[Decider] Fox News host Greg Gutfeld likely won’t be appearing on The View any time soon — or ever. While speaking on a recent episode of Gutfeld!, the television personality took jabs at the intelligence of the women who host the long-running daytime talk show.
It all started when Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin were chatting on Friday’s (July 14) episode of The View about the mystery cocaine found in the White House — and the Secret Service’s decision to call off the search for who might have left it there.
Republicans accused President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, of leaving the drugs. While he’s known to have struggled with addiction, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it’s "irresponsible" to ask if the drugs belonged to the Bidens. In response to Republicans continuing the narrative, Navarro claimed that the right is "weaponizing" Hunter against his father.
"It has nothing to do with Hunter Biden but you can hear that said 100 times and people who want to believe it, are still going to believe that," she said at the time. "And there’s people who might believe that it was planted for somebody so that they could advance the Hunter Biden narrative."
[ZH] The Dossier has acquired a new Department of Defense (DOD) memo that goes into great detail on the topic of "care of service members who identify as transgender."
The document, which is not classified but has long remained unavailable to Americans, is being published here for the first time for public consumption.
The 34 page memo details the enormous perks granted to service members who identify as transgender.
At the beginning of his tenure, President Biden ended President Trump’s ban on people who identify as transgender serving in the military. Since then, the Biden Administration has granted more and more benefits to this cohort, leading to dudes like this being celebrated by the Defense Department.
Anyway, here’s some of the "highlights" found within the document:
Taxpayer funded "care" for transgender service members includes:
speech/voice therapy
cross-sex hormones,
laser hair removal,
voice feminization surgery,
facialcontouring,
body contouring,
breast/chest surgery ("upper surgery")
genital mutilation surgery ("lower surgery").
Psychological counseling
Service members who identify as transgender may receive a waiver for grooming and uniform standards.
Service members who identify as transgender may receive an indefinite waiver for physical fitness standards. This waiver often becomes a de facto permanent situation, and the transgender identifying service member just has to renew the exemption request every six months.
Service members who identify as transgender will be considered "non-deployable" for up to 300 days while taking hormones for their "transition" period. Again, given that these hormones are often required for life, this may render the transgender identifying service member as permanently unable to deploy.
The United States military is facing its worst recruiting environment since 1973, when the conscription era ended and the current all-volunteer force was formed. As the Defense Department memo makes clear, the U.S. military in 2023 represents more of a social welfare and social justice program than an entity purposed with defeating an aggressing army.
View the memo below:
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/20/2023 00:00 ||
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#1
As plain in my face as the rising sun, I cannot understand this. Neither the drive, nor the acceptance and support.
#3
I've photographed bison in Wyoming and the Dakotas many times over the years. They're big and often times ornery, especially when calves are around or you approach them too closely (if you stand still and they amble by, it seems less threatening to them). She apparently came upon the two 'Bachelor Bulls' during their dust bath (they are vulnerable to predators while rolling on their backs) and approached them.
Her narrative in the article regarding their interaction with the bison prior to it getting angry at her I believe is 'incomplete'. My thought is that they approached a lot closer than '50 yards' (the Park's recommendation for all animals).
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
07/20/2023 8:19 Comments ||
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A tornado swept through the town of Rocky Mount, 60 miles east of Raleigh, NC, on Wednesday
A Pfizer factory which stores large quantities of medicines was hit: 50,000 pallets of goods were strewn across the site, damaged by rain and wind
Shocking aerial footage showed the roof of the Pfizer site crumpled and twisted like a discarded tissue
Pfizer said the 250 acre site, with 1.4 million square feet of manufacturing space, 'is one of the largest sterile injectable facilities in the world'.
Nearly 25 percent of all sterile injectables used in U.S. hospitals are produced at the site, and 400 million units leave the site annually.
It also produces vials, syringes, IV bags and bottles of anesthesia, analgesia, therapeutics, anti-infectives and neuromuscular blockers.
'We are assessing the situation to determine the impact on production,' the company said.
[Garowe] The endless wrangles in Las Anod town in northern Somalia escalated on Tuesday, multiple sources confirmed, with the Somaliland army and the SSC-Khatumo forces exchanging gunfire, even in the middle of the calls for both parties to embrace ceasefire.
According to officials, artilleries were fired in the troubled town presumably by the Somaliland army, triggering a fight back by SSC-Khatumo, who are fighting to be governed from Mogadishu instead of Hargeisa, the regional administrative capital of Somaliland.
Further reports show that as many as 20 people may have died in Tuesday's battle, with the majority believed to be members of the Somaliland army. Locals have been pushing for the withdrawal of the Somaliland army, but regional leader Muse Bihi Abdi is yet to sanction such a move.
A few days ago, the World Health Organization [WHO] confirmed an attack on a local facility, insisting that mortar shells were fired at a nearby health facility, leading to the death of healthcare workers and serious injuries to others. The fighting, WHO added, destroyed two ambulances.
But in a rejoinder, Somaliland regional administration vowed to safeguard the lives of locals, infrastructure, and hospitals but accused SSC-Khatumo of engaging in criminal activities. In addition, the government has been linking Puntland ...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion... and the federal government of Somalia to the current situation.
However, Switzerland makes more than cheese... in separate statements, the Puntland administration and Mogadishu denied involvement in the conflict, calling for peaceful resolutions. But Said Abdullahi Deni, the regional leader of Puntland, vowed to chip in and protect lives in Las Anod if Somaliland "fails to protect civilians".
Statistics indicate that over 300 people have died in the conflict which intensified in January this year, with over 200,000 getting displaced from their respective homes. The federal government of Somalia has persistently called for a truce between the warring parties, adding that mediation should be embraced to solve the conflict.
[AFRICANEWS] A mass is held at Notre-Dame du Congo Cathedral in Kinshasa to honor opposition politician Cherubin Okende, found dead in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... . Several people, including a bodyguard and a driver, are being questioned in the former transport minister's death.
-THE INVESTIGATION-
The bodyguard of an opposition politician found dead in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is among several people being questioned by Sherlocks, the Kinshasa prosecutor's office said Wednesday.
The body of Cherubin Okende, 61, a former transport minister, was found bullet-riddled in his car on July 13 on a road in Kinshasa after disappearing while heading to an appointment at the constitutional court.
Attorney general Firmin Mvonde told a press briefing that his bodyguard, who was detained the same day, has since "made many statements... that are not consistent".
Okende's driver, along with "other people", are also being questioned.
An autopsy has yet to be performed, Mvonde said, adding that Congolese and foreign experts are working together to ensure "consolidated results".
The cause of death has not yet been confirmed.
Okende was a member of the party of Moise Katumbi, a leading opposition politician who is set to contest the presidential election in the central African nation in December.
He resigned as minister as Katumbi announced his presidential bid and withdrew his Ensemble pour la Republique party from the ruling coalition.
President Felix Tshisekedi, who came to office in January 2019, is also due to stand for re-election.
Several of the leading opposition figures, including Katumbi, have insisted the nation's electoral authority is planning a fraudulent poll.
Congolese soldiers arrested one of Katumbi's advisers, Salomon Kalonda, in late May, accusing him of illegal possession of a firearm and of plotting to overthrow the government.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2023 11:08:33 PM ||
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[Bus Insider] MI6, Britain's intelligence agency, is channeling more resources to China than anywhere else in the world, its chief says.
"We now devote more resources to China than any other mission. That reflects China's importance in the world and the crucial need to understand both the intent and capability of the Chinese government," MI6 chief Richard Moore told Politico's Anne McElvoy in an interview in Prague on Wednesday.
Moore, officially codenamed "C," made these remarks to Politico after delivering his second public speech as MI6 chief at the British embassy in Prague. Moore also shared his take on the Russia-Ukraine war during his address, and openly appealed to Russians who are "silently appalled" by the war to spy for the West.
This is not the first time Moore has sounded the alarm on China's rise as an intelligence threat. During his first public speech as MI6 chief, Moore said the "rise of China is the single greatest priority for MI6."
This was echoed by his predecessor, Alex Younger, who told the BBC in February that the UK needs to "wake up" to the threat posed by China, cautioning that Western nations are "under full press of Chinese espionage."
Western nations have indeed been fending off China's attempts at espionage. In July 2022, the UK Security Service MI5 said their agency disrupted a cyberattack by China against key aerospace companies that took place in May 2022.
[TheDiplomat] The expanding presence of China-based companies in Latin America, and the security problems they have experienced there, creates an inherent demand for Chinese private security companies.
The enormous expansion of global engagement by China and its companies over the past two decades has generated a corresponding need to protect Chinese operations and personnel in the dangerous environments where they sometimes operate. Awareness of such needs for protection among the Chinese public was most obviously expressed in the “Wolf Warrior” movies, in which Chinese citizens working abroad are threatened by foreign mercenaries and must be rescued.
The need to evacuate Chinese citizens from Libya in 2011 and Yemen in 2015 due to political turmoil in those countries, as well as recent attacks against Chinese nationals in Pakistan, highlighted the imperative for Beijing to protect its people, as well as its growing military and other capabilities for doing so. It also illustrated how China’s desire to project itself as respectful of the sovereignty of other nations – reflected in its 2015 Military Strategy and 2019 Defense Strategy White Papers – restricts its options for official military action.
China-based companies have responded to these risks to their overseas operations through a combination of working with local authorities and contracting private security companies (PSCs). In recent years, private security companies have begun to form in China to support operations both at home and abroad. The proliferation of Chinese PSCs has arguably been based on the presumption that the cultural familiarity, common language, and relationships with fellow Chinese will give such companies an inside track with Chinese companies in need of protection.
By 2022, there were an estimated 7,000 Chinese PSCs, with 20-40 such PSCs operating abroad in as many as 40 countries.
The scope of Chinese private security companies is broad, encompassing everything from firms selling principally electronic surveillance systems, to consulting, to providing armed personnel on the ground to physically defend Chinese persons and assets. In general, Chinese deployment of private security companies has been most extensive in Asia, and to a lesser extent in Africa, where their familiarity with local cultural practices is strongest, and local governments are relatively malleable. In more developed countries and in Latin America and the Caribbean, PSCs have been more limited by their lack of experience, in competition with established and well-resourced companies with knowledge of working within (or around) local laws.
Despite such limitations, the expanding presence of China-based companies in Latin America, and the security problems they have experienced there creates an inherent demand for Chinese private security companies. Since 2000, according to the respected Latin America-China academic network, Chinese companies have invested over $184 billion in Latin America and the Caribbean across 600 projects.
China-based companies operating in the petroleum, mining, construction, and other sectors have been continually beset by security problems. Protesters took control of a Chinese-operated oilfield in January 2007 in Tarapoa, Ecuador. Attacks against the Emerald Energy oilfield in Colombia in 2011 resulted in the taking of Chinese hostages. In Peru, there has been regular violence linked to protests and criminal activity in Chinese-operated mines Shougang Hierro, Rio Blanco, and Las Bambas. Attacks forced Sinohydro to suspend construction on the Patuca III dam in Honduras; there have been numerous strikes against Chinese hydroelectric and road construction projects in Bolivia.
Most recently, violence this year in Colombia forced China-based Zijin to shut down operations in the Burtica gold mine and China-owned Emerald Energy to suspend its oil operations.
With the current deterioration of economic conditions, expanding violence and social protest across Latin America, on top of China’s expanding footprint there in the post-COVID-19 environment, security challenges to China-based operations in the region will likely continue to increase in the near future.
Official Chinese policy papers such as the 2016 China-Latin America Policy White Paper, the China-CELAC 2022-2024 plan, and the February 2023 white paper on China’s “Global Security Initiative” all acknowledge Beijing’s interest in multifaceted security cooperation with Latin America, but are notably silent on the issue of private security companies.
#2
Xi definitely has no need to meet with that hack, not only from a sanity perspective but also simply from a protocol perspective. A head of state meeting that French-looking dude? LOL
#3
Not a fan of much of what is Chinese culture, but they have great skill at insulting people they feel are lesser or weaker. China actually caring about climate except as a manipulative tool, even more amusing.
[cigar aficiando] Sin City is getting a posh new cigar bar. On Monday construction began on the Montecristo Cigar Bar at the Paris Las Vegas hotel, the hotel on the strip with the 46-story-tall replica of the Eiffel Tower.
Those who know the hotel (perhaps back in the days when it served as host to Cigar Aficionado’s Las Vegas Big Smokes) might remember Napoleon’s Lounge, located not far from the convention center. The new bar is going into that space, and will span 2,835 square feet of French-inspired décor with stone accents and a green color palette. The new Montecristo Cigar Bar will be able to seat more than 70 guests, and there will be an extensive cigar portfolio of more than 300 brands, not only those owned by Montecristo brand owner Tabacalera USA (such as Romeo y Julieta, H. Upmann and of course the namesake Montecristo) but also Padrón, La Flor Dominicana, Arturo Fuente and My Father, according to a statement sent to Cigar Aficionado today. The bar will also serve a wide selection of spirits and cocktails.
[Epoch Times] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 14
...last Friday. Possibly at the end of the day when nobody was paying attention?
approved Veklury, also known as remdesivir, to treat COVID-19 in people with severe renal impairment, including dialysis, despite data showing the drug increases the risk of kidney failure.
Remdesivir is an antiviral medication that targets the RNA in viruses to prevent replication. The FDA first authorized remdesivir for emergency use in May 2020 to treat people with severe COVID-19. It has since been approved for adults and children as young as 28 days who weigh at least 6.6 pounds.
Remdesivir is the first and only FDA-approved antiviral COVID-19 treatment for people with renal disease. On the one hand --
"The approval by the FDA of Veklury for the treatment of patients with renal impairment reflects the urgency to make this medicine available to these patients, and underscores the established safety profile for Veklury," Anu Osinusi, vice president of Clinical Research for Hepatitis, Respiratory, and Emerging Viruses at Gilead Sciences said in a press release. On the other hand --
"Remdesivir should never have been approved in the first place," Dr. Paul Marik, critical care physician and author of more than 500 peer-reviewed journal articles told The Epoch Times. "Gilead had to cook the data to be approved. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) own data shows it increases the risk of kidney failure twentyfold, so why you would approve it for someone with renal dysfunction is obscene."
The WHO published a bulletin in 2020 recommending against using remdesivir to treat COVID-19. The WHO’s recommendations were based on a review of evidence published in the British Medical Journal, including data from four international trials covering more than 7,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The WHO found no evidence that the treatment helped hospitalized patients recover or improved their outcomes.
Dr. Marik said the National Institutes of Health and Gilead "cooked the first study" that formed the initial basis of FDA authorization in October 2020 because remdesivir was "so toxic."
[Blaze] Republican Navy veteran Hung Cao formally announced Tuesday that he was jumping into the race to unseat Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine in Virginia. Cao did so with a powerful video emphasizing both his gratitude for the United States, which took his family in as refugees in 1975, and his unwillingness to see it devoured by the same forces of darkness that first brought him here.
In his announcement video, the 51-year-old father of five can be seen hammering his fist against wood, saying, "This is the scariest sound you will hear when you live in a communist country."
Cao, a combat veteran who served with special operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, hammers his fist once more, recalling it was the last sound his Vietnamese parents heard "when their fathers were taken away in the middle of the night and they never saw their loved ones again."
Powerful. If elected, he’ll be a real asset on the side of good.
After serving 25 years in the U.S. Navy, I recognize that our country has real problems and we need real fighters in Washington. I’m running for United States Senate because I’m not done fighting for us. pic.twitter.com/IYVmIh1V2c
[Slay news via Geller] Unvaxxed Amish Death Rates 90 Times Lower Than Rest of America
By: Frank Bergman, Slay News June 30, 2023:
A major study into the impact of the pandemic on Amish communities has found that Covid death rates among the traditionalist groups of citizens are 90 times lower than for the rest of America.
The main difference, the study revealed, is that Amish communities completely ignored the guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Amish families did not get vaccinated or wear masks, nor did they engage in lockdowns, social distancing, or any other type of restrictions.
But the separated communities didn’t avoid catching the virus, however, as roughly 90% of the Amish have been infected with Covid.
The study was conducted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation (VSRF) and specifically focused on Amish people in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Lancaster has the world’s largest single community of Amish people with over 45,000 people
The study was conducted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation (VSRF) and specifically focused on Amish people in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Lancaster has the world’s largest single community of Amish people with over 45,000 people.
Speaking to the Pennsylvania State Senate this week, Steve Kirsch, the founder of the VSRF, testified on his study.
Kirsch explained why Amish citizens died at a much lower rate than the rest of the country.
Kirsch first described talking with the family of the lone Amish man in Lancaster County who allegedly died from Covid.
Speaking to the family, Kirsch found out they actually didn’t know if he passed from the virus because the claim was made by the hospital where the man died.
"Maybe he died from the Covid hospital protocols," Kirsch told the State Senate about the Amish man.
Kirsch said he had heard that five Amish people had died from Covid but he was unable to find any information on them and couldn’t confirm their identities or the deaths.
He said he "did the calculation" based on the assumption that he was able to confirm the identity of five.
#4
They also don't watch TV or partake of "social media."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/20/2023 9:40 Comments ||
Top||
#5
The physical activity that they do is not causing all their young men to keel over with vax related heart issues. The folks they probably lost were likely old and had comorbidities. Our current death rate remains much higher than expected even with Covid factored in.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/20/2023 12:32 Comments ||
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#6
this is admitted pedantic but the header should have been '10% as high as the rest of America'
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/20/2023 13:17 Comments ||
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In the three top places — Miami, Baltimore and the Bronx — an estimated one in six over-65s have Alzheimer's
Imperial County in California has the highest number of patients, with a rate of 15 percent in those over 65
The new report by the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) offers the most granular look at the prevalence of the condition, providing estimates of the rates at the county level for the first time.
It shows that overall, 6.7 million Americans over 65 have the disease — roughly one in ten.
Rounding out the top five counties for Alzheimer's disease sufferers were Prince George's County in Maryland (16.1 percent) and Hinds County, Mississippi (15.5 percent).
It comes as results from trials of the drug donanemab showed it can slow early Alzheimer's by up to 60 percent in a breakthrough hailed as the 'turning point' in the fight against the disease.
Hover over your county to see the rate of Alzheimer's in over 65s
#2
Although Miami is famous as a party destination, researchers pointed out that it has a large black and Hispanic population — who are at up to 2.5 times higher risk of the disease than their white counterparts. They said that other areas with the highest rates also tended to have more ethnically diverse populations, driving up estimates of the proportion of people with the disease.
[BenarNews] The Philippine president on Wednesday appointed as the new military chief a general who had helped stabilize the southern city of Marawi, which Islamic militants seized in 2017 before government forces routed them in a five-month battle.
Lt. Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., 55, who is currently the Army commander, will replace Gen. Andres Centino, who was appointed presidential adviser on the West Philippine Sea, the Presidential Communications Office said.
The West Philippine Sea is Manila’s name for South China Sea waters within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Brawner “exemplified the highest levels of excellence in his military schoolings,” Communications Secretary Cheloy Garafil said, according to the state-run Philippine News Agency.
Brawner takes over at a time of persistent challenges to the country’s borders from Beijing in the disputed South China Sea.
Just a week before the seventh anniversary of a landmark international arbitration ruling that dismissed Beijing’s expansive claims to the sea, Manila accused China of harassing its ships in the waterway.
In February, the Philippines protested a similar incident when the Chinese Coast Guard pointed a laser at one of its coast guard ships, causing temporary blindness to its crew.
China has continued to ignore the ruling. Beijing claims nearly all of the South China Sea including territories within the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.
In February, Brawner said that the Philippine Army had shifted its focus to territorial defense from internal security, fueled by China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea. Troops, he said then, required a change of mindset to focus on an external enemy from fighting southern insurgents and communists.
“There is a common theme among armies around the world: wars will be fought on land so we have to be prepared,” Brawner said at the time.
A Special Forces commando, Brawner had served in various capacities in the southern Philippines, fighting against communist and Muslim insurgents.
He was the commander of the army division that carried out an operation that killed Jorge Madlos, a long-time senior commander of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) in the south.
Brawner was also one of the top military officials and tacticians on the ground during the 2017 siege of Marawi by Islamic State group militants.
He subsequently led an infantry division that went after their remnants in Mindanao, and that killed Owayda Marohombsar (also known as Abu Dar), one of the senior IS leaders who escaped from Marawi, in 2019.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka 
Remdesivir is an antiviral medication that targets the RNA in viruses to prevent replication. The FDA first authorized remdesivir for emergency use in May 2020 to treat people with severe COVID-19. It has since been approved for adults and children as young as 28 days who weigh at least 6.6 pounds.
The WHO published a bulletin in 2020 recommending against using remdesivir to treat COVID-19. The WHO’s recommendations were based on a review of evidence published in the British Medical Journal, including data from four international trials covering more than 7,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The WHO found no evidence that the treatment helped hospitalized patients recover or improved their outcomes.
[Slay news via Geller] Unvaxxed Amish Death Rates 90 Times Lower Than Rest of America
