Day: September 14, 2021

An Analytical Review of the Central Scientific Facts About the Efficacy of Face Masks and Claims They Reduce the Transmission of COVID-19

Virginia Star Staff

In a terse essay titled “Science and Dictatorship,” Albert Einstein warned that “Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech.” And on his deathbed, Einstein cautioned, “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.”

With reckless disregard for both of those principles, powerful government officials and big tech executives have corrupted or suppressed the central scientific facts about face masks. The impacts of this extend far beyond the issue of masks and have caused widespread harm and countless deaths.

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Commentary: Terry McAuliffe is the Abortion Candidate

Admin

While pro-life candidate for governor, Glenn Youngkin continues to talk about rational pro-life measures, like preventing taxpayer funding for abortions and passing a Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, pro-abortion former governor Terry McAuliffe, is sounding one note all over Virginia: he is promising to prevent any new pro-life law and to ultimately help see Roe v. Wade codified in the Virginia Constitution.

Terry McAuliffe is making protecting abortion promoters his top priority as witnessed in his comments and actions at two events in Virginia yesterday. At a small business forum sponsored by the Multicultural Chamber Alliance in Fairfax, VA, McAuliffe’s opening remarks focused on how proud he was to have kept Virginia’s abortion facilities open as governor and stopped any new pro-life laws from being enacted. Unsurprisingly, the small business leaders were not very excited, and the only applause was from his own cheer squad that he travels with.

Later in the afternoon, he returned to Charlottesville where he made a campaign stop at the local abortion facility to promise to “be a brick wall against any anti-choice (pro-life) laws. He said clearly to those present, “I will always fight to protect women’s clinics!” Obviously, the campaign funding he has received from the abortion industry is calling the tune he dances to. Their goal is to get him elected so as to protect the abortion industry in the Commonwealth. They have no interest in protecting women’s health or the lives of the babies they carry.

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Commentary: Americans Can’t Afford Joe Biden’s America

Virginia Star Staff

Americans are tapped out. They are struggling to pay for higher prices at the pump, the grocery store, and just about everywhere else. Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics August Producer Price Indexes  report showed on an unadjusted basis, the final demand index rose 8.3 percent for the 12 months ended in August, the largest advance since 12-month data were first calculated in November 2010.

The Producer Price Index is a precursor to what retail prices will be doing in months ahead, and the August report is more bad news. The 8.3 percent annual increase in final demand signals that Americans will be paying much more for goods and services in coming months and verifies what everyone who pays their own bills already knows, Joe Biden’s America is a much more expensive place to live and it is going to get worse.

It is time for Congress to just put a stop to the madness and refuse to pass the budget reconciliation bill. Our nation cannot afford to hit the accelerator when we are already feeling the inflation pain from our prior debt excesses.

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Virginia Manufacturers Criticize Biden’s ‘Heavy-Handed’ Vaccine Mandate

The Center Square

A new federal policy, which would require many private businesses to enforce COVID-19 vaccine mandates or weekly testing, has come under criticism from Virginia manufacturers.

President Joe Biden announced a new rule Thursday, which will require private businesses that employ 100 or more people to require every worker be vaccinated against COVID-19 or receive weekly tests. The rule, which will be promulgated through OSHA, is expected to face legal challenges from Republican states. It will affect about 100 million people nationwide.

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FBI Fires Lead Investigator in Whitmer Kidnapping Plot

Peter D'Abrosca

After an investigation into Special Agent Richard Trask, accused of beating his wife after the pair attended swingers’ party in July, the FBI agent who once lead the investigation into the plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has been fired. 

“Trask was fired, according to a source familiar with his case, while awaiting trial on a charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm and allegations he smashed his wife’s head against a nightstand and choked her after a dispute stemming from their attendance at a swingers’ party in July,” The Detroit News reported. 

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The Taliban Controls a Vast Array of Weapons After America’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Virginia Star Staff
Afghan, coalition forces advance into Taliban heartland British Lt. Col. Andrew Harrison, 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment commander, conducts a shura with Tor Ghai village elders after ISAF and ANA secured the village during a recent operation. (Photo courtesy of Task Force Helmand Public Affairs)

When the Taliban assumed control of Afghanistan last month, the group took possession of a U.S.-funded weapons stockpile worth tens of billions of dollars.

The U.S. invested nearly $83 billion in bolstering the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), more than $24 billion of which went to funding weapons, vehicles and other equipment, according to a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report published in July. The amount of funding for weapons, vehicles and equipment is based on a 2017 Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimate that roughly 70% of the investment went towards other budget items like training.

In the aftermath of the shocking collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government last month, U.S. defense officials estimated that Taliban militants took dozens of aircraft including Blackhawk helicopters and thousands of vehicles, communications equipment and weapons. Republican lawmakers demanded the Biden administration provide them with a full accounting of the equipment that was in the Taliban’s possession while GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee introduced a bill requiring the White House to share the information with Congress.

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College Student in Missouri Filmed Throwing Away 2,977 9/11 Memorial Flags

Virginia Star Staff
American Flag blowing in the wind

A student senator at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri was filmed tearing out and throwing away nearly 3,000 American flags featured in a 9/11 memorial on campus, as reported by the New York Post.

The student, Fadel Alkilani, was captured on video Saturday as he tore the flags out of the ground and stuffed them into multiple large garbage bags. The student filming the incident, Nathaniel Hope, confronted Alkilani; Hope said that Alkilani falsely claimed that the memorial was “in violation of school rules,” and “was also saying profanity.” In the video posted to Twitter, Alkilani, who is wearing a face mask, stops for a few moments when he realizes that he is being filmed, then quickly walks away with the bags, calling Hope “weird” before leaving the scene.

The 2,977 flags were placed in the grass on the campus’s Mudd Field for the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks in 2001, with each flag representing one of the victims of the attacks in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania on that day. This has become a common tradition around the country every year since 2001, often organized by conservative student groups.

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New Poll Suggests Little Change among Californians in Recalling Governor, But Large Partisan Divide

Virginia Star Staff

Anew poll on the recall election for California Gov. Gavin Newsom shows voters appear essentially locked into their position on whether to remove the embattled Democrat lawmaker.

The poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan The Public Policy Institute of California found 58% of likely voters surveyed oppose removing the governor from office, compared to 39% who support recalling him.

The numbers are largely consistent with those the pollsters collected in March and May – 40% to 56% and 40% to 57%, respectively, in the largely Democrat-leaning state.

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Democrats See Trump Supporters and Unvaccinated as Bigger Threat Than Taliban, China: New Poll

Virginia Star Staff

A majority of Democratic voters believe that supporters of former President Trump and unvaccinated Americans pose a bigger threat to the nation than the Taliban or China, according to a new Scott Rasmussen poll.

Among Democrats, 57% believe that Trump supporters are a serious threat to the nation, and 56% believe the same about unvaccinated individuals.

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Merit System Is Unjust Because It Rewards Productive Individuals, Professors Argue

Virginia Star Staff
Woman on laptop working outside

Professors from the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs are arguing that “success and merit” are “barriers” to the equity agenda. 

“Admitting that the normative definitions of success and merit are in and of themselves barriers to achieving the goals of justice, diversity, equity and inclusion is necessary but not sufficient to create change,” professors Beth Mitchneck and Jessi L. Smith recently wrote for Inside Higher Education.

Mitchneck and Smith attributed those definitions to a “narrow definition of merit limited to a neoliberal view of the university.” Specifically, they express concern that universities receive funding and recognition based on the individual performances of professors’ own work such as peer reviewed journals and studies. 

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FDA Will Need More Time to Decide If Juul Can Sell E-Cigarettes

Virginia Star Staff

Health officials delayed a decision Thursday on whether e-cigarettes made by Juul and other top companies can stay on the U.S. market.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it needs longer than the Thursday deadline to determine if Juul and other select companies’ products can continue to be sold in the U.S., according to a press release.

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Commentary: Cancel Culture is Both a Scarlet Letter and a Reign of Terror

RealClearWire

In a recent Atlantic article, Anne Applebaum compares our college campuses to New England Puritanism. She did so by drawing on the storyline of the novel “The Scarlet Letter,” wherein Hester Prynne suffers eternal ignominy for having sex and getting pregnant outside of wedlock. So, too, Applebaum wrote, do many today receive a scarlet “C,” marked for shunning at the behest of a “Cancel Culture.”

While Applebaum’s comparison is helpful, a more fitting reference exists, one both historical and literary. The French Revolution, which began in 1789, provided the backdrop for Charles Dickens’snovel “A Tale of Two Cities.” It tells a tale with parallels to the college experience of today.

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Facebook Buys up the Outstanding Invoices of Minority-Owned Small Businesses

Virginia Star Staff

Facebook is spending $100 million to buy up the outstanding invoices of small businesses owned by women, racial minorities, veterans, disabled people and LGBTQ+ people, the company announced last week.

The Invoice Fast Track Program allows certain “small, midsize and diverse-owned businesses” to submit outstanding invoices to Facebook. The tech giant then buys the invoices, giving the business cash immediately, and the business’ customers pay Facebook instead.

The program is designed to help “diverse-owned” businesses improve their cash flow and hire more employees, according to the program’s description.

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Alaska Airlines Fired Flight Attendants for Saying Democrat Transgender Bill Harms Women

Virginia Star Staff
N615AS Alaska Airlines 2000 Boeing

Alaska Airlines fired flight attendants for questioning its support of a proposed federal law that would open women’s spaces to biological males, according to complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Their union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, allegedly refused to defend their Title VII employment rights against religious discrimination during the proceeding and “disparaged” the employees’ Christian beliefs.

The Seattle-based air carrier, which once decorated a plane with the logo of Nirvana’s first music label Sub Pop, did not respond to queries from Just the News about the allegations and why employees shouldn’t fear official retaliation for expressing their views.

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