Tag Archives: #FascismFromTheLeft

Posted on by

Why don’t neoconservatives, who support American-style liberty and democracy abroad, support liberty at home?

When commenting on Patterico’s Pontifications, I am styled “The libertarian, but not Libertarian, Dana”, since one of his main writers is named Dana.

The site host was previously a Republican, and certainly a conservative, but he left the GOP when Donald Trump started to make headway toward the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and became one of the #NeverTrumpers. His dislike of our 45th President has been apparent from the start, and he wanted Mr Trump not just impeached, but removed from office.

Patterico has been vocal in advocating that people get vaccinated against COVID-19, and I agree: they should. But this I did not expect from him:

I have previously noted how neoconservatives Max Boot and Bill Kristol, upset that not as many people as they believe should have have freely chosen to take the COVID-19 vaccines, have urged making vaccination mandatory.

When Patterico tweeted:

We may get to a point where the big debate becomes: why on Earth didn’t we institute more coercive measures on the unvaccinated in July 2021, when we could have stopped COVID before it mutated beyond the vaccines’ capacity to immunize people against it?

he has not precisely stated, as Messrs Boot and Kristol have, that he believes that vaccination should be mandatory, but one wonders: just what does he mean by “more coercive measures”?

A clue, I suppose, comes from his retweet from Allahpundit, who referenced yet another #NeverTrumper, David Frum, and his article in The Atlantic:

    Vaccinated America Has Had Enough

    In the United States, this pandemic could be almost over by now. The reasons it’s still going are pretty clear.

    By David Frum | July 23, 2021

    In the United States, this pandemic could’ve been over by now, and certainly would’ve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.

The article title itself practically drips with contempt: “Vaccinated America has had enough.” With that, the distinguished Mr Frum, an urbanite who lives in Washington, DC, and Wellington, Ontario, tells his readers that “vaccinated America” and he are just better than the riff-raff who have decided against it.

    Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans. Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty.

Or, perhaps, they have decided that they just don’t trust government very much. Such used to be commonplace among conservatives. Actually, it’s pretty commonplace among liberals as well . . . when conservatives are in power. Conservative states have been tightening up election security, but the left see that not as insuring against election fraud, but as trying to prevent some citizens from voting at all. And the left certainly distrusted government during President Trump’s four years in office!

Naturally, I cannot quote all of Mr Frum’s article; that would violate Fair Use standards. Suffice it to say that he spends the next three paragraphs telling us of all of the evils and sorrows the vaccine hesitant and conservative politicians have spread throughout conservative states.

    Reading about the fates of people who refused the vaccine is sorrowful. But as summer camp and travel plans are disrupted—as local authorities reimpose mask mandates that could have been laid aside forever—many in the vaccinated majority must be thinking: Yes, I’m very sorry that so many of the unvaccinated are suffering the consequences of their bad decisions. I’m also very sorry that the responsible rest of us are suffering the consequences of their bad decisions.

There it is again: Mr Frum is telling his readers that he is just so much smarter than those with reservations, that those who have not been willing to take the vaccine are irresponsible. As I have pointed out previously, insulting people, telling them that they are stupid, might not be the best approach to get them to buy what you are trying to sell.

    As cases uptick again, as people who have done the right thing face the consequences of other people doing the wrong thing, the question occurs: Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth—and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another. Something else they do for one another: take rational health-care precautions during a pandemic. That reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld.

And here I thought that Mr Frum was supposed to be a conservative! Now he’s using the leftist argument that the liberals support conservatives. Well, Philadelphia might seem more productive, with its inflated prices for everything, and their 2020 voting pattern (81.44% for Mr Biden vis a vis 17.90% for President Trump), than Estill County, Kentucky, where I live, (77.98% for Mr Trump, 20.72% for Mr Biden) but we sure don’t kill each other the way they do in the City of Brotherly Love! We don’t have to surround our homes with iron bars to keep the criminals out!

    Can governments lawfully require more public-health cooperation from their populations? They regularly do, for other causes. More than a dozen conservative states have legislated drug testing for people who seek cash welfare. It is bizarre that Florida and other states would put such an onus on the poorest people in society—while allowing other people to impose a much more intimate and immediate harm on everybody else. The federal government could use its regulatory and spending powers to encourage vaccination in the same way that Ron DeSantis has used his executive powers to discourage it. The Biden administration could require proof of vaccination to fly or to travel by interstate train or bus. It could mandate that federal contractors demonstrate that their workforces are vaccinated. It could condition federal student loans on proof of vaccination. Those measures might or might not be wise policy: Inducements are usually more effective at changing individual behavior than penalties are. But they would be feasible and legal—and they would spread the message about what people ought to do, in the same way that sanctions against drunk driving, cheating on taxes, and unjust discrimination in the workplace do.

Mr Frum, like Patterico, is an attorney, and just loves him some ways of forcing people to comply. No, he didn’t say, “Make the vaccines mandatory,” but wants to try to regulate the non-compliant into poverty. And Mr Frum wonders why some people wouldn’t trust the government!

    In the end, the unvaccinated person himself or herself has decided to inflict a preventable and unjustifiable harm upon family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet.

And here we see the urbanist liberal argument again: that those who are doing nothing wrong — say, by owning a firearm even if they have never shot anyone — simply by living their lives as they see fit, are still guilty, guilty, guilty! of hurting other people. Mr Frum does not, and cannot, know whether any particular unvaccinated person has contracted the virus and then spread it to “family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet.” He simply assumes that all are guilty. Yet, at least here in the Bluegrass State, the Fayette County Health Department, in the Commonwealth’s second largest city, reported that 24.3% of all new COVID cases in July were “breakthrough” cases, instances in which vaccinated people still contracted the virus.

I look at people like David Frum and Max Boot and Bill Kristol, neoconservatives who supported American intervention to bring American-style liberty and democracy to places which were not liberal Western democracies,[1]Mr Frum was a speechwriter and assistant to the younger President Bush in 2001 and 2002, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. yet don’t seem to support liberty here at home.

References

References
↑1 Mr Frum was a speechwriter and assistant to the younger President Bush in 2001 and 2002, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Posted on by

Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen! Max Boot wants to see your papers!

What is fascism? The term is bandied about so much, but it does actually mean something. From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Fascism

Robert Soucy
Professor Emeritus of History, Oberlin College. American historian specializing in French fascist movements (1924-39), European fascism, and 20th-century European intellectual history; French fascist intellectuals…

Fascism, political ideology and mass movement that dominated many parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and that also had adherents in western Europe, the United States, South Africa, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East. Europe’s first fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, took the name of his party from the Latin word fasces, which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome. Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.

Max Boot, the Washington Post columnist and well-known neo-conservative, has stated, explicitly, that he believed Donald Trump was a fascist, and Mr Boot is educated enough to know just what fascist means:

Might we then conclude that the distinguished Mr Boot believes that individual interests should not be subordinated to the good of the nation? Well, if we did conclude that, we would be wrong.

Stop pleading with anti-vaxxers and start mandating vaccinations

by Max Boot | July 19, 2021 | 2:53 PM EDT

It’s time to get serious about coronavirus vaccinations. Stop pleading and start mandating.

For the past six months, President Biden, joined by every public health authority in the land, has been begging Americans to get vaccinated. The “pretty, please” approach isn’t working. According to The Post’s covid-19 tracker, in the past week, daily reported covid-19 cases rose 66 percent, covid-related hospitalizations rose 28 percent, and daily reported covid-19 deaths rose 20 percent. With the delta variant spreading across the country, every single state has seen an increase in cases over the past seven days.

This is a preventable tragedy. Over 99 percent of covid-19 deaths in June were among the unvaccinated. Yet even as evidence grows that vaccines are safe and effective, resistance to them is also growing. A recent Post-ABC News poll found that 29 percent of Americans said they were unlikely to get vaccinated — up from 24 percent three months earlier. Only 59 percent of adults are fully vaccinated.

Translation: “individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.”

Persuasion, something one would think an OpEd columnist would favor, does not seem to be something Mr Boot accepts, at least not if some people don’t agree with him:

This is madness. Stop making reasonable appeals to those who will not listen to reason. (According to an Economist/YouGov poll, a majority of those who refuse to get vaccinated say vaccines are being used by the government to implant microchips.) It’s a waste of time. Start mandating that anyone who wants to travel on an airplane, train or bus, attend a concert or movie, eat at a restaurant, shop at a store, work in an office or visit any other indoor space show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test.

We must show proof of vaccination or a negative test? Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!

Boy, it sure is a good thing Mr Boot does not use the term “fascist” loosely or often!

One would think that the son of Russian Jews, who fled oppression in the Soviet Union in 1976, when the iron-fisted Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev ruled, would understand the need for individual liberty. but, again, if one thought that, he would be wrong.

For months, Republicans have been caterwauling about vaccine passports, even obscenely comparing them to the Holocaust. All this sturm und drang obscures the fact there has been far too little use made of vaccine passports. I downloaded a New York state app on my iPhone months ago to verify that I’m vaccinated, but I’ve never once had to show it. Instead, many stores have signs saying that vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks — but they don’t verify vaccination. That provides no incentive to get your shots. Los Angeles County is also treating vaccinated and unvaccinated alike by again requiring masks for everyone. Why not just mandate proof of vaccination or a negative test

If New York state provides an app to certify that someone has had the vaccines, and Mr Boot has voluntarily chosen to use that, hey, that’s great, and an exercise of his individual liberty.

Sturm und drang, huh? The expression refers to an artistic movement in the late 18th century, characterized by the expression of emotional unrest and a rejection of neoclassical literary norms. To use this expression, the esteemed Mr Boot is telling us just what he thinks of individual thought.

Or at least it would if the distinguished columnist for The Washington Post actually understood the meaning of the term he used, a fact not in evidence.

In the United States, the authority of state governments to mandate vaccinations is clear — it goes all the way back to a 1905 Supreme Court case that upheld a Massachusetts law requiring vaccinations for smallpox. More recently, governors have used their public health powers to mandate mask-wearing and social distancing to fight covid-19. They ought to now take the logical next step and mandate vaccinations for the use of indoor spaces outside the home.

Except, of course, the public have rebelled. In the Bluegrass State, Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) mask mandate was so hated that when Republican candidates ran on the platform of ending his dictatorial powers in November of 2020, the voters rewarded GOP candidates with 14 additional seats, increasing the Republicans’ state House majority to 75-25.[1]The state House districts were set, following the 2010 census, by a House which was then controlled by Democrats. Mr Boot has been all about democracy, in his condemnation of President Trump and his vociferous insistence on supporting Joe Biden, but it seems that when the will of the people isn’t what he thinks it should be, democracy isn’t that great a thing anymore.

The distinguished Mr Boot suggested that President Biden should mandate vaccinations (not just negative COVID-19 tests) for:

  • Airline travel;
  • Amtrak travel;
  • All federal employees;
  • Everyone who enters a federal building (which would include a post office)[2]We have a post office box because the United States Postal Service will not deliver to our house. I have no idea how many people living out in the sticks as we do have the same problem, but Mr Boot … Continue reading; and
  • Order all military personnel to be vaccinated.

Mr Boot wants President Biden to use his authority to order people to get vaccinated, but he said that it was President Trump who was the fascist! And remember: it isn’t a term he uses loosely, or often!

Granted, there are limits to the United States’ ability to mandate vaccines because many red-state governors are unlikely to go along. But even Republicans want to fly on airplanes and visit blue states such as California, Hawaii, Nevada and New York. Vaccine mandates will prove controversial, to put it mildly, but, like seat belt laws, drunken driving laws and motorcycle helmet laws, they will save lives. We should not grant an unreasonable minority the power to endanger public health.

Good heavens! You know, people can get to California, Nevada and New York without flying. It’s not that long a drive for me to get to New York or New Jersey or Virginia. Perhaps Mr Boot thinks that the state police in those blue states should stop all travelers at the border, and demand to see their papers. Sound far fetched? In March of 2020, then Governor Gina Raimondo (D-CN) ordered the Rhode Island State Police to pull over drivers with New York plates so that National Guard officials can collect contact information and inform them of a mandatory, 14-day quarantine. She also ordered the state’s National Guard to go door-to-door in coastal communities to find out whether any of the home’s residents have recently arrived from New York and inform them of the quarantine order.

Ve need to see your papers!

For a man who does not use the term “fascist” loosely, or often, the esteemed Mr Boot sure seems unable to recognize just how much he wants to subject the rights of the individual to the police power of the state. Or, perhaps he actually does recognize it, but just doesn’t care, not as long as that police power is being used for something he thinks good.

References

References
↑1 The state House districts were set, following the 2010 census, by a House which was then controlled by Democrats.
↑2 We have a post office box because the United States Postal Service will not deliver to our house. I have no idea how many people living out in the sticks as we do have the same problem, but Mr Boot would require us to be vaccinated just to receive our mail.
Posted on by

I wish that I had written this!

Yes, I have been harping on the promulgation of fear in our society rather a lot lately, but Glenn Greenwald said it better than I ever have!

Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.

Mr Greenwald wasn’t even talking about the restrictions so many have accepted, to out freedom of peaceable assembly, to our free exercise of religion, to mask mandates and the other things government has imposed on us due to COVID-19, though he certainly could have been. No, he was talking about the Biden Administration and its cranking out of ‘domestic terror’ alerts.

The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun — Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants

Homeland Security just issued its fourth danger bulletin this year. And both the weapons and rhetorical tactics of the first War on Terror are increasingly visible.

Glenn Greenwald | June 2, 2021

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized.

The first was a January 14 warning, from numerous federal agencies including DHS, about violence in Washington, DC and all fifty state capitols that was likely to explode in protest of Inauguration Day (a threat which did not materialize). Then came a January 27 bulletin warning of “a heightened threat environment across the United States that is likely to persist over the coming weeks” from “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” (that warning also was not realized). Then there was a May 14 bulletin warning of right-wing violence “to attack higher-capacity targets,” exacerbated by the lifting of COVID lockdowns (which also never happened). And now we are treated to this new DHS warning about domestic extremists preparing violent attacks over Tulsa (it remains to be seen if a DHS fear is finally realized).

Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country. A CNN article which wildly hyped the latest danger bulletin about domestic extremists at Tulsa had to be edited with what the cable network, in an “update,” called “the additional information from the Department of Homeland Security that there is no specific or credible threats at this time.” And the supposed dangers from domestic extremists on Inauguration Day was such a flop that even The Washington Post — one of the outlets most vocal about lurking national security dangers in general and this one in particular — had to explicitly acknowledge the failure:

Thousands [of National Guard troops] had been deployed to capitals across the country late last week, ahead of a weekend in which potentially violent demonstrations were predicted by the FBI — but never materialized.

Once again on Wednesday, security officials’ worst fears weren’t borne out: In some states, it was close to business as usual. In others, demonstrations were small and peaceful, with only occasional tense moments.

President Biden just said:

Terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda, white supremacy.

Here’s the video:

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 2nd, 221 people had been murdered in the city so far this year. That’s 1.444 per day in the City of Brotherly Love, a rate, which if maintained throughout the year would mean 527 people spilling out their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets.

In Chicago, 266 people have been murdered so far this year, 1.739 every single day, putting the Windy City on track for 635 homicides.

In much smaller St Louis, 78 people have been killed, ‘only’ 0.510 per day, for ‘just’ 186 for 2021.

In just those three cities, that’s a total of 565 people murdered so far this year, and a projected 1,348 for the entire year.

White supremacists? So far they’ve killed exactly zero people in 2021![1]The claim that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the Capitol kerfuffle is untrue. The Washington medical examiner found the Officer Sicknick had died of “acute brainstem and … Continue reading Yet President Biden tells us that they are “the most lethal threat to the homeland today.”

Mr Greenwald compares the measures the Democrats are taking today to those under Presidents Bush and Obama following the September 11th attacks, and finds them shockingly similar.

Yeah, I want you to keep reading The First Street Journal, every day, but this is the time in which you should follow the embedded link and read Mr Greenwald’s article on substack. It’s just plain brilliant!

References

Posted on by

Why do the left always want to run other people’s lives?

Twitter did not suspend or delete the account of Richard Marx:

But for “Freckled Liberty,” a Jewish-American libertarian, it was off to 12 hours in Twitmo!

Mrs “Liberty” is a 26-year-old married woman who spends kind of a lot of time on Twitter. She wants to have children, and has expressed reservations about the long-term effects of the various COVID-19 vaccines, as possibly impacting her fertility. We do not know the long term effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, because they haven’t been available long enough.

Now, Mrs Liberty has been pretty strong in pushing her position, but she has never, to my knowledge, said that other people shouldn’t be allowed to take the vaccines if they wish; she has been, like the libertarian she is, saying that it is a matter of personal choice.

Of course, the left don’t really like that. A guy named Tom, whose Twitter address is, laughably enough, @FreedomSeeker83, condemned her by saying, “Knowingly carrying a chance you can infect other with a disease that may kill when it can be prevented or mitigated is an NAP violation,” and “You have a moral obligation to mitigate risk where one can.”

Freedom: he keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

I’ve said it before: I have taken the vaccine, and have reached the “fully vaccinated” stage. Taking the vaccine was my personal choice, as it should have been, as it should always be. Miss Liberty’s concerns are her own, and her choices are her own. That’s a big problem with the left: they believe that they should get to take decisions for everyone else, too.

Like Jonathan Edwards said in Sunshine, “And he can’t even run his own life, I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine!”

Posted on by

The left are pro-choice on exactly one thing

The Centers for Disease Control, and President Joe Biden, have decided that “fully vaccinated” people, by which they mean people who are 14 days past their final vaccine dose, no longer need to wear masks in public, other than in some specialized and crowded conditions, such as hospitals, nursing homes, or prisons.

The new advice comes with caveats. Even vaccinated individuals must cover their faces and physically distance when going to doctors, hospitals or long-term care facilities like nursing homes; when traveling by bus, plane, train or other modes of public transportation, or while in transportation hubs like airports and bus stations; and when in prisons, jails or homeless shelters.

William Teach noted President Biden’s declarative tweet that “The rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. The choice is yours.” The President, of course, has no authority in any of this: the mask mandates which existed were issued not by the federal governments, save on federal property or in federally licensed transportation modes, but by state Governors.

But for the left authoritarians, that ain’t good enough!

Streiff from RedState noted that “her inner fascist emerges,” as though we didn’t already know about it. I do wonder if the lovely Mrs McCormick[1]Jill Filipovic is married to a gentleman named Ty McCormick, a senior editor of Foreign Affairs. I always show the proper respect for married ladies by referring to their proper names. thinks we should do things the old-fashioned way, as the Germans pioneered it some eighty years ago, or whether she’d like something 21st century, like implantable, scannable microchips.

It’s kind of amusing that the left want everybody to have a #VaccinePassport to be allowed to do almost anything, but are wholly resistant to the concept of requiring identification to vote.

More amusing, though sadly so, are all of the messages from people complaining that there is no enforcement mechanism. One guy tweeted, “I hope you have a plan to track people who are not vaxxed. Otherwise, no one will wear masks. This is scaring me.” There are thousands upon thousands of other like-minded sheeple.

The vaccine itself? Yeah, I’ve had it; first dose on April Fool’s Day, and the second on Cinco de Mayo, something I find mildly amusing. I think it wise to get vaccinated. But I’ll lay in Hell before I carry around a ‘vaccine passport’!

We have reached the state — actually, we reached that point in March of 2020! — that it is more important to fight for freedom and liberty and our constitutional rights than it is to fight this disease! The ‘progressives,’ to whom William Teach refers as “nice fascists”, would surrender all of our freedoms, because they value compliance over liberty.

References

References
↑1 Jill Filipovic is married to a gentleman named Ty McCormick, a senior editor of Foreign Affairs. I always show the proper respect for married ladies by referring to their proper names.
Posted on by

Zeigen Sie uns Ihre Papiere!

We can see where Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) wants to go with this one! Our wannabe dictator tweeted:

The “^AB” at the end of the tweet indicates that it was written by the Governor himself, not one of his minions.

Note that the article from the Louisville Courier-Journal was entitled Kentucky Libertarian Party compares ‘vaccine passports’ to star IDs Jews wore in Holocaust. Vaccine passports, not the vaccine itself.

The Libertarian Party of Kentucky compared coronavirus “vaccine passports” to star-shaped identification badges people of Jewish descent were forced to wear during the Holocaust in a tweet this week, drawing outrage from across the nation.

The post, sent just after 5 p.m. Monday, compared “vaccine passports” – credentials that would show whether a person has received the coronavirus vaccine and would theoretically grant access to businesses and other spaces that will require proof of vaccination before entry – to “the stuff of totalitarian dictatorships” that the party considers a “complete and total violation of human liberty.”

“Are the vaccine passports going to be yellow, shaped like a star, and sewn on our clothes?” the party wrote on Twitter.

The tweet had been reposted more than 4,000 times as of Monday afternoon, with many reposts adding messages disavowing its message. Nearly 7,000 comments were left in response as well, including one from Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt that called the post an “ignorant and shameful comparison” and another from Jewish actor Seth Rogen, who (explicitly) suggested the party take its message elsewhere.

I had, of course, suggested something other than the sewn on yellow stars, something that couldn’t be mistakenly left at home.

Perhaps the Governor’s ideas would sound better in the original German: Zeigen Sie uns Ihre Papiere!

Governor Beshear’s tweet indicates what we might expect from him: he will probably try to issue executive orders mandating that people carry their vaccination records, and, with the General Assembly’s 2021 session ending on March 30th, and Democratic state judges willing to support his authoritarian dictates, Kentuckians will have little protection other than massive public resistance to this bovine feces.

Will you have to update your vaccine passport? The Washington Post noted on Monday that we do not know for how long the vaccine will be effective:

But based on clinical trials, experts do know that vaccine-induced protection should last a minimum of about three months. That does not mean protective immunity will expire after 90 days; that was simply the time frame participants were studied in the initial Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson trials. As researchers continue to study the vaccines, that shelf life is expected to grow.

In the real world, the protection should last quite a bit longer, though the length of time still needs to be determined with further studies, experts said. . . . .

Immunity could also depend on what happens with future variants. If a person were exposed to a variant capable of evading vaccine-induced antibodies, for instance, a vaccine might not be as effective as initially expected, said Lana Dbeibo, an infectious-disease expert at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Although researchers do not yet have all the answers, previous knowledge of other coronaviruses, as well as emerging research about the current strain, may provide clues.

Looking at studies on natural immunity from the coronavirus, experts hypothesize that protective immunity from the vaccines will last at least six to eight months. And if immunity from SARS-CoV-2 ends up being similar to other seasonal coronaviruses, such as “common colds,” it is even possible the vaccines could provide protection for up to a year or two before requiring a booster, the experts said.

So, what? Should we have to have our booster shot record on the passports as well? How often? Six to eight months? Maybe up to two years?

But, what the Hell, it’s only one more bit, one tiny little bit, of government control over our individual lives, right?

Posted on by

Fighting Fascist Governors

Not content just to order Kentuckians to wear face masks everywhere, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) wants to push other states to enforce such as well.

Governor to governor: Beshear will ask Holcomb not to lift Indiana’s mask mandate

As of now, Indiana’s mask mandate will expire in early April. Gov. Beshear says that’s concerning for Kentucky.

By Brian Planalp | March 29, 2021 at 5:59 PM EDT | Updated March 29 at 6:08 PM

FRANKFORT, Ky. (FOX19) – Gov. Andy Beshear on Monday said he will personally ask Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb to reconsider dropping the state’s mask mandate.

Holcomb announced last week his state’s mask mandate will become a mask advisory on April 6. Each Indiana business will have discretion to require masks in their premises.

Beshear has said he will re-up Kentucky’s mask mandate for another 30 days until the end of April.

So, just what action did Governor Holcomb take?

Eric Holcomb announced Tuesday a number of forthcoming changes, including a change in the mask mandate.

Indiana’s mask mandate will become a “state mask advisory” on April 6, the governor announced. Under the advisory, masks will be recommended.

Masks will still be required in schools through the end of the academic year, he added.

Face coverings will still be mandatory in all state buildings and facilities, and in all COVID-19 vaccination and testing sites though.

Also starting April 6, Gov. Holcomb said restaurants, bars, and nightclubs customers will not be required by the state to stay seated. Six feet of spacing between tables and non-household parties is still recommended, however.

“When I visit my favorite restaurant or conduct a public event, I will continue to wear a mask,” Gov. Holcomb said. “It is the right thing to do. Hoosiers who take these recommended precautions will help us get to what I hope is the tail end of this pandemic.”

Local governments and private businesses can choose to enforce stricter guidelines, the governor said.

In other words, Mr Holcomb will go from ordering everybody to wear a mask to asking people, recommending to people, that they wear masks in public contact situations. That’s what should have been done from the very beginning.

As we noted previously, Governor Beshear vetoed Senate Bill 1, which placed a maximum thirty day limit on the Governor’s executive orders, beyond which they could not be renewed without the consent of the General Assembly, our state legislature. The legislature, in which the Republicans hold ‘super’ majorities in both chambers, overrode Mr Beshear’s vetoes, at which point the Governor filed suit to declare the General Assembly’s actions unconstitutional.[1]Republican candidates campaigned against the Governor’s executive orders during the 2020 election campaigns, and the voters of the Commonwealth rewarded the GOP with a 75-25 majority in the … Continue reading

Sadly, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd, a long-time opponent of the previous Governor, Matt Bevin, a Republican, issued a temporary restraining order against the new laws. Judge Shepherd is elected only by the voters in Franklin County, where the state capital of Frankfort sits, and is much more Democratic in party organization than the Commonwealth as a whole. In effect, the voters of Franklin County have exercised an outsized influence over regulations for the entire state.

Judge Shepherd has yet to rule in the lawsuit, so, with the injunction in place, the laws passed by the General Assembly are being held in abeyance without any legal decision as to their constitutionality.

Once Judge Shepherd does rule, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, will appeal the decision when it goes against the legislature — which we all know it will — to the state Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals is a friendlier venue for conservatives, but their decisions can then be appealed to the state Supreme Court, which is officially non-partisan but is, in practice, controlled by Democrats.

What will happen? The Democrats will drag out the legal battles for months, hoping that the epidemic is over by then, which means that the Governor will be exercising dictatorial power throughout it.

But while the Reichsstatthalter tries to exercise dictatorial power, the public are turning against it. I was in a store last Wednesday, one which I will decline to name to keep the Reichsstatthalter from sending the Geheime Staatspolizei to stomp down on the owner, in which there was no ‘mask required’ sign on the door, and in which none of the staff I observed were wearing masks. And this story from the Lexington Herald-Leader, included several photos of people working on the clean-up efforts in Beattyville and Lee County from the devastating floods earlier this month, and most of the people shown in group situations were not wearing masks. To paraphrase the old expression, the “people are voting with their feet,” in the Bluegrass State, the people are voting with their bare faces.

Personally? If I am entering a facility in which the private property owner is requiring a face mask, I wear a face mask. If the private property owner does not so require, I do not. If there is such a requirement, but it is being ignored by others, I don’t wear the mask. And I never wear one outside, but, to tell the truth, in my mostly rural setting, I am almost always well more than six feet away from other people.

It does make some sense to wear a mask, though perhaps not as much as the left claim. However, it also makes sense to fight tyranny, because our rights, once lost, are difficult to regain. If masks not being mandatory increases the risks of contracting the virus, then that is one of the costs of liberty and freedom.

I have said it many times before: if Governor Beshear had asked Kentuckians to wear masks, he would have gotten a lot more compliance and a lot less resistance. But when he goes in for dictatorial controls, ordering churches to close,[2]After we were so graciously allowed to return to church, I saw going to Mass as having become almost as much of a political act of resistance as a religious one. Though I was a very regular attendee … Continue reading and then sending state troopers to record the license numbers and vehicle identification numbers of cars in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday of all days, and deliberately excluding the legislature from his decision-taking process, he has to be resisted, he has to be fought.

References

References
↑1 Republican candidates campaigned against the Governor’s executive orders during the 2020 election campaigns, and the voters of the Commonwealth rewarded the GOP with a 75-25 majority in the state House of Representatives, an increase of 14 seats, and a 30-38 advantage in the state Senate, an increase of two seats in an election in which only 19 of the seats were up for election. Governor Beshear likes to claim that the polls show the public support his measures, but in the only poll that actually counts, the one on election day, the voters decisively rejected his actions.
↑2 After we were so graciously allowed to return to church, I saw going to Mass as having become almost as much of a political act of resistance as a religious one. Though I was a very regular attendee at Mass before, I have not missed a Sunday since then.
Posted on by

Big Brother will be watching you!

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ran his mouth the other day about going from a gasoline tax to a mileage tax:

Vehicle mileage tax could be on the table in infrastructure talks, Buttigieg says

By Thomas Franck | Friday, March 26 2021 | 10:29 AM EDT | Updated 4:57 PM EDT

  • Pete Buttigieg, the Transportation secretary, said a vehicle mileage tax could be on the table in infrastructure talks.

  • He contended that President Joe Biden’s forthcoming plans to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges and waterways would lead to a net gain for the U.S. taxpayer.

  • “I’m hearing a lot of appetite to make sure that there are sustainable funding streams,” Buttigieg said. A mileage tax “shows a lot of promise.”

A vehicle mileage tax could be on the table in talks about how to finance the White House’s expected multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure proposal, according to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Buttigieg, who spoke with CNBC’s Kayla Tausche on Friday, also contended that President Joe Biden’s forthcoming plans to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges and waterways would lead to a net gain for the U.S. taxpayer and not a net outlay.

“When you think about infrastructure, it’s a classic example of the kind of investment that has a return on that investment,” he said. “That’s one of many reasons why we think this is so important. This is a jobs vision as much as it is an infrastructure vision, a climate vision and more.”

He also weighed in on several potential revenue-generating options to fund the project. He spoke fondly of a mileage levy, which would tax travelers based on the distance of the journey instead of on how much gasoline they consume.

“A so-called vehicle-miles-traveled tax or mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be a way to do it,” he said.

Democrats have slowly pivoted away from a gasoline tax in favor of a mileage tax amid a simultaneous, climate friendly effort to encourage consumers to drive electric cars.

This really isn’t all that new: it was in either Oregon or Washington that such was proposed a few years ago, because higher gas mileage cars and electric vehicles were depressing gasoline tax revenues.

But a mileage tax has an obvious drawback: how do you determine mileage, unless the government mandates GPS units on every vehicle, and tracks your travel?

This is what a mileage tax would mean!

Of course, what it would also mean would be backyard mechanics who find ways to disconnect the GPS, so you can leave the damned thing at home for half or more of your trips. Big Brother will insist on GPS units without which your vehicle can’t be started, but it won’t take hackers long to find ways around that. Big Brother would need to find ever more intrusive ways to track your travels, such as satellites which scan vehicles and determine which ones have the GPS disconnected, to send the Geheime Staatspolizei to stop and arrest you.

It could be something simpler, such as having to track your odometer, and file that with your income taxes, but I’ve seen plenty of vehicles in which the odometer did not work. And, in older vehicles, it’s ridiculously easy to disconnect the damned thing.

But, however it works, one thing is certain: for it to work, the government has to be able to watch you, to track your every movement, because mileage taxes can’t work unless they track your mileage!

Posted on by

Ve need to see your papers!

It seems that President Joe Biden and his Administration are very concerned, very concerned! about how Americans are going to prove that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. There are just so many ways that such could be documented, that I’m surprised that no one has yet suggested the very simple way that the German government found in the late 1930s.[1]I suppose that I have to note here that yes, I am using sarcasm; too many people take things so deathly seriously.

From The Washington Post:

‘Vaccine passports’ are on the way, but developing them won’t be easy

White House-led effort tries to corral more than a dozen initiatives

By Dan Diamond, Lena H. Sun and Isaac Stanley-Becker | March 28, 2021 | 11:00 AM EDT

The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials — often referred to as “vaccine passports” — that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen.

The effort has gained momentum amid President Biden’s pledge that the nation will start to regain normalcy this summer and with a growing number of companies — from cruise lines to sports teams — saying they will require proof of vaccination before opening their doors again.

The administration’s initiative has been driven largely by arms of the Department of Health and Human Services, including an office devoted to health information technology, said five officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the effort. The White House this month took on a bigger role coordinating government agencies involved in the work, led by coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients, with a goal of announcing updates in coming days, said one official.

I was initially fooled when I saw the tweet by William Teach, which used a photo of an American passport as the illustration. I had originally thought that this was going to be a story about how American passports could be stamped to notify foreign countries that a traveler had been vaccinated.

But nope, I was wrong: the story was about how Americans will prove internally that they had been vaccinated!

The White House declined to answer questions about the passport initiative, instead pointing to public statements that Zients and other officials made this month.

“Our role is to help ensure that any solutions in this area should be simple, free, open source, accessible to people both digitally and on paper, and designed from the start to protect people’s privacy,” Zients said at a March 12 briefing.

The initiative has emerged as an early test of the Biden administration, with officials working to coordinate across dozens of agencies and a variety of experts, including military officials helping administer vaccines and health officials engaging in international vaccine efforts.

Count on it: as the Biden Administration wants to continue pushing vaccination, they will concomitantly push employers to require proof of vaccination before allowing people to work. The left have no interest, no interest at all, in enforcing existing law requiring people to prove that they are eligible to work under our existing immigration laws, but, damn it, you’d better be vaccinated!

I had frequently complained about the Obama Administration’s passage of the HITECH Act, which required that all medical records be digitized, so that your next physician could easily obtain your medical records from your past doctors, noting that there will never be enough safeguards that hackers won’t be able to break through them. It would only make sense that, if you are a candidate for a job, that a company, if it could, might want to check your medical records to see if you had even been treated for mental illness or had diabetes or a heart condition that could drive up their medical care costs, or which might indicate that you were more prone to missing time from work due to illness. While I’m sure that would be illegal, there would be ‘dark’ companies which might be willing to provide such a service to established human resources departments.

But now? The Biden Administration wants to have a way in which people can prove they had been vaccinated, and the only reason for that is to punish those who have not.

Those initiatives — such as a World Health Organization-led global effort and a digital pass devised by IBM that is being tested in New York state — are rapidly moving forward, even as the White House deliberates about how best to track the shots and avoid the perception of a government mandate to be vaccinated.

One of the teams working on vaccine passports is the Vaccination Credential Initiative, a coalition endeavoring to standardize how data in vaccination records is tracked.

If there’s a standardization of data in how vaccination records are tracked, then they will be tracked, and the notion that they will “avoid the perception of a government mandate to be vaccinated” will simply be propaganda. If the records can be tracked, they will be tracked, and you can count on the Biden Administration, as well as states with Democratic Governors, who have never shied away from intrusive and unconstitutional mandates to fight COVID-19, to use every tool they have to force compliance.

“The busboy, the janitor, the waiter that works at a restaurant, wants to be surrounded by employees that are going back to work safely — and wants to have the patrons ideally be safe as well,” said Brian Anderson, a physician at Mitre, a nonprofit company that runs federally funded research centers, who is helping lead the initiative. “Creating an environment for those vulnerable populations to get back to work safely — and to know that the people coming back to their business are ‘safe,’ and vaccinated — would be a great scenario.”

This was, of course, the justification for the mask mandates, that you must wear them to protect other people. If you refused to wear a mask, you were harming other people, because the assumption was that you carried the virus. And the vaccination ‘passports’ will have the same underlying assumption: if you have not been vaccinated, you are a carrier.

There’s a lot more at the original, but there is part of one last paragraph I need to quote. An official, speaking anonymously, said that:

some of the considerations include how to adjust for the spread of variants, how booster shots would be tracked and even questions about how long immunity lasts after getting a shot. There’s “a lot to think through,” the official said.

And there it is: it’s not just getting your two-shot vaccine this year, but the government will want to track you, and your movements, every time the CDC decides that there’s another variant out there, and that you require periodic booster shots or re-vaccination.

“It’s for our own good,” we will be told, and there will be plenty of sheeple out there, ready and willing to go along with the Mandates of Our Betters.

I guess that we’ll need a new forearm tattoo every year!

References

References
↑1 I suppose that I have to note here that yes, I am using sarcasm; too many people take things so deathly seriously.