Category: Hard times in the land of plenty

The New Normal

No easy answer

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Californy’s political “leadership” ponders the imponderable.

SACRAMENTO, CA—California is currently on fire, having also been plagued by darkness, earthquakes, and hippies. State leaders are claiming they have “no idea” why God keeps lighting them on fire, though they just voted to reduce penalties for pedophiles in the name of equality for the LGBTQ+ community.

“It’s unclear here what exactly we’re being punished for,” said Governor Gavin Newsom at a press conference as the state burned down around him. “We are a progressive utopia. We’re the other states in fast-forward. We pass amazing legislation that shows our love and inclusiveness of pedophiles of all sexual orientations. We are doing exactly what Socialist Jesus would want us to.”

Hm. I believe I see your mistake here, fellas. I boldfaced it to help y’all out. No need to thank me; in fact, I’d kinda rather you didn’t, and just carried on. As you were.

Whole lotta nothing much

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I’m thinking very seriously about making this my final COVIDIOT shamdemic post.

A recent study claimed that the annual motorcycle rally held last month in Sturgis, South Dakota was a “superspreader event” infecting more than half of the 460,000 attendees at a cost of $12 billion to our public health institutions.

In a report titled “IZA DP No. 13670: The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19,” claimed that “large crowds, coupled with minimal mask-wearing and social distancing by attendees” turned the rally into a “superspreader” infecting 260,000 people.

Authors Dhaval M. Dave, Andrew I. Friedson, Drew McNichols, and Joseph J. Sabia concluded that “the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally generated public health costs of approximately $12.2 billion.”

The public health risks of Sturgis were so rigorously studied by the authors that “no medical journal would touch it,” as bestselling author and public health writer Alex Berenson noted on Tuesday. Instead, the report was posted on the website of the obscure Insitute of Labor Economics, a leftwing German thinktank.

Our infotainment industry — formerly known as “the mainstream media,” and prior to that as “the news business” — went bonkers over the claim.

The Hill — formerly a respectable Washington-based publication — breathlessly ran the study’s claims as though they were undisputed by anyone without a political agenda.

Here’s a partial list:

  • NBC News: Sturgis rally may have caused more than 250,000 new coronavirus cases, study finds
  • USA Today: Study says Sturgis bike rally was a ‘super-spreader’ event, led to 260,000 COVID-19 cases
  • IBT: Sturgis Rally May Have Led To 250,000 New US Coronavirus Cases, Study Estimates
  • Jalopnik: Results Are In: Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Was A COVID ‘Super Spreader’ Costing Billions
  • Forum News Service: Researchers: Sturgis rally a ‘superspreader event’ linked to 267K coronavirus cases
  • Kaiser Health News: Sturgis Biker Rally Linked To 260,000 COVID cases

PLEASE NOTE: I boldfaced all those mentions of new “cases” above for a reason, folks. To wit:

I am begging you not to use the enemy’s language. Stop saying “cases”. Correct people who do.

A positive test is not a case. A case is an active symptomatic illness in a person needing or seeking treatment. A case is not a person who just has the bug and has, say, only the sniffles. Most people who get this don’t develop anything like a serious illness. Many never even knew they had it!

Again, some positive tests are false. Most genuine positives tests not are not symptomatic. (Here is one example.)

Positive tests do not necessarily mean active infections. I told us months ago the test was likely picking up past infections. This has since been verified (and it was always likely). Also as we guessed a long time ago, using evidence from other similar infections, the best current guess of the infection fatality rate is about 0.3%. We used similar numbers to show pictures of the number of people likely already infected.

Propagandists and governments are using these false “cases” to cause unnecessary panic. When you hear somebody say “cases”, tell them, “You mean positive tests. How many of them required hospitalization? How many deaths were caused by the virus? How many died with it?”

Stop saying cases!

Also stop saying deaths. Say “attributed deaths”, or “deaths with but not necessarily by.” Poor use of language has exacerbated this crisis beyond all measure. Do not contribute to it.

From the very start of this fiasco, it’s been nothing but lies and deception, all the way down. Well, unless one would like to be generous about the thing and credit witless stupidity instead, which I admit is a possibility too. But either way, the scam served its purpose very well already; the soaring Trump economy has been thoroughly brought down, the Amerikan populace cowed and subjugated, the “new normal” established. The shamdemic horse has been well and truly flogged nearly unto death at this point, and I for one am sick and tired of hearing about the damned thing, much less talking about it here.

So unless it’s something other than yet another run-of-the-mill “whoopsie, got it wrong” admission from yet another gaggle of mutton-headed “experts,” I’m thinking of just packing it all in for good. Perhaps that will be harder to do than I think at the moment; could be my spluttering rage as TPTB smear yet another transparent lie into the faces of the gullible majority will force me to the keyboard for another rant on this tired topic. We’ll see.

Oh yeah, that Sturgis “superspreader” surge? Guess what.

According to South Dakota health officials, 124 new cases in the state—including one fatal case—were directly linked to the rally. Overall, COVID-19 cases linked to the Sturgis rally were reported in 11 states as of September 2, to a tune of at least 260 new cases, according to The Washington Post.

There very well may be more cases that have been linked to the early August event, but so far, that’s only 260 confirmed cases—about 0.1 percent of the number the IZA paper offers.

The results of the IZA paper “do not align with what we know,” South Dakota epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said at a Tuesday news briefing.

The IZA paper “isn’t science; it’s fiction,” Gov. Kristi Noem (R) said.

It’s also good election-time propaganda, apparently.

NOW you’re getting it.

The Church Militant

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Yeah, tell me again all about how it’s all about health, safety, and combating a profligately-overhyped virus, whydon’tcha. That one’s my favorite.

SEATTLE CLOSES PARK TO PREVENT OUTDOOR WORSHIP SERVICE: This notice sounds innocuous enough, just a legitimate public health measure. The reality is officials closed the park because it was the planned site for a worship time organized by a group of local churches, assisted by Sean Feucht. Feucht’s ministry organization has organized 19 services in 19 cities during July and August.

“This is the height of hypocrisy for the City of Seattle to turn a blind eye to riots, looting, and AntiFa, while refusing to let Christians gather in a public park to sing and worship,” Feucht said in a statement in response to the closure notice. “First the government shuts down churches. Now it’s shutting down parks to stop us from worshipping. Time to stand up church!”

If they don’t, they will soon be destroyed forever. And if they continue to submit to this naked tyranny, they will deserve to be. Michael Walsh’s sage advice from way back in 2012 is even more apt today:

In 1844, faced with a Nativist threat to burn down St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral (at Prince and Mott streets), John J. Hughes, the Irish-born bishop (and later first archbishop) of New York, gathered several thousand of his mostly Irish parishioners and deployed them around the church. Any attack on the cathedral, warned the man known as “Dagger John,” would be repulsed with force. The Nativists backed down.

During the Civil War, Hughes undertook a secret mission to Europe at the personal request of Abraham Lincoln, to rally support for the Union cause and keep Britain from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy. This he did in part by explaining the facts of the life to the English: that they’d have no luck in raising troops in restive, famine-stricken Ireland to fight against America, and a great deal of trouble if they tried.

Those were the days of the two-fisted Irish clergy, who understood their dual American roles as both the spiritual leaders of their people and — when necessary — political figures as well. But those days are long gone (Cardinal O’Connor was the last of the line).

It’s good to see the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops making noises about suing the government, but it would be even better to see Archbishop (and Cardinal-designate) Timothy Dolan get out front on this issue in a very public way. “Conscientious objectors” and “civil disobedience” were all the rage on the left during the Vietnam War and the draft,” and it’s high time we tried the same tactic on them: Catholic institutions should simply ignore the law, refuse to implement it, and refuse to pay the Obamacare fines — and dare the Left utter a peep about “higher morality.” There are 77 million Catholics in the U.S., and an awful lot of them vote.

In other words, Archbishop Dolan and his confreres ought to ask themselves, What Would Dagger John Do? No need for mobs this time, just morals. But if they’re not going to vigorously defend their own faith, in a Church Militant sort of way, who will? 

Pretty sure I linked and excerpted this column way back in the day, I believe; honestly, I’m astonished that I even remembered. But when I read about the above instance of the broader rejiggering of the COVID “crisis” into a convenient tool to be wielded against all the perennial hate-objects of Leftist despotism—an abominable tide that has inundated the nation this disastrous summer—it became readily apparent that some things never change after all. More, from Walsh’s second follow-up to that first Dagger John piece:

I’ve written about Bishop John J. Hughes, the first Archbishop of New York, here and here, advocating that both the Catholic clergy and its laymen take a page from that tough mick’s book and deal with the Obama administration’s unconstitutional attack on religious conscience and the First Amendment the way Dagger John would have: by defying it.

Civil disobedience was all the rage on the left when I was a lad during the Vietnam War era. Refuse to register for the draft; declare your conscientious objector status if called; refuse to pay that portion of your taxes that went to support the Pentagon, etc. The liberals couldn’t wrap themselves in enough moral goodness as they cursed and spat upon the returning soldiers in their customarily peaceful and tolerant fashion. 

Time to turn the tables by using their own weapons and tactics against them.

It was said of Dagger John that he was “more a Roman gladiator than a devout follower of the meek founder of Christianity.” To face the secular threat of the modern Left, we’re going to need a lot more gladiators.

It ain’t just the Christian church, both Protestant and Catholic, that needs to get its head out of the sand, shed all comforting delusions, and boldly defy our would-be masters. For all of us, it’s quickly boiling down to this simple expression: On your feet, or on your knees.

You don’t have to like it. But you DO have to recognize it.

In any war, to refuse to fight back vigorously is effectively to surrender. At such a perilous crossroads of history not only our freedom but our very future hangs precariously in the balance…waiting. A stark, binary choice must be made; there is no longer any middle ground, no third way, no half-measures. Anyone who declines to engage, in any way they can manage, in defense of what’s right, just, and true might as well just declare themselves actively in league with the enemy and be done with it.

Craven update! Oh, it’s the Church Militant alright. But not in the way Walsh meant.

Black Lives Matter DESTROYED and TORCHED the historic St. John’s Church in Washington DC in late May.

St. John’s was designed by noted architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe to serve Episcopalians in the neighborhoods in the western end of Washington. The cornerstone of St. John’s was set on September 14, 1815.

Beginning with James Madison, until the present, every President of the United States has attended a service at St. John’s Church.

BLM torched it.

St. John’s Church leaders invited Black Lives Matter to paint race-based themes on the boarded up church this weekend.

They did not ask for Christian themes — they asked for racial themes.

Well, I mean, this IS Episcopalians we’re talking about here. But still. One can’t help but wonder what or who might be influencing these pathetic fools to prostrate themselves at the altar of cowardice and appeasement. Could it be…ohh, let me see…SATAN?!?

This has been going on for decades, of course, but its most striking manifestation of late has been the near-total failure of the Christian church to expose and reject the destructive fraud that is Black Lives Matter.

That kind of failure requires extraordinary ignorance, extraordinary cowardice, or both. After all, it’s not like the veil hasn’t come off Black Lives Matter, if it was ever there in the first place. Its founders openly profess their allegiance to Marxism, history’s most genocidal ideology. Its members repeatedly encourage violence, destruction, and even murder. Its website calls for the “disruption of the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”, the end of accepting heterosexuality as normal, and the avoidance of “environments in which men are centered”.

At least two of its leading lights—Patrisse Cullors and Malina Abdullah—practice a Yoruban zombie religion in which they may, or may not, sacrifice animals to invite the spirits of the dead to possess their bodies during their nightly riot activities. (Abdullah says she’s become very friendly with the spirits of the dead, and has had a lot of laughs with one named “Wakeesha”).

In addition, the cited catalyst for the entire movement—the “murder” of Trayvon Martin in 2012—is a lie. Trayvon Martin was not “murdered”. He violently assaulted a man named George Zimmerman by pounding his head into the pavement. Zimmerman then shot him in self-defense. That’s precisely why a jury of six women acquitted him. Yet Black Lives Matter is still calling it a “murder” on its website.

The second rationale for the movement—that a racist white cop gunned down an innocent “gentle giant” named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—is also a lie. After robbing a store, Brown attacked a police officer trying to arrest him. As a result, the officer shot Brown in self-defense. Attorney General Eric Holder himself confirmed this after an exhaustive review.

These aren’t the only Black Lives Matter lies, of course. It’s a lie that there’s an epidemic of racist police shootings. It’s a lie that defunding the police will help black communities (it does just the opposite, and has already directly enabled the murder of hundreds more black people, including children).

In short, you couldn’t invent an organization which more flagrantly violates a greater number of Biblical commandments and Christian ideals than Black Lives Matter. You have murder, beatings, necromancy, stealing, bearing false witness, covetousness, lying, insurrection against duly-elected leaders, worshipping false gods, assaults on the family, assaults on heterosexuality, and a transparently fake concern for the black lives every real Christian is duty-bound to see as creations of God. It’s a Satanic dream.

And yet…

Pretty much all of Leftism is a Satanic dream, really. Ironic that the modern libtard-subverted church would be so eager to grovel at the feet of the Prince Of Lies, solely in order to court the favor of people who hate them above almost anything else.

Holding back the Dismal Tide

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Q: What happens if Trump loses? A: More, and worse.

In modern America, hypocrisy and double standards aren’t merely part of the business climate; they’re endemic to the whole society. Former Heritage Foundation scholar and Washington Times writer Sam Francis dubbed this system “anarcho-tyranny”: complete freedom—even exemption from the gravest laws—for the favored, maximum vindictive enforcement against the pettiest infractions by the disfavored.

Rarely has an analysis been so vindicated by events. Even before the 1619 Riots began in May, anarcho-tyranny was already the de facto law of the land. Can you remember the last time anyone in Antifa was punished for anything? I can’t. But I do remember community college adjunct philosophy professor and Antifa thug Eric Clanton walloping three people on the head with a five-pound iron bike lock—and the Alameda County, California district attorney letting him go with probation.

I also remember, in pre-apocalypse New York City, Antifa goons getting into a fight—it’s hard to say who started it—with a group of men calling themselves the Proud Boys. Although no one was seriously injured, the NYPD expended significant time and resources tracking down the Proud Boys, but none whatsoever looking for any Antifa figures involved. Two Proud Boys were sentenced to four years in prison. No Antifa members were ever identified, much less charged with any crime, still much less tried or convicted. At most, the incident was a mutually idiotic brawl for which only one side was punished. The real distinction here is that the Proud Boys are regime dissidents while Antifa thugs are ruling-class shock troops.

All that, though, was child’s play compared to the nightly horrors Antifa—and their BLM allies—have wreaked on America’s streets for three straight months with close to zero official attempt to rein them in, and often with officials cheering them on. Examples—from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to Governors Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo, and Tim Walz, to Mayors Bill de Blasio, Eric Garcetti, Lori Lightfoot, Jenny Durkan, Ted Wheeler, and Jacob Frey—are too numerous to catalog fully. The latest atrocity came from Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, who, the instant a career criminal wanted on an active warrant was shot while resisting arrest and, it appears, reaching into his car for a knife, took to Twitter to fire up the mob. His state’s fourth-largest city has burned every night since. It took him days to make even a token appeal for calm.

Then consider the fates of those not destroying America in the name of “social justice.” This story is still “developing” as they say, but as of Friday, August 28, a young man who appears to have had a Molotov cocktail thrown at him, a loaded pistol pointed at his face, and his head bashed with a skateboard after being chased by three Antifa thugs is currently in jail on a charge of first-degree murder.

The fundamental right of self-defense—the bedrock foundation of all our other rights—increasingly is not honored if you’re a member of a disfavored group and your attacker is not.

Our officials—at least in all the Democratic Party-controlled state and local governments—operate in the precise opposite way that they are supposed to. Instead of enforcing the law and maintaining order, they encourage riots, refuse to enforce the law, and then leap into action only when a victim defends himself. This is not incompetence or misguided idealism; it is evil. Should it continue, it will lead either to the collapse of the country or to revolution.

To return to more prosaic matters, should Trump lose, the repowered thought police will greatly expand its “enemies list.” Those deemed “dangerous” by the wokerati will be dogged by authorities. Any suspected dissident not as scrupulous as Caesar’s wife in his every interaction with the state will get the book thrown at him for minor, technical infractions of some law, executive order, or administrative rule. As the poor sucker is hauled away in cuffs by a heavily armed team of feds in windbreakers, CNN and MSNBC reporters—tipped off in advance to get it all on camera—will intone that this “dangerous white supremacist” with “ties to neo-Nazi groups” was “planning attacks.” Months or years later, after being held without bail, the unfortunate target will be convicted of something like mail fraud and given the maximum sentence. 

All of this is easy enough to predict because it is either what the Left is already doing where it has the power, or what it says it wants to do.

The lessons of California and New York show that when leftists no longer face opposition, they do whatever they want—or try to. The problem (for them, for now) is that they still face opposition from the red elements still extant in the federal government, from red states, and from red communities in their own states. Once the whole country has gone blue, though, things will be…different.

Don’t kid yourself for one moment that things couldn’t possibly get worse. The above is excerpted from the great Michael Anton’s latest book—at 14.99 for the Kindle version, not exactly cheap, but I’m gonna have to somehow scrounge up the wherewithal to get it nonetheless—and, sobering though it most definitely is, you very much need to read it all. There’s also a fine review of the book by no less a light than Angelo Codevilla which is well worth looking in on, too.

Inexpertise

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Expert me no more experts.

Joe Biden climbed out of his basement last week. Twice! Once to deliver a brief but well-received address at the Democratic National Convention, and once to give a socially distanced interview to ABC News with his wing-woman Kamala Harris. The big news out of the interview is that Biden said he would shut America down again if scientists told him to.

If this is true, then I have a question. Why are we even bothering to consider Biden? Why not just elect Dr. Anthony Fauci, or Dr. Deborah Birx if we want to smash glass ceilings in the process?

Very early on we all made a decision as a society to hand our freedom to a small group of people because they have lab coats with fancy logos. It’s shocking. It is something that America needs to come to terms with because what we did can never happen again.

The misery, joblessness, loss of life, addiction, destruction of businesses, suicides — they all happened. It wasn’t people wanting manicures and brunch, it was peoples’ lives being destroyed. Did we have to do it? Maybe. Maybe we did have to do it, maybe that heavy human toll had to be accepted to stop the spread.

But we didn’t even have a conversation about it. We just pretended the downsides didn’t exist. When President Trump or anyone else said, “Wait, this is gonna hurt people too,” they were called grandma killers.

Biden just told us that as president of the United States he will do whatever the science bureaucracy tells him to do. Then why have a president? What good is he? Literally anyone could do that. If the new rule is that nobody gets to go outside or go to church unless Dr. Fauci says so, then why have a president? Why have a Constitution? Let’s just have a medical board that sends out decrees. Also one for the environment and racism. It’ll be easy, we just do whatever they say while we watch Netflix and order stuff from Amazon while having Zoom drinks.

Sadly, Amerikans have now proved that they much prefer freedom FROM choice over freedom OF choice.

COVID is O-V-E-R

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But the lockdowns, masks, and sundry Soviet-style repression will be forever.

If you’re hoping the COVID-19 pandemic will go on forever, this post may disappoint you. And, I get it. We have gone frothing-at-the-mouth nuts over a slightly above-normal virulence virus, with a unique and obvious age-distribution pattern that should have made containment easy and panic completely unnecessary. And, if you’re living in the United States, like I am, you probably think my declaration that this pandemic is “over” to be somewhere between wishful thinking and incredibly premature, and I hear you, too, although forgive me if I’m not sure you’re the one thinking clearly, given some of the things I’ve recently read. I promise to support my assertion with data, and the wisdom of people far more expert than me who are having a harder time being heard in the present climate of…bats#@t crazy.

Have we lost our collective minds? Yes.

You may not be one of them. In fact, I’m guessing the people who actually take the time to read my blog posts are the few remaining who haven’t been subsumed by the panic, but can we agree that most have?

I can’t see how it’s possible NOT to at this late stage, myself. Yet somehow, here we all are. Don’t miss a word of this excellent post, people; Handley has done yeoman’s work to compile a remarkable and copious shit-ton of data, stats, charts, graphs, and expert analysis—y’know, actual science—that all adds up to one irrefutable conclusion: we’ve been had.

Tyrants on notice update! A shot across the bow.

A veteran and business owner living in Shasta County, California is completely fed up with the authoritarian Covid lockdown orders so he gave a stern warning to the Board of Supervisors.

Carlos Zapata warned the masked officials in the Board of Supervisors chamber that a revolution is brewing.

“At first we sat as concerned citizens….as we realized that [Covid] is not as quite as dangerous as we thought it would be, I was absolutely appalled at the cowardice — and you guys are sitting here with your masks on — I don’t blame you for wearing masks because I would be hiding my face if I was you for what you’re doing,” Zapata said.

He continued, “I’m a business owner and I’m telling you, our families are starving — you guys can sit here with your jobs — you’re gonna sit here and get paid to fall asleep in your chair like that gentleman’s doing behind his mask right there.”

Zapata then put the officials on notice.

“Right now we’re being peaceful and you better be happy we’re good citizens, that we’re peaceful citizens but it’s not gonna be peaceful much longer — and this isn’t a threat — I’m not a criminal, I’ve never been a criminal but I’m telling you real good citizens are going to turn into real concerned and revolutionary citizens real soon. And nobody else is gonna say that. I’m probably the only person that has the balls to say what I’m saying right now.”

“We’re building and we’re organizing and we’ll work with law enforcement or without law enforcement but you won’t stop us when the time comes because our families are starving!” he said.

“This is a warning for what’s coming because it’s not going to be peaceful for much longer! It’s gonna get real!” Zapata said adding he went to war for this country and he’s ready to fight for this country even if it’s against its own citizens.

Well, the usual swearing-in oath taken by military personnel, police, and elected officials DOES mention defending the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” after all. There’s a reason for that.

The fate of The City

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She’s DEAD, Jim. This time for real.

I love NYC. When I first moved to NYC, it was a dream come true. Every corner was like a theater production happening right in front of me. So much personality, so many stories.

Every subculture I loved was in NYC. I could play chess all day and night. I could go to comedy clubs. I could start any type of business. I could meet people. I had family, friends, opportunities. No matter what happened to me, NYC was a net I could fall back on and bounce back up.

Now it’s completely dead.

“But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time.

“But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.

People say, “NYC has been through worse,” or “NYC has always come back.” 
No and no.

First, when has NYC been through worse?

Even in the 1970s, and through the ’80s, when NYC was going bankrupt, even when it was the crime capital of the U.S. or close to it, it was still the capital of the business world (meaning, it was the primary place young people would go to build wealth and find opportunity). It was culturally on top of its game — home to artists, theater, media, advertising, publishing. And it was probably the food capital of the U.S. 

Altucher breaks things down into categories to explain in detail why he deems NYC well and truly doomed, but this next but for me is the important:

NYC has never been locked down for five months. Not in any pandemic, war, financial crisis, never. In the middle of the polio epidemic, when little kids (including my mother) were becoming paralyzed or dying (my mother ended up with a bad leg), NYC didn’t go through this.

This is not to say what should have been done or should not have been done. That part is over. Now we have to deal with what IS.

Perzackly. As I said early on, the “unprecedented” thing about the COVIDIOT panic was never the virus itself; it’s turned out to be fairly ordinary as these things go—just a bad flu, not the planet-depopulating scourge it’s been sold as. The only thing truly unprecedented was the hysterical reaction to it; the speedy exploitation of a cringing, fearful populace by a whole damnable horde of wanna-be tyrants both high and low; and the pathetically submissive obedience in response to that exploitation by subjects of a country once proud to misnomer itself as “land of the free, home of the brave.”

Altucher goes on from there to present an intriguing take on why this time might be different:

I lived three blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11. Downtown, where I lived, was destroyed, but it came roaring back within two years. Such sadness and hardship and then quickly that area became the most attractive area in New York.

And in 2008/2009, there was much suffering during the Great Recession, again much hardship, but things came roaring back.

But… this time is different. You’re never supposed to say that but this time it’s true. If you believe this time is no different, that NYC is resilient, I hope you’re right.

I don’t benefit from saying any of this. I love NYC. I was born there. I’ve lived there forever. I STILL live there. I love everything about NYC. I want 2019 back.

But this time is different.

One reason: Bandwidth.

In 2008, average bandwidth speeds were 3 megabits per second. That’s not enough for a Zoom meeting with reliable video quality. Now, it’s over 20 megabits per second. That’s more than enough for high-quality video.

There’s a before and after. BEFORE: No remote work. AFTER: Everyone can work remotely.

The difference: bandwidth got faster. And that’s basically it. People have left New York City and have moved completely into virtual worlds. The Time-Life Building doesn’t need to fill up again. Wall Street can now stretch across every street instead of just being one building in Manhattan.

We are officially AB: After Bandwidth. And for the entire history of NYC (the world) until now, we were BB: Before Bandwidth.

Remote learning, remote meetings, remote offices, remote performance, remote everything.

That’s what is different.

Very interesting indeed. This James Altucher fella seems to be a pretty smart and perceptive guy, and you should definitely read it all. Even for those of you who give not one damp fart about the fate of what was once indisputably the world’s greatest metropolis (and I myself don’t care nearly as much as I once would have, I admit), it seems obvious to me that most if not all of this grim prognostication could probably be applied to any other American city as well—most certainly the Democrat-Socialist misgoverned ones, at least. As enjoyable as the schadenfraude no doubt is for a great many of us out here in the hinterlands now, that is NOT gonna be a good thing long-term…for anybody.

(Via Insty)

Oh, what a difference a commie can make

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My kneejerk response to the collapse of New York City at the hands of Hizzoner Bill DeBalledZero goes something like, “Too fucking bad, assholes. You elected the bastard, now you can stew in it. Enjoy the socialist hellhole of your votes’ devising, and don’t you even DREAM of moving here.”

On the other hand, some of the most wonderful, memorable times of my life were spent in NYC. Heck, I even married a born-and-raised Manhattan girl and remain close to her mom now that she’s gone, along with several good friends I made over decades of living and playing music there. I still have a certain fondness for the place, even now.

But frankly, I can’t say I care anymore if I ever go back there.

The New York Times reports that national retailers and restaurant chains such as J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, Le Pain Quotidien, and Subway are permanently closing locations in New York City in response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to a “mass exodus” of residents and businesses.

Business leaders warn that the city is facing a crisis of “historic proportions,” according to the Times.

Michael Weinstein, the chief executive of Ark Restaurants, which owns the popular Bryant Park Grill & Cafe, told the New York Times he would never open another restaurant in the city. “There’s no reason to do business in New York,” Weinstein said.

With tourists staying clear of the city and surrounding office towers mostly empty, the restaurant has been forced to close its 1,000-seat dining room and move service to the patio. As a result, Weinstein says the restaurant brings in only about $12,000 a day—an 85 percent drop in revenue.

Here’s a real grabber for ya:

The flagship Victoria’s Secret store at Herald Square in Manhattan has been closed for months and has not paid its $937,000 monthly rent in the meantime. “It will be years before retail has even a chance of returning to New York City in its pre-COVID form,” the retailer’s parent company recently told its landlord.

Dear God, how many lacy underthings must they have been selling to be able to meet close to a million bucks a fucking month in rent before this mess started? David Marcus, for his part, explains the rapidly-dissipating appeal of the New York Groove:

Why I Won’t Leave New York City, But Probably Should
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why people are leaving and I don’t really blame them. Living in New York City is an expensive transaction, not just in terms of money but in terms of lifestyle. We often pay more money to rent a small apartment than most Americans pay for the mortgage on their house. The city is not easy to get around, and we all navigate the panoply of cultures and tongues, our Lingua Franca a kind of unwritten “rules of the city.”

But then there is the other side of the transaction, the wonderful restaurants, bustling bars and jazz clubs, the Cyclone at Coney Island, the rushing mass of pedestrian frenzy assuring us that yes, this is the center of the world, the current Rome. Today, for now at least, all of that is gone. All of the bad things are still bad, worse actually with the crime wave and all, but the good things are all still locked down, which means we are too, locked in those little apartments.

And it gets worse. Schools are only partially opening, leading parents to look for pods in some vain hope that their kids can be educated. Empty apartments sit unrented, sparsely populated subway cars have an air of fear not felt by most for a very long time. But for all this, for all of these overwhelming reasons to get the hell out and find a picket fence in Jersey, I just can’t do it. New York is stuck with me. For better or worse.

There are some things I know about New York City. I know that as the Great Depression dragged along, Gotham was home to the birth of Method Acting and changed theater and film forever. I know that while World War II ravaged nations, New York stole the title of center of the visual art world from Paris. I know that in the drugged out riotous 1970s and 1980s, the city built Disco and pop art and hip-hop. I know that in the shadow of a skyline with teeth knocked out, white belt Williamsburg hipstered in an Electroclash revolution.

Do not mistake this for a childlike nostalgia for the bad old days. Nobody who was an adult back then wants that. It is rather a matter of being resigned to see this thing of ours through. So no, I will not be on the midnight train to Georgia, or Florida, or the Oranges. I have to stay in the husked out shell of greatness that even Bill de Blasio can’t blunder into oblivion because I have a chance to help bring it back. And I trust my fellow New Yorkers, the ones who stay to be just as committed to that.

Even in the best of times one has to be a little crazy to want to live in New York City. These days, one has to be a stark, raving mad lunatic. But that is kind of the point of New York City. After all, even raving mad lunatics need someplace to live. And in the Big Apple those kinds of people have a really successful track record.

Marcus expects NYC to make a comeback once the DeBalledZero lockdown is lifted and life gets “back to normal,” but he’s missing something: the lockdowns aren’t GOING to be lifted, in NYC or anywhere else, without massive, serious, overwhelming pushback all across the nation. Actually, my money is on the opposite: anybody out there seriously think there’s going to be a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade this year? Will the Power allow a Thanksgiving holiday gathering of any kind? Will people be social distancing around their T-day feast, chatting gaily through their masks, scrubbing surfaces and utensils down every five minutes with bleach to stave off the Great Plague?

Will there be a huge, beautiful Christmas tree brightening up the Rockefeller Center ice rink in 2020? Those famous midtown store-window displays to attract the gaze of celebratory shoppers who just aren’t around anymore this year? Anybody out there planning on letting their kid sit on Santa’s lap at Macy’s? Will old Kris Kringle be able to hear and understand as the kids recite their wish-list through the mandatory proper face-covering? Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve? Christmas Day services? Carollers strolling the neigborhood, their voices muffled and unclear because of those same masks?

I seriously, seriously hope none of you have made plans to attend the Times Square ball-drop on New Years Eve this year, I really do.

You say that Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and New Years Eve displays, parades, and festivities all being wiped from the calendar by our esteemed rulers seems a bit of a stretch, do you? Well, they damned sure cancelled Independence Day fireworks all across the nation this summer, now didn’t they? Didja ever imagine you’d see such a thing as that?

Even after a mass rebellion that at the moment looks like a no-show, alas, recreating New York as anything other than the miserable, oppressive, and life-threatening ghetto it’s been “fundamentally transformed” into will be a Herculean task—one which will be vehemently opposed by at least half of the lunatics who live there, just as the Giuliani Renaissance was back in my own New York days. I’ll be rooting for it; New York was a unique and wondrous place, the greatest city on earth, for a long time. But I can’t say I’ll be counting on it.

But maybe there’s a small, fragile seed of hope taking root in Wisconsin:

On Sunday, Wisconsinites protested a new state-wide mask mandate by Gov. Tony Evers at a “We Will Not Comply” freedom rally held in the rural town of Mosinee. It was also a protest against the recent Marathon County online reporting tool for violations of the mask mandate.

Marathon County Health representative Judy Burrows said the online complaint form and tracking process will help officials identify businesses or organizations with multiple reports. “Our primary intention is to educate on the need and benefit to wearing a face covering to prevent the spread of COVID,” Burrows said.  

The event was organized by Get Involved Wisconsin, a grassroots organization that was also responsible for an April rally held at the same location to protest Evers’s stay-at-home orders.

The rally this past weekend drew national speakers such as Dr. Simone Gold and local physicians, including cardiac surgeon Fernando Riveron. Both doctors asserted medical experts are being silenced by corporate media and big tech companies about the true risks of coronavirus and weighing those against other medical concerns.

Doesn’t seem like much, I admit. But from tiny acorns, mighty oaks sometimes grow, right?

Update! Did someone say rebellion?

It appears that government-imposed restrictions on travel, business, and social contact don’t become more palatable with age. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to simmer, the one competency that officials have consistently displayed is in tightening the screws, using the licenses and permissions they require as enforcement tools. For people tired of being bossed around, the obvious response is to carry on without the government’s imprimatur—and they’re doing so in droves. It’s an attitude likely to live on long after the crisis has passed.

“Our businesses are doomed,” Chris Polone, co-owner of a Fort Worth bar that was one of more than 800 such establishments to open in defiance of Texas closure orders, said at the end of July. “We have nothing to lose. We can either fight this thing, Or we can starve ourselves out.”

As apocalyptic as that sounds, it’s a reasonable statement when the review site Yelp reports that 55 percent of all businesses shut during the pandemic are believed to have closed their doors forever. For many entrepreneurs, breaking the rules may be the only way to survive.

Bold above mine, and absolutely critical; as in just about every conflict, numbers matter. Any nascent citizen uprising can only come to grief unless it occurs en masse. As long as only a sad handful of Americans are willing to risk getting up to stand on their feet again, they will all continue to live on their knees. Doesn’t have to be universal; doesn’t even have to be a majority of the populace, even. But it absolutely has to be more than a handful, and when you’re trying to face down governments that have far eclipsed their rightful boundaries, the more the merrier.

At least some encouraging news regarding the overdue groundswell of grassroots defiance in this article, though—very little of which will be reported by Old Media media, assuming any at all is. Bottom line:

Officials in Los Angeles have run into so much push-back that now they’re threatening to cut water and power to businesses and homes that don’t comply with lockdown orders. Depriving people of electricity and running water seems an unlikely means for improving public health, but officialdom is always more interested in compelling submission than in achieving reasonable outcomes.

But submission is harder to come by when the stakes are so high. The government is actually ordering people to refrain from earning their keep, and instead to humbly submit to bankruptcy and beggary. To some, submitting to the rules can look foolish and suicidal—like baring your throat to a predator.

And once you’ve battled government officials threatening your ability to make a living during hard times, why would you assume, after the crisis passes, that they’ve suddenly become wiser and better disposed to your wellbeing? People who have questioned officials’ judgment and defied their orders are unlikely to lose that habit after the pandemic passes. Sure, they’ll probably continue to apply for licenses to operate just to make life easy. But they’ll remember that officials tried to strip them of the “privilege” of putting food on the table and they’ll realize just how dangerous it is to rely on such permission.

Viewed from the historical perspective, would-be despots always end up sowing the seeds for the own destruction. They may reign for a while, even a very long while, yes. But sooner or later, their subjects get a belly full of it and take them out, one way or another. We Will Not Comply indeed, you commie motherfuckers.

Hope the overblown hysteria was worth it

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Toldya.

The entire restaurant industry is “on the brink” of economic collapse as COVID-19 shutdowns and restrictions have cut sales nearly in half in some cities, according new figures released by the Independent Restaurant Coalition.

The group estimates that five out of six restaurants face permanent closure, and up to 16 million jobs could be lost.

Well-known TV chef Andrew Zimmern is behind a new TV ad detailing the restaurant industry’s politically-induced woes. The ad is narrated by Morgan Freeman who intones in that way of his that restaurants are “facing extinction.”

This comes as no surprise. The restaurant industry has high fixed costs and razor-thin profit margins typically not much better than 3%.

Already successful restauranteurs will take hits, sure, but it’s the mom & pop places — and all the people they employ — whose businesses, savings, and dreams will be crushed by this economic collapse.

“Two weeks to flatten the curve” has morphed into “however long it takes to crush the economy.”

That’s not COVID-19. That’s your city or state government at work.

The destruction so wantonly wrought on this country by an unholy combination of power-drunk demi-tyrants, opportunistic Democrat-Socialist politicians, a wholly-complicit media establishment, and a fearful, easily-stampeded populace is way beyond criminal.

Letter to America

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From a good and decent man, a man of courage and integrity, who also happens to be one of Amerika v2.0’s first true martyrs.

We are witnessing a vicious assault by enemies of all that is good, and our president is having to act in ways unprecedented in decades, maybe centuries.

The biblical nature of good versus evil cannot be discounted as we examine what is happening on the streets of America.

It’s Marxism in the form of antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement versus our very capable and very underappreciated law enforcement professionals, the vast majority of whom are fighting to provide us safe and secure homes, streets and communities.

We can no longer pretend that these dark forces are going to go away by mere prayer alone. Prayers matter, but action is required.

This action is needed at the local, state and federal levels. Action is also required in the economic, media, clerical and ecclesiastical realms.

Decide how you can act within your abilities. Stand up and state your beliefs. Be proud of who you are and what you stand for. And face, head-on, those community “leaders” who are willing to allow dark forces to go beyond peaceful protests and destroy and violate your safety and security.

Read all of it—and acknowledge, if you haven’t by now, that this is indeed war: REAL war, war to the knife, war for all the marbles.

If you haven’t noticed yet, our political life is rapidly descending into a series of charades with the potential for catastrophe. In case you think that a “charade” is just a parlor game, here is a dictionary definition: “an absurd pretense intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance.” The peril created by false appearances in the current political climate is blindness in the face of the evil that threatens us.

…Republicans collude in these dangerous charades. Democrat leaders like Pelosi call Republicans Nazis, Russian agents, traitors. And Republicans respond: “Democrats are playing politics.” No they’re not. This is not the language of politics; it’s the language of war. It’s designed to destroy you. From the moment Trump emerged as victor in 2016, Democrats declared war on the president and therefore America, whose duly elected commander-in-chief he was. They also declared war on everyone associated with the White House and supporting its agendas. Republicans need to wake up. The most important decision they can make as we approach the November elections is to end the charade, accept that it is a war we are facing, and return the Democrats’ fire with fire.

Damned skippy, right down the line. Read all of this one too. It’s a short ‘un, but there’s some very sobering stuff tucked between my ellipses.

Just stay home!

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Shhhhhh.

If you are, like me, stuck in a state where coronavirus restrictions have turned your life upside down, bankrupted your business, and traumatized your kids, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, you might be considering a big relocation. There are plenty of states that are retaining liberty in spite of the Chinese flu virus that has a 99% recovery rate. If you are considering fleeing your state for a new one, then look into the following five states that scored the highest in a data-collection study by the financial site WalletHub, showing which states have the fewest coronavirus restrictions. (Please note that coronavirus restrictions change daily. It is possible that by the time this is published one or more of these guidelines will have changed so verify before you pick up and move.)

After the list, she appends a “Whither Texas” update at the bottom that is, frankly, quite depressing.

Sadly, shockingly, Texas does not make the list of places I would move anymore. The left has taken over the major cities in Texas. Invaders from California, bringing their politics with them, have made Texas a place that needs major rehab. Coronavirus restrictions are also quite stringent and Texas ranked as the 46th-worst state for restrictions on freedom in the WalletHub study. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? We should all consider that winning a presidency without Texas is going to be damn near impossible. So for that reason alone, it might be a place to move if your goal is moving to politically strategic places. But don’t expect an abundance of freedom in Texas. Those days are over.

It would seem so, alas. Progtard locusts have the most amazing ability to destroy our liberty, independence, and dignity no matter where the swarm ends up.

Dead giveaway

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If it’s truly the planet-killer Plague they claim, then why is nearly everything they’ve said about it a damned lie?

On Wednesday, Florida reported a record high 216 deaths and “the grim news comes a day after the state set the record with 186 virus-related deaths,” as NBC Miami put it.

In fact, the record high for the daily number of deaths in the state appears to have been on July 16, when 123 people in the state were known to have died with the disease.

As of Wednesday night, Florida’s COVID-19 surveillance dashboard showed only 13 deaths on July 28.

As we have reported in this space before, the press is using daily reports from states to paint a picture of a runaway virus.

What the mainstream press keeps forgetting to tell people is that it can take the government days, if not weeks, to record a COVID-19 death. The daily reports aren’t telling us what’s happening now, but what happened earlier in the month. The chart below shows the impact of this. The gray bars represent when deaths are reported by Florida, and the red bars are when the deaths actually occurred. 

If anything, what the numbers show is that the virus peaked in that state around mid-July.

And when you throw in how wildly the death count has been inflated using all sorts of diabolical stratagems and jiggery-pokery, even that peak isn’t nearly as scary as they need it to be. Meanwhile, in Georgia, they appear to have themselves a governor and not a wannabe dictator.

I am old enough to remember when the media was trashing Georgia Gov. Kemp for being a first to reopen the economy. Massive death and suffering were sure to follow. That didn’t happen and Kemp never got an apology or an opportunity to tout the success of the reopening.

Then the riots happened over Memorial Day weekend and continued apace following the death of Rayshard Brooks. About two weeks later, Georgia’s case-rate began to climb. The cases were concentrated in Fulton County, where the protests occurred in Atlanta and two adjacent counties, Gwinnett and DeKalb.

By that time Georgia had been open for six weeks. Georgians were not going back on lockdown. We were back to eating out, back to the gym, and getting our hair done. It was starting to feel like we could get back to normal. Most Georgians also don’t take hypocrisy lightly. If thousands of people could be in the streets in downtown Atlanta, there was no way you were going to stop those of us outside the city from meeting friends for a plate of nachos and a beverage on Friday evenings.

Governor Kemp resisted calls to lock down again. He insisted that the freedoms that had been restored be available to Georgians across the state. Nor did the governor let mayors in Savannah and Atlanta place additional restrictions inside their cities. He also ensured no Georgian or business would be fined for not wearing masks or enforcing mask-wearing.

He invalidated local ordinances that mandated masks or levied fines. Following that announcement, there was much screeching and gnashing of teeth from Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Kemp went on a statewide tour to educate the public on mask-wearing with the surgeon general. He has also consistently modeled the behavior in public and on social media.

However, to those on the left, letting adults assess their own risk and make a personal decision is not allowable

Well, I mean, duh. That IS pretty much their whole raison d’etre, you know. And then there’s this:

Any conservatives afraid to look at the data and form their own judgment ought to instead, look at the people who they’re standing with when they dutifully put on a mask or continue to believe that the economic and social catastrophes inflicted on us had any justification whatsoever.

It’s hard for a normal well-adjusted person to believe that anyone could be so depraved that they’d create a fake medical crisis to inflict the equivalent of a massive bombing campaign on the American people in order to create enough misery to unseat the President.

Or that they’d insist everyone needlessly wear surgical masks in public to keep the crisis going till November.

But, when you find yourself on the same side as Jerry Nadler, Eric Swalwell, the rest of the Democrats, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and Hollywood; all of them insisting that there’s some horrible threat to America we need to take extreme actions against as they ignore the obvious terrible costs, suppress all evidence to the contrary, and flood us with propaganda that would’ve made the Soviet’s envious, you might want to consider whether you’ve maybe gone astray somewhere.

That’s the bonus Reason Number 6 in an article touting 5 reasons why “…wearing masks is anything but harmless.” But speaking strictly for myself, I find the moral case against donning the Mask Of Submission the most compelling of all.

People who resist COVID-19 restrictions are often accused of being selfish and caring only about their own freedom. While that might explain the actions of some, moral arguments can be made against many of the restrictions.

Although simple appeals to “freedom” are indeed less popular today than in the past, we should not disregard them. Nearly all our responses to COVID-19 require balancing one concern against another, and individuals and institutions will come to different conclusions as they try to strike that balance.

Freedom implies the right to conclude something different than the state and order your life accordingly. That is no small thing.

We should also resist the ratcheting effect of a growing culture of safetyism, most excellently discussed in an UnHerd article by Matthew Crawford. He writes, “At the level of sentiment, there appears to be a feedback loop wherein the safer we become, the more intolerable any remaining risk appears. At the level of bureaucratic grasping, we can note that emergency powers are seldom relinquished once the emergency has passed.”

Accepting invasive rules that affect personal behavior in a low-risk environment conditions people to accept that kind of intrusion into their lives. This is one reason people are particularly against masking their children, who are especially prone to manipulation. If we do this, what kind of human are we helping to produce? People who care only about coronavirus statistics gloss over these negative consequences.

It is also morally problematic to indefinitely treat the healthy as the maybe-sick. Inasmuch as we are required to do this at all, we should do it with the lightest hand and for the shortest duration possible. “Eliminate all risk” is not a reasonable standard. Politicians, however, almost always eager central planners — with a few exceptions — seem willing to just drop the hammer.

Which should tell all Real Americans everything they’ll ever need to know about them.

NYC Kommissar DeBalledZero doing a bang-up job

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Coming soon to a soon-to-be hellhole near you, as ever-more New Yorkers flee the cesspit they created to begin the process all over again in your hometown.

It’s the Great Black Tar Way.

A cluster of junkies has turned Broadway into a shooting gallery, injecting drugs unhampered in broad daylight and then shuffling around in a zonked-out stupor, seemingly oblivious to the Midtown bustle around them, The Post has learned.

If that wasn’t enough, the addicts are peppering the area with used syringes, turning individual planters on 40th Street and Broadway into mini needle parks.

“They’ve taken over the tables, blatantly using needles and shooting up heroin all day long,” said a local worker who asked that he only be identified as James. “There’s no police action, there’s no reach-out. There’s nobody preventing this, and you know we’ve had multiple calls to 311 but nobody really responds. It’s becoming a real problem.”

He called his own 311 calls “futile exercises.”

The Post spotted several of the spent needles dumped at the scene — and even caught one of the vagrants shooting up out in the open on Tuesday afternoon, with no one stepping in or saying a word.

The accompanying pictures are…well. Hate to say it and all, because I still have plenty of friends in NYC and its environs, people I love and care greatly about. But the sad, sorry truth is this: New Yorkers twice elected the asshole primarily responsible for The City’s current sad collapse into misery and chaos. They should now be forced to enjoy what they voted for.

I suppose the ship already sailed on that Big Beautiful Escape From New York-style Wall idea, eh…?

Restaurant holocaust

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Told ya so.

New economic data released Wednesday by business review website Yelp shows that approximately 60 percent of restaurants that had to shut down during the pandemic have permanently closed their doors.

Outlined in a July economic impact report, this figure is notably higher than the same data from March, where Yelp found 53 percent of all restaurant closures were indicated as permanent closures.

Countrywide data indicates that the most permanent closures have occurred in California, Texas, Florida  and New York — states that have been or are currently especially affected by the virus.

Overall, as of July 10, 26,160 restaurants closed in the U.S., an increase of 2,179 since June 15.

Bad as that is, it’s only the beginning. Partial, tightly-controlled “reopenings” requiring no more than fifty percent capacity, early close times, no bar seating at all, and the like will no more than delay the now-inevitable tsunami of destruction. The sad, sorry fact is that the restaurant biz as we once knew it, along with many other worthwhile and irreplaceable things, is now gone for good—all wilfully and wantonly destroyed by bureaucrats on a power-rampage; a compliant press; Democrat-Socialist politicians intent on unseating Trump by any means necessary; and the foolish, unnecessary panic instigated at the behest of that nefarious combine.

Beginning to figure it out yet?

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It still amazes me how dismayingly many conservative op-ed writers and bloggers—people usually given to gimlet-eyed skepticism about blanket statements or decrees from government and its pet “experts,” as they certainly should be—allowed themselves to be suckered by it. But the contrived Covidiot “crisis” was a steaming, stinking heap of bullshite from jump.

More than 8 weeks have passed since the publication of the ICL (Imperial College of London, the selfsame one whose “scientific models” got the stampede rolling with their initial hysterical prediction of 2.2 million American deaths from the Little Plague That Wasn’t—M) team’s warnings against reopening, meaning we can now see how their model performed.

As with other examples of ICL COVID modeling, their attempt to predict the effects of a US reopening can only be described as an embarrassing scientific failure.

The image below shows the three modeled scenarios from May, as depicted in the ICL report for the five states under consideration. Note that even under the “constant mobility” scenario of remaining under lockdown, their model predicted an increase in COVID deaths for every state except New York, which had already peaked. Under the reopening scenarios where mobility increased 20% and 40% respectively from its lockdown state, all five states were predicted to surge into apocalyptic territory by the middle of July. Under the 40% scenario, this even entailed upper boundaries of more than 4,000 deaths per day (the bands represent the 95% confidence interval). Massachusetts and New York, two of the hardest-hit states from the first wave back in March and April, would easily match or exceed their previous COVID-19 daily death records.

To see how these predictions held up, I indicated the daily death totals for each state for July 20th with a small red dot on the graphs above.

If you don’t already know perfectly well exactly how they held up…well, dammit, you certainly should by now, that’s all. But I’m afraid some of us, a great many most likely, never will get it. The growing legion of increasingly-belligerent Face Diaper Ninnies afflicting the land like a biblical plague testifies well enough to that.

The long and the short of it: you’ve been had, people. Hoodwinked, bamboozled, and with your own eager cooperation and full participation, too. But hey, all it cost us was our liberty, our prosperity, our Constitutional rights, our livelihoods, and our country.

Hey, if even one life is saved, amIright?

Thanks just the same there, Juggsy

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Nice of her to admit it, I guess, even though we all knew it already anyway.

McBigTitsadmitsit.jpg

Done and done, Theo.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: this lackwit missed her true calling in life when she decided to run for Congress instead of heading on down to Flashdancers in Manhattan for a job working that Pole. Hey, it’s honest work, she woulda made fantastic tips (about fifteen hundred a night; ask me how I know), and would’ve made a lot of horny fellas very, very happy.



I just can’t see any way around it, fellas: she’s dumb as a bag of hammers, but she’s also a smokin’ hot, sexy little thing. Great big bodacious titties; nice, warm, open smile; smooth, un-self-conscious dance moves and gyrations—c;mon, man, what’s not to like? Other than pretty much every squawk emitted whenever she opens her fat, stupid yap, I mean.

Link to Theo Spark’s Tweet-tit capture via MisHum, who throws in:

We’ve dealt too long with gloves on and at least one if not two arms tied behind our backs. Fight. Fight back against the progressives who want to destroy this country.

24 flawless carats of Gott Damned Skippy.

Of groupthink, and drooling beasts

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We are currently being ruled by an unholy coalition-dictatorship of the two of them.

Having lived through the Russian Revolution, Ayn Rand knew well the nature of the mob—a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who’s had some disease that’s eaten his brain out…closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own.

The drooling beast is on the prowl against any independent thought or truth regarding the coronavirus outbreak, the George Floyd riots, and, for that matter, anything else. Hype and hoax, readily recognizable to the intellectually honest, fuel the mob think.

The death toll from Covid-19 will be a small fraction of what was initially projected, depending on which outlandish projection (they ranged from 2.2 million to 100 million in the US) is used as the denominator. The beast, of course, never acknowledges its own fallibility or incompetence.

“Systemic racism” has become the endlessly repeated epithet, but nobody can point to a single institutional system in the US that practices it. The statistics don’t even bear out that police forces are systemically racist, although some police, white and black, individually are. In the US, the last systemically racist institution to fold up that tent was the Democratic party, and it routinely wins 90 plus percent of the black vote. The beast, of course, never acknowledges its own hypocritical inconsistency.

While Covid-19 and systemic racism have been hyped and hoaxed, the same mob has consistently ignored or downplayed Covid-19 totalitarianism’s and the riots’ destruction of the economy. A disease that will kill less than one tenth of one percent (less than .001) of the US population is worse than the Black Plague (which wiped out 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe’s population), but a catastrophe already worse, by the unemployment numbers, than the Great Depression is merely a temporary economic squall.

If you have either not contracted or survived the coronavirus and thought you were out of the woods, think again. We are entering a forest so dark and deep many of us won’t make it to the other side.

So while people lockdown, work or not work from home, social distance, face mask, and compulsively sanitize, cowering before the small risk of a germ (how do they even get up in the morning?), they’re blissfully unaware that the world is bankrupt. A tsunami the likes of which none of us have ever seen has already made landfall and will permanently deprive millions, perhaps billions, of their livelihoods and millions, perhaps billions, of their lives. The coronavirus cowards are running from an ant into the arms, claws, and fangs of a very hungry beast.

Robert closes on a more hopeful note, but I can’t honestly say I share his optimism.

Via WRSA, who titles his excerpt from it the “Quote of the next decade.” A lot longer than just that, I’d say.

Brother, can you spare a…

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At first glance, this seemed kinda absurd to me. Then I gave it further thought, and…I dunno, it still seems kinda absurd to me.

Pearl Jam, the Eagles, Guns N’ Roses, and Green Day are among the bands who have received loans from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, Rolling Stone reports.

According to data from the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department, the money will go to supporting and retaining the artists’ crews and staff; Rolling Stone notes that the Eagles’ loan is listed under their touring company and will help save 50 jobs. Larger loans—between $350,000 and $1 million—were taken out by the Eagles, Pearl Jam, and Disturbed. Out of 660,000 recipients, Rolling Stone reports that over 40 musicians and bands received loans for over $150,000, including Weezer, Imagine Dragons, Chainsmokers, Nickelback, and Jason Isbell.

Various major and independent labels also received PPP loans, including Sub Pop Records, Third Man Records, and Knitting Factory Records, who each received a minimum of $350,000.

Not one of the above-named bands are outfits I would think of as needing any federal aid to scrape by; I’d far rather see that dough put into the hands of the struggling, lower-tier road warriors out there who are certainly worse off than they are, and if I was still working the road myself I’d likely resent this, at least somewhat.

On the other hand, though, as the article notes, the assistance is earmarked for their crews and support staff, which makes it seem a bit more reasonable. Although it’s also true that even those guys typically haul down bucketfuls more cash than your average bar band does.

There’s this, too: the fact that no bands, great or small, have been allowed to ply their trade and earn their living during this summer’s touring season is entirely on the goobermint. Also, although people don’t realize it, even the big-name acts earn most of their dough not from record sales, but from touring and merch sales. So why the hell shouldn’t they insist on compensation from the very assholes who shut them all down on a pretext?

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE!!!

Posted on      by     

Whatever you do, DON’T PANIC. Unless they tell you to.

A new pandemic is raging.  Even before the Covid 19 pandemic has subsided, the WHO has now warned that a virulent form of Hoof and Mouth disease has “jumped” species in record time from horse to humans and is threatening to devastate the planet. It is even more deadly than the original.  An appropriate name for the pathogen is being considered, as we speak. A tricky task, this, as it is imperative to avoid giving offense and fostering lasting grievance on the part of those who would level the charge of speciesism.  After all, equine phobia is a thing. We must avoid maligning horses and their hoofs at all cost. Needless to say, the same consideration must apply to their owners, as well as their countries of domicile and origin.

Let us discuss the symptoms: Because we are confronted with a new disease, the syndrome and its various manifestations are still regarded as capable of impressive plasticity—that is, they are changing and changeable. The disease can rampage through every organ, bone, nerve, blood vessel and system in your body. The result is manifold noxious, painful, and deadly symptoms that appear to be unrelated to each other. Furthermore, these symptoms are similar to every disease, ailment, malady discomfort and inconvenience that you, or anyone else in the world, has ever experienced. Thus, it is easily confused with other morbidities. But, make no mistake about it, the underlying cause can only be one thing when testing indicates that the pathogen is present.

Curiously enough, the pathogen has an affinity for the right foot of its human host. At this early stage of the pandemic, we can already state, with confidence, that the microbe can be detected by the application of a simple laboratory test to the right foot. A swab administered between the big toe and second toe with a sterile Q-Tip is capable of rendering a true positive, false positive, true negative or false negative result, based on the suppleness of the skin.  In short, the test is just as efficacious as the current Covid 19 test. A small fragment of DNA of the patient’s skin is sufficient for one of the above four possible diagnoses.

However, acute observational skills are also imperative!  Let us describe what we definitively know: In addition to the laboratory test, the disease can also be diagnosed visually, if the carrier’s big right toe angulates away from the foot, upward by one fourth of an inch, in either or both directions.

Because an emergency has been declared, a vaccine is being rushed to market and will be ready between six months and two years from now.  It will be administered alongside the greatly anticipated vaccine for Covid 19. By necessity, we have dispensed with the usual safety controls required for other drugs. Fortunately, therapeutics, such as hydroxychloroquine, widely in use for over 70 years for other diseases, and proven safe for them, is frowned upon by pharmacists. They are withholding the drug from the patients whose doctors prescribe them for Covid 19. Obviously, the pharmacist’s judgment should and does pre-empt the advice of the patient’s doctor!  The pharmacist studied drugs in school.  That is why he or she is called a pharmacist. What does a doctor know?

Now that we know what we are dealing with, what do we do to prevent the spread?  We cannot simply wait for the vaccine. Patience is not an option. There is no time for that. We must act now!

Fortunately, our experience with Covid 19 has paved the way for imposing the additional discipline required for battle against the soon to be renamed disease originating from the beloved horse. First of all, we have become accustomed to sheltering in place. We now have learned to distinguish between essential and non-essential businesses.  We wear a mask and we maintain social distance. Furthermore, we are intensely motivated to continue to observe the above admonitions, rules, and guidelines, thanks to our recent and current riots.

The riots have taught us that the nonessential businesses are the ones that the rioters have looted, ransacked, and burned.  We know that they are nonessential because we are still alive even though those businesses are gone. If they had been essential, I would not be writing this essay and you would not be reading it. 

This would seem to be satire worthy of the Bee itself…OR IS IT?!? No matter what, we must all proceed with extreme caution to eliminate all risk until we’re absolutely certain one way or the other. Therefore, I am pleased to join the author in her urgent call for a new national and/or state and/or local and/or neighborhood decree requiring every American to…

No, I can’t do it; you gotta go read the whole thing to find out.

SECOND wave?

Posted on      by     

There never was a first one—not that remotely resembled the pig in a poke we were sold, anyway.

The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave. Because the red states recklessly loosened their lockdowns, we are now told, the US is seeing a dangerous spike in coronavirus cases. ‘EXPERTS SKETCH GLOOMY PICTURE OF VIRUS SPREAD: FAUCI TELLS OF “DISTURBING” WAVE, WITH A VACCINE MONTHS AWAY,’ read the front-page lead headline in the New York Times on Wednesday. ‘VIRUS SPREAD AKIN TO “FOREST FIRE”’ read another front page headline in the Los Angeles Times on Monday, quoting Michael Osterholm, one of the media’s favorite public health experts. Osterholm had told NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I’m actually of the mind right now — I think this is more like a forest fire. I don’t think that this is going to slow down.’

The ‘this’ is an uptick in daily new cases from 19,002 on June 9 to 38,386 on June 24. The high to date in new daily cases was on April 24 — 39,072. Since April 24, the daily case count started declining, then began rising again after around June 9. What virtually every fear-mongering story on America’s allegedly precarious situation leaves out, however, is the steadily dropping daily death numbers — from a high of 2,693 on April 21 to 808 on June 24. That April high was driven by New York City and its environs; those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be good news. Instead, it is no news.

There are no crises in hospital capacity anywhere in the country. Nursing homes, meat-packing plants, and prisons remain the main sources of new infections. Half the states are seeing cases decline or hold steady. Case counts are affected by more testing; the positive infection rate captured by testing is declining. The current caseload is younger, which is a good thing. The more people who have been infected and who recover, the more herd immunity is created. Meanwhile, daily deaths from heart disease and cancer — about 3,400 a day combined — go ignored in the press.

From all I’ve seen, the “exploding” number of case counts currently threatening to exterminate all life on Earth (almost all of which cases are asymptomatic) closely tracks with the huge increase in testing, which only stands to reason. Hey, anybody out there remember when our masters were saying America dared not reopen until more testing was done? It was the second subterfuge they used to extend their usurpation of freedom, right after “flatten the curve” and before the ludicrous “not until there’s a vaccine.” Of course, it was a lie; all three of these stalling tactics were, along with pretty much everything else they’ve said about this phony crisis. But still—good times, good times.

More inconvenient truths, actual data, and genuine science that will be ignored in favor of continued Commie opression:

Early in the epidemic, public-health experts feared the virus might kill up to 2 percent of those infected, potentially causing millions of deaths in the United States and tens of millions worldwide. Those terrifying estimates prompted the lockdowns that have done incalculable harm to the economy, shattered small businesses and left children traumatized and untold numbers suffering from brutal isolation.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ­esti­mated in May that the coronavirus kills about 0.26 percent of the people it infects, about 1 in 400 people. New estimates from Sweden suggest that only 1 in 10,000 people under 50 will die from the virus, compared to 1 in 14 of people over 80 and 1 in 6 of those over 90.

To be sure, these estimates still have some uncertainty. The ­actual figure could be as low as 0.1 percent or as high as 0.4 to 0.5 percent, though treatment advances should mean it will trend lower over time. Even at 0.26 percent, the rate is still significantly higher than influenza most years, more comparable to a bad flu strain like the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

But it is far lower than we initially thought — a fact that should be cause for celebration.

Instead, some media outlets insist on using the out-of-date estimates that are much higher. For example, an ESPN article this week said public discussions about reopening the National Football League were “ignoring a mortality rate that has been estimated at 1.4 percent.” That figure is more than five times the CDC’s best estimate. Even more jarring, it is more than 100 times the actual risk to people in their 20s and 30s — the age range for nearly all NFL players.

Using those overstated estimates is a recipe for panic, bad public policy — and continued lockdowns that may delay to ­return to normality.

Let’s hope that isn’t the reason people in the media are using them.

OF COURSE it’s the reason, you big silly. What other reason could there be? What, you think the same Enemedia that tripped over itself to gleefully praise the national spree of urban violence and destruction is all of a sudden suffused with concern about a clear and serious danger to the health and well-being of Americans or something? Gedouddahere, willya.

The COVID shamdemic was much ado about very little all along, the proof of which is mounting every single day. And you can be sure that the Clampdown is going to continue, with onerous restrictions and requirements; patently illegal and unconstitutional decrees; a total rejiggering of our routines, habits, and daily lives without our consent; and an ongoing metastasization of the Amerikan police/surveillance state and its authoritarian powers, regardless of what the science is telling us. Perhaps that might provide a sharpish hint as to what this is really about, no?

WE. HAVE. BEEN. HAD. They fully intend to bend us over and have us again, too—in the exact same way, using the exact same lies as their justification. If we passively allow it to happen, then we deserve no better, and never really did.

(Both via Insty)

Update! Lest we forget: even the underwhelming reported body count is a sham.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the respected physician who heads the Trump administration’s coronavirus team, reportedly argued back in May at a closed Centers for Disease Control meeting that the agency’s death estimates were 25% too high, according to a Washington Post report.

Anecdotal evidence at the state level suggests this is true. In fact, estimates may be off by more than 25%.

…But the fact remains: The death totals are almost certainly grossly exaggerated due to intentional miscounting. There are strong incentives to over-report, but few to under-report.

The Centers for Disease Control admits as much in its June 24 update of the data:

“For 7% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.5 additional conditions or causes per death.”

So in only one in 14 deaths out of the current total of 125,000 can COVID-19 be said to be the actual cause.

As grotesque a manipulation as all that is, though, it’s just the tip of the deception and hype iceberg:

This Issues & Insights editorial (cited above—M) does a good job of bringing together some of the relevant data. But let’s start with something they didn’t mention: this acknowledgement by the Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health:

I just want to be clear in terms of the definition of people dying of COVID. So, the case definition is very simplistic. It means that at the time of death it was a COVID-positive diagnosis. So that means if you were in hospice and had already been given, you know, a few weeks to live and then you were also found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means that if, technically, even if you died of a clear alternate cause but you had COVID at the same time it’s still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone that’s listed as a COVID death doesn’t mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of death.

That certainly is clarifying.

Ain’t it, though. Ain’t it just. John finishes up:

Why is this important? Because in all likelihood, the actual Wuhan fatality rate is not much different from a relatively virulent seasonal flu. Every year, the seasonal flu bug kills tens of thousands of Americans. Just two years ago, the CDC says it killed 62,000–and that was without a Medicare spiff or other pressures to build up the numbers. The reality is, I think, that in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, we devastated our economy–which means that we devastated tens or hundreds of millions of lives–needlessly.

So what do we do next year, or the year after? It is a virtual certainty that during next year’s flu season, absent a comprehensive shutdown, and perhaps with a shutdown, tens of thousands of Americans will die, and have their deaths attributed to that virus. COVID-19 presumably will still be active and will add to the total. There are powerful forces in our society that yearn to shut down economic activity and thereby increase poverty, unemployment and dependence on government. Those forces likely control the Democratic Party, which could well be in charge of the Executive Branch in January.

Without any track record of sensible risk assessment, what will stand in the way of another shutdown next Winter? Or the year after that? The case for hysteria will be more or less as strong as it was this year.

The case was never strong at all. The problem is that enough of us are weak, cowardly, and stupid enough to let them get away with it anyway.

And because of that stupidity, cowardice, and total absence of any will whatsoever to resist the abridging of Constitutional rights and freedoms they neither appreciate nor understand, you can count on occasional shutdowns, masks, social distancing, one-way grocery store aisles and bare shelves, plastic sneeze-guards between you and the cashier, and the rest of the Commie rot as now being integral parts of our New American Life. Those things and more were always on Big Boss Man’s wish list, and now that he’s seen how easy it was to get ’em, only a fool would think he’ll ever give them up.

Stalin could only dream of having a slave class as docile and compliant as present-day America’s.

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