Go to work, go to jail

Are we tyrannized yet?

Yesterday, I wrote about a disturbing incident involving a tattoo parlor owner here in North Carolina who was handcuffed and escorted out of his shop Wednesday by police officers after he tried to reopen his business.

Matthew “Jax” Myers, 38, told the Raleigh News and Observer that he had no options left but to open back up because he needed the income, so it was a risk he was willing to take.

Click here to watch the video clip of Meyers being led out of his business by police.

In a separate incident that happened earlier today, police in Roxboro, North Carolina showed up to a woman’s hair salon to get her to shut it down after she attempted to reopen.

For the record, Person County – which is where Roxboro is located – has had a total of 20 cases diagnosed, and one death.

Words fail. But on that note, remember last night when I was all pleased and proud to report the Gaston County insurrection?

Gaston County officially reopened for business yesterday at 5:00 PM. Unlike Gov. Cooper, officials of the North Carolina county have enough sense to understand that endlessly shuttering businesses is a worse situation than coronavirus itself.

Tracy Philbeck, a commission chairman of Gaston County, explained that the return of the county’s economy is “health-minded.” Philbeck additionally noted that a one-size-fits-all solution is not appropriate. Shortly thereafter, he cited precautionary measures to prevent health issues; these precautionary measures entail sanitation, good hygiene, and social distancing.

In Gaston County’s announcement about reopening, they noted that vulnerable individuals should remain at home. The order also states that anyone who doesn’t wish to reopen their business is not obligated to do so. As of yesterday, Gaston County gave gyms, restaurants, movie theaters, churches, and sporting areas the green light to resume operations. Thus far, schools, bars, and activities for young people in Gaston County remain shuttered.

Sounds good, right? Yeah, well, about all that.

As it happens, close on the heels of Philbeck’s announcement, the daughter of a close friend of mine received a call from her boss instructing her to report to work at five. Having inexplicably bought into the frenzied Shanghai Sniffles panic-mongering herself, she was alarmed and VERY reluctant, but in the end screwed up the wherewithal to risk all-but-certain death and head on over to the small Belmont restaurant/pub that employs her anyway, a brand-new place that’s only been open a few months.

This was at five (5) PM.

At six, several black-and-whites from the town Schutzstaffel surrounded the place, and po-po strolled in to enforce Comrade Cooperovitch’s illegal edict. The owner, having already done hard time once years ago, saw no reason to risk arrest and immediately complied. And that was that; the Empire struck back, the nascent Rebel Alliance was quickly crushed.

Now, you people know I am not one to reflexively hate on cops. But I can only come up with one ugly little word in reference to LEOs who execute orders they know damned well are invalid, well outside the authority of our pissant little shit of a governor to issue. Such cops are pigs. Sorry and all, it pains me no end to have to say it, but…well, there it is.

Excuse me no excuses about being obliged to comply with the commands of your superiors, boys. “Just following orders” didn’t suffice to wash away the stain of guilt from the Nazis, and it isn’t going to absolve any of you now. The truth is, you all recited a few words before the badge was pinned on your chest:

The widely used oath embraced by the International Association of Chiefs of Police reads, “On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. I will always uphold the Constitution, my community, and the agency I serve.”

As AG Barr so concisely put it the other day, there is NO pandemic exception written into the Constitution. And just because our professional politicians speak similar oaths with forked tongues, harboring no intention whatsoever of living up to them right from jump, it doesn’t mean that YOU should do the same.

Comes a time when a man—any man, every man—has to decide to stand up for the right, to refuse to go along with things that are patently wrong. Orders of magnitude more so for cops, for soldiers, for any toting a similar weight of communal trust and responsibility. A cop willing to flout the Law Enforcement Oath Of Honor, a solemn and serious covenant, in order to enforce dictates he knows to be unrighteous should never have become a cop in the first place, no matter how polite he might be as he slips the cuffs onto some blameless soul for the crime of trying to keep a roof over his family’s heads in extremely difficult times. He has shown himself to be morally unfit for the job.

Instead of arresting desperate small business owners who stand to lose everything they have or ever will have, LEOs should consider heading to the Governor’s Mansion instead. There’s far more upright and honorable work awaiting you there, fellas.

Oh, by the way: as of yesterday, Gaston County has all of twenty active C-19 cases, and a total of three deaths.

“The biggest shock since the Great Depression”

Hey, no worries. Professional politicians and Deep State bureau-rats universally assure us it can all be turned back on again as easily as flipping a light switch. And when have those supergeniuses ever been wrong about anything?

GDP falls by 4.8 percent, bringing longest economic expansion on record to abrupt halt
Gross domestic product, which measures the output of goods and services, sank by 4.8 percent in the first quarter on an annualized basis, according to an initial estimate from the Department of Commerce released Wednesday morning.

It’s the steepest decline since the Great Recession, which ended in 2009. Economic growth was tracking at or above 2 percent until mid-March.

With most of the nation stuck at home, large swaths of the economy have shuttered, throwing 26 million people out of work. Consumer spending, which drives around two-thirds of economic growth, has plummeted.

While Wall Street had been steeling itself for the data, the worst is yet to come. First quarter data captured economic activity up to the end of March, but the second quarter will likely include three straight months of decline.

“You’re looking at something like minus 20 percent to minus 30 percent in the second quarter,” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Monday, noting that the coronavirus is “the biggest shock since the Great Depression. It’s a very grave shock and it’s something we need to take seriously.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimated second-quarter GDP would be down by as much as 40 percent, for the worst quarter since 1947.

Economists say the U.S. likely entered recession — generally defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in GDP — in the second half of March, when lockdowns began.

“You’re going to see the economy really bounce back in July, August, September,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox News earlier this week. “You’re seeing trillions of dollars that’s making its way into the economy and I think this is going to have a significant impact,” he said of the government’s $2 trillion dollar emergency stimulus package meant to buttress the economy.

Damage: done.

A farmer named Shad Sullivan warned in a viral video that “[America’s] food supply is in trouble.”

Farmers are outraged that subpar imported meat continues to flow into America despite warnings to American farmers to put down their own livestock.

“Yesterday, the first shipment of imported beef from the country of Namibia hit the shores of the United States of America,” said Sullivan.  “And yet this morning they are telling us to prepare to euthanize harvest-ready cattle.”

Sullivan questioned, “Am I the only one who sees a problem in this?”

Racist.

Over 30 Million Americans Have Lost Their Jobs In The Last Six Weeks
In the last week 3.839 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the first time.

That brings the six-week total to 30.31 million, which is over 12 times the prior worst five-week period in the last 50-plus years.

Worse still, the final numbers will likely be worsened due to the bailout itself: as a reminder, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed on March 27, could contribute to new records being reached in coming weeks as it increases eligibility for jobless claims to self-employed and gig workers, extends the maximum number of weeks that one can receive benefits, and provides an additional $600 per week until July 31. A recent WSJ article noted that this has created incentives for some businesses to temporarily furlough their employees, knowing that they will be covered financially as the economy is shutdown. Meanwhile, those making below $50k will generally be made whole and possibly be better off on unemployment benefits.

As Mises’ Robert Aro noted earlier in the week, the stimulus packages being handed out across this world provide us with an opportunity to document the anticapitalist process as it unfolds in real time, keeping in mind that when these inflation schemes fail, it will likely be blamed on capitalism.

And Trump, of course. After all, that was one of the main points of this whole disastrous exercise.

But no matter. The damage is done now; assuredly, there will be no going back to where we were from this, our New Normal. Wherever you sit, whatever you choose to believe, it all comes down to one thing.




I do believe I need to set up that song title as a new category here.

Two sets of laws Part the Bazillionth

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

Yeah, well. About all that.

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

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

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

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

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

Because Islam, silly. Another report:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clearly Christians are being singled out and persecuted.

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

Choices, choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let a million middle fingers rise

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



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

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

Update! Washington state insurrection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

T’aint funny, McGee

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

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

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

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

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

Bloated numbers

A New York affliction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Same old same old

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Had, took, hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bottom line? This:

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

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

Are we not men?

On your feet or on your knees.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you a free man or a sheep?

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Priorities

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



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.

Hate crime

One asks one’s self, will this psychopathic “woman” NEVER leave the poor man alone? And the answer comes back: of course xzhe/zxher/zxhim/zxhit won’t.

Jack Phillips, the baker who was sued for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding because of his religious conscience, was back in court on Thursday, this time for turning down a request for a “gender transition” cake.

The first lawsuit against Phillips, who owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado, worked its way up to the United States Supreme Court, which in 2018, reached a 7-2 decision that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted with hostility toward religion when it ordered Phillips to make cakes for same-sex weddings as well as conduct so-called sensitivity training for his employees.

The Christian Post reported on how Phillips will once again be represented in court by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF):

The same state agency pursued another case against Phillips because he declined to make a cake celebrating transgenderism. Phillips filed a lawsuit against the state alleging harassment and it subsequently dropped the matter.

After that, a local trans activist and attorney named Autumn Scardina called Phillips’ Denver-area bakery to order a custom made gender-transition cake. Scardina waited past the appeal deadline so he could file a new lawsuit in a different court.

Scardina is seeking more than $100,000 in damages, fines, and attorney’s fees, according to the Post.

Mr Scardina is a lawyer himself, in partnership with his shameless, ambulance-chasing brother and some other blood sucking leech, although all mention of “Autumn” has been scrupulously from the firm’s website at present. As such, I very much doubt that the deranged lowlife has any real interest in collecting “damages” from Phillips. His true interest is now solely in destroying this Christian baker utterly—ruining him beyond all recovery or redemption. Tragically, infuriatingly, the demented freak’s campaign of hatred and destruction is succeeding:

Mr. Phillips said Thursday that he gladly serves all customers, but that “I just can’t celebrate every event or express every message through my cake art.”

The lawsuit, which seeks about $100,000 in damages, fines and attorney’s fees, “could cost me everything,” he said.

“I already lost 40% of my business and more than half of my employees during the first case,” Mr. Phillips said. “I still haven’t regained that income, nor been able to resume creating custom cake art for weddings. During this current coronavirus, I’ve been hit just as badly as many other small business owners.”

“This attorney’s relentless pursuit of Jack was an obvious attempt to punish him for his views, banish him from the marketplace, and financially ruin him and his shop,” said ADF legal counsel Jake Warner, who argued the case in court. “For these reasons and others, we are asking the court to dismiss this case.”

The above story provides a rundown of the relentless vendetta Mr Scardina has waged against Phillips, including this:

By now, you’ve probably heard a lot about Jack. He serves everyone that walks into his shop. But he can’t create custom cakes that express messages or celebrate events in conflict with his deeply held religious beliefs. This includes cakes advocating drug use, Halloween cakes, and cakes disparaging people, including those who identify as LGBT.

On June 26, 2017, a local attorney named Autumn Scardina called Masterpiece Cakeshop and requested a custom cake: designed blue on the outside and pink on the inside to celebrate and reflect Scardina’s transition from male to female. The shop declined the request because the message of the cake contradicts Jack’s religious belief that God creates us either male or female.

But the day that call came wasn’t just another summer day. It was the same day the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear Jack’s first case—Jack and Masterpiece Cakeshop were all over the news.

And a few months later, Scardina made another request of Masterpiece Cakeshop. This request was for a custom cake featuring Satan smoking marijuana.

Ummm, sorry, guys, but that ain’t the way I heard it at the time. Not quite.

In the months that followed, the bakery received requests for cakes featuring marijuana use, sexually explicit messages, and Satanic symbols. One solicitation submitted by email asked the cake shop to create a three-tiered white cake depicting Satan licking a functional 9 inch dildo. Phillips believes Scardina made all these requests.

Of course he did. Who the hell else in the Denver area would be seething with anti-Christian bigotry enough, would be so personally obsessed with Phillips and his beliefs, and is plain old batshit insane enough to do all this?

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER FOR PURELY LEGAL PURPOSES: Now, y’all must understand that I am NOT suggesting that anyone should undertake any such thing, nor would I ever. But I probably couldn’t keep from laughing myself silly if one fine day I read that some enterprising soul had taken it upon himself to visit some old-school rough justice on this sick freak by walking him way out in the woods someplace, nailing him to a tree with railroad spikes through his palms and feet, and then using a rusty old Uncle Henry to complete his “transition” to full-bore “womanhood.”

Trump FINALLY cleaning house?

Mucking out the stalls in the Deep State stables.

President Trump often refers to government waste as part of the Washington “swamp” he has vowed to drain – but the phrase has also become shorthand for bureaucratic resistance to his agenda and policies. Putting inspectors general, or IGs, under the microscope is the latest push in Trump’s post-impeachment purge of government officials whom the president and his conservative supporters say have worked to undermine his agenda and sabotage political appointees’ efforts to carry it out, several sources familiar with the discussions have told RealClearPolitics.

Heightened monitoring of IG investigations and their findings has yet to lead to anyone’s ouster, but key administration officials and Trump allies are urging the president to do some housecleaning and get rid of Obama-era watchdogs sprinkled throughout the administration. Several acting inspectors general appointed during the Obama administration are still operating at key government agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Treasury Department.

“The federal bureaucracy has gone to war with the Trump administration, and their people have targeted and taken out many Trump’s officials,” a former White House official told RCP. “Those who are naturally responsible are the IGs, and they are complicit in their inaction.”

“The IGs, many put in place by the Obama administration, empower the deep state to go after the administration. … It’s absolutely nuts,” the former official added. “If [officials] were scared of the consequences of breaking the law, they wouldn’t go after the Trump administration like they do. That’s why you have the deep state gone wild. No one is watching the watchdogs.”

Note that this article is from March 10th. Now let’s have the author bring us up to date:



Good. At the risk of sounding like a broken record here, I’ll say it yet again: By now, there should not be so much as a single Obama stay-behind left in place anywhere in the Executive branch. Period. Hopefully, Trump is thinking of this as nothing more than a good, if way overdue, start.

Trump’s biggest blunder has been to let these ill-intentioned saboteurs keep their jobs; he shouldn’t have, and that mistake has proven very expensive indeed—not just for him and his agenda, but for the entire nation. Cristina reminds us that Reagan, at least, wasn’t suckered by the nefarious Deep State weasels:

Flashback: On day one of his administration president Ronald Reagan fired all IGs. The usual suspects were up in arms but the Reagan presidency went on just fine. Hiring or firing IGs is the president’s prerogative.

On Inauguration Day, Mr. Reagan sent notice to Congress that he had removed 13 inspectors general and two acting inspectors general in 15 agencies.

He said that the discovery of fraud, waste and mismanagement of Federal funds was an ”important priority” of his Administration and that it was essential for him to have the ”fullest confidence” in the ability and integrity of each inspector general.

Why, it’s almost as if the President thinks he might have some kind of influence over the Executive Branch or something, innit? But we know that’s a purely preposterous notion, risible on its very face. After all, no less an expert on the Constitution’s explicit separation-of-powers mandate than Adam Schitt says so.


Quick civics lesson for partisan-axe-grinding shitlib ignorami: the “intelligence community” isn’t supposed to be “independent,” actually. It is but one subdivision of what is known as the Executive Branch. Its personnel serve at the pleasure of their boss—the President—one of whose job titles is Chief Executive. So in other words, Trump can fire any of ’em; he can fire none of ’em; or he can fire every single gott-damned one of ’em, entirely at his own discretion or whim. For any reason, or for no reason at all. And whichever route he chooses to go, the Congress has not one single gott-damned thing to say about it. Period, full stop, end of fucking story.

Or, cutting right to the chase: Fuck off and die, Shitthead. Five minutes ago wouldn’t be soon enough to suit me.

Commie tigers never change their stripes

Don’t trust China. China is asshoe*.

Call it the Kung Flu, the Shanghai Shivers, the Wuhan or Chinese virus, or COVID-19 — whatever you want — communist China lied and so far thousands worldwide and the global economy died. The interconnected world has two main hubs, the United States and China. What happens in one will affect the other, as long as China remains the world’s manufacturing and supply hub. You cannot buy antibiotics, Nike shoes, or untold thousands of other products we use every single day that did not originate in part or in whole in China.

Geraghty’s timeline does leave out a couple of dates that bear mentioning. The Democrats in the House passed the articles of impeachment against President Trump on December 18, 2019. On January 15, after sitting on those articles across the holidays, they walked them over to the Senate while the mainstream media gushed over the solemnity of the occasion.  That same day, the first human carrying the coronavirus landed in the United States. He traveled here from China, as thousands did every day. Of course, no one knew he was carrying the deadly virus at the time. China and the WHO were still lying about the outbreak.

The impeachment saga lasted until February 5, 2020. Of course, President Trump and his core team were focused nearly exclusively on that, while at the same time they had little choice but to rely on what the WHO was saying about what was happening in Wuhan. Virus outbreaks come and go and none have caused a global crisis in more than a century. Impeachment was an immediate existential threat to Trump’s presidency and a political act designed to destroy him. When President Trump announced the China travel ban on January 31, the Democrats and the media carried China’s water and denounced the action as an attack on immigrants. As if business travelers and tourists are the same things as immigrants.

Looking forward, we need clear and unified thinking in the West when it comes to China. The communists suppress open media and all dissent domestically. The left ought to hate that. They lie for any reason and no reason at all. They punish scientists for discussing facts. They bury findings that don’t suit them. The coronavirus outbreak has exposed both the WHO and the UN Human Rights Council as bad and unreliable actors who favor China’s communists over their own credibility. The Hong Kong protests exposed much of the western media and even the NBA as cowards more concerned with their bottom lines than the freedoms they rely on to exist. China has used the wealth generated from becoming the world’s manufacturer to buy influence across the world with its Belt and Road programs and to undermine American influence at the same time.

Only Richard Nixon could have gone to China, but that trip may have turned out to be his greatest mistake. Decades later free Taiwan is marginalized, Hong Kong is under threat and the communists in Beijing are more influential, richer and more powerful in overt and insidious ways than ever. The whole world is reeling thanks to China’s rulers. In every way, as long as communists rule China, it should be viewed as a hostile and unreliable entity — villainous in the extreme and an enemy of freedom, decency and human dignity.

Amen. Sadly, it’s on us that such an obvious truth—a truth which ought to be the very first assumption informing all intelligent attitudes towards Communist shitrapies one and all—is even a matter of debate at this late date. Through our schools and universities, our news and entertainment media, and our politics, we’ve provided the dark, humid environment in which the parasitic Communist fungus can take root and flourish. We should have been digging up and burning the diseased, moldy thing instead. Exhibit A:

“Mom, can you look at this assignment?” A few weeks ago, before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic forced my school-aged children home, I looked at the homework sheet my high school-age child was referring to and quickly realized what prompted the question. The freshman world history reading assignment was about parents raising “theybies.”

Scratching my head, I read through the assigned article, which included definitions such as “gender is a social construct” followed by leading questions asking students to regurgitate gender theory. The next day, my child received an assignment that taught him about critical race theory before he read an article about when black singer Lil Nas X’s song “Old Town Road” was kicked off the country music charts. The class? Physics.

Needless to say, now with my kids home and me overseeing their daily e-learning, this is a great opportunity to take a deeper look at the left-wing theories on race and gender, not to mention climate change, that public schools are pushing on my children.

My 11-year-old middle school son was assigned the following two videos for “Integrated Global Studies” class. The first is an alarmist video that promotes donations to a bogus fund. The second has countless grammatical errors and lacks any sort of sourcing.

Before Halloween last fall, the same school sent out this memo regarding cultural appropriation, sharing a Teen Vogue video and explaining that cultural appropriation is “defined as the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another.” (So I guess the school’s annual “Luau Madness” party is also off).

So how are we to reckon with the above-cited truth, about Red China and about Communism itself, when The Long March Through The Institutions—part of a brilliantly-conceived and flawlessly-executed project for bringing about Communist tyranny not through violent revolution but surreptitiously, via the “fundamental transformation” of American culture—has proved to be such a smashing success? Have we in fact committed cultural suicide?

How do societies and cultures end? What causes the death of societies and cultures? It is not always the obvious threats.

Today we are struggling with the coronavirus which has unfortunately sickened many and killed some Americans. The deaths are tragic, but so are the many Americans who die annually from the flu, from cancer, and from auto and industrial accidents. The death rate from the coronavirus will be low, far below any existential threat to American demography.

Here is the critical fact: the death of societies and cultures is usually suicide. Members of the society lose faith in its institutions, reject its cultural values, demonize their fellow citizens, enthusiastically entertain foreign ideologies, and open their doors to foreign adversaries. This is particularly devastating when elites turn against the society’s institutions and culture. The initial result is social conflict, loss of confidence, and eventually civil war and or foreign invasion.

With the Democrat Party, all colleges and universities, the school system, and the mainstream media all devoted to anti-American progressive values and objectives, it is clear that America is 75% gone. Who is left to uphold American society and culture and the values of freedom, opportunity, prosperity, individual integrity, and family unity? We know that the half of the American population in “flyover country” maintains American values, even while the national elites on the coasts despise that population, infamously characterized by the Democrat Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton as “the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it.” The Republican Party, faced with a pro-American candidate for president, retreated in part, while another part fought against, so it is unlikely to be the cavalry coming to save America. Do not bet against seeing the emergence of the United Progressive States of Socialism.

Hate to say it and all, but especially after all we’ve witnessed the last couple of weeks that 75% estimate seems pretty low to me.

*NOTE: The source of that hilarious quote can be found here.

The price

Was it worth it?

It took only 15 days after the coronavirus outbreak was confirmed in the U.S. for Boba Guys, a popular San Francisco bubble tea chain with 400 employees and 17 locations, to shut its doors.

With an average daily income of only $7 above daily expenses, the typical small business has a median cash buffer of 27 days of burn before it runs out of money.

Karen Mills, prior head of the Small Business Administration (SBA), said recently that “20%, even 30%, of small businesses could fail even in a good scenario.” Without immediate support to buffer the cash flows of stalled businesses waiting for the economy to reopen, it is a matter of days until millions begin to shut their doors, driving unemployment up significantly and sending the economy into a tailspin.

Small businesses make up over 99.9% of businesses, employ about 59 million people (about 47% of the U.S. private workforce in 2015), create over 41% of new jobs, and account for 45% of GDP.

A Goldman Sachs survey of 1,500 small businesses found that 96% of owners were already feeling the effects of COVID-19. More than half said their business would not be able to continue operating for more than three months because of the economic stresses caused by the pandemic.

With 47% of the private workforce facing potential layoffs, unemployment could rise rapidly into the double digits, substantially driving down the 45% of GDP that small business represents, and lasting for a substantial, years-long recovery.

Even if the death rate from the Creeping ChiCom Crud suddenly spikes to the scarifying levels our masters have been predicting, I still can’t see that the Great Clampdown was worth the cost that decades of impoverishment and misery from destroying the economy is going to exact. And that doesn’t even take into account the freedom we’ve thrown away, which will assuredly NOT be coming back.

Update! Michael Z Williamson gets specific on which businesses will fail.

By week 2, unemployment went from 3% to 10%.

It really hasn’t occurred to most of you that businesses fail from not engaging in business. This just tells me the socialist indoctrination centers (schools) have utterly failed to explain how business works.

Most businesses operate on tiny margins, especially stores and restaurants. Now, restaurants that can do takeout are managing, mostly (at reduced capacity and with reduced employees). But fine dining establishments or sit-down-only ethnic restaurants aren’t. They’re closed. That means no income for any of the owners or employees, followed shortly by no income for the landlord, who is also probably a small business, so stow your socialist-indoctrinated hate.

Keep in mind that every one that fails means unemployed workers as well. And just because YOU can find a workaround for their product, doesn’t put money in THEIR pocket.

Here’s a partial list I will expand:

Theaters, who have managers, ushers, concessionaires, ticket takers.

Restaurants and bars who have managers, cooks, servers, cleaners.

Restaurants need food suppliers. If they’re not selling food, they’re not ordering food from the suppliers. (One corresepondent reports his factory produces sliced cheese. 80% drop in orders with so many restaurants closed or doing less business.)

Specialty retailers–bookstores, hobby stores.

Hotels–no one is renting rooms if they’re not traveling for leisure or business. Hotels employ maintenance, housekeepers, clerks, often entertainers.

Convention facilities–who have lots of overhead, and lots of staff and/or contractors for support, displays, decorations, etc.

Venues for music or live theater.

Gyms aren’t getting anything without guests and attendees.

He has many, many, many more, as if the above weren’t all too much. Then he gets to the REALLY grim stuff—what the effect of all this will be in only a few more weeks—before asking the big question:

The point is there are ZERO non-essential jobs in even our nominally free (though massively government controlled) market. If a job doesn’t generate income, it goes away.

The question comes down to: How many people are you willing to starve and murder over a virus that the experts agree won’t be significantly worse than the four previous major viruses, in the last half century?

Since it’s way too late to fix this now, and there’s no going back from here, it looks like we’re about to find out.

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"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

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

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
Donald Sensing

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
Bill Whittle

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