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A lot of what people call "conservative" today is about a cultural identity. A club. A clique. Not about ideas. Or even ideology in general. A lot of people identify "conservative" as anything that liberals hate. Which doesn't work out too well when liberals hate getting COVID. @TheValuesVoter
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Trump stands alone as a bitter old man who seems to be incapable of moving on with his life and respecting the electoral process that made him President in the first place. He can’t and won’t bring himself to accept the truth that after barely winning in 2016, he lost in 2020.
George H.W. Bush went on to have a long and enjoyable post-Presidency, living to see his firstborn son become US President and another son become Governor of Florida. He also became close friends with the man who beat him in 1992.
Jimmy Carter went on to have a second career as a humanitarian and has lived a longer life after leaving office than any other President in US history. He and his wife Rosalynn just celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary.
Gerald Ford lost a very close election and went on to serve on Corporate Boards and became a respected elder statesman. He even became close friends with the man who beat him in 1976.
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Bill Gates has been pushing to keep the planet locked down in 2021 using the virus as an excuse to reduce CO2. Even in Germany, the government has been lying to the people extending the lockdown little by little. Internal papers have shown that they intended to keep everything locked down until at least June 2021. This is a lockdown NOT for the virus, but to reduce CO2. Gates has been on record saying that the Climate Crisis is far worse than COVID.
More concerning has been Gates’ quest to monopolize farmland. Keep in mind that the Great Reset would not apply to the Super Rich and it certainly would not apply to “foundations” for they are not individuals. Many questions have come in about Gates and his farmland. Gates is a specialist in monopolies. He did that with Microsoft and he has done that in health and all the vaccines are tied back to him. He is doing the same with farmland. Don’t forget he will try to end meat production and this investment is as strategic as the alternative. If he refuses to plant, then he is deliberately trying to create a food shortage. Watch for him moving into cattle ranches to reduce meat production. He now has a free reign under the Democrats. He will do whatever and nobody will investigate. armstrongeconomics.com
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Bonefish is OK. He is calling it as he sees it, as best he can.
Far as I can tell.
Sure Covid is real, never said it wasn't.
It's my view it was almost certainly planted though, and Fauci is up to his neck in the intrigue. There seems to be a few others coming on the radar too, one being AIDS and some earlier SARS.
There is, without a sliver of a doubt in my mind, an agenda, and the useless masks, and social distancing proves it. It is for frightening and controlling people only . No other reason.
As said, Fauci is damage goods. He needs to be replaced.
Hopefully Bonefish makes a good recovery.
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Half of Florida COVID-19 hospitalizations under 55; 96% unvaccinated
By NSF staff Published 14 hours ago Coronavirus in Florida The News Service of Florida TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The number of people hospitalized in Florida because of COVID-19 continued at a record pace Monday, according to the Florida Hospital Association.
The industry group said 10,389 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 -- the second day in a row that the number was over 10,000 and the highest daily total since the start of the pandemic.
During an interview with MSNBC, Mary Mayhew, the president and CEO of the association, called the increase "dramatic" and said the disease is "attacking a younger population and putting them in the hospital."
Mayhew said 50% of the people hospitalized are between ages 25 and 55. She also said 96% of people hospitalized were unvaccinated.
The surge in hospitalizations has come as the overall number of reported infections has risen dramatically in recent weeks, fueled by the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus.
Florida registered its largest-ever single-day total of new COVID-19 cases -- 21,683 -- on Friday, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC on Monday did not post new Florida case numbers from the weekend. Florida was one of 32 states with no COVID-19 infection data for Saturday and Sunday. The state Department of Health in early June scaled back to posting data once a week, with its reports coming out on Fridays.
State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2022, called again Monday for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to return to providing daily reports to the public. Fried said residents were "completely in the dark" about what was going on.
Christina Pushaw, the governor’s press secretary, pushed back against Fried, saying that the state was sending data to the CDC on weekdays. The Florida Department of Health routinely and automatically reports COVID-19 data Monday through Friday, she said.
Department of Health Communications Director Weesam Khoury said the federal government has not required the states to report data on the weekend since June 18.
A review of the data, though, shows that this is the first time the state has not reported the information.
The rise of cases and hospitalizations in Florida also drew the attention of the White House.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, noting that 20% of all new cases in the nation are coming in Florida, said schools should be allowed to enact mask mandates and that vaccinations should be encouraged. DeSantis on Friday issued an executive order barring school districts from requiring students to wear masks.
"So, you know, at a certain point, leaders are going to have to choose whether they're going to follow public health guidelines or whether they're going to follow politics," Psaki said.
DeSantis has disputed the need for children to wear masks and has argued that the decision should be left up to parents. His executive order threatened to withhold funding for school districts that require students to wear masks.
"I have young kids. My wife and I are not going to do the mask thing with the kids," DeSantis said Friday. "We never have. I want to see my kids smiling. I want them having fun."
DeSantis recently has encouraged people to get vaccinated, though he has also blocked businesses from requiring customers to show proof of vaccination --- the concept known as "vaccine passports."
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Okay you can disagree, but mind callin Biden to add few words. Possibly save 30-100 lives next few days. Thx
FACT — Law Enforcement Officers all around the United States of America knows what Administration loves and respects them more than any other Administration in HISTORY! twitter.com
Is that you upper balcony 2nd row 5th in? twitter.com
"What if, happiness didn't have anything to do with what you had, where you've been, or who you were, and arose entirely from what you chose to think about, yet nobody knew this?
And what if changing your thoughts, so that you could feel happier more often, would entirely change what you had, who you were, and where you're headed, yet nobody knew this either?
Do you think if we told them they'd choose to think differently?
The Universe
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Understanding Overlapping Corporate Disinformation Campaigns is Critical to Telling the Full Story About Science Denial
Monsanto’s use of corporate advisory firm FTI Consulting to target journalists and activists was one of the most neglected stories of 2020. But a deeper look reveals it’s part of a bigger pattern of misinformation.
Activists in Europe protest Monsanto's use of glyphosate. Credit: Avaaz. CC PDM 1.0
By Paul D. Thacker
Bayer, which now owns Monsanto, announced at the end of July that it will remove the harmful pesticide glyphosate — a “ probable carcinogen” — from its Roundup herbicide products by 2023, as it continues to face mounting pressure from lawsuits about the product’s health impacts.
But while the spotlight has been on the pesticide chemical’s potential dangers, a 2019 trial against Monsanto revealed another tale of bad behavior and its use of glyphosate: a story of corporate efforts to target journalists and activists dedicated to reporting on the risks posed by Monsanto’s products.
And just recently, on July 28, France’s personal data protection agency fined the company $473,000 for “illegally compiling files of public figures, journalists and activists with the aim of swaying opinion towards support for its controversial pesticides,” according to France 24.
Monsanto’s campaign to target journalists and activists was ranked the second most neglected story of 2020 according to the nonprofit media watchdog Project Censored in its annual list of top 10 stories overlooked by mainstream media. This is despite the company’s campaign to undermine reports on its bad behavior dating back decades.
Part of Monsanto’s campaign utilized international business advisory firm FTI Consulting, which offers services for a wide range of sectors including energy and mining as well as agrochemical and petrochemical industries. FTI Consulting has a history of targeting reporters. In 2019, the company was caught spying on reporters and helping orchestrate an operation to denigrate Carey Gillam, a book author and contributing writer for The Guardian.
Understanding how firms like FTI Consulting operate is critical for reporters and concerned citizens who are trying to understand the strategies that corporations deploy to confuse the people about public health. Too often, people scrutinize science issues only if they fall within their narrow focus of interest: climate change, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food. But corporate disinformation cuts across all these concerns, because the main objective is protecting profits, not advancing science.
And the case of Monsanto and FTI Consulting shines a harsh light on the hidden work these firms orchestrate behind the scenes to sow doubt and disinformation.
As Monsanto faced a crisis over sales of glyphosate, the company hired FTI Consulting to help them beat back critics and undermine reports that they sold an herbicide that caused cancer. While it’s unclear exactly what year the two companies began working together, what is known is that around the same time, FTI Consulting was doing similar subterfuge for ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies by running a website called Energy In Depth — on behalf of the Independent Petroleum Association of America — that attacks scientists and reporters, and promotes climate disinformation.
FTI Consulting’s work for Monsanto first came to light when a reporter covering a Monsanto trial in California in May 2019 noticed that a woman presenting herself in the courtroom as a freelancer for the BBC also stated on her LinkedIn page that she worked for FTI Consulting.
When I then reported on this story for HuffPost in October of that year, FTI said they were initiating an internal review of their procedures, while Bayer denied employing FTI Consulting to work at the trial.
This was not the first incident, however, where FTI Consulting employees had posed as reporters. Previously, FTI consultants working for Western Wire had tried to question an attorney representing communities suing ExxonMobil about climate change. Western Wire was launched jointly by the oil and gas trade association the Western Energy Alliance and FTI Consulting in 2017 as the “go-to source for news, commentary and analysis on pro-growth, pro-development policies across the West.”
A few months after the FTI employee was caught in the courtroom, Monsanto’s internal documents became public during the trial. Writing in The Guardian, Carey Gillam reported on a Monsanto campaign called “Project Spruce” that outlined specific steps the company had been taking to harm the credibility of a book she had written in 2017 about glyphosate’s dangers and the steps Monsanto took to cover this up.
In one September 2017 email, an FTI employee notified Monsanto about several action items they were advancing, including providing a link to the book’s Amazon page, apparently so that Monsanto’s allies could post negative reviews. As Gillam reported, “Shortly after the book’s publication, dozens of ‘reviewers’ suddenly posted one-star reviews sharing suspiciously similar themes and language.”
The court documents also included a spreadsheet titled “ Project Spruce: Carey Gillam Book” that detailed a sequence of specific actions the company was taking to undermine her book. The lead on many of these action items was FTI Consulting, whose work against Gillam included briefing Monsanto’s third party “pro science” organizations about the book, creating background materials on the book, helping to release a website to counter the book, and responding to media requests after the book was released.
Screenshot of court document published by law firm Baum Hedlund.While the work FTI Consulting did for Monsanto got a bit of attention after the court documents were released, major media outlets failed to highlight and explain the broader connection with FTI’s work on climate denial for the fossil fuel industry.
But as I reported in December 2019, for instance, documents and recordings of meetings by the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) showed the group was spending millions of dollars every year on Energy In Depth, a public outreach campaign that regularly attacked scientists and journalists critical of the fossil fuel industry. Most of Energy In Depth’s writers worked for FTI Consulting, and Jeff Eshelman, senior vice president of the IPAA told me that he had hired FTI Consulting several years back to run the site.
When contacted, FTI Consulting said that they could not discuss their work for clients. However, in 2014 FTI published a paper they presented at an oil and gas conference in Brazil. At the conference FTI explained that they used Energy in Depth to generate and guide media “behind the scenes” and claimed to have influenced hundreds of articles and opinion pieces. By running Energy In Depth themselves, FTI Consulting was allowed “to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.”
FTI Consulting is just one of the many companies that provides disinformation for both the agrochemical and petrochemical industries. In fact, this overlapping work has been going on for decades, involving two groups most known for their work denying the dangers of climate change: the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
For several years, the Heartland Institute published a monthly newspaper called “Environment and Climate News.” In March of 2000, they ran several stories that promoted GMO agriculture, while downplaying the dangers of pesticides and climate change. The author of one story in that edition of Environment and Climate News that promoted GMO agriculture was Francis Smith.
What the story did not note is that Francis Smith was employed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where she downplayed the dangers of climate change calling it “scare mongering.”
After examining these articles in Environment and Climate News, Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes explained that groups like Heartland and the Competitive Enterprise Institute form interlocking networks that promote unregulated or loosely regulated capitalism. “[T]his woman has no obvious expertise in climate science, no expertise in biotechnology,” Oreskes said of Smith’s writing on climate and agriculture. “This is a classic example of the pseudo expert, really an anti-expert. It’s a person claiming expertise and using that claim to refute genuine experts.”
Indeed, groups promoting disinformation for one industry often do the same for several others. Journalists covering beats such as climate, chemicals, or pharmaceuticals who become suspicious of an organization should check to see how that group handles information on other topics — including climate change. If they promote talking points for one industry, they often do the same for other companies as well. Because in the end, too many groups are hired to pretend to inform the public, while actually just protecting corporate profits.
Activists in Europe protest Monsanto's use of glyphosate. Credit: 
Screenshot of court document published by law firm