Daily News Roundup
NOTABLE QUOTE
President Biden on Thursday: “It’s here now and it’s spreading and it’s going to increase. For unvaccinated we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death if you’re unvaccinated for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they will soon overwhelm. But, there’s good news. If you’re vaccinated and have your booster shot you’re protected from severe illness and death.”
Rachael Gutman writing for The Atlantic: The 60 percent of Americans who are fully vaccinated could soon find their lives looking very different. For much of the summer and fall, those who had received two Pfizer or Moderna doses or one Johnson & Johnson shot were told that they were essentially bulletproof, especially if they were young and healthy. But preliminary data from South Africa and Europe now suggest that two vaccine doses alone might still allow for frequent breakthrough infections and rapid spread of the disease—
Dr. Jim Meehan contributor to CNS News: The CoVID-19 pandemic is about viral transmission. Surgical and cloth masks do nothing to prevent viral transmission. We should all realize by now that face masks have never been shown to prevent or protect against viral transmission. Which is exactly why they have never been recommended for use during the seasonal flu outbreak, epidemics, or previous pandemics. If a surgeon were sick, especially with a viral infection, they would not perform surgery as they know the virus would NOT be stopped by their surgical mask.
DC SWAMP
{H/T CB) Sperry: DC Bar Restores Convicted FBI Russiagate Forger to ‘Good Standing’ Amid Irregularities and Leniency
A former senior FBI lawyer who falsified a surveillance document in the Trump-Russia investigation has been restored as a member in “good standing” by the District of Columbia Bar Association even though he has yet to finish serving out his probation as a convicted felon, according to disciplinary records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. The move is the latest in a series of exceptions the bar has made for Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in August 2020 to doctoring an email used to justify a surveillance warrant targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months probation last January. But the D.C. Bar did not seek his disbarment, as is customary after lawyers are convicted of serious crimes involving the administration of justice. […] Before quietly making that decision, however, records indicate the bar did not check with his probation officer to see if he had violated the terms of his sentence or if he had completed the community service requirement of volunteering 400 hours.
Read more at Real Clear Investigations.
Hauf: FDA Will No Longer Require In-Person Doctor Visits for Abortion Pill
The agency temporarily lifted the requirement in April so doctors could prescribe the pill after a virtual visit. Unlike morning-after pills, which are available over the counter and aim to block fertilization, chemical abortion pills terminate a developing fetus in the uterus. Chemical abortion pills have four times the complication rate as surgical abortions and are more likely to send women to the emergency room. Physicians recommend in-person exams prior to prescribing abortion pills because ultrasounds can help minimize harm to the mother. “If you can’t tell a woman how far along she is you also can’t tell her what her risks are,” Dr. Donna Harrison, the chief executive officer of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told the Washington Free Beacon. Women often misdate their pregnancies and taking the abortion pill too late could prove deadly.
Read more: https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/fda-will-no-longer-require-in-person-doctor-visits-for-abortion-pill/
FAUCI’S VIRUS: IT’S POLITICAL
Yuldoshnoev: Two Former Top FDA Officials Slam Biden Admin For Ignoring Scientists On Booster Shots
Two former top officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published an op-ed at the Washington Post on Thursday, slamming President Joe Biden’s administration for “sidelining” outside expert panels when making a decision on the authorization of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots. […] “At this point in the pandemic, the world faces a host of new questions related to vaccines and boosting. The recommendations of experts on the outside advisory committees are needed more than ever — so the scientific community can understand the empirical bases for decisions, and so the public can be assured that science, not politics, is driving vaccine policy,” the former officials wrote. The scientists warned of undesirable “long-term consequences” of such “convenient” disregard for experts’ opinions.
Read more: https://dailycaller.com/2021/12/16/philip-krause-luciana-borio-fda-booster-shot-approval/
BIDEN’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL VACCINE MANDATE
Sundance: Amid Ever-Increasing Gas Prices Joe Biden Ramps Up Fear of Omicron Threat
The medical community has continued to say the Omicron variant, to the extent there is such a thing, is akin to a traditional head cold. Symptoms include sniffling, sneezing, coughing and a stuffy head. However, that said, the Omicron is also being used as a justification for shutting down human activity.
One way to look at the motives of Omicron as a tool to control behavior, is a method to stop travel, work, transportation services and other economic activity that involves the use of gasoline. In essence, Omicron becomes a tool to target the demand side of higher gas prices. […] Enter Joe Biden today, to tell everyone the Omicron variant will fill up the hospitals with the unvaccinated and unboosted during a time when the winter cold and flu season generally does the same.
Read more/Watch the 1:53 minute video: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/12/16/amid-ever-increasing-gas-prices-joe-biden-ramps-up-fear-of-omicron-threat/
GOVERNMENT HAS SEIZED CONTROL OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION
Siabarium: Biden Administration Offers Bonuses to Doctors Who Implement ‘Anti-Racism Plans’
The Biden administration will offer bonuses to doctors who “create and implement an anti-racism plan” under new rules from the Department of Health and Human Services, a move meant to update Medicare payments to “reflect changes in medical practice.” Effective Jan. 1, Medicare doctors can boost their reimbursement rates by conducting “a clinic-wide review” of their practice’s “commitment to anti-racism.” The plan should cover “value statements” and “clinical practice guidelines,” according to HHS, and define race as “a political and social construct, not a physiological one”—a dichotomy many doctors say will discourage genetic testing and worsen racial health disparities. The “rationale” for the bonus, the new rules read, is that “it is important to acknowledge systemic racism as a root cause for differences in health outcomes between socially-defined racial groups.” Such premises have found a receptive ear in the Oval Office, which has taken steps to institutionalize them throughout the federal bureaucracy. Hours after his inauguration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order launching a “whole-of-government equity agenda,” one plank of which was the “equitable delivery of government benefits.”
Read more: https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-administration-offers-bonus-to-doctors-who-implement-anti-racism-plans/
BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA REGIME: TRANSFORMING AMERIC
Ascik: Democrats’ Cradle To Grave Welfare Expansion Targets Small Children Big-Time
The massive and historic entitlement-and-spending bill, Build Back Better (H.R. 5376), includes the “largest expansion” of government education since public high schools were established by the states more than “100 years ago,” according to President Biden. The bill was passed by the House at the end of November and is now the intense focus of the Democrat Senate and the Biden administration for passage before Christmas. Under the proposed legislation, the federal government would expand and then regulate not just public education but a good portion of what heretofore has been family-based education, and not just “education” as has been normally understood, but pre-school “child care,” including from “birth,” essentially child rearing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has rightly said this would be “transformative” of the country. A major and much-repeated purpose of the bill is to increase the employment of women who, according to President Biden, are prevented from working because they “can’t afford the cost of childcare.” The child care and early education part of Build Back Better has three parts.
Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/16/democrats-cradle-to-grave-welfare-expansion-targets-small-children-big-time/
Spencer: Ilhan Omar’s ‘Islamophobia’ Bill Passes
What will happen to opposition to Jihad and Sharia? On a party-line 219 to 212 vote, the House on Tuesday passed the Combating International Islamophobia Act, which is co-sponsored by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu). The bill calls upon the president to appoint a “special envoy” to fight “Islamophobia”; this envoy will head up a State Department that will monitor the phenomenon. Omar’s bill, however, is wrongly focused in all kinds of ways, not least of which is the fact that it will combat efforts to “promote racial hatred” against Muslims, even though Islam is not a race and there are Muslims among people of all races. Meanwhile, the raucous House debate raised other problems with the bill as well, including the likelihood that it will inhibit counterterror efforts.
Read more: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/ilhan-omars-islamophobia-bill-passes-over-robert-spencer/
Citizen Free Press; ‘That was embarrassing, I can’t vote for you’…
John Kennedy embarrasses Anne Rachel Traum, nominated by Biden as United States District Judge for Nevada, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday.
Watch the 1:09 minute video exchange: https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/that-was-embarrassing-i-cant-vote-for-you/
Boyd: 16 Of Biden’s Biggest Whoppers About COVID-19 Vaccines
It should be no surprise that President Joe Biden and his administration lied their way through the last year in the White House. As a matter of fact, The Federalist rigorously recorded more than 100 whoppers Biden and his team gladly fed the public and the corporate media. Of those dozens of lies, more than 15 of them had to do with the COVID-19 vaccine. Here are the president’s top 16 lies about the jab.
Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/15/16-of-bidens-biggest-whoppers-about-covid-19-vaccines/
Boyd: 12 Times Joe Biden Completely Made Up Stories, Lied, Or Said Something Crazy
President Joe Biden has a long list of slip-ups in his political history, and his first year in the White House was no exception. In addition to bumbling through national addresses and mixing up the titles of world leaders, Biden infamously misremembered his past, lied, and even made up several stories to score points with his audience. Here are just a few of such incidents. 1. Joe Biden’s Made-Up Amtrak Story At a 50th-anniversary event for Amtrak in Philadelphia, Biden said that when he was vice president, a train conductor congratulated him for traveling 1.5 million miles on Amtrak. A Fox News report out on May 5, however, pokes holes in the president’s account. […] 2. Falsely Claimed U.S. Government Experimented On Tuskegee Airmen . . . 3. . .
Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/16/12-times-joe-biden-completely-made-up-stories-lied-or-said-something-crazy/
THE CORRUPT & DANGEROUS DEMOCRAT PARTY MEDIA INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Spencer: Leftist ‘Journalists’ Float the Idea That Criticizing Joe Biden Is a Danger to Democracy
The Leftist political and media elites are desperately afraid of Donald Trump, even more than they were when they relentlessly defamed him and tried to run him out of office with a hoax collusion conspiracy and a tempest in a teapot over a routine phone call. A Trump return to the White House on January 20, 2025, would represent a massive repudiation of those who have arrogated to themselves the authority to tell us what to think, and those self-appointed intellectual and moral superiors are doing everything they can think of to try to preserve their crumbling hegemony. The New Republic, one of the flagship publications of the Left before it became completely authoritarian and irrational, on Saturday joined Dana Milbank of the Washington Post in offering one of the most absurd and dangerous recommendations for how to stop Trump and his supporters: stop criticizing Joe Biden.
Read more: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/leftist-journalists-float-idea-criticizing-joe-robert-spencer/
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S MARXIST PLAYBOOK: CRT (WOKE IDENTITY POLITICS)
Matthews: Redfin, Realtor-dot-com To Stop Including Crime Stats on Listings Due to Possible ‘Racial Bias’ Concerns
When searching for a home to rent or buy, the two top priorities for most people beyond the affordability of the house is whether or not it is in a safe neighborhood and whether or not it is close to good schools. With violent crime on the rise in big cities across America over the last 18 months or so, one would think that real estate listing websites would be ramping up their efforts to give prospective renters/homebuyers all the available information they needed on crime stats for the area(s) they’re looking to move to so they can be better informed before they make a decision to put in an application or make an offer. But that’s not the case for two of the top real estate search engines in the country. […] So who are the real racists here? The people searching for a home, or the real estate honchos who want to pretend they’re “better serving” consumers and being more “equitable” to black/brown/Asian communities by excluding important data that all people look to – white, black, Hispanic, etc – when trying to rent/buy a home?
Read more: https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/12/redfin-realtor-dot-com-to-stop-including-crime-stats-on-listing-due-to-possible-racial-bias-concerns/
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Hemingway: The Federalist’s Notable Books Of 2021
Our year in reading, featuring book recommendations from Federalist writers and contributors.. . . we bring you The Federalist’s notable books of 2021. Bear in mind, this is not a collection of the best books of 2021 — just a collection of what books Federalist writers and those in our orbit read to cope with another trying year.
Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/17/the-federalists-notable-books-of-2021/
OTHER NEWS
Leonard, Rojas, & Dechalus: At least 182 high-ranking congressional staffers have violated a federal conflict-of-interest law with overdue disclosure of their personal stock trades
Insider’s tally includes aides in both the House and the Senate with high-ranking jobs such as chiefs of staff, legislative directors, and communications directors. Also among them are workers known as professional staff members, who serve on congressional committees to advise lawmakers on policy. The late-reporting problem is decidedly bipartisan. The violations split almost exactly down the middle between Democrats and Republicans. The 182-person finding is part of Insider’s exhaustive Conflicted Congress project, in which journalists reviewed nearly 9,000 financial-disclosure reports for every sitting lawmaker and their top-ranking staffers. Watchdog groups say the sheer number of late filings is evidence of a far-too-lax attitude on Capitol Hill about ethics rules. The congressional staffers’ infractions come on top of STOCK Act disclosure violations by at least 49 members of Congress.
Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-staff-violated-stock-act-conflicts-of-interest-possible-2021-12?IR=C
Levinthal: 49 members of Congress have violated a law designed to stop insider trading and prevent conflicts-of-interest
Insider and several other news organizations have this year identified 49 members of Congress who’ve failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act. Congress passed the law in 2012 to combat insider trading and conflicts of interest among their own members and force lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings. A key provision of the law mandates that lawmakers publicly — and quickly — disclose any stock trade made by themselves, a spouse, or a dependent child.
Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-stock-act-violations-senate-house-trading-2021-9
Mann: Melania Trump releases first NFT, launches blockchain technology venture
Trump’s first NFT, titled “Melania’s Vision,” will be available for a limited time, from Friday until Dec. 31. Part of the proceeds will go to aiding children aging out of the foster care system “by way of economic empowerment and with expanded access to resources needed to excel in the fields of computer science and technology,” read a release about the endeavor. “I am proud to announce my new NFT endeavor, which embodies my passion for the arts, and will support my ongoing commitment to children through my Be Best initiative,” Trump said. “Through this new technology-based platform, we will provide children computer skills, including programming and software development, to thrive after they age out of the foster community.”
Read more: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/melania-trump-releases-first-nft-launches-blockchain-technology
INTERNATIONAL
Wittels: Giant Kites That Drag Cargo Ships Across Oceans Go on Trial
Add ships being dragged along by giant kites to the list of things the industry is exploring in its quest to decarbonize. At the start of next year, the Ville de Bordeaux, a 154-meter-long ship that moves aircraft components for Airbus SE, will unfurl a 500 square meter kite on journeys across the Atlantic Ocean. It will undergo six months of trials and tests before full deployment. While the industry has come up with multiple decarbonization initiatives, it is struggling to keep pace with goals set out under the Paris Agreement on climate.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-16/coming-to-an-ocean-near-you-ships-dragged-along-by-giant-kites
