Disasters Near and Far

SECOND wave?

Posted on June 27, 2020June 28, 2020 by Mike

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

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

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April high was driven by New York City and its environs; those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Both via Insty)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That certainly is clarifying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The science is settled, the facts are in

Posted on June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 by Mike

COVID is a sham, and masks are the bunk.

I wore surgical masks daily for 36 years as an anesthesiologist. Their purpose was to reduce the chance that I would infect an open wound with bacteria from my mouth. This article of faith has been shown to be false. If staff who are working outside of the immediate sterile field do not wear masks, there is no increase in wound infections. And this is in a closed environment where staff will be present for hours. This casts a very large cloud of doubt on the utility of masks for COVID-19.

Another problem arises when we look at the use of masks by the public. Even accepting the uncertain premise that masks are useful, “incorrect use and disposal may actually increase the risk of pathogen transmission, rather than reduce it, especially when masks are used by non-professionals such as the lay public.” Given that most “masks” are simply kept handy for use when required, set aside, and then re-used, most mask-wearing by the public is likely to increase virus exposure, not reduce it.

But do properly used surgical masks reduce disease spread in the general public? To say there are almost no data would not be overstating the case. When households with sick kids were examined, even rigorous mask-wearing provided no statistically significant improvement in adult infections.

Let’s put that in plain English. Even if you did everything to protect yourself with surgical masks, even keeping it on when your kid wants to see your face, it might reduce your chance of getting sick, but we can’t prove it. And that’s in a well designed study intended to get a meaningful result. “[H]ousehold use of face masks is associated with low adherence and is ineffective for controlling seasonal respiratory disease” (emphasis added).

What about homemade cloth masks? In a study using influenza, masks made from cotton T-shirts “should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals.” They were only one third as effective when worn by the sick person as a surgical mask. If you’re sick, they’re better than nothing, but that’s not much. The CDC says, “Cloth face coverings may slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others.” Translation: It might help, but we don’t have any data to back that up.

As we can see from other studies, even surgical masks have minimal benefit in preventing you from getting sick. This was confirmed in a hospital study. Cloth masks had a “relative risk” of flu infection thirteen times greater than medical masks. “Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.”

What about the fabled N95 respirator masks? “Respirators work as PPE only when they are the right size and have been fit-tested to demonstrate they achieve an adequate protection factor.” Translation: If you haven’t gone through the fit-testing I’ve been through (the first model didn’t fit!), N95s won’t reduce your exposure to the virus. Sorry.

Of course, smarmy, grasping little pétit dictators like NC’s own Comrade Cooper almost certainly know all this, and issue royal decrees mandating universal mask use anyway. Might there be an explanation for that, you ask? Oh, there certainly might at that.

Merriam-Webster defines pseudo-science as “a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific.” The Oxford dictionary clarifies by stating, “a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.“

Pseudo-science quickly emerged as the principal domain of Technocrats, but they soon found that scientific debate with those promoting real science was most inconvenient to their social engineering goals. The solution was simple: claim that their own pseudo-science was indeed the real science, and then refuse debate by excluding all other voices to the contrary.

The American public is being spoon-fed a steady diet of pseudo-science in order to justify the wearing of face masks, social distancing and contact tracing. Yet, the actual science points in the polar opposite direction.

Furthermore, those who try to present the real science are shamed, ridiculed and bullied for having such narrow-minded views.

This is a clear sign of Technocrats-at-work. Instead, these are the ones who should be exposed, shamed and ridiculed.

In sum, these dangerous and destructive policies are designed to curtail economic activity, break down social cohesion and control people.

There you have it, folks. And yet somehow, as I always say, here we all are.

It’s clobberin’ time

Posted on June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 by Mike

Tucker rings the tocsin.

During Thursday’s airing of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host, a supporter of Trump, said that it may be “tough” for Trump to win reelection if he does not adequately respond to civil unrest in the country.

“Not many people are saying it out loud on the Right. But the fact is that President Trump could well lose this election. In fact, unless fundamental facts change soon, it could be tough for him to be reelected,” Carlson said in his opening monologue. He said if former Vice President Joe Biden wins in November, the White House will be controlled by “radicals” who will “remake the country.”

“We’re fully aware that virtually nobody watching this show tonight wants to hear that, but it’s true, and key people around the president know that it’s true. They’ve seen the numbers,” he added. All the while, the chyron banner that appeared on the bottom of screen blared in all capital letters: “President Trump may lose this election.”

Carlson asserted that social cohesion in the country is eroding after nationwide protests have occurred following the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“An awful lot of people voted for Donald Trump precisely to avoid a moment like the one we’re now in,” Carlson said, stating that Trump’s instincts were on the side of order, tradition, and stability, but Carlson later remarked that during the rioting, Trump “said little” and “did less.”

Doc Zero sees it too:

Trump's big political problem right now is that he talks about "law and order," often with all-caps tweets, but he isn't delivering any. He's running like a challenger, not an incumbent. Even people who agree with him aren't excited by this "hapless but loud bystander" routine.

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) June 26, 2020

Bonchie, too, is shaken:

Tucker Carlson took to the airwaves last night and delivered a message some don’t want to fathom. Namely, that Trump could actually lose the 2020 election. Later, he would make his case by laying out the current chaos engulfing the nation, the shifting public sentiment against the President, and by playing audio of a woman having her car attacked by rioters. She was told by the 911 dispatcher to “call city all” and that she was in the middle of a “sanctioned event.” Eventually, the mayor of her city would apologize, not to the terrorized woman, but to the rioters.

It was a powerful reminder that people are being abandoned across the country, whether it’s business owners in the “CHOP” or residents in Democrat cities in red states. Governments are failing their people out of a fear of retribution, or in some cases, direct support of anarchy. But perhaps more troubling, and something Carlson brought up, is that so many voters seem to agree with or sympathize with the chaos.

There’s simply no “seem” to it. Not when they’re in your face, burning your city, and beating you about the head and neck with skateboards, there isn’t. Then again, anybody who, after having Proggy throw a brick at his head and cave his skull in with it, nonetheless still refuses to face up to what Proggy is deserves what he’s surely going to get. Because Proggy doesn’t stop. He never stops. He doubles down.

Like the “security moms” of the Bush era, many voters put Trump in office, not because they are enamored with his personality, but because they saw him as strong. He’s not currently living up to that image. To many on the right, that’s not a bad thing. They want to see people in these Democrat run cities reap the consequences of their voting patterns, with the assumption that they won’t like it and will turn back.

But what if there is no backlash coming? Carlson points that possibility out by noting that GOP leaders in Congress, in all their fecklessness, have said little about the current chaos except that it’ll blow back on Democrats. Everyone keeps thinking we’ll reach the end of the track on crazy train, but the truth is, the train never gets there. People just end up giving ground and becoming more and more conditioned to the current reality. The only real way to not let this become the new normal is to stop it.

That means Trump has to retake the initiative. The case for Trump was never to sit back and watch the country devolve into chaos. Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz could have done that with a lot less consternation about their tweeting. Trump was not elected for his awesome personality or ability to bring the country together. People know that, and I don’t think anyone is pretending that’s who he is. He was elected precisely to avoid moments like we are currently in. It’s not a coincidence that his failure to take action over the last month has led to his worst approval ratings in recent memory. Meanwhile, Trump was tweeting about Carly Fiorina yesterday, someone most swing voters don’t even know exists.

The Left has continually wailed about Trump being a dictator since 2016, then wilfully acted in such a fashion as to require dictatorial measures to reign in their madhouse excess lest it destroy the nation. Well, so be it, then. They’re going to wail and call him “Hitler” no matter what he does. So give them something to wail about for real. Crush them. Crush them utterly.

TRAGEDY!

Posted on June 24, 2020June 24, 2020 by Mike

What little is left of my heart is not quite breaking for them.

With Statues Gone, Pigeons Forced To Poop On Rioters
U.S.—With more and more statues across the country being pulled down, pigeons are being forced to redirect their payloads to different targets.

As soon as statues are pulled down, the pigeons turn toward the nearest available target: angry rioters.

“Yes! Down with racism–AHHHHH!!!!” screamed one rioter just after pulling down a statue of Christopher Columbus. The pigeons immediately turned on him, with a squadron of the birds divebombing him to unload hundreds of pounds worth of excrement. “Run!!!”

Rioters frantically tried to put the statues back up as they were attacked by the feral flocks. “Put Christopher back! Quick!” cried one Antifa group as they were swarmed by a whole fleet of pigeon bombers. But try as they might, their weak liberal arms could not lift the statue and they were forced to flee the scene.

Those unintended consequences remain the bane of liberals everywhere.

Civil disintegration

Posted on June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 by Mike

And a very uncivil war.

What seems most obvious is that a civil war, like any war, requires two sides pitted against one another in outright combat or in destructive ideological engagements. And given the mass capitulation of mayors, governors, police chiefs, media editors, entertainment celebrities, CEOs and members of Congress to the insurrectionary cadres holding the nation hostage — forces of disarray like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, raging Twitter mobs, hate-promoting institutions like the SPLC, the ACLU, The Nation of Islam and others — one is hard pressed to locate and identify a respectable “other side” of the struggle.

Admittedly, there is a beleaguered though resolute president (abandoned by many who should logically be his allies, including members of his own party), a small number of conservative commentators who have stood their ground in the public square, and an inchoate “silent majority” (assuming it is indeed a majority), but they scarcely comprise a visible and identifiable “other side” equal in approximate strength to an active, vociferous and bellicose hostile power. That being the case, we cannot say that a de facto civil war is in progress. The side of law and order seems to have surrendered without much in the way of robust and concerted resistance.

We can say that the nation has grown dysfunctional and largely ungovernable — civil disintegration, not civil war — and will remain so unless those who believe in the Constitution and re-possess sufficient authority in the military and government agencies, backed by a genuine silent majority emerging at election time, can mount a viable defense against the agents of destruction. This does not mean that the left will be defeated or lay down its arms, only that the playing field — or battlefield — will have been made rather more level.

At that point, once a balance of forces is achieved and a meaningful engagement of opposing sides becomes possible, we may have entered a condition of veritable civil war, whether institutional or manifest, unless a resolution or armistice can be worked out. And the only resolution that might make some initial sense is an official divorce between the warring segments of the nation, a secession of states from the federal system, red and blue states going their own ways. Such would inevitably involve manifold complications, with citizens of differing political loyalties abiding in the same state, the division of economic and industrial property, the re-assignment of components of the military, the complexities of foreign relations, and so on.

People keep blathering hopefully about this “secession” business, as if it was anyplace near the realm of actual possibility. I’m kinda surprised to see the usually sober Solway doing it though, and apparently taking it seriously—even going so far as to suggest such a thing might be done peacefully.

Sorry to rain on the fantasist parade, everyone, but it’s a delusion, an entirely absurd proposition. Or does anybody really want to argue that the federal government of the US of A might entertain the notion of dissolving itself to allow states, regions, or whatever other imaginary subdivision go their separate ways without a tremendous, inconceivably bloody struggle?

Do I really need to point out how that worked out the first time around?

It’s a fever dream, the aimless woolgathering of a madman. Which is not to say that the nation won’t end up riven asunder, mind. In fact, any realistic assessment of the unbridgeable chasm between Normals and the agressively batshit-insane Left would almost have to conclude that some kind of division is well-nigh inevitable. But it ain’t gonna be peaceful, and it ain’t gonna be bloodless. It’s gonna be brutal, nightmarish, and destructive, with no guarantee of ending well for any of us.

A lot of egg, on a lot of faces

Posted on June 17, 2020June 17, 2020 by Mike

Still waiting for the mass apologies that are due for inflicting the COVID idiocy on all of us. Not holding my breath, naturally.

In the early days of the pandemic, there was debate over whether lockdowns were worth the economic costs. Now, with months of data, we know the verdict: Lockdowns did very little to save lives, were not worth their economic costs, and their collateral damage could lead to far more deaths worldwide due to social turmoil and disruptions in medical care and food supplies.

The COVID-19 lockdowns may be one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time, and those who supported them may have a hard time reconciling their past views with new data. However, it’s not too late to have an open mind.

It’s understandable that so many people were early supporters of lockdowns when fear and panic drowned out data and reason. We should not, however, be so forgiving of experts who led us astray, nor to leaders who were so quick to destroy people’s livelihoods without strong evidence, without due process, and without full consideration for the unintended medical, societal, and economic consequences of their decisions; all this for a virus which the CDC now estimates has a survival rate above 99.9% for people under 65.

As the world awakens to how fear and panic drove unnecessary lockdowns, we will also witness political fallout as leaders are exposed for how they turned medical decisions into political ones. For example, U.K. political leaders and their scientific advisers are now pointing fingers at each other over who was behind the quarantine policy.

The Danish Health Authority is also trying to exonerate itself from Denmark’s March 13 lockdown order after a leaked March 15 email stated: “The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that COVID-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either an usually serious course or a high mortality rate.”

Lots, lots more here, all of it adding up to one thing:

It is early and we don’t yet know exactly how this will play out, but the false narrative of lockdowns and the efficacy of their underlying models is disintegrating by the day.

The Clampdown isn’t about any silly-assed virus, and as time goes on I begin to doubt that it ever was at all. It was about an opportunity for the authoritarians to flex their muscles, to see what they could get away. Sadly, that turned out to be one hell of a lot, as millions of purported “Americans” proved all too eager to take counsel of their cowardice and throw away what precious little liberty they still enjoyed.

But the signs were all there almost from the very beginning, and they still abound, as those same authoritarians who piously proclaimed all along that they were only “following the science” double down on fascism yet again, despite the actual science now serving to expose them for what they really were all along. To wit:

Mecklenburg leaders pushed for a mask mandate Tuesday as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to escalate in the county, and asked county health officials to return with an official recommendation by next week.

County commissioners say cloth face coverings are crucial in preventing COVID-19 outbreaks — and could be the deciding factor in avoiding another stay-at-home order.

The Raleigh City Council made a similar step Tuesday toward possibly implementing a mask mandate. In Durham and Orange counties, residents already are required to wear face coverings in public settings where social distancing may be difficult.

Looking like three hots and a cot, bread and water, and steady work making license plates and/or picking up roadside trash are in my near future, I’m afraid. Because I ain’t putting on no face diaper, and I do not give a skinny shit what some whey-faced, lying commie—be he in Charlotte, Raleigh, or Washington—may require of me.

Arbitrary update! Bullshit, plain and simple.

When he announced on May 1 that masks would be worn in public places, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker was emphatic.

“We view this as common sense. This is going to be basically a way of life. No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts.”

Yeah, go fuck yourself, little Stalin.

First, Baker’s order said to wear face coverings when in public places and unable to keep a social distance of six feet. Why’d he pick six feet? There is no research showing that six feet means anything in a public space.

That six-foot idea is an arbitrary guess that was “conjured up out of nowhere,” according to Professor Robert Dingwall, a top scientific adviser to the British government, which like the U.S. has adopted six feet as a safe social distance. The authorities guessed that it might be a good distance because some study had shown that a cough could travel six feet in a tightly closed dead-air space. The relevance of that to everyday life — who knows?

Anyone claiming the six-foot rule is not arbitrary should explain why the World Health Organization suggests a three-foot distance and why Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have adopted that rule, and why Germany and other countries use a 4.5-foot rule. Does the coronavirus behave differently in Europe?

Second, the order never defined public places. Did it mean indoors or outdoors? No one knew, and Baker probably didn’t know himself. It seemed as if he was talking about indoor spaces with other people nearby. However, upon hearing Baker’s poorly defined order, anxious people extended it and ran with it. Suddenly, we saw multitudes wearing masks and bandannas everywhere, even when it didn’t make sense because no one was around. They jogged and rode bikes with them on, walked in the parks with them, wore them in their cars. When crossing a street alone, carrying groceries home, or even climbing mountains, they burdened themselves with all kinds of masks.

The disease isn’t contagious in the open air, but the mask-wearing anxiety sure is.

Not at my house, it ain’t.

Not knowing about this disease, people anxiously want to do something. Eight weeks ago, it was buying mountains of toilet paper, and today it’s needless masks. There’s social pressure — the unanimity is worrisome. And Governor Charlie Baker is looking at you. And there are busybodies who will be masked when they light into you. Yikes.

Oh, how I hope one of them tries. They’re gonna get one hell of a lot more than they bargained for.

Mask-wearing is not benign, either. (1) Masked faces feel hostile because you can see no relaxation or smile in the person you’re facing. (2) People feel disconnected, and a national survey shows that depression and suicidal thoughts are way up. (3) Public misbehavior is amplified when actors are anonymous — riots, anyone?

People make mistakes, but rigidly sticking with a mistake is inexcusable.

It is that, at minimum. High time Real Americans stopped excusing them, then, and started confronting and defying them instead, openly and aggressively. There’s way more at stake now than any health concerns, real or imaginary, can account for.

The Long March reaches its destination

Posted on June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 by Mike

And once again, I find that a long post I’ve been working on for several days is superceded by somebody who says exactly what I was trying to, only better.

The crime syndicate dominated Windy City was fertile ground for the plot of world conquest. The Mob was already in the business of brutality, deception, and despotism, the same means Leftists use to achieve their goals. It was a natural partnership. Through the bait and switch tactics of “community organizing,” Frankfurt School corruption of education, and the nurturing of toxic radicals like Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, and Barack Obama, the Illinois spawned alliance of Marxist Crime has now long marched its way into being the political system of Globalism.

It’s not called what it is, of course. Leftists lie and distort; it’s necessary to hide their evil intentions. We’ve come to call this mass cultural subversion Postmodernism. And what we’ve been going through in 2020 is the push to bring Postmodernism to its final solution: the destruction of Western Civilization. Postmodern partisans seek to switch off the Enlightenment, in order to rule over a new Dark Age.

When I started writing this piece just a few short weeks ago, I had plenty to say about how the wacky woo hoo virus hysteria exposed massive corruption and Chinese influence in our traitorous elitists. Arbitrary and needless shutdowns devoured American prosperity, coincidentally right when a new trade agreement undercut Chinese market manipulations, and a tectonic scale spy scandal started emerging regarding the Obama administration and all their cronies.

China’s rigid totalitarian system is the desired outcome of the majority of the world’s administrative classes. They won’t admit this, but look at their actions, instead of listening to their empty words.

Events overtook the essay I was preparing. So now we have divisive race riots being inflamed, on top of the Overblown Outbreak. This is just a continuation of the same war, a new battlefield of the thoroughly planned and prepared Postmodern assault on the United States. It’s being facilitated across our culture by a massive betrayal by the New Aristocracy of the Well Connected, our own countrymen. As they’ve demanded society mask up to pretend to prevent disease, and to facilitate looting, our betters have been unmasked as the deeply embedded enemies within.

This is Postmodern War for the 21st century. It’s not fought openly with bombs and soldiers. It’s combat waged by other means, with biological agents, economics, propaganda, data manipulation, sabotage.

The primary difference between Bledsoe’s take and my own is that he’s way, WAY more optimistic than I am about the eventual outcome. We can only hope he has it right, and I don’t.

(Via Sarah Hoyt)

The only sane response

Posted on June 13, 2020June 13, 2020 by Mike

What he said, times a million billion.

This is 100% accurate.

Defund the police, and we will take matters into our own hands! pic.twitter.com/Vj9EFgcYpb

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) June 7, 2020

The sooner the better, sez I. Because as I always say, the Left is never going to stop all this horseshit lunacy; it will have to BE stopped. Yes, that will surely mean violence and bloodshed, I’m afraid. So be it. Ace lays down the straight skinny:

The people with all the actual privileges scream that they’re “marginalized,” while attacking the people who are actually marginalized by the system as, supposedly, “privileged.”

It’s a madhouse, and one in which the lunatics run the asylum.

And it will not last long.

The left wants a revolution?

So do we.

Bring it on, soibois.

Mega, mega, megadittos.

Fake, phony, fraud

Posted on June 12, 2020June 12, 2020 by Mike

Much ado about very little.

The Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded because many victims of the pandemic would have died soon anyway, one of Britain’s leading medics has said.

Professor Karol Sikora, a senior oncologist who has built a huge Twitter following for his positive takes on the virus crisis, said doctors were sometimes too eager to put Covid-19 on death certificates.

Speaking to The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast – which you can listen to on the player above – Prof Sikora said the virus would be mentioned on death certificates when there was “any hint” that it could have been the cause, without proof, as well as retrospectively over the phone.

The total number of deaths, rather than what is on the death certificates, should be used to judge the impact of the virus, he said, estimating the real death toll to be 20,000 to 30,000.

He said: “It could end up that more people have died because of lack of medical care directly caused by the unavailability of it, because its facilities have been taken over for Covid.

“If we look at the numbers, how many people have really died from Covid that wouldn’t be dead at the end of the year? The numbers vary enormously. The current ONS data suggests 60,000 people have died from Covid. I’m sure that’s not really the case, it’s because of the counting we discussed earlier.”

Ahh, but even though our masters temporarily suspended the COVIDIOT panic so as to allow for the Black Lies Murder/PantiFa riots, don’t dream it’s over. Sundance sees what’s coming.

If we think they’ve thrown the kitchen sink at us, just wait. The Trump campaign has announced the restart of Keep America Great rallies to begin in Tulsa Oklahoma on June 19th. And with that announcement we can immediately predict the apparatus of the resistance forces will once again start pushing the COVID-19 narrative.

My response, SCREW ‘EM.

I refuse to live on my knees.

“Rally to the standard” is a call to arms when a situation is critical, there is no time for lengthy debate, and optimal solutions are needed. The COVID-19 virus was weaponized for political purposes against us and our economy. Nothing they attempt now to try and retake that position should be taken seriously.

Given their overlong record of incompetence, dishonesty, and utter failure, I can scarcely believe how seriously they were taken the first time, myself. The simple truth:

Is there going to be a second wave? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. We know enough about COVID-19 to realize that it’s not an excuse to continue to destroy the economy and send people into destitution. It’s not enough of a threat to destroy jobs, tank companies, and push people into another panic. We need precautions for the most vulnerable among us, namely the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. For the rest of us, we need (the) freedom to live our lives, go to work, go to church, or essentially whatever else we want to do.

It’s about choice. Just because lockdowns are not implemented again doesn’t mean people will be forced to venture forth into the coronavirus-ridden world if they prefer to stay locked down. But their choice to stay at home should not influence our choice to live our lives. The coronavirus didn’t kill the initial estimate of 2.2 million. It didn’t come close. It wasn’t a nothingburger, but it was nowhere near the existential threat we were told it would be.

Patriots need to stand strong against the next wave of lockdown attempts by government. Those of us in blue states or Democratic-majority cities need to be especially vocal with our unwillingness to comply with draconian mandates. We need to protest and take it to the courts if necessary. We need to engage in civil disobedience at times, and that doesn’t mean riot like the left is wont to do. We don’t need more riots. We need more common sense, and fighting Lockdowns 2.0 is a common sense play.

The fight isn’t over. We must keep the pressure up and make sure Democrats and mainstream media know we’re not going to fall for their fearmongering this time. Whether there’s a second wave or not, we must stand strong against authoritarianism.

We ought to be doing that anyway—continually, reflexively, every day and in every way.

Another thing we very much need to do is to stop granting the premise of the nefarious panic-mongers: squirming around about how we can reopen for business and still “maintain adequate social distancing,” “providing hand sanitizer,” wearing masks, etc—as if we were children begging an indulgence from mom and dad by making extravagant promises about what good little boys and girls we’ll surely be.

To hell with all that rot. Anyone who must beg his masters to grant him a little bit of freedom has already lost it. The Clampdown was an outrageous affront to American Constitutional principles; our supine response provided a grim demonstration of exactly how moribund that document really is…and why. The state and local officials who imposed those illegal edicts far exceeded their legitimate authority, and of right ought to be punished severely for that audacious power-grab. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty certain groveling and forelock-tugging about “safety” is NOT the way to go about that.

Defiance, not compliance, people. It’s the American way. Or it was.

Getting woke to the Left

Posted on June 6, 2020June 7, 2020 by Mike

Jim Hoft posts some sobering scenes from the aftermath of the Left unchained.

For the past week the left has been protesting, rioting, looting, shooting officers, beating innocents, torching national landmarks across the United States.

This is the fruit of the American left: pain, chaos, suffering, violence, fear and arson.

Indeed it is. But if the past week’s irrational and opportunistic anarchy results in a long-overdue awakening to the Left’s true nature as the ruthless enemy of all that is good, decent, and reasonable in America, then it may yet prove to be worth it. Hoft’s third entry puts it straight: “This isn’t a protest, this isn’t solving any injustice, this is the result of leftist media and celebrities encouraging divisive racism and violence to hurt the country and thus Trump.” Bingo, nailed it in one.

But let’s not forget to include the full-throated endorsement and assistance of Democrat-Socialist Party elected officials at all levels across the nation, too. The bottom line is that when it comes to Leftist hatred, wanton destruction, and evil, All Are One.

No peace, no justice

Posted on June 6, 2020June 7, 2020 by Mike

As always, the violent, fascist Left has it exactly backwards.

These rioters aren’t Martin Luther King Jr. or even Malcolm X. They are Alex and his droogs from “A Clockwork Orange” out for a night on the town, albeit with less style and a duller patois. Violence is the point.

Protests responding to the cruel police killing of George Floyd have been turned into nationwide riots and looting. This is not about Floyd anymore. His killing was universally condemned, the cops involved were fired, and homicide charges have been brought against the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck. More should be done, and what has been done could have been done sooner, but folks are not looting the Nike store in downtown Chicago for greater justice. They just want to smash things and take stuff.

The very real problems of police misconduct and racial injustice have been buried under rubble and broken glass, then obscured in a haze of smoke and tear gas. Progress was possible— in his last State of the Union address, our bombastic Republican president was boasting about criminal justice reform — but that requires basic civil order. The problem with “no justice, no peace” is that although the absence of justice will indeed corrode peace, without peace there is no possibility of justice.

It’s a good enough column generally, but he downplays the very real threat the rioters present by blithely dismissing them as fundamentally unserious about their nascent revolution, motivated not by ideology and hatred, but by boredom. When cities are burning, property and businesses being destroyed, and innocent people being brutally beaten and murdered, that’s a mistake, I think.

Life during wartime

Posted on June 5, 2020June 5, 2020 by Mike

Report from the front lines.

As every parent knows, children can sleep through anything when they’re tired enough. So it was with our two kids Monday night. They snored away, oblivious to the buzz of helicopters overhead, the constant wail of sirens — and the distinct crack of gunshots that rang out at around 10:40 somewhere in Midtown East, where we live. Their parents, on the other hand, were bundles of racked nerves.

I went downstairs to see for myself. In the four hours that followed, I felt the insecurity of lawlessness and disorder more acutely than I ever had before — and I’ve filed datelines all over the Middle East, including from the front line of the Iraqi Kurdish war against the Islamic State.

Yeah, you be sure and vote to re-elect DeBalledZero again now, pal.

Back when I was living there, one of my favorite LES dive-bars was a dingy, loud rock-and-roll/punk rock den of iniquity called Downtown Beirut. It’s long gone, alas, so I will refrain from commenting on the attendant irony now.

It’s DIFF’RUNT when they do it, see

Posted on June 5, 2020June 5, 2020 by Mike

Anybody out there still kidding themselves that the phony Coronavirus Doomsday ploy was anything other than a head fake, a subterfuge?

This is insane and has no rational or scientific basis. pic.twitter.com/2Cdiw2r4tL

— Dodd (@Amuk3) June 5, 2020

The riots and looting will probably begin to lose steam and gutter out over the next several days, having served their purpose as successfully as the last one did. Which leads me to wonder what the next Deep State/Left/Democrat-Socialist maneuver is going to be. You can be sure that they already have one planned and ready to go.

Come back, Shane!

Posted on June 5, 2020June 5, 2020 by Mike

Yeah, no.

Mayor Lightfoot Pleads With Walmart, Other Retailers To Not Abandon Chicago
Mayor Lightfoot said she was on a conference call with Walmart and other major retailers that had stores looted or heavily damaged during the unrest in Chicago. She said she pleaded with them to not abandon Chicago.

“ABANDON” Chitcago? I beg to differ, Madame Kommissar: they were BURNED and LOOTED out of Chitcago. With your explicit endorsement, lest we forget. So you might want to consider sitting back and sucking on the fattest moose cock you can find while you’re reaping what you sowed. Hinderaker puts it way more civilly than I ever will:

Why, exactly, would major retailers choose to rebuild and re-open stores that were burned to the ground or otherwise destroyed by rioters? What is there in the current response to riots by big city politicians that provides any assurance that the same thing won’t happen again? If you owned a store in an area that was destroyed by rioters, would you invest more money in the same location? Why?

John has a lot more along those same lines, and you should read of it, for It Is Good.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

A pandemic of looting

Posted on June 1, 2020June 1, 2020 by Mike

Comes the night.

This pandemic of civil violence is more widespread than anything seen during the Black Lives Matter movement of the Obama years, and it will likely have an even deadlier toll on law enforcement officers than the targeted assassinations we saw from 2014 onward. It’s worse this time because the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology. From Ta-Nehisi Coates to the New York Times’s 1619 project, the constant narrative about America’s endemic white supremacy and its deliberate destruction of the “black body” has been thoroughly injected into the political bloodstream.

Facts don’t matter to the academic victimology narrative. Far from destroying the black body, whites are the overwhelming target of interracial violence. Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks. Blacks are less than 13 percent of the national population.

If white mobs were rampaging through black business districts, assaulting passersby and looting stores, we would have heard about it on the national news every night. But the black flash mob phenomenon is grudgingly covered, if at all, and only locally.

Anyone who is still shocked and surprised by that home truth ought to wake up at long last to what the media really is: the enemy.

The national media have been insisting on the theme of the allegedly brutal Minneapolis police department. They said nothing as black-on-white robberies rose in downtown Minneapolis late last year, along with savage assaults on passersby. Why are the Minneapolis police in black neighborhoods? Because that’s where violent crime is happening, including shootings of two-year-olds and lethal beatings of 75-year-olds. Just as during the Obama years, the discussion of the allegedly oppressive police is being conducted in the complete absence of any recognition of street crime and the breakdown of the black family that drives it.

Once the violence began, any effort to “understand” it should have stopped, since that understanding is inevitably exculpatory. The looters are not grieving over the stomach-churning arrest and death of George Floyd; they are having the time of their lives. You don’t protest or mourn a victim by stealing oxycontin, electronics, jewelry, and sneakers.

The great philosophers and poets of the West—from Aeschylus and Euripides, to Shakespeare, Hobbes, and the American Founders—understood the chaos and lust for power that lurk beneath civilization. Thanks to the magnificent infrastructure of the rule of law, we now take stability and social trust for granted. We assume that violence, once unleashed in the name of justice, can easily be put back in the bottle.

It cannot.

Lot of that unwarranted-assumption thing going around these days, it seems.

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