Officials From Martha’s Vineyard Hold Emergency Meeting Following Arrival of 50 Illegal Immigrants, Migrants Will be Moved “Off Island”

According to The Boston Globe, officials in Martha’s Vineyard are holding an emergency meeting to deal with the crisis of 43 illegal alien arrivals, including one four-year-old child.  The group arrived via a chartered flight dispatched by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

According to state representative Dylan Fernandes, “when you look at the limited housing options on Martha’s Vineyard, as I’m sure many of the folks here are aware, it’s likely we’re going to need an off island location.”  As noted by the Globe …”a Zoom meeting has been scheduled for emergency management officials from the island along with people from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency to discuss the next step for the immigrants.”

(Boston Globe) […] Fernandes also strongly condemned DeSantis and Governor Greg Abbott of Texas for sending the migrants to the Vineyard.

“To use women and children as political pawns is cowardice. Governor DeSantis is a coward,” Fernandes said. “Their communication on this, Governor DeSantis’s on this, was to jump on Fox News and beat his chest about how tough he is on immigration. It’s inhumane. It’s depraved.”

DeSantis defended the move in remarks to reporters on Thursday during a briefing at Northwest Florida State College.  

“Every community in America should be sharing in the burdens. It shouldn’t all fall on a handful of red states,” he said. Other states “don’t like it as much when you get just a small, small, small amount compared to what these folks have dealt with in Texas and in other states.”

Florida’s message, DeSantis said, is that it’s not “a sanctuary state.”

“Now what would be the best is for Biden to do his damn job and secure the border,” he said.

Susan Church, a prominent immigration lawyer based in Cambridge, said a team of attorneys in Massachusetts is working with advocacy groups including the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice to interview the migrants and determine whether they’d be eligible for victims of crimes visas, based on reports they were coaxed into getting on a plane under the pretext that their paperwork would be expedited.

“They were duped in to getting on to the plane,” said Church, former chair of the New England Chapter of American Immigration Lawyers Association. “This is akin to kidnapping.”  (read more)

While the apoplexy and pearl-clutching from the condescending and sanctimonious democrats is political fuel for ridicule, at the end of the day these transports of illegal economic migrants, illegal aliens, is not a solution.

Desperate times do call for desperate measures, and we desperately need to see the southern border secured, immediately.  If the transports lead to backlash from Democrat officials and politicians, and that hypocrisy leads to facing the reality of the border crisis created by Joe Biden, then perhaps something positive can come from this approach.

I find myself torn between seeing this as a political gimmick yet understanding that some shift in the national narrative is needed. If this approach delivers that shift, if more people wake up to the border crisis, then something positive could be gained.  However, at the end of the day these unlawful migrants are people.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis answers questions earlier today:

Don’t Tolerate People Who Hate You

The people who are forcing the huge cultural shifts on our society are people you would disregard in person.

by Tim Young for American Greatness

When is the last time you went to an independent coffee shop? Not a coffee shop run by a church or a charity that does positive things for a community—I mean, a grungy, hipster coffee shop run by Gen Z-ers who dress like they rolled out of a bed in the late ’70s and who believe their knowledge of roasting beans has greater value than rocket science.

These types of places hold a special place in my heart—not because I love to sit on old couches that would illuminate like the brightest moon on the darkest night if put under a black light—but because they remind me of who we’re up against in the ongoing culture war. 

You can’t go anywhere without seeing evidence of this rapid change—whether it be television, radio, films, print, or your child’s classroom—you don’t just see it; you’re slapped in the face with it. Pronouns, fat acceptance, gender dysphoria, critical race theory and much more haven’t been casually shoehorned into our world. They’ve been dropped like an anvil into it—and if you don’t agree with these new radical ideologies, you’re considered the problem. But by who?

For most people who have real jobs or families to provide for, it’s easy to lose touch of exactly who you’re up against—which can lead to you thinking it’s much worse than what it actually is. 

Over the past weekend, I visited the vegan hipster coffee shop Mecca of the world, Austin, Texas. Approaching my favorite circus of all the coffee shops in the town, it was impossible not to notice the same virtue signaling found in most leftist Twitter profiles, but in physical form: a Ukrainian flag, a Black Lives Matter sign, a Beto rainbow sign (for double points), and a few trans flag stickers (that I wouldn’t have been able to identify had it not been for trolls on social media) adorned the outside of the building. 

Upon entering the mental facility at 10:30 a.m., I heard one of the baristas complaining about Senator Ted Cruz’s tweets. He was dressed in a dirty retro shirt that was covered in holes and he had a handlebar mustache that was straight out of 1982—or maybe 1882, come to think of it. After ordering my $5 coffee, he turned the iPad screen around to present me with tip choices that ranged from 20-30 percent—for what I would assume is a good job pouring my coffee and handing me a cup.

Taking a seat in the shop whose walls are adorned with years of moldy independent band stickers, you can’t help but immediately observe the clientele—poor hair colorings of the entire rainbow, lots of that nose piercing of a sort only cattle should have, an “I’m-rebelling-against-my-parents” wardrobe provided by Hot Topic, and dozens of what could be best described as prison tattoos entered the building—and of course they were all there midday which implied that they had nowhere like a job to be.

If you met the people I just described in person, and they told you how you should live your life, you’d laugh in their faces. You’d take one look at them and write them off more quickly than you just read my description of them. In a simple glance, you’d identify that they don’t deserve even a second of your respect. These are the people who are pushing the extreme cultural shifts onto society.

The purple-haired woman who wants her pronouns to be ze/zir and who believes in only using natural deodorant—the one who also pierced her nose to look like a bull, who has what looks like a poor attempt at drawing a 3-D box on her arm she did while high and who wears small ripped up shirts, but should be in 2XL—is among the vanguard of people who want you to change your life to make “zir” feel more comfortable. 

You don’t see them because you’re busy working a 9-to-5 job to provide for your family in a recession—and so your exposure is limited to the new restrictions they caused by rambling all day long about being offended on social media platforms—and the insane changes to the culture that this has caused by trickling down into all forms of media. But if you did see them, if you met them, you wouldn’t even be remotely intimidated.

These are the people who wanted you banned from society for not getting the same medical treatment they believe in; the same people who want toddlers to be taught sex in schools; the same people who want to ostracize you for your faith in God; and the same people who scream that you’re a hateful -phobe or an -ist for having opinions that differ from their own.

You’d laugh at them in person. You’d quickly move them out of your path if they stood in your way. You’d shut down their nonsense because they’re nonsense people.

So why play along with their rules now? It’s important to keep in perspective the pure clownery that are the people attempting to change societal norms. They don’t deserve your respect or your tolerance—they never did. 

And if you ever lose that perspective or feel intimidated by what you’re seeing from the Left, just take a trip to your local independent coffee shop and reclaim your confidence in knowing that you are on the correct side of history.

On the Fringe and Red Pill news- Sept 15

 

I, am SO tired of all the freaking promotion that that forced NCIS crossover keeps getting!! 😩 Seriously, NCIS LA doesn't even have a trailer yet, there's still no new Hetty footage or photos, and a stupid crossover (whose 2nd part of it will be talked about way more then the 1st part for very disgusting reasons) that Behind the Scenes fanatics knew was coming since June has gotten way, way more promotion then CBS's entire lineup!! Next Tuesday can't get here soon enough.

Here's tonight's news:

Ukraine with a Whimper or a Bang? ~ VDH

Putin deserves what he’s getting, but that moral and strategic victory is still a very different story from America sliding into a nuclear confrontation with a desperate autocrat.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Russia started the war with Ukraine in late February with a shock-and-awe effort to grab Kyiv. It failed both to decapitate the government and absorb half the country in one fell swoop. 

Soon the conflict descended into a war of attrition in Eastern Ukraine over the occupied majority Russian-speaking borderlands. 

That deadlock was eventually going to be resolved by relative morale, manpower, and supply.

Would the high-tech weaponry and money of the United States and Europe allow heroic Ukrainian forces to be better equipped than a larger Russian force—drawing on an economy 10 times greater and a population nearly four times larger than Ukraine’s?

After the latest sudden Ukrainian territorial gains and embarrassing Russian retreats, we now know the answer. 

Russia may be bigger and richer than Ukraine, but it is not up to the combined resources of the United States, along with the nations of NATO and the European Union. 

Most are now in a de facto proxy war with an increasingly overwhelmed Russia. And so far, a circumspect China has not stepped in to try to remedy the Russian dilemma. 

So, what will become the next, and most dangerous, stage III of the war? 

A heady Ukraine believes it now has the wherewithal to clear out the entire occupied Donbass and turn southward to free Crimea. To complete that agenda of rolling back all Russian aggression since 2014, it may step up hitting strategic targets across the Russia border and on the Black Sea.

Again, what will a nuclear Russia—run by an ailing, desperate autocrat—do when a far smaller Ukraine finally and deservedly humiliates her before a global audience?

Will Putin cut off all European energy supplies to force a European end to supplying Ukraine? 

Russia has all but done that. But so far Putin has gained little strategic advantage on the battlefield, despite current European fears of an impending bitter winter.

Will Putin go fully medieval on Ukraine, like the carnage in Chechnya when he leveled Grozny in 2000? 

But a European Ukraine is vast compared to tiny Chechnya. And the Chechens even without allies still withstood a decade of savage Russian brutality.

So how will Putin survive his self-created disaster that may have cost him nearly 100,000 casualties, and now risks losing him all the territorial advances from 2014? 

Will Russia mobilize its entire army, drop its silly euphemism “special military operation,” and finally try to crush Ukraine with a full Soviet-style assault? 

But that escalation might push an already restive Russian population into open and angry defiance. 

Can he just admit defeat, slink back home, and stop the massive Russian hemorrhaging? 

Yet can Putin take his chances that sacked generals, money-losing oligarchs, and the embarrassed Russian street will fear his bloodstained reach too much to neuter or remove him?

Will Putin instead keep declaring that Russia is not losing to Ukraine, but to the United States and NATO—even though the West is only doing to him what an opportunistic Russia once did to America in both its Vietnam and Afghanistan fiascos

Putin would then keep portraying himself and Russia as the victim in this conflict. He would drone on that the United States, by supplying the Ukrainians weapons, is now the “aggressor”—as our new proxy keeps hitting more targets inside Mother Russia, sinks more ships of the Black fleet, and assassinates more Russian generals. 

Putin’s only way to keep his cred, back up his dangerous brinkmanship, and retain power is apparently to play defender of Mother Russia and continue threatening the use of a tactical nuclear weapon—perhaps against the Ukrainian nuclear power complex or Kyiv itself.

That final gambit of an updated version of the Cuban missile crisis is something the American people need to stop simply discounting. Do our leaders know for certain that the man Joe Biden once dubbed a “killer” is merely yesterday’s empty bluffer?

Of course, Putin deserves all he is suffering. And the Ukrainians warrant the world’s thanks in repelling a brutal aggressor. 

But that moral and strategic victory is still a very different story from America sliding into a nuclear confrontation with a desperate autocrat. Do the American people support offering up their nuclear umbrella to a non-NATO, former Russian republic?

And not so long ago, the United States advantageously saw Russia as useful triangulation to the greater threat of Chinese aggression.

In sum, the problem that plagues these assumed, multifaceted Western agendas is that so far they in toto appear mutually exclusive.

Consequently, the question remains: How exactly does the United States all at once avoid the resumption of a Verdun-like, endless bloodbath on the Ukrainian-Russian border, reject any negotiated settlement until Ukraine unambiguously wins the war and expels every Russian from all its territory, prevent a wounded Putin from using a tactical nuclear weapon—and circumvent a head-to-head showdown with Russia and its 7,000 nukes?

The Biden Administration Isn’t Interested In Governing But In Criminalizing The Opposition

For Biden, actual governance is pure theater. The real work is making sure Trump can’t run again and his supporters rot in prison. 

John Daniel Davidson reporting for The Federalist

It is going to be hard to forget the spectacle of President Joe Biden “celebrating” the passage of his woefully-named Inflation Reduction Act while the stock market plummeted in real time, dropping nearly 1,300 points Tuesday while Biden crowed about his great achievement. 

The cable news clips were surreal. There was old man Biden, shaking his fist and shouting at the sky, while in the corner of the screen the Wall Street tracker kept ticking down, stocks plunging in reaction to persistent and worsening inflation. Even CNN had to interrupt coverage of Biden’s remarks to note that the stock market was tanking.

It takes a special kind of hubris to throw a White House victory party (with boomer icon James Taylor performing “Fire and Rain,” no less) for a bill allegedly meant to curb inflation amid the worst inflation in 40 years and the worst day for the stock market since Biden’s presidency began.

But then this is also an administration that outrageously claimed, during an historic border crisis, that it is doing more to secure the southern border than Trump ever did, raided the home of Mike Lindell (the My Pillow guy) for having an unapproved opinion about the 2020 election, and falsely stated that grocery prices have been “essentially flat” despite a new consumer price index report showing a 13.5 percent increase from last year. And that was all just on Tuesday.

Watching this sort of thing play out day after day, week after week, you start to get the sense that the Biden administration and the Democrats are play-acting at governance, that this is all a shoddy pantomime of what competent leaders might do or say.

That is why you are seeing clips of Vice President Kamala Harris on “Meet The Press” saying slowing, as if she is trying to remember the line, hands awkwardly raised for emphasis, “We have… a secure border.” That is why, at one point during the White House inflation party on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to prompt the audience to applaud after she thanked Biden for making “this glorious day possible.” We’re having a celebration here, folks. Act celebratory.

None of it is real. It is pure theater — a farce.

If Biden and the Democrats do not have much interest in actually governing, they have a keen interest in using force against their political opponents. That part of their agenda is very real; it consumes their attention and energy in a way that addressing inflation or the border crisis does not.

Hence the recent surge of subpoenas from Biden’s Justice Department for people associated with former President Donald Trump and the events of Jan. 6. The DOJ has now charged more than 870 people in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and it is becoming obvious, in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid, that Attorney General Merrick Garland would like very much to indict Trump himself ahead of the November midterms on charges vaguely connected to Jan. 6.

He might not be able to now that a federal judge, at Trump’s request, has appointed a special master in the case. The appointment of a special master to review the material seized by the FBI from Trump’s residence — a shocking 11,000 documents and 1,800 other items, including what the judge called “personal effects without evidentiary value” — means Garland might not be able to indict Trump before the November midterms, given the time it will take to go through all this material. But that is a risk Garland ran when he sent the FBI on what was clearly a fishing expedition.

As Margot Cleveland has fastidiously explained in these pages, the appointment of the special master in this case has already exposed the political nature of the raid, including what appears to be the direct involvement of Biden in launching the FBI’s investigation of his predecessor.

Without an indictment ahead of the midterms, it seems Democrats might have to settle for airing the next installment of their Soviet-style Jan. 6 hearings. The Jan. 6 committee is admittedly mostly theater, but unlike the White House inflation party with James Taylor this week, it has real teeth in the form of subpoenas that Biden’s Justice Department has been more than happy to enforce. 

According to reporting from CBS News this week, however, the focus of the next round of televised hearings will merely confirm what many of us have already concluded: that the entire purpose of the committee is to criminalize support for Trump and trample on the First Amendment rights of anyone who dares to question the conduct or outcome of the 2020 election.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told CBS the committee still hoped to interrogate Ginni Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative activist who vocally supported Trump during and after the 2020 election. They also want to question former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had the audacity to send emails to some of Trump’s senior advisors about political ads that, in Thompson’s words, “relied upon false claims about fraud in the 2020 election.”

Just to be clear: the Jan. 6 committee Democrats are proposing that anyone who thinks there was fraud in the 2020 election, anyone who thinks the election was something less than perfect, is fair game for hauling before the committee, being harassed by the FBI, having his property confiscated, maybe even indicted. In their world, having the wrong opinion about the election is tantamount to a crime. You might even get a visit from the FBI — better not delete your emails or destroy your devices. (That only works if your last name rhymes with Flinton.)

Whatever the committee ends up doing, rest assured it is part of a larger effort to go beyond mere political theater and use the levers of government power to ensure that Trump cannot run again, that his supporters are under investigation, and that anyone who disagrees with the regime about the last election has a target on their back.

Democrats Are Drowning in a Sea of Complacency

Cameron Arcand reporting for RedState 

President Joe Biden’s celebration of the Inflation Reduction Act on Tuesday was perhaps one of the most politically tone-deaf events of the year, which is telling given the current climate.

Prior to the event, Vice President Kamala Harris this weekend blatantly ignored the ongoing border crisis in an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

“The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular, over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed,” the vice president said.

In what universe is the border being open season for drug trafficking and a misleading bill about inflation considered an accomplishment?

Here in Phoenix, we’re facing the highest inflation rate of any metro area in the nation at a jaw-dropping 13 percent, The Arizona Republic reported.

If you drive only a few hours south (with expensive gas), there’s an influx of illegal immigration and who knows what substances coming across the United States-Mexico border. Oh, and by the way, your radio airwaves will be dominated by public service announcements about how “one pill can kill” to warn Arizonans about the dangers of fentanyl.

That’s the reality of America right now, and the Democrats in Washington seem to be oblivious or willfully ignorant to the fact that these issues have only gotten worse since they’ve gotten ahold of the White House and retained Congress.

If Democrats keep control of Congress in November, it’s going to be more of the same. If Republicans win, most people know this will not magically make everything better. It’s meant to be a roadblock to Biden, which would hopefully hold the dial still until Republicans retake the White House. There’s a serious need for accountability and moderation in Washington, and Republicans have a responsibility to use their higher positions in Congress for good in 2023.

On the campaign trail, Democrats can say they care about the economy and border security, but few actually mean it. The heart of the issues of inflation and the border is curtailing wasteful government spending and the desire to protect national sovereignty. Those are conservative values, so when most Democrats say they care, they likely will not go into a deeper understanding as to why.

Democrats at the national level are drowning in a sea of complacency. If Biden and Harris had a true pulse on the nation, there would certainly be no celebrations or statements of assurance.

Judge Makes Decision in Regard to Hunter Biden Matter That Raises More Questions

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

There’s a lot of information we still don’t know about the investigation into Hunter Biden.

One of the questions that have been hanging out there for years is what happened in the investigation in relation to the gun that Hunter Biden obtained back in 2018, which his then-girlfriend/brother’s widow threw away in the trash by a school? The gun was later recovered.

But as Politico noted:

But a curious thing happened at the time: Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.

The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.

The Secret Service says it has no record of its agents investigating the incident, and Joe Biden, who was not under protection at the time, said through a spokesperson he has no knowledge of any Secret Service involvement.

It looked like the Secret Service may have intervened on behalf of Hunter.

Then there was also the question of the 4473 form that Hunter Biden had filled out in order to buy the gun where he declared that he was not “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance,” despite the fact that he himself later admitted he was.

So that naturally raised a lot of questions as to what was the status of any investigation into Hunter for not telling the truth on the form which is a crime and why the Secret Service intervened. Blogger and investigative reporter David Codrea tried to get answers with a FOIA request.

But in a ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras held that while the public interest was “significant,” Hunter Biden’s “privacy interest” as a private person was “remarkably strong.” Contreras made this finding despite the fact that Hunter is Joe Biden’s son, has done numerous interviews, and even wrote a book about his struggle with drugs.

Contreras said Hunter Biden’s discussion of his drug problems in his memoir did not diminish his privacy interest in any records about the episode.

“Disclosure would reveal whether Hunter Biden was criminally investigated by ATF,” the judge wrote. “An individual’s public disclosure of information that could be potentially incriminating in a general sense does not reduce his privacy interest in whether he was the subject of a particular federal criminal investigation by a particular agency.”

Fascinating how Hunter Biden is entitled to privacy, but the FBI is leaking all over the place when it comes to President Donald Trump and moves against his allies. We saw leaked reports about an alleged nuclear document to make Trump look bad. That, of course, is completely improper. We also saw that before subpoenas and warrants were dropped on many of Trump’s allies, the media had been tipped off. Trump and his allies didn’t seem to be entitled to privacy or the presumption of innocence, at least not in the eyes of the FBI.

While there are no doubt privacy questions when it comes to Hunter Biden, this decision leaves people wondering why the decisions all seem to go one way; why no action seems to have been taken when maybe it would have had he not been Joe Biden’s son.

I’d also note another interesting coincidence. Contreras is also the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He was the guy who former FBI official Peter Strzok was texting Lisa Page about in 2016, trying to arrange a party to have a meeting with him.

“Rudy is on the [FISC]!” Page texted Strzok on July 25, 2016. “Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.”

“I did,” Strzok responded. “I need to get together with him.”

“[He] said he’d gotten on a month or two ago at a graduation party we were both at.”

Strzok and Page, who reportedly had a romantic relationship, even discussed planning a dinner party with the express purpose of providing cover for a meeting with Contreras.

“[REDACTED] suggested a social setting with others would probably be better than a one on one meeting,” Strzok told Page. “I’m sorry, I’m just going to have to invite you to that cocktail party.”

“Have to come up with some other work people cover for action,” Strzok added.

“Why more?” Page responded. “Six is a perfectly fine dinner party.”

It remains unclear whether the party ever took place.

That raises even more questions about what’s going on here — and whether there was any bias involved in the decision.

Several Unnecessary Crises Culminate at Once – and the Biden COVID Mandates Are Directly to Blame

Freedom Foundation guest editorial at RedState 

(The opinions expressed in guest op-eds are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState)

It’s becoming abundantly — and painfully — clear that Joe Biden and his benefactors in organized labor have wreaked enough havoc in 19 months to haunt this country for decades.

First, the president allowed the nation’s teachers’ unions to dictate school reopening policies during the COVID lockout. The politically motivated shutdowns fought for by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and her fellow teachers’ union leaders led directly to an epidemic of substance abuse and a 99 percent increase in self-harm and suicide attempts among U.S. teenagers who would otherwise have been in school interacting with their friends and classmates.

Social distancing at lunch, weeks languishing in plexiglass cubicles and trying to learn when you can’t see or hear your teacher and classmates behind masks had a devastating impact on students’ mental and emotional well-being. Now we’re learning through the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test results that the COVID overreaction from teachers’ unions and state and local governments has erased two decades’ worth of progress in math and reading.

What the unions and their sock puppets in elected office have done to American children is criminal.

But wait, there’s more.

It may take even longer to fully document the impact on Americans Biden’s panic-motivated vaccine mandate is having and will have on the country, but early indications are ominous.

The vaccine mandate affected members of the U.S. military and federal government employees, federal contractors, healthcare professionals, and employers of 100 or more workers.

In one of his many doomsaying speeches, Biden declared last September, “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.”

Now it’s his mandate that is costing all of us.

Employers didn’t know if he — or they — even had the authority to require a person put something unwanted in their body as a condition of employment. Would the mandate be upheld? If not, how long could they hold out without terminating employees against their will?

If employers refused to fire valued employees because of a half-baked mandate, would the government really impose financially devastating, punitive fines designed to bankrupt the offender?

Labor unions in both the public and private sectors responded with characteristic hypocrisy. The AFL-CIO and the National Nurses United and American Nurses Association, for example, embraced the mandates — regardless of their members’ wishes.

There were a handful of notable exceptions. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, for example, went to court on behalf of its members’ right to decline the vaccine without going through the negotiating process.

Likewise, the Minnesota Nurses Association surveyed its members and released a statement the same week as Biden’s “patience wearing thin” threat and concluded:

“After years of deliberate under staffing, increasing threats of workplace violence and lack of autonomy over their profession, the same healthcare workers who have been caring for us in our darkest hours are exhausted and leaving the profession early or for less demanding work. We question the timing of the impending vaccine mandates and believe these mandates will continue to exacerbate staffing shortages. It’s time for our healthcare system to get back to healing the patient and upholding their responsibility to workers.”

On Sept. 12, however, roughly 15,000 nurses in Minnesota began a strike in protest of stalled contract negotiations and “concerns over staffing and retention, wages and patient care”.

The strike is expected to continue through Wednesday and is believed to be the largest-ever strike of private-sector nurses in the country. The walkout includes nurses from 16 hospitals representing seven different hospital systems.

Regardless of what happens after Sept. 14, don’t expect this to be the last major strike among healthcare professionals, nor will it be the longest.

America is now intently watching the railway industry to see if it will head into a strike this week, as well. If a deal is not reached this week, a national strike is scheduled to commence on Friday.

Americans need that like they need a hole in the head.

Roughly 40 percent of the nation’s long-distance trade moves by rails. If a strike idles 7,000 trains a day, that’s a $2 billion hit to the U.S. economy, not to mention untold perishable food waste, disruption in delivery of medical and healthcare supplies, delays in fuel transport, and increasing prices during a time Americans desperately need an end to the skyrocketing inflation.

There’s a lot of finger-pointing going around. Were the private companies too quick to enforce an untested vaccine mandate? Should more unions have fought for their members not to lose their jobs?

One thing’s for sure: The crippling strikes we’re seeing in crucial industries are but the latest manifestation of the Faustian Bargain agreed to between Joe Biden and his union cronies in 2020.

 

Article by Kurt Schlichter in Townhall

Rebels Without a Rebellion

 

You can always count on Johnny Lydon – AKA Johnny Rotten of the legendary Sex Pistols – to tick people off. He ticked me off last May when I saw him with his second band, PiL, and he not only failed to play any of the classic Pistols hits but also any of PiL’s good songs. I was deeply annoyed – and figured that if Johnny isn’t annoying you, he just isn’t Johnny. He is a rebel.

Johnny did it again when Queen Elizabeth II passed away. The Sex Pistol are, of course, known for their 1977 song “God Save the Queen,” among others – the whole punk scandal overshadowed the fact that the Pistols are a great, great rock band (“Bodies” not only rocks but is basically a conservative anti-abortion tune) – and a superficial reading of the song’s lyrics imply contempt for the monarch. Granted, lyrics like “God save the queen/She's not a human being” might lead you to that impression, though the terrific song – it’s one of the best rock tunes ever – is really about the alienation brought on by the failure of their own British ruling class in the seventies.

So, when Elizabeth went to her reward, Lydon used his official Twitter account to tweet a beautiful portrait of the monarch (incidentally, the same one the Pistols adulterated for their famous record cover) and included the words “Send her victorious,” a stirring line from the British national anthem which is also called “God Save the Queen.”

Oh, did the self-proclaimed edgy set freak out. If you read the comments, you were treated to a non-stop litany of sissy blue checks explaining to Johnny Freaking Rotten how he’s just not punk enough for their exacting standards. The guy who spent his twenties hanging out with Sid Vicious was getting lectured to by people who spent their twenties out with their parents and using their inside voices. 

No punk ever tells you his pronouns. 

And you know Johnny got a kick out of blowing the minds of the very same people who insist they aren’t squares. Homeboy is a rebel – he does what he wants and if you don’t like it, well, bugger off, ya wanker.

The world could use a lot more of this outstanding attitude. There is no group in human history more deserving of a middle finger than our garbage ruling elite. Arrogant, stupid, corrupt, inept, and yet possessed of such awesome self-regard that is actually astonishing. How can people so devoid of any actual accomplishments be so firmly convinced of their own moral and mental superiority?

And while their inexplicable conviction of their own hyper-competence is tiresome, perhaps their most irritating affectation is that they think they are rebels. They imagine themselves as being the underdogs, of battling the bourgeois constraints that keep them from flying their freak flags and being exactly who they are. Yeah, the big problem in America today is all the repression that keeps people from being who they are.

In fact, far too many people are being who they are when they are, in fact, appalling in every way. Weirdos, losers, mutations – these bizarre goofs think they are somehow striking back against society when the mandarins of our institutions are not interested in stopping their shenanigans, even when they include grooming kiddies to form the next generation of geebos. Our institutional class is interested in helping them become the very best version of themselves, which is often terrible.

Here's the thing. If you aren’t doing something the people in power dislike, you are not a rebel. You are a cog, a cog in a machine designed to crush all dissent. And these people are eager to be cogs. They are actually delighted to submit, happy to conform. And they hate you because you won’t.

Here’s a test. Which of these will society – in the form of government, schools, the media, and the corporations, to the extent they differ – not harass:

1. Some dude who dresses up in leather bondage gear with a thong, puts a unicorn horn on his head, and dances for dollar bills before a kindergarten class at a public school;

or

2. An 18-year-old in a college class who disagrees with the professor that Christians are racists who are ruining America;

or

3. Some healthy mom who didn’t want to make her kids wear a mask outside;

or

4. A citizen who expresses concerns about the integrity of an election that is not the 2000 election, the 2004 election, the 2016 election, or the last Georgia governor’s election.

There’s the easiest quiz you’ll take all year. In fact, the only conformist among those examples is the dude trying so very hard to be special and unique, just like all his friends. And pardon me if I misgendered said being.

But if you refuse to conform, you risk everything and gain only trouble. They say conservatism is the new punk rock, and there’s much to that. We’re the ones who take risks. We’re the ones in danger of getting fired for wrong think, of getting banned from social media for dissenting, of having a rabid pack of useless goobers try to cancel us for refusing to comply.

It’s true throughout society. If you are some Hollywood star, you risk nothing and gain everything by joining the pack and braying your commie nonsense like that washed-up Harvey Weinstein dishrag Jennifer Lovemeformymind who recently spouted off about how she in haunted by Tucker and how she hates her conservative family in a pathetic attempt to salvage some attention as her talents and prospects begin to sag. The ridiculous and elderly Dee Snider and Howard Stern, once out there on the edge, are today both so far up the establishment they are human suppositories.

Everyone knows it, but the truth is immaterial. Their narrative is that they are the rebels, and they are sticking to it. Mere facts are not going to change their minds – or at least make them admit it out loud. The smarter among them hate themselves inside for their cowardice, and they should. They suck. Let’s keep reminding them of that by mocking them, just like Johnny R did by paying tribute to Elizabeth R.

It is nice to know that in this world of rebels without any rebelling, with hacks raging in favor of the machine, that are at least a few rebels like good old Johnny Lydon still telling the powers that be to stuff it. Though it would have been so cool if he had played “Anarchy in the UK.”

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/09/15/rebels-without-a-rebellion-n2613041 

 

 

Don't Forget to Recommend
and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage