SCOTUS Gets One Decision Right

The Supreme Court has, thankfully, affirmed the federal government does not have the authority to force average citizens to get a vaccine.

The heart of our health care system has always been that people and their doctors have the right, even the duty, to make their private, personal health care decisions based on their unique circumstances. The mandate runs counter to that foundational value.

CDC has recently conceded vaccinations don’t do anything to protect against the newest version of the virus. They say that natural immunity does more to protect us than a vaccine, but still insist you need to be vaccinated, even if you have had it. They also admit that, even if you have had the shots, you can still get it and still pass it on.

Vaccines reportedly help you to get a milder case, when you do get it, but they are not vaccines in the traditional sense. We were told a “lie” that said, if we get the vax, we won’t get Covid, can’t spread it, and can live a normal life. None of that was true.

Anyone who questions vaccine efficacy is in danger of being labeled an anti-vaxxer or conspiracy theorist. Yet, in the past month I have had appointments with three separate doctors. Each of them independently brought up the subject of Covid, said that we had handled the pandemic disastrously, and criticized the vaccines as ineffective and untested. None of the three have gotten the vaccine themselves. All have had Covid, so have natural immunity.

Mandatory vaccinations would be a new low in individual freedom in America. If government can force you to get a shot, what can’t they do? We have already seen most of our key liberties violated with lockdowns, banning church, etc. If we literally allow government to force citizens to get a shot, well, it is game over.

We let people go out and about without any medical intervention at all with other diseases that kill people. The flu and AIDs are two examples. You don’t have to lockdown at home or wear a mask.

Most children get some important vaccines to be able to attend school. But they can choose not to attend public school. In Nevada, which seems typical, kids need to be vaccinated for measles, tetanus, diphtheria, mumps, and rubella. Anyone younger than 23 and enrolled it higher ed as a freshman must also submit proof of immunity against meningitis. There are exceptions for children with religious or medical reasons. It is worth discussing, at another time, what should be the policy on vaccines for children.

Adults are a separate issue. They are essentially never forced to get vaccines just to be able to live their lives. Can you think of a vaccine you have been forced to get as just an average person? A Covid mandate would be an entirely new class of governmental control over our lives.

The restrictions on our freedom, in the name of health, are not a function of a unique deadly disease. They are a function of a uniquely anti-freedom cohort running the show in Washington and many state capitals. They claim it is all for your own good. Nonsense. That is what autocrats always say.

We have vaccines largely because of President Trump. And that is great. But we should not be forced to take any medicine if we have legitimate moral, health, or religious reasons not to.

About 145 million Americans have had Covid. They have natural immunity that is far superior to any provided by a vaccine. The want us to take the vaccine so we will get used to being told what to do. They want to set a precedent. And they want to give the drug companies additional profits. Do you think it is a coincidence that the 5th most widely held stock among members of the House and Senate is…. Wait for it… Pfizer? If you believe that is coincidence, I know a Nigerian prince to whom you should send your bank account information.

Get a vaccine or don’t. It should be up to you.

The Biden Administration said, less than a year ago, that they would not require vaccinations, would not issue a mandate, and did not have the authority to do so. Then they suddenly did it anyway. Fortunately, for once, SCOTUS defended our rights. It is sad that they even had to.

President Biden is Blaming Everyone Else for Surging Inflation

Flyover

  • Jan. 12, 2022
  • 1-min read

This article appears at The Hill and can be read in its entirety there: The Hill.

“Americans paid more for everything this Christmas, from toys to turkeys. But this “Bah, humbug” reality didn’t start with the Christmas season. Only 1.4 percent when Joe Biden took the presidential oath last January, year-over-year inflation has come in at 5 percent or more for 7 consecutive months. We know inflation is a growing problem because President Biden has repeatedly gone out of his way to shift the blame away from his administration.

“Anyone who fills up at a gas pump, for example, knows what a big bite increasing gas prices are taking. President Biden blames higher energy prices on oil and gas producers. As reported in November: ‘In a letter to FTC chairman Lina Kahn, Biden claimed “there is mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil and gas companies.”

“Having pledged during the campaign to eliminate fossil fuels from our energy future, the president’s hostility to conventional energy was obvious on Inauguration Day. That was before he axed the Keystone XL pipeline and took no fewer than 24 other actions that raised energy prices. And yet, President Biden won’t fess up about the effect his policies have had on energy prices.”

Screen Grab, CDC

Conceit, Lies, Greed, & the COVID Debacle

By J Robert Smith

  • Jan. 10, 2022
  • 1-min read

Hubris, not COVID, presents the greater existential threat to America.

If you haven’t seen the CDC map of COVID (CDC Interactive Map: Community Transmission in the US by County), it’s practically all red, meaning transmission is at its highest level (see above). The U.S. is awash in COVID infections. After nearly two years –- and heaven knows how much money and resources spent and how much wreckage –- COVID hasn’t been whipped, as laughable old Joe Biden vowed. In fact, as viruses do, COVID is spawning variants.

The saving grace is that the Omicron strain appears to be milder, signaling a wind-down. Hospitalizations and deaths from Omicron appear lower.

Per the virology, viruses “shift” or “drift.” Drifted viruses change gradually, allowing your immune system to provide “cross-protection.” Shifted viruses (COVID) represent an “abrupt, major change” and can trigger epidemics or pandemics. Viruses typically drift, because killing off hosts isn’t much of a survival strategy. Nature, not man, is resolving the contagion, as was the case with the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19. For sensible people, that should be a sobering realization.

Yet, sensibleness isn’t so common. The critical question is: Will enough of us draw the right lessons from the pandemic or are we doomed to repeat our mistakes again and again? And not just mistakes in the public health sphere.

The complete article can be found here: American Thinker. Thank you!

Biden Thinks Racism Is OK

By Rob Meyne

  • Jan. 5, 2022
  • 3-min read

A major change was announced by the new Biden Administration nearly a year ago. It represented a significant policy shift, a fundamental change in philosophy, but received relatively little notice. Team Biden, led by Susan Rice, said that, moving forward, the federal policy would be to administer laws and regulations with an intention to pursue racial equity rather than equality.

Equality means that every person is entitled to equal opportunity to pursue the education, employment, and support that allows us to succeed and reach our potential. If everyone gets equal opportunity, then we are only separated by our talent, intelligence, and ambition.

Biden has rejected that philosophy, committing instead to equality of results for groups identified by race, gender, and ethnicity. Equity insists that groups, divided by factors of importance to leftists, matter more than individuals. People are thus entitled to more governmental largesse, if they happen to be black or Hispanic, than they would be if they were white.

If that sounds like an indefensible policy in a free nation, it is. A commitment to equity means that groups should share resources, benefits, status, and wealth equally, regardless of their own talent, effort, or performance.

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What Muslim Ban?

By Dr. Robert Scott & Rob Meyne

  • Jan. 4, 2022
  • 4-min read

Supporters of a leftist, pro-government, anti-freedom agenda are in charge in Washington. They control both the legislative and executive branches and hold all important leadership positions in the Democratic Party. Their top priorities are policies that are not necessarily popular with the American people but are essential dogma for the far left.

Examples abound, but consider just one: their border policy. Americans don’t support open borders. Yet Democratic leaders have chosen not to enforce immigration laws, to welcome illegals without conducting background checks, do not determine if they are political refugees, do not test them for COVID, and relocate them in communities across the country.

Florida alone was the destination of more than 70 government flights, in the dark of night, unscheduled and unannounced, moving in illegal aliens collected at the border. The Biden Administration does not even notify local officials or coordinate with them. If that doesn’t constitute an “open border,” then the term has no meaning.

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Faith in Government Led to COVID Failures

By Rob Meyne

  • Dec. 27, 2021
  • 5-min read

Someday, the full story of COVID’s effect on America will be written. If it is compiled competently, and truthfully, it will describe some successes but also a ton of mixed messages, censorship, policy reversals, selective reliance on “science,” and assaults on our rights.

There may be debates about the effectiveness of how we responded to COVID, but there is no dispute it was an astonishingly draconian assertion of governmental power and control over our lives. You will recall President Trump grudgingly accepted the need for “15 days to flatten the curve,” which led to a near-complete shutdown of our economy and normal life. At the same time, he endorsed strategies to protect those who were at greatest risk and initiated Project Warp Speed to develop a vaccine in record time.

Following that initial period, and nearly alone among our leaders, President Trump urged a quick return to normal life. Predictably, the state and local governments, as well as federal regulators, who managed our COVID response fell in love with lockdowns and mandates, and they continued long after the President supported them.

If you rely on your memory, rather than mainstream media, you may recall Biden and Harris both discouraged people from getting a vaccine. Astonishingly, today’s preferred media/Democratic Party narrative is that President Trump and his supporters are anti-vaccine Neanderthals, whose reticence is keeping COVID alive. Quite the contrary: President Trump led development of a vaccine, has promoted it, got the vax himself, and the groups with the lowest vaccination rates are Blacks and Hispanics, groups that generally vote Democratic.

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Anti-Intellectuals

By Dr. Robert Scott

  • Dec. 15, 2021
  • 2-min read

Especially as a young man, I enjoyed spending hours reading books and short stories written by Isaac Asimov. His writings were adventurous and scientifically (for the most part) possible. He was an endorser of technology that brought more jobs by the end of the 20th century than we had people at the beginning of the century. He appealed to the economist in me.

Asimov wrote (Newsweek, January 21, 1980; re-posted on Medium: “A Cult of Ignorance”) an article critical of people who considered college professors and other highly educated people to be elitists. Snobs. He cited a few examples of famous people who denigrated college professors. It seemed like a good point, especially to a young college professor.

Today, I hear disdain for those who are unvaccinated. They are described as “misinformed” or “ignorant.” They should follow the science. (Which apparently means they should follow Tony Fauci, who says “I am science.”) Yet, recent reports from the CDC showed about 30% of healthcare workers have not been vaccinated. This includes many doctors and nurses that logic says would have some knowledge of science (even if not of “Fauci-science”).

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A U.S. Senator Honors Communists: Guess Who?

By J. Robert Smith

  • Dec. 14, 2021
  • 2-min read

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal is helping his state’s communist party celebrate it’s 102nd birthday. As the old saying goes, “Show me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.”

So, Blumenthal would swear he isn’t a commie, but, heck, he definitely has sympathies.

From American Greatness, December 13:

“Blumenthal stipulated that while one doesn’t have “to agree with anyone and everyone” and every party, he was happy “to honor the great tradition of activism and standing up for individual workers that is represented by the three honorees here.”

And to give you a sense of the moral sewer that “Progressivism” has tumbled into, and the disinterest or deliberate ignoring of communism’s evil and destructive impact on the world over the past century, Blumenthal actually suggested to those gathered for the Connecticut Communist Party’s party that – Shh!!! – Republicans are the real threat to liberty and God-given rights.

Again from the American Greatness article:

“Blumenthal told the attendees that the enemies of Communism (Republicans) are trying to ‘restrict Democracy.’

“Our opponents are trying to restrict Democracy. They are threatening the right to vote in state after state, congressional district after district all around the country, and the John Lewis Voting rights Act,” he complained. The senator called any restrictions on voting undemocratic, and vowed to fight against them.”

No matter that the history is irrefutable: Communists (and let’s throw in their kissing cousins, fascists) killed an estimated 100 million people from the start of the 1917 Russian Revolution forward. Communists crushed hundreds of millions of lives though unceasing oppression. It is, without a doubt, the greatest evil unleashed in human history. One can almost characterize it as “satanic.”

For Dick Blumenthal – who lied about his service in Vietnam, by the way – to honor and celebrate communists is on par with honoring and celebrating Nazis.

But that’s no longer shocking from progressive Democrats nowadays.

A War with Russia?
Over the Ukraine?
Good Heavens, Why?

By J. Robert Smith

  • Dec. 8, 2021
  • 2-min read

The Ukraine is in Russia’s crosshairs. Vladimir Putin is massing troops, weapons, and equipment along the Ukrainian border. Putin doesn’t want Ukraine to become part of NATO or align with it in any way. He regards that as a direct threat to Russia.

Democrats, neocons, and military contractors are squawking. “We can’t let Russia invade the Ukraine,” they cry. “We must slap sanctions on Russia, make Putin and his fellow oligarchs feel pain,” they say with blood in their eyes. “And if all else fails, the U.S. needs to intervene militarily. Send troops! Bomb Russia!”

Anyone outside the DC establishment think this is sheer madness? Must we explain why a rush to confrontation and conflict with the Russians is folly?

Proving that the contemporary madness plaguing our society isn’t exclusive to Democrats and the left, Mississippi GOP senator Roger Wicker isn’t ruling out nuclear war over the developing Ukrainian crisis.

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The Left’s Favorite Issues

By Rob Meyne

  • Dec. 7, 2021
  • 3-min read

Every Washington solution currently being offered, by the Party that controls the legislative and executive branches, would give more power to government. They all call for a bigger role for government in controlling our lives and the economy, and, by definition, less individual freedom.

If you want to fully understand what is happening on two issues, which you hear about daily, all you need to do is remember who is in charge and what they want. Call them leftists, socialists, progressives, or whatever, they all favor more government and less freedom. So, they enthusiastically champion issues that give them an excuse to implement expensive governmental programs.

Two “dream” issues for the left are COVID and climate. They provide perfect excuses for governmental, corporate, and non-profit elites to do exactly what they have always wanted. These issues also allow them to say, “it is for our own good, the future of the world is at stake, and we if we save even one life,” etc. The left loves to condescend to us, and to criticize anyone who dares to disagree with them. If you have a different opinion, according to them, you are not just mistaken, you are vile, filthy, and evil. They don’t usually even bother to criticize our opinions. They find it more effective to just vilify us.

If you believe the leftist/socialist agenda just happens to be what we need to combat climate change, or to handle COVID, then you are, with respect, naïve beyond belief.

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