Greetings! Hello, howdy, and hi, there! (Or for my readers in San Francisco, Wha errum? Yada Eve Arden, boomp, err!) Today is Friday, May 15, 2026. It’s Peace Officers Memorial Day, National Defense Transportation Day, National Chocolate Chip Day, and National Pizza Party Day.
1711: Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" is published anonymously. It contained such sayings as “To err is human; to forgive, divine” and “A little learning is a dang’rous thing.”
1718: London lawyer James Puckle patents the world's first machine gun.
1841: First emigrant wagon train to reach California leaves Independence, Mo., on a 1,730-mile journey over the Sierra Nevada.
1862: The U.S. Department of Agriculture is created.
1869: The National Woman Suffrage Association forms in New York, founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
1928: Mickey Mouse makes his first appearance in the silent film Plane Crazy.
1934: The U.S. Department of Justice offers $25,000 reward for John Dillinger, dead or alive.
1941: The first British turbojet takes flight.
1957: Evangelist Billy Graham launches his "crusade" in front of 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden.
1981: George Harrison releases the single "All Those Years Ago" in the UK: the song was a tribute to John Lennon and featured Ringo Starr on drums and Paul and Linda McCartney on backing vocals.
Birthdays today include: L. Frank Baum, children's book author (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz); Richard J Daley, politician (38th Mayor of Chicago); James Mason, British actor (Lolita, North by Northwest, Bloodline, Boys From Brazil); Leo Fuchs, actor (The Six Million Dollar Man, Avalon); Eddy Arnold, country singer ("Make The World Go Away," "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye"); James Mitchell, session baritone saxophone (The Memphis Horns; Particularly on Al Green’s '70s hits); Gordon Mills, British songwriter (Tom Jones - "It's Not Unusual"); "Trini" Lopez, singer and guitarist ("If I Had A Hammer," "Lemon Tree") and actor (The Dirty Dozen); Madeleine Albright, first female Secretary of State (1997-2001); Lenny Welch, singer ("Since I Fell for You"); Roger Ailes, TV executive and CEO of Fox News (1996-2016); Rod Coombes, British folk and progressive rock drummer (Stealers Wheel - "Stuck in the Middle with You," “Everyone’s Agreed That Everything Will Work Out Fine”); Graeham Goble, Australian rock guitarist (Little River Band – "Reminiscing"); and Mike Oldfield, British musician and composer ("Tubular Bells").
If today’s your day, too, happy day to you.
* * *
Interesting piece from David Marcus at Fox Digital this morning. More accurately, a disturbing one.
It was an amazing sight in the Senate on Wednesday, as the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led by its chairman, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., held an explosive hearing featuring a CIA whistleblower testifying on COVID origins, and not a single Democrat bothered to even show up.
Every chair on the left of the dais sat empty as high-ranking CIA official James Erdman outlined the duplicity and lies, not just of the government during COVID, but especially of disgraced former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, which is precisely why the cowardly Democrats took the morning off.
According to Erdman, suppression of the lab leak theory, now widely accepted as how the COVID pandemic began, "was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci, injecting himself into the IC [intelligence community]."
What followed was a detailed description of how, at every turn, Fauci put scientists in oversight positions in place who not only backed up his wet-market theory, but in some cases were arguably complicit in the creation of COVID and the subsequent coverup.
Democratic indifference — and let's be honest: it looks more like outright fear than indifference — doesn't prove guilt. But it implies it. And none of this should come as a surprise. Consider Jesse Waters from 2023:
Remember this: Fauci himself — the man at the center of all of it — went on CNN and declared, in the window between Election Day and Inauguration Day, that a pandemic was coming. That Trump would have to deal with one. He didn't hedge. He didn't speculate. He declared it.BREAKING: New evidence has just surfaced tying Dr. Anthony Fauci to the CIA's cover-up of COVID-19 pic.twitter.com/Uk756IVn4Y
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) September 27, 2023
Some have called it a plan — a deliberate move to kneecap Trump after he won at the polls. Was COVID plan B? That question remains open, to my thinking, and it deserves a real answer, not dismissal.
But look, let's set that aside entirely. Set it completely aside. Because what the years have made undeniable is this: Fauci lied. That's not opinion anymore. That's the record. So when Democrats stand up and act offended — act shocked — at the suggestion that something was wrong, that's not just questionable. It's insulting.
Cui bono? (Who benefits?) applies here.
We know Fauci lied about funding gain-of-function research — research that killed millions, research he personally authorized and oversaw. He lied about masks. Some 7.1 million people world-wide died from the virus directly, according to the WHO, and that estimate is widely considered an large undercount, with some estimates running as high as 15 to 20 million people.
Add to that, our reaction to the virus: Fauci lied about the vaccine he championed as "safe and effective" — a shot that, by some estimates, drove a 279% spike in miscarriages, a 487% spike in breast cancer, a 551% spike in Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a 269% spike in myocardial infarction, a 468% spike in pulmonary embolism, a 291% spike in Bell's Palsy, a 437% spike in ovarian dysfunction, and a 680% spike in multiple sclerosis — just within U.S. borders, and that's just for starters.
Of course the Fauci followers dispute a lot of these figures. But it’s becoming increasingly clear just how large the smoldering crater is that these people left behind. With the lies that we have been served up over the years, do we really trust the people disputing these reports? I don't.
And that's before we get to the glowing example of deep blue New York, where former Governor Cuomo's administration made the deliberate decision to funnel COVID-19 patients into nursing homes — and straight into contact with the most vulnerable people in the state. The resulting deaths were predictable. But, hey, those seniors probably would have voted Republican anyway, right, Andrew? No worries.
Then there were the restrictions on hospitals that prevented elective surgeries, pretty much messing up regular checkups for people. And masking and “social distancing," every bit of it harmful to both individuals and society. All because of the lies, designed to cover the guilt of the people who created this virus.
And the Democrats were a no-show when Congress was investigating this.
If I sound angry, you're quite right. I am. I'll be transparent: I have skin in this game. My mother spent the last year of her life essentially imprisoned and alone because of the policies these men championed and enforced. Couldn’t see her grandkids. Couldn’t see others in our family. We were cut off from her, by what we now know was an outright lie, all while Saint Fauci posed for another magazine cover, jealously guarding that notoriety and power.
And of course, as we now understand, the whole program was used to aid one political party to alter the outcome of an election. (Mail-in ballots, anyone?)
Yesterday, the Democrats, who politically benefited greatly by those lies, didn't show up to the hearing.
I can't imagine why.
Thought for the day: Think you can't do it? Consider that all the Masters at their craft — artists, athletes, indeed, any walk of life — were once rank amateurs in their fields.
Recommended: When Oppression Is the Coin of the Realm, the Chosen Are the Victims
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