Posts Tagged → China
attack of the cone jellies
A single-brain-celled animal lives in the deepest oceanic depths, and its jello-soft blobular body can replicate like rabbits, self-heal, split and morph into clones, and swarm in seemingly endless numbers. This is the mysterious “cone jelly.” It is pretty much the animal kingdom’s actual mindless zombie horde so many of us joke about when describing living people who carelessly consume spoon-fed political narratives from the partisan media and who move through life like mindless robots as a result.
While not a whole lot is yet known about the covid19 CCP virus, here are some things we have learned in the past month about many of the people living on Planet Earth as a result of the demopanic:
- Globalism carries enormous risks and costs that probably greatly outweigh globalism’s benefits. Globalism is sold on its face as trade, even free trade between many nations, but it is really the purposeful enrichment of just a few people at the worst possible cost of the many billions of other people. Globalism created this gigantically costly Wuhan Flu problem here in America through artificially porous borders. Previous examples include the American chestnut blight in 1912, the Spanish flu 1918-1922, and the various Chinese flus of the 1980s-2000’s that all started outside of America, and nearly crippled our nation for a long time.
- Turns out people are power hungry. Some politicians will use a demopanic to grab power that blatantly violates the federal and state constitutions. Yes, we thought America was immune to this, and we were wrong. We must eternally stand guard and not allow broad claims of “We are protecting you from yourself and other high risks” to justify the destruction of our rights.
- Some politicians will use the demopanic pandemic to extort unrelated and unearned political results and taxpayer-funded payouts that the off-balance and vulnerable voters would not otherwise support. Again, older Americans never thought they would see a political party hold millions of sick Americans hostage in order to get greasy political payoffs, but we just watched Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer throw Mister and Missus America overboard in their power grab.
- Some voters will support political power grabs and political extortion because they both advance statism and big government ideology. And have we ever seen these anti-American ideologies on parade lately! It is as if liberals sense that America is weak, and they are openly coming in for the kill. But who would have thought so many of our fellow Americans hated America?!
- We desperately need news outlet diversity, as witnessed by the activist media’s relentless daily cone jelly fake news swarm attacks on us, the citizens, and on our president. The first attack being the equating of New York City covid19 risks with the rest of America, thereby generalizing the suffocating costs of the Wuhan Flu while its worst effects were extremely localized, and the latest such attack being that the president ‘encouraged people to inject themselves with Clorox bleach’…when in fact, what President Trump described in his press briefing are the common antibiotic irrigations, saline IV drips, and various chemical infusions used daily to save people’s lives across America.
The cone jellies are mindlessly swarming America, trying to overwhelm it and suffocate it. Stand your guard! Defend America!
Watch out! Mindless hordes of liberal cone jellies are swarming you
Earth Day: Protect What Matters
Today is Earth Day, a day annually marked for environmental protection. Good, we need it. We all need to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and eat clean food.
All kinds of organizations run advertisements today promoting a clean environment, a protected environment, wildlife habitat conservation, and so on. Most of the ideas we will see promoted today are worthy of attention and worthwhile policy efforts, while some of the more heavily marketed ideas are Marxist anti-capitalism dingbat stuff.
The two biggest challenges we have on Earth Day are overcoming the fake issue of human-caused “climate change,” and protecting the American economy. Achieving both of these goals will actually maximally protect the environment.
“Climate change” on its face is a factual thing, because Planet Earth has had constant climate change since its creation. Glaciers have come and gone on their own, sea levels have risen and fallen on their own, and plants and animals have come and gone as the greater environmental forces around them directly shape their habitat, the salinity of the water they live in, and the air they breathe. All of this dynamism has happened without any human intervention. In fact, most of it has happened without any humans existing at all.
Climate change continues on today just as it always has since the Earth was born, and though human actions might contribute to it in some minuscule way, the fact is that humans have a far greater and more measurable impact on more important environmental issues.
The problem with the current human-caused climate change hoax is that it sucks all of the air out of the room, leaving no oxygen for other real, actual, measurable and documented issues like lost wildlife habitat, farmland loss, water quality, forest fragmentation, and controlling the invasive plants and animals that are literally destroying our native environments and species.
All of the “climate change” policy bandied about is a result of bad modeling using flawed data, junk science, topped off with deliberate fraud and public shaming of heretics. The fake but well-heeled climate change industry is fueled by juicy foundation and government grants, making all kinds of financial incentives for people to continue this fakery. Fake climate change junk science can be a hell of a good business for a few private bank accounts!
Normal people see this obvious policy fraud and end up writing off the entire quest for environmental quality as just a bunch of “environmentalist wackos” trying to destroy Western Civilization. And indeed, a great many of the climate change advocates are in fact America-hating Marxists, whose suspect opinions aren’t worth spit. But it is not fair to roll all environmental quality efforts in with the climate change nonsense. Leftists include the real issues together with fake climate change to give climate change unwarranted credibility, while magical-thinking meatheads on the right also do it to discredit all environmental quality issues.
If there is one thing we have all witnessed over the past month of China Flu coronavirus here in America, it is that in addition to weakening America by sending our technology and jobs there, for decades Americans have exploited Chinese slave labor and the Chinese environment so that we could have more cheap junk available to play with at home. It is an undeniable fact that like the Russians before them, Chinese Marxism has destroyed the Chinese environment, while American capitalism has created the high living conditions here necessary for our citizens to expect environmental protection.
Capitalism protects the environment, while Marxism and communism destroy it through unbridled industrialism to buoy up their ruling elites.
Today, on Earth Day, the best thing we can do is to re-open the American economy and create the kinds of high quality living conditions here that incentivize environmental protection. Protect the world’s environment by repatriating American jobs from their thirty-year hiatus in China. Demonstrate to Americans that we can all enjoy high quality environmental protection without sacrificing our economy on the false altar of human caused climate change..or a Chinese virus whose effects are felt locally but whose costs are being applied equally everywhere across the United States.
Rural & Urban People Experience the Virus Differently
Rural and urban people are experiencing the covid19 CCP virus differently. And this means they each experience the various governors’ approaches to it differently, too. Chinese Flu policies impact rural and urban people differently.
In rural America, like Clinton County and Lycoming County here in Pennsylvania, life is still pretty much going on, not quite like normal, but fairly close to normal. The perceived risk from Wuhan covid19 Flu is low. This is because the rural peoples’ observations are not squaring up with what they are being told from their state capital. Rural people are not seeing up close and personal the disruptive chaos and death that is so pervasive in places like New York City and Philadelphia. So their behavior is different.
For weeks the Lowes in Mill Hall, PA, has been standing-room-only parking on the weekends, as local people shop for gardening supplies. Likewise the other nearby big box stores and small hardware stores are also full of people attending to their needs. Life is going on, albeit with some face masks and people clearly trying to steer clear of one another in shopping aisles. The Wegmans in Williamsport, PA, was full of shoppers the last time I was there, and the shelves were mostly well stocked. Notes about limits per customer are placed in all the usual places – TP, canned tuna, milk, bread. Ladies at the checkout are quite tough and firm about shoppers abiding by these limits, and everyone seems to be getting along just fine.
Elsewhere in rural PA are drive-in church services, food takeout, maybe some bonfires with chairs set apart, but still lots of chairs, nonetheless.
Actual Risk vs. Perceived Risk vs. Government Policy
At the heart of this lifestyle difference between rural and urban people is the difference they have over perceived risk, actual risk, and what the government policy says.
When rural people look around and see none of the catastrophic chaos engulfing New York City, they begin to ask simple and necessary questions about the actual risk of the China Flu to them. The actual risk, not the suggested hype or irrational fear stay-the-f#k-at-home perceived risk that is being breathlessly communicated by the cable outlets every minute. Without bodies stacked high, without lots of people becoming obviously sick from the CCP Chinese Flu, and with local health providers like hospitals and clinics operating as normal, rural people begin to question the value and necessity of the government policy that tells them their Constitutional rights must be suspended.
They then begin to question the value and purpose of their own government.
When we hear about the over-reach in places like Kentucky and Michigan, whose governors are literally demanding that people cower in their homes or else face huge overwhelming coercive force and jail time, it is natural for Americans to ask not just what is the value of these policies, but why can’t we have real policies that are tailored to the realities that each community faces. The potential risks of Wuhan Flu are just not the same everywhere.
Rural areas have more room and space between people, fewer people, less congestion, and a lot lot lot less exposure AND a lot less actual risk. Government policies need to reflect these realities. Blanket one-size-does-not-fit-all policies serve no real health purpose. Instead, no matter how well intentioned the governor may be, these blanket policies that are the same in Philadelphia as they are in Lock Haven, PA, make everyone equally miserable, damage all businesses equally, regardless of the health outcomes.
At the end of the day, government action must both balance risks with costs and benefits, while also safeguarding the citizenry’s sacred Constitutional rights. To date, very few states have done this. Instead, almost every state has treated low-risk rural areas the same as high-risk congested urban areas, and hit them all with the same heavy hammer. This makes the whole covid19 reaction thing seem awfully fishy.
Lotta covid19 pain? Better be lotta gain
For all the pain we are all experiencing from the Chinese covid19 flu “lockdowns,” shutdowns, economic activity coming to a screeching halt, businesses laying off people, orders drying up etc., there had damned well better be a lot of gain when all is said and done.
Meaning, all our sacrifice and loss and crushed civil rights should damned well have happened for a good reason. A lot of people should have lived who were going to die or get very sick. etc.
When the most mild mannered attorney friend texts me out of the blue yesterday “Are you worried about our civil rights?” I knew that the felt pain was cutting deep.
Our text conversation last night was brief, but it covered all the territory a person might expect, given its premise. My friend reports that many of his other friends are starting to get pretty fussy about this government-imposed suspension of civil liberties. He wrote “It is one thing to cooperate and volunteer to move less in public, but to be told we must stay in our homes…?”
This guy who wrote these texts to to me is a solid religious person, a respected family man, a well regarded attorney, pretty staid and non-excitable, perhaps even at times a boring personality (hope he is not reading this). It would take a lot to get him to write something like this civil rights text. And yet by now it is doubtful we can find any American who has not also felt a lot of pain from this covid19 China Flu business, so his texts to me are probably indicative of a lot of other Americans’ restlessness. A chafing at the bit. A natural inborn resistance to being told what to do, as opposed to being asked to volunteer as free people.
Really at the center of all this lockdown/shutdown/ Big Coercive Government vs Smaller and Smaller Citizen are two factors: 1) The philosophy of governance held by the various mayors, governors, and federal disease experts, and 2) a sense of duty to nation and to one another held by Americans.
A natural tension always exists in our republic, between effective government decision making on the one hand, and citizens’ rights on the other hand. Our founding documents (Constitution, Bill of Rights) are all about this tension, and how to strike a balance between the trade-offs of having an effective government and also having a free citizenry. No doubt that Communist China has a really effective government, but on the other hand its citizens have zero freedom. Americans want maximum freedom, so we naturally reject the kind of government it takes to be really effective.
However, many if not almost all of the Washington, DC, careerists are inured to the notion of a strong federal government. An overpoweringly strong and coercive government, need be. And why would they not have this mindset? It makes them maximally relevant and powerful. So enter Washington bureaucrats Fauci and Birx, and their approach to the Wuhan China covid19 flu has been to at first pooh pooh it, and then when it becomes a big issue, to take the opposite tack – everyone lock yourself in your home and do not come out until we experts tell you to.
Back in January and February, Fauci was quoted many times pooh poohing and disavowing the China covid19 flu. Can’t happen, won’t happen, not a big deal. Oops, now it is happening – everyone run and hide, to hell with the economy.
Add to this message coming out of Washington bureaucrats the naturally authoritarian nature of many elected officials around America, and we get some pretty authoritarian abuses of power. In Malibu California the other day, a guy simply paddle boarding out in the surf was actually cut off by two police boats and then arrested for not self-social-distancing. While he was literally all alone out on the water, near no one, hurting no one, putting at risk no one. And of course the ACLU is nowhere to be found for him, because the ACLU is not about civil rights, it is about destroying America.
Here in Pennsylvania, our governor, the mild mannered and generally friendly Tom Wolf, has issued a pretty wild declaration, a dictatorial ultimatum, that has suspended our civil rights and shut down most businesses and the families who depend on them. While many of us have a strong sense of duty to our fellow humans, and we are happy to make personal sacrifices in order to protect our neighbors and our communities, at a certain point we begin to chafe under the dictatorial approach to applying law.
A lot of pain is being felt across America, and certainly here in Pennsylvania. Many of the businesses I regularly interact with are in increasingly bad shape. Much of this has to do with their diminished cash flow and uncertain banking situation. So if the banks are eventually made whole, then the rest of these businesses will be made whole, and the whole economy will come roaring back to where it was or stronger. In the mean time we all have families to feed and bills to pay, and the pain of Wolf’s lockdown is becoming intense.
Is this pain worth it, is it justified, people are asking.
Everyone I know has a real commitment to doing the right thing, because it is the right thing to do. They do not need to be told what to do, just asked. But now the pressure and resentment to being told what to do, at great personal cost, without a lot of evident gain, is beginning to build up. This would naturally be expected. The sacrifices we are all making seem to be much greater than would normally, reasonably be expected. We cannot really see the fruits of our sacrifices.
Americans die every day from all sorts of maladies and accidents. A regular flu season sees about 32,000 Americans die nationally, from just the regular old flu. We take that number of deaths as a matter of fact, a cost of being alive. And yet we are not seeing that same result from this covid19 coronavirus thing. Not even close. In fact, so far, just the opposite.
If it turns out that Wuhan China covid19 Chinese Flu actually results in very few deaths, and yet the entire nation’s economy was thrown out the window for little or no gain in health, then there is going to be hell to pay.
Five Spice Donkey Meat: Coronavirus Lessons Learned
As the lab-grown Chinese Wuhan Flu coronavirus tornado has whipped around the planet, destroying people, families, businesses, hopes, dreams, savings, homes, careers, there are a few initial takeaway lessons we have learned so far.
Lesson 1: We cannot trust the media. The mainstream media (CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, BBC, PBS, Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, AP, Reuters etc) is full of politicized nonsense, not actual factual reporting. After weeks of calling the Wuhan Flu the Wuhan Flu, the China Flu, and the Chinese Flu, because this virus comes from Wuhan China, mainstream reactivists (my own conjunction of reporter + activist) immediately began saying it was racist after President Trump called it the Wuhan Flu. So if the president says something, the mainstream media reactivsts immediately disagree with it and criticize it. After doing the same and saying the same thing themselves. This is obvious hypocrisy and reveals the media as a bunch of political activists, not news reporters. OK, so you knew this already, especially after the media has constantly parroted Communist China lies over the past few weeks. Well, now you know it even better.
Lesson 2: China is actively pursuing the domination of America. Through any means necessary, Communist China has demonstrated that they are like the German Nazi Party of eighty years ago and the Democrat Party of today. They are our avowed enemy. They will stop at nothing to dominate everyone around them, especially America, even if it means playing with strange fire like lab-grown viruses designed to wipe out entire enemy adult generations, so that only the inexperienced and defenseless young are left alive. Chinese efforts to undermine and dominate America are nothing new, but for thirty years Americans have been told by elected officials from BOTH political parties that it was in our own best interests to give all of our technology, jobs, money, and security to China. Well it turns out that this globalism impoverishes Americans while further enriching a small handful of oligarchs. And now we see that Chinese domination of our pharmaceutical industry is not a benefit to us, and is in fact a great risk to our survival.
Lesson 3: Everything China makes is contaminated and dangerous. China has no environmental regulations and very few food regulations. Their rush to industrialize at any cost has resulted in tremendous environmental damage and the contamination of their food, soil, and water. This week we were treated to a video of a sick Chinese worker deliberately coughing into a shipment of new face masks bound for America, in order to further infect Americans. Five years ago the “Five Spice Donkey Meat” scandal in China demonstrated just how badly Chinese foods are adulterated, infected, and contaminated with a God-knows-what mix of dangerous chemicals and pathogens. Even donkey and fox meat, which are actually (unbelievably) succulent delicacies in China, alongside snakes, bats, cats, rats, wombats, dogs, hogs, and monkeys, are infected; not just baby milk powder and apple sauce sold to America. Anything we import from China is full of nasty chemicals, viruses, and bacteria. Including food, medicine, and clothing. Don’t let it in here.
Lesson 4: Buy American – Putting America First means protecting American Health. Putting America first in all things means that we will now question whether or not certain practices are in fact actually good for Americans. Whether or not cheap labor and cheap products from China are desirable in the short term, we as a nation will now always ask “Is this good for America and her citizens, my family, my neighbors?” If the answer is either No or Probably Not, then we will re-patriate whatever goods were being made elsewhere and have them made here. Having things made here in America, subject to our own regulations, high expectations, and standards, will give us control over our destiny and health. Including physical and financial health.
Lesson 5: Secure American Borders equals Secure American Citizens, so Force the Issue. In early February, US senator Chuck Schumer (Democrat) and US Congressthing Nancy Pelosi (Democrat) accused President Trump of being a “racist” for implementing a travel ban from abroad. Literally four weeks later these same two fools accused President Trump of not having enacted a travel ban soon enough. All kinds of dangerous diseases, dangerous drugs, dangerous people, sex slave trafficking, child prostitution, child molesters, and violence have been pouring over and through America’s open borders into our towns and cities. This is happening only because the Democrat Party has been totally devoted to having our borders remain wide open, for their own short term political gain. A willingness to trade off the health and safety of American citizens for the benefits of law breakers and parasites should demonstrate to any open minded person that the Democrat Party and its criminal assistants like La Raza and the ACLU are guilty of treason and crimes against the American people. All of these groups should get big bills from the United States Treasury for the damage they have wrought on innocent Americans. China should get a big bill for the widespread destruction that their Chinese Wuhan China Virus has wrought, too. Close America’s borders and get control of who and what gets in here.
Why having your own philosophy of government is American
It is American nature for each individual citizen to have a philosophy of government. That is, to have a firm idea of how you want and expect all levels of government to relate to you, to serve you, to represent you, and to respect you.
Maybe there are too many syllables in this, so let’s just say that every American citizen should have a belief in how they want to relate to their own government, at every level – local, state, and federal.
From America’s founding until right now, our entire nation is still predicated upon the expectation of direct citizen involvement in every aspect of what makes America work: Voting in every election, staying updated and informed on the political and cultural issues of the day, participating in jury selection when called upon, serving on school boards, local zoning and planning boards, etc.
America is a citizen-run nation. That is how we were founded. Consent of the governed. Right now, a surfeit of material success has put many Americans almost to sleep. They are too busy taking care of their own individual desires to look up and participate in the larger happenings around them. They are almost believing that American government is on autopilot, and that their participation is unnecessary. Once American citizens stop participating in how government is run, then automatically people will step in who use government for their own benefit. Self-enrichment, long undeserved careers paid for by the taxpayers, funneling limited taxpayer money to interest groups who then work hard to get career politicians re-elected, selling American interests and secrets to foreign governments, these are just a few examples of the problem.
No longer are career politicians “public servants.” Now career politicians are self-servants who use government to enrich themselves and their friends and family. Examples include politicians from both political parties at all levels. Joe Biden (D) and Richard Burr (R) are just two easy low-hanging examples. Biden used his public vice president office to get undeserved contract work for his sons in Ukraine. Burr used his position as US senator to sell his stocks before they lost value, an act on private information about potential stock losses, which is insider trading.
Across government entrenched bureaucrats make decisions every day that determine or influence the paths of our life. Somehow these “public servants” have also aggregated huge power, with little to no accountability. Many of these bureaucrats quite clearly demonstrate their own philosophy of government. They believe in the overwhelming coercive force of government intruding directly into individual lives. They believe in the diminution of the Bill of Rights that protects our individual freedoms, rights, and liberties. They believe in death-by-a-thousand-cuts regulations that render a great deal of American life almost meaningless and almost illegal. They believe in all kinds of specific policies that are totally at odds with the rights, freedoms, and liberties that Americans have always enjoyed, and which are spelled out in our founding documents.
The “Waters of the United States” regulation emitted by US EPA in the last administration is a classic example. People’s private property rights were trampled beneath the coercive weight of government control, with very small benefits.
While the establishments of both political parties, nationally, are not terribly far apart on some key aspects of governance, it is fair to say that the Democrats believe in crushingly big government and unlimited coercive force to achieve their policy goals, while Republicans believe in free markets and free choice.
Party responses to the Wuhan Chinese Flu (coronavirus, covid19) are instructive. The Democrats have tried to use the virus to achieve policy goals they could not otherwise gain through the political process or from the voters. Things like enormous amounts of regulation on individuals and business sectors, and enormous amounts of taxpayer cash paid to their private sector supporters. This Democrat attempt at extortion of sick Americans held up passage of a covid19 relief package last week, which hurt people. Democrats are using the Wuhan Chinese Flu crisis to gain political power and control over Americans, and to artificially damage the American economy and President Trump. Democrats will destroy America to try to wrest control of it. Sick Americans who die from this are simply collateral damage to them.
So, if you have not yet developed your own philosophy of government, now is a very good time to do it. Events happening right around you demand that you participate in some way.
Determine your philosophy of government based on your own principles and values.
Do you believe in the pre-eminence of the free citizen, and the innate smallness of government, as defined by the Bill of Rights? Or do you believe in a Marxism-inspired vision of forced wealth redistribution, open borders, endless streams of illegal aliens into America, and endless amounts of taxpayer money given freely to these aliens, even while it is tightly withheld from the very American citizens who paid it in the first place?
My own philosophy of government is based on America’s founding documents (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights) and their promise of free and equal opportunity for all citizens. This means I work for a government that is a big safety net, with arms and legs sticking out of it, and not the over-reaching nanny state that micromanages and dictates every breath we take.
Flumageddon shines spotlight on failed US bureaucracy
The Wuhan Flu aka coronavirus has resulted in a Flumageddon hysteria that has damaged America’s economy and forced millions of students to stay at home, supposedly “study online,” and pester their working parents.
Flumageddon has shut down public meetings, schools, and work environments coast to coast. Almost everything that Americans take for granted has been stopped cold by it. Entire cities on both coasts are entering constitutionally questionable lockdown status, where the citizenry may have to “shelter in place” just like the ancient Hebrews did in Egypt, as God’s death plague worked its way through the first born of humans and animals alike.
Why are we here? What on earth happened to bring the freest, most technologically advanced nation to this point?
Was America really, truly unprepared for this moment?
Two things happened that got us here.
First, China has been doing everything it can, in literally every way possible, to undermine, hamper, damage, and take over America. China is a socialist tyranny, and so they have been able to direct hundreds of millions of Chinese to sit at keyboards all day every day with the goal of filing fake Trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office in DC, and to hack into credit card companies, and to hack into everyday websites, and to post antagonistic messages on websites, and to play around with ordering and then canceling American products and services, and so on. Not to mention the 500,000 Chinese fake “researchers” posted at American research institutions. They are spies, really, stealing our knowledge out from under us in the phony name of open-ness and tolerance and diversity and other meaningless nonsense.
The tentacles of China are long and many, its parasitic sapping of America’s strength a long-held accepted fact.
And nothing allowed China to wreak its havoc on Americans more than people in BOTH Democrat and Republican parties allowing it to do so openly and in plain view. Because a handful of ultra wealthy wanted to be even more ultra wealthy. And they share a bit of that wealth by giving it to re-election campaign funds of careerist politicians, who hold on to power and do China’s bidding in American policy and law. Thus were American jobs and factories outsourced to China, and basically everything good America has or had was literally handed to China. All for thirty pieces of silver, on top of the thirty pieces of silver that had already been handed out a million times before to just a handful of highly placed recipients. Traitors to America, really.
So China’s Wuhan Flu is a direct product of the artificial and unhealthy economic relationship between our two nations, maintained by a billion people in China and just a few thousand people in America. Wuhan Flu spread through the world, and into America, because of an unnaturally open one-way relationship, and a criminally porous American border.
Second, Flumageddon happened because American bureaucrats are an incompetent and lazy bunch, artificially protected by artificially way-way-way over-generous personnel rules.
Career bureaucrats at Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Drug Administration have been unprepared for this moment for decades, despite plenty of warning shots from SARS and Swine Flu before. Instead of developing flu testing kits and extensive steps for combating Wuhan Flu, career bureaucrats at CDC, NIH, FDA and a host of satellite agencies and state offices, all took long lunches on the forgotten taxpayer’s dime. They posed and preened and presented themselves as dispassionate arbiters of public health interests. And in fact, when the moment of truth arrives, we see that they are simply lazy and incompetent. In China, which so many of our federal bureaucrats love because of its ruthless efficiency and all-powerful government, they would all have been shot in the back of the head by now for their failure.
Instead, we are treated to a host of foolish talking heads from CDC and NIH who are, in fact, partisan political activists using their public positions to advance a political campaign to discredit the one person who has absolutely no blame for Flumageddon: President Donald Trump, who, unlike 95% of Congress and 100% of the federal bureaucracy, has NOT been in government his entire career.
Flumageddon is not even Obama’s fault, though he did experience at least one, arguably two, fatal flu public health events, and, therefore, Obama could have directed CDC and NIH and FDA to begin making testing kits and vaccines. In anticipation of future outbreaks. Nope, the fault really lies with our open borders mentality, which carries nation-ending risks, and with our lazy, incompetent, over-protected, entitled, unaccountable bureaucrats, who then cement the open borders risks into stone.
In order to pound down Americans even more, and make us more pliable, more amenable to their supposed solutions. Which are always more and bigger and more powerful government intervention into our lives.
Interesting how this works. The symmetry was so clean and easy. Until Trump came along and challenged it. Cue the hysteria…
I am so post-socialism now
Socialism and its sisters communism, collectivism, authoritarianism, mass murder, and tyranny have never proven fun or beneficial for anyone but a chosen tiny handful, who lord it over the unfortunates below. Venezuela is the latest example of what socialism really is, no matter how many college professors tell you how wonderful it is: Violent poverty and no human rights. Socialist Russia and communist China have the worst environmental records and situations, because under socialism, there is no incentive to clean up the environment.
For the occasional Millennial who may accidentally be reading this essay, the words written above mean that under socialism, you don’t get to pick your healthcare system (like Obama promised when selling his not-free-for-all centralized healthcare system snake oil), you don’t get to keep your doctor (also like Obama promised), you don’t get to choose your friends (most will be carted off to jail and then disappeared), and you certainly don’t get an iPhone and a five dollar latte, ever. In other words, everything you take for granted right now is stuff you will never ever see in a socialist country.
And so, dear Millennial, you should know that after eight years of Obama’s effort to implement socialism at every level of America, which required him to lie a lot, and after three years of Trump’s fantastic economic revival, I find myself feeling so, so post-socialism.
I say this, even though it puts me at odds with a fad that has recently emerged on the left, where people loudly proclaim they are “post-capitalism.” While they simultaneously and shamelessly use capitalist medicine, drive capitalist cars, wear capitalist clothing, live in capitalist buildings, drink capitalist five dollar lattes, endlessly text on capitalist smart phones, and eat capitalist food.
So OK, aside from the clean abundant food, the best medicine, the nicest buildings, the clean water, the clean air, the clean environment, the fuel efficient vehicles, and the best clothing, yeah, I guess capitalism sucks…like that old Winston Churchill line that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others…or like that scene from The Life of Brian, where Monty Python’s cast members recite a litany of popular improvements the Romans brought to Judea…”but what have the Romans ever done for us?”
The fact is, capitalism creates the best situation for the most people out of all the alternative forms of government (free choice). Capitalism has its weaknesses, but compared to all the alternatives, it is the best arrangement. We have seen this proven over and over. And it is proven by the fact that none zero nada of the “post capitalism” advocates are actually living socialist lives.
And that is why this bizarre “post-capitalism” posturing and virtue signaling has always mystified me; you know, the Che Guevara tee shirt wearers using their parents’ credit cards to pay for everyday things that no socialist or communist country ever had or ever will have. Or the socialist child climate activist barking at adults about the choices they make, while herself jet-setting around the world using capitalist planes trains automobiles and boats, and leaving a one-week carbon footprint bigger than my entire lifetime will be.
So I am over it, that socialism thing. Too much hypocrisy, too many lies.
Socialism sucked during the Obama administration, and watching newly socialist Venezuela crash and burn now is painful. As we learned during the Obama years, it is not cool or hip to say you are socialist, it is actually very stupid. And if you have a college professor or three who tells you socialism is great, then ask them to prove themselves correct by immediately living the socialist lifestyle. You know, give it all up, practice what you preach. Push come to shove, when those beret-wearing fake educators are put on the spot, you will find that deep down, those Che-lovin’ professors are actually so, so post-socialism, too.
It’s natural to be post socialism, because socialism is naturally bad for you.
Photo of Chinese military summarily executing an unarmed civilian who has not had a fair trial, for some imagined crime that only threatened the power of the state. This is socialism, and you should be post-socialism
In a socialist country, you can earn the death penalty by simply speaking your mind, by disagreeing with the official government positions
Strangely, China makes pretty young women about to die get dressed up before they get on their knees and are shot in the back of the head. Who knows what this unhappy young woman did to earn such a violent death, but we know she had zero due process. Socialism
socialism
same lady who is kneeling in front of the soldier above. Socialism is cool, right? No?
Nice ladies in a socialist country about to be executed on their knees. Is this what young Americans think is just fine? Do you drink $5 lattes and watch your friends get executed for fun?
this is the lady kneeling above and then with her head blown in half, as she is being taken off the truck to her execution. In socialist countries, you can easily earn the death penalty for simply disagreeing with a leader’s opinions. Not in America! So why is America supposed to be turned socialist?
about John Bolton’s departure from government
John Bolton has been a Washington, DC, fixture since I was in college, which is a long long time ago. He has held a number of high level government jobs in that long time, as well as the usual garden variety of middlin’ roles that regular revolving door people in DC have. Like mid-level government, academic, lobbying, and think tank jobs.
And all that time John Bolton has been a staunch, unabashed defender of America and American interests.
John Bolton was our hero when he worked for the last Bush administration and he took on the gun prohibitionists at the United Nations. That was a proud day for America, with Bolton at the podium, when American government told European tyrants that one of the great defining characteristics of America is the right and the ability of our people to make an effective armed revolt against our own government, and so No, we would not be signing their small arms treaty as a back door way to strip American citizens of their Constitutional rights.
Over the past year or two, US National Security Advisor John Bolton has been hugely criticized by conservatives for being a war hawk, someone too eager to use full American force at the drop of a hat. A warmonger some call him.
“We are so tired of wars. We are not the world’s police man,” goes one refrain, which on its face certainly makes sense, within certain basic parameters.
Another common refrain which does not make sense goes “Iran is not a threat to America, and we should do everything we can to avoid war with Iran.”
Thus, with that second refrain, anyone promoting a strong deterrent policy and posture with Iran, like John Bolton, is automatically risking another Mid East war, which we are told, we absolutely must avoid at all costs. Apparently even at the cost of letting Iran nuke a few of our major cities.
The left-right crossover by these so-called anti-war conservatives is fascinating to me, and Bolton became the friction plane for where their war-weary criticism met the Trump Administration’s foreign policy activities. As a Bush II legacy, Bolton reminded everyone too much of poorly implemented wars, in which the USA rules of engagement put our warriors’ lives and limbs at unnecessary risk, and where America foolishly sought to implement a second Marshall Plan, this time in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like Bolton, I also say Give War a Chance, but let it always be total war, uninhibited war, completely and immediately successful war, not the war of namby pamby uniparty globalists worried about how America will be perceived poorly as some sort of meany arch defender of its own interests. Hell, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and China do not give a damn about how anyone else perceives their pursuit of their national interests. They do whatever they want, come hell or high water, with a lot of extra brutality thrown in, just so the defeated remember the high price of resisting.
So, in turn, I believe, America should be just as ruthless and just as bold as they, our main competitors, if we are to survive them. John Bolton was a proud promoter of this stance. He believes in America, a successful, strong, defiant America.
It is certain that Bolton was a nettlesome cowboy inside the Trump Administration. He was well suited to the first year or two of this administration, when America was being felt abroad for the first time in decades, but Bolton was not a good fit in the third or fourth years, where Trump is beginning to tame the bureaucracy and bring his own more nuanced policies to bear. Anyone with a huge manly mustache like Bolton has, in this day and age, is living in the 1950s past, where mustachioed gunslingers in chaps and dusty cowboy hats still represented the best that America had been and the best that she still could be.
It is no surprise that Bolton was taken down by Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, because no matter who runs the State Department, they all at that agency are always the weanies, the wimps, the “war-no-more” tip-toeing weasel fairies of our foreign touch. Everyone at the State Department believes fervently that all our conflicts can be resolved amicably, if America just gives in and gives away enough of its own interests.
On the other hand, every day he was on the job John Bolton was leading the US cavalry straight up San Juan Hill with the American flag in his left hand and a smoking Colt .45 revolver in his right. I will miss the guy.
John Bolton’s approach to American foreign policy: TR’s famous charge up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders
The US State Department: Obsequious weasel with a toothy beaming sycophantic smile looking perky and wide eyed, always
Happy Economy: Consumers & Local Banks vs. The World
The US economy is strong, and it has been strong since a flood of consumer confidence swept in behind a new president who ushered in to a miserable bipartisan vacuum a refreshing cleansing confidence.
Added to that confidence was –and very much is– a renewed pride in America, in being American, and in American-made products. By mid-2017 a sense of 1950s community once lost and now found again birthed a strong antidote to Obama’s “new normal” of slow American decline.
And we can’t just blame Obama. Yes, Obama hates America and did everything he could to destroy our nation from inside and outside. But he was helped significantly by ye olde typical career Republicans who saw money to be made in America’s decline, just as there was money to be made in its growth. But growth is harder, and why work hard if you don’t really have to, they reasoned. Either way, growth or defeat, the big money Republicans bought their many pet congressmen to safeguard their investments and stood by watching as they hit big on a global economy shifting from their American home turf to China, India, the EU, and other undeserving recipients of America’s health.
In fact, America’s veins were opened up and flowing out. Our life force was draining away, and a host of hungry nations were perched around us, like vultures, picking away at the juicy scraps that fell from our Rust Belt homes and boarded up churches. Both Democrats and Republicans were pumping away, pushing our citizens’ energy force, our very national being, into the waiting mouths of so many other nations. And so our American economy had sputtered, dying
That is, until Trump inspired US consumers, and the local banks they work with and rely upon to take what are big steps in their quality of life.
And so like a thing alive, the American economy has powered forward like it has not moved in decades. And why would the economy not be alive? Our collective economy is us, of us, an organic part of us and an extension of us. America has a sense of good health again, and so it follows that our economy is healthy again, too. And it is getting stronger, despite transparent and treasonous attempts to destroy our economy by the Democrat Party and everyone else allied with them, including the governments and industries of China and Russia.
It is sickening that an entire American political party will do everything it can to badmouth, damage or destroy America’s economy simply in order to artificially malign a president they oppose. The cost to America is enormous! Then again, this is the same political party that advocates for illegal invaders over American citizens, for law-breakers and against law-followers, that claims Social Security will be tossed overboard by the other political party and then does everything in its power to give all of our Social Security money to their new chums, the illegal invaders.
So yes, I guess destroying America’s economy and hurting the American citizens standing in the way is to be expected from the Democrat Party and their communications arm, the Mainstream Media.
One discrete sector of the national economy that is changing is the timber industry. When four hundred million (400,000,000 !) middle-income Chinese aspire to own the nice kitchens and hardwood floors that define comfortable life in America, a huge sucking sound can be heard ’round the world as unquantifiable amounts of natural resources are pulled in to that huge nation. And when the Chinese economy began to falter in early 2018, even before the tariff battle, the Chinese domestic demand for American timber dried up. We then learned in late 2018 that the red oak, residual ash, and black walnut that had been bringing us huge export revenue but which were then beginning to stack up in East Coast log yards were not once destined for Chinese factories re-exporting their finished goods back to America. No, those logs and lumber were being used up domestically in China, as China grew its own middle-income population. A population that is now up against the ropes and cannot buy American hardwoods that make pretty kitchens and flooring.
Accordingly the American timber industry is going through a shake-up due to the way timber buyers invested and spent. The fact is that even as they close in China, new cabinet and flooring factories are opening up in several other Asian countries.
And so now on the battlefield it is the confident American consumer and her local bank officers standing strong against the evil political tide that seeks to reverse what has been accomplished, just begun really, since November 2016. It is happy healthy family and local community versus a global colossus hungry for endless cash, endless money, endless wealth, at any cost, and a domestic political party hungry for power at any cost, even the cost of individual liberties and American success.
In this fight I put my money on the American consumer, not just because I think she is a tough and hard working bunch, but because I am an American. I want her– you, me, us — to win this fight.
