HELEN TRIES IT: Planigent Business Plans was kind enough to send me a copy of their simple software that lets you make up a business plan in less than 24 hours for $29.00. I took a look at the templates and it seemed straightforward and easy to understand even for me. Post-pandemic a lot of people are starting new businesses (like Helen’s Page) and this might come in handy.
Archive for 2021
July 19, 2021
THE COLORADO RESISTANCE: Jefferson County Sheriff won’t enforce Foothills concealed carry ban; says civil offense the district’s responsibility.
Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader has sent a letter to the Foothills Parks and Recreation District (FPRD) clarifying any role his office would play in a possible future regulation to ban the concealed carry of a firearm by lawfully-permitted citizens on district-managed property.
“I have substantial concern in taking action against an individual who is otherwise acting in a legal and proper manner,” Shrader said in part in the letter.
Shrader’s office sent Complete Colorado, which broke the story outlining the district’s plan, a copy of the letter.
At issue is Senate Bill 21-256, which allows local governments to enact gun control laws within their jurisdiction that are “not less restrictive than state laws governing the sale, purchase, transfer, or possession of the firearm, ammunition, or firearm component or accessory.”
In other words, local governments may enact gun regulations only if they are stricter than those at the state level. A local government could not, for instance, expand gun rights or loosen existing restrictions under the new law, as one might expect under the traditional understanding of local control.
It certainly what I expect from Democrats’ understanding of local control.
ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT SUBURBIA: Not sure I agree with much of his analysis, but I have to credit David Larson, writing in The Federalist, with some interesting and arresting insights about the growing debate over the federal government’s aspiration to control local zoning.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Lying Democrats Are Anti-Vaxxers and COVID Superspreaders. “The nonstop COVID drama is a bit much. Didn’t we all get enough of that last year? Social media is flooded with variant and vaccination news and harassment. It’s on the other side of tedious at this point. If you listen to Team Biden and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media it’s only Republicans who are bringing everybody’s least favorite plague to new people.”
WHY THE LEFT IS WINNING IN TWO SENTENCES: A guest post at The Lid by Dr. Joel Holmes captures the strategic and tactical essence of the present correlation of forces.
VACCINE RESISTANCE IS A WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON, EVEN IN CHINA:
Several local governments in China are planning to bar residents who haven’t been vaccinated against Covid-19 from accessing public venues, stirring controversy as the country makes a push for herd immunity.
In recent days, a dozen counties and cities in the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi set late-August deadlines for people 18 years or older to complete a two-shot vaccine regimen, according to similarly worded online statements. Many of them also set dates in late July by which unvaccinated people would be barred from entering schools, libraries, prisons, nursing homes and inpatient facilities at hospitals without a valid medical exemption.
Some of the localities attributed their new policies to “national, provincial and municipal arrangements,” without explaining whether they received a decree from the central government.
China is dealing with sporadic outbreaks of Covid-19 and authorities have been offering homegrown vaccines free of charge since last December.
The government notices have sparked online pushback from some Chinese and triggered a debate—as in the U.S. and elsewhere—about whether people should be required to present proof of inoculation to travel, work or undertake other routine activities outside their home. . . .
The vaccination mandates come after months in which Chinese authorities have tried to entice citizens to get inoculated by offering free milk, eggs and bubble tea—and in one city, the chance to win a free night in a luxury hotel. Some schools urged their students to get the shot, while ride-hailing companies such as Didi Global Inc. have required drivers to get vaccinated. At many state-owned firms, getting vaccinated is seen as an act of duty.
China’s National Health Commission hasn’t declared a nationwide vaccination mandate, nor has it signaled to the public that it will. It didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Tao Lina, a former immunologist at the Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that it wouldn’t be appropriate for the central government to explicitly require people to take vaccines, but he said many more localities would follow suit and that Beijing wouldn’t stop them. . . .
News of vaccination mandates has been met with skepticism on Chinese social media, with some users saying the local authorities were going too far.
It “goes against the government’s original pledge that vaccinations would be voluntary,” wrote one user on Twitter-like Weibo, expressing a sentiment widely repeated across the platform.
A woman surnamed Wang wrote that she opposed the policy even though she had already gotten two shots. It would be unfair for people who couldn’t get vaccinated due to pre-existing medical conditions to have to then explain their conditions in public in order to enter venue sites, she wrote. She is from Jinan, Shandong province, where local authorities haven’t published such mandates.
Surveys by universities in China and the U.S. suggest that Chinese people are more accepting of Covid-19 vaccines compared with Americans. Still, some Chinese have balked at getting vaccinated because they feel the risk of infection inside China is low. Many also don’t trust Chinese vaccines to be safe and effective, in part because of past vaccine safety scandals.
I don’t blame them.
OH: Amazon is getting hauled into court for not recalling dangerous products the right way. “Since 2019, Amazon has sold nearly 400,000 hair dryers that could shock someone if they fell into a pool of water, 24,000 carbon monoxide detectors that didn’t actually detect carbon monoxide, and an unspecified number of ‘children’s sleepwear garments’ that didn’t meet flammability requirements, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).”
STACY MCCAIN: The First Rule of Censorship Club.
“The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.”
Something very similar is at work in the operations of Big Tech, acting as a political arms of the Biden administration. Using the pretext of suppressing “misinformation,” Facebook and other platforms are identifying and silencing the administration’s opponents and, even though this is happening in full view of anyone paying attention, you’re not going to know anything about it if you get your news from CNN, MSNBC or one of the broadcast network troika of NBC/ABC/CBS.In fact, the liberal media are engaged in “fact-checking” that labels reporting about this censorship as (you guessed it) “misinformation.”
Politico reported last week that the Democratic National Committee is going to “work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.”
Repeat: “text messages.”
The DNC is going to censor your text messages?
A lot of people (among them our friends at Gateway Pundit) were startled by this news, but then the Thought Police “fact-checkers” at USA Today went to work to label this as “misinformation,” explaining that what they were actually talking about was mass-delivery text messages sent via software platforms (known as SMS APIs), the kind of messages you get from political campaigns when you sign up to get text alerts. So the White House is not monitoring your private text messages, but instead is trying to silence groups like Turning Point USA, which sends its members alerts like, “Biden is sending goons DOOR-TO-DOOR to make you take a Covid-19 vaccine. Sign the petition to: No medical raids in America.”
Let us stipulate that a certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected in the messages that political organizations deliver to their followers. How is what TPUSA does any different than what the DNC itself sends to its supporters? If you’re signed up for such text-message alerts from any political outfit, you have volunteered to receive this stuff, and why is it that the effort to suppress “misinformation” is only directed toward opponents of the Biden administration, not its supporters?
It’s the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 all over again.
No, wait — that’s hyperbole, and perhaps even “misinformation,” but my point is that the Biden administration’s behavior is comparable to what the Adams administration was attempting to do, to suppress the publication of material deemed “dangerous” to the public interest.
This is a First Amendment violation, and the fact that the government is pressuring private companies to do it means that you can’t plead the “it’s a private company” exception.
Related: Defund the Thought Police: Psaki Admits Facebook, Twitter are State Actors.
JOHN HINDERAKER: WHY DO SOME MISTRUST THE VACCINES? “As noted here, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were themselves the most prominent of anti-vaxxers, and if some people took their skepticism too seriously, they have only themselves to blame. But there is more: Drew Holden did an excellent job, back in November 2020, of reminding us that anti-vaccine sentiment was widespread on the Left right up to the 2020 election. . . . Did the Democrats’ relentless attacks on the vaccines that were expedited by President Trump get some people killed? I suppose they probably did. But I am not aware of a single Democrat who has expressed remorse for discouraging people from taking advantage of the vaccines, or who has acknowledged their party’s 180 degree turnabout as soon as the election was over.”
Flashback: They’re Killing People:
Here’s a mashup of VACCINE MISINFORMATION from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Does Jen Psaki want Big Tech to CENSOR this?pic.twitter.com/vqnucmZjnj
— Kyle Martinsen (@KyleMartinsen_) July 16, 2021
(Bumped.)
FACE, MEET PALM: Dr. Fauci Embarrasses Himself While Trying to Mock Fox News.
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WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Inflation & Crime Spike Under Weak Democratic President: 1970s Redux.
COLD WAR II: China’s Military Has a Hidden Weakness.
New missiles and advanced platforms represent only a small part of the PLA’s endeavor to achieve parity with its adversaries. I categorize this technological advancement as “military modernization,” defined by the development of exquisite weapon systems and improvements of warfare materiel to meet military requirements. There is, however, a second bin of advancements I label as “military reform,” which is defined less by hardware and more by institutional evolutions such as a restructuring of PLA hierarchy and a reprioritization of realistic training in integrated joint operations. While the military modernization bin represents the PLA’s image of strength and tends to garner the majority of attention in press reports, the military reform bin receives less fanfare but highlights current PLA weaknesses. High-tech new weapons are useful for enabling a military’s lethality, but current military reform shortfalls hinder the PLA’s ability to employ such hardware to achieve China’s strategic political goals. To best provide a balanced analysis of the PLA’s strengths and weaknesses, analysts and policymakers should focus on assessing not only military modernization strengths, but also military reform weaknesses.
Not so much “hidden” as “rarely acknowledged.” But poor training and politicization are typical of authoritarian regimes like Beijing’s — and you can see it happening here under Joe Biden, too.
HOWARD PROFESSOR TO NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Welcome to the Sweatshop!
Three years ago, the full-time faculty who work in positions not subject to tenure, organized and voted to create a Union that covers a membership roster of less than 150 professors. And in the three years since that ratifying vote passed, Howard University has rivaled the likes of Amazon and Wal-Mart in their efforts to first block and then break the Union of non-tenure-track faculty. The Administration waged a propaganda campaign to undo organizing efforts. And after that failed to interrupt our creation, they side-stepped in-house attorneys to hire external legal counsel with experience thwarting Union organizing and collective bargaining. In three years, Howard has agreed to ZERO of the Union’s requests, offered a “best and final” offer that included ZERO of the Union’s requests, and completely left the bargaining table, leaving little options for the Faculty beyond labor actions the campus will likely see this Fall.
Why are lefty institutions such cesspits of exploitation?
A YEAR AGO THIS WAS A “CONSPIRACY THEORY” AND “DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION:” Top Biden officials now believe COVID lab-leak theory.
The Biden administration took one giant step closer to admitting that the coronavirus was leaked from a Chinese lab, a theory once derided as fanciful fiction.
An increasing number of senior administration officials engaged in a probe of the virus are now backing the theory that the virus could have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a CNN report.
Although officials still remain divided on whether the virus emerged from nature, passing from animals to humans, the acknowledgment marks a shift from the scorn that was heaped on former President Trump and a group of European scientists who first brought up the lab-leak theory during the height of the pandemic last year.
The virus has infected nearly 190 million people around the world and resulted in more than 3.5 million deaths, according to statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The World Health Organization’s director general also engaged in an about-face this week when he acknowledged that the virus could have leaked from a lab. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus now wants China to be “transparent, open and cooperate” and hand over the “raw data” that the WHO asked for at the beginning of the pandemic, he said.
Now it turns out there has always been a lab leak in EastAsia.
I’LL BELIEVE WE’RE STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF A DEADLY PANDEMIC WHEN THE PEOPLE TELLING US WE’RE STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF A DEADLY PANDEMIC START ACITING LIKE WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A DEADLY PANDEMIC. After Meeting with COVID-Infected Texas Dems, Kamala Harris Goes to Walter Reed.