You probably think the job of a reporter is to report news. How old-fashioned, cis-gendered, white supremacist of you! That’s not it at all, certainly not at the august New York Times.
Instead, a reporter’s mission is to find out what kind of story would help the Democrats at any particular moment in time, and then write it, no matter how preposterous. Obviously, skills in sophistry and legerdemain are crucial.
Right now, nothing would help the Democratic Party more than somehow blocking Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida from becoming the Republican presidential nominee.
That’s a tall order. DeSantis is not only running on 70-30popular issues, but he’s following through by actually enacting those policies — on everything from immigration to crime, to trans-mania, to anti-whiteracism. Most spectacularly, he made utter fools of the entire liberal brain trust over COVID.
This cannot stand. There’s a whole world of Times readers waiting for Pravda to land on their doorstep every morning to confirm their prejudices.
So what’s a liberal lackey to do?
I can now reveal the six takedown techniques taught to Times reporters on Day One — before they’re even taught that misgendering someone is a fireable offense — as illustrated by journalists Sharon LaFraniere, Patricia Mazzei and Albert Sun, in a million-word, front-page article on July 23.
1) The Kamikaze Run
Hit a person on his strongest point — he’ll never expect it. If the target’s loyal, call him disloyal; if he’s consistent, call him inconsistent; if he’s honest, call him a liar; if he’s good-looking, call him ugly.
And if he performed brilliantly during a global pandemic when almost all other government officials blundered, write an article saying: HEY, GOV! YOUR COVID RESPONSE SUCKED.
2) The Shocker Headline
Use a scary headline belied by the actual facts presented in your article.
Actual NYT headline: “The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis’s Vaccine Turnabout … a grim chapter he now leaves out of his rosy retelling of his pandemic response.”
3) Hide the Ball
Deep within the story, bury the central fact that blows apart your narrative. Most likely, the reader will never get that far.
NYT, paragraph 6,000: “Overall, [Florida’s] death rate during the pandemic, adjusted for age, ended up better than the national average.”
4) The Ant’s Eye View
Find a brief, aberrational moment during the relevant time period that supports your phony premise.
NYT: “Floridians died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than residents of almost any other state during the Delta wave … With less than 7% of the nation’s population, Florida accounted for 14% of deaths between the start of July [2021] and the end of October.”
That’s four months out of a three-year-long pandemic. During that precious interval, Florida’s death rate was, in fact, higher than the national average — as opposed to across the whole pandemic, when Florida’s death rate waslower than the national average.
5) “Huh. We Forgot That.”
Do not mention other, more likely, explanations for the aberration.
Like all airborne viruses, COVID hit southern states hardest in the summer (when people are crowded inside for the air conditioning) and northern states hardest in the winter (when people are crowded inside for the heat).
If you didn’t already know that, it was being reported everywhereat the time. Here, for example, is NPR in the fall of 2021: “We’re certainly seeing [COVID conditions improve] throughout Florida, South Carolina, southern Texas in particular. … [But as] the surge eases in the South, it could ramp up in the North, like last year.”
Just last week, the Times quoted a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist who noted that: “This is the fourth summer now that we see a [COVID] wave beginning around July, often starting in the South.”
Won’t well-informed Times readers know this? Absolutely not. For Times readers, the world began this morning and ended this morning.
5) The Imaginary Causation
Ignore painfully obvious facts that ruin your bogus theory of causation.
Your thesis: COVID deaths soared in Florida during the Delta wave because Gov. Death-Santis did not encourage young people to get vaccinated.
In fact, it was the Delta variant that couldn’t be stopped by vaccination, finally forcing the CDC to admit that vaccination would not prevent either infection or transmission.
As CNN reported in July 2021: “CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said new data had convinced her the Delta variant was ‘behaving uniquely’ … [and] the evidence indicated that fully vaccinated people who have breakthrough infections involving Delta may be as likely to transmit virus to others as unvaccinated people are.”
6) The “What Isn’t Like the Other” Statistic
Lard your article with statistics made meaningless by combining like and unalike things.
— “Of the 23,000 Floridians who died [during the Delta wave], 9,000 were younger than 65.”
OK, but how many were younger than 60? Is there no difference between a 23-year-old and a 63-year-old? Also, how many were obese? How many had co-morbidities?
— “Despite the governor’s insistence at the time that ‘our entire vulnerable population has basically been vaccinated,’ a vast majority of the 23,000 were either unvaccinated or had not yet completed the two-dose regimen.”
“Unvaccinated” is completely different from “got one shot,” i.e., “basically vaccinated.” For all we know, everybody who died from Delta in Florida had had at least one shot, contradicting the whole point of that statistic.
To use a professional journalist’s technique: This Is the Steep Cost of the Times’ Descent Into Mindless Left-Wing Activism … a grim chapter the paper leaves out of its history.
Since profiling her in February – and the atrocious way she’s been treated by the elitist cabal that runs the EU – Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy has done nothing but move her country forward.
Isn’t that delightful?
In fact, there are a lot of things looking rosy about Italy that can’t be said for the powerhouses of the E.U. and they still treat Meloni as if she had shown up to their ball uninvited and in a tracksuit (That would be Zelensky’s uniform, but everyone in the EU has a man-crush on that guy.)
Besides negotiating new oil deals to free her country from EU Green entanglements as far as energy goes, Meloni has also been considering detangling some of her former office holders’ deals. One of which was not only baffling, but – as she calls it – “atrocious.”
In 2019, Italy, under the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, had signed a memorandum of understanding supporting China’s multi-trillion Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing represented an opportunity to export made-in-Italy products.
As the two countries began to finalise the deal, warnings came on many fronts. Both American and European leaders cautioned Rome against signing a bilateral agreement with Beijing. PM Conte, on the other hand, reassured the public that the agreement was purely a commercial one, that favoured Italian national interests.
Conte was lured by China’s huge market potential. Highlighting both America’s role as Italy’s main strategic partner and China’s growing global footprint, Conte envisioned a role for Rome and Brussels to act as a potential bridge between Washington and Beijing.
That was all before the horrific Hong Kong crackdown and China’s human rights abuses became international fodder and cast even more unflattering light on just how the Chinese do business. The Italian parliament began looking for ways to reconsider the deal itself and asking the government to push back against Chinese influence. As Italy was the only major Western country to sign on with the Chinese, it also had the effect of making the Italians something of a pariah at meetings.
The next administration, of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, began the process of discussions, but China’s enormous economic punch always lent an element of danger to any talk of withdrawing completely from the BRI agreement.
The U.S. was deeply critical of Italy’s decision in 2019 to become the only major Western economy to sign on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The BRI, as it’s known, is an unprecedented global infrastructure project that critics see as Beijing’s attempt to gain influence abroad and make smaller countries financially dependent on Chinese investment.
But this week Italy gave its strongest signal yet that it planned to pull out of the project.
Signing the deal four years ago was “an improvised and atrocious act,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told the Corriere della Sera newspaper on Sunday. “We exported a load of oranges to China, they tripled exports to Italy in three years.”
Crosetto added a more measured coda: “The issue today is, how to walk back without damaging relations? Because it is true that while China is a competitor, it is also a partner.”
These remarks followed months of reports that Italy planned to quit the BRI. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s far-right prime minister, said her government would make a decision by December, when the pact between Rome and Beijing is due to renew.
It’s goin to be a delicate tap-dance for Ms. Meloni, for, while she’s made it clear she’d very much like to remain on congenial terms with the Chinese, her pivot to the West is a full buy-in to the emerging NATO Asian-Pacific expansion that Britain and France are already working with.
…The discussion was part of NATO’s efforts to “de-risk” – that is, reduce – economic activity with Beijing.
Meloni let it be known she was working to cancel Italy’s participation in China’s so-called Belt and Road Initiative, the trade and infrastructure partnerships that Rome joined four years ago. Meloni indicated Rome could somehow maintain “good relations with China” even as it dropped Belt and Road.
…Meloni, for example, expressed hopes that benign post-Belt and Road relations with Beijing will continue. But she also steered clear of touting Italy’s other China policy feature: entry into the anti-China arms race. Italy joined the United Kingdom in a partnership with Japan to develop new fighter jets.
There’s much more upside to working with United States, Japan, Korea and the Philippines, et al, in concert with other EU nations, as opposed to being owned belt, road, hook, line, and sinker by the Chinese.
Biden out on the lying tour. Joey boy is at it again. Going out telling more lies about Bidenomics. But it seems as if Reuter has some bad news based on the latest poll.
Americans have soured on Bidenomics, concluding that the U.S. economy is worse now than it was five years ago under former President Donald Trump’s leadership, a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey found.
Forty-nine percent of Americans say that inflation or increasing costs are the most important issues facing the country, 9% cite unemployment and 10% cite economic inequality.
Sixty-four percent of Americans say the economy is worse off compared to 2020, while seventy-three percent of Americans say the economy is worse off compared to five years ago. About two in five of Americans say they feel worse off from five years ago generally (38%) and a similar number say they feel worse off compared to 2020 (37%).
A majority of Americans say that President Biden and his administration are not doing enough when it comes to investing in the economy (56%) and reducing economic inequality (52%).
Show them all. All the Trump circus shows should be televised. Democrats in the House are calling for the trial about the much to do about nothing mostly peaceful gathering be televised.
I say televise them all. Let the American people see what kind of affirmative action judges and DA’S that are out there.
Why are the Sanctuary bluebirds crying about their new found voters for 2024? We see it in New York, Illinois, and now Massachusetts. We are spending our money on all these future voters is the battle cry.
I guess the bluebirds thought the plan was to send them in just before the 2024 elections. Not now. And the Progressives are crying cause they have to house and educate the undocumented. What did they think that being a Sanctuary city and state meant?
Just putting this out there. Fauci successor at NIAID peddled dangerous Remdesivir drug as ‘silver bullet’ against Covid-19 Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo tried to use unsafe antiviral IV drug on every covid hospitalized patient at UAB.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, the newly minted successor to Dr Anthony Fauci at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was recently one of America’s chief hype women for an antiviral drug that is now unanimously considered an unsafe and catastrophically failed treatment for Covid-19.
Prior to moving to her Government Health post, Marrazzo was the longtime director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
In partnership with Big Pharma drugmaker Gilead, UAB played a major role in the research and development of Remdesivir. The drug was developed over a decade ago with the hopes to treat Hepatitis C and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but was suddenly repurposed to “treat” Covid-19 when coronavirus hysteria reached the United States.
Given the UAB-Gilead partnership, one would think that Dr. Marrazzo would refrain from commenting on issues through which she maintained a clear conflict of interest. Or at the very least, she had the duty to disclose her conflict of interest when speaking to the media about the UAB-developed “wonder drug.” She did no such thing.
Even worse, Dr. Marrazzo bashed harmless and low cost alternatives like hydroxychloroquine, while hyping the super expensive Gilead-UAB competitor drug.
“The hope was maybe, if you treat early in the disease, you don’t need a silver bullet” such as remdesivir, she told The Washington Post in a July 2020 piece. “Hospitals are on the razor’s edge,” she added, contributing to the fear and paranoia that was enveloping the nation at the time.
In interview after interview, Dr. Marrazzo had nothing but good things to say about remdesivir, despite the incredible lack of data available to support her outandish claims about the drug.
On social media, Marrazzo lavished endless praise upon Remdesivir, declaring it the best agent against coronavirus disease, and boasting that her hospital tries to use it on every covid-hospitalized patient.
“We don’t have enough remdesivir to treat everybody who’s in the hospital,” she said in a late 2020 news conference about the state of her hospital system. “It’s a really challenging situation.”
Her predecessor at the NIAID, Mr Fauci, infamously paraded Remdesivir as the “standard of care” for Covid-19 treatment, adding that it can “block the virus.”
Unsupported pseudoscientific claims about very expensive drugs (a full course of remdesivir costs the patient thousands of dollars) is nothing new for NIAID officials, who, under Fauci’s leadership, have created an agency that acts as a government marketing department for pharmaceutical companies.
Undoubtedly, Marrazzo’s Remdesivir maximalism had disastrous implications for patients hospitalized at UAB. The so-called silver bullet later took on a morbid nickname, “run, death is near,” because of the severe side effect portfolio associated with the IV drug.
The headlines speak for themselves:
Remdesivir not only failed, but actively harmed hospitalized patients, who were being injected with the antiviral agent following the recommendations of Dr. Marrazzo.
The most exhaustive studies on the Gilead-UAB drug show that there are zero clinical benefits to injecting patients with remdesivir. Many studies show that Remdesivir can severely injure vital organs such as the heart and kidneys.
Dr. Marrazzo has never publicly expressed remorse for her longtime promotion of the drug she once described as a “silver bullet” against Covid-19. She last promoted the unsafe drug in December, 2021, long after most hospital systems stopped treating patients with the Gilead-UAB disaster drug.
Markets: Stocks brought their Jackie Wilson energy yesterday, climbing higher and higher, with the Dow notching its best day since June and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both snapping losing streaks as investors wait for inflation data later this week. Berkshire Hathaway soared to a record high after Warren Buffett revealed over the weekend that it had a quarterly profit of more than $10 billion for the first time.
Tesla’s CFO stepped down. Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Zach Kirkhorn unexpectedly resigned after working with Elon Musk at the electric vehicle maker for 13 years, which one asset manager told Bloomberg “is like working 50 years for anyone else.” Kirkhorn, who plans to stay at the company until the end of the year to ensure a smooth transition, has been replaced by Tesla’s chief accounting officer. Still, the unexpected departure spooked investors, raising concerns about volatility in the company’s executive ranks and the succession plan for one day replacing Musk at the top.
Yellow’s bankruptcy might cost taxpayers. The 99-year-old trucking company made it official on Sunday, filing for bankruptcy and ending the employment of its 30,000 workers following years of financial struggle and a labor battle with the Teamsters. But for most outside the trucking industry, the big question looming now is whether the company’s plan to sell off its assets will enable it to pay back the controversial $700 million pandemic-era loan it got from the government or whether other creditors like Apollo Global Management will get whatever is left from the freight company.
Freeway traffic won’t be the only thing grinding to a halt in Los Angeles today. More than 11,000 city workers plan to walk off the job this morning for 24 hours.
Sanitation and airport workers fed up with a lack of resources and unfilled vacancies will be among those participating, according to the SEIU Local 721, which represents many city workers.
Hot Strike Summer has already been extra scorching in LA. The city workers will be joining:
170,000 Hollywood actors and 12,500 screenwriters picketing there and in NYC.
Thousands of local hotel workers staging rolling strikes (who even tried to get Taylor Swift to postpone her LA tour dates).
Nationwide, strikes have spiked this summer, putting July among the busiest months for labor action in decades, according to the Washington Post.
But…unless UPS’s 350,000 workers reject the contract their union secured for them, this year is not on track to have more strikers than 2018 or 2019—which in turn had fewer strikers than many years in the 1950s through 1970s, per Bloomberg columnist Justin Fox. There’s another big strike looming, though: With the auto workers union demanding a 40% raise for 150,000 hourly workers at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, Detroit may soon look like LA with less green juice.—AR
Illustration: Francis Scialabba, Photo: Getty Images
Turns out classics majors and petroleum-engineering students have more in common than we thought: Both their programs are shrinking. College students aren’t interested in entering the oil and gas industry like they used to be, no matter how much money they could make when they graduate, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The number of undergrads studying petroleum engineering—once a practical, popular major that would make Boomer parents proud—has seen a 75% decline since 2014, Texas Tech professor Lloyd Heinze told the WSJ.
In the past, enrollment in oil- and gas-related majors followed the market, but despite oil prices popping off between 2016 and 2021, the number grads entering the field still fell, according to the US Dept. of Education. It probably didn’t help that the pandemic highlighted how volatile the oil and gas industry could be as companies laid off over 100,000 employees between March and August 2020.
It’s not just about business. Petroleum engineers can earn 40% more post-graduation than computer science grads, but Gen Zers are opting for more environmentally conscious companies and positions. Current students are nervous about the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate change and question whether these high-paying jobs will even exist in the future as the country moves toward clean energy.—MM
Last week during an Australian Senate committee hearing, Pfizer and Moderna executives were grilled under oath about covid-19 vaccine policies and vaccine safety.
Tensions were high during the public hearing, which was live-streamed via the parliamentary website.
Senators fired questions at Pfizer and Moderna executives who responded by dodging questions and refusing to take accountability for their failures.
To complicate matters, the drug company executives did not attend the hearing in-person, only via video link allowing them to plead ignorance about the studies that were presented during the inquiry.
At the commencement, the Chair warned the witnesses against giving “false or misleading evidence” and after opening statements by Pfizer and Moderna, the floor was opened to questions.
Stopping transmission
Senator Matt Canavan began question time and was laser-focused on the issue of viral transmission.
“Did Pfizer test whether your covid-19 vaccine could stop or reduce the transmission of the virus before its approval and rollout in late 2020,” asked Canavan pointedly.
Pfizer Australia’s medical director Krishan Thiru was evasive.
Left to right: Brian Hewitt, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Pfizer Australia; Krishan Thiru, Medical Director, Pfizer Australia
“To bring this vaccine to patients we were required to show that the vaccine was safe and effective…The primary purpose of vaccination was, and remains, to protect the person who received the vaccine,” said Thiru.
Canavan reminded him that Pfizer’s own CEO Anthony Bourla told a reporter on NBC news on Dec 3, 2020, that it was “not certain” if vaccinated people could catch and spread the virus, but Thiru kept repeating the mantra, “the vaccine is safe and effective.”
Canavan persisted, citing Pfizer’s official tweet on Jan 14, 2023, stating its highest priority was its “ability to vaccinate at speed to gain herd immunity and stop transmission,” and then on June 8, 2021, Bourla tweeted, “the vaccine was a critical tool to help stop transmission.”
“What evidence did Pfizer have to make that public statement to imply that vaccination could stop transmission?” asked Canavan.
Thiru pleaded ignorance saying he was not familiar with the context of the tweets and took the question on notice (to respond later in writing).
Canavan explained that federal and state governments had imposed vaccine mandates based on the evidence and advice from the manufacturers that claimed the vaccines could “stop the spread.”
Canavan also pointed to the Doherty Modelling report submitted to national cabinet in Nov 2021 that underpinned the government’s decision to impose mandates in late 2021, but again, Pfizer could not confirm whether it was consulted about the modelling.
Hewitt said, “I can’t answer that question” and took it on notice.
Moderna Executive Director of Medical Affairs for Respiratory Vaccines Rachel Dawson, said that in the phase III pivotal trials of 2020, its mRNA vaccine showed that it could reduce symptomatic infection, and that it could “make an important contribution to reducing viral transmission.”
Dawson cited real world data demonstrating that the spread of the virus was reduced in households among vaccinated individuals and that they had a “lower viral load.”
But to this day, the US regulator says the ability of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine to reduce transmission remains unproven. “While it is hoped this will be the case, the scientific community does not yet know if Spikevax will reduce such transmission,” states the FDA.
Canavan said Moderna’s evidence, “just doesn’t seem to stack up”.
“Politicians told us it will stop the spread. Clearly that hasn’t happened. Do you have a simple explanation for why very high rates of vaccination, higher than anyone expected (90%) in this country, has clearly not stopped the spread of coronavirus,” asked Canavan.
But Moderna avoided the question on transmission, presumably because it would undermine the entire argument that vaccine mandates “keep others safe,” and instead, referred to its scripted statement that “the goal of vaccination is to prevent severe infection in hospitals.”
Preventing infection
Senator Gerard Rennick then proceeded to challenge Pfizer on its claim that the vaccine was “100% effective at preventing covid-19 cases,” a statement that Bourla tweeted on April 2, 2021.
Rennick proceeded to explain why the statement was implausible.
“By September 2022, Australia had recorded 10 million cases of COVID despite having an adult population vaccinated to the tune of 95% so given those real world figures in Australia, do you still stand by that statement?” said Rennick.
But Thiru responded repeatedly, “we strongly believe, and we reiterate, that the vaccine is safe and effective for its intended use” saying that Pfizer’s vaccine remained highly effective prior to the emergence of variants.
When Rennick asked Pfizer for its definition of “highly effective” in terms of duration, Thiru responded saying, “When the wild-type virus was prevalent, efficacy of approximately or greater than 90% was maintained at six months for illness and severe disease.”
But regulatory filings clearly show Pfizer had strong evidence by April 2021 that its vaccine’s efficacy waned, and withheld the data from the public for months.
Claiming that vaccine efficacy was 90% after six months following vaccination is misleading because that figure is largely driven by the first couple months of the trial when there was still a placebo group. Had people stayed in the trial for the whole duration of the 6 months, the average overall, would have been lower.
Lack of studies
Senator Rennick proceeded to read out the TGA’s non-clinical report listing all the safety studies in animals that were not carried out prior to testing in humans.
Despite assurances that “no corners were cut,” there were no carcinogenic tests, genotoxicity tests, immunotoxicity tests, duration studies, interaction studies with other medicines, and the list went on.
Again, Thiru predictably answered, “I don’t have that report in front of me, so I’m afraid I can’t talk to that.”
When Rennick asked directly if any studies were omitted or circumvented entirely to achieve the accelerated time frame for vaccine development, Pfizer objected saying its process was “thorough and comprehensive”.
Safety problems
Senator Rennick asked if Pfizer had determined the mechanism for why its vaccine could cause myocarditis and pericarditis, but Thiru was defiant saying that Pfizer had “strong confidence in the safety profile” of its vaccine.
Rennick would not let up. “I want you to explain to me why it causes myocarditis,’ he asked several times.
Thiru conceded that Pfizer was aware of “very rare” reports of myocarditis and pericarditis temporally associated with vaccination, but could not explain the mechanism, instead opting to take the question on notice again.
Senator Alex Antic challenged Pfizer on the Fraiman re-analysis, which found one additional SAE for every 800 people vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, but his attempts hit a brick wall.
Senator Pauline Hansen chimed in, noting the Fraiman re-analysis found a “36% increase in serious adverse events. The most common were coagulation disorders, including thrombosis, and acute cardiac injury. In every 10,000 people injected 18 will experience a life threatening or altering medical complication,” said Hansen.
Again, Thiru pleaded ignorance. “I do not have a copy of your paper. I have not examined it,” he said, “the benefit risk ratio for vaccination remains strongly positive in all indications, all age groups for which it has been approved.”
Senator Hansen became visually frustrated.
“You haven’t read up on all of this, have you?” she said angrily, “You’ve come to this inquiry and you haven’t done anything whatsoever to respond to our questions. I think it’s very poor of you to not be able to answer these questions.”
When it was Moderna’s turn to respond to the Fraiman re-analysis, they too, said they were not aware of it.
Senator Antic asked Moderna what its overall rate of SAEs was for its mRNA vaccine and how that compared to routine vaccination.
But Moderna’s director of Scientific Leadership Chris Clarke said, “I don’t have the actual rates of adverse events,” as he shuffled through the papers on his desk.
Antic was staggered by the response, “You’re before a Senate inquiry and you cannot tell me the rates of serious adverse events? I mean, it’s quite extraordinary.”
Moderna took the question on notice and said that in the clinical trials they “observed no safety concerns.”
Indemnity agreements
Senator Malcolm Roberts asked for details of the indemnity agreement between Pfizer and the Australian government.
Specifically, Roberts asked if there was any clause in the agreement that indemnified Pfizer in the situation where an employee is mandated by their employer to undergo vaccination and then experiences harm.
“Senator, any indemnity agreements between Pfizer and the Australian Government are confidential, and we’re not able to discuss that in this forum,” responded Thiru.
Roberts fired back, “What have you got to hide?”
He also asked if there was any clause in the agreement that negates Pfizer’s indemnity in the event Pfizer is found to have committed fraud in the trial, as alleged by whistle-blower Brook Jackson in 2021.
“My question is simple. What is the answer? Yes or no?” asked Roberts. But Pfizer insisted “the contents of Pfizer’s contract with the Australian Government remains confidential.”
Senator Malcolm Roberts summed up his thoughts.
“You have repeatedly refused to provide evidence and dodged questions from Senators Rennick and Antic. You have relied instead on appeals to authority, and other logical fallacies.”
Covid vaccine in pregnancy
Senator Hansen confronted Pfizer with questions about the safety of its vaccine in pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Thiru did concede that there is limited clinical trial evidence in pregnant women, but said that peak bodies such as the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) supported use of the vaccine.
“[RANZCOG] have said pregnant women in Australia are a priority group for covid-19 vaccination and should be routinely offered the Pfizer vaccine (Comirnaty) or Moderna (Spikevax) vaccines at any stage of pregnancy. They have said there is no evidence of increased risk of miscarriage or teratogenic risk with mRNA or viral vaccines.”
Forced vaccination
One of the most egregious moments of the hearing was when Pfizer’s Head of Regulatory Affairs Brian Hewitt, piped up and said no-one in Australia was ever “forced” to be vaccinated.
Senator Hansen took exception to the comment and asked if Hewitt would retract his statement.
Hewitt held his position saying, “No. I believe firmly that nobody was forced to have a vaccine.”
“A lot of Australians will disagree with you on that one,” retorted Senator Hansen.
Senator Matt O’Sullivan was incredulous. He said that in his state of Western Australia, there were mandates across the board, with “very, very few exceptions.”
“If you wanted to go to work, and earn a living and provide for your family, you had to be vaccinated. I am staggered that that was your response to questions in relation to whether or not people were forced to have vaccines,” said O’Sullivan.
Many of O’Sullivan’s constituents had to go without income because the state government was “forcing” them to be vaccinated against their will.
Hewitt looked down to read a pre-prepared answer, much to the dismay of listeners.
“Senator, mandates, and vaccine requirements are determined by governments. As a company we were not involved in any government vaccine mandates. I don’t believe the mandates actually forced individuals to get vaccinated.”
Pfizer did confirm that it enforced a vaccine mandate within its own company and that it had imported a special batch of covid-19 vaccines for its employees. Why the special batch? “So that no vaccine would be taken from government stocks,” said Hewitt.
Thiru also said there were some exemptions for medical or religious reasons and that “a small number of colleagues departed the company,” presumably because they did not comply with the mandate.
Moderna, on the other hand, distanced itself from commenting on vaccine mandates.
Clarke, Director, Scientific Leadership, Moderna.
Moderna’s Vice President of Medical Affairs Jane Leong said, “We do not have a view on decisions taken by public health agencies or governments in relation to vaccine mandates. This is purely a matter for policymakers.”
At the finish line, Pfizer and Moderna executives managed to expertly dodge questions, they couldn’t recall their own rate of SAEs, they wouldn’t admit that covid vaccines cannot stop transmission, and they refused to divulge details of their indemnity agreements with the government.
Responses to questions on notice are due Aug 17, 2023.
James Trusty sounds off on Jack Smith's grand jury 'shenanigans'
Former federal prosecutor James Trusty joins 'Life, Liberty & Levin' to dissect the new indictment against former President Trump. Fox Photo.
Special Prosecutor Smith will do anything and everything to get a conviction.
A former federal prosecutor called out a reported filing made by an attorney for former President Donald Trump’s valet – a co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago special counsel case – and said the allegations amount to “extortion.”
James Trusty, a former chief of the Justice Department’s organized crime unit, said both Trump’s case and the state of allegations against the Biden family from whistleblowers “speak volumes” about the integrity of the current DOJ.
He referenced allegations against Assistant U.S. Attorney for Delaware Lesley Wolf that claim she warned Hunter Biden’s attorneys about potential scrutiny on a storage unit the first son used.
“In my book, that’s basically obstruction of justice,” Trusty said on ‘Life, Liberty & Levin” Sunday.
Waltine Nauta, left, takes a phone from Former President Donald Trump at a golf event in Virginia.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
But, Trusty added that a recent wrinkle in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into alleged mishandling of classified information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach may be similarly alarming.
“You had a high-level DOJ official — according to a statement submitted as an officer-to-the-court, to a federal judge — told Stanley Woodward, a defense attorney representing Walt Nauta that it would be a shame, essentially, if he endangered his pending judgeship by not flipping Nauta against President Trump,” Trusty said.
The incident, first reported in the UK Guardian, claimed federal prosecutor Jay Bratt – head of the counterintelligence and export-control section of the DOJ’s National Security Division – brought up the fact that Woodward filed an application to be considered for a federal judge opening.
Waltine Nauta along with defense attorney Stanley Woodward.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Woodward appeared before prosecutors in Washington in November 2022, according to the Guardian, over a matter they did not want to talk about by phone. The paper characterized the exchange as one in which Bratt suggested Woodward’s endeavor for a judgeship would be viewed in a more positive light if his client cooperated against his boss — the former president.
“Again, it’s extortion,” Trusty told host Mark Levin.
“So the people that we are entrusting in our criminal justice system to fairly and impartially and transparently pursue justice are actually obstructionists because they’re so hellbent on going after one target: President Trump.”
Trusty said the reported incident involving Woodward and Bratt is the latest example of continued suggestions the Biden DOJ has “no compunction about breaking the rules” or flouting rule-of-law for political ends.
Trusty added that there are other “shenanigans” afoot in Smith’s use of a grand jury regarding Trump, characterizing the classified documents case as one that began with a presiding judge in Washington, but continued with an indictment lodged in Miami.
“You don’t do a grand jury investigation for a year only to move it to another district unless there’s more to the story,” he said.
Levin noted that the grand jury in Washington would be witnessing evidence and occurrences that would naturally remain unbeknownst to a Florida grand jury, thereby muddying the case.
“Past people I have talked to that have faced this man, Smith, say that’s exactly what he does,” Levin said.
US prosecutor John L. “Jack” Smith presides during the presentation of the former Kosovar president Hashim Thaci before a war crimes court in The Hague, Holland.(JERRY LAMPEN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
“He pierces attorney-client privilege by-hook-or-by-crook, gets it in front of the grand jury. It’s used in front of the grand jury. And now in this case, he’s moved it to another grand jury. And so the grand jury in Florida and the judge in Florida don’t know anything about it unless Trump’s lawyers are good enough to raise it with them.”
Trusty, who at one point was part of Trump’s Washington-based legal contingent but withdrew in June, said he hopes the former president’s current counsel does bring the discrepancies before Judges Tanya Chutkan – the Obama appointee in Washington – or Aileen Cannon – the Trump appointee in Miami.
Of the Bratt-Woodward report, Fox News contributor and George Washington University Law Prof. Jonathan Turley also opined, saying in a June “Hill” column the indictment against Nauta, a Guam native, is “clearly designed to concentrate [his] mind on cooperation.”
“If he were to flip… Trump would face a potentially insurmountable case,” Turley wrote in the column.
Yellow’s bankruptcy might cost taxpayers. The 99-year-old trucking company made it official on Sunday, filing for bankruptcy and ending the employment of its 30,000 workers following years of financial struggle and a labor battle with the Teamsters. But for most outside the trucking industry, the big question looming now is whether the company’s plan to sell off its assets will enable it to pay back the controversial $700 million 
