RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/27/the-covid-follies-play-again/

I was hoping I would never have to write about the Wuhan flu, aka COVID-19, again. I overdosed on it in days of yore. During the Great Panic of 2020, I wrote about it many times.  I really have nothing much new to add. 

Now, as then, I have been astonished that a disease that poses a serious threat to a tiny sliver of the population—some of the elderly, and those with underlying (new vocabulary word!) “co-morbidities” like obesity—should have caused such widespread panic, not to mention such an acrid authoritarian response from so many governments. I was also astonished, and correspondingly disheartened, by the alacrity with which people the world over turned themselves into sheep, allowing their elected representatives (where such existed) to herd them like cattle: docile, bovine, will-less. But that’s how it was. 

Now of course, everything has changed. We have a smorgasbord of vaccines with (we are told) something like a 95 percent success rate. We have a wide range of effective therapeutics, including the once-scorned (because Trump-endorsed) ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, not to mention monoclonal antibody treatment. Right around the corner, I am told, Pfizer and other members of the Big Pharma brotherhood will be offering a pill that (according to some) will cut hospitalizations and death from COVID by almost 90 percent. So the world is once again free, maskless, social. 

Just kidding. 

But why, you might ask, are we still masking up, locking down, and otherwise acting like savages who forgot yesterday’s human sacrifice and now are worried about what the angry, unpropitiated gods might do? 

I like to point out that the great, but under-remarked upon, thing about COVID is that it has all but abolished death from old age. Readers will remember that Florida motorcycle driver who was in a dreadful accident, poor thing, and was spread like raspberry jam across the highway. Nevertheless, assiduous EMTs, or maybe it was some junior assistant of Anthony Fauci, collected enough goo to perform the requisite test and, bingo, he, or it, “tested positive” and was put down at first as a death from COVID. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/looters-hit-la-home-depot-bottega-veneta-on-black-friday/

Two Los Angeles County stores became the latest victims of California’s “smash and grab” looting wave on Black Friday.

A group of 15-to-20-year-old suspects targeted a Home Depot store in Lakewood around 8:30 p.m., making off with crowbars, mallets and sledgehammers, according to Fox 11 Los Angeles. The group, which arrived in as many as ten vehicles and ran into the store wearing ski masks, reportedly emptied out an entire section of hammers before taking off, KCBS-TV reported.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told the station the stolen tools could be used in more robberies at other LA-area stores.

Meanwhile, in Beverly Grove, looters stole high-end merchandise and pepper sprayed those who tried to stop them, KCBS-TV reported.

The robberies come after Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore told the city’s Police Commission on Tuesday that the department would be “dedicating resources to some of these higher-end locations to deter further acts of violence.” 

The “smash and grab” break-in comes amid a wave of similar burglaries in California.

A group of 20 looters targeted a Nordstrom store in Los Angeles on Monday night, using a sledgehammer to smash the store’s windows in and steal an unknown amount of merchandise, police said. That burglary, which resulted in three arrests, took place at The Grove shopping mall just before 11 p.m., CBS Los Angeles reported.

The suspects fled the scene in four vehicles, according to the report. Police pursued one of the cars and arrested three suspects after they attempted to flee on foot.

One hour before the Nordstrom incident, burglar reportedly stole $8,500 in cash from a CVS roughly ten miles away. Authorities are investigating to see if there is a possible connection between the two burglaries. 

One day earlier, a mob of robbers hit stores in Hayward and San Jose for the third consecutive day of looting in the San Francisco Bay area. On Sunday, a wave of 30 to 40 young people arrived at a jewelry store in Southland Mall in Hayward where they reportedly smashed glass counters and ran off. A second, smaller wave of people came shortly after to finish the job, Da Lin of KPIX-TV reported.

Last weekend, a group of looters struck a Nordstrom in Walnut Creek, assaulting staff and intimidating patrons. They reportedly even pepper sprayed a few individuals.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/waukesha-atrocity-should-herald-an-end-to-the-bail-charade/

Don’t set fictional $5 million bail. Deny bail to defendants who can be established by clear evidence as dangers to the community.

L ast Sunday’s atrocity in Waukesha, a mass-murder attack by a career violent criminal that ravaged a community celebration, has brought to the fore the issue of cash bail — a bête noir of self-styled criminal-justice “reformers” and thus a top agenda item of the Progressive Prosecutor Project.

Stated succinctly, Darrell Brooks Jr. had no business being out on bail. He has a two-decade record of forcible felonies. When he killed six people (a death toll that could go higher) and injured dozens of others by ramming through a parade at high speed in his SUV, he was on low-bail release on not one but two violent felony cases. For that, we can thank the unconscionable crime-enabling policies of Milwaukee district attorney John Chisolm.

First, Chisolm’s office failed to timely bring Brooks to trial on assault and firearms charges, so, to facilitate his release, his bail was reduced to $500 (originally, it had been $10,000, which was enough to hold him for a time). Then, after a November 2 incident in which Brooks allegedly beat his former girlfriend and then used the same SUV to run over her leg, causing severe injuries, Chisolm’s office agreed to release him on just $1,000 bail. At the time of both Milwaukee bail releases, there was an outstanding Nevada arrest warrant for Brooks — in addition to his other charms, Brooks is a convicted sex-offender who has allegedly violated his supervision terms.

DA Chisolm is a zealot on the matter of diverting criminals from prosecution, a position that seamlessly devolves into opposing pretrial detention for arrestees. Chanting the familiar progressive mantra, he portrays cash bail — the practice by which defendants are released upon posting an amount of money reasonably deemed to assure their appearance at court proceedings — as “criminalizing poverty.” The idea is that in our irredeemably racist system, requiring the posting of money results in the pretrial incarceration of those who cannot afford it. The poor, disproportionately in population terms, include African Americans and some other racial and ethnic minorities; better-off white defendants, by contrast, are said to be able to buy their way back onto the streets.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/community-family/texas-parents-are-fighting-back-and-theyre-getting-doxxed-for-it

Parents in Texas have been increasingly concerned over controversial issues circulating at their children’s schools, causing an uptick in involvement and pushback from school administrators.

This week, Norma Garcia-Lopez, the co-chairwoman of the Racial Equity Committee in the Fort Worth Independent School District, doxxed a group of concerned parents who had filed a lawsuit against the district’s mask mandates. Doxxing is when a person’s personal information, such as home address and phone number, is published online for punitive reasons.

“She doxxed us … I got 17 voicemails at my work from one person,” Kerri Rehmeyer, a Fort Worth mother who sued the school district to block a mask mandate, told Fox News .

“It’s astounding what the ‘White Privilege’ power from Tanglewood has vs a whole diverse community that cares for the well being of others,” Garcia-Lopez wrote on a Twitter account that has now disappeared. “These are their names: Jennifer Treger, Todd Daniel, Kerri Rehmeyer and a coward Jane Doe. Internet do your thang.”

In August, a court granted a temporary injunction against the mask mandates, but the school district continues to appeal the injunction to higher courts. While Rehmeyer opposes mask mandates, she told Fox News she believed Garcia-Lopez targeted and doxxed her because she and other parents also oppose the teaching of critical race theory in schools.

Parents have every right to be as concerned about schools implementing unnecessary mask mandates as they do the teaching of critical race theory. Fort Worth ISD has not been shy about embracing a curriculum designed to teach students solely from a race-based perspective.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/courage-strength-optimism/fire-the-four-stars

Facing the rising prospect of a major conflict with China, the nation needs senior military leaders who are, well, superb leaders.

We’re not getting that leadership.

The problem starts with the most senior military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

The Army officer had an impressive career up until his current job. A light infantry warfare specialist, Milley held commands in some of the Army’s most prestigious units. As Army chief of staff, the general won praise for pushing innovation in procurement and strategy. Unfortunately, Milley’s record as chairman of the Joint Chiefs has been far less inspiring.

Over the past year, Milley has given explosive quotes to a legion of different journalists. Stand-out moments include Milley’s apparent pledge to Nancy Pelosi that he would interfere with nuclear command structures and his likening of former President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. When questioned about his penchant for pontification, Milley offers disdain.

What of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle? Milley says it was “a logistical success but a strategic failure.” One, we would note, that no senior military officers have resigned over. This spin-savvy, media-obsessed leadership sets a poor example.

Others have taken heed.

Central Command’s Kenneth McKenzie, for one. Responsible for U.S. military operations in the Near East, Middle East, and Central Asia, Gen. McKenzie supervised the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.

He’s happy to be political. On Aug. 30, McKenzie offered a masterclass in the delivery of Biden administration talking points. The general insisted that even after the withdrawal, the United States would “always retain the ability to [target terrorists in Afghanistan effectively].” This optimism was derided by analysts, who pointed out the difficulty of identifying and targeting terrorists while lacking a proximate ground base near them.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-cynical-and-dangerous-weaponization?token=e

Within hours of the August 25, 2020, shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin — not days, but hours — it was decreed as unquestioned fact in mainstream political and media circles that the shooter, Kyle Rittenhouse, was a “white supremacist.” Over the next fifteen months, up to and including his acquittal by a jury of his peers on all charges, this label was applied to him more times than one can count by corporate media outlets as though it were proven fact. Indeed, that Rittenhouse was a “white supremacist” was deemed so unquestionably true that questioning it was cast as evidence of one’s own racist inclinations (defending a white supremacist).

Yet all along, there was never any substantial evidence, let alone convincing proof, that it was true. This fact is, or at least should be, an extraordinary, even scandalous, event: a 17-year-old was widely vilified as being a white supremacist by a union of national media and major politicians despite there being no evidence to support the accusation. Yet it took his acquittal by a jury who heard all the evidence and testimony for parts of the corporate press to finally summon the courage to point out that what had been Gospel about Rittenhouse for the last fifteen months was, in fact, utterly baseless.

A Washington Post news article was published late last week that was designed to chide “both sides” for exploiting the Rittenhouse case for their own purposes while failing to adhere carefully to actual facts. Ever since the shootings in Kenosha, they lamented, “Kyle Rittenhouse has been a human canvas onto which the nation’s political divisions were mapped.” In attempting to set the record straight, the Post article contained this amazing admission:

As conservatives coalesced around the idea of Rittenhouse as a blameless defender of law and order, many on the left just as quickly cast him as the embodiment of the far-right threat. Despite a lack of evidence, hundreds of social media posts immediately pinned Rittenhouse with extremist labels: white supremacist, self-styled militia member, a “boogaloo boy” seeking violent revolution, or part of the misogynistic “incel” movement.

 “On the left he’s become a symbol of white supremacy that isn’t being held accountable in the United States today,” said Becca Lewis, a researcher of far-right movements and a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. “You see him getting conflated with a lot of the police officers who’ve shot unarmed Black men and with Trump himself and all these other things. On both sides, he’s become a symbol much bigger than himself.”

Soon after the shootings, then-candidate Joe Biden told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Rittenhouse was allegedly part of a militia group in Illinois. In the next sentence, Biden segued to criticism of Trump and hate groups: “Have you ever heard this president say one negative thing about white supremacists?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/trying_to_make_sense_of_the_omicron_covid_variant.html

The big news today—the one that sent oil prices and stock markets plummeting—is that there is a new variant of COVID emerging in South Africa called. It’s been christened the “omicron” variant. Currently, it’s hard to tell if it’s really something to worry about or if it’s a variation on the theme. It’s enough to know that world governments are reacting as if it’s Spring 2020 all over again, plus more pressure for vaccines, all of which is ironic considering there’s no evidence that anything we did last year or this year helped stop COVID’s rampage.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle has a mixture of fact and opinion that seems representative of the whole omicron phenomenon. First, the known facts:

The variant was discovered in South Africa, when cases suddenly spiked from an average of about 200 a day to 2,465 on Thursday. Scientists studying samples of the virus to try to explain the outbreak discovered the variant. That doesn’t necessarily mean the variant originated in South Africa, which has among the world’s best viral surveillance systems and may simply have been the first country to identify it.

[snip]

Omicron has many more mutations than the currently world-dominant delta variant — more than 30 on the spike protein alone, which is considered key to the virus’ ability to infect human cells. The large number of mutations has scientists concerned that omicron could be more infectious than delta, and possibly able to evade immunity generated by previous infections or vaccines.

The WHO wrote in a report on the variant that preliminary evidence suggests that omicron might have “increased risk of reinfection.” Among omicron’s many mutations are sequences associated with increased infectiousness and reduced vaccine effectiveness.

[snip]

Scientists still don’t know how omicron matches up with delta — a variant so transmissible that it essentially wiped out other variants of concern like alpha and beta. In the United States, delta still makes up 99% of cases that undergo genomic sequencing.