Vulcan rocket's debut brings long-awaited challenge to SpaceX dominance

 A Boeing-Lockheed joint venture's launch of a new Vulcan rocket this week inaugurated a formidable rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX, a milestone long sought by the U.S. government as it seeks to build a list of launch suppliers for its satellites.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin's United Launch Alliance sent Vulcan into space for the first time on Monday, a first step toward reclaiming market share from SpaceX, whose reusable Falcon 9 rocket for years has been the main option for countries to get their satellites into space. The payload, a privately funded moon lander, will not finish its mission because of tech problems, but the Vulcan launch in Florida was a success.

"This launch puts ULA in the front-runner position to challenge SpaceX's de facto monopoly over launch," said Caleb Henry, a space analyst at Quilty Analytics. "If ULA can prove that Vulcan can scale up to a rapid launch cadence quickly, they will provide the market with another route to space."

Dependence on SpaceX has been a concern for the Pentagon, which wants multiple vendors of rides to orbit.

"If SpaceX has a bad day in the future, we'd still have a pathway to space for our national security needs" with Vulcan, said Michael Lembeck, a space consultant and director of University of Illinois Advanced Space Systems lab.

Demand for launches has soared, driven mainly by plans from countries and companies like Amazon to put thousands of internet satellites in space. But supply to the West has dropped, with Europe's sovereign space access held up by rocket development delays and Russia's rocket program being isolated by the West over the Ukraine war.

Bigger U.S. rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn, are months or years from reaching orbit.

"It takes a long time to develop a new heavy-class launch vehicle, so the scarcity is going to be here for about 10 years," ULA CEO Tory Bruno said in an interview at Vulcan's launchpad before its launch.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-vulcan-rockets-debut-brings-174450872.html

Cathie Wood Says Gensler ‘Denigrated’ Crypto With His Statement

 

• Wood’s Ark Investment among ETF issuers approved by SEC
• SEC chair, crypto critic, voted in favor of spot Bitcoin ETFs

Ark Investment Management LLC’s Cathie Wood said she was taken aback by Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler’s statement shortly after the agency approved around a dozen exchange-traded funds that will directly hold Bitcoin.

“He just denigrated the whole crypto space. I couldn’t believe it,” Wood said in a Bloomberg Radio interview aired on X. “This is par for the course in disruptive innovation.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-11/cathie-wood-says-gensler-denigrated-crypto-with-his-statement

Trump-Fox Iowa Town Hall

 Former President Donald Trump railed against the “chaos” at the southern border during a Fox News town hall Wednesday.

“They have chaos at the border,” Trump told a group of voters in Iowa. “The border is a disaster, the worst border in history. I think the worst border in the history of the world. We had the best border in the history of our country. We never had a border like that.”

Former President Donald Trump, when asked by Fox News moderator Bret Baier about accusations he is a "big government Republican" who added $8 trillion to the national debt during his tenure, defended his administration's spending during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I say very simply, we were starting to pay down debt," Trump said during the Iowa Town hall event on Wednesday night. "We were going to pay down a lot of debt when COVID came along. If I didn't inject this country with money, you would have had a depression, the likes of which you have never seen."

Trump continued, "You had to inject money. We gave businesses that were going bankrupt, temporarily bankrupt, but they needed money. We helped businesses. If I didn't do that, you would have had a depression in this country. That was a very good investment. And now what they should be doing instead of the kind of debt that they're building at record levels, they should be paying down their debt and they ought to go into the energy business instead of this green new scam business that they're in."

Former President Trump accused his Republican opponents, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, of wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security as part of their plans to reduce the record national debt facing the nation.

He made the claim after being asked what his plans were to lower the debt, which he said were a combination of "a lot of cutting" and "a lot of income."

"We have more liquid gold under our feet, energy, oil and gas than any other country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia," Trump said, referencing oil.

He said when he left office, the U.S. was "number one" in oil production in the entire world.

"We were going to make a lot of money. We have a lot of potential income. DeSantis wants to cut social security and Medicare. Nikki Haley wants to cut social security and Medicare," he said.

Former President Donald Trump during the Fox News Town Hall in Iowa Wednesday night pointed blame at President Biden for “chaos now” when asked if a second Trump presidency would “bring years of chaos.” 

An audience member, who said he would vote for Trump, asked the former president to respond to skeptical primary voters who think a second term Trump would “bring years of chaos” because of his “haters.”  

“They have chaos now,” Trump responded, referencing Democrats and the Biden administration.  

“They have chaos at the border. They have chaos in the military, people are going woke,” Trump added.  

“Look at today with Hunter Biden going into the going into Congress and just sitting down and the bedlam that's been caused,” Trump continued.  

“Today you have chaos. We have, I think more with Joe Biden. He can't put two sentences together. And he's representing us on nuclear weapons with Putin and Xi and all of these very smart people,” Trump said.  

The GOP frontrunner when on to say that “most of the chaos” during his first term in office “was caused by the Democrats constantly going after [him].” 

“Remember that with phony Russia, Russia, Russia. I mean, if you look at Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, everything was phony. The FISA warrants, the lying to Congress, they had chaos. They were the ones that caused the chaos. We didn't have chaos,” Trump said.  

Trump touted that his administration installed “the biggest tax cust in history,” “the biggest regulation cuts in history,” “the best border in the history of the country,” and that “no wars” were started during his presidency.  

Former President Donald Trump accused Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., of being "the biggest fan of Dr. Fauci."

"If you go back and look at the record, you will see that the biggest fan of Dr. Fauci was Ron Desanctimonious. He was a big fan," Trump said during a town hall Wednesday. "Ron DeSantis was a big Dr. Fauci fan and nobody wants to cover that."

The Trump administration listed Fauci as an individual recognized for "exceptional efforts on Operation Warp Speed" in 2021, but Wednesday the former president night claimed "Dr. Fauci was not a huge factor in my administration. He became a much bigger factor in Biden's administration."

Trump said again in September that Dr. Anthony Fauci was not a "big player" in his administration and reiterated his position that he wasn’t "allowed" to fire the medical adviser.

"First of all, you’re not allowed," Trump told Hugh Hewitt’s radio show when asked by the conservative host why he didn’t fire Fauci, the controversial head of Trump's COVID-19 response team, which Hewitt called the "biggest knock" on Trump’s presidency. 

"No, no, no, Dr. Fauci was there. First of all, he’s civil service, and you’re not allowed to fire him. But forget that because I don’t necessarily go by everything … but Dr. Fauci would tell me things, and I wouldn’t do them in many cases. But also, he wasn’t a big player in my administration. Dr. Fauci became a big player in the administration of Biden. He’s a very big player in Biden’s administration."

Former President Donald Trump slammed Hunter Biden during his Fox News Town Hall in Iowa on Wednesday night calling him out for selling his artwork for large sums of money.

"I don't get $8 million for doing nothing like Hunter," Trump said. "I don't get I don't get $500,000. I don't get $500,000 for doing a painting. It's not a bad idea, I guess, if you can get away with it. When I heard that when I said there's no way they get away with that. But they got away with that. I guess they got away with it."

"Now we have you know, there was an emoluments lawsuit against me where the radical left, sued me for that, and I won the suit."

Trump was responding to a question on accusations from Democrats that he illegally profited from his businesses during his time in office.

"I own hotels, all over the, I don't get free money," Trump said. "Somebody rents a hotel room, etc, etc. Much money I gave back. In fact, I didn't have to do it. You know, George Washington was a very rich man. People don't know that, in his essentially White House, which wasn't built, but they had an office, he had a business desk and he had a country desk right next to each other. You're allowed to do that. I didn't do it."

"I put everything in trust. And if I have a hotel and somebody comes in from China, that's a small amount of money. And it sounds like a lot of money. That's a small. But I was doing services for that. People were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels, because I have the best hotels, I have the best clubs, I have the best clubs, I have great stuff and they stay there and they pay."

Trump previously blasted the Justice Department's Hunter Biden indictment in mid September as the "only crime" that doesn't "implicate" the President Joe Biden.

Biden's son was indicted on Sept. 14 for making false statements and unlawfully possessing a firearm.

Trump claimed in a Truth Social post at the time that the gun charge was "the only crime that Hunter Biden committed that does not implicate Crooked Joe Biden."

Hunter Biden, in an indictment filed in federal court in Delaware by a special counsel overseeing the case, was accused of lying about his drug use when he purchased a weapon in 2018, during a time when he's acknowledged struggling with a crack cocaine addiction.

Late in the year, Trump took another shot at Hunter Biden for skipping his closed-door congressional deposition in mid December and joked that the presidential scion "went to the wrong place" on Capitol Hill.The former president joked that Hunter went to the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol when he should have gone to the House side.

Trump told Iowa voters that America has “no choice” but to carry out a massive deportation effort.

The former president said the southern border is “not sustainable for our country” when asked how he would handle the influx of illegal migrants already in America.

“We have millions and millions of people here. It is not sustainable. Did you see in New York City with it getting the regular students out and they're putting migrants in their place?” Trump said, referencing a recent report that a school in New York was switching its students to remote learning in order to house nearly 2,000 migrants in the building.

“We are going to have the largest deportation effort in the history of our country. We're bringing everybody back to where they came from. We have no choice. We have no choice.”

Former President Donald Trump said during an Iowa Town Hall event on Fox News Wednesday night that he knows who he will choose as his running mate.

"I can't tell you that really, I mean, I know who it's going to be," Trump said when he was asked who his running mate will be in 2024.

"We'll do another show sometime," Trump said when pushed by host Martha MacCallum to "give us a hint."

"What about any of the people who you've run against?" MacCallum asked. "Would you be open to mending fences with any of them?"

"Oh, sure. I will, I will," Trump responded. "I've already started to like Christie better."

"Christie for vice president?" MacCallum joked.

"I don't see it, I don't see it," Trump said. "That would be an upset. Christie for vice president. Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to announce, nah."

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/donald-trump-town-hall-iowa

Bitwise Tops Bitcoin ETF Low-Fee Table, While Grayscale Bets on Size

 Two days before the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) is expected to approve one or more U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), all potential issuers have disclosed an important – if not the most important ­– detail about their product: the fee. And they differ greatly.

Some 13 proposed ETFs are awaiting SEC approval, or rejection, and the fee they charge is one way they can differentiate themselves from the others. Lower fees, charged as a percentage of the fund's assets, leave more for investors.

Crypto native fund manager Bitwise is charging the least – 0.24% after a 6-month period of no fees – though some of its rivals aren't far off. Ark and 21Shares plan to charge 0.25%, VanEck also lists at 0.25% and Franklin at 0.29%.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, set its fee at 0.30%, lower than some experts had expected given its size and reputation could have allowed it to charge more and still strongly compete in popularity.

“Life just got a lot tougher for everyone else,” Bloomberg Intelligence’s ETF senior analyst Eric Balchunas wrote on X, referring to BlackRock's pricing decision.

Fidelity set its fee at 0.39% and Invesco and Galaxy at 0.59%, while Valkyrie and Hashdex chose 0.80% and 0.90%, respectively. Like Bitwise, most of the issuers plan to offer reduced fees for a fixed period after their introduction.

One stand out is Grayscale, which wants to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF. It plans to charge at the high end of range, 1.5%. While this is lower than the trust's management fee of 2% and there is a potential to waive the fee, it might not be enough to compete with the other applicants, according to some observers.

“Hard to imagine advisors picking a 1.5% ETF” Balchunas said on X. Grayscale’s fee, “simply isn’t going to cut it," posted Nate Geraci, another ETF expert. For context, the average fee on ETFs in 2022 was 0.37% according to research from Morningstar.

Grayscale, however, has heft in another category that matters greatly in the ETF world: size. It already has more than $27 billion of assets under management, which gives it a huge advantage compared to the others, which have zero.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/01/08/bitwise-tops-bitcoin-etf-low-fee-table-while-grayscale-bets-on-size/

'Key' to potential breast cancer prevention and treatment found

 Every time a cancer cell divides, it sustains damage to its own DNA molecules. Researchers, including Gaorav Gupta, MD, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UNC School of Medicine, have long wondered how cancers are able to evade detection by the body's own defenses, despite the immune system being on constant watch for cells displaying DNA damage.

New findings by Gupta's lab, which were published in Nature, show how the cGAS-STING pathway—a pathway inside cells essential for activating the inflammatory immune response—is unleashed to prevent cancer formation by detecting DNA damage within cells. In the process, the research team discovered the "key" that "unlocks" the cGAS/STING pathway, which is normally turned off to prevent excessive inflammation in healthy conditions.

"Our findings suggest that loss of this pathway may be what's allowing breast cancer cells to withstand high levels of DNA damage without being recognized by the immune system," said Gupta, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and member of UNC Lineberger Cancer Center. "We're very interested in identifying ways to reactivate this pathway to treat and potentially even prevent cancer development."

The key to unleashing cGAS

An enzyme called cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) is well known for its role as a messenger for the immune system. Double-stranded DNA viruses, such as herpes simplex and chickenpox, and DNA-damaged cells are perceived as threats and waste to the body. In response, cGAS is tasked with calling on the immune system to seek out the threat and eliminate it from the body.

Back in 2020, Robert McGinty, MD, Ph.D. at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Pengda Liu, Ph.D., and Qi Zhang, Ph.D., of the UNC Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, were among the first research teams to make a landmark discovery about cGAS. Their paper, which was published in Science, revealed that cGAS is "locked up" in an effort to prevent the body from unleashing the inflammatory immune response unless it is absolutely necessary.

"It's in a 'turned off' state because it has a much stronger affinity for histones molecules, which are proteins around which our DNA is packaged, than to DNA itself," said Gupta. "You can think of cGAS as being locked up through its binding to histones, not able to perform its duty to recognize DNA unless it is freed by some key."

In light of his colleagues' findings, Gupta reached out to them to test a new hypothesis, using the assays they had previously developed and used in those studies.

Gupta's lab was curious to know whether a protein being investigated in his lab, MRE11, which is known to recognize broken fragments of DNA, may also be the key that releases cGAS from its histone prison. Indeed, the researchers found that MRE11, in the process of recognizing and binding to broken DNA, simultaneously releases cGAS from the histones.

"This was fascinating because MRE11 was known for detecting and repairing DNA damage, but the evidence I uncovered indicated that MRE11 plays a different role, namely in activating the innate immune system," said Min-Guk Cho, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Gupta's lab and co-first author on the paper.

The connection between inflammation and cell death

Researchers also found that when MRE11 and cGAS interact with one another, they initiate a specialized form of cell death called necroptosis. As opposed to other forms of cell death, necroptosis causes cells to die in a way that triggers immune activation, making it easier for the body to initiate an all-hands-on-deck effort.

"Linking Mre11 and cGAS to necroptosis activation is a very effective way for suppressing tumor formation," said Gupta. "When MRE11 and cGAS are activated by a damaged precancerous cell, they cooperate to activate an immune-boosting form of cell death, to help our bodies eliminate the cells before they develop into a cancer."

Future clinical treatment and collaborations

Gupta and colleagues in the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center are actively enrolling patients for a clinical trial at UNC to examine the combination of radiation and immunotherapy as a means of treating certain types of breast cancer.

With this new information in hand, researchers will see if the pathway is more or less responsive to these therapies, or if specific types of therapies may more effectively engage this pathway and result in improved clinical outcomes.

More information: Gaorav Gupta, MRE11 liberates cGAS from nucleosome sequestration during tumorigenesis, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06889-6. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06889-6

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-01-scientists-key-potential-breast-cancer.html

Lloyd Austin at the ICU: A Symptom of a More Serious Malady

 By John F. Di Leo

There isn’t much left in this regime to shock the consumer of news.

We have grown accustomed to the daily cavalcade of assaults on American freedoms in the Federal Register; both the autocrat-in-chief and his press secretary have mainstreamed the practice of lying about virtually every issue. They attempt to take both sides of foreign policy issues within the same speech, claiming to be supporters of Israel while supporting Hamas, claiming to be opposed to the risk of nuclear war while encouraging Iranian nuclear advancement.

What is left to shock us, in such an environment?

Well, sometime Friday, January 5, the story developed that Lloyd Austin, the 70-year-old Secretary of Defense, was in intensive care, at Walter Reed Hospital, and had been for four days – without anybody notifying anyone in the regime.

In fact, not only did the Department of Defense keep his hospitalization a secret from the White House and the National Security Advisor, DoD personnel specifically lied when asked, claiming that Mr. Austin had been “working from home.”

Now, we must of course stipulate, before we go any further, that Lloyd Austin isn’t exactly a standout in his role. Like everyone else in the Biden-Harris regime, he’s been lackluster at best, dreadful at worst. He bears at least partial responsibility for many of the foreign policy and military disasters throughout this dumpster fire of a presidential term.

Austin has issued orders to the military in support of convoluted leftist redefinitions of extremism in an effort to drive Republicans out of the military. Austin implemented mandatory use of untested COVID vaccines and supervised the dismissal of servicemen who refused, even on religious grounds. Austin was in charge of the DoD when it so severely mismanaged the pullout from 2021 Afghanistan, leaving tens of billions of dollars’ worth of sensitive equipment behind, not to mention abandoning thousands of employees and allies to the Taliban. And that’s just the highlight reel of his disastrous tenure.

Even if none of these decisions were his choice, an honorable Secretary of Defense would have resigned his office and left the administration rather than agreeing to implement such positions.  Lloyd Austin made them his own, implementing every leftist, anti-American decision that the Biden-Harris regime came up with.

But all his failures notwithstanding – the Secretary of Defense remains a critical element of the decision process, whenever the United States has to make a quick policy decision.  Even when it’s just being the person to say the cursory “yes, of course, make it so” to an obvious question – still, he is the one to say it, the one who has to say it. And that means both the DoD and the White House have to be able to reach him at a moment’s notice.

As we go to press, this story is still developing. It is not yet known exactly who knew Lloyd Austin was in the Intensive Care Unit all this time.  But this much is certain: for over three days, possibly more like four or five, neither the White House and Cabinet nor the leadership of the House and Senate were informed of his condition.

Congress is, of course, offended; they own the Constitutional responsibility of oversight over each department, and have to be able to get to any Cabinet secretary at any time, as needed.

Congressional leaders have said that heads will roll; this is simply an unacceptably irresponsible lapse. Even the press, for once, is aghast; even the mainstream media, biased though they be in favor of the standard Biden-Harris line, knows full well that they need access to Cabinet secretaries, just to do their jobs and share their administration swill with their readers and viewers.

But that’s not the main lesson of this news story. 

What’s most shocking about this story is that it provides a rare look inside the minds of the bureaucrats, the people we often think of as the technocracy, or even the Deep State.

Obviously, someone at the Department of Defense knew Lloyd Austin was in the ICU at Walter Reed.  Someone had to make up the lie that the man was working at home, to cover up the fact that he was suffering complications from some as-yet-unidentified elective surgery (if it was indeed elective, that’s a story in itself, as well). Some staffers, and presumably some undersecretaries, knew the truth of the situation and collaborated to keep both the whereabouts and the potentially life-threatening condition of the Secretary of Defense a secret from both his legislative and executive superiors.

Why?

Why did they think they had the right?

That’s the really interesting lesson in this story, isn’t it?

When our Constitutional government was founded in 1789, some federal departments were truly tiny.  The Department of State constituted a few ambassadors reporting to Thomas Jefferson; the Department of the Treasury was primarily a few hundred Customs commissioners, collecting the import duties to fund the government.  It was expected that each department would be tiny, run carefully and efficiently by its very “hands-on” cabinet secretary.

Since the 17th Amendment removed our state governments from the picture in 1913, however, the federal government has exploded in size and scope.  Each department has become overstuffed with career bureaucrats, mostly protected by the Hatch Act and insulated from the political firing process.

These bureaucrats too often believe themselves immune to presidential elections; they are there until they retire, with the power to write regulations in flagrant disregard for the Constitutional or Congressional authority that originally created their positions. With Congress unwilling to devote the energy necessary to keep the bureaucracy under heel, each of our federal departments has become a self-perpetuating behemoth of its own, spreading its tentacles, continually seeding its new growth and expanding its petty dictatorship in all directions.

But they don’t admit to it. 

These bureaucrats still spout the fiction, publicly at least, that they report to the Congress, the president, and the American people.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

And this is what the first week of 2024 proved, to Washington watchers all around the world.  The chiefs at the DoD, both Hatched and un-Hatched, didn’t feel any need to tell anyone else about their figurehead of a Secretary’s illness and indisposition.

They didn’t keep a secret as their boss was shuttling between confidential meetings across the globe, or anything similarly job-related. The man was just in a nearby hospital, sedated, with a possibly life-threatening condition, and they didn’t tell his bosses, the press, or the American people, all of whom deserve to know.

Some things are obvious. This shows their cockiness and irresponsibility; they didn’t tell a boss they don’t respect, or a press they don’t respect, or a public they don’t respect.  Lots of people should be offended today.

But even more than that, this shows more clearly than anything else how independent, how rudderless, how powerful our bureaucracy thinks itself to be.

All the conservative accusations of the past half century are proven true by this one situation.  We say that the bureaucracy has gotten too big for its britches, that the deep state behaves as if it’s independent of the political system and the will of the people.

And sure enough, the biggest department – the one with the guns, the one that our Founding Fathers would definitely have said was the most important one to keep under heel – doesn’t respect the concept of “civilian control” enough to even report the incapacity of its Secretary up the chain of command.

The Leviathan has indeed developed an ego that needs to be reined in, before it’s too late.

 

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional and trade compliance consultant. A one-time Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. Read his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II, and the brand new Volume Three).

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/lloyd_austin_at_the_icu_a_symptom_of_a_more_serious_malady.html

Fauci Confesses: Six-foot social distancing guidance was not evidence-based, and ‘sort of just appeared’

 Not only is Anthony Fauci a shameless flip-flopper, but he’s an extremely sloppy one at that—why are these criminals in politics (pardon the redundancy) so incapable of covering their tracks? How does a man like Peter Strzok, who spent a career as an investigative agent, put something as incriminating as “we’ll stop” a Trump presidency into writing, on a government-issued cell phone? How does Hunter Biden leave the “Laptop from Hell,” containing graphic evidence of criminal activity, with some civilian computer repair store man? How does Fauci “confess” to Capitol Hill lawmakers that the six-foot social distancing guidance “sort of just appeared” out of the ether, knowing full well that his own sworn testimony revealed exactly from where it came?

See below, from a New York Post report out earlier this morning:

COVID ‘6-feet’ social distancing ‘sort of just appeared,’ likely lacked scientific basis, Fauci admits

Dr. Anthony Fauci confessed to lawmakers Tuesday that guidelines to keep six feet of separation — ostensibly to limit the spread of COVID-19 — “sort of just appeared” without scientific input.

Fauci, 83, revealed to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that the ‘six feet apart’ recommendation championed by him and other US public health officials was ‘likely not based on scientific data….’

Let me just cut to the chase and remind him exactly from where the “social distancing” policy came: China and the World Health Organization, via Fauci’s own hand-picked man.

Now, the only reason I know this is because I wrote a blog back in December of 2022, shortly after Fauci testified under oath as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by several Republican Attorneys General against the Biden regime—the deposition revealed that the social distancing policy (among others) didn’t just float down from the ether, as Fauci now apparently insists, but was openly pushed by anti-American foreign adversaries, and delivered stateside by Fauci’s “recommended” accomplice. 

A little context. In February of 2020, the WHO sponsored a trip for an “advance team” of “public health officials” to visit China; one of the trip’s participants was a man named Dr. Clifford Lane, a “well-known, competent person” and a “very astute clinician” (Fauci’s words, not mine) who had been personally recommended by Fauci to join the envoy. Starting on page 165, we see a back-and-forth between Missouri’s Solicitor General D. John Sauer and Fauci:

Q [Sauer]. Did you [Fauci] discuss Mr. Lane’s experience on the trip with him when he got back from the WHO trip?

A. The answer is I did, and it relates really a lot to what -- the sentence -- what he said. Dr. Lane was very impressed about how from a clinical public health standpoint, the Chinese were handling the isolation, the contact tracing, the building of facilities to take care of people, and that's what I believed he meant when he said were managing this in a very structured, organized way.

Q. And he goes on in that last sentence on that page to say, ‘From what I saw in China, we may have to go to as extreme a degree of social distancing to help bring our outbreak under control’; correct?

1. Correct.

Q. So he drew the conclusion that there might have to be extreme, in his word, measures to mandate social distancing to bring the outbreak under control; correct?

1. That’s what this is implying, yes.

Q. And so he [Lane] had a kind of positive reaction to that. There might be lessons to be learned for the United States in its response to the outbreak; correct?

A.    I believe Dr. Lane came to the conclusion that when you have a widespread respiratory disease that a very common and effective way to curtail the rapid spread of the disease is by implementing social distancing measures.

He sure had a lot to say about knowing exactly where the social distancing policy came from; heck, this was the beginning of 2020, when it all really kicked off! He’s a pathological liar, or certifiably delusional.Calls for Nuremberg 2.0 are growing, and Fauci has made himself into quite the villain. Follow the science? More like follow the yuan.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/fauci_confesses_sixfoot_social_distancing_guidance_was_not_evidencebased_and_sort_of_just_appeared.html