Archive for 2020

OPEN THREAD: Because I care, and want you to be happy.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Covid: UK government requests guidance on vitamin D use. “A number of studies have suggested that low vitamin D levels are associated with a higher risk of death from coronavirus, and some believe sufficient levels of it can reduce tissue damage from lung infections.”

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: Be mindful: Study shows mindfulness might not work as you expect. “Where earlier work in this area suggests how mindfulness may help people manage active stressors, the current paper finds evidence for an opposite response. In the midst of stress, mindful participants demonstrated cardiovascular responses consistent with greater care and engagement. Put another way, they actually were ‘sweating the small stuff.'”

RAPHAEL WARNOCK’S BLOOD LIBEL:

Raphael Warnock, the Democratic Senate candidate seeking to unseat Republican Kelly Loeffler in Georgia’s runoff election in January, has had some interesting things to say about Israel in the past.

Here is Warnock during a 2018 sermon:

“We need a two-state solution where all of God’s children can live together. We saw the government of Israel shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey. . . . It is wrong to shoot down God’s children like they don’t matter at all. And it’s no more anti-Semitic for me to say that than it is anti-white for me to say that Black lives matter. Palestinian lives matter.”

Warnock, senior pastor of the church once led by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., isn’t merely being “critical” of Israel, as his defenders claim. Arguing that Israel hasn’t done enough to placate Fatah is a criticism. Arguing that Israel’s refusal to return to 1967 boundaries is misguided is a criticism. Claiming that the Jewish state goes around picking off God’s children as if “they don’t matter at all” is a blood libel. It’s the kind of rhetoric that generates the anti-Semitism unfortunately found in some corners of black communities. It is also a complete fiction.

And the hits just keep on coming:

Warnock, 2009: Socialism is supported by Scripture, you know.

Rev. Raphael Warnock dodges question on Fidel Castro ‘lovefest.’

Warnock: Americans Must ‘Repent’ for Backing Trump and ‘Worship of Whiteness.’

Why, it’s as if: Democrat Senate Nominee in Georgia Runoff, Raphael Warnock, Is Beyond Radical.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR NEW ACTING SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: “Ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it’s time to come home.”

Related: New Acting SecDef Is a Former ‘Horse Soldier’ Who Played Key Role in Afghanistan Invasion.

UPDATE: People seem unclear on what’s going on here, so here are my thoughts: There could be no victory in Afghanistan because the schwerpunkt of the Afghan conflict was Pakistan, since the Taliban are a creation of the Pakistani ISI. The U.S was unwilling to address Pakistan because it is a nuclear power, and a Saudi client. The schwerpunkt of the conflict with Pakistan, however, was Saudi Arabia, and Trump’s peace deal with the Saudis — which required them to stop supporting anti-US terrrorism — addressed that issue. But a Biden Administration will focus on reconciliation with Iran, and the Saudis will likely renege on the deal if (and when) they decide the U.S. has done so. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is an effort to get ahead of that, so as not to leave hostages, or to allow a more-obvious defeat.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: GOP Megadonor Charles Koch, 85, Now Says He Regrets Fueling Partisanship With His Fortune.

Flashback: How Decades Of Paranoid Attacks On The Koch Brothers Turned Into Mainstream Leftist Tactics.

Well, more like a decade of paranoid attacks. In the late 1990s, the conservative zillionare baddy du jour was Richard Mellon Scaife, but in his last years, Scaife’s cold war with Bill Clinton thawed to the point where, as this 2014 Politico article notes, after Scaife’s passing, “Bill Clinton on Saturday fondly memorialized one of the key financiers of what Hillary Clinton years ago deemed the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’”

Thus, new a new shadowy replacement was needed to counterbalance the right’s obsession with George Soros. That the Koch brothers were much more libertarian than conservative didn’t stop the left from picking the target, personalizing it, and polarizing it, as Hillary and Obama’s chief influence would say.

ROGER SIMON: Encountering Antifa in Front of the Marriott.

I was in the Epoch Times office when one of the young women working across from me said, “I heard Antifa’s outside.” She gestured to the street below that was several floors down.

Antifa? It was certainly possible. Nearly every storefront in the area was boarded up with plywood. Something was feared or expected.

I was in D.C., having flown up from Nashville, my first flight since COVID, for meetings with my ET colleagues and possibly to report on the big MAGA rally that ran from Freedom Plaza up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Supreme Court.

The latter had been extremely peaceful as far as I could see and also multi-cultural, something that came as little surprise after the plethora of blacks and Latinos who had supported Trump during the election.

The only thing worth writing about was the usual blather about how many people showed up—25 or so, half of them confused tourists, according to CNN, two-thirds the population of India, according to Breitbart.

Crowd size is one of the great mythological subjects of our times. No one can possibly say for sure but everyone has an opinion. So I will state the obvious: It was a lot of people and, as noted above, everything was peaceful.

Until night fall.

So back to Antifa. Either because I had nothing to write about or out of morbid curiosity, and though I had a sudden minor attack of butterflies, I decided I wanted to see this for myself.

The young woman kindly lent me her electronic security key to the building, one of those little guys you use to activate elevators, and I headed out of the office, down the building elevator and out onto the sidewalk.

No one was there. I glanced up and down the street. Still no one. False alarm, apparently.

I was about to go back inside, when I heard a noise, yelling and screaming. Then something like a firecracker going off. I looked further off and noticed a crowd half in the street and half on the sidewalk.

They were in front of the hotel where I was staying—the JW Marriott.

My curiosity now exploding, I hurried down there to see for myself.

The hotel has a rather large porte cochère and a number of people were gathered there, many in MAGA garb from the rally, some of those also staying in the hotel, staring in incredulity at what was in front of them.

Several Antifa-types were whizzing by on skateboards in front of the porte cochère driveway, seemingly about to enter it and storm the hotel, taunting and yelling obscenities at the crowd and calling them, almost needless to say, “racists,” although the onlookers were of decidedly mixed race. That, of course, didn’t matter.

Just then, one of the Antifa came closer, as if he were about to attack someone, daring us to respond.

For a split second, he was staring straight at me.

He appeared not like any sort of political activist I had seen but a complete psychopath, more like The Joker as portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in the latest Batman movie, only this joker had long, bedraggled blonde hair and the deadest grey eyes you could imagine.

This was pure evil, beyond psychoanalysis or any ideology I could think of.

I had read many Antifa were actually community college teachers. Was that possible? What was this madman telling his students?

And then just as suddenly he moved past me deeper into the crowd, shouting more obscenities and racist accusations, threatening violence.

The onlookers were yelling for the police to come and arrest him, but they were nowhere to be found, although there were a handful of uniformed Marriott security people urging everyone to back up, including the Antifa.

He could have cared less, continuing his taunts, several of his cohorts whizzing behind him, cheering him on, when one of the MAGA people—a six-foot-four or so guy with the build of a power forward, stepped forward and literally hurled the smaller Antifa into the street, his skateboard flying.

Related: ‘Total Media Blackout’ as Antifa Launches Attacks on MAGA Rallygoers in D.C.