The Capitol Police have issued a statement saying that they are upping security around DC ahead of truck convoys expected to arrive in the city around the time of Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address.
The State of the Union is scheduled to take place on March 1.
The department said that they are coordinating with other agencies, including the Secret Service and National Guard.
“Law enforcement agencies across the National Capital Region are aware of plans for a series of truck convoys arriving in Washington, DC around the time of the State of the Union. As with any demonstration, the USCP will facilitate lawful First Amendment activity,” Capitol Police said in a statement on Friday.
“The USCP is closely coordinating with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, the United States Park Police, the United States Secret Service and other allied agencies to include the DC National Guard,” the statement continued.
The department “has received reports of truck drivers potentially planning to block roads in major metropolitan cities in the United States in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates. The convoy will potentially begin in California early as mid-February, potentially impacting the Super Bowl scheduled for 13 February and the State of the Union address scheduled for 1 March,” according to a memo obtained by The Hill on Feb. 9.
According to a recent report on Newsmax, the protest against COVID-19 mandates is scheduled to begin before the end of the month — but the exact start date was not provided.
The organizers claim that they have 1,000 truckers ready to participate “right out the gate,” but that it will likely grow as it moves from California to DC.
“I think you’re going to see it grow as we move across the country,” organizer Brian Brase said. “Initially, we’ve projected potentially a little over a thousand trucks right out the gate to start.”
Canada aggressively cracked down on the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa this week, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act.
On Thursday, Ottawa Police arrested two of the main organizers. According to the Freedom Convoy Twitter account, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have been charged with “counseling to commit mischief.” Barber is facing an additional charge of “counseling to commit obstruction.”
The following day, Friday, the department moved in with full-scale violent mass arrests.
CDC and Johns Hopkins studies show strength and duration of natural immunity protection
Two newly released studies show the power of natural immunity following recovery from COVID-19 sickness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says “previous SARS-CoV-2 infection also confers protection against severe outcomes in the event of reinfection.” Johns Hopkins found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant.
Natural immunity was six times stronger during the Delta wave than vaccination, according to one news report about the CDC study. The report published Jan. 19 analyzed COVID outcome data from New York and California, which make up about one in six of the nation’s total COVID deaths. “Whereas French and Israeli population-based studies noted waning protection from previous infection, this was not apparent in the results from this or other large U.K. and U.S. studies,” the CDC said.
Dr. Benjamin Silk of the CDC told the media last week, “Before the Delta variant, COVID-19 vaccination resulted in better protection against a subsequent infection than surviving a previous infection.”
“When looking at the summer and the fall of 2021, when Delta became the dominant in this country, however, surviving a previous infection now provided greater protection against subsequent infection than vaccination,” he added.
Omicron has become the focus of the pandemic as Washington state and the nation enter the third year of battling multiple variants of the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus. Until this past week, Omicron accounted for nearly all the new cases detected in the state. Early reports seemed to indicate it ignores both vaccine immunity and natural immunity.
Johns Hopkins Dr. Marty Makary says this is a pandemic of the non-immune. A new Johns Hopkins study shows natural immunity following recovery from COVID sickness is stronger and lasts longer than vaccine immunity. Tweet by Marty Makary
Clark County Public Health reports 72,239 total cases since the pandemic began. This means all those who have recovered now have natural immunity and protection. The two new natural immunity studies should boost public discussion regarding vaccine mandates by Gov. Jay Inslee.
This impacts citizen discussions about children in schools with or without vaccines. It also impacts the mini initiative petition the Clark County Council will consider. Should there be mandates when natural immunity provides protection as good if not better than vaccines alone?
The new CDC report was concluded before Omicron arrived on the scene. “After two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear,” writes Dr. Marty Makary. He is a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
Last week, the CDC released data which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing COVID infection compared with vaccination, according to Makary.
One of the arguments that public health officials have used to discount natural immunity, is they claim they don’t know how long it lasts. Makary noted the U.S. is one of the few countries that ignores natural immunity. The NIH has $42 billion in resources, but has refused to study it.
“You could do the study with about 100 people,” Makary told Brian Kilmeade. “You just invite people who were infected in New York two years ago and test their blood.”
Dr. Makary and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins therefore did their own study. “We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had COVID, antibodies were present in 99.9 percent of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant,” he reports.
“We found that immunity was strong, nearly two years out from the infection,”he said. “So it is now settled science. Natural immunity is durable and effective for as long as the infection has been around.”
Omicron is likely to go through the entire U.S. population. Makary noted that Dr. Fauci said everybody will get it. “If Omicron is nature’s vaccine for those who have not had access to or been eligible for vaccine, what are we doing immunizing those already immune?” A booster shot offers only a modest and temporary benefit.
The World Health Organization reported natural immunity
following recovery from COVID-19 sickness is more robust and
longer lasting than vaccine immunity. The WHO study showed
cellular immunity elicited by natural infection also targets
other viral proteins, which last across multiple variants
rather than targeting just the spike protein.
Graphic courtesy of World Health Organization
Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said he believes about half of the U.S. population will be infected with Omicron during the next three months, with most cases being asymptomatic.
The CDC found COVID-19 rates among the vaccinated with no previous infection were 6.2 times lower in California and 4.5 times lower in New York than among the unvaccinated with no previous infection.
However, among the unvaccinated with a previous infection, the COVID-19 rate was 29 times lower in California and 14.7 times lower in New York.
The individuals most protected against infection were those who had previously had COVID-19 and were also vaccinated. Their infection rate was 32.5 times lower in California and 19.8 times lower in New York.
The CDC study and the Johns Hopkins study confirm what more than 100 other studies on natural immunity have found, Makary emphasized: “The immune system works,” he said. The largest of these studies, from Israel, found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic illness.
Last September, Heidi Wetzler highlighted doctors from the St. Elizabeth Healthcare System in Ohio submitted a compelling letter to their administration logically and completely outlining their concerns with vaccine mandates. Their very first point states that “Natural immunity is at least equal to and likely superior to vaccine immunity, yet this has not been a part of the discussion for unclear reasons. A majority of healthcare providers in our system are declining the vaccine due to prior infection and already having sufficient immunity to COVID-19.”
Wetzler shared those who had SARS-CoV-1 in 2002-2003 were still found to be immune 17 years later, and those who survived the influenza pandemic of 1918 were still immune to the H1N1 outbreak in 2009-2010 a stunning 92 years later.
Researchers followed more than 52,000 Cleveland Clinic employees for five months in 2021. More than 1,300 of those employees already had a documented COVID infection and did not get vaccinated.
The study released last June, found none of them were re-infected during the five months they were monitored. They concluded those with laboratory-confirmed symptomatic COVID infection are unlikely to benefit from vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before.
The orange line corresponds to people who’ve been previously
infected but not vaccinated; the yellow line to those who’ve
been previously infected and vaccinated; and the green line to
those who’ve been vaccinated but not previously infected. The
y-axis gives the percentage reduction in the number of
infections, compared to those who haven’t been vaccinated or
previously infected. For example, a value of 90% means there
would be only 10 infections for every 100 in the comparison
group. The x-axis gives the number of days since the relevant
event.
Graphic courtesy of Danish Study — Statens Serum Institute
A Danish study published in December confirms that natural immunity protects better against infection than the vaccines. It shows vaccine-induced immunity wanes rapidly, beginning a few weeks after vaccination. At the five-month mark, protection is well below 50 percent. Natural immunity, by contrast, is robust: a full year after infection, protection is still above 70 percent.
The study shows hybrid immunity – conferred by the combination of vaccination and previous infection – is slightly better than natural immunity. However, the difference is small compared to that between natural and vaccine-induced immunity.
“While those who’ve already had Covid should be perfectly free to get vaccinated, there’s no obvious need for them to do so,” said Noah Carl of The Daily Sceptic. “The tricky part may be getting this message through to politicians.”
A May 2021 statement from the World Health Organization made the following points.
Within 4 weeks following infection, 90-99 percent of individuals infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus develop detectable neutralizing antibodies.
The strength and duration of the immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 are not completely understood and currently available data suggests that it varies by age and the severity of symptoms. Available scientific data suggests that in most people immune responses remain robust and protective against reinfection for at least 6-8 months after infection (the longest follow up with strong scientific evidence is currently approximately 8 months). (Emphasis added)
Some variant SARS-CoV-2 viruses with key changes in the spike protein have a reduced susceptibility to neutralization by antibodies in the blood. While neutralizing antibodies mainly target the spike protein, cellular immunity elicited by natural infection also target other viral proteins, which tend to be more conserved across variants than the spike protein. (Emphasis added)
The ability of emerging virus variants (variants of interest and variants of concern) to evade immune responses is under investigation by researchers around the world.
“Public-health officials have a lot of explaining to do. They used the wrong starting hypothesis, ignored contrary preliminary data, and dug in as more evidence emerged that called their position into question,” Makary writes in his column.
“Many clinicians who talk to other physicians nationwide have long observed that we don’t see reinfected patients end up on a ventilator or die from Covid, with rare exceptions who almost always have immune disorders.”
He was asked if there was a variation in the strength of the immunity in the Johns Hopkins study. According to Makary, “99 percent of these subjects we studied had antibody levels that were almost as effective and consistent as they had in the earliest time of their recovery,” he said.
Essentially 100 percent of new infections now are Omicron, he noted. The data shows it is less dangerous than influenza, according to Makary.
A 3.8 percent increase in protection
Kilmeade asked if you were vaccinated, and then you had COVID or you got the virus and then got vaccinated, does that double your immunity?
“It increases it by 3.8 percent,” Makary responded. “So hybrid immunity is more effective. But remember, the vaccine gives you almost a sugar high of antibodies that will wear off in terms of its protection against getting the infection. Your protection against hospitalization and severe disease is still solid with vaccinated or natural immunity.”
“We’re really not seeing new vaccinations at this point,” he said. Makary believes people are so hardened by what they see as excessive government policies, they’re probably not going to get vaccinated. Chances are, they have natural immunity.
He also mentioned that “no healthy child has ever died of COVID that we know of.”
In South Africa, where officials first sounded the alarm about Omicron, the government in December eased protocols. They are betting that previous encounters with the virus have given the population enough immunity to prevent significant levels of severe illness. The Omicron wave there subsided quickly with modest hospitalizations. Scientists think one reason is that so many people — close to 80 percent — had previously been infected by earlier variants.
CATO
Last fall the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued an emergency temporary standard (ETS) requiring businesses with 100 or more employees to enforce a vaccination‐or‐testing regime. That has since been overruled by the Supreme Court..
The CATO Institute weighed in, including the following.
Universal vaccine mandates are irrational in ignoring naturally acquired immunity from infection and recovery, which has come to be referred to as “natural immunity” in public discussion. This single‐minded focus on vaccination as the exclusive means to acquiring immunity is largely novel.
Contrary to conventional belief, states typically do not have “vaccine” requirements for children to attend school or any other purpose; they require evidence of immunity to certain viruses, whether through serological testing that evidences the presence of relevant protective antibodies or evidence of prior history “diagnosed or verified by a health care provider.”
Virtually all countries in the Western world that impose some form of vaccine passport or mandate recognize natural immunity to Covid as qualifying for at least six months post‐recovery.
If OSHA had reviewed the medical and scientific literature regarding the relative protective efficacy of natural immunity compared to vaccination, it is unlikely that the agency would be successful in establishing a factual basis for forced vaccination of Covid‐recovered individuals. Given the trivial — if any — benefit to either the individual or the public from compelled vaccination of Covid‐recovered individuals, that evidence of elevated adverse effects requires an especially high standard of proof by regulators to overcome.
Fighting for those terminated
Makary also spoke about those who have been terminated over refusal to get vaccinated. “By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others,” he said. “It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology.”
He writes in The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid that “Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated.”
“It’s time to reinstate American workers who were fired under the vaccine mandate, for a number of reasons,” he told Kilmeade. “Number one, it was unfair. Number two, we have therapeutics now that really mean no one should be dying of COVID. And number three, it turns out, many of them had natural immunity.”
“The risk of somebody who has natural immunity getting hospitalized is 3 per 10,000,” he said. “That’s identical to the risk of somebody with hybrid immunity, that is a vaccine and natural immunity. So getting the additional vaccination (booster) did nothing to change the numbers of hospitalization. That’s the honest data.”
“When employers fired workers with natural immunity, they got rid of the workers least likely to spread the infection,” he said. “That’s the great irony. The data are now in. It’s clear.”
Makary noted a disconnect in numbers being reported by public health officials. A California study of Omicron cases found only one death among over 52,000 cases. Yet the state is reporting much higher numbers of COVID deaths.
Reported COVID-19 deaths in California have begun to rise
rather quickly during the Omicron wave of the pandemic, yet
remain far below peak levels reached a year ago.
Graphic courtesy San Jose Mercury News
Termination Stupidity
Makary mentioned COVID-19 case numbers showing a steep decline for the past two weeks. In some parts of the country the virus is still peaking and hospitals are going to be strained. The hospitals are not necessarily strained from the influx of patients alone, he noted. “We normally have a massive influx of patients every winter, from a number of respiratory pathogens,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a bad flu season.”
“The difference is this time, we’ve got a massive staffing shortage,” Makary said. “One in five workers in health care have left. If you look at what happened at Washington State, they fired 55 workers from this hospital system called Multicare. They were so short staffed, they told people who tested positive who were working, even if you have COVID come back into work. Even if you have symptoms, we are that short staffed. That’s the problem with the staffing crisis that people don’t know about.”
According to an internal memo dated Jan. 6, MultiCare hospitals in the Puget Sound area moved into “crisis levels of staffing.” The impetus for the move was the rise in hospital visits, though not all due to COVID.
Consequently, the hospitals modified their return-to-work process, ordering staff “to work even if they are experiencing mild symptoms but are improving.” But a MultiCare staffer claimed that unless a staffer has a fever, “they want us coming in.” COVID-positive staffers are not required to disclose their status to patients or coworkers.
Makary believes we’ve got to reinstate all these workers. He noted that 50 to 60 percent of all truck drivers are not vaccinated. We have got to get the country moving, including the supply chain he said.
“People don’t just die of viral replication,” he said. “They die of hopelessness, poverty, and all kinds of substance abuse and mental problems. We’ve been blowing that data off. Those soldiers who were dishonorably discharged need to immediately be reinstated with their rank and back compensation, including restoring that period of lost pension pay.”
Omicron behaving like a different virus
Makary spoke to the reality of fighting Omicron. “It’s really not COVID; it’s acting and behaving like a different virus.” He pointed out there’s only been one death in 52,000 Omicron cases in the Kaiser Southern California study, which is lower than influenza.
Yet other news reports indicate Omicron deaths are increasing at a faster pace than during the Delta wave of COVID-19 last summer. As of Thursday, California was averaging 157 new COVID deaths a day. That’s more than last summer but less than a year ago.
Over the weekend, one case of natural immunity has been making headlines. A North Carolina man who said a hospital refused to carry out a kidney transplant because he’s unvaccinated against COVID-19. He is willing to “die free” rather than comply with their vaccine requirement. He is in need of a kidney transplant due to it operating at 4 percent, requiring him to get dialysis three times a week.
Chad Carswell said he’s had the coronavirus twice before and believes getting the vaccine should be a personal choice, not a requirement. Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem said both the donor and the recipient must be vaccinated.
“The reason it is recommended is to provide protection for the patient. Transplant patients are at high risk for severe illness if they don’t have preexisting immunity prior to being transplanted,” the hospital said
Carswell has preexisting immunity. The CDC and Johns Hopkins studies show his immunity is likely more robust than if he’d been vaccinated three or more months ago.
As Noah Carl noted in his review of the Danish study, there’s no obvious need for people who have recovered from COVID to get vaccinated.
“The tricky part may be getting this message through to politicians.”
Canadian company Coastal Gaslink is building a 670 kilometres (416 miles) pipeline project across British Columbia to safely deliver natural gas across the Canadian province. Natural gas is one of the world’s cleanest and safest energy sources. It’s used for many purposes – to heat our homes and operate household appliances, to make crop fertilizer, fabrics, plastics and other everyday products.
The project will help heat Canadian homes in the long dark winters.
But pro-China leftists hate the idea and want the pipeline shut down.
On Thursday night, after Prime Minister Trudeau declared the Emergency Act earlier in the week, at least 20 violent far-left terrorists broke into the Coastal Gaslink company and caused millions of dollars in damage to costly equipment.
Violence has erupted at a Coastal GasLink pipeline work site in Northern B.C., leaving workers shaken and millions of dollars in damage.
Very early Thursday, just after midnight, Coastal GasLink security called RCMP for help, reporting it was under attack by about 20 people, some wielding axes.
RCMP Chief Supt. Warren Brown, commander for the north district, called the attack a “calculated and organized violent attack that left its victims shaken and a multi-million dollar path of destruction.”
Coastal GasLink said in a statement the attackers surrounded some of its workers in a “highly planned” and “unprovoked” assault near the Morice River drill pad site off the forest service road.
“In one of the most concerning acts, an attempt was made to set a vehicle on fire while workers were inside,” said the company in a statement. “The attackers also wielded axes, swinging them at vehicles and through a truck’s window. Flare guns were also fired at workers.”
Only a week after I wrote an article about the final extinction of the Never Trumpers (“The Cruise Is Over”) a remarkable thing happened: Jonah Goldberg announced that he was joining CNN. Finally, he was embracing his new role as the laughingstock of the Right. Think about: Jonah gets to do zoom calls now with Jeffrey Toobin! (I’m sure those two will be fast friends.) He gets to lecture the public using his imaginary doctorate as the “Asness Chair of Applied Asininity” along with fellow academic Don Lemon! This was the height of perfection in terms of comedic timing, and I want to personally thank Jonah for humiliating himself so publicly.
The thing you have to understand about Jonah is that he’s no longer even the most popular pundit in his own family. How do I know this? Because I noticed a number of links attached to some of my recent Substack articles coming from Lucianne Goldberg’s website. That’s right: Jonah’s mother prefers to read Emerald Robinson. Can you really blame her?
Jonah has fallen very far and very fast in the world and hubris has been the lube that greased those skids all the way. A prominent Washington think tank expert once told me a remarkable anecdote about Goldberg and Stephen Hayes back in 2016. While Trump was busy beating Hillary Clinton, these two magazine editors were busy sending out dinner invitations to other conservatives to inform them that any pro-Trump journalists who came to town would be targeted and drummed out of the business. Their self-appointed mission, in other words, was to police conservatives. Goldberg was still at the National Review, and Hayes was running the Weekly Standard — and both of them believed that they controlled conservative journalism in America.
Now they’re both a year or two away from starring in Jenny Craig diet commercials.
Shameless people do shameless things. Stephen Hayes was just picked up to be a “conservative analyst” at NBC News — Chuck Todd even put out a statement about it. Any serious conservative intellectual who got a compliment from Chuck Todd would ordinarily go into hiding — but Hayes has signed up to be the court jester for NBC because he doesn’t really have any core beliefs. He claimed that he couldn’t stand Tucker Carlson’s view anymore but joining a network that promotes anti-white bigots like Joy Reid and Russia Hoax diehards like Rachel Maddow is just fine with him. Does that sound conservative to you?
Trump broke these people. There is simply nothing that they won’t do (or say) in order to be viewed as his opposition. That’s why Bill Kristol is now a fundraiser for Democrats. That’s why Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are working with Nancy Pelosi That’s the most important thing that you must understand. The Never Trumpers are still on TV because they provide the intellectual justification for jailing Trump supporters on flimsy pretexts in the run-up to the 2024 election. Does this sound like hyperbole to you? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just released this bulletin about “misinformation” on February 7th:
While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions; (2) continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure; soft targets and mass gatherings; faith-based institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and mosques; institutions of higher education; racial and religious minorities; government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement and the military; the media; and perceived ideological opponents; and (3) calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on the United States based on recent events.
To the Biden Administration lackeys at DHS, the term “domestic terrorist” is simply code for Trump supporters. The White House has put out a “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” that is probably the most Orwellian document ever produced by the U.S. federal government. It’s also completely unconstitutional — but, these days, who cares about that in Washington? The creeping authoritarianism of the Biden regime continues to grow because the GOP establishment also wants Trump supporters muzzled. How else are Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney going to get their party back now that GOP voters have deserted them?
Just watch as Goldberg and Hayes (and Kristol and Boot and all the rest of the Never Trumpers) cheer on the Biden regime’s harassment of Republican voters in the coming years. We are watching the United States fall into tyranny — and they’re going to support it every step of the way. How’s that for a prediction of the ultimate fate of the author of Liberal Fascism? He’s going to end up denouncing everything he once defended. He’s going to end up as Jennifer Rubin with a beard. It reminds me of a delicious quote: “If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.”
“The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable. I feel like we’re on the run.”
By Steve Peoples/The Associated Press
(Smethport) — Some Democrats here in rural Pennsylvania are afraid to tell you they’re Democrats.
The party’s brand is so toxic in the small towns 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh that some liberals have removed bumper stickers and yard signs and refuse to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly. These Democrats are used to being outnumbered by the local Republican majority, but as their numbers continue to dwindle, the few that remain are feeling increasingly isolated and unwelcome in their own communities.
“The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,” said Tim Holohan, an accountant based in rural McKean County who recently encouraged his daughter to get rid of a pro-Joe Biden bumper sticker. “I feel like we’re on the run.”
The climate across rural Pennsylvania is symptomatic of a larger political problem threatening the Democratic Party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized from many parts of rural America, leaving party leaders with few options to reverse a cultural trend that is redefining the nation’s political landscape.
The shifting climate helped Republicans limit Democratic gains in 2020 — the GOP actually gained House seats despite former President Donald Trump’s loss — and a year later, surging Republican rural support enabled Republicans to claim the Virginia governorship. A small but vocal group of party officials now fears the same trends will undermine Democratic candidates in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, states that will help decide the Senate majority in November, and the White House two years after that.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to devote the vast majority of its energy, messaging and resources to voters in more populated urban and suburban areas.
In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a leading candidate in the state’s high-stakes Senate contest, insists his party can no longer afford to ignore rural voters. The former small-town mayor drove his black Dodge Ram pickup truck across five rural counties last weekend to face voters who almost never see statewide Democratic candidates.
Fetterman, wearing his signature hooded sweatshirt and gym shorts despite the freezing temperatures, described himself as a champion for “the forgotten, the marginalized and the left-behind places” as he addressed roughly 100 people inside a bingo hall in McKean County, a place Trump carried with 72% of the vote in 2020.
“These are the kind of places that matter just as much as any other place,” Fetterman said as the crowd cheered.
The Democratic Party’s struggle in rural America has been building for years. And it’s getting worse.
Barack Obama won 875 counties nationwide in his overwhelming 2008 victory. Twelve years later, Biden won only 527. The vast majority of those losses — 260 of the 348 counties — took place in rural counties, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.
The worst losses were concentrated in the Midwest: 21 rural counties in Michigan flipped from Obama in 2008 to Trump in 2020; Democrats lost 28 rural counties in Minnesota, 32 in Wisconsin and a whopping 45 in Iowa. At the same time, recent Republican voter registration gains in swing states like Florida and North Carolina were fueled disproportionately by rural voters.
Biden overcame rural losses to beat Trump in 2020 because of gains in more populous Democratic counties. Perhaps because of his victory, some Democratic officials worry that party leaders do not appreciate the severity of the threat.
Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, who recently announced he would not seek reelection to Congress this fall, warns that the party is facing extinction in small-town America.
“It’s hard to sink lower than we are right now. You’re almost automatically a pariah in rural areas if you have a D after your name,” Cooper told The Associated Press.
Keith Srakocic / AP Photo
Democratic candidate for the Pennsylvania U.S.senate seat in the 2022 primary election, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, center, talks with people during a campaign stop at the Mechanistic Brewery, in Clarion, Pa., Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022.
Even if Democrats continue to eke out victories by piling up urban and suburban votes, former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota fears her party will have “unstable majorities” if they cannot stop the bleeding in rural areas.
“Democrats have the House, they have the Senate, the presidency, but it’s an unstable majority. By that, I mean, the narrowest kind, making it difficult to advance ideas and build coalitions,” said Heitkamp, who now heads the One Country Project, which is focused on engaging rural voters.
She criticized her party’s go-to strategy for reaching rural voters: focusing on farmers and vowing to improve high-speed internet. At the same time, she said Democrats are hurting themselves by not speaking out more forcefully against far-left positions that alienate rural voters, such as the push to “defund the police.”
While only a handful of Democrats in Congress support stripping such money from police departments, for example, conservative media popular in rural communities — particularly Fox News — amplifies such positions.
“We’re letting Republicans use the language of the far left to define the Democratic Party, and we can’t do that,” Heitkamp said. “The trend lines in rural America are very, very bad. … Now, the brand is so toxic that people who are Democrats, the ones left, aren’t fighting for the party.”
To help win back rural voters, the Democratic National Committee has tapped Kylie Oversen, a former North Dakota state legislator, to work with rural organizers and state party rural caucuses as the chair of the national committee’s rural council. The DNC also says it’s sharing resources with people on the ground in rural areas to help improve training, recruiting and organizing.
So far, at least, those resources are not making life any easier for Democrats in northwestern Pennsylvania.
At one of Fetterman’s weekend stops in rural Clarion, a group of voters said they’ve been effectively ostracized by their community — and even family members, in some cases — for being Democrats. One woman brings her political signs inside at night so they aren’t vandalized or stolen.
Keith Srakocic / AP Photo
Eugenia Barboza, 22, talks about being a college student and politics while living in a small town, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022. in Clarion, Pa. The Democratic Party’s brand is so toxic in some parts of rural America that liberals are removing bumper stickers and refusing to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly.
“You have to be careful around here,” said Barbara Speer, 68, a retired sixth grade teacher.
Nearby, Michelle’s Cafe on Clarion’s main street is one of the few gathering points for local Democrats. A sign on the door proclaims support for Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights and other progressive priorities.
But the cafe owner, 33-year-old Kaitlyn Nevel, isn’t comfortable sharing her political affiliation when asked.
“I would rather not say, just because it’s a small town,” she said.
One patron, 22-year-old college student Eugenia Barboza, said the cafe is one of the few places in town she feels safe as a Latina immigrant. Just down the road, she said, a caravan of Trump supporters met up to drive to the deadly protests in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
Barboza said she’s grateful that Democrats like Fetterman are willing to come to rural areas, but she isn’t hopeful that it’ll change much.
“It would take a lot more than just him,” she said. “It would take years and years and years.”
Well gee, they brought it on themselves, didn’t they?
In this still image from undercover video footage, Ryan Cole, an executive officer at the Food and Drug Administration, speaks about vaccines. (Courtesy of Project Veritas)
By Zachary Stieber for The Epoch Times February 17, 2022
An executive officer at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a newly released video that President Joe Biden’s administration plans to push annual COVID-19 vaccine shots.
Christopher Cole, executive officer of the medical countermeasures initiative at the FDA, made the comments to the journalism group Project Veritas.
“Biden wants to inoculate as many people as possible,” Cole told an undercover reporter with the group. “You’ll have to get an annual shot. I mean, it hasn’t been formally announced yet because they don’t want to rile everyone up,” he said.
Right now, all Americans 5 and older are advised to get a two-dose primary regimen of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. All Americans 12 or older are also advised to get at least one booster dose five months after their second shot.
Cole said that drug, food, and vaccine companies “pay us hundreds of millions of dollars a year to hire and keep the reviewers to approve their products.”
He also said that annual shots would become “a recurring fountain of revenue” for the vaccine makers, referring to them as Big Pharma.
“It might not be that much initially, but it’ll be recurring—if they can get every person requiring an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company,” he added.
Cole didn’t respond to requests for comment, including an email, a LinkedIn message, and a voicemail at his office.
An FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email, “The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA.” The spokesperson didn’t respond to a followup question.
Cole later told Project Veritas that he is a manager in an office of the FDA that does not work on vaccines but that does help “oversee the approval of the COVID vaccines for emergency approval.”
Cole said his comments about having to get a COVID-19 vaccine annually was a comparison to how many Americans get a flu shot every year.
He also confirmed that he believes the FDA will ultimately grant emergency authorization for at least one vaccine for toddlers—the FDA delayed its decision on that front on Feb. 11—and that he is not in communication with the president, but “from what he’s said, he probably wants to inoculate more people than not.”
Cole said he was on a date when he made the remarks.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment and White House press secretary Jen Psaki didn’t address the matter during a briefing on Wednesday.
Biden and his administration have pushed virtually every American to get vaccinated, asserting its the best protection against COVID-19. They’ve also downplayed natural immunity, or protection enjoyed by people who recover from COVID-19, drawing criticism from some experts.
Dr. Robert Malone, who helped create the technology the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are built on, described the Project Veritas video as a “smoking gun.”
“What we have is an agency that has been completely distorted by the huge amounts of capital that await all their employees once they leave their agency,” he said on Steve Bannon’s show. “They have a strong incentive to behave in these ways, to do whatever’s necessary to comport with the interests of Big Pharma, and now you’ve got a smoking gun, thanks to Project Veritas.”
The far left just can’t win with inner city black mayors. They ask softball questions, praise race baiting, and just do some good old fashion ass kissing. But still get yelled at. Let me explain. MSM is mostly white. Male and Female. White folks who think that they know what’s best for Blacks. So now Black Inner city mayors are upset when on occasion those white reporters do their job.
NY mayor Adams said this. “I’m a Black man that’s the mayor but my story is being interpreted by people who don’t look like me. We got to be honest about that. How many Blacks are in the editorial boards? How many Blacks determine how these stories are being written?”
OTTAWA—Freedom Convoy organizers say they will continue to protest on Parliament Hill despite the federal government’s declaration of a state of emergency.
“We are not afraid. In fact, every time the government decides to further suspend our civil liberties, our resolve strengthens and the importance of our mission becomes clearer,” organizer Tamara Lich said on Feb. 14 in anticipation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act over the protests demanding an end to COVID-19 mandates.
“We will remain peaceful, but planted on Parliament Hill until the mandates are decisively ended. We recognize that there is a democratic process within which change occurs. We have never stepped outside of that process, nor do we intend to.”
Trudeau is the first prime minister to use the Emergencies Act. The act replaces the War Measures Act, which was last used by Trudeau’s father, then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau, in 1970 during the October Crisis when Quebec separatists kidnapped and killed Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte.
The act gives the state additional powers to deal with the protests and blockades, such as providing legal tools to cut funding to protesters, as well as freezing the corporate accounts of companies whose trucks are used in any blockades and removing their insurance.
The province of Ontario and the city of Ottawa have also declared states of emergency over the protest.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters about the ongoing protest in Ottawa and blockades at various Canada-U.S. borders, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 11, 2022. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
The protest was initiated by truck drivers opposed to COVID-19 vaccination mandates for cross-border travel. As convoys of truckers made their to Ottawa, many supporters joined the movement, which turned into a large-scale protest against all COVID-19 mandates and restrictions. Many protesters who converged into Ottawa on Jan. 29 say they intend to stay in the capital until COVID-19 mandates are lifted.
Separately, protest convoys set up blockades at border crossings in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia. The blockade at the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor to Detroit, which accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars in trade between Canada and the United States, was cleared over the past weekend. The protest at the Coutts border crossing in Alberta ended on Feb. 14, as did the protest at the Pacific Highway Border Crossing in Surrey, B.C.
“The Emergencies Act will be used to strengthen and support law enforcement agencies at all levels across the country. This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people’s jobs, and restoring confidence in our institutions,” Trudeau said.
“The police will be given more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities such as blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa, Ambassador Bridge, and elsewhere.”
Lich said Canadians “should be surprised” that such “an extreme measure” is being used against peaceful protesters.
“We have countless vulnerable people in our crowd, including children, the elderly, and the disabled, who cannot be met with force by a genuine liberal democracy. The right to peaceful protest is sacrosanct to our nation. If that principle is abandoned, the government will reveal itself as a true tyranny and it will lose all of its credibility,” she said.
Children participate in the Freedom Convoy protest against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions in Ottawa on Feb. 9, 2022. (Jonathan Ren/The Epoch Times)
Lich said she realizes some people are opposed to the protests, but noted that a democratic society “will always have non-trivial disagreements and righteous dissidents.”
“There are many reasons for us opposing the mandates,” she said. “Some of us have been mistreated by our government, including many of our indigenous communities, who have personally experienced medical malpractice. Some of us simply want bodily autonomy and oppose the mandates on principled grounds. No matter our reasons and opinions, it is how the government responds to its citizens that determines the fate of the country.”
Addressing the prime minister, Lich said, “No matter what you do, we will hold the line.”
Only a diehard leftist could not foresee this reaction.
Joe just can’t cut a break.
This insane idea backfired pretty badly.
A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms plan to turn use Valentine’s Day as a hook to get jilted lovers to snitch on ex-significant others took a turn for the worse on Monday after the agency posted a public plea for information about “illegal gun activity.”
The response could not have been what the feds were looking for.
Valentine’s Day can still be fun even if you broke up. Do you have information about a former (or current) partner involved in illegal gun activity? Let us know, and we will make sure it’s a Valentine’s Day to remember! Call 1-888-ATF-TIPS or email ATFTips@atf.gov. pic.twitter.com/OdDIPdIzkr
“Valentine’s Day can still be fun even if you broke up. Do you have information about a former (or current) partner involved in illegal gun activity?” the post asked.
“Let us know, and we will make sure it’s a Valentine’s Day to remember!”
Someone at the ATF probably thought it was pretty clever, as did someone at the Biden Justice Department, who retweeted it. (It might also have been cribbed from a similar Facebook post published Friday by the Nash County, North Carolina, Sheriff’s Office that wasn’t geared specifically toward firearms.)
Do you trust the Biden ATF?
Yes: <1% (17 Votes)
No: >99% (2092 Votes)
(Poll by The Western Journal as of 5pm EDT, 2/15/22)
But a large part of the audience on social media used the opportunity to point out that the ATF hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory in recent years — along with other federal law enforcement agencies that sometimes appear a good deal more interested in casting a cloud of suspicion over law-abiding Americans than making a case against the politically connected.
Like, say, President Joe Biden’s notoriously wayward son, Hunter Biden. According to a report last March in Politico — not exactly a hotbed of conservative journalism — Biden lied on a 2018 form when he was buying a gun to hide his history of drug abuse.
He’s not a former or current partner, but here’s a tip regarding an illegal gun purchase. Name: Robert Hunter Biden: pic.twitter.com/CCNuhw9qxE
And more than a few noted that the ATF and the Justice Department don’t exactly have clean hands when it comes to illegal weapons itself. The infamous “Fast and Furious” operation run during the Obama administration by then-Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t been as forgotten as many liberals would like. (And the memory of the late Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.)
What if it’s your own government for a gun-running op called Fast and Furious? Weren’t you guys involved in that? https://t.co/elw4iq9JR0
I have information on some guys who trafficked guns to Mexican drug cartels@EricHolder masterminded the whole scheme, and then had his best friend @BarackObama assert executive privilege to protect him from having to testify. Their co-conspirator was an agency called @ATFHQ
These Google search terms will get you started: Fast and Furious Eric Holder Border Patrol Officer Brian Terry (deceased) Maria Susan Flores Gamez “Miss Sinaloa” (deceased) ATF gun-running operation
And, political hypocrisy aside, it’s important to note that what the ATF is looking for here is supposed evidence of illegal activity deliberately solicited from a segment of the population that would have a reason to lie about it.
Would any responsible government agency solicit — en masse — information to bring the might, and firepower, of the federal government down on any individual unfortunate enough to have a past paramour who wasn’t too picky about how to get revenge?
The answer is obvious, and it’s “no.”
Americans who care about the Second Amendment already have plenty of reasons not to trust the ATF. Bonehead moves like this Twitter post give them one more.
As one Twitter user put it:
Bad idea, guys. I went through an acrimonious divorce many years ago. Had my now ex-wife thought about setting me up for an armed SWAT-like ATF raid with a bogus gun sale tip, I’m fairly sure she would’ve done it.
The geniuses at the ATF who came up with this idea better hope not too many take them up on it — and turn armed federal agents into tools of romantic revenge.
Bad as it’s backfired now, it could get a lot worse.
Thousands of protesters gathered on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill and sang “O Canada” on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
OTTAWA—The center of Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, was flooded by thousands of protesters on Feb. 12 demanding an end to COVID-19 mandates and restrictions.
Many more joined the ongoing trucker-led protest with the arrival of the weekend. Numbers grew from the night of Feb. 11 into the next morning as supporters seemingly poured into the city.
Greater masses of people were particularly noticeable on Parliament Hill and then later on the streets, where they spilled out from the immediate vicinity of the truck blockade.
An influx of newcomers swelled the ranks of anti-mandate protesters in the Canadian capital of Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
Around 10 a.m., several thousand protesters were marshaled into groups to form the word “freedom.”
Then, they waved their red and white maple leaf flags and sang the national anthem “O Canada” with passion and rousing volume.
On finishing, they burst into loud cheering and the maple leaves waved again.
The effort helped rouse the spirits of the protesters on what was a very cold winter’s day, as the morning temperature was on its way down to -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) and snow was being whipped around in the air by a gusty wind.
Protesters enjoying the music played during the blockade on Feb.12, 2022, in Ottawa, Canada. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)Protesters on Wellington St near Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)Children at the protest in Ottawa, Canada, on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
Denis Cadieux, a carpenter from Orleans, told The Epoch Times that he liked almost everything about the protests and the way people had behaved.
. . .
“We won’t win everybody, but honestly, I think this is great.”
He added that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and “the mainstream news had made it sound like we are disrupting the economy, but actually, it is their delays in not sitting down to speak with us that are disrupting the economy.”
Electrified Crowd
Protesters in Ottawa, Canada, on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
The mass gathering on Feb. 12 had a carnival atmosphere along Wellington St., near Parliament Hill, and spirits were sent soaring as people stood and sang along in unity with a very well received song list.
Speeches were made throughout the day, during which key words and phrases—such as freedom—earned cheers and whistles from the packed-in crowd.
Regular cries of “Freedom” were screamed out and answered in similar fashion, while vehicles with national emblems fluttering above their flatbeds honked their horns as they cruised the snow-covered streets.
Thousands of people joined the mandate protesters in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)A protester with a sign in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)Happy to be here. Flag waving Canadians in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
Canadian company 
“The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable. I feel like we’re on the run.”
