THREAD: “A very long, careful, artful analysis that nonetheless seems to imply a significant number of ‘long covid’ patients are actually suffering from some form of mental illness.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: White House Frenzy Over Karine Jean-Pierre’s White Straight Male Backup.

Plus:

• That Wuhan lab has been monkeying around with the monkeypox virus
• Stop saying “despite” when you mean “because” of new voter laws
• Hillary perp walk: The greatest video meme in the history of the internet

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

OH: Bill Gates Poured Millions into Dark Money Fund Attacking Elon Musk.

Research exclusively shared with Breitbart News identifies hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from Bill Gates’ foundation to 11 of the 26 organizations that signed an open letter last month urging Twitter advertisers to boycott the company if Elon Musk restores free speech on the platform.

Breitbart News’ report, based on research and analysis from the newly-formed Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), analyzed public filings to trace hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions from the letter signatories back to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
…
The open letter’s connection to the billionaire Microsoft founder is significant, as Gates is in the middle of a public feud with free speech advocate Musk. Last month, Gates revealed his $500 million short position against Musk-owned Tesla, prompting Musk to call Gates a “b*ner” killer alongside a meme of Gates as a pregnant man emoji.

Musk is working on making man into a multi-planet species while Gates sounds increasingly like a Bond villain who wants to force everyone to eat fungi instead of meat.

SCAM: January 6 Committee Wants $20,000 to Release Surveillance Video. “An outside observer might wonder at the cost. Today, a casual search at B&H shows several 20 terabyte external drives for between $600 and $1000 retail. How much data are we talking about?”

READER FAVORITE: 4PATRIOTS Emergency Solar Powered Tactical Flashlight. #CommissionEarned

RASMUSSEN: Economic Confidence Plummets in May.

IT ISN’T MEANT TO BE: Homeland Security’s Rebooted Disinformation Plan Is No Better Than the First. “Compounding these dangerous conditions, the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Mayorkas has prioritized all the wrong things: climate change, diversity and equity, LGBT Pride month, white supremacists, and now, ‘disinformation.’ To put Gorelick, the director of the information wall of separation, in charge of disinformation lacks self-awareness at a minimum, and handicaps their own efforts to garner public trust in their disinformation efforts.”

EMORY PROFESSORS SAY A LOT OF THINGS: Emory professors: Buffalo shooter’s ideas linked to January 6, implicate ‘innocent’ white people.

NOBODY’S FALLING FOR THIS ONE AGAIN: Is This How Biden Hopes to Save the Democrats in the Midterms?

STUDENTS WANT A LOT OF THINGS: Students want local government to defund police, transfer power to activists.

THEY HAD TO GATHER IN DAVOS TO LEARN THIS? Ukraine war, price shocks have ‘darkened’ economic outlook, leaders warn in Davos.

BLUE ON BLUE: DC attorney general sues Mark Zuckerberg, claims CEO was ‘personally involved’ in privacy failures.

AUX TUMBRILS CITOYENS!

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS:

A friend comments: “Democracy dies in derpness.”

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Trump vs. Pence Is the Battle the GOP Doesn’t Need. “It’s hard not to see that the Times is anxious for Trump and Pence to run against each other in a Republican primary. Why? Because it would be an utter disaster for the party.”

Megan Fox: Ancient Archetypes, Amber Heard, and How to Avoid Both. “Athena turned Medusa into a monster with writhing snakes for hair whose glare would turn men to stone. But her face remained so beautiful that men couldn’t help but look at her. You could say that on the crazy/hot matrix, Medusa was at the highest point in the danger zone.”

Yours Truly: One of Our Vice Presidents Is Missing! “The situation our ‘border czar’ was supposed to fix has gotten so bad under the Biden-Harris Administration (or is that Harris-Biden?) that it could be the setup to a not-funny Johnny Carson bit.”

JUSTIN TRUDEAU’S LEGACY: Once a liberal democracy, Canada is now an authoritarian state.

BECAUSE MAKING THINGS WORSE IS WHAT THE FDA DOES? Why Is the FDA Seizing Baby Formula During a Baby Formula Shortage? With trusted sellers shut down, parents are being driven to untested suppliers.

Parental demand led to American mom-and-pop vendors selling European formula because the manufacturers wouldn’t make the effort. They even provided translated instructions. But the FDA in the past year has cracked down on these sellers. Without notice, thousands of families were left scrambling to find more formula. Parents who tried to purchase directly from Europe had hundreds of dollars of formula seized by U.S. customs agents. One parent reported that she had nearly $700 of formula destroyed at the border—in the middle of a national formula shortage.

The FDA’s actions have exacerbated the problem they were trying to solve. The agency cites concerns about storing and transporting powdered formula to avoid bacterial contamination or product deterioration. But by shutting down trusted vendors who had built a reputation on importing and selling high-quality products, the FDA drove desperate parents to untested sellers, creating the storage and handling concerns that caused the FDA to distrust European products. The difficulty finding preferred baby formula brands also increased the likelihood of inauthentic products and unscrupulous sellers taking advantage of parents in need.

The FDA is a debacle with an awful track record and should be abolished or replaced.

THIS IS THE QUESTION I’VE BEEN ASKING OVER AT THE PJMEDIA MOTHERSHIP FOR TWO MONTHS: Why is Xi Jinping doubling down on a ‘zero-Covid’ policy that is causing massive economic distress and public anger in China?

For an authoritarian regime that draws its legitimacy primarily from technocratic proficiency and ability to ensure economic growth and prosperity, cratering of the economy is bad enough, a depression in the job market is worse as it may create social unrest and pose political challenges for a regime obsessed with social stability. And it should be of particular concern for Xi ahead of the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party where he is expected to secure an unprecedented third term in power.

Once again, unlike the 2020 experience when the lockdown measures in Wuhan benefitted the e-commerce industry, Xi’s ‘zero-Covid’ policy to tackle the notoriously contagious Omicron mutant has resulted in a decimation of both online and offline businesses in a “double killer” effect.

The situation is so grim that a former Chinese central bank advisor, Huang Yiping, an economics professor at Peking University, was quoted by Wall Street Journal as saying, “We’ve reached a point where we should use policies to save the economy at all costs.” A similar refrain can be heard from Wei Yao, chief economist at Societe Generale SA, who told Bloomberg that “if the surge in unemployment does not raise the urgency of adjusting the zero-Covid measures to allow the economy to normalize, we don’t know what will.”

The founder and chair of one of Asia’s biggest private equity investors, Weijian Shan, has said that China’s policies have caused a “deep economic crisis” and “Chinese economy at this moment is in the worst shape in the past 30 years.”

I wonder what the Biden Administration will come up with to try and help bail Beijing out.

WITHOUT HYSTERIA AND FALSE CHARGES OF RACISM, WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO RUN ON? THEIR RECORD? Liberal Media Scream: CNN pushes absurd white-blaming abortion conspiracy.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. For Biden, courage would be visiting the US border, not touring Asia.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Democrats’ Georgia Lies Are Being Laid Bare. “It’s a shame that Abrams and the rest of the Democrats (including the village idiot masquerading as president) can’t be held criminally responsible for incessantly lying about Republicans and voter suppression, which they’ve been doing for decades.”

OUR INSANE POLITICAL CLASS: Journalist Gets COVID Despite Never Taking Mask Off Around People: Blames ‘little kids outdoors who came over to say hi to me.’

DEAL OF THE DAY: NutriBullet Pro. #CommissionEarned

UKRAINE: Russia intensifies Donbas offensive as war enters fourth month.

The Ukrainian armed forces said in a Facebook update on Tuesday that Russian forces were conducting non-stop “offensive operations” in the region, adding “the enemy is exerting intense fire along the entire line of contact”.

The governor of Lugansk said Russia had sent thousands of troops to capture his entire region and that Severodonetsk was under massive attack, warning residents that it was too late to evacuate.

“At this point I will not say: get out, evacuate. Now I will say: stay in a shelter,” Sergiy Gaidai said on Telegram. “Because such a density of shelling will not allow us to calmly gather people and come for them.”

Residents of Bakhmut, a crucial junction that serves as a command centre for much of the Ukrainian war effort, told AFP of the aerial onslaught they had suffered.

As I wrote last week:

Though much less effective than advertised, the Russian armed forces can still cause a lot of death and destruction. Manpower and logistical limitations, however, prevent them from advancing very far or in more than one direction at a time. The retreats from Kyiv and Kharkiv are the result of these very real limits.

The Ukraine armed forces have fought beyond most expectations, particularly in their ability to inflict damage on those parts of the Russian military that can afford it the least. Retired Australian Army General Mick Ryan describes how Ukraine has focused on Russia’s “communications networks, logistic supply routes, rear areas, artillery and senior commanders in their command posts” to devastating effect.

But Ukraine has yet to demonstrate that it can force the Russian troops out of areas where Moscow chooses to remain strong.

Or keep the Russians out, provided Russia limits its offensive to a single axis, moving at a (brutally expensive) snail’s pace.

This would be a great time for cooler heads to push for a negotiated settlement but there don’t seem to be any of those around.

WELL, YES: The Big Lie About Georgia Voting Has Been Shredded. “A thread throughout the Post story chronicles how Democratic activists have changed their strategies in reaction to the law. But if you can defeat alleged voter suppression with ease by registering people and getting them out to vote in massive numbers, it’s a good sign that there wasn’t any voter suppression to begin with.”

Democrats weren’t worried about votes being suppressed. They were worried about fraudulent votes being suppressed.