Welcome to this week’s edition of “F**king Mondays!”
RFK Jr., The Liberal Trump
Thankfully, the more RFK Jr. speaks, the more the public is going to realize how deranged he is. Just watch this extraordinary clip where Kennedy Jr. claims Covid-19 is a bioweapon designed to attack specific races and spare others:
“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately…..COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
There are a few things worth clearing up here. First of all, there is some evidence that suggests Covid-19 effects people with specific genes differently. We also know that governments around the world have a history of making biologically engineered weapons. However, there is no evidence whatsoever that Covid-19 is an engineered bioweapon, and evidence for specific racial groups faring better than others is limited and incomplete. For example, East Asians and South Asians have genetic differences that have an effect on susceptibility to Covid-19. A study published in 2022 looking into SARS-CoV-2 genetic susceptibility within diverse ethnic backgrounds found:
Consistent with our findings, Cao et al. (2020) showed that the East Asian populations have much higher allele frequencies in the eQTL variants associated with higher ACE2 expression, suggesting population differences in response to SARS-CoV-2. In a study analysing single-cell RNA sequencing data of human lungs of eight donors, Zhao et al. (2020) showed that ACE2 was more abundantly expressed in type II alveolar epithelial cells of a male Asian donor than both Black and White donors.
East Asians had a higher frequency of upregulating variants and lower frequency of downregulating variants than other populations. The resultant higher levels of ACE2 in this population may lead to higher COVID-19 susceptibility. Further, Africans showed a genetic predisposition for lower expression levels of ACE2, implicating the opposite.
Was Kennedy talking about East Asians or South Asians? What about Africans compared to African Americans? As is always the case, the devil is in the detail. And Kennedy always makes sure to avoid inconvenient data that contradicts whatever wild conspiracy theory he is currently obsessed with.
Let’s examine the repellent antisemitic/Sinophobic connotations. Kennedy claimed the US and China are involved in developing bioweapons that target specific ethnic groups. He then says “there’s an argument” that Covid-19 was ethnically targeted to attack whites and blacks, while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Asians. The implication is clear: whoever developed Covid-19 in a lab to kill millions of people wanted to specifically spare Jews and Asians.
Saying the quiet part out loud: American Jews, who control the world, worked with the Communist Chinese to kill racial groups they don’t like because George Soros, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, the Rothschilds want to vaccinate you with microchips etc, etc.
According to the presidential candidate, the controversy was actually the media’s fault because he was, er, correctly quoted?:
This is a familiar routine from Kennedy where he tries to wriggle his way out of trouble by claiming he was “just asking questions”.
Is Covid a bioweapon? Why doesn’t it effect Jews and Asians? Do vaccines cause autism? Why is the mainstream media censoring me? I don’t know, but I’m just asking questions!
I have no idea whether Kennedy is actually antisemitic/Sinophobic, or he just knows this stuff plays well with his New Age/Alt political followers. I suspect the latter, but either way he’s going to pay a very heavy price for this nonsense.
Could Joe Manchin spoil the election?
Via the Guardian:
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is headlining today at the event in New Hampshire organized by No Labels, the third party outfit that promotes itself as “middle of the road” or “common sense” and hopes to get on the ballot in 50 states for the 2024 presidential election with a “unity ticket”, much to the Democratic Party’s chagrin….
If he ran for the presidency as a No Labels candidate, it could not only split the Democratic vote in a way that gives the White House to the Republicans in 2024 but also hands the party his crucial seat in what is currently a finely-balanced Senate where the Democrats have a very narrow majority.
Manchin hasn’t said whether he is running or not, so it’s likely he’s playing his usual game of scaring the crap out of Democrats for personal political gain. Manchin loves to keep his party in a perpetual state of fear over whether he’ll help destroy or save the country, and this is no different. If he runs, he knows full well he could topple Biden and hand the White House to Trump, so he’s going to drag this out for as long as possible. My guess is that the pressure will build and Manchin won’t announce anything. If he does, 2024 is going to be one of the most chaotic, destructive elections in, well, at least four years…
Russia wants the world to starve
After Ukraine blew up part of the Kerch Strait Bridge that links Russia to occupied Crimea yesterday, Russia announced it “was ending an agreement that had allowed Ukraine to export its grain by sea despite Moscow’s naval blockade, upending a deal that had helped to keep global food prices stable and alleviate one element of the global fallout from the war." Via the NY Times:
Ukraine is a major producer of grain and other foodstuffs, and the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision. Millions of people who face hunger, or are struggling, as well as consumers around the world facing a cost of living crisis, will “pay a price,” he said.
"Today’s decision by the Russian Federation will strike a blow to people in need everywhere,” he told journalists.
A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told journalists earlier on Monday that the agreement had been “halted” until Russia’s demands were met.
According to Peskov, Ukrainians must end “provocations and attacks against Russian civilian and military facilities” in the Black Sea. In other words, if Ukraine continues resisting occupation, the world must go hungry.
It is unlikely that Ukraine the West will give into Russian demands, as painful as they might be. They know giving ground to Putin means he’ll just continue demanding more — a strategy that has had disastrous long term consequences in the past.
Ukraine’s attack on the Kerch Straight Bridge clearly has Russia spooked given its strategic importance, and is another sign that their chances of winning the war are diminishing by the week.
See you next week!
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Tucker Scrapes The Barrel, Climate Apocalypse, And MTG The Fascist
For Banter Members:
Is the Earth flat? Have you physically stood at the south pole yourself, or viewed the Earth from space? Is the Earth’s core made of styrofoam?
What? I'm just asking questions! What actually lies 1,000 feet below the south pole, and how come the government isn't talking about it? (just made that up - answer is solid rock - probably)
1) RFK, Sr., would (I suspect) be horrified and saddened by what his son has become.
2) There's a reason why so many Republican dollars are flowing in the direction of both RFK, Jr., and "No Labels". Both are fronts to weaken President Biden and divide Democrats.