“Now, I suppose the president’s statement is an improvement from the administration’s contention yesterday that a ransomware attack emanating from a foreign actor is merely a “private sector” matter. Though, if our last president had claimed that a pipeline disruption that caused gas lines and skyrocketing prices had nothing to do with the Russian government — even though the group behind the attack, DarkSide, seemingly operates freely in that country — there would be a thermonuclear media meltdown. Biden provided no evidence for his assertion. For five years, there was virtually nothing the panic-mongering press and Democrats wouldn’t blame on the nefarious Russians. The administration, for example, is still defending the debunked Russian bounty story. (As is, we detail below, Liz Cheney.) The media spilled millions of hysterical words convincing Americans that a few Twitter bots and a $200,000 Facebook ad buy was tantamount to Pearl Harbor. At one point, 67 percent of Democrats believed that Russians hacked into machines and changed their votes. Yet, after this, one of most expensive cyberattacks in history, the president simply says Putin — a man he rightly called a “killer” only recently — is innocent. And, so far, everyone seems fine with it. That’s quite the turnaround.“

Only because Orange Man soooo bad.

Turning from the world’s former Communist superpower to that which many Progressives are trying to ensure is its next, The Washington Free Beacon reveals…

How China Co-Opted the Olympics

Olympics bigwigs dismissed human rights abuses behind closed doors

“When Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs, the 2022 Beijing Olympics chief, met with Chinese dissidents in a closed-door October meeting, he firmly rejected their plea to relocate the games out of China to protest human rights abuses. “The world lives under very many political systems. We cannot go and say and endorse one or the other. That is not what we do,” Salisachs told activists, according to meeting minutes obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The activists were stunned. “[Salisachs] was talking to me as if he knows so much better than we do,” Frances Hui, a Hong Kong activist who attended the meeting, told the Free Beacon. “We were all in shock—they were so disrespectful to us.”

The October meeting was far from the first time an Olympics official dismissed Chinese human rights concerns. Salisachs’s comments echoed those made by his father—Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former president of the International Olympics Committee—in the years leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The senior Samaranch, remembered today in China as a “dream-maker,” for years turned a blind eye to Chinese state repression, telling reporters in 2008, “If we are talking about human rights, many countries that attack China should look at themselves.”When pressed, the senior Samaranch often switched up his arguments, saying that the IOC can leverage its international prestige to nudge China to improve its human rights record.

The IOC has abandoned even the pretense of using its influence to reform the Chinese regime. Salisachs refused to consider discussions about Chinese human rights abuses, telling activists the Olympics is not the place to deliberate “political agendas,” according to the meeting minutes…” To try to leverage on the Olympic Games to obtain a number of political agendas is very dangerous,” Salisachs said during the October meeting.

Since the 2008 Olympics, the authoritarian country has only strengthened its grip over society, inflicting genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and violent repression in Hong Kong and Tibet. While the IOC failed to influence China, the communist regime has managed to co-opt the IOC. In the last decade or so, the Chinese state fostered corporate sponsorships, personal ties, and institutional connections with Olympics executives, making it difficult for any games to be held without Chinese support.

“The IOC benefits a lot from Chinese business and Chinese government,” Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer who attended the October meeting, told the Free Beacon.“And some senior officials have conflicts of interests.”

China’s multi-year effort to influence the IOC—ranging from a Samaranch memorial park the size of five football fields to lucrative deals with Chinese tech company Alibaba—provides a cautionary tale of how China uses its global influence to co-opt international organizations. China has used similar tactics to sway a wide range of international institutions, from the WHO to the U.N. Human Rights Council. The influence peddling operations have proven effective: The WHO refuses to give membership to Taiwan; meanwhile, Chinese diplomats in the UNHRC threaten experts who testify about China’s genocide of Muslim Uyghurs…”

In other words, the leaders of any number of nations, organizations, businesses, professional sports, along with a number of sports stars and celebrities, are all making huge amounts of cash off the ChiComs…as well as the backs of innumerable slaves.

Moving on, Marcus Aurelius forwarded the ideal t-shirt for those unwilling to knuckle under to 46*’s “vaccine-or-else” edict:

Which is cause for a brief commentary: Neither TLJ nor we ever deliberately altered our lives or habits in the face of the scamdemic; rather our lives and habits were changed for us, both by government edict and those either in fear of either a virus with a remarkably low mortality rate or worried about appearing insufficiently fearful.

When the vaccines became available in record time (Thank you, Donald Trump!), both of us received the Moderna variant, just as both of us always get an annual flu shot, and just as we’ve received the shingles and pneumonia vaccines.  Our three boys and daughter-in-love have all been vaccinated, as have most if not all of the friends with whom we regularly socialize.  But we never refused to meet, greet or eat, let alone worship with anyone because they were unvaccinated.

We’ve one very close friend who, owing to possible side effects, both long and short term, remains unvaccinated, which in our view he has every right to be.  After all, none of the vaccines have gone through the FDA’s formal, time-consuming approval process, the agency having deemed the potential benefits far outweighed any likely downside, and their possible long-term effects are quite literally unknown.  As TLJ and we aren’t getting any younger and had already delayed our return to Africa an entire year, we were both willing to take the risk.  Others feel differently.

Here’s the juice: As we understand herd immunity, it occurs at or above the point at which 70% of the country has either been vaccinated against or exposed to the Wuhan virus…from China, CHINA.  The higher the combined percentage, the closer the risk of any significant transmission approaches zero.  Yes, those who’ve been vaccinated still have a very small chance of infection, thus posing a potential risk, not to themselves but to the unvaccinated members of the herd who’ve never contracted COVID.  And that‘s a risk the purposefully unvaccinated assume themselves.  Again, herd immunity doesn’t mean the complete eradication and/or absence of the Wuhan virus, rather there’s not enough members of the herd who’ve neither been exposed to or vaccinated against the virus to precipitate a pandemic, nor would their becoming infected pose a risk to the vast majority of the remaining population.

Which makes it all the more curious when Maryland governor Larry Hogan lifted Maryland’s indoor mask requirement this past Saturday, he left it in force for public transportation, health care settings and schools.  Sorry, but how does the Wuhan virus know the difference between a bar and a bus, a cardiologist and an ornithologist, a school and a pool?!?

Or as Matt Vespa wonders at Townhall.com, is Nancy continuing the mandatory wearing of masks on the House floor about controlling COVID, or simply control?

It’s as Kevin Williamson contends: This isn’t a medical question anymore; it’s a question of cultural allegiance.

In a related item also featured at Townhall.com, Scott Morefield suggests…

If You Suspected That Most Epidemiologists Were Complete Clowns, This Will Seal The Deal

“…Exhibit A is the fact that the vast majority of survey respondents expected public mask-wearing to continue to at least a YEAR, and more than a quarter want some form of mask-wearing to continue indefinitely.

…Exhibit B is the continued insistence among epidemiologists that the pandemic won’t end until 70 percent of Americans, including children, are vaccinated. Not only does this deny the science behind natural immunity, it also denies the fact that children have never been shown to be significant victors or be statistically negatively affected by the virus…”

Except, of course, in the high school science project of 14-year-old girl which helped formulate the self-destructive lockdown strategy we continue to endure.  Guess it really IS all about the children!

Next, we offer six items specially selected for inquiring Conservative minds:

(1). If what’s said about a man is true of a group or organization, namely you can tell a lot about them by their membership, the presence of holocaust-denier Pete McCloskey tells you all you need to know about the latest Never-Trumpers, the purportedly “principled” members of A Call for American Renewal.  Relax, America: They’re here to save you from The Donald!  Uhhh…