Is Our Government Totally Broken? COVID 'Relief' Bill Strongly Suggests Yes. Yes, It Is Broken.

Congress is likely to pass the big COVID “relief” bill like the world’s second-largest kidney stone. My colleague Victoria Taft already highlighted some of the most egregious spending included in the bill, such as the horseracing regulations and the new cars for HIV/AIDS workers overseas. That one’s worth more than $193 million, begging the question of just how many restaurants, movie theaters, and other small businesses in these United States might have been helped with that money.

A lot, I’d venture. Enjoy your $600, America. Don’t spend it all in one place!

In addition to the $10 million for gender programs in Pakistan and the lavish spending on receptions that Victoria noted, there’s more.

The bill is packed with…salmon?

I wasn’t aware that COVID affected salmon.

Did anyone read this bill? Does any single person know everything that’s in it?

Scroll through the 5,593 page bill — more than twice as long as the original Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare — and you’ll see millions by the tens and hundreds going to federal agencies. The Department of Justice alone receives hundreds of millions of dollars for various sections of the agency. Many federal agencies get hundreds of millions, despite the fact that they don’t need relief, they need downsizing.

You had a better chance of getting a meaningful amount of money if you were a Sudanese official than if you’re an American citizen. About $700,000,000 in the bill goes to the government of Sudan, evidently to help preserve that government and as part of its peace deal with Israel. The latter is certainly unobjectionable on its own, but wedging it into the so-called COVID relief bill raises questions.

Our nation’s capital is getting a couple of new museums as part of the COVID “relief” bill.

They just had to work a little divisive dig in there — in the so-called COVID relief bill. Odds that the museums’ first contract will be with critical race theory instructional firms?

It’s worth noting that the federal workforce has not missed a paycheck since the pandemic struck. Tens of millions of Americans have missed multiple paychecks. Some have even gone many months on end without paychecks as their businesses have faced lengthy shutdowns. The gig economy, which includes musicians and venues as well as Uber drivers and the like, has been smashed by restaurant and venue closures. The bill includes relief for live music venues — along with the giant stacks of money for federal workers who haven’t missed a paycheck and are all but impossible to fire.

Senators and their staffs haven’t missed a paycheck either, but it was important to get their daycare expenses taken care of.

Congress is setting aside money in its COVID-19 stimulus program to pay the added pandemic expenses inside its own US Senate daycare center pic.twitter.com/mQieVPpLuH

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) December 21, 2020

It was important, Mr. and Mrs. Laid-Off American, that we get diversity in the intelligence community as part of your COVID relief.

The Covid relief bill mandates new hiring measures to ensure diversity in the intelligence community pic.twitter.com/6Xaaq0kaMH

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 21, 2020

The icing on all this is that Pelosi held it up beyond the election for purely political reasons. She let millions suffer so she could make sure her vote for president counted for more than yours.

How did we get to this point, where the nation faces the emergency of a lifetime (if you can believe many in the government), yet those same people in the government seem to be doing whatever they can to take advantage, impose their politics, and make the crisis worse? It suggests that some, such as Pelosi, are too confident in the knowledge that whatever they do to the voters in flyover country, whatever nonsense they pack into a “relief” bill that our great-grandchildren will be paying for if there is a United States at that point, their own voters will never feel enough disgust to turn them out of office as they deserve.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2020/12/21/is-our-government-totally-broken-covid-relief-bill-strongly-suggests-yes-yes-it-is-broken-n1223340

Your Search History Could Influence Your Credit Score Under New IMF Proposal

A new working paper from the International Monetary Fund proposes that banks start using "nonfinancial data" such as people's "history of online searches and purchases" to influence credit scores.

From Gizmodo, "Your Credit Score Should Be Based on Your Web History, IMF Says":

In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future. Gazing into their crystal ball, the researchers see the possibility of using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a more accurate mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual or business. They believe that this approach could result in greater lending to borrowers who would potentially be denied by traditional financial institutions.

At its heart, the paper is trying to wrestle with the dawning notion that the institutional banking system is facing a serious threat from tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. The researchers identify two key areas in which this is true: Tech companies have greater access to soft-information, and messaging platforms can take the place of the physical locations that banks rely on for meeting with customers.

The concept of using your web history to inform credit ratings is framed around the notion that lenders rely on hard-data that might obscure the worthiness of a borrower or paint an unnecessarily dire picture during hard times. Citing soft-data points like "the type of browser and hardware used to access the internet, the history of online searches and purchases" that could be incorporated into evaluating a borrower, the researchers believe that when a lender has a more intimate relationship with the potential client's history, they might be more willing to cut them some slack.

While they're imagining the future of banking, the present involves political dissidents and Christian conservatives being denied bank accounts and blocked from processing credit cards over their political and religious views.

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61965

The Top Owners of America’s President-Elect Joe Biden

Some of the top owners of America’s President-Elect Joe Biden are entirely secret because a corrupt U.S. Supreme Court, in the infamous 2010 Citizens United case, encouraged not only corruption but corruption that’s entirely secret or “dark money.” However, most of the individuals who purchased Biden to become the U.S. President did so under the previously existing laws, which require public reporting of their donations.

Here, then, are the top ten publicly known donors to the Biden campaign, but these are all via some sort of Political Action Committee or PAC, and therefore most are in conjunction with other billionaires and centi-millionaires, instead of entirely solo donations:

https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/joe-biden/contributors?id=N00001669

Top Contributors, federal election data for Joe Biden, 2020 cycle

totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Contributor Total

Bloomberg LP [Michael Bloomberg] $56,796,137

Future Forward USA [largely Dustin Moskowitz] $29,917,229

Priorities USA/Priorities USA Action [Hillary backers] $25,841,199

Asana [Moskowitz & Rosenstein] $21,937,902

Sixteen Thirty Fund [dark money] $19,874,655

Democracy PAC [George Soros] $19,000,000

Senate Majority PAC [Democratic billionaires] $12,371,874

American Bridge 21st Century [largely Soros] $10,260,573

Paloma Partners [Donald Sussman] $9,016,248

Euclidean Capital [James Simons] $7,006,805

The 11th-largest (which will now be shown) happens to be not Democratic billionaires but Republican billionaires. However, Michael Bloomberg, the former Republican Mayor of NYC, was Biden’s largest donor, and therefore could also be considered to be a Republican donor to Biden’s campaign.

So, here is that final list, of the 902 Biden bundlers who raised over $100,000 each for him — totaling at least $902,000,000 for him — (which list has never before been published, except at its source):

Use link for full list

https://joebiden.com/asmfr200830jkl/#

https://archive.is/AIq8S

Defending Democracy Together [Republican billionaires] $6,776,862

In other words: the distinction between Republican billionaires and Democratic billionaires is no longer quite clear. Although the manicured PR for each of the two major Parties accentuates the ideological differences between the two, those differences have greatly decreased, except that on the U.S. Supreme Court the Republican ‘Justices’ are far-right (extremist conservatives) whereas the Democratic ‘Justices’ are centrist (liberals). None are, at all, progressives. Progressives don’t exist on that Court. The numbers and natures of that Court’s unanimous decisions make clear that no leftist jurist (progressive or otherwise) sits there. Whereas some billionaires are centrist and others are far-right, none are any sort of leftist. Nor does any leftist candidate for national political office receive any donation from any billionaire but only from poor and middle-class donors. Both of America’s Parties represent mainly the interests of billionaires, and this has been documented in the only scientific studies that have been done of the subject. America is an aristocracy not a democracy.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/12/22/top-owners-america-president-elect-joe-biden/

U.S. slaps new sanctions on Syria, hoping for end to bloody civil war

The United States on Tuesday levied a fresh round of sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, hoping the increased financial strain will bring a swifter end to the bloody civil war that has engulfed the nation since 2011. These latest sanctions target its central bank and blacklist several individuals and entities with ties to Assad’s dictatorial regime.

These new sanctions follow in the footsteps of sanctions imposed earlier this year on the regime.

“The United States will continue to seek accountability for those prolonging this conflict,” a Tuesday statement from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reads.

The civil war, which started from a violent crackdown on Arab Spring protests in 2011 and has subsequently brought in multiple foreign nations, has resulted in millions fleeing the war-torn country and millions displaced internally. On top of that, it is estimated that the conflict has taken the lives of 593,000 people, according to a report earlier this month from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The Assad regime, supported by its enablers and allies,” says the statement, “refuses to end its needless, brutal war against the Syrian people, stalling efforts to reach a political resolution.”

In accordance with Executive Order 13894, the State Department said it is levying sanctions on Asma al-Assad, the wife of President Assad, “for impeding efforts to promote a political resolution of the Syrian conflict”; as well as on members of her immediate family, which include Fawaz Akhras, Sahar Otri Akhras, Firas al Akhras, and Eyad Akhras.

“Asma al-Assad has spearheaded efforts on behalf of the regime to consolidate economic and political power, including by using her so-called charities and civil society organizations,” Pompeo’s statement says.

“The Assad and Akhras families have accumulated their ill-gotten riches at the expense of the Syrian people through their control over an extensive, illicit network with links in Europe, the Gulf, and elsewhere,” Pompeo continues. “Meanwhile, the Syrian people continue to wait in long lines for bread, fuel, and medicine as the Assad regime chooses to cut subsidies for these basic essentials that Syrians need.”

Furthermore, the Department of the Treasury is also imposing sanctions on the Central Bank of Syria. Additional sanctions from the Treasury Department include those on Lina al-Kinayeh, one of Assad’s key advisers; her husband, Syrian parliamentarian Mohammed Masouti; and numerous businesses affiliated with the regime.

https://saraacarter.com/u-s-slaps-new-sanctions-on-syria-hoping-for-end-to-bloody-civil-war/

Always working for Israel's benefit never the US

U.S. Adds Chinese, Russian Companies To MEU “Alternative Sanctions” List, Pushing Them Closer Together

On December 21st, the US Department of Commerce published the names of 103 entities, which includes 58 Chinese and 45 Russian companies.

They are included in a new ‘Military End User’ (MEU) List, which is part of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

The U.S. Government has determined that these companies are ‘military end users’ for purposes of the ‘military end user’ control in the EAR that applies to specified items for exports, reexports, or transfers (in-country) to the China, Russia, and Venezuela when such items are destined for a prohibited ‘military end user.’

“This action establishes a new process to designate military end users on the MEU List to assist exporters in screening their customers for military end users,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “The Department recognizes the importance of leveraging its partnerships with U.S. and global companies to combat efforts by China and Russia to divert U.S. technology for their destabilizing military programs, including by highlighting red flag indicators such as those related to Communist Chinese military companies identified by the Department of Defense.”

This is essentially an alternative way to sanction Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran and others.

The MEU List informs exporters, reexporters, and transferors that a license will be required to export, reexport, or transfer (in-country) designated items to listed entities. The U.S. Government has determined that these entities represent an unacceptable risk of use in or diversion to a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China, Russia, or Venezuela.

However, it is likely that this “alternative sanctioning” will also backfire and push Russia, China, Iran and others to cooperate even more economically and could potentially further isolate the US.

In relation to the new developments, Iran is making moves to further increase economic relations with Russia.

Iranian Oil Minister Bizhan Namdar Zangane said that Iran views Russia as a strategic partner and welcomes Russian investments in the country’s oil industry.

According to the minister, one of the topics discussed at the meeting with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak was the topic of world oil markets.

The meeting was also attended by Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov. Given the serious cooperation in OPEC +, the views on this issue of the two countries turned out to be very close. Therefore, cooperation with Russian companies in the field of oil, gas and equipment production will continue.

https://southfront.org/u-s-adds-chinese-russian-companies-to-meu-alternative-sanctions-list-pushing-them-closer-together/

Prosecutors Decline to Charge Black Lives Matter Militant Who Ran Over Proud Boy in Washington

Prosecutors have declined to file charges against a Vancouver Black Lives Matter militant who followed the Proud Boys to a bar following a memorial for the Patriot Prayer member who had been murdered by Antifa in Portland — and ran over one of them with his vehicle.

The victim, Shane Moon, as well as other witnesses, say that it was a targeted attack due to his political beliefs. He was placed in intensive following the attack, as he was bleeding from his brain, sustained damaged to his left temporal lobe, has a concussion and could not remember the impact.

“Court records filed Dec. 11 in Clark County Superior Court, show Charles R. Holliday-Smith, 30, was exonerated, pending further investigation. His bail of $100,000, which had already been posted, was also exonerated,” The Columbian reports. “No charges were officially filed against Holliday-Smith, who’s also known as Robbie Smith, who had been accused of first-degree assault and hit-and-run resulting in injury.”

The Gateway Pundit has obtained the email sent to inform the victim that they would be exonerating the attacker.

As Gateway Pundit previously reported, Moon had just attended a memorial for the man who was murdered by Antifa member Michael Forest Reinoehl in August when he was hit.

Following the memorial, Moon and a group of his friends and Proud Boys went to a local bar down the street called Charlie’s. According to Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio, a man who appeared to be a member of Antifa was also at the bar and began taking photos and recordings of the people inside.

Rex Fergus, who witnessed the incident, told the Gateway Pundit that the man “started walking around the bar and recording us, putting his phone in our faces, supposedly for doxing.”

“As he was doing that, one of our guys confronted him and said ‘hey, get out of here, we don’t want you filming us. This is a private establishment and we’re not in public.’ The man continued to try to pick fights with people in the bar at the time, until security finally kicked him out of the bar,” Fergus said.

As the man was kicked out of the bar, there were several Proud Boys in the parking lot smoking cigarettes and just arriving from the memorial service. Fergus explained that the man had also become combative with them.

“Once the guy started his vehicle up and started to drive off, he hit Shane,” Fergus said. “Shane tried to get out of the way and the guy ran him over.”

For weeks, the Vancouver Police Department refused to provide the victim or witnesses with any information about whether or not the attacker was in custody, or even a name of the suspect.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/prosecutors-decline-charge-black-lives-matter-militant-ran-proud-boy-washington/

U.S. Testing Its THOR Drone-Killing Microwave Weapon In Africa

The US Air Force is testing its prototype drone-killing microwave, the Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR), “in a real-world setting” in Africa.

This was announced by Richard Joseph, the Air Force’s chief scientist.

This is necessary since Iran and its allies frequently use drones and drone swarms, this is necessary development that needs to take place, but a bit away from the Middle East, so as not to risk an escalation.

A May report by RAND Corporation’s Project Air Force also raised an alarm on growing base threats.

“The gap between the cruise missile threat and the U.S. joint force’s capacity and capability to counter the threat is particularly worrisome. Constraints on resources and Army prioritization of mobile short-range air defenses for forward forces suggest that shortfalls in air base air defenses are likely to continue unless U.S. Department of Defense force planning and posture decisions give higher priority to these point defenses.”

“We have recently deployed a test system to Africa for base defense … based on a microwave system. And the purpose is to be able to disrupt and destroy the performance of drones or swarms of drones,” he told the Mitchell Institute today. “It’s been tested extensively, works remarkably well. … I’ve watched it in action and it’s really quite impressive.”

He didn’t provide any details as to when the THOR would specifically be ready for deployment, however.

Joseph said THOR was “better than anything else” the service has right now, and noted that “the capabilities that can be incorporated in system are increasing day by day.”

The Air Force back in August was readying THOR for overseas field experiments.

THOR uses high-powered microwaves to fry drones’ electronics, shooting swarms out of the sky at short ranges. If anti-drone lasers are like sniper rifles, microwave weapons are like shotguns full of birdshot.

THOR was designed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and it uses a radar that AFRL bought from Idaho-based startup Black Sage last month.

“THOR is a directed energy game-changer,” said Dr. Kelly Hammett, AFRL’s Directed Energy director, back in April 2020.

“Drones are becoming more and more pervasive and can be used as weapons intended to cause harm to our military bases at long standoff ranges. We built the THOR weapon system as a deterrent against these type threats. THOR with its counter electronic technology can take down swarms of drones in rapid fire. This capability will be an amazing asset to our warfighters and the nation’s defense,” said Hammett.

“The overseas field assessments are allowing us to understand directed energy as a capability against drones. This gives us a better picture of the military utility, reliability and sustainability, training requirements and implementation with existing base defense,” said Dr. Michael Jirjis, the Base Defense Experimentation director of the Air Force Strategic Development Planning & Experimentation (SDPE) Office.

Jirjis said the 12-month assessment of the directed energy weapon system would shape the Air Force’s future program of how to integrate the new weapon system on military bases.

It appears that the US is steadily improving its capabilities when it comes to the microwave weapon and the fight against drones, which would likely come in handy if the situation in the Middle East were to escalate.

https://southfront.org/u-s-testing-its-thor-drone-killing-microwave-weapon-in-africa/

Strategic Propaganda Concept Of NATO – Part 1

One of the characteristic features of the modern era is the rapid development of electronic means of disseminating information, which contributes to the steady growth of the influence of subjective factors on world politics, including preparation and operations conduct to resolve crises. The experience of using non-violent means to solve political and military tasks during a number of campaigns in recent decades has demonstrated the high effectiveness of targeted information and psychological impact (IPA) on active and indirect participants in conflicts, which often exceeded the direct benefits obtained during military operations. According to Western experts, the rational use of information resources makes it possible to control public opinion up to the point of changing the value system of broad masses, and manipulation of information can radically change the perception and behavior of selected (target) audiences. As a result, information superiority over the enemy began to be viewed as the most important factor in achieving victory in modern warfare.

In these conditions, the leadership of the Alliance was forced to radically reconsider their views on traditional means, methods and forms of information and psychological warfare, which is reflected in the new concept of the so-called Strategic Communications, which emerged as part of the much-publicized “Comprehensive Approach” to crisis management. An important area of ​​its implementation was to ensure the coherence of the use of military and civilian information tools to achieve the global goals of the alliance in peacekeeping activities.

The emergence of “strategic propaganda” became a further development of the doctrine of indirect actions, which consists in influencing the consciousness of those groups of population on which the adoption of key socio-political state decisions depends. In this case, the required effect is achieved “by influencing individual, non-main elements of the system, the change of which leads to the transition of the system to the required state.”

Strategic Propaganda Concept Of NATO - Part 1

Click to see the full-size image

The main provisions of this concept are enshrined in the relevant basic documents approved by the NATO Council, in which “strategic propaganda” is defined as the process of pooling of available information resources for their coordinated use in order to effectively promote the alliance’s policy and support it in conducting military operations.

The block’s theoreticians borrowed the idea of ​​”strategic propaganda” from their American colleagues, who not only introduced new approaches to organizing information and psychological confrontation, but also introduced into circulation a number of original terms to disguise the true goals of US actions on the ideological front.

The directive of the US Secretary of Defense had a programmatic significance for the development of the conceptual apparatus of the new idea, which back in 1998 approved the “Joint Doctrine of Information Operations” and for the first time used the expression “Strategic Information Warfare”. It also revealed the forms and methods of complex Info-psychological warfare on the enemy, tested in practice during military campaigns in Iraq (Operation Desert Fox, 1998) and Yugoslavia (Allied Force, 1999), and later refined and consolidated on the basis of combat experience obtained in Afghanistan. In its final form, the aforementioned doctrine was set forth in the Pentagon’s directive “Strategic Propaganda Roadmap” (2006).

https://southfront.org/strategic-propaganda-concept-of-nato-part-1/

Longtime Trump Banker Investigated Over Kushner-Linked Deal Resigns From Deutsche Bank

Less than six months after Deutsche Bank launched an investigation into Rosemary Vrablic, longtime personal banker to President Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, the elite banker is resigning along with colleague Dominic Scalzi.

Vrablic, a managing director and senior director in Deutche Bank's wealth management division, is stepping down effective Dec. 31 for unknown reasons, however in August the bank launched an investigation into a 2013 transaction in which Vrablic, Scalzi and others purchased a $1.5 million Park Avenue apartment from a company called Bergel 715 Associates, which Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump held an ownership stake at the time.

The transaction, which posed a potential conflict of interest in violation of firm rules, was discovered by the New York Times after Kushner disclosed that he had received between $1 million and $5 million in 2019 from Bergel. And now, the Times has its scalp.

"I’ve chosen to resign my position with the bank effective Dec. 31 and am looking forward to my retirement," said the 60-year-old Vrablic in a statement.

Ms. Vrablic and Mr. Scalzi joined Deutsche Bank in 2006 from Bank of America. Ms. Vrablic quickly made a name for herself as one of her division’s leading rainmakers. In 2011, she landed a prominent new client: Mr. Trump, who for decades had been mostly off-limits to the mainstream banking world because of his tendency to default on loans. With her bosses’ approval, Ms. Vrablic agreed to a series of loans, totaling well over $300 million, for his newly acquired Doral golf resort in Florida, for his troubled Chicago skyscraper and for the transformation of the Old Post Office building in Washington into a luxury hotel. -NYT

After Trump became president, congressional Democrats, special counsel Robert Mueller, and regulators put his finances under a microscope - during which Vrablic's role in his life pushed the publicity-shy banker into the spotlight.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/longtime-trump-banker-investigated-over-kushner-linked-deal-resigns-deutsche-bank

Julian Assange’s Fiancée Sits Down With Revolver to Reveal Deep State’s Plot to Erase Our First Amendment

For years, America’s oligarch class has grown fat by betraying the country they rule over. They’ve outsourced the country’s wealth and well-being to China. They’ve embroiled the country in one disastrous war after another — wars that did nothing to make America safer but did a great deal to enrich the defense contractors who supplied them. They’ve colluded with Big Tech and Big Finance to gradually chip away at the basic rights that Americans once took for granted.

To the badly misnamed, oligarch-captured “intelligence community,” the imprisoned Wikileaks Editor and free speech activist Julian Assange remains Public Enemy Number One.

As head of Wikileaks, Assange published leaked documents from former Army soldier Chelsea Manning (born Bradley Manning). Manning has already gone free, but Assange has been a hunted man ever since. For seven years, Assange holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid an unjust extradition on trumped-up charges.

In 2016, Wikileaks released emails from the DNC and John Podesta. These emails exposed how the Democrat Party rigged the primary race for Hillary Clinton. After an informed public unexpectedly rejected Hillary Clinton for president, Washington, D.C.’s rage against Assange boiled over. Assange was assigned a key role in the Russiagate conspiracy theory that charged Russia with handing Trump the 2016 election. In spring 2019, Ecuador revoked Assange’s asylum, and he was dragged out of the embassy to face extradition on more than a dozen espionage charges in the U.S.

But another possibility exists. President Trump could thumb his nose at the Deep State’s decade-long obsession with persecuting Assange, and give him the pardon he deserves. Revolver has advocated just such a course.

Remarkably, a steadily-growing group of fair-minded patriots around the world have come together to ask for Assange’s freedom. Former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had her emails published by Wikileaks in 2008, but on Saturday she called her prior attacks on Assange a ‘mistake’ and called on President Trump to pardon the Wikileaks publisher. Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz and Democrat Tulsi Gabbard have joined forces to endorse clemency for Assange as well. Actress Pamela Anderson wants clemency as well, as does Iranian dissident and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi.

More

https://www.revolver.news/2020/12/revolver-exclusive-interview-julian-assange-fiancee-stella-moris-smith-robinson/

Van Morrison: 'Those who are shutting down our economy haven't missed a paycheck'

Legendary vocalist's latest anti-lockdown statement attracts large vials of venom from those who usually sing his praises — the left

Iconic singer Van Morrison is known the world over for his instantly recognizable stellar vocals. And those among his biggest fans — in this case those who lean left politically — know something else about the veteran crooner: He has an attitude and doesn't scare easily.

So it's quite a thing to witness Morrison rip into coronavirus lockdowns, then watch leftists castigate Morrison's stance — then see the singer come back for more.

What's the background?

Morrison and fellow music superstar Eric Clapton have made a number of headlines over anti-lockdown songs. Back in September, a health minister in Northern Ireland labeled Morrison's anti-lockdown songs "dangerous." Morrison's tunes "Born to Be Free," "As I Walked Out," and "No More Lockdown" reportedly target the U.K. government for using COVID-19 lockdowns to "enslave" the people.

Clapton noted late last month that he and Morrison were releasing a new anti-lockdown song, "Stand and Deliver" — penned by Morrison and recorded by Clapton — and the guitarist took a lot of grief from the left over it.

But despite the ever-looming specter of cancel culture , Morrison just won't shut up.

On Monday the singer took to Twitter to blast politicians who suffer no economic hardships due to coronavirus lockdowns since they always stay employed as long as they're in office:

Remember, those who are shutting down our economy haven't missed a paycheck since lockdown began. We are not in this together.

— Van Morrison (@Van Morrison)1608565250.0

"Remember, those who are shutting down our economy haven't missed a paycheck since lockdown began," Morrison tweeted to his nearly 66,000 followers before adding a mocking zinger. "We are not in this together."

Earlier Monday he also tweeted, "10 months on and the @niexecutive still hasn't presented the science for the Northern Ireland lockdown."

How did folks react?

While it appears that the majority of fans lauded Morrison's stance ("You're spot on Van," one commenter replied. "We can't stand for this anymore."), others — whose ultimate loyalties are to their leftist causes — blasted Morrison:

"You're dead to me," one user wrote.

"From he who hath not had to worry about pay checks for decades!" another commenter said.

"I am a massive fan, but you're testing me with this bulls**t, you're in the wrong side of this argument, and you much like the people you refer to are not worried about a paycheck either, whilst huge numbers of people worry about nothing else," another user noted.

Far-left singer-songwriter David Crosby predictably skewered both Morrison and Clapton for their anti-lockdown stance:

Dumb …childish ….masks and lockdown are how you beat this …proof is already there …New Zealand for instanc… https://t.co/VTqIs72dHs

— David Crosby (@David Crosby)1608581407.0

Specifically regarding Morrison, Crosby added the following:

Talented ….makes good records. …but ….yeah that’s what my friends who know him say …but then …lots of peo… https://t.co/KeeDx5jims

— David Crosby (@David Crosby)1608581584.0

The media also is in lockstep against what the Morrison/Clapton collaboration hath wrought, as Consequence of Sound titled its piece, "Eric Clapton and Van Morrison Share Awful Anti-Lockdown Song 'Stand and Deliver'"; Variety said, "Van Morrison and Eric Clapton Strike the Wrong Note About COVID-19," and the Los Angeles Times took it a step further: "Eric Clapton's anti-lockdown protest song by Van Morrison is totally worth protesting."

Here's "Stand and Deliver":

https://www.theblaze.com/news/van-morrison-those-shutting-down-economy-paycheck