Month: September 2022

Argentine health officials announced on Saturday that a pneumonia of previously unknown origin has been linked to Legionnaires’ disease – a rare bacterial infection of the lungs, after four people in a clinic in northwestern Tucuman province died. Seven others are currently infected.

The cases have been linked to a single private clinic in the northwestern city of San Miguel de Tucumán, according to the WHO’s regional office, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told reporters in a Saturday statement that Legionnaires’ had been identified as the cause of double pneumonia in the four who died after the rare bacterial infection was initially ruled out, according to a Friday report by Reuters.

On Tuesday, five health care workers and a patient who required intensive care were reported with pneumonia of unknown origin. Their symptoms emerged between Aug. 18 – 22.

Then on Thursday, three more cases were reported by local health officials, bringing the total number to nine, and on Friday and Saturday Argentina reported the 10th and 11th cases.

The most recent death was that of a 48-year-old man with underlying health problems, which followed a 70-year-old woman who had undergone surgery in the clinic.

In total, 11 cases have been identified – nearly all involving clinic staff according to provincial officials. Of the seven under care, “four remain hospitalized, three of them under respiratory assistance, and three are under home surveillance, with less complicated clinical symptoms,” said provincial health minister Luis Medina Ruiz on Saturday, who added that “toxic and environmental causes” could not be ruled out – and that the clinic’s climate control systems were being checked.

Reported symptoms include fever, muscle and abdominal pain and shortness of breath, with several patients experiencing pneumonia in both lungs.

The disease first appeared in 1976 at a meeting of the American Legion veterans group in Philadelphia, PA, and was linked to contaminated water or unclean air conditioning systems.

When the outbreak first appeared in Tucumán, officials first tested for Covied-19, flu and hantavirus, ruling them all out. Samples were then analyzed by the Malbran Institute in Buenos Aires, which pointed to Legionnaires’.

Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The fresh controversy stoked by ongoing revelations about the FBI’s raid of the Mar-a-Lago home of former President Donald Trump, including the release on Sept. 2 of a detailed inventory of documents and items retrieved in the raid, is unlikely to have a significant effect on the outcome of the November midterm elections, political strategists have told The Epoch Times.

The issues of concern to voters still struggling with massive inflation, and a bloated national debt exacerbated by President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive some $500 billion worth of federal student loans, will be much more decisive factors in the minds of voters heading to the polls, the strategists say.

Reports on Friday that a small number of the thousands of documents seized by federal agents contained information labeled secret, confidential, or top secret, might appear to some observers to spell bad news for the former president and his anticipated 2024 reelection bid. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has made public an inventory of the items of property taken in the raid, the vast majority of which—11,179—were not classified as in any way secret or confidential. But, according to a tally compiled by the New York Post, 54 documents were labeled “Secret,” 31 were “Confidential,” and 18 were officially “Top Secret.”

The secret and top-secret documents were found in Trump’s office and in a storage room on the property, the Post reported.

Muted Impact

In spite of these revelations, the investigation into documents transferred from the White House at the time of Trump’s departure in January 2021 is still at an early stage, is prone to missteps and possible backfiring, and none of the findings are likely to dissuade voters from supporting Republican candidates or drive them to cross the political aisle and vote for the incumbent party, experts say. In part, this is simply a function of the timing of the investigation and of the November elections.

“I think there will be more activity by the Department of Justice, but they will be careful. If they make a misstep, it will benefit Trump. I don’t think raid will affect the midterms much unless there is an indictment of Trump, which I think is very unlikely before November,” Keith Naughton, the principal of Silent Majority Strategies, a political consultancy based in Germantown, Maryland, told The Epoch Times.

Naughton acknowledged that the raid, and recent statements by Trump, such as his call for a redo of the 2020 election, may motivate voters already inclined to support Democrat candidates. But while Democrats may hope that the raid and subsequent revelations prove highly embarrassing to Trump and the GOP, the truth is that most of the electorate will still vote on the basis of the larger economic issues affecting their day-to-day lives, Naughton believes.

“The student loan giveaway by Biden is backfiring badly and the economy is not really improving, even if inflation is moderating a bit. Republicans and independents will turn out to vote against Biden’s flailing policies,” Naughton said.

Naughton alluded to a debt forgiveness plan that has left even former Democrat officials and left-leaning economists expressing concerns about the feasibility of the measure and its long-term impact on the economy, what with a federal deficit of $1 trillion and some $30 trillion of overall government debt.

The fallout from this measure is likely to be severe for Democrat candidates as the public comes to perceive more and more that a purportedly altruistic measure works to the disadvantage of poorer citizens in the long term while pushing government debt to ever more unsustainable levels, some economists believe.

“I suspect this supposed to be a first step to making taxpayers liable for all student loans, and eventually to the federal government making college ‘free.’ College education would then be a transfer from the less well-off to the wealthier, who have much higher rates of college preparation and attendance. It would also put the federal government on an even faster track to a debt crisis,” Charles Steele, Chair of the Department of Economics, Business, and Accounting at Hillsdale College in Michigan, told The Epoch Times.

The question of whether Trump may or may not have violated the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which established a highly specific protocol regarding the handling of documents by outgoing presidents, is a partisan-driven distraction from the issues on people’s minds, he continued.

“The New York-Washington media axis is obsessed with Trump, the raid, and the January 6 hearings, and is very much out of touch. The rest of the country is much more concerned with the cost of living and issues affecting their livelihoods,” Naughton said.

The Greater Mobilizer?

Some commentators believe that, regardless of public concerns about the raid or what legal consequences the FBI’s actions and the ongoing investigation may have, challenges loom for Republican candidates in an environment where significant backlash against the Supreme Court’s recent divisive ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reversed Roe v. Wade, is all but inevitable.

“Democrats are motivated by the Dobbs decision in a far greater way than the raid motivates Republicans,” David Carlucci, a former New York State senator who now works as a political consultant, told The Epoch Times.

In the past, the issue of legal access to abortions was not quite the dealbreaker that it has become in the months since the Dobbs ruling, Carlucci argued. The decision has changed the game, and Republicans ignore this at their peril.

“Republican politicians have for years been able to be pro-life and still get pro-choice voter support. Pro-choice voters have felt secure [in the belief] that access to a safe abortion would be protected. Moderate Republicans now have to carry water for their most conservative Republican counterparts because strict abortion bans are very much a concern for moderate voters,” Carlucci said.

But other observers reject this analysis and argue that federal law enforcement has already committed such severe missteps in the execution of the raid and attempts to justify it that the fallout will give Trump-endorsed candidates an edge in the midterms.

Rick Wiley, a political consultant who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, told The Epoch Times that the raid and its aftermath have “fired up” the GOP base.

“The raid at Mar-a-Lago is one of those moments in history, where you remember where you were when you heard they raised the President’s private residence. And overwhelmingly, people are saying, ‘Was all this necessary?’ That’s a problem for the FBI and DOJ. They left everyone in the dark for days before they gave a half-hearted, at best, explanation for what happened, and most people were left scratching their heads,” Wiley said.

Read more here…

Not long ago, if a company or corporation faced intense backlash from millions of their intended customers, they would try to fix the problem and appease the people that put money in their pockets.  In the past few years, though, things have changed.  Now, if millions of people don’t like a product they are attacked and shamed by companies as “bigots, racists, misogynists, etc.”  The idea is a rather authoritarian one – The consumer is now beholden to the establishment and its business partners.  If the establishment approves of a product you are not allowed to dislike or criticize that product.   If you do, you are a bad person with malicious intent.

The business/buyer relationship has become a landowner/peasant relationship.  In their minds they have cast pearls of propaganda and because you are swine you just see it as garbage.  

In the case of popular media and streaming entertainment when the public or a fandom criticizes a product the corporate response is to call it “review bombing.”  There is, of course, no such thing.  As a production company you must acknowledge that a large number of people don’t like your film or TV show and you are losing customers – You don’t own them, they own you.  

For Amazon, the intention was to take yet another beloved property (Lord Of The Rings) and twist it into a vehicle for more woke propaganda, including intersectional feminist messaging and forced diversity casting for a story that was written as an ancient historical record of England.  Imagine if a company decided to make a movie about a fantastical African mythology and half the casting was white?  It would not go over very well…

Is ‘The Rings Of Power’ the worst case of leftist propaganda ever created?  No, but it is the straw that broke the camel’s back.  This time the fandom is in heavy opposition and is not afraid to speak out.  The American consumer has grown weary and frustrated with the endless injection of social justice politics into our entertainment culture and now they are fighting back and speaking out.  

Amazon and leftists in general are not happy about this.  Amazon is particularly worried because they have spent billions in production costs already for a show that now has a 37% audience ratings score on Rotten Tomatoes.  It appears they have decided that they won’t allow the same thing to happen on their own website.  

Amazon is currently blocking reviews for 72 hours in order to “weed out the trolls.”  Meaning, they will most likely remove numerous negative reviews and keep all positive reviews in order to artificially boost the show’s audience rating.  There has been suspicion of this kind of behavior by Amazon and other websites in the past when it comes to woke productions, but this is the first time they have blatantly declared censorship of negative reviews.  At the very least, it is a sign of panic among the Hollywood establishment as they face widespread exposure of their propaganda.        

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Police in Michigan are working with the state government to investigate how a piece of voting equipment ended up for sale online, according to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

“We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate allegations of an illegal attempt to sell a voter assist terminal acquired in Michigan,” Benson said in a statement.

“Voter assist terminals are not used to tabulate ballots, but are typically used by voters with disabilities who need assistance marking their ballot privately at polling places,” she said.

“While our elections remain secure and safe, we take seriously all violations of election law and will be working with relevant authorities to ensure there are consequences for those who break the law.”

The machine had disappeared from the Colfax Township in Wexford County.

Colfax Township Clerk Becky Stoddard confirmed to the Cadillac News that the equipment taken was a voter assist terminal machine or tablet from her township. Wexford County Clerk Alaina Nyman told the outlet that the voter assist terminal was noticed as missing some time before the August primary.

“The equipment that went missing was not anything that could change a vote. It was a touchscreen [Voter Assist Terminal] machine,” Nyman said. “No election data was on it and you can’t get into the machine without the program cards and those were all accounted for.”

Under Michigan election law, it is a felony to “conceal, withhold, or destroy a ballot box or voting machine,” as well as to “obtain undue possession of that ballot box or voting machine.”

Connecticut Man Obtained Device From eBay: Reports

Harri Hursti, a cybersecurity expert in Connecticut, said he had purchased a Michigan voting device on eBay for $1,200. He told WJBK that he then reached out to state officials after the purchase went through.

On Twitter, Hursti wrote: “I contacted MI authorities even before the machine arrived – and before I even knew for certain if the machine had been used in Michigan.

“I still do not know that as a fact, because the machine is still in an [unopened] box,” he added.

Read more here…

Students across the US are returning to classrooms for the fall semester. Many school districts resumed class last week and have sought to boost security since the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May.

Calls for protecting the more than 50 million US public school students have grown louder since Uvalde. The tragedy haunts many parents as they send their kids off to school. 

Some Democratic politicians and policymakers rejected calls for “hardening” schools. Meanwhile, Republicans have said adding school resource officers and arming teachers and administrators are deterrence measures that would allow for a quick response to neutralize active shooter situations — unlike what happened in Uvalde, where video footage shows it took local police officers 77 minutes to breach the classroom where the shooter was hiding.

The latest sign at least one school is trying something different — instead of inaction — is a private school in Texas that will soon allow teachers certified in a new firearms course to carry weapons on them at all times in school, according to Victoria Advocate, a daily newspaper published in Victoria. 

Faith Academy will soon allow school personnel to carry concealed handguns. Training begins in the next couple of weeks and will involve dozens of hours of firearms training, which addresses student protection, interaction with first responders, tactics for denying intruders entry into a school, and increased handgun accuracy. 

Faith Academy is planning on implementing a program that will allow teachers and staff to carry weapons at school.

The private Victoria Christian school is joining several area school districts in taking advantage of a Texas law that gives school officials the authority to let private individuals have guns on school premises, which is otherwise illegal.

This provision is often called the “guardian plan” or “guardian program,” though that name is not official.

Unlike most of the public school districts that have implemented such a plan, Faith’s teachers and staff will have the guns on their person during the school day, according to Principal Larry Long. — Victoria Advocate

Victoria Christian school is joining several area school districts in Texas and various parts of the country that have begun to harden schools. 

Last month, Madison County Schools in North Carolina worked with the local sheriff’s office to install AR-15-style rifles in schools across the district so school resource officers could neutralize a threat immediately. 

In July, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a new measure to expedite school firearms training for teachers. 

Schools that are gun-free zones are favorite targets for mass shooters.

Recent data from Crime Prevention Research Center shows a high percentage of all mass shootings occur in gun-free zones. 

Schools are a soft target. Once bad people understand there are ‘good guys and women’ with a gun in a school, they will be less likely to go in there and shoot. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Hillary Clinton recently hawked a line of hats with a mocking logo — “But her emails.” The taunt was directed at Donald Trump, who faces a real possibility of a criminal charge after the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago residence.

While Clinton considers her prior conduct a subject of mirth, the FBI’s handling of her case will cast a long shadow over any potential prosecution of the former president, including the recent focus on an obstruction charge. There likely would be an assortment of “but her emails” objections to a charge that could have been made as readily against Clinton or her associates.

The appointment of a special master to examine materials seized in the Trump investigation has occupied much of the attention in the past week. Trump’s legal team’s belated request for a special master could help bring greater clarity to the raid’s scope and seizures. Yet it will not likely alter the trajectory of the case, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) has repeatedly stressed is an “active criminal investigation.”

What is notable is the government’s obvious effort to focus public attention on obstruction as a potential crime. Emphasizing obstruction, instead of the improper retention of classified material, could be seen as a way to navigate a political minefield to get to a prosecution. The reason, once again, is Hillary Clinton, who remains a complicating factor in Attorney General Merrick Garland showing the public that this is not about pursuing Trump but enforcing the law.

In its filings in the last two weeks, the most worrisome line for Trump came in the DOJ’s 36-page opposition to a special master’s appointment when it declared that “obstructive conduct occurred” at Mar-a-Lago in the months leading up to the Aug. 8 search. The DOJ also said it “has developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”

Those types of statements never bode well for a target, since they reflect a certain commitment to the prosecutorial path.

The value of shifting toward an obstruction case is that it would reduce the complications of any Trump claims on declassification or executive privilege to remove documents while he remained president. (The three cited statutes do not require classified status for a crime but two deal with the unlawful possession or handling of defense or sensitive information.) Trump has not fully explained how he allegedly declassified all of this material. Under Section 1519, the government can prosecute someone who “knowingly conceals any document with the intent to obstruct” their investigation.

The filings do not indicate that the government has evidence of knowing concealment by Trump, but it cited various representations made by lawyers on his behalf.

Trump might be familiar with such cases because he pardoned Jesse Benton in the final days of his administration. Benton, who managed Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign, was convicted of violating Section 1519 by concealing campaign payments from the Federal Election Commission. Ironically, Trump signed that pardon as his staff was preparing to leave the White House, including having these boxes packed for transport to Mar-a-Lago.

While the released evidence would clearly support a charge of obstruction, it is unclear what acts were knowingly taken and by whom.

A criminal charge of obstruction against Trump would offer certain political benefits for Garland. As previously discussed, the government has routinely elected not to prosecute high-ranking officials for improperly removing classified material or has sought mere misdemeanor charges in the most egregious cases.

Prosecuting Trump for a misdemeanor for possessing or removing classified documents would seem gratuitous, while prosecuting him for a felony would raise questions of biased or selective prosecution. After all, in 2016, Hillary Clinton had not just 113 documents containing classified material but some documents “classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level” on her private email servers. (In Trump’s case, the government allegedly found roughly 100 documents in the Mar-a-Lago raid in addition to roughly 150 handled over by the Trump team under an earlier subpoena.)

Clinton’s documents were even more vulnerable to being compromised via her unclassified email account and, according to the FBI, “hostile actors gained access” to some of the information. Yet she was never subjected to a raid, let alone a charge.

Yet, while less glaring as a contradiction than the charges on the possession or handling of classified information, an obstruction charge would allow up to a 20-year sentence and could be brought with misdemeanor charges on the mishandling or retention of classified information.

Thus, an obstruction charge against Trump would be prosecuted in the shadow of Hillary Clinton’s case. In addition to the transfer of top-secret and other classified documents to her private server, Clinton and her staff did not fully cooperate with investigators. During the investigations of her conduct, some of us marveled at the temerity of the Clinton staff in refusing to turn over her laptop and other evidence to State Department and DOJ investigators. The FBI had to cut deals with her aides to secure their cooperation.

Later, more classified material was found on the laptop of former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who was married to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin — 49,000 emails potentially relevant to the Clinton investigation.

After Congress sought these emails, Clinton’s staff unilaterally destroyed thousands of emails with BleachBit. Clinton was aware that Congress and the State Department were seeking the emails in 2014. Her lawyers turned over about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department and deleted 33,000 others while insisting they unilaterally deemed them “personal.”

Garland may be able to make a case against Trump and show that it is indeed distinguishable from the Clinton case and others. What has been alleged is undeniably serious, including the alleged failure to comply with an earlier subpoena and false statements. However, Garland must address the legitimate concerns of millions of Americans that the same office involved in past Trump investigations — with documented instances of false or misleading statements — is leading this new effort. There also is the great concern over the Biden administration charging a prior and possibly future political opponent.

Any criminal case should be based not only on unassailable legal theories and facts but on clear consistency with past cases. That case will turn on still undisclosed evidence of what was known about the contents of the boxes found at Mar-a-Lago and how the documents were handled after the Trump team learned of the FBI’s investigation.

With Hillary Clinton selling “But Her Emails” hats at $30 a pop, Merrick Garland will have to explain the prospect of one politician going to jail while the other goes retail.