Author Archives: Dana Pico

Posted on by

If everyone is going to be exposed to #COVID19 anyway, why are we bothering with restrictions?

As we noted on February 3rd, while other places, including entire countries, are reducing or eliminating COVID-19 restrictions, Philadelphia’s tinpot dictators want to keep restrictions in place for months. Even worse, when school districts in Pennsylvania, but outside of Philadelphia, were so graciously granted permission to make masking optional, some overly worried parents sued the schools, trying to require that the mask mandates be kept in place, and federal Judge Wendy Beetlestone ordered the Perkiomen Valley School District to keep masking in place, granting a preliminary injunction sought by parents of children with disabilities that put them at higher risk of serious complications from COVID-19.

If masks work, why wouldn’t such masks worn by the children with health issues protect them? Why must other people, hundreds of other people, be required to wear masks to protect these three children? Why must the whole school wear masks, rather than only the children and staff in the individual rooms in which the vulnerable students are seated?

It was one line in this article, from National Public Radio — not exactly an evil reich wing site — which puts things in perspective: “eventually, every one of us will get infected.”

    The future of the pandemic is looking clearer as we learn more about infection

    by Michaeleen Doucleff | February 7, 2022 | 5:00 AM ET

    During the early days of the pandemic, scientists and doctors were concerned that being infected with SARS-CoV-2 might not trigger a strong immune response in many people – thus an infection might not provide long-term protection.

    “Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests,” a headline from The Guardian alerted back in July 2020. “King’s College London team found steep drops in patients’ antibody levels three months after infection,” the story warned.

    But that idea was based on preliminary data from the laboratory — and on a faulty understanding of how the immune system works. Now about a year and a half later, better data is painting a more optimistic picture about immunity after a bout of COVID-19. In fact, a symptomatic infection triggers a remarkable immune response in the general population, likely offering protection against severe disease and death for a few years.

    And if you’re vaccinated on top of it, your protection is likely even better, studies are consistently showing.

    Here are several key questions people have been asking throughout the pandemic – and ones that researchers are beginning to answer.

    If I just had COVID, am I protected against getting a severe course of COVID in the future ?

    With SARS-CoV-2, your immune system generates two types of protection: protection against reinfection and protection against severe illness upon that second infection. Let’s start with the latter.

    If you’re under age 50 and healthy, then a bout of COVID-19 offers good protection against severe disease if you were to be infected again in a future surge, says epidemiologist Laith Abu-Raddad, at Weill-Cornell Medical-Qatar. “That’s really important because eventually, every one of us will get infected,” he says. “But if reinfections prove to be more mild, in general, it will allow us to live with this pandemic in a much easier way.”

Also see: William Teach: Surprise: Natural Immunity To COVID Is Rather Real

“Eventually, every one of us will get infected.” Dr abu-Raddad isn’t the only one to tell us this, as Dr Anthony Fauci, the attention whore who has driven so much of US policy, has admitted, as has Dr Janet Woodcock, the acting head of the Food and Drug Administration, and others.

With the current Xi Omicron variant generally leading to milder forms of the coronavirus, the obvious question becomes: if everyone will become infected, and infection helps protect people from subsequent infections and disease, isn’t it better to go ahead and get that done now, rather than when a more serious variant emerges?

The three kids in Perkiomen Valley with chronic health problems? Yeah, they’re going to contract the virus, too. Even if a federal judge forces the hundreds of other people in the school to wear masks all day long, they’ll contract the virus anyway, as life continues and the virus evades virtually all measures to stop its spread. It may be more serious for them, it may even be fatal for them, but if everybody is going to be exposed to the virus, they are part of everybody.

Posted on by

Where is our privacy?

Lexington Herald-Leader health and social services reporter Alex Acquisto wrote, “A little over 55% of the state population is fully vaccinated and 23% of residents have received a booster, according to the Kentucky Department for Public Health.” One wonders: would more Kentuckians consider the vaccines if there were no Kentucky Immunization Registry (KYIR) and the Vaccine Tracking System (VTrckS)? Why must my personal medical information become part of the state’s database?

    Kentucky’s omicron surge is now ‘significantly if not rapidly declining’

    by Alex Acquisto | Monday, February 7, 2022 | 4:59 PM EST | Updated: 5:17 PM EST

    The number of new COVID-19 cases and the statewide rate of people testing positive are now solidly declining in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said on Monday.

    “Cases are significantly if not rapidly declining,” the governor said in a news conference from the Capitol.

    As it has played out in other states, the longevity of the current omicron surge — from beginning, to peak, and now decline — is significantly truncated compared with the delta surge last year, largely because omicron is much more transmissible. It took the delta variant roughly nine weeks to peak at 30,680 cases a week; omicron reached its weekly caseload peak of 81,473 in four weeks.

Further down:

    Hospitalizations, Beshear said, are also showing a “real downward trend,” though the decline is not as sharp as cases. Over the last seven days, coronavirus hospitalizations dropped by 7%, he said, adding that 2,124 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Monday (down 221 people from Friday), 414 people were in an intensive care unit (40 fewer than a week ago), and 207 are on a ventilator.

    Meanwhile, the number of people seeking vaccinations is “definitely slowing,” Beshear said; at the height of the delta and omicron surges, upwards of 7,000 people would get a dose in any given weekend, and on weekdays, typically more than 3,000 people. Weekends now bring closer to 5,000 people getting doses, and weekdays, 1,000 or less.

There’s more available here.

Kentuckians are independent cusses, and we don’t like people sticking their noses in our business, yet every time the Herald-Leader publishes these stories and shows us these statistics, it tells us what we already really knew: the state government is tracking these things.

The real question is: does the Commonwealth have simply aggregate data, or is the state maintaining information on which specific individuals have been vaccinated?

Posted on by

And the fearful shall control the rest of us

The American people have become just plain tired of all of the COVID-19 restrictions, and even Democratic Governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware have ended their statewide mask mandates for the schools. Naturally, the petit dictators in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia have not only kept their mask mandates, but even strengthened it:

    Philadelphia students and staff continue to be required to wear masks. On Monday, those rules became stricter — students and employees must now either wear a well-fitted mask (such as a N95, KN94, or KN95) or a three-ply disposable masks. Cloth masks on their own are no longer allowed across the Philadelphia School District.

As we have previously noted, many, and perhaps even most, men now wear beards, and the Centers for Disease Control issued a chart for which facial hair styles will and will not allow an N-95 mask to properly seal! Will Philadelphia now issue facial hair regulations based on the notion that the required masks won’t seal otherwise?

But in the school districts outside of Philadelphia, where local school boards have opted to end the mask mandates, the fearful have gone to court to force those schools to keep them in place:

    Judge orders Perkiomen Valley School District to continue masking to protect disabled students

    The decision is likely to be reviewed by other area school districts revisiting masking requirements as COVID-19 cases decline.

    by Maddie Hanna | Monday, February 7, 2022

    Also see: William Teach: Majority Of Americans Say It’s Time To Accept Chinese Coronavirus And Get On With Our Lives

    A federal judge on Monday ordered the Perkiomen Valley School District to keep masking in place, granting a preliminary injunction sought by parents of children with disabilities that put them at higher risk of serious complications from COVID-19.

    The decision effectively extends a prior order for masking during the school day that Judge Wendy Beetlestone had previously issued against the Montgomery County district, but without any end date.

    In her opinion, Beetlestone agreed with lawyers for the plaintiffs — three children with medical conditions ranging from asthma to chronic bronchitis and pneumonia, that in some cases require taking immunosuppressant drugs — that the children were at heightened risk of severe illness or death if they contracted the virus, and that “universal masking meaningfully reduces the transmission of COVID-19 in schools.” As a result, she said, optional masking prevents the students from “meaningfully accessing” in-person education, a valid claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

There’s more at the original, but if masks work, why wouldn’t such masks worn by the children with health issues protect them? Why must other people, hundreds of other people, be required to wear masks to protect these three children? Why must the whole school wear masks, rather than only the children and staff in the individual rooms in which the vulnerable students are seated?

Of course, the Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t apply just to schools; it applies to almost every institution, public and private. Under the rationale of this decision, which does not set a precedent but can be used by other lawyers as evidence in other cases, any fearful Karen in any company can claim highten vulnerability to COVID-19 and try to get a court order requiring the company to maintain a mask mandate. A few thousand Karens across the country, and we could see federal judges basically ordering every workplace and every school and every business to maintain a mask mandate for months or even years. The American people will not stand for that!

Posted on by

Carjackadelphia

District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia), one of the George Soros-funded stooges who took office in some of our major cities with the explicit promise to reduce prosecutions, tried to tell people that yes, crimes with firearms had increased, but other crimes were down. That, of course, was bovine feces.

There are two different types of crime, crimes of evidence, and crimes of reporting. Murder is a crime of evidence, because it leaves a dead body, and dead bodies get found. It’s hard to dispose of 100 to 300 pounds of dead and decaying flesh and bone and muscle and fat unless someone has carefully planned how to do it.

But assaults, or robberies, or rapes? Assaults and rapes can be crimes of evidence, if the victim goes to the hospital for treatment. But if the victims is not seriously enough injured to seek medical care, or if the rape victim chooses not to report it, then those crimes become crimes of reporting, and if they are not reported to the police, then as far as the police are concerned, as far as the statistics measure, the crimes never happened. Yet, while the statistics vary, it seems that fewer than half of all “violent victimization” are reported to the police, and rape appears to be the least reported crime. According to the survey, only 32.5% or rapes or sexual assaults were reported in 2015, and that dropped to 23.2% the following year.[1]See Table 4. In a city, in communities, in which the vast majority of crimes which are known about go unsolved, why would people who are already distrustful of the police, people who have low expectations that the crimes will actually be solved, even bother reporting the crimes? Why would residential burglaries be down 22% but non-residential burglaries up 15%? Same crime, just different targets, but different conditions for the owners. Commercial owners who find their businesses burgled[2]Though “burglarize” is apparently a real word now, I refuse to use it. have a far greater possibility of getting an insurance recovery, while residents do not, so of course the victims of commercial burglaries are more likely to report the crimes. Residential burglaries? With so many unsolved crimes, and distrust of the police high, reporting such a crime must seem mostly useless to people.

Aggravated assault? The total number of aggravated assaults increased 14.58%, using the city’s own numbers; it’s simply that the tools used were more heavily included firearms than before.

And now we have this, from Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

    Police arrest Philly teens wanted in carjackings and Wawa robberies

    The arrests come amid an unprecedented surge in carjackings. The rate of such attacks doubled in 2020 and again in 2021 — and 2022 is off to an even more dangerous start.

    by Samantha Melamed | Sunday, February 6, 2022

    Philadelphia police on Saturday night arrested two teens, aged 14 and 18, who they said had been wanted in a series of armed carjackings in the city, as well as the robberies of two Wawa stores in Upper Darby.

    Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Man killed in Philadelphia carjacking.

    Officers on patrol around 8 p.m. near Broad and Wallace Streets in the city’s Spring Garden neighborhood recognized the suspects during a vehicle stop, police said. Both teens were armed and attempted to flee on foot, according to police. The 14-year-old was quickly apprehended, while the older suspect fled into a house on the 1200 block of Wallace Street, causing police to report a barricade situation. SWAT was called in and he, too, was arrested. Police recovered two loaded handguns, one from the car and the other from the house.

    “These two arrests are a result of cooperation between the Philadelphia Police Department and also neighboring agencies,” Inspector D.F. Pace told 6ABC, which reported that authorities are investigating whether the two may be implicated in additional crimes. Charges were still pending as of Sunday morning, police said.

And here’s the money line:

    The arrests come as Philadelphia is grappling with an alarming spike in carjackings: The rate nearly quadrupled from 2019 to 2021, when there were 840 such attacks. This year, there have already been 140 carjackings, putting the city on an even more perilous pace.

Carjackings are a pretty serious, violent crime, and while people might just throw up their hands and say, “Forget it,” when their home is burgled, because they think it fruitless, cars are big, important and cost a lot of money; when someone’s car is stolen, he loses a lot of capacity, to get to work or school, to carry home groceries, really to do much in society that involves travel.

Yet we are supposed to believe that crime, overall, has decreased in the City of Brotherly Love. well, no, I don’t believe it, don’t believe it at all.

Now, happily enough, one crime has decreased: murder. As of 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, February 6th, there had been 50 homicides reported by the Philadelphia Police Department, compared to 54 on the same date last year, and 39 in 2020. Homicides are running behind 2021’s record 562 killings, but ahead of 2020’s 499, which is the city’s third worst year, with the 500 killings during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

So, is it an improvement that the city might see fewer murders than in 2021, but is still ahead of 2020’s pace? I guess that Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would call it an improvement if there are ‘only’ 543 homicides, but that would be pretty much damning with faint praise.

    “This is like the new way of stealing a car, and it’s become very dangerous,” Chief Inspector Frank Vanore, told The Inquirer last week.

Of course, the Inquirer tried to blame guns:

No, the great rise in gun sales have been to law-abiding people, people who have to go through a background check, to defend themselves from crime! The law-abiding aren’t the ones out there jacking cars. As we have previously noted, a couple of good citizens took out the thieves, though sadly one of the good guys didn’t have his weapon properly registered.

The real reason for the increase in carjackings? It’s because the perps simply aren’t very afraid of being caught, or, if they’re caught, being seriously punished, not with a ‘social justice’ District Attorney in charge of prosecutions. And it’s because so many of the kids in Philadelphia simply aren’t being reared properly. I’ve said it before: you show me a rotten kid, and I’ll show you a lousy parent.

 

References

References
↑1 See Table 4.
↑2 Though “burglarize” is apparently a real word now, I refuse to use it.
Posted on by

The truth shall set you free . . . from your job

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

The First Street Journal has previously published five articles on Will Thomas, the male swimmer who claims to be female and swims for the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s team under the name ‘Lia’ Thomas. With a lot of different stories published in the Washington Examiner, New York Post, and OutKick, about teammates critical of his participation on the team, I cautioned, “I have to wonder: has it always been the same (anonymous) teammate who has been the source for these stories? This has sort of jumped out at me as I have read these stories.”

Well, that question has been answered, surprisingly enough, in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

    16 Penn swimmers send letter saying teammate Lia Thomas has an unfair advantage

    The players’ names are not signed on the letter, but it appears to reveal a division in the team less than two weeks away from the Ivy League championship meet.

    by Ellie Rushing | Friday, February 4, 2022

    Sixteen members of the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team have sent a letter to school and Ivy League officials speaking out against transgender teammate Lia Thomas’ participation in the upcoming championship meets. They also ask the university and league to not take legal action against the NCAA if it adopts a policy barring Thomas’ eligibility.

    The letter — penned by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, former Olympic swimmer and CEO of Champion Women, on behalf of 16 unnamed Penn swimmers and their families — appears to reveal a division in the team less than two weeks away from the Ivy League championship meet.

    The players question the fairness of Thomas’ participation, and say that she is taking “competitive opportunities” away from other members of the team.

    Thomas is a 22-year-old transgender woman who holds the fastest times of any female college swimmer in two events this season. She has been on gender hormone therapy for more than two years and has followed all NCAA eligibility requirements. Her times make her a favorite for the NCAA championship in March.

There’s more at the Inquirer original. Note that while our Stylebook specifies that the ‘transgendered’ will be referred to by their birth names and the pronouns appropriate to their biological sex, the Inquirer, and most of the credentialed media have chosen to refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their assumed names and preferred pronouns. We do not alter the direct quotations of others.

What we are seeing here is more than just the idea that ‘transgendered’ athletes are the sex they claim to be, rather than the sex they actually are, but the self-censorship of people who fear the consequences of doing something radical like telling the truth. The Inquirer reported, three days earlier, that “several” team members issued a letter of support for Mr Thomas; the number of teammates who signed the letter was not revealed:

    Members of the Penn women’s swimming and diving team have issued a statement in support of their transgender teammate, Lia Thomas.

    “We want to express our full support for Lia in her transition,” the statement said. “We value her as a person, teammate, and friend. The sentiments put forward by an anonymous member of our team are not representative of the feelings, values, and opinions of the entire Penn team, composed of 39 women with diverse backgrounds.”

    This is the first official public message of support for Thomas from the Penn women’s swim team. An anonymous member of the team had previously criticized Thomas and the university’s decision to allow her to swim to the Washington Examiner, the Daily Mail, and Fox News.

    Tuesday’s statement was not signed, but a Penn representative told ESPN that it was from “several” swimmers.

There’s more at the original, but one thing is obvious: releasing the names of the “several” team members who signed the letter supporting Mr Thomas also reveals which teammates did not sign the letter. The Washington Post reported:

    A Penn spokesman told ESPN that Tuesday’s statement was sent on behalf of “several” Quakers swimmers. On Thursday, the parent of a Penn swimmer, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation against their daughter, said in a telephone interview that they estimated the letter supporting Thomas was sent on behalf of only “two or three” swimmers.

Back to the first article cited:

    “We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman. Lia has every right to live her life authentically,” the letter reads.

    “However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone’s gender identity. Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female. If she were to be eligible to compete against us, she could now break Penn, Ivy, and NCAA Women’s Swimming records; feats she could never have done as a male athlete,” they wrote.

Oddly enough, I have been unable to find a link to the text of the original letter. But here’s the money line:

    Penn’s women’s team roster lists 41 members. The 16 teammates did not identify themselves in the letter, stating that they “have been told that if we spoke out against her inclusion into women’s competitions, that we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer.”

In other words, sit down and shut up, or you’ll be punished for speaking out.

This is the tyranny of political correctness: if those sixteen teammates, at an Ivy League school, identify themselves, they’ll be punished. Though the letter does not say so, as far as I know, their grades could suffer as liberal professors might mark them down. Some of the slights that the left give to those who just aren’t #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading enough to think that girls can be boys and boys can be girls aren’t just slights, but career-trashers. Remember: the #woke pushed liberal columnist Bari Weiss out at The New York Times and politically liberal Stan Wischnowski out as executive editor at the Inquirer, because they just weren’t #woke enough.

Me? I’m retired, and have no career from which to be fired, so I can do something really radical like tell the truth.

I’ve yet to see it mentioned anywhere else, but when you have part of the team supporting Will Thomas and another part, at least 16 teammates out to 41, or 39%, opposed, Mr Thomas has become a locker room cancer. At least some of the team considered boycotting a January 8, 2022, meet against Dartmouth, but eventually decided against it. At least one team member has complained that Mr Thomas still has male genitalia and this is causing stress for some of the team.

If Will Thomas wants to claim he’s a woman, that’s his business. But when institutions like the University of Pennsylvania start enforcing his delusions, when the NCAA allows his beliefs to determine his athletic status, it starts to become other people’s business, as he is being allowed to exercise a competitive advantage over biological women.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
Posted on by

A ‘crime’ created by government I hope that they get away with it!

As we noted on January 30th, two nurses in Amityville, New York were arrested for selling faked COVID-19 vaccination cards. The failure of the government to persuade everybody to take the COVID-19 vaccines voluntarily has led to the coercive measures of vaccine mandates and the wholly repugnant notion of “Ve need to see your papers.” And, just like every other such thing, some people try to get around these things. I only wish that the nurses charged had gotten away with it!

Now comes this story out of the City of Brotherly Love, which has its own vaccine mandates, for many jobs, to dine indoors at a restaurant, and other things. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

    Police investigating theft of vaccination cards from Penn Medicine clinic in Center City

    The cards and N95 masks were taken from a clinic storage room at 245 S. 8th St., police said.

    by Robert Moran | Thursday, February 3, 2022

    Philadelphia police said Thursday night that they are investigating the theft of COVID-19 vaccination cards and N95 masks from a Penn Medicine clinic in Center City.

    The confirmation of the investigation came after KYW News Radio reported that 5,000 cards had been taken from Pennsylvania Hospital, which is run by Penn Medicine.

    Police, in a summary of the theft report, said the actual number of cards stolen was unknown.

    A spokesperson for Penn Medicine said in a statement: “Safety and security are top priorities in all of our facilities. When this issue was discovered, we promptly reported it to the Philadelphia police and are cooperating fully with the ongoing investigation.”

There’s a bit more at the link. It looks like an inside job, in that there was no sign of forced entry, and all staffers had access to the storage room.

This really can’t be a surprise. As we reported on Thursday, the officious petit dictators who run Philadelphia aren’t planning on dropping COVID-19 restrictions for months, which only creates more incentive for people to want fraudulent vaccination cards. While employers enforcing a vaccine mandate might check the cards more carefully, no one can reasonably expect a hostess at a Philadelphia restaurant trying to enforce the vaccine mandate for indoor dining to give more than a cursory glance at a card someone presents for entry.

How many times have such thefts occurred? In reality, I don’t see the need, because anyone with a good scanner and printer can simply print up the cards himself! He’d need the heavier paper on which they are printed, but that’s readily available at any Office Despot Depot. Counterfeiting these cards is just not that difficult, and actually stealing them from the clinic adds risk to the enterprise.

This is a ‘crime’ created by the government! If it were not for the vaccine mandates, there’d be no need for faked vaccination cards. Given that the vaccines neither prevent infection by the current Xi Omicron variant, nor reduce the transmissibility of the virus from a vaccinated person, the rationale for a vaccine mandate simply does not exist, save in the minds of those who love exercising unbridled power. More, the face masks most people use just don’t stop Omicron, and the so-called experts recommend a N-95 mask, which are only effective if properly fitted, which is impossible for most men who wear beards, meaning that the stupid mask mandates are also unjustifiable.

How many of these faked vaccination cards are out there? We don’t know, but the answer is obviously larger than zero, probably much larger than zero. Some people are going to get caught at this, but I hope that the number who do get caught is very, very low, and the number of people who get away with these forgeries is very, very large. This is not the way I would choose to fight government tyranny — even though vaccinated, I refuse to carry my vaccination card to yield to the officious little pricks demanding, “Papiere, bitte” — but I recognize that, for some people, it’s necessary.

The United States exist because Americans refused to yield to tyranny; that spirit still exists in our great land!

Posted on by

Neither the rules nor honesty apply at CNN If we can't expect CNN to follow its own internal rules, how can we trust their reporting?

As we learned on Wednesday, Jeff Zucker, who was fired resigned as President of the Cable News Network and the chairman of WarnerMedia’s news and sports division over a “romantic relationship with another senior executive at CNN”, said:

As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years. I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong.

CNN, of course, wanted to hold Donald Trump’s feet to the fire, and had now-disgraced attorney Michael Avenetti on the boob tube at least 122 times when he was representing Stormy Daniels, to attack our 45th President. As Robert Stacy McCain noted, MSNBC had Mr Avenetti on at least 108 times as well.

Mr McCain also noted the New York Post’s story:

Rumors about Zucker, 56, and (CNN’s Executive Vice President and chief marketing officer Allison) Gollust’s affair have been circulating in the media world for years, but the pair have repeatedly, and vehemently, denied they were in a relationship when asked numerous times by Page Six.

Zucker was allegedly so brazen about his relationship with Gollust, he moved her into the same Upper East Side building where he lived with his then-wife of 21 years Caryn Zucker before the two divorced, sources said.

So, the President of CNN, and an Executive Vice President, who had the whole network incessantly pounding on President Trump over his honesty, were themselves dishonest about a relationship they were required to report. Mr Zucker, who should have been canned years ago over CNN’s lousy ratings, was finally shown the door over an affair.

But what about other people at CNN?

Female employees at CNN are furious that chief spokesperson Allison Gollust is keeping her job after “lying” about her affair with newly resigned CEO Jeff Zucker “for years,” sources told The Post.

“Why is she allowed to keep her job?” a CNN insider railed.

“CNN is supposed to be a transparent news network. How does she get away with lying about their affair for so long?”

Early Wednesday, Zucker sent a memo to colleagues announcing he’d be retiring after his relationship with Gollust came to light during CNN’s probe into Chris Cuomo. He called the relationship “consensual” and told staff that he wished he’d disclosed it sooner.

Gollust released a statement shortly after saying that she and Zucker had been professional colleagues for over 20 years but their relationship “changed during COVID.”

One insider called the comments “a total lie.”

“They’ve been together for years,” the source dished.

Katie Couric in her memoir Going There, had said that Mr Zucker and Mrs Gollust “were joined at the hip,” while Mr Zucker was at NBC, which he left nine years ago.

If this was such a widely-known ‘secret,’ why didn’t anyone say anything? For Mr Zucker and Mrs Gollust to have been required to report the relationship when it began, there had to have been human resources regulations on the subject. Did no one in human resources know about this, or did no one in human resources care about this? How many people were in on this “open secret”, and why did no one say anything until an outside party investigation of Chris Cuomo lead to the discovery of Mr Zucker’s and Mrs Gollust’s relationship?

If Mr Zucker and Mrs Gollust had reported the relationship, as they were required to do, what would have happened? CNN would have had to set up certain restrictions on responsibility, presumably taking Mrs Gollust out of a direct reporting line to Mr Zucker. Since we cannot assume that neither Mr Zucker nor Mrs Gollust was unaware that the relationship needed to be reported, the only reasonable consideration for not doing so was that it could have changed the professional relationship between the two, and neither wanted for Mrs Gollust to cease being Mr Zucker’s closest business confidant.

Remember NBC’s Matt Lauer, and the infamous ‘secret button’ which locked the door to his office so the targets of his affection couldn’t escape? If it existed — Mr Lauer claims that it didn’t — who installed it? Did Mr Lauer have the technical skills to do it himself? Ronan Farrow, who discovered and reported Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, claimed that Mr Lauer’s behavior toward women was an “open secret” at NBC.

At some point it has to be asked: if all of these people knew about the behavior of these media big wigs, why did no one ever report it? And why should the public trust the reporting of people who have not been honest themselves?

The New York Post reported, “Three top CNN executives will form an interim leadership team at the network and assume Zucker’s duties until WarnerMedia’s pending merger with Discovery is complete,” but that ignores the obvious question: who among those three were aware of the affair, of this supposed ‘open secret,’ and tolerated it anyway?

If CNN cannot be trusted to follow and enforce its own rules, and this only came to light, allegedly, after Chris Cuomo’s lawyer went scorched earth on the network, just how can news consumers trust anything CNN reports, ever? As Mary McCarthy famously said about writer Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” That is how we should regard CNN.

Posted on by

It doesn’t matter if Omicron is waning: Philadelphia’s tinpot dictators want to keep #COVID19 restrictions in place for months!

The news was certainly appreciated when we learned that Denmark was ending all COVID-19 restrictions:

    Denmark has lifted all Covid-19 restrictions within the country, with coronavirus no longer considered a “socially critical sickness,” according to the government.

    This means that an indoor mask mandate, the use of a “Covid pass” for bars, restaurants and other indoor venues, and the legal obligation to self-isolate if you test positive are all ending.

    “No one can know what will happen next December. But we promised the citizens of Denmark that we will only have restrictions if they are truly necessary and we’ll lift them as soon as we can,” Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke told CNN on Monday. “That’s what’s happening right now.”

    Denmark is the first country in the European Union to lift all restrictions. The move comes at a time when it has the second-highest infection rate, or seven-day average of new infections, of any nation in the world, according to Our World in Data.

There’s more at the original.

Denmark does have a high vaccination rate, 81% being “fully vaccinated,” though the story does not specify what percentage have received the booster. Denmark has no vaccine mandate.

Sadly, here in the United States, supposedly the beacon of freedom in the world, we have too many petit dictators who just love them some authoritarian controls. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

    Lifting COVID-19 mandates likely still ‘several months away’ in Philadelphia as omicron recedes

    “Our team is actively discussing what an off-ramp looks like,” the city health commissioner said.

    by Justine McDaniel and Erin McCarthy | Groundhog Day, February 2, 2022

    Philadelphia is likely “several months” away from being able to drop its current pandemic restrictions, even as the omicron surge wanes, Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said Wednesday.

    City officials hope to drop the indoor mask mandate eventually, but it’s too early to do so now, Bettigole said at a virtual briefing Wednesday, citing much-improved but still-high case and hospitalization numbers.

    However, officials have begun discussing plans for easing restrictions and providing guidance to residents once the pandemic relents. The city will also consider when to eliminate the vaccine mandate for indoor dining at restaurants, which Bettigole said would not be permanent.

Cheryl Bettigole, from BillyPenn.

At this point in writing an article, I would normally consider adding an illustration, the photo of Cheryl Bettigole, Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner. In previous articles, I used the photo from Dr Bettigole’s Twitter account, but, alas! she went ahead and deleted it. I wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, she was getting too many people calling her a petit dictator. When I found another photo, it let me know one thing: the one she used in her now-defunct Twitter account was definitely a much younger, glammed up photo!

    “Our team is actively discussing what an off-ramp looks like,” Bettigole said when asked about easing restrictions. “If you think about where we are with this particular wave and case rates right now, we’re probably several months away from a place where we will have the kind of safety to drop all the current restrictions.”

    With the surge rapidly declining but transmission levels still categorized as high, public health officials nationwide are urging continued caution for now — while saying optimism is warranted as the spring looks likely to bring at least a period of relief.

A period of relief? What they are saying is simple: at least for the Xi Omicron variant, COVID-19 is a seasonal disease, like influenza.

    In New Jersey, the rate of COVID-19 transmission is the lowest it has been in several weeks, Gov. Phil Murphy said.

    “Trends that we are seeing across literally all metrics continue to suggest the omicron tsunami, as fast as it washed in, is washing out at nearly the same speed,” the governor said. Still, “we have to remain on a vigilant footing.”

    The average daily new case count has dropped 70% in New Jersey and 57% in Pennsylvania over the last two weeks, according to federal data analyzed by the New York Times. Still, more than 10,000 new cases are being reported each day in Pennsylvania and more than 5,000 in New Jersey.

Vaccinations remain slow, for a simple reason: the people who wanted to take the vaccines had already done so, and the people who resisted have mostly still resisted; only dictatorial action, mandating vaccination, with the cost of non-compliance being job loss or being unable to participate in society, has pushed some of the reluctant to take the vaccines.[1]Yes, I am fully vaccinated, and boostered, but that was my choice, and I absolutely refuse to carry my vaccination card with me, to yield to the officious little pricks demanding, “Papiere, … Continue reading And we already know: the vaccines do not stop the spread of the Omicron variant, and they do not reduce the transmissibility of Omicron from vaccinated people. More, the face masks most people use just don’t stop Omicron, and the so-called experts recommend a N-95 mask.

Click to enlarge.

Of course, many, and perhaps even most, men now wear beards, and the Centers for Disease Control issued a chart for which facial hair styles will and will not allow an N-95 mask to properly seal! I shall admit to previous ignorance of the names attached to various styles of beards.

With my full beard, an N-95 would not work for me, so I have to ask: would Dr Bettigole and the rest of the tinpot dictators in the City of Brotherly Love try to require men to shave off their beards to wear properly the recommended N-95 mask? That would seem silly, but I put nothing beyond these drunk-with-power bureaucrats.

Fortunately, I no longer live in the Keystone State, but I am constantly amazed at the number of people yielding to dictatorship, who give up some of their essential liberty to purchase a bit of temporary safety.

References

References
↑1 Yes, I am fully vaccinated, and boostered, but that was my choice, and I absolutely refuse to carry my vaccination card with me, to yield to the officious little pricks demanding, “Papiere, bitte.”
Posted on by

What does it say when CNN is getting beat out by the Hallmark Channel and the Food Network? In any sane business environment, Jeff Zucker and his minions would have been fired years ago

The Cable News Network, or CNN, was launched on June 1, 1980, by Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld, the world’s first 24-hour news network. Now a part of WarnerMedia, it’s being spun off by parent AT&T T: (%). From The Wall Street Journal:

    AT&T Sets WarnerMedia Spinoff Plan and Lowers Its Dividend

    Shareholders will get 0.24 shares in new media company and reduced annual dividend of $1.11 a share

    by Drew FitzGerald | Tuesday, February 1, 2022 | 6:07 PM EST

    AT&T Inc. said it would roughly halve its dividend payout and divest itself of its WarnerMedia division through a spinoff that would give shareholders 0.24 share for each AT&T share they own, a move that would complete its retreat from the entertainment business.

    The spinoff is part of AT&T’s planned deal to combine WarnerMedia with Discovery Inc., DISCB: (%) a merger that is expected to close in the second quarter. AT&T plans to use the transaction to refocus its remaining assets on its core telecom operations.

    After the spinoff, AT&T said it expects to pay an annual per-share dividend of about $1.11, down from its most recent $2.08 level. The new payout would cost the company just under $8 billion a year, down from the roughly $15 billion it paid out in 2021.

    AT&T is one of the most widely held U.S. stocks, and the company has historically offered one of the largest regular dividend payouts on the market. Based on Tuesday’s closing price, it had an 8.52% dividend yield. By comparison, rival Verizon Communications Inc. VZ: (%) had a dividend yield of 4.81% based on Tuesday’s prices.

    Shares of AT&T fell 4.2% to $24.42 on Tuesday. The stock has lost about one-third of its value since AT&T agreed to buy Time Warner Inc. in October 2016, while the S&P 500 index has doubled during the same period.

There’s more at the original.

Now, with a net worth of $60 million, and an annual base salary of $6.3 million, you’d think that Jeff Zucker, the current president of CNN Worldwide and Chairman of WarnerMedia News, would be a top, top performer; you’d think that CNN would be dominating the ratings in the 24-hour news network business, right? You wouldn’t think that it was getting stomped by Fox News and MSNBC, would you?

Well, it is, and it gets worse: CNN gets beat out by the Hallmark Channel, which shows reruns of Reba and the Golden Girls, along with really cheesy romance movies, and the Food Network, which is basically cooking shows and silly cooking competition games. Home and Garden Television (HGTV), which is 95% reruns, beats CNN.

CNN has had more than just ratings problems. The network took the absolutely brilliant journalistic decision to have its number one host, Chris Cuomo, interviewing his brother, then Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), for the better part of a year over the Governor’s response to COVID-19. Then, when the Governor got in trouble over sexual harassment claims, his younger brother Fredo Chris was giving him advice and access to defend himself, all of which got the younger Mr Cuomo fired. Maybe, just maybe, if CNN had followed responsible journalistic ethics, and not allowed Chris to interview Andy all of those times, this wouldn’t have been a problem.

One of the younger Mr Cuomo’s producers, John Griffin, 44, was then fired after he was indicted for trying to lure minor girls, one only 9 years old, to his home for sexual subservience training. There’s no indication that anyone at CNN knew about Mr Griffin’s alleged activities, but it was another public relations black eye, for a network which has had a lot of them.

Under any sane business plan, Mr Zucker and all of his executive vice presidents would have been fired, and would have been fired several years ago; that they haven’t makes me wonder just what pictures Mr Zucker has of his bosses. There’s really no excuse for the kind of failure that CNN has been.

No wonder AT&T wants to get rid of WarnerMedia!

___________________________________________

Updated! 4:00 PM EST

Looks like I spoke too soon, From The New York Times:

    Jeff Zucker Exits CNN After Relationship With Senior Executive

    The relationship came up during the network’s investigation into the former anchor Chris Cuomo. “I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t,” Mr. Zucker wrote in a memo to colleagues.

    by Michael M Grynbaum | Groundhog Day, February 2, 2022

    Jeff Zucker resigned on Wednesday as the president of CNN and the chairman of WarnerMedia’s news and sports division, writing in a memo that he had failed to disclose to the company a romantic relationship with another senior executive at CNN.

    Mr. Zucker, 56, is among the most powerful leaders in the American media and television industries. The abrupt end of his nine-year tenure immediately throws into flux the direction of CNN and its parent company, WarnerMedia, which is expected to be acquired later this year by Discovery Inc. in one of the nation’s largest media mergers.

    In a memo to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Zucker wrote that his relationship came up during a network investigation into the conduct of Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor who was fired in December over his involvement in the political affairs of his brother, former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York.

    “As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” Mr. Zucker wrote. “I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong.”

There’s more at the original.

So, he completely trashed CNN’s brand, but he’s been fired resigned because he was copulating with a subordinate? How much of this was known to AT&T, and did it push the decision to divest from WarnerMedia?

Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Mr Zucker’s co-copulator, and who kept her job, said:

    Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years. Recently, our relationship changed during Covid. I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time. I’m incredibly proud of my time at CNN and look forward to continuing the great work we do everyday.

So, at a time when a lot of people were locked down, and when all sorts of other improper relationships were publicized, Mr Zucker and Miss Gollust were happily screwing away — both are divorced — and neither of these two highly paid executives thought, ‘hey, maybe we need to do the right thing here, policywise’? They could have disclosed it, obviously knew that they needed to disclose it, but did not until it was discovered during the investigation into the conduct of Chris Cuomo? Does this explain CNN’s wholly unprofessional decision to allow Chris Cuomo to keep having his brother on his show?

Then there’s the obvious question: if this was only discovered during the investigation into Mr Cuomo’s behavior, yet it started “during Covid,” whatever that means, just who else at CNN knew about it, and kept his mouth shut?