Category: Life (and/or death) in the Amerikan gulag

Fascism has a pretty new face!

The Boomers vs the Zoomers

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Or: the Geezer Resistance.

By turning the nation into a weird form of North Korea. the new class gets new perks. Instead of standing in long lines dressed like idiots, they will soon have private shops where they can shop like normal people in a normal society. The next phase of liberal democracy is concierge shopping to go along with concierge health care. You see, who we are is a nation of equals with one set of rules for the Cloud People and another for the Dirt People.

The hero nonsense does not stop with the boot to the masked face. Just as happened in communist societies, fanatics are now rising up among us to hector the rest of us about our adherence to the new rules. This plague first started on-line with the “Cucks and Karens”, as one commenter called them, tone policing anyone questioning the mass idiocy we see all around us. Now they have spilled into the real world, furiously looking to heroically tell people to keep their distance.

Since I will not stand in the idiot line for the market I usually solicit, I went to another market that is not as heroic. They have a fat broad making sure everyone entering is dressed like a train robber. The greeter has not become the enforcer, but you don’t have to stand outside like a moron. This store serves the working and middle-class, while the really heroic store serves managerial types. There is a strong correlation between class and the willingness to suspend the sense of disbelief.

Inside the store they have arrows on the floor, meaning you have to walk up and down every aisle in a specific order. Apparently, heroism now means having to examine every product on every shelf before you leave the store. This is actually dumber than the Soviet-style lines to enter the store. No one is going to traverse the whole store because they forget to get something in aisle one. As a result, people are violating the edicts and going about their business like sane people used to do.

I was one of those sane people, going against an arrow to get something when a Cuck and Karen in their TikTok costumes said something to me about the arrows. The Cuck did the “Sir! Sir!” bit, but I just ignored him. After I got what I wanted, I turned around and he was saying something, but I could not hear it because my hearing is not good and he was talking through his sissy rag. I was ready to ignore him, but then he did the same “Sir! Sir!” bit to an old guy who was violating arrow policy.

Having reached the age where I no longer bite my tongue in public, I said to the guy, “It is bad enough we have to put up with nonsense, we don’t need idiots like you pretending to be the police of us.” He then heroically said something about it “being about all of us” and I reminded him that the most likely way for him to end up in the hospital was to keep talking. The old guy, heroically chimed in with a vigorous “Fuck you, asshole” and a middle-finger at Cuck and Karen.

The Boomers get a lot of grief from certain people and some of it is surely justified, but the only rebels I see in my travels these days are old-timers. This was not the first time I’ve seen an old person tell one of these prissy heroes to do an unnatural act when confronted about a mask or other dumb stuff. All the butch young guys are sheltering in place, heroically self-isolating while whining about the Boomers. The growing protests we see are almost all old people. Zoomers ain’t our heroes.

I myself have taken to saying “Moron” whenever I walk by another masked pissypants—not whispering it, not muttering it under my breath, just saying it in a normal tone of voice and passing right on by. Not saying it threateningly or angrily either, mind, just making a casual observation and moving on. It’s the native curmudgeon in me being brought to the fore at last, maybe. But I can’t help but feel that I probably should have been doing it long before this whole shitshow descended on us.

Preview of coming attractions

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If you like the panic-ninny overreaction to the Chink-N-Pox, just wait until you get a load of the rationale your masters plan to use to indefinitely confine you to your home over next.

You knew this was coming:

Public want radical response to climate change with same urgency as coronavirus, poll finds
The government should be more radical and put in place serious policies to fight the climate crisis with the same urgency as it has to coronavirus, voters believe. A new survey by pollsters Opinium found 48 per cent of the public agree that the government should respond “with the same urgency to climate change as it has with Covid-19”, with just 28 per cent saying it shouldn’t.

Environmentalists said the polling figures were a “green light” for the government to be more ambitious in tackling the climate crisis and that politicians had not yet caught up with public opinion on the issue. The polling is the latest evidence that public opinion is moving fast towards seriously tackling the crisis, following a surge in attention given in the issue last year amid international protests. The start of 2020 was punctuated with climate-related disasters like forest fires in Australia and major flooding.

Yes, it’s the Independent, a left-wing British newspaper. and, yes, we’ve been seeing this conflation of the coronavirus and “climate change” for at least the past month. The overreaction to Covid-19 has resulted in the summary abrogation of the First Amendment in the United States without so much as a shot fired, and in the imposition of lockdown orders in formerly semi-democratic Britain and in the never-really-democratic “social democracies” on the Continent.

Politicians the world over, it seems, just couldn’t wait to unleash the heavy hand of government on their hapless, trusting citizens. and now, having gotten a free look at how willingly the people transform themselves into sheep, petty tyrants in statehouses around the U.S. and in European capitals are hardly likely to let go. It seems that all you have to do is stand on a podium surrounded by doctors, frighten people into think they’ll all soon be extras on The Walking Dead, and you can get away with anything, the Constitution be damned.

And thus is the game given away. Never mind that the “legal goal” is a fiction that can easily be repealed. The absurd panic over the coronavirus is now being used as a stalking horse for further, even more punitive measures against the citizenry. After all, if the government can forbid you to leave your home out of fear of the flu, what can’t it do? Further, the longer the lockdowns last, the more “new normal” they will come to seem, so that the next government mandate, and the next, and the next, will be seen as part of a legitimate continuum, rather than the enormities they are.

And that ain’t no accident, either. Nor is it coincidence. What it is, is enemy action.

Already, those advocating for a swift reopening of the economies are being accused of wanting to kill grandma by the moral brow-beaters. In their eyes, even one death is too many, and the capitalist economies should not reopen until we can absolutely guarantee that no one will ever die of anything ever again.

Now let me see, who was it that said “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” again, now?

The “progressives” are trying to forge a chain from coronavirus to “climate change.” Having softened up the population and herded them into pens, unleashed the petty police on them, and condemned them to a life of terrified solitude until their masters deign to free them (with restrictions, of course!), government is now very nearly free of all constitutional and moral restrictions.

Again: Accident? Coincidence? Or that third thing I mentioned?

Some folks out there have challenged the get-the-boot-off-our-necks crowd with the query: So, how many people are you willing to let die of Chink-N-Pox so you whiny little bitches can go back to work? But that’s the wrong question, seems to me, and is more or less irrelevant anyway, since A) none of us has any real control over who will die, or of what, and B) none of us are getting out of this world alive anyway.

What I’d much rather have an answer to is: How many more of your already-vanishing Constitutional rights are you willing to give up forever in order to contain a malady that looks more every day like much ado about very little? Do you REALLY trust your rulers and their pet “experts” that much—even after EVERY SINGLE ONE of their computer-model projections have proven wrong, and their doomsday predictions have had to be hastily revised over and over again?

Make no mistake, people: when I said “permanent” and “forever” just now, I meant it. History has proven again and again and again that rights relinquished will never be given back; they must be TAKEN back, almost always via violent force. But what really curdles my cream is the abandonment of the fundamental principle that—no matter the crisis, the calamity, the season, the general public mood, or the supposed justification—directly and incontrovertibly flouting the US Constitution is NEVER acceptable. If you’re the gummint—federal state, or local—YOU DON’T GET TO SHUT DOWN THE CHURCHES, for one example, regardless of the supposed “risk” to however many of whomever from whatsit.

Yeah, yeah, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Got it. If I remember correctly, exceptions to the clear injunction against any restriction of the people’s unalienable rights are countenanced therein, if reluctantly, in time of war or insurrection only. Well and good.

But a blanket, across-the-board imposition of house arrest? No right to peaceably assemble? Businesses shuttered indefinitely by government decree, the purchase of certain arbitrarily-selected consumer goods forbidden? Freedom of movement now punishable by legal sanction, up to and including arrest? Gun stores closed, ammo sales locked down? No right to attend worship services?

No, sorry, but…NO. Contrary to what panic-ninnies both Left and Right are now screeching, nobody wants to get sick. Nobody wants to die, or to recklessly endanger others, to have “blood on their hands.” So stipulated. Nonetheless, Constitutional principles are supposed to be fundamental, not to be contravened by any government that hopes to sustain its claim to legitimacy. Here’s how I see it:

The tension between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, between the states and federal government, is by design. It is supposed to be challenging to “get things done” in government. Sure, crises require sacrifices, but we must be careful to preserve the structure that protects our liberties in the long run.

We are thankful that the U.S. Department of Justice recognizes the serious threat to the constitutional structure these sorts of action present. Americans do not lose constitutional rights during crises. “There is no pandemic exception,” DOJ writes in its statement of interest in the case, “to the fundamental liberties the Constitution safeguards.”

It is a great tribute to our Constitution that these checks and balances are working to create the friction necessary for Americans to take notice of the deeper issues at stake here. But we must take note and demand much better from our public officials. Federal and state executives would be wise to take a step back and consider the long-term implications of the actions they are taking. They must preserve and respect the constitutional structure that guards our liberty.

The American spirit in 2020 still shouts, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” as Patrick Henry did in 1775. No exception for Covid-19.

Forever and ever, amen. Peggy Ryan calls BS:

What are we doing, America? We’ve destroyed a booming economy, turned a record number of jobs into record unemployment numbers, and given up our basic tenets of liberty — all so we won’t get sick?

We’re allowing governors to restrict people’s movement; prevent citizens from assembling; and order mandatory masks, testing, and vaccines. These governors now claim the right to track our every move, to surveil every American in order to ensure compliance. This shutdown is not just a slippery slope to socialism and communism; it’s a downhill slalom.

How did we get here? Americans aren’t cowards who would eagerly surrender liberty for immunity. But therein lies the genius of the left. It’s not just about you and me, now, is it?

The left has hostages: our aging parents, grandparents, sick relatives. Either we put down the Constitution and slowly back away or the hostages will die.

Too many Americans have died for our liberty for us to squander this treasure over a virus. Over a million American soldiers — young, healthy — ran headlong into gunfire, navigated mine fields, dodged bombs, and otherwise gave their lives so Americans can be free.

Not a single patriot sacrificed his life, his future, to keep Americans from getting sick.

The government claims it’s protecting us from the virus. With the Constitution in lockdown, who’s protecting us from the government?

Just us, as always. Like I said last night, the Constitution doesn’t protect the people; it is the people who must protect the Constitution. Ryan closes out with a dead-on quote:

“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” —Daniel Webster

Precisely so. It’s dismaying to see how many of us have forgotten that truism, or never understood it in the first place.

Blood on your hands update! Reasonable people can disagree honestly and respectfully. Then again, some people are just irredeemable assholes.

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Just this once I’ll forego my customary “fuck you in the liver with a rusty railroad spike” comeback and let Linda handle it.

But, in fact, we are making a choice that returning to work is worth the risk – EVEN OF OUR OWN FAMILY. We take sensible precautions. We do the outside errands of our elderly family (and, often, of neighbors, as well).

But, in the end, some risks just have to be taken – for example, those who are considered essential and frontline. No one tells the nurses and truckers to stay home. We accept that they are putting their own, and their family’s lives at risk – for YOU to stay home, safe.

Don’t see those sanctimonious ones criticizing them. Instead, they are filled with praise for their “bravery”.

Financial problems have destroyed more than one American family. Long-term financial problems – not just “Oh, I can’t buy the latest shoes!” or “Bummer, I have to drink homemade coffee, rather than my $5 Latte” – can cause the emotional, physical, and mental breakdown that leads to a lifetime of despair.

It’s not selfish to prefer to keep your family intact. It’s not a bad thing to think that children deserve to have their mother and father living together. It’s not evil to NOT want (corrected from opposite meaning) to see the frugality of a lifetime wiped away, because NO ONE should die. Ever.

Even old people with multiple illnesses/conditions. Even if they were already hanging on by their toenails to life.

This is not Un-Christian. This is a realistic understanding that we cannot ask the entire country to upend itself for months, solely to make you feel better about having sacrificed US. Yes, US. Because most of those who are saying these things, are still getting a paycheck. Government workers, large corporations, schools.

If this is not devastating your finances, I just don’t want to hear from you. You haven’t skin in the game. You have nothing to lose by Virtue Signaling your willingness to see the rest of us suffer to make you feel better.

As she suggests, a sense of proportion is one of several important things that have gone right out the window in this debate. And that ain’t helping any either.

The American Uprising gathers steam

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Fight the Power.

CASTLE ROCK—Sedalia knife shop owner Hal Van Herke on Tuesday posted a Declaration of Business Independence on Facebook saying he would reopen CastleGate Knife and Tool Tuesday in defiance of Governor Polis’ stay-at-home order.

Van Herke’s declaration says in part:

“WHEREAS: Small businesses have carried the burden of this effort more heavily than special interests, large corporations and major banks who once again received preferential treatment and largess from the Federal Government at the further cost of small business tax payers, and

WHEREAS: Non-essential Government, Academic, and Corporate staff continue to remain unconscionably fully paid at the same time that Small Business, the Self Employed and the Unemployed suffer, and

WHEREAS: Our attempts at petition and righteous redress, to Our Government has fallen on uncaring ears, and in some cases has been actively suppressed, and

WHEREAS: We refuse to become second-class citizens, beholden to the entitled class for our safety, freedom, and wellbeing, and

WHEREAS: We have the ability to operate our business in such a manner as to reduce and mitigate the risk to our Community, Customers, and Staff, and to adjust operations in a responsible and balanced manner commensurate with local conditions.”

“I felt like it was important to for somebody to stand up along with other businesses and say we’re not going to be discounted in this and we’re not going to sit back and watch our life’s work destroyed while many of the people making decisions are still being paid their full time salary while they’re sitting at home,” said Van Herke.

Amen to that, brother.

In his declaration, Van Herke quotes President Ronald Reagan’s farewell address of January 11, 1989 in which Reagan says, “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”

Amen to that, too. Ain’t it sad how quickly, and how thoroughly, Americans seem to have forgotten that home truth.

(Via Stephen Green)

Update! Defiance: the American spirit.

Shelly Luther, a salon owner in Dallas, is drawing a line in the sand. Behind on her mortgage and no Small Business Association funding in sight,  Luther has decided to re-open her business Friday, April 24, in violation of the stay-at-home order in Texas that has closed all non-essential businesses, Inside Edition reported.

“I’m behind on my mortgage,” Luther said. “I know a lot of my stylists haven’t paid their mortgage. It’s either come in and make money to be able to feed your family or stay home and freak out.”

A mother of three, Luther has 19 stylists who make their living at her salon.

“Obviously I don’t want anyone to get sick and I don’t want the virus to spread,” the business owner told Inside Edition. “It will be one of the safer places for people to go rather than going to Walmart or Home Depot.”

And Luther is willing to risk her freedom as an American.

“No one wants to go to jail, but if push comes to shove I’m willing to take that risk,” she said.

Which is the question podcast host Cari Kelemen asked in a tweet.

Noting that Luther’s schedule was “PACKED,” Kelemen asked how local authorities would respond to this carefully calculated violation.

“This morning, a single mom Salon Owner in Dallas, who cannot afford to stay closed another day, is opening her salon ‘ahead of schedule.’ Her schedule today is PACKED with happy women. Will sheriffs be there to arrest her? How will the women with appointments respond if they do?”

That really is the crucial question here, isn’t it? For their own part, the cops ought to know that enforcing illegal edicts carries a price tag of its own.

In my previous column, posted on April 6, I lamented that the actions of some police officers, ordered to carry out some of the sillier or more onerous restrictions attendant to the pandemic, will further erode the already strained relationships their departments have within their communities. As one might have predicted, things have only gotten worse. Since that column was posted, we have seen police officers issuing $500 citations for the crime of attending a drive-in church service, and others arresting an Idaho woman who dared take her kids to a closed playground. Indeed, social media is awash with similar tales, which are all the more insulting to the average citizen when accompanied by stories of criminals released from jail only to re-offend within hours.

With the accumulation of these stories, the populace grows ever more restive at the restraints placed upon them. If the law and civil authority are to be respected, the laws must be respectable, at least to a majority of those on whom they are imposed.

Which brings us back to the police officers in the field and caught between their feckless superiors and a fractious public. There comes a time in every cop’s career when he receives instructions he knows will waste his time and may even be antithetical to his mission to reduce the fear of crime in his community. Often these instructions are relayed by a sergeant who himself is equally dubious about them, but who is obeying orders to disseminate them. When this happens, it is the wise officer who can say, “Yes, sir,” and then go out and do the right thing, modifying the instructions or ignoring them altogether with the sergeant’s tacit blessing. Every good cop, and every good sergeant, is familiar and comfortable with this arrangement.

Chasing people away from churches, beaches, hiking trails, and parks, and arresting those who do not meekly comply, is not enforcing the “law,” it is enforcing the whimsical edicts of people unqualified to craft and issue them. When all of this is over, can the damage be undone?

Doubtful at best, and certainly not easily. Look at it this way: when a trust is betrayed, how willing should the betrayed be to grant it again, at least without a great deal of hesitance and skepticism? Does that sound like a smart move, or a sucker’s bet?

Non-essential update! I didn’t think of this angle before, and I really should have.

Whenever the threat of a government shutdown looms, Democrats and their media allies give us daily doses of how devastating such a thing will be on “non-essential” government workers.

Then they go into overdrive when a shutdown actually occurs: wall-to-wall sob stories giving examples of government workers supposedly harmed even though, everyone knows, those employees will soon be paid. They essentially have a paid vacation.

Now, after weeks of the intentional destruction of the private sector with tens of millions of jobs lost, with businesses and families being devastated and having no idea how they will feed their families and themselves, there are few of those same sob stories, despite real hardship, and here is what we get instead:

If a Republican governor wants to open a state’s businesses, we get attack pieces saying he wants people to die. It’s as if the media were acting as a major participant in encouraging the U.S. to commit economic suicide. For decades, they have sought to weaken the U.S. and remake America.

If most of the media had an honest bone in their bodies, instead of an agenda, they would report that states that did not have a complete shutdown, or stay-at-home orders, had as good results or better results than states that put in the tyrannical, dictatorial orders. They would say there is no proof that the stay-at-home orders and harsh measures caused the flattening of the COVID-19 curve. It appears that most of the flattening has occurred naturally, same as with the normal flu.

That’s a pretty big “if” there, fella. Probably the biggest, most glaring one ever attempted indoors.

Tyranny, straight up

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You guys know I am neither a reflexive cop-sucker nor a knee-jerk supporter of the police. I’ve known enough of them over the years, more than a few quite closely, to know that they’re every bit as diverse in their attitudes, beliefs, and overall outlook as any other group of humans is. Some are selfless and heroic. Some struggle mightily to rise above their own flaws and frailties, with varying levels of success. And some have absolutely no business whatsoever wearing a badge, carrying a gun, and wielding power over others.

The Chink-N-Pox clampdown is underlining those distinctions in bright, bold red, whether we like it or not.

On Tuesday, an Idaho mother was arrested in front of her children for refusing to leave a playground that was apparently closed by the city due to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.

Video of the confrontation shows a woman later identified as Sarah Brady, 40, being cuffed for refusing to leave an area playground. “Do it,” Brady dared an officer threatening to arrest her.

“Her kids are here! Her kids are here! What is going to happen? Who’s got her kids?” another woman at the playground can be heard saying as Brady is taken away in handcuffs.

“After receiving several calls to Ada County Dispatch, Meridian Police responded to Kleiner Park on April 21 2020 at around 3:50PM,” said a press release from Meridian Police Department.

“Upon arrival, officers saw that metal signage and caution tape announcing the playground closure due to COVID-19, was removed,” the department continued, adding, “Officers informed those gathered several times that the play structure was closed, and that they were welcome to utilize other areas of the park if they chose.”

After asking questions about the public playground’s closure and refusing to leave when asked, Brady was arrested and hit with one count of misdemeanor trespassing.

Brady was “non-compliant and forced officers to place her under arrest to resolve the issue,” the department said. “She was arrested for trespassing.”

In fairness, Brady’s arrest was the culmination of a planned protest against the lockdown, and Brady was inarguably acting in a, shall we say, intentionally provocative manner. Near as I can make out, the cops performed their duty as professionals, with restraint; no surprise, since they had been sent out by their masters to do a job that was in all likelihood distasteful to at least some of their number. All in all, I’m more inclined to put most of the blame on the city authorities whose nonchalant assumption of dictatorial powers placed the Meridian PD squarely between a rock and a hard place. I note, too, that not ONE of those city authorities seemed to be present to oversee the proper execution of his edicts. This, then, is key:

An extended video of the incident shows an officer earlier in the exchange apologetically saying that “someone” had taken down the caution tape from the closed-off area before Brady — who is reportedly married to a law enforcement officer in another department — and others argued that they are on public grounds supported by their tax dollars.

That same officer suggested the issue should be taken up with the mayor, rather than law enforcement.

Bingo. On the other hand, though, staging a protest DOES amount to “taking it up with the mayor” in practical terms, probably in way more effective fashion than sending a strongly-worded letter or speaking at a city council meeting. I truly hate that petty local and state-level tyrants are driving wedges between honorably-intentioned cops and the citizenry they’d prefer to be protecting than oppressing, a wedge that’s already doing damage even in small-town Idaho.

No, I don’t hate cops, I really don’t. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been even-handed and rational with this post so far. That said, though, I just can’t find a way to make myself comfortable with this:

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WELL! I know I certainly feel a lot safer with this dangerous predator removed from our midst, don’t you?

Total number of deaths in all of Idaho as of today: 54. Population of Idaho as of 2020: just under 1.83 million.

Sefton, from whence the above pic etc etc, says:

I’m pausing for a moment because I am honestly on the verge of tears as I collect my thoughts and try to write something coherent. I’m also enraged because what we are enduring amounts to a Reichstag Fire moment. Please do not fucking lecture me about the massive deaths from Chinese Lung AIDS that warranted the actions taken. The models and statistics are about as reliable as a Magic 8 Ball and the confirmed mortality rate is somewhere in the 0.1-0.3% range which is akin to a bad flu season. What is being done to us has never happened before; not during all the other outbreaks, not after the stock market crashes, not after 9/11. Never. This is tyranny, straight up. It’s at our throats with a My Pillow in one hand and a Khalid Shiekh Mohammed rusty hacksaw in the other. The past three years were a complete refutation and rejection of the anti-American progressive globalist enterprise. In fact, it might have been down for the count. This virus was not planned, but it was an opportunity that was seized upon not only to destroy Trump, but to punish us for electing him, and now the opportunity to subjugate us permanently.

There is indeed a plague upon this nation. It is the Globalist Left that includes the Democrat Party, the propagandist media, governmental bureaucracy, academia and anyone and everyone who support it. Ronald Reagan once said:

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

You tell me if what is going on right here and right now is not an extinction-level event. Because it sure as hell is. Tick-tock-tick-tock.

Thanks to the now-evident authoritarian streak that lurks within the hearts of so many American politicians and goobermint officials at every level, we’re all going to be confronted with some difficult choices as this illicit lockdown drags on and on—a lockdown which now threatens to rip the already-tatterdemalion fabric of American society completely asunder. If they don’t care about the rest of us, you’d think the politicians and bureau-hacks would at least be canny enough to recognize how much danger they’re putting their own decidedly non-essential carcasses in with this crap.

And yet.

Update! Government is force.

Let’s start with the good news. Americans are starting to push back against all the authoritarian COVID-19-related edicts and, if social media is an indication, shaming people who call the authorities to report neighbors who are violating social-distancing rules. In Michigan, voters are circulating a recall petition against a governor whose illogical list of permitted activities bans the purchase of seeds to grow food — but allows the purchase of lottery tickets.

It’s a start, but only a small beginning. It’s a shame that it would take such monumental government overreach to spark a backlash. We’re all used to the nonstop, slow-motion infringements, which are imposed (albeit in different ways, perhaps) by leaders of both parties. Finally, as we’re all prisoners in our homes and subject to hastily drafted and arbitrary suspensions of our fundamental liberties, Americans are learning a civics lesson.

Fears of a pandemic have exposed government for what it really is: a collection of petty tyrants who will grab any power they can to impose any idea they prefer. And it all comes to force. The news reports are infuriating. A man is handcuffed after playing ball with his six-year-old daughter in a park. A paddle-boarder, enjoying the surf alone off Malibu beach, is arrested and taken to the police station, as if the latter isn’t more dangerous than the former.

In one social-media posting, two New York police officers apparently threatened to cite a couple for sitting next to each other outdoors — even though the two are married. Increasingly, American policing is all about blind obedience to authority. It’s about the letter rather than the spirit of the law. If you think officers will resist an order to confiscate your weapons once the order comes down, then you are woefully naïve.

“[P]ublic officials at all levels of government are now exercising emergency powers rarely seen outside the context of total war,” Healy wrote. Yet the “crisis hasn’t yet led to massive new presidential power grabs” and “Trump has been a piker next to FDR, George W. Bush or even Barack Obama.” My only wish is that Americans would consistently stand up against all such power grabs, regardless of the party affiliation of those who engage in them.

Newsom and governors in Oregon and Washington have come to a collaborative agreement for “reopening” their respective states, but the guideposts are imprecise and still come down to this: People will be free to go about their lives again when they say so. Even in a health emergency, this is not how an even free-ish country should operate. I’m astounded at how quickly and totally every constitutional protection has evaporated.

Since so many folks misunderstand what the Constitution is, does, and does not do, I’ll say it again: The Constitution protects NOTHING. Being no more than words written on paper, how can it possibly “protect” or “guarantee” anything? The Constitution enumerates, specifies, codifies rules and principles. It must BE protected, by a morally-upright, vigilant people who harbor no illusions about the true nature of government. The Constitution hasn’t let us down. Its home truths are all right there still, clear as crystal, inspiring and ennobling just as they will forever be. Intact, indomitable, unbreakable.

Still there…waiting. Waiting for us to step up, to honor it properly by requiring every one of our so-called leaders, highest to lowest, to maintain the respect that is its due. To fulfill its promise in the only way possible: by meeting its challenge. By proving ourselves worthy of that promise.

I can’t say I expected as sudden a power-hog stampede as this, but the rebellion against Obama’s “fundamental transformation” that resulted in Trump’s election—along with the repeated failure of every attempt so far to discredit, hogtie, or remove him from office—seems to have driven the Ruling Class into frenzied desperation. The thing I find most surprising is that, after so many years of incremental federal encroachment, the big-daddy power-grab of them all emanated not from Mordor On The Potomac but from governors, mayors, and city councils. I have to admit I did NOT see that coming.

Two kinds of people in America now

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Them that still has a job and get a paycheck…and them that don’t. Might behoove those in column A to pretend they have a wee mite of empathy and concern for the column B folks who are rightly worried about their ability to feed their newly-strugging families and keep a roof over their heads, I’m thinking.

In a turn of events that should surprise no one, thousands of people across the country have taken to the streets to protest the draconian lockdown measures that have destroyed the economy and millions of lives along with it. Many in the media seem to be perplexed about this development. They are doing quite well, personally — still pulling an income, still able to do cable news hits from their home studios — and they can’t imagine why anyone would be so upset about being asked to stay home and watch Netflix and play video games, as Patton Oswalt put it in a tweet that has half a million likes.

But those who lack the privilege of a media personality or famous comedian may find that Netflix and video games are paltry comfort when they return home after spending six hours in line at a food bank. Agree or disagree with the methods of the protestors, but any reasonable and decent person should at least understand why they are protesting. In the past month, 22 million people have lost their jobs. Plus another several million who didn’t qualify for unemployment or couldn’t apply because the unemployment sites are crashing. Contrary to how Dr. Fauci has characterized it, these numbers represent more than a mere “inconvenience.” Many Americans have lost everything. And not because of some natural disaster or act of God, but because the government has forbid them from going to work.

Illegally and unconstitutional forbidden them to go to work. Let’s not leave that part out. As time goes on, state governors continue their wanton destruction of the economy and impoverishment of tens of millions, the rebellion escalates, and it becomes time to get the torches alight and the tar a-boiling, it will begin to matter.

A woman at a protest in Maryland held a cardboard sign saying she wanted to save her business. “I need to work to live,” the sign read. Democrat politicians would call that woman “selfish.” Talking heads on MSNBC would say she is part of a “death cult.” But it seems to me that she’s just a woman who wants to salvage the business that she has poured her sweat and tears into. And she wants to survive. Both of these seem like perfectly reasonable goals. Disagree with her approach if you want — though, honestly, I can’t see the problem with the approach — but to sneer at her and the other protestors, as so many in the media have done, is morally repugnant.

I would like to propose an unofficial rule for any further discussion of these protests and the lockdowns that prompted them. Before you give your opinion, you should first reveal whether you still have an income. The rest of us would like to know if you are earning an income while you smear your fellow Americans for wanting to earn an income. Indeed, it’s rather striking that the loudest voices in favor of the shutdown are primarily people who have lost nothing because of it. It is bad enough for those who’ve lost nothing to wag their fingers at those who’ve lost everything, but to call them selfish? Well, that level of hypocrisy is just too much to bear.

It is indeed. And there’s no good reason for the people who are toting quite a load already, with little to no real justification, to do so. More from Insty:

It’s no surprise that a major center of resistance to the shutdown has emerged in Michigan, whose Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has shown all the sensitivity of an angry third-grade teacher in administering a shutdown regime that often makes no sense — banning sales of seeds in stores that are open for other purposes, or allowing sailboating but banning powerboating. Her response to the protests, a threat to extend shutdowns further, seems calculated to inflame things further.

People don’t appreciate being lectured and condescended to and bossed around. They especially don’t appreciate being urged to sacrifice by people who make no sacrifices themselves. And that’s a different sort of class divide: When rulers ask for sacrifices without making any, they’re displaying a distinct lack of, well, class.

Sadly, to succeed in their job, our leaders will need to possess humility, empathy and self-discipline. Those traits are in sadly short supply in our leadership class. We will all pay a price for that, though if recent history is any guide, our leaders will pay less than the rest of us.

Yep. But the price our “leaders” and “elites” must pay can rise with shocking rapidity, and if they continue blindly along their present path, they’ll find that the pain of settling accounts might not be limited to the merely allegorical.

Update! We must all pray that Robert Zimmerman is wrong. But deep in our hearts, we know he’s right.

I don’t want to mince any words here. This Great Wuhan Depression was ordered by the governors of our fifty states. It is their economic collapse, through and through. They knew that if they shut down everything for a month or more the economy would collapse, and yet they did it anyway. And sadly, President Trump aided them in this effort by publicly activating the National Guard when requested by them in order to enforce these lock down edicts.

Moreover, I fear that this economic crash will be exacerbated by the accompanying loss of freedom. You can’t turn an economy around on a dime, but if freedom is allowed you raise the odds that things can recover faster.

Sadly, the government edicts, many of which literally nullified the Bill of Rights, have set a precedent that is very hostile to freedom, and one that our governments now appear to be following with enthusiasm. The so-called “plans” being announced by various state governments, many following federal guidelines developed by the Trump administration, all dictate which businesses can operate, when businesses shall reopen, and how people will behave. The idea of letting freedom do the job seems quite quaint to our modern rulers. They would much rather rule as dictators, setting the rules without referring to law or legislation.

Meanwhile, the facts on the ground continue to suggest that the Wuhan flu is not the deadly plague that many politicians and health experts have claimed. With the rate of new cases apparently peaking, we can now make a reasonable prediction of how many the virus will eventually kill (recognizing that for many political reasons some of these numbers have been padded), and find that the numbers will likely end up comparable to a high flu season, and far less than many other causes of death that we routinely take for granted. In addition, there is clear evidence that the lock downs were unnecessary and that our health system was not going to be overrun. In fact, though the data remains incomplete at this moment, the overall mortality rate is actually low this year, when compared to recent years.

Thus, this virus did not warrant the panic that ensued, the destruction of the economy, and the nullification of the Bill of Rights. But yet that is exactly what our elected officials have done, destroyed the economy and nullified our freedoms.

Unless we as citizens take action to oppose this, our country will never be the same, and millions more will suffer as the economy continues its crash, hindered from recovering because we are now no different than socialist Venezuela or communist Russia.

This country will assuredy NOT ever be the same—not least because of how very far down the road to true socialism we had already come before this latest state-mandated, panic-inspired lurch to the extreme Left was perpetrated.

Two sets of laws Part the Bazillionth

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Remember back when I mentioned that, amidst the Christian church/synagogue shutdowns, arrests, fines, and threats from His (dis)Honor Bill DeBalledZero, nobody seemed to be including mosques in all that?

Yeah, well. About all that.

A Syracuse mosque is still open for daily prayers amid the Coronavirus shutdown as Christians are threatened and fined for attending drive-in services.

New York is the country’s Coronavirus epicenter with more than 18,000 deaths, however this mosque is still open for prayers.

This mosque located on the north side was once the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, but it closed down due to lack of parishioners — now it is considered a victory mosque.

It ought to be. Because that’s precisely what it is.

The Muslims who attend this mosque are not practicing social distancing. They are standing and praying closer than 6 feet apart, so why aren’t the police raiding this mosque and threatening the attendees with imprisonment and or fines?

Because Islam, silly. Another report:

While virtually every church in the United States is shut down due to coronavirus, and those few willing to defy lockdown orders are threatened with arrest or hauled to jail, a New York mosque is operating with impunity during the pandemic.

The mosque, in Syracuse, New York, had its operating procedures detailed by gushing local media, which described how the facility has modified its practices to adhere with social distancing during the China virus pandemic.

The building, formerly a Catholic church, is disinfected between services – not by cleaning professionals, but by volunteers – and video reveals those worshipers brave enough to leave their homes during the pandemic are not social distancing.

In video to YouTube uploaded by Syracuse.com, a small group of worshipers is seen praising Allah far less than six feet apart, failing to adhere to social distancing procedures and potentially defeating the purpose of worshiping in a room completely covered in plastic.

While this mosque is allowed to operate during the coronavirus pandemic, albeit under slightly modified procedures, Christians are being forced out of their churches across the country.

Shocking, yet not in the least surprising. Back to Cristina for some specifics:

Parishioners who attended a drive-in service at Temple Baptist Church in Mississippi were fined $500 each by police for violating ‘social distancing’ orders.

20 police cars swarmed King James Bible Baptist Church in Mississippi and pastor Charles Hamilton Jr., was told by a cop that his rights were suspended.

A Kentucky church parking lot was littered with nails on Easter Sunday and police officers harassed churchgoers by recording their license plates and leaving notes on their cars.

That’s but a few examples from an ever-expanding list. The conclusion is as obvious as it is appalling:

Clearly Christians are being singled out and persecuted.

Yup. It amounts to nothing more nor less than the mopping-up phase of the PC Left’s long campaign against America That Was, as Proggie walks the battlefield shooting the wounded.

Choices, choices

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Our would-be masters will narrow and restrict them as much as possible, until we’re well and truly cornered.

Presently, billions of people around the world are ‘living’ under mandatory stay-at-home orders, purportedly to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Aside from the question as to whether quarantine is the most effective method for fighting this particular pandemic, what exactly will be required from us before any semblance of normalcy returns?

One possible requirement – aside from being discouraged from ever shaking hands again – is the mandatory participation in a global vaccine program, underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Big Pharma and an assortment of other people who supposedly have the best interest of the global citizenry in mind. Should we be concerned?

Despite so much uncertainty with regards to the real mortality rate, US medical spokespersons are uttering incredibly irresponsible statements that only serve to instill a sense of fear throughout society. Dr. Fauci, for example, said in the course of his above interview that “I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you.” Meanwhile, World Health Organization (WHO) special envoy David Nabarro told the BBC that “some form of facial protection, I’m sure, is going to become the norm.”

Now, judging how the medical experts are preventing entire nations from acquiring herd immunity, together with the media’s refusal to consider the merits of hydroxychloroquine, this leads to what should have been the last resort: a vaccine program, which could very well turn out to be mandatory; a requirement forced on individuals before they are able to participate in any sort of public events again.

This much was suggested by none other than the world’s premier vaccine pusher, Bill Gates, who said in a recent interview that any sort of mass gatherings “may not come back at all” without a wide-scale vaccination program. Some would call that a form of blackmail, used against a desperate people who would do just about anything right now to get back to life as they once knew it. Those days appear far in the future. Just this week, the UK announced that people will have to “live with some restrictions” until a vaccine is developed.

To be clear, few people would question that vaccines have been an inherent good for civilization; they have helped eradicate some of the worst diseases mankind has ever faced, like smallpox and polio. But today things are not so straightforward as simply eradicating a pandemic. Presently, there is a major push being made – with Bill Gates at the vanguard of those efforts – to introduce a vaccine that contains nanotechnology to ‘mark’ and surveil those injected. As just one example, consider the work being carried out by ID2020, a San Francisco-based biometric company that counts Microsoft as one of its founding members. It recently announced it was exploring “identification technologies for infants” that is based on “infant immunization.” In other words, tracking devices embedded inside of vaccines.

While the world would welcome a vaccine that eradicates the coronavirus, many would find it unacceptable to be forced to have a vaccine that contains any sort of surveillance technology. At this point in our battle against a pandemic, which has created millions of newly unemployed, the last thing people need in their lives right now is yet another source of worry. Let’s develop a vaccine against coronavirus, Mr. Gates, but please hold the tracking add-ons.

Don’t you people get it yet? The tracking add-ons are the whole point.

Let a million middle fingers rise

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The spirit of American rebellion still lives, and is beginning to awaken at last.



Now get a load of what happened next. Trust me, it’ll warm the cockles of even the most cynical heart.

It may not seem like all that much…yet. But it will be small, seemingly insignificant acts of defiance like this that will snowball into full-on revolt—which is something America has never in its history needed more desperately than it does right now.

Update! Washington state insurrection.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s draconian executive orders mandating business closures and stay-at-home status for all residents has been rejected by county commissioners in Franklin County. The motion passed unanimously. Now, the legal battles may or may not begin but in the immediate future, the county is official reopened for business.

“I move that Franklin County end recognition of the governor’s stay at home emergency proclamation that is now deemed unconstitutional. We support the reopening for all builders and small businesses that want to work,” Commissioner Clint Didier said during a meeting Tuesday morning.

This opens the door for other counties and cities to oppose the order based on RCW 43.06.220(4), which limits the governor’s state-of-emergency powers to 30 days unless the state legislature passes an extension.

Well, I gotta admit I didn’t see THAT coming.

Payback time update! Cockroaches get hit with a spotlight, to their great dismay.

Talk radio great Jamie Allman filed a Sunshine law request for the actual emails of St. Louis County residents who’ve snitched on local entrepreneurs trying to make a living. Most of the complaints were unfounded, involving people “turning in” companies that were deemed essential by the county.

But reading the actual complaints reveals just how terrified the media and corrupt academics have made good people. The complainants are truly scared. They believe that Coronavirus kills almost everyone who gets infected. They believe that washing your car, hitting golf balls at a range, or playing singles tennis can spread the disease to many people.

The 900-page file of complaints is, ultimately, sad. What could be more depressing than a mother begging government officials to put her daughter out of work? Or women asking the county to shut down their fiancé’s company?

Well, about the only thing I can think of is the thought of such despicable, craven panic-ninnies getting away with diming out friends and loved ones without paying a stiff price for such perfidy. Doxx the living fuck out of every last one of these diaper-dragging ratbags; if the old “snitches get stitches” bylaw can’t be practically enforced, then public exposure, scorn, and humiliation is the very least they have coming to ’em.

T’aint funny, McGee

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Is it satire, or is it real? The Shadow knows.

Michigan Governor: ‘Revolting Against A Tyrannical Government Is Simply Un-American’
DETROIT, MI—On Meet the Ptess Sunday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer reminded everyone that “revolutions and revolts are simply un-American.”

Whitmer called on the protesters in her state to stop their illegal assembling, reminding them that protesting so-called tyranny is a foreign idea to the history of the United States.

“Protesting and revolting against your wise rulers goes against everything America was built on,” she said. “It flies in the face of every American tradition. Revolting against tyranny has no place in this great country.”

It’d be a lot funnier if I didn’t know that this is precisely the way Whitler and her shitlib cohort really do think.

Bloated numbers

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A New York affliction.

According to The New York Times coronavirus report, as of Sunday, April 19, 2:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, there were 35,676 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. Of those deaths, 18,690 were in the New York metropolitan area.

That means that more than half (52 percent) of all deaths in America have occurred in the New York metropolitan area.

What makes this statistic particularly noteworthy is that the entire death toll for 41 of the other 47 states is 7,661. In other words, while New York has 52 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in America, 41 states put together have only 21 percent of the COVID-19 deaths. And all the 47 states other than New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have less than half (48 percent).

Now let us imagine that the reverse were true. Imagine that Georgia and North Carolina—two contiguous states that, like the New York metro area, have a combined total of 21 million people—had 18,690 COVID-19 deaths, while metro New York had 858 deaths (the number of deaths in North Carolina and Georgia combined).

Do you think the New York metro area would close its schools, stores, restaurants and small businesses? Would every citizen of the New York area, with the few exceptions of those engaged in absolutely necessary work, be locked in their homes for months? Would New Yorkers accept the decimation of their economic and social lives because North Carolina and Georgia (or, even more absurdly, Colorado, Montana or the rest of what most New Yorkers regard as “flyover” country) had 18,960 deaths, while they had a mere 858?

It is, of course, possible. But I suspect that anyone with an open mind assumes that New Yorkers would not put up with ruining their economic and social lives and putting tens of millions of people out of work because of coronavirus deaths in North Carolina and Georgia, let alone Montana and Idaho (and, for the record, I would have agreed with them).

Lest we forget, even the underwhelming non-NYC numbers are themselves grossly inflated:

The IHME model is considered the gold standard. In mid-March, without social distancing, they predicted 2.2 million American deaths. By early April they reduced their death projection to 100,000 to 240,000 assuming social distancing measures in place. Their April 17 update now projects 60,308 deaths, 3% of their original prediction.

What changed? Social distancing was in already in place when the death predictions dropped by a factor of four. For perspective, 61,000 Americans died in the 2017-18 flu season.

The CDC had its own models predicting gloom and doom. In mid-March they projected 160 million to 214 million infected and 200,000 to 1.7 million deaths. Did that leave President Trump any choice but to hit the off switch on the U.S. economy? What if the models were wrong?

Another factor influencing models is the death count from this coronavirus. Projected deaths determine projected need, as in the ventilators mentioned above. How accurate are the death counts?

Task force member Dr. Deborah Brix, on April 7, said the U.S. government is classifying the death of any patient who tested positive for coronavirus as a coronavirus death, regardless of any underlying health conditions that genuinely killed them. If one has a heart attack, and happens to test positive for the virus, he or she will be classed as a coronavirus death. Garbage in, garbage out.

Going further, New York City is including in their death counts, “people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it.” Data by presumption? Models based on presumption?

What the hell, why not? Julie Kelly brings it on home for us.

Tests show about 434,000 Americans have contracted the disease so far. Only a few states indicate COVID-19 symptomatic activity; most of the country now is quiet.

Would those facts frighten you into government-ordered submission? If the United States had a population of 300 million and 48 states, would the fact that 18,000 people—sadly, mostly elderly and already sick patients—succumbed to the virus over a period of nearly two months warrant an ongoing lockdown that is destroying the economy, overwhelming unemployment rolls and food bank lines, shutting down schools and colleges for five months, and bankrupting small businesses?

Would it justify increasingly despotic orders from power-grabbing politicians to stop Americans from going to the beach or hosting dinner parties in their own homes let alone canceling graduation ceremonies and weddings and funerals?

Of course, it would pose a public health concern; strategies to mitigate the spread of the virus, particularly among the most susceptible, would be necessary. Plans to prevent a bigger outbreak later in the year would be appropriate.

The coronavirus crisis in the United States is largely a New York City crisis. One reason why many governors are afraid to fully reopen is over the fear that virus-carrying New Yorkers will flee to their largely unimpacted states.

Happy beachgoers in northern Florida are not a threat; subway commuters in New York City are. The fact that there is outrage over the former and not the latter speaks volumes about the politicization of this travesty while we remain under house arrest for the foreseeable future.

Wall it off. Should Air Force One ever go down inside…well, hey, we can always call in Snake Plissken.

“De Blasio Wants New Yorkers To Rat On Neighbors. Don’t Do It”

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Disagree. Strongly.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took to Twitter Saturday to urge his constituents to monitor, photograph and report each other if they aren’t strictly obeying his social distancing guidelines. Just fire off a photo to 3-1-1 of a few guys having a chat in a bodega and Hizzoner will send police officers, with guns and everything, to break it up. What could go wrong?

That rhetorical question is exactly why I disagree with discouraging meddlesome NYC panic-ninnies from snitching out their neighbors. No, no, let a million busybodies bloom, sez I. What more fitting opportunity to not only take a page from Alinsky (make the enemy live up to its own book of rules“) but also enact something of a Cloward-Piven Inversion at the same time? Remember:

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty”.

So, yeah: if DeBalledZero wants to turn New Yorkers into a passel of skulking stoolies, then by all means let them oblige the Commie asstard…by lighting up those 311 switchboards morning, noon, and night with reports of real, imagined, or made-up infractions. That ought to be plenty enough to quickly exhaust police resources and manpower on a never-ending parade of bootless snipe-hunts for trifling infractions against The Rules laid down by the Kommissar of Public Cleanliness, until the whole goddamned system collapses into smoking, stinking rubble.

Should DeBalledZero himself be driven to nervous collapse and involuntary institutionalization by the anarchy and chaos resulting from meticulously strict obedience to the letter of his own dictates, well, so much the better.

Update! WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN THE HORROR.

It is “unconscionable” that Rikers Island inmates who were released due to coronavirus concerns are committing new crimes, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.

“I think it’s unconscionable just on a human level that folks were shown mercy and this is what some of them have done,” the mayor said during his morning briefing Monday, which came on the heels of a Post report outlining the issue.

You stupid fucking moron. If you’re uncertain about how “unconscionable” it might be, Comrade Mayor, try asking someone who gets robbed, mugged, assaulted, or worse by one of the thugs you just cut loose how they feel about it.

On the other hand, though, they’re the ones who voted you into office, so I guess they’re just getting the government they deserve—good and hard.

De Blasio said the number of re-offenders remains relatively small and that the city was “buckling down” on monitoring and supervising released prisoners.

“We do see some recidivism. I have not seen a huge amount, but any amount is obviously troubling,” he said.

Oh, OBVIOUSLY so, Perfessor. Because there should never have been so much as one act of “recidivism” in the first fucking place. And there wouldn’t have been either, if your dumb ass had sense enough to pour piss out of a boot.

Sheesh.

(Via Bill)

Same old same old

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Wait, didn’t we have the whole RUSSIANS UNDER EVERY BED thing already?

NBC News Analyst Claims U.S. Lock-Down Protests Created by Russians…
Oddly enough I thought about this yesterday when Washington State Governor Jay Inslee was complaining about citizen protests being a form of “domestic rebellion.” The modern liberal mindset cannot fathom how removing liberty and freedom, from a nation founded upon freedom and liberty, would start to ignite protests. They need to blame something.

In the Democrat collective worldview big government control of their lives is a utopia to be achieved. Therefore those same Chè T-shirt wearing ideologues cannot understand push-back based on individualism. A justification for visible frustration is needed.  What could possibly be causing this anger?… Why yes, the Russians of course. Gottabe.

Greartly as it disturbs me to have to do it, I gotta part ways here with Sundance, if only just a wee mite. It’s not that they don’t or can’t understand push-back based on individualism; as collectivists and authoritarians, they not only understand it, THEY HATE AND FEAR IT. Individualism is the very thing they’re most vehemently opposed to: individual liberty, self-determination, and the basic concept of rights not granted by an all-powerful State are the enemy, an enemy they want to see crushed.

Just how tolerant was the USSR of openly-expressed dissent, anyway? Or Cuba? Venezuela, Red China, Vietnam, Cambodia? Here as everywhere else, the Left understands these things quite well, thanks—not from an attitude of reverence, not as goals to be met or ambitions to work towards, but as objects of hatred most ferocious and implacable. And they intend to put a stop to them once and for all, by any and all means necessary.

All of the various restrictions coming from state governors in response to the COVID-19 do not come from State House and/or State Senate debate and decisions. These are not laws.

The rules restricting liberty, in response to the COVID crisis, have been pronounced without any representative voice supporting them.

All of the rules are arbitrary, and many of these rules will be challenged in court.

However, until those court challenges take place, the only option for a redress of grievance comes in the form of public protest. Currently, there is no way for any citizen to appeal to a representative voice against the decrees from a state governor; other than a public protest.

Rebellion against unilateral and authoritarian power is America. Rebellion or push-back against non-representative government is the thread connecting the patchwork of our constitutional republic. Protest is so critical to our nation that it is protected within the very first amendment to our constitution.

The funny thing to me throughout the whole Mueller/Russiagate/Shampeachment fraud was how shamelessly the Left—who for decades had advocated for the Soviet Union in every conceivable fashion, constantly insisting that the US should blindly follow along the same poisoned path—turned on a dime, the moment it became politically useful to them, to shriek with horror at the (baseless) suggestion that an American presidential candidate might have colluded with the Rooskies to aid his election campaign.

And now, here are these same fork-tongued bullshit artists again, haplessly trying to peddle yet another fraudulent charge of sinister Rooskie manipulation because some Americans aren’t willing to go along with the lawless trampling of their God-given rights without protest.

As Sundance reminds us, America was founded on the principle that being ruled from afar without representation to provide the people with a voice in government is the very definition of tyranny, and is therefore intolerable. Such an arrangement renders the government implementing it entirely illegitimate, thereby granting its citizenry not just the right but the solemn, absolute duty to remove its burdensome yoke: “…to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” more appropriate to the governance of a free people. Doubt me on that? Don’t.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

…He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

Can any of us credibly propose that the despotism of George III was a far grosser provocation than the outrages currently being perpetrated against us by our own governors, mayors, city councils, and even unelected bureaucrats? Is it reasonable to expect those Americans who still cherish their already-dwindling rights under the US Constitution to submit to these latter-day depredations with nary a murmur of dissent?

Sundance has it right: protest against illegitimate authority IS America. It’s bred in the bone, the fabric and foundation of the Republic, hard-coded into our national DNA. Can it be any surprise, then, that the Left hates it so desperately, and will hurl any accusation—no matter how transparently hypocritical, self-contradictory, or spurious—to crush it?

One of these things is not a LOT like the other

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The ever-helpful and considerate SteveF created a handy Chink-N-Pox/Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) compare-contrast chart for us which, unfortunately, I fear we’ll soon be seeing quite a bit of now that the trial run has worked out so swimmingly for TPTB.

AGW WuFlu
Used to increase government power ✓ ✓
The public isn’t sure what’s going on but we know we’re being lied to ✓ ✓
Attacks on doubters ✓ ✓
Economic ruin in fighting it ✓ ✓
Fear tactics, embellished stories, and doom and gloom scenarios ✓ ✓
Actual deaths ✓
Dramatically over-counted deaths ✓ ✓
Disaster doesn’t live up to the hype – deaths fail to materialize ✓ ✓
Money grab ✓ ✓
Constantly redefined criteria for disaster ✓ ✓
Blamed for problems that would have happened anyway ✓ ✓
Gaslighting ✓ ✓
The possible catastrophe is so dire that any amount of money spent to avert it is well spent ✓ ✓

Hope nobody out there was kidding themselves that the Green Raw Deal was dead and buried.

Had, took, hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray

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To all the shrieking panic-ninnies cowering under their beds in full Level-4 Biohazard gear: hope it was worth it.

The … crisis we face is unparalleled in modern times,” said the World Health Organization’s assistant director, while its director general proclaimed it “likely the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and its agencies have ever faced.” This was based on a CDC computer model projection predicting as many as 1.4 million deaths from just two countries.

So when did they say this about COVID-19? Trick question: It was actually about the Ebola virus in Liberia and Sierra Leone five years ago, and the ultimate death toll was under 8,000.

With COVID-19 having peaked (the highest date was April 4), despite the best efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to increase numbers by first saying any death with the virus could be considered a death from the virus and then again this week by saying a positive test isn’t even needed, you can see where this is going.

Since the AIDS epidemic, people have been pumping out such models with often incredible figures. For AIDS, the Public Health Service announced (without documenting) there would be 450,000 cases by the end of 1993, with 100,000 in that year alone. The media faithfully parroted it. There were 17,325 by the end of that year, with about 5,000 in 1993. SARS (2002-2003) was supposed to kill perhaps “millions,” based on analyses. It killed 744 before disappearing.

Later, avian flu strain A/H5N1, “even in the best-case scenarios” was to “cause 2 (million) to 7 million deaths” worldwide. A British professor named Neil Ferguson scaled that up to 200 million. It killed 440. This same Ferguson in 2002 had projected 50-50,000 deaths from so-called “Mad Cow Disease.” On its face, what possible good is a spread that large? (We shall return to this.) But the final toll was slightly over 200.

In the current crisis the most alarming model, nay probably the most influential in the implementation of the draconian quarantines worldwide, projected a maximum of 2.2 million American deaths and 550,000 United Kingdom deaths unless there were severe restrictions for 18 months or until a vaccine was developed. The primary author: Neil Ferguson. Right, Mad Cow/Avian Flu Fergie.

Then a funny thing happened. A mere nine days after announcing his model, Ferguson said a better number for the U.K. would be only 20,000. The equivalent would be fewer than 80,000 American deaths. Technically, that U.K. number was buried in a table in the report under what might be called “a fantastic case scenario.” But could that reduction possibly reflect a mere nine days of restrictions? No.

Soon all the numbers were tumbling. Yet as late as March 31, the New York Times declared: “White House Projects Grim Toll from Virus” citing White House Coronavirus Task Force head Deborah Birx and director of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, who in turn cited a model showing deaths up to 240,000. Still awful, but Birx explicitly backed off the Ferguson projection for which she had previously been the Grey Lady’s pompom girl.

Then suddenly Fauci announced a flat figure of “more like 60,000,” the same number the CDC says died of flu two years ago. Probably not coincidentally, until quite recently the agency said there were 80,000 flu victims that year, before lowering it to 61,000 – presumably because people were using that figure to compare to COVID-19 deaths. In any event, the 1968-1969 “Hong Kong flu” killed an estimated 100,000 Americans, or 165,000 adjusted to today’s population.

Moreover, as noted, the CDC now encourages coding a death of anyone “if the circumstances are compelling” even though they haven’t been tested at all. Yeah, wow; it’s not a “conservative myth.” During flu season, that means a lot of flu victims have magically become COVID-19 victims in addition to people who would have otherwise had cause of death listed as heart attack, diabetes, and other co-morbid conditions.

Get hit by a truck, die of COVID19. Get shot by a home-invader, die of COVID19. Jump off a building, die of COVID19. Hey, maybe it IS a “magic virus” after all!

Model defenders declare the plummets were based on the success of severe restrictions of civil liberties. “It just means we won,” declared an article in The Atlantic. Wrong. The bottom range of the models presumes the best-case scenario. If the low end is 100,000, that’s the low end.

This is what what they are, it’s what they do. The entirely-predictable Progressivist progression goes something like this: be back-asswards wrong about something, exaggerate and overhype something, fuck things up badly because of it, then either A) claim to have been right along, that without your farsighted palliative measures things would undoubtedly be a hell of a lot worse; B) claim you failed only because your already-extreme measures just didn’t go far enough; or C) blame Reagan/Bush/Trump/conservatives for the mess you made. If none of those options fools anybody to Proggy’s satisfaction, then we’ll get: HEY, LOOK, OVER THERE! CLIMATE CHANGE/COMMON SENSE GUN CONTROL/HOMELESS EPIDEMIC/RAPE CULTURE/OPIOID CRISIS/RUSSIAN BOTS!!!!

Bottom line? This:

That’s not proof that public health interventions are worthless; merely that since the Plague of Athens four centuries B.C. and before, epidemics have risen and fallen quite on their own. Nobody needed Big Brother looking over their shoulder and cracking a whip; nobody needed to implode their economies and leave their citizens with tops reading: “I survived the ‘worst epidemic in history’ and all I have left is this crummy t-shirt.”

Leaving us with one simple question: can a hard number be put on how many times goobermint “experts” like Fauci have to be proven wrong before the shrieking panic-ninnies finally lose their purblind faith in them? Or will good ol’ Charlie Brown go right on attempting to kick that football no matter what, forever and ever, amen?

Are we not men?

Posted on      by     

On your feet or on your knees.

I am thoroughly disheartened – nay, sickened — by the sheeplike behavior of so many of our countrymen. I cannot believe they think the proper response to “our leaders’” overweening usurpations of authorities never granted is to politely ask for their rights back.

Americans don’t do that. Americans exercise their rights openly and confidently. They don’t ask for anyone’s permission.

Your rights are not permissions. They are yours, not because some “authority” has granted them to you, but by virtue of your membership in the human race. To treat them as permissions is to surrender them, such that any “crisis,” whether real or notional, can be used to nullify them. And there are plenty of wannabe dictators who are grasping at that opportunity — with the support of the left-wing media…

It hardly matters what rights you claim if you refrain from exercising them. That’s how the Second Amendment was gutted. It’s how the rest of the Bill of Rights is being reduced to meaninglessness. And if we permit it to go one millimeter further, we are unworthy of the term “free people.”

It’s not about the economy. It’s not about the virus. It’s not about “science.” It’s about freedom: holding onto the pitiful amount we have left after two and a quarter centuries’ incursions upon it, usually in the name of “crisis” or “safety.”

Free men accept that life entails risk.
They don’t ask their “leaders” to “protect” them.
When “leaders” tyrannize them “for your own good,” they rise up.
Such “leaders” become lamppost decorations, pour encourager les autres.

Are you a free man or a sheep?

From what we’re seeing of late, the answer to that question is far from encouraging. Happily, though, sometimes it doesn’t take all that much in the way of pushback or defiance to force our masters to relent:



Good on ya, Master Chief. They may well take us down in the long run, but at the very least we can make ’em work for it.

Update! This may seem to be unrelated, but it strikes me as yet another depressing aspect of the Great Knuckling Under.

Land O’ Lakes drops ‘racist’ Native American image after nearly 100 years
The new label was announced in a press release from Land O’ Lakes in February, though it made no specific mention of removing the Native American image from all products.

The press release shared “the new packaging will show up in a variety of ways, including through a new front-of-package design that features the phrase ‘Farmer-Owned’ above the LAND O LAKES brandmark,” as well as include pictures of farmers and co-op members on the label.

“As Land O’Lakes looks toward our 100th anniversary, we’ve recognized we need packaging that reflects the foundation and heart of our company culture—and nothing does that better than our farmer-owners whose milk is used to produce Land O’Lakes’ dairy products,” said Beth Ford, President and CEO, Land O’Lakes, in the press release.

“As a farmer-owned co-op, we strongly feel the need to better connect the men and women who grow our food with those who consume it,” Ford said.

Is it really necessary to “connect” them beyond having them buy and eat your damned butter? Because if it is, I’m just damned if I can see the why of it. Or how a bunch of mealy-mouthed gobbledygook from some college-kid corporate flack who probably never yanked a single bovine teat in her life is gonna get the job done. Until such time as you can explain those mysterious profundities to me, grab that plunger-handle and get to churning, lady.

But if you think that’s depressing stuff—and it is—wait till you get a load of the backstory.

Did you know that back in the 1950s, when Land O’ Lakes wanted to update their logo, they hired an American Indian artist to do the job. He came up with Mia, the logo we’re all familiar with, to honor American Indian culture and their traditional connection to nature.

I checked into it a little myself, and WeirdDave ain’t just making it up.

Mia first appeared on Land O’Lakes packaging in 1928, and was originally designed by illustrator Arthur C. Hanson for the advertising firm Brown and Bigelow.

Native American artist Patrick DesJarlait, of the Ojibwe tribe, redesigned the packaging in the 1950s to foster “a sense of Indian pride,” the Minnesota Reformer reported.

His son, Robert DesJarlait, told the outlet that the image — which has been slammed by many as “racist” — has become a “paradox” for Native Americans.

“He was breaking a lot of barriers…Back in the ’50s, nobody even thought about stereotypical imagery. Today it’s a stereotype, but it’s also a source of cultural pride,” DesJarlait told the outlet.

As well it might be, too. As Dave says, you can be pretty confident that there were few if any Native Americans among the SJW screechers demanding Land-O-Lakes’ capitulation to mindless PC here.

Puzzling, innit, the way those screechers have managed to “fundamentally transform” a legitimate source of cultural pride into some kind of shameful offense against all human decency. In the end, though, this isn’t really about butter, or marketing, or the Land-O-Lakes mascot, or respect for Indians and their heritage, or even “racism” itself. In the end, it’s really about this:


So is the above gutting of Ilhan Omar-Elmi really related to the topic at hand? You just better believe it is, chum. Because collapsing American society, dismantling America, is ALWAYS what it’s about with the Left—every single time, every single issue, every single word of every single argument. Until you begin to get your head fully around that, you ain’t fighting back, and you damned sure ain’t winning. You’re just chasing your tail, that’s all.

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