Our Enemies – Page 56

Are we not men?

Posted on April 17, 2020April 18, 2020 by Mike

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:

Full dressed #Navy Master Chief standing in the water today on Emerald Isle NC after the beach & water were closed. LEO let him go and approx 3 hours later the town of Emerald Isle opened back up the beach & water to the public!#AmericanHero #salute4servinghumanity #MAGA pic.twitter.com/3fIaOjNgGF

— John B Wells 11:11 (@JohnBWellsCTM) April 17, 2020

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:

Regardless of how many times they say it, the far left can't come up with a definition of "systemic racism" that doesn't involve collapsing American society, our system of government and our rights. When she says she wants to "dismantle racist institutions"– she means America. https://t.co/Y3LxoYK6xx

— Dalia al-Aqidi (@Dalia4Congress) April 16, 2020

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.

When the government fears the people, there is liberty

Posted on April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 by Mike

When the people fear the government, there is…Gretchen Whitler.

RETALIATION? Michigan’s Democrat Governor Threatens to EXTEND Stay-At-Home Order in Response to #OperationGridlock Protesters
Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has threatened to extend her extreme stay-at-home order in response to protesters who rallied against it at the state’s capital on Wednesday.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Governor Whitmer said that the protest was “irresponsible” and that “we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home orders, which is supposedly what they were protesting.”

“When you see a, you know, a political rally — that’s what it was yesterday — a political rally like that, where people aren’t wearing masks, and they’re in close quarters, and they’re touching one another, you know that that’s precisely what makes this kind of a disease drag out and expose more people,” Whitmer said.

Thousands of protesters had converged for a protest called “Operation Gridlock” to protest her order, which is one of the strictest in the nation.

Sorry and all, but this wretched, petty tyrant has now made it abundantly clear that something a lot stronger than peaceful protest will be required to properly rein her ilk in. The really nice thing about tar, feathers, stout ropes, and tall lampposts, though, is the worthy example thereby provided to all the other dimestore dictator wannabes across the nation. Pour encourager les autres, as the saying goes.

Swinging just one or two of these fleabitten sumbitches ought to plenty enough to get all of them back on track, and any who can’t or won’t get their minds right from said example(s) we’ll all be better off without anyway. Call it Darwinian natural selection at work in the real world. Hey, politics ain’t beanbag, amIright?

Not that I would ever advocate any such thing, of course. That would be ~~wrong~~ against the law.

Two sets of laws

Posted on April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 by Mike

Averting our eyes from the unpleasant truth.

There should not be two standards of justice in this nation—a slap on the wrist for the politically correct who do wrong, while Gen. Michael Flynn’s whole life has been upended for allegedly lying to the FBI.

Flynn has lost his house, livelihood, and reputation. Meanwhile, in contrast, there is a high ranking FBI attorney who allegedly doctored an email to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant for raw political sabotage, who has yet to be punished.

Writing over the weekend an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (April 11-12, 2020), Sen. Ron Johnson, (R) Wisconsin, noted: “The Steele dossier already ranks as one of the dirtiest political tricks of all time.” The falsified Steele dossier became the pretext by which some FBI officials appear to have obtained FISA warrants.

How can this nation continue to have two standards of law and order? Two standards of judgment? Punishment of conservatives for alleged wrong-doing versus wrist-slapping of liberals for woeful violations of the law.

Dr. Frank Wright, the president of D. James Kennedy Ministries, points out, “Lying has become so endemic in our time that many times when some politicians speak, it’s a given that some of what they say is not necessarily the truth—but rather it’s so-called spin. However, we’ve learned recently that there is serious deception among key government leaders—even in the FBI.”

“MANY” times, is it? Only “SOME” of what they say? We only learned of the FBI’s systemic malevolence “recently”? You’re either being way too kind here, or you’re perilously naive.

Veteran journalist and author Robert Knight said to me in an interview for Christian television: “When I was growing up the FBI were the heroes….and now the FBI has grown into this enormous organization whose powers are far-reaching, and whose powers could be abused if political partisans get a hold of it, which apparently is exactly what has happened.”

“COULD be abused”? “IF political partisans” etc? Can anyone possibly imagine that such wholesale, Pollyanna-ish shying away from obvious realities might be the right way to deal with them effectively?

Knight added, “I don’t recall any time in American history where the FBI was used as a blunt political instrument.”

Then you know very, very little about the FBI, my friend. Just because you thought of the FBI as “the heroes” when you were growing up doesn’t mean they actually were. Read up on how J Edgar Hoover ran the organization and you should realize that the problem was always your too-credulous perception of it. The FBI really hasn’t changed all that much, other than to become bigger and more powerful over time. Reckless, arrogant thugs they were, and reckless, arrogant thugs they will remain.

“There’s a pattern of corruption here that’s far and deep. And Americans are wondering if anybody’s ever going to be punished for it.” Bob said these words in the summer of 2018. To my knowledge, no one involved on the left has yet been punished.

Oh, I seriously doubt many Real Americans who weren’t born yesterday are really wondering all that much about it, Bob. They’re pretty confident that no Leftist Deep Stater will ever be punished for any infamy they might commit, either heinous or trivial. Unfortunately, they have plenty of evidence to back up their bitter cynicism, I’m afraid.

Uncle Gropey’s sad deterioration

Posted on April 17, 2020April 18, 2020 by Mike

Okay, okay, if it were anybody other than Uncle Gropey it would be sad, and I’d feel at least some pity for the poor old coot. But in light of how long Bribe’em been a corrupt, despicable, third-rate con artist, it’s howlingly funny. And he richly deserves every last bit of scorn and contempt that can be heaped upon his rapidly-emptying head.

In a remote interview earlier today on MSNBC, Democratic presidential nominee-apparent Joe Biden had a sad anecdote to tell about the impact of the Wuhan-virus pandemic on one American dad.

I’m pretty sure, anyway.

In case you don’t have all day to make sense of Biden’s story, I made the effort to transcribe it for you. It was a time-consuming process, but I’ve done my best to make it error-free. Still, any mistakes in the transcription are my own. Lapses of logic, coherence, cogency, grammar, and the like all belong to Biden.

One last thing before you read on. Biden was making odd slurping noises during his appearance, and while I can’t explain them, I did include them in the transcript for the sake of completeness.

Here you go:

I sat with a guy on, on a telephone and he’s telling me, he said, “I don’t always,” he said, “Look, I, I, I, I, I, I’m, I, I worked at the hospital.” And he said, “Then I, I got, I got myself a position where I got the virus so they quarantined me and, and they put me in the hospital, and I made it out and so I’m out [slurp]. But they don’t want me with my family. I’m on the third floor. I spent 15 minutes on the phone with them saying,’ he said, ‘I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old. They come to the door outside and they just knock on the door and say ‘Daddy, Daddy, can I see you Daddy, can I see you Daddy?’’”

So we spent time going through it [slurp], I used to do with my kids when they were little and I couldn’t see them and we’d play games. I said, “Knock, make up a game, knock, knock on the door and say this is, you know [slurp].” [incomprehensible] This is practical things, the guy’s scared to death. And he’s worried about his children, he’s worried about his wie [sic]. I mean, these are practical things. And the president talks about this like, “OK, it’s gonna be OK. We’re gonna open… tomorrow. We’re gonna do this.”

I mean, it just, I must tell you, it drives me crazy. I don’t know what he doesn’t understand.

It’s a real head-scratcher what Biden doesn’t know, does know, or is trying to say — if anything.

When most politicians speak, audiences have to suspend their disbelief. When it’s Biden speaking they have to suspend their incomprehension.

And their intellect, facility for logic, and integrity, too.

Oh HELL no

Posted on April 17, 2020April 18, 2020 by Mike

I have a suggestion or three for alternate locations where the goobermint can stick its little chips.

The technocrats are talking about giving people a chip – once they’ve been vaccinated for the CCP virus, or otherwise proven their immunity and state of non-contagion – so that anyone with the right scanner can easily see that interacting with them is “safe.”

Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?

But think about it. Even if you don’t care about personal freedom, don’t respect concerns for societal liberty. Just think about this a moment.

Don’t have to. There’s only way such a thing will ever be done to me or my young ‘un, and that is over my dead body.

The CCP virus is just the flavor of the month. It’s the terrible risk of 2020, the big thing this year. In past years, we have been scared of H1N1, Ebola, SARS, all of which have killed tens of thousands of people. This is hardly the first such epidemic to hit humanity. The list goes on and on.

So… what about next year?

There’s a seasonal flu every year, and some years, it’s especially bad (sometimes arguably worse than this one)… Over a 20 year period, there might be five such really bad flus. Should we agree to a chip for all of them? Or only for certain ones? This year’s virus hits the overweight and the very old worst of all. Maybe the next one will hit the young and the skinny worst. Maybe one will hit the asthmatics worst. There’s ALWAYS someone to protect from these things, and our concern for these innocent victims is laudable.

Then people will ask: Should we have a chip every year, and 300 million tests, every year, just to be safe? You know what they say – “if it saves just one life,” right?

Right. And so very, very wrong, too. Tons of very good stuff along these lines in this one, all of which you should peruse, culminating in this:

The risk of putting too much information in the hands of government used to be well-understood by Americans, but this risk appears to have been forgotten, with the philosophy of our Founding Fathers going untaught for generations.

We want to think this is a leap. We desperately want to tell ourselves that the slippery slope argument is just fear-mongering, that it would never get that bad, not here, not in America.

But in recent weeks, we have seen mayors ban gun sales, in blatant defiance of the Second Amendment. We have seen governors ban church services, in blatant defiance of the First Amendment. We have seen manufacturing brought a standstill in state after state. We have seen police ticketing married couples just for walking together on the sidewalk, and taking down license plates of cars parked at a drive-through church service.

If these past few weeks have proven anything at all, is that we can risk no further erosion of our liberty, because too many of these petty bureaucrats hold too much power… and because too many of them are far too quick to follow the lead of Rahm Emanuel – Chicago’s former mayor, and Barack Obama’s former chief of staff – who enunciated the modern statist approach so proudly and so succinctly:

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Nailed it, clean and tight. We can only hope that there are enough of us left who understand all this—or, even worse, wouldn’t eagerly applaud the implentation of a federal forced-chipping program. If the last month is any guide, alas, that hope is a truly forlorn one.

O Brave New World, that has such fascists in it!

Posted on April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 by Mike

Some folks are shocked and/or angry about CooCooCoomo’s pronouncement, but I think he’s more right than wrong here. Although probably for the worst possible reasons.

(CNSNews.com) – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo predicted “a new normal” when the state’s economy reopens – in the environment, economics, civil rights, and social justice.

“People are restless. We have to talk about the reopening of the economy. How do we do this? We have to build a bridge, from where we are to the reopening of the economy. Well, what does that look like?” he said during a press conference on Wednesday.

“Let’s say that where we’re going it’s not a reopening, in that we are going to reopen what was. We are going to a different place, and we should go to a different place, and we should go to a better place. If we don’t learn the lessons from this situation, that all of this will have been in vain,” Cuomo said.

“So we’re going to a different place, which is a new normal. We talk about the new normal. We’ve been talking about the new normal for years. We are going to have a new normal in public health. By the way, the way we have a new normal in an environment, the new normal in economics, a new normal in civil rights, a new normal and social justice, right? This is the way of the world now,” he said.

We are indeed going to find ourselves saddled with a “new normal” from here on out, pretty much no matter what anybody does. But it isn’t going to be a nice, happy place. Coomo’s statement, though, is one among several that puts the lie to recent Righty crowing about how the coronavirus panic has singlehandedly discredited so many cherished liberal tropes—globalism; densely-packed urban areas over surburbia; mass transit instead of private autos; open borders and unrestricted immigration; the desirability of big, intrusive government, etc—for good, thereby rendering them, shall we say, unsustainable.

Somebody should maybe tell the Left that, though, because from where I sit it sure looks like they fully intend to double down, rather than shamefacedly admitting the error of the Leftist Way and slinking off the national stage to rethink a few things, and current reality be damned. Interestingly enough, it seems some Leftard states are already making bold moves towards this New Normal.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced the Northeastern Directorate will keep all citizens within the region on lock-down through May 15, 2020, with a possible extension depending on an agreement within the Blue State alliance members.

Six other governors from within the Northeastern Directorate form the regional alliance.

Northeast states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Delaware have assembled an authoritarian alliance, without legislative approval and without legal precedent, to block any federal efforts to reopen the economy.

The Blue State leaders have determined it is in the best interests of the Northeastern citizenry for individual rights to be suspended under a post-constitutional framework. The government in this region will determine when the advancement of individual rights will be permitted and will set the parameters of permitted civic, social and economic engagement.

All citizens within the Northeastern Directorate are now captive to arbitrary rules on business ownership, property rights, contract terms, movement and assembly. Under the terms of a regional health emergency, as outlined by the command and control structure, currently citizens within the containment area are quarantined and not permitted to exit their homes, petition government or request redress for grievances.

But the Northeastern Directorate isn’t the only region to kinda-sorta declare its independence from the former Republic:

(Bloomberg Opinion) — California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America’s budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California’s multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear.

Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.”

“Nation-state.” “Export.”

Hey, fine by me, and don’t let the door etc. Feel free to take some of the other Democrat-Socialist shitholes like, say, Chicago, Portland, and Seattle along with ya when you go, too. We ask not your counsels or your arms. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Fish in a barrel

Posted on April 14, 2020April 14, 2020 by Mike

Another day, another sick burn.

Trump defended his response today to the coronavirus in order to fight negative reporting from the ‘Fake News Media’ in two different ways.

First, he layed out the timeline of his response…

And then:

President Trump just played a montage of the the media downplaying the Coronavirus in the White House Briefing Room

What a Savage ? pic.twitter.com/rZDio8F27V

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) April 13, 2020

It sometimes seems as if they’re actually trying to make it easy for him to kick their asses up between their shoulder blades, don’t it?

Above the fray

Posted on April 13, 2020April 13, 2020 by Mike

Being “elite” means never having to say you’re sorry.

Take any contentious issue—travel bans, the advantages of masks, the Chinese compromising of WHO, the entire industry of grievance politics infecting criticism of China’s despicable behavior, delayed testing by the Centers for Disease Control and FDA, modeling, the efficacy of antimalarial drugs—and our elite seem unable to admit they were wrong, and wrong with a great deal of costly arrogance.

It is no exaggeration to say that most models that the best and brightest offered the public, from the imported Imperial College in London to those from the University of Washington and many more besides, were not just inaccurate, but quite mistaken in two tragic ways: First, they were accepted as gospel by governments and thus their flawed assumptions became the basis for policies that in many cases may prove counterproductive. Second, the modelers themselves either did not promptly correct their warped inputs, or were not completely forthcoming about their data and methodologies, or blamed their flawed assumptions on others or circumstances beyond imagination, or claimed that their mistakes were in fact salutary—if not sorta, kinda planned—in galvanizing a presumably infantile public to accept draconian measures that it otherwise would not.

I know a plumber and an electrician, both skilled in the pragmatic engineering of pipes and wires, who would not dare to think they could offer a model of plumbing or electrical prediction if they had no idea of the real size of the denominator and were likewise unsure that the numerator was widely accepted as accurate and clearly defined.

When California Governor Gavin Newsom warned that 25.5 million Californians “will” get the virus in the eight weeks following March 18, albeit without his shelter-in-place orders, he was also essentially stating that, at a then 2.6 percent lethality rate for Californians known to have the active virus, about 1 million would die. As I write, 24 days out from his prediction and nearing the half-way point to Doomsday, about 23,000 Californians have tested positive, and either are fighting the disease or have recovered. Since late January, about 650 of 40 million Californians have died from the disease, in a state where well over 700 people die from some cause every day.

If 10 times that number of known positive tests are now actively infected, we legitimately could assume at least 222,000 residents are now active or past carriers. Those who advised Newsom to shut down the world’s sixth-largest economy, including universities like Cal Tech, UC Berkeley, and Stanford, Silicon Valley, and the commerce and livelihoods of 40 million residents, apparently did not factor into their models some possible collective immunity among thousands of Californians who, for months, were on the front lines of arriving flights from China.

Nor did modelers seem to factor in the ability of people to social distance even before the shutdown was ordered, or the fact that a virus that does not kill 95.5 percent of those who are infected, but not frontline health workers or over 60 years old, may be deemed by the public manageable in a way that does not require having multigenerational small businesses ruined, or careers destroyed, or retirement savings accounts wrecked, or key appointments with doctors postponed or canceled.

Elite wisdom, which in its allegiance to the scientific method eventually is likely to find an antidote and vaccination against the virus, still fails us in so many other ways in which it should not, in part also because its high priests rarely face the consequences of their own ideological and scientific pronouncements.

Whatever the end result of this crisis, few at the WHO, CDC or the state health directors are going to lose their jobs in a way the small restaurateurs and Uber drivers most certainly will.

In their boundless “wisdom,” the Ruling Class “elites” seem determined to leave us with pitchforks, torches, and heads on pikes as our only possible recourse.

Rain on the parade

Posted on April 13, 2020April 13, 2020 by Mike

A splash of cold water on that slim hope I was talking about the other day.

Once again, it was goosebumps for diehards when investigative reporter John Solomon told Fox News host Sean Hannity that U.S. Attorney John Durham was issuing subpoenas on behalf of a grand jury. Twitter pulses raced. Former CIA Director John Brennan was closer than ever to a rockpile in prison stripes, wasn’t he? Comey, Ohr, Kramer, Simpson, Clinton were sweating bullets, right?

I will be jubilant if I’m wrong, but I continue to doubt it. I don’t expect the anti-Trump conspirators to be indicted and tried for sedition or treason or any other serious crime by Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice. Nothing we have seen to date points to it.

What should also temper expectations, however, is a hard look at history. When it comes to the Swamp’s subversion of the Republic, issuing subpoenas to bring witnesses before a grand jury means nothing more than issuing subpoenas to bring witnesses before a grand jury. Indictments, trials, and convictions have always been exceedingly rare.

Consider the grand jury convened in the spring of 1947 to hear sensational charges of subversion inside the federal government by Elizabeth Bentley, a key American defector from Soviet intelligence. Ex-KGB courier Bentley would offer testimony against numerous federal government officials, bureaucrats, and others from those early days of the Swamp in connection with espionage rings run inside the U.S. government by Soviet intelligence.

Although the names were completely unknown to the public at the time, the Bentley grand jury witness roster was, as Evans and Romerstein write, “a spectacular line-up, an all-star team of Soviet agents, Communists and close-in fellow travellers.”

As the list demonstrates, this was indeed a Who’s Who of traitors working for Stalin, for the KGB, for communism and globalism inside and around the federal government, including Soviet agents Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. These two top FDR administration officials were instrumental in the creation of the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, helming them both, respectively, in the globalist institutions’ early days.

The most stunning thing about the Bentley grand jury witness list, however, is that no one on it, not even the later-notorious Hiss or White, was indicted for anything.

Why were there no indictments? The reason is quite simple. The government failed to call a witness who could corroborate any of Bentley’s grave charges even though such a witness was already well known to it. That witness was Whittaker Chambers. His testimony about Hiss and White alone would have been crucial to the federal case. “Yet though the FBI was well aware of what Chambers knew and could have told the grand jury,” the authors write, “for over a year prosecutors refused to call him. Hence no second witness in the case—hence no indictments.”

Why didn’t prosecutors call Chambers? FBI records, Evans and Romerstein write, “provide a suggestive picture of attitudes at the Justice Department that guided the grand jury process.”

For example, federal prosecutor Thomas Donegan “was of the opinion Chambers testimony would not be helpful.” Helpful to what?

Oh, I’m pretty sure we can guess the answer to that one easily enough.

Given the FBI’s interview with Chambers to date, it would have been clear that Chambers’ testimony would have been exceedingly “helpful” in pursuit of indictments. Even after Chambers and Hiss sensationally battled in Congress in August of 1948, however, prosecutors refused to call “the former Soviet courier who would become the most famous witness in the Cold War.”

The record indicates that the Department of Justice did not want indictments.

I’m trying real hard to come up with a solid reason to believe that this time around might be different, but I’m coming up empty. Then as now as ever as always, the Deep State looks after its own.

The link I used above is to an archive.is snapshot of the original, which is locked away behind a paywall. As such, it may or may not work for ya, I dunno.

I. Just. Can’t. EVEN

Posted on April 13, 2020April 13, 2020 by Mike

Probably gonna want to sit down for this one, folks.

STUNNING! US Gave Wuhan Lab $3.7 Million Grant to Study Horseshoe Bats that Carry Coronavirus

Well, stunning IS one word for it, I suppose. I can think of a few others.

In late March FOX News host Tucker Carlson reported on a CHINESE study on the origin of the novel coronavirus.

The coronavirus came from either the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention or Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.

The study concluded the deadly virus came out of local laboratories in Hubei Province. The smoking gun in the study is the link to horseshoe bats which are not sold in local markets and not native to Wuhan. In fact the closest colony is 900 kilometers away. There is no evidence horseshoe bats were sold in the Wuhan wet markets. The local labs used this bat specimen and the virus came from a lab in Wuhan.

Reports linking bats to the coronavirus started making the rounds back in January. But a recent paper published in the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention found the source of the coronavirus is a laboratory near the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.

But that’s not all.

And it isn’t. It really, really isn’t.

According to documents obtained by British media outlet Daily Mail, scientists there experimented on bats as part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which continues to licence the Wuhan laboratory to receive American money for experiments.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services responsible for biomedical and public health research.

US Congressman Matt Gaetz said, “I’m disgusted to learn that for years the US government has been funding dangerous and cruel animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute, which may have contributed to the global spread of coronavirus, and research at other labs in China that have virtually no oversight from US authorities.”

Well, disgusted IS one word for it, I suppose. I can think of a few others.

Easy target

Posted on April 12, 2020April 12, 2020 by Mike

Dan Mitchell shoots, scores.

About three weeks ago, I unveiled the “Seventh Theorem of Government” to support the libertarian proposition that a smaller government will do a better job of fulfilling its legitimate responsibilities.

This should not be a controversial concept. There’s plenty of empirical data as well as academic evidence showing that smaller governments are more competent.

Many people in the D.C. bubble obviously disagree.

In his Washington Post column, Dana Milbank tries to make the argument that the fight against coronavirus has been hampered by inadequate government.

…then came the tea party, the anti-government conservatism that infected the Republican Party in 2010 and triumphed with President Trump’s election. …What you see today is your government…a government that couldn’t produce a rudimentary test for coronavirus, that couldn’t contain the pandemic as other countries have done… Now it is time to drown this disastrous philosophy in the bathtub — and with it the poisonous attitude that the government is a harmful “beast” that must be “starved.” It is not an exaggeration to say that this ideology caused the current debacle with a deliberate strategy to sabotage government. …Americans are paying for this with their lives — and their livelihoods.

There are some glaring inaccuracies in Milbank’s column, starting with the absurd notion that big-spender Trump (he increased domestic spending at a faster pace than Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama) is somehow connected to the principles that animated the Tea Party.

More relevant, he wants readers to believe that anti-government activism somehow blocked the production of a “rudimentary test” for the virus, yet I’ve repeatedly documented that the actual problem has been mindless red tape from bureaucracies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control.

Mitchell’s pwnage of Milbank gets even more humiliating from there. But hey, y’know, it’s Dana Milbank. Most any half-bright person could clean that witless pud’s intellectual clock in his sleep.

(Via Insty)

Update! Speaking of stupid.

One particularly terrifying consequence of the Chinese Bat Soup Virus that is not yet getting the attention it deserves is how this situation is making already stupid liberals even dumber, especially when they sound off about economics. In the wake of this pandemic, we’ve been subjected to a series of mind-numbing insights from the pinko blue check brain trust that reaffirms the clichéd but true observation that our elite is anything but elite. Leave it to our liberal betters to take a bad situation and seek to make it exponentially worse.

For example, Sally Kohn – oh, you know where this is going – offered an astonishing observation just as the Democrats were obstructing the vital relief our small businesses desperately need:

“I’m really tired of reading how business owners are “forced” to layoff workers. No one made them do that. They *chose* to do that. Not saying it isn’t a hard choice, during a hard time, but to say they were *forced* obscures their agency AND casts owners/CEOs as the victims.”

If that hasn’t plunged your IQ to new depths, consider ever-dumb Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), who tweeted out this brainstorm:

“We need to cancel rent until this crisis is over.”

Wow. Her economics advice is even worse than her relationship advice.

Okay, it seems like you would not have to explain this to allegedly educated people, but apparently there are still some people who need a lesson in Economics 101. Since I actually own a business, perhaps I have a perspective that C Tier social media personalities and commie grifters could find illuminating.

Here goes.

Are you people stupid? What the unholy hell are you thinking? When there is no income, what do you expect a business owner to pay his employees with? IOUs? Monopoly money? Feelings?

Schlichter goes on to consider the question of whether they’re stupid, or evil. Need to embrace the healing power of “and” there, buddy, no reason they can’t be both. Actually, with politicians and “journalists” you almost never see the one without the other, in what you might call a most wretched symbiosis.

Curiouser and curioser

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

Unpossible, I say!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Killed by the cure

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

So how’s everybody liking their 30-day free trial of Communism?

Over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic and societal shut down (the communist trial run) it should be understood by those communists cheering on the lockdown of humanity and the destruction of the market system, the person most likely to be designated as the new Tsar of America is Donald Trump, someone capable of running a multi-trillion dollar economy, who understands production better than Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, James Comey or whatever communist cut out Washington has to offer.

If we are to be forced into a “climate saving” lockdown and re-tooling of the American economy, of which this fake pandemic is pretext and having seen the American patriots and their terror-filled responses to all other machinations of communist principles overlaid on their capitalist system, then the outcome is already known. So, since communism seems to be undeniable, largely because through the dilution of the American educational system, the slow progression of communist government displacing capitalist government, we ought to at least focus ourselves on determining our tyrant.

I am all for a mass march on Washington to demand capitalism and a release from self-imposed captivity. I am all in on a state by state effort toward the same goal, release, freedom, liberty, etc., but none of my fellow citizens seem to think it is such a situation and even if it is, it is much too dangerous to group ourselves together in such a manner as we might further enrage the communists in charge (as they have proven over the past few weeks that in fact they are) of our lives, our liberty and our persons to the degree that they can fine and imprison us for exerting our individual right of movement and commerce.

Understand the situation we are in. If any Democrat is elected president, this will be the model for fighting climate change. I finally heard this understanding of the situation broached on talk radio. Finally, someone understood that after we had gone this far, any health issue might be used as an excuse to thus confine us. My thoughts went to the amount of lives that could be saved by keeping the majority of us off the roads, except by the communist practice of “travel permits” allowing us to go to work at pre-determined and acceptable jobs or for specific purposes only, but the idea of combating climate change is equally useful to those wishing to impose communism on America.

And if you’re telling yourself “it can’t happen here,” you’re a damned fool.

TL also has a post up on the release of his Lies Of Omission doc, which you can stream for free if you have Amazon Prime. And, of course, you can still donate to the fundraiser for the Belmont Playboys doc if you’re so inclined, too.

Update! I for one welcome our new Green overlords.

Last month, we were wondering whether the cure could be worse than the disease; this month, it seems clear that the cure and the disease were always the same thing. Rely on Chinese communists to produce your medicines and fill your supply lines with breakable crap, and this is what happens. Rely on globalist socialist flimflammers to remedy the situation with “calm expertise,” and they will instead send in an army of anti-American boffins to complain, arrest fathers playing catch with their daughters, and find ways to blame the whole out-of-control exercise in petit-tyranny on Christians and Southerners. For the first time since the James Younger Gang was roaming these parts, grown men are walking around with bandanas covering their faces, but their eyes are telling a whole other story. There’s only so much despotism that free people will endure, and if the price for life is the surrender of everything that makes life worth living, then those bandanas begin to feel like something else entirely. If all these municipal Napoleons-in-aspiration getting fitted for shiny hobnailed jackboots right now can’t control their shared impulse to rule over other men, then these bandanas might become a more permanent fixture. If there’s one thing Americans have always understood, it’s this: where speech and religion and personal defense are all outlawed, be an outlaw.

I, for one, welcome this grand display of government intrusion from coast to coast. Unlike the invisible Chinese virus hunting us surreptitiously, this overbearing application of government force is right out in the open for all to see. The more unscrupulous Democrat mayors openly brag about shutting down private businesses, banning gun ownership, and ripping congregants from church pews. They’re closing every house of worship in sight until their constituents learn to supplicate at the steps of City Hall and nowhere else! Democrats are always gravely warning about creeping fascism from others, but they insist we ignore the rank smell of authoritarianism emanating from their every local executive order. Lone drivers are pulled over for no other reason than to remind the riffraff that they are powerless before their local lords; neighbors are enticed by official favor and bounty to snitch on isolated joggers running through their streets; married nonagenarians are forcibly separated “for their own good.” Only the Democrats could follow the examples of Boko Haram and the Chinese Communist Party in taking advantage of human misery for their own gain. There is no need to imagine the historical totalitarianism of the ’30s and ’40s when it is now bursting forth before us with a vulture’s plumage for all to see. And for that, I am thankful.

Well, now that we’re getting an awful peek behind the socialists’ GND curtain with this partial shutdown of the economy. Does it feel as if the American people are jumping up and down with excitement that “revolutionary change” on an “epic scale” has finally begun? Does it seem as if we’re “committed” to this path? Millions of Americans out of work. GDP contraction. Stock market and retirement savings up in smoke. A Constitution left in tatters. All to decrease electricity usage in the United States by five to ten percent and slash the demand for gasoline in half. If this is what it feels like to destroy capitalism and usher in a new era of universal misery, please stop teasing me with the amuse-bouche of collapsing just part of the economy. I can hardly wait until we are allowed to indulge ourselves with the gluttonous feast of shutting down the whole thing. What a world Biden has promised us! It is as one anti-fracking Greenie declared online: “We now see the ‘glorious vision’ of a world free of fossil fuels.” Except the Green New Deal requires twenty times the effort and sacrifice and many more orders of magnitude in national debt to finally free ourselves of the dastardly hydrocarbons they abhor. Imagine the bliss we will discover from our future of permanent social lockdown. Thank goodness China Joe and the Green tyrants have such grand vision to go with their good intentions. We can save the planet by destroying ourselves over and over again!

Or maybe enough Americans will find this depressing glimpse into the future the Democrats promise us more than enough for one lifetime. Perhaps America will wake up to the reality that the Green New Deal and the Chinese virus share an identical life force. Maybe we won’t have to fight the war to come because enough of the great-grandchildren of the last generation to fight state-sponsored evil will finally recognize the Democrats’ counterfeit promises of unobtainable perfection here on Earth. Either way, at least we can finally see for ourselves what the Democrats have in mind. This miserable police state is the only future they desire.

It was always that way. It was always obvious too, for anyone with eyes to see, although it’s true that they’ve been more up-front and brazen than ever before with this Chink-N-Pox shinola. Yet half the electorate votes for them nonetheless. Again:

There’s the REAL problem.

Priorities

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

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

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

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 10, 2020

Backstory:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Willingly to the slaughter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the immortal words of another pissant dimestore dictator:

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

Update! Welcome signs of a backlash against Kommissar Whitmerova.

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

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

Just one small caveat:

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

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

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

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

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

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