Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Democrats’ Definition Of ‘Misinformation’ Is Whatever Hurts Them Politically Today

Facebook is killing people, misinformation is rampant, and the only people who can save us from ourselves are the all-wise executives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue whose judgment is infallible and whose motives are pure. That’s the message emanating from the White House and the corporate press.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced last week that, due to 12 unnamed people on social media posting what the Biden administration considers to be misinformation, the White House is actively “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation” and “helping” to “boost trusted content.” Going even further, Psaki said nothing is “off the table” for using Big Tech to quiet opposing views.

Not only is the Biden administration effectively deputizing Facebook to be an extension of the federal government’s communications office, but it also insists that if you’re banned from one Big Tech site for questioning conventional wisdom, you should be banned from all of them.

Psaki maintains the government has “a responsibility, as a public health matter, to raise that issue” of people allegedly dying en masse because of uncensored Facebook posts that don’t comport with the White House’s vaccine messaging. This isn’t a caricature of the White House’s position either. When a reporter asked President Joe Biden directly last week what his message is to sites like Facebook, Biden replied, serious as a heart attack, “They’re killing people.”

This push for censorship is interesting for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the same political stripe that ridiculously cried “fascism” for four years under Donald Trump is now taking concrete steps to suppress political opposition, one of the hallmarks of true fascism. It’s also interesting because information changes so rapidly, as Psaki herself admitted.

“Science evolves, information evolves,” Psaki said during the same press conference in which she pledged her commitment to silencing vaccine dissidents online. If anyone should understand the reality of information evolving, it’s the Biden administration.

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COVID Authoritarianism Has Changed Our Polity

We are not the same country that we were just a few years ago.  However unfortunate it may be to realize it, COVID has changed the political identity of America.  To put it bluntly, it has become normal to expect that the government can close your business, robbing you of your livelihood and your family of the fruits of your labor, in order to protect hospital infrastructure and personnel.  

Last March, that was the argument that propelled America into lockdown.  Just “fifteen days to flatten the curve,” we were told.  The prospect of some hospitals, in a very specific few locations, becoming overwhelmed by COVID patients caused the bulk of the economy to shut down and civil liberties to be suspended.

Fifteen days of lockdown and social distancing and school closures, if you remember, became “until Easter,” which became “until the spread slows,” which became “until the number of new cases fall,” which became “if everyone just wore masks, we could get back to normal,” which became “we can’t open until we get a vaccine,” which became “even vaccinated people should mask up and socially distance,” which became “oops, obviously the vaccine is super safe for anyone who’s taken it, so if you’ve taken it, you don’t have to distance or wear masks.”

It’s hard to miss the trajectory of our free-fall down the fabled “slippery slope” toward ideological authoritarianism, but in case we had any doubt, the federal government has just signified that it will be sending agents, door-to-door, to homes of the unvaccinated (the identities of whom are ostensibly protected by a federal “right” to health privacy), and that the federal government is working hand-in-hand with social media companies to ensure that only government-approved health propaganda can be distributed in the most prominent e-town squares.

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The Incoherence of the White House’s COVID Messaging Reaches Code Red Levels

To begin, we’ve known since at least last fall (because of real-world data gathered from schools being open largely across the South) that heavy mitigation in schools is pointless. Children are not serious vectors for spread and virtually all teachers have been vaccinated at this point. It is child abuse to still be demanding an eight-year-old wear a mask all day in a classroom while they have a vaccinated teacher. There is no science behind doing that, both because of the lack of spread from children and the fact that masks do not work to stop the spread of COVID.

Regardless, I really want to zero in on the last point Murthy makes because it’s a pathetic attempt by Biden and his administration to have their cake and eat it too.

If they put in place a mask mandate for those who are vaccinated, the White House is absolutely signaling that the vaccines aren’t effective. Now, we know that’s not true because the Delta variant is far less deadly in individuals with immunity, either via vaccination or by prior infection. Clearly, the vaccines and natural immunity are doing their job. Given that the vaccines work, masks are not necessary. It’s that simple, but by suggesting a mask mandate is needed again for those with immunity, the White House is inadvertently promoting the idea that the vaccines aren’t effective.

In short, while Joe Biden runs around trying to blame Facebook and Republicans for so-called “vaccine hesitancy,” his own administration is pushing a narrative that encourages people to not bother getting vaccinated. The White House can not have it both ways. Either the vaccine works (it does) or masks are necessary (they aren’t). Asserting that a mask mandate doesn’t undercut the messaging on the vaccine is nonsensical.

This is what you get when the country is being run by an incompetent old man who is surrounded by left-wing ideologues. Everything is political. That includes Biden’s inability to simply stand up and lead, accepting the risks that come with that. Instead, we are getting a cowardly, overly risk-averse approach that is only making matters worse.

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FBI Agent In ‘Whitmer Kidnapping Entrapment Plot’ Arrested For Beating His Wife

An FBI agent who worked together with at least 12 FBI informants to allegedly entrap a small group of patsies in a plot to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was criminally charged on Monday for beating his wife. 

The alleged inability of FBI special agent Richard Trask, 39, to resist beating his wife for just a couple of months as the case go to trial may now end up jeopardizing the FBI’s entire suspected entrapment operation. 

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Feds Threaten 10 Years in Prison for Americans Planning Thursday Flotilla to Cuba

The Department of Homeland Security reminded Floridians ahead of a flotilla scheduled to travel near Cuba on Thursday that it was “illegal” to travel to the island nation without permission from the federal government.

“It is illegal for boaters to depart with the intent to travel to Cuba for any purpose without a permit,” the department said in an advisory, noting that penalties could include fines of $25,000 per day and up to 10 years in prison.

If at least 100 boaters show up, Cuban South Florida residents are planning to sail from the United States’ southernmost point in Key West on Thursday to within 12 miles of Cuba’s border — technically in international waters — to show support for the country’s protesters.

“We are trying to show a peaceful protest against this regime. To show the people that we are with them, that we want to help them, that we have seen what is happening with the protests and we support the movement,” a coordinator for the flotilla, 24-year-old Osdany Veloz, told The Daily Mail. However, he said, “If Cuban authorities open up and let us through, then we will definitely go in and hand over anything useful that we have on board.

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Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

Health research is based on trust. Health professionals and journal editors reading the results of a clinical trial assume that the trial happened and that the results were honestly reported. But about 20% of the time, said Ben Mol, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Monash Health, they would be wrong. As I’ve been concerned about research fraud for 40 years, I wasn’t that surprised as many would be by this figure, but it led me to think that the time may have come to stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported, and assume that the research is fraudulent until there is some evidence to support it having happened and been honestly reported. The Cochrane Collaboration, which purveys “trusted information,” has now taken a step in that direction.

As he described in a webinar last week, Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, began to have doubts about the honest reporting of trials after a colleague asked if he knew that his systematic review showing the mannitol halved death from head injury was based on trials that had never happened. He didn’t, but he set about investigating the trials and confirmed that they hadn’t ever happened. They all had a lead author who purported to come from an institution that didn’t exist and who killed himself a few years later. The trials were all published in prestigious neurosurgery journals and had multiple co-authors. None of the co-authors had contributed patients to the trials, and some didn’t know that they were co-authors until after the trials were published. When Roberts contacted one of the journals the editor responded that “I wouldn’t trust the data.” Why, Roberts wondered, did he publish the trial? None of the trials have been retracted.

Later Roberts, who headed one of the Cochrane groups, did a systematic review of colloids versus crystalloids only to discover again that many of the trials that were included in the review could not be trusted. He is now sceptical about all systematic reviews, particularly those that are mostly reviews of multiple small trials. He compared the original idea of systematic reviews as searching for diamonds, knowledge that was available if brought together in systematic reviews; now he thinks of systematic reviewing as searching through rubbish. He proposed that small, single centre trials should be discarded, not combined in systematic reviews.

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Bernie Sanders: Republican Party All About ‘Conspiracy Theories’ and ‘Anti-Science Vaccine Rejection’

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) declared on Monday that the Republican Party “cannot be allowed to prevail,” reducing it to a gang of conspiracy theorists who seek to suppress votes and engage in “anti-science vaccine rejection.”

“Here is what the modern Republican Party is all about: cult-like devotion to Trump, big lies and conspiracy theories, voter suppression, climate denial and anti-science vaccine rejection,” the Democrat socialist said.

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