And the Leonid Brezhnev Memorial Award goes to ...

So UK Prime Minister Keir "Two Tier" Starmer has decreed that people saying hateful things will be jailed because their speech is actually violence, and he's making room for them in His Magesty's prisons be releasing violent criminals because their violence is actually speech, you guys.

Some big shot police constable has even said he was going to go all 1775-Bunker Hill on Americans for their speech, which is totally violence.  Ooooh kaaay,

All this totalitarianism reminds me of a joke from the Soviet Union, back in the day.  It was said about Leonid Brezhnev (and likely others).  I've somewhat rewritten it for modern times.  See if you can tell the difference.

So this guy goes to Red Square Hyde Park Speaker's Corner and yells "Leonid Brezhnev Keir Starmer is a senile fascist old fool!"  Of course, the police swarm him and drag him off to Ye Olde Gaol.  He is sentenced to ten years and ten days in durance vile - ten days for slander and ten years for revealing State Secrets.

Maybe I gave away my edits right there ...

And so the Leonid Brezhnev Memorial Award for Totalitarianism goes to Brit PM Keir Starmer, for fascism above and beyond the call of duty.  Well done you dirty commie bastard.

Quote of the day - Government mandated electric cars edition

Johnathan Pearce hits the nail on the head:

In my view, the idea of making people rely on electric vehicles (EVs) and then curbing how much power they have, is a design feature, not a bug. Those of a Big Government cast of mind (most politicians) might rather like the idea of fitting “kill switches” into EVs so that a bureaucrat can disable them. By making cars costly and annoying, it also forces people to use public transport.

To dismiss the California ban on internal combustion cars as mere incompetence misses the depth of the fascist evil on display.  They want to own everybody in California, and make them submit to their will.  They simply hate freedom, and that's what cars mean.  It's what California used to mean.

Vladimir Putin is the worstest ever!!!!11!!!eleventy!!

There is a *ton* of propaganda about what's happening in Ukraine right now, maybe 80% of it from the Ukranian side.  This makes it hard to know what is actually, you know, happening there.  This is a very long and very interesting analysis of (a) current situation, (b) Ukraine.Gov motives, (c) Russia.Gov motives, and (d) US.Gov/NATO motives.

Highly, highly recommended.

And this part seems to me to hit center mass:

In my analysis, the Ukrainians are mass mobilizing their civilian population to use them as human shields, and then parade their bodies on Western media. These forces will be poorly armed and trained, and have little military usefulness. They will make it more costly for Russian forces to enter Ukrainian cities, but as I mentioned previously, the Russian solution to this problem is the simply level the city. In the end, all of these armed civilians will die, their cities destroyed, with nothing gained. I believe this is in fact the goal of the Ukrainian leadership, who are being cheered on towards this end either consciously or not by Americans and other Westerners. I think Ukrainian leadership is hoping for Russia to flattened cities and inflict mass deaths among the civilian population for PR purposes. With their mass mobilization of urban populations, the Ukrainian leadership is putting the Russian forces in a similar position that Hamas puts Israel’s IDF in. What Hamas does, is hide their forces in dense urban centers from where they stage attacks on Israel. The Israelis are faced with a dilemma, either they tolerate Hamas’s attacks, or they shoot back which will inevitably inflict civilian casualties. The Palestinians in turn show dead civilians and destroyed building on Western news media with the intention of ruining Israel’s international reputation. Both Hamas and Ukraine are using their civilians as human shields. Civilians throwing Molotov cocktails at Russian tanks will achieve nothing, other than getting themselves killed. This should be obvious. As America is weaponizing its “cancel culture” for foreign policy objectives, Russia will be endless maligned in Western media if the Ukrainian strategy succeeds. Personally I find it quite sick that Westerners are cheering the Ukrainians on with this strategy. What they are doing, whether consciously or not, is to sacrifice endless Ukrainian lives all for a narrative to be built of Ukrainian martyrdom.

Take a half hour to read the whole thing which is best described as (ahem) Borepatchian in length.  Or maybe even longer.  But there's a ton of food for thought, at least for folks who don't appreciate being manipulated by increasingly transparent propaganda.

And when I say "increasingly transparent propaganda" I really, really mean increasingly transparent propaganda.  For example, the "New York Times" journalist who was just killed.  The headline?  

BREAKING: Award-Winning AMERICAN Filmmaker and Journalist Shot Dead By Russian Troops...Here Are The Details

Wow, just wow.

Except, not so fast.  Here's the interesting graf from that very article:

Daily Mail reports – Initially, he was thought to have been on assignment for The New York Times because he was carrying a press badge that listed the newspaper as his publication but it has since emerged he was working on a global film about refugees.

So was he or wasn't he covering things for the NYT?  Like I said, increasingly transparent propaganda that is increasingly disconnected from facts.  Certainly this is a tragedy for him and his family - actually the whole damn war is a tragedy for millions and their families - but wartime journalism is known to be a dangerous profession.  Remember the 15 journalists killed in the opening weeks of the Iraq war?

Like I said, I would love a higher caliber of news reporting from Ukraine.  It feels like the original link to Alexander's Cartographer is providing what used to be provided by regular journalists.  Is it, or is it a more subtle and less obvious propaganda?  Who can say?

But it seems that most of what you read is clearly drivel.  I'd like a higher caliber drivel, please.  Go read the whole thing which does not feel to me like drivel, but rather reasoned discussion.

I got yer Canadian "Emergency" right here

Man, it sure looks like Canada is in dire danger ...

Anyone remember that old poem from the 1960s?

"I'm not afraid of A-Bombs,"

says Khrushchev, and he knows it.

He's not afraid of anything -

except, perhaps, a poet.

Holy cow, Justin Trudeau sure is a putz.

Tagged "fascists" because, well, you know.

Why Government should never be allowed to control your Health care

Hospitals in Germany, UK, and Israel refuse life saving transplant to 3 year old because his parents had not been vaccinated.

Politico EU reports that a 3-year-old Cypriot boy was denied a heart transplant by a hospital in Germany allegedly because his parents weren't "fully vaccinated".

And it wasn't just Germany. The boy was turned away by hospitals in the UK and Israel for the same reason. Finally, a Greek hospital was found to do the transplant, but the story is going viral anyway as the latest example of COVID restrictions run amok.

Remember what the lefties like to say: Government is just the set of things that we all agree to do together.

[spit]

Why do you need an assault rifle?  Because some governmental flunky might want to tell you that your kid is going to die because you committed crimethink.

C. W. McCall - Convoy

Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy ...

The #1 song from 1975 (and #98 on Rolling Stone's top 100 song list) is suddenly current again, as the longest truck convoy in history rolls into Ottawa.  The big rigs have been joined by smaller trucks, pickups, and cars, so there may be 100,000 vehicles involved.  Canadians have donated around $8M to pay for the trucker's gas as they flip the middle finger to the hosers in Parliament.

Good.

Convoy (Songwriters: Bill Fries (aka C. W. McCall), Chip Davis)

Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck. You gotta copy on me, Pig Pen, c'mon? Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen, fer shure, fer shure. By golly, it's clean clear to Flag Town, c'mon. Yeah, that's a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy...

Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June
In a Kenworth pullin' logs
Cab-over Pete with a reefer on
And a Jimmy haulin' hogs

We is headin' for bear on I-10
'Bout a mile outta Shaky Town
I says, "Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck"
"And I'm about to put the hammer down"

'Cause we got a little convoy
Rockin' through the night
Yeah, we got a little convoy
Ain't she a beautiful sight?

Come on and join our convoy
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy
'Cross the USA, convoy

Ah, breaker, Pig Pen, this here's the Duck. And, you wanna back off them hogs? Yeah, 10-4, 'bout five mile or so. Ten, roger. Them hogs is gettin' in-tense up here

By the time we got into Tulsa Town
We had eighty-five trucks in all
But they's a roadblock up on the cloverleaf
And them bears was wall-to-wall

Yeah, them smokies is thick as bugs on a bumper
They even had a bear in the air
I says, "Callin' all trucks, this here's the Duck
We about to go a-huntin' bear"

'Cause we got a great big convoy
Rockin' through the night
Yeah, we got a great big convoy
Ain't she a beautiful sight?

Come on and join our convoy
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy
'Cross the USA, convoy

Ah, you wanna give me a 10-9 on that, Pig Pen? Negatory, Pig Pen; you're still too close. Yeah, them hogs is startin' to close up my sinuses. Mercy sakes, you better back off another ten

Well, we rolled up Interstate 44
Like a rocket sled on rails
We tore up all of our swindle sheets
And left 'em settin' on the scales

By the time we hit that Chi-town
Them bears was a-gettin' smart
They'd brought up some reinforcements
From the Illinois National Guard

There's armored cars and tanks and jeeps
And rigs of ev'ry size
Yeah, them chicken coops was full'a bears
And choppers filled the skies

Well, we shot the line and we went for broke
With a thousand screamin' trucks
An' eleven long-haired Friends a' Jesus
In a chartreuse micra-bus

Ah, Rubber Duck to Sodbuster, come over. Yeah, 10-4, Sodbuster? Lissen, you wanna put that micra-bus right behind that suicide jockey? Yeah, he's haulin' dynamite, and he needs all the help he can get

Well, we laid a strip for the Jersey shore
And prepared to cross the line
I could see the bridge was lined with bears
But I didn't have a dog-goned dime

I says, "Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck
We just ain't a-gonna pay no toll"
So we crashed the gate doing ninety-eight
I says "Let them truckers roll, 10-4"

'Cause we got a mighty convoy
Rockin' through the night
Yeah, we got a mighty convoy
Ain't she a beautiful sight?

Come on and join our convoy
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy
'Cross the USA

Convoy! Ah, 10-4, Pig Pen, what's your twenty?
Convoy! Omaha? Well, they oughta know what to do with them hogs out there fer shure. Well, mercy
Convoy! sakes, good buddy, we gonna back on outta here, so keep the bugs off your glass and the bears off your...
Convoy! tail. We'll catch you on the flip-flop. This here's the Rubber Duck on the side
Convoy! We gone. 'Bye,'bye

 

Oh no, Canada!

Remember this from 7 years ago?  Ukranian priests are badass.

It looks like they're now matched in badassitude by Canadian priests who need a SWAT team to take them down for holding church services:

But He knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
My feet have closely followed his steps;
I have kept to his way without turning aside.

- Job 23:10-11

This post tagged "fascists" because, well, you know, eh?

There will be all sorts of compost once the Powers That Be go Green

Over at Miguel's place (I think it was J.Kb - hey guys, can you get a tag to show who posted what there?) we get a link to ravings at the UK Guardian about a Climate Change Final Solution:

The insane people at The Guardian published an article that sets up the historical precedent for that.

Why Genghis Khan was good for the planet
Laying waste to land scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

His empire lasted a century and a half and eventually covered nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface. His murderous Mongol armies were responsible for the massacre of as many as 40 million people. Even today, his name remains a byword for brutality and terror. But boy, was Genghis green.

Genghis Khan, in fact, may have been not just the greatest warrior but the greatest eco-warrior of all time, according to a study by the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Energy. It has concluded that the 13th-century Mongol leader’s bloody advance, laying waste to vast swaths of territory and wiping out entire civilisations en route, may have scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere – roughly the quantity of carbon dioxide generated in a year through global petrol consumption – by allowing previously populated and cultivated land to return to carbon-absorbing forest.

Killing 40 Million people for the planet.

This fiendishly clever plan of theres will indeed lead to a lower population because people like me will put .45 caliber holes in the foreheads of genocidal eco-fascists like the Guardian writers.  Think of all the compost!

Sheesh, it's like these people don't ever listen to what they say.  If they did, they might think something like "Hmm, am I sounding like a deranged, genocidal fascist?  Maybe we should focus on something incremental, like bike paths."  Instead, they'll talk themselves into my proposal, above.

And these morons probably think they're the smartest kids on the block.

And to show that this isn't a one-off, a "Black Swan", an oddball proposal - but rather a recurrent theme from the Genocidal Eco Left, here are some other genocidal Save The Planet sooper smaht plans that we've mocked here, dredged from the Borepatch archives:

Save The Planet - Starve The Children

Kill The Children For Mother Gaia

Friday Follies: KillThe Children For Mother Gaia Edition

Kill The Dog for Mother Gaia

Cut Health Care To Save Mother Gaia

Global Warming Causes Totalitarianism

Oh, and that last one is a hoot - the link there goes to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.  This sort of genocidal eco fascism is entirely mainstream in western medical establishments.  It seems that there must be some sort of education plan in action, to make all this easy to get along with.  Maybe something like this ...

UPDATE 18 April 2021 11:19: Very good reply posted over at The Silicon Graybeard.

Queen - Under pressure

ASM826's post about the pressure that inhabitants of Blue Cities must be feeling made me think that there's an anthem for this, an anthem from 35 years ago.  The introduction really shows how fun one of these concerts must have been - although Wembley was special.  Jump ahead to around 2:45 for the song.

Under Pressure (Songwriters: Roger Taylor, Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, Brian May, David Bowie)

Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you no man ask for
Under pressure
That burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets

It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming get me out
Tomorrow takes me higher
Pressure on people
People on streets

Day day day
Okay

Chippin' around
Kick my brains round the floor
These are the days
It never rains but it pours

People on streets
People on streets

It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming let me out
Tomorrow takes me high, high, higher
Pressure on people
People on streets

Turned away from it all
Like the blind man
Sat on a fence but it don't work
Keep coming up with love
But it's so slashed and torn
Why why why?

Love, love, love, love

Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love give love give love?

Give love, give love, give love
Give love, give love, give love?
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care
For the people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way
Of caring about ourselves

This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure

It must be said here that Brian May is a PhD Astrophysicist (and Commander of the British Empire, or CBE).  Not your typical head banger.  The Queen Of The World and I highly recommend the film Bohemian Rhapsody, if you haven't seen it.  Or even if you have.

Coronavirus data, and some cautious conclusions - and an apology to Aesop

Ignore the hype.  The data are not hype, and the hype is not data.  This is the most important thing to know about the Coronavirus:

This is the weekly US COVID deaths as reported by the CDC.  Even with the shift from "dying from COVID" to "dying with COVID" to "dying in the same Zip code as COVID" (like the Florida buy killed in a motorcycle accident whose fatality is included in the graph here), we see that deaths are way, way down and dropping further.  The data are clear on this.

This is the second most important thing to know about the Coronavirus:

This is the US All Cause Deaths.  You can see the annual spikes during the winter Flu season.  This year is definitely not "just a bad flu season" - deaths are significantly up from two years ago (which was a bad flu season).  The dashed line is all cause deaths minus Coronavirus deaths but again you see the deaths dropping.  The last three dots are most recent reports which are incomplete and which will be adjusted upwards in the future as it can take 8 weeks for all deaths to be reported.

Data are from here, which is worth a read in full.

And this is where I was wrong and Aesop was right - this was not just a bad flu.  The data are crystal clear on that.

However, the data did not justify shutting down the economy.  The data did not justify preventing you from saying goodbye to Grandma on her deathbed.  The data did not justify prohibiting public gatherings at funerals.  The data did not justify shutting down Sunday church.  The data did not justify shutting down the schools.  The data don't justify mandatory mask wearing.  The data don't justify the hype.

The data do justify intelligent measures to protect vulnerable populations.  The data do justify additional health care resources to make sure the hospitals - and their employees - do not get overloaded.  There are probably a couple others that could go here, but I'd be pretty surprised if it's more than a couple others.

But we are not governed by Philosopher Kings, which means that we get the worst of both worlds - we get forced infection of vulnerable populations, we have great stress in the health care system, and we have Autocratic tyranny that would have had the Russian Tsars scribbling notes.

In a younger and more vigorous age of this Republic, the politicians who imposed all this useless misery on the population would have been horsewhipped through the public square.  The data don't say that, but we can figure that out all on our own.

Observe your Philosopher-Kings in action, and despair

The central conceit of progressivism is the dream that really smart public servants can conceive of and implement optimal public policy.  The problem is simple - who are you going to believe, Progressives or your lyin' eyes?

"Smart" public policy for the Kung Flu doesn't include shutting cemeteries:

Nobody on the inside is at risk to either transmit or receive the disease.  And anyway, by definition they are all six feet away even if you are indelicate enough to stand right on them.

Tim is much kinder to them than I would be, but he's much more of a gentleman than I.  But he was also an ER doctor, and so there is a clarity to his thinking that our Governmental Overlords could use a heapin' helping of:

The vehicle gate on the other end of the cemetery was naturally open so this the sort of response to the Current Unpleasantness that grates because it is ineffectual as well as petty and lazy.

We have top men creating public policy.  Top.  Men.

The Kung Flu death data *is* getting better

I've been criticized for citing CDC data in yesterday's post because CDC updates the data.  Fair enough.  I haven't been tracking how the updates have been running.

But other people have:

As of Monday, the CDC reported that deaths from covid-19 in the week ended May 2 (Saturday) were 138 nationwide. That is 1% of the 12,516 covid-19 deaths for the week ended April 11, which was the peak week of this pandemic.

Now then, the CDC cautioned readers.

It said, "Death counts for earlier weeks are continually revised and may increase or decrease as new and updated death certificate data are received from the states by NCHS. Covid-19 death counts shown here may differ from other published sources, as data currently are lagged by an average of 1–2 weeks."

The week ended April 25 initially was reported as 461 covid-19 deaths.

Now it is listed at 3,699 -- a nine-fold increase.

A nine-fold increase in week ended May 2 would mean a 90% drop from the peak week. Clearly the time has come to re-open the nation.

Like I said in yesterday's post, we're on the other side of the mountain.

Anyone who wants to keep the lockdown in place (with the possible exception of the New York City metropolitan area) needs to do some justification that includes data showing that there is an existential crisis.  Just saying that "people will die" isn't enough to keep 30M (and counting) out of work.

At this point the government is doing nothing but immiserating the working class and going full frontal fascist.  Oh, and destroying the health care system.  Enough.

The data on Kung Flu deaths is getting better

CDC just revised Wuhan Flu deaths down by 44%, to 37,000.  Here's why:

Click through to the CDC's web site - the data are very interesting.  Everything that I've seen reported by the idiot media has been a big grab bag of "Death by Kung Flu" + "Death with Kung Flu" + "We think it might have been Death with Kung Flu but couldn't be bothered to test to make sure".  Now CDC has broken this all out explicitly.  Looking at just the "Death From Kung Flu", things are looking pretty encouraging:

Source: CDC

We're on the other side of the mountain.  The graph looks the same if you plot "We think it might have been Death with Kung Flu but couldn't be bothered to test to make sure":

Source: CDC

How dodgy is this particular plot (the "Kitchen Sink" Kung Flu Deaths)?  About the same number of people died in the week of 4/25/2020 as before the flu broke out.  That is either extra crazy medical juju, or it's crummy data.  But even with data this bad, it's clear that we've crossed the mountain.

Observations:

1. The data have been dodgy but we're getting better visibility.  Things are better - a lot better - than anyone has been saying.

2. Even using crappy data (where nobody dies of natural causes anymore) it's very clear that things are a lot better than anyone has been saying.

3. Prediction: when the data for this week are in, the plot trajectories will continue in the same direction, heading towards zero.

4. There is absolutely no data justifying maintaining the lockdown that has thrown 30 Million out of work.  The trajectory of that graph is also clear - each day another million people lose their jobs.

5. There is no data that shows that the lockdown is saving lives.  There is no data that shows that the lockdown is preventing ICUs from being overloaded.  You can say that after the lockdown were imposed the deaths peaked and then declined, but the lockdown went into effect a month ago - why the delay in turning the curve? Where's your control group so you can compare lockdown vs. non-lockdown deaths?  This is nothing but post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning.  OK, maybe it's also bureaucratic ass-covering.

6. The lockdown is being implemented by fascists.  That by itself is sufficient reason to end it.

We're over the mountain.  It's over, we're just waiting for the Fat Woman to sing.  Given how wretched our government is, that means it will only be another month of lockdown.

In which I agree with Elon Musk

Obligatory disclaimer: he is (in my opinion) a modern version of the Gilded Age robber barons.  Specifically, he has figured out how to extract government funding for his private ventures.

Of course, that doesn't make him wrong, it just makes him an interested party.

But this is a fine rant, getting extra credit for being delivered on an earnings call.  He calls the government lock down fascist, explicitly using the term.  Maybe he just reads Borepatch.  Full marks.  Maybe he's read Borepatch for a long time*, in which case the question becomes "what took you so long, dude?"

Of course, sophisticated observers have know this for the better part of a decade, but it's gratifying to see a Captain Of Industry saying this out loud.



But yeah - fascist.  And a note to all government employees who think they might "follow orders" to ask for a "government permit" for free citizens out and about doing their business: you get extra crazy fascist style points** asking for the permit in the original German: "Papierien, bitte."

Extra crazy style points.

* Perhaps the finest comment ever left here was by The Czar Of Muscovy on that post.  Bravo.  And that post got a comment by Spandrell.  (Respectful) Fanboi Squee!

** Remember, the Wehrmacht got Hugo Boss to design their uniforms.  Extra crazy style points, amirite?

The shutdown is not about protecting people's health

Sure, that's how it was sold to the public, but that isn't how it's being used.  The Queen Of The World saw this on the Book of Faces, and it is so dead on target that I'm posting it here:

When the State tells you it's safe to go to Home Depot to buy a sponge but dangerous to go and buy a flower, it's not about your health. 

When the State shuts down millions of private businesses but doesn’t lay off a single government employee, it's not about your health. 

When the State bans dentists because its unsafe, but deems abortion visits are safe, it's not about your health. 

When the State prevents you from buying cucumber seeds because it's dangerous, but allows in person lottery ticket sales, it's not about your health. 

When the State tells you it's dangerous to go golf alone, fish alone or be in a motor boat alone, but the Governor can get his stage make up done, and hair done for 5 TV appearances a week, it's not about your health. 

When the state puts you IN a jail cell for walking in a park with your child because it’s too dangerous, but let’s criminals OUT of jail cells for their health- It’s not about YOUR health! 

When the state tells you it’s too dangerous to get treated by a doctor of chiropractic or physical therapy treatments yet deems a liquor store essential- It’s not about your health! 

When the State lets you go to the grocery store or hardware store but is demanding mail-in voting, ITS NOT ABOUT YOUR HEALTH. 

It's not about your health.  It's about the exercise of power by the State.

I don't think that I'm the only one who thinks this; the wave of protests we're seeing across the country are likely driven by this recognition.

And can we pretty please once and for all admit that "smart" public policy can't fix all problems if we just got the right Smart People® in power?

It's been a while since used the fascist post tag, but the last couple days I'm wearing it out ...

It's time to re-open the economy

Nobody is talking about the justification the government used shut down the economy: the health care system will collapse unless we "flatten the curve".  It wasn't "people will die unless we do this" - people will die no matter what.  Instead, it was to protect the health care system from collapse.

Well, mission accomplished:

The curve is flattening all over the world.  It's at or approaching the top of the bell curve, and will be dropping soon.  We see the same thing in the US:

Even New York which has kept its Petri Dish subway system open if flattening.  I guess the reason you close restaurants but keep the subway open is that Public Transit has been sprinkled with magic government dust.

Curve, flattened.

Note that we don't know what flattened the curve.  The models that projected disaster are full of crap* and so this might just be the normal course of the disease.  Note that we don't know exactly how many people really dies from this disease because of sloppy record keeping.  There are tons of co-morbidities and a death often gets chalked up to the virus when the patient was on Death's Door anyway.  The data is not great, and you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if the Powers That Be at CDC are shifting into ass covering mode and fiddling the data.  It wouldn't be the first time that data got "adjusted" to suit political purposes.

At the end of the day, what will protect sick people from this virus is herd immunity.  We don't even know how many people have had this and recovered, because the CDC screwed up the test kits and we aren't systematically testing the population.  However, it looks like the number of recovered is much, much higher than predicted (remember - the models are crap).  The key metric now has shifted from Hospital Bed Usage to Percent Recovered.

So it's time to declare victory.  We can't increase the number of recovered fast if everyone is under house arrest.

And quite frankly, enough damage has been done to the people of this country.  80% of restaurant owners polled are unsure if they will survive until things return to normal.  23M people are out of work, just in this country.  Enough.

But we're not done.  We're seeing that the fascist instinct is alive and well at all levels of government.  I won't bother with exhaustive links, but people getting tickets when they are in their cars in their church parking lot, Chicago closing hair salons except for the Mayor, and New Jersey claiming that political protests are illegal are just a few examples.  The government has gotten a taste of power, and likes it.

Enough.

I don't often disagree with Aesop, but he's entirely wrong in his latest post.  The curve has flattened.  Sure, reopening might lead to a spike but that's just conjecture.  Certainly any models showing this are suspect, based on the crummy track record of previous model projections.  And we don't know how many of the deaths would have happened anyway without the virus, but it sure isn't zero.

Lastly, I have to call Godwin.  Those of us who are saying we have to reopen the economy aren't the brown shirts.  On the contrary, Aesop can drive out to San Clemente to look at the sand filled skate park.  There's your fascist, right in your own back yard.

It's not Wall Street that's hurting, it's the small businesses which are the core of the country.  These are our neighbors.  Their dreams are being crushed.  The government said it had to be done to protect the health care system from collapse.

Well, mission accomplished.

Miami-Dade police body armor

There's a new design being issued, it seems.

pic.twitter.com/mguvDh70lZ

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) December 9, 2019

ATF flouts 5th Amendment

I guess that chewing at the Second isn't enough:

A US judge gave the cops permission to force people's fingers onto seized iPhones to see who could unlock them, a newly unsealed search warrant has revealed. 

Specifically, Judge Judith Dein, of the federal district court of Massachusetts, gave agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) the right to press Robert Brito-Pina's fingers on any iPhone found in his apartment in Boston. The bloke was suspected to be trafficking guns, hence the application for a search warrant. In fact, anyone nabbed at the property would be forced to use their fingers to unlock any cellphones seized at the home, according to the court filing.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Heck, why not let them waterboard everyone?

This is why you should never use your fingerprint (or face) to unlock your phone:

What is notable about the warrant, surfaced this week by Law360, is that law enforcement is drawing a clear distinction between forcing someone to place their fingers on a phone to unlock it and forcing them to give officers the passcode to unlock it. The first is physical; the second is mental, and brings with it both Fourth and Fifth Amendment issues.

Why can't the government provide healthcare and the "Green New Deal"?

You can learn everything you need to know about the counter-productiveness of handing power to the government by reading this:  Canadian woman fined for not holding escalator handrail finally gets case before Supreme Court:

A Canadian woman fined for failing to hold on to an escalator handrail in 2009 has finally reached the Supreme Court in her search for justice. 

Bela Kosoian was using the subway in Laval near Montreal in 2009 when a police officer told her to respect a warning sign, in French, saying "Caution, hold the handrail", CTV News reported. 

She argued with the officer that the pictogram was advice rather than the law, but the officer promptly handcuffed her, detained her for half an hour and slapped her with a $100 fine for failing to take advantage of escalator safety features and a further $320 for refusing to identify herself. 

Kosoian was acquitted in 2012 but decided to sue the police and transport authority. She lost twice in Quebec before the Supreme Court of Canada took up the case.

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So some jack-booted fascist thug got all Respect mah authoritah on her, and the redress requires the Supreme damn Court.  No doubt the Police Officer is still on the force, if he hasn't since retired on a hefty pension.  There was almost certainly no unpleasant consequences for his use of handcuffs and detainment over a trifle.

Apply that exact calculus to the public school system, or the Veteran's Affairs Department, or to just about everything government does.  Heck, even the military which is about the best we can point to for government actually doing what it is supposed to.  The book Embrace The Suck captures the failure of everything government from the point of view of the Grunts.

And remember, the military's goal is a lot easier than the goals of any of the rest of the Fed.Gov.  The other departments have to try to build something that works, while the military has to kill people and break their stuff.  Dangerous, sure.  But a lot easier to understand and accomplish.

And to return to the original point of this rant: even if the Green New Deal weren't a wasteland of bone headed and counter productive boondoggles, the government couldn't implement it anyway.  The people who would need to do it are too busy handcuffing hardened criminals like Ms. Kosoian for the dastardly crime of ignoring their Betters.

This post is tagged with the labels fascists, police state, and government cockups because, well, you know.

UPDATE 19 April 2019 14:31: Of course, Sal the Agorist has something apropos:

pic.twitter.com/MxKMOBGs8E

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 19, 2019

The CDC gets blowback on draconian anti-opiod guidelines

In 2016, the CDC published new guidance for doctors on pain medication.  This has resulted in increased difficulty in getting medication by people suffering from chronic pain, and in some cases had led to "cold turkey" withdrawal of the medications - a cruel and quite frankly medically dangerous practice.

Last month saw a letter to the CDC, a letter that documented hundreds of patients suffering the adverse consequences of the CDC's guidance.  The letter was signed by hundreds of doctors and nurses.  And suddenly the CDC is stumbling all over itself to "clarify" their 2016 guidance:

Acknowledging the suffering caused by "misinterpretation" of the opioid prescribing guidelines it published in 2016, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday sought to clarify that it never recommended imposing involuntary dose reductions on chronic pain patients. In a letter to physicians who had objected to that widespread practice, CDC Director Robert Redfield emphasized that his agency "does not endorse mandated or abrupt dose reduction or discontinuation, as these actions can result in patient harm." Redfield described several steps the CDC is taking to research the impact of its guidelines and correct misunderstandings that have led to abrupt withdrawal, undertreated pain, denial of care, and in some cases suicide.

"I have seen many patients harmed by widespread misapplication of the Guideline," said Stefan Kertesz, a University of Alabama at Birmingham pain and addiction specialist who helped organize a March 6 letter on the subject that was signed by hundreds of health professionals. Kertesz welcomed the CDC's response, which came the same day that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning about the risks of involuntary or fast opioid tapering.

It seems that a bunch of folks are giving the CDC attaboys for this.  My take is different.

The people at the CDC (and also it seems at the FDA) who wrote this guidance should be horsewhipped in the public square, and then denied pain medication.  The Reason post linked above contains story after story from people forced to live in agony.  Here's a sample quote from a patient:

"You don't know me, you don't walk in my shoes, you don't have my nerve damage, and you don't have to live with the thought of will today be the day that I kill myself because I can't take the pain anymore"

And the CDC's answer?  "Oops, my bad":

Redfield said the CDC is communicating with providers and health systems to "clarify the content" of its advice, to "emphasize the importance of developing policies consistent with the Guideline's intent," and to "highlight recommendations within the Guideline, including tapering guidance, options for non-opioid treatments for chronic pain, and communicating with patients."

Let's break that down, shall we?  Here's the translation from bureauticrese to English:

the CDC is communicating with providers and health systems to "clarify the content" of its advice 

Our guidance was crappy and too vague, almost certainly because we were covering our ass with politicians breathing down our necks on this "War On Drugs" nonsense and we were a bunch of pussies that caved to the pressure. 

to "emphasize the importance of developing policies consistent with the Guideline's intent" 

It may be vague but we're still pussies worried about those damn politicians.  But we're sorry we got caught and really really want this to get out of the public eye. 

and to "highlight recommendations within the Guideline, including tapering guidance, options for non-opioid treatments for chronic pain, and communicating with patients." 

Holy cow we're still pussies and are afraid of losing our jobs because the Politicians really really want their War On Drugs. 

The Government is a stumbling, bumbling idiot that crushes everything it touches.  Remember, kids: it's not "Government Healthcare" or even "Socialized Healthcare".  It's "Politicized Healthcare" and we're seeing it right now, before our very eyes.  Just wait until that's the only thing left to us and the Politicians really start yanking the levers.

Jerks.