Iconoclast: YouTube Censors Truth, Hosts Disinfo

Still burning over past YouTube censorship of his site’s “factually accurate video about lefties’ “rigged election” comments,” TKNews’ Matt Taibbi jumps on the latest (CBS’s) “verification” of the Hunter Biden laptop, noting how “major news media — including CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and countless other outlets — actively embraced disinformation,” namely the false “Russian information operation” charge, to justify ignoring The Post’s reporting. “YouTube also pushed this disinformation campaign. It still does”: “Despite the total absence of evidence ever existing that the laptop was either fake or part of a Russian ‘information operation,’ and a growing pile of evidence that the laptop is real,” it still hosts “countless videos promoting the conspiracy theory,” including by PBS, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Washington Post writer David Ignatius. “YouTube has become a place that censors true content but traffics in official and quasi-official deceptions.”

From the right: Kick Schiff Off Intel Committee

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy vows to boot Rep. Adam Schiff from the Intelligence Committee, after a four-year reign as chairman “marked by abuse and grotesque politicization,” cheers The Federalist’s Tristan Justice. Schiff “lied to the American people time and again,” McCarthy notes. The California Democrat, notes Justice, served as his party’s “point man” on the “conspiracy to take down” President Donald Trump “and undermine democracy” via the “Russia hoax.” He falsely claimed “for years to have evidence that Trump colluded with Russia” and repeatedly leaked confidential testimony. Schiff has been “at the center of practically every fabricated scandal” on Trump. Not ousting him would be “irresponsible.”

From the left: Dems Have Rich 2024 Options

“It appears inevitable that Joe Biden will seek a second term,” admits New York magazine’s Ross Barkan, though and if he had a “more politically competent and popular vice-president, party leaders’ calls “for him to step aside would be much louder.” But her “dismal approval ratings” and failure to build a “meaningful profile” mean “the case for [Kamala] Harris is weak enough that Biden almost has to run again.” If he doesn’t, Democrats’ success this year gives them a “number of battle-tested senators and governors,” such as Govs. Jared Polis (Colo.) and Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.).

Business desk: One Man’s Fight Against ESG

A “nationwide campaign” against environmental, social and governance investing “promises to gather force now that Republicans maintained control of most state legislatures in the midterms,” report Bloomberg’s Saijel Kishan and Jeff Green. And it’s thanks largely to fast-food magnate Andy Puzder, “a central figure” in an “ambitious network of like-minded conservatives” taking aim at major corporations like BlackRock Inc. Seeing the ESG movement as “an intricate plan to defeat our democracy,” Puzder & Co. have gotten states to push anti-ESG laws, and Republicans vow to probe the movement in congressional hearings. Even the young are tuning in: A video featuring Puzder that “aims to explain the risks of ESG to college and high school students now has more than two million views.”

Woke watch: False Panic on Maternal Mortality

Beware the “woke panic on maternal mortality,” warn Stanley Goldfarb & Benita Cotton-Orr at City Journal. Academics, journalists and Team Biden cite “an epidemic of black mothers dying in the delivery room,” but that narrative has “more to do with advancing the notion of systemic racism than medical reality.” Just 861 out of America’s 3.6 million 2020 births resulted in pregnancy-related deaths; around 350 were white women and 300 black. “Scientifically speaking, it’s hard to draw society-wide conclusions from such a small sample.” And the stats include deaths “up to a year after delivery” and those caused by pregnancy-aggravated “underlying and preexisting medical conditions.” A CDC Foundation study found fewer than a third of preventable deaths “attributable to individual providers.” Black mothers aren’t “dying because doctors and nurses are racist,” yet the notion is spurring “discriminatory and dangerous policies across health care.”

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board