From FL lawyer Jeff Childers morning COVID email—Biden’s SOTU gets fact checked by the Washington Post!:
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🔥 Meanwhile, the Washington Post ran its SOTU story, not celebrating a victorious oration, but headlining “Fact-checking President Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address.” The usually-Biden-friendly paper identified a long list of misinformation in the Big Guy’s speech:
— Biden said: “Our economy created over 6.5 million new jobs just last year, more jobs created in one year than ever before in the history of America.”
WaPo: “The United States is emerging from a pandemic that caused huge job losses in 2020 — 9 million jobs, in fact.”
— Biden said: “The only president ever to cut the deficit by more than 1 trillion dollars in a single year.”
WaPo: “In the first four months of fiscal 2022, which began last October, the federal government ran a deficit of $259 billion.”
— Biden said: “America used to have the best roads, bridges, and airports on Earth. And now our infrastructure is ranked 13th in the world.”
WaPo: “Of the 12 economies the WEF ranked ahead of the United States, three — Singapore, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates — are tiny coastal city-states. That’s not a relevant comparison.”
— Biden said: “Look, repeal the liability shield. It makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can’t be sued.”
WaPo: “Biden’s language is too sweeping. Gun manufacturers can certainly be sued — and some other industries have some liability protections.” Like Pharma, say?
— Biden said: “Just last year, 55 Fortune 500 corporations earned $40 billion in profits and paid zero dollars in federal tax.”
WaPo: “The companies in question pay billions of dollars in federal payroll taxes. … The number comes from a report issued in April by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. .. Company tax returns generally are not made public, so ITEP’s numbers are the product of its own research and analysis of public filings.”
— Biden said: “Seventeen Nobel laureates in economics say my plan will ease long-term inflationary pressures.”
WaPo: “Biden’s plan has changed significantly since [the economists’ letter was written]. The bipartisan infrastructure plan became law, but the rest of the spending proposal has been pared back.”
— Biden said: “The single biggest investment in history was a bipartisan effort.”
WaPo: “While certainly the largest package of infrastructure spending in decades, the infrastructure bill passed in 2021 would not qualify as the largest in U.S. history. … Biden’s prepared text had different language, but in his telling, Biden made the claim more specific and less factual.”
So.
Biden should’ve stuck with the original plan to completely cancel the pandemic. It’s what everyone was expecting by the time he gave the speech anyway. This last-minute shimmy to the test-treat-jab plan, and the retention of airplane masking, cast a gloomy shadow on everything else he said, which didn’t amount to much anyways. So he’s not getting any bump this time. A massive wasted opportunity for dems.
Oh well! I wish he’d axed it, to be honest. My dad always used to say, “it doesn’t do a puppy dog any good to cut its tail off an inch at a time.” But at least it’s good news for everyone who would’ve been mad that Biden got a benefit from “ending the pandemic.”
And, another excerpt—this one about the documents Pfizer has been forced to produce about their COVID vaccine:
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🔥 So Pfizer released its first batch of documents pursuant to Court order late Tuesday, and the media and agency investigators have been diligently digging through them ever since. Haha, just kidding. The media has a blackout on the story. There are NO official investigations pending anywhere in the US, right down to the county level. So it’s up to us. Again.
First of all, as a litigator, I immediately recognized that because Pfizer still has about a six-month window to produce all the docs, it will backload the production, producing the least useful and least damaging documents first, in hopes of going back to court later with a new development or argument. At that point they can say “Judge we’ve already produced 100,000 documents” or whatever.
Anyway, the point is, I’m not super excited about the March documents, not yet, because it wouldn’t make sense for Pfizer to produce the most damaging material first. Hot-takes are trickling out, but I would suggest care in putting too much stock in these early analyses. Whenever the issue is something that only independent analysts will cover, like this, I wait to read both sides’ takes before forming an opinion. In other words, after I read a credible claim going one way, I search for the rebuttal argument. Just like in court.
For example, much is being made of a nine-page list of “Adverse Events of Special Interest” that is included in the docs. But a hostile source that appears credible claims that “AESI” are just conditions that the drugmaker is paying special attention to, and may or may not have actually happened to anyone. So while it is interesting that Pfizer picked those particular nine pages of AESI, it is not necessarily informative.
The guy could be full of horse hockey. But it looks credible, and more importantly raises a question that has to be answered — what are AESI anyway? So let’s be patient and wait a little longer. That’s easy to do, right?
The WaPo, I looked outside and didn’t see any pigs flying.