[Garden & Gun] Wendell Berry has been called a prophet and a visionary, but he has about as much use for such lofty praise as he does for screens. He doesn’t own a cell phone or a computer. An essayist, fiction writer, poet, and small-farms advocate, Berry does possess a National Humanities Medal, which President Obama presented him in 2011, as well as a slew of other honors and the adulation of people around the world who admire him not only for his tremendous body of work but also for his activism and uncompromised truth telling.
Since his debut in 1960, he has published prodigiously. "Let’s say a lot. Or: too many," Berry says, when asked how many books he has written. Among his works are masterpieces such as his poem "The Peace of Wild Things," his novels Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter, and hugely influential non-fiction such as What Are People For? and Home Economics. He is currently working on a new book that his publisher says may be seen as an update of his 1977 classic, The Unsettling of America.
Now eighty-five, Berry lives in Henry County, Kentucky, where he was born and raised, having resettled there in 1964 after stints in California and New York City. He is beautifully devoted to his wife, the artist and agrarian Tanya Berry, and says that a perfect day for him involves writing and farming, both of which he does on his property overlooking the Kentucky River, where I recently spent the day with him and saw firsthand his knowledge of the land, its history, and its people. For this conversation, however, we wrote to each other in mailed letters and then had early-morning telephone chats, a process that illuminates Berry’s insistence on looking at everything—trees, rivers, words, discourse—with deep care and interest.
[TOMLUONGO] I’m done mincing words. I’m done giving people the benefit of the doubt. Whenever I do that The Davos Crowd and their highly placed agents make me look like a virtue-signaling fool.
Fire Anthony Fauci now.
For weeks I’ve been careful to separate the threat of the disease, COVID-19, from the political response. I’ve felt strongly that one can respect the virus while at the same time be wary of the political response and the panic engineered over it.
But that’s come to an end. It’s clear that the plan from the beginning was to allow this virus to run wild in high profile places like New York and Italy to create fear. It is also clear that people like Dr. Anthony Fauci were activated to ensure the worst possible response to the crisis would be implemented in the U.S.
And now, after more than a month after shutting down whole swaths of our economy and locking people in their homes under effective house arrest it’s also clear that most of this response was overblown and unnecessary.
And here in the U.S. the point man on this insanity has been Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) whose ties to all the worst people you can imagine run very, very deep.
Lastly, it’s also very clear that President Trump was the target the entire time. He finally hit his breaking point yesterday because he realizes that he was advised poorly....
Now this morning, the Surgeon General Jerome Adams has effectively announced the U.S. has dumped the models created by the CDC and the WHO — models backed by Bill Gates and forced on the scene by his gatekeeper Fauci....
....Frankly, it's beyond sick and it has to end. If we don't see this lock down and attempted coup to allow doctors to run the country for what it is, then we deserve everything that's coming to us.
#6
It isn't clear. But would you put it past the likes of Schumer, Pelosi and Schifferbrains to conspire with the CCP to wreck the US economy? How about Baraq, Brennan and Hillary? Lying, cheating criminals, all of them. I mean, a booming US economy was Trump's signature accomplishment and now it's on the ropes. I put on my tin foil hat and started wondering about it a long time ago. But then, who would have ever thought they would conspire to come up with the Russian collusion hoax?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/15/2020 15:10 Comments ||
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#7
If it was intentional they would have started the outbreak in Texas and other red states, not in the bluest of the blue. Incompetence explains many, many things. You elect someone because of their opinion on trans bathrooms or abortion you really shouldn't be surprised they can't handle an emergency.
[Washington Examiner] Africans in a major Chinese city face evictions and harassment from local officials and businesses fearful of a coronavirus outbreak, a scandal that has created a backlash on the continent at the very moment China is working to build inroads there and outflank the United States.
"It definitely has sent outrage through African governments," George Washington University’s Jennifer Cooke, who directs the Institute for African Studies, told the Washington Examiner.
Senior Chinese officials maintain that they have "zero tolerance for discrimination," but Africans in the port city of Guangzhou have been subjected to "inhuman treatments," according to a joint rebuke issued by African ambassadors in Beijing. The offending practices include forced quarantines, enhanced coronavirus testing, and forced evictions.
"I've been sleeping under the bridge for four days with no food to eat," Ugandan exchange student Tony Matthias told AFP. "I cannot buy food anywhere. No shops or restaurants will serve me."
Guangzhou officials also ordered all Africans in the city to go into quarantine "regardless of their previous circumstances or how long they have been in Guangzhou." They plan to monitor compliance by placing "a device on their door, and once they open the door, we will be alerted."
A bloc of African ambassadors responded by declaring that the policy "has no scientific or logical basis and amounts to racism towards Africans in China" in a Friday statement. That’s a sharp rebuke of Chinese diplomats, who accused President Trump’s administration of "fear-mongering in a xenophobic way" during a dispute over the origins of the pandemic.
"Chinese engagement in Africa has always been really limited with its primary focus on African political elite and not the people," former Liberian Public Works Minister W. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, tweeted Monday. "Even corrupt African elite will respond to pressure from their people."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s team added to the chorus of rebukes over the weekend. "The U.S. consulate general advises African Americans or those who believe Chinese officials may suspect them of having contact with nationals of African countries to avoid the Guangzhou metropolitan area until further notice," the State Department advised Saturday.
That warning drew a complaint from China’s diplomatic corps. "This is neither moral nor responsible," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday. "Attempts to use the pandemic to drive a wedge between China and Africa are bound to fail."
#3
Would be nice if this convinced Africa to give up on China, Foreign aid in general, and Communist economic policies from the London School of economics. Perhaps then they can get their house in order.
When this is over Korea and Taiwan should send some economic advisers to Africa and teach them about economics.
#8
You lot were the first group to share my delight in Tom Lehrer and Gilbert &Sullivan, which is odd considering how popular TWTWTW was in its heyday.
A long article. My favorite sentence:
[AmericanInterest] After three decades of intellectual gymnastics aimed at convincing Americans that the off-shoring of manufacturing and the attendant deindustrialization of the country are good for us, the time has come for a reckoning.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/15/2020 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
What is it our Chinese friends like to say? "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." So start stepping.
We are in a long twilight competition with the Chinese communist regime, a struggle we cannot escape, whether we like it or not. Now is the time to wake up, develop a new strategy for victory, and to move forward.
Herein lies the "struggle" or better yet, the 'Made in China' betrayal:
To name just a few. Massive 'big pharma' and AGRI firms not mentioned. Will anything change? Very unlikely. We'll all be friends again soon, you'll see.
#5
While you have internal inter-american tariffs such as income and sales taxes higher than inter-country taxes the government will favour the export of jobs.
#6
We need to decouple from China. The globalists like the allure of cheap labor but with today's manufacturing methods and automation, cheap labor tends to be largely a myth. There is no reason that we can't manufacture what we need in this country. It is like becoming energy independent, we can become manufacturing and agriculturally independent as well.
China cannot seriously threaten us. We have brought this scourge upon ourselves. It is OUR doing.
No one forced us to make our pharmaceutical supply chain >80% dependent on China.
No one forced us to outsource most of our non-pharmaceutical manufacturing supply chain to China.
No one forced us to make our flagship public universities' revenues hence solvency dependent on thousands of extremely well-connected and wealthy, free-spending spoiled ignorant CCP spawn.
No one forced us to admit thousands of Chinese spies into our research land and high-tech corporations.
We did all this to ourselves. Because we are ruled by f---ing morons.
#9
Not everything in those big box stores is from China. I went to Home Depot when I wanted a caliper and found two different brands. One was Made in China, the other was Made in India. You can guess which one I bought. Too bad nobody makes them in USA anymore.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/15/2020 12:23 Comments ||
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#10
#7 We elected officials who sold us out for their own self-enrichment. Some making the decisions were not even elected. So no, I don't agree that, we the people, did it to ourselves.
#11
I voted for George Bush but what choice did I have? It was him or Al Gore and then it was him or John Kerry. I could have voted for Jeb Bush in 2016 but that was when Trump started talking about China so I was delighted when Jeb got his butt beaten. But I worry about 2024.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/15/2020 13:34 Comments ||
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#12
What choice did I have?
Agreed.
The entire US establishment was down with this Mad policy.
From Nixon and Kissinger to Clinton and Obama;
from the House of Bush to the investment houses of Blackstone and Goldman and Morgan Stanley and the rest;
from Brookings to Heritage and from the American Prospect on the left to the American Enterprise Institute on the right;
from Robert Reich and Paul Krugman to Greenspan and Kudlow and Mankiw and Hubbard and David P. "Spengler" Goldman;
from Pelosi and Feinstein to Romney and Graham;
from Harvard-Kennedy to Stanford-Hoover:
EVERYONE except a few lonely voices said that tightly coupling America's prosperity and economic fortunes to a hostile, rising China was indisputably a good thing for this country.
The only people I can think of who suggested, and even then only indirectly, that this was risky were the realpolitiker political scientists Sam Huntington and John Mearsheimer.
Both men were castigated by polite opinion, the former as a rayciss and the latter as a Machiavellian meanie.
#14
Early in 2016 I resolved that if the two major parties nominated Jeb and Hillary, I would vote for a third party candidate, any third party candidate. It would have been a protest vote. It would have been my only recourse because I could not see a dime's worth of difference between Jeb and Hillary. But Trump is an anomaly and we cannot count on another candidate like him in 2024. He needs to strike now, hard and fast, to keep this country from being taken over by the CCP. The whores who got us into this mess lack the wisdom, integrity and fortitude to keep it from happening. They would be mere puppets for the likes of Xi Jinping.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/15/2020 15:28 Comments ||
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I doubt that DJT can pull it off, he's just one against the entrenched and that's a real big ask.
Ever since Zero was in charge I've been expecting the move from one box to the next and I'm not seeing anything to upset the progression. Once Trump is gone we'll have one chance left with the ballot box.
#18
#10 #7. One thing I would add to what was said is that most likely many of the people whom ended up in office, ended up there as the result of rigged elections and so we had little to say about this at the time. The MSM is owned by a handful of corporations and we seldom get the truth from them about candidates they are pushing or those whom they are opposing. I tend to think the election rigging has been done primarily by the Dems in the last few election cycles.
I will be more optimistic about the 2016 election when I see the "real" criminals in the last election prosecuted for their crimes no matter who they are. The rule of law must be established in this country or we don't have a country. This is as important as controlling our borders and our sovereignty.
[ANDMagazine] Put simply, at some point it becomes both the right and the duty of a free people to stand up and take matters into their own hands.
Ever since Bill Clinton began to steer us down the road toward open and free economic relations with Communist China, we, the people of the United States have been fed lies. We have been told that we will benefit economically from these ties and that the Chinese people, who live in a totalitarian dictatorship, will inevitably benefit as well. Liberalization will come with a growing Chinese economy. Not only will China be more prosperous, but it will also be freer.
None of this was ever true.
The people of the United States have not become more prosperous. A select few among us have profited massively and are rich beyond measure. For many, many others this new economic reality means part-time jobs without benefits and shopping for dinner at the Dollar Store. Since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), in excess of 60,000 factories have closed in the United States. More than 2.4 million manufacturing jobs have been lost.
A nation, which once shipped manufactured goods worldwide now longer makes the most basic things. You will struggle to find a surviving American manufacturer for even such iconic American items as blue jeans, baseballs, and bicycles. Not a single company manufactures televisions in the United States anymore.
Meanwhile, in China, while the laborers in sweatshops churning out iPads and smartphones may have a little more money to spend when they are allowed to travel home to see their families once a year, they have — if anything — less freedom than they did decades ago. Trade with the West has not made the Chinese Communist Party softer. It has not led to liberalization. On the contrary, it has given the Communist regime new strength and armed it with the technology to create a surveillance state the likes of which the world has never seen. From cradle to grave, Chinese citizens are monitored, cataloged and when necessary disciplined by the Party.
All of the above has been clear for many years, but now the dysfunction of our self-destructive relationship with Communist China has gone to new levels. Now the oppressive, Orwellian nightmare has reached out and touched every person in the United States via the instrument of the coronavirus.
The origins of the virus, called by many the "CCP Virus," remain unclear. Beijing continues to push the narrative that the pandemic is a naturally occurring event and that it began in a seafood market in Wuhan. There are very strong indications that the pathogen in question escaped from the Chinese BSL-4 laboratory in Wuhan where it was being studied for unknown purposes.
What is clear beyond any question at this point, however, is that the Chinese Communist Party acted with full knowledge of the danger posed to world health to suppress news of the outbreak and even arrested Chinese medical professionals who spoke out in an attempt to warn the rest of the planet and give us all time to prepare. Estimates are that 95% of the people who will die in this pandemic could have been saved if Beijing had told the truth and sounded the alarm.
Can we do that all at once? Unlikely, given how far down the road we have gone. But, every single one of us can, today, stand up, identify an item we routinely purchase from a Chinese manufacturer and refuse to buy it anymore. We can when possible substitute an American manufacturer. We can in other cases at a minimum give our business to another company that operates in a free nation. Or perhaps, in some cases, we can simply realize that we don’t need to buy the item at all.
Individually, we can make a small impact. Collectively, over time, we can send a powerful signal, both to Beijing and to our representatives in Washington.
Time for another Tea Party. What are you throwing overboard?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/15/2020 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
Been trying - ain't that easy. I just bought a compact fridge and specifically discarded choices that were made in China. I settled on a Canadian company, Danby. Fridge arrived and sure enough on the serial number plate - Made in China.
#2
When you buy stuff online, they never tell you where it's made. Makes me not want to buy stuff online.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/15/2020 12:18 Comments ||
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#3
This ain't new. Back in the 90's a friend was showing off his new "made-in-the-USA" Harley...'til I pointed out the "made in Japan" embossing on the front forks.
[Red State] ...Not even a week ago, the left was screeching to the high heavens about states that had not yet implemented unconstitutional "lockdowns" of their citizens. My colleague and good friend, Sister Toldjah wrote about this. Short version, the left wanted the President to force those holdout states to adopt "lockdown" measures. He pushed back citing Constitutional issues. And the fight was on.
Now, President Trump is embroiled with the left again, this time on the opposite side of the argument. He has stated that he is the final word on reopening the country/economy. (For the record, I have some issues with this, but that’s for another day). The governors, particularly noted DEMOCRAT governors such as New York’s Cuomo, have pushed back citing...please sit down folks...States’ Rights.
...So, let’s recap. Not even a week ago, the left was after President Trump for not being a tyrant and clamping down on non-compliant states. Today, we have Democrat governors, legislators, and even their media enablers advocating for States’ Rights. Hold that thought.
There’s another aside to this. No matter when President Trump decides to "open the U.S. Economy," he will get heat. After he makes said decision, the very first — and every subsequent — fatality will be his fault, according to the leftists and trumpeted loudly and long. Unless of course, any of those decisions are made by governors, Democrat governors. Then, they will be ignored.
I’m not sure whether or not President Trump purposely engineered this particular situation. What I am pretty sure of, is that the Democrat governors and the leftist press, are both busily whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence, while President Trump is eating Ben’s apple and walking home with the cumulative treasures of every boy in town.
#1
Not even a week ago, the left was after President Trump for not being a tyrant and clamping down on non-compliant states. Today, we have Democrat governors, legislators, and even their media enablers advocating for States’ Rights.
What are we to conclude? The left is schizophrenic?
#2
I ready a comment yesterday (possibly here, I don't recall) suggesting it was reverse psychology to get blue states to wait just a bit longer after Trump says they are ready. Seems more reasonable than a super-sudden about face on Federalism.
#3
Chaos Actual
@actual_chaos
·
16h
As soon as a state that was previously closed re-opens for business it will be a race for other states. Citizens in states that are closed will look on at the celebration of normal life and start to demand their govenors to reopen. The media won’t be able to control the narrative
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/15/2020 11:41 Comments ||
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[AmGreatness] It’s Time for the President to Address Our Economic Relaunch: If the president acts carefully and puts the issues squarely, he will succeed, the economy will recover quickly, and he will be invincible in November.
#4
I am not sure comparing the number of unemployed to the number dead is a good ratio. The number of unemployed compared to number of lives saved would be a much better ratio of effectiveness but then the number saved is a swag/guess/lie..
#5
^One of the positive outcomes of the Wuhan Corona crisis is (IMO) that we're discovering what "Libertarians" as just as prone to cherry picking facts and exaggeration as anybody else in the political spectrum.
#6
what if the 80+ year old death is George Soros? Lots of media ruination results from that.
Posted by: Bob Grorong1136 ||
04/15/2020 7:34 Comments ||
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#7
Old people dying is NOT as important as destroying the economy. In no possible way are 80 year old people as important to the world as young people.
We need to open back up. Just because people are dying does not mean that purposefully destroying the economy and eliminating our civil liberties is a good idea. Freedom is not a meaningless concept. And frankly, whether that means young or old people dying, destroying the country is what "shelter in place" is going to do, and it is not worth keeping in place.
#8
Old people dying is NOT as important as destroying the economy. In no possible way are 80 year old people as important to the world as young people.
That's right VH.
Old people leave estates to the young people.
Old people pay estate taxes to the Feds.
Old people surrender homes to their children.
Old people are a service platform for the home health industry.
Dead old people don't care about the economy, only live ones.
#9
Regarding the number of dead. We have to factor in how many people would have died from the Flu that did not because of social distancing. Also car accidents and other factors are likely down a lot.
On the reverse side suicide rates are probably much higher than normal.
They won't really settle the numbers of years and by then everyone will have moved on believing we did what we had to do with the info we had. and will be reluctant to admit over-reaction because they like the control and don't want to minimize the reaction in the future if a really bad pandemic does hit.
#12
People are only getting tested if they're symptomatic. Why should kids be any different?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/15/2020 12:22 Comments ||
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#13
Let's see...
They suck resources for 20 years.
They carry disease like rats.
They are rude, ignorant, noisy and dangerous.
They hunt in packs.
They may be asymptomatic carriers...
#18
Eventually we will ALL start hunting in packs if we don't start opening up the economy again within the next 6-8 weeks.
We need some degree of judicious, smart, selective balance. It isn't either-or. You cannot save lives by killing the economy. There is no life without economic activity.
#19
This has all been bullshit for weeks. We should have treated New York and New Orleans and a hanful of other places as the exceptions that they were and thrown the switch back to the "On" position for the rest of the country. This has all been one giant power play for petty governors and mayors and assorted other hacks.
#20
I am not quite sure the people who are criticizing (mocking?) my point are coming from. None of you made any cogent points. The economy needs to be opened. And old people are not as important as young people. You want to know how I know that? Because A SEVENTY YEAR OLD CAN LIVE FOR A MAXIMUM FOR FORTY-FIVE YEARS, WHILE A TWENTY-FIVE YEAR OLD CAN LIVE FOR A MAXIMUM OF NINETY YEARS. Even if we magically believe that the years between 70 and 115 are entirely productive and equal to the forty-five years prior (or even equally likely to occur, neither of which are true), that leaves young people with twice as much potential. You don't like it? Too bad.
#21
Vernal Hatrick? You first, and no, I'm not in 70 - 115 range
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/15/2020 20:13 Comments ||
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#22
Think about all the 50-60 year olds who are the most senior people at important companies. Each of them has 30+ years of experience and has risen in their chosen field. You gonna replace those people with f&*king Millennials? If we really did lose a meaningful number of "old" people we would be f*&ked.
h/t Instapundit
[Hot Air] - I write post after post here about how the U.S. should remain locked down as long as possible, until more testing and contact tracing is in place, but I find myself weirdly glad that Sweden is conducting its highly risky experiment with herd immunity. It’s the only way we’ll know whose approach to the disease was the correct one, the cautious "shut it all down" contingent or the more fatalistic "everyone’s getting infected eventually" group of one, i.e. Sweden. If Sweden’s death toll ends up being lower than expected and the country ends up achieving herd immunity sooner than expected, it’ll look like a brilliant gamble in hindsight. They wagered the lives of thousands of people in refusing to bring their economy to a screeching halt — and it paid off. Just like their Socialized Medicine did
Epidemiologists, including many in Sweden itself, are willing to take that wager, though. They see a catastrophe in the making even though the Swedish government has put in place some basic social distancing measures. Gatherings of 50 people or more are banned, and citizens are asked to use good sense in keeping their distance from others. But as far as closing down schools and businesses? Nope. Life goes on.
Today they recorded their 1,000th death from the virus, far more than any of their Scandinavian neighbors.
...A group of 22 Swedish doctors and virologists published an open letter to the government in a newspaper today pointing to the much better data in Finland and Norway and begging the prime minister to start locking things down. I remember back when the UK was considering this strategy how scientists warned them that the plan to quarantine the old and vulnerable while letting the young and healthy walk free had a (literally) fatal flaw for senior citizens: Many of them need assistance day-to-day, and that assistance is typically provided by younger people. Who’ll provide that assistance if the young are out infecting each other? The fact that Sweden’s seeing an unusual number of deaths in nursing homes made me think of that. Of course the virus is going to get into clusters of the elderly if you’re making little effort to restrain it among younger caregivers. A fatal flaw in "Libertarian" arguments against lockdown. Stupidity or cold "economic" calculation?
...In fact, if you look at the COVID-19 statistics here, you’ll see that Sweden isn’t (yet) a worst-case scenario. They have the ninth-highest number of deaths per one million people of any major country in the world, far more than other Scandinavian countries and ahead of the United States — but also far less than Spain and Italy, the hardest hit European nations. On the other hand, the IHME model predicts that Sweden won’t peak for nearly another month and that it’ll see more than 18,000 deaths before August 4, a *big* number relatively speaking. By population, that would be the equivalent of nearly 600,000 deaths in the United States, around 10 times as many dead as IHME projects for us by August. I predict more than that - because, once the disease is spread enough, the essential service industries will shut down - the surviving doctors, and supermarket workers, will just leave their jobs.
Maybe you think that’s okay because of the accelerated timeline Sweden is aiming for. Conceivably they’ll be completely done with coronavirus by August while we’ll be gearing up for thousands more deaths this fall and winter — unless, of course, scientists discover an effective therapy between now and then that makes coronavirus much less lethal for us going forward. That’s the giant hole in Sweden’s "let’s get it over with" strategy. By not playing for time, they’re not giving medicine any chance to partially solve this problem for them. Imagine telling your citizens that they should carry on as usual in the name of herd immunity and accept that that means many thousands of deaths ... and then, just as you’re finished burying the bodies and the outbreak is finally calming down, researchers announce great success with an experimental antiviral. It’d be like a "Twilight Zone" episode. Natural herd immunity is for wild animals, humans can do better.
In fact, I'm willing to take a bet. When, a few years down the road, we compare coronavirus damages to Swedish vs Israeli economies - it won't be Israel eating crow.
Of course, what I expect to really happen is for Swedes to pull their head from their ass, and start lockdown - like UK did
#1
A footnote on model predictions.
In the past months various stupid/dishonest people made hay pointing out how quantitative predictions of the IMHE model are wrong. An epidemiological (or any other, outside simple physics/chemistry - where the numerical values of the model's parameters are known) model cannot produce quantitative predictions. A good model produces qualitative predictions.
"If you don't flatten the curve, medical service will be overwhelmed." is such a qualitative predictions.
The problem, for experts, is convincing the People (their elected representatives). And People believe in numbers. So the experts - being aware of the qualitative predictions - produced the most threatening numbers the model would allow. In countries where it worked - politicians were convinced and imposed quarantine, deaths (and long term damage to economy) go down. In other countries, where they weren't - like Sweeeden, people die like flies.
#3
Err... the new infection rate has stabilized in Sweden. Their daily death counts (see chart, "Avlidna per dag") are now falling. It is very unlikely that Sweden's 10m population will suffer more than 3,000 deaths total from this virus - i.e., a rate of, maximum, 0.3 per million, or what we typically experience in a bad flu season in the US.
Here's the data for daily new infections in Sweden:
3/30...475
3/31...555
4/1.....601
4/2.....357
4/3.....366
4/4.....341
4/5.....391
4/6.....739
4/7.....656
4/8.....645
4/9.....542
4/10...389
4/11...419
4/12...420 (revised from yesterday)
4/13...440 (added since yesterday)
4/14...169 (may be revised slightly upward)
4/15...(not yet published)
#5
#3 April 15 (GMT)
482 new cases and 170 new deaths in Sweden (from wordometers). IMO, it's just broke out of Stockholm - you ain't seen nothing yet.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/15/2020 18:30 Comments ||
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#8
According to the Swedish statistical agency's website that reports infections, fatalities etc in exhaustive detail, the daily average COVID fatalities in Sweden for the last 6 days is about 50. The the daily average the preceding 6 days was about 75.
Democrats in Congress have plundered the library of racy novels, dreamy fairy tales and bizarre science fiction paperbacks. They have even stoked their own psychotropic fever dreams.
They have scrawled in the margins and defaced every book on the shelves, turning each one into a "choose your own adventure" mystery drama.
Yet, still, they could not conjure up a story wild enough or scary enough or remotely believable enough to bring down President Trump.
So, now they are headed for the nonfiction stacks.
While Democrats in Congress were entirely consumed with impeaching Mr. Trump, it now appears, the president was conspiring with the leaders of Wuhan, China, and the wild-bat delicacy industry to hatch a virus so deadly and uncontrollably transmissible that it would spark a global pandemic and shut down the world’s economy.
All in an effort to — I don’t know — help Russia? Maybe. Or, because, he is racist. Whatever.
"We are right now going through our intelligence holdings. What did the intelligence community make us aware of at the end of last year or earlier this year," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff explained on Easter Sunday how he and fellow Democrats plan to blame the coronavirus pandemic on Mr. Trump before the 2020 election.
Yes, this would be the same Adam Schiff who for more than three years now has lied to gullible reporters about his spectacular fantasies of Mr. Trump in a Moscow hotel room with hookers.
This is the same ridiculous nutjob who for years now has been lying to American voters about how he has secret evidence that he cannot share proving that Mr. Trump "colluded" with Russian President Vladimir Putin to "steal" the 2016 election.
Secret "evidence," it turned out, that all came from the Kremlin.
This is the same desperate, dishonest charlatan who — after his Russian fantasy went up in smoke — turned his imagination to Ukraine and began spinning new fantasies about Mr. Trump conspiring with the president of Ukraine to make Joe Biden look bad — as if Joe Biden needs any help looking bad.
And, yes, this is the same Adam Schiff who colluded with phone callers he believed to be actual Ukrainians in order to obtain naked pictures of Mr. Trump. (Sickos like this you really cannot make up.)
Now Mr. Schiff and his fellow Democrats have seized on something that at least did actually happen. The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
This virus is as deadly real as these people are ridiculously unserious.
Mr. Schiff and his band of twittering impeachment fairies have decided to turn the awesome powers of the legislative branch of the federal government into yet another weapon against Mr. Trump. This time, they want to use all their constitutional powers to accuse the president of somehow playing dumb to allow the coronavirus to spread as far and wide as possible so as to infect and kill as many Americans as possible.
Again, to what end? To help Russia? To prop up his only personal financial interests in the wild-bat trade?
[Babylon Bee] The New York Times has finally addressed the sexual assault allegations against presidential candidate Joe Biden. After an in-depth investigation, they’ve found that Biden is a Democrat. Furthermore, they found that he is the assumed candidate running against President Trump. With these two facts in mind, they’ve concluded there is no possible way the charges can be true.
"While the charges of sexual assault by Biden’s former aide, Tara Reade, are something we would call extremely credible in any other situation," reads the article, "our investigation revealed that legitimizing them would be politically unhelpful to Democrats. Thus we conclude the allegations are false for reasons we will fill in later -- unless we can just go back to not talking about them and not give any reasons at all. We also find it absolutely necessary to consider Biden’s habit of inappropriately touching women to be ’charming.’"
This is quite different from The New York Times’s investigation into the charges against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, in which the Times found that Kavanaugh was being appointed by a Republican and thus any and all charges against him "must absolutely be true."
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[The National Interest] The U.S. Marine Corps arguably is the biggest champion of, and the most important user of, the F-35 stealth fighter.
But Marine Corps commandant Gen. David Berger has made it clear that the Corps could scale back its planned, 420-plane F-35 buy as it reorganizes for naval warfare against China. Berger long has said he wants Marine battalions to be lighter and faster-moving.
"Right now, the [F-35] program of record plows ahead as it is," Berger told reporters on April 1, 2020. "But I’m signaling to the industry, we have to be prepared to adjust as the operating environment adjusts."
The possibility of F-35 cuts probably wouldn’t surprise Raymond "Chip" Dudderar, a retired U.S. Navy aviator and test pilot. For nearly three decades Dudderar flew Navy A-7s and F/A-18s — and also Marine Corps AV-8 Harrier jump jets as an exchange pilot.
In his capacity as an airpower consultant, in 2010 Dudderar penned informal, unclassified analyses for Navy admirals outlining problems with the F-35. Years later Dudderar released his analysis to the public.
#1
FIFY: ...as it reorganizes for naval warfare against China.
Reductions In Force (RIF) as troops are pulled from Afghanistan, Iraq and other "active" theaters (hopefully).
They are also looking in mothballing their M1-Abrams, as well. More "seaborne Commandos" than the other US army.
#4
My sole experience with the military was 6 months working on a purchasing admin system to be shared by the Army, Navy and MC.
It was amazing that those folks could coordinate and win a fight against a troop of Cub scouts.
Especially the Navy Aviators always had to have the last word. WTF was the watch word for the entire project.
That's a long way of saying that I'm not surprised.
[Arutz 7] - After a month of lockdown in Italy we have reached the threshold of 20,000 dead. We are swept away by a wave and no one can predict how long it will last.
But we already know something, or at least we should know it.
The Western world believed in globalization, free trade and cultural uniformity. It now wakes up with a virus that challenges all these beliefs, the ones that have governed us for almost a century. The pandemic does not question only the Western health systems, but its cultural offers as well.
The bell has tolled for a certain globalization without depth, without substance, without reality and without truth, and with it the dominant progressive ideology, the idea that one could ignore what was happening in China, for example, in exchange for its cheap goods.
It is a fatal mistake that we will not be able to afford again. Virus and totalitarianism go together in China.
We were about to turn the globe into a shopping centre and game park, and that too is dead and buried. Every identity had to be liquidated then, and now we rediscover them in the moment of division (what do we Italians have in common with the Latvians anyway?).
We realized that the Western middle class was bloodless and increasingly poorer and increasingly obsolete.
We realized how easy it was to get rid of the "old and sick" without too much scandal and when we do the real count of the victims we will see that they will be twice as many as they are today.
Public services, devastated even by those who had made them into useless political dogma, have been sacrificed on the altar of the "budget." The priests of public opinion have failed, moving from the ideology of "without borders" to that of "stay at home." because the pandemic is revealed as a panacea for every form of socialism.
We pretended not to know that China had become the factory of the world, producing everything we stopped producing because we had to take consumer drugs, TV and services.
This pandemic is also an anthropological shock. It is a paradox that religious leaders had more to say about the virus than the scientists who were deeply confused about the epidemic.
The mainstream conception of man now was that of a mellifluous, superfluous and redundant individual, cut off from his fellows, owner of himself, even of his own death. Now this unprecedented crisis leads us to rethink every relationship with time and space, with the beginning and the end. The images of this pandemic which will last forever are the bodies transferred by the army - in Italy, the Palace of Ice in Madrid used to host all the victims, and a mass grave dug in New York.
We rediscover the importance of community solidarity, of the tragic, of the historical unexpected, of life and death, in short, of everything we wanted to forget.
The virus was a great return to reality. We thought we had to and could destroy religion, family, community, all the great Western anthropological truths that have resurfaced in this tragedy and to which many have clung.
If we do not become aware of it, if we do not hang on to it, our civilization will run a mortal risk.
[The EU is big into this, too, probably more so.]
[Rutherford] Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s been talk about this for decades, but I don’t see it happening — there are always people and reasons for some to use cash, at least sometimes. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I intend to keep more cash on hand in case of emergencies going forward. In a real emergency, credit cards/digital wallets might not be a possibility.
As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.
#4
It's a similar argument to the crap I've been hearing for about two decades now, and that is the 'paperless office'. I've cut my own (CPA) stuff down from about 10,000 pages a year to about half that, but paper cannot be eliminated. This is the wet dream of the globalist crowd, so fuck 'em with a 5 iron.
#5
Raj, you're either younger than I thought or haven't been listening, which I doubt.
When I joined DEC (that's Digital Equipment Corp. for you young-uns) the corporate buzzword was "Paper free in '83". Didn't work out too well then though the effort was made.
#6
When Puerto Rico had no power after the hurricanes, electronic stuff like ATM's and debit cards did not help much, did they? But this is all about control with Big Brother wanting to know where every thin dime is going.
#7
a cashless society‐easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down‐would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners.
To say nothing of the possibility of your accounts being hacked. Or drained on a whim if you are on the wrong side of politics.
#8
AlanC - I got out of high school in 1982 and saw my first punch card at the Engineering building at UNH a few months later. I was undeclared at the time so I wasn't steeped in the geek culture for a few more years, once I bought a IBM PC - dual floppy disks with a whopping 480 KB of memory. My first upgrade was putting in nine memory chips to bring it to 640 KB - it was wicked fast, at the time.
#10
Of course, don't forget cash is used by terrorists, organized crime, and drug runners.
But that's the excuse. Now money is all of a sudden a disease vector? I don't buy it. Besides, soooo many people use plastic now (even to buy a cup of coffee) that cash use isn't what it used to be.
Big gov't wants to track every penny, period. Imagine also how much money central banks can "print" if it's all 0's and 1's.
#14
Yes, a society that has a single point of failure in electronic transfers is a society waiting to return to the barter system. Practical experience in wake of numerous hurricane ravaged sections of the country should have killed any mention of this racket.
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.
[Washington Examiner] Africans in a major Chinese city face evictions and harassment from local officials and businesses fearful of a coronavirus outbreak, a scandal that has created a backlash on the continent at the very moment China is working to build inroads there and outflank the United States.
[Red State] ...Not even a week ago, the left was screeching to the high heavens about states that had not yet implemented unconstitutional "lockdowns" of their citizens. My colleague and good friend, Sister Toldjah wrote about this. Short version, the left wanted the President to force those holdout states to adopt "lockdown" measures. He pushed back citing Constitutional issues. And the fight was on.
[Babylon Bee] The New York Times has finally addressed the sexual assault allegations against presidential candidate Joe Biden. After an in-depth investigation, they’ve found that Biden is a Democrat. Furthermore, they found that he is the assumed candidate running against President Trump. With these two facts in mind, they’ve concluded there is no possible way the charges can be true.
