BZ’s Berserk Bobcat Saloon Radio Show, Thursday, 12-23-21: “The Christmas Show”

Hours 1 and 2: on Christmas Eve Eve, BZ spoke to MIKE FITZPATRICK and LONNIE POINDEXTER, both good friends themselves, about Christmas, what it means, their Christmas traditions, families, values, and experiences on Christmas Day.

This was two great hours of Christmas reminiscing, laughs, tales, and sincere, heartfelt discussions about what Christmas means to three average Americans.

Come listen to the show — it will bring back Christmas memories for you too.

Full audio of the show is available here on Spreaker. Click on the yellow arrow below.

Listen to “BZ’s BBS, Thursday, 12-23-21: “The Christmas Show”” on Spreaker.

Join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the booze is not.

Thank you one and all for listening, watching and supporting the SHR Media Network: “Conservative Media Done Right.”

BZ

 

 

“A single death is a tragedy. . .”

“A million deaths is a statistic.”
— Josef Stalin

Put it another way.

A single death in a nursing facility is a tragedy.
Three to eight thousand deaths in nursing facilities, of Wuhan-19, is a statistic.

Let me cut to the chase up front.

In my opinion, New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo has blood on his hands.

Why would that be?

For taking the most virulent global pandemic disease of 2020 and placing people infected with same — not just “suggesting” but mandating it with the force of the entire state of New York behind said mandate — and no, not “placing” but forcibly injecting people, into nursing facilities within the state of New York.

Facilities that couldn’t say no.

The elderly, the infirm — those very same persons, who in their early years, had worked hard in order to allow New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo to attain his exalted position and stand upon their work (as in: Governor Cuomo, you didn’t build that, they did.), their grief, their tears, their labor and sweat in order to obtain his current position.

Those people. Who paid their taxes, paid their dues, obeyed the laws, built ships, flew planes, poured concrete, laid bricks, fixed cars, took care of children, started small businesses, repaired toilets, constructed skyscrapers, drove locomotives, dug ditches, stitched wounds, designed clothes, conducted brain surgery, repaired broken windshields, replaced HVAC systems, knitted socks, changed diapers, and fought wars for America, serving their nation, serving their communities.

And those people who, now, in their later years, those infirm, those who require the greatest amount of care, those who did in fact pay every bill, honor every debt required of them, the most vulnerable, the weakest amongst us, the most susceptible to disease, the least able to fight back physically, genetically and psychologically — found themselves placed directly into harm’s way by an individual who knew better.

And I’ll prove it. Work with me here.

First, we know that Wuhan-19 deaths are being padded. For money. That is to say, three times the federal cash paid for a Wuhan-19 death as opposed to any other.

Clear thinking people should already have all the bells and klaxons going off in their heads about information surrounding Wuhan-19.

First, we knew that New York was over its head. It couldn’t begin to cope with what was before its very eyes

New York was told to prepare. But it decided to ignore its own study. From the NYPost.com:

We didn’t have to have ventilator shortage — leaders chose not to prep for pandemic

by Betsy McCaughey, 3-19-20

Several years ago, after learning that the Empire State’s stockpile of medical equipment had 16,000 fewer ventilators than the 18,000 New Yorkers would need in a severe pandemic, state public-health leaders came to a fork in the road.

They could have chosen to buy more ventilators to back up the supplies hospitals maintain. ­Instead, the health commissioner, Howard Zucker, assembled a task force for rationing the ventilators they already had.

In 2015, that task force came up with rules that will be imposed when ventilators run short. ­Patients assigned a red code will have highest access, and other ­patients will be assigned green, yellow or blue (the worst), ­depending on a “triage officer’s” decision.

Who was governor of the State of New York in 2015? Correct. Andrew Cuomo.

In 2015, the state could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece, or a total of $576 million. It’s a lot of money, but in hindsight, spending half a percent of the budget to prepare for pandemic was the right thing to do.

This wasn’t Trump’s purvey. He wasn’t even president. Only one person: Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo then blamed the president for not providing a sufficient amount of ventilators to help NY state residents.

But in New York, rationing ventilators should be unnecessary. The state knew of the shortage, had the money and should have bought the lifesaving equipment, instead of making a plan for who should live or die. A lesson for the future.

New York was overwhelmed. But they had warning. They chose to ignore the warning. They were unprepared. They could have decided to be prepared. They chose not to. That was an active, affirmative decision; not a passive one. There were consequences. President Trump had absolutely nothing to do with those decisions.

Here’s one example, from the NYPost.com:

Dozens of bodies found in U-Haul trucks outside NYC funeral home

by Larry Celona, 4-29-20

Police found dozens of bodies being stored in unrefrigerated trucks outside a Brooklyn funeral home and lying on the facility’s floor Wednesday, law enforcement sources told The Post.

Between 40 and 60 bodies were discovered either stacked up in U-Haul box trucks outside Andrew Cleckley Funeral Services in Flatlands or on the building’s floor, after neighbors reported a foul odor around the property, sources said.

The corpses were stacked on top of each other in the trucks. Fluid leaking from inside created a terrible smell and caused neighboring store owners to call the police, according to sources.

We heard, then, the resulting plaintive cry from this women when she discovered her own reality. Again from NYPost.com:

Woman slams de Blasio after relative’s body left at home for hours

by Sara Dorn, 4-18-20

A grieving Harlem food truck owner was forced to ice her husband’s corpse Saturday as she searched for someone to retrieve his body, several hours after he died from suspected coronavirus.

Tami Treadwell, 57, slammed the city after Gregory Anthony Treadwell’s remains were left in the home by emergency responders, with the city medical examiner’s office telling her it could take “three hours to three days” to pick them up.

“This is our city, and we’re being treated like s–t!” wailed Treadwell, owner of Harlem Seafood Soul.

“It’s grossly inhumane. I say shame on you Mayor de Blasio … you got to designate somebody to come get these bodies out of here, people who died at home. How dare you make us have to deal with that and to live with the body for days? How dare you, Mayor de Blasio? And you can’t blame that s–t on Trump. You can’t blame that s–t on Cuomo!” Treadwell cried.

Now let’s get specific. On April 14th, Governor Cuomo said nursing homes are the “optimal feeding ground for the virus.”

Governor Cuomo knew this. It is archived on the internet via, for example, this NYDailyNews.com story:

Cuomo calls nursing homes a ‘feeding frenzy’ for coronavirus as 540 die in New York

by Dave Goldiner, 4-18-20

Gov. Cuomo called nursing homes the biggest concern for New York authorities battling the coronavirus pandemic on Saturday even as a lower overall total of 540 people died in the past day.

The relatively lower death toll represents a dip of more than 25% from just a few days ago. But the governor said the still-raging epidemic claimed 36 elderly victims in nursing homes — and still poses a dire threat.

“Nursing homes are the single biggest fear in all of this,” he said. “Vulnerable people in one place, it is the feeding frenzy for this virus.”

“Nursing homes are the No. 1 long term consequence of this disease,” he added.

Knowing this, saying this, what did New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo decide to do? Correct. Force nursing facilities to accept Wuhan-19 patients in their March 25th policy.

Newsday.com reported:

Nursing homes can’t reject patients just over coronavirus, state says

by Joan Gralfa, 3-29-20

New York State’s nursing homes cannot reject newly released hospital patients solely because they tested positive for the novel coronavirus, a new state directive says.

The order raised concern in an industry whose elderly and frail residents have the lowest survival rate for the disease.

The state health department issued the new directive, which the nursing home industry says is a first, late Wednesday. “No resident shall be denied readmission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” the directive reads.

Hospitals are under pressure to discharge patients, including ones stricken with the coronavirus but who don’t need ventilators, to open up beds for what Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says will be a surge of thousands more cases in the next two to four weeks. However, nursing homes, whose workforce is struggling with problems like those in hospitals — arranging child care and managing a shortage of supplies like protective garb — fear their facilities will be overwhelmed.

Governor Cuomo himself told facilities they had to accept Wuhan-19 patients. From NYPost.com:

Nursing homes have ‘no right’ to reject coronavirus patients, Cuomo says

by Bernadette Hogan and Bruce Golding, 4-23-20

New York’s nursing homes weren’t allowed to challenge a controversial order to admit patients with the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday — even though it’s been blamed for spreading the deadly disease among residents.

“They don’t have a right to object. That is the rule and that is the regulation and they have to comply with that,” Cuomo said during his daily briefing in Albany.

“And the regulation is common sense: if you can’t provide adequate care, you can’t have the patient in your facility and that’s your basic fiduciary obligation — I would say, ethical obligation — and it’s also your legal obligation.”

That wasn’t enough. Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to demand more compliance, as this New York Post article indicates:

Cuomo doubles down on ordering nursing homes to admit coronavirus patients

by Kate Sheehy, 4-26-20

Gov. Cuomo doubled down Sunday on the state’s controversial directive ordering nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients.

The governor — who himself has described nursing homes as a “feeding frenzy’’ for the deadly coronavirus — said that the facilities can’t challenge a state regulation forcing them to admit patients with the contagion.

Well wait. Cuomo said, Wuhan-19 will sweep through nursing facilities like a whirlwind. He believed it. He said it. He knew it. Yet he made the statement, demanding it continue to occur. So yes, Governor Cuomo knew precisely what he was doing, and was aware of every movement regarding New York State nursing facilities.

The CEO of a hard-hit Brooklyn nursing home, where 55 patients have died from the coronavirus, told The Post last week that he’d been warning state Health Department officials for weeks he had staffing and equipment issues — yet received little help.

“There is no way for us to prevent the spread under these conditions,’’ the head of the Cobble Hill Health Center, Donny Tuchman, wrote in an e-mail to the department on April 8.

But here’s the crux of the biscuit.

He said he asked to move some patients to the makeshift wards at Manhattan’s Javits Center and aboard the city-docked USNS Comfort amid the pandemic, only to be told those two spots were receiving only patients from hospitals.

“I made specific requests to transfer patients, and it didn’t happen,’’ Tuchman told The Post. “There weren’t options.”

Hospital facilities built quickly on the order of President Trump. An entire military ship, one of only two in existence, devoted solely to New York City. Ignored. Unused. Torn down. Sailed away for “lack of need.”

Yet the “need” somehow continued to be to “place fiery, virulent Wuhan-19 virus patients into the closed buildings of those persons with the least capacity to fight said virus.”

In direct contravention of federal laws. From the TimesUnion.com:

Medicare chief: Cuomo’s nursing home order did not follow federal guidelines

by Emilie Munson, 5-29-20

WASHINGTON — The federal government’s top official overseeing nursing homes said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s executive order in late March that directed the admittance of coronavirus patients from hospitals to nursing facilities did not follow her agency’s guidance.

Cuomo has insisted that his original order regarding nursing homes was aligned with the Trump administration’s policy, but Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Wednesday that’s not the case.

We see what’s building here, don’t we? A case?

“Under no circumstances should a hospital discharge a patient to a nursing home that is not prepared to take care of those patients’ needs,” Verma said on Fox News Radio. “The federal guidelines are absolutely clear about this.”

New York nursing homes have reported about 6,000 confirmed or presumed COVID-19 deaths, as of May 27, the most recent data available.

We see already, what Governor Cuomo is going to say soon, don’t we?

Cuomo’s March 25 nursing home order did not specifically say that nursing homes should only accept recovering coronavirus patients if they were safely able to do so, a talking point he has been making repeatedly in recent weeks. The order said “all NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs. Residents are deemed appropriate for return to a NH upon a determination by the hospital physician or designee that the resident is medically stable for return.”

It emphasized: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

Already Governor Cuomo was saying “hey, it wasn’t me. I wasn’t responsible.”

Cuomo defended his actions on May 23, saying, “What New York did was follow what the Republican administration said to do. … Don’t criticize the state for following the president’s policy.”

Except he was responsible. And he knew what he did. Only after things went very badly did he begin his political backpedal.

The policy prompted severe backlash against the Cuomo administration as COVID-19 cases spread rampantly among seniors in nursing homes, causing many deaths. Then, on May 10, Cuomo revised this policy, ordering nursing homes to only accept hospital patients who have tested negative for coronavirus into their facilities.

Nursing facilities in New York weren’t ready. They weren’t prepared with appropriately-trained staff. They didn’t have the requisite equipment. But that didn’t matter to Governor Cuomo. Equipment? He wasn’t going to assist them. From the NYPost.com:

Gov. Cuomo says ‘it’s not our job’ to provide PPE to nursing homes

by Bernadette Hogan, Bruce Golding and Carl Campanite, 4-22-20

Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted that “it’s not our job” to provide coronavirus-ravaged nursing homes with personal protective equipment — even as more than 3,000 patients have lost their lives in facilities ordered by his administration to take in COVID-19 patients.

“We have been helping them with more PPE but, again, it’s not our job,” Cuomo said Wednesday during his daily briefing in Albany.

Pressed on why coronavirus patients were not kept out of the facilities, which treat the elderly and other vulnerable populations, Cuomo insisted that the state regulated, but did not “run,” New York’s privately owned nursing homes.

“You’ll be out of business if you’re not providing your staff with the right equipment. You’re out of business. That we can do,” he said of state regulations.

I see a trend. Governor Andrew Cuomo makes the active decision to place Wuhan-19 patients in New York nursing facilities, where the weakest live in small, enclosed spaces. He doubles down on that demand. They chides these facilities for not ponying up their own PPE or Personal Protective Equipment — or, as he states, he’ll gladly assist with closing their businesses.

The situation in New York was a warning — one that was clearly heard by an administrator in Pennsylvania, who took “her” own mother out of a nursing facility. After making the same order as New York Governor Cuomo. “Do as I say, not as I do. Only the little people need obey me.”

From the DailyCaller.com:

PA Health Secretary Moved Mother Out Of Personal Care Home After Ordering Nursing Homes To Accept COVID Patients

by Peter Hasson, 5-13-20

Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine’s mother moved out of a personal care home with the health secretary’s help, after Levine ordered all nursing homes and long-term facilities in the state to accept coronavirus patients from hospitals.

Levine admitted Tuesday to moving the 95-year-old Pennsylvania resident out of her personal care home, which is similar to an assisted living facility although technically distinct.

“Good for thee, not for me.”

“My mother requested, and my sister and I as her children complied to move her to another location during the COVID-19 outbreak,” Levine said. The health secretary’s admission came after local station ABC27 found out about the move.

Translated: unless discovered, Levin was never going to tell anyone what “she” had done. Lying by omission. Purposely. Consciousness of guilt. Remember that phrase.

Levine is facing calls to resign over the department’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

“Our secretary of health, Dr. Levine, decided that it would be good to allow COVID-positive patients to be returned to elder-care facilities. And as a result of that, it broke out like fire,” Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano said Monday at a rally calling for Levine’s resignation.

Imagine that. Should Governor Cuomo be any exception?

So what happened? FoxNews.com reported:

Over 4,300 virus patients sent to NY nursing homes, AP counts

by Bernard Condon, Jennifer Peltz and Jim Mustian, 5-22-20

More than 4,300 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York’s already vulnerable nursing homes under a controversial state directive that was ultimately scrapped amid criticisms it was accelerating the nation’s deadliest outbreaks, according to a count by The Associated Press.

AP compiled its own tally to find out how many COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals to nursing homes under the March 25 directive after New York’s Health Department declined to release its internal survey conducted two weeks ago. It says it is still verifying data that was incomplete.

Whatever the full number, nursing home administrators, residents’ advocates and relatives say it has added up to a big and indefensible problem for facilities that even Gov. Andrew Cuomo — the main proponent of the policy — called “the optimum feeding ground for this virus.”

As I mentioned earlier, weren’t there alternative locations available for Wuhan-19 patients besides nursing facilities? Of course there were. Some were never even used. From the NYPost.com:

$21M Brooklyn field hospital never saw a patient amid coronavirus pandemic

by Carl Campanile and Natalie Musumeci, 5-22-20

A roughly $21 million Brooklyn field hospital authorized by the de Blasio administration at the height of the coronavirus pandemic opened and closed without ever seeing one patient, according to city officials.

The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook was one of several sites across the five boroughs converted into a medical facility as a way to relieve the city’s overburdened hospital system as the COVID-19 crisis mounted.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans on Mar. 31 — a day after the USNS Comfort hospital ship arrived in New York Harbor to aid in the coronavirus fight — for the $20.8 million Red Hook field hospital with an estimated capacity for 750 beds.

The field hospital was built by Texas-based construction company SLSCO.

The USS Comfort was also available, but unused. But now the pressure begins to build. FoxNews.com reported:

Coronavirus: Amid New York’s unused hospital beds and ventilators, critics point to mass waste and mismanagement

by Holly McKay, 5-1-20

While New York has weathered the brunt of coronavirus infections and deaths, the state’s apparent hoarding of medical supplies, and the millions spent on equipment that never arrived, as well as unused hospitals and beds, have some questioning what went wrong.

Early to mid-March projections of the spread of COVID-19 had the state scrambling to bolster its hospital bed capacity to more than double its 53,000 maximum status-quo. Subsequently, hospitals statewide were ordered to discharge patients to free up beds, and forced to add new ones as non-emergency procedures were canceled.

Knowing all that, Governor Cuomo had a decision to make. But he knew what the outcome would be, inserting a hot virus into populations of the weakest New York citizens. Wouldn’t a normal individual with common sense realize that?

But read this now, from the same story.

Meanwhile, nursing home managers have been left bewildered as to why the empty facilities were not made available for ill and suspect coronavirus patients, who were not able to be aptly isolated from others deemed vulnerable to severe infection or death.

In April, coronavirus patients at a Brooklyn nursing home were denied admission to both of the medical facilities established in New York to handle victims of the pandemic even though beds were mostly empty. The snub, as highlighted by the New York Post, came weeks after New York health officials were warned by the nursing home operator – where 55 people have died – that there was a grave concern, and requesting patients be transferred to the temporary facilities.

New York nursing homes have accounted for 13 percent of the state’s coronavirus death toll, according to the state’s health department figures.

Oh, but it’s much worse than that. We’ll see. The death counts continued to build. From the NYPost.com:

Over 1,700 more coronavirus deaths reported in New York nursing homes

by Carl Campanile, Bernadette Hogan and Aaron Feis, 5-5-20

The coronavirus’ suspected death toll among New York’s nursing home residents exploded by an additional 1,700 fatalities — as Gov. Andrew Cuomo caught bipartisan backlash Tuesday for his administration’s edict that the facilities take in COVID-19 patients.

The grim tally surged to at least 4,813 late Monday as the state Department of Health disclosed for the first time not just confirmed coronavirus deaths, but fatalities in which the deceased was never tested despite showing telltale symptoms, which also sparked outrage.

A spokesman for the Health Department pinned the delay in factoring in the suspected deaths on shoddy work by overwhelmed nursing homes.

“The numbers we are presenting as part of our review capture confirmed and presumed coronavirus deaths that many facilities were not previously reporting,” said Gary Holmes.

The numbers. Yes, the numbers.

Sources told The Post, however, that even the revised figure fails to capture the true scope of the horror, because stricken nursing home residents who die in hospitals are not counted towards the healthcare facilities’ tallies released Tuesday.

Cuomo attempted to undercut his own Health Department by casting skepticism on the figures during a Tuesday press briefing in Manhattan.

“Just to be clear, I would take all of these numbers with a grain of salt,” the governor told reporters in his Midtown office.

“What does a ‘presumed death’ mean, right? How do you presume it to be the coronavirus?”

Cuomo scoffed at the stats as they sparked a renewed barrage of criticism over his handling of nursing homes amid the pandemic.

Cuomo scoffed. The bodies piled up. Your mother, your father, your parents, your grandparents.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote on May 2nd:

I don’t think there are easy or pat answers to how civil liberties should be balanced with the outbreak of this new, lethal, highly contagious virus. But what’s worrisome is that there is no balancing going on: it’s full, unlimited, absolute authority in the hands of governors.

But the heat was on and Governor Andrew Cuomo was the focus. So Cuomo made a public statement. From CBSNews.com:

Cuomo says no one should be prosecuted for coronavirus deaths in New York, including those in nursing homes

by Caroline Linton, 5-18-20

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday addressed the state’s early response to the coronavirus outbreak and said “nobody” should be prosecuted for the those who died, noting that “older people” were most vulnerable. The governor has been criticized for a decision in March, which has since been reversed, to send patients back to nursing homes after they tested positive for COVID-19.

Isn’t that convenient, since the focus was now on him? And could Governor Andrew Cuomo have been any more dismissive? Consciousness of guilt. His guilt.

But wait; there’s more. It gets better. From FoxNews.com:

Cuomo granted immunity to nursing home executives, after big-money campaign donation: report

by Adam Shaw, 5-27-20

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who signed legislation granting hospital and nursing home executives immunity from lawsuits related to the novel coronavirus last month, previously received a big-money boost from a powerful health care industry group, according to a new report.

An article published on the socialist website Jacobin, and re-published by The Guardian, reports that the New York State Democratic Committee, then backing Cuomo’s primary run in 2018, received more than $1 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) — a lobbying group for hospital systems, some of which own nursing homes.

Correct. More people died in New York nursing facilities than died on September 11th.

Because if Governor Cuomo couldn’t hold himself accountable, how could he hold the nursing facilities accountable? Big money folks, big money. Big donations. $2.3 million dollars.

REVEALED: Governor Cuomo quietly gave legal immunity to nursing home executives from coronavirus lawsuits after raking in $2.3 million in campaign cash from the industry

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo took in $2.3 million in campaign cash from the hospital and nursing home industry before signing legislation to provide legal immunity to healthcare executives in the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report.

Cuomo quietly signed legislation last month shielding hospital and nursing home executives from the threat of lawsuits stemming from the pandemic, in a provision inserted into the annual budget, the Guardian reported. 

We already knew this as of April 23rd.

Coronavirus deaths at US nursing homes, long-term facilities reach over 10,000

by Joshua Miller, 4-23-20

Coronavirus-linked fatalities at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in the US have surpassed 10,000 — with the highest tally in New York, according to a troubling new report.

A survey by the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday found at least 10,700 fatalities among 35 states that either submit data online or responded to information requests.

The highest total — 3,505 — was reported in New York, according to the outlet.

The MinotDailyNews asked:

Who sent COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes?

by Michael Barone, 5-20-20

One-third of reported coronavirus deaths in the United States, according to New York Times reporting, are of nursing home residents or workers. Nursing homes accounted for a majority of deaths in heavily hit states like New Jersey (52%), Massachusetts (59%), Pennsylvania (66%) and Connecticut (55%), and for 80% of the deaths in otherwise lightly hit Minnesota.

When asked about his (nursing home) policy in late April, Governor Andrew Cuomo professed ignorance. Two weeks later, on May 9, after 46 days in effect, he reversed it.

New York wasn’t the only state that insisted on placing infected patients in nursing homes. New Jersey’s policy was similar, explicitly barring homes from requiring testing before admitting patients. California had the same policy but dropped it after 10 days.

Michael Goodwin wrote in the NYPost.com:

Blame governors for the coronavirus deaths in nursing homes: Goodwin

An article in Nowhere Magazine several years ago explored the ways ancient cultures dispatched the elderly, a practice known as senicide. Author Justin Nobel recounted several gruesome rites that made the Inuit habit of putting Granny on an Arctic ice floe seem humane.

At one point, Nobel mentioned that his own grandparents had moved “to a fancy nursing home in the suburbs of New York City.”

That made me shudder.

If they are honest, historians judging the American experience during the coronavirus pandemic will excoriate our barbaric failure to protect the elderly. We think of ourselves as civilized, but mindless policies and bureaucratic indifference turned many nursing homes and rehabilitation centers into killing fields.

At least 28,000 residents and workers in long-term care facilities already have died from the ­virus, according to a New York Times analysis done more than a week ago. That represented one out of every three COVID-19 deaths recorded in the United States at the time and was likely an undercount because of reporting lags and varying state methods.

Read this:

The states with the most nursing-home deaths, New York and New Jersey, didn’t make the list because of so many other deaths, yet more than 10,000 people died in their facilities. The 5,500 nursing-home deaths in New York are more than the total deaths in all other states except New Jersey.

Despite the surging death count, Cuomo defended his directive for more than six weeks. He reversed himself only last Sunday, ruling that patients must test negative before hospitals can send them to nursing homes. Yet he insisted that the initial policy “worked.”

If more than 5,000 dead was success, what would failure look like?

Cuomo’s reversal included forcing nursing homes to test staff and administrators twice a week, at the homes’ own expense. There was no explanation why testing was not required all along, or how it would work when labs say they cannot process the needed 410,000 weekly tests.

Blame governors, not Trump. You know, the same people who are blaming President Trump.

If that wasn’t clear enough, Goodwin also wrote:

This nursing home disaster is on you, Gov. Cuomo: Goodwin

Two weeks ago, Gov. ­Andrew Cuomo was first asked about his policy that forced nursing homes to admit ­patients infected with the coronavirus.

“That’s a good question, I don’t know,” the governor answered, turning to an aide.

On Tuesday, Cuomo was asked about a report from the Associated Press that his team had added more than 1,700 deaths to the count of those who died in nursing homes, bringing the total to at least 4,813.

“I don’t know the details, frankly,” the governor answered, turning to an aide.

Whose responsibility is it? Trump’s?

So with known nursing home deaths representing 25 percent of all deaths in the state, it beggars belief that the governor didn’t know anything about his office’s fatal policy two weeks ago or the new death totals now.

The only way either could be true is through an extreme case of plausible deniability. Thus, if there’s no proof he knew, he can’t be held responsible, right? Which was the whole point of the Sgt. Schultz defense.

That was a sitcom. This is life and death.

Then this.

Two other things Cuomo said Tuesday also bear remembering. First, he allowed that “we did some very harsh things” to nursing homes that “frankly, I wasn’t comfortable with.” He then cited the order barring visitors for the last two months.

It was indeed harsh, especially for the families who never saw their loved ones again before the virus killed them. By the same token, those families want to know why in the world the state would bar them from nursing homes but simultaneously impose infected patients on the same facilities.

It wasn’t President Trump, who was responsible for the New York nursing facility catastrophe. It was Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Now the stats are coming in. From Forbes.com:

The Most Important Coronavirus Statistic: 42% Of U.S. Deaths Are From 0.6% Of The Population

by Avik Roy, 5-26-20

Americans are vigorously debating the merits of continuing to lock down the U.S. economy to prevent the spread of COVID-19. A single statistic may hold the key to resolving this debate: the astounding share of deaths occurring in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Nursing homes and assisted living facilities: The #1 COVID problem

2.1 million Americans, representing 0.62% of the U.S. population, reside in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. (Nursing homes are residences for seniors needing help with activities of daily living, such as taking a shower or getting dressed, who also require 24/7 medical supervision; assisted living facilities are designed for seniors who need help with activities of daily living, but don’t require full-time on-site medical supervision.)

According to an analysis that Gregg Girvan and I conducted for the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, as of May 22, in the 43 states that currently report such figures, an astounding 42% of all COVID-19 deaths have taken place in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Let’s look at that again.

As of May 22, in the 43 states that currently report such figures, an astounding 42% of all COVID-19 deaths have taken place in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

And you couldn’t see that a captive audience, like nursing facilities in your state, were the very last place you should have purposely inserted a terrible virus?

Over TEN THOUSAND people killed, who could have been here today. The bulk of them killed in New York and New Jersey nursing facilities.

We also got this:

Report: Man who beat elderly veteran was diagnosed with coronavirus, quarantined into nursing home

Jaydon Hayden, 20 years old, filmed himself punching multiple elderly people repeatedly until they bled at the Westwood Nursing Center.

The man in the video that went viral was a 75-year-old United States Veteran.

We have discovered that Hayden was only brought to the nursing home last week, and he was staying there because he was diagnosed with COVID-19.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’re not alone.

Hayden’s father spoke to the local news station Fox2. He said that Hayden has mental health issues, including autism, and severe behavioral issues, and while he does box, he’s normally not vicious. 

His father (who wished to not be identified) said that Hayden called him from the group home he’s living at to say that he wasn’t sleeping well, was hearing voices, and was feeling anxious.

Last week, he went to a mental health facility in Ann Arbor. While there, he was diagnosed with the virus and workers told his father they were taking him to another facility to quarantine.

His father said that Hayden should not have been taken to the nursing home and he would not have consented if he knew that’s where they were taking him.

So a man with a history of mental problems, because he also had Wuhan-19, was placed in a Detroit nursing facility.

Who does that? Why do people no longer think things through? And then who says, in retrospect, “well, you know, old people die. Get over it.”

Then this from NY1.com:

Why the Extent of Coronavirus Carnage in New York’s Nursing Homes May Never be Known

by Michael Herzenberg, 5-28-20

BRONX, N.Y. – The coronavirus death toll in nursing homes and adult care facilities in New York State has now exceeded 6,000.

Residents have been especially vulnerable to COVID-19 and advocates say we still don’t have a true picture of just how many residents of these facilities have died in New York.

Six thousand. Twice the 9-11 death toll. And it could have been avoided by not making an affirmative decision by Governor Andrew Cuomo to place people with Wuhan-19 into nursing facilities, places having the least-trained staff, the least amount of appropriate equipment, and the most vulnerable persons in the entire state to a red-hot virus.

“Every time you turned around somebody was dying,” said Sharon Anderson, a resident of Bronxwood Assisted Living, an adult care facility in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx. 

Anderson said she was kept in the dark as the coronavirus swept through the building and took the lives of fellow residents.

“They don’t even want you to ask questions about these people and if you ask, they don’t tell you,” said Anderson.

She is one of the first residents of a local adult care facility to speak publicly about what it was like as the coronavirus toll around her mounted.

But it’s not just residents left without information.

Advocates and lawyers say the state’s accounting at Nursing Homes and Adult Care Facility deaths, which now stands at 6,035, remains an incomplete picture of what has happened to residents of the facilities.

Finally:

Initially, the state only counted residents who tested positive for COVID-19 and died at the facility.  Then it added to the tally residents who only had a suspected case and died.

But the state is not including in these figures adult care facility residents who were transferred to a hospital and died of the coronavirus there. The Health Department says that’s “to maintain consistency and reliability in the data as presented, and to avoid any potential for double-counting.”

However, nursing home and elder abuse attorney John Dalli explains the state’s tally of 6,035 nursing home deaths is not accurate.

“I would suspect that number is probably somewhere around ten to fifteen percent higher than that and it could be more. It’s just too difficult to tell,” Dalli said.

The human toll is real. Meterologist Janice Dean lost both of her in-laws to the Wuhan-19 virus invading their nursing facility.

From FoxNews.com:

Janice Dean slams Cuomo nursing home policy after losing in-laws to COVID-19: ‘Not just numbers on a curve’

by Yael Halon, 5-21-20

Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Thursday that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s failed nursing home policy should be “one of the biggest” stories of the year after both of her parents-in-law lost their lives to the coronavirus.

“I have not seen the coverage of this … ,” an emotional Dean said. “Twenty percent of our lost loved ones are from nursing homes … because Governor Cuomo and several other governors forced COVID-recovering patients into nursing homes.”

There is no sign on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s desk saying THE BUCK STOPS HERE. The buck simply passes through.

Cuomo essentially sent death into nursing homes containing the MOST VULNERABLE and LEAST ABLE to fight the virus, a population EVERYONE AGREES should be the MOST PROTECTED, staffed by the LEAST EQUIPPED to battle Wuhan-19.

We couldn’t protect the most vulnerable. Simultaneously, the least vulnerable in our society were themselves locked down. What do you do in a pandemic? You quarantine and keep safe the most infirm, those most susceptible.

You don’t quarantine the healthy.

Yes, a single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic. Or at least 6,000 + deaths in the state of New York.

BZ

 

 

 

Flynn proves: yes, it’s a Soft Coup

I have said and written since January of 2017 — three long years — that what we are witnessing in the United States of America is a Soft Coup against a presidential nominee, a president-elect, and a sitting president.

I was writing and saying that, again, years before it became “cool” to do so. Because I had insight to laws violated and, well, I also have at my disposal a grasp of history, facts, logic, rationality, proportion, tradition, context, intent and common sense.

And because those things — power, mighty applications of power, propaganda and weight — can be applied to one president by whom the forces of the Deep State disagree, well, it can thusly be easily applied to another president of a different party by similarly-arrayed forces.

But that’s immaterial with the LDAMM: Leftists, Demorats and American Media Maggots.

With a number of caveats, of course, including the American Media Maggot factor. Because the AMM will never side with Republicans or Conservatives, not unless and until the AMM are totally eradicated and reinvented. Which may, in time, occur. We certainly know they are moribund.

The AMM hate to be called Fake News, except they continue to go out of their way to prove, each and every week, that they are indeed Fake News.

NBC admits Chuck Todd’s ‘Meet the Press’ deceptively edited Barr remarks on Flynn

by Greg Re, 5-11-20

NBC News’ Chuck Todd aired a deceptively edited clip of Attorney General Bill Barr discussing the Michael Flynn case during his “Meet the Press” broadcast on Sunday, prompting the network to concede the mistake hours later — but there is still no word on whether Todd will apologize on-air.

Asked by CBS News’ Catherine Herridge how history would judge the DOJ’s decision to move to dismiss the Flynn case, Barr initially responded, laughing: “Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

After the brief clip aired, Todd remarked that he was “struck by the cynicism of the answer — it’s a correct answer, but he’s the attorney general. He didn’t make the case that he was upholding the rule of law. He was almost admitting that, yeah, this was a political job.”

In the full clip, which the NBC show did not air, Barr immediately went on to state explicitly that, in fact, he felt the Flynn decision upheld the rule of law.

“I think a fair history would say it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law,” Barr said. “It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.”

Here’s how the full cut went, with Catherine Herridge.

That was NBC’s American Media Maggot hit job on William Barr — because he had the guts to do his job.

This all stemmed, of course, when the Department of Justice decided to drop charges against General Michael Flynn on May   .

But even before that, documents were unsealed on April 30th, indicating the collusion really occurred with the FBI regarding General Flynn.

Gregg Jarrett: FBI’s actions in Michael Flynn case should send a chill down your spine

by Julia Musto

Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said Thursday that explosive new internal FBI documents unsealed Wednesday evening in the government’s case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn are the most “outrageous” and “unethical” actions by government officials that he has seen in 40 years of practicing law.

In an interview on “Fox & Friends” with hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade, Jarrett explained the findings.

“You know, I thought this is the most outrageous, unethical, dishonest, and corrupt act I have ever seen. And, I have been a lawyer for 40 years. I have never seen such misbehavior by government officials,” he remarked.

You can read the documents here.

Rep Jim Jordan told us what he thought the released documents indicated.

And then former Rep Trey Gowdy weighed in on same.

But what did fired former FBI Director Jimmy “The Leak” Comey say, in 2019, about why he sent FBI agents to the White House? Jimmy reveals: it was a purposeful Perjury Trap. And he did it because he could. He thinks it’s amusing.

Never before have I seen such a sanctimonious, hypocritical, entitled, arrogant, self-serving, preening, alleged law enforcement officer in my life. He is right is better, more sacrosanct and devout than you will ever be.

From RedState.com:

New Docs Tie Obama in to Effort Against Flynn, Biden Also in Room

by Nick Arama, 5-7-20

You can make the judgment call here, but this does not look good for former President Barack Obama.

According to the newly released documents from the Department of Justice, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates learned about the effort against Gen. Michael Flynn from Obama himself.

From Townhall:

“Yates first learned of the December 2016 calls between [LTG Michael] Flynn and [Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey] Kislyak on January 5, 2017, while in the Oval Office. Yates, along with then FBI-Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, were at the White House to brief members of the Obama Administration on the classified Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities in Recent U.S Elections. President Obama was joined by his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and others from the National Security Council,” the document states.

“After the briefing, Obama dismissed the group but asked Yates and Comey to stay behind. Obama started by saying he had ‘learned of the information about Flynn’ and his conversation with Kislyak about sanctions. Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information. At that point, Yates had no idea what the President was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can’t recall if he specified there was an ‘investigation,’” it continues.

But how can you discover information if you fail — as the American Media Maggots have purposely failed to do — to even ask the basic question:

And even after all this time, has anyone asked Obama or Biden: what did you know and when did you know it?

John Solomon — an excellent journalist — writes at Just The News:

Schiff releases transcripts undercutting Dem claims of Russia collusion proof

by John Solomon, 5-7-20

FBI officials admit they knew Papadopoulos had little contact with Russians but opened probe anyways. DNC-connected lawyer reveals CIA contact.

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released thousands of pages of declassified interview transcripts from the Russia investigation that show that more than a year into the probe senior FBI and intelligence officials could offer no specific proof of collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow and instead offered rambling explanations of why the probe had persisted.

The testimony of fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe typified the testimony that was given back in 2017 to the committee, then under the leadership of Rep. Devin Nunes.

McCabe admitted at one point that while the FBI opened up the entire Crossfire Hurricane investigation based on a tip from Australia that George Papadopoulos may have been told Russia possessed emails of Hillary Clinton, the bureau suspected the former Trump campaign adviser had little or no contact with Moscow.

You can see for yourself. Go here for Russia Investigation Transcripts and Documents.

So agents pivoted instead to another adviser, Carter Page, who had been the focus of Christopher Steele’s now-discredited dossier, he explained.

“Papadopoulos’ comment didn’t particularly indicate that he was the person that had had — that was interacting with the Russians,” McCabe answered when asked by lawmakers why a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant request in October 2016 focused only on Page and not the man the FBI originally predicated the Trump investigation upon.

It was one of the few extraordinary admissions from McCabe: The FBI opened up an entire counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign on a figure agents did not believe was having contact with Moscow.

But wait; it’s all a Nothing Burger that Schiff had to cover up. Schiff said this:

In releasing the transcripts Thursday, the current Democratic House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff claimed they provided proof of nefarious connections between Russians and Trump associates. “The transcripts released today richly detail evidence of the Trump campaign’s efforts to invite, make use of, and cover up Russia’s help in the 2016 presidential election,” he alleged.

But this was actually in the documents.

JAMES CLAPPER:

In fact, witnesses were repeatedly pressed to offer specific evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia and could offer none, saying it was either too preliminary or they did not have any. 

“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told lawmakers. “That’s not to say that there weren’t concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence.

“But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence,” he added  

LORETTA LYNCH:

Former Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified that by the time she left office on Jan. 20, 2017 with the case more than six months old, she was unaware of any direct evidence of collusion.

“I don’t recall anything being briefed up to me, and it’s just my recollection at this point is not,” she said. She added that what officials had was mostly fears Russia might be working with Trump.

“Certainly the information that was given in [redacted] was concerning to me and indicated that there was a goal to have coordinated activity,” she said. 

SALLY YATES:

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who worked for both Obama and Trump, also acknowledged there had been no determination of any conspiracy to collude before she was fired. Her winding answer was typical of many of the witnesses.

“I think you need to learn — if you want to get to the bottom line answer of was there collusion, conspiracy or coordination — if I got the three Cs right — then you also need to learn about who had contact, because you can’t get to that collusion — the other — the three Cs there, until you figure out who’s having contact with who,” she said.

Pressed to be more specific, Yates conceded there was no finding. “I don’t believe anybody had reached a conclusion yet as to whether there was a nefarious alliance … with the Russians. We were at the fact-gathering stage here, not the conclusion stage.”

MARY McCORD:

Mary McCord, the former assistant attorney general for national security, also testified that by the time she left the department a year into the probe there was no evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia to hack DNC or Clinton campaign officials.

“I can’t recall if there was information, any information or evidence at the time I left about conspiring to take part in the actual intrusion,” she said.

ANDREW McCABE:

“What is the most damning or important piece of evidence in the dossier that you now know is true?” McCabe was asked during his December 2017 interview.

“Well, as I tried to explain before, there is a lot of information in the Steele reporting. We have not been able to prove the accuracy of all the information,” he answered.

Pressed further to confirm that he did not know if Christopher Steele’s dossier was true, McCabe said, “That’s correct.”

BEN RHODES:

When asked under oath by House investigators if he had any evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, Rhodes said he did not.

“I wouldn’t have received any information on any criminal or counterintelligence investigations into what the Trump campaign was doing, so I would not have seen that information,” Rhodes told investigators.

Pressed again on the topic, he continued, “I saw indications of potential coordination, but I did not see, you know, the specific evidence of the actions of the Trump campaign.”

SAMANTHA POWER:

Samantha Power, former US ambassador to the United Nations, has publicly accused Trump of catering to Russian President Vladimir Putin to compensate him for interfering in the 2016 election.

“Every day @realDonaldTrump finds new ways to compensate Vladimir Putin for his election interference. And every day Putin gains additional incentive to interfere again on Trump’s behalf in 2020,” she wrote on Twitter in November of last year.

But when speaking under oath to House investigators, she sang a different tune.

Asked whether she had seen evidence of Russian interference, she said, “I am not in possession of anything—I am not in possession and didn’t read or absorb information that came from out of the intelligence community.”

SUSAN RICE:

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice told ABC’s “This Week” in July 2018 that questioning if President Trump was compromised by the Russians was “legitimate” because Putin was benefitting by the commander in chief’s policy decisions.

“What his motivations are I think is a legitimate question … the policies that this president has pursued globally have served Vladimir Putin’s interests,” she said at the time.

Less than a year earlier, however, Rice told House investigators that she hadn’t seen evidence proving then-candidate Trump coordinated or colluded with Russia to take the 2016 election.

“I don’t recall intelligence that I would consider evidence to that effect that I saw prior…to my departure,” she said when being questioned by former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC).

The American Media Maggots also did their jobs on behalf of Russia — as you knew they would.

From TheFederalist.com:

Obama, Biden Oval Office Meeting On January 5 Was Key To Entire Anti-Trump Operation

by Mollie Hemingway, 5-8-20

Susan Rice’s bizarre Inauguration Day email about that meeting helps explain the campaign of leaks, lies, and obstruction that followed.

Information released in the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case it brought against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn confirms the significance of a January 5, 2017, meeting at the Obama White House. It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration.

“President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote in an unusual email to herself about the meeting that was also attended by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Comey, and Vice President Joe Biden.

Remember that convoluted email?

A clearer picture is emerging of the drastic steps that were taken to accomplish Obama’s goal in the following weeks and months. Shortly thereafter, high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective information supporting a supposed Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming National Security Advisor was ambushed, and the incoming Attorney General was forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump. At each major point in the operation, explosive media leaks were a key strategy in the operation to take down Trump.

Not only was information on Russia not fully shared with the incoming Trump team, as Obama directs, the leaks and ambushes made the transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the administration, made effective governance almost impossible, and materially damaged national security. When Comey was finally fired on May 9, in part for his duplicitousness regarding his handling of the Russia collusion theory, he orchestrated the launch of a Special Counsel probe that continued his efforts for another two years. That probe ended with Mueller finding no evidence of any American colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election, much less Trump or anyone connected to him.

Read the rest of the article. It goes step-by-step in a clear timeline delineating everything.

Listen now to Adam Schiff. Psychologists term this kind of thing “projection.”

One of the biggest questions, of course, is this: who will fold first? Who will try to cut a deal with the DOJ first? Because whoever makes that decision will get the cushion deal and the rest will be out in the cold.

Here is Obama’s former DNI, Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, throwing Barack Hussein Obama under the bus. Do you enjoy hot kitchens much, JC?

You know; the same James Clapper who lied before Congress in 2013.

The case against General Flynn was dropped by the Department of Justice on Thursday of last week. Here is Politico’s take — and please note the biased stance.

DOJ drops criminal case against Michael Flynn

by Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, 5-7-20

The move comes after the president and his allies stepped up their assault on the legal case against the former national security adviser.

The Justice Department has abandoned its prosecution of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, throwing in the towel on one of the most prominent cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The move represents a remarkable reversal two and half years after Flynn initially pleaded guilty to the FBI about his dealings with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. In that time, the case has taken a number of dramatic turns: Flynn went from the precipice of being sentenced in 2018, to abruptly switching legal teams in 2019, to trying to withdraw his guilty plea in 2020. Flynn’s attempt to take back his plea led Attorney General William Barr in January to assign a federal prosecutor to review the case.

It was that review that led to the move on Thursday to dismiss the case altogether. Department officials, including Barr, concluded in light of recently disclosed evidence that the FBI’s questioning of Flynn just four days after Trump’s inauguration lacked a proper investigative basis. Flynn admitted in front of two federal judges that he intentionally lied during that interview about his dealings with the Russian ambassador, but the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general formally retreated from those admissions in January.

“A review of the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information, indicates that Mr. Flynn’s statements were never ‘material’ to any FBI investigation,” read the motion filed Thursday seeking to dismiss the criminal prosecution.

This was a Mark I, Model I “Perjury Trap” plain and simple, because I’ve seen them, I’ve worked them. Director Comey admitted to it, plainly and clearly. It was a fishing expedition.

For what? Russia “collusion”? You want to talk about Machiavellian? How’s this for convoluted? The famed Susan Rice “cover your ass” email at the end of the Obama regime.

Try to follow. The Obama Regime and Susan Rice believed General Flynn had to be Putin’s Poodle because he was — correctly, as certainly is confirmed now — emphasizing the threat and danger China is to the United States, whilst also indicating that Russia was — and is — the world stage “has been.”

Thusly proving that General Flynn was a Russian stooge and required targeting.

But mostly because Flynn was a clear threat. For one, he planned to revamp pretty much all seventeen intelligence agencies and, to them, that was a true existential threat. Jobs could be lost! Power could be lost! Control could be lost!

The bastard’s gotta go, the Obama Administration agreed.

For a moment, let’s go back to 2017 and the truthful Marie Harf, Obama devotee extraordinaire.

Let’s also go back to 2018 for this article from the WashingtonExaminer.com:

Memo: FBI recommended Michael Flynn not have lawyer present during interview, did not warn of false statement consequences

by Byron York, 12-11-18

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who arranged the bureau’s interview with then-national security adviser Michael Flynn at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017 — the interview that ultimately led to Flynn’s guilty plea on one count of making false statements — suggested Flynn not have a lawyer present at the session, according to newly-filed court documents. In addition, FBI officials, along with the two agents who interviewed Flynn, decided specifically not to warn him that there would be penalties for making false statements because the agents wanted to ensure that Flynn was “relaxed” during the session.

The new information, drawn from McCabe’s account of events plus the FBI agents’ writeup of the interview — the so-called 302 report — is contained in a sentencing memo filed Tuesday by Flynn’s defense team.

Citing McCabe’s account, the sentencing memo says that shortly after noon on Jan. 24 — the fourth day of the new Trump administration — McCabe called Flynn on a secure phone in Flynn’s West Wing office. The two men discussed business briefly and then McCabe said that he “felt that we needed to have two of our agents sit down” with Flynn to discuss Flynn’s talks with Russian officials during the presidential transition.

McCabe, by his own account, urged Flynn to talk to the agents alone, without a lawyer present. “I explained that I thought the quickest way to get this done was to have a conversation between [Flynn] and the agents only,” McCabe wrote. “I further stated that if LTG Flynn wished to include anyone else in the meeting, like the White House counsel for instance, that I would need to involve the Department of Justice. [Flynn] stated that this would not be necessary and agreed to meet with the agents without any additional participants.”

Can anyone say “Perjury Trap” again? Hands? Bueller?

Chief conspirator himself, Barack Hussein Obama, had to weigh in on the DOJ dropping the Flynn investigation. Ever notice how Obama isn’t the so-called incredibly brilliant orator when a TelePrompter isn’t around?

Why does Barack Hussein Obama care? His presidential ship has sailed. That’s yesterday’s news. Unless he somehow fears that orange really is the new blue.

And speaking of Obama, why doesn’t he want to let us see his archives? I thought — no, wait, I know — Obama said his was going to be the most transparent presidential administration in the history of history.

Obama Sends Private Letter to National Archives Claiming ‘Confidentiality’ To Not Release Biden-Ukraine Docs

by Gregg Jarrett, 5-10-20

What exactly is Obama concerned with in regard to the “confidentiality interests that all presidents have sought to protect?”

Former President Barack Obama has inserted himself into the Russia, Ukraine fiasco; arguably this was not the first time. While Democrats have been denying and protecting their guilt in creating and advancing the Russia Hoax, there is evidence that suggests President Obama likely was aware of the probe. Fox News has obtained a letter from the office of former President Barack Obama to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which manages presidential records.

Why would Obama, four years after leaving office, suddenly get involved? The letter to the National Archives was privately sent in March. Arguably they did not want Fox News to obtain a copy. Nonetheless, the letter bashes Senate Republicans and their investigation of Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukraine. Hunter, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, joined the Ukraine company during the Obama administration. Very intriguing.

Obama’s letter to the NARA is a response to Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson having requested the Obama administration records on Ukraine-related meetings, placed on November 21, 2019. Obama’s letter claims the senators’ inquiry is an effort “to shift the blame for Russian interference in the 2016 election to Ukraine.”

In retrospect, it appear the Obama Administration was in fact one of the most opaque administrations.

So depending upon the prevailing political prairie winds, the Leftists and American Media Maggots will always align with, alternately — whenever it suits their purposes of working against President Trump in any fashion — Russia, China, or the loving Nazi George Soros.

While we’re here, let’s remind ourselves of what was said between Hillary Clinton and James Comey in 2016.

And let’s review how I knew James Comey was lying back in 2016, and couldn’t be trusted or believed from that point forward. As I wrote in early 2017:

It is crystal clear from the evidence released by the FBI after the first investigation that the former Secretary of State used a private email server to transmit national security information rather than safeguard such information, as required by law, and that she subsequently made statements contrary to the facts as we continue to learn.

Second, the real actor in this Theater of the Absurd is the Justice Department’s decision to commence an investigation that was a sham from the very beginning. After all, it was the Justice Department that failed to convene a grand jury, issue search warrants for computers, place witnesses under oath and appoint a special prosecutor who could operate free from conflicts of interest. Hey, just like Robert Mueller, right?

Then FBI Director James Comey “cleared” Hillary Clinton of all wrongdoing on July 5th of last year.

Comey admits that Clinton lied.  But here is the difference (that we won’t know precisely because there was no oath and no recording).

You can lie publicly all you want, if people are sufficiently stupid to believe it — like much of the electorate and the American Media Maggots are doltish enough.  But you should not lie to the FBI.  My guess is that Hillary Clinton came relatively clean in 3.5 hours.  And that is why I believe she was not placed under oath and the interview was not recorded.  Things like that make it easier to dispute later when politically necessary.

But James Comey outed himself to Jason Chaffetz:

Chaffetz then asked whether it was that he was just not able to prosecute it or that Clinton broke the law.

“Well, I don’t want to give an overly lawyerly answer,” Comey said. “The question I always look at is there evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody engaged in conduct that violated a criminal statute, and my judgment here is there is not. “

And this is how James Comey attempts to rationalize his decision.  He states he does not believe his case established guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

NEWSFLASH: It is not UP to YOU, Director Comey, to assemble a case that yields a determination of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  That threshold is up to the DOJ or more pointedly a Grand Jury, not you or your organization.  All you need to compile a case for submission is “probable cause.”  That’s what real cops and real DAs in America do. Their jobs.  They stay in their lanes and do their jobs.

As I have said time and again, there are two kinds of crimes as written by statute: those of general intent and those of specific intent. Comey stated that HRC had to have possessed a very specific intent to commit her crimes. EXCEPT that the US codes applicable are not those of specific intent because they do not include the phrase “with the intent to.”

That is how a crime of specific intent is crafted. It is stated.

Even more disturbing: Attorney General Lynch did not recuse herself from the final decision on whether to prosecute the case — nor did she give that decision to a career prosecutor at the Department of Justice. She instead prejudged the case by supposedly blindly accepting the FBI’s recommendation.

“[AG Lynch] said…she would accept whatever recommendations career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director made…” –NYTimes July 1, 2016

Of course she would. The fix was in. And Comey was predestined to take whatever fall occurred, not her. After all, he is white and male; she is black and female.

Here, Maria Bartiromo speaks with Devin Nunes about the situation.

Now we’re discovering that, of course, Barack Hussein Obama knew what was going on with Flynn — but Joe Biden knew as well. From FoxNews.com:

Obama knew details of wiretapped Flynn phone calls, surprising top DOJ official in meeting with Biden, declassified docs show

by Gregg Re, 5-7-20

President Obama was aware of the details of then-incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn’s intercepted December 2016 phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, according to documents released Thursday as exhibits to the government’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case.

Obama’s unexpectedly intimate knowledge of the details of Flynn’s calls, which the FBI acknowledged at the time were not criminal or even improper, raised eyebrows because of his own history with Flynn — and because top FBI officials secretly discussed whether their goal was to “get [Flynn] fired” when they interviewed him in the White House on January 24, 2017.

Obama personally had warned the Trump administration against hiring Flynn, and made clear he was “not a fan,” according to multiple officials. Obama had fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014; Obama cited insubordination, while Flynn asserted he was pushed out for his aggressive stance on combating lslamic extremism.

Obama knew what was going on. So did Joe Biden. No one can possibly think that Barack Hussein Obama was either a stupid or an uninformed individual in the Oval Office. And particularly when dealing with issues of these importance.

So it’s official: we have a name. ObamaGate. Jesse Watters talks about same.

And listen how the LDAMM, the Leftists, Demorats by way of the American Media Maggot Brian Stelter, want it both ways. Flynn is just a smoke screen for avoiding Wuhan-19 deaths, which is essentially an overblown flu targeting the elderly while — in the meantime — the nation spent almost four straight years being put through the wringer of the constant whining and keening of little officious pricks like George Costanza on CNN.

General Flynn’s lawyer weighs in, from the New York Post:

Flynn’s lawyer accuses Obama of framing the ex-national security adviser

by Mark Moore, 5-10-20

The lead attorney for former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Sunday accused former President Barack Obama, other top administration officials and the FBI of setting up her client.

Sidney Powell on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” cited the revelation in recently released-documents that FBI agents didn’t tell Fynn he was under investigation or that lying to them would be a federal crime.

“These agents specifically schemed and planned with each other how to not tip him off, that he was even the person being investigated,” she said.

“So they kept him relaxed and unguarded deliberately as part of their effort to set him up and frame him.”

“The whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper, [Former CIA Director John] Brennan, and in the Oval Office meeting that day with President Obama,” Powell said.

And finally, when you’ve lost New York media, you know things aren’t going well for you. This, just today, from the New York Post:

It looks like President Obama ordered up phony RussiaGate scandal

by The Post Editorial Board

RussiaGate is now a complete dead letter — but ObamaGate is taking its place. Just how far did the then-president go to cripple his successor?

It’s now clear the Obama-Comey FBI and Justice Department never had anything more substantial than the laughable fiction of the Steele dossier to justify the “counterintelligence” investigation of the Trump campaign. Yet incessant leaks from that supposedly confidential probe wound up consuming the Trump administration’s first months in office — followed by the Bob Mueller-led special counsel investigation that proved nearly the “total witch hunt” that President Trump dubbed it.

Information released as the Justice Department dropped its charges against Gen. Mike Flynn shows that President Barack Obama, in his final days in office, played a key role in fanning the flames of phony scandal. Fully briefed on the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, he knew the FBI had come up with nothing despite months of work starting in July 2016.

Yet on Jan. 5, 2017, Obama told top officials who’d be staying on in the new administration to keep the crucial facts from Team Trump.

And there you have it. ObamaGate.

Sadly, Comey’s FBI played along — sandbagging Flynn with the “friendly” interview that later became the pretext for the bogus charges dropped last week, as well as triggering the White House chaos that led to his ouster. This when the FBI had already gone over the general with a fine-tooth comb, and concluded that, no, he’d done nothing like collude with the Russians.

Meanwhile, Comey himself gave Trump an intentionally misleading briefing on the Steele dossier. That was followed by leaks that suggested the dossier was the tip of an iceberg, rather than a pack of innuendo that hadn’t at all checked out under FBI scrutiny.

Pulitzer Prizes were won for blaring utter fiction; the Trump administration was kneecapped out of the gate. Innocents like Flynn were bankrupted along the way.

Say this about Obama: He knows how to play dirty.

Everyone, up to and including Barack Hussein Obama, in this treasonous chain, should be prosecuted criminally and civilly.

Criminally, under 18 USC 242.

Civilly, under 42 USC 1983:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.

And finally: the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree Doctrine should prevail. Everyone caught, sentenced or affected by the illegal FISA warrant should be set free, to include Manafort and all others.

I have said and written since January of 2017 — three long years — that what we are witnessing in the United States of America is a Soft Coup against a presidential nominee, a president-elect, and a sitting president.

Heads should roll.

And this can never happen again.

BZ

 

 

Freedom and law enforcement: what are the laws?

A paddleboarder was arrested 4-3-20 for disobeying Governor Newsom’s “stay at home order” on Malibu Beach. It took a sheriff’s boat, a USCG boat, and about $17,000 worth of fuel, time and man-hours to “corral” the miscreant, who faces 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine — at the same time that actual criminals are released from Kalifornia jails. Perspective, anyone?

The fight continues.

And I am perplexed why it does.

I’m not speaking out of school when I say that this issue is tearing through a number of law enforcement contingents on Facebook, with groups featuring retired and current LE members, who have vastly different opinions on the subject.

Altogether too many of them shockingly wrong.

Wrong how? As in marching lockstep with whatever edicts are handed down by local mayors or state governors. I won’t enumerate all the myriad reasons on this post; I already did so on my prior post in great detail. Read it here.

I find this thinking disappointing and, frankly, a bit shocking and certainly disturbing. In my opinion, altogether too many law enforcement officers are willing to look at the computers in their vehicles, acknowledge a call with an easy fingertip, respond, violate rights, and seemingly think nothing of it, all in the name of what I term Fear Porn.

And now, there’s another reason for cops to continue violating your rights. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Perhaps that might have been initially semi-excusable about two months ago when the numbers were still rolling in — and yet, not very excusable when taken in overall context in terms of rights and freedoms in the United States of America.

The subject was already a primary focus, for two entire hours, on my wireless radio show last Thursday night, the 7th, where I delineated the numerous reasons, in significant detail, why too many responses by law enforcement feature unnecessary, over-the-top — and unconstitutional — reactions to situations that can be best served, easily, by other less heavy-handed means.

Listen to “BZ’s Berserk Bobcat Saloon Radio Show, Thursday, 5-7-20” on Spreaker.

And yet the hits and foolishness just keeps on coming. Please understand, the bulk of what I’m addressing with this post applies primarily, as you will read below, to Kalifornia laws.

The most recent incident that set me off — as well as apparently others in the opposite direction — occurred in Fresno, Kalifornia on May 10th, Sunday, Mother’s Day.

WATCH: Police Shove Through Crowd, Arrest Mother’s Day Diners at Fresno Waffle Shop

by Todd Starnes, 5-10-20

At least two people were hauled away by police after law enforcement officers tried to enter a diner that was illegally opened in Fresno, California.

The diners were waiting in line outside the Waffle Shop. Officers ordered the diners to step aside so they could enter the establishment. When they refused, the officers forcefully shoved aside patrons. It was during that confrontation that at least two people were taken into custody.

Body cam video from Fresno PD.

Then: off to the races on a law enforcement Facebook group. The original post:

So I can’t find the post where the video of my Alma Mater Fresno PD arrested a guy at a restaurant this morning.

I watched the video earlier and only later decided to respond to it. What I saw was an officer meeting two code enforcement officers to make contact with the management of the restaurant probably to cite them for a muni code violation. As they walk up to the door, the crowd gets ugly. There is a guy blocking the door.

The big guy is about 6-03. He blocks the door as a crowd surrounds the officer and tells him he can’t go in. The big guy also gives the officer some sort of forearm or elbow. The officer arrests him.

I know the officer pretty well. He did everything by the book. The crowd and the tall guy were angry and things went down hill because of them not the police. The officer is a good dude who does his job impartially doesn’t get jacked up easily. Don’t judge until the facts are in.

You may not like the fact that code enforcement was going to shut down the restaurant, fine. In my opinion the officer did his job the way he thought it needed to be done.

I disagreed. After a number of comments I wrote:

Maybe the guy’s (the officer) a good guy. At this point it’s becoming immaterial. The numbers and the science aren’t justifying these actions any longer.

I retired as a cop after 41 years in LE. As a Sergeant I wouldn’t have allowed my troops to be the Covid Gestapo.

I can read and people can read. I smell bullshit and people smell bullshit.

You forget the phrase “with the consent of the governed” at your own peril.

From that point the fire was lighted. One deputy responded to my comment.

The police are being used by the politicians to enforce poorly thought-through directives. The public is getting more and more pissed off about these Draconian measures to contain the virus. What will result is civil unrest as the public grows more defiant against the politicians while the police get caught in the middle. It’s a no-win situation for the police.

By the way I’m a retired deputy sheriff and I’m catching a lot of flack from friends who see more and more intrusion on their civil liberties.

He’s correct. Cops are catching crap — properly — for actions such as this. I replied:

My point precisely.

Then there was a response I hadn’t anticipated, corroborating my thoughts.

You might need to get your glasses checked, the guy he arrested never gave him a forearm or elbow. The officer reacted to a verbal challenge and got pissed off. There was no crime, hope you buddy is ready for the law suit. Also ask your buddy how long it will be before he does gun confiscation as ordered.

Then we were off to the races when I wrote:

I’ve read on any number of LE sites how “politics like this” are ruining these sites. Debatable. The overarching points in my mind are Constitutionality and the Bill of Rights. That’s the oath I took. Not to a mayor, not to a governor, but to the US Constitution. Because LE can do a thing, we always need to ask: “are we doing the right thing for the right reason?”

Spirit of the law vs the letter of the law. Discretion. Malum in se vs malum prohibitum.

One individual began the thread.

So what would you have done if you were directed by your supervisor to assist code enforcement with their investigation?

I replied:

Told my troops to C4, gone over myself to look, listen. The city can send paper later. Is it worth getting my troops or citizens hurt over this when the numbers and stats don’t justify it, when I personally see the same thing happening at Costco or Save Mart, or people standing in line for EEO? Nope.

So when rational arguments don’t work, as with everyone else — and attorneys — you go for the ad hominum attacks:

You worked in Sacramento County, one of the most pussified and liberal departments in California. Where you need permission before you can make a request (he meant arrest). I understand your response. But, in real police work, things are a bit different.

So my 41 years mean nothing. Okay. But factually, again, he was sorely incorrect. I responded:

Oh, you mean SAC PD.

Because historically, with the Sacramento Police Department, you need the permission of a SPD Sergeant to make an arrest absent exigent circumstances.

Not so, historically, at the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office where I worked for 35 years, where myself and others were granted trust and utilized discretion — and did not require a Sergeant’s permission for any arrest.

That is one of many reasons that retired SPD officers came over to Sac SO to work as annuitants because, as most every retired SPD officer told me when I supervised EVOC: “If I’d only known this, that you treat your officers like actual adults, I would have gone with you guys.”

Another individual wrote:

Funny we never went with code enforcement people when they did their job, wasn’t our business enforcing health codes and such, only time I ever responded to assist a code enforcement was when the place had a history of getting physical with the code enforcers and I can’t imagine that was the case here, but one never knows. Personally with all the lies and deception coming from newscum I would have on viewed something en route and not gotten their to be involved…..this isn’t about a virus it’s about the upcoming elections…..

Now we’re getting closer to the crux of the biscuit, because here’s another thought:

Where was the on duty patrol Sgt. That would not have happened if those were my troops. I would have led the Code Enforcement officers through the back door, securred the front door after safely ecorting the customers out the back door after they had finished their meals and as as soon as Code Enforcement was done, ecorted them to their vehicles. Sorry Folks the Waffle House is closed until further notice.
10-8 Clear – return to your beats.

The same goon who hated me hated that response. He posed:

Back doors locked. Now what?

The response?

Have dispatch call them and tell them to open the back door. If that doesn’t work, have a unit borrow a crowbar from the Fire Dept. Do I have to do all the thinking? Apparently.

Boom, shaka-laka.

More comments.

We can all debate the officers actions/tactics, etc. But I’ve read several comments on here referring to the officer as “ short shot, gnome, tweedle dum” etc.
It’s disappointing that a few of the arm chair warriors on here feel the need to denigrate an officer who is still out there wearing the badge, doing a difficult job.

And:

That Officer is 5-02 of fury. He is tough as hell any of you who denigrate him based on his size are dicks.

Several comments later, a voice in the wilderness:

The police should not be involved in this issue at this level. Distrust & rebellion are growing, & involving our police is perceived as the overreaction that it is. LE cannot afford further erosion of respect & cooperation. Our collective security is at great risk & anarchy is the result. Big Bird appeared to challenge the officer. I know nothing of him or his motives but that cannot be allowed.

And there we have it. Another comment:

The officers did not have their heads in the game. I led patrol officers as their field Sgt.for 26 years and that was a cluster f..k from the get. They did not follow the 5 Ps – Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

Then it went to this, and rightly so.

Confiscation of lawfully possessed firearms? Better bring a body bag. Our neighbors, friends and every citizen will ultimately be engaged in armed resistance. We’ll be getting a taste of what it was like to be a Redcoat in 1775. Sure, there will be cops and soldiers who will buy in and enforce such orders. I expect the majority will not. I know of none of the Marines I served with who would comply.

Exactly what I want to hear from law enforcement officers.

Another comment.

“The officer is a good dude who does his job impartially doesn’t get jacked up easily.”

I don’t doubt that at all, but I bet their friends and colleagues would have said much the same about many of the Redcoats at Concord on April 19, 1775.

Sometimes “good guys” follow bad orders, and find themselves on the wrong side of history. Time will tell.

And another comment.

Speaking for myself only, if I had to go out on a call to assist another city department, I just stood by to keep the peace. My dog wasn’t in the fight over too many chickens or how tall somebody’s grass was.
That’s their call. But, if things started going south then I was in charge and called the shots. It wasn’t worth the potential damage trying to force a hand over a municipal code violation.
The department involved could file a report with the city attorney and go about finding another solution. I’d back them but I wasn’t going to get my butt in a sling for them either.

You have to look further down the road. What are the ramifications of this call, particularly a Wuhan-19 call?

The problem today is that the police are in a no win situation. They are expected to uphold the law but in turn are crucified by the press and the public, who know nothing about the law or the situation.

And:

Agencies need to step back and away from all the bull shit. U have people getting arrested and released…real crooks. Not people trying to keep there business going and people hired. Really. Going to arrest people on the beach, or your not social distancing and going to take them. Come on. My son a combat Marine grunt was hired by a agency. After seeing all this the kid withdrew. Told them he wanted nothing to do with what they r doing…He is back in the service

Then this dropped:

I thought this site was an LEO site. All the second guessing sounds like some of you need to be in IA.

A response:

Exactly. Bunch of self righteous assholes

I responded myself:

Who follow the Constitution, Bill of Rights, honor their oaths and don’t blindly obey. So I guess I’m an asshole.

A reply to me:

Right. I’m sure when you were a cop in the 80’s and some asshole mouthed off to you, you immediately thought “of the constitution, bill of rights” and walked away. Come on.

Me:

Apparently you don’t understand the difference between Constitutional and unconstitutional. I’m not someone’s political poodle and this is all politics. These political mayors and governors can fight their own political wars.

Him, with the ad hominum attack, which is what attorneys use when they have no argument.:

Apparently you forgot what it was like to be an officer. Easy for you to judge in retirement how bad ass you were and how you would have done it.

One defender:

Calling out a fellow officer for doing something stupid isn’t anti LEO.

Then I wrote, more pointedly:

Oh please. This is all political bullshit that cops get placed into by fuckhead politicians, meaning it isn’t worth getting my troops embroiled in. I go back to my original reasons above. Numbers, stats, politics.

Then a little more common sense emerged from another officer:

This reminds me of the time I had a municipal code violation for loud music. The guy was ready to go to blows along with his party friends. I issued the ticket noted the refusal, wrote a brief report. The city attorney later got upset and said I should have taken the guy to jail. I asked if they would have stood by me for a use of force complaint over loud music. The look on his face told me I did the correct thing… cops are being pulled into a bad situation with this mess.

Bingo. Thank you. Then another interesting comment making the distinction between a police department and a sheriff’s department.

Can’t fault a city peace officer if he is ordered by a city appointed Police Chief who must answer to city officials who order him to enforce unconstitutionally issued orders, codes or statutes.

A county Sheriff on the other hand is elected and answers directly to his citizens and if he truly believes in the Oath of Office he swore to he will tell those communist leaning officials, whether they be city, county or state, that he will NOT enforce any unconstitutional statue or rule that violates the rights guaranteed to the citizens under the U. S. Constitution.

Whether it be active military or active law enforcement anyone who took the Oath of Office which is a life long obligation, knows full well they do not have to carry out orders they know to be wrong and in this case an egregious violation of the rights of all Americans…….………………

Read what Wikipedia says about governors executive orders. As I interpret it, the governors executive orders apply to only government employees and departments, “NOT” the citizens. If that is the case all of these communist leaning orders they have issued are illegal in the first place and not adhering to an illegality issued statute or code by people exercising their protected rights is not a violation of anything.

Except yes, I still fault the police department.

It’s politics, people. Backed, now that we are cognizant of so many other updates, by smoke and mirrors. The numbers and statistics and even the World Health Organization, the WHO, no longer back the Chinese model, instead selecting the Swedish model. Sounds kind of lascivious. I’d select the Swedish model also.

And on and on it went.

So let’s check the law. Let’s let an attorney grab a part of this.

Please note these salient portions.

California Government Code section 8567 states that all orders under the California Emergency Services Act must be in writing and they take effect immediately. When the governor calls a state of emergency, he may suspend any state statute, rule or regulation. (Cal. Gov. § 8571). Please notice that the governor does not have the authority to suspend the California Constitution. As such, any rights contained in the Constitution are still in force. In fact, to make sure the government understands that there are limits to their authority, Cal. Gov. § 8571.5 expressly states that nothing in the California Emergency Services Act gives the government the right to seize or confiscate any firearm or ammunition unless an officer is arresting someone pursuant to an investigation for the commission of a crime.

And:

On March 4, 2020, Governor Newsom Declared a State of Emergency.

On March 11, 2020, Governor Newsom’s office published the fact that it was California Department of Public Health’s policy of preventing gatherings of groups larger than 250 people “should be postponed.” This was not an executive order by the governor, instead it was a California Department of Public Health policy. This policy does not cite a single law that gives the California Department of Public Health authority to shut down events of 250 people or require social distancing of more than 6 feet. While these may be good guidelines to follow, they are simply policies, they are not the law.

To emphasize that this was just a policy and not a law, on March 12, 2020, Newsom issues his next executive order (N-25-20). This executive order states that “All residents are to heed any orders and guidance of state and local public health officials, including but not limited to the imposition of social distancing measures, to control the spread of COVID-19.”

Notice the language of this order. “All residents are to heed any orders and guidance …”. If you look up the word heed in the dictionary, you will discover that it means “to give consideration attention to.” It does not say you must obey. Gavin Newsom in his executive order utilizing his powers granted him after declaring a state of emergency told the citizens of California that Californians should takes the advice given by the California Department of Public Health into consideration when making decisions.

Now a very important part.

Thus, contrary what you may have been led to believe, Gov. Newsom did not actually issue an executive order requiring Californians to practice social distancing, nor did he actually order gatherings of over 250 people to shut down. All he did was order people to pay attention to what these organizations were saying. These were merely recommendations.

Understand, a policy is different from a regulation. While I was able to find authority that allowed the California Department of Health Services to issue emergency regulations after they jumped through a few hoops, I have been unable to find where their policies would have the full force of law. Laws are passed by the legislature, or under the state of emergency, via executive order by the governor.

We’re not done yet.

Cal. Health & Safety § 101040 permits local health officers to take any preventive measures that may be necessary to protect and preserve the public health from any state of emergency declared by the governor. After a local health emergency has been declared, “The sheriff of each county .. may enforce within the county … all orders of the local health officer issued for the purpose of preventing the spread of any contagious, infectious, or communicable disease.” (Cal. Health and Safety Code 101029). Cal. Health & Safety § 101030 specifically gives the county health officer the authority to order quarantines.

As one studies California law, it is clear that the law used to be very explicit that a quarantine was only applicable to those who had a contagious disease or those who had come in contact with someone who had a contagious disease.

While most of the laws regarding quarantine are very broad, Cal. Health & Safety § 120215 appears to have limiting language. This statute reads: Upon receiving information of the existence of contagious, infectious, or communicable disease for which the department may from time to time declare the need for strict isolation or quarantine, each health officer shall: (a) Ensure the adequate isolation of each case, and appropriate quarantine of the contacts and premises. (b) Follow the local rules and regulations, and all general and special rules, regulations, and orders of the department, in carrying out the quarantine or isolation.

And finally:

The quarantine laws are clearly intended to be applied to individuals not to the entire county. The quarantine laws are designed to stop those who might have been infected from passing the disease onto others. Absent the local health officers finding that an individual has the disease or is likely to have the disease, California law does not give them broad authority to quarantine the entire county.

As such, it appears counties such as San Francisco that have issued broad shelter in place laws may be violating California law.

Let’s just be plain and obvious. With altogether too many cops in these circumstances, they are taking the calls personally. It becomes a personal affront. That’s not how this works. Not with politics and politicians — who are all to happy to allow cops to get caught in the middle so that they can be kicked to the curb at will.

And by departments, when faced with use of force complaints, aren’t willing to support their officers when they’re correct.

They are failing to see the ramifications of their short-sighted decisions. That’s my job as a Sergeant, to cover my troops, make sure they’re doing the right thing for all the right reasons, and to ensure people are safe and rights are upheld.

Here is an organization that knows how to protect its troops against an absolutely classic “no-win” situation for law enforcement, the New York Police Benevolent Association.

NYPD union wants cops out of ‘social distancing enforcement’

by Tina Moore, 5-4-20

The city’s largest police union is demanding cops get “out of the social distancing enforcement business,” while slamming New York pols for “releasing criminals,” “discouraging proactive policing,” and leaving subways “in chaos.”

“This situation is untenable: the NYPD needs to get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether,” a statement from Police Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch said.

“The cowards who run this city have given us nothing but vague guidelines and mixed messages, leaving the cops on the street corners to fend for ourselves,” Lynch said. “Nobody has a right to interfere with a police action. But now that the inevitable backlash has arrived, they are once again throwing us under the bus.”

Lynch was referring to a fracas that erupted as NYPD cops were trying to enforce social distancing rules over the weekend in the East Village and a cop was caught on video slapping and hitting a bystander who appeared to challenge him.

Lynch added that the politicians are “still watering down our laws, releasing real criminals and discouraging proactive enforcement of fare evasion and quality of life issues.”

“As a result, our subways are in chaos and we have hero nurses getting mugged on their way to our hospitals,” he said, referring to a nurse who had her phone torn out of her hand in Times Square on April 26. “As the weather heats up and the pandemic continues to unravel our social fabric, police officers should be allowed to focus on our core public safety mission. If we don’t, the city will fall apart before our eyes.”

If only more organizations took this logical stance.

Before I go, this came to the forefront:

The original video can be seen here.

There is also this, from a locality closer to my area, Lodi, Kalifornia:

Lodi Police Officer Says He Was Fired For Refusing To Enforce Stay-At-Home Order

LODI (CBS13) — A Lodi police officer says he was fired for not enforcing the states’ stay-at-home order.

In the past 24 hours, his community has raised thousands of dollars to support his family.

Former Officer Jordan Duncan only worked with the police department for four months. The details of the incident aren’t clear, but city officials confirm an April separation date. They would not go as far as to say that Duncan was fired.

Officials did point to a recent ruling which calls the stay-at-home order “lawful,” and said police officers can’t choose which laws to enforce.

That last paragraph? Wrong. Cops have been using discretion in terms of which laws to apply and when for, literally, over a century.

Two aspects the article fails to point out are that, one, he fronted off the Chief of Police in a briefing, telling him what he would and would not do. The other aspect is, two, that he belongs to the easiest class of person in the world to fire, someone on probation.

THIS JUST IN: A RECENT RAY OF LIGHT

From Breitbart.com:

Fresno County Sheriff Won’t Enforce Stay-at-Home Orders; Too Busy Re-arresting Freed Criminals

by Joel B Pollak, 5-14-20

Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said Tuesday that she would not be able to enforce Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders because she was too busy re-arresting accused criminals set free under the state’s new “zero-dollar bail” policy.

Mims appeared on the Trevor Carey Show, discussing the challenges facing law enforcement during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the economic hardship. She pointed out that government employees were also vulnerable to the economic damage, because the decline in tax revenues meant that state and local governments would cut services.

Carey asked her: “I’ve heard multiple sheriffs around the nation state they will not enforce their governors’ shelter-in-place orders. Is that your position?

“That is my position. We do not stop the public to find out what they’re doing when they’re not sheltering in place. We don’t ask those questions, we don’t ask if they’re ‘essential’. We’ve got our hands full trying to re-arrest people that are released due to zero-dollar bail. So we’ve got other things that are on our mind that are more important than stopping normally law-abiding citizens.”

Fresno County now, officially, has a Good Sheriff.

Clearly, two camps have emerged in law enforcement.

The strict “we follow the orders and directives all the time” camp — and the other, like mine, who insist there are overarching issues we shouldn’t be ignoring — like the rights and freedoms we as peace officers are sworn to uphold, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, no matter the circumstances. I don’t recall the “Time Out, It’s A Bad Flu” clause in any of those documents.

The bottom line is: there’s no doubt this is a proverbial “dry run” for Leftists and Demorats to push the envelope and see what it is that you, the average American citizen, will tolerate in terms of having your freedoms and liberties removed.

Do they only have to provide some kind of “safety crisis” for you to cave and fold? Will Fear Porn do it? How far can you be pushed before you react negatively?

I think we’re starting to see those answers right now.

We cannot allow law enforcement to be wedged into political issues like this. Because we have to do what I term The Logical Extension:

If law enforcement will willingly obey Fear Porn — what will they do when ordered to confiscate firearms from American citizens should Leftists return to power — which they obviously will, some day? And just as Leftists and Demorats said “nah, we’re not coming for your guns,” wrong, they now state openly they’re coming for our firearms.

Doing again The Logical Extension, that means they’re coming for, eventually, all of your rightsevery little thing they can steal. IF you stand there complacently and allow it. But wait. Once you have no firearms?

Yeah. You are going to have to stand there and allow it.

I wish I could say I knew for a fact that all law enforcement officers are not going to act unconstitutionally. I cannot.

And that is so foundationally disturbing to my core.

Because I’ve seen all of this, now.

BZ

 

Covid-19, freedom and law enforcement

Never in the history of this nation has it been under such terrible assault in terms of freedoms and liberties.

And I submit that the Wuhan-19 virus has merely accelerated the underlying subtext of nudging freedoms to the side via Leftists and Demorats, ably abetted and assisted by the American Media Maggots.

Multiple cases in point? The numerous actions around the nation by over-reaching governors and mayors in terms of setting proclamations and edicts restricting the rights of residents and citizens dealing with “sheltering in place” and keeping American businesses closed and dark — with clear and obvious disastrous effects on local and national economies.

Is this coming around? Are there changes in the air? Perhaps there are. Let’s deal first with a major event that occurred Thursday morning, with the release of General Michael Fllynn. The details from AP:

Justice Department is dropping Flynn’s Trump-Russia case

by Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.

The action was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Lending credence, obviously, to what I’ve been saying and writing here on my blog, and on my program, BZ’s Berserk Bobcat Saloon Radio Show:

This has been nothing more than a SOFT COUP against a presidential nominee, a president-elect and a sitting president — simply because he was not in keeping with the historical precedent of installing an actual politician behind the Oval Office desk.

In particular a man who is brusque, frequently unpolished, takes crap from few because he doesn’t have to, and is considered to be the proverbial “bull in the china shop” in terms of how the Deep State functions in DC.

His potential was that of blowing apart the jobs and lives of those who have insinuated themselves, like dangerous ticks, into all facets of federal DC politics, and how the massive cadre of unelected parasites have taken collective umbrage at being, first, “outed” and then, second, targeted for pest removal because — the Deep State is an infection upon the nation that must be destroyed.

Wiretapping, Russia, Mueller, dossier, bed piss, FISA courts, Urkraine, strippers, impeachment, Iran, illegals, travel bans, red tape, federal judges and now even a pandemic seems not to deter OMB — Orange Man Bad — President Donald John Trump, the guy with the dead orange cat on his head, from completing his duty to fulfill his campaign promises.

Much to the chagrin and absolute horror of Leftists, Progressives, Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, the Religious Climate Change Leftists, and Globalists everywhere.

They are cornered, they know it, and like wounded dogs they will do and try anything, anything at all, in order to survive. Because their survival is paramount and if you, the Little People, deign to get in the way with yout petty little lives, the LDAMM will smash you like the proles, serfs, commoners, groundlings, unwashed, rabble and insect-like subjects you truly are.

The Wuhan-19 pandemic provided the perfect opportunity for Leftists, Globalists, Progressives and Demorats to push the envelope in order to see just how much oppression you will take as American citizens. Because once they know and identify this Wuhan-19 threshold, they’ll know with greater accuracy how much more to push you when the Fear Porn subsides.

And make no mistake, the LDAMM are all about pushing the Fear Porn right now. In order to relinquish your rights, freedoms and liberties, you must be subjugated with the constant bath of fear — individually and for your family, loved ones, friends and acquaintances.

We have seen, as a result, the shameful acts carried out, thusly, by various law enforcement officers throughout the nation when the obey the edicts of their mayors or governors who have gone out of their way to create a class of criminals from individuals who had no intent of committing crimes but, instead, unlike true criminals, simply wanted to step outside like human beings or worship or get some food or, worse yet, to not allow the Wuhan-19 pandemic to cripple them financially, kill their businesses, eradicate everything they have worked their lives for, go into bankruptcy. They want to pay their bills, their mortgage, feed and clothe their kids.

And now, in my areas of the United States, that’s considered a crime. And certain law enforcement officers are, shamefully, carrying out these edicts against good, honest American citizens.

Unlawfully. Wrongfully. Unconstitutionally.

But first, let’s talk about the alleged science and the numbers utilized in supposedly justifying the removal of freedoms all around our nation. The models, the statistics, and the motivations behind it all.

Because, as per normal, when people “say” it’s not about the money, power or control? Oh yeah; it’s all about the money, power and control.

We were told from the outset that we had to “flatten the curve,” that all would be well, that the models were working, that we could place confidence in the WHO, the World Health Organization, upon whose logic, training, education and experience we could rely.

Though it was run by a Nigerian Director who isn’t really a doctor, put into place by his Chinese superiors, lied about his background, covered up for the Chinese, belittled President Trumps ACCURATE, TIMELY and APPROPRIATE response to place a travel ban on those from first China and then Europe.

Yes, that World Health Organization. The one embracing the strict Chinese Lockdown Model which, resultingly, various Leftist governors and mayors have been following religiously like the strictest of Koran tenets.

The WHO that is Xi Xenping’s Puppet. From ForeignPolicy.com:

How WHO Became China’s Coronavirus Accomplice

by Hinnerk Feldwisch-Drentrup, 4-2-20

Beijing is pushing to become a public health superpower—and quickly found a willing international partner.

While the novel coronavirus is changing the world, China is trying to do the same. Already a serious strategic rival of the United States with considerable international clout, it’s now moving into a new field—health.

After initial denials and cover-ups, China successfully contained the COVID-19 outbreak—but not before it had exported many cases to the rest of the world. Today, despite the falsehoods it initially passed on, which played a critical role in delaying global response, it’s trying to leverage its reputed success story into a stronger position on international health bodies.

We now know that China locked down Wuhan, a city of over 11 million people, immediately. They allowed no one to move or fly from Wuhan into any other points in China. Yet it purposely did not place such limits anywhere else. Chinese could fly anywhere and everywhere around the planet, from Wuhan. And did.

Simultaneously — and this indicates clear consciousness of guilt — China began gobbling up PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) supplies from the world: masks, gowns, gloves, all in an attempt to corner the market, which it did. And then would sell back to various governments and organizations for inflated prices. In some cases a 50-cent mask sold for $8 dollars.

Most critically, Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors—unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body—and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.

After the Beijing visit, though, WHO said in a statement that it appreciated “especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated.” Only after the meeting did it declared, on Jan. 30, a public health emergency of international concern. And after China reported only a few new cases each day, WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic March 11—even though it had spread globally weeks before.

Why wouldn’t WHO Director Tedros cooperate? China spent millions of dollars installing him in that position of power. He became their dancing monkey. And the Chinese hated him for it as well because, as we already know, China is literally the most racist and ethnocentric country on earth. Ask blacks who work there. Ask Muslims.

The Chinese have made it quite clear. You can’t trust them.

One reason is that official data from China is often highly dubious—which can lead to ill-advised health policies in other countries, since studies based on information from China are the first used to understand COVID-19. Countless cases of people dying at home in Wuhan—some being described in social media posts—will probably never go into the statistics. And while a report by Caixin on the Chinese province of Heilongjiang said that a considerable percentage of asymptomatic cases has not been reported—which amounts to about 50 percent more known infections in China, according to a South China Morning Post report on classified government data—WHO takes numbers reported by Beijing at face value.

Using those initial skewed and poorly-reported statistics — in some cases no statistics at all, conclusions and models were drawn for not only the United States but other countries.

Over time, however, other discoveries were made and studies published. The information now indicated the Wuhan-19 was much more prevalent and widespread than anyone imagined and, thusly, that meant its fatality rate necessarily plummeted. A number of studies were cited, this one from USC:

Early antibody testing suggests COVID-19 infections in L.A. County greatly exceed documented cases

by Leigh Hopper

USC and L.A. County Department of Public Health officials have released the preliminary results of their antibody tests, which show a surprising number of residents have been infected with the coronavirus.

USC and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Monday released preliminary results from a collaborative scientific study that suggests infections from the new coronavirus are far more widespread — and the fatality rate much lower — in L.A. County than previously thought.

And that was true for the nation, not just Los Angeles.

That led to the heinous conclusion by two now-infamous Kern County (CA) doctors that the time has come to quarantine the sick and release those who are fine, getting them back to work and re-vitalizing the economy. Of course, for suggesting that, the video from Doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi of Accelerated Urgent Care was removed from YouTube for “violating community standards.” You can still watch it here.

Then, the worst of all possible worlds for WHO sycophants like all the various and sundry Leftist and Demorats governors and mayors who pretended to utilize “science” in order to justify their Draconian decrees.

The World Health Organization kicked the Chinese model to the curb, in favor of the Swedish model — which embraced no lockdown. From the NewYorkPost:

WHO lauds lockdown-ignoring Sweden as a ‘model’ for countries going forward

by Jackie Salo, 4-29-20

The World Health Organization lauded Sweden as a “model” for battling the coronavirus as countries lift lockdowns — after the nation controversially refused restrictions.

Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert, said Wednesday there are “lessons to be learned” from the Scandinavian nation, which has largely relied on citizens to self-regulate.

“I think there’s a perception out that Sweden has not put in control measures and just has allowed the disease to spread,” Ryan told reporters. “Nothing can be further from the truth.”

Ryan noted that instead of lockdowns, the country has “put in place a very strong public policy around social distancing, around caring and protecting people in long-term care facilities.”

In other words, they quarantined and protected the sick, not so the healthy population. And they treated people like adults. Such a concept.

So now we have a massive paradigm shift. The proverbial “sea change.” The WHO discards the Chinese model and embraces the Swedish model.

This is the highly vaunted WHO. The scientific WHO. The WHO whose numbers and thoughts are utilized by American Leftists and Demorats who wish to keep their own populations under thumb.

And, of course, trust the CDC. Until we saw this:

The CDC Confesses to Lying About COVID-19 Death Numbers

by Matthew Vadum, 4-9-20

Can any government statistics on COVID-19 deaths be trusted?

It is an open question now that we are learning that the highly respected, world-class Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been lying to us.

That the CDC isn’t telling the truth to Americans is no conspiracy theory:  it’s right out there in the open for everyone to see.  The CDC openly admits that it is fudging the COVID-19 death figures.

We know this because, among other truth-tellers, a plainspoken small-town physician from Kalispell, Montana, has pulled back the curtain.

Dr. Annie Bukacek, MD, explained in a presentation how death certificates are made.  (See “Montana physician Dr. Annie Bukacek discusses how COVID-19 death certificates are being manipulated,”

But wait; there’s more.

Bukacek refers to a March 24 CDC memo from Steven Schwartz, director of the Division of Vital Statistics for the National Center for Health Statistics, titled “COVID-19 Alert No. 2.”

“The assumption of COVID-19 death,” she says, “can be made even without testing.  Based on assumption alone the death can be reported to the public as another COVID-19 casualty.”

There is a question-and-answer section on the memo.

One question is, “Will COVID-19 be the underlying cause?”

The answer is:  “The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate.  However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause more often than not.”

Another question is, “Should ‘COVID-19’ be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?”

The answer is: 

“COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.”  [Boldfacing in original]

“You could see how these statistics have been made to look really scary when it is so easy to add false numbers to the official database,” Bukacek says.  “Those false numbers are sanctioned by the CDC.”

“The real number of COVID-19 deaths are not what most people are told and what they then think,” she says. 

“How many people have actually died from COVID-19 is anyone’s guess … but based on how death certificates are being filled out, you can be certain the number is substantially lower than what we are being told.  Based on inaccurate, incomplete data people are being terrorized by fearmongers into relinquishing cherished freedoms.”

And we trusted the numbers coming out of New York City hospitals as well. Until this.

New York City is lying about Chinese virus death rates

by Matthew Vadum, 4-3-20

The mass hysteria over COVID-19 in the U.S. is driven in large measure by misleading statistics and bad math about the disease’s body count.

Now that New York has become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, we are now regularly inundated on cable TV news with the latest pandemic statistics from the city.  The statistics grow gloomier by the hour.

In New York City, the death of anyone who dies who tests positive for COVID-19 is counted as a coronavirus death.  This is the case even if the coronavirus failed to play a significant role in the person’s passing or illness.

A medical doctor once explained this critical distinction to me.

Arguing against ordering excessive tests for his patients, he said that plenty of old people die who have cancer present in their bodies.  Sometimes they don’t even know the cancer is present because the growth is tiny and slow-growing and doesn’t affect them.  As they age, they die of some other cause even though they do in fact have cancer.  When they die, it is not counted as a cancer-caused death because the cancer cannot be said to have killed them.

Then there is this audio from a video that was removed from YouTube because it revealed altogether too many material facts — and I knew it would be taken down. So I copied the audio and have it here for you to hear.

CLICK TO HEAR AUDIO.

So what is the motivation for skewing the statistics? Cooking the books? Funeral directors happened to weigh in.

Funeral Directors Blow Whistle on Fake Coronavirus Death Reports

by Warner Todd Huston, 5-2-20

Funeral directors in New York are busting the fake coronavirus death certificates that state authorities are fraudulently assigning to people who have died this month.

New York authorities are desperate to make the pandemic seem far worse than it is to keep getting more federal financial assistance, and now they have been caught lying on death certificates to keep the cash rolling.

For instance, funeral director in Williston Park, N.Y., told Project Veritas that “Basically, every death certificate that comes across our desk now has COVID on it.”

Project Veritas essentially found that funeral directors are finding nearly everyone who has died is marked as a victim of the virus no matter what has really happened to the deceased.

“They are putting COVID on a lot of death certificates because people who are going to their hospital with any kind of respiratory distress, respiratory problems, pneumonia, the flu — the flu-like symptoms lead into the COVID-19,” said Joseph Antioco of Schafer Funeral Home.

“To me, all you’re doing is padding the statistics. You’re putting people on that have COVID-19 even if they didn’t have it. You’re making the death rate for New York City a lot higher than it should be,” Antioco added.

Wait. The statistics are being padded for money? For federal cash? From Globalresearch.ca:

US Hospitals Getting Paid More to Label Cause of Death as ‘Coronavirus’

by Wayne Dupree, 4-15-20

Senator Scott Jensen represents Minnesota. He’s also a doctor. He appeared on Fox News with Laura Ingram where he revealed a very disturbing piece of information.

Dr. Scott Jensen says the American Medical Association is now “encouraging” doctors to overcount coronavirus deaths across the country.

Jensen received a  7-page document that showed him how to fill out a death certificate as a “COVID-19 diagnosis” even when there isn’t a lab test confirming the diagnosis.

“Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.” (Dr. Sen. Scott Jensen, from Fox Interview)

So make no mistake. There are deaths. Some hospitals are zoos. But there is so much more going on than can be documented here in just this brief post. Money is involved. Influence is involved. China is involved and attempting to pull as many international strings as possible so as to avoid their nation being destroyed — as well it should — because of their staggering negligence, if you wish to be positive, or what could be interpreted as an attempt at war — by way of crashing the economy and killing what will turn out to be hundreds of thousands of lives around the planet.

So with the aforementioned knowledge, that Leftist governors and mayors are essentially doing the work of China by keeping American citizens locked up and the economy split apart — which obviously serves the needs of Leftists and Demorats and works against President Donald Trump — we see that our current US scenario becomes a couple of things.

First, a test bed for pushing the freedom envelope.– how much will you take?

And second, the final revelation that Demorats and Leftists are actually working against America and for Chinese interests, still continuing to push for Globalism simultaneously, which is nothing more than a naked and abject power grab in order to centralize control, and strength. As if that worked well for the EU.

The Wuhan-19 response model has changed, according to the WHO, from the Chinese to the Swedish. Let my people go.

So those governors and mayors wanting their denizens locked up have all changed their minds, right? Now is the time to embrace the Swedish model.

Let’s just examine a few stories. From Kalifornia:

FRESNO’S CRAZY BERNIE HIT WITH $5,000 TICKET FOR OPERATING ONLINE

The Crazy Bernie furniture store in Fresno has received a $5,000 citation from the city for operating as a non-essential business.

Storeowner Bernie Siomiak — known for his eccentric television commercials — shared the information on his Facebook page Wednesday.

Siomiak wrote on the Facebook post that he is being “cited again” after he made statements for non-essential businesses to re-open at Councilmember’s Garry Bredefeld press conference on Tuesday.

“Told it was unlawful to operate my website and to cease immediately,” Siomiak wrote on the Facebook post that went up today. “I have tried to reach the lady who is in charge at the city but so far no luck. I wonder how many fines they are handing out for doing the safest form of business there is.”

According to a statement from the city, he was issued a warning notice on March 31, a $1,000 citation April 23 and a $5,000 citation Wednesday after the city received complaints about the continued operation of his store and advertisements of his store website for pick-up sales, which are not allowed at this time.

Bad Benrie. From Wisconsin, where a woman dared to allow her children to play with others:

In the UK, neighbors are snitching on their neighbors. Hey. Just like Mayor de Blasio is telling New Yorkers.

More than 200,000 report neighbours to police for breaking virus lockdown rules

Police have fielded nearly 200,000 calls from members of the public snitching on neighbours or reporting other lockdown breaches, it emerged yesterday.

House parties, public loitering and other coronavirus-related concerns are being swiftly reported to police, who have now issued more than 9,000 lockdown fines in England and Wales.

There have been hundreds of repeat offenders, senior officers revealed, while breaches of social distancing are partly responsible for a doubling in antisocial behaviour offences.

On May 1st, CHP officers arrested protesters who had gathered at the state capitol after having not acquired a permit to protest there — because the CHP said no protests would be authorized. Tell you what. Let’s not even talk about the First Amendment issues. Let’s talk about the “Governor Newsom says you must social distance and you should wear a mask in close quarters.” Let’s talk about that. Because here are photos of CHP in the background doing precisely what the protesters were accused of doing. Not wearing masks. Not social distancing. That’s a fucked-up look, CHP, endemic of, again, “do as I say but not as I do.”

From Tennessee:

UPDATED: Knox County, Tenn., Bans Communion, Hymnals—and Even Bibles—at Church

by Paula Bolyard, 4-30-20

One of the things we’re beginning to see as states move toward “reopening” is elected officials and health directors mandating even more stringent precautions than had existed in prior orders. In Ohio, for example, Gov. Mike DeWine announced last week a plan to reopen the state, even while ordering restaurants, stores, and their customers to wear masks — something that wasn’t required under his previous shutdown order.

It’s even worse in Knox County, Tenn., where the health department just announced that while churches may reopen on May 1, the Lord’s Supper is forbidden.

The order was announced by Knox County Health Department Regional Hospital Coordinator Charity Menefee, who announced that Communion is not part of “core worship.”

No. Not kidding.

From New Mexico:

New Mexico governor orders roads closed to city of Gallup in effort to stop coronavirus spread

by Morgan Phillips, 5-1-20

New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham invoked the state’s Riot Control Act to slow the spread of coronavirus and sealed off the roads into and out of the hard-hit city of Gallup, she announced Friday.

To help control a surging outbreak in the city, the Democratic governor locked down the city at the request of Gallup’s mayor, Grisham said in a news release.

The Riot Control Act allows the state’s governor to enact temporary restrictions under a state of emergency, including prohibiting residents from being on public streets and the use of certain streets and highways.

Beginning noon Friday, all roads into the city were shut down and businesses were required to close from 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. in the city of 22,000. Additionally, only two people are allowed in a vehicle at the same time.

To this date, New Mexico has had 163 deaths as of this writing. Allegedly, the lock was lifted May 4th. I’ve seen nothing about that and cannot confirm. Yet that’s worth walling off a city, according to the Leftist female governor. Won’t wall of for illegals, but certainly will wall you off. No, not kidding.

From Oregon:

Oregon DHS Announces Plan to Confiscate Children if Foster Parents Test Positive for Coronavirus and Deemed Unable to Provide for Them

by Jim Hoft, 5-3-20

Several states reopened last week. Several more will open at least partially this week from the Fauci lockdown.

But Democrat-led Oregon is not one of them. Oregon, a state with 4.14 million residents, did not reopen on Friday. In fact, the liberal state is not reopening anytime soon.

Leftist Governor Kate Brown is extending the state’s lockdown until July 6th. After the 4th of July, naturally.

Yet Oregon is ranked 40th of all the states in Coronavirus deaths.

On April 22nd the state initiated a plan to remove children from foster homes if one of the parents comes down with coronavirus.

The state of Oregon will remove the children and place them with “substitute care” if the parents are deemed unable to support them.

This law was actually published online on the Oregon Department of Human Services website.

Likely the State of Oregon cribbed this idea from the WHO’s Dr Michael Ryan, who advocates removing children from families by force and isolating them during Wuhan-19. Not kidding.

In Kalifornia, Governor Newsom “allows” us to do a limited number of things.

Calif. Gov. Newsom releases list of approved outdoor activities: ‘Wash the car,’ ‘watch the sunrise’

by Jessica Chasmer, 5-1-20

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has released a list of outdoor activities that are approved under the state’s shelter-in-place order, including watching a sunset and “throwing a baseball” as long as it’s not in a group.

“We want you to see sunsets,” the governor said. “We want you to enjoy activities outdoors. What they don’t want is people congregating outside in large groups.”

Oh bless you, anointed one. Not kidding.

From Chicago, Illinois:

“If We Need to We Will Arrest You and We Will Take You to Jail” – Chicago Commie Mayor Outlaws Parties Under Her Watch

by Jim Hoft, 5-2-20

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot released a video on Saturday. The commie mayor will NOT ALLOW parties in her city. If you attend a party you will find yourself in jail.

From Hawaii:

Citrus Heights newlyweds arrested in Hawaii for violating quarantine, officials say

5-4-20

A newlywed couple from Citrus Heights was arrested while on their honeymoon in Hawaii for allegedly not following the state’s mandatory traveler self-quarantine order, Hawaii’s governor’s office said Friday.

Borice Lepovskiy, 20, and Yuliia Andreichenko, 26, were taken into custody on Thursday by special agents from the Hawaii Department of the Attorney General, the governor’s office said.

The couple arrived at their Waikiki-area hotel Wednesday night. Officials said the front desk manager read them the requirements of the self-quarantine order.

“[The couple] reportedly said this contradicted what airport screeners told them. They also indicated they planned to visit friends and go to parks and beaches and claimed airport screeners told them that was okay,” the governor’s office said in a statement. “The hotel manager reiterated the rules and said the couple scoffed at him again and then left the hotel.”

The couple returned to the hotel after midnight with pizza, telling the manager they were allowed to be outside and buy food, officials said.

The couple “refused to sign the required quarantine acknowledgment,” the statement said.

On Thursday, the hotel’s general manager was told the couple left their room again. When they came back, the couple was told — again — they violated the self-quarantine order.

“AG Special Investigators were notified and arrested the couple. They are being charged under Hawai‘i Revised Statutes for unsworn falsification to authority and violation of the 14-day quarantine,” the governor’s office said.

Evil criminals! Hawaii has had 17 deaths from Wuhan-19. Not kidding.

From Missouri:

HUNDREDS OF MISSOURI RESIDENTS FEAR CONSEQUENCES OF ‘SNITCHING’ ON CORONAVIRUS RULEBREAKERS AFTER INFORMATION LEAKS ONLINE

by Bryan Kirk, 5-4-20

Scores of Missourians who tipped off county authorities that local businesses had violated COVID-19 lockdown requirements in March and April are now worried about being publically shamed after their names and addresses were published on Facebook.

Jared Totsch, who shared the names on his Facebook page on April 16 after obtaining the list of 900 complainants from St. Louis County official under Missouri’s Sunshine Law, said on his Facebook page that tipsters should have realized their information could be made public, according to a report in the newspaper Independent.

Now, some of those who snitched may be worried these business owners may show up at their homes or businesses, and Totsch said he thinks that’s just too bad.

“If they are worried about retaliation, they should have read the fine print which stated their tips would be open public record subject to a Sunshine request, and should not have submitted tips in that manner, to begin with,” Totsch said. He added that he released the information to discourage this kind of behavior in the future.

You know what they say about snitches and stitches. Not kidding.

From Kansas City, Missouri:

A conservative law firm is calling a new order in Kansas City, Missouri, “Nazi-like” for requiring churches to “surveil, track, and spy” on anyone who attends an in-person service, but the mayor is pushing back.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas’ 10/10/10 rule took effect May 5, restricting nonessential businesses, like churches, to 10 people inside and 50 people outside, as long as they practice social distancing.

In addition, nonessential businesses can operate at 10 percent maximum capacity.

The mayor said in late April that venues “need to keep track of those who come in” for more than 10 minutes, and the written order states each “should consider maintaining a record of customers.”

He’ll check back for your “papers.” Not kidding.

Then most recently from Dallas — and luckily this has drawn large attention from media — the semi-Conservative media, that is.

Dallas salon owner jailed for reopening in violation of court order

by Lavendrick Smith, 5-5-20

A Dallas salon owner will spend a week in jail after she was found in contempt of court Tuesday for violating an order to close her salon during the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition, Shelley Luther was fined $7,000 for contributing to operate her business, Salon à la Mode, in violation of a judge’s temporary restraining order issued against the business.

The problem? She failed to kiss an Obama advocate’s ring and, unconstitutionally, admit guilt in his courtroom.

This is her attorney.

Thankfully Texas came a bit to its senses.

Dallas Salon Owner Gets Out of Jail After Texas Supreme Court Orders Release

by Bryan Roth and Paul Weber, 5-7-20

Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther walked out of the Dallas County Jail shortly before 2 p.m. on Thursday, after the Texas Supreme Court ordered her release.

Luther was met with cheers and hugs from supporters who have rallied around her since she reopened her North Dallas salon: Salon A La Mode, despite state orders against it.

“I just want to thank all of you who I just barely met and now you’re all my friends,” said Luther to the crowd. “You mean so much for me and this would have been nothing without you.”

Again, in Kalifornia:

California restaurant defies statewide order, opens for dine-in service

At a tiny roadside diner in El Dorado, where the sign promises home cooking, people are not staying home any longer.

Café El Dorado opened its doors for dine-in service on Friday for the first time since the statewide stay-at-home order went into effect March 19.

“We either run around in fear of getting a virus or we’re homeless,” said owner Cherie Baldridge. “I’m going to be homeless if I don’t open my business back up.”

From the packed parking lot to the bustling dining room, the restaurant saw its first lunch rush in more than a month.

“I found myself just smiling the whole time. I was like, ‘Wow this feels awesome,'” customer Kathy Ralph said.

“It felt like getting back to normal,” Glenn Ralph added.

The quaint restaurant along Pleasant Valley Road serves breakfast and lunch and only seats about 25 people. Nearly 100 people made their way through for the diner’s reopening. Baldridge said social distancing is just not possible.

“If you want to come in, come in. If you don’t, you don’t,” she said.

That’s called freedom. That’s called being an adult.

Luckily, after having watch law enforcement officers all across the nation arrest fathers in parks in front of their kids — for being in an empty park, arresting boarders in the ocean by themselves, and many many other examples of over-wrought enforcement, there are a few lights on the horizon.

From Arizona:

Some Arizona sheriffs won’t enforce Gov. Ducey’s stay-at-home order

by Melissa Blasius, 5-1-20

At least three Arizona sheriffs say they will not fully enforce Governor Doug Ducey’s extended stay-at-home order.

Most non-essential businesses have remained closed across the state, but there is some rebellion.

Some businesses have reopened without permission, when the governor failed to lift the stay-at-home order on Thursday. Some Arizonans have also protested, saying social distancing rules should be loosened immediately, in part to save small businesses from ruin.

Anyone who defies the governor’s stay-at home-order, including businesses that reopen in violation, are committing a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb said he won’t enforce the penalties. Lamb said the governor’s order seemingly conflicts with the U.S. Constitution.

“Keeping people from going out and working and being able to live their lives like they normally do,” Lamb said. “I think you can make a clear claim that that’s a constitutional violation.”

Lamb added that refusing to let people inside businesses and restricting gatherings could be a violation of the First Amendment right to peaceful assembly.

Mohave County Sheriff Doug Schuster, at Thursday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, said his deputies are not going to be the “social distancing police.”

“It’s my job to ensure their freedoms and liberties are safeguarded,” Schuster said. “I am not going to make criminals out of law abiding citizens that are struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table.”

He clarified Friday, saying it is recommended and advisable to take precautions against coronavirus.

Friday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the Gila County Sheriff’s Office told ABC15, “We are encouraging people to follow CDC guidelines, but we will not be arresting anyone or closing any businesses.”

Acting with discretion and Constitutionally. Now there’s a concept to embrace. But wait; there’s more.

This is from the Washington Post. And of course they believe this is horrible.

Why ‘constitutionalist sheriffs’ won’t enforce coronavirus restrictions

by Zoe Neveremer, 4-23-20

In Snohomish County, Wash., Sheriff Adam Fortney is refusing to enforce the governor’s stay-at-home order. He claims the order “intrudes on our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” On April 22, he told constituents via a Facebook post that “along with other elected Sheriffs around our state, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office will not be enforcing an order preventing religious freedoms or constitutional rights.”

These Washington sheriffs are far from alone. They’re part of a nationwide group of sheriffs who feel beholden to no one but their voters. As they have on issues such as immigration and gun regulations, they will lead rebellions against higher levels of government — in this case, undermining public health efforts in the name of their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Here’s how.

Sheriffs are unlike other elected officials.

Unlike police chiefs or commissioners who are generally appointed, sheriffs are law enforcement officials elected by residents of their counties. While research finds that police generally try to carry out their responsibilities in a nonpartisan manner, sheriffs are influenced by the desire to be reelected. Sheriffs run for office in the same way that members of Congress or the president do: they run on campaign platforms they believe will win a majority of votes. Sheriffs’ campaign platforms consist of their political and law enforcement records, personal philosophies and policy priorities.

What sheriffs promise to do is quite likely to come true, because they have much more autonomy than do other elected officials. Legislators can’t do much without first going through lengthy and involved policymaking efforts that involve collaborating with their fellow legislators. Governors and presidents have to work with the legislative branch of government. Because sheriffs don’t have these constraints, their personal attitudes are quite likely to affect how they carry out their jobs.

So remember: if you’re a Leftist, allowing law enforcement to utilize discretion and not carry out ramrod, goose-stepping Leftist edicts is, well, just not cool, man.

Constitutionalist sheriffs believe that the Constitution appoints sheriffs as the ultimate law enforcement authority, even above the federal government. The Constitutionalist Sheriffs and Peace Office Association (CSPOA) claims to have over 400 members. Constitutionalist Sheriffs vow not to enforce federal laws that they consider a violation of individual rights granted by the Constitution.

Constitutionalist sheriffs have been attacking stay-at-home orders, which elevate the rights of the community over the rights of the individual. For example, Sheriff Daryl Wheeler, who identifies himself as a constitutionalist sheriff, posted a letter to Bonner County, Idaho, Facebook page asking the governor to “reinstate the Constitution” because “Covid-19 is nothing like the Plague.” This sentiment is echoed by sheriffs across the country.

I think you can clearly grok the gist of the article. Free-thinkers can go right to hell and should never interfere in Leftist philosophy. To which I reply: thank God for Constitutionalist Sheriffs in this nation. We need more, not fewer.

And this from, I hope you’re sitting down, a Kalifornia Sheriff.

California sheriff says he can’t enforce coronavirus orders making ‘criminals’ out of business owners, others exercising rights

by Bradford Betz, 5-6-20

Southern California sheriff on Tuesday announced he will not be enforcing the state’s stay-at-home order on the grounds that doing so would make “criminals” out of business owners and others who are merely exercising their constitutional rights.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco delivered the remarks during a meeting with the county’s board of supervisors, who were deciding whether or not to remove the county health officer’s order.

Bianco said that the state order forced residents into their homes, closed their businesses, kept them from going to church.

“In the name of a public health crisis, our civil liberties and constitutional protections were placed on hold,” Bianco said.

And:

“Not only do we not have the resources to enforce unreasonable orders, I refuse to make criminals out of business owners, single moms, and otherwise healthy individuals for exercising their constitutional rights,” Bianco said. “There cannot be a new normal. We are talking about a country formed on the fundamental freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Any new normal is a direct attack on those basic rights which set us apart and make us the greatest country in the world.”

Thank you, Sheriff Bianco.

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones wrote yesterday:

It is time.

It is time to let people out of their houses and responsibly open the economy, to let businesses thrive and employees and former employees get back to work.

It is time to develop a plan to open ALL businesses. If car washes, Starbucks, adult boutiques, and pot shops have been considered ‘essential’ throughout this, really aren’t ALL businesses essential?

It is time to reflect on decisions we have made under the pretext of this pandemic: Such as why we were forced to let over 1100 inmates out of Sacramento’s Covid-free jail into a community where the law-abiding are still locked down?

It is time to place responsibility for hygiene and healthy practices back into the hands of the public, rather than being forced upon them by government.

It is time to recognize that this year is and will continue to be tragic because of the pandemic, but that it does not mean that the next SEVERAL years have to be devastated as well by economic and social ruin from continued inertia. Remember Newton’s Law of Motion (and lack of motion).

It is time to understand that stay-at-home equals loss of tax revenue, and THAT equals significant cuts to law enforcement and fire departments next year, including potential public safety layoffs all over California and the nation.

It is time to recognize that We the People have willingly acquiesced to loss of freedoms, loss of income, and loss of social connection for the greater good, but now we are ready to responsibly get back to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is time.

Thank you, Sheriff Jones.

Please again note that those officers deigning to use discretion in enforcement are markedly Sheriffs as opposed to Chiefs of Police. Elected vs appointed. A large difference in freedom there, eh wot?

As Mark Pantano wrote: “What has the government learned? All they have to do is declare an “emergency” and Americans will give up their jobs, close their businesses and confine themselves to their homes. They will tolerate criminals released and parents arrested for playing outside with their kids.”

This addendum as well. Demorats are saying: “While Americans have lost their jobs, dying of Wuhan-19, while the economy is tanking, let’s sow more chaos and division, change voting laws and ram through everything we can of our Leftist agenda. Fuck Americans. Especially those who didn’t vote for us.”

From the NYPost.com:

Democrats trying to use coronavirus crisis to rewrite all US election law

by David Harsanyl, 4-9-20

I’m sorry, but you have no constitutional “right” to vote by mail. You have no constitutional “right” to vote six days after an election is over. Nor do you have any “right” to censor information related to an election. Not even during a pandemic.

This week, the US Supreme Court ruled that a lower federal court couldn’t overwrite Wisconsin’s election laws and force the state to accept ballots without any postmark deadline nearly a week after the election. Likewise, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Gov. Tony Evers didn’t have the authority to arbitrarily suspend in-person voting.

If these dictates had been allowed to stand, they would have created destructive precedents, taking elections out of the hands of local legislatures. If we discard legal norms every time there’s a crisis, we no longer have a nation of laws.

The usual suspects, of course, lamented the alleged anti-democratic animus of Chief Justice John Roberts’ high court. Liberal pundits, apparently unable to differentiate between partisan policy preferences and the rule of law, launched into their customary hysterics, denouncing the Supreme Court for disenfranchising minorities and putting people’s lives at risk.

But the court doesn’t exist to fix your local government’s incompetence or make life safer. It exists to uphold the Constitution.

BINGO. Pay attention, people. This is critically important.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has already proposed mandating automatic and same-day voter registration, ending ID requirements, compelling states to have 15 days of early voting and forcing states to adopt voting by mail, among other liberal pet projects. She wants the federal government to bribe states billions to adopt these standards.

And she wants those changes implemented by November.

She isn’t alone. In “Phase 4” of the coronavirus rescue package, Democratic leaders are reportedly including provisions that would compel all states to offer voting by mail. Presidential hopeful Joe Biden also supports such a mandate, because, he claims, “all the experts” say we should do it.

Folks, this is a power grab. A cynical and overt power grab.

Democrats have spent years weakening the integrity of elections, but voting by mail opens up the process to real-world voter intimidation, disenfranchisement, fraud — and a host of other problems.

Then again, people of goodwill can disagree over the particulars of election policy. It’s far more critical to note that neither the Senate, nor the House, nor the White House, nor federal courts have any business compelling states to adopt uniform standards regarding mail-in ballots or IDs or voting machines or much of anything else. A national mail vote is meant to federalize the election, leaving smaller states to the vagaries of a national ­majority. It’s exactly the kind of situation the Founders wanted us to avoid.

“Let’s make sure this crisis doesn’t go to waste.”   –Rahm Emanuel

This is another is a series of examples illustrating what happens when we’re not paying attention as a nation, when we are distracted. Nothing good. Something bad. A perfect opportunity for Leftists and Demorats to cheat, aided by the American Media Maggots.

Fear Porn is distracting us from seeing the obvious. Our freedoms are taking wing, leaving the nation, courtesy of the LDAMM.

Judge Andrew Napolitano wonders how we can get our Constitutional freedoms back.

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Coronavirus crisis — Does America still have a Constitution?

I have been taking some heat from friends and colleagues for my steadfast defense of personal liberties and my arguments that the Constitution — when interpreted in accordance with the plain meaning of its words, and informed by history — does not permit the government to infringe upon personal freedoms, no matter the emergency or pandemic.

For those who agree with me, worry not. We will persevere. For those who trust the government, worry a lot. You are not in good hands.

The purpose of the Constitution is to establish the government and to limit it. Some of the limitations are written in the Constitution itself. Most of the limitations that pertain to personal freedoms are found in the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments.

These amendments were ratified to restrain the federal government from infringing upon personal liberties. Since the enactment of the 14th Amendment in 1868, and subsequent litigation, these amendments, for the most part, restrain the states as well. The courts have characterized these protected liberties as fundamental.

So, the rights to thought, speech, press, assembly, worship, self-defense, privacy, travel, property ownership, interstate commercial activities and fair treatment from government are plainly articulated or rationally inferred in the first eight amendments. The Ninth is a catchall, which declares that the enumeration of rights in the first eight shall not mean that there are no other rights that are fundamental, and the government shall not disparage those other rights. The Tenth reflects that the states have reserved powers to themselves.

Dennis Prager chimes in:

Our Dress Rehearsal for a Police State

All my life, I have dismissed paranoids on the right (“America is headed to communism”) and the left (“It can happen here” — referring to fascism). It’s not that I’ve ever believed liberty was guaranteed. Being familiar with history and a pessimist regarding the human condition, I never believed that.

But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.

People will argue that a temporary police state has been justified because of the allegedly unique threat to life posed by the new coronavirus. I do not believe the data will bear that out. Regardless, let us at least agree that we are closer to a police state than ever in American history.

“Police state” does not mean totalitarian state. America is not a totalitarian state; we still have many freedoms. In a totalitarian state, this article could not be legally published, and if it were illegally published, I would be imprisoned and/or executed. But we are presently living with all four of the key hallmarks of a police state:

But listen to this:

The reason I believe this is a dress rehearsal is that too many Americans appear untroubled by it; the dominant force in America, the left, supports it, and one of the two major political parties has been taken over by the left. Democrats and their supporters have, in effect, announced they will use state power to enforce any law they can to combat the even greater “existential” crisis of global warming.

On the CNN website this weekend, in one of the most frightening and fanatical articles in an era of fanaticism, Bill Weir, CNN chief climate correspondent, wrote an open letter to his newborn son. In it, he wrote of his idealized future for America: “completely new forms of power, food, construction, transportation, economics and politics.”

“You cannot get there without a police state.”

If you love liberty, you must see that it is jeopardized more than at any time since America’s founding. And that means, among other things, that at this time, a vote for any Democrat is a vote to end liberty.

Steve Apfel wrote, concerning the perils of submitting to petty tyrants:

  • We let bureaucrats decide for us what businesses are more important than others to society.
  • Without a squeak we acquiesce to being put under de facto house arrest.
  • We hardly blink when troops are deployed to enforce lockdown.
  • People believe they’re doing their duty by reporting on neighbors.
  • Passively, we observe our right to protest neatly cut off when public gatherings are outlawed in the name of social distancing.
  • We accept the obligation to go bankrupt and hungry as the cost of beating the virus but don’t expect our lawmakers to make the same sacrifice that they imposed on us.
  • That the chance of death in lockdown due to hunger, addiction, depression, violence, neglect, etc. may be higher than dying from the virus matters not one iota to the commissars of lockdown.
  • With bovine servility, we greet every inroad into private lives by lawmakers who too often have a rotten past.
  • We are blind to the political basis of the divide between those who advocate keeping the economy closed until the cows come home and those desperate for the economy to reopen.
  • Though we may see it, we fail to grasp that deliberate destruction of the socio-economic fabric is about exercising power over people instead of a life-or-death imperative.
  • Bureaucrats blame the pandemic for threatening untold lives: “The World Food Programme suggests that 130 million people around the world could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.”  Wait a minute!  “As a result of”?  COVID-19 causes sickness and death, mostly of minuscule proportions.  It took just 1 in 1 million Indians to die to panic bureaucrats to lock up a billion people.  What virus ever caused people to starve?  Lockdown policies did that.  The dire condition of our world is no fault of a virus.  It was man-made.  More to the point, it was expert-made and government-administered.

I said for quite some time that security and liberty are a scales. And I’ve said this for years: law enforcement officers, REMEMBER YOUR OATHS to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. You owe NO allegiance to a transitory governor or mayor acting improperly or unlawfully. NONE.

I’ll let Dan Bongino talk to my law enforcement brothers and sisters:

I’ll also let another law enforcement officer talk to my law enforcement brothers and sisters, from Facebook.

I somewhat began this post with General Flynn, and I’ll somewhat end the post with my thoughts on General Flynn because they too have to do with law enforcement.

I worked for the FBI and US Marshal and locals. This problem and issue with handling Flynn is institutional in the FBI. There are MANY other agents who knew what was happening, what was wrong, but did nothing. They KNEW about Comey. They KNEW about McCabe.

Just as I called bullshit on UC Berkeley PD, Portland PD, San Jose PD, Sacramento PD. Berkeley PD, I call bullshit on the FBI.

It hasn’t stopped with Comey. It’s continuing with Wray. When you have the alleged “premiere law enforcement” agency of the entire US acting this way, it’s not a “one-off.” I still speak to agents. They’re not stupid. But they know if they air dirty laundry their careers are over. That is institutional fear. There is NEVER an excuse to NOT do the right thing, ESPECIALLY at the FBI. Agents are embarrassed and ashamed, and they SHOULD BE.

Look, I HAD to play by all the rules. I couldn’t show bias. I couldn’t have political motivations. I had to apply for all my search and arrest warrants. I had to OBEY the Constitution and Bill of Rights. If I didn’t, I faced discipline or criminal prosecution.

So no, I don’t excuse the FBI.

I PAID political prices for doing the right thing several times on my department. I was told to my face not to apply for Lieutenant because I’d never make it. Guess what? I didn’t.

Why? For doing the right thing against the wishes of my “superiors.”

So I’m VERY sensitive about doing the right thing. Why? Because stains like those created by the FBI taint ALL of law enforcement and LE can ill afford that, at all, in these times.

NO SLACK for the FBI.

What I can also say is this: keep pushing Americans who want to pay their bills, feed their kids, not see their lives ruined and the lives of their children and grandchildren.

Keep pushing, Leftist governors and mayors. I submit, especially the hotter it gets, that we’re just a measly few weeks away from many in government seeing just how the “consent of the governed” truly works.

After all of this, though, what will we have learned? What should we learn? Nothing more than a continuance of this.

Freedom is never free.

“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”
– Aung San Suu Kyi

And:

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin

And:

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
– JFK

God bless America, the last and best experiment on the planet with regard to freedom and liberty. Because when we lose it here — and people keep wanting to be here because of it — what other country do you go to find it?

You already know that answer.

BZ