There is so much in this soundbite from Dr Leana Wen (Public Health Policy, George Washington University) it is difficult to encapsulate.
When they show you who they are, believe them. In this soundbite Dr. Wen is apoplectic that people might realize there is no need for a vaccination because everything is open and there is no crisis. She frets that American people will enjoy their freedoms without vaccination. Just watch and listen to the priority in her soundbite.
The blind-spot exposure of their ideology is a weakness of the totalitarian mind. They spend so much time in an echo-chamber they cannot fathom the insanity of what they are espousing. To them it just seems like the typical conversation they have all the time, because they never face anyone challenging them. WATCH:
“We have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status because if everything is reopened, then what’s the carrot going to be… How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine… So that’s why I think the CDC & the Biden admin need to come out a lot bolder & say “if you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things…here are all the freedoms that you have, because otherwise people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms ANYWAY.”
In an apparently predestined and inevitable manner, as occurs when there is weak international leadership, the United States and China are drifting into a state of prickly antagonism.
During the election, Joe Biden said the Chinese were not a threat to the United States and he has still only half-heartedly acknowledged a serious rivalry between the two countries. There is plenty of evidence that the new administration has made such a poor impression in Beijing that President Xi Jinping has concluded now is the time for China to humiliate and displace the United States—a conclusion he was certainly deterred from adopting during the Trump years.
Any analysis of Chinese policy must begin with the fact that the coronavirus pandemic has delivered Beijing the most decisive strategic victory in great power affairs since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The World Health Organization report on the origins of the pandemic is clearly a Chinese whitewash—as even vehemently anti-Trump CBS News acknowledged over the weekend—and the eager Inauguration Day return of the Biden Administration to the WHO now appears particularly destructive of any claim the administration might make to cloak itself in moral resolution on the issue. On the basis of what has been revealed, it appears that though the Chinese may not have deliberately invented and propagated the virus, they dissembled and lied about it as well as facilitated its transmission out of China to the world while aggressively suppressing it within its own borders. This verged on, if it did not in fact constitute, an act of germ warfare.
The Beijing regime improvised skillfully, and with the assistance of the almost universally bungling Western response to the same facts, gained a huge economic advantage on the United States, as America’s foremost allies, the NATO and EU powers, floundered contemptibly. Apart from the United Kingdom, the distribution of vaccines there has been an almost unmitigated fiasco.
All the European fantasies of standing on each other’s shoulders to regain the status that they enjoyed before plunging the world into the Great Wars of the last century and elevating the fiendish heresies of Marxism and Nazism, are in tatters. Somehow, and without Britain, the most politically mature and astute of all European countries, the European idea will have to await new champions and mount a second attempt to achieve a respected status in the world. As it is, Germany, which since Bismarck united it in 1871 has been the most powerful European country, now imagines that it has some vocation to dicker with China and hold some balancing role in the world. One does not have to be a pessimist to be mindful of Germany’s thoroughly indifferent post-Bismarck record of behavior as an autonomous great power.
The Danger of a Sino-Russian Alliance
What appears to have provided the final great impetus to escalate Sino-American rivalry to open antagonism was the Democratic Party’s mindless baiting of Russia, culminating in Biden’s description of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “murderer” followed by Putin’s recall of the Russian ambassador from Washington.
Russia, though one of the world’s great cultures and an immense country, has not begun to recover from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than half of its population. It has a declining population, has never in its history enjoyed one day of what a citizen of any Western democracy would accept to be good government (even under successful tyrants such as Peter the Great and Stalin), and now has a GDP smaller than Canada’s. The only danger, apart from cyber-meddling and irresponsible arms sales, that Russia could present to the United States is one that the Biden Administration has unfailingly fomented: driving it into the arms of China.
The principal American advantage over China, apart from reasonably well functioning democratic institutions and a preponderant free-market economy, is that it is a rich country, while China has few natural resources, and is still 40 percent a command economy and has no institutions that command any respect, apart from the military. Moreover, the country is still hobbled by its one-child policy. China is not predestined to win this contest, unless the United States continues to misplay its hand.
If the United States cannot lure Russia back from its cooperation with China, eventually surplus Chinese manpower will be successfully exploiting the vast unpopulated treasure house of Siberia under some royalty arrangement, and the United States will find itself for the first time in its history in a severe competition with a deadly rival of approximately equivalent geopolitical strength to itself.
What will be at stake is not just a matter of the prestige that accrues to the world’s most powerful and successful country; it is the question which vastly transcends mere interstate rivalry of whether the world’s foremost nation recognizes the value of human life and the entitlement of all people to certain rights, despite imperfect observation of these ideals in practice, or rather whether that nation is governed by a totalitarian government’s imposition of collective values by surveillance and repression that are not subject to any canvass of the approval of the governed.
The People’s Republic of China has largely renounced its Confucian and Mandarin intellectual and somewhat humanistic traditions, and as the only great nation ever to have lost that status and regained it, China today proclaims the premier efficiency of dictatorship, without any pretense to humanistic values, apart from increasing prosperity. The materialism of Marxism is retained even if its impractical egalitarian distribution is not.
Implications of Chinese Supremacy
The implications of the Western world not being paramount in the whole world, and of being infested—as it would be in any such scenario as is planned by the Chinese leadership—by admirers of repressive government, is profoundly disturbing to any constant believer in even the broadest definition of Western values.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, after the fiasco of his meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister in Anchorage two weeks ago, appears at least to recognize the challenge. He will presumably abandon the imbecility of trying to discuss climate change with China, and celebrating being “back,” will think better of his proposal to ignore the past and think only of future prospects, and start to direct American diplomacy toward holding China responsible for the exportation of the coronavirus, the rupture of its Hong Kong treaty with the United Kingdom, its religious persecutions and semi-genocidal oppression of the Uighurs, its incremental invasion of India, its gross violations of international law in the South China Sea, and its threat to the autonomy of Taiwan.
We presumably have the time before the Winter Olympics in China next year to pull up our socks. Despite the flabbiness of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their acceptance of the heresy of basic racial instruction for the forces, the administration will have to fortify Guam’s anti-missile defenses and provide the Seventh Fleet and all aircraft carrier task forces with adequate defenses against hypersonic weapons if the United States is to retain any credible deterrence for Taiwan. China’s oil purchase agreements with Iran and Venezuela will effectively defeat American sanctions and deprive both countries of any incentive to make concessions to the United States. Biden will likely now suffer the complete strategic defeat of the nuclear militarization of Iran and North Korea.
On the other hand, Ukraine’s cancellation of the sale of an important defense contractor to China, in response to American intervention, is a sign that Washington is awakening. A unified and focused effort to rally all those who are rightly offended by the implicit insolence of China’s “Belt and Road” plan for Eurasian hegemony could, like Jimmy Carter’s belated awakening to the nature of the Soviet Union after it occupied Afghanistan in 1979, pave the way for an American response as imaginative and successful as that of President Reagan to the Soviet Union. The elements of containment, based on the alliance with Japan, India, and South Korea, are available.
The West should still win, without war, but traversing the next four years under the quavering leadership in Washington now will strain the patience and the faith of those who love liberty in every land. No one could have imagined that we would so quickly squander the West’s mighty and bloodless strategic victory in the Cold War.
On New Year’s Eve, Emmanuel Macron promised France an economic revival
by the spring. Cancel that. Instead, as the intensive care units are
saturated by a third wave of COVID, we have a new lockdown light and a
new message from the president: ‘Don’t panic.’
More than a year after Macron the general took personal command of
the war on the new coronavirus, the vaccination program has still to get
into high gear, the doctors are threatening to triage patients,
abandoning those with little hope, yet there was no hint of contrition
from the president.
Instead, he announced that we are to be subjected to yet another
baffling set of rules which together comprise a sort of ‘confinement,’
although Macron never used the word.
Macron is said to have held at bay the ‘enfermistes’ urging a tighter
lockdown. Relying on his own instincts as an autodidact epidemiologist,
he has decided on a bouquet of measures, including a temporary shutdown
of schools and limitations on travel and non-essential commerce. It’s
hard to see how this can make much difference, but perhaps it’s intended
to be mostly theatrical. Something must be done, this is something.
French people are increasingly fed up with the restrictions on their lives
Insisting that the French ‘mustn’t panic, we’ve not lost control,’ he
promised more intensive care beds, more remote working and more
benefits to small businesses and those on furlough. So, no economic
recovery in immediate view.
The fiasco of the European vaccine procurement was conspicuously
unmentioned. But it seems that Macron has finally twigged that vaccines
will ultimately be the only way out for France and perhaps his own
political career, with a presidential election a year away. ‘Vacciner,
vacciner, vacciner,’ said Macron, suddenly unequivocal. ‘They work,’ he
said.
He acknowledged delays in vaccination but promised that in weeks to come
the vaccinations will accelerate. From April 16, vaccines will be
available for everyone over 60. By May 15, for those over 50. And by
mid-June, everyone else. Teachers and police will get priority. Even
veterinarians will be enlisted in the army of jabbers, Macron promised.
Macron was fluent on Wednesday evening and while he may be, as his
father says, a great seducer, it’s clear he remains months away from
beating back the virus or convincing the voters that he’s on top of
this.
While he made the traditional appeals for solidarity and
responsibility, French people are increasingly fed up with the
restrictions on their lives. As the weather improves, even 90,000 police
may find it hard to keep them locked down.
L.A. Times journalist Harry Litman says that vaccine passports are a “good idea” because they will help the Biden administration “break the resistance down.”
Litman is a a former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, having been appointed by Bill Clinton and now writes as a legal affairs columnist.
“Vaccine passports are a good idea,” tweeted Litman. “Among other things, it will single out the still large contingent of people who refuse vaccines, who will be foreclosed from doing a lot of things their peers can do. That should help break the resistance down.”
The remark was in reaction to reports that the Biden administration has been working with tech companies and non-profits to create a vaccine passport that “will play a role in multiple aspects of life.”
As we previously highlighted, the vaccine passport will likely be rolled into a digital ID card linked to facial recognition technology, greasing the skids for the introduction of an onerous Communist Chinese-style social credit score system.
With as many as one in four Americans likely to refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine, the White House will seek to make ordinary life almost impossible for those who resist taking the shot, leaving millions of Americans under a de facto state of permanent lockdown.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has already unveiled the “Excelsior Pass,” which will mandate New Yorkers “prove their vaccination status, or recent history of a negative COVID-19 test, in order to gain entry to events and businesses.”
Litman’s comment sounds like something an evil character in a dystopian thriller about a high-tech dictatorship would say.
If Joe Biden's American Jobs Program, outlined in Pittsburgh, is
enacted, then the federal government will take a great leap forward
toward irreversible control of the destiny of the Republic.
To
finance this leap, to subsidize this giant stride toward socialism,
U.S. corporations are to be forced to turn over to the government a far
larger slice of their earnings. The corporate tax rate is to be raised
from 21 to 28 percent. And that is only the first of the new or added
taxes to come -- on incomes, capital gains and estates.
The bait
to lure Republicans into embracing this $2.3 trillion in Great Society
II and Green New Deal spending is the modest fraction to be allocated to
infrastructure -- airports, bridges, roads, ports, public transit.
Most
of the rest is to be used to grow social programs and launch new ones.
Biden plans to lead the nation into a new "forever war," an endless war
on climate change. Meanwhile, the Chinese pump ever more carbon into the
atmosphere, as Americans sacrifice to take it out.
Make no
mistake. "Sleepy Joe" is determined to emulate, not Bill Clinton or
Barack Obama, but FDR and LBJ, and to be remembered as a president who
raised federal power to new heights.
The significance of what Biden has already done, with his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, cannot be denied.
Even
before the COVID-19 pandemic hit with hurricane force in March 2020,
the U.S. was looking at yearly trillion-dollar deficits. Then, in that
final year of the Trump presidency, came a massive surge in federal
spending of some $4 trillion.
The final 2020 deficit exceeded $3 trillion. and the U.S. debt
now exceeds the gross domestic product for the first time since World
War II.
But unlike 1945, when the war was all but over and federal
spending was about to recede dramatically, today, the riptide of new
spending is coming in stronger and stronger.
Why? The reasons are many.
First,
fear of the social, economic and political consequences of a recession
is far greater in Congress and the country than the fear of an outbreak
of inflation, which seems to have been contained.
Second, the
drivers of deficit spending are growing bolder as the traditional
resistance grows weaker. Inside the Republican Party, once a church
preaching small government and balanced budgets, the deficit hawks are
going the way of the passenger pigeon -- toward extinction.
Then there are the other driving forces of larger deficits.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the major entitlements and principal budget elements, are all programmed for growth.
Nor did Donald Trump extract us from the draining wars of the Middle East.
Also,
for a decade, the Federal Reserve has held interest rates down and
inflation has not been the threat it was at the end of the 1970s when
Chairman Paul Volcker brutally squeezed it out of the economy.
The
only way interest rates can go now is up, and with the federal debt as
huge as it is today, interest rates do not need to rise too far to
consume a large chunk of the federal budget.
Over the last century, it has been the fate of the
Republican Party to retreat, regroup, resist and retreat again on this
macroissue of deficits and debt.
When Cal Coolidge left office in
1929, the federal budget claimed 3% of GDP. The Crash of 1929, the Great
Depression and the Second World War followed. All saw huge increases in
the federal government's claim on the nation's wealth.
But when the Depression and war ended, Eisenhower Republicans made no
effort to repeal FDR's New Deal. And when Barry Goldwater was nominated
in 1964 and went down to crushing defeat, LBJ, who cut his teeth in the
New Deal, used his massive majorities on the Hill to launch his Great
Society, programming new spending far into the future.
When Ronald
Reagan came to power on a promise to restrain the federal government,
he enlisted the private sector, with his tax cuts, to be the locomotive
of progress. But even Reagan failed, by his own admission, to restrain
the deficits.
The financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 brought us our
first trillion-dollar deficit. And while Trump unleashed the private
sector with his tax cuts -- unemployment was at record lows across the
board on March 1, 2020 -- the pandemic and the economic crisis it
engendered brought about a bipartisan clamor for government to resolve
the crises.
So, where are we?
There appears to be no
historical evidence that once a Western democracy expands central power
and control of the nation's resources that it ever willingly gives up
those gains.
Yesterday's gone. Yet, Biden's remaking of America
must be resisted. As was said at Waterloo, "The Guard dies but does not
surrender!"
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—Johnson & Johnson has introduced a new 3-in-1 product that contains shampoo, conditioner, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
"Now, you can clean, condition, and vaccinate, all with one handly bottle," said a Johnson & Johnson representative. "Our product has all the vitamins and minerals you need for a healthy head of hair and a 100% safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19."
"Plus, it has no more tears!" The Johnson's-branded 3-in-1 shampoo is safe for infants through adults, so your whole house can be clean, tangle-free, and safe from COVID. Protection may not last forever, though, so Johnson & Johnson recommends buying multiple cases of their product and using it several times a day, and then ordering more when you run out, just to be on the safe side.
"Yeah, you're gonna have to buy a lot of this stuff we make," said the rep. "It's, uh, for science."
If you buy now, for a limited time, the shampoo will include 30% more tracking microchips, a representative confirmed at publishing time.
Election Fraud Hotspots – 10% of the Data are 70% of the Fraud
The
more our team looked at the 2020 election fraud from publicly available
records, the more it appeared to have similar characteristics to
property casualty insurance fraud.
Beginning
in November, like many citizens, we witnessed election fraud
possibilities any sentient person would investigate. Having backgrounds
in fraud detection, particularly in the property casualty insurance
business, Medicaid fraud, and cyber fraud, gave us a curiosity that
never dissipated.
Our
interest is 100% in data analysis. That means looking at the actual
votes, the addresses, the information about ballots reported to
Secretaries of State. While there are all kinds of other fraud, the
best way to light it up is with data analysis.
Not
just the statistical stuff with the graphs and Greek symbols, but old
fashioned rows and columns. Nothing illegal, just the same public data
Google uses to profile someone for new running shoes.
If Jesse Morgan
did drive a tractor trailer truck with 100,000 ballots from New York to
Pennsylvania, how can we find out? Chris Wray and our hardy pals at
the FBI may not want to open that truck’s back door, but we do – with
database analysis.
Every
one of those ballots has a person’s name and address. The ballot is
cast, illegally for sure, and counted. The local government is involved
as well as the U.S. Postal Service officials at that particular
location. That makes this sovereign, industrial election fraud.
They can hide the truck. They can claim it never happened. They cannot hide the record of the ballot.
Imagine
yourself trying to fake 100,000 ballots. Even with some of your pals,
lots of them, sitting around tables with pizza and Cokes and #2 pencils,
it’s daunting. Every ballot needs to tie to an address. Each ties to a
name. This is fraud infrastructure.
While
you and your friends are filling out 100,000 ballots with Biden
circles, do you think you took the time to use a different, real address
for every one of them? Or, more likely, did you use a small group of
addresses over and over? You get the picture.
If
you filled out birth dates, did you use a different one every time you
thought about it? How about those surnames? They are tied to real
people and they better live in Pennsylvania.
We
are getting reports some Secretaries of State are modifying mail-in
ballot data to hide the tens of thousands of ballots received before
they were sent.
This is a very bad idea.
Fraud data is like the world’s messiest crime scene.
Think
of your worst nightmare crime scene with blood, bullet casings, broken
furniture, spatterings, and that is how complex a fraud database is. If
a criminal alters a crime scene, they always make things worse for
themselves. They leave traces of who they were. More troublesome,
they leave traces of what they are trying to hide.
We
are thrilled people are trying to alter data after the fact. They are
leaving tracks like a dinosaur walking through a field of peanut butter
for database tracking.
Citizen
election fraud investigators are coalescing across multiple states
sharing information, fraud profiles and actual data. We are helping
with fraud investigative expertise and search technology beyond anything
commercially available.
Our
thesis is that 70% of all 2020 election fraud will be tied to 10% of
the records. Like insurance fraud, election fraud has cultural
affinities. It also has geographic patterns and links to a small number
of people who deliver the overwhelming amount of fraud.
Cultural affinities?
We
broke a major insurance fraud ring showing a group of Somali
immigrants, living in the same building, driving the same car, had
scammed a major insurance company. Sure they did, they knew each
other. This happens all the time; the data show it.
Election
fraud is no different. People who hang out together may have similar
world views. If they are aggressive enough to join in an election fraud
conspiracy, they don’t bring in strangers, they bring in friends and
family. This kind of relationship shows up as a hot spot in data
visualization.
Data visualization shows hotspots – like red wine stains on a white tablecloth.
Isn’t
it interesting that 634 people with the same birthday, including the
year, live at these seven addresses? Digging deeper, look, the address
is not a physical location, it is a UPS store with mailboxes. That’s a
crowded P.O. Box!
Look
here, different family members live in different mailboxes with the
same surname. The mailboxes are consecutive numbers, too! That’s so
convenient for Thanksgiving dinner!
This
is what industrial fraud starts to look like and there are plenty of
data from December Secretary of State data files to prove this.
In
fraud analysis, connections count big time. Industrial fraud is by
definition a connected enterprise with a few actors driving lots of
transactions. As we build a likely fraud database, think more of
Ancestry.com rather than those rows and columns.
Ancestry.com
allows you to build a family tree. As you build it, your family
connects to other families. Those families add their long lost
relatives you did not know existed enriching the tree. Connections
count.
That is what an organic election fraud database starts to look like. Here, let’s do one!
Billy
X has 239 people living in his one-bedroom Pennsylvania house and they
all voted. All public information. Billy should be proud of his
diligence.
We
connect Billy via 100 social media posts floating on the internet using
a web crawler. Look, Billy is a steward for the local trade union. He
hates Trump.
Data
visualization indicates Billy corresponds with Sally B. and Mortimer
W. They live in Virginia. They too, hate Trump; so says social media.
Our new friends in Virginia interested in election fraud start adding
their data about Sally and Mort. Here are two addresses for Sally and
they tie to over 600 registered voters. Mort has over 150 living in his
one bedroom flat.
This
is how it looks, folks. This is just the surface of what can be found
from current, available, public records, social media and internet
communication. We can go hundreds of layers deeper and it is delivered
in the blink of an eye.
So
when you freak out about H.R. 1, which is terrible, remember, they may
have Marc Elias in their corner but the Patriots have data, technology,
and adversaries who leave dinosaur tracks.
Critics Try to Oust Archbishop for Reminding Joe of Catholic Teaching
During this year's Holy Week, in the days leading up to Easter Sunday,
Catholics find themselves in a fierce debate as some would try to cancel
an archbishop for correctly stating Church teaching. This is
specifically on abortion as it pertains to President Joe Biden, who is
often showcasing his Catholic faith. Candidate as well as President
Biden's staffers, surrogates, and supporters, are often reminding voters that Biden is a "devout" Catholic, despite how he publicly disagrees with the Church on abortion.
Jen Psaki spins out of Hyde Amdt. & Mexico City question by saying Pres. Biden is a "devout Catholic".
Either Pres. Biden is about to be a very pro-Life President or Jen Psaki (and basically everyone else) needs to stop referring to him as a "devout Catholic"...! pic.twitter.com/Tvy9qVvUnW
On March 14, the Atlantic published an interview
between Emma Green and Archbishop Joseph Naumann, the Chairman of the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, a
position he was elected to by his fellow bishops. Green also referenced
how Naumann has said Biden should not call himself "devout" and should
not present himself for Communion. This is what the critics are all up
in arms over, as referenced in a March 18 open letter sponsored by Faithful America and Faith in Public Life Action.
As
of Thursday evening, the letter has collected 19,619 signatures, also
indicating it is 5,981 signatures away from its goal of 25,600.
The preliminary text reads:
In
the latest sign that some U.S. Catholic bishops are out of step with
Pope Francis, the bishops' pro-life committee chair claims President
Biden should stop calling himself a "devout" Catholic -- and even says
the president should know better than to take Communion.
It's only
a few months into Biden's term, yet Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas
City, KS, is already far more critical of the new president than he
ever was of Donald Trump. In a recent interview, Naumann even praised a
South Carolina priest who bragged about denying Biden Communion on the
campaign trail.
This focus on personal, single-issue, culture-war
attacks might not be a surprise, but it is dangerous. From COVID-19 to
climate change to family separation, Trump's policies were so deadly
that Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, KY, correctly called the
ex-president "anti-life."
It's time for top U.S. bishops to stop
the attacks and join Pope Francis in finding common ground with
President Biden. The bishops' conference must appoint a new pro-life
chair -- a true pastoral leader who will pay equal attention to all life
issues.
The letter in its entirety reads:
To: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) From: [Your Name]
President
Biden regularly demonstrates how important faith is to his personal
life and to his commitment to justice and the common good. Yet instead
of following the pastoral model of Pope Francis and other bishops who
are building bridges with only the second Catholic president in U.S.
history, the chairman of the U.S. bishops' pro-life committee has
questioned Biden's faith and even praised a priest who once denied Biden
Communion.
As fellow Catholics, Christians, and other concerned
people of faith, we urge conference leaders to remove Archbishop Joseph
Naumann as chair of the pro-life committee. We encourage you to select a
new leader who will refrain from attacking the president's personal
faith, speak consistently about all life issues, work through sincere
differences with respect, and join Pope Francis in seeking common ground
with the administration.
While Archbishop Naumann accuses
President Biden of "usurping the role of the bishops and confusing
people," nobody is confused about the church's position on abortion. The
real confusion comes when bishops like Joseph Naumann weaponize the
Sacraments, malign the faith of sincere Catholics, and refuse to give
equal attention to other pro-life issues. Pope Francis reminds us that
"the lives of the poor" and "those already born" are "equally sacred."
In
questioning President Biden's faith and even claiming he should not
receive Communion, Archbishop Naumann is choosing the culture wars over
pastoral leadership.
That the letter claims
"Archbishop Naumann is choosing the culture wars," undermines how the
Church's teaching on abortion is just that, the Church's teaching on abortion.
Because Naumann was elected as Chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life
Activities, it is especially relevant that he would speak the Truth on
the abortion issue.
Every child who a woman expects in her womb is a gift that changes a family’s history: the life of fathers and mothers, grandparents and of brothers and sisters. That child needs to be welcomed, loved and nurtured. Always! #WorldDownSyndromeDay
Perhaps most concerning of all, though, is that the letter claims
that "nobody is confused about the church's position on abortion." That is the entire point of concern here, that people would be.
In
that interview with Green, Archbishop Naumann expands upon such points.
"I spoke with the archbishop about why he sees Biden’s position on
abortion as a problem, and what the bishops will do next," Green wrote.
Here is the beginning of the interview:
Emma Green: The
second-ever Catholic president of the United States—a man who attends
weekly Mass and quotes Augustine and carries a rosary—also supports the
expansion of abortion rights. Do you think this presents a challenge to
the witness of the Church?
Archbishop Joseph Naumann: Yes.
To have a president who is an engaged Catholic, but who acts in
contradiction to some of our most fundamental moral teachings—we haven’t
really faced that kind of challenge before.
Green: So
what is the exact challenge? Do you think the teachings of the Catholic
Church will be misinterpreted or misunderstood by people who see
President Biden talk about his faith?
Naumann: One of the issues is the extent to which he supports legalized abortion, even to the point of wanting all Americans to fund abortion.
But the bigger issue, for us, is the one you alluded to, which is that
he does these things, and then in reply to questions about them, he or his press secretary says,
“Biden’s a devout Catholic.” Whether he intends it or not, he’s
basically saying to people, “You can be a good Catholic and do similar
things.”
Green: You have said
that the president should not offer himself up to receive Communion.
Why is Communion the place in Catholic life where this conflict between
President Biden’s Catholic identity and his support for abortion should
be adjudicated?
Naumann: If a non-Catholic
Christian wants to enter into full communion with the Church, they’re
asked to make a profession where they say, “I believe and profess all
that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be
revealed by God.” Each time we receive the Eucharist, we’re also saying
that profession. That’s why it becomes a point of confusion. Obviously,
the president doesn’t believe what we believe about the sacredness of
human life, or he wouldn’t be taking the actions that he is. And yet, he
continues to receive the Eucharist. We can’t judge his heart. But we
consider the action itself a grave moral evil.
The
issue of whether or not to deny Communion to President Biden appears at
the closing of the interview as well, with added emphasis:
Green: I
know you’ve been part of the USCCB working group on the bishops’
relationship with the Biden administration. Was there any final
conclusion about what priests should do if and when Biden presents
himself to receive the Eucharist?
Naumann: No. That wasn’t our job or our mission.
Green: Got it. And do you expect there to be further writings along those lines?
Naumann: Each bishop is responsible to teach the faith in his diocese. So I think each bishop will do that, to the best of his ability.
They will continue to teach and exercise their pastoral ministry in
trying to form their people in the truth of the Catholic faith.
The
issue of Communion comes up throughout the interview, because it is so
crucial to properly understand as much as possible with this holy
sacrament. The archbishop explains the role of bishops in reaching
particular members of their flock:
Green: When
Kathleen Sebelius, who is Catholic, was the governor of Kansas, you
asked her not to receive Communion. Is this something you have done with
other public officials?
Naumann: I had several
conversations with her over a couple-year period about this issue,
wanting to make sure she understood its gravity. At some point, I said,
“Governor, we have to bring some closure to this.” I said, “I don’t
really want to publicly embarrass you, but I ask that you don’t do this,
because it’s what we would call ‘scandal in the Church,’ which means
she could lead others into error by her actions.” Obviously Governor
Sebelius wasn’t happy with that. Some months later, one of our priests
called me and said she had been at a Mass and had come to Communion. So I
chose to make it public that I had made that request to her. I’ve
talked to other legislators about this issue. We haven’t taken the same
actions at this time with others.
President Biden is not my
parishioner. Governor Sebelius was. But obviously the president impacts
us all. I want to protect my people from being misled. His actions,
right now, do mislead. They do create confusion for people in terms of
what the Church believes and teaches.
Referring back
to Pope Francis and the accusations that Naumann is not and needs to
"join Pope Francis in seeking common ground with the administration,"
Naumann does just that when asked by Green:
Green: Do
you think President Biden presents opportunities for the Church on
other issues that matter for the family? For example: immigration and
family separations at the border, which he has said he opposes.
Naumann: Yes.
One of the things Biden has done that I feel is very positive is to
increase the number of refugees that our country will welcome. Also, his
aspirations to bring legalization to those who weren’t born in this
country but were brought here as children. Hopefully, his Catholic
formation has helped him to have compassion for the poor and compassion
for those fleeing violence and economic poverty. So yes, I think those
are positive things that the president can do and will do, for the good
of some of the people that are on the margins.
Bennett references the issue at hand facing Naumann, in writing:
Some church leaders
are concerned that Biden may sow confusion over what it means to be
devout. Conservative Catholics say Biden’s prominence legitimizes what
is pejoratively referred to by some as “cafeteria Catholicism”—the idea
that Catholics can choose which church teachings they adhere to. “We
must pray and fast that the President will cease attempting to confuse
people about Catholic teaching by trampling on the sanctity of human
life while presenting himself as a devout Catholic,” said Kansas City
Archbishop Naumann. “The presidency does not empower him to define
Catholic doctrine and moral teaching.”
Other Catholics are coming to the Archbishop Naumann's defense. CatholicVote launched its own letter
on March 25. One of the signatories, Kristan Hawkins, President,
Students for Life of America and SFLAction, spoke to Townhall about the
letter she signed. "The Catholic Church has always been opposed to the
ending of preborn, innocent life, and I stand with those in my church
working to protect the least of these because this is a fundamental
issue," she told Townhall.
The text of the letter reads, with original emphasis:
Your Excellency,
We
write to assure you of our deep gratitude for your ministry as a
priest, a bishop, and an archbishop. With recent attacks on your good
name and, by implication, your many years of service to Our Lord and His
Church, we write today to thank you for speaking for the defenseless
and to assure you of our prayers.
We are aware that an
organization calling itself “Faithful America,” has demanded that you be
removed from your role as Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities – despite being elected to
this position by the majority of your brother bishops in the United
States.
Ostensibly, the hard-left group who circulated this
petition claims their call for your removal is based on what they
erroneously believe to be an incompatibility with the priorities of our
Holy Father. The letter’s author seems completely unaware that Pope
Francis himself boldly compared having an abortion to “hiring a hitman.”
The Holy Father said, “Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem?
It is not right to kill a human being, regardless of how small it is,
to solve a problem!” The letter likewise falsely accuses you of failing
to “seek common ground” with a President who, on the one hand, talks
about the importance of his Catholic faith, and with his other hand,
personally signed Executive Orders that will directly lead to the deaths
of thousands of unborn children.
Despite what the letter says,
we know that you have dedicated your entire priesthood and episcopal
ministry to consistently speaking for those with no voice. Although your
own life was changed forever when your father was violently murdered,
you nonetheless have consistently spoken out against the use of the
death penalty. Further, at your request, your first decade as a priest
was spent ministering in underserved communities of color in St. Louis.
When
you were then asked to lead the pro-life office at the Archdiocese of
St. Louis, you did not hesitate in your willingness to serve the Lord’s
people in a new way. Your name became well-known in the pro-life
movement as you helped to establish a strong Project Rachel ministry
nationwide, assisting women and men adversely affected by an abortion
experience. You are an annual presence at the March for Life in
Washington each January. You have given countless hours of advice,
support, and direction to pregnancy resource centers, striving to offer
women humane and compassionate alternatives to abortion.
You have
regularly visited nursing homes and facilities for the elderly, prisons,
and social service agencies that care for the marginalized. Even a
brief examination of your life would have made all of this evident, yet
the writers of the letter seemed more interested in character
assassination than in an authentic “commitment to justice.”
We, the undersigned Catholics, are proud to stand with you!
We
understand that your admonition of President Joe Biden, whose campaign
was both funded and endorsed by Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest
abortion provider, did not make you popular in some quarters. In
publicly noting that the President’s unequivocal advocacy for abortion
on demand makes him ineligible to receive Holy Communion, you have
followed St. Paul’s directive to Timothy: “Proclaim the word; be
persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince,
reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching. For the time
will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine.” (2 Tim 4:2-3)
We
thank you for your courage in transmitting “sound doctrine” and for
your commitment to defending the most vulnerable among us.
Please be assured of our prayers; please keep us in your own prayers.
As of Thursday evening, the letter has 43,886 signatures, in addition to the over 40 signatories.
Last week, the New York Times obtained a leaked copy of video footage purporting to show the exact moment Officer Sicknick was allegedly bear sprayed by MAGA protesters.
New videos obtained by The New York Times show publicly for the first time how the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died after facing off with rioters on Jan. 6 was attacked with chemical spray.
The officer, Brian D. Sicknick, who had been guarding the west side of the Capitol, collapsed later that day and died the next night. Little had been known about what happened to Officer Sicknick during the assault, and the previously unpublished videos provide new details about when, where and how he was attacked, as well as about the events leading up to the encounter.
Two rioters, Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios, were arrested on March 14 and charged with assaulting Officer Sicknick and two other officers with chemical spray. The investigation is continuing, and federal prosecutors haven’t ruled out pursuing murder charges. [New York Times]
If you haven’t seen the videos yet, there’s a good reason why. They’re surprisingly hard to find, unless you’re a paying Times subscriber. Also, given how underwhelming and confusing the actual evidence is, the fact that the clips didn’t exactly go viral is itself an indictment of the Justice Department’s case against Khater and Tanios.
Fortunately, a helpful anon managed to upload the key New York Times clip on YouTube. These are the main 36 seconds around which the entire Sicknick trial will revolve.
The Department of Justice is telling the public that this grainy 360p video is sufficient to justify 60 years in Federal prison for two young men, one of whom is not even accused of using the spray canister at all.
In a previous Revolver exclusive, we detailed the shocking apparent weaknesses of the FBI and DOJ’s claims asserted against George Tanios and Julian Khater, the two defendants charged with assaulting Officer Sicknick.
First, we laid out the jaw-dropping disproportionality of the charges:
Tanios is facing 60 years in prison, which is considerably more time than for typical first degree murder, despite the fact that Tanios not only did not spray Sicknick (it was Khater who allegedly did so), but the criminal complaint does not allege he even entered the U.S. Capitol building that day. At 39 years of age, if Tanios is found guilty on all counts with no leniency at sentencing, he will leave prison at 99 years old. [Revolver]
Then, we noted the astonishing fact that the criminal complaint, while purporting to show still frames from “pinpointed” footage of the assault, had no money shot in which Sicknick was actually struck:
The crux of the prosecution’s case is that they discovered surveillance video footage, plus corroborating officer body cam footage, showing Khater spraying Sicknick and two other officers with chemical spray. But neither the surveillance video nor the body cam footage has been made publicly unavailable.
While the 11-page criminal complaint and the 65-page FBI Special Agent affidavit both refer to the same six screenshots purporting to be video frames from the surveillance and body cam footage, none of the screenshots show the “money shot” where Khater supposedly sprays the officers. [Revolver]
Our conclusion was that the evidence in these videos must be so weak that unlike in the so-called Whitmer Kidnapping Plot, where Federal prosecutors raced to show the public whiz-bang footage of The Bad Guys, we may never see the whole tape of what happened here. Alternatively, given the intense political pressure on the FBI and DOJ – and their propensity to bend to such pressure – one could easily envision their instinct to maliciously overplay a poor hand in order to preserve The Narrative.
Like Wiley Coyote running over a cliff and not yet looking down to realize how unmoored his sprint has become from reality, cartoonish speculation continues to support The Narrative in place of actual evidence or a legal allegation from the Justice Department. [Revolver]
To put it in meme:
Big Flop Video Creates Big Problems for Prosecutors
The revelation of the New York Times Sicknick video present three major issues for the FBI and DOJ.
First, from the moment Khater raises a spray canister onward, there is not a single moment in which Khater appears in the same video frame as Officer Sicknick. The below image shows the last time the two appear together in frame.
This confirms Khater to be a considerable distance away from Sicknick during the alleged assault. It also leaves open the possibility that it was not Khater’s spray that made contact with Sicknick, but rather than someone else’s closer to Sicknick in the crowd.
Second, we are told spray is coming out of Khater’s cannister, but it’s not actually shown in this video. The New York Times primes its audience by overlaying a large white box reading “Spray Stream” on the video.
NYT further states:
A thin stream of liquid is visible shooting from a canister in Mr. Khater’s hand. It is unclear in the video what Mr. Khater is firing, and prosecutors have alleged that Mr. Tanios brought two smaller canisters of pepper spray to the Capitol in addition to two cans of Frontiersman bear spray. [NYT]
But does this really show a “a thin stream of visible liquid” actually hitting Sicknick? From a distance, you can’t really tell if a spray has been fired, so in the midst of the confusion and uncertainty, most readers simply defer to the New York Times. Let’s zoom in closer with Photoshop.
What appears from a distance to be a white-ish mist from the canister actually appears upon closer inspection to be simply a continuation of the white-tipped January treeline in the background.
When we set the still frame to max resolution in Photoshop, it becomes apparent that the supposed “bear spray stream” is utterly invisible.
A tonal heat map of the image in Photoshop confirms that there is no “thin stream of liquid” visible at all. The boxed area is entirely indistinguishable from background noise.
There appears to be nothing there.
This is no small point. Some sort of spray should be visible. Recall, for instance, the salience of the spray in the infamous “UC Davis Pepper Spray” incident.
What about bear spray?
It’s virtually impossible to find a “bear spray” incident where the visible spray is not hugely prominent. It’s certainly never wholly invisible over several yards. Full spray mace canisters, like the one allegedly used by Khater, produce fantastically voluminous clouds.
Per the New York Times, we now know the brand of the bear spray that Tanios possessed. Mind you, Tanios is now facing six decades in prison for bringing this spray to the Capitol.
On Monday, federal prosecutors alleged in court that Mr. Khater and Mr. Tanios were carrying Frontiersman bear spray… Images of the bear spray sold by Sabre appear to be similar to the canister seen in Mr. Khater’s hand at one point in the video. [NYT]
The spray’s plume is unmistakable and huge in Frontiersman’s promotional videos.
Heat map gradients in Photoshop reveal the obvious contours of the precise shape of the bear spray canister’s plume when it is actually being deployed.
It’s patently evident from the exact moment that the New York Times froze the video that someone else was actually confirmed to be spraying mace around Sicknick in the moments shortly before Sicknick reacts by rubbing his eyes.
In the below Photoshop heat map, this other bear spray stream near Sicknick is apparent, and it’s coming from the opposite direction of Khater.
So why did the New York Times place a priming bar with “Spray Stream” over that box, when there is no spray inside the box they actually circled? Are we back in Looney Tunes land?
Third, and perhaps indeed most damning, it appears that FBI Special Agent Riley Palmertree may have made a serious and material error in his 65-page affidavit in support of the DOJ’s charges.
The DOJ’s criminal complaint provided two conflicting accounts for Khater’s exact location at the moment when Officer Sicknick reacted to spray in his eyes, according to a previous Revolver investigation. Evidently, Officer Chapman’s bodycam footage shows Khater “five to eight feet away” from the officers. But FBI Special Agent Palmertree testifies in his affidavit that Khater is closer, “within a few feet” during the actual spray incident.
The New York Times footage reveals an incredible coincidence. Another man, the same height as Khater, is wearing a red-white-and-blue Trump Beanie identical to Khater’s. Let’s call this character “Trump Beanie Man #2.”
Khater is standing what appears to be perhaps five to eight feet away from Sicknick (more like eight feet), while Trump Beanie Man #2 is standing much closer, just a few feet away. FBI Special Agent Palmertree appears to have mistaken Khater for Trump Beanie Man #2 in his testimony.
To wit, at 0:14, Khater (far left) is standing much farther away from Sicknick (off screen to the right) than Trump Beanie Man #2 (center):
At 0:17, Khater’s invisible bear spray allegedly goes over the head of Trump Beanie Man #2 towards Sicknick:
And then finally, at 0:20, we see Sicknick rubbing his eyes. But it’s not Khater standing “within a few feet of him;” it’s Trump Beanie Man #2.
The NYT video implies Khater cannot be “within a few feet” of Sicknick because he was at least several feet behind Trump Beanie Man #2.
Did the testifying FBI Special Agent screw this one up on his affidavit? Did he mistake the two men? Perhaps there is a benign explanation. But it would be little surprise if this is yet another convenient FBI mistake to deceptively inflate a highly dubious case, corrupt the public record, and disadvantage the defendants in the court of public opinion.
Shock and Awe
Perhaps there is another variable at play besides justice. To students of history who have witnessed the public record be corrupted by the national security state before, this all feels too familiar.
Last week, Federal prosecutor Michael Sherwin, who is leading the DOJ’s dragnet of 1/6 arrests, took to CBS’s 60 Minutes with a message: these prosecutions have been a successful “shock and awe” mission to scare MAGA protesters witless. See the below clip from 3:41-3:58.
He says:
I wanted to ensure, and our office wanted to ensure, that there was shock and awe. That we could charge as many people as possible before [January] 20th. And it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C., because they were like, ‘If we go there, we’re going to get charged.’
This is U.S. Attorney Sherwin’s face as he says “shock.”
And this is Sherwin’s gleeful face as he emphasizes how “afraid” protesters are of him.
He’s not giddy that criminals are afraid to break the law. He’s giddy that citizens are afraid to come to their nation’s capital. As pointed out by Big League Politics, Sherwin’s “Shock and Awe” campaign was designed to deter any kind of pro-Trump organized rally in D.C. whatsoever.
Federal prosecutor Michael Sherwin appeared on CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Sunday where he admitted that he charged as many people as quickly as possible regardless of the evidence to put a chilling effect on the 1st Amendment rights of Trump supporters. [Big League Politics]
This is the face of a smug, malicious prosecutor, absolutely over the moon that he has successfully intimidated as many American citizens as possible into not exercising their right to peaceably assemble.
It’s fitting that Sherwin name-dropped “Shock and Awe.” Shock and Awe was, of course, the famous name of the military and media propaganda campaign associated with the Pentagon’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
It was, in fact, then-candidate Trump’s absolute torching of Jeb Bush during the 2016 debates over the failed invasion of Iraq that initially put his Make America Great Again movement so squarely in the crosshairs of the neoconservative wing of The Blob. Trump’s whirlwind performance that night may have never been forgiven.
Indeed, the reorientation of the entire U.S. national security state around the invasion of Iraq was based on a lie of absolutely incredible proportions: namely, the hoax that Iraq’s Evil Regime (TM) had “weapons of mass destruction.” The original Shock and Awe Big Lie was heralded with all the same fanfare and Congressional testimonies we see today. The Department of Homeland Security has of course used 2021’s Big Lie of “lethal” riots to justify the Department of Homeland Security’s conversion into a domestic social media spy agency.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security, which was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to protect the country from international terrorism, is moving toward a sweeping set of policy changes to detect and stop what intelligence officials say is now a top threat: domestic violent extremism.
Two senior Biden administration officials said DHS, whose intelligence division did not publish a warning of potential violence before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is seeking to improve its ability to collect and analyze data about domestic terrorism — including the sorts of public social media posts that threatened an attack on the U.S. Capitol but were not deemed “actionable” by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
DHS plans to expand its relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence, one of the senior officials said, as well as to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects about Americans, including travel and commercial data through Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and other DHS components. [NBC News]
For your edification, here is a flashback to Colin Powell’s historically deceptive presentation to the UN regarding “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
From the transcript:
I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling.
What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior… Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction. [Guardian]
But “Shock and Awe” also has a more general meaning.
Term for a military strategy based on achieving rapid dominance over an adversary by the initial imposition of overwhelming force and firepower. [Oxford Reference]
A prosecutorial “Shock and Awe” blitz is the exact opposite of a fair trial. When used by a U.S. Attorney, it constitutes a direct assault on the very concept of Lady Liberty as blind, measured and dispassionate. And it is an unrepentant middle-finger aimed at every American dissident who questions The Regime.
Apparently, excessive force completely out of step with all principles of proportionality is the new banner brand of the U.S. Justice Department.
And how do they get the American people to go along with it?
Then, as now, we were told to not believe our lying eyes. Ignore what is plain as day six inches in front of your face, citizen, and listen to “experts” whose “years and years of experience poring over light tables” allowed them to see Weapons of Mass Destruction, whereas you, pleb, lack the necessary Intelligence Goggles. Witness 14:52-15:22 of Colin Powell’s “Shock and Awe” presentation:
That transcript:
We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities.
Let me say a word about satellite images before I show a couple. The photos that I am about to show you are sometimes hard for the average person to interpret, hard for me. The painstaking work of photo analysis takes experts with years and years of experience, poring for hours and hours over light tables. But as I show you these images, I will try to capture and explain what they mean, what they indicate to our imagery specialists. [Guardian]
Sound familiar?
Shock and Awe was not just made for Baghdad, citizen. Today, their sights are set on you.
