Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Sandy Hook Families Settle with Remington Arms to the Tune of $73 Million
On Tuesday, the families of nine children killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting settled with Remington Arms, receiving a collective total of $73 million in compensation from the gun manufacturer.
As Insider reports, Remington was targeted by the families of the 2012 shooting due to the fact that one of the guns used in the attack, a Bushmaster rifle, was manufactured by Remington. The company was not sued by families until 2014, two years after the attack.
The basis for the lawsuit was that Remington marketed its rifle in such a way that it became appealing as a weapon of choice for the shooter, Adam Lanza, who committed suicide after he killed 27 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty of his victims were children, while six were staff members at the school; he had earlier killed his own mother at their home before heading to the school.
Following the settlement, several of the plaintiffs and their lawyers expressed explicitly anti-gun sentiments in their public statements. One of the plaintiffs, Nicole Hockley, claimed that “today is a day of accountability for an industry that has thus far enjoyed operating with immunity and impunity. And for this I am grateful.” She also described the settlement as a “crack” in “the gun industry’s impenetrable armor.”
Josh Koskoff, the attorney for the coalition of families, similarly claimed that the ruling was proof that “the gun industry’s protection is not bulletproof.” Koskoff added that the settlement not only included the financial compensation, but the sharing of “hundreds of thousands of documents” detailing Remington’s internal marketing strategy as it related to that particular firearm.
Remington tried to argue that it was protected under the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, but the Connecticut Supreme Court allowed the lawsuit to proceed. The Connecticut court’s justification was that the law does “not permit advertisements that promote or encourage violent, criminal behavior,” without citing any evidence of what “violent behavior” was in any of the marketing.
Remington’s attempts to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States were denied when the high court declined to...
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Camels and burning Kuwaiti oil fields that had been blown up by retreating Iraqi troops, 1991.
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Will Xi Jinping's 'End of Days' Plunge China and the World into War?
- Xi Jinping, China's mighty-looking leader, has an "enormous array of domestic enemies." — Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association and editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, to Gatestone Institute, February 2022.
- Xi created that opposition. After becoming China's ruler at the end of 2012, he grabbed power from everyone else and then jailed tens of thousands of opponents in purges, which he styled as "anti-corruption" campaigns.
- Beijing is panicking, adding nearly a trillion dollars in total new credit last month, a record increase.... When the so-called "hidden debt" is included, total debt in the country amounts to somewhere in the vicinity of 350% of gross domestic product.
- Not surprisingly, Chinese companies are now defaulting. The debt crisis is so serious it can bring down China's economy—and the country's financial and political systems with it.
- In the most recent hint of distress, "Fang Zhou and China"... wrote a 42,000-character essay titled "An Objective Evaluation of Xi Jinping." The anti-Xi screed, posted on January 19 on the China-sponsored 6park site, appears to be the work of several members of the Communist Party's Shanghai Gang faction, headed by former leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang's faction has been continually sniping at Xi and now is leading the charge against him.
- Xi's problems, unfortunately, can become our problems. He has, for various internal political reasons, a low threshold of risk and many reasons to pick on some other country to deflect elite criticism and popular discontent.
- The Communist Party of China has always believed its struggle with the United States is existential—in May 2019 the official People's Daily declared a "people's war" on America—but the hostility has become far more evident in the past year.
- Virulent anti-Americanism suggests Xi Jinping is establishing a justification to strike America. The Chinese regime often uses its media to first warn and then signal its actions.
- America has now been warned.
Not so in the world's most populous state, which maintains the world's strictest COVID-19 controls. There are no known popular protests in the People's Republic of China against anti-coronavirus efforts.
Yet China is not stable, and Xi Jinping is facing his "End of Days," as a recent essay by opposition figures (see below) puts it. The revolt is not in society at large but at the top of the Communist Party. As Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association, told Gatestone, Xi Jinping, China's mighty-looking leader, has an "enormous array of domestic enemies."
Xi created that opposition. After becoming China's ruler at the end of 2012, he grabbed power from everyone else and then jailed tens of thousands of opponents in purges, which he styled as "anti-corruption" campaigns.
Xi also used the disease to great advantage. As Copley, also the editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, points out, "Xi's 'zero COVID' policy is, indeed, less about stopping the spread of COVID and more about suppressing his internal enemies, both in the public and in the Party."
The "enormous array" is now starting to strike back. Xi is most vulnerable on his handling of the country's stagnating economy. For one thing, the draconian campaign against COVID—massive testing, meticulous contact-tracing, strict lockdowns—have of course undermined consumption, which Beijing has touted as the core of the economy.
Beijing is panicking, adding nearly a trillion dollars in total new credit last month, a record increase. Chinese technocrats have also become sneaky, embarking on what the widely followed Andrew Collier of Global Source Partners terms "shadow stimulus"—stimulus provided by local governments and their entities in order to allow the central government to avoid reporting spending.
China needs a vibrant economy to service enormous debts, largely run up as Beijing overstimulated the economy, especially beginning in 2008. When the so-called "hidden debt" is included, total debt in the country amounts to somewhere in the vicinity of 350% of gross domestic product.
Not surprisingly, Chinese companies are now defaulting. The debt crisis is so serious it can bring down China's economy—and the country's financial and political systems with it.
For three decades, a Chinese leader was essentially immune to criticism because all decisions of consequence were shared by top figures in the Communist Party. Xi Jinping, however, as he took power also ended up with accountability—in other words, with no one else to blame. With things not going China's way in recent years, Xi, often called the "Chairman of Everything," is taking heat.
There are signs of intensifying discord among senior leaders. In the most recent hint of distress, "Fang Zhou and China"— "Fang Zhou" is a pseudonym meaning "ark"—wrote a 42,000-character essay titled "An Objective Evaluation of Xi Jinping." The anti-Xi screed, posted on January 19 on the China-sponsored 6park site, appears to be the work of several members of the Communist Party's Shanghai Gang faction, headed by former leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang's faction has been continually sniping at Xi and now is leading the charge against him.
Fang's piece incorporates previously voiced criticisms but does so in a comprehensive fashion. Fang blames Xi for, among other things, ruining the economy.
"Xi will be the architect of his own defeat," writes Fang at the end of the rant, in a section titled "Xi Jinping's Denouement" or "End of Days." "His style of governance is simply unsustainable; it will generate even newer and greater policy missteps."
Fang notes that Xi was able to take advantage of a feeble opposition but has not been able to accomplish much. "Xi's policies have been retrogressive and derivative, his successes minor and his blunders numerous," writes the Asia Society's Geremie Barme, who translated the essay, summarizing Fang's thoughts. Fang believes Xi "deserves a score of less than zero."
Xi is not one to let a decade of zero scores get in the way of his continued rule. Communist Party norms require him to step down at the 20th National Congress, to be held sometime this fall if tradition holds. He obviously wants a precedent-breaking third term as general secretary so that he can become, as outsiders say, "Dictator for Life." Most observers expect he will get that new term.
Maybe. Fang Zhou's essay shows Communist Party leaders are risking stability by airing disagreements in public. Xi Jinping therefore, now realizes he is in the fight of his life.
Xi's problems, unfortunately, can become our problems. He has, for various internal political reasons, a low threshold of risk and many reasons to pick on...
Visage à trois #47
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Visage à trois #46
How the CDC Abandoned Science
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| Filthy Liar: Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, |
Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda
The main federal agency guiding America’s pandemic policy is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which sets widely adopted policies on masking, vaccination, distancing, and other mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID and ensure the virus is less morbid when it leads to infection. The CDC is, in part, a scientific agency—they use facts and principles of science to guide policy—but they are also fundamentally a political agency: The director is appointed by the president of the United States, and the CDC’s guidance often balances public health and welfare with other priorities of the executive branch.
Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient. This research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the papers are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as such, these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. The CDC’s use of this technique has severely damaged their reputation and helped lead to a growing divide in trust in science by political party. Science now risks entering a death spiral in which it will increasingly fragment into subsidiary verticals of political parties. As a society, we cannot afford to allow this to occur. Impartial, honest appraisal is needed now more than ever, but it is unclear how we can achieve it.
In November 2020, a CDC study sought to prove that mask mandates slowed the spread of the coronavirus. The study found that counties in Kansas which implemented mask mandates saw COVID case rates start to fall (light blue below), while counties that did not saw rates continue to climb (dark blue):
The data scientist Youyang Gu immediately noted that locales with more rapid rise would be more likely to implement a mandate, and thus one would expect cases to fall more in such locations independent of masking, as people’s behavior naturally changes when risk escalates. Gu zoomed out on the same data and considered a longer horizon, and the results were enlightening: It appeared as if all counties did the same whether they masked or not:
The CDC had merely shown a tiny favorable section, depicted in the red circle above, but the subsequent pandemic waves dwarf their results. In short, the CDC’s study was not capable of proving anything and was highly misleading, but it served the policy goal of encouraging cloth mask mandates.
When it comes to promoting mask mandates in school, in October 2021 the CDC famously offered a comparison of masked and unmasked schools in Arizona’s Pima and Maricopa counties in their own journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The analysis claimed that schools with no mask requirement were 3.5 times more likely to experience a COVID outbreak when compared with schools that mandated masking. But the analysis did not adjust for rates of vaccination among either teachers or students. The paper also looked at two counties in Arizona with different political preferences, and thus did not separate mask mandates from other patterns of behavior that fall within partisan lines. Democratic voters, for example, are much more likely to embrace mask mandates and are more likely to otherwise curtail their behavior as they report greater overall concern about COVID. Elementary schoolchildren generally do better with COVID than high school kids, but the CDC’s analysis lumped all ages together, and might have been biased by the fact that mask mandates were more common at ages when outbreak detection occurs less often.
These were only a few of the CDC paper’s problems. When the reporter David Zweig investigated it for The Atlantic, he found that the exposure times varied: The mask mandate schools were open for fewer hours per day, with less time for outbreaks to occur. Zweig also found that the number of schools included did not add up. He hypothesized that some schools conducting remote learning might have been wrongly included, but when he asked the paper’s authors to provide him a list of the schools, they didn’t. In short, the more one examined this study, the more it fell apart.
Masking is not the only matter in which the CDC’s stated policy goal has coincided with very poor-quality science that was, coincidentally, published in their own journal. Consider the case of vaccination for kids between the ages of 5 and 11. COVID vaccination in this age group has stalled, which runs counter to the CDC’s goal of maximum vaccination. Interestingly, vaccinating kids between 5 and 11 is disputed globally; Sweden recently elected not to vaccinate healthy kids in this age group, and some public health experts believe that it would be preferable for kids to gain immunity from...
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Press Calls Trump A Fascist For Opposing Violent Riots, But Trudeau’s A Hero For Treating Peaceful Protesters Like Terrorists
There is no shortage of double standards when it comes to corporate media and Democrats’ conduct related to 2020’s summer of rage.
When President Donald Trump pressed for military deployment to quell the violent riots overwhelming cities in 2020, the commander in chief was vilified by the corporate press as a fascist dictator who weaponized his office for political gain. When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanded his government invoke similar measures over a block party this week bringing the capital of Ottawa to a halt by those who demand medical freedom, it’s merely a government exercise to restore order.
“The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority,” Cotton wrote, warning some of the worst devastation would occur in poor communities, which it did. The editor responsible for publishing Cotton’s op-ed promptly resigned and the paper pinned a lengthy “editor’s note” to the piece.
Trump never invoked the 1807 law which was last requested and approved in 1992 amid L.A. riots over Rodney King. The president’s call on governors to deploy the National Guard, however, while mobilizing the military to ensure resources were available, was met with the hysterical routine coverage expected from the legacy press corps.
Below is how the Washington Post opened a story on Trump pledging military resources to states which need them, regurgitating the lie he tear-gassed protesters in the process (emphasis ours):
Operative From ‘Republican’ Lincoln Project Now Working for George Soros
The Lincoln Project's national press secretary, RC Di Mezzo, is leaving the scandal plagued super PAC for a new gig as communications director for Good Information Inc., a for-profit investment firm that aims to counter media "disinformation." The firm, launched in October 2021, is backed by George Soros and other left-wing billionaires, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Apple widow Laurene Powell Jobs.
Good Information Inc. is the brainchild of Tara McGowan, a veteran Democratic operative who has spent the last several years funneling millions of dollars from Democratic megadonors into a complex web of dark money groups with the goal of influencing elections while skirting federal transparency requirements. Reports announcing the group's formation noted that McGowan planned to raise $65 million for the venture in an effort "to counter the right's disinformation machine."
McGowan previously ran ACRONYM, a left-wing nonprofit that funneled money to media sites and activist-run digital firms, including Shadow Inc., the "progressive" technology company best known for completely botching the Iowa caucus results in 2020. ACRONYM, with the help of funding from Powell Jobs, also operated Courier Newsroom, a network of left-wing media websites posing as local news sources.
Courier, which has been accused of peddling "hyperlocal partisan propaganda," is now owned by Good Information Inc. after being acquired from ACRONYM for an undisclosed sum. McGowan has insisted that Courier isn't a "partisan" enterprise, a claim that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Her new venture is not focused on electing Democrats, she said. Its mission is to "invest in immediate solutions to counter disinformation and increase the flow of good information online" via Courier and other partners.
Di Mezzo, who joined the "Republican" Lincoln Project in 2020 after serving more than two years as communications director for the Democratic Party of Vermont, is a natural fit for the "nonpartisan" company being funded by some of the wealthiest...
Systemic Voting Issues In Pennsylvania County Even More Extensive Than Previously Known
The newest recordings provide some of the frankest discussion on how bad the behind-the-scenes situation was in Pennsylvania’s 2020 election.
he video (and audio) hits just keep on coming from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where a whistleblower secretly taped the aftermath of the chaos from the 2020 presidential election. Two recent recordings exclusively obtained by The Federalist from a source with knowledge of the recordings provide further evidence that systemic problems plague the large Pennsylvania county.
The newest recordings provide some of the frankest discussion on how bad the behind-the-scenes situation was, with one election worker describing a part of the post-election situation as “abominable” and the attempt to do the impossible—reconcile some precincts’ voter sheets—as “a nightmare.”
The whistleblower, Regina Miller, began recording conversations involving Delaware County officials after she became concerned with what she saw as a contract worker assisting election employees. A source familiar with the videos explained that Miller made the recordings as election workers scrambled to find—and in some cases create—documentation in response to a “Right to Know” request that sought copies of the paperwork that would confirm the accuracy of the vote tallies certified for the 2020 election.
To date, the videos have exposed a wide array of problems with election integrity, including on-tape admissions that the election laws were not complied with, that 80 percent of provisional ballots lacked a proper chain-of-custody, that there were missing removable drives for some of the voting machines, and that election workers “recreated” new drives to response to the Right to Know request.
The most recent video, however, reveals a new area of concern related to the reconciliation of the voting totals in the precincts. Captured on film in this video was a conversation between one election worker and the whistleblower. With boxes of voting sheets lining the basement floor of a Delaware County building, the election worker tells Miller, “There were six precincts in one location and all of the machines were, all of the scanners were, programmed to accept any ballot of those six precincts.”
“It was a nightmare,” the Delaware County official explained, adding that “you couldn’t, there’s no way you could reconcile” the results.
The Pennsylvania Department of State cheklist for the November 2020 election explained how the reconciliation process was to proceed. According to the Department of State, each precinct was required to compare the numbered list of voters created at the poll on election day to the number of votes recorded on...
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