Saul Alinsky, Let’s Go Brandon, and the End of the Biden Presidency

The breadth, width, and speed of the “Let’s Go Brandon!”

 phenomenon shows the Biden Administration is toast. 

by John Conlin for American Greatness

Joe Biden’s presidency is in existential trouble. In fact, nine months in and it is already toast. The coup de grace is a silly little phrase, “Let’s Go, Brandon!”

For those few who don’t know, you can go here to get the full story but in a very short period of time “Let’s Go Brandon!” has become a national Joe Biden joke—and one in which everyone can participate.

As the famous intellectual leader of the Left, Saul Alinsky noted in Rules for Radicals, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Humor and ridicule can be fatal if you can use them against your opponent. There generally is no effective response to it and the more you struggle, the worse it gets.

And that is the situation Biden finds himself with the grassroots explosion of “Let’s Go Brandon!”

Just the other day iTunes reported an anti-Biden song, entitled “Let’s Go, Brandon” by the rapper Loza Alexander had shot to number one on the hip-hop chart. Listen to the lyrics—amazing.

Even more amazing, as of October 19 it was the number two song in all categories and had been for a number of days! Behind only Adele’s latest release.

This is a remarkable situation and one would hope there is at least one Republican consultant who isn’t a dumbass and can see the implications.

Look at who the average hip hop listener is. First, they are young; almost two thirds of the hip hop audience is between the ages of 18-34. Younger people are also the most likely to be living on the lower economic rungs.

Black listeners comprise 46 percent of the hip-hop radio audience, Hispanics make up 25 percent.

They are relatively uninformed, politically speaking—they self-report only a third of them make it a point to watch news shows at some point during the week.

And yet these are the people who have jumped on the “Let’s Go, Brandon!” bandwagon?! It shows the organic and deep roots of this phenomena. Young, ethnic, relatively poor, relatively uniformed and thus most likely relatively non-political and they drove the song to number one in a matter of days!

If this message is resonating with these folks it is yikes-time for Sleepy Joe and one of the most incompetent administrations in recent times. 

It also presents an amazing opportunity for the Republican Party to reach out to an audience they have ignored for far too long.

Although they might not become Republicans anytime soon, there are far more areas of agreement and commonality than not. Let’s start with those commonalities and build from there.

And the biggest, most obvious one is children. Everyone wants a better life for their children—everyone. And the schools many of them have attended and the schools their children are forced to attend are a national disgrace. Everyone knows this is true. Far too many young people’s lives are being destroyed before they even get a chance—and far too many of these kids have black and brown skin.

The vast majority of our schools spend over $20,000 per pupil per year to deliver these life crushing results. How difficult a “sale” is it to reach out to these parents and convince them to support a transformation of public schools by changing how they are funded? Rather than letting the government determine how our tax dollars are spent, give control of 100 percent of it to parents—in some sort of state-regulated environment of course—and watch the world change. 

And as the world changes so will the political landscape. If the Republicans can’t sell giving away $20,000 per kid per year to poor people, then they simply can’t sell.

The breadth, width, and speed of the “Let’s Go Brandon!” phenomenon shows the Biden Administration is toast—whether they know it or not. Can the Republicans capitalize on this and help change the world for the better? God is teeing this one up for them. Let us all hope they can do something with it.

X22, And we Know, and more-Oct 22

 

Top of the evening. Here's tonight's news:

Reality Check: The Republican Party is the Indispensable Last Line

Those who want to save our country would do well to aim their fire at the real enemies of America, not those on our own side who want to save it.

by Rod Thompson for American Greatness

Those who want to save our country would do well to aim their fire at the real enemies of America, not those on their own side who want to save it.

I was the speaker at a large Republican event recently and, inevitably, the grievance was aired in the Q&A portion: “Where’s the Republican Party? They are worthless. They won’t do anything.” 

This is one of the most common refrains on talk radio. Glenn Beck does it almost daily. Steve Deace and his team never stop. Rush used to do it regularly. And therefore, a lot of conservatives and traditionalist Americans think it is true. But is it? 

Exhibit number one in this case is always the failure to repeal Obamacare. That’s where the line of accusation really kicked in. 

They had the House, the Senate, and a president who would sign Obamacare repeal and they did nothing!

This narrative is wholly wrong, however. Contrary to the narrative, the GOP-controlled House did pass a full repeal of Obamacare in 2017—just as promised. Republicans almost unanimously supported it. It went to the Senate, where three Republicans voted against it. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) had not campaigned on repealing Obamacare, however. Collins is from a liberal state and had always supported keeping Obamacare, so there was no broken promise there. But Senator John McCain had campaigned and fundraised every time, including his most recent election, on repealing Obamacare. It was McCain who single-handedly betrayed those who wanted to repeal Obamacare, not the entire party. It failed 51-49, because of one turncoat vote based on what appeared to be the petty reason that he hated President Trump. 

The Glenn Beck version that represents many people’s idea of events is just flat wrong. And this is one of the foundational points for the “Republicans do nothing” criticism. 

But what about one of the ultimate swamp creatures, Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)?

Mitch McConnell is the problem. He can’t be trusted! 

McConnell is maybe the single favorite bogeyman for those who say the Republican Party is the problem. But NPR described his efforts to repeal Obamacare this way: “McConnell, who seemed to exhaust every trick in the procedural playbook to get to this point [of voting], seemed surprised and undercut by the result.” Right, because McCain stabbed him in the back, too. Nevertheless, virtually every judge that President Trump nominated, McConnell pushed through the Senate confirmation process, including changing rules and playing hardball. Even now, he is holding together every GOP Senator to oppose the Left’s craziness. McConnell has been there too long and is hardly trustworthy, but neither is he the locus of the problem. 

But the election was stolen and the Republicans didn’t do anything! 

You sure about that? The Republican-run Arizona Senate ordered a full forensic audit of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million votes, the most comprehensive election audit in the history of the United States, and they stood firm against withering, egregious media attacks and smears almost daily to conclude the audit. There are two other states conducting further election audits against fierce opposition. 

And so far, 14 Republican states have passed tightened election laws. Did you read about Georgia losing Major League Baseball’s All-Star game? That’s because they tightened up Voter ID and vote monitoring. These changes, and more are coming as the RNC and state parties are creating plans to more aggressively monitor and challenge voting in real time in future elections. That’s not nothing. 

But what about now? The country is going down the toilet and Republicans aren’t doing anything! 

Frustration with the direction of our country is understandable, but again the fire is aimed at the wrong people. Republicans have held unanimously against HR 1, against the $3.5 trillion in spending and on other terrible initiatives. Since the Senate is 50-50, neither party can afford a defection. Yet it is the out-of-power GOP that has stopped every bad idea they’ve had the power to stop. That’s not exactly nothing. 

Interestingly, it is the Democrats who cannot keep their party together. Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are the Democrats’ equivalent of John McCain and Mitt Romney to their base. And don’t think for a minute that the Left’s most fervent believers are not saying the same things on the other side about their two “squishes.” AOC and her squad are obviously frustrated they can’t ram through their disastrous schemes. 

Part of the problem is a basic misunderstanding of political parties. In a sense parties, like a representative Republic as a whole, are mirroring their supporters. And they are necessarily broad. So the problem really is all of us. It’s just a lot easier to blame someone else. The American people let it get to this point. 

But this is where we are. And the full stop reality is that the Republican Party is the only remaining American institution not under control of leftists and anti-Americans. The media, academia, public schools, Hollywood, the music industry, every federal government department, most major non-profits, and now, Silicon Valley tech giants, are all controlled by the Left. 

Given that, I often stand amazed that Republicans can ever win anything. But we do. And it is because the GOP is the only organization that has structure in place, from the city to the state to D.C., that will fight the destruction of America. It is far from perfect, and there are plenty of disappointing individual Republicans, but that is the nature of political parties. And given what is arrayed against it, the party has been surprisingly effective. 

Attacking the Republican Party, not individual Republicans, is equivalent to fragging your only defense force. In the end, that only serves the interests of the Left by depressing voter turnout—one of our strengths. Those who want to save our country would do well to aim their fire at the real enemies of America, not those on their own side who want to save it.

 

Article by Stephen Green in PJMedia

BREAKING: Alec Baldwin's Gun Loaded with One Live Round in Place of a Blank

 

Notorious anti-gun Twitter advocate and occasional actor Alec Baldwin was given a real gun to handle on set, one that was supposed to be loaded with blanks, and now one woman is dead and a man injured — how could this have happened?

First, despite reports that Baldwin was using a “prop gun,” that’s dangerously inexact. He was using a real gun being used as a prop, as is often the case in moviemaking.

Somehow a genuine round was loaded into the genuine firearm.

In the email that IATSE [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees] Local 44 sent to its membership, Secretary-Treasurer Anthony Pawluc described the event as an “an accidental weapons discharge” in which “A live single round was accidentally fired on set by the principal actor, hitting both the Director of Photography, Local 600 member Halnya Hutchins, and Director Joel Souza … Local 44 has confirmed that the Props, Set Decoration, Special Effects and Construction Departments were staffed by New Mexico crew members.

A “blank” is a semi-real round. It contains powder for realistic noise and flash, but no bullet (or shot pellets for shotgun blanks).

Still, a blank round can be dangerous at point-blank range because of the wadding used to hold the powder in place.

While shooting a short-lived TV series called Cover Up in 1984, 26-year-old actor Jon-Erik Hexum as a “joke” pretended to commit suicide by firing a blank round into his own temple. He died for real days later after being pronounced brain dead.

Here’s what we don’t know yet about what happened on the set of Rust, and it could make all the difference in whether or not Baldwin faces criminal charges or a civil suit from the family of the deceased: Why was Baldwin firing that pistol at that moment?

 

If you’re pointing a weapon at anyone on set without permission from the armorer, director & 1st AD, then you should be reprimanded for the first offense, fired for the second.

If you do so and harm/kill someone, you should be be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

— Adam Baldwin (@AdamBaldwin) October 22, 2021

 

Note: That’s Hollywood conservative ADAM Baldwin’s tweet, not Alec’s.

If a scene was being shot or rehearsed and Baldwin was doing what he was supposed to be doing, then it would seem this was a tragic mistake. A two-part mistake to be sure, however.

The first mistake was whatever prop master accidentally loaded a live round. The second mistake was one of those deadly sins-of-omission: How could Baldwin or any actor, not check their own not-prop gun to make sure it was loaded correctly.

Recommended: Actor Alec Baldwin Kills One Person, Wounds Another When Prop-Gun ‘Misfires’

Those of with military, police, or just range experience know you always check your load before firing if you didn’t just load it yourself. Or maybe Hollywood has some stupid rule that actors aren’t allowed to check for themselves.

In any case, a similar mistake killed 28-year-old Brandon Lee (son of Bruce) on the set of The Crow in 1993.

But what if Baldwin wasn’t shooting or rehearsing a scene? What if he was goofing around, pointing and firing a pistol he hadn’t first checked? That’s the kind of recklessly deadly behavior that ought to get a person put in front of a jury — assuming Hollywood fame couldn’t shield them from justice.

Again: We don’t know what happened on that set Thursday.

It will be telling over the next few hours or days what we see happen next, whether the Hollywood people involved circle the wagons, or there’s an honest investigation.

Baldwin has already been taken in and released, so maybe there’s no there-there for the star of Hunt for Red October and 30 Rock.

For his part, Baldwin tweeted earlier today:

There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours. I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family. My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.

All that can be said at this early hour in the process is that a propmaster made a terrible mistake, and that Hollywood needs much better on-set rules for firearms handling — and much better training for the know-it-all actors who handle them.

 

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/10/22/breaking-alec-baldwins-gun-loaded-with-one-live-round-in-place-of-a-blank-n1526063 

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Special Counsel Filing Reveals More About Alfa Bank Conspiracy Theory

This indicates the Alfa Bank angle of the John Durham investigation extends beyond Michael Sussmann and that several more players might still face potential criminal jeopardy.

Margot Cleveland reporting for The Federalist

Yesterday, Special Counsel John Durham’s team responded to a perfunctory motion filed by defense attorneys in the criminal case against Michael Sussmann. Durham’s response reveals details about the breadth of the special counsel’s investigation and suggests two things: More charges will be forthcoming related to the Clinton campaign’s attempt to sell the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory, and the special counsel’s office has likely used similar investigative techniques to unravel further misconduct underlying the Crossfire Hurricane and Robert Mueller investigations.

A little over a month ago, Durham filed a one-count criminal indictment against Sussmann, a Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign lawyer. That indictment charged that Sussmann lied to FBI General Counsel James Baker when providing him three “white papers” and various data files that purported to establish a secret communication channel between the Trump organization and the Russian Alfa Bank.

Before the 2016 election, the Clinton team had peddled claims to the media that there was a covert communication channel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank. Slate published a detailed story on this conspiracy theory the week before the election.

The indictment, however, focused on Sussmann’s attempts to feed the false story to the FBI through his friend Baker. Although the Clinton campaign was paying Sussmann for his work, including the time he spent meeting with Baker, according to the indictment, Sussmann falsely claimed that “he was not doing his work on the aforementioned allegations ‘for any client.’”

In fact, according to the indictment, Sussmann was acting on behalf of “a U.S. technology industry executive at a U.S. Internet company” and “the Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign.” The indictment further alleged that after the election Sussmann lied to a second agency—presumably the CIA—again repeating the false claim that he was not presenting his work on behalf of a client.

While the indictment included but a single count of lying to a government agent, the charging document ran 27 pages long and revealed the origins of the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory and the role other unnamed actors played in the scheme.

According to the indictment, to craft the so-called white papers on the Trump-Alfa connection, an unnamed “Tech Executive I” “used his access at multiple organizations to gather and mine public and non-public Internet data regarding Trump and his associates, with the goal of creating a ‘narrative’ regarding the candidate’s ties to Russia.” Tech Executive I, the indictment alleged, “directed and caused employees of two companies in which he had an ownership interest,” identified as “Internet Company-2” and “Internet Company-3,” “to search and analyze their holdings of public and non-public internet data for derogatory information on Trump.”

Also involved were two university researchers, identified only as “Researcher-1” and “Researcher-2.” Those individuals, Durham claims, “searched broadly through Internet data for any information about Trump’s potential ties to Russia. At that time, the university at which the researchers work was finalizing a federal government contract.” Significantly, in doing this research, they both accessed “data of an Executive Branch office of the U.S. government,” which “Internet Company-I had come to possess as a sub-contractor in a sensitive relationship between the U.S. government and another company.”

The indictment also included excerpts from various email exchanges indicating the team compiling the white papers that Sussmann handed to the FBI did not believe the data showed a secret Trump-Alfa network. The supposed standard-bearers of journalism ignored or glossed over these revelations and instead spun the single charge against the Clinton campaign lawyer as proof that there was no big there there in the special counsel’s investigation into the investigators.

On Wednesday, however, we learned that just on the Alfa angle of his investigation, Durham has compiled an overwhelming amount of information. The revelation came buried in the special counsel’s response to Sussmann’s “Motion for a Bill of Particulars,” in which the defendant asked the court to order the government to provide more details about his supposed crime.

Among other things, Sussmann asked the court to order the government to identify “the exact words of Mr. Sussmann’s alleged false statement,” the “specific context in which the statement was made,” “what portion of the statement is allegedly false,” and what various words in the indictment meant, such as “his work” and “acting on behalf of any client.”

In response to Sussmann’s motion, the special counsel’s office argued that “the grand jury’s detailed, 27-page speaking indictment more than adequately informs the defendant of the charges against him and provides him with sufficient information and facts to prepare his defense at trial.” Durham added, “all or nearly all of the information that the defendant seeks either has already been, or soon will be, made available to him through the government’s discovery,” and therefore the motion for a bill of particulars fails.

On the latter point, the special counsel stressed that the government had already produced “more than 6,000 documents, comprising approximately 81,000 pages.” That discovery included, the brief explained, “documents received in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to fifteen separate individuals, entities, and organizations—including among others, political organizations, a university, university researchers, an investigative firm, and numerous companies.”

Additionally, Durham explained, the government is working expeditiously to declassify large volumes of materials,” including, “more than 30 declassified reports of interviews conduct in the course of this aspect of the Special Counsel’s investigation,” “emails and other documents shown to witnesses during the above-referenced interviews,” and notes the investigators took during those interviews. In addition, the government intends to provide “transcripts of grand jury testimony for multiple witnesses,” and “the majority of the FBI’s electronic ‘case file’ pertaining to its investigation of the Russian Bank-1 allegations.”

The breadth of information gathered, through subpoenas and grand jury testimony, and the targets of those subpoenas, which include “political organizations” (plural), and “an investigative firm,” coupled with the detailed allegations included in the Sussmann indictment, suggests the Alfa Bank angle of the Durham investigation extends beyond Sussmann and that several more players might still face potential criminal jeopardy.

A second key takeaway from these passages emerges when one considers the framing of this evidence as related to “this aspect of the Special Counsel’s investigation.”

The investigation into the Alfa Bank hoax likely pales in comparison to the probe that has been underway for some two-plus years into the numerous other Russia-collusion threads weaved by the Clinton campaign and the Crossfire Hurricane team. And Sussmann’s white papers are no Steele dossier, meaning there will be a lot more evidence to sift through and use to find the truth underlying Spygate and the culpability of the various players involved. Here, the power of subpoenas and grand jury questioning will prove vital.

It already has, as the indictment against Sussmann reveals, but more is to come—and not just related to Alfa Bank.

CDC Wants Your Vaccinated 5-Year-Old Masked Indefinitely

CDC Wants Your Vaccinated 5-Year-Old Masked Indefinitely

Director Rochelle Walensky characterizes the potential unmasking of even vaccinated children as being "complacent."

Matt Welch for Reason 10.20.2021 5:20 PM

(BING GUAN/REUTERS/Newscom)

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was asked Wednesday morning at a White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing to explain what impact expanding vaccination to 5- to 11-year-olds would have on masking in schools. "You can speak to sort of the benefits along those lines," Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller prompted her.

Here's how Walensky responded:

After we have authorization from [the Food and Drug Administration] and recommendations from CDC we will be working to scale up pediatric vaccination. That said, it will take some time, and as I just noted, as we head into these winter months, we know we cannot be complacent. We also know that from previous data that schools that have had masks in place were three-and-a-half times less likely to have school outbreaks requiring school closure. So, right now we are going to continue to recommend masks in all schools for all people in those schools and we will look forward to scaling out pediatric vaccination during this period of time.

So the "benefits" of vaccinating kids is that kids will be vaccinated; otherwise nothing changes.

Walensky and the CDC have serially misrepresented the data on which they base their global outlier of a recommendation that kids aged 2 and older wear masks in indoor group settings. But what makes the director's comments today particularly distressing for some parents is that it offers zero off ramp; no numerical set of targets to hit; not even a distant glimmer of light when it comes to the increasingly grim and questionably scientific practice of concealing children's faces at a developmentally critical age.

"Please find a parameter to unmask children," responded infectious disease specialist Monica Gandhi of UC San Francisco. Or as Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo wrote yesterday, "Masks in schools were meant to be a temporary measure. It is good policy and practice to establish off-ramps for interventions that aren't meant to be permanent….We should be able to answer what conditions would enable an end."

My 6-year-old, who has spent nearly one-quarter of her life wearing masks in group indoor settings, attends a school where all the adults are vaccinated, kids and adults alike get tested once a week, and (per state requirement, as directly influenced by the CDC) everyone over age 2 wears masks, even outdoors. We live in a moderately high vaccination zip code (68 percent of all residents with at least one shot, 64 percent fully vaxxed), in a city with a lower case rate than all but six states, whose positive rate among regularly tested, unvaccinated public school students since mid-September is a minuscule 0.23 percent. I would like to know what any of those numbers need to look like in order for my daughter to see her teachers' mouths again.

Instead, as Harvard associate public health professor Joseph G. Allen wrote in Tuesday's Washington Post, "it's easy to see how schools could sleepwalk into indefinite masking for kids for at least this entire school year."

The coronavirus remains largely an older-person disease, attacking particularly those with pre-existing comorbidities. As of Oct. 20, just 542 of the 723,280 people who the CDC have counted as deaths involving COVID-19 have been under the age of 18, despite that group representing 23 percent of the U.S. population. The two age cohorts in New York City with the lowest cumulative COVID-19 case rates are the ones totally or mostly ineligible for the vaccine: children age 0 to 4 (6,049 per 100,000 people), and children age 5 to 12 (9,220 per 100,000).

As Allen points out, "In highly vaccinated New England, the hospitalization rate right now for kids under 17 is about 7 per 10 million. That is not a typo. At the worst of the delta surge in Florida, the hospitalization rate for this age group was about 1 per 100,000. It has since dropped sharply in that region, and is now approaching 1 per million again." And irresponsible journalistic scaremongeringnotwithstanding, these numbers accelerated downward as school doors opened this fall.

Walensky's refusal to offer parents any future hope runs the risk of doing more than just boosting alcohol sales. As Monica Gandhi points out, it reduces a potential incentive for parents to vaccinate their young'uns. "I think tying availability of the vaccine in children to taking away restrictions in adults and children provides a very positive motivation for everyone," she wrote today.

It also reinforces the growing notion that pandemic restrictions are meted out in proportion to the targets' political power, rather than vulnerability to the disease. "When the 63-year-old governor of NY goes out to crowded bars without a mask, but mandates 2-year-olds (lower risk of severe illness than vax'd governor) wear masks all day long at daycare," noted Democratic New York state legislator Rachel Barnhardt yesterday, referring to some widely circulated photos of Kathy Hochul yukking it up with some Buffalo Bills fans, "it's time for some offramps."

There are entire swaths of the country where the CDC's opinion of school masking matters not. And there are plenty of parents in CDC-obedient cities like New York and Los Angeles who view the microscopic positive-test rates of students as proof that heavy-handed restrictions work. Since the relevant public officials won't answer the question, I'll put it to the mask-happy blue-state parents: At what number—of cases, hospitalizations, vaccines, you name it—will you support allowing developmentally sensitive kids to take the damned masks off?

Biden Forced Americans Into A Game Of Chicken Over Their Livelihoods, And They’re Not Flinching

Somebody's got to give in this game of chicken, and Biden is gambling that it will be you. It's time to make sure he loses that bet.

Kylee Zempel reporting for The Federalist

There’s this iconic scene in the 1984 “Footloose” where Kevin Bacon’s city-boy character Ren McCormack goes head-to-head with his macho antagonist Chuck Cranston to show who’s the bigger man in a game of “chicken.”

The two young men mount tractors on opposite ends of a single-lane road facing each other and drive full speed ahead to see who flinches first. In this hazardous game, one of them must swerve off the path, or both could die in the head-on collision — but the first one to swerve will be dubbed the “chicken” for his cowardice. After Ren’s shoelace gets caught on the throttle, keeping him unwittingly on the path, Chuck embarrassingly barrels off his rig at the bitter end into a ditch of water — right in front of his girlfriend, who subsequently falls in love with the victor.

That scene keeps coming to mind as President Joe Biden’s administration squares off with the American people. The president who promised unity, leadership, and a return to normalcy has challenged you to a game of chicken, is charging at you, and is waiting for you to flinch.

Biden’s Game of Chicken

Nowhere has this intimidation tactic been as clear as with medically coercive vaccine mandates. Near the start of Biden’s tenure, after shots were rolled out quickly thanks to Trump’s efforts, Biden left no doubt about his position: It wasn’t just that vaccines were good, but that everyone who was eligible for a vaccine should get one as soon as possible.

So Americans began doing calculations. Many who knew that their risk factors were heightened prudently jumped in line for the first available shots, but others not so much. Lots of pregnant women paused, unwilling to undertake extra risks quite yet. Many others with natural immunity decided to sit this one out for a while, as did a horde of the young and healthy, who have never been at serious risk of dying from COVID-19.

After shooting up immediately, vaccination numbers then stalled, which didn’t please the Democrat administration that had promised to shut down the virus. Biden’s patience began “wearing thin.”

And so there were talks of vaccine passports. New York City instituted them, and federal bureaucrats such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted them as a potential “path forward” in July. At that time, Biden was toying with the idea of requiring shots, not just for medical workers, but for all federal employees.

Opponents were seeing the writing on the wall. When the ruling class began medically segregating people into first- and second-class citizens, the fight became less about the necessity of universal vaccination and more about the importance of medical freedom. And instead of falling in lockstep with the administration’s goals, Biden’s detractors began piling onto the opposing tractor.

Biden didn’t veer. He forged full speed ahead with the declaration that in addition to all federal workers, all private workers for companies with at least 100 employees would need to get the jab or get endlessly tested, reportedly affecting more than 80 million private-sector Americans.

Despite this fascist announcement being nothing more than a press release, companies caved to the president’s wishes left and right. From hospitals and major airlines, to police departments and universities, head honchos adopted Biden’s refrain: Get a COVID shot or be fired. With alarming authoritarianism, Biden and the private sector chiefs he deputized to enforce his vaxx ambitions went full throttle.

A Refusal to Flinch

Something remarkable has occurred in response. Countless American workers have remained unflinching. Instead of veering off the path, they’ve held the line, turning in their boots, hanging up their scrubs, and unpinning their wings.

While the number of administered vaccine doses trended up slightly at the end of September and beginning of October, the jump wasn’t drastic — and it actually appeared to coincide with a rise in booster shots. According to the data, the number of fully vaxxed Americans has gone up only 3 percentage points since Biden’s fearmongering private-sector declaration more than a month ago on Sept. 9.

Instead, what we’ve seen day after day are brave men and women who either kept driving ahead with worker strikes or counted the cost of medical freedom and opted to completely walk away from their careers. It’s working. The more workers refuse to comply, the more other employees are emboldened to join them. And the more these freedom-fighters pile on, the more their bosses learn things don’t go so smoothly when the employees you rely on for everyday operations quit en masse.

Take what happened with Southwest Airlines, which was forced to cancel several thousand flights just days after it mandated the vaccine for workers. A rumored “sickout” resulted in reportedly only three out of 33 air traffic controllers showing up to work.

Despite Southwest’s denial that the mayhem was a result of its vaxx policy, after several days of chaos, the airline changed course and walked back its pledge to begin putting workers who applied for vaccine exemptions on unpaid leave in December. As The Federalist reported on Wednesday, sources said that part of Southwest’s meltdown was because pilots took their paid sick leave shortly before they were scheduled to be fired.

A San Francisco In-N-Out is displaying the same courage, with the local health department shutting it down for not checking patrons’ vaccination status.

“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” In-N-Out Chief Legal and Business Officer Arnie Wensinger told Newsweek. “We fiercely disagree with any government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business. This is a clear government overreach.”

Noncompliant health workers are quitting or being fired in droves. By Monday, one-third of Chicago’s desperately needed police were reportedly still unvaccinated, opting for unpaid leave over getting the shot. Seattle police officers and firefighters are getting similar treatment. After being fired for refusing to comply with medically coercive mandates, the brave first responders fed the homeless and then marched up to City Hall to return their boots.

The fact is, this is the beginning of the fight, and if Americans chicken out and comply against their convictions, it will be the end of medical freedom. Several thousand workers across a few industries might be expendable to the COVID authoritarians right now, but weak points can only withstand so much pressure. The worker shortage is only getting worse.

Somebody’s got to give in this game of chicken, and Biden is gambling that it will be you. It’s time to make sure he loses that bet. Timid Americans are holding out for a hero, for a reason not to just give in and get this strong-arming over with — but we’ll never escape tyranny by capitulating to it. Be the hero they need. When freedom is at stake, don’t barrel off. Go full throttle.

Federal Reserve to Ban Top Officials From Buying Individual Stocks, Restricting Trading

Federal Reserve to Ban Top Officials From Buying Individual Stocks, Restricting Trading

The Epoch Times 

The Federal Reserve on Thursday banned individual stock purchases by top officials who work at the central bank and placed limits on other activities.

The new rules come several weeks after reports of active trading by high-level Fed policymakers triggered calls for an ethics investigation.

Now, the fed will implement rules limiting the types of financial securities that top Fed officials can own, including the aforementioned ban on individual stock purchases or holding individual bonds. Any transactions require advance notice from the official, and it stipulates that investments have to be held for at least one year.

Officials will have to give 5 days’ notice in advance of buying or selling any securities that are allowed, according to a news release announcing the rules. They also can’t purchase funds during periods of “heightened financial market stress,” the release said.

“These tough new rules raise the bar high in order to assure the public we serve that all of our senior officials maintain a single-minded focus on the public mission of the Federal Reserve,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a statement.

In the release, the Fed said the rules are designed to “help guard against even the appearance of any conflict of interest in the timing of investment decisions.”

Several weeks ago, 2 of the 12 Federal Reserve officials resigned after reports surfaced of their active trading last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts taken by the Fed to fight associated economic impacts. The Fed has reportedly purchased more than $4 trillion in bonds to bolster the U.S. economy, and it also purchased bonds from some of the largest companies on Wall Street to ensure that the market functions.

Regional presidents Robert Kaplan of Dallas and Eric Rosengren of Boston stepped down after disclosures of their trading surfaced, although Rosengren cited health concerns. Fed officials obtain private reports about the U.S. economy on a daily basis.

After those revelations became public, the Federal Reserve announced last month its inspector general would conduct an independent review over their behavior to determine whether they complied with the law and ethics rules.

“The core rules that guide personal financial practices for Federal Reserve officials are the same as those for other government agencies. We also have a set of supplemental rules that are stricter than those that apply to Congress and other agencies that are specific to the work we do at the Federal Reserve,” a spokesperson for the Fed told The Epoch Times.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has called for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate the trading activity. Earlier on Thursday, the senator called for the Federal Reserve to release a March 2020 ethics warning that was allegedly provided to Fed officials.

“I am writing to ask that you release this information immediately, so that Congress and the public can evaluate the extent to which Fed officials may have known of the risks from their trading, and if they ignored calls by ethics officials to avoid this scandalous behavior,” Warren wrote in a letter to Powell.

It also comes as Powell’s term as chairman is slated to expire in February 2022. The White House has not signaled whether it will renominate him.