AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deals Galore.

REPORT ANY DEMOCRATS YOU MIGHT KNOW: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown urges residents to call cops on shutdown violators.

LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: Police union boss tells MTA riders they’re on their own amid violence uptick.

FLASHBACK: Senior WHO official: “stop using lockdowns as your primary control method.” “We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus. The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

WHY CAN’T AMERICANS JUST GO ALONG WITH QUARANTINES LIKE THOSE ORDERLY CHINESE? Shanghai airport is plunged into chaos after a ‘worker tested positive for Covid-19 prompting Hazmat-clad staff to herd THOUSANDS of people into basement for testing before they make bid for freedom.’

OPEN THREAD: Pursue your various debates with vigor and panache.

FASTER, PLEASE: Stratolaunch starts building Talon hypersonic plane for Mach 6 flights.

CHANGE: Mass Protest at CNN HQ. I’m not saying the rally was huge, but it was bigger than CNN’s audience. . .

SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB: Face mask trial didn’t stop coronavirus spread, but it shows why more mask-wearing is needed.

SAME: When milkweed leaves are scarce, hungry caterpillar get angry.

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WHERE’S THE SCIENCE? As my local Board of Health ponders closing gyms and bars their own data doesn’t support that action:

Charity Menefee said that small social gatherings between friends and coworkers at homes, offices and restaurants are the most significant causes for COVID-19 cases.

So why close bars and gyms, sending people to spend more time in these gatherings? From the comments to this post, the Tennessee Department of Health data don’t seem to support the restrictions, or even the statement about restaurants above.

As I’ve said before, my concern is that they’re not following the science. They’ve twice admitted that their own data don’t show bars and restaurants as significant sources of infection, yet they’ve continued to treat them as such. In the early days, when we didn’t know much, going by hunch and supposition was forgivable. Now we’ve got over 6 months of contact tracing data, and going by hunch and supposition isn’t forgivable anymore. Any government action must at the very least show a reasonable relationship between a legitimate governmental purpose and the action taken. At this point I don’t think they can show that for the bar and restaurant regulations.

UPDATE: National Study Confirms It’s Safe To Work Out At The Gym: Current Data Shows No Evidence of COVID-19 Spread in Gyms. It’s a big study, though it relies on self-reporting of infections. But, like the contact tracing data above, suggests that gyms aren’t much of a threat.

HE WAS JAILED WAY TOO LONG, DESERVES HIS FREEDOM, But Jonathan Pollard Is No Hero.

RAND PAUL: “When the media says no evidence of widespread fraud, perhaps they mean no evidence, if you look the other way…”

HEH: Biden Is Crowdfunding His Own Transition. Now, Do the Federal Government.

DEVELOPING: Trump legal team shuns Sidney Powell as insiders and national security officials see no evidence supporting her voting machine claims.

SPACE: Rocket Lab launches satellites, recovers booster in ‘Return to Sender’ mission.

HISTORIANS HEAL THYSELVES: There is perhaps nothing crazier in the modern historical profession than the refusal of people who really should know better to acknowledge that Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist, murdered JFK for political reasons. (He was also unhinged, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.)

Let’s review. Oswald was a Communist. He had previously defected to the USSR, but was allowed to return after growing disillusioned. He then became a partisan of the Cuban Revolution, and visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico, trying to defect to Cuba. He was very angry about hostile U.S. policy toward Cuba, and before he killed JFK tried to kill well-known anti-Communist Edwin Walker.

Yet somehow, every November, instead of reminding us of these facts, “mainstream” historians gaslight us with stuff like the tweet below, implying, and sometimes explicitly stating, that JFK was the victim of “right wing hate.” They then complain in other contexts about how conservatives purportedly won’t accept “reality.”

I have a theory about why liberal historians do this re JFK. The left spent the 1950s and early 60s decrying McCarthyism as a “witch hunt,” i.e., not just that McCarthy was a lying demagogue (which he was), but that there was no domestic Communist threat, whatsoever. Acknowledging that a domestic Communist, albeit a lone nut apparently acting on his own volition, assassinated a beloved Democratic president ruins the witch-hunt narrative. That narrative has been a huge propaganda advantage for decades, and they don’t want to let it go.

HMM: Statin use in U.S. up 20% in last 10 years, study finds.

PUSHBACK IN KNOXVILLE: Seen on Facebook:

KNOX COUNTY RESIDENTS!!
IMPORTANT!
Tomorrow evening (Monday 11/23)
5PM
We will be peacefully protesting at the Knox County Health Department. They’re voting Monday evening on a new Lockdown that will destroy businesses and the morale & mental health of the residents.
It includes:
1. No more than 8-10 people in a group
2. New Curfew at either 8 or 9 pm
3. Gyms closed
4. Restaurants at either 25% capacity or no indoor dining (takeout only)

Please join us at the Health Department. Feel free to bring a sign.

I’ve twice heard Knox County officials say that their contact tracing data doesn’t indicate that restaurants or bars are a significant source of infection. I’ve heard no evidence that gyms are a source of spread. I don’t think these plans are scientifically based — we’ve been contact-tracing for 8 months — and I don’t think they’ll hold up in court if challenged. Businesses have already been devastated by lockdowns and the pandemic, and we’re in what, month 8 of “15 days to slow the spread” now?

To quote Judge Stickman in the Pennsylvania case: Population-wide lockdown orders are “such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.”

UPDATE: The local small business community is getting organized. A friend sends this message, which is circulating:

We are trying to get all small business/service industry to close from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm so all staff can attend in solidarity the Health Department protest. We also ask that in lieu of being able to be there in person that you at least make emails from the [circulated] list of public officials.

This is the first organized resistance I’ve seen, but it won’t be the last.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on what the science does, and doesn’t, support, here.

ROGER KIMBALL: Waiting for Sidney.

BUFFALO BUSINESS OWNERS REVOLT AGAINST HEALTH DEPARTMENT AND SHERIFFS: ‘Get Out! We Will Not Comply.’ (Video.)

Related: Newsom Wanted Snitches to Turn in Thanksgiving ‘Scofflaws’ But Several California Sheriffs Say They Will Not Comply.

More: Arbitrary COVID-19 Control Measures Will Not Make Americans More Likely To ‘Hang in There’ Until Vaccines Are Available.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Joseph Stalin To Receive International Emmy For His Outstanding Hunger Relief Efforts.

(To be fair, America’s wannabe newspaper of record wouldn’t have a problem with that idea, either.)

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Self Defense and Your Vehicle.