Sunday, August 30, 2020

Meanwhile...closer to home in DC....

"Peaceful" Protestors inciting/ instigating violence against the police (and anybody else wearing a hat or tee with the wrong cause stated on the front).

A Patriot Prayer Supporter is Shot and Killed in Portland

 
No wonder BLM wants the Police Defunded. That way they can gloat and "take out the trash" without any pesky "judicial process" or "judicial review". Wear an offensive hat and its' "Off with his head!" Meanwhile, what preceded the shooting above much earlier in the day:

Q- How Many Americans Have Died SOLEY from the Covid-19 Virus? A- 9,684 or 6% of Total

 


Note what it says..."For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the ONLY cause mentioned."  That means that in 94% of cases, there were on average 2.6 other reasons for the person's death.

6% of 161,393 deaths is only 9,684 deaths.

So, if you are a perfectly healthy American, your chances of dying from Covid-19 once you ALREADY HAVE the virus is 9,684 out of 6,008,588 (total COVID positive test results in the USA) or 1.61 in 1,000.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Biden Disses the Bernie Bros on Democratic Platform AGAIN!

DNC Disaster? More Than A Thousand Delegates Voted ‘No’ On Democratic Party Platform
Democrats are more divided than they appear according to numbers released by the Democratic National Committee following their nominating convention last week.

Fox News reports that of the 5,000 delegates that voted on the party’s platform, widely recognized as the most progressive Democratic Party platform in years, more than a thousand delegates — around 25% of all attendees — voted against the decision to approve the party’s official policies.

The situation reveals a breakdown in the party that could cost the Democrats in the coming years and indicates a vast difference between the “moderate” Democratic party, which fought to nominate former Vice President Joe Biden as its 2020 contender, and the growing progressive wing, which backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

“The DNC revealed over the weekend that  3,562 delegates voted to approve the platform, while a total of 1,069 voted no, and 87 abstained,” Fox reported. “The number of convention delegates who voted no is roughly the same as the number of delegates pledged to progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The populist lawmaker and ‘Medicare-for-all’ champion was the last remaining rival to Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the primaries before suspending his White House bid and endorsing the former vice president in April.”

The number could give Biden’s team pause; although Sanders himself has pledged to back the former Veep, recent reports indicate growing unrest within the progressive caucus, and fear that once elected, Biden will not be as willing to embrace far-left policy as they expect.

Biden has already turned down a “Medicare-for-All” health care plan, refuses to endorse the “defund the police” movement and, as The Daily Wire reported Sunday, encouraged Democratic platform committees to marginalize the official Black Lives Matter organization, even though Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, made racial justice a central theme of the convention.

At least one Sanders convention delegate acknowledged acrimony.

“We were upset. There was pushback. There were emails and phone calls,” a Sanders supporter told Fox.

Only two Democratic legislators voted against the platform — Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) — both because the platform failed to include a fully single-payer health care plan.

Although the numbers are shocking, the discord is not necessarily unexpected — and Republicans, who raised eyebrows Sunday by refusing to issue an official platform for their own convention, may have decided to avoid a similar display of major, internal party fracture by avoiding policy altogether.

Instead of an official platform, the Republicans are pledging to “enthusiastically support” their nominee, according to Fox News. Instead of voting on changes, the RNC will leave the party’s 2016 platform intact.

“The RNC has unanimously voted to forego the Convention Committee on Platform, in appreciation of the fact that it did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement,” the RNC said in a statement Sunday.

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Kim Klacik for Congress

More Democratic Stink Coming Out of Baltimore...

 

Jazz Shaw, "Baltimore State’s Attorney Says Her Business Emails Are None Of Your Business"

Baltimore has a new Mayor coming in January, which is probably a relief to many of the residents of Charm City since the one they had before the current, interim Mayor is currently in prison on corruption charges. At the same time, many of her colleagues at the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) Board of Directors are under investigation to see just how many people had their fingers in the cookie jar. But now that crew may not have to feel all alone in the world. The City’s State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby is currently under investigation by the city’s Inspector General as well.

You may remember Mosby for her involvement in the Freddie Gray debacle back in the day and her attempts (and failures) to prosecute a lot of police officers instead of wasting her time with Baltimore’s massive, raging gang violence problem. It turns out she must have a lot of free time on her hands even with all of that backlogged work because now she’s become embroiled in this situation.

We don’t know precisely what’s going on, but it has something to do with several private-sector travel and consulting businesses that Mosby set up last year without bothering to list them on her ethics reports. The reason we don’t know more is that when the Baltimore Sun filed a Public Information Act request for any emails on her government computer system mentioning the businesses, she basically told them to go whistle for their dinner. She claims those records are none of the public’s business so she’s not turning them over.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby won’t make public emails that mention her private businesses and are stored on her government computer, arguing that they are exempt from disclosure because they are part of an investigation by Baltimore’s inspector general.

The Baltimore Sun filed a Public Information Act request for all emails that mention three private travel businesses Mosby set up last year but did not initially disclose in her state ethics filings. Her office cited three reasons for not releasing the documents: the ongoing investigation; that they weren’t related to state business; and that they “contain information about the finances of an individual.”

Mosby also declined a separate request for her companies’ financial records — such as receipts and tax returns — that are not subject to state public records laws. And she refused repeated requests for an interview.

Mosby’s spokesperson has been rather tight-lipped and a number of the questions that Sun reporters have put to her have gone unanswered. She claims that these companies exist “only in name” and they are intended to help underserved Black residents to travel in comfort. But if that’s the case, why not set them up as nonprofits? Also, why set them up just as she’s starting another term in office rather than waiting until she’s at least close to getting out of politics and law enforcement when she’ll have more time to operate them?

It’s also curious that financial statements apparently exist for the companies as well. That’s rather odd since they allegedly only exist on paper, don’t you think? Of course, we don’t know because she’s not turning those over either. Oh, and the Inspector General is looking into another matter as well, though it’s uninvolved with these businesses. Mosby has been doing a lot of travel these past two years, much of it overseas. And almost all of it was on the dime of private interests. Hey, wait… is that why she wanted to start a travel business? Hrmm…

Questions also surround Mosby’s travels while in office. She has disclosed to the Ethics Commission that she traveled at least 20 times for events over the past two years, including trips abroad to Berlin, Portugal and Kenya. Most of the travel — which totaled about $30,000 — was paid for by private organizations.

If Marilyn Mosby wants to set up some legal private business on the side, that’s up to her, assuming she stays inside the guidelines of the law. But any records on her government computer and official email system are part of the public record, no matter what they are about. (Unless their disclosure could endanger ongoing criminal investigations being handled by her office, of course, but that hardly sounds like the case here.) And while we’re on the subject, if these companies are entirely private and none of the public’s business, why are you handling those affairs on your government email system?

Given the cavalcade of corruption that Baltimore’s citizens have had to put up with from their mayors, the members of City Council and the UMMS, I would think that any public official in Charm City with nothing to hide would be rushing to the microphones to deliver any requested official documents, do interviews and take questions. That’s how you put any possible misunderstandings behind you and maintain the trust of the public. But Mosby’s behavior is looking increasingly like the beleaguered citizens of Charm City may have yet another stinking cycle of news about municipal corruption coming their way.


Saturday, August 15, 2020

Get Back to Work, America!

 

What history will record as the great COVID coup of 2020 is based on lies and fear manufactured by America’s ruling class—led by the Democratic Party and aided by the complaisance of most Republican politicians.


In March, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) presented the coronavirus to the Western world as a danger equivalent to the plague. But China’s experience, which its government obfuscated, had already shown that COVID-19 was much less like the plague and more like the flu. All that has happened since followed from falsifying this basic truth.

Americans were led to believe that the virus was unusually contagious, and that it would kill up to one in 20 persons it infected—a 5 percent infection/fatality rate (IFR). Today, we still lack definitive, direct knowledge of COVID-19’s true lethality. The absence of that knowledge allows bureaucrats to continue fearmongering.

By May, a  host of studies in the U.S. and around the world showing that the vast majority of COVID cases cause mild symptoms or none, and showing the IFR to be equal to or lower than that for most flus, forced the CDC to conclude that the lethality rate, far from being 5 percent, was 0.26%––double that of a typical flu. Instead of amending their recommendations in the face of this reality, the CDC and the U.S. government tried to hide it by manipulating the definition and number of COVID “cases.”

Federal officials defined “cases” as people sick enough to be hospitalized who also tested positive for the virus—this represented the “curve” that we were urged to sacrifice so much to “flatten,” lest a wave of hospitalizations overwhelm our health-care system. That wave never came. The CDC and feds began labeling mere infections as “cases” and stopped reporting “cases” together with the number of deaths. They did this to frighten the inattentive public about “spiking COVID cases.” They also inflated the number of deaths attributed to COVID by including illnesses such as pneumonia and influenza and others into the death figures.

In reality, those who died with or of COVID-19 nearly always suffered from other diseases as well, such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and compromised lungs, in addition to being elderly and infirm. COVID-19’s effect on ordinary healthy persons is considerably milder than those of ordinary respiratory diseases.

COVID-19 is not America’s plague. There was never the slightest evidence that the virus could produce mass casualties; all evidence pointed in the opposite direction. Instead, the ruling class took this opportunity to extort the general public’s compliance with its agendas. Their claim to speak on behalf of “science” is an attempt to avoid being held accountable for the enormous harm that they are doing. They continue doing it because they want to hold on to the power the panic has brought them.

In sum, the lockdowns have been inflicted and perpetuated by people who care more about your subjugation than your health. They want to wreck the U.S. economy and increase the Democratic Party’s chances in the 2020 election. And they might succeed.

The 2016 election raised the possibility that the presidency’s enormous powers might be used to dismantle the ruling class’s network of prestige and privileges. In response, elites launched what has amounted to a “full court press” against the Trump administration, treating anything and everything about the administration as illegitimate. Despite their best efforts, the U.S. economy boomed. Trump’s approval ratings rose. As 2020 dawned and Trump seemed a cinch for reelection, the political left and its allies grasped for ways of damaging him.

COVID-19 was the perfect chance to produce, stoke, and maintain fear in pursuit of power. In short, the ruling class used the coronavirus to collapse American life. We are living through a coup d’Ă©tat based on the oldest of ploys: declaring emergencies, suspending law and rights, and issuing arbitrary rules of behavior to excuse taking “full powers.”

Truth and clarity about the 2020 COVID coup are necessary for the United States to overcome its effects. Americans are anxious for truth about what happened—and what is still happening. The lies upon which this scam has been based are so substantively thin, and the resources for establishing the truth so abundant, that a few courageous leaders in key places may suffice.

For example, nothing is stopping the Senate from functioning as a truth commission regarding the COVID coup. Since the virus scam is based on lies and misrepresentations by persons of considerable power and prestige, expert questioning under oath before television cameras can let Americans judge for themselves why “medical experts” stigmatized those going to the beach and church—while not objecting, later, to the even greater numbers of Americans rioting in the streets.

State governors, as well, can provide practical leadership to motivate, guide, and legitimize life independent of our dysfunctional ruling class. Several U.S. states never shut down, while others reduced activities far less than the likes of California and New York. Like Sweden’s government, these states’ officials didn’t believe that COVID-19 was the plague and saw individual responsibility as the surest guarantee of safety for all. Indeed, the public would benefit from seeing these states’ governors defend their widely different perspectives on the COVID pandemic—and the results of their policies and decisions.

An honest reckoning, if we can get one, will reveal that the COVID-19 experience in America has only tangentially been about health. It has been, predominantly, a political campaign based on the pretense of health but dedicated to the maintenance of elite control—and it has done far more damage and caused more misery than the coronavirus itself.

Friday, August 14, 2020

The New Trump Voter...

 

Breaking away from the Lose-Lose Identity politics of the past...

Great Americans making America Great Again!

Saul Alinsky, "Rules for Radicals" - RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.”

Today's example:  Uncle Tom

Not your typical rent-seeking Left-Leaning Democrat "Magical Negroes" of the past who volunteered or got conscripted to keep racism alive through performance of minor Democratic Party public relations roles needed or keep the fires of racial resentment burning by exonerating white racist Democratic politicians or shaking down public corporations for racism accusation protection insurance :


But Independent Minded Black American citizen/ voter Volunteers for the ages who couldn't give a cr*p about YOUR Whiteness issues or letting doddering backwards-looking racist Democrat politicians off the hook for their personal despicable historical behaviours.  Men/Women who merely ask the proper Nationalist's question, "What's in this Union for me?" and "Must we forever continue to view all social issues through racially-tinted oppressor/ oppressed lenses?":

Welcome Aboard the Trump Train, brothers!  It's so good to see so many of you!


The 'Big Ugly' Begins...


Sean Davis, "Kevin Clinesmith, Corrupt FBI Attorney Who Falsified Carter Page FISA Warrant, Expected To Plead Guilty"

A top FBI lawyer who fabricated evidence in a federal spy warrant against Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page is expected to plead guilty to federal charges brought by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Kevin Clinesmith, who is expected to admit to deliberately fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application, used to spy on a former campaign affiliate of President Donald Trump, was a top attorney in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) and a key agency attorney under fired former FBI Director James Comey.

Clinesmith is the first individual to be charged as part of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the efforts in 2016 and 2017 to spy on the Trump campaign and Trump administration. Both Durham and Attorney General William Barr stated at the conclusion of the OIG investigation of the Page FISA warrants that they had reason to believe the entire investigation of Trump, which allegedly began in late July of 2016, was not legally predicated. Durham was tapped by Barr in May of 2019 to investigate the Russian collusion hoax and determine whether any criminal charges against those who perpetrated it were warranted.


Clinesmith’s deliberate falsification of a federal spy warrant was first revealed last December following a lengthy investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG), headed by Michael Horowitz. Horowitz and his team wrote in a 434-page report that Clinesmith — identified in the report as “OGC Attorney” — altered an email from a separate U.S. federal agency, believed to be the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to falsely state that Page had never worked with the CIA to investigate suspected Russia agents operating within the U.S. In fact, as Clinesmith was told by the operative, Page had worked with the CIA previously, as well as with the FBI.

According to the OIG report, Clinesmith “[o]mitted Page’s prior relationship with another U.S. government agency, despite being reminded by the other agency in June 2017, prior to the filing of the final [FISA warrant] renewal application, about Page’s past status with that other agency.”

“Instead of including this information in the final renewal application,” the OIG report stated, Clinesmith “altered an email from the other agency so that the email stated that Page was ‘not a source’ for the other agency, which the FBI affiant relied upon in signing the final renewal application.”

Following the completion of the OIG investigation into the abuse of the FISA process by Comey and his lieutenants, the federal court that reviews FISA warrants ruled that at least two of the four applications against Page were illegal, including the application that included Clinesmith’s fabricated claim that Page never previously assisted the CIA. Page’s previous work for the federal government was a key issue given that each of the FISA warrants used to spy on him falsely claimed that he was an illegal Russian agent working on behalf of the Kremlin. Page was never formally charged with any wrongdoing.

Clinesmith’s name first made national news after his anti-Trump text messages to another FBI attorney, Sally Moyer, surfaced following a separate OIG investigation of anti-Trump bias from top FBI attorneys and investigators.

“I’m just devastated,” Clinesmith texted to Moyer shortly after Trump won the presidential election in November of 2016. “Plus, my god damned name is all over the legal documents investigating his staff,” Clinesmith wrote.

“Is it making you rethink your commitment to the Trump administration?” Moyer later asked Clinesmith, ostensibly referring to Clinesmith’s plan to remain at the FBI after Trump’s inauguration.

“Hell no,” Clinesmith responded. “Viva le resistance.”

The full federal charging document detailing Clinesmith’s crimes can be found here.

It's 1918 All Over Again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Mainstreet vs. Wall Street


America is in crisis — and it’s not just from the coronavirus that is plaguing our communities.

We are in the midst of an epidemic of hatred that has left most of us feeling hopeless and exhausted. There are social, cultural and racial explanations for our predicament. But evidence suggests that a feeling of economic humiliation, which manifests as fear and a politics devoid of empathy, is at the core of our divisions.

The American Dream is dying for the average worker, and the middle class is shrinking. At the same time, special interests are increasingly able to rig the economy in their own favor, stockpiling wealth like dragons sitting atop piles of gold. That leaves us susceptible to a hate industry that gains influence by stoking hyper-partisan contempt and division.

To help Americans understand how we came to this troubling state and how to escape it, David began researching the source of this burning hatred. The result is "Stars and Strife," a documentary that is available today on demand. It will premiere at 9 p.m. EDT Sept. 21 on STARZ and will be available on the STARZ app for download or streaming that same day. 

Contrary to election-year claims, the story about our bitter polarization isn’t just about the candidates’ personalities and deficiencies. It is about how for decades we abandoned Main Street Capitalism for a system that more closely resembles a kind of corporate socialism that leaves an unsustainable number of Americans behind.

When we were growing up in working-class neighborhoods in Baltimore, it was possible for a wage-earning parent to provide for a family. Not a life of luxury, but enough to ensure kids had reliable food, housing and education — and the opportunity to climb the economic ladder of success themselves.

Contrast that to the American experience today. Nearly half the country lives one paycheck away from insolvency. And this was the case even before the coronavirus slowdown battered the economy. “The traditional route to wealth and success,” says Amy Chua, the best-selling author and Yale law professor, “has been cut off for many Americans.”

Global economy left workers behind

In some respects, our current predicament is not entirely of our own doing. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the rise of a globalized trade and financial system set the stage for today’s climate of economic humiliation. After the Cold War, interest rates dropped to historic lows.

In this disinflationary environment, with nearly limitless capital flooding into the American economy, the stock market and economy boomed. But wage growth became almost nonexistent because of foreign competition. The problem is that only about half of the country owned stocks, leaving the average wage-earner behind.

Economic security and identity are deeply intertwined. The ability to earn a living wage isn’t just about money; it’s correlated with self-esteem, optimism and civic involvement. Gene Sperling, former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, says economics is about “the promotion of dignity.”

The end of economic stability for wage earners has deeply damaged the American psyche, driving cynicism about our ability to change our circumstances. That becomes a dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy.

Political leaders ignore the problem

With economic disillusionment the root of a paralyzing divisiveness, you would expect economic transformation to be a leading priority for our elected officials. Why then, do we see so little progress for infrastructure modernization that would lead to an economy of greater opportunity?

During this decades-long period of stock market growth, why weren’t both parties concentrating laser-like on ways average working families could ride that giant financial wave? 

In "Stars and Strife," Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense, gives a simple answer: Politicians today too often “put party before country.” The current system may not work for most Americans, but it works just fine for politicians who capitalize on our divisions to hold onto power.

The American economy is at a watershed moment. People rightly recognize that top-down corporate capitalism isn’t working for them, and their hopelessness and fear are crippling our politics. We can change course, but only if we demand a new Main Street capitalism that approaches business activity from the bottom up, not the top down.

Main Street capitalism would remove entrenched advantages for special interests and empower wage earners. It would eliminate corporate tax carve-outs and rules that stifle competition. It also would eliminate racist barriers to capital and wealth creation.

An inclusive entrepreneurial spirit is at the beating heart of Main Street capitalism. Business start-ups are the economy’s great equalizer. Women have started firms at twice the rate of men in recent years and their empowering is transforming the economy. Immigrants account for one quarter of all American entrepreneurs.

The solution to our economic and political malaise is not tossing capitalism aside. It is to rediscover a Main Street capitalism that leverages the best parts of our economy to make the American Dream possible for average working families. Both of our political parties need to stop the food fight and work to break this cycle of disillusionment that crushes the spirit of so many Americans.

Monday, August 10, 2020

Swedish Meatballs


Lockdowns Never Again: Sweden Was Right, and We Were Wrong

In life, we encounter things which may work in theory, but not in practice.  Communism is famously one of those things.  Time travel is another.  With any luck, Americans will soon come to realize that strict social distancing, economic lockdowns, and mask-wearing all belong in that category of supposedly sound ideas that simply don’t work in reality.

For evidence, let’s look to Sweden.  As Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, an ER doctor at a hospital in Stockholm, writes on his blog, “COVID is over in Sweden.  People have gone back to their normal lives and barely anyone is getting infected anymore.”

Unlike so many other countries, “Sweden never went into complete lockdown,” Dr. Kendrick writes.  Non-essential businesses remained open, people continued frequenting restaurants, the kids stayed in school, and “very few people have bothered with face masks.”

Basically, Sweden did the exact opposite of what most Americans tragically still believe are the necessary requirements to reach the outcome that Sweden has achieved.

He argues what should now be obvious to any rational, thinking person, which is that “the size of the response in most of the world (not including Sweden) has been totally disproportionate to the threat.”

Naysayers may point to Sweden’s mortality rate to discount its success.  But the virus has taken nearly 6,000 people in a country of 10 million, and one which tallies about 100,000 annual deaths each year.  Given that 70 percent of those who died with COVID were over the age of 80 and very unhealthy, he argues, “quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway,” making COVID a “mere blip in terms of its effect on mortality.”  And, while Sweden will likely continue to see deaths from COVID, it will likely never see anything close to those numbers again.  The large number of deaths can be clearly attributed to a “complete lack of any immunity” to this novel coronavirus. 

A few months ago, Dr. Kendrick says that “practically everyone who was tested had COVID,” even if the presenting symptom was a “nose bleed” or “stomach pain.”  Today, he reports that he hasn’t seen a COVID patient in over a month, and even when he tests patients with fever or cough, the “tests invariably come back as negative.” 

To be clear, Sweden’s economy is wide open.  No one is social distancing or wearing a ridiculous mask.  Life is back to normal, and the infection rate is still falling.  It’s pretty safe to say the population in Sweden has now built some level of immunity to the virus, and all signs indeed point to the pandemic being over in Sweden.

What is the obvious takeaway from this?  Perhaps Dr. Kendrick sums it up best, saying that he is “willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t have been any point in shutting down in the first place.”

In other words, all of the lockdowns will have been meaningless.

But we were assured that the lockdowns, the distancing, the masks, all of it, would absolutely work, because science (Science!) suggested that these are the only things that could work. 

But how strong was the scientific evidence to support our government making us lab rats in its experimental and unprecedentedly oppressive response to this virus?

To answer that, we’ll look to Alex Berenson, who, in my opinion, is nothing short of a national hero for his honest reporting throughout the pandemic. It often serves as a counterbalance to the panic porn preferred by the media, and I could not more highly recommend following his wonderful Twitter feed.  In Part 2 of his book series, Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns, he reminds his leaders that lockdowns, complete with the economic disruption and social distancing required, aren’t some tried and true means of slowing the spread of a virus in a pandemic.  “The idea of using lockdowns to slow epidemics took off in 2006,” Berenson writes.  In the aftermath of an avian flu scare in 2005, President Bush “asked for research on slowing epidemics.” 

I wish what follows was a joke or some conspiracy theory, but it’s not.  The idea was the brainchild of the 14-year-old daughter of a computer scientist named Robert Glass.  She “created a model of the way social distancing might slow the spread of the flu,” and this was expanded upon by her father in a “simulation “proving” lockdowns could reduce an influenza epidemic in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people by 90 percent.”

In 2007, predicated upon the strength of the simulated results, the CDC issued new guidance to “reduce transmission, from “voluntary isolation of ill adults” to “reducing density in public transit.”

This was the moment, according to the New York Times, when Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions, or NPIs, became “official US policy,” thus presenting the 2020 lockdowns as just an example of long-standing procedures, and totally understandable policymaking.

Berenson explodes that absurd contention:

Crucially, [the 2007 CDC paper] also contained a “Pandemic Severity Index” that included five categories.  On the low end, Category 1 represented a normal flu season, which might kill up to 90,000 Americans.  On the high end, a Category 5 pandemic, like the Spanish flu, would kill at least 1.8 million Americans.

Based on the CDC’s scale, Sars-Cov-2 almost certainly should be classified as a Category 2 epidemic, meaning it will cause between 90,000 and 450,000 deaths.  For an epidemic like that, the CDC merely said governments should consider school closures of less than four weeks, along with moderate efforts to reduce contacts among adults, such as telecommuting.

The prospect of closing all retail stores or offices is not even mentioned in the paper, not even for the most severe epidemics. (emphasis added)

In short, it was a high school sophomore who initially dreamt up the modern notion of lockdowns and social distancing.  Her computer scientist father then created a compelling simulation involving 10,000 hypothetical people enduring a pandemic, and the CDC applied the hypothesis by creating some new interventions, though even those interventions certainly did not include recommendations for an economic lockdown, stay-at-home orders, or mask mandates.

In other words, the effectiveness of economic and social lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, or mask mandates had all only worked in theory before 2020, but had never been shown to be effective in practice.

But based on the foundation of that little girl and her father’s hypothetical experiment and the theory that followed, more than 300 million real Americans in 2020 have endured the economic hardship, social unrest, loneliness, depression, anxiety, and increased substance abuse, suicide, and crime that the lockdowns have produced in reality. 

And in terms of the national morale, it couldn’t be more obvious that the social fabric is being torn apart. 

The very-likely useless rags that people are wearing over their faces serve as a constant reminder to Americans that their neighbors are little more than vectors for disease transmission. 

Teachers in America, who often have endured no pay interruption, incredible job security, and inflation-proof pensions, are now telling their communities that they shouldn’t be expected to return to their workplace, even as many members of their own communities are praying that they can return to work soon and pay their bills. 

Families who have lost loved ones have had to forego funerary services due to social distancing protocol and churches are closed by government decree, obviously liberty-infringing rules that didn’t seem to apply when throngs of mourners gathered in churches to honor deceased Democrat John Lewis.

How could we expect this do anything other than sow animus and resentment in our communities across America?    

And we are enduring all of this because of a belief that it is theoretically possible to achieve what Sweden has achieved by enduring none of it in reality. 

Very likely, America will join Sweden in building immunities and being past COVID-19 sometime in the coming months, though we will have paid a much, much higher price to have achieved that goal.  We should all hope and pray that Americans will look back to the public policy reaction to this pandemic and recognize it as the colossal mistake that it has been.  And, if we are wise, we will commit to never, ever doing anything like it again.


Sunday, August 9, 2020

Despite all News Reports to the Contrary, The Emperor is Naked!


Roger Kimball, "The Man Who Wasn't There

Joe Biden doesn’t make gaffes. His is a gaffe.

Those things with which we are most familiar are often hardest to see. This is perhaps particularly true of such fraught subjects as politics. There we are every day staring at the same people, reading news stories that are virtually indistinguishable from one another, and what do we know?

Our situation is similar to Alice’s in Through the Looking Glass when she finds herself in a shop that seemed full of curious things. “[T]he oddest part of it all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.” 

I feel that way about Joe Biden. Gertrude Stein once quipped of her native Oakland, California, “there is no there there.” Isn’t that how it is with Joe Biden? He doesn’t make gaffes; he is a gaffe, poor thing. (I’ve expatiated on this elsewhere.) 

I suspect that most Americans, whatever side of the political aisle they occupy, do not really see Joe Biden—especially when, like Alice, they are looking directly at him. They need to manage a sidelong glance, a sudden shift of perspective to catch his drift (and I employ the word “drift” advisedly). 

This was brought home to me by an article that appeared a few days ago in Le Figaro, the biggest newspaper in France. The headline summed up its burden: “La stupĂ©fiante indulgence des grands mĂ©dias amĂ©ricains envers Joe Biden”—“The stupefying indulgence of big American media towards Joe Biden.”

The author evinced no pro-Trump sympathies. On the contrary. Yet he wrote in amazement at the seamless media distortion that worked to disparage Trump while excusing Biden—a process that “va jusqu’Ă  l’occultation des faits”—goes so far (add an expression of amazement) as to conceal the facts. 

Imagine that!

Back in 1987, the revelation that Biden had plagiarized a speech by the British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock destroyed his first foray into presidential politics. I think of Gertrude Stein again: it’s critical, she said, to “know how far to go in going too far.” Biden didn’t. Not only did he appropriate whole passages of Kinnock’s speech, he even repeated the boast-bid-for-sympathy-declaration-of-authenticity that came with the claim of being a miner’s son. Kinnock was. Joe’s dad ran a car dealership. (Joe revisited the miner meme a few years later when he said that he was “a hard coal miner,” a ridiculous claim his campaign explained away as a joke. 

Detractors of President Trump like to say he is an inveterate liar. Usually, what they have called lies are what the rest of us would call exaggerations. But with Joe, the mendacity is something else entirely. 

Back in 2019, before it became clear that Joe was to be the Democratic nominee, even the Washington Post went to town on some of Joe’s whoppers. For example, at a political rally in New Hampshire, Joe said that a four-star general had once asked the then-vice president to travel to Kunar province in Afghanistan to recognize the remarkable heroism of a Navy captain. “We can lose a vice president,” said Joe, bravely. “We can’t lose many more of these kids. Not a joke.” 

It was a good story: the Navy captain had rappelled down a ravine “under fire” and retrieved the body of an American comrade, “carrying him on his back.” Biden was there to pin a Silver Star on the American hero, who demurred.

He said, ‘Sir, I don’t want the damn thing!’ Biden said, his jaw clenched and his voice rising to a shout. ‘Do not pin it on me, Sir! Please, Sir. Do not do that! He died. He died. 

The room was silent.

 This is the God’s truth, Biden had said as he told the story. My word as a Biden.

“My word as a Biden,” indeed. Every single detail of the story is wrong. Biden went to Kunar in 2008, as a senator, not later as vice-president. The chap who made the rescue was a 20-year-old Army specialist, not a captain. And Biden never pinned any sort of medal on him.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden, endeavoring to ingratiate himself with black voters, claims that he was arrested by South African police while attempting to visit Nelson Mandela. But he wasn’t and he didn’t. “Invention,” Figaro notes, “du dĂ©but Ă  la fin.” 

In brief, the difference in the treatment accorded to Trump and Biden is the difference between a bright daytime and a black night. . . . It amounts to a democratic scandal that is essentially Orwellian.

In one sense, the article in Le Figaro tells us nothing we didn’t already know. And yet it reveals a rift or fissure in The Narrative that is obvious to everyone outside the bubble, outside the echo chamber of American punditocracy. Joe Biden is toast. Already the polls, rigged though most of them are, are tightening. President Trump is calmly stealing the Democrats’ thunder, issuing executive orders on everything from payroll tax cuts to instituting a moratorium on evictions. 

Coronavirus hysteria has, at least for now, prevented the president from deploying his biggest vote-getter, the huge rally. But he has adapted and is outflanking poor Biden on every front. 

The curious thing is that the Democrats do not seem to have twigged to this reality. They are like Alice in that shop of curiosities. They look straight ahead but cannot see what is staring them in the face. They should give CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post a rest. Their “news” comes from the same mendacious cloaca maxima. A glance abroad, even at some Trump-skeptic publications, would disabuse them of their fantasy.

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Portland 101

 

Latest Fake Virus News from the Liberal Leftwing Media

7-year-old boy in Georgia died 'from COVID-19'? Media leaving out key details

It has been widely reported in the last several days that, sometime within the past ten days to two weeks, a seven-year-old boy from Chatham County (the Savannah area), Georgia died "from COVID-19." If the media didn't say the child died "from COVID-19" they reported that he died "of COVID-19" or "of coronavirus." Even Fox News declared, "A 7-year-old old boy from Savannah, Ga., with no underlying conditions, became the youngest victim to die from the coronavirus ..." (Emphasis mine.) 

 Like Fox News, virtually all of the media repeatedly reported that the child had "no underlying conditions." Even my local radio station — repeating the deception every 30 minutes for hours on end — which, among other conservative programming, carries The Rush Limbaugh Show, helped perpetuate this latest example of Wuhan virus "fear porn." 

 The AP — whose stories are often widely distributed in the media — did more accurately report that the boy died "with COVID-19." However, the AP went on to say, "The boy had no other chronic health conditions, according to data released by the state[.] ... The boy's death comes amid nationwide debate about the risks that children face in getting infected or spreading the coronavirus, particularly as the school year begins." 

 The implication is that schools should not reopen, fall sports should not be played, and America must remain in shutdown mode. If not for our own sakes, we must do it "for the children!" 

 As is often the case with so many things when it comes to the Wuhan virus and the drive-by media, few things could be farther from the truth. As of late Friday evening, except for one Savannah TV station — whose more accurate account I first found via Facebook — I could find no drive-by media telling the whole story on this tragic episode. WTOC reporter Cyreia Sandlin provides some crucial details on the seven-year-old's death that the vast majority of the media have so far ignored:

NEW INFORMATION ON CHILD COVID DEATH We have some new information about the youngest COVID related death thus far in...

Posted by WTOC Cyreia Sandlin on Friday, August 7, 2020
So it seems that the boy died not "from COVID-19," but rather as the result of a seizure and a fall in the shower. 

 It seems that, prior to his death, the child had zero Wuhan virus symptoms, and that after he was pronounced dead, "a rapid test showed evidence of COVID-19 positivity." 

 I don't know about you, but I've followed the news and the science on this virus as closely as most anyone, and I have yet to hear any reports of the Wuhan virus causing seizures. 

 If this were the case — especially where children are concerned — it is a virtual guarantee that the media would have daily told us so. It would seem that fair and accurate reporting of this incident would include all of the circumstances surrounding this terrible tragedy and that this is almost certainly another example of someone dying with the Wuhan virus and not from it. 

 All the media have done here is give us another reason not to trust them in this grave matter.

 

Friday, August 7, 2020

On SJW Panchrestons

 

Kafka trap

The Kafka trap might also be called the SJW trap.

Author Eric Raymond coined the term Kafkatrapping in his 2010 article in which he presented a style of argument that is common today with SJW’s, but has it’s origins in The Trial a book written in 1915 by Franz Kafka.

In The Trial the protagonist is arrested and accused of serious crimes which are never specified. He receives no explanation or description of the charges, and his refusal to acknowledge that he must be guilty is what makes him guilty.  The only way to stop his abuse is to admit that he is guilty.

What is the kafka trap?

In the kafka trap you are accused of being a:

  • Racist
  • Sexist
  • Bigot
  • Facist
  • Homophobic
  • Transphobic
  • Islamophobic
  • Misogynist
  • Nazi
  • Hitler
  • etc.

…and any attempt to argue, deny or defend yourself is seen as proof of guilt.

Yep.

Denial is proof of guilt.

You’re guilty until proven innocent.

Any accusation of guilt is all that is needed to condemn you.

Eric Raymond laid out various models of kafkatraps in his 2010 article which I’ll share here.

Note: Kafkatrapping can be used against any perceived “ist” or “ism” (racism, sexism, homophobia etc.) however I’ll simply use the word racism here in the interests of space.

Model A

“Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of racism, confirms that you are guilty of racism”

Model C

“Even if you do not feel yourself to be guilty of racism, you are guilty because you have benefited from the racist behavior of others in the system”

Model D 

“The act of demanding a definition of racism that can be consequentially checked and falsified proves you are racist”

Model L

“Your insistence on applying rational skepticism in evaluating assertions of pervasive racism itself demonstrates that you are racist”

Model M

“The act of arguing against the theory of anti-racism demonstrates that you are either racist, or do not understand the theory of anti-racism, and your argument can therefore be dismissed as either corrupt or incompetent”

Model P

“Even if you do not feel yourself to be guilty of racism, you are guilty because you have a privileged position in the racist system”

Model S

“Skepticism about any particular anecdotal account of racism, or any attempt to deny that the particular anecdote implies a systemic problem in which you are one of the guilty parties, is itself sufficient to establish your guilt”

Model T

“Designated victims of racism who question any part of the theory of racism demonstrate by doing so that they are not authentic members of the victim class, so their experience can be discounted and their thoughts dismissed as internalized racism”

Men’s rights activist Adam Kostakis has defined a ninth model of the kafka trap, Model J:

Model J

“Even if your innocence is proven in a court of law, this not only confirms your guilt; it also confirms the guilt of the legal system that found you innocent”

In summary:

“You are now trapped in a circular and unfalsifiable argument; no one who is accused can be innocent because the structure of kafkatrapping precludes that possibility.” – Wendy McElroy

Just accept the ‘facts’:

  • All white people are racist
  • It’s impossible for a black person to be racist
  • “Believe women” – or you’re a rape apologist
  • Gender is a social construct
  • There are no biological differences between men and women
  • You have white privilege – regardless of your circumstances
  • “All lives matter” – is hate speech

“Having shown how manipulative and psychologically abusive the kafkatrap is, it may seem almost superfluous to observe that it is logically fallacious as well. The particular species of fallacy is sometimes called “panchreston”, an argument from which anything can be deduced because it is not falsifiable. Notably, if the model A kafkatrap is true, the world is divided into two kinds of people: (a) those who admit they are guilty of thoughtcrime, and (b) those who are guilty of thoughtcrime because they will not admit to being guilty of thoughtcrime. No one can ever be innocent. The subject must be prevented from noticing that this logic convicts and impeaches the operator of the kafkatrap!” – Eric Raymond

How to deal with a kafka trap

If presented with a kafka trap don’t try to argue or deny it because your words will be twisted and used against you.

In fact, any attempt to argue, deny or defend yourself will be seen as proof of guilt, and SJW’s and trolls might say things like:

“Deny, Deny, Deny”

“There’s no smoke without fire”

“Me thinks thou dost protest too much”

My advice: Ignore it, and if possible put the shoe on the other foot and reverse the accusation. See how they like it.

“The kafkatrap is a form of argument that is so fallacious and manipulative that those subjected to it are entitled to reject it based entirely on the form of the argument, without reference to whatever particular sin or thoughtcrime is being alleged” – Eric Raymond

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