While Democrat after Democrat has cried out over the possibility a conservative Supreme Court could eviscerate abortion rights, strategists say little is being offered in terms of a clear way to fight back.

Some also say the party wasn’t ready for something that was clearly coming down the pike.

“Why are we so behind the curve on this? Where is the plan? We knew this was coming in theory since Coney Barrett joined the court, and in practice since December,” said Democratic strategist Christy Setzer.

“I don’t want to hear empty rhetoric about how ‘we won’t go back,’ I want to hear that there is a legislative or federal plan to change things,” she added.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have assailed the leaked draft opinion. In an impassioned speech at the EMILY’s List gala on Tuesday night, Harris declared that women’s rights were under attack, previewing her party’ midterm messaging.

Strategists say the rage is real. But they are worried the party has no real strategy.

“We’re all so enraged but now what? What’s the plan? Sadly, I don’t think we have one,” said one strategist. “There’s so much talk of ‘We can’t let this happen.’ But I don’t think anyone knows what to do next.”

There are significant limits to what the White House and Democrats in Congress can do if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade and GOP states begin to outlaw abortion rights.

Previous efforts to codify abortion rights into law have failed and Democrats do not have the votes in Congress to overcome a filibuster.

“I think their options are very limited, and what I’ve been advising is for the White House to focus on winnable battles,” said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law professor at Georgetown University.

While some progressive Democrats have renewed a push to do away with the legislative filibuster, Biden isn’t joining that effort – at least not yet. Instead, he’s called on voters to elect more pro-abortion Democrats to Congress, a message echoed throughout his administration.

Democrats may not even have 50 votes to codify abortion rights. Sen. Joe Manchin (R-W.Va.), who describes himself as a pro-life Democrat, voted against advancing the Women’s Health Protection Act earlier this year.

Biden has ordered the Gender Policy Council and the White House counsel’s office to develop a response plan in preparation for a Supreme Court ruling, but it’s too early to know what that plan will entail. Any steps could also face legal challenges from Republican attorneys general.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the administration will not release its plan until after the final opinion is released, conscious of not getting ahead of the official ruling expected to come over the next two months.

“We don’t have a final conclusion. The Supreme Court themselves made clear this is not the final opinion,” Psaki said. “We are already working a great deal behind the scenes and we will have more to say.”

Psaki said that officials across the administration are focused on helping those who will be most affected by the ruling, including women of color and poorer Americans who will face bigger financial challenges accessing abortions if Roe is overturned and states enact restrictions. The White House believes that as many as 26 states will move to restrict abortion if the draft opinion holds.

Gostin offered that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could prepare a report on the physical and mental consequences for women for don’t have access to safe and lawful abortions. He also said the Food and Drug Administration could expand its guidance on the use of abortion pills, such as specifying where people can safely order them.

He also said that Biden is considering allowing the use of Medicaid funding to pay for time off and travel for women who need to travel out-of-state to receive abortions.

The administration’s actions thus far have offered little solace to frustrated Democrats.

Some progressives are calling for more aggressive action, including renewing a controversial push to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court.

“We aren’t powerless,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said on an organizing call for the progressive advocacy group Demand Justice Wednesday night. “Two things that we must do to protect and preserve our democracy: one, we must get rid of the filibuster and, two, we need to add some seats to the United States Supreme Court.”

Meanwhile, a coalition of organizations including Planned Parenthood, MoveOn and Women’s March announced plans Thursday to hold marches in four major cities including in Washington, D.C., as part of a coordinated effort to protest the forthcoming ruling.

The White House has pointed to steps the administration has already taken, such as creating $6.6 million in grants for family planning services and emergency contraception for people in states with restrictive laws.

“We are going to double down on the effort to make sure that the legal rights of all Americans, women to access the care that they’re entitled to continues forward,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told lawmakers at a Senate hearing this week.

Gostin said the White House was unprepared for the uproar created by the leaked draft opinion earlier this week.

“The leak has really made this an outsized public and political issue even more so than the actual opinion would have been,” he said. “It’s caused a huge political tsunami.”

Source: https://thehill.com/news/administration/3479097-democrats-worry-they-lack-a-plan-to-fight-back-on-roe-v-wade/

The post Democrats worry they lack a plan to fight back on Roe v. Wade first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A memo from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas outlines a more robust effort to enforce U.S. immigration law without the use of Title 42, which was invoked at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

“When the Title 42 public health Order is lifted, we anticipate migration levels will increase, as smugglers will seek to take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants,” Mayorkas warns in a memo that comes a day before he is to testify to Congress on an issue that has become a potent element in Republican political messaging.

The plan includes increasing the number of personnel in the border region from Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies, expanding detention capacity with the use of temporary facilities and aggressively deploying a process known as expedited removal to deport migrants who do not qualify for asylum or some other relief under U.S. law.

It also relies on new Department of Homeland Security initiatives intended to streamline the evaluation of migrant claims, such as the deployment of asylum officers to the border to help determine whether someone should be granted temporary legal residency until an immigration court rules on their case.

Unmentioned is the fact that a court could soon order the government to reverse course and halt plans to lift Title 42 on May 23 because of lawsuits filed by Republican-led states.

On Monday, a federal judge in Louisiana said he would issue an order limiting the administration’s ability to prepare but left specifics of the settlement to the federal government and the states.

U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays, a Trump appointee, has scheduled a hearing on May 13 in the lawsuit by Louisiana and 20 other states seeking to keep Title 42 authority in place. Republicans and some Democrats in Congress have also urged the Biden administration to continue the order for now.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that Republicans “are going to insist” on a vote on keeping the public health order in place, likely as an amendment to a compromise $10 billion package of pandemic aid. That demand has put Democrats on the defensive ahead of fall elections in which congressional control is in play and some moderates face competitive races.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., conceded that the GOP effort is forcing Democrats to try finding a position they can rally behind. “There’s divisions there now,” he said. And Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., took the unusual step of criticizing the administration for sending conflicting signals on the issue.

“We’re puzzled by the administration, some mixed messages around. Is the emergency over or isn’t it over?” Kaine told reporters. “We’re confused about it. And that leads different people to be in different spots until we get questions answered.”

Migrants have been expelled more than 1.8 million times under the rule, which was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under former President Donald Trump.

Advocates for asylum-seekers support the end to the rule, which they say endangers people fleeing persecution back home and violates rights to seek protection under U.S. law and international treaty. The states challenging the administration say the U.S. is not ready for a likely influx of migrants resulting from the rule’s end, straining public services.

It comes amid what the administration concedes are historic numbers of migrants attempting to cross the border due to factors that include economic and political turmoil in Latin America, as well as a backlog of people hoping to seek asylum.

The increase in migrant encounters is also due in part to Title 42 itself.

Immigration authorities stopped migrants 221,303 times along the Southwest border in March, a 33% increase from a month earlier, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

But many of those encounters were people coming back after being removed under the public health authority. CBP said the number of unique individuals encountered nationwide in March came to 159,900, still high but significantly below the total.

Biden administration officials argue that the use of expedited removal is more of a deterrent because people subjected to it are inadmissible for five years and can be charged with a felony if they attempt to return to the country. Under Title 42, there are no legal consequences and many people simply turn around and come back.

Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.lmtonline.com/news/article/US-preps-for-even-busier-border-amid-lifting-of-17128394.php

The post US preps for even busier border amid lifting of health order first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The Title 42 policy, implemented by the Trump administration during the pandemic to allow border officials quickly to expel migrants on public health grounds, will be terminated next month, the CDC announced Friday.

Title 42 was the last tool border officials had left to stem the flow of illegal migration from more than 150 countries across the southern border. Now, they are anticipating a doubling or tripling of numbers to as many as 18,000 a day.

We know what that means. More secret migrant flights fanning out from the southern border to a town near you.

Already, charter flights to White Plains airport in Westchester have started again, after a hiatus following The Post’s report last October revealing migrant planes landing in the middle of the night several times a week, and unloading hundreds of migrants, claimed to be children, to be spirited away on buses to locations around New York and neighboring states.

Unlike before, they now are landing before the airport’s midnight curfew, and there are fewer each week. The planes are stopping en route, in cities like Houston, Texas, and Oklahoma City, Okla., as opposed to Jacksonville, Fla., where The Post observed them last year disgorging migrants.

Publicly available flight data show World Atlantic Airways charter planes began landing again in White Plains in late February.

On February 25, March 11, March 19 and March 21, World Atlantic Airways flights from El Paso flew to White Plains via Houston, arriving between 7.59 p.m. and 9.21 p.m.

On March 4, and March 26 World Atlantic Airways planes flew from El Paso to White Plains via Oklahoma City, arriving at 9:25 p.m. and 9:33 p.m.

It is not known who was on board, but these are the same McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft with the same registration numbers which were chartered by the Department of Health and Human Services and were observed by The Post flying illegal migrant minors into White Plains last year.

It is not just White Plains. Migrant flights from the border are traveling all over the country, as the administration tries to manage the deluge at the border by spreading the problem far and wide, turning every state into a border state.

With the end of Title 42, already record numbers are set to explode.

Even moderate Democrats think the move is insane. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have condemned the plan to nix Title 42.

Manchin described it as “a frightening decision . . . Title 42 has been an essential tool in combatting the spread of COVID-19 and controlling the influx of migrants at our southern border.

“We are already facing an unprecedented increase in migrants this year, and that will only get worse if the Administration ends the Title 42 policy. We are nowhere near prepared to deal with that influx.”

Already, since President Biden dismantled Trump-era border restrictions on his first day in office, the number of illegal migrants who have entered the US is the equivalent of the fifth largest city in the nation. By the time the midterms roll around, we will have another 5 million.

That’s at least 7 million total, the equivalent of the second largest city in the country. Almost the size of New York City. It’s like importing the entire population of Libya.

And from next month, that’s the number who will enter every year unless someone wrests control of the border from the cartels.

By the time the next presidential election rolls around, in 2024, the number of Biden illegals will be over 20 million at these rates. That’s a 6% population increase over Biden’s term in illegal migration alone, against a backdrop of rampant inflation.

How do we house and feed such a horde? How do hospitals, schools and jails cope with this unheralded influx with no planning or preparation?

This is Biden’s biggest disaster, and there have been a few.

Throwing Hunter under the bus won’t be enough to clear Joe
Hunter Biden won’t like the interview his father’s chief of staff Ron Klain did with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

Asked about the Delaware investigation into the president’s son’s business affairs, Klain threw Hunter and his uncle Joe Biden under the bus.

“The president is confident that his family did the right thing. But, again, I want to just be really clear, these are actions by Hunter and his brother. They’re private matters. They don’t involve the president. And they certainly are something that no one at the White House is involved in.”

This is the party line, parroted by The Washington Post and CNN in their belated coverage of the story last week.

Sure, they say, it looks bad for Hunter, but, gosh, Joe Biden had nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, this line of defense does not sustain scrutiny.

Judging by morsels trickling out of the ongoing investigation into Hunter, the scope has widened to include questions involving the president.

‘Big Guy’
Witnesses testifying before the Delaware grand jury are believed to have been asked if they know who is the “Big Guy” referred to in coded fashion in e-mails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop and in WhatsApp messages his former business partner Tony Bobulinski handed to the FBI in October 2020.

Bobulinski asserts that the “Big Guy” is Joe Biden.

The identity of the “Big Guy” is relevant because he was to be allocated 10% equity in a joint venture Hunter and partners were cooking up with Chinese company CEFC, according to an e-mail on the laptop.

“Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing,” Bobulinski wrote in a letter to the Post in October 2020. “I’ve seen VP Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.”

There is evidence on the laptop that Joe Biden profited from Hunter’s overseas business dealings, indicating mingled finances, shared bank accounts and household bills Hunter was expected to pay for his father.

Hunter complained about having to give “half” his salary to his father and “pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years.”

But even if Klain and media pals want to dismiss evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling scheme — including meetings with Hunter’s foreign partners — that doesn’t clear the president.

There is no country in the world where millions of dollars paid to a top official’s son for doing nothing would not be regarded as corruption.

“Large payments to the children of powerful government officials by those with interests potentially affected by those officials’ actions are universally understood to be corrupt efforts to influence the officials,” Manhattan litigation lawyer Francis Menton writes in the Manhattan Contrarian blog.

“In cases involving people other than the Bidens, whether the official/parent ‘personally benefited’ from the payments or ‘knew details’ of the transactions are considered completely irrelevant.”

Klain will have to find a better response.

Source: https://nypost.com/2022/04/04/biden-opens-the-title-42-gates/

The post Biden opens the Title 42 gates – prepare for madness first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“Now is the time for the administration to sunset federal transportation travel restrictions – including the international predeparture testing requirement and the federal mask mandate – that are no longer aligned with the realities of the current epidemiological environment,” the CEOs of 10 U.S.-based passenger and cargo airlines, including Delta, American and United, wrote in a letter to President Biden.

The letter states that while the airlines and their employees supported the federal mask mandate when it was first implemented, especially because it did away with the possibility for airline-by-airline rules in the early days of the pandemic, they now feel it is no longer necessary.

“The persistent and steady decline of hospitalization and death rates are the most compelling indicators that our country is well protected against severe disease from COVID-19,” the letter states. “Given that we have entered a different phase of dealing with this virus, we strongly support your view that ‘COVID-19 need no longer control our lives.'”

While initially popular with employees, over the past two years flight attendants and gate agents in particular have taken the brunt of flyer frustration over the masking rules. Despite fewer flyers than pre-pandemic levels, cases of disruptive passengers have soared over the last two years. Airlines last year banned thousands of passengers due to unruly behavior.

“It is critical to recognize that the burden of enforcing both the mask and predeparture testing requirements has fallen on our employees for two years now,” the letter read. “This is not a function they are trained to perform and subjects them to daily challenges by frustrated customers. This in turn takes a toll on their own well-being.”

Citing the planes’ onboard air filtration systems as well as the nation’s high level of immunity thanks to vaccines and prior infection and the CDC’s most recent guidance indicating that 99% of the U.S. population live in areas of low or medium transmission and therefor no longer needs to wear masks indoors, the carriers argue it is time to wind down masking rules for them as well.

The letter noted that masks could also still be worn voluntarily, even if the mandate is removed. “The effectiveness and availability of high-quality masks for those who wish to wear them gives passengers the ability to further protect themselves if they choose to do so,” the letter read.

Delta Air Lines, in its own separate statement, also stressed that passengers would not be barred from wearing face masks. “N95 and KN95 masks that were previously unavailable are now widely available for personal protection as are vaccinations and other medical advancements for those who choose them,” the carrier wrote.

The carriers also ask Mr. Biden to lift the pre-departure testing for international travelers. They argue such measures are ineffective, citing The World Health Organization, which determined in January that “the failure of travel restrictions introduced after the detection and reporting of Omicron variant to limit international spread of Omicron demonstrates the ineffectiveness of such measures over time.” WHO did note, however, that preventative measures such as masking and testing “should be based on risk assessments.”

“The United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada have recognized this reality and lifted travel restrictions,” the letter states. “The U.S. inconsistency with these practices creates a competitive disadvantage for U.S. travel and tourism by placing an additional cost and burden on travel to the U.S. Further, many outbound travelers are not willing to risk being stranded overseas.”

Following a massive surge fueled by the Omicron variant, COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are at their lowest since last summer. Meanwhile, cases in the U.K. are rising again as restrictions are lifted and the Omicron subvariant BA.2 spreads. But the case numbers are nowhere near their Omicron peak, and former FDA commissioner and current Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that there is evidence the U.K. has already seen the peak of BA.2 infections.

“I think we’re going to continue to see low levels of infection through the summer,” Gottlieb predicted. “But before we get there, we’re probably going to see some tick-up of infection like the Europeans are seeing right now, maybe not as pronounced.”

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airlines-ask-biden-to-drop-mask-mandate-testing-requirement/

The post Airlines ask Biden to drop mask mandate and testing requirements for travelers first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The war drums are being pounded in the mainstream media.  We see blown up buildings and stately old construction turned into rubble.  People are crossing rushing water on wooden planks, some of them carrying babies.  Pundits populate panels, wondering how bad it will get before we’re willing to risk touching off something much larger.  We’ve got nothing to say about any of it.  We can just hide and watch, disgusted and embarrassed about our supposed representation before the world.

The information wars are in full swing, and we don’t know who to believe.  Once upon a time we had confidence in our leaders and in the news media.  But now we hear that obnoxious cackle when our VP doesn’t know what else to say.  The record of the occupant isn’t very reassuring, particularly after some of the nonsense that came out of his mouth at his press conference this week.  You know, the one where he took no questions.

Today, the Russian delegation at the UN is trotting out information they hope will change the perception of what they’re doing and why they’re doing  it.  As people flee for their lives, Russia says there are bio labs in Eastern Ukraine and they want to present proof.  The claim is that they were experimenting with bat viruses and dangerous pathogens, and Russia had to go in to prevent another worldwide pandemic, or whatever dangerous activity was being perpetrated at U. S. expense.

Others say, “Calm yourselves.”  Those massive facilities were simply there to dismantle Soviet era weapons from the Middle East or wherever they existed in years gone by.  Who are we going to believe?  We see the Putin regime, ravaging innocent civilians on the news.  But the “news” has become a joke.  After what they did to Trump, and their own “collusion” with Fauci and the CDC, it’s hard to swallow anything on faith.  Especially when delivered with such passionate concern.  We’ve seen it all before.

Some in the fringe media have been having a field day with the disappearance of everybody’s favorite little doctor.  They’ve been wondering how his ego has been affected, as if he can’t get an appearance after having enjoyed near universal fame. But maybe he doesn’t want to appear anywhere, for fear he’ll be asked about stuff he never discussed while in the spotlight.  Like, what’s been going on at these massive facilities in Eastern Ukraine.  Why are they doing things in remote places we never heard of, that can’t be done right here at home.  If it’s dangerous and illegal to do this experimentation in the U. S. why would our money be used to do it over there?  Nobody even told us, certainly not the mainstream media.  Maybe Mr. too big for his britches really can’t get an interview anymore.

They’ve chased us around, fear-mongering like there was no tomorrow for two years.  We were just beneath contempt of all those anchors and their experts, unless we ran somewhere and took the needle.  “We can do this,” they told us.  But if you don’t, prepare to be ruined.  It would have been miserable to rebel, and it was for the few who did.  Chances are they’d send a swat team.  That might be a slight exaggeration, but some examples were made.  The upshot of all this is, they’ve lost whatever trust they ever had.

We don’t know who to believe anymore.  The Trump/Russia story was bad enough, but then there was the COVID, and now we hesitate to listen let alone believe any of their fervent nonsense.

How Ukraine turns out is anybody’s guess.  It would be nice if it would just stop, but that doesn’t seem likely.  It would sure be nice if we weren’t back to the Cold War, when there was the possibility of nuclear war that hung over every day life.  For all their “progress,” they’ve turned back the clock to a time thirty years ago.  We’re very impressed.

The people of Ukraine have tasted freedom, and they don’t need Vladimir telling them what to do.  We don’t need government agencies telling us what to do either, but we’re not going anywhere, regardless of what some media-driven poll says.

Suddenly, everything’s Putin’s fault.  Things that were in full swing before the invasion are now his doing.  Inflation is off the chart at historic levels.  Gas prices will make you stay home, and there’s now a scape-goat for the incomprehensible incompetence of this crew who despite everything is going to ram this nonsense down our throats, pretend to believe in it and try to ruin us if we don’t.  Regardless, we still can’t believe a word they say.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 11 March 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Will CNN change its tune? There’s quite an interesting dynamic playing out at the Atlanta network, and you probably know the details. The fact that there is so much money for them to grapple over is a scandal in itself. It might be entertaining to watch two Trump haters trying to ruin each other. But with the kind of money that is at stake, they’ll survive. Makes you wonder who the advertisers are, if only we were willing to watch long enough to find out.

But that is the crux of the problem with China. You’re no doubt aware of the fact of the diplomatic boycott of the Olympics. Putin and Xi are already there, but no American government officials on account of “human rights abuses.” We occasionally hear about the Muslim Uyghur population, re-educated at a bare minimum, in camps constructed for that purpose. Chairman Xi fixed that for you. Apparently an Uyghur helped light the Olympic torch. The immediate question is, what would have happened if he’d refused? Athletes who chose to compete have had warnings about saying anything that might be construed as critical of the Chinese. Even the old bat has issued a statement.

Back to the point, apparently the corporations see their growth potential as being in China. If something’s not good for America, too bad. The almighty dollar is the top priority. You’ll notice there hasn’t been a lot of talk about the debt, but the cabal in charge has been running it up through the roof. It’s enough to make you feel, and act, hopeless about the future. On top of the debt, the occupant’s scriptwriter is subtly doing everything imaginable to hobble Americans because of the environment, social justice or whatever.

There are some things the government can’t do to us on account of the Constitution and the Bill or Rights. But the corporations are doing whatever the government recommends. They’re doing it to their employees, they’re making demands of their clients. Two years after the fact, the CDC has finally admitted that natural immunity is at least as good as the vaccine. But don’t worry, the places that are staying open will still demand your papers.

Some of the arguments being made are downright comical. Shaq says the mandates and lockdown orders are the dumbest thing he’s ever heard of. Uh-oh. The interview with CBS, which incidentally enforces the vaccine on employees, did not go well. There are respected studies showing that the lock-downs did more harm than good. If you’re not seeing that on the mainstream news, it’s because they pushed, shamed the non-complaint and brought in lackeys to call the non-compliant guilty of “not caring.” And potentially manslaughter if not murder. No wonder we can’t watch.

It’s beginning to look like every household name we know and love has cast it’s lot with China. It’s a financial decision and one that doesn’t bode well for the future of the U. S. The vast upwardly mobile market just represents unlimited riches. Why should they worry about America when they can dominate one sector or another in China? There is evidence, documentation and e-mails suggesting that the occupant has taken advantage of, shall we say, financial help from his son who is on corporate boards operated by the Chinese government. Ever heard of Peter Schweitzer? We’re all but scared to read his book. The mainstream and the occupant himself says it’s a smear job. Russian disinformation.

We’ve been through infuriating cycles before, but nothing quite rose to the current level. It would be easy to be hopeless and beaten, but maybe we’re not beaten. There may be a lot of rabble-rousers who demand that “society” make them rich, while they rage about racism. The most daring are smashing jewelry cases at retail stores. Who’s betting that every one of them is out on bail. We may never know. Unless…

Unless some of the lies get jammed down the mainstream media’s throat. It’s not nice to lie to everyone, particularly if you present yourself as America’s Most Trusted Name in News, or whatever.

Ukraine is still hanging fire. Troops are being publicly put on high alert in nearby NATO countries. Germany has bowed out. The pipeline, you know. Everybody saw this coming, we just didn’t expect it to happen so fast. A quick look at the “diplomats” who have our future all figured out says it all. At their recent planning session in Davos, they admitted to respecting and trusting each other even though nobody else does. Now that the public everywhere in the Western world has shown a willingness to comply with each and every mandate, logical or otherwise, they’ve got big plans for us.

What’s going on in Israel? The people have complied. The population is double and triple-vaxed at the highest rate on record, and having the greatest Corona virus crisis on earth. Maybe it’s good that Netanyahu is out of office, for now. He is being pursued by prosecutors for crimes aplenty, and has been mighty quiet, unlike somebody we know. But the analogy is eerily accurate.

Trouble is brewing among the Arab nations, some of which have made buddies with Israel and others that are standing by their historical posture. The war in Yemen continues, but somebody’s hitting the UAE with drone-launched explosives, and they think it’s in support of the Houthis that are fighting in Yemen. It’ll never end. Not in this era.

Who could have expected the Canadian truckers to shut down the Capitol in Ottawa over health rules and mandates. They have my respect, even though the Prime Minster so often photographed in blackface, has called them racist and evil. What a dork.

A couple of things you’ll remember my Dad saying from time to time. One is that Israel will tear itself apart internally in the absence of an outside enemy. He also said that end-time events would be brought about by a worldwide financial collapse. There’s astonishingly good news on the other side. If the media displayed some honesty there might be good news on this side. We can take comfort in the knowledge of how it ends. God will only put up with the success of evil for so long. We’re more fragile.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 4 February 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Addressing an anti-vaccination rally in Washington, DC, American environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday compared COVID-19 vaccination mandates to the Holocaust, saying that “Even in [Adolf] Hitler’s Germany… you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did,” according to a tweet by NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins.

Ben Collins@oneunderscore__
We are onto the original acoustic guitar music about the vaccine portion of the antimandate rally so I will be blending something while using a powersaw for the next five to ten minutes.

Ben Collins@oneunderscore__
At the antivaxx rally in DC, RFK Jr. says that in the future “none of us can run and none of us can hide” because of Bill Gates’ satellites and also 5G, unlike… the Holocaust.

“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did.”

Kennedy, who is a son of assassinated senator Robert. F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, has been outspoken in his opposition to vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine.

Kennedy’s organization Children’s Health Defense has disseminated various conspiracy theories regarding the coronavirus pandemic, particularly via social media; Its COVID-19 vaccine-related posts have been shared more often on Twitter than vaccine-related reports from mainstream sources such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), CNN, Fox News and NPR, according to a report by the Associated Press.

At the Washington rally, dubbed “Defeat the Mandates: An American Homecoming,” another speaker, TV producer Del Bigtree, suggested that there should be a Nuremberg trial for medical workers and journalists, referencing the war crimes trials for Nazis that were held after World War II, according to the independent.

Throughout the pandemic, numerous public figures have drawn comparisons between COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates to the genocidal Nazi regime.

Just last week, Vickie Paladino, a member of the New York City Council apologized after she compared COVID-19 vaccination passes to Nazi oppression in interview with NY1, saying, “I don’t need to show you my papers. This is not Nazi Germany.”

That same week, responding to a Twitter update from Washington mayor Muriel Bowser regarding COVID-19 requirements in the city, Ohio Congressman Warren Davidson posted a photo of a Nazi-era health pass, saying “This has been done before.”

Source: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-694357

The post COVID-19 vaccine mandates worse than Holocaust, RFK suggests at anti-vax rally first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Has literally no idea when asked how CDC is testing for the so called Delta variant

With the CDC announcing a mask mandate reversal and the endless doom mongering over the dreaded Delta variant, Americans have a lot of questions, yet the answer to all of them seems to simply be ‘do as you’re told because we say so’.

This was in evidence again on Friday when after the announcement that even vaccinated people can still get and transmit the Delta variant, Newsmax reporter Emerald Robinson asked the White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre what exactly the CDC is doing to test for this.

Jean-Pierre had no idea and didn’t even bother to suggest she would try to find out.

The Biden Administration is unable to provide any proof that Delta variant is real and White House Deputy Press Secretary @KJP46 just admitted in a press briefing that she has no idea if there’s even a test for it! — Emerald Robinson (@EmeraldRobinson) July 30, 2021

She claimed she didn’t even know why anyone would ask how the CDC tests for the Delta variant or why they would bother to explain the process.

Robinson pointed out that the only answers Americans are being given is “because they say so,” to which the Deputy Press Secretary answered “because they are the experts.”

Amy Tarkanian@MrsT106.
@EmeraldRobinson asked @KJP46 how the CDC is testing for the Delta variant and she completely falls apart and says it’s because “the experts” say so.

As we noted last week, Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s answer to the question “If vaccines work, then why do people who have the vaccine now need to wear masks?” was essentially ‘because we say so’.

After admitting that he is seeking to determine whether he can mandate vaccines for all Americans, Joe Biden lost it with reporter Peter Doocy, who again dared to ask for an explanation on the flip-flop on masks.

Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, are literally repeating the stock phrase ‘it’s science’ over and over without explaining any of the methods behind it, because they literally have no idea what it is.

(TLB) published this article from Summit News as compiled and written by Steve Watson

Source: https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/wh-deputy-press-secretary-says-americans-must-follow-cdc-orders-because-the-experts-say-so-video/

The post WH Deputy Press Secretary Says Americans Must Follow CDC Orders ‘Because The Experts Say So’ [Video] first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Whether they realize it or not, about 200 million people in the United States now likely have access to a COVID-19 digital vaccine card.

The digital pass known as the SMART Health Card is voluntary and minimal by design to protect personal information. It has a person’s name, date of birth and the dates and brands of vaccination doses, all contained within a type of scannable bar code known as a QR code.

And after a relatively quiet start, it has built momentum in recent months as more states and companies have signed on, making it something of a de facto national digital vaccine card.

“The beautiful thing about this is that this multistate coalition is a coalition of the willing,” said Dr. Brian Anderson, chief digital health physician at MITRE, a research nonprofit, and an architect of the health cards.

Any such card seemed like a remote possibility a year ago, when people first began receiving paper cards as proof of their COVID vaccinations. The Biden administration said in March that it would not take the lead on any national health pass and instead defer to the private sector, and the idea of a vaccine “passport” has faced opposition and even bans, especially in Republican-led states such as Alabama and Texas.

Rather than a single app, the SMART Health Card is open-source computer code that anyone can use to ping a verified source of health data and produce the unique QR code. The digital cards are now widely available from more than 400 sources including states, pharmacies and health care organizations.

The fact that the system exists in any form is a triumph for a loose coalition of technologists, nonprofit groups and mostly Democratic states that championed the development of a digital vaccine card even before the first coronavirus shots were administered.

“This is a de facto standard,” said Rick Klau, California’s chief technology innovation officer. “This is essentially the one common way for residents to secure that digital copy and then use it.”

The digital card offers a few benefits beyond a paper card. QR codes can’t be forged in the way a paper card could be, because a restaurant or a music venue can use a scanner app to verify that it’s legitimate. People can also download the QR code again if they lose it, adding a convenience factor.

People can get the QR code from their state health authority if they’ve been vaccinated in one of the 13 states now participating, but they may also be able to get them from a hospital or from a national pharmacy chain, such as Albertsons, CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens or stores like Walmart if they’ve been vaccinated at any of their locations.

Vaccine QR codes are also spreading internationally. Japan launched a similar system last month, and Ontario, Canada, is requiring people to have scannable proof of vaccination to eat inside restaurants or go inside certain other businesses. QR codes are increasingly required as part of international airline travel.

Within the U.S., the QR codes are still voluntary. California and Louisiana became the first states to roll out the SMART Health Card last June, and the number of issuers grew slowly at first before picking up pace over time.

Colorado signed on in November, followed by Connecticut and Illinois in December. On Monday, Massachusetts became the 13th state to voluntarily embrace the system, and another 10 or so states are privately exploring the possibility, Anderson said.

Washington has issued about 840,000 QR codes, according to the state’s health department. That’s equivalent to about 11 percent of the state’s population. The numbers in Colorado and New Jersey are similar.

The QR codes work on paper, too, if people would rather print them out than keep them on a phone.

Klau, a former manager at Google, has advised other states as they put the system in place. In California alone, 7 million individuals have downloaded their QR code, and he estimated that about 80 percent of the vaccinated U.S. population of 247 million people have access to a SMART Health Card if they want one through either their state health authority or the site where they were vaccinated, such as a pharmacy or a hospital.

“It’s inspiring to see what has largely been a grassroots effort not only take hold, but develop so completely,” he said. “It has certainly not been mandated.”

A critical feature is that the QR codes are standardized and interoperable, so they work across state lines. A resident of New Jersey visiting San Francisco can use the same system to prove vaccination as a Californian.

And they can work internationally. Countries including the United Kingdom, Israel and Singapore have said they’ll recognize the QR codes if Americans present them abroad, Klau said.

It’s not clear if the Biden administration will ever endorse the project. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond to requests for comment.

But people involved in the project said it may have gone more smoothly if President Joe Biden had agreed to coordinate it.

“It has forced many states to take leadership roles in implementing and coordinating around multistate coalitions,” said Anderson, who is also co-lead of the Vaccine Credential Initiative, or VCI.

Anderson said other countries haven’t always known whom to speak with in the U.S. to plan cross-border systems. “They’re turning to the states, they’re turning to VCI, and it’s a challenge for a state to conduct foreign diplomacy,” he said.

One barrier to creating a truly national digital vaccine card is that there’s no federal database of vaccination records. Each state maintains its own registry of vaccination records, so either the states or the health care providers need to be the ones to issue verified copies or credentials.

Some of the most thorny political questions remain up in the air nationally, including: Should a business have the right to turn away someone without a vaccine QR code? Or in a pandemic, should a city or state even require businesses to turn people away, as in Canada? What about people who, for health reasons, can’t get a vaccine?

“We won’t be safe until venues are able to *require* SMART Health QR codes and stop accepting paper cards, or photos of cards. And that won’t happen until state or local governments mandate that,” said Jamie Zawinski, a software developer who also owns a night club, DNA Lounge, in San Francisco. He requires customers to have the QR code or, for now, their paper CDC card.

DNA Lounge not only requires people to display the QR code, but it also scans the code using a smartphone app to verify that the codes are authentic — making the club one of the few businesses anywhere in the U.S. to take that extra step.

The primary scanning app available, the SMART Health Card Verifier App, has been used about 750,000 times this month, and the trend line indicates usage is doubling month over month, Anderson said. He said he doesn’t know where the scanning is happening, because by design neither the health card’s creators nor the states have the ability to collect that data.

Only a few places in the U.S. require proof of vaccination to enter indoor businesses, and that list is growing slowly. A mandate in Boston is scheduled to take effect Saturday, even as Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, has pushed to keep the state system voluntary.

“The Administration is not requiring residents to show proof of vaccination to enter any venue, but this tool will help residents who would like to access and produce a digital copy of their record,” his office said in a statement.

The idea that airlines or even local businesses could attempt to collect data from digital health cards remains a chief concern for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group in San Francisco that advocates for privacy online and that criticized the health cards last June soon after California adopted them.

“The scanning of your health information at the door of any business still worries me because generally we do not have a federal data privacy law,” said Alexis Hancock, EFF’s director of engineering. She pointed to software, unrelated to vaccines, that venues can use to scan driver’s licenses.

That danger could be lessened, she said, if Congress or state legislators pass new consumer protections. A bill pending in the New York state Legislature would create new safeguards for medical immunity information.

But Hancock also said the SMART Health Cards have alleviated at least some of EFF’s concerns about digital vaccine records by making the computer code behind the cards open-source, which allows others to inspect it, and nonproprietary.

“Obviously, a lot has happened since last year,” she said.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/national-covid-vaccine-card-quietly-emerged-rcna11678

The post Quietly and over some objections, a national digital vaccine card has emerged first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

What if your next-door neighbor suddenly went dangerously insane and started holding people hostage in his house? Would you consider that threatening? Would you even notice? These aren’t theoretical questions. Something very much like that just happened in our neighborhood.

Canada — the land mass directly to our north and our single largest trading partner, with whom we share the longest international border in the world — took a dramatic move toward legitimately dangerous authoritarianism. Yes, Canada.

On Monday, the country’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, outlined his government’s new corona regulations. Canadians hoping to return to their country must be tested before and after takeoff, he said, adding: “If your test results come back positive, you’ll need to immediately quarantine in designated government facilities. This is not optional.”

“Designated government facilities.” When this happens in other countries, and it does, we call those internment camps. Because this is Canada we’re talking about, a place we assume is passive and polite and Anglo to the point of parody, no one thinks to use that term. In fact, no one seems to think about it at all.

TUCKER CARLSON: WHY THE MEDIA, SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY AND WHO WON’T INVESTIGATE COVID ORIGINS

Trudeau’s internment policy has been in been place since last month, and as far as we can tell, no major U.S. news network has mentioned it. Neither has our State Department, which ordinarily seems to exist to make unhappy noises about human rights violations around the world. But not a word about Canada. Preconceptions may play a role in this. We assume that interning people is what Russia does. Boring people is what Canada does. But not anymore.

Suddenly, Canada is a flagrant violator of the most basic human rights. Fail a COVID test and they’ll lock you up without trial. Go ahead and try to disobey. According to the Canadian government, anyone who attempts to avoid detention in a government internment facility could face a million-dollar fine and three years in prison.

This is Justin Trudeau’s Canada. It’s funny, Trudeau always seemed like a cheerful idiot, wearing weird costumes and yammering on about diversity. Who knew he was Mussolini? There might be a lesson here for other nations led by shallow, neoliberal empty suits. Underneath all the chirpy identity politics talk, it’s not a joke. It’s interment cells.

In Canada, where everything has a euphemism, those cells are referred to as “approved quarantine hotels.” What are they like? Well, as noted, they’re internment cells. What do you think they’re like? There are shortages of food and water. You could be sexually assaulted. A member of the Canadian Parliament explained what they’re like.

Oh, the Liberals did this. It’s not very liberal to intern people, is it?

According to a report in The Post Millennial, doors in many of the internment facilities don’t lock. Detainees have no way to protect themselves while they sleep, hence the sexual assault. They also don’t have access to medical care. In one case, Canadian authorities detained a man with diabetes called Ray Truesdale. What was his crime? Flying from Tennessee to Toronto on a business trip. As he waited in confinement for his coronavirus test results, his jailers forgot to feed him for more than twenty-four hours. Ultimately Truesdale left his cell and went downstairs in search of something to eat.

There, he found others who were being held without food. “They were screaming,” he said. In the end, Canadian authorities informed Truesdale that his coronavirus sample had been damaged, so he had to remain in internment.

AUTHOR: FAUCI IS MOST POWERFUL, DANGEROUS BUREAUCRAT IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Or consider Mitch Beaulieu, a Canadian who landed in Calgary after a business trip to Florida. He told CTV News that the experience very much like a kidnapping.

According to CTV, Beaulieu was “put in a black van with tinted windows and taken to an undisclosed location.”

“Where am I going?” he asked. “Why am I going there?” The response came back: “We’ll tell you everything when you get there.” He thought it was a prank. He thought it had to be. But it wasn’t.

“I get out there and there was plastic all over, people walking around in … hazmat suits,” he recalled. “It was like jail pretty much.”

RAND PAUL MOCKS FAUCI OVER ADVOCACY OF MASK USE AFTER VACCINATION

Just don’t call it jail. That’s an order, directly from Canadian state media. This past fall, the CBC ran a story with this headline: “PM, health officials warn Canadians against believing COVID-19 ‘internment camps’ disinformation.”

Warn them against believing – sound familiar?

That claim, that conspiracy theory, said CBC, “that the federal government is preparing to forcibly intern Canadians is patently false.” The CBC assured Canadians that the government was preparing “voluntary quarantine sites.” Yes, voluntary in the sense of being mandatory, which is what they are.

By the way, as a matter of science, how does packing people into crowded internment facilities reduce the spread of the coronavirus? Some have asked the Canadian government that very question. But they haven’t explained.

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We do know, and this is significant, that Canada has fallen far behind other advanced nations in distributing the vaccine, which is interesting considering the decades of propaganda all of us here have been subject to about the glories of the Canadian healthcare system. According to Andrea Taylor, a researcher at Duke’s Global Health Innovation Center, Canada “had more faith in the global supply chain than other countries.”

Oh, they believed the whole globalism thing worked. That turned out to be a mistake. But rather than admit that globalist stupidity is the problem, Justin Trudeau decided to punish his own citizens. It’s his fault, and the population gets punished. Recognize that impulse? It should, because neoliberalism is always the same, no matter where you find it.

What’s so interesting is that Canada’s new rules apply only to COVID patients. Other transmissible diseases are exempt. People with AIDS aren’t being sent to internment facilities, thank God. No one’s tried that since Fidel Castro in the 1980s. Drug-resistant tuberculosis is fine too. That’s a real problem, but not in Canada. Only COVID, a disease with a 98% survival rate.

Weirdly, and you may recognize this as well, at the same they’ve clamped down on travel by citizens, the Canadian government has announced plans to admit 400,000 new permanent residents from other countries over the next eight months. Sound familiar? And by the way, that number will increase substantially in the next two years. None of these immigrants from the Third World will be forcibly quarantined in Canada. We’re not calling for them to be, but the difference is interesting. They won’t be arrested, in fact, they’ll be rewarded, because they’re not citizens. Only the citizens are punished.

MYSTERIOUS BRAIN DISEASE ‘CLUSTER’ UNDER INVESTIGATION IN CANADA

Back in November, Justin Trudeau admitted what’s going on. It’s not about stopping the coronavirus and saving lives. No. This pandemic, he said, is an opportunity to permanently change Western civilization:

TRUDEAU: This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to reimagine economic systems that actual address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality, and climate change. We don’t want to give Justin Trudeau too much credit. He may be sinister, but he’s not smart. He didn’t think that phrase up. He took it from his role models in this country. At a forum hosted by the World Economic Forum in mid-November, John Kerry — our new climate czar — laid it out.

“Yes, it [the Great Reset] will happen,” Kerry said, “and I think it will happen with greater speed and with greater intensity than a lot of people might imagine. In effect, the citizens of the United States have just done a Great Reset. We’ve done a Great Reset. And it was a record level of voting. We’re at the dawn of an extremely exciting time.”

KERRY MOCKED BY REPUBLICANS OVER MASKLESS PLANE PHOTO: ‘NOT USED TO FLYING COMMERCIAL’

Has it been extremely exciting for you? Has it been extremely exciting for most Americans as the people in charge mismanage this country all the way to the brink? No, it probably hasn’t been. It’s been a sad time for most people.

For power-mad leaders hoping to eliminate centuries of constitutional restraints on their own ambitions, it is indeed an exciting time. Could what’s happening in Canada happen here? That’s the question. You might not think so. We don’t need internment cells. Unlike Canada, we have the vaccine, and we’re distributing it to tens of millions of people. Once you’re vaccinated, you can live your life normally. That’s the whole point of the vaccine. But then you wonder:

If that’s true, why are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris still wearing their obedience masks everywhere they go? They’ve been vaccinated. So has everyone around them. Why the masks? Why the restrictions? What’s going on here? We know for certain it’s not science. According to the CDC, once you’re vaccinated, you don’t need a mask anymore:

CDC DIRECTOR ROCHELLE WALENSKY, MONDAY: We can kind of almost see the end. We`re vaccinating so very fast, our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it’s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data.

CDC PROVIDES EASTER CORONAVIRUS GUIDANCE, SAYS FULLY VACCINATED PEOPLE CAN GATHER WITHOUT MASKS

Well, we hope vaccinated people don’t carry the virus. Otherwise, why are we getting all these vaccines? Turns out the “real-world data” confirms common sense. Once you get the vaccine, you don’t need a mask. That’s a Biden employee. So, why is everyone still wearing them? Why are people with vaccinations walking alone outside with masks on? Why are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris wearing masks?

These are sincere questions. You’d think our media would ask that once in a while, but they’re not. They’re asking very different questions in the other direction. In fact, they’re heckling members of the opposition political party — people who have been vaccinated — and demanding they put their masks back on:

Whoops! We couldn’t access this Tweet.

As if we needed to be reminded and we do, because we’ve lost sight of that – that’s what the science says. But it doesn’t matter what the science says. Wear your obedience mask. Immediately. “It would make us feel better.” Which is the passive-aggressive way of saying “do it, or else.”

That interaction makes you wonder how our media would react if Dr. Fauci one day reluctantly concluded that actually, we need “coronavirus internment facilities” in this country. We don’t want to violate anyone’s rights, but we have to have them. How would our media respond?

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You realize the person who asked Ted Cruz to wear a mask badly wants him tossed into the back of a black van for coronavirus noncompliance? And not just Ted Cruz, but you, too. In fact, all the disobedient, politically inconvenient people should be held without trial (on public health grounds, of course) until they no longer pose a mortal threat to the rest of us. And by “the rest of us,” of course, we mean the good people, the ones who obey.

Think that couldn’t happen here? Why, because the Constitution prohibits it? Think that couldn’t happen in America? It just happened in Canada.

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson’s opening commentary on the March 31, 2021 edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight”

Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.

Source:  https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-covid-internment-camps-coming-country-near-you

The post Tucker Carlson: COVID internment camps, coming soon to a country near you first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.