[Glenn Greenwald] Powerful media figures now invoke sexist and racist tropes to cast themselves as so fragile and marginalized that critiques of their work constitute bullying and assault.
The daily newspaper USA Today is the second-most circulated print newspaper in the United States — more than The New York Times and more than double The Washington Post. Only The Wall Street Journal has higher circulation numbers.
#2
You give them too much credit when you refer to them as journalists. They have abandoned all pretense of objective journalism. They are much more properly called propagandists.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/30/2021 12:50 Comments ||
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#3
In the time honored Rantburg tradition, I propose the following procedure for dealing with this term:
JournalistsPropagandists Attack the Powerless, Then Self-Victimize to Bar Criticisms of Themselves
There. Fixed it for ya. No charge.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/30/2021 12:53 Comments ||
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#4
Good on greenwald for calling out these hypocrites who let BLM murder their way through several months a ross the US as “mostly peaceful protesters”
[Townhall] Oh, they hate him. They’ll hate him even more now. Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins has been one of the lone medical professionals trying to bring reason and logic to the COVID pandemic. He lobbed a grenade into the tent by declaring that we’ll have herd immunity by April. In fact, he said by the end of April, COVID won’t really be a big deal. this was heavily disputed by folks far less qualified, but the panic peddlers had to combat this somehow. It goes against their entire narrative of us living under the authoritarian yoke of the lab coats—who know nothing.
What Makary knows is that with the data we have now, "About 1 in 600 Americans has died of Covid-19, which translates to a population fatality rate of about 0.15%. The Covid-19 infection fatality rate is about 0.23%." By that count, he estimates that two-thirds of the country already had the virus; the survival rate is 90+ percent by the way. With natural immunity, plus vaccinations soaring past 100 million by now, his estimate of herd immunity isn’t nuts. He said his colleagues didn’t necessarily think his projection was off but didn’t want to say anything to avoid impacting the vaccination rate. That’s precisely wrong. Medical professionals should proclaim good medical progress, especially during a pandemic. This prediction was made in late February when COVID cases had dropped 77 percent. Texas nixed its mask mandate. Three weeks later, cases are still dropping.
Makary also went after the expert class and their ’follow the science’ narrative regarding the vaccine. They haven’t followed 'the science.' They’re more paralyzed by fear with their contradictory and utterly useless COVID protocols, especially when it comes to the vaccine. If you get vaccinated, you still have to remain in a state of panic. Oh, and keep wearing your mask because of...variants. The virus is going to mutate no matter what, but right now—these people should be telling us what we can do after we’ve acquired immunity through vaccination. He cites an unpublished Israeli study by the nation’s ministry of health that showed just one dose of the Pfizer vaccine renders the subject virtually "bulletproof" from COVID after four weeks.
So, his latest op-ed in The Wall Street Journal should bring more irritation to Fauci, Democrats, the liberal media, and the technocratic acolytes who want to keep us in a constant state of fear. Are you ready? Dr. Makary declares herd immunity is near, even if Fauci doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He circles past points he’s made in the past regarding natural immunity. It’s as if Fauci and his crew don’t get that A LOT of Americans already have natural immunity to COVID. Oh, and reinfection is rare. Does Makary think that everyone should get vaccinated? Sure, but he’s also living in the real world. Natural immunity cannot be discounted. If it is, then a massive scientific error is being made regarding calculation and its effects on public policy. Fauci’s vaccination-only path to herd immunity does lend itself to keep a lot of freedom-curbing COVID protocols in place. I don’t think that’s an accident, however (via WSJ)-
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/30/2021 12:30 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[15 views]
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#1
Long ago the CDC published the establish for the ratio of Americans who have had COVID since Feb 2020 to the ratio of Americans who have had positive RT-PCR tests/etc. for COVID in the same time frame. That magic number is 7.7
Meaning, for example, that if 30 million Americans have had + RT-PCR tests, 231 million Americans have had COVID whether or not they know it. There are about 330 million Americans. This published ratio never gets mentioned in the MSM. Old Ferret Face never gets asked about it, either.
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 ||
03/30/2021 13:17 Comments ||
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#2
Argh, thought I had proofread well enough.
For " Long ago the CDC published the establish for the ratio of Americans who have had COVID since Feb 2020 to the ratio of Americans "
substitute "Long ago the CDC published its estimate for the ratio of Americans who have actually had COVID (irrespective of tests) to the number of Americans" etc.
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 ||
03/30/2021 13:19 Comments ||
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#3
Mask and lockdown cultists are going to have psychological problems when COVID Circus Theater™ is over. St. Fauxi will never adjust to not being on TeeVee all the time trying to blow smoke up everyone's a$$e$.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/30/2021 14:51 Comments ||
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#6
I'll tell you exactly where the "experts" failed.
They did not account for the "silent" cases, and transmission, and the faster spread of immunity due to them. Upwards of 1/3 of Americans have likely had COVID and not known it. And we are now, in March, approaching 1/3 of the nation, the most vulnerable 1/3, being vaccinated. That makes 2/3 of the population being practically immune, leaving maybe 100-120 million vulnerable. There are over 2 million inocculations a day ongoing, 1/2 first, 1/2 second. so in 45 days, out of a max of 120 million, at least 45 million more will be nearly completely immune, and another 45 million will have initial immunity.
That leaves 10% of the population vulnerable, and 90% either completely or partially immune.
That is herd immunity level.
The numbers do not lie, but the Progressive Democrats do.
Posted by: Ho Chi Snemp6051 ||
03/30/2021 16:49 Comments ||
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#7
Upwards of 1/3 of Americans have likely had COVID and not known it.
Yes. Exactly. This episode represents an astonishing failure of our public health bureaucracy to understand and account for silent cases.
Bureaucrats like Fauci... what are we paying them for?
#8
Fauci is there for self-aggrandizement, now that he has achieved his other goal: making sure Trump was hobbled during the election by Fauci's lies and disinformation and the willing dupes in the Press.
Posted by: These Forkbeard7574 ||
03/30/2021 19:07 Comments ||
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[NYT via the generally deplorable Yahoo.com] WASHINGTON — As secretary of state during the Trump administration, Mike Pompeo had little regard for his job’s genteel diplomatic protocols, routinely throwing verbal punches against foreign governments, political opponents and the mainstream media.
What was he like as President Trump’s CIA director?
Out of office for more than two months, Pompeo has not stopped punching. In a series of speeches, interviews and Twitter posts, he is emerging as the most outspoken critic of President Joe Biden among former top Trump officials. And he is ignoring, much as he did in office, the custom that current and former secretaries of state avoid the appearance of political partisanship.
In back-to-back appearances in Iowa and during an interview in New Hampshire over the past week, Pompeo questioned the Biden administration’s resolve toward China. In Iowa, he accused the White House of reversing the Trump administration’s immigration policy "willy-nilly and without any thought." He derided Biden for referring to notes during his first formal news conference on Thursday.
"What’s great about not being the secretary of state anymore is I can say things that when I was a diplomat I couldn’t say," Pompeo said the next morning, to a small crowd at the Westside Conservative Club near Des Moines.
Never mind that he was hardly known for biting his tongue, even as the nation’s top diplomat. It seems clear that Pompeo, a onetime Republican congressman from Kansas, is animated not just by freedom but also by a drive for high elective office that has long been evident to friends and foes. His appearances in a pair of presidential battleground states only seem to confirm his widely assumed interest in a 2024 presidential campaign.
#4
^ Biden and his handlers have four years to accomplish their goals for this country. They are unscrupulous, dishonest, hasty and rely far too heavily on their ability to pull the wool over they eyes of the voters. But at some point, more likely at multiple points, in the next four years they will screw up so badly that no amount of cheating will give them electoral victory. They will then be faced to choose between openly shredding the Constitution and rule by martial law or ignominious defeat. Your guess is as good as mine which way they'll go.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/30/2021 13:45 Comments ||
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#5
Biden, et al may only have until January 2023, if the Republicans can take control of either House or Senate — while much can temporarily be done with executive orders for the remaining two years, a large part of their ability to steamroll opposition depends on maintaining a façade of overwhelming voter preference.
#6
And he is ignoring, much as he did in office, the custom that current and former secretaries of state avoid the appearance of political partisanship.
Oh, yeah - like Hillary and John Forbes Kerry were fucking pillars of stoicism since they left that office...
#7
That's why Joe said he's gonna run in 2024. They couldn't possibly cheat enough to get Ms. Knee Pads over the line. Old Joe will be a complete zombie by then but he'll just have to do.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/30/2021 12:35 Comments ||
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#8
I wish someone would cold ask Biden what his campaign slogan was.
I know people who voted democrat understanding it was really a vote for Kumalong who must be trying to square that Joe for Four circle. All agree that she is, at best, unlikable and tolerated.
[Foundation for Economic Education] Few people in 2020 came under more heat than Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top epidemiologist.
"I think people will probably think very carefully about these total shutdowns, how good they really were," Tegnell told Reuters in a recent interview. "They may have had an effect in the short term, but when you look at it throughout the pandemic, you become more and more doubtful."
Tegnell was referring to data published by Reuters that show Sweden, which shunned the strict lockdowns embraced by most nations around the world, experienced a smaller increase in its mortality rate than most European countries in 2020.
Many critics countered by comparing Sweden’s death rate to its Nordic counterparts Norway and Finland, which had some of the lowest mortality rates in Europe. Norway and Finland, however, embraced policies even less restrictive than Sweden's for most of the pandemic.
Public health experts in Sweden say the latest data are further evidence that Sweden was one of the few nations to get the virus right. "Some believed that it was possible to eliminate disease transmission by shutting down society," said Johan Carlson, Director, Public Health Agency of Sweden. "We did not believe that and we have been proven right."
Pandemics are awful and COVID-19 is a nasty virus. But lawmakers around the world made two severe miscalculations when they decided to discard fundamental liberties and embrace lockdowns.
First, they concluded that they could contain a virus through central planning. They failed—as numerous academic studies show. Summary of studies, from the link
Second, policymakers forgot the basic reality of tradeoffs, something economist and political scientist James Harrigan recognized early in the pandemic.
"In times of crisis, people want someone to do something, and don’t want to hear about tradeoffs. This is the breeding ground for grand policies driven by the mantra, "if it saves just one life." New York Governor Andrew Cuomo invoked the mantra to defend his closure policies. The mantra has echoed across the country from county councils to mayors to school boards to police to clergy as justification for closures, curfews, and enforced social distancing."
Rational people understand this isn’t how the world works. Regardless of whether we acknowledge them, tradeoffs exist.
Sweden avoided much of the collateral damage associated with lockdowns, which includes economic distress, increased suicide, depression from social isolation, drug and alcohol abuse, and other adverse public healtth consequences.
America did not. For example, the US saw mental health hit a 20-year low last year. The CDC reports surging depression in young people. There have been spikes in suicide, [and] drug overdoses.
"We can't stay locked down for such a considerable period of time that you might do irreparable damage and have unintended consequences, including consequences for health," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious-disease expert, told CNBC last year.
Fauci was right. Unfortunately, unlike Tegnell, he didn’t have the courage of his convictions. And Americans paid the price.
[ARABNEWS] What were earlier simply claims that Iran’s regime was using its loyalist armed militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... as bargaining chips to gain more leverage in any prospective nuclear negotiations with the US are now acknowledged facts requiring no further proof.
Instead, the discussion now is about the extent to which Tehran is willing to deploy its proxy militias across the region and instruct them to launch devastating offensive operations, ultimately leading to all-out war. Are the Gulf states militarily and socially prepared to counter the ramifications of such a catastrophic war? And what would be the role of the US, Europa
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/30/2021 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[13 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
The danger is that they will miscalculate as a result of Biden's perceived weakness and push him to the point where he will have no political option other than to respond militarily. Then we'll see how his new, diverse military performs.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/30/2021 13:08 Comments ||
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#2
My fear exactly.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/30/2021 13:39 Comments ||
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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.
Makary also went after the expert class and their ’follow the science’ narrative regarding the vaccine. They haven’t followed 'the science.' They’re more paralyzed by fear with their contradictory and utterly useless COVID protocols, especially when it comes to the vaccine. If you get vaccinated, you still have to remain in a state of panic. Oh, and keep wearing your mask because of...variants. The virus is going to mutate no matter what, but right now—these people should be telling us what we can do after we’ve acquired immunity through vaccination. He cites an unpublished Israeli study by the nation’s ministry of health that showed just one dose of the Pfizer vaccine renders the subject virtually "bulletproof" from COVID after four weeks. 
"I think people will probably think very carefully about these total shutdowns, how good they really were," Tegnell told Reuters in a recent interview. "They may have had an effect in the short term, but when you look at it throughout the pandemic, you become more and more doubtful."
America did not. For example, the US saw mental health hit a 20-year low last year. The CDC reports surging depression in young people. There have been spikes in suicide, [and] drug overdoses.
