On a tip from Occam’s Stubble.
Open Thread
Category Archives: Tyranny
Domestic Terrorism Task Force May Target You
The Injustice Department under leftist apparatchik Merrick Garland — the guy who sicced the FBI on angry parents who speak out at schoolboard meetings — is creating a domestic terrorism task force.
Barks Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the National Security Division,
“Domestic violent extremists are often motivated by a mix of ideologies and personal grievances. We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”
If even accidents result from racial animus, any resistance to Democrats’ agenda is likely to be racist in origin.
In case there is any doubt who they mean by “domestic violent extremists,” consider this:
The highly controversial National School Boards Association letter sent to President Joe Biden that compared protesting parents to domestic terrorists and led the FBI to use counterterrorism tactics against parents was drafted at the direction of Biden’s education secretary, Miguel Cardona, a newly obtained email indicates. …
What’s more, the infamous letter, sent Sept. 29, was directly relied upon by Attorney General Merrick Garland in his issuing of an Oct. 4 memo dispatching the FBI to address a supposed “disturbing spike” of “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school administrators, board members, and other personnel.
In the letter, NSBA officials … urged the government to act on their behalf, in part, by classifying alleged threats from parents as acts of “domestic terrorism” and “hate crimes.”
That is, the Biden Regime asked the school boards to ask the Biden Regime to protect them from parents who don’t like critical race theory indoctrination and sadistic mask mandates. As with the establishment media, the Democrat Party enjoys a symbiotic relationship with the comparably corrupted education establishment.
If true that Cardona originally requested the letter, it would mean that the Biden administration was involved in the formulation of a policy to track and monitor parents as domestic terrorists from start to finish.
Parents who complain about their children being brainwashed to hate themselves because of their race are not the only enemies of the state who might attract the attention of the weaponized “Justice” Department. If you don’t think the federal government should unconstitutionally appropriate control of elections from the states so that Democrats can facilitate election fraud, you too are a domestic enemy, as Joe Biden put it on the same day the DOJ announced its task force:
In summary, President Biden said he supports blowing up the filibuster to pass his anti-voter bills and called anyone who gets in his way a domestic enemy.
We are far from the calls for unity he preached a year ago. pic.twitter.com/qGqRscHSW8
— Jessica Anderson (@JessAnderson2) January 11, 2022
The American system of government was designed to withstand the inevitability of Biden’s kind taking power. Now it faces a major test.
Also being tested is the character of the American people. The collapse of support for Biden and his party is encouraging in that regard.
On tips from Bluto and Mr. Freemarket.
Five Years in Prison for Providing “Conversion Therapy”
In a sick society, promoting health is not merely frowned upon; it is illegal.
From Canada’s CTV:
Conversion therapy is now illegal in Canada, marking a major milestone in LGBTQ2S+ rights in this country.
After parliamentarians came together to unanimously pass legislation to eradicate the harmful practice in late 2021, the Criminal Code sanctions came into force on Jan. 7.
Note the loaded language. This is presented as a straight news article, not an editorial, but they are not taking any chances that readers will come away without the correct opinion.
The piece goes so far over the top as to refer to “those who have survived conversion therapy,” which it defines as including “seeking to repress someone’s non-heterosexual attraction, or repressing a person’s gender expression or non-cis gender identity.” In a world run by liberals, being told to “man up” is regarded as life-threatening.
[N]ow, anyone who looks to subject someone of any age, consenting or not, to so-called conversion therapy could face up to five years in prison.
That means 5 years in prison for attempting to counsel someone regarding unwanted perverse sexual urges if a moonbat rats you out to authorities. It isn’t only regarding Covid that Canada for all its blandness is a tyrannical society.
Consider the implications for a minister who is asked for help regarding deviant temptations that are explicitly condemned in the Bible in the strongest terms. Yet again, we see that the imposition of LGBTXYZPDQ “rights” is an attack on Christianity. The worship of moonbattery shall have no gods before it.
On a tip from Bluto.
For the Greater Good
What the Founding Fathers understood and progressives pretend not to understand is that sacrificing the individual for the greater good leads inevitably to misery for everyone who does not belong to a tyrannical ruling class.
Covid tyranny has made this obvious. The global warming tyranny Democrats plan to inflict will make it even more obvious.
Conservative Momma captures the creepiness of the greater good:
On a tip from Dragon’s Lair.
Open Thread
Massachusetts Virtually Bans Eggs
There is nothing moonbats won’t take away from you in the name of their twisted, antihuman ideology. Not even the basic staples of human existence — like eggs.
The Blaze reports:
In 2016, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly passed an animal treatment measure that, in part, made it illegal to sell eggs born of hens with less than 1.5 square feet of floor space in their enclosure. Now that decision, scheduled to take effect in 2022, is coming home to roost — and it’s threatening to wipe out the supply of eggs in the state.
The legislation is expected to decrease the Bay State’s egg supply by about 90% when it takes effect on the first of the year. The situation could get worse still as egg producers are driven into bankruptcy or out of the state.
However, eggs will still be available to our moonbat rulers no matter how extravagant the price, because they know how to monetize power. That’s why they don’t mind the inflation their policies cause.
The new standards, which apply to all egg products, cover eggs imported from other states, as well.
Similar moonbattery will soon make bacon all but unattainable in California.
Once liberalism has achieved critical mass in a given region, no extreme of tyranny is too insane to find public support.
On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.
Open Thread
Spending Bill Gives Dems Power to Inflict Green Tyranny
Imagine your country reduced to an impoverished hellhole because vast authoritarian power was turned over to the mediocre mayor of a small city who is a dead ringer for Alfred E. Newman and whose only qualification for higher political office is being ostentatiously gay. That is the situation we will find ourselves in if Democrats are able to ram through their latest gargantuan spending bill.
From the Wall Street Journal:
One provision would give the Federal Highway Administration $50 million “to establish a greenhouse gas performance measure that requires States to set performance targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” The agency would also “establish an incentive structure to reward States that demonstrate the most significant progress”—and “consequences” for those that don’t meet the standard.
The performance targets are likely to become progressively more Draconian until states are forced to forbid any productive activity, lest harmless CO2 be released, helping plants to grow.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would have broad discretion over the program’s rules.
Who died and made Mayor Pete the czar in charge of whether we can drive cars? Lady Liberty.
He’s likely to require states to reduce CO2 emissions from vehicles by heavily subsidizing electric cars or banning internal combustion engines. Mr. Buttigieg could withhold funds from states or require that they spend money on bike paths and public transit. States that exceed the emissions target could get more money to subsidize EVs or bullet trains.
Where the electricity will come from to power the EVs remains a mystery. The same goes for the rare materials needed to make their batteries. Refer to California to see how vast a fortune liberals can flush down a bullet train boondoggle. Forcing people onto public transit while flooding the country with millions of illegal aliens does not sound like an effective plan for getting Covid under control. But at least, as the economy is smothered by taxation, inflation, and hyperregulation, we will have lots of bike paths, which ought to be paved with gold, considering how much they will cost us.
The program may be unconstitutional since it would conscript states into carrying out federal policy.
That would give Democrats yet another reason to pack the Supreme Court with Merrick Garland types, an intention they have made clear.
Buttigieg doesn’t get all the power. More authority will also go to the Deep State:
The bill also gives the Environmental Protection Agency $50 million to regulate greenhouse gases economy-wide under the Clean Air Act. This includes smelters, refineries, steel mills, concrete factories, tractors, chain-saws, airplanes, ice rinks, air conditioners and even vending machines—no joke.
This gives an idea of the kind of power compliant Supremes can grant Democrats:
In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Supreme Court allowed EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as an “air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act if it found the emissions endangered public health or welfare. Four Justices dissented, and the Court recently agreed to hear a challenge to the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants. The case gives the Justices an opportunity to revisit Massachusetts v. EPA, and Democrats want to prevent that by explicitly authorizing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.
Massachusetts v. EPA gives the federal government the power to regulate the breath you exhale on the basis of the politically driven doctrine that CO2 is harmful. Packing the court would allow this insane ruling to stay in place indefinitely, no matter how much senseless economic damage is caused. No wonder Democrats love the idea.
What else is hidden in the 2,400-page bill? As with the ObamaCare debacle, we won’t know what’s in it until after it has been rammed down our throats.
On a tip from Varla.
Democrats Impose Vehicle Kill Switches
As with ObamaCare, we will have to let Democrats ram it down our throats before we know what’s in their latest blowout spending bill. Details are coming to light regarding the last one they imposed, signed into law on November 15. It includes mandating vehicle kill switches so that the authorities can shut down our cars:
Buried deep within the massive infrastructure legislation recently signed by President Joe Biden is a little-noticed “safety” measure that will take effect in five years. Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, the measure will mandate that automobile manufacturers build into every car what amounts to a “vehicle kill switch.”
The device is required to “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”
Three reasons to regard this mandate with horror:
First, use of the word “passively” suggests the system will always be on and constantly monitoring the vehicle. Secondly, the system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected. Thirdly, it will be an “open” system, or at least one with a backdoor, meaning authorized (or unauthorized) third-parties can remotely access the system’s data at any time.
Click through for details on the safety, constitutional, and privacy concerns.
Like all things Democrat, the vehicle kill switch mandate is un-American:
Adding what amounts to a mandatory, backdoor government “kill switch” to cars is not only a violation of our constitutional rights, but an affront to what is — or used to be — an essential element of our national character. … [T]he freedom of the open road that individual car ownership brought to the American Dream, will be but another vague memory of an era no longer to be enjoyed by future generations.
However, being able to remotely disable our cars offers numerous advantages to an authoritarian regime, as noted previously.
On a tip from R F.
Civics Lesson From Ron DeSantis
Given his extremely lousy academic record, it would be no surprise to learn that Joe Biden flunked civics class. Ron DeSantis fills a gap in his education by reminding him why this country is called the United States:
Absolute 🔥🔥🔥 from America's Governor, Ron DeSAVAGE @GovRonDeSantis
Watch this. Believe me. pic.twitter.com/HZTE4DArnt
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 18, 2021
As DeSantis reminds us,
“The states are the primary vehicles to protect people’s freedoms, their health, their safety, their welfare in our constitutional system.”
All true — to the extent these areas are the business of any government.
If the Constitution did not protect the independence of the states, they never would have agreed to the federal system.
This arrangement is crucial for defending liberty. If some state governments go off the rails, citizens can escape to states that respect their liberty. This explains the caravans of moving vans traveling from New York to Florida and from California to Texas.
On a tip from Mr. Freemarket. Hat tip: Not the Bee.