Masking, Vaxing, and Mail-In Ballots; Democrats use masking to make people fearful and willing, once again, to vote by mail.

I have swim trunks made from COVID mask material; I can go into a public swimming pool and relieve myself and it has no effect whatever on the water around me. not a joke. The Tunnel Dweller

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics   "When a bipartisan congressional bill ending the COVID-19 national emergency was reluctantly signed by President Biden last April, most Americans hoped that the politicization of the virus was at an end. Those hopes dimmed two weeks ago when Dr. Anthony Fauci materialized on CNN, like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s feast, to dispute a widely publicized study showing that masking doesn’t reduce the spread of COVID or any of its variants. After host Michael Smerconish described the study’s findings, Fauci brayed that it somehow helps “at an individual level.” This is nonsense, of course, but his return to the talking head circuit tells us something important about Democratic intentions in 2024.

"Those intentions became all too clear a week later, when Senate Democrats killed a bill introduced by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) that would have banned mask mandates for public schools, domestic air travel, and public transit. The remarks of Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who led the charge against Vance’s bill, made it clear that the Democrats will bring back mask mandates and scare tactics to accomplish their goals: “[I]f in the opinion of public health officials, strategies can be adopted using masks that reduced the likelihood that more will die, we should give them that freedom to make those decisions.” Vance refuted the claim that masks reduce COVID transmission when he introduced his bill:

It’s not just that masks, according to randomized, controlled studies do no good. It’s that they can actively cause harm. We know that a generation of school children has suffered significant speech and developmental disabilities because this country panicked instead of using its brain and forced toddlers and small children to wear masks. We cannot return to the failed policies of the COVID pandemic. I’m not mad that we screwed up. I made mistakes, many people in this body made mistakes. What I do think that we should avoid is repeating the mistakes in 2023. Let’s learn from the mistakes that we made instead of just doubling down on them. . . .

 COVID-19 Has Forever Destroyed Americans' Trust in Ruling Class 'Experts'  " Charlotte, NC — As even many casual observers of America’s fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution’s framers intended. Instead, the vast majority of the “rulemaking” governing Americans’ day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state’s sprawling bureaucracy. The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.