Tag Archives: #COVID19

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Andy Beshear will try to issue another odious mask mandate any day now

I told you so!

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) hasn’t tried to make masks mandatory again, but today’s “recommendations” certainly set the table for that.

The Governor’s new “recommendations” are:

  • All unvaccinated Kentuckians should wear masks indoors when not in their homes
  • Kentuckians at higher risk due to pre-existing conditions should wear masks indoors when not in their homes
  • Vaccinated Kentuckians in jobs with significant public exposure should consider wearing a mask at work
  • All unvaccinated Kentuckians, when eligible, should be vaccinated immediately

Mr Beshear is like any other American: under our First Amendment, he has the freedom of speech, and can recommend anything he wishes. But I do not trust him, nor do I trust the state Supreme Court and how they may rule on the Governor’s legal attempts to invalidate the restrictions on his emergency powers under KRS 39A passed by the General Assembly last February, and it’s all too easy to see Mr Beshear trying to turn his recommendations into orders.

Kentucky reporting new cases of COVID-19 at levels not seen since March

By Alex Acquisto | July 22, 2021 | 1:38 PM | Updated: 2:06 PM EDT

Kentucky is poised to report its fourth consecutive week of rising COVID-19 cases, the overwhelming majority of which are driven by unvaccinated people, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday.

“We believe that on Monday we are going to be in another week of increasing cases,” the governor said from the state Capitol. Cases began rising again in late June after two months of consecutive decline.

In Kentucky, where roughly half the state is at least partially vaccinated, over 95% of the more than 61,000 new coronavirus cases from March 1 to July 21 were among unvaccinated people, the governor announced. Likewise, 92% of the 3,100 coronavirus-related hospitalizations and 89% of the 447 people who died of coronavirus were either unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated.

OK, let’s stop right there. The vaccines didn’t even become available to people under 70 until the beginning of March, so when March and April are included, those numbers are wholly skewed. I’m in my upper sixties, and I was not able to get my first dose until April Fool’s Day, and my second until Cinco de Mayo. I would not have been considered “fully vaccinated” until 14 days after my second dose, which meant May 19th.

So, when the Governor tells us that “over 95% of the more than 61,000 new coronavirus cases from March 1 to July 21 were among unvaccinated people,” he is using a time frame in which most Kentuckians had the opportunity to be vaccinated. The percentage of the Commonwealth’s population which could have been vaccinated, especially “fully vaccinated,” during March and April was pretty small.

Note what the Herald-Leader had reported just two days earlier:

About one-fifth of the new COVID-19 cases in Lexington in July occurred in vaccinated people, according to new data from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department.

Those so-called “breakthrough” cases had accounted for less than 1 percent of Lexington’s reported infections until the last few weeks. In May, less than 10 percent of the month’s cases were breakthrough infections. In June, that number increased to almost 15 percent.

This month, about 19.5 percent of all cases have been in people fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the health department.

Note, the report is that 19.5% were among people fully vaccinated. One wonders what the infection rate was for those who were only partially vaccinated.

The vaccines are supposed to help those who do contract the virus anyway by resulting in far less serious symptoms. If someone has been vaccinated, and he doesn’t feel sick, there’s really no reason for him to be tested, so, though we can’t prove a negative, it stands to reason that a smaller percentage of vaccinated than unvaccinated people get tested for COVID-19. It could well be that the percentage of vaccinated people who are infected with COVID anyway is significantly higher than anyone knows.

And why would a fully vaccinated person get tested unless it was absolutely necessary? From CNBC:

If a vaccinated person tests positive for Covid, through routine workplace testing, for example, “we don’t just let them go about their business and forget about the fact that they tested positive,” says Dr. Peter Katona, professor of medicine and public health at UCLA and chair of the Infection Control Working Group.

“With the understanding that you’re less of a problem than an unvaccinated [person], it doesn’t mean you let up on your protocol,” he says.

The most important thing to do after testing positive would be to isolate, meaning you stay away from people who are not sick, including others who are vaccinated, and monitor for Covid-related symptoms, Gonsenhauser says.

“You are going to have to isolate just as though you were not vaccinated for 10 days from the first symptoms that you recognize or from the time of your test…keeping yourself from being around other people until that period is up,” Gonsenhauser says.

You should avoid visiting any private or public areas or traveling during that 10-day period, according to the CDC.

In other words, if you are fully vaccinated and are not sick, getting tested can mean only one thing: more restrictions on your life!

And here comes what I said was coming:

The more contagious Delta variant is driving an increase in cases and the statewide positivity rate, which rose above 6% on Wednesday for the first time since late February. On Tuesday, the state reported 1,054 new cases of the virus — the highest single-day increase since March 11, Beshear said. On Wednesday, the state reported 963 new cases.

For the first time since he lifted the statewide mask mandate and repealed capacity restrictions in early June, Beshear said on Thursday that he will not shy away from reinstituting those rules if the spread of the virus continues to gain momentum.

“We’re not going to be afraid to make the tough decision if it’s merited,” he said, again noting that the solution to stemming spread is for more people to get vaccinated.

It is, I believe, the wiser choice for people to go ahead and get vaccinated; not only have I said that before, but my freely disclosed choice on the matter months ago ought to stand as testimony to that. And if someone believes that he ought to wear a face mask, I absolutely support his right to choose to do that.

But I am absolutely opposed to the government trying to mandate vaccination, or facemasks, or any of the restrictions on our individual rights that so many states imposed previously. COVID-19 may be deadly in a small percentage of cases, but it has already dealt a near-mortal blow to our rights as free people and as Americans.

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Neoconservatives want to fight for American-style freedom and democracy everywhere, but don’t seem to want Americans to have individual rights

If someone was asked to put names to a list of neoconservatives in the United States, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Norman Podhoretz might come to mind. Irving Kristol was an editor and publisher who served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine, founded the now-defunct magazine The Public Interest, and was described by Jonah Goldberg as the “godfather of neoconservatism.” His son, William Kristol, founded the magazine The Weekly Standard, which quickly took hold to challenge National Review for primacy among conservative opinion journals.

The Weekly Standard failed because, as a fervent #NeverTrumper, Mr Kristol guided the journal into being all-Never Trump, all the time, while National Review, with plenty of Never Trumpers in its fold, still tried to allow pro-Trump articles in its pages and on its website. Mr Kristol (probably) realized that yes, Donald Trump was a factor in Republican politics, and yes, some conservatives really did like his views and his style, but The Weekly Standard was never going to tolerate the views of the riff-raff to pollute its pages and website!

We have already noted how neo-conservative Max Boot of The Washington Post wants to make vaccinations against COVID-19 mandatory. The Post’s other neocon, Jennifer Rubin, while I have not seen anything from her yet urging making vaccination mandatory, certainly wants to do everything that can be done to stifle opposing views. The Post also supports “vaccine passports.”

Now comes the younger Mr Kristol, who, like so many others, wants to force you to be vaccinated. Not trusting Mr Kristol not to delete that tweet, this is a screenshot of it, but the hyperlink will take you to the original. If it’s difficult to see, you can click on it to enlarge it.

Mr Kristol and the neoconservatives, frequently fairly liberal when it comes to domestic and social issues, very much wanted to spread the ideas of American-style freedom and democracy around the world. But I have to ask: when so many of them are now opposed to individual liberty and individual rights, just what does their commitment to American-style freedom and democracy mean? One of the most basic freedoms of all, the right to decide what you will put into your own body, is a freedom they would deny people who have decided differently than they have.

Full disclosure: I have been vaccinated myself, a choice I made freely, and I believe that others should take the same decision I did. While no vaccine is 100% without risk, the benefits of being vaccinated outweigh the risks. But I respect the right, and yes, “right” is precisely the word I mean to use, of other people to choose whether or not to take the vaccine. That’s a right that the neoconservatives don’t seem to want you to have.
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The Lexington Herald-Leader does not know how to win friends and influence people

In October of 1936, Dale Carnegie published the self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In 2011, it was number 19 on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential books. It is a book that Dr David Shafran has apparently not read.

    ‘Selfish or stupid.’ Rejecting COVID vaccine puts healthcare workers in real danger.

    By David Safran[1]At least as of 2:36 PM, the Herald-Leader spelled the author’s name ‘Safran’ at the beginning of the article, and ‘Shafran’ at the end. | July 21, 2021 | 10:42 AM | Updated: 11:04 AM EDT

    “If you can get the vaccine, and decide not to, then you’ve made your choice: Don’t ask for sympathy or money when you get sick”. Conservative columnist Bret Stephens offered that comment in the NY Times on July 19 as an alternative when referring to President Biden’s ill-received comment about people “killing America” by not getting the vaccine.

    Sounds great, and I agree to a point. But unfortunately, thanks to a federal regulation with the acronym EMTALA, which stands for Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, the comment, like our president’s, is empty. The law was passed in 1986 with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Reagan. It basically states if the hospital receives payments from Medicare, a person had a right to be seen, or from the other point of view, a doctor is forced to see and take care of a patient, whether or not they could pay the bills. Physicians learned to call EMTALA the Anti-Patient Dumping Act, as they could no longer refuse to see uninsured patients, or more likely “dump them” on a bigger hospital. Private hospitals got around the law by closing their emergency rooms.

    Now, with the environment of healthcare completely different, I would like to rename EMTALA the People’s Inherent right to Selfishness and Stupidity Act. As we are seeing in this country, when it comes to Covid, unvaccinated Americans are either for the most part selfish or stupid.

There’s more at the original, and even more in the last paragraph, but I ended my copying at the most important point. Dr Shafran specifically, and the Lexington Herald-Leader editorially, and Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) generally speaking, are all trying to persuade Kentuckians who have not yet chosen to be vaccinated to go ahead and take one of the freely available COVID-19 vaccines. But perhaps, just perhaps, calling the people they are (purportedly) trying to persuade “stupid or selfish” might not be a method of which Mr Carnegie would have approved.

Of course, while Dr Shafran was very explicit in expressing his beliefs, Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford couldn’t contain her snarkiness:

    The political divide is no help, of course. Tuesday morning, (Louisville Courier-Journal) reporter Olivia Kraus noted that House Education Chair Regina Huff had deleted a tweet in which she compared Dr. Anthony Fauci’s vaccine advocacy to the Jonestown massacre. We used to be a nation of science. Now (as the world burns down around us) we let conservative news shows convince us that the vaccine is depositing microchips into our arms so Google can figure out what you had for breakfast, as though it didn’t already know this from your phone. One in five Americans believe the microchips, according to a new poll by The Economist and YouGov.com.

Mr Carnegie could sell ice water to Eskimos; I have my doubts that Dr Shafran or Mrs Blackford could sell ice water in Hell.

If you want to influence people, to persuade people to your position, the first thing you need to do is not be an [insert slang term for the rectum here.] You don’t need to be Max Boot, saying that the President should order people to get vaccinated, and that those who refuse should be cut off from all social life. You don’t need to be Jen Psaki, saying that the Biden Administration is working with Facebook to censor “misinformation,” or that if you are banned from one social media site, you should be banned from all. The American people don’t take well to censorship.

What you need to do is identify with people, to show them your concern and your respect for their thoughts, feelings and beliefs. You need to demonstrate an attitude that they’ve won if they bought what you are selling, not that you’ve won if they do. And you must show that you respect their choices, and their right to take those choices, even if you disagree with their decisions.

References

References
↑1 At least as of 2:36 PM, the Herald-Leader spelled the author’s name ‘Safran’ at the beginning of the article, and ‘Shafran’ at the end.
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It’s being set up again!

As we have previously noted, the nation is being set up, through the spreading of fear, for another imposition of the illegal and unconstitutional COVID-19 restrictions.

And now comes Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), one of the worst of the COVID tyrants:

    As Delta variant spreads, Beshear recommends return to indoor masking for some

    By Alex Acquisto | July 19, 2021 | 5:07 PM | Updated: July 19, 2021 | 6:01 PM EDT

    Fully-vaccinated Kentuckians who work in jobs with “significant public exposure” should consider wearing a mask again in indoor public spaces, Gov. Andy Beshear recommended on Monday, citing rising case numbers and escalating spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19.

    The governor is also recommending a return to masking in indoor public settings for fully-vaccinated Kentuckians at high-risk of severe coronavirus infection because of pre-existing health conditions. High-exposure jobs include retail and hospitality businesses, as well as any job that requires contact with many different people.

    “The more people you come in contact with, the more exposure you are likely to have, so we believe at this point it is a smart idea,” Beshear said.

    The new recommendations, which apply to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, are necessary because “we are seeing more cases among vaccinated Kentuckians because of the Delta variant,” Beshear said.

There’s more at the original, but the most important word in that article is “necessary.” The Governor argued, after his attorney’s presentation to the state Supreme Court:

    After the court hearing, Beshear told reporters that a governor’s emergency powers certainly “have to be large enough with a one-in-every-hundred year pandemic that creates the deadliest year in our history, it has to be significant and strong enough to do what’s necessary there.”

    “You look back at different things that this legislature has tried to do in the midst of this pandemic and they would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary,” he said. “We would have looked like the Dakotas and not what we looked like here in Kentucky.”

Mr Beshear believes that he just has to have these powers, because they are necessary, regardless of the General Assembly putting restrictions on them.

Oral arguments were made to the Court on June 10th, which was 5½ weeks ago, and the Court has not yet issued its ruling. The last time this issue came before the state Supreme Court, prior to the last legislative session, which changed the laws, the Court took from September 17th until November 12th, to issue its decision, 56 days, an even 8 weeks, so, if the Court uses the same timetable, it wouldn’t issue its decision until Thursday, August 5th.

Of course, the Governor has only issued recommendations, and not tried to impose another executive order. I would like to think that this is because he has already been notified by the justices that they aren’t going to come down on his side, and he knows that the General Assembly would never approve an extension of a mask order, but the state Supreme Court has a decidedly liberal leaning:

    The last three years in Kentucky should provide an equal awakening concerning the Kentucky Supreme Court. Over and over in the past three years, the state’s highest court has upended legislation after legislation passed by the General Assembly, often appearing to seek legal justification after it had decided what it wanted to do.

    To name a handful, regardless of the policy merits of the 2018 pension reform bill, the Court invalidated the law based on a procedure that has been used by the General Assembly for decades. The Court threw out Medical Review Panels, blocked Marsy’s Law[1]Hyperlink added by editor; not included in cited article., and perhaps the most head-scratching of all, had three justices dissent in the case that ultimately upheld Kentucky’s right-to-work law.

    Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who studies methods of selecting judges, looked at the ideological makeup of state Supreme Courts compared to the electorate they serve in a 2017 study. Kentucky, he found, is entirely out of whack. The commonwealth had the eighth highest liberal skew in the country, versus the federal electorate in the state, during his studied period.

Well, the Kentucky Supreme Court was certainly out of tune with the electorate in Kentucky. On November 3, 2020, the voters in the Commonwealth rewarded Republican state legislative candidates, who had campaigned against the Governor’s restrictions, with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, giving the GOP a 75-25 seat advantage,[2]Don’t scream, “Gerrymandering!” because when the House districts were redistricted following the 2010 census, Democrats controlled the state House. and 2 additional seats, out of 17 up for election, in the state Senate, for a 38-10 GOP margin.

The state Supreme Court has long been a friend of Mr Beshear’s, particularly when it came to the then-Attorney General filing lawsuit after lawsuit to frustrate Governor Matt Bevin (R-KY). And while I would like to think that the Governor has already been clued in to his legal position failing, it’s just as possible — and perhaps even more possible — that the state Supremes have come down in his favor, and he’s just setting the table to change recommendations into requirements.

References

References
↑1 Hyperlink added by editor; not included in cited article.
↑2 Don’t scream, “Gerrymandering!” because when the House districts were redistricted following the 2010 census, Democrats controlled the state House.
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Kathleen Sebelius advocates authoritarian controls; the credentialed media try to ignore it to death

Kathleen Sebelius was Secretary of Health and Human Services during the previous Democratic administration, but it seems that she has taken her lessons not from Barack Hussein Obama but Xi Jinping. First, from The Wall Street Journal:

    Get Vaxxed or Stay Home, Some Local Chinese Governments Say

    Some areas are planning to restrict people from public venues unless they get shots, sparking criticism

    By Chao Deng | Updated: July 15, 2021 | 7:17 AM ET

    Several local governments in China are planning to bar residents who haven’t been vaccinated against Covid-19 from accessing public venues, stirring controversy as the country makes a push for herd immunity.

    In recent days, a dozen counties and cities in the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi set late-August deadlines for people 18 years or older to complete a two-shot vaccine regimen, according to similarly worded online statements. Many of them also set dates in late July by which unvaccinated people would be barred from entering schools, libraries, prisons, nursing homes and inpatient facilities at hospitals without a valid medical exemption.

    Some of the localities attributed their new policies to “national, provincial and municipal arrangements,” without explaining whether they received a decree from the central government.

    China is dealing with sporadic outbreaks of Covid-19 and authorities have been offering homegrown vaccines free of charge since last December.

    The government notices have sparked online pushback from some Chinese and triggered a debate—as in the U.S. and elsewhere—about whether people should be required to present proof of inoculation to travel, work or undertake other routine activities outside their home.

There’s more at the original.

Mrs Sebelius, previously the Governor of Kansas, apparently loves the way the Chinese Communists do things. From Breitbart, via The Pirate’s Cove:

Mrs Sebelius stated:

    Sebelius said, “We’re in a situation where we have a wildly effective vaccine, multiple choices, lots available, free of charge, and we have folks who are just saying I won’t do it. I think that it’s time to say to those folks, it’s fine if you don’t choose to get vaccinated. You may not come to work. You may not have access to a situation where you’re going to put my grandchildren in jeopardy. Where you might kill them, or you might put them in a situation where they’re going to carry the virus to someone in a high-risk position.”

    That’s, I think the point where we are, is freedom is one thing, but freedom when you harm others like secondhand smoke and issues that we’ve dealt with very clearly in the past you can’t drive drunk. You can drink, but you can’t drive drunk because you can injure other people. You can’t smoke inside of a public place where you can give cancer to someone else in spite of their never having been a smoker.

    So I think we’re reaching that point in the United States where those of us who are vaccinated, I want to take off my mask. I want to be able to live my life with vaccination, and right now, I’m being impinged on by people who say I don’t want to get vaccinated. It’s fine. I want them to maybe have a limitation on where they can go and who they can possibly infect.

You know what’s interesting? Breitbart is a definitely conservative site, and I like to cite liberal sources to prevent complaints by the left that my sources are biased, so I made a Google search for Mrs Sebelius’ first sentence. As you can see from the screen capture at the right, on which you can click to enlarge to make it more readable, all I found were conservative sources and individual blogs. Given that Breitbart had a video of the interview embedded, one which has two annoying commercials in it and one I cannot embed, the story is confirmed, but, oddly enough, the credentialed media seem loath to report it. Site searches for Sebelius on The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer yielded zero returns of this. Even a site search of CNN, where the interview was broadcast, yielded only one article, Young children will pay the price if enough US adults don’t get vaccinated against Covid-19, expert says, in which Mrs Sebelius’ statement is buried down in the 19th paragraph.

The credentialed media absotively, posilutely do not want such a totalitarian statement from a former Secretary of Health and Human Services to get much publicity, and so the story is being quietly buried, quietly ignored to death. Such is apparently not news that is fit to print! But we can be certain of one thing: if President Biden proposed such a thing, the left would certainly go along with it, because the left love them some totalitarian controls!

“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” The Washington Post has as its masthead tagline. Yet it seems that a former Democratic Secretary of Health and Human Services’ advocacy of authoritarian controls is news the editors of the Post want to keep in darkness.

It’s interesting that the Wikipedia biography for Mrs Sebelius states, “She is strongly pro-choice,” but it seems that, like so many others on the left, she is pro-choice on exactly one thing.

It should be noted that I am, and have previously stated, that I have been vaccinated against COVID-19. That was my personal choice, a choice I took freely, and my decision is the one I think others should take. But I also believe that people have the right to decide that for themselves, and that the government ought not to have any authority to penalize or punish them if they choose differently than I have.

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It’s being set up again! The Lexington Herald-Leader is trying to set up a scenario in which Governor Beshear reissues his mask mandate

As we have previously noted, a government and credentialed media which just love to restrict our constitutional rights, are once again setting up a scenario in which Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) will claim that he just has to issue mandatory mask orders and other restrictions, for our own good, don’t you know?

    Lexington COVID-19 cases jump. Variants, loosening of restrictions to blame.

    By Rayleigh Deaton | July 13, 2021 | 1:42 PM | Updated: 2:06 PM EDT

    The number of new COVID-19 cases jumped Tuesday in Lexington as a result of lifted restrictions and virus variants, according to the health department.

    On Tuesday, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department said there were 53 new cases, and the “COVID-19 continues to spread.” The city’s previous rolling average of four new cases per day has risen to 22 since July 6, according to the department. As of June 13, there have been 35,726 total coronavirus cases and 324 deaths since the pandemic began early last year.

    Kevin Hall, spokesman for the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, said, “Most of Lexington’s new cases are a form of a variant, with the Delta variant popping up among them.” The Delta variant has been more contagious.

The article writer, the editor who wrote the headline,[1]Headlines in newspapers are traditionally written by editors, not the article authors, but that might not be the case in this instance. and the Lexington Health Department spokesman all wanted to tell us the same thing: loosened restrictions on people are to blame. How long will it be before they start to advocate that Governor Beshear try to once again impose his illegal and unconstitutional restrictions on us?

    Hall said other guidelines include:

    • Avoiding close contact with people showing COVID symptoms.
    • Covering coughs and sneezes.
    • Avoiding touching your eyes, nose and mouth.
    • Washing hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.
    • Wearing a face covering in crowded places.

There it is, of course: the setting up of fear, fear of other people in Mr Hall’s first point — after all, people who have been exposed to COVID-19 can pass on the virus before they show any symptoms themselves — and the need, in the last point, that we’re all doomed if we don’t wear face masks again.

At least so far, the Herald-Leader’s Opinion section does not show any editorials pushing the Governor to reimpose his COVID-19 restrictions, but it may well be only a matter of time.

References

References
↑1 Headlines in newspapers are traditionally written by editors, not the article authors, but that might not be the case in this instance.
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The Biden Administration want to snoop into your private text messages, looking for COVID “misinformation”

President Biden and his Administration are planning to get tough on social media sources, including text messaging, and ‘conservative news shows’ which question the efficacy and safety of the various COVID-19 vaccines. Our good friend William Teach noted an article from Politico, a site I don’t normally check:

‘Potentially a death sentence’: White House goes off on vaccine fearmongers

The administration has shifted to a head-on strategy to dispel fear-mongering over its door-to-door efforts.

By Natasha Korecki and Eugene Daniels | July 12, 2021 | 1:22 PM EDT

The Biden administration is casting conservative opponents of its Covid-19 vaccine campaign as dangerous and extreme, adopting a more aggressive political posture in an attempt to maneuver through the public health conundrum.

The White House has decided to hit back harder on misinformation and scare tactics after Republican lawmakers and conservative activists pledged to fight the administration’s stated plans to go “door-to-door” to increase vaccination rates. The pushback will include directly calling out social media platforms and conservative news shows that promote such tactics.

Well, at least the authors wrote a good lede paragraph, something vanishing from a lot of journalism these days!

“The big misinterpretation that Fox News or whomever else is saying is that they are essentially envisioning a bunch of federal workers knocking on your door, telling you you’ve got to do something that you don’t want to do,” Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview on Sunday. “That’s absolutely not the case, it’s trusted messengers who are part of the community doing that — not government officials. So that’s where I think the disconnect is.”

What, the Administration don’t think that the “trusted messengers who are part of the community” haven’t already been talking to their friends? The displacements caused by COVID-19 and the federal, state and local governments’ overreactions to it have been topic number one among people, for five seasons now, whether over the phone, in people getting together — sometimes in violation of ‘gatherings’ limits[1]Petty dictator Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) issued orders that banned families from getting together during Thanksgiving and Christmas in groups of more than ten persons and from more than two … Continue reading — and people finally meeting people they had missed, people getting back to work, and people discussing the odious mask mandates. What the Administration want to do is to send not “trusted messengers who are part of the community” going door-to-door, but people who are not “trusted messengers who are part of the community,” because people have already been talking to the people they’ve known and trusted.

Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages. The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely.

Really? And just what is an SMS carrier?

An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer (also known as a Server) to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommunications networks. In most cases, SMS and MMS are eventually routed to a mobile phone through a wireless carrier. SMS gateways are commonly used as a method for person-to-person to device-to-person (also known as application-to-person) communications. Many SMS gateways support content and media conversions from email, push, voice, and other formats.

It’s not quite the same thing as sending text messages from your phone to one of your friends, or a group of friends, but it’s along the same lines. Unlike a service like Facebook or Twitter, where anyone can access your messages, SMS systems are messages sent directly to individuals or small, specified groups.

Translation: the Biden Administration believe that they have the right to, without a warrant, look into your private messages. This is a 21st century form of wiretapping. How could the Biden Administration know what “misinformation” might be in private messages you might send, or receive, over your phone or computer, unless they look, or get your email or SMS service or wireless telephone carriers to snoop?

We have noted it before: the greatest death threat from COVID-19 has not been to individuals but to our constitutional rights. And the sheeple will go right along with it.

References

References
↑1 Petty dictator Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) issued orders that banned families from getting together during Thanksgiving and Christmas in groups of more than ten persons and from more than two households. My family did not obey that order.
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It’s being set up again!

Long-term readers of The First Street Journal — both of them — know that my trust of Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) is so great that if he told me that 2 + 2 = 4, I’d check his math. I noted his attempts to have the state Supreme Court invalidate Senate Bill 1, House Bill 1, and other legislation which would restrict his ’emergency powers’ under KRS 39A, saying that it was necessary that he have those powers as defined before the General Assembly passed, over his veto, restrictions on how they could be used. The Kentucky Supreme Court has yet to issue its ruling, but I must admit: given how the justices have bent over backward for Mr Beshear, both when he was state Attorney General and now, as Governor, I am not confident that the Court will uphold the laws. Continue reading →