Tag: joe biden

WSJ Shreds Vaccine Makers, Biden Admin Over “Deceptive” Booster Campaign

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley has taken a flamethrower to vaccine makers over their “deceptive” campaign for bivalent Covid boosters, and slams several federal agencies for taking “the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy.“

You might have heard a radio advertisement warning that if you’ve had Covid, you could get it again and experience even worse symptoms. The message, sponsored by the Health and Human Services Department, claims that updated bivalent vaccines will improve your protection.

This is deceptive advertising. But the public-health establishment’s praise for the bivalent shots shouldn’t come as a surprise. -WSJ

The narrative behind the campaign was simple; mRNA Covid shots could simply be ‘tweaked’ to to target new variants – in this case, the jabs were claimed to confer protection against BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants, along with the original Wuhan strain.

To call this wishful thinking would be extremely generous.

As Finley writes, three scientific problems have arisen.

  1. The virus is mutating much faster than vaccines can be updated.
  2. Vaccines have ‘hard wired’ our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, “so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines.”
  3. Antibody protection wanes after just a few months.

Finley has brought receipts too…

Two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine this month showed that bivalent boosters increase neutralizing antibodies against the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but not significantly more than the original boosters. In one study, antibody levels after the bivalent boosters were 11 times as high against the Wuhan variant as BA.5.

The authors posit that immune imprinting “may pose a greater challenge than is currently appreciated for inducing robust immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants.” This isn’t unique to Covid or mRNA vaccines, though boosters may amplify the effect. Our first exposure as children to the flu—whether by infection or vaccination—affects our future response to different strains. -WSJ

Here’s what happened

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NYT Details How White House Thought They’d Get Away With A Cover-Up

New York Times reporters Michael D. Shear, Peter Baker and Katie Rogers detailed Friday how the White House thought they would manage to cover up the ongoing scandal of President Joe Biden’s classified documents.

Biden’s lawyers discovered the first trove of classified documents, which date to his time as vice president, on Nov. 2 at the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s Washington, D.C., think tank. The administration reported the matter to the National Archives and Records Administration the same day, and NARA referred it to the Department of Justice two days later, according to a timeline compiled by the Times.

Lawyers subsequently found more documents during additional searches conducted on Dec. 20, Jan. 10 and Jan. 11 at his Delaware residence.

The discovery of the documents did not become public knowledge until Jan. 9. On Jan. 12, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as a special counsel to investigate the case.

“The decision … to keep the discovery of classified documents secret from the public and even most of the White House staff for 68 days was driven by what turned out to be a futile hope that the incident could be quietly disposed of without broader implications for Mr. Biden or his presidency,” the Times reported.

The Times also alleged that Biden’s advisers knew of the classified documents six days before the midterm elections and “gambled” on keeping the revelations hidden, hoping that the Justice Department would view the incident as “little more than a minor, good-faith mistake.”

The Biden team instead hoped to “demonstrate that the president and his team were cooperating fully” by handing over the documents as soon as they were found, people familiar with the internal deliberations told the Times on condition of anonymity.

“The bet seems to have backfired,” the Times reported, noting that the administration remains hopeful that they can convince “the special counsel that nothing nefarious took place.”

According to the Times, the scandal “has eroded” Biden’s “capacity to claim the high road against [former President Donald] Trump,” who is under investigation for his own handling of classified documents.

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Inflation Used To Squeeze The Middle Class. Now It’s Hitting The Poor The Hardest

The primary burden of inflation has shifted from middle class to low-income households thanks to a shift in the spending categories hardest hit by price hikes, according to a study published Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

At the onset of rising inflation in the spring of 2021, middle-income households, defined as those earning between $50,000 and $150,000 per year, bore the brunt of inflation as they purchased more used cars and gasoline than other demographics, according to the New York Fed. However, as the cost of gas falls and the price of food and housing surges, lower-income households, defined as those earning less than $50,000, now face higher effective costs — roughly 0.3 percentage points higher than average — since they spend a larger portion of their income on food and housing than middle and high-income households.

“As of December 2022, the bottom 40 percent have the highest year-on-year inflation rate of the three groups, and the inflation rate of the middle-income group is below the national average,” the report reads. “It is likely the case that the same rate of inflation represents a greater welfare loss for lower-income than higher-income households because of the former’s lower capacity for substituting to less expensive goods, greater liquidity constraints, and larger marginal utility of real income.”

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Feds borrowed $4 billion per day in 2022, totaling $10K per household

Federal debt soared by $1.4 trillion in 2022 as President Joe Biden and Congress approved multiple new spending packages.

The Congressional Budget Office this month released the final details of federal spending in 2022 showing the federal government had a $1.4 trillion deficit last year, borrowing roughly $82 billion in December alone.

“This is not a pretty picture no matter how you look at it,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “There are times to borrow – like during a pandemic or major recession – and there are times where we should ratchet down the borrowing, like now when the economy is strong and inflation is hot.”

MacGuineas pointed out last year’s borrowing totals more than $10,000 per household and $4 billion per day.

The federal debt surpassed $31 trillion in the fall.

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BIDEN USED CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS ACCUSATION AGAINST CARTER CIA NOMINEE

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN and his supporters have sought to downplay the significance of the improperly handled and stored classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank where Biden maintained an office. The documents are believed to relate to his time as vice president under Barack Obama. But then it emerged that another batch of classified documents was recovered from Biden’s personal garage at his home in Delaware. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter.

Former President Donald Trump and his supporters have defended his transfer of classified materials to his resort at Mar-a-Lago, claiming that the president had authority to declassify the materials. That case is also the subject of a federal investigation.

It is a barely concealed secret in Washington, D.C., that for decades, elite politicians have engaged in some form of bending or breaking the rules on classified documents — in some cases for plausibly benign uses as writing memoirs. Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser Sandy Berger stole documents from the National Archives in 2003 by stuffing them inside his clothing and then destroyed some classified materials. He claimed he wanted to review the documents to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Gen. David Petraeus was forced to resign as CIA director in 2012 after it was revealed he had improperly handled classified materials, including taking some to his home and sharing them with his biographer with whom he was having an affair.

While there have been cases where criminal charges have been brought — Berger was fined $50,000 by a federal judge and lost his security clearance, and Petraeus got two years probation and a $100,000 fine — it is rare for a high-profile figure to face any meaningful criminal consequences for such actions. That, of course, is not the case with whistleblowers — including Reality Winner, Jeffrey Sterling, Terry Albury, and Daniel Hale — who have been aggressively prosecuted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

The revelation that Biden illicitly stored classified materials, including in his garage, is a grave embarrassment to the president, particularly in light of the fact that Democrats have hammered away at Trump for months over the classified documents he retained at Mar-a-Lago. But there is also a relevant story from Biden’s past that bears mentioning.

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Hunter Listed $49,910 Monthly Rent Payments While Living at Joe Biden’s Residence 

Hunter Biden recorded monthly rent payments of $49,910 while living at President Joe Biden’s residence, according to a document unearthed by New York Post’s Miranda Devine.

On a document titled “background screening request,” it appears Hunter paid $49,910 in monthly rent for one year while living at Joe Biden’s Delaware residence, where the president kept classified documents alongside his Corvette in the garage.

Hunter listed his rental tenancy from March 2017 to February 2018, the document shows. The document is signed July 2018.

In 2017, Joe Biden left the White House and stored a large number of classified documents inside his Delaware garage and at two other locations. The first batch of documents found are alleged to contain information pertaining to Ukraine and Iran, CNN reported.

The document also shows that Hunter checked a box on the form claiming to own Joe Biden’s home. It is unknown why Hunter would have paid rent if he owned the home.

It should be noted Joe Biden’s 2017 tax return on Schedule E only listed $19,800 in “rents received.” In 2018, Biden listed no rents received.

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Comer Accuses National Archives of Stonewalling Probe Into Biden Classified Documents

The new chair of the House Oversight Committee has accused the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) of stonewalling the GOP-led probe into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.

In what is fast becoming a crisis of credibility for Biden, the White House said Saturday that another five pages of classified documents were found on Thursday at Biden’s Delaware home, which is in addition to sensitive materials found in December in the president’s garage and in November at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.

Biden said he was “surprised” by the discovery of the documents and both he and his allies have insisted they’ve cooperated with NARA and the Justice Department over the materials, while Republicans have launched a probe into the matter.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said in a post on Twitter late Sunday that the National Archives has yet to provide a “simple briefing” to the committee on its handling of classified documents after Comer sent a letter to the agency nearly a week ago requesting information and documents.

“The Archives isn’t being transparent with the American people,” Comer wrote in the post.

“So many questions remain unanswered,” he continued. “I will use the power of the gavel to get answers.”

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New ATF rule on pistol stabilizing braces will effectively ban millions of rifles

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives released a new rule on pistol-stabilizing braces that will effectively ban millions of rifles and has Second Amendment supporters up in arms.

The ATF had previously ruled that pistol braces were legal, but a new rule was sought by President Joe Biden as part of his promise to reform gun laws.

The 296-page document outlines several options that gun owners with stabilizing braces have to avoid prosecution.

“Any weapons with ‘stabilizing braces’ or similar attachments that constitute rifles under the NFA must be registered no later than 120 days after date of publication in the Federal Register,” read the rule, “or the short barrel removed and a 16-inch or longer rifle barrel attached to the firearm; or permanently remove and dispose of, or alter, the ‘stabilizing brace’ such that it cannot be reattached; or the firearm is turned in to your local ATF office. Or the firearm is destroyed.”

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The White House’s most brazen, entitled, social media censorship demands

The latest batch of revelations into the social media censorship directed by the Biden White House reveal a range of broad, often petty, censorship demands, some of which are purely requests to boost President Biden’s image and show him and his family in a better light.

The revelations came as part of the discovery in the ongoing lawsuit against the government for its alleged First Amendment violations, making clear requests to silence American citizens through online platforms.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, shared some of the documents obtained during discovery.

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