Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Nancy Pelosi is an under-appreciated badass

...the money laundering operation they set up in Ukraine...

It's almost as if you have a faulty recording device instead of a working brain and just repeat the same dumb stories over and over, demonstrating your lack of reasoning ability and revealing your unsavory fixations.

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Nancy Pelosi is an under-appreciated badass

She's a doddering alcoholic, and her children are every bit as tied to the money laundering operation they set up in Ukraine, as Biden's "boy".

Career politicians, who have zero input in any other part of society, are parasites. She's no different.

Our institutions only hold when men and women of good faith make them hold regardless of the political cost. We have no guarantee that these men and women will be in place next time. Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way.

And also, please consider this. The rulings of our courts are respected and obeyed because we as citizens pledge to accept and honor them. Most importantly, our president, who has a constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the laws, swears to accept them. What happens when the president disregards the court's rulings as illegitimate, when he disregards the rule of law?

That, my fellow citizens, breaks our republic

There’s Only One Group to Blame for How Republicans Flocked to Trump
And it’s not “the media.”

By David French

Ever since Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, an industry of rationalization and justification has thrived. The theme is clear: Look what you made us do. The argument is simple: Democratic unfairness and media bias radicalized Republicans to such an extent that they turned to Trump in understandable outrage. Republicans had been bullied, so they turned to a bully of their own.

No aspect of that theory has been more enduring than what I’ll call the Mitt Romney martyr thesis. The Republicans nominated a good and decent man—so the argument goes—and the Democrats and the media savaged him. Republicans respected norms, Democrats did not, and now those same Democrats have the gall to savage the GOP for Trump?

I happen to agree that there has been, in fact, a Mitt Romney radicalization process. But it is quite the opposite of what this narrative suggests. It isn’t rooted in Republican anger on behalf of Romney but in Republican anger against Romney, and over time that anger has grown to be not just against Romney the man but also against the values he represents.

The Mitt Romney martyr thesis is important to understand. Like many popular (but mistaken) theories, it’s based on some grains of truth. Many of the attacks against Romney were definitely extreme, most notably when in 2012 Joe Biden told an audience that included hundreds of Black Americans that Romney’s policies would “put you all back in chains.”

Biden wasn’t referring to literal slavery but rather the “chains” of, in his view, unfair economic rules. But the language was indefensibly inflammatory. When Biden launched that attack, I was personally infuriated. I was a Romney partisan from way back. In 2006, just as Romney planned his first run for president, I formed a group—along with my wife, Nancy, and a small band of friends—called “Evangelicals for Mitt.”

Our goal was to persuade evangelical Christians to vote for a Mormon candidate. We built our case around Romney’s competence and character. (It was sadly naive to believe that the bulk of evangelical voters truly cared about personal virtue in politicians.) We spent countless hours supporting Romney through two separate campaigns, and in 2012 Nancy and I both were Romney delegates to the Republican National Convention.

A partisan mindset is a dangerous thing. It can make you keenly aware of every unfair critique from the other side and oblivious to your own side’s misdeeds. I was indignant about attacks against Romney, for example, while brushing off years of birther conspiracies against President Barack Obama as “fringe” or “irrelevant.”

Then, of course, Republicans nominated Trump, the birther in chief, and the scales fell from my partisan eyes.

And now, in hindsight, the real Romney radicalization is far more clear. You could see the seeds planted during the 2012 Republican primary. On January 19, two days before South Carolina primary voters cast their ballot, Newt Gingrich had a moment during the GOP primary debate.

The CNN host John King asked Gingrich about claims by one of his ex-wives (Gingrich has been married three times) that he pressed her in 1999 to have an open marriage. Gingrich responded by condemning the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media,” declared that he was “appalled” that King would begin a presidential debate on the topic, and said that it was “despicable” for King to make Gingrich’s ex-wife’s claim an issue two days before a Republican primary.

The crowd interrupted Gingrich with cheers and hoots of approval. But why? Wasn’t King’s underlying question fair? After all, Gingrich had admitted to cheating on his first and second wives, and he admitted to cheating on his second wife at the same time that he was speaker of the House and leading impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his own extramarital affair.

Moreover, Gingrich was having his affair after the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America and a key Republican constituency, had passed a Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials that contained the following statement: “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.”

Surely, heavily evangelical voters in a key Republican stronghold would be concerned about Gingrich’s scandals? No, they were far angrier at media outlets than they were at any Republican hypocrisy.

Gingrich went on to win the South Carolina primary in a “landslide” powered by evangelicals. It was the only time in primary history that South Carolina voters failed to vote for the eventual GOP nominee. But South Carolina voters weren’t out of step; rather they were ahead of their time. They forecast the Republican break with character in favor of a man who would “fight.”

To understand the emotional and psychological aftermath of Romney’s loss, one has to look at the cultural break between the GOP establishment—which commissioned an “autopsy” of the party in 2012 that called for greater efforts at inclusion—and a grassroots base that was convinced that it had been hoodwinked by party leaders into supporting the “safe” candidate.

They wanted a street brawler, and when (they believed) Romney campaigned with one hand tied behind his back, they were angry. Yes, there was anger at Democrats and reporters for their treatment of Romney, but the raw anger that really mattered was their anger at Romney for the way he treated Obama and the press. They were furious that he didn’t angrily confront Candy Crowley when she famously fact-checked him in the midst of the third and final presidential debate of 2012.

And so the Republican establishment and the Republican base moved apart, with one side completely convinced that Romney lost because he was perhaps, if anything, too harsh (especially when it came to immigration) and the other convinced that he lost because he was too soft.

Trump’s nomination was a triumph of that base. Well before Romney came out against Trump in the primary and well before Romney’s first impeachment vote, Trump supporters scorned him. They despised his alleged weakness.

When Trump won, the base had its proof of concept. Fighting worked, and not even Trump’s loss—along with the loss of the House and the Senate in four short years—has truly disrupted that conclusion. And why would it? Many millions still don’t believe he lost.

The Mitt Romney martyr theory thus suffers from a fatal defect. It presumes that large numbers of Republicans weren’t radicalized before Romney’s rough treatment. In truth, they already hated Democrats and the media, and when Romney lost, their message to the Republican establishment in 2016 was just as clear as it was in South Carolina in 2012. No more nice guys. The “character” that mattered was a commitment to punching the left right in the mouth.

A Dutch politician posed a question to a Pfizer representative during a European Parliament hearing on Oct. 10, eliciting an answer that some social media users framed as a new, shocking revelation.

"Pfizer director admits that COVID vaccine was never tested on preventing transmission," read the text on an Oct. 12 Instagram post.

But the answer was no revelation at all, according to Pfizer and experts.

The post shared a video clip of an exchange between Rob Roos, a conservative member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, and Janine Small, president of international developed markets at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The exchange soon spread widely on social media and on conservative news sites, where it was framed as a bombshell admission by Pfizer.

"Was the Pfizer COVID vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market?" Roos asked.

After two other Parliament members asked questions, Small responded to Roos' query.

"Regarding the question around, did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market … no," said Small, presumably meaning to say "transmission" and not "immunization." "We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market."

The Instagram post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

"This is scandalous," Roos later said in a video he shared on Twitter, arguing that the admonition to "get vaccinated for others was always a lie." He also appeared on Fox News on Oct. 11, discussing the exchange with host Tucker Carlson.

But Pfizer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and news reports before the vaccine’s approval were clear that while the vaccine was effective in preventing infection and severe disease, there was no data about whether it stopped transmission to others.

Some may have been surprised at Small’s answer, given public officials’ comments about vaccines and transmission. Both Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said that vaccination can help mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

The CDC in May 2021 changed its guidance on masking, with Fauci saying on CBS’ "Face the Nation" that vaccinated people’s chances of transmitting the virus to others was low. The agency reversed course on that guidance two months later, when it became clear that wasn’t the case with the delta variant.

But the notion that Pfizer "admitted" it didn’t test its vaccine for its ability to stop transmission is incorrect.

Andrew Widger, a spokesperson for Pfizer, said in a statement that details of its phase 3 clinical trial have been online since 2020, and that the trial was never intended to study transmission.

The phase 3 clinical trial was "designed and powered" to evaluate the COVID-19 vaccine’s efficacy in preventing disease caused by SARS-CoV2, including severe disease, Widger said. "Stopping transmission was not a study endpoint," he said, which means it wasn’t an outcome being studied.

The FDA, meanwhile, said in its Dec. 11, 2020, announcement of emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s vaccine that there wasn’t yet "evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person." A Pfizer press release that same day and another announcing its approval in the European Union on Dec. 21, 2020, made no mention of the vaccine’s effect on transmission.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, said the outcomes being measured in the original vaccine trials for Pfizer and Moderna were always about their effectiveness against "symptomatic COVID-19."

"So, the prevention of transmission (and asymptomatic COVID) were not primary endpoints of these trials and were never a claim of the pharmaceutical companies in developing these vaccines," Gandhi said, adding, "Indeed, this revelation is not new."

Tara Smith, a Kent State University epidemiology professor, agreed, saying the Pfizer executive’s statement was "not a ‘gotcha.’" In a December 2020 article for the online website SELF, Smith wrote that the vaccine’s ability to stop transmission was an unanswered question, noting that it’s common in initial vaccine trials for that topic to be addressed in later studies.

"We were hopeful in spring/early summer 2021 that vaccines would be effective against transmission. Delta did change that a bit, making it clear that while vaccines did, and still do, help to reduce one’s risk of infection, they alone are not enough to stop transmission," Smith said in an email to PolitiFact. "That’s why many of us were and remain frustrated at CDC’s messaging around masks, suggesting the vaccinated could stop masking."

Before the delta and omicron variants came along, studies suggested that the vaccines were somewhat effective in slowing transmission of the coronavirus.

"In the era before omicron, and to some extent the delta variant, the vaccines clearly were transmission-halting to a high degree," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Once variants began evading vaccine immunity and breakthrough infections became more common, he added, vaccines were less likely to stop transmission.

When Walensky "said that vaccines decrease transmission and therefore, getting vaccinated protected others, she was providing accurate information to the American public based on data at the time," said Gandhi.

It’s clear that the vaccines are not a firewall against transmission to others, despite misleading claims on two occasions by President Joe Biden that we fact-checked in 2021.

Currently, Gandhi said, a recent study during the Omicron surge showed that vaccines or prior infection each decreased transmission to others by about 20%.

"The pharmaceutical companies and the CDC both were accurate in terms of their messaging and reporting on the vaccines over time in terms of their ability to reduce transmission and — currently — their incredible ability to reduce severe disease due to the generation of cellular immunity," Gandhi said.
Our ruling:

An Instagram post claimed that a Pfizer executive suddenly "admitted" that its COVID-19 vaccine had not been tested for preventing transmission before it went to market.

But this is not a revelation. Pfizer’s clinical trial was always intended to study whether the vaccine prevented recipients from getting infected with COVID-19 and whether it prevented severe disease. Pfizer did not claim to have data about transmission of the virus to others.

We rate this claim False.

All COVID-19 vaccines currently approved or authorized in the United States (Pfizer-BioNTech/Comirnaty, Moderna, and Janssen [Johnson & Johnson]) are effective against COVID-19, including against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.

Available evidence suggests the currently approved or authorized COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against hospitalization and death for a variety of strains, including Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351), Gamma (P.1), and Delta (B.1.617.2); data suggest lower effectiveness against confirmed infection and symptomatic disease caused by the Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants compared with the ancestral strain and Alpha variant. Ongoing monitoring of vaccine effectiveness against variants is needed.

Limited available data suggest lower vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 illness and hospitalization among immunocompromised people. In addition, numerous studies have shown reduced immunologic response to COVID-19 vaccination among people with various immunocompromising conditions.

The risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection in fully vaccinated people cannot be completely eliminated as long as there is continued community transmission of the virus. Early data suggest infections in fully vaccinated persons are more commonly observed with the Delta variant than with other SARS-CoV-2 variants. However, data show fully vaccinated persons are less likely than unvaccinated persons to acquire SARS-CoV-2, and infections with the Delta variant in fully vaccinated persons are associated with less severe clinical outcomes. Infections with the Delta variant in vaccinated persons potentially have reduced transmissibility than infections in unvaccinated persons, although additional studies are needed.

He also viciously attacked the unvaccinated in multiple speeches, claiming that not getting the shots was putting other people at risk.

John Cleese
@JohnCleese
4h
Many of my US Twits are baffled by my remarks about British politics

Ignore them

The impending disaster in America is much, much more important

We have politicians who are weak, selfish and
quite unqualified, but your psychopaths are actually a danger to the entire planet

Quote:

John Cleese
@JohnCleese
4h
Many of my US Twits are baffled by my remarks about British politics

Ignore them

The impending disaster in America is much, much more important

We have politicians who are weak, selfish and
quite unqualified, but your psychopaths are actually a danger to the entire planet