Democrats Making Big Mistakes With Shutdowns

Democrats Drunk With Pandemic Power Could be Undercutting Themselves Come November

Brad Slager

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Posted: May 16, 2020 12:01 AM

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Source: AP Photo/Paul Sancya

  

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Flexing unearned influence has exposed the thirst for control of their citizens.

In Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf caught a whiff of his constituents working up the desire to step out and start living their lives once again. The idea of citizens exerting their freedoms and basking in the normalcy of liberty was too much for him to stand. On Monday he sent out a tweet storm, delivering a series of firm commands of how he intends to clamp down on those who might dare get the idea of doing things.

‘’Today I am announcing consequences for counties that do not abide by the law to remain closed,’’ said the Wolf cub in his opening salvo, the concept of federalism trickling down to the local level becoming an insult to him. He threatened to cut off non-compliant counties from federal relief aid if they dared defy his executive order and grant the voters the choice to decide for their own lives and livelihoods. He then extended his punitive promises further.

He went on to threaten businesses that might open in defiance of his iron-fisted decree, telling them they could be cited, they might see their liability insurance threatened, and bars and restaurants might end up with their liquor licenses revoked. As threats go, Wolf could see this becoming a rather neutered one; if an establishment is facing foreclosure all together then running the risk of the governor’s tantrum-like wrath could be one worth taking. 

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This governor, as we know, is hardly alone, as the petulant Pennsylvania tyrant is part of a widespread mob of Democratic governors who have been intoxicated by the sudden discovery of power they can impose on the citizenry. Wolf does this with the comfort of no reprisals, as he is in the final stretch of a term limit regime -- he is operating comfortably with a lame-duck Napoleanic complex. Others, however, may have a reckoning ahead, and the wider Democratic party repercussions could be felt later this year.

In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer has attempted to parlay her oppressive dictates into becoming a vice-presidential contender. She has gone so far as to extend her stay-at-home orders another month in a state with mounting anger towards being kept from their businesses, with a legislature fighting back at her power grab. Whitmer, like so many of her Democrat demagogues, is freely imposing rules which have no bearing on public safety.

Gretchen has been bolstered by a fawning press corps, operating under the belief that her tactics are warmly received. She initially was combative with President Trump over relief aid supposedly denied to her state only to have it revealed that her office had failed to fill out the basic paperwork to apply for FEMA aid. She has forced most businesses closed, and even went so far as to mandate that those stores remaining open had to limit what items were available for sale. The locals are becoming fed up. 

Protests have been staged at the state capitol already, and the pushback in her state is growing. She thinks that it is a strong move to go after a local business that is defying her executive order, but the local law enforcement divisions are resisting the command to shut him down. It has not occurred to Whitmer that in a state where the people want to return to life, the optics of her bringing the force of government down on a 77-year-old barber are not a good look for her. A judge also thought so, overruling the governor’s order to close his shop down.

Her neighbor Wisconsin is also seeing legal opposition to an oppressive governor. Governor Tony Evers saw himself getting swatted on the snout by the state Supreme Court when it ruled that his extension of the stay-at-home order for another month needed to be overturned. Evers was full of hysterical bromides as a result, proclaiming everything was being thrown into ‘’chaos’’, and declaring of his state - ‘’It’s the wild west’’. His summation at the power that was stripped from him was that ‘’It’s a bad day for Wisconsin’’, but the citizens seemed to disagree. Within hours of the ruling bars and restaurants were flung open, and they saw themselves packed with residents.

Other states have had a tougher go of it with dictatorial leaders. Maine Gov. Janet Mills stripped the business license of a restaurant that defied her order to keep businesses closed -- until June. In Colorado Gov. Jared Polis came down on the restaurant that dared to open on Mother’s Day, to national attention, closing it down in the name of science. In every case, the establishments opened to packed crowds, filled with people willing to be in these businesses while these Democrats invoked death and doom as a promised result. To get a real feel of the tide shifting we only need to look to the west.

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In California, where cowing to idiotic political mandates is considered good manners, even there we are seeing a fed-up citizenry. Beach closures have been met with protesting crowds, and skateboard parks that were moronically filled in with sand were converted into dirt bike tracks by the area youths. And more than a small shop owner, automaker Elon Musk has come out and defied the business closure, all but daring the authorities to come and arrest him. Instead, they backed off. 

These Democrats resorted to the short-sightedness of their temporary power grabs. They could exert their influence and peacock around with inflated importance as the press was busy castigating GOP leaders who took less authoritarian approaches. The risk they do not see is that more than a bothered constituency inside their state borders is the result. Tens of millions are out of work, unknown millions more are under varying degrees of duress, and most are eager to move forward with our lives once again.

Those frustrated by this crisis are made more so by these political opportunists, and it is something of a revelation. It has been a common refrain that this shutdown and its removal of liberties by the government has opened the eyes of many to the negative impact of too much government. Now factor in that those newly skeptical minds are seeing this overreach consistently from the same party, it will register in their minds come November.

Rights Be Damned!

China Should Be Punished--But Will They?

China's Lies Turned Virus into a Full Pandemic, and WHO Is Complicit

Naohiko Hatta / AFP via Getty ImagesWorld Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Jan. 28, 2020. (Naohiko Hatta / AFP via Getty Images)

By Jared Harris
Published March 30, 2020 at 7:33am

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Thanks to all the evidence that has escaped Chinese censors in the past few months, we’re finally getting a full picture of how the COVID-19 outbreak began.

Now, there remains little doubt that the global coronavirus pandemic is the fault of the communist nation — a country that was enabled every step of the way by the World Health Organization.

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To get a better grasp on how China’s lies and Orwellian information control allowed the coronavirus outbreak to go global, we have to go back to the closing months of 2019.

Patient zero was discovered on Dec. 1, 30 days before the government’s admission that a new virus had been identified. Before the end of the month, nearly 200 people were infected.

The first cracks in China’s story were already beginning to form — credible reports said the country’s first case was found a month before the official date.

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The Coverup Begins

By Jan. 1, labs that linked the novel coronavirus to severe acute respiratory syndrome were ordered by the central government to destroy their samples, eliminating vital information and hurling researchers back to square one.

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The World Health Organization soon stepped up to bat for China, parroting the communist government’s narrative that the virus was not contagious and was nothing to worry about.

In a sparsely populated area, this approach might have worked.

Should the WHO and China be made to answer for this?

100% (855 Votes)

0% (3 Votes)

Unfortunately, Wuhan is a bustling metro that serves as the crossroads of China. Traveling from Beijing to Hong Kong takes drivers directly through the city center. Going from the port of Shanghai to Chongqing, the largest city in the world, also requires passing through ground zero of COVID-19 as well.

With the apparent all-clear signal sounded loud and clear by both the Chinese government and WHO, it’s no surprise that Wuhan held a record-breaking open banquet nearly three weeks after samples were destroyed. To prepare for the event, around 40,000 families cooked and prepared dishes.

Life in China largely continued as it normally would. Days later, however, the government could no longer hide the severity of the outbreak.

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The Explosion

Less than a week after the banquet, six Chinese cities were placed under a full lockdown, a move that shocked the world.

Videos of people collapsing on the street soon went viral, escaping a network of censors seemingly unprepared for an age where nearly every man, woman and child has a camera-equipped cellphone.

The growth of the novel coronavirus in China became exponential.

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As hospitals became overloaded, the number of dead soared. Soon, swarms of crows hinted that even the mortuary system was buckling under the surge of COVID-19 cases.

By February, world leaders were shutting down borders with China. President Donald Trump ordered a travel ban, a move that his enemies soon used against him.

It wasn’t just Democrats negatively latching on to this preventative measure — even the World Health Organization shockingly fought against the travel restrictions, placing China’s own economy above the health of the world.

The WHO Connection

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WHO officials weren’t content to just defend China’s economic interests, but actually began praising the country for its heroic work stopping the virus.

“We are encouraged that the steps China has taken to contain the outbreak at its source appear to have bought the world time,” WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in mid-February, “even though those steps have come at greater cost to China itself.”

While the WHO nominally does not take sides or favor nations, this pandemic has exposed that the organization does just the opposite.

The beginnings of the WHO’s friendship with China could be seen two years ago when Ghebreyesus met with the highest levels of Chinese leadership.

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Ghebreyesus was awed by the state of China’s medical industry and infrastructure and was especially fond of the country’s Belt and Road initiative, which promised to dump medical aid into Africa and other impoverished places.

The flood of aid, it seems, would take a major load off the WHO’s back.

Two years later, we can see the product of this horrible union in nearly every country in the world. China’s lies have allowed the novel coronavirus to spread through the country’s own population and hop oceans to hit unsuspecting nations.

All the while, the World Health Organization seemingly allowed this to happen, only stepping in when it was too late to stop the spread.

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Make no mistake about it — this is a Chinese virus, turned into a full pandemic by the lies and ineptitude of the Chinese Communist Party, and the WHO is complicit in the germ’s deadly spread.

Obama's Buddies In The News Media Ignored Anti-Semitic Incidents During His Years! Why Are They All Upset Now? Politics?

THERE WERE MORE THAN 7,000 ANTI-SEMITIC INCIDENTS UNDER OBAMA, AND THEY WERE LARGELY IGNORED

March 1, 2017 · by Seth Frantzman · in Uncategorized. ·

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN

In the last two months almost 100 Jewish community centers and day schools have been targeted with anti-semitic threats. The map of the threats is shocking. It stretches from Maine to Florida, Texas, Colorado, all the way to California and Washington. Despite more than 190 anti-semitic incidents, no arrests have been made. These are terrifying times for many, and there is a feeling that anti-semitism is reaching a crescendo in the US.  The perception is that America has historically been safe and tolerant, but today a rising “wave” of anti-semitism may be breaking on its golden door.

The US administration’s response has been tepid at best, denial at worst. Although Vice-President Mike Pence stopped by a desecrated cemetery in St. Louis, it took more than a month for US President Donald Trump to make his denunciations clear, despite numerous chances to do. Trump is personally blamed for “unleashing” anti-semitism during the election campaign last year. Rabbi Daniel Bogard, a victim of online anti-semitic abuse, told the JTA “there has been permission that’s been given to say these things we didn’t used to say.”

Fox News shows a map of communities that received threats (Photo of TV)

This feeds a growing narrative about the rise in anti-semitism. There are more than 9 million results in google relating to “Trump anti-semitism,” including the recent headlines “Report: Trump mulling axing anti-semitism envoy as part of budget plan” and “Trump suggests Jewish community is spreading anti-semitic threats.”

However Mark Oppenheimer at The Washington Post notes “there is no good statistical evidence (yet, anyway) that Americans have grown more anti-Semitic in recent months…Overall, however, we won’t know for many more months, when the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League have better data to work with, if Nov. 9, 2016, was the start of something new or just a continuation of a regrettable but enduring legacy.” The Anti-Defamation League has released a list of the ten worst anti-semitic incidents of 2016, but the data for 2016 is not ready yet. However there is data for the years before 2016.

If there was a major rise in anti-semitism then the 190 incidents that media have reported on in the first two months of 2017 should be significant. That’s 95 a month. Let’s use that as a barometer and look at the first seven years of Barack Obama’s presidency.  The 2016 data, when it is released, will be influenced by the apparent rise in anti-semitism during the election.  But the years 2009-2015, which we have data for, are untainted by the alleged rise in attacks from Trump supporters.

7,034 incidents in seven years

There were 1,211 anti-semitic incidents in Obama’s first year in office. This was after four strait years of declining anti-semitism. For instance in 2008 there had been 1,352 incidents. Attacks had peaked in 2004 with 1,821 incidents.

Over the years the number of incidents continued to decline. After an initial uptick to 1,239 in 2010 they declined to 751 in 2013. They began to rise again to 914 in 2015, the last year we have data for. When we add the total number of incidents between 2009 and 2015 the overall number of attacks reaches more than 7,000. However the number of assaults increased, almost doubling during the Obama administration.

Overall, there were an average of 84 incidents a month under the Obama administration. Let’s step back for a moment and compare that to the 95 incidents between January and February 2017. That’s a 10% increase. It could be more once all the data comes in. But media hasn’t been telling us there is a slight increase, the narrative has been that there is an anti-semitic wave sweeping the US. In Berlin there was a 16% increase in anti-semitic incidents by comparison. It was also “sweeping” the UK in 2014.

One of the key indicators of rising anti-semitism during the Obama years was the number of physical assaults. From a low of 17 in 2012 they rose to 56 in 2015. The ADL noted there was a “dramatic rise” in assaults that year. So why are headlines today claiming a “pandemic” of anti-semitism in the US. Abe Foxman used the word “pandemic” to describe anti-semitism in the US in 2009. “This is the worst, the most intense, the most global that it’s been in most of our memories. And the effort to get the good people to stand up is not easy,” he said in a speech that year. Jonathan Greenblatt said in November of 2016 that the US was suffering extreme levels of hate. “Anti-Jewish public and political discourse in America is worse than at any point since the 1930s,” the JTA reported.

Looking back almost a decade puts things in perspective. Where was the media in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 to highlight thousands of incidents of anti-semitism? 210 physical assaults on Jews. 3,900 threats against Jews and Jewish institutions. 2,900 incidents of vandalism. 180 incidents of anti-semitism on campus. Every 6 days a Jewish person in America was being attacked in 2015 and it went largely ignored. On average there were threats every day against Jews and Jewish institutions over the last eight years and most of them did not receive headlines. There were also incidents of vandalism on everyday on average.  Why did 7,034 incidents of anti-semitism not get major headlines for so long? Was it because of an agenda to protect the Obama administration from criticism, or due to complacency and people becoming inured to daily anti-semitism? The cesspool and swamp from which today’s hate crimes on Jewish cemeteries emerge is not a vacuum and it may not be due to the toxic divisions of 2016, it may have deeper roots. That’s the elephant in the room. 7,000 incidents that were recorded, that have been reported by the ADL, the data that does exist, that almost no one wants to talk about.

The anti-semitism we don’t hear about

Is the media misleading us through fear-mongering about anti-semitism in the United States? The data seems to show that the recent wave of threats, while unique in their target and regularity, are not a massive increase from years past. Threats occurred throughout the last decades, and many of them went unreported. The key indicator of physical assaults has been rising in the last years. Campus anti-semitism, the ADL says, peaked in 2015. The most important thing is to present the public with real data on the number of incidents. The 24-hour news cycle tends to encourage the feeling that anti-semitism is leaving people under siege, with swastikas on subways and memorials, at rural synagogues and on homes. There is also a tendency in the last year to feed a narrative that believes there is a major rise in hate-crimes in the United States connected with the toxic election and which should be blamed on Trump. There may be a rise in hate crimes, but many of them are not directed at Jews, many of them are directed at Muslims and other groups, such as the Georgia couple recently sentenced for threatening African-Americans.

The reality is that media even ignores serious anti-semitism in other countries while reporting on US anti-semitism. Video recently emerged of a preacher at the Al Andalous Islamic Centre named Sheikh Wael Al-Ghitawi shown in video claiming Jews were “people who slayed the prophets, shed their blood and cursed the Lord.” Another sermon in Toronto referred to the “filth of the Jews.” When preachers can spread hate speech openly and without any protest from those listening, that is a major problem. Are there videos in America of anyone preaching such hatred openly without a pushback? Similarly a teen was charged in November 2016 in Ottawa after six incidents of anti-semitic vandalism. The charges were relatively light, including “uttering threats and mischief to religious buildings.”

This raises serious questions about how we discuss and learn from anti-semitism. When people sit through a sermon and don’t raise a hand in protest when a preacher says Jews should be killed, that’s a huge problem. Those who sit silently and their families who are influenced by them basically accept anti-semitism. What about when there is clear anti-semitism and then the perpetrators are not charged with hate crimes. In Avignon a man tried to light fight firecrackers in front of a synagogue, but was clear of any anti-semitic charges. He just happened to do it in front of a synagogue, not any of the dozens of churches in the town? There are many incidents where youth are arrested for anti-semitism and then released when local authorities say they are just kids “being kids,” or just making “mischief.” In Germany a court ruled that an attempt to burn down a synagogue was not anti-semitic or a hate crime, but rather an attempt to protest Israel. According to The Jerusalem Post “a German regional court in the city of Wuppertal affirmed a lower court decision last Friday stating that a violent attempt to burn the city’s Bergische Synagogue by three men in 2014 was a justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies.”

Where is the outcry when a court decides it is “justified” to burn down synagogues. Isn’t burning down a synagogue more serious than phone threats? What is the lesson learned among the public when attacks on synagogues are excused or go unpunished, or when preachers openly preach hate and there is silence? Are we only offended by certain types of anti-semitism and not others?

We need to ask, where was the discussion of the “wave” of anti-semitism when there were 7,000 incidents, when imams preached hate, when people tried to burn down a synagogue. These are all connected and complacency in the face of hatred allows it to grow. Pressure should be put on law enforcement to find those terrorizing JCCs across America. At the same time we must be keen to call out other acts of hate, including anti-semitism, teach lessons from it and also look at long term trends, such as why have anti-semitic assaults almost doubled while threats, statistically, decreased greatly (almost 50% less) between 2008 and 2015.