Posted on May 2, 2024 by Lloyd Billingsley in Coronavirus

Vaxxing Questions

Life must be lived forward, Soren Kierkegaard contended, but can only be understood backwards. That invites a glance at “CDC Found Evidence COVID-19 Vaccines Caused Deaths,” by Zachary Steiber in the May 1 Epoch Times. As the author discovered:

CDC employees worked to track down information on reported post-vaccination deaths and learned that myocarditis—or heart inflammation, a confirmed side effect of the vaccines—was listed on death certificates and in autopsies for some of the deaths.

The spokeswoman declined to explain why the CDC doesn’t consider autopsies or death certificates as evidence of causality, the criteria that would establish vaccine-caused deaths, or whether the numbers have been updated since 2023.

 “They are taking the exact opposite approach to COVID deaths! Every death after a test was a COVID death. No death after a vaccine is a vaccine death!” Dr. Craig said. She questioned what it would take for the CDC to admit that the vaccines have caused some myocarditis-related deaths.

Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson did not return requests for comment.

And so on, with case studies examined, experts consulted, and other realities to consider. Remember, the FDA wanted 75 years before revealing the data it used to license the Pfizer vaccine. Like the others, it failed to prevent infection or transmission of Covid. As Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor, explained in Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, vaccine mandates, “should not be dictated by anyone who stands to gain monetarily.” Recall that Dr. Anthony Fauci wanted vaccines even for children, the least vulnerable group.

Dr. Fauci is a “genius,” according to Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt. Dr. Schaffner wants you to get a Covid jab with your flu shot. So does the CDC, and Travis Kelce made the same pitch before the Super Bowl. Fans can let Kelce, the CDC, and Dr. Schaffner call the signals, but if they choose to drop back and punt it would be hard to blame them.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Higher education

Counterrevolution at Chapel Hill

The gentlemen of Pi Kappa Phi at UNC Chapel Hill have given us a morale booster by protecting the American flag from the kill-the-Jews crowd on campus. They join the Columbia night-shift custodian fighting off the Hamilton Hall Hamasniks in an early bid for man-of-the-year recognition. See the photo below depicting them standing guard.

Fill out the picture with the singing of the national anthem (below).

The gentlemen of Pi Kappa Phi have seized the moment with their bravado and their sense of humor. The New York Post reports that they have raised $400,000 for a “rager” celebrating their victory over the mob. The $400,000 is now approaching $500,000. Leland Vittert adds that John Rich has offered to play the party for free.

As I say, the gentlemen of Pi Kappa Phi have a sense of humor. Their GoFundMe page now includes this update:

We are overwhelmed by you glorious, Patriotic Americans who value good beer and great times. We are in contact with multiple leaders from fraternities whose members helped defend the flag, including Alpha Epsilon Pi and others, in addition to Pi Kappa Psi. Our gratitude goes to all of them and we will update supporters on what comes next.**

Commie losers across the country have invaded college campuses to make dumb demands of weak University Administrators.

But amidst the chaos, the screaming, the anti-semitism, the hatred of faith and flag, stood a platoon of American heroes. Armored in Vineyard Vines and Patagonia, fueled by Zyn and White Claws, these triumphant Brohemians protected Old Glory from the unwashed Marxist horde — laughing at their shrieks and wails and shielding the Stars & Stripes from Soviet missiles.

These boys… no, men, of the UNC Chapel Hill Pi Kappa Phi, gave the best to America and now they deserve the best.

Help us raise funds to throw this frat the party they deserve, a party worth of the boat-shoed Broleteriat who did their country proud.

That should be quite a party. I trust they will find a worthy use for the funds they will have left over when they turn out the lights on it. The most recent update concludes: “There is nearly half a million in the bank. That is plenty to throw a killer party and give to some great charities. At midnight, we will close the GoFundMe to donations.”

Posted on by John Hinderaker in 2024 Election, Democrats, Donald Trump, Law

Trump To Be Fined Again? Then What?

Judge Juan Merchan is considering a motion by Alvin Bragg’s office to fine Donald Trump an additional amount for further violations of Merchan’s unconstitutional gag order. Merchan has also threatened to throw Trump in jail.

So what did Trump do to merit such a response? The four new alleged violations are quoted here. Trump criticized the Manhattan venue and expressed concern that the jury would be unfair:

“That jury was picked so fast—95% democrats. The area’s mostly all democrat. You think of it as a — just a purely democrat area. It’s a very unfair situation, that I can tell you.”

He’s right about that. Here and elsewhere, the Democrats have brought charges against Trump in venues where they know they will get a jury that is prejudiced against him. In what world does Trump not have a constitutional right to comment on the fairness of the venue in which criminal proceedings are brought against him?

Trump also criticized his former lawyer Michael Cohen. Pretty much any insult you direct Cohen’s way will be justified. This is part of what Trump said about him:

And when are they going to look at all the lies that Cohen did in the last trial? He got caught lying in the last trial. So he got caught lying, pure lying. And when are they going to look at that?

Also:

Michael Cohen is a convicted liar and he’s got no credibility whatsoever. He was a lawyer and you rely on your lawyers. But Michael Cohen was a convicted liar. He was a lawyer for many people, not just me. And he got in trouble because of things outside of what he did for me….

Once again, true. Cohen went to jail for tax fraud that had nothing to do with Donald Trump. With regard to his tax fraud and in other instances he is, indeed, a liar. Why can’t Trump say that? In any other trial, a litigant can comment on witnesses if he wants to.

Obviously, Trump’s statements may get more press coverage than the average litigant’s, but so what? How does that deprive him of his First Amendment rights? Talking publicly about jurors and witnesses may or may not be smart–in most cases, it isn’t–but that is Trump’s business, not Judge Merchan’s.

Finally, Merchan is threatening to imprison Trump for this:

“What have you thought of David Pecker’s testimony so far? When was the last time you spoke to him?” Trump answered, “He’s been very nice. I mean, he’s been — David’s been very nice. A nice guy.”

If Trump can go to jail for saying that, it proves that Merchan’s gag order is ridiculously broad and, in fact, unconstitutional.

Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Trump is wholly illegitimate, little better than Stalin’s show trials of the 1930s. It is a purely political act, intended to interfere with the 2024 presidential election. It deserves no deference and no respect. As I have written before, I think Trump would be justified in walking away from the case and refusing to obey Merchan’s illegal orders. Whether walking away from the Manhattan prosecution would be a good idea, either politically or legally, I leave to others. But in my view, it would be fully justified by the Democrats’ outrageous conduct.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Anti-Semitism, Education, Liberals

It Didn’t Start In College

Many Americans have been shocked at the spectacle of thousands of college students, along with thousands more non-college students, engaging in kill-the-Jews riots. These people are demonstrating in favor of Hamas, which means in favor of gang rape and mass murder. How could this possibly have happened?

I have seen suggestions that left-wing professors have led students astray, and no doubt that is true. We have seen many professors participating in these pro-mass murder rallies. But I think that explanation misses a more fundamental point: hating Israel and, more important, hating the United States, has been built into the curriculum of many, perhaps most, public K-12 schools.

al Qaeda’s ideology focused hatred on two countries: America, the Great Satan, and Israel, the Little Satan. al Qaeda’s philosophy has now been adopted by American liberals and is being taught in our public schools. Liberals tell children that the great evil of world history is “settler colonialism.” But it turns out that, despite millennia of peoples migrating and invading, there are actually only two instances of “settler colonialism”–the United States and Israel. The Great Satan and the Little Satan. This is the nonsense with which our children’s minds are being poisoned, long before they go to college.

My colleague Kathy Kersten wrote about this in the context of Minnesota’s new Social Studies standards, which my organization has been battling against for more than three years:

Minnesotans will likely be surprised and disturbed to learn that our state’s new K-12 social studies standards are littered with these buzzwords [“decolonization,” “settler-colonialism,” “dispossession” and “resistance”], which are at the heart of “decolonization” ideology.

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) has portrayed the standards — which were formally adopted in January 2024 after a four-year process — as unifying. In reality, they will divide our young people by group identity, teach them to view social life as a zero-sum power struggle between oppressors (bad) and victims (good), and convert public schools into boot camps for political activism.

In the new standards, the connection between “decolonization” ideology and Israel is made explicit in the examples that, according to [the Minnesota Department of Education], “clarify the meaning” of the grade-level benchmarks. MDE has not made these examples public, indicating it will provide them separately to explain how schools should implement the standards. However, Center of the American Experiment obtained the examples, which appeared in MDE’s September 2021 working draft, through a public data request.

In connection with one standard, for instance, students are instructed to “describe how individuals and communities have fought” for “liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power.” In another, they must “analyze the impact of colonialism” and in a third, they must “analyze dominant and non-dominant narratives.” In all three cases, Israel-Palestine is highlighted as an example. Likewise, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is held up as an immigrant who has made “contributions” to “political ideas.”

For what it is worth, Jews have been in the Holy Land for more than 2,000 years longer than Arabs, so I am not sure who is the “settler” here.

Kersten goes on to explain who wrote the current Social Studies standards:

“Ethnic Studies explores the colonial roots of the dispossession of Palestinian land and the creation of Zionism,” wrote Lozenski in 2022 in a Convergence magazine article he co-authored with pro-Palestinian activists like Lara Kiswani, who directs the extremist California-based Arab Resource and Organizing Center. “Given the devastating impact of Israeli colonialism,” “studying Israeli settler colonialism in comparison to U.S. settler colonialism” is “at the heart of the discipline of Ethnic Studies.”

Minnesota’s legislature has decreed that all classes–geometry, for instance–must include an Ethnic Studies component. These people are the ones the state is relying on to supply the content of that component.

“But even the suggestion that Palestine might be mentioned is enough to bring forth well-funded organized attacks from pro-Israeli lobby groups,” the authors continued. They denounced, by name, “Islamophobic and Zionist organizations” like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The people Kathy is quoting here are not just irrelevant quacks. On the contrary:

Brian Lozenski served as chief testifier for HF 1502. Its sponsor was Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura, whom the Twin Cities-Democratic Socialists of America endorsed in 2022. This party’s sympathies are well known. On Oct. 9, 2023, its leaders issued a statement blaming the Hamas invasion on Israel, condemning Israel’s alleged “settler-colonial violence and dispossession,” and vowing to “fight border fascism wherever it rears its hideous head.”

There is much more at the link, but I will close with this:

EdLib MN’s message included a link to an organizing tool kit for students from the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, whose director co-authored Brian Lozenski’s Convergence article. The tool kit laid out a step-by-step guide, along with timetables, media talking points, and templates for protest signs and chants. One sign reads, “Decolonize Palestine,” and features a masked woman hurling a rock, with a burning police car behind it.

This from the group that describes itself, accurately, as the driving force behind Minnesota’s legally mandated curricula. Here, as in so many other areas, Minnesota may be below average, but it isn’t unique. Across the country, elementary, middle school and high school children are being indoctrinated in this anti-American, anti-Israel ideology. Osama bin Laden would be proud. He failed in the military arena, but American liberals have taken up his ideas and are teaching them to American school children. By the time they get to college, kids who have been poisoned by this ideology see nothing odd about rioting for murder and rape, as long as those being murdered and raped are “settler-colonialist” Jews.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in The Daily Chart

The Daily Chart: Finding the Rot at Columbia

My pal David Bernstein of Scalia Law School at George Mason University notes the following on Twitter:

One thing that hasn’t received enough attention is that major unviersities see themselves today not as American, but as global, institutions. American institutions are strongly opposed to antisemitism and support Israel’s existence. Globally, institutions ranging from the UN to the NGO establishment at best give lip service to antisemitism, and range from tolerant of to facilitators of antisemitism. If you want to appeal to the “global community,” it’s clear what the path of least resistance is.

There’s also this:

I think I’ve spotted the core of the problem—and where to start to fix it.

Posted on by Lloyd Billingsley in Immigration, Islam

From Munich in 1972 to America in 2024

 

Christopher Scalia recently tweeted side-by-side photos of a masked pro-Hamas protester and a masked terrorist captioned “Manhattan 2024 meets Munich 1972,” a reference some readers might not recognize. On September 5, 1972, at the Olympics in Munich, Palestinian terrorists of the Black September faction forced their way into the quarters of the Israeli team. The terrorists shot dead and castrated weightlifter Yossef Romano, a mutilation not revealed until 2015. The carnage continued and by the next day, the terrorists had murdered 11 Israelis.

The next year, Israeli commandos killed Muhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar, mastermind of the Munich massacre. His son Yasser al-Najjar became a fugitive and in one account came to the United States, though documentation of his arrival is hard to find. When National Public Radio profiled him in 2003, Yasser al-Najjar was an official of the Palestinian Authority living in Gaza.

In 2012, a man named Ammar Campa-Najjar worked in the Obama administration, which never revealed that Ammar was the grandson of Muhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar, mastermind of the Munich massacre. That emerged in a February, 2018, Haaretz report headlined “Grandson of Munich Massacre Terrorist Is Running for Congress.”  The revelation was not in the campaign materials of grandson Ammar Campa-Najjar, which said only that he was “the son of a Mexican American mother and a Middle Eastern immigrant father.” Campa-Najjar claims he was born in San Diego County but said he lived in Gaza from ages eight to 12.

Rolling Stone billed Campa Najjar as a “rockstar Democratic candidate” but he lost to Duncan Hunter in 2018 and Darrell Issa in 2020. In 2022 Campa-Najjar ran for mayor of Chula Vista and lost to Republican John McCann. In August of 2023, the three-time loser joined the U.S. Navy, which made him a reserve officer. The former Gaza resident kept rather quiet after 10/7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and many times worse than his grandfather’s massacre of Jews in Munich in 1972.

It has emerged that the rockstar Democrat has been dating Rep. Sara Jacobs, granddaughter of billionaire Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs. With that kind of support, the former Gaza resident is someone to watch. Munich in 1972 meets America in 2024 and beyond. As Trump says, we’ll have to see what happens. Meanwhile, for more on the Munichian candidate, and others with unbelievable stories, see Yes I Con: United Fakes of America.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Fake News, Hollywood, Media, Media Bias

Rather full of it

The documentary Rather made its appearance yesterday on Netflix. Directed by Frank Marshall, the film premiered last year at the Tribeca Film Festival. It now becomes generally available via the streaming service. I watched the documentary twice yesterday in order to comment on it here. As it turns out, Star Tribune media critic Neal Justin fairly describes it and nails its shortcomings in 114 words, but there is more to be said.

Rather celebrates the career of Dan Rather in television journalism. It is the kind of thing CBS News would have prepared for Rather on the occasion of his retirement from the network had he voluntarily retired at the end of his tenure with the company.

Gathering testimony from family, friends, former colleagues, and admirers, the film treats Rather hagiographically, as one naturally would on the occasion of retirement. CBS itself would have broadcast the documentary and sent Rather off to let him bask in its warm glow. It is one step up from a home movie, or it is Frank Marshall’s version of a home movie on Rather’s behalf. It is a vanity production. Rather, of course, approves.

However, Rather’s career at CBS News ended in disgrace. CBS involuntarily terminated his employment as a result of Rather’s participation and defense of the fraudulent September 2004 60 Minutes II story on George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard — the episode known as Rathergate. Rather himself bitterly recounts his termination at length in Chapter 10 (“Rather v. CBS”) of his 2012 memoir Rather Outspoken (written with Digby Diehl).

The movie arrives at Rathergate at minute 75 of its 95 minutes and does not tarry for long. The six or seven minutes it devotes to the episode amount to a confused jumble that is disgraceful in its own way. Anticipating the appearance of Rather on Netflix, I have recalled the true history of Rathergate this week in “Rathergate: 100 proof fraud,” “The Mapes miasma,” and “Rather not.”

Despite its manifest deficiencies, the film is worth pausing over. It could be used as a brilliant teaching tool illustrating the techniques, the limitations, and the partisanship of the mainstream media as well as the need for alternate outlets such as Fox News and News Nation.

Rather depicts the mainstream media as a source of light and truth. Rather himself is its hero. Every epic story requires a villain as well as a hero. Rather supplies one in the person of Roger Ailes and in the institution of Fox News. Rather longs for the days of old when the mainstream media determined the approved narrative without dissent or opposition. It is nostalgic for the days before the debut of Fox News in 1996. In substance it laments the coming of opposition to the truth according to CBS News and its broadcast colleagues.

Before it arrives at Rathergate, the film covers Rather’s career with a series of clips illustrating its chapters. Those of a certain age may recall Rather’s on-air encounter with security at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. A related clip appears. It made me reflect that it might be the last time Rather was sideways with a room full of Democrats. On this point, however, the documentary is entirely evasive. It portrays Rather only as a seeker after truth. Rather — he’s a modern Diogenes with a Texas twang.

The testimony to Rather’s character as a lonesome seeker after truth comes both in Rather’s comments and in the comments by talking heads that are interspersed among the clips. Rather himself is one of the talking heads. Here are the other talking heads I noted in order of their appearance (I have marked the names of former CBS/CBS News executives, producers, and bureau chiefs with asterisks):

Douglas Brinkley (insufferable liberal historian)
Soledad O’Brien (former CNN anchor)
Margaret Sullivan (former Washington Post media columnist)
*Jim Murphy
*Tom Bettag
Robin Rather (Rather’s daughter)
Andrew Young (civil rights activist and former Carter administration UN ambassador)
*Howard Stringer
Martin Rather (Rather’s grandson)
*Susan Zirinsky
Rick Perlstein (leftist historian and journalist)
Ronan Farrow (described as “investigative journalist”)
*Dana Roberson
*Larry Doyle
*David Buksbaum
Andy Cohen (described as “TV host and producer”)
Samantha Bee (described as “comedian and producer”)
*Wayne Nelson
Shepard Smith (former Fox News and CNBC anchor)

The talking heads all testify to Rather’s greatness and integrity. Neither Rather nor the multitude assembled to testify on his behalf gives any hint of his politics. The truth is his thing. He has no politics of his own. That is the given one must accept to enjoy the documentary.

Rather’s politics are nevertheless not difficult to detect. He is a liberal Democrat with a view of Republicans as misguided at best and loathsome at worst. Rather’s impartiality is a ridiculous pretense. See, for example, Rather Outspoken. The talking heads serve as an embarrassing mouthpiece for this pretense.

Conspicuous by their absence from the list of talking heads are former CBS News President Andrew Heyward, former victims of Rather such as, say, George W. Bush, and any critic of Rather. What we have here is a chorus singing in unison. Although Rather disparages Roger Ailes and laments the coming of Fox News in 1996, it illustrates the crying need for an alternative to the mainstream media. As I say, the documentary could be valuable as a teaching tool.

When it arrives at Rathergate after 75 minutes, the documentary becomes an incoherent mess. It portrays the 60 Minutes II story alternately as true, a set-up, “fake but accurate,” a “mistake” (Susan Zirinsky), but, if so, faulty only in its “process.”

Former CBS News producer Wayne Nelson weighs in: “Was it planned [i.e, planned to disgrace CBS News] — we’ll never know.” According to Douglas Brinkley, those wily Republicans have become adept at coming up “with schemes.” In the world of Rather, we are to kneel down and give thanks for the innocence of Democrats, left-wing historians, and reporters such as Rather.

Rather ends with Rather’s current incarnation as a social media star. He has garnered 2.6 million followers on X/Twitter and a generation of fans that knows not Rathergate. It’s ancient history — beyond their ken, where Rather means to keep it. How the opinionated man of the left who has emerged on social media comports with the impartial seeker after truth portrayed in Rather is a question that the documentary leaves untouched.