90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, January 16, 2023

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1965

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Visage à trois #715

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #896

Dr. Leana Wen slammed after admitting there's been 'overcounting' of COVID deaths: ‘TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATE’

Wen claimed that the actual COVID-19 death count could only be '30 percent of what's currently reported'

CNN medical analyst and Washington Post columnist Dr. Leana Wen admitted in a column, Friday, that the medical community is "overcounting" the amount of "COVID deaths and hospitalizations."

Wen, who writes an occasional Washington Post column providing her observations on the pandemic, masking and other COVID-related subjects, cited sources claiming that most "patients diagnosed with COVID are actually in the hospital for some other illness."

The article is titled, "We are overcounting COVID deaths and hospitalizations. That’s a problem."

Wen’s observations prompted readers on Twitter to complain, stating that it's "two and a half years late."

CNN medical analyst Leana Wen wrote a column Friday claiming it appears that hospitals have been overcounting COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. (REUTERS/Andrew Kelly)

Wen began her column with some apparent skepticism about the CDC’s latest COVID-19 death stats: "According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States is experiencing around 400 COVID deaths every day. At that rate, there would be nearly 150,000 deaths a year. But are these Americans dying from COVID or with COVID?"

The doctor claimed that "Understanding this distinction is crucial to putting the continuing toll of the coronavirus into perspective. Determining how likely it is an infection will result in hospitalization or death helps people weigh their own risk."

She spoke to two Infectious-disease experts, who told her they believed "the number of deaths attributed to COVID is far greater than the actual number of people dying from COVID."

Mentioning the first, she wrote, "Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with COVID are actually in the hospital for some other illness."

Dretler told the analyst, "Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for COVID many are incidentally positive." Wen noted how people with gunshot wounds or other serious illnesses often test positive for the virus, and wrote, "If these patients die, COVID might get added to their death certificate along with...

Visage à trois #714

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #891

Behind Biden classified-docs fiasco is the feds’ obscene abuse of ‘secrecy’

The Penn Biden Center held the first of the two sets of classified documents found.

The discovery of Obama-era classified papers in multiple locations former Vice President Joe Biden used is the White House’s latest fiasco. “How could that possibly happen? How could anyone be that irresponsible?” Biden declared. Except that was him bemoaning to “60 Minutes” after the FBI found classified documents in its raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume both Biden and Trump are guilty as hell of mishandling classified documents. (Throw in Hillary Clinton for a trifecta.) The current and former president deserve the full penalty of law that they approved for other violators (some of whom have recently been sent to federal prison for mishandling documents).

But the latest scandal shows the need to puncture the iron curtain that both Republicans and Democrats dropped over the federal government.The discovery of Obama-era classified papers in multiple locations former Vice President Joe Biden used is the White House’s latest fiasco. “How could that possibly happen? How could anyone be that irresponsible?” Biden declared. Except that was him bemoaning to “60 Minutes” after the FBI found classified documents in its raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume both Biden and Trump are guilty as hell of mishandling classified documents. (Throw in Hillary Clinton for a trifecta.) The current and former president deserve the full penalty of law that they approved for other violators (some of whom have recently been sent to federal prison for mishandling documents).

But the latest scandal shows the need to puncture the iron curtain that both Republicans and Democrats dropped over the federal government.

Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as “incomprehensibly complex” and “so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.” The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were “classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like ‘sensitive security information.’” It’s gotten worse since then.

Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.

Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.

Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.

In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.

Biden ripped Donald Trump when classified documents were found in his Mar-a-Lago home.Getty Images

Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as “incomprehensibly complex” and “so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.” The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were “classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like ‘sensitive security information.’” It’s gotten worse since then.

Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.

Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.

Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.

In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.

Even some Biden appointees claim to recognize the perils of the classification system. According to Politico, the Biden White House is launching a “new war on secrecy” and is especially concerned about “potentially illegal [government] activities that have been shielded from the public for...