Fauci's Diaries Are A Media Scandal

"The media’s generous treatment of Fauci allows them to avoid confronting what the diary reveals about the press itself."

 Brianna Lyman - The Federalist  

"The very people who were supposed to scrutinize Fauci’s handling of the pandemic were privately trying to protect, impress, and maintain access to him."

Uncle Paul's Parodies

"Anthony Fauci’s newly released diaries include explosive revelations about how he lied publicly about the Covid fatality rate, the lab leak theory, school closures, and vaccines (among other things).

"Yet according to the propaganda press, the biggest takeaways are that Fauci disliked President Donald Trump, worried about threats, and really liked being famous. But perhaps that framing is no surprise: The diary entries don’t merely implicate Fauci for perpetrating the greatest coverup and attack on American freedoms through his “science.” They also expose that the same propagandists who pretended to be objective journalists while covering Fauci and the pandemic were the same people soliciting Fauci’s advice on how to interview Trump administration officials, managing Fauci’s public image, and trying to befriend him.

"So naturally, the propaganda press has to cover the diaries in a way that minimizes the serious revelations and signals to readers that the story is nothing too concerning.

"The New York Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg headlined her piece: “Fauci, in Private Diary, Reflected on Covid’s Origins and His Own Fame.” Stolberg opened by recounting a January 2020 entry from Fauci in which he said the virus could have jumped from animals to humans and that the Wuhan wet market accelerated the spread of the virus. She then explained that Sen. Rand Paul released the diaries “as part of his investigation into whether the virus might have leaked from a laboratory and whether, as Mr. Paul claims, Dr. Fauci lied to Congress about it.” After acknowledging why Paul released the entries, though, she quickly told readers there was nothing important in those entries.

“The diary does not provide the smoking gun the senator is seeking,” Stolberg opined. “Rather, it echoes past disclosures showing Dr. Fauci wrestling with a fast-moving crisis as scientists’ views evolved.”

"But the “smoking gun” evidence is there for anyone willing to open his eyes to see. Take, for example, Fauci’s testimony before Congress that “the seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1 percent” and that “[t]he stated mortality over all of this when you look at all the data including China is about three percent. It first started off as two and now three.” He added the virus is “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.” Yet privately, Fauci said the “case fatality rate” was “more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%,” as reported in these pages by The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood." . . . More...

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. 

9/11 Families Have a Surprise Waiting for Mamdani If He Shows Up at Ground Zero –

 Teri Christoph- RedState 

 "If Mamdani does show up and try to steal the show, the families have a plan: they will turn their backs to him en masse to return the disrespect being shown them and their loved ones by his presence." 

The 25th anniversary of 9/11 is just over a month away, and the families of those murdered in the World Trade Center are making plans for a dignified remembrance of their loved ones on this painful and solemn occasion. 

There's just one problem: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani insists on being there despite the growing chorus from the families telling him to stay far away. They'd rather not have a practicing Muslim and avowed socialist mar the day that belongs to them and their memories – feelings that are completely understandable. 

Here's what I wrote about this a few days back in a VIP article:

While Mamdani has never publicly endorsed the 9/11 attacks, he has suggested that FBI surveillance helped drive Anwar al-Awlaki – an American-born radical Islamic cleric who became a leading propagandist and operational figure for al-Qaeda – into the terrorist organization. 

This isn't a guy who should be anywhere near Ground Zero.

It's important to note there are several ceremonies in the works, including a slate of events sponsored the New York City government and the big one at Ground Zero where the families gather and the names of the fallen are read. While Mamdani, in theory, has the right to be at the former, he seems determined to also be at the latter. He wants his smug face all over the event, even if it means additional pain for the families on an already horrific day.

A petition started by the families, who are encouraging all interested parties to sign on, has garnered nearly 67,000 signatures so far. The petition raises concerns about Mamdani's "public positions, associations, and responses to rhetoric" that appear antithetical to the goals of the 9/11 remembrance.

More...

Jew York, still?

 Greg Crosby 

. . ."If anything happens to Benjamin Netanyahu while he's in our country, you can place the blame on Mamdani. He has given the green light for violent actions to occur."

"The Islamist commie Mamdani is flexing his antisemitic chops once again. This past week the New York mayor announced his intention to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he ever entered New York. Of course he has no legal authority to do that, but it's his way of sending a message to his Jewish-hating base that he would if he could. I'm sure if he could he would roundup all Jewish New York residents and ship them out to a concentration camp too. I have no doubt.

"It's absolutely amazing to me that New York elected this antisemite as mayor. At first all the pundits were saying that Mamdani's election is not a harbinger of the country at large. New York is extremely left-wing, they said, so don't worry about this proliferating across the country at large. That's what was said during his election, and since then it has proliferated into other jurisdictions and states. You see, if this kind of hatred isn't contained, it spreads. History has proven this time and time again.

"Commie Mamdani is looking to remake New York to suit his constituency. Recently he proudly unveiled a map of New York which highlighted ethnic neighborhoods in the city. It included places like Little Palestine, and yet totally ignored historic Little Italy and other well known Jewish and Irish immigrant areas.

"The map, titled "New York City Immigrant Enclaves," highlights 30 areas across the five boroughs, ranging from Koreatown in Manhattan to Little Pakistan in Brooklyn and Little Yemen in The Bronx. Another signal to his Islamic base that his goal is to eliminate ethnicities that he doesn't particularly care for.

But this desire to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu isn't a new idea with him. It was a promise he made during his campaign for mayor. He said he would order the New York City Police Department to arrest the Israeli Prime Minister as soon as he stepped foot in New York. Even though legal experts warned him that he would have zero authority to do so, Mamdani said last week he was actively consulting with city lawyers to find a way he could legally arrest Netanyahu." . . . More...

Why do the willfully ignorant mutate into the most intransigent ideologues? Obscurantism

"All the rationale in the universe is wasted on such people. Their favored response when confronted with facts and logic is this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon: Obscurantism (ob*scu*ran*tism/ ob-skyoo-RAN-tiz-uhm) | noun.  The practice of deliberately employing vague and unintelligible arguments as a conscious strategy to obscure what is true."

 Rabbi Yonason Goldson 

"Why do the willfully ignorant mutate into the most intransigent ideologues? Because their ignorance makes them insecure and their insecurity drives them to lash out at any ideas that threaten to puncture the superficiality of their worldview."

"There's no place on earth like Israel: The history, the diversity, the tension of a culture divided by religion and regional culture while simultaneously unified by common ancestry and the threat of violence from a host of inimical neighbors.

This past Sabbath morning, I attended services held by a group of Chassidim who trace their traditions back to the Polish town of Bobov. I don't look like them, dress like them or speak their preferred language of Yiddish. Even so, they welcomed me warmly into their congregation. The majesty of their music and intensity of their prayers infused my own Sabbath experience with a feeling of spiritual transcendence.

All of which evaporated the moment I returned to my apartment.

A group of religious zealots, most of them teenagers, instigated a furious protest against a local cafe doing business on the Sabbath in violation of Torah law. Considering that half of Israelis claim little or no religious affiliation, most observant Jews quietly lament their brothers' and sisters' lack of spiritual awareness while directing their attention elsewhere.

But not these self-appointed guardians of the faith. They amassed in the adjacent courtyard, relentlessly spewing vitriol, accosting passersby and disturbing both the residents of the surrounding apartments and the peace of the Sabbath day.

The police — some religious, some secular — showed exemplary restraint trying to disperse the miscreants. After more than an hour of abuse, they finally got aggressive (although never violent) and dragged the ringleaders out of the area, only to have them regroup to continue their mindless remonstrations a few yards farther away.

A few people, including some deeply religious, tried to dissuade the protestors, explaining that they were accomplishing exactly the opposite of what they intended. Harassing the irreligious produces nothing but animosity toward the entire religious community.

Unsurprisingly, these arguments went unheeded. After all, what is a fanatic but someone doing what G od would want done if only G od understood as well as they do?

All the rationale in the universe is wasted on such people. Their favored response when confronted with facts and logic is this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon:" . . .More...

The World Cup of Ink

 The American Conservative 

"If Alexander Pope were alive today, he would not write that the proper study of mankind is man; he would write that the proper study of man is tattoo. And in mankind, I include (for those who object to the word) womankind, for in one of the strange reversals of our time, more women are now tattooed than men."

"My interest in professional sport these days ranges from minimal to nil, but even I could not altogether avoid or evade the hysteria over the recent World Cup, which recurs every four years. It would have been easier to miss the outbreak of the Third (or would it be the Fourth?) World War. 

"As everyone now knows, Spain beat Argentina in the final, in a match more remarkable for its non-sporting qualities than for its display of skill. There was something of a brawl afterwards. The Spanish were clearly the better side, and while they played a clean game (or one as clean, at least, as can be expected from a professional soccer team), the Argentinians played dirty. 

"But I noticed another very important difference between the teams: The Argentinians were far more heavily tattooed than the Spanish. Indeed, desultory research revealed that, of the 26 players in the Argentinian squad of players, 20 were tattooed. Could this explain the inferiority of the Argentinians to the Spanish? 

"I had already observed that when the Germans last won the World Cup, their team was much less tattooed than their opponents. Could it be that, in the modern world, the prevalence of tattooing is inversely proportional to intelligence, and that, though skill at soccer is principally one of physical coordination, higher intelligence is nevertheless an advantage in any match? "Those who write on soccer often refer to “footballing intelligence,” as if it were a faculty of its own; but perhaps it is related positively to general intelligence as, say, musical ability is related to it, notwithstanding the populist demagoguery of Amadeus (the misleading film adaptation of the play of the same name).

"Despite the expansion in the proportion of the population that is tattooed, one would still expect, where a brawl breaks out as it did after the end of the World Cup final, that the tattooed were more likely to be the originators of it than the untattooed. And so it was in this case. 

"Of course, one would also not expect there to be a one-to-one correspondence between tattooing on the one hand and low intelligence and bad behaviour on the other. Perhaps the greatest player in the history of the sport—certainly one of the greatest—is the Argentinian, Lionel Messi, and he has a hideously, totally tattooed forearm, but is neither stupid nor badly behaved. But generalizations may hold while individual instances seem to contradict them. 

"I was somewhat alarmed, therefore, to see that several of the winning Spanish team had either had promised or resolved to have the face of their trainer tattooed on themselves if they won the cup. This, I surmised, would be the beginning of the end of the predominance of the Spanish in world soccer, not having lost in their last 38 games in international competitions. If I were their trainer, I would strongly advise them not to have themselves tattooed, and this quite independently of aesthetic considerations (what is called body art is really, and invariably, body kitsch)." . . . More...

Mamdani’s reparations logic does not add up

 Washington Examiner

"New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani floated cutting checks to black New Yorkers to atone for the city’s involvement in slavery. But transforming the descendants of immigrants into historical perpetrators, and millions of black New Yorkers into victims, would be historically incoherent and legally perilous.

When asked whether he would support cash reparations for those affected by slavery if recommended by the New York City Commission on Racial Equity, Mamdani said New York was “very complicit” and that he looked forward to the commission’s “critically important” findings.

It has become a rite of passage for progressive public officials to establish racial-reckoning commissions. They propose relief for black people, whom they view as victims of systemic racism, often in the form of cash payments or housing grants.

California was the first state to form an official reparations task force. The body released a 500-page report charging the state with systemic racism, as demonstrated by disparate outcomes between white and black Californians. Illinois, Maryland, and New York state have done the same, with little follow-through.

Evanston, Illinois, was the first municipality to follow through on reparations promises. Black residents and their descendants who faced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969 can receive $25,000 in unrestricted cash payments.

New York had the largest enslaved population among northern states in 1790, and 42% of the state’s households enslaved at least one person in 1703 — a rate second only to Charleston, South Carolina. The Empire State’s outsize figures were perhaps a consequence of the government-sanctioned slave market New York City established near Wall Street in 1711, as Mamdani mentioned in the interview.

Unsurprisingly, Southern states eclipsed New York’s enslaved population of 21,324 in 1790. Enslaved people accounted for 43% of the population in South Carolina, 39% in Virginia, and 35% in Georgia, compared with 6% in New York." . . .  More...