Archive for 2021

QUESTION ASKED: Did the Democrats Steal the Presidential Election?

Even greater doubts about the election arise from the deliberately loose procedures that governed voting. Something like 69 million mail-in votes were cast, and until two months ago, everyone agreed that mail-in voting is highly susceptible to fraud. But the laxity in 2020 went far beyond the risks inherent in mail-in votes. I put it this way: I don’t know whether the Democrats stole the 2020 election, but I do know that they tried hard to steal it.

Read the whole thing.

POLITICO STAFF IN UPROAR OVER BEN SHAPIRO APPEARANCE:

To its credit, Politico issued the kind of statement that is rare whenever the woke Left makes a fuss: It told the wokesters to stuff it. “We have taken great care to assemble a roster of guest authors who are prominent thinkers and writers and represent a range of perspectives,” read the statement. “What sets Politico apart in this intense political and media moment is that we rise above partisanship and ideological warfare — even as many seek to drag us into it. It’s a core value of the publication that is unchangeable.” Politico has, perhaps, grokked something that those of us who have been through a few high-dudgeon cycles know very well: Outrage doesn’t last. It can be ignored. Really. A few tweets — even a few hundred tweets — mean nothing. If you have any integrity, simply stick to your guns instead of cringing and begging forgiveness. In 48 hours, the mob will move on. It always does.

Shapiro had, as usual, a deft response to the hubbub:

Kudos to Politico for not taking the New York Times/Jeffrey Goldberg route and standing up to their crybully staffers.

 

GOPERS TALK THE MOST IN CONGRESS: That’s according to C-SPAN, which compiled the data for the House and Senate in 2020. Six of the top 10 in the House are Republicans.

LIFE IN ANDREW CUOMO/BILL DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: Mt. Sinai Cancels COVID-19 Vaccination Appointments Due to Shortage. “Mount Sinai says it is canceling COVID-19 vaccination appointments until the middle of next week due to a shortage of vaccines. In a statement, the hospital network said appointments from Friday, January 15 through Tuesday, January 19 would not take place.”

OPEN THREAD: Talk, talk.

JOHN HINDERAKER ASKS THE FORBIDDEN QUESTION: DID THE DEMOCRATS STEAL THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?

Democrats are making extraordinary efforts to suppress all discussion of whether Joe Biden actually won the 2020 presidential election. In fact, they go even farther: they want to suppress all discussion of the extent to which voter fraud occurred. That naturally makes me want to write about voter fraud, and who really won the election.

First, this question: why are the Democrats so hysterical in their insistence that fraud not be mentioned? One reason is obvious. Joe Biden will take office under a cloud, since close to half of all Americans doubt that he really won the election. The Democrats want to stamp out such doubts to preserve Biden’s authority as president.

But there is a second reason that may be more important. The Democrats want the lax voting procedures that prevailed in 2020 to continue in the future. They know that efforts will be made in many states to improve ballot integrity, and they want those efforts to fail. By rendering all discussion of voter fraud out of bounds, they hope to forestall reforms that would make it harder for them to cheat, or enable cheating, in the future.

Nobody was arguing that it was beyond to pale to accuse Trump of being elected due to tampering by Russian hackers, so I’m treating all this pearl-clutching as the self-serving fraud that it is.

INCOMPETENCE: Daniel Greenfield: The Capitol Hill Riot Was Pelosi’s Fault, Not Trump’s: Why couldn’t Congress’ private police force of 2,000 protect it from a mob of hundreds?

Congress’ private cops are the 19th largest police force in the country. It’s a larger force than the police forces of Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, or Milwaukee with a massive $460 million budget.

It’s the only legislative federal force in the country that is answerable exclusively to Congress.

While Democrats advocated defunding the police, their private police force budget shot up from $375 million in 2016 to $460 million in 2020. . . . The media claimed that the Capitol Police were overwhelmed by a massive riot. Except that the number of violent rioters was, at most, in the hundreds, while the Capitol Police could deploy a force the size that protects entire cities to protect a few buildings from hundreds of people.

Related: WashPost: Capitol Police intelligence report warned three days before attack that ‘Congress itself’ could be targeted.

READ IT. CURSE AND WEEP. THEN FIGHT: The State Department’s Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Aw heck, I’m just gonna post The Whole Damned Thing:

For more than a year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one.

The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic. Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection. Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure.

The CCP’s deadly obsession with secrecy and control comes at the expense of public health in China and around the world. The previously undisclosed information in this fact sheet, combined with open-source reporting, highlights three elements about COVID-19’s origin that deserve greater scrutiny:

Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):

The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.

Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.

The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.

Research at the WIV:

Starting in at least 2016 – and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak – WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar). The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins.
The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.
WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV’s work on bat and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of a thorough inquiry, they must have a full accounting of why the WIV altered and then removed online records of its work with RaTG13 and other viruses.

Secret military activity at the WIV:

Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.

The United States and other donors who funded or collaborated on civilian research at the WIV have a right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funding was diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.

Today’s revelations just scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin in China. Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records.

As the world continues to battle this pandemic – and as WHO investigators begin their work, after more than a year of delays – the virus’s origin remains uncertain. The United States will continue to do everything it can to support a credible and thorough investigation, including by continuing to demand transparency on the part of Chinese authorities.

But go ahead, though it’s posted here, click the link and read the whole damned thing. (RTWDT)

VERY RELATED: Chinese commies lied, millions of human beings died.

HOWIE CARR: Restaurants in Massachussets Tired of Being Beaten Up.

This sign in Halifax sums it all up:

“Charlie Baker Take 25% of Your Pay.”

We’re all in this together, right? That’s what Gov. Baker keeps screaming at us — hectoring, lecturing, threatening, demanding, even banging his fists as he thunders one preposterous, counter-productive order after another.

But unlike his subjects, I mean constituents, the man Joe Biden calls Charlie Parker has not lost a single penny throughout this entire disaster.

For presiding over this panic more incompetently than almost any other governor in the U.S., Charlie Parker is paid $185,000 a year, plus a $65,000 housing allowance.

Even at 25%, Charlie Parker would still be grossly overpaid at $62,500 a year.

The signs — two of them — are outside the Lyonville Tavern in Halifax. It’s owned by Debra Trotta, along with Grille 58 across the street. She put the signs up about a week ago.

“I’m tired,” she was saying Thursday. “It’s been 11 months now, I’m tired of being beaten up. I’m 61, I could close up shop and retire and I’d be okay but I feel a responsibility to the people who work for me. I’ve got 60 employees. I’ve gone from four waitresses to three to two, and they’re not making any money.”

The signs, she said, are a reminder of what’s happened to most of the people in the state. . . . “A year ago the economy was booming. My people were doing very well, they were buying cars, they were buying houses. Now … .”

Well, with Biden being sworn in, the lockdowns are going to be whisked offstage like they never happened.

COLLECTIVE GUILT AND THE NEW WITCH HUNT:

Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” was the question used in congressional hearings in the 1950s in what was portrayed as a witch hunt against leftists that blighted American freedom of speech. A new witch hunt is sweeping Washington, Silicon Valley, and much of the media based on the following question: “Do you currently have any doubts or have you ever written or said anything disparaging the vote counts of the 2020 presidential election?”

Anyone who questions the final vote of that election is now literally being derided as a traitor. Regardless of 65 million mail-in ballots (for which fraud is “vastly more prevalent,” according to the New York Times), regardless of the last minute changes in election procedures in key swing states, and regardless of controversies about computer voting software, anyone who does not attest to the final proclaimed vote count  is finding themselves forever damned – or at least that is the intent of Democratic activists and social media companies.

Read the whole thing.

EVERYTHING IS GETTING WORSE: The Incredible Shrinking Liquor Bottle.

Did you see the birth announcement? A few weeks ago, the standard 750ml liquor bottle was blessed with a little brother! The new bottle looks just like its older sibling, but is 6.667 percent smaller, holding 50 milliliters less.

And as younger brothers sometimes will do, the little scrapper may well overtake and displace his older brother in the coming years, as 700ml bottles gradually replace those holding 750ml.

In theory, the shift to the smaller bottle will mean the price of liquor will be six percent less. Yay! But if history is any guide, the price break won’t actually happen. That means you’ll probably be paying the same for less.

Boo.