Category: Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant

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.”

Vox: It’s time to reconsider air conditioning for the sake of ‘cooling justice.’

Thursday Vox published a piece about the need to reconsider air-conditioning in order to promote “cooling justice.” The article is based on a book on the same topic but this interview with the author is a bit vague. What exactly is “cooling justice” and what would that look like in practice? I confess I’m a bit curious if only because I like to know what it is that the left has planned for all of us. Here’s the author not quite telling us what that is:

What I hoped to do with the book was by tracing this history people could consider a radically different way of living, one that doesn’t have to be suffering. It can actually be pleasurable. I think a lot of people are too afraid to even try that because they think they have to give something up. I hope that it can open the door just a little bit for people to really re-contextualize what it means to be comfortable. I think there’s something to be said about making us a bit more comfortable with the discomfort of outside air.

Get “comfortable with discomfort” doesn’t sound like an improvement. Anyway, it has to be done because air-conditioning is racist, hence the need for “cooling justice.”

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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.”

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.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new “Key to NYC” vaccine passport is now be required for entry into everything from gyms to museums to restaurants, but the passes are also required to be accompanied by a photo ID. Even those New Yorkers willing to pony up their CDC vaccination cards or app-based vaccination verification will need further proof to show they are who they say they are.

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Fauci: ‘Put Aside All of These Issues of Concern About Liberties’

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said Sunday that unvaccinated Americans need to shift their focus from “concerns about personal liberty” to combat the “common enemy” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You have to get the overwhelming proportion of people vaccinated, but you also have to do mitigation, and that gets to the controversial issue of mask wearing, and the mandating of things. Mandating vaccines, for example, for teachers and … personnel in the school,” Fauci said during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Fauci went on to say that, while vaccinated individuals have become infected with the coronavirus, the unvaccinated are the ones with more severe cases. He also took the stance that personal liberties should be put on the back burner in favor of mitigating the spread of the virus.

“It’s the unvaccinated that are doing that, so we have a lot of tasks,” Fauci said. “We’ve got to do mitigation. Put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties and realize we have a common enemy and that common enemy is the virus. And we really have to go together to get on top of this. Otherwise, we’re going to continue to suffer as we’re seeing right now.

Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant #2744

There are some people I know that would actually relish the idea of this happening, just for the ‘opportunities’ it would present. And they are the kinds of opportunities I think all my readers can readily imagine.

Biden Administration May Consider ‘Vaccine Passports’ For Interstate Travel

President Joe Biden really wants Americans to get vaccinated, and after rolling out all the stops, from free beer to free Uber rides to child care, the administration has plans to penalize those that either won’t get the shot or don’t feel obligated to prove to the government or businesses that they’ve gotten the shot.

The administration may consider creating vaccine requirements for interstate travel for citizens within the US.

The AP reports that “…while more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.”

“That’s not to say they won’t be implemented in the future,” the AP writes, “as public opinion continues to shift toward requiring vaccinations as a means to restore normalcy.”

The Biden administration has forced many federal employees to vaccinate, and has urged US businesses to force their employees to get vaccinated as well, under penalty of losing their position or persistent COVID testing.

The Biden administration said they would work with businesses to create a vaccine credentialing system, but has repeatedly said that there would be no federal database of vaccine recipients.

Disney, United, and Google issued vaccine mandates for their employees. More than 600 colleges and universities are requiring the vaccine as well, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“We are essentially saying there are different paths you can take, but the path that you cannot take is doing nothing—that’s the one unacceptable position right now,” said deputy director of strategic communication and engagement for Biden’s COVID-19 response team Ben Wakana.
Georgetown Law took up the question of Americans’ rights to travel freely within the United States under the Trump administration at the start of the pandemic. At the time, Americans in many parts of the country were asked to “lockdown” for two week and to “slow the spread” so that when Americans got sick and ended up in the hospital, they didn’t all end up there at once, overwhelming the medical infrastructure.

Meryl Chertoff, Executive Director, SALPAL writes: “The right of Americans to travel interstate in the United States has never been substantially judicially questioned or limited. In 1941, the Court declared unconstitutional California’s restriction upon the migration of the ‘Okies’—whose travails are famously documented in ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ Justice Douglas referred to ‘the right of free movement’ as ‘a right of national citizenship,’ and the rights of the migrants were upheld under the Commerce Clause.”

“The Privileges and Immunities Clause protects the rights of US citizens,” Chertoff goes on to say, “who are each also the citizens of a state, against discriminatory treatment under the law of a different state. In a 1985 case, the Court found that the Privileges and Immunities clause prohibited discrimination against a non-resident except where (i) there is a substantial reason for the difference in treatment; and (ii) the discrimination practiced against nonresidents bears a substantial relationship to the State’s objective.

In deciding whether the discrimination bears a close or substantial relationship to the State’s objective, the Court has considered the availability of less restrictive means.”
“The baseline, then, is that freedom of movement within and between states is Constitutionally protected,” Chertoff concluded.
On Thursday, the CDC was asked outright what they would be doing to make sure that counterfeit vaccine cards were not in circulation, and if they’ve reconsidered creating a federalized system to track vaccine recipients and issue identification for the vaccinated to enable them to move freely through society while those who don’t have the credential are shut out from public life.

Biden administration COVID spokesperson Jeff Zients was asked “Is the administration reconsidering something like a QR code, or a passport, to help verify people’s vaccination status and if not, what are you doing to stop the proliferation of fake vaccine cards?”
“There are a number of ways people can demonstrate their vaccination status,” Zeints said. “Companies and organizations and the federal government are taking different approaches, and we applaud this innovation.”
“Through vaccination requirements, employers have the power to help end the pandemic,” Zients said.

But, Zients said, “There will be no federal vaccination database as with all other vaccines, the information gets held at the state and local level. Any system that is developed in the private sector or elsewhere must meet key standards, including affordability, being available both digitally and on paper, and most importantly protecting people’s privacy and security.”
Biden said on Thursday “I know there are a lot of people out there trying to turn a public safety measure, that is children wearing masks in school so they can be safe, into a political dispute. And this isn’t about politics. It’s about keeping our children safe.”
“I saw a video and reports from Tennessee, protestors threatening doctors and nurses, who before a school board were making the case that to keep kids safe there should be mandatory masks. And as they walked out these doctors were threatened, nurses were threatened. Our health care workers are heroes. They are the heroes when there was no vaccine. They’re doing their best to care for the people who are refusing to get vaccinated,” Biden said.

“And unvaccinated folks are being hospitalized and dying as a result of not being vaccinated,” the president continued, harkening back to his statement that COVID is now a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
“To the mayors, school superintendents, local leaders,” he said, “who are standing up to the governors who are politicizing mask protection for our kids, thank you, thank you as well. Thank God that we have heroes like you. And I stand with you all, and America should as well.”

Bu bu bu but it’s precccious, and I wants it.

Dems should keep their grubby paws off Americans’ retirement savings.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are proving their socialist stripes: They’ve reportedly considered raiding the “super-sized retirement savings accounts” of the wealthy to pay for their $3.5 trillion progressive spending fiasco.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that congressional Democrats are “aghast that hundreds of Americans have IRAs worth more than $25 million, and nearly 30,000 have accounts with balances topping $5 million.” (The nerve of them, no?)

On the other hand, they observe, some folks “have little to no retirement savings” — also surely the fault of those who work hard and save their money over the course of their lives.

Meanwhile, Democrats are desperate to figure out how to pay for all those left-wing agenda goodies — free college tuition, climate-change schemes, universal pre-K — that they’re aiming to stuff into their $3.5 trillion spend-a-palooza. Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) vows to find a way, even if it takes all summer. And what better way than to skim from the savings of “evil” rich folk, those who have been wise stewards of their money, that is?

Please. How would this be even remotely fair to people who’ve worked hard all their lives and saved on the expectation that their money is, well . . . their money? And that it will be there for them when they retire?

Imagine reaching retirement age and suddenly learning that Uncle Sam is going to pull the rug from under you and skim from your nest egg. It would be outright theft. Yet this is how the left, pushed by radical Democratic Socialists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, thinks these days.

Let’s face it: Dems will never be satisfied until everyone is equally poor, the end game of every socialist system. Yet as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is famous for noting, such regimes “eventually run out of other people’s money.”

New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Eric Adams had it right: America “is not a socialist country . . . [but] a country that believes in giving people the opportunities [so] they will be able to succeed and excel.”

And it’s in large part thanks to the rich — who already pay the lion’s share of taxes — that Americans have many of the opportunities they have. Raiding their retirement funds goes too far.

The Great Reset: The Global Elite’s Plan to Radically Remake Our Economic and Social Lives

The Great Reset is upon us…or at least the powers that be are trying to bring it out. What was once a fringe “conspiracy theory” is now on display plain as day for everyone to see. The economic, political, academic, and media elites around the world are leveraging the chaos, confusion, and restrictions on liberty from the COVID-19 lockdowns and using them to radically alter society around the world.

What will this change look like? The global elites want to create a society of renters who own nothing, while also pushing a social agenda that would be unpopular with the unwashed masses and difficult to implement in a society with a broad, ownership-based middle class. What this means is that you would rent not just your home, but also your phone, computer, car (though you probably will “carshare,” the term for renting a car when you need one for an extended period and summoning one when you need it for a ride), and even the pots and pans you cook with.

The flip side of this will be a radical transformation of the world economy. No longer will you have a job in the sense that it has traditionally been understood. Instead, you will work various and sundry “gigs,” all of which place you in a precarious position at any given time. You will receive a fee for services performed, with no benefits, paid time off, healthcare, or anything else that the middle class in the West has become accustomed to.

To facilitate the Great Reset, rural populations will have to be coerced into more concentrated population centers since dispersed populations have too high a “carbon footprint.” The suburbs will be a thing of the past as suburbs and exurbs become more like cities. Mixed-use housing, where you and 500 other people live in a mid-rise condo hive with shops and “workshare” spaces (the new version of an office – on your dime, not your employer’s) in the same area.

The short version is that it’s a total end to the American way of life, specifically the way of life of most of the Western middle class. The specifics, including the why, are a longer story that you’re going to want to read if you want to be ready to fight against the Great Reset.

Table of Contents

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A Teacher’s Union is Suing a Mother For Repeated Attempts to Know What Her Kindergartener is Learning

On Monday, Nicole Solas, a Rhode Island mom whose daughter will be going into kindergarten, was sued by chapters of the National Education Association (NEA) for submitting multiple requests to find out what her daughter was learning when it comes to lesson plans on concepts such as transgenderism and Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Pseudo-Omniscience Versus Freedom

Shut up and submit” is now the favorite Covid cure of some of America’s leading progressives. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist, revealed on Tuesday that since freedom is a mirage, people have no good reason not to comply with endless government commands. Unfortunately, punitive panaceas are increasingly popular among both politicians and pundits.

Krugman breezily expunges years of Supreme Court rulings to remove any impediment to forcibly injecting a hundred million Americans with an experimental vaccine. Krugman explains that “when people on the right talk about ‘freedom’ what they actually mean is closer to “defense of privilege” — specifically the right of certain people (generally white male Christians) to do whatever they want.” Blacks and Hispanics have lower rates of Covid vaccinations than whites, but the freedom of minority groups is apparently irrelevant because some Trump supporters are anti-vax loudmouths.

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Psaki Admits They Have ‘Guidelines’ They’ve Given to Private Businesses to ‘Police’ Proof of Vaccination

We’ve been seeing the Democrats bandying about the concept of vaccine passports for a while.

Now, with them pushing fear porn about the Delta variant, we hearing more about that. New York City just announced this week that they would be requiring evidence of vaccination before being allowed into places like restaurants and gyms. Mayor Bill de Blasio said they were specifically doing that to try to force the vaccine-hesitant to get the shot.

Biden has said that he fully endorses such ideas.

That’s how they get around not having a federal mandate, they just go through the backdoor and try to push behind the scenes, shaming everyone into it, hoping to create social pressure to have businesses, schools and organizations make it mandatory.

Today, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said perhaps a little more than she intended to say, revealing that they actually had “guidelines” that they were talking with private businesses in how to “police” requiring vaccine passports/proof.

First, Psaki repeated what Biden said that they supported the concept. Then she went further. “We want to ensure that it’s done in a transparent way, that it’s in an equitable way, that if there are verification requirements — it can be done digitally, there are a range of ways to provide the information — so there are basic guidelines along those lines that we have conveyed and that we will continue to convey.”

So no, we’re not instituting a national mandatory vaccine passport. We’re just encouraging businesses to do it and telling them how we think it should be done. But we’re not really doing it. Meanwhile, as they try to slip this stuff past us and claim that restrictions are for our “own good,” illegal aliens from all over the world are pouring through the Southern border at a record pace, increasing each month that Biden has been in office, and Psaki also had to admit that some of those folks are positive for the Wuhan coronavirus.

They’re being overwhelmed in McAllen.

According to the city of McAllen, since mid-February of 2021, there have been over 7,000 confirmed COVID-19 positive immigrants released into the City of McAllen by CBP, including over 1,500 new cases in the past seven days. [….]

Cortez also told ValleyCentral the infection rate for migrants rose to a shocking 16%, doubling the numbers from last time. Sister Norma Pimentel of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley also says the federal government needs to step in.

Both Cortez and McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos said they have not heard “a single word” from the federal government.

The federal government is too busy trying to pushing restrictions on Americans.

One more reason there’s a second amendment

Anthony Fauci Claims With COVID There Are No More Individual Rights.

I’m more worried about what is happening behind the scenes in the non-COVID universe while everyone is distracted by the purposeful weaponization of the healthcare institutions.  It’s the other thing, the unseen activity, that is most troublesome when the leftists are this entrenched on a singular narrative.

In this clip from Anthony Fauci on ABC This Week Sunday [Rumble Link], the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, claims that individual rights no longer exist during the era of COVID-19.  When you consider the mindset of the far-left, his opinion on communal rights -vs- individual rights is right in line with the collectivist perspective.  These people are dangerous.

“The fact is, if you get infected, even if you are without symptoms, you very well may infect another person who may be vulnerable … So in essence, you are encroaching on their individual rights.”

It appears from the visible evidence, the Delta variant of COVID-19 may well be more transmissible; perhaps even more transmissible due to increased shedding from people who are vaccinated carriers of the virus.  However, the death rate is lower than the traditional flu.

All of these extreme mitigation efforts appear constructed to protect against something that just doesn’t carry the scale of risk that would match the severity of alarm we are bombarded with.   If you turn off the television, disconnect from corporate media and tune-out these alarmist proclamations, life appears to be carrying along just fine.

Full Interview is available Here

DOJ has okayed “local communities” to mandate vaccinations?
That also sounds like SloJoe is looking at mandating vaccines and would do so if he could.
Just because the DOJ says something does not make it legal, and no city can mandate vaccinations anymore than the federal government can.

Vox correspondent Ian Millhiser’s proposed solution to vaccine hesitancy sounds great, if you dig fascism and racism

 

We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.

Lawn Order, Chinese Style

California is home to nearly 40 million people and the supply of water does not always meet demand, particularly in times of drought. A recent newspaper article offered the solution of snitching on one’s neighbors.

On July 9, the Sacramento Bee published an article headlined, “Is your neighbor wasting water? Snitching on them may ease California drought, study says.” According to the report, “ratting out one’s neighbors could help relieve some of the pressure from California’s current drought.”

That caught the attention of California Globe editor Katy Grimes.

“While California politicians and water officials have long supported water snitches,” Grimes wrote on July 12, “this is the first time we’ve seen a study supporting the idea, and curiously, an out-of-state university study.” That study turned out to be “Public Water Waste Reporting: Contextual Correlates and Conservation Outcomes,” by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Manny Teodoro, a self-described “environmental justice” warrior.

According to the study’s summary, “The success of water conservation restrictions depends in part on governments’ capacity to monitor water use. Inviting the general public to report instances of water waste is one means of expanding government capacity to monitor and enforce water use.”

For Grimes, “the study was all about monitoring neighbors and ratting them out when their sprinklers run too long or on the wrong allowable water day.” In this case, Teodoro leaned on strategic assistance.

The study supports the idea of “participatory surveillance” and cites the Chinese research article “Social ties and citizen-initiated contacts: the case of China’s local one-stop government,” written by Youlang Zhang, assistant professor in public administration at China’s Renmin University, and Xufeng Zhu, professor of public policy and management at China’s Tsinghua University. The article examines why some citizens are “more likely to initiate contact with the government than others.”

As the abstract explains, “We find that citizens with strong political ties are significantly likely to initiate contact with local one-stop governments.” For Grimes, “strong political ties” means that “these citizens have some sort of political tie to the Chinese Communist Party and/or the Chinese government because China is a one-party state.”

As it turns out, the research for “Social ties and citizen-initiated contacts” was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), established in 1986 under the jurisdiction of the State Council and since 2018 managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China, in turn, is “the Central People’s Government of the PRC” and “the highest organ of state administration.”

The English-language link for the State Council shows a photo of Xi Jinping participating in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) centenary celebrations. In China, all science is political science, and everything traces back to the CCP. Meanwhile, the push for what Grimes calls “water snitching” is hardly the only Chinese influence in California.

For the new span of the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland, California rejected federal funding that would have required the use of American steel. Instead California contracted with China’s state-owned Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co., which at the time had no experience building bridges. California politicians claimed Chinese steel, engineering, and labor would save money and render a quality product. They were wrong. The span came in 10 years late, $5 billion over budget, and riddled with safety issues that remain to this day.

One of the biggest boosters of the new span was Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco. In March 2020, Gov. Newsom declared a state of emergency and during an April 7, 2020 MSNBC appearance, announced a $1 billion deal for “upwards of 200 million masks” with “a manufacturer here in the state of California.” That turned out to be Build Your Dreams (BYD), a Chinese company with no experience manufacturing masks, and at the time the efficacy of masks was still in question.

The $1 billion deal was 30 percent more than the state budget allotted for infectious diseases for the entire fiscal year. Newsom hid details of the deal, even from fellow Democrats. The governor quickly sent the first installment of $495 million to BYD, and the Chinese company referred reporters’ questions back to his office.

Newsom’s dealings with BYD have made the recall election something of a referendum on China. The vote will take place on Sept. 14.

Gun and ammo sales started going through the roof in mid 2020 and are just in the last month beginning to look like they’re slowing…a little.

Hrmmmm, summer 2020? Where we had riots and building being in looted and burned while the media called it “mostly peaceful protests.”?

The bug was the excuse given by goobermint to release thousands of prisoners back into the populace ?

Police come under attack, were defunded by city goobermintss and a significant number of officers decided to take early retirement and leave the city’s residents to their own devices ?

You can’t turn on the news and not hear about weekends in major metro cities where 50 or more people are shot.

A lot of eyes have been opened.  When the police have been defunded and the ‘woke’ prosecutors refuse to prosecute for reasons of “equity,”  it becomes crystal clear that nobody is coming to save you and you better be ready to protect yourself.

But Chipman has nothing but contempt for law abiding Americans who want to be able to defend themselves. Of course he’s like that, he’s a career bureaucrap at the ATF and they simply hate law abiding American gun owners.