Doughty bitch slapping the Biden administration. Again.
DOJ files an appeal. Wishes to continue having Social Media block Conservatives. It looks as if the DOJ is upset that the federal judge put a clamp on their ability to spread false information using Social Media. Well the judge had good reason to do this.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at the Trump judge for granting a preliminary injunction, blocking the federal government from censoring conservatives online.
The State Department canceled its future meetings with Facebook just one day after US District Court Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee who still honors the US Constitution, accused the Biden Regime of violating the First Amendment by censoring unfavorable views in a blistering 155-page opinion.
So let’s see if it comes out that the government had other secret meetings with other Social Media Venues.
Bill Ackman explains why he embraced RFK Jr.’s skepticism on COVID vaccines. This article from CNBC is mostly anti RFK JR., but they do allow Ackman to get his point across about why he changed his views on the COVID vaccines.
Bill Ackman, one of the most influential investors on Wall Street, has stunned his Wall Street peers by amplifying Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism.
“I listened to RFK on several podcasts and a town hall and thought he raised important issues about vaccines and other issues that were worth learning more about,” the Pershing Square CEO told CNBC.Bill Ackman said in 2021 that delaying Covid vaccinations for older Americans “seems like genocide.”Today, the influential hedge fund chief and investor is amplifying the anti-vaccine views of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Ackman is not denying his change. In fact, he said Kennedy is asking “important questions” about vaccines, raising issues he is interested in learning more about.
Several of Ackman’s recent tweets about Covid vaccines have stunned and confounded many of his colleagues on Wall Street, according to several people who have known and been allied with him for years. And it’s led both his allies and foes to ask the same question: Why is he doing this?
Ackman answered that question in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.
“I listened to RFK on several podcasts and a town hall and thought he raised important issues about vaccines and other issues that were worth learning more about,” said Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square Capital. “I don’t feel like we’ve fully answered questions about the safety of all vaccines, particularly more recently approved vaccines, and our approach to determining their safety and efficacy.”
Wall Street veteran Omeed Malik is hosting a campaign fundraiser for Kennedy later this month in the Hamptons. Venture capitalist David Sacks and fellow tech leader Chamath Palihapitiya hosted a fundraiser for Kennedy in June, which raised approximately $500,000 for Kennedy’s campaign. Ackman would not say whether he planned to donate to Kennedy’s campaign for president.
Ackman told CNBC his newfound worries about vaccines come from being a parent and a concerned citizen. He said Kennedy, in his view, is asking “important questions” about them. “Unfortunately, vaccines are not safety tested,” Kennedy said at a town hall late last month.
″@RobertKennedyJr and others have raised important questions about the safety of some vaccines and have sought explanations for the dramatic increases in the incidence of childhood allergies, autism, and other health issues. These are good questions that have not been adequately answered,” Ackman said in a tweet last month that quoted a video of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson arguing that Kennedy is getting the better of President Joe Biden in the early days of the Democratic primary campaign.
When asked if he believes whether Kennedy should be president, Ackman said: “I don’t yet know, but I think he is asking important questions and raising interesting issues that are worthy of discussion and debate.”
Ackman, who has backed Democrats in the past, also wouldn’t say whether he will back Biden.
“It depends on the alternatives at the time of the general election,” Ackman said. “My strong preference is that he announces now that he won’t run to create a more open field for other candidates.”
The man is a far left wing Progressive, but he’s having second thoughts on COVID and there’s nothing wrong with that. So let’s see if more Progressives come out of the closet and take a second look at the COVID misinformation.
Angel Studios’ Sound of Freedom opened Tuesday, July 4, to an astonishing $11.6 million, which nearly topped the July 4 take of Disney’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Some caveats apply, all of them in Sound of Freedom’s favor… To begin with, Dial of Destiny played in 2,000 more theaters than Sound of Freedom. Second, and this is really something, Sound of Freedom sold $14.2 million worth of tickets Tuesday, which tops Dial of Destiny and makes the Christian-themed film America’s top 4th of July ticket seller.
A drama starring Jim Caviezel as a real-life rescuer of children from traffickers, grossed just under the day’s total for #IndianaJones, which played in almost 2,000 more theaters. https://t.co/gCF251x43D
The reason those “extra” ticket sales don’t officially count is because those tickets were not used. The additional sales were part of the movie’s “pay it forward” program, where people who enjoy the movie purchase a ticket for someone else. That’s some pretty smart marketing.
In one day, “Freedom” grossed more the full domestic runs of recent awards contenders like “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “TAR,” and “Women Talking.” Its gross nearly doubles that of current independent hit “Past Lives.”
Sound of Freedom stars Jim Caviezel and Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino. Caviezel plays Tim Ballard, a real-life U.S. government agent who quit his job at Homeland Security to rescue children from drug cartels and sex traffickers in Latin America.
President Donald Trump, center, speaks as Kirstjen Nielsen, U.S. secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), and Timothy Ballard, founder and chief executive officer of Operation Underground Railroad, left, listen during a meeting about human trafficking on the southern border at the White House in Washington, D.C., on February 1, 2019. (Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Here’s where this box office story becomes even more glorious…
Sound of Freedom was produced in 2018, five full years ago, and 20th Century Fox acquired the distribution rights. But after Disney acquired Fox in early 2019, it shelved the movie. It then took the producers years to acquire the distribution rights back from Disney.
Angel Studios, the company behind the worldwide hit The Chosen, acquired Sound of Freedom in 2023, and it now owns what will almost certainly be the most profitable independent movie of the year — a movie that, in a single day, outgrossed the total gross of three of last year’s Oscar contenders.
So why would the Disney Grooming Syndicate dump a movie with a meager $15 million production budget starring a bankable star like Jim Caviezel and a full-blown Oscar winner like Mira Sorvino?
Easy answer… Under CEO Bob Iger, Disney became demonic, and today’s very different and morally corrupted Disney wants nothing to do with anything Christian. Secondly, the same Disney that is now so aggressively defending child groomers and engaging in grooming and sexualizing little kids likely wanted nothing to do with a movie that condemns child sex trafficking. Finally, look back at the political climate in 2019. Iger has made no secret of his desire to run for president as a Democrat, and no Democrat wants to be associated with a movie that appeals to MAGA Christian Red State Tards like me.
Ah, but the arc of history does bend toward justice, doesn’t it? The Disney Grooming Syndicate has released one money-losing flop after another. But Sound of Freedom will go on to make a nice, fat profit (Sound of Freedom is projected to gross anywhere from $20 to $28 million by Monday). Oh, and Sound of Freedom just handed Disney’s Dial of Destiny flop another humiliating headline.
The shareholders must be thrilled.
Between Sound of Freedom, The Chosen, His Only Son, and others, Angel Studios is achieving what Disney has lost: audience trust and goodwill. People are starting to see the Angel Studio brand as not only trustworthy when it comes to the kind of content they want, but also — and most importantly — the quality of that content (Sound of Freedom earned a rare A+ from CinemaScore). That special status is very difficult to earn and very easy to lose (just ask the child exploiters at Disney … or take a gander at the company’s stock price, lol).
This week, The Wall Street Journalreports that Rochelle Walensky steps down as CDC director and warns the public to be on guard against misinformation and the politicisation of science.
Ironically, this comes after two and a half years of Walensky misinforming the public and politicising the science.
I have documented how Walensky misled Congress on various issues, including covid vaccine effectiveness against viral transmission and on Cochrane’s review of face masks.
Walensky testified that her public statement on MSNBC in March 2021 about how “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, they do not get sick” was accurate. But even today, the FDA states that efficacy against transmission is unproven.
Walensky also said that the summary of Cochrane’s review of face masks had been “retracted.” But it was neither retracted, nor had the authors of the review changed the language in the summary.
A recent, damning study by Krohnert et al, solidifies criticism of the agency. The researchers compiled instances of numerical and statistical errors made by the CDC during the COVID-19 pandemic.
After reviewing CDC publications, press releases, interviews, meetings, and Twitter accounts, they found a total of 25 instances where Walensky’s agency promoted demonstrably false numbers and statistical errors.
The majority (80%) of these instances exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation. For example, on Oct 27, 2021, Walensky said “there have been 745 deaths in children less than 18,” but the National Center for Health Statistics showed it was 558 deaths.
At a White House COVID-19 briefing on Jun 23, 2022, Walensky claimed that COVID-19 was a “top 5 cause of death” in children, which was also untrue.
And in Feb this year, Walensky testified before Congress that there had been “2000 paediatric deaths from COVID-19”, when in fact, it was 1400-1500.
In some cases, the errors were not corrected, or the errors were repeated. Notably, the vast majority of errors (94%) made by the CDC pertained to exaggerated COVID-19 risks to children, which the authors say would have influenced the discussion of pandemic policies.
“The CDC’s errors have likely led the public to believe children’s risks are higher than they truly are,” wrote the authors.
“CDC’s guidance repeatedly called for restrictions being placed on children, including school closures, mask mandates, and strong recommendations for vaccinations and multiple boosters even among children who have recovered from the virus,” they added.
Consequently, the authors suggested that the agency responsible for reporting health statistics should be firewalled from the agency setting health policy – something that would avoid biased statistics or the politicisation of the science.
CDC delusion
At the commencement of her tenure at the CDC, Walensky wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times saying she found it “extremely disturbing” hearing reports that White House officials in the Trump administration interfered with official guidance of the CDC.
“I believe in the agency’s mission and commitment to knowledge, statistics and guidance. I will do so by leading with facts, science and integrity and being accountable for them,” wrote Walensky.
But the public has not witnessed any accountability – the opposite in fact. Now that her tenure is over, Walensky remains defiant as she reflects on her time as director.
“We made this world a safer place. I have never been prouder of anything I have done in my professional career,” said Walensky after announcing her resignation.
The Biden administration has since nominated Dr Mandy Cohen, an internal medicine physician and former state health secretary in North Carolina, as the new CDC director to replace Walensky.
But many fear that Cohen will implement more of the same unevidenced, misguided health policies as her predecessor.
Mandy Cohen, CDC director seen wearing a “Dr Fauci” face mask.
Cohen supported forcibly masking children in schools, and promoted cloth masks despite no evidence for their effectiveness at stopping viral spread, which many say, should have been immediately disqualifying for the position.
US District Court Judge Terry Doughty, who still honors the US Constitution, accused the Biden Regime of violating the First Amendment by censoring unfavorable views in a blistering 155-page opinion.
The judge called the Biden Regime’s efforts “Orwellian.”
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Judge Doughty wrote.
“This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech,” he continued. “American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country … the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario.”
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting DHS, FBI, DOJ, and other agencies from its government-wide, fascist conspiracy with Big Tech to censor speech and manipulate the public.
Newsmax is continuing its success in key Nielsen ratings for the second quarter of 2023, blowing away all major cable news channels.
Newsmax led the top cable news competition — including Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN — in ratings growth for the second quarter of 2023 compared to the same quarter of 2022.
According to Nielsen, during Q2 2023 Newsmax ‘s growth was explosive:
71% increase in total audience for total day
50% increase in total audience 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday
126% increase in total audience in prime time Monday to Friday
No other leading cable TV network comes close to Newsmax’s ratings gains.
Meanwhile, Fox News saw a significant decline of audience ratings, losing 21% of its prime viewers and a 28% decline in the key 35-64 age demographic for the same time period.
Fox News’ prime-time fall has been attributed to the abrupt firing of top-rated cable host Tucker Carlson.
At the same time, Newsmax has made tremendous gains.
“It’s clear millions of Americans are making the switch to Newsmax, and they’re staying,” Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said. “We have a powerhouse night lineup that begins with Greta Van Susteren and continues with Rob Schmitt, Eric Bolling, Chris Plante, and Greg Kelly.”
Megyn Kelly told “Eric Bolling The Balance” this week that the “ideological” turn at Fox News, which increasingly has become more establishment and anti-Trump, is a key reason for the ratings losses.
“I think the whole network kind of outstayed its welcome,” “Tucker” biographer Chadwick Moore told Eric Bolling last week. “They’ve continually offended their core audience, and they seem to not care.”
Winning at the 9th. James O’Keefe Wins HUGE Lawsuit in Oregon: Court Rules Anti-Recording Law Unconstitutional. This article was originally posted at the GP.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the law that prohibits recording in the state of Oregon. James O’Keefe and Project Veritas filed the lawsuit in Portland, Oregon back in 2020.
In Project Veritas vs Schmidt, the organization argued it had a right to engage in undercover journalism and record people without their consent. “WON in Ninth Circuit – Federal Appeals Court STRIKES DOWN Oregon criminal recording law” James O’Keefe said boasting about his win.
“It violates the 1st amendment right to free speech, INVALID ON ITS FACE” – the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling.
“Oregon Revised Statute 165.540(1)(c). This law prohibited anyone from making an audio recording unless that person “specifically informed” others they were recording. But the law also included special permissions from the government to allow for non-notified recording of the police, but not any other government employee,” O’Keefe said.
“That just leaves the government putting its thumb on the lens of newsgathering, deciding which news is easiest to get and skewing reporting. Like the Ninth Circuit has explained before, whatever concerns Oregon has over shoddy reporting or “fake news,” the remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true and not the suppression of speech.” O’Keefe added.
Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta out of the 9th circuit in Pasadena, California authored the opinion. Ikuta wrote, “Oregon does not have a compelling interest in protecting individuals’ conversational privacy from other individuals’ protected speech in places open to the public, even if that protected speech consists of creating audio or visual recordings of other people.”
BREAKING NEWS: PORTLAND, Ore. (OMG) the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has OVERTURNED the law that prohibits recording in the state of Oregon on the grounds it violates the 1st amendment. I filed the lawsuit (PVA v Schmidt) with attorney Benjamin Barr and Steve Klein at the Marc… pic.twitter.com/hsy50IJm2T
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced in no uncertain terms that her office is determined to enforce it, the US Supreme Court and freedom of religious conscience be damned.
Mayes calls ruling ‘woefully misguided’
After the court announced its decision in the Colorado case, Mayes issued a statement that read in part, “Today, a woefully misguided majority of the United States Supreme Court has decided that businesses open to the public may, in certain circumstances, discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans.
“While my office is still reviewing the decision to determine its effects, I agree with Justice Sotomayor — the idea that the Constitution gives businesses the right to discriminate is ‘profoundly wrong.’ ”
Mayes is referring to a dissenting opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote in part, “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”
[Protected class means that they are “more equal than others” — to quote George Orwell’s Animal Farm. –TPR]
She added, “By issuing this new license to discriminate … the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
Not in Arizona, according to Mayes.
She will ‘continue to enforce’ Arizona’s law
She said in her statement, “Despite today’s ruling, Arizona law prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation, including discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity.
“If any Arizonan believes that they have been the victim of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, or ancestry in a place of public accommodation, they should file a complaint with my office. I will continue to enforce Arizona’s public accommodation law to its fullest extent.”
The extremist majority of the Supreme Court appears willing to nudge the country into a modern-day Jim Crow era.
For now, however, members of the LGBTQ community in Arizona do not have to sit in the back of the bus.
[It would seem that AG Mayes (and the OpEd writer) both feel that the “protected classes” should have preferential treatment over the other “non-protected” people in their state. — TPR]
Lawyers for IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley issued a statement Friday afternoon responding to a letter by Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell that attacked their client and House Ways and Mean Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) over revelations in the investigation into Hunter and Joe Biden. Statement by Shapley’s attorneys Mark Lytle, Jason Foster and Tristan Leavitt:
WASHINGTON — The following was issued today from the legal team of IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley in reaction to the letter from Hunter Biden’s attorney to the House Ways and Means Committee:
“Biden family lawyers have resorted to intimidation before—reportedly threatening federal prosecutors with “career suicide” if they charged Hunter Biden—so this attempt to intimidate our client and the oversight authorities scrutinizing the politicization of that case is no surprise. IRS SSA Gary Shapley has scrupulously followed the rules and blew the whistle to Congress about the unequal application of tax laws pursuant to 26 U.S.C. §6103(f)(5) and 5 U.S.C. §2302(b)(8)(C), a process facilitated lawfully by the authority of both Chairs of the tax committees, including Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR)—with whom we are still working cooperatively to arrange follow-up testimony to supplement for the Senate any topics not covered in the transcripts of questioning by Republican and Democrat staff already released by the House Ways and Means Committee.
“SSA Shapley referred the October 6, 2022 leak for investigation to the inspectors general (IGs) of his own agency and DOJ. He volunteered to make the referral to his supervisors as is shown in the very same email that reports that U.S. Attorney David Weiss “was not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.” Ex. 10. 5/23/2023 testimony of Gary Shapley. Falsely alleging that he was a leaker is just another baseless attack on him for blowing the whistle.
“All the innuendo and bluster that Biden family lawyers can summon will not change the facts. Lawful whistleblowing is the opposite of illegal leaking, and these bogus accusations against SSA Shapley by lawyers for the Biden family echo threatening emails sent by IRS leadership after the case agent also blew the whistle to the IRS Commissioner about favoritism in this case—as well as the chilling report that Biden attorneys have also lobbied the Biden Justice Department directly to target our client with criminal inquiry in further retaliation for blowing the whistle. These threats and intimidation have already been referred earlier this week to the inspectors general for DOJ and the IRS, and to Congress for further investigation as potential obstruction of their lawful inquiries as well as retaliation against our client.” – Mark D. Lytle, Nixon Peabody LLP & Jason Foster and Tristan Leavitt, Empower Oversight.
Lowell in his letter denied that Hunter’s laptop — which provided evidence for the federal probe into the now-53-year-old — had been abandoned or its data authenticated, despite Shapley testifying the FBI had verified its contents in November 2019.
Hunter’s attorney also falsely claimed the first son never responded to an email from associate Tony Bobulinski — who according to Lowell coined the phrase “10 held by H for the big guy,” — that dealt compensation from a 2017 joint venture with Chinese energy company CEFC.
Email evidence from the laptop shows the first son had responded: “It will all work Tony just trying to elaborate on certain existing pressures so we are all aware going in.” The “big guy” phrase was used by another Biden business partner, James Gilliar — not Bobulinski — and Hunter responded to that email both by demanding more money to help pay the cost of his divorce from first wife Kathleen Buhle, as well as that his longtime office manager Joan Peugh be brought in as well.
…Lowell said the WhatsApp messages posted by Smith were “fakes,” without acknowledging the images were based on Shapley’s testimony about communications obtained from Hunter’s iCloud via a search warrant in August 2020, and were not meant to be actual screenshots.
The Post also reported a statement by Chairman Smith to Lowell’s letter:
“It’s little surprise that Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to chill our investigation and discredit the whistleblowers who say they have already faced retaliation from the IRS and the Department of Justice despite statutory protections established by law,” Smith said in a statement. “These whistleblowers bravely came forward with allegations about misconduct and preferential treatment for Hunter Biden – and now face attacks even from an army of lawyers he hired.
“Worse, this letter misleads the public about the lawful actions taken by the Ways and Means Committee, which took the appropriate legal steps to share this information with rest of Congress,” the chairman went on. “It doesn’t even address concerns that counsel for Mr. Biden was regularly tipped off about potential warrants and raids in pursuit of evidence that implicated him, as well as his father. We will continue to go where the facts take us—and we will not abandon our investigation just because Mr. Biden’s lawyers don’t like it.”
The House Judiciary Committee responded to Lowell’s letter in a tweet, “The White House is terrified. Full panic mode.”
Biden telling tall tales. Again. Thanks to Gateway Pundit and Fox for the background.
Former Reagan administration economist Larry Kudlow destroyed President Joe Biden’s claims Wednesday that Bidenomics is “working” and superior to Reaganomics.
In a speech in Chicago, Biden said, “I knew we couldn’t go back to the same failed policies when I ran, so I came into office determined to change the economic direction of this country, to move from trickle-down economics to what everyone on Wall Street Journal and Financial Times began to call ‘Bidenomics.’”
“And guess what? Bidenomics is working,” the president claimed. “When I took office, the pandemic was raging and our economy was reeling, supply chains were broken, millions of people unemployed, hundreds of thousands of small businesses on the verge of closing after so many had already closed — literally, hundreds of thousands on the verge of closing.
“Today, the U.S. has the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economies since the pandemic. The highest in the world.”
It’s not clear exactly what criteria Biden was using, but according to Statista, India’s GDP growth rate in 2022 was 6.8 percent, Canada’s was 3.4 percent and China’s was 2.99 percent, while in the U.S. it was 2.1 percent.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2023 was 2 percent. So Biden appears to be prevaricating again.
He also claimed that his administration has created 13.4 million jobs since taking office. “More jobs in two years than any president has ever made in four — in two,” the president said Wednesday.
The GOP-controlled House Budget Committee and other fact-checkers have pointed out Biden’s characterization of new jobs his administration created is misleading because most were simply jobs added back following the pandemic.
“Nearly 72 percent of all job gains since 2021 were simply jobs that were being recovered from the pandemic, not new job creation. In fact, when looking at today’s economy compared to pre-pandemic levels, employment is up only by 3.7 million,” the committee said.
“On the other hand, prior to the pandemic, job creation under President [Donald] Trump was 6.7 million — 3 million more jobs than the current President,” it said.
In fact, when Biden took office in January 2021, the unemployment rate had already dropped from a pandemic high of 14.7 percent in April 2020 to 6.3 percent. It is now 3.7 percent.
So the economy was not “reeling” but well on the way to recovery when Biden became president, with Trump’s pro-growth policies still in place.
Kudlow, who was Trump’s top economist in addition to working for Reagan, noted on his Fox Business program Wednesday the “reeling” GDP growth rate when Trump left office was 6.5 percent. CNBC reported it at 6.3 percent during the first quarter of 2021 before Biden’s policies began to kick in.
