Bah! – Page 64

Curiouser and curioser

Posted on April 11, 2020April 11, 2020 by Mike

As of Wednesday (April 8), officials in eight remaining states have yet to issue full stay-at-home orders. Those states are Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Officials in three other states — Alabama, Missouri, and South Carolina — only issued stay-at-home orders within the last few days after being resistant to enacting such a measure in the weeks prior.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that those states, due to their inaction, would reap the consequences in the form of higher COVID-19 death toll projections. But that has not been the case.

According to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks the coronavirus outbreak in each individual state, predicting its death toll and hospital resource usage, all but one of the states in question have downgraded their death toll projections.

In addition to downgraded death toll projections, the states also saw significant downgrades for their projected hospital resource use, which include intensive care unit beds and ventilators.

The data doesn’t suggest that social distancing as a whole is worthless, or that it isn’t having any effect. But it does raise the question of whether every single state and locality needs to institute the same exact stay-at-home-on-government-orders regime. Many commentators have suggested that such measures might well be necessary in some places, but not necessary in others. The fact that both hospital usage and fatality projections are going down even in states without stay-at-home orders indicates that these people might be right.

I’d say so, yeah. But YMMV—particularly if you’re a Democrat-Socialist apparatchik looking to take advantage of widespread panic to advance your eternal agenda of glomming more power and control while you have the chance. Julie Kelly suggests that it might be time to shitcan the scare-mongers.

Those alarming forecasts were based on a model produced by the University of Washington late last month. Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, assembled a set of graphs to show how COVID-19 would overwhelm the country’s health care system, causing a shortage of hospital beds, intensive care units and ventilators.

Murray also originally calculated that 2,271 people would die on April 15, which would be the peak “death day” in the United States. But that wasn’t the only scary news. Sick people would by dying in the streets and entryways outside of hospitals across the country because no beds would be available.

The Murray model has been fully embraced by the president’s top two health advisors, Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci. The pair presented the doomsday model to President Trump on March 28, which prompted his decision to extend the CDC “social distancing” guidelines until the end of this month. (It bears repeating that the Murray model factored in “full social distancing” such as the shutdown of schools and nonessential businesses as well as stay-at-home orders through the end of May.)

Birx and Fauci also presented Murray’s charts to the White House press corps on March 31. Birx, relying on the model’s most extreme range of total fatalities, warned that upwards of 240,000 people would die of coronavirus in the United States by the beginning of August. The next two weeks, Birx admonished at the time, would be particularly painful. “As sobering as that number is, we need to be prepared for it,” Fauci told the socially distanced reporters in the briefing room. “Is it going to be that much? I hope not.”

But this week’s Pearl Harbor and 9/11 didn’t happen. Widespread death and devastation couldn’t be found.

Aside from two states, the rest of the country escaped terrorist-attack level fatalities this week. Between April 4 and April 9, a little more than 8,000 people in the country reportedly died from COVID-19; more than half of the fatalities occurred in New York and New Jersey. A tragedy no doubt, but certainly not the “hardest and saddest week” for most Americans, as Adams warned.

Only one other state—Michigan—has more than 1,000 recorded deaths so far. Populous states such as California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas have fewer than 500 fatalities. Many states are still in the double-digit range.

Further, the Murray model has been revised dramatically since its publication. An April 2 update predicted more than 93,000 total deaths by August; the April 5 update revised that figure downward to about 82,000. The total number of hospital beds needed dropped drastically between the two updates, from 262,092 beds to 140,823 beds. Predicted demand for ICUs dropped by about 10,000; ventilator demand dropped by nearly 12,000. Some of the model’s state-by-state projections also changed.

Beds and ICUs are aplenty across the country. There are so many ventilators available that we will now supply the machines to other countries in need.

Rather than admit the inherent flaws in the Murray model and confess the doomsday scenarios were completely unwarranted, Fauci, Birx, and Adams are stepping up their demands to keep the country under house arrest while the once-vibrant U.S. economy dives into Depression-era territory.

Curious indeed. Why, it’s almost as if there might be a different agenda at work here than the one they’ve been shrieking about. As if—I dunno, it’s such a crazy, out-there idea I really hate to even think it—as if goobermint bureau-rats and “experts” might possibly be ass-covering, incompetent liars or something.

Ohnononono, that’s just ridiculous. Sorry I mentioned it, folks. Go home, stay home, wait for further instructions from the proper authorities. That is all.

Update! Heard this great old tune on the radio earlier, and it seemed particularly appropriate for a Saturday night house-arrest music selection.

Priorities

Posted on April 11, 2020April 11, 2020 by Mike

Ted Cruz lays ’em out, in another of his trademark bursts of unleavened awesomeness.

The Ayatollah leads chants of “death to America.” He pledges to destroy America, which he calls “the Great Satan.” And Senate Dems want to send him millions??? At the EXACT SAME TIME, Senate Dems are blocking desperately need relief to small businesses in America. ? #Priorities https://t.co/o44wqG9bOm

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 10, 2020

Backstory:

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz unloaded on his Democratic colleagues on Friday in response to Sen. Dianne Feinstein sending a letter to President Trump declaring that she is “disappointed” in his administration’s plan to block funding to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran. The Democrats’ demand of Trump to help Iran get $5 billion in aid, Cruz noted, comes “at the exact same time” that they are “blocking desperately need relief to small businesses in America.”

“The coronavirus has hit Iran hard, with the potential for even greater spread in the region,” the high-ranking Democratic senator tweeted Thursday along with a copy of her letter. “In the interest of international security, President Trump should support Iran’s request to the IMF for emergency funds to contain this virus.”

“I am disappointed to see reports that your administration intends to block Iran from receiving $5 billion in humanitarian aid from the IMF to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” the letter begins. “Providing these funds to Iran would help it respond more effectively to the disease and mitigate the risk of further destabilization in the region.” She goes on to urge Trump to reconsider so that the infamously tyrannical regime can receive the billions in aid from the IMF.

Feinstein’s letter was issued the same day that Senate Democrats blocked an urgent request from Sec. Mnuchin to increase the amount of cash in the emergency small business loan program recently established by Congress from $350 billion to $600 billion.

As the New York Post’s editorial board explains, instead of agreeing to the desperately needed increase in cash on Thursday, the Democrats “issued partisan demands”: “They insisted the new money include $60 billion for ‘community-based lenders’ that serve minorities, women, nonprofits and other groups. And the bill also had to OK an immediate $250 billion for cities, states, hospitals, food stamps and other needs.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) explained in response that “everything is an opportunity.” This was an “opportunity” to address “disparities” she suggested are plaguing the country.

“And if they don’t get their way, no one gets a dime more,” the Post’s editorial board noted. “Never mind that businesses face bankruptcy or that 17 million people filed for jobless benefits in recent weeks.”

Now, if you’re a Real American and not a despicable Commie toe-rag, you’d read that last sentence just as it is. But Pelosi and her fellow Democrat-Socialists see something more like this:

Never mind that evil capitalist running-dog exploiters face social justice or that 17 million people are now permanent wards of the State and reliably dependent Democrat-Socialist voters.

See? Easy peasy. As Cruz says, it’s all a matter of perspective.

Willingly to the slaughter

Posted on April 11, 2020April 11, 2020 by Mike

When we decide to hang the Americans, they will sell us the rope.

Comrades, the ministry of coronavirus compliance is making it easy to be a good state citizen. If you spot a non-compliant citizen participating in life without adhering to the dictates of the state, there’s now mobile APP’s for quick snitching.

Comrade citizens are now able to take a picture of the non-compliant behavior (citizen spotted outdoors, not wearing a mask, unauthorized gatherings etc), upload the picture to the state ministry, and the state compliance division will dispatch local enforcement teams to correct the non-compliant behavior, or remove the citizen.

Elsewhere, Sundance provides a quick rundown of another tyrannical decree:

In the latest round of edicts from the Michigan Ministry of Coronavirus Compliance, Governor Getchen Whitmer extends the citizen home arrests through the end of the month. Additionally forbidding any travel between state residences.

Subversive citizens, acting against the interests of the state, will be captured and fined.

Additionally, the state-defined list of approved “non-essential” products is further restrained to forbid the purchase of any home gardening, private food growing or other subversive and regulated activities.

However, Michigan citizens may purchase Lotto tickets as they are deemed essential to the state ministry of compliance monitoring.

The first-term democrat dictator issued a new order that continues to require residents to stay under home confinement unless they seek to: engage in approved forms of isolated exercise; travel for a job essential to the administration of the state; care for a loved one (as defined by the state which does not include contact with a person to whom you do not have a direct familial relationship as defined by legal connection); or pick up pre-approved “necessary” supplies including approved/regulated food products and/or medicine.

COMRADES! Think it might be a good idea, in light of the Great(er) Depression despotic governors, mayors, and city managers have now made inevitable with the over-reaction to the over-ballyhooed Chink-N-Pox “crisis,” to maybe plant yourself a garden so as to keep your family from going hungry? Better rethink that.

Crazed Democrat Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer prohibited big box retailers from in-person sale of seeds because according to her, food is non-essential.

Whitmer also called on Home Depot and Lowes to shut down to close certain sections like flooring, garden centers and plant nurseries.

In the immortal words of another pissant dimestore dictator:

Kommissar Whitmer says you can eat cake, Michiganders. But hey, you voted for her, you got her, now you get to enjoy her.

Update! Welcome signs of a backlash against Kommissar Whitmerova.

A Change.org petition demanding the recall of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) went viral on Saturday, quickly shooting well past 80,000 signatures.

The online petition had about 60,000 names in the morning and, by the afternoon, had surpassed 80,000.

Just one small caveat:

Legally, the petition is meaningless, but it may indicate an appetite on the part of some Michiganders to remove their governor.

Oh well, back to the good old stout-rope-and-a-hanging-tree option it must be, then. That one is most definitely NOT “meaningless.”

“Michigan’s typical small business owners obey laws, but they may not notice the progressive agenda being pushed by our radical leftist Governor Whitmer,” said Rosanne Ponkowski, president of the Michigan Conservative Coalition.

“Dope shops are open, while cigar shops are closed.”

Dope smokers matter. Cigar smokers don’t. Beginning to get it now?

Compare, contrast

Posted on April 10, 2020April 10, 2020 by Mike

They think we’re all too stupid to notice things like this. Sadly, it appears they may be right.

2 week government shutdown: a humanitarian crisis on par with the Ethopian famine

2 month everything-but-government shutdown: what are you wussies bitching abouthttps://t.co/q7Ub2H8SsV

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 10, 2020

(Via Insty)

The price

Posted on April 6, 2020April 6, 2020 by Mike

Was it worth it?

It took only 15 days after the coronavirus outbreak was confirmed in the U.S. for Boba Guys, a popular San Francisco bubble tea chain with 400 employees and 17 locations, to shut its doors.

With an average daily income of only $7 above daily expenses, the typical small business has a median cash buffer of 27 days of burn before it runs out of money.

Karen Mills, prior head of the Small Business Administration (SBA), said recently that “20%, even 30%, of small businesses could fail even in a good scenario.” Without immediate support to buffer the cash flows of stalled businesses waiting for the economy to reopen, it is a matter of days until millions begin to shut their doors, driving unemployment up significantly and sending the economy into a tailspin.

Small businesses make up over 99.9% of businesses, employ about 59 million people (about 47% of the U.S. private workforce in 2015), create over 41% of new jobs, and account for 45% of GDP.

A Goldman Sachs survey of 1,500 small businesses found that 96% of owners were already feeling the effects of COVID-19. More than half said their business would not be able to continue operating for more than three months because of the economic stresses caused by the pandemic.

With 47% of the private workforce facing potential layoffs, unemployment could rise rapidly into the double digits, substantially driving down the 45% of GDP that small business represents, and lasting for a substantial, years-long recovery.

Even if the death rate from the Creeping ChiCom Crud suddenly spikes to the scarifying levels our masters have been predicting, I still can’t see that the Great Clampdown was worth the cost that decades of impoverishment and misery from destroying the economy is going to exact. And that doesn’t even take into account the freedom we’ve thrown away, which will assuredly NOT be coming back.

Update! Michael Z Williamson gets specific on which businesses will fail.

By week 2, unemployment went from 3% to 10%.

It really hasn’t occurred to most of you that businesses fail from not engaging in business. This just tells me the socialist indoctrination centers (schools) have utterly failed to explain how business works.

Most businesses operate on tiny margins, especially stores and restaurants. Now, restaurants that can do takeout are managing, mostly (at reduced capacity and with reduced employees). But fine dining establishments or sit-down-only ethnic restaurants aren’t. They’re closed. That means no income for any of the owners or employees, followed shortly by no income for the landlord, who is also probably a small business, so stow your socialist-indoctrinated hate.

Keep in mind that every one that fails means unemployed workers as well. And just because YOU can find a workaround for their product, doesn’t put money in THEIR pocket.

Here’s a partial list I will expand:

Theaters, who have managers, ushers, concessionaires, ticket takers.

Restaurants and bars who have managers, cooks, servers, cleaners.

Restaurants need food suppliers. If they’re not selling food, they’re not ordering food from the suppliers. (One corresepondent reports his factory produces sliced cheese. 80% drop in orders with so many restaurants closed or doing less business.)

Specialty retailers–bookstores, hobby stores.

Hotels–no one is renting rooms if they’re not traveling for leisure or business. Hotels employ maintenance, housekeepers, clerks, often entertainers.

Convention facilities–who have lots of overhead, and lots of staff and/or contractors for support, displays, decorations, etc.

Venues for music or live theater.

Gyms aren’t getting anything without guests and attendees.

He has many, many, many more, as if the above weren’t all too much. Then he gets to the REALLY grim stuff—what the effect of all this will be in only a few more weeks—before asking the big question:

The point is there are ZERO non-essential jobs in even our nominally free (though massively government controlled) market. If a job doesn’t generate income, it goes away.

The question comes down to: How many people are you willing to starve and murder over a virus that the experts agree won’t be significantly worse than the four previous major viruses, in the last half century?

Since it’s way too late to fix this now, and there’s no going back from here, it looks like we’re about to find out.

The Great Disconnect

Posted on April 5, 2020April 5, 2020 by Mike

The fishy smell intensifies.

According to most national media hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

U.S. media claim doctors and nurses are collapsing under the stress and strain of conditions they describe as “war zones” in the battle against COVID-19.

Media are now reporting about nurses and doctors committing suicide as they try to deal with severe PTSD, and psychological trauma, as a result of endless shifts in overcrowded hospitals filled with desperate and dying patients. Additionally, refrigerated trailers now fill with piles of dead bodies as the morgues are overwhelmed with deceased coronavirus patients.

Influencers, perhaps people with an interest in pushing an agenda, are sharing videos of nurses and doctors pleading for help and crying under duress amid their struggle. It all seems rather sad and unnerving. Additionally, professional instability that severe seems a little disconcerting…. That said, that’s one summation of a recent 24-hour media cycle.

However, there is a disconnect.

I’m not talking a little disconnect; there is a profound and entirely opposite set of reports from nurses, doctors and healthcare workers –in multiple states– who are being laid-off, sent home, told not to come in; and doctors worried of losing their practices because hospitals, and their offices are completely empty.

For every media claim of overwhelmed hospital war-zones, there are a dozen reports from actual workers, nurses, doctors and medical personnel reporting exactly the opposite; and yes, a disparity in reporting even in the New York metropolitan area.

Medical personnel in Wisconsin, Missouri, California, Florida, Colorado, Oregon, Georgia New Jersey, and every region in the USA are reporting there are few to no patients in their facility and the medical staff is being laid-off, or told to go home and/or stay home, because there is nothing to do.

How the heck is this level of profound disconnect possible?

Here here, sirrah! Have I somehow misconstrued? Or do you seriously imply that our national liberal-media complement—so essential to the well-being of the entire Republic, now as always—might conceivably be LYING to us?

Why, you impudent scoundrel! Such damnable slander against good and honorable “journalists” cannot be borne, SHALL not be borne, without consequence! To the field of honor straightaway then—where, on my oath as a gentleman, I shall see justice done upon you, decency and righteousness upheld! Pistols at dawn, I say!! PISTOLS AT DAWN!!!

Sundance solicits reports on all this from readers working in the field, and he gets plenty of ’em. Call me a conspiracy nut if you will, but considering the source of the horror stories—and also bearing in mind, as we should here and elsewhere, that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”—I nevertheless feel the idea that Enemedia might possibly NOT be giving us the straight dope is in no way too great a strain for rationality to bear.

(/sarcasm)

Whither freedom?

Posted on April 4, 2020April 4, 2020 by Mike

Going, going, gone.

Here’s a sensible question. If the mayor of the most notable metropolis in the country can openly suggest that the government has the right to permanently shutter the doors of a church if it refuses to comply with “social distancing” guidelines, or any other edict the government finds necessary in a given moment, then what can’t the government do?

If ever there was a question better left unasked…

Just a few weeks ago, the threat of COVID-19 was considered by nearly everyone to be potentially far deadlier than it has yet proven to be. The fatality rates, hospitalization rates, and the predictions of American death tolls (once routinely touted as “over 2 million”) associated with infection were all much higher three weeks ago than they are today. And yet, as the dire projections about the impact of infection has become considerably smaller with new data and improved medical readiness, the social restrictions placed upon the populace have become progressively more obstructive and draconian.

Got that? The better the health outlook has become, the harsher the government’s restrictions on you have also become.

Coincidence, I’m sure.

If that isn’t bothersome to you, maybe you should think about the fact that these social restrictions seem to have only become harsher on you. Some Americans are enduring no government obstruction in their lives, and others still are actually enjoying more freedom than they would have before these social obstructions in your lives were introduced.

Consider this. A junkie can wake up on a brisk morning in the streets of San Francisco, defecate on the sidewalk in plain view of onlookers, and insert a used needle into his arm to inject illegal narcotics into his veins. The cops will make no effort to stop him, for, you see, that might be a violation of his supposed “rights.” That’s much the same as it was before the coronavirus pandemic, so I should probably add that this junkie’s sleeping and social arrangements may very well be in violation of “social distancing” guidelines, also.

Now, consider that he is far less likely to incur the attention of law enforcement, or even the news media, than you might incur for the crime of choosing to attend your local church, should it have the audacity to be open. It is you, don’t you understand, who is the public health menace.

To put it mildly, the social fabric is being torn apart. And for what?

It’s healthy for Americans to maintain skepticism about the motives and effectiveness of our government. Right now, there is a lot which calls the government’s motives and effectiveness into question. Like what I suspect is a growing number of Americans, I am completely unconvinced that the harsh measures being foisted upon the American people, as collective units amongst the states, are entirely necessary, and even more unconvinced that a similar outcome could not have been achieved with fewer rigid restrictions upon healthy and less at-risk individuals and American life, in general. And as days pass, I’m ever more convinced that the utter annihilation of the economy that we’ve seen, and the trillions in spending of taxpayer money that we absolutely, positively do not have, could have been significantly less damaging if we had demanded fewer government restrictions throughout this crisis, rather than more.

Sure, but how was THAT supposed to provide our masters with any kind of trial run for making certain America had accepted the bit fully?

If you think it’s bad now, though, just wait till the next time they decide to put the boot on American necks and press down. And if you think there isn’t going to BE a next time, you’re a damned fool.

Numbers game(s)

Posted on April 4, 2020April 4, 2020 by Mike

They ain’t adding up.

All admit that the numbers that are scaring the sense out of the country are mathematical projections. All projections are based on assumptions about the ever-changing numbers of “confirmed cases” of COVID-19, as well as of deaths resulting therefrom. But few—and here it seems we must include many “health officials”—consider that the latter numbers are themselves “soft” and tell us next to nothing about how much, how little, or what kind of dangers the virus poses to us.

To make intelligent decisions about countermeasures, we would need have hard data about all these matters. Yet, for two months, doctors such as Anthony Fauci have messed up millions of lives and commandeered trillions of dollars while scaring the hell out of people and watching curves based on projections based on meaningless numbers. Watching the several curves resulting from the testing that is now ongoing and that is projected to continue as the country suffers will provide only more guesses, that will feed more models and more disputes.

The most important fact about COVID-19, its true mortality rate, is the number who die of the virus divided by the number infected by it. No algorithms. Simple arithmetic.

In short, Fauci, et al., are showing themselves to be typical of our bureaucracy: over-credentialed, entrusted with too much power, and dangerously incompetent.

It’s mind-blowing to see how many of us who long since accepted American bureaucratic realities are now willing to set it all aside and squander their faith and hope on those same demonstrably inept, corrupt, and untrustworthy bureaucracies…with no evidence whatsoever of even the slightest change or improvement therein.

Learning the true figures about precisely what danger the virus poses to whom must begin by taking into account one thing we know for sure about COVID-19: that many, if not most, of those infected by this unusually contagious virus show few or no symptoms. This suggests eventual near-universal contagion.

But we don’t know how many of these asymptomatic people there are. Hence, meaningful epidemiological testing must include a random representative sample of the population, regardless of whether they are presumed to be infected or not. The numbers resulting from monitoring what happens to the health of individuals in this sample over a few weeks would tell exactly what percentage of people in each category and subcategory suffer what consequences from whatever contact with the virus they happen to have.

Backed by the media, Fauci and company have contended that actions by anybody, ordinary citizens, elected officials, or physicians that do not follow proper bureaucratic procedures are illegitimate. Who the hell do they think they are? We belong to ourselves. Not to them.

Surely, President Trump’s low point came when he supported bypassing roll call votes in the passage of a $2.2 trillion bill as part of his and other executive officials’ decisions to shut down the country. Making decisions on the basis of meaningless curves and bureaucratic authority rather than through open debate about hard facts followed by roll call votes is not just undemocratic. It’s stupid.

I’d tell you to go read it all, but it’s Codevilla, so I’m sure you know that already,

They’re getting the band back together

Posted on April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by Mike

There they go again. But Trump, bless his stout heart, ain’t having any of it.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is doubling down on his call for President Trump to name a “czar” to oversee the production and distribution of coronavirus-related medical supplies.

Schumer sent a letter to Trump on Thursday saying it was “long past the time” to name a senior military officer to lead the effort, including allowing the individual to use the Defense Production Act “to complete and rapidly implement a plan for the increased production, procurement and distribution of critically-needed medical devices and equipment.”

“The existing federal leadership void has left America with an ugly spectacle in which States and cities are literally fending for themselves, often in conflict and competition with each other, when trying to procure precious medical supplies and equipment,” Schumer wrote.

The Hill, being just another Enemedia propaganda organ, minimized Trump’s scrumptiously scathing response to the tapeworm Schroomer. But I won’t.

Note Trump’s prominent mention of the failed Shampeachment hoax. There’s a reason he brought it up.

The team is back in action. On Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis. The new panel will have the authority to investigate any aspect of the virus emergency and the Trump administration’s handling of it.

Pelosi’s announcement came a day after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called for a 9/11-style independent commission to investigate “mistakes” in the virus response. Shortly after that, Schiff told the Washington Post that in Congress, House Democrats must investigate the Trump administration’s handling of virus testing and the government’s distribution of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers.

“We need to make sure there’s no favoritism in terms of political allies, no discrimination against states or governors based on lack of presidential flattery,” Schiff said, indicating the probe would be aimed squarely at President Trump.

Less than three months after sending to the Senate impeachment articles to remove the president from office and less than two months after the Senate trial ended in Trump’s acquittal, the Pelosi-Schiff team is up and running again.

So after nearly FOUR FUCKING YEARS of refusing to accept defeat in the 2016 election instead of pretending to be grown-ups and abiding by the result, here we go with Round Four of the perpetual coup attempt from these scrofulous scoundrels.

Lemme see now, what was it I was just saying about how they never, ever stop? And didn’t I have something about bullets in heads lying around here someplace, too?

There is no way in Hell that the next Democrat-Socialist president should be allowed one single moment of peace from his/her/zxher/xxhis/its opposition after this outrage. He/she/zxher/xxhim/it should be hounded into a total schizophrenic break beginning the very instant the election results are announced, without surcease or pity. Full stop, end of fucking story.

MORE TESTOSTERONE, STAT!

Posted on April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by Mike

A risk-free society ain’t a healthy one.

The panic over the virus is something new to modern society. This virus is not a threat to humanity, but it is treated as one. We know there was no panic over the Swine flu, the Asian flu, the Hong Kong flu and so on. There was no panic over the great influenza outbreak of 2017 that killed 80,000 Americans. Yet with the death toll soaring to 4,000 with the Chinese flu, America is paralyzed with fear.

It could be that when a civilization becomes sufficiently advanced, three things happen that change how it interacts with the world. One is the birth rate falls. This is something we have seen all over the world. Once a society can reliably feed its people and it reduces interpersonal violence to a certain level, total fertility rates fall. At the same time, the society feminizes. Women begin to take up positions of authority in both civil and government institutions, changing the nature of those institutions.

That’s the third thing, what we are seeing today. A society dominated by women is extremely risk averse. The focus first shifts to elevating the value of life, then to guarding the children against any potential risk. We saw this happen in the 90’s and 00’s with the millennial generation, who were sheltered from everything. Finally, the society shifts to organizing against any threat, even those that promise to merely trim a few years off the lifespan of the octogenarians.

A society that is hyper-focused on preventing even the slightest risk is not a society taking great risks to explore the stars. Maybe that’s why the cost of going back to the moon is prohibitively high. The safety precautions that would be required make the venture pointlessly expensive. The reason it takes ten years to build a building that a century ago only took a year to build, is that today’s society is risk intolerant. If just one worker gets a hangnail or stubs a toe, the cost is considered too high.

Ahh, but the cost of quivering in terror at the mere prospect of risk is far higher. Or will be when a stronger, bolder, more virile one comes along to kick its cowardly ass, subjugate it, and eventually replace it completely, while the lily-livered, man-bunned MenWymryn all cringe weeping in a corner—soiling their expensive designer skinny-jeans in fright, pleading from their weak knees for a mercy not forthcoming from their steely-eyed conquerors.

The spy in your pocket

Posted on April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by Mike

Our modern technological conveniences come at a price. And it ain’t calculated in dollars alone, either.

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly and Dr. Lee Norman, the head of the KDHE, addressed several issues Wednesday afternoon.

The KDHE is using a GPS program that tracks people’s locations through their cell phones. From the data, the state can tell that a lot of Kansans are not following social-distancing guidelines.

The program the state is using gave Kansas a grade of B Monday but has now downgraded the state to a C. Dr. Norman said some Kansas counties are getting an F grade because of how many people are not observing the stay-at-home order.

Well for God’s sake, man, with a scarifying tally to date of 482 cases and ten deaths as this doomsday pandemic ravages the state, how could anybody blame ’em for keeping a close eye on the witless knaves? Sundance cautions:

Comrades, again we note – our voluntary transponder devices (cell phone, FitBit etc) are being used by government officials to monitor our ‘stay-at-home’ coronavirus compliance. It only takes one slight flip of the government switch, or a carefully worded executive order, to turn that innocuous data into a personal penalty (civil fine).

If you choose to roam, ditch your phone…

All well and good, I guess. But what does that do about the countless surveillance cameras, drones, and satellites still monitoring our every move?

“I Used to Think, Are They Really that Evil? Well, Yes they Are”

Posted on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by Mike

Welcome to the party, pal.

Mike Lindell, the inventor and CEO of MyPillow, announced Friday his company will convert 75 percent of their production from making pillows into making masks in an effort to combat the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

Lindell told Fox News he is working with the Trump administration on the type of masks needed. “Obviously, we specialize in cotton and we found out different materials that they didn’t want — latex. So, finally, we got the final prototype three days ago,” he said. But after Trump invited Lindell to speak at a press briefing in the White House Rose Garden Monday afternoon, verified blue checkmarks and members of the media did not take kindly to Lindell’s remarks to Americans.

Lindell, who just announced his company will produce 50,000 masks a day by the end of the week, was mocked for sharing his faith from behind the lectern, and encouraging Americans to turn to God in this time of crisis.

“God gave us grace on November 8, 2016 to change the course we were on,” Lindell said. “God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the Word. Read our Bibles and spend time with our families.”

Lindell audaciously daring to mention God in the course of his remarks was of course just too much for the Evil Left, who viciously attacked him as “insane,” an “awful human being,” and “an embarrassment,” among other such vileness. Happily, their bilious, reflexive hatred splashed back on ’em some.

An executive editor at CNN retweeted a video of Lindell’s appearance with the sarcastic caption, “In case you were wondering what My Pillow is doing in a time of coronavirus.” That’s odd, because Lindell just said he spent three days converting a 200,000-square-foot factory into a facility to produce millions of masks for American health-care workers, so we know exactly what he’s been doing during the public health crisis.

Insty jumps in with one of his simple, pithy slashes: “More than CNN has done. And even if he’d done nothing at all he’d be ahead of CNN, which as usual is mostly making things worse.” He also appends a couple of Twitter responses, of which this one is my personal fave:

Man, if only the My Pillow guy recorded a video of him singing “Imagine” in his bathroom instead of retooling his factory to make medical gear.

Then he’d be stunning and brave.

— Henry (@HMSPitts) March 30, 2020

Lindell went on to an appearance on Lou Dobbs to discuss his belated awakening to Who They Are, What They Do.

Mike Lindell told Lou Dobbs, “I heard Jim Acosta attacked me too and he was just 10 feet from me in the Rose Garden. This is just evil, Lou… CNN what they did to me? I’m sorry, I put out a message of hope to the country that God had given us grace on November 8, 2016 for such a time… I’m appalled by the journalists that I see there. I used to think are they really that evil? Well, yes they are.“

Y’know, most days I truly dread the coming schism—the Great Unpleasantness that will see the country torn apart, riven by another bloody Civil War. And then other days something like this happens, and suddenly I look forward to seeing some of these fucking assholes shot right in their goddamned empty heads.

Prison Planet?

Posted on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by Mike

Welcome to Prison Nation.

Over the weekend, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that “synagogues” and “churches” that disobey his order to remain shut down may be closed permanently as punishment. One can’t help but notice that the good mayor conspicuously omitted one type of worship facility from this dire warning. But whether mosques are exempt or not, the bigger issue is that Bill de Blasio certainly does not have the authority to permanently close places of worship as a punitive measure for defying his commands. He has the word “mayor” in front of his name, not “sultan” or “king” or “supreme leader.” And the First Amendment still exists, even if he’d prefer to pretend otherwise.

But this is just one example of government officials seizing power that does not belong to them. And it’s not only happening in the United States. Over in the UK, police are setting up checkpoints to questions drivers about where they’re going and why. Those deemed to be engaged in “non-essential” travel will be fined. Some UK police departments have gone so far as to deploy drones to track and follow non-essential joggers, hikers, and dog walkers.

Well, okay then. But that’s only Once-Great Britain, right? As I pointed out last night, the crucial question of whether the English people remain English was answered long ago. A hint as to which way that decision went might be found in the name of the “overpraised Chancellor” Hitchens complained about in the piece I excerpted, which is hardly one of those fine multi-hyphenated English names of old—the ones PG Wodehouse had such riotous fun with, like Cyril Bassington-Bassington, August Fink-Nottle (“Spink-Bottle” to Wooster’s beloved Aunt Dahlia, of course), or Claude Cattermole “Catsmeat” Potter-Pirbright.

Yep, that’s Anglund, and Anglund definitely ain’t what once it was. Thankfully, America is still America, right? And always will be, right?

Well. About that.

This week a pastor was arrested and charged with criminal offenses for holding a worship service. Let us note that this event occurred not in North Korea or Saudi Arabia, but the United States of America. Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, of Revival International Ministries, turned himself into authorities after leading his congregation in Sunday worship, which put him in violation of his county’s “stay-at-home” order.

Hillsborough County in Florida, like many other states and localities across the country, has forcibly shut down all establishments that it has deemed “non-essential.” As far as I know, no government at any level, anywhere in the nation, has deigned to label churches essential. Our Founding Fathers, who gave the right to assemble and the right to practice religion pride of place in the Bill of Rights, seemed to have disagreed. But in these times we are not subject to the opinions of the Founding Fathers or even the legal document they wrote. We have entered a point in our history where governors, mayors, and local county boards, can come up with any rule they like, outlaw whatever behavior they don’t like, and enforce their edicts at gun point. But to question this new system, I have been repeatedly informed, is to wish death on our nation’s elderly population.

Pastor Howard-Browne insists that his church took many precautions. Hand sanitizer was given out. Staff wore gloves. Congregants were spaced out as much as possible. They may not have all been 6 feet apart, but they were certainly better spaced than you will be if you wait in line at the grocery store. As it happens, you can go to the grocery store 10 times a day and load your cart up with snacks, candy, and soda. You can then stand in a crowd of densely packed people as you wait to purchase your items from a cashier who may or may not be wearing gloves. All of this, says our Dear Leaders, is both safe and essential. But sitting in a church, a few feet from the next person, taking care to cover your mouth when you cough, and making sure that your hands are washed, is both unsafe and inessential. Does that make any real sense? Probably not. Can the government simply declare all churches non-essential, close them indefinitely, and thus circumvent the First Amendment with so much ease as to render it effectively nullified from here on out? I doubt that was ever what the men who wrote it had in mind, but here we are.

I am trying to imagine a definition of “religious liberty” that includes the government closing churches indefinitely on the basis that they are not essential enough to remain open. I cannot think of one that would be at all cogent or meaningful. Indeed, it has become obvious (if it wasn’t already) that our mainstream notions of “liberty” and “rights” and “freedom” are largely nonsensical, as evidenced by the people who normally assert these concepts as absolutes but now insist that the government has the unquestioned power to lock us in our homes and shut our businesses for as long as it pleases.

Most of us, it turns out, do not have a governing philosophy or set of principles. We are slaves to our emotions. So, if the government scares us enough, we will rip the “Give me liberty or give me death” and “Don’t tread on me” bumper stickers off of our cars and stuff them in the closet while we cower along side it. Then when the threat has passed — or at least we are told that it has passed — we will proudly affix the bumper stickers back on our bumpers again, and sing bravely about our love of freedom.

For as long as the authorities still allow anyone to sing, and not one minute longer. Sadly, tragically, at this point a reasonably objective, historically literate person can only conclude that our Founders wouldn’t lower themselves to piss in our mouths if our gums were on fire. Can’t honestly say I’d blame ’em for feeling that way, either.

No fake news here

Posted on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by Mike

More plain-and-simple truth, inconvenient though it be, from America’s Only REAL News Source.

Americans Excitedly Anticipate Getting Paid With Their Own Money
U.S.—Americans have reported they’re very optimistic about the stimulus package passed by Congress last week. In particular, people all around the country are excited to get paid with a little bit of the money that they paid the federal government already.

Americans from all walks of life said they couldn’t wait to receive a check with a small percentage of the money the government had already taken from them.

“I can’t wait to get that $1,200.00 check of my own money,” said one man in Texas, rubbing his hands together. “Surely this will get the economy back on track.”

From the rich to the poor, American citizens spent many hours dreaming of all the things they will spend their newfound riches on. “With $1200, I could save enough to pay my taxes on time this year,” said one woman in Los Angeles. “Thanks so much, Congress. You’re the real heroes here.”

A small percentage of the population said they thought it would be way more efficient for the economy if the government just didn’t take the money in the first place. These people were shouted down as “libertarian conspiracy theorist wackos” and told to move to Somalia.

Sure, why not? Makes every bit as much sense as anything else does these days. Plus, what with Minnesota and other places having been “fundamentally transformed” into Somali enclaves, there’s probably lots of room over there now, available at fire-sale prices.

The Green New Deal Dystopia

Posted on March 28, 2020March 28, 2020 by Mike

Wouldn’t be caught dead living there, myself.

Greens just can’t help themselves. As the rest of us do what we can to tackle or withstand the Covid-19 crisis, they treat it as a sign, a warning from nature, a telling-off to hubristic, destructive mankind. The speed with which they have folded this pandemic into their misanthropic narrative about humanity being a pox on the planet has been shocking, but not surprising.

Right from the top of the UN, they have been promoting their backward belief that this virus is a reprimand from nature. Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, says ‘nature is sending us a message’ with this pandemic and other recent disasters, including bushfires in Australia and locust invasions in Kenya. Of course nature is doing no such thing, because nature is not a sentient being, however much the new religion of environmentalism might fantasise that it is.

Britain’s chief bourgeois misanthrope, George Monbiot, was hot on the heels of the UN’s eco-medievalists. He says Covid-19 has shattered humanity’s self-serving myth that it has achieved ‘insulation from natural hazards’. There is a grotesque glee in the way Monbiot describes what Covid-19 has unleashed – ‘the membrane has ruptured’, he says, and ‘we find ourselves naked and outraged, as the biology we appeared to have banished storms through our lives’.

“Insulation from natural hazards”? We somehow “banished” biology? Ummm, excuse me and all, Mr Moonbat, sir, but…well, I can’t honestly say I know ANYBODY—not a single living soul—who believes ANY of that utter codswallop you just disgorged. I certainly don’t myself.

This is also why so many greens online have been sharing images of dolphins swimming near Venice or an absence of airplane trails over California. Because to them, these are signs of a benefit from Covid-19: the humbling of humankind, the reining in of our industrial and technological activity, and the reassertion of nature’s awesome power. If you see a disease as a political statement, as an opportunity to pursue your pre-existing misanthropic agendas, there is something very wrong with you.

Even though all of this is morally perverse, it is not surprising. For a long time, greens have viewed human beings as a pox, a virus in our own right, doing untold damage to the planet. Green god David Attenborough has said humans are ‘a plague on the planet’. Even when greens don’t use such explicitly hateful language, they constantly promote a view of human production and development as toxic and destructive.

And they latch on to everything from bushfires to floods, from plagues of locusts to melting ice-caps, as signs from nature, lessons from a furious Gaia. When religious crackpots blame floods on gay marriage, claiming God is punishing us for losing the moral plot, we rightly mock them. Yet greens offer merely a secular version of such backward, apocalyptic claptrap.

Oh, there’s nothing secular about it. It’s more a contemporary twist on traditional religious faith—a perverse, bitter, ugly one, based not on love and redemption but on bilious contempt—more precisely attuned to the sensibilities of shriveled souls who scorn Christianity, mostly out of juvenile spite.

The truth is that if the Covid-19 crisis has shown us anything, it is how awful it would be to live in the kind of world greens dream about. Right now, courtesy of a horrible new virus, our societies look not dissimilar to the kind of societies Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, green parties and others have long been agitating for. Fewer flights, industry halted, huge infrastructure projects put on hold. Less driving, less travelling, less human interaction. Over the past few weeks, as a result of our response to Covid-19, the ‘human footprint’ will undoubtedly have shrunk. And what an awful world it has become: smaller, quieter, more atomised.

Also stilted, impoverished, and fearful: a world in which trust has been supplanted by suspicion, comfort and ease by hardship and angst, hope by despair. Green weenies frequently blibber on about the necessity of a mass die-off in order to indulge their pet delusion of restoring “balance” and “harmony” between man and his natural environment. Too bad for us saner sorts that they seem determined to take our helpful response to heart and act on it: By all means. After you.

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