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Michigan House votes to repeal 1945 emergency law used by Whitmer to issue coronavirus orders


MLive
Fri, 18 Dec 2020 18:25 UTC
Gretchen Whitmer
© mlive.com/KJN
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer
Legislation that would overturn one of the emergency laws Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used as authority to issue COVID-19 orders during the first several months of the pandemic cleared the Michigan House early Friday morning.

Senate Bill 857, sponsored by Sen. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, would repeal the 1945 Emergency Powers of Governor Act, one of two state laws currently on the books Whitmer used to issue a wide swath of orders that required masks in public spaces, limited crowd sizes, and closed various establishments after the legislature opted not to extend the initial state of emergency declaration on April 30.

Whitmer's use of the act was ultimately deemed unconstitutional in a split October Michigan Supreme Court decision after Republicans and others challenged the orders in state and federal courts. That's left it up to the legislature to codify many of the COVID-19 executive orders invalidated by the ruling, although the state's Department of Health and Human Services has mirrored several of Whitmer's response measures in subsequent public health emergency orders.

Legislative Republicans have long butted heads with Whitmer over COVID-19 pandemic response, arguing that she's left the legislature out of discussions before implementing restrictions on in-person business and activity to limit the spread of the virus. Whitmer has criticized the legislature for not supporting prevention measures recommended by public health experts, including a statewide mandate to wear masks.

Comment: See also:

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Mr. Potato

If only they'd listened to Greta: World Economic Forum mocked for comparing CLIMATE CHANGE ON VENUS with that on Earth


RT
Sun, 20 Dec 2020 18:24 UTC
Thunberg venus climate change
© Reuters / Johanna Geron; Wikipedia
(L) Greta Thunberg (R) Venus
When it comes to the fight against climate change, the boffins at the World Economic Forum think we can learn from the planet Venus, which had its oceans and milder climate wrecked. All that, and nobody on Venus ever drove a car.

"We can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister planet," read an article on the website of the World Economic Forum (WEF) this week. According to the post, new scientific modeling has revealed that, for much of its history, Venus had surface temperatures similar to those of present-day Earth, complete with oceans, rain, and even snow.

Comment: Nothing like a bad analogy to fool the masses. The history of Venus is likely far different than the accepted narrative. Evidence that "climate change" is solar system wide

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Attention

Pandemic migration underway: Londoners fleeing latest covid lockdown measures

Mark Hookham, Holly Bancroft, Jake Ryan, Chris Jewers and James Tapsfield
The Daily Mail
Sun, 20 Dec 2020 17:28 UTC
london covid tier 4 crowds train station
© Alex Mason
By 7pm on Saturday evening, there were no trains available online from several London stations including Paddington, Kings Cross and Euston
Mass exodus likened to the 'last train from Saigon'

Families were last night fleeing areas of England that have been plunged into the tightest restrictions in what one leading expert described as a 'mini exodus'.

Edmund King, president of the AA, said that within 90 minutes of Boris Johnson's bombshell announcement, there were reports of people jumping into cars and taxis and even hiring vehicles to escape London before draconian new rules were imposed at midnight.

'There are certainly elements of an exodus of some people from tier 4,' he told The Mail on Sunday.

'I have heard of people actually hiring cars to get out of London to get to Liverpool because a lot of the trains are either restricted or booked.

Comment: Britain is not the only country succumbing to the latest covid madness. Germany and The Netherlands are both now restricting travel from the UK, with other EU countries preparing to follow suit. Such lockstep coordination seems a little suspicious, doesn't it?

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Attention

An end to alternate news media?


Great GameIndia
Sun, 20 Dec 2020 17:42 UTC
A new white paper by the IMF calls for linking your search history to your financial credit score, which would in effect lower your score if you visit websites marked harmful by their fact-checkers.
Search History
© IMF
Your Search History Will Determine Your Financial Credit Score In Future, Says IMF.
In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future.

The researchers propose using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual or business.

The plan is outlined in a blog written by Arnoud Boot, Peter Hoffmann, Luc Laeven and Lev Ratnovski, pitching the Orwellian notion as a breakthrough in financial technology (Fintech).
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Megaphone

Victory in the war on woke: Judges' landmark ruling in case of mother who called trans woman 'he' on Twitter means freedom of speech does include the 'right to offend'

Martin Robinson
The Daily Mail
Fri, 18 Dec 2020 08:45 UTC
Court of Appeal

Presiding over a case in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby said: 'Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.' Pictured, supporters of Kate Scottow protesting outside court earlier this year
Judges have insisted that freedom of speech includes the 'right to offend' in a landmark ruling which could help to turn the tide on 'woke' intolerance after a feminist who called a transgender woman a 'pig in a wig' and a 'man' was cleared.

Presiding over a case in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby said:
'Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.'
They added that 'free speech encompasses the right to offend, and indeed to abuse another'. The judgment from two senior members of the judiciary will set a precedent for future cases involving freedom of speech.

Comment: The gender fluidity rules have allowed biological male offenders to be put in a female prison. You can read the full article here.
A female prisoner who was sexually assaulted by a trans inmate has launched a challenge against the policy of keeping such offenders in women's prisons.She was attacked by an inmate who identified as female but had not had reassignment surgery.
The trans woman had convictions for serious sexual offences.
See also:

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NPC

Intersectional vaccines: Citing top 'medical ethicist', NYT suggests the elderly NOT be vaccinated first because they are 'too white'

David Harsanyi
National Review
Fri, 18 Dec 2020 12:02 UTC
nyt vaccines intersectionality
As if we needed another reason to lose faith in the expert class, here is a medical ethicist in the New York Times discussing the CDC's rollout of the coronavirus vaccine:
Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. "Older populations are whiter," Dr. Schmidt said. "Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit."



Comment: So what you're saying is... let them die off?


This is what happens when "science" and the racial identitarianism of the modern intellectual Left collide. "Historically," says the Times, the committees tasked with deciding this sort of thing relied on "scientific evidence to inform its decisions." Nowadays, members are "weighing social justice concerns as well."

It would be merely obscene if ethics professors were theorizing about saving — or, rather, not saving — lives based on race. How long before half-baked social science is being used by technocrats in positions of power and influence to ration medical care?

You know who else is a "medical ethicist" at the University of Pennsylvania? Ezekiel Emanuel, a Biden adviser on medical issues, who believes human beings are bits of GDP that have no real purpose once they hit a creaky 75 (with an exception made, no doubt, for the 78-year-old president-elect).

Emanuel and Schmidt, in fact, co-authored a textbook titled, Rationing and Resource Allocation in Healthcare.

The CDC data, by the way, show it would save the most American lives to prioritize Americans over the age of 65 rather than essential workers. Emanuel might object because people are approaching the end of their usefulness. Schmidt might dissent because they may skew too white.

Comment: No one should be taking these franken-vaccines, but it's interesting to watch their warped minds marry ideology and science.

We saw this clearly back when BLM protests flared in May/June: 'top virologists' and 'experts' came out in support of those mass gatherings because - to quote one of them - "the virus of white supremacy is more dangerous than Sars-CoV-2 (kind of, just, y'know, temporarily)..."

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Question

The populist American powder keg is primed but will it be lit?

Tim Kirby
Strategic Culture Foundation
Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:00 UTC
populist powder keg
There are countless alarmist articles from the past rotting away on the forgotten side of the internet, warning us that "this time it'll be different" and that the given crisis of the moment was "the one" that would lead to big change. Flawed humans are often too eager to over inflate information that suits them to build the exciting revolutionary narrative of their fantasies. We should always be wary of falling into the trap of this alarmism, but as 2020 comes to an end there are some truly unique events happening in the West, especially America that cannot be ignored. The Covid-19 Pandemic, or should I say governments' strange measures to fight it, have eroded one of the major pillars of Western stability, that is rarely acknowledged. Life in the West is finally becoming uncomfortable and whether this is "good news" is up for debate, but it is certainly good for creating major political change.

The most unseen form of repression is perhaps the most effective

If we look at the late 20th and now the 21st century it is critical to acknowledge that the main means of coercion of the population of a given nation is comfort. Throughout all of human history from the point when we first started to slap together farm implements there has had to be some form of repression/coercion to keep the system, that we call society, on its feet. The serfs needed to toil, the knights needed to defend, the traders to trade and the elite to oversee it all. This is one of the paradoxes of Democracy, we created a system that tells us the people are in charge and free to do whatever they want when in reality society exists as it does, exactly because people cannot do what they want and do not have the power to topple the system.


Comment: In other words: "When people have nothing left to lose, and they've lost everything, they lose it." -- Gerald Celente

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Bizarro Earth

340+ Nigerian schoolboys freed after abduction claimed by Boko Haram militants


RT
Thu, 17 Dec 2020 23:10 UTC
nigeria
© Reuters / Afolabi Sotunde
Nigerian soldiers are seen at the Government Science school in Kankara, Nigeria, where more than 300 students were kidnapped last week, December 13, 2020.
More than 300 schoolboys reported to have been abducted by Boko Haram fighters in Nigeria have been freed after nearly a week in captivity, officials said. The news came after a video emerged showing children begging for release.

The 344 students were released to authorities on Thursday and are set to be transported back to the state capital of Katsina City in northern Nigeria, Governor Aminu Masari told state media in a televised interview. Officials said the students were in good condition, but they have yet to receive a full medical check.

"At the moment, 344 of the students have been released and handed over to the security operatives. I think we can say at least we have recovered most of the boys, if not all of them," Masari said.
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Vader

Why This Campaign of Terror?

Gillian Dymond
OffGuardian
Sun, 13 Dec 2020 08:39 UTC
nurses
© Hiep Le Duc
In the morning, the world is as the world should be. The sun rises, as predicted for this part of England in early December, at around twenty past eight. Shortly after this, I get up, go through the usual morning routines, have a quick breakfast, wash up, and am at my computer by ten o'clock. The hours pass unexceptionably until lunchtime. And then I can no longer put off the trip to the shops.

Going to the shops is something I do as little as possible nowadays. Once I might have walked in and out of the nearby town centre several times in a day, without thinking twice: but that was when I could move from home to street seamlessly, with no jarring transition between here and there.

Now it's different. Now, beyond the protective confines of our home lies a parallel universe, a place of outlandish rituals and dogmas, where grotesquely masked figures pass each other warily on the street or, in the supermarket, lurk out-of-touch behind symbolic plastic screens. Instead of muzak, as I follow the prescribed route between the aisles, disembodied voices warn of death and disease, order me to protect myself and others by maintaining distance and keeping my plague-ridden exhalations to myself.

"We're in this together!" they proclaim.

In less than a year some malign necromancy has transformed the fearless social beings who once thronged shops and cafés in the run-up to each Christmas into an infestation of dangerous, outsized germs: or, if scrupulous examination of the facts has left you confident that "the novel coronavirus" is no more threatening to moderately healthy people than the nastier brands of flu, into the crazed adherents of some apocalyptic cult.
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Bullseye

Maintaining and expanding the ban on critical race theory

James Lindsay
New Discourses
Sun, 20 Dec 2020 06:47 UTC
united states flag
It's virtually certain that a Biden administration will not maintain President Trump's executive order that was issued in response to using Critical Race Theory in employee training circumstances in federal agencies and contractors ("Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping"). I think that, if anything, can be assumed with very high confidence. There are a number of important points to make about this issue, then. I want to list four important points about the order, the ideas it contains, and the environment we find ourselves in around it.

These are:
  1. it offers no protection at the state level (or local), which is needed;
  2. it is incomplete in one important regard — neglecting other factors of identity besides race and sex;
  3. we've been systematically misled, if not lied to, about it ever since it was issued; and
  4. those who wish to overturn it — including university presidents, provosts, and departments, prominent journalists, and many Democratic politicians, plausibly to include Joe Biden and his administration relatively soon — must be held to account for this desire in the terms of the executive order itself, not in made-up terms that don't apply to the situation.
Awareness and action are required on all four of these domains.

Comment: See also:

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