Puppet MastersS

2 + 2 = 4

Best of the Web: Can't we put these power-mad clowns of the Johnson junta in a nice rest home?

Boris Johnson
Months ago, I predicted that we would all come to hate the narrow, bossed-about new life the Government wants to force us to live. I was wrong.

Most people have far too readily accepted limits to their lives which the world's tyrannies would once have hesitated to impose on their citizens.

Well, have you had enough yet? Because the Johnson Junta has only one tool in its box. That tool is restriction.

And it has only one aim, one that has never been achieved by any state in the history of the world - the total suppression of a coronavirus. Who would have thought that the rule of clowns would be so unfunny?

But it now looks as if this will go on for ever, unless we can somehow lead these people away to secluded rest homes where kindly nurses can indulge their wild power-fantasies with soothing repetitions of 'Yes, dear', cold compresses and cups of Ovaltine. It is certainly increasingly dangerous for them to be out and about.

Take the Health Secretary, Mr Matthew Hancock. I know I have laughed at him in the past as a sort of crazy prep-school headmaster raging at his tiny pupils. But for goodness sake, the man is a Cabinet Minister, and he has real power over us.

Comment: UK citizens are being relentlessly gaslit by their elected, and non-elected officials, everyday. Normal (and healthy) people there, and in dozens of other countries are being fed lies that are literally stealing the income and well-being of many - all to serve an agenda that will further make life intolerable - and people existing in open air prisons, courtesy of their governments. BoJo and his circle are just among the most obvious and stupid regarding how they're going about it.

See also:


Info

MP Ben Bradley: Why I refuse to take part in the Orwellian 're-education' courses on 'unconscious bias' that tell ordinary people they are racists

unconscious bias training session
The Mail on Sunday revealed a few weeks ago that the company that has been recruited to run these Unconscious Bias lessons uses a blue puppet called 'UB', who looks like the Cookie Monster (file image, above), in their training sessions, which makes me think of it as some kind of primary school assembly.
Imagine being called in to the boss's office tomorrow morning, a bit nervous and unsure what it is you've done wrong, and being told you've been reported by a colleague.

You've been caught saying that you disagree with the idea that Black Lives Matter is helping to deal with racism, that in fact you don't believe Britain is a racist country. And now you're to be 're-educated'. You're going on a course...

It sounds like something from Orwell's 1984, yet hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in workplaces around the UK have been ordered to attend special training sessions of this sort.

Comment: See also:


Bullseye

Occupying Palestine is rotting Israel from inside - no Gulf peace deal can hide that

Hebron
© Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPAPalestinians and Israeli soldiers during protests against an agreement between Israel and the UAE in the West Bank city of Hebron, September 2020.
More than a quarter of a century after Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn, Israel has managed to turn its occupation of Palestinian territory from a burden into an asset. What was for so long a liability - the flagrant violation of international law - has now become a valued commodity. Understanding this development is key to explaining why the Israelis are making peace with two distant Gulf states but not their closest neighbours, the Palestinians - without whom there can be no real peace.

Israel has learned in recent years how to manage the occupation in perpetuity with minimal cost. But from the very beginning of the occupation in June 1967, Israel has been unwilling to recognise the Palestinian nation or cede control of the Palestinian territory occupied in order to make peace.

The evidence to support this claim is easily found in Israel's own archives. Two days after the occupation began, Israel passed military order number three, which referred to the fourth Geneva convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war - mandating that military courts apply the provisions of the convention to their proceedings. Four months later, this portion of the order was deleted.

Comment: See also:


Wolf

Strzok interviews reveal FBI's long fall from grace

Strzok oath congress
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesFired FBI agent Peter Strzok
Can constitutional democracy continue to coexist with a lawless secret police that targets innocent people?

By his smartly dressed appearance, one would never know Peter Strzok wasn't still a senior FBI agent. He looked to be straight out of central casting as he began his Meet the Press interview on Sunday with this book-promoting slander, "I think it is clear, I believed at the time in 2016, and I continue to believe, that Donald Trump is compromised by the Russians. And when I say that, I mean that they hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interests, the national security ahead of his own."

Nothing is more sleazy and corrupt than a current or former FBI agent implicitly claiming to have access to secret evidence of a target's guilt when the time to produce such evidence has long since passed.

Black Cat

Pelosi losing it: House will use 'every arrow in our quiver' to stop Trump Supreme Court nominee

Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Sunday the House had its "options" when asked about the possibility of impeaching President Trump and Attorney General William Barr should the White House and Senate Republicans jam a Supreme Court nominee through the process during a lame duck session after Election Day.

"We have our options, we have arrows in our quiver that I'm not about to discuss right now," Pelosi told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week. "But the fact is, we have a big challenge in our country. This president has threatened to not even accept the results of the election with statements that he and his henchmen have made. So right now, our main goal... would be to protect the integrity of the election as we protect the American people from the coronavirus."

Comment: Not included in this article (why?) is that Pelosi's remarks were in the context of possibly putting impeachment back on the table, in order to block a Trump Supreme Court appointment.

The White House slammed Pelosi's suggestion, as a "bizarre and dangerous" power grab.

"The Speaker threatened to impeach the President โ€” again โ€” for simply fulfilling his constitutional obligation," White House Deputy Press Secretary Brian Morgenstern told Fox News. "Numerous Democrats are threatening to pack the court and say things like 'nothing is off the table.' These are bizarre and dangerous power grabs by Democrats who will stop at nothing to erode the Constitution to enact their radical agenda."

He added: "President Trump will fulfill his constitutional duty to protect our God given rights and do his part to fill the seat."

The House of Representatives, in December, voted to adopt two articles of impeachment against the president โ€” abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Meanwhile, the Guardian sings backup to the Hill:
With control of every branch of government now in the balance, liberal groups are redoubling their efforts, pressuring Senate Democrats to deploy every tactic possible to stop Trump seating a third justice.

Ed Markey was perhaps the first member of the Senate to suggest retaliating by expanding the court.

"Mitch McConnell set the precedent," the Massachusetts Democrat said on Twitter. "No supreme court vacancies filled in an election year. If he violates it, when Democrats control the Senate in the next Congress we must abolish the filibuster and expand the supreme court."

[...]

That sentiment is shared by Hillary Clinton, the 2016 presidential nominee who many believed would nominate Ginsburg's replacement.

Speaking on MSNBC, Clinton urged Senate Democrats "to use every single possible maneuver that is available" to stop McConnell filling the vacancy. She called the Senate majority leader's commitment to confirming Trump's nominee a "monument of hypocrisy" that would result in "the greatest travesty".

"Let's go down fighting," she said. "Let's not give an inch."
Cue the propaganda pollsters:
A majority of voters say President Trump should not nominate a Supreme Court justice this year, according to a snap poll released Saturday by YouGov.

The poll came less than a day after the U.S. Supreme Court announced liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday evening of complications from pancreatic cancer.

The poll found that 51 percent of voters believe Trump should not nominate another justice this year, while 42 percent said he should move forward with a nominee. A slight majority, 48 percent, believe the Senate should not confirm a nominee this year. Forty-five percent said the upper chamber should.

Forty-nine percent of respondents said they believe Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would "do a better job" picking a Supreme Court nominee, while 40 percent said Trump would. Eleven percent of respondents were undecided.
Which the (far more reliable and respectable) Rasmussen Reports immediately decried:


Aaand as a finale, Slick Willie puts on his 'elder statesman' shtick, going down memory lane regarding Ginsburg's nomination and criticizing McConnell:




Bandaid

CDC drops controversial testing advice that caused backlash

CDC Headquarters
© Getty Images/BloombergCDC Headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia
U.S. health officials on Friday dropped a controversial piece of coronavirus guidance and said anyone who has been in close contact with an infected person should get tested.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention essentially returned to its previous testing guidance, getting rid of language posted last month that said people didn't need to get tested if they didn't feel sick. That change had set off a rash of criticism from health experts who couldn't fathom why the nation's top public health agency would say such a thing amid the pandemic.


Comment: Maybe because people who aren't sick aren't a problem? "It has become clear that asymptomatic spread is a negligible risk vector."


It was "not consistent with the basic principles of controlling an epidemic,"said Dr. Silvia Chiang, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at Brown University who applauded the change announced Friday.

The CDC now says anyone who has been within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes should get a test. In a statement, the agency called the changes a "clarification" that was needed "due to the significance of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission."

Agency officials declined additional comment.

Health officials were evasive about why they had made the change in August, and some outside observers speculated it was forced on the CDC by political appointees within the Trump administration.

Comment: Expect a new spikes in 'cases' as a result - with full media hype - but with no accompanying spike in actual illness or death.


X

Judge blocks Trump's WeChat app ban, citing first amendment - Trump extends TikTok deadline

wechat
WeChat, the Chinese messaging app that was set to get effectively switched off for American users Sunday night, for now will still be available and operational in the U.S.

A federal judge in San Francisco issued a ruling early Sunday issuing a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration's order to ban the WeChat app, which is owned by China internet giant Tencent.

Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California, said in her ruling that the plaintiffs in the case successfully argued the merits of their claim that the Commerce Department's Sept. 18 order โ€” forcing Apple and Google to remove WeChat as of Sunday night โ€” violates their First Amendment rights.

The WeChat users who filed the request for an emergency injunction "have shown serious questions going to the merits of the First Amendment claim," Beeler said in the decision, and therefore "the balance of hardships tips in the plaintiffs' favor."

The Trump administration has cited national-security concerns, postulating that Chinese government agents could demand access to data from WeChat on U.S. users. Beeler wrote that "while the general evidence about the threat to national security related to China (regarding technology and mobile technology) is considerable, the specific evidence about WeChat is modest."

Beeler added that the U.S. government had other options at its disposal to achieve its stated national security objectives, such as banning WeChat from use on government devices, which is a step that Australia has taken.

Syringe

'Big, fat shots in the ass': Trump again suggests Biden is on energizing DRUGS

Trump Biden
© REUTERS / Tom Brenner; Jonathan Ernst
Donald Trump has mercilessly taunted Joe Biden, telling supporters that his Democratic nemesis must be taking performance-enhancing substances and should undergo a drug test.

Trump reiterated previous casual accusations that Biden is too senile to be a good fit for the US president's office while talking to a crowd of supporters in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Using his nickname for his Democratic opponent, Trump said that "Sleepy Joe" is appearing conspicuously efficient during debates and public events.


Bizarro Earth

England goes full-on barking mad: Breaking covid isolation to become illegal with fines up to ยฃ10,000

london street cafe covid
© Matt Dunham/AP PhotoPeople sit outside on a street closed to traffic to try to reduce the spread of coronavirus in London, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020.
People in England will be required by law to self-isolate if they test positive for COVID-19, risking increased fines if they fail to do so, the UK government has announced.

The fines will start at ยฃ1,000 (โ‚ฌ1,090) and could increase to up to ยฃ10,000 (โ‚ฌ10,909).

The higher fines will be for repeat offences and "egregious breaches" such as preventing others from self-isolating, the UK government said in a statement.

It includes business owners who prevent staff from self-isolating by threatening redundancy if they do not come to work.

Comment: Notice the groundwork being laid for the 'second wave' of cases. In true Orwellian fashion, the population has been conditioned to fear a number that is meaningless. Cases do not equate to fatalities. Yet that connection has been successfully made in the public's mind. Therefore all that is needed is to ramp up the rate of testing using a completely useless technique, and viola!, cases are increasing.


Bad Guys

Bill Gates sees 'best case' for end of fake pandemic in 2022.

Bill Gates
© The Last American Vagabond
Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in an exclusive "Fox News Sunday" interview that he believes the United States will be able to get back to normal life around summer 2021 due to progress made on vaccines and he's "optimistic" the coronavirus pandemic "won't last indefinitely" -- although he also panned President Trump's handling of the health crisis and said the coronavirus caused "huge setbacks" in human progress in poorer countries.

Gates' interview with host Chris Wallace came as the tech titan's charitable foundation is giving $650 million to fight the disease, which is the largest commitment by any independent foundation. Gates told Wallace that much of that money is going toward ensuring that once vaccines are approved, they are able to be manufactured for poor countries as well as more developed countries like the United States.

Gates said that during the coronavirus pandemic, vaccination rates have dropped by 14% in developing countries, erasing 20 years of progress, and that for the first time in years "extreme poverty" is increasing, causing ill-effects on education, mental health, and other indicators that he said is "much greater than I expected."