[Red State] Frightening, almost surrealistic, headline, isn’t it? And it’s not even close to clickbait. As is usually the case when I read or listen to conservative author and commentator Victor Davis Hanson, his bottom-line analysis and admonitions are straight-up; no punches pulled, no hyperbole necessary.
Such was the case with VDH’s recent piece at American Greatness, Radical New Rules for Post-America, in which he says many Americans who privately fear the "radical rules" of the left are now "appearing to accept them publicly." He begins with a startling line:
"There are 10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently."
Americans privately fear these rules, while publicly appearing to accept them. They still could be transitory and invite a reaction. Or they are already near-permanent and institutionalized.
"The answer determines whether a constitutional republic continues as once envisioned, or warps into something never imagined by those who created it."
That an intellectual conservative like Victor Davis Hanson comes right out and says that our constitutional republic — America as we know it — is at a crossroad where one direction leads to protecting it while the other direction leads to America "warping into something never imagined by those who created it" is sobering — and I believe he’s right.
[Townhall] If it weren’t so sad and devastating to people’s lives, we would be living in the middle of one of the greatest comedies of all time. Democrats are scrambling to understand why their policies related to COVID are failing while Republican policies are succeeding. There is no explanation they can see, none they can accept, because leftists are incapable of even entertaining the possibility that they could be wrong. About anything.
Infection rates are surging to near record levels...in states with lockdowns and mask mandates, and they are sinking in states without them. So-called experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci can’t explain this, which means no one in media can either since he’s the only person they believe on the subject, no matter what evidence contradicts him.
"Call it a ’COVID conundrum,’ in states with the strictest measures in the country, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and much of New England, cases are on the rise," a Today Show report this week started. "While in the south, states like Arkansas and Texas that have reopened businesses and ripped away mask mandates are seeing their numbers drop."
It’s like watching a child slowing beginning to question the existence of Santa Claus...but not quite get there. At least not yet.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/12/2021 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
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#1
My SWAG is the democrats are fudging the numbers.
#3
^(a) Francisco Cosme received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
(b) J&J's vaccine is 72% effective in the US meaning 28 in 100 will still get infected
Actually, it means 28/100 exposed to the virus will get infected - a minor, but not trivial, point.
#4
It's a yuuuuge anecdotal thing going way back that people would complain that they got a flu shot and still got the flu. No, I'm not one of those people saying "it's just the flu." What I am saying is what vaccine for this type virus is 100% effective? What is the effectiveness percentage for polio vaccine? For smallpox vaccine? Yes, those last two questions are unfair comparisons because those viruses have been mostly wiped out. What about measles and mumps since the anti-vaxx movement became a thing? Is there any decent research on that?
A final aside. I'm not rushing to get COVID vaxx even though here in Florida I am now eligible. Why? Not because I don't want it, but because I have either had it asymptomatically (don't know, never been tested) or I'm just pretty immune as I am. I don't feel like jumping thru hoops to get something others may want / need more than I do right now. I'm going to guess by June-July it will be no fuss, no wait to get, and I'm fine with taking my chances until then.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/12/2021 11:08 Comments ||
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#7
G, I am totally with you, more on your side than you can imagine. Right now I still see so many people who are afraid I don't feel a need to stand in line with them. It's like bullets on the battlefield. If my time's up, it just is. I personally am comfortable that I can wait six more weeks to just walk in instead of making work for a bunch of recent hire incompetent paper pushers. Hell, Florida still hasn't got a unified online system to make an appointment. Totally absurd, but that's gummint.
As Todd Rundgren sang, "If I die before I wake, somebody made a big mistake." I remain satisfied it won't be me making the mistake.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/12/2021 11:33 Comments ||
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#8
Re #5. Thanks, G. I actually don't think I've had it. I just don't know. I have not had anything that drove me to make a doctor appointment and I sure don't see why I would get tested for anything while I'm not sick. I know when I had my semi-annual checkup in December 2020, I wasn't even asked if I wanted to be tested. Story there somewhere, as I like to say.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/12/2021 11:36 Comments ||
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#10
My wife had it. Was very sick. I didn't get it.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/12/2021 13:30 Comments ||
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#11
Just maybe there is an argument for herd immunity or just allowing to run its course. Social isolation does not cure it, it just slows it down, it is still going to come..
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2021 15:26 Comments ||
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#12
I think I will come down with COVID before Fauxi admits he's wrong most of the time.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/12/2021 17:01 Comments ||
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Taki's Mag
Those old enough to remember the Cold War will recall, perhaps with some prompting, that the fight with the Soviets was as much a moral war as a political one. It was not that the communists were in error about some item in dispute. The communists were immoral because communism was immoral. Whatever the faults of liberal democracy, it was morally superior to the evils of communist totalitarianism.
At the time, this was not a tough case to make. Americans could speak out against the government, while Russians had to suffer in silence. The West had elections and big public spats over policy. Debate in the East was always behind the dreary walls of the communist party. Most important, the West did not have political prisoners, while the East operated camps, even small cities, for their dissidents.
A generation later and the roles are not exactly reversed, but it is now possible to argue that Russians are freer than Americans. Putin has his enemies jailed, but that’s now official policy in America. In the case of Putin, he does not relish in the torment of his opponents. There is some hint of shame there. In America, members of the regime take pleasure in tormenting those who speak out against them.
Take, for example, the case of Alexey Navalny, the CIA-sponsored critic of Putin who is now in jail. He claims poor treatment at the hands of the government, but he is able to speak to the media about it. In contrast, there are an unknown number of people in jail right now over the January protests. One was beaten by guards to the point where he lost sight in one eye.
Unlike with Alexey Navalny, The New York Times and The Washington Post are not demanding Ronald Sandlin be set free. The great and the good are not calling him a political prisoner, despite the fact he is literally in jail for politics. The folks who tell us "democracy dies in darkness" are happy that Ronald Sandlin now lives in darkness at the hands of the state. The political prisoners being held by the Biden regime envy Alexey Navalny.
It is not just at the extreme where the moral relationship has reversed. Russian citizens can walk up to the Kremlin and take pictures of it and themselves in front of it without fear of being shot by the army. Americans, on the other hand, will be sent to prison for daring such a radical act. People protest in Moscow all the time. As long as they are peaceful, they are left alone. Protest is banned in Washington now.
#1
If you're going to talk about this without including the context that the Bidens are pretty much owned by the Russians you're talking out of all four sides of your mouth with both your faces.
#2
Especially from someone who believed all the left-machine's (both locally and from China) stack of lies and half-truths that basically amounted to: none of the treatments worked, so let's ban them and bitch about masking and keep everyone inside instead.
#3
^I managed to upset somebody with strongly held opinions - who, unfortunately doesn't understand that there is a difference between Russians and Ukrainians. (I won't ever touch on his profound knowledge of immunology & epidemiology).
#4
Burisma was founded during Yanukovitch's term in office by his environmental minister, Zlochevsky, who basically denied environmental permits to most companies besides the one he owned. Yanukovitch is currently resident in Russia. Noone seems to know where Zlochevsky is living. Biden basically exercised influence during the Obama regime to keep the Ukranians from prosecuting Burisma, which is a Russian front firm paying him money.
"Those are just Ukranians Us Poor Russians Have No Control Over" is just another way for the machine to exercise control over you and keep you from seeing what's going on. Or for you to advocate for the Russian branch of the Machine even as the US branch is grinding me down.
#6
The truth is China cares more about killing Westerners, which they're trying to establish ownership over, than it does about killing Laotians, because they already own Laos and don't need to establish ownership over them.
#7
I just thought of the way of finishing the sentence:
IF I were an obnoxious troll I could ignore the last thirty years of warfare by other means, which has picked up in the last four years, of which the virus is just one example.
#10
Who's moving to China for the freedom? Bueller? Anyone?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/12/2021 11:20 Comments ||
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#11
Ted Nugent said, "Of course America is f*cked up. But it's still the least f*cked up place in the world." Not true, of course. Lichtenstein, Monaco, Switzerland, a few other places are less f*cked up. But you better have the gelt to apply for citizenship. Unlike the US, those places don't let just anyone in...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/12/2021 11:24 Comments ||
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#12
^So no more posts about USA becoming Nazi Germany in the 'Burg?
#13
G(r)om, you're misunderstanding how the "Limited Modified Hangout" works. It starts out, "Ok, you're been lied to, but here's the truth..." and they take a small clipping of the truth and staple another layer of lies to it.
It's been used to kill half a million people in the West in the last year, but maybe the governments, most of them foreign, that are behind this are only doing it to _you_ for your own good because they like you. Maybe you'll be that one special person.
#15
Re. the article's comparison of Putin's Russia and Woke America:
In both countries, major corporations are expected not to cross the regime. However, only Woke America demands that corporate executives make affirmative statements and other shows of loyalty to the ruling party.
Woke America now requires outright discrimination against white males in order to achieve "diversity, "inclusion" and "equity" across races, genders and something called "transgenders."
These concepts do not exist in Russia. Although the USSR had various schemes to promote Siberian or Tatar or other underrepresented groups, and of course Party members and children of same were privileged while Jews, Armenians and others were openly discriminated against, today's Russia has no such distinctions.
In Putin's Russia there is no systematic or widespread, let alone official, discrimination in hiring by private firms or in university admissions. By contrast American universities and firms are now openly discriminating on the basis of gender and race.
In Russian job interviews there are no political loyalty tests.
In today's Woke America, people are now being fired for incorrect political views-- or even statements that appear to violate Woke pieties.
In America today, one who shows any evidence of sympathy for Donald Trump or his policies -- to take one small example, suggesting that perhaps the US should cease promoting lies about Russian "collusion" and stop alienating and demonizing Russia at every turn -- such people are persecuted, slandered, attacked, destroyed financially and reputationally.
Frankly, the choice isn't at all difficult. For whites generally and white males especially, today's Woke America is far more repressive -- and dangerous -- than Putin's Russia.
[Last Refuge] Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the issues with Hunter Biden’s laptop and the severity of political compromise within the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Ratcliffe notes how politicized the intelligence community and national security have become specifically in defense of lies being perpetrated by those behind the Biden administration.
Misinformation and disinformation is rampant as the Nat Sec community and Intel Community use their political ideology to advance false assertions. Good segment, WATCH: Don't neglect the pithy comments.
#1
CIA intransigence in the face of political policy is now decades old. It really began in the nineteen eightees when it was ordered, and basically refused, to join the Bush-led Reagan anti-narcotics program. There was no push-back from the administration and the CIA understood that while the government might propose, it would dispose.
#2
/\ Excellent point. You may also recall, late Secretary of State George Shultz threated to resign if Foggy Bottom was forced to institute drug testing. President Reagan back down.
Shultz was the consummate beltway careerist and insider. Not a man to be crossed, he knew where the bones were buried.
#3
They truly are a Fifth Column undermining the American Republic.
Other than anti-Trumpism, though, it's not clear what their ideology comprises. What's their view of China? Are they really in favor of endless overseas wars? Do they favor ValJar's pro-Iran and anti-Israel Middle East agenda?
I also don't see how the CIA and FBI 5th Columnists can survive and thrive anode the new Woke Tyranny.
Brennan, Comey, Clapper, McCabe, Strzok, Flounder -- these are all class enemies, the hated cis-heteronormative European male. It's like being a relative of the Tsar while holding high rank in the Bolshevik government after 1921. How do they pull that off?
Another internal contradiction: these jokers don't even appear to be coordinating at the lower and middle levels. Look at what that idiot junior FBI lawyer from Michigan State did with the CIA document which informed the FBI that, yes, Carter Page was indeed "one of ours."
The only conclusion: these clowns' only real agenda is power. They have no coherent idea or plan for this nation's foreign policy other than to line their pockets while preserving complete freedom of maneuver or themselves.
#4
/\ Look at what that idiot junior FBI lawyer from Michigan State did with the CIA document which informed the FBI that, yes, Carter Page was indeed "one of ours."
The coordination process is quite well established. Without going into classified aspects, the agency writes the tickets and is the last stop at the station. Everyone knew Page was a community source. The 'junior FBI lawyer' was the designated goat. He was quite severely punished as you may recall (tongue in cheek).
BTW, Page is far from innocent in all of this. He knew he was milking two cows, and the cows were standing next to one another in their stalls and smiling.
A token, Junior FBI lawyer's conviction and slap on the wrist. Then voilà, it was all over and forgotten.
But the much more severe Barr-Durham indictments are coming, you'll see !
[Federalist] President Joe Biden ran on a platform that condemned former President Donald Trump as unfit, embarrassing, and reckless, but while Biden might complain that Trump will "go down in history as being one of the most irresponsible presidents," his administration appears to be using the Republican’s decisions, policies, and stances to inform their own.
Here are some of the ways the Biden administration is embracing Trump’s actions and policies despite their professed vehement opposition to the former administration.
[American Thinker] War between Russia and Ukraine looks imminent. Israel and Iran are engaging in tit for tat maritime altercations. And China is ratcheting up provocative incursions into the airspaces and waters of Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.
Any one of these regional conflicts is incendiary enough to ignite World War III (or, more accurately, each one is capable of transforming the cold, hybrid warfare of cyberhacks, technology thefts, financial markets manipulation, and perhaps even biological attacks that has been underway for many years into total and unrelenting global bloodshed), yet trading markets and news media are largely ignoring what's unfolding. It's as if the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1999 Kargil War between nuclear-equipped India and Pakistan, and the Soviet and Nazi Invasion of Poland were all happening concurrently, and the world decided it was too busy enforcing face mask mandates upon religious congregants and following the turmoil of Khloe Kardashian to care.
Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August paints a vivid picture of European elites so mentally imprisoned by the mores and cultural etiquette of the nineteenth century that they failed to grasp the reality of the geopolitical chessboard before them or the likelihood of the monumental carnage of WWI. Something eerily reminiscent of those miscalculations is going on today.
In the thirty years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has squandered much of its time as the world's sole superpower. Rather than winding down NATO's mission in a post-Soviet world, the West redirected and revitalized the alliance after 9/11 into a global military engagement against "extremism," with the U.S. fortifying its role as the world's policeman. And rather than using the end of the Cold War to balance budgets and fix America's unstable financial footing, the U.S. aggressively burdened itself with new and unsustainable levels of debt. In effect, the U.S. rejected the possibility of multipolar peace, assumed the role of global hegemon, and never saved up for a rainy day.
Instead of broadly integrating a shaky post-communist Russia into European and trans-Atlantic institutions, the U.S. has wobbled between treating Russia as an ally in the "war on terror" and as a Cold War adversary that must be contained by driving the expansion of NATO-allied member countries all the way to Russia's borders. One moment Hillary Clinton is promoting a "Russia reset," and the next moment Barack Obama and Victoria Nuland are orchestrating a Ukrainian coup d'état to swap a Russia-friendly government with a fiercely anti-Russian replacement. In order to prevent Russia from becoming a thorn in the side of New World Order types utilizing the IMF, WTO, and World Bank as engines for maintaining American-led global governance, U.S.-controlled NATO and E.U. technocrats intent on building a European superstate have kept Russia relegated to the sidelines. And in recent years, Democrats in the U.S., "Remain" Brits opposed to Brexit, and European integrationists who have taken umbrage at Central European countries such as Poland and Hungary defending their own sovereignty have tried to scapegoat lost referendums on illusory "Russian disinformation" campaigns. The effect of this intentional ostracism has been to push Russia closer to communist China and into adversarial brinkmanship with U.S.-E.U. interests.
#3
They're rioting in Africa,
They're starving in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Florida,
And Texas needs rain
The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles;
Italians hate Yugoslavs,
South Africans hate the Dutch,
And I don't like anybody very much!
But we can be tranquil
And "thankfill" and proud,
For man's been endowed
With a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain
That some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off,
And we will all be blown away!
They're rioting in Africa,
There's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Last Refuge] Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the issues with Hunter Biden’s laptop and the severity of political compromise within the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Ratcliffe notes how politicized the intelligence community and national security have become specifically in defense of lies being perpetrated by those behind the Biden administration.
