Portents and alarums

Houston, we have a problem.

It has become accepted knowledge that America’s intelligence agencies missed 9/11 warning signs — but that’s not entirely true.  Signs were seen, but they impelled no action. We were so convinced that the fall of the Soviet Union as the end of history precluded any need for urgency. Yet, even if there had been, no one, at that point, knew how to react.

I don’t think I need to remind everyone of what happened on 09/11/2001.

Au contraire, I’m afraid. From the looks of things, there all too many American memories in serious need of refreshing.

I share this vignette as a means of showing that there are always signs. We, for whatever reason, miss them, or we ignore them for political purposes, or we refuse to believe them because they contradict the core tenets of our belief system.

I believe that China’s actions today may be telegraphing an intent we are choosing to ignore. They show all the signs of a nation preparing to attack America. China seeks a bespoke world run by China with “Chinese characteristics” — a dream that under Trump was drifting away.

China appears to be laying the groundwork for a “justified” attack on the United States, perhaps in the South China Sea or perhaps elsewhere. It will be a military attack, not an act of terrorism, and the excuse will be America’s deliberate transmission of COVID-19 in Wuhan.

When the Chinese became accusatory, it’s telling that they didn’t blame the CIA, always the usual suspect. No, they blamed it on American soldiers.

American military deliberately infecting China is an act of war worthy of a military response.

In October, the 2019 World Military Games were held in Wuhan. Chinese media triumphantly trumpeted the Americans winning just eight medals, while China won 239. It was then that we supposedly infected Wuhan citizens with the “American virus.”

China is now defenestrating foreign media, sending home reporters from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post at just the opportune moment. No nation wants journalists around when it is planning a sneak attack.

The ChiComs are making a mistake there; the “journalists” of those bastions of collectivist America-hate would certainly come down solidly in favor of the Chinese. They’re “pacifists,” see, in any hostilities America initiates in pursuit of its own national interests, which are considered “illegitimate” each and every time anyway. That peaceable, “war is bad” attitude is subject to immediate revision anytime the US is attacked, for any reason whatsoever.

Even worse, though, is the fact that we live in an age when the portion of the nation roosting in urban-blight zones, college towns, and “blue” states would be out in the streets to cheer the ChiCom invaders on, happy at the eternal dream of the establishment of a Commie shitrapy here coming true at long last.

Then, as always, the useful idiots of the Vanguard will find themselves put up against a wall—UNEXPECTED!™—and the rest of us will be the ones cheering, albeit bitterly.

The Great Disconnect

The fishy smell intensifies.

According to most national media hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

U.S. media claim doctors and nurses are collapsing under the stress and strain of conditions they describe as “war zones” in the battle against COVID-19.

Media are now reporting about nurses and doctors committing suicide as they try to deal with severe PTSD, and psychological trauma, as a result of endless shifts in overcrowded hospitals filled with desperate and dying patients.  Additionally, refrigerated trailers now fill with piles of dead bodies as the morgues are overwhelmed with deceased coronavirus patients.

Influencers, perhaps people with an interest in pushing an agenda, are sharing videos of nurses and doctors pleading for help and crying under duress amid their struggle.  It all seems rather sad and unnerving.  Additionally, professional instability that severe seems a little disconcerting…. That said, that’s one summation of a recent 24-hour media cycle.

However, there is a disconnect.

I’m not talking a little disconnect; there is a profound and entirely opposite set of reports from nurses, doctors and healthcare workers –in multiple states– who are being laid-off, sent home, told not to come in; and doctors worried of losing their practices because hospitals, and their offices are completely empty.

For every media claim of overwhelmed hospital war-zones, there are a dozen reports from actual workers, nurses, doctors and medical personnel reporting exactly the opposite; and yes, a disparity in reporting even in the New York metropolitan area.

Medical personnel in Wisconsin, Missouri, California, Florida, Colorado, Oregon, Georgia New Jersey, and every region in the USA are reporting there are few to no patients in their facility and the medical staff is being laid-off, or told to go home and/or stay home, because there is nothing to do.

How the heck is this level of profound disconnect possible?

Here here, sirrah! Have I somehow misconstrued? Or do you seriously imply that our national liberal-media complement—so essential to the well-being of the entire Republic, now as always—might conceivably be LYING to us?

Why, you impudent scoundrel! Such damnable slander against good and honorable “journalists” cannot be borne, SHALL not be borne, without consequence! To the field of honor straightaway then—where, on my oath as a gentleman, I shall see justice done upon you, decency and righteousness upheld! Pistols at dawn, I say!! PISTOLS AT DAWN!!!

Sundance solicits reports on all this from readers working in the field, and he gets plenty of ’em. Call me a conspiracy nut if you will, but considering the source of the horror stories—and also bearing in mind, as we should here and elsewhere, that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”—I nevertheless feel the idea that Enemedia might possibly NOT be giving us the straight dope is in no way too great a strain for rationality to bear.

(/sarcasm)

Numbers game(s)

They ain’t adding up.

All admit that the numbers that are scaring the sense out of the country are mathematical projections. All projections are based on assumptions about the ever-changing numbers of “confirmed cases” of COVID-19, as well as of deaths resulting therefrom. But few—and here it seems we must include many “health officials”—consider that the latter numbers are themselves “soft” and tell us next to nothing about how much, how little, or what kind of dangers the virus poses to us.

To make intelligent decisions about countermeasures, we would need have hard data about all these matters. Yet, for two months, doctors such as Anthony Fauci have messed up millions of lives and commandeered trillions of dollars while scaring the hell out of people and watching curves based on projections based on meaningless numbers. Watching the several curves resulting from the testing that is now ongoing and that is projected to continue as the country suffers will provide only more guesses, that will feed more models and more disputes.

The most important fact about COVID-19, its true mortality rate, is the number who die of the virus divided by the number infected by it. No algorithms. Simple arithmetic.

In short, Fauci, et al., are showing themselves to be typical of our bureaucracy: over-credentialed, entrusted with too much power, and dangerously incompetent.

It’s mind-blowing to see how many of us who long since accepted American bureaucratic realities are now willing to set it all aside and squander their faith and hope on those same demonstrably inept, corrupt, and untrustworthy bureaucracies…with no evidence whatsoever of even the slightest change or improvement therein.

Learning the true figures about precisely what danger the virus poses to whom must begin by taking into account one thing we know for sure about COVID-19: that many, if not most, of those infected by this unusually contagious virus show few or no symptoms. This suggests eventual near-universal contagion.

But we don’t know how many of these asymptomatic people there are. Hence, meaningful epidemiological testing must include a random representative sample of the population, regardless of whether they are presumed to be infected or not. The numbers resulting from monitoring what happens to the health of individuals in this sample over a few weeks would tell exactly what percentage of people in each category and subcategory suffer what consequences from whatever contact with the virus they happen to have.

Backed by the media, Fauci and company have contended that actions by anybody, ordinary citizens, elected officials, or physicians that do not follow proper bureaucratic procedures are illegitimate. Who the hell do they think they are? We belong to ourselves. Not to them.

Surely, President Trump’s low point came when he supported bypassing roll call votes in the passage of a $2.2 trillion bill as part of his and other executive officials’ decisions to shut down the country. Making decisions on the basis of meaningless curves and bureaucratic authority rather than through open debate about hard facts followed by roll call votes is not just undemocratic. It’s stupid.

I’d tell you to go read it all, but it’s Codevilla, so I’m sure you know that already,

They’re getting the band back together

There they go again. But Trump, bless his stout heart, ain’t having any of it.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is doubling down on his call for President Trump to name a “czar” to oversee the production and distribution of coronavirus-related medical supplies.

Schumer sent a letter to Trump on Thursday saying it was “long past the time” to name a senior military officer to lead the effort, including allowing the individual to use the Defense Production Act “to complete and rapidly implement a plan for the increased production, procurement and distribution of critically-needed medical devices and equipment.”

“The existing federal leadership void has left America with an ugly spectacle in which States and cities are literally fending for themselves, often in conflict and competition with each other, when trying to procure precious medical supplies and equipment,” Schumer wrote.

The Hill, being just another Enemedia propaganda organ, minimized Trump’s scrumptiously scathing response to the tapeworm Schroomer. But I won’t.

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Note Trump’s prominent mention of the failed Shampeachment hoax. There’s a reason he brought it up.

The team is back in action. On Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis. The new panel will have the authority to investigate any aspect of the virus emergency and the Trump administration’s handling of it.

Pelosi’s announcement came a day after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called for a 9/11-style independent commission to investigate “mistakes” in the virus response. Shortly after that, Schiff told the Washington Post that in Congress, House Democrats must investigate the Trump administration’s handling of virus testing and the government’s distribution of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers.

“We need to make sure there’s no favoritism in terms of political allies, no discrimination against states or governors based on lack of presidential flattery,” Schiff said, indicating the probe would be aimed squarely at President Trump.

Less than three months after sending to the Senate impeachment articles to remove the president from office and less than two months after the Senate trial ended in Trump’s acquittal, the Pelosi-Schiff team is up and running again.

So after nearly FOUR FUCKING YEARS of refusing to accept defeat in the 2016 election instead of pretending to be grown-ups and abiding by the result, here we go with Round Four of the perpetual coup attempt from these scrofulous scoundrels.

Lemme see now, what was it I was just saying about how they never, ever stop? And didn’t I have something about bullets in heads lying around here someplace, too?

There is no way in Hell that the next Democrat-Socialist president should be allowed one single moment of peace from his/her/zxher/xxhis/its opposition after this outrage. He/she/zxher/xxhim/it should be hounded into a total schizophrenic break beginning the very instant the election results are announced, without surcease or pity. Full stop, end of fucking story.

The eternal choice

A primer on Progressivism versus Americanism.

This is the choice before us. Are we to be ruled by experts as if they are our guardians simply because they might be smarter than us in specific fields, or are we to rule ourselves?

The supposed legitimacy of the former approach comes from fear. We are told the world is too complex. We need the experts to guide us, protect us, and save us. We need an elite guardian class to rule over us because we cannot make it on our own. But this cowardice makes us nothing more than slaves, not citizens.

The legitimacy of self-rule springs from our love of justice and our virtue. In our republican system, it requires a commitment to the truth that all men are created equal, and to the proposition that the just powers of government are derived by consent. It requires courage, moderation, friendship, and grace. It is these virtues that allow us to live free, apart from the “chains of despotism” as Madison says in Federalist 55.

The rule of expertise is not politics rightly understood; it is management. There is no deliberation involved. Instead, there is only bureaucracy, administration, and a religious—actually, cultish—devotion to what we now call science.

The rule of the people allows for statesmanship and liberty. Though statesmen might not always be “at the helm,” we the people, as the safeguard of our own liberty, can elect representatives with wisdom and prudence or pay the price when we don’t. We evaluate how well they do, discuss, debate, and then decide who should govern through elections.

Okay, good enough to this point, and right as rain so far. But then he begins to miss the mark just a little bit.

The rule of expertise, while on the surface promising intelligent leadership, is incapable of prudent government. The rule of expertise leads to incompetence, strife, and corruption instead of scientific precision and impartiality.

This is because the rule of expertise is built on a weak foundation. People’s faith in “science” is often misplaced. Most of what we call science is really just scientism—the foolish belief that men cease to be men when they put on white lab coats and begin charting numbers and lines. Scientism overstates what men can actually know. Moreover, the rule of expertise stands or falls on the belief that men are basically good and scientists are immune to the unjust desire to rule for their own benefit.

Regardless, the vast majority of “experts” are useless academics and professional bureaucrats. Their fields of study are full of jargon and credentials that lead to conformity and groupthink. Experts learn early that challenging the authorities in one’s field is risky for one’s career. Whatever thinking is involved quickly devolves into vague, abstract theorizing about ideas that are unable to be proven or disproven and thus do not threaten the ideas of one’s peers or superiors.

Often, what is supposed to be science ends up being just another form of cronyism, and what we call “expertise” ends up being knowledge of otherwise useless jargon and how to navigate a career field. The government bureaucracy that results is incompetent, often harmful, and tyrannical.

This is not to say there are not very smart men whom we can legitimately call experts—men like Dr. Fauci. But even at their best, these experts are incapable of prudence. Their knowledge is specific and precise, limiting their ability to consider circumstances broadly. Their skillset is often highly technical, built on years of experience and careful adherence to established protocols, limiting their ability to consider new solutions. And, besides, they typically confront only one problem a nation faces, not the full spectrum of the problems we must face.

In short, science and expertise can be wonderful things that help us to know what is, but they cannot answer the question of what we ought to do. This is the difference between science and politics. One is about knowing; the other is about acting. Expertise and science are subordinate to the art of politics. Experts make terrible rulers.

And here is where he begins to lose me. Mind you, I don’t disagree with any of the above, either; he’s not wrong, not at all. But the real point of this whole discussion isn’t whether the self-anointed “experts” are more knowledgeable, or more qualified to rule, or even more competent rulers.

None of that matters—NONE of it. The only thing that does—which happens to be the premise central to every word uttered or written down by the Founders—is whether or not one believes in the people’s right to the ultimate say in who will govern them, and in how they will be governed. THAT is the question that truly matters. All else, including the above analysis of “experts” and “science” and skillsets, is just so much idle jaw-jaw compared to that one.

And that right there is where Progressivism “faw down an’ go boom.” THEIR central premise, the idea from which the whole toxic ideology grows like an ugly, noxious, strangulating weed, is that the people should NOT have a say in their own governance. After all, the unwashed masses are not intelligent, not altruistic, not “evolved” enough to be trusted to make proper decisions about such weighty concerns.

No, for their own good they must under the direction and control of superior beings with the vision and moral purity to help them, to protect and provide for them, and to nudge them ever forward along the path to true “enlightenment.” Their base urges must be reined in, all rowdy individualism brought sharply to heel; the moronic superstition that insists on the existence of some mythical “God” educated out of them; their primitive reverence for the old traditions and long-established ways of doing things transformed into the Progressivist’s reflexive acceptance that change—any change, all change—represents real “progress” and can never be anything other than good and desirable.

Only then can the Progressivist dream of shaping and molding the primordial clay into New Progressive Man be achieved. Only through this inspiring metamorphosis from savage to civilized—under the sting of the lash, if need be—can the perfection of man be realized. Only through the Progressivist program can the cave-dwelling, revanchist knuckledragger finally rise to walk erect, then take his place with his fellows to make his due and proper contribution in service to the glorious State.

Of course, there will always be some number of dim, backwards apes who, whether out of stubborness or stupidity, either refuse to be or actually cannot be reformed. No need for our betters to waste a lot of time on determining how to deal with them. There are a variety of options for dispensing with them, from slave-labor camps to gulags to forced starvation to mass graves. Such ignominy is no more than such creatures deserve; they cannot, MUST not, be allowed to hinder Progress.

Nor can the knuckledraggers be permitted to freely express any irrational dissent from Progressivist dogma. The risk of infecting other minds and perverting whole sectors of society by exposure to such blasphemy cannot be tolerated; its potential influence on society is far too insidious to be overlooked. No extremity of oppression could be too harsh in safeguarding the State and The People from such wanton, destructive criminality.

Well, Real Americans say nuts to all that happy horseshit, and to hell with them what’s pushing it. The Progressivists positively HATE us for this defiance, a mad hate that burns so fiercely inside them it blackens the very soul whose existence they deny. Nonetheless, Real Americans would rather not bother ourselves about them at all; we’d be content to just leave them alone, to let them all toddle off somewhere and cherish their doot-brained fantasies to their shriveled hearts’ content.

Trouble is, though, that they will NEVER grant us the same courtesy. Actually, they can’t; Progressivist cant itself commands that they interfere with and harrass us to whatever degree they can manage, until the job of either converting us, subjugating us, or snuffing us out is done.

Since they’re lazy and childish, they’d dearly love to short-cut the whole frustrating process by just crushing us utterly, wiping us right out of earthly existence so’s they can just get on with things. Tragically for them, the puling, mewling pussies lack the stones to actually jump the fuck up. The vegan diets, scrotum-torquing skinny jeans, and general feminization have left them so sickly and weak that they couldn’t physically do it anyway.

All of which means that, much as we’d prefer not to have to waste perfectly good ammunition and put unnecessary wear on our barrel rifling, it looks like sooner or later we’re just gonna have to buckle down and shoot them all in their fucking empty heads. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, really I have, but I just haven’t been able to come up with any other way out of this. They created the problem; they’re responsible for bringing it to our very doorstep and waving it around obscenely at us. And it ought to be abundantly clear to even the meanest intelligence that they will never, ever back off a single inch, damn their eyes. So we’re gonna have to be the ones who solve it, if it’s ever to be solved at all.

The spy in your pocket

Our modern technological conveniences come at a price. And it ain’t calculated in dollars alone, either.

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly and Dr. Lee Norman, the head of the KDHE, addressed several issues Wednesday afternoon.

The KDHE is using a GPS program that tracks people’s locations through their cell phones. From the data, the state can tell that a lot of Kansans are not following social-distancing guidelines.

The program the state is using gave Kansas a grade of B Monday but has now downgraded the state to a C. Dr. Norman said some Kansas counties are getting an F grade because of how many people are not observing the stay-at-home order.

Well for God’s sake, man, with a scarifying tally to date of 482 cases and ten deaths as this doomsday pandemic ravages the state, how could anybody blame ’em for keeping a close eye on the witless knaves? Sundance cautions:

Comrades, again we note – our voluntary transponder devices (cell phone, FitBit etc) are being used by government officials to monitor our ‘stay-at-home’ coronavirus compliance. It only takes one slight flip of the government switch, or a carefully worded executive order, to turn that innocuous data into a personal penalty (civil fine).

If you choose to roam, ditch your phone…

All well and good, I guess. But what does that do about the countless surveillance cameras, drones, and satellites still monitoring our every move?

At last, some GOOD news

A silver lining finally appears.

Due to the coronavirus and a healthy dose of karma, newspaper advertising is drying up, and these same newspapers are now laying staffers off and slashing salaries while the far-left New York Times’ media columnist screams for a bailout.

Before I get to the karma part, here are the details…

On Monday, we learned the Tampa Bay Times is suspending its print publication from seven to two days a week. That’s not a typo. A newspaper that had been printing every day of the week will now print only on Wednesday and Sunday.

This, however, is not due to a lack of clicks.

“The company reported a surge in traffic to its website … and growth in digital subscriptions over the last few weeks” but “the pandemic sent advertising sales into a plunge. In just the last two weeks, [advertising] cancellations have cost us more than $1 million, and there is no sign of quick recovery on the horizon. We must act now.”

More…

Gannett, one of the largest newspaper companies in the country, publisher of, among others, USA Today, the Des Moines Register, and Arizona Republic, announced a sweeping round of furloughs. A memo from Gannett CEO Paul Bascobert asked employees to immediately make a “collective sacrifice … as soon as this week.”

Poynter points out that this is in direct response to “big advertising declines.”

Finally, Chicago’s Daily Herald is slashing newsroom salaries by 15 percent and salaries at its parent company by 20 percent.

And with this news, all released on Monday (the floundering BuzzFeed cut salaries by up to 25 percent last week), the far-left New York Times published a panicked and ludicrous bailout proposal…

Well, boo fucking hoo for them. I can’t quite see how it could be possible, but Ace is enjoying Enemedia’s pain even more than I am.

Check out this CNN whine of a headline:

Hundreds of journalists are being laid off, right when the public needs them the most

We “need” them?

We DO in fact need journalists. We assuredly do NOT need these pusnutted reprobates. In fact, we NEED to rid ourselves of them, one way or another, once and for all.

Last week, a senior “reporter” decided he would “investigate” and call the mother of a Twitter rando whose opinion he doesn’t like.

Do we “need” him? Is he “essential personnel” in a time of crisis?

As far as I’m concerned, you can all fucking starve to death. I hope you all lose your jobs and you all wind up in the gutter.

Disagree. In my opinion, starving is a WAY less painful death than they deserve. I much prefer they be eaten alive by rabid wolverines, myself.

Full coverage of the frabjous day to be made available for all free of charge, natch, in various formats. With pics and video. Let the handful of real journalists handle it.

“I Used to Think, Are They Really that Evil? Well, Yes they Are”

Welcome to the party, pal.

Mike Lindell, the inventor and CEO of MyPillow, announced Friday his company will convert 75 percent of their production from making pillows into making masks in an effort to combat the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

Lindell told Fox News he is working with the Trump administration on the type of masks needed. “Obviously, we specialize in cotton and we found out different materials that they didn’t want — latex. So, finally, we got the final prototype three days ago,” he said. But after Trump invited Lindell to speak at a press briefing in the White House Rose Garden Monday afternoon, verified blue checkmarks and members of the media did not take kindly to Lindell’s remarks to Americans.

Lindell, who just announced his company will produce 50,000 masks a day by the end of the week, was mocked for sharing his faith from behind the lectern, and encouraging Americans to turn to God in this time of crisis.

“God gave us grace on November 8, 2016 to change the course we were on,” Lindell said. “God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the Word. Read our Bibles and spend time with our families.”

Lindell audaciously daring to mention God in the course of his remarks was of course just too much for the Evil Left, who viciously attacked him as “insane,” an “awful human being,” and “an embarrassment,” among other such vileness. Happily, their bilious, reflexive hatred splashed back on ’em some.

An executive editor at CNN retweeted a video of Lindell’s appearance with the sarcastic caption, “In case you were wondering what My Pillow is doing in a time of coronavirus.” That’s odd, because Lindell just said he spent three days converting a 200,000-square-foot factory into a facility to produce millions of masks for American health-care workers, so we know exactly what he’s been doing during the public health crisis.

Insty jumps in with one of his simple, pithy slashes: “More than CNN has done. And even if he’d done nothing at all he’d be ahead of CNN, which as usual is mostly making things worse.” He also appends a couple of Twitter responses, of which this one is my personal fave:


Lindell went on to an appearance on Lou Dobbs to discuss his belated awakening to Who They Are, What They Do.

Mike Lindell told Lou Dobbs, “I heard Jim Acosta attacked me too and he was just 10 feet from me in the Rose Garden. This is just evil, Lou… CNN what they did to me? I’m sorry, I put out a message of hope to the country that God had given us grace on November 8, 2016 for such a time… I’m appalled by the journalists that I see there. I used to think are they really that evil? Well, yes they are.“

Y’know, most days I truly dread the coming schism—the Great Unpleasantness that will see the country torn apart, riven by another bloody Civil War. And then other days something like this happens, and suddenly I look forward to seeing some of these fucking assholes shot right in their goddamned empty heads.

Coronavirus coinkydinks

Ain’t no such thing.

Time bombs are innocuous until the fuse is lit, counting down to an explosion at some predetermined future time. Did the fuse on this current novel virus just happen to light itself? Or was it lit on purpose? And why now?

Here is where the coincidences begin. Wuhan, where the virus originated, just happens to be the location of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s only level 4 biosafety lab.

Could the virus have originated in that lab? The “consensus of scientists” say no, that this is just a conspiracy theory. Perhaps, but other consensuses of scientists tell us President Trump is mentally ill and that man-made global warming is melting the polar icecaps.

Plus we have that whole Chinese scientists pretty much admitting to it thing, too.

Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market.

A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province.

Let’s not forget about this, either:

What’s more, the People’s Liberation Army’s top expert in biological warfare, a Maj. Gen. Chen Wei, was dispatched to Wuhan at the end of January to help with the effort to contain the outbreak.

According to the PLA Daily, Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003, as well as Ebola and anthrax. This would not be her first trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, either, since it is one of only two bioweapons research labs in all of China.

Does that suggest to you that the novel coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, may have escaped from that very lab, and that Chen’s job is to try to put the genie back in the bottle, as it were? It does to me.

Does to me too, and to anybody else who knows anything about Commie regimes in general, and China in particular. Back to the first article for more on how the “coincidences” do keep piling up.

Move from science to politics for more coincidences, under the backdrop of the Trump presidency and upcoming election. The Chinese Coronavirus was first noted in China in December 2019. What was happening politically here at home at that exact time?

The House was holding impeachment hearings over President Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president, alleging election interference, obstruction of justice, quid pro quo, and anything else Reps Schiff and Nadler could fabricate.

The Ukrainian allegations coincidently originated shortly after the Mueller Special Counsel investigation came up empty in their efforts to remove Trump from office. Articles of impeachment were passed on a partisan basis in December but not acted upon until January, despite the “urgency” of removing the “existential threat” from the Oval Office.

Hmmm. Most peculiar, innit? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps…not so much.

Note the sequence of events, each failed plan was followed by another scheme, all with the same goal of destroying President Trump. Why was the impeachment trial delayed until January? It’s almost as if that was the perfect time to distract the president, the media, and American people while a viral time bomb was beginning to explode.

January was when the Chinese virus was spreading. The intel agencies briefed Trump and Congress. Trump took notice and instituted a travel ban on arrivals from China. Congress ignored the warnings and plowed on with a Senate impeachment trial, guaranteeing no media interest or reporting on the new SARS-like Chinese virus. Was the fuse of the time bomb lit when it was apparent that the Ukraine phone call was a dud, with impeachment a good cover for the burning fuse?

Another way to look at this is to ask: who stands to gain by the economic and social destruction this virus is wreaking?

You’ll want to read all of this one. He makes a pretty tight case, and ties it all up in a neat little bow at the end.

Flatten their curve update! Everyone who played a role in engineering and driving this catastrophe needs to face a serious reckoning. Starting with the ChiComs.

The facts are clear. China is not our friend or ally or even a responsible business partner. Right now, between 30 percent and 40 percent of world national economic output is affected by the coronavirus shutdowns, calculated the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in a report for the G20.

China’s President Xi is petrified that after this inferno the U.S. and others will turn their backs on globalization. In a March 26 letter to the G20, Xi pledged to increase active pharmaceutical supplies and implored G20 nations to cut tariffs and keep up the unfettered flow of trade.

Xi’s words don’t match his actions. In the face of this global crisis, China has hunkered down. China has tried to pin the origins of the coronavirus on the U.S. Army and on Italy. These inept, Communist Party responses show China is not ready to act with honesty or compassion. China wants to claim victory in their “peoples war,” as Xi called, it but they don’t want to change anything. Yes, Beijing has sent doctors and face masks.  But the Communist Party’s two-month cover-up attempt cost lives around the world.

It’s time for a total reconsideration of China’s role in the world and specifically, the U.S. economic relationship with China. Decoupling won’t happen all at once, but pharmaceuticals, 5G wireless, agriculture policy and of course imports and exports all need a new look post-coronavirus.

We can do this, folks. Canada and Mexico were America’s top two trade partners in 2019, with China ranked third in total value, which is exports and imports combined. Our neighbors Canada and Mexico really are the most important partners, accounting for a combined 30 percent of U.S. total trade vs. just 13.5 percent for China.

While Washington will have much to consider, its increasingly clear that coronavirus ended globalization as we know it: the phase dating from the day China joined the World Trade Organization on Dec. 11, 2001, until December 2019, when China fumbled its response to the Wuhan virus outbreak.

I can’t say I expect much if any of this to happen; with such a huge percentage of US manufacturing now based there, we’re much too completely enslaved to China to be able to exact a proper toll from them for these heinous crimes anytime soon. But it’s still a pleasant topic to ponder while we’re all locked in our homes indefinitely, watching it all burn.

By their fruits shall ye know them

The mailed fist is beginning to show through the velvet glove of “an abundance of caution” and “concern.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s power trip has reached new heights.

On Friday, de Blasio warned religious leaders during his press briefing that if places of worship do not comply with the city’s shutdown order — he might close them down permanently.

“A small number of religious communities, specific churches and specific synagogues, are unfortunately not paying attention to this guidance even though it’s so widespread,” de Blasio said during the briefing.

While he specifically mentioned synagogues and churches, he did not mention mosques at all.

Anybody surprised by that curious little omission? At all?

“I want to say to all those who are preparing for the potential of religious services this weekend: If you go to your synagogue, if you go to your church and attempt to hold services after having been told so often not to, our enforcement agents will have no choice but to shut down those services,” he added.

The out-of-control mayor continued on to say that if churches and synagogues resist authorities, they may be shut down forever.

Don’t think he wouldn’t, and with a big, happy smile on his face too. Fierce suppression of Christianity and Judaism has always been pretty much di rigeur for Commie tyrants everywhere, after all. Marxism can’t stand up to competition from other faiths.

Overstepping his bounds update! By what authority, Red Bill?

Let us be clear, the government can request, suggest and recommend that faith-based assemblies suspend their services; and in many cases those churches and religious groups may indeed choose to suspend their services. However, under no circumstance, including: war, famine or virus pandemics that could leave only a hand-full of people alive, can the government force the suspension; or punish those who refuse to comply.

Religious worship, including the assembly therein, is enshrined within the first amendment as it carries the first and ultimate essential service. There is absolutely no situation where that right can be removed.

Worse still is the use of the word “permanently” when de Blasio announces his unconstitutional suspension of rights. The mayor threatens to permanently close buildings? What kind of mindset would even fathom forcing the permanent closure of houses of worship because they defy unconstitutional dictates from the state?

This decree by the New York mayor should alarm everyone.

What TRULY ought to alarm everyone is that New Yorkers elected the loathsome Commie shitheel in the first damned place.

The Green New Deal Dystopia

Wouldn’t be caught dead living there, myself.

Greens just can’t help themselves. As the rest of us do what we can to tackle or withstand the Covid-19 crisis, they treat it as a sign, a warning from nature, a telling-off to hubristic, destructive mankind. The speed with which they have folded this pandemic into their misanthropic narrative about humanity being a pox on the planet has been shocking, but not surprising.

Right from the top of the UN, they have been promoting their backward belief that this virus is a reprimand from nature. Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, says ‘nature is sending us a message’ with this pandemic and other recent disasters, including bushfires in Australia and locust invasions in Kenya. Of course nature is doing no such thing, because nature is not a sentient being, however much the new religion of environmentalism might fantasise that it is.

Britain’s chief bourgeois misanthrope, George Monbiot, was hot on the heels of the UN’s eco-medievalists. He says Covid-19 has shattered humanity’s self-serving myth that it has achieved ‘insulation from natural hazards’. There is a grotesque glee in the way Monbiot describes what Covid-19 has unleashed – ‘the membrane has ruptured’, he says, and ‘we find ourselves naked and outraged, as the biology we appeared to have banished storms through our lives’.

“Insulation from natural hazards”? We somehow “banished” biology? Ummm, excuse me and all, Mr Moonbat, sir, but…well, I can’t honestly say I know ANYBODY—not a single living soul—who believes ANY of that utter codswallop you just disgorged. I certainly don’t myself.

This is also why so many greens online have been sharing images of dolphins swimming near Venice or an absence of airplane trails over California. Because to them, these are signs of a benefit from Covid-19: the humbling of humankind, the reining in of our industrial and technological activity, and the reassertion of nature’s awesome power. If you see a disease as a political statement, as an opportunity to pursue your pre-existing misanthropic agendas, there is something very wrong with you.

Even though all of this is morally perverse, it is not surprising. For a long time, greens have viewed human beings as a pox, a virus in our own right, doing untold damage to the planet. Green god David Attenborough has said humans are ‘a plague on the planet’. Even when greens don’t use such explicitly hateful language, they constantly promote a view of human production and development as toxic and destructive.

And they latch on to everything from bushfires to floods, from plagues of locusts to melting ice-caps, as signs from nature, lessons from a furious Gaia. When religious crackpots blame floods on gay marriage, claiming God is punishing us for losing the moral plot, we rightly mock them. Yet greens offer merely a secular version of such backward, apocalyptic claptrap.

Oh, there’s nothing secular about it. It’s more a contemporary twist on traditional religious faith—a perverse, bitter, ugly one, based not on love and redemption but on bilious contempt—more precisely attuned to the sensibilities of shriveled souls who scorn Christianity, mostly out of juvenile spite.

The truth is that if the Covid-19 crisis has shown us anything, it is how awful it would be to live in the kind of world greens dream about. Right now, courtesy of a horrible new virus, our societies look not dissimilar to the kind of societies Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, green parties and others have long been agitating for. Fewer flights, industry halted, huge infrastructure projects put on hold. Less driving, less travelling, less human interaction. Over the past few weeks, as a result of our response to Covid-19, the ‘human footprint’ will undoubtedly have shrunk. And what an awful world it has become: smaller, quieter, more atomised.

Also stilted, impoverished, and fearful: a world in which trust has been supplanted by suspicion, comfort and ease by hardship and angst, hope by despair. Green weenies frequently blibber on about the necessity of a mass die-off in order to indulge their pet delusion of restoring “balance” and “harmony” between man and his natural environment. Too bad for us saner sorts that they seem determined to take our helpful response to heart and act on it: By all means. After you.

You have been conned

Robert Zimmerman lays out what it’s REALLY all about. Hint: same old thing it always is.

While common sense, caution, and the human ability to adapt to fluctuating circumstances requires our society to react to the COVID-19 epidemic spreading across the globe, our additional ability to think coolly and rationally requires us to not allow our emotions to run wildly and out-of-control, taking actions that might feel good for a moment but do no good and maybe more harm in the long run.

It also requires to look closely at the actions of our lawmakers, whose motives are now commonly not driven by an interest in the country but by their own interests and an insatiable desire for power. Two stories this past weekend were quite revealing in this context.

First we have the incredible request by the Justice Department for new special powers so that it can supposedly react to the epidemic properly.

The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as the coronavirus spreads through the United States.

…There are more requests on the list, including the ability for the chief judge of any district court to “pause court proceedings” when the court is impacted by civil disobedience or other emergency situations. Such a “pause” could be put into effect for pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures. In other words, this would effectively throw habeas corpus out the window for the duration of the pandemic. You could, in theory at least, be arrested and tossed in a cell and left there indefinitely without getting the chance to appear before a judge and ask to be released, have bail set or anything else.

Remember, this is essentially the same Justice Department that for the past three years has worked hard to misuse the FISA court in an effort to overthrow the legal election of a president they don’t like, even as they abused their power to put several people in prison and ruin the lives of others for relatively minor process crimes that would not have even existed without their fake investigation.

You think they won’t misuse these new powers, should Congress give such to them? And in what way do any of these totalitarian and unconstitutional powers contribute in any way to overcoming COVID-19?

They don’t. That’s the giveaway, see. Even for those blind or naive enough not to have seen what was coming early on, rely on loathsome Demo-dimwit James Clyburn to be stupid enough to give the game away.

House Democrats are indicating they want to go bigger and broader than the already massive economic stimulus package offered by Senate Republicans to blunt the coronavirus pandemic.

On a Thursday conference call featuring more than 200 members of the House Democratic caucus, lawmakers one by one laid out a sweeping wish list of provisions they want to see included in the nascent package, including a boost in infrastructure spending, an expansion of Social Security benefits and funding for states to set up an all-mail voting system in the event the pandemic extends into November’s elections.

This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told lawmakers, according to a source on the call.

It is at that, and they’re making the most of it. Hey, isn’t there an old saw, probably apocryphal, about the Chinese word for “crisis” having a dual meaning, also signifying “opportunity”? Back to Zimmerman for the closer:

Can you imagine removing these restrictions next year, when the flu returns (as it always does) and causes even half those deaths? And if the lockdowns have been removed this summer because the Wuhan virus has subsided, I will not be surprised if they are re-imposed next fall, due to the annual much more serious flu season. A precedent will have been set, a precedent that every single one of our power-hungry and very corrupt politicians will wish to use, as often as possible.

Fortunately, we do have an election coming in November. If these thugs in power continue their effort to make themselves our dictators, we will have a chance to tell them otherwise.

The big question however is: Will we? I wish I knew.

Which brings to mind another, darker old saw: If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.

China syndrome

Tucker expands on some of those Bigger Problems I mentioned below.

There are serious long-term problems facing America, as we’ve told you about for years on this show. Thanks to outsourcing, this country no longer has the same reserve of stable middle-class manufacturing jobs we did even 30 years ago.

In coastal cities, housing has become astronomically expensive. Prices are rising far quicker than wage growth. And most tragically, an opioid epidemic kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. One of the chief reasons for that is a synthetic opiate called fentanyl that is smuggled in from abroad.

Now, these might seem like unrelated problems, but they’re not. A single theme unites them — a systematic decision by many of our country’s most powerful leaders to sell out America to China.

Those jobs that were outsourced, they went to China. Those rising home prices, all-cash Chinese buyers are a major contributor to that, though it’s almost never said out loud. Fentanyl — made in China with the knowledge and tacit approval of the Chinese Communist Party.

China is no longer simply an economic rival of the United States; it’s becoming a dangerous enemy. But instead of protecting us from this threat, an existential one, our leadership class collaborates with the other side.

The scariest part is that as China has grown more powerful, America has grown more dependent on it. Outsourcing our manufacturing power brought American companies big short-term profits. Head to Florida, and you’ll see the houses they’ve built with those profits. But in the long run, that decision made this country dangerously dependent on a nation that seeks to displace us on the world stage.

The saddest and most infuriating part is that none of this needed to happen in the first place. China didn’t just one day magically overtake us. Our leaders made that possible. They abetted it. They profited from it. They betrayed us.

And Americans voted for ’em anyway, and will again too. Which makes this depressing splash of cold-water reality look more relevant than ever:

BumsOut.jpg

Top Men

Bitter Clinger is not impressed.

It’s not just infuriating, it’s depressing, to see how mentally softened our country has become. Reduced to a shadow of ourselves, once the greatest, most inspiring nation to grace the planet. A nation colonized by men that sailed across oceans to a wilderness unknown without modern convenience or assurance of survival to have what they coveted most, personal autonomy. A nation that sent men to the deepest depths of the oceans and planted flags on the moon.

And what are we reduced to by media-induced panic? A nation of cowards, that casts the eye of suspicion on our fellow countrymen for the crime of a public sneeze or clearing of the throat.

My Little Clingette recently travelled to Spain on a school trip, one wrought with government travel bans, social distancing advisories, the ever-present “abundance of caution”, airport screenings, and a rucksack replete with hand sanitizer, alcohol-wipes and the like.

Upon her return, the top men of government, medicine and science have deemed it proper that she be quarantined for a fortnight, because, you see, having travelled makes her a hazard to society, or so say the top men. Mind you these same men of science have informed us that a child, moments from birth, is no child at all and may be summarily executed. These same men of medicine have assured us that injecting livestock with hormones is a dangerous practice, but injecting an eight year old with hormone blockers is sound medicine. These same men of government ply us with sound logical practices such as the forgoing of jurisprudence for the rapists, murderers and drug peddlers that invade our country from lands afar and near that pillage our great nation by way of government trough and illicit acts.

As a child of the internet generation, Little Clingette is given to trust the collective knowledge of the keyboard. So she is convinced that a visit to grandma’s house is tantamount to issuing a death sentence to her elderly maternal role model, and while I love her heart for being so concerned, a part of my heart breaks for her that she is assuredly is symptomatic, not of COVID-19 (or as it is referred to in House Clinger, “The Boogeyman Virus”), but of a deeper, more worrisome disease, one that is increasingly pervasive in our society. She suffers from fear, and fear is a dreadful disease most certainly. For while a bacteria, a virus, a stranger, or whatever other form that risk may manifest as may indeed kill you, fear itself will cripple your growth and life in a way that Polio or Ebola never could.

I still say that if our Top Men—with their superior wisdom, judgment, and access to much information we lesser beings lack—were really all that concerned about CV-19, they wouldn’t be in Washington conducting the usual business in the usual way right now as if there was nothing to worry about.

They’ve lied to us, and lied to us, and lied to us—about everything under the sun, for years and years and years. We know this full well. We know they’re not to be trusted; we know their intentions, ethics, and behavior all habitually fall a good ways short of honorable. Yet now, all of a sudden, we’re going to start believing them? We’re going to start trusting them, we’re going to just take it on faith that they have our best interests at heart—that they mean well after all? That they’re only “here to help,” as the bumper-sticker joke goes?

I could be all wet, I could be overly cynical, I could be a damned idiot, but…nah, brah.

The death of liberalism?

T’is an ill wind indeed that blows no man any good.

With some experts predicting, at a minimum, anywhere from 480,000 to 1.6 million American deaths from the coronavirus over the next three to 18 months, how smart does urban living, mass transit, open borders, reusable straws, reusable grocery bags, reusable water bottles, gun restrictions, over-regulated housing, using the Centers for Disease Control to fight gun violence, and outsourcing to China look now?

Just for a moment, close your eyes, and picture the establishment media’s and left’s (but I repeat myself) idea of The Virtuous American…

Then the pandemic hits… And thanks to a dense population, crowded mass transit, recycled air, poopy streets, bacteria-infested (but environmentally friendly) cups, straws, bottles, and bags, it spreads like wildfire though Virtue City.

Will Virtuous American be laughing at McMansion American while looking for a place in that tiny (but environmentally friendly) apartment to store enough food and water for four weeks?

Will Virtuous American be laughing at Gun-Nut American when tensions increase due to empty store shelves and the only thing between Virtuous American and I’m Taking All Your Shit American is a door made from 100% recycled paper products?

Will Virtuous American be laughing at Hick American who lives anywhere from 50 feet to 50 acres from any potential Possibly Infected American?

And what about Globalist American? When his parents can’t get their medications because they’re made in China, how funny is America First American looking now, pal?

I won’t quite say that if this disaster inspires Americans to rethink a few things, it was all worth the cost. On the other hand, if the inevitable discrediting of Progtard shibboleths by harsh reality results in a sweeping, long-term rejection of the Left’s fossilized, proven-failure ideas…well, that ain’t exactly nothing, folks.

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing

Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC

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Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for

pAntiFa: an alternative spelling of "fascist scum"

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