Life In The O!gulag

Tragedy, or atrocity?

Posted on September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 by Mike 2 Comments

Jake Gardner — awaiting arrest after a grand jury in Omaha indicted him last week — shot himself outside a medical clinic in suburban Portland, Oregon, two law enforcement officials told The World-Herald. Police in Hillsboro, Oregon, found the 38-year-old former Marine dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound about 12:20 p.m.

Gardner’s attorneys, Stu Dornan and Tom Monaghan, said Gardner shot himself on the day he had said he would surrender in connection with manslaughter and three other felony charges stemming from the May 30 confrontation that led to the death of 22-year-old James Scurlock.

Now, both men are dead. By the same hand.

Sunday, Dornan and Monaghan blamed Gardner’s apparent suicide on a cocktail of behavioral health problems stemming from head trauma he experienced during military service; the belief that people were out to kill him; and an “incessant rush to judgment” by social media jockeys.

Dornan said Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine — who defeated Dornan in 2006 to become county attorney — had made the right call in ruling Gardner’s actions justified. Gardner had claimed that Scurlock had him in a chokehold and wouldn’t let go, despite Gardner’s repeated pleas to “get off me.” At the end of the 18-second struggle, Gardner switched the gun to his left hand and fired over his shoulder, killing Scurlock.

Grand jurors, under the guidance of a special prosecutor, ruled out self-defense as a justification.

Bottom line, Dornan and Monaghan said, Gardner had lost his bars (a landlord ended his lease after the shooting), his home, his livelihood. And he was about to lose his freedom. Add in behavioral health concerns, Dornan said, and suicide was not a surprise, even though his attorneys fully expected him to turn himself in Sunday night. Monaghan said Gardner did not leave a suicide note.

“I had the opportunity to talk with Mr. Gardner before his return, and he was really shook up,” Dornan said. “The grand jury indictment was a shock to him, it was a shock to us, it was a shock to many people.”

As a monstrous abuse of any reasonable concept of justice, shocking would certainly be one way to describe it, yeah. I can think of others. And so can Ace.

The Omaha Man Who Shot a BLM Attacker in a Videotaped Open-and-Shut Case of Self-Defense Was Indicted to Appease the Mob. That Man Has Now Committed Suicide.
—Ace
BLM will attack you, and unless you allow yourself to be murdered or to have your head bashed in and left with brain damage, the agents of the state will then act as BLM’s enforcement officers and imprison you for defying the illegal demands of BLM.

It’s now legal to resist a police officer but it’s illegal to resist a BLM rioter and street thug?

Had enough yet?

We’ll find out soon enough, I guess. As Ace goes on to say, this poor Marine was pretty much murdered by the prosecutor on behalf of Burn Loot Murder. There damned sure ought to be a steep price paid for that, and I mean with a quickness, too. Otherwise, we’ll know that no, we apparently have NOT had enough just yet. And will be getting more of it, too.

Update! Herschel with the skinny on our New Rules.

War has been declared on you, your family, and your possessions. You’ve seen enough instances like this to know how it’s going to go down.

You behave according to traditional Western and Biblical jurisprudence, and then the unthinkable happens…

This all happens if you use traditional TTPs to defend yourself and your family, even attempting to warn rioters with warning shots because you don’t really want to harm anyone, under the assumption that America is still a civilized and just society, not at war with itself.

Bottom line: in Amerika v2.0, if you’re white, you have NO right to defend yourself, under any circumstances whatsoever. Your one and only “right” is to passively submit to any and all abuse—verbal, physical, or Other—that your Approved Minority Group attacker may decide to deal out. Call it “reparational justice,” let’s say. Please don’t forget to humbly express profoundest gratitude to your “oppressed” tormenter for enlightening you, and for helping you to “evolve” into a far better person.

Via WRSA, who explains:

You now live in New Sarajevo.

Plan and execute accordingly.

I’m not entirely sure that there’s any comparison to be made that’s sufficient to do our current Kafka-esque situation justice at this point.

Whole lotta nothing much

Posted on September 9, 2020September 9, 2020 by Mike 6 Comments

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 Forever Lockdown

Posted on September 7, 2020September 7, 2020 by Mike

Don’t look now, but our masters just moved the goalposts yet again.

The notion that we would lock down our society until a vaccine is introduced to counter a virus with a 0.3% infection fatality rate and near-zero risk for non-immunocompromised individuals was shockingly insane. Then we were told that even after a vaccine is in place, the social control will not end because the vaccine will not fully work against COVID-19 for all people. Now, we are beginning to see that because indeed COVID-19 is not that much different from a pandemic flu, the flu itself will now constitute the new threshold for social control and panic in perpetuity. In other words, the totalitarianism that we blissfully accepted in March is here to stay forever, unless we reclaim our sovereignty.

“[Arizona] State officials Monday laid out a plan for ‘aggressively’ combating the upcoming influenza season as the COVID-19 pandemic lingers, with the first step being to urge people to get a flu shot as soon as possible,” wrote the Copper Courier on Tuesday. “The state plans to increase funding for Medicaid recipients to get flu shots, combine flu-shot sites with coronavirus testing facilities, and more, while also advocating many of the same measures meant to head off the spread of COVID-19” (emphasis added).

“Aggressively” combating freedom, more like. But note well the next part, which I’ll boldface for ya.

The Arizona paper was reporting on a press conference held by liberal Republican Governor Doug Ducey and Arizona health department director Dr. Cara Christ, when they warned about “a perfect storm” of lingering COVID-19 mixing with the flu season in the coming months. They warned about mask-wearing and shutting down businesses that don’t participate in their unproven social control rituals. They also revealed that indeed hospitals get overwhelmed to a degree during the flu season and now that fact, which we always lived with every year, will be used to control our lives.

Lest anybody think that the scourges of liberty and proper Constitutional governance exclusively inhabit the Demonrat Party. Hate to tell ya, but the infestation of Statist tyranny is far more extensive than that, I’m afraid.

Folks, we have come full-circle. When this all began in early March, we were warned by the World Health Organization that COVID-19 was the worst epidemic in generations, with an infection fatality rate of 3.4% and a hospitalization rate exponentially higher that was going to swamp all of our big-city hospitals. As such, there was no way to compare it to the flu. Anyone who did was treated almost like a Holocaust denier.

Now, those same control freaks are comparing COVID to the flu! See, if they were right about the threat level of this virus, the contrast between it and the flu would be black and white. Talking about the perfect storm between COVID-19 and the flu would be tantamount to tethering the health care concerns of cancer to those of a cold. But now the truth comes out that this virus really is not that much different from a pandemic flu and that hospitals are always crowded at the peak of even a seasonal flu, much less a pandemic flu.

In July, Justin Hart, founder of RationalGround.com, which promotes a rational approach to the virus, posted on Twitter a series of articles describing emergency measures in various ERs throughout the nation during the 2018 pandemic flu. Yet the media coverage at the time wasn’t incessant, it never became political, and the politicians never gave any thought to shutting down our lives. We lived with it, and few people ever heard of the 2018 pandemic flu.

That is all about to change. Now the flu is the new threshold for perpetual mask-wearing, draconian regulations on businesses and houses of worship, and government mandates of every facet of our lives.

And after that, it will be…something else. Whatever comes to hand for them, so as to keep the Sheeple fearful and compliant, and the slaugherhouse train rolling happily along.

Hence, the politicians have gone from “Don’t you dare compare this to the flu” to “We should be doing this for the flu as well.” In other words, there’s a reason why politicians and the media warn about a “new normal.” It’s not because COVID-19 will necessarily be with us forever; it’s because the tyranny of the government response had nothing to do with COVID-19. That was simply the perfect pretext because so much was unknown about it earlier this year. Now that everyone is conditioned to go along with the suspension of democracy for “public health,” it’s not even a political leap to use the flu as the next excuse.

My boldface above is exactly what I’ve said from the very start of this shamdemic fiasco. Believe me when I tell you that I take no pleasure whatsoever in having been right all along.

At present, we are at the point in this COVID “epidemic” where the flu season, which is driven more by symptoms and not testing, more definitely disrupts people’s daily schedules with illness. As Lamb notes, “By this logic, the virus would never go away and emergency powers will be indefinite.”

And indeed, that is exactly the point. That is their plan … if we let them get away with it.

Unfortunately and to our undying shame, that’s EXACTLY what we’ve done.

Holding back the Dismal Tide

Posted on September 3, 2020September 3, 2020 by Mike

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.

Swing ’em

Posted on September 3, 2020September 4, 2020 by Mike

Stretch “Antoinette” Piglosi just made the ultimate case for why all professional politicians of right ought to be strung up from the nearest lamppost without delay.

And that case is Air. Fucking. TIGHT.

San Francisco salon owner Erica Kious disputed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) claim that she was “set up” by the salon this week when she broke COVID-19 restrictions and got her hair done at the salon, saying that Pelosi was the one who called and set up the appointment, and that she has been “coming in for quite a while.”

“She had called the stylist, or her assistant did, and made the appointment, so the appointment was already booked, so there was no way I could’ve set that up,” Kious said. “And I’ve had a camera system in there for five years. I mean, I didn’t go in there and turn cameras on as soon as she walked in to set her up. So that’s absolutely false.”

“So, Pelosi says that salons in San Francisco, and of course she lives there and she’s the most powerful democratic legislator in the world, but she said she understood that the restrictions allowed a one-on-one appointment in salons,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said. “What do you make on that?”

“I heard that, and I thought to myself, well, as a hairstylist I see clients one-on-one, so, that would mean I would be open, right?” Kious responded.

“Are you open?” Carlson asked.

“No,” she responded.

Her Royal Majesty Piglousy, being who and what she is, has demanded an “apology” from the salon owner for daring to question her obviously justified elevation in status over the lowly peonage, and sent her legions of flying monkeys to avenge the disgrace of actually having to listening to the serf class having the temerity to question her about anything at all she wishes to do. Indeed, Her Most Puissant Highness is most displeased with you benighted swine, she is.

When asked what the shutdown has done to her business, Kious responded: “For the past six months, we’ve, I mean, we are pretty much done. I mean, we’ve lost at least 60% of our clients. I’ve lost the majority of my staff, so, six months is a long time to be closed down.”

“How do you feel about seeing the most powerful woman in America come into your salon in violation of the rules she supports, get caught, and then blame you for it?” Carlson asked.

You damned well better feel damned contrite about it, and hope that Her Liege is in a forgiving mood, lest she decree that your head be separated from your neck forcibly, with extreme prejudice.

“To be honest, it was more hurtful,” Kious responded. “She’s been coming in for quite a while, and just to see her come in and especially not wearing the mask, that’s what really got to me, but this isn’t even political. She’s been coming in there. It’s the fact that she actually came in and didn’t have a mask on, and I just thought about my staff and people not being able to work and make money and provide for their families, and if she is in there comfortably without a mask and feeling safe, then why are we shut down? Why am I not able to have clients come in? So, it’s been hard.”

“If Nancy Pelosi feels comfortable using your salon, why can’t civilians use it?” Carlson asked.

“Exactly and I’ll be honest, in our area in San Francisco, we are obviously the last county or city to not open,” she answered. “We’ve been trying to figure that out. We’ve been asking ourselves these questions for six months—I mean for the past actually four months, of why we are not reopened, and it’s kind of a good question. Again, we don’t know.”

Kious later stated that she does not plan on staying in San Francisco after this whole ordeal because of how the community has treated her in response to the situation with Pelosi.

I do hate to come across all churlish by pointing this out here and all, and I am most definitely on her side and wish her no ill, but…well, this being San Francisco, and knowing as I do the typical political leanings of the many, many salon owners and stylists I’ve known all through the years, well…I DO have to wonder who Ms Kious might have been voting for all these years, y’know?

No matter. I’d bet that after this dustup, however Left she might (or might not, in fairness) have been before, Kious is most likely a good deal less so than she was.

Anybody remember the quaint old days of yesteryear, when Americans used to take great pride in living in what they used to call a “classless society?” Nah, me neither. Hell, those days were long gone at least as far back as 1966 or so, as Gomer knew full well:

As Piglousy and her minions continue to wreak a swift and terrible vengeance on this poor pee-on, inflicting complete ruination on her and her family so as to remind her of the proper place in “American” society of such as she, it will serve as a stark reminder for the rest of us of just how very far the former Republic is from Mayberry nowadays.

Yeah, fuck that noise. Swing her. Swing ’em all. Stretch their motherfucking necks until they are dead, dead, DEAD. Pour encourager les autres, don’tchaknow.

*spit*

It’ 5 o’clock somewhere update! In conversation earlier today, my lifelong partner in musical crime and occasional commenter here Brack quipped that Pelosi doubtless saw the “Salon” sign and misread it as “Saloon,” staggering woozily inside hoping to down a shot or three. An honest mistake, that’s all; coulda happened to any gin-soaked lush, right? Ask HILLARY!™—I’m sure she could back ol’ Stretch up on that.

STREET JUSTICE update! For all its admitted flaws and shortcomings, how can you not just love this country anyway?

@AriDavidUSA Hell has no fury like a woman hair stylist scorned….. They are rallying in front of Pelosi’s home and putting curlers in the tree outside….. https://t.co/hUgdDcYIST

— Gwilym McGrew (@GwilymMcGrew) September 3, 2020

You go, girls.

Submissive update! David Marcus searches hard for a silver lining.

Perhaps some good can come of Pelosi’s ignominy. Perhaps seeing her insane hypocrisy, owners will start opening their businesses and daring petty tyrants like Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo to shut them down. One of the truly remarkable — and chilling — aspects of the more arbitrary lockdown rules is that, in general, they have been consented to, not enforced. We have given away our rights as much they have been taken from us. Well, if Pelosi doesn’t have to live under these absurd restrictions, then neither should you.

The jig is up here. People have a right to feel frustrated and furious, and they also have a right to disobey these crushing laws that Democratic leaders impose but refuse to live by.

If all of this is beginning to feel to you like a sick charade, you aren’t alone. This is a slap in the face, but Democrats and their media allies don’t care. They are counting on you to just take it. But the American people can only take so much before they start demanding their lives and livelihoods back.

Might be time to bring back some old, tried-and-true favorites—like tar and feathers, riding on a rail, and the stocks.

Answers itself

Posted on August 26, 2020August 26, 2020 by Mike

Ask a silly question.

COVID-19: The epidemic is ending, why do government restrictions remain?

Easy-peasy: because governments like them. To ask the question, truly, is to answer it. Robert knows this quite well already, of course.

This essay is going to include a number of graphs [data source], showing the daily numbers related to the Wuhan virus since the beginning of the epidemic. All show that the epidemic is truly tapering off or ending, regardless of where you live. All also strongly suggest that the lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates, and the many other odious rules that were imposed initially for just a few weeks to prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed but have remained in force now for many months should immediately be cancelled or removed.

And yet, these restrictions remain, in one form or another, with some rules (such as the mandate to wear masks) being expanded, sometimes to the point of idiocy. That they remain proves again that those lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates and other rules had little to do with the disease. Instead their goal was to impose new authoritarian rules on the citizenry, meant to establish new precedents of power and control for the petty dictators who wish to rule us like servants.

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING! Ladies and gennlemens, we have ourselves a winner!

Zimmerman has put together a nice collection of facts and figures—ie, actual science—that solidly confirms what I said from the very beginning about all this: the phony Covid Clampdown was never really about any stupid virus in the first place. Read it all.

The plot thickens

Posted on August 23, 2020August 23, 2020 by Mike

Don’t call it paranoia, they really ARE out to get you.

“Traitors everywhere. [D] leadership in joint ops w/China [CCP] in effort to regain power? It was never about the virus,” wrote Q on July 31st.

Q then proceeded to explain the many advantages the virus brought the Democrats: It decimated the booming economy and laid off millions of workers, wrecking Trump’s great economic achievements. It stopped Trump’s huge campaign rallies, which showcased his popularity, and sheltered Biden from public appearances, limiting public exposure of his mental condition.

The lockdown also shifted focus from Biden’s burgeoning Ukraine scandal and offered him an excuse to refuse to debate. It encouraged state bailouts for New York and California, and increased the national debt, placing China in a controlling debt position in which it could regain leverage.

And, of course, the lockdown allowed the Democrats to relentlessly insist on mail-in ballots as the only safe voting option, thereby setting the stage for record-breaking fraud.

Q focuses on the significant date of January 15, 2020 on which three linked events happened: 1) After long delays, the House finally delivered impeachment articles to the Senate. 2) Trump and China signed a trade deal, which disadvantaged China. 3) The first COVID patient in America arrived from China at Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

The net effect of these developments was that the Democrats put on a big impeachment show, which drew attention away from the silent spread of COVID in America. And the Chinese, who had lost face and money, were reassured that they would soon prevail again.

Helping COVID to spread across America, Democratic politicians in New York and California, such as Nancy Pelosi and Mayor DiBlasio, urged crowds to come out and celebrate the Chinese New Year. Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo and Phil Murphy forced COVID patients into nursing homes, quickly killing thousands of seniors, thereby driving up the death count that justified the lockdown. And, of crucial importance, Democratic politicians and their allies in the media and medical establishment demonized hydroxychloroquine and denied its use, cutting off access to life-saving treatment.

One of Q’s big themes is “Infiltration not invasion,” the notion that America has been sold to its enemies by powerful politicians and their donors, who gave China access without alarming the American people.

Preposterous; I’m SURE it’s all coincidence, every bit of it. Hey, who you gonna believe: the people who told you the Deep State didn’t exist? Or your own lyin’ eyes?

Add Q to the list of folks who need to be constantly checking their six.

The Watchers

Posted on August 23, 2020August 23, 2020 by Mike

You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.

A Baltimore County, Md., fifth-grader got a visit from the police after his teacher called to report that she had seen a BB gun on the wall behind the student during a class video call.

The boy’s mother, Courtney Lancaster Sperry, a Navy veteran, is warning other parents about a lack of privacy during virtual classes after her son was targeted by a teacher who saw what she thought was a scary-looking gun hanging on the wall of the boy’s bedroom.

“While my son was on a Zoom call, a ‘concerned parent’ and subsequently two teachers saw his properly stowed and mounted Red Ryder BB gun and one other BB gun in the background,” Sperry wrote on Facebook. “He was not holding them and never intentionally showed them on video. In fact, he was oblivious that they could even be seen in the background.”

After the teacher reported the gun, the principal, Jason Feiler, decided to call the police to report the guns and ask that the home be searched.

The principal and the teacher cited a rule stating that students may not bring guns to school and claimed it extended to virtual classes as well, Sperry said, adding that the school handbook does not address rules for virtual learning at all. Besides, “he did not BRING anything to this meeting and he is in his own home,” she said. “They were simply in the background in our home, safely stowed in a room behind a closed door, with no ammunition (if you can even call it that).”

The 11-year-old in question is a Boy Scout, pursuing the rank of Eagle Scout, and is an “outdoors / all-boy kind of kid,” his mom said. “And as his parents and by way of legal rights, he is allowed to own said guns.” In addition to the BB gun, she said her son is training in archery and enjoys shooting his Airsoft gun.

Sperry was, understandably, shocked when police pulled up in front of the family’s home.

“I had no idea what to think. I’ve never been in any legal trouble whatsoever. I’ve never had any negative encounter with law enforcement,” said Sperry. “I had no idea. I really didn’t know what to think.”

“So, I answered the door. The police officer was…very nice. He explained to me that he was coming to address an issue with my son’s school,” the mother told Fox Baltimore. “And then explained to me that he was here to search for weapons, in my home. And I consented to let him in. And then I, unfortunately, stood there and watched police officers enter my 11-year-old son’s bedroom.”

Oh, there’s an issue with your son’s school, all right.

“The officers that responded were appalled at the call and even commended the set-up that my son has for his toys and commended him also on his respect and understanding of the BB guns,” Sperry wrote on Facebook.

They were “appalled,” you betcha. Which did NOT stop them from barging on in anyway and tossing your home for an item that is in no way, shape, or form illegal, please do note.

“The officers were more than nice,” she wrote, “and though they did not have a warrant, I have always been taught to not only comply, but had nothing to hide and allowed them to look wherever they wanted to.”

And comply you did, which was the exact moment you freely gave up your liberty and your rights forever.

But hey, we’re Amerikans, right? It’s in our nature to comply, to obey, to bend the knee and submit to authority. In the land of the “free” and the home of the “brave,” we believe everything they say and do as we’re told. Right?

This story is appalling at every level, with every participant thoroughly disgracing themselves.

Update! What he said.

There is a litany of excuses, to the effect that these were “only BB guns,” and were “properly stored,” and so on.

The fact is that if they had been fully operational AR-15s dangling from the walls with loaded magazines, this illegal intrusion would have been no more justified, either by the insane educrats, or the complisiant coppers.

First off, what, precisely, was the law that was broken? What was the crime that these garbage teachers observed?

And what, had the naïve parent not consented to the police entry without a warrant, would the cops have had to present to a judge in order to get a warrant?

Everybody involved here is an idiot. The teachers are malignant idiots for presuming that their writ extends into private homes simply because they are connected to a computer housed in such homes.

The cops are idiots for not telling the teachers to FOAD.

And mom was an idiot for allowing the coppers entry in the first place.

Nobody involved could be said to have covered themselves in glory here, and that’s putting it mildly indeed. Bill links to another all too similar, and perhaps even worse, story—a one-two punch that pretty much serves to confirm just how thoroughly broken this once-great nation really is.

Open the schools? Hell no. Shut ’em down, burn the buildings, plow the grounds, salt the earth, start over fresh. This is way too big a mess to straighten out any other way.

Ritual purification

Posted on August 17, 2020August 17, 2020 by Mike

Lepers, unmasked.

Purity rituals now extend to almost the entire populace and to every aspect of life. Go to get food at a grocery store and violate the mask or social distancing rule, and you will be called out by the reigning religious authorities — much as Jesus was when he and his disciples were rebuked for gathering and eating grain on the Sabbath.

If you dare to go outside the parameters permitted you, be it travel to another state or to the dentist, the ritual priests will test you to see if you are fit, taking your temperature, testing for antibodies, and then pronouncing you clean or unclean. Go to church and be masked, socially distanced and don’t dare sing.

Persist in your transgressions and you will be at least temporarily cut out of the community by having to live outside the camp until you are healed. You will be a leper.

The Coronavirus has provided the extreme left with a reason to create a huge class of outcasts while also affording the opportunity to fundamentally transform society. Those who previously had been designated as outcasts, including those considering themselves to be disempowered in any way, may now find themselves uniquely qualified to enter the holy circle of the pure.

Ominously, also now outside the camp are those who were once powerful authority figures, namely, the police and the military who were appointed to confront and contain the dark side of society.

But even more worrying, in states like Maryland, one’s neighbor is encouraged to snitch on neo-lepers who endanger public health, as happened in the USSR and East Germany. This is to say nothing of those designated as having leprous minds by Twitter, YouTube and Facebook’s determiners of mental health. Spies now determine who belongs outside social discourse because of criminal thoughts and “hate” speech — which is generally defined as any speaking or writing that opposes the left.

In fact, the leftist elite believe that America’s moral health was compromised irrevocably by the events of 1619, the introduction of slavery now seen as irredeemable original sin. So inherently leprous is America and the West in general that all diseased institutions and cities need to be set on fire, much as physicians once cauterized gangrene.

Rest assured the establishment of the new caste system will continue after the fires. The current virus has set the template for future government dictates. Other diseases will follow Covid-19. More citizens will be placed outside the camp and more kulaks of private enterprise will be destroyed. Society will continue to require purification until the last virus of bad thinking is exterminated.

The authoritarian Left’s work is never done. But they’ll have to do it without any help from me. Myself, I’ll just stick with good ol’ Bob Marley.

Freedom undefended is freedom lost.

Oh, what a difference a commie can make

Posted on August 14, 2020August 15, 2020 by Mike

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

Posted on August 14, 2020August 14, 2020 by Mike

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.

They’re just rubbing our noses in it now

Posted on August 8, 2020August 8, 2020 by Mike

STILL think this is really about a virus, do ya?

Thou fool.

Physical distancing, mask-wearing could be in place for 2-3 years even with vaccine, Dr. Tam warns. COVID-19 vaccine won't be a 'silver bullet,' chief public health officer says. https://t.co/hJ4rqD5qGz

— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) August 4, 2020

Goalposts, on wheels, permanently. Via WRSA, Patriactionary says:

She really thinks Canadians will put up with that!

I pray she’s wrong, and that we don’t put up with it.

There’s never even ever been a vaccine for coronaviruses; who’s to say we’ll even get one, so, what, we’ll remain locked down indefinitely?

NOW you’re getting it, buddy. I repeat: goalposts. On wheels. Forever and ever, amen. As for “not putting up with it,” early indicators are extremely discouraging on that score, and by no means only in Canada, alas. Now for another one a bit closer to home, at least pour moi.

It’s truly incredible how we went from “we need a brief pause to build hospital capacity” in March to “we must indefinitely suspend any activities that could allow the virus to spread” in August. https://t.co/rFheB88iF0

— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) August 6, 2020

Gee, imagine my surprise. What will the rationale for Comrade’s Cooper’s next “regrettable” Clampdown extension be in five weeks’ time, we wonders? Helpful Hint for the obtuse: this ain’t about “keeping people healthier,” either. And “boost our economy”? Seriously, motherfucker? SERIOUSLY, FOR FUCK’S FUCKING SAKE?!?!?

My God, the balls on that sleazy sonofabitch.

They’re not even bothering with PRETENDING to try to fool us anymore. They’re just waving the bloated, blubbery Phallus Of Contempt—grotesquely engorged, an obscenity—right in our very faces, shamelessly defying the hapless Sheeple to utter Peep One of protest over it.

But hey, never mind all that stuff. Y’all just be sure and always wear your little Mask Of Submission now, y’heah? It’s IMPORTANT.

The top immunologists and epidemiologists in the world can’t decide if masks are helpful in reducing the spread of COVID-19. Indeed, we’ve seen organizations like the World Health Organization and the CDC go back and forth in their recommendations.

The truth is masks have become the new wedge issue, the latest phase of the culture war. Mask opponents tend to see mask wearers as “fraidy cats” or virtue-signalling “sheeple” who willfully ignore basic science. Mask supporters, on the other hand, often see people who refuse to wear masks as selfish Trumpkins … who willfully ignore basic science.

Whether one is pro-mask or anti-mask, the fact of the matter is that face coverings have become politicized to an unhealthy degree, which stands to only further pollute the science.

Last month, for example, researchers at Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy responded to demands they remove an article that found mask requirements were “not based on sound data.”

The school, to its credit, did not remove the article, but instead opted to address the objections critics of their research had raised.

The problem with mask mandates is that public health officials are not merely recommending a precaution that may or may not be effective.

They are using force to make people submit to a state order that could ultimately make individuals or entire populations sicker, according to world-leading public health officials.

That is not just a violation of the Effectiveness Principle. It’s a violation of a basic personal freedom.

NOW you’re REALLY getting it, buddy. That’s precisely what they’ve done, all right; horrifying, to be sure. But even more horrifying is how handily they’ve gotten away with it so far. I dunno, it begins to look as if we may have waited a bit too late to start in on thumping the living daylights out of Ken and Karen a la my earlier post. We should’ve been doing it from jump, just on general principle.

A paean to pubs

Posted on August 5, 2020August 5, 2020 by Mike

They matter far more than you might realize.

Due to the draconian responses to COVID-19, America has been seeing the temporary triumph of the new ax wielders. A whole network of institutions that are the bedrock of neighborhoods are under attack, including shops, bars, pubs, restaurants, concert halls, movie theaters and churches. Even some church choirs are silenced by a ‘no singing’ rule.

The smashers of neighborliness and camaraderie are, like Carrie Nation, doing so in the name of righteousness and the improvement of American’s physical health—a principle that seems fair enough.

But if the health of Americans was truly the issue, there would not be so much arbitrariness and inconsistent application of rules and regulations. The people who are under the laws of the new Prohibition can see the inconsistencies clearly. It seems odd to them that COVID-19 virus is apparently far more active in churches, small businesses, and eateries, than it is in densely packed crowds of protestors whose righteous ideology apparently immunizes them from the virus’s deleterious effects.

It even would be acceptable if it were a sensible means of protecting one’s and others’ health. Most reasonable people are open to sensible precautions. But even when the State has allowed the denizens of the cities and small towns it is “protecting” from the virus to gather, government officials continue to regulate venues in ways that have nothing to do with health but which make the public discourse and camaraderie of bars, cafes and eateries nearly impossible.

For example, recently the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board updated their COVID guidelines to define the acceptable purchase of alcohol at a restaurant or bar. If you want a drink, you have to purchase a meal, defined as “food prepared on the premises, sufficient to constitute breakfast, lunch or dinner.” Just to be absolutely clear, “a snack, such as pretzels, popcorn, chips, or similar food, does not meet the definition of a meal.” Also, no drinking after eating your meal! “Additional drinks may be purchased while the customer is consuming the meal, but no further drinks may be purchased after the meal is finished.”

Not only is the customer told when, where and how to eat and drink, but more arbitrary regulations ensure no friendly give and take is allowed. Customers who formerly enjoyed shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow discussions have been replaced with expressionless, masked and muffled anonymous clients who sit at tables six feet apart from one another, only daring to lower their masks to eat, not to talk. Meanwhile, the familiar senior citizen coffee klatsches at McDonald’s have been abruptly disbanded and sausage biscuits are now impersonally dispensed from the takeout window.

What do all of the minute regulations have to do with public health? Not very much.

One cannot help but wonder if in addition to suppressing free discourse, something else is at work; namely H.L. Mencken’s view of puritanism, which he called “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

People who knew who you are and with whom you amiably rubbed elbows at the bar or in the pew, are now excised from your life. At the local café, it’s been your neighbor you’ve been talking with. It’s your neighbor whose business you’ve been supporting. The camaraderie, humor and mutuality of belonging to the human race is there at the local tavern. The mutuality of the faith community that recites creeds, sings hymns and prays together is found when meeting in person, not in cyberspace. ‘Tavern’ and ‘tabernacle’ spring from the same Latin root, taberna.

Just as bad, the demise of the familiar pub, the neighborhood restaurant and cafes; and the shutting down of church fellowships seems to have left protest marches as the only viable outlets for free speech.

Something is profoundly wrong with a society when the only acceptable and freely chosen social gatherings are protest marches rather than humble camaraderie as the unifying emotion. Something’s desperately amiss when the chief form of socialization is angry protest. It’s on the local level that true diversity exists, not on the macro stage with blaring megaphones drowning out all other voices.

Those whom you would rule, you first make afraid: dehumanize them, demoralize them, isolate them, confine them, terrorize them. Anybody out there seriously think the Left doesn’t understand all that, better than anybody ever has?

“Safety” theater

Posted on August 5, 2020August 5, 2020 by Mike

Odd how closely it parallels our farcical post-9/11 Security Theater, innit? Why, it’s almost as if the goobermint only has one tune in the whole hymn book.

If you go to a restaurant in Gotham right now, you might be subjected to a temperature check. It’s no big deal, it takes a second — but it’s pointless; plenty of COVID-positive people don’t have a fever. So why do we do it? It’s part of a growing trend of COVID-19 security theater. We do things that have no bearing on our actual safety but that make us feel safe.

Take masks. It makes sense to wear masks inside businesses or for any close contact with strangers.

No it doesn’t.

But why are people wearing them outside, when they’re not near anybody? Neighborhood message boards across the country are filled with complaints like: “I saw a bicyclist without a mask today!”

The problem is messaging from the top. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coronavirus guru, is the man we all look to for direction. In March, he said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Now he’s gung-ho, yet his mask instruction is very convoluted.

He wore a mask to throw out the first pitch at the Opening Day game at Nationals Park — while standing more than 60 feet away from the nearest person. Then he sat down in the stands with his wife and friend, and they all took turns wearing and removing their masks.

In restaurants in New York, you must wear a mask to your seat. But then you take it off to eat, drink and talk, which is clearly where all the danger lies.

Not to worry; once the dwindling few NYC restaurants still hanging on by their fingernails are driven under too, that little conundrum pretty much solves itself. Of course, the, ummm, flexible standards the “elite” hold themselves to are yet another indicator that this whole shamdemic thing is just so much smoke. But speaking of NYC, there IS some truly hilarious news:

The governor of New York has begged the city’s wealthy, who fled the coronavirus outbreak, to return and help it recover.

Andrew Cuomo said he was extremely worried about New York City weathering the Covid-19 aftermath if too many of the well-heeled taxpayers who fled to second homes decide there is no need to move back.

“They are in their Hamptons homes, or Hudson Valley or Connecticut. I talk to them literally every day. I say. ‘When are you coming back? I’ll buy you a drink. I’ll cook,’ “ Mr Cuomo told MSNBC, naming popular getaways for the rich.

Lawmakers have proposed a wealth tax targeting the city’s 100 billionaires to help fill a $30 billion (£23bn) budget shortfall created by the Covid-19 crisis.

However, Mr Cuomo, a Democrat, said he could not support greater taxes on the ultra-wealthy as rich people already have one foot out of New York City and he fears they will leave for good if their taxes go up.

Instead, he wants the federal government and New York’s congressional representatives to send billions of dollars in aid.

LOLGF, asshole-eyes.

Update! What the hell, more NYC hilarity.

.@NYCMayor: I’m laying off 22,000 city workers if the feds don’t give us a bailout pic.twitter.com/iWkSh4N8yJ

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 4, 2020

Aww gee, my heart is just breaking over here.

Dead giveaway

Posted on August 1, 2020August 1, 2020 by Mike

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.

Restaurant holocaust

Posted on July 28, 2020July 28, 2020 by Mike

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?

Posted on July 27, 2020July 27, 2020 by Mike

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?

Even classical music now, too?

Posted on July 25, 2020July 25, 2020 by Mike

If you’re still one of the wilfully-oblivious few who thinks there’s anything at all the sick bastards won’t try to ruin and destroy, kindly allow me to recommend that you reconsider. Fast.

What’s the most important thing about opera singer Luciano Pavarotti?

(A) He used his vocal gifts to bring joy to millions;

or

(B) He was white, and not black or Latino.

If you’re a normal person, you’d choose option A. But if you’re the New York Times chief classical music critic, Tony Tommasini (or some other equally lousy person), you choose B.

Tommasini last week published what might be the single worst arts piece ever published by the formerly revered, now auto-cannibalizing Gray Lady. And since I have no word limit on this column, I might as well add that in my imagination, the backstory to Tommasini’s piece (about which more below) goes something like this.

Only a few more steps of Manhattan sidewalk, a quick right turn, and the weekly ritual would begin. Again.

“Is my tie okay?”, asked Tony.

“Stop”, said Benjamin.

Squaring himself to his partner, Benjamin directed an urgent OCD gaze toward Tony’s silk accoutrement (knotted as always with a modded half-Windsor, which Tony proudly believed he had invented all by himself, and that he alone on earth used).

Reaching out, Benjamin shifted Tony’s custom-knotted tie precisely .87 millimeters to the left, patted his partner’s lapels, stepped back, and smiled. “There. C’est magnifique!”.

“God…I love it when you speak French”, Tony cooed. Moistly.

Rounding the corner, Tony and Benjamin – one of New York’s (that is, the world’s) top power couples, with bonus-point gay cachet to boot – merged with streams of other self-important people draped in mink and gold heading toward the front doors of the Lincoln Center. It would be yet another evening of seeing and being seen, aristocratic chit-chat right out of a Tolstoy novel, and eventually, watching the world famous New York Philharmonic perform. What Tony didn’t know as he strolled into the building was that everything was about to change.

The program began typically enough: a Ravel piece; a Copland piece; a screeching atonal piece of avant garde garbage written only the month before by an Albanian communist no one had ever heard of, etc.

But when the orchestra’s principal clarinetist, Anthony McGill, rose to perform…Tony felt something snap inside.

It wasn’t McGill’s felicity of phrasing, his emotive dynamics, or the transcendent beauty of the melody which so affected him.

No. For Tony – a wealthy, highly-educated man born into privilege – it was McGill’s skin color. It was chocolate…but all the other players’ skin was…well, it was wrong. Even the tapioca-to-teak skin tones of the Asian musicians now seemed to blend into the now-intolerable Dairy Queen whiteness of the rest of the orchestra.

Only one of them…but four dozen whites, thought Tony. No. No no no no.

Tears of indignant rage welled in his eyes – sharp, stinging, Tabasco tears.

What…the actual f***…have I been part of?!

Tony was shouting silently to himself now, his thoughts racing.

How did I not see this before? NO. This is WRONG. F*** this music! F*** everything about this whole f***ing thing! There’s only ONE, um, African black American, um, of colour! That poor, poor man!

He looked around at the audience. Almost all white. That was the last straw. This is like a **** KLAN RALLY! THIS MUST END!

For the first time in Tony’s 72-year long life, a geyser of bitter gall, guilt, shame, and fury exploded within him, consuming him…And in that moment, the music stopped mattering to Tony. The only thing that mattered anymore was devoting his life to a cheap, destructive, ultimately meaningless, colour-by-numbers social justice game which required “correct” distribution of skin tones, in every time and place and situation – including orchestras.

And that, my friends, is how it came to pass, that Tony Tommasini just wrote the worst arts piece in the history of the New York Times.

After confessing that the above was his own instant-classic spoof of the twee douchebag Tommasini, Tal Bachman goes on to beat both the dweeb and the NYT soundly about the head, neck, and shoulders for stupidly demanding that racial quotas and political correctness must now trump ability even in classical music, concluding thusly:

I’m no virtuoso, but I did grow up playing and singing in classical ensembles at university, in high school, in the community, in church. So I admit I might be unusually sensitive to the displacement of musical merit and the diminution of musical experience by race obsessions and political ideology. That displacement and diminution feels like something out of communist China (which banned Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms), the Soviet Empire (which banned Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and the overtly Christian composer, Arvo Pärt), or Nazi Germany (which banned Jewish composers like Mendelssohn, Mahler, and even Debussy, on grounds he had married a Jewish woman).

Actually, no, strike that. This doesn’t “feel” like that. It is that. It’s the same old rotten, thuggish, conscription of everything – film, sport, love, family, history, literature, science, everything – into the service of some hideous, ultimately inhuman, ideology.

At some point, someone, something has to stop The Destroyers. But who, or what, and how?

Easy: sane people, that’s who or what. The how is a little more problematic, maybe. But in the end there really ain’t but just the one way, and we all know what it involves. Because Bachman is perfectly correct: it IS “the same old rotten, thuggish, conscription of everything” into a hideous ideology we all ought to be familiar enough with by now. When it comes to that one way of dealing with it, the song remains the same, and it always will.

The Peltzmann effect

Posted on July 22, 2020July 22, 2020 by Mike

Unintended consequences.

In the 1960s, numerous countries (including the United States) began adopting laws that mandated the use of seat belts. The hope was that this would reduce mortality in motor accidents.

However, economist Gordon Tullock once quipped that “if the government wanted people to drive safely, they’d mandate a spike in the middle of each steering wheel.” Why would that be? Because of how we respond to risks. If we know that even the slightest accident might impale us on our driving wheel, we would all drive more safely. While it is a strange thought experiment, we can run it in reverse. If one driver knows that all the other drivers are wearing a seat belt while he also wears a seat belt, that driver faces a lower risk level. As a result, feeling safer, that driver acts more recklessly. He exceeds the speed limit, accelerates at a yellow light etc. This greater recklessness, in turn, increases the risks of an accident.

As a result, there is an ambiguous effect from the regulation. On the one hand, the law reduces risks but it also induces a behavioral response that increases the likelihood of an accident happening. Thus, we must wonder which effect dominates the other.

The same logic applies to face masks. Imagine a fictitious Canadian economist who, fearing the risk of bringing the virus to a loved one or catching the virus himself, avoids situations that would be too risky for his tastes. He avoids going to the coffee shop for a latte and limits himself only to doing groceries. With everyone being forced to wear a mask, he may decide to go pick up that latte. Technically, the activities of shopping for coffee and groceries are individually less risky with mandatory face masks. However, that fictitious economist now exposes himself to two activities that carry a risk rather than a single activity and so he faces a higher likelihood of catching the disease. Just as with seat belts, we must ask which effect dominates: the risk reduction of masks or the behavioral response?

In the end, the answer is an empirical one. Yet, the case of seat belt laws suggests that the precise answer might be elusive. The first paper of importance on the effect of seat belts was published in the 1970s by Sam Peltzman who found that the behavioral response by American drivers completely washed out the effects of the law. Since then, numerous papers on the topic have been published. Some confirm the findings of Peltzman while others infirm them. All these studies confirm that there is some offsetting behavior. They simply cannot agree on how strong it is.

However, let us take one important fact in consideration: the first laws mandating seat belt use were adopted in the 1960s. This is more than fifty years ago. Yet, there is still a discussion among experts who try to design the most convincing statistical tests. If there is uncertainty about the past, how can experts today be certain that compelling the use of face masks will not result in a greater level of risk taking? What if the offsetting behavior is stronger? Experts and policy-makers probably do not know this information (and I believe that they cannot reasonably be expected to know this). As the damages from faster propagation are exponential (given the nature of the virus), there is a real risk of backfire!

The question of whether or not seat belts, motorcycle helmets, masks, suits of medieval armor, etc save lives might be a fascinating one. It’s probably worth the ongoing research it inspires, I suppose. Ultimately, though, it’s the wrong question. What any and all Americans SHOULD be asking themselves, and constantly, is this: in a supposedly “free” country, with a government whose reach and scope is confined within very explicit limits set by the US Constitution, are ANY such mandates in accordance with those limits? Or do they so flagrantly breach them as to do far greater harm to the Constitution’s continued authority and relevance, thereby harming the nation entire?

Tragically, most of us long ago forgot about just how important that question really is, and no longer care anyway. If they think about them at all, they consider such notions quaint, antiquated, and hopelessly silly—the exclusive province of cranks and fools who are completely out of touch with reality, too thick to really comprehend what government’s true purpose is: to solve every problem, grant every wish, scratch every itch, safeguard every life, and abolish all risk, forever.

Of groupthink, and drooling beasts

Posted on July 22, 2020July 22, 2020 by Mike

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.

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