Roundup
Hey, why not do a roundup?
(1) Jill Biden’s ex-husband speaks, and let’s just say he’s not a fan of the Biden family and says they’ve been using their power against him for years.
(2) The Biden administration’s get-out-the-vote plans for the election:
… [T]he president’s 2021 directive orders every federal agency, more than 600 in all, to register and mobilize voters – particularly “people of color” and others the White House says face “challenges to exercise their fundamental right to vote.” It further orders the agencies to collaborate with ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofits.
Since issuing the order, critics claim, the Biden administration has stonewalled efforts to scrutinize its implementation by often ignoring document requests and litigating to shield relevant records. The critics, including members of Congress, state officials, and government watchdog groups, say the executive branch is attempting to federalize elections with an end-run around constitutionally prescribed state control over voting – in many cases using the resources of agencies with missions unrelated to registering voters.
Some have labeled the president’s order “Bidenbucks,” evoking “Zuckbucks” …
(3) Mick Jagger turns 80. Must be all that clean living.
(4) About the transcript of the foiled plea agreement hearing for Hunter Biden. Interesting but a bit technical. More also here.
(5) Here’s another lengthy and yet very interesting article on Iran negotiator Robert Malley (who’s been temporarily removed from that post).
Julie Kelly: on the J6 “celebrity cop” versus the video
Julie Kelly has been one of the best – and most dogged – writers about January 6th and all related issues. She’s still going strong with this post. Here’s an excerpt:
For nearly two years, Capitol police officer Aquilino Gonell was off the job or on partial duty, insisting the severe physical and mental injuries he sustained on January 6, 2021 prevented him from doing his job as a federal law enforcement officer.
In news interviews and on social media, Gonell has told his sob story about how violent rioters inflicted debilitating foot, shoulder, and head injuries that day. He routinely posts images of those alleged injuries, including several photos of a foot with stitches and surgical tape and pictures of his ongoing shoulder therapy…
But new video published by reporter Joe Hanneman at The Epoch Times this week contradicts Gonell’s claims. For more than seven minutes, Gonell, highlighted in the video below, is seen moving and walking with no sign of pain…
Both shoulders appear to have full mobility; he is seen at one point kicking a medical kit and walking around without any indication either foot is injured. His hands look unscathed.
More at the link, including the video. I have to say that I’d never heard of Gonell before, hadn’t followed his story, and don’t know quite know what to make of this analysis of his veracity. For example, have any medical authorities ever corroborated his complaints right after January 6th? But at any rate, it’s certainly interesting. If he’s faking it, it wouldn’t be surprising, either. So much of what has been said about January 6th has turned out to be untrue.
There’s also this from Kelly:
A common theme in the official January 6 narrative is that police acted heroically that day and suffered violent, unprovoked attacks by Trump supporters for hours. While some officers undoubtedly displayed courage in attempting to protect the building and lawmakers as a handful of violent protesters assaulted them, officers in many instances were the instigators, prompting unnecessary physical clashes with peaceful Americans assembled in a public building.
Security camera footage shows how Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers ambushed nonviolent protesters assembled in the Rotunda of the Capitol building shortly after 3:00 p.m. on January 6, 2021.
Much more at the link, plus many videos.
Kelly concludes:
It is clear that police, on numerous occasions, did not follow proper protocol on January 6. The use of physical force and nonlethal munitions on protesters assembled outside who posed no threat of violence provoked many clashes on January 6. Not only was the aggressive behavior of D.C. and Capitol police inside the Rotunda unwarranted—completely catching people by surprise—but the building had been evacuated at 2:20 p.m. The individuals inside the Rotunda did not pose a threat to lawmakers or staff; officers should have guided people outside to clear the premises and allow Congress to restart proceedings.
It is unclear whether D.C. police officials conducted any use-of-force investigations related to the events of January 6.
I haven’t watched the videos yet – I’m in a hurry today – but Kelly has been reliable in the past, and that’s why I’m linking to her articles. You can watch and decide for yourself.
And about that COVID vaccine study that supposedly shows 3000% more myocarditis post-vaccine than previously reported
Here’s an article from Hot Air that got a lot of links yesterday. An excerpt [emphasis mine]:
We keep being told that injury to the heart from the COVID vaccine is very rare, but a study done in Basel Switzerland indicates that the rate of subclinical myocarditis after the COVID vaccine is hardly rare at all.
In fact, in a study with only 777 participants with a median age of 37–all medical professionals getting the COVID vaccine–the incidence of elevated cardiac enzymes 3 days after injection was pretty substantial, at almost 3%.
The CDC did a study and from that, they claimed the rate was 0.001%, or one out of 100,000.
2.8% is a lot higher than 0.001%. Another 0.3% had “probable myocarditis,” putting the total at over 3%. That is 3000 times higher than the US government claimed.
Sounds terrible, right? But it’s actually a very misleading analysis of the data by the author of the Hot Air critique. If you don’t read carefully, you might not catch the problems, but they’re quite blatant and become more so if you follow the links and read the studies involved.
The key is that the “injury to the heart” in the Swiss study was subclinical. That means it had no clinical consequences but was a function of measurement alone. And it was temporary and resolved on its own.
And let’s look a bit closer [emphasis mine]:
In this small study, nobody had serious complications, but with a myocarditis complication rate of 3%, you would have to expect that giving out hundreds of millions of doses is a pretty risky proposition.
Yes, like maybe a risk of actual clinically noticeable complications in one out of 100,000, just like the government claimed. Oh, and what did the government actually claim? (And was it actually the government claiming it? When I look at the authors, I don’t see that it was the US government doing the research, anyway.) Let’s follow that link:
In this study, the incidence of vaccine-related myocarditis was 0.95 per 100,000 individuals and was highest in men aged 18–24 years, who had received two doses of the vaccine.
This sounds as though they are talking about actual myocarditis that is measured by actually having symptoms that bring a person to the doctor. And indeed, it seems that’s what’s being measured in this study; I read the bulk of it and that is apparent.
So the Hot Air author is comparing apples and oranges. In the study that found 3% elevated enzymes, no one was ill – and ordinarily these people would not even have had their enzymes checked. The elevations subsided on their own. In the other study being compared – the one that had found a much lower level of problems – they were talking about the level of symptomatic myocarditis itself, not just elevated enzymes. No one checks the enzymes of everyone who got a vaccine, nor does that study purport to have done so.
The smaller Swiss study did something quite different; researchers took a small group and checked the enzymes of everyone in it after getting the vaccine. But only after getting the vaccine. It would have been better to have also checked those levels in those people before getting the vaccine so they could compare the actual changes in those levels post-vaccine. But they did not. Instead, the way they determined there were elevated enzymes was to compare the people’s levels to norms in the population for the age groups involved. In addition, no patient in the Swiss study “had ECG-changes, and none developed major adverse cardiac events within 30 days.”
Researchers prior to this have been quite upfront about there being a very small elevated risk of symptomatic myocarditis in certain populations after getting the vaccine, almost all cases very mild and temporary. And in that linked government study, the authors also say this:
We hypothesized that COVID-19 mRNA-vaccine-associated myocardial injury following booster vaccination may be much more common, as symptoms may be unspecific, mild or even absent, escaping passive surveillance.
What that means is that the authors are saying there may be a higher incidence of asymptomatic changes post-vaccine that were not measured in the study, because the study only looked at symptomatic cases. And that’s exactly what the Swiss study did measure: asymptomatic changes that were temporary. So of course the number of people with such changes was higher.
So there is no contradiction here at all between the two studies. And, as with nearly every single one of the articles I’ve read purporting to say how awful the COVID vaccines are in terms of side effects – and I’ve probably checked at least fifty such articles – I have never found a single one of the claims about such articles that isn’t quite flawed, sometimes very flawed. As is this one.
Unfortunately, most of my lengthy discussion of such things has been in the comments rather than in posts, so it’s very hard for me to go back now and find them and link them. But I’ve written about such things many times.
Look, the government lied about plenty of things connected with COVID, particularly the lab leak origin that was always likely and yet was strongly denied. They lied and/or were mistaken about the efficacy of lockdowns and of masking. Initially they claimed that vaccines would make the vaccinated person unable to transmit COVID and would have a very low chance of getting it in the first place, but with the newer strains that turned out to be false. There were lies about how many people were dying of COVID versus with COVID.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of these articles about how the government lied about so many other things connected with post-vaccine side effect, articles that purport to crunch numbers and understand research, are simply mistaken or lying themselves. And yet so many people seem to believe them.
Just because one side lies and/or is mistaken doesn’t mean the other side doesn’t lie and/or is mistaken. However, I consider government lies more serious, because they are the supposed experts and they influence policy and many more people. But I still don’t like to see research misrepresented by anyone, whether on the left or right, and I see it almost constantly.
[NOTE: By the way, there’s also symptomatic myocarditis as a complication of getting COVID itself. See this, for example; the indication is that the incidence is higher post-COVID than it is post-vaccination.]
Open thread 7/27/23
We used to smash them in doors, too:
RIP Sinead O’Connor
The singer has died at the age of 56:
Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor has died at the age of 56, her family has announced.
In a statement, the singer’s family said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”
The acclaimed Dublin performer released 10 studio albums, while her song Nothing Compares 2 U was named the number one world single in 1990 by the Billboard Music Awards.
I really have never followed her music and know little about it, but I know who she is and that she often seemed the center of some storm. The article said she had manic depression, which makes me think this may have been a suicide. Manic depression can be a dreadful thing. I also noticed that one of her four children, a son, died last year at the age of 17. Terrible terrible heartbreak and tragedy, and I can’t help but think that her death is also related to that, particularly since he had committed suicide.
RIP to them both.
What’s going on in the Hunter Biden trial?
There was a lot of back and forth there that made it hard to sort it out for a while, but this seems to be the gist of the outcome – at least for the moment:
As we reported, the first news out of the courtroom was that the plea deal was not going to happen because there was a difference of opinion between the parties as to exactly what the deal covered and whether additional charges, potentially related to FARA violations, were covered in the agreement or not. Then we heard that a revised deal might be on.
It has now been learned that no plea deal was entered during the hearing on those charges, and that Biden pled not guilty to the charges. According to CNN Judge Maryellen Noreika “said she could not accept the plea agreement as it was structured as it just had her as a rubber stamp.” The original deal was for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors, receiving no jail time, and diversion on a felony gun charge. Apparently Hunter’s attorneys believed that the plea agreement would provide their client with blanket immunity on other criminal charges, but after prosecutors told the Court that some of the matters were still under investigation, Judge Noreika questioned whether it was appropriate to grant immunity for matters still under investigation …
Fox News contributor Sol Wisenberg posits that the DOJ, Hunter Biden, and his attorneys were all banking on Judge Noreika not asking questions before accepting the plea and noted that it is essentially unheard of for the parties to not have an extremely specific and mutually-agreed-upon understanding of what the plea agreement encompassed before showing up in court.
In addition, Wisenberg tweeted the following:
Some thoughts: Now we know why DOJ didn’t show us the plea agreement terms. What didn’t they want us to know ahead of time? A) a global immunity deal for Hunter; B) A binding plea (that is, the judge must accept the specific terms if she accepts the agreement); C) Misdemeanor probation; D) Other unusual plea terms.
Highly unusual and highly irregular. But hey, this is about Prince Biden. So at this point, nothing really should shock us.
More from Wisenberg:
Think about this. DOJ was about to sanction a plea deal where Hunter would get misdemeanor probation on serious tax charges plus pretrial diversion (no time served or criminal record) on the felony gun charge. Hunter would also get complete immunity on all other charges. And he would not have to cooperate with the government’s ongoing investigation. Totally disgraceful. Merrick Garland and David Weiss should be ashamed.
Ashamed? I don’t think they know the meaning of the word. Proud, rather. Except for now it backfired.
Will there be a trial? Will it be a jury trial or just in front of a judge? Remember, this is in Delaware, a state not only heavily Democrat but heavily Biden-dominated and Biden-influenced. Is there any chance of a Hunter conviction? I have strong doubts.
Plus, it seems to me that – since these are federal charges – Joe can always pardon Hunter. What’s to stop him from doing so? The Democrat machine would always protect him. Or, if they do end up abandoning him for the 2024 nomination, it won’t be for principle – it will be because he’s become too obviously foggy, and polls show he won’t win.
ADDENDUM: More on the subject here; please read the whole thing. I am reminded of the rather obvious fact that in the Hunter Biden case the two sides – prosecution and defense – aren’t really opposed to each other. The prosecution wants to give Hunter a tiny little wrist slap rather than make him responsible for his actions. It’s only because the House is in GOP hands – for now – and there are whistleblowers who have testified, that we are seeing even this much pushback to the sweetheart plea deal.
Biden cures cancer and the White House transcript office won’t even give him credit for it
First, the claim:
Next, the transcript:
“If you could do anything at all, Joe, what would you do?” I said, “I’d cure cancer.” And they looked at me like, “Why cancer?” Because no one thinks we can. That’s why. And we can. We can end cancer as we know it.
Winston Smith at the Minitrue.
It certainly could be the case that that’s what Biden meant to say. It definitely is true that that’s what his handlers wish he had said. But it’s also true that it’s a bizarre error to have made, indicative of a trait Biden has had for his entire life: being a grandiose braggart.
Trump is a grandiose braggart too, but on a smaller and more understandable scale. And I’ve never seen any evidence of dementia in Trump, although his critics – the same ones who are silent on Joe’s cognitive decline – kept pointing out supposed evidence of Trump’s senility. Trump’s bragging takes a more ordinary form than Joe’s, and is more in the nature of exaggeration: the crowd attending his speech was the biggest, he was the greatest – that sort of thing. In that regard, Trump reminded me and still reminds me somewhat of Mohammed Ali, and much like Ali he often has been able to accomplish what he said he would accomplish.
Biden reminds me of no one and nothing. He doesn’t even remind me of the many cognitively challenged people I’ve visited over the years in nursing homes. There is something more odd and repellent about Biden, and it was present even before his current slow fade: something arrogant, bold, sly, mendacious, and cunning.
Open thread 7/26/23
The case for a Biden impeachment
I’m not usually in favor of impeachment when it’s a foregone conclusion that there will never be a conviction. But Margot Cleveland makes a good case for impeaching Biden nevertheless:
The evidence of President Joe Biden’s corruption during his time as vice president is now so overwhelming and the implications so serious, the disparate investigations underway in the House and Senate can no longer suffice. Nor can the Department of Justice and the FBI — even under the auspices of a special counsel — be trusted to oversee the investigation given the overwhelming evidence that they obstructed the probe into the Biden family.
There is only one option left that can deliver truth and transparency to the American public, and that is an impeachment inquiry that investigates not just President Joe Biden, but Attorney General Merrick Garland, U.S. Attorney David Weiss, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In other words, because the MSM, the DOJ, and the FBI are in corrupt collusion with the Bidens, all of them need to be bypassed in order to get the word out to the American people.
A special counsel won’t do, either:
A belated appointment of a special counsel is untenable because, beyond interfering with congressional oversight and delaying a transparent accounting to the American people, the necessary investigation includes both the DOJ and FBI, the heads of both agencies, and, at minimum, one U.S. attorney. Thus the attorney general’s control over any special counsel appointment creates an untenable conflict of interest.
I think that reasoning is quite convincing. However, I’m not at all sure that even an impeachment inquiry would get the word out to enough people. Would the MSM cover it? And wouldn’t it just be framed as “Republicans pounce!” and “Republicans are just acting to avenge the impeachments of Trump, which of course were completely valid whereas this one is not.”
I still think it needs to be done.
NOTE: I just saw this article, “Speaker McCarthy Warms Up to Impeaching Joe Biden.”
Jonathan Turley on the media’s protection of Biden
The media’s desire to “move on” from the scandal is reaching an almost frantic level, as millions in foreign payments and dozens of corporate shell companies are revealed, and incriminating emails are released.
The same plaintive demand was made in congressional hearings.
What was most striking about the last hearing involving two respected IRS whistleblowers was how Democratic members avoided virtually any specific questions…
…Any question would now trip a wire on the Bidens, so most avoid the allegations in favor of talking about Trump or other shiny objects…
Now, Archer is expected to testify that Joe Biden participated in actual telephone calls with them…
No matter the severity of the revelations, the liberal media calls the investigations a “clown show.”
Others have continued to tell the public that there remain no alleged ties from Hunter to President Biden despite emails, pictures and witness testimony.
Yet it is becoming harder and harder to avoid these details.
I agree with what Turley wrote, and I suggest you read the whole thing. But although, as Turley says, it’s become harder for them to avoid those details – and I’ll add that it’s also become more outrageous and ludicrous – I believe that the Democrats are fully up to the task. Helped by an MSM which echoes their message as well as ignores the details that implicate the Bidens, and instead makes the story into “Republicans pounce!” And “Republicans malign our glorious FBI and DOJ!” as well as “evil Trump this and evil Trump that,” they might be quite successful in continuing to minimize and/or coverup the biggest US political scandal of my lifetime.
NOTE: The Federalist has two articles on much the same topic: this and this. From the latter:
The lead stories from The New York Times and The Washington Post, however, are not focused on the credible allegations of bribery, the more than 200 alleged interactions between Joe Biden and his son’s business partners, or the bombshell testimony from veteran IRS whistleblowers who testified publicly. Instead, Monday’s lineup included a story in The New York Times about how the pair of IRS whistleblowers were prepped by former Grassley staffers (who’ve also worked for Democrats) and a column in The Washington Post about Republican efforts to “impugn Biden.” On Tuesday, readers had to scroll to the politics pages of each paper to find anything about the president’s Ukrainian scandals. Even then, readers were met with skepticism of Republican charges instead of the pro-impeachment coverage that defined the corporate media’s approach to the Trump administration.
On political affiliation as a birthmark
Commenter “Jamie” writes: “My father-in-law is utterly convinced that he’s a Democrat and that Republicans are, minimally, bad people,” and then she lists a set of beliefs he holds that seem very consistent with being on the right. She adds:
Doesn’t he sound center-right? But there is NO convincing him that he might consider voting for a (California!) Republican for ANY office, including dog catcher.
My point being, he begins with an unexamined belief in something that doesn’t hold up to even a little scrutiny, because it’s core to him. He is a Democrat, his father was a Democrat, his father before him… To challenge that “truism” is to challenge his sense of identity.
That is extremely true for a lot of people I know. They are consistent Democrat voters and believe people on the right are mean-spirited, bigoted, money-grubbing, ignorant and/or stupid. And yet, when one actually speaks with these Democrats and explores their beliefs – which I sometimes do – it seems they are far more conservative than their voting records would indicate.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve said to such a person, “You know, you’re actually a closet conservative.” And I meant it. They sometimes have chuckled in response. But still, they would never ever vote for a Republican.
I wrote about this phenomenon back in 2005 in this post entitled, “The birthmark: an identity is a difficult thing to change.” An excerpt:
So, the groups to which we belong–social, ethnic, religious, racial, class, professional, recreational, familial, political–all are pieces in the puzzle that creates our sense of identity. The majority of people are probably most comfortable when they perceive the elements within them as cohesive, and are uncomfortable when they see them as clashing with each other. But all sides–Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, “progressives” and anarchists and libertarians–take on an affiliation which becomes a basic part of personal identity and is consequently often very difficult to give up.
An excellent illustration of this phenomenon is Democrat Zell Miller, who gave a speech nominating G.W. Bush at last year’s Republican convention. This earned him the enmity of most of his fellow Democrats, who considered him a traitor to the party.
Many people wondered aloud why Zell Miller had not switched parties in light of his strong alignment with the Republicans and his staunch opposition to the Democrats. A “conservative Democrat” seemed to be a sort of oxymoron.
Miller’s answer? That he was born into the Democratic Party and considers his party label to be “like a birthmark”–innate, and difficult to eradicate…
That’s because a liberal political identity tends to be so much more than a political identity–it’s also a moral and personal identity. Liberals tend to equate their own position with such abstract (and non-political) qualities as goodness, kindness, lack of bigotry, intelligence–oh, a host of wonderful virtues. Any identity that is so identified is going to be particularly difficult to shed. Do some conservatives feel this way about their identity? Of course. But my impression is that it is a feeling even more basic to the political identities of liberals–at least the ones I know, and I know quite a few.
My sense is that this is one of the main reasons that my attempts to talk to my friends have so often been met with rage: to many of them, my espousing of any conservative causes means 1) I must be a bad (i.e.: selfish, racist, classist) person; and 2) if I ever were to convince them of the rightness of my arguments, they would be faced with leaving the fold, also, and becoming a bad person, too. Much better to let the whole edifice remain in place than to remove one little brick and risk the whole thing toppling down.
As I said, that was written in 2005. What’s changed about the phenomenon during the ensuing years is that the gulf is now even wider and the feelings more entrenched for the vast majority of people. Democrat pundits, politicians, and activists realized quite some time ago that their strongest appeal was to this phenomenon of virtue-signaling and demonizing of the other side, and so over the years that’s become an especially prominent part of their campaign tactics.
It works.