COVID-19 has highlighted the two primary qualities of Democrats who achieve positions of authority: authoritarianism and hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock is so glaring, not even the Washington Post could help but report on it:

Hancock, a … vice president of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors, has been an advocate for coronavirus restrictions. He has pushed residents to wear masks and last week warned that another stay-at-home order might be needed if cases keep rising in Colorado, which has seen covid-related hospitalizations rise in the past week by almost 13 percent.

He has also been vocal about limiting holiday get-togethers. At a virtual news conference on Friday, he suggested residents buy a small turkey and celebrate with their immediate family only. “Maybe next year we can all be together again,” he said. “I’m asking, I’m urging, I’m pleading with everyone. Please stay home.”

But just 30 minutes after tweeting his latest plea to avoid travel on Wednesday morning, Hancock boarded a flight, KUSA reported.

Off he flew to Mississippi, to visit family for Thanksgiving.

He got caught, so he apologized. There, all better.

As with the mendacious Gavin Newsom, Hancock’s apology appears not to be heartfelt:

Despite the mayor’s apology, [Mike] Strott, his spokesman, argued to the Denver Post that Hancock didn’t see his travel as contradicting his advice to residents.

Strott argues that Hancock will “follow health and safety guidelines upon his return.”

Quintessential COVID-19 tyrant Andrew Cuomo also had plans for today, but they blew up in his face in time for him to ostentatiously cancel them:

Cuomo narrowly skirted putting another[*] elderly New Yorker in danger of dying from COVID-19 after he decided to cancel Thanksgiving dinner plans with his 89-year-old mother.

*Cuomo killed presumably thousands of elderly New Yorkers by forcing nursing homes to accept 6,300 coronavirus patients.

This is after getting widely slammed for announcing plans to have Thanksgiving dinner with his two daughters and his elderly mother, TODAY reported.

This came on the heels of Cuomo, basically, ordering New Yorkers not to celebrate the holiday with anyone but household members.

Jason Riley reminds us of a few other prime examples of COVID-19 hypocrisy:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi violated lockdown orders to get their hair done, which sounds like something a Kardashian would do. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney sneaked out of state to dine at a restaurant in neighboring Maryland because eateries back home were closed to indoor customers. When Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and members of her staff traveled to Delaware to celebrate Joe Biden’s presidential victory, they violated Covid quarantine requirements. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who tweeted in July that “wearing masks in public should be mandatory,” has been spotted several times in public not wearing a mask while she was indoors and chatting face to face with others.

Notice that hypocritical coronavirus tyrants are virtually always members of the Party of Coercion, i.e., Democrats.

These are the same politicians who had no shame about gathering at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in July to eulogize the late Rep. John Lewis even while millions of grieving Americans were barred from giving their own loved ones proper funerals.

Even as it has forced regular people to wear masks, the ChiCom virus has taken the mask off Democrat officials, revealing their hypocrisy and predilection for arbitrary tyranny.

On tips from MrRightWingDave, Sad Hill, and Varla.

Among the many things we have to be thankful for is that the Pilgrims showed us that individual liberty is an integral component of general prosperity and that socialism does not work, except as a means of inflicting tyranny:

On a tip from Jester.

In case anyone besides Democrats has forgotten, Mark Dice reminds us that the First Amendment guarantees not only freedom of speech and religion, but also “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”:

Actually, the capital of Oregon is Salem, but Portland is certainly the cultural capital of the people in charge. You might say the 100+ leftist riots that have occurred there this year have made it the cultural capital of moonbats throughout the country.

Oregon Gauleiter Kate Brown’s assertion that there is no difference between calling the police over a noisy party and ratting out neighbors for seating seven at the Thanksgiving table is absurd. In the former, the infraction is not gathering; it is creating a disturbance — similar to the case if Oregon’s leftist rulers were to enforce laws against rioting. With Thanksgiving restrictions, it is explicitly the gathering itself that is forbidden, despite being a fundamental right guaranteed in the Constitution.

On a tip from KirklesWorth.

No need to plunge headlong into the ocean of cartoonish propaganda excreted by the liberal media establishment. Stick a toe in first. One headline is enough to determine whether it is worth your time to go any farther:

What if Trump Won’t Leave the White House? A Hostage Negotiator, an Animal-Control Officer, and a Toddler Whisperer Have Advice

That is an actual headline from the Boston Globe.

Trump is a terrorist, an animal, and a toddler, and he will not leave the White House gracefully even if the election is finalized and finds him the loser. Chuckle smugly if you identify with the liberal elite.

Hat tip: Not the Bee.

Rigidly intolerant moonbats infest the publishing industry. Penguin Random House Canada is in hot water with its own employees for planning to publish the new book Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by the soft-spoken, moderate conservative Jordan Peterson.

Via Vice:

“[Peterson] is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” [barked] a junior employee who is a member of the LGBTQ community…

The content of the book does not matter, because Peterson has been canceled for past crimes against liberal dogma. Prominent among them, Peterson has refused to refer to cross-dressing men with feminine pronouns and to pretend there is such a thing as “white privilege.” He has failed to embrace demasculinization. Worst of all, he promotes personal responsibility, which is anathema to liberals.

Another employee said “people were crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives.” They said one co-worker discussed how Peterson had radicalized their father and another talked about how publishing the book will negatively affect their non-binary friend.

For moonbats, tears are weapons.

“The company since June has been doing all these anti-racist and allyship things and them publishing Peterson’s book completely goes against this. It just makes all of their previous efforts seem completely performative,” the employee added.

It is not enough to publish leftist propaganda by the shipload. Publishers must produce nothing other than leftist propaganda. Otherwise, snowflakes will weep menacingly.

A third employee told VICE World News the company’s diversity and inclusion committee received at least 70 anonymous messages about Peterson’s book, and only a couple are in favour of the decision to publish it.

Previous generations produced the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Now we have diversity and inclusion committees.

On a tip from Varla.

Fortunately, there are limits to how bad tyranny can get so long as individual citizens can defend themselves. Unfortunately, Biden’s handlers know this and will aggressively target gun rights.

[Biden’s handlers’] “Plan To End Our Gun Violence Epidemic” seeks to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce In Arms Act, which affords firearms dealers and manufacturers legal protection against lawsuits that may result from the misuse of weapons or ammunition sold to the public. Such a measure would effectively leave dealers and sellers vulnerable to wrongful death and injury lawsuits, senior vice president of the Gun Owners of America Erich Pratt told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The plan is a workaround to get past the Second Amendment. You can have guns just like the Constitution says — except there aren’t any guns because a locust swarm of our trial lawyer friends have looted those who make and sell them out of existence.

Kevin Jamison, a Missouri self-defense lawyer and firearms trainer, said “The guys pushing these lawsuits, they don’t care if they win. They care if they can force these companies to hemorrhage money. They are in the business of putting gun companies out of business.”

The strategy is effective:

Remington Arms Company, which has been producing firearms since 1816, went bankrupt in late September after the corporation was sued by the families of the victims involved in the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, according to Fox Business. The gunman used a Bushmaster, a sub-company of Remington, AR-15 during the shooting, Fox reported.

Democrats will also go after ammunition, so that we cannot use the guns we already have:

Outdoor retail giant Cabela’s was also sued in early November for selling ammunition to a 19-year-old who accidentally killed a friend with a handgun, The Buffalo News reported.

What about the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act?

Jamison called the theories behind the gun litigation “absurd” and said the lawsuits have been allowed to continue even under the Commerce In Arms Act because of misguided [i.e., liberal] courts.

With the CIAA out of the way completely, courts will go wild. Every shooting will result in gigantic jackpot justice verdicts until the gun industry exists only to arm the government.

Far more people are killed in auto accidents than by firearms. Also, cars make it be too hot outside according to liberal dogma. If Democrats manage to eliminate guns by looting manufacturers and retailers, cars could be next. With Democrats in charge, it’s a great time to be a trial lawyer or tyrannical bureaucrat, but a miserable time to be anyone else.

With no guns to defend ourselves, there will be no way to prevent future administrations from forcing those of us who are deemed ideologically or demographically problematic to get in the boxcars. The absence of cars will be the least of our problems.

On a tip from Lyle.

As J.K. Rowling has learned, it isn’t enough to be left-leaning in general. You have to toe the line on all aspects of current leftist ideology, no matter how pernicious, depraved, and insane. When the lynch mob comes for thought criminals like Rowling, who has objected to some of the more outrageous demands by militant transsexuals, you had better not object to their cancelation. If you defend them in any way, you too are a thought criminal. The lynch mob will then come for you, just as it has come for John Cleese after he signed a letter of support for Rowling.

Encouragingly, Cleese has pushed back against the bullying:

“Deep down, I want to be a Cambodian police woman. Is that allowed, or am I being unrealistic?” he replied to someone who asked why he couldn’t “just let people be who they want to be.”

More defiance:

“I’m afraid I’m not that interested in trans folks,” he admitted when pressed to “be upfront” about his views on Rowling’s controversy.

That must have evoked a chorus of horrified gasps from moonbats.

“I just hope they’re happy and that people treat them kindly,” he wrote.

Not good enough. You are not allowed to be a nice guy who wishes transsexuals well and leave it at that. You are required to worship them, and to endorse all aspects of their agenda: men playing women’s sports, boys in the girls’ locker room, little kids getting “transitioned” into trophy transexuals by their woke parents, the works.

He later complained that critics showed a “complete lack of perspective” as well as a “complete lack of a sense of humor,” asking, “Heard a woke joke yet?”

The Twitter mob does not permit such insolence. Denunciations of Cleese as “transphobic” trended on the moonbat-friendly platform.

“Damn. Really wasn’t expecting someone as talented and amazing as John Cleese to be anti-trans,” author Adam Tierney wrote with a sad-face emoji.

“Dude … John Cleese being Transphobic was not something I saw coming and I am thoroughly disappointed by it,” one follower wrote…

These woke vigilantes were so surprised by Cleese displaying a sense of humor rather than obsequious submission, you would think they had been suddenly confronted by the Spanish Inquisition.

They must have missed Life of Brian:

On tips from KirklesWorth and Mr. Freemarket.

There is at least one difference between the Green New Deal and the lunatic social engineering schemes the Khmer Rouge used to depopulate Cambodia. Pol Pot never thought to set his policies to music. Clap along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as moonbats sing the Green New Deal Song:

The purpose of the event was to remind Joe Biden that radicals like AOC expect to call the shots within the Democratic Party. They have run roughshod over Nancy Pelosi. Steamrolling befuddled Biden should be child’s play — perfectly suited to their childlike mentality.

Just because these people are absurd doesn’t mean they can’t destroy the country.

On a tip from Dragon’s Lair. Hat tip: Not the Bee.

Members of the liberal ruling class support the authoritarianism of the Democratic Party, but then attempt to avoid the repression they eagerly impose on others. Consider Apple, a corporation as progressive as the rest of Big Tech.

In the 2020 election cycle, only 4.3% of donations by Apple employees and their families went to Republicans. The largest beneficiary was Joe Biden.

The Democratic Party in general and Biden in particular vociferously oppose gun rights. However, like the rest of us, Apple requires firearms for security purposes. So we read this, via CNET:

Thomas Moyer, Apple’s head of global security, was indicted last week as part of a two-year investigation into the sheriff’s office, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said Monday. Moyer allegedly agreed to donate 200 iPads worth $70,000 to the Sheriff’s Office in exchange for four [concealed carry] permits that had been withheld from Apple employees, the District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. …

Also indicted in the scheme were Santa Clara Undersheriff Rick Sung and Capt. James Jensen, who allegedly requested the bribes, the DA’s office said.

There should be no need for Apple to hand over iPads. It is not up to potentially corrupt law enforcement agencies whether we have a right to bear arms. It says we do right in the Constitution.

On a tip from Adam.

Prohibition failed the first time, but back then authoritarians didn’t think to employ the tactic of justifying their impositions with the magic word “COVID-19.” Pennsylvania wants to try it again, if only for one night as a trial balloon:

Restaurants and bars are ordered to suspend alcohol sales from 5 p.m. Wednesday to 8 a.m. Thursday.

Democrat Governor Tom Wolf explains that it is not him or the eccentric fellow known as Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine who is imposing this irritating decree at a time when bars and restaurants are finding it hard enough to stay in business. It is the virus itself:

“The thing that we can’t do is ignore reality and say ‘yeah you folks, for no fault of your own, have been hit hardest by this virus.’ But the virus is what’s doing this. It’s not me. It’s not the administration. It’s not the government,” said Gov. Wolf.

Under liberalism, not even Big Government is responsible. Something else is to blame for every harmful action taken by anyone.

Also among Monday’s virus mitigation efforts is a stay-at-home advisory, and Dr. Levine says people shouldn’t gather with others outside their household. …

“Orders already in place and those announced today will be enforced, and law enforcement and state agencies will be stepping up enforcement efforts, issuing citations and fines and possible regulatory actions for repeat offenders,” says Dr. Levine.

“It has to be our collective responsibility to protect our communities, our healthcare workers and our most vulnerable Pennsylvanians from COVID-19.”

Previously, Levine protected the most vulnerable by pulling his mother out of a nursing home, so that his policy of forcing nursing homes to accept people positive for COVID-19 wouldn’t kill her.

On a tip from Henry.

Formerly, the point of NASA was to explore outer space. But it has been so grotesquely deranged by moonbattery that it now embraces the opposite mission — preventing space exploration:

NASA’s Equity Diversity and Inclusion Working Group (EDIWG) publishes an anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist manifesto which, if followed, would effectively ban the USA from exploration of Mars, our Moon and other planetary bodies.

The manifesto is entitled, “Ethical Exploration and the Role of Planetary Protection in Disrupting Colonial Practices.” National Review has details:

[T]he EDIWG authors say that human space exploration must be stopped because it represents a continuation of the West’s tradition of resource development through free enterprise. “All of humanity is a stakeholder in how we, the planetary science and astrobiology community, engage with other worlds,” they say. “Violent colonial practices and structures — genocide, land appropriation, resource extraction, environmental devastation, and more — have governed exploration on Earth, and if not actively dismantled, will define the methodologies and mindsets we carry forward into space exploration. . . . It is critical that ethics and anticolonial practices are a central consideration of planetary protection. We must actively work to prevent capitalist extraction on other worlds, respect and preserve their environmental systems, and acknowledge the sovereignty and interconnectivity of all life.”

So far as we know, there is no life on other worlds. But just in case there is, we better not go out there, lest we infect it with free enterprise.

Look what happened when our ancestors discovered America. Stone Age savagery was displaced by a civilization that placed men on the moon. You wouldn’t want more of that, would you?

Even if there are only microbes on other planets, humans must be kept from disturbing them, because according to cutting edge progressive ideology, microbes are people too.

“There must be further discussion of what moral consideration microbial life on other worlds should have, beyond their scientific significance,” they say. “Consideration of ‘intelligence’ or ‘non-intelligence’ should not be used as a framework in this discussion. Not only do biological distinctions of intelligence have a racist history, they do not hold scientific merit. It is clear that microbiology is foundational to Earth as we know it, and microbes are deserving of moral consideration.”

Maybe it is just as well if we are kept from exploring outer space. If we do find microbes out there, liberals will want to given them voting rights and sign them up for welfare.

There is probably no life on Mars anyway. Humans still must be kept away:

“Even if there is no extant microbial life on Mars or beyond, we must consider the impacts of our actions on geological timescales,” they say. “A human presence on an astrobiologically significant world could disrupt evolutionary processes already in place. What moral obligation do we have towards potential future life that our presence on Mars could impact, or to hybrid forms of life that our presence could potentially create? These questions must be addressed by planetary protection policy.”

We have to stay away from the moon as well, because we might spoil the scenic beauty of a wasteland even more remote and uninhabited than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and also because the moon might be sacred to indigenous peoples, and indigenous peoples are sacred to moonbats.

“Aesthetics should also be considered. If Moon mining is to be an extensive enterprise as planned, these changes will be visible from Earth,” they claim, “fundamentally changing one of the few communal human experiences of gazing at the Moon. In addition, the Moon and other planetary bodies are sacred to some cultures. Is it possible for those beliefs to be respected if we engage in resource utilization on those worlds?”

The EDIWG authors assert that the moon has a right to remain unchanged. Human rights for microbes were not the final extreme of absurdity. Now rocks floating through outer space have rights.

If NASA can’t explore space because it would be unethical to inflict colonial oppression on microbes and rocks, how about private industry? No dice:

[H]elping to meet the needs of humanity by entrepreneurial development of resources from space would be a bad thing, because “enabling those with the wealth to privately engage in space exploration efforts could exacerbate already extreme wealth inequality in the immediate future.”

Mankind cannot explore space or strive upward in any other meaningful way until it has first rid itself of moonbattery.

On a tip from Steve T.

American national security is not likely to fare well under Biden’s handlers. Consider that on Monday, Biden…

…announced former Secretary of State John Kerry as special presidential envoy for climate, [who] will sit on the National Security Council — the first time that the NSC will include an official dedicated to climate change.

That’s their idea of national security: placing John Kerry — who betrayed his country during wartime and went on to facilitate the acquisition of nuclear weapons by our most aggressive enemy — on the National Security Council, where it will be his job to subordinate American interests to the globalist power grab known as the global warming hoax.

Biden has already announced that on his first day in power he will undermine American interests by embracing the Paris Climate Agreement.

Regarding security at the overrun border, where the ongoing invasion has lurched into overdrive in anticipation of a Biden’s handlers presidency, he has signaled his seriousness by symbolically choosing Latino immigrant Alejandro Mayorkas.

Maybe America could survive Biden, provided Republicans hold the Senate. But only if there is constant aggressive pushback. His handlers do not mean this country well.

On a tip from Varla.