Month: September 2023

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

COVID-19 vaccine was detected in patients who died within a month of vaccination, according to a new study.

U.S. researchers analyzed tissue samples from the autopsies of 25 people, including 20 who were vaccinated.

Samples from the hearts of three patients, all of whom died within 30 days of a Pfizer shot, tested positive for messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA).

Eight bilateral axillary lymph node samples, from people who died within 30 days of a Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, also tested positive. The companies’ shots utilize mRNA.

The research shows “the vaccine can persist for up to 30 days, including in the heart,” Dr. James Stone, with the departments of pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times via email.

The study was published by npj Vaccines. Authors declared no conflicts of interest. They said the research was supported by Massachusetts General Hospital, which is in Boston.

In testing of heart and bilateral axillary lymph node tissues from other vaccinated people who died, no vaccine was detected.

Additionally, no vaccine was detected in the liver, spleen, or mediastinal lymph nodes—vaccine was detected in the liver and spleen in preclinical rodent studies before—nor was any detected in tissues from the unvaccinated patients.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are known to cause myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that can result in death.

The people who had mRNA detected in the heart did not have myocarditis, though they did have detectable heart injuries, researchers found.

The researchers said they believed the heart injuries stemmed from underlying diseases and not the vaccines.

“There is no indication as yet that the vaccine in the heart is causing any problems in these patients; neither the causes of death nor the causes of the myocardial injury were linked to the vaccines in that study,” said Dr. Stone, one of the authors of the paper.

That position was challenged by Dr. Clare Craig, a British pathologist who reviewed the research.

“The vaccine should not have been there. There was evidence of heart damage. Those three people are now dead,” Dr. Craig told The Epoch Times in a message.

She said the researchers were setting too high of a bar for causality.

The researchers wanted to test the tissue for vaccine in light of research that has found both spike protein and mRNA persisting in axillary lymph nodes and blood for weeks or even months after vaccination. The testing would help “gain a better understanding of the biodistribution and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines,” they said. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.

Researchers ended up with tissues from 20 vaccinated patients, including six who received one dose, 12 who received two doses, and two who received three doses. They also formed a control group of five unvaccinated patients.

Six bilateral axillary lymph node samples were available for people vaccinated with Moderna’s shot. Two tested positive for the vaccine. Thirteen were available for people vaccinated with Pfizer’s shot. Six tested positive for the vaccine.

Overall, of the 11 bilateral axillary lymph node samples from patients who died within 30 days of a shot, eight tested positive. None of the samples from patients who died beyond 30 days of vaccination tested positive.

Researchers also examined samples from each of the vaccinated people from the cardiac left ventricle and cardiac right ventricle. Of those, four samples tested positive across three patients. These were the three who received Pfizer’s shot within 30 days of dying. The samples also tested negative for COVID-19.

Vaccine was not detected in any of the unvaccinated people.

The vaccinated patients were on average older, with a mean age of 64 compared to 57. A higher percentage—55 percent to 20 percent—had recent heart injury.

Read more here…

A new report from the right-leaning Media Research Center concludes that Google is burying search results for 2024 presidential candidates, but an expert in search engine optimization has suggested it’s unlikely.

According to various tests conducted by MRC and Just the News, the online visibility of these sites in generic searches for the GOP’s 2024 bench is practically nil, and not significantly better for RFK Jr., Biden’s primary challenge on the left.

Google’s search engine failed to produce even-handed results in multiple searches performed by MRC Free Speech America over the course of a week prior to today’s Republican presidential primary debate. Researchers broadly searched for “presidential campaign websites” as well as two additional searches specifying the party affiliation of the candidates. When MRC searched for “republican presidential campaign websites,” only two candidates’ websites appeared on the first page in the search results — a Democrat candidate and a Republican who is polling at less than half a percent. -MRC

Both MRC and Senator Ted Cruz claim this is unambiguous proof of Google’s bias.

“Google is either the most incompetent search engine on the planet, or it is intentional. This is not a coincidence,” states Dan Schneider, MRC Free Speech America Vice President, following the group’s extensive analysis of search tests conducted between September 20 and 25.

This is ABSURD.

Blatant election interference. #GoogleCensorship https://t.co/qfcSfk1cHx

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 27, 2023

In 2018, Trump accused Google of “rigging” search results against him.

Google responded at the time, saying that “Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology.”

In 2021, the Daily Mail sued Google for ‘illegally building its dominance in ad tech industry by harming rivals, bid-rigging on ad auctions and manipulating news search results.”

And of course, former Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt – who said the Trump administration would do “evil things” – was an advisor to the 2016 Clinton campaign.

Google head Eric Schmidt’s secret strategic plan for the US election #PodestaEmails https://t.co/LskJODXyXn

More: https://t.co/ZUfh7WDAT5 pic.twitter.com/llq5G9kp5V

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 31, 2016

A simple matter of SEO?

While the evidence certainly looks damning, Just the News spoke with Eric Goldman, an SEO researcher and co-director of Santa Clara University’s High Tech Law Institute, who proposed several benign possibilities to explain these search anomalies. Goldman argues for the necessity of a comprehensive academic study into search engine indexing and ordering, terming MRC’s tests an “advocacy stunt”.

“Search engine indexing and ordering is the kind of topic that would benefit from a proper academic study, not an advocacy stunt,” he said.

Yet, Google also told Just the News that it couldn’t explain the replicated results until Friday.

Meanwhile, Google, the world’s dominant search engine, is grappling with a Justice Department antitrust trial. The company’s explanations of its search dominance have raised eyebrows, bringing more scrutiny upon its practices. With accusations flying, former Psychology Today editor-in-chief Robert Epstein states, “Google poses a serious threat to democracy.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in USA Today on what the Menendez indictment might say about the Hunter Biden investigation. From the luxury cars to massive amounts of money to even their choice of counsel, the two scandals have striking similarities.

Here is the column:

In February 2019, Sen. Bob Menendez was having nightmares. The Democratic senator from New Jersey said he was haunted by a question that “keeps me up at night” — whether President Donald Trump was compromised by the Russian government because of past secret dealings.

Menendez’s restless nights also may have had something to do with the fact that at the time, he was allegedly accepting lavish gifts from various sources in exchange for using his Senate seat to bestow favors.

The indictment of Menendez and his wife last week included details of alleged bribes that went to the senator in exchange for revealing sensitive, nonpublic information to Egyptian contacts less than a year before his sleep-deprived speech.

Menendez denied the accusations on Friday. However, even if half of this indictment is true, Menendez is toast. He was able to dodge a bullet in 2017 when a jury hung over a separate series of corruption charges involving lavish gifts. This time, the Justice Department says it has photos of thousands of dollars in cash stuffed in clothing, a luxury car, gold bars and other gifts.

That would keep anyone up at night, but there may be one other insomniac this week: Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell.

The Menendez indictment likely proved chilling reading for Lowell, who not only represents President Joe Biden’s son but also represented Menendez in his prior bribery trial.

There are striking similarities between the Menendez and Biden cases.

While Hunter Biden was allegedly selling access to and influence with his father, he also allegedly received massive payments. His associate Devon Archer told Congress that they were selling the Biden family “brand,” and that Joe Biden was “the brand.”

Like Menendez, Hunter Biden allegedly received a luxury car from his foreign clients. For the senator, the Justice Department says it was a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz. For the president’s son, investigators say it was a $142,000 Fisker sports car.

Menendez allegedly received gold bars worth up to $120,000. Biden received a diamond allegedly worth $80,000.

Indeed, the alleged object of these payments was influence with then-Vice President Biden, when he was the presiding officer of the Senate. Menendez was one of the nation’s most powerful senators at the time.

There are also dealings that reference Hunter Biden and his associates in the Menendez matter. When the senator was trying to arrange for Joe Biden to host a foreign event, an aide to Menendez reportedly reached out to Hunter Biden’s associates.

While the president’s son is accused of peddling influence, in Menendez’s case, it is his wife who is accused of acting as a go-between with those trying to buy the senator’s attention. Nadine Menendez allegedly had lunches and countless communications with people, who, according to the indictment, sought favors from the senator.

Nadine Menendez allegedly knew the co-defendants before she married the senator in 2020. The couple met at an IHOP, but he fittingly proposed to her in 2019 at the Taj Mahal on a trip to India. The setting for the proposal would foretell the lavish gifts to come.

Like Hunter, Nadine started an international consulting company, Strategic International Business Consultants, after being unemployed before meeting the senator. She found ample business.

Like Hunter, she is accused of marketing her ability to deliver access to her husband. In March 2020, she allegedly texted an Egyptian official that “anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.”

There is of course a major difference between the Biden and Menendez cases: Menendez and his wife are being criminally charged for their alleged influence peddling.

The Justice Department has not only let the statute of limitations run out on the most serious tax charges against Hunter Biden, but it also has not charged the president’s son under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Despite charging figures like Paul Manafort for similar accusations, prosecutors have avoided charges in the Biden case that would put Hunter at the center of a corruption prosecution. Instead, they sought an embarrassing “sweetheart deal” that collapsed in court.

In the Menendez case, investigators left no stone unturned in tracing gifts and money. In the Biden case, a special agent with the IRS testified before Congress that the Bidens were tipped off on planned searches and an attempt to interview the president’s son.

As the Justice Department grinds Menendez into a fine powder, it is likely to draw more attention to the relatively light touch shown Hunter Biden. It is, as Menendez said on the Senate floor in 2019, the type of thing that keeps you up at night.

It is possible that the far left sociopaths running most major American cities have finally had enough?

That could be the case in Philadelphia, where hours after large portions of downtown were ransacked and looted as part of “protests”, the city’s town council voted to ban safe injection sites from opening up in the city.

Councilmember Quetcy Lozada told CBS Philadelphia, who reported the decision: “This is a ban on being able to put a center like this one in a community.”

“This bill puts the decision in the hands of people, the people who live there and would be directly impacted by it,” Lozada added. 

The bill “creates a zoning rule in nine of 10 city districts prohibiting the sites”, CBS Philadelphia reported. The 14-1 vote overrode a veto by far left Mayor Jim Kenney, the article says. 

Now, organizations would have to get a zoning variance for such a facility, and that would require community approval, the report says. 

But the ban wasn’t without its opponents, with some in the city coming before the city council to argue the need for such sites. 

Holiday Davis, of the Soul Collective (whatever that means), stated: “Overdose prevention sites offer an opportunity to bring those activities inside, offer safe disposal of needles and other litter, and offer pathways to medical care and drug treatment. And most importantly, save lives.”

Kensington resident Moses Santana added: “It’s gonna get people off the streets. It’s going to get people out of the park, get needles off the street, get people into treatment.”

Councilmember Jim Harrity was one of several to retort, stating: “The way we do that is through long-term recovery. Not giving them a space where they can continue to harm themselves.”

Lozada concluded: “Push for enforcement in that community. We need to bring back the conversation of prevention and recovery.”

Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A revolt against government policies that many say usurp parental authority is spreading across the nation—especially in blue states where lawmakers have promoted transgender ideology and “gender-affirming care”—according to parents, attorneys, and teachers.

For more than a year, California parents have shown up in droves at legislative hearings and phoned in by the hundreds to protest policies that encourage schools to keep social gender transitions of children secret. Teachers also have begun to refuse to hide information about a child’s gender identity from parents.

Meanwhile, Democratic members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus have spearheaded legislation supporting so-called gender-affirming care, especially for children, touting it as a “first-in-the-nation” model.

Parental rights groups such as Our Duty have pushed back against the model, while groups such as Planned Parenthood, Equality California, and others support it.

California school districts claim that they’re required by law to keep gender transitions secret from parents unless a child wants to tell his or her parents. But recent court rulings tell a different story.

Landmark Case

A federal judge on Sept. 14 blocked California’s Escondido Union School District from punishing two teachers who refused to comply with guidance issued by the California Department of Education that encourages educators to keep gender transitions of students secret from their parents.

Judge Roger T. Benitez granted a preliminary injunction (pdf) against the state and the Escondido Union School District stating the policy is unconstitutional.

The teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, claimed the state and district violated their constitutional and religious rights. They were both placed on paid administrative leave after their lawsuit was filed in April but are negotiating with the district to get back to work in the classroom.

The teachers told The Epoch Times that gender transitions among girls at their middle school are a “social experiment” that has become a social contagion.

When the girls go to the school counselors they get “so much praise and affirming” and are celebrated as “brave” and “honest,” Ms. West said.

“It’s only girls at our school. They eat it up. They get so much attention. They see one kid gets this, and they kind of follow along. It’s infecting them. It’s spreading.”

Until recently, it was rare to have even one child identify as transgender, but it’s becoming much more common, Ms. West said.

“I had seven girls in one class that wanted to be trans all of a sudden,” she said.

Ms. Mirabelli said gender transitions are “trending” in California public schools.

“Schools are now the social engineer,” she said. “They’re socially transitioning children, and as they move through the social transition, the next level is, of course, the medical transition.

“We can’t just stand by while all this is going on.

“I had a trans kid in my class. This kid was a fantastic student, one of my favorites—worked hard, good grades, well-behaved. We had a great relationship. I knew that little girl was not a boy, and in the not-too-distant future she looked in the mirror and said, ‘Hey, I’m pretty. Wait a minute.”

Ms. Mirabelli said she wants no part of putting children on a “conveyor belt” toward puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and eventually surgical transitions that they might regret later in life.

“These kids are 10, 11, and 12 years old. They’re in the throes of adolescence. We’ve been teaching adolescent children for decades. We’ve seen it all. We know that they go through a lot,” she said.

To get to the bottom of why gender transitions are trending, she said, “Follow the money.”

The so-called sex reassignment surgery market reached $2.1 billion last year in the United States and is expected to more than double to $5 billion by 2030, according to a 2022 report by business consulting firm Grand View Research. More research released by Acute Market Reports indicates that North America holds at least half of the global market share for so-called sex reassignment surgeries.

According to the Gender Mapping Project, there were only “a handful” of gender clinics for children operating in North America a decade ago, but there are now more than 400 involved in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry, even as parts of Europe move away from the “affirmative care” model.

‘Required’ Guidance

Paul Jonna, a Thomas More Society attorney representing the teachers, told The Epoch Times that the ruling in favor of the teachers is significant.

“This ruling could really set the framework for how this issue should be analyzed, not just in California, but everywhere,” he said.

The state issued “very misleading” guidance in the form of an FAQ page to every school district in the state asserting that parental exclusion is required by California law under privacy rights for children and that it was required to keep students safe, he said.

“They said it was nonbinding guidance, but they used words like ‘required’ and ‘must,’ and basically every school district interpreted it as binding,” Mr. Jonna said. “The [district] was convinced it was binding and said so at the hearing … but in fact, this was not mandatory.”

The judge, he said, was deeply troubled over inconsistent positions that the state has taken and grilled state attorneys in the four-hour hearing on whether the policy was backed by law.

“So, which is it?” the judge asked, according to the court transcript. “Is the FAQ binding on the school district or not?”

Eventually, state attorneys agreed that the policy isn’t binding and doesn’t compel school districts to enact the rule.

“The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition,” Judge Benitez said, quoting the 1979 Supreme Court case Parham v. J.R.

He added: “Isn’t that precisely what your rules does? … It basically says that all parents are presumed to be the enemy if the child simply says, ‘I don’t want my parents to know.’”

The judge asked why parents, who are ultimately legally responsible for the care and nurturing of their children, are “cut out.”

Read more here…

Retail money-market fund inflows continued last week and usage of The Fed’s emergency funding facility for banks remains at record highs, as shrinkage of The Fed’s balance sheet continues.

Tonight, all eyes are on the bank deposits for more worries, and on a seasonally-adjusted basis, total deposits jumped $49BN last week (the biggest inflow since May)…

Source: Bloomberg

But, on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, total deposits plunged $85BN last week (the biggest drop since July)…

Source: Bloomberg

Which means the gap between surging money-market fund assets and bank deposits continues to grow…

Source: Bloomberg

For the last two weeks, the SA and NSA data has ‘agreed’ on its direction… but not this week as The Fed’s utter fuckery turned a massive $92BN domestic US bank deposit outflow into a $36BN deposit inflow…

Source: Bloomberg

On an NSA basis, Large banks saw $66BN of outflows (SA $26BN inflows), Small banks saw $26BN outflows (SA $9.1BN inflows), and Foreign banks saw $7,3BN inflows (SA $13BN inflows)…

Source: Bloomberg

The gap between SA and NSA deposit losses since the SVB Crisis is now over $150BN…

Source: Bloomberg

On the other side of the ledger, large banks saw loan volumes decline (odd given the $26BN inflows SA) while small banks saw loan volumes jump $8.2BN…

Source: Bloomberg

The key warning sign continues to trend lower (Small Banks’ reserve constraint), supported above the critical level by The Fed’s emergency funds (for now)…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, last week we suggested the gap between large bank and small bank deposits may mean its time for another small bank failure so JPMorgan can soak up some more cheap deposits… and sure enough, Jamie Dimon hinted that the banking crisis was not over…

“The problem of interest rate exposure was known to everyone. I do not think we want a system where no bank ever fails. So, having a bunch of failures is not a terrible thing. But if it causes havoc in the system, we have to modify regulations to stop that from happening.”

After an ugly month and even uglier quarter, we sure hope these banks are making plans to fill the $108BN hole in their balance sheets they are filling with expensive Fed loans.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Two-Punch

“The statement that “Joe Biden wasn’t involved in Hunter Biden’s business,” is absurd in its face. Joe Biden was Hunter Biden’s business.”

– Margot Cleveland

Understand: no amount of political blustering will bring this gaslit nation into daylight when there is no more money and no more credit and no feasible way to feed the blob that ate our government.

The equation is simple. Our country can’t handle normal interest rates; and the value of the dollar can’t withstand more ultra-low interest rates. Someone, please, ask Congress to stop screwing that pooch over there!

Oh, and that “can” we’ve been kicking down the road turns out to be a rusty old 50-gallon drum. Somebody has stuffed America into it and is fixing to drop us overboard beyond the continental shelf off the Jersey Shore. Can that be stopped, too?

So, here at week’s end we see these two rather momentous issues juxtaposed:

1. the battle over how to finance that blob-infested monster in DC; and

2. the battle to expose the crimes of a real-life Manchurian Candidate president.

Neither battle is going all that well for the minority of citizens who want to live in a pro-reality society. If we follow the fiscal trend, all the tax revenue we can grudge up will barely cover the annual interest on our $30+trillion debt. If we can’t boot out the brain-dead cat’s paw in the White House, then say goodbye to the rule of law and liberty with it.

The people we elect to Congress don’t want to be accountable for specifically authorizing spending on the blob’s multitudinous pet projects. So, they depend on multi-thousand-page omnibus bills nobody can ever scrutinize, and continuing resolution dodges to postpone any necessarily painful action on a budget. Therefore, a dissenting coterie in the House proposes to play hard-ball over de-funding the blob, that is, a government shutdown of unknown duration, until gaslight is replaced by sunlight. The blob itself sends out a frantic S.O.S. 

Don’t let these white supremacist, “far-right” MAGA nut-jobs drag us out of the comfortable warm, moist darkness we thrive in — perfect conditions for continued blob growth!

After all, these Congresspersons have their lobbyist-donors to answer to, and they’d better come up with the right answer — or else their chance of eventually retiring as multi-millionaires, like Nancy Pelosi did, might slip away. Of course, the joke would be on them (and the rest of us) if it eventually costs a million dollars for a slice of pizza when they try to cash-out. Or is there some dirty secret involved here — for instance, that the blob has also taken over whatever remained of the US economy, too. So that defunding the blob also blows a hole in that putative economy? Or maybe not. Maybe the regular economy can breathe a little again with the blob’s boot off its neck. Let’s go ahead and shut off the flow for a week or two, see what happens.

I imagine some of you took in the opening of House Oversight’s impeachment inquiry, or at least enjoyed a few choice tidbits on Web video. Chairman Comer (R-KY) tried to proceed gingerly, so as to not appear vicious, and called onstage three witnesses to establish an upright basis for the exercise. Alas, they were led by the earnest but equivocating GWU law professor Jonathan Turley, straining so hard to be above reproach that he seemed to levitate out of his seat. The Democrat minority were allowed to invite their own shill, one Michael J. Gerhardt, a law prof from North Carolina, who was there to make the gaslight flicker, and sho’nuff did.

Ranking (minority) Member Jamie Raskin immediately tried to distract the proceeding with a call to subpoena Rudy Giuliani — supposedly to impugn the process. The majority briskly tabled Raskin’s motion. The old trouper has been worked over pretty severely by a lawless DOJ the past three years, had his client correspondence stolen by the FBI, his law license suspended by a malign New York Bar Association… but don’t forget he is an experienced and resourceful federal prosecutor himself. He spent many months beating the thickets of corruption in Ukraine for then-President Trump, and certainly knows more about what went on in that grubby money laundry than practically anyone. Bring him on. I’d like to see ol’ Rudy joust with the likes of Cori Bush (D-CA) , AOC (D-NY), and Kweisi Mfume (D-MD).

The New York Times pushed the leitmotif of their narrative this morning: there’s no evidence that “Joe Biden” committed any impeachable offenses.

That wasn’t the point of Mr. Comer’s opening exercise, which did not include what are called “fact witnesses” – exactly what The New York Times pretended to not understand. The point was to open this ugly business delicately, with some decorum. It will be interesting to see how long the news media can keep pretending there’s nothing to see in the Biden family’s global business doings when a firehouse of evidence is turned on them.

You can be sure the committee is sitting on some items we have not heard about.

There’s reason to be discouraged that the people we elect can bring the two great issues of the moment – the blob’s budget and the impeachment of “Joe Biden” – to satisfactory conclusions. They are arguably pseudopods of that very blob, whose very existence is being threatened now, and they have to worry about their shots at becoming multi-millionaires, too. The weeks ahead will inform us if there’s anything that can be salvaged of our federal government or whether we must make other arrangements.

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