The Real Virus is not Covid, it’s Communism

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“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.” – Samuel Adams

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”  – Benjamin Franklin

“The policy of American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.”  – Bishop Fulton Sheen

Those of us who are constitutional conservatives and believe the words of the Holy Bible and America’s founders, who sought freedom and liberty for mankind, fear a dystopian society that imposes a harmful, oppressive, and miserable existence upon its citizens. The communists now in control of our federal government believe they are creating a “utopian” society promoted by Marx and Engels, but their utopia ultimately ends in starvation and death.  We’ve watched for multiple decades as decay has set in at the very core of our liberty loving nation and America has been torn from her freedom loving roots.

Freedom loving Americans have become the pariahs who must be terminated for the good of the Marxist utopian society.  Socialism makes you a slave to the government and that’s what has happened to our brainwashed public.

Covid-19 was used for many reasons against America by both China and Democratic Socialists, but the continued efforts by both parties to control the citizenry showed their true totalitarian natures. Lockdowns, masks and vaccines are far more dangerous to our health than Coronavirus and interestingly enough, we’ve had no seasonal flu this year.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, 70, told a Federalist Society virtual convention last November that he thought the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic serves as a “sort of constitutional stress test.” He argued that America has “never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive, and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020” and raised concerns over their impact on individuals’ civil liberties. Link

The real virus infecting America is not Covid-19.  The Marxist-Leninist takeover of the Democrat Party is complete and the majority of the Republican Party is following the same path.  The real danger is communism; it’s here and it’s going to cost us unless we stand together and fight.

Mask Mandates

According to Anthony Fauci, who is now the chief medical advisor under Biden, we’re supposed to wear two masks to keep from catching the new variants of the Covid-19 virus, a paper mask and a cloth mask over it. (Remember that back in March of 2020, he said there was no reason to be walking around with a mask.)  Maybe three or four would be even better, to totally cut off our oxygen intake. CNBC touts that their experts suggest wearing three!  Did we ever wear a mask for the seasonal flu virus in the past?  Never! (Wait, I’m wrong…excuse me, many wore masks during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu epidemic that killed 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.)

Why did anyone think wearing a warm, moist rag a millimeter away from his or her mouth, for hours at a time, creating the ideal conditions for bacteria to multiply, would be a good thing?  Link

In a previous article regarding Dr. Anthony Fauci, I stated that he had co-authored a paper about the 1918-1919 Spanish flu and said that many had died of bacterial pneumonia.  This is true.  However, I had also stated that he claimed masks were the cause.  A devoted reader corrected me.  Fauci did not claim that bacterial pneumonia was caused by masks but it’s interesting that wearing masks has caused numerous problems, including impetigo (usually caused by a staph infection), dental problems, yeast infections, acne etc.  Link  Today, doctors are warning that bacterial pneumonia is on the rise…and yes, it’s from wearing masks.  Maybe Fauci and his friends forgot to mention this fact, or didn’t discover it.

Despite the knowledge that this evil Covid-19 virus was made in a bioweapon lab in Wuhan, China, it is still a virus and no more people have died in 2020 than have died in years past in America.  Johns Hopkins reported that the yearly death rate remains normal despite Covid-19.  Deaths from heart disease, respiratory disease, influenza, pneumonia and other causes have far lower stats for 2020, where Covid-19 deaths are higher.  Yet the average of yearly deaths remains the same.  Why?  Because everyone is being categorized as dying from Covid-19 rather than their underlying comorbidity. The study was immediately withdrawn and trashed.

US Intelligence tells us that the Chinese government is collecting American’s DNA.  Link  60 Minutes has learned that the Chinese company, BGI Group, the largest biotech firm in the world, offered to build Covid labs in at least six states, and U.S. intelligence officials issued warnings not to share health data with BGI. The story was on Sunday, 31 January 21 on 60 minutes.

Beijing Genomics Institute, is a Chinese genome sequencing company, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It was formed in 1999 to participate in the Human Genome Project as a genetics research center.

100 More Days

President Biden, elected via Dominion machines with Smartmatic software connected to the internet and sent to multiple foreign countries in order to intercept data of America’s 2020 election, has decided all federal people throughout the country should be masked until May 1st, 2021.  And he wants all 50 states to follow through with mask mandates.

I see toddlers and young children with masks on their faces, put there by parents who believe the propaganda spewed by mainstream media.  It makes me heartsick.  And people alone in their cars with masks on their faces!  The entire country wore masks everywhere for months, yet we had another surge of the virus.  Our citizens are fools.  We have become a nation of controlled lemmings who are abandoning freedom!

One Los Angeles health official went so far as to say that not wearing a mask is domestic terrorism!   In another article, a couple was escorted off a plane because their two-year-old son refused to wear a mask!  Never reported are those who are dying from mask wearing.  If you’re outside, get the danged thing off your face!

The unelected tyrants in local health departments are issuing these decrees without any studies whatsoever.  I wonder how many of them own stock in the mask making companies.

We are not the citizens who won back-to-back World Wars!  America’s propagandists in the mainstream media have stampeded the public into fear and panic over the virus in order to generate support for their totalitarian agenda.  Few Americans have seen through it…and that is most alarming.

Statistics

According to the CDC, along with studies by people in the age groups of 0 to 19 have a 99.997% chance of survival if they contract COVID-19, the age group of 20 to 49 a 99.98% chance, 50 to 69 years old 99.5% and 70 years old and above a 94.6% chance.

The case fatality rate of Covid-19 is 0.1 to 0.3 percent which is the same exact case fatality rate as the regular seasonal flu.  They shut down the entire world economy for a lie!  The WHO came out with a 3.4 case fatality rate and Fauci came along and cut it to 1.0 rate, which is 10 times higher than seasonal influenza. The middleclass was purposely destroyed, and they still have foolish Americans in masks.

Last September One America News reported that medical researchers from UCLA and Stanford University found that the chances of dying from Covid are much lower than previously thought.  Even the likelihood of contracting the virus, going to the hospital or even death from Covid-19 is an extremely rare event.  An average person in an average county has a one in 3,836 chance of becoming infected and that’s without wearing masks or doing any social distancing.  Odds of being hospitalized are vanishingly small even for people in the at-risk category.

If you’re between the ages of 50-64 years old, the chances of getting the virus and needing hospitalization are one in 852,000.  And for that same person who is at risk, the chance of dying from Coronavirus is one in 19.1 million.  All these stats are from last May 2020 when deaths were 16 times higher than when this was reported.  The risk from dying in an automobile crash is one in 114.  Yet, we were sold lockdown insanity.

One America News also reported that researchers in Australia say Ivermectin can cure Covid in 48 hours.  Ivermectin is typically used for parasitic infections, yet a peer review study conducted last April stated Ivermectin could kill the virus with one dose.

One of my neighbors is elderly.  She contracted Covid-19 and her smell and taste was gone, and she had sinus problems.  Her physician gave her Azithromycin and she recovered.  She is 82, her husband is 88 and he has a comorbidity.  He insisted on sleeping with her should she have a problem in the night, and he watched over her even though she wanted him to sleep in another bedroom.  She was fine, and he never contracted Covid.

Lockdowns

Small businesses have been wiped out, and millions of middleclass Americans have been decimated.  Yet, the big box stores allowed to stay open have flourished while small businesses faced total destruction.  Far more damage has been done to middle America by the lockdowns than by the fraudulently dangerous Covid-19 flu.

Cases of Covid-19 rose despite the lockdowns.  Of course, they did…the locked down folks needed to be exposed to get herd immunity, but the totalitarian dictators knew that every time the lockdown was lifted, Covid-19 would spread again, and they could force another lockdown.  Over the course of the past year, class inequalities have grown wider and have become more entrenched. And yet, at each turn, left-wing lockdown lovers have demanded ever-more severe restrictions on people’s lives.

Had America left the entire country open; Professor Isaac Ben-Israel claims that within 40 to 70 days the virus would have passed through all of those who were not sheltered for comorbidities, and it would have been over.  Unfortunately, the communist controllers in this country wanted the Trump economy destroyed along with small businesses so that they would rely on government handouts, and the middle class who loves freedom would be decimated.  Well done by the Marxists in control.  How many have committed suicide because their life’s work was ruined by the shutdowns and then by the communist BLM and Antifa riots.  And nothing was done to stop them!  Nothing!

How easily we have snowballed into a full-fledged Marxist/fascist nation, with political dictators releasing criminals from prison and imprisoning those who refuse lockdown orders.

Truth in Medicine

America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) have been at the forefront of telling us the truth.  They knew that Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Azithromycin (Z-Pak) and common zinc cured early onset Covid-19.  Dr. Simone Gold, who is also an attorney, said, “Follow the science always meant ‘follow,’ but never the ‘science.’”  A new study out of New Jersey actually validates what the frontline docs have told us.

Dr. Gold tweeted, “On Inauguration Day, 6+ months after AFLDS said it, The WHO announced a single PCR test is not reliable. “Coincidentally” the number of “cases” will now plummet.”

How many times have we heard that the tests are unreliable?  WHO confirms the PCR test has a problem, one day after Biden inaugurated.

Elon Musk had four tests in one day by the very same way, same machine, left nostril positive twice, and right nostril negative twice.  Sounds like we’ve been had!

PCR assays are not designed to be used as diagnostic tools, as they can’t distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.  Besides that, previously, the WHO had recommended 45 “amplification” cycles of the test to determine whether someone was positive for Covid or not.

The thing is, the more cycles that a test goes through, the more likely that a false positive will come up — anything over 30 cycles actually magnifies the samples so much that even insignificant sequences of viral DNA end up being magnified to the point that the test reads positive even if your viral load is extremely low or the virus is inactive and poses no threat to you or anyone else.

In one Colorado county, they’ve admitted nearly half of the deaths from Covid were false.  All deaths were designated as Covid, but were false.  The CDC now claims that 94% of all coronavirus deaths were supplementary, meaning, the person had co-morbidities. Less than 10,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 alone.  The CDC apparently changed Covid criteria that inflated fatalities ten-fold, and actually broke federal law.

Conclusion

There are no guardrails on the left or the right to protect the Republic from communism.  Other than a handful of constitutionalists, both parties have joined the socialist agenda. President Trump, as much as he did for America in four years, and as much as he loved her and her citizens, he lacked discernment in hiring good people and continually chose from the swamp.

Matt Bracken writes in the American Partisan, “The American Left has no self-correction mechanism. (Examples of contemporary Leftist insanity: transsexuals welcomed into the military, biological boys ordered onto girls’ sports teams and in girls locker rooms, etc.) This Leftist insanity is anything but unprecedented. From the French Revolution, to the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik Revolution and through all the horrors of 20th Century Communism, the Left has proven that when it is unchecked, it will drive at full speed straight off the cliff of civilized norms of behavior into totalitarian systems of guillotines, Gulags, forced starvations, and killing fields.”

Matt is right…we are there.

©Kelleigh Nelson. All rights reserved.

Young, Healthy and Woke Jumping the Line for China Virus Vaccine

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I’m not picking on Stacey Griffith per se, because you know there are others like her who have been so freaked out by Dr. Fauci (and Chairman Joe) that they are willing to push grannies out of the way in order to get an experimental vaccine.

It really is amazing how powerful herd mentality can be.

Snagging the vaccine appears to be the new craze for the Lefties.

President Trump was criticized for trying to keep Americans calm about the pandemic, but now the Fauci (Biden) frenzy is unleashed and has gone into high gear.

From Yahoo Life:

SoulCycle instructor apologizes for getting COVID-19 vaccine, which sparked backlash

A star instructor for the trendy cycling workout brand is backpedaling after being criticized for getting the COVID-19 vaccine under the pretense of being a teacher.

On Friday, Stacey Griffith — a top fitness coach in New York City who, according to a recent Vox report, makes at least $800 per class — shared footage from her trip to Staten Island to get the Moderna vaccine.

“Now I can teach @SoulCycle with a little more faith that we’re all gonna be OK if we get the [vaccine],” Griffith, whose celebrity clients have included Kelly Ripa and Madonna, told her 64,000 followers on Instagram.

It didn’t take long for many of those followers to chide the 52-year-old author of Two Turns from Zero for bypassing elderly and high-risk individuals who have yet to be vaccinated.

“Let’s celebrate that we are making the world safe for in-person spin class in the midst of a global pandemic,” read one comment, from a woman who shared that she and her wife, a cancer patient, were still months away from being eligible for their own shots. “What’s left of any respect that I had for Soul and the leaders it celebrates is done and gone.”

There is more if you feel like reading it.

UK Daily Mail had a lot of fun with the story yesterday.  See here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Psychologist Explains the Unhealthy Incentives Behind ‘Cancel Culture’

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If there was a video documenting every second of my life, you can bet it would contain some pretty stupid comments I’ve made over the years. I would also probably be reminded of some opinions I no longer believe. If you’re being honest with yourself, yours likely would be equally cringe.

The things we have said in the past may not have been outrageously offensive, but we have all made comments, or held opinions, we later regret. We are, after all, inherently flawed creatures.

But imagine if one instance of poor judgment or one “fringe” opinion stuck with you forever. This is the problem our society is now facing with the prevalence of cancel culture.

In 2016, then-high school freshman Mimi Groves posted a video to Snapchat in which she used a racial slur. The video later circulated around her school, though it wasn’t met with controversy at the time.

Fellow classmate Jimmy Galligan hadn’t seen the footage until last year when the two were seniors—four years after it first made the rounds at Heritage High School. By this time, Groves had moved on to focus on her role as varsity cheer captain with big dreams of attending the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a school known for its nationally ranked cheer squad.

For Groves, summer 2020 had been a time of celebration as she found out she had been accepted to the university’s cheer team. But her joy was short-lived when the death of George Floyd rightly outraged the nation, sparking a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Like many teens, Groves used her social media platforms to urge people to protest, donate, and sign petitions in support of ending police brutality. It was then that her unfortunate video came back to haunt her.

“You have the audacity to post this, after saying the N-word,” one commenter, unknown to the teen, posted on her Instagram.

That’s when her phone began ringing nonstop.

Galligan had held onto the video made four years earlier and had chosen to celebrate Groves’ admission to UT by blasting the footage to every major social media platform.

As the video began going viral, public outrage ensued, calling for the university to rescind her acceptance.

Capitulating to the mob, UT removed her from their cheer team, a decision that resulted in Groves withdrawing from the school because of what she perceived as pressure from the school’s admissions office.

Make no mistake, making racial slurs of any kind is demeaning and inappropriate behavior. But is one comment made four years prior enough to ruin the future of a teen who hadn’t even entered adulthood yet?

The court of public opinion said yes, without giving Groves any chance at redemption.

Why People ‘Cancel’

Groves’ story is just one of many.

Cancel culture has become more widespread over the last several years than anyone could have imagined. When I penned this article on the topic two years ago, I had no idea the problem would escalate to the level it has reached today.

But cancel culture isn’t reserved only for those who have made distasteful comments in the past.

Today, those espousing any opinion that goes against “woke” rhetoric are ridiculed online, fired from their jobs, and some are banned from using popular social media platforms altogether.

One University of North Carolina Wilmington professor, Mike Adams, even took his own life after tweets construed as offensive pushed him into early retirement after years of service to the institution.

Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, has been an outspoken critic of the cancel culture phenomenon for some time.

“Part of a call-out culture is you get credit based on what someone else said if you ‘call it out,'” he said in a 2018 interview.

This virtue signaling, which is really just a means of proving to society how “good” and “moral” your views are, is only half of the equation, however. Cancel culture is also about personal destruction, which is obvious in Groves’ situation, since Galligan didn’t use this ammunition against her until the time was ripe for maximum harm.

“It(cancel culture) has reached a level of personal vindictiveness, where people go out of their way to find ways the things other people say could be construed as insensitive,” Haidt said.

Slurs and inappropriate comments aside, cancel culture has made people scared to share their opinions lest they be condemned for thinking “incorrectly” about any given issue.

We now live in an era where people are constantly looking over their shoulders, or computer screens, worried that whatever opinion they post might make them victims of cancel culture.

There is no opportunity to change one’s mind, nor is there room to defend opinions you genuinely believe. And this is a huge problem for any civil society.

Haidt spoke of the importance of protecting open dialogue so that we may live in a society filled with varying opinions from which to choose.

“One of the most important [aspects] is that people are not afraid to share their opinions – they’re not afraid that they’re going to be shamed socially for disagreeing with the dominant opinion,” Haidt said.

The odds are high that your opinions about certain issues will change over time. However, some may not, and you shouldn’t live in fear that your beliefs will be met with social condemnation and isolation.

We are no longer given the room to share our opinions today because we are no longer able to disagree with each other respectfully.

You’re not always going to agree with everything other people say — not your professors, your classmates, or your parents. In fact, you might even find that your own views change as you learn new things and grow as a person and adult.

But having the freedom to consider all opinions and decide what you genuinely believe is vital to the human experience and civil discourse.

There is a market of choice in all things, from what clothes you wear, products you buy, and what ideas you subscribe to.

When you go shopping, you might not like the first outfit you try. You might not even like the second or third. But trying on different looks, or opinions, allows you to think for yourself and figure out what it is you want, or believe.

To be truly open-minded, you must be able to consider all opinions, instead of condemning any thought contrary to your own. The free exchange of ideas pushes individuals to share unique ideas and allows for opinions to evolve.

Dissent is what makes democracy strong. Our Constitution has outlasted so many others because the Founders disagreed and debated with each other until they crafted a document that fostered “a more perfect union” than had ever been seen before. We would be wise not to forget the example they set.

Put simply, shaming others doesn’t work. It’s purely punitive, and self-aggrandizing. It also rarely changes a person’s mind and often further radicalizes their beliefs, widening the divide already growing in our country.

To foster a world where ideas can be freely expressed, Pacific Legal Foundation will be hosting an event this Friday featuring Haidt that will examine the many ways free speech serves as a central tenet of innovation, community, and civil society, and how we can preserve and protect this fundamental value that makes our society so extraordinary.

Without the ability to speak freely and consider all opinions, civil discourse cannot occur. In its absence, society as we know it will cease to exist and the divides between us will continue to grow.

COLUMN BY

Brittany Hunter

Brittany is a writer for the Pacific Legal Foundation. She is a co-host of “The Way The World Works,” a Tuttle Twins podcast for families.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Illegitimate ‘President’ Biden to STOP oil and gas sales on public lands

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EVERY action of the fraudulent administration is hostile to Americans.

Biden issues 60 day moratorium on federal land drilling – despite saying he would NEVER ban fracking – after killing thousands of jobs by canceling the $9BN Keystone XL pipeline

  • The Biden administration is expected to announce a temporary suspension of new oil and gas leasing on U.S. federal lands and waters on Wednesday
  • President Joe Biden will make the announcement as part of a second batch of executive orders aimed at combating climate change
  • The policy is an abrupt about-face from his predecessor Donald Trump who sought to maximize the country’s oil, gas and coal output
  • Biden had vowed to ban new federal oil and gas drilling during his campaign for the White House
  • The orders will impact large swathes of acreage onshore in mostly Western states, as well as offshore drilling acreage located mainly in the Gulf of Mexico
  • It could lead to the loss of 2.8 million jobs directly linked to the industries

By Associated Press and James Gordon For Dailymail.com, 26 January 2021

President Joe Biden is set to announce a wide-ranging moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on U.S. lands and waters, as his administration moves quickly to reverse Trump administration policies on energy and the environment and address climate change – but it will also lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

Two people with knowledge of Biden´s plans outlined the proposed moratorium, which will be announced Wednesday. They asked not to be identified because the plan has not been made been public; some details remain in flux.

The move follows a 60-day suspension of new drilling permits for U.S. lands and waters announced last week and follows Biden´s campaign pledge to halt new drilling on federally controlled land and water as part of his plan to address climate change.

The Biden administration is expected to announce a temporary suspension of new oil and gas leasing on U.S. federal lands and waters on Wednesday

The moratorium is intended to allow time for officials to review the impact of oil and gas drilling on the environment and climate.

Environmental groups hailed the expected moratorium as the kind of urgent action needed to slow climate change.

‘The fossil fuel industry has inflicted tremendous damage on the planet. The administration´s review, if done correctly, will show that filthy fracking and drilling must end for good, everywhere,’ said Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has pushed for the drilling pause.

Oil industry groups, however, slammed the move, saying Biden had already eliminated thousands of oil and gas jobs by killing the Keystone XL oil pipeline on his first day in office.

President Joe Biden will make the announcement as part of a second batch of executive orders aimed at combating climate change

‘This is just the start. It will get worse,’ said Brook Simmons, president of the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma. ‘Meanwhile, the laws of physics, chemistry and supply and demand remain in effect. Oil and natural gas prices are going up, and so will home heating bills, consumer prices and fuel costs.’

‘In the first couple of days of the new administration, they are taking actions that will harm the economy and cost Americans their jobs,’ said Frank Macchiarola, a senior vice president of policy for the American Petroleum Institute. ‘We’re concerned, and everyone in the country should be concerned.’

A 2017 report produced by the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade and lobbying association, suggests nearly 2.8 million jobs are directly linked to fossil fuels with a further 5.3 million in sectors sustained by the spending of oil and gas companies.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Facebook, Twitter, Google et al have shadowbanned, suspended and in some cases deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here— it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever.

Biden Admin To INCREASE Drug Prices – Reversing Trump Policy Designed To Lower Insulin Prices

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President Trump’s policies continue to reveal what destroyers and enemies of the people the Democrats are.

President Biden has been reversing or pausing some rules put in place under former President Donald Trump this week, including one designed to bring down the price of insulin.

Biden admin freezes Trump HHS rule meant to lower insulin prices

The rule has been put on hold for 60 days pending review

By Brittany De Lea | Fox News January 23, 2020:

Is Biden’s rush to reverse Trump policies in nation’s best interest?

FOX News Washington correspondent Rich Edson details the foreign policy concerns on ‘Special Report’

President Biden has been reversing or pausing some rules put in place under former President Donald Trump this week, including one designed to bring down the price of insulin.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced that the directive would be put on hold among a number of other measures that were passed under Trump, but are not yet in effect.

The measure, signed off on in December, aimed to require some community health centers to deliver savings to low-income patients for insulin and epinephrine in a bid to bring down unaffordable prices.

The rule was scheduled to go into effect on Friday but has since been delayed until March 22.

On Wednesday, White House chief of staff Ron Klain directed agencies to pause orders signed towards the end of Trump’s term so they could be reviewed.

The order directs the administration to immediately withdraw rules that have been sent to the Office of Financial Research but not yet published in the Federal Register. For those that have been published, but are not yet effective, members are directed to “consider postponing the rules’ effective dates for 60 days.”

EDIOTRS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Facebook, Twitter, Google et al have shadowbanned, suspended and in some cases deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here— it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever.

VIDEO: Biden Breaks His Own Mask Mandate

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Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Mary Margaret Olohan joined the Daily Caller’s Caity McDuffee to discuss President Biden breaking his own mask mandate at a COVID-19 memorial ceremony.

“On Wednesday when Biden was inaugurated one of his first actions was to sign an executive order mandating masks on federal land,” Olohan continued.

“When Biden gave a speech at the Lincoln Memorial he was seen not wearing a mask while he was giving a speech,” she said.

Olohan also discussed whether or not former President Trump will get any credit from the Biden administration for his COVID-19 response.

“I don’t think he’ll get very much credit at least not from the Biden administration. I mean you see, I believe yesterday, Biden already said that they had to start from scratch with the vaccine rollout, which is just absolutely false, and even CNN fact checked him on that,” she said.

Watch the full video to find Olohan’s full perspective on lawmakers breaking their own COVID-19 rules.

WATCH:

COLUMN BY

CAITLYN MCDUFFEE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ACTION: Sign The Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights — Stop the replacement of Sex with Gender Identity

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Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights is a new website launched to protect every woman’s sex-based rights. The Declaration website states:

The Declaration re-affirms women and girls’ sex-based rights, and challenges the discrimination we experience from the replacement of the category of sex with that of ‘gender identity.’

SIGN THE DECLARACTION ON WOMEN’S SEX-BASED RIGHTS

About the Women’s Human Rights Campaign:

Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC) is a group of volunteer women from across the globe dedicated to protecting women’s sex-based rights. Our volunteers include academics, writers, organizers, activists, and health practitioners, and aim to represent the total breadth of the human female experience.

The Declaration on Women’s Sex Based Rights was created by the founders of WHRC to lobby nations to maintain language protecting women and girls on the basis of sex rather than “gender” or “gender identity”. Read our FAQ here.

We are a female-only group, and men are invited to support the cause by donating at our GoFundMe page here or directly through our bank account using the details below. We can accept donations in UK pounds sterling, Euros or US/Australian/New Zealand dollars – please read our How to Donate guide here.

WHRC has published its first set of accounts after one year of trading. Click here to download.

The Declaration reads:

Declaration on Women’s Sex Based Rights

On the re-affirmation of women’s sex-based rights, including women’s rights to physical and reproductive integrity, and the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls that result from the replacement of the category of sex with that of ‘gender identity’, and from ‘surrogate’ motherhood and related practices.

Introduction

This Declaration reaffirms the sex-based rights of women which are set out in the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 18 December 1979 (CEDAW), further developed in the CEDAW Committee General Recommendations, and adopted, inter alia, in the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women 1993 (UNDEVW).

Article 1 of the CEDAW defines discrimination against women to mean,

“any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or  exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.’’

Read the entire declaration by clicking here.

©Dr. Rich Swier.com and Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. All rights reserved.

How Missouri became the first abortion-free state in the U.S.

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Grassroots action over decades has borne fruit.

Although the pro-life movement has faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision illegalizing abortion in the U.S., the movement continues to make legal and cultural gains.

This is one of the latest.

In July 2019, I wrote the blog “The Last Planned Parenthood Clinic in Missouri Again Evades Closure” about how the lone Planned Parenthood clinic in my home state of Missouri received multiple court-ordered reprieves from closure after the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) decided not to renew the facility’s license because of dozens of serious health and safety violations.

Public records showed numerous problems at the clinic, including unreported failed abortions, life threatening complications, an illegal abortion at 21 weeks, insufficient supervision of medical residents (students) performing abortions, and inaccurate medical records, among the many other violations.

Yet the St. Louis abortion clinic continued to get court-ordered reprieves.

But this month, Operation Rescue confirmed that now no abortions have been performed there for months.  Instead, all abortion appointments are now being referred to the Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood facility across the Mississippi River in Illinois.

How could this happen?

While Missouri has long been a strongly pro-life state with legislation like the 2019 “Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act” and many active pro-life organisations, Defenders of the Unborn president Mary Maschmeier, who has led a peaceful, prayerful and life-saving ministry outside the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic for many years, wrote an email also giving credit to the:

“ordinary citizens who would not take no for an answer. Who persevered day after day, year after year, decade after decade. Ever present on the front lines. In the streets. In the halls of our state legislature. Sidewalk counseling. Prayer warriors… Manning pregnancy aid centers. Staffing ultrasound vans. Rain, snow, heat, cold — ever vigilant.”

Mary also wrote,

“We will not stop until the that unjust practice is banished from our land and encourage our fellow citizens to end abortion in their respective states.”

Conclusion

In 1989, I had just started working as an RN on an oncology (cancer) unit when we discovered that one of our patients had CMV (Cytomegalovirus).

One of our nurses was pregnant and tested positive for the virus. Her doctor told her how her baby could die or have terrible birth defects from the virus, and he recommended an abortion.

“Sue” (not her real name) was frantic. She had two little girls and worked full-time. She said she didn’t know how she could manage a child with serious birth defects.

I told her that it was usually impossible to know if or how much a baby might be impaired before birth. I also told her about my Karen who was born with Down Syndrome and a critical heart defect and died at 5 months. I told her that I treasured the time I had with her and later babysat children with a range of physical and mental difficulties. Most importantly, I also told her that I would be there to help her and her baby.

“Sue” decided against abortion and told the other nurses what I said.

The other nurses were furious with me and said if the baby was born with so much as an extra toe, they would never talk to me again.

But slowly, the other nurses came around and also offered to help Sue and her baby.

In the end, we all celebrated when Sue had her first son, who was perfectly healthy!

My point is that what many people don’t understand is that pro-life doesn’t mean just being against abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. What being pro-life really means is truly caring about all lives, born or unborn.

The article has been republished with permission from Nancy Valko’s blog.

COLUMN BY

Nancy Valko

I have been a registered nurse since 1969 and currently I am a spokesperson for the National Association of Prolife Nurses (www.nursesforlife.org). I have also been a past President of Missouri Nurses… More by Nancy Valko.

RELATED ARTICLE: UK transgender treatment centre urged to speed up its controversial service

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Here are the states with the lowest levels of marijuana use among kids 12-17 years old

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Last week, we reported that 3.2 million 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana in the past year, according to the new 2018-2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Of those, 39 percent live in the 15 recreational legalization states and the District of Columbia, while 61 percent live in the other 35 states.

We got curious about which states had the lowest levels of past-year marijuana use among kids. These states have one-fourth (26 percent) of young past-year marijuana users, while the uncolored states have three-fourths (61 percent) of them.

Curious about how many kids in your state used marijuana in the past year? Here’s how to find out. See Table C.10, which tells you the Population Estimate for the number of 12- to 17-year-olds who live in your state here.

Multiply that number by the percent of 12- to 17-year-olds in your state who used marijuana in the past year. You can find that number in Table 2 here.

DRUGGED DRIVING

Colorado drugged driving data

The DUID (Driving Under the Influence of Drugs) Victim Voices website has compiled and posted data from Colorado state agencies about the problem of DUID. Here are a few highlights:

  • 18.6 percent of past-month adult marijuana users admit to driving after marijuana use. The percent of high school marijuana users who admit this is an astonishing 54.4 percent.
  • Toxicology tests of those arrested for DUI show 4,205 positive screens for cannabinoids. Of those, 4,069 were positive for THC. Positive screens for alcohol were 3,956.
  • Yet 2018 DUI charges in the state were 75.3 percent for alcohol, 6.4 percent for THC.

For more Colorado DUID data, visit the website here.

More than half of people using cannabis for pain experience multiple withdrawal symptoms

Lara N. Coughlin and colleagues from the University of Michigan Addiction Center find that more than half of medical marijuana patients who take the drug to ease pain experience mild to severe withdrawal symptoms when they are between uses.

Marijuana withdrawal symptoms include craving for the drug, as well as “anxiety, sleep difficulties, decreased appetite, restlessness, depressed mood, aggression, irritability, nausea, sweating, headache, stomach pain, strange dreams, increased anger, and shakiness.”

The researchers surveyed 527 Michigan residents seeking medical marijuana for noncancer pain three times, once to establish a baseline and then one year and two years after patients’ initial survey. While more than half of patients experienced withdrawal symptoms, about 10 percent experienced worsening symptoms over time, making them vulnerable to developing a cannabis use disorder.

Read University of Michigan account of this study here.

Read Addiction abstract here.

Better data for a better understanding of the use and safety profile of cannabidiol (CBD) products

FDA Administrator Stephen M. Hahn, MD, issued an explanatory statement regarding the agency’s pursuit of a better understanding of the potential positive and negative effects of CBD. The statement describes the challenges involved in collecting and evaluating CBD data and points to a “framework for the FDA’s development of research projects that can leverage novel data sources and can form the foundation for additional research on the safety profile of CBD products.”
Read Dr. Hahn’s FDA statement here.

SAFETY

Colorado issues a health and safety warning about contaminated marijuana
The Colorado Department of Revenue and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued a warning last Friday about unsafe levels of yeast and mold found in marijuana produced by Carrick-Harvest, LLC. The company does business as Veritas Fine Cannabis. The yeast and mold levels are above acceptable limits established by the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division. The warning lists batch numbers so that those who bought these items can return them to the dispensaries from which they bought them.

Read the state’s Health and Safety Advisory here.

Lack of standards, dubious business practices threaten to upend cannabis testing industry
Unethical business practices are undermining public confidence in marijuana products. Some producers “lab shop” to find a testing facility that will give them results they want to see in terms of THC levels (high) and contaminants (none). Others adulterate their products with spray-on marijuana oil or THC crystals to indicate a higher THC presence than exists.

Washington state regulators suspended the license of Praxis Laboratory for allegedly falsifying testing data on more than 1,200 samples by supplying higher THC levels than tests found.

One lab owner explains that it just takes time for a new industry to develop standards. “Give it another five to 15 years,” she says.

Read Marijuana Business Daily article here.

VAPING

Kids who vape are four times more likely to become cigarette smokers later in life

Researcher Olusegun Owotomo and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin analyzed data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study. They find that e-cigarette use is associated with increased odds of cigarette smoking among teenagers who had no previous intention to smoke. A 5-minute video by the lead researcher nicely explains the study and its findings.

Read full text of Pediatrics article and access the video here.

Chemicals in e-cigarettes disrupt the gut barrier and trigger inflammation

Aditi Sharma and colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in La Jolla, and Assiut University in Egypt find that chemicals in e-cigarettes disrupt the gut barrier and trigger inflammation.

They say chronic use of e-cigarettes “led to a ‘leaky gut,’ in which microbes and other molecules seep out of the intestines, resulting in chronic inflammation. Such inflammation can contribute to a variety of diseases and conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, dementia, certain cancers, atherosclerosis, liver fibrosis, diabetes, and arthritis.”

Read UCSD’s description of this complex study here.

Read full text of the study published in iScience here.

SHORT TAKES

California governor’s proposed 2021 budget includes funds to consolidate three state marijuana regulatory agencies into one.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s new budget contains funding to collapse the three state agencies that regulate legal recreational marijuana into one agency. Is it the State Department of Public Health? Sadly, no. Proposed is $153.8 million to create a Department of Cannabis Control within the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency. In other words, an agency to serve the needs of the commercial marijuana industry rather than the public’s health and well being.

Read last entry in the California Department of Food and Agriculture bulletin here.

Congress commands CDC, NIDA to study “the potential health impact of safe consumption sites.”
A bill tied to the stimulus package passed by Congress in December includes language that directs the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute on Drug Abuse to provide Congress with “an updated literature review and evaluation of the potential public-health impact of Overdose Prevention Centers in the US” by the end of June 2021.

“Safe consumption sites” provide medically pure addictive drugs and a place where addicts can consume them with medical personnel in-house to prevent or reverse overdose. There are none yet  in the US, although harm reduction advocates and the Drug Policy Alliance, which appears to be responsible for getting the language calling for a literature review into the stimulus bill, have been trying to establish one in Philadelphia.

Read Filter article here.

Head of SAMHSA resigns after attack on US Capitol

Elinore F. McCance-Katz, MD, PhD, resigned as the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use and director of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

She says she saw the violent takeover of the Capitol building. “I believe that this behavior was totally unacceptable and, in my own heart, I simply am not able to continue.”

She will be missed.

Read her resignation letter here.

EDITORS NOTE: This National Families in Action report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Lockdowns: An Abortion Argument

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David G. Bonagura, Jr.: COVID restrictions have exposed the privacy/liberty “right” to abort as what’s it always been: an arbitrary government edict.

The irony is sickening. For decades we have heard the shrieks in defense of abortion and birth control: “Keep the government out of my uterus!” “My body, my choice!” “No woman can call herself free,” said Margaret Sanger, “who does not control her own body.”

Democratic politicians have long supported abortion with this line of reasoning. Most recently, in signing the Reproductive Health Act into law in 2019, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that “women in New York will always have the fundamental right to control their own body.” Out West, seeking codification of Roe v. Wade into the laws of California, Oregon, and Washington, Governors Newsom, Brown, and Inslee, in a joint letter, defined “reproductive choice” as “the right to make private decisions about one’s body,” and asserted that to intrude upon that choice “is a fundamental violation of individual liberty and freedom.”

Flash forward to 2020. These same governors have imposed the most restrictive measures in the nation to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Suddenly, the right to control one’s own body is no longer sacrosanct; individual liberty, touted so righteously just a year earlier, must now be curbed. These governors, along with others, have ordered their citizens to mask their faces, to limit the number of people in their homes, not to worship God in churches, not to exercise their bodies in gyms. In short, they have swiftly and systematically deprived their citizens of the very same “fundamental right to control their own bod[ies]” that they celebrate under another banner.

How far will this encroachment go? In New York, the governor decreed that food must be served in order to purchase alcohol. When one bar started offering “Cuomo Chips” as the plat du jour, the governor countered by mandating that “a substantial amount of food” must go into one’s body to drink alcohol.

Then, in October, New York released its “Mirco-Cluster Strategy” that sets thresholds at which schools must issue mandatory COVID tests to students. In essence, the government is forcing school personnel to poke into the bodies of minors, without their parents’ present. If parents object to testing their kids, the students are barred from attending school.

How can these “champions” of the right to control one’s body justify their blatant hypocrisy?

“COVID is a different matter,” they would surely say in reply. “We are protecting public health. With these measures we are saving lives.”

So we ask: in order to be consistent, shouldn’t the government ban abortion, if saving lives is so important?

We would then hear a sermon asserting women’s right to privacy, since abortion supporters must quickly shift the conversation away from the humanity of the child in utero. Advocating killing is seldom a winning argument. So they change the topic, masking abortion’s grim reality with the rhetoric of freedom, choice, and privacy.

Which returns the governors to their dilemma: How can the choice to have an abortion be protected under the penumbras of privacy but the choice of who comes over for Thanksgiving and Christmas be restricted for reasons of public health?

The governors, though, have lined up for yet another merry-go round ride. “If we don’t act now we’ll continue to see our death rate climb,” said Governor Newsom. Preventing the death of children in utero, it seems by extension, is not state interest. The message is clear: a government purportedly so concerned with saving lives has decided that only some lives are worth saving.

The severity and swiftness with which these governors have imposed COVID restrictions expose just how specious the abortion argument is. Its legality hinges entirely on an act of raw government power. We knew this in the past, but now, thanks to COVID, we feel it on our faces and up our noses. The government cannot with a straight face say that women can control their bodies when it comes to abortion, but not when it comes to going to school.

Abortion has never been about privacy or liberty. Unlike COVID prescriptions, outlawing abortion requires no intrusion into women’s lives or bodies, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary. In fact, abortion prevents the normal and healthy process of pregnancy from continuing – an odd choice when we are told that health is the government’s top priority. In fact, abortion is about ensuring that the sexual revolution has no consequences, and for this the government has declared it a compelling state interest.

To assert a “right to control one’s body” where it does not exist, as Roe did in legalizing abortion, is a lie. To continue to defend abortion on these same grounds while intruding into private homes and into the bodies of citizens to stop the pandemic transforms a lie into hypocrisy. “But COVID is different!” – is no defense at all. If the government wants to suspend livelihoods and poke into bodies to protect life, it has no choice but to protect all life, from womb to tomb.

The discussion now has to shift back to the humanity of the child in utero, where the governors and abortion supporters do not want to go. The “right to control one’s body” on the grounds of privacy and personal liberty argument has been exposed as an arbitrary government edict. We can then turn to science, which the governors claim to honor, but regularly flout, to finish the discussion, since science shows that a new human life begins at conception and is, therefore, unequivocally on the pro-life side.

COLUMN BY

David G Bonagura, Jr.

David G. Bonagura Jr. teaches at St. Joseph’s Seminary, New York. He is the author of Steadfast in Faith: Catholicism and the Challenges of Secularism (Cluny Media).

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

VIDEO: Bill Gates Carbon Hypocrisy

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Bill Gates wants you to pare down your over-the-top lifestyle.

How about we all agree to not let our “carbon footprints” exceed his.

CFACT’s Marc Morano exposed Gates’s hypocrisy on Fox and Friends:

“Bill Gates was listed in 2019 as the number one carbon footprint of all the celebrities. He beat Al Gore, Jennifer Lopez. He beat Bernie Sanders and a bunch of others [including] Harrison Ford. He came out number one, Bill Gates. He has a new book coming out about the climate crisis; what we can all do. He spoke to the World Economic Forum and claimed we have to change every aspect of our lives to fight global warming but Bill Gates is not willing to do it. The last estimate in 2010 he paid $30,000 a month in his electricity bill at his home. Since he…recently bought a 43 million-dollar oceanfront property, [he’s] not very worried about sea-level rise apparently.”

Marc reports that Gates and the rest of the climate elite want us to refrain from flying unless we can come up with a “morally justifiable” reason to do so.  Of course they expect their moral justification travel visas to be permanently stamped.

“Gates just said we need to continue lockdowns on bars, restaurants, small businesses. Meanwhile, the billionaire class is reaping benefits of lockdowns — his pals from Amazon, Walmart, all other big box stores. What is interesting [is that] climate activists are calling for flying only when it is ‘morally justifiable’ as the new normal post-pandemic. Bill Gates is in on that. He is saying, well business travel – he expects a 50% reduction. So now if you want to fly commercial, if you’re not Bill Gates or Leonardo DiCaprio or Al Gore, you need to come up with a ‘morally justifiable’ reason. This is what the climate activists are doing. Crushing the airline industry, by boosting private planes. They’re living one way for themselves and imposing…another set of austerity on the rest of us.”

Maybe Bill Gates and the rest of the carbon elite will shock us all someday and lead by example.

Don’t hold your (CO2-laden) breath.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The endgame of transgender ideology is to dismantle the family

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Nancy Pelosi and her fellow gender-inclusive enthusiasts have taken a bold and much-disparaged move to erase language that expresses the reality of familial relationships. In the name of inclusivity, words like “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, son-in-law, and daughter-in-law” have been targeted for erasure from House proceedings.

If pursued, this scrubbing of gendered words from public communications in concert with other trans-inclusive initiatives will prove seismic in its effect on society.

Pelosi and her associates are echoing the socialist-feminist ideology articulated by Shulamith Firestone in the 1970s: “It has become necessary to free humanity from the tyranny of its biology” and “eliminate the sex distinction itself [so that] genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.”

At its core, this means that male and female manifestations of the human body should no longer be legally recognized or culturally valued. We have been marching down this road for decades and are now approaching the endgame: a genderless society. The vilification of gendered language in public settings is a significant leap toward “freeing humanity from the tyranny of its biology” and undoing the significance of biological sex.

Mothers on the trash heap of history

Firestone made a stunning prediction. She jubilantly declared that when biology was subdued and “transsexuality” became the legal and cultural norm, “the blood tie of the mother to the child would eventually be severed” and the triumphal “disappearance of motherhood” would follow. And she was right. Legal movements surrounding transgenderism are setting the stage for the legal marginalization of mothers, fathers, and families by force of law.

Though Firestone’s astute prediction has been largely overlooked in the debate about transgenderism, the fact remains that when women legally disappear, so do mothers because “mother” is a sex-specific designation. The same goes for fathers. If there are not two specific, perceivable sexes that can be definitively recognized by law, then it becomes difficult to define or defend mothers and fathers—along with their parental rights—in legal terms. Therefore, the belonging of children to their parents is increasingly thrown into question and the family stands on trembling legal legs—which is precisely the point.

When parents’ ties to their children are obscured or weakened it creates an environment hospitable to government intervention and socialist-communist revolution. That is why Marx’s Communist Manifesto openly called for the “abolition of the family.” Dethroning the family creates a void that can and must be filled—though it is impossible to adequately fill it. If we are to avoid the destruction of the family and the domination of the state that necessarily follows, we must resist efforts to cancel biological sex.

Rejection of anatomy

The push for gender abolition seems to be accelerating. Last year a California state Senate committee attempted to ban the words “he” and “she” during committee hearings. The “rainbow voting agreement” in the Netherlands calls for “the registration of gender to be abolished wherever possible.” A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably the world’s most prestigious medical journal, asserted that sex demarcations on birth certificates should be reconsidered because “assigning sex at birth perpetuates a view that sex as defined by a binary variable is natural, essential, and immutable.”

It is becoming difficult to keep up with the myriad initiatives being rolled out to forcibly suppress biological sex distinctions.

The legal and social embracing of transgenderism encapsulates rejection of the human body as inherently manifested in two distinct and complementary forms. This rebellion against anatomy is not only tragic for individuals, who wage war against their own bodies, but it also undercuts the inherent, two-pronged voltage of male and female that propels, balances, and drives the world.

If it becomes legally inappropriate to recognize the two bodily sexes or to articulate how the interplay of those sexes forges and perpetuates the basic relationships by which we fundamentally define ourselves (mother, father, son, daughter) then the core of civilized society is in peril.

What started out masquerading as a celebration of gender turns out to be an edict for the elimination of the sex distinction itself, which in turn erodes the family—the essential cradle of humanity. If we are to salvage the family and civilization with it, we must protect and defend the “gendered language” that is now on the chopping block.

COLUMN BY

Kimberly Ells

Kimberly Ells is the author of, The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win, and is a policy advisor for Family Watch International where she works to… 

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Biden Estimated 250,000 COVID Deaths This Month. He Was Off By 178,000!

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GUESTS AND TOPICS:

JEFF CROUERE

Jeff Crouere is the host of, “Ringside Politics,” which airs weekdays on WGSO 990-AM in New Orleans. He is a political columnist, the author of America’s Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on www.JeffCrouere.com.

TOPIC: OH BROTHER, NANCY PELOSI IS INSANE!

GEORGE PARRY

George Parry is a Contributor to The American Spectator, The Federalist, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. George is a former federal and state prosecutor. George served as: Special Attorney for the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, U.S. Department of Justice ; Unit Chief, Investigations Division, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office ; Special Organized Crime Prosecutor, Blair and Cambria counties (central Pennsylvania) ; and a Legal Analyst for KYW-TV in Philadelphia.

TOPIC: Beware of the Thing That Is Coming!

TRISTAN JUSTICE

Tristan Justice is a staff writer at The Federalist focusing on the 2020 presidential campaigns. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism.

TOPIC: Biden Estimated 250,000 COVID Deaths This Month. He Was Off By 178,000!

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Why the Real Villain of 2020 Was Big Government

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COVID-19 was going to be bad, no matter what. But the failures of big government made it much, much worse.

The disaster that was 2020 is finally over. Now it’s time for the inevitable post-mortems.

First and foremost, the COVID-19 pandemic posed enormous challenges to American institutions, and continues to do so. Frankly, we were not prepared. We need to diagnose what went wrong, so that we are never caught unaware like this again. Fortunately, the diagnosis is straightforward. COVID-19 was going to be bad, no matter what. But the failures of big government made it much, much worse.

In particular, the Centers for Disease Control, Food and Drug Administration, and public teachers’ unions are the great American villains of 2020. Meanwhile, the heroes of this year are almost entirely in the private sector. From Zoom to vaccine development, Big Pharma and Big Tech—yes, you read that right—made this horrible year bearable. Even amid a crisis that led so many to cry out for vigorous government action, we saw that private markets still work best.

For progressives and so-called “national” conservatives who support big government, 2020 represented the ultimate test for their philosophies. Although they disagree on cultural issues, they see eye-to-eye on the role of government. Both want a big, energetic state promoting what (they believe to be) the good of the nation. Well, here was their chance for the government to shine.

The result was shameful failure. The COVID-19 crisis put left-wing and right-wing statism on trial—and both were found guilty of ill-intent and gross incompetence.

After all, the CDC is the reason America lagged behind other nations for so long in terms of COVID-19 testing. We had the virus genome fully mapped in January, which enabled the rapid production of private testing kits. But the CDC forced these operations to shut down, coming up with its own test—which was flawed, and even contaminated! Testing and tracing could have stemmed the worst of the COVID-19 tide.

On this issue alone, CDC ineptitude is likely responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Its red tape and incompetence made containing the COVID-19 pandemic, like a few other countries were able to, impossible.

How about the FDA?

It is no secret that the vaccine was delayed because it needed FDA approval. Indeed, several working vaccines could have come much earlier, were it not for our bungling bureaucrat gatekeepers. (Dear FDA: Can you please speed things up a little, so people do not, you know, die? It would make us ever so happy if you did. Thanks.)

As for schools, the data show that young people and children are at very low-risk from COVID-19, and that schools are not “super spreaders.” Despite this, largely due to pressure from public teachers’ unions, many schools remained closed in the fall. In fact, the US was pretty much the only country to pursue the alarmist policy of keeping schools closed.

The toll on school-aged children is immense, from psychological trauma to impeded learning. Low-income families were hit especially hard. They often lacked the means to participate in distance learning, and having their kids at home made it harder for parents to earn much-needed income.

Fortunately, there seems to be some well-deserved backlash against the crony public education establishment. Hopefully a mass exodus to more effective and accountable learning platforms will follow, whether that is charter schools, private schools, or homeschooling. Even more hopefully, parents will realize public education racketeers are not their friends. They should demand loud and clear: Fund students, not systems!

In stark contrast to these unacceptable failures by government agencies and employees, the private sector delivered.

Big Pharma and Big Tech are the winners here. Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and many other companies did amazing work getting the vaccines developed as quickly as they did. Public health “experts” repeatedly claimed a vaccine would not be available for 18 months, at the earliest. (Shows what they know!)

As for Big Tech, companies like Facebook and Twitter helped us stay connected while we were forced physically to remain apart. Amazon responded well to a huge surge in demand, stemming from the curtailment of in-person shopping. Faced with an immense logistical challenge, the online retailer surpassed expectations.

These sectors and their star performers are not perfect, of course.

In the past, Big Pharma lobbied for many of the regulatory roadblocks that made fighting COVID-19 so hard. Big Tech got egg on its face for covering up the Hunter Biden laptop story. Nevertheless, the takeaway is clear: 2020 would have been much, much more miserable without these supposedly evil big businesses in our corner. We owe them far more than we give them.

2021 is the perfect time to revisit our basic beliefs about the role of government and business in society. Both were unexpectedly challenged by the greatest public health crisis in recent memory.

Government failed. Business triumphed. Statism should be discredited, hopefully for an entire generation. Any coherent political philosophy for the 21st century must start from this basic truth.

COLUMN BY

Alexander William Salter

Alexander William Salter is an associate professor of economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University, the Comparative Economics Research Fellow at TTU’s Free Market Institute, and a senior fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research’s Sound Money Project. Follow him on Twitter @alexwsalter.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.