Posse Incitatus

Super-Spreader of Bad News

The corrupt news media is gearing up for the final four months -- the stretch run in trying to take out Donald Trump.

For over three years, the media jackals have been giving 90 percent negative coverage to the Trumpster. Their raw partisanship, frequent inaccuracies, sensationalism, and utter lack of humility are appalling. Let's put it this way: They're quick to quote "anonymous sources" (made up sources and/or hacks with an ax to grind), but highly reluctant to run corrections when they report laughably inaccurate bullshit (which is often).

There's no doubt in my mind that Coronavirus, the lockdown and its economic damage, plus the riots & mayhem following George Floyd's death on May 25, have lifted their spirits considerably. I repeat: These people don't give a rat's ass how many people suffer or die from COVID-19, have their businesses destroyed, are assaulted or raped, or lose their jobs and face financial ruin --- AS LONG AS TRUMP LOSES HIS RE-ELECTION BID. 

So I turn to the question of motive, and how big a factor it is. Let me set this up with an observation on former President Barack Obama and his egregiously misguided foreign policy team. Obama's nuclear deal with Iran involved removing sanctions that had been imposed on the pariah nation, and sending $150 billion in cash to Tehran. So what if we were just releasing Iranian cash that we had been holding onto for decades; the Iranians used that money to fund their terroristic exploits worldwide. The Obama administration definitely had blood on its hands.

The president also agreed to a lax inspection regimen to supposedly monitor Iran's compliance. My question at the time was, are Obama and his people really this naive? Or did he deliberately do it to spite Israel and hurt America in the long run? The latter sounds entirely plausible coming from the Manchurian candidate whose anti-semitism was the world's worst-kept secret.

So that scenario is playing out in my mind as I see repeated overwrought news stories about COVID-19 making a comeback like a raging forest fire. The media gleefully reports on sudden spikes of COVID-19 cases in red states that had less strict lockdowns and re-opened their economies sooner than the rest of the nation.

But context is downplayed or not reported on at all. Of course there will be far more confirmed cases, simply because testing has dramatically increased since the early days of the pandemic. Back in March, under 1 million COVID-19 tests had been performed nationwide. Now, the total is over 32 million, and that figure promises to increase dramatically  in the coming weeks.

Having learned hard lessons about the insanity of sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes and assisted living facilities, thus jeopardizing the most vulnerable among us, our nation is now doing a much better job of protecting seniors than we did a few months ago. But not without a heartbreakingly large number of deaths of senior citizens in states like New York and Michigan due to the ill-advised policies of misguided governors.

A huge portion of the positive test results now involve young people. Many of them are due to the young congregating in bars and at parties (social distancing is impossible for hormone-driven and alcohol-fueled youth looking to score some action). A bar right here in East Lansing, Mich., is now confirmed to have been the source for about 90 COVID-19 cases invovling people who visited the establishment during a 10-day period in mid-June. There's no question that the protest marches and riots of a few weeks ago also contributed to the spread. With that being said, the survival rate for people under age 50 afflicted with COVID-19 is still well above 99 percent.

This is not worth locking down the economy, which is doing grave damage to budgets, commerce and the mental and physical health of millions of people whose jobs were lost and livelihoods destroyed. It's difficult to quantify the extent of domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment, bankruptcy, despair, depression, and suicide that are ravaging the American populace. Many of the strictest lockdown advocates -- power-hungry dictators like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and their lemming-like followers -- have an Asperger-like indifference to the hideous fallout.

The press will continue with the hysterical drumbeat of "a spike in cases" and push out all sorts of panic about the infection rate. But the mortality rate is far more important, and it is declining dramatically. The COVID19 Tracking Project reported Saturday that our nation's daily death toll for June 27 (506) was the lowest since March 21.

Normally, I blame simplistic thinking, limited intellect and an absence of analytical skills / critical thinking among our rotten Fourth Estate. But something tells me they can't be that stupid. More than likely, it's a deliberate attempt to paint Donald Trump and Republican governors in the worst possible light. So typical for the vermin of the press, and unless America wakes up, a potential death blow to our nation's future.

John Roberts = John McCain / Jeff Flake / Mitt Romney

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts, he of the infamous Obamacare ruling in 2012, in which he found the mandate with a fine for noncompliance to be a tax, is up to his old tricks again.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (concerned with equal employment opportunity) bars discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation or status as a transgender person. Supposedly conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Roberts in ruling for the majority, a ruling that grossly distorts the original intent of the 1964 law, and effectively gives free reign to LGBTQ rights.

Then, just a couple days later, a double-whammy: The Supremes ruled that President Donald Trump cannot immediately overturn DACA (Deferred Action for Childhool Arrivals), which President Barack Obama implemented via executive order to provide legal protections and work permits to unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. Once again, Roberts was the swing vote, going with the liberals to rule against Trump.

I used to say that retired justice David Suiter, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Looking back, Suiter wasn't nearly as damaging as John Roberts, who G.W. Bush appointed as Chief Justice. Roberts, it turns out, is truly a fox guarding the henhouse. (Thanks, Dubya! Heckuva job, fellah!)

Fortunately, the high court made clear that the Department of Homeland Security could rescind the program, but said it must offer well-supported and transparent reasons for doing so. I certainly hope  (and feel fairly confident) that the Trump administration will be up to the task. This unconstitutional law can be slapped down; a massive influx of Democrat voters can be prevented.

It is disturbing that so may Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents have strayed toward the dark side. They seem addicted to praise from the establishment Democrats and mainstream media. But on the reverse side of the coin, it is almost unheard of for a Democrat-appointed justice to wander off the reservation and vote for a conservative position alongside conservative justices.

Frankly, we're playing small-ball here. My greatest fear is that if Joe Biden wins in November, and the Democrats take over control of the U.S. Senate, Biden will stack the Supreme Court with leftists. After that, we'll see the abolition of the Electoral College, and possibly the elimination of the First and Second Amendments (or at the very least flagrant, unchecked trampling upon these two crucial amendments.)

To paraphrase scripture, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the destruction, havoc and totalitarianism that will result when slappy politicians and judges seek to pacify the establishment and acquire plaudits from the mainstream media."

Conjecturing Sunday

A lot has happened in the past few day, including the "CHAZ" takeover in Seattle by Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other riff-raff, and the killing of a black man by a white police officer in Atlanta. I'll withhold comment on the Atlanta incident until more facts come in.

As for Seattle, I agree wholeheartedly with Michael Savage that President Trump should not allow them to bait him into sending in federal troops to take back the Seattle Police precinct and the six-block area in downtown that is being illegally held and occupied by anarchists. That would simply play in to the media/Democrat narrative that Trump is a dictator/fascist/Nazi. Besides, it's not necessary, as this little experiment in Alinskyism is destined to fail very soon.

Already, there have been tensions between blacks and whites inside the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone. They're disagreeing about who their leaders will be, the demands that must be met for them to move out and return the occupied blocks to the city, and basic strategy and tactics.

Basic things, like the need for food, showers, prescription drugs, personal hygiene items, porta-potties and laundry facilities, are already posing problems. Word is that police are reluctant to respond to any reports of crime inside Chaz, so it's a no-brainer that rapes, thefts, assaults and all sorts of illegal drug dealing/use are taking place.

This petri dish of squalor will implode in short order. The best thing for Trump to do is let the ugliness play out, so Americans can see what happens when the hateful, monstrous left gets its way. It won't quite be Stalin's Gulag, but this kind of insanity playing out nationwide is what eventually leads to mountains of skulls.

I'll have more to say on Atlanta and Seattle in the near future. But today I'm putting forth a few thoughts about an upcoming major shit-show: The 2020 presidential election.

If you believe the polls, Trump is in serious trouble in the swing states he must have to win re-election. Biden leads Trump in such states as Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. Biden supposedly leads Trump among women by 20 points. But then again, we all know how badly the polls did a face-plant in 2016, and who's to say the pollsters will fare any better this time around?

It's possible that so many millions are fed up with nonstop divisiveness and chaos (regardless of who's to blame) that they will vote for Biden in hopes we get back to relative calm. It also could be that millions are utterly alarmed and appalled by the lawlessness and mayhem we've witnessed in recent weeks from coast to coast, with spineless Democrat mayors, governors and police chiefs allowing animals to decimate their cities and victimize innocent people of all races. Therefore, they might favor keeping Trump in office, figuring he can restore law and order and hold things together.

A couple of things are guaranteed: Democrats will allege voter suppression, and Republicans will charge voter fraud. But what Democrats like Stacey Abrams call "voter suppression" is often just routine operating procedure, e.g., requiring picture IDs at polling places and cleaning up grossly inaccurate voter rolls that include names of deceased people and convicted felons. As I've said before, Democrats insult minorities when they imply that these voters don't have the gumption, intelligence or financial means to obtain a simple photo ID. This is one of the most preposterous positions I've ever seen, yet no one calls them on it.

Because of concerns about Coronavirus, many states are leaning toward mail-in voting and eliminating polling places altogether. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, five states currently conduct all elections entirely by mail, and three others allow counties to determine if an election will beheld entirely by mail. Michigan and many other states have sent absentee ballot applications to voters to encourage mail-in voting.

As an early warning sign, look at Wisconsin's election problems a few months ago. The Chicago Sun Times reports that three tubs of absentee ballots that never reached voters were discovered in a postal center outside Milwaukee. At least 9,000 absentee ballots requested by voters were never sent, and others recorded as sent were never received. Even when voters did return their completed ballots in the mail, thousands were postmarked too late to count — or not at all. Many voters who did not receive ballots in the mail elected to turn out at polling places (which themselves have been reduced in number, thus meaning more congestion and longer lines in the age of social distancing).

Ballot harvesting and other shenanigans have been documented as reasons why mail-in ballots are susceptible to voter fraud. Even liberal Jimmy Carter said this after he chaired a bipartisan commission on federal election reform in 2005: "Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” 

I can easily foresee election delays, multiple court cases and a knock-down / drag-out legal morass that will make Florida 2000 look like a cakewalk. Combine that with the feral youth of the Democrat Party raising holy hell out on the streets, and this fall could be like a warehouse full of fireworks going off.

Fasten your freakin' seatbelts!

There can be no discussion about race because progressives are dishonest

Recently I had to banish our remaining troll (who I strongly suspect was a sock-puppet of another troll) because the cartoonish parodies of actual insight it offered had become tedious.

Such nonsense is sadly all too common on the left these days.

The troll's last act of defiant stupidity was to insist that Antifa does not actually exist, and also to ask for specific links of minority-owned businesses damaged by Democrat-sponsored riots.

This willful dishonesty is what precludes any kind of intelligent politics.

Antifa is of course real, it has adherents, "liberated zones," and a number of partisans who boast of their strength.  It cannot be "legitimate protest" and also "a bugbear of the right."

Similarly, one can't keep going on about "mostly peaceful protests" and ignore the massive physical destruction they caused.

The media is now openly into Goebbels mode, pushing Big Lie after Big Lie, completely indifferent to the contradictions in their statements.  Similarly, Democrat politicians and their corrupt public health allies want to simultaneously emphasize the need for eternal lockdowns, but then make bogus exceptions ("racism is woth the risk").

Right now there is chatter hyping the growing number of "cases," by which they mean people who test positive for the Wuhan Virus.  This is meaningless.  There are a number of viruses that have almost universal spread, such as the herpes variant that gives one "cold sores."  None of these would justify an economic shutdown of indefinite length.

The reason for the shutdown was to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by sick patients.  That risk has disappeared.  Not only has the case load dropped, capacity has been increased in case there is a surge.  Responsible, non-partisan scientists would point this out.

But science also must serve The Party, so whatever The Party requires is now the new science.

All of this renders normal politics impossible.  I don't think the left understands that what comes next will be beyond the ability of their twitter accounts to control.

Chicago in Meltdown Mode

We've known for years that Chicago is a cesspool of corruption, and its south and west sides are plagued by gangs, drugs and violent crime. Chicago itself is primarily responsible for the horrendous fiscal condition of the State of Illinois -- in large part due to massive unfunded liabilities on pension and healthcare programs for public sector employees.

On Sunday, May 31, 18 people were murdered in Chicago -- the most in one day in the past 60 years. Chicago 9-1-1 dispatchers received an incredible 65,000 calls on that fateful Sunday -- about 50,000 more than normal. The violence of the Al Capone gangsters, rum-runners and bootleggers never really went away -- it has just morphed into different types of atrocities perpetrated by other races and ethnic groups. Essentially, black, Hispanic and some white thugs have replaced the Italians and Irish of 80 years ago.

May 31 was one of the worst days in Chicago (and many other cities) for rioting, looting, plundering, assaults and general hellacious mayhem. I said when socialist Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor in April 2019 that Chicagoans would come to regret putting her in office. Incredibly, she received 73 percent of the vote and won all 50 wards in the city. That in itself is alarming.

What transpired on May 31 underscores what a failed leader and angry radical Lightfoot is. Audio of a conference call between the mayor and aldermen from the 50 wards was just released to the news media. She and Alderman Raymond Lopez, one of her harshest critics, engaged in a foul-mouthed rage-fest against each other.

Lopez condemned the mayor for losing control of the city, and said if the gangs of thugs roaming about with AK-47's were not checked, there might not be anything left of his neighborhood. She told him he was "100 percent full of shit." 

Lopez responde, "F*** you, then. Who are you to tell me I'm full of shit. Maybe you should come out and see what's going on."

Lightfoot took umbrage at the charge she had failed to prepare law enforcement for the onslaught.

"That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I understand you want to preen," she said.

“Mayor, you need to check your f***ing attitude," Lopez replied. 

Meanwhile, Chicago residents in some neighborhoods complained bitterly that there was no police presence whatsoever as looters and thugs plundered and burned their businesses. (This is just a taste of what would result if the far-left kooks succeed in abolishing big city police departments.) Frankly, it is blacks and other minorities who will be hurt the most if police forces are greatly reduced or eliminated.

It is frightening how rapidly radical and violent leftists have expanded their reach these past few weeks, and how menacing they have become. When leftist voters continue electing weak pacifist leaders who are detached from reality, more of this chaos will flourish.

And rest assured, even if Joe Biden wins the presidential election, violence will continue, as the far-left extremists will accuse his administration of not moving leftward fast enough. Efforts will be made to abolish the Second Amendment.

A few months ago, the nut-job progressives were saying we should abolish the Department of Homeland Security. Now they want to "defund the police" (a vague term that could mean everything from cutting police budgets to entirely eliminating police departments).

Despite widespread failure by progressive and liberal mayors and governors during the Coronavirus pandemic and riots following George Floyd's death, the leftists show no signs whatsoever of learning their lesson and coming to their senses. That's what really scares me and makes me fear for our nation's future.

Systemic Liberal / Progressive Incompetence: An 'Existential Threat'

(Just wanted to use a couple of liberal buzzwords in the headline.)

It never fails: When liberal / progressive policies go unchecked, and havoc results (as it usually does), the leftists will turn on each other. An extreme example would be thugs like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara torturing and executing former cohorts who helped them overthrow the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in the late 1950s.

In more recent years, it has involved different factions of the Democrat kaleidoscope turning on each other.  Think Nancy Pelosi throwing the late Michigan Congressman John Dingell under the bus for his advocacy of the conventional auto industry (i.e., vehicles with internal combustion engines as opposed to electric vehicles). She revoked his committee chairmanship and handed it to far-left kook Henry Waxman. (Didn't Bobby Vinton have a 1963 hit called "Blue on Blue?")

The latest liberal to turn on a fellow leftist is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has harshly criticized New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for the mayor's feckless, weak and incompetent response to the animal-like anarchists that have turned this great city into a third world hellhole in a matter of days. The meatball governor also lambasted the NYPD, saying it was rudderless and ineffective. (An utter lack of leadership? Gee, whose fault do you suppose that could be?)

Cuomo said he had offered de Blasio National Guard troops, but de Blasio rejected his offer. I suppose the commie mayor figured the sight of soldiers dressed in camouflage would trigger the precious rioters and invade their safe spaces. It turns out the mayor's radical, left-wing daughter was even arrested for throwing projectiles at police. He says he's proud of her. What a twisted man.

Like other leftist mayors throughout the nation, de Blasio has imposed curfews, but refused to enforce them. He has sided with looters over troops, and if there's ever a charge of rougher than needed behavior between a police officer and a rioter, de Blasio naturally sides with the rioter and threatens a full investigation of the officer, if not a firing. Liberal mayors and police chiefs are also living with the consequences of liberal prosecutors' appeasement policies -- e.g., release criminals as soon as they're arrested, and often file no charges at all.

Meanwhile animal-like looters have torn New York apart, plundering and pillaging wantonly, overturning cars, starting fires and assaulting passers by. Third world conditions have proliferated rapidly due to the leadership vacuum of the pathetic de Blasio. I wonder if the useful idiots of New York who elected him and then re-elected him will again vote to keep him in office in a couple years? Sadly, the answer is probably yes.

Meanwhile, leftist mayors besides de Blasio have equally beclowned themselves in other cities. Mayor Gil Garcetti of Los Angeles bowed down and kneeled in solidarity with the anarchists holding his city hostage.

And in the "beyond parody" department, Mayor Jacob Frey of Minny-ha-ha -- er, Minneapolis -- issued a statement reminding protesters to wear masks and practice social distancing. This bozo is from the same state as Rep. Ilhan Omar and leftist radical Muslim Attorney General Keith Ellison. As I've noted before, Minnesota is chock-full of useful idiots.

Finally, I have to use a term about animals to assess the behavior of the feral youth, gang-bangers and Antifa scum who are defiling our cities: Even an animal knows better than to soil its own bed. Yet you fools are out destroying businesses and homes in your own communities? Black and Hispanic business owners are being hurt, but the vermin in the news media get their dander up about Donald Trump's mean tweets.

We're in a world of hurt, folks. Where it's leading, nobody knows.