DML Morning Briefing ~ Tue. Oct. 18

Today is October 18. Below are some of the stories grabbing headlines this morning. I hope you share this briefing as doing so will make you the smartest person in the room.

1 – Texas has seized over 336 million ‘lethal doses’ of fentanyl during Operation Lone Star, DPS says
Fox News reports: A border security mission launched by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has resulted in 336 million “lethal doses” of fentanyl being seized since it began earlier this year, enough to kill the entire population of the United States, he said.

Operation Lone Star was launched in March to combat illegal immigration, an issue Abbott has said the federal government refuses to address as border communities continue to feel its impacts.

On Monday, the Texas Department of Public Safety said hundreds of millions of fentanyl doses have been seized by troopers amid heightened security and aggressive law action by law enforcement near and around the southern border throughout the state.

Abbott said much of the fentanyl being used in the United States is made in China and then smuggled into the U.S. by Mexican drug cartels. He said he has issued an executive order designating such cartels as terrorist organizations and signed a law that would increase penalties for making or distributing the drug.

MY TAKE:  And Biden says China is not out enemy, just a ‘competitor’.  Secure that border NOW!!!

2 – CNN Analyst Says Conservatives Are ‘Abusing First Amendment’
The Daily Caller reports: CNN’s National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem said Monday that Conservatives are “abusing the First Amendment” after Kanye West, now known as Ye, announced he would be purchasing Parler.

Ye announced Monday that he is set to acquire Parler just days after getting kicked off Twitter. “In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” Ye said.

Kayyem said that Ye’s announcement has the media talking about the platform more than it ever has, but that Parler “is there to thrive in what they call ‘a world that can’t be canceled.’”

Kayyem added that conservatives flock to Parler because they don’t like to be criticized.

“So obviously they’re just abusing the First Amendment. They’re not being silenced. The market has decided they don’t want some of this behavior, insurrection, incitement, violence on their platforms. So when Twitter takes Donald Trump, there’s no First Amendment allegation. But they like throwing words like that around because of the righteousness of which they like to claim, they’re racism or anti-Semitism,” she said.

MY TAKE: Liberals would rather we didn’t even have a First Amendment. VOTE RED!

3 – Man dead after being shoved in front of subway in Queens in yet another transit fatality
The New York Post reports: A 48-year-old man was fatally shoved in front of an oncoming Queens subway train during Monday night’s rush hour after he accidentally bumped into another rider, cops and police sources said.

The senseless crime occurred after the pusher’s cell phone dropped onto the tracks when he was knocked into at the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue 74th Street station just before 4:45 p.m., according to cops and the sources.

The 50-year-old man who was bumped yelled at the other man to retrieve his phone from the tracks, sources said. The rider refused and the pair got into a scuffle.

The man who lost his phone then pushed the victim, identified as Heriberto Quintana, down to the tracks — in front of an oncoming Jamaica-bound F train, according to sources and police.

“I heard a loud argument, an altercation. It was two Spanish guys — older, like in their 50s,” a MTA station cleaner at the Jackson Heights station said. “You could hear them yelling on the mezzanine level. Then I heard screams and ran down to the platform.”

MY TAKE: Crime is out of control in these Democrat-led cities. New Yorkers, WAKE UP – VOTE RED!

4 – This is playing with fire – it could spark a lab-generated pandemic’: Experts slam Boston lab where scientists have created a new deadly Covid strain with an 80% kill rate
The Daily Mail reports: Boston University scientists were today condemned for ‘playing with fire’ after it emerged they had created a lethal new Covid strain in a laboratory.

DailyMail.com revealed the team had made a hybrid virus — combining Omicron and the original Wuhan strain — that killed 80 per cent of mice in a study.

The revelation exposes how dangerous virus manipulation research continues to go on even in the US, despite fears similar practices may have started the pandemic.

Professor Shmuel Shapira, a leading scientist in the Israeli Government, said: ‘This should be totally forbidden, it’s playing with fire.’

Gain of function research – when viruses are purposefully manipulated to be more infectious or deadly – is thought to be at the center of Covid’s origin. A Chinese laboratory located just miles from the first cluster of cases carried out similar research on bat coronaviruses. But the practice has been largely restricted in the US since 2017.

Dr Richard Ebright, a chemist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, told DailyMail.com that: ‘The research is a clear example of gain of function research.

MY TAKE: What could possibly go wrong?  Now we’ve got China importing drugs, and a US lab creating a Covid virus!

5 – WHO Chief Pushes Countries To Sign New Global ‘Pandemic Accord’
The Daily Caller reports: World Health Organization (WHO) Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday all countries must come together in an agreement to better contain future pandemics.

Dr. Tedros addressed the 2022 World Health Summit and decried a lack of cooperation between countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, stating it was among the defining characteristics of the outbreak. Tedros and the WHO have pushed for an agreement on a global pandemic treaty in an effort to strengthen future pandemic preparedness and response.

“Taking global health to a new level means we need a new global agreement, or global accord, based on a shared vision,” Tedros said. “We can only face shared threats with a shared response, based on a shared commitment to solidarity and equity.”

Critics of the agreement, and of the WHO more broadly, argued a pandemic treaty will undermine national sovereignty and turn over response powers to the international body that they say, in many ways, failed during COVID-19. Tedros said such claims are inaccurate, and that all of the WHO’s member countries will have to ratify the proposed pandemic treaty by their own laws.

MY TAKE: Does anybody trust this guy?  I sure don’t!