Tag Archives: covid

Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2021

THE VELOCITY OF CARBON

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Masking won’t help…

In terms of money, economists measure the health or activity of an economy using “velocity” of money in an economy.  There are a thousand measuring tools measuring the same parameter, whether it’s investment dollars generating new production or a change in policy like a tax cut or increase that either releases money to or sucks money from, an economy.  Supply-chain snags can certainly reduce the velocity of money; building road, rail or air infrastructure can speed it up.  If you’re seeking real understanding of this kind of velocity you’ll have to ask someone else: I know only how rapidly $20 bills move out of my pocket these days, converting themselves to a few coins in a blink of an eye.

Let’s talk about the climate… a place where velocity is never discussed as a “good.”  It’s always “bad,” and it’s everybody’s fault, which means “climate change” by today’s – or this morning’s – definition, is going to increase a lot of financial velocities while slowing or stopping others.  These effects will affect everybody and his or her $20’s like we’ve never seen.  In any case, the velocity of “change” in the Earth’s climate seems to always be too fast, potentially the end of humanity, often in a very small numbers of years, and the result of conservative politics.  That is, unless the “conservative” in question is neither European nor English-speaking.  The Earth knows.

Very quickly, climate change discussion centers on carbon: carbon dioxide, carbon-based fuels, “carbon-neutrality” by 2030, 2050 or next week.  Anyway, the other day, at a point when no other useful actions were possible, Prudence led to an interesting question about climate that we’ve never heard asked: “What is the velocity of carbon in the Earth’s climate-economy?”  And this will be followed in most people’s minds with, “What the Hell is wrong with this person?  There’s no such thing as carbon velocity.”  Ahhh, but there is, my friend… there is.

The Earth has about as much carbon on it as it has ever had.  A lot of it is buried deep underground, but a lot more is in the biosphere between, say, 20 feet below ground and, maybe, 200 feet above ground, although with 1,000-foot high rise buildings we’re certainly stretching those limits.  Then, there’s the ocean – definitely part of the biosphere, so… cripes!  We live in a gigantic biosphere!  And, it’s carbon-based, which is to say that molecules with carbon in them are the fundamental building-blocks of life, including seaweed and us.

Now, the CLIMATE we all live in has been “changing” for billions of years, which is a very good thing.  The simplest example of a climate-change “good” is the endings of ice-ages, of which there have been several.  Humans were impacted by only the last couple of them: they’re not very frequent, thank goodness, and the impacts of the last one are still with us, even being enjoyed by us, like the Great Lakes, Cape Cod and so forth.

For the average ersatz vaccine-loving supplicant to climate-change fears, the movement of carbon from safety underground to horrific, polluting, crime above ground is a cumulative, onrushing white-man-caused threat to life.  Why, the USGS (U. S. Geologic Survey) tells us that upwards of 36.5 TRILLION TONS of carbon spewed (probably, “spewed”) into the atmosphere worldwide in 2019!  That is a hu-u-u-u-ge number, but there are lots of huge numbers involved when measuring worldwide things.  A small amount was in the form of methane, other ethanes, ordinary “anes” and the majority of it from CO2 which is a lot heavier than average, breathable air.  Fortunately for all concerned, plants “breathe” CO2 in and oxygen, O2 out.

“Oh, my Gawd!  Everybody stop breathing!”  Also, stop mowing your lawn, heating your homes, cooking, refrigerating, making plastics, driving cars and trucks and, for God’s sake, stop flying back and forth around the world on those terrible jet planes… just stay home.

Quite a bit of CO2 derives from cute little woodland creatures that, since Walt Disney gave them names, we must love and protect, along with every other sort of elk, antelope, bison, bear, reindeer, POLAR bears, for heaven’s sake, whales, dolphins, dogs, cats, protected tigers, elephants and, of course those evil cattle who do little but eat and fart, don’t you know?

Still more comes from rotting vegetation in the normal cycle of plant life and the bacteria and bugs, termites and ants that live off of the trillions of tons of IT.  Government types, those who really like to apply rules for living to most everyone else – rules derived from superior intellects like theirs – hold, without fail, concepts of perfection for humanity and how humanity should live, among which are rules against eating animals that Disney may have named or which provide substantial amounts of nutrition for sub-perfect humans, nutrition those same humans may be “taught” to live better without.

Just the same, carbon in various chemical combinations moves into and out of the atmosphere at rates that could be measured, extrapolated, closely estimated, and measured again for more or less controllable impacts humans might want to have.  Except no one asks the velocity question.  There are no grant millions for calculating how fast carbon churns in what kinds of weather, over what kinds of land or waters. Or, in what levels of the atmosphere.  Grants are plentiful if researchers – or advocates – can add to climate panic; only a level of panic enables political control, after all, which is a large part of making grant monies available: find out something that makes specific political or taxation controls possible.  If you find out something else, give it a good leaving-alone.

No matter how carbon moves around, whether from volcanoes seen and unseen, or burning forests to yield cropland, or propelling planes at 35,000 feet, or burning trash at ground level, moving trucks and things, or, pushing ships with both vital and frivolous container loads, joy-riding passengers or militaries setting off to war, not all climatological consequences are of the same value.  Some are just plain pollution, spreading dirt where we live in ways that we could control if the value were better understood.  Others are “necessary evils,” tolerated, temporarily, for lack of cleaner alternatives.  Over the past 130 years, say, humans have quite consistently moved away from “dirty” ways to improve life and living standards, towards much cleaner ones.  Only a relative handful of people on Earth burn cattle dung to keep warm – too many, and a very controllable problem – but a handful.

Cars and trucks get phenomenally better mileage compared to 40 or 50 years ago, as do even those jet planes at 35,000 feet.  More and more electricity is generated without coal, and “scrubbers” can mitigate particulates and sulphur compounds, which are actually bad to have in the air, along with some CO2, making even coal much cleaner.  New buildings are built to be far more thermally efficient.  New lighting and electronics are far more efficient, too.  Watch for the impact of solid-state batteries in making almost everything electrical more efficient, including cars and trucks.

The point is, CO2 in the air is not, per se, a bad thing, but if you ask the average, fearful, climate-change crybaby what he or she is afraid of and the answer will be that we have to stop spewing CO2 or else the world is going to end… possibly even before illegal aliens and polar bears get the vote!

In a sense, we are constantly reminded that the CO2 from last year, and the year before that, and before that, and ever since the first automobile burned gasoline, is hanging over our heads ready to destroy the PLANET, including my daughter’s recycling science project!  All it will take to tip the balance is for a few more Trump voters to drive through drive-up windows for a cheeseburger and some Freedom Fries, when they could have had a hand-picked kale salad.  The time to act is now, now, now!

But it isn’t, is it?  The CO2 building up in the atmosphere, I mean.  It churns around, dissolving into bodies of water, like oceans, of which there are a lot, and if not dissolved right away, generally CO2 sinks down to near ground level because it’s quite a bit heavier than air.  This, alone, is a good thing, because that’s where most plants that we can eat, grow.  Whoever thought of this system was a very smart Dude.

Mankind, however, is both brilliant and ignorant, wise and foolish, scientific and superstitious, and clean and dirty.  We used to think that God had provided convenient sewers in the form of rivers, but we have become smarter about that foolishness – we could be and will be much smarter about that.  We used to think the atmosphere was a big river to dump effluents into, too, but we’re coming around quickly on that foolishness.  Politically, however, we are being propelled to ever greater foolishness over CO2, not because we can “save the planet” and keep ocean levels and weather right where WE want them by limiting it, but so that we can, politically, control how people live, prodding them ever closer to the perfection models government-types have clung-to since Miss Hannigan’s 4th grade terrarium with the turtle in it.

Just like fraudulent COVID-19 statistics, if the government and compliant media focus on single numbers, a lot of fear can be ginned up, quickly modifying sovereign individuals’ actions, beliefs and willing abandonment of freedoms… like the number of COVID “cases,” as they “spike” from time to time.  Most are simple positive results from testing, and what they have detected are remnants of spike proteins, mostly not actual infections.  If you run enough cycles of PCR tests you can detect a lot of “cases.”  Everyone can be made to change his life through the police-power of the state or municipality because of largely meaningless numbers like these.  Fixating on how much CO2 goes into the atmosphere is much the same.  That we should be happy it’s there, for the most part, is never part of the news.  Do you have any concept of where we’d be without global warming?

Respecting our home planet by not dirtying its air and water is a noble thing to do – not from baseless fears but from purpose.

There are satellites watching the whole earth, now, measuring CO2 for places where it comes from and goes to at different times of year.  These are fine data to have and will, little by little, improve recommendations for spewing less CO2 .  Which we probably should… spew less, that is.  But we never will, or never will fast enough, if we don’t adopt a worldwide perspective on being clean or dirty in how we live, prosper and move ourselves and things about, starting with how cleanly we can generate electricity.  This will have to include nuclear power at its best, for urban areas, and solar collection and energy storage at its best in rural areas.  Cleaning up the planet need not, and should not require forcing people into cities, for example, or forcing ever tighter regulation on freedom (quite the opposite) or directing whole economies from a dictatorial, tight-control top.

It does involve honest education and a recognition that fouling where we live is anathema to both God and to humanity.  Economic mobility is prime in terms of balancing needs and wants and increasing qualities of life.  That comes from freedom.  Any “plan” for defeating – pick any – COVID, inflation, climate change, crime, ignorance, poverty in every other country in the world, that also includes restricting personal freedom or sovereignty, is the absolutely wrong move to accept.  A political party that identifies with restricting freedom and which villainizes those who don’t, does not deserve any American’s vote.

Crime, Economics, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2020, Terrorism

A citadel of Lies

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Supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. – Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. (Photo by Saul LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

A CITADEL OF LIES

It appears that not only the idiots who stormed the Capitol but Trump, himself, were suckered into exactly the reactions the Democrats wanted.  They have been convinced for years that conservatives and anyone who agrees with a strong defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are all, secretly, neo-Nazis and other caricatures of knuckle-dragging troglodytes.  And all racists, of course, every last one.  One can see this attitude displayed in the virtuous signage supporting “Black Lives Matter” and “Science” and “Love is Love” and “Hate Has No Home Here” since, by their lacking such declarative advertising on their own lawns, everyone that homeowner already knew was barely human, is admitting to that condition.

The trouble is, they teach this stuff in school, to the point of children apologizing for being born white.  Undefined guilt works best if started at an early age.  What rot.

There were some idiots in Washington on January 6th, and not all were part of the rally / protest.  Many work there… many on Capitol Hill, in fact.  Their erstwhile president-elect was quick to declare that the breeching of Capitol security could not be referenced as a ”protest,” no, no, no; it was an insurrection!  A threat to and an attack on “democracy!”  “Don’t you dare call this a protest,” he stated with great passion.

This of course denies the presence of tens of thousands of protesters who have, it seems Prudent to say, hundreds of things to protest.  They came at great cost, since virtually all of them work for a living, and came with some discomfort and trouble, TO PROTEST!  The left, including Democrats and their subservient media, perceive the election of a Democrat as a fresh confirmation of purity and light; only the disruption of that outcome is subject to protest.  Republicans and conservatives are merely tolerated for their value as a common enemy of “progress,” whom all good and virtuous people should dislike, if not more, and shun if possible.

Trump changed their reactions, as he did those of most Republicans, because he actually said what he believed and then put it into action, policy and legislation.  Worse, millions of people – the aforementioned troglodytes – loved the change, loved the brashness, loved the heartfelt defense of America.  The “real” rulers of America had to up… errr, lower their game.  The worst “official” behavior in our history became normal for more than four years, as those sworn to uphold the constitution connived to destroy the most dangerous interloper they’d seen.  For shame.

Now, with the attack on the Capitol, the left has a more perfect common enemy than they could conjure up with constant lying: “Look what they did!  See?  They’re as bad as we’ve been telling you for decades!” 

The Capitol, itself, will become a virtual armed citadel, with new defensive barriers, more police carrying long guns, maybe some hate-sniffing dogs.  Why, you citizens can’t protest what we do up here.  We don’t work for you scum, you work for US!  Oh, wait, is it too early to say that?  We meant to say, “We work our fingers to the bone for all Americans, and we’re happy to scrimp and sacrifice for each and every one of you, especially minorities and members of the LGBTQx community and women and the downtrodden and those streaming to our country for a better life and more government checks, and for Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Disney and CNN and the Washington Post.  But, we must be safe as we go about our august duties… for you.  And you must be safe, too, so keep your stupid masks on.”

No one opposed to the steady march leftward has a right to protest, since to do so is to oppose “progress.”  That such progress replaces and suppresses the guarantees of the Constitution and disabuses us of the points of the Declaration of Independence, is being obscured and dissipated by educational avoidance.  A generation of children are amenable to socialism in the mistaken belief that it will somehow end racism and “inequality.”  The premise, riotously hammered home in city after city during 2020, is that we cannot repair the problems in the U. S., we must destroy the United States and start fresh.  God forbid.

The people leading the riots that burned, destroyed and looted, and assaulted and killed totally innocent people, are financed and led by espoused Marxists and communists.  Yet the “woke” left and Democrats were sympathetic to them and to their supposed grievances however illogical, and even to their destruction of public property.  Theirs were “mostly peaceful” protests and represented an exercise of “fundamental rights.”  Those who lost their businesses – and the THIRTY people who died – were probably part of the protested problems…, they were capitalists, after all.

What on Earth could motivate hundreds of people to be so angry that they’d break the law to protest something the Congress was in the midst of?  What could have possibly been so important?  An election?  Really?

Without fail, every Democratic source and nearly all media instantly declared that there was no evidence of voting fraud or irregularities or illegalities.  By definition, then, anyone who thinks there were is a right-wing nut and not worth listening to.  Unfortunately there are hundreds of statements, affidavits eye-witnesses and analyses that strongly indicate that a lot went wrong in the handful of states, counties and cities where sufficient unlawful votes could guarantee a Biden electoral college win.  None of those deniers of electoral hanky-panky has been interested in actually investigating the charges since doing so would add to the possibility of something wrong and they uniformly deny that.  It’s actually fairly easy to make a strong case based on data analysis, sworn statements, and similarity of irregularities and tactics in the half-dozen “battleground states.”  The defense of what happened in each state comes from the election officials who may be culpable for what may have gone wrong, if so.  To whom can we turn for redress of these grievances?  No one has an answer for that question.

Courts have rejected every appeal, and in more than one instance – including the Supreme Court – the fear of riots… err, “protests” like those that destroyed cities and monuments, was part of why no hearings would be entertained.  For shame.

The respective states’ legislatures, Constitutionally defined as responsible for selecting electors, did attempt action in some states, but the executive branch of their governments had already “certified” the results of the election as reported.  The Biden juggernaut was almost at the pier and the political pressures to conform were intense.  No state was interested in actually investigating “itself,” particularly if it were the only one to change its results, winding up on the ‘outs’ with the new Biden administration.  Our corrupt intermingling of financial responsibilities between supposedly sovereign states and the ostensibly Federal  government, could cost a state a lot of “federal” dollars if that state appeared to oppose the new disbursers of those increasingly hollow “dollars.”  see: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/

There was a flood of complaints and subsequent sworn testimony.  There were observations of illegal internet connections, photocopied ballots being scanned, observers being prevented from doing their legal jobs, observers being illegally removed from their posts, false justifications for “stopping” counts simultaneously in four of the battleground states, followed by statistically impossible “spikes” for Biden, every time.  At one point, in Georgia, following an abrupt spike for Biden that erased Trump’s substantial lead, the following FIFTY THREE batches of votes showed exact rates of 50.5% for Biden and 49.5% for Trump – an impossibility.  “Nothing to see here, everybody.  We can explain how everything you saw happen, never happened.”

So, was the giant Washington protest and the smaller ones across the country, just because of this election?  For many, yes, but for many more, the election is simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Congress, particularly the leadership in both houses, has been lying to us for decades.  Almost every piece of legislation is a pack of lies, in that almost every one has a high-falutin’ title that purports to describe what making that bill law, will do.  Yet every one contains pieces of spending that couldn’t pass otherwise.  The worst deceptions are the so-called “budget” bills that spend hundreds of billions at once.  Not even leadership know what such “omnibus” bills include.  Partisans argue over details for publicity purposes, but under various deadline threats, these piles of crap are passed and sent to a president who is also under timely pressure usually because the bill, itself, was passed at the last minute and the defense of the country or the checks to Social Security recipients or, as of late, Covid relief checks are already late.  The pile of dishonesty becomes the law of the land.  Then the big lie kicks in.

The U. S. can’t afford the cost of its standard of living.  Congress – and most other government types – pretend this is nothing to worry about.  They pass spending bills as if we had the money, or revenue, to pay for them.  But these are really borrowing bills.  Up to a third – even 40%(!) – of our budgets for the past 20 years have been covered by borrowing money through the Federal Reserve, a private banking consortium that can legally lend the government money that it doesn’t have.  The U. S. Treasury also sells bonds, which is to say, borrows money from thousands or millions of lenders / investors to keep enough cash in the bank to cover daily outflows.  Consequently, whether to holders of “treasuries” or to the “FED,” Americans pay a ton of interest every month and year.  When we can’t afford to pay the interest, why we just borrow that, too!  What a hoax.

We’ve all heard the stock lie about how closing the government over a spending dispute will cause us to “default” on our loans.  This has never been true, but it sure upsets the less-informed, and mendacious news outlets repeat the same nonsense.

Americans like to believe that the people we elect are watching out for us and keeping us “safe.”  How safe are we with $27 Trillion of debt?  Are we not obligated to our lenders?  How “free” can we be with that burden?  Have our elected representatives been pulling the wool over our eyes all these years?  Are any of them watching out for this nation or for us?  No wonder people are restless.  Fake news makes it even worse, and it all came to a head with the shady voting of 2020, following a year of lies about Covid and lies about the dangers of voting in person.  Partisan news organizations support all of those untruths and add personal attacks and calumny aimed at Trump supporters who agree wholeheartedly with “America First.”  Who argues with that philosophy?  One can tell a great deal about those who do.

After the Viet-Nam war and the following 45 years, who can we complain to?  We have the right to peaceably assemble and to appeal to “the government” for redress of our grievances.  Who would that be?  Who has power over the budget, over the rates of taxation, over the disbursement of funds to which agencies, over the amounts and recipients of “foreign aid, over the confirmation of judges, over the laws governing federal elections, over the policies governing public education, and over the kinds of lightbulbs we can buy?  And over thousands of other daily, personal and business decisions?  Why, the very Congress who has sold us out to China and to international bankers, that’s who.

They are the same charlatans who haven’t been listening to the Americans they purport to represent.  One wonders if they heard anything on January 6th.

What did they hear all Summer as cities burned and insurrection was declared in Seattle?  What did they hear as Marxists burned out the businesses of private citizens and companies?  Apparently, their perceived message was telling them that enough fear in the streets will prevent any serious investigation into the theft of a presidential election.

They did hear something on the sixth, too: “Now is our opportunity, with the connivance of media and social media, to destroy those who disagree with our socialist plans.”  For shame.

Unfortunately, on January 6th, there were some truly odd characters who infiltrated the crowds close to the Capitol building itself.  Many have commented on the very different attitudes of men in camouflage outfits, and how things “felt” as they got closer to the Capitol.  Some evidence indicates that Antifa’s paid thugs were also at the head of the line as the Capitol lines were breeched.  With the new administration, no investigation of that possibility is likely.  As for the odd ducks who may be white supremacists, there is no need to investigate that, because Democrats believe that EVERY Trump supporter is only a shade above troglodyte status and very probably a white supremacist, even if he or she doesn’t know it.  No investigation.

Our new, quite old President, is staffing his administration with people about as different as possible from those who have done a remarkably good job under Trump… and they’ve been selected not for merit or skill, necessarily, but for gender and skin color.  Biden’s “dark winter” could extend for years.  God save us.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2020, Race, Responsibility

THE ENCROACHING

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The encroaching divide of America into “Constitutionalist” and “Socialist” camps, is proceeding apace.  At no time in our history has the nation and its culture been so threatened, not even at the time of the secession of the Confederacy.  Then both “North” and “South” shared nearly all moral beliefs and religious ones, economic practices, and the honesty in contracts that underpins our ability to cooperate as a civilization.  The exception, alone, was on the matters of slavery and racial differences and prejudice.

Wrenchingly, courageously, the slavery error has been solved.  During the civil War, reconstruction and segregation, the nation held together and made progress on virtually all fronts, including for the economic success and educational advancement of non-white peoples within the United States.  Black families were strong and growing stronger all the way through “Jim Crow” laws and post-war awakening and struggles, as was the nation as a whole.  This, only because the moral values and their religious underpinnings were widely shared across all strata of American society.

Today, not so much.  The first 60 years of socialist, globalist intrusion had paved a path but few were taking to it… at least until Lyndon Johnson took over from JFK.  Under the guise of “fulfilling Kennedy’s dream,” the Great Society was foisted on a relatively balanced government, federalizing welfare for “the poor” and “minorities,” mainly blacks.  Johnson’s famous prediction, “…I’ll have those n***ers voting Democrat for 100 years” exposed the cynical plantation-mentality of Johnson’s Democrats, and the base, gutter-snipe qualities of Johnson, himself.

At the same time Johnson plunged the U. S. into a meaningless war… er, U.N.-sanctioned conflict, in Viet-Nam, that split the nation politically and for the first time, split youth from parents.  With the advent of drugs and drug-infected music, the revolution was under way:  “the Sixties.”  Nixon was our last attempt to reign in alien culture, and they got rid of him in the most politically destructive way.  Meanwhile, welfare was corroding black families and dissociating old morals from “modernity.”  Feminism aggressively began to destroy both manhood and motherhood and education commenced to dissolve Christian thought as rapidly as new socialist-trained and unionized teachers could be installed in supposedly “public” schools.  Clever lawyers, psychologists, judges and justices found ways to parse common sense and conscientiousness into never-imagined “constitutional” rights.

Even so, with Ronald Reagan’s election patriotic Americans were renewed in belief in the “American Way:” that together, with right leadership, Americans could restore the nation they loved and pull back from the rot that was slipping past common sense everywhere.  We even vanquished Soviet Communism without a nuclear war; “History is over,” pundits declared.  Even Bill Clinton seemed rational for a while as his Alinskyite wife plotted “communitarianism” and socialized medicine.  Rational people seemed to be back in control of our freedom-loving destiny.  But the left never rests.

Gore almost pulled it off.  The Democratic party was, haltingly, inquiringly trying not just voting for the temporarily deceased, but here and there, voting for the imaginary.  Bush stopped them in Florida and waltzed into the September 11th attacks.  For a few hours the congress was unified and appeared to be patriotic.   We’ll be damned if some backward Islamists are going to attack us on our home turf!  That’s OUR job, after all.

Americans still largely believe that we can “fix” things.  Problems are solvable and resolvable in fair and rational ways or, as we’ve shown the world for 300 years, with technical skill and innovation.  Along the way we have spread wealth to more poor people than any other society on earth or in history.  But, we’re slipping:  concerted efforts to change our shared beliefs have taught millions of us to distrust and even hate, our own nation.  The most effective poison?  Charges of racism… and hateful or just confused racism, itself.

The source of these changes is Marxism-socialism.  Those of you who are not willing to correct the flaws of poorly regulated capitalists, and who believe that distorting history and historic figures will somehow make life better in 2020, should step away from the next planned “protest” and consider your own role in the destruction of the best system yet devised for the betterment of the most lives possible.  To reach back to the only governing system that has NEVER succeeded to replace the Constitutional democratic republic that always has, is to prove yourself a fool.  Please wake up.

Nevertheless, the plan to divide and dissolve the United States is working.  States are now practicing what then-future Confederate states employed prior to secession: “nullification.”  With “Sanctuary” status being self-declared by cities and states, the federal system is under assault.  Politically useful illegal immigration is used as a “humanitarian” reason to disavow proper immigration regulations and restrictions, while still accepting federal welfare payments to even illegal recipients.  To date, the political will to stop this trend and restore primacy of federal law over international border control, has not been found.  Division.

Covid-19 has played neatly into the hands of socialist control-agents.  Economic and religious lock-downs both fit their innate desires to impose superior ways of living and doing than those chosen by free citizens.  Dictating how many free citizens can buy the services and products of other free citizens is a reach of executive whim that would seem impossible in an individual-freedom-and-responsibility, Constitutionally limited governance system.  Yet we have acquiesced to it rather sheepishly.  But, not everyone, by a wide margin.  Division is the greatest impact of the 2020 lock-downs.  Disease-prevention is a far-distant secondary effect.  The United States and China are the only major industrialized nations still hampered by this misguided theory.  The United States, ostensibly a “free” nation, is the only one damaged by it.  Division.

The tools of division are mostly forms of lying, whether about the efficacy of Covid lockdowns or of switching America’s high-energy-density economy to a low-energy-density one based on sunlight and windmills, or of “systemic” racism or tremendous racial progress and tolerance.  Those who would divide us are, practically speaking, anti-Christian and anti-Judaic.  Those who would divide our peoples wish most of all to divide us from our past… at least from the good parts.  In their views all that came before right now is so rotten as to be worthless, including the people and philosophies that created it.  Their Marxism is the only true philosophy (religion) and there shall be no other religions before it.

One wonders if they ever listen to the things they say.  Do you?

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020

If You Knew Covid…

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YOU DON’T KNOW COVID

Prudence has often commented on the casual mendacity of politicians, and that quality of theirs is troubling enough.  New depths are plumbed, however, when hundreds of appointed, elected and hired “officials” agree to lie together  for some tawdry political purpose.  Many lie without knowing what that purpose even is.  Suffice to say that the greatest power on Earth is unified belief, including evil belief.

Like the man or not, honest observers, liberals included, have to agree that hatred of Donald Trump inspired some of the most virulent and congruent political lying our nation has ever experienced.  Virtually all of the lies have been exposed for what they were.  Dishonest observers retain belief in many of those lies and have convinced themselves that because of what they perceive as true there is no possibility of compromise or even courtesy towards those who believe that the lies were, in fact, falsities.  This mish-mash of lies and truths and the distrust of so many for so many others, provided the perfect breeding ground for the most widespread political lying yet: the Covid-19 pandemic.

It appears that only in the United States, where Donald Trump is running for re-election, has the Covid-19 epidemic played a significant part in the unseating of a government.  Many countries have been hit hard by the initial attacks of the new, somewhat engineered, coronavirus that China spread across the world, but only in the United States has this medical threat been politicized.  At the same time, and again, only in the U. S., leftist thugs have chosen the same moment to riot in dozens of cities.  That resulted from a completely different set of lies from those told about Covid-19, and this isn’t the place to recount them, but the confluence of the two, essentially unique events, is itself unique and conveniently coincident in a political sense.

But “Covid” provided – and provides – a rich harvest of public policies – all left-leaning and largely unconstitutional – that are serving to twist electoral politics and sway votes based – on – half-truths – and outright lies.  Everything from business and religious lockdowns, intrusions into personal properties and lives, and the enforcement of personal actions like mask-wearing, are based on half-truths at best, complete untruths at mid-range, or utter falsehoods at worst.

Americans have been misled.  We hear constantly how many of us have died… DIED, from this awful scourge, now totaling some 169,000… THOUSAND(!) poor souls struck down by a disease that the Trump administration practically spread on purpose because all those people who work for Trump hate the rest of us.  Remove the silliness from that sentence and we’re left with a statistic that is meaningless.  The CDC counts “deaths” as people who died WITH Covid, not FROM Covid.  Why would bureaucrats count such a serious phenomenon in such a flaccid way?  Even people who died in accidents but who happened to test positive for Covid, are counted as Covid deaths.  What good is a “statistic” like this?

Well, this half-truth serves erstwhile dictators who need to induce fear to gain compliance.  There were reasons for fear in late February and March of this year.  First, the virus protein was altered in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, from a corona (shaped) virus that existed in weird, ugly bats!  Few of us know much about bats in the first place, and most of us are a little fearful of them, thanks to various horror movies.  A wonderment for the average person was: “Who the Hell cares what kind of viruses exist in Chinese bats?”  Fair question.  It was totally rational to be afraid of the entry of a bat virus into humans, especially from such ugly creatures as Chinese horseshoe bats.  The researchers who first discovered the bat-source of the SARS-like novel coronavirus, were certainly frightened.

Another reason for fear, then, was China-caused rapid spread of the new virus around the world, especially in the middle East and Europe, areas where China had developed intensive trade relationships and to where Chinese personnel were traveling in large numbers.  Scary numbers of cases.  A third reason for fear… then, was that the U. S. was not sure what to do or how to do it to contain or prevent the disease, and all kinds of directives were being issued and soon abandoned in favor of other directives.  People, officials, with no medical background were creating public policy on the fly upon the advice of medicos who were often wrong.  But recommendations quickly became economic shutdown dictates.  Americans’ private properties were being stripped from them without compensation in the hopes that stopping commerce would stop the virus.

It certainly stopped commerce.

Oddly, maybe, the most Democrat-controlled jurisdictions have imposed the tightest restrictions on business.  Despite improving knowledge from Europe and Scandinavia, governors and mayors insisted on ever-tighter lockdowns.  Amazingly, State and Municipal employees didn’t lose their incomes, nor were they forced onto unemployment or furloughed or, simply, fired.  When a governor said “We’re all in this together,” he was really saying, “YOU’RE all in this together.  I and everyone else who is paid by the state, we’re pretty much divorced from your problems, especially if you lose your business or your job.  We will borrow some money – from YOU – to pretend to care about you today.”

So who is benefitting from tight, anti-business and anti-religious lockdowns?  Certainly not the people who own or work at those businesses, nor the ministers, priests, choir directors or secretaries who work at places of worship, certainly not the believers whose unfettered right to worship has been soundly fettered without debate or legislation, and certainly not all the people who depended upon those shuttered businesses for their daily living, health, recreation, library services or exercise routines.  So, who, exactly?

Is it all to keep healthy people from coming down with Covid?  Maybe… that’s what we are told to justify forcing everyone to wear masks when outdoors at pain of monetary fines and even apprehension should we ‘fail to follow the law.’  Except that it’s not a law, it’s a gubernatorial impulse or, sometimes worse, a mayoral one.  If asked, those worthies would declare adherence to “CDC” advice and the implied fulfillment of “science” because of that connection.  Of course there is no science that informs us of the efficacy of masks or other face coverings, although you’d think there must be because elected officials clearly care so much about saving lives.  Indeed, they care so much that they are willing to implore us to endure the discomfort of masks and, even better, to distrust anyone who isn’t wearing a mask.  In fact, we should no longer trust anyone to not be about to spray us with Covid-laden spittle.

Did you know that hospitals are rewarded, in a sense, by up to $25,000 for treating a Covid-19 patient who dies in the hospital?  That accident victim who died WITH Covid was worth $25 Grand if the right box was checked for C.O.D.  Follow the money for the outrageous total of Covid deaths.  China, our far-eastern friend who blessed the world with Covid-19, has 4.34 times as many people as the United States and about 5 times the population density.  Yet, miracle of miracles, the U.S. has THIRTY-SIX AND A HALF TIMES as many Covid deaths.  Ignorant governors… and malevolent ones, have been making rules to barely live by, based on BS statistics designed to hurt the President of the United States: an odd way to execute public policy.

Now the big battle is re-opening schools… because of the need to protect the children, don’t you see?  School-age children, say, 5 to 17 years, are so slightly impacted by Covid that it is nearly impossible to state their Covid death rate in terms of percentage: the decimal point is too many places to the left.  But despite the desire of most teachers to teach, their unions have hamstrung craven politicians into “hybrid” schooling (some education / some goofing off) for the Fall and beyond in some cases, or long delays in re-opening, as if they’d only just heard of Covid-19.  Teachers are all college educated and it would be reasonable to expect them to know and follow the latest approximations of “science” in judging the safety of schools reopening with real teachers and real students.  But, apparently not.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, not only did the teachers’ union force delays in reopening, they forced the county to prevent private schools  from reopening, as well, all of which, essentially, were prepared to open safely.  The county refused to even examine their reopening plans, citing the fact that public schools weren’t going to open, as if it mattered.  Private schools are generally smaller, more lightly staffed and better able to enforce social distancing and other rules, and, it seems, more committed to real education.

The more one sees the tactics of various “public” employee unions – particularly teachers’ unions, one sees that worries about Covid are largely political and financial.  Between home-schooling and private schools, the grand government school monopolies are threatened as never before, as is the hyper-sexualized, white evil oppression, bull-bleep they spend so much class time on as if educating.  The Lord works in mysterious ways.

What will come of nightly riots and mayhem in major cities?  Would the changes demanded by the anarchists and BLM Marxists make America stronger, fairer or more beautiful?  Not a chance.  If police departments closed down, incarcerations ended and white people gave up their homes to black screamers and haters, would the demands for the relinquishing of all white possessions end?  No.  Kow-towing to rioters or other thugs has never ended the thuggery… it simply increases the level of demands and changes the targets.  In fact, changing public policy on the terms of rioters  instead of on society’s carefully considered terms, is the stupidest path any responsible leader could follow.  The stupidest.

How is it that so many people are holding office at this moment whose decisions to respond to public mayhem are all the stupidest of available choices?  Have these mayors and governors always hated the United States or are they mere cowards?  We know how several District Attorneys got elected with the help of socialist money – anti-American money, but are there no “lawmakers” who can craft legislation that will provide for their removal if they fail to prosecute criminals?  Or even laws that require that EVERY case be brought to court even if unenthusiastically?  Or shall public safety and the fulfillment of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments be at the whim of a single person without constraint of law?

What do we actually believe about our civil rights?  It’s silly enough to wear masks outdoors, please don’t put on blinders, too.

Culture, Economics, Family, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

So, is the cat dead?

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Even when the Governor escapes he won't know if he's dead or alive...

Every cloud has a silver lining, we tell ourselves.  We believe, or hope at least, that no matter how grim conditions may be, we will emerge from them to a new level of happiness, love or accomplishment.  We know – or believe – enough to sacrifice today and in this lifetime, to receive the rewards of a better life before we die… or afterwards.

So it must be with this God-forsaken imposition of leftist tyranny that politicians are blaming on “the coronavirus.”   Most of us have quickly, aggressively, agreed to forego our “unalienable rights” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Most of us have agreed to be frightened by the dire descriptions of what is happening to a fast-shifting number or percentage of COVID-19-infected fellow citizens and to denizens of foreign countries.  In the span of 3 weeks or so Americans watched China (until the news was clamped down) Italy and Iran erupt with thousands of deaths from COVID-19.  Suddenly in early March, politicians and medical bureaucrats who days earlier had been telling Americans that they would not be very much impacted by the new coronavirus, were grimly commanding us to stay at home, stop intermingling with others, stop working or playing, and to obey, obey, obey in order to “flatten curves” and “save lives.”

It might have.  There really is no way to precisely state whether the curves “flattened” because of the lockdown.  It’s possible that the course of the infection rate (which is still not fully known) would have been about the same if people were given good advice and masks and told to stay out of work if exposed or symptomatic.  Unfortunately, locking down a whole city or state is something the true government types have dreamt of: stopping people from enjoying life unfairly, and enforcing the stoppage with police powers.  Oh! My! Gawd!  “I never realized how good this would truly feel,” hundreds of mayors and governors (may) have been overheard to say.  “My Poli-Sci professor tried to tell us but who could have imagined the glow?”

There are several collateral injuries that result from any brutal attack and the requisite stern defenses governments must mount on our behalf.  Businesses close down, for one, but, when you think about it, most of those were unfairly profitable, especially for the owners.  Lots of people lose their jobs, for another, but, when you think about it, a lot of them are church-goers and even Christians, so the damage isn’t as bad as it could have been.  If we put a stop to church-going altogether, no one will feel unfairly repressed.  There are more reports of domestic violence, but that’s a problem of degree, only.  Child abuse is also up, according to agencies that watch those things, but those kids were going to be abused at some point, anyway.  Let’s get the federal government to send out checks to everybody and they’ll all put up with the house-arrest that is so obviously necessary.

Still, we can’t let people stew over conditions for long periods.  We’ll have to add new policies and closures here and there to keep lock-down opponents off-balance.  We are saving lives, after all.

There are several silver linings, though, despite the multi-trillion-dollar costs (so far) and building conflict with Red China.  For one big thing, the utter inability for state governments in “progressive” states to do the right thing for even a large fraction of their populations, has been made glaringly clear.  Their citizens, tenuously holding the power of voting idiots out of office, should take note: big opportunity ahead.

The purposes of those at the federal level, both elected and appointed, come in two sets: elected and deep-state.  Elected officials have two goals: re-election and avoiding responsibility.  Deep state denizens have only one: staying in power.  Everything else is subordinate.  This should help explain why change can be excruciatingly slow or, about as often, way off-target… not off any target, just off our, citizens’  target.  Whatever politicians do is hitting, first, their personal targets as they become wealthy in office.

Power and re-election are drivers for state pols, too.  The most common end of legislative service is retirement at age.  Citizen-legislator is a mythical being from a long-ago time; today we have the inside-government “us” and the lesser, civilian “them.”  In any case, once a sweeping declaration of change is made, it must be defended and justified as the very best, life-saving decision that could have been made due to forces over which the deciding politician had no control.  Then, when the consequences appear to be going sideways, the same politician will defend and reinforce the underlying, out-of-control circumstances that forced the original decision.

In effect, then, regarding current political fears, it is Prudent to describe the problem as one of politicians building a box from which they cannot escape.  With haphazard statistics peppering them during January, February and into March, everyone in a decision-making position – president on down – was afraid to not shut things down.  “We must flatten the curve,” said the medical experts, “for if we don’t our hospitals will be overwhelmed and people will needlessly die… die…die.”  OMG!  The possibilities of politicians being blamed for something – being forced to take responsibility for something, anything – were growing to be a real crisis.

As each day passed and unfortunately ill-suited supply chains drew unending accusations, the future looked bleak.  Hot spots seemed to be simply precursors of what was waiting around the corner for every city and state.  Stormy skies for the Republic were forecast, minute by minute, to finally fall on our heads the day after tomorrow.  Things were worse than we thought and getting worse than that.

Quickly, private enterprise shifted manufacturing and supply chains to fill the gaps in equipment and personal protective equipment.  Hospital ships were deployed; ventilators found, refitted or newly manufactured.  Less than 3 weeks later there were too many ventilators and the emergency hospitals and ships were largely unused.  We’re told those successes are all due to stay-at-home orders and strictures on groups as small as, well, one.

The work of the healthcare “system” was and is remarkable as it dealt with an infectious disease not fully understood.  But understanding has developed quickly, as have testings that seek current infections, and past infections, more interestingly.  The folly of many policies and mandates intended to slow the infection rate, is becoming stark.

All incidents are anecdotes until they are added up.  People, especially blame-shedding politicians, can adhere to the “science” of mathematics while ducking responsibility simply by adding up certain incidents and not others.  Every “covid” death was not a covid death; every shutdown business was not about to cause increased infection if not shut down.  School-age children were neither at risk nor a risk for others.  Even public transportation turned out to not be a major source of cross-infections.

Still, shutdowns were not relaxed and even enhanced to varying degrees.  Governors and mayors were just beginning to flex their dictatorial muscles when pesky statistics began to intrude into the shutdown model.  Two things were never going to happen as a result: 1) Those elected executives would change their shutdown tactics to accommodate new facts; or, 2) Those same would admit they had been wrong about some of their policies.

In some states shutdown rules became ever stricter despite evidence they need never have been strict at all.  Besieged governors and even judges, appear to have reacted arbitrarily and personally to citizens demanding that the shutdowns be lifted, including arrests, lifting of licenses, incarceration and harassment.  Essentially none of those instances involved any provable health risk… not even suspected  health risk, the ostensible basis for the “rules.”  Americans should be alert to and instructed by these and hundreds of other examples: Our nation is no longer a nation of laws, but a serfdom of rules.  Rather than “We the people” ratifying shared moral codes of rights and wrongs, set in law, there are now, literally, tens of thousands of rules for what we sovereign citizens are allowed to do.  The solemn advisories that cause small and large “g” governors to promulgate their new rules do not come from US, but from unelected “experts” who self-declare their predictive expertise and carry impressive resume’s.

Some are, perhaps, experts in a field of study, even epidemiology, even in studies of contagions and how they spread in past, somewhat similar environments.  Our newest adversary, coronavirus-19, is not the same as earlier epidemics, it was not spread around the world in the same way, it has not mutated the same way, it has different symptoms, different impacts on different demographics, different gestation periods and different sensitivities to drugs and anti-viral chemicals.  But, they knew exactly what to do before all the statistics were collected and studies were underway.  Presumably these “scientists” would be poised to alter their predictions upon receipt of new facts and observations.  Oddly, however, in direct contravention of scientific method, they have tended to “double down” (a popular gambling term) on their first predictions, making ever more draconian recommendations DESPITE new data.  It is at this point that medical science became medical politics, or ideology.  Like true ideologues they had staked out their beliefs, not their science, and those positions would be defended… economies and lives be damned.

Dr. Fauci appears to be in this class of dictators.  In the span of a few days he switched from reassuring the public that the new coronavirus was not a major concern for Americans, to advising that the economy be shut down, gatherings prohibited and healthy citizens be confined.  Only he can tell us if any science was behind his first views of COVID-19; only he can tell us if any science is behind his current views.  Anyone, however, can tell that there is no science or even judgment behind his praise of W.H.O. director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a politician willing to cooperate with or promote some very sketchy other politicians in matters of public health – including those tied to the Chinese Communist Party.  Ol’ Tedros’ communist-inspired lying can be thanked for many thousands of deaths in the U. S. and around the world.