Cuomo Admits America IS that Great!

Timothy Birdnow

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo finally admits that America has the best healthcare system in the world.

From the Daily Wire:

"What is justice? Who can we prosecute for those deaths? Nobody," Cuomo said to the reporter. "Nobody.Mother nature. G-d. Where did this virus come from? People are going to die by this virus. That is the truth. Best hospital system on the globe, I believe we have. Best doctors, best nurses who have responded like heroes, every medication, ventilators, the health system wants for nothing. We worked it out so we always had available beds. Nobody was deprived of a bed or medical coverage in any way..."

Now Cuomo was defending himself when asked about why he forced nursing homes to accept infected elderly. He was clearly trying to say he thought it was a good idea at the time.

Andrew Cuomo was the man who said "America was never that great" and yet he defends his bad decision by arguing that we have the best healthcare in the world. Strange; didn't he support the massive government takeover of that very "best in the world" system?

But you have to actually let the system work as designed. Cuomo threw a monkey wrench in the machine, and then is surprised when it didn't work.

Typical liberal.

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A Chill Wind Blowing in Israel

Timothy Birdnow

Things are happening in Israel that are being eclipsed by the Coronavirus pandemic. And they may have a profound effect on world affairs.

First, Benjamin Netanyahu has formed a coalition government and is preparing to move forward with the Trump plan to declare Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria now held by Palestine.

This has the potential to stir up a lot of trouble.

Second, the Chinese Ambassador to Israel was found dead in his home - not long after President Trump sought to limit Israeli investing with China.

While there were no signs of foul play, the very suspicious nature of Du Wei (ditty, ditty dum ditty Du) - and the already defensive nature of the Chicoms as their hand in the pandemic is increasingly evident - makes one worry about how China will respond.

Du Wei is believed to have died of a heart attack. Of course, there are ways to cause a heart attack...

At the best of times the Chinese Communists are paranoid; it goes with the territory when you are the largest slaveholders in the world. But given the fact that China was at a minimum guilty of hiding the degree of infection in Wuhan and may well have created this virus to attack American commerce they are going to be doubly paranoid, and apt to blame some people. And since Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power, and is a friend of the United States, they may be prepared to take some retaliatory action.

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Black Rock Taking Over America

Timothy Birdnow

Money is power and the titanic amounts about to be spent on recovering from something that didn't need to happen can only empower big government - and the plutocrats who use their influence to take advantage. It looks like Black Rock is essentially going to take over the management of the U.S. economy. Call it Corporatism or Fascist economics, either way America isn't going to be what she was.

The Dawn of the Black Rock Era

From the article:

Of course, BlackRock has been angling for a government takeover for a while. CEO Larry Fink famously "built a shadow government” of former agency officials as part of an influence initiative to become Hillary Clinton’s Treasury Secretary during her 2016 campaign; but that effort was for naught when Hillary lost. Fink then pivoted and became part of the main private-sector advisory organization to Donald Trump, but that, too, was quickly disbanded.

BlackRock’s governmental ambitions aren’t just domestic. Currently, BlackRock is managing U.S. securities purchases for the central bank of Israel. Philipp Hildebrand, who used to run Switzerland’s central bank, is a BlackRock vice chairman. George Osborne, the former U.K. chancellor, is a senior adviser. Friedrich Merz, a former high-ranking member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party, was chairman of BlackRock Deutschland until last month, when he stepped down to focus on his campaign to replace Merkel as chancellor. In Mexico, BlackRock handles the country’s pension funds, while simultaneously owning the companies they invest in. It also secured a contract with the European Commission to advise on a project to integrate climate change into EU banking regulation. Did I mention that BlackRock is the world’s largest institutional investor in fossil fuels?

And while BlackRock has diverged from the Goldman model, pursuing policy and money management more than personnel, they’ve also got a personnel coup in the works. That’s because Larry Fink has positioned himself in the shirt pocket of the Biden administration, and he has in turn been shortlisted in some circles for the position he’s lusted after for years: Treasury Secretary. Giving him that post would have a profound effect: The Fed’s reliance on BlackRock to oversee the Trump bailout strategy means that the company would be extremely influential in a second Trump term; that influence would be amplified even further in a Biden presidency, if Fink was indeed granted that role.

America has the best government money can buy. While I'm happy to see Goldman Sachs out - they are the architects of so many of the globalist policies that have so decimated the United States - I doubt Black Rock stewardship will be any better. What is missing is a policy that actually seeks to serve the American People.

And don't think Black Rock will help steer us away from dependence on Chinese commerce.


Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock.

So the Internationalists remain firmly entrenched in power. The baton may pass from Goldman Sachs to Blackrock, but the ships sail in the same easterly direction.


I don't know how many people remember the old '70's film Rollerball, but it is essentially about a world governed entirely by international corporations. You were an employee of the corporation in some capacity or other and they ran your life - and provided for your needs. There were no longer any governments, just the unelected ruling class of corporate managers. It was quite prescient; we would have socialism without an intermediary civil government.

I fear that's where we've been heading for some time. Sadly, this probably will only accelerate the process.

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My Life...My Choice!

James Doogue:

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War Games Show China Would Win

Timothy Birdnow

According to the U.K. Daily Mail:

The US would lose a war with Chinafought in the Pacific, is unable to defend Taiwan from an invasion and fears the Guam military base is at risk now, US defense sources have warned.

'Eye-opening' Pentagon war games have revealed growing fears the US is vulnerable to threats from China and that any attack would lead to the US 'suffering capital losses', the sources said.

The worrying analysis is expected to come to light in the Pentagon's 2020 China military power report this summer.

US defense sources told The Times that one Pentagon simulation based on the year 2030 when China would have new attack submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers resulted in the US being overwhelmed by the nation's force.

The threat is more immediate than 2030, however, withevery US base in the Indo-Pacific Command region considered to be at risk of attack now because China has ramped up its supply of medium-range ballistic missiles.

The US island territory Guam, home to three US military bases, is a particular concern, the games revealed.

I find this situation somewhat reminiscent of the Russo-Japanese War. The Russians were absolutely convinced the were undefeatable, especially by an Asian nation. But they were half a world away and the Japanese were right there, and guess who won? It established Japan as a world power and accelerated the decline of Russia, which collapsed just a little over a decade later.

Are we the new Russians?

America is certainly much like Czarist Russia; we are over-centralized, over-bureaucratized, regulated, over-taxed. While we are much wealthier and more industrialized than the Czarists ever were, we are also at a point where we have made ourselves hostage to foreign powers and their economic strings. How do you wage war with a nation that owns large swaths of your economy? War with China would be rather like a colony going to war with the colonial empire that rules them. It's enormously difficult. We voluntarily made ourselves a colony of China when we let them buy up our national debt and purchase American corporations and American land.

If a foreign power owns you, or a sizable portion of your national wealth, you are a colony.

Russia at least was the colonizer prior to their war with Japan.

So we go to war with China and what happens? They cut off our pharmaceuticals, all of them. They cut off our electronics. They cut off all the cheap goods. How long can we fight from that vantage point?

That was the intent of the internationalists; they wanted to do what France did with the European Common Market/Union. France devised this sinister plan after the Second World War in which they tied their economy to Germany so that the Germans dared not ever attack them again. They sought a political and economic Anschluss with the Germans. The end result was the creation of a European nation, a true international entity. Many of the world's elites wanted that for us as well, and so we've tied our economy to the Chinese with the will-o-the-wisp of "free trade" which was never free to begin with (how can you have free trade with a country ruled by a government  that essentially owns or countrols all of their own businesses?)

The "interconnected world" scheme has failed to bring us any real peace; there have been more wars since they started implementing this than ever. But it does empower the tyrants and the warmongers. And now we have a Communist China that can defeat us in a traditional standing-army war.

I think we are in one of the most dangerous periods in human history, and have been for a bit (although most people haven't been aware of the danger.) We have the Islamists, who have never settled their score with us. We have the Russians, not as powerful as the Soviets but dreaming of becoming so and possessing a very dangerous nuclear arsenal. We have China, the enemy of all Mankind. And we have the worst thing of all, Western Progressivism/Socialism. That is the cancer eating out our insides.

As the Bible puts it, there is the King of the South, of the North (Gog and Magog lived on the north shore of the Black Sea), of the East in China, and the Great and Terrible King - the forces of Progressivism and the "New World Order". The table appears to be set.

You don't have to be a Christian or some Bible thumper to not see that we are in precisely the position that the Books of Ezekial, Daniel, and Revelation warned about. Coincidence or Divine prophecy, either way we are in the same pickle.

And like Babylon in one hour this great city may be undone.

There is still time - but not much.

The Bible says that ships will watch from afar as the city burns, crying and lamenting because they were made rich with trade with the great city and now it is all gone, a habitation of demons and foul and unclean birds.

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Petition to Kill H.R. 666 6 Pushed by "The Beast" Aka Nancy Pelosi

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a petition to demand government drop plans to spy on Americans and force vaccinations.

From the petition:

As government agencies prepare to "re-open" society, serious concerns have been raised about federal and state plans to track people - using smartphones and other technologies - who have been infected with the coronavirus.

In an almost unbelieveable move, Democrats in the House of Representatives have filed a bill called 'H.R. 6666 -COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone,' or the TRACE Act.

If passed, the measure would give the federal government $100 BILLION for"diagnostic testing for COVID–19, to trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals, and to support the quarantine of such contacts..."

And, most chillingly, the bill would alsoprovidefor "services" related to the "quarantine[of people] at their residences."

What does that mean? Would government agents be charged with keeping citizens under "house arrest?"

This is outrageous, and it's happening right now. If Congress passes a federal law mandating contact tracing, the possibility for abuse - at federal, state, and local levels -boggles the mind.

Please sign this urgent petition which urges Congress and state governors to reject mandatory government contact tracing and surveillance, especially using smartphone technology.

Read the rest of the intro; it's disturbing. Then sign the petition.

BTW get the number they assigned it. No doubt Pelosi and her Godless friends thought that was funny!

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The Never Surrender Left

Timothy Birdnow

After having lost at the Supreme Court level, this leftist health secretary in Wisconsin tried to impose the radical lockdowns by getting individual counties to impose her own orders with fill-in-the-blank edicts.

From the article:

The allegation comes in a legal brief filed Friday afternoon in a separate lawsuit that challenges restrictions on constitutional grounds. That lawsuit was filed last week by private citizens Jere Fabick and Larry Chapman. Their court filing claims Palm began contacting city and county health departments immediately after the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday, enabling identical emergency orders to be put into place in certain parts of the state. The lawsuit notes that Dane County enacted the entire text of the state's order which has just been stuck down by the court. Other cities and counties modified the state's order, and some have issued no local restrictions.

The petition asks the court to strike down the remaining local orders that restrict travel, the freedom to assemble, and the freedom to practice religion.

The Supreme Court's 4-3 ruling on Wednesday said the state health department's emergency order amounted to rules that need to be reviewed by the legislature. The separate Fabick-Chapman lawsuit says that county and local emergency orders violate rights protected under the state constitution.

Typical Leftists; they lost in court but are trying to brazenly violate the order and force multiple lawsuits against individual counties. This health secretary should be cited for contempt of court. She won't be, of course, but she should be.

That is one of the maddening things about liberals; they want what they want and they are determined to get it hook or by crook. They are content to cheat, lie, steal, and even kill to get their way.

Also, one must ask why this woman was so utterly determined to get her lockdown? That is more than professional advocacy. It shows there are other things at work with all of this, political machinations.

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Soros and the Snot Revolution

Timothy Birdnow

And who is smiling at this snotty revolution we have started with Covid 19?

You know.

George Soros: We’re now in ‘revolutionary moment’ that allows us to achieve the ‘inconceivable’

"Even before the pandemic hit, I realized that we were in a revolutionary moment where what would be impossible or even inconceivable in normal times had become not only possible, but probably absolutely necessary,” he said during an interview on May 11.

Let us hope he does not live to see this revolution consummated. That guy is pure evil.

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Smoke 'em if You got 'em

Timothy Birdnow

Maybe they should be allowed to start smoking. After all, you can SEE where the "infected" air is going! And nicotine kills germs..

New MLB Rules: Shower at Home, Don't Spit, No Mascots

It appears that nicotine may well be protecting smokers from COVID 19. From the U.K. Guardian:

So if nicotine works, and you can't spit, maybe we should revive the old fashioned smoking baseball player? I mean, if we are going to do crazy stuff anyway...

You may say I'm a dreamer, but aren't we living in a fantasy world now, where people are locked away, wearing masks, and not working? These are surreal times. So why not get ballplayers to puffing away on those noxious weeds? After all, we can at least see where their exhalation is going. In fact, if it woks in baseball then we can spread it to the general population. Local officials can order the public to smoke while they are out and about, so everyone can see where their germy breath is going. Now some of you may think this proposal isn't very Swift, but I say it is perhaps past time we started blackening a few lungs to save them! After all, pot shops and liquor stores have been deemed essential services - why not cigarette stores! If America is to become fat, liquored up, and stoned, why not smoke some tobacco in the process?

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Genesis of the Pandemic Panic

Timothy Birdnow

Here is an article about the genesis of the whole lockdown/social distancing notion.It's fascinating because it is a reasonably new idea and was invented by computer modelers, not epidemiologists or virologists.

From the article:

Let’s start with the phrase social distancing, which has mutated into forced human separation. The first I had heard it was in the 2009 movie Contagion. The first time it appeared in the New York Times was February 12, 2006:

If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have is "social distancing,” which is the new politically correct way of saying "quarantine.”

But distancing also encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face masks, staying out of elevators — and the [elbow] bump. Such stratagems, those experts say, will rewrite the ways we interact, at least during the weeks when the waves of influenza are washing over us.

Maybe you don’t remember that the avian flu of 2006 didn’t amount to much. It’s true, despite all the extreme warnings about its lethality, H5N1 didn’t turn into muchat all. What it did do, however, was send the existing president, George W. Bush, to the library to read about the 1918 flu and its catastrophic results. He asked for some experts to submit some plans to him about what to do when the real thing comes along.

The New York Times (April 22, 2020) tells the story from there:

Fourteen years ago, two federal government doctors, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher, met with a colleague at a burger joint in suburban Washington for a final review of a proposal they knew would be treated like a piñata: telling Americans to stay home from work and school the next time the country was hit by a deadly pandemic.

When they presented their plan not long after, it was met with skepticism and a degree of ridicule by senior officials, who like others in the United States had grown accustomed to relying on the pharmaceutical industry, with its ever-growing array of new treatments, to confront evolving health challenges.

Drs. Hatchett and Mecher were proposing instead that Americans in some places might have to turn back to an approach, self-isolation, first widely employed in the Middle Ages."

And here's a kick!:

Notice that in the course of this planning, neither legal nor economic experts were brought in to consult and advise. Instead it fell to Mecher (formerly of Chicago and an intensive care doctor with no previous expertise in pandemics) and the oncologist Hatchett.

But what is this mention of the high-school daughter of 14? Her name is Laura M. Glass, and she recently declined to be interviewed when the Albuquerque Journal did a deep dive of this history.

Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people – family members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations – interact. What she discovered was that school kids come in contact with about 140 people a day, more than any other group. Based on that finding, her program showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if the schools were closed.

Laura’s name appears on the foundational paper arguing for lockdowns and forced human separation. That paper is Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza(2006). It set out a model for forced separation and applied it with good results backwards in time to 1957. They conclude with a chilling call for what amounts to a totalitarian lockdown, all stated very matter-of-factly.

Implementation of social distancing strategies is challenging. They likely must be imposed for the duration of the local epidemic and possibly until a strain-specific vaccine is developed and distributed. If compliance with the strategy is high over this period, an epidemic within a community can be averted. However, if neighboring communities do not also use these interventions, infected neighbors will continue to introduce influenza and prolong the local epidemic, albeit at a depressed level more easily accommodated by healthcare systems.

In other words, it was a high-school science experiment that eventually became law of the land, and through a circuitous route propelled not by science but politics.

The primary author of this paper was Robert J. Glass, a complex-systems analyst with Sandia National Laboratories. He had no medical training, much less an expertise in immunology or epidemiology.

That explains why Dr. D.A. Henderson, "who had been the leader of the international effort to eradicate smallpox,” completely rejected the whole scheme.

This is a fascinating article about a worldwide policy initiative created by a computer programmer and a fourteen year old high school girl.  (No wonder they are trotting out Greta Thurnberg to discuss this issue!)

Read it all!

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COVID Model Coding "A Mess"

Timothy Birdnow

Since most science is funded by governments these days it is inherently corrupt; it's a matter of giving the boss what he wants or getting fired. Governments want power, control, and more money. This CV thing has given them all of that. It was a dream come true for every would be potentate and every aspiring pharoah. It's why the whole Climate Change thing dragged on for a generation with scant evidence. And it's especially true of this. The main difference between this and other such scams in the past is that the media was completely on board and the public accepted the premise because it theoretically had a direct, personal impact on them. When pop stars start doing psa's for this you know you are being suckered by a slick advertising campaign.

From the U.K. Telegraph:

The model, credited with forcing the Government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is a "buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming”, says David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.

"In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.”

[...]

"The Imperial model works by using code to simulate transport links, population size, social networks and healthcare provisions to predict how coronavirus would spread. However, questions have since emerged over whether the model is accurate, after researchers released the code behind it, which in its original form was "thousands of lines” developed over more than 13 years.

In its initial form, developers claimed the code had been unreadable, with some parts looking "like they were machine translated from Fortran”, an old coding language, according to John Carmack, an American developer, who helped clean up the code before it was published online. Yet, the problems appear to go much deeper than messy coding.

Many have claimed that it is almost impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data, using the same code. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh reported such an issue, saying they got different results when they used different machines, and even in some cases, when they used the same machines.

"There appears to be a bug in either the creation or re-use of the network file. If we attempt two completely identical runs, only varying in that the second should use the network file produced by the first, the results are quite different,” the Edinburgh researchers wrote on the Github file.

After a discussion with one of the Github developers, a fix was later provided. This is said to be one of a number of bugs discovered within the system. The Github developers explained this by saying that the model is "stochastic”, and that "multiple runs with different seeds should be undertaken to see average behaviour”.

However, it has prompted questions from specialists,who say "models must be capable of passing the basic scientific test of producing the same results given the same initial set of parameters...otherwise, there is simply no way of knowing whether they will be reliable.”

But this was government funded research, and the work did not require anything but the desired results. Panicky predictions are much more desirable to the government bosses than are dry statements of "well, it might be a nasty flu bug but..."

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Reaching Herd Immunity Far Earlier than Expected

Timothy Birdnow

Herd immunity is going to be reached much earlier than thought.

From Judith Curry's blog:

The ‘herd immunity threshold’ (HIT) can be estimated from the basic reproduction rate of the epidemic, R₀– a measure of how many people, on average, each infected individual infects. Standard simple compartmental models of epidemic growth imply that the HIT equals {1 – 1/R₀}. Once the HIT is passed, the rate of new infections starts to decline, which should ensure that health systems will not thereafter be overwhelmed and makes it more practicable to take steps to eliminate the disease.

However, the Ferguson20 report estimated that relying on herd immunity would result in 81% of the UK and US populations becoming infected during the epidemic, mainly over a two-month period, based on an R₀ estimate of 2.4. These figures imply that the HIT is between 50% and 60%.[2]Their report implied that health systems would be overwhelmed, resulting in far more deaths. It claimed that only draconian government interventions could prevent this occurring. Such interventions were rapidly implemented in the UK, in most states of the US, and in various other countries, via highly disruptive and restrictive enforced ‘lockdowns’.

A notable exception was Sweden, which has continued to pursue a herd immunity-based strategy, relying on relatively modest social distancing policies. The Imperial College team estimated that, after those policies were introduced in mid-March, R₀ in Sweden was 2.5, with only a 2.5% probability that it was under 1.5.[3] The rapid spread of COVID-19 in the country in the second half of March suggests that R₀ is unlikely to have been significantly under 2.0.[4]

Very sensibly, the Swedish public health authority has surveyed the prevalence of infections by the SARS-COV-2 virus in Stockholm County, the earliest in Sweden hit by COVID-19. They thereby estimated that 17% of the population would have been infected by 11 April, rising to 25% by 1 May 2020.[5] Yet recorded new cases had stopped increasing by 11 April (Figure 1), as had net hospital admissions,[6]and both measures have fallen significantly since. That pattern indicates that the HIT had been reached by 11April, at which point only 17% of the population appear to have been infected.

How can it be true that the HIT has been reached in Stockholm County with only about 17% of the population having been infected, while an R₀ of 2.0 is normally taken to imply a HIT of 50%?

A recent paper (Gomes et al.[7]) provides the answer. It shows that variation between individuals in their susceptibility to infection and their propensity to infect others can cause the HIT to be much lower than it is in a homogeneous population. Standard simple compartmental epidemic models take no account of such variability. And the model used in the Ferguson20 study, while much more complex, appears only to take into account inhomogeneity arising from a very limited set of factors – notably geographic separation from other individuals and household size – with only a modest resulting impact on the growth of the epidemic.[8]Using a compartmental model modified to take such variability into account, with co-variability between susceptibility and infectivity arguably handled in a more realistic way than by Gomes et al., I confirm their finding that the HIT is indeed reached at a much lower level than when the population is homogeneous. That would explain why the HIT appears to have been passed in Stockholm by mid April. The same seems likely to be the case in other major cities and regions that have been badly affected by COVID-19.

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The Wonderful Carbon Dioxide

This from Jassy May:

Greening the Planet and Slouching Towards Paris

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Perhaps the best description of the Obama Administration I've ever read

Through eight years, I accepted the rules of the game. Obama was president. He won fair and square because the Republicans serially put up two milquetoast opponents who were incapable of offering a vision or articulating a message that inspired. John McCain had been an American wartime hero who stood by his men, refused early release, and withstood torture in the "Hanoi Hilton” 40 years earlier. But he had no business running for a presidency two generations later for which he was not prepared to fight and for which he had no vision. And then came Mitt Romney, his etch-a-sketch candidacy, his binders full of women, and his Romneycare, which served as the model for the Obamacare and which was the single most galvanizing issue in 2012 for Republican conservatives. In order to throw out Obamacare, the Republican Party offered us conservatives … what, Romneycare? Tough for us conservatives to sing in that tabernacle choir.

I accepted Obama. I never articulated his first name, and I never called him "president,” but I accepted the results and accepted that this Pretender was our country’s lawfully elected chief executive. I watched his arrogance, the unctuous way he carried himself literally with his nose up, the way he never held a railing while walking a stairway because he was too cool, the kinds of human dreck he regularly invited as his White House guests, and I accepted it all with the soft whisper, "This, too, shall pass.” I watched the Corrupt Journalist Corps idolize him, crown him a king, admire him as a messiah and a deity, and I accepted the milieu. This, too, in time would pass. It meant living through eight years of the deepest public corruption. Lois Lerner stealing an election by leveraging the awesome power of the Internal Revenue Service to close down legitimate conservative political groups. Eric Holder — the nobleman who urged people to kick enemies — bringing lawlessness and corruption into the Justice Department, even approving the "Fast and Furious” idea of releasing lethal weapons to Mexican drug lords in the cockamamie scheme to find out how they access and move their weapons. Glenn Beck exposed Obama’s Maoist communications director, Anita Dunn, who walked children through the White House. There was ACORN. Just one corruption after another.

Amid my speeches and writings throughout the Wasted Obama Decade, I never published a piece aimed at bringing down Obama before his term was up. He won. Although he is despicable beyond words, the rules of our game, as set forth in our precious Constitution, made him our president. That meant Americans would die needlessly because we had a commander in chief who was a Pretender and an Incompetent. But he won fair and square. So ISIS grew from a small terror band to a caliphate. ISIS-inspired terror attacks occurred in our homeland. Western Europe sustained terrible deadly attacks. Our American economy went nowhere. We micturated half a billion dollars down a toilet with Solyndra while trying to close down our energy sector, attacking the genius of our hydraulic fracturing, obstructing our oil exploration, blocking the construction of new pipelines that offered even more oil and more thousands of jobs. Instead, we got shovel-ready jobs that were not ready but rather were chummy payoffs to union heads and other political insiders. We got windmills suitable for blowhards. We got Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Benghazi as testimonial to her vision. We got Susan Rice, an idiot, raised paradoxically to head of national security after spending a day lying on five television stations about Benghazi and later going on to describe Bowe Bergdahl, a coward and deserter, as a hero who had served with honor and distinction. We got Loretta Lynch, who some thought would clean up Holder’s corruption of Justice, only to find that she ended up in bed with the Clintons at the height of the probe of Hillary’s corruption. We saw the world’s worst murderers freed from Gitmo so that they could rejoin the war against America.

And yet I accepted it all. Because if there are only two main parties in this country, and if the Republican RINOs refuse repeatedly to nominate a bona fide conservative who truly reflects the will of the rank-and-file voters whose ballots send them to Washington, then we are left with a Pretender like Obama, and he won fair and square.

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Why Accepting Two Million COVID-19 Deaths May be Better Than a National Lockdown

Selwyn Duke

We’ve heard much during the Wuhan flu crisis about a "worst case scenario” of two million dead Americans, a staggering number. But missing from the national conversation is something equally important:

What’s the worst case scenario given our present course of action, largely locking down the country and freezing life like an insect stuck in amber?

What if worse coming to worst means a great depression, a descent into tyranny, millions more dead from other causes and a permanently impoverished nation?

Almost the entire virus debate has centered around whether the experts are correct about the infectivity and virulence of the disease and in their projections (which have often been drastically wrong). But even if we assume that the experts having the government’s ear — and there are dissenters who don’t— are absolutely inerrant in their expressed judgments, there’s a problem with just "listening to the health professionals’” prescriptions:

Like most everyone else, these individuals have only a narrow range of expertise; they are epidemiologists, virologists, infectious disease specialists, etc.

They are not epidemiologists-cum-philosophers/political scientists/sociologists/economists.

So they provide counsel on how to achieve a narrow goal contemplated from a narrow perspective. This is not a put-down. It is their job to do just that.

Congruent with this, these experts consider the health-related consequences of the disease, not the civilizational-health related consequences of their cure — which may be worse than the disease.

The latter is the job of statesmen, commentators, academics, and the wider population. All these groups, unfortunately, are found wanting in this.

Unemployment claims are at a record high, but I don’t have to tell you how the current lockdowns are ravaging our economy. Many businesses and jobs will never come back, yet this concern not only is just the iceberg’s tip, it isn’t even, as critics may say, just about "money” — because money isn’t just about "money.”

Money represents resources, people’s capacity to obtain food, shelter, clothing, health care, education and everything else that preserves life and makes it worth living. Note here that poverty is associated with a host of negative health and health-related risks, such as a higher incidence of manifold diseases, depression, anxiety, stress-related disorders, suicide, domestic violence, child abuse and crime.

Yet even more must be considered. Remember now that if the following seems radical, it is a worst case scenario. And if we can consider the worst case scenario on one side of the equation, we must for balance and perspective consider the worst case scenario on the other side as well.

What if locking down the nation means causing a great depression lasting a decade or more?

What if this economic disaster leads, as history teaches it can, to the rise of demagogues and loss of freedom?

What if there are consequently millions more deaths from other causes due to economic malaise and descent toward tyranny?

What if, in other words, we essentially destroy our civilization as we know it?

Will it have been worth it to ensure there’d be fewer Wuhan virus deaths — even two million, shocking though that number is? Civilizational destruction, something permanent, would be a steep price to pay to combat a pandemic, something temporary.

Know that I’m not insensitive to the vulnerable’s plight. Near and dear to me are two people in an extreme high-risk category and a handful of others somewhat at risk, and I have an in-law physician relative who contracted the virus and is currently treating herself with hydroxychloroquine. But I also recognize the truth of economist Thomas Sowell’s observation that sometimes in life "there are no solutions; there are only tradeoffs.” Are we making the right tradeoff now?

I’ll emphasize that my worst case scenario isn’t at all fanciful. Many are concerned about a depression resulting from our lockdowns and about the erosion of freedom as people, as people will, trade liberty for security. In fact, The New York Times, of all entities, recently ran a headline warning, "For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power.”

"Leaders around the world have passed emergency decrees and legislation expanding their reach during the pandemic,” the paper writes in its subhead before asking, "Will they ever relinquish them?”

Anyone who grasps the nature of power — and of the power-hungry — won’t bet the answer is yes.

Now ask yourself: If the given amount of power is currently being seized, what would happen in an infinitely worse situation such as lockdown-caused depression and social upheaval?

Speaking of autocrats, the mainstream media have rightly been castigated for doing despotic China’s bidding and touting its "response” to the virus; never mind that China created this problem and that its response’s immediate effectiveness is actually unknown because Beijing lies like it breathes. But what if China has responded rightly, not in its tyrannical measures but in one respect?

What if Beijing’s apparent decision to get people back to work and accept virus-related deaths leaves it stronger over the long term? There is some possibility, a scary one, that China could emerge from this as the world’s superpower — a status it craves — under our worst case scenario.

Also consider Sweden. That it continues commerce and life largely unchanged and is striving for "herd immunity” may be instructive. Are we just prolonging the inevitable?

Of course, one lockdown motivation is to slow the virus’s spread so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed. But Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday that there won’t be a true turning point until a vaccine is developed. Yet some say this could be 18 months away, an eternity in lockdown terms.

In the meantime, since restoring normal commerce and freedom without experiencing increased virus contagion appears unlikely, focusing on developing herd immunity while insulating vulnerable groups may be the wiser course.

Remember, too, that we’ve been through this before. During the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, 675,000 Americans died; adjusted for today’s U.S. population this amounts to a bit more than two million people — exactly our worst case scenario number.

We weathered that pandemic, of course. But people were far different then, and, correspondingly, we’re far different politically today. If President Trump advocated the Swedish model and there were hundreds of thousands of deaths, never mind two million, every one would be laid at his doorstep and he’d likely be ousted from office (as it is, it was already suggestedlast month that Trump may be guilty of "negligent homicide”). The same could befall any governor acting likewise, never mind that he might have helped save the future — because the alternate future would never be known.

This is why I know certain things. No, I don’t have definitive answers; this is a fluid, serious situation with many unknowns, and we all should act responsibly and not claim knowledge we don’t possess. But I do know some questions, as posed above, that should be asked and maturely debated. I also know this won’t likely happen, given man’s nature in general and the state of our politics and media in particular.

This is why we’d better hope for a highly efficacious Wuhan virus treatment — and fast. Because if we’re going to lockdown our nation for months on end, well, we may learn the hard way that we might as well have just thrown away the key.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:11 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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China on the Brink of War?

Timothy Birdnow

I have always believed China posed an existential threat to the United States. I have further believed China is a paper tiger, one we largely created as part of terrible geopolitical and economic policy. And I've always believed China was going to attack us at some point.

Seems William L. Gensert agrees.

From his American Thinker article:

I believe that China's actions today may be telegraphing an intent we are choosing to ignore.They show all the signs of a nation preparing to attack America.China seeks a bespoke world run by China with "Chinese characteristics" — a dream that under Trump was drifting away.

China appears to be laying the groundwork for a "justified" attack on the United States, perhaps in the South China Sea or perhaps elsewhere.It will be a military attack, not an act of terrorism, and the excuse will be America's deliberate transmission of COVID-19 in Wuhan.

When the Chinese became accusatory, it's telling that they didn't blame the CIA, always the usual suspect.No, they blamed it on American soldiers.

American military deliberately infecting China is an act of war worthy of a military response.

In October, the 2019 World Military Games were held in Wuhan.Chinese media triumphantly trumpeted the Americans winning just eight medals, while China won 239.It was then that we supposedly infected Wuhan citizens with the "American virus."

China is now defenestrating foreign media, sending home reporters from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post at just the opportune moment.No nation wants journalists around when it is planning a sneak attack.

And with its economy ravaged by Trump's trade war and the virus shutdown, and now back at full production, while America's economy is in total shutdown and in the grip of an active pandemic, there will never be a better time to attack.

China is facing a demographic time bomb and has ten years to rewrite the facts on the ground.It is facing a quandary of epic proportions.It won't be long before it has the oldest population on the planet.Those people will be old before they are rich.

China's business model is existentially flawed.It has extraordinary debt that is multiples of its GDP, having grown exponentially through government funding of empty cities, military buildup, high-speed rail to nowhere, a Belt and Road initiative that's becoming obvious to partner countries as a means of colonialist extortion, and various other nonproductive government lending to CCP members.Its vaunted reserves will soon disappear.

China is also a nation, thanks to the "one child" initiative, that has hundreds of millions of young men with no prospect of marriage.Hundreds of millions of "incel" men make for either an angry and expendable fighting force or a bane upon society.

China is on the clock.Today, it is formidable, with a sophisticated and capable military.The Chinese may be able to win a confrontation, even a war, with the United States.Under Obama's policy of surrender, China had a chance of overtaking us economically while growing its military until its primacy was a fait accompli.But Trump killed that dream with his trade war, exposing the inherent weaknesses of the Chinese economy.And should the aftermath of the pandemic play out without interference, China's position in the world will be irreparably damaged.

What does China have to lose?

Do read the entire article. I've watched the situation in China for years and fully believe the ruling Communists are reaching a point where they either have to put up or shut up. They have no intention of shutting up.

This was SUPPOSED to be the Chinese century. They aren't going to let that go without a fight.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:57 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Refrigerants and Ozone Holes

Richard Cronin is a researcher who has written several papers on the ozone and the claims CFC'S are causing a hole.

Richard states:

RE: refrigerants and the putative ozone hole

Mind you, as we migrate to different refrigerants, the thermodynamic properties are different so the air conditioner machinery is different. Plus, because you have different machinery running less efficiently and at higher temperatures, you require different greases, lubricants, hoses, and gasketing.

The linked article mentions the "Final Solution” in the Montreal Protocol. That is, totally Chlorine-free refrigerants. Yup, R-1234yf for cars is totally Chlorine-free. It is also a powerful greenhouse gas (yuck, yuck, chuckle).

Also, R-1234 yf is toxic and flammable so if you are in a car accident and your refrigerant reservoir ruptures you are DOOMED !!

The original refrigerant for automobile air conditioners was R-12. The reduced chlorine substitute ( fluorine replacing chlorine) is R-134a. Globally, R-12 is still the most broadly used refrigerant in auto A/C. You can still buy R-12 over e-Bay or Amazon for older model cars.

Wait !! There’s more !!

The original refrigerant used in home air conditioners was R-22. The first reduced chlorine substitute was R410a. In the U.S., home air conditioners run about half as R-22, half as R410a. Again, you can buy R-22 on e-Bay or Amazon.

The spanking new chlorine-free substitute for home air conditioners is R-32. You’ll have to replace everybody’s home air conditioner and R-32 is flammable.

But that’s all we know for now.

I won’t talk about Chloro-fluoro gases (CFCs) used for plastic blow molding ( i.e. bubble wrap).

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:23 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The Dangers of Facemasks

David directs our attention thisaways:

Neurosurgeon Says Facemasks Pose Serious Risk to Healthy People

From the article:

saying that "masks pose serious risks to the healthy.”

First, Blaylock says, there is no scientific evidence that masks are effective against COVID-19 transmission. Pro-science people should care about this.

As for the scientific support for the use of face mask, a recent careful examination of the literature, in which 17 of the best studies were analyzed, concluded that, " None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.” Keep in mind, no studies have been done to demonstrate that either a cloth mask or the N95 mask has any effect on transmission of the COVID-19 virus. Any recommendations, therefore, have to be based on studies of influenza virus transmission. And, as you have seen, there is no conclusive evidence of their efficiency in controlling flu virus transmission.

It is also instructive to know that until recently, the CDC did not recommend wearing a face mask or covering of any kind, unless a person was known to be infected, that is, until recently. Non-infected people need not wear a mask. When a person has TB we have them wear a mask, not the entire community of non-infected. The recommendations by the CDC and the WHO are not based on any studies of this virus and have never been used to contain any other virus pandemic or epidemic in history.

Beyond the lack of scientific data to support wearing a mask as a deterrent to a virus, Blaylock says the more pressing concern is what can and will happen to the wearer.

Now that we have established that there is no scientific evidence necessitating the wearing of a face mask for prevention, are there dangers to wearing a face mask, especially for long periods? Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask. This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications.

There are studies to back that claim up.

In one such study, researchers surveyed 212 healthcare workers (47 males and 165 females) asking about presence of headaches with N95 mask use, duration of the headaches, type of headaches and if the person had preexisting headaches.

They found that about a third of the workers developed headaches with use of the mask, most had preexisting headaches that were worsened by the mask wearing, and 60% required pain medications for relief. As to the cause of the headaches, while straps and pressure from the mask could be causative, the bulk of the evidence points toward hypoxia and/or hypercapnia as the cause.

That is, a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood C02 (hypercapnia). It is known that the N95 mask, if worn for hours, can reduce blood oxygenation as much as 20%, which can lead to a loss of consciousness, as happened to the hapless fellow driving around alone in his car wearing an N95 mask, causing him to pass out, and to crash his car and sustain injuries.

I am sure that we have several cases of elderly individuals or any person with poor lung function passing out, hitting their head. This, of course, can lead to death.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Democrats Seek to Force Trump to Obey WHO

Timothy Birdnow

The President cannot be compelled to obey a foreign power. This is monstrously unconstitutional.

Democrat Senator's Bill Would Force Trump to Follow WHO Directions on Pandemics

From the article:

TheCOVID-19 International Response and Recovery Act(CIRRA), sponsored by Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), authorizes $9 billion in already-appropriated and new emergency funding to address the pandemic. It cedes the President’s executive authority to coordinate government responses in any future global health emergencies to the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international agencies.

The bill authorizes $2.8 billion in new and arrear payments to all UN Agencies including to the World Health Organization, UN Population Fund, Pan American Health Organization and the World Bank.

The bill would require the President and federal agencies to follow the lead of the World Health Organization. It achieves this by increasing funding for international agencies and by establishing multiple layers of new federal bureaucracy to align U.S. policy with global policy. The bill would make it harder for the U.S. to take unilateral decisions during pandemics, including travel restrictions like the ones put in place by the Trump Administration in February on all travel from China to the U.S.

Democrat lawmakers opposed the Trump Administration’s decision to halt payments to the WHO pending an investigation on whether its handling of the pandemic was politically influenced by China. Experts say the delayed response by WHO to inform the global community about the virus resulted in a greater loss of lives. COVID-19 has claimed the lives of nearly 300,000 people globally with close to 90,000 in the United States.

The bill would also circumvent President Trump’s decision to withhold funds to the UN Population Fund. The Trump administration revoked its funding citing its complicity in China’s coerced family planning programs.

This is truly astonishing in light of the World Health Organizations' cozy and protective relationship with China. The WHO has done more to protect the Chinese from blame for their actions in this worldwide pandemic than they have taken steps to protect the health of the world's population.

Ceding authority to them is walking very close to the definition of treason.

America must remember this.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:59 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Outsourcing Pandemics

Timothy Birdnow

A friend on Facebook named Cornelius Carroll made the following excellent point:

I added:

Like the Romans outsourcing their national defense and border security to the barbarian Germanic tribes, we in the West have sold our souls for cheaper and easier. There is a huge price to pay for that.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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