…to remember when there was no how, no way, the Coronavirus was a Chinese biowarfare experiment, and it was racist to suggest as much.
I guess they’re right – elections have consequences.
UPDATE: Remember – it was only pro-Trump fake news propaganda outlets.
Totally legit beef there.
Is the ‘biowarfare’ assertion strong? ‘Gain of function’ research certainly.
The good news is, this is a big deal for the long term delegitimization of fact checking [in service of left center talking points]. If you get a President DeSantis in 2024 and the press is trying to brow beat him, he can use this ex to tell them to go to hell.
re elections, my own framework on this was I knew intuitively it was Wuhan lab / not wet market, but that I wouldn’t vote for Trump anyway.
The only president we have had who could take on China as an adversary left office on Jabuary 21, 2021.
Biden and the democrats can’t do it. They are the party of the media and hi tech, and media and hi tech are dependent on China for their growth. The mainstream republicans (like Ryan and Romney) are too committed to a failed view of libertarian capitalism to use trade with China as a weapon to keep China in line.
So let me get this straight. Criticizing China is anti-asian racism, but criticizing Israel is not anti-semitic?
Beyond that, MO: Criticizing China, which is not an ethnic group, is racist, but critiziing Israel, which exists entirely as a manifestation of an ethnic group, isn’t.
Weird.
Interesting contrast between the headline of that Guardian article, If the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis is true, expect a political earthquake, and the conclusion:
But even if it inches closer to being confirmed, we can guess what the next turn of the narrative will be. It was a “perfect storm,” the experts will say. Who coulda known? And besides (they will say), the origins of the pandemic don’t matter any more. Go back to sleep.
Until I see one leftist, the first in many, many years, arrested, charged, and jailed with just one of the many violations they’ve done while accusing the “republicans” of the same, I don’t believe in any “political earthquake”.
It isn’t just that covid (possibly) originated with the Chinese goernment, it is also true that the Chinese were negligent in containing it within China. They barred travel by Chinese to Wuhan while they allowed people in Wuhan to travel outside of China. They lied about its being transmitted from human to human. They disappeared a chinese doctor who tried to warn doctors in other nations about covid.
I would think that canceling our chinese debt would be a good start on reparations.
In January of 2020 China and Italy agreed to allow Chinese clothing factories to operate (and largely be staffed by Chinese) in Italy so that China could claim “Made in Italy” on the labels. The Chinese workers started arriving in Italy, and a few weeks later the virus showed up.
Just one of those things, I guess.
While I agree that the discussion around lab outbreak in the early stages might have been unfair to the lab leak hypothesis, I think that by the time most of the right wing ecosystem picked up and began shouting about lab leak stuff was when it was apparent that the Trump administration had failed to contain the virus and the US was gonna get nailed.
Nearly every time a right winger tried to kick up lab leak dust, it was not to be helpful, it was to distract from the body count in the US by getting folks mad about China. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be mad about China, but these guys gave away the game by not also being helpful about stopping the virus while shouting about lab leak.
The problem with the lab leak hypothesis is that there’s still no direct evidence of it. And the advocates of it prop up anything they can to try and prove it no matter how weak it is.
That’s not to say it’s impossible for the Wuhan lab theory to be right. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But most reporting is garbage, and has more red flags than a Chinese National Day parade.
I prefer my news sources to not encourage people to believe that an event is the result of a conspiracy unless there’s enough evidence to reasonably support that conclusion.
Trump, Trump Trump… a55hole still hasn’t given one single suggestion of how the Trump administration should’ve done anything differently.
Emery is a TDS jackass. As in “I had one too many at the saloon last & now I have to go to court for a DUI. Damn that Trump!”
^^ Clearly your comment is off topic—I’ve often heard it referred to as “thread-jacking” Out of respect I’ll respond to your “thread-jack”.
There’s little about Trump support that willful ignorance can’t explain. After all, Trump is unusual in that most of what he says and does is a matter of public record. The only substantial differences between Trump supporters and Trump critics is in how they interpret the same information.
So Trump supporters consciously choose to disregard what they know to be true because they believe, relative to themselves, that empowering Trump is a net positive for them. The “very fine people,” want to persecute minorities, which Trump doesn’t mind. The oligarchical-minded, want their tax cuts, which Trump is happy to provide. The holy-rollers want their beliefs to carry the force of ostensibly secular law, which Trump was happy to endorse. Political conservatives want to try to rule without the consent of the governed, which Trump happily endorses as well. To me, that smacks of “rationalization,” plain as day. Trump supporters stick with him because he provides cover to do and say what they’re inclined to do and say anyway.
↑↑ Such bull shit. You need no excuse go on one of your TDS fuled Trump rage-athons.
The Worst thing is that you feel that the GOP candidate who received more votes than any other GOP candidate in 2020 is even loonier than you are.
You are a sick person with a severe mental disability. Seek help.
… it was apparent that the Trump administration had failed to contain the virus and the US was gonna get nailed.
You’ve said this dozens of times. Again, as Joe Doakes has repeatedly asked, what should he have done, when should he have done it, and by what authority should it have been done?
“Trump dropped the ball” is not a sufficient answer.
Bill C – thanks for the assist!
Heh! I asked too. I’m just not as popular as JD. 😉
Maybe we could have rounded up all of the Chinese in this country and killed them. Would that have worked, Emery?
-or-
Maybe we could have rounded up all of the Chinese in this country, and Emery, and killed them all.
The interesting thing about Emery’s comment is that in stating that when “right-wingers” mentioned the hypothesis, “it was not to be helpful.” That statement of his is trying to impute motives, which is extremely dangerous business when the very truth of a statement hasn’t been determined.
And really, if we’d acted on the evidence provided, found more, and found, say, that yes, the Chinese government did accidentally or willfully release the virus and quickly began a massive coverup (this appears to be the case, almost certainly), then at the very least, we could have started to apply some massive diplomatic pressure on China which…..contrary to Emery’s claim….could have been very, very helpful.
Want to put the kibosh on Chinese agreements for supply chain? “Look what they did to the Italians–it could be you too!” Want to put the kibosh on Chinese maritime aggression–same response.
See, Emery, if one doesn’t simply attack the messenger and apply a genetic fallacy, one can actually learn something and apply it to everyone’s benefit. It’s a darned shame that the press hasn’t learned this lesson–I know they had learned it when my great uncle was a newsman in Louisiana exposing gambling rackets and covering the integration of Ole Miss.
It’s a darned shame that the press hasn’t learned this lesson
The past 60 years (for me, say, Vietnam and Watergate), the national news media has been in the pocket of the Democrat party. What’s to learn? They’ve done great work as propagandists for the Democrats.
I find that impugning motives to Trump is a feature of the TDS right as well as the TDS left. They are absolutely certain that did a thing because of some base motive when there is really no empirical evidence that this is true. Jonah Goldberg is a TDS guy on the right who does this.
When you tell the TDS person that you don’t understand how they came to the consclusion that Trump, say, promoted a tax cut only because it would mean that he could sell more of his over-priced property, they just go ballistic.
There is no reasoning with them. They are lost in the hall of mirrors of their mind.
Oh, and the TDS media promotes and affirms their lunatic notions.
Here, for example, is a bit from a recent by “conservative” Jonah Goldberg:
First, I think Donald Trump—who is not and never was fit to be president—should have been impeached, removed, and barred from ever holding office ever again within 48 hours of the siege on the Capitol. As I have written at great length, he tried to steal an election. It was a failed self-coup—what they call in Latin America an attempted autogolpe. Months, if not years before the 2020 election, Trump started laying the groundwork for the claim that any defeat was illegitimate. He declared victory on Election Night not because he won, but because he clearly lost.
That’s not Jonah Goldberg making a wildly delusional observation. That’s Jonah Goldberg making a solid observation.
Goldberg, of course, is suffering under the delusion that he, and not the American people (in whom all sovereignty resides) is who decides who is and who is not fit to be president.
Goldberg has been pushing for Trump’s impeachment from the day he sworn in. He seems to have been forbidden to bring up the topic of Trump on any of the group podcasts or round tables he appears in, but god help you if anyone else mentions the name “Trump.” His voice changes pitch and he begins to stutter when he talks about Trump. There is no clearer example of TDS on the planet.
So you agree with Goldberg that he, and not the American people, determines who is and who is not qualified to be president of the United States?
You are as looney as the rest of the #nevertrumpers, JK.
Trump was the most conservative president of my lifetime.
Yeah right, that’s what Goldberg says…
Trump supporters may be (IMO) foolhardy, but they are not stupid in the most literal sense of the word. Rather, they choose to indulge lies because its suits them to do so.
Just to refocus:
December, 2020: Covid was never a CCP biowar experiment gone (at best) wrong, and saying so marks one as a droog of the Orange Man deserving of cancellation. .
June 2021: Covid was always , potentially, a CCP biowar experiment, and we never doubted it, and anyone saying we ever said otherwise deserves cancellation.
All else is baked wind.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Might be time for the semi-regular “articles that make claims based on paraphrases of supposedly leaked US intelligence are nearly worthless” thread again.
Let’s start here — turns out COVID is actually from a Wuhan lab, and we know this now thanks to a previously undisclosed US intelligence report! Except, all here is not quite as it seems. Let’s go take a look.
WSJ EXCLUSIVE: Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report
https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228
First glaring omission when we reach the article is … the document on which the reporting is based. The lack of primary source document here is a significant omission when making a claim this explosive.
Next critical thing we learn is that *both* the document’s authority *and* its origin are disputed. That’s a big deal in its own right, but it’s also noteworthy that the journalists here can’t resolve it directly.
Most documents of this nature self-describe their origin. If the origin is plausibly disputed and can’t be resolved decisively by the journalist then this is a very irregular document which is a huuuuge red flag to taking it at face value.
Next, we learn that someone thinks the information is very strong. It’s of “exquisite quality”. “Very precise”. But those words are also red flags here on the authority of the person stating them. These are not words used by IC analysts to describe confidence assessments.
The nature of the document is also curious. It goes “beyond a State Department fact sheet”. OK, so what is it? Which department or agency drafted it? Who wrote it?
And the document was drafted “in the final days of the previous administration”. OK. That could be a coincidence — documents get written all the time — but could also be an indication that it was drafted to codify a political conclusion, rather than an intelligence one.
Let’s get back to this paragraph: that someone thinks this document was provided by “an international partner”.
First, that doesn’t specify which partner, or the nature of the partnership. But if you follow international news, there’s another story that looks suspiciously similar to this one from May last year:
Coronavirus NSW: Dossier lays out case against China bat virus program
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/bombshell-dossier-lays-out-case-against-chinese-bat-virus-program/news-story/55add857058731c9c71c0e96ad17da60
In that story, we got extra details that match this one. Could be a coincidence and two unrelated stories. But in that story they had similar claims: a 15-page “research document” laid out the case, and heavily implied that the assessment was done by the Five Eyes community.
Except the Five Eyes community then came out and said “this isn’t a Five Eyes assessment” and the dossier in question was probably made in the US, based on open-source reporting.
Five Eyes network contradicts theory Covid-19 leaked from lab
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/five-eyes-network-contradicts-theory-covid-19-leaked-from-lab
Long story short is this reporting is taking something that isn’t an official IC assessment and passing it off as one to give it a glean of authority.
Reason I know that is because BBC ran the same claim, and then had to walk it back with this article.
Coronavirus: Fact-checking claims it might have started in August 2019
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53005768
So anyway, make of this what you will. But someone is shopping something that isn’t an IC assessment as an IC assessment, and news sites keep falling for it.
Lol, not reading them but emetic needed to drop four stools. Must have been getting his ass handed to him as usual. Can’t make your point in two or three sentences? Then you don’t have a point .Baffle ’em with bs and all that.
Yo, Emery, if indeed you’ve got proof that this is nonsense, maybe you’d better inform the President, the CIA, the CDC, and others. They’re moving the opposite way.
Bike (and kinlaw), I think the little fella should’ve checked his email before writing his 4-part jeremiad. Things are afoot and even the Washington Post is (stealth) rewriting headlines from a year ago.
Rand Paul calls for Fauci to be fired after shocking email revelations.
Told you so.
Those emails of Fauci’s seem to give us a good indication of why he didn’t raise H*** about sending COVID patients into nursing homes. Increasing information suggests he didn’t give a rip about the origins of the virus, didn’t act on information that suggested clearly that it wasn’t random, didn’t act on information that suggested face masks were of little use in preventing infection…..so why the heck would he act on information that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives?
Time to fire Fauci and everyone who corresponded with him and didn’t raise H*** about this in public, hire Ed Garcia to head infectious diseases (he was the guy at Firestone in Liberia for Ebola), and give Donald Trump the Nobel Prize for Medicine for getting vaccines to the world half a decade before anyone else thought it would be possible.
The Memory Holes are working overtime, and putting out so much smoke that the EPA should order a smog warning.