MasterCard and Visa Have Suspended Russia Operations: ominous

 

image credit: blackenterprise.com

Why Americans Shouldn't Be Happy That

MasterCard and Visa Have Suspended Russia Operations

At PJ Media, Robert Spencer concludes:

This action by Visa and MasterCard is also ominous for American conservatives. Allum Bokhari, who covers Big Tech for Breitbart, reported last July that “progressive activists have launched well-funded campaigns aimed at payment processors, and credit card companies, aimed at cutting the political right off from payment and banking services.” Bokhari also noted that I myself was a victim of this in 2018: “Visa and Mastercard cut off payments to David Horowitz’s Freedom Center. Horowitz later had the service restored, but Islam critic Robert Spencer reported that he too was blacklisted by Mastercard, blaming it on pressure from far-left activists.” Indeed: after a Leftist hate group published an “exposé” about funding of “right-wing” groups, MasterCard cut me off, claiming it had done so because my website featured “illegal content.” That is, content that Leftists don’t like.

Whatever you may think of me and of other people that the Leftist establishment has targeted for destruction, the implications of what is being done are clear. America is at a crossroads today. The choice before us is whether we will continue to exist as a free society, or whether we will become a totalitarian state in which holding the proper opinions is an indispensable prerequisite of being able to function as a citizen at all. Note that Visa’s Al Kelly said his company had decided to take the step to suspend services in Russia because of “the unacceptable events that we have witnessed.” What will Americans who dissent from the Leftist agenda do when the credit card giants tell them that such dissent is “unacceptable” as well?

If MasterCard and Visa offer their services only to those with acceptable political opinions, it isn’t just Russia that will ultimately be affected. At risk is the basic and hard-won principle of equality of access to services. When that goes, our other freedoms will swiftly follow — more swiftly than most Americans realize.

Read the rest here.

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SOTU: Must Miss Television UPDATED WITH LINKS

 

White House Occupant Biden’s “State of the Union” speech
is this evening, March 1 at 9pm ET.

UPDATE:  As of 8:55pm, Vodkapundit has not yet posted a drunk-blogging link.  If he decides to not drunk-blog Biden’s first SOTU address, it would be understandable. 

The link is up!! Stephen Green’s [Mr. Vodkapundit] watches, so you don’t have to.  It is less painful to access the proceedings via live DrunkBlogging at PJ Media here.   If you really want to tune in to the broadcast online, Conservative Treehouse has the link here.

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The Government From Hell

 

David Solway at PJ Media is writing about Canada, but his words apply to America today as well:

. . . The fact is that the government from hell is working to transform a democratic nation into a police state and normalize totalitarian rule without having to mobilize the military and scramble its jet fighters. It moves subtly, insidiously, through legislation, decree, deception, legal subterfuge, financial penalties, and targeted defamation. It divides a country into sectarian belligerents, employs tested techniques of misinformation and disinformation, prevents the free expression of opinion (Bill C-11), and impoverishes and segregates its perceived adversaries. It manipulates a strategy of covert control which, in the long run, may be more effective than overt physical repression. It doesn’t need tanks; a few RCMP horses will do. Slander and sanctimony are excellent weapons.

The truckers were never a menace, bore no resemblance to the volley of epithets hurled against them: white supremacists, racists, misogynists, antisemites, and the like. A Liberal MP is convinced that “honk honk” is code for “Heil Hitler.” Reviewing Paul Gottfried’s must-read Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade in American Greatness, Christopher Zeeman writes, “Organizing a state around a nonexistent threat is a novel approach to governing…the lack of proof is confirmation that they must redouble their efforts to thwart the threat”—a threat, be it said, not to the nation but to the impious power of the managerial elect. In other words, our political elites must conjure their enemies in order to maintain their own compromised existence. The dumbing down of a supine population, still wearing their badges of conformity across their faces, completes the task.

Of course, as noted, there will be the inevitable casualties. The truckers who protested the draconian and useless vaccine mandates have been crushed and their lives ruined. And the majority of Canadians do not care. Some believe the truckers got what they deserved, gloating over the misfortune of their betters. Others do not give them a second thought. The feeble-minded claim to be suffering from “phantom honking.” Some hover over the top like a helicopter pilot surveying rush hour traffic and move on: nothing very significant to see here. Their sympathies go out to the Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression. The victims of government oppression in their own country are an afterthought. Stupefying indifference to the fate of their nation is the order of the day. The government from hell remains solidly entrenched. . . .

Mr. Solway’s entire column is here. 

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SOTU: Must Miss Television

 

White House Occupant Biden’s “State of the Union” speech
is tomorrow, March 1 at 9pm ET.

Stephen Green’s [Mr. Vodkapundit] usually watches, so you don’t have to.  It will be less painful to access the proceedings via live DrunkBlogging at PJ Media.   If you really want to tune in to the broadcast online, Treehouse will have the link.

Note: Direct links will be added in tomorrow's blog.

Let’s Go Brandon!

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Remembering Rush Limbaugh

 

Megan Fox at PJ Media marked the one-year anniversary of Rush Limbaugh’s passing:

Kathryn Limbaugh took Fox News into the home she shared with the great Rush Limbaugh for an exclusive interview one year after the death of the talk radio giant. “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt interviewed Kathryn about her husband’s legacy in a touching segment that will not leave a dry eye across Dittohead Nation.

Kathryn has been gracious in sharing her grief with Rush’s audience, who also feel that they’ve lost a family member. “I’m doing well for the most part,” said Kathryn. “It’s been very difficult, but knowing how many people are out there praying for me, praying for Rush, I very much think this was the nation’s loss.”

Never-before-seen footage of Rush’s home focused on beautiful American memorabilia collected over the years. “To me, it really represents Rush in so many ways, not because of the grandness of it,” she said. “That’s not really him. It represents success, American freedom.” One such reminder is an American flag hanging in the foyer that was given to Rush by American service-members who flew it on five different aircraft carriers before giving it to him.

Kathryn noted that receiving the diagnosis of cancer was a blessing in that they were given some time to prepare and also to hear some of the tributes before Rush was gone, like the memorable speech President Donald Trump gave honoring Rush’s life with the presidential medal of freedom. “One of the perks, I guess, of having a diagnosis like this is that you have a little bit of time to hear some of the wonderful eulogies,” she said.

When Rush died, Kathryn got on the radio that day and broke the news to the audience. “I wanted them to hear that devastating news in the most familiar way possible. I knew this audience would remember where they were when they lost their hero,” she said.  . . .

More here.  Video link is included; scroll down.

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Can Politicians Quit the Power Habit?

 

Richard Fernandez raises a timely question, and one that puts the Western world at a crossroads.  The column is at PJ Media; here are some extracts:

Can Politicians Quit the Power Habit?

… By declaring vaccine petitioners a “small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views,” Trudeau turned a public health issue into political dynamite. It’s a classic case study on how to escalate a problem into a crisis, turning an issue of lifting restrictions on a fading epidemic into a referendum on civil liberty and prime ministerial leadership. By declaring vaccine petitioners a “small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views,” Trudeau turned a public health issue into political dynamite. It’s a classic case study on how to escalate a problem into a crisis, turning an issue of lifting restrictions on a fading epidemic into a referendum on civil liberty and prime ministerial leadership. 

. . .

For some, an end to the pandemic signals the closing of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remake the world. As the Socialist Equality Party (Canada) writes: “The so-called Freedom Convoy is a far-right rabble… spearheaded by fascist activists who have assaulted homeless people and workers trying to enforce anti-COVID measures and brought guns and other weaponry into downtown Ottawa.”

. . .

When the history of the Covid-19 pandemic is written, the names of many drugs — Paxlovid, fluvoxamine, sotrovimab — will be mentioned. But the account will be incomplete if the distorting effect of the most powerful and addictive drug of all, political power, is omitted. The public, out of fear, gave politicians enormous power. What we’re about to see, the world over, is whether they can take it back.

Mr. Fernandez’s full column is here.

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Crispus Attucks: America's First Patriot

 

image credit: americanhistorycentral.com

February is Black History Month.  Athena Thorne offers us this history lesson at PJ Media:

Black History Month Should Begin With Crispus Attucks,
America's First Patriot

Every February, America goes through a month-long ritual where it reminds everyone that blacks and whites have beef, and black people only matter historically when they’ve been victimized by white people. Setting aside the first part — the incessant picking at a great scab that is never allowed to heal — black people are taught to feel angry, less important, and, through their identity as victims, trained to measure any success they might have as a function of either a defeat for or a gratuity from white people.

If Black History Month were truly meant to be a paean to black Americans, it would highlight blacks whose historical contributions to America include more besides ending slavery and overcoming prejudice. While those are undoubtedly massive steps forward for any society, they are not uniquely American.

. . .

Crispus Attucks’ name ought to be as well-known as Paul Revere’s: Attucks [a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry] was the first American Patriot killed as he confronted the British at the very beginning of the American Revolution.

. . .

In March of 1770, tensions were running red hot between American colonists and their British rulers. On that fateful day, Attucks helped lead a group of angry sailors who confronted British soldiers stationed in Boston. The sailors wielded clubs, hurled snowballs, and shouted at the soldiers. In a panic, the soldiers fired into the crowd. Attucks was the very first person killed in what came to be known as the Boston Massacre, a pivotal event that brought the colonies and England to the threshold of war.

Crispus Attucks lay in state in Faneuil Hall alongside the other four men killed in the Massacre. The City of Boston waved segregation laws so he could also be buried with them. It is right and just that he was so honored, and he deserves to be a household name in this country.  . . .

Crispus Attucks was the very first American to give his life to the cause of liberating the colonies from British rule and creating the freest, greatest nation man has yet conceived. How is that not at least as important?

Read the rest here.

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Nick Searcy’s documentary about the Jan. 6 “insurrection”

 

At PJ Media, Victoria Taft previews Nick Searcy’s film (released last November) Capitol Punishment, a documentary about the January 6 “insurrection” in DC.  You can watch the documentary online – click on the link at the end of the article.  Here’s Ms. Taft’s preview:

Actor Nick Searcy's Movie 'Capitol Punishment'
Is the Best Documentary
 About Jan. 6. He'd Know, He Was There.

Nick Searcy was at the huge Trump rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., and was so unnerved and shaken by what he saw that day that he made a movie about it. The actor/producer/director’s movie, Capitol Punishment, is the most complete story about that day and its aftermath that anyone has attempted to date. It’s a must-watch, even if you think you know all there is to know about that day.

Searcy is here to say that you don’t. He says it with a knowing wink and a rueful laugh.

The actor, who stars opposite former Mandalorian actress Gina Carano in the upcoming film Terror on the Prairie and who’s appeared in some of the biggest Hollywood movies, including The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, Moneyball, Cast Away, and Fried Green Tomatoes and co-starred in the hit television FX series Justified, knows something about stagecraft.

But he was stunned at the stage-crafted events of Jan. 6.

“Everything that we are being told [about Jan. 6] is a lie and Americans are being persecuted to support that lie,” says Searcy who features national security experts in the film who attest that the assault on the Capitol for political ends “was years in the making.”

Searcy’s idea for the movie with filmmaker and director Chris Burgard began when the two men attended the Jan. 6 rally because they “believed the election had been stolen” stolen from Donald Trump. Searcy told me on my Adult in the Room Podcast that they figured any story they told would be about the typical anti-Trump media malpractice. But, he told me, that idea went out the window when they witnessed agents provocateur pretending to be Trump supporters.

After the rally, Searcy and Burgard began to see footage of police admitting rally-goers and protesters into the Capitol Building, video of Antifa provocateurs changing clothes between black bloc and MAGA clothes, and video of a notorious Leftist militant who trains activists in violent tactics and who worked with government workers to take over D.C. buildings beginning on Election Day. In the documentary, Searcy shows an organizing Zoom call in which professional protest provocateur, Lisa Fithian, urges her co-conspirators during a Zoom call to shut down the Capitol. She told them, “we are going to be in crisis but we want it to be one that we’re creating. Whoever’s got the guns can win. Let’s take over the buildings.” Her tactics look an awful lot like what happened on Jan. 6.

Searcy is unsparing in his treatment of these questionable activities leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, and the prosecutions of people who were either invited into the Capitol or who stepped over an imaginary line where a fence delineating a no-go zone had been taken down by early provocateurs such as Ray Epps. You’ll hear of the FBI raids at their homes, the handcuffing of their children, and the inside story of the life of Ashli Babbitt from her husband, Aaron.

He is outraged about the Trump supporter’s shooting inside the Capitol. He wants answers to his questions about why Lt. Michael Byrd “just shot her” without warning. “If he was going to stop people from coming in,” he asked me, “then why didn’t he train his gun on the people who were breaking windows right in front of him? There was no evidence that she had a weapon, there was no reason to think she was a threat. … Those windows had been broken out and he could have said something at that point [as a warning] ‘if you come through that window I’ll shoot.'”

And who was in front of him breaking the windows? John Sullivan, another Antifa/BLM provocateur who stood next to Babbitt, urging her and others to go through the broken windows and into another part of the Capitol. He recorded and live-streamed her killing.

Related: Democrats Want Jan. 6 to Be a Holy Day for Their Dark Church
Searcy believes organizers “wanted a bigger massacre.”

“That’s the real cynical view of that killing, is they wanted more people dead,” he said.

Lives lost. Lives ruined. A president’s legacy muddied. And a government arrayed against them. Searcy tells it all.

He says the question isn’t whether you believe that he convincingly lays out the case; it’s how you could believe the FBI, Justice Department, and political actors are incapable of pulling off such a caper. He points to the Russian “collusion” hoax and other incidents in his movie as exemplars of such gaslighting and perfidy by the feds.

Searcy’s film was released in November, and one wonders how such a quality product was conceived and produced in under a year.

The first anniversary of Jan. 6 passed in ignominy, complete with stage-crafted Washington outrage, but don’t forget the real story.

Watch Capitol Punishment online.

Source here. Wow.  Share this with you family and friends – including those who believe that Ray Epps is a loyal Oath Keeper.

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Door-to-door: Are we next?

 

Kevin Downey Jr at PJ Media has another frightening report about what’s happening Down Under.  The headline:

Australia Building Quarantine Camps
as Military Goes Door-to-Door
to Enforce Lockdown Orders

The opener:

Welcome to Australia! Now Get in the Camp

Travelers visiting or returning to Australia will have to quarantine for 14 days at their own expense. Quarantine camps are going up around Australia and to little surprise. Australia has seen massive riots, protesting draconian lockdown measures. The Australian military has been brought in and is going door-to-door to make sure people are obeying lockdown orders.

If you know someone who has plans to protest, the police believe you are obligated to talk them out of it, or rat them out. This sounds like something the SS, KGB, and FBI would do.

The closing:

As mentioned, the army is now going door-to-door to make sure Australians are bending their knees. They did the same thing last year. The big difference is that now there are camps.

Are we next?  Or are we already almost there  -- or see here (there are so many reports of various sorts of governmental or institutional coercion to link to).  Full report by Mr. Downey at PJ Media is here.

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Chief Wahoo on unemployment

To follow up on yesterday's news announcing the Cleveland Guardians, here's the Babylon Bee with another good one:

Unemployment Up 800% Among Ethnic Mascots

And from Paula Bolyard at PJ Media:

RIP Cleveland Indians:
Brave New Name Will Honor Traffic Pillars
on a Crumbling Bridge

. . . The name change depresses me. I’m sad that my grandkids will never know the joy of cheering for the Cleveland Indians—like their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents before them. If they even bother to watch the team, they’ll be cheering for a stupid traffic pillar. I feel the same way I did when Art Modell up and moved the Cleveland Brown to Baltimore in 1995, leaving fans with an empty stadium and the rights to the name. A part of our collective history died that day and the team has never really recovered. “The Move” joined a long and storied line of disappointments for Cleveland fans (there’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the topic). But it’s more than just the Indians’ name change. Our history is being erased by a small minority of noisy activists, statue by statue, logo by logo, name by name. They’re using 1984 as an instruction manual to shove our entire history down the Memory Hole. Meanwhile, their fellow travelers are inundating our schools with fake history, heavy on social manipulation and light on education.

I refuse to accept the premise that I’m a racist because I love the Cleveland Indians—the name, the logo, and Chief Wahoo. I’m sick and tired of having my motives called into question at every turn because of my skin color. I will never EVER cheer for the Cleveland Guardians. Instead, I’ll join the many loyal Tribe fans who will no doubt continue to cheer for the Indians. And we’ll wear our black-market Wahoo gear proudly, celebrating the history of the team and the bravery of our Native American brothers and sisters.

I grew up with the Cleveland Indians, and when I read the change to “Guardians” – I made no connection between that name and these “guardians on the Hope Memorial bridge.  No, it's just another politically correct decision that will sadden and irritate the fans. 

# # #

Don't Open The Door?: Babylon Bee's alternative

Following up on yesterday's blog "Don't Open The Door" when the HHS people show up to give you your vaccine jab, here's the latest from Babylon Bee:

Popular New Ejection Porch Automatically Launches
Vaccine Evangelists Into The Stratosphere

Click to embiggen or click on the link above.

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Don’t Open The Door!

Victoria Taft at PJ Media has the terrifying report:

IT'S HAPPENING: Biden Is Sending Community Organizers
Door-to-Door With COVID Shots

Joe Biden wasn’t kidding. When his spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the Biden administration would send people door-to-door to convince people to get the COVID shot, there was a chill sent down the spines of freedom-loving Americans everywhere. Many people took it as a threat.

But now those door-to-door COVID-shot salespeople are here and they’ve brought back-up: injectors.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra says, “We’ll go to you. If you want to get vaccinated, we’ll go to you.”

And so they are.

In North Carolina, health officials are using a far-Left community organizing group to go to COVID-shot-hesitant areas to “educate and encourage” people to get a shot. If someone indicates they’ll get a COVID shot, the organizers, who usually register people to vote for Democrats, call an accompanying health department injector to administer the shot on the spot.

The medical director for the Mecklenburg County Health Department, Dr. Meg Sullivan, says that the percentage of people with COVID shots “just isn’t as high as it needs to be. We need these innovative ways.”

So the innovative way is a Fuller-Brush-man-we’ll-sell-you-meat-off-the-truck-I-can-fix-your-bad-driveway-right-now approach.

In this case, instead of a hair brush, chicken wings, or a jackhammer, they come with an injector to give people a COVID shot right now.

. . .

Read the rest here.  Exit message: Don’t Open The Door!

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Coercive Control: Fauci Speaks

 

We’ve all noticed (read: we are unable to avoid seeing or hearing) ads promoting COVID-19 vaccination.  Ohio’s Governor DeWine added million dollar lotteries to vaccinated Ohioans in order to bribe encourage people to get the jab.  Why are federal and state governments trying so hard to promote an experimental vaccine?  It would seem that they might be pushing too hard.  

And Megan Fox at PJ Media has a column on “The Age of Coercive Control:  We’re in an Abusive Relationship with Our Government Now.”  The full article is here, and it considers government over-reach on COVID-19 and other matters.  But here are two headlines that reveal some of the carrots and sticks to force people to get the jab. 

At The Blaze:

Dr. Fauci: Expect cruise lines and airlines to require proof

of vaccination before you can travel 

At Breitbart: 

Anthony Fauci Predicts Airlines, Universities

Will Require Proof of Vaccination

Ms. Fox looks at other ways that Americans are now being controlled, including by “Monitoring Activities” and surveillance, isolation, financial restrictions, and other controls.  This blog linked to information on vaccination passports here. Tea Party people want to get the information and then make up their own minds. 

# # #

Masks and the New World Order

 

Masks Forever!  Stacey Lennox at PJ Media recently published “The New World Order Is Taking Its Mask Off While They Tell you to Keep Yours on.  The report begins:

New World Order used to be the province of conspiracy theorists. However, the phrase is now descriptive of what we see daily in the news. There is tremendous pressure to reorder society in the West, using the pandemic as a pretext. In America, the result has been an assault on our God-given rights on an unprecedented scale. Political leaders proclaimed they were following the science to protect public health and stripped citizens of their ability to work, to associate, to worship, and even to petition our government.

Big Tech jumped in to help and made sure that no information that contraindicated their favored experts was easily accessible to the public. Using the pretext that the global and national health bureaucracies are the only experts Americans should listen to, they set out to ban or suppress information that contradicted the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control. Permissible content changed from day to day because those two agencies often disagreed.

Then the entire country — and, to some extent, the West overall — was rocked by consistent and unmitigated street violence. What happened last summer, including a days-long siege on the White House, has been memory-holed by the corporate media. If not for brave, independent journalists who navigated to nightly mobs, those who did not live in affected areas might not have understood the extent of the violence and damage. Nineteen people were killed in the first 14 days of the riots following the death of George Floyd. Rioting and looting in the name of racial justice were exceptions to pandemic restrictions. Lockdown protests were not.

Now, it is nearly certain that the nation will see a repeat performance after the trial of the officer involved in Floyd’s death. The outcome will not matter. America is now a nation that tolerates riots in the wake of police-involved shootings and trial verdicts. Americans don’t even pay attention to near-nightly violence and arson in Portland’s once beautiful and vibrant city—a city that is now a microcosm of a failed state.

Read the full report here.

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Not a Good look

 

Matt Margolis at PJ Media covered this latest idiocy:

Social media was abuzz on Friday after Newsmax TV host John Cardillo noticed that the United States Navy’s official Twitter account featured an altered version of its logo with the bald eagle wearing a blue face mask.

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President Biden’s press conference

 

I got this one wrong. I didn’t think there would ever be a Biden press conference. But it did indeed take place earlier today, and if you want to watch it, livestream links are here.  As soon as I saw that Stephen Green (a/k/a Vodkapundit) and his colleagues were live-blogging the whole thing, I went to the PJ Media link here.  Start at the bottom and gradually scroll up.  Takes less time and it’s bearable.

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Flattening the curve

 

Seen on MeWe via Vodkapundit's Insanity Wrap #164

(Click to embiggen or click on link and scroll down)

BONUS MEME via Bookworm Room (Mister Potato Head enters the pantheon of cancel culture logos -- with Chief Wahoo and friends):

# # #

Creating emergencies

 Meme via Insanity Wrap (Vodkapundit at PJ Media):

# # #

Early voting is a bad idea: just look at this election cycle

 

Matt Margolis at PJ Media explains why early voting is such a bad idea. He concludes:

While it’s difficult for most of us to fathom the possibility that something could happen to change one’s mind about who they plan to vote for, it’s obvious that it can happen, and it appears to be happening right now. When this election is over we need to have a serious look at how voting is done in this country. Early voting is a cancer on the electoral process that can disenfranchise voters who aren’t 100 percent committed to either candidate.

Early voting, outright voter fraud, and moving the deadlines for counting mail-in ballots, are creating election chaos – which is just what the Democrat Progressive party wants. And Mr. Margolis recommends that after this election, "we need to have a serious look at how voting is done in this country.”  Hmmm.  That is, if we still have a country after this election.  (Full article by Mr. Margolis is here.)

# # #

 

Fauci would like to cancel Thanksgiving

 

Rick Moran at PJ Media reported that “Dr. Fauci Tells American To Bite The Bullet and Sacrifice Thanksgiving":

First, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield warned that sharing Thanksgiving dinner indoors with a group of loved ones was very, very dangerous. Now, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Mendacious Midget™, is joining the chorus. In an interview with Norah O’Donnell on CBS News, the media darling said the following about the holiday:

That is unfortunately a risk, when you have people coming from out of town, gathering together in an indoor setting. It is unfortunate, because that’s such a sacred part of American tradition — the family gathering around Thanksgiving. But that is a risk.

Given the fluid and dynamic nature of what’s going on right now in the spread and the uptick of infections, I think people should be very careful and prudent about social gatherings, particularly when members of the family might be at a risk because of their age or their underlying condition… You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering, unless you’re pretty certain that the people that you’re dealing with are not infected.

"Sacrifice that social gathering"?  To quote General Anthony McAuliffe:  “NUTS!”  (Mr. Moran’s full report is here.)

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