USA Pushback

28/11/2021

OMICRON VARIENT: WHY IT’S A LITTLE SOON TO GO INTO FULL PANIC MODE

Travis Christensen for USA PUSHBACK

Just when you though that covid was going away, we now have the brand-spanking-new omicron variant originating from South Africa. There are concerns, probably legitimate, that omicron is highly mutable and may slip past vaccine protection. However, “concerns” are no reason to go into full panic lockdown, again. Looking at news headlines from the last few days we see that New York has declared a state of emergency, the stock market has plummeted, the crypto market has crashed, and President Biden has imposed travel bans from several countries.

I believe that current, instant level of panic is both silly and contrived. Here is why:

1) While travel bans from certain countries MAY be warranted the fact is that anyone from anywhere in the World who wants to enter America illegally can do so through the Southern border. Somehow, for some reason, the government then takes people who are detained at the border and flys them to different locations across America without informing local or state governments that they are doing so. While such a situation might sound like a paranoid fantasy this really is happening. Here in Jacksonville Florida it as been reported on local news that multiple plane loads of illegal immigrants have arrived, they disembarked, and no one knows where they went. Neither local government, the Governor, or our Congressional members were informed or have any information about what is going on. So the situation is that while the Biden administration can talk about the covid pandemic and now are imposing travel restrictions, they seem to be letting a whole lot of people cross the Southern borden and then flying some of them all over the United States. I think it is conflicting policing to have travel bans and vaccine mandates for citizens while having an open door policy for illegal immigrants. A pandemic policy for some but not for others makes no more sense than a vaccine mandate for people who are working but no mandate for the unemployed collecting government benefits.

2) Financial reporting lives off of fear and greed so they constantly publish stories to excite investors into buying or selling. The latest reported “plummet” in the stock market was only a few percentage points overall with the cruise industry getting hit harder. This is not unexpected and is no cause to panic, the stock market went through the entire delta variant surge and never blinked. As for the crypto market it was about a 10%-15% drop across the board from which it has mostly recovered. The crypto market is incredibly volatile in comparison to the stock market so a big drop is not unusual and the big investors took the drop as a “buy the dip” moment. When other people sell crypto whales buy and get richer.

3) Every time I hear anything about New York and covid I am thankful that I live in Florida. While many point at Florida as an example of what NOT to do in a pandemic what I have seen is that most individual Americans are tired of the government pushing them around on mask and vaccine issues and that individual compliance with mandates is very low. I was recently in North Carolina and at the time there was a state-imposed mandate for mask wearing in businesses, but when you walk inside the employees themselves were not wearing masks. The reason why Florida gets so much national attention is that Democrats are afraid of Governor Desantis because he has done more than any governor in America to push back against mandates from the Biden administration.

With these three things in consideration is appears the initial panic response is nothing more that 1) Biden administration trying to look like it is doing something productive, 2) reporters trying to make news, and 3) New York just being New York where the emergency order will keep the liberal-base happy but most people will ignore mandates when they can get away with it.

WHAT IS THE REAL PUBLIC HEALTH THREAT?

I am not going to downplay the public health threat because omicron could very easily spread and cause another covid spike. However, the current situation does not warrant panic. Here is why:

1) South Africa is currently at one of the lowest daily deaths from covid levels of the entire pandemic. While South Africa recently had a very bad daily death spike they were at the bottom of the curve when the omicron variant was first discovered. Whether that recent daily death spike was from the omicron variant, the delta variant, or some other coronavirus variant or combination of variants is impossible to say, but if the last death spike was from omicron then South Africa has already recovered from it.

2) The theory that omicron variant could slip past vaccine protection is probably not a cause for panic because we have seen that immunized people can still catch covid. My understanding of the scientific consensus is that covid vaccine does not prevent covid, it merely reduces symptoms to greatly reduce the individual’s chances of serious illness, death, and passing on covid to other people. Furthermore, the scientific consensus seems to be that covid resistance seems to wane 6 months after the initial vaccination but getting a booster shot brings resistance back.
South Africa has a very low level of vaccination in comparison to many Western nations. A google search will show that America currently has 59% fully vaccinated and 11% having received booster shots. Some say that Americans don’t take covid seriously, yet here with almost 60% fully vaccinated. The United Kingdom on average has had more stringent restrictions and lockdowns than America and is currently at 69% fully vaccinated and 25% boosted. Australia is a special case in that it seems that the majority of Australians love for their government to put them on house arrest. While Australia has a low booster rate of 1.6 they do have a 72% rate for full immunization. Ongoing reports from Australia reflect what I consider to be an insane level of restrictions to personal liberty for a nation with a 72% immunization rate. I don’t understand how anyone could be deathly afraid of a disease that they are immunized against so can only assume the majority of Australians love to live under the heel of their government.

In contrast, South Africa only has a 24% fully vaccinated rate and a booster rate so low it is not even listed. If vaccines are at all effective in reducing death rates it is obvious that Western Nations are going to receive far, far less impact from any covid spike in relations to nations with low immunization rates. I don’t know if that is “fair” or “equitable,” but that is the current reality.

Please don’t consent to “Australia” our “America.” Especially do not do so in response to panic over a disease that a majority of Americans have been immunized against. The fact is that government has an authoritarian impulse and wants everyone to comply with whatever is passed down. While liberals like to talk about “saving democracy,” the fact is that the actual demands of government are usually devised by a small number of insiders and special interests so what liberals consider to be “democracy” is in large part just an exercise of the rich and powerful manipulating the World so that they can become more rich and more powerful. True democracy is when people place a check on government power by voicing and acting upon strident opposition to being bossed around.

Simply, if everyone quietly complies with government demands they come up with more mandates that intrude further and further upon how you can live your life. If everyone resists then the government backs off. That is what we are seeing from the Biden administration: big talk about how “Our patience is wearing thin,” so here are some mandates and you just best do what you are told, but not much follow up. Meanwhile, Governor Desantis of Florida and individuals across the United States are successfully saying no to government overreach.

Do what you think is right to protect your health, but don’t do so because of phony panic over omicron.

Travis Christensen

07/11/2020

STAND WITH TRUMP TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY

By Travis Christensen

I am from Chicago, the city that made “voting from the grave” famous. Chicagoans understand that the “Chicago Democratic Machine” will do what they have to do to keep power for the few, even if those actions include election fraud and crushing members of their own party who rebel against the power brokers. While Chicago is famous for dirty politics it is not unique in the “win at all costs” attitude of the political elite. In the 2012 and 2016 Presidential elections many supporters of Bernie Sanders expressed outrage that the primary election had been stolen by the Democratic National Committee. It stands to reason that if Democrats will steal elections from other Democrats they will certainly try to steal an election from President Trump.

In these past 4 years of the Trump Presidency we have again and again the refrain from the left that we must “Save our Democracy” from President Trump. That is utter foolishness which I believe is only repeated by those who are themselves fools wish to gain pollical advantage by exploiting fools.

Now in this contested Presidential election we hear this same imaginary and exploitive sentiment, that the actions of President Trump in filing lawsuits over elections procedures is “casting doubts upon the legitimacy of the elections” and “places our Democracy in danger.” This is foolishness. You don’t lose your Democracy by losing an election, you don’t lose your Democracy when an election is disputed, you DO lose your Democracy when the election is stolen.

LAWSUITS BETWEEN GOVERNMENT BODIES ARE COMMONPLACE AND ARE USED TO SETTLE DISPUTES

Everyone in America should be able to agree that this is an “unusual” Presidential election and that there have been many allegations of “unusual” election activity. “Unusual” means “suspicious,” and is in itself a justification for enhanced scrutiny into election counts and how election officials carried out their duties to determine those counts.

For all the snowflakes who think they are living under a Trump dictatorship, consider what President Trump is doing in comparison to what an actual dictator would do. The President is filing lawsuits, which means his team is bringing legal action before judges with the goal that judges will compel states to carry out recounts or perform other actions to verify that elections were in fact carried out in conformance with the law. That is completely Constitutional in that the Judiciary is supposed to be a check and balance against abuse of power by government bodies. If Trump did indeed wield dictatorial power he wouldn’t be going to judges, he would have instead used secret police, military, and para-military to control the voting results at the polls and anyone who stood in opposition would have been arrested or perhaps “suicided” or “disappeared.”

There is no dictatorial action on the Trump side of the election to in any way indicate election results have been tampered with or that the election is being stolen. Filing lawsuits is the Constitutional process to contest close elections and election irregularities and it does not endanger Democracy. The real danger to Democracy lies in the possibility that some of the allegations of misconduct are true, that there has indeed been instances of voter fraud and illegal mishandling of ballots to steal an election.

I support President Trump in his efforts to verify election results. We want TRUE election results and should not be deterred by the whimsical notion that we are bad people that are destroying Democracy by demanding verification of questionable proceedings. Election officials in the contested states should be more than willing to open up their process to scrutiny. In the case that nothing improper is found then it seems highly likely at this time that Biden will be seated as President. While that is not the result that I want it would nonetheless be the result. There are plenty of laws in place, election officials shouldn’t have any problem at all verifying that election results are valid, and once that validity is proven the faith in the election process is restored.

However, what if under examination it is found that irregularities and fraud are found? What if these are enough to change the end result from a Biden Presidency to a Trump Presidency? We won’t know unless we look, and if we do defeat election rigging we will have persevered the process and in so doing have saved our Democracy.

(Note: I am well aware that the Constitution designates the American government as being a Republic, not a Democracy. The reason why I am well aware of this is that every time I am at a meeting of conservatives and someone says “Democracy” there is going to be someone who stands up says “it’s a Republic, not a Democracy.” I say will say that on paper, America is a Republic but that the reality of how we are governed at the Federal level does not match up with the limited Federal government that is clearly defined in the Constitution. Voting is the Democratic element that determines our Representatives in government, so “preserving Democracy” means to uphold and verify the integrity of the election process.)

03/06/2020

5 THINGS TO REMEMBER IN THE PROTEST “KILLZONE”

In a combat zone any roadblock is considered an ambush and the area where you are stopped is called the kill zone. The area where cars are trapped in a protest roadblock can quickly turn into a killzone if even a few people in the crowd have bad intentions.

1) REALIZE THIS CAN GET REAL DANGEROUS REAL FAST
Sure, the middle-aged white ladies in “Black Lives Matter” tee-shirts blocking the road might not seem threatening but in protest/riot situations there can be other people around and the danger level can escalate quickly. Maybe someone tries to drive through the protestors and fights break out. Maybe the police show up and tear gas everyone. Maybe a random crazy person uses the confusion as cover and plays “knock out game” on you while you are craning your head out the window to see what’s going on. Hopefully nothing bad happens, but certainly bad things can happen when crowds are involved in tense situations. Be very aware of your surroundings, don’t be so focused in one direction that you get blind sided from another direction.

2) GET OUT OF THE KILLZONE WITHOUT USING YOUR CAR AS A WEAPON
Stay away from an area if you know there is going to be a demonstration or march that day. Keep an eye ahead for traffic jams, particularly in urban areas. If it looks like a protest/riots situation, carefully and safely try to avoid getting into that backed up traffic. If you are already in the jam get out as quickly as you can because once other cars pull in behind yours you are trapped. Realize that driving on the sidewalk or shoulder or making an illegal u-turn may get you a traffic fine but as long as you can get out of there (without getting into a car accident or hitting pedestrians) a fine is probably a small price to pay.
If the only way out is to drive through the protestors then you have a real problem. Blocking a road is illegal and clinging to a vehicle is illegal but vehicular assault is a felony. If you start driving into the protestors there is a very strong possibility of onlookers swarming your car and perhaps assaulting and robbing you in the process, but if you just sit there you are at the mercy of the situation. You also need to be aware of who is on the other side of the road block, it doesn’t do much good to punch through a line of people just to be in your car trapped in a crowd on the other side.
You cannot legally justify driving at people; that being said, the longer you sit there the more the potential for escalation grows. It is going to have to be a judgement call so if you feel that sitting and waiting it out is too dangerous and you MUST move forward for your own safety then lean on your horn and inch forward. Someone might throw themselves on your car or even start beating on your car, but DO NOT start making violent vehicle movements because you do not want to hit another car or injure/kill a pedestrian. If you move slowly while leaning on your horn you have a good argument to use in court if you are arrested for vehicular assault.
For activists who are planning on road blocks, be aware the situation can be dangerous for you as well so maybe you should just stay out the damn road. A few years back an Occupy group in Jacksonville decided they would block a road during rush hour, they were arrested, afterwards they acted like they had done a noble thing to get the message out for their cause. Nope, even people who would normally be sympathetic thought that was a bad move and making people mad doesn’t make them listen.

3) STAY IN YOUR CAR, GET ON YOUR PHONE
If trapped, stay in your car with the doors locked and the windows up. There is a chance that someone might come up to your car and start talking smack or even hitting on the car, if so, they WANT you to get out of the car so DON’T do it. Get on your phone and dial 911. There are phone apps that allow you to stream/record video, if you are approached be very obvious that everything is being recorded and streamed because that is a deterrent to violence. DO NOT just record to your phone because if you are pulled from the vehicle they will steal your phone, you have to stream/share the video. Be aware the recording could end up as evidence so do not make threatening statements, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

4) SELF DEFENSE
This is really tricky because there are different laws everywhere and the laws can be confusing and contradictory. Know the weapons laws for where you are to include whether displaying a weapon is in itself a crime that can get you arrested. Having a tool or kitchen utensil in the car for use as a weapon CAN be illegal in some circumstances so know the laws for where you are. At the very least you should carry a small folding knife, with the blade closed when not in use, because that is an effective defensive weapon that is almost always legal to carry and is better than nothing if someone tries to pull you out of your car. Be very, very aware that the keychain cannisters of pepper spray are notorious for blowing back into the user’s face so while displaying a cannister will probably make someone go away, actually trying to spray through a window crack from the confines of your vehicle is probably going to blind you.
Also, remember you have two hands, your most effective defensive weapon should be in your dominant hand, your phone or less effective defensive weapon should be in your other hand.

5) BE AWARE OF ANTIFA-STYLE TACTICS
It is obvious you should watch out for guns, knives, sticks, and bricks, but more radical types sometimes carry a variety of weapons that might not be such obvious threats. They are known to use mace, so carrying a few bottles of water in the car to flush your eyes would be prudent if someone maces you. In the case you are trapped in your car and the police tear gas the area, turn off the air conditioner/fan so you are not blowing gas in your face.
Be very aware of people walking around with drink containers because ANYTHING can be in that container. It could be full of flammable liquid, it could be full of quick-dry cement, it could be anything, so be aware of drink containers.

CONCLUSION
Hopefully you never find yourself in the situation where these tips are useful, but there is a lot of bad stuff going on. If you do find yourself in that situation then be smart and defensive: you have to survive today to get to tomorrow, but don’t mess up tomorrow by doing dumb things today.

Travis Christensen

09/04/2020

I think everyone in Clay knows Ronnie Robinson: Christian businessman, former County Commissioner, veteran. He is running for the open seat for tax collector. If you would like to help him qualify to get on the ballot print out the attached petition, fill it out, then take a picture of it (being sure to get all 4 corners of the petition) and e-mail to [email protected]. Or you can mail it to Ronnie Robinson, 3170 Hwy 17, Green Cove Springs, FL 32043. Thanks for your help.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vnvm5jflrfcgwwz/Petition%201.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR3g2MFhReOOwVtE5NKUo6VEdDbd-3IabyEzHLBIelIaFr3SGx1PAAJeGug

17/03/2020

THE CORONAVIRUS, V FOR VENDETTA, AND NEWSWEEK CONTRIBUTORS

I recently read a Newsweek article by Newt Gingrich about what it is like to live in Italy during the very serious outbreak of corona virus in that nation. I assume most people know who Newt Gingrich is, but for those who do not he was Speaker of the House of Representatives during the 90’s and became somewhat of an iconic Republican hero for leading the impeachment effort against President Bill Clinton. Now that everyone is up to date on who Newt Gingrich, the next question would be why is Gingrich living in Italy, especially since the entire country is in lockdown over coronavirus? Apparently, Callista Gingrich, the wife of Newt Gingrich, is the American Ambassador to the Vatican. You can question why America has an Ambassador to the Vatican, but for whatever reason that is why Newt Gingrich is in Italy and according to his article it is very bad. Simply, Italy is closed, the Italian government wants everyone to stay home unless they have to go to work, there are no public gatherings, and most frightening, medical facilities are being overwhelmed by shortages of respiratory aids. These shortages are causing triage situations in which medical personnel are having to choose who will receive care and who will not based upon who has the best chance of survival.

I’ve never really been a fan of Newt Gingrich, his 2008 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination turned me off to him and I do recall an article at that time which called Gingrich “A stupid man’s idea of what a smart man sounds like,” but I did think it was a thoughtful article in which he praises the efforts of the Trump administration in closing borders to buy time because the Italian situation of medical shortages and triage queues of “those expected to live” and “those expected to die” could happen in America when and if corona breaks containment.

Not a bad article, made some good points; then I looked at the sidebar and saw some of the other opinion pieces that Newsweek chose to showcase.

By Parroting “Chinese Coronovirus” Republicans are promoting racism.
Coronavirus is exposing Trumps “Strong Economy” for the hoax it is.
Don’t panic over the coronavirus, that’s what Trump’s enemies want.

These are stupid headlines for stupid articles that NEWSWEEK decided to share with us. We will come back to these in a minute.

Lately I have been thinking about the movie V for Vendetta. For those who have not seen this movie, the title character V is a masked rebel fomenting an uprising against a totalitarian British government. The reason why I have been thinking about V is that in the movie the government gained totalitarian power by creating a killer virus in a lab, which they then released into the general public and false flagged as a terrorist attack, the people of course fearfully submitting to permanent martial law and loss of rights in the name of safety.

What we have right now in America does not come anywhere near the control seen in V for Vendetta, but I have been surprised by extent of the American reaction to coronavirus. On the government side there are sweeping travel bans, national guard units being activated, even suggestions of travel bans within the United States. From the local government and private sector we see that every form of public event has been cancelled, government meetings canceled, concert tours canceled, amusement parks closed, universities closed, public schools closed, it makes me uneasy at the power of government to shut down so much of American life in an emergency and me wonder what the people would agree to in the event things really bad, like Italy bad or China bad, and people really got scared.

Returning to the theme of the stupid opinion pieces from newsweek, the ones crying out that it is racist to refer to coronavirus as being Chinese, or that Trump’s enemies want us to panic, or that the strong economy is a hoax-I especially like that one because it suggests a strong economy wouldn’t be hurt by little teensie things like disruption of supply lines, a major drop in the price of oil, massive travel bans and massive curtailing of domestic commerce, at a time when the European economy is at the edge of recession, as if all these negative factors at the same time wouldn’t be blip on the economic radar if we really a strong economy-these stupid opinion pieces remind me of a line from V for Vendetta. The scene is towards the end of the movie where V has been shot multiple times and the villain asks in horror, “why wont you die?” V’s response, to paraphrase, is that he represents the idea of freedom and that “ideas are bulletproof.”

Not a very realistic scene, but nonetheless very dramatic and emblematic that people can drive hard when they are fueled by a principle that they live. In contrast to that idealism, these Newsweek opinion piece writers are what passes as the idea people of today, peddlers in snark, the contemporary version of “a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.”

It would be easy to say I am making too big a fuss over just a few opinions from a few scribblers, if their pieces are just the opportunistic fluff that I am making them out to be then their articles will be disregarded by most. For my part I think that most people are pretty smart on an individual basis but let me ask a question: how smart are we as a group? How smart is America as a collective entity? Not how smart are individual Americans, does America make good decisions as a whole?

The Hell No, America makes bad decisions all the time.

Example: We are in a toilet paper panic. Who started this? Two groups of people. The first group was a very small percentage of rather smart people that anticipated the larger group idiocy and went out and stocked up as soon as there were hints of a moron stampede on toilet paper. I would guess that a much larger percentage, though a small percentage of the total population, were the true morons that didn’t stock up on food, or gas, or medical supplies, but decided they needed to panic buy massive amounts of toilet paper. They created a shortage for no reason, but this very real shortage drug the rest of us into this idiocy as a group dynamic so now if you find toilet paper you buy more than you normally would because you don’t how long the shortage will last.

The toilet paper panic is something noticeable, you have to pay attention to it because you need toilet paper, you shake your head at the stupidity of the situation but you go along with it because you have to. How many other things relating to government and society are just as stupid but you don’t notice them because they don’t have as direct and immediate an affect upon you? Look at social trends, look at government policies, or political commentary such as these Newsweek contributors and you see society as a whole being led down some paths that thinking individual would not take, but somehow as a society we do go down those paths.

We now find ourselves as individuals in a situation where there is a very real disease that commentators treat as pollical, a government that is ratcheting up the social control in a manner where I am beginning to think the disease might not be as damaging as the damage to society, the economy, and individuals checking account, and one has to wonder in which direction the toilet paper panickers are going to panic next.

Who knows what will happen when people really get scared?

Who knows what will happen when other people get fed up with this heightened government control of their lives?

What silly ideas will people latch onto to find hope and order in the uncertainty of coronageddon and how far down the path of idiocy will they drag the rest of us?

10/03/2020

02/03/2020

28/02/2020

Sen.

10/02/2020

“Our mission is to assert our state’s rights and promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a constitutional foreign policy, by means of educational and grassroots political lobbying activity.”

10/02/2020

A lot of Republicans conceal carry. Just sayin...

Jacksonville police said a van crashed into a Republican party tent where volunteers were registering voters Saturday afternoon.

10/02/2020

We need government to get out the way of people working. It is an economic fact that more economic freedom a nation has the more all the people are able to gain wealth.

While licensing laws may have been well-intended, they’ve devolved into yet another example of government imposing top-down, ineffective solutions.

07/01/2020

Found on Bing from ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com