#1
Doubtful. More likely, the CCP paid out small dollops of petty cash that Hoover and Pop could easily launder.
$500k here, a million there, $850,000 for Hoover's alimony bills, 6-figure wire transfers to pay for renovations to the Big Guy's Delaware McMansions, fancy cars and binges on hookers and crack etc
People like owning things. Perhaps fewer things than in the past — Mr. Wife just signed up for the AppleMusic service, which means he will listen to national artists on it, while still buying CDs from local artists; I am taking a similar approach to books, and trailing daughter #2 and her husband will continue to decorate their home with pretty things purchased on their travels and furnishings that suit both her 5’2” height and his 6’6” — renting is for those who have average needs and taste, and aren’t willing to save up to purchase.
The fight on the superpower front will between contenders for #2, as it has been since WWII ended. China only has a few more years before their lack of primacy becomes as painfully obvious as did Japan’s before them, and nobody else is big enough economically, now that the EU project is distracted by their refugee problem.
The organ manufacture thing sounds reasonable, which also takes care of any meat shortage once the kinks are worked out and the process scaled up. It also wipes out ecological concerns on the subject.
After the brouhaha about Covid-19, the demanded changes for climate change would be a dead letter even if we weren’t already sliding down the cooling side of the cycle.
And finally, because of fracking and President Trump’s very heavy thumb on the scales, the wars and jihads that are creating so many refugees are coming to an end, resulting in a tacit world agreement to send them all home. Mexico’s current refusal to pass along the groups coming from Central America is an example of what we have to look forward to.
#4
As of today (10-26-20) over the last 285++ plus Days since the C-19 Virus Panic started.
Your chance of being infected: 8,617,022 out of 342,000,000 (342 Million) or honestly put a 2.51% chance of being infected.
The chance of Dying from the C-19 Virus is 224,601 out 8,617,022 is 2.60%. So you needed to be part of the 2.51% infected and then you only stood a 2.60% risk of being of dying if infected.
Using the whole USA 342 Million population that mean about 0.06567280701754385 of 1% are claimed to have died. OVER the last 285++ Days.
Side Note: The USA normal daily death rate (2017) was about 7,808. With winter months (flu season the higher)
ON A POSITIVE NOTE:
97.5% of the US population in the last 285++ days was NOT infected.
99.93432719298246% of the USA Population in the last 285++ days did NOT die from the C-19 Virus.
BTW: CDC final 10-17-20 weekly numbers show:
1,477 C-19 Deaths. But on average normally the USA sees about 54,656 weekly deaths. So roughly ONLY 1 in 38 deaths was "related" to C-19.
So you odds of dying from OTHER/NATURAL causes was 38x's greater.
#3
I went to the hospital last week in Brookline. Apparently there's a town ordinance mandating the wearing of masks. Out of hundreds of people I spotted getting to and from the hospital, I counted exactly three people not wearing masks, including myself. I can only conclude I am a wolf amongst a vast flock of sheep.
#10
I'm still waiting to blast some mask Nazi if I'm spotted without one. The aforementioned trip to the hospital got me plenty of looks and stares; I just stared them all down and nothing's been said so far.
#11
I have been lucky that no Mask Karen got on my case (note: I do follow the local laws), but when taking a walk, I have had two women (separate occasions) leave the sidewalk and walk in the street to avoid walking past me. Pathetic, but whatever floats their boat (and, no, I wasn't going to sucker-punch them).
#16
Because all the Karens will run away from me if I don't.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/26/2020 11:22 Comments ||
Top||
#17
N95 = 95% effective
This is what I find most troubling about the whole mask thing: They say the N95 protects the person who wears it. But the N95 lets that person's aerosols escape and so does not protect others. So they recommend that you wear some other type of mask to protect others and trust that they will do the same for you. I'm not all that trusting of some of the other people I see walking around. I see huge gaps in their masks that certainly allow their aerosols escape and often they let their masks slip below their noses.
So, it seems to me if the need for masks was real, nobody would want to wear anything but an N95.
We know that the Democrat party is the party of fear and failure, not the party of the brave and successful. They want us to be afraid so that we will give them control.
I see Biden wearing his mask in the middle of a corn field when there is nobody anywhere near him. That's so stupid that I can't believe anybody will vote for him.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/26/2020 11:34 Comments ||
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#18
Well, I guess I am going to be the lone supporter of masks. Any kind of mask.
As a former medical tech who trained in a hospital ER during flu season surrounded by Drs and nurses wearing masks dealing with dozens of flu cases a day, day in and day out, and non of them ever got the flu from all of these people they were treating, that sold me on masks.
As someone who uses a major city's mass transit system every day where many people w
Now wear masks and a handful of vagrants who don't wear masks ride along with us complaining of fever, coughs and chills...
We build walls, fences, barriers to keep that which we don't out all the time as best as we can so as far as the respiratory system goes, masks do help.
#20
According to the CDC, masks are ineffective against the flu.
"We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility (Figure 2). However, as with hand hygiene, face masks might be able to reduce the transmission of other infections and therefore have value in an influenza pandemic when healthcare resources are stretched."
Posted by: Craig O ||
10/26/2020 14:09 Comments ||
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#21
Masks do work. A little. Depending on mask and how worn. When the fear was the risk was aerosol transmission masks were of little value. Seems to be that for most people aerosols don't contain enough pathogen for severe infection, and masks do reduce droplet transmission, so they do reduce risk of severe infection. Combined with social distancing and good hygiene masks do help. They don't make anyone 'safe.' And they won't solve COVID. Nothing will - it's loose in the environment, and like flu, vaccines will be only partially effective (if that.) If we want to get rid of it we need 100% lockdown for a month, no exceptions, people have heart attacks and die and rot in their homes, etc. Politically unacceptable - but might well result in fewer net deaths in the end.
#25
Our county mandates them indoors in public businesses or medical facilities. So I wear them in the store or doc's office. Soon as I walk outside, like most other Texans, it comes off. Very few parents wear them at the soccer fields on Saturdays for the kids games. So far as do I think they work? I really have ZERO flaming clue anymore. There's been so much back and forth, at this point that I no longer believe any of them.
#26
grom, a month of lockdown should, in principle, get past the asymptomatic carriers contagious period. Masks don't stop the virus, merely delay it somewhat.
EC, indeed, 100% lockdown is not possible in Western society. Whether the ultimate cost in life is higher or lower than from COVID can never be known.
#27
#26 Glenmore I don't mean people who didn't develop symptoms yet. I mean asymptomatic carriers (wiki) like Typhoid Mary (or Magic Johnson). People who go for years having no symptoms but capable of infecting others (their immune system is in dynamic equilibrium with pathogen).
#32
I don't wear a mask except when specifically asked to, and that includes trips inside stores that have signs on the doors saying "Mask required". Most stores won't enforce it. We must let the powers that be know that we won't tolerate this perpetual deprivation of liberty and that we will not EVER consider this "normal".
#33
if that’s the case then nothing ever can stop it and we have to learn to live and die with it. That has been the case since the beginning. Obviously a huge fraction of the population already knows how to live with it AND not die of it. Other people's mileage can and does vary. There will be other pandemics, count on that.
#34
@abu ulique: N95 masks do work against COVID, especially if both parties are wearing them.
However, civilians can't buy them at this time. In fact, the CDC says civilians should not wear them, they must be reserved for front line health care workers.
3M is gearing up to produce two billion masks a year by the end of 2020 (!!). There has been a complete market dislocation for the past eight months, replete with fraud and gouging.
I have a number of N95 around, because I have always used them for sanding and sweeping. Most of the uses are industrial. Trump should have used the DPA more forcefully to crank up production earlier.
#36
*One catch is that mine are latex straps, so if you have an issue with latex be aware.
To examine the other sides of the issue in fairness, I go back again to March when masks were being, uhem, "Voluntarily Compelled", one customer was following the meme "what good is a mask if your pants can't contain the smell of a fart?" to which I replied, "True; but if the fellow in front of you sharts you would be glad they had pants on."
[Craig Murray] The security services put an extraordinary amount of media priming effort into explaining why the alleged novichok attack on the Skripals had a delayed effect of several hours, and then failed to kill them. Excuses included that it was a cold day which slowed their metabolisms, that the chemical took a long time to penetrate their skins, that the gel containing the novichok inhibited its operation, that it was a deliberately non-fatal dose, that rain had diluted the novichok on the doorknob, that the Skripals were protected by gloves and possibly only came into contact in taking the gloves off, or that nerve agents are not very deadly and easily treated.
You can take your pick as to which of those convincingly explains why the Skripals apparently swanned round Salisbury for four hours after coming into contact with the novichok coated doorknob, well enough to both drink in a pub and eat a good Italian lunch, before both being instantaneously struck down and disabled at precisely the same time so neither could call for help, despite being different sexes, ages and weights. Just as the chief nurse of the British army happened to walk past.
So now let us fast forward to Alexei Navalny. Traces of "novichok" were allegedly found on a water bottle in his hotel room in Tomsk. That appears to eliminate the cold and the gloves. It also makes it possible he ingested some of the "novichok". I can find no suggestion anywhere it was contained in a gel. So why was this deadly substance not deadly?
Continued on Page 49
[American Greatness] Like it or not, Trump hit on a great truth that no country can write off its vast industrial interior, destroy its borders, or prefer managed decline over renewal, and meanwhile call itself moral.
What was, is, and will be the Trump agenda?
Against all odds, what elected Trump in 2016 was a recalibration of American foreign and domestic policy—and the art of politicking itself.
DOCTRINE AND POLICY
In foreign affairs, the United States would no longer adhere to every aspect of the 75-year-old postwar order it created—given the world now bore little resemblance to the world of 1945.
Prior bipartisan foreign policy had often ossified to the point of enhancing the power of our enemies, weakening our complacent friends, and terribly damaging our own power. When Trump entered office, ISIS was proving that it was hardly a "JV" organization. North Korea was recklessly testing missiles and bragging of its nuclear-tipped rockets pointed at our West Coast.
Israel and the moderate Arab regimes were ostracized as part of the insane Obama empowerment of theocratic Iran and its quest for a radical crescent encompassing Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
Russian reset was an utter failure. Unhinged, we were hectoring Vladimir Putin on human rights while agreeing to dismantle missile defense in Europe, if he would just please behave for a bit, and give Obama space during his 2012 reelection bid. The Asian pivot was laughable. Our friendly and hostile trading partners praised the Obama Administration in direct proportion to their manipulation of it.
In the 1950s, it was understandable that the United States would spend blood and treasure abroad to resurrect the destroyed economies after World War II and contain Soviet Communism. Its policy of allowing recovering allies to run up huge trade deficits to reenter the world community was seen both as desirable and affordable, as was putting down Communist insurrections the world over to contain the Soviet Union.
Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea became powerhouses, often with wide open, one-sided access to U.S. markets. China would never have achieved its 40-year stunning ascendence had America applied to Chinese trade the same mercantilism that China applied to the United States.
#1
Should Trump lose this election, which is unlikely, beginning next year he will lead the creation of a new political party which will end phase one of the recalibration.
#3
RINOs and old Donks can rationally form a 'Liberal Party' but where's the fun in that realizing you can't appease the Left without surrendering to them and having to move to your agenda to the right on any compromises with the other party. They prefer scorched earth like the Left they've been sock puppets to for decades.
#7
I think we are seeing the end of the two party system.
We're seeing the end of a unified nation under law. We will gradually split into two cultures that loathe each other and fight each other using endless lawfare. One is anti-Woke and nationalist, and thinks America fundamentally decent and worth preserving; the other is Woke and anti-nationalist, and believes the story of America is merely another, "woke" version of South African-style white supremacy.
The Nationalist group will try to retreat culturally into its own communities and schools, but it will not be able to escape the anti-nationalist Wokers' constant stream of identity-politics lies and nonsense, which dominates American corporate culture. When even the head of Christian fundamentalist family-led corporations such as Chuck-Fil-A must kowtow and "wash the sneakers," however that's done, of BLM extortionists and thugs, the culture battle has been lost. The war may not be over, but resistance to Wokery has scattered and retreated to the hills and the hinterland.
Specifically the Wokers have an iron grip on a power nexus defined as the dominant media platforms, the universities and the administrative state. They have now extended this to a large share of the upper reaches of major American corporations.
This nexus of power will be used to police speech and thought above all. The Woke media are already censoring the news that Americans read and watch as well as what they say on these dominant platforms. The justice system is already being used to selectively enforce the law in ways designed to punish enemies and reward friends.
As with their control of the universities, the anti-nationalist Woke power nexus in its corporate hiring practices and its HR policies is now seeking to achieve the 10:1 or 50:1 ratio that is typically seen in colleges' liberal arts departments. A furious effort to roll back anti-racist, anti-affirmative action protections has begun.
This is a cultural and legal civil war. Largely bloodless -- for now
#10
We will gradually split into two cultures that loathe each other and fight each other using endless lawfare.
For the most part this has already happened. The preventative and the cure are identical: a dramatically smaller and less domestically powerful federal government. If it could do little, few would care much about it.
#11
We will gradually split into two cultures that loathe each other and fight each other using endless lawfare.
Zebulon Panda1352, have you read this essay by Benjamin Studebaker? Very insightful in the description portion, but since he is a creature of the academic left, he fails completely at the prescription portion.
#14
Grom, we have proportional representation in the House of Representatives, that is where it would begin. Currently most states have winner take all in the electoral college but that could be changed easily enough if the idea catches on.
#16
When the next civil war comes, the cities will have power, food, water and other supplies cut. Their highways mined and trucks turned back from delivering supplies. In 8-12 weeks, the war will be over aside from cleaning out the last few hideouts from the now dead mega cities of the Left.
All their 'tech' power dies the moment the power sub stations get shot to hell.
Rotten apple sample:
[Townhall] Yes, the Department of Justice is a cesspool that Barr inherited from the habitually weak Jeff Sessions, the corrupted Loretta Lynch, and the serial criminal Eric Holder. Still, he's been in office long enough to have taken some action. One itty, bitty FBI lawyer has been indicted and that's it? Give me a break.
#1
They're part of the Be Here brigade.
"We be here when you come in, we be here when you leave."
Posted by: ed in texas ||
10/26/2020 10:58 Comments ||
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#2
Term limits. Long term politicians build long term alliances. Term limits will help it to go away.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
10/26/2020 12:42 Comments ||
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#3
Problem with that 49 pan is the ever present bureaucrats become the only ones that know what's going on and hence become more powerful.
The one new (old) idea that I've seen brought up is a return to a spoils system that lets the winners of the election kick out a lot more of the dead wood than just the cabinet level. Might not be an answer but it could use a thorough analysis.
[AsiaTimes] The US president has trampled over the conventional wisdom of the whole foreign policy establishment.
Long, thought-provoking. Herewith his closing paragraphs:
Managing the continuing mess in the region will require a Bismarckian combination of flexibility and nastiness. Trump’s biggest success may well be his handling of relations with Russia, whose English-language publications livestreamed the Sept. 15 signing ceremony at the White House while the major American media buried the story at the bottom of their websites.
Trump’s biggest problem remains China. Iran and Turkey are constrained by extreme economic problems; if China decided to give them substantial financial backing (rather than the token support that Beijing has provided to date), America’s position in the region could change rapidly for the worse.
China, to be sure, has no interest in a regional war, simply because it is the biggest importer of oil from the Persian Gulf. Trump’s initiative helps stabilize the region, and that serves Beijing’s economic interests for the time being. Barring a global escalation of tensions with the United States, China probably will continue to act cautiously in the Gulf.
Posted by: 3dc ||
10/26/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life,
#1
Trump really needs to bring this up, and link it to Fracking and American Energy Independence.
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.
[Craig Murray] The security services put an extraordinary amount of media priming effort into explaining why the alleged novichok attack on the Skripals had a delayed effect of several hours, and then failed to kill them. Excuses included that it was a cold day which slowed their metabolisms, that the chemical took a long time to penetrate their skins, that the gel containing the novichok inhibited its operation, that it was a deliberately non-fatal dose, that rain had diluted the novichok on the doorknob, that the Skripals were protected by gloves and possibly only came into contact in taking the gloves off, or that nerve agents are not very deadly and easily treated.
[American Greatness] Like it or not, Trump hit on a great truth that no country can write off its vast industrial interior, destroy its borders, or prefer managed decline over renewal, and meanwhile call itself moral.
