Novavax Developing Vaccine Against Variant That Appeared 72 Hours Ago – Will Be Ready in Two Weeks

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse

Vaccine Against Variant That Appeared 72 Hours Ago – Will Be Ready in Two Weeks, Already in Emergency Use Trials in Indonesia and Phillipines

Wow, 72 hours ago no one even heard the name Omicron variant.  Now, in less than three days, a variant has been identified, global travel has been halted, states of emergency have been declared, and now we see a pharmaceutical company announcing the variant specific vaccine trial that will begin in the U.S. in a few weeks.  This government relationship with Big Pharma is certainly generating some fast action, eh?

If a person was cynically inclined; while knowing governments’ need to control inflation yet cannot raise interest rates or stop purchasing debt because current legislative spending continues – a remarkable control option would be to halt demand; and a person might think this was suspicious, or something.

Nov 26 (Reuters) – Novavax Inc said on Friday it had started working on a version of its COVID-19 vaccine to target the variant detected in South Africa and would have the shot ready for testing and manufacturing in the next few weeks.

The company’s COVID-19 shot contains an actual version of the virus’ spike protein that cannot cause disease but can trigger the immune system. The vaccine developer said it had started developing a spike protein specifically based on the known genetic sequence of the variant, B.1.1.529.

Novavax’s vaccine received its first emergency use approval earlier this month in Indonesia followed by the Philippines. Other vaccine developers, including Germany’s BioNTech SE and Johnson & Johnson, have said they are testing the effectiveness of their shots against the new variant, which is named Omicron by the World Health Organization (read more)

Slow Joe Biden: The Half-Fast Manchurian Candidate

If this is what “Build Back Better” really looks like, 2022 can’t come soon enough.

by Mark Sessantuno for American Greatness

“Slow Joe” Biden—more accurately and precisely described as “Half-Fast” Biden—had his much-hyped “virtual summit” with his “old friend” Chinese Dada-President-for-Life Xi Jinping.

A “virtual summit,” by the way, is progressive-speak for a Zoom call with translators, aides, and the White House hallucinogenic script suppository producer readying the next briefing for Jen “Circle Back” Psaki, Biden’s shameless redheaded flak who only lies when she moves her lips. Or just moves.

At any kind of summit, what could Joe Biden possibly do or say that would make Xi rock back on his heels? Well, nothing . . . except offering a gauge of just how far China can go without U.S. intervention. Not since Richard Condon’s Manchurian Candidate has an American adversary—real or fictional—had such an advantage.

And don’t think that for second that Xi would not immediately have called his other “old friend,” Russia’s Retro-Czar-for-Life Vladimir Putin, to compare notes on their mutual adversary, Joe Biden’s United States. The conversation might have gone something like this:

“Vlad! Z-Man here. Wasssssssssup?”

“Z! Wasssssssup, Bubba? Caught your act with Slow Joe on TV. Too cool. How about makin’ a bunch of noise in Taiwan for me? I need to buy some time for my Little Green Men to blob another chunk of Ukraine . . . and then stop. Biden is just like that other toad, Obama, when I took Crimea. All mouth. No guts. No shame. A wimp.” 

“Vlad, he’s more of a poster boy for Lewy Body. Say the word, Bro, and I can make him fill his diapers faster than the Pope did.”

“Totally! Can you see that moron, trying to bluster NATO into doing something, while changing his Depends?”

“Party on, Vlad! I’ll keep funneling money into America to slowly make them implode. Just stick with the playbook and everything will be fine.”

(According to Unrestricted Warfare: “Can funds be set up to exert greater influence on another country’s government and legislature through lobbying? And could buying or gaining control of stocks be used to turn another country’s newspapers and television stations into the tools of media warfare?”)

“So are you gonna invade Taiwan?” 

“Nah. Not now. Don’t want to piss off the Japanese. They’re funny that way.”

“Yeah. Port Arthur. Right. They kicked the crap out of us.”

“Port Arthur? Are you for real? You ever heard of the Rape of Nanking? Dude!”

“Good Point. So whattaya gonna do?”

“Prestidigitation. Mesmerize my old friend, Half-Fast Joe. You know, watch the birdie in Taiwan, while we continue to manipulate his currency, ‘influence’ politicians, and cause the Americans to fall into chaos. Then I’ll take Taiwan.”

“But what if Joe is too stupid to hit the bait?” 

“Well, did I tell you I have a copy of Hunter’s hard drive? And speaking of hard drives, I have Fang Fang’s cellphone.”

Meantime, Biden’s approval at home has slipped to 36 percent. If this is what “Build Back Better” really looks like, 2022 can’t come soon enough. 

X22, Red Pill news, and more-Nov 26

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

Countering China’s Grand Strategy

Does it matter if China supplants the United States? 

Only if we desire a more or less free international order.

by Mackubin Owens for American Greatness

It has been clear for some time that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) seeks to displace the United States not only as a regional but also as a global hegemonic power. Indeed, we are now in the midst of a new “cold war,” not unlike its predecessor that pitted the United States against the Soviet Union. In the service of its goals, Beijing has pursued a coherent grand strategy. Although China seems to be effectively executing its grand strategy, its success is not foreordained. But countering it must be the strategic priority of the United States.

“Strategy” describes the employment of limited means to achieve the goals of national policy. In general, strategy provides a conceptual link between national ends and scarce resources, both the transformation of those resources into means during peacetime and the application of those means during war.

In the words of Edward Mead Earle:

strategy is the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation—or a coalition of nations—including its armed forces, to the end that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and secured against enemies, actual, potential, or merely presumed. The highest type of strategy—sometimes called grand strategy—is that which so integrates the policies and armaments of the nation that resort to war is either rendered unnecessary or is undertaken with the maximum chance of victory. (emphasis added)

Properly understood, grand strategy integrates all the instruments of national power—military, economic, political, technological, and psychological—in a concerted effort to achieve the goal of a state in the international system.

China’s Grand Strategy

If China seeks to become the global hegemonic power, it must first secure its geographic heartland. It is clear that Chinese strategists have read their Mackinder and Mahan. Accordingly, China has worked assiduously to undermine the U.S.-led alliance system along the Asian rimland and invested heavily in naval, missile, and other military capabilities. Recent decades have seen the PRC pursue a massive military buildup, including an ambitious maritime modernization program. Today, the size of its navy rivals that of the U.S. Navy. Although still qualitatively inferior to its American counterpart, the PRC Navy boasts more hulls, and its shipyards are churning out modern ships at breakneck rates that far outstrip U.S. naval output. 

Aided by the “tyranny of distance,” it seeks to deny the United States unfettered access to the Western Pacific by means of an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy featuring the deployment of a layered cruise and ballistic missile system that threatens the United States and allied forces operating in the Western Pacific. The ultimate goal of the PRC is to deny the ability of the United States to operate west of the “second island chain,” the series of islands running from Japan’s Bonin and Volcano Islands, through the Marianas and western Caroline Islands to western New Guinea and the eastern maritime boundary of the Philippine Sea.

In particular, Beijing—defying international norms—has attempted to establish sovereignty over the South China Sea and has continued to threaten the independence of Taiwan. In addition to embarking on a major buildup of its naval forces, Beijing also has carried out numerous maritime provocations against its neighbors as well as the United States, in the South China Sea, which Robert Kaplan has called “Asia’s cauldron,” a “nervous region, crowded with warships and commercial vessels . . .” Such a region is particularly vulnerable to miscalculation or miscommunication.

In seeking to dominate this vitally important maritime region, Beijing has quashed the competing claims of smaller and weaker powers: Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, Malaysia, and Singapore. Starting with its seizure of Scarborough Shoal in 2012, China has illegally claimed features in the South China Sea, building and militarizing numerous artificial islands. In doing so, China undermined international law and norms.

To supplement its A2/AD strategy in the Western Pacific, Beijing has employed maritime “gray zone” operations: provocative actions short of war, which seek to assert and expand Chinese control over a large area of disputed and artificial islands and reefs in the South China Sea. The main instrument for executing its gray zone operations is the PRC’s irregular “maritime militia,” comprising numerous ostensibly civilian vessels, which operate from Chinese-held islands in the South China Sea, harassing the vessels of countries with rival territorial claims. They also interfere with freedom of navigation (FON), which undermines U.S. security commitments in the region. Although occurring below the threshold of direct military confrontation, such operations employ coercive elements that undermine existing rules and norms.

Economically, China pursues a grand strategy of predatory capitalism. The PRC refuses to adhere to the norms of liberal internationalism by employing massive government support for Chinese firms and ignoring environmental and labor standards, thereby upending global markets. Accordingly, it has pulled one key American industry and supply chain after another into its orbit, eliminating millions of U.S. jobs along the way.

Beijing also has employed its “belt and road initiative” (BRI) to advance its geopolitical situation. For instance, China has invested in lucrative railway and pipeline projects in Malaysia and has attempted to establish a naval base in Cambodia. But for those countries that have been ensnared in Beijing’s infrastructure ambitions, the BRI—a neo-colonial approach focused on resource extraction and debt as a means of control—has proven to be a debt trap.

Technologically, China seeks to exploit the “fourth industrial revolution,” based on artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and the leveraging of 5G networks. Psychologically, China has sought to exploit divisions in American society. Beijing may very well have engaged in biological warfare by unleashing—intentionally or not—the Wuhan virus that has ravaged the economies of the liberal states.

Countering China’s Grand Strategy

Two factors have contributed to China’s success in implementing its grand strategy. The first has been the conceit that the fall of the Soviet Union heralded the triumph of a liberal world order of free trade and interdependence. Seduced by this conceit, the United States and other liberal countries opened their markets to China, believing that Beijing would happily accept the tenets of a liberal economic order and “play by the rules” of that order. But despite the fatuous optimism of market fundamentalists, China remains unwaveringly committed to authoritarianism and to exploiting the system to improve its position at the expense of liberal states.

The second has been the post 9/11 wars that have diverted attention and resources away from China’s rise. Indeed, for a period, U.S. policy experts contended that the threat of great-power conflict was a thing of the past. The Trump Administration belatedly corrected this focus by issuing a U.S. National Strategy document that refocused attention and resources on China and the Indo-Pacific. There is some question as to whether the Biden Administration has continued to give China the strategic attention it deserves.

A successful U.S. grand strategy must pit U.S. strengths against China’s weaknesses, which include reliance on imports for foodstuffs and oil/gas, and demographics. Although China possesses vast coal reserves, it lacks oil and natural gas. In addition, China’s population is aging and thanks to the “one child per family” policy from the Mao era, there is a serious imbalance between the sexes, with men outnumbering women by a substantial margin.

A key to countering China’s grand strategy is to revitalize the U.S.-led Asia-Pacific alliance system that includes not only Japan, Australia, and the Republic of Korea but also those countries that have claims to the South China Sea. Since China’s regional tactics are most effective when it can take advantage of the highly asymmetrical power differential between Beijing and each of its neighbors, the United States can effectively counter this strategy by creating and strengthening a network of capable allies that are unified in their opposition to the PRC’s aggression. In other words, Washington should seek to make the competition multilateral wherever possible.

The United States needs to make its commitment to the defense of Taiwan clear. Deterrence works only if the power to be deterred takes the commitment seriously. The problem with ambiguity is that it can lead to miscalculation. Of course, effective deterrence requires prudence. The United States must recognize the relative “value of the objective” and avoid provocation. But it must also understand that Beijing only responds to power.

An overlooked—but critical—Chinese weakness is that, like France during its centuries-long struggle with Britain, China has a continental frontier that can be exploited strategically. France had the power and resources to challenge Britain at sea, but by means of adroit diplomacy and finance, Great Britain was able to divert France’s attention away from the maritime realm by creating evolving continental coalitions funded by British money and supported by limited military resources. The foremost examples of British strategy against France are the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763).

China faces unrest on its western frontier as well as a hostile India to the south. A little-appreciated diplomatic triumph of the Bush Administration was increased cooperation with India that can be leveraged against Beijing. If China is strong in the Western Pacific, it is weak in the Indian Ocean. This weakness can be leveraged to the advantage of the United States and its allies.

Although the United States should continue to counter the Chinese A2/AD strategy in the Western Pacific, it should also make it clear to China that the United States and its allies will respond to its aggression by threatening, on the one hand, its ability to operate beyond the first island chain and, on the other, the Indian Ocean. If the PRC seeks to deny access to the Western Pacific, the United States and its allies can return the favor by making it clear to the PRC that in the event of a conflict, the United States is capable of denying China’s access to the wider Pacific and the Indian Ocean, threatening the vital sea-lanes that run through the Strait of Malacca and other maritime choke points. This “distant blockade” has the potential to deny Beijing access to the Middle Eastern oil upon which it desperately depends

In the technological arena, the United States should make maintaining an edge over China in the development of AI and 5G a priority. The United States cannot cede leadership in the fourth industrial revolution to China. In military terms, the Pentagon must prioritize developing technologies and systems that will be pivotal to U.S. and allied military supremacy in the Western Pacific. These include hypersonic weapons, stealth bombers, ground-mobile missile delivery systems, long-range anti-ship missiles, improved ballistic missile defenses and underwater unmanned vehicles. These systems will depend on cutting-edge, artificial intelligence-enabled software and innovative warfighting doctrines.

In economic terms, the United States can use financial leverage to counter Beijing’s BRI by stressing that it seeks independent and prosperous partners while China seeks dependent and indebted vassals for exploitation. Washington can thereby undercut Beijing’s ability to utilize debt to coerce, control, or intimidate other countries in the region.

The threat that China poses illustrates that liberal institutions are not sufficient to maintain a liberal international order. As the late Donald Kagan observed, a peaceful, prosperous international system requires “the possession by those states who wish to preserve peace of the preponderant power and of the will to accept the burdens of and responsibilities required to achieve that power.”

Does it matter if China supplants the United States? Only if we desire a more or less liberal international order. In the words of Samuel Huntington:

A world without U.S. primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country in shaping global affairs. The sustained international primacy of the United States is central to the welfare and security of Americans and to the future of freedom, democracy, open economies, and international order in the world.

U.S. Needs Data on Variant Before Limiting Any Flights, Fauci Says / UPDATE: Biden ignores the science

 

More scientific data is needed about the new coronavirus variant that’s roiling global markets before the U.S. can determine whether to halt flights from southern African countries, Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser said Friday. 

“Obviously as soon as we find out more information, we’ll make a decision as quickly as we possibly can,” Fauci said in an interview with CNN. “You always put these things on the table, but you don’t want to say you’re going to do it until you have some scientific reason to do it.”

There’s no evidence the new variant is present in the U.S., he said.

Fears stemming from the new variant, first identified in South Africa, fueled a post-Thanksgiving selloff that spread across global markets as both the U.K. and the European Union moved to halt air travel from southern Africa.   

he new variant “has some mutations that are raising some concern, particularly with regard to possibly transmissibility increase and possibly evasion of immune response,” Fauci said. 

U.S. scientists are set to meet later Friday with their South African counterparts to discuss the matter and “really get the facts,” about what’s going on, Fauci said. Testing the new variant to determine if the spike protein mutations make it more able to evade the immune response from vaccines or infection will be key, Fauci said. 

“Once you test it, you’ll know for sure whether or not it does or does not evade the antibodies that we make, for example, against the virus through a vaccine or following convalescence.”  

Any move by the U.S. to impose stricter travel restrictions would mark a shift from the pattern in recent weeks of easing limits on travel to the U.S., which re-opened its doors to vaccinated international travelers earlier this month. 

The emergence of the mutation has prompted a rapid response by governments, who don’t want to either jeopardize progress made in the fight against the pandemic or make an already bad situation worse. Some countries in Europe are already back in lockdown due to a spike in cases.  

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-26/u-s-needs-data-on-variant-before-limiting-flights-fauci-says  

Your Default Assumption Should Be That Everything Corporate Media Says Is A Lie

The media’s deluge of lies about the Rittenhouse case is a disturbing reminder that the corporate press lies about everything all the time.

by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

As far as corporate media are concerned, the massacre in Waukesha, Wis., on Sunday was a “Christmas parade crash.”

That’s how the attack that killed six people and injured more than 60 others is being described by ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Newsweek and others. Not an intentional attack, not a massacre allegedly committed by a violent career criminal already facing multiple felony charges, but merely a crash. The New York Times is calling it a “tragedy.”

Not to be outdone by major news outlets, The Daily Beast rushed to remind its readers that “there are no indications of any additional motive for the Waukesha killings, or any reasons to label it domestic terrorism. That didn’t stop these right-wing trolls.”

Oh no we wouldn’t want to assign ideological motives to a case too soon. But these damn right-wing trolls sure will! No mention from the Beast, of course, of the worst possible example of that in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, which every major news organization gladly went along with.

Here’s the thing. The next time you read an article in the New York Times or the Atlantic, watch a bit of breaking news on MSNBC or a panel on CNN, or hear a report on NPR, your default assumption should be that what you are reading, watching, or hearing is not true. Either it is an outright falsehood, a distortion of the facts, or not the whole story. That should be your posture toward literally every piece of news you consume from corporate media from now on.

There is ample justification for such a posture. It’s justified by every single major news story in recent years — the Russia collusion hoax, the origins of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter riots, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the debate over Covid vaccines, the January 6 riot, and especially the Rittenhouse trial, to name just a few. Every one of these stories, and many more besides, were dishonestly reported by a corrupt media establishment that you should never trust again.

Consider the Rittenhouse trial. How many times in recent weeks did you hear that Rittenhouse “crossed state lines” with an “illegal firearm”? Or that his mother drove him to Kenosha, Wis., that night? Or that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist and the men he shot were black? How many times did you hear that the Kenosha riot was over the police “killing” of an “unarmed” black man, Jacob Blake?

You probably heard all of that, a lot. We all did. None of it is true. The corporate press lied incessantly about nearly every little detail of the Rittenhouse case, and it was aided in that deception by Big Tech, which has also forfeited any presumption of trust by its users.

In the immediate aftermath of the Kenosha riots last summer, Facebook proclaimed that Kyle Rittenhouse had committed “mass murder,” blocked all searches of his name, and censored all “praise or support” for him, including links to fundraising sites contributing to his defense. Eventually, fundraising sites like PayPal and GoFundMe did the same.

Facebook wasn’t alone. Before Rittenhouse’s trial, Twitter censored and suspended users who dared to say the teenager hadn’t done anything wrong and acted in self-defense. After a jury acquitted Rittenhouse on all counts, confirming that indeed he did nothing wrong and acted in self-defense, Twitter continued to censor users and suspend accounts that declared Rittenhouse’s innocence, even though it was now a matter of judgment in a court of law, not opinion or speculation.

Big Tech’s official position, long before the trial, was that Rittenhouse was guilty. For Twitter, at least, Rittenhouse remains guilty in some sense, despite his acquittal on all charges. If you wanted to post about the case on these platforms, there was only one opinion you were allowed to have.

It was the same with The New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story last year. Twitter banned the Post over it, suspending its account and demanding the paper delete all tweets about the story, which turned out to be completely true, as the Post insisted it was and as Hunter’s former busines partner Tony Bobulinski confirmed at the time.

Regardless, most corporate outlets worked to suppress the story until the election was over. Only this past September did Politico admit the story was true. Yet The New York Times continued to call it “unsubstantiated” before quietly deleting the false claim amid pushback.

It is the same with nearly every major issue in every major new cycle. During the gubernatorial election in Virginia, where the influence of critical race theory on public school curricula became a flashpoint in the race, we heard over and over from corporate outlets and talking heads that, actually, critical race theory isn’t even taught in Virginia schools! Glenn Youngkin, they said, was simply lying. But of course they were the ones lying, along with Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, whose lies cost him the election.

Once you notice what is happening, it is impossible to un-see it. Just this past weekend, a shocking report by The New York Times about how Hunter Biden helped a Chinese conglomerate secure a major cobalt mine in Congo was assiduously ignored by every major news network. The networks showed zero curiosity about President Biden’s son facilitating the purchase from an American company of one of the world’s richest cobalt mines in 2016, when Joe Biden was still vice president. Instead, ABC News hyped online Black Friday deals, while CBS and NBC News focused on LeBron James’ suspension.

On and on it goes. If the media are not lying outright, they are distorting or ignoring major stories that undermine their preferred narratives. You won’t have to wait long for this to happen again. It will probably happen this week.

When it does, remember that this is what the corporate press has been doing for years now. They are not interesting in informing their readers and viewers, they are interested only in telling you what to think. That is their entire raison d’être.

And rest assured that if you do somehow end up with the wrong opinion, Big Tech will silence you.

FDA Demands 55 Years To Release Documents About Pfizer Vaccine Aporoval

FDA Demands 55 Years To Release Documents About Pfizer Vaccine Approval

It seems the FDA wants to slow-walk ‘transparency’ until all the people responsible for approving a product with unknown long-term effects are dead.

Georgi Boorman - The Federalist

Nearly three months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration licensed the Pfizer COVID injection, the agency has released the first 91out of tens of thousands of documents it reviewed before approving it for emergency use.

Last week, court documents revealed the FDA was asking the court to schedule a monthly release of the documents over the next 55 years. This means the “full transparency” the FDA promised the American public would not be fulfilled until the year 2076.

The FDA was sued soon after it approved the injection for not providing a single page of documentation relating to that decision beforehand. According to a status report filed Nov. 15, “FDA proposes to work through the list of documents that Plaintiff requested FDA prioritize for production in order of priority at a rate of 500 pages per month,” since this rate is “consistent with processing schedules entered by courts across the country in FOIA cases.”

The plaintiffs, a group of 30 scientists, academics, and professors under the name Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (referred to as PHMPT in the report), filed the lawsuit on August 27. Since the agency did not release a single document since this group’s open records request, made almost three months ago, they asked the court to give the FDA until March 3, 2022 to fulfill the records request.

The agency responsible for approving a brand new pharmaceutical they knew would be immediately mandated for millions of Americans complained that the plaintiffs were requesting they “process and produce” more than 80,000 pages a month, claiming they do not have the personnel to redact sensitive information from the records at that rate.

The PHMPT has argued that since it only took the FDA 108 days to conduct what it claims is a “rigorous” examination of the documents to determine whether Pfizer’s product was safe to approve, it should be able to release documents to the public in a similar timeframe. But the agency claims this argument is “specious,” as its information specialists conduct an “entirely different” kind of review when deciding what information must be kept confidential.

The FDA also cited an unrelated decision by the D.C. Circuit Court, which stated that “another agency’s policy of processing 500 pages per request per month… ‘serves to promote efficient responses to a larger number of requesters,’” and that allowing this plaintiff to similarly “jump to the head of the FOIA processing line would upset the agency’s processes and be detrimental to the other expedited requesters.”

PHMPT is arguing a “compelling need” for expediting processing, as their Freedom of Information Act request “concerns a matter of current exigency to the American public.” In the FDA’s letter to the group denying their request for expedited processing, they denied any such urgency to inform the public and claimed PHMPT “failed to “demonstrate[] a compelling need that involves an imminent threat to the life or physical safety of an individual.”

It’s audacious for the FDA to claim this request for transparency isn’t meeting “a compelling need” to inform the public, given these are the documents that led the FDA to approve a product with dire alleged medical consequences for some recipients (such as myocarditis or stroke) and far-reaching social consequences. COVID shots have effectively created apartheid communities in parts of the country that exclude those who decline the shot from many indoor public places and activities that constitute a normal life.

The FDA has said they are committed to “ensuring full transparency, dialogue and efficiency.” Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock was quoted in the PHMPT’s complaint as assuring the public they “can be very confident that [the Pfizer vaccine] meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product.”

Particularly if the FDA was this confident, they should have been working on processing related documents as soon as the drug was approved on August 23 to bolster trust in Pfizer’s mRNA product. Instead, it seems the FDA wants to slow-walk “transparency” until all the people responsible for approving this product are dead.

To say the public has an urgent need to see every related document forthwith would be an understatement. People are losing their jobs, military service members are losing their benefits, and Americans are losing access to basic life activities such as places to eat, schools, and gyms if they have concerns about accepting these vaccinations.

The FDA’s alleged inability to process 80,000 pages of records a month begs an important practical question, as well: it is 2021, and all this redaction appears to be done by human hand. Yet there are several redaction software programs on the market, including at least one the company explicitly states can redact medical records and clinical research. Why is one of the most important regulatory bodies in the world using anachronistic processes that hold up FOIA requests for months or years instead of cutting-edge technology that could ensure speedy public availability of important records?

Lagging decades behind modern technology is characteristic of government bureaucracies, but in this case it isn’t just an inconvenience. The FDA is leveraging these outdated processes to avoid accountability for people whose decisions are affecting all of society, and it shouldn’t be tolerated.

Members of Congress should apply pressure to the administration and the FDA and introduce legislation, if necessary, to ensure the redaction of records subject to FOIA are done in the most efficient way possible. The public was promised a “safe and effective vaccine” and they deserve nothing less than full transparency as to how the FDA made that determination.

Georgia Governor Releases More Evidence That 2020 Ballots Were Miscounted

While nothing will change the fact that Joe Biden is president, 

election integrity matters and Gov. Brian Kemp’s letter is but 

the latest proof that it must be shored up in America.

by Margot Cleveland for The Federalist

Last week, Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp referred data to the State Election Board showing “36 inconsistencies” in the results of a Fulton County audit. This development provides yet the latest example of the chaos controlling the November 2020 election—and the corrupt media’s refusal to care.

With only 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million votes cast separating Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the final tally in Georgia for the 2020 presidential election, the southern state and specifically Fulton County—the state’s most populous county and the home to the Democrat-heavy city of Atlanta—became a focal point following the November general election. After a recount and audit confirmed Biden carried the state, politicians and the press joined forces proclaiming, “Nothing to see here, move along.”

But there was a lot to see there and elsewhere throughout the country: It was just hidden or, in some cases, destroyed. And while nothing will change the fact that Joe Biden is president, election integrity matters and Kemp’s letter is but the latest proof that it must be shored up in America.

Private Resident Sniffs Out Election Inconsistencies

An analysis of the “2020 Risk-Limiting Audit Report” data revealed “36 inconsistencies,” in the Fulton County audit, Kemp wrote in his November 17, 2021 letter to the members of the Georgia State Election Board. These “inconsistencies” were uncovered, not by an election official, but by a retired corporate executive and resident of the Peach State, Joseph Rossi, the letter explained.

Rossi’s analysis compared the official audit data made public by the secretary of state’s office to images of the underlying ballots provided by the county in response to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s open records request. Further, before referring the matter to the Election Board, the letter explained that Kemp’s “office tested the veracity of his work by independently repeating the research Mr. Rossi conducted on each of his 36 claims,” and that analysis confirmed Rossi’s review.

“The data that exists in public view on the Secretary of State’s website of the [Risk-Limiting Audit] Report does not inspire confidence,” Kemp continued, noting “It is sloppy, inconsistent, and presents questions about what processes were used by Fulton County to arrive at the result.” Kemp then recommended the Election Board review Rossi’s findings, determine what negatively impacted the integrity of the audit report, and review the audit methodology used throughout the state.

Duplicates for 20 Different Groups of Votes

Kemp’s letter, while damning, doesn’t do justice to how troubling the “36 inconsistencies” uncovered are. Those inconsistencies are not conflicts relating to 36 different votes, but to 36 different categories of votes. Among other things, the analysis originally undertaken by Rossi, and then confirmed by Kemp’s office, revealed that the audit report included duplicates for 20 groups of votes.

To illustrate this category of “inconsistencies,” the official Audit Report reported double scans of “batch 40,” which contained two votes for Trump and 95 votes for Biden.

A review of the scanned ballots, however, revealed only one “batch 40,” which included 97 votes for Biden and 2 votes for Trump.

Ten more batches included in the official audit results were misidentified, according to Kemp’s analysis. Again, to illustrate, the audit report identified two different vote totals attributable to “scanner 2/237,” but included different totals for each, indicating one of the batches was misidentified.

Further, the actual results for batch 237 differed from both contained in the audit report.

A third category of error detailed by Rossi and confirmed by Kemp involved the state supposedly cataloging of batches of votes that showed 100 percent of the votes being cast for one candidate. There were four such inconsistencies identified and, with the first of the inconsistencies, multiple batches were involved with batches 19, 20, and 21 all awarding Biden 100 votes and Trump zero.

The governor’s internal count, however, showed that not only did Biden not receive 100 percent of the votes, but that none of these batches had exactly 100 ballots.

The second inconsistencies in this category reported 200 votes for Biden in batch 22, and none for Trump. Kemp’s review, however, showed only 97 ballots contained in batch 22—not 200—and Trump receiving 12 of those.

The third inconsistency identified also involved two batches with each recording 100 votes for Biden and zero for Trump, with the governor’s review showing Trump received 23 to Biden’s 78 in one batch (again, not totally 100) and Trump garnering 40 votes to Biden’s 60 in the second batch.

The final inconsistency in this category also contained two batches, with one favoring Biden and one Trump—but the apparent error in Biden’s favor was reporting 950 votes for our now-president to Trump’s 0, while Biden really only received 92 votes to Trump’s 6, according to the governor’s office.

Conversely, the audit report showed Trump received all 130 votes in Batch 2 from Scanner 5, while the breakdown according to Kemp was Trump 5 to Biden’s 94. The net effect of this disparity totaled more than 600 votes in Biden’s favor—exceeding the 537 votes that handed President G.W. Bush Florida, and in turn the presidency back in 2000.

The final category of errors Kemp’s office identified consisted of apparent misallocation of votes. For instance, the audit report listed Biden as the recipient of 77 votes and third-party candidate Jo Jorgensen receiving 23 votes, when the ballot images showed those 23 votes belonged to Trump.

The audit report for scanner 3, batch 89, also showed the votes misallocated between the candidates, with five votes belonging to Biden recorded for Trump. The governor also noted that a second report of votes for the same scanner and batch appeared to be misidentified.

While spelling out these troubling “inconsistencies” in his two-page letter last week, Kemp also bent a figurative knee to the left, which continues to portray any concern about election integrity as an irrational attempt to challenge the 2020 election. These inconsistencies “are factual in nature, pose no underlying theories outside of the reported data, and could not be explained by my office after a thorough review,” Kemp stressed, to assure the populace he isn’t pushing a Kraken-inspired conspiracy theory.

Nor is he disputing or contesting the outcome of the 2020 election, Kemp added, and rest assured, neither was Rossi, Kemp explained: “Rossi never alleged the outcome of the election was in question or asked me to act beyond my constitutional or statutory powers as Governor.”

By handing the investigation off to the State Election Board, which along with Georgia’s secretary of state holds “the authority to oversee elections in Georgia,” as Kemp highlighted in his letter, Kemp seemingly straddled the third-rail of today’s political discourse: the November 2020 election.

One Thing’s Clear: Fulton County Is Untrustworthy

Republicans may (rightly) view Kemp’s letter as pure political theater, but the details released nonetheless serve the interests of election integrity by focusing public attention to numerous factually based problems with the Fulton County audit—and in turn Georgia, as a whole. And those facts are asserted and verified by the governor’s office, and not self-interested private litigants.

Yet Kemp’s referral and the independent analysis conducted by the governor’s office also bolster the claims made in private litigation, specifically the evidence gathered and expert testimony proffered in one such lawsuit brought by lead plaintiff Garland Favorito, challenging multiple aspects of Fulton County’s handling of the election. Among other things, the plaintiffs in that case presented expert witness testimony from David Sawyer, a certified fraud examiner and former partner at Ernst and Young.

Sawyer, who had also worked with the forensic units at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young, “testified that he viewed the information provided on the Georgia secretary of state’s website from the risk-limiting audit and compared that data with the scanned ballots provided by Fulton County.” From that analysis, Sawyer testified, “there were 1,539 batches of scanned ballot images produced . . . but only 1,283 batches were counted in the Secretary of State’s risk limited audit.”

Sawyer also testified “that the Secretary of State’s risk limiting audit included combined batches, i.e., batches that contained more than 100 ballots in each batch; sequence breaks in the number of batches that indicated there were missing batches; and batches that were counted twice.” Based on his analysis, there should have been about 1,630 batches of ballots counted, which is 347 more than the secretary of state’s risk-limiting audit reported. “These irregularities indicated a ballot scanning error rate of about 21 percent,” according to Sawyer.

While Sawyer’s testimony was publicly available and, like the analysis Kemp’s office conducted, relied on the official audit results compared to the scanned ballot images, much of the press and public ignore such testimony, viewing the experts as paid partisan hacks—even when the testimony comes from highly credentialed individuals such as Sawyer. Sawyer’s testimony also received little fanfare and, at least until Kemp released his letter, was unlikely to garner much attention because a month ago the lower court tossed the lawsuit in which Sawyer testified, finding the plaintiffs lacked standing, or a legal basis to sue.

Favorito v. Fulton County is currently on appeal. But no matter the outcome of that case, thanks to Kemp, the numerous problems with the Fulton County audit are now clearly within the public eye. Whether the Georgia Election Board or Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will avert their glances again, however, is another matter.

A request for comment from the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office went unanswered.