 35, forever.”

. . .

The RESTRICT Act takes away freedoms from the American people. It is just another thinly veiled attack against the First Amendment. The powers granted to the secretary of commerce give her the authority to remove, investigate, or outright censor companies that aren’t toeing the Democrat Party line. In fact, if any company resists her edicts, those responsible could go to jail for 20 years.

Do we really want that sort of power in the hands of an unelected bureaucrat?

That sane answer is no. . . .

Read the rest here.

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Training Americans to spy on those who oppose leftism

 

At American Thinker, Andrea Widburg reports on yet another alarming development:

The DHS is training Americans to spy on those who oppose leftism

. . . A FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request revealed that it produced training documents teaching ordinary Americans to report on Americans opposed to Biden’s policies.

This sounds too far-fetched to be believable, but it’s true. The Foundation for Freedom Online reviewed documents that America First Legal obtained from the DHS via a Freedom of Information Act request. It showed that the DHS is planning to train ordinary Americans to intervene when they see “radicalization” among their peers.

. . .

It's one thing to urge citizens to be vigilant about packages that could be bombs or to be aware of someone sweating, mumbling prayers to himself, and smelling of rosewater at fairs or other crowded venues. It’s another thing entirely for the Department of Homeland Security to define the Democrat party’s political opponents as incipient terrorists.

This means we no longer live in a free, two-party representative democracy. Instead, we live in a budding socialist, totalitarian state, complete with a secret police that deputizes citizen fanatics to engage in unlawful searches for crimes. Just as the Deep State used social media to circumvent both the First and Fourth Amendments, it’s doing the same with a generation of citizen spies.

Read the full report here.

# # #

Throwing Sand

 

A F Branco cartoon

Dr Robert W Malone posted an update at Substack with a link to the petition to move The American Sovereignty Declaration forward:

“The World Health Organization (WHO) is a supranational United Nations agency that is effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as evidenced, among other things, by the manner in which the WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, has relentlessly accomplished Beijing’s bidding. That includes advancing the CCP’s interest in bringing about a post-Constitutional-America and “global governance” dominated by the Party. The CCP’s hegemonic ambitions have no place for a powerful United States of America, human freedom or personal sovereignty.

The WHO is, moreover, underwritten and malignly influenced by other hostile special interests, including Bill Gates and Big Pharma. Their efforts to expand the WHO’s supranational control align with Beijing’s. If they are no more concerned than the CCP with actually advancing public health, Gates and his fellow corporate globalists exploit their roles with the World Health Organization to generate profits.

These factors make it hardly surprising that, in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO lied about the nature, origins and effective responses to the Wuhan Virus. The “China Model” of lockdowns, masks and vaccine mandates and digital enforcement mechanisms was endorsed. And the WHO approved the use of expensive and inadequately tested gene therapies as “vaccinations” and the suppression of readily available, effective and inexpensive treatments. . . .

. . .

What the WHO has euphemistically dubbed its “One Health” approach enables it to take animals, plants and the environment under its jurisdiction.  Doing so would give it authority over every aspect of life, under the guise of a potential public health emergency. . . .

More at the link here. Anything to throw sand into the globalist machines.

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Look at all the wrecking balls

 

As the world staggers into the New World Order, Mark Lewis at Townhall looks at all the wrecking balls: 

What is critical to understand is that all the failures of the Biden administration are choreographed.  They are deliberate, exactly what Soros, the WEF, the Deep State, i.e., the Marxist Left covet.  They WANT failure.  We must understand that.  Some of them are intelligent enough to know that Leftist policies never succeed because they contradict basic human nature, economic laws, history, science, God, and every other reality.  This is the horror we are witnessing in America and around the world today —designed, intended collapse.  Those who are engineering this are aware of it and, again, need the failure.  As societies crumble and dissipate into total chaos, someone, echoing Hitler, will have to step forth and restore order again.  The Left certainly doesn’t intend for Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis to do it.  The Marxist Left will be able to assume all power, and the people will gladly give it to them in order to restore some measure of peace and stability to their lives.  The masses will obey whatever orders are given to them under the threat of terror, and out of fear of a resurrection of the madness that brought about the totalitarian state in the first place.  Most Americans sense something is dreadfully wrong, but don’t know enough history to understand it. That is a supreme tragedy.  

Read the full article here.  And we all know people who are still sleep-walking. 

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Genetically-altered pigs are now on the menu

Here’s the latest on genetically modified pork, from NextGov:

The United States Food and Drug Administration has authorized gene-edited pigs entrance into the food chain for human consumption—as German-style sausages.

Gene-editing can make changes in an organism’s DNA that could occur in nature or through selective breeding but would take much longer without a tool like CRISPR.

The FDA authorization is investigational, and limited to these particular pigs, but shows that gene-editing livestock to quickly produce desirable traits for improved food production is a viable strategy for helping feed the planet’s growing population.

Uh huh.  Here’s the final quote:

“There’s a trust that comes with university-based research,” he says. “We just want to make sure the research is valid, and the animals we produce are healthy.”

The “trust that comes with university-based research”?  With all the corruption in the peer-reviewed studies (RetractionWatch does nothing all day but track the retractions in peer-reviewed research), well, that trust would seem to be long gone.  Read the full report here. 

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