In this series of posts, I’m going to sketch what I view as four probable futures coming from this. Mind you, I’m a fiction writer, not a prophet. These futures would probably all have bits of each other in it. Because people are mixed up and messy.
Only one of them — this one — is unalloyed “good” (as much as anything is in the real world) and I start with it, partly because I don’t want to send you into the weekend depressed. Also because I’m doing my best to avoid bottoming out on depression, because last night’s presidential weaseling of guidelines solidified for me that we now live in a socialist economy. Our only choice is between national-socialists (no, not like Hitler. Hitler was an aberration. The others, by and large, didn’t kill their own people in batch lots, just in lost of opportunity, despair, poverty.) and international socialists. The economy will never be free, and your ability to pursue happiness will never be your own again. Not unless….
In this scenario people set themselves free. At some point, they get tired of the disaster porn the media is feeding them and get out of their basements, and look around to realize that no, we’re not all dying like flies, there are no bodies on the streets, the hospitals are so far from overwhelmed that doctors and nurses are choreographing dance numbers in the hallways, all while grandma’s cancer gets worse, and mom goes without heart surgery because the government closed the hospitals, to make way for a surge of COVID-19 deaths that never happened.
Then people get angry and jam the streets and start screaming and yelling and refusing to be arrested. They, in fact, become the America Hong Kong thinks we are.
The governors, in terror, realize they’ve gone too far, and lost all plausible cover.
If this happens soon enough, it will be tight this winter, but not outright famine. If this happens soon enough, and Trump realizes it (if he has a talent, it is reading people) he puts the blame squarely where it belongs. He denounces “governing by “experts”” and does a 90 degree turn and tells us how we were fooled. And what the media and the DNC (BIRM) did to the country, all to put their spokeszombie in charge.
He wins in a landslide, but with the other side completely discredited. At which point he cleans house, the Dems fall apart (I told you it was a dream) and the election in 2024 is between Republicans and Libertarians. And I don’t know for whom I’d vote, at least if Pence is the nominee, because as head of the Covid-19 task force he seems to believe experts and reach for the authoritarian lever, given a choice. I don’t like his personality as seen in this response, and his personality is all we have to go on. So it would depend on how wild-eyed open-borders the Libertarian was. (Because open borders are a bad, bad idea when the rest of the world is largely unfree.)
If it happens soon enough, say no later than mid May, the winter will suck like living hell, but America recovers. America recovers fast. Regulations that impair the opening of factories and America doing for itself are struck down. Everyone goes to work, and Welfare becomes a distant, bad memory. The economy takes off like a rocket, because bad as we’ll be we’ll still be way better than 90% of the world.
And because people have seen what schools and colleges are doing to their kids, homeschooling grows exponentially. Perhaps not everyone, but a vast majority of parents in jobs that work from home opt to teach their kids from home. Because the job market is so tight, kids are encouraged to join the gig economy as soon as they’re able (and laws are relaxed. Look, our laws are insane, okay. 15 year olds have never been “children.”) College becomes less relevant, and what remains is real scholarship and real training.
Eventually — I’d like tomorrow, but I know it’s more likely to be ten years — the stupid tax collection laws online are done away with, and people can trade and work across state lines, start up their own sales sites and not be dependent on vast, increasingly unresponsive corporations.
In ten years, from a happy, prosperous America starting to colonize space, we look back at this moment of utter insanity and say “yeah, but without it, the breakage of the old institutions would have been slower, more painful, and we’d have ended up in a more centralized and less free society.”
And 2020 initiates the beginning of the Liberty century, one in which individuals become more and more free each year, until the crazy theories of that angry inkblot, Marx, are no more than a bad memory and referred to in wondering confusion, as we talk about phrenology.
Sure, people still need to fight to KEEP their freedom, but the corner will have been turned, and we’ll be undoing the closing of minds and opportunity of the 20th century.
No, I do not believe it is likely. But I WANT to believe.
According To Hoyt 
Things may go better but we always need to be on the look-out for power-hungry assholes.
Human nature being what it is, they’ll always exist and too many will believe that they are doing it “for our own good”. 😦
I’ve never been much of a fan of pie, much less in the sky.
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Good way to get lemon meringue in your hair . . .
good thing I ain’t got any hair
Not even cherry pie?
My webmail client has stopped previewing links in WordPress email. So I posted this again. WPDE.
Mine has become … erratic. Typically the original email fails to display the link, but a reply to the original will include the link. Myriad and mysterious are the ways of WP email.
As to the subject matter … I will allow as how the food service at West Virginia’s Tamarack way station along the state turnpike, catered by the kitchen of the Greenbriar (locus of the Nero Wolfe tale of Too Many Cooks) offers up a divine cherry cobbler, tart, sweet and delicious.
I eave for others the debate whether or not cobbler is pie.
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c4c
ditto
Now they’re talking about maintaining the ‘state of emergency’ until there is not one single corona virus left in the whole world. And slamming it down again if they do find one virus. All for our own good, of course.
What is wrong with those idiots? Are they that stupid? Do they believe we are that stupid?
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Dark Willow: “Bored now.”
Our PM wants Canada locked down until there’s a vaccine. Which is going to be untenable if every other country opens up before then.
It’s okay. We won’t. We’ll die before they let us out.
No, they will die if they don’t.
I saw the Michigan protest. I see what Atlanta looks like today. The best they can hope for in much of the country if this continues is Irish democracy. They’ll destroy restaurants and bars and some small retailers, but I suspect some of those will open soon no matter what.
Pretty much this … sullen and reluctant compliance, and a lot of back-door, under the table commerce. I honestly don’t think that people can stand another two weeks or a month of this.
Although the mayor of San Antonio has declared a mask order – after a point next week must have masks, if going indoors to conduct business. The Daughter Unit and I have been positively swamped with requests for masks. We aren’t doing them for sale, which is what most of them want. We’re doing them for vulnerable family members and neighbors, and for people working in health-care positions. Quixotic of us, but there it is.
I’ve seen reports of Speakeasies in NYC already.
I remember reading about unlicensed drinking establishments in the Five Boroughs as far back as the 1990’s, in an oldish copy of The New Yorker (doctors office). They catered to the Hispanic Illegal Immigrant population. Since they were strictly illegal anyway, anti-smoking laws were not enforced. The author didn’t note it that way, he (she?) merely commented that everybody seemed to smoke.
My thought at the time was, “Well, the Smokeasies are in place, for when the pillocks finally Push tobacco all the way into the black market.”
I suspect at least some of these are the same.
Sounds like that article was due to the Happy Land fire in 1990 that killed 80 odd people at one of them.
The article I saw implied a more upscale clientele at the establishments and that they are less than a couple of weeks old.
Don’t tell the Karens, but a lot of people yesterday were picking up pizzas and grill stuff. And people might have said something about having people over today.
Yup, everybody is okay with being careful with the vulnerable, and maybe wearing masks. But they are otherwise done.
Ask PM Zoolander where the SARS and MERS vaccines are.
Both are also coronavirus based.
But SARS is different, man.
Yeah, it is CoVID’02, and MERS is COVID’12. Totally different, dude . . . and hey, isn’t MERS a raaaaaacist thing to say? Scientifically called: Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), or EMC/2012 (HCoV-EMC/2012)
(~_^)
I note the Chinese managed to keep SARS-CoV or now called SARS-CoV-1 from being named for Yunnan where it popped up.
I guess the Middle East has less pull within WHO.
The media certainly covered it differently.
And they’ve been working on a vaccine for predecessors since… what, the 19th century?
Germany is.
I wonder how long he could be forced to open up so they’re more like Europe than the US.
Excessive Chinese influence.
The platform for a militantly anti PRoC party writes itself.
And there are mayors to run against.
Nixon should have stayed home in 1972.
No, Bush and Clinton should not have lobbied to add them to the WTC.
Nixon was accepting that “the enemy of my enemy is a useful tool against my enemy”. Post Reagan too many people confused “useful tool” with “friend”.
I will condemn Nixon for a lot of policies, but not that one.
Given Nixon’s pissing off the Russian commies by opening up relations with China was a huge geopolitical win (though why Henry Kissinger is still pimping for the Chinese Communists in print at this late date is a mystery to me), there’s nothing to prevent Trump from making a similarly-commie-pissing-off visit to Taiwan and recognizing them while he’s there.
Nothing wrong with pissing off commies.
I’m seriously wondering if PRC is going to use this as the excuse to invade Taiwan while the rest of the world is hiding under the bed.
Might have to recall all those asymptomatic crewbeings and sail the TR out from Guam.
Might want to do that anyway given it’s parked on a known lat-lon right now.
Likely. They have already done a couple of recent test runs. Fully expect that they will do it for real with it starting like just another test run.
Apparently the CCP is also now violating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty by conducting small underground tests.
I think that the invasion goes just after the Pacific Typhoon season. The Chinese remember the Kami Kazi that took out the Mongols.
Their ability to project force is limited, at least for now, and they too seem to be seeking an overseas empire, or hegemony, for oil and other natural resources.
The “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” has a familiar ring, doesn’t it?
Bad thing is that if the Chinese do in ade Taiwan, we may have to “discover” that the WuFlu was actually a bio-war attack. Then Hell comes to breakfast.
John in Indy
They can combat lift maybe one light division across the Straits.
They need to be able to put about a dozen ashore on D-Day to have a prayer of taking the place.
Yeah, and their under construction LSD just caught on fire.
Still, maybe they think they have some ace in the whole. It could also be a Falklands like thing, invoke nationalism and distract the populace for the screw up.
With this and Hong Kong and locusts and who knows what else, they probably need to distract people.
Item one on the Anti-PRoC Party platform is:
The Government of the Republic of China deserves to be recognized.
That is one, because the PRoC assets will be crying racism for all that they are worth.
Two and three are similarly things that would piss off the Chicoms. The important items where state and local offices are concerned are the insistence on emergency responses that are not based on Chicom propaganda organs.
I’d vote for a part running on that
At the time it wasn’t a completely idiotic idea. The Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union had crumbled. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Baltics were running into the West’s arms. Even Russia looked like it might become a responsible modern democracy. There was every reason to believe that once the Chinese were exposed to the wealth free markets create they would demand an end to the communist regime the same way Poland and Russia did.
The problem is that the people running China, while murderous and power hungry, aren’t idiots. They saw what had happened to the Warsaw Pact and set up a system to ensure that the bulk of the money went to their cronies, with just enough going to the people to keep them happy, and always coming from the Party. Instead of American values infecting Chinese culture, Chinese values reinforced American Progressive values.
Time to recognize reality for what it is and announce that we will no longer do business with China, or anyone else who does business with China, until China is no longer communist and totalitarian.
What do you expect from a nation with one time zone Beijing’s
I have no problem with that. Much of my life would be simplified if we all just stayed on Greenwich Mean Time.
“But-but-but… I don’t want to go to work in the middle of the night!”
“Bozo. The numbers are meaningless. Pick the numbers that match the time of day you want. Look up ’11th hour” to see how timekeeping has changed in history.”
One clock to rule them all and in the Timespace bind them?
I don’t think so.
That would mean sacrificing the ability to truthfully declare, “It’s Five O’ Clock Somewhere.”
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It wasn’t a completely idiotic idea, but it was badly structured. Participation ought have been probationary, conditioned on meeting and maintaining certain standards. Instead we gave them the whole carrot without any stick. We painted ourselves into a corner where we were trusting them without verifying their compliance. With a state having a long and distinguished record of dishonest dealing.
That sort of policy typically works poorly when loaning money to a spendthrift brother-in-law, why would anyone expect it to work better with a nation run by such?
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I’m sure it’s because we didn’t want to be seen as dictating terms a la the European powers in the 19th century, and because we were so confident that our values were superior that they would quickly overwhelm the Chicom penchant for dishonesty.
Oops.
Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my enemy as well.
Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.
-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
The guy’s an ass, but he’s not wrong.
Well, to be clear, he was not wrong in that maxim. That is the absolute limit if my assertion of not-wrongness.
Which is f*cking impossible.
But hey they “believe in science”
I’ve got several quotes that keep coming to mind the today.
Richard Feynman said “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” (Somebody reminded us of that one here a few days ago.)
Dwight Eisenhower warned “that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
And Thomas Jefferson wrote “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
I used to tell patients not to take vaccines in the first year out. That’s the “fourth” stage of research where they release it and look to see if there are any increased complications. Don’t be in the study group. In this case, where panic is driving the research and development, safety is not their first concern. I won’t be taking that vaccine, even if it comes out. My chances with the virus are good. My chances of being someone’s lab rat, not so good.
Saying this as a doctor STRONGLY in favor of vaccines!
I’ve also heard from a couple sources that vaccine manufacturers are immune from liability. If I won’t buy a first year car, I think I’ll hold to that habit for vaccines as well.
There was a law specifically passed to that effect, you can look it up. Mid to late eighties.
Lawsuits for injury go through a special federal court that pays out damages from Federal funds.
I suspect the law covers ordinary liability: manufacture of a vaccine according to government requirements in accordance with proper precautions.
A manufacturer who produced the vaccine without reasonable protocols in tainted laboratories and not consistent with government specifications would likely void such protection or be liable to the government rather than consumers. Essentially, the purchaser is the government.
Given that vaccines are only producible with government permission it makes sense to provide a safe haven for those “only following orders.”.
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Preaching to the choir. Preaching to the choir. I plan on making that clear to my husband, my mom, & my son. I can only answer to myself in the end. But boy am I going to be vocal in my opinion on first run vaccinations made up in a hurry. It’s not like they haven’t been trying for cold vaccines since forever and haven’t come up with one period. I mean not even one that is as effective as the annual flu. We know the effectiveness of the flu vaccine year to year. It varies is an understatement. Odds of an effective safe version after weeks? NACIH (not a chance in hell).
I feel like I’ve read this before… A college friend is now a published YA author – her first duology was set in a world where there was a rush vaccine that ended up giving a tiny percentage of the population minor superpowers. Good read, plus, she’s a friend.
Not presuming to speak on Sarah’s behalf, and it is likely too late for tomorrow’s Vignette & Promos post, but might it be entertaining for the April 26 edition for people to send in favorite tales/series set in times of pandemic? Ringo’s Zombiepocalypse seems an obvious read, but there are undoubtedly a large number of others less widely known or that come less readily to mind.
Your college fried’s book sounds entertaining and I, at least, would like to know it’s title.
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This. I am actually terrified of any CCPlague vaccine being made mandatory here in Aus, from the get go, for the reasons you state. And I’m not an anti-vaxxer by any stretch of imagination.
Ditto.
I’ve seen the results of non-vaccination. Not because of anti-vaxxer. I’m old enough to have personal knowledge of what disease that have vaccines can do. When I was witnessing the effects there weren’t vaccines for those diseases. I’m old enough that I’ve experienced (most) the diseases that could sweep through the US Population in the ’50s and early ’60s. No thank you.
Missed Small Pox, Polio, & TB. Those had vaccines that I received as a child. OTOH – Whooping Cough (at least twice), Measles both types, Rubella, Mumps, Chicken Pox, Scarlet Fever, Scarlatina, strep throat (every year for years), the flu … I’ve had them all. I survived. Some didn’t. My son only experienced Chicken Pox, and only because the vaccine wasn’t developed until just before he entered 1st grade. By then he’d had a good case of it (at 18 months).
I expect childhood diseases to return in the Philippines because of what happened in the Philippines with that new dengue vaccination
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/03/719037789/botched-vaccine-launch-has-deadly-repercussions
The Philippine children were the test population. Part of the fallout from this is a lot of people started mistrusting older vaccines as well, and that resulted in measles outbreaks with children dying, and the return of polio, though the latter may be vaccine derived. Also, while there are supposed to be vaccinations available at the barangay level, and programs aimed at the poor, there may be no stocks available of vaccines or they can be improperly stored. Private vaccinations can cost up to 5000-10,000 pesos, which is more than most people can afford.
Mentioned this convo to my Mom, and she said, “Hundreds of kids died, not sure if thousands.” Local news reported more than international news.
They are stupid and believe everyone else is stupid because they are insular and everyone they know thinks the same way. Good old Pauline Kael.
They’re losing and doubling down. They thought they were so close but the data aren’t supporting it and the cascade will begin soon.
Stanford study is being attacked now because it doesn’t support the narrative, but there was Germany and Iceland as well as the “anecdotal” rates among pregnant women in NYC among others and, of course, Diamond Princess.
I’m hoping they surrender but wouldn’t really mind seeing some tar and feathers.
It’ll be over by mid May. Nit because they’re smart, or care about the people, it’ll be from their,patrons, not all of whom are stupid; though I’ve been very disappointed by the performance of some people who should have done better. There’s too much money at stake.
Actually, being Kael would be an improvement.
I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.
1. She knew people unlike her existed.
2. She was aware she knew nothing about them.
3. She was aware her lack of interaction with them set her apart.
4. Even if she thought they were, she didn’t call them Nazis, deplorables, racists, sexists, etc in describing them. At most she implied some discomfort at knowing they might be around her (and that’s not the only interpretation of the last sentence).
Compare her to any public figure freaking about that Hillary lost. Kael is a rational person. They are not.
saw it pointed out Sweden is being slammed for not shutting down, but when you combine Denmark and Norway the populations are near identical, and Sweden has 20 deaths/ to 18/ in the D/N population, and hasn’t gutted its already shaky economy.
And they’ve got Malmo. If anything was going to gut their numbers, that was.
yeah
Their economy is taking a hit. Projections say that they’ll have -4% growth for the year and around 9% unemployment. Projections say that we’ll have -5% growth and 20% unemployment. But if the Swedes are right they’ll hit the downside of the curve before anyone else and so their economy will recover sooner.
At the very least we need somebody to run the risk so we can tell whether or not the lock downs work. Frankly, given the vitriol aimed at Sweden by the proponents of the lock downs, I suspect that those proponents know the answer and they’re desperate that nobody else figure it out. Then again, I know that this situation is putting my paranoia gland into overdrive.
They were not doing all that great before, and, well everyone is taking a hit, as this goes on. They were better off than some and they had more societal issues than full economy issues (the EU immigrant issues, of course). They just didn’t go full seppuku , so yeah, they should pull out faster if the rest of the economies don’t pull them down.
Even if the other economies pull them down, if their fundamentals are good and they look like they’ve successfully navigated the Wu Flu their economy will do better than their neighbors, which will tell us something.
Don’t let the Horde get bored. It never works out well.
John in Indy
Yes they do.
I’ll post pictures when I am home, but in line at Home Depot. The parking lot is Saturday full and roads are Sunday busy.
Atlanta is out of lockdown for all intents and purposes.
Can’t find it right now, but I saw a photo earlier that purported to be one of the LA freeways with a complete traffic jam. If LA is defying lockdown…
I saw that over at Insty.
Except for any sort of hospitality. Betting gonna see a 10-50% increase in dui deaths if they open those back up. They’ll probably fold em into kung flu
I believe that New York is already doing that: the “classify it as Kung Flu if the deceased displayed any symptoms of it whatsoever” apparently wasn’t giving them the numbers they needed, so they went to “any increase in deaths over this month last year must be due to Kung Flu, so just toss those numbers in there.”
Caveat: I can’t find the source for this at the moment, so take it with a Dead Sea’s worth of salt.
I mean, I guess “don’t bring them back to the hospital unless you can revive them on the spot” is in a sense attributable, but not the same way. And if they’re really too swamped to deal with them, wasn’t that supposed to be what sending the mercy ships was for?
I don’t want to think they are trying to increase actual deaths instead of just misattributing them, and I recognize that under intense pressure triage is a thing, but… is that really the situation they’re in? And if not, what can we do?
The adding deaths thing:
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/04/14/818384/
The motivation: not sure who else may have said it, but I sure as **** did.
Promised pictures:
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPg9CPWTeZoq_UdWK4z4P5LeqyWN5nDSoIv3Y6t
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipN7skyUQFIT77bhrXVrr8mJV9XRkZwb7VvhMYAL
Thank you for a few minutes of sanity in a world I have come to believe is totally off its axis. Just knowing that at least one other person is seeing this mania as way over the top is a stabilizing moment in my day. Appreciate a touch of sanity and reality in a society gone mad. Back to scrubbing (my other way of dealing with insanity).
Also, seeds are heavily picked over. Lots of Victory gardens this year.
We’re adding carrots to the mix this year. ain the greenhouse because critters, but 3 muck-tubs worth of carrots will help. Building a chicken coop and run is on the agenda. Probably will get chicks next spring.
$SPOUSE says the foodbank windfall from the stranded food in the restaurant supply chain has ended, and the ‘banks are starting to hurt.
Yes. The one down here is screaming for help, and the “food for kids on the weekends” thing says they got 2,000 new requests for aid.
I think there are two big obstacles to this. The first is that the right, at least in America, is not big on going into the streets to protest. Mostly because we have (had) jobs and families and better things to do. At the moment, aside from still having families, we don’t, so that may change.
The second is we are very comfortable. Even now in this mess: I have power, ac, heat, clean running water, internet, tv, streaming services, etc. Granted those can all run out at some point. But people are going to be so desperate to return to normal, I’m not sure they’ll hold people accountable the way we must if this is never to happen again.
Even I very much feel like I never want to talk about this sh*t again when it’s over. I want to put this behind me. I don’t want to be this angry anymore.
I’m not justifying my feelings. I know what I want doesn’t matter, but what we all want will affect what we all do.
Still I have hope. Not foolish worldly hope, but the hope of God that is solid and real and a promise. I honesty think things will bounce back quicker than anyone could have imagined.
Which will itself be a problem. Because it will allow everyone to quickly forget the bad part. Like how when you are well, you can’t actually remember what it feels like to be sick.
The right does more protesting than people are generally aware of. The Left tries hard to ignore such protests, unless they are up for election in that district soon, which is how ‘must issue’ laws marched across the nation. The 2nd Amendment protests got no coverage, so each time the Usual Suspects got caught flat footed. They’re beginning to catch on that they have to pay attention to ‘minor’ protests in other States, even if they don’t want the Media to cover them…but these idiots are slow learners.
I’m seeing reports of protests in several places, complete with arrests for ‘violating lockdown’ which is going to involve the authoritarian jerks in VERY embarrassing civil rights cases, which they are likely to lose. The authoritarians are still singing their song of “Stay safe, stay inside” but the citizenry is g\\beginning to answer “Die in a fire”.
I have long said that the pressitutes only spreading DNC propaganda in the long term hurt the Dems. It’s part of why Trump surprised Hillary, but is behind a lot similar “failures” such as CCP and Constitutional Carry spreading, the quiet but starting to be effective law on licensing (which is much smarter than BLM’s war on cops because they know who to champion to maximize public appeal, something the 50s/60s Civil Rights movement were masters of), and other things.
The honestly do believe if it isn’t in the MSM it isn’t real (and the opposite) which gives them huge blind spots.
It’s also what drives Jonathan’s Haidt’s observation that if you ask conservatives or libertarians to fill out his moral survey as liberals they can, but the reverse is not true.
That’s one of the two reasons I have more hope than our hostess. The liberty faction in the US understands their opponents. The opposite is not true.
The other, apologies Sarah, is I think you’re still a little too trapped in Europe, although arguably much less trapped in European than leftists born and raised in America. I think sometimes you remember what you saw growing up and believe at a certain point it will work the same here. It’s the flip side of you seeing things about the US those of us raised here are blind to and as such it isn’t a criticism or saying you haven’t acculturated. It’s more the fact that no one can completely unlearn their youth.
The cops screwed themselves wrt that, though. Know a number of folks that previously supported local LE and now we recognize that the fascists would do anything to keep their paychecks. Much like fibbies my default assumption is now that cops are lying and I’m honestly not sure if it is somewhat worse.
The Oregon situation is going to be interesting. LEOs and prosecutors outside the Blue enclaves tend to be pretty much law and order, but the Blue has been giving a lot of perps a get-out-of-trouble-free passes. The DA in Jackson county (Medford) flat out refuses to go after the Poor Oppressed Minority crooks, unless their behavior is so over the top it gets noticed. In Portland, the city police and Multnomah County SO are so cowed by Antifa that people have lost respect for them. Other counties are now refusing to do mutual aid, since they know they’d be the targets, and the perps would walk.
Not a good situation for LEOs. (Didn’t help TPTB when they did the Malheur Occupation trial in Portland, figuring that they had a slam dunk, only to get jury nullification. In Portland! [VBEG].)
I think the governor is getting nervous. There were two (alas competing) recall measures that failed to get enough signatures last year, but If This Goes On, somebody might just do a single one… We’re in LockDown Light, but with no clear end in sight. Kate has subjective criteria for freedom: “Slow the growth of COVID-19”; that’s been true since March 22nd, and “get sufficient PPE for health care workers and responders”. How about enough is enough?
Lockdown Light is still lockdown. I’d like for small businesses to have a chance at restarting, though I suspect a lot have already collapsed or made plans to get out of Dodge. (I hope the latter, fear the former.)
I wish I had thought of it sooner, but having a bunch of protests tomorrow nationwide would have been great, it being Patriot’s Day and all.
“Funny” thing about the Oregon crud: I was in a Little Caesar’s the other day picking up lunch (I work residential construction so I’ve only had a 10% pay cut so far) and ended up chatting with the proprietor about the insanity. He mentioned that the executive Order was not signed in accordance with the Oregon constitution, which apparently requires the signatures of three other people, SECSTATE, ATTGEN, or Senate / House Maj Leader. He also mentioned that there is at least one (I am assuming ethics) investigation into her, via a high level friend in the State Police. You may partake of my bucket of salt for that…
RE: Executive orders and signatures, I took a quick look at the OR Consitution, and couldn’t find any specifics, so I’m not sure that the information I got was true, but it is still thought provoking.
One can hope. I’d really like to see Ms. K Brown given the boot out of office before the end of her term.
Son works at a cabinet maker. They’ve take a slight pay cut too. Only because overtime has been nixed. They are still busy. They are still behind. They are short crewed because people are out sick. They were short crewed before this mess because of the economy. The company is considered essential because they have a huge customer building low income housing in CA (somewhere).
I remember that Despicable Kate Brown was OR Sec State when she triggered the investigation that brought down John Kitzhaber and conveniently took his position. (OR doesn’t have a Lt Governor, so the Sec State is the next in line here.) Dennis Richardson got elected to OR Sec State (the first R in decades), and if memory serves, he was doing an investigation in to DKB. When he died, OR SS went to that RINO and the investigation went into the memory hole.
I haven’t heard about any fresh investigation of Kate, but wouldn’t be shocked. We’d still get the person she appointed, so I’m not hoping for much.
It’s time for everyone stop repeating this line. It is as obviously untrue as anything Mark ever wrote.
If it were about “not having time” no one on the right would ever go on vacation. Would never have a hobby. Would never attend their kid’s sportsball events. If it were about not having the money the various Conservative Inc. organizations and Churches would have went bankrupt years ago. There would be no guns because every gun and ammunition manufacturer would have gone bankrupt for lack of sales, not any gun ban.
The Right doesn’t take to the streets because 1. we don’t want to, and 2. we suck at coordination.
That was supposed to be Marx.
It did not say, ‘not having time.’
It said, ‘have jobs, and families, and better things to do’.
Which is very obviously relevant when so many of the highly covered protests are live, on TV, during the work day– closing down by about 6pm.
Or, in one of the many ways it has been phrased– those are the guys who are free between ten AM and six PM on a Thursday.
You are missing the chain of logic: People can schedule. Whether that means scheduling the protest on a weekend, or scheduling work around the protest. Which brings us back to the original question: Why does the Right not do this? “No time” and “No money” cannot be the answers.
Lobby Day showed that the excuses fall away once conservatives feel sufficiently threatened. Even then before the day of the infighting was near constant.
In the end it is just another manifestation of the central problem: Nukes-only defence doesn’t work and never has. But it is the only kind the Right is interested in.
Lansing showed that out of work people are easier to get to show up. Most protests are not planned far enough out for a lot of those of us working to jump up and head off too, or are dire enough to the person to warrant giving up time off to eat it in a protest. Whitless put a lot of those people who showed up in a position they were able to drive over to the capital and show their displeasure.
Add in the fact the left shows up at your personal space and is often willing to resort to violence or just work to ruin your life, many people decide they can’t afford the danger as well. This has emboldened the leftoids, and if it doesn’t stop, it will end badly, and bloody.
I’m somewhat surprised it hasn’t ended bloody.
In fact, I’ve been expecting a useful patsy to be pushed forward at just the right person’s house to get a martyr to the cause. I don’t think it would work well, and maybe they are smart enough to get that, but the fact the Trump era has not had at least one Rachel Corrie outside the home of a Tucker Carlson is a big surprise to me.
We’re now seriously overdue for a “mass shooting event.” Though when people kept looking behind the curtain and asking inconvenient questions about what happened, instead of Banning All The Things Now it took some of the wind out of their sails…
Were I a conspiracy fan, I would consider it significant that there have been a few – severely under reported – apparent attempted ‘mass shootings’ that happened in Gun Country and got cut drastically short by legal gun owners. Almost as if there was an effort to gin up a mass shooting to dispel the ‘mass shootings happen in gun-free zones’ argument.
I consider orchestration of such events unlikely if only because I don’t think the current Left is competent to do it.
What’s the comment someone made a few days ago, something about there not being a need for conspiracy when there’s a general agreement?
Just protected, in part, by our theory being more accurate.
The best argument against large conspiracies is that they require competence and intelligence to operate. No visible supply of either.
You don’t need conspiracy if you have consensus.
Conspiracy requires a bunch of people who love to condescend and be known as “the smart ones” keep their mouths shut. Consensus only requires the knowledge that they already know everything worth knowing.
“No need for a conspiracy when there’s a consensus,” is the way I heard the quote. In a Ringo book, one of the Posleen War offshoots.
It’s in one of the ones Kratman wrote – he likes that phrase
*Wry* To give an example, if an entire town is convinced “X is the problem” – whether that problem be “witch”, “juvenile delinquent” or other… X will end up on the short end of every stick, whatever the evidence in X’s favor. Because.
Why, that’s Xist!
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*G* Isn’t it just.
hard to have a mass shooting when there are few masses to serve as targets . . .
Hard to have a school mass shooting when it’s home schooling. Not a target rich environment now.
Their snowflakes have a bit too much self preservation.
I’m not saying the protest moved her, but I notice she’s moved:
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ‘hopeful’ state can start to reopen May 1 amid lockdown protests
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said she was hopeful her state’s economy could begin to reopen at the beginning of May as she faces intense criticism for her strict stay-at-home order meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
“I am hopeful that come May 1, we will make some steps forward,” the Democrat said during a town hall event Friday, according to Reuters.
Whitmer added that she acknowledged Michiganders are “desperate to get back to work” and no solution is without risk.
Thousands of protesters showed up around the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, this week to protest Whitmer’s stay-at-home order to demonstrate against restrictions they argue are too strict and endanger their economic future. …
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She might have noticed she is getting outside of the margin of fraud.
I took the scenic route riding home from work today.
The outdoors place here in town that had just the bait and tackle going for a while, was fully open today when I drove past, the WI public boat launches had several MI plates parked in them (as an aside, saw a guy with a mahoosive Walleye yesterday, caught in the river just below the dam), and a few more people were out and about or gathering in chat groups (though well spread out), and some of the groups didn’t even have the cover of walking the dog, though I saw a LOT of folks out walking the dog, too.
Right and Left eventually boils down to one thing: “leave me alone” vs. “it’s for your own good.”
I actually agree with what you’re saying. I read all your responses and I don’t think we disagree on the big picture. You seem to disagree with my specifics. Which is cool.
Just wanted to put that on the record. 🙂
I didn’t miss your chain of logic, I refuted it by yanking out the foundation plank.
“Having jobs, families, better things to do” is saying that there are more important things to deal with in drumroll……. the limited resources available.
Not a bad position in an of itself. We shouldn’t have to care about politics.
But it directly contradicts the rest of conservative theory which says this is super important. Rather like the gun owners who say they will boog, but refuse to take the time to introduce new people to the culture.
More defensible than your original statement, but still not what the statement says, and then you go and conflate “being at a protest” with “caring about politics.”
The left is fond of the “form a large, loud mob” as evidence of caring, and as a default norm for political action.
The vast majority of leftist mobs are made up of what Lenin called “useful idiots”. Of course, they are useful to the left. To the rest of us, useless idiots is a more apt description.
The modern education system, especially colleges, is designed and intended these days to churn out more of these idiots who will be leftist widgets.
the more apt description to most of us is ‘barista’
Why did antifa smash the Starbucks?
So they didn’t have to go to work on Monday.
WRT “being at a protest,” (for Constitutional causes, libertarian etc) I have. But on the “not crazy left” side of the spectrum, I think we tend to protest in less visible ways. Writing to congresscritters. Campaigning locally against aforementioned, when they break their word. Going to actual town hall meetings, usually around 7-8pm on a weekend or Friday night. Signing protests. Stuff that doesn’t make the local newspaper front page, let alone the nightly news.
Heck, how much press coverage does the Right to Life march get? And how long has *that* been going on? How clean are the streets after, and how happy the local businesses with the marchers? Quiet, law abiding folk rarely make the national news. I tend to think the coverage over the Tea Party was more so the crazy left had someone to hate more than actual “this is newsworthy” coverage.
On the right, there’s a long running protest outside the one abortion clinic in the three county area. There’s occasionally one or two pro-infanticide, and most often a half dozen or more on the pro-life side. Alameda County California we most definitely ain’t, for perspective. But I believe there are a lot more little rural or even suburban counties like mine than there are like the one that hosts the University of California at Berkley.
Though I would bet that a good number of protesters, or folks who find themselves in a protest mob (larger group) don’t vote, their politics are more popular. Thus it affects pop culture, which reaches a larger, wider audience. Most people don’t notice how it affects their thinking. Humans can be tricked, and the study of how and what works has been ongoing since the first intra-tribal squabble on the African plain.
The counter to this is a large part of how we got Trump. Surveys? If you answer at all, most lie like dogs, who knows who will be reading those. Polls? Same. It was bad during the run up to 2016, and its only gotten worse. So much worse normal people are noticing. Which is bad for business, if your business model relies on putting one over on the rubes this election season. The news hamsters are pushing the lever, but folks just aren’t buying it like they used to.
Exactly.
We don’t walk around with boards, chanting, generally.
March for Life is about it– and that’s a once a year, “yes there ARE a lot of us” thing.
What are called protests at abortion clinics are usually either public prayer, or what might be called awareness raising or outreach.
*********
What those big protests do is give a sense of “there are a lot of people doing a thing.” Which the media can use to say “look, look, everybody is doing it!”
They do this even when the protest is, to use an example from real life, six people who are paid by the union to protest a grocery store. (Lots of close cropping, and angling it so that it looked like the people standing in line to shop were in the “protest.” WinCo is employee owned, so not union.)
When folks who *aren’t* popular with the media do it, they are reported as being a big threat, if they’re reported on at all.
How long did it take for it to get out that the Covington Kids were there for the March for Life?
“It said, ‘have jobs, and families, ”
Both of which are vulnerable if you’re photographed at a protest. Leftists don’t seem to have that issue.
There are a number of ways to solve the problem in the first five seconds of thinking about it. The right has had decades to work on this.
They don’t want to.
and what have you been doing about it then?
Didn’t say I was any better. Though I do have the excuse of being too young through 95% of this time period. Most conservatives don’t even have that excuse.
And it wouldn’t matter if I had been Supreme Overlord of Conservatism and ordered this behaivor: the fact remains that the only way conservatives win is by losing so much that the left get too crazy for the middle and center-left.
So enlighten us. Because the facts on the ground say otherwise.
Arrange for people from non-vulnerable jobs.
Arrange for people from rural areas.
Arrange for people from red states.
Go after leftist protesters in tit for tat.
Help people who do get hit with cancelling.
Because we let them not have that issue.
So they think they can push indefinitely. The thing is, when conservatives decide to make them have that issue, they won’t know what to do or how to handle how it occurs.
Because they are the establishment. There’s no one to punish them.
Hee-hee. I am imaging the epic MSM pearl-clutching that would follow if conservatives staged rallies garbed as are the Antifa activists.
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*sudden mental image of a geeky protest where everyone is dressed up like the less colorful Naruto characters*
We would be arrested for violating the mask laws. Exhibit A: Charlottesville VA.
It has long seemed to me that many on the Right simply do not expect protests to be effective at changing the behaviour of politicians. Such events can be useful for communication, organization and instruction — which is where the T.E.A. Party excelled — but about the best that one can hope with elected politicians is that they will make the mistake of openly displaying their contempt for the public.
They forget how we got Trump.
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Pretty much, yeah.
Ages ago now, there was a Saturday Session of the MN legislature and a gathering/demonstration in support of business and lowering (or at least NOT raising) taxes, etc. One legislator asked someone there why they never saw this other times. “We have jobs.” was the reply.
Aiming for real full employment would be a logical thing for legislators, if they didn’t want to be bothered by such gatherings. But it’s seems they find such useful. Or did.
and 3. We are probably a little too patient and able to defer gratification. Protesting is, in no small part, children screaming “we want it now.” That is where the “have jobs” enter into it.
That is part of why I am objecting. The Right has taken a failing: “We won’t do anything to push back”, and sold themselves on the idea that it is a virtue: “We are just oh so much more responsible than the other side”.
This is no different than being polite to the left/msm so that you can lose as the better man.
No.
If Trump has achieved ANYTHING it is to show that you have to occasionally be slightly more rude than the Church Lady on her fainting couch thinks is appropriate. Well, if you ever want to win that is.
As Glenn Reynolds kept saying in 2016, “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”
I think that, even more than “never Hillary” is why I voted for him in November. I voted for him as a rebuke not to the Left, but to the Right, specifically the GOP establishment and Conservatism, Inc.
Despite being arguably the most liberal GOP president of my life, and easily of my adult life, he has done more to advance conservative policy than anyone since Reagan and arguably more domestically than the Gipper (which is fine, winning the internal fight was less important at the time than winning the Cold War), Conservative Inc. still wants to destroy him. They were more about being paid to be the anti-MSM than they ever were about conservatism.
my support was straight up no hillary.
That he turned out to keep more of his promises and bee rather effective has been a very nice happenstance
That was my position to. Between Hilary’s obvious corruption with respect to the Clinton Foundation, her contempt for security shown in manifold ways (email, Benghazi, Uranium One), and her utter contempt for a large portion of the US it was clear she was NOT the choice. Living in Massachusetts my vote was irrelevant, our electoral votes were going to her, Mass hadn’t voted for a republican since Reagan’s first term. But I couldn’t bring myself to vote for the Green or Libertarians (Johnson & Weld, [spit]). One pointless vote is as good as the next. And yes he has startled me. He’s somewhere between Jackson and a Truman style democrat. The judge nominees/positions alone are worth it, The rest of his Pro USA nature is a change from woebegone Democrats and even wimpy Repubs like Bush the younger.
“Living in Massachusetts my vote was irrelevant …”
And yet, as we now know, you ballot cast for Trump in Massachusetts was not pointless — else we’d not be hearing such squalling over “Hillary won the popular vote.” Had every anti-Hillary voter in MA, NY, NJ, IL and other Blue-as-Blue-can-be states (including CA) not considered their vote inconsequential it is conceivable Trump would have carried the popular as well as the electoral vote.
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RES I have a stubborn streak and love hopeless causes and a strong civic streak from reading to much Heinlein, so I went to vote. But had we all stayed home it would be irrelevant as (as you know 🙂 ) the total national vote is not considered in our electoral system. The stupid Demoncrats would be eve n more annoying (if that’s possible) but they’d still be pointless and stupid…As the old joke goes I may be fat, but I can lose weight. They’re ignorant and ain’t nothing that can fix that.
I will NOT contribute to the RNC, but I will to Trump. The RNC is too squishy for me.
The RNC has pulled too many d*mned stupid stunts to save as a whole. Individuals, yeah maybe. Will they keep their word? Do they have the spine to tell the rest to go stuff themselves when they get all spend-happy? Are they a good representative of my interests, in other words?
Every politician I’ve met has taken my money and spent it on things I not only do not support, but vehemently oppose. But I also recognize I am an outlier. My ideal government would be infinitesimal compared to what we’ve got now, and the budget reduced accordingly. I mean *drastic* reductions. Many thousands of bureaucrat jobs eliminated, never to return, budgets voted on item-by-item and concerning *only* what the Constitution explicitly grants.
Want something not covered? Amend the Constitution. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
last time i voted to rebuke hillary, this time its to rebuke the media, the nevertrumpers, and every person i know with a case of TDS.
I cannot spare this man, he fights.
Yes this is part of the problem for me with protesting.
Don’t get me wrong, intellectually I see it’s value. I truly do.
But I have this personal wall of seeing it as a boring and unserious. Which I know isn’t actually accurate or fair.
Again, protesting has value. I know it’s important, especially under certain circumstances. I guess it’s just not for me.
It has value, but such value isn’t random and is diminished by poor choices.
Why did BLM rally for Michael Brown, but not for Philando Castile…I have theories, but the fact is Castile was much more salable as a victim than Brown. The 50s civil rights movement knew this by selecting Rosa Parks for the boycott having passed up several preceding opportunities (and probably using them as a template for Parks’s actions).
The second thing that can undermine protesting is no consequence. In the Gulf War protests police deployed a “arrest and release” policy. It has been used in other protests, but I remember protesters demanding it. Everyone got their photo-ops and then went home. However, much of the power of “On Civil Disobedience” and “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” comes from them being written while incarcerated. By demanding, and getting, no consequence civil disobedience becomes a party, not a protest.
Finally, protest fatigue sets in. Another smart thing about the Parks boycott is they were not doing it every time someone was mistreated by the bus company. They picked the most sympathetic victim and focused all the energy and attention of a protest on them.
By continually protesting, including making protests annual events, activists on the Left (and to a lesser degree anti-abortion activists) have largely neutered the value of protesting for their causes.
The early Tea Party made people stand up and look because it championed mostly appealing people, it wasn’t so common as the draw yawns, and the press made sure it had real risk to employment and education even if the police didn’t.
Behind that is an existing structure to set up a civil disobedience case and guide the martyr all the way through the system. It is very effective in getting people to actually put themselves in the crosshairs when it matters, and to make taking that risk worthwhile.
An effective political mechanism requiring long term investment is practically the definition of what the right hates.
(Meanwhile shaking a cane at the damn kids for not caring about the long term. Why be dumb when you can be dumb and a hypocrite?)
Oh, there is no doubt the right as a whole could learn a lot from the 50s era Civil Rights movement. The 2nd Amendment people have and have had similar successes as a result, despite having national media against them (it was mixed in the 50s, but by the 60s they did. They never had the uniform opposite guns right people do in the press).
I also think the Right suffers from its complaints being about things more diffuse so lacking critical mass. That would explain gun rights success and the lack of success, until recently, on insane licensing rules.
On the run up to Lobby Day I was in the Telegram chat where people were doing planning.
(Telegram is publicly accessible, so I’m not causing problems by saying this)
One of the many things I learned from the political tactics expert that was there is that those crazy Antifa protests on the west coast after Charlottesville were deliberately caused. She and others goaded Antifa into overextending themselves and burning their political support among their own side.
Listening to those conversations was one of the most concentrated political educations I’ve had.
I did not know that, but I am in no way, shape, or form surprised.
The Lt. himself taught me that trick in “A Bathroom of Her Own”.
The original Boston revolutionary protests were close to workplaces, and conveniently scheduled at lunchtime. Meetings were at the inn after work.
IIRC there were some protests here locally for Castile, but he didn’t become the national cause celebre that Brown was. Perhaps because he was a permitted gun carrier?
And apparently stoned at the time. The Left didn’t embrace him because he was a gun owner, and the Right didn’t want to touch him because he was a BAD gun owner.
My two theories, not mutually exclusive are the cop wasn’t white so BLM didn’t think it mattered and the NRA quickly came out with a statement in support of Castile and BLM didn’t want to associate with “white supremacists”.
I think there was some effort to make it big. I mean, I knew about it all the way down in Georgia and the protests got some national coverage. However, no one big, press or activist, went up.
I wonder if his family wonders why his black life didn’t matter to the people who championed Brown.
If it were about “not having time” no one on the right would ever go on vacation. Would never have a hobby. Would never attend their kid’s sportsball events.,/i>
Haven’t been on vacation in nigh onto two decades. My hobbies are other work, and vo!unteering for my church and community. That includes *local*political projects. I don’t think I’m that unusual as someone on the right.
YMMV
My kingdom for an exit function. You can set the timer for something like 5 min.In wordpress. Pretty please?
Aaaaarghhh! Edit function. I rest my case.
WPDE
That too.
Remember, after the overthrow of Sauron there remained a scouring of the Shire to be achieved.
Come November every office holder running for reelection is going to be faced by challengers criticizing their actions in the Great Oppression. While they can manufacture a great many votes I suspect they cannot manufacture enough.
In all things, there comes a reckoning.
I reckon there are politicians in need of defenestration and some
priests“scientific experts” who ought become more closely acquainted with their entrails.Just as there are certain writers who need to write some cathartic and informative scenes and worry about fitting them into some story or another later.
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By November, the enemedia will have persuaded the sheeple that their despots were actually heroes.
I don’t think they will, unless your definition of ‘sheeple’ is “those still numb enough to believe the Media”. And if it is, that’s gonna be a small number.
Keep in mind, the Media and the ‘Social Media’ are both dedicated to Teh Narrative. So we are seeing much more of what they WANT us to see, and much less of what they don’t. And they STILL aren’t keeping a lid on the growing ‘f-you, authority’ sentiment.
I’ve seen, personally in meatspace, people who *know* better, fold under the incessant pounding of TV-Facebook-Twitter-newspaper. I guess after a while, it’s easier to just go with the flow.
I’ll quote Austen, because it’s true “My spirits rise with every attempt to depress them”
Governor Abbot has just opened the medical sector, is saying he will start with more retail soon, focus on keeping the “vulnerable” safe, and schools are going to stay on-line until the end of this academic year. He’s still harping on test, test, test, but the door is opening, so I’m going to stay optimistic. At least on the state level. I’m not holding my breath on the local follies.
MomRed said that she saw a goodly amount of traffic on the streets yesterday, more than since late March. The lid is breaking.
Same here. Yesterday the streets in my part of Calgary were busy enough that you’d never guess there was still a lockdown in place.
Up here in the TX Panhandle, our city council seems intent on keeping the clampdown going as long as possible.
Entirely coincidentally, I’m sure, they voted through an emergency Certificate of Obligation (CO) issue, last week, to build a new water park. COs are like bonds, except the voters don’t get to vote on them. AIUI, two previous attempts at a water park bond issue were voted down.
The electorate does have a remedy: a petition signed by 5% of voters triggers an election on the COs. Except, how do you get up a petition in the middle of a lockdown?
A cursory check does not find anybody making book on the duration of the lockdown versus the time period for the petition to be put together. Funny, that.
I’m in Amarillo. I feel your pain, minus the water park. (We went through that mess 5-6 years ago, before the not-a-ballpark ballpark stuff.)
I’m sorry to break it to you like this, TXRed, but I’m in Amarillo too. I guess you missed it, which wasn’t hard as the local media appears to be enforcing a news blackout on the matter, in favor of fuelling FUD.
I missed it. I know two other towns in the area that are contemplating bonds for water parks, so there were a couple other options that came to mind first. That explains the property tax bill that just arrived. *Growl*
“Except, how do you get up a petition in the middle of a lockdown?”
Put on a mask, go door to door, and dare them to arrest you for doing something explicitly protected by the First Amendment.
Please take care that you have somebody with a video recording device following at a discrete distance to document what happens.
Might prove handy i court and certain to provide amusement on the internet.
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And hopefully you have the bail money and lawyer money and won’t lose job by being arrested. Maybe you will be lucky and get backed up by one of the pro bonos but unlike the fascists the right does not have anything set up for preplanning. Cops have already arrested, fined and harassed people for explicitly protected activities and until the pain is spread they will remain supported in doing so by the majority.
OK, not a full release of medical stuff, but more urgent-elective and diagnostic stuff is OK (rule out cancer, rule out cardiac, that kind of thing.) Local option on other things, but with Austin calling the “you need to have a good, numeric rule why you are not allowing Y category of business to open” shots.
Texas is far enough south that we can grow food all year round, at least with a bit of help during the winter. I suspect we’ll need it and hope that we rise to the occasion, like the best damn state of the nation that we are.
-Albert
Traffic outside San Antonio was easily triple what it was almost a month ago. Austin, too. People are bloody sick of quarantine theatre, no lie.
Sarah, this may be important.
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/04/17/an-open-letter-to-governor-walz/
Kevin Roche is former general counsel of UnitedHealth Group and chief executive officer of its Ingenix Division. It’s going to be harder to argue with him.
Despite its flaws, living in Philly has one advantage…we’re not good on listening to our “betters”. The theme song for the Sons of Ben (support group for our soccer team the Union) goes like this (to the tune of Clementine):
No-one likes us
No-one likes us
No-one likes us, we don’t care
We are Philly, f*cking Philly
No-one likes us, we don’t care.
I just thought of a change to those lyrics
You can’t stop us
You can’t stop us
You can’t stop us, we are free
We are Yankees, f*cking Yankees
You can’t stop us, we are free.
Philadelphia, cradle of liberty.
They booed Santa and had a jail inside the stadium. Even though I’m from NYC, I have to admire their lack of inhibitions. Could use some more of it around the rest of the country.
My daughter in MD just told a Karen to, umm, take a hike when told to wear a mask. The Karen in question’s mask was on wrong of course. I’m so proud I could burst.
I love the Surfrajettes. That was the first song I heard by them.
Okay…now the song has changed. WTF YouTube.
It seems to have defaulted to the first track on the playlist. Which is a GMV by JackersEdit. (A real cool one.)
1:51- *Starring Sarah Hoyt as Lady…*
😀
(I have that video on one of my playlists.)
I think she meant this one, since she posts links to it often:
Yeah, it’s there now. If I need to I can watch it on BlueRay (I think…maybe it is just DVD).
“I have come to the conclusion that one USELESS man is called a disgrace,
that two are called a law firm,
and that three or more become a Congress!”
*grin* Man after me own heart, that one. We need more of that, and less of… well, pretty much anything you see on the news lately.
I am advised that he was obnoxious and disliked.
So, he’s got that in his favour.
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Civilization has ALWAYS needed less of pretty much anything that appear3d on the News or in the papers.
That is the nature of the News business. And always has been.
I cannot turn up the exact quote, but one definition of News goes something like this: News consists of announcing Lord So-and-so is dead to people who had no idea Lord So-and-so was alive.
In lieu of a properly attributed quote I proffer:
“If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.” Thomas Sowell
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Dear hostess this brings up some very weird news seen on Insty
https://www.theatermania.com/boston-theater/news/full-casting-1776-revival-diane-paulus_90903.html
Yes the ART (American Repertory Theatre) in suburban Boston has decided it needs an all female/ all genderqueer (whatever the heck that means) version of the USAians most holy entertainment. All I can think of is this is a Bialystok and Bloom production. Why must people do this? It’s like a kindergartener using a dirty word to get attention.
They see it as something you value, so they must piss on it until you don’t want it any more.
Basic Leftist tactics.
TRX I don’t know. Outside of a small group of folks like us 1776 has little appeal as a musical per se. I wonder if perhaps in classic producer think they thought “Hamilton was really big $1000 a seat packed houses. What was distinctive about it? Federalist Period, and a vaguely transgressive casting of famous white guys as actors of color. What musical is cheap to buy/rent and uses little staging and is set in the Federalist period? I’ve got it! An all female gender queer cast for 1776! It’ll make a Million”
I’m not sure about the limited appeal — the show has undergone several revivals — the Brent Spiner production ran 34 previews and 333 performances between Jul 16, 1997 and Jun 14, 1998 and was recently enjoyed a stripped presentatio in the City Center Encores! production (March 30-April 3, 2016):
I believe it also enjoys regular performances in regional (my household attended a superb performance in Raleigh a few years ago that was the highlight of its summer repertory) and schools.
Its primary problem is likely the large number (25) of male roles (and a mere two females) which makes it a challenging show for most theatre departments to stage.
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True RES I may be noting a local issue, no big productions in the North East recently. And yes the huge number of Male roles make it a poor choice for high school productions where male voices are not fully developed and females dominate the members of drama clubs. Given it has 27 roles paid production might be an issue as 27 actors at scale is going to hurt. More modern productions (e.g. Wicked with 8 Main roles, Hamilton with 10) tend to be smaller (with notable exceptions such as Les Miserables) tend to be smaller with smaller orchestras to keep costs down.
They probably just zeroed in on the name. “1776” sounds like something patriotic. Patriotism = bad.
I’m glad they’re doing it. Maybe they’ll learn something.
I’ve doubts they’ll find an actress
willing to playcapable of playing John Adams adequately obnoxious, nor Richard Henry Lee as bumptiously pompous as they ought be, and there will be issues withSally HemmingsMartha Jefferson, as well. But Godspeed and I wish the well. There are twenty-seven actresses who will probably learn something important about the founding of this nation.–
Just to be clear: I would not buy a ticket or even cross the street to see the show on a pass. But I wish them joy and knowledge.
Oh so much knowledge.
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You can lead an actress to knowledge but you can’t make her think 🙂 . I suspect you and I are old fashioned in referring to these thespians as actresses. Modern usage seems to eschew actress and use Actor. And dollars to donuts they will learn nothing about our contry except for an increased hatred for the evil white men that founded it (please note that’s sarcasm I do NOT want heresy investigations by the USAins).
Every refresh a different song. Now it’s Patty Gurdy which is just fine with me.
Millwall Football Club out of London. No one likes us, we don’t care.
Remember that guy who head butted the terrorist in London last year? they asked him why he did it and he said, “I’m Millwall”. the poor American reporter girls never did figure it out. We could use some here.
Alabama is starting to reopen today, Michigan beginning May 1. News is moving fast so hard to keep up.
Please see the Stanford serology testing, The news reports seem to have been taken down but they show WuFlu is just an average flu. 0.08% to 0.14% estimated Infected Fatality Rate. Flu IFR runs about 0.10%
This cascaded when the ICL model came out and will cascade the other way as the data come in, and this is the 4th broad study that came up with the same answer, first slowly then all at once as the vast majority of social phenomena do.
How long before everyone who is saying how amazingly deadly it is starts saying they knew it wasn’t all along, and how dare the records lie about them so?
The sooner the better, that’s when you know you’ve won.
Only if the evidence of the perfidity is there. We are never going to see an accounting of the true screw ups in all this. The red tape snafus, misplaced trust (china and the I’m not going to check what you should have done 11 years ago wrt stockpile), and so on. Dems and media are all in on blame trump and that is only fueling his ego issue where he doesnt admit he made a bad choice even if the info was bad.
By the end of May the press will be talking about how Trump’s overreaction destroyed the economy and why didn’t he reopen things when the press realized he should have at Easter.
Again, that’s how you know you’ve won. Thats the tell I’m waiting for
I’m surprised they went with it as long as they did. Stupid children. Now they own it and Trump has a path toward avoiding the blame he actually deserves. He wasn’t the worst and actions should be judged by what was known or could be known at the time, but he went on too long with this and continues to talk about the million dead. Oh well, perhaps he’s playing 4 dimensional chess. Doubt it, but could be.
Trump has two great skills:
1. A good instinct for knowing what the public wants enough before his competitors to move before them (not the instant the public does and sometimes when giving the public what they want is the wrong move: see the USFL).
2. Making his opponents slit their own wrists out of the need to just oppose him no matter what.
We’ll see if those are enough this time. CNN is doing its damnedest to prove #2.
I dunno, I think the Left hasn’t had any real opposition in so long they just freak out.
They’ve had their way for generations; it’s the way their world ought to be… and when it’s not, they have no means of coping other than going full Trigglypuff.
Maybe, but we got a lot of similar reaction in 2000 to Bush, but it wasn’t nearly this unhinged.
And when you’re more unhinged than BusHitler rants, you’ve really lost it. If Bush endorsed breathing, I wouldn’t have expect the entire staff of CNN and MSNBC to self asphyxiate. I would if Trump endorsed breathing.
Can he do it tonight, please. Maybe also not electrocuting oneself or slitting wrists in bathtub or drinking hemlock.
From your keyboard to the Author’s Ear. Amen.
“CNN is doing its damnedest to prove #2.”
Sure – but with airports effectively shut down who is there to see CNN, other than professional media watchers?
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Hear! Hear!, A point to the resident wallaby.
No wonder TSA and airport people are grouchy. If I was in a workplace with CNN blasting at me all day, I’d spaz.
If the United Nations Convention Against Torture doesn’t include CNN, it ought to…
Only problem comes with making sure the truth is available. The propaganda organs will play the nitpicking truth and falsehood game and simply memory hole the extra incompetence. Just like are doing with the who atm with respect to weasel words.
“Now they own it and Trump has a path toward avoiding the blame he actually deserves.”
He doesn’t have to play 4-dimensional chess to frustrate these morons. Remember when he was claiming “Only the President has authority to re-start the economy” and they were reduced to citing the Tenth Amendment in arguing it is up to the governors?
That set the battle space we’re currently entering, with Trump instructing those governors to “Let my people work!” Because they are hyper-focused on winning every argument they win arguments it is in their interest to lose. Trump, OTOH, isn’t afraid to sacrifice a pawn in order to maneuver them into an impossible position.
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When I heard Cumno cite the 10th Amendment, it was … “Wait. What? You mean the Constitution means something! What do you know. I mean really.”
Gee. I wonder if anyone will hold it against him? Or anyone who has said that the Constitution is an old piece of paper and means nothing in these enlightened times? What idiots. They don’t get to pick and choose. It is all important. Not some more than others … every single one.
I’m already seeing that…
In some societies, this would be a great time for your enemies or opponents to get disappeared.
Death certificate and cremation; who could prove anything was untoward?
To be fair, most of them DID say it was just the flu before joining in the “Worst thing ever, must shut down the economy til 2022” chorus. The convenient thing about changing your story at every opportunity is that you can always point to evidence that you were right all along.
This is why we should all be taking screenshots while various and sundry FB and Twitter posts are still up.
For evidence.
The news reports seem to have been taken down but they show WuFlu is just an average flu.
And there is my real concern. They are going to argue “look how effective this was at reducing flu deaths” and use that as an excuse to resume next flu season.
If I’m right about Victory gardens and Irish democracy and some people about the damage this is doing to public education, the law of unintended consequences is going to bite them in the ass, although I’d rather not depend on it.
Still, even if it does, six weeks of shutdown at the beginning of every year is going to be a big price to pay even if it kills leftism.
Alternatively,,this might discredit the more alarmist, which would be bad if there was in fact a serious disease, but would be nothing but good otherwise. Everything that shakes confidence in government competence is good.
I can’t see us ever doing this again. I can see them trying, but no. Never again.
If we’re lucky, some of them might even lose their office and that would burn it in as an example forever.
Oh, I have a mild worry that in trying to use SARS 2.0, the sequel is never as deadly as the original, to do this and try for the Green Nude Heel that when 1919 1.1 (upgrades are “improvements”) hits we’ll under-react.
More of their inability to understand human nature and the American mindset.
The opponent always gets a vote. Red China is a natural breeding ground for this kind if thing. China has BHL2-4 labs. They’ve the WHO in their pocket.
What stops them from doing round 2 on purpose?
Until we are lucky and not just the elected officials but also bureaucrats driving this get a comeuppance we will see it again. Most people are cheering it all on.
I will leave it up to others to determine what comeuppance would be in their own mind.
It’s a flu-like-illness where the small percentage of severe cases spend longer in ICU with greater required interventions than is normal for flu.
It may be a bit more deadly than the flu but not much. It’s just more expensive in PPE & ICU time.
The lessons are to keep the epidemic stockpiles filled & properly rotated, get rid of those “Certificates of Need” for building hospitals or adding beds to existing ones, and DON’T PANIC!
And always carry a towel. It’s about the most massively useful thing an inter stellar hitchhiker can have.
And diversify lines. We saw countries slamming doors shut on exports immediately in this. And not just china but India and I believe a number of euro countries. For all the reasontarian mewling the export restrictions imposed here were reactionary. If we cannot make shit here then the country is nothing more than a hovel
Epic battle cry– “F YOU, I’M MILLWALL!”
It has an issue in some hospitals but cdiff and MRSA are way too common as well. Maybe some more publicized deaths can actually get them to be less blase. I mean doctors are the #3 cause of death or something similar.
Ah yes, Millwall, the club that put the houligan in soccer/football houligans
don’t hold your breath on Michigan opening “officially” on the 1st. She’s dumb enough to extend it again.
Opening in Protest, might force her hand. maybe even before then, but I expect her to go kicking and screaming (and that sociopathic Smile)
From this distance it appears that Die Führerin is well and truly stuck on stupid and doubling down is to be expected.
Right she’s the kind that would extend the month of April to 45 days and open on May 1st then. I’d participate in schadenfreude and say the Michganders got what they asked for good and hard. But here I am stuck in Massachusetts with RINO Charlie Baker who is only slightly less insane so I’ll just walk away.
The Libertarian Party, as it stands, is in no way ready to be competitive on the National level. They might start to pick up Congressional seats and local positions in 2024. What strikes me as more likely is that there will be a major fight for the Democrat Party between the Left, the Far Left, and the Deranged Left, that they will nominate somebody with about as much chance of getting elected as and Orange candidate in Dublin, and lose ground everywhere but their hard-core satrapies.
Which is why they keep trying to rig it so that they only need the eight biggest cities to rule the country. Then they can stop pretending to pay attention to anybody else.
Eight biggest? They are trying to rig it so they just need California.
They keep yelling how Hillary won the popular vote by 5 million, but ignore she won California by 11 million.
That means outside of the recently declared nation state of California Hillary lost the popular vote by 6 million.
Want to stop the Dems? Give money to the California succession movement and get the GOP to endorse accepting the results of any state which holds a plebiscite on leaving.
And I keep asking the people who say she won the ‘popular vote’, “What makes you think so?”
She ‘won’ the ‘popular vote’ by LESS than 5 million. 2,868,686, according to Wikipedia, which is (if anything) biased in her favor. Now, mark me down as a cynic, but I expect at least 5 million illegal votes,were,counted in California alone.
Need to double check my numbers. Was going off memory of a prior lookup.
The point remains the same, California provided more margin than she had nationwide.
Illegal votes or not, it is not sustainable to convert the race for the president to the governorship of California. Even the governorship of California and NY would work one cycle at best.
and that was because she ran GOTV in big cities she was guaranteed to win becuse she felt Trump might win the popular vote while she sewed up the Electorals, and wanted her win to be “legit”, to the point of getting mad at attempts “wasting time” trying to GOTV in Wisconsin and Michigan, and yelling at them to get back to work in Chicago.
She then lost those states. Luckily for us, as crooked as she is, she is even more so an incompetent.
Oh, I hear the 5 million figure a lot. And the people I hear it from don’t like to be corrected.
Poor diddums.
😈
They also don’t like to hear that I don’t believe even the almost 3mil figure to be legit. And they tend to bluster that “vote fraud is rare”. I point out that there have been successful vote fraud prosecutions in each national election for the last four cycles, that they have all involved DEMOCRAT fraud, and that the Democrat party has done its damndest to block all investigation of fraud. Then I ask them if they really want to bet that Trump will roll over and wave is paws in the air.
They tend to avoid me after that.
2024 will see the rise of a “conservative” party built out of the Never Trump fools and the corporate Democrats (Biden, Clinton, et al) claiming to oppose the dangerous populism of Trump. There might be a rump Democrat party trying to bring back old union Democrats, but that wing, call them Scoop Jackson Democrats, is effectively Trump’s base.
I suspect this is true even if Biden wins, although the Never Trump, Conservative Inc., Corporate Democrats will be the rump Democrat party, with the handful of Scoop types sliding to the GOP.
The party with the most to gain in terms of the nation stage if Biden loses is the Greens. They are a natural home for a lot of Bernie Dems and have the infrastructure. The Democratic Socialists could took, but AFAIK don’t have the 50 state orgs in place.
This is quite possible.
If Biden wins the republic is done, absent the boogaloo. All fraud by mail. dear leader will win elections FOREVER.
I may be whistling past the graveyard, but I don’t think the Democrats, as presently constituted, can pull that off without getting caught. And if they get caught, Trump will ram it up their backside. Sans lubricants.
What was it the Spartans said to Philip of Macedon? If.
If there is a boogaloo, it’s pretty well sunk, too. But Biden winning? Seriously. This would be a very loud bell to startle even the most tone deaf that the whole thing is *rigged* and always will be.
Prediction: Biden won’t be the nominee. The Democrat Powers Behind The Throne will arrange for Biden to have a high-profile public appearance a week or two before the convention, and he will bungle it so horribly that “everyone agrees” (i.e. journo-list agrees) that a replacement is needed. Enough delegates will agree, that the first ballot will deliberately fail to pick a winner, and the second will pick Cuomo (possibly Noisome, but I doubt it). It won’t be a ballot war on the convention floor, it will be a prearranged outcome. Biden will get a great sendoff as an “honorary candidate” or MVP or something. Bernie will get a similar nod, trying to keep his supporters sweet. Kamala for Veep, for maximum intersectionality points. It’s unthinkable until it happens, then it was always inevitable. Watch.
Prediction: Biden is the democrat nominee but gets saddled with some Clintonista VP candidate. Should he win AND the Dems take both houses at some point they’ll let him drool, cop a feel, or rant aimlessly in public and remove him via the 25th amendment. Should he win but the Dems NOT take both houses he has a massive stroke (perhaps 9mm based) and the VP takes charge with the Wicked Witch and her consort pulling the strings. Actually, just looked at 25th amendment section 4 and forcible removal takes 2/3s of both houses, very unlikely. So Slow Joe had better watch his back. Honestly unless things get REALLY bad (like John Ringo bad) before the election the path for the Dems to the Whitehouse seems really rough. (knock on wood, offering prayers to the Author not to mock me this once…)
The Democrats don’t need Congress, they just need the VP and the majority of the cabinet officials. Once they inform Congressional leadership that the President can’t do the job the VP becomes Acting President until the President says he’s able to take the job. Only if there’s a dispute where the President says he can do the job and the VP and the cabinet saying he can’t does Congress decide.
I had presumed Biden would not concede. He’s been wanting that job since 1984. I think if he gets in the only way he leaves is with a congressional vote or in a pine box. If he gets in there and his VP is not more incompetent than he is (quite a challenge) he’s a dead man walking.
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You mean like Obama did?
Oh. Wait …
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Thus why Biden was chosen in 2008 🙂 as you have observed. Obama wanted someone who would not upstage him. Biden couldn’t upstage moldy room temperature oatmeal. He certainly wasn’t chosen to make sure Obama got Delawares 3 critical electoral votes.
I don’t think Biden is mentally competent to realize that he was sidelined. They’d probably keep him in the Oval Office and let him make speeches to the “people.”
It’s possible they could use him as a catspaw. However, his tendency to “misspeak” and utter unpredictability mean he makes a far better martyr than marionette.
Yeah, I really think he’s the Democrats’ Bob Dole. They knew they weren’t going to win this cycle, so they kept Bernie off the ticket to minimize the damage and gave Joe a consolation prize.
It doesn’t help that the Libertarian Party is a stealth wing of the big-government Democrats.
-Albert
Yep, their 2016 candidate demonstrated they are, at the national level, at best the Legalize Pot party with no concern about other issues and at worst and empty shell for whoever organizes a take over this round.
They made Trump’s at best wishy washy support of the 2nd look like rabid boogalooism.
Hell, they made Hillary! look not too bad on that count.
The Libertarians had a serious opportunity in 2016. There were a lot of us for whom the choice between Hillary and Trump was not nearly as obvious as it was in retrospect and would have voted for a serious third-party candidate. But the Libertarians were not that party. They were the believers in carbon taxes and forcing bakers to make custom wedding cakes for same sex marriage. They were so determined to prove that they weren’t like those nasty Republicans that they never showed any reason why someone should be for them.
The Libertarian Party isn’t about electing people to office. It’s about letting people who aren’t talented enough to be a major player in a real party feel like they’re major players.
Right the Libertarian party has always been a refuge for 3rd rate politicians and minor (and occasionally major) nut cases. It looks like all the various rebellious Judean groups from Monty Python and that is when its vaguely organized. Mostly it just chaos and brownian motion.
Look, it’s pie in the sky. They could…. grow.
Granted. And incompetence is not necessarily a limitation on parties, Look at the Republicans
There IS a serious demand for a truly Libertarian party in this country, but the one we have has been hopelessly co-opted by the agents of the major parties (I eschew debate over which bears greater onus, the Dems for maliciously using the LP to bleed off right-wing support for Republicans or the GOP for, well, being the GOP.)
Sadly, you go to the polls with the Libertarian Party you have, not the one you would like.
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Truthfully NO 3rd party in my lifetime has approached starting up in a functional way. They seem to use a variant of the underpants gnome strategy
1) Win the presidency!!!
2) ????
3) POWER!!!!
thinking that IF they win the Presidency then other national and state offices will follow. Rather true success would take >20 years as you have to first get state legislatures and hold them across a reapportionment
cycle. Then with the power of the mighty gerrymander (a mythical and fickle beast) you slowly take more state and later Federal offices. the horizon on this is so long and daunting no one can do it. Rather what is more likely is that one of the existing parties will morph over time into another. Since Reagan (and likely before) the Democrats have been trying to morph into a socialist European style party , purging their ranks in a rather stalinistic way (people become unpersoned). They already lurched that way in ’72 but reality in the form of the ’72 election clubbed them up side the head with a clue bat in the Form of Nixon. They then went all resistancy and unfortunately he acted stupidly and gave them a chance to get even.
There is a viable strategy for third party with this, if there are enough people pissed about mayors being excessive hysterical ninnies. Run for mayors, promise not to be a hysterical ninny, use a coherent theory blaming the tyranny of the PRC, and excessive respect for that tyranny, and expect to stay at the state and local level, or to be coopted by a major party. Which in pre-2016 thinking might be a victory, but post 2016 looks like a loss.
FBI/Deep State and PRC influence networks are a big hazard for anyone who wants to do this. Not at all clear that there is anyone who would be attracted to the risk/reward profile.
> run for mayor
Maybe in Hooterville, somewhere. But even if your state doesn’t require mayors be members of a “recognized political party” to get on the ballot, the mayor’s office might just be a powerless figurehead while the city is run by a non-elected “city manager” chosen by the city council.
Waltzing into the local Party HQ and announcing you’re going to be their candidate for mayor would probably give them some entertainment, but it’s not likely to get you on the ballot.
You’re looking at 250 years of political power consolidation; the machine is set up to exclude outsiders.
Also in a lot of Cities they mayor is a figurehead. A city manager actually does most of the work. For example Burlington Vt where Bernie was mayor is one of these (Surprise Surprise, Bernie did a useless job). The nature of a political system in a first past the post voting methodology is that it stabilizes out to 2 parties with short intermediate 3 party states. If you don’t want to be the party eliminated you need to have control of that very helpful semi mystical creature the Gerrymander.
“The nature of a political system in a first past the post voting methodology is that it stabilizes out to 2 parties with short intermediate 3 party states.”
Typically, the winner is a minority party, the other two parties comprising more than half the voters and usually able to reconcile & unite, have one party seduce sufficient voters from the third to win the next election, or engage in such fratricidal combat that only one remains as challenger to the incumbents.
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I’ve been amused to talk to several Europeans who were *terrified* of the Libertarians, and flat wouldn’t accept that they barely exist, much less aren’t GOP shock troops…
Euros have strange ideas about American politics and culture…
That last sentence could lose five of its nine words 🙂
The problem is all the Americans eager to import strange European ideas – even after those ideas have been disproved, or worse have been proven deadly.
If it were about “not having time” no one on the right would ever go on vacation. Would never have a hobby. Would never attend their kid’s sportsball events.
This was supposed to be a comment about Mr. N’s amusing “edit five of those 9” words comments. IDNK how this rubbish tablet auto-filled the combos with the opening bars of a previous remark, and then, after I highlighted and deleted them and hit send, got rid of the new comment to wit:
LOL HerbN!
How would Libertarians work as shock troops? Organized, they ain’t…
that’s a shock!
I’m reminded of the lady our hostess knew who thought a guy who wanted to ban the internal combustion engine must be a libertarian because banning things was what libertarians did.
Yeah, just because they’re terrified of libertarians doesn’t mean they know the first thing about them.
I vaguely remembered something about European libertarians being different than ours, and a quick cruise around suggests that the totalitarian libertarians that keep popping up here at random are the European group using that name. (and the English are Adam Smith flavored, whatever that means?)
Where the US version tries to minimize the interference with freedoms on the part of others, the EU version tries to maximize total freedom…which means they’re totally OK with, for example, forcing someone to Bake That Cake.
Like contrasting a republic with a democracy, basically.
Which at least sort of makes the American Libertarian party nonsense make sen… no, definitely the wrong word… somewhat understandable on a theoretical basis beyond cynicism or possibly misanthropy?
If we’re opening a discussion of things the Left doesn’t know the first thing about we’re gonna need a bigger blog.
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Bigger blog and several yottabyes of storage to describe their idiocy.
There’s already a website that documents all of that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
About as effective as the synchronized briefcase team in the New Year’s DooDah Parade.
Or the Judean People’s Front Suicide Squad
I’m not sure there is a political party in America that isn’t a stealth wing of the big-government Democrats.
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That’s because until very recently not being at least sympathetic to big government Democrats was a surefire way to get the media to portray you as a dangerous extremist with blood on your hands.
Look at the pro-life movement.
The media successfully made a bunch of little old ladies praying in front of abortion clinics, often ladies who’d had abortions themselves and regretted it, as homicidal maniacs. Effective homicidal maniacs.
Given the attempt to spin a really obvious, standard “loser with personal reasons” type shooting as an abortion clinic attack in ’15, and multiple failed attempts to gin up bomb scares, I have to wonder how well the ones from the early 90s would stand up to real investigation. Simple stuff like “were they involved with any of the women who were killed/injured in this facility,” or “did they have an obvious, personal reason for their actions.”
“What strikes me as more likely is that there will be a major fight for the Democrat Party between the Left, the Far Left, and the Deranged Left …”
That is already happening, which is how we’re getting the presidential run of Zombie Biden:
The silent Democratic majority is sick of leftist candidates
Over the last year, Democrats have increasingly lurched left, driven by a fervent progressive wing on social media. But these candidates have been ignoring what Democrats actually want.
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Neither party provides what people say they want. Canadian style immigration laws, focusing on our own citizens, etc. Dems and reps have their corporate wings calling for unfettered immigration, assistance offshoring, and favorable tax policies. In addition the dems have the racialist and fascist wings while reps have a forever war wing.
Which is why Codavilla’s Ruling vs Ruled makes more sense.
And because people have seen what schools and colleges are doing to their kids, homeschooling grows exponentially.
Apparently, the Usual Suspects are already scared of this:
https://cap.law.harvard.edu/events-and-conferences/homeschooling-summit-june-18-19-2020/
Sponsored by a group that claims to be trying to protect the rights of kids, but all their examples are cases where the folks empowered to do so, with piles of hard, physical evidence from multiple, non-anonymous sources, did not protect the lives of the kids. Much less any other rights.
So, clearly, we need to give more power to folks to “protect the rights” of kids to be taught what a stranger wants, rather than being unsupervised with their parents.
The school personnel indoctrinate children to be leftists, groom them to break their sexuality and future child-begetting potential, and flat-out molest them at a rate well over 100 times the per-person frequency of Catholic priests.
Of _course_ they don’t want parents to find out what they’re doing.
-Albert
College too. What was their biggest fear? That conservative students or parents could record their indoctrination.
Oh, yes they are; the masks are dropping again……..
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2020/04/18/harvard-professor-recommends-a-presumptive-ban-on-homeschooling-says-it-violates-childrens-rights-promotes-white-supremacy/
Ensure that “that “children grow up exposed to … ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints.”
They really are beyond parody, aren’t they?
Also beyond reason. I won’t quite say they’re beyond redemption; that’s above my paygrade, but unless He wants to show up for the job, He’s going to have to be satisfied with running them through Purgatory after they’re out of my misery.
You elided the critical terms: “community values, social values, democratic values” — by which they mean correct values, responsible values, their values — not the values of those who merely bore them.
And we are all well aware what they mean by “nondiscrimination and tolerance” as they have amply demonstrated that in their treatment of Hobby Lobby, Jack Phillips, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and those rubes from Covington.
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And don’t own any mirrors.
Well, they do — but they’re all scratched up by razor blades.
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I would like to see those surveys (and their internals) before accepting Bartholet’s word on them. Our observation over several years attendance of the state Home School Convention was that about fifty percent of attending families were “Christian Conservative” and forty percent were old-style “reject authority” hippie-types, with the remaining ten percent simply dissatisfied with the public penitentiaries labeled schools.
I say this as, at the time, an agnostic, albeit a conservative.
Of course, I also suspect
Baphomet’sBartholet’s operating definition of “conservative.”Then again, there is no way I am granting her ANY presumption of good will and would even want to cross-check her meaning of “and” and “the.”
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In fairness, this is pretty much their argument about socialization in the first place.
Just makes the “destroy BadThink” much more obvious.
They just don’t get it — they are sitting on a live volcano, and the pressure is building up. The harder they try to clamp down the lid, the higher it will get, and the bigger the eruption is going to be.
I just hope All The Right People receive the burning lava enemas they have done so much to earn…
———————————
“What do I want? What do I want? I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come at too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this. Can your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?”
FWIW, Mr. Morden did arrange for that in the end. I don’t think he intended to, but he did.
Out of all the people Morden asked ‘What do you want?’ only Vir got exactly what he asked for.
No, Vir lived a few decades after he got what he wanted. But otherwise, pretty much that, yeah. 😉
Who is this Mr. Morden? I don’t know that name, his background, his story.
A character in the show Babylon 5. He is the tempter from the “evil” aliens.
I didn’t watch that series. Did see a part of one episode; didn’t interest me.
It’s a series that gets so much better as it goes on.
I don’t think either side Shadows or the Vorlons wer the “Good Guys”. Each culture had a defining question, the shadows “What do you Want?”, the Vorlons, “Who are you?”. In the end humanity and the rest of the younger races tosses both of them out of the galaxy for being professional sh*t stirrers.
The realization by Sheridan and Delenn that the Vorlons weren’t actually looking out for the younger races was one of the best story arcs.
Hence the scare quotes around bad guys. You are supposed to view them as the bad guys to the Vorlon good guys, but that is just one side of Kosh’s three sided sword.
The other thing is that you got the impression that the Vorlons were split. The original Kosh and his faction (who may have all been present when the Vorlons engaged the Shadow vessels right before the original Kosh was killed) seemed to still take their original mission to guide and guard the “younger races” seriously; the faction represented by his replacement Ulkesh seemed to simply want to use the “younger races”.
“Respect! From whom?”
Kosh definitely seemed sympathetic to the younger races.
Ulkesh was an a-hole and at least 90% a dick.
They were based on order and chaos. The Shadows *appeared* at first to be the villains, the Vorlons’ evil was much more subtle.
The scene in question:
Better to be one of Vir’s multitudes than Londo’s!
I know he got me to cheer.
They *can’t* get it – that’s a direct contravention of their Narrative. If they start acting otherwise, they’ll become targets themselves.
They are an entire generation of Parsons and Parsons’ children, thankful that they got turned into Big Brother for thought-crime
I share that dream! I turned down the career path that was making me more money for independence and time to raise my kids.
Since then I’ve taught students making more income than their teachers doing Web design.
Kids with the ink on their driver’s licenses not even dry.
We need to remember the things that are working now… AND correct the political belief that the Constitution can be tossed aside on a single individuals panicked whim.
A few headlines of the day, with links (hopefully) neutralized to avoid WP moderation:
Random sampling test shows coronavirus more widespread and less deadly than previously thought: Study
[washingtonexaminer . com/news/random-sampling-test-shows-coronavirus-more-widespread-and-less-deadly-than-previously-thought-study]
Widely Followed Model for Predicting Virus Deaths Is ‘Flawed and Misleading,’ Experts Now Say
[pjmedia . com/trending/widely-followed-model-for-predicting-virus-deaths-is-flawed-and-misleading/]
Governor hopes to reopen Texas businesses in early May
[washingtonexaminer . com/news/governor-hopes-to-reopen-texas-businesses-in-early-may]
Belt and Road and ‘bribes’: China paid off home country of WHO boss, Cotton says
[washingtontimes . com/news/2020/apr/17/belt-and-road-and-bribes-cotton-says-china-paid-ho/]
Pelosi delays reauthorization of domestic violence law over ‘boyfriend’ language
[washingtontimes . com/news/2020/apr/16/nancy-pelosi-delays-violence-against-women-act-rea/]
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman slams shutdown ‘insanity’: ‘It makes no sense’
[washingtontimes . com/news/2020/apr/17/carolyn-goodman-las-vegas-mayor-slams-shutdown-ins/]
N.B. – Goodman has been a registered Independent since 2009, was a Democrat from 1985-2009.
–
One more?
Senate Democrats, Obama Small Business Chief Break With Pelosi, Urge Loan Funds Now
–
oe the phrasing:
Trump calls for states to be ‘liberated’ from coronavirus lockdowns
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday called for a number of states under extended lockdown to be “liberated” after telling governors on Thursday “you’re going to call your shots” over when to reopen.
In a series of Twitter missives, the president called for Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia to be “liberated.”
“LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” Trump told his 77 million followers. …
–
Yeah. I see no reason not to call it at this point: Trump set up the guidelines as rope for the governors to hang themselves with.
Given how loose parts of the guidelines were, I figured they were intended to give cover for governors wanting to open things up. And for those who wanted to keep things closed, there were other avenues to take.
Cumno at least is taking President Trump’s offer and tying his (Cumno) own knots with that rope. And laying the framework for Biden, Pelosi, etc., to follow in his footsteps. FWIW not in a good way.
More prudent Governors are using the rope thrown as the lifeline it was intended to be.
I love how because “1 in 3 women will experience violence in their lifetime” we have a Violence Against Women Act, but the odds men will be victims of violence in their lifetime approached unity is just ignored.
As for the model being flawed, no s*** Sherlock. Did you know water is wet?
Did you know that ONE IN FOUR homeless people are women!?
Obviously, we need more female homeless! And they all must meet the proper ratios for gender, cultural background, and race. (even if they’re made up and change hourly)
“Sorry, too many unisex panda furry homeless on this stretch of sidewalk, you’ll have to hold it and defecate somewhere else…”
That’s not all. Statistics show that half of all the people who die are female! Something must Be Done.
That is incorrect, women outnumber men. Also women live LONGER then men. If husband and wife are old and HE dies she lives many years, if SHE dies the man normally only lives a year or two.
And the Women claim THEY are oppressed.
Other way around– slightly more boys than girls, at birth, without interference.
Guys tend to die a lot more often, a lot earlier, in most situations.
Not all of them “hey y’all, watch this” either. IIRC, before puberty, males are more likely to have serious inherent health issues that end fatally.
Stressed populations tend to have a slightly higher percentage of female births.
Just leave the Violence Against Women Act in its grave. Its expiration a year ago didn’t lead to an increase in domestic violence and everything it criminalized is already criminal at the State level.
It’s hard for politicians to vote down legislation like this (how could you be for violence against women?) and it would have been reauthorized easily if Nancy Pelosi hadn’t tried to add Red Flag on accusation provisions to it, but it was all federal overreach from the start.
Was Nancy eating one of those $13.00 a pint ice creams out of her $24,000 refrigerator/freezer when she did this?
Yes, in a true “let them eat cake moment” she gave a lecture on why she blocked the small business emergency loan fund from being replenished from her multi-million dollar mansion’s extremely expensive kitchen, with extremely expensive gourmet food stocked in it.
I’ve seen one or two memes of San Fran Nan as Marie Antoinette already (which is not fair to Marie Antoinette, but fits the myth.)
If you have two fridges stocked with Jeni’s (and you show them off), and you live in a Ghirardelli town, you don’t really care about politics anymore.
I prefer to have a Lindt trap. *runs for cover as fast as paws will carry her*
Stop Trapping the Lindts!!! Trapped Lindts will often gnaw their own wrappers off to escape the cruel wrapper hold traps used to harvest them. Accept only free range naturally raised Lindts!!!
Troublemaker
c4c
Take heart! America is getting pissed:
Proving that Comrade Phil meant it when he said that he didn’t give consideration to the Bill of Rights in connection with decrees, he is having people arrested for organizing protests against those decrees:
https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/04/woman-charged-for-organizing-protest-of-murphys-coronavirus-stay-at-home-order.html
This is patently unconstitutional and Murphy and the police officers involved should all face criminal charges and civil lawsuits over these tyrannical patently unconstitutional actions.
Texas and Vermont on Monday. First slowly, then all at once.
The Hysterical Ninny Brigade (hereinafter HNB), Texas Department, is reacting as if Gov. Abbott is planning to spray typhoid into everyone’s air vents. “OMG he’s killing people! OMG stay safe!”
JFC
Broken record time. Johnson County Kansas is doing randomized testing. 369 processed, 14 positive for WuFlu, 3.8%. Small sample but again it extrapolates to 60x undercount of infections, which is consistent with the Stanford study, the German Study, the Icelandic study. I suspect we’ll find NY and NJ over 10%. The pregnant women measured in NYC were at 14% infection. None of the powers that be seem to have realized the implication of that.
Noli Timere.
Netherlands blood donors …. 3%. …. extrapolates to 21.5x the official cases
We’re not going to have a famine. The food production that actually matters — staples like wheat, corn, and meat — was not interrupted.
And I gotta dispute something said here the other day. California does NOT produce “half the nation’s food”. It produces about half the fresh fruit/veggies and nuts (the only staple crop it produces enough of to export is rice). But it looks disproportionately large because these are high-dollar crops (in terms of calories per dollar, they’re luxury foods).
And CA’s share of that market has been dropping as more and more comes from Mexico and South America, and as CA regulates itself to death. In the early 1980s CA was ag-heavy. By 1999 ag was declining, but still productive. In 2006 most of the orchards and row crops were gone due to “water must go to the delta smelt” and the only remaining cash crop in SoCal (formerly a huge root-veg and strawberry area) was alfalfa, and that was declining due to the rising cost to pump water (something like $100k/acre, last I checked. Or, why hay in CA is $650/ton.)
Don’t be too sure about that, Rezlac:
https://theweek.com/speedreads/909359/beef-processors-are-closing-plants-warn-beef-shortages-hoarding
Add that to the Smithfield’s pork processor, and something’s happening.
I’ve read the Smithfield plant closure lasted about 3 days, to allow cleanup and installing some additional safeguards.
They planned for a week, hoped it wouldn’t run longer, and got it faster.
Locally I’ve seen no truly “we’re OUT of that” for a while – with the exceptions of hand sanitizer and TP at times. Getting a particular brand or form factor (rice, sugar, flour, yeast) might be an issue, but there is something. Meat and eggs are more expensive, and might (still) have signs limiting amounts to a customer/family – but they are in stock. Even the TP seems to be lasting over a day on the shelf – though it’s clear the store is NOT doing a standard arrangement of things, but turns tags around and anything that comes in gets put on the shelves until the shelves are full.
Here, Hutterite eggs are overflowing the counter and the price has dropped about 20%.
It may be briefly disrupted at the macro level… but remember the current centralized system is only about 25 years old. Before that, a lot of meat and most milk was processed locally. Slaughterhouses and commercial dairies were everywhere. Centralization was also hard on the smaller producers — used to be you just took any number to market and the local meatpacker bought ’em; nowadays if you have fewer than 25,000 head available, the packers and shippers are not even interested… but a lot of ’em still go to small local meatcutters.
Bringing back local processing, as a hedge against this kind of disruption, would be a good thing.
A lot of hay in California is produced in Oregon, at least in a good year. On a really good year, a bunch goes north (not sure where, Washington, or export maybe) as well as the loads going south.
FWIW, a lot of the ordinary (long grain, nothing fancy) rice we’ve purchased in Southern OR comes out of Texas. The Cali rice that we’re seeing is short grain, sometimes jasmine rice. That runs about 2X the Texas stuff, but we don’t use it.
CA requires that hay imported into CA be certified weed-free. You can’t just pack up a truckload of $75/ton North Dakota hay and make a killing in CA.
Remember how MJB Rice tasted so much better than other white rice? didn’t realize why til I couldn’t find that green box anymore, and in frustration finally tried jasmine rice… that’s why. MJB was jasmine rice.
How can it be weed free when there’s so much pot in Cali already?
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/04/17/what-the-wuhan-virus-on-the-uss-theodore-roosevelt-tells-us-about-what-we-should-do-next/
Well, I hope there won’t be a boogaloo… and I hope I don’t get chosen to rally the troops. I would probably do worse than Cayde-6 from Destiny 2. (“There will be a TON of LOOT!”)
just dropping this here, I might have elsewhere too, but damn, Floor is just too good not to.
Also, I think this is when Floor got, possibly the WuFlu. She was quite ill at home after for a bit over a week. She isolated from Hubby Hannes and the Smurf in the guest house and they seem to have avoided getting it, or had it asymptomatic.
Visited the local Wal-Mart for the first time in two weeks. The movie bargain bin was all full then, half-full now, shelves were bare in places. I’d heard physical media sales were down, but maybe the last month has given them a boost. I also went through their book selection and got a Louis L’Amour Western I’ve never read before. Can’t tell you how great it was to do some non-essential shopping. Bare survival is boring.
Given that the last time around the Libertarian candidates for President believed in “force bakers to bake gay wedding cakes” (yay, freedom!), I don’t know that an R v L race would be much different than what we have now. Except of course that L candidates would show up wearing their Star Trek uniforms (true story) and drone on and on about legalizing marijuana, to the detriment of any actual useful policy proposals.
I want to believe too.
Look at John Ekdahl on twitter. I’m pretty sure a year ago I thought he was a liberal Democrat.
Today, he is raving on twitter about the hypocrisy of wealthy NYC liberals lecturing the rest of the country for not shutting down hard enough, and demanding longer shutdowns, while themselves not being prepared to accept the hardships necessary to shut down the NYC subway system.
Now, there are arguments that shutting down the NYC subway system is not really feasible.
Okay, yes it is apparently a people mover, so freight might be brought in another way if people could simply stop moving.
But the city’s service workers, including a fair amount of medical and first responders, apparently live outside the city, and need the subways to be able to commute to the city in any significant volume. Because the density is so high compared to road network capacity.
Thing is, if this public health matter is worth inflicting extremely high economic hardship on the non-NYC portions of the country, then ‘dismantling’ NYC stops being too costly to even discuss.
The population density of NYC can be decreased by forcible relocation. If you prioritize the very wealthy, the homeless, and the criminals, you are not removing service workers. With fewer people in NYC, there would be a lower need for services, and you would eventually hit a point where the necessary commuting service workers and freight could be handled by the road networks.
Build concentration camps in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, quarantine the folks there for some weeks, then send them to the next set of camps and sanitize the quarantine camps for the next group.
Horrific costs, but the ‘oh, it is just money’ measures in force elsewhere are not free.
I surely do not like the way the rich media elites are all ‘more government boot, harder, on /your/ neck’, when they haven’t even been sent to a Federal isolation camp. It is apparently enough to be driving some desertions or even defections from enemy ranks.
The simple models we use to understand politics in this country are wrong. Sometimes they are useful. Take heart from the possibility that they might not be useful, and that we cannot know for certain beforehand when that is the case.
How many hotels are in nyc. Fill em with docs and nurses at GSA rates. Stop the transit, furlough them and use their pay to do it. Match busses with hospital schedules.
“I surely do not like the way the rich media elites are all ‘more government boot, harder, on /your/ neck’”
The operative term, of course, is the personal pronoun, “your.”
None of them are requesting that boot on their own necks, and they squeal like piggies whenever they imagine Trump might be applying it.
–
It didn’t help that the NY transit Authority had fewer runs because the number of people went DOWN and they were not making as much per train, Yes, they CUT the number of runs so that the trains would stay FULL, with the people PACKED in. And NYC has the gaul to wonder WHY their “Lockdown” didn’t work better.
PRECISELY.
On a positive note from the actual virus front, that antibody testing is starting to come in and it’s putting COVID-19 at roughly the same fatality order of magnitude as the normal flu. One of the Docs at Stanford that is involved in the first testing did another video interview:
Moving the observed fatality rate from something like 3 in 100 to something like 1 in 1,000, where the seasonal flu usually ends up, is actually a big deal.
And Stanford’s Doc Bhattacharya should be commended for pushing this testing – making sweeping political and economic decisions with global impact using models based on the fake ChiCom data on COVID-19 disease from the 武汉冠病毒肺炎 virus that originated in Wuhan, China where Winnie is God Emperor is just a horribly bad idea no matter how pretty your charts are, Imperator Gavin. Best to say “Oh, look, we now have better data from people we trust instead of lying commie bastards or the WHO, but I repeat myself – we are now using this Stanford data instead!”
The Wall Street Journal has an article on the editorial page about this study, and the others from Iceland, Germany, and one in Italy. ‘Twill be interesting to see what happens Monday-Tuesday.
Per the video they have data from the LA sampling and the sports league tests from 27 cities all complete and analyzed that will be in new papers submitted this week, and other folks are doing this sample testing too as noted by BGE. Once they map this out across the country they can move off of the models based on falsified Chinese data and for the first time have the capability to make rational decisions.
HAH! Government making rational decisions. I crack myself up.
The only thing this does is increase the political pressure, like the WH guidelines. Texas opening up does the same thing.
Political pressure is what works even in the Glorious Imperator Gavin Bear Flag People’s Republic.
They’re attacking this based on the false positives while the author reminds them that there are also a lot of false negatives. Nate Silver, and he’s about as establishment as it gets, says that we need to look at the meta-analysis of all the different tests. He’s right about that, especially as all the tests show the same thing. The newest one is a small test in Chelsea, Mass with infection around 34%. Chelsea has similar density to NY and you can put that together with the homeless shelter rates over 30%. Infection rates are hugely higher than thought, the only distinction seems to be how high, Lowest is 2% highest, so far, over 30%
What we’ll find is infection rates in NYC and surrounding are huge and that’s why we had so many hospitalizations.
The dems are fighting this because they want to restructure everything in their image. This needs to come out.
Tucker had this last night but didn’t draw the damn conclusion. As said, Monday/Tuesday will be interesting.
They gave a range to account for false positives. I will grant the criticism that they may not make it clear enough whether the controls adequately accounted for past encounters with other coronaviruses, but if they had major cross-reactivity problems with common-cold-coronavirus strains, I would expect a lot more than 3%.
Yes, there’s always a range. This was an attack by Democrat politicians and media. Neither is noted for its numeracy, intelligence, or honesty.
It does remain, though, that all the tests are coming up with the same answer. All over the world with no low outliers. Even China has it over 2.5% so it’s probably 25% there
The result should be tar and feathers.
Yeah, we’ve already seen systematic corruption of the test supply by China.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-test-antibody-kit-uk-china-nhs-matt-hancock-a9449816.html
“infection rates in NYC and surrounding are huge”
For weeks the NY authorities were assuring people the subways were safe and there was NO WAY you could get COVID-19 in them.
That was
a liewrong, as they eventually admitted.It requires very little consideration to understand why the claim was bollocks from the start.
The Train Has Left the Station
By Ramesh Ponnuru
April 16, 2020 9:20 AM
New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Feb. 2: “I want to assure New Yorkers that there is no reason for anyone to change their holiday plans, avoid the subway, or certain parts of the city because of #coronavirus.”
Jimmy Vielkind and Melanie Grayce, Wall Street Journal, March 3: “New York state and local officials are trying to quell public concerns about the spread of coronavirus on public transportation with assurances that the virus can only be transmitted through close contact.”
Barbot, March 4: “There’s no indication that being in a car, being in the subways with someone who’s potentially sick is a risk factor.”
Terry Nguyen, Vox, March 13:
[SNIP]
Jeffrey Harris, Department of Economics, MIT, April 13:
Emphasis added
–
the virus can only be transmitted through close contact
Has that jackass ever ridden a train at rush hour.
MARTA down here isn’t nearly as busy as the NYC subways, but during peak times you are standing cheek to jowl. If that isn’t close contact then all these social distancing guidelines are more bullshit than I thought.
The social goodness of mass transit shames plague vectors. Can’t you see the holy light of civic responsibility shining through each railcar? Kills those nasty Coronas stone dead…
Besides, they’d rather you died than they shut down their rolling spam cans.
And since this IS the 18th of April, even if it is not that date in ’75 . . .
Oh, dear Lord.
It’s grandma’s birthday…. I meant to send a bunch of flowers to be put on her grave, but the country is under lockdown. 😦
Put some flowers on the table now, send some to the gravesite later.
*hugs* Send them for July 4, from her American granddaughter.
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/04/18/820800/
Redstate is apparently not willing to consider that the Hillary campaign, and the impeachment effort might have been PRC operations from the start.
The impeachment effort a PRC/CCP operation?!? The CCP is stupid and ineffectual but they’re not THAR stupid and ineffectual. Nope only Democrat leadership (sorry oxymoron there) leadership can shoot themselves in the family jewelsthat precisely. Look at their talking points no CCP operative is that ineffectual :-).
Well maybe the stupid party in their hay day cold have screwed the pooch that badly, but it would have taken their best people (Romney, Collins, etc…).
Her Shrillness becoming important enough to glom the nomination MAY have been a secondary consequence of PRC operations. But if the PRC were smart enough to engineer the Shrillary campaign and the four year temper tantrum against Trump, they would be smart enough to have nothing to do with Granny Maojackets von Pansuit, Big Mama Clinton is fundamentally dishonest, to such a degree that the PRC could not count on her staying bought.
Pelosi and Schiff are a little bit weird, and both from California.
Their actions could be self motivated.
But if they had been compromised by the PRC, and the CCP’s regime is in trouble, pressure from there could explain some of possibly unusual behavior.
“Do something.” “This is something, we are doing it.”
Beyond that, the Clinton campaign was pushing the Russian collusion story, and it was run through a politicized/compromised FBI before the actual election. And the media has been careful not to accuse people of being Chinese agents.
There are other plausible persuasive explanations for these apparent items. And while OODA may be over hyped*, it is not clear that the PRC could decide that Trump was a problem and get the FBI agents moving in time.
*Or at least abused as comprehensively as ‘agile’ and ‘six sigma’
“the Clinton campaign was pushing the Russian collusion story”
Let’s be clear: as we now know (and as was deducible at the time) the Russians were feeding disinformation to the Clinton campaign who laundered it through a blind (the campaign law firm), then fed it into the FBI (and CIA) and the MSM.
Complaining about “Russian Collusion” was the most shameless act of chutzpah since O.J. vowed to find the real killers.
–
The sudden and oddly forced drive to the helium-assisted impeachment vote in the House was weird at the time (A phone call? And the transcript confirms nothing happened? Really?) so another trigger makes perfect sense (“Look Madame Speaker, we paid all this money and have all these recordings that you would not want to come out – it is time to do what Beijing is asking and get rid of Trump.”)
Or at least give him something to distract him from the pandemic to come.
They didn’t succeed at that either. Because President Trump did mention it during the impeachment circus. And Fox News reported on the mentioning & the process as it was occurring. Documented as early as January. Now, without the impeachment lead up to & hearings October thru December, could a red flag been raised even earlier?
As President Trump has stated already China is directly responsible for the deaths of American Citizens because of their actions in causing the pandemic (we didn’t mean to isn’t an excuse). I’m not 100% sure they took advantage of the situation (95% sure). In light of the democratic actions with impeachment, democratic leadership in the house & senate are guilty associates after the fact. In that case they are all guilty of murder and should be punished accordingly. We know that won’t be prison. Don’t know what will happen.
What do people here think of the possibility of a State local boog? Would it not going national reduce the bad effects while fixing the problem? One or two states followed by a wave of states opening.
Violence is easy to escalate, hard to deescalate, not easily stage managed to stay within only one person’s personal desire, and starting it automatically ticks off a share of neutrals not engaged with politics.
If they want to let violent criminals out of jail, they ought to accept when they become victims. I believe the term is maskirovka.
Ordinary routine vigilantism should suffice for the release of criminals.
It is not sufficiently different in degree or kind from ‘peacetime’ acts with the same true goals.
No need for anything like putting together lists of offenders (which can be done from publicly released info), and making an organized effort to hunt them down.
Escalating against the people who support or tolerate the peacetime nonsense would likely splash on nominal innocents who are potentially allies on other matters.
The Panopticon has been shown to be helpless at providing evidence to convict ordinary criminals… but I suspect it would be fully utilized against badthinking vigilantes.
“Let’s be careful out there.”
Which will also prove interesting and informative, neh?
“Escalating against the people who support or tolerate the peacetime nonsense would likely splash on nominal innocents who are potentially allies on other matters.”
And this type of thinking is PRECISELY why people are tolerating the house arrest. “Oh, anything you do besides sit at home might have unspecified bad consequences.”
Precisely the argument the lock it all down until doomsday crowd is making.
If the opposition is going to create chaos anyway, plan on using it against them.
Lotta sincere believers in drug legalization/criminal justice reform/Prohibition was a mistake and failure.
The left is resorting to junkies and wishcasting precisely because they cannot recruit and train the people for effective combat teams.
The supporters who mean it maliciously are probably not the most competent direct threats in the world.
The ones who mean it innocently are wasteful to target.
For the level of hazard, my guess is that the expedient thing to do is play out the litigation, and play the propaganda game.
The question is a little too open to properly answer. If Michigan, then probably a learning experience for the politicos, with some (Noisome, Murphy) tightening screws and others making a big show of opening things up. If, OTOH, western Virginia applies for admission to West Virginia (we need a simple term for the secession and merger process) the long term effects might be salubrious indeed.
At the micro level I think we’re likely to see the end of a few mayor’s careers (e.g., Greenville, Miss.) and the start of the rise in standing of some sheriffs.
Not much of an answer, but then it is very much an “If by whiskey …” question.
–
we need a simple term for the secession and merger process
Transcession maybe?
I don’t think the vast swaths of dissatisfied rural California will apply to neighboring states, however, given similar rural vs. urban divides there. Maybe disaffected rural CA and other-than-Portland OR would want to join up as a new extracted State of Greater Jefferson.
Extraction would be the correct word. No way Salem and Sacramento will let Southern, Central, and Eastern Oregon join with NorCal. Frankly, I would just as soon build a wall around Portland and then join with NorCal.
IF it starts, it goes national.
The media would stroke out over the agony of choosing between “say nothing and maintain the Narrative” and “pump this new catastrophe for all it’s worth.”
And for no particular reason, the voices just reminded me of this scene in L. Neil Smith’s “The Nagasaki Vector”:
“…America’s most popular ventriloquist … But this time, it meant war … But, in its early dyin’ throes, the system lashed out at its tormentor. The week followin’ Blocky’s announcement ,,, an’ he was in the middle of his openin’ monologue, two CIA loaners an’ a paira outa-work installers busted into Studio B with silenced Ruger Mark IIs an’ emptied their clips into poor Blocky, endin’ his career forever.
Too bad the stupid jerks didn’t think t’ shoot his partner, the ventriloquist.”
OTOH, this suggests a re-invigoration of a quiescent political movement:
Could anti-lockdown protests be new Tea Party movement?
Growing discontent with stringent state-level restrictions imposed to mitigate the coronavirus is pouring out into the streets near state capitols in ways reminiscent of the last decade’s conservative activism.
“They have a very tea party feel,” said Tea Party Express co-founder Sal Russo of the demonstrations.
“The current protests are because of government overreaching and infringing on our rights,” said Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin. “The protests are an extension of what the Tea Party movement has stood for the last 11 years — constitutionally limited government, personal and economic freedom. In the time of crisis and to remain on solid ground with those whom they represent, elected officials should lean on the Constitution, not abandon it.”
[SNIP]
“So far, this hasn’t been as a big a reaction as the Tea Party,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, critic of Trump coronavirus adviser Anthony Fauci, and a proponent of unlocking the economy. “We’ll see if this catches on.” But the Arizona Republican added the protests were “reflective of a lot of what I’m hearing from my constituents. They’re fed up and feel their rights are being abused. People are losing their life savings, losing their businesses.”
Many complain that churches are closed, but liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries remain open. “There’s really no constitutional or statutory authority for a lot of what they’re doing,” Biggs said of some governors’ executive orders, expressing surprise there haven’t been more legal challenges.
“It is intriguing to see that these movements have certain states where they are very strong, some where they are modestly active or just organizing or considering organizing, and some where they are completely inactive,” said Michael Johns, a former George H.W. Bush speechwriter who became a Tea Party leader. “There appear to be six states, in my view, where they are a legitimate force: Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, and Virginia. The strength of our Tea Party movement, however, has always been that it is a national movement, active in even the bluest of states, and sometimes especially in the bluest of states. That offered the opportunity for some degree of national coordination and messaging.”
[SNIP]
“Obviously, with 35,500 Americans dead in a matter of weeks, this virus is very real, and it is very dangerous. Acknowledging that may seem counterproductive, but it isn’t,” Johns said. “To be effective, these activists need to reject extreme or conspiracy views … And they should be very specific about what liberalization measures they want taken and then be prepared to explain why doing so is not a public health threat.”
Trump’s election was seen as the culmination of the tea party’s protests against the Republican leadership, but also a rejection of their small-government activism. He joined leaders in both parties in rebuking Rep. Thomas Massie’s efforts against the massive economic rescue package. In recent days, Trump has vacillated between deferring to governors on stay-at-home orders and asserting the power to make them reopen their economies.
–
ME: Hey, France, whatcha doin’?
FRANCE: Maintenance de routine. Pas grave.
ME: That apparatus looks strangely like…
FRANCE: MAINTENANCE DE ROUTINE.
COMING SOON
French Revolution Part Deux: European Boogaloo
Lest anybody be wondering whether the Dems might not overplay their hand on this … they’re sitting on a pair of treys betting like it’s a full house:
Jonathan Turley: Arguing Trump is criminally liable for coronavirus deaths ‘wildly disconnected from the controlling law’
Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley pushed back against critics of President Trump who argue he is criminally liable for coronavirus deaths.
“The argument that Trump may be criminally liable for his handling of the pandemic is wildly disconnected from the controlling law,” Turley wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “It is only the latest of a long line of distortions of the criminal code that would make prosecution an extension of politics.”
Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, was reacting to an opinion piece published by Newsweek with the headline: “Could Trump Be Criminally Liable for His Deadly Mishandling of Coronavirus?”
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The president’s critics argue the Trump administration was too slow in preparing for the onslaught of the coronavirus outbreak.
“Can we talk about 1 of the few topics I may actually know too much about: homicide?” and MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said in mid-March. “Specifically, whether Donald Trump may have criminal exposure for some level of negligent homicide or voluntary/involuntary manslaughter for the way he’s mishandled the Coronavirus crisis.”
Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice echoed Kirshner’s sentiment earlier this month, blaming Trump’s leadership for the lives lost from the virus.
“I really hope the president does not declare prematurely ‘mission accomplished’ and try to celebrate his success when we already lost more than 23,000 lives in barely two months,” Rice said to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Lives that, many of which, necessarily did not need to be lost. And our economy is in the tank? It is a very, very tragic situation that could have been lessened with responsible and effective leadership. Sadly, that is not what we have at the moment.”
A lengthy report by the New York Times published last weekend described weeks of warnings about the virus, which originated in China late last year, that Trump did not act on aggressively until mid-March beyond limiting travel from China.
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Is that the same Susan Rice who went on every single Sunday Morning Presstitute show to avow that the Benghazi attacks were prompted by a Youtube video? The woman who declared Bowe Bergdahl was a hero? The woman who “requested that the identities of some Americans mentioned in intelligence reports related to the campaign and presidential transition of Donald Trump be unmasked”[Wiki]? This would be the former UN Ambassador who invoked a “Responsibility to Protect” to embroil America in the Libyan civil war, ensuring no tyrant would ever again trust American entreaties to dispose of nuclear weapons?
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By the Fall? As in “October Surprise? By then John Durham’s investigation should be commencing prosecutions, and the Trump campaign will be plastering Biden’s reassurances about China all over the place.
Bret Baier: Sources believe there is ‘holdback’ on Wuhan lab story because ‘China’s control of some big elements’
Fox News anchor Bret Baier said his sources tell him the truth about the origins of the novel coronavirus outbreak will be revealed to the public by the fall.
There is a delay, the veteran journalist told Fox News colleague Jesse Watters while discussing the story he helped break, because of China’s place in the supply chain.
“My sources are saying in six months time, all of this will be out in the open. There’s a lot of holdback to the story, they think, because of China’s control of some big elements like PPE [personal protective equipment] and other things we have seen that China is slowing up getting to the U.S.,” he said in an interview that aired Saturday evening.
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op officials have publicly acknowledged the coronavirus origin theory is something the Trump administration is at least considering. President Trump told reporters on Friday that “a lot of strange things are happening” in terms of the origins of the novel coronavirus and said the U.S. is trying to determine whether it came from a laboratory.
Fox News reported U.S. officials are certain the Chinese government went all-out in an effort to conceal the viral outbreak and cited sources who expressed confidence that the World Health Organization either played a role in a cover-up or looked the other way.
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I’m thinking they’re breaking the news in stages. First, the evidence that it came from their lab — but lean toward the possibility that it was an experiment that had nothing to do with bio-warfare, and it was an accident. Then broach the possibility that it was from their biowarfare division, but leave open the possibility that it was the result of sloppy lab procedure. Only at the end, when all their other evidence is pretty much agreed upon as valid, make the big reveal that no, it wasn’t an oops, it was a very deliberate release, perhaps intended as a plausible-deniable way of eliminating members of their own population they viewed as “useless eaters,” especially the elderly and those with various chronic conditions, or perhaps a way of weakening the West.
You have a low, cunning, nasty and evil mind.
I like the way you think.
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Having had some time for the thought to percolate I think we can presume this virus release was not deliberate. Had the CCP engaged in an intentional culling of the population there are more likely regions — Tibet, among the Uighers — for them to have deployed the virus. Wuhan is, by all reports I recall*, in their industrial heartland and thus would constitute shooting themselves in the foot. While I would not refect the self-hobbling argument out of hand, Occam’s Blade supports the accidental release as most credible.
*not the most rigorous possible standard
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Nod. I suspect that the deliberate started with the cover-up as to exactly when and what degree of sloppiness allowed it to get out. After that, the Chinese government may have been operating on the theory of making lemonade out of lemons by letting it get out to damage everyone ELSE, and using their Democrat fellow travelers to help.
Few spoons to analyze right now, but can we fully exclude idiocy on the part of the US actors? Journolist, panic, and groupthink.
I think this is an appropriate message from Himself in these times.
South Carolina. Starts opening tomorrow.
New York announces most aggressive anti-body testing in world to begin next week. They’ll miss the significance I suspect, but I’m betting NYC is at herd immunity already with NJ and suburbs not far behind. We have crap governors so we’ll still be the last out despite being the safest place in the country since we’ve all already had it.
From your
lipskeyboard to God’s ears.I so want to bequeath to my posterity the sort of freedom I had, or better.
Two great Americans, whose signatures were never on our founding documents, have told us in their art what the news media consist of– and they told us this a couple of generations ago, when Kronkite still sat behind his desk and the evenings reporters were still presumend to be relatively objective, and nobody called each other “Fake News” yet:
Orson Welles, in Citizen Kane, and Don Henley in Dirty Laundry
Disaster porn, indeed!