Sunday, January 31, 2021

FGM

Ivory Coast: Stamping out female genital mutilation 

Female genital mutilation is still an issue in rural areas of Ivory Coast. Though it has been banned decades ago, girls still die and suffer from the practice.

    


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You Will Be Made to Believe Implausible Things

You Will Be Made to Believe Implausible Things


In George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984, he said, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” 

To guide you along this path, I bring to your attention implausible things you are expected to believe this week. 

  1. Things that are not graft.

Outrageously generous book deals to present and former officials.

The Obamas’ $65 million book advances still lead the way to the most lavish, though the notion that even Democrat politicians’ relatives, like Chelsea Clinton, would offer ghostwritten pap worth anything is something you just have to believe.

Generous speaking fees.

The $25 million the Clintons garnered for just six months of speeches in 2014 and 2015, you must regard not as bribes for access and influence, but as well-earned compensation for minutes worth of pearls of wisdom. Not just former presidents and would-be presidents are the recipients of such largesse.  Janet Yellen, the Biden pick for Secretary of the Treasury, for example, raked in $7.2 million in speaking fees from Wall Street and large corporations like Citi, Goldman Sachs, Google, City National Bank, UBS, Citadel LLC, Barclays, and  Credit Suisse. The Great Iggy (an online friend) must be in error when he questions these fees:

These fees are for what? Some pointless stupid boilerplate speech that does not and cannot, in itself, contain anything of value to the payers. So its value is in the form of access and influence only; which used to be called graft and influence peddling.

Charitable Shakedowns.

You must ignore the suggestion that plea bargains in which the government gives a settlement payment to a bureaucrat’s favorite nonprofit constitutes anything unethical. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions halted this practice. If the new administration reverses this ban, avert your eyes from bad thinking. If the government claims a corporation ripped off yourself and fellow citizens illegally, you should be grateful they have to pay up to the agency head’s alumni association or some left-wing advocacy outfit. Why should you be compensated for the harm done to you? And from the viewpoint of the defendant, why not grease the palms of the prosecution’s favorites with some small amount rather than go through the expense and aggravation of defending?

Congressional Stock Trading

If you believed Hillary Clinton made so much money investing shrewdly in cattle futures and not out of some manipulation, you will certainly agree that speaker Nancy Pelosi’s $1 million investment in Tesla stock call options shortly before the Biden administration announced it planned to make the federal automobile fleet (645,000 cars) electric was just another example of stock trading genius by a high-ranking politician.

There’s certainly no graft in providing lucrative deals for politicians’ families.

Ignore Hunter Biden’s deals with Ukraine and China and Joe’s brother James, “who took out $650,000 in personal loans from a company that bankrupted local hospitals while trading on his brother’s name and connections to the campaign.” Or his brother Frank’s farming for clients for the law firm he’s connected with advertising with the not too subtle hint of access.  

2. You can Trust Dr. Fauci

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the China Virus was appropriate even though he placed the virus carriers in nursing homes and ignored the presence of the USNS Solace, the Javits Center, and Samaritan’s Purse hospitals which were fully staffed and ready to assist.

Dr. Fauci was right to praise him. Ignore the New York Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated and announced this week that the Cuomo administration failed to report thousands of COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents after forcing these homes to admit COVID-19 patients. And you know you can ignore James’s report and credit Dr. Fauci’s praisee of Cuomo’s performance because Joe Biden said “Dr. Fauci isn’t just one of our foremost experts on combating viruses -- he is a good man and a tireless public servant.... Our administration, and our country, will be stronger because of his guidance.”

Dr. Fauci is one of our foremost experts on combating viruses and is totally nonpartisan. Ignore his waffling and misstatements.

This is the man who dictated coronavirus policy in the Trump administration. If mistakes were made, as the Biden administration claims, they are Fauci’s. 

Yet, astonishingly, Fauci told CNN Friday that a “lack of candor” from the Trump administration had cost American lives. 

If people’s lives really were at stake last year, why did he wait until now to tell us? 

Chalk it up to another convenient fib from a habitual fibber, who has deceived us on everything from masks to herd immunity. 

Even if you decide these are not lies but lapses of judgment by Fauci, they had potentially lethal consequences. 

Take, for instance, Fauci’s serenity back on January 21 last year, when he assured us that the virus convulsing China at the time “is not a major threat for the people of the United States and this is not something the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.” [snip] The following week, he was at it again, vehemently opposing President Donald Trump’s proposed flight ban from China, which Biden at the time decried as “xenophobia.” 

[snip] Then there was Fauci’s advice on masks. 

Back in March, when the coronavirus was decimating New York, he told us masks were useless. 

“Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks,” he told “60 Minutes.” 

Three months later, he did a backflip: “Masks work... to prevent you from infecting someone else... but also, it can protect you to a certain degree.” [snip]

Turns out he lied about herd immunity, too. 

In December, Fauci admitted to the New York Times that he had “slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts” on the percentage of the population that needed to be vaccinated before “herd immunity” against ­COVID-19 was reached. 

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85,” he said. 

Fauci is not precise with numbers, which is odd for a scientist who professes to care about facts. 

For instance, on Biden’s first day last week, Fauci said we would have “100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days” and specified he meant both “primary and boost” shots, a total of 200 million shots in arms. 

On Sunday, he was forced to “clarify that, because there was a little bit of a misunderstanding. What we’re talking about is 100 million shots in individuals.” 

The 100 million goal is fake anyway,  since we’re already there. In the week before the inauguration, 912,000 shots were administered per day, according to Bloomberg News’ tracker. On Inauguration Day, it was 1.6 million shots. 

Disregard the Media’s covering up for Both Cuomo and Fauci.

Janice Dean, who lost family members in the New York nursing home mismanagement, must not be listened to. Trust Lester Holt to fairly report:

@JaniceDean

So @NBCNews @LesterHoltNBC @TODAYshow censored one of my friends who lost a loved one in a nursing home. She wanted to say “@andrewcuomo failed us” in the interview and they told her to say “New York failed us” instead. The mainstream is STILL protecting this guy. Disgusting.

Shame on you @LesterHoltNBC @NBCNews @TODAYshow. New York State did not fail us. The governor, his administration and his health department FAILED US. You are a disgrace to all families. Just like @andrewcuomo.

You should trust Holt to provide a clear account and not bloggers like Yaacov Applebaum who nailed Cuomo’s  horrid nursing home policies last May. 

3. All the White House efforts on the China virus are based on sound science, not politics

So when the White House calls for Florida restaurants and bars to close their doors, contrary to Governor Ron DeSantis’ directives to stay open, you must ignore Richard Grenell’s criticism of Governor Gavin Newsom and its application to the White House plan for Florida. Logic is now banned thinking.

Richard Grenell

@RichardGrenell

It makes no sense to let people fly on an airplane for 5 hours but not be inside a restaurant or a gym for 1 hour.

Open up our businesses!

@GavinNewsom must be recalled.

10:07 AM · Jan 30, 2021

I’m 79 years old, and all the protocols indicate I should be among the first eligible for the vaccine. Although my D.C. ward (3) is mostly white and rich and taxpaying, too many of its residents want the vaccine, so it’s going first to wards where people have been most affected by the virus (and are in significant numbers still refusing to take it). Having registered at numerous sites, it’s still unavailable to me. On the other hand, if I had been a participant in terrorism against the U.S. like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others locked up in Guantanamo Bay, I would be scheduled to get it ahead of most Americans (until backlash compelled them to "pause" that plan). Don’t ask. Don’t question. Surely our leader has good reasons behind this.

4. Show trial and Impeachments are the Way to Unity

Daniel Greenfield explains, for those who are slow learners. Questioning an election is now sedition and incitement. A Capitol wrapped in barbed wire and with streets filled with National Guardsmen is not using a fake state of emergency, friends. 

The show trial of President Trump and the city full of soldiers is just the opening act to the Great Purge of a domestic terrorism crackdown on anyone who ever retweeted the wrong meme.

Biden will embed a domestic terrorism office in the NSC, making the NSC's former abuses under Obama routine as a system meant to track foreign enemies is instead used to surveil domestic political opponents. Heading the effort will be Joshua Geltzman, who had formerly falsely claimed, "No, Black Lives Matter is not a terrorist organization."

Inside of a month, Democrats had redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy. And by “democracy,” they mean the Democrat Party.

Popular leaders don’t take their false oaths of office in a deserted city surrounded by barbed wire and military checkpoints manned by 25,000 troops. Nor do they engage in show trials of their predecessors or unroll massive efforts to surveil, arrest, and silence their opponents.

That’s not the stuff of healing, but it is how you unite a country at gunpoint under your rule.

After four years of vowing to remove President Trump by any means from massive riots to illegal eavesdropping to coups, the Democrats declared an emergency because a few Republicans had done 10% of the things they had been doing, but without dressing up as human genitalia.

Democrats had been collecting bail fund donations for mass arrests in post-election protests and even a “separate fund to raise money for the families of anyone killed in violence on or around Election Day.” And then they pivoted from prepping body bags to declaring that insurrection was a national emergency which will require the National Guard to sleep in parking lots where they won’t annoy Democrat House members until Biden sees his own shadow.

That or the show trials wrap up before they get around to mandating that all future elections take place at Democrat campaign offices preceded by poll tests about equity and white privilege.

Meanwhile the Democrat media went from writing sympathetic pieces about BLM lawyers throwing Molotov cocktails at the police to demanding a thorough purge of every single person who had ever questioned the idea that Joe Biden might not be the most popular politician ever.

Any day now I expect the publishers who toss favors at Democrat officeholders to print and distribute gratis Biden’s Little Red Book for us to memorize, or redo paintings of him as they did in Russia of the doddering fool Brezhnev bedecked with dozens of  medals.




Do you want politically driven healthcare?

NEWS

This is callous

New York state Democratic Attorney General Letitia James dropped a bombshell report on Thursday alleging that the number of coronavirus-related deaths at nursing homes in New York could be undercounted by as much as 50%. When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) was pressed about the accuracy of the state's nursing home deaths, he lashed out with a response that the New York Post called "callous."


The scathing report found that the state counted only coronavirus-related deaths that occurred at nursing homes and long-term care facilities, but did not count nursing home residents who died at hospitals after being transferred there for medical care. 

During a press conference on Friday, WHEC-TV reporter Jennifer Kewke asked Cuomo, "Governor, your staff is often unapologetically aggressive when it comes to defending your policies, particularly on social media. But in this case, many of the people who disagree with this nursing home policy have a very personal connection to it, they lost a loved one during this pandemic with a connection to a nursing home. So, the policy itself aside...who was right, who was wrong... just as a father and son yourself, what would your message be to those families today?


Cuomo responded, "What I would say is everyone did the best they could."

Cuomo then passed the blame on the federal government, "When I say the State Department of Health as the report said, The State Department of Health followed federal guidance so if you think there was a mistake then go talk to the federal government."

"If you look at New York State, we have a lower percentage of deaths in nursing homes than other states. A third of all deaths in this nation are from nursing homes," the Democratic governor said. "New York state we're only about 28% … but were below the national average in number of deaths in nursing homes."

Cuomo then blurted, "But who cares?" 33 [percent], 28 [percent], died in a hospital, died in a nursing home—they died!"

Even the Washington Post called Cuomo's response a "bad 'who cares' answer on coronavirus nursing home data."

"From a public policy perspective, we should care," wrote Aaron Blake. "A death is indeed a death, but there are major and very valid questions about whether nursing home policies led to unnecessary ones."

Cuomo has been questioned on his leadership regarding nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 25, Cuomo instituted a directive that took coronavirus-infected elderly patients who were discharged from hospitals and allowed them to be transferred to New York's nursing homes to free up hospital beds.

Cuomo's controversial directive was rescinded on May 10. The directive has been removed from the state's health department website.

report from the Associated Press in May claimed that more than 4,300 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to nursing homes because of Cuomo's directive. 

Nearly half of all COVID-19 deaths in the United States are connected to nursing homes and long-term care centers, according to a June report from the New York Times.


Saturday, January 30, 2021

87% of Bureau of Land Management Staffers Quit When Trump Told Them to Move to Colorado

87% of Bureau of Land Management Staffers Quit When Trump Told Them to Move to Colorado

 

 


This is a template for what could have been accomplished. It hopefully will be restarted under the next Republican administration.

The Bureau of Land Management rules the lives of people out west, yet its bureaucrats operate out of D.C. When the Trump administration began relocating BLM offices to Colorado to be close to where the people and land they control actually live, the hacks headed for the exit.

The Trump administration’s decision to relocate most Bureau of Land Management headquarters staff out West — designed to shift power away from the nation’s capital — prompted more than 87 percent of the affected employees to either quit or resign rather than move, according to new data obtained by The Washington Post.

The exit of longtime career staffers from the agency responsible for managing more than 10 percent of the nation’s land shows the extent to which the Trump administration reshaped the federal government. The reorganization plan reestablished the bureau’s headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., moved 328 positions out of Interior’s main D.C. office and left 60 jobs in place.

A total of 287 BLM employees either retired or found other jobs, according to Interior communications director Melissa Schwartz, while 41 people moved to the new office in Colorado. 

Good. 

Anyone who wants to run the lives of people in Colorado, but doesn't want to live there should quit. The abusive administrative state in the Imperial City is roughly 40% of the problem with the United States government. The Washington Post fumes at the move, but the BLMers made their own choice.

They want to run people's lives from D.C. That's what Congress is for.

But several experts, including former high-ranking Interior officials, said the shake-up has deprived the agency of needed expertise and disrupted its operations. 

So it's win-win.

D.C. expertise on events in the west is worse than worthless. I'm going to bet that BLM can find qualified people in Colorado who actually know something except how to look for the next step on their career ladder in D.C. while leaking to the media.

 

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith admitted to altering an email that served as evidence to support the surveillance of Trump campaign officials.

Here you have the perfect example of how bureaucracy functions is exactly as Kafka described.

Bureaucrats care not for the individual truth but act only to 'avoid the hassle'






On Friday he was sentenced to 12 months probation and 400 hours community service.

Supporters and allies of former President Donald Trump hoped the DOJ investigation headed up by special counsel John Durham would uncover evidence that former President Barack Obama illegally used the power of his office to surveil the Trump campaign.

Clinesmith was charged with improperly altering an email that would have lessened the case in favor of surveilling Carter Page, who played a minor role in the 2016 Trump campaign.

A lawyer for Clinesmith explained in August that he had not made the alteration in bad faith, but only to save himself a procedural hassle.


continue


A world out of balance

Gitmo prisoners will be offered COVID-19 vaccines next week — ahead of most Americans


The Pentagon says detainees could get the jab as early as Monday, if they so choose