Category: Goobermint

After Sinwar

After Israel announced the IDF’s elimination of Sinwar in Rafah yesterday, Vice President Harris made a congratulatory statement (White House transcript here, video clip below). This statement should fill a normal person with disgust.

The news of Sinwar’s death serves as an indictment of the judgment of President Biden’s and Vice President Harris’s disparagement of Israel’s conduct of the war on Hamas. To take the pertinent example of Biden administration harassment, they spent months warning Israel against an invasion of Rafah. Biden said going into Rafah was a “red line” for him while Harris warned there would be “consequences” because she “studied the maps.” See NRO’s editorial comment in This Week (behind the NRO paywall). Biden’s statement yesterday included the usual ceasefire blather (White House transcript here).

The comment below makes the closely related point. It’s not enough that these people are idiots. They are also frauds.

 

In the immediate aftermath of Sinwar’s death, the Biden crew claimed to have assisted Israel with the intelligence that facilitated it. See National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s comments here. Putting to one side the obstacles Biden and Harris have erected to Israel’s operation in Rafah, Michael Doran summarizes how it went down in the X post below.

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Haviv Rettig Gur is an excellent Israeli reporter. He comment on Sinwar’s death in the X post below.

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New Mexico governor won’t renew ban on carrying firearms in public

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she will not renew a public health order that temporarily banned carrying firearms in public parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque, the state’s largest city.

The temporary order, which went into effect in September 2023, was intended to slow gun violence in the metro area, but high-ranking state officials, gun advocates and members of her own Democratic Party widely viewed it as a violation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The order drew lawsuits from national gun rights and advocacy groups, which forced her to narrow its scope from applying to public places throughout Bernalillo County to applying to parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque.

Lujan Grisham said in a news release Wednesday that more than 1,700 firearms were collected in gun buybacks over the past year because of the order. She also said it had reduced the number of gunfire incidents in the area, but she did not cite any numbers.

Lujan Grisham, who was unavailable for comment Thursday, said in the news release, “The public health order, though temporary, allowed us to implement urgent and necessary measures that have had a measurable, positive effect on public safety in our state.”

State Senate Republican leader Greg Baca said Thursday that he did not support the order.

“From the onset, the governor’s action was unconstitutional and an easy distraction to keep from curbing the crime epidemic gripping our state,” Baca said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the feckless shell of the original order stood for over a year.”

The National Association for Gun Rights filed a lawsuit against the action last year; it was dismissed after Lujan Grisham scaled back and modified her policy.

“This is a win for gun owners,” said Dudley Brown, the association’s president. “This is a quiet way to admit her plan didn’t work.”

Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, a Democrat who decided not to enforce the ban because he believed it was unconstitutional, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Allen said last year: “This order will not do anything to curb gun violence other than punish law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense. It’s unconstitutional. So there’s no way we could enforce that order.”

Lujan Grisham issued the temporary order, originally a 30-day ban, in September 2023 after an 11-year-old boy was shot and killed in an Albuquerque park.

In addition to restricting firearms in public parks and playgrounds in Bernalillo County, it strengthened oversight of firearm sales and implemented wastewater testing for fentanyl in public schools.

State Attorney General RaĂșl Torrez, a Democrat, wrote in a letter last year that he opposed Lujan Grisham’s decision.

“Simply put, I do not believe that the Emergency Order will have any meaningful impact on public safety but, more importantly, I do not believe it passes constitutional muster,” he wrote

Shades of Commie East Germany and its STASI
The “monkey wrench” is for lots of tips on the demoncraps.

Michigan And Hawaii Launch Tip Lines To Encourage Anonymous Snitching On Gun Owners

Michigan and Hawaii, both Democrat-led states, have launched taxpayer-funded tip lines for individuals looking to report perceived firearms violations anonymously. While these dumpster fire states claim the lines are aimed at lawbreakers, Second Amendment groups are reasonably skeptical, as they should be, because such a system can easily be abused. Let’s face it, we know that the weaponization of this service against law-abiding gun owners is exactly what they are intended for.

On Thursday, October 10, Hawaii’s Democrat Governor Josh Green announced the state’s Department of Law Enforcement had established a confidential “Gun Tip Line for people to make anonymous reports of illegal gun ownership and gun crimes,” where tipsters can either call, text or drop a dime via the DLE’s website or a downloadable app where they can submit photographs and videos to back up their report.

The governor’s office went even further during the brown shirt recruiting exercise saying, “People reporting tips are encouraged to leave detailed information including the names of those in possession of illegal guns or committing gun crimes, a location where those people may be found and a description of the guns.” Sure, what could go wrong when hiring unpaid, untrained, overzealous, anti-Second Amendment sycophants typically knowing very little about firearms to play the role of a detective, spying on and recording their neighbors?

Meanwhile, Gretchen “Lockdown” Whitmer, known for hosting the most oppressive COVID lockdowns in America while still having more deaths per capita than any neighboring Midwestern states, signed House Bill 5503, a measure passed off as an education funding bill that allocates $1 million in School Aid Funding to support an anonymous tip line for students to report firearms thought to be “improperly stored.”

The bill goes on to mandate that Michigan’s Department of Education develop materials concerning improper storage of firearms, including tip line usage, and distribute those materials to school districts across the state. The Gestapo may not pay you for your work, but you will receive free training, whether you want it or not.

As the NRA-ILA points out, language regarding the tip line was added to the bill as an amendment that was then swiftly passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature.

“The expedited pace and the silencing of opposition when the bill came up for a floor vote underscores the reality that this was a political move and another attack on gun owners,” says the NRA.

These tiplines will ultimately create a situation that will lead to wasted resources, unwarranted confrontations with law enforcement and what could amount to unconstitutional searches of homes, businesses and other private property based on vendettas and other nefarious agendas. Not only does this negatively impact the community’s relationship with authorities, but those who abuse the tip lines will undoubtedly drive wedges within communities as well, drawing lines at a time when we need to be working together to strengthen and solidify those connections.

Our utility company (city owned and operated) has already changed out all meters to ‘smart’ ones that can show usage of whatever commodity down to the hour. I suspect in home devices are next on the agenda, but as our utilities are very locally controlled, I think if such shenanigans are attempted, the populace will have a definite say about it.

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Environmentalists don’t believe there is such a thing as clean or green energy either. Their goal is to reduce energy usage by replacing reliable energy systems with unreliable ones, and inexpensive ones with expensive ones, as a way of ‘Cloward-Pivening’ the energy grid to force energy rationing and the eventual reduction of the human population

The Government is Coming for Your Thermostat

It’s the middle of a summer heat wave and temperatures are rising. Suddenly your air conditioning turns off. It’s not a blackout or a brownout: it’s the new government plan.

Mass government subsidies for inefficient and expensive ‘green energy’ wind turbines and solar panels combined with bans on efficient and cheap oil, coal and gas, have made energy grids unreliable and costly. States that have aimed for widespread use of green energy like California and Texas are suffering blackouts and brownouts at growing rates.

Instead of building reliable energy resources, federal and state governments, along with monopolistic energy companies, are making up for green energy with energy rationing.

Or ‘smart rationing’.

Virtual power plants were a green energy buzzword that promised to harness local battery capacity to distribute energy to the grid, but the diminishing promise of solar panels and the power hunger of electric cars has poured cold water on the idea that the ‘green’ battery devices and useless solar panels will ever reliably give more to the grid than they take from it.

Virtual power plants, like all things virtual, have come to mean power that isn’t really there. Instead virtual power plants have become another euphemism for rationing power.

Unable to get meaningful savings from so-called battery ‘distributed energy resources’, virtual power plants now mean using smart thermostats to seize control over homeowner power usage with bureaucrats or AI software deciding how much power people should be using and turning off their heat or air conditioning. Government agencies and monopolistic utilities insist on calling this ‘efficiency’ rather than what it actually is which is rationing customer power usage.

State utilities have taken to bribing consumers with discounts on skyrocket energy rates and ‘free’ smart thermostats like Google Nest in order to induce them to turn over control of their thermostats. Once they give up control, they may be allowed only limited manual overrides a month to be able to turn on the heat or air in even the most miserable weather.

Families facing summer heat and winter cold find that they’re not just wrestling with each other for control of the thermostat but with their utility company, its software and the government mandates that are out to force them to use less energy even as energy prices climb higher.

A recent Department of Energy report revealed the ambitious scope of the ‘virtual power plant’ strategy while emphasizing the rationing aspect of ‘smart thermostats’ and ‘smart water heaters’ which “can be controlled remotely” in ways that are “typically imperceptible to the owner.”

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Florida officials who banned guns prior to hurricane may soon pay for their ‘error’
Okeechobee city council, police chief, face fines of $5,000 each.

The five-member Okeechobee, Florida city council and Police Chief Donald Hagan may each be forced to pay $5,000 personally — without using taxpayer dollars — for violating Florida’s powerful preemption statute, which only allows the state legislature to regulate firearms.

As previously reported, the city adopted an illegal ordinance shortly before Hurricane Helene made landfall, which banned the sale of guns and ammunition and prohibited firearm possession in public by anyone other than law enforcement or members of the military.

After learning of the civil rights violation, Florida Carry, Inc. sent a demand letter titled Written Notice of Preemption Violation and Offer of Settlement, to the city council and Chief Hagan, warning the recipients they have violated Florida’s preemption statute.

The letter, which was written by Florida Carry, Inc. General Counsel Eric J. Friday, spelled out that the pro-gun group has sufficient standing to bring a lawsuit if the ordinance is not repealed within 30 days, and demanded the payment of $30,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees to “resolve this matter prior to initiation of litigation.”

Okeechobee City Attorney John J. Fumero, in a response sent Wednesday, claimed that the city’s Second Amendment violation was merely an “inadvertent mistake in using an outdated emergency ordinance form that, legally and factually, did not apply to the circumstances at hand regarding Hurricane Helene.”

Besides. Fumero wrote, no one ever enforced the illegal ordinance.

“At no time did the City, or the Police Chief, contemplate, nor take any action, to prohibit, confiscate or otherwise regulate firearms or ammunition in any fashion or manner. This was never the intention of the City. This was never implemented by the City. Moreover, to ensure this never happens again, the City has developed and implemented a new emergency ordinance form and process,” the city attorney wrote.

Fumero’s boss, Okeechobee Mayor Dowling R. Watford, Jr. and police spokesman Detective Jarret Romanello, gave numerous interviews to local media claiming city officials were reviewing the entire incident to determine how the “mistake” occurred. Romanello also claimed he looked forward to “providing more answers as soon as the review is complete.”

In his response, Fumero also balked at Florida Carry’s monetary demand.

“We see no legal, factual or public policy basis for your organization demanding payment of taxpayer dollars to satisfy your assertion of ‘damages and attorneys’ fees. The City is a rural small town that fundamentally believes in gun rights and the Second Amendment. From any standpoint, for Florida Carry, Inc. to take legal action against the City, under the circumstances described herein, is patently inappropriate and unjustified,” he wrote.

In an email reply to Fumero, Friday advised the city attorney to re-read Florida statute Sec. 790.33, which does not require actual enforcement of a preemption violation, since enactment itself is enough to prove liability.

“Inadvertence and ignorance of the law by government is no more of an excuse for violating civil rights than when a citizen ‘inadvertently’ violates the law and is arrested and prosecuted,” Friday wrote.

“I will begin drafting my Complaint seeking relief, including personal fines against the city officials under whose jurisdiction this knowing and willful enactment occurred.

You may want to inform the relevant officials that they are not allowed to use tax dollars to defend themselves from such liability, and that any fine assessed will be personally payable by them, to alleviate your concerns about tax dollars.”

Opening Arguments Begin in ‘Ghost Gun’ Challenge

While so-called ghost guns get a lot of hype in the media, the reality is that they account for only a tiny fraction of those firearms used in illegal acts. However, because they’ve grown in supposed popularity–probably because of media hysterics cluing bad guys in that these are a thing–they’re the worst thing ever.

When the Biden administration took steps to try to regulate these firearms, the usual suspects in the media and anti-gun activism celebrated it.

However, such a decree was never going to go unchallenged. Today, opening arguments begin in that case. (Arguments begin at 11:00 AM Eastern; you can watch them here.)

Among those party to the challenge is the Second Amendment Foundation, which sent a press release about today’s opening statements.

On Tuesday, Oct. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Second Amendment Foundation’s (SAF) challenge to ATF’s regulation expanding what constitutes a “firearm.”

Arguments will begin at 11 a.m. EST and will be broadcast live here.

SAF is joined in the case by Defense Distributed and Not an LLC (doing business as JSD Supply). SAF and its partners are represented by attorneys Charles R. Flores and Josh Blackman of Houston, and SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut.

In April 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) published its Final Rule amending the regulatory definition of the term “firearm” to encompass precursor parts that, with enough additional manufacturing operations, would become functional firearms frames and receivers, but in their current state were non-functional objects.

In seeking to regulate these “non-firearm objects” the ATF’s Final Rule directly contradicted Congress’ definition of “firearm” set forth in the Gun Control Act of 1968. The ATF’s re-definition of “firearm” in the Final Rule establishes a practical ban on the private manufacture of firearms – a constitutionally protected tradition.

In December 2022, SAF filed to intervene in an existing lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas known as VanDerStok v. Garland. The case challenges the lawfulness of ATF’s regulatory re-definition of a “firearm” under the Administrative Procedures Act. SAF scored a major victory in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which vacated significant portions of the Rule. The Biden Department of Justice now seeks to resurrect the rule before the Supreme Court.

For more information about the case, visit saf.org. To listen to the arguments live, click here or follow SAF’s X page for live updates.

The key takeaway is that the argument will be that the ATF exceeded it’s regulatory authority by trying to redefine what is and isn’t a firearm. This is what the ATF did with bump stocks when they opted to redefine them as machine guns. The Supreme Court ruled they had no such authority, so it’s unlikely this will be any different.

That’s bad news for the anti-gun side because the reason Biden went the executive order route and had the ATF act unilaterally was because there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades that Congress was going to pass any bill trying to accomplish what the ATF tried.

Yet that’s not a valid reason to try and go around Congress like this and redefine things differently than Congress did.

Had there never been a law that specifically defined a firearm, they might could have gotten away with it. One could argue that the lack of definition would put the onus for defining what is and isn’t a gun on the ATF. The problem is that they did define it. The ATF has to work within that definition, not make up their own because they really don’t like that people do things they don’t approve of.

The Vanderstock case is likely to be another smackdown of the ATF’s overreach, much like what we saw in Cargill.

Study: COVID-Vaxxed Kids SIX TIMES Likelier to Die Than Unvaxxed Peers

The ostensible takeaway, per the authors, of a poorly-publicized study from June of this year was that children vaccinated for COVID had much higher rates of asthma — almost double, in fact — post-COVID infection than their unvaccinated peers.

That’s compelling enough of a headline, but what should really have been the lede in any sane world got buried deep in the weeds.

Via Infection (medical journal) (emphasis added):

Two cohorts of children aged 5 to 18 who underwent SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing were analyzed: unvaccinated children with and without COVID-19 infection, and vaccinated children with and without infection. Propensity score matching was used to mitigate selection bias, and hazard ratio (HR) and 95% CI were calculated to assess the risk of new-onset asthma.

Our study found a significantly higher incidence of new-onset asthma in COVID-19 infected children compared to uninfected children, regardless of vaccination status.

In Cohort 1, 4.7% of COVID-19 infected children without vaccination developed new-onset asthma, versus 2.0% in their non-COVID-19 counterparts within a year (HR = 2.26; 95% CI = 2.158–2.367).

For Cohort 2,COVID-19 infected children with vaccination showed an 8.3% incidence of new-onset asthma, higher than the 3.1% in those not infected (HR = 2.745; 95% CI = 2.521–2.99). Subgroup analyses further identified higher risks in males, children aged 5–12 years, and Black or African American children. Sensitivity analyses confirmed the reliability of these findings.

The study highlights a strong link between COVID-19 infection and an increased risk of new-onset asthma in children, which is even more marked in those vaccinated. This emphasizes the critical need for ongoing monitoring and customized healthcare strategies to mitigate the long-term respiratory impacts of COVID-19 in children, advocating for thorough strategies to manage and prevent asthma amidst the pandemic.

However, as Alex Berenson — vindicated “conspiracy theorist” who turned out to be right about all of the things he was censored for since the start of the pandemic — explains, the truly shocking statistical finding, which somehow never made it into the conclusion, is a six-fold increase in death among vaxxed kids in the study as compared to the unvaxxed.

Via Alex Berenson (emphasis added):

The study about Covid and asthma in American kids and teens has gone mostly unnoticed. It hasn’t been cited once since it was published in June.

Which may be why no one has raised an alarm over the stunning figures buried in its appendix about deaths among mRNA Covid-vaccinated kids.

They show that 354 of the 64,000 children and teenagers who received a Covid mRNA shot died within a year after vaccination – a death rate of almost six kids per 1,000.

In contrast, only 309 out of 320,000 unvaccinated kids died, fewer than one per 1,000.

One might assume, again, that finding a drug is implicated in a six-fold increase in childhood mortality might be the headline — but, if it were, these researchers might not get another grant their whole careers. In fact, they might be working at McDonald’s or collecting unemployment within a week.

Why the researchers refused to focus on this statistic, or even mention it in passing in the summary of their work, is obviously a matter of speculation.

But speculate I will.

Scientists rely on grant money, either directly from the pharmaceutical industry or indirectly from the pharmaceutical industry by way of the government, which is often in bed with said industry.

There are, as such, clear financial interests at play, which is why you will notice that, virtually universally, scientists will downplay even the mildest negative effects of pharmaceutical products they study— especially blockbuster ones like the COVID-19 shots — or else rig the research design to produce rosier results, or else never publish any negative research findings in the first place.

Indeed, it’s mildly surprising that the data Alex Berenson unearthed ever made it to publication at all, when it would have been so easy just to scrub it out of existence.

wretchardthecat

The key to renewal is repentance, the acknowledgement of error. Yet that acceptance is almost impossible to those who grew up on the belief they are better than everyone else, who have justified their power over others upon that undoubted superiority.

The normal person learns more from failure than success. But the already perfect man lacks the capacity to learn anything from defeat other than to conclude that someone failed him.

Usually it is we the public who have failed them. Taxes will increase and regulations redoubled until everyone is doing his fair share. Notice that the concept that they actually work for us has completely disappeared in the shuffle.

The trope that Communists make subordinates report while standing on a trap door over a shark tank is a joke, but only just.

“You know the penalty for failure. Comrade”

Biden’s agency bosses say Americans have ‘too much freedom’
The ‘swamp’ thinks you have it too good.

In an unusual look at federal agency managers, most believe Americans have too much freedom, and they back President Joe Biden‘s efforts to impose 

The bosses of federal agencies were asked in a new Napolitan Institute survey about the “individual freedom” Americans have, and 51% said they have “somewhat” to “far too much freedom.”

But just 16% of voters agreed and 57% believe the government has too much control over their lives.

Democratic “swamp” managers felt the country has too much freedom at the highest levels in the survey, at 68%. Among Republican federal agency chiefs, just 33% agreed.

But the partisan bureaucrats were more in agreement when it came to choosing who is best at deciding if new regulations are needed, found the polling outfit headed by Scott Rasmussen.

Said the analysis shared with Secrets on Friday, “Fifty-four percent (54%) of government managers say that if, after carefully researching an important issue, they determine that a regulation is needed, yet voters overwhelmingly oppose it, they should follow their research and issue the regulation anyway. This includes 49% of Republican government managers and 60% of Democrats,” it said.

Unlike Democrats and Republicans in America, and even on Capitol Hill, partisans that work in the swamp generally think like the other, according to Napolitan’s latest poll of America’s 1% elitists.

“On many topics, there is a disturbing level of bi-partisan agreement among federal government managers. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Republican government managers and 48% of Democrats believe the federal government should be allowed to censor speech that is posted on social media platforms. Forty-three percent (43%) of ‘Elites’ and just 16% of voters share this view. Seventy-four percent of Republican government managers and 79% of Democrats favor banning private ownership of guns. This view is shared by 77% of ‘Elites,’ but just 36% of voters,” said the analysis.

In his polling of elites, Rasmussen has found a stunning gap with Middle Americans, which could be a danger sign considering the outsize effect of elites, especially in the media.

Rasmussen said, “The ‘Elite’ 1% wield a tremendous amount of institutional power but are wildly out of touch with the nation they want to rule. Over the years they have built institutions and mechanisms of regulatory power that are immune to the checks and balances of elections. Worse still, these same ‘Elites’ own, operate, and control a large majority of media outlets, blocking out the true voice of the American people and broadcasting their own out of touch viewpoints.”

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Many are pointing out that the regime seems to care a lot more about providing aid to the Ukraine than it does about providing aid to Appalachia.

Hurricane Helene and the Lost Mandate of Heaven
“We’re from the government, and we’re here to make sure no one helps.”

As of the time of this writing, over two hundred people are confirmed to have been killed by Hurricane Helene. No one knows the true death toll yet. There are rumours of over 900 unidentified bodies, with some saying that a couple of zeroes need to be added to the death toll. Who knows what the real number is. We may never know. A lot of the bodies may simply never be found.

This is the last image of a husband and wife trying to escape from the flood by climbing onto the roof of the their home in Asheville, NC. The roof collapsed, killing them and their six-year-old grandchild; the child’s mother took the photograph.

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There are multiple reports of bodies stuck up in trees (link has video). There don’t seem to be any pictures confirming this yet, but one can understand why people would be reluctant to take such pictures, or to share them.

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