China

RPT Offers Ford CEO Jim Farley Some More “Reality Checks”

Published by Papa Giorgio

See my larger ARE ELECTRIC CARS “CLEAN” ~ post

As an aside, this/these critiques are not meant to be “Ford specific,” rather, ALL EV SPECIFIC. Ford’s CEO’s truthful admission while ignoring other TROOTHZ is the point ALL CEO’s should take note of.

  • Ford CEO Jim Farley said he faced a “reality check” while attempting to charge his electric truck during a road trip across the American West, an admission that comes as President Joe Biden spends billions to spur electric vehicle adoption.
  • Farley embarked on the trip in Ford’s new electric F-150 Lightning last week in an attempt to “see the EV transition in action.” He started in Silicon Valley, made a stop in Los Angeles, and then ended in Las Vegas. Farley documented much of the trip on social media, including his late-night charging sessions and the “challenging” nature of obtaining enough power to travel long distances.
  • “Charging has been pretty challenging,” Farley said, adding that at one stop it took him 40 minutes to charge his truck’s battery to just 40 percent. “It was a really good reality check—the challenges of what our customers go through.” (OFF THE PRESS BULLET POINTS)

‘Reality Check’: Ford CEO Struggles to Charge EV During Road Trip (WASHINGTON FREE BEACON):

Earlier this year, the Biden administration unveiled a new rule to limit tailpipe emissions, which is aimed at ensuring two-thirds of new vehicles are electric by 2032. That benchmark far exceeded Biden’s 2021 executive order pushing for half of all vehicles sold by 2030 to be zero-emission. Still, getting drivers to hop on board with the EV transition has been difficult. Last year, just 6 percent of vehicles sold were electric.

RPT Offers Ford CEO Jim Farley Some More “Reality Checks”

Check One:

State Sized Chunks of Land To Go Green

To give you a sense of scale, to replace the energy from one average natural gas well, which sits on about four acres of land, would require 2,500 acres of wind turbines. That is a massive amount of land. You would have to cover this entire nation with wind turbines in an attempt to replace the electricity that we generate from coal, natural gas, and nuclear power, and even that would not get the job done.

[….]

Achieving Biden’s goal will require aggressively building more wind and solar farms, in many cases combined with giant batteries. To fulfill his vision of an emission-free grid by 2035, the U.S. needs to increase its carbon-free capacity by at least 150%. Expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota, according to Princeton University estimates and an analysis by Bloomberg News. By 2050, when Biden wants the entire economy to be carbon free, the U.S. would need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.

(RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK)

Check Two:

Google Admits Infrastructure Impossibilities

We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.

[….]

“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”

(RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK)

  • “the plausible path to decarbonization, modeled by researchers at Princeton, sees wind and solar using up to 590,000 square kilometers — which is roughly equal to the land mass of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island and Tennessee put together. The footprint is big.” — Ezra Klein in the New York Times.

Check Three:

Added Weight (Parking Garages/Fatality Risks)

  • For example, the 2023 GMC Hummer EV, a full-size pickup, weighs more than 9,000 pounds, sporting a 2,900-pound battery. In comparison, the 2023 GMC Sierra, also a full-size pickup, weighs less than 6,000 pounds, according to Kelley Blue Book.
  • The average weight of U.S. vehicles has already increased from about 3,400 pounds to 4,300 pounds over the last 30 years as Americans have ditched passenger cars for pickups and SUVs, according to Evercore ISI analysts.

Threat level: Safety watchdogs are raising concerns after the recent deadly collapse of a parking garage in New York City called attention to the challenge of creaking infrastructure.

  • Traffic safety is particularly concerning. In crashes, the “baseline fatality probability” increases 47% for every 1,000 additional pounds in the vehicle — and the fatality risk is even higher if the striking vehicle is a light truck (SUV, pickup truck, or minivan), according to a 2011 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
  • “Since we’re seeing pedestrian and roadway fatalities at record levels, the introduction of more weight into crashes via EVs will complicate any attempts to reduce the ongoing fatality crisis that has showed no signs of abating,” Center for Auto Safety acting executive director Michael Brooks tells Axios in an email.

(RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK | RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK)

Check Four:

Slave Labor and Resource Materials

The Disturbing Reality of Cobalt Mining for Rechargeable Batteries

….Regarding the demand for the different minerals, in the case of aluminum, according to our results, the demand for minerals from the rest of the economy would stand out, with the requirement for batteries having little influence. Copper would have a high demand from the rest of the economy, but it would also have a significant demand from vehicles, infrastructure and batteries. Cobalt would be in high demand because of the manufacture of batteries with the exception of the LFP battery that does not have this mineral, in the case of its demand from the rest of the economy it can be stated that it would be important but less influential than the demand for batteries. Lithium would have very high requirements from all the batteries and with a reduced demand from the rest of the economy. Manganese would have an important but contained demand coming from LMO and NMC batteries, since the requirements for this mineral would stand out in the rest of the economy. Finally, nickel would have a high demand from NMC and NCA batteries, but its main demand would come from the rest of the economy.

The batteries that would require the least materials are the NCA and LFP batteries. The NMC battery has been surpassed in performance and mineral usage by the NCA. The LiMnO2 battery has a very poor performance, so it has been doomed to disuse in electric vehicles. In addition, the LFP battery, the only one that does not use critical materials in the cathode (other than lithium), also has poor performance, requiring very large batteries (in size and weight) to match the capacity and power of batteries using cobalt.

Charging infrastructure, rail and copper used in electrified vehicles could add up to more than 17% of the copper reserve requirement in the most unfavourable scenario (high EV) and 7% in the most favourable (degrowth), so these are elements that must be taken into account…..

(RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK | RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK)

Check Five:

Materials for One EV Battery:

  • You Dig Up 500,000 Pounds of the Earth’s Crust for One EV Auto Battery! And each of these half a million pounds of earth are dug up with a diesel engine. A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells. To manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for one battery.” (NATIONAL REVIEW – AUSTRALIA)

Check Six:

China’s “Red Barchetta”

Check Seven:

ECON 101

[….]

On a more serious note, yes, pushing technology that does not work well at all in replacing fossil fuels as sound (solar, wind, current battery tech, etc.) through subsidies and edict… yes, THAT is the issue. This video highlights [encapsulates] the result of government largess IN THAT people have a false impression these vehicles are just as good and would in a free and open market fail. Europe is moving to make natural gas and nuclear “green,” because (a) they are, and (b) they work. The U.S. has the most corrupt and politicians that vote legislation based on a Utopian ideal (say, a Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc.) or personal enrichment (say McConnell or Pelosi, etc.). Reality bites and refuses to let go… even Newsom extended Diablo Canyon nuclear plant life instead of shutting it down. Why? because it works, wind and solar wanes at best…

It is an impossible goal, but many miss out on inculcating that fact into their thinking. Thomas Sowell notes the biggest difference between “conservatives” and “the Left” are these simple and basic questions:

1) compared to what?
2) at what cost?
3) what hard-evidence do you have?

Which even if someone were to read just my “BATTERY” section of my EV Post, they will encounter thinking unheard of in their normal diet of “clean energy” thinking. “At What Cost”

So, the “short answer” to my fellow compatriot on a similar life journey is, that that video shows the failure of what a large government “buying widgets” can do:

  • “A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge” — George Gilder

Via an Interview by Dennis Prager [EDITOR’S NOTE: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” no one needed in the real world (things made that it could not use, or people did not want based on what a politician or leader in a controlled environment “thought” people would need). This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program works. Only the free-market can do this: I-PENCIL]

(RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK)

J. Waller’s CCP/Cuba Prescient Warning 2-Years Ago

Published by Papa Giorgio

MIAMI HERALD reminds us of this recent news:

Remember the Chinese spy balloon flying over the United States earlier this year, the one the Biden administration said had been capable of collecting intelligence before the U.S. shot it down off the South Carolina coast?

Now there’s a new threat coming from China. It’s a lot more blatant and it’s just 90 miles away — in Cuba.

China is establishing a spy base in Cuba, according to information first reported by the Wall Street Journal. It would be focused on the United States and give Chinese intelligence agencies a way to track electronic communication in the southwestern U.S, though the region covered would include U.S. Southern Command — in Miami-Dade County — and other military facilities.

J. Waller was on this topic early…. in this interview 2-years ago  he points out the following:

Contras in Nicaragua with J Michael Waller and Michael Johns

Jim Jordan Lays Waste To Democrat Conspiracists | John Durham

Published by Papa Giorgio

BOOOM!

At today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) questioned Special Counsel John Durham about his report on the FBI and the investigations into former President Trump.

HOT AIR has this story on the above exchange:

What did Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey know about Russia-collusion — and when did they know it? John Durham dropped a bombshell in his testimony today at House Oversight, which will go on for at least a couple of hours or more, but this part wasn’t the bombshell. In his special-counsel report, Durham had already revealed that CIA Director John Brennan briefed these four in August 2016 that Hillary Clinton planned to paint Donald Trump as linked to Russian intelligence, presumably to shift attention away from her own e-mail scandal.

That briefing resulted in a “referral memorandum,” and one of its recipients was then-FBI director James Comey. Oversight chair Jim Jordan asks Durham whether Comey ever bothered to share that with the agents assigned to the newly launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane or ever presented to the FISA court when applications were made for domestic surveillance of Trump campaign officials. 

[….]

  • JORDAN: “Did [Comey] share it with the agents…working the Crossfire Hurricane case?!”
  • DURHAM: “No.”
  • JORDAN: “Can you tell the committee what happened when you took that referral memo, and shared it with one of those agents?”
  • DURHAM: “He indicated he had never seen it before. He immediately became emotional…”
  • JORDAN: “He was ticked off!”
  • DURHAM: “The information was kept from them.”

Let me expand the truncated transcript on Durham’s recollection:

  • JORDAN: Can you tell the committee what happened when you took that referral memo, and shared it with one of those agents?
  • DURHAM: We interviewed the first supervisor on the Crossfire investigation, the operational person. We showed him the intelligence information. He indicated he had never seen it before. He immediately became emotional, and got up and left the room with his lawyer, spent some time in the hallway, came back.
  • JORDAN: He was ticked off, wasn’t he? He was ticked off because this was something he should have had as an agent on the case. This was important information that the director of the FBI kept from the people doing the investigation.
  • DURHAM: The information was kept from them.

In other words, the director of the FBI knowingly withheld evidence pertinent to an FBI investigation. That resulted not just in errors made by the agents conducting the investigation that might have resulted ending what turned out to be a witch hunt, but also contributed to misrepresentations to the FISA court about the nature of the evidence they used to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign figures.

(READ IT ALL!)

Representative Troy Nehls (R-TX) questioned Special Counsel John Durham in the House Judiciary Committee today, spending his time dismantling the absurd claims made by Democrats about the existence of an alleged “Trump Pee Tape.”

Hank Johnson shames John Durham for failing to indict Hunter Biden (but there’s a good reason for that) | TWITCHY

The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Hat-tip to THE RENEGADE INSTITUTE FOR LIBERTY) When Hong Kong’s basic freedoms come under attack, newspaper publisher and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai finds himself in the crosshairs of the state and must choose between defending Hong Kong’s long-standing liberties, or his own freedom.

  • A copy of The Road To Serfdom was given to Mr. Lai. He — tearfully — said in this film, “it changed my life”

Jimmy Lai personifies Hong Kong’s entrepreneurial spirit. This spirit, coupled with an embrace of freedom, unleashed economic prosperity for Hong Kongers and made Jimmy a billionaire. Jimmy’s native China underwent a similar prosperity by undertaking an experiment with personal and economic freedoms, lifting an astounding 800 million Chinese out of poverty. Today, it’s a different story—and the stakes couldn’t be higher for Jimmy Lai, the citizens of Hong Kong, and the people of China.

Jimmy fled Maoist revolutionaries as a 12 year old and began a new life as a simple textile laborer in Hong Kong. Within 30 years he started a fashion house and built Giordano into an enormously successful clothing retail business with thousands of stores worldwide. In reaction to China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Jimmy launched Next Media and published Hong Kong’s most successful newspaper, Apple Daily. As guardian of freedom of speech and the press, Apple Daily provided an independent voice for Hong Kong following its 1997 transition from British rule to Chinese control.

Reassured by Beijing’s “one nation, two systems” approach, much of Hong Kong’s prosperity and freedom continued—until a palpable shift occurred under the leadership of Chinese president Xi Jinping. As China retreated from its “one nation, two systems” policy and began installing pro-Beijing leaders in Hong Kong, Jimmy became a leading voice against repressive policies. Jimmy could have fled but he chose to stay, marching alongside millions of his fellow Hong Kongers in defense of freedom and democracy. He was soon arrested and jailed. International banks froze his assets. Apple Daily was raided and key executives arrested. In June 2021, Apple Daily printed its final edition and shut its doors.

Today Jimmy perseveres in a Hong Kong prison cell awaiting trial. Featuring Lord Christopher Patten, Rev. Robert Sirico, Mary Kissel, Victoria Hui, Joey Siu, William McGurn, Lord David Alton and others, The Hong Konger chronicles Jimmy’s story of heroic sacrifice and symbol of the freedom movement. From his own testimony as well as through exclusive interviews with diplomats, citizen activists, scholars, and friends from across the globe, one thing becomes clear: Jimmy’s fate is in our hands. His cause must not die in a prison cell—for freedom is not merely his cause, but the cause of all Hong Kongers, the Chinese people, and indeed all humanity.

Mike Pompeo Discusses the Chinese Spy Balloon (Chris Stigall)

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATED PICS AFTER AUDIO!

This is an excerpt of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussing China with Chris Stigall on Chris’ podcast (found here on SALEM), but the entire shows topics include:

  • Ukraine, the Chinese spy balloon, classified documents, who’s running the Biden White House, the State of the Union, and more.

Chris Stigall’s site is HERE — and there is a wonderful archive section as well.

THESE ARE REAL

The Department of Defense has released of a photo of the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down earlier this month off the coast of South Carolina after it had traversed the country. 

The photo, obtained by Fox News Digital, was taken Feb. 3 by one of the U-2 pilots. It shows a U.S. Air Force pilot looking down at the suspect Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovered over the central continental U.S. …

(FOX | DAILY MAIL)

Biden: Emboldening and Arming Our Enemies

Published by Papa Giorgio

My thoughts on the Middle-East have been pretty consistent., in that any hope of a stable area over there had the linchpin as Iraq. I think if we had committed to Iraq in a way we had with Japan and Germany, We would have had a country closer to Kuwait in governing, and headed in a faster pace than Kuwait toward more freedom. Once we pulled out of Iraq rather than continuing our presence there, all surrounding foreign policy was moot. Years and years ago I posted a short statement by KEN JOWITT that is still true today, but our chance to change the Middle-East was set on Iraq, in my opinion.

RELATED POST: Some SOFA/Iraq History (RPT FLASHBACK)

So, what I see Biden doing is both a horrible withdrawal as well as sending a message to our biggest enemies that we are weak. Before I show why I think both China and Russia will make some geo-political land grabs, here is an excellent article via PJ-MEDIA:

I’ve been fatalistic about the future of Afghanistan for so long now that I can barely remember when mission creep made our failure there a certainty.

Afghanistan isn’t a country. It’s a hole in the map where neighboring countries aren’t. Sometimes, a foreign power like Great Britain, the Soviet Union, or the United States will attempt to fill that hole. But as has been proven yet again, the hole labeled “Afghanistan” is essentially bottomless.

Absent occupying foreigners, Afghan localities typically rule themselves (badly) while the strongman-style central government tries to rule from Kabul (even more badly). In this age of renewed Islamic fundamentalism, the strongmen, local and central, were always going to be the meanest and most brutal fundamentalists.

Always.

Routing the Taliban in late 2001 was a necessary and proper response to the 9/11 attacks on this country. But there was never going to be a permanent fix.

Had President George W. Bush pulled us out when he damn well should have, in 2002 or ’03, the result would have been the same as it was on Sunday: a rapid takeover by the Taliban.

Had President Barack Obama pulled us out after killing Osama bin Laden in 2012, same result.

Had President Donald Trump pulled us out last year, yep, same thing.

But it didn’t have to be like this:

Dear God, not like this.

Presidentish Joe Biden told people just like the ones being shed from that cargo plane like so much detritus that he had a plan for getting them out.

He did not.

Biden told the world that we had weeks or even months to bring home those Afghans who had put their lives on the line to help our mission.

We did not.

In fact, the Biden administration gave the order that made the rapidity of this weekend’s Taliban takeover inevitable:

THIS is what people around the world will remember: that the United States left our Afghani friends and their families behind to be tortured and then slaughtered….

And the first to act? China… “China likely to recognize Taliban as Afghan rulers with fall of Kabul” (WASHINGTON EXAMINER). China is emboldened with US weakness in the region, the historic collapse of Afghanistan, and the frail puppet installed in Washington DC.

  • On Monday Steve Bannon warned that the US economy will implode if Taiwan falls to the Communist Chinese. According to Bannon he entire American economy centers around the chips, and in particular, the advanced chips designed, made, and manufactured in Taiwan. (GATEWAY PUNDIT)

All this said, I doubt Biden and his VERY progressive team would even bother with unenforced red-lines like Obama.

And then there is this:

The Taliban seized a staggering quantity of American military vehicles, equipment, and weapons when it overran Afghanistan in a week.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat obsessed with gun control, ended up giving billions of dollars of American weapons to the Islamist fanatics who helped perpetrate 9/11.

Only a month ago, Biden was bragging about the terrific quality of the modern “tools, training, and equipment” sent to the Afghan military at the expense of U.S. taxpayers over the past two decades.

Biden scoffed at the notion of an easy Taliban victory on July 8:

Together, with our NATO Allies and partners, we have trained and equipped over three hu- — nearly 300,000 current serving members of the military — of the Afghan National Security Force, and many beyond that who are no longer serving.  Add to that, hundreds of thousands more Afghan National Defense and Security Forces trained over the last two decades.

We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools — let me emphasize: all the tools, training, and equipment of any modern military.  We provided advanced weaponry.  And we’re going to continue to provide funding and equipment.   And we’ll ensure they have the capacity to maintain their air force.

“Do I trust the Taliban?” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question. “No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war.”…..

AMERICAN MILITARY NEWS has quite a few pics for the visually attentive:

On Friday, the Taliban seized control of Firoz Koh, the provincial capital of Ghor, Afghanistan, marking at least 17 Afghan provincial capitals the Taliban have seized in the span of a week. Videos and photos have surfaced on social media showing the Taliban taking over swaths of U.S.-donated military equipment that the Taliban is using to continue overtaking Afghanistan.

Taliban forces have reportedly captured around 100 U.S.-made Humvees and MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs) as well as U.S. ScanEagle drones left behind and the Kunduz Airport.

The Taliban captured Kunduz Airport on Wednesday and on Thursday, German journalist Julian Röpcke tweeted, “The #Taliban not only seized appr. a hundred US humvees and (MaxxPro) MRAPs at Kunduz airport, but also several US ScanEagle drones. Billions of US tax payer $ going to Islamist extremists, thanks to the administration’s hasty withdrawal without a peace deal or follow up mission…..

[pics of Tweets from article and more]

 

MSM Telegraphs It’s Bias (Larry Elder vs. The World)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Larry Elder’s Show from Wednesday the 26th (2021) was good. The upload is mainly from the first hour, however, I add a lot of video to compliment his excellent points. Very long but worth the watch and listen.

Debunked Bunkum (MSM’s Wuhan Conspiracy Montage/Supercut)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(MOONBNATTERY and TOM ELLIOT hat-tips!)

What do I think? I think that China was using the labs (level 2 and 4) to change – genetically – this coronavirus to have in it’s arsenal as a bio-weapon. But through human or facility errors (or both), it escaped. I highly doubt this release was intentional.

ARTICLES:

  • Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin (WALL STREET JOURNAL)
  • The ‘Wuhan Lab Leak’ Theory Looks More Credible Than Ever (NEW YORK POST)
  • After Mocking And Dismissing Wuhan Lab Theory, Media Now Taking It Seriously (FOX)
  • U.S. Intel Report Identified 3 Wuhan Lab Researchers Who Fell Ill In November 2019 (NBC)
  • PolitiFact Retracts Wuhan Lab Theory ‘Fact-Check’ (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
  • More Evidence That The Wuhan Lab-Leak Theory Is The Correct One (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
  • Facebook Decides to Finally Let You Say Something Previously Verboten About COVID (PJ-MEDIA)
  • Facebook Lifts Ban on Wuhan Lab Leak Posts amid Renewed Debate over Theory (NATIONAL REVIEW)
  • CNN Flip Flops and Blames Trump For Their Denial (RPT)
  • Mainstream Media Finally Reports on Wuhan Illnesses in November 2019 – More Than A Year After First Reported By TGP (GATEWAY PUNDIT)
  • China Joe Shut Down State Department Probe Into Covid’s Origins — FAUCI: IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A “DERELICTION OF DUTY” TO NOT FUND THE WUHAN LAB (ACE OF SPADES)
  • Virologist: NIAID Grantee Funded Wuhan Coronavirus Studies Used In Gain-Of-Function Research (JUST THE NEWS)
  • “Take COVID Lab Theory Seriously,” Say Top Academics (NATIONAL PULSE)
  • Wuhan Lab DELETED Fauci’s NIH And Gain Of Function Mentions From Old Web Pages In Early 2021 (NATIONAL PULSE)
  • Fauci Says He’s No Longer Sure COVID Occurred Naturally… (WEASEL ZIPPERS)
  • Bombshell Letter in Prestigious Scientific Journal Calls for New Investigation Into COVID-19’s Origins  (PJ-MEDIA)
  • Unearthed Evidence Shows Fauci Defended ‘Integral’ Gain-Of-Function Research Despite Pandemic ‘Risks’ (NATIONAL PULSE)
  • Wuhan Lab Researcher’s Wife Died Of COVID-Like Illness In December 2019, Former Lead US Investigator Says (DAILY CALLER)

Premiered Apr 7, 2020

Ben Swann — Apr 17, 2020

1-Year Ago:

Media slammed as conspiracies, but later turned out true.

  • the MSM said ppl who believed the FBI spied on Trump were whacks… turned out true . Mark Levin called it in March of 2017.
  • The media said what was said to be going on in the nursing homes in New York was a big conspiracy from conservatives. Turned out to be worse than expected.
  • The MSM said the Hunter laptop story was a conspiracy, and very likely a Russian propaganda operation. Biden even said he had zero discussions with his sone and brother regarding Hunter’s business dealings. This turned out to be patently false
  • Biden met with Ukranian, Kazakhstan, and Russian business associated of Hunter. There are signed receipts by Hunter when he dropped it off — lol.
  • the MSM and Big Tech censored evidence and called the idea of Covid escaping a lab in Wuhan conspiratorial. As of this week, Big Tech has backed off censoring these now heavily evidentiary positions.
  • It was touted that Dominion Machines did not have wireless modems, and were safe for elections. Anyone who thought different was called crazy. Turns out Dominion now admits “human error” can influence the election (per Dominion)
  • People were called conspiracy nuts for thinking Antifa/BLM dressed up as Trumpers and entered the Capital. Turns out they have arrested one main agitator (seen stoking the crowd) and seized money paid him from CNN. He and some others were Antifa/BLM.
  • For 2-years the media said Mueller had evidence. The media said Trump said there were good Nazi’s.
  • Etc., Etc.

Trump and Republicans have been batting .750

LOL – VOX STEALTH EDITS

(Click to go to larger source)

Make Orwell Fiction Again (Hunter Biden Edition)

Published by Papa Giorgio

A family member commented on a sticker on the back-window of my van by affirming the idea of “Make Orwell Fiction Again.” (Click to Enlarge) [This will be a continuing series to address this idea]

However,  knowing that his only form of news is essentially late-night [political] comics, CNN, and NPR… he meant it in a differing way than both the novel, and I meant it. So, below will be the beginning of a series of articles with small excerpts that I will continually add to in other posts. And note as well that what we have is a marriage of Orwell as well as Huxley as expressed in the quote from Joshua Charles’ book, Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders, found here: Orwell vs. Huxley (Big Tech Update)

MOST MEDIA EXCLUDES CONSERVATIVE IDEAS

Only a society that can effectively block and censor news, and shut down free expression is the kind the sticker refers to. Non-conservative ideas and news stories can be found readily in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ABC, NPR, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc.

In fact, almost every newspaper WITH THE EXCEPTION of the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and the New York Post, and at times FOX NEWS, have a more conservative leaning bias and news stories to be considered.

One example is that years ago the L.A. Times carried columns by Dennis Prager (and other conservative voices). Today they carry zero.

TWITTER/FACEBOOK CENSOR MAJOR NEWS STORY

THE NEW YORK POST was censored for many weeks… scrubbed from Twitter as well as Facebook. Here is what my past Twitter looked liked when trying to share the story:

This was all common knowledge [for the most part] because of Peter Schweizer’s March 2019 book, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends“. And the NEW YORK POST had a wonderful article that Facebook, Twitter, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, NYT, WaPo — essentially ignored or censored.

EVEN LEFTIE GLENN GREENWALD CENSORED

Armstrong and Getty cover Glenn Greenwald resigning from the “free speech” news outlet he founded. The article mentioned them of Glenn’s is this one: “Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept”. [As an aside, I added MUCH MORE of the Tucker interview.]:

In Glenn’s article, this stood out (SUBSTACK):

….The U.S. media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.

A media outlet that renounces its core function — pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people — is one that deserves to lose the public’s faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored.

As my colleague Lee Fang put it on Sunday: “The partisan double standards in the media are mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear.” Discussing his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this way: “The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it’s true.”…

50 FORMER SENIOR INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS WERE WRONG

The NEW YORK POST opines on the recent “discovering” of an old story: “Liberal media ‘snuffed out’ Hunter Biden coverage until after election to help defeat Trump: critics” . But a must read article is this one over at RED STATE: “Ric Grenell Blows Up, Big Time, the Group That Should Be Most Ashamed of What They Did on the Hunter Biden Story“

So we’ve all been talking a lot about the investigation into Hunter Biden and how the mainstream media seems to have finally caught up to the fact that yes, it’s real and it’s Russian disinformation as some tried to claim before the election.

Now that they think Joe Biden won, they’re free to just say “oh, well, here’s this thing.”

Never mind that they consciously suppressed it from the American people and completely failed in their supposed job prior to the election.

We saw a lot of conservatives chastising the media today for what they did.

But I wanted to talk about another group.

We expect the Democrats to cover for Biden. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told CNN it was a “smear” straight from the Kremlin. CNN’s Jeff Zucker said in his morning conference call to impress upon people this stuff about Hunter was just more “Russian disinformation.” A lot of mainstream media has become little more than Democratic operatives at this point.

There’s a group that we don’t expect and for sure shouldn’t be playing this game and that’s the intelligence community.

But they have and they did in this instance as well.

There were 50 former senior intelligence officers who signed a letter saying that Hunter Biden’s emails had all the signs of a Russian disinformation campaign……

MEDIA “DISCOVERED” STORY AFTER BIDEN ELECTED

Except the story was [and still is] 100% true. It was Russian disinformation UNTIL BIDEN WON, then the media discovered it’s veracity.

…After the New York Post’s reporting was dismissed and characterized by members of the media as a “baseless conspiracy theory,” a “smear campaign,” and “Russian disinformation,” Wednesday’s announcement from Hunter Biden was ultimately too much for the media to ignore.

All three major networks’ evening newscasts addressed the controversy, with “NBC Nightly News” spending the most time on the subject, clocking in at roughly one minute and 16 seconds of coverage while “CBS Evening News” came in a distant second, with roughly 45 seconds of coverage, followed by ABC’s “World News Tonight” with roughly just 30 seconds. 

CNN anchor Jake Tapper reported the breaking news as it happened during his program, which was quite the opposite tone that he took during the election when he dismissed the allegations against Hunter Biden as “too disgusting” to repeat on-air.

Tapper’s colleagues Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper also mentioned the explosive development on their shows, while CNN anchors Erin Burnett, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon avoided the subject….

(FOX)

  • Jake Tapper declares Hunter Biden claims ‘too disgusting’ to repeat on CNN: ‘The rightwing is going crazy’ — CNN is among other major news outlets that continue to downplay the growing Biden controversy (FOX)
  • CNN boss, political director spiked Hunter Biden controversy, audiotapes reveal: ‘We’re not going with’ story — Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe vowed he will release ‘raw recordings’ of the over 50 conference calls every day until Christmas. (FOX)
  • Ric Grenell calls out CNN’s Jake Tapper for belatedly covering Hunter Biden story — ‘This story broke in October. You didn’t do it then,’ former acting DNI scolded the CNN anchor (FOX)

1984 JUMPS TO #1 ON AMAZON AMID EXPANDED CENSORSHIP

JUST THE NEWS notes the jump to #1 of 1984 on Amazon

As “big tech” companies have moved to silence conservative voices on the Internet, mega-marketer Amazon reports on Sunday that its overall top-selling book is 1984, a decades old novel that portrays a society completely controlled by government “Thought Police.”

The spike in sales comes amid a rush of shutdowns in which these moves occurred in rapid succession:

  • Twitter on Friday booted Donald Trump from its platform and erased the entire history of his tweets;
  • Facebook deleted a grassroots organization for disenchanted Democrats, WalkAway;
  • Apple and Google banned the messaging platform Parler from its app stores;
  • and Amazon said it imminently will ban Parler, which is used by many conservatives, from company servers.

As of Sunday morning, Amazon book sales showed that the top-selling book is the dystopian novel published by George Orwell more than 70 years ago. The classic novel, published in 1949, depicts how government Thought Police eavesdrop on citizens in their own homes, searching for heresy of any kind. Anyone whose beliefs deviate from the official norm are declared “unpersons” who never existed.

Reviewers on Amazon drew parallels between the book’s plot and current events in the United States.

“Born and living in communist Romania I went through the same ordeal described in 1987,” wrote Constantin Turculet, who is listed as making a verified purchase. “After 40 years I managed to escape to America, only to find after 35 years of living in freedom that this country is pushed toward the same horror scenario I thought mankind will never forget.”…

CLICK TO ENLARGE

  • Later ages are always surprised by the casual brutality of totalitarian regimes. What those innocent ages neglect is the unshakeable (though misguided) conviction of virtue that animates the totalitarians. The historian John Kekes, writing about Robespierre in City Journal some years ago, touched on the essential point. If we understand Robespierre, “we understand that it is utterly useless to appeal to reason and morality in dealing with ideologues. For they are convinced that reason and morality are on their side and that their enemies are irrational and immoral simply because they are enemies.” That is the position of conservatives in American culture today. (AMERICAN GREATNESS)

WARNINGS YEARS AGO

Tammy Bruce’s book, “The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds,” was an important salvo in all this. Not the first book, but one of the most relevant for it’s day. Tammy has noted for years the censorship of the Left, one example is an older post:

Well, this explains why I never got a response to my #AskPOTUS questions, “What’s wrong with you?” and “What meds are you on?”

Via Washington Examiner.

A former Twitter CEO took measures to ensure messages critical of President Obama wouldn’t circulate too widely on the platform during a 2015 question-and-answer session, according to a new report.

The incident allegedly occurred during a May 2015 “#AskPOTUS” event on the platform, when former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo purportedly ordered the creation of an algorithm to suppress the messages and used employees to manually scrub any critical content missed by the software.

Costolo kept the decision secret from company executives for fear that someone might object, several sources told Buzzfeed….

Related: NY Observer: Tech Companies Apple, Twitter, Google, and Instagram Collude to Defeat Trump

The tech companies are just emboldened now. That’s all.

TONY BOBULINSKI AND LEFTIE LEGAL SCHOLAR, JONATHAN TURLEY

Yep, there were MANY disgusting videos on Hunter Biden’s laptop: him sexually abusing underage girls, including a family member, smoking crack, etc. But what was more disgusting was covering up a real news story [evidence of pay to play in the Ukraine and China] by almost all news outlets (print or media), as well as the censoring of it on social media. However, as Jonathan Turley notes wisely about NPR….. the designation as “a distraction” shows a bias rather than a news outfit, video precedes Turley’s article for context:

Tony Bobulinski will attend Thursday night’s debate as guest of President Trump.

JONATHAN TURLEY [Lefty Legal Scholar] notes this about Tony Bobulinski giving AMPLE evidence of who “the big guy” is:

A former business partner to Hunter Biden, Tony Bobulinski, has made a bombshell statement that not only are the emails on the Biden laptop authentic but the reference to giving a cut to “the big guy” was indeed a reference to former Vice President Joe Biden. More emails are emerging that show Hunter Biden referring to his family as his asset in these dealings.

The emails that have attracted the most attention refer to an actual meeting of Joe  Biden with these foreign figures and one referring to a proposed equity split of “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?” Bobulinski confirms that “H” was used for Hunter Biden and that his father was routinely called “the big guy” in these discussions.

Another email Bobulinski being instructed by James Gilliar not to make any mention of the former veep’s involvement: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.”

 Bobulinski said he was brought on as CEO by Hunter Biden and James Gilliar and stated that he believes Joe Biden was lying in denying any knowledge of these dealings, stating Hunter “frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals.”  He added that “The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China.”

His statement reads in part:

I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to “the Big Guy” in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other “JB” referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother.

Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.

I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

This is obviously just one side and the documents do not show a direct role or benefit for Joe Biden. However, it would seem that between the FBI statement and this witness statement, there is ample foundation for media scrutiny.  Yet, organizations like NPR has dismissed the story on Thursday as a “distraction.”

[….]

I have written for years that Hunter Biden was clearly influence peddling and he contradicted his father’s denial of any knowledge of his dealings.  The media can continue to hold its breath for weeks to try to avoid the obvious in this story.  That could well guarantee Biden the presidency but it will destroy the media’s credibility for years.

THIS CENSORSHIP PUSHED BIDEN INTO THE “WIN” COLUMN

It did guarantee a Biden victory BTW:

OMISSION

Click to enlarge:

(CNS NEWS)

…For the post-election survey, The Polling Company interviewed 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, six of which (excluding North Carolina) were called for Biden. The voters were asked about their knowledge of eight news stories, all of which the liberal media had downplayed or censored.

The survey showed “a huge majority (82%) of Biden voters were unaware of at least one of these key items, with five percent saying they were unaware of all eight of the issues we tested,” reported the MRC.

For instance, despite the #MeToo movement and the media coverage it garnered, the survey found that 35.4% of Biden voters were unaware of the serious allegations of sexual assault made by Tara Reade against Joe Biden. Reade had worked for Biden in the 1990s.

“If they had known about Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations, 8.9% told us they would have changed their vote — either switching to Trump or a 3rd party candidate, not voting for any presidential candidate, or not voting at all,” said the MRC.

“By itself, this would have flipped all six of the swing states won by Biden (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), giving the president a win with 311 electoral college votes,” said the organization.

Another important story buried by the major media was the Hunter Biden laptop story, which showed that Joe Biden was aware of his son’s business dealings in the Ukraine and in Communist China.

Yet 45.1% of Biden voters said they were unaware of the laptop story.

“According to our poll, full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump, giving the President 311 electoral votes,” reported the MRC.

Similar results were found when Biden voters were asked about the other six censored stories – Kamala Harris’s radical left-wing policies; positive economic and job reports; Middle East peace deals brokered by Trump; energy independence; and the swift vaccine production as a result of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.

“Looking at all eight of these issues together, our poll found that a total of 17% of Biden’s voters told us they would have changed their vote if they had been aware of one or more of these important stories,” reported the MRC.

“This would have moved every one of the swing states into Trump’s column, some by a huge margin,” said the MRC. “The President would have trounced Biden in the electoral college, 311 to 227.”

The MRC noted that the Biden voters who said they would have voted differently had they been properly informed by the media, did not have to vote for Trump for the president to have won a second term.

“Just by choosing to abandon Biden, these voters would have handed all six of these states, and a second term, to the President — if the news media had properly informed them about the two candidates,” said the MRC. (Emphasis added.)

(SEE NEWSBUSTERS)

RUSH LIMBAUGH: The MSM “Discovers” the Hunter Biden Story

Published by Papa Giorgio

This was all common knowledge [for the most part] because of Peter Schweizer’s March 2019 book, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends“. And the NEW YORK POST had a wonderful article that Facebook, Twitter, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, NYT, WaPo — essentially ignored or censored.

Some previous uploads speaking to the censorship are these:

The NEW YORK POST opines on the recent “discovering” of an old story: “Liberal media ‘snuffed out’ Hunter Biden coverage until after election to help defeat Trump: critics” . But a must read article is this one over at RED STATE: “Ric Grenell Blows Up, Big Time, the Group That Should Be Most Ashamed of What They Did on the Hunter Biden Story“

So we’ve all been talking a lot about the investigation into Hunter Biden and how the mainstream media seems to have finally caught up to the fact that yes, it’s real and it’s Russian disinformation as some tried to claim before the election.

Now that they think Joe Biden won, they’re free to just say “oh, well, here’s this thing.”

Never mind that they consciously suppressed it from the American people and completely failed in their supposed job prior to the election.

We saw a lot of conservatives chastising the media today for what they did.

But I wanted to talk about another group.

We expect the Democrats to cover for Biden. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told CNN it was a “smear” straight from the Kremlin. CNN’s Jeff Zucker said in his morning conference call to impress upon people this stuff about Hunter was just more “Russian disinformation.” A lot of mainstream media has become little more than Democratic operatives at this point.

There’s a group that we don’t expect and for sure shouldn’t be playing this game and that’s the intelligence community.

But they have and they did in this instance as well.

There were 50 former senior intelligence officers who signed a letter saying that Hunter Biden’s emails had all the signs of a Russian disinformation campaign……