Archive for 2021

ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHO WERE HELD UP AS NONPARTISAN STRAIGHT-SHOOTERS WERE HACKS AND WORSE: RealClearInvestigations: A Fresh Reminder of Russiagate’s Failed Guardian(s) of Integrity. “The rush to promote unsupported allegations and ignore countervailing facts shows that U.S. officials and their media allies have obsessively accused Russia of what they have in fact carried out themselves: a massive, divisive disinformation campaign aimed squarely at the Western public.”

THE GERMANS CALL THE STRATEGY “WANDEL DURCH HANDEL” (“CHANGE THROUGH TRADE”): But doing business with China seems to be changing the wrong countries.

(Why am I reminded of the Rolling Stones’ 19th Nervous Breakdown? “On our first trip, I tried so hard to rearrange your mind. But after a while I realized you were disarranging mine.”)

YOU KNOW, HE’S RIGHT.

COLD WAR II: China Is Engaged in a Massive Nuclear Missile Buildup. “Communist China is not an adherent to any nuclear weapons limitation treaties such as New START. And they will soon have an all-new ground-based missile force (in addition to their current forces) able to deliver, at the low end, around 875 warheads — nearly double our capability.”

IF IT’S NOT WILLING TO DO SO, CAN YOU CALL PEOPLE WHO ARE HESITANT UNSCIENTIFIC? Jeffrey Singer: If the FDA is serious about vaccine hesitancy, it should fully approve vaccines now. “A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey suggests 30 percent of the vaccine hesitant, concerned they are taking an ‘experimental’ drug, are waiting for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to formally approve the vaccine. What is the FDA waiting for?”

I’M ENJOYING HER: Oh my: “I do not support a bill that costs $3.5 trillion,” says AZ Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. “Perhaps Senate Republicans are smarter than they’ve looked in this infrastructure negotiation — or maybe they just lucked out. After the GOP’s negotiating group announced an agreement in principle on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Chuck Schumer announced that he’d move forward on both that bill and the parallel $3.5 trillion package containing everything Republicans wouldn’t support. The bigger bill would move through reconciliation, cutting out the GOP entirely as long as Schumer can hold all 50 of his caucus together. Not so fast, Kyrsten Sinema declared shortly afterward.”

Plus: “If Sinema’s getting worried about the ticket price in relation to purplish Arizona, Joe Manchin has to be getting the shakes in deep-red West Virginia. West Virginians have a long track record of being in the Bacon Party, so some of this might be mitigated by how much pork-barrel spending Manchin can direct to the Mountain State. However, with inflation burning a hole in working-class buying power and Democrats attempting an end run to get a lot of progressive wish-list items funded under the rubric of ‘infrastructure,’ it remains to be seen just how enthusiastic Manchin will be for the Pelosi-Schumer Special.”

WELL, IT DOESN’T INSPIRE CONFIDENCE: The CDC’s hysterical mask flip-flop might be its final undoing. “Remember when only the ‘conspiracy theorists’ said that the real goal was a passport and eventually a China-style social credit score?”

Go long on tar, feathers, and pitchforks.

FROM A FRIEND:

Related:

Actually, I suspect the trend will be different in four years.

OUT: DOCTOR DEMENTO. IN: PRESIDENT DEMENTIA. Biden confuses Trump with Obama, calls it ‘Freudian slip’. Plus: “‘I feel like Joe Biden might not know what a ‘Freudian slip’ is,’ Abigail Marone, press secretary for Republican Sen. Josh Hawley posted.”

OPEN THREAD: I tried to win you over, called the Teleflora, man said save your money.

ROGER KIMBALL: Calm down about the Delta variant.

I thought we’d be well beyond the the Wuhan flu by now. Yes, it probably came from a Chinese virology lab, one where ‘gain-of-function’ (i.e., bio-weaponization) research, generously funded by St Anthony Fauci’s NIH, was taking place, but you’re not supposed to say that. The Chinese don’t like it to have it bruited about publicly. So I won’t say it.

But I thought we would be beyond it because, after all, it is a seasonal respiratory virus that ebbs and flows and it is definitely on the ebb now. But what about (cue scary music), what about the Delta variant? They should have called it the Andromeda Strain for all the carefully cultivated and deliberately fanned panic its advent has occasioned.

Here’s a biology lesson. Viruses mutate. They can’t help it. It’s in their nature. Perhaps the so-called Delta variant is ‘more communicable’. So what? It is also markedly less deadly.

But, but, but: there is a great surge in people ‘testing positive’ for COVID. Again, so what? ‘Testing positive’ signifies — nothing. It really is a tale told by an idiot, many idiots. What if the people who run our lives, who bark at you on public transport to put on a face-diaper, who pontificate from state capitals about who can eat in restaurants, go to the theater, travel on airplanes — what if they started testing for your ordinary run-of-the-mill coronaviruses, the ones that are responsible for the common cold? Want to bet that there would be an awful lot of positives?

It’s Rahm Emanuel time now and forever: never let a good crisis go waste, he advised, and rest assured, they — the alphabet-soup pod-people who we put in charge of our lives — they have run with it big time.

Speaking of which: “I just have to note as well, after I wrote this, that could there be worse messaging than the CDC telling vaccinated people to wear masks. Readers know that I don’t find any evidence to suggest masks play any role in limiting transmission in the community. I have summarized my reasons for that repeatedly. And what is the point in pushing, even forcing people to get vaccinated if they have to still abide by all the same futile and stupid restrictions. But at least the CDC is consistent, they have done an absolutely atrocious job of communication.”