Life in a once-great nation

The Forever Lockdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holding back the Dismal Tide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answers itself

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

Ask a silly question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senseless sensibility

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

Verily, these are revolutionary times.

For many Americans, the enemy is the conservative patrimony of individual agency, traditional marriage, competitive achievement, historical memory, freedom of thought, expression and peaceful assembly, and the morality of public reciprocity. The handshake has been replaced by the clenched fist, a communist salute and emblem adopted by BLM. The virus of collectivism has taken hold among the young, and equality of personal opportunity has yielded to equality of forced outcome.

This is no less than a revolution of sensibility, aggressively promoted by the big digital platforms and the open sewer of social media where the scourge of rampant vigilantism, infantilism run amok and mob justice has infected the entire culture and eroded the principle of legal justice by the politics of indiscriminate revenge for evils real and imagined. Twitter, of course, has now become the major conduit for the neural filth of the nation to disgorge into the mainstream.
The responsible and literate individual is gradually disappearing into a featureless mass. The mob and its movers prevail. The result is an epidemic of iconoclasm (destruction of images and statues), antinomianism (rejection of laws and customs), and the degradation of rational thought. America’s foreign enemies and competitors can scarcely contain themselves as they watch the country implode, a pervasive leftist fifth column doing their work for them.

What we are plainly observing is the resurgence of socialist doctrine and practice characterized by radical egalitarianism, the expansion of welfare dependency, the destruction of the nuclear family, and the gradual emergence of single-party rule, associated with the Democrats. The ideals of liberty, personal responsibility for one’s choices, love of country, property rights, civil order, historical continuity, an enduring moral order, economic prudence, voluntary community and restraint upon government power, were expounded by Russell Kirk in The Politics of Prudence. They constitute the essence of what we once understood as the American experiment in republican governance, but now are denounced as a “right-wing” conspiracy to suppress the poor, the marginalised and a proletariat of assorted victims suffering under the iron rule of a colonial oligarchy. As many observers have commented, the cold war was really won by the Soviets. In the words of Alexander Markovsky from Liberal Bolshevism, “America did not defeat communism, she adopted it.”

There can be no doubt that a Biden victory at the polls would be a devastating blow to Middle America — flyover country, suburbia — and to the fragmented conservative movement in the U.S. As Stacy Lennox points out in an article for PJ Media, echoing Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, “The radical left has conducted a long and successful march through our educational, cultural, and bureaucratic institutions. Their takeover of the Democrat party will be complete if Joe Biden wins in November.” His intent is obvious to all even though few can make any sense of Biden’s refried beans.

These are some of the changes that must take place if we are to save our way of life.

All good ideas, not a one of which stands the remotest chance of ever being seriously considered, much less implemented. To his credit, Solway has the good sense to at least half-heartedly acknowledge this harsh reality:

Some will no doubt argue that these initiatives are unrealistic, and they may be right. But as proposals they are at least theoretically conceivable under Trump but would be anathema to any Democratic candidate, whose agenda is to perpetuate dysfunction, lawlessness, corruption, mendacity and indoctrination.

Ohhh, but Trump has been a complete failure, the Dissident Right and Accelerationist Puritans wail girlishly. He hasn’t swept all opposition aside on every single issue, so therefore he has done NOTHING! He is USELESS! I’ma vote Biden! By God, THAT’LL SHOW ‘EM!!

Whatevs. Any putative adult who can’t distinguish between the practical political realities hindering Trump’s sincere last-ditch efforts to at least slow the Leftist riptide and Biden’s full-on embrace of extreme-Left totalitarianism is too damned stupid and childish to be allowed a vote anyway. Let not the perfect be the enemy of the good…or the good enough.

Inexpertise

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

Expert me no more experts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Watchers

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

You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update! What he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When are Local and State Governments Illegitimate?”

Posted on August 22, 2020August 22, 2020 by Mike

Oh, right about, umm, NOW, in my estimation. Have been since March, in fact.

Should we shrug off crises in blue cities as the fault of voters? The “They’ve made their bed, let them lie in it” trope misses a key point. Did voters in any of these cities really bargain for what they’re getting now? Yes, most claim to be progressives, but did they expect their votes to result in the sacking of their communities? The menacing of their neighbors and themselves? Did they really desire or expect a leftist dystopia?

In our federal system, it falls first upon the states and localities to uphold the mandate of the Constitution’s preamble. But when states and localities fail — by cowardice or design — to fulfill their basic duties, then isn’t it incumbent upon the national government to act?

Day in and day out, we’re told by the MSM not to believe our lying eyes. The leftist-provoked mobs running wild in blue cities are merely protesters, registering grievances and questing for justice in an endemically racist America — an America unjust beyond race, anyway, and from its inception. The cancers growing in blue cities are meant to metastasize across the nation, have no doubt.

To excise these cancers, to reestablish justice and restore domestic tranquility, the national government must act. Leaders in afflicted blue cities, bolstered by their states’ governors, are in rebellion and are trampling the constitutionally guaranteed rights of their citizens, while gestating wider rebellion. If the national government doesn’t act, then it rests upon the citizens to exercise “their right, [snip] their duty, to throw off such [state and local] Government[s], and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Don’t know as I’d be holding my breath waiting for that, bub. Any appeal to the Constitution seems futile at best anyway, especially when you’re pleading with people who hold the Constitution and every ideal it represents in utmost doot-brained contempt in the first place.

Not that I’m saying there’s no recourse, or no solution, mind you; I assure you, there is.

The fate of The City

Posted on August 16, 2020August 16, 2020 by Mike

She’s DEAD, Jim. This time for real.

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

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

Now it’s completely dead.

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

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

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

First, when has NYC been through worse?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this time is different.

One reason: Bandwidth.

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

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

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

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

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

That’s what is different.

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

(Via Insty)

Of clown acts and puppet shows

Posted on August 16, 2020August 16, 2020 by Mike

ZMan introduces his latest podcast thusly:

Fishing around for material this week, I stumbled upon some stories that brought a smile, because they featured the unhappiness of bad people. Naturally, I thought a whole show on the suffering of the wicked was a good idea. It is easy to succumb to self-pity and despair, so it is important to look at the bright side of life on occasion in order to avoid those temptations. Given what faces us this fall, there will be plenty of time for weeping and gnashing of teeth.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the people in charge are terribly unhappy with the state of things, which is why they are revolting. These punitive measures they are inflicting upon us are not coming from a supreme sense of self confidence, but from a deep fear that revolution is brewing in the shadows. The reason they are running around looking for bad-thinkers is they lie awake at night imagining one us creeping from the darkness with a My Pillow as they sleep.

There’s also the fact that these people are not gods. They slithered in through the gaps in the doors then flung open the gates to allow their co-conspirators in to take over the institutions, but they are not worthy of their positions. They are riding high only because we let them. Looking at their failings and weaknesses is a good way to remind ourselves that this lunacy stops when we make it stop. Numbers still matter. The night of the million pillows is probably closer than we think.

That’s something to keep in mind as the fall election kicks off in the coming weeks and the usual suspects are trying to peddle a bitter bindy and a dementia patient as the solution to what ails them. This really is the best they got. What comes next for them is the buck-toothed barmaid and the incestuous goatherd. As Tucker pointed out the other day, we really do need to enjoy the show. This is lunacy at a scale and intensity not seen since Caligula was the ruler of the civilized world.

“Bitter bindy, “dementia patient,” “buck-toothed barmaid,” and “incestuous goatherd” (ie, Ilan Omar, just in case that one went by any of y’all) are all pretty heady stuff, right enough. But then Tal Bachman gets downright jiggy with it.

Now, some folks think Kamala isn’t really a “sister”, but all that matters is how Democratic Party decision-makers think about race—and that hasn’t changed since the party’s founding 200 plus years ago. They still go by their old “one-drop” rule. And Kamala, despite having an Indian mother, has a black father (albeit from Jamaica). That’s not only good enough for the DNC Puppeteers, but will be good enough for every Democrat voter, no matter how much they might mutter otherwise for the next week or so. In the end, no Democrat voter is going to stay home on election night just because Kamala’s only half-black (which, of course, makes her just as black as Barack Obama), or a quarter, or an eighth, or because her ancestors weren’t slaves, or even because some of her ancestors were, themselves, slave owners. She’s brown, the end.

And most exciting of all for The Puppeteers was that now, she was, as she had always been, entirely for sale. Sure, she could scheme with the best of them, but like any lady of the night, she’d also do anything her political johns wanted. She would change policies, attack anyone, pretend to be sorry, believe and then instantly unbelieve the very same thing, falsely accuse someone, shake her booty, pretend to choke up, anything.

Hell, she was so soulless, she might even do something like announce her conclusion that Joe Biden committed first degree sexual assault (a crime meriting up to life imprisonment), but then, when it was to her political advantage, retroactively assent to the crime she believes occurred by endorsing him and agreeing to be his vice-president—all of which she’s now done. And she would do all this, and more—she would do anything on God’s green earth—without evincing even the slightest sign of shame. She was a DNC dream.

In short, once The Puppeteers chose Biden, Kamala Harris was a lock. America now has an All-Puppet Ticket right out of a Jim Henson workshop trying to win the White House. One is a short-circuiting near-cadaver—far feebler than Statler and Waldorf ever were—kept alive (in my imagination, anyway) by forced Red Bull consumption and adrenaline injections. The other is a diversity-cult showgirl for hire. Both are utterly hollow, both represent loathsome policy ideas, and—make no mistake—both are utterly loathsome human beings.

After all, it takes a loathsome human being to keep repeating a libel even after it has been repeatedly, publicly, and definitively debunked. Yet this is just what Biden did during his Wednesday press conference with Harris, once again falsely accusing Trump—the most philo-Semitic president in American history, with an unparalleled record of job creation for blacks and Hispanics—of publicly praising the Charlottesville Nazis and Klansmen as “fine people”. This is demonstrably not what Trump said. Biden doesn’t care. Why not? Because he’s a loathsome human being.

Of course, there’s much more.

Believe it or not, as fulsome a bounty of in your face, bare-knuckles, hardcore truth in all its ugliness as all that is, there IS more. There really, really is. And that’s a damned shame.

Reynolds has been saying for a long time now that Americans are cursed with the worst political class in history, and he certainly ain’t wrong about that. But I have to say that at this late date I much prefer Bachman’s no-holds-barred, personally insulting approach to presenting this grim reality. Name ’em and shame ’em, sez I. Assuming that there’s even one political parasite left alive who’s capable of shame.

Oh, what a difference a commie can make

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s a real grabber for ya:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update! Did someone say rebellion?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asking the tough questions

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

Ones with scary answers, too.

Would the Military Side with Leftist Tyranny or with America?

Offhand, I’d say the answer depends on which military we’re talking about here. Is it the higher-ranking officers put in place by the Obama junta after Jugears McNoChest had spent purging the military of nearly all its actual military types and replaced them with PC dweebs, FOBbits, REMFs, and Blue Falcons uninterested in, y’know, winning wars—preferring instead to humiliate its enlisted ranks by forcing them to march on parade in stripper-pumps? Or would it be the crusty old lifer Senior Chiefs, Gunnies, and Command Sar-Majors, who must be scratching their heads in puzzlement by now over the atrocity that’s been wrought on what was once, long ago, the most effective, well-trained, and just plain dangerous military in existence?

Because one of those things is NOT like the other.

Between the perma-coup against the American people, the mainstream media’s myriad and shameless lies, and the Democrats’ election fraud agenda (including the Golden Ticket to anarchy that is mail-in voting), it is absolutely clear that the Democrats will not accept Donald Trump’s impending victory. It is also clear that their plan is to sow chaos when they lose, with outright ballot box-stuffing, riots, and endless counts and recounts, so that they can obscure Trump’s win enough to create a patina of fake doubt about the result. Then they will rush into some Hawaiian courtroom and get some Hawaiian judge to announce that the Delaware Basement Crustacean won the election. The idea is to then have a deus ex militaria where somehow the establishment gets reestablished forever at gunpoint. And the liberal elite is said establishment.

Look at CNN and see the endless parade of fully semi-automatic Obama generals babbling like idiots about how Trump is ruining their sweet gigs, though they don’t put it quite that way. Look at the appalling Chairman of the Joint Chiefs apologizing for following the elected president’s lead. And, especially, look at their horror that America is ending those endless wars.

Those are the generals, and they have the elite’s back, not yours. A general who said “all lives matter” or refused to buy the ridiculous but fashionable notion that America’s greatest strategic threat is the weather a century hence or uttered some other heresy would not be a general much longer – and certainly not cash in on a sweet post-retirement gig at Boeing.

But most Americans don’t see that. Because America remembers the military of 30 years ago that could actually win a war in a reasonable period of time (as we did in Desert Storm), today’s generals benefit from residual respect for yesterday’s Cold War military. Americans are unaware of the devastated culture cultivated by our military senior leadership. Here’s the ruinous legacy of today’s generals: Afghanistan is a disaster and still not won, ships colliding and catching fire due to gross failures of leadership, boats of sailors on tape whimpering as they surrender to the Iranian Navy, senior officers leaking to the media, colonels, generals and admirals getting court-martialed, massive prosecutorial misconduct by JAGs, woke West Point (which recently graduated an open communist), and troops kneeling before rioters. It’s a military that puts Diversity Day before D-Day.

We know we cannot trust this generation of generals to stand up for freedom, but I’d like to think that a good portion of the troops would refuse to enter civilian politics in favor of the anti-American left. Yet, I would have also liked to think that we’d never see law enforcement officers eagerly obeying the fascist decrees of liberal poohbahs. The sight of overeager Barney Fifes hassling citizens about piehole thongs made it clear that for some people oaths come behind the giddy joy of power and keeping their pensions.

And yet here we all are, alas. The really scary part comes at the very end:

Sadly, we cannot rely on the generals to not make the error. Let’s just hope that the danger is mooted because Trump’s margin of victory is so great that the Democrats cannot cheat.

It won’t be, I assure you; mail-in voting will see to that all by itself, plus whatever other fraudulent skullduggery the megalomaniacal Democrat-Socialist flim-flam men can dream up too. Not a single peep from any of you people claiming that “they can’t” do this or that “they wouldn’t dare” do that, either. They’ll be “finding” and counting “votes” behind closed doors for however long they need to—even into early January if necessary—until they have enough to “prove” they won.

Doubt me? Don’t. See Al Franken, election of, just for one example. Small potatoes though it may seem now, remember ye well that the election of “Senator” Franken ended up being decisive in snaking Obamacare through the Senate and driving a stake through the heart of American health care forever.

Even if Trump should somehow pull off a true miracle and win so overwhelmingly that his victory is impossible for the Left bunco artists to deny or subvert, the rioting will intensify by orders of magnitude until we’re all so fed up we just start gunning Libtards down on sight. No matter how the Last American Election shakes out, things are looking to get mighty sporty indeed in its aftermath.

The truly dismaying thing to me is that I can remember a time when to so much as pose such a question would seem utterly preposterous on the face of it, dismissible with a snort and an airy wave of the hand. Not now, though. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Hope the overblown hysteria was worth it

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

Toldya.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They’re just rubbing our noses in it now

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

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

Thou fool.

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

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

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

She really thinks Canadians will put up with that!

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

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

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

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

— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) August 6, 2020

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

My God, the balls on that sleazy sonofabitch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A paean to pubs

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

They matter far more than you might realize.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Safety” theater

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

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

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

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

No it doesn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOLGF, asshole-eyes.

Update! What the hell, more NYC hilarity.

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

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 4, 2020

Aww gee, my heart is just breaking over here.

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