Timothy Birdnow

James Doogue and I were discussing the coming world depopulation, and I mentioned the mayhem that will cause to the world's ponzi schemes (like social security.) He mentioned Singapore's alternate system; I hadn't known about that.

James said:

The Maintenance of Parents Act 1995.

General article here.

Statistics here, Parents maintenance under Maintenance of Parents Act [Internet]. Singapore: Ministry of Social and Family Development; 2017.

Study looks at falilial responsibility in India, Bangladesh, China and Singapore.

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Timothy Birdnow

Looks like Venezuela is imposing price controls! And they want this for the U.S.

Venezuela Sets New Price Controls, with Eggs Costing More than a Month's Wages

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Timothy Birdnow

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy!

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler Tear Gassed by Federal Agents While in Crowd of Protesters

I dare you not to laugh.

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Timothy Birdnow

Dr. John Iaonidis says Wuhan  is a once-in-a-lifetime data failure.

From the article:

The answer surprised reporters, who probed for additional information.

"He died in a motorcycle accident,” Dr. Raul Pino clarified. "You could actually argue that it could have been the COVID-19 that caused him to crash. I don’t know the conclusion of that one.”

The anecdote is a ridiculous example of a real controversy that has inspired some colorful memes: what should define a COVID-19 death?

While the question is important, such incidents may be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg regarding the unreliability of COVID-19 data.

In May, a public radio station in Miami broke what soon became a national story. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had been conflating antibody and viral testing, obscuring key metrics lawmakers use to determine if they should reopen their respective economies.

The story was soon picked up by NPR, who spoke to an epidemiologist who condemned the practice.

"Reporting both serology and viral tests under the same category is not appropriate, as these two types of tests are very different and tell us different things," Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told NPR.

The Atlantic soon followed with an article that explained the agency was painting an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic. The practice, the writers said, was making it difficult to tell if more people were actually sick or had merely acquired antibodies from fighting off the virus.

In both of these reopening scenarios, the model depicted a catastrophic rebound of COVID-19 fatalities. As the ICL team itself put it, their model "illustrates the potential consequences of increasing mobility across the general population: in almost all cases, after 8 weeks, a 40% return to baseline [mobility] leads to an epidemic larger than the current wave.” Media reportsat the time touted the study’s dire warnings as reasons to stall the reopening process – even at its sluggish pace of recurring 2-week delays and extensions.

More than 8 weeks have passed since the publication of the ICL team’s warnings against reopening, meaning we can now see how their model performed.

As with other examples of ICL COVID modeling, their attempt to predict the effects of a US reopening can only be described as an embarrassing scientific failure.

The image below shows the three modeled scenarios from May, as depicted in the ICL report for the five states under consideration. Note that even under the "constant mobility” scenario of remaining under lockdown, their model predicted an increase in COVID deaths for every state except New York, which had already peaked. Under the reopening scenarios where mobility increased 20% and 40% respectively from its lockdown state, all five states were predicted to surge into apocalyptic territory by the middle of July. Under the 40% scenario, this even entailed upper boundaries of more than 4,000 deaths per day (the bands represent the 95% confidence interval). Massachusetts and New York, two of the hardest-hit states from the first wave back in March and April, would easily match or exceed their previous COVID-19 daily death records.

To see how these predictions held up, I indicated the daily death totals for each state for July 20^th with a small red dot on the graphs above. As you can see, the actual totals are below the ICL model’s predictions in every scenario. In Massachusetts, the current daily death totals are even falling below the lower boundary of the ICL model’s projections for both its 20% and 40% mobility increase scenarios.

Coronavirus cases and deaths have spiked in two of the modeled states, Florida and California. As of the week of July 20^th, both are averaging between roughly 100 and 150 deaths per day. Yet even with this "second wave” spike, Florida and California are only showing about one-tenth of the projected deaths that the Imperial College modelers predicted for this time back in May.

In New York, Washington, and Massachusetts, daily death counts have dropped to the low double-digits and remain a tiny fraction of the ICL predictions for mid-July.

Although all five states remain under COVID-19 restrictions of varying degrees, even partial reopening has increased mobility at levels that match or exceed the ICL’s modeled scenarios. The main Google mobility indicators for Massachusetts are depicted below for reference, and show a clear upward trend since the time of the ICL predictions in mid-May.

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Timothy Birdnow

With Prosecutor Kim Gardner this is not just possible but likely.

Report: Prosecutors Tampered with St. Louis Couple's Gun to Charge Them

The handgun Patricia McCloskey used to defend her home during a June 28 confrontation with protesters was inoperable at the time the St. Louis crime lab received it, but the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s office ordered it reassembled before announcing charges against the couple for felony unlawful use of a weapon and fourth-degree assault offenses

KSDK 5 News first reported documents showing one of the firearms confiscated from the McCloskeys "could not be test fired as submitted.” The document goes on to state that "at the request of [Assistant Circuit Attorney] Chris Hinckley, the firearm was field stripped and found to have been assembled incorrectly.” The crime lab determined the handgun’s firing pin spring was placed in front of the firing pin, which itself was backwards, rendering the gun incapable of firing.

Missouri law requires prosecutors prove a firearm is "readily” capable of lethal use when it is used in crimes such as those for which the couple was charged. Hinckley then ordered the crime lab to reassemble the gun properly, according to KSDK 5.

"The firearms was reassembled properly, test fired and functioned as designed,” the document stated. "No additional defects were observed.”

KSDK 5 further reported crime lab workers photographed the disassembly and reassembly process.

Another local news station, KMOV 4 also reported an anonymous source provided them with a copy of the lab report showing the record of alterations to the firearm.

Despite the handgun being inoperable, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner wrote in her charging documents that the weapons the McCloskeys used during a confrontation with protesters surrounding their private propertywere "readilycapable of lethal use.” There is also no reference to the operating condition of the handgun in a probable cause statement police provided for the case. The only reference to the operating condition comes from the charging documents themselves.

The McCloskeys said they had intentionally rendered the handgun inert because they had previously used it as a propduring a lawsuit they once filed against a gun manufacturer. In order to bring it into a courtroom, they had to first render it inoperable.

"It’s disheartening to learn that a law enforcement agency altered evidence in order to prosecute an innocent member of the community,” said Joel Schwartz, the attorney for the McCloskeys.

Asked about the reported alterations to the firearm, a spokeswoman for Gardner told the publication "We can’t comment on a pending case.”

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James Doogue

Dr Tony Bartone president of the Australian Medical Association says wearing face masks is of "no real benefit" in the general population...ABC 2 March 2020

Dr Tony Bartone president of the Australian Medical Association calls for a nation wide mask policy. "If people had been wearing masks earlier in this disease cycle the spread would have been significantly reduced." Sky
News Australia22 July 2020
https://youtu.be/HvstYyFEmS4

This is 'expert medical advice'.

From the start I have advocated the common sense efficacy of masks for those who wanted to protect themselves. I even produced peer reviewed research to support my advocacy. But hey, I'm no medical expert. The medical experts used by the government and the media have been so consistently wrong about Covid-19, it seriously has ceased to be funny.

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Timothy Birdnow

Sorry for not posting yesterday; I went to the world famous Ozark Hilton where I luxuriated until yesterday afternoon. When one is in such a zen place it would be just wrong to worry about the blog and world events.

Tuesday was a strange day; mix of dark clouds and sun and humid as the Everglades. About half way down there it started pouring, and I discovered - to my chagrin - that my windshield wiper blades were shot. They just smeared the rain around a bit on the windshield. So I had to drive on the highway half blind (with the other half being no better thanks to my terrible vision) and it was a rather scary ride. It didn't rain very long though; I was out of it in a few minutes. Thank the Lord for very big small favors.

It rained then stopped then rained then stopped. Eventually I got to my turnoff in steady rain and had to make the turn very quickly because I had several cars behind me. It's always hard to find that turnoff; it gets overgrown and I leave it that way to avoid unwelcome visitors, but it makes it hard to find and I had to take the turn unsure if I was at the right spot and hope for the best; with the rain it was tricky to tell if it WAS the turnoff or I was driving myself into the drainage ditch.

At any rate I made it there in one piece.

I had a few surprises; my road had a little creek running down it, a brook created by runoff from the main road. That worried me; it would be easy to get stuck in that ! But the land dries up quickly.

Also, the roof over my newly minted porch (which isn't a roof at all but some old vinyl siding I threw up there to cover it) was leaking like a White House intern. The porch was soaked. (I'm going to have to put a real roof over that sometime soon.) So I spent a lot of time trying to maneuver the siding to stop the rain, and seemed to succeed, but by then the rain stopped completely. Oh well.

Critters were scarce yet again. There WERE a lot of crickets, as in late August. I fear it's going to be an early winter.

I did see a bee. One. No wasps (thank the Good Lord for that) but a single bee, who came and sat on my porch chair as soon as I vacated it. I got up to take care of some chore and this little gal (I assume since male bees are usually small drones) flew over and perched her saucy backside on my chair. I don't know what had her so enamored of the chair; it is a wooden kitchen chair that I keep in the cabin until I get down there. But this bee wouldn't get out of my chair, and I sounded like Archie Bunker yelling at her to get out. Eventually I came up with a solution; I lit a cigar up and blew smoke on her. She got up rather annoyed and I snatched the chair away, taking down into the "yard". Never did see any others or figure out why she was so interested in sitting in my chair.

I had that happen with a black wasp once. (A red one would just have stung me.) It sat on my futon one night, right next to me, and stayed there for a couple of hours while I read. Made an occasional buzz but otherwise just hung out. I often call it my pet wasp. Eventually it got tired and went home, wherever that may be. That was a number of years ago.

Oh, I did have one tick on my, too. I have seen no ticks there this year, which is amazing as that place used to be chock full of them. I would wear sandals so I could see to pick them off; they would get under socks and completely infest my ankles otherwise.

Anyway, while it was raining it cooled way down, but the heat and humidity returned by nighttime. I had a fitful night; the air was heavy as Rosie O'Donnell and thick as extra chunky peanut butter. My kerosene lamps just made it hotter in the cabin, too. I always run them all night; it's much better than blowing them out and then fumbling around in the dark, not knowing if some creature was creeping up. Burns up a lot of fuel, but what the heck.

So I was glad when I came home. They were predicting more of the same with storm clouds but I never encountered any. I'm thankful; I really do need to change those blades.

So anyway I'm home safe and sound (well, maybe a bit unsound in mind, but you already knew that.) 

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This from Larry Mackie:

Why isn't anyone making the argument that the Democrat Party has become seditious, and should be declared a terrorist organization?

Before you yell at me, here's the definition of domestic terrorism according to the Patriot Act..

"A person engages in domestic terrorism if they do an act "dangerous to human life" that is a violation of the criminal laws of a state or the United States, if the act appears to be intended to: (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping."

Advocating for open borders and declaring your city or state a sanctuary is a violation of federal law, and places your citizens in peril, physically and economically.

Providing moral support to groups like Antifa and Black Marxist Lives Matter...even painting the latter's name on city streets. These radical Marxist groups are assaulting and killing people, including law enforcement, in order to intimidate us and force Marxist change.

Democrats are allowing this. They're allowing anarchy in cities like Portland, Chicago, New York, Seattle...

All to influence the people and the government to adopt the changes they want.

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Willis Eschenbach observes:

Elizabeth Warren; Cancel Student Debt in Next Stimulus Package

That headline is a lie, and an example of successful propaganda. There is no way to "cancel" such a debt. You can only shift the burden somewhere else. In this case, she's proposing shifting it to the taxpayer.

But of course, even Indian Lizzie knows that saying something like:

"TAXPAYERS SHOULD BE FORCED TO PAY FOR STUDENT LOAN SCOFFLAWS WHO WASTED THEIR SCHOOL YEARS STUDYING THE STUNNING INSIGHTS OF LEFTHANDED LITHUANIAN LESBIAN POETS"

... mmm, probably wouldn't sell all that well.

Here's my student loan program.

If you borrowed it, pay it back.

Why is this so hard to understand? It's what I and everyone I know has had to do if we borrowed money.

What's next? Is Fauxcahontas going to force taxpayers to pay mortgage loan scofflaws?

Finally, this is a CORONAVIRUS stimulus package. I fail to see the connection with the students, other than through Lieawatha. I despise this habit of sleazy politicians loading up important bills with sleazy pork, and she's one of the worst.

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James Doogue observes:

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Timothy Birdnow

At least in Seattle this was an act of sedition, and as such the President has behaved in a very restrained manner; he could have sent in special forces or droned the leaders. But that restraint isn't enough for the Novaya Yorka Vremya.

At least in Seattle this was an act of sedition, and as such the President has behaved in a very restrained manner; he could have sent in special forces or droned the leaders. But that restraint isn't enough for the Novaya Yorka Vremya

Opinion:  Trump's Occupation of American Cities has Begun

The New York Times has lost all credibility.

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This from E. Calvin Beisner:

UC Boulder's policy is a big, slow, hanging curveball just waiting to be slammed right out of the park by a lawsuit for First Amendment violation. Some enterprising young student needs to apply for enrollment and specifically state on the application that she rejects the values of the BLM movement, get turned down, and then sue.

U.C. Boulder: "Holding the Values of Black Lives Matter 'Non Negotiable'"

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Warner Todd Huston

Maker of Red Bull Drink Fires Dangerous Woke Crap-Stirring Employees

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You are a man of many talents Anthony! Two years is enough time to feel at home there.  When did you live there?

I had a chance at getting a a corporate job there but turned it down hoping for a job with the U.S. government after I got out of college in '87. My mistake; the Soviet Union was going down and the Feds weren't hiring at that point. It rather derailed my career plans.

I got a certificate in scientific translation, which was interesting; translated a lot of Russian science papers back then. As I say, I remember little of it at this point, And my conversational Russian is horrid.

Cheers!

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Timothy Birdnow

A Connecticut pathologist did a review and found massive "vote fraud" in Coronavirus cases.

From Legal Insurrection:

As the American press paints a dire picture of all the new cases of coronavirus out there, to inspire another economy-crushing set of closures, it would be wise to step back and start questioning the numbers.

Evidence suggests there may be substantially fewer new cases of COVID-19 than those being reported. To begin with, there appear to be many cases of "presumed positive.”

Additionally, there are clear cases of deemed-positive, despite contraindications the cause of illness or death is related entirely to another factor.

Florida’s coronavirus death count includes at least one young man who died in a motorcycle accident, according to a local health official.

After several reports that health organizations in Florida were misreporting data, Danielle Lama of Fox 35 Orlando spoke with Orange County Health Officer Dr. Raul Pino about several specific cases.

Lama asked Pino whether two younger people listed as COVID-19 deaths, both in their twenties, had suffered from any underlying conditions.

"The first one didn’t have any. He died in a motorcycle accident,” Pino replied.

When Lama followed up, asking whether his data had been removed from the official tally since his cause of death was the motorcycle accident, Pino said that he couldn’t be sure.

Furthermore, there are now indications that there are false positive results being reported from testing laboratories.

In fact, a study product by a Connecticut pathologist shows the CDC coronavirus test kits generate 30% false positive results and 20% that are false negatives.

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Timothy Birdnow

Fifty one years ago today Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.

In one of Mankind's greatest moments in our history two men set foot on the Earth's faithful companion.

The Moon landing is fascinating for a variety of reasons. First, it was done in just nine years; the first satellite was put in orbit by the Soviets in 1959, and the first man in space (Yuri Gagarin) in 1961. Gagarin actually orbited Earth while the American Alan Shephard merely did a suborbital flight one month later. But the implications were obvious at the time; the Soviets had superior launch capabilities, meaning they had superior missile capabilities and so could probably nuke us and we couldn't respond.

President Kennedy instituted a catch-up program with the intention of putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade - what today would appear to be an impossible timetable. We were different people back then.

At any rate, we moved swiftly and surely with developing our capabilities, through the one-man Mercury program, then the two-man Gemini (where we worked a lot of the kinks out of space flight, including docking and space walks etc.) And finally to Apollo. (Many Apollo missions were merely hardware tests, so you have to get to Apollo 8 before anything interesting happened.)

Apollo One was the heartbreaker. A ground test saw the astronauts (Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee) died when a fire broke out and the pure oxygen atmosphere made it impossible to stop. Also, the hatch wouldn't let them out. The men died entombed in their tiny capsule.

But we didn't stop and Apollo 8 did the incredible; orbited the Moon. In fact, it was the first time anyone had ever seen the far side, the so-called "dark side" of that body. (The lunar far side is rather uninteresting insofar as it has few dramatic features as in the visible face, but these were the first people to look at it!)

That led to Apollo 10 (Apollo 9 was a test of the Lunar Module) which passed very close to the surface. Then came the big day.

Armstrong got the most coveted role in NASA history; he was chosen to command The Eagle and to be the first guy to set foot on another world.

Michael Collins, who was stuck playing nursemaid to the command ship Columbia) is fairly forgotten, although he was an accomplished astronaut. He was perhaps the loneliest man in human history, having been left alone in lunar orbit and being cut off from NASA when Columbia went behind the satellite.

Collins said he never felt lonely or annoyed by being stuck in Columbia; he was too worried about his friends. He had a nail-biting job, for sure. HE was there to go fetch the other two if they made back into orbit.

Collins would likely have gone had the program not been cancelled. Actually, Collins retired before that; had he stayed he may have been chosen commander of Apollo 17, the last flight; he was on the duty roster for that (based on the rotating system NASA used.)

At any rate, it was Armstrong and Aldrin who got the honors.

What wasn't told to the public at the time was that there were serious problems with the landing.

They had a major computer malfunction, giving them a code that suggested total computer failure as they were descending. This was serious as a heart attack; Eagle needed the guidance computer to get the angle and velocity correct. The failure came at a critical moment, too, when they were reaching the "point of no return" and the decision had to be made whether to abort or land. Given the position they were in it was determined that landing was probably the safer course of action, so they proceeded with the landing.

But what did they find? Boulders the size of cars strewn all over the landing site. These weren't visible from Earth and they posed a HUGE problem. Armstrong had to scramble to find another LZ and quickly, because his fuel was running out. He flew a couple of miles from the target and found a clear spot - and touched the bird down. Score one for human piloting!

At any rate, The Eagle had landed.

Now, the Eagle was a tiny thing, just barely large enough for two men to stand in (they couldn't fit seats and couldn't afford the extra weight) but standing in lunar gravity is easy, so the astronauts had to forego the luxury of sitting. And the thing was flimsy; the skin of the LEM was no thicker than a beer can.

Not exactly luxurious accommodations, but who cares when  you get to be the first guy on a new world - and have so very much to see.

At any rate, Armstrong stepped off the LEM'S pad onto the surface with the famous words "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind". He - and NASA - claimed this was impromptu, but I've never believed it; they wouldn't leave so momentous a thing as the first words of a man on the Moon to chance. Also, notice Armstrong didn't say "for A man"; it was as though it was scripted and he flubbed it.

Be that as it may, he could have clucked like a chicken and nobody would have cared; we had a human being standing on another world!

The rest is history.

Armstrong never did like his fame. He quit NASA after the landing and hid out at a rural university, where he tried to duck his stardom. His wife, bored by the rural life, left him. He eventually died at the age of 82 (August 25, 2012).

Michael Collins has also passed away. Now only Buzz Aldrin remains.

It really is too bad we gave up the space program and especially the Moon; we should have tried to establish permanent bases, and eventual mining and research colonies. We needed to exploit the Moon for her resources and use them to build space structures to allow us to do more deep space exploration. An L4 or L5 space station would be nice (L4 and L5 are short for Lagrangian Points, which are stable points equidistant from one another in Earth's orbit. They lie 33 degrees ahead of and behind the Moon and if you put something there it will stay there forever, or a long time at least.)

Such a station would allow us to build deep space ships for a trip to Mars, and eventual Martian settlement.

I want to see us settle the Moon, too. We can learn a lot about living off-planet by doing that, establishing permanent settlements. If something goes terribly wrong we can always go home. And we can get supplies from Earth, and even be in communication with Earth (imagine; you could go on the internet if you were a lunar settler; something impossible on, say, Mars.)

We may do it yet, but it's been fifty one years now. But Earth will wither and die without a new frontier, and Man is a restless critter. We need new horizons, new territories, new experiences and hopes and dreams. We have a whole planet just a short hop away to start.

Let's get at it then!

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