Anthony fauci

Last week saw another batch of emails drop from Anthony Fauci, and another media blackout as to their contents. The strategy by the press in cases like this has been pretty straightforward: ignore the story, wait for right-leaning media or Republicans to pick it up, then frame any attacks on the subject as tainted by partisanship. Last week, when confronted once again by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Fauci responded with more hyperbole and ad hominem. The media, meanwhile, framed the exchanges as “Rand Paul Attacks!” and “Anthony Fauci defends!” They refused to look at the information in the emails that Paul was asking about, refused to ask questions about them, refused to even report on them. They are interested in the bloodsport, not the truth.

If you think politics was insufferable in 2021, just wait until the New Year. The midterms are around the corner, so before the incessant campaign ads begin, I’d like to suggest a few New Year’s resolutions for our political class. Let’s start at the top with the president of the United States, Joe Biden. Perhaps Joe, who as usual is on vacation in Delaware, could begin 2022 off by firing his speechwriters. I have long suspected that saboteurs lurk in the White House. Who in his right mind would put the word “Galapagos” into a Biden speech? There is a double agent in the Biden-Harris administration who is trying to trip up the 79-year-old — so whoever it is needs to hear two of the last president’s favorite words: “You’re fired.

We’ve all learnt to wash our hands more carefully over the last couple of years, but no one has soaped his dirty digits as fastidiously as Joe Biden. His announcement that “there is no federal solution” to Covid-19 puts him up there with history’s greatest handwashers. Like Pontius Pilate, Biden is leaving it to the mob: “this gets solved at the state level.” Unlike the procrastinating procurator who surrendered his responsibilities to the jeering Judeans, Biden’s got it right. But it won’t save him from the jeers — and nor should it. Biden won the presidency on a promise of the federal solution that he now says doesn’t exist. It didn’t exist in 2020, either.

Cockburn always thought Thanksgiving was the holiday designated for sharing madcap political views that one day you'll regret saying aloud. So kudos to Fox Nation's Lara Logan for extending the tradition into advent, by offering a comparison between Anthony Fauci and Nazi doctor Josef Mengele on Monday's edition of Fox News Primetime. Logan, a former war correspondent, was invited on to discuss the Omicron variant. Presumably the logic behind the booking was that the variant emerged from her home country, South Africa. Here's the expertise she chose to provide: On Dr. Fauci, this is what people say to me. He doesn't represent science to them, he represents Josef Mengele. Dr. Josef-the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews in the second world war and in the concentration camps.

What does Anthony Fauci have to do with a starship? The good doctor’s staggering claims and admissions during his Sunday interview with Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan recall a classic scene from Star Trek V: The Undiscovered Country. The crew of the Enterprise are taken to a mysterious realm to face a being claiming to be an all-powerful god. To question the being would be to question God himself. The being, of course, turns out not to be a god or the God, but rather an alien entity, trapped and trying to escape. Now, Dr. Fauci seems to be borrowing from the alien’s playbook.

If we have learned anything over the last few months it is that emergencies, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. The ruling elites have been as shifty and duplicitous about what justifies enacting emergency powers as the FBI has been about what warrants investigating angry parents at school board meetings (and before them, Trump campaign operatives for their Russian 'collusion’.) One feature of all these police-state excursions into unbridled power never changes — vagueness. It is so much easier to move the goal posts when there are no lines drawn on the field. The COVID-19 pandemic served as the all-encompassing key to unlocking 'emergency powers’ for politicians and unelected government bureaucrats.

Don’t let this relatively Fauci-free week fool you. The Biden administration is still laser-focused on the coronavirus. In fact, as reporters waited anxiously to ask the President about stranded American civilians in Kabul and Afghans falling from Air Force planes, Baghdad Biden stumbled through a teleprompter address about vaccines and left without taking a single question. America is back! In his brief remarks, the President assured the American people that he would stand tough against the Taliban. Oops sorry, scratch that. The President assured us that he would stand tough against Republican governors. See, these red state politicians are 'setting a dangerous tone', according to Joe.

Marjorie Taylor Greene held a press conference late last week. It took place inside, meaning the Jews with the space laser must have been at red alert once again. The raison d’être for Greene’s shindig was to announce that she’d been banned from Twitter. Which raises the question: what do I have to do to get arrested in this town? I recently reactivated my own Twitter account after a blessed hiatus and I would give anything to be banished from that cesspool. How do you get hoosegowed? Apparently all you have to do is what everyone else on Twitter is doing: Greene was banned for spreading ‘COVID misinformation’.

Listening to the testy exchange between Sen. Rand Paul and St — er, Dr Anthony Fauci the other day, I couldn’t help but think both of these famous lines from Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Marmion’: ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!’ ...and also this excellent ‘completion’ by J.R. Pope (‘A Word of Encouragement’): ‘But when we’ve practiced for a while, How vastly we improve our style!’ Sen. Paul began by reminding the ubiquitous doctor of Section 1001 of the US Criminal Code, which makes it a felony, carrying a prison term of up to five years, for lying to Congress.

For four years the mainstream media kept a tally of every lie President Trump ever told. Fact-checkers like the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler and CNN’s Daniel Dale centered their lives around Well Ackchyually-ing Trump at every opportunity. How times have changed! President Biden’s lies are constantly written off as either harmless gaffes or exaggerations. Even the most blatant falsehoods from Joe receive little or no criticism from the press. Instead, journalists speculate on what they think the 78-year-old probably meant to say. During the Trump administration, fact-checking hubs like Snopes and Reuters had no problem issuing black and white verdicts on the president’s statements. Suddenly there are 46 shades of gray.

Cockburn’s nieces have just bundled into the kitchen, squealing about someone called Olivia Rodrigo visiting the White House tomorrow. A cursory Google search informed him that Olivia Rodrigo is the star of something called High School Musical: The Musical: The Series and the teen pop sensation behind the ungrammatical chart-topping singles 'drivers license' and 'good 4 u'. Rodrigo, 18, is heading to Washington to meet with President Biden, 78, and Dr Anthony Fauci, 80. According to a White House official, the singer will 'record videos about the importance of young people getting vaccinated, including answering important questions young people have about getting vaccinated’. good 4 her!

Dr Anthony Fauci has exhibited plenty of behavioral red flags over the past year. Don’t believe me? Google ‘Fauci magazine covers’. The results say it all. My favorite was an InStyle cover from last July where the ‘The Good Doctor’ was posing by a pool. The Daily Beast described the cover in slobbering detail: ‘His black rimmed square sunglasses reflect a sun ray back into the camera’s eye. His blue and white button-up is undone at the neck and his jeans fit tight. It’s as if Fauci is playing Daniel Craig playing Roger Stone in an inevitable biopic.’ Can we get a wellness check on these writers, who are drooling over an elderly bureaucrat sitting in a folding chair wearing Dwight Schrute-style sunglasses?