PrairiePundit

 NY Post: The city’s vaccine mandate has been put on “pause” for the NYPD so the force can avoid losing nearly 5,000 cops and employees as the weather — and crime — heats up, The Post has learned. ... It looks like the mandate was worse than the disease when it comes to public safety. 

 Forbes: Even as the omicron variant loosens its grip on the world, destinations continue to require travelers to show proof of vaccination. And, increasingly, a paper CDC vaccination card is not cutting it. While the United States government has not issued a federal digital vaccine pass, a national standard has nevertheless emerged. To date, 21 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico offer accessibility to the SMART Health Card , a verifiable digital proof of vaccination developed through the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), a global coalition of public and private stakeholders including Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, the Mayo Clinic and other health and tech heavyweights. And very soon, at least four more states will be rolling out access to SMART Health Cards. “We've seen a notable uptick in states that have officially launched public portals where individuals can get verifiable vaccination credentials in the form of SMART Health Cards with a QR code,” says Dr....

  Epoch Times: CDC Grant Program Spends $5,000 Per Shot to Convince Minorities to Get COVID-19 Vaccine This looks like minority privilege.  No one paid me to take the vaccine. 

  Post Millennial: Majority of Americans support Canadian freedom protesters: poll   Rasmussen Reports found that 59 percent of US voters support the Freedom Convoy, including 42 percent who "strongly support" it. The media not so much:  Media Wage Harassment Campaign Against Freedom Convoy Donors Doxxed In GiveSendGo Hack The media seems to be taking advantage of the illegal hacking of the donor list at  GiveSendGo.  I suspect donors support the truckers' campaign against the mandates.  In fact, I would be surprised if that was not the primary reason for the donations.  I also suspect those harassing the donors are liberals in the media who support the mandates.

  Epoch Times: EXCLUSIVE: ‘The People’s Convoy’ Heading to Washington, Organizers Unveil Their Plans The remaining mandates are in the crosshairs along with the end of emergency powers.  Hopefully, Washington will have a wiser response than Canada had demonstrated to date.  Note the leftist double standard: Sorry, Freedom Convoy — fundraisers are only for left-wing criminals   Black Lives Matter bails out an alleged attempted murderer Double standards are the main ones held by liberals.  And: Poll: Majority of U.S. Voters Support Canadian Truckers Freedom Convoy 2022

 Breitbart: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s administration over federal rules that mandate mask-wearing in American airports and on airplanes. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) mandate was unlawfully issued. It was not authorized by Congress, and the CDC did not put the mandate up for notice and comment, which is ordinarily required for regulations like this,”  Paxton, Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R), and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said in a statement. “Yet a person’s failure to comply with the Administration’s mask mandate carries criminal penalties.” In a tweet, Paxton noted that Wednesday’s legal action represents his 22nd lawsuit against the Biden administration. ... The masks are a nuisance for travelers. Their value appears to be overrated.

  Children's Health Defense: After the U.S. Supreme Court last month froze the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for large private employers, some companies — including Boeing , General Electric and Starbucks — dropped plans to implement the mandate. Others, based on guidance issued in 2020 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, left the mandates in place. Most of the large employers that opted to mandate COVID vaccines for their employees, even though the Supreme Court ruled they didn’t have to, have something in common: BlackRock and The Vanguard Group have ownership stakes in them. BlackRock and Vanguard, two of the world’s “ Big Three ” asset managers, also are among the top three shareholders of COVID vaccine makers Pfizer , Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — which means the two investment giants stand to benefit from these companies’ soaring profits and the resulting rise in those companies’ stock prices. BlackRock and Vanguard don’t just bene...

 Ari Kaufman: Trudeau’s Authoritarian Actions Are Unnecessary And Morally Wrong Trudeau's screw-ups are many.  His mandate was unnecessary and clearly unpopular with a significant sector of the economy.  His response to their opposition is even more totalitarian.  Canada needs to call a new election and remove Trudeau from office.  If Parliament were doing its job it would already be calling for an election.

  Washington Examiner: Liberal jurisdictions lift mask mandates — but not for schools Texas and Florida have already demonstrated that school children are not vulnerable.  Masks have been optional in both states for months as they now are in a majority of states.  It is the liberal states who are listening to the teachers' union kooks who are still abusing the school children with mask mandates. 

  Legal Insurrection: Canada-Style Freedom Convoy Protest Goes Global, Reaches Australia and New Zealand   In Europe, Freedom Convoys head to Paris and Brussels. There is a limit to which people are willing to give up the freedom of choice and we are seeing in the US too.  Where we are not seeing it is Texas and Florida where Governors have done away with mandates. 

 Salena Zito: ... This week, it finally became acceptable among the insider set to say that the pandemic is over. But this abrupt change is part of an apparently coordinated effort to save a political tribe; as such, it does not pass the smell test for most people. It is now too late to save the insiders. People had moved away from elite insider opinion long before the insiders finally gave their permission to say the pandemic is over. Their insincerity is overwhelming. Something deep has changed for all the outsiders, and very few insiders ever saw it coming. The control freak left finally saw themselves losing elections if they did not ease up.  Maybe Texas and Florida were not killing their population by refusing mask mandates and vaccine mandates.  It is a lesson that Canadian politicians are still slow to grasp. 

 Tiana Lowe: In the summer of 2020, Gretchen Whitmer praised not just Black Lives Matter but also the “spirit” of the "defund the police" movement. Two years later (and facing a nail-biter of a reelection campaign), the Michigan governor has changed her tune when it comes to the Canadian truckers conducting their Freedom Convoy. Whitmer called upon the growing demonstration, which is currently stalling transit between Michigan and its northern neighbor, to end the “unacceptable” protest. Left-wing politicians and their agents in the media haven't hidden their ever-shifting standards, drawing a false equivalency between the race riots of 2020 and the convoy up in Canada today, but beyond sheer hypocrisy, the two aren’t the same. ... That doesn’t matter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is definitely not the illegitimate love child of Fidel Castro. The prime minister explicitly said that he participated in protests like BLM when he “supported the people express...

  Red States: Kristi Noem Rolls out the Red Carpet for Endangered LA Deputies South Dakota's Governor has fostered a mandate-free environment.  Meanwhile in Los Angeles: ... Sheriff Alex  pummeled  the policy as a “death blow to public safety.” “Your motion is going to seek to basically cause us to actually lose 4,000 employees, for a grand total of 0.4% improvement in positivity rate. [That] is not exactly a benefit to public safety. We’re coming off two years of a historically high 94% increase in homicide rate, 64% increase in grand theft auto. And this is just not sustainable. The current situation is not sustainable. The hiring freeze is not sustainable.” ...  The California mandates look counterproductive. 

 Epoch Times: Court Freezes $8 Million for Freedom Convoy Raised on GiveSendGo  GiveSendGo says Canada has 'ZERO jurisdiction' ... In a statement on Twitter, GiveSendGo wrote in an apparent response to the court order, “Know this! Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo.” It adds, “All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.” John Carpay, president of the legal group Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which is providing legal help to the Freedom Convoy organizers, told The Epoch Times that their lawyers are looking into the issue. The protest started in late January as a demonstration by truckers against the federal government’s requirement for cross-border truck drivers to be vaccinated, but has since evolved into a large movement joined by people from across Canada to oppose different COVID-19 mandates and restricti...

  Fox News: US truckers slam Facebook for removing page organizing DC freedom convoy: 'Censorship at its finest'   Truckers plan to drive from California to Washington, D.C., in protest of vaccine mandates. Facebook alleges the truckers involved are with QAnon although the story by Fox does not support that claim.  It appears to be another movement against vaccine mandates.  That movement seems much bigger than QAnon.

  Tyler Durden: Four weeks ago , OneAmerica insurance company CEO Scott Davison revealed that they had witnessed ' the highest death rates in the history of this business  - not just at OneAmerica' with a jump of ' 40% over what they were pre-pandemic. ' Interestingly, Davison noted that the majority of deaths are  not  classified as due to Covid-19. ... The implication to many was clear - that the Covid-19 vaccine is linked to the excess mortality, and months of  vaccine injury reports  were now spilling over to actuarial data - which is beginning to show, among other things, that  younger, working-age people began dying in greater numbers as vaccine mandates hit  -   for a disease which primarily kills older, non-working age individuals. The counter argument, often presented without evidence, is that the increase is due to people who  postponed  elective surgeries and other medical treatments during the pandemic. Ex-Blackrock fund...

 Epoch Times: Thousands of protesters once again gathered in Canada’s capital to protest COVID-19 mandates and restrictions on Feb. 5. The trucker convoy protest was joined by farmers who took their own farm vehicle convoy to Ottawa to take part in the protest. The protest on Feb. 5 featured speakers, music, dancing, and a singing of the Canadian national anthem. There were also tables set up to serve free food and drinks to protesters. The number of protesters dropped after last weekend, the first weekend of the Freedom Convoy demonstration, but many joined again this weekend. Several other large protests were held on Feb. 5 in provincial capitals around the country against COVID-19 mandates. The convoy, which first began as a demonstration against the federal government’s vaccine mandate for cross-border truck drivers, has since evolved into a large movement against all COVID-19 restrictions and mandates. ... The Covid mandaters attempt to defund the movement appears to have bac...

  Epoch Times: ‘Government Overreach Is Coming to an End’: Massive Truck Convoy Heading to Washington After Ottawa They are exposing the double standard of the Biden administration and Canada where there are mandates for licensed truckers but none for illegal aliens flooding the country by the millions.  It is an insane policy that is not sustainable.  Stop the illegals and free the truckers from the mandates.  

Russel Brand makes the case for the trucker convoy in Canada.  It is an anti-mandate protest and not a vaccine protest.  A majority of the truckers are vaccinated. See, also: Military Whistleblowers May Blow Up the COVID Vaccine Narrative ... WATCH the testimony of Attorney Thomas Renz:

 Politico: Los Angeles Unified was supposed to show other school districts how to roll out an expansive Covid-19 vaccine mandate for students, but its about-face this month may instead have a chilling effect around the country. In September, the nation's second-largest school district imposed strict vaccine requirements on children 12 and older, with almost no exemptions. The district blinked at the last minute, however, as community activists and Gov. Gavin Newsom questioned the idea of moving more than 30,000 unvaccinated students back into distance learning. Other U.S. districts in blue states are scaling back previous student mandate ideas, too. School leaders in Portland, Ore., tabled discussion this fall amid vigorous pushback, while New York and Chicago have taken a wait-and-see approach. Not only are they wary of mandate critics, but they also question whether they should impose a requirement before the Food and Drug Administration fully approves vaccines for their students...