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For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

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Pushback: NY gym owners will not comply with new mask mandates

Owners of World Gym Greece
The owners of World Gym Greece will not comply.

Do not comply: The owners of a gym in Rochester, New York, World Gym Greece, have announced that they will not comply with the new mask mandates imposed unilaterally by New York State’s Democratic Party governor, Kathy Hochul.

The owners, Michelle Sember, Ron Sember, and Tim Dougherty, say that they aren’t worried about fines or punishment, as the oppressive edicts of their state and city governments have already been catastrophic. According to Ron Sember,

“The fine is irrelevant at this point. They’ve already destroyed our businesses.”

They have found their membership dropping because people do not want to exercise in a mask. Given a choice between losing more customers or getting punished by the state, they have decided their customers are more important, and are telling everyone to come and work out and throw the mask away.

At the moment the local county government in Rochester is saying it will enforce Hochul’s mandate, while also equivocating on how it will do so.

County Executive Adam Bello announced this week Monroe County will enforce the governor’s new mask mandate in hopes of controlling the winter surge. That means businesses in Rochester have to ask people to wear masks or show proof of vaccination while indoors.

…Bello said there is no plan to hurt or shut businesses down but he said the only way we can get through this effectively, is if everyone works together. “Let’s settle down a lot of the conflict that exists out there,” Bello said. “Let’s work together and get it done because we all have the same, even people I understand don’t want to wear a mask, they have the same goal we do which is to get out of this pandemic with as many people alive and healthy as possible.”

When it comes to how the enforcement will work specifically in Monroe County, Bello has not commented on that.

It appears that World Gym Greece is not the only business refusing to comply, and that makes it very difficult for the local government to play hardball. If it does, it will soon find itself punishing most of the businesses in the county, and that will be a disaster for the future of these petty dictator politicians.

I say, the more the merrier. The power games of these thugs has completely gotten out of control. They now demand the right to dictate all behavior by everyone, simply by their whim, and not based on any law or actual data. Not only is there no evidence masks accomplish anything, there is also no evidence the new Omicron variant is dangerous. Like COVID, it kills no one on its own, and so far only one person has died with it, and that person had several much more serious illnesses. While also more contagious, all evidence also says Omicron is much milder, merely producing cold-like symptoms in almost everyone.

To petty tyrants like Kathy Hochul, none of that matters. She now claims the right to pass life-numbing edicts on everyone, just because it is cold season and people might get colds.

This must stop, and the only way to stop it is to tell petty tyrants like Hochul and Bello to go jump in a lake.

UPDATE: It appears this revolt against Hochul’s absurd mask edict has spread wildly. From a story later today:

Defiance of Gov. Hochul’s mask mandate grows as all of Long Island refuses to enforce it

Many of these local governments are controlled by the Democrats, so this refusal to comply is actually bi-partisan. Both parties have now realized that it is bad politics to force this on the public, which does not want it.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • Cotour

    Related:

    What is the problem with the politics of today?

    “Sanders: Manchin, Sinema ‘Kind of Acting Like Republicans’ – ‘Arrogance’ for Them to Ignore What 48 Other Senators Want”

    Sanders nor any other Democrat Senator or Congressman want any kind of compromise and are not or can not sell their Leftist Socialist agenda to the other side and can not attain some kind of compromise.

    Arrogance indeed.

    The American system and Constitution is in full operation, because this result, frozen legislature is exactly what was intended if compromise can not be achieved.

    Well done Founders of America, your brilliance shines through once again.

    How the hell did you accomplish what you accomplished?

  • Concerned

    Cotour : They accomplished it by being incredibly well read and morally grounded. They were keenly aware of centuries of despotic rule—these petty tyrants popping up all over is nothing new. It was the default behavior of rulers and anyone with power throughout the vast bulk of human history. The American Experiment has really been an historical anomaly—the wonder has been that it has lasted this long. It has been sorely tested before, but our founders realized it could only survive with an engaged, religiously grounded citizenry. The Leftist enemy clearly understands this, because the concepts of citizenship and belief in God are their principal targets.

  • Cotour

    Concerned:

    No, no, I do not mean where did the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution come from, I understand well those details and much of the history which the Declaration and the Constitution is the result of.

    I meant how the hell were they able to come together as a group and hash this thing out, structure it, agree to it, and sign their names to it and manifest it. And to top it all off they understood well that to sign your name to such a thing and or agree to it that that would guarantee your place on the Kings hanging list of things to do. 100%

    How many today are willing to jeopardize their situation and their good life to sign such a thing if that were determined to be necessary?

    Yes, the Founders lived at the direct interface of tyranny and knew well what it was all about. We today have no clue as to what that real reality was. We today live in a contrived and safe reality American fantasy that is a direct result of their efforts. Americans today, unless they make the effort to truly understand and put themselves in the Founders place, live many layers removed from the true realities of life, existence and the world.

    That is a monumental accomplishment, a paradigm shift in governance never before attempted on the planet.

    I will make an analogy here: The Declaration / Constitution is analogous to the building of the pyramids in Egypt.

    Today you could look at the pyramids and say: Well there they are people built them, big deal.

    But when you study them and their mass and size and complexity and the massive effort and understand them in the context of their time and the technology that you understand and establish existed at that time you might have a very different appreciation of that accomplishment.

    I see the Founders accomplishment in the same manner.

  • Concerned

    Cotour: Thanks for clarifying your point. I believe, because it’s clear that the Founders believed, that the fact that our country was able to come together at the time it did and in the manner and substance it did was truly miraculous. Your pyramid analogy is a very good one. The incredulity of modern people at how the building was possible given their primitive state of technology has led to theories that extraterrestrial aliens were responsible. Cynics would say that’s really the same explanation as appealing to the grace of God for the birth of the USA. The difference of course is that our Founders were keenly aware of the Divine inspiration that was driving them and about which they wrote extensively. We may never know exactly how the pyramid builders were inspired to conceive and direct their construction, but we know exactly what the Founders were thinking as their hands worked the miracle. John Adam’s wrote later in his life: “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

  • wayne

    Cotour–
    Don’t forget the Articles of Confederation.
    (revolution’s, are messy business.)

    “Now or never, deliverance must come. We attack the redoubts at nightfall”
    TURN: Washington’s Spies
    Yorktown & Surrender
    https://youtu.be/MHflAoCYX_c
    5:56

  • Cotour

    Spies, information, disinformation, agent provocateur:

    https://www.worldtribune.com/who-is-ray-epps-and-why-has-the-fbi-protected-him/

    “Agent provocateur: An agent provocateur is a person who commits or who acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the target or a group they belong to or are perceived to belong to. They may target any group, such as a peaceful protest or demonstration, a union, a political party or a company.”

    We are already engaged in internal political warfare, but then again, we always will be.

    The Constitution understands and structures this.

  • Cotour

    Concerned: (Not to get off the subject)

    Pyramids: Its the sheer mass of material processed, and the extremely high and consistent level of precision in extremely hard, the hardest stone, that has me scratching my head.

  • Cotour

    THE ENEMY IS WITHIN

    Ever wonder why the Democrat party leadership and many of the Democrats primarily in Congress seem that they stand so strongly against America and are actively anti American? There is a genetic reason for that, wonder no more, its in their blood. The enemy is within.

    Jamie Raskin: Congressman, Maryland (D).
    Image result for jamie rsakin

    Father: Marcus Raskin, Founder: The Institute For Policy Studies: “The political outlook of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is classically Marxist.”

    Ilhan Ohmar: Congressperson, Minnesota (D).
    Image result for ilhan ohmar father

    Father: Nur Omar Mohamed: “Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s Father was a Soviet Russian Trained Colonel in the Somali Communist Military Dictatorship”

  • Cotour

    CONTRADICTIONS AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST?

    “More than 15,000 medical and public health scientists have allegedly signed the Great Barrington Declaration and over 45,000 medical practitioners have endorsed the document. The health advice in the Great Barrington Declaration was the complete opposite of what top U.S. public officials espoused.”

    We can’t stop the viral spread of COVID, but we can end the pandemic, writes Dr. Jay Bhattacharya | Daily Mail Online
    The email shows Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins attempting to coordinate a ‘devastating takedown’ of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD).
    AIER, a liberal think tank, sponsored GBD, largely abandons lockdown in favor of herd immunity strategy that returns life to normal
    In an October 8 email from Collins to Fauci, the head of the NIH described GBD as the work of “three fringe epidemiologists” that is “getting a lot of attention”.
    Collins states that ‘there must be a quick and disastrous published removal of its premises. I don’t see anything like this online yet – is this going on?’
    Fauci later sent Collins several op-eds trashing GBD in Wired and The Nation Magazine.
    Dr. Jai Bhattacharya – one of the authors and contributor to DailyMail.com – tweeted that he was the subject of propaganda by his own government.
    Why the extreme disparity between what those politically empowered within our American health agencies and what those professionals in healthcare worldwide say is best and most prudent? Because IMO there is clearly something else going on here. Contradictions and conflicts of interests.

    PS: Dr. Francis Collins, head of the NIH and Fauci’s boss mysteriously announces he is retiring. And when was this announcement made? Right after Anthony Fauci was being aggressively questioned and pressured by Rand Paul in Congress and being accused of being a liar regarding the gain of function that he apparently funded within the Wuhan bio research facility in China. Where did the SARS COV 2 virus come from that is pulsing through the world? Wuhan China as far as I can see. But as far as these U.S. agency heads are concerned you are not allowed to see or discuss that.

    Why do governments worldwide tend to go to the draconian lock down and forced vaccination method of public healthcare, especially now as the virus is clearly becoming more transmissible but much less dangerous as most all viruses do in their life cycle? There is a worldwide agreed upon government agenda of control that is being rolled out that is going on.

    What I understand like I understand that the sky is blue: If America and the people of America are not able to put a stop to this worldwide drive for the ultimate control over all the peoples of the world, it’s all over. And so once again it all comes down to America and the strength of its Constitution that will save the world or serve it up to Nazi like government control. Choose one.

    (Picture of Anthony Fauci hold a bottle of snake oil, with the text: “The same people who sell the fear, sell the cure”

  • Cotour

    Look at this video, 5 min. Peter McCullough & Bret Weinstein

    https://youtu.be/HXH573bRSZQ

    Lawyers, Courts and Money will reveal it all, this is the light of truth that will save the world from the perverted and corrupt.

  • Just curious when we all agreed to become unpaid and involuntary Government enforcement agents? Shouldn’t The People be compensated?

    Takings Clause Amendment V:

    “Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

    Well, my time, and personal relations; both compromised by the COVID enforcements, are about as private as it gets. Is your time your own, or isn’t it? Are personal relations governable by the State, either through action or obligation?

    Government has demanded an awful lot of The People the last couple years; but this is what happens when The People build Government to the point it consumes them.

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