'let the Democrats fight it out'

I think in the wake of last week’s debate performance, it’s entirely possible for states to shift

LeBron is out here STEAMROLLIN' the league

'He has a number of options he can do'

The Sisters of Mercy  was formed in 1980 in Leeds, England, by Andrew Eldritch and Gary Marx. Known for their dark, atmospheric sound and deep, brooding vocals, the band quickly became a prominent figure in the gothic rock scene of the 1980s. The band’s lineup has changed numerous times over the years, with Andrew Eldritch being the only constant member. They have released three studio albums: First and Last and Always (1985), Floodland (1987), and Vision Thing (1990). Each of these albums has been critically acclaimed and has significantly contributed to the gothic rock genre. In addition to their studio The post Complete List Of The Sisters Of Mercy Albums And Songs appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Newly released documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal early evidence and analysis four years ago in which U.S. government officials indicated that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China. These findings in the CDC documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, dating from about six months after the disease’s initial outbreak, are coming to light only now because of the government’s repeated delays in releasing relevant documents through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In addition, federal employees’ use of encrypted private messaging applications such as Signal or WhatsApp to evade records-retention requirements under the Federal Records Act has become commonplace in the federal workplace, despite clear violations (as we will see below). To date, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, in that post since January 2021, has released minimal documentation under the COVID-19 Origin Act, which President Joe Biden, who appointed her, signed into law in March 2023. The new law requires Haines as director of national intelligence to declassify information about links between COVID-19 and China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology within 90 days of its enactment. But Haines apparently didn’t make sure such documents were provided to Congress. Avril Haines is sworn in Jan. 19, 2021, at the beginning of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee as Joe Biden’s pick for national intelligence director. Biden took office the next day. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Heritage’s Oversight Project obtained 1,066 pages of related documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, through the Freedom of Information Act. The intelligence community’s official assessment of the origin of COVID-19, as of June 2023, states that it can’t be determined: “The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19.” However, the documents released to Heritage’s Oversight Project include a presentation labeled “Overview of COVID-19 Disease” by Dr. John T. Brooks, who was chief medical officer for the CDC’s emergency COVID-19 response, according to his LinkedIn profile. In his presentation, Brooks repeatedly emphasizes the early analysis that the disease originated in Wuhan. According to the documents (page 386), as of May 8, 2020, Brooks was chief of science under the principal deputy incident manager for the government’s COVID-19 Response Organizational Chart. A slide excerpt from a June 2020 presentation by the CDC’s John T. Brooks entitled “Overview on COVID-19 Disease.” Note the word “Wuhan” in red to the left of the notation SARS-CoV-2. One document released under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, includes the above slide presentation. It shows that in data files for a COVID-19 sample analysis, staff used the word “Wuhan” in red letters (in the so-called file paths of a phylogenetic analysis depicting patterns and similarities of DNA sequences). One source in a position to know, who asked to remain anonymous, told Heritage’s Oversight Project that a sole-sourced, unevaluated intelligence report (meaning one without other sources and intelligence collaboration) floated around the intelligence community in late summer 2020. That report specified that the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, site of the Chinese research lab called the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There is no evidence that the U.S. government’s underlying raw intelligence on the origin of the coronavirus was shared with congressional committees or declassified under the COVID-19 Origin Act. Recent releases of documents to Heritage’s Oversight Project—through the State Department and under the Freedom of Information Act—highlight the tenuous timeline of what email traffic in 2020 labeled as an “Updated timeline of PRC coverup (April 28).” (The acronym PRC refers to the People’s Republic of China, the full name of the communist nation.) This email traffic, primarily sent to State Department principals along with several inspectors general and White House officials, detailed what it called the suppression and destruction of evidence: E.g. virus samples destroyed at genomics labs, wildlife market stalls bleached, genome sequence not shared publicly, Shanghai lab closed for ‘rectification’ after sharing genome on its own, academic articles subjected to prior review by the [Chinese] Ministry of Science and Technology, data on asymptomatic ‘silent carriers’ kept secret … An excerpt from a State Department document details China’s suppression of data on COVID-19. This situation, in which Congress is falling behind in gaining timely access to information from the Biden administration, highlights the inherent imbalance between the two branches of government. A significant lag of years occurred before the executive branch provided relevant information to the legislative branch. Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, testified March 8, 2023, about China’s record on COVID-19 before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. “Since the early days of the pandemic,” Metzl told lawmakers, “China’s government has destroyed samples, hidden records, imprisoned brave Chinese journalists, prevented Chinese scientists from saying or writing anything on pandemic origins without prior government approval, actively spread misinformation, and done pretty much everything possible to prevent the kind of unfettered, evidence-based investigation that is so urgently required.” A slide excerpt from Brooks’ CDC presentation in June 2020 entitled “Overview on COVID-19 Disease.” Slides released under the Oversight Project’s FOIA request detail strong links to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan in early January of 2020, as well as the concentration of COVID-19 cases in early January 2020. Four months into his presidency, on May 26, 2021, Biden announced further investigation into the origins of COVID-19, instructing Haines and the rest of the intelligence community to “bring us closer to a definitive conclusion.” The Biden administration previously had sought to avoid directly linking COVID-19 to geographic locations. The administration labeled terms such as “Wuhan Flu” as “inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric” in presidential actions during the government’s continuing response to the disease. The COVID-19 Origin Act, the bipartisan bill signed by Biden in March 2023, tasked Haines’ Office of the Director of National Intelligence with declassifying information on the origins of the deadly disease. This slide excerpt specifies COVID-19 cases in China, as of Jan. 20, 2020, from Brooks’ CDC presentation about six months later. However, with Democrats in control, it took over three years for Congress to conduct oversight investigations into the origins of COVID-19 by establishing the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The panel’s creation occurred in early 2023, after the new Republican majority in the House took over from Democrats. It also took over three years for Congress to resume its oversight of gain-of-function research conducted on coronaviruses in China through grants made by the National Institutes of Health, a U.S. government agency, to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit. Such research produces a stronger version of a virus. This slide excerpt, also from the CDC presentation in June 2020, depicts COVID-19 cases in and outside China. The revelation that documents on COVID-19 weren’t provided to Congress comes on the heels of disclosures that David Morens, a senior adviser to Dr. Francis Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health, intentionally sought to avoid disclosure of government records under the Freedom of Information Act. (Morens also was a senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the public face of the government’s response to COVID-19.) In letters to the National Archives and NIH regarding records retention guidelines and adherence to the Federal Records Act, the House pandemic subcommittee disclosed that Morens deleted emails and used special characters and misspellings to avoid text matches in records requests. Fauci’s adviser also used private emails to facilitate the destruction and withholding of federal records from oversight through records retention or FOIA requests. To date, Congress has taken little to no action to curb Morens and other federal employees in the programmatic evasion of federal guidelines on retaining records. In the information age, with an exponential increase each year in records created by the U.S. government’s executive branch coupled with intentional destruction of records, oversight by Congress consistently has failed to obtain documents from the executive branch in a timely and meaningful manner. Blatant violations of the Federal Records Act have become so extreme that some federal employees openly have included Signal and other encrypted messaging applications in parentheses in their email signature blocks, next to cell phone numbers, without fear of penalty or congressional oversight. Congress should reaffirm its right to quickly access data and information, including classified information, from the executive branch via congressional inquiries and subpoenas. Without this ability, we risk that oversight by Congress will be delayed for years, undermining the purpose of oversight and potentially rendering it ineffective. The post EXCLUSIVE: 4 Years Later, CDC Documents on COVID-19’s Origin in China Emerge as Oversight Wanes appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Police Attacked Following Chicago Pride Parade

In a heartwarming video, a young girl introduces viewers to her wild magpie friend named Pie. From the moment they first met, their friendship blossomed into a beautiful connection that bridged the gap between humans and birds. The story of Pie and the girl is not just about a pet, but about a wild bird... The post 9-year-old shares close bond with wild bird that follows her around like a dog appeared first on Animal Channel.

Meet Winston, the charming cow who is determined to spread love in the most delightful way. This video introduces us to Winston’s mission: kissing every horse he meets, regardless of their initial reluctance. His friendly demeanor and steadfastness in the face of rejection create a humorous yet touching narrative. From the moment he arrived on... The post Cow won’t stop kissing angry horse despite the horse hating it and biting him back appeared first on Animal Channel.

The vast majority of Americans are spending this Independence Day weekend taking pride in their country as they celebrate the freedoms established by the Founding Fathers. However, there are some journalists who are embarrassed by the USA. Some of them even seem to take pride in actually shaming the country.     Over the years, the Media Research Center has caught journalists ridiculing and deriding America. The following is a countdown of the Media’s 20 Worst Anti-American Outbursts (as culled from the MRC’s archives):   20. Americans Who Live on “Stolen Land” Should Stop Griping About Crime Epidemic “America is a sticky-fingered nation built on stolen land, and its current moral panic is about shoplifting.”— Washington Post features reporter Maura Judkis in March 1, 2024 story.   19. Hope You Had A Happy Fourth of July, Too “Oh say, we’ve seen too much. The Star-Spangled Banner pushes like a cough through America’s mouth and the twilight’s last gleaming is just that, a sickly flash above our heads as we ride unsuspecting in the bellies of sleek trains, plop to our knees in churches, embracing truths that disgust us.”— Boston Globe arts critic and poet Patricia Smith in The Nation’s “Patriotism” issue, July 15/22, 1991.   18. Respecting Anthem = Racism     “Some of the words of the National Anthem are white supremacist....I think this is a country whose history is racist, whose history is steeped in white supremacy, and the anthem reflects that in its very words.” — Detroit Free Press writer Stephen Henderson on NBC’s Meet the Press, September 24, 2017.   17. Now Is the Part of the Debate Where You Should Dump on America  “Governor Romney, Daniel Duchovnik [ph] from Walnut Creek, California wants to know, ‘What do you dislike most about America?’”— Online question selected by The Politico’s Jim VandeHei to pose to the Republican presidential candidates at their May 3, 2007 MSNBC debate.   16. Liberal Radio Host: It Pains Me to Chant “U.S.A!”  “As I’ve grown older, I find my ‘U.S.A.!’-chanting reflex increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort, and not because I’m ashamed of our country or our Olympians....Missed in the ensuing red-white-and-blue hoopla, of course, is the fact that we are not so exceptional outside the Olympic village....We are not gold, silver or even bronze medalists when it comes to healthcare; sadly, we are 39th for infant mortality, 43rd for female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortal-ity....If we do stand atop a dais anywhere other than at a sporting event, it is for military spending, carbon emissions and incarceration rates.”— Colorado radio host David Sirota in an August 1, 2012 piece for Salon.com, “Don’t chant ‘U.S.A.!’ It’s liberal Americans’ Olympic dilemma: How do they root for their countrymen without being jingoistic?”   15. Ringing the Bells of Jingoism  “The pro-American approach is one NBC rarely detours from. It is in the DNA of Olympic broadcasting. Networks around the world with the rights to the Games can toll their jingo bells when they please. And it’s easier to interview your own nation’s athletes, especially if language barriers exist. Still, there should be a better way to present these stories without so much American navel-gazing.”— New York Times sports/TV columnist Richard Sandomir in an August 17, 2016 column.   14. Embarrassed by the Star Spangled Banner      “I mean, when you think about it, it’s ‘bombs bursting in air,’ ‘rocket’s red glare,’ it’s all kinds of — you know a lot of national anthems are that way, too — all kinds of military jargon, and the land — there’s only one phrase ‘the land of the free,’ which is kind of nice, and ‘the home of the brave?’ I don’t know....Are we [Americans] the only ones who are brave on the planet? I mean, ‘all the brave people live here.’ I mean, it’s just stupid, I think. I’m embarrassed, I’m embarrassed every time I hear it.”— Former CNN and MSNBC host Bill Press on his Full Court Press nationally-syndicated radio show, June 5, 2012.   13. Despising the Stars and Stripes  “My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. She tells me I’m wrong — the flag means standing together and honoring the dead and saying no to terrorism. In a way we’re both right....[The flag] has to bear a wide range of meanings, from simple, dignified sorrow to the violent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry that has already resulted in murder, vandalism and arson around the country and harassment on New York City streets and campuses.”— The Nation’s Katha Pollitt in an October 8, 2001 column.   12. Red, White, and Scary  “A friend of ours, a prominent member of the ‘liberal media,’ wrote to the head of our kids’ school last week suggesting that students spend more time with the Pledge of Allegiance and The Star-Spangled Banner. The principal agreed. Our 10-year-old daughter asked her mother if we could put a flag on our car. My wife reluctantly agreed, but hasn’t procured the flag yet....My wife essentially shares our daughter’s feelings. But for her, the symbol of the flag was appropriated in her youth by counter-protesters who used it to deny the patriotism of the war’s opponents. Flag-waving feels aggressive to her.”— Former CBS Evening News producer Dick Meyer in a commentary posted October 1, 2001 on CBSNews.com.   11. Taking Back the Flag       “I decided to put on my flag pin tonight — first time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see....I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo – the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism….When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread. But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapels while writing books and running Web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American....I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us.”— Bill Moyers on PBS’s Now, February 28, 2003.   10. Happy Independence Day, America Sucks  “We know what July 4th is. What about July 5th? After the fireworks, the music, the rhetoric of freedom what then?...What kind of nation does our flag fly over now? Not a less innocent one, because American innocence was never the truth. Not one less reluctant to go to war without a good reason, because we have foolishly credited bad reasons in the past. But now the nation lacks even that. As our President demonstrated last week, we have become a people who wage unending war killing and maiming our young ones and theirs without being remotely able to say why.”— Columnist James Carroll in the July 5, 2005 Boston Globe.   9. Editor: I Want to Burn the Flag  “If the U.S. Senate follows its silly siblings in the House of Representatives and votes for a ban on burning the American flag, I’m going to burn one. It never occurred to me to burn a flag — except in some flag-retiring ceremony — but just the idea that Congress has nothing better to do than spend time on this nutty issue makes me want to burn one.”— Linda Grist Cunningham, Executive Editor of the Rockford Register Star in Illinois, in a June 26, 2005 column.   8. Let’s Shred the Constitution! “The framers were not gods and were not infallible. Yes, they gave us, and the world, a blueprint for the protection of democratic freedoms — freedom of speech, assembly, religion — but they also gave us the idea that a black person was three-fifths of a human being, that women were not allowed to vote and that South Dakota should have the same number of Senators as California, which is kind of crazy....If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn't say so.”— Time managing editor Richard Stengel in the magazine’s July 4, 2011 edition, which featured a picture of the U.S. Constitution going through a shredder with the headline, “Does It Still Matter?”   7. Post-9/11 Flag-Waving “Sometimes a Cousin to Intolerance”  “The CNN film [The Flag], based on a book by David Friend, focuses on the smudged American flag that three firefighters raised through the dust of the collapsed buildings at ground zero late in the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. A photograph of the flag raising taken by Thomas E. Franklin of the New Jersey newspaper The Record became a heartening, patriotic symbol for many on an otherwise awful day....[But] the photographer rebelled at efforts to make him a celebrity, and so did the three firefighters. A plan to turn the photograph into a sculpture became a source of controversy. Nationwide, flag-waving was sometimes a cousin to intolerance.”— From New York Times critic Neil Genzlinger’s September 4, 2013 review of CNN’s The Flag.   6. Forget About the “Terse and Old” Founding Documents  “The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights….The Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care. It has its idiosyncrasies. Only two percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.)”— New York Times Supreme Court reporter Andrew Liptak in a front-page February 7, 2012  “Sidebar” news analysis, “We the People Loses Appeal with People Around the World.”   5. American Revolution = “Monumental Mistake”  “American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake....I’m reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would’ve been abolished earlier, American Indians would’ve faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government....Government spending in parliamentary countries is about 5 percent of GDP higher.”— Dylan Matthews in a July 2, 2015 post on Vox.com: “3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake.”   4. Triggered By the American Flag      “We have tens of millions of Trump voters who continue to believe that their rights as citizens are under threat by simple virtue of having to share the democracy with others. I think as long as they see Americanness as the same as one with whiteness, this is going to continue….I was on Long Island this weekend, visiting a really dear friend. And I was really disturbed. I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with you know, expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which you know is also just disturbing, because essentially the message was clear: ‘This is my country. This is not your country. I own this.’”— New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, June 8, 2021.    3. Standing For National Anthem is “Affirmation of American Empire”  “It’s a political statement to pledge allegiance to the flag. It’s a political statement to stand for the singing of the National Anthem. The fact is, Colin Kaepernick and me and many other people simply have different politics. It’s not neutral to pledge allegiance or sing the National Anthem. It’s an affirmation of the American empire.”— Political analyst Marc Lamont Hill on CNN Newsroom, September 23, 2017.   2. “Uncomfortable” With Calling Veterans “Heroes”      “I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words ‘heroes.’... I feel comfortable — ah, uncomfortable, about the word ‘hero’ because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war, and I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine and tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”— Host Chris Hayes talking about “The Meaning of Memorial Day” on MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes, May 27, 2012.   1. July 4th, MSNBC-Style: “Imperialism, Genocide, Slavery”      “The land on which they [the Founders] formed this Union was stolen. The hands with which they built this nation were enslaved. The women who birthed the citizens of the nation are second class….This is the imperfect fabric of our nation, at times we’ve torn and stained it, and at other moments, we mend and repair it. But it’s ours, all of it. The imperialism, the genocide, the slavery, also the liberation and the hope and the deeply American belief that our best days still lie ahead of us.”— MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous July 1, 2012 program, delivering what she called “my footnote for the Fourth of July.”