Biased Media

Michael Eric Dyson’s Words Used Against Him (RPT)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I just want to reproduce this short exchange from NEWSBUSTERS where Katy Tur says white people are essentially racist, even if we don’t know it, HOWEVER I want to respond to in kind to crazy Dyson with an adaptation of his comments:

MSNBC Live host Katy Tur could have used Thursday’s show to try to see if there was a way that the current protests across the country in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd could bring the country together. Instead, however, she teamed up with Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson to wonder if white Americans are unwittingly racist by being scared of black Americans, simply by looking at them.

[….]

Tur then asked Dyson to put the “extreme case[s]” aside and deal with the ordinary white person.

TUR: Let me ask you this. Let’s leave aside the extreme case, what we saw with George Floyd, and let’s look toward the middle. How do you change, how do you improve the internal biases that so many white people have, that maybe they don’t intend to have, maybe they don’t think they are racist, but there is an internal bias that might be there that causes them to look at a black person and they might be scared or look at a black person and think in some way they might not be like them or they might not be nice to them, something, that internal bias that haunts so many white Americans.

Dyson said “Great question,” and started off innocent enough, saying that even if you’re not an overt racist, you can still have problems, such as the “Karen” in Central Park, but that just shows that, “we’ve got to ask white people to be just as aggressive about reading about race, about social injustice and about inequality as they are about Star Wars and horror movies,” which got a hearty laugh out of Tur’s fellow host Chuck Todd.

He concluded his thought by returning to Tur’s previous point about white Americans being scared of black Americans,”…

This is how I would reword it

“We have got to ask black people to be just as aggressive about reading works by Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams Heather Mac Donald — while listening to and reading Larry Elder’s works as they are familiar with hip-hop/rap lyrics and NBA team stats”

In another conversation someone wrote this in another post, I will include my response:

  • It’s shown how in denial white conservative evangelicals are about systemic racism, and to what lengths they’ll go to pretend there actually isn’t a problem.

I SIMPLY NOTED:

BTW 》》》

  • Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Coleman Hughes, Jason Riley, Carol Swain, Armond White, Star Parker, Michelle Bernard, Charles Payne, Lester Holt, Gianno Caldwell, Tara Setmayer, Allen West, Mason Weaver, Deneen Barelli, Ward Connerly, Angela McGlowen, Jesse Lee Petersen, Dinesh D’Souza, Alfonzo Rachel, Kevin Jackson, Candace Owens, and Amy Holmes…. etcetera, etcetera….

….are not white Evangelicals.

 

Media and Democrats Spreading Lies About Trump

Published by Papa Giorgio
  1. Tear Gas Used On “Peaceful” protestors;
  2. Trump Held Up Bible To Mimick Hitler Holding Bible Up;
  3. Hillary Clinton “compares” Obama and Trump Whitehouse;
  4. Hodge Twins and Larry O’Connor Show BUNKER BONUS.


PEACEFUL PROTESTORS

THE NATIONAL PULSE was one of the first places I could find a story (hat-tip to theWANAB3), Here is an excerpt from their story:

U.S. Park Police have told reporters they did not use tear gas in LaFayette Square last night ahead of the President’s walk to St. John’s Church. Instead, police officers used smoke canisters to disperse protesters who were hurling bottles at them.

The news – from Park Police themselves – potentially renders virtually every mainstream media organization and Twitter verified user guilty of spreading misinformation.

WTOP’s Neil Augenstein reported this morning: “U.S. Park Police is explaining its decision-making in clearing Lafayette Square, at least 20 minutes before DC’s 7p curfew, on night 4 of protests. A source says tear gas was never used — instead smoke cannisters [sic] were deployed, which don’t have an uncomfortable irritant in them.

“And, the source says Park Police didn’t know President Trump would be walking across the park several minutes later. Park Police say the reason the crowd was disbursed with smoke cannisters is that at that moment, officers were being pelted with water bottles. Another factor was that protesters had climbed on top of the structure at the north end of Lafayette Square that had been burned the day before.”

Adding to this, Augenstein said: “In theory it’s possible another agency used tear gas, in addition to Park Police using smoke cannisters [sic], but my source was on the scene, got a dose of smoke, but didn’t feel the irritants of tear gas.”

[….]

UPDATE 11:40AM – WTOP reports: “DC Police Chief Peter Newsham just said the only time his agency used tear gas and pepper balls last night was later in the evening, when protesters had gotten “very aggressive” near Judiciary Square.”

Then I cam across the FOX NEWS story: Attorney General William Barr gave the order to push protesters out; Kristin Fisher reports from the White House.

A really good article on this comes from THE FEDERALIST, and it is worth adding some emphasis to a portion of it:

For the media, however, these actions were further proof that Orange Man Bad is literally the worst, restoring rule of law is criminal, and standing in front of a church holding a Bible is an assault on the American conscience. They focused on how the Park Police had cleared the area ahead of the city-wide curfew declared by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Facts were no barrier to their narrative. They spun a tale of violent, jack-booted cops running rampant through the streets over innocent docile protesters, using tear gas to clear the area. It turns out none of that was true.

Every single major media outlet falsely reported that Park Police were unprovoked when they used “tear gas” to clear the area. If any of that were true, it might mark the first time in history that cops without gas masks launched tear gas in an area that the president of the United States easily walked through minutes later.

After thousands of false tweets, print stories, and broadcast stories to the contrary, local journalist Neal Augenstein of WTOP reported that a Park Police source said “tear gas was never used — instead smoke canisters were deployed, which don’t have an uncomfortable irritant in them.” Further, the source said the crowd was dispersed because of projectiles being thrown by the “peaceful protesters” at the Park Police and because “peaceful protesters” had climbed on top of a structure in Lafayette Park that had been burned the prior night.

Sgt. Eduardo Delgado, the public information officer for the Park Police, confirmed the agency did not use tear gas. And later this afternoon, United States Park Police acting Chief Gregory T. Monahan exploded the entire false narrative:

On Monday, June 1, the USPP worked with the United States Secret Service to have temporary fencing installed inside Lafayette Park. At approximately 6:33 pm, violent protestors on H Street NW began throwing projectiles including bricks, frozen water bottles and caustic liquids. The protestors also climbed onto a historic building at the north end of Lafayette Park that was destroyed by arson days prior. Intelligence had revealed calls for violence against the police, and officers found caches of glass bottles, baseball bats and metal poles hidden along the street.

To curtail the violence that was underway, the USPP, following established policy, issued three warnings over a loudspeaker to alert demonstrators on H Street to evacuate the area. Horse mounted patrol, Civil Disturbance Units and additional personnel were used to clear the area. As many of the protestors became more combative, continued to throw projectiles, and attempted to grab officers’ weapons, officers then employed the use of smoke canisters and pepper balls. No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners to close the area at Lafayette Park. Subsequently, the fence was installed.

Prior to getting the actual facts, nearly every major media outlet falsely reported that canisters of tear gas, not smoke canisters, were used against peaceful protesters. ….

TRUMP IS HITLER

THE FEDERALIST then goes on to document just how wide-spread the lie was.

Some other lies not so widely picked up are these two. LEGAL INSURRECTION details one of them by Debra Messing (actress):

I already covered one fake photo today. Now the left claim President Donald Trump held a Bible yesterday as Hitler did during his reign of terror.

It was photoshopped. Why would people fall for this? Hitler hated religion….

[….]

HIDDING IN BUNKER

TWITCHY has a story about the second photoshopped (not really photoshopped but mislabeled year-wise). They note this and then the TWITTER response:

There’s a “Trump’s afraid” narrative going around on the Left, and Democrat Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has done her best to try and reinforce that perception:

Hillary Clinton appears to have used the same photograph in her “compare/contrast” tweet of Obama vs. Trump:

[….]

BUNKER BONUS

I combine a segment from a recent Hodge Twins video (https://youtu.be/rGwAjPgo8Jc) along with yesterdays Larry O’Connor Show (790-KABC: https://tinyurl.com/yaak4jkd). The Hodge Twins play Don Lemon’s audio that Larry O’Connor plays and refutes as well with President Trump actually speaking out on the issue of the riots. Kinda a hodgepodge, but well worth the listen.

A Misused MLK Quote (Plus! An RPT Rant)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Larry Elder corrects the record on a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr., often taken from its larger context. On Thursday, May 28th, the quote was the 11th most searched item in Google “A riot is the language of the unheard“

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR deals with the above misquoting of MLK (misunderstanding his intent of that statement) very well:

It was inevitable that George Floyd’s death would spark protests against police brutality and that mendacity would characterize the attendant media coverage. True to form, the press affected dismay when the demonstrations devolved into violence, yet reported the riots with obvious approbation. The most obscene example of this was the widespread use, in headlines and ledes, of an out-of-context Martin Luther King quote suggesting that the civil rights leader would have condoned the mayhem. USA Today, for example, ran a feature story bearing the following title: “ ‘A riot is the language of the unheard’: MLK’s powerful quote resonates amid George Floyd protests.”

This grotesque misrepresentation of Dr. King’s views is only possible by cynically cherry-picking eight words from a 1966 interview during which he repeatedly emphasized that violence was counterproductive to the progress of the civil rights movement. Mike Wallace interviewed him for “CBS Reports” on Sept. 27, 1966, and the primary topic of discussion involved divisions within the movement concerning overall strategy. The myth that King had somehow endorsed violence went mainstream in 2013, when “60 Minutes Rewind” posted a clip from the Wallace interview and irresponsibly titled it using the same out-of-context quote. The interview transcript begins with this unambiguous statement:

KING: I will never change in my basic idea that non-violence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and justice. I think for the Negro to turn to violence would be both impractical and immoral.

It’s pretty difficult to find anything resembling support for street violence or riots in this statement, but a subsequent question about the “Black Power” movement persuaded Dr. King to explain the impetus of the numerous 1966 riots. He cited the growing frustration caused by the absence of progress on basic civil rights for black people in general. King obviously understood that much of the community was growing very impatient. He also knew that most owners of property burned and businesses ruined during riots were owned by black people. This is still true. Thus, he continued to denounce the riots as self-defeating and socially destructive and insisted that nonviolence was the best course to follow:

MIKE WALLACE: There’s an increasingly vocal minority who disagree totally with your tactics, Dr. King.

KING: There’s no doubt about that. I will agree that there is a group in the Negro community advocating violence now. I happen to feel that this group represents a numerical minority. Surveys have revealed this. The vast majority of Negroes still feel that the best way to deal with the dilemma that we face in this country is through non-violent resistance, and I don’t think this vocal group will be able to make a real dent in the Negro community in terms of swaying 22 million Negroes to this particular point of view. And I contend that the cry of “black power” is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. (Emphasis added.)

The media have dishonestly plucked the highlighted fragment from this 175-word answer to create the false impression that Dr. King somehow viewed violence as a legitimate weapon in the fight for justice. In reality, there is no honest way to arrive at this conclusion when those eight words are read in their proper context. Yet USA Today is by no means alone in its misuse of this fragment. CNN uses the same eight words for the title of a Fareed Zakaria segment that begins with a deceptively edited clip from King’s 1967 speech, “The Other America,” in which he discusses riots much as he did on CBS. In order to launch the segment with the magic words, however, CNN edited out most of the speech, including the following:

Let me say as I’ve always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I’m still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they will solve. That in a real sense it is impracticable for the Negro to even think of mounting a violent revolution in the United States. So I will continue to condemn riots, and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way.

USA Today, CBS, and CNN have lot of company. The Week, for example, ran yet another trite effusion titled “ ‘A riot is the language of the unheard,’ Martin Luther King Jr. explained 53 years ago.” This nonsense, like the rest, ignores the facts and includes standard fictions to once again conjure up an image of Dr. King as an advocate of violence in the cause of social justice. Among those offended by this mendacious exploitation of King’s words to validate violence is his niece, Alveda King. She writes, “I am saddened yet undaunted that a quote from my Uncle Martin is being taken out of context.… Some people are calling this an endorsement of violence, but nothing could be further from the truth.”……

MY RIOTESS THOUGHTS

I feel bad for the Floyd family. Not because of their loss (although that was my first emotion and care, was for the loss of their son… even if it was more heart related, the officer in question could have saved his life if he wasn’t kneeing his neck), but because I do not care about the incident all that much any longer. I am more focused on the fruits of a culture that has been brewing since gay author/professor first fired a warning shot over the New Left’s bow (the beginning of the culture war):

  • There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students’ reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them…. The relativity of truth is… a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it…. The danger they have been taught to fear is not error but intolerance. (Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind [New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1987], 25.)

These riots have nothing to do with that officers’ actions. It has to do with how a large segment of society brands people for seeking categories for society to adhere to (SIXHIRB: sexist, islamophobic, xenophobic, homophobic, intolerant, racist, bigoted). Unless people (a) counter these histories found in horrible university texts like the one pictured to the right with actual histories that work in the real world when applied… not some fantasy Utopia; (b) or at least invigorate adults to challenging themselves to enter into real conversations about our body politic (which requires discussions about our nation’s history, past and current politics, our nations roots in cities like Athens and Jerusalem), we will see more of this:

The Western world has produced some of the most prosperous and most free civilizations on earth. What makes the West exceptional? Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire and author of “The Right Side of History,” explains that the twin pillars of revelation and reason — emanating from ancient Jerusalem and Athens — form the bedrock for Western civilization’s unprecedented success.

All culminating in America’s “Trinity”:

Nearly every country on Earth is defined by race or ethnicity. Not America. What makes the United States different? Dennis Prager outlines the values that have allowed the American people to flourish and, unlike immigrants almost everywhere else, transformed those who arrived from across the globe into full Americans—regardless of where they were born.

One needs to also confront the idea that in the black community cults like the Five Percenters (The Nation of Gods and Earths) and Nation of Islam in some of these communities of color (an aside: if I had said colored communities — that is racist — but not communities of color). If MLK hated this radicalism, then why do people support it in the black community but rebuff it in the white?

King’s influence was tempered by the increasingly caustic tone of Black militancy of the period after 1965. Black radicals increasingly turned away from the Gandhian precepts of King toward the Black Nationalism of Malcolm X, whose posthumously published autobiography and speeches reached large audiences after his assassination in February 1965. King refused to abandon his firmly rooted beliefs about racial integration and nonviolence.

In his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, King dismissed the claim of Black Power advocates “to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States.” But he acknowledged that they responded to a psychological need among African Americans he had not previously addressed.

“Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery,” King wrote. “The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation.”

– see more

People [read here adults] need to challenge their beliefs with thinking outside their lifelong or university taught Leftism. Pick a site from the following and visit it a couple times a week [hint: Powerline will be the quickest reads]:

– just to name a few with good writing and represent some counter thinking to the CNN’s and WaPo’s of the world. They offer an excellent introduction to how Conservatives view our political landscape. Stop feeding these lies about American history based on emotion rather than testing one’s own viewpoints. PICK UP A SINGLE BOOK AND READ. Preferably one you disagree with and would otherwise read. If we don’t figure out how to do this, the cities that most need businesses and stability will lose them over and over. This is exactly what we can expect to happen:

Here is something I said in July of 2013:

  • A conservative think tank had to have their yearly meeting in an undisclosed place due to threats of violence, Michael Steele had Oreo cookies thrown at him, conservative speakers like Ann Coulter need body guards when going on to a campus when speaking (the reverse is not true of liberal speakers), eco-fascists (like this CBS story notes) put nails in trees so when lumber jacks cut through them they are maimed, from rapes and deaths and blatantly anti-Semitic/anti-American statements and threats made at occupy movements [endorsed by Obama], we are seeing Obama’s America… divided, more violent; [NOT OT MENTION] forcing Christians to photograph, make cakes for, and put flower arrangements together for same-sex marriage ceremonies… to pro-choice opponents with jars of feces and urine taken from them after chanting “hail Satan” and “fuck the church,” a perfect storm is being created for a real culture war… all with thanks to people who laugh at terms like “eco-fascists” and “leftist thugs.” The irony is that these coal unions asked their members to vote for Obama. Well, the chickens have come home to roost.

The chickens indeed are coming home to roost (Obama’s pastor’s saying after his “Goddamm America” sermon), just for the people that except such a bad ethos. With the NYTs 1619 project. Professors teaching a generation that America was and is the most oppressive racist nation. Media making things up about Republicans being racists since Goldwater. And the calling of a President who has Jewish religious kids and grandkids an anti-Semite/racist. The comedic newsers like Trevor Noah, Colbert, and the like confirming such lies to a millennial generation that gets their news from the “Jimmy Falons” of the world (not to mention CNN, NPR, WaPo, MSNBC, NYT, etcetera).

THE AMERICAN MIND has a great article saying similar things:

The publication of my new book, America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American revolution and the Declaration that Defined It, comes at a crucial moment in American history. Academic study of the American revolution is dying on our college campuses, and the principles and institutions of the American Founding are now under assault from the nattering nabobs of both the progressive Left and the reactionary Right. These two ideological antipodes share little in common other than a mutually-assured desire to purge 21st-century American life of the founders’ philosophy of classical liberalism.

On this point, the radical Left and Right have merged.

The philosophy of Americanism is, as I have argued in my book and elsewhere, synonymous with the founders’ ideas, actions, and institutions. Its core tenets can be summed up as: the moral laws and rights of nature, ethical individualism, self-interest rightly understood, self-rule, constitutionalism, rule of law, limited government, and laissez-faire capitalism.

The founders’ Americanism is most identifiably expressed in the leading political documents of the founding era: the Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson said was an “expression of the American mind,” and in the revolutionary state constitutions as well as the federal Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The classical liberalism of the founding era assumed that individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are grounded in nature and that government’s primary responsibility is to protect those rights.

[….]

The anti-Americanism of the radical Left is well known and long established. Its most recent and most virulent incarnation comes in the form of the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” which claims that the founders’ principles and institutions were disingenuous in 1776 and immoral today.

Much more interesting than the ho-hum anti-Americanism of the progressive Left, though, is the rise in recent years of a rump faction of former Paleo or Tradcons, who have come out of their ideological closet and transitioned from pro- to anti-Americanism. The recent rise of the radical Right in America is distinguished from all previous forms of conservatism and libertarianism by its explicit rejection of the founders’ liberalism.

A new generation of neo-reactionary ideologues looks at contemporary America and sees nothing but moral, cultural, and political decay, which they blame on the soullessness of the founders’ Americanism. Remarkably, just like the radical Left, the radical Right condemns the philosophy of 18th-century liberalism as untrue and therefore immoral. It is the source, they claim, of all our present discontents.

Much has already been written on the 1619 Project, so I shall only briefly describe its arguments and goals in order to better focus on the aims and tactics of the reactionary Right.

[….]

Lastly, a word to the young—to those who have been let down or feel abandoned by the cowardice and unmanliness of Conservatism and Libertarianism, Inc.—know this: you have not been abandoned. There is a new generation of intellectuals willing to take up the cause of Americanism.

More to the point, you should know this as well: I will be, to quote William Lloyd Garrison, as “harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice” when it comes to defending the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The principles and institutions of the founders’ liberalism are worth defending because they are true. The reactionary Right is a dead end; it’s a dead end because it’s a lie. You should not let your despair turn you to the Dark Side. It’s time to come home.

(READ IT ALL)

 

 

Some Hydroxychloroquine Straight Talk

Published by Papa Giorgio

I ended up pausing the first video below and went to FLECCAS TALKS to watch the second video below that BLUE COLLAR LOGIC played. But here are both of them:

This might be the most important episode of Fleccas Talks: This week Kez and I spoke with Dr. Jeff Barke (30 year board certified MD). He blows a hole in the MSM’s fake Corona Virus narrative and explains why it’s so important to get the country open as quickly and safely as possible. Dr. Barke receives a lot of flack for coming out and saying these things. His patriotism is greatly appreciated!

BONUS video:

This Doctor, Ivette. C Lozano, shares her experience with Covid-19 and she is upset at what is happening in our nation. Seek truth, freedom, and justice.

Media Myths and Bias (Larry Elder)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The recent Russia collusion narrative is not the only major example of left-leaning bias in the mainstream news media. Larry looks back at previous presidents and provides five other classic examples of how political bias has manifested itself in the news.

In Part 2, Larry provides five more examples of left-leaning bias in the mainstream news media. This time, Larry tackles several classic myths perpetuated by the media, including the idea that rich people don’t pay their fair share in taxes, that conservatives are more wealthy and less generous, and that liberals are more tolerant.

The Narrative ~ The Origins of Political Correctness

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally Posted Late 2010 – Updated Today)

Critical theory is the opposite of critical thinking. This is a great definition:

This video was added in 2020… a good discussion on the issue:

Best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, renown critic and PJ Media contributor Michael Walsh discusses his new book “The Devil’s Pleasure Palace” with Stephen Kruiser. From the Frankfurt School’s critical theory to Hillary Clinton, Michael Walsh delves into how America got off course and was derailed by this post-World War II school of though that originated in Europe. Patriotism, marriage and the military are just a few of the aspects of American life that were altered for the worse by this school of thought. Join us for this special PJTV interview with Michael Walsh and Stephen Kruiser.

Just wanted to post this excerpt from INTELLECTUAL TAKEOUT’S dealing with Political Correctness:

The Historical Origin of ‘Political Correctness’
A professor at Boston University recently touched on origins of the term ‘politically correct.’ And it’s revealing…

…“The formula is straightforward: the world is not as it should be because society’s basic, ‘structural’ feature is ordered badly….For Marx and his followers that feature is conflict over the means of production in present-day society…. For Freudians it’s sexual maladjustment, for followers of Rousseau it’s social constraint, for positivists it is the insufficient application of scientific method, for others it is oppression of one race by another. Once control of society passes exclusively into the hands of the proper set of progressives, each sect’s contradictions must disappear as the basic structural problem is straightened out.”

The methods of the Communists and progressives differ, but the goal is one and the same: achieve “cultural hegemony,” a political phrase popularized by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian Marxist and politician who became prominent in progressive circles decades after his death.

Progressives learned that achieving hegemony by criminal punishment is difficult. Intellectuals seeking to remake America—“born tainted by Western Civilization’s original sins: racism, sexism, greed, genocide”, etc.—found a more effective way.

There’s no longer “Good” or “Evil”,
Now it’s all just “right” or “wrong”…
And, of course, that’s always changing
As “correction” comes along.

Politics is now what’s reigning…
Power Principles of man.
There’s no Bottom Line to speak of,
No such thing as “God Commands”

It’s high time you learn this Lesson:
Man and Morals all “evolve”…
In this world of shifty-changers,
There’s no TRUE truth to resolve.

We’ve moved past that faulty “logic”…
What rules now is how we feel.
“Sin” we feel is now outdated.
Sin we feel just isn’t REAL.

HA!… “The Fall” has finally fallen…
Yes, indeed, we’re free at last!
Heaven’s wholly democratic…
GLORY!… Happy Votes we cast!

Son, Big Brother makes “The Call” now,
He decides what “truths” to pick.
He defines for us what’s kosher.
(AND He’s got the biggest stick.)

~ Tom Graffagnino ~

Political correctness, perpetuated by a small class of people ensconced at universities, bureaucracies, and major media, is the ideal tool for achieving cultural hegemony. It is “forceful seduction” in lieu of rape. It achieves “tacit collaboration by millions who bite their lip.”

As a political philosophy, political correctness might seem lifeless and aimless. But Codevilla noted the goal of Lenin and Stalin was not a state built on Marxist principles; it was always party control. The two philosophies are similarly empty.

“Like its European kin, all that American progressivism offers is obedience to the ruling class, enforced by political correctness….Nor is there any endpoint to what is politically correct, any more than there ever was to Communism. Here and now, as everywhere and always, it comes down to glorifying the party and humbling the rest.”

It’s not exactly light reading, but Codevilla’s article is a must-read for anyone serious about understanding the nature and origins of political correctness. I found it interesting that Codevilla made a point similar to one that Dr. Jordan Peterson made in an interview over the weekend. It’s the idea that political correctness is a movement 1) fundamentally political in nature; and 2) built on resentment.

Peterson said this is no accident. It comes right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.

“The social justice people are always on the side of compassion and ‘victim’s rights,’ so objecting to anything they do makes you instantly a perpetrator. There’s no place you can stand without being vilified, and that’s why it keeps creeping forward….There’s no compassion at all. There is resentment, fundamentally.”

It’s a simple point, but a very important one. Stop and think about it for a moment. How much of our politics today is driven by resentment?

TO WIT…

  • The origins of “political correctness” or “cultural Marxism” can be found in the early parts of the 20th century from the Frankfurt School, which was the headquarters for the Communists scheming in Germany. Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich Fromm were all there.

This video is an explanation of cultural Marxism, which is a term often thrown around in contemporary political and social debates. Here, those ideas are explored in a brief format. (See Dr. Cooper‘s follow up video to this one: “Is Cultural Marxism Just a Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory?“)

Douglas Murray shows how the people who are always in favour of the latest woke doctrine are the same people who wanted to bring down Western Capitalism in days gone by. Unregenerate Marxists. You’ll find plenty of them in the academy according to Douglas.

Pat Condell

Remember, Pat is an atheist… but a classical liberal – atheist. Progressivism is Marxism attempting to wear a liberal mask, and failing.

Flatten The Curve

Published by Papa Giorgio

JUMP TO:

Media Confirms Opening Premise That Flattening the Curve Was To Protect Hospitals/Healthcare ★ A Debate on My Facebook About The Curve ★ Historical Stresses on the Healthcare/Hospital System  [192,446 Hospitalizations for Covid-19 as of May 27 2020 | 2017-2018 Flu Season: 810,000 Hosdptalizations (low: 620,000 | high:1,400,000) – CDC] ★ Ventilator Shortage Myths ★ Damages of Continued Flatten Curve Power Grabs: Hospitals Going Bankrupt

OPENING PREMISE:
Not To Overwhelm Hospitals

This first part of a multi-part post is merely to discuss what the Flattening the curve was for ~ AND THAT WAS ~ not over-burden our healthcare system.

The Los Angeles Times explains:

…The goal is no longer to prevent the virus from spreading freely from person to person, as it was in the outbreak’s early days. Instead, the objective is to spread out the inevitable infections so that the healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed with patients.

Public health officials have a name for this: Flattening the curve.

The curve they’re talking about plots the number of infections over time. In the beginning of an outbreak, there are just a few. As the virus spreads, the number of cases can spike. At some point, when there aren’t as many people left for the pathogen to attack, the number of new cases will fall. Eventually, it will dwindle to zero.

If you picture the curve, it looks like a tall mountain peak. But with containment measures, it can be squashed into a wide hill.

The outbreak will take longer to run its course. But if the strategy works, the number of people who are sick at any given time will be greatly reduced. Ideally, it will fall below the threshold that would swamp hospitals, urgent care clinics and medical offices, said Dr. Gabor Kelen, chair of the emergency medicine department at Johns Hopkins University…

(LOS ANGELES TIMES / SCIENCE, March 11, 2020)

No Other Reason

MORE CONFIRMATION

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Why We Should Still Try To Contain The Coronavirus

The coronavirus outbreak that has sickened at least 125,000 people on six continents and caused nearly 4,600 deaths is now an official global pandemic. But that doesn’t mean we should give up on trying to contain it, health experts say. The goal is no longer to prevent the virus from spreading freely from person to person, as it was in the outbreak’s early days. Instead, the objective is to spread out the inevitable infections so that the healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed with patients. Public health officials have a name for this: Flattening the curve. (Healy and Khan, 3/11)

ABC NEWS: Why Flattening The Curve For Coronavirus Matters (March 11, 2020)

NBC NEWS: What Is ‘Flatten The Curve‘? The Chart That Shows How Critical It Is For Everyone To Fight Coronavirus Spread. (March 11, 2020)

Confirming the above, you will see that the trend line was to spread out the disease, not to defeat it. And this endeavor would take two weeks at the least, six at the most:

Anywhere from 20 percent to 60 percent of the adults around the world may be infected with the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. That’s the estimate from leading epidemiological experts on communicable disease dynamics.

[….]

So yes, even if every person on Earth eventually comes down with COVID-19, there are real benefits to making sure it doesn’t all happen in the NEXT FEW WEEKS.

(SCIENCE ALERT, March 11, 2020)

Dena Grayson, MD, PhD, a Florida-based expert in Ebola and other pandemic threats, told Medscape Medical News that EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, Washington, is a good example of what it means when a virus overwhelms healthcare operations.

[….]

Grayson points out that the COVID-19 cases come on top of a severe flu season and the usual cases hospitals see, so the bar on the graphic is even lower than it usually would be.

“We have a relatively limited capacity with ICU beds to begin with,” she said.

So far, closures, postponements, and cancellations are woefully inadequate, Grayson said.

“We can’t stop this virus. We can hope to contain it and slow down the rate of infection,” she said.

“We need to right now shut down all the schools, preschools, and universities,” Grayson said. “We need to look at shutting down public transportation. We need people to stay home — AND NOT FOR A DAY BUT FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS.”

The graphic was developed by visual-data journalist Rosamund Pearce, based on a graphic that had appeared in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) article titled “Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza,” the Times reports.

(MED SCAPE, March 13, 2020)

To slow down the spread of the pandemic virus in areas that are beginning to experience local outbreaks and thereby allow time for the local health care system to prepare additional resources for responding to increased demand for health care services (CLOSURES UP TO 6 WEEKS)

(CDC, April 21, 2017)

On the other hand, if that same large number of patients arrived at the hospital at a slower rate, for example, OVER THE COURSE OF SEVERAL WEEKS, the line of the graph would look like a longer, flatter curve.

(JOHN HOPKINS MEDICINE, April 11, 2020)

And, here is a conversation via my Facebook that elucidates how people have this idea of saving lives mixed up with not pressuring or overwhelming our healthcare system

EXCERPT FROM FACEBOOK CONVO

(ME)

  • Steve W — you do know Steve that the same amount of death from and infection due to Covid-19 exists under the trend line of doing nothing and the most strict quarentine rules…. right? In other words, we are not saving lives. And, in fact, we have made it worse for our economy next fall/winter because it is coming back as it makes its rounds around the world.

(STEVE W)

  • Sean Giordano I have heard that said but not seen it from a credible source. So I think that is false.

(ME)

  • Steve W what is false?

(STEVE W)

  • Sean Giordano “the same amount of death from and infection due to Covid-19 exists under the trend line of doing nothing”

(ME)

Steve Wallace now you are saying don’t listen to Dr. Fauci?

Many bemoan Trump for not listening to him (even though he has), and some I meet do not support Fauci in the idea that this was to elongate the process as to not put any undue stress on our health care system. Even though he clearly announced multiple times this was the reason to do so

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM mentions the following, and all the graphs of the United States shown by Doctors Fauci and Birx have all used this idea as well (graph below from CDC and WEF)

CHRIS WALLACE: All right. You talk about slowing the virus down. You talk a lot, and I’ve very used to this now, you can either have a bump like this of cases or you could make it maybe the same total cases, but it’s a much more gradual and slower and longer curve. I want to put up some numbers. We have in this country about 950,000 hospital beds, and about 45,000 beds in Intensive Care Unit. How worried are you that this virus is going to overwhelm hospitals, not just beds, but ventilators? We only have 160,000 ventilators. And could we be in a situation where you have to ration who gets the bed, who gets the ventilator?

DR. FAUCI: OK. So let me put it in a way that it doesn’t get taken out of context. When people talk about modeling where outbreaks are going, the modeling is only as good as the assumptions you put into the model. And what they do, they have a worst-case scenario, a best-case scenario, and likely where it’s going to be. If we have a worst-case scenario, we’ve got to admit it, we could be overwhelmed. Are we going to have a worst-case scenario? I don’t think so. I hope not.

What are we doing to not have that worst-case scenario? That’s when you get into the things that we’re doing. We’re preventing infections from going in with some rather stringent travel restrictions. And we’re doing containment and mitigation from within. So, at a worst-case scenario, anywhere in the world, no matter what country you are, you won’t be prepared. So our job is to not let that worst-case scenario happen.

(…. STILL ME….)

STEVE W for you not to understand the goal of all this, and then get on here sharing insights is itself insightful. I am not blaming you STEVE… I just see this fundamental misunderstanding of the underlying factors and goals of this whole endeavor of bending the curve as applicable to MANY A PERSON in these discussions here and elsewhere on social media. I am giving you, in fact, the most respectful benefit of a doubt, but am merely in conversation with you at this moment. This conversation is just multiplied (others are having) across social media many fold. Blessings to you and yours friend. Yet, this foundational view is not known well by others… that is, the reason behind flattening the curve as well as the data underneath the trend line.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Here I wish to switch gears a bit and start to discuss another “info graphic” post from MY SITES FACEBOOK I shared with my readers. And since the entire idea behind “flattening the curve” was to keep the health and hospital system working well by not getting inundated all at once, this should have lasted two or three weeks. Not as long as it has — our economy is important too! Damnit!

CAPACITY OF THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

The following was compiled after a conversation I had on Facebook. It touches on some of the issues above. Enjoy

  •  I note the bell curve because many are under the false impression we are doing this to “save lives.” This was never the case.

The quarantine was to lessen the apex of the bell curve as to not put pressure on the hospital/health system. The same amount of people in the elongated “quarantine bell curve” (the trend-line) would die and get sick. In other words, the same statistics exist below the line (POWERLINE). Here is a site cataloging the hospitalizations for the rona that POWERLINE used – US CORONAVIRUS HOSPITALIZATIONS  …they used both the CDC site and this one, but the CDC site has lower hospitalizations, so they opted for the most updated numbers. WHICH AS OF APRIL 21ST STAND AT 84,292 HOSPITALIZATIONS FROM JANUARY TILL NOW. This is important, because, the flu season of 2017-2018 we saw 810,000 hospitalization, and our health system didn’t collapse. Nor did the Swine Flu of 2009-to-2010, which saw 60-million American infected and 300,000 hospitalizations.

No quarantines then.

No exaggerated respirator shortages then.

SOME VENTILATOR MYTHS

  • The Ventilator Shortage That Wasn’t (NATIONAL REVIEW)
  • Report: New York City Auctioned Off Ventilator Stockpile (BREITBART)
  • New York City auctioned off extra ventilators due to cost of maintenance: report (THE HILL)
  • Gov Cuomo Refused To Buy Ventilators In 2015 Despite Knowing They’d Be Needed (INDEPENDENT SENTINEL)
  • Trump Was Right: Cuomo Admits New York Has ‘Stockpile’ of Ventilators, Says ‘We Don’t Need Them Yet’ (DIAMOND and SILK | BREITBART | WESTERN JOURNAL)

(What was different I wonder? Maybe the Orange Man Bad Syndrome?)

This then may explain why all the field hospital’s the ARMY CORE OF ENGINEERS built are being dismantled without a single bed being used.

  • The panic and fear among the people who cannot be bothered to read the actual statistics about this pandemic is what should concern most preppers. In fact, this virus has been so overhyped that the Army’s field hospital in Seattle, an “epicenter” of the pandemic has closed after three days without seeing one single COVID-19 patient. According to a report by Military.com, the hastily built field hospital set up by the Army in Seattle’s pro football stadium is shutting down without ever seeing a patient. [….] The decision to close the Seattle field hospital comes amid early signs that the number of new cases could be hitting a plateau in New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the U.S., and other states. At a news conference Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “Overall, New York is flattening the curve.” — ZERO HEDGE (see: MILITARY TIMES | DAILY CALLER)
  • Unlike the Mercy, the Comfort is treating COVID-19 patients on board as well as patients who do not have the virus. The ship has treated more than 120 people since it arrived March 30, and about 50 of those have been discharged, said Lt. Mary Catherine Walsh. The ship removed half of its 1,000 beds so it could isolate and treat coronavirus patients. [The Mercy has seen 48 patients, all non-Covid related] (THE STAR)

And literally handfulls of patients on the Comfort (New York City) and the Comfort (Los Angeles) — *see comment below. There was never a shortage of respirators (NATIONAL REVIEW), and we may surpass the 2018-to-2019 flu death rate, but come nowhere close to the 2017-to-2018 flu death rate:

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

And it seems that we are reaching a plateau with The Rona, so there is good news in this regard (POWERLINE).

* Here is a comment from the Military Times article from a few days ago:

So, why did we spend all that Taxpayer’s money to move the Comfort to NYC and all the added Military medical personnel to staff the Javitt’s Center? Because Cuomo was crying WOLF.

“So far, the thousands of beds provided by a converted convention center and a hospital ship have not been needed, but the extra personnel are coming in handy for the city’s civilian hospitals.

About 200 doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and others are working in New York’s medical centers, where bed space has not been overwhelmed, but where hospital-acquired coronavirus cases have sidelined civilian staff.”

…TO WIT…

HOSPITALS GOING BANKRUPT

VOX actually has a decent story on this:

  • Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston is laying off 900 people from its 17,000-person staff and asking full-time salaried employees to take a 15 percent pay cut, according to the Post & Courier; the hospital says it’s not laying off front-line workers at this time.
  • Essentia Health, a major medical system of clinics and hospitals in Duluth, Minnesota, is laying off 500 workers, per KBJR.
  • The Cookeville Regional Medical Center in Tennessee will be furloughing 400 of its 2,400-person staff, and a few hundred others will see a cut in their hours, Fox 17 Nashville reports.
  • Boston Medical Center is furloughing 10 percent of its staff, about 700 people, according to the Boston Globe.
  • Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic, which runs five hospitals in the Philadelphia area and employs 125,000 people there, will furlough an unspecific percentage of its staff, per the Philadelphia Inquirer.
  • Mercy Health, the largest health system in Ohio, is temporarily laying off 700 workers.
  • Two hospital systems in West Virginia are furloughing upward of 1,000 employees combined, Metro News reports.
  • The largest hospital system in eastern Kentucky is laying off 500 workers, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

I’m sure there are many more stories like these. But you get the idea.

Hospitals have typically said in these announcements that they are starting with nonmedical staff for furloughs and reduced hours, which is no solace to those workers but softens the impact on our medical capacity.

But it’s not clear how long medical systems can avoid cutting doctors and nurses as well, and some of them clearly cannot. I heard from a nurse in Texas, who asked that neither she nor her hospital be named for fear of professional repercussions, who has been furloughed because of the ongoing economic crisis.

She said how constrained she felt by the news. If she wanted to help with the coronavirus response by taking a job with a travel nursing service offering temporary postings in Covid-19 hot spots, for example, she would lose her old job and her health insurance.

”It really is frustrating to hear that you’re a hero but also we don’t value you enough to prepare or pay you,” she said. “I would be happy to temporarily relocate, work in a hot spot, and make the same wages as I normally would. I can’t afford to work for free, exactly, but it’s frustrating if I can’t work at all.”

Hospitals have taken huge revenue losses as they postpone elective surgeries and other routine care so they can make more staff and space available for the Covid-19 response. Some hospitals expect to lose half their income, and the top industry trade groups have warned that hundreds of hospitals could close after this crisis.

Congress pumped $100 billion into US hospitals as part of its first stimulus package, and Democratic leaders are already calling for another $100 billion in the next stimulus bill they hope Congress will pass.

But that may still not be enough, in the end. When one in four rural hospitals were already vulnerable to closure before the coronavirus struck, the current pandemic is almost certainly going to leave some hospitals with no choice but to close, no matter how much money the federal government provides….

And to compliment the Left leaning VOX article is the “Right” leaning FEDERALIST article:

….During a press conference Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis noted that health experts initially projected 465,000 Floridians would be hospitalized because of coronavirus by April 24. But as of April 22, the number is slightly more than 2,000.

Even in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last month he would need 30,000 ventilators, hospitals never came close to needing that many. The projected peak need was about 5,000, and actual usage may have been even lower.

Other overflow measures have also proven unnecessary. On Tuesday, President Trump said the USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship that had been deployed to New York to provide emergency care for coronavirus patients, will be leaving the city. The ship had been prepared to treat 500 patients. As of Friday, only 71 beds were occupied. An Army field hospital set up in Seattle’s pro football stadium shut down earlier this month without ever having seen a single patient.

It’s the same story in much of the country. In Texas, where this week Gov. Greg Abbott began gradually loosening lockdown measures, including a prohibition on most medical procedures, hospitals aren’t overwhelmed. In Dallas and Houston, where coronavirus cases are concentrated in the state, makeshift overflow centers that had been under construction might not be used at all.

In Illinois, where hospitals across the state scrambled to stock up on ventilators last month, fewer than half of them have been put to use—and as of Sunday, only 757 of 1,345 ventilators were being used by COVID-19 patients. In Virginia, only about 22 percent of the ventilator supply is being used.

Meanwhile, hospitals and health care systems nationwide have had to furlough or lay off thousands of employees. Why? Because the vast majority of most hospitals’ revenue comes from elective or “non-essential” procedures. We’re not talking about LASIK eye surgery but things like coronary angioplasty and stents, procedures that are necessary but maybe not emergencies—yet. If hospitals can’t perform these procedures because governors have banned them, then they can’t pay their bills, or their employees.

To take just one example, a friend who works in a cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) in rural Virginia called recently and told me about how they had reorganized their entire system around caring for coronavirus patients. They had cancelled most “non-essential” procedures, imposed furloughs and pay cuts, and created a special ICU ward for patients with COVID-19. So far, they have had only one patient. One. The nurses assigned to the COVID-19 ward have very little to do. In the entire area covered by this hospital system, only about 30 people have tested positive for COVID-19.

If Hospitals Can Handle The Load, End The Lockdowns

I’m sure the governors and health officials who ordered these lockdowns meant well. They based their decisions on deeply flawed and woefully inaccurate models, and they should have been less panicky and more skeptical, but they were facing a completely new disease about which, thanks to China, they had almost no reliable information.

However, in hindsight it seems clear that treating the entire country as if it were New York City was a huge mistake that has cost millions of American jobs and destroyed untold amounts of wealth. Now that we know our hospitals aren’t going to be overrun by COVID-19 cases, governors and mayors should immediately reverse course and begin opening their states and communities for business…..

Media Narrative (Smoke and Mirrors)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is the general public (and many on FACEBOOK) believing these headline makers lock-stock-and-barrel (ROLL CAMERA PLEASE):

REMEMBER THIS?

(If this does not play, WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE)

OR THESE?

Trump Acted Quickley On Coronavirus (TIMELINES PART DEUX)

Published by Papa Giorgio

A friend – in response to a challenge, posted multiple stories about Trump’s response to the Coronavirus to my single post detailing the timeline of the Trump admins response here: “Trump Acted Quickley On Coronavirus (TIMELINES)“

This was his firing away as if to make a point:

JIM

  • 10 times Trump and his administration were warned about coronavirus (AXIOS)
  • Trump’s daily briefings warned about COVID-19 at least a dozen times before the US outbreak, but he ‘failed to register’ the threat (BUSINESS INSIDER)
  • Trump was warned in January of Covid-19’s devastating impact, memos reveal (THE GUARDIAN)
  • Trump Was Warned About Virus Threat In More Than A Dozen Intelligence Reports In January, February (KAIESER HEALTH NEWS)
  • Trump Received Intelligence Briefings On Coronavirus Twice In January (NPR)
  • Trump Aide Warned Early on of Deadly US Coronavirus Outbreak (VOA NEWS)

(The italicized articles are completely debunked by information below – the others are highly questionable, the ones that have unnamed sources that is, and other portions of them are called into question by the timeline below.)

Besides the obvious question of, “which Western leader do you look to as a shining example of reacting in January to the crisis?” I could have easily responded to these papers who spread stories from a single anonymous source as if they are all different stories based on different [again, unnamed] sources, which, their practice of has undone almost all their stories [one example, another, and another] on the Russian Collusion Hoax, like this,

  • Memory Hole: What the Media Wants You to Forget About Their Biased Coronavirus Coverage (PJ-MEDIA)
  • The Media’s Top Lies and Spins About COVID-19 (REAL CLEAR POLITICS)
  • The Top 10 Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus (PJ-MEDIA)
  • The China Virus Pandemic: COVID-19 Response and Recovery (PATRIOT POST)
  • Pollak: Democrats Pushed Impeachment While Coronavirus Spread (BREITBART)
  • China hid extent of coronavirus outbreak, US intelligence reportedly says (CNBC)
  • China deliberately hid coronavirus, admonished whistleblowers (WASHINTON TIMES)
  • Fauci points to China for late realization coronavirus was his ‘worst nightmare’ (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
  • China admits to destroying coronavirus samples, insists it was for safety (NY POST)
  • China confirms US accusations that it destroyed early samples of the novel coronavirus, but says it was done for ‘biosafety reasons’ (BUSINESS INSIDER)
  • China pressured WHO to delay global coronavirus warning: report (NY POST)
  • China’s president Xi Jinping ‘personally asked WHO to hold back information about human-to-human transmission and delayed the global response by four to six WEEKS’ at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, bombshell report claims (THE DAILY MAIL)

MY OWN SITE:

However, this does nothing to prove or disprove a point. So, I merely went to the first point made in his first linked article at AXIOS, quoting the NYTs:

AXIOS:

On Jan. 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first briefed Trump on the threat of the virus in a phone call, the New York Times reports. Trump made his first public comments about the virus on Jan. 22, saying he was not concerned about a pandemic and that “we have it totally under control.”

NEW YORK TIMES:

…Even after Mr. Azar first briefed him about the potential seriousness of the virus during a phone call on Jan. 18 while the president was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Mr. Trump projected confidence that it would be a passing problem.

“We have it totally under control,” he told an interviewer a few days later while attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. “It’s going to be just fine.”…

(NEW YORK TIMES)

Now, much like the Left’s favorite thing to do, they take Trump out of context and use this false context to create a straw man and then bludgeon it. Why did Trump say it was going to be fine? Because, according to the WALL STREET JOURNAL, Alex Azar “oversold his agency’s progress in the early days and didn’t coordinate effectively across the health-care divisions under his purview.” Trump could only report what Alex told him on the 18th.

But this January 18th discussion is not proven to have even taken place, all we have again are unnamed sources: Azar told several associates that Trump thought his warnings were ‘alarmist’, according to The Washington Post” (DAILY MAIL). And again, NEWSMAX discusses that WALL STREET JOURNAL article, saying:

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar waited weeks to brief President Donald Trump on the coronavirus threat and oversold the progress of developing an effective test for the virus, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

The newspaper said that as of Jan. 29, Azar had assured Trump the coronavirus outbreak was under control. And during the meeting with Trump, Azar said the government had never mounted a better interagency response to a crisis.

But that isn’t the only story to the story. I do not think this even reported by anonymous sources actually happened. The same people that wrongly reported using anonymous sources are now the same people using anonymous sources.

News media figures advancing “Trump-Russia collusion” narratives are now spreading misinformation about President Donald Trump and the coronavirus outbreak as part of a “permanent coup,” […..]

The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, recently alleged that Trump was issued repeated warnings about the coronavirus through a dozen classified daily briefings between January and February.

“An article in the Washington Post … said that in [his] presidential daily briefings, Trump repeatedly ignored warnings of the coronavirus,” Smith recalled. Acting DNI Richard Grenell tweeted at the authors of this piece. [He] said. ‘That’s not true. We told you this is not true, and yet you only included our denial in the ninth paragraph.’”

Smith continued, “So these two Washington Post journalists were a core Russiagate conspiracy team. Again, unfortunately, we’re seeing the same thing unfold again and again, and that’s why the title of the book is The Permanent Coup.”…

(BREITBART)

And the LEGAL INSURRECTION does a bang-up job on the same subject:

According to the Washington Post, the president’s classified daily briefings included “warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat.”

The unnamed sources were foregrounded, while an actual named source refuting the claim was not mentioned until paragraph eight:

A White House spokesman disputed the characterization that Trump was slow to respond to the virus threat. “President Trump rose to fight this crisis head-on by taking early, aggressive historic action to protect the health, wealth and well-being of the American people,” said spokesman Hogan Gidley. “We will get through this difficult time and defeat this virus because of his decisive leadership.”

As if that’s not bad enough, it’s only in the ninth paragraph that WaPo gets around to noting that the suggestion the president ignored his presidential daily briefing (PDB) has been denied by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the office responsible for the PDB.

  • The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for the PDB. In response to questions about the repeated mentions of coronavirus, a DNI official said, “The detail of this is not true.” The official declined to explain or elaborate.

So WaPo contacted the DNI about claims the president ignored Wuhan coronavirus warnings in Jan/Feb PDB’s, and the DNI responded that the “detail of this is not true.” What do they need to explain here?  Maybe WaPo needs to provide its list of questions so that we can make that determination ourselves?  I’m pretty sure the context would greatly improve our understanding of the DNI response… and undermine the WaPo smear, thus the absence of said context.

It’s not actually clear what the point of the WaPo article is except to smear the president with the false implication that his administration ignored the Wuhan coronavirus until March.  This smear is completely and demonstrably false.

Of course, the mindless, anti-Trump stenographers who make up the legacy and leftstream media “covered” the questionable story, all linking to this flimsy WaPo hit piece that provides no evidence to support—and that actually refutes—its own claim.

  • Business Insider: “Trump’s daily briefings warned about COVID-19 at least a dozen times before the US outbreak, but he ‘failed to register’ the threat”
  • CNN: “The intelligence community did its job, but Trump didn’t do his”
  • MSN: “Trump reportedly ignored intel briefings on coronavirus threat”
  • NYMag: “Trump Informed of Coronavirus Threat in January in Briefings He’s Known Not to Read: Report”
  • CNN (again): “Washington Post: US intelligence warned Trump in January and February as he dismissed coronavirus threat”

Setting aside for the moment the fact that a global pandemic of this sort is new to everyone in the world and that no one, including top virologists, has answers, keep in mind that the first U.S. death from Wuhan coronavirus was reported on February 29th in Seattle.

What was Trump doing about the Wuhan coronavirus in January and February when he was supposedly ignoring the potential crisis?

Oh, right, setting up a coronavirus task force and issuing travel restrictions on China, well before the first U.S. death occurred.  How did he know to take these actions if he was ignoring his daily briefings?  Weird, right?…

(READ THE REST – EXCELLENT POST – it includes a timeline as well)

Mollie Hemingway says it best:

Hemingway began by noting that the “Russia narrative” predates the Mueller probe, having begun circulating during the 2016 election after the creation of the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier, which pushed the theory that then-Republican candidate Donald Trump was a “Russian agent.”

“We have, for the last three years … frequently [witnessed] hysteria about treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election,” Hemingway told the panel. “The fact [is] that there are no more indictments coming and the fact [is] that all of the indictments that we’ve seen thus far have been for process crimes or things unrelated to what we were told by so many people in the media was ‘treasonous collusion’ to steal the 2016 election.”

“If there is nothing there that matches what we’ve heard from the media for many years, there needs to be a reckoning and the people who spread this theory both inside and outside the government who were not critical and who did not behave appropriately need to be held accountable,” she added.

THE FEDERALIST has a printing of the HHS timeline for January that shows that the propositions made by these Leftist newspapers are not revealing the whole timeline to their readers:

…The Wall Street Journal should do a lot better; they asked Azar for the truth. He gave it to them. They chose not to report it. For those who want to know, here is HHS’s offical timeline of what happened in January:

December 31: CDC, including Director Robert Redfield, learns of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology” reported in Wuhan, China.
January 1: CDC begins developing situation reports, which are shared with HHS.
January 3: Director Redfield emails and speaks on the phone with Dr. George Gao, Director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
January 3: Director Redfield speaks with Secretary Azar, and HHS notifies the National Security Council (NSC).
January 4: Director Redfield emails Dr. Gao again and offers CDC assistance, stating, “I would like to offer CDC technical experts in laboratory and epidemiology of respiratory infectious diseases to assist you and China CDC in identification of this unknown and possibly novel pathogen.”
January 6: At the request of Secretary Azar, Director Redfield sends formal letter to China CDC offering full CDC assistance.
January 6: CDC issues a Level 1 Travel Watch for China.
January 6: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci begins doing interviews on the outbreak.
January 7: CDC establishes a 2019 nCoV Incident Management Structure to prepare for potential U.S. cases and to support the investigation in China or other countries, if requested.
January 8: CDC distributes an advisory via the Health Alert Network, which communicates to state and local public health partners, alerting healthcare workers and public health partners of the outbreak.
January 9: CDC and FDA begin collaborating on a diagnostic test for the novel coronavirus.
January 10: China shares viral sequence, allowing NIH scientists to begin work on a vaccine that evening.

JANUARY 11: FIRST DEATH REPORTED IN CHINA
JANUARY 13: 41 CASES IN CHINA, FIRST CASE REPORTED OUTSIDE CHINA

January 13: NIH shares their vaccine sequence with a pharmaceutical manufacturer.
January 14: The National Security Council begins daily Novel Coronavirus Policy Coordination Council meetings.
January 14: WHO tweets: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”
January 17: CDC and Customs and Border Protection began enhanced screening of travelers from Wuhan at three airports that receive significant numbers of travelers from that city, expanded in the following week to five airports, covering 75–80 percent of Wuhan travel.
January 17: CDC hosts its first tele-briefing on the virus, with Dr. Nancy Messonnier, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who emphasizes “this is a serious situation” and “we know [from the experience of SARS and MERS that] it’s crucial to be proactive and prepared.”
January 17: CDC posts interim guidance, updated regularly in the coming weeks and months, for collecting, handling, and testing clinical specimens for the novel coronavirus, includingbiosafety guidelines for laboratories.
January 18: CDC publishes interim guidance on how to care for novel coronavirus patients at home who do not require hospitalization.
January 20: The Chinese government confirms human-to-human transmission of the virus.

JANUARY 21: FIRST U.S. CASE CONFIRMED (FROM TRAVEL)[1]

January 21: CDC activates its Emergency Operations Center.
January 21: The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA, part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR) begins holding market research calls with industry leading diagnostics companies to gauge their interest in developing diagnostics for the novel coronavirus and to encourage initiating development activities.
January 21: CDC holds its second tele-briefing on the virus, with officials from Washington State, to discuss the first U.S. case, and Dr. Messonnier, who notes “CDC has been proactively preparing for an introduction of the virus here” and that a CDC team was deployed to Washington.
January 21: CDC posts interim guidance, updated regularly in the coming months, on how to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in homes and other settings.
January 21: Secretary Azar discusses coronavirus with Lou Dobbs on Fox Business Network, noting “we have been heavily engaged at the outset” of the outbreak, with the CDC and the rest of HHS working under the President’s direction to develop testing and alert healthcare providers.
January 22: Secretary Azar signs a memorandum from CDC Director Redfield determining that the novel coronavirus could imminently become an infectious disease emergency, which allows HHS to send a request to the Office of Management and Budget to access $105 million from the Infectious Disease Rapid Response Reserve Fund.
January 22: FDA, working with test developers, shares an authorization application template with a diagnostic test developer for the first time.
January 22: ASPR stands up an interagency diagnostics working group with BARDA, CDC, FDA, NIH, and the Department of Defense (DOD).
January 22: HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement began flagging any children referred from China for risk assessments and, if indicated by their travel and exposure history, for quarantine for up to 14 days before being placed in the general community of the shelter. Screenings expanded to children referred from Iran, Italy, Japan and South Korea on March 2.

JANUARY 22: ALL OUTBOUND TRAINS AND FLIGHTS FROM WUHAN CANCELED

January 23: ASPR convenes a Disaster Leadership Group (DLG), to align government-wide partners regarding the outbreak situation, communications strategies, and the potential medical countermeasure pipeline. The same week, conversations begin with manufacturers of N95 masks, enabling mask production on U.S. soil to rise from about 250 million a year in January to about 640 million a year in March.
January 24: ASPR forms three government-wide task forces—on healthcare system capacity and resilience, development of medical countermeasures (diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines), and supply chains—as part of work under Emergency Support Function 8 of the National Response Framework.
January 24: CDC hosts its third tele-briefing on the virus, with Dr. Nancy Messonnier and officials from Illinois, where CDC has deployed a team to respond to the second U.S. case, from travel. Dr. Messonnier notes, “We are expecting more cases in the U.S., and we are likely going to see some cases among close contacts of travelers and human to human transmission.”
January 24: CDC publicly posts its assay for the novel coronavirus, allowing the global community to develop their own assays using the CDC design.
January 25: Five days before WHO’s declaration of a public health emergency of international concern, Secretary Azar preemptively notifies Congress of his intent to use $105 million from the Infectious Disease Rapid Response Reserve Fund.

JANUARY 26: FIVE U.S. CASES CONFIRMED, ALL TRAVEL-RELATED

January 26: ASPR holds first meetings of healthcare resilience, medical countermeasure development, and supply chain task forces, which continue several times a week or daily in the coming weeks.
January 27: In a Washington, D.C., speech, Secretary Azar shares that HHS is “proactively preparing for the arrival of the novel coronavirus on our shores,” noting that “the novel coronavirus is a rapidly changing situation, and we are still learning about the virus.” “While the virus poses a serious public health threat, the immediate risk to Americans is low at this time,” Azar says, noting that he spoke on the morning of January 27 with China’s Minister of Health and WHO Director-General Tedros speak to discuss the novel coronavirus.
January 27: CDC hosts a tele-briefing with Dr. Nancy Messonnier, who notes that new travel recommendations are coming and that “there may be some disruptions” to Americans’ lives as a result of the public health response, but that “this virus is not spreading in the community” in the U.S.
January 27: CDC and State Department issue Level 3 “postpone or reconsider travel” warnings for all of China.
January 27: FDA begins providing updates about processes for approval and authorization to developers of vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and other countermeasures for the novel coronavirus.
January 27: CDC’s Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases, Jay Butler, holds a call with the nation’s governors on the novel coronavirus.
January 28: HHS hosts press briefing by Secretary Azar, Dr. Fauci, Director Redfield, and Dr. Messonnier. Azar says, “Americans should know that this is a potentially very serious public health threat, but, at this point, Americans should not worry for their own safety.” He underscores, “This is a very fast moving, constantly changing situation…. Part of the risk we face right now is that we don’t yet know everything we need to know about this virus. But, I want to emphasize, that does not prevent us from preparing and responding.”
January 28: CDC posts interim guidance, updated regularly in the coming months, for airline crews regarding the novel coronavirus.
January 29: The White House announces the establishment of the Coronavirus Task Force, which begins daily meetings.
January 29: CDC hosts a tele-briefing with Dr. Messonnier, who notes that “despite an aggressive public health investigation to find new cases [in the U.S.], we have not.”
January 29: CDC posts infection prevention and control recommendations for novel coronavirus patients in healthcare settings, updated regularly in the coming months.
January 29: The Chinese government sends email to HHS acknowledging offer of U.S. expert assistance; HHS begins soliciting nominees for mission from across the department.
January 29: ASPR, CDC, FDA, NIAID, and DOD host a listening session with industry—1,468 participants—on medical countermeasure development, health system preparedness, supply resilience, and medical surge needs.
January 29: The first repatriation flight from Wuhan, China arrives at March Air Reserve Base in California, beginning the safe repatriation of Americans and marking the first use of federal quarantine power in more than 50 years. The operation eventually totals more than 3,000 repatriations, with citizens from Wuhan and passengers from cruise ships. Repatriated Americans praise the work of the quarantine teams—including a couple who spent an extended honeymoon at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

JANUARY 30: SIXTH AND SEVENTH CASES CONFIRMED IN THE U.S., CLOSE CONTACTS OF TRAVEL-RELATED CASE

January 30: CDC hosts a tele-briefing with Director Redfield, Dr. Messonnier, and officials from Illinois, where a sixth case is identified, in a spouse of a confirmed case who had traveled to China. Director Redfield notes that most cases around the world outside of China are close contacts of travelers, and “the full picture of how easy and how sustainable this virus can spread is unclear.” (A seventh case is identified later that evening.)
January 30: Department of State issues Level 4 warning, “do not travel,” for all of mainland China.
January 30: The Trump Administration hosts a call with Secretary Azar, Director Redfield, Dr. Fauci, and others with the nation’s governors to present the Administration’s action plan on responding to the outbreak.
January 30: In an appearance on Fox News, Secretary Azar notes that, whether the WHO declares a public health emergency of international concern (declared January 31), “That doesn’t change anything about what we are doing here in the United States. … The President is ensuring that we are proactively preparing and also taking the necessary steps to prevent or mitigate any potential further spread here in the United States.”
January 30: Trump Administration budget officials begin discussions about funding needed for development of vaccines and therapeutics, purchases of Personal Protective Equipment for the Strategic National Stockpile, surveillance and testing, and state and local support.
January 30: ASPR launches a coronavirus portal to receive market research packages and meeting requests from industry stakeholders interested in developing or manufacturing medical countermeasures.
January 31: At the recommendation of his public health officials, President Trump issues historic restrictions on travel from Hubei and mainland China, effective February 2.
January 31: Secretary Azar signs a declaration of a nationwide Public Health Emergency, which allowed HHS to begin using a range of emergency authorities and flexibilities, and, together with other subsequent declarations, would allow emergency flexibilities for healthcare providers. At a White House briefing, he notes, “The risk of infection for Americans remains low, and with these and our previous actions, we are working to keep the risk low. It is likely that we will continue to see more cases in the United States in the coming days and weeks, including some limited person-to-person transmission.”
January 31: CDC hosts a tele-briefing with Dr. Messonnier, who notes possible reports of asymptomatic transmission and says, “We are preparing as if this were the next pandemic, but we are hopeful still that this is not and will not be the case.”
January 31: FDA holds a virtual meeting with American Clinical Laboratory Association about the emergency use authorization application process.

Yes, Trump acted as soon as the news of the virus was available. And as we know from the results, stringency of lockdowns did not translate into how many deadly infections there were:

(Click Graphic To Enlarge)


While not a gauge of whether the decisions taken were the right ones, nor of how strictly they were followed, the analysis gives a clear sense of each government’s strategy for containing the virus. Some — above all Italy and Spain — enforced prolonged and strict lockdowns after infections took off. Others — especially Sweden — preferred a much more relaxed approach. Portugal and Greece chose to close down while cases were relatively low. France and the U.K. took longer before deciding to impose the most restrictive measures.

But, as our next chart shows, there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities — a measure that looks at the overall number of deaths compared with normal trends.

(BLOOMBERG)

Who Is Stacey Abrams? A Superhero?

Published by Papa Giorgio

Despite fawning media coverage, it’s difficult to point to a single accomplishment.

Stacey Abrams Bonus:

PJ-MEDIA notes Stacey’s side work… as a soft core novelist:

Ever wonder why Stacey Abrams can afford those sumptuous, jewel-toned tents she wears?*

When Abrams isn’t appearing on MSNBC or CNN campaigning to be Joe Biden’s vice president, the mahogany beauty, whose imagination is so active that she thinks she’s the governor of Georgia, is keeping her revenue streams flowing like the Amazon.

Abrams is on the political speech-for-hire circuit, but before she became a professional politician and national victim, the gap-toothed Ivy Leaguer was a soft-core romance novelist.

Stacey Abrams’s nom de plume is Selena Montgomery.

And Selena is thirsty.

Her romance bibliography includes Hidden Sins, the story of Mara Reed, who has “the devil in her.”

Mara Reed’s been stirring up trouble since she was eighteen—running scams, living on the edge, always on the run. … But cornered in an alley, only seconds from death, an unexpected rescuer comes to her aid—Dr. Ethan Stuart, the dark and beautiful scientist whose heart she once broke and betrayed . . . the only man Mara ever loved. … Ethan needs Mara’s help; she needs his protection. And their search for a shocking, devastating truth could lead them to forgiveness, salvation, passion, and back to love… if they can survive the journey.

Secrets and Lies 

She just witnessed her uncle’s murder, she’s running for her life, and now Dr. Katelyn Lyda is face-to-face with a breathtaking man who could be her salvation. Tall, sexy, his eyes full of mysterious promises, he seems to have the answer she needs.

It’s too bad Sebastian Caine is one of the bad guys…

A “recovery specialist” skilled at separating prized possessions from their owners, Sebastian is after an ancient relic. But he reconsiders the job when he finds himself staring at the wrong end of a gun.

With her life in jeopardy, Kat wonders how far she can trust Sebastian Caine… how long she can resist him… and dare she fall in love?….

INDEPENDENT SENTINEL has a good story on Abrams.

POWERLINE humorously passes along some humor on the WaPo Magazine puff piece:

Do Republicans win elections by preventing minorities from voting? The Left says yes, but the data says no. Jason Riley, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, settles the argument with hard evidence, separating fact from fiction.

 

Did Trump Fire Dr. Rick Bright Over Hydroxychloroquine?

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is a good intro that gives a “front-story” to Ami’s video by NEWSBUSTERS:

  • On Wednesday, the liberal media lit up with the new anti-Trump narrative about Dr. Rick Bright, who claimed without evidence that he was fired from his HHS position for opposing the use of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug President Trump had touted as a possible treatment for the Chinese coronavirus. 

NEWSBUSTERS continues with their dissecting of the latest “scandal” of Trump’s:

But new reporting from Politico (not a right-wing outlet) found officials had been looking to fire him for incompetence for about a year, and he had praised the drug himself.

[….]

Meanwhile, Politico reporter Dan Diamond did actual research into Dr. Bright and what he found debunked the allegations. According to his reporting, Bright had praised the HHS’s acquisition of large quantities of the drug, and suggested it was a boon to the department [I added more from the Politico story than Newsbusters had]:

Bright told The New York Times on Wednesday that he believed his removal was because of his internal opposition to pursuing investments in malaria drugs as potential treatments for Covid-19, which President Donald Trump has touted without scientific evidence. Three people with knowledge of HHS’ recent acquisition of tens of millions of doses of those drugs said that Bright had supported those acquisitions in internal communications, with one official saying that Bright praised the move as a win for the health department as part of an email exchange that was first reported by Reuters last week, although Bright’s message was not publicly reported.

“If Bright opposed hydroxychloroquine, he certainly didn’t make that clear from his email — quite the opposite,” said the official, who has seen copies of the email exchanges.

In a statement late Wednesday, an HHS official directly linked Bright’s decisions to the health department’s acquisition of the malaria drugs.

“As it relates to chloroquine, it was Dr. Bright who requested an Emergency Use Authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for donations of chloroquine that Bayer and Sandoz recently made to the Strategic National Stockpile for use on COVID-19 patients,” spokesperson Caitlin Oakley said. “The EUA is what made the donated product available for use in combating COVID-19.”

In addition, Diamond took to Twitter to share photographic evidence that Bright was being looked at for removal as early as last year. In the tweet, Diamond showed a timestamped text message exchange from January 2 proving people understood Bright was on the way out because of his “incompetence and insubordination.”

Definitely, not the narrative the networks wanted to go with against Trump….

RIGHT SCOOP notes after reproducing the above the following addition:

…Here’s one last tidbit that you should know about Bright…

The doctor who claimed he was demoted after raising concerns about hydroxychloroquine hired the attorneys who represented Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Dr. Rick Bright, who was the head of the Health and Human Services agency tasked with creating a coronavirus vaccine, claimed he was fired after raising concerns about the anti-malaria drug touted by President Trump as a potential treatment for the coronavirus. After his demotion, Bright linked up with the law firm Katz, Marshall & Banks, the same firm that represented Blasey Ford.

Attorneys Debra Katz and Lisa Banks have deep ties to high-ranking members of the Democratic Party. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein recommended the two to Blasey Ford after she came forward with allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing.

The two attorneys have also hosted fundraisers for Democratic members of Congress, including a dinner for Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

Well if that doesn’t make his story smell even more like a rat…

Profiting From Fear?

Published by Papa Giorgio

What really tans my hide about the CDC announcement that it is IN FACT NOT EASY to contract the Wu Flu from surfaces (HEAVY) is that there is an automatic acceptance that their proclamations are at the heart, noble. As if scientists and organizations cannot be swayed by money, special interests, or by some internal biases. When Trump was mentioning hydroxychloroquine in his pressers, the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and the like chased down Trump’s financials and said he had stock in a company that makes the product – ERGO Trump was mentioning it to get rich (HUFFPO).

No “best interest” afforded to the President of these United States. Just to weasels like Fauci.

Trump was one of many people in a 401K type mutual fund where many money markets, stocks, bonds, etc. are invested into – just like my own 401K plan I have. Trump was found to own (along with the 1,000’s of people in that mutual fund, $150 in a company that makes Hydroxychloroquine. This company makes many other medical supplies, and, since Hydroxychloroquine is not patented any longer due to the age of the medicine — and anyone can make the product… there was no profit involved in his touting Hydroxychloroquine. (BREITBART)

  • Trump owns between $29 and $435 worth of Sanofi stock. (CERNO)

This did not matter however. Any chance to smear the President is an opportunity the MSM cannot pass up.

Which got me thinking. Maybe the Washington Post and the New York Times, and NPR, CNN, and the like will scour the decision makers at the CDC to see if any of them have financial ties to makers of disinfectant companies like Clorox? Since Hydroxychloroquine is not a product that can be patented, maybe some overturning of evidence to see if those at the CDC have financial ties to products like Remdesivir, since a single company can copy write that product and hold patent power over it.

The WASHINGTON TIMES notes this:

Anthony Fauci, America’s most-listened-to medical professional on the coronavirus, and apparently on all the political, economic, cultural and social precautions every man, woman and child in the nation should take on the coronavirus, has just warned what cooler-head coronavirus watchers have suspected all along: that this country may never, no never, go back to normal.

Never, that is, Fauci suggested, until a vaccine is developed. And by logical extension, that’s to say — never, until a vaccine is developed that must then be included on the required list of shots for all children to attend school.

What great news for Big Pharma….

No “BREAKING NEWS!” stories about financial ties by persons like Fuaci??? No… I suspect not. UNLESS, it could hurt Trump. Then the Democrats and CNN peeps would be all over it.