Tag: oppression

The lockdowns were a bad idea and did not work

9:44 am

Link here. The key quote compares this epidemic with the last two large similar epidemics, and finds this one hardly an issue:

As novelist Lionel Shriver writes, “We’ve never before responded to a contagion by closing down whole countries.” As I’ve noted, the 1957-58 Asian flu killed between 70,000 and 116,000 Americans, between 0.04 percent and 0.07 percent of the nation’s population. The 1968-70 Hong Kong flu killed about 100,000, 0.05 percent of the population.

The US coronavirus death toll of 186,000 is 0.055 percent of the current population. It will go higher, but it’s about the same magnitude as those two flus, and it has been less deadly to those under 65 than the flus were. Yet there were no statewide lockdowns; no massive school closings; no closings of office buildings and factories, restaurants and museums. No one considered shutting down Woodstock.

He then notes the failures of the lockdowns this time, and its apparently inability to really make much difference in the path of the epidemic, while causing enormous harm to the economy, to the lives of millions, and to many who were denied healthcare for other reasons due to the panic and shut downs.

If only someone had pointed this out back in March.

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The Democratic Party: The party of riots, looting, and stolen elections

1:26 pm

Last week CNN anchor Don Lemon, who like everyone else at CNN for years has repeatedly signaled his blind partisan support for the Democratic Party, revealed something even more fundamental about Democrats and their supporters in the political world. The clip below shows Lemon discussing the rioting going on in cities across the U.S., and what Joe Biden should do to address this violence. Lemon is clearly acting as a Democratic Party front man, not a news reporter, as he thinks of ways to help that party win elections.

After proposing Biden give a speech on the subject, Lemon says this, “The rioting has got to stop. … It’s showing up in the polls. It’s showing up in the focus groups. It is the only thing right now that is sticking.”

In other words, the riots and looting were great, as long as they helped the Democrats in the polls. According to Lemon, who is a very typical Democratic apparatchik, only if rioting should hurt Democrats in the polls should Democrats oppose them.

This fact is far more important than Lemon’s obvious partisan bias. In this one clip he demonstrates, with the nodding approval of his fellow CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, that the political leadership of the Democratic Party and their lapdogs in the press care only about polls and winning, and will tolerate anything — riots, lynchings, looting, murder, oppression — if it will get them re-elected and in power.
» Read more

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State Dept employee destroyed evidence in Russian collusion hoax

10:52 am

Not only does it appear that almost all the sources for the Steele dossier — used by the Obama FBI and Justice Department to instigate spying operations on the Trump administration — were Russian, it now appears that, at the request of the dossier’s author a former State Department employee destroyed State Dept evidence relating to that dossier.

Earlier this year, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele revealed he had destroyed nearly all the records detailing his dirt-digging on Donald Trump and Russia. “They no longer exist,” Steele told a British court.

Now comes word that Steele’s primary and longtime contact inside the Obama State Department, Jonathan Winer, also destroyed records of the former British MI6 agent’s contacts inside that federal agency, including many of the 100-plus unsolicited intelligence reports Steele provided the Obama administration. “I destroyed them, and I basically destroyed all the correspondence I had with him,” Winer is quoted as saying in a little noticed passage of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on the Russia collusion scandal.

Winer apparently destroyed the records at Steele’s request, the report said. “After Steele’s memos were published in the press in January 2017, Steele asked Winer to make note of having them, then either destroy all the earlier reports Steele had sent the Department of State or return them to Steele, out of concern that someone would be able to reconstruct his source network,” the committee’s report released last month stated. [emphasis mine]

And why was Steele worried that his sources might be uncovered? Apparently they were all foreign, Russian or Ukrainian in nature, meaning that his dossier was actually an operation of enemies to the United States, which was then used by the Obama administration to foist the hoax that Trump was in collusion with Russia. Thus, it was Obama and his administration who were colluding with foreign powers, for their own political gain, not Trump. That collusion by Obama and his cronies even went so far as to destroy evidence.

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Sweden declares victory over COVID-19

9:45 am

Sweden appears to have successfully weathered the Wuhan virus epidemic, with a current infection rate one of the lowest in the world, and that country did so with no lockdown, no mask mandates, and few restrictions on the lives of its citizens.

The country now has one of the lowest infection rates on the planet, and it’s difficult not to admire how it has handled the past year, with no strict lockdown or compulsory face mask rules. All businesses, schools and public places remained open in Sweden for the duration.

“Sweden has gone from being the country with the most infections in Europe to the safest one,” Sweden’s senior epidemiologist Dr. Anders Tegnell commented to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “What we see now is that the sustainable policy might be slower in getting results, but it will get results eventually,” Tegnell clarified.

“And then we also hope that the result will be more stable,” he added.

Tegnell previously warned that encouraging people to wear face masks is “very dangerous” because it gives a false sense of security but does not effectively stem the spread of the virus.

To put it more bluntly, Sweden did not panic, looked at the early data, not the junk models, and correctly decided to treat COVID-19 as a variation of the flu. As a result the country’s population has now mostly acquired immunity, killing the epidemic, even as its economy avoided an unnecessary crash and an absurd loss of freedom for its citizens.

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COVID-19 numbers surge after mask mandate in Hawaii

5:45 pm

More evidence masks are a very bad idea: Soon after Hawaii imposed new rules requiring masks both indoor and outdoor, the number of Wuhan virus cases and hospitalizations zoomed upwards.

Just like in the Philippines and Peru, Hawaii’s government has imposed a long, strict lockdown and has never emerged from it beyond a modified phase one reopening. Additionally, the state has had an indoor mask mandate in place since April 20 and an outdoor mandate (even while jogging!) since July 7. It is the model for what the political elites believe to be the key to stopping the spread. Yet the results are the same as they have been in every place that tried to put up a cloth in front of the inexorable spread of viral particles that can only be seen with an electron microscope.

As [indicated by the graph], Hawaii’s daily case count grew more than tenfold in July and August. All along, state officials thought they were steering this ship cleanly throughout the spring and that their draconian efforts avoided the spread of the virus. Instead, it has become clear that the virus simply arrives at southern latitudes several months later and spreads for six to eight weeks, as it does everywhere else. [emphasis mine]

I must emphasize what the author notes, that Hawaii is the most isolated U.S. state with one of the most stringent lock down and quarantine rules for visitors. Basically entering Hawaii has become difficult if not impossible, and if you do go you are required to quarantine for weeks.

Yet, as soon as they required masks, the disease’s spread accelerated.

Masks are fake science. Not only is there no solid science proving they are a benefit, the data clearly shows that if used improperly (which the general public is doing routinely) they are unsanitary and will easily promote infection and the spread of pathogens.

This data from Hawaii also proves the utter pointlessness of the lock downs. Even on this remote island the disease has arrived, and is spreading. This is what these respiratory viruses do. The best way to fight them is let them spread as fast as possible among the young and healthy population, which will easily fight them off and become immune and thus act to choke off any further spread to more vulnerable populations.

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A nation of control freaks

12:19 pm

Americans have not simply in the past six months become trapped in terror and fear over a relatively low-level virus, they have compounded that fear with a strong and ever-growing desire to tell everyone else what to do.

The conservative internet has been pushing the term “Karen” to apply to any busybody who wishes out of outrage to wield petty power over everyone around them. I find that term too vague. A much more apropos term would be to call them what they are: control freaks.

And sadly, there now are a lot of them, many of which are downright insane in their demands and willingness to commit violence to impose their will.

Want to hold a small wedding in Hawaii near the beach, with maybe no more than ten people attending? Nope, you can’t, because someone will arrive to harass you rudely and demand you be arrested. The Democratic state government there has declared the beaches closed, public weddings illegal, and private enterprise under strict control, all over a virus that appears only mildly more dangerous than the flu.

Want to sing in church and you live in California? Nope, you can’t, because Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of that state has declared such singing and chanting dangerous. It will spread the Wuhan flu! (He doesn’t have a problem with leftist Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters chanting “Death to America” slogans however. Leftist protesters are immune from the virus.)

It isn’t just the rules imposed over COVID-19 however. » Read more

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COVID-19 illnesses after half million people attend Sturgis rally: almost none

10:24 pm

Can we please put aside our fear? Almost two weeks after about a half a million people attended the Sturgis motorcyle rally in South Dakota (an event that spanned ten days), only three hospitalizations from COVID-19 have been linked to this event, and two of those have already recovered.

I can only find confirmation of three hospitalizations at this point in the reporting. Two of the patients have confirmed discharges indicating they will fully recover. Since they had symptoms and developed them within fourteen days of the rally, contracting the virus during their travels or attendance seems likely. By way of contrast, there were four fatal crashes at the Sturgis event that killed five people.

Even using the largest number of positive tests and granting they all 222 resulted from rally attendance, 0.048% of attendees and contacts tested positive for COVID-19. Some states have done contact-tracing on people who tested positive post-rally and included those individuals in their reporting.

You won’t see this reported in the media nationally. It is too much good news. If almost half a million people can gather for an event that spans 10 days with this outcome, it puts their COVID-19 panic porn to rest.

If you saw any videos from this rally, you saw that most people were not social distancing, were not wearing masks, and were having a darn good time.

COVID-19 is not dangerous. You won’t get it easily, or if you do, you are likely not to even know. And if you do get sick, you will almost certainly recover, like the flu. The only people who should be concerned about the virus are those with other serious illnesses who likely should not attend such large events anyway.

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COVID-19 is simply not life-threatening

9:50 am


The fading and not very threatening COVID-19 epidemic
in California. Note how masks appear to increase the
disease’s spread. Note also how this doesn’t seem to
change the death toll significantly. Go here for more details.

In the past few days there have been a flurry of new reports proving once again that the panic over the Wuhan virus was completely unnecessary, that the disease was exactly what the initial data suggested, a variation on the flu that would be, like the flu, harmless to the healthy and young while dangerous to the elderly sick.

And like the flu, the Wuhan virus required no extreme measures. All we had to do was protect those elderly sick, and let everyone else continue living their lives normally.

First we have the revelation this weekend, from the CDC no less, that the number of people who died only from COVID-19, with no other health issues, was only about 6% of the total deaths assigned to the disease, or only about 9,700 people total, an infinitesimal percentage of the total population.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website disclosed the shockingly small number of people who died from only the Wuhan coronavirus, with no other cause of death mentioned. Hold on to your hat because here it is: out of the 161,392 deaths in the CDC data, just six percent, about 9,700 deaths, were attributed to the coronavirus alone. According to the CDC, the other 94 percent had an average of 2.6 additional conditions or causes of deaths, such as heart disease, diabetes, and sepsis. [emphasis mine]

Let that sink in. The Wuhan virus killed you only if you had an average of slightly less than three serious chronic health conditions. And generally you had to be elderly, with the average age of death 78 years old. Otherwise, just like the flu you might have been sick for a few days, but you would have recovered and been able to go on with your life as normal. This data once again demonstrates that the masks, the shut downs, and the economic disaster were all unnecessary.

Then on Friday we had another research paper, one of a long continuing string of papers, finding once again that COVID-19 is of no threat to young children at all, that they not only don’t get sick from it they also don’t infect anyone else.
» Read more

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Another Chinese national arrested for spying

5:52 pm

The Department of Justice on August 25th arrested a Chinese national as he was trying to leave the country with classified military computer software.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped Hu Haizhou, a researcher from the University of Virginia’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering [who] also work[ed] for a Chinese military-linked university too, before he could board a flight to Qingdao, China, from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Tuesday, said an FBI special agent in an 11-page affidavit filed on Friday in federal court in Virginia.

According to the agent, Matthew Rader, CBP investigators questioned Hu and searched his electronic devices, which revealed UVA-research-related files stored on his laptop, including “bio-inspired research simulation software code” developed by “Professor 1.” Bio-inspired research relates to studying the complexities of flying and swimming creatures in nature and applying that to manned flight or submersibles — often with military applications.

Hu “did not have lawful, authorized access to this material, and he admitted that Professor 1 would not want him to have it and would be upset to learn that HU possessed it,” the FBI said. The professor, who runs the multiuniversity Flow Simulations Group, has been developing this code over the last 17 years and is sponsored by the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. The FBI special agent said that probable cause existed to charge Hu federally with fraud-related illicit computer intrusions and the theft of trade secrets.

More here.

These stories are beginning to sound repetitious, as they keep happening on almost a weekly basis. It appears that until the Trump administration the swamp in Washington had absolutely no interest for decades in protecting this nation from spying and the theft of military secrets from China or from anyone else.

Seems par for the course. At best our so-called elites are incredibly incompetent. At worst they have shown themselves to be traitors, with their loyalties aligned more with foreign powers than with the United States.

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AI software beats real pilot in simulated dogfight

5:35 pm

The Terminator is coming: In a DARPA competition between a number of AI software teams, the finalist AI team, called Heron Systems, went up against a real F-16 pilot in a simulated dogfight and went undefeated, beating him five times in a row.

Heron Systems, a company with just 30 employees, had beaten out Aurora Flight Sciences, EpiSys Science, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Lockheed Martin, Perspecta Labs, PhysicsAI, and SoarTech to claim the top spot in the last of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) AlphaDogfight Trials. This three-day event had started on Aug. 18, 2020.

The software then beat the real pilot.

There is a lot of blather on the website, though there is this interesting analysis by F/A-18 Squadron commander that in the end concludes that we are only a generation or two away from making all fighter pilots obsolete.

Or to look at it from another perspective, we are only a short time away from putting the ability to fight war entirely into the hands of computers and software, with abilities that humans will not be able to match.

Does no one but me see the potential problems with this? Have all of these military experts never seen any science fiction movies or read any science fiction novels?

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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Boeing’s CEO vows to hire based on race, not qualifications

3:40 pm

The coming dark age: Boeing’s CEO today vowed to raise the number of blacks working at the company by 20%, apparently with no regard to qualifications.

Boeing is seeking to increase black US employees throughout the company by 20 percent and mandate benchmarks for hiring people of color, Chief Executive Dave Calhoun told employees in a memo on Friday reviewed by Reuters.

…The changes at Boeing, a stalwart defense contractor with its corporate headquarters in Chicago and largest factories in Washington state and South Carolina, appeared to mark the first concrete steps by the planemaker to address the issue. “We understand we have work to do,” Calhoun said in the memo, which was released on the 57th anniversary of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech and included references to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin on Sunday.

Boeing declined to provide its current number of black employees or a timeline for the new target.

The planemaker separately has had to lay off thousands of workers as it grapples with the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and the 17-month-old grounding of the 737 MAX after two fatal crashes.

In the memo, Calhoun said the company would establish an internal Racial Justice think-tank to guide its policies.

As a company, Boeing’s bad performance in almost every area in the last year is bad enough. If they are going to lay off thousands and then replace some with workers based merely on racial quotas the company’s future will be worse, since their ability to produce quality airplanes and spacecraft is certain to go down.

And for those hate-mongers who will immediately try to accuse me of saying blacks are not as smart, go to hell. The goal should be to hire the best, instead of members of a specific race. If you favor one race over another you simply prove yourself to be a bigot, as this company’s CEO is now amply doing.

I also hope a lot of fired Boeing employees sue Boeing for racial discrimination.

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Democratic voters swamp CSPAN to say they are switching to Trump

9:19 am

CSPAN's new call lines, eliminating party affiliation

Is this a sign of hope? So many callers on CSPAN’s Democratic Party call line were calling to announce they were either switching to Trump or becoming Republicans after watching the two conventions these past two weeks that CSPAN changed the call lines from “Democrat” and “Republican” to “Support Biden” and “Support Trump.”

I always like to say “It’s the audience that counts.” In this case the audience appears to be making its preference loud and clear, which is to me is truly a sign of hope. Conservatives and supporters of liberty and the rule of law might cheer the speeches and presentations at the Republican convention, but it is how the unaffiliated general public reacts that matters. And at least from this one data point, it appears they are trending to the Republicans.

UPDATE: I stupidly listed the channel incorrectly as CNN in my initial post. This is now corrected.

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It is the PARTY of Biden that must lose big in November

1:03 pm

Modern Fifth Avenue in New York
Today’s bankrupt New York,
a typical Democrat-run city

With the upcoming November presidential election, only two months away, the major focus continues to be on Trump and Biden. Who should win? Who is better? Do we want four more years of Trump or another four years of a Obama-type rule?

My readers will know immediately where I stand. Biden would be major disaster for the country, especially because it appears he is declining both physically and mentally and seems owned by the most radical leftist elements of his Democratic Party.

This essay, however, is a call for voters to not just vote for Trump. It is a desperate call for voters from both parties and from all ethnic, religious, and racial cohorts to vote for Republicans in every election and at every level of government. Biden is only the figurehead. It is the body of the now very corrupt, anti-American, and radical Democratic Party that must be killed, thoroughly and at all levels, including the House, the Senate, and in every state, city, and local council election.

The riots and looting and the almost willing endorsement and support given to those riots and looting by local Democratic mayors and councils and state governors demonstrates their incompetence to hold office. For the United States to survive as a nation ruled by law that also supports the freedom of its citizens, voters must reject them, unequivocally.
» Read more

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Canada proposes new global treaty to control mining in space

10:05 am

The globalists at the UN fight back! A Canada-led effort, endorsed by more than 140 academics, politicians, and diplomats, has proposed that the UN and international community create a new treaty to control mining in space.

Signatories to the request for the UN to intervene believe space must be regulated internationally – similarly to Antarctica or the world’s seabeds – and all countries, including non-space-faring ones, get a say in decision-making. The alternative, they warn, could be a splintered approach where companies conduct flag-of-convenience resource extraction in space under whichever country has the least onerous rules. [emphasis mine]

The Trump administration has made it clear that it wants the ability to establish U.S. law on its space operations, both in spacecraft and on its future bases on the Moon and elsewhere, an ability that the Outer Space Treaty forbids. To get around the treaty, the administration has created what it calls the Artemis Accords. The accords require that any nation that wishes to partner in the American-led Artemis program to explore and colonize the Moon must agree to support the establishment of private enterprise and ownership, with the laws of each nation applied to its own operations. To do this the Trump administration is negotiating individual bi-lateral agreements with its Artemis partners.

In essence, the U.S. is using the strategy of dividing and conquering to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions.

Canada’s effort is designed to counter the U.S. approach, which is a strong sign that the Trump effort is working. I suspect the battle-lines are now being drawn between China and the many nations that are not operating in space (note the highlighted text), and the U.S. and those space-faring capitalistic nations that wish to partner with it, such as India and the European Space Agency. In fact, Japan and the U.S. today announced continuing negotiations leading to an agreement endorsing their partnership in Artemis, including the Artemis Accords.

Where Russia stands in this battle remains uncertain. They desperately need to partner with someone in the new effort to get to the Moon, since they no longer have the economic resources to do it themselves. The U.S. has made it clear they could join Artemis, but the Putin government opposes the Artemis Accords, preferring that the international community (meaning governments such as them) retain ownership over space resources. They have begun negotiations to partner with China, but it is unclear how much China wishes to partner with anyone.

Regardless, it would be terrible blow to freedom and private enterprise for the U.S. to agree to this Canadian-led effort. Should that approach win, it would make provide ownership and capitalism in space impossible. All power and control will devolve to the global international community, which will then dictate that nothing can happen but what it wants. For example, all the many nations incapable of doing anything in space will want a piece of the action from those nations and companies that are capable, and the result will be that no one will do anything because it simply will not be profitable. Space will simply become another failed communist state, dying before it even becomes born.

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Skylab astronaut Gerry Carr passes away at 88

9:22 am

R.I.P. Gerry Carr, the commander of the last and longest Skylab mission in the 1970s, has passed away at 88.

Carr’s first and only spaceflight was as the commander of Skylab 4 (also referred to as SL-4 or “Skylab 3” as appeared on the crew’s mission patch). The third of three crewed stays of increasing duration aboard the orbital workshop, Carr and his Skylab 4 crewmates, Ed Gibson and William “Bill” Pogue, set what was then a record spending 84 days in space.

“We proved, I think, just absolutely, positively that the human being can live in weightless environment for an extended period of time,” Carr said during a NASA oral history interview in October 2000. “But medically, we gathered the data that I think gave the Russians and other people the understanding and the courage to say, ‘Okay, we can stay up for longer periods of time.'”

The obituary at the link includes Carr’s lifelong effort to explain that the crew never “mutinied,” as the press has tried to say for decades. Instead, they spent days and repeated long communications with mission control trying to get it to understand that the crew was being overworked because NASA was micro-managing their workload from the ground. They finally made mission control recognize this, after a long public conversation. Sadly, NASA had to relearn this lesson again in the 1990s during its first long missions on the Russian Mir space station (See chapters 3 and 12 in Leaving Earth).

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Five charts prove the continuing COVID-19 panic unwarranted

4:08 pm

Link here. Not surprisingly, the U.S. is doing better than almost every other country in the world, and the numbers also show that the epidemic is dying off.

On confirmed cases per million, the U.S. ranks 9th, but this is in part due to the extensive testing we’ve done. In fact, despite what Biden and Co. will have you believe, we are in the top of the pack when it comes to COVID-19 tests per capita. (Note that only four of the other 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations do better than the U.S. on tests per capita. Also, every country that does better than the U.S. has a significantly smaller population — some just tens of thousands. In fact, if you add up the populations of every country in the top 17, it equals a little more than half the U.S. population. )

When it comes to the case fatality rate – the share of confirmed cases who have died – there is no comparison. Not only does the U.S. outperform most countries – as well as the world overall – the case fatality rate in the U.S. has been steadily declining.

Finally, there’s the chart Democrats really don’t want you to see: The number of new COVID-19 cases peaked a month ago and has been trending downward ever since.

Make sure you take a look at where Sweden stands when compared to everyone else. For a country that imposed no odious lock downs, their numbers are quite good, and in fact beat nations like Italy and the United Kingdom, which imposed strict rules and house arrests.

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Another professor arrested for lying about ties to China

9:07 pm

This is beginning to be a weekly event: Today another professor, this time from Texas A&M, was arrested for lying in grant applications by not disclosing his university affiliations in China.

Professor Zhengdong Cheng, 53, is charged with conspiracy, making false statements and wire fraud. Cheng led a team conducting research for NASA while secretly working with China, according to federal investigators.

“Dr. Cheng is accused of hiding his affiliation with the Guangdong University of Technology, along with other foreign universities, while disregarding the rules established under his NASA contract during his employment at TAMU,” said FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge Perrye K. Turner.

More and more it looks to me as if China cannot invent anything themselves, only update what they steal.

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COVID-19: The epidemic is ending, why do government restrictions remain?

3:45 pm

This essay is going to include a number of graphs [data source], showing the daily numbers related to the Wuhan virus since the beginning of the epidemic. All show that the epidemic is truly tapering off or ending, regardless of where you live. All also strongly suggest that the lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates, and the many other odious rules that were imposed initially for just a few weeks to prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed but have remained in force now for many months should immediately be cancelled or removed.

And yet, these restrictions remain, in one form or another, with some rules (such as the mandate to wear masks) being expanded, sometimes to the point of idiocy. That they remain proves again that those lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates and other rules had little to do with the disease. Instead their goal was to impose new authoritarian rules on the citizenry, meant to establish new precedents of power and control for the petty dictators who wish to rule us like servants.

Daily mortality of COVID-19 across the entire United States

The first graph to the right shows the daily deaths across the entire United States. As you can see, after reaching a peak in late April, the disease began fading with the coming of warmer weather, as these seasonal flu-like diseases always do. Then, beginning in early July we saw a slow new rise that peaked in early August and has since begun tapering off.

The second peak is puzzling for a seasonal disease, but we might be able to explain it by thinking about the consequences of the lock downs. Normally a seasonal disease hits, and than fades. Normally however there are no lock downs and restrictions, which means the virus has a chance to quickly spread throughout the population, reach herd immunity, and then die.

This time however we decided to slow the disease’s spread, which means that at some point, when those restrictions were eased (not removed) we were guaranteed to see a new uptick. This is what has happened, though the uptick as should be expected is relatively small, nowhere near as severe as the initial peak.

In fact, to understand the true impact of this virus it is essential to recognize several very important components of these death numbers. First, these numbers are likely exaggerated, by at least 25%. Hospitals get more money if they claim a death came from COVID-19, so they have a strong incentive to assign the cause of death to COVID-19, even when it was only a minor factor. There is ample evidence this has been happening.

These extra benefits have also meant that COVID-19 has cured the flu! This year will see the fewest flu deaths ever, now estimated to be only 6,605 total, an absurdly low number compared to every other year, ever. In other words, of the 168,000 or so deaths assigned to the Wuhan flu a large percentage, maybe as much as half, might actually be cases that would have died (or did die) from the flu.

All told, these numbers tell us that the total deaths this year are simply not much higher than in past years, that they have either been overstated or assigned incorrectly to COVID-19. A hard look instead suggests actually that this year’s epidemic was essentially nothing more than a somewhat worse flu season, painful, but hardly justifying the panic that we’ve seen.

Second, the disease’s mortality continues to be confined almost entirely with the aged sick, with 80% of all COVID-19 deaths occurring in people over 65. Like the flu, the Wuhan flu carries practically no threat for the young and the healthy. If anything, the sooner they can all get infected, the sooner the epidemic will end, actually producing the fewest deaths because the healthy population will choke it off before it can reach the vulnerable parts of the population.

Unfortunately, we did not let this happen, and the consequences for the older population is tragic, as shown by the next two graphs.
» Read more

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Russia to continue bilateral space negotiations with U.S.

9:28 am

According to one Russian foreign policy official, the Putin government will continue bilateral space negotiations with United States in connection with both its Artemis Accords (designed to encourage private ownership in space) and the military doctrines in space recently set forth by the U.S. Space Force.

The official also made note of a Russian-Chinese agreement related to the use of space, which seems to counter what the Trump administration is pushing with the Artemis Accords. However, the fact that these bilateral agreements and negotiations now exist actually gets the U.S. what it wants, foreign treaties that set out goals and rules that bypass the restrictions of the Outer Space Treaty. Those restrictions make private ownership in space legally questionable. That Russia is willing to continue negotiations with the U.S. means that it might agree eventually to some framework that allows private property in space, in order to remain a partner in the Trump administrations Artemis lunar project.

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Dying Democratic Cities

12:40 pm

Saks Fifth Avenue, summer 2020
Saks Fifth Avenue in 2020 NYC.

Want to move to one of America’s big urban cities? Ever imagine having a penthouse apartment close to or even in downtown so that you could walk to the theater? Well, the options are endless, and the cost is plummeting. It’s a buyer’s market! Just take a look:

None of these trends are new. American cities have been generally suffering since the end of World War II, though for the past few decades they have seen a partial renewal that did not bring them back to the halcyon days of the past but at least made them look vibrant and alive.

The last few months however have seen a perfect storm of circumstances that have led to a major crash, destroying all the gains made in the recent past.
» Read more

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Another SLS screw-up related to Europa Clipper

3:16 pm

Despite being required for years by a legal congressional mandate to use SLS to launch Europa Clipper to the moon of Jupiter, NASA engineers have suddenly discovered unspecified “compatibility issues” that might make use of the rocket problematic.

At an Aug. 17 meeting of NASA’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee, Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said the Europa Clipper mission had recently discovered compatibility issues involving the Space Launch System, the vehicle preferred by Congress to launch the spacecraft. “There have been some issues that have been uncovered just recently,” she said of the use of SLS for Europa Clipper. “We are in a lot of conversations right now with human exploration and others within the agency about what kind of steps we can take going forward.”

She did not elaborate on the compatibility issues regarding SLS. Such issues, industry sources say, likely involve the environment the spacecraft would experience during launch, such as vibrations. That environment would be very different for Europa Clipper, a relatively small spacecraft encapsulated within a payload fairing, than for the Orion spacecraft that will be the payload for most SLS launches.

“We are currently working to identify and resolve potential hardware compatibility issues and will have more information once a full analysis has been conducted,” NASA spokesperson Alana Johnson said in an Aug. 18 statement to SpaceNews. “Preliminary analysis suggests that launching Clipper may require special hardware adjustments, depending on the launch vehicle.”

This is a joke. It is also absurd and disgusting. Finally, it is also par for the course for NASA and all of today’s government, at all levels. They can’t do anything competently. From the beginning Europa Clipper was mandated to fly on SLS. And yet, they didn’t design the two to be compatible?

Based on this example we should of course demand that the government and these bureaucrats be given more power and more control over our lives. Of course.

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Conservative firebrand Loomer easily wins Republican primary

9:25 pm

A good sign: Conservative firebrand and outsider Laura Loomer easily won her Republican primary today in Florida, beating five opponents by a large margin.

Loomer gained prominence on social media over the past few years for a number of stunts, including handcuffing herself to Twitter’s headquarters to protest her suspension from the platform and hopping the fence at Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s house to protest immigration. In addition to her suspension from Twitter, Loomer has also been suspended from GoFundMe, Facebook, Uber, and Lyft.

After being suspended from multiple platforms, Loomer’s campaign message was that of free speech, “making America safe again,” and the Second Amendment. With the help of large donors, Loomer raised more than $1 million while campaigning.

She will now face the Democratic incumbent, Lois Frankel, in the November election.

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More data from Sweden demonstrates failure of lock downs everywhere else

7:06 pm

Link here. Sweden imposed almost no rules when the Wuhan virus arrived. And though Sweden’s death toll was higher than many other places, consider this:

Of the 5,783 deaths, how many do you think were of people under the age of 40-years-old? 20%? 10%? No. Not even close. In Sweden, 26 people under the age of 40-years-old have died from COVID-19. That means less than one-half of one percent of the deaths associated with the coronavirus were of people younger than middle age. What’s more is that they have now essentially flattened the curve completely to the point that they often report zero deaths on any given day. [emphasis in original]

Also, only one school-age child died. Only one.

This is not a disease to be feared if you are healthy, especially if you are healthy and young. We should stop panicking.

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Minor FBI official pleads guilty of altering evidence in Russian collusion hoax

12:01 pm

Yawn: The so-called Durham investigation into the effort by high-level FBI and Justice Department officials to misuse their power to try to overthrow the election of President Trump has gotten its first guilty plea, that of a minor FBI lawyer who had altered evidence in order to help justify the FISA warrant against Carter Page that made possibly the political spying on the Trump campaign and administration.

Clinesmith was charged in federal court in Washington D.C. with one count of making a false statement for altering information he had received from the CIA in June 2017 to hide the fact that Trump campaign official Carter Page was a source for the Agency. The alteration caused the Justice Department to make a false representation to the FISA Court that approved surveillance of Page for nearly a year, the criminal information filed by Durham states.

Clinesmith “did willfully and knowingly make and use a false writing and document knowing the same to contain a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement and entry in a matter before the jurisdiction of the executive branch and judicial branch,” the court filing said.

The statement Clinesmith’s lawyer released to the Washington Post is especially laughable:

“Kevin deeply regrets having altered the email. It was never his intent to mislead the court or his colleagues as he believed the information he relayed was accurate. But Kevin understands what he did was wrong and accepts responsibility,” the lawyer told the Post. [emphasis mine]

“It was never his intent.” What a bald-faced lie. Clinesmith was told by the CIA that Carter Page was a source of information for them. He then consciously changes the words in a CIA email (which stated as much) so that it stated the exact opposite. This faked evidence is then included in the warrant request presented to the FISA court to justify spying on Page, and the Trump administration. If the FISA court had known Page was a CIA source, the entire FISA warrant request, as written, would have made no sense, and would have been denied.

Regardless, while it is good that this guy has plead guilty, he is small potatoes. Unless some of the big fish get fried — such as James Comey and Andrew McCabe and maybe even Barack Obama — this investigation is junk and the first administrative coup attempt by an unelected bureaucracy will go unpunished, guaranteeing more such coup attempts in the future.

Or to put it even more bluntly, since the administrative state is tightly aligned with the Democratic Party, it will become impossible for anyone from any other party to ever gain power ever again. For even if they should win an election, that administrative state will quickly move to remove them, under false pretenses, knowing it will not be punished for voiding a legal election.

A more hopeful take would be to say that Clinesmith has struck a deal and is going to provide the information necessary to indict these big fish. Recent history has not born out such hopeful takes, however, as the Justice Department, under Republican rule, even under the Trump administration, has routinely failed to follow through in this manner. Instead, they scapegoat the people at the bottom (maybe), and then make excuses for those in charge.

We shall see.

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“The disease may recede, but the stigma lingers.”

9:11 am

Link here. The author notes how his 21-year-old daughter tested positive for the Wuhan virus, exhibited no symptoms at any time, and yet finds now herself too often treated like a leper to be avoided in terror. He then provides a magnificent analysis of this disease’s true threat, which is practically nothing at all when put in proper perspective. Consider just this one example provided by him:

The CDC discloses in only six percent of all coronavirus deaths, “COVID was the only cause” mentioned. For the other ninety-four percent, “there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.” There were 115,495 fatalities where patients got admitted to the hospital with “influenza and/or pneumonia.” Another 93,393 checked in with respiratory failure, while 35,167 arrived amid cardiac arrest. Yet hospital administrators sign COVID on death certificates one hundred percent of the time. Early on, Dr. Deborah Birx publicized the probability that medical facilities overstate numbers of actual coronavirus fatalities

Of U.S.165,000 casualties attributed to COVID, six percent translates that less than ten thousand fatalities were otherwise healthy.

He also notes this:

Over the past couple of weeks, the media, with lackey doctors Fauci and Gottlieb providing imprimatur, double down on hysteria as for several days, COVID cases spiked above 70,000. Even Republican governors cowed under pressure as many states slow or halt reopening economies. For perspective, for the six-month Oct-April 2020, CDC reports up to 56,000,000 seasonal flu cases. This calculates to over 300,000 per day. Currently, the official COVID count stands just over 5 million. Does anyone, ever, refer our annual flu “tradition” as a pandemic? During the recent case spike, deaths never got above 55 percent of the April peaks.

There’s lots more, if only people were willing to read it and put aside their false terror of this disease. Sadly, they are not. His accurate analysis will fall on deaf ears.

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It ain’t the national elections in November that matter

2:20 pm

The Declaration of Independence

Much analysis and punditry is on-going in both the conservative and liberal press on whether Trump or Biden will win the presidential election come November. Similarly, those same pundits spend much ink considering the fate of the House and Senate. Will the Republicans retake the House? Will the Democrats retake the Senate?

All important. The fate of our country hangs in the balance, and based on the irrational behavior of the Congressional Democrats these past four years, giving them control of both houses of Congress will not bode well for the nation, especially if the increasingly mentally-incapacitated Joe Biden wins the presidency. Since the 2016 election the Democrats and Washington administrative state have foisted on us a fake Russian collusion investigation and a fake impeachment trial against Trump. They clearly wish to do more. If they win both houses and Trump wins the presidency I predict that within six months they will move to remove him from office, using another set of fake charges but really instigated by their blind hatred of Trump and their refusal to accept defeat in an election.

Even, so these national elections are not the most important elections coming in November. What really will tell the tale for the future is how the elections at the local and state levels play out. For you see, it is those governments by their very actions that give us a peek into the future. What they do will percolate upward with time.

Let us do a quick survey of some of the worst local governments to get an idea who really should be thrown out of office.
» Read more

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Air Force terminates development contracts to ULA, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman

9:44 am

In awarding ULA and SpaceX exclusive launch rights for all launches through 2026, the Air Force also decided to end prematurely the development contracts to ULA, Blue Origin, and Northrop Grumman aimed at helping these companies develop new rockets.

An issue at hand is the termination of the Launch Service Agreement contracts that the Air Force awarded in October 2018 to Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman, as well as to ULA. The purpose of the agreements was to help Phase 2 competitors pay for launch vehicle development and infrastructure. Blue Origin received $500 million; Northrop Grumman $792 million and ULA $967 million. The funds were to be spread out through 2024, and the Air Force from the beginning said the LSAs would be terminated with those companies that did not win a Phase 2 procurement contract.

Despite political pressure to not end the LSAs, the agreements will be terminated, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Will Roper said Aug. 7 during a video conference with reporters. “We will work with those two companies to determine the right point to tie off their work under the LSA agreements,” Roper said. The intent of the LSAs “was to create a more competitive environment leading into Phase 2,” he said. “The point is not to carry them indefinitely.”

LSA funds supported the development of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and Northrop Grumman’s OmegA launch vehicle. ULA will continue to receive funds for its Vulcan Centaur vehicle.

Almost immediately after the award of these contracts was announced in 2018, ULA and Blue Origin announced one year delays in the development of Vulcan and New Glenn. Apparently, meeting the additional requirements of military’s bureaucracy in exchange for getting the cash slowed development.

Now they won’t be getting a large part of that cash, making the decision to take it a deal with the devil. The delay in development has definitely hurt both companies in their competition with SpaceX. First, it likely has raised the cost and complexity of their new rockets, making it harder to compete in price. Second, the delay has given SpaceX more time to grab more customers while improving its own rockets.

SpaceX initially protested not getting a share of this development money, but has subsequently chosen to no longer pursue such government money for Starship because it doesn’t want itself hampered by obtuse government officials and their mindless requirements.

Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman’s Omega rocket is almost certainly dead. That company took the old big space company approach, structuring development around government cash. Without it there is no R&D money at Northrop Grumman to continue work. Furthermore, Omega was designed to serve only once customer, the military. Without any launch contracts there are no customers for Omega, especially because it likely has too high a launch price.

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Dentists: Serious health issues from overuse of masks

2:30 pm

Dentists are now reporting an upsurge in a range of serious dental issues caused by the overuse and misuse of masks, mandated by government.

The new oral hygiene issue — caused by, you guessed it, wearing a mask all the time to prevent the spread of the coronavirus — is leading to all kinds of dental disasters like decaying teeth, receding gum lines and seriously sour breath. “We’re seeing inflammation in people’s gums that have been healthy forever, and cavities in people who have never had them before,” says Dr. Rob Ramondi, a dentist and co-founder of One Manhattan Dental. “About 50% of our patients are being impacted by this, [so] we decided to name it ‘mask mouth’ — after ‘meth mouth.’ ”

…While mask mouth isn’t quite as obvious, if left untreated, the results could be equally harmful. “Gum disease — or periodontal disease — will eventually lead to strokes and an increased risk of heart attacks,” says Dr. Marc Sclafani, another co-founder of One Manhattan Dental. He says the stinky syndrome is triggered by face coverings since wearing a mask increases the dryness of the mouth — and a buildup of bad bacteria. [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the big lie, “preventing the spread of the coronavirus.” It can’t be done, no one until June ever thought it was possible, and to claim it now suggests a willful stupidity, a blindness to reality, or a eager desire to trumpet a lie for political purposes.

Meanwhile, the health of Americans will continue to suffer, just as their economic situation and their basic rights under the Constitution have suffered. All based on a big lie.

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European health officials: Masks are useless, maybe a health problem

12:14 pm

They must be white supremacists! Leading health officials in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden continue to state that there is no scientific evidence masks can prevent transmission of COVID-19, while there is ample evidence that their improper use can lead to many other heath issues.

Others, echoing statements similar to the US Surgeon General from early March, said masks could make individuals sicker and exacerbate the spread of the virus.

“Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,” said Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment [Holland]. “There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.”

The point here is that research into the ability of masks to block transmission of a virus like COVID-19 is presently very unsettled and unclear. However, the evidence that masks, when used improperly (as almost everyone does) can be unsanitary and actual transmission points for disease is well documented.

Under such conditions it is unconscionable for governments to mandate their use.

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