As a long-standing free speech advocate, the last few years have been alarming and, frankly, depressing. The censorship efforts of the government are, unfortunately, not new. However, what is new is the support of the media and the Democratic Party in such censorship. That was on display on various channels after the recent opinion finding that the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment in “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” However, the New York Times immediately warned that the outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.” Yet, no one expressed more simply and chillingly than CNN Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly who stated that it “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands.
Mattingly admitted that social media platforms “more often than not” gave in to the censorship demands by the Biden administration. However, he insisted that it “makes sense,” and is “probably what we should do on public health grounds.”
“[T]he Biden administration would regularly reach out to Twitter and Facebook and other companies in kind of the early stages of their COVID response and say, this person is spreading lies about vaccines, this account is spreading misinformation that is inhibiting — not just our efforts, the administration’s efforts to address COVID — but also public health, do something about it. And often, I think more often than not, the companies would respond and say, okay. And there are emails that came out during the course of this case that that was something that I think — when it was explained to me at the time, I thought, alright, that makes sense, that’s probably what we should do on public health grounds.”
What is striking is not just the blind acceptance that the government should be protecting us from harmful thoughts. It is also the failure to recognize that the government was wrong on many of these points while experts were being banned and blacklisted.
Many people were routinely censored on Twitter and other platforms for daring to challenge the official position on masks.
The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.
The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media. Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”
However, there are now ample studies stating that “a new scientific review suggests that widespread masking may have done little to nothing to curb the transmission of COVID.” It added that “wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (nine studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (six studies; 13,919 people).”
It also found little evidence of a difference from wearing better masks and that “wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (five studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (five studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (three studies; 7799 people).”
Again, I expect that these studies will be debated for years. That is a good thing. There are questions raised over the types of studies used and whether randomized studies are sufficient. The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat.
The head of the World Health Organization even supported censorship to combat what he called an “infodemic.”
Scientists previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections. Even raising the lab theory on the origin of Covid 19 (a theory now treated as plausible) was denounced as a conspiracy theory. The science and health reporter for the New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, even denounced the theory as “racist.”
Yet, Mattingly and others are defending censorship by repeating a tautology: the government must seek the censorship of ideas because some ideas must be censored. Governments have always claimed that censorship of critics and dissenters is for the public’s best interest. They have always defined certain views as harmful or false.
Now, however, major media figures are shrugging off free speech concerns and supporting censorship as what former CNN media host CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter called a “harm reduction model.” While once fiercely opposed to censorship and government-supported blacklists, many in the media are echoing Mattingly’s view that the natural default should be to obey the government and its directions on permitted speech. After all, this is all for our own protection. Censorship just “makes sense.”
The more often this happens, the more we get closer to the so-called armed rebellion of the ‘masses.’
I’m a bit surprised the targeting hasn’t already begun
Richard Lowe,
Reading about leftists protests, their death threats, their protests at SC justices, the fact one man actually planed on killing a SC justice if it were not for his sister talking him down, I would say, yes, targeting has begun.
At a time when trust in our government is at an all time low, Prof. Turley piles on. If we can’t trust our government, who can we trust? It is through our government that we can have the world’s top experts develop caring, far-seeing policies that will avoid untold crises and provide the very best benefits to those citizens that are most worthy. Can we trust the voices of the unwashed, the unenlightened, of the hoi polloi? Of course not. Our government has an unenviable track record of prescient and optimal decision making. Our government clearly only spends the minimum necessary to achieve the greatest good. Yet the good professor has the stunning temerity to posit that perhaps not all wisdom is held by those of the elected or career governmental officials. Prof. Turley and his ilk can only slow down the wonderful and desperately needed societal progress that this government is striving to achieve.
OMG!
It’s Karl Marx’s brother, or merely his doppelganger!
I’m outta here, comrades!
It’s off to the Gulags and Re-Education camps we go.
___________________________________________
“Damn the [Constitution]. Four bells, Captain Drayton, go ahead. Jouett, full [Progressive] speed.”
– Admiral David “Arnold Nordsieck” Glasgow Farragut
Arnold was being sarcastic
So was I, you ——- idiot!
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision
We’ll be clean when their work is done
We’ll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
Donald Fagen
IGY
Great song. Donald Fagen would be more than a bit hesitant being cited in this hell pit though.
The judge noted in the decision that the feds want to censor not just covid19 “misinformation”…but also…. “with regard to other issues, such as gas prices, parody speech, calling the President a liar, climate change, gender, and abortion” and criticism about “U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the return of U.S. support of Ukraine”
So if we can’t trust our government to tell the truth ….and we can’t criticize our government…or question the ‘narrative’…..then….are we still free? Don’t think so….
Translation: Arnold enjoys, nay, demonically throws money at the Federal Government Public Health bureaucracy when it comes to propagating the trust the science™ public service announcements involving mutilation of the bodies of children starting at age 1 to make them all Trans, irreversibly damaging their hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis (HPG axis) with steroids before puberty that are deemed lethal and roid rage inducing for men, sexualize, groom, and snatch young children from the arms of parents while attending public schools, putting bullseyes on the heads of parents of school age children so that Merrick Garland’s Schutzstaffel (SS) can spot the parents quickly like sniper fire, threaten, harass and intimidate Catholic Justices of the Supreme Court and their children at schools, but only after US Senators of the Biden Politburo make public declarations against said SCOTUS Justices, proselytize Marxist doctrines in schools to ensure that next generation children and young adults are
Hitler Ariansobedient Demoncrats, follow through, finally, come hell and high water, the eugenic ideologies that Supreme Court ruling Buck v Bell written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., articulated, which has never been reversed per se because overturning “stare decisis doctrine” is a “threat to Democracy”™, adopt China’s One Child policy as a way to combat climate change, assure that every man and woman serving in the US military are so demoralized that America no longer can recruit anyone to defend our nation and hence has no military (cue armed militia!), have the labor force be such an outlier vis a vis the US adult population, that socialism in Venezuela looks quaint compared to the humongous US Debt Biden’s Handlers refuse to acknowledge, and place a free Hunter Biden laptop from hell in the hands of every American courtesy of 51 former US intelligence officers / spies so as to prove Hunter Biden’s laptop is a must accessory for every failed parent/son co-dependent relationship….for startersIf we can’t trust our government, who can we trust?
Your family, spouse, children, in-laws, friends….oh wait, you have none of the aforementioned. It shows
Um. Pretty sure Arnold was doing /sarc.
Impressive comment, Estovir!
My muse gets stirred when it comes to America following the trajectory of Cuba. Fortunately there is rum & coke with a twist of lime
“You can have no wise laws .. unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people – and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive.”
~William Allen White (1922)
Arnold, they said the same thing about the wonderful Government of Germany and the USSR. please inform us about how wonderful the government was when Trump was president. Your inference is that the government has been wonderful for a very long time. We await your defense of government under the Trump administration. Such thinking can only be found at the shallow end of the pool.
Arnold Nordsieck — So do You suggest we dismiss the Taste-Test and just start drinking the Kool-Aid?
I will admit that it would take some doing to switch from Mountain Dew to Kool-Aid,
however I ponder if it is even possible to switch back from Kool-Aid to Mountain Dew.
That alone deters me from venturing from these Ridges high upon the Mountain.
Arnold,
Is that satire?
Arnold appears to perpetually he on both knees servicing Biden, Schumer and Garland much like the former Gray Lady which is now arguably the Scarlet Woman
Ruling Puts Social Media at Crossroads of Disinformation and Free Speech
And it is being overseen by Judge Terry A. Doughty, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump and has previously expressed little skepticism about debunked claims from vaccine skeptics. In one previous case, Judge Doughty accepted as fact the claim that “Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent transmission of the disease.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/us/politics/social-media-ruling-government.html
Left wing AI bots appear to be running the NYT
Arnold, you left off thee sarcasm tag and many fell for it.
What are you smoking?
You left out, “” at the end there, Arnold.
Interesting… why did *sarcasm* not publish? Because it was between ?
I am not sure whether Jonathan Swift is smiling at you or spinning in his grave.
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
“As a long-standing free speech advocate, the last few years have been alarming and, frankly, depressing.”
*********************************
Don’t despair. Trump’s SCOTUS is the biggest truth-teller of my lifetime. No longer are we compelled to admire the emperor’s new clothes and we can say exactly what’s on our mind without the government prattling at us about politically correct speech. We don’t have to pretend we’re practicing equal protection when we aren’t. We don’t have to find Constitutional penumbras of privacy that don’t exist. We don’t even have to call vote buying compassionate relief for students. We can call liars, lairs. We can call frauds, frauds and even the incompetent, incompetent. The truth will out. Oh and don’t sweat temporary quislings like Phil Mattingly. Like falling stars, they burn hot and streak away fast.
With apologies to Martina McBride: “Roll the stone away. Let the guilty pay. It’s Independence Day.”
I never liked the penumbras. I am encouraged by the recent SCOTUS decisions, but I think that it would be prudent for elected folks like AOC to actually read the decisions before expounding on them.
These Commie Parrots should review history. This will not end well for them. Research what happened to those who followed Goebbels. Joseph Goebbels knew what was waiting for him and that is why he ….. “We The People” will only take so much. Historically speaking, This end at the end of a rope.
Trump suggested that ingesting (drinking or injecting) industrial bleach may help treat Covid. Trump apparently got this idea from a fake doctor serving a prison term in South America. No legitimate real doctors supported this medical treatment. Apparently some Trump supporters actually drank bleach.
The bleach manufacturers immediately told the American public not to ingest bleach.
Biden, like all leaders is not perfect, but Biden had an unknown virus. Better being safe than sorry, Biden tried to protect the nation with the available information at the time.
It should be noted that Trump was aware of the pandemic overseas around December of 2019. Trump totally ignored the threat to American citizens, allowing the pandemic to become much worse. Biden then inherited Trump’s dereliction of duty.
The solution is not that hard:
The social media companies could follow American history and adopt a Hollywood style “self-rating” system like PG, R, Mature Audiences, Violent Content, Nudity, etc – making parents (citizens) the censors not the government officials. The speaker could self-label their own posts.
Social media companies could also adopt a “footnote links” similar to Wikipedia. Trump’s “drinking bleach” advice would likely be labeled “Opinion” and the footnoted to a fake doctor in prison in South America.
Readers could decide for themselves, without being censored by the government.
Trump emphatically did not recommend drinking bleach. He did comment on how easily bleach could kill the virus and in an offhand manner asked how that might be used in some fashion. And in fact, as later determined, a few drops of bleach in the right solution could be used to gargle with and kill the virus in your throat. Safer and more effective than the genetic therapy that was so forcefully recommended by the head quack, Fauci.
re: RonB
After making the bleach comment (and reaction to it), later Trump said he was just being sarcastic. According to testimony from his White House staffers, Trump simply didn’t read the briefing material before the press conference and didn’t do his homework.
White house staffers = secret phantom brain farts, that resonate in your clueless noggin, issued from paid off retarded MSM parroting sheep in a struggle session for quelling the orange man bad clickbait cravings .
Trump knew of medical research at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for over 10 years as to use of bleach in various forms in humans.
Did you drink any?
Everyone in America that drinks tap water drinks sodium hypochlorite, aka bleach, it is a disinfectant applied in the water purification process.
Ron B: other than because his narcissism REQURES him to be center-stage if there are cameras, why did Trump show up at CDC briefings? Why? Whadt business did he have to be there or comment at all, taking up valuable time allocated to physicians and scientists who were trying to save American lives? He has NO scientific background, and constantly LIED to the American people about the seriousness of COVID. And, it’s NOT safe to drink even diluted breach. If you don’t believe me, read the label on Clorox Bleach. And, vaccines are NOT “genetic therapy”. You need to stop watching alt-right news because you don’t even know what gene therapy involves, which is manipulating human genes that are defective so that they will stop causing illness. Replicating the mRNA of the COVID virus spike proteins so that the human immune system recognizes and attacks it, is NOT “genetic therapy”–it does not involve manipulation of the human genetic code.
You’re incorrect, as usual.
You were fed misinformation.
However, the idea of using bleach or another oxidizing substance is valid. We use bleach (Cl) for municipal water supplies, and when out in the wild drinking unpurified water, we use 5-8 drops per gallon, dependent on the bleach used.
Why some cannot figure out what is true and what isn’t is an enigma—the left lives in a fantasy world.
I think they know, what they really like is the smarmy smart aleck attack. It’s a joke, they get a kick and laugh about it. A put down, so stupid, it’s funny. They babble their crap then take their haughty superiority complex chuckle. They don’t mind lying and pretending, that’s their game. They learn it from all their demoncrat public national liars, of which there are a tremendous and prolific number.
Reagan’s Unenforced Torture Treaty, you have no proof that any Trump supporters drank bleach. Your buying into such nonsense demonstrate your level of mental capacity.
Trump suggested that ingesting (drinking or injecting) industrial bleach may help treat Covid.
The first sentence is lie.
Joe Biden doesn’t know what day it is.
One of many debunked hoaxes. You might check this out… https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1635268886743638018
Yes lemmings, follow the Propaganda Ministry.
Jonathan: Now I would like to get back to the real world–the world of former DJT lawyers who find themselves in a heap of trouble.
Lin Wood, one of Trump’s lawyers who cast his lot with Sidney Powell–imagining a world in which DJT never lost the election of 2020, has decided the legal profession is no longer his cup of tea. In a letter to the Georgia State Bar, dated July 4th, Wood asked to be permitted to retire. Acknowledging he is facing two disciplinary proceedings Wood decided grace was the better part of valor. He could see the handwriting on the wall.
So now Wood joins Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman in facing possible disbarment for their roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Giuliani’s law licenses in NY and WAS, DC, have already been suspended and Eastman faces the same prospect in California. Giuliani is facing even more dire legal threats. He is now considering testifying for Jack Smith’s team and against DJT to save his skin. Other of DJT’s former lawyers have decided to cooperate as well. Seems there is no honor among thieves.
Makes me somewhat ashamed of the legal profession when so many lawyers like Giuliani, Eastman, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood could slide into MAGA craziness without any thought of the consequences–and to throw away promising legal careers for Trump’s adoration. On the other hand, I respect lawyers like Jack Smith and Fani Willis, among others, who have upheld the honor of the legal profession by dedicating their lives to protecting the Constitution and the rule of law. That’s something to be proud of.
Full blown TDS
“Full blown TDS”
And typical deflection from the Left’s censorship.
Whenever Turley exposes a Leftist power-grab or irrationality, you can predict that there will be numerous, dishonest attempts to deceive via deflection.
Now do Wiessman, Comey, Meuller, the Clintons, Edwards, Lynch, Holder just to name a few! I’ll wait…
Before I go off on any substantive rant against the likes of “Dennis McIntyre”, I’d first like to know what the going wages are for selling out, stocking TDS fevers and gaslighting patriotic believers in a Constitutional Republic in general.
Perhaps it could turn out that even this man “has his price”. ???
I know these pro=censorship MSM talking heads knock down a pretty good chunk of change…
Sorry Felix, We have run out of seized Russian Oligarch Yachts, would you consider a Russian/Ukrainian Villa on the Black Sea?
Turley has become a full-time alt-right media pundit. He ignores the big legal stories that are significant, and which have long-term implications to come up with ways to attack Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Democrats or anyone not Republican or named Trump. It’s so predictable, and sad, really.
Gigi is just phoning it in now
Tell us, Gigi, who else is covering the Biden crimes and corruption? Anyone?
Turley is giving much needed airing to stories the fake news media continues to ignore.
MSM is bought and paid for by Big Pharma. They say whatever their corporate masters tell them to say. They’re puppets reading a teleprompter, nothing more. Same with “Joe Biden.”
Until’We the people’ hold the elitist billionaires and deep state bureaucrats accountable, we will continue to lose our freedom and liberty. We should invest in rope. Lots of it.
Those “elites” that want to legislate more “gun control” have their own private security teams, well armed, experienced, hard-core.
A couple of yahoos carrying rope would be lit up by those security goons in a heartbeat.
Open to suggestions, “work-arounds”.
old man: so if Joe Biden has been purchased by Big Pharma, why did he get passed the Inflation Reduction Act that caps insulin at $35/month, and is pushing to allow Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate prescription drug prices–something Republicans have fought against for years? It’s Republicans who are in the pockets of Big Pharma.
why did he get passed the Inflation Reduction Act that caps insulin at $35/month,
Why are millions of people paying alot more?
Iowan2,
“Why are millions of people paying a lot more?”
I can answer that: Obamacare.
Wife and I went from a $400 premium and $1200 deductible, to $1200 premium and $3000 deductible.
Yes, Obama care was the answer.
My point to Gigi, if you have only SS as income, and no assets, qualify for medicare, that’s the price. Everyone else is paying just like before the IRA. Insurance, deductibles, co-pays and cash.
It’s Republicans who are in the pockets of Big Pharma.
Some are, I never denied that. But you look at the sponsors of the MSM “news” shows, it’s almost always big pharma companies. Russell Brand had a funny montage in which he ran all those sponsor messages together. Funny, but revealing too.
CNN: A sty filled with a herd of self-aggrandizing, self-satisfied shits with delusions of grandeur about being left off the hook after the last book has been burned. How historically naive.
Jonathan
You omitted a few key and revealing elements from your timeline and understanding.
First remember that when the pandemic became known in China the Dems’ first instinct was to claim people here reluctant to attend Chinese New Year celebrations were racist. Pelosi and DeBlasio were high profile examples, but of course it was widespread as all Dems and left of Dems consider calling others racist their top priority.
Second these Dems and leftists realized the risk as the pandemic worsen and called a weekend retreat to develop their political response. The outcome of this weekend was their complete 180 degree change of direction toward overreaction. This served three purposes. The first was to insulate them from their prior lack of seriousness. But the second and far more important goal was ruining the American economy to deprive Trump of his best re-election pitch. The third goal was to hype the “emergency” to justify massive increases in government spending and control.
As we can see from post meeting events all three goals were largely met. The about-face on masks was merely one element of this larger plan.
Correct Marshall
We all lived the what. You explain the Why
“As a long-standing free speech advocate …” — who senselessly censors his own comment section.
That opening statement should be accompanied by a laugh track.
Jonathan: Capturing the narrative seems to be your approach these days. So as if repeating it was not enough–you keep repeating the conspiracy theories that face masks, pandemic restrictions, school closures and the like were all unnecessary as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. You even revive the debunked “Great Barrington Declaration”–a theory rejected by the scientific consensus. You also even Q the efficacy of vaccines. What’s next? Blood letting as the preferred way to deal with future pandemics?
I don’t know what is worse. A legal scholar who stakes out a position on the fringes of legal opinion (e.g., DJT can “self-pardon”) –or one who pretends he is also an authority on science!
Show us where the Great Barrington Declaration was debunked.
Fauci told us he is “the science.” Isn’t that enough? Who is going to argue with that? Certainly not real scientists, no, they will be silenced by the government!
We do know that the Great Barrington Declaration was such a threat to Fauci, he and Collins schemed to discredit and to, “There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-collins-emails-great-barrington-declaration-covid-pandemic-lockdown-11640129116
https://www.aier.org/article/twitter-files-confirm-censorship-of-the-great-barrington-declaration/
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That’s all I remember from physics.”
-Dennis McIntyre.
-Yesterday.
Dennis: thank you. Now that Turley has chosen to be an alt-right media pundit, his credibility takes an even worse hit when it comes to the power of a POTUS to self-pardon–Turley previously wrote that attempting to do so would provoke a constitutional crisis: From ThoughtCo:
“Most scholars argue, however, that presidents cannot pardon themselves. More to the point, even if they were, such a move would be incredibly risky and likely to ignite a constitutional crisis in the United States.
Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University, wrote in The Washington Post:
“Such an act would make the White House look like the Bada Bing Club. After a self-pardon, Trump could wipe out the Islamic State, trigger an economic golden age and solve global warming with a carbon-eating border wall — and no one would notice. He would simply go down in history as the man who not only pardoned his family members but himself.” ”
Other than the fact that he is now on the Fox payroll, what has changed since Turley expressed this opinion?
“Most Scholars argue, however, that presidents cannot pardon themselves. Plenary power of the President. Nobody has the power to review the pardon. The People have the power to vote the President, and his Party out of power. Even the House under control of the Democrats would not attempt an impeachment.
Who is the Person. I see them quoted often, but I cant find a CV. Pass along a link to the Bio.
One of the most important acts by any totalitarian government is to be the only voice heard.
I’ve been shopping around for a modified Lincoln Continental.
If anyone knows about a car shop that can handle this modification project, let me know. You won’t be disappointed. I’ll pay cash up front. It’s got something to do with free speech.
Try getting a hold of those car guys on History channel. Heck they will probably do it free for an interview and TV episodes.
If CNN or MSNBC and social media had been around, I wonder if they would have favored government censorship during the Vietnam War??
Bill, the Vietnam War allowed the left/media to get rid of LBJ, although a Democrat, a Democrat being challenged by those further left such as McGovern and RFK, and then of course Nixon. Nixon did what he had to do due to the situation he was left with and the facts on the ground. He did actually end the war or at least created the path to end the war.
Now remember how the left attacked Bush regarding the middle east wars. Remember the Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan and how all the protests disappeared the minute Bush was out and a Democrat was in. The left/media got rid of Sheehan the minute Obama was in office even though things hadn’t changed overnight.
The left will use ANYTHING for power. Remember AOC crying at the border? When was the last time she was there? They will defend an open border, censorship, crime in the cities and even riots that burn and loot black owned homes and businesses as long as it helps the cause.
AOC is too busy these days expressing outrage at the recent SCOTUS rulings, but appears not to actually have read them. It might be a good time for members of Congress to take a class in Constitutional Law.
Then why are you still a registered democrat John..??
Journalism is dead. These hacks are nothing but spokespersons for the Democratic Party. I doubt they would approve of the practice if Bush or Trump were president. They are propagandists no less than so called journalists working for Putin or Xi. And quite frankly. They are evil
Upstate Farmer is correct.
I knew that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan by the spring of 2020, and that it was most likely a leak in September or October (various bits of evidence on line, including satellite images of parking lots), that it was not dangerous for those under the age of 25 (national databases), and not all that dangerous for those between 25 and 50 (ditto), that most of the deaths were from those who were over 70 and had at least two underlying health problems (kidneys, heart, lungs, liver), and that masks did not work and we were being lied to on a daily basis by everybody (the Danish study in particular, but others as well, none discussed in the MSM). None of our friends or acquaintances knew because they watched and read the MSM, which was churning out a daily diet of ‘expert’ misinformation (to borrow a favorite term of my betters).
I hunted down the ‘dissidents’ on line and avoided the experts at place like Imperial College and the CDC. Of particular use were Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (Carl Heneghan & cpy.), the dissidents at Stanford (John Ionnidis and Jan Bhattacharya), and others pathologists, epidemiologists, and physicians at Harvard, Hull, Johns Hopkins, and other universities.
I also searched national data-bases and the web, and I used Sweden as my ‘control’ to see whether the locked-down countries fared any better. They did not, and Sweden kept kids under 16 in school the whole time. The only serious error the Swedish acknowledged was not realizing that the elderly were particularly at risk and failing to take measures to protect them.
I knew a handful of others who also scrutinized the web and vetted the information on it, so I was aware that Ivermectin worked, that corticosteroids were useful, and that the ‘vaccine’ was a therapeutic, not a vaccine. But I submitted and had the shots because I had no choice; without them, I could not live normally or travel.
Almost all my friends and acquaintances, but not my extended family (who are naturally curious about things like reality), listened to the ‘experts’ on the MSM, so their standard response to any comments I made that conflicted with the reality being portrayed on the TV and in the newspapers was, ‘Are you a doctor (MD)?’
No, of course not.
But I know how to read a chart, how to assess data, and how to read, and there was plenty of evidence from the beginning that the nonsense we were being fed by the experts from places like Imperial College and the CDC were exactly that . . . nonsense. And yet, and yet, even now a great many people think that lockdowns saved us, that Fauci is not to be questioned, and that nobody knows whence the virus came . . . .
It is more than a little exasperating . . .
An Old Guy,
Thank you.
At the start, when we had little if not questionable information, I think it was prudent to take some degree of caution.
However, the degree to which they took, looked like and as we found later was overboard.
As more information did in fact come to light, rather then stop, analysis of the information and adjust accordingly as the Great Barrington Declaration suggested, they doubled and in some cases tripled down on bad policy.
To do otherwise would they have to admit they were wrong. They would never do that as we have seen some try to re-write history. Fortunately the internet is forever and we will not forget.
Well for me, I knew it was a hoax when I started seeing all kind of Chinese people falling out in China.
China NEVER SHOWS US INTERNAL CONFLICT OR PROBLEMS. Common sense told me at that point, it was a false flag op for something else. COMMON SENSE should have told everyone in America that! We have “citizens” now who are dumb enough to believe anything and everything. Thanks, Dept. of Education and TEACHERS F ING UNIONS!!!
Did anyone else notice the smoke when Fauchi’s pants caught fire when he did a 180 pirouette on masks, claiming new *evidence* supported his own reversal without citing the alleged ‘evidence’ – or was it just me?
It has not been established that Covid 19 came from the Wuhan lab. If you have concrete evidence please present it. Otherwise it’s just a conjecture. In science association may be is misleading.
It has not been established that these feathered things with wings and webbed feet that are quacking are ducks. If you have concrete evidence please present it. Otherwise it’s just a conjecture. In science association may be is misleading.
Indeed!
I am a historian, not a physician nor an epidemiologist, nor any other type of expert. Historians tend to be jacks-of-all-trades, with a spurious speciality in a particular area, like Modern France or Renaissance Italy.
Whatever our particular interest, we all work from secondary sources (so we learn whom to trust and whom to doubt), fragmentary original sources (so we learn to draw conclusions from incomplete evidence), and, if we are up to date, oral testimony (so we learn how unreliable human memory can be and how mendacious people in positions of power often are).
Upstate Farmer is certainly correct that caution is called for when we do not know whom to trust, but it quickly became apparent that the experts and media were not to be trusted, if for no other reason that they refused to report what was happening in Sweden honestly and ignored all the circumstantial evidence that the virus was not that deadly and that the Chinese were doing their best to cover up whatever might have happened at the lab in Wuhan. One of my Eureka moments was the physician in Bergamo, the first major outbreak in Europe, who warned everyone to separate those who died of the virus from those who died with it, and noted that most of the dead were past 70. Nobody paid any attention, nor did they note that Italy was a hot spot due to the close links between major Chinese cities, including Wuhan with the industrial city of Milan, which is spitting distance from Bergamo.
HB is asking more than anybody ever has, which is a smoking gun. But he ignores all the evidence that showed Wuhan to be the source, and all of it available by April 2020. The ‘wet’ market was close to the laboratory, but the bats who hosted the virus were hundreds of miles to the south and do not migrate. Nobody could produce a pangolin with the disease. The first casualties were employees of the laboratory. The Chinese wiped all of the information about research at the lab before January. Peter Daszak boasted on tape of the gain-of-function research being done at the lab in a 2019 interview (since taken down), and we knew Fauci was funding Wuhan, and that a researcher from UNC in gain-of-function had advised the lab, and that the lab had harvested bats with the virus. I could go on, but why bother. If you are not convinced by now, only Saint Fauci descending from on high with the evidence chiseled in two tablets will convince you.
To Anonymous. Yup. Koots don’t quack, neither do geese or swans or water hens. Webbed feet, yes, quacking, not usually.
What fascinates me is that people like HB, if s/he is being sincere, are convinced by an expert (a.k.a., authority figure) who offers no evidence at all for his claims, but remain skeptical despite there being no other explanation for the original of the virus that makes any sense.
Just really really exasperating . . . .
An Old Guy,
Great comment!
Exasperating is right. Have they no independent thought? Or just bob their head and believe whatever some “expert” or talking head says on TV?
Howard: It is established that it came from China
Howard Brookshire: You do know by now, don’t you, that it was a Plandemic? A scamdemic? None of this was accidental. Wake up, man.
It has not been established that Covid 19 came from the Wuhan lab. If you have concrete evidence please present it. Otherwise it’s just a conjecture. In science association may be is misleading.
In all you infinite wisdom, what is the origin? (China has given up patient Zero. A lab worker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology). After 100’s of thousands of animals tested, not a single one provide the matching DNA of the virus.
Here’s a hint. Stop using talking points of the left and do more reading.
Interior Department included Wuhan lab funder on early COVID pandemic research team
“Officials at the U.S. nonprofit that passed taxpayer money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – whose coronavirus bat research is now suspected by the FBI to be the source of the pandemic – helped the Interior Department research possible transmission of COVID-19 between humans and North American bats, according to newly released government memos.”
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/interior-department-included-wuhan-lab-funder-early-covid-pandemic
I agree with everything you wrote, except “the ‘vaccine’ was a therapeutic, not a vaccine.” My understanding of “a therapeutic” is it’s something that helps when you already have a condition, not a preventative. A vaccine is supposed to prevent a disease.
What I think is true is that the Covid-19 vaccines are like conventional flu vaccines: sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, and maybe they mitigate, depending on whether you’re lucky enough to be infected with a virus they were designed for and not some variant that evolved to be slightly different. Also, all drugs have potential side effects and there was insufficient study before most of the population was turned into guinea pigs.
Creekan, I think you are a little askew with the facts. I am no longer willing to believe there is any therapeutic value. There are no controlled studies. I think we are seeing correlation, not causation. By the time 60%+ vaccination rate, along with the natural immunity, and the dry tinder of elderly with co morbidities dying off. We were left with a population able to deal with a tough cold.
The “shot” did not protect you from contracting the virus, nor, did it prevent the infected from spreading the virus. AND they knew that going in.
“Great! I’m vaccinated and I can toss my mask!!..”.not so fast said the govt, we still need the masks”. For what reason?
I think you misunderstood what I wrote. I quoted another posting (using quotation marks). Something with “therapeutic value” would be used after someone became ill, not before.
Have you ever seen a Bovine turn around to smell its own pie? Why then does MSM wallow in the smell of their putrid BS!!!?