Category: Deceit O’ The Day

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Will the Left Ever Learn to Wait Before Blaming the Right for a Mass Shooting?

It’s our thirst to understand “why” someone would carry out such a horrific act that drives our curiosity and animates our search for a political villain in these mass shootings.

Answers are always few and very unsatisfying. Trying to ascribe rational, logical thought processes to someone who is mentally ill is an exercise in futility. It doesn’t matter if he leaves a right-wing manifesto railing against blacks and Jews or swears allegiance to Antifa and claims to want to stamp out “fascism.” “Politics” — a shooter’s limited understanding of it — isn’t a catalyst as much as it is a touchstone to a reality of which he or she is only vaguely aware.

The most recent incident led to a familiar pattern. A man walked into a gay club where a drag queen show was underway. Before he was stopped, five people were killed and 18 were wounded. Given the gunman’s “target,” it was “naturally” assumed that the perpetrator was a right-wing fanatic who was driven to this mass slaughter by conservative politicians and online hate sites (like PJ Media).

A National Review editorial sums up the arguments on the left.

According to the burgeoning conventional wisdom, therefore, the true culprits for the Club Q shooting include Libs of Tik Tok, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk’s Twitter content-moderation policies, the “right wing moral panic” about drag queen story hours, and — of course — the entire Republican Party.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attributed the shooting to the Right’s “anti-LGBT+ campaign,” writing: “Connect the dots, @GOP.” Equality Florida press secretary Brandon Wolf told MSNBC that “right wing grifters, including politicians like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, they’ve been spewing this vile, hateful rhetoric about LGBTQ people . . . and we warned them that inevitably this would result in violence.”

In the New York Times, columnist Michelle Goldberg argued that the shooting “seems hard to separate” from the Right’s “nationwide campaign of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. incitement.” “Each time these things happen, the right-wing go-to is to blame ‘mental illness,’” Brian Broome wrote in the Washington Post. But “it’s right-wing rhetoric that sparks these nightmares.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center — always looking to fundraise off of a tragedy — weighed in.

The mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, which saw a 22-year-old man charged with hate crimes and murder on Monday, came after years of intensifying anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, acts of violence and intimidation, and discriminatory legislation from far-right individuals and groups, including powerful Republican politicians.

Anderson Lee Aldrich was not influenced by right-wing “hate speech.” He was not “anti-LGBTQ” because he was, in fact, a “non-binary” person who preferred being addressed with the pronouns “they/them.” He had been hospitalized several times for mental disorders. But, apparently, Aldrich was influenced and motivated to kill fellow LGBTQ people by right-wing loudmouths?

“Words matter,” Whoopi Goldberg said on The View. “Words matter and people like Lauren Boebert who, you know, has been in the forefront of dissing LGBTQ+ people, is now saying her prayers and thoughts go with the families. Well, they don’t really need your prayers and thoughts. They needed your votes. That’s what they needed.”

What did people need when a Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer opened fire on a number of House Republicans at a practice for the Congressional baseball game, putting House Majority Whip Steve Scalise in the hospital for six weeks? This came just days after Sanders warned on the Senate floor that if the GOP’s healthcare bill passed, “thousands of Americans would die” — a phrase echoed by most of the Democratic congressional leadership.

In 2017, a Tennessee woman attempted to run a Republican congressman off the road for his support for the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill. Does violent rhetoric from the left ever matter? Or is it only violent rhetoric from the right?

There have been more than 100 pro-life churches attacked since the Dobbs decision last summer. A man was arrested outside of the private home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh admitting he was planning to kill him. Using the left’s rationale to explain the attacks, we have to assume that left-wing rhetoric is to blame.

But that will never happen. And what’s really, truly frightening is that the left pretends not to see the hypocrisy of its position.

Observation O’ The Day

Hi 97 Percent Team,

Thank you for putting on yesterday’s conference. I am a gun owner and member of the firearm community based in Chicago. I share your desire to decrease gun deaths and find common ground. As a sign of my good faith intentions, I recently put on a Safe Storage presentation with a Moms Demand Action representative for our school community despite vehemently disagreeing with their public policy platform.

I feel that the strongest part of yesterday’s presentation was the Hot Button Topics discussion between Amy Swearer and Fred Guttenberg. I am still shocked that Fred wold be willing to sit down with Amy. More conversations like that need to happen where each side sits down with one another to try and have good faith conversations.

I am writing after watching the entirety of yesterday’s presentation. I watched because I was interested in what the panel, which included elected officials and other policy makers, would put forward as give and take compromises to get the gun community onboard. Unfortunately I feel as if it was a hugely blown opportunity on the whole as zero policy compromises were put forward by any of the speakers except Dr. Seigel.

Many members of the gun community showed up to watch in the hopes that we may have found a partner where we could work together. Instead we were shown a parade of speakers who have all publically asked for or voted recently for assault weapons bans. Governor Roy Cooper, Rep Moulton, Rep Dean, are all elected officials who have publicly pushed for bans and made clear yesterday that not only are they unwilling to remove these bans (despite the organization’s stated policy as presented by Michael Seigel) but rather they said explicitly that they are just waiting for the opportunity to have the votes to pass it in Congress. Congressman Moulton even threw in the usual talking point about shooting deer with AR-15s and needing better aim. Is insulting comments REALLY how you intend to find common ground with the majority of responsible gun owners who train to use their firearms not for hunting, but to defend themselves and family? Our supposed “voice at the table” Former Rep Walsh put forward no push back but rather spent most of the panel virtue signaling his hatred of the NRA (who we all hate too btw). There was not one word, not one proposal that was put forward as a give-and-take compromise with the gun community. That first panel lost many of us but I continued watching.

Former Schumer aid Emily Amick’s social media is full of video clips demonizing gun owners who own AR-15s, calling for an end to the filibuster to push gun ban proposals, and glowing videos of Congressman Cellini saying “spare me the constiutional right bull sh*t.” How was including her, who again has shown no sign of willing to compromise on any policy, intended on getting buy in from the gun community?

What was the point of allowing WH Assistant Stefanie Feldman to read a 5 minute speech about Biden’s domestic policy, including once again her emphasizing that he wants to ban assault weapons and if you don’t agree with the ban then you don’t actually care about crime? Again not one word about compromises that the administration is willing to make with the gun community.

The gun community has a huge amount of respect for Stephen Guttowski and I am glad you included him in the discussion. Stephen’s method and podcasts, calmly discussing the DETAILS of firearm policy and law should be how 97 Percent moves forward in discussions with the gun community.

Unfortunately I’m not sure your organization will get the chance after yesterday’s conference as much credibility was lost. You simply cannot parade out a bunch of speakers, many of whom are board members, who have publically been strong advocates of gun bans and then ask us to trust your organization because…… your official platform says you don’t want an assault weapons ban? We all remember Conor Lamb campaigning with video of him shooting an AR-15 and then voting to ban them this year.

Richard Aborn (instrumental proponent of 94 AWB), Rep Steve Israel (proponent of AWB and on recent 97% podcast spoke favorable of NY’s Bruen-response bill and explained his idea of compromise as “getting 60% rather than 100%” of gun control policies he wants), and Rep Moulton (who’s service I respect yet again just voted for an AWB), are all prominent members of your board. Why should the gun community trust you???

So when will the gun community trust you? When you come forward with REAL policy compromises as well as fight to overturn abusive laws. We want to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in calling out California’s Handgun Roster or New York’s post-Bruen concealed carry restrictions. We are willing to discuss federal Universal background checks in exchange for national concealed carry reciprocity. A federal license (with training perhaps!) in exchange for not needing FFL NICS checks for transfers. These were the types of discussions we were expecting when we showed up to watch yesterday. The ONLY person who in good faith touched on any of this was Dr. Siegel.

I will end with a humorous fictional story written about someone attending the conference in-person that is circulating among the gun community.

https://hwfo.substack.com/p/ninety-seven-percent

I hope your organization will take this criticism to heart and revamp how you plan on engaging in good faith with the firearm community. Many of us are still willing to talk, but not just about how much we are willing to give up in exchange for nothing.

Best,
David Rice
Chicago

COVID vax makers finally study long-term heart damage as FDA admits bivalent data lacking
HHS corrects stats on tripling of COVID-related pediatric hospitalizations, used to justify booster campaign for kids, after analyst calls out bad data. CNN still hasn’t corrected false report.

More than a year after the FDA added heart inflammation warnings to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — amid the second academic year of campus vaccine mandates on a demographic at higher risk of severe adverse events — vaccine makers are finally studying the long-term consequences of vaccine-induced myocarditis and pericarditis.

Moderna already has two trials running, while Pfizer said its first trial will start “in the next couple months” and include up to 500 teenagers and young adults under 21, NBC News reported last week. Neither has disclosed the studies on their websites.

The CDC isn’t much further ahead in studying long-term post-vaccination harm. In late September, the agency started contacting people who meet the case definition of myocarditis and have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System.

While an “independent entity” should be reviewing long-term consequences, it’s “puzzling” why Pfizer and Moderna waited so long to follow through on the FDA’s approval conditions, said MIT professor Retsef Levi, lead author of a study on post-vaccination “emergency” heart problems in 16-39 year-olds in highly vaccinated Israel.

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Four Developments That Waited Until After the Midterms.

Did you notice that there have been many stories breaking recently that are inconvenient to the left-wing narrative? I did. And I noticed that they came out after the midterm elections were over — when they’d have no impact on the vote. Wasn’t that nice and convenient? Here are four of those stories.

Newsom’s budget deficit

After back-to-back years of running surpluses, this week we learned that California is back in the red. Back in May, the Golden State had a nearly $98 billion surplus, but new projections show that California will have a $25 billion deficit in the 2023-2024 fiscal year. Luckily for Gov. Gavin Newsom, voters reelected him last week before the news broke. The story may not have doomed Newsom’s reelection bid, but it could have helped some GOP candidates running for Congress.

Rudy Giuliani cleared

The Biden administration and the Democrats have gone after anyone remotely tied to Donald Trump. One man they targeted for destruction was Rudy Giuliani. A two-year investigation into possible violations of foreign lobbying ended this week without charges — effectively clearing him of wrongdoing. Boy, what stellar timing.

New York City crime

The crime issue was so influential this year that it threatened to oust Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) from office. So the liberal media did everything possible to pretend that crime wasn’t an issue. But now that the midterms are over and the red wave didn’t materialize, the New York Times decided it was finally safe to report on crime again.

Biden’s student loan forgiveness killed

In a blatantly transparent move to bribe young voters to get to the polls, Joe Biden announced a student loan relief plan over the summer. So it should come as no surprise that young voters came out in droves in the midterm elections, effectively saving the Democrats from a red wave. And conveniently, a few days after the election, a federal judge struck down Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan. Whew, that was close!

DeWine allies push for passage of STRONG Ohio gun bill in lame duck session

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine cruised to re-election last week, defeating Democrat Nan Whaley by an eye-popping 25 points. Now the governor, who signed Constitutional Carry into law back in March, is hoping to spend some of his newly-acquired political capital to put several new gun control measures on the books, and his allies in the state legislature are doing everything they can to help.

The bill in question is SB 357, and though it’s been bottled up in committee for most of the year, there’s now a push to move the bill forward during the legislature’s lame-duck session that started this week.

An attempt to revive some of the “Strong Ohio” proposals against gun violence, stalled in the General Assembly since 2019, faces a timeline that’s hard to meet.

State Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, is trying to resurrect some of the “Strong Ohio” proposals against gun violence that stalled in the legislature in 2019. His Senate Bill 357 will get a first hearing, but also faces a tight timeline. The bill includes a “red flag” provision, better background checks, some limitation on private sales, and using $175 million in federal funds to improve mental healthcare.

Gov. Mike DeWine has signaled approval of the bill, which includes some of the ideas he unsuccessfully floated following the August 2019 mass shooting in Dayton’s Oregon District.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee held its first hearing on SB 357, but didn’t hold a vote on the measure. Dolan, meanwhile, has made a few tweaks to the legislation, which would create a new category of prohibited persons, require adults under the age of 21 to have a co-signer for all gun purchases, and establish a “seller’s protection certificate” that is designed to encourage (but not require) background checks on private transfers of firearms.

“Everything in this sub bill is about before you buy a gun,” said Dolan, who chairs the finance committee.

During months of campaigning for the Nov. 8 election, legislators heard people statewide asking what they’d do to prevent gun violence, he said.

From speaking with healthcare personnel, law enforcement and others, it became clear the state’s current involuntary commitment program is not sufficient to identify all the at-risk people who shouldn’t be able to buy guns, Dolan said.

His substitute bill adds a sixth “disability” to state laws preventing people from buying guns. Existing ones prohibit fugitives from justice, felons, those who committed juvenile crimes that would be adult felonies, drug addicts and alcoholics, and those with established dangerous mental problems from buying guns, he said.

Dolan’s bill adds people who go before a behavioral risk assessment team and have been determined to be a “suicidal or homicidal risk.”

Ohio law already prohibits people under age 21 from buying handguns, he said. His bill would add that under-21 buyers of other guns would need a cosigner age 25 or older. There are exceptions for anyone under 21 in law enforcement or the military, Dolan said.

For some reason Dolan’s really focused on the fact that these provisions are all directed at individuals before they purchase a firearm, though that doesn’t mean that any or all of his proposals would be constitutional or effective.

Take his new category of prohibited persons, for example. The supposed reason to add those who’ve been determined by a behavioral risk assessment team to be a “suicidal or homicidal risk” is that the state’s current involuntary commitment law isn’t working as well as it should. Seems to me the proper legislative response would be to determine why that’s the case and work to fix the existing law, rather than avoiding improving the state’s mental health system by making it easier to deny some individuals the ability to purchase a firearm. If someone truly is a risk to themselves or others, simply denying them the ability to purchase a firearm at a gun store isn’t going to make them any less dangerous, but Dolan’s bill treats guns as the issue and not the supposedly dangerous individual.

There are also major issues with Dolan’s desire to force young adults to find someone who’ll sign off on their gun ownership. The co-signer assumes some legal liability if the under-21 gun buyer were to misuse the firearm; an extraordinary provision that is unlike any existing (or historical) gun regulation that I’m aware of. Not only would this have a chilling effect on the Second Amendment rights of young adults, it’s hard to see how this restriction even remotely fits with the text, history, and tradition of the right to keep and bear arms.

SB 357 has been floating around the Ohio legislature in one form or another since 2019, and so far it’s received a very cool reception from the Republican majority. Clearly DeWine is hoping to capitalize on his overwhelming victory last week, but whether or not his Republican colleagues in the statehouse have had a change of heart about his gun proposals is still very much up in the air. The first test will be a vote in the Senate Finance Committee, and Ohio gun owners should be reaching out to those committee members to share their concerns before the bill has a chance to reach the Senate floor.

Virginia: Fairfax Co. Schools Push Anti-Gun Propaganda on 5th Graders

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)-  A concerned parent, Darcey Geissler, has brought attention to an assignment that her son received in a Fairfax County school.

In a “lesson” on persuasive writing, students were given an anti-gun essay to evaluate, rather than something with more neutral content, so that the students could focus on the persuasive writing aspect. There was no sample essay with an opposing viewpoint presented.

Though this sample essay is ostensibly meant to be just a learning tool, it does parrot many worn-out talking points that disarmament radicals have used over the years. It claims that the Second Amendment is about hunting, that the existence of modern police forces makes the Second Amendment obsolete, and that citizens defending themselves from imminent danger while police are, at best, minutes away is somehow “tak[ing] the law into their own hands.”

It even mentions the Brady Campaign and simply describes it as “an organization to prevent violence,” without any mention of their radical policy proposals, such as gun bans and restricting the right to self-defense, or their junk lawsuits that attempt to bankrupt the firearms industry. Most recently, Brady partnered with the Mexican government against the rights of law-abiding Americans.

All this is not surprising, coming from a school system in a county that is hostile to the Second Amendment rights of its own citizens.

In 2020, the county banned firearms in many county-owned and operated locations, including its extensive public parks. While disarming law-abiding citizens, the ordinance they passed was not about safety or security. There were no measures ordered to prevent armed criminals from ignoring the arbitrary boundaries (as criminals do), such as metal detectors or increased police presence. This carry ban is currently the subject of an NRA-backed lawsuit.

This situation underscores the value of parents and guardians being involved in passing on American values, such as respect for the Second Amendment, to the next generation. Government schools in Fairfax County, despite being funded with taxpayer dollars, certainly will not.

Comment O’ The Day:
The ultimate bow to China

Biden and Trudeau Beclown Themselves by Parading Around Asia in Commie Mao Jackets

What better way to show the world you suckle at the teat of the globalists’ New World Order than to dress like the most “successful” mass-murdering communist in history?

Joe Biden and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, North America’s one-two punch of Marxism, were filmed happily flouncing around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in matching Mao starter kit jackets.

FAMINE-O-RAMA! Some leftists believe dressing like a geisha on Halloween is “super not cool.” Yet Biden and Trudeau were happy to bend their weak knees and dress like Chairman Mao, the commie dictator responsible for more deaths than Hitler and Stalin. Democrats have said nothing.

Most of the people on Mao’s victim list died of starvation. Now is a good time to remind you that the Dutch want to close 30% of their livestock farms in the name of “climate change” and they want this done by 2030.

Holy cow farts, Batman: 2030 is the same year the commie swine (heh-heh) at the World Economic Forum (WEF) predict plan to cut most meat out of our lives.

The embarrassing, planned sartorial bum-licking comes just before North America’s Uriah Heeps are expected to meet with China’s leader Xi Jinping. Some Canadians expect Trudeau to confront Jinping on civil rights involving the Uyghurs and China’s possible involvement in Canada’s 2019 election.

FACT-O-RAMA!  A man suffering from cognitive disabilities was recently fired for dressing as Hitler in a mocking way. But when a president suffering from his own issues dresses as Mao, leftists say nothing.

Biden will meet Jinping for the first time on Monday to discuss, among other things, the tension between China and Taiwan. What better way for Trudeau and Biden to stand up to the pinkos than by dressing like their exalted, draconian leader? It reminds me of Jen Psaki wearing a Soviet hat in Russia.

BLUF
The study follows on the heels of Moderna’s third-quarter earnings report released Nov. 3. The 2022 sales forecast for its COVID-19 vaccine was lowered to between $18 billion and $19 billion in revenue, down from $21 billion.

Study: Myocarditis risk 2 to 3 times higher from Moderna than Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

Nov. 7 (UPI) — The incidence of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — is two- to threefold higher after a second dose of the Moderna Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine than the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, a study released Monday says.

But Moderna tells UPI the benefits of its vaccine “significantly outweigh” the risks.

Males under age 40 who received the Moderna vaccine were shown to have the highest rates of myocarditis, and the researchers said the study’s findings support the idea of recommending specific vaccines for certain populations to maximize benefits and minimize adverse events.

But the scientists underscored that cases of heart inflammation as a serious side effect from either mRNA vaccine are rare overall — also stressed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said it is actively monitoring the situation, and by the manufacturer itself.

The most common symptoms of myocarditis are chest pain, fever, fatigue, shortness of breath, and a rapid or irregular pulse, says the National Institutes of Health. Heart inflammation can lead to serious complications, including heart failure, shock or death.

Moderna, in an emailed statement provided by spokesman Luke Mircea-Willats, said its “mRNA-1273 has been administered to hundreds of millions of people worldwide and has been shown to be effective against both the original strain of the virus and its major variants.

“Regulatory agencies around the world have stated that the benefits of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines significantly outweigh the risk across all age groups. Vaccination against COVID-19 continues to be a critical tool in overcoming the impacts of the global pandemic.”

According to Moderna, myocarditis is a known, though “very rare” risk associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and, “when it does occur, cases are generally mild and resolve after a few days with treatment and rest.”

And, “at a population level,” current evidence indicates the risk of myocarditis after COVID-19 infection is much higher than after COVID-19 vaccination, Moderna said.

Moderna stressed that patients’ health and ensuring the safety of its vaccines is its top priority, noting it “shares all adverse events data with regulators and has a robust pharmacovigilance function, ensuring any adverse events are recorded and shared with the regulator in line with local regulations.”

Results from the new study, which appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, “generally align” with findings from previous studies into indirect comparison of COVID19 mRNA vaccine product safety, the researchers said in their paper.

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Reviewer Exposes EV Truck’s ‘Kryptonite’ After Trip Takes 3 Hours Longer Than It Should’ve

Auto reporter Henry Payne is only the latest person to discover that electric vehicles are simply not ready to replace gas-powered cars, especially for long-distance driving, when his Ford F-150 Lightning got only just over half the mileage that the manufacturer claimed on a 280-mile trip.

Payne, an auto critic for the Detroit News, set out to travel from Detroit to Charlevoix, Michigan. His trip was to be around 280 miles, and he was driving a new 2022 F-250 Lightning EV.

Payne wrote that he charged the truck to a full 100 percent charge ahead of the trip, and that the manufacturer claimed that a full charge should have allowed him to travel the whole distance without another charge.

But it wasn’t even close.

Payne wrote that as he sat at his third charging station of the day, another driver asked what sort of mileage he was getting on his roughly $93,000 EV truck.

“I’m getting about 170 miles of range on this trip up I-75,” he told the other driver. “How about you?”

The man replied, “I’ve got the turbo-6 cylinder. I’m getting 600 miles and 22 mpg. I don’t think I’ll ever get one of those electrics.”

At the bottom of his tale of woe, Payne reeled off the F-150 Lightning’s statistics, which included that it was supposed to have a 320-mile travel range on a full charge. But Payne only got about 170 miles down the road before he had to find a charger.

Certainly, electric cars themselves are not entirely useless, especially for local driving. Instead, the problem comes with the Biden administration’s attempts to force Americans to switch to electric vehicles rather than allowing them to determine for themselves what kind of vehicle best fits their needs.

The auto writer noted that inside the city limits of his hometown of Detroit, the Ford Lightning was a great vehicle. But out on the open road, no so much, adding that out on the long haul, “the Lightning’s wattage starts to dim.”

Payne started out the night before with a full charge on his battery, but by the time he got to Saginaw, a little less than halfway to his destination, “the Lightning was getting just 60 percent of estimated range and it was becoming clear to the trip computer that we would not make it to Gaylord,” Payne wrote. He added that the “281-mile range (he was supposed to get) looked more like 168 miles.”

Saginaw had several charging stations, but even that experience left him with a less-than-satisfying outcome.

The first charging station that he found stated that other drivers were currently charging their vehicles. So, he tried a second location that supposedly had four charging stations. But when he got there, two were occupied and the other two were being serviced by technicians and were out of service.

Then it got worse. One of the drivers at one of the two portals pulled out and told Payne that the second charger was not working, meaning that only one of the four chargers at the station was any good.

A frustrated Payne then drove to the first station he found and waited, wasting a lot of time.

Perhaps it could have been worse. If Payne’s truck had needed a battery pack replacement on that trip, it could have cost him more than $35,000!

Payne also added that he had to calculate earlier chargings in areas he knew he could find a station instead of risking having to hunt for a charging station when he was dangerously low on power. It was a calculation about which he said manufacturers don’t warn buyers.

“Though I had traveled just 70 miles since Bay City, chargers are scarce in Charlevoix and so I wanted to top up. That’s something that in-car navi systems don’t tell you. Arrive at your destination with low battery and there may be no infrastructure to get you around town,” he wrote as a warning to his readers.

This fact brings to light the serious mental aspect about driving an EV. The phenomenon is called “range anxiety,” as drivers find themselves in anguish over whether or not they will make it to the next charging station before their EV conks out because manufacturer claims don’t ever seem to pan out.

Payne’s final report was a bit disheartening, especially for those who claim it is much cheaper to drive an EV.

“I arrived in Charlevoix after 6 hours, 40 minutes for what’s normally a stop-free, 4-hour trip by gas-fired pickup. I had been delayed by 45 minutes of construction and nearly two hours of charging detours across three stations. Cost? About the same as filling with $3.50 gas,” he wrote.

The disaster led Payne to conclude that road trips are the electric truck’s “kryptonite.”

Payne ruefully concluded his review of the F-150 Lightning with a statement made by the driver of a Rivian, an electric car made by a Tesla competitor.

“I recalled my conversation with the Rivian driver in Gaylord,” Payne wrote. “He said he hadn’t anticipated so many delays on his family trip to Mackinac Island. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘I’m bringing a different vehicle.’”

That statement seems to be the common denominator in these stories. Everyone who tries using an EV for a long haul wishes they had driven a gas-powered car, instead.

For instance, a Colorado man found his 180-mile road trip through Wyoming took 15 hellish hours where it would take less than four hours in a gas-powered car.

In another case of an EV disaster, a Youtube user discovered that his electric truck was not suited for towing despite what the manufacturers said.

Towing is a particular problem which seriously limits the range of an EV. According to Autotrader, towing large loads reduces the range of electric cars significantly, sometimes by as much as one-third, or even by half.

American consumers are perfectly free to buy a far more expensive electric vehicle, of course, especially if they intend to use it only to drive locally. But the government’s idea that we all should be in an EV is simply not a logical goal considering the logistical and technological limits from which these vehicles suffer.

BLUF
COVID has been the tool that the Elites™ have used to bully Americans into complying with the most absurd rules, beating us into submission. It would be ironic indeed if we could turn the tables and use the likelihood that the United States helped fund the development of the virus that has literally plagued us as a tool to dismantle the bipartisan transnational clique who have been driving the West into the ground.

The COVID coverup begins to unravel.

UPDATE: Vanity Fair has a detailed story on the investigation into the COVID virus’ origin:

COVID likely started circulating in China is late 2019–now 3 years ago–and its effects have dominated our lives for 2 1/2 years.

Yet for much of that time the Establishment™ has been gaslighting us about its likely origins. You know that. The Establishment™ knows that you know. And now the Senate Republicans on the health committee are laying the facts out on the table. COVID almost certainly was released accidentally from a Chinese research lab.

It was remarkable how quickly the Narrative™ settled on the zoonotic origin of the virus, since warning signs that the virus didn’t originate naturally were everywhere. Even scientists who confidently declared in private their belief that the virus was engineered publicly stated the opposite–after having been directed to by Anthony Fauci, the keeper of the keys to the kingdom’s treasury when it comes to research dollars. Fauci in recent months has been backtracking on whether or not the virus could have been engineered, but he sure expended enormous effort maintaining the fiction that an animal origin was certain.

There is a simple reason for Fauci’s reluctance to consider a lab leak hypothesis–if it came from the Wuhan Institute for Virology, the US government likely funded the research. Obviously nobody wants that on their record, and Fauci has quite the pension to protect, as well as an unearned reputation as The Science™.

From the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON—The Covid-19 pandemic that has killed millions worldwide “was most likely the result of a research-related incident” in China, and not natural transmission of a virus from animal to human, a new report by Republicans on the Senate health committee concludes.

The study cites details about the early spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes Covid; the fact that no animal host has been identified nearly three years into the pandemic; and troubled biosafety procedures at labs in the Chinese city of Wuhan to buttress its conclusion.

The 35-page report by Republican committee staff acknowledges that definitive conclusions about the pandemic’s origins are impossible without more evidence. But, it says: “The hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.”

The report is largely based on information already publicly available but is likely to bolster calls in Washington for further investigations into the origins of the virus. Republicans have vowed to launch more aggressive Covid-19 probes if they regain control of one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections.

Previous zoonotic disease outbreaks—in which a pathogen jumps from animals to man—have occurred in multiple locations as a virus circulates in animal populations, while the Covid virus is known to have emerged only in Wuhan, home to laboratories conducting research on coronaviruses, the report notes. In addition, it says, no animal has been identified as infected with the virus before the December 2019 pandemic outbreak.

I have always suspected, based upon the balance of the evidence I have access to, that the virus was accidentally leaked from a lab. But I freely admit that biological research is not in my wheelhouse.

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BLUF
Democrats,  Demoncraps, who have spent years delegitimizing the Supreme Court and rule of law, undermining legislative norms, cheering on unprecedented and blatant executive abuses, and using the DOJ to target their political enemies, among other “democracy”-destroying behaviors, do not occupy any high moral ground. And while “democracy” was once just a transparently silly euphemism for “stuff we want,” it has since evolved into a rhetorical device that denotes a decisively illiberal mindset.

DEMOCRATS Demoncraps: The Only Way To Save Democracy Is One-Party Rule.
‘Save Our Democracy’ is the new ‘Russia Collusion.’

At this point, it would save everyone time if Democrats could simply point to a policy agenda item that isn’t going to save democracy — if such a thing exists.

If Republicans vote, they are killing democracy. If they don’t vote, they are killing democracy. The only way to “save democracy,” writes The Washington Post’s Max Boot, is to empower one-party rule — a position that probably sounds counterintuitive to anyone with a middle-school education. “Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again,” contends President Joe Biden, or we will lose our “fundamental rights and freedoms like the right to choose, the right to privacy, the right to vote — our very democracy.”

Chilling stuff. But it doesn’t end there. You will remember that by failing to “reform” the filibuster, which would entail authorizing the thinnest of fleeting majorities to shove through massive generational “reforms” without any national consensus or debate, we are also killing democracy. This has been the position not only of left-wing pundits and the New York Times editorial board, but also senators tasked with defending their institution. I wonder if they will support this democracy-saving fix next session, as well?

Then again, if we don’t nationalize the economy to avert a climate crisis, we are also killing democracy. “We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species,” Jamie Raskin explains. And if we don’t empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to temporarily keep gas prices low to help Democrats win in 2022, we are killing democracy. “We find ourselves in a situation, where keeping gas prices low is key to preserving and strengthening the future of our democracy,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says.

We must allow the president to unilaterally create trillion-dollar spending bills and break existing private sector contracts by fiat. For democracy. We must pack the court to “save democracy.” We must create a Ministry of Truth to help with “strengthening democratic institutions.” We must vote for a Pennsylvania candidate who can’t cobble two consecutive coherent sentences together because the “fate of our democracy” is at stake, says our former president.

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BLUF
That’s why I don’t really care what 97Percent wants or claims to be about. They’re no different than Giffords, Brady, Everytown, and every other group that wants to annihilate our Second Amendment rights.

Don’t get too excited about “common ground” survey results

For many, the goal is to find common ground on issues relating to guns and gun control. It’s their hope that if they can find enough points of agreement, gun control laws can be passed.

Even if I accepted this premise, though, I know what will happen. Those laws will be passed, only we see no results (at best) so now they want to find “common ground” on still more regulations. Little by little, we’ll see our rights whittled away.

Yet the question remains, does the common ground exist?

According to a recent report, it does.

The majority of gun owners are concerned about gun violence and support policies to reduce gun-related injuries and deaths, according to new research from Tufts University and gun safety organization 97Percent.

Three-fourths of gun owners surveyed said they are concerned about the frequency of school shootings, and 71 percent said the same of mass shootings, according to the research released on Monday. Seventy percent said they also want to help find a way reduce gun-related injuries and deaths.

Most gun owners, including Republican ones, said they support several proposed laws to prevent people with a high risk of violence from accessing guns.

Gun safety organization 97Percent, which touts itself as a bipartisan group of both gun owners and non-gun owners, noted in its report on the research that this defies the current perception that there is an “intractable divide” over gun control in the U.S.

And since 97Percent paid for this study, it’s not surprising that the result was exactly what 97Percent wanted.

It’s part of why all such “studies” need to be questioned vigorously.

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‘Massive Fiduciary Breach’: Missouri Pulls $500M Worth of Pension Funds From BlackRock’s Control

Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick announced on Tuesday that the state’s pension fund is selling all of its assets that are managed by BlackRock, a move that will divest up to $500 million from the asset manager.

The Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System is withdrawing its assets from BlackRock’s control because the state believes that the company is using its control of pension funds to push a “left-wing” agenda, as opposed to making money for its clients, according to a press release.

Missouri joins several other Republican-run states that have also pulled funds from BlackRock for similar reasons.

“We should not allow asset managers such as BlackRock, who have demonstrated that they will prioritize advancing a woke political agenda above the financial interests of their customers, to continue speaking on behalf of the state of Missouri,” Fitzpatrick said in the press release. “It is past time that all investors recognize the massive fiduciary breach that is taking place before our eyes, and do something about it.”

Republican state treasurers in Louisiana, South Carolina, Arkansas, and Utah will divest a total of $1 billion from BlackRock by the end of 2022, according to The Financial Times. The removal of state money from BlackRock’s management comes after 19 Republican attorneys general accused BlackRock of boycotting the fossil fuel industry at the expense of its clients, according to a letter sent to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

BlackRock, which manages roughly $8.5 trillion worth of assets, denied such allegations and claimed that it has “hundreds of billions of dollars” invested in energy companies, according to a response letter the company sent. The company also stated that it was fully considering the interests of its investors in relation to its climate-focused investment agenda, as 90% of global governments are committed to phasing out fossil fuels by 2050.

BlackRock is committed to achieving net-zero emissions by no later than 2050, according to its website.

“Fiduciary duty must remain the top priority for investment managers—a duty some of them have abdicated in favor of forcing a left-wing social and political agenda that has failed to succeed legislatively, on publicly traded companies,” Fitzpatrick said.

Large asset managers such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street are pushing private companies to adopt environmental, social and corporate governance standards. Republicans have previously claimed that those standards seek to force businesses to promote climate activism as well as diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

BlackRock did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Moderna CEO admits to past lies: “COVID is simply the flu, harmless to the healthy.”.

On October 17, 2022 during a news conference, Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of the drug company Moderna, made the following statement about COVID, the so-called plague that allowed his company (and others) to make billions pushing their jabs on a terrified public:

“I think it’s going to be like the flu. If you’re a 25-year-old, do you need an annual booster every year if you’re healthy?

“You might want to… but I think it’s going to be similar to flu where it’s going to be people at high-risk, people above 50 years of age, people with comorbidities, people with cancer and other conditions, people with transplants.”

Gee, where I have heard these exact words for the past two-plus years? Could it have been on this very same webpage, said by me as well as numerous other cool-headed experts who — rather than panicking — looked at the actual data? From my first detailed post about COVID in March 2020, using all the early real data:

The death rate is mostly confined to the older population with already existing health issues, like the flu.

This early conclusion was later confirmed again and again in the months that followed. From September 2020, for example, in citing CDC data I wrote:

The Wuhan virus killed you only if you had an average of slightly less than three serious chronic health conditions. And generally you had to be elderly, with the average age of death 78 years old. Otherwise, just like the flu you might have been sick for a few days, but you would have recovered and been able to go on with your life as normal. This data once again demonstrates that the masks, the shut downs, and the economic disaster were all unnecessary.

I of course was hardly the loudest voice, or the only one. Many others with much greater expertise than I kept saying the same thing. All were pilloryed, doxed, blackballed, and censored for saying so. “How dare you? You are killing grampa by not panicking! You should be burned at the stake!”

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Anti-Gun Junk ‘Science’ Misleads Ignorant with Deceptive Fallacies

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Firearm sales in the United States broke records at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,” U.S News & World Report notes. “Now, researchers have found that firearm injuries to children also increased during the pandemic’s first two years compared to the preceding year.”

A reasonable conclusion would be that the two occurrences are somehow related. The way this is presented implies that increased gun sales have resulted in more children suffering firearms injuries, or in the parlance of the citizen disarmament lobby, hurt BY guns. Right?

Wrong, of course.

The obvious logical fallacy is that correlation equals causation. It does not. An extreme example to illustrate why is the nonexistent ice cream/rape “connection,” claiming both sales and sexual assaults go up in hotter weather and falsely concluding that one influences the other.

We’re being led down another deceptive path as well with loaded terms. To see what we’re supposed to envision, enter the word “children” in Google’s image search. The results, happy munchkins doing happy munchkin things, are pretty much what everyone is going to expect.

You have to do a deeper dive to find the population being exploited here includes 19-year-olds and that the dramatic increases are happening due to gang activity participated in by minority populations:

“Firearm-related injuries in Black children grew from nearly 31% in 2019 to 40% in 2020 and 48% in 2021. Those cases also showed increases in patients with mental health issues and in injuries where the shooter was a friend.”

Increased firearm sales are extrapolated by increases in background checks. Who thinks teen gangs submit to those? In order for pandemic-related sales to significantly move statistics, the transference from the “legal” to the “illegal” market would need to be almost instantaneous, when in fact, ATF time-to-crime (“the amount of time between the retail sale of a firearm by a federal firearms licensee (FFL) and its recovery by law enforcement”) statistics show a national average period for 2021 of  6.21 years.

True, the Michael Bloomberg-“seeded” agenda “journalism” project The Trace tries desperately to  establish a connection, but after it’s all said and done must concede the relationship is only “suggested” and admit:

“[T]he increase in gun sales is not solely responsible for the increase in short time-to-crime recoveries [and] the number of guns recovered and traced by law enforcement does not always indicate the amount of gun crime in a given year. In other words, factors driving increases in the amount of short-time-crime guns in the ATF’s data may be separate from the factors contributing to gun violence.”

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