March 16, 2025

THE PASSIVE VOICE IS SURE DOING A LOT OF WORK HERE: ‘We Were Badly Misled’ Says the New York Times As They Admit COVID Lab-Leak Theory Was True.

Maybe the Times means Xi Jinping’s administration? Because it certainly wasn’t Trump’s:

Pressure from who in the administration? President Trump was pretty adamant about calling it the ‘China virus.’

And why didn’t The New York Times bother sending a reporter or two to do some digging on this?

We all know why. Because if they thought it could hurt Trump to investigate, they would have.

Tom Cotton was routinely called a racist for referring to the lab leak origin – in February of 2020. To which a variety of Democrat house organs, including the Times, responded:

“Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins,” lamented the Times, before accusing Cotton of contributing to an “infodemic.”

“Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked,” explained the Post, which later issued issued a correction that still characterized the theory as “fringe.”

The Daily Beast declared that he was promoting a “Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Dismissed by Actual Scientists.”

Tom Nichols, a cable news “conservative” who has since been rewarded with a staff writer position at The Atlantic, approached Cotton’s comments even more scornfully. When Cotton pointed out to detractors that he had not said that the virus had originally been developed as a bioweapon by the Chinese government, and that there were several hypotheses worth exploring, Nichols responded by calling it an example of “why arguing with a conspiracy theorist rarely goes well.”

“It gives the person advancing the theory to keep repeating it ‘just as a hypothesis,’ as Cotton does here. Every time you ask him, he’ll repeat it, say it’s unlikely, and then say he’s just asking questions,” continued Nichols. One might wonder if such questions are worth being asked — especially by the press. But Nichols left that to Cotton, instead opting to mock the senator for doing so.

Anne Applebaum, also a staff writer for The Atlantic as well as a member of the advisory panel for the Global Disinformation Index, compared Cotton’s comments to those of “Soviet propagandists who tried to convince the world that the CIA invented AIDS.”

As late as May of 2021, Apoorva Mandavilli, the Times’ replacement for veteran chief science reporter Don McNeil, who was forced off the paper during 2020’s culture war, was tweeting:

With today’s Times’ headline, we’ve entered into “Oceania has never been at war with Eastasia” territory:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 118

THEY’LL SAY ANYTHING IF IT FEELS GOOD AT THE MOMENT:

Posted at 12:20 pm by Glenn Reynolds 120

RICH LOWRY: Does Anyone Know What a Nazi Is? Not if Elon Musk is considered one.

It’s not just that many of these people need to read a book — they need to get acquainted with the country where they live.

Needless to say, Nazism is not, and never was, normal. It was born of the wrenching destruction of World War I and represented a fundamental break with the norms of Western civilization. It was irrational, bloodthirsty, and obsessed with racial purity and warfare.

If Hitler merely sought to reduce the workforce of the Ministry of the Interior by 15 percent, he wouldn’t have been the most notorious figure in modern history.

Elon Musk wants to balance the budget; Hitler wanted to murder mentally ill people.

Elon Musk seeks to root out fraud from the federal government; Hitler sought to eliminate the supposed malign, pervasive influence of the Jews.

Elon Musk believes that we need to enforce the border and welcome talented foreigners into the United States in abundance; Hitler believed he had to conquer Europe and “cleanse” the East of Untermenschen.

Elon Musk makes trolling posts on X; Hitler made a “prophecy” that if war came, it would bring “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

And so on.

It’s tiresome, of course, to point this out, and the sheer overuse of the Nazi charge means that it has lost much, if not all, of its sting. Still, as long as the other side remains so attached to this smear, we shouldn’t lose our outrage at the poisonous idiocy of it.

Related:

Republicans and conservatives would be thrilled about any cutting of government spending or the size of government. What is Walz implying about the reaction from the other side of the aisle? Or, along with his other constant references to Musk’s South African background, did he not think this analogy through?

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 117

NEWS YOU CAN USE:

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll 88

DOJ DROPS PROBE OF SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION: Did you hear the Department of Justice (DOJ) has dropped its Biden administration-initiated investigation of allegations by Russell Moore and other prominent “Woke evangelicals” of widespread abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)?

Probably not, but the fact is, as reported by guest author Jon Whitehead on the Rod Martin Report, no charges were filed after a lengthy investigation that cost the SBC as much as $20 million just in legal fees. The investigation was yet another illustration of the Left’s costly, time-consuming and often-libelous Lawfare.

“Russell Moore, in his infamous ‘leaked’ letters, peddled a narrative of systemic corruption and cover-up within the SBC Executive Committee (EC). This was demagoguery of the worst sort. It was a tale steeped in half-truths and self-righteousness, meant to whip messengers into a frenzy,” Whitehead explains.

If you aren’t familiar with Moore, he’s a former congressional aide to Democrat-turned Republican Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi. After leaving the Hill, he occupied prominent preaching and teaching positions across the SBC, then became the long-time leader of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

Moore was a vocal Trump critic in 2016 and thereafter, but what really caused his downfall was his steadily escalating Woke-driven criticism of Southern Baptists and other evangelicals, beginning during the Obama administration.

Most recently, Moore became Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, a move that highlighted that once-respected magazine’s sad abandonment of its conservative evangelical roots in a direction that will almost certainly end up in the same Progressive neighborhood as Sojourners magazine.

Whitehead is also clear that exposing Moore’s attack on the SBC as groundless does not mean SBC congregations need not be always alert to and just in responding to abuse allegations:

“Don’t be fooled. This doesn’t mean sin is absent from every corner of the SBC. Local churches must remain vigilant; God hates sexual abuse. We should support SBC churches who report sexual abuse to authorities and care for victims of such crimes. I have laid out the path for real reform on the issue here: ‘The Path Forward on Abuse Reform in the SBC: Baptist Accountability.’”

Posted at 10:12 am by Mark Tapscott 27

JENNIFER SEY: The Five Year Anniversary of Lockdowns is Here and I’m Angry.

As philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke famously said in 1795: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

All those who did nothing are also responsible for the global human rights violations of the covid era. And of course the covid enthusiasts who acted as snitches, and joyfully targeted friends and neighbors for punishment deserve our ire. Beyond that you have those directly responsible, the media which utterly failed in their duty as the 4th estate resorting instead to publishing Big Pharma and government issues talking points as “news”; the medical community, with few exceptions; the academics; the teachers; I could go on.

The vaccine (and of course mandates — which people lost jobs over) have disappeared from public consciousness. I mean does anyone actually get that thing anymore?

We are still reminded of masks, as any good leftist protesting about anything — from Teslas and DOGE to “freeing Palestine” to protesting in favor of kids taking mutilating, life-altering hormones to “become” the opposite sex — dons one, still. It is the uniform of “good lefties” or what I would call the “unhinged.” Which it always was really.

There has been no denunciation of those that drove lockdowns and distancing and toddler masking. These public health bureaucrats should be run out of their jobs and never be allowed to set any policy (or “make recommendations”) again. Randi Weingarten should not have any job that has any bearing on children’s lives.

Sure Fauci has retired. But people like Barbara Ferrer (LA) and Sara Cody (Santa Clara county) still hold their positions after destroying small businesses and locking kids out of school for a year and a half and putting disrupted schooling in place for another year after that. And, of course, they force masked 2 year olds as well as speech delayed toddlers and hearing impaired adolescents. This was state sanctioned child abuse from the outset. So forgive me, but the modest acknowledgement that maybe we went too far, brings cold comfort.

I do not feel redeemed. I just feel angry, still, when I think about it. I mostly try not to.

So many kids’ lives were altered and harmed forever. So many milestones they can never get back. And if these concerns were raised at the time (remember drive through graduations?) parents were mocked for saying those things mattered. They were Karens and racists and murderers and selfish for thinking any of that mattered and every stupid vilifying name the idiotic covid hysterics could think of was trained on us.

QED: Watch Dr. Lena Wen Admit COVID ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ She Wanted to Imprison at Home Were RIGHT All Along.

Past performance, future results, etc. And it’s great to see the Bulwark still conserving conservatism so conservatively.

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll 162

LIAR’S POKER: Michael Lewis: Won’t Somebody Please Think of the DC Bureaucrats?!

Trump’s America moves fast and breaks things, including careers. Eighteen months ago the Washington Post asked Michael Lewis, the great American storyteller and illustrious business journalist, to conjure up a series of lengthy features on federal government personnel. He would write two of them, six other distinguished writers the rest. This almost ruthlessly unsexy commission delivered the glad tidings that the government is manned by decent, hardworking employees, some of them near-geniuses. The series featured, among others, the Department of Labor man who has spared miners’ lives by inventing safer pillars for coal-face tunnels, the military cemeteries chief devoted to ensuring no American hero lies unburied or unmarked, and the woman at the National Archives who meticulously unearths and cherishes the country’s history.

To the surprise of everyone, not least Lewis, the pieces proved among the Post’s most read features of last year. Having now collected them into a book, Who Is Government?, Lewis, who regards himself as habitually lucky, has the mixed fortune of finding himself holding both a hot property and a hot potato. Those the book celebrates are now living in fear of the chop from President Trump’s proxy, Elon Musk, the axe man who regards civil servants as monsters from an infinitely drainable swamp.

“I do think that there is this kind of bigotry about civil servants,” says Lewis, the 64-year-old author of The Big Short, from his writer’s cabin in the garden of the home overlooking San Francisco Bay where he lives with his wife and two children. “For whatever reason, people will accept a false portrait of them. In the same way they accept a false portrait of immigrants and trans people. The Trump administration has identified that you can put into the same bucket with immigrants and trans people, civil servants. You can beat up on them relentlessly, say whatever you want to say about them and people will kind of nod their heads.”

This is a significant shaft of pessimism from a writer whose journalism can cast a withering eye but is personally noted for his sunniness. His optimism, after all, survived the scandals of Salomon Brothers, where he had worked in the Eighties and whose obnoxious culture he colourfully depicted in Liar’s Poker, and the great homes-destroying crash of 20 years later (as featured in The Big Short, which, like many of his books, became an unlikely but compelling feature film).

In 2012, “Vanity Fair writer Michael Lewis agreed to allow the White House to approve the quotations he used from President Barack Obama in his story about the president in this month’s magazine.” So why is Lewis now attacking Doge, a thoroughly Obama-endorsed idea?

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll 258

ME NEITHER:

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 79

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: “15 Days to Slow the Spread.”

The federal government issued new guidelines Monday for Americans on how to combat the coronavirus pandemic, titled “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” The 15 days are seen as a trial period for the new recommendations and add to previous guidance about practicing good hygiene, staying home if sick and following state and local authorities.

Or as Erick Erickson later wrote: Trump Platformed Fauci and Shut America Down [Five] Years Ago This Week.

Though Donald Trump and his supporters do not want to admit it, this week, [five] years ago, American kids were forced out of schools and into their homes. The President of the United States had chosen to give Tony Fauci a big platform and advocated shutting everything down. On Donald Trump’s last day in office, instead of pardoning the people who’d stormed into the Capitol on January 6th, he was giving a presidential commendation to Fauci. That’s the actual history. Here’s the video of Trump, Fauci, and Deborah Birx laughing it up as they shut down America.

Fauci and Birx’s glee during the announcement is something to behold:

Birx’s excitement is driven in part because in her mind, she was playing the (very) long game: Dr. Birx Praises Herself While Revealing Ignorance, Treachery, and Deceit:

Recall that for the remainder of the year, the White House was urging normalcy while many states kept locking down. It was an incredible confusion. The CDC was all over the map. I gained the distinct impression of two separate regimes in charge: Trump’s vs. the administrative state he could not control. Trump would say one thing on the campaign trail but the regulations and disease panic kept pouring out of his own agencies.

Birx admits that she was a major part of the reason, due to her sneaky alternation of weekly reports to the states.

After the heavily edited documents were returned to me, I’d reinsert what they had objected to, but place it in those different locations. I’d also reorder and restructure the bullet points so the most salient—the points the administration objected to most—no longer fell at the start of the bullet points. I shared these strategies with the three members of the data team also writing these reports. Our Saturday and Sunday report-writing routine soon became: write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit. 

Fortunately, this strategic sleight-of-hand worked. That they never seemed to catch this subterfuge left me to conclude that, either they read the finished reports too quickly or they neglected to do the word search that would have revealed the language to which they objected. In slipping these changes past the gatekeepers and continuing to inform the governors of the need for the big-three mitigations—masks, sentinel testing, and limits on indoor social gatherings—I felt confident I was giving the states permission to escalate public health mitigation with the fall and winter coming.

As another example, once Scott Atlas came to the rescue in August to introduce some good sense into this wacky world, he worked with others to dial back the CDC’s fanatical attachment to universal and constant testing. Atlas knew that “track, trace, and isolate” was both a fantasy and a massive invasion of people’s liberties that would yield no positive public-health outcome. He put together a new recommendation that was only for those who were sick to test – just as one might expect in normal life.

After a week-long media frenzy, the regulations flipped in the other direction.

Birx reveals that it was her doing:

This wasn’t the only bit of subterfuge I had to engage in. Immediately after the Atlas-influenced revised CDC testing guidance went up in late August, I contacted Bob Redfield…. Less than a week later, Bob [Redfield] and I had finished our rewrite of the guidance and surreptitiously posted it. We had restored the emphasis on testing to detect areas where silent spread was occurring. It was a risky move, and we hoped everyone in the White House would be too busy campaigning to realize what Bob and I had done. We weren’t being transparent with the powers that be in the White House…

Read the whole thing.

As Glenn wrote at the end of 2021: We must make public health authorities accountable for their COVID lies.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll 145