He Was Right about China

Denounced by Democrats and the media as a racist for blaming China for COVID-19, Trump feels vindicated as evidence emerges suggesting that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese virology lab in Wuhan. But he believes it was unintentional, likely a product of “gross incompetence.” What was intentional, in Trump’s mind, was the decision by Chinese leaders to allow its citizens to travel globally, which spread the pandemic. Trump has called for countries to cancel their debts to China as part of a down payment on a future reparations plan that he suggests ought to total some $10 trillion.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/06/17/investigative_issues_an_interview_with_donald_trump_unbowed_781711.html

Reading, Understanding

 "A socialist is someone who has read Lenin and Marx. An anit-socialist is someone who understands Lenin and Marx." President Ronald Reagan

Where Socialism Works

 "Socialism only works in two places. Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it." President Ronald Reagan

Science? What about passion and strongly held belief?

It is a sad irony that the teaching of science in American schools is so unscientific. In a more rational world, children would learn about nature and a mode of inquiry—the scientific method—that would awaken them to the awe, fascination, and surprise that the universe should inspire. Instead, the chronic problems afflicting K–12 education and the growing politicization of science have pushed us ever further from that ideal.

Science has been misused and poorly taught for centuries.

https://www.city-journal.org/k-12-science-curriculum-environment

Now we teach passion and strongly held belief and call it "climate science". There is, of course, real climate science and hopefully those engaged in it will eventually start calling out those who use strongly held belief wrapped in the sheep skin of science.

The new version of speaking truth to power ....

 Whatever you do, don't dare to speak the truth about tragic events.

"We will never hear the last of these names. Eric Garner. Alton Sterling. Michael Brown. George Floyd. Rashad Brooks.

"And now Daunte Wright.

"We will never hear the last of them because there will always be more. And because certain people are invested in forcing us to hear about them.

But what they demand we hear isn’t the truth.


"Is it a tragedy that Daunte Wright is dead? Of course it is. Should he have been shot dead on Sunday by a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer? Why, no, he shouldn’t have been."

https://spectator.org/daunte-wright-shooting/

Worried about inflation? Just spend more!

I don't have any idea what to say about the so-called president's ideas. Maybe he's "crazy like a fox", but I doubt it. Who knows how many cronies you can pay off with a 6 trillion dollar spending spree.

"On the menu today: No, really, you can’t keep track of the Biden administration’s trillion-dollar spending bills without a scorecard — and this administration appears to be whistling past the graveyard on the threat of inflation; there’s some easily overlooked good news on COVID-19 over the past two weeks; another police controversy, this time in California’s Bay area; and looking ahead to Thursday night’s NFL Draft."

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/bidens-trillion-dollar-train-wreck/

AGW Alarmism as Obvious as Ever

 What the science can determine versus what the Alarmists say - it’s just stupid. People make claims in the name of science that science cannot possibly have determined. 

Science is conjecture, attempt to disprove, reassess or refine conjecture, attempt to disprove. If unable to disprove, conjecture may become hypothesis. 

Alarmism is pure conjecture, strongly held belief. In other words, some weak assed shit.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-media-vs-climate-science-11618355224?mod=djemalertNEWS

Deming reportedly said “It’s not what we don’t know that gets us, it is what we know that isn’t so.”

https://nypost.com/2021/04/24/obama-admin-scientist-says-climate-emergency-is-based-on-fallacy/

Who will you believe, your lying eyes or the climate alarmists?

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/23/how-global-warming-isnt/

Do you believe in cooperation or coercion? It's that simple

"I won’t quibble over the word “free,” for my interlocutor didn’t mean these benisons of modern society cost nothing but that the cost isn’t borne by the user in the form of fees. He knows full well that we pay for them with taxes and borrowing. And it can be conceded that they’d provide strong if not necessarily compelling grounds to support socialism if it deserved credit for them.

"But does it? Does our impulse to help others start with a socialist impulse or any ideology? Or is the truth entirely different?" 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-selfishness-at-the-heart-of-socialism

A Stinking Pile of Silly BS

President Biden has not backed down from his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending proposal, and House Democrats are pushing full steam ahead on making his vision a legislative reality. But a top budget watchdog just warned that the budget-busting legislation, which costs roughly $13,260 per federal taxpayer, is full of spending that has nothing to do with the pandemic.

“Only about 1 percent of the entire package goes toward COVID vaccines, and 5 percent is truly focused on public health needs surrounding the pandemic,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) warned on Wednesday.

“Meanwhile, nearly half of the package will be spent on poorly targeted rebate checks and state and local government aid, including to households and governments that have experienced little or no financial loss during this crisis,” the report continues.

https://fee.org/articles/new-covid-legislation-contains-300-billion-in-unrelated-spending-budget-watchdog-warns/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020_FEEWeekly

"It seems like as soon as something appears in a newspaper it ceases to be true ..." T-bone Burnett

Applies equally well 30 years later to the MSM. 

Earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced plans for a 9/11-style commission to “investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex.” Will that investigation include the media’s role in peddling flagrant falsehoods about what actually happened that day?

Look up any story about the storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters, and you will find it described as a “deadly riot” that killed five people.

Worse still, one of the deaths was that a police officer who – the story goes – was killed by rioters after getting hit in the head by a fire extinguisher.

Then there is the story of the protestor who “carried Zip Ties into the Capitol,” which led to accusations that the protestors intended to take hostages.

There have also been endless media descriptions of the event as an “armed insurrection.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/19/exposed-the-media-has-been-lying-about-the-capitol-protests/

Tamny Sends Off Rush

 I can remember hearing Rush as far back as 1990 when I was in flight training in Corpus Christi, TX. He was already re-married and went through his first round of weight loss by 1991 when I had completed flight training and was learning to fly and fight a P-3C Orion in Jacksonville, FL. I was grateful to him for his ability to fight the absurdity of political correctness with logic. Ups and downs, joys and sorrows, trials and triumphs; Rush was fully human and therefore, fully imperfect. He was mostly in service of himself but he accidentally struck mighty blows for human liberty and I'm grateful for that, too. 

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2021/02/19/remembering_the_great_rush_limbaugh_660896.html

Forget Due Process, We Want Justice!

It’s always worth reminding people that if President Joe Biden were compelled to live by the standards he intends to institute for college students accused of sexual misconduct, he would be presumed guilty of rape, denied any legitimate opportunity to refute Tara Reade’s charges, and tossed from office in disgrace.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/biden-prepares-to-strip-college-students-of-due-process-rights/

Oh, so funny, that doesn't happen to the Bidens! C'mon man ...

Buying Influence

Other outlets involved in the propaganda operation include Forbes, the Financial Times, Newsweek, Bloomberg, Reuters, ABC News, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, AFP, TIME magazine, LA Times, The Hill, BBC, and The Atlantic.

https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/media-private-ccp-dinners-trips/ 

About That Socialist Thing

My great-grandfather wasn’t a wealthy man, but he was relatively well-to-do by the standard of his time. He lived in a small village on the east coast of China where everyone was related to everyone else. In an old photo, he looked handsome and scholarly. He hoped one day to become a government official. Unfortunately, the imperial court ceased to exist when rebels forced the last Qing emperor to abdicate in 1912. With no court to serve, he became a wheat farmer.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-socialism-meant-for-my-great-grandfather-11562526670?shareToken=st8a60527b976d400384c94f7871464814

Solution? Economic Growth

Tamny always cuts through the crud:

What used to end careers in basketball no longer necessarily does.

Notable about this is that all manner of maladies not related to sports used to amount to death sentences. As this column routinely makes plain, pneumonia used to be “Captain of Man’s Death” per the late surgeon and author, Lawrence D. Dorr. Tuberculosis was a quick life ender too. So was yellow fever. Cancer was a certain killer, but then most didn’t live long enough for some form of cancer to get them. See what used to bring on mortality first.

So what happened? Economic growth did.

All animals are equal but some are more equal than others ...

 More animal farm:

The media? It is a Ministry of Truth. Informers and readers beg the Great Leader to let drop his favorite flavor of ice cream or the details of the Oval Office makeover. There is no need for censorship: the media are the censors. Whatever sinister idea a paranoid politician has for muzzling journalists, reporters themselves have already trumped it. Pravda is their model. Who can be disinterested when there is a war to be fought for diversity and equity, against climate change and white supremacy?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/07/our-animal-farm/

What if you held a pandemic and no body came?

 That was stolen from an old anti-war quote, supposed penned by Leslie Parish: "what if they held a war and no one attended?"

That's Tamny's question. He's more sure of the answer than I am. However, I hope that some of us will remember how much extra damage was done by political over-reaction.

It is also fascinating to consider, following the yin yang that is inescapable in seemingly all things, that were we poorer and therefore dying younger, as people in this nation were 100 years ago, it is likely that no one would have noticed the virus. 

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2021/02/04/what_if_the_coronavirus_had_spread_without_diagnosis_659087.html

Patterson Eversman War Stories

 Just read it

https://www.insidehook.com/article/military/matt-eversmann-james-patterson-war-stories

Hanson's Animal Farm Reverie

I was lectured by an ACLU guy in the 80s. I remember the end of the cold war. I remember many of these references when they were happening. This is like a tough piece of steak that should be chopped up and stewed - great flavor, and intense to experience.

The Left’s 1960s dream is America’s 2021 nightmare.

George Orwell published Animal Farm in August 1945, in the closing weeks of the Pacific War. Even then, most naïve supporters of the wartime Soviet-British-American alliance were no longer in denial about the contours of Moscow’s impending postwar communist aggression.

The short, allegorical novel’s human-like farm animals replay the transition of supposedly 1917 revolutionary Bolsheviks into cynical 1930s Stalinists. Thereby, they remind us that leftist totalitarianism inevitably becomes far worse than the supposed parasitical capitalists they once toppled.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/07/our-animal-farm/

Tamny Strikes Again

The incomparable Tamny! He thinks in such unfamiliar ways it is like a workout to read his stuff - but because the light of clarity is so satisfying, it is always worth the effort.

To which some will say “yes, but,” only to mention all manner of ridiculous (in retrospect, of course) internet companies that went public over twenty years ago. There’s your “bubble,” right? Wrong. Lest readers forget, Amazon’s share price fell into the single digits in 2001 after all too many ridiculed its formerly triple digit valuation. Amazon was once “Amazon.org AMZN -0.9%,” and it was for a time one of the more public faces of an “internet bubble” having “burst.” “.org” for Amazon was a joke about its “non-profit” status. What’s perhaps “obvious” now about good and bad internet companies wasn’t obvious at the time. What’s transformative yet again is a magnet for all sorts of investment that often only becomes understandable well after the fact.
“Yes, but” what about the housing “bubble” in the 2000s? Glad you asked.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2021/02/07/a-modest-proposal-to-voluntarily-abolish-the-word-bubble/?sh=378fd9e2710b

Hunter and Joe, Palling Around Like Father and Son

"Hunter Biden joins his father aboard Air Force II for a trip to Beijing, where he briefly introduces the vice president to his Chinese business partner Jonathan Li. Vice President Joe Biden's official trip to Beijing was to quiet security concerns in the region after Chinese aggression in the China Sea. Less than two weeks after the trip, China officially approves an operating license for the BHR investment."

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/timeline-key-events-hunter-biden-overseas-business

Given what Joe knew of Hunter's problems and businesses, this is indescribably poor judgement or just plain rubbing every citizen's nose in the muck over "the family business." And he got away with it. 

"Hey, I'm the VP, and I'm making millions for my sons and friends overseas - and giving them free transport - and you can't stop and will elect me president anyway." 

His ridiculous claim that he "didn't know anything about" his son's business dealings should have been an insult to every citizen. Were the dems just looking at that thinking "this has to go south" and then saw that it wouldn't and finally pulled in the sails leaving him as the only one? 

I didn't realize it, but things are just exactly like they were in 1968 ...

It is confusing to me why a person would make the argument that nothing has changed since 1968, especially one that lived through the change. They cannot mean that literally, it is just as difficult to be a Black American now as it was then.

I grew up wondering why family and friends would argue about Hank Aaron not legitimately earning the home run record - who cares what the banalities were, he his more home runs and he was the hitter I cheered for as a Braves fan. I never cheered for a segregated Crimson Tide team, by the time I was able to watch, dominant black athletes were a core component of the Tide's success. Hey, I know I was lucky, I saw enough of the slavery hangover but much less than the previous generation. 

Is it still harder to be born a Black American than white? As a generality, of course. I wish I wish I wish there was a way to shift the suffering and poverty and ensure every human could live up to their full potential for growth and love and satisfaction, safe and supported and healthy. As an officer in the US Navy I saw so many Black Americans do just that and it gave me hope and I silently cheered and as they created a good life for themselves. I worked shoulder to shoulder with so many fine humans of so many ethnicities and a broad spectrum of cultural history. I hope that some of my childhood classmates (elementary school in Alabama in the 70s) have done as well. 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/01/20/an_open_letter_to_stevie_wonder.html

The article points out:

In 2008 America elected – and in 2012 reelected – the nation’s first African American president.

Two months ago, a majority Americans voters cast ballots for a woman whose immigrant parents grew up on opposite sides of the globe under British rule: Donald Harris in Jamaica and Shyamala Gopalan in India. Their daughter, Kamala Harris, takes the oath of office tomorrow as vice president.

Two weeks ago, and for the first time, voters in Georgia sent a black man to the United States Senate. Martin Luther King would have certainly considered that progress: The new senator, Raphael Warnock, is the pastor at Dr. King’s iconic church.

In 2013, Tim Scott was appointed to fill Strom Thurmond’s old Senate seat. The following year, Sen. Scott won election in his own right, having become the first African American senator elected from the Deep South since Reconstruction. He did it by winning more than 60% of the vote.

From 2001-2005, Colin Powell served as the first African American secretary of state. He was succeeded by Condoleezza Rice, the first female African American secretary of state.

Michelle Obama has held the title of “the most admired woman in America” for three years in row. Oprah Winfrey has been on the list for 33 consecutive years.

Two decades ago, Robert Johnson, the CEO of Black Entertainment Television, became the first black billionaire.

Will They Get Better?

"Then Democrats voted to impeach President Trump. Again. When they last impeached him almost exactly a year ago — just in time to distract the White House, Congress and the nation from the looming coronavirus pandemic — the grounds were, to say the least, thin. It was notable that Democrats didn’t even bring up impeachment at their convention, and it stayed below the radar during the presidential campaign. After allegedly being a matter of earthshattering importance, it was like it never happened."

"But now they have impeached Trump — a week before he was scheduled to leave office anyway. And this time, the claim was even thinner: that a speech in which Trump called for peaceful protests was somehow “incitement” of events on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, some of which apparently took place before the speech was delivered. When Democrats spent a year promoting and excusing violent riots against the police, we were told that it was “mostly peaceful” protest, even when police stations and state capitols were seized, and when rioters tried to burn down federal courthouses. When Trump called for peaceful protest, we’re told he was advocating violence. Byron York calls this “the crazy impeachment,” and he’s right."

https://nypost.com/2021/01/19/gaining-power-hasnt-made-the-left-any-less-insane/

I hope they regain sanity. 

But if they don't we'll see the socialist experiment tried here in greater doses and perhaps it will be harmful enough, fast enough, to convince the average folk they were right all along - socialism punishes as much or more than it helps. 

I've been doing my best to ignore all the insanity, I'm probably still in denial that the end of Trump was even worse than the beginning of Trump. Stunned that GA voted for two crazies to give power to dementia J. 

But the world will turn, and it's a good time to become a stronger, better, more ethical, more potent human with the most possible capacity to regulate your emotions and focus. 

Celebrities Are Superfluous

Meanwhile, it’s the non-famous heroes who resonate: The frontline workers and health-care providers New Yorkers cheered for every night at 7. The wealthy Secret Santa profiled by CBS News who anonymously mailed $1,000 cash to 100 carefully chosen essential workers in need. Nathan Apodaca, the Idaho potato warehouse worker longboarding and lip-syncing to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” while sipping an Ocean Spray, giving us all a lift.

 https://nypost.com/2021/01/02/2020-taught-us-one-good-thing-celebrities-are-meaningless/

Don't Just Do Something, Stand There

Inaction kills, incorrect action kills, there's no easy path. Hind sight shows that government intrusions on liberty were not effective and therefore not justified. 

The government's responses (i.e., the severity index and the containment and health index) are strongly correlated with the second factorial axis (Figures 2, 4). The death rate from Covid-19 is not correlated with this axis. Therefore, the death rate appears not to be linked with the responses of governments.

The third axis shows a relationship between Covid-19 mortality and longitude as well as obesity and sedentarity (Figures 4, 5). American countries have a higher obesity rate and a higher Covid-19 mortality rate; Asian countries have lower obesity rates and lower Covid-19 mortality rates.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full

Herd Immunity On the Horizon?

Experts estimate that about two-thirds of the population need to have neutralizing antibodies in order to reach herd immunity. Two-thirds of the 325 million people in the United States is about 218 million people. You can get antibodies that neutralize the virus in one of two ways: taking an effective vaccine, which is only being starting to be administered, or having been infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. About 19 million people in the U.S. have had confirmed cases of COVID. But confirmed cases may be the tip of the iceberg. Although estimates vary, the Centers for Disease Control believes that about eight people have been infected for each one person with a documented case. If we multiply the 19 million known cases by 8, it is possible that about 152 million people are already immune. Yet, the proportion of people who have been infected and the rate of new cases varies significantly by state.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/12/30/some_states_may_be_well_on_their_way_to_herd_immunity_144936.html

The author continues on to propose several states where the infection rates exceed 50%, and in which the rate of spread seems to be reduced.