Category: Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant
This author also makes a small mistake.
‘pro-government extremists’ should be ‘pro-authoritarian statists’
but whatever.
Our Greatest Domestic Threat: Pro-Government Extremists
Republican leaders should vow to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and commence a clean sweep of the swamp’s pro-government extremists.
By Thaddeus G. McCotter
Though alarming and depressing, we can no longer avoid recognizing that America’s greatest domestic threat is from pro-government extremists.
We rue that pro-government extremists caused immense destruction during their less-than-“peaceful protests” in 2020; and we witness the continuing damage caused by their neurotic, totalitarian response to a plethora of problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic..
Indeed, what makes the pro-government extremists so dangerous is their far greater numbers than their anti-government extremist counterparts. Their noxious ideology that the citizen is subordinate to the omnipotent state is incessantly “normalized” and propagandized by their corporate media comrades.
Worse, their pro-government extremism is being indoctrinated throughout American public and private institutions, including K-12 education, higher education, and the military. In fact, pro-government extremists have infiltrated the American government, and are weaponizing the powers of the state to wage war on dissenting citizens’ liberty and livelihoods.
In a nation that constitutionally recognizes and respects an individual citizen’s God-given rights, including free speech and the power to peaceably assemble to petition the government for the redress of grievances, only the infiltration of the Department of Homeland Security by pro-government extremists could explain Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ February 7 National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin, which included the following “Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland”:
Just in case you didn’t know what this violent leftist demoncrap wanna-be tyrant looked like. And if this is called ‘increasingly hostile‘, they haven’t seen ‘hostile‘ yet.
James Carville: I want to punch ‘piece of s–t’ unvaccinated people in the face
‘I just want to punch you in the god—-ed face’
Demoncrap strategist James Carville cursed out unvaccinated individuals on his podcast last week, saying anyone without a vaccine was a “piece of s–t” and he wanted to punch them in the face.
On Thursday’s “Politics War Room with James Carville & Al Hunt,” Carville and Hunt took a listener question wondering why President Biden would not pass a bill that bars unvaccinated citizens from interstate travel.
“I wouldn’t be against that at all. I’d be for it actually, as long as you put ‘or testing.’ Before you get on a plane or bus or interstate train, you want to be vaccinated or tested. I don’t think the Supreme Court would allow him to do that,” Hunt said.
“I don’t either,” Carville replied.
“I don’t think he should expend much capital trying to get something done that’s going to get knocked down,” Hunt said.
Carville continued by suggesting a law giving immunity to anyone for punching an unvaccinated person.
“I wish what they’d do is pass a law to make you immune from liability if you punch some unvaccinated person right in the face, which I’d really like to do. If you ask me what’s my first reaction to you if you’re not vaccinated, you don’t have any medical reason not to be, you’re a piece of s—, OK? I just want to punch you in the god—-ed face. That’s the way I look at these people,” Carville said.
“Agreed,” Hunt replied.
Media pundits and authorities have grown increasingly hostile against individuals who choose to remain unvaccinated for various reasons.
Quip O’ The Day
“I’ll believe Brooks’ “end of individualism” schtick when he gives up his NYT byline and replaces his name with “Staff Writer.” —Professor Reynolds
Comment O’ The Day
“We are a nation of individuals with unique dreams and liberties. Stop it.”–Brian Gutherman
DAVID BROOKS IS PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1919!
Flashback to a century ago, when attacks on individuality were all the rage among collectivist-obsessed “Progressives:”
[Woodrow] Wilson was merely one voice in the progressive chorus of the age. “[W]e must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection to the activity of the many,” declared the progressive social activist Jane Addams.
“New forms of association must be created,” explained Walter Rauschenbusch, a leading progressive theologian of the Social Gospel movement, in 1896. “Our disorganized competitive life must pass into an organic cooperative life.” Elsewhere, Rauschenbusch put it more simply: “Individualism means tyranny.”
Or as Mies van der Rohe, the last director of Weimar Germany’s socialist-oriented Bauhaus design school said in 1924:
The individual is losing significance; his destiny is no longer what interests us. The decisive achievements in all fields are impersonal and their authors are for the most part unknown. They are part of the trend of our time toward anonymity. Our engineering structures are examples. Gigantic dams, great industrial installations and huge bridges are built as a matter of course, with no designer’s name attached to them. They point to the technology of the future.
Curiously, Mies would have no problem building for wealthy individuals who wished to commission his work — not to mention having his name firmly associated with his designs — after he fled the Weimar Republic’s much more punitive successors for America.
Exit question:
Some of its shakier proponents fell in love with fine trouser creases over substance. As did others who knew better, but hated missing out on all the best cocktail parties on both ends of the Northeast Corridor. Not to mention, the green room at MSNBC.
Truckers are starting a working-class revolution — and the left hates it.
So we’re finally seeing a genuine, bottom-up, working-class revolution. In Canada, and increasingly in the United States, truckers and others are refusing to follow government orders, telling the powerful that, in a popular lefty formulation, if there’s no justice, there’s no peace.
Naturally, the left hates it.
For more than a century, lefties have talked about such a revolt. But if you really paid attention, the actual role of the working class in their working-class revolution was not to call the shots — it was to do what it was told by the “intellectual vanguard” of the left.
A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants. The working class wants jobs, a stable economy, safe streets, low inflation, schools that teach things and a conservative, non-adventurous foreign policy that won’t get a lot of working-class people killed. It’s not excited about gender fluidity, critical race theory, “modern monetary theory,” foreign adventures and defunding police.
Worse yet, a huge part of the lefty self-image revolves around feeling superior to the working class and openly expressing disdain for it. One need spend only a few minutes tuning into left media like NPR, CNN or MSNBC to hear the disdain for working-class Americans, inhabitants of “flyover country,” people who live in the middle of nowhere.
So naturally, the idea that those people might be staging a revolution is intolerable.
The number I’ve seen is that it is estimated that the lockdowns prevented on average 0.2% – that’s “Maybe Two (2) out of a Thousand” – deaths in comparison with just trusting people to do the right thing.
Sorry, that small of a number is statistical noise, which means that there is no evidence the lockdowns did anything but disrupt our entire economy and empower the tyrant authoritarians. Which, to be frank is the silver lining because they’re now exposed to the world for future action.
Johns Hopkins Analysis: ‘Lockdowns Should be Rejected Out of Hand.’
The aura of “expert” has lost its luster during Covid, as our supposedly bigger brains have been proved wrong repeatedly.
Two of these have been Ezekiel Emanuel and Anthony Fauci. Both were enthusiastic proponents of societal lockdowns as a means of preventing deaths and the spread of Covid. We now know from a Johns Hopkins blockbuster meta-analysis that “shutting it down,” in Donald Trump’s awkward phrase, did very little to prevent deaths.
It’s a long, arcane, and detailed analysis, and I can’t present every nuance or statistic here. But I think these are the primary takeaways. From the study:
Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic, at least not during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results are in line with the World Health Organization Writing Group (2006), who state, “Reports from the 1918 influenza pandemic indicate that social-distancing measures did not stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission […]
In Edmonton, Canada, isolation and quarantine were instituted; public meetings were banned; schools, churches, colleges, theaters, and other public gathering places were closed; and business hours were restricted without obvious impact on the epidemic.” Our findings are also in line with Allen’s (2021) conclusion: “The most recent research has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid 19 deaths.”
Why might that be?
Mandates only regulate a fraction of our potential contagious contacts and can hardly regulate nor enforce handwashing, coughing etiquette, distancing in supermarkets, etc. Countries like Denmark, Finland, and Norway that realized success in keeping COVID-19 mortality rates relatively low allowed people to go to work, use public transport, and meet privately at home during the first lockdown. In these countries, there were ample opportunities to legally meet with others.
Worse, the lockdowns caused tremendous harm:
Unintended consequences may play a larger role than recognized. We already pointed to the possible unintended consequence of SIPOs, which may isolate an infected person at home with his/her family where he/she risks infecting family members with a higher viral load, causing more severe illness. But often, lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to safe (outdoor) places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe (indoor) places. Indeed, we do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality
What lessons should be learned (my emphasis)?
The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.
To which I would add another: We can never squelch free discourse and debate on public-health issues again.
People who argued against the “scientific consensus” about the lockdowns were stifled, censored by Big Tech, denigrated by the media, and mocked by establishment scientists. That was essentially “anti-science.” The scientific method needs heterodox voices to speak freely if it is to function properly.
This subsequent look-back shows why. To a large degree, those with the officially disfavored views–such as the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration—were correct on this matter.
Will we learn the lesson? Yes, if our goal is to ably discern and apply the best policy options, which can be a messy process. No, if the point is to allow those in charge of institutional science to exert societal control.
Observation O’ The Day:
“I am aware that people can be removed from the transplant list for engaging in behavior that increases the rust of transplant failure, such as someone needing a liver transplant continuing to drink alcohol.
However, falling back on this justification to deny someone a transplant for refusing a highly contentious vaccine that may have no appreciable effect on the latest variant and may in face cause hear related issues in a patient with a bad heart, seems less about science and more about politics.
To be honest, so many people have been screaming for the unvaccinated to be killed or left to die from medical neglect that I can’t give a hospital the benefit of the doubt that they are making this decision based on a desire for the patient outcome and not partisanship.” –J.Kb.
People concerned that COVID precautions have gotten out of control may have some reason to feel that way:
Hospital REMOVES dying father-of-two, 31, from top of heart transplant list because he's not vaccinated https://t.co/xMChASc41y pic.twitter.com/82b2ub5nHW
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) January 25, 2022
An unvaccinated and gravely ill 31-year-old father-of-two has been taken off the donor list for a heart transplant by a Boston hospital because he ‘does not believe’ in the COVID vaccine.
DJ Ferguson, who has a hereditary heart condition that causes his lungs and heart to fill with blood and fluid, was denied the life-saving organ transplant by Boston Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.
The hospital said it removed Ferguson from the donor list because all transplant recipients need to get the vaccine in order to ‘create both the best chance for successful operation and also the patient’s survival after transplantation.’
The only thing really surprising is that the demoncraps feel ‘sporty’ enough to let what they’d like happen out in public.
COVID-19: Democratic Voters Support Harsh Measures Against Unvaccinated
While many voters have become skeptical toward the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of Democrats embrace restrictive policies, including punitive measures against those who haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine.
A new Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of voters favor President Joe Biden’s plan to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on the employees of large companies and government agencies. That includes 33% who Strongly Favor the mandate. Forty-eight percent (48%) are opposed to Biden’s vaccine mandate, including 40% who Strongly Oppose the mandate. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
“The goal is to give leftist thugs free rein, while ensuring that the right is afraid to respond. It’s the sort of thing authoritarian governments do.”
BLUF:
The events of January 6, 2021, do not meet any legal definition of “insurrection.” But if Democrats and the mainstream media insist on the term, then the violence of the last two years has also been an insurrectionary force.
Insurrections and Double Standards
Reveling in the anniversary of the Capitol riot, Democrats and the media dubiously brand it a right-wing “insurrection”—while ignoring the urban anarchy that began in May 2020.
The disappointment was palpable. As the one-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot approached, the Department of Homeland Security had warned state and local law enforcement officials that “domestic violent extremists” could strike again. Security forces were on guard and many people were on edge, reported the New York Times. Yet, as a CNN anchor morosely observed during the network’s saturation coverage of the anniversary celebration: “There’s been no violence at the Capitol today.”
The letdown was all the greater, coming after so many similar disappointments. Early in 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security predicted that white supremacists and militias would stage January 6-inspired attacks throughout the year. Fencing and bollards ringed the Capitol through July, protecting against the alleged white-supremacist threat. The Biden administration budgeted for attacks from domestic terrorists embedded within the military and law enforcement. In late spring, DHS issued an intelligence bulletin about coming domestic extremist attacks during the summer of 2021. A flurry of excitement broke out about possible violence in August 2021 from Trump plotters. College campuses were also at risk from those who feel “hostility toward higher education, intellectualism, and societal sectors seen as elite,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Barricades went back up around the Capitol in September 2021 and law enforcement was put on high alert, in preparation for unrest from right-wingers protesting the treatment of the January 6 rioters. The FBI doubled its investigations of white supremacists and militias, since extremists “advocating for the superiority of the white race” pose the greatest threat of mass-civilian attacks, the bureau has concluded.
None of those expected attacks materialized—not last week, on the one-year anniversary of January 6, or during the preceding year. The media’s Capitol riot anniversary celebration, however, was choreographed to underscore the fictional claim that white supremacy is the biggest impediment to civil order in the U.S. today. “White supremacy is a clear and present threat, and must be rooted out,” Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley said on MSNBC. If that threat was not realized at the Capitol over the last year, we are told, that is only because it has migrated elsewhere. “Domestic extremists are glomming on to other issues,” Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL Center on Extremism, told CNN on Thursday. “They need to focus locally to keep extremism going,” so they’re showing up at school board meetings, Segal said. MSNBC host Joy Reid seconded that assessment: The “MAGA insurrectionists have travelled to school boards” to fight the teaching of history. Those insurrectionists are worried that their “kids will identify with abolitionists,” Reid explained.
A central theme that I often see in Idaho is to default to labels of extremism when discussing Idaho’s right spectrum. It’s a regular occurrence to read op-eds suggesting that Idaho’s right has gone too far to the right and that what we really need is a broad center. But studies from even left-leaning organizations like Pew consistently show that it is in fact the American left that has gone off of the rails. When billions in riot damage and dozens of murders by leftist organizations like Antifa and BLM are labeled mostly peaceful and downplayed, while January 6 is labeled tantamount to Pearl Harbor or September 11, Houston, we have a problem.
The primary issue with this assertion of extremism is who is making this assertion. My friends, might I point out that it is the authoritarian spectrum that is making this assertion of extremism?
BLUF:
I suppose we should be glad that between the existential threat of climate change, which is urgent, and the threat to democracy from the “insurrectionist” right that nearly toppled our Constitution on January 6, some liberals still have the bandwidth to worry about NORAD’s Santa tracker.
Must be a cheerful life.
They say misery loves company, and that may be why liberals always want to extend their control over everyone and everything—because they are miserable people. Thomas Byrne Edsall covers some of the survey evidence about the misery and unhappiness of liberals in a New York Times article back in October:
Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals. Discuss.
Two similarly titled papers with markedly disparate conclusions illustrate the range of disagreement on this subject. “Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?” by Jaime Napier of N.Y.U. in Abu Dhabi and John Jost of N.Y.U., and “Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals, but Why?” by Barry R. Schlenker and John Chambers, both of the University of Florida, and Bonnie Le of the University of Rochester.
Using nationally representative samples from the United States and nine other countries, Napier and Jost note that they
consistently found conservatives (or right-wingers) are happier than liberals (or left-wingers). This ideological gap in happiness is not accounted for by demographic differences or by differences in cognitive style. We did find, however, that the rationalization of inequality — a core component of conservative ideology — helps to explain why conservatives are, on average, happier than liberals.
Napier and Jost contend that their determinations are “consistent with system justification theory, which posits that viewing the status quo (with its attendant degree of inequality) as fair and legitimate serves a palliative function.”
Need I point out that Napier and Jost are far-left? Thus we shouldn’t be surprised that the issue of “inequality” shows up for heavy work here. I suppose it makes some sense, given how the super rich are skewing left these days, and must be unhappy with guilt about this.
But let’s continue with a paper less enslaved (see what I did there?) to leftist ideology:
Listen to Fauci here. He's saying that a vaccine requirement for air travel is "just another mechanism to get more people vaccinated." It really has nothing to do, then, with mitigating spread. That's not their goal. Their objective is universal vaccination, which is absurd. https://t.co/hZXcn60zav
— Don Wolt (@tlowdon) December 26, 2021
‘Common Good’ is an canard of the left as they try to make tyranny palatable.
BLUF:
Gun control isn’t for the public good. The outcome of gun control policies does nothing to benefit the public. The only people it benefits are those who would use their strength against the rest of us, be they criminals or would-be tyrants.
Don’t bring that “public good” argument here, because what you’re hoping for is the exact opposite of being good for the public.
“The Public Good” And Gun Rights
Opinion writers always seem to think they know better than everyone else on every subject imaginable. As an opinion writer myself, I’m aware I’m talking about myself as well, but there is a difference. I’ve had to make myself knowledgeable about the Second Amendment simply because I cover it so much.
But many opinion writers talk on a wide variety of topics, most of which they only know their side’s talking points on.
However, I recently came across an opinion piece where the author thinks he’s found a “gotcha,” the reason why everything from forgiveness for college loans to gun control can and should be passed. (I’m obviously only going to focus on the gun stuff, but much of this will apply across the board.)
“To demonstrate the ‘squeeze’ of inflation and supply chain issues on everyday Americans, CNN’s ‘New Day’ featured the Stotlers, a Texas couple looking after nine children – two of whom are their biological kids, while they’ve adopted six more and have one foster child. Krista Stotler said she started seeing prices rising this summer and it was costing them an extra $100 a week on groceries…. ‘A gallon of milk was $1.99. Now it’s $2.79. When you buy 12 gallons a week times four weeks, that’s a lot of money,’ she said…. ’12 gallons of milk a week may sound like a lot, but they’ve actually had to cut out their milk baths on alternate days,’ snarked New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait. The New York Times account on crossword puzzles also got into the act, tweeting – and deleting –, ‘sorry, i can’t do today’s crossword. i’m too busy carrying my 12 gallons of milk home.'”
Fox News reports (embedding lots of very embarrassing tweets).
The mockery is based on the gut reaction that 12 gallons of milk a week is absurd. But with 11 people in the family, it’s an average of two and a half cups — 20 ounces — of milk per person per day.
One of the mockers — a sports editor at the Orlando Sentinel — tweets “Having to buy 12 gallons a week means you have an issue with contraception… not the price of milk.” But as you can see above, only 2 of the children are the natural offspring of the parents. The Stotlers have opened their home to 7 more children. And he’s sneering at them!
Quote O’ The Day
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
–William F. Buckley
Scratch A Lib, find a tyrant #8675309
Washington Post Wants Facebook to Shut Down PJ Media and Others for ‘Climate Denial.’
While the Washington Post piously reminds us that “democracy dies in darkness,” it’s busy shooting out the lights: on Tuesday it published a lengthy call to Facebook to shut down dissident media, including PJ Media, because, you see, the non-Leftist publications are daring to spread “climate change denial” on the platform. Not just democracy, but also the freedom of speech dies in darkness if the Post gets its way.
The Post article focuses upon a newly published study from one of the endless stream of far-Left advocacy groups masquerading as think tanks, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which the Post hastens to assure us is a nonprofit. Of course. What else could it possibly be called?
Disagree with the Leftist establishment about the causes of and/or remedies for climate change, and what else could possibly be your motivation but “hate”? You don’t want to see your country voluntarily impoverish itself and empower the People’s Republic of China in service of unproven assumptions and selective application of accountability? Come on, man! You’re just a bigot!
As we’ve noted from the very beginning of this pandemic, the measures taken by the federal government and some state governments have nothing to do with public health and everything to do with curtailing civil liberties using the Wuhan virus as a stalking horse. To date, there is scant evidence that lockdowns do anything beyond trashing the economy. There are no systematic trials of the efficacy of “social distancing,’ or why 6 feet is superior to 3 feet. We don’t know why the virus will attack people late at night, at liquor stores, or while walking through restaurants but not while eating. No one knows why and how unvaccinated people can infect vaccinated people if the vaccine is effective. The best mask study shows masks, paper and surgical, marginal best-case efficacy in reducing infection (paper masks could, within the study’s confidence interval, actually increase infection) and no effect upon hospitalization. There has been a rush by pharmaceutical giants with battalions of lobbyists to produce a vaccine, and now booster and boosters of boosters of boosters might be necessary.
⇓(Long)⇓
Free people should never be comfortable with the term "I'll use my power as President to get them out of the way"… https://t.co/E1aAYQu8u9
— Burgess Owens (@BurgessOwens) September 9, 2021
Correct https://t.co/BPLERkG0OE
— Jason B. Whitman (@JasonBWhitman) September 9, 2021
Gun control groups pressure Biden to create firearm control office to bypass Senate
Activists from numerous gun control groups are pressuring President Biden to created a White House-level gun control office that can be led by an individual who does not need Senate confirmation.
Politico reports that push comes as confirmation of Biden ATF nominee David Chipman appears unlikely, now that Sen. Angus King (I-ME) has voiced his opposition to the nomination.
Subsequently, four groups from the gun control lobby–Guns Down America, March For Our Lives, Newtown Action Alliance, and Survivors Empowered–are urging Biden to create a gun control office that will not be dependent on Senate support.
They sent a letter to Biden which said, in part:
Your administration is hard at work pursuing important priorities from infrastructure reform to reducing the disastrous impacts of climate change. But with rising gun deaths and the heightened threat of armed political extremism, gun violence can no longer be seen as a back burner issue.
Politicians have told us for decades that we must wait for the “right time” to tackle this crisis. We are writing to tell you that the time for bold executive action is now — and that you cannot wait on the Senate to take action. Our lives depend on your leadership.
The members of the gun control lobby asked Biden to create an “Office of Gun Violence Prevention.” Politico notes the gun control lobby suggests the leader of the office could be “an aide who does not need Senate confirmation.”
March for Our Lives’ Zeenat Yahya said, “The president promised bold action over and over again … but he’s not really using all of his powers to tackle the issue of gun violence. When he wants to get things done, he does it. We’ve seen the infrastructure proposals, the Covid relief plan … So I think it’s really up to him to get moving on these things.”
All of a sudden having to have a photo ID is not racist
Photo ID and vaccine passport required by Mayor de Blasio to move freely in New York City
New Yorkers will now have to show photo IDs in order to engage in public life. Along with proof of vaccination, the mayor said “Whatever works, all you have to do is show that proof and have ID as well.”
“And it’s easy, all you have to do is show proof of vaccination — that could be a CDC paper card, that could be an Excelsior Pass, an NYC COVID Safe app, whatever works,” de Blasio said. “All you got to do is show that proof and have ID as well, and it’s straightforward.”