The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Debate?

Last night's presidential debate was a pathetic display of petulant behavior by both candidates. It was embarrassing to watch two national politicians act like ill-behaved five year olds for 90 minutes. Worse, the public learned little if anything about the issues that really matter in this election.  Neither candidate made much sense, and both reinforced the notion that the American public deserves better.The editors of the Wall Street Journal summarize nicely:

No one expected a Lincoln-Douglas debate, but did it have to be a World Wrestling Entertainment bout? Which may be unfair to the wrestlers, who are more presidential than either Donald Trump or Joe Biden sounded in their first debate Tuesday night.

The event was a spectacle of insults, interruptions, endless cross-talk, exaggerations and flat-out lies even by the lying standards of current U.S. politics. Our guess is that millions of Americans turned away after 30 minutes, and we would have turned away too if we didn’t do this for a living.

Mr. Trump no doubt wanted to project strength and rattle Mr. Biden, but he did so by interrupting him so much that he wouldn’t let Mr. Biden talk long enough even to make a mistake. The President bounced from subject to subject so frequently that it was hard to figure out what he hoped to say beyond that Joe Biden is controlled by the Democratic left. Even when moderator Chris Wallace asked a question that played to the strengths of his record—such as on the economy—Mr. Trump couldn’t stick to the theme without leaping to attack Mr. Biden.

The former Vice President wasn’t much better, interrupting nearly as much. And for the candidate who says he wants to bring people together, he was ready with his own name-calling. He called Mr. Trump a “racist,” a “clown,” and told him to “shut up, man.” He spun out falsehoods as fast as the President, notably in asserting that 100 million people would be vulnerable to losing their health insurance due to pre-existing conditions. The Obama Administration set up a special fund for pre-existing conditions in the transition to ObamaCare, and the takers were only in the thousands. Mr. Trump didn’t know enough to be able to rebut him.

No one won this fiasco, but Mr. Biden did succeed in passing the test of appearing coherent for 90 minutes. Mr. Trump had done him the favor of calling his mental capacity into question for months, so expectations were low. Mr. Biden passed that bar, albeit in highly scripted fashion.

Joe Biden refused to answer any pointed questions about substantive topics:

What he would have actually done differently during the COVID-19 crisis (he babbled about more PPE and testing, but it was clear that he had no earth-shattering revelation that would have saved those who died); 

Whether he would support packing SCOTUS (he didn't answer the question), 

Whether he would outright condemn the BLM organization (this after Wallace insisted that Trump condemn "white supremacists") and implyed (dishonestly) that they were as culpable as leftists for the rioting that has roiled the country over the past four months.

Why his son Hunter received significant payments from the Chinese and Russians for ... well, nothing (he called this a lie, but, of course, it is no such thing). 

Chris Wallace, the moderator and a #NeverTrumper, allowed Biden to lie about the "fine people hoax" (in fact, Wallace brought it up in a question) and the Clorox hoax, his son's Hunter's dirty dealings, his contention that people with pre-existing conditions would be left in the cold (they would not), while at the same time quasi-debating Trump on specific issues. Wallace enthusiastically asked Trump about his taxes, but avoided any discussion of Biden's lack of mental acuity—certainly a topic that should be considered prior to the election. Wallace avoided asking Biden why it took him almost three full months to condemn the leftist rioting in Portland and other cities. Wallace purposely mislead a national audience with his question on Trump's totally appropriate ban on Critical Race Theory for government training, calling it "racial sensitivity training" and thereby softening its marxist and anti-American origins. But that's par for the course. Wallace is no longer an objective observer—although he plays one on TV.

Biden was all platitudes and generalities—maybe because that's the only way he can speak coherently. Trump for his part was a bull in a china shop, wasting valuable debate time with interruptions and other nonsense when he could have cogently discussed his many accomplishments and his plans for the next four years. His responses were often muddled and his attempts to connect Biden to his hard-left handlers grew tiresome.

If they were capable of embarrassment (they are not for different reasons) they should both be ashamed of themselves.

UPDATE:

Roger Simon takes Chris Wallace to the woodshed over his role as moderator of the debate:

Forget Candy Crowley. Chris Wallace was the worst moderator in recent memory. Clearly biased and argumentative, he was anything but the invisible presence he promised that he was going to be.

Meanwhile, both candidates more or less stunk. Trump wasn’t organized in his responses and interrupted more than he should, sometimes even when Biden seemed about to fumble the ball and make the kind of gaffe the president’s supporters were hoping he would.

Biden did a fair amount of interrupting himself, usually to call Trump the likes of “racist” and “clown.” How imaginative!

But, to be fair, this debate was two against one with Trump versus Biden and moderator Wallace. Yes, Trump frequently acted like a buttinsky, but he really had no choice with the odds stacked against him.

Wallace kept letting Biden off the hook, notably on multimillion-dollar Hunter/corruption issues in Ukraine, China, and now, Russia, that the former vice-president assured us were “debunked.” (When a politician uses that word, you know they’re lying. Anything can be “debunked” by someone, even, or especially, if it’s true.)

It's worth noting that Wallace will seem like a Trump partisan when compared to the next two moderators of debates 2 and 3.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Precedent and Norms

It is truly amusing to watch the Democrats' trained hamsters in the mainstream media create "bombshell" story after "bombshell" story, only to have each fall flat and become a nothingburger with 48 hours. The latest NYT "bombshell" about Donald Trump's leaked tax returns is yet another comical example. In essence, the story exonerates Trump from any illegality, proves that he was not in debt to "the Russians," demonstrates that his assertion that he was under audit is accurate, and indicates that he used tax laws written by both Democrats (think: Joe Biden) and the GOP to pay only the taxes he owed. 

So ... now that the latest "bombshell" (timed to give a cognitively challenged Joe Biden a debate talking point) has failed, we're back to Amy Coney Barrett (ACB). As if on queue, the Dems refuse to meet with her* and claim they will delay confirmation proceedings because ... "precedent and norms." 

Yeah, that would be the same precedent that had Ruth Bader Ginsberg (RBG) confirmed in 42 days with a bipartisan vote of 96 - 3. Or maybe it might be the precedent that you don't nominate and confirm a SCOTUS justice before an election. Problem is ... it has happened at least nine times before—when the President and the Senate majority are of the same party. 

But wait ... the Dems claim this is all about a "power grab." Uh ... yeah ... it is a GOP power play for sure, just like the Dem's:  

  • destruction of Robert Bork or 
  • "lynching" of Clarence Thomas or 
  • vilification of Antonin Scalia or 
  • defamation of Brett Kavanaugh,

... that kind of Democrat political play, right?

But, but, but what about norms." You mean like threats to pack the courts if the Dems don't get their way, or removing the Senate filibuster, or eliminating the electoral college. Or maybe it's insisting that deep-blue D.C. and Puerto Rico become states so that the Senate balance shifts. Those kinds of norms?

For four years, the Dems have done everything possible to destroy a presidency up to and including weaponizing the government against Donald Trump. They have paid for false dossiers, repeatedly solicited illegal leaks of government documents, encouraged their supporters in the FBI to attempt a now proven "soft coup," created a Russian collusion hoax, and then conducted "investigations" that turned up nothing. They have impeached Trump for a phone call ...and failed. 

And now they and their media hamsters have the unmitigated gall to fall back on "precedent and norms?" You gotta be kidding.

FOOTNOTE:

*  As an example of Dem hyperbole, we have Senator Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY), a contender for the dumbest Democrat politician in the senate, who tweeted: "I will not participate in the degradation of our democracy or our judiciary, or in confirming a judge so clearly unfit for the Supreme Court." This statement by a person who is "so clearly unfit" to be a U.S. Senator.


Sunday, September 27, 2020

Homelessness

Back in the 1980s and early-1990s, homelessness was what "racism" is today. It was an on-going narrative in the media. Liberals (this was before the term "progressive" became popular) demanded action and funding, properly decrying the tragedy of people living on the street. But they also fought hard against vagrancy laws, "reformed" mental health institutions allowing mentally-ill people to walk free, and took a laissez faire attitude about drug addiction, thereby inadvertently created a street market for increasingly dangerous and destructive drugs (e.g., crystal meth).* 

Writer and columnist, Amy Alkon, is a long-time L.A. Resident. She is a self-described "bleeding heart libertarian" and seems to be a gentle soul.  In an in-depth article on homelessness in LA, she begins:

I never wanted a gun. In fact, I wanted to never own one—until around noon on Thursday, August 20th.

Since the late 1990s, I’ve lived in Venice, California, renting a one-bedroom Craftsman house a mile from the ocean that someone built out of a Sears-catalog kit 100 years ago. I’m a science-based syndicated columnist and author, currently working all hours to complete a book that keeps trying to kill me. Luckily, I’m writing it in this cute little old lady of a house on my sweet Venice block ...

On March 16th, in response to the COVID pandemic, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and his council relaxed parking enforcement codes “to help Angelenos comply with public-health recommendations to prevent the spread of the novel Coronavirus.” This included lifting prohibitions against both overnight parking on residential streets for vehicles over six feet high (such as Winnebagos), and the parking of any vehicle in any one place for over 72 hours.

Some considered such restrictions to be cruel to the vehicle-dwelling homeless, even before the pandemic. The reality is there’s a vast amount of non-residential streetage on which a homeless person can safely park a camper in Los Angeles County—including locations served by Safe Parking L.A., which provides restrooms, security guards, and social-service resources. And the neighborhood parking restrictions that keep a Winnebago from staying in place in perpetuity prevent residential blocks from becoming noisy and violent campgrounds-cum-public health crises (when the rose bushes are inevitably turned into open-air toilets).

Throughout Garcetti’s seven years as Mayor, Los Angeles has witnessed a shocking explosion of homelessness. When he took office in 2013, the city had about 23,000 residents classified as homeless, two thirds of whom were unsheltered, living on the streets. By mid-2019, the figure was about 36,000, and three-quarters of them were living on the streets. Currently, there are 41,000 homeless. Garcetti’s pet plan to alleviate the homelessness crisis was the construction of permanent supportive housing. In 2016, compassionate voters approved $1.2 billion in new spending to fund these units. Three years later, only 72 apartments had been built, at a cost of about $690,000 apiece. Meanwhile, an El Salvador-based company has come up with nifty $4,000 3D-printed houses that look like great places to live and can be put up in a single day.

Alkon goes on to describe an on-going incident in which a homeless woman, her boyfriend who was recently released from prison (for multiple violent felonies) because COVID-19 decided to live in an old Winnebago they parked in from of Alkon's small house. Until recently in LA, that was against the law. They were loud, threatening, and abusive. They may have been insane and had anger management issues. They defecated on her front walk. They effectively terrorized her small street, and yet, because LA Democratic city counsel had defunded part of the police budget and passed ordinances that "protected" the homeless, the police were powerless to act against the street squatters.

Looking at the broader picture of homelessness in L.A., Alkon writes:

The situation is especially tragic for those [homeless] who are so mentally ill that they cannot take care of themselves, and are often a danger to both themselves and others. And I sometimes wonder which movie star or other famous person needs to be stabbed or bludgeoned before politicians take meaningful action.

It’s fashionable in progressive circles to demonize law enforcement, but Rufo explains that in 2006, then-L.A. police chief Bill Bratton implemented a “Broken Windows” policing initiative on Skid Row. It led to a 42 percent reduction in felonies, a 50 percent reduction in deaths by overdose, and a 75 percent reduction in homicides. The overall homeless population was reduced from 1,876 people to 700—a huge success. Activists filed lawsuits and ran publicity campaigns, slowly killing Bratton’s program, on the grounds that it “criminalizes homelessness.” As a libertarian, I’m opposed to drug laws and forced behavior—but only to a point. It is not compassion to leave people to be victimized by criminals simply because they are unhoused, nor is leaving mentally and physically disabled people strewn across the streets amidst piles of garbage a form of freedom.

Mayor Garcetti, in lieu of admitting the real challenges—the first step to taking meaningful action to alleviate the homelessness crisis—has simply ignored the human results of his failed policy. As a result, whole sections of the city, including formerly livable streets in my beloved Venice, have been turned into Skid Row by the Sea ...

Typical of a liberal person who has been "mugged" by reality, Alkon has begun to ask questions about the "supposedly compassionate" treatment of the homeless:

The supposedly compassionate approach to the homeless endorsed by Garcetti and his “progressive” enablers has, in practice, been anything but: leaving mentally ill and addicted homeless people by the tens of thousands to suffer on L.A.’s streets. I support helping the homeless—but with meaningful measures that have been proven to work, as opposed to policy that’s heavy on virtue signaling and ultimately short on humanitarian substance.

She concludes with a rather sobering assessment that every voter should keep in mind in six weeks:

I’m writing this from California. I’m sure there are many Americans from outside this state—not to mention foreign readers—whose response to all of this is that we left-coast utopians are merely getting what we deserve. But remember, for better or worse, my state has a long history of exporting cultural and political trends to the rest of the world.

In fact, even as I write this, Politico is reporting that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is considering L.A. Mayor Garcetti for Housing Secretary. Yes, America’s municipal honcho of homelessness could be rewarded for his massive policy failures by being put in charge of housing policy for the nation: Skid Row, writ large. Like that camper outside my house, the thought fills me with dread.

3s hire 2s. Being very generous, Joe Biden is a 3. Based on what Alkon tells us, Eric Garcetti is a 2. Welcome to the Biden administration—2021.

FOOTNOTE:

* For those who believe that the majority of the homeless are simply down on their luck, some sobering statistics offered by Amy Alkon: " ... urban-policy researcher Christopher Rufo explains, only about 20 percent of the homeless population are people down on their luck, who just need housing and a few supportive services to get back on their feet. Approximately 75 percent of the unsheltered homeless have substance-abuse disorders and 78 percent have mental-health disorders. Many have both."

Saturday, September 26, 2020

A Response

Personally, I'm not in favor of email blasts that argue for one political candidate over another. They're often strident, sometimes inaccurate and generally a waste of bandwidth.

Having said that, I got one (forwarded by a friend) today that touted all of the accomplishments Donald Trump has achieved in the Middle East, with specific emphasis on Israel. Because it was forwarded, I also got a copy of an angry email response that went like this:

Don’t believe the Trump spin.  He has yet to denounce the actions of white suprematism in this country!  Those people hate the Jews!

Don’t send me anymore trump bullshit, he’s a terrible leader and this country is a mess because of him.  Frankly, I’m disappointed that you ...  feel strongly enough about him that you feel compelled to send me stuff in support of him.  

I urge you to think deeply about your vote and your support of Trump.  Do you want your grand daughter to grow up in a world where women don’t have the rights they do now?on’t believe the Trump spin.  He has yet to denounce the actions of white suprematism in this country!  Those people hate the Jews!

I don't know either the pro-Trump originator of the email or the sender of the angry response, but after reading the response, I couldn't help thinking how I'd respond if it was directed at me. Let me give it a try:

Thanks for your email. 

One thing I’ve noticed about those who hate, hate, HATE Donald Trump is that, like you, they’re very good at making baseless allegations of “racism” or "white supremacism" and then telling anyone who supports Donald Trump how “disappointed” they are in them. Bulletin: No one really cares about your disappointment … but whatever.  

The coup de grâce, they think, is to invoke grandchildren, as if somehow the socialist utopia espoused by their beloved Democrats would lead to a better life for the youngsters. History tell us all that simply isn’t the case (just ask virtually anyone who still lives in Venezuela).

And of course, if they and the Trump supporter are Jewish, then it's all about how “white supremacists” are anti-Semitic. But wait … the “new" Democratic party is approaching the same anti-Semitic stance. Check out the Democratic 2020 platform, or consider how leftists (and elected Democrats) like Keith Ellison, Rashida Talib, AOC, Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders are closet anti-Semites and proud anti-Israel activists. Or maybe it's how senior members of the Dems outright refuse to condemn their anti-Israel/anti-Semitic statements or their actions—that kind of anti-Semitism, right?

FYI, I have thought long and hard about the Dems vs. Trump. I cannot and will not abide a political party that took 3 months to condemn rioting (a.k.a. "mostly peaceful protests”) that destroyed black-owned businesses, killed innocent African Americans (think: David Dorn, or does his black life not matter") and terrorized white and black neighborhoods. I cannot support a party that cynically uses “racism” as a political bludgeon while the person they hate (Trump) has done more for Black and Latino people in 4 years than their candidate has done in 47 (think: lowest unemployment, highest wages, historic home ownership). I cannot support a party that is overtly anti-Israel, enthusiastically socialist, and overwhelmingly vicious (think: the politics of personal destruction levied on Bret Kavanaugh and the strong likelihood that more of the same will be used to cancel Judge Amy Coney Barrett). Nor can I support a political party that thinks virtue signaling is somehow more important than accomplishing things that actually help minorities.

Unlike you, I don’t want my grandchildren to grow up in a country where the authoritarian “woke" will cancel them if they oppose the left's latest progressive views, where skin color rather than merit and accomplishment are the most important aspect of a person, where Israel is sold down the river, and where a leftist mob is allowed to run free and define the latest narrative. 

But maybe it’s just me. We’ll see in November, won’t we?

Pushback is coming.

Friday, September 25, 2020

Tantrums

As part of their frustration over the likelihood that Donald Trump will nominate and the Senate will confirm a new Supreme Court justice to replace RBG, the Democrats have resorted to threats about what they'll do in revenge when (if) they win the November elections.

After demonstrating that there is considerable historical precedent for Trump's actions, Michael Barone discusses each of the Democrats' threats—(1) packing the court, (2) naming Puerto Rico and D.C. states, and (3) abolishing the electoral college. Of particular interest is his take on the electoral college. The Democrats suggest that the elections are somehow unfair because they have won the popular vote by small percentages on a number of occasion but lost in the electoral college. In each cases, the popular vote advantage came from only one or two states with significant blue majorities:

In both 2004 and 2012, incumbent presidents were reelected with 51% of the popular vote. But a similar percentage of the vote netted Obama 332 electoral votes and Republican George W. Bush only 286.

Hillary Clinton’s entire edge in popular votes came from California. [emphasis mine] That’s because since 2000, for the first time since 1820, our largest-population state is voting far out of line with the national average.

That puts the party favored there at a disadvantage, just like any party in which votes are heavily clustered in relatively few congressional or legislative districts. The party in which the votes are more evenly spread around enjoys a natural advantage.

Democrats can try to compensate for this by changing or evading provisions of the Constitution, but amendments must be approved by 38 state legislatures. What's more, all 50 states would have to approve the elimination of the states’ equal representation in the Senate.

A more practical and speedy response and one that doesn’t violate norms is to modify your political positions and rhetoric. [emphasis mine] It may satisfy liberals’ pride to pile up votes in California and the coastal northeast by denouncing "deplorables" in the flyover states. But it’s also feasible to win more votes there.

The "new" Democratic party is hard-left, and absolutely refuses to "modify ... political positions and rhetoric." Rather than examining the reality that their positions are out of the mainstream and that the American people reject socialism for very good reasons, they plod onward, believing the fantasy that socialism will lead to utopia and throwing tantrums when they lose.

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Man of the People

There's something particularly galling about has-been politicians who leave office and then make millions of dollars in speaking fees and/or book deals when they have nothing of interest to say or write. Of course, we all know that these deals are all about payoffs based on past favors or future guarantees of access. The Clintons were masters of this grift to the extent that they made in excess of $100 million doing it after Bill and then Hillary left office. 

Speaking of has-been politicians, let's consider Joe Biden, America's "man of the people"—a man who for almost 5 decades, never worked in the private sector, never created any service or product that had any value, and was never known as a good speaker (LOL) or writer (can anyone say 'plagarism'?). Yet, Joe earned $15.6 million dollars in the two years after he left office. And even though Joe tells us he's really concerned about "Trump's attack on the payroll tax", according to the WSJ, Biden and his wife avoided the payroll tax on $13.3 million in income by using a tax dodge. BTW, Biden's brothers and son, Hunter, received anywhere from tens of millions to billions of dollars because they were connected to the then-VP of the United States. Gotta love it.

Stephen Green, author of the Insanity Wrap column, comments:

Biden has never been a great speaker, even when his mind was comparatively sharp.

So Insanity Wrap must ask what could Biden possibly have to say or write that was worth millions?

Nothing.

Biden wasn’t paid for speaking and writing. He was paid by people hoping that he could deliver the goods to them — as Insanity Wrap hopes you already knew — either through his connections in Washington, or especially if he could win the White House.

It doesn’t get much more corrupt than that, and most of the Infotainment industry is helping Biden along because they’re riding the same gravy train.

You'd think that a media that insists that "Truth Dies in Darkness"  might be interested in shedding some light on Biden's earnings, or maybe asking him why his brother, Frank, was able to get $45,000,000 in taxpayer loans from the Obama administration for his Caribbean projects? Or maybe why a newly-created company "employing" his other brother, James, received a $1.5 billion contract to build homes in Iraq despite having no experience in construction or international development? And then, of course, there's his son, Hunter. Younger Biden's many unusual "deals" were clearly predicated on his connections to Washington's elites

Nah ... the NYT and WaPo, among others, are more interested in convincing us all that COVID-19 would never infect "mostly peaceful" protesters, and that makes riots okay -- from a public health perspective, of course.

And spare me the argument that no matter what, Biden can not be held responsible for the actions of relatives, and therefore any investigation of, say, his son, is unwarranted. Those arguments are being made by the same politicians and their trained hamsters in the media who "investigated" Donald Trump, Jr. for having a meeting before the campaign. Not a nickel changed hands and nothing of substance happened. But thousands of column inches were dedicated to the story. Different political parties, different rules.


Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Tents

This past week, we decided to have brunch across from the Atlantic Ocean in Delray Beach. Don't be shocked ... unlike far too many catastrophists in other states who remain barricaded in their basements, most (but not all) people in FL have decided its time to move on with their lives. We chose to take advantage of the weather and eat outdoors, although the indoor part of the restaurant was open. A few people arrived wearing masks—most didn't. By law in Palm Beach County, our local petty tyrants require masks when entering any indoor establishment. These are quickly removed once seated. The logic for this is ... well ... pretty weak, but what else is new. 

In SoFla, eating out-of-doors can be a year-round activity, so even the COVID squeamish can have some semblance of the restaurant experience. But as cold weather approaches in the northern half of the U.S., financially-stressed restaurants that must operate under catastrophist "scientific" guidelines will be faced with daunting challenges.

But wait, Team Apocalypse in some cities has come up with a "solution." For example consider this missive by Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser in Washington, DC:

We just announced an investment of $4 million to help small businesses winterize outdoor dining areas and maintain outdoor dining operations in the District through the Streatery Winter Ready Grant Program.

So ... in the latest installment of covidiocy, the mayor wants diners to eat outdoors when the temps drop into the 20s and 30s—in tents? No worries, there'll be propane heaters for all.

The Victory Girls comment:

That’s her plan? Tents? With heaters of some kind? The science here is AMAZING! DC restaurants have been restricted to 50% capacity. And instead of ramping up to 75% capacity as Maryland did in the last few days, Bowser comes up with tents as the solution. TENTS. 

Let’s look at the science shall we? In the winter, one isn’t going to want to sit in a tent with the sides tied up to let cold fresh air through. Nope, people will want the sides down, the tent door closed, and heaters going. 

Oh wait… doesn’t that sound like INDOOR DINING??! 

Why yes, yes it does. But I guess being in a tent and eating food isn’t as dangerous as being inside a building and eating food. It’s all so very scientific or something. 

And how about those heaters? What kind of heaters will work best? Are we talking multiple stand up gas heaters? The overhead propane heaters? The choices are endless. Except for the fact that they will be futile during blizzards or major cold snaps.

... Sooo, back to Bowser’s scientific tent idea. How will this work? Make a reservation for your favorite place knowing you’ll be outside IN A TENT. Check the weather and realize that you’ll need to bundle up in about 30 layers. Take extra hand and foot warmers and hope you’ll get seated directly next to or under a heater. 

On to the dining experience! You order wine, hope it doesn’t arrive at the table resembling slush. You order a hot appetizer. Will it make it to the table before freezing? How about your entrees? How fast will you have to eat before your food turns cold? In fact, will you be able to eat, drink, and converse with your friends while your teeth are chattering 900 miles an hour?

You just can't make this stuff up. It'll be a joy to eat dinner while wearing a down jacket, earmuffs and gloves.

As I've stated many, many times over the past six months: 

  • Media-driven reports about COVID-19 that are inaccurate and context-free and that lack the granularity needed to understand the danger, lead to fear. 
  • Fear leads to hysteria. 
  • Hysteria causes politicians—particularly (it seems) Dem politicians—to make very bad policy decisions. 
  • Very bad policy decisions defy common sense and lead to a set of "rules" that defy logical explanation.
  • People who are not catastrophists begin to question the rules because they are inconsistent and don't make much sense.
  • People begin to disregard the rules.
  • And guess what ... nothing of consequence happens.
Sure, people still contract the virus. The majority are either asymptomatic of suffer mild symptoms, but life begins to return to normal.

Of course, Team Apocalypse fights VERY hard to stop that from happening. When hospitalizations and deaths fall precipitously, it becomes all about "cases." When the case count drops significantly, it becomes all about unproven and tenuous "long-term" effects.

And the small restaurants that are struggling to survive? Tents ... Tents... and more Tents.

UPDATE-1:

The editors of Issues & Insights (I&I) provide a deep dive into COVID-19 data and find, unsurprisingly, that there is a lot of good news, that the case fatality rate (CFR) for the United States is among the lowest in the world, and that the virus is no longer as significant a threat as it was in April or May. These numbers, backed by actual (as opposed to the Democratic party's) science make all members of Team Apocalypse nervous, so they avoid them like (excuse the pun) the plague.

One of the more interesting and least discussed metrics is deaths in excess of the expected number of fatalities. People die in this and every other country every day of every year and there is a seasonally adjusted number of "expected deaths" that is computed by the CDC and others.

I&I comments:

... deaths in excess of the expected numbers of fatalities. The Centers for Disease Control chart below shows that total deaths, the blue bars, have fallen below the threshold for excess deaths. Stanford biophysics professor and 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry Michael Levitt called it “a huge milestone.”

There’s no better method for gauging the severity of an outbreak of disease than counting excess deaths. Our World in Data says “excess mortality is a more comprehensive measure of the total impact of the pandemic on deaths than the confirmed COVID-19 death count alone.” According to an opinion piece in STAT, “measuring excess mortality gives a clearer picture of the pandemic’s true burden.”




Unfortunately, the most recent data available is from the week of Sept. 5. The Centers for Disease Control promises to update its data by 5 p.m. Eastern every Wednesday. But the page has not been updated since Sept. 9, so we’re missing the week of Sept. 12. Given the trend, though, we’d expect the total number of deaths to fall yet again below the threshold. If this continues to happen over the next several weeks, what does it mean?

Before we move on, we feel its important to reiterate that COVID-19 is not fully responsible for the death total that surged past the expected threshold. The lockdown response has been deadly.

“Federal data show deaths in 2020 have exceeded those of previous years in numerous categories,” the Wall Street Journal reported last week. “Doctors and health researchers say the fatalities reflect the ways the pandemic has amplified stress and financial strain while causing many people to avoid hospitals for fear of infections.”
As much as Team Apocalypse screams bloody murder when this subject is raised, the "excess deaths" graph indicates that throughout the COVID-19 crisis, deaths have generally remained BELOW the predicted numbers—until recently, when deaths have risen above those predictions. It's likely, therefore, that many of the deaths presented on the Team's scoreboard would have occurred in any event (recall that almost half of all deaths were of people over 80 years of age) and that as the lockdown begins to take its toll, excess deaths are occurring because of it.

The Dems and their trained hamsters in the media, of course, would NEVER admit to this because they need an angry and scared populous who will blame the GOP for all of it. Imagine for just a moment if an honest and thorough examination of the measures discussed by I&I were presented by the nation's media. I wonder who the populous might blame then.

UPDATE-2:

Team Apocalypse love, loves, loves to talk about "death" as they celebrate the 200,000 "death" milestone they've looked forward to for weeks. Because their pitch is to people who are either innumerate or uninformed, they avoid percentages associated with death because ... well ... those percentages might calm people and reduce the fear. Can't have that.

Anyhow, a quick look at survival rates using numbers just announced by the CDC might be instructive. The survival rate for those who actually get COVID-19 is:

0 to 19 years old:  99.997%  (but we close down schools)
20 to 49 years old:  99.98%  (but we close down businesses)
50 to 69 years old:  99.5%   (but we lockdown states)
70+ years old:  94.6%  (might have been a really good age group to focus on)

So ... we shut down the country, wrecked the economy, ruined lives and livelihoods, closed schools, and otherwise terrified the populous for a virus that even in the worse case, even with co-morbidities, and even with the clear recognition that death statistics are ... uh ... questionable (see below) has a survival rate of 99.9% on average. Bravo.

And the death statistics? Let's say you have one or more co-morbidities (e.g., heart disease) and have a PCR test that come back positive. You have no symptoms, wait 14 days, get tested negative, and go about your life. 59 days later, you die of a heart attack. In some states, your test records are searched when your death certificate is filed and your death is put up on the Team Apocalypse scoreboard because you had a positive test. It's a guess, of course, but it's likely that a non-trivial percentage of the reported deaths have nothing to do with COVID-19, but their entry on the scoreboard does make the virus more scary. Bravo.



Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Boomerang

In politics at any level, there is only one constant—hypocrisy. With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, we're seeing that norm on display from BOTH parties. Positions that were supposedly entrenched four years ago have now reversed 180 degrees. No one who follows the political scene should be the least bit surprised, but if you examine the reaction of the talking heads who populate the media, you'd think they just fell off a pumpkin truck. They're shocked—shocked!!—that the GOP would want to gain a conservative majority on SCOTUS. And they seem sanguine that the Dems, who decry such coarse political maneuvers, would threaten to pack the courts, abolish the electoral college, and eliminate the filibuster in revenge.

Gerard Baker comments:

Try to imagine the reaction of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and their Hallelujah Chorus in the media if a conservative Supreme Court justice had died weeks before the re-election bid of a Democratic president while that party also controlled the Senate.

See if you can make the statesmanlike words fit the mouths of these stolid custodians of honor, integrity and unswerving principle.

“It is our solemn duty to set aside our ambition to remake the court and patiently await the outcome of the people’s decision,” says Sen. Schumer, demonstrating once again why he has a glowing reputation for devotion to selfless virtue over ambition and political self-interest.

“Though we strongly believe this is a matter of the greatest importance for our nation, for life, liberty and the pursuit of our agenda, it would be wrong to fill this vacancy with just a few months left of this presidency,” says Speaker Pelosi, emerging perfectly coiffed from a locked-down hair salon to denounce hypocrisy and double-standards in politics.

Fiat justitia, ruat caelum,” declaims a tearful Don Lemon on CNN, explaining to his less erudite fellow commentators that justice must be done, rules observed, whatever the lost political advantage.

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the vacancy it has produced on the Supreme Court have produced a now familiar word spray on the importance of norms and the scourge of hypocrisy in the nation’s politics. Yet hypocrisy is itself a political norm with a long pedigree. At least since Brutus plunged his knife into Julius Caesar for the alleged crime of exaggerated ambition, politicians have been asserting one set of rules for their opponents and living by another.

As I noted in yesterday's post, the "new" Democratic party has over the past four years and a few decades that preceded them established a new set of rules for SCOTUS appointees. Those rules essentially say that anything goes, that an opposition party can do whatever it takes, no matter how vicious, to gain an advantage on the court. The GOP is now following the new rules.

And the threats of retaliation? In an era of Trump Derangement and hard-left politics, the Dems have demonstrated that doing "whatever it takes" has become their new norm. Nancy Pelosi threatens to use "all the arrows in her quiver." She better be very certain that none of those arrows is transformed into a boomerang.

UPDATE:

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recalled the reprehensible treatment of Brett Kavanaugh by the Democrats in the last SCOTUS confirmation hearing and then tweeted:

Being lectured by Democrats about how to handle judicial nominations is like an arsonist advising the Fire Department.

It's worth noting that Lindsey Graham was among the GOP senators who often tried to be collegial and work with the Dems. In interviews over the weekend, he admitted that the Kavanaugh debacle radicalized his thinking on SCOTUS nominations. He now has no reservations about a vote on the new nominee before the election.

Boomerang!


Monday, September 21, 2020

RBG and the New Rules

Ruth Bader Ginsberg (a.k.a. RBG) served the nation well as a Supreme Court justice for more than a generation. To do so, she overcame many gender-based obstacles as she rose to the SCOTUS. Her rulings were always well-reasoned, even if one disagreed with them on ideological grounds. Donald Trump's comments on RGB celebrate her legacy well:

“... our nation mourns the loss of a legal giant, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Her landmark rulings, fierce commitment to justice, and her courageous battle against cancer inspire all Americans. … She was an inspiration to a tremendous number of people, I say all Americans.

“Justice Ginsburg’s close relationship with a friend of ours, a friend of mine, Justice Scalia, is also a powerful reminder that we can disagree on fundamental issues while treating each other with decency, dignity, and respect. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family.”

When RBG was nominated to the Court, the politics of our nation were entirely different. The "old" Democratic party, slightly left-of-center, represented no threat to our rights and freedoms. The media, although it leaned left, was a moderating force, calling out excesses whenever either political party got carried away. The deep state did not evidence the partisan slant that we see today. Academia, although always left-leaning, wasn't a hot house for hard-left ideas and at the same time, a repressive entity that literally silenced dissenting voices. Entertainment and the arts were not ruled by political correctness, nor did they self-edit their stories out of fear of cancel culture.

Today, all of that has changed. The "new" Democratic party is hard-left in its view of both domestic and foreign politics. The media has become their Praetorian guard. The deep state  aggressively works to defeat any person or party that even suggests policies that conflict with their aims. Academia is now as much a propaganda tool as it is a learning/research institution. And entertainment (all of the arts and sports) care only about presenting a product that fits the prevailing leftist "woke" narrative.

There was a time when I strongly believed that SCOTUS should be balanced ideologically ... that it should reflect a diversity of opinions and ideologies, and that justices would rule on the law and the constitution. I still believe that. 

But my faith in "balance" has been shaken by the imbalance that we see in the media, the deep state, academia, and arts and entertainment. Those entities consistently deliver an imbalanced left-wing message. And because those entities have enormous influence on public perception, a rogue political party can now suggest policies and pass laws that are antithetical to the collective freedoms (e.g., freedom of speech) that we have enjoyed for hundreds of years. SCOTUS can act to correct that imbalance.

The replacement battle for RBG's seat on the court will be brutal. The new Democratic party—afraid that the SCOTUS can act as a check on their power—has already suggested that the president's clear right to nominate a justice (as Obama did in his final year as president) is somehow wrong. They now want to stand on "principle."  

Yet the new Democratic party forfeited any right to argue about principled stands after their vicious and mendacious treatment of a series of SCOTUS nominees over the past three decades—Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and then, Brett Kavanaugh, in the middle of Donald Trump's first term. They and they alone decided that SCOTUS nominations would be played using new rules—created by the Dems and intended to guarantee a court that they wanted.* The new rules indicated that anything goes—that opposition included extreme parliamentary maneuvers, unsubstantiated claims of judicial bias, and the politics of personal destruction. The Democrats had over those years adopted their new mantra—by any means necessary.

It looks like the GOP is about to use those same new rules, hopefully without the viciousness and mendacity, but the new rules nonetheless.  Funny that all of sudden the Dems don't like the new rules one bit.

FOOTNOTE:

*  For those progressives who argue that the GOP has done exactly the same thing—uhhh ... no. The editors of WSJ provide a little history:

No Democratic nominee has been borked, to use the name that became a verb. Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose left-wing legal views were obvious upon her nomination, received a respectful GOP hearing and was confirmed 68-31 with nine GOP votes. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed 96-3, Stephen Breyer 87-9, and Elena Kagan 63-37.

In each of the cases noted, the GOP acted like adults, expressing concern over ideological differences, but never trying to destroy the nominee (a la Bork, Thomas or Kavanaugh). In fact, more than just a couple of GOP senators voted for the Dem president's nominee in every case. Can the same be said for Dems?

UPDATE-1:

Miranda Devine provides a few examples of how leaders of the new Democratic party handled the new rules when they are applied to them:

“Let this moment radicalize you,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a social-media video, claiming democracy and the climate were at stake. “I need you to be ready . . . We can and must fight.”

Barack Obama hubristically declared that RBG had left “instructions” on her deathbed that Donald Trump not fill her Supreme Court slot.

Hillary Clinton urged a “fierce” response if he tried.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday refused to rule out impeachment to stop Trump getting his third Supreme Court justice.

“We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now,” she told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos when he suggested impeachment.

If anything, Biden was even more hyperbolic Sunday.

He drove 40 minutes from his basement to a hall in Philadelphia to read a rabble-rousing speech off a teleprompter.

Like Obama, he demanded the Senate heed RBG’s purported death-bed wish and warned of “action and reaction. Anger and more anger.

“That’s the cycle that Republican Senators will continue to perpetuate if they go down this dangerous path . . . a constitutional crisis that plunges us deeper into the abyss . . . irreversible damage."

Dem's fury over next SCOTUS pick mainly betrays tremendous historical ignorance.

POTUS has the constitutional obligation to choose new justices, and if he has a majority in the Senate, his nominees can be confirmed. And please, spare me comparisons to Merrick Garland. Barack Obama did not have a majority in the Senate, so his nominee was rejected, not through the politics of personal destruction as the Dems have done, but simply by ignoring the nomination.

That's political hardball when its played within months of an election, but the "new rules" indicate that hardball is the way the game is now played.

UPDATE-2:

All national politics is hypocrisy, and we see it in spades as the Ginsburg replacement battle looms. In this case, both sides (the GOP and the Dems) are being hypocritical, but it's really all about political advantage, masked in solemn words about the "constitution" or "precedent" or RBG's "dying wish."

Charles Lipson comments:

All of them [GOP and Democrats] are hypocrites. They have flipped their positions, and their justifications (then and now) are nothing more than cloaks for political advantage. They don’t care about consistency or even logic. They are fighting to win control of the Supreme Court and defeat the other side in November. They will say whatever helps their cause and hope voters forget whatever they said last time.

Roger Simon seconds that opinion with this:

But before I go further, lest I be thought of as a partisan hack, neither side comes off here in anything close to shining armor. For all the hoity-toity talk, Supreme Court nominations and confirmations are fraught with hypocrisy, everyone claiming a high ground that doesn’t exist.

Precedents come and go and are revised again. Leaders say the opposite of what they said a year or two ago.

Meanwhile, The Constitution says nothing about timing—only that presidents nominate the justices and the Senate confirms. Even lame duck presidents have nominated justices on several occasions. It all comes down to power. If you have it, in this game you take it. 

This will not end well.

Sunday, September 20, 2020

"I'm Not Making this Up"

Poor Joe Biden. His factual recall is weak to non-existent, his thinking is muddled, and his presence is ... well ... "impressive" only if you fervently believe that face masks are a required preventive measure when you go to the beach. 

There is growing evidence that even in friendly Q&A sessions (to call them "press conferences" is laughable), Biden must have a teleprompter or cue cards that guide his responses to every question (might be worth knowing if his handlers are given the questions in advance, but the media is disinterested).

This past Thursday, in an "interview" with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Biden made the following comment responding to yet another 'let's-hate-on-Trump' softball question*:

"If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all people would still be alive. All the people– I'm not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data."

So Biden is suggesting that all 195,000+ people who have died with or from COVID-19 would be alive if Trump "had done his job"? If we had an honest media, this ridiculous statement would make Biden a laughingstock. Where are the touted "fact-checkers" that always seem to appear when Trump says anything even remotely controversial? 

So let's deconstruct Biden's idiocy. What EXACTLY could Trump have done to do "his job" and keep "all the people" alive? What magic could he have performed? Maybe he should have followed Biden's advice, not been a "xenophobe," and kept the flights from China coming by welcomed COVID-19 cases into the USA. Nah, I don't think that would have worked. Maybe Trump should have followed the advice (often wrong, but that's a whole different matter) of the nation's public health gurus. Wait ... that's exactly what Trump did. Maybe Trump should have bolstered the capacity of hospitals in big cities or put the nation on wartime footing and produced copious PPE. Heh ... he did that as well. Maybe Trump should  have resisted a lockdown (worth consideration), but I can guarantee that the Democrats would have called him a murderer had he done that against the recommendations of their oracle, Anthony Fauci, MD. Maybe Trump should have tested every person, every day ... no wait, every hour of every day ... but that's logistically impossible, and people still would have died regardless. 

Joe says, "I'm not making it up" (with lots of emotion). He tells us to "look at the data." What data exactly? What scientific studies tell us that a force of nature—a viral pandemic—can be stopped so that "all the people would still be alive" by the actions of a president? What public health organization (e.g., the WHO or the CDC) would back Biden up on his outrageous claim?

Of course, the same people who wear masks at the beach believe Joe and do think that "all the people would still be alive" because Biden tells us he's "not making it up." After all, he has such empathy.

Those of us who are more grounded in reality might argue that Joe is a cognitively disabled old fool who is rambling on about stuff he's no longer able to understand. You might argue that Biden was simply parroting what his handlers wrote for him. But what does that say about his ability to understand the concept of viral transmission and self-edit statements that are patently false? Or is it that Biden and his Democrat handlers believe that any level of dishonesty, no matter how outrageous, is justified during his grasp at power?

UPDATE:

In an orgasm of adoration spawned by Biden's session with Anderson Cooper, someone named Jess McIntosh wrote on op-ed on the CNN site that began:

For a couple of hours Thursday night, America was treated with honesty and compassion by a man who wants to hold its highest office. That could be the entire review right there, how jarring and unusual it was to visualize a president who could clear the extremely low bar of telling the truth and caring about pain. We've had presidents like that before, of course, but after a particularly brutal news week it was starting to feel like that kind of leadership belongs to a different era.

Joe Biden is at his best in this format, easily connecting with audience questioners and frankly answering moderator Anderson Cooper's follow-ups during the CNN town hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Biden was prepared and he was angry. It was a tautly restrained outrage as he described the failings of President Donald Trump, and he seemed to hold back tears multiple times as he fielded questions from Americans experiencing overwhelming fear and loss amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

I'll betcha that Jess McIntosh religiously wears her face mask at the beach.


Friday, September 18, 2020

Futile Gestures

There's an old saying in engineering:  Before you can solve a problem, you must understand it. As we watch the nation's top corporations, universities and media attempt to eradicate "systemic racism," we see a classic example of refusing to fully understand and state a problem followed by a panicked attempt to develop "solutions" anyway. The consequence is a massive effort to come up with futile gestures that somehow demonstrate the "wokeness" of those institutions. 

Heather McDonald comments:

The lethal arrest of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May triggered widespread riots and a torrent of contempt for America from virtually every institution in the country. Businesses large and small, the education establishment, and the press rushed to condemn the country’s purportedly endemic racism, implicitly accusing the majority of Americans of destroying “black lives.” Banks and law firms pledged that hiring and promotions would now be even more race-conscious than before. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured forth from corporate coffers into activist groups; the corporate benefactors hoped to dismantle America’s white supremacy, they announced ...

Fealty to “diversity” and denunciations of white privilege have been a unifying theme in academia for decades, of course. What’s different this time is the sheer venom of the denunciations. College presidents and deans competed for the most sweeping indictment of the American polity, rooted in the claim that blacks are everywhere and at all times under threat.

Concern about racial inequity is certainly justified, but the attempted "solutions"  will not be effective because political correctness—now bolstered by a "cancel culture"—will dissuade serious people from even discussing the underlying characteristics of the problem. And then, there's the politics of race, allowing some racial groups to be used as political weapons.

The argument that our nation is "systemically racist" is one that encourages certain racial groups to view themselves as victims. It also encourages at least some white people to view themselves as "privileged" at best and more commonly as "oppressors." It's the language of critical race theory, a dishonest trope that resonates on the Left.

McDonald is fearless when she asks the verboten questions that are absolutely necessary to answer if we are to develop meaningful solutions to the racial problems we face as a society:

What if the racism explanation for ongoing disparities is wrong, however? What if racial economic and incarceration gaps cannot close without addressing personal responsibility and family culture—without a sea change in the attitudes that many inner-city black children bring with them to school regarding studying, paying attention in class, and respecting teachers, for example? What if the breakdown of the family is producing children with too little capacity to control their impulses and defer gratification? 

It is much easier not to ask these questions, because if they are asked, the actual solutions that would be implied are daunting. Among the Left, it's far more palatable to virtue signal (with layers of "diversity training" and heartfelt TV commercials that say all the right stuff) and create "solutions" that are nothing more than futile gestures to solve a problem that is very complex.

ADDENDUM:

In an in-depth look at the origins of the 1960s riots that roiled America and today's rioting across many U.S. cities,  Katherine Gorka (read the whole thing) provides significant evidence that the perpetrators of rioting in both eras were organized leftist organizations. In both cases, these organizations took advantage of racial incidents (usually involving the police) to foment unrest and then violence. In both cases, the leftists were primarily white, college-educated radicals who used racism as a catalyst for their dream of revolution. 

In the 1960s, the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) along with their militant arm, The Weather Underground, and the Black Panthers and related groups were hard-left. They were trained to transform protests into riots, had written manuals that guided their adherents, and cared little that their rioting hurt, not helped, the black community. 

Today, groups like antifa and BLM are hard left and committed to revolution using a marxist ideology. Some of their senior leaders have connections back to the 60s groups. They are professional agitators and would-be revolutionaries. They, like their brethren of 60 years ago, care little for the black community, except to use it as an excuse for revolution.

Gorka writes:

Not only are there strong parallels between the riots of 2020 and the riots of the 1960s, but there is a direct link between the organizers. As Gonzalez points out, one of the three BLM founders, Patrice Cullors, spent a decade working as a radical organizer in the Labor/Community Strategy Center, which was established and run by Eric Mann, a former member of the Weather Underground.

They bombed the State Department, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the California attorney general’s office, and a New York City police station.

The Weather Underground was formed in 1969 as a militant wing of the Students for a Democratic Society. They sought “the destruction of U.S. imperialism and [to] form a classless communist world.” In seeking those ends, they bombed the State Department, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the California attorney general’s office, and a New York City police station.

Andrew McCarthy recently documented ties between the BLM Global Network and the Weather Underground. Kyle Shideler has also exposed the ideological roots of BLM’s obsession with white privilege, which can be traced directly to the terrorists of the Weather Underground.

As the United States now finally embarks on a serious effort to uncover whether, as Rand Paul charges, the current rioting is planned and organized, they would do well to rediscover the ground-breaking work of [Eugene] Methvin. He exposed the very real injustices faced by black Americans, but he also exposed the way those injustices were exploited by those who had been seduced by the lies of Marxist utopia.

Through painstaking research, Methven was able to uncover exactly how those radical organizers turned despair and frustration into violence. We can also now see, with the benefit of hindsight, that the social demolition of the revolutionaries only hurt those it aspired to help.

But for the leftists, that's just collateral damage in their effort to foment a revolution that will lead to their fantasy of a socialist utopia. In the 1960s, Democrats rightly condemned the actions of the hard-left almost without reservation. Today, the new Democrats, their presidential candidate and their trained hamsters in the media do everything possible to avoid naming the revolutionaries, describing their actual intent, and uncovering the source of their funding.*

In a very real way, the new Democrats are the silent allies of this generation's version of The Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. 

Voters will decide whether their alliance is good or bad for the country.

FOOTNOTE:

*  It appears that internal polling conducted by the Dems has indicated that they are on the wrong side of this issue. Dem leaders are now "condemning" rioting in strong terms, but still refuse to say "antifa" or "BLM" and insist that the riots are equality distributed among adherents to the Left and the Right—an outright lie. Unfortunately for them, they're about 4 months too late. 


Thursday, September 17, 2020

Toward Peace

Israel and the majority of Arab States in the Middle East (ME) have been in a perpetual state of conflict for over 70 years. Throughout that time, the Arabs have refused to recognize Israel's right to exist and have encouraged leftist boycotts of the region's only liberal democracy. It's a big deal when even one Arab state agrees to a cessation of hostility, and the media rightly praised Jimmy Carter (in the 1970s) and Bill Clinton (in the 1990s) when that happened with Egypt and Jordan. 

After a quarter century of failure by both Dem and GOP administrations, it would seem that when another president gets two Arab nations to agree on peace with Israel, it would be an equally big deal. The peace agreement between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, brokered by Donald Trump and his foreign policy Team of 10s, is a big deal. Unless of course, you're the mainstream media that is consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome. 

Because the media is generally dishonest, biased, and unprofessional, they have decided to go dark on any news associated with this historic deal. Outlets like the NYT or WaPo grudgingly give it a mention, snarking that Trump stumbled into it. CNN emphasized Nancy Pelosi's idiotic statement that a peace deal in the Middle East is a "distraction." After the signing ceremony, the CNN talking heads beclowned themselves by combining TDS idiocy with catastrophist hysteria, commenting that they were concerned about the ceremony because the principals and attendees weren't wearing masks or socially distanced. Ya gotta laugh.

And then there's the deep state, whom Trump has made to look like fools for their arrogant claim that he wouldn't accomplish anything of substance in the ME.

A prime example of a deep state marionette is John Kerry, Barack Obama's Secretary of State and facilitator of Obama's capitulation to Iran. Kerry, a card carrying member of Obama's foreign policy Team of 2s, suggested that the ME would "explode" if Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Post reported at the time:

WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State John Kerry and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas offered similar warnings to the incoming Trump administration over the weekend: Moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would ignite a violent uprising that no one would be able to control.

In an interview with CBS, Kerry – preparing to leave the State Department after engaging in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensely for four years – said the violent movement would extend beyond the West Bank.

“You’d have an explosion, an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region,” Kerry warned.

“The Arab world has enormous interest in the Haram al-Sharif, as it is called, the Temple Mount, the Dome [of the Rock], and it is a holy site for the Arab world.”

Aides to President-elect Donald Trump say he is interested in moving quickly to relocate America’s embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s seat of government and its declared “eternal and undivided” capital. The Palestinians insist that east Jerusalem, or al-Quds, would have to be the capital of a sovereign state of Palestine under any two-state solution to the decades-old conflict.

Trump did exactly what he promised and moved the embassy. Three years later, we did have an "explosion"—of peace!

John Kerry has two characteristics that are exemplified by 2s who rise to national prominence—they are predictably pompous and undeniably stupid. They are also consistently wrong about things that matter.

You'd think that an honest media would revisit all of this in light of Trump's recent accomplishments and admit that their elite deep state friends, along with virtually every Democrat, were wrong about the president's efforts in the ME. Think again.


Wednesday, September 16, 2020

The Threat

In a way, it appears that the new, leftist Democratic party is like a person who is drowning. They will grasp at any straw to explain away the simple fact that their ideas do not resonate with the "Normals" who occupy those states that are not blue. The United States constitution requires that every state has a say in our national governance. The genius of this approach is to eliminate the tyranny of the majority where a few populous blue states can dictate national policy to the rest of us. Hence the need, albeit often frustrating, for the filibuster rule in the Senate (a rule, BTW, that is used often by the current Dem minority) or the electoral college which gives every state an equal say in the election. Because the Dems prefer power over our constitution, they are currently advocating the abolishment of both the filibuster (but only if they take the Senate) and the electoral college.

In a number of recent articles in left-leaning media, there is an implied threat associated with this November's election. Here's an example from the left-leaning The Atlantic:

This is the era of expecting the worst while hoping for the merely tolerable. Some might say that the worst is already happening—economic disaster and 190,000 dead from a pandemic—while the president and his surrogates insist, in a feat of self-delusion, that the “best is yet to come.” As someone who has argued against catastrophism—I don’t believe Donald Trump is a fascist or a dictator in the making, and I don’t believe America is a failed state—I find myself truly worried about only one scenario: that Trump will win reelection and Democrats and others on the left will be unwilling, even unable, to accept the result.

A loss by Joe Biden under these circumstances is the worst case not because Trump will destroy America (he can’t), but because it is the outcome most likely to undermine faith in democracy, resulting in more of the social unrest and street battles that cities including Portland, Oregon, and Seattle have seen in recent months. For this reason, strictly law-and-order Republicans who have responded in dismay to scenes of rioting and looting have an interest in Biden winning—even if they could never bring themselves to vote for him.

So ... a win by Donald Trump will "undermine faith in democracy." And as a consequence leftist violence will escalate, and therefore, you better hope Biden wins. Talk about extortion ... vote Dem, or antifa and BLM (quietly cheered on by the Dem elites) will burn your cities and suburbs, threaten your lives, and continue with their "no justice, no peace" leftist 'revolution.'

Imagine for just a moment if a respected conservative media outlet, say The Federalist, published an article that implicitly threatened that the KKK would burn down blue enclaves, say San Francisco, CA or Newton, MA, if Trump loses. The mainstream media would become hysterical and demand that every GOP politician disavow that threat and condemn the KKK outright. Why isn't the media doing the same for the dozens of articles that are similar in substance and tone to The Atlantic's piece quoted here? Why aren't they demanding that Dem politicians condemn antifa and BLM by name? You know the reason ... and so do I.

UPDATE - 1:

Because of the huge population of two blue states—NY and CA—the Dems mantra is that only the popular vote matters. Forget the constitution. Anything that advantages the Dems is good, and our existing constitutional approach is bad.

I think it's worth mentioning that the difference between the overall popular vote for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 (as if it matters ... It. Does. Not.) was about 2 percent. It's not as if an overwhelming majority of the American people preferred HRC ... They. Did. Not. But according to the Dems, our current constitution is now invalidated and the electoral college should be abolished. The vote of 30 states (a clear majority of 60% - 40%) who preferred Trump should be invalidated and replaced by a slim majority of people (51% - 49%) that preferred Clinton. 

Nathaniel Blake gets it exactly right when he writes:

The framers of our Constitution rightly feared mob rule, and the Electoral College was designed to preclude it in the selection of our presidents. That Democrats are threatening mob violence over the Electoral College shows that it is working as intended by that keeping power away from the mob and forcing candidates to appeal to voters of various regions and factions.

In truth, Democrats’ complaints are less about principled constitutional theory and more about political opportunism. They were quite pleased with the Electoral College back when they thought they had a “blue wall” that would favor them forever in states like Pennsylvania.

The following visual reminder gives you a feel for what happened:

And yet, the Dems disregard the rules and the law, and to this day, refuse to accept the result, threatening to do it all over again in 2020.

I honestly believe that at some level the new Democrats think they can frighten people into voting for a cognitively challenged candidate backed by a party that for four years has refused to accept the results of the last election. 

That isn't going to work. The American people will decide "that keeping power away from the mob" is a very good idea. Pushback is coming.

UPDATE - 2:

I've always believed that the majority of Democrats, even today, are intelligent, well-meaning people who want what is best for the country. The problem is that their "old" Democratic party has been transformed into the "new" Democratic party. A loud leftist minority runs the new Dem party. They are far more interested in power and "transformation" than they are in doing what is best for the United States.

Among the many political commentators who are shills for the new Democratic party is NYT columnist, Michelle Goldberg. Like many out-of-touch leftists, Goldberg seems unaware that defending anarchist and/or Marxist groups like antifa and BLM does NOT help Biden or the Dems win elections.

After ranting about the police killing of a violent antifa member who had previously killed a Trump supporter (in cold blood) during a riot, she writes:

Inasmuch as antifa is conflated with street-fighting, vandalizing anarchists, it does not garner much mainstream sympathy. This popular understanding of antifa isn’t quite correct; some people associated with the movement mainly focus on researching and exposing members of the far right. (I once met a middle-aged woman, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, who described herself as “antifa C.I.A.” for the volunteer work she did tracking right-wing extremists for an antifa-aligned organization called the One People’s Project.) Still, there’s obviously overlap between antifa and violent and destructive elements on the far left.

You can't make this stuff up. Goldberg tries to somehow justify or soften antifa by telling us that "the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors" is an active member.

Gosh ... as the son of a holocaust survivor I can only say ... WTF??? 

Is Goldberg too stupid not see the parallels between the tactics employed by antifa fanatics and the actions of brown shirts during Kristallnacht? Is she too ideological to understand that when antifa and BLM members terrorize innocent citizens, they are using the early tactics of the people who perpetrated the Holocaust? Is she too dense to recognize that someone who helps a violent group attain its goals (think: "antifa CIA") is culpable when those goals are achieved?

Nah ... people like Michelle Goldberg aren't good at recognizing irony. She'll keep up her idiocy, but you know what, her unhinged rants will do more to elect Donald Trump than any 10 of his campaign workers. Nice work, Michelle.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Fires

As we all observe the catastrophic forest fires that rampage through CA, it appears that the media and virtually every Democratic politician prefer the Climate Change narrative—if only we could stop climate change the fires would abate. And since draconian changes to our transportation, economy, and way of life are required to "stop climate change," we need to implement those changes RIGHT NOW!

There's one question that is never asked of the Dems who push that narrative. Stated simply ... How long would it take to implement these changes, and how long before these changes have an impact on climate, even if we do make them immediately. More importantly, what should we do to prevent catastrophic forest fires RIGHT NOW! 

It is not an overstatement to suggest that these fires are catastrophic—for the environment, for property, and for human lives. Air quality in the Western states is currently the worst in the world.


A response that results in improvements next year—not in 2030 or 2040—is required. And that response has nothing to do with climate change. Longer term ... maybe, but in the moment, over the next 1, 2 or 5 years, more pragmatic and targeted actions are required.

And that leads us to a topic that the Dems and their trained hamsters in the media try to avoid—forest management. For decades, environmentalists in CA have used 'lawfare' to block the management of state and federal forests. Short-term, effective methods for fire control—clearing undergrowth, performing controlled burns, conducting targeted logging in dense forests, cutting fire breaks, and the like. The hard-left CA state legislature has resisted spending money on forest management, and liberal state courts have sided time and again with environmental advocates that care more about protecting owls than reducing the massive amounts of pollutants that are released during catastrophic fires (see chart above).

A meaningful response to catastrophic forest fires is really a question of fantasy vs. reality. The Dems' fantasy is that somehow we can magically implement policies that will change climate and in so doing, eliminate forest fires. There is absolutely no evidence that climate change policies would eliminate drought or reduce temperature to the extent needed to eliminate catastrophic fires. And even if it could, it would take decades to see meaningful results.

The reality is that the only proven effective measure for controlling forest fires is well-planned, well-funded forest management. These measures could be implemented at the end of this fire season and would show meaningful results immediately.

Which approach do you think the Dems and their trained hamsters in the media are pushing?