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August 2020

An Effective COVID Treatment the Media Continues to Besmirch By Steven Hatfill

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/04/an_effective_covid_treatment_the_media_continues_to_besmirch_143875.html

On Friday, July 31, in a column ostensibly dealing with health care “misinformation,” Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan opened by lambasting “fringe doctors spouting dangerous falsehoods about hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 wonder cure.”

Actually, it was Sullivan who was spouting dangerous falsehoods about this drug, something the Washington Post and much of the rest of the media have been doing for months. On May 15, the Post offered a stark warning to any Americans who may have taken hope in a possible therapy for COVID-19. In the newspaper’s telling, there was nothing unambiguous about the science — or the politics — of hydroxychloroquine: “Drug promoted by Trump as coronavirus game-changer increasingly linked to deaths,” blared the headline. Written by three Post staff writers, the story asserted that the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 is scant and that the drug is inherently unsafe. This claim is nonsense.

Biased against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 — and the Washington Post is hardly alone — the paper described an April 21, 2020, drug study on U.S. Veterans Affairs patients hospitalized with the illness. It found a high death rate in patients taking the drug hydroxychloroquine. But this was a flawed study with a small sample, the main flaw being that the drug was given to the sickest patients who were already dying because of their age and severe pre-existing conditions. This study was quickly debunked. It had been posted on a non-peer-reviewed medical archive that specifically warns that studies posted on its website should not be reported in the media as established information.

Sharyl Attkisson :Investigative Issues: The Troubling Fact Is That Media Fact-Checkers Tend to Lean ← Left

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/0/04/investigative_issues_the_troubling_fact_that_media_fact-checkers_lean_left_124663.html

A growing response to today’s chaotic information landscape sounds inviting and elegantly simple: appoint experts to “fact-check” news stories, blogs, speeches, studies, opinions, and political ads. Information they deem to be false is corrected or even removed from public view, in the name of the public good.

Since Donald Trump’s election these “fact-checkers” have gained increased prominence. Pressure has mounted for news outfits and big tech companies – including Google, Facebook, and Twitter – to police political discourse. At the same time, many people, notably conservatives, are demanding that the tech giants back off such perceived censorship. Tensions on both sides were on display last week as a House Judiciary subcommittee grilled top Silicon Valley executives. 

That discord is likely to persist because in large part the fact-checking solution is illusory. Many such efforts fail because they amount to a circular feedback loop of verification. The fact-checkers are like-minded journalists or often liberal Silicon Valley gatekeepers, who frequently rely on partisan news sources and political activists to control narratives on a wide variety of issues and controversies. This small group of players exerts an oversized influence, using fact checks to shape and censor information.

Twitter recently sparked controversy by taking the unprecedented step of adding a disapproving “fact-checking label” to some of President Trump’s tweets. The social media site publicly explained that Trump’s May 26 posts contained what its fact-checkers deemed to be “potentially misleading information about voting processes.”

Trump had said widespread mail-in ballots in the 2020 election would be “substantially fraudulent.” While the definition of “substantially” is in the eye of the beholder, the United States, in fact, has a long and ongoing history of ballot fraud.

8 Democrat Myths William Barr Debunked Between Deliberate Interruptions By Margot Cleveland

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/03/8-democrat-myths-william-barr-debunked-between-deliberate-interruptions/

Notwithstanding Democrats’ attempts to prevent William Barr from setting the record straight, the attorney general dismantled major fake news headlines over the last two months.

When Attorney General William Barr testified before the House Judiciary Committee last Tuesday, Democrats’ rhetorical questions reinforced eight falsehoods previously peddled by left-wing media. Notwithstanding these attempts to prevent Barr from setting the record straight, the attorney general dismantled much of the fake news that has made headlines over the last two months.

Here are the highlights of the media myths congressional Democrats paraded for the public during the hearing.

Myth 1: Barr overruled prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone because of a Donald Trump tweet.

Several of Democrats’ attacks focused on President Trump associate Roger Stone. Democrat committee Chair Jerry Nadler accused Barr of personally interfering “with ongoing criminal investigations to protect the president and his allies from the consequences of their actions,” and then “when career investigators and prosecutors resisted these brazen unprecedented actions, you replaced them with less qualified staff who appear to be singularly beholden to you.” Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, drilled more specifically into the Stone case, misrepresenting the facts in the process.

In 2nd Try, James Sees Different MI Challenge (and Outcome) . By Philip Wegmann

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/04/in_2nd_try_james_sees_different_mi_challenge_and_outcome_143870.html

Republicans know they could not draft a better candidate for a worse time. Luckily for them, John James was such a candidate before a pandemic ravaged its way around the globe, a recession cratered the world economy and racial strife erupted across America.

He turned heads when he ran and narrowly lost a race against Sen. Debbie Stabenow last cycle as an untested political rookie, then quietly and quickly started gathering strength for his current challenge against the other Democratic incumbent in Michigan, Sen. Gary Peters.

“It feels a lot different this time,” James told RealClearPolitics in a stark understatement less than 100 days from Nov. 3. And one of the many differences comes Tuesday. In the 2018 primary, he had to hurdle a self-funding fellow Republican who put $5 million into his bid. James will now breeze unchallenged to the party’s nomination, enjoying a takeoff that preserves precious resources for the general election race in a state critical to Republican self-preservation.

The Grand Old Party needs Michigan. It was the key to a Trump victory four years ago, and it could hold the fate of his second term. It also represents one of the rare opportunities for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to go on the offensive as Senate Republicans otherwise play defense across the board.

Enter James, who tells RCP during a brief phone interview that yes, his state is both those things. His race also represents, he believes, a contest for the soul of the GOP, if not the nation.

Sydney Williams: on Anger

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Anger has been a constant in American politics since the beginning. On July 11, 1804, a long and bitter feud between Vice President Aaron Burr and former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton ended in the latter’s death by gunshot on a field in Weehawken, New Jersey. On February 6, 1858, as the House of Representatives debated the Kansas Territory’s pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, Pennsylvania’s Republican Galusha Grow and South Carolina Democrat Laurence Keitt traded insults and then blows. On March 1, 1954 four Puerto Rican nationalists in the visitors’ gallery unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and opened fire on members of Congress, wounding five. When heated political dialogue becomes angry words (or worse), the nation loses. The 1960s were angry years, fed by opponents and proponents of Civil Rights and an unpopular war in Southeast Asia. We are living through another period where anger has become pervasive and political extremism has made the middle way a difficult passage.

We are in a summer of discontent, made inhospitable by Covid-19, an economic depression and unprecedented hatred for the President of the United States. Political extremism has always been around, but usually on the fringes. Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace and Lester Maddox once represented right-wing extremists, just as Henry Wallace and George McGovern did on the left. (George Wallace and Maddox were both Democrats, but extreme rightwing in their views). However, they were all marginalized by the far larger center-right and center-left parts of their respective Parties. That is no longer the case. Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist, is contributing to the Democrat platform. Like a mutating cell infected with a virus, the country has been dividing and separating, creating extremists on both ends.

What We Know Now About Hydroxychloroquine to Treat COVID-19

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/08/01/hydroxychloroquine-covid-19/?utm_source=rss&

The buzz surrounding the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 began to die down until early July and the results of 2,500-person study. Pictured: A pharmacy employee displays a box of Plaqueni, a brand name for hydroxychloroquine, May 28 in Paris. (Photo: Marc Piasecki/Getty Images)

Early in health officials’ response to the pandemic, one drug offered hope of a safe, widely available, and cheap therapeutic that would break the death grip that COVID-19 held on the world.

However, after its promised efficacy didn’t materialize in large, statistically significant numbers, enthusiasm for the drug, hydroxychloroquine, quickly waned. Why, then, has it made its way back into the headlines?

When it was first suggested that hydroxychloroquine may be an effective antiviral against the new coronavirus, which scientists call SARS-CoV-2, the U.S. government purchased and delivered the drug by the millions of doses even before research could prove its efficacy.

At the time, what scarce data was available suggested it would work, and waiting much longer would’ve been unethical. After all, the drug has a decadeslong history of use to treat malaria.

But with those millions of doses being administered, clinicians found only mixed results. Some, as in the early French trial, found tremendous success, while many others found no clinical benefit.

In New Interview Bobby Kennedy Jr. Claims Dr. Fauci will Make Millions on Coronavirus Vaccine and Owns Half the Patent Joe Hoft

www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/unbelievable-new-interview-bobby-kennedy-jr-claims-dr-fauci-will-make-millions-coronavirus-vaccine-owns-half-patent/

Robert Kennedy Jr. and Harvard Attorney Alan Dershowitz debated on the topic of the coronavirus vaccine back in July. During the debate, Kennedy Jr. claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci invested $500 million in the vaccine that is not safe by any means and Fauci owns half the patent so he’s due to make millions.        In an earlier thread we reported on Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s comments about Big Pharma and the increase in vaccines in our culture back in April.  Kennedy shared the story of how Dr. Fauci fired and led the indictment of a brilliant assistant who blew the whistle on the harmful consequences attributed to vaccines.

 We also reported on this doctor, Dr. Judy Mikovits who was a young doctor with a promising career until she began raising concerns about what she considered to be the potentially harmful consequences of vaccines.  Dr. Mikovits explained how she was jailed during this time period with charges related to her removal of lab notebooks, a computer, and other material belonging to the institute. These charges were ultimately dropped.  Her video has since been taken down by YouTube.

The Biden Basement Strategy Backfires Jeffrey Lord

https://spectator.org/biden-trump-debate-joe-lockhart/

Call it an unforced error — a potentially serious backfire.

Over there at CNN, former Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart outs the Democrats’ greatest fear: that Joe Biden will be a disaster in the scheduled presidential debates with President Trump. So Lockhart’s recommendation to Biden? Don’t debate.

Lockhart’s stated reason for a Biden refusal to debate is, no kidding, this:

Whatever you do, don’t debate Trump. Trump has now made more than 20,000 misleading or false statements according to the Washington Post. It’s a fool’s errand to enter the ring with someone who can’t follow the rules or the truth. Biden will undoubtedly take heat from Republicans and the media for skipping the debates. But it’s worth the risk as trying to debate someone incapable of telling the truth is an impossible contest to win.

Let’s leave aside the amusing irony of someone who worked for Bill Clinton complaining that “It’s a fool’s errand to enter the ring with someone who can’t follow the rules or the truth.” Donald Trump did just that in 2016 with Hillary Clinton and won the debates going away.

The Containment of China by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16300/china-containment

After China’s many transgressions over the past 50 years… the military containment of Chinese expansionism and Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s stated goal of world domination needs to be the highest foreign policy priority of the Free World.

Countries could also be enjoined to cancel all commercial activity with China. Why fund one’s enemy and make him stronger?

China’s walk-in-the-park takeover of Hong Kong — an illegal appropriation — undoubtedly served to whet China’s expansionist appetite.

The firm tone of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s July 13 declaration that the U.S. rejects China’s fake claims in the South China Sea as mostly illegal will probably be seen as “just words.” The U.S. might need to convince Beijing that the U.S. and its allies have the political will to implement this containment.

China’s leaders are surely hoping that the current U.S. administration’s aversion to war will enable the Communists to pick off new territory with relative ease; the U.S. should not even let them think of such a possibility.

The Chinese Communist Party’s narrative is that the U.S. administration is threatening all the people of China. One Chinese state CCTV anchor added that the “U.S. fights for greed and arrogance,” but that “China will fight for a new world.” It certainly will — if we let it.

After China’s many transgressions over the past 50 years — including the theft of $600 billion of U.S. intellectual property each year; Beijing’s malignant cover-up of the Covid-19 virus; the Communist regime’s attempts to blind US airmen with lasers; constructing military islands in the South China Sea, and last month sending a massive fleet of 250 Chinese fishing vessels near the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, to name but a few — the military containment of Chinese expansionism and Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s stated goal of world domination needs to be the highest foreign policy priority of the Free World.

Portland: What Does It Mean? The issue that will re-elect Donald Trump in November. David Horowitz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/portland-what-does-it-mean-david-horowitz/

Perhaps the most emblematic moment in the battles raging in American cities came the other day when Bernie Sanders attacked President Trump’s decision to send federal agents to quell the riots in Portland Oregon. His alleged reason: they bear the earmarks of a “police state.” This, from a man who spent the entire sixty years of his adult life supporting every ruthless, communist police state on the planet – and there were many – and who to this day declares his solidarity with the police states in the West Bank and Gaza run by his terrorist comrades in the PLO and Hamas. Of course these twisted values have made him the most popular Democrat leader.

Our cities are under siege by communists like Bernie and other self-declared enemies of America who have made eminently clear that they are Marxists and their goal is the destruction of our democracy, which they hope to replace with a communist gulag. In the last two months these violent criminals have torched 400 American cities, injured more than a thousand police officers, killed more than a dozen individuals, looted and destroyed billions of dollars worth of downtown real estate and merchandise, all the while demanding the defunding of police departments. This has led to a violent crime wave resulting in the deaths of scores of individuals including at least eight children – all of them black.

Portland is the epicenter of this insurrection, the extent of which America hasn’t witnessed since the Civil War. Every night for the last two months thousands of criminals have attacked Portland’s downtown, firing explosives and wielding machetes, terrorizing its inhabitants, setting fire to its hall of justice, smashing public monuments and calling for the abolition of the United States. Like every other major American city that has been victimized, Portland’s mayhem has been made possible by the actions of a seditious mayor and city council who have refused to perform the first task of government, which is to keep its citizens and their property safe.