The COVID coverup begins to unravel (DP: lengthy but worth it)

The COVID coverup begins to unravel

DAVID STROM 

COVID likely started circulating in China is late 2019–now 3 years ago–and its effects have dominated our lives for 2 1/2 years.

Yet for much of that time the Establishment™ has been gaslighting us about its likely origins. You know that. The Establishment™ knows that you know. And now the Senate Republicans on the health committee are laying the facts out on the table. COVID almost certainly was released accidentally from a Chinese research lab.

It was remarkable how quickly the Narrative™ settled on the zoonotic origin of the virus, since warning signs that the virus didn’t originate naturally were everywhere. Even scientists who confidently declared in private their belief that the virus was engineered publicly stated the opposite–after having been directed to by Anthony Fauci, the keeper of the keys to the kingdom’s treasury when it comes to research dollars. Fauci in recent months has been backtracking on whether or not the virus could have been engineered, but he sure expended enormous effort maintaining the fiction that an animal origin was certain.

There is a simple reason for Fauci’s reluctance to consider a lab leak hypothesis–if it came from the Wuhan Institute for Virology, the US government likely funded the research. Obviously nobody wants that on their record, and Fauci has quite the pension to protect, as well as an unearned reputation as The Science™.

From the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON—The Covid-19 pandemic that has killed millions worldwide “was most likely the result of a research-related incident” in China, and not natural transmission of a virus from animal to human, a new report by Republicans on the Senate health committee concludes.

The study cites details about the early spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes Covid; the fact that no animal host has been identified nearly three years into the pandemic; and troubled biosafety procedures at labs in the Chinese city of Wuhan to buttress its conclusion.

The 35-page report by Republican committee staff acknowledges that definitive conclusions about the pandemic’s origins are impossible without more evidence. But, it says: “The hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.”

The report is largely based on information already publicly available but is likely to bolster calls in Washington for further investigations into the origins of the virus. Republicans have vowed to launch more aggressive Covid-19 probes if they regain control of one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections.

Previous zoonotic disease outbreaks—in which a pathogen jumps from animals to man—have occurred in multiple locations as a virus circulates in animal populations, while the Covid virus is known to have emerged only in Wuhan, home to laboratories conducting research on coronaviruses, the report notes. In addition, it says, no animal has been identified as infected with the virus before the December 2019 pandemic outbreak.

I have always suspected, based upon the balance of the evidence I have access to, that the virus was accidentally leaked from a lab. But I freely admit that biological research is not in my wheelhouse.

What is in my wheelhouse is the manipulation of evidence, the shaping of the Narrative™, the corruption at the core of our institutions where money and power are accumulated while citizens and the economy are manipulated for the benefit of the people at the top of the power pyramid. The Establishment™ is a transnational club, and as with all such clubs if you are inside you are covered, if you are outside you are scum.

The conspiracy to cover up the origins of the virus isn’t based upon some deep dark desire to kill off millions of people. Nor, I am certain, was the virus released intentionally to create the conditions where the people at the top could seize emergency powers to take us far down the path of tyranny–that was just a happy accident that the WEF crowd took advantage of. If they wanted to do that, they would have chosen a time when Trump wasn’t president.

No, this one is explained by something as simple as bureaucrats covering their assess after having blundered so badly that millions of people died. The emails that were FOIA’d from the NIH make that clear:

In the earliest days of the pandemic, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins emailed about coronaviruses under study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and about whether they had steered money to the lab, an email obtained by U.S. Right to Know shows.

Collins, then leader of the National Institutes of Health, and Fauci, leader of its infectious diseases institute, exchanged emails on February 1, 2020, about a preprint authored by Zhengli Shi, director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases. The preprint described bat coronaviruses under study at the lab, including a coronavirus 96 percent genetically similar to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The emails show that Collins and Fauci were concerned about links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and NIH.

“In case you haven’t seen this preprint from one week ago,” Collins said in a February 1, 2020, email to Fauci. “No evidence this work was supported by NIH.”

“I did see it, but did not check the similarities. Obviously we need more details,” Fauci replied, a little before noon.

Some details of the short exchange are redacted.

The email shows that these concerns were top of mind at a critical time.

About two hours after the email exchange, Collins and Fauci would join a secret teleconference with a group of virologists who were closely examining the novel coronavirus. The teleconference touched off a high profile push to discredit the lab leak hypothesis.

The revelation that Collins and Fauci were discussing whether NIH had funded work on coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 at the Wuhan lab in the hours before suggests that politics may have been at play.

Those virologists’ claims that the virus could not have been engineered may have been influenced by Collins and Fauci. The NIH leaders may have sought to obscure links between federal funding and coronavirus research at the advancing pandemic’s epicenter. The emails raise questions about these virologists’ assurances that their deliberations were apolitical.

The word went out very quickly that the lab leak hypothesis was off the table. It simply had to be, because there indeed was funding flowing from the NIH to Wuhan through the EcoHealthAlliance, and gain of function research was being done there. As everybody now knows, it even goes on here in the US, where BU and Cleveland Clinic researchers just engineered a COVID variant that has an 80% mortality rate in mice from a COVID virus that was as dangerous as a mild cold.

These people play God every day, and when they release the Hounds of Hell on the rest of us they just go “oops” and cover it up.

UNHERD has an article by Matt Ridley who wrote a book with Alina Chan about the origins of the COVID virus. Alina Chan is a Scientific Advisor at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Ridley is an author. Their book was widely praised everywhere–except in America, because the word had gotten out to treat them as pariahs because it raised uncomfortable questions about The Narrative™.

Imagine if the accidental launch of a nuclear missile had killed 21 million people. It’s hard to believe the world would shrug and say: let’s not bother finding out how it happened. The Covid pandemic has killed around that number and disrupted the lives of billions. Nothing like it has happened in more than a century; it is the greatest cause of global suffering since the Forties. Yet we still do not know how it started, and much of the world seems to be increasingly incurious to find out.

We co-authored a book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, on this topic in 2021 and it proved to be an odd experience. Eschewing speculation and sticking to what we could prove, we delved deep into the evidence and wove together the threads that linked bat viruses from southern China or Southeast Asia with an outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019. We concluded that it was impossible to be sure yet, but two theories were plausible: spillover from an animal to a person at a market, or an accident in a laboratory or during a research field trip.

Hardly a shocking conspiracy theory, right? A straightforward attempt to answer a compelling question, weighing the evidence and suggesting possible solutions. This was not an Alex Jones conspiracy theory book, but scientific journalism of the highest order with an author backed by MIT and Harvard. A scientist, in other words.

Our book received praise from readers: we received letters and emails from senior scientists, politicians, businessmen, journalists, and others commending it as a non-fiction whodunnit.

All that was gratifying. But it stood in marked contrast to the reaction in much of the media. CNN invited us on to discuss the book then cancelled at the last minute — at the behest of their health editor. The BBC simply ignored the book altogether, as did the other mainstream US and UK networks. The topic remains taboo in much of the mainstream media. Reviews were mostly bad — in both senses of the word. That is to say, they were highly critical and inaccurate. In some cases, the authors said things that made clear they had not read the book but had made up their minds to dislike it. Not one but two virologists told us on Twitter that the book was full of lies — and that they had not read it. An odd thing for anybody to admit to, especially a scientist.

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington invited us to give a presentation on the book, then cancelled the invitation. We asked the Royal Society if they had considered a debate on the topic of the origin of the Covid pandemic: no, they said, it’s not a proper topic for scientific discussion. What? We tried a couple of other learned societies: no, sorry, too controversial. Seriously.

I highly recommend reading the whole piece because it is thoughtful, informative, and distressing if you still have a modicum of faith in our institutions.

As the entire Establishment freaks out about the possibility that Republicans are likely to take over Congress it is worth thinking about why that would be. Obviously it is better to control all the levers of power, but with a Biden White House it’s hardly the case that radical Republicans will be passing laws that will radically change anything in the country.

Presidents rarely get much done domestically in the second half of their first term because they expended most of their political capital early, so why the obvious panic?

It is this: when Republicans get control they also gain enormous investigatory power. And as the Establishment™ Republicans have been flushed out of the Party the new breed are much less inclined to cover up the dirty laundry than those they are replacing.

This Senate report doesn’t in itself cover any new ground, but what it does do is signal that the new Republicans are not going to play ball with the politicians and bureaucrats who are desperate to cover their own asses. If so, very good indeed.

COVID has been the tool that the Elites™ have used to bully Americans into complying with the most absurd rules, beating us into submission. It would be ironic indeed if we could turn the tables and use the likelihood that the United States helped fund the development of the virus that has literally plagued us as a tool to dismantle the bipartisan transnational clique who have been driving the West into the ground.

UPDATE: Vanity Fair has a detailed story on the investigation into the COVID virus’ origin: https://t.co/xZUnzDxptc

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2022/10/28/the-covid-coverup-begins-to-unravel-n506352

 

Here's What I Asked the FBI's 'Election Crimes Coordinator' About Its Calling ‘Misinformation’ an ‘Election Crime’

BY ROBERT SPENCER 

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

The Biden regime’s notorious Disinformation Governance Board is dead (for now), but the regime’s quest to stigmatize and criminalize all dissent from its agenda is still very much alive. On Thursday, that indispensable team of actual journalists, Project Veritas, released a document entitled “2022 Midterm Elections Social Media Analysis Cheat Sheet” and subtitled “What Are Election Crimes?” This FBI document “details what FBI agents should look out for leading up to November 8.” Some of it really discusses what FBI agents should be looking out for: Election Interference, Election Fraud, Voter Intimidation, and the like. But included with all the other “Election Crimes” are the Left’s favorite euphemisms for true and accurate information that dissents from the Leftist agenda: “Disinformation” and “Misinformation.”

The “Election Crimes” document defines “Disinformation” as “false or inaccurate information intended to mislead others,” adding that “disinformation campaigns on social media are used to deliberately confuse, trick, or upset the public.” “Misinformation” is “false or misleading information spread mistakenly or unintentionally.”

Back on June 30, J. Christian Adams revealed at PJ Media that the FBI was working with the Democracy Fund, “a hyper-funded progressive money source,” on election issues. Among the FBI officials implicated in this partisan and corrupt collusion was Lindsay Capodilupo, who was identified as the FBI’s “Election Crimes Coordinator.”

Now, there are a lot of great titles in the world, but Lindsay Capodilupo must be proud to have one of the absolute greatest. With the FBI all in on the Russian Collusion hoax, it’s unclear whether the “Election Crimes Coordinator” is actually fighting against “election crimes” or coordinating and implementing them, and that’s just perfect for Merrick Garland’s desperately corrupt and politicized FBI.

Related: EXCLUSIVE: FOIAs Reveal Progressive Money Fueling FBI, DOJ, Leftist Activist and Election Official Coordination

Anyway, as it happens, I have met Lindsay Capodilupo, as she was one of the agents who questioned me after ISIS terrorists attempted to murder us all at our free speech event in Garland, Texas, in May 2015, while an FBI informant egged the terrorists on, telling them to “tear up Texas.” So on Friday morning, I sent her an email:

Dear Ms. Capodilupo

Greetings. You may remember me, as we had some interaction some years ago.

I’m writing now because I see from this (https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2022/06/30/foias-reveal-progressive-money-fueling-fbi-doj-leftist-activist-and-election-official-coordination-n1609558) that you are now “Election Crimes Coordinator” for the FBI. Congratulations on your appointment.

Now it appears from this document (https://twitter.com/pnjaban/status/1585698721886457857/photo/1) that among “Election Crimes,” the FBI is including “Misinformation.” Hence my questions. These are on the record, for publication in an article I’m working on today.

1. What criteria does the FBI use to determine what is and is not “Misinformation”? It appears that previously, and perhaps now as well, you were working with the Democracy Fund, a highly partisan organization. Do you allow Democracy Fund, or the Southern Poverty Law Center, or any other entity, to determine what constitutes “Misinformation”? If so, please specify which and explain why you believe this group is trustworthy.
2. Given the fact that several stories initially classified as “misinformation” have turned out to be true (notably Hunter Biden’s laptop, certified as Russian disinformation by 50 top intelligence professionals), do you plan to build in some appeals process to your prosecution of “Misinformation” as an “Election Crime,” or will your judgment be final, absolute, and not subject to appeal or discussion?
3. On what basis can you classify alleged “Misinformation” as any kind of crime at all, in light of the First Amendment and the necessarily subjective character of your judgment of this alleged misinformation?
4. Are you at all concerned that false charges of “Misinformation” will be used to silence political opponents of this administration, or any future administration, and thereby destroy America as a free society?
5. Are you at all concerned about the decisively partisan character of the FBI in recent years, and the increasing public perception that there is a two-tier justice system, with the FBI aggressively sending SWAT teams to arrest inoffensive pro-life activists, elderly political commentators such as Roger Stone, and others who are out of favor with the regime, while allowing Leftists such as Hunter Biden with multiple clear violations of numerous laws to escape all prosecution of any kind?

Many thanks in advance for your answers; if at all possible, please send them before noon today, as I’m working on a tight deadline.

Kindest regards and thanks for your indispensable service to the United States of America

Robert Spencer

Needless to say, as of this writing, there’s been no response from Ms. Capodilupo; if I hear from her later, I’ll most certainly add an update. I didn’t really expect her to respond, and she likely thought my questions were impossibly leading and thus unworthy of notice, but in reality, they were no more so than the questions Leftist “journalists” routinely ask patriots. And they’re salient questions, to which Americans need to know the answers if trust is ever going to be restored in the FBI and other institutions. Some FBI official, if not the bureau’s “Election Crimes Coordinator,” should answer them. It’s a shame that the FBI thinks it’s better to stonewall such inquiries than to face the American people with some transparency and honesty.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/10/28/heres-what-i-asked-the-fbis-election-crimes-coordinator-about-its-calling-misinformation-an-election-crime-n1640888

Media Claims that ‘Fossil Fuel Addiction Kills’ Are Patently Absurd

Media Claims that ‘Fossil Fuel Addiction Kills’ Are Patently Absurd

Anthony Watts | 

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Media outlets have been abuzz this week over a new report that blames fossil fuel use for a wide variety of ills, even going so far as to say it is killing people. ABC News recently ran a story by Associated Press (AP) climate reporter Seth Borenstein, which could be the most dishonest piece of climate related journalism ever.

The article, titled “Doctors say 'fossil fuel addiction' kills, starves millions” is based on a new report published in The Lancet Countdown.

Citing the report, AP’s Seth Borenstein makes some very broad claims, including, “Our health is at the mercy of fossil fuels.” He added, “We’re seeing a persistent addiction to fossil fuels that is not only amplifying the health impacts of climate change, but which is also now at this point compounding with other concurrent crises that we’re globally facing.”

The claim of “our health is at the mercy of fossil fuels” isn’t just wrong, it is patently absurd, and real-world data proves this.

For instance, below is a quote from a 2020 peer-reviewed article by Bjørn Lomborg: Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies.

Summarizing the data, Lomborg writes, “Back in the 1920s, the death count from climate-related disasters was 485,000 on average every year. In the last full decade, 2010-2019, the average was 18,357 dead per year or 96% lower. In the first year of the new decade, 2020, the preliminary number of dead was even lower at 8,086 — 98% lower than the 1920s average.”

As anyone knows, from 1920 to 2020, fossil fuel use increased dramatically. If it were in fact causing more deaths, we’d see it in the mortality data. We’d also see it in the graphs of human population growth. In fact, since the beginning of the industrial revolution, both global population and global fossil fuel use parallel each other closely.

Clearly, humans have thrived in conjunction with fossil fuel use since 1850, not the opposite, as the AP article claims. The proof is in the Human Development Index (HDI), which is a summary measure of average achievement in three key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable, and having a decent standard of living. The global HDI shows a constant positive improvement since the mid-19th century following the same growth path as global fossil fuel use.

Another claim in the AP article is easily shot down by real-world data. Borenstein writes, “Extreme weather from climate change triggered hunger in nearly 100 million people and increased heat deaths by 68% in vulnerable populations worldwide as the world’s ‘fossil fuel addiction’ degrades public health each year, doctors reported in a new study.”

Climate driven epidemiology model output is not the same as actual measured data, such as mortality – it is merely a guess.

When you look at real-world data, such as what was published in 2021 in The Lancet, and highlighted by Climate at a Glance: Temperature Related Deaths, actualtemperature related deaths (using real data, not model output) are not dramatically increasing. Peer-reviewed research, informed by real-world data, clearly shows deaths associated with cold temperatures significantly outnumber heat related deaths by almost 10 to one. The same research shows that deaths associated with extreme temperatures have declined significantly during the recent period of modest warming.

The study reports that the number of deaths associated with cold temperatures decreased by more than double the amount that deaths tied to hotter temperatures increased over the 20-year period of the study. 

The study also reports that, overall, temperature-related mortality (from extreme hot or cold) has declined significantly, with a total of 166,000 fewer deaths tied to non-optimal temperatures. 

Yet, somehow, despite this clear and compelling evidence, the AP’s Seth Borenstein would rather trust model projections from the study than real-world data. Neither disasters nor deaths supposedly related to climate change are increasing. Shame on The AP and ABC News and the rest of the mainstream media for refusing to tell the whole story, while simply regurgitating falsehoods.

Anthony Watts (awatts@heartland.org) is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute.

https://townhall.com/columnists/anthonywatts/2022/10/29/media-claims-that-fossil-fuel-addiction-kills-are-patently-absurd-n2615199

Reading about the principles of the American Founding is not "extremist" activity.

Reading about the principles of the American Founding is not "extremist" activity.

by Mark Lamb Mark Lamb

When I was sworn in as the 24th Sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, I took an oath to support the Constitution. So did the more than 3,000 sheriffs serving across America. The best of us reaffirm this oath every morning. This daily commitment to the legally enshrined principles of justice is the crucial philosophic orientation that separates America from a lawless land where “every man [does] that which [is] right in his own eyes.”

There is a growing faction of elite “progressives,” however, who deride both the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. In their telling, these venerable documents are old, dusty, and out of date. These radicals want to replace the bedrock principle of equality with the idea of “equity,” colorblind justice with never-ending (and, for them, quite profitable) racial grievance. Worst of all, they want to eliminate our settled and fair laws and replace them with the tyranny of power politics.

I don’t accept these revisions to the American way of life and neither should you.

But it’s not simply enough—and here I address my fellow sheriffs—to feel that something is gravely wrong with this picture of our future. We have to understand the why. And to get to this position, it is helpful to do a deep dive into our founding documents and the great men and women who first (and best) articulated the philosophic principles that forged a great nation.

Recently, I spent a lovely week in sunny Huntington Beach studying precisely these subjects while participating in an academic fellowship for sheriffs with the Claremont Institute, a think tank devoted to “restoring the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.” We pored over and discussed everything from the statesmanship of Washington and Lincoln to the teachings of Aristotle and Aquinas on natural law and natural rights. Other sessions were devoted to understanding the assault of progressivism on our cherished values of liberty and freedom. It was a wonderful experience to read and discuss these great books with other sheriffs from all around the country.

Like clockwork, however, the usual detractors emerged to characterize a week of talking about books as an example of how Claremont is training sheriffs to empower militias in order to take over the country in 2024. My classmates and I were labeled as “extremists” who consider ourselves “above the law,” intent on policing “brutally,” thanks to our “relative impunity.” This is all so laughable it’s hard to know where to begin. If spending a week reflecting on the Federalist Papers and George Washington’s Rules for Civility and Decent Behavior is the activity of would-be extremists and conspirators, then I suppose you should include me among the guilty ones.

I mention this gross and purposely obtuse response not because it is worth taking seriously, but so both my colleagues and fellow citizens understand the kind of reaction they can expect when they try to educate themselves about America’s founding principles. Don’t be intimidated. Justice, equality, rule of law, separation of powers, and consent of the governed will erode unless we make it our duty to understand their importance and function. Our elites count on this happening, so they try everything in their power to stamp out attempts at learning.

The Founding era in America was, like today, a socially and politically tempestuous time. But then, unlike now, philosophic ideas were publicly debated on stage, in taverns, and at home. Those disputes gave light to two vibrant documents totally unique in the annals of history. Unless we, together, follow the examples of our forefathers—enemies of freedom and free-speech be damned—the elemental truths upon which our nation was founded will be lost. And what replaces them will be unrecognizably bad.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/a-vow-to-serve/

It Sure Looks Like Biden Destroyed Our Economy Intentionally

It Sure Looks Like Biden Destroyed Our Economy Intentionally

BY MATT MARGOLIS 

Twitter/@TheDemocrats

We’ve all heard the adage that Democrats are guilty of what they accuse Republicans of doing. Despite all the years of this being a tactic of the left, it never ceases to amaze me that Democrats still think they can get away with it. And yet they keep trying. This week, Biden has been pushing the narrative that if Republicans win in November, they’ll tank the economy.

“Republicans have made it clear that if they win control of the Congress, they will shut down the government, refuse to pay our bills, and it will be the first time in our history America will default unless I yield and cut Social Security and Medicare,” Biden claimed. “They’re flat-out saying that, in order to cut Social Security, Medicare, they’re threatening to default on the federal debt. There’s nothing, nothing that would create more chaos, more inflation and more damage to the American economy than this. … Republicans are going to crash the economy” if they get their way.

Cute story, even more laughable than Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to absolve Biden of responsibility for historic inflation by insisting that inflation “is a global phenomenon” even though, according to Forbes, inflation is hitting America harder than many other industrialized nations.

It is embarrassing the way Joe Biden is trying to change the conversation about the economy just two weeks before the midterm elections. It would be impossible for Republicans to do more damage to the economy than what Joe Biden has already done. To tell you the truth, it’s extremely difficult not to draw the conclusion that Joe Biden has intentionally harmed the economy of our country.

Just look at the evidence. On the campaign trail, ending fossil fuels was a key promise he made. “I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you, I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels,” he said while campaigning in New Hampshire. Sure enough, the moment he took office, he declared war on the oil and gas industry, making us more reliant on foreign nations, including our enemies, to meet our fundamental energy requirements.

Then there’s the reckless spending. There isn’t a problem in the world Biden doesn’t want to throw money at. And look at the results. Inflation is at historic highs. He’s tried to blame everyone and everything else for skyrocketing inflation, but the blame rests squarely with him. Inflation started trending upward when he took office and Democrats had one-party control, and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) even admitted last week that his party knew its spending plans would drive up inflation.

“Well, let me make it very clear. All of us are concerned about these rising costs, and all of us knew this would be the case when we put in place this recovery program. Any time you put more money into the economy, prices tend to rise,” Clyburn said.

There’s no doubt that the Democrats knew what they were doing, and now they’re not only trying to distance themselves from the economic mess they’ve created, but they also have the gall to claim that Republicans would make it worse. The Trump years weren’t all that long ago, and the economy was doing great then. I bet most people would sooner go back to the Trump economy than want more of what Biden has delivered.

But the bottom line here is that the economic situation we are in now was by design. Biden and the Democrats spent, spent, spent, crushed domestic energy, and undid all the progress Trump made. And the best closing argument they can make now is, “Well, Republicans would make things worse.”

Really? I can’t stop laughing.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/10/25/it-sure-looks-like-biden-destroyed-our-economy-intentionally-n1639723

Election integrity storm brewing in PA: Over 250k ballots sent to voters with unverified ID

Election integrity storm brewing in PA: Over 250k ballots sent to voters with unverified ID

The Pennsylvania Department of State has provided conflicting guidance regarding the handling of mail ballots that do not have verified identification, state legislators wrote in a letter.

By Natalia Mittelstadt

More than 250,000 ballots have been mailed to Pennsylvania voters without their identities being verified, according to state data collected by election integrity group Verity Vote.

On Tuesday, 15 Pennsylvania state legislators sent a letter to acting Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Leigh Chapman regarding unverified ballots sent to voters. As of Thursday, state data show that more than 250,000 ballots have been mailed to voters without verifying their identification.

The legislators noted that during a state House of Representatives committee meeting in September, Deputy Secretary for Elections and Commissions Jonathan Marks testified that there is no identification requirement for voter registration in the state but that it is required for mail-in ballots.

Marks was asked by state Rep. Francis Ryan about "the large number of requests submitted to the Social Security Administration Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system." Marks explained that the HAVV systems were being used to verify Social Security numbers for mail ballot applications.

However, the deputy secretary added that if someone submits an invalid Pennsylvania Department of Transportation ID number or if the last four digits of their Social Security number cannot be verified for a mail ballot application, then the counties must still send the ballot to the voter without the ID verification. Marks also said that "the ballot doesn't count unless the voter provides a valid form of ID."

In their letter, the legislators cited Pennsylvania Department of State guidance issued nearly two weeks after Marks' testimony that contradicted him, saying that voter identification must be verified "before sending the ballot to the applicant."

"Due to this conflicting information, conscientious election workers could unknowingly accept and count ballots for which no verification has ever occurred," the legislators wrote.

According to county election officials, "a letter may be generated and mailed to" some applicants whose identification didn't match the Social Security Administration records to notify them "to produce a valid form of identification to the county board of elections," the legislators continued. But if a verified ID isn't provided, then "the county election officials report that they can and do count the ballots without the ID from the voter."

The legislators noted that "several counties report that they can and do 'fix' the invalid ID in the system and accept the ballot (with no action taken by the voter.)."

Marks also testified that there was only a "small percentage" of ballots sent without verified ID, but the legislators explained that a quarter of a million ballots "is an enormous number" that "according to the law, must be set aside and not counted for the 2022 General Election unless the voter produces ID."

The legislators asked how much "additional staffing is allocated for counties to attempt to contact and verify the identity of these quarter of a million of ballot recipients?" They also noted that while the unverified identification may be from simple mistakes such as switching letters or numbers, "the purpose of the law is to ensure integrity."

The lawmakers told the acting secretary of the commonwealth to instruct all counties to set the ballots with unverified identification aside, not count them, and "not 'fix' non-matching identification" until a valid form of identification is provided.

The information the legislators provided in the letter came from a report by Verity Vote released on Monday. The election integrity group told Just the News on Thursday that they are being attacked for the report, despite its reliance on information provided by the state itself.

"Election directors are trying to do the right thing and fix it for people for their ballot to be counted," Verity Vote said. While they have "pure motives," the law is supposed to be correctly applied, and "it's possible that ballots that shouldn't be accepted, could be."

The group added that it is "really frustrating that nobody's doing anything about this" and the Pennsylvania Department of State "doesn't feel like they have to respond to these [legislative] members."

Phill Kline, director of the election integrity nonprofit Amistad Project, told Just the News on Thursday that the problems in the 2020 presidential election are being repeated in the 2022 midterms.

"The left has refused to abide by common-sense procedures, laws, and rules that make it easy for legitimate voters to vote and difficult for fraudulent voters and people to commit fraud," Kline said.

Kline recalled that during the 2020 election the Amistad Project was involved in a lawsuit in Pennsylvania challenging the legality of guidance issued by the governor and secretary of state permitting the curing of ballots.

Even if counties had attempted to follow the ballot-curing guidance, most lacked the resources to do so, according to Kline. Philadelphia, however, had the resources, he said, to implement the guidance, thanks to grants, or "Zuckerbucks," from the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life.

This election cycle, Kline says, taxpayer money, or "Biden bucks," as he terms it, is being used for a similar purpose, this time under the pretext of expanding democratic participation.

The Pennsylvania Department of State didn't respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/brewing-election-integrity-storm-pa-over-250k-ballots-sent-voters

Don's Tuesday Column

     THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   11/01/2022

Delusional gaslighting, new normal?

So much delusion: Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing hypocrisy—having conceded the election, then spending years denying President Donald Trump’s legitimacy because her rightful victory “was stolen,”—now “projects” election-stealing onto Republicans in 2024. Her email pleaded for funds to stop future theft; it was Hillary holding a digital gun to her own head if you don’t confirm her fantasy. The gullible probably responded because it scratched the Dems conspiratorial itch.

White House Occupant Joe Biden (thinking that his utterances shape the narrative) continued economic “gaslighting.” Reporter: Why “given record inflation, should people choose Democrat?” Biden: “because it’s not record inflation any more, I’m bringing it down…people are now in a position where the combination of pay raises and job security, they’re now in a better off, even with inflation, than were before it…” (word for grammatically-flawed word).

 Don’t look for fact checkers to dispute Biden’s falsehoods; they’re obsessed with propping up failing Democrat fortunes by prevaricating over things Republicans say or do. 8 to 9 percent inflation understates real 10 to 30+ percent inflation, as itemized previously—record high since the 1980s. Biden has personally caused gas, oil and energy inflation by fulfilling his campaign promise to wage war on American oil production.

Americans are poorer than they “were before it” if “it” is his presidency; “real wages” after inflation declined by hundreds of dollars per month, thousands per year. A Republican Congress can’t reverse it but—given that the $5+ trillion of excess deficit spending has cheapened every dollar you earn and spend—sending Doug LaMalfa back to help a Republican-majority rein in foolish profligacy is a start. Democrats are congenitally incapable of reversing budgetary deficits.

It would be good if America’s Gross Domestic Product increased by 2.6% in the 3^rd quarter, but it was a deceptive number. In “How Good Is the GDP News?” Jeffrey A. Tucker explains that the 2.6% number is solely due to “unsustainable increases in exports to Europe (mostly oil) and an increase in government spending.” Sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine enriches no American.

Taking oil from the Petroleum Reserve to sell to Europe and China doesn’t grow American paychecks; it’s as manipulated as slight drops in gas prices, still 50% higher than when Biden took office. Government spending is a phony method of goosing the economy; it’s either taken from current taxpayers or borrowed, with interest, from future generations.

The bottom line: Removing the temporary trade surplus from exporting oil, the 3^rd quarter GDP remains negative. Biden gets no credit for reducing inflation or growing the economy. Look up, “How do you successfully lie to 300 million people,” by John Nantz. Short answer: you make big, simple lies, repeated so often that people give up refuting them, while regime-compliant news media promote them.

So, Biden does the “look, squirrel” routine over “junk fees” for extra leg room, checked luggage or bank/credit fees. Fees are just business’s way of not inflating all their prices which they’d otherwise have to do in Biden’s stagflation economy. Savings have declined drastically; borrowing has shot up to replace lost “real disposable income.” “Private (and nonresidential) investment”—the stuff that actually drives real economic growth—has declined for multiple quarters.

USA Today’s poll: Republicans are drawing “40% of Hispanics and 21% of Blacks” (Trump got 32% and 12%). With high Republican enthusiasm and turnout, Democrats are doomed in Congress and state races like Oregon, set to have its first Republican governor in 40 years; likewise, state AGs like Minnesota’s DFL progressive Keith Ellison. It’s the economy and crime, stupid.

The “party of diversity and tolerance” is blocking Rep. Mayra Flores, the first Mexican-born member of Congress, from joining the Congressional Hispanic Caucus because she’s Republican. Meanwhile, a stroke-impaired PA U.S. Senate candidate, Democrat John Fetterman—who, God bless him, can’t even read or string one sentence together and is less capable than a one-eyed man of driving a UPS truck—has big-contributor Dr. Chen tell us “Nothing to see here.” Chen’s message: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own lying eyes?”

The Dem/media cabal’s message: “Uncle Fester”/Fetterman’s disabilities entitle him to a U.S. gov’t office. “That’s the ticket,” put a guy who can’t comprehend the spoken or written word in a position to cast a vote on spending, taxes, gov’t power to prosecute, or maybe even going to war. His wife wants a woman, who simply “reported” on his cognitive challenges, to be punished. Why not give him more power?

Democrat-aligned election interference: 1) The Census Bureau undercounted five Republican states and overcounted six Democrat ones, giving Democrats more members of Congress, federal funding and, in the 2024 presidential election, several more Electoral College votes. Coincidence? 2) Biden’s 2021 executive order illegally turns federal agencies into de facto Democrat turnout boosters, but ignore “the man behind the curtain.”

3) A leaked FBI document, “2022 Midterm Elections Social Media Analysis Cheat Sheet,” lists potential election crimes for possible prosecution, including “false or misleading information spread mistakenly or unintentionally.” Just trust the same folks that use their power to persecute/prosecute Trump supporters.

4) While illegal ballot harvesting ramps up again (Florida), and hundreds of thousands of ballots in PA have insufficient verification, the Dems have a new conspiracy theory: Poll/drop-box watchers (meaning Republicans) are a threat to Democracy. The DOJ is concerned because only nightstick-wielding New Black Panther thugs are allowed to intimidate voters (Philadelphia, 2008).

And 5) The “gates of hell” will open when Elon Musk allows free speech to replace conservative censorship, on Twitter.

It's not just gender...climate propaganda dominates the schools

It's not just gender...climate propaganda dominates the schools

DAVID STROM 

It’s easy to focus all our attention on the vile transgender propaganda spewed out in schools across the country. Transgender recruitment is a clear and present danger to children, threatening their bodily integrity and their mental health. The menace is real. The threat is now. The consequences of failure to stop it in its tracks are dire.

But schools are filled with Leftist propaganda, all intended to deconstruct every aspect of our social order, our economy, and our political system. And all these ideological movements are, ultimately, the same: some version or another of critical Marxism, which holds that our present society is irredeemably oppressive and must be destroyed. And destroying that is the goal of the ideologists and their public school teacher followers.

RealClearInvestigations did a deep dive into the Climate Change propaganda being taught in our schools, and their findings are troubling.

For those of you unfamiliar with the site, it is a sibling to RealClearPolitics, one of the most respected political sites on the internet. We refer to it often, and pretty much every politico or analyst has it on a “must read” list. They combine original reporting with links to diverse source articles, presenting a broad based view of what is going on in politics and what people are saying about it. When one of my articles appeared on their list I was over the moon. I made it!

RealClearInvestigations extends the brand and the approach, taking a deeper dive into stories with a centrist, objective approach. They try not to take sides, at least not before they outline what is really going on. You know, like real journalism is meant to do.

What RCI found was shocking, but not surprising. Shocking only because the penetration of our education system by activist groups is so extensive. They essentially control the curriculum when it comes to environmental science, and of course on many other issues.

Public school districts are adopting curricula on climate change from well-funded progressive groups casting the issue as a threat to life on the planet that students should respond to through activism.

As of fall 2020, 29 states and the District of Columbia have adopted standards that require science classes to teach human-caused climate change as a peril beyond dispute, according to K12 Climate Action, a group that is part of the progressive Aspen Institute.

The school districts often rely on information provided by advocacy groups including the Sierra Club and the U.S. Green Building Council. A Sierra Club teaching “toolkit” signals a wide purpose across subject areas: “The ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of moving our entire society to 100% clean energy — and for fighting climate change more broadly — can be woven into many subject areas, including: biology, chemistry, physics, and even social studies.”

Still more curricular guidelines and suggestions are distributed by well-funded progressive groups that include the United Nations’Office for Climate Education, and the North American Association for Environmental Education.

You may have noticed that the younger generation is 100% committed to the idea that life on earth is at risk; in fact, many students believe that the human race is doomed. Many more believe that the doom is imminent should we not radically reshape society in precisely the same way that Leftist advocates have proposed for decades: population control, deindustrialization, and the implementation of a communist society.

The solution is always the same; it’s only the crisis requiring that solution that changes over time. Overpopulation; resource depletion; insecticides; pollution; climate change. It is all the same argument–human beings are racing headlong to a self-created apocalypse.

The only difference between now and earlier generations is that the activists own the education system, and we have invited them in.

Many scientists agree that human activity has contributed to the warming of the Earth in recent decades. But it’s still not clear how much temperatures will rise in the future and the effect that might have on society. While the Biden administration and progressive groups who help shape the school curricula argue that it is imperative to end or limit the use of fossil fuels, there is vigorous debate among scientists and policy makers about the best way to balance mitigation measures with economic and other tradeoffs that, critics say, are largely ignored in schools.

“It’s fine to teach climate if you summarize the pro and con arguments of climate change,” said John Staddon, professor emeritus of biology at Duke University and author of Science in an Age of Unreason. “But you don’t talk about it as a concluded issue. It’s a very political area and [climate change] is about scientific data, which is not a consensus.”

A RealClearInvestigations review of materials used to advance climate learning found that many contain an uncritical examination of climate change; they tend to emphasize worst-case scenarios, and to urge encouraging students to organize as activists.

“There are a lot of resources out there that are … helping students draft policies as well, and getting them involved from the beginning. And this is what we want to see, this whole-institution approach where we’re creating this culture of climate action,” Kristen Hargis, who works on research with the North American Association for Environmental Education, told attendees of an August webinar.

Lesson plans for schools are written by activists, parroted by teachers, and then students are organized to form pressure groups and even engage in the kind of active resistance we are seeing break out around the world. By promoting the idea that human beings and indeed all life on earth faces extinction because of human economic activity students have been indoctrinated with communist propaganda. Only this time the class struggle has been replaced by a racial struggle and an environmental justice agenda.

Teaching about the environment in this manner dovetails nicely with both Critical Race Theory and Transgender ideology, since they share a similar and complementary view about the oppressive and harmful nature of liberal capitalism. Capitalism is a threat to life on earth itself, and must be replaced with one based upon a social justice model.

To question the widely disseminated doomsday view of much climate science is to invite outrage and personal attacks, as Wade Linger found in 2014. As a member of the West Virginia Board of Education, Linger sought to change the wording in a proposed lesson that would, if his amendment were adopted, allow students to consider “factors that have caused the rise and fall” of global temperatures over the past century, rather than only considering the idea that temperatures have increased. Linger also suggested students be allowed to consider the credibility of climate change data.

The lessons he challenged were developed largely by Next Generation Science Standards, developed by a series of mostly progressive science learning groups; they encourage students to “[take] action within their own spheres of influence” to combat what is presented as out-of-control global warming.

“This was a precursor on the education scene to all the indoctrination stuff like [critical race theory] and the gender conflicts,” Linger said in an interview with RCI. “This was an early trial balloon to see how they can use the system to indoctrinate kids.”

His stance drew widespread criticism, with strangers shouting him down on social media. State universities and science groups sent letters to the board, denouncing Linger’s proposal.

“Adding the words ‘“and fall’” to [the lesson] risks confusion among students between the concepts of weather and climate,” read a letter from the National Science Teaching Association.

Schools are being rated by non-profits based upon how well they promote the Climate Change Narrative™, helping ensure that they aren’t just genuflecting to the woke mafia. They must actively promote the most radical parts of the agenda.

The non–profit National Center for Science Education issued a report card in 2020 evaluating states on how their public schools teach climate change. The report stated that 26 states and District of Columbia have standards that earned a B+ or better.

The review said its grading favored instruction reflecting that “human activity is responsible for the global change in climate,” and that “It’s bad: climate change is affecting and will continue to affect nature and society.”

As these standards advance, public school districts, with enrollment this year of some 50 million American students, are also collectively paying millions of dollars to “sustainability officers” and their staff to ensure schools are following “green” practices and to help districts meet their self-imposed goals for clean energy and carbon neutrality.

All of this aims to train students not just to believe, but to become the shock troops of the Left. Out of the ranks of the schoolchildren in classrooms will come the teens and 20-somethings who will throw soup and glue themselves to walls. Antifa has been nurtured by the radicals inside the schools and those who are creating the supporting curricula. Even teachers just seeking an easy way to build a class schedule can get sucked into the propaganda machine, uncritically teaching a pre-prepared classroom curriculum that is designed to create true believers.

It all adds up to a dangerous corruption of our education system, and one that likely can’t be repaired. Just as the Left now owns academia, they have taken over the public schools.

Some of these administrators help foster activist student groups. In Denver, sustainability director LeeAnn Kittle is listed as a “key community supporter” of DPS Students for Climate Action Policy. The student group this year successfully pressed the school board to pass a climate plan that includes a pledge to use 100% “clean” electric power by 2030.

Other student groups, led by adult activists, have filed lawsuits against governments including those in Rhode Island, Virginia, and Oregon. 

Seven Utah schoolchildren, ranging in age from 9 to 18, in March sued Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. The lawsuit alleges Cox, a Republican, along with several other cabinet offices and officers, are harming the plaintiffs through “unconstitutional” fossil fuel policies.

Kittle, whose career includes serving on the board of the U.S. Green Building Council, said the students in the Denver advocacy group were acting on climate “anxiety,” fed by what Kittle said were the students’ concerns over climate change-related weather and events in the region, including wildfires and increasing temperatures.

“None of this came from what was taught in class,” she said. “They taught themselves how to be advocates.”

We all know that’s not true. The Left has built the infrastructure. They created the propaganda. They disseminate it throughout the public schools. They recruit students to engage in direct action. And they breed the next generation of activists and rioters.

What to do? First of all, if you are parents, take your kids out of the schools. Demand school choice from your state. Demand to see curricula and the supporting materials. Harass your local school board. Replace the school board. Fight back.

Can we succeed? Will we? I don’t know.

What I do know is that the danger is much larger than we have realized. It goes far beyond remaking the gender binary, as awful as that it. The point is to destroy Western Civilization itself, and they are well placed to do just that.

 https://hotair.com/david-strom/2022/10/25/its-not-just-gender-climate-propaganda-dominates-the-schools-n505747