Day: February 12, 2022

More Than Half of Americans Can’t Find “a Single Thing” Biden Has Done Right in His First Year

BY BOB ADELMANN

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/over-half-of-americans-cant-find-a-single-thing-biden-has-done-right-in-his-first-year; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes:

When a major mouthpiece for the left is forced to admit that Biden is in trouble, Biden is in trouble. After reviewing the latest poll conducted by SSRS Research for CNN, the network’s political commentator, Chris Cillizza, tweeted: “When those who disapproved of Biden’s overall performance were asked to name a single thing he’d done that they … approved of, 56% had nothing positive to say.”

The poll covered a “representative sample of the adult population,” explained SSRS, with the survey done via the internet or by phone from January 10 through February 6. It was a large enough sample to measure accurately, within three percentage points, just how Americans feel about the job Joe Biden is doing after a year in the Oval Office.

No matter what question was asked or what issue or topic was covered, more than six out of ten respondents gave Biden a failing grade: “The President’s ratings have fallen across the board, the survey found. Just 41% approved of the way he’s handling his job while 58% disapproved, a significant drop from his approval numbers in CNN polling last year,” said CNN.

Worse were the survey’s results among Independents and Republicans: “Just 36% of independents and 9% of Republicans approved.”

Even among Democrats Biden lost ground, with 83 percent approving now compared to 94 percent approving last year.

Sixty-two percent disapprove of his handling of the economy (down 8 points since December), 54 percent disapprove of his handling of the pandemic (down 9 points since December), and 57 percent say they consider Biden’s administration to be a failure after his first year in office.

CNN writers Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy, given the unhappy task of trying to find something good to say about the CNN-sponsored poll, were hard-pressed to find anything. What they did find is that, given the results, Biden is now essentially a “lame duck” in the White House, with little ability to change or reset the public’s perception of his performance for whatever remains of his first term:

[T]he poll suggests few have much faith in anything Washington or Biden may do this year. The share who say they felt even somewhat well represented by the federal government remained low at 32%, and only 21% of Americans said they currently had a lot of confidence in Biden’s ability to provide real leadership for the country.

The share who said they had a lot of confidence in the President’s ability to work effectively with Congress has dropped by half since last March, from 32% to 15%, including a 28 percentage point drop among Democrats over that time.

John Hanson, writing for The Political Insider, posed: “Democrats must be wondering if it can get any worse. Given the trajectory of this president, the honest answer is ‘probably!’”

Where Shall Americans Find “True Democracy” If Not In Their Thoughts, Actions & Guns?

BY ROGER KATZ

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2022/02/americans-find-true-democracy-in-guns; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes: 

New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Deep State & Globalist stooges in Government and in the legacy Press and media constantly talk of “Democracy”— bantering endlessly that only the “Democrat Party” is intent on preserving it. Yet, they never bother to explain what they mean by it, even as they lavish attention on it. But what is really going on here?

These stooges constantly claim they are all for “democracy; and that they and they alone are the only protectors of it. And they dare anyone who might object to what surely comes across as mere pretension when they mention ‘democracy.”

Yet, think about what these imbeciles don’t say when they go on and on about it. They never mention the word ‘freedom’ in association with it. They never mention ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ in the same breath. In fact, they don’t mention the word, ‘freedom’ at all. And why is that? Might it be that ‘freedom’ is not something they want; that it isn’t a thing they adhere to, and that it’s not something they wish others to adhere to either.

Why would these “Democrats” object to “freedom,” and why would they vigorously attempt to dissolve man’s natural bond to it? Indeed!

Do you think this might have something to do with their concern over Americans’ exercise of their fundamental natural rights?

In fact, “freedom” is tied up with and inextricably bound to natural laws rights of the people—those that are enumerated in the first Eight Amendments of the Bill of Rights, and those unenumerated rights as exemplified in the Ninth Amendment.

Recall that the Antifederalists demanded that the U.S. Constitution provide explicit expression of the rights of the American people.

The Federalists objected, concerned that, if a Bill of Rights delineated a set certain of specific rights, then a strong, centralized “federal” government might henceforth claim, one day, the natural rights of the American people must be limited to the rights specifically enumerated, and they must ever refrain from asserting an unalienable right that has not been enumerated.

But, the Antifederalists, for their part, knew that, if natural law rights of the people were not explicitly etched in stone, then a strong, centralized federal government could, and would, eventually, invariably, one day deny, to the people, exercise of any right that government did not deign to bestow to them.

Tyranny is the natural state of Government. The history of the actions of governments, regimes, and empires against the populace, going back to antiquity, is laden with evidence of that. The very struggle of America’s colonists, the Nation’s first Patriots, attests to the tenacity, voraciousness, and virulence of Tyranny.

The Antifederalists’ concern has been shown to be entirely reasonable and justified.

For, even as founders of a new Nation struggled to construct a Government that would be able to resist the intrusion of future tyranny, they knew that tyranny would always sit at the doorstep of the Nation. They understood the forces that they had defeated would soon resume the conflict. And the Nation’s Patriots must have contemplated the next attempt to insinuate tyranny would be surreptitious and devious.

Assisted from the outside, they contemplated that malevolent forces would attempt to subvert the will of the people from the inside.

The only hope for America to preserve the gain of freedom won through a Revolution fought more than two centuries ago, is to hold tight to their natural law rights—those rights that the would-be destroyers of our Nation, both inside and outside the Country, have struggled mightily to constrain. These forces know full well that, as long, as Americans have the capacity and will to exercise their natural God-given rights, the Nation cannot fall. Yet, these forces that crush entire nations have made substantial inroads against this Nation in their effort to undercut and, in one case, even curtail exercise of some of those natural law rights.

Americans have all but lost the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The attack on the fundamental rights of free speech and the freedom of association (an attendant right of freedom of speech) are under siege, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, and has been, for decades, under vigorous assault.

Had these rights not been explicitly delineated, the American people would have lost, long ago, any vestige of their once free Constitutional Republic. Those who presently control Congress and the vast and powerful police, military, and judicial apparatuses of the Executive Branch of Government do not accept the reality and legitimacy of natural law rights. They categorically reject any notion of laws that stand beyond their power to create, modify, and rescind at will. Thus, the Bill of Rights, a set of natural law rights, existent in man before the inception of Government, serves as a perpetual annoyance for them.

The Antifederalists dealt with the thorny issue presented by the Federalists, among them—those who were against the creation of an express, but limited, set of natural law rights—by adding a Ninth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment states, plainly and succinctly that,

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The very presence of the Ninth Amendment buttresses the ineluctability of the first Eight. And the presence of the first Eight points to the illimitability and impenetrability of the essence of the Divine Creator. Through time, the Divine Creator will manifest through man further obligatory, eternal natural law rights that, at present rest, behind the veil of inscrutability that further elucidate the sanctity and inviolability of man’s Spirit and Soul.

And what are the American people to make of the Tenth Amendment? The Tenth Amendment says,

“‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’

The Tenth Amendment is the principal expression of federalism, an assertion that the Federal Government shares power and authority with the States and the people. But it is also an expression of autonomy and sovereignty of the people over Government, both State and Federal. This idea, rarely mentioned, is, nonetheless, made explicit in Justice Clarence Thomas’ well-reasoned and amplified dissent in the case, United States Term Limits vs. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1994).

The case involved whether the people of Arkansas can amend their State Constitution concerning the State’s electoral process. In a close decision, the majority opinion, penned by now retired Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, and joined by Associate Justices, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, ruled the people of Arkansas do not have that right!?

Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Associate Justices Scalia, O’Connor, and Thomas vociferously disagreed.

Discussing Justice Thomas’ reasoning, who penned the dissent, the author of the law review note writes, in pertinent part,

“Thomas contends that all power stems from the people of the states and that ‘reserved’ powers therefore include all those not specifically granted to the federal government in the Constitution. . . . Justice Thomas reasons that the ultimate source of the Constitution’s authority is the consent of the people of each individual state. Further, ‘because the people of the several States are the only true source of power . . . the Federal Government enjoys no authority beyond what the Constitution confers: the Federal Government’s powers are limited and enumerated.’” “Term Limits and the Tenth Amendment: The Popular Sovereignty Model of Reserved Powers, 29 Loy. L.A. L. Review 1163 (April 1996), Vince Lee Farhat.

Although this topic of elections and electoral process would seem abstruse as discussed in the above-referenced law review note, it is of paramount importance in the upcoming midterm elections in November 2022, and it has implications for the rights of the American people.

It boils down to this:

The would-be Destroyers of the Nation realize that they need a few more years to complete their agenda—involving further destabilization of society, dissolution of the Nation’s institutions, and the dismantling of the Republic, for its eventual inclusion in a supra-transnational governmental structure embracing the world.

To obtain time, these Destructors must maintain firm control over the electoral process in the upcoming election. The liberal-wing of the U.S. Supreme Court knows this as well, and their rulings in the Arkansas case suggests a desire to defeat the doctrine of Federalism, underlying the Tenth Amendment, and their rulings also underscore the liberal-wing’s contempt for the notion that the American people remain the sole true sovereign over all Government, State, and Federal.

Anti-American forces have already stolen one U.S. Election, undermining the great strides made during the Trump years to impede the Clinton/Bush/Obama Globalist agenda that had severely weakened the security of the Nation and undermined the sovereignty of the American people.

Americans must not allow these malignant forces to waylay the 2022 midterm elections, as well.

About The Arbalest Quarrel:

Arbalest Group created `The Arbalest Quarrel’ website for a special purpose. That purpose is to educate the American public about recent Federal and State firearms control legislation. No other website, to our knowledge, provides as deep an analysis or as thorough an analysis. Arbalest Group offers this information free.

For more information, visit: www.arbalestquarrel.com.

Arbalest Quarrel

POLICE STATE: NJ’s Newest Carry Case Exposes How ‘Justifiable Need’ Was Slipped Into NJ Law

BY JOHN PETROLINO

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2022/02/njs-newest-carry-case-exposes-how-justifiable-need-was-slipped-into-nj-law; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes:

Read more: https://www.ammoland.com/2022/02/njs-newest-carry-case-exposes-how-justifiable-need-was-slipped-into-nj-law/#ixzz7KhMACGEm
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
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New Jersey – -(AmmoLand.com)- Jay Factor is a small businessman and resident of New Jersey.

The life-long inhabitant of the Garden State is also at the center of a new challenge to the “justifiable need” standard which is a requirement when trying to apply for a permit to carry in the State. This is not Factor’s first rodeo, by a long shot.

In fact, Factor’s first application for a permit to carry was on October 10, 2006. A lot has happened in over the decade and a half since his first denial, including the Heller decision, the McDonald decision, the orders and remand of Caetano, and also being part of the brain trust behind the Cheeseman case, which was denied cert by the Supreme Court of the United States.

One of the things that first attracted me to Factor is that he’s a fantastic study on the history of firearm laws in New Jersey. There are several podcast interviews that he’s done where he talks about some of the inception of the Garden State’s first gun control measures. He ought to have a documentary made of him talking about the history of oppression in NJ!

What makes Factor’s arguments unique is that he put the time in to get all the little details of the laws. Where and why they came about. I remember talking to him once, telling him he needs to write a book on the subject, and he had told me there are about a hundred pages of reading involved in being able to get one page of material that’s worth discussing in our context.

I had the pleasure to meet Jay Factor at a rally in Trenton on March 26, 2019.

Cheeseman, Factor, and I were musing while standing in the forum of the Legislative Annex in the thick of the viper pit. We noted that by that time the following year we’d all be holding up freshly issued carry permits. That did not come to fruition. The only thing about that narrative that I believe to be false is just the timeline. One day I do think we’ll be waving our cards in New Jersey under the hubris noses of the legislators that look down upon us peasants as if we’re subhuman.

Factor’s latest round started on September 16, 2020, when he applied for another carry permit.

Besides that, the entirety of New Jersey’s permitting system is a giant racketeering scheme of RICO proportions, the “roadblock” to New Jersey citizens qualifying for their permit to carry is the “justifiable need” provision in the law. But that law wasn’t always the law, which is something that Factor points out in both his argument during his permit hearing, as well as in his filing documents.

At a minimum, Factor’s civil rights have been infringed upon just based on the timeline of his latest crack at trying to get a permit to carry. He filed in September of 2020 and got his denial from the Chief of Police of his jurisdiction on October 29, 2020. From there, after extensive back and forth, up to and including every COVID-19 excuse the county had in the book, he finally had his permit denial hearing on July 7, 2021.

During that hearing, Factor laid out his arguments which were also repeated in his filing, spoiler alert, the judge denied the issuance of his permit in an “envelope” opinion which was issued on July 21, 2021. Going from the hearing to receiving the opinion from the judge had to have been the most expeditious part of the process Factor had suffered. Everything else has been ripe with infringement in the way of slow-rolling and putting up red tape at every turn. Speculation is that the State does not want all this information out in the open, what Factor found.

Factor filed and served his brief in the matter of Docket Number A-003678-20 to the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division.

From the statement of facts filed in Factor’s brief:

1. Argument: Factor was under no constitutional obligation to provide Chief McGovern, the County Judge, or Prosecutor Brennan with specific threats, previous attacks, or a “special purpose” with his application.

2. Argument: New Jersey’s core substantive standard of Siccardi for determining when a permit to carry should be issued to a private citizen has failed THE CAETANO CONJUNCTIVE TEST.

3. Argument: Judge O’Malley failed to examine the new evidence submitted by Factor that THE SICCARDI RULE and thus 2C:58-4c ¶ 3 violated the Administrative Procedures Act.

4. Judge O’Malley failed to take into account new Evidence which proves the Siccardi Police Chiefs, and the State Police Investigation Unit, did not have valid rules in force in late 1969 & 1970 and the Siccardi Rule was therefore nullity making N.J.S.A. 2C:58-4c ¶ 3 void.

5. The Prosecutor should not have been allowed at the Zoom Hearing and all of his “objections to (this) particular applicant” should be thrown out.

6. Conclusion: The Siccardi Rule N.J.S.A 2C:58-4c ¶3 was never “presumptively lawful” as per Heller’s Note 26 at 2817.

Some of the more interesting points, in this case, surround what Mr. Factor learned in over the decade and a half he spent engrossed in the subject. The once scorned Factor from 2006 was coming to this new battle armed with dust-covered citations. Had Factor been issued his permit in ‘06 there’s a lot we would not know about the history of these laws.  Somewhat humorously, Factor even offered a preamble to the judge presiding over his carry hearing when he delivered arguments concerning the subsequent statement of facts 3 & 4 of his brief.

I don’t want to be disparaging when I say you guys or Government, but when I say the State, is not accurate. You seem to be much younger than myself and the prosecutor. This all took place when we were either very little or before we were born. So I’m just going to tell you how this broke down and I’m just going to tell you that this is not legislative intent and it has never been legislative intent.

What was Factor alluding to? The “justifiable need” provision of the law. In his research, Factor uncovered a very important detail about how “justifiable need” entered into the administrative code in New Jersey. This was not something that was voted on through the legislature, but from an opinion in a challenge to a carry permit denial in 1971.

From his hearing on the permit application:

So the standards are there in 1966 when A-165 becomes the gun control law. In 1968 we get the Administrative Procedures Act. So if we’re in Siccardi in 1971, if the standards become more strict, those standards had to show up somewhere. They’re not in the New Jersey register and they’re not in the New Jersey administrative code, which means they’re not — there’s nothing lawful because they violated the Administrative Procedures Act.

I gave John Chancellari evidence of the New Jersey register 1969, the — the page name is 1 N.J.R. 30. And if you look at 1 N.J.R. 30, there is no urgent necessity. There is no specific threat. There is no previous attack. There is no special danger to the app — to the applicant’s life.

Fast forward back to Siccardi. The special need came from a law review, the final report national commission on the causes and prevention of violence. That didn’t come from the legislature. It says it — (audio interference) Pries (indiscernible) at page 55 citing — citing Siccardi at 552. The previous attacks — previous attacks comes from the assignment judges in Siccardi.

Somehow this goes on as case law for decades, an unwritten rule among prosecutors and judges, until it’s entered into the register going against the Administrative Procedures Act. A further explanation is offered in Factor’s brief.

The post-Wheeler evidence proves that THE SICCARDI RULE never entered the Register, or the Code until 1991. And not an Administrative Rule by the Superintendent of the State Police but as New Jersey Supreme Court precedent:

N.J.A.C 13:54-2.3 reiterates the statutory criteria which must be satisfied in order to obtain the issuance of a permit to carry a handgun. This and other amendments in subchapter 2 reflect the standards enunciated by the Supreme Court decision in In re Preis, 118 N.J. 564 (1990). 1 [23 N.J.R. 2251. Pa. 30.; (Cover page) 23 N.J.R. 2205. Pa 2 31.; .64 Tr. 6-7.; See In the Matter of Factor, GP No. 16-3 2020. Pg. 2. No.10(e). Pa. 32.]

This fact was brought up in the Cheeseman case and it’s everyone’s speculation that’s why the legislature moved to have the “justifiable need” definition entered into the New Jersey statute. Assembly Bill 2758 was signed into law in 2018 adding the following language to the statute:

Each application form shall be accompanied by a written certification of justifiable need to carry a handgun, which shall be under oath and, in the case of a private citizen, shall specify in detail the urgent necessity for self-protection, as evidenced by specific threats or previous attacks which demonstrate a special danger to the applicant’s life that cannot be avoided by means other than by issuance of a permit to carry a handgun.  Where possible, the applicant shall corroborate the existence of any specific threats or previous attacks by reference to reports of the incidents to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

The irony of this of course, beyond that the state has been operating basically illegally on the matter of permits to carry since the ’90s, in reality, the ’70s, is that the legislature (and Governor Phil Murphy) had codified this crime in a post-Heller world.

The lawmakers and governor knowingly passed and signed into law a provision that goes against the Heller opinion in several ways. Instead of folding their hand, admitting defeat, and trying to reorganize the law to something a little more permissive, something that’ll hold some constitutional muster, the hubris lot of elitists doubled down.

The fact that “justifiable need” goes against Heller is noted in Factor’s arguments at his hearing as well as in his brief.

And then — and then Heller — Girda [Gura] said, however, if the licensing requirement is, we only want to give license to people who look a certain way or it depends on how we feel or if the licensing office is only open on Thursdays at 3 o’clock in the morning, that’s what the Siccardi Rule is. It depends on how we feel. We’re going to decide this thing on a case-by-case basis, that’s my case.

Heller has taken the ability of Chief McGovern to decide my permit on a case-by-case basis away from him. There’s a standard. Either I’m qualified to exercise my Second Amendment rights or I’m not. And Heller has taken that away from you. You are to determine whether I’m qualified to exercise my Second Amendment rights or not. You have — you have other standards that you can go on. Did I qualify in the shooting test?

The enumerated items we — we discussed. Did I pass all that? Do I have the firearms ID card? Did I pass a background check? Was I fingerprinted? All that stuff. But the case-by-case determinations are off the table.

That’s my case, Judge. I know no ones ever given you a case like that before, but I’m not the guy who’s going to stand here on front of you and grovel and say I’ve been attacked or I have a special threat. It’s just not going to happen. I’m going to rest on that and I appreciate your time.

The standards were discussed during the hearing and Chief McGovern could not give a specific guideline on what exactly fulfilled the requirements to reach the burden of “justifiable need”. He conceded there was no guidebook to tell the chiefs how to weigh the interests of the applicants. We can be certain the guideline is “Just don’t issue them (Unless they’re connected to one of us, then by all means. Or if they have lots of money.).”

One of the other things that Jay Factor brought up in his filing and arguments is the Caetano Conjunctive Test.

The State’s case is that it’s dangerous for me to have a 2C:58-4 permit and that they need to weigh that danger based on my previous attacks. They need to weigh that danger based on my specific threat or the special danger to my life. But the Court in Catano (phonetic) [Caetano]– and you familiar with Catano [Caetano]?

[…]

It was in my brief. Are you familiar with that case, the Taver (phonetic) [taser] case in Massachusetts?

[…]

[I] tried to point out previously, what Miller said is, if it can contribute to the common defense, the weapon is protected by the Second Amendment. And so by pointing out that it’s a common handgun, I’m pointing out that it contributes to the common defense, that’s under Miller.

So this is — this is my case. Yes, Glock 9-millimeter is very dangerous. We’re all aware of that, but I’m not disqualified from my Second Amendment right and that is the crux of Heller. When Heller says, the very enumeration of the right takes out of the hand of Government, the next couple sentences on page 2822, the decision that Heller makes is, “assuming Dick Anthony Heller is not disqualified from his Second Amendment rights, the District must issue — must allow him to register his handgun.”

Mr. Factor first established that the exact firearm he qualified with and intends to carry is the same make as those commonly used by the police. During the examination of the Chief, he agreed with that summation. The Glock handguns are dangerous, but they’re not unusual, which is the standard that needs to be met, also playing into “common use” outlined in Heller.

I’ve had the chance to review the argument and transcript from the carry hearing and this is an exciting case to follow. As noted more than once, Factor’s grasp of the history on these concepts makes reading the narrative that more appealing. On the page, the fact that New Jersey does not issue carry permits to the regular peasants, the story to get here reads like a pulp noir. This story is filled with corruption, mystery, and a dash of “we’re better than you” from our government officials.

Where’s this leave Factor now? On January 7th 2022, Factor received a “deficiency letter” nitpicking away at his eloquently written pro se complaint. Last I checked in, Factor filed on January 12th an extension in order to meet the requirements of the court, and by the 25th he “got the motion in and accepted.”

Now, like everything else in the judicial system, we wait.

John Petrolino is a US Merchant Marine Officer, writer, author of Decoding Firearms: An Easy to Read Guide on General Gun Safety & Use and NRA certified pistol, rifle, and shotgun instructor living under and working to change New Jersey’s draconian and unconstitutional gun laws. You can find him on the web at www.johnpetrolino.com on twitter at @johnpetrolino and on instagram @jpetrolinoiii .

John Petrolino
John Petrolino

 

Pakistani Teen Brings His Entire Tribe to Christ: Remarkable True Story

BY Savannah Hulsey Pointer

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/pakistani-teen-brings-his-entire-tribe-to-christ-remarkable-true-story/; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes:

17-year-old Pakistani boy led his entire village to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ in what is an inspiring true story from the Mission News Network.

QUICK FACTS:
  • A 17-year-old going by the pseudonym “Rehan,” received Christ as his Savior after meeting a truck driver who gave him an audio Bible, according to Mission Network News.
  • The trucker, Safdar, began to meet with Rahen to talk about God, and shortly after the boy was saved and baptized, but he was not able to keep the good news to himself.
  • Rahen began to share the Gospel with family members and neighbors, at great personal risk, and his parents were the first to receive the Gospel for themselves.
  • Nehemiah from Forgotten Missions International explained that the fear of persecution didn’t dissuade the teen and he was able to bring the 60-person tribe to faith in Christ.
  • Mission Network News reported that every person in Rahen’s 60-person tribe reportedly stopped participating in Muslim prayer and turned toward Jesus.
STATE OF RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION IN PAKISTAN:
  • “In Pakistan, Christians are considered second-class citizens and are discriminated against in every aspect of life,” Open Doors reported. “Church leaders can be arrested if they don’t abide by the authorities’ wishes. These arrests act as warnings to the Christian minority and intimidates them further.”
  • The missions group is asking for prayer for Rehan’s tribe and others in the area due to the aggressive hostility toward Christians in Pakistan.
  • The country has been put on Open Doors USA’s “2022 World Watch List” in the eighth spot and was listed as one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a Christian.
BACKGROUND:
  • Previously, Faithwire reported a number of horrific instances of abuse toward Christians in Pakistan, including a teen who was abducted and forcibly converted to Islam.
  • Another Christian nurse also reported abuse after disagreeing with a Muslim co-worker, which are two stories that only scratch the surface of accounts of persecution in Pakistan.
  • To hear more about the stories of Christians exercising their faith in the face of persecution in Pakistan, read more about Pakistani Christians here.

Vaxxed Over 300% More Likely to Be ‘Out Sick’ with COVID Than Unvaxxed: WSJ

BY JON FLEETWOOD

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/vaxxed-over-300-more-likely-to-be-out-sick-with-covid-than-unvaxxed-wsj/; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes:

Vaccinated “were the most likely to have worked outside the home.”

QUICK FACTS:
  • The number of workers taking time off because they were sick with Covid-19 or caring for someone else who was sick surged at the beginning of the year, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports.
  • About 6.6 million vaccinated workers were out sick at the beginning of the year, according to a Census survey, compared to only 2.1 million unvaccinated workers.
  • That the vaccinated are so much more likely to be so infected by coronavirus than the unvaccinated raises questions about the vaccine’s efficacy.
  • It also calls into question the CDC’s claim that the Covid-19 mRNA gene therapy drug “helps protect adults and children ages 5 years and older from getting sick or severely ill with COVID-19 and helps protect those around them.”
  • The surge in sick workers hit Maryland, New York, and Texas the hardest, when at the beginning of the year more than 1 in 20 workers in each state were unable to work because they were sick with or caring for someone with Covid, WSJ reports.
Screenshot from wsj.com taken February 11, 2022
Screenshot from wsj.com taken February 11, 2022
VACCINATED WORKERS MOST LIKELY TO BE OUT SICK WITH COVID:
  • Workers who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine—the smallest group among those vaccinated—were the most likely to have worked outside the home, according to WSJ.
BACKGROUND:
  • About 87% of adults who did any work at the beginning of the year were vaccinated, WSJ notes.
  • Higher-income workers were more likely to have had three or more shots of a Covid vaccine.
  • South Africa boasts one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world—only about 33% of the region’s population being vaccinated with the gene therapy drug—but it also has one of the lowest covid infection rate, now standing at only 3,169 new cases.
  • That’s compared to Israel, which has 31,422 new cases, though the country has one of the highest vaccination rates, at 72.6%.
Screenshot from Google.com taken February 11, 2022
Screenshot from Google.com taken February 11, 2022
Screenshot from Google.com taken February 11, 2022
Screenshot from Google.com taken February 11, 2022

Biden’s New Energy Department Pick Is His Most Outrageous and Appalling Yet

Woodlands designer makes dress worn at Academy Awards

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/02/bidens-new-energy-department-pick-is-his-most-outrageous-and-appalling-yet; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes: 

Biden’s New Energy Department Pick Is His Most Outrageous and Appalling Yet
FEB 11, 2022 7:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER23 COMMENTS

My latest in PJ Media:

Sam Brinton (“they/them”), had some “pretty BIG news” for his friends and followers on LinkedIn recently: “I have accepted the offer to serve as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy for the Department of Energy. In this role I’ll be doing what I always dreamed of doing, leading the effort to solve the nation’s nuclear waste challenges.” Brinton also noted proudly that he would “even be (to my knowledge) the first gender fluid person in federal government leadership.” He is much more than that. He is, to the best of my knowledge, the first drag queen and the first person to discuss his affinity for sex with animals to hold an office of the public trust.

Brinton identifies himself on his LinkedIn page as “Solving the World’s #NuclearWaste Challenges and Protecting LGBTQ Youth from #ConversionTherapy.” He combines these two concerns in his drag queen persona, “Sister Ray Dee O’Active,” in which guise he says: “I am the slutty one. And the nerdy one. #sexynerd.” He has also combined his life’s preoccupations in previous government work, according to the bio he provided to the “LGBTQ Religious Archives Network”: “Sam has worn his stilettos to Congress to advise legislators about nuclear policy and to the White House where he advised President Obama and Michelle Obama on LGBT issues.”

Brinton is also involved in “puppy play,” which apparently involves grown men putting on dog masks and behaving like animals for sexual kicks. In a 2016 article in Metro Weekly, a man named Sam, with no last name given, is interviewed at length; an accompanying photo makes it clear that Sam is Sam Brinton. Brinton is identified in the article as a “handler” of the men pretending to be puppies, and explains: “It’s the concept of the teacher and nurturer…. My job is to make sure that while he’s in headspace, I’m keeping him safe.” He says of one of his companions in this bizarre role-playing: “Pup and I have what I feel is one of the most ideally perfect connections between our personal and kink life. Both of us have other partners, so we come into this space, and then we come out of it, knowing the boundaries of where your kink and non-kink relationships begin and end.” Yeah, good to know.

In the same article, Brinton explains some of the difficulties inherent in this game: “I actually have trouble when we transition from pup play to having sex. Like, ‘No, I can’t have you whimper like that when we’re having sex,’ because I don’t want to mix that world. It’s interesting, because he doesn’t have to come out of pup mode to have me f**k him. I personally have to bring him out of pup perception for me. But then I’m still treating him as a submissive to me.”

Brinton also defends the concept against those strait-laced normies who might object to the whole idea: “One of the hardest things about being a handler is that I’ve honestly had people ask, ‘Wait, you have sex with animals?’ They believe it’s abusive, that it’s taking advantage of someone who may not be acting up to a level of human responsibility … The other misperception is that I have some really messed up background, like, did I have some horrible childhood trauma that made me like to have sex with animals.”

There is more. Read the rest here.- https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/02/10/bidens-new-energy-department-pick-is-his-most-outrageous-and-appalling-yet-n1558281

Iran: Ten Christian converts forced to take reeducation classes led by Islamic clerics

BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/02/iran-10-christian-converts-forced-to-take-reeducation-classes-led-by-islamic-clerics; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes:

In Shia Iran, converting to Christianity or any faith outside of Islam constitutes “propaganda against the Islamic Republic.”

But there is a way around it: reeducation to return the convert to Islam. And if they refuse, Shi’ite Islam, like Sunni Islam, prescribes death for apostasy:

Shaykh al-Kulayni narrates a sahíh (correct) hadith from `Ammãr as-Sãbãti who said: I heard (Imam) Abu `Abdullãh (as-Sãdiq) (a.s.) saying, “A Muslim from among the Muslims who renounces Islam and rejects the prophethood of Muhammad and considers him untrue, then verily his blood is lawful (mubãh) for anyone who hears that from him, his wife is to be separated from him the day he became murtad, his wealth will be divided among his heirs, and his wife will observe the `idda of a widow (i.e., four months). The Imam is obliged to kill him, and not ask him to seek forgiveness.” (Furu al-Kãfi, vol. 7, p. 257)

Converts in Iran are often imprisoned, with a threat of death.

There is no freedom of religion in Islam, as well as no freedom of expression, and yet when mainstream Islamic groups set up their Muslim advocacy groups in free societies in the name of “human rights,” they impose their “Islamophobia” subterfuge on all of society in order to continue expanding the tenets of their religion everywhere they go, but they do it (ironically) under the guise of “tolerance,” “diversity” and “anti-racism.”

In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled “that an Iranian who sought asylum in Switzerland based on religious grounds could be deported to his home country because his life was not in danger” because the man “did not have reason to expect torture or to fear for his life, as long as he didn’t pose a threat to the Iranian government and “practice[d] his faith discreetly.” Absurd.

“10 Christian converts forced to take Islamic re-education classes in Iran: report,” by Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post, February 7, 2022:

Intelligence agents in Iran’s Khuzestan Province have instructed 10 Christian converts who had been cleared of all charges to participate in “re-education” classes led by Islamic clerics, according to a watchdog report.

Agents of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told the 10 Christians, including eight who were cleared last November of any crime in a court in Dezful, on Jan. 29 that they will have to attend 10 sessions with Islamic clerics to “guide them back onto the right path,” Article 18, a nonprofit that promotes religious freedom and tolerance for Christians in Iran, reported.

The IRGC had summoned more converts, but they didn’t appear. However, those who didn’t appear were called and asked why they hadn’t appeared.

The IRGC arrested four converts in the southwestern city of Dezful last April and charged them with “propaganda against the Islamic Republic” because they participated in a house church, according to an earlier report from Article 18. The IRGC also summoned other Christian converts for interrogation at the time. The four arrested had personal property confiscated for nearly six months, including necessary items for their children’s schoolwork, laptops and mobile phones.

The U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern states that the “mandatory Islamic re-education classes directly conflict with the rulings of the Civil and Revolutionary Court of Dezful that said the group ‘merely converted to a different religion.’”

“The court noted that this apostasy could be punished under Islamic Sharia law but was ‘not criminalized in the laws of Iran,’” ICC noted in a statement.

In reference to other charges that Iranian Christians often face, the courts also ruled they “didn’t carry out any propaganda against other groups,” ICC added.

In 2021, Revolutionary Guards were responsible for 12 of the 38 documented incidents of Christians being arrested or their homes and churches being raided, Article 18 noted.

“So-called ‘re-education’ sessions have become much more common in recent years, even appearing in the list of ‘corrective punishments’ on official court papers,” Article 18 detailed.

Converts from Islam to Christianity are most at risk of persecution in Iran, especially by the government and to a lesser extent by society and their families, Open Doors USA states in a fact sheet on Iran.

“The government sees the growth of the church in Iran as an attempt by Western countries to undermine Islam and the Islamic regime of Iran, the fact sheet states. “House groups made up of converts from Muslim backgrounds are often raided, and both their leaders and members have been arrested, prosecuted and given long prison sentences for ‘crimes against national security.’”….

Around the World, Authorities Are Cracking Down on ‘Freedom Convoys’

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/02/11/around-the-world-authorities-are-cracking-down-on-freedom-convoys-n1558379; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes:

Paris police are threatening truckers in a French “Freedom Convoy” with prison if they try to block traffic. Meanwhile, authorities in New Zealand made more than 100 arrests as they moved to clear a protest encampment of thousands outside the country’s parliament building.

Something is happening in the world. At present, it’s a formless, shapeless mass, and barely discernible. But something wonderful—and scary and exciting and possibly earth-shattering—is happening in countries across the globe.

It’s not some socialist revolt of the masses, although ordinary people are largely driving the movement. The sound you hear coming from these Freedom Convoys is the sound of people who’ve had enough and want to control their own destinies once again. And authorities are refusing to oblige.

Mandates may be the proximate cause of the Freedom Convoys, but it’s what the mandates represent that’s at issue: the micro-managing of the lives of people who are being treated like small children instead of rational adults.

Forcing people to do something for their own good just because the powers that be have decided what’s best is no way to live in a free country—in any country. And it’s clear that governments haven’t caught on to what these protests are really about.

The U.S. government is begging the Canadian government to take action to clear the bridges on the border that have been blocked by truckers in the Freedom Convoys. Apparently, the U.S. auto industry is being negatively impacted by the blockade and some factories have been forced to shut down.

The White House said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with their Canadian counterparts and urged them to help resolve the standoff.

Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said Royal Canadian Mounted Police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor, Ottawa and Coutts, Alberta where another border blockade is happening.

Trudeau met virtually with leaders of Canada’s opposition late Thursday and said he spoke with Windsor’s mayor. Trudeau’s office said there is a willingness to “respond with whatever it takes” to end the blockades.

That certainly sounds ominous. But wouldn’t it be better to, like, you know, talk to the protesters before going in and seizing their rigs and bashing their heads?

In Canada, even some on the right have abandoned the Freedom Convoy after Canadian TV dwelt lovingly on some Nazi flags and the Stars and Bars flying in the protest crowd. This proved to be too much for the mild-mannered Canadians. Perhaps one in a thousand people at the protest harbor hateful thoughts, but the coverage in the Canadian press is making it appear as if there’s a Nazi Party convention is in town.

Or worse, that January 6-style “insurrectionists” are trying to take over the Canadian government…or something.

Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford, meanwhile, moved to cut off funding for the protests by successfully asking a court to freeze millions of dollars in donations to the convoy through crowd-funding site GiveSendGo. Ford has called the protests an occupation.

Canadian officials previously got GoFundMe to cut off funding after protest organizers used the site to raise about 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.8 million). GoFundMe determined that the fundraising effort violated the site’s terms of service due to unlawful activity.

With political and economic pressure mounting, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens announced the city will seek a court injunction to end the occupation.

The Mullahs Close in on the Bomb Darkness descends on a region’s stability.

BY BRUCE THORNTON

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/what-about-iran-mullahs-close-bomb-bruce-thornton/#.Ygeh7lVtD7w.gmail; republished below in full unedited for educational & research purposes:

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

While we try to figure out Russia’s intentions for Ukraine, Iran is getting closer to a deal that will leave it a nuclear power. Discussions in Vienna are back on, and hopeful dispatches are sent out by Western diplomats. But given Iran’s maximalist demands, and the Biden administration’s fetish of “diplomatic engagement,” things aren’t looking good for the region’s stability.

Ever since Biden rejoined the talks to restart the deal Trump wisely walked away from, Iran has shown patent contempt for this country and its diplomats. Meanwhile, the advanced centrifuges keep spinning weapons-grade uranium. What else explains the arrogant, dismissive tone Iranian negotiators take with the U.S., particularly the demand that we lift punitive sanctions before the real talks begin? When Biden’s team restored the sanctions waivers on European nations, “Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called it ‘good but insufficient’ on Sunday, while Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh went further, calling sanctions relief a ‘red line’ in the talks.”

You don’t need a degree in foreign relations to see what Iran’s game is––keep talking until they can present their bomb as a fait accompli. North Korea successfully played that game for 30 years. With Biden’s team so eager for a deal that they’ll stand for this contempt, no wonder Iran thinks they can pull off that scam once again. In fact, they’re even more confident now that Russia and China are playing big-brother to the regime. China’s money and oil purchases have taken the sting out of U.S. sanctions. So of course, Biden restores the waivers so Europeans, faced with mounting energy costs, can contribute to Iran’s fisc as well.

But this cringing approach to the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism has characterized our response to Iran’s aggression from the beginning. Jimmy Carter set the tone with his tentative handling of the hostage crisis, allowing the new regime to humiliate a great power. The Soviets got the message, and invaded Afghanistan that same year. The kidnapped diplomats came home after Carter paid the Iranians danegeld, and lost the election to Ronald Reagan.

Reagan’s tenure, however, was a mixed bag. In 1983 Iranian-trained terrorists blew up 241 of our military personnel. While the French and the Israelis bombed terrorists in the Bekka Valley in retaliation for attacks on their diplomats and personnel, our troops were moved onto a ship offshore. Then there was the Iran-Contra scandal of 1984-86, in which the U.S. used Israeli middle-men to sell Iran advanced weapons, and then used the profits to arm the Contras in Nicaragua. No one seemed to get the moral hazard that comes from doing business with a regime that calls you the Great Satan and has declared war on you, and whose leader, the architect of the revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini, proclaimed, “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle,” i.e. jihad.

Towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war, however, Reagan showed the mullahs a glint of steel. When the Iranians tried to disrupt tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf, Reagan ordered severe punishment on its navy and terrorist units fighting from oil platforms. The Tanker War ended when Ronald Reagan retaliated for a missile attack on an American warship by eventually destroying two Iranian oil platforms, two Iranian ships, and six Iranian gunboats.

Yet since then, we have seldom called Iran’s bluff. Indeed, Barack Obama telegraphed his desperation for a “legacy” nuclear deal, and signed an agreement that not only put Iran on the glide-path to nuclear weapons, but ignored its development of missiles capable of delivering nuclear bombs. Nor was Iran’s malign adventurism, its sponsorship of terrorist gangs across the Middle East, on the table. Iran just pocketed those gains for free, along with pallets of cash. Obama gave the mullahs everything, and got nothing other than the feckless praise of the “rules-based international order” clerks who put “diplomatic engagement” ahead of our country’s security and interests.

Then came Donald Trump. He knew, as did many Americans, that as the Russian fable has it, “You don’t talk to wolves until you’ve skinned them.” He ditched the preemptive cringe our diplomats employ to show hardened, ruthless enemies that we are noble and civilized. He left the deal, recognizing it was inimical to our security and interests. He also took steps that the foreign policy mavens all declared would ignite a war. He moved our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, killed Republican Guard hero Qassem Suleimani, and brokered agreements between Israel and four Muslim states. Any of these achievements were impossible to the professional diplomats, who run on old paradigms they return to over and over, no matter how many times they’ve shifted.

So of course, such achievement would not be allowed to stand. They by comparison made the “lightworker” Barack Obama look juvenile. The simulacrum of a president we call Joe Biden followed his handlers’ instructions regarding the Iran nuclear deal, which was their great success in “diplomatic engagement,” instead of recognizing the Munich-class disaster it was.

At this point, our negotiators––with whom the haughty Iranians won’t deal directly––seem eager for a deal no matter what. The Europeans want oil and trade with Iran, and if they have to sup with the devil to get it, so be it. The can will be kicked down the road yet again. An enemy of over forty years, with the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands, will end up with weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, this renewed deal will harm the interests and security of our allies in the region, especially Israel. Allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons will put the whole region in peril––if only because Israel’s history has taught them that when a lunatic says he wants to destroy your people, you’d better listen and not wait for him to try conclusions.

The “international community,” as we call it, has abused Israel since the day it was created. Israel, a liberal democracy that acknowledges human rights and rule by law, has had to face three invasions and endless terror attacks, with its every defensive move second-guessed by “new world order” globalists who find Israel’s patriotism and faith gauche.

Finally, if we leave it up to Israel alone to take action against Iran’s nukes, we will have besmirched our country’s history forever.