RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
November 8 to November 14, 2020 A veteran poll watcher sees much amiss in Georgia's conduct of the presidential vote, Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations -- including a sudden surge of some 20,000 mail-in votes for Joe Biden in the greater Atlanta area while some 1,000 votes for President Trump mysteriously disappeared. - An affidavit by the poll watcher, Garland Favorito, a career IT professional, helped spur Georgia's Secretary of State this week to order a full, by-hand ballot recount in the critical swing state, where Biden holds a razor-thin lead.
- Favorito suspects votes in Fulton County were "artificially inflated" for Biden using the same Dominion voting system as the one in Antrim County, Mich., which erroneously transferred 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden.
- Dominion asserts that its safeguards are adequate.
- Favorito said it is imperative investigators identify the source of the irregularities before the state holds its two U.S. Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5. Georgia is now Ground Zero in the battle for control of the Senate.
- Favorito suspects that similar surges in Biden ballots may have taken place during the counting of mail-in ballots on other nights, including Election Night.
- He does not rule out "ballot harvesting" as a culprit in the sudden surges of mail-in votes for Biden.
- Georgia this year installed hundreds of ballot dropboxes throughout the state at the urging of a group led by Stacey Abrams, a defeated gubernatorial candidate and now a leading campaigner against "voter suppression."
- Favorito suspects that the unregulated dropboxes may have encouraged third parties to collect ballots in the name of other voters and stuff them into the boxes. That's illegal.
Trump-Russia/2020 Election News Election fraud, malfeasance and vote counting errors often go undiscovered because almost no one looks for them. No state has conducted a rigorous ballot review since Nov. 3 to establish if such problems occurred. Nevertheless, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are using the absence of proof as proof that the election was untainted by corruption. In fact, multiple claims of fraud and error have surfaced, including these: - Election supervisors in Clark County, Nevada, counted mail-in ballots despite concerns that the signatures were invalid, according to a whistleblower's affidavit.
- People inside a Biden-Harris van were witnessed opening, filling out, and resealing mail ballots. another Nevada whistleblower alleged.
- Supervisors ordered a Pennsylvania mail carrier to collect and submit late ballots, the carrier alleged, which supervisors then backdated so that they appeared to have been mailed in time.
- Over 51,000 Pennsylvania ballots allegedly were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out, while nearly 35,000 were returned on the same day they were mailed out. More than 23,000 other ballots have a return date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.
- In Texas, a social worker has been accused of 134 counts of fraudulently casting ballots for intellectually challenged clients.
- In Wisconsin, election officials used potentially illegal administrative policies that could disqualify tens of thousands of ballots in the battleground state, which has Joe Biden ahead by 20,000 votes.
Attorney General William Barr has instructed the Department of Justice to investigate all "substantial allegations" of voting irregularities. Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Towns Trusted Doctor on Covid Testing. Sample Fee: $1,944.
New York Times
In health care, it's called "upcoding": using billing codes that net high reimbursements but aren't warranted for the medical care delivered. COVID-19, with its promise of "free" testing paid for by the government, has proven a bonanza for this practice. This article opens with the story of a Bedford, N.Y., woman who heeded the call of her town leader and took her family to get tested for the virus, even though no one was sick. The results came back negative. Then the paperwork came: $6,816 had been charged to insurance for four coronavirus tests. The woman's fees alone were $1,944. One insurance claim showed that she had been tested for a dozen respiratory diseases. She found that odd; the town emails advertised only a coronavirus test. There was also a surprise $480 charge for a short phone call relaying her results. The provider, Dr. Steven Murphy, estimates he has tested at least 60,000 patients for coronavirus. He defended his billing practices. Warned About McCarrick, Pope John Paul II Promoted Him
Wall Street Journal
St. John Paul II knew about allegations of sexual misconduct by Theodore McCarrick, but still named him archbishop of Washington, D.C., in 2000. A long-awaited Vatican report found that the late Cardinal John O'Connor of New York wrote to the Vatican's envoy in 1999 that McCarrick was known to share his bed with adult seminarians; that a priest had accused him of having sexual relations with another priest; and that anonymous letters had accused him of pedophilia. The information was shared with John Paul, the report says. Such allegations against McCarrick prevented his promotion to important dioceses on three occasions, the report says. But the papal envoy to the U.S., after asking four bishops to determine whether the allegations were true, concluded that it wasn't certain that McCarrick had had sex with the priests who had shared his bed. The envoy's 2000 assessment was based on inaccurate information provided by three of the four bishops, Tuesday's report says. The Strange and Twisted Tale of Hydroxychloroquine
Wired
Do chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine protect people from COVID-19? This article takes about 7,000 words to get to the answer - apparently not. But the journey there is fascinating as it provides a lively overview of the tension between the need to prove a medicine's safety and effectiveness through arduous clinical trials and the need to quickly address public health emergencies. It also illuminates the troubling intersection of science, politics and the media that erupted during the COVID-19 crisis. When the coronavirus emerged last winter, there were no treatments, so doctors began using lots of different medicines in the hopes some worked. "They were throwing everything they had at the virus," Adam Rogers reports. "People were sick and dying. You go to war with the drugs you have, not the drugs you wish you had." In March, chloroquine was standard for patients with COVID-19, along with a repurposed HIV antiviral - even though, at the time, there was only the thinnest data recommending either drug. Some hospitals were participating in a clinical trial of a then-experimental antiviral called remdesivir and others were advocating the use of convalescent plasma. Once President Trump embraced hydroxychloroquine - asking what have you got to lose? - his opponents targeted it, but not the other unproven treatments. The Medical Mystery at the Heart of the Iraq War
The Nation
This very long article is a very long exercise in potentially tragic suspicions. It focuses on a "medical mystery of the Iraq War": birth defects that, local doctors in the war-torn city of Fallujah say, "began after the United States invaded the country in 2003 and plagues the city to this day." The increases are only "alleged," the articles reports, because "more than 17 years after the US invasion … Nearly every aspect of the story of the city's birth defects remains contested." It makes sense that a war that included the use of depleted uranium and other toxins would lead to an increase in birth defects, but as yet there is little proof. The article quotes just one study, by a concerned doctor who set out in 2009 to track every birth defect case referred to one of the three pediatric clinics at Fallujah General Hospital over 11 months. Her study found that an estimated 14 percent of infants delivered at the hospital had congenital disorders—more than twice the global average. Bernadette Modell, an emeritus professor of community genetics at University College London and a longtime World Health Organization researcher, said the study suffered from a challenge facing most clinicians working in resource-strapped or conflict settings: a lack of reliable epidemiological data. "This is a sincere effort, but it does not provide definitive evidence," said Modell. How a Registered Sex Offender Thrived in Hollywood
Variety
Adam Kimmel's official biography is impressive. He is the cinematographer of such acclaimed films as "Beautiful Girls," "Capote" and "Never Let Me Go." He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the American Society of Cinematographers. He's shot short films directed by Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. What it doesn't include is his conviction in 2003 - when he was 43 - of having repeated sexual intercourse with a 15 year-old girl, and charges in 2010 that he sexually touched and kissed another 15-year-old who wrote in her diary, "he's sorry he kissed me and said it's over and I'll never understand." This article reports how Kimmel has been able to hide his status as a registered sex offender while enjoying Hollywood success. In a separate article, the New York Times reports allegations from famous models that the photographer Jonathan Leder sells racy photos of them without their consent; other women, including his ex-wife, claim he has been physically abusive. |
