Bearing the Weight of Liberty

It appears we've become security state lap dogs with not appetite for bearing the weight of self government. The home of notsofree and the notreallybrave. Maybe the generation suffering from the current jelly spined responses to government over-reach will grow hungry again for the benefits of individual liberty.

In The Price of Panic, Douglas Axe, William M. Briggs, and Jay W. Richards offer a contemporaneous answer to this question while at the same time exploring alternative ways to deal with the pandemic that are not violations of mere socialnorms, let alone the inalienable rights that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights. There have been violations of the free exercise of religion and the right to peacefully assemble, both enshrined in the First Amendment. The Second Amendment’s guarantee of right to keep and bear arms, which is fundamental to allowing a free people to defend themselves against both criminals and the government has also been restricted; this is particularly important when the government does not protect its people from criminals. The sanctity of private households, the Fourth Amendment, has been disregarded. Presently in most of California, you are not supposed to have any friends or family over to your house. Many governments have disregarded the right of due process and property, which as part of the Fifth Amendment are not to be ignored. The Twenty-First Amendment’s guarantee to drink liquids of one’s choice is in many places functionally returning to the Eighteenth Amendment. While some may quibble at “intoxicating liquors” as an inalienable right, the ability to drink such liquids is certainly part of the natural law tradition.

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/viral-panic/

The Deaths of Despair

A record 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco so far this year, a staggering number that far outpaces the 173 deaths from COVID-19 the city has seen thus far.

The crisis fueled by the powerful painkiller fentanyl could have been far worse if it wasn't for the nearly 3,000 times Narcan was used from January to the beginning of November to save someone from the brink of death, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/overdose-deaths-outpace-covid-19-deaths-san-francisco-74823530

I suppose the drug dealers are not obeying the lock down. They should be ashamed. 

The Sky Is Falling! I see a wolf (no really I do)! And ... the Emperor has no clothes

 I feel like almost all of the Wuhan bug discussion is just proof that old allegories are the sum total of the human experience. 

I love my sister and admire her to infinity. She does "her" so much better than I've been able to "do me". Her authenticity scale is 1000%. 

I'm just WIP by comparison.

So I'm stunned that she's sucked in the #covidmadness. Maybe I shouldn't be. 

For one, my job has never been threatened by #covidmadness, and the business she and her husband created has been gut punched.

For two - I'm an idiot. I got into old USN airplanes and flew them at 300mph at 300' above the water. I also flew at a small margin above stall speed 200' above the the water to make fast passes over the submarines we were tracking. We did that for hours on little sleep with a crappy auto pilot (did I mention how old the planes were ...). 

Then when they sent me to an aircraft carrier I found a way to work in the world's 2nd most hazardous industrial environment - launching jets from the flight deck. 5000 launches, the airplanes crossing over my head while I - after directing the launch - crouched to the deck and held my goggles to my face so at least I I wouldn't have hydraulic fluid in my eyes.

And when they said "the good news is you get to go on an all expense paid vacation for 14 months, but the bad news is you are going to Bagdad and you leave in 5 days", I did it and ... dealt with it, became a better version of me while my kids and beloved wife were doing the same 12 time zones away. 

And that's what I wish the USA were doing now. 

Instead we pretend politicians and the CDC know what to do. We pretend that governments "can get this thing under control". We pretend that masks make things safe and social distancing must work since some expert says so (maybe it does, it probably helps, but makes things safe? Not likely). We talk about lock downs, as if they really were lock downs, and we say "15 days to flatten the curve". 

We act like humans act when in challenging, unfamiliar circumstances - we act the fool. We listen to the "news" - a group that earns their living by keeping us frightened and feeling like we have to know the latest thing that will make us all the more fearful and judgmental.

We listen to politicians who tell us they think they know what to do, when a brief review of the history of political judgement could prove they are lucky to find their assholes with the toilet paper. 

45,000 people per year die in cars - and we all just drive every day anyway, as we should based on the risk/reward curve. 

70+ percent of the 7000 to 8000 people who will die today (and have died every day for the last 20+ years) die a premature death from metabolic derangement from eating sugary, high carb diets - and before these unfortunate souls die they live a drastically diminished life characterized by vascular disease (heart attack, stroke) neurological disease (ALS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's) or cancer (a substantial majority of these predicted by diabetes or pre-diabetes). More than 5000 people per day, year after year, dead after a long suffering end state based on our food choices, most of which were advocated by our government's USDA food recommendations. 

What does that have to do with now?

This Chinese virus kills those who would die anyway. 40% of the deaths are from the .6% of those who live in long term care or nursing homes. 30% of those in those facilities die every year. The other 60% all have the pre-existing characteristics of high sugar, high carb diets (aka metabolic syndrome or full blown type II diabetes). If you are under 50 and have normal blood sugar and blood pressure - your death from covid would be extraordinary.

The politicians only have one incentive - to take action and use their monopoly on coercion. If they take action and people die - oh well, they did what they could, they "followed the CDC recommendations" or whatever. If the same number of people were to die but the pols were cautious of government over-reach, they would be pilloried. We see the witless ordering the timid to do those things which sound good but apparently just pave the way for more of the same government over-reach.

Government was wrong on everything - minimum wage, prohibition, the drug war, USDA food recommendations, the assessment of Iraq's nuclear capacity, the potential harm of home loan guarantees to risky lenders, the benefits of the CAFE laws, and so on and so forth. It's a miracle when the government gets anything right. And like freak show idiots we allow those morons to dictate the covid response. 

When fears are high enough, humans get tribal. "Tribal" means you are either for us or against us - there's no middle ground. That's when we all instinctively start to preach the religion of our tribe, and condemn the intentions of those who will not pretend to comply. 

And that's the part that vexes me. Once folks are tribal, they can only say "the sky is falling" and they can only "cry wolf". Any invitation to dialogue is a threat to the tribe and must be stomped. The need for certainty reaches multiples of atmospheric pressure. Fault lines interrupt human connection. We are deprived of our daily bread of feeling safe with the extended family members we love most. 

Covid will do what covid will do. There's little to be done about it until the vaccines are available, assuming they are effective like polio vaccine (but not like flu vaccine). You can continue to perseverate the risk of death from covid (less than 1% of the population so far), or you can face that risk like the many additional risks we face daily. You can join in the "sky is falling" freak out, or you and improvise, adapt and overcome. You can deal with the risks and get on with life or you can keep yelling about the wolf and adding to the fear. 

The dead? Heartbreaking.

What could I have done to prevent those deaths? Not one thing, nor would their deaths be more noble if I stood around fearful and grief laden. 

I will not be tribal. I will not cry wolf. I will not tell you the sky is falling. I will not wake up in fear of any of the many ways I may perish tomorrow. 

And if I do, I will curse myself, forgive myself and get it right the next day.

The goal: Be person worthy of the incredible liberty and safety you have been given, a birth right few or none have had in any generation before ours. And be merciful and kind and understanding to those who are not yet at the point of clarity. 

Perspective on the Evangelical "Threat"

Those about to fire off emails with refresher courses on the history of European Jewry, please save your efforts. For more than a century now, attacks on Jews have predominantly emanated from secular fascists and leftists, Arab nationalists and Islamists -- not Christians spreading the good word. It is in secular France, where gruesome murders of Jews are now an annual event, that men can't wear yarmulkes in public. And, rest assured, it is not because of Mormon missionaries. An American Jew is far more likely to encounter anti-Semitism on progressive campuses than anywhere else in this country.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/11/20/convert_me_if_you_can_144698.html

The Human Experience May Save Us From Ourselves

Maybe there's reason for hope still. Common values transcend ethnicity.

Modern liberalism is at odds with masculinity, free speech, religious faith, self-determination and belief in the nuclear family.

O’Shea Jackson is a married father of four. His music and approach to life are drenched in masculinity and devoid of political correctness. He’s made no secret of his affinity for religion, including Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. He lifted himself from poverty with an incredible work ethic and independence.

Like all men, he’s flawed. Like all wise men seeking enlightenment, he’s pragmatic and willing to adjust to new information.

https://www.outkick.com/rapper-ice-cube-joins-kanye-wests-bid-to-make-black-america-free-again/

Tamny's Brilliant Summary

"What lends what’s ridiculous a little bit of credibility is that stock markets were correcting at the time of the meeting between top Trump officials and Hoover board members. Except that the correction was unrelated to the virus. Markets had been pricing its arrival with great calm since January. Anyone with a pulse knew this.

"More realistically, in late February Bernie Sanders looked like he might take the Democratic presidential nomination. Markets logically corrected at the time to price at least the possibility of a socialist in the White House. Notable is that they stopped correcting after Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary. In fact, the Monday after Biden’s Saturday win the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its biggest one day point gain in history. This happened after Trump officials who are said to never be right and to never be truthful allegedly told the truth to Hoover types. Get it? The big stock movements were politics related, not virus related.

"No doubt stocks did eventually correct in March. The virus did factor this time. With good reason. Investors hadn’t priced in the horrid possibility that politicians would respond to the coronavirus by forcing an economic contraction."

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2020/10/16/the_new_york_times_cant_have_it_both_ways_about_trump_and_his_advisers_580977.html

If Only They Were Kidding

There will always be these nut jobs who can only see the world based on ethnicity. It is human to be tribal, and would have been a death wish in the paleolithic era to be an X and to go to Y turf.  But the number of people who are so damaged and so bereft of soul that they want to and are willing to hate others based on ethnicity gets smaller by the day. These supremacists are angry, weak and pathetic. They won't kill as many ethnic minorities in this country as will be murdered in any given big city today. 

The focus on this topic is exactly displacement activity, and it is absurd.

The media’s myopic focus on white supremacy is a displacement activity of epic proportions. For weeks now, the mainstream media, and much of the Democratic-leaning political class, have refused to speak honestly about the instability in the US and about the divisive, identity-based ideologies that have fuelled it. Perhaps nervous that their own role in fomenting the dogma of identitarianism will be exposed, or worried that criticism of Antifa and BLMcould accidentally benefit Trump, they have either ignored or downplayed the mayhem of the past couple of months. ‘Mostly peaceful protests’, they’ve said about fiery, nihilistic destruction. As statues were toppled and beheaded, as businesses were burnt to the ground, as people were accosted and attacked for being white or for failing to raise a fist in support of BLM, the media have shrugged their shoulders or said ‘It’s not a big deal’. And now they want us to get heated about the Proud Boys, an ineffectual bunch of muppets? Are they kidding?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/01/the-medias-mad-obsession-with-white-supremacy/

It's Going to Be Worse the 2nd Time Around

 I've been dreading the re-traumatization of all of us when this goes to trial. It will be like what happened with M Brown or T Martin - the facts will not support criminal charges because there was no violation of law in those deaths. The officers in the G Floyd case did what he asked and complied with their training. He died from his injection of lethal doses of drugs into himself.  

"As will be explained in detail below, throughout Floyd’s confrontation with the police, he was at imminent risk of death from sudden cardiac arrhythmia caused by excited delirium. So it was that these officers followed the MPD’s official procedures for how to properly and safely subdue someone in that life-threatening condition. In doing so, they were not only keeping Floyd in the prescribed “recovery position” to alleviate his risk of asphyxiation, they were also keeping an agitated and delirious Floyd from harming himself as they awaited the arrival of the ambulance that they had twice summoned to provide medical aid to him."

https://spectator.org/george-floyd-police-training-minneapolis/

"So Called" Lockdowns Have Little Effect

 Cost benefit, based on the evidence, does not justify lockdowns.

https://www.city-journal.org/lockdowns-must-end

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/stats-hold-a-surprise-lockdowns-may-have-had-little-effect-on-covid-19-spread/

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/case-you-missed-it-standford-professor-talks-about-disaster-covid

It's nearly too crazy to be true. They framed a General to get Trump, and the General was so fearful of the prosecution that he pleaded guilty - out of his sense of honor? I don't know why, but he did.

From Rush:

Folks, I am of the opinion that it looks to me like everybody in that town was colluding with the Russians except for Trump. For crying out loud — and do you know we wouldn’t know what we learned yesterday, last night and today if it weren’t for Judge Emmet Sullivan?

If Emmet Sullivan hadn’t insisted on this stuff with Lt. General Flynn, then we would not have seen the documents that the FBI tried to hide. They were released some time ago’ now they were demanded to be produced. If it weren’t for the fact that Judge Sullivan can’t wait to put Flynn behind bars (which isn’t gonna happen), we wouldn’t have learned what we now know — and this has been known by so many people for so long.

Do you know that the people in this investigation actually went out and got liability insurance for themselves because they knew how rotten what they were doing is? They knew that the Mueller team was all about getting Trump? There are two investigators on this team telling each other, “This is not looking good, Jack.” “I know, Fred.” There’s a distinct get Trump attitude with these people.

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/09/25/everybody-in-washington-was-colluding-with-russia-except-trump/

BLM - how many have they killed?

How many black people died in these BLM riots?

"Contrary to corporate media narratives, up to 95 percent of this summer’s riots are linked to Black Lives Matter activism, according to data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). The data also show that nearly 6 percent — or more than 1 in 20 — of U.S. protests between May 26 and Sept. 5 involved rioting, looting, and similar violence, including 47 fatalities.

"ACLED is a nonprofit organization that tracks conflict across the globe. Its U.S. project that collected the summer protest data is supported by Princeton University. The project’s spreadsheet collating tens of thousands of data points documents 12,045 incidents of U.S. civil unrest from May 26, 2020 to Sept. 5, 2020. May 26 is the day after George Floyd’s death in police custody with enough fentanyl in his system to have died of an overdose if police had never touched him."

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/16/study-up-to-95-percent-of-2020-u-s-riots-are-linked-to-black-lives-matter/

"The cause of violence is not the police. It is not poverty. It is not one’s race. To say so is in fact a smear against poor people and people of the racial group identified. The cause of violence is the people who have chosen to be violent.

"Rather than assigning responsibility for violence to those who engage in it, the report constantly pushes the criminal victimization narrative that the rioters are not to blame for their rioting. This is abuser psychology 101: The abuser is never responsible for his or her abuse. The people who might object to it are. This is also false and manipulative."

Sturgis Was Another Victim of the Fake News

"Not so fast. Let's take a look at what they actually tracked and what's mere speculation.

"According to South Dakota health officials, 124 new cases in the state—including one fatal case—were directly linked to the rally. Overall, COVID-19 cases linked to the Sturgis rally were reported in 11 states as of September 2, to a tune of at least 260 new cases, according to The Washington Post.

"There very well may be more cases that have been linked to the early August event, but so far, that's only 260 confirmed cases—about 0.1 percent of the number the IZA paper offers."

https://reason.com/2020/09/09/no-the-sturgis-motorcycle-rally-didnt-spawn-250000-coronavirus-cases/?itm_source=parsely-api

Next verse, same as the first: "follow the money"

 That's about the size of it.

"All while Kaepernick and Nike cash in and financial donations pour down on Democratic voter drives. Everybody is using George Floyd’s death to make it rain. His memory is used to hype NFL and NBA games, power ad campaigns for podcasts and YouTube shows, leverage media members for promotions and, most importantly, fuel left-wing political funding. 

"Justice is not being sought. Cash and power are.

"The Criminal$ Justice Movement is the Wu-Tang video for the rap song C.R.E.A.M.

Cash Rules Everything Around the Movement. Dolla, dolla bills, y’all."
https://www.outkick.com/blm-101-history-lesson-the-2020-criminal-justice-movement/

All of the above is true, as is this:

"My cousin, Anton, was a paroled felon when sheriffs, in our view, needlessly tasered him to death. I loved my cousin. He had a huge heart. He loved his mother and his brother. He had the potential to be a doctor, lawyer, scientist or whatever he wanted to be. He was let down by his negligent father and a difficult zip code. Dealt a bad hand, he played it poorly and found himself in a dangerous situation he could not control.

"Everyone has a story. And I get why the people close to Blake, Floyd, Garner, Taylor, etc., are devastated. But the outsiders preening outrage and sadness and kneeling for cameras are using the tragedies to advance careers and personal finance."

So Wrong For So Long

There are not very many "journalists", those who claim the title are new entertainers who hustle for ratings like other entertainers.

"In researching my latest book, I determined that this is happening in 2020 because, above all, too many of us utterly failed to examine and correct what arguably was the biggest case of journalistic malpractice in recent times: the widespread misreporting on the failed Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Everyone from The New York Times to the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, to former CIA Director John Brennan to former special counsel Robert Mueller ultimately acknowledged that many investigators and media took the wrong fork in the road. Yet we spent almost no time or energy examining how we could have been so blind, so wrong. We didn’t bother to dig into who was behind the bad information, illegal leaks, slander and libel, intelligence abuses, and destruction of evidence — the sorts of pursuits that used to make journalists want to get up in the morning and work late into the night."

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/516036-journalism-or-partisanship-the-medias-mistakes-of-2016-continue-in-2020

Do You "Believe" in Corona Virus Religion?

 In many ways this article only points out what we know - humans respond with too much focus on a novel threat and tend to ignore the everyday threats. 

The other gift from the writer is the clarity that human choice is invaluable to fight off the virus. 

"For one, economic growth has long been the biggest enemy of virus and disease precisely because economic growth produces the surplus resources that can be mobilized in pursuit of cures for what ails us. If something threatens us with sickness or even death, no reasonable person would respond with forced economic contraction.

"Second, the greater the presumed lethality of any virus, the more that any laws or rules meant to limit its spread are superfluous. Really, what about the high possibility of sickness or even death requires a law? People don’t need to be told to not hurt or kill themselves. No reasonable person would seek to expand government power over human action during the spread of a virus precisely because wise people would govern themselves.


"To which some who absolutely revel in being told what to do will respond that not everyone is rational when it comes to protecting themselves. So true.

"All of which speaks to the third reason any kind of governmental response to a virus is impractical. It is because accepted wisdom rarely ages well. Think back to AIDS in the 1980s, and the popular view that it could be spread by people merely existing in the same room."

China Virus Isn't Scary for the Young

CDC confirms — again: Youth aren’t at COVID risk

The latest data on COVID-19 cases and fatalities from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirm that young people face a negligible risk of dying from the disease, while people 65 and older face a much higher risk. That latter group accounts for about 16 percent of confirmed cases but four-fifths of deaths. The fatality rates are even lower among minors: 0.04 percent for children 4 or younger and 0.02 percent for 5-to-17-year-olds.

The crude case fatality rate indicated by the CDC’s numbers — deaths divided by confirmed cases — is about 0.25 percent for patients younger than 50 and nearly 16 percent — 63 times higher — for patients older than 64. While the overall crude CFR is 3 percent, the rates among adults range from 0.07 percent for patients in their late teens and 20s to 29 percent for patients 85 or older — more than 400 times higher.

https://nypost.com/2020/09/01/the-numbers-are-clear-covid-is-no-real-threat-to-kids/

The American Way

Could this happen in another country?

"With his studio humming, Perry is taking a page from Disney and Universal for lot development, with plans to build restaurants, shops and an entertainment complex with a theater and a theme park–like experience. Think Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, but with the feel of a down-home Southern kitchen. Perry admits that such a venture will take him outside of his comfort zone in terms of scope, control—and debt, since his business has always been, extraordinarily, a self-financed, all-cash operation. His plans also include housing for trafficked women and LGBTQ youth, and an academy to teach kids who grew up like he did the things he never learned—financial literacy, for one."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2020/09/01/from-poor-as-hell-to-billionaire-how-tyler-perry-changed-show-business-forever/?fbclid=IwAR16yeD0WsKNb9lcI-8sSjoFBkLWHyFnBhcAw172ZbzjGOx3Sd_GKVjZtiU#43e2626a34b5

"An African American man with the middle name Hussein, he began by embracing his unique heritage, punctuating the opening with a line offering the kind of praise for this country we rarely hear from the left side of the political spectrum these days: “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.”

"But this was not a speech about identity politics. It was, instead, his version of “the shining city on the hill.” America’s original source of greatness, Obama pointed out -- as had Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and, yes, Ronald Reagan before him -- was the Declaration of Independence.

"“Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy,” he said. “Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over 200 years ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’”"

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/16/could_barack_obama_be_nominated_today_143976.html

First Impressions

Without fail, the first narrative is not correct. 

"We are now in an era where initial visceral narratives shape our lasting attitudes. Images of men being lethally shot in the back or dying with a knee on their neck create strong impressions that are not easily changed by subsequently released information. These dynamics were previewed by Christine Blasey-Ford’s testimony at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. Despite no corroborating evidence, despite her remembrance based on memory-retrieval therapy almost thirty years after the alleged event, her emotional testimony was riveting. It was compelling for many older women as they relived dynamics they had experienced in their youth. No amount of subsequent information that brought into question Blasey-Ford’s veracity made any difference to her supporters."

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2020/09/02/first_impressions_are_trumping_complete_facts_on_police_violence_576028.html

"COVID Supremacists"

I also believe that my willingness to compromise demonstrates an ability to reason effectively. So it has become infuriating, to the point of feeling untenable, that the “lockdown indefinitely” crowd has become so unhinged as to label people like me morons, “deniers” and pro-murder because we find the reaction to this virus outsized and dangerous.

But Kira, you can’t compromise on DEATH! Why do you hate the elderly????

Can’t we? We compromise on death every day, pandemic or not. We calculate the risk to drive our vehicles, attend events, get on airplanes. We use a complicated equation based on what facts we know, our fears and our goals. If this virus had the fatality rate we were promised in the beginning, extended lockdowns might…might…be defensible. But we are looking at a virus with a 99.6% survivability rate.

https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2020/08/21/sick-to-death-of-covid-supremacists/

Lebron, Tell Me About Malcolm

LeBron James says he’s reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Is he?

On Wednesday, via Instagram, James posted a picture of himself, shirtless, riding a stationary bike and wearing earbuds while reading the iconic book. On Thursday, following the Lakers 111-88 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers, LeBron carried the book into his postgame news conference. Bleacher Report’s Taylor Rooks asked James for his biggest takeaway on the book. You can listen to his complete response on Rooks’ embedded tweet below.

https://www.outkick.com/lebron-james-claims-he-is-reading-malcolm-x-autobiography/