Begins At Home – Page 39

National disgrace

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

People, what the fuck are we doing? More to the point, what the fuck are we allowing to be done to us? Why in the hell are we putting up with this police state that is being imposed upon us in the name of “saving lives”?

Look, I expect lefties to take advantage of any crisis, real or imagined, to grab more power and control. That’s what they do. That’s their bag. I mean, this is deep blue Philadelphia.

He mentions Philadelphia in the context of the implementation there of something called the “Anti-COVID-19 drone task force,” and large teams of Philly cops now bodily removing anyone not wearing a mask from mass-transit buses and trains.

No, really, it’s true. There’s video. Onwards.

And Colorado? Well, the state is suffering from an infestation of Californians, so it’s at best purple. These things happen. Dad handcuffed and led away by cops in front of 6-year-old daughter for violating social distancing. They were playing tee ball at a park. And Virginia is suffering from the same infestation from NOVA and Gov. Blackface. Police fine VA church $2,500 for holding service with 16 people spaced far apart

Still, we can rely on red states to show a little more fealty to the Constitution, right? States like…Kentucky? Kentucky to record license plates of those attending services this weekend and require them to quarantine for 14 days.

or…Mississippi? States don’t get much redder than Mississippi. Mississippi churchgoers fined $500 while attending drive-in service

Funny how it seems to only be Christians who are being hauled off, fined, and/or generally harrassed for attending church services, even if they’re observing the rules and have been extremely careful to cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s to ensure the safety of everyone involved. Why, it begins to appear as if the whole point might be something other than merely limiting the spread of the murderous, planet-depopulating Chink-N-Pox, don’t it?

Apologies, by the way, for daring to insult Red China with that outrageous racist slur. Because along with being Christian and attending worship services, daring to imply any connection between the NothingtodowithChinavirus and…uhhh…Voldemort Nation is one of those things you Just Don’t Do here in the land of the “free” and home of the “brave.”

Next up, a now-depressing Reagan quote.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
― Ronald Reagan

This thread wanders into conspiracy theory territory, but woven in there is a good point about the bulwark of liberty that is the 2A. We say that being armed will protect our liberties, but look at just how many of them we have surrendered voluntarily. We’re still armed. To the teeth. And yet our liberties are being taken one by one, and all we do is schedule some range time while muttering Molon Labe.

As the guy says in the Twitter thread Dave links, “We’ll be the first dictatorship with an armed population.” Begins to look that way, sure enough. Conspiracy theorizing or not, there’s some good stuff therein, however bitter the taste, and it’s well worth a look. Dave closes his rant out with this:

The iron curtain descends

Posted on April 9, 2020April 9, 2020 by Mike

Soooo, how’s everybody liking their shiny new Police State, eh?

On Saturday, police in Kansas City “intervened” to shut down a parade of elementary school teachers. The staff of John Fiske Elementary School decided to organize the parade as a way to boost the morale of their students and encourage them in their new distance learning adventure. All of the teachers and administrators were in their own cars. There was literally no chance whatsoever of any virus being transmitted from car to car. But a spokeswoman for the police later explained, after the elicit gathering was descended upon by law enforcement, that the celebration of learning was not “necessary” or “essential.”

Two days before the Kansas City community was saved from the threat of cheerful elementary school teachers waving to children from their sedans, police in Malibu arrested a man who was caught paddle boarding in the ocean. Two boats and three additional deputies in vehicles were called to the scene of the non-essential joyride. How could a man out by himself in the Pacific possibly contract or spread the coronavirus? Nobody knows. But orders are orders, after all. And so the man was pulled out of the ocean and hauled away in handcuffs.

Uh huh. Kinda makes one wonder how well those all-important “social distancing” rules were maintained in that patrol car, as well as at the jailhouse. Best not to think too much about that stuff, I suppose.

Officials in other parts of the nation have banned essential retailers from selling non-essential items like mosquito repellent. I suppose the prevention of West Nile and malaria are no longer considered essential. The mayor of Port Isabel, Texas, has decided, for whatever reason, that residents may not travel with more than two people in their vehicles. What if you’re a single parent with two kids? Well, sorry, one of your kids is out of luck. It’s not clear how this rule will be enforced, but some states have made that easier on themselves by setting up checkpoints to stop and question every car that passes through. A driver from New York who gets caught in Florida might face 60 days in jail. I should stop here to remind you that Florida and New York are places in the United States of America, not Soviet Russia.

Sorry, Matt, but that’s become a very difficult proposition to support of late. A distinction without a difference, one might say.

Apologists for our newly established police state will tell me that states and localities have the authority to impose restrictions in an emergency. That is true, but the question of how far their authority actually goes is complicated, and in this case made even more complicated by the fact that these stay-at-home orders, in many cases, are based not on a current medical emergency in the respective state, but on models that forecast the possibility of an emergency in the future. For example, Minnesota is under a stay-at-home order despite having only 29 coronavirus deaths among a population of over 5 million. Perhaps the situation will get worse. Perhaps not. The point is that there is no current emergency in Minnesota or many of the other states currently under lockdown. There is, rather, a model that projects an emergency. And if projected emergencies can justify the effective nullification of the Bill of Rights, where is the limit? Haven’t we now granted the government the power to seize near-total control on the basis of any real or phantom threat?

I would argue that nothing could ever justify such a thing. Indeed, the First and Fourth Amendments — the provisions of the Bill of Rights that seem to be having the worst time of it, recently — serve no purpose and have no reason to exist if they can be canceled or overridden whenever the government might have a specially compelling reason to do so. It is only when the government has a specially compelling reason to violate the amendments that the amendments have any function. After all, we really don’t need them during the times that the government has no interest in infringing on them. It seems that if we toss aside our right to assembly, our right to practice our religion, our right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, etc., whenever the government insists that such protections are hazardous to our health, then we might as well not have the rights in the first place. It’s like locking a criminal in a cell but giving him the key to open it along with a stern warning to only use the key if he has a very good reason. Doesn’t the key make the cell a rather pointless accessory? Sure he might remain in it sometimes, but only when he wants to. And it’s precisely when he wants to be behind bars that you don’t need the bars at all.

Funniest thing about it might be that, while we were all keeping a wary eye on FederalGovCo in expectation of the Big Clampdown being launched from Mordor On The Potomac, it turned out to be the states and localities who were the true threat.

But do tell me again all about how the government “fears” an armed populace, as is appropriate and right; that most cops will resist enforcing blatantly unconstitutional edicts; that the 2A is enough all by itself to protect our “unalienable” rights; that all those eleventy bajillion guns out there (kept unloaded and securely locked away as the law requires, of course) will somehow keep us “free” just by their very existence. As bedtime fairytales go, that one’s my favorite.

Commie tigers never change their stripes

Posted on April 7, 2020April 7, 2020 by Mike

Don’t trust China. China is asshoe*.

Call it the Kung Flu, the Shanghai Shivers, the Wuhan or Chinese virus, or COVID-19 — whatever you want — communist China lied and so far thousands worldwide and the global economy died. The interconnected world has two main hubs, the United States and China. What happens in one will affect the other, as long as China remains the world’s manufacturing and supply hub. You cannot buy antibiotics, Nike shoes, or untold thousands of other products we use every single day that did not originate in part or in whole in China.

Geraghty’s timeline does leave out a couple of dates that bear mentioning. The Democrats in the House passed the articles of impeachment against President Trump on December 18, 2019. On January 15, after sitting on those articles across the holidays, they walked them over to the Senate while the mainstream media gushed over the solemnity of the occasion. That same day, the first human carrying the coronavirus landed in the United States. He traveled here from China, as thousands did every day. Of course, no one knew he was carrying the deadly virus at the time. China and the WHO were still lying about the outbreak.

The impeachment saga lasted until February 5, 2020. Of course, President Trump and his core team were focused nearly exclusively on that, while at the same time they had little choice but to rely on what the WHO was saying about what was happening in Wuhan. Virus outbreaks come and go and none have caused a global crisis in more than a century. Impeachment was an immediate existential threat to Trump’s presidency and a political act designed to destroy him. When President Trump announced the China travel ban on January 31, the Democrats and the media carried China’s water and denounced the action as an attack on immigrants. As if business travelers and tourists are the same things as immigrants.

Looking forward, we need clear and unified thinking in the West when it comes to China. The communists suppress open media and all dissent domestically. The left ought to hate that. They lie for any reason and no reason at all. They punish scientists for discussing facts. They bury findings that don’t suit them. The coronavirus outbreak has exposed both the WHO and the UN Human Rights Council as bad and unreliable actors who favor China’s communists over their own credibility. The Hong Kong protests exposed much of the western media and even the NBA as cowards more concerned with their bottom lines than the freedoms they rely on to exist. China has used the wealth generated from becoming the world’s manufacturer to buy influence across the world with its Belt and Road programs and to undermine American influence at the same time.

Only Richard Nixon could have gone to China, but that trip may have turned out to be his greatest mistake. Decades later free Taiwan is marginalized, Hong Kong is under threat and the communists in Beijing are more influential, richer and more powerful in overt and insidious ways than ever. The whole world is reeling thanks to China’s rulers. In every way, as long as communists rule China, it should be viewed as a hostile and unreliable entity — villainous in the extreme and an enemy of freedom, decency and human dignity.

Amen. Sadly, it’s on us that such an obvious truth—a truth which ought to be the very first assumption informing all intelligent attitudes towards Communist shitrapies one and all—is even a matter of debate at this late date. Through our schools and universities, our news and entertainment media, and our politics, we’ve provided the dark, humid environment in which the parasitic Communist fungus can take root and flourish. We should have been digging up and burning the diseased, moldy thing instead. Exhibit A:

“Mom, can you look at this assignment?” A few weeks ago, before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic forced my school-aged children home, I looked at the homework sheet my high school-age child was referring to and quickly realized what prompted the question. The freshman world history reading assignment was about parents raising “theybies.”

Scratching my head, I read through the assigned article, which included definitions such as “gender is a social construct” followed by leading questions asking students to regurgitate gender theory. The next day, my child received an assignment that taught him about critical race theory before he read an article about when black singer Lil Nas X’s song “Old Town Road” was kicked off the country music charts. The class? Physics.

Needless to say, now with my kids home and me overseeing their daily e-learning, this is a great opportunity to take a deeper look at the left-wing theories on race and gender, not to mention climate change, that public schools are pushing on my children.

My 11-year-old middle school son was assigned the following two videos for “Integrated Global Studies” class. The first is an alarmist video that promotes donations to a bogus fund. The second has countless grammatical errors and lacks any sort of sourcing.

Before Halloween last fall, the same school sent out this memo regarding cultural appropriation, sharing a Teen Vogue video and explaining that cultural appropriation is “defined as the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another.” (So I guess the school’s annual “Luau Madness” party is also off).

So how are we to reckon with the above-cited truth, about Red China and about Communism itself, when The Long March Through The Institutions—part of a brilliantly-conceived and flawlessly-executed project for bringing about Communist tyranny not through violent revolution but surreptitiously, via the “fundamental transformation” of American culture—has proved to be such a smashing success? Have we in fact committed cultural suicide?

How do societies and cultures end? What causes the death of societies and cultures? It is not always the obvious threats.

Today we are struggling with the coronavirus which has unfortunately sickened many and killed some Americans. The deaths are tragic, but so are the many Americans who die annually from the flu, from cancer, and from auto and industrial accidents. The death rate from the coronavirus will be low, far below any existential threat to American demography.

Here is the critical fact: the death of societies and cultures is usually suicide. Members of the society lose faith in its institutions, reject its cultural values, demonize their fellow citizens, enthusiastically entertain foreign ideologies, and open their doors to foreign adversaries. This is particularly devastating when elites turn against the society’s institutions and culture. The initial result is social conflict, loss of confidence, and eventually civil war and or foreign invasion.

With the Democrat Party, all colleges and universities, the school system, and the mainstream media all devoted to anti-American progressive values and objectives, it is clear that America is 75% gone. Who is left to uphold American society and culture and the values of freedom, opportunity, prosperity, individual integrity, and family unity? We know that the half of the American population in “flyover country” maintains American values, even while the national elites on the coasts despise that population, infamously characterized by the Democrat Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton as “the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it.” The Republican Party, faced with a pro-American candidate for president, retreated in part, while another part fought against, so it is unlikely to be the cavalry coming to save America. Do not bet against seeing the emergence of the United Progressive States of Socialism.

Hate to say it and all, but especially after all we’ve witnessed the last couple of weeks that 75% estimate seems pretty low to me.

*NOTE: The source of that hilarious quote can be found here.

From the belly of the beast

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

Another first-person account of an experience with the Creeping Chinese Crud.

My first hints of the virus were on Tuesday 3/24. A little coughing, lots of mucous, etc. Not a dry cough. By Thursday, Mrs. Bulldog was saying “You’re coughing too much, I don’t want people on our walks to think you have it, so stay home.” Fine…I stopped taking walks. I had started having headaches (sinus) anyway. The headaches got worse. By Friday, my head was pounding, the cough was persistent, and it was dry. No fever. No rash. 3 days of (sorry) diarrhea began.

Over the weekend, the headaches intensified, the coughing got worse. I was more or less stuck on the couch watching movies, in a very annoyed frame of mind. By Sunday, it was suggested I get tested.

So we arranged it, and yesterday at 3pm the results were back. Positive.

Of course, by now the headache is starting to fade. It’s still there, but Tylenol keeps it reduced. The coughing is still there, but laying down helps it stop (don’t lay down too much…no need to promote pneumonia). I’ve been sleeping 10 hours a night. The really weird things, and there are 2 of them, are the general haziness of frame of mind – I can’t concentrate very long – and what I’d call “fever dreams without the fever.” I don’t know how to describe these, but I have the strangest dreams all night. Then I wake up in the morning very dehydrated and have to drink a pint or two of water.

My doctor voiced concern over the number of cases, but also pointed out that “it’s just a flu that is worse for at-risk people, you’re not at risk. Just stay vigilant, take care of yourself and you should be fine.”

So if this were the normal world – I’d take 2-3 weeks off from work, and get better. Instead, I’ve had 3 weeks off, and based on current protocol I will have AT LEAST (if my symptoms play out normally) 3 more weeks off (because my office says 2 weeks after cessation).

For what it’s worth – most people in the US, after 6 weeks off from work, will be broke. If it goes longer, who knows. At this point, the “cure” is worse than the disease. Trump is right to consider opening some counties as soon as possible – like any other pandemic, this has areas of concentration. We can limit exposure to those regions, and keep the rest of the nation working well.

Stay healthy. Stay vigilant. I do believe there is much more, politically, to play out. At this point I no longer believe it’s mainly a health crisis (if it ever was). It’s a political one.

YMMV, as always, but until the body count increases drastically enough to justify thinking otherwise, I couldn’t agree more. Glad to hear you’re feeling better, B-dawg, and thanks for writing up and posting the story of your ordeal for us. The more info we all have, the better off we’re going to be. In fact, the scarcity of reliable information out there is a big part of why we are where we are now.

Oh, if only

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

Glenn posts a good ‘un from Fakebook.

The debate over immigration is over: restriction wins.

The debate over borders is over: they are needed.

The debate over globalization is over: the era of autarky begins.

The debate over Europe is over: it is a geographic expression, not a polity.

The debate over global warming is over: it is irrelevant.

The debate over international institutions is over: only nations matter.

The debate over the People’s Republic of China is over: it is a menace to the community of nations, not a member in good standing.

Crisis is clarity.

I don’t disagree, and I do realize that all these most welcome developments will be a while yet in shaking out. But purely in the interest of indulging my own bred-in-the-bone contrarianism, I have to note that things like lax border enforcement; One-Worlder globalization; the EU, UN, ICC, and the accompanying international-bureaucratic Kraken; and most especially Red China are ALL still very much with us. The legions of Leftist advocates for those things are all still with us, too.

THAT’S the problem we’re going to have to take care of first, before we can begin to tackle all those others. So yeah, gonna be a while yet. Another most edifying rumination along those lines:

“In just ten days, we discovered that neither the tampon issue, nor the participation of transsexuals in the Olympic Games, nor the climate emergency were real problems, nor emergencies, nor anything of the sort. They were just fictitious problems, the pastimes of a generation that hadn’t known tragedy.” – Itxu Diaz, National Review

How many times are we supposed to have died? Net Neutrality, Budget cuts, Donald Trump’s very existence were supposed to have killed us all already. How many failed predictions of global warming/climate change/ManBearPig destroying us in 10 years have we seen blow by us without incident? If there was an actual environmental catastrophe incoming, no one would actually believe it.

Aside from that, we have the whole woke subculture. (Have I ever mentioned that I utterly despise the term woke? It’s cheap knock-off black culture) Microaggressions? Safe Spaces? What, are you that fragile that you cower in fear of my words? I guess Evil White Males like me must be some kind of sorcerer. Trans-activism is just like the rest of their celebration of mental illness. I have never heard an actual argument about cultural appropriation, especially since the same people used to moan about inclusion. It is a giant screaming mess like an out of control daycare without the cute part.

*cough-cough* Liberalism, defined *cough-cough*

The central thesis of the Ricochet piece is that sane people can no longer afford to fritter away either resources or attention on the fake “crises” Proggy uses to incrementally advance his authoritarian agenda. Leftism has always been what you might call an ideological luxury item. Everywhere it provides entertainment for pushy, overindulged brats. Nowhere is it a real necessity. I almost just lifted the whole brief essay, but the excerpt ought to be enough of the rich, buttery goodness therein to get you headed over to savor the whole thing.

Birth of the Resistance

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

The heart of American liberty still beats in some places, however faint it may have become elsewhere.

Maine’s Franklin County Sheriff Scott Nichols has a strong message for the Governor of Maine, Janet Mills, who issued “stay-at-home” orders with threats of police punishment if not followed. Sheriff Nichols issued a statement on the Franklin County Facebook page saying in no uncertain terms he will not follow the unconstitutional order.

“We will not be setting up a Police State. PERIOD,” he wrote. “The Sheriff’s Office will not purposefully go out and stop vehicles because they are on the road or stop and ask why people are out and about. To do so puts our officers at risk. This is not Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia where you are asked for your papers!”

The sheriff’s announcement comes as a welcome sign to Americans who have been arrested for inane things like praying outside, surfing, or trying to drive to work. Someone has to stand up to the unconstitutional directives that are being handed down daily by government officials and it will fall on the sheriffs to uphold what they know to be their legal and lawful duties, none of which involve trampling the rights of citizens.

“Please use common sense during this executive order. We are more interested in the safety and well-being of the public as well as our officers at this time. With that being said, we are sworn to uphold the Constitution and laws of the State – for any unlawful act/situation, arrestees will be taken into custody and transported for fingerprinting and bail.”

Nichols made it clear that he only intends to arrest for matters of law-breaking, and nothing else. Executive orders aren’t laws. He finished his announcement with words of encouragement for his constituents: “Most of you are doing a fantastic job – we appreciate that! Please look out for one another, especially the elderly and shut-ins. Please be a good neighbor/citizen always showing compassion. Please be kind especially on social media, negativity online only adds to the stress people are currently experiencing.”

Nichols signed this brave decree with his name and followed it with “Of the People, For the People.”

Fancy that: a government employee who fully understands what his job is, and is not. A man in a position of authority who recognizes that there are proper limits to that authority. A man who, in an age when our Constitution is used as toilet paper more often than not, nonetheless respects it as the supreme law of the land, and governs his professional actions with a determination to abide by it. In short, a man who has kept his head when everyone around him is losing theirs.

May God bless the honorable Sheriff Nichols; no matter how many like him there are out there, we’ll never have enough of them. I’d say he oughta be President, but could be that he’s needed more right where he is.

Positivity

Posted on April 3, 2020April 3, 2020 by Mike

Again: t’is an ill wind indeed etc etc.

With March Madness canceled, food industry is overloaded with chicken wings
EVANSVILLE, Ind., April 2 (UPI) — With March Madness canceled and restaurants across the country closed, the meat industry is overloaded with chicken wings it can’t sell.

“The wing business is totally in the gutter,” said Stan Neva, the owner of the Northwest Meat Co. in Chicago, which supplies meat to restaurants, hotels and clubs.

“The only way we’re selling wings is for curbside to-go. We have one pizza place in town that does carry-out and ordered some wings. But that’s been it. We probably lost 30 or 40 sports bars,” Neva said.

Ah well, even some silver linings have clouds of their own, and I’m sorry for those entrepreneurs and their staff that have had their businesses and livelihoods stolen from them. Although I can’t honestly say the loss of any number of sports bars perturbs me overmuch. I never was a sports-bar kind of guy.

Whitman said that it’s possible prices will fall low enough for wings to start selling again. The price for wings has fallen considerably. On March 1, they were selling for $1.60 per pound wholesale. On Wednesday afternoon, the price was $1.25, he said.

Usually, when the price falls enough, someone will buy them, Whitman said.

*shoots arm straight up into the air, waves hand wildly, clears throat loudly, jumps up and down* That would be ME, fellas.

In case you never have made ’em at home, there’s a very easy way to get near-perfect Buffalo wings every time: Put your frozen bulk-bagged wings in a glass baking dish—a big enough one that they’re not all piled up on each other. Scatter some butter around on ’em, and bake at 400℉ until the skin is brown and crispy. Keep an eye on ’em; despite being frozen, they don’t take as long as you might think to cook through.

Toss the wings in a generous bath of Texas Pete Buffalo Wing sauce and some chopped or minced garlic; if you can manage one without splashing sauce all over the kitchen, one of those large stainless-steel mixing bowls will work well for this. Grab the celery and carrots you sliced up while the bird parts were in the oven. The small veggies are what you dip in the bleu cheese. Do NOT dip the wings in the bleu cheese. That is just wrong. Gorge yourself wobbly on God’s Own Finger Food.

A note for you Texas Pete newbs: do NOT believe the Texas Pete website’s spurious falsehoods misrepresenting their wing sauce being “Mild,” verging on “Medium.” Delicious as it is, much as I do love it, it is NOT “mild.” It will in fact rock your world pretty good, although not as agonizingly as some other brands I’ve tried. Your eyes will tear and your nose will run freely. Your face will turn alarming shades of deepest vermilion. The less doughty among you will truly believe that you may have swallowed the Sun by mistake. But you will absolutely love every last morsel nonetheless, I assure you. The excruciating fire in your mouth will not suffice to dissuade you from eating every last one of them. No matter how many you made, you will wish you had just one or two more.

Bonus hint: unless you are some kind of urban-dwelling man-bunned pansy, or have a pacemaker, do NOT bother with their “Extra Mild” wing sauce. It’s the only thing the geniuses at Garner Foods ever got wrong. Trust me on this.

The fog thins

Posted on April 1, 2020April 1, 2020 by Mike

At LAST we get some all-too-scarce facts and hard data about the Wuhan Fug, via judicious use of the tried-and-true Busting Of Myths format.

We’ve just entered an unprecedented era in human history, because although there have been numerous global plagues before, nobody had smartphones before.

And because nobody had smartphones before, nobody was nearly as dumb before.

Unlike so many, I am here to help rather than harm. I come before ye to shine the light of truth upon so many harmful myths about this dark, mysterious, and beguiling illness from the East.

Gird your loins with these facts as if they were a hazmat suit protecting you from the viral lies that have rendered online information-sharing into a petri dish teeming with deception and stupidity.

MYTH: Coronavirus is man-made.
Completely false. A woman made it. A very lonely Chinese woman with a lot of cats. She originally intended it as a love potion, and then, as we all know now, things went horribly wrong.

MYTH: Everyone should wear a mask in public.
Mostly true, partially false. Only very attractive people should be free to walk around in public without covering their faces.

MYTH: Baltimore’s mayor begged residents to stop shooting each other so they could use hospital beds for coronavirus patients.
Partially true. What actually happened is that Baltimore’s mayor begged residents to call a cease-fire on shooting each other until they’d shot all the coronavirus patients first.

MYTH: Italy currently has the most fatalities because African migrants brought the virus to Italy.
Another racist trope designed to make Africans look stupid and smelly. The truth is that Italy has so many fatalities because Italians are dirty animals who eat with their hands.

MYTH: The virus spread to humans as a result of Asian girls eating bat soup.
Partially false. Soup wasn’t involved. The virus originally spread to humans as a result of Asian girls having unprotected sex with bats.

MYTH: Black people don’t get coronavirus.
This racist falsehood spread like wildfire until black actor Idris Elba, who tested positive for the virus, wrote a touching editorial debunking it. Black people are fully capable of getting coronavirus. What they actually have trouble “getting” are things such as the value of deferred gratification and a two-parent household. What’s interesting, though, is that white people who act black are immune to the virus. For example, Tom Hanks’s son Chet is, for better or for worse, still perfectly healthy.

MYTH: OK, then, but if that’s true that COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate against blacks, why are there so few infections in Africa?
Because there aren’t many Chinese restaurants in Africa, especially not ones that serve soup containing bats that had unprotected sex with Asian girls. If you’d ever been to Africa, you’d realize this.

I think we should all print a copy of this entire article and keep it handy in a pocket for use as a reference when needed to prevent ill-informed debates from degenerating into bare-knuckle brawling, which is uncouth and unhelpful. Heartfelt and humble thanks to Jim Goad for clearing all this up for us.

Dammit, I thought I had a SCIENCE! category around here someplace, which would be the perfect place to file this post. Gonna need to make one, looks like.

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.

Remain calm, all is (not) well

Posted on March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by Mike

Bearing in mind the uncertainty factor—that we don’t really even know what we don’t know as of yet—stepping back for a dose of level-headed perspective seems like it might come in useful.

I’m a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and National Health Service consultant pathologist, and have spent most of my adult life in healthcare and science — fields which, all too often, are characterized by doubt rather than certainty. There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.

The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically, we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to COVID-19 — so 0.8 percent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 percent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

Initial reported figures from China and Italy suggested a death rate of 5 percent to 15 percent, similar to Spanish flu. Given that cases were increasing exponentially, this raised the prospect of death rates that no healthcare system in the world would be able to cope with. The need to avoid this scenario is the justification for measures being implemented: the Spanish flu is believed to have infected about one in four of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920, or roughly 500 million people with 50 million deaths. We developed pandemic emergency plans, ready to snap into action in case this happened again.

At the time of writing, the UK’s 422 deaths and 8,077 known cases give an apparent death rate of 5 percent. This is often cited as a cause for concern, contrasted with the mortality rate of seasonal flu, which is estimated at about 0.1 percent. But we ought to look very carefully at the data. Are these figures really comparable?

Cause for concern? Sure. Taking reasonable, appropriate precautionary measures? Of course. The kind of irrational panic response we’ve seen of late—upending society wholesale, wrecking the economy, throwing millions out of work, passively forsaking rights and liberties that can never be regained without bloodshed? Sorry, I just can’t see it. The good doctor makes a lot of sense to me here. But YMMV.

(Via Larwyn)

Religion versus pseudo-science?

Posted on March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by Mike

The pseudo-science-pimping Left isn’t as anti- or a-religious as they like to think.

All pseudo-science models have one thing in common: They are essentially deeply religious, accompanied as they are by apocalyptic end times scenarios that goad the public into actions fomented by panic and despair. The use of mathematics and charts adds an air of legitimacy to apocalyptic predictions that are almost the exact duplicate of end time scenarios prophesied by cult leaders. Such prophets have used biblical verses, gnostic numerology, guilt and fear to panic their followers into selling all their possessions, buying white robes and heading to the mountains or digging shelters underground in hopes of surviving as the chosen remnant.

In a similar panicked manner, there are those whose disruptive plans are now being put into play while they appeal to “science” and to their higher moral discernment; wisdom that is hidden from the rest of us mortals.

Nothing is more tempting to potential tyrants than utilization of a panic stoked to white heat in order to reinforce and extend state control. The use of partial truth — yes, the virus is real — can be inflated and massaged in order to achieve nefarious ends. Alas, the fact is that the final writhing of a diseased system built on lies can still create havoc. Some ideologues just like to see things burn. Some see ways to profit from societal collapse. Some see the possibility that society can be fundamentally transformed.

We need to consider what will happen if our entire nation is shut down. We need to consider that what is happening in our own country goes far beyond an attempt to take down Donald Trump and is rapidly morphing into hysteria that if unchecked, could change our entire nation beyond recognition.

Don’t look now, bub, but I think maybe it just did.

The coronavirus madness puts before Americans a choice: Revive the progressive/leftist Frankenstein monster or immolate it at last.

Let’s hope America chooses the latter and doesn’t accede to embracing an ideological vision that has long relied on deathly visions of apocalypse now, visions bound to destroy the flawed but redeemable peoples and institutions of the West.

All the while, hope and pray that the panic engendered by an ideological paradigm bolstered by pseudo-science and errant philosophical underpinnings at last collapses; and that true reform and restoration can begin.

And now for something completely different: a look at the brighter side.

Thankfully as a nation this crisis is causing us to reevaluate our priorities: faith, family, community and freedom; and seeing the easy dispatch of liberty also reignites that oft forgotten flickering flame…

Journalists are less important than janitors. Our nations best athletes are healthcare workers rushing to assist those in need. The true heroes are not celebrities, but rather farmers, truck drivers, stock clerks, and supermarket cashiers.

The most valuable businesses do not glitter or present themselves with self-congratulatory award shows; they do today what they have always done to keep our food supply flowing. Perhaps now, at least for a few short weeks, we stop taking them for granted.

Effective right now comfortably invisible workers are recognized as critical priorities; or as the government has official designated them “essential services.” These folks form the network of our lives; they always have, but we didn’t notice. Everything else is less than.

No-one is saying this doesn’t suck; but some people know that standing around bitching about the comparative values of current life in suckdom doesn’t actually accomplish anything.

President Trump is doing what needs to be done; with far more information than me; and in the best manner he can assemble to keep America great. He does this while simultaneously swatting away thousands of piranhas biting at him on an hourly basis.

So again, ask yourself a question: what part are you to play?

Live your best life.

You only have this moment once.

That unlooked-for burst of sunny positivity comes to us courtesy of Sundance, who also steers us to this one:

Truckers are saying “fuck the log rules, I’m hauling” and they’re getting supplies to the stores. People are stocking the shelves all night and letting old people shop first. Folks are buying meals for truckers, who (obviously) can’t go through the drive-ups. Asking ’em what they want, then buying it for them.

Carnival Cruise Line has told Trump “We can match those big Navy Hospital ships with some fully staffed cruise ships”.

GM and Ford have said “hold our cars and watch this — we can make ventilators where we were just making car parts, starting next week” — by re-engineering seat ventilators which their engineers hacked together for a new purpose. In under a week.

In a project with which I’m loosely associated, a very-effective agricultural disease-control agent was re-purposed and re-labeled specifically for Corona-virus control by the FDA and EPA in under ten days, from initial request to distribution.

Restaurants and schools have said, “we’ve got kitchens and staff; we can feed the poor kids who used have school lunch.”

NBA basketball players have said, “Hold our basketballs while we write checks to pay the arena staff.”

Construction companies are saying, “Here are some high-end masks for medical staff and doctors”.

Distilleries are making sanitizer out of distilling “heads and tails” which are normally discarded. Nasty shit to drink, but effective sanitizer.

People are tipping grocery check-out clerks and thanking them for taking the risk.

Local, state, and county governments are taking control of everything the feds cannot do. Some are doing it wrong, but for the first time in decades … they’re doing it. Federalism is re-emerging, and the smallest unit of government is the individual and the family. This, too, is re-emerging after decades of dormancy.

As Japanese Admiral Isokuru Yamamoto said, after Pearl Harbor … “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

I sense this has just happened. We have a wonderful country, the greatest single force for good in all human history. We have closed our borders, with good reason, yet we have top medical people now assisting North Korea in their response to the virus.

Many things have been re-set, and will never be the same.

By microbiological accident, we are living in profoundly transformative historical times.

No denying that. It remains to be seen how that profound transformation shakes out in the end, but we must remain hopeful to whatever extent we possibly can. Horrid as it is, if the current upheaval is what it takes to achieve the aforementioned immolation of the Left at long last, it will have been well worth the cost.

AWWWW update! What the heck, two more feel-good stories—from New Jersey, of all places—below the fold.
Continue reading “Religion versus pseudo-science?” →

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!

Posted on March 29, 2020March 29, 2020 by Mike

What was I saying the other day about it being an ill wind indeed that blows no man any good?

Government Accidentally Shuts Itself Down With Ban On Non-Essential Businesses
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congress has asked all non-essential businesses to limit their hours or close entirely for an undetermined amount of time.

But this shutdown mistakenly shut down the most non-essential entity of all: the government. For a brief period of time, all government in the United States was illegal, since it is completely non-essential to everything.

“Oops,” said Senator Mitch McConnell. “We meant non-essential private businesses. Of course, the government is always essential, even when it’s not doing anything or is making things worse.”

Senators, congresspeople, and bureaucrats frantically rewrote the ban to include only businesses that actually produced something and not government agencies that just watched other people make stuff. Though they had dragged their feet on passing bills related to relieving the financial distress of the shutdown, they passed this revision in record speed, almost as quickly as they vote for pay raises for themselves.

It’s the Bee, of course, but would that it were true. I do have a quibble to make with that “watching other people make stuff” business too. Actually, if they limited their activities to merely spectating, we’d all be a lot better off. Unfortunately, their primary function is to actively hinder the people who are trying to make stuff, then turn around and tax, regulate, inspect, harrass, and fee them right into oblivion.

Requiem for the Republic

Posted on March 27, 2020March 27, 2020 by Mike

She’s dead, Jim.

In order to maintain something of an economy with most of the nation locked away in their homes, there has been a 2 Trillion dollar payment to individuals, businesses and corporations to stabilize the economy and another 4 Trillion dollar loosening of the Federal Reserve to go along with it. What does that mean? It means that created out of air is twice the annual tax receipts for the United States. There is no way that is not a significant economic event. It is the invention of 1/3 of GDP. That it would not have a drastic and detrimental effect on the future of the nation is insanity only capable of being ignored by graduates of the public school system.

In one fell swoop of a minor pandemic the United States as a nation has abandoned both the republic and capitalism. Individual rights are destroyed, never again to be seen as rational arguments against the power of the state. Capitalism has lost out to the political and economic ideology of Soviet Russia allowing for such things as “travel permits” and sequestration of healthy individuals. It might be politically acceptable to brush all of this off for the time being as we sort out how big of a problem the pandemic is going to be, but it will never return to what it was and what few and precious rights once available to us will no longer be accessible through the courts.

It’s over. The elephant is dead. Capitalism is gone, the republic is gone. What we have now is an opportunity to feed off of the dead elephant, to stockpile as much as we can, to distance ourselves from each other and prepare for the ultimate battle for survival. The economic collapse is already in motion. It would have come along anyway, eventually, but this stimulus package stacked on top of the already soaring debt and unfunded liabilities will cripple the nation forever. It will implode. That is not to say that it will not chug along on four square wheels for some time, but the last support has been kicked out from under it, that of the belief in the rule of law and an understanding of global economics. Without those, nothing prevents the ceiling up from crashing down. It is what we recognize in Christianity as faith. Remove faith (as we have) and the only thing left are words, memes circulating the popular sites with no structural substance.

I note that hereabouts at least, the Christian churches are among the many things under lockdown, but golf courses…ain’t?!? Strangely, I’ve yet to see much specific mention of mosques, nor of how our newly-decreed statewide lockdown might affect Ramadan. But I do confess the idea of holding “digital Ramadan” observances just tickles me silly.

Oooops!

Posted on March 27, 2020March 27, 2020 by Mike

Never mind.

If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.

Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate—2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others. So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.

The latter rate is misleading because of selection bias in testing. The degree of bias is uncertain because available data are limited. But it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills two million. If the number of actual infections is much larger than the number of cases—orders of magnitude larger—then the true fatality rate is much lower as well. That’s not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far.

Follows, some crunching of what admittedly meager numbers we actually have, an unknown portion of which are either incomplete or unreliable. Conclusion?

This does not make Covid-19 a nonissue. The daily reports from Italy and across the U.S. show real struggles and overwhelmed health systems. But a 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two million. Given the enormous consequences of decisions around Covid-19 response, getting clear data to guide decisions now is critical. We don’t know the true infection rate in the U.S. Antibody testing of representative samples to measure disease prevalence (including the recovered) is crucial. Nearly every day a new lab gets approval for antibody testing, so population testing using this technology is now feasible.

If we’re right about the limited scale of the epidemic, then measures focused on older populations and hospitals are sensible. Elective procedures will need to be rescheduled. Hospital resources will need to be reallocated to care for critically ill patients. Triage will need to improve. And policy makers will need to focus on reducing risks for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions.

A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health. We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns.

I feel confident in sticking with a tried and true central premise of mine: whatever the solution to any given problem might be, if any, it’s EXTREMELY unlikely that it will come from government. I have for years now distrusted both its intentions and its capabilities, and see no reason to abandon that position now just because everybody else has suddenly decided to embrace the old faith again out of nothing but sheer terror.

The excerpt above is from a WSJ article, paywalled of course, so the link I provided above is actually to an archive.is snapshot. It may or may not work for some of you guys, I dunno. But except for the statistical nitty-gritty, I already copped the good parts for ya anyhow.

(Via CBD)

Fact check update! More number-crunching, unveiling the truth behind all the Enemedia lies.

It begins

Posted on March 27, 2020March 27, 2020 by Mike

Shit just got REAL, people.

Waffle House says 418 of its restaurants are closed as coronavirus continues to spread

Updated: Waffle House has increased the number of restaurants closed since this story was first published.

Waffle House, the restaurant chain known for having its own unofficial index used during natural disasters, said it’s closing 418 of its restaurants.

In various social media posts, the chain featured a map showing the 418 closed restaurants, while another 1,574 across the southeastern U.S. remained open. The posts also featured the hashtag “#WaffleHouseIndexRed.

Being a HUGE fan of Waffle House myself—anybody who’s spent as much time on the road as I have over the years simply couldn’t NOT be—this reads like a real tragedy to me. But it ain’t just Waffle House that’s suffering; the national Restaurant Holocaust I’ve been predicting is just getting its boots on, looks like.

The Cheesecake Factory, one of the most popular sit-down restaurant chains in the country, says it will not be able to make upcoming rent payments for any of its storefronts on April 1 because of significant loss of income due to the coronavirus crisis.

The Calabasas Hills-based company informed all of its landlords in a letter dated March 18 (reproduced below) that a severe decline in restaurant traffic has decreased its cash flow and “inflicted a tremendous financial blow” to business. Cheesecake Factory’s affiliated restaurants, such as Rock Sugar and North Italia, will also not make April 1 rent payments.

Company chairman and CEO David Overton writes, “Due to these extraordinary events, I am asking for your patience, and frankly, your help.” He continues, “we appreciate our landlords’ understanding given the exigency of the current situation.” The letter says that the company hopes to resume paying rent as soon as possible.

Cheesecake Factory, for those of you unfamiliar with ’em, isn’t exactly your basic small-time mom-and-pop operation.

The Cheesecake Factory was founded in Beverly Hills in 1972 and maintains its original location on Beverly Drive, with 39 locations in California. In total, it operates 294 restaurants in 39 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Toronto, Canada. In 2019, the company also acquired Phoenix-based Fox Restaurants, including North Italia, Flower Child, and The Henry. Most of the company’s landlords are malls, including Simon and Westfield.

In telling landlords that it will not able to pay rent, the Cheesecake Factory essentially confirms that it is in the same position that many independent restaurateurs currently find themselves in. In a statement to investors on March 23 — five days after the letter to landlords — the Cheesecake Factory announced that it would curtail development of unopened restaurants and tap into a $90 million credit line to increase its available cash. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, the Cheesecake Factory has closed 27 locations across the country, and pivoted other locations to a takeout and delivery-only model — which it said just days ago was enabling the company to “operate sustainably at present” — and its stock price has fallen by more than 50 percent in the past month.

With 38,000 employees, the Cheesecake Factory is one of the largest restaurant employers in the country. Given its recent stock woes and the ongoing reduction in business due to the coronavirus pandemic, it seems possible that it, like many restaurants, could end up needing a bailout to survive.

As I keep saying, this shutdown/lockdown business is going to wind up being one hell of a lot more costly long-term than some folks seem to realize. If a huge national chain like CF is struggling, just imagine what this is doing to all the independently-owned places out there—and how many of those businesses are going to simply cease to exist.

Nor is the dismal impact limited to restaurants and bars; pretty much any small business you could name, in any field, is in a similar untenable situation. The jobs they provide, the taxes they pay, the livelihoods their employees depend on—all gone for good, never to return no matter how big a “stimulus” the goobermint finally comes up with. The suppliers and services they support, the customers they serve, the communities they enliven—all damaged if not brought to ruin themselves by this cascade of catastrophe.

Our “leaders,” in the arrogance of their mistaken assumption of omnipotence, decided to light a fuse that cannot be extinguished. Now it’s too late for the rest of us to do anything but sit back and wait for the explosion, and see how much of American society is caught inside the blast radius.

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