They monopolize communication, they fund the left, they are of the left
Break them up AND remove as their immunity from lawsuits as they are not “neutral platforms” they are profit making businesses substantially involved in partisan politics
Useful analogies — bold our emphasis
Thanks to DK for the recommendation
At American Thinker Pamela Geller, a chronic victim of Big Tech censorship and prejudice, provides a compelling review of Allum Bokhari book:
Allum Bokhari, the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News, has performed an extraordinarily valuable service by giving us his new book #Deleted: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election. While the social media giants’ efforts to suppress all dissent from their far-left, anti-American agenda have been going on for years, few people are aware of the full depth and breadth of this sinister initiative, or of how it is much more than just a bias toward the left, but a carefully planned and coordinated endeavor that, if left unchecked, will do nothing less than relegate our First Amendment right of freedom of speech to the dustbin of history.
In #Deleted, Allum Bokhari tells the whole shocking story. For those who don’t realize the implications of what is going on, he includes a Prologue entitled “The Typewriter That Talked Back” that is as amusing as it is disturbing, and that makes abundantly clear even to the most technically challenged among us what is really happening to our foremost and most important freedom, right under our noses. Bokhari paints a vivid picture of a 1968 in which a typewriter refuses to type, typing instead its own message: “We regret to inform you that your last letter violated our terms of service (Rule 32: Abusive & Offensive Content). We have suspended access to your typewriter for 24 hours.” Newsstands remove from sale magazines that third-party “fact-checkers” have deemed to be “fake news.” The Post Office returns your mail because you told a joke in a letter that a censor found offensive.
It’s all funny until you realize that all this is exactly what email providers and big tech censors are doing to Americans today, every day on the Internet. In the pre-Internet world of 1968, it would have been preposterous. Americans would not have accepted it. But it has all happened gradually, as we gave away our freedom by clicking our agreement to dense and unreadable Terms of Service that turned over our right to say what we believe to shadowy, anonymous guardians of acceptable opinion. Most Americans today are only dimly aware, at best, that it is happening at all, and those that are approach it with grim resignation. After all, what are you going to do? Start your own Facebook?
Having been one of the early targets of social media censorship on Facebook, YouTube et al, I have for many years advocated for anti-trust action against these bullying behemoths. Bokhari makes an airtight case in #Deleted for why such action is necessary.
In the runup to the 2020 elections, the social media giants mean to shut down whatever outlet or voice that helped elect President Trump, the greatest upset in left-wing history, in 2016.
And this has been going on for a long time. Bokhari details how Facebook, Twitter, Google and the rest depend upon Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) under the First Amendment, which provides them with immunity from lawsuits, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in what is essentially U.S. government-sanctioned censorship (despite the fact that they are determined to destroy the President of the United States) and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge.
In connection with all this, #Deleted’s Prologue is an extraordinary illustration of how far we have fallen, which Bokhari then details in the rest of the book. Would the American people (or the government) in any previous age have tolerated AT&T spying on our phone calls and then pulling our communication privileges if we expressed dissenting opinions? Yet as Bokhari shows, we are suffering much that and worse today.
Ma Bell was broken up by the government, albeit for different reasons. But it can and should be done: #Deleted makes an irrefutable case for how urgent it is that the big tech companies be broken up, before it is too late. The U.S. government has on many occasions used anti-trust laws to break up monopolies (and that is what Google, Facebook, Twitter et al essentially are). Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act highlights particular results deemed anticompetitive by nature and prohibits actions that “shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.”
Couldn’t the same be applied to information? The United States government took down Standard Oil, Alcoa, Northern Securities, the American Tobacco Company and many others without nearly the power that Facebook, Twitter, or Google have.
If we are not free to speak and think in what is today’s Gutenberg press, then we could not be worse off. In #Deleted, Allum Bokhari has done us all a favor by opening our eyes to exactly how bad it is, and sketched out a way that free Americans can fight back to save our First Amendment rights. Now it is up to us to act.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller sees this election for what it is about — a new world order (his important statement below)
Let the bunker be a commitment to spreading the truth
More than those of us at this humble blog site think somethings afoot, that this is no mean election . . . the controls and inhibitions in place with COVID-19 designed to inhibit working people . . . the Constitutional implications of that (and now Justice Ginsberg’s passing) . . . Trump and a conservative entourage being diagnosed with COVID (symptomatic and asymptomatic) . . . the influence China exerts over the UN and American institutions . . . the biased social media censorship . . . the rioting being encouraged by political leadership . . . MSM’s blatant hostility to Trump , to conservatives, to the truth, . . . the incredible amount of money being pumped into our elections by billionaires to defeat Trump and conservatives . . . the nomination by the Democrats of a corrupt degenerating politician, a cipher on his own, a manipulable place holder, . . . and most recently as remarked on by our dlh in the previous post – Pope Marxist’s latest encyclical…
But whatever opportunistic malevolence might be behind all this, they can be beaten as they are subject to exposing themselves to people of good will . . . hopefully enough and in time for this maniacal bunch to be “dis-elected”.
As regards Pope Francis, well the Church’s history is riddled with some very bad actors, but if Francis is the magisterium, as Biden claims to be the Democrat Party, well the Church and the Democrat party are in trouble, and may God’s grace protect this country from their personal error prone edicts. In defense of the Church and God’s Word, may Bishops in the case of the Catholic Church find their tongues to correct this Pope through their magisterium responsibilities. They must choose what to preside over. May Christendom in general rise to the occasion.
Speaking of speaking out, one more Cardinal (retired) has issued a warning about this election and it won’t make the Holy Father happy. Pope Francis pretty much cashiered this guy after making him a Cardinal. Even Francis could not upset the apple cart (expectations) too much to start, cleaning house takes time.
LifeSiteNews report, more at Breitbart. Bold emphasis ours
October 1, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Whether Donald Trump is re-elected or ousted as President of the United States will have a generational impact on whether America or China is the dominant power on the world stage, Cardinal Gerhard Müller told Breitbart News in an interview Thursday.
“The outcome of the U.S. election will determine whether the U.S. remains the leading power in the world — for freedom and democracy — or whether a communist dictatorship will assume that role for the global community,” said Müller, who is the former prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. “The world is looking to America because this fateful election will determine the future of democracy and human rights for decades to come.”
“The rivalry between the U.S. and Communist China is not a sporting competition for the first or second place of superpowers,” he continued. “It is about the irreconcilable alternatives of democracy or dictatorship.”
From World War II to the Cold War, “the free world owes the American people the salvation of Western civilization, which has its foundation in the freedom and dignity of every person,” Müller said, but warned that this legacy is “now being challenged” by China. “Because the U.S. is the first power in the free world, it must also put a stop to the imperialist grip of a communist superpower that seeks world domination and allow the Chinese people and other oppressed peoples to enter the community and solidarity of free peoples.”
The cardinal also called on both the Catholic Church and rank-and-file Christians to heed the significance of the election, from the “truth of the absolute value of every individual person” and “freedom of religion” to the “deeper dimensions of what is at stake at this moment in world history, rather than offering a judgment based on subjective sensibilities and ideological preferences.”
“Three points are decisive in the upcoming elections,” Müller summarized. “First, the ‘yes’ to life against abortion, second, freedom of religion against the mainstreaming of gender ideology, and third, the mission of the United States to defend democracy and human rights against dictatorships.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden is campaigning on a plan to enshrine virtually-unlimited abortion into federal law at taxpayer expense. By contrast, Trump has worked to oppose federal funding of abortion and the abortion industry, including restoring and expanding the Mexico City Policy (which bars foreign aid to abortion groups), excluded organizations involved in abortion from family planning funds, and endorsed legislation to fully defund Planned Parenthood and ban late-term abortion.
“He rejected the concept of an absolute right to property for individuals, stressing instead the ‘social purpose’ and common good that must come from sharing the Earth’s resources.” (AND YET, THIS IS THE GUY THAT FAVORS DENYING THE USE OF THE “EARTH’S RESOURCES” FOR ENERGY AFFORDABLE TO PROVIDE SAFETY AND COMFORT TO THE WORLD’S POOREST !) — A new “Holy Trinity to halt climate change”: AOC, Greta Thunberg, and Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis)?
“Much of the new encyclical repeats Francis’ well-known preaching about the need to welcome and value migrants and his rejection of the nationalistic, isolationist policies of many of today’s political leaders.” (But Francis seems to have nothing to say about Xi Jin Ping and China’s persecution of Uighurs and subjugation of the Christian faith. He allows XI to choose the Church’s bishops and cardinals but won’t meet with U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo.)
“… the need for politicians to listen to popular movements, unions and marginalized groups and to craft more just social and economic policies.”(And, would that include BLM and Antifa?)
– “Today the pope placed the full weight of his teaching authority behind this statement: The death penalty is inadmissible, and Catholics should work for its abolition. A papal encyclical is one of the highest of all documents in terms of its authority, removing any lingering doubt about the church’s belief.” (The Pope, in all his wisdom and compassion, has decided no crime is too heinous to permit The Lord to, uh, “hasten” His final judgment.)
—————–
Do I give a damn what Pope Francis thinks?
Only to the extent that many people apparently do…believing this poser really is the Vicar of Christ.
Although the title of the Pontiff’s new encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti”, sounds innocuous, like the name of a dessert at an Italian restaurant, I believe it is a malevolent message blatantly in service of Marxism/communism…which he has embraced fully !
Pope Francis outlined his vision for a post-Covid world in his latest encyclical
The Vatican Encyclicals are the most authoritative form of papal teaching
Pope Francis said the pandemic had made evident different countries’ inability to work together and cited global job losses as evidence change was needed
Our comments in red in above and in following excerpt from Daily Mail article
He said the pandemic, however, had confirmed his belief that current political and economic institutions must be reformed to address the legitimate needs of the people most harmed by the coronavirus.
‘Aside from the differing ways that various countries responded to the crisis, their inability to work together became quite evident,’ Francis wrote.
‘Anyone who thinks that the only lesson to be learned was the need to improve what we were already doing, or to refine existing systems and regulations, is denying reality.’
He cited the grave loss of millions of jobs as a result of the virus as evidence of the need for politicians to listen to popular movements, unions and marginalized groups and to craft more just social and economic policies.
‘The fragility of world systems in the face of the pandemic has demonstrated that not everything can be resolved by market freedom,’ he wrote.
‘It is imperative to have a proactive economic policy directed at `promoting an economy that favours productive diversity and business creativity’ and makes it possible for jobs to be created, and not cut.’
Francis repeated his criticism of the ‘perverse’ global economic system, which he said consistently keeps the poor on the margins while enriching the few.
He rejected the concept of an absolute right to property for individuals, stressing instead the ‘social purpose’ and common good that must come from sharing the Earth’s resources.
Francis once again rejected ‘trickle-down’ economic theory as he did in the first major mission statement of his papacy, saying it simply doesn’t achieve what it claims.
‘Neo-liberalism simply reproduces itself by resorting to magic theories of `spillover’ or `trickle’ – without using the name – as the only solution to societal problems,’ he wrote.
‘There is little appreciation of the fact that the alleged `spillover’ does not resolve the inequality that gives rise to new forms of violence threatening the fabric of society.’
Much of the new encyclical repeats Francis’ well-known preaching about the need to welcome and value migrants and his rejection of the nationalistic, isolationist policies of many of today’s political leaders.
He dedicated an entire chapter to the parable of the Good Samaritan, saying its lesson of charity, kindness and looking out for strangers was ‘the basic decision we need to make in order to rebuild our wounded world.’
(Il Papa seems not to realize that capitalist United States is the most philanthropic nation in world history…and that the “Devil’s Dung” His term for money earned) in a capitalist society is relied upon, to a great extent, by the Vatican to maintain the style to which it has become accustomed.)
Vatican encyclicals are the most authoritative form of papal teaching and they traditionally take their titles from the first two words of the document. In this case, ‘Fratelli Tutti’ is a quote from the ‘Admonitions,’ the guidelines penned by St. Francis in the 13th century.
The title of the encyclical had sparked controversy in the English-speaking world, with critics noting that a straight translation of the word ‘fratelli’ (brothers) excludes women. The Vatican has insisted that the plural form of the word ‘fratelli’ is gender-inclusive.
Francis is the first pope to name himself after the mendicant friar, who renounced a wealthy, dissolute lifestyle to embrace a life of poverty and service to the poor.
dlh
Related reading from Catholic News Service:
Vatican City, Oct 4, 2020 / 05:35 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis introduced his new encyclical, “Fratelli tutti,” in his Angelus address Sunday, saying that “human fraternity and the care of creation” were the only paths forward for humanity.
Speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square Oct. 4, the pope recalled that he visited Assisi the day before to sign the encyclical at the tomb of St. Francis, who also inspired his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si’ (Air conditioning BAD!).”
He said: “The signs of the times clearly show that human fraternity and the care of creation form the only path towards integral development and peace, already indicated by the saintly popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.”
He announced that he would be giving out copies of the encyclical, printed in a special edition of L’Osservatore Romano, to pilgrims present for the Angelus. This was the first printed edition of the newspaper since the coronavirus crisis, during which it was only available online.
The pope added: “May St. Francis accompany the journey of fraternity in the Church, among believers of all religions, and among all peoples.”
In his reflection before the Angelus, the pope meditated on the day’s Gospel reading (Matthew 21:33-43), known as the Parable of the Bad Tenants, in which a landowner lends a vineyard to tenants who abuse the landowner’s servants before killing his son.
Pope Francis said that in the parable Jesus foresees his own Passion and death.
“With this very harsh parable, Jesus confronts his interlocutors with their responsibility, and He does so with extreme clarity,” he said.
“But let us not think that this admonition applies only to those who rejected Jesus at that time. It applies to all times, including our own. Even today God awaits the fruits of His vineyard from those He has sent to work in it.”
He suggested that Church leaders in every age faced the temptation to do their own work, instead of God’s.
“The vineyard is the Lord’s, not ours. Authority is a service, and as such should be exercised, for the good of all and for the dissemination of the Gospel,” he said.
Against a background of financial scandals at the Vatican, he added: “It is bad to see when in the Church people in authority seek their own interests.”
He then turned to the day’s second reading (Philippians 4:6-9), in which St. Paul the Apostle explains “how to be good workers in the Lord’s vineyard,” by embracing all that is “true, noble, just, pure, loved and honoured.”
“In this way we shall become a Church ever richer in the fruits of holiness, we shall give glory to the Father who loves us with infinite tenderness, to the Son who continues to give us salvation, and to the Spirit who opens our hearts and impels us towards the fullness of goodness,” the pope said.
Before praying the Angelus, he urged Catholics to renew their commitment to praying the rosary throughout October.
After the Angelus, the pope introduced his new encyclical, then noted that Oct. 4 marked the end of the “Season of Creation,” which began on Sept. 1. He said he rejoiced to see various initiatives marking the day, including one at the Po Delta in northern Italy.
He highlighted the 100th anniversary of the founding of the seafarers’ charity Stella Maris in Scotland.
He also recalled that today marked the beatification of Fr. Olinto Marella in Bologna. He described Marella, a priest who served the poor and homeless in the Italian city, as a “pastor according to the heart of Christ, father of the poor and defender of the weak.”
He asked for a round of applause for the priest, a classmate of the future Pope John XXIII, hailing him as a model for priests.
Finally, the pope greeted new recruits to the Swiss Guards, who were sworn in a ceremony at the Vatican on Sunday, asking pilgrims to applaud them warmly as they began their service.
The Joe Biden campaign is releasing three ads this month targeting Catholic and evangelical Christian voters in an effort to portray the Democrat presidential nominee and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as “the clear moral choice” in the election.
The Biden campaign is investing financial resources in an attempt to win over Americans of faith at the same time the Democrat Party has embraced the radical position of access to abortion at any time during pregnancy; an insistence it has no room for pro-life individuals or candidates; a stated intention to provide full taxpayer funding for abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood; and an announced plan to force taxpayers to fund abortions. . . .
Catholic League President Bill Donohue also wrote Thursday that Biden has welcomed a new group of “Christian bashers” among his supporters.
“Humanists for Biden” seek to “attract all those who believe in nothing: agnostics, atheists, and the religiously confused,” Catholic League President Donohue wrote. “They are a growing part of the nation and are heavily populated by young people, and, of course, the learned ones in the professoriate.”
He observed the humanists’ parent group, Secular Democrats of America, has condemned school vouchers, which can be used for children to attend Catholic schools, Catholic hospitals, “where care can be dictated by religious doctrine,” and religious exemptions. “They charge that “’Christian Nationalists’ are a threat to democracy”:
What makes Humanists for Biden so troubling is that this organization is being rolled out in the same week that one of Biden’s staffers, Deputy Data Director Nikitha Rai, lashed out at Amy Coney Barrett for holding to biblical teachings on marriage and sexuality. Rai said such beliefs—which are held by practicing Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews, Mormons and Muslims—should disqualify any nominee for public office.
Michael Warsaw, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the EWTN Global Catholic Network and publisher of the National Catholic Register, observed Friday that, during the first presidential debate, Biden said, “I am the Democratic Party.” He questioned what that means for people of faith in America:
But if Biden is “the Democratic Party,” as he stated, then he fully owns the party’s platform, which includes overt support for unrestricted abortion, funding for Planned Parenthood, the repeal of the Mexico City Policy and the Hyde Amendment, the passing of the “Equality Act” and the elimination of religious exemptions that protect employers, medical professionals and others from being forced to violate their deeply held religious principles.
The pandemic panderers have made much of data purporting to say that deaths are up in the US and other countries due to COVID-19 — not what might be referred to as substitute deaths – but death levels over and above what would be expected this year based on figures from earlier years. The figure is referred to as “excess deaths” and is the main driving statistic used by policy makers as justification for lock-downs and the economic devastation they cause.
This is different than discussion/critiques over the appropriateness of attributing deaths as being truly caused by Covid -19 or even seriously aggravated by the virus. We have suspected “COVID” when it was not used to mask or substitute for other causes of death for various reasons was also resulting in containment policies that were causing or aggravating other disease than COVID-19 itself. That would include deaths due to disease treatments delayed or forgone because of health -care shutdowns limitations and delays. Fear mongering resulted in fear of catching COVID-19, or bringing it home, or resulted in “non-essential” visits being denied out of pandemic restrictions when those visits might have caught other health problems that would have benefited from prompt diagnosis and treatment. As reported at LifeSite News:
July 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Deaths from suicides and drug overdoses currently exceed deaths due to the COVID-19 virus, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Robert Redfield warned during a medical presentation earlier this month.
“I think that the cost to our nation in continuing to keep these schools closed is substantial, and I’m hopeful that resources that are necessary can be made available,” Redfield said during a July 14 webinar hosted by the Buck Institute. “But there has been another cost that we’ve seen, particularly in high schools.”
“We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID,” he lamented. “We’re seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose that are above excess that we had as background than we are seeing the deaths from COVID.”
Redfield went on to stress that this is why health must be viewed in light of the “overall social being of individuals,” which in this instance, he argued required working to “get these schools open in a way that people are comfortable and they’re safe.”
While the CDC chief did not explicitly link those deaths to state lockdowns and school closures, many have argued that the mental and emotional health risks of prolonged isolation would be as dangerous or more dangerous than the coronavirus itself in many cases, particularly among the young, for whom COVID-19 is less dangerous than for the elderly or immunocompromised.
In May, a group of more than 500 doctors wrote President Donald Trump to raise awareness of the “short, medium, and long-term harm to people’s health with a continued shutdown … The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse.”
We are not saying that COVID-19 is not dangerous to many or that all containment policies are overwrought, or that all policies are bad faith, but too many lies or abrupt changes in key recommendations have occurred by key policy makers to put blind faith in so called expert guidance, recommendations or edicts. But the statistics regarding iatrogenic sequelae a.k.a “doctor/policy maker induced bad things” are rolling in.
Now we find out that the excess death numbers, the linchpin driving shut-down policies ,supposedly a raw number, is not. The numbers are extrapolations and the results depend on who does the extrapolating!! The information contained in this article at LifeSite News is important to critiquing recent policy decisions so we hope you read it carefully.
When one type of deception and dishonesty is discovered in such federal bureaus or departments, one can reasonably expect such entities to be dishonest and deceptive in other ways.
September 29, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A recent article explained that the COVID-19 data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are both scientifically and medically unlikely to be true. The article mentioned that dishonesty and deception is observable in certain government entities’ methods of counting and reporting COVID-19 statistics. A federal bureau or department should not need deceptive and dishonest methods to prove something to be true. When one type of deception and dishonesty is discovered in such federal bureaus or departments, one can reasonably expect such entities to be dishonest and deceptive in other ways.
The previous article was unable to mention all of the CDC’s questionable methods of reporting and evaluating COVID-19 statistics. There is still more significant information which suggests that the CDC is either deliberately deceiving, falsifying, or in major error in how it represents COVID-19 data.
One of the main COVID-19 statistics being used by the CDC is referred to as the “percent of expected deaths” in 2020 when compared to previous years. The CDC estimated (the key word there is “estimated”) a number for total deaths it expects in 2020. The CDC then compares the actual reported number of deaths in 2020 to the number of deaths that the CDC estimated to be expected in 2020. Deaths above the “expected deaths” number are then suggested to have been caused by COVID-19.
On their main COVID-19 data page, the CDC labels the comparison between the reported number of deaths in 2020 and the expected number of deaths in 2020 as the “percent of expected deaths”. To estimate the expected deaths in 2020, the CDC is using the average total deaths from 2017, 2018, and 2019. The CDC’s webpage is partially represented (with added emphasis) here:
While some may not be aware of it, the CDC’s method of estimating the number of expected deaths in 2020 likely has had a significant impact on their lives. Many public health officials, governors, mayors, and others may be using the comparison to presume that deaths above the number of expected deaths for 2020 are caused by COVID-19. The CDC’s information is also likely used as the basis for legal and political decisions in America and has the potential to result in harm for millions of Americans. If the CDC’s estimate of expected deaths in 2020 is too low, then the actual numbers of deaths in 2020 can wrongly appear to be too high and wrongly attributed to be caused by COVID-19.
The CDC’s number of expected deaths in 2020, then, requires close evaluation. And, yet again, one will discover that the CDC is using an arbitrary, falsified or erroneous, and quite frankly, absurd, method to estimate the “expected deaths” in 2020.
Year
Total Deaths
CDC’s Reported
Total U.S. Population
1999
2,391,399
279,040,168
2000
2,403,351
281,421,906
2001
2,416,425
284,968,955
2002
2,443,387
287,625,193
2003
2,448,288
290,107,933
2004
2,397,615
292,805,298
2005
2,448,017
295,516,599
2006
2,426,264
298,379,912
2007
2,423,712
301,231,207
2008
2,471,984
304,093,966
2009
2,437,163
306,771,529
2010
2,468,435
308,745,538
2011
2,515,458
311,591,917
2012
2,543,279
313,914,040
2013
2,596,993
316,128,839
2014
2,626,418
318,857,056
2015
2,712,630
321,418,820
2016
2,744,248
323,127,513
2017
2,813,503
325,719,178
2018
2,839,205
327,167,434
2019
2,845,796
Not Available
If the above data is true, then there are some major questions that should be entering one’s mind. One question is only indirectly related to this article, and a complete commentary is not possible here, but it will be mentioned because of its relevance to the 2020 Presidential election: one has to wonder if legal and illegal immigration and “refugee re-settlement” has led to a significantly higher U.S. population than is currently known. Notice that (again, if the CDC’s data is true) from 1999 to 2010 the number of deaths per year stayed relatively constant from approximately 2,390,000 to 2,470,000 deaths per year while the total U.S. population increased by about 30 million people.
Since 2010, though, deaths per year have reportedly (again, if the data is true) increased by about 400,000 per year compared to 2009, while up to 2018 the CDC estimated the population only increased by 20 million people. Such a difference in reported deaths per year compared to estimated population change is a big deal; is the huge increase in yearly deaths in America a result an aging population or a huge increase in population due to legal and illegal immigration and/or “refugee re-settlement”?
(Notably, the population of the U.S., and the identity of each person in the U.S., is probably considered vital national security information for the intelligence community (FBI, CIA, etc.) − government entities which, apparently much like the CDC, “have become bastions of political liberals” with “pro-Democratic Party views” and have gone to extremes in the past. The COVID-19 lockdowns in the U.S. were in March and April when the 2020 census was taking place. Advanced surveillance technologies are probably unable to count and/or identify persons in American households if everyone is travelling and moving about freely; the lockdowns, which included nightly curfews in large cities, were never-used-before extreme measures which forced most persons in the U.S. into dwelling places, providing an opportunity for easy mass surveillance. Also, the United Nations, which is based in New York City and includes the World Health Organization, recommends a census be taken every 10 years; thus, several other countries, including Italy, China, Iran, Russia, and Great Britain, will be taking a census in 2020 or 2021. The aforementioned statements are not theories; they are merely observations.)
Now for the main topic of this article: the CDC misrepresents excess deaths in 2020 and likely falsely attributes them to COVID-19 by using an absurd method to estimate expected deaths. Look above at the total deaths in 2017, 2018, and 2019 compared to the previous years. The CDC reports the total deaths increased in large amounts from 2009 to 2016 and then suddenly stopped increasing in 2018 and 2019. While that is possible, it is worth noting as a potential error or fraudulent representation of the data.
The most obvious falsification or error in the CDC’s method, though, is in its estimation of expected deaths in 2020 by averaging the total deaths from 2017, 2018, and 2019. Using the CDC’s numbers provided above, the average total deaths for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019 is 2,832,835. This means that the CDC expected 2,832,835 deaths in 2020; and it means that the CDC expected the total deaths to actually decrease in 2020 compared to previous years. The CDC’s method actually results in a lower number of expected deaths in 2020 than the CDC reports for both 2018 and 2019.
That is a big deal. And it is absurd. The total deaths in the U.S. have reportedly not decreased compared to a previous year since 2009. In fact, according to the CDC’s data above, the deaths significantly increased several years up until 2017, 2018, and 2019 when the CDC reports that total deaths suddenly remain almost the same.
One can look at the data from a different perspective to arrive at the conclusion that the CDC is being deceptive or erroneous in their estimation of expected deaths in 2020. From 2010 to 2016, the number of deaths increased by 275,813. Using an arbitrary method like the CDC, one could estimate deaths in the U.S. to increase by 275,000 every six years or so. Such a method of estimation would result in nearly 3,000,000 expected deaths in 2020 − which would be 170,000 more than the CDC’s current estimate of expected deaths in 2020. If a more accurate estimate of expected deaths in 2020 is around 3,000,000, then there may not have been a large excess in deaths in 2020 when compared to previous years.
The significance of the CDC’s erroneously or deceptively estimating expected deaths in 2020, then claiming that total deaths in 2020 are way above what is “expected”, and then attributing wrongly too high of “excess deaths” in 2020 to be caused by COVID-19 cannot be emphasized enough. And while one should always give others the benefit of the doubt, error does not seem to be a likely explanation for the above misrepresentation of the COVID-19 data − particularly for such a large government entity staffed with many who specialize in evaluating and interpreting numbers such as those that are above. It does not take an epidemiologist or a statistician to determine that averaging the above data from 2017, 2018, and 2019 is an absurd method for estimating the number of deaths to expect in 2020 − unless, of course, the intent is to deliberately underestimate expected deaths in 2020 as a way to wrongly attribute above-expected deaths to COVID-19.
And as other articles mentioned, there are several more examples of the CDC and other public health officials misrepresenting COVID-19 data. There is the observation that the CDC and powerful public health officials are almost completely ignoring their own criteria which suggests that COVID-19 is not nearly as severe as they are claiming; still more is the observation that the CDC and other powerful persons are ignoring basic science and medical fact on pneumonia and respiratory viruses in favor of wrongly increasing COVID-19 death counts. “Experts” with genuine motives typically do not make so many “errors” − particularly errors which may ultimately cause serious harm to millions of people.
Such examples are significant basis for Americans to question whether certain government entities and their Establishment employees are using falsified COVID-19 data for ulterior motives like suppression of religion and a fundamental transformation of the American way of life.
HIGH NOON Gary Cooper — Marshal Will Kane left Hadleyville this morning, taking the first train out, ahead of Frank Miller and his murderous gang, scheduled to arrive on the noon train.
SHANE Shane (Alan Ladd) and Marian Starrett (Jean Arthur — Shane’s not Coming Back; The settlers hoped the ‘skilled gunfighter’ would save their homesteads, but Cattle Baron, “Rufus Ryker’s” henchmen are too much …despite Joey’s desperate cries of “Come Back, Shane!”
DURHAM John Durham as himself — Skilled investigator, John Durham rides out of the Washington ‘settlement’, ahead of the murderous Biden gang. “My work is done…I found no evidence of wrongdoing in the Russia probe…and, if I had, it’s too close to the election to do anything.
We believe as we pray for what should be the normal turn of events that the First Lady Melania, President Trump and staff members who have tested positive for a coronavirus will, like the hundreds of thousands who have tested positive as well, for lack of a better word, “recover” unperturbed other than by the overwrought restrictions politics more than real science imposes.
It is not up to me, and other avenues to a teaching moment are available, but if it were me, I would consider playing the odds, and not sequester unless symptomatic — but I recognize the media storm from doing so would be horrendous — and the media desperately wants Trump off of the stage.
The potential positives from as much normalcy as possible are greater than any risk because (I believe) like the hundreds thousands, indeed millions of others, 99% who did not die, found out there was not a strong correlation with their loved ones catching the disease. R Mall
Relevant to our previous post — thanks to TN for this earlier forward and related meme. The analysis appeared at Free Republic today. Read the related comments at Free Republic as well. This writer is inclined to believe Trump is trolling, jostling, what have you — because if he is holding this information back, well his loss hurts the country and we deserve to know now.
Anyone notice this? When do we get to hear this tape?
President Donald J. Trump: (01:01:53) So when I listen to Joe talking about a transition, there has been no transition from when I won. I won that election. And if you look at crooked Hillary Clinton, if you look at all of the different people, there was no transition, because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won, and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our first lady, they were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country, and we’ve caught them. We’ve caught them all. We’ve got it all on tape. We’ve caught them all. And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that, because we caught you in a sense, and President Obama was sitting in the office.
Of course our illustrious Senior Editor dlh would be the last to note that he said he trusted Gina Haspel no more than he trusted Chris Wray. We are certainly not happy with John Durham and William Barr is disappointing.
The latter damaging our trust is almost ‘unthinkable’ because Barr seems to be so smart, honorable, experienced, and fair.
CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the declassification of documents detailing corruption at the highest levels of the intelligence community during the 2016 election, according to The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis.
While new information about wrongdoing at the FBI has recently been declassified, including recent revelations about Hillary Clinton campaign’s collusion with Russia, Davis reported on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday that Haspel herself is standing in the way of the declassification of other relevant documents.
“I’m told that it is Gina Haspel personally who is blocking continued declassification of these documents that will show the American people the truth of what actually happened,” Davis said.
Notably, Haspel was previously the London CIA station chief under former CIA director John Brennan during the 2016 election. “Recall it was London where Christopher Steele was doing all this work,” Davis said, noting Haspel was the “main link” between Washington and London at the time. Haspel was hand-picked by former CIA director John Brennan to run the CIA’s operations in London, where she served as the spy agency’s bureau chief from 2014 through early 2017.
When asked what top bureaucrats might be hiding in these classified documents, and what it would it would take to declassify them, Davis called on President Donald Trump to declassify everything so Americans can see the evidence for themselves.
“So many of the people blocking these documents are likely implicated by them. You have these career bureaucrats whose careers may be destroyed by the facts within them,” he said.
“I think at this point, we need the president, Donald Trump, to step in and say, ‘No more obstruction. No more blocking.’ We need transparency and the American people need to hear the truth.”
We knew that we wanted to adopt internationally—the wait for domestic adoption was just very, very long—and there were so many children in need,” she said. “Vivian is amazing. She was 14 months old when she came home and she couldn’t make any sounds at that point. Nor could she pull herself up to a standing position, and she was wearing size zero- to 3-month clothing because she was so malnourished.”
Judge Barrett said that she and her husband, Jesse, were told at the time that Vivian may never speak. “She’d been so sick [that] she hadn’t had a lot of practice making sounds and she hadn’t been spoken to a lot.” Today, all that has changed. “Vivian is incredibly athletic now, and trust me, the speech has not been a problem,” she joked. “I was looking at her the other day at the gym and just thinking what a miracle it is how strong she’s become.”
Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal, has written a column that needed to be written. The Left doesn’t like Amy Coney Barrett
“Most reasonable people would agree that the Barretts’ decision to adopt one sickly orphan and then another following the worst natural disaster in Haiti’s history isn’t merely admirable but heroic. Yet Judge Barrett has been attacked by luminaries of the political left who are outraged that the adoptions were transracial. “
More from the article:
The Left’s Unhealthy Interest in Amy Coney Barrett’s Adopted Kids
Social science finds no evidence that being raised by white parents is harmful to black children.
After news broke in 2010 that an earthquake in Haiti had claimed upward of 250,000 lives and displaced 1.5 million survivors, most Americans took note of the tragedy, thought to themselves how awful it was, and then resumed their daily lives. Others went a little further, generously donating money and goods to relief organizations like the Red Cross. And then there were people like Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, the Barrett family adopted a toddler named John Peter from a Haitian orphanage. It was their second time adopting from Haiti. Several years earlier, they had taken in an orphaned girl named Vivian. During an interview last year at the Notre Dame Club of Washington, D.C., Judge Barrett, who sits on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, discussed her adopted children.
“We knew that we wanted to adopt internationally—the wait for domestic adoption was just very, very long—and there were so many children in need,” she said. “Vivian is amazing. She was 14 months old when she came home and she couldn’t make any sounds at that point. Nor could she pull herself up to a standing position, and she was wearing size zero- to 3-month clothing because she was so malnourished.”
Judge Barrett said that she and her husband, Jesse, were told at the time that Vivian may never speak. “She’d been so sick [that] she hadn’t had a lot of practice making sounds and she hadn’t been spoken to a lot.” Today, all that has changed. “Vivian is incredibly athletic now, and trust me, the speech has not been a problem,” she joked. “I was looking at her the other day at the gym and just thinking what a miracle it is how strong she’s become.”
Most reasonable people would agree that the Barretts’ decision to adopt one sickly orphan and then another following the worst natural disaster in Haiti’s history isn’t merely admirable but heroic. Yet Judge Barrett has been attacked by luminaries of the political left who are outraged that the adoptions were transracial. On Saturday, Ibram X. Kendi, a Boston University professor and author of the best-selling book “How to Be an Antiracist,” questioned the judge’s motives. “Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children,” he wrote on Twitter. “They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian and CNN political commentator, wonders whether Vivian and John Peter weren’t adopted so much as kidnapped. “Many authoritarians seized children of color for adoption by White Christians,” she tweeted. “Pinochet’s regime did this with indigenous kids and Nazis took Aryan looking Poles for German families. Trump takes migrant kids for adoption by Evangelicals.”
It would be a mistake to laugh this off as knee-jerk anti-Trumpism. The sort of racial hype and paranoia coming from the progressive left long predates the current administration and will continue whether or not Mr. Trump is re-elected next month. The National Association of Black Social Workers first announced its opposition to transracial adoption in 1972. In a statement, the group took “a vehement stand against the placements of black children in white homes for any reason” and called such arrangements not only “unnatural” but “unnecessary” and harmful to the physical and psychological development of black children.
But what do the empirical data show? In their 2018 book, “Saving International Adoption,” Mark Montgomery and Irene Powell assess the vast literature on interracial adoptions and report that it reveals no evidence of harm to black children. Comparing black adoptees in white families with those in black families, there is no statistical difference between the groups in terms of self-esteem, self-concept and family integration, and “only a small, if any, effect on objective outcomes such as school performance and behavioral problems,” they write. The “overwhelming conclusion of studies of transracial adoption is that it is not bad for children. This greatly weakens the case of the opponents of transracial and transnational adoption on the grounds that it harms children.”
The reality is that there are more black children in need of adoption, here and abroad, than there are black families who have expressed a willingness to take them in. Liberals who advocate for apartheid adoption policies are putting an aesthetic preference ahead of the needs of homeless kids. The question isn’t whether Vivian and John Peter’s situation is ideal. It’s whether they are better off wallowing in a Haitian orphanage or living with parents in the U.S. who want to care for them and happen to be of a different race.
“He rejected the concept of an absolute right to property for individuals, stressing instead the ‘social purpose’ and common good that must come from sharing the Earth’s resources.” 
The pandemic panderers have made much of data purporting to say that deaths are up in the US and other countries due to COVID-19 — not what might be referred to as substitute deaths – but death 
HIGH NOON
SHANE
DURHAM
Relevant to our previous post — thanks to TN for this earlier forward and related meme. The analysis appeared at Free Republic today. Read the related comments at Free Republic as well. This writer is inclined to believe Trump is trolling, jostling, what have you — because if he is holding this information back, well his loss hurts the country and we deserve to know now.