Happy weekend, Screamers! Today I wanted to do a few mini-updates on stories that I’ve touched on in the past — I’ll try not to take too much time away from your weekend plans!
We start with the saga of Russell Brand. A few companies — most notably Burger King — have recently pulled advertisements from Rumble due to the story’s backlash. And as Brand explains below, most platforms have rolled over for the UK government — exactly as planned (and predicted).
Sounds like Brand isn’t going down without a fight. (Which would ironically lead to more charges! 😉)
Yesterday I discussed Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial, and in a somewhat surprising turn of events, the Texas Republican party has passed a Resolution (58-2) asking Dade Phelan (current Speaker of the House) to step down. Here’s a copy of the Resolution (click to enlarge):
That’s certainly a delicious twist. Could the Texas GOP be growing a pair?
The availability (and rubber-stamp approval) of the new covid shots means just one thing:
COVID IS BACK, EVERYBODY!
And that means propaganda from the “experts”:
Lots and lots of propaganda from the “experts”:
And also lots of propaganda telling you that “everybody” is getting the new booster — except those icky MAGAs. (And you don’t wanna be like them, do you, POLITICO reader?)
Of course, covid season also means throwing inconvenient data down the memory hole, like the page holding information showing just over 40% of “covid hospitalizations” are just pregnant women going to the hospital for the #1 reason people go to the hospital.
Now my bookmark for that page redirects to a generic covid dashboard that lumps all underlying conditions together. (I see no way to break them out, either.) Score another one for the modern-day Winston working at the Ministry of Truth.
And of course the worst part of a new covid freakout season are the new mandates, which Boston Children’s Hospital is already bringing back — and as usual, the “private company” is simply piggybacking onto CDC recommendations:
Notice how they say “the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine”. Why do you think that is? Maybe because there will be a “2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine”? And then maybe a “2025-2026 COVID-19 vaccine”? Remember when claiming you’d need booster shots forever was a dangerous conspiracy theory that got you kicked off Facebook, even though your vaccine card had empty spots on it?
Good times.
Steven Sund, Chief of Capitol Police on January 6th, was back in front of the House this week, and destroyed Nancy Pelosi’s story that the two of them hadn’t spoken after the protests of that day:
You’d think that a “January 6th Committee” would have gotten to the bottom of stuff like this, wouldn’t you?
Jim Jordan has continued his angry letter writing campaign, which hopefully means something considering he’s the Chairman the House Judiciary Committee. In a recent screed, Jordan demanded to know why the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) continues to redact files showing the agencies knew of safety issues in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The most shocking example of this comes from a letter that was completely redacted after a public FOIA request. Here’s the (mostly) unredacted content of the email:
After reading the email in full, Jordan comes to the obvious conclusion:
But the real question remains: WILL ANYTHING ACTUALLY HAPPEN?!?!
Finally, I don’t talk about John Fetterman much (don’t punch down and all that), but after the media spending a week yapping about the Senate’s Fetterman-inspired dress code change, Fetterman this week seemed to confirm he’s just lazy:
Interesting demands. Very interesting demands when you think about it.
On a completely unrelated note, did you know that even if the federal government shuts down, the money funnel to Ukraine will continue? Weird, right?
Or we can play ‘just the tip’ on Ko-fi — no subscription required!
I'm just happy to share that nitwit Mandy with the rest of you. NC does NOT miss her.
I like to think we libertarians are the control group in this societal "science" experiment.