Observation O’ The Day

President’s Day: A Liberal Homogenized Celebration Of Nothing.

While officially a celebration of Washington’s birthday, after the bill took effect in 1971, it morphed into President’s Day, tearing down an American hero and replacing it with a meaningless day off work (for some). It became a bogus holiday…Suggesting President’s Day is a bogus holiday isn’t about putting down a particular president. It’s tossing out wokeism and teaching an understanding of the country’s greatness.

Or, maybe 4 cups…just to be on the safe side?

This Is the Exact Amount of Coffee You Should Drink, According to a Harvard Brain Expert.

Scientists agree: Drinking coffee is good for you. That’s good news if, like most Americans, you enjoy coffee and perhaps rely on it to help you wake up in the morning or stay alert during the day.

In the last couple of years, more detailed research on coffee has sought to zero in on just how much coffee you should drink every day for maximum health and brain benefits. They’ve found the answer–you should drink three cups………….

CDC quietly lowers the bar for early childhood speech development.

This is a story that first surfaced earlier in the week but hasn’t gained a lot of traction yet. (This is perhaps understandable given the situation in Ukraine, but also likely by intention.) For the first time in decades, the CDC has changed many of the recognized milestones for childhood development in terms of speech and cognitive functions.

These markers are considered important in terms of recognizing when children aren’t progressing quickly enough, suggesting the potential need to determine if some sort of impairment is being observed and if the child may require greater medical attention. The curious thing about the changes instituted by the CDC is that in a majority of the cases, they have lowered the standards rather than raising them. I first noticed this news on Twitter, as so often happens these days.

You can read the new guidelines here. One of the big changes that many critics are focusing on is the former guideline saying that children should normally know approximately fifty words by 24 months or two years of age. That benchmark has now been stealthily raised to 30 months. That’s not insignificant at all. It’s a 25% increase from the previous standard.

The Postmillennial examines the context in which these changes are taking place. It’s hard to ignore the growing body of reports showing that childhood development has been suffering as a result of various COVID protocols, raging from “virtual learning” environments to forcing children to wear face masks.

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These proggies voted their proggie goobermint in.
They sowed the wind, and we know what you reap from that…
The Whirlwind!

San Francisco residents report police doing nothing

During the push to “defund the police,” San Francisco was knee-deep in things. In fact, while few places actually reduced police funding, they did.

Eventually, due to soaring crime, the city reversed that. They really didn’t have a choice at that point.

However, it doesn’t seem to be helping. Why? Because the police don’t seem interested in actually arresting anyone.

After weeks battling the bewildering bureaucracy of San Francisco’s criminal justice system, Danielle Kuzinich finally has some answers in the strange case of the thrashed parklet and the do-nothing cops.

Just before dawn on Dec. 31, firefighters witnessed a man wrecking the charming parklet outside the San Francisco Wine Society in the Financial District and notified police. Security camera footage from a nearby hotel shows police arriving, chatting with a firefighter, talking to a man sitting next to piles of parklet debris and leaving. It then shows the man continuing to trash the area.

Now, a man police believe is the culprit is in jail — busted only because he allegedly went on to commit more vandalism days after the Wine Society mess. But the episode spotlighted an issue bigger than one arrest: a pattern of some officers on the San Francisco force seemingly uninterested in dealing with crime.

Numerous readers shared stories of police indifference after reading last week’s column about Kuzinich’s frustrating experience — and how it adds to their feeling that San Francisco city government, and its criminal justice system in particular, is broken.

They had questions. Is property crime in some ways allowed in our city? Are police on an unofficial strike or work stoppage?

In a visit to The Chronicle newsroom Tuesday, Police Chief Bill Scott promised that’s not the case.

“I can confidently say that’s not happening,” he said. “I get a report every morning of last night’s activities, and there’s a lot of great work being done.”

Not officially, in any case.

However, if this is a recurring problem, there’s probably a reason for it. Scott knows this, too.

He acknowledged, though, that the department has “serious morale issues” because of understaffing, intense scrutiny amid the police reform movement and tussles with District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Still, he said, that’s no excuse for not addressing crime.

“Despite the reason that an officer may be in that mental state where they might think it’s not a big deal for them to bother with it, it is a big deal,” Scott said. “And when they don’t do their job, I have to hold them accountable.”

The problem, though, is that they were thrown under the bus for something that didn’t even happen in their city.

Following the death of George Floyd during an arrest, departments all over the nation felt the heat. A few, like San Francisco, saw their funding cut by politicians who were essentially blaming them for something that happened in Minneapolis.

As a result, one shouldn’t be surprised when the police are less inclined to engage with someone committing a crime.

After all, any criminal offense can result in someone dying under certain circumstances. Is it any wonder that these guys would opt not to do much?

I’m not excusing it, mind you, just understanding it. They’re paid to do a job and they’re supposed to do it. Failure to do that should result in some degree of punishment. That’s simply not a matter up for debate in my book.

But the leadership in San Francisco needs to accept their own role in this. They need to understand that while the officers on the street need to step up, they’re not doing so as a result of their own actions.

Police officers aren’t mindless myrmidons who simply do as they’re told without thought or feeling. They’re people who are trying to do the best they can in most cases, and they don’t appreciate being vilified by their own leadership.

There already is a proven solution to this. Richmond Virginia tried it out awhile back and it worked very well;  Project Exile.
Among those 500 people, I’m betting about half of them have evidence that can lead to more arrests. DC has about 3400 officers, so why can’t they round up about 2000 officers to pick them all up simultaneously?

Study: DC gun crimes involve ‘small number’ of people

A study finds that suspects in violent crime in the District share a lot of characteristics.

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform looked at the numbers for homicides and nonfatal shooting in D.C. in 2019 and 2020, and found that “most gun violence is tightly concentrated on a small number of very high-risk young Black male adults that share a common set of risk factors.”

Those factors include involvements in street crews, a previous criminal justice history and connection to a recent shooting. Often, they’ve been the victims of crime themselves. While the motive for the shooting “may not be a traditional gang war,” the report says, “often shootings are precipitated by a petty conflict over a young woman, a simple argument, or the now-ubiquitous social media slight.”

The homicide rate in D.C. rose by 18% in 2020 compared to 2019, the study found, and about 500 identifiable people are behind 70% of the 863 incidents involving gun violence. The studies also showed that about 200 people are driving a majority of these incidents at any one point in time.

More than 90% of victims and suspects in 2019 and 2020 were male and about 96% were Black.

The study also found that another 86% of victims and suspects have been involved with the criminal justice system and the average age of victims is 31, while the average age of suspects is 27 years old.

They found that, in terms of prior arrests, “victims and suspects were remarkably similar.”

NICJR is now recommending a clear, citywide strategic plan and is working with the District and community members to create a path forward, stressing that “a small number of very high-risk individuals are identifiable; their violence is predictable and therefore it is preventable.”

The study says the strategy will require intervention for people at high risk, which “requires frequent and regular assessment of recent shootings and identification of individuals likely to retaliate based on the findings of this report.”

You can read the report online.

New firearm owners shaking up gun culture and American politics

HARRISBURG — Richard Reisinger, of New Bloomfield in Perry County, leaned in as David Walker of Savage Guns, a Massachusetts-based firearm company, showed him how to work a new innovation that allows the owner to adjust a gun for right- or left-handed users.

“I have grandchildren; some of them are left-handed, some are right-handed, so now if you purchase a gun, all you have to do is place this on the handle and it accommodates either, so you buy one gun and multiple kids can shoot it,” Mr. Reisinger said, admiring the practicality of the design.

“It is really nice.”

Mr. Reisinger — who was visiting the Savage booth at the Great American Outdoor Show at the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex recently — said he comes from a long line of hunters, a tradition he now enjoys with his grandchildren.

“I do a lot of whitetail hunting at the moment — but with grandchildren, I’ll take them out to hunt pretty much anything that they’re interested in. I love coming to the outdoors show because I get to see, and touch, and feel a lot of different firearms that I might be interested in down the road,” he explained.

Mr. Reisinger — like dozens of other people interviewed that day — said gun ownership is about a lot of things: “Putting food on the table and providing for my family, self-protection and the motor and dexterity skills it sharpens when you go target practicing. You meet more and more new gun owners all of the time; most of them said they bought their first gun for those exact same reasons … they found all of it personally empowering.”

This is a truth that conflicts with our culture’s misconceptions about who “the American gun owner” really is and what his or her motivations are for enjoying firearms. If you turn on the national news or log onto social media, you’re likely to find lawful gun owners portrayed as cultish, backwoods white males who have a gluttonous appetite for violence.

Gun owners see themselves quite differently — and their demographics and motivations don’t fit neatly into the stereotypes.

Despite the millions spent in digital advertisements by gun control advocates like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the appeal of gun ownership is only increasing. Of all the firearms sold last year, 30% — 5.4 million purchases — went to new gun owners, according to a retailer survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

A new interest in self-sufficiency, caused by collapses in our supply chain, has also led to an explosion in applications for hunting licenses.

According to Stateline, a Pew Trust initiative, many states across the country saw a dramatic rise in both men and women taking a hunter safety class for the first time — with states like Michigan seeing a 67% hike in new hunting license buyers in 2021 compared with 2019, including a 15% increase in female hunters.

People who would never have considered owning a gun were now curious about hunting to provide for their families — and about target practice to learn how to defend themselves and their homes.

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Arizona: House Passes School Pick-Up Drop-Off Bill

A number of pro-gun bills have continued to advance in Arizona.

On Thursday, the House passed House Bill 2414 by a vote of 31-27. It allows law-abiding citizens to store their loaded firearms in their locked personal vehicles while parked on school grounds. This ensures that parents are able to pick-up and drop-off students without first having to stop and unload their firearms before driving onto school grounds, or deviating from their route to park off-campus. So-called “gun-free zones” are arbitrary boundaries that only disarm law-abiding citizens and leave them defenseless while doing nothing to deter criminals. HB 2414 has been transmitted to the Senate for further consideration.

The House Ways and Means Committee passed House Bill 2166. It exempts firearms and firearm safety equipment, such as gun safes and gun locks, from state transaction privilege and use taxes. This recognizes that the government should not be placing additional cost barriers on citizens who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights, and who wish to safely store their firearms. HB 2166 will next be considered in the House Rules Committee.

The House Judiciary Committee passed House Bill 2473. It prohibits public entities from entering into contracts worth $100,000 or greater with businesses, unless they certify that they do not discriminate against firearm businesses. Anti-gun banks and their executives have expressed interest in denying services to the firearm industry as a way to further their political agenda and impose gun control by making such business impossible when legislatures won’t bend to their will. Banks should evaluate firearm businesses like any other business and consider financial risk, rather than ideology, in their decisions on providing services. This ensures that Arizona taxpayer money does not go to such businesses. HB 2473 will next be considered in the House Rules Committee.

The House Military Affairs & Public Safety Committee passed House Bill 2448. It requires school districts to offer age-appropriate firearm safety instruction to students in grades six through twelve. This legislation will help empower youths with this basic knowledge of respecting firearms “from a qualified individual with a focus on safety rather than from popular culture and various forms of media.” HB 2448 will next be considered in the House Rules Committee.​

FYI; All data pulled from massshootingtracker.site which freely and openly admit their definition of ‘mass shooting’ isn’t what the FBI uses for its Uniform Crime Report (and which just happens to increases the number of incidents)

Here are a few tidbits according to the data provided for 2021:

California has the 3rd highest number of mass shootings (54 by their definition).

New York was 5th with 41.

Both have had magazines and AR bans for 28 and 9 years respectively.

Inversely Alaska, Idaho, New Hampshire, and South Dakota have had only 1 mass shooting with no such gun control laws.

Hrmmm. I think I see the possibility of a pattern emerging. It’s like gun control doesn’t just not work, it makes the problem worse!

Gun crimes grab most media attention, while gun use in self-defense gets merely a fraction: experts
People using guns in self-defense overwhelmingly don’t even lead to a criminal being killed or wounded, one crime watcher says

Americans across the country have used legal guns to defend themselves and thwart crimes, but the reports often fly under the radar and most people are unaware how often guns are used in self-defense cases.

“Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves,” Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital. He pointed to women in particular, who “behave passively” and are “about 2.4 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than a woman who has a gun to protect herself.”

As crimes skyrocketed in major cities since 2020, instances of women using guns to protect themselves and stop crimes have repeatedly played out.

“Thank God I had my gun, or I’d probably be dead right now,” a Chicago woman with a concealed carry permit said in October after two would-be carjackers approached her outside a bank.

“Thank God I had my gun, or I’d probably be dead right now.”

— Chicago crime victim

In New Orleans just last week, a mom and Air Force veteran pulled a gun on a man who tried to get into her car while she was sitting in gridlocked traffic with her 2-year-old son. She wasn’t forced to fire the weapon and the suspect took off.

‘Dramatic undercount’

Lott said that, in a typical year, the media reports about 2,000 defensive gun use stories, but he added “that is a dramatic undercount, because the vast majority of successful self-defense cases don’t make the news.”

STUDY SHOWS CONCEALED HANDGUN PERMITS SOARED DURING PANDEMIC, RECORD YEAR-OVER-YEAR INCREASE

Lott said there are about 2 million defensive gun uses per year, according to the average of 18 national surveys.

The Heritage Foundation, which launched a database tracking how often guns are used in self-defense cases, cites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which looked at various studies and found “that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year.”

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The Constitution may impede them, to an extent, but they still are trying.
It takes what Patrick Henry advised:
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

WaPo Writer Actually Declares Individual Freedom ‘a Key Component of White Supremacy’

George Orwell’s “1984” or “Animal Farm”? Nope. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”? Uh-huh. Some other dystopian novel about life in a future totalitarian America? No way. Straight from the pages of the Washington Post. You know, the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” guys?

More like “Individual Freedom and Liberty Dies in the Darkness of the Radical Left.”

In a WaPo “Made by History” op-ed titled The Ottawa Trucker Convoy Is Rooted in Canada’s Settler Colonial History, Taylor Dysart, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, awkwardly argues that “one’s entitlement to freedom is a key component of White supremacy.” After carefully dissecting the garble, I was able to get to the root cause.

Before we begin, unlike the 187,594,632 (and counting) articles about the Freedom Convoy, totalitarian Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or anything else to do with Ottawa, my focus will be on “none of above.” Instead, it will be about the crux of the lunacy of Ms. Dysart and other lunatics who believe as she does, and the unfortunate publishing of said lunacy by a once-proud American institution.

You’re welcome. Now, on with the show.

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U.S. president Gerald Ford told Congress in 1974: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” That goes for rights too.

Canada Shows Why It’s Called ‘American Exceptionalism’

It’s shocking to me that some people are surprised by how the situation with the Freedom Convoy went down. It was never going to end well, the odds of them winning were as long as a summer day for a very simple reason: Canada is not the United States.

That may seem obvious, and in the easiest way, it is. But in the way that matters most, it’s probably not that clear.

We have a tendency to think things that simply are not true, like the Iraqi people yearned to be free and democratic when in reality they simply wanted Saddam dead so they could return to settling ancient tribal scores. They had no idea what “freedom” meant, and the concept of individual liberty never occurred to them. It went over like introducing Sharia Law to San Francisco would.

One thing to notice about the coverage of the Canadian Freedom Convoy is how the American media, particularly from conservative outlets, didn’t reflect the will of Canadians. You’d think Justin Trudeau going full totalitarian, turning into a little Fidel Castro (like father, like son – look it up), would bring about a collapse in his popularity, but it hasn’t. Most Canadians were upset he didn’t act sooner.

Canada is not like the United States. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants Canadians various rights that, if you don’t think about it, are similar in a lot of ways to the rights we enjoy here. But there’s a major difference.

Our Constitution grants exactly zero rights to anyone, it acknowledges the rights with which we were born and denies the federal government the ability to infringe upon them. The Canadian Charter gives citizens certain rights, explicitly. If a government can grant rights, there is no justification for them not being able to take them away, temporarily or permanently.

When Trudeau invoked emergency powers, US conservatives recoiled in horror. Canadians did not.

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If Dems Wants to Do Something About ‘Rise in Anti-Asian Hate Crimes,’ They Can Start By Being Tough on Crime

Saturday marks the 80th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing an executive order that began the removal of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps. DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and DNC AAPI Caucus Chair Bel Leong-Hong issued a joint statement commemorating that day. The joint statement also closed by claiming it’s Democrats who are righting for the safety of Americans, while at the same time calling out anti-Asian hate crimes.

Such a mention may be bold, or even stupid. In many Democratic-run cities, crime has exploded. Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, as Katie reported, has dismissed a “soft on crime policies” approach as an “alternate universe.” Worse, Democratic DA’s are no help.

“Unfortunately, Japanese Americans and the AAPI community continue to face violence and discrimination because of their identities,” the joint statement acknowledged. “The rise in anti-Asian hate crimes must stop, and perpetrators must be prosecuted. Democrats have fought and will continue to fight to secure the rights, safety, and prosperity of all Americans, including those facing injustice and discrimination, in order to ensure a better and brighter future for our nation,” it closed with.

The version of the statement shared on Twitter did not mention such a modern-day application, curiously enough.

If Democrats truly feel that “perpetrators must be prosecuted,” then they can start in their own cities, with their own DAs.

A recent and tragic case in point is with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who only just recently has been reversing course on his super soft on crime approach over backlash, as Landon has covered. According to the New York Post, which I’ve mentioned in my own articles, there have been whispers of a recall effort against Bragg, who only just took office at the beginning of this year.

Among many changes, Bragg initially made, as Spencer highlighted, was the lack of prison time except for crimes of homicide and some other of the most violent offenses. Bragg also had the audacity to claim “I don’t understand the pushback” when people expressed concerns.

These changes from Bragg’s office haven’t been enough, though.

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Bought and paid for….as she’s always been.
I wonder if her husband’s name is Hosea?

Psaki Pushes Chinese Propaganda From White House Podium.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday claimed that the spike in violence against Asians in the United States was due to “hate-filled rhetoric” about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, a baseless claim that has been promoted by the Chinese Communist Party.

“We’ve seen this rise, unfortunately, because of hate-filled rhetoric and language around the origins of the pandemic,” Psaki said from the briefing room in response to a question on the 339 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes since President Joe Biden took office last January.

Psaki is not the first to push the unsubstantiated link between speculation about how the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, and violence toward Asians. Allegations of that unfounded link grew to a fever pitch last spring and were trumpeted during #StopAsianHate rallies across the country. A Wall Street Journal investigation found, however, that the driving force behind the rallying call was a network of fake social media accounts driven by the Chinese government as it pushed to undermine the plausible “lab-leak” theory.

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Man Shot By Homeowner After Alleged Break-In

OKLAHOMA CITY – A man was shot while allegedly trying to break into a home early Saturday morning. It happened in a southwest OKC neighborhood, as officers say the suspect was taken to a hospital.
Police said the man was inside his home when he heard what sounded like someone trying to break in. He quickly grabbed his gun and when he saw the intruder, he aimed and fired.

Officers arrived on the scene just before 6 a.m. at a home near SW 15th and Westwood. When they got there, they found the suspect who had been shot.

“It was a non-life-threatening injury as far as we know at this time,” said Rob Robertson, with OKC Police. “I don’t know that any arrests have been made at this time.”

The suspect was taken to a local hospital and neither the homeowner nor anyone else in the area was injured. Police are now continuing to investigate the scene.

“The most important thing is conducting interviews,” said Robertson. “Collecting evidence, collecting the weapon, that sort of thing. “If there’s any video surveillance or anything like that yeah know a lot of people have video surveillance now.”

It’s uncertain how the suspect got inside the home and what he planned to take. Robertson says you never know how incidents like this could turn out and it’s fortunate no one was critically injured.

“We don’t want anybody hurt, it’s always unfortunate and what a lot of people discount or disregard is what the victim is going through as well,” Robertson said. “That’s every little bit as traumatic for them as maybe the suspect who got hit.”

BLUF:
Fascism is an overused and elastic term that in our politics mostly is used against Republicans for anything liberals don’t like. Donald Trump calling people names on Twitter is not fascism.  Justin Trudeau commanding private businesses unilaterally and without legal consequence to freeze the assets of his political opposition and their supporters is fascism…….

It’s already happening here, though not with the brazenness of Trudeau. The Biden administration gives cover to and encourages every one of the actions listed in the preceding paragraph by declaring political opposition domestic terrorists (even parents at school boards), and by broadly blurring the distinction between political dissent and terrorism. Social media platforms openly are solicited by the Biden administration to crack down on dissent.

The situation here is not yet as dire as in Canada. And I still believe our courts and collective national will would not allow what is happening in Canada to happen here. But I also never thought the government would be empowered as it was, with scant judicial interference, in locking down the country for Covid, or that private citizens would become the government’s enforcers.

When Fascism Comes To America, It Will Look Like Justin Trudeau’s Canada.

If Justin Trudeau had merely removed trucks from blocking a bridge in protest of vaccine mandates, it would be no big deal. Protesters for various causes routinely get removed from blocking traffic.

But that’s not all Justin Trudeau did. He suspended civil liberties in Canada, targeting peaceful protesters and anyone who supports them. Not because those supporters committed a crime, but because they supported the political opposition to Trudeau’s government.

Trudeau ordered all financial institutions to freeze the assets of his political opposition without court order and with full immunity from liability, and no financial asset was spared.

“The names of both individuals and entities as well as crypto wallets have been shared by the RCMP with financial institutions and accounts have been frozen and more accounts will be frozen.”

Trudeau has weaponized and commanded the private sector to do the government’s bidding in crushing political dissent. The Toronto Sun reported (emphasis in original):

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Observation O’ The Day

“Anything that threatens to remove power from a leftist is terrorism in their minds. Because they’re a crazed cult who believe it’s foreordained that they win. In their indoctrinated minds, there can be no dissent from this. Why, Marx foretold it.” –Sarah Hoyt

Canadian Public Safety Minister Claims, Without Proof, That Protestors Were Really Violent Terrorists Attempting to Overthrow Canadian Government.

Worth watching this entire diatribe from start to finish.  In his public statements today, Trudeau’s Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendicino, definitively says the people charged by federal RCMP officials are tied to far-right extremist groups who are funded by international terrorist organizations with an intent to overthrow the government.

According to the statements, the Canadian government is under attack from thousands of highly organized terrorists within the country.  Their goal is to overthrow the government and install an entirely new form of national assembly.  This is what he is claiming.

Specifically, Mendicino claims the protestors, charged with firearms offenses in Coutts, are the first wave of a well known domestic terrorist group directly connected to the trucker protest group in Ottawa.  However, when challenged to give the name of the terrorist organization he is speaking about, Mendocino completely walks back the claim to an unrecognizable point.

Boston abruptly lifts vaccine mandate.

Boston’s new mayor, Michelle Wu, took the city by surprise yesterday when she announced that Beantown’s requirement for proof of vaccination to enter most indoor businesses was being lifted “immediately.” This was particularly good news for bars and restaurants in the city which have struggled to enforce the mandate and seen their customer traffic (and profits) tanking over the course of the pandemic. The reason she gave was yet another “following the science” speech, noting that the city’s positivity, hospitalization, and ICU occupancy rates had all fallen below the previously defined limits. Since that means that even the unvaccinated will now be able to go about their lives a bit more normally, Wu really should answer one pressing question. What about all of the people who wound up getting vaccinated against their will? (CBS Boston)

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has lifted the proof of vaccine requirement for indoor businesses effective immediately. The announcement was made Friday evening.

The city just fell below the third metric it needed to hit in order to loosen the restrictions.

Public health data reported on Friday shows Boston has a 4.0% community positivity rate; 90.7% occupancy rate of adult ICU beds, and a 7-day average of adult COVID-19 hospitalizations at 195.9 per day.

At the Boston restaurant Sonsie, the manager went out front and took down the mandate poster that had been in the window for more than a year. She also informed her staff to stop asking to see immunity passports “immediately.”

The one thing that didn’t change on Friday night was the city’s face mask mandate. Officials said they will be reviewing that policy “in the coming days.” Of course, as we’ve discussed here previously, a mask mandate in a bar or restaurant is nothing more than idiotic posturing and virtue signaling. Customers take off their masks as soon as their beverages and food arrive at the table, so the only people being punished are the employees.

Returning to the question I posed at the top of the article, this ending of vaccination mandates is taking place all over the country now. Those who refused to accept the vaccines will now finally be allowed to mix with the rest of the public like normal human beings. But what of all of the people who didn’t want to be vaccinated but gave in and took the shots just to gain some measure of freedom of movement or keep their jobs? They can’t turn around now and be “de-vaccinated.”

The latest numbers from the CDC tell us that 64.4% of the people in the United States are now “fully vaccinated.” (That means three shots at this point for all but the hangers-on who waited until the last possible moment.) So more than a third of the country – including a majority of young children – are only partially done with getting their shots or are entirely unvaccinated. They will get to return to whatever passes for “normal” these days while those who took the shots against their will carry their lingering resentment of the government mandates with them.

If you weren’t paying attention to the politics involved, you might be surprised at how quickly we went from “the mandates are the only thing that will save us” to “never mind.” But that’s because all of these politicians are able to read their own polling numbers and those numbers look like a dumpster fire at the moment when it comes to COVID mandates. These are political decisions far more than medical decisions. And at least some of these officials are going to be held accountable later this year.