Thank you Caitlin, for describing the intensifying authoritarian climate.
Mass protests against lockdowns and vaccine mandates across Europe: not a word from the Mainstream Media, all while demanding unprecedented censorship.
WAPO's article today "NYC to require proof of vaccination for indoor activities," disabled from public comment! Because WAPO and MSM understand that most people, Republican and Democrat, unvaccinated and vaccinated, are vehemently opposed to such mandates!
I am a registered Democrat. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Deciding against taking vaccines under Emergency Use Authorization, using new mRNA technology never heretofore approved by the FDA, from companies who have paid billions of dollars in fines for defective products and unscrupulous practices is reasonable, not reckless.
The "Left" have become vicious shills for Big Pharma. The "Left" have found Religion, devoid of empathy, in worship of an insufferable and infantilizing "Big Mother" betrothed to "Father Tech."
Here in France it has gone to the extreme with the "Health" Pass. Last week on the 21st ALL restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and any leisure activities like sporting events, theaters, cinemas, museums, were closed to anyone without "the pass" and all staff at these places are mandated to get the jab to keep their job.
It is now a 6 Month prison sentence if you are caught inside any of these places without the pass (the man who slapped the president in the face got only 3 months prison time). Business owners will get a fine of 45,000 euros and 1 year prison sentance if they do not comply with the use of "the pass" and force all their employees to get the jab. (If you know France, you can commit murder and have less of a sentence)
So the result? All the low paid employees quit, they can make more on welfare here. (for now) We can still technically "get take out food" but I just tried last night and every restaurant in our town (that is dine in with take out) has closed their doors due to the lack of staff.
As of last week ALL doctors, nurses and health industry workers have been mandated to get the jab or lose their license, practice, job, business etc. (ALL health care here is Govt paid positions and there are no private health care Doctors or Hospitals etc.)
Since the Health care system is state run and funded, it has been run into the ground. All the good doctors left France 5 Years ago, all the hospitals look like they are 3rd world hospitals since there is no money to repair them, half of the equipment doesnt work and not every hospital is stocked with supplies needed for daily needs (masks, gels, disposable gowns etc).
For 5 years Nurses have been understaffed and doing double the work because the Health care system is nearly bankrupt.... So add to this the mandatory jab.
So the result? Well they took to the streets by the millions and now all the hospitals just lost another 50% of staff capacity. My doctor just went into early retirement (a.k.a. he quit) and I have yet to find a replacement.
As of Aug 1st ALL large malls, retail stores and grocery store owners and their staff need to be jabbed and the health pass is required to enter for employees and customers. This would be the equivalent to closing ALL Targets, Walmarts, Costcos, Home Depots, and all major grocery stores. (basically any building over 20,000 squre meters) to those without "the pass".
Result.?? Aug 15th Truckers will be going on strike nation wide; Blocking all access roads in and out of Paris.
Yesterday an entire airport in Northern France closed due to the majority of staff quitting.
As of Sept 15th All public areas and access will be off limits. No farmers markets, no parks, no national parks, lakes, rivers, beaches, recreation areas, campsites etc. and no gathering over 100 people, no churches, no weddings, etc.
As of Oct 1st ALL small vendors such as, delis, pizza trucks, sandwich shops, butchers, bakers, vegatable stands etc.
So as of Oct 1st I will only be able to purchase food by internet and pick up (if allowed).
Food shortages, Truckers strike, hospitals and airports shutting down unemployment going through the roof. Its going to be a bumpy ride folks.
Is it me or does all this seem a bit extreme for a "pass" that isn't exactly working?
America England Australia New Zealand you’d better wake up"
Well said for bringing this to substack readers' attention. There are mass protests against lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports again in France today, fortunately there are still a few maverick news organisations to get the news out. Here in Britain the usual weekend protests will go unreported, even the big protests held in London on the last weekend of each month since March get hardly a mention in spite of attracting hundreds of thousands to join them.
I used to think i was a loyal leftie, but the last year has got me bewildered.... maybe it's cause i'm paying attention more, i dunno. Now the left is against free speech, for censorship, and adamantly against holistic healing. Apparently nutritional healing is a right wing thing now. It's conservative voices that are telling us that taking a good dose of Vitamin D can save you from dire outcomes of the virus. How dare they? The 'science' says that only a vaccine can save us. Your innate immune system is in league with the far right.
Amazing that the left ignores that the national health agencies are captive of the pharmaceutical industry. That promoting vaccines is promoting huge profits for Big Pharma. Leftist who can break down the numbers of the housing crisis are impotent to make heads of tails of the data that keeps coming out on the virus. It still is killing the already sick; those with multiple co-morbidities. That has not changed despite the dire headlines about a young person's tragic end. We have to after all, make sure everyone, even the babies get the jab. Good for us maybe but especially good for our guardians in Big Pharma...
My problem is i have been antagonistic to Big Pharma long before this event, and this event just solidifies my revulsion about the way they do business.
The stupidest (most ignorant) of all talking points to come out of covid era is the notion that people want to end lockdowns because of "greed". OMG I can't even. It's like dealing with children who don't fucking understand that the billionaires dont suffer from cash flow problems and for them this is a golden opportunity to gobble up more and more of the world's wealth and resources while it's all super cheap and no one else has money which is exactly what they are doing while getting record bailouts.
In short, 2020 was the biggest wealth heist from the bottom to the top in all of human fucking history and people are saying that people who want to end lockdowns are motivated by greed. The ignorance of that is just staggering.
Not too many are saying anymore that the rich want to end lockdown to get back to business no matter how many people die, although Chris Hedges did manage to come up with that one only recently... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exuBUuQi2vY&t=2s
Now there's a huge eviction crisis going on in the States. Yeah, the lockdown has been great for the poor!
You are correct, before I quit working as an I.T. consultant I has the unpleasant experience of twp assignments with corporations that are part of the Big Pharma cartel. They are piratical. Corporate greed does not get anywhere near describing accurately the moral degeneracy of these organisations. Their business plan is based on making us all "patients for life."
there is little doubt that Big Pharma are capitalists. They will charge as much as they possibly can for their vaccines and they will try to limit their distribution. However, I think it would be really difficult to promote a vaccine that doesn't work.
OTOH falsely debunking other treatments (like Vitamin D) would not be difficult to do. OTOOH, can they really buy every doctor, every medical institution, every nurse?
When folks post how ivermectin or vitamin-D "really work", there is most often no link to support the claim. Sometimes there will be one to a youTube where a guy will go on and on and on about how his treatment works but, just like when you go to a "free time share dinner", there is little substance and often a lot of hand-waving.
This article is about the consequences of Russiagate. Sure, don't believe the MSM any longer, but why believe some random guy you've never heard of on youTube?
Yesterday's "useful idiots" was talking about generals on the MSM who bolster their credibility by wearing medals all over their uniforms -- sometimes even medals that they did not earn.
Would it reallly be difficult to promote a vaccine that didn't work? In the case of any individual nobody can logically say that any vaccine worked. As you may have guessed I am unvaccinated, I'm the grandson of a successful bookie who showed me the ropes before he died. So I looked at the figures and after 18 moths of being totally untouched by the virus in common with over 90% of the population, I didn't like the odds.
Here's the logic: Suppose I, having been COVID free throughout the pandemic caved and got my shot tomorrow and in two years time I'm still untouched by COVID, the vaccine industry would say, "See; our wonderful vaccine saved your live or at the very least stopped you being seriously ill. But that is dishonest, nobody can possibly know whether I would have been infected or stayed COVID free had I not had the jab. So as I have never had 'flu and can't remember when I last had a cold, I'll continue to trust my immune system.
Even if you did contract the virus Basil, you would get nothing more than a cold at worst, or no symptoms more likely. People with a strong immune system don't come to a bad end with this or any virus. And that little secret is the key to the future. No wonder the death culture doesn't advertise it.
"Would it really be difficult to promote a vaccine that didn't work?"
Well, I think so. But after reading Ed Snowden's Apophenia article and Taibbi's Lolita article, perhaps I should reevaluate my beliefs.
Just how hard is it to get organizations like the Mayo Clinic, which has an outstanding reputation, to stand in league with other "respected" agencies to promote a lie?
NPR says there are only 12 "misinformation outlets", quite a joke, but what if they're right?
Here's the thing, I recall being somewhat ill about 18 months ago. It was something I passed off at the time as being unimportant since it could have been too many beers, the wrong choice of salsa, some tainted something or other. But now, I wonder.
I know some "friends of a friend of a friend of an acquaintance" who also had some mild symptoms of something after returning from a trip to Central America just before there was a huge outbreak of Covid in their town. They're wondering if they didn't bring it into town.
Then to, there's another friend who has developed quite a good contact tracing app which Apple will not "bless" even though they blessed a different app that I consider quite fraudulent. Nope, contact tracing can only be through "approved" methods. (Apple's hypocrisy is glaring after they've now announced that any "child porn" photos uploaded to the iCloud -- something that is not easy to turn off -- will be reported to "authorities")
Maybe you've already had Covid and your superior immune system responded.
So, what are we doing here but confirming Caitlin's hypothesis?
How do we know the CIA hasn't recruited a bunch of freaks who wonder around with "squirt guns" (for want of a better description of the 'weapon') who arbitrarily "squirt" random people with the SARS virus?
NPR just had a story about how the Myanmar generals are controlling the supply of Oxygen. Are they committing genocide against their own people?
You can see how this kind of thinking rapidly spins out of control. OTOH, what has our government been doing for the last 100 years but creating false flag after false flag. (Remember the Maine!)
Get the jab or don't. I'm not in a position to judge.
I suppose I should say that over the last couple of days there has been reports that Ivermectin possibly works. But just like the argument between the Democrats and the Republicans about voting rules, how can I be sure this group promoting this isn't part of the "grand conspiracy"?
I guess there is a thing that might call anti-apophenia -- things that are obviously connected are dismissed as being lies.
Oh yeah. The IPCC report that came out today. And Larry Page is now a resident of New Zealand. Something big is happening and we're not being let in on the plan. Or we're just allowing our paranoia to run away with us.
You’re awesome this whole thread is awesome, I love the nuance and how folks consider many different angles and alternatives. It’s very human and these patterns of thought are similar to my own. I’m glad this blog is here.
John, i already posted a youtube video that had plenty of data in it and you said it was too complicated for you. So, why do you still think yourself some kind of authority on these matters?? And there isn't just one random video.. There are doctors and scientists all over the world offering up insights into the data. Until you actually take in some of that, maybe you should stick to an area that you have more expertise in.
You personify the determined ignorance of a loyal consumer of mainstream propaganda sir. There is evidence all over the place and Dr. Seheult is giving a good overview of all the data to date seven months back... but i know you can't countenance anything that isn't pushed by the CDC and those other health agencies you trust with your life. So be it.. the world in now officially filled with fools who can't figure much out on their own so trust the good people who give us wars and other lies...
The Vitamin D story is making the rounds well outside of the research that supports it. I was looking it up earlier today and there are so many caveats about the use of vitamin D that it really only applies to a very small population. If you're white and drink milk and go outside, you already have more than enough Vitamin D to not benefit from this "research" of just over 500 people. It wasn't a controlled study, it was just something that worked for this small group.
I'd provide a link to the article, but what the hey, maybe 2% would follow that link. The other 98% have already made up their mind -- either for or against.
Jeez, that's not the studies i saw... and that's plural... lots of studies and they've been coming out since the beginning of the pandemic.... no huge surprise that a Vitamin D deficiency would correlate with dire outcomes. Of course the fact that we actually have an immune system is a well guarded secret. No one on the left of the spectrum knows it. It is a right wing part of our bodies obviously.
Looks to me like an hour long Dr. Oz commercial. Pretty much it highlights the problem Caitlin is writing about.
I have no problem with Doctors using Vitamin D. But there's way, way too much written on this subject that I couldn't possibly understand to be able to make an independent judgement.
For every guy that supports it, you can find another guy who says it doesn't work.
This sentence (published a few months ago) I totally understand:
"Although the results from most ongoing randomized clinical trials aiming to prove the benefit of vitamin D supplementation for these purposes are still pending,"
YOu're right of course... every man can decide for herself, regardless of the evidence. And if you are a consumer of mainstream news about covid, you will 'know' that nothing will save you from immanent death but this amazing new experimental vaccine. That you can take to the bank!!
... and this time last year Vitamin D and zinc, along with HCQ and Ivermectin were dismissed as conspiracy theories, yet all had been proved in methodologically sound scientific studies to be effective, cheap and without serious side effects.
Show me a study that doesn't come across like a Dr Mercola or Dr Oz published by some fly-by-night quack.
When I search for "Vitamin D and Covid", there are lots of agencies that say "we don't know" or "studies have not confirmed" which includes the Mayo Clinic, Harvard, AARP and others.
The only proponent of this treatment seems to be this guy and his youTube specifically says:
PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Seheult says in this video “I can’t tell you how much vitamin D to take because I’m not your doctor nor am I here to give you medical advice.”
Here's an example of what happens if you try to debunk the quacks, you get attacked.
For some reason these attacks against the debunkers are successful because people seem to believe that no one (like Trump or Hillary or QAnon) would ever make stuff up (like Comet Pizza or Russiagate).
Ed Snowden just published and excellent substack article on the subject: Apophenia
The comments are also worth reading since they are (mostly) well considered and thoughtful. They discuss how google (and probably other search engines) discover what you want to search for and they then feed back to you ever more outrageous and ridiculous articles to feed your bias on the subject.
Why you think you can make a claim about how a certain treatment for Covid "works" without even attempting to back it up with a link to at least 3 articles from different authors who have some expertise in the field is beyond my understanding. You're just pushing a new religion.
You cite sciencebasedmedicine John, I've read that site, trust me there is more scientific knowledge in the steam off my piss that all the contributers and commenters on that site can muster between them.
Now I'm not going to weigh in on the Vitamin D issue, the importance of Vitamin D to the human immune system is self evident. But you will see article highlighting the efficacy of Ivermectin as phrphylaxis and treatment for COVID-19 regularly "debunked" by people at sciencebasedmedicine whose idea of science is to simply parrot propaganda. They all say "There is no reliable evidence that Ivermectin works."
But it does not take five minutes to find plenty of evidence pointing to the fact that the drug is more effective than any of the vaccines on the maket. Here are just three examples from the hundreds available, one is from a US Government source, one from The Journal of Antibiotics the third from a highly respected Australian university ...
Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19
US National Library of Medicine review of results in trials of Ivermectin as prophilaxis and theraputic treatment for COVID-19 and other viral illnesses
You make a good point about the way Google distorts search results to maximise revenyue from their AADWORDS product John, I suggest you stop using Google and choose a genuine search tool rather than a censorship tool.
These are long reports and not easy reading, however nobody ever said research should be easy:
Lab experiments show anti-parasitic drug, Ivermectin, eliminates SARS-CoV-2 in cells in 48 hours
Report of research carried out at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Moral weakness? Yes. Political weakness in growing tyrannical governments, US Federal and many US states? Cite Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Warsaw Pact countries, USSR, CCP China, Cuba, Venezuela, etcetera ...
Perhaps a minor point but the lies started long,long before Russiagate. However for many, like me, they appeared to be anomalies until Bush invaded Iraq.
While I believe COVID-19 is real, whether or not it was man-made, whether or not the vaccines are really effective, and safe, whether or not new variants occur naturally— I don’t know.
I find most deniers use really ignorant approaches to the disease but I figure they have every right to not believe authority figures. Like this morning when a caller to MPR radio started talking about delta breakthrough infections and Kerri cut him off faster than a crank call — our media is still concentrating on a theme dictated to them rather than an exploration for the truth.
Logic tells me that “they” have a hidden motive. How can I insist that those who don’t want to be vaccinated are wrong?
Well, as one of those right-wingers to which you're referring, I might also add in that said pandemic also coicidentally required ("because science!") that voting rules be completely changed in just the right ways to allow the Democrats to mass harvest just enough ballots to unseat their hated Orange Man Bad.
And somehow all discussion of any means of protecting ourselves and our loved ones against this particular virus other than those that would result in billions in guaranteed mega-profits for the biggest corporate lobbying operation in existing (Big Pharma) were "conspiracy theories" that needed to be censored and driven from the Interent.
And we also noticed that the origin story of the virus that starts with Dr. Anthony Fauci running a serreptitious end run around federal rules prohibiting U.S. funding of Chinese bioweapons research (euphemistically called, "gain of function") and ends with said lab workers showing up in Wuhan hospitals with "flu-like" systems is a "racist" conspiracy theory, whereas the origin story that involves Chinese people (who don't eat bats) eating bats at a "wet market" (that doesn't sell bats) is conventional wisdom.
It's also not lost on us that Democratic states seemed oddly eager to interpret the "science" as requiring the complete self-immolation of the Trump economic boom (it's easy to forget that 2019 had record low unemployment and poverty rates, with projections for more of the same) with "stay at home" orders shutting down all businesses except Walmart, Target and Home Depot not to mention public schools in all of the cities and states controlled by Democrats, but somehow now with Biden in office, similar case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths warrant little more than a "recommendation" that people use masks in indoor public spaces.
Yeah, Russiagate is neither the beginning nor the end of the kind of "skepticism" that would make one untrustful of the people now urging us to allow them to inject an "mRNA" vaccine injected into our bloodstream. For the record, I still did it.
along with the hysteria about russiagate - the fact that these same media companies employ ex-spooks from the FBI & CIA (are they ex-spooks or once a spy always a spy?). CNN has on many occasions had their ex-fbi / ex-cia employees serve the role of analyst to address criticism of those agencies...
If skepticism of covid narrative isn't welcome on the left then the left us useless and as far as I am concerned they have rolled over and are allowing the global plutocracy to tickle their bellies.
mainstream media have been serving their corporate master class all along, and the russiagate is just the last "lie" they told people. it's only reasonable and wise to oppose whatever they try to shove down our throat and i'm unanimous on that, without counting the capitalist parasites and their bootlicking minions.
The problem with the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers is they are protesting about the wrong thing. They should be protesting against the gain-of-function (biowarfare) research that most likely produced the virus.
Catlin, please look up Mike Yeadon, former Vice President of Pfizer. Drink in all the information you can by Yeadon before he gets completely obliterated by the authorities. Those political leaders who love the poor and the vulnerable so much, they now lie awake at night worrying about their wellbeing.
"Can you imagine how disgusted you'd get with the media watching this happen day after day?" Caitland, I honestly think Republican howled with laughter at the entire farce. They saw the Democrats self destructing as they made complete fools of themselves with their self righteous insistence that the Russians, and not Hillary, were responsible for losing the election in 2016.
Good ducking and diving. But complete drivel. It’s not the Right, that opposes this medical tyranny and its nonsense narrative, it’s the awake and the brave. You Cait, are treading water in quicksand, by trying to portray your lack of writing on the subject as a result of your ignorance of science. Instead of your fear, of being throttled, or even blocked from earning.
As a right-leaning guy with a science background that writes for a living, for me writing is hard and science is easy. Writing often requires creating from nothing, science is simply looking at the facts (not the opinions) and seeing what they produce. For instance, if you give people a solution to drink and they all become invisible for a period of time, the science says that the solution likely leads to (at least) temporary invisibility.
However, if a significant percentage who drink the solution do not become invisible, then the science cannot say that the solution alone causes the invisibility and perhaps there are factors with the invisible group that work together to enable invisibility or there are factors associated with the non-invisible group that preclude invisibility.
Another example is that if the corporate media and control-leftists are pushing and hinting at requiring something, like forced vaxx or public education or public healthcare or..., then the science shows that those things are expected to be failures or largely inadequate solutions and always boondoggles designed simply to further empower those doing the forcing.
I do not agree with you on all issues, Caitlin, but on the issues like these you have a the correct perspective.
IMO, the fix was in near the end of Reagan and fully in place by Clinton. The neo-con/neo-lib shitstorm we all are suffering under was the child of Bush I - I do not have, yet, the science to support that fully, but it seems that the data supports that.
I could peer into the future and see we would be up against this high level of BS... So, I wrote this essay in December 2020... 1 of my reasons for not taking it is not trusting the government... for the reasons you cite. I feel we are at war.. and that things will get worse and then get better. Keep up the great journalism Caitlin! https://turningpointnews.org/corona-virus-reports/10-reasons-for-corona-vaccine-skepticism
20@20 makes excellent points about Fauci and Big Pharma, so it is disappointing to see he solely blames the Democrats for the fight over voting rights -- makes him look like a racist to me. The Republican claims of voter fraud are ridiculous. But I'm not at all saying the Democrats don't cheat on elections.
His other claims I can accept until we talk about COVID. Let's not go into that too deeply. There are so many caveats as to require a PhD dissertation.
But then along comes Gregory with his posts of Jon Rappaport -- the right-wing Rachael Maddow wannabe. Gregory is a true believer who will accept any lie that even comes close to his beliefs.
Let me be clear, the virus might indeed have been manufactured in Wuhan with Fauci's help, but the sources Gregory cites to "prove" this wild tale are just charlatans wanting to cash in on his ignorance. The "facts" they provide don't pass the smell test. But Gregory wants to believe it and so it is true.
Yeah, we've been lied to so long by so many about so much it is absolutely right that we shouldn't believe anyone. But to then turn to hacks that promote even more outrageous lies...
As you noted, the credentialed, the experts, the educated, the thinkers, have a long and storied track record of mendacity and self-serving lies and bullshit. (Look up Professor Frankenfurter for the distinction.)
The problem is that, unless you have a lot of education or way too much time on your hands, to give one example, you or I have no way to evaluate medical research and tell whether a given course of treatment is promising or snake oil.
If I'm a "racist" I would have to hate myself, as I'm a descendant of African slaves brought to America. It's odd that you attacked a strawman of my arguments, as "voter fraud" did not appear in my comment. I simply said that the Democrats leveraged COVID hysteria to put in place a set of new rules that were enormously helpful to their base turnout efforts, rules that would not have been approved absent COVID hysteria. Whether there was fraud or not is another question. Genuinely curious to hear what I misunderstand about how establishment Democrats have responded to COVID more broadly.
"voting rules be completely changed in just the right ways to allow the Democrats to mass harvest just enough ballots to unseat their hated Orange Man Bad."
This is an argument that I've seen mostly from people I consider to be racist so you "look like" a racist. I did not say you were a racist.
The contest of who writes the voting rules has been on-going for centuries. It is one portion of the electoral fraud that has been prevalent (as in obvious) in every election since Reagan. Electoral fraud has probably been in every US election since the nation's founding.
That you want to blame only the Democrats for Electoral Fraud is disingenuous. Now don't get the impression that I'm defending the Democrats. They won because they "cheated better". The cheating (fraud) is financed by the Oligarchy which chooses the winner. The Oligarchy is not monolithic so it isn't like they all agree on who should win. That is why there are so many different media outlets arguing all different sides of the fraud. You seem to have chosen to listen only to the outlets that blame the Democrats. The majority of the Oligarchy did not want to see Trump re-elected so he wasn't. (NOTE: "majority" in this sense is a convenient term to use but it might be better said the "more effective members of the Oligarchy").
Yes there was electoral fraud in the 2020 election. Again though, Trump's guys didn't cheat well enough to beat Biden's guys. IOW, I reject your (unstated) premise that Trump did not cheat. And to repeat myself, yes the Democrats cheated.
Your decision to align yourself with a psychotic narcissist is depressing but understandable. There are many who naively support Biden.
Voter Fraud is not to be confused with Electoral Fraud.
I said "Republican claims of Voter Fraud". Voter Fraud is very, very rare, as in the number of proven cases is in the single digits. The poor ex-con in TX who is being prosecuted for it thought he was allowed to vote. It was an honest mistake and made absolutely no difference in the outcome of the election. The Republican decision to prosecute him is based on his race.
I purposely stated that I did not want to talk COVID because there are so many caveats. The main one being your apparent claim here that only the Democrats are responsible for mishandling the pandemic.
But again, my comment mentioned neither "Voter Fraud" nor "Electoral Fraud", in fact I did not write the word "fraud" at all. Mainly, because that's not the issue as I see it. My entire comment was in response to Caitlin's imagining right-wing skepticism of the COVID vaccine, and as a (somewhat) right-winger, I was adding some to her thoughts. With respect to the election, the Democrats argued that absentee balloting needed to be allowed as never before "because COVID", and it just happens that the Democrats also have a lot of latent voters who often can't be bothered to get to the polls, or specifically request an absentee ballot on their own, but will fill one out if it's sent to their house and then collected by an organized operation. When those marginal voters sit out, it can cost the Democrats close swing states in Presidential elections. Well, in 2020, the Democrats guaranteed that they would not sit out, they sent them ballots in the mail, then went and collected them. And that provided the margins in those states, you could see it in real-time as vote drops in cities like Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Detroit took Biden over the top in big chunks.
Does that mean that Republicans don't also manipulate the rules to their advantage? Of course not. Republicans generally benefit when it's not so easy to vote, so they focus on "election integrity" which generally makes it not so easy to vote. I don't think it's racist, they're not doing it because they hate minorities, they're doing it because they like winning elections, and their ideology supports election integrity as a concept.
I think Republicans also mishandled the pandemic, and the Democrats didn't do everything wrong. My main point is that the Democrats leveraged their control over the public health system to take unprecedented actions that harmed the economy in the lead up to a Presidential election, and it seems clear to me that they are now far more reluctant to take the same actions based on a very similar set of facts. For example, if California was still using the color-coded closing and reopening criteria that was in place in 2020, the area I'm living in would be in lockdown. Instead, people are eating inside restaurants without masks.
Thank you Caitlin, for describing the intensifying authoritarian climate.
Mass protests against lockdowns and vaccine mandates across Europe: not a word from the Mainstream Media, all while demanding unprecedented censorship.
WAPO's article today "NYC to require proof of vaccination for indoor activities," disabled from public comment! Because WAPO and MSM understand that most people, Republican and Democrat, unvaccinated and vaccinated, are vehemently opposed to such mandates!
I am a registered Democrat. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Deciding against taking vaccines under Emergency Use Authorization, using new mRNA technology never heretofore approved by the FDA, from companies who have paid billions of dollars in fines for defective products and unscrupulous practices is reasonable, not reckless.
The "Left" have become vicious shills for Big Pharma. The "Left" have found Religion, devoid of empathy, in worship of an insufferable and infantilizing "Big Mother" betrothed to "Father Tech."
This was posted on someone's telegram channel:
"WARNING REPORT FROM FRANCE !
(gotten from my telegram channel)
Here in France it has gone to the extreme with the "Health" Pass. Last week on the 21st ALL restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and any leisure activities like sporting events, theaters, cinemas, museums, were closed to anyone without "the pass" and all staff at these places are mandated to get the jab to keep their job.
It is now a 6 Month prison sentence if you are caught inside any of these places without the pass (the man who slapped the president in the face got only 3 months prison time). Business owners will get a fine of 45,000 euros and 1 year prison sentance if they do not comply with the use of "the pass" and force all their employees to get the jab. (If you know France, you can commit murder and have less of a sentence)
So the result? All the low paid employees quit, they can make more on welfare here. (for now) We can still technically "get take out food" but I just tried last night and every restaurant in our town (that is dine in with take out) has closed their doors due to the lack of staff.
As of last week ALL doctors, nurses and health industry workers have been mandated to get the jab or lose their license, practice, job, business etc. (ALL health care here is Govt paid positions and there are no private health care Doctors or Hospitals etc.)
Since the Health care system is state run and funded, it has been run into the ground. All the good doctors left France 5 Years ago, all the hospitals look like they are 3rd world hospitals since there is no money to repair them, half of the equipment doesnt work and not every hospital is stocked with supplies needed for daily needs (masks, gels, disposable gowns etc).
For 5 years Nurses have been understaffed and doing double the work because the Health care system is nearly bankrupt.... So add to this the mandatory jab.
So the result? Well they took to the streets by the millions and now all the hospitals just lost another 50% of staff capacity. My doctor just went into early retirement (a.k.a. he quit) and I have yet to find a replacement.
As of Aug 1st ALL large malls, retail stores and grocery store owners and their staff need to be jabbed and the health pass is required to enter for employees and customers. This would be the equivalent to closing ALL Targets, Walmarts, Costcos, Home Depots, and all major grocery stores. (basically any building over 20,000 squre meters) to those without "the pass".
Result.?? Aug 15th Truckers will be going on strike nation wide; Blocking all access roads in and out of Paris.
Yesterday an entire airport in Northern France closed due to the majority of staff quitting.
As of Sept 15th All public areas and access will be off limits. No farmers markets, no parks, no national parks, lakes, rivers, beaches, recreation areas, campsites etc. and no gathering over 100 people, no churches, no weddings, etc.
As of Oct 1st ALL small vendors such as, delis, pizza trucks, sandwich shops, butchers, bakers, vegatable stands etc.
So as of Oct 1st I will only be able to purchase food by internet and pick up (if allowed).
Food shortages, Truckers strike, hospitals and airports shutting down unemployment going through the roof. Its going to be a bumpy ride folks.
Is it me or does all this seem a bit extreme for a "pass" that isn't exactly working?
America England Australia New Zealand you’d better wake up"
Well said for bringing this to substack readers' attention. There are mass protests against lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports again in France today, fortunately there are still a few maverick news organisations to get the news out. Here in Britain the usual weekend protests will go unreported, even the big protests held in London on the last weekend of each month since March get hardly a mention in spite of attracting hundreds of thousands to join them.
I used to think i was a loyal leftie, but the last year has got me bewildered.... maybe it's cause i'm paying attention more, i dunno. Now the left is against free speech, for censorship, and adamantly against holistic healing. Apparently nutritional healing is a right wing thing now. It's conservative voices that are telling us that taking a good dose of Vitamin D can save you from dire outcomes of the virus. How dare they? The 'science' says that only a vaccine can save us. Your innate immune system is in league with the far right.
Amazing that the left ignores that the national health agencies are captive of the pharmaceutical industry. That promoting vaccines is promoting huge profits for Big Pharma. Leftist who can break down the numbers of the housing crisis are impotent to make heads of tails of the data that keeps coming out on the virus. It still is killing the already sick; those with multiple co-morbidities. That has not changed despite the dire headlines about a young person's tragic end. We have to after all, make sure everyone, even the babies get the jab. Good for us maybe but especially good for our guardians in Big Pharma...
My problem is i have been antagonistic to Big Pharma long before this event, and this event just solidifies my revulsion about the way they do business.
The stupidest (most ignorant) of all talking points to come out of covid era is the notion that people want to end lockdowns because of "greed". OMG I can't even. It's like dealing with children who don't fucking understand that the billionaires dont suffer from cash flow problems and for them this is a golden opportunity to gobble up more and more of the world's wealth and resources while it's all super cheap and no one else has money which is exactly what they are doing while getting record bailouts.
In short, 2020 was the biggest wealth heist from the bottom to the top in all of human fucking history and people are saying that people who want to end lockdowns are motivated by greed. The ignorance of that is just staggering.
Not too many are saying anymore that the rich want to end lockdown to get back to business no matter how many people die, although Chris Hedges did manage to come up with that one only recently... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exuBUuQi2vY&t=2s
Now there's a huge eviction crisis going on in the States. Yeah, the lockdown has been great for the poor!
You are correct, before I quit working as an I.T. consultant I has the unpleasant experience of twp assignments with corporations that are part of the Big Pharma cartel. They are piratical. Corporate greed does not get anywhere near describing accurately the moral degeneracy of these organisations. Their business plan is based on making us all "patients for life."
After the Purdue Pharma heroin craze and the martin Shkreli fiasco,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli
there is little doubt that Big Pharma are capitalists. They will charge as much as they possibly can for their vaccines and they will try to limit their distribution. However, I think it would be really difficult to promote a vaccine that doesn't work.
OTOH falsely debunking other treatments (like Vitamin D) would not be difficult to do. OTOOH, can they really buy every doctor, every medical institution, every nurse?
When folks post how ivermectin or vitamin-D "really work", there is most often no link to support the claim. Sometimes there will be one to a youTube where a guy will go on and on and on about how his treatment works but, just like when you go to a "free time share dinner", there is little substance and often a lot of hand-waving.
This article is about the consequences of Russiagate. Sure, don't believe the MSM any longer, but why believe some random guy you've never heard of on youTube?
Yesterday's "useful idiots" was talking about generals on the MSM who bolster their credibility by wearing medals all over their uniforms -- sometimes even medals that they did not earn.
Would it reallly be difficult to promote a vaccine that didn't work? In the case of any individual nobody can logically say that any vaccine worked. As you may have guessed I am unvaccinated, I'm the grandson of a successful bookie who showed me the ropes before he died. So I looked at the figures and after 18 moths of being totally untouched by the virus in common with over 90% of the population, I didn't like the odds.
Here's the logic: Suppose I, having been COVID free throughout the pandemic caved and got my shot tomorrow and in two years time I'm still untouched by COVID, the vaccine industry would say, "See; our wonderful vaccine saved your live or at the very least stopped you being seriously ill. But that is dishonest, nobody can possibly know whether I would have been infected or stayed COVID free had I not had the jab. So as I have never had 'flu and can't remember when I last had a cold, I'll continue to trust my immune system.
Even if you did contract the virus Basil, you would get nothing more than a cold at worst, or no symptoms more likely. People with a strong immune system don't come to a bad end with this or any virus. And that little secret is the key to the future. No wonder the death culture doesn't advertise it.
"Would it really be difficult to promote a vaccine that didn't work?"
Well, I think so. But after reading Ed Snowden's Apophenia article and Taibbi's Lolita article, perhaps I should reevaluate my beliefs.
Just how hard is it to get organizations like the Mayo Clinic, which has an outstanding reputation, to stand in league with other "respected" agencies to promote a lie?
NPR says there are only 12 "misinformation outlets", quite a joke, but what if they're right?
Here's the thing, I recall being somewhat ill about 18 months ago. It was something I passed off at the time as being unimportant since it could have been too many beers, the wrong choice of salsa, some tainted something or other. But now, I wonder.
I know some "friends of a friend of a friend of an acquaintance" who also had some mild symptoms of something after returning from a trip to Central America just before there was a huge outbreak of Covid in their town. They're wondering if they didn't bring it into town.
Then to, there's another friend who has developed quite a good contact tracing app which Apple will not "bless" even though they blessed a different app that I consider quite fraudulent. Nope, contact tracing can only be through "approved" methods. (Apple's hypocrisy is glaring after they've now announced that any "child porn" photos uploaded to the iCloud -- something that is not easy to turn off -- will be reported to "authorities")
Maybe you've already had Covid and your superior immune system responded.
So, what are we doing here but confirming Caitlin's hypothesis?
How do we know the CIA hasn't recruited a bunch of freaks who wonder around with "squirt guns" (for want of a better description of the 'weapon') who arbitrarily "squirt" random people with the SARS virus?
NPR just had a story about how the Myanmar generals are controlling the supply of Oxygen. Are they committing genocide against their own people?
You can see how this kind of thinking rapidly spins out of control. OTOH, what has our government been doing for the last 100 years but creating false flag after false flag. (Remember the Maine!)
Get the jab or don't. I'm not in a position to judge.
I suppose I should say that over the last couple of days there has been reports that Ivermectin possibly works. But just like the argument between the Democrats and the Republicans about voting rules, how can I be sure this group promoting this isn't part of the "grand conspiracy"?
I guess there is a thing that might call anti-apophenia -- things that are obviously connected are dismissed as being lies.
Oh yeah. The IPCC report that came out today. And Larry Page is now a resident of New Zealand. Something big is happening and we're not being let in on the plan. Or we're just allowing our paranoia to run away with us.
NPR is a great authority!! Surely they're not in on it.. they're the paragon of liberal righteousness.
OMG! NPR is all you got out of my post? And to think you screwed it up so totally. OK, have a nice day.
You’re awesome this whole thread is awesome, I love the nuance and how folks consider many different angles and alternatives. It’s very human and these patterns of thought are similar to my own. I’m glad this blog is here.
John, i already posted a youtube video that had plenty of data in it and you said it was too complicated for you. So, why do you still think yourself some kind of authority on these matters?? And there isn't just one random video.. There are doctors and scientists all over the world offering up insights into the data. Until you actually take in some of that, maybe you should stick to an area that you have more expertise in.
Yes and I already called BS on Dr. Seheult. He appears to be the only one pushing Vitamin D. He has plenty of youTubes pushing it.
You claim there are doctors and scientists all over the world, but the ONLY one I can find is Dr. Seheult.
OTOH, I can easily find well respected clinics that say either "we don't have enough information" or "it doesn't work."
So push whatever you want. I'm sure you'll get plenty of people to go to Dr. Seheult and take whatever quack cure he's offering.
IOW, -ONE-VIDEO-IS-NOT-ENOUGH-
You personify the determined ignorance of a loyal consumer of mainstream propaganda sir. There is evidence all over the place and Dr. Seheult is giving a good overview of all the data to date seven months back... but i know you can't countenance anything that isn't pushed by the CDC and those other health agencies you trust with your life. So be it.. the world in now officially filled with fools who can't figure much out on their own so trust the good people who give us wars and other lies...
Thanks for the new evidence. Much appreciated. /s
The Vitamin D story is making the rounds well outside of the research that supports it. I was looking it up earlier today and there are so many caveats about the use of vitamin D that it really only applies to a very small population. If you're white and drink milk and go outside, you already have more than enough Vitamin D to not benefit from this "research" of just over 500 people. It wasn't a controlled study, it was just something that worked for this small group.
I'd provide a link to the article, but what the hey, maybe 2% would follow that link. The other 98% have already made up their mind -- either for or against.
Jeez, that's not the studies i saw... and that's plural... lots of studies and they've been coming out since the beginning of the pandemic.... no huge surprise that a Vitamin D deficiency would correlate with dire outcomes. Of course the fact that we actually have an immune system is a well guarded secret. No one on the left of the spectrum knows it. It is a right wing part of our bodies obviously.
Here's a vid from seven months ago when the data was sufficient to do this kind of analysis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha2mLz-Xdpg
Looks to me like an hour long Dr. Oz commercial. Pretty much it highlights the problem Caitlin is writing about.
I have no problem with Doctors using Vitamin D. But there's way, way too much written on this subject that I couldn't possibly understand to be able to make an independent judgement.
For every guy that supports it, you can find another guy who says it doesn't work.
This sentence (published a few months ago) I totally understand:
"Although the results from most ongoing randomized clinical trials aiming to prove the benefit of vitamin D supplementation for these purposes are still pending,"
YOu're right of course... every man can decide for herself, regardless of the evidence. And if you are a consumer of mainstream news about covid, you will 'know' that nothing will save you from immanent death but this amazing new experimental vaccine. That you can take to the bank!!
Nothing right wing about opposing this biosecurity fraud.
https://odysee.com/@drsambailey:c/Once-Upon-A-Time-in-Wuhan-Odysee-Exclusive-Comp:2
... and this time last year Vitamin D and zinc, along with HCQ and Ivermectin were dismissed as conspiracy theories, yet all had been proved in methodologically sound scientific studies to be effective, cheap and without serious side effects.
Show me a study that doesn't come across like a Dr Mercola or Dr Oz published by some fly-by-night quack.
When I search for "Vitamin D and Covid", there are lots of agencies that say "we don't know" or "studies have not confirmed" which includes the Mayo Clinic, Harvard, AARP and others.
The only proponent of this treatment seems to be this guy and his youTube specifically says:
PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Seheult says in this video “I can’t tell you how much vitamin D to take because I’m not your doctor nor am I here to give you medical advice.”
Here's an example of what happens if you try to debunk the quacks, you get attacked.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/editorial-staff/david-h-gorski-md-phd-managing-editor/
For some reason these attacks against the debunkers are successful because people seem to believe that no one (like Trump or Hillary or QAnon) would ever make stuff up (like Comet Pizza or Russiagate).
Ed Snowden just published and excellent substack article on the subject: Apophenia
https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt2
The comments are also worth reading since they are (mostly) well considered and thoughtful. They discuss how google (and probably other search engines) discover what you want to search for and they then feed back to you ever more outrageous and ridiculous articles to feed your bias on the subject.
Why you think you can make a claim about how a certain treatment for Covid "works" without even attempting to back it up with a link to at least 3 articles from different authors who have some expertise in the field is beyond my understanding. You're just pushing a new religion.
You cite sciencebasedmedicine John, I've read that site, trust me there is more scientific knowledge in the steam off my piss that all the contributers and commenters on that site can muster between them.
Now I'm not going to weigh in on the Vitamin D issue, the importance of Vitamin D to the human immune system is self evident. But you will see article highlighting the efficacy of Ivermectin as phrphylaxis and treatment for COVID-19 regularly "debunked" by people at sciencebasedmedicine whose idea of science is to simply parrot propaganda. They all say "There is no reliable evidence that Ivermectin works."
But it does not take five minutes to find plenty of evidence pointing to the fact that the drug is more effective than any of the vaccines on the maket. Here are just three examples from the hundreds available, one is from a US Government source, one from The Journal of Antibiotics the third from a highly respected Australian university ...
Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19
US National Library of Medicine review of results in trials of Ivermectin as prophilaxis and theraputic treatment for COVID-19 and other viral illnesses
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/
The mechanisms of action of Ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2: An evidence-based clinical review article
The journal of antibiotocs via nature.com
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5
Lab experiments show anti-parasitic drug, Ivermectin, eliminates SARS-CoV-2 in cells in 48 hours
Report of research carried out at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/news-and-events/news/2020-articles/Lab-experiments-show-anti-parasitic-drug,-Ivermectin,-eliminates-SARS-CoV-2-in-cells-in-48-hours
You make a good point about the way Google distorts search results to maximise revenyue from their AADWORDS product John, I suggest you stop using Google and choose a genuine search tool rather than a censorship tool.
These are long reports and not easy reading, however nobody ever said research should be easy:
Lab experiments show anti-parasitic drug, Ivermectin, eliminates SARS-CoV-2 in cells in 48 hours
Report of research carried out at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
The increasing reliance on overt repression is a sign of weakness and not strength.
Moral weakness? Yes. Political weakness in growing tyrannical governments, US Federal and many US states? Cite Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Warsaw Pact countries, USSR, CCP China, Cuba, Venezuela, etcetera ...
It is an admission that they cannot win the argument or convince people or even take advantage of the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps a minor point but the lies started long,long before Russiagate. However for many, like me, they appeared to be anomalies until Bush invaded Iraq.
While I believe COVID-19 is real, whether or not it was man-made, whether or not the vaccines are really effective, and safe, whether or not new variants occur naturally— I don’t know.
I find most deniers use really ignorant approaches to the disease but I figure they have every right to not believe authority figures. Like this morning when a caller to MPR radio started talking about delta breakthrough infections and Kerri cut him off faster than a crank call — our media is still concentrating on a theme dictated to them rather than an exploration for the truth.
Logic tells me that “they” have a hidden motive. How can I insist that those who don’t want to be vaccinated are wrong?
Well, as one of those right-wingers to which you're referring, I might also add in that said pandemic also coicidentally required ("because science!") that voting rules be completely changed in just the right ways to allow the Democrats to mass harvest just enough ballots to unseat their hated Orange Man Bad.
And somehow all discussion of any means of protecting ourselves and our loved ones against this particular virus other than those that would result in billions in guaranteed mega-profits for the biggest corporate lobbying operation in existing (Big Pharma) were "conspiracy theories" that needed to be censored and driven from the Interent.
And we also noticed that the origin story of the virus that starts with Dr. Anthony Fauci running a serreptitious end run around federal rules prohibiting U.S. funding of Chinese bioweapons research (euphemistically called, "gain of function") and ends with said lab workers showing up in Wuhan hospitals with "flu-like" systems is a "racist" conspiracy theory, whereas the origin story that involves Chinese people (who don't eat bats) eating bats at a "wet market" (that doesn't sell bats) is conventional wisdom.
It's also not lost on us that Democratic states seemed oddly eager to interpret the "science" as requiring the complete self-immolation of the Trump economic boom (it's easy to forget that 2019 had record low unemployment and poverty rates, with projections for more of the same) with "stay at home" orders shutting down all businesses except Walmart, Target and Home Depot not to mention public schools in all of the cities and states controlled by Democrats, but somehow now with Biden in office, similar case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths warrant little more than a "recommendation" that people use masks in indoor public spaces.
Yeah, Russiagate is neither the beginning nor the end of the kind of "skepticism" that would make one untrustful of the people now urging us to allow them to inject an "mRNA" vaccine injected into our bloodstream. For the record, I still did it.
great story, thanks for writing it.
along with the hysteria about russiagate - the fact that these same media companies employ ex-spooks from the FBI & CIA (are they ex-spooks or once a spy always a spy?). CNN has on many occasions had their ex-fbi / ex-cia employees serve the role of analyst to address criticism of those agencies...
If skepticism of covid narrative isn't welcome on the left then the left us useless and as far as I am concerned they have rolled over and are allowing the global plutocracy to tickle their bellies.
mainstream media have been serving their corporate master class all along, and the russiagate is just the last "lie" they told people. it's only reasonable and wise to oppose whatever they try to shove down our throat and i'm unanimous on that, without counting the capitalist parasites and their bootlicking minions.
The problem with the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers is they are protesting about the wrong thing. They should be protesting against the gain-of-function (biowarfare) research that most likely produced the virus.
Catlin, please look up Mike Yeadon, former Vice President of Pfizer. Drink in all the information you can by Yeadon before he gets completely obliterated by the authorities. Those political leaders who love the poor and the vulnerable so much, they now lie awake at night worrying about their wellbeing.
"Can you imagine how disgusted you'd get with the media watching this happen day after day?" Caitland, I honestly think Republican howled with laughter at the entire farce. They saw the Democrats self destructing as they made complete fools of themselves with their self righteous insistence that the Russians, and not Hillary, were responsible for losing the election in 2016.
Good ducking and diving. But complete drivel. It’s not the Right, that opposes this medical tyranny and its nonsense narrative, it’s the awake and the brave. You Cait, are treading water in quicksand, by trying to portray your lack of writing on the subject as a result of your ignorance of science. Instead of your fear, of being throttled, or even blocked from earning.
Since your mind reading skills are top notch, can you tell me who's going to win the Super Bowl next year? I'd like to place a bet.
As a right-leaning guy with a science background that writes for a living, for me writing is hard and science is easy. Writing often requires creating from nothing, science is simply looking at the facts (not the opinions) and seeing what they produce. For instance, if you give people a solution to drink and they all become invisible for a period of time, the science says that the solution likely leads to (at least) temporary invisibility.
However, if a significant percentage who drink the solution do not become invisible, then the science cannot say that the solution alone causes the invisibility and perhaps there are factors with the invisible group that work together to enable invisibility or there are factors associated with the non-invisible group that preclude invisibility.
Another example is that if the corporate media and control-leftists are pushing and hinting at requiring something, like forced vaxx or public education or public healthcare or..., then the science shows that those things are expected to be failures or largely inadequate solutions and always boondoggles designed simply to further empower those doing the forcing.
I do not agree with you on all issues, Caitlin, but on the issues like these you have a the correct perspective.
IMO, the fix was in near the end of Reagan and fully in place by Clinton. The neo-con/neo-lib shitstorm we all are suffering under was the child of Bush I - I do not have, yet, the science to support that fully, but it seems that the data supports that.
I could peer into the future and see we would be up against this high level of BS... So, I wrote this essay in December 2020... 1 of my reasons for not taking it is not trusting the government... for the reasons you cite. I feel we are at war.. and that things will get worse and then get better. Keep up the great journalism Caitlin! https://turningpointnews.org/corona-virus-reports/10-reasons-for-corona-vaccine-skepticism
How serendipitous to have run across this excellent commentary on Quora by Curtis Lindsay
https://www.quora.com/If-there-truly-is-a-cult-of-ignorance-in-the-United-States-like-American-writer-Isaac-Asimov-claimed-where-can-it-be-found
discussing Issac Azimov's 1980 essay "A Cult of Ignorance"
(This comes as a repost on an individual blog that has an introduction but then the entire essay)
https://alex-65670.medium.com/there-is-a-cult-of-ignorance-in-the-united-states-10068ac77591
20@20 makes excellent points about Fauci and Big Pharma, so it is disappointing to see he solely blames the Democrats for the fight over voting rights -- makes him look like a racist to me. The Republican claims of voter fraud are ridiculous. But I'm not at all saying the Democrats don't cheat on elections.
His other claims I can accept until we talk about COVID. Let's not go into that too deeply. There are so many caveats as to require a PhD dissertation.
But then along comes Gregory with his posts of Jon Rappaport -- the right-wing Rachael Maddow wannabe. Gregory is a true believer who will accept any lie that even comes close to his beliefs.
Let me be clear, the virus might indeed have been manufactured in Wuhan with Fauci's help, but the sources Gregory cites to "prove" this wild tale are just charlatans wanting to cash in on his ignorance. The "facts" they provide don't pass the smell test. But Gregory wants to believe it and so it is true.
Yeah, we've been lied to so long by so many about so much it is absolutely right that we shouldn't believe anyone. But to then turn to hacks that promote even more outrageous lies...
What can I say? Asimov is right!
As you noted, the credentialed, the experts, the educated, the thinkers, have a long and storied track record of mendacity and self-serving lies and bullshit. (Look up Professor Frankenfurter for the distinction.)
The problem is that, unless you have a lot of education or way too much time on your hands, to give one example, you or I have no way to evaluate medical research and tell whether a given course of treatment is promising or snake oil.
If I'm a "racist" I would have to hate myself, as I'm a descendant of African slaves brought to America. It's odd that you attacked a strawman of my arguments, as "voter fraud" did not appear in my comment. I simply said that the Democrats leveraged COVID hysteria to put in place a set of new rules that were enormously helpful to their base turnout efforts, rules that would not have been approved absent COVID hysteria. Whether there was fraud or not is another question. Genuinely curious to hear what I misunderstand about how establishment Democrats have responded to COVID more broadly.
You said:
"voting rules be completely changed in just the right ways to allow the Democrats to mass harvest just enough ballots to unseat their hated Orange Man Bad."
This is an argument that I've seen mostly from people I consider to be racist so you "look like" a racist. I did not say you were a racist.
The contest of who writes the voting rules has been on-going for centuries. It is one portion of the electoral fraud that has been prevalent (as in obvious) in every election since Reagan. Electoral fraud has probably been in every US election since the nation's founding.
That you want to blame only the Democrats for Electoral Fraud is disingenuous. Now don't get the impression that I'm defending the Democrats. They won because they "cheated better". The cheating (fraud) is financed by the Oligarchy which chooses the winner. The Oligarchy is not monolithic so it isn't like they all agree on who should win. That is why there are so many different media outlets arguing all different sides of the fraud. You seem to have chosen to listen only to the outlets that blame the Democrats. The majority of the Oligarchy did not want to see Trump re-elected so he wasn't. (NOTE: "majority" in this sense is a convenient term to use but it might be better said the "more effective members of the Oligarchy").
Yes there was electoral fraud in the 2020 election. Again though, Trump's guys didn't cheat well enough to beat Biden's guys. IOW, I reject your (unstated) premise that Trump did not cheat. And to repeat myself, yes the Democrats cheated.
Your decision to align yourself with a psychotic narcissist is depressing but understandable. There are many who naively support Biden.
Voter Fraud is not to be confused with Electoral Fraud.
I said "Republican claims of Voter Fraud". Voter Fraud is very, very rare, as in the number of proven cases is in the single digits. The poor ex-con in TX who is being prosecuted for it thought he was allowed to vote. It was an honest mistake and made absolutely no difference in the outcome of the election. The Republican decision to prosecute him is based on his race.
I purposely stated that I did not want to talk COVID because there are so many caveats. The main one being your apparent claim here that only the Democrats are responsible for mishandling the pandemic.
But again, my comment mentioned neither "Voter Fraud" nor "Electoral Fraud", in fact I did not write the word "fraud" at all. Mainly, because that's not the issue as I see it. My entire comment was in response to Caitlin's imagining right-wing skepticism of the COVID vaccine, and as a (somewhat) right-winger, I was adding some to her thoughts. With respect to the election, the Democrats argued that absentee balloting needed to be allowed as never before "because COVID", and it just happens that the Democrats also have a lot of latent voters who often can't be bothered to get to the polls, or specifically request an absentee ballot on their own, but will fill one out if it's sent to their house and then collected by an organized operation. When those marginal voters sit out, it can cost the Democrats close swing states in Presidential elections. Well, in 2020, the Democrats guaranteed that they would not sit out, they sent them ballots in the mail, then went and collected them. And that provided the margins in those states, you could see it in real-time as vote drops in cities like Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Detroit took Biden over the top in big chunks.
Does that mean that Republicans don't also manipulate the rules to their advantage? Of course not. Republicans generally benefit when it's not so easy to vote, so they focus on "election integrity" which generally makes it not so easy to vote. I don't think it's racist, they're not doing it because they hate minorities, they're doing it because they like winning elections, and their ideology supports election integrity as a concept.
I think Republicans also mishandled the pandemic, and the Democrats didn't do everything wrong. My main point is that the Democrats leveraged their control over the public health system to take unprecedented actions that harmed the economy in the lead up to a Presidential election, and it seems clear to me that they are now far more reluctant to take the same actions based on a very similar set of facts. For example, if California was still using the color-coded closing and reopening criteria that was in place in 2020, the area I'm living in would be in lockdown. Instead, people are eating inside restaurants without masks.
Dr Thomas Cowan, Dr Andrew Kaufman, The Big Virus Hoax . com, Jon Rappaport for your REAL "COVID" science information.
https://www.bitchute.com/search/?query=tom%20cowan&kind=video
https://www.bitchute.com/search/?query=andrew%20kaufman&kind=video
https://thebigvirushoax.com/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/