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MY SAY: THE MUDDLED DEATH STATISTICS

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

Here are some headlines about appalling death counts: How will we ever know exactly how many Americans really died of Covid 19. The only thing I can absolutely guarantee is that many of the deceased will be voting this November 3,2020.   rsk

Funeral Directors Blow the Whistle on Deaths Falsely Attributed to Coronavirus By Megan Fox

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/04/30/nyc-funeral-directors-reveal-shocking-inflation-of-covid-19-deaths-n387013

“Basically, every death certificate that comes across our desk now has COVID on it,” said a funeral director in Williston Park, N.Y., on a recorded phone call with Project Veritas in a newly-released video. James O’Keefe has been asking for people inside the medical system to blow the whistle if they see corruption or inconsistencies in reports about the Chinese WuFlu known as COVID-19.

Physicians Say Hospitals Are Pressuring ER Docs to List COVID-19 on Death Certificates. Here’s Why Jon Miltimore

https://fee.org/articles/physicians-say-hospitals-are-pressuring-er-docs-to-list-covid-19-on-death-certificates-here-s-why/

The economic incentive to add COVID-19 to diagnostic lists and death certificates is clear and does not require any conspiracy. When Drs. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi of Accelerated Urgent Care held a press conference last week, their goal was to galvanize policymakers to reopen the economy.The California-based hospital owners may have uncorked a bigger story. During their long discussion with reporters, Dr. Erickson noted he has spoken to numerous physicians who say they are being pressured to add COVID-19 to death certificates and diagnostic lists—even when the novel coronavirus appears to have no relation to the victim’s cause of death.

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Germany Allows Mullahs’ Terror Banks Amid Coronavirus by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15971/germany-iran-terror-banks

“Germany was again Europe’s largest trading partner with Iran by far, exporting $1.64 billion worth of goods in 2019. While German banks have been largely reluctant to finance Iran trade, there are at least five banks – all owned/operated by Iran and all operating inside Germany – that are more than happy to step in.” – Daniel Roth, “Germany’s Iran Banks,” United Against Nuclear Iran April 7, 2020

One of the sanctioned banks freely doing business in Hamburg, Germany, is Bank Melli. It is the largest bank owned by the Iranian regime, and when it comes to revenues, it ranks first, followed by bank Mellat.

Another major Iranian bank also still conducting business in Hamburg Germany is Bank Sepah. Bank Sepah, also owned by the Iranian regime, has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department and has links to the regime’s ballistic missile program. According to United Against Nuclear Iran, “Bank Sepah has provided ‘direct and extensive financial services’ to Iran’s key ballistic missiles procurement and development agencies, including Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO) and its subsidiary, Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG).”

By trading with the Iranian regime and allowing Iran’s sanctioned banks freely to operate in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is empowering the ruling mullahs and their regime. They are not only the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism; they are also racing to develop clandestine nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

While the attention of the international community has been directed towards the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government appears to be allowing Iran’s sanctioned banks to operate freely in Germany.

According to a recent report published by United Against Nuclear Iran:

“Siemens, Volkswagen and the big multinationals have pulled back due to U.S. sanctions, but many of Germany’s 3.5 million small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) are still prepared to do business with Iran. And they still can. From Hamburg in the north to Munich in the south, the ‘Mittelstand’ firms can obtain Letters of Credit, bank guarantees, insurance and all the other trade finance products they need from their Iranian facilitators. “

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Do the Media Even Exist? The media exists in name only but not in fact. By Victor Davis Hanson *****

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/03/do-the-media-even-exist/

If we lived in a fair and just world, most of the current media would simply go away and try something else.

The problem is not that reporters are human and therefore sometimes err. The rub is not even that they are poorly educated or rarely write well.

We also expect officials to leak one-sided stories and then the media to print them without edits. These are all things baked into the media cake and the public understands, even if it does not quite accept them.

The crisis instead is that they are now almost always wrong, and predictably wrong because they are lazy and biased—and they deny it to the point of self-delusion. The result is that, for all practical purposes, journalists no longer exist for the general public as sources of news.

More than half the country now assumes that the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, the networks, and the cable news outlets are culpable not of merely failing to tell the truth but of being incapable of telling the truth. Even if they wished to, or had the skills to report empirically and dispassionately, they simply cannot, given their investments in the progressive agenda, and its investments in them. In other words, they are owned—creatures of that agenda.

Nowhere has the media nadir been clearer than in the case of ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton.

He may have once bragged on tape that he got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for daring to investigate corruption that involved his own wastrel son, Hunter. He may have had a history of racially charged condescension, ranging from commentary on his future boss Barack Obama (“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man”) to the purported predictable habits of Indian immigrants (“You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”). He may have had a bad habit as a candidate of plagiarizing and spreading fairy stories.

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Online ‘Taliban Imam’ Ramadan Izhar Khan, other radicals featured in stay-home holiday affair. Joe Kaufman

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/online-taliban-imam-ramadan-joe-kaufman/

Last month, the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF) sponsored an online town hall meeting, titled ‘RAMADAN FROM HOME.’ While the event was being conducted online to keep those involved safe from coronavirus, the groups and individuals participating in it – from the sponsor to the speakers to the moderator – represent terror-related organizations and institutions promoting violence and bigotry and should be regarded as threats to our community and country’s security.

Ramadan is a month-long holiday, whereby Muslims gather together in prayer and reflection. It has also been a time for launching jihad attacks. In South Florida, however, this year’s Ramadan is being celebrated by many at home, due to the coronavirus pandemic. With that in mind, the South Florida Muslim Federation, an umbrella organization for terror-linked Islamist groups and radical mosques, created an online event in honor of the holiday, featuring a number of local imams, to be hosted on Zoom, this past April 19th.

The contact for the event was the Executive Director of SFMF, Nezar Hamze. Prior to his involvement with the Federation, Hamze was a Regional Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist organization with foundational and financial ties to Hamas. CAIR was established, in June 1994, as an integral part of a terrorist umbrella group led by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook, who at the time was located in the US and today is a senior member of Hamas, residing in Cairo, Egypt. The Public Relations Director of the Federation, Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, is currently the CAIR-Florida Communications Director.

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Netherlands: Man who Murdered Politician “to Protect Muslims” is Free And even more than free, he is victorious. Robert Spencer

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/netherlands-man-who-murdered-politician-protect-robert-spencer/

“I shot Fortuyn for Dutch Muslims.”

This was the startling claim of Volkert van der Graaf, a thirty-four-year-old non-Muslim Dutchman, as he confessed to the May 2002 murder of “far right” politician Pim Fortuyn. Eighteen years later, Volkert van der Graaf is free to receive the gratitude of the Islamic community for which he did, in his mind, such a signal service. His freedom is yet another indication, as if we needed another, of Europe’s wholesale cultural collapse, and the inability or unwillingness of European authorities to face up to the consequences of what they have done by inundating their nations with Muslim migrants with a vastly different sociocultural perspective from that of the natives.

The Dutch-language Post Online reported Thursday that “van der Graaf (50) was convicted on appeal in 2003 by the Amsterdam court of appeal. The court had also imposed an eighteen-year sentence upon him, after a demand from the Public Prosecution Service for a life sentence. The Justice Service saw the murder not only as an attack on the politician, but also on democracy. The court did not follow that line of reasoning. The prosecution also demanded a life sentence on appeal, but the sentence remained unchanged.”

Even worse, “in recent years, Van der Graaf no longer had to be in prison because – since May 2014 – he was on parole. He had to comply with various conditions, such as a duty to report and a ban on talking to the media. Van der Graaf then successfully challenged a number of conditions in legal proceedings.”

Consequently, on Thursday, the murderer was officially free completely from all obligations to the state. A Dutch official explained that “the person concerned has fully undergone the imposed sentence and is no longer under the supervision of the Public Prosecution Service or the probation service; there are no more conditions for him.”

No one seems to mind, because after all, Fortuyn was “far-right.” Probably only in the post-modern, post-Christian Netherlands of hashish cafes and taxpaying licensed prostitutes could an openly homosexual politician such as Fortuyn (whose kitchen featured portraits of Marx and Lenin) be described as “far right,” but such is the way of the world today. Fortuyn held only one position that earned him that label: the incompatibility of traditional Islamic values with the liberal, secular societies of the West.

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Pelosi’s Coronavirus Power Grab Representatives can’t do our jobs when we’re stuck at home. So the speaker is writing the laws herself. By Rep.Bradley Byrne (R-Alabama- District 1)

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-coronavirus-power-grab-11588526451?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_4&cx_artPos=6#cxrecs_s

“The coronavirus has given Mrs. Pelosi the greatest control over the House of Representatives of any speaker in U.S. history. Fear of the virus has given her an excuse to send 434 of us home and essentially say, “See you when I need you.” Before Republicans objected two weeks ago, she even sought an amendment to House rules to allow for proxy voting. Under this plan, representatives wouldn’t even need to return to Washington to vote and pass legislation. They could simply hand over their voting cards to Mrs. Pelosi or one of her lieutenants.”

For nearly two months, my staff and I have been fielding calls from the people of southwest Alabama—small-business owners, bankers, seniors and many others. The government’s response to coronavirus is affecting their livelihoods, and their congressman may be the only voice they have in Washington. But when the lights are turned off in the committee rooms and on the floor of the House, who’s watching out for them? Who’s holding Washington accountable?

More important than the flawed message Congress’s absence sends to the American people—that their representatives value personal protection over their constituents’ interests—is the reality. When nobody is around, it is easier to make backroom deals, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi is taking advantage. She has consolidated the power of the institution in her person. Without lawmakers there to speak up for their districts and influence the legislative process, Mrs. Pelosi has made herself the sole voice and negotiator for the House, as it passes massive funding and regulatory bills.

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Brazil Doubles Down on Reform President Jair Bolsonaro reaffirms the goal of ending crony capitalism. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazil-doubles-down-on-reform-11588541718?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Under the strain of Covid-19, the Brazilian economy is expected to contract by 5% this year. But the outlook isn’t all grim for the world’s ninth-largest economy. Last week a political crisis swirling around President Jair Bolsonaro prompted him to reaffirm his commitment to free-market-minded Economy Minister Paulo Guedes.

Mr. Guedes is the architect of a revolutionary plan to end the decadeslong subsidization of the well-connected in Brasília, paid for by the forgotten man. Progress has been slow since Mr. Bolsonaro took office in January 2019 and now the virus has thrown the reformers a curveball. But the president’s fresh endorsement of Mr. Guedes signals an understanding that his government is built on the popular demand for faster growth and better living standards.

The wild card is whether the government can build a coalition in the National Congress willing to cooperate. That’s a thorny challenge in Brazil’s notoriously fragmented legislature. The socially conservative Mr. Bolsonaro is a former military officer who served 28 years in Congress. As a legislator, he was never prominent in shaping policy. Now swaying the coequal lawmaking body is vital to his efforts to move Brazil ahead.

Mr. Bolsonaro has been full of surprises for left-wing critics. During his presidential campaign in 2018, they labeled him a right-wing extremist and predicted that he would try to impose a military dictatorship. Yet while plenty of leaders around the region are using police-state tactics in national lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Mr. Bolsonaro is taking a federalist approach by putting the states in charge.

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Smart or Lucky? How Florida Dodged the Worst of Coronavirus Even though it’s too early to draw clear conclusions, and the virus could flare again, there are lessons from its approach By Arian Campo-Flores and Alex Leary

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/smart-or-lucky-how-florida-dodged-the-worst-of-coronavirus-11588531865?mod=hp_lead_pos5

MIAMI—When the coronavirus pandemic swept toward Florida, public-health professionals nationally warned of a potentially devastating wave of infections that could imperil the state’s large senior population.

But so far, the state seems to have dodged that fate, despite not following advice to impose measures such as an early, blanket lockdown to minimize spread.

With Gov. Ron DeSantis preparing to start reopening the state on Monday, epidemiologists and others are asking: What happened? Was Florida smart or lucky?

The answer may be a bit of both. Mr. DeSantis restricted visitation to nursing homes but he left early lockdown decisions to local authorities. Mayors in some hard-hit large communities shut down faster and more aggressively than the state, gaining valuable time.

Walt Disney World closed two weeks before the statewide order. Spring breakers, who packed Florida beaches and bars until mid-March, went back home. Some scientists point to Florida’s low population density, while others to its subtropical climate to explain fewer infections.

A key factor, many say, is a change in the behavior of Floridians. Though the governor didn’t impose a statewide stay-at-home order until April 3, people began hunkering down en masse in mid-March, according to firms that analyze anonymous cellphone data.

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A New York Times opinion writer says it’s time to dump Biden By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/a_new_york_times_opinion_writer_says_its_time_to_dump_biden.html

On Sunday, I wrote that it’s been fun watching Democrats struggle with the Biden conundrum: Do they rally around him or, because he’s obviously mentally diminished and has significant corruption problems, do they use Tara Reade’s accusation against him as an excuse to boot him out? By Sunday night, Elizabeth Bruenig, a New York Times opinion writer, had her verdict: It’s time for Biden to go.

Bruenig is surprisingly sympathetic to Reade. She acknowledges that Reade’s story has been inconsistent and that she’s a somewhat eccentric character. However, unlike other Democrat journalists, she extends to Reade the same benefit of the doubt that Democrats routinely extend to politically correct victims:

Ms. Reade’s account is not nearly as incredible as some have argued. In the course of my reporting, I have worked closely with many survivors of sexual assault. It isn’t unusual, in my experience, for survivors to exhibit behavior that seems unstable or erratic to others. They may initially disclose to investigators or journalists only a fragment of what happened, and then reveal more over time — some even falsely recant, either because they sense the police don’t believe them, or because they fear the consequences of pressing their claims. And victims often maintain relationships with their attackers or harbor mixed feelings about them.

“It’s not at all uncommon for someone to still have positive feelings about aspects of the person who assaulted them, or to admire or respect them,” Scott Berkowitz, the founder and president of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) told me. “With people who work for politicians, there’s usually a strong measure of loyalty or respect in that relationship. So it’s not indicative that someone wasn’t telling the truth.”

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ProPublica: Millions of Vote-by-Mail Ballots Aren’t ‘Missing’ — They’re Just ‘Most Likely in Landfills’ By J. Christian Adams

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/columns/j-christian-adams/2020/05/03/foundation-funded-journalists-lie-about-voter-fraud-n387767

Last week I wrote about a new constellation of leftist philanthropy trying to influence the rules of the 2020 election, including pushing vote-by-mail, paying reporters to deny that voter fraud exists, and lobbying Congress to federalize state power over elections. Less than 24 hours later, I saw these dollars in action – through a smear by the propagandists at ProPublica.

ProPublica is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) posing as a newsroom. It is the new model in a changing media landscape, where groups like George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society give ProPublica hundreds of thousands of dollars and ProPublica does what the funders ask.

It should be no surprise that ProPublica is tasked with attacking anyone who reports on voter fraud or election security vulnerabilities but sometimes it rises to the level of parody.

A few weeks ago, my organization reported that federal data published by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission revealed a terrible problem with vote-by-mail. It turns out that tens of millions of ballots went missing, were rejected, went to the wrong address, and ultimately were never counted as valid votes.

You can read the disheartening data here.

Reporting on millions of ballots that were mailed out but never counted as valid votes is too much for ProPublica’s donor masters. So this weekend, Derek Willis of ProPublica penned a ham-handed attack on the revelation.