Reader Andy L sent me this:

Last Thursday, the ISP confirmed that their FOID (Firearm Owners Identification) card portal had been hit with a cyber attack, and that about 2,000 Illinoisans who have FOID cards may have had their information compromised:

“Out of necessity, some of the online account parameters put in place for ease of use and convenience years ago have been appropriately modified and tightened to prevent unauthorized users from attempting to further expand the extent of the identify fraud.”

The ISP news release points out that they’re reaching out to those 2,000 FOID card holders who may have had their personal info stolen.

Illinois’ FOID Card System Hit By Cyber Attack

Besides the obvious info required to steal identities, this breach has provided a nice sexy shopping list for burglars to go find themselves some free guns, courtesy of the Illinois government.  Did you notice the “parameters” explanation? It sounds like they had some 1990s security running or maybe their access password was “password 1”

Anyway, if you needed yet another reason why any kind of firearm registration is dumb and dangerous, you can add this to the always lengthening list.

North Carolina lets you register to vote at the DMV.

I had to tell them my party affiliation.

Unfortunately I could not register as a Pinochetist.

Also, of you try and register two pickup trucks, and the guy asks “why do you have two pickup trucks?”

The correct answer is not “one for each testicle”

I need to get a new drivers license.

I go online to set up an appointment.

Six weeks.

Go in, the DMV requires a mask.  I don’t have one.

Usually they have extras but they are out.

They check my paperwork to make sure I have what I need then send me away to get a mask.

I get one.

Come back.

They sign me in.

Wait five minutes.

They process my paperwork and make me take off my mask for the picture.

None of this makes a God dammed bit of sense.  But obtuse bureaucrats have to enforce obtuse, useless, and inconvenient rules because that justifies their existence.

I hate the bureaucratic state.

This is going to be super controversial, but I absolutely agree that if you do your part and get vaxxed you should have priority treatment from doctors.

If you don't get vaxxed because you don't trust science and medicine, then you probably don't trust the doctors anyway, right? https://t.co/BxXCNDkSd7

— The Darkest Timeline Numbersmuncher (@NumbersMuncher) August 19, 2021

Now let me be clear, I am not saying that the COVID vaccine will cause flipper babies.

What I am saying is that skepticism about a drug hailed as a miracle and pushed through testing quickly caused one of the worst medical disasters in modern medical history.

People have a right to be skeptical.

The vast majority of people who are hesitant about the COVID vaccine are vaccinated against a lot of other things.

When you ask them why they are hesitant about the COVID vaccine they will almost universally tell you that it was developed and approved very fast and they want to know what the long term effects are.

Which is an entirely reasonable position.

People want some clinical history to show that it’s safe.

The Left has deliberately  mischaracterized COVID vaccine hesitancy as a total distrust of all vaccines and all modern medicine.

This is horseshit.

I could talk about how Fauci and most/all of the physicians in government and policy making have lied to us repeatedly.

I could talk about dancing doctors and nurses destroying their credibility on TikTok.

But in the end there is only one word that needs to be said: Thalidomide.

There is precedent that medicine with a lot of hype and no clinical history can go very,  very wrong, and people being hesitant about that (especially pregnant women) should not be treated as second class citizens for their reticence.

North Texas doctor’s group retreats on policy saying vaccination status to be part of care decisions
This would have been a big change in health care, and it was all outlined in a memo obtained by the Watchdog.

Originally doctors “quietly” came up with a plant that if they ran out of ICU beds that vaccinated patients would get priority.

After this was reported on, the doctors backed down.

Good, but honestly, not good enough.

They never should have come up with this idea to begin with.

I’m telling you, there is going to be a hostage situation in a hospital if this shit continues.

Someone goes to the hospital, maybe for COVID, maybe for a hear attack, maybe for a car accident, who knows.  The staff there will check and find out the patient is unvaccinated and then low priority them.

Sure, they may be bleeding internally after a collision but isn’t COVID more of a threat than a ruptured spleen?  And if an unvaccinated person dies because they were given a lower priority, isn’t that their fault for being a COVID denying untermensch?

This will happen and an angry husband and/or father will seek treatment for their wife/child at the point of a gun.

And I will have no sympathy for any medical staff who were ventilated at high velocity.

Making medical staff into arbiter of who lives and who dies based on social status is amongst the worst things that society can do.

We must be able to trust out doctors because we put out lives in their hands.

When doctors decide that “those people” don’t deserve the same level of care because they are “the other” then that trust is destroyed and bad things will happen.

The medical community made the right decision this time because of public pressure after a good newspaper reported on it.

But the medical community better get its head on straight before shit goes south.

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1428382828794978311

We have been absolutely assured that our elections are safe and trustworthy, including the COIVD compliant mail-in ballot system.

So whatever this is, it can’t be election fraud, because that is just a racist, Right-wing conspiracy, that only insurrectionists believe.

Landlords, Frustrated With Eviction Moratorium, Sell to Wealthy Investors to Stem Losses

Amid thousands of dollars in losses in back rent and a federal eviction moratorium extended to October 3, small property owners are selling their units to wealthy investors and equity funds, whom advocates worry will renovate properties and hike up the market rate.

“A lot of landlords are disgusted. They are selling at losses. They are getting out, period,” said Michael Reid, a mortgage loan officer who sold three of his houses.

“The minute they enacted the moratorium, that trigged my decision to sell the properties,” Martin said. “I did not want someone moving in whom I could never get rid of if they didn’t pay rent. That would make the financial situation worse.”

Most evictions for unpaid rent have been halted since the early days of the pandemic and there are now more than 15 million people living in households that owe as much as $20 billion in back rent, according to the Aspen Institute.

A majority of single-family rental home owners have been impacted, according to a survey from the National Rental Home Council, and 50% say they have tenants who have missed rent during the pandemic.

Smaller landlords with fewer than four units, who often don’t have the financing of larger property owners, were hit especially hard, with as many as 58 percent having tenants behind on rent, according to the National Association of Realtors. More than half of back rent is owed to smaller landlords.

David points to two tenants who received paychecks throughout the pandemic but didn’t pay rent or bother to file for rental assistance. Others singled out delinquent tenants who they claimed still managed to drive a luxury car, get food deliveries or go on vacation.

This was absolutely the plan all along.

COVID was the excuse.

1. 1. Impose the eviction moratorium.
   2. Create a perverse incentive for people not to pay their rent.
   3. Squeeze and bankrupt the small landlords.
   4. Small landlords sell cheap the minimize losses.
   5. Investment banks and real estate mega-corporations end up owning the vast majority of rental properties and dominate the market.

Given that the majority of young people are renters, and because of student loans are a long way from being able to buy a house, the investment banks and real estate mega-corporations will effectively own the lifestyle of a majority of a generation.

This doesn’t happen by accident, the outcome was just too obvious.  That was deliberate.

The greatest transfer of property wealth from the middle-class to the elite investment class in history.

Capitalism put an end to feudalism.  The people acquired land and grew prosperous.

The elites just had to take it all back and they used COVID to do it.