Sic Semper Tyrannis

Bound for Glory? - The Seattle City Council

"The Seattle City Council on Monday approved adopting a new tax on large businesses, two years after the council repealed a big business tax amid pressure from corporations such as Amazon and the prospect of a voter referendum.

The new tax called “JumpStart Seattle,” from lead sponsor and council member Teresa Mosqueda, will target companies with many highly paid employees, whereas the 2018 “head tax” would have applied to all employees at large companies.

The council voted 7-2 on the measure, which is expected to raise more than $200 million per year. The tax repealed by the council in 2018 weeks after it was adopted was expected to raise $47 million per year.

Mosqueda and council members Lorena Gonzalez, Kshama Sawant, Tammy Morales, Lisa Herbold, Dan Strauss and Andrew Lewis voted for the new tax Monday. Alex Pedersen and Debora Juarez voted against it. In last year’s council elections, five candidates defeated opponents who were supported by big business groups.

“This is a huge win,” Mosqueda said. “This is about caring for Seattleites now and into the future. It will help Seattle survive the crisis of COVID and emerge stronger and more equitable.”

Under the new tax, companies with annual payrolls over $7 million will be taxed based on their pay to employees making over $150,000 per year. As amended in committee last week, the tax rate would range from 0.7% to 2.4%, with tiers for various payroll and salary amounts." Seattlemedium.com

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Yup.

Kshama Sawant (a member) stated after the vote that "this is a wonderful opportunity to begin the destruction of the United States and its replacement by a socialist world state." Well, pilgrims, she should get high marks for honesty.

It is apparent that the City Council does not credit the idea that these companies will simply move away.  Texas or some other tax haven would seem possibilities.  Would there be any benefit in moving to western Canada?

It seems that what we are watching is a lot of children playing with big people toys.  How interesting.  pl

https://seattlemedium.com/seattle-city-council-approves-new-tax-on-big-business/

The lawyer dunnit.

"they also noted that she had been hiding out on a 156-acre property in Bradford. She lived in an estate with “a fabulous barn for hoedowns, square dances, and hay rides,” according to the property site Zillow."  BG

"Maxwell, a citizen of three countries, apparently bought the home in an all-cash purchase at the end of December through an anonymous LLC, a prosecutor’s memo said. The LLC has a Boston-based mailing address, according to public records.

“We had been discreetly keeping tabs on Maxwell’s whereabouts,” said William F. Sweeney Jr., the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York office, at a press conference. “More recently we learned she had slithered away to a gorgeous property in New Hampshire, continuing to live a life of privilege while her victims live with the trauma inflicted upon them years ago.” The memo said she had been “hiding out in locations in New England” for the past year."  BG

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When I was a kid I used to drive my father back and forth from Sanford, Maine to Grenier, AFB at Manchester, NH.  He had a retirement job at the base (long closed) as the budget analyst for the facility.  He never learned to drive.  Central New Hampshire is a forested and somewhat gloomy land both east and west of Manchester.  Bradford looks to be 40 miles NW of Manchester.  I never had any reason to go west of Manchester into the center of the state.  All of central NH is a land of coniferous forest and tiny villages like Bradford.  South of Manchester the scene is dominated by immigrants from Massachusetts centered around a big town, Nashua.  The actual locals in greater NH refer to them as Massholes.  They moved to NH to escape MA taxes.

A million bucks for 156 acres of pine and fir with a nice house and the wondrous barn mentioned above?  Sounds like a great deal to me, even in an all cash deal.  A million dollars wouldn't get you anything like that where I live at Alexandria in Occupied, Virginia now ruled by the Quisling Northam.  So, who set up the dummy LLC through which the property was acquired?  A law firm, right?  And who found the place?  Were they steered to this property by the FBI?

The FBI in NY gave a presser and handed out a memo on the "score."  Why the NY City office of the FBI?  My WAG would be that they have had one or more sources on the books in NY City telling them where she has been since her "disappearance," and keeping them up to date on her activities and location.  Who?  There must be at least one lawyer in the mix.  A lot of lawyers would "rat out" a client in a heartbeat if approached by the FBI.  They know the cost of refusing to cooperate.

The FBI brought the NYPD as well as the local flics to make this arrest?  Why did they do that? I just checked in Wikipedia and Bradford has not been ceded to NY City. 

My uber WAG would now be that she probably never left the US.  In an age of digital passport controls at frontiers it is not easy to move around internationally without being reported electronically.  I suppose she could have sneaked across the Canada/US border in northern New England, but she doesn't look the type for spooking around in some little border town or hiking through the Maine woods.  And, the Canadians would have noticed her when she arrived at one of their airports even by private jet.

No, on balance I would bet that all the stuff about her residence in Israel or France is probably hot air, but I could be wrong.  pl

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/07/metro/ghislaine-maxwells-new-hampshire/

Open Thread - 7 July 2020

  pl

"... Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes."

"Dr Jefferson believes many viruses lie dormant throughout the globe and emerge when conditions are favourable, which also means they can vanish as quickly as they arrive.

"Where did Sars 1 go? It's just disappeared," he said. "So we have to think about these things. We need to start researching the ecology of the virus, understanding how it originates and mutates.

"I think the virus was already here – here meaning everywhere. We may be seeing a dormant virus that has been activated by environmental conditions. 

"There was a case in the Falkland Islands in early February. Now where did that come from? There was a cruise ship that went from South Georgia to Buenos Aires, and the passengers were screened and then on day eight, when they started sailing towards the Weddell Sea, they got the first case. Was it in prepared food that was defrosted and activated? 

"Strange things like this happened with Spanish Flu. In 1918, around 30 per cent of the population of Western Samoa died of Spanish Flu, and they hadn't had any communication with the outside world.

"The explanation for this could only be that these agents don't come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should be looking for.""  The Telegraph.

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This article is behind a paywall but may have been re-published elsewhere.

I find this to be an appealing theory.  It supports my suspicion that, as Trump says, the more you test the more of this virus you will find.   Why?  Perhaps that is true because the virus has been widely present in populations and dormant for a long time only to be activated by some environmental change in the recent past.  

Dr. Jefferson asks rhetorically where the Spanish flu disappeared to.  No cure or vaccine was ever found.  He asks the same question about SARS.  Where did it go?

If the Jeffersonian theory is correct, the implications are enormous.  pl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/05/covid-19-may-not-have-originated-china-elsewhere-emerged-asia/?WT.mc_id=tmgliveapp_iosshare_AvlLDXGB2PqF

What does "divisive" mean for the left in the USA?

"President Donald Trump delivered another deeply divisive speech to mark Independence Day on Saturday, comparing the US's fight against Nazis and terrorists to his efforts to defeat "the radical left" in the US and accusing social justice protesters of trying to destroy America.

"American heroes defeated the Nazis, dethroned the fascists, toppled the communists, saved American values, upheld American principles and chased down the terrorists to the very ends of the earth," Trump said. "We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing.""  CNN

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One hears the left in the US claiming daily that Trump is "divisive."  I did my best to ignore that usage but it is so pervasive that I am forced to take note.  Both the media and the Democrats say and write this every day.

What the lefties mean of course is that Trump and the conservatives do not accept the new dispensation of the gospel truth spread by the left.  This automatically causes a division of opinion,  This is clearly a very bad thing in their eyes.

 

IMO the freedom of speech and thought that we have had in the US is in great peril.  pl 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/04/politics/trump-july-fourth-remarks/index.html

The Great Charge - 3 July 1863 (from "The Butcher's Cleaver")

"... A mile away, across the grassy valley from the cemetery ridge, Pickett's Division lay waiting in the woods.  They had come up to this position in the early morning hours.  The officers occupied themselves with the usual business of placing the long lines of men in the order in which they would attack.  

After that, the men lay down, pretended to sleep, or devoted themselves to the routine of preparation for a major action.  They cleaned weapons, wrote letters, talked to their messmates and made final judgments on the comrades with whom they would go forward against the guns.

Jepson Thacker lay on his back looking up through the leaves and branches of a patriarchal and seasoned oak.  He had the thick trunk of the tree between him and the Yankee guns.  The smell of leaf mold and wood smoke hung in the air.  He tried to keep his mind on the beauty of the forest scene through the long wait under fire.  The 7th Virginia Infantry Regiment was all around him, stretching out to either side of his company.  The company had stood the artillery fire well.  Cannon balls had caromed through the trees for the last hour.  From time to time one killed or maimed, but for the most part the soldiers simply stepped out of their path.  The shrapnel from air bursts in the tree tops was a more serious matter.  They had lost several men to shell fragments.

In the midst of it all, “Pete” Longstreet rode into view, going down the line, slowly passing them by on a tall black horse, looking at them with an odd, pale expression on his usually ruddy features.  The black horse shied from the sounds of falling leaves and branches ripped off trees by passing solid shot.  A sergeant in Thacker's regiment stood up to yell at Longstreet. "You damn fool!  Do you think we need you to do this to make us fight?  Get the hell out of here before you get killed!"  Longstreet bowed his head to the man, and rode on.

When the barrage stopped, Thacker sat up and looked for his company commander.  The captain stood fifty feet away talking to an officer from another company.  Thacker just caught the end of their talk.  "Oh!  Here we go!” the other officer said.  “Please do remember me to your cousin Sally!  I haven't seen her since before the war.."

The captain walked back.  "Get 'em up Jepson," he said.  "I expect we'll be leavin' now.."

The regiment formed and dressed its ranks.  Thacker saw General Kemper and his staff take their place in front of the center of the brigade line.  This happened to be exactly in front of Thacker's company.

"Watch Morrison and Davidson," the captain said in a soft voice beside him.  "I'm takin’ everybody in today, everybody.  If they drop out, kill 'em."

Thacker nodded.  He checked his revolver to make sure none of the explosive metal priming caps had somehow been lost.

Claude came up the hill to stand beside his brother on the ridge just as the Rebel infantry began to emerge from the distant woods.  He intended to remonstrate with Patrick against their presence, but the scene before them silenced him.  "My God..  My God," was all he could manage.  There was at least a mile of troops forming in front of the wood line across the valley.  In the center of the line lay a triangular projection of forest.  To left and right of this feature regiment upon regiment of the familiar motley brown figures moved into position, coming out of the trees and halting behind their leaders and flags.  Somewhere, a band began to play.

"The Return of the Anti-Antiwar Left" James W. Carden

"only “a few decades ago, “the Left” was considered the center of opposition to imperialism, and champion of the right of peoples to self-determination.”

Johnstone is part of a distinguished line of American expatriate writers, who, perhaps because of an objectivity conferred by distance, saw their country more clearly than many of their stateside contemporaries. Members of the club include William Pfaff who for many years wrote from Paris and the longtime Asia correspondent Patrick Lawrence. The Paris based Johnstone brings a moral clarity to matters of war and peace that is, alas, too often absent from most contemporary foreign affairs writing. Its near total absence on the Left during the Trump years should be cause for reflection, and concern.

As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of waging wars for humanitarian ends. A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens, would make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the process throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine’s Just War theory on the trash heap and paving the way for what was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II, Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a “targeted” assassination program."  Carden

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Ah, for the good old days when lefties could be treated as a deluded minority rather than a vanguard party of globalist imperialists.  pl

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/01/the-return-of-the-anti-antiwar-left/

"Hydroxychloroquine lowers COVID-19 death rate, Henry Ford Health study finds" Detroit News

"A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday.

Officials with the Michigan health system said the study found the drug “significantly” decreased the death rate of patients involved in the analysis.

The study analyzed 2,541 patients hospitalized among the system’s six hospitals between March 10 and May 2 and found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died while 26% of those who did not receive the drug died.

Among all patients in the study, there was an overall in-hospital mortality rate of 18%, and many who died had underlying conditions that put them at greater risk, according to Henry Ford Health System. Globally, the mortality rate for hospitalized patients is between 10% and 30%, and it's 58% among those in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator."  Detroit News

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No comment needed.  pl 

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/07/02/michigan-henry-ford-health-study-finds-hydroxychloroquine-lowers-covid-19-death-rate/5365090002/

"One-time treatment generates new neurons, eliminates Parkinson's disease in mice" Science Daily

"Several years ago, a postdoctoral researcher working in Fu's lab was taking that approach, using a technique called siRNA to silence the PTB gene in connective tissue cells known as fibroblasts. But it's a tedious process that needs to be performed over and over. He got tired of it and convinced Fu they should use a different technique to create a stable cell line that's permanently lacking PTB. At first, the postdoc complained about that too, because it made the cells grow so slowly.

But then he noticed something odd after a couple of weeks -- there were very few fibroblasts left. Almost the whole dish was instead filled with neurons.

In this serendipitous way, the team discovered that inhibiting or deleting just a single gene, the gene that encodes PTB, transforms several types of mouse cells directly into neurons."  Science Daily

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Does this have some relevance to approaches to treatment of senile dementia and Alzheimer's?  pl

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200625102540.htm

“All this room will be dead by tomorrow.” Nurse supervisor at the Holyoke abattoir.

"Staff members told investigators that they were initially discouraged from wearing protective equipment, in an effort to conserve a limited supply, and that they felt “annoyed, paranoid and fearful for their lives because they could not find masks,” the report said.

The most troubling portions of the report describe the weekend of March 28 and 29, when staffing was so short at the home that two wards were hurriedly combined, a decision one employee described as “the most insane thing I ever saw in my entire life.”

A social worker described listening to the chief nursing officer say “something to the effect that this room will be dead by Sunday, so we will have more room here.” Another social worker recalled seeing a supervisor point to a room and say, “All this room will be dead by tomorrow.”"  NY Times

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Were they thanked for their service at some point before the end?  Did they receive "the thanks of a grateful nation?"

The Democrats want to f---k around with Trump over the names of Army posts where a lot of these men trained before going overseas.  I was trained at Fts. Bragg and Benning.  Are the Democrats interested in anything but their power and the present goodwill of their Marxist allies?

I doubt it.  pl 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us/holyoke-soldiers-home.html

 

For BLM and the Antifa Zoo the Union is the real enemy, not the Rebs.

(Grant)

The statues of long dead Johnnies were easy pickings, low hanging fruit for the revolutionary movements now ravaging the land.

I was in college in Virginia during the Centennial of the US Civil War at a school drenched in the history of that period (VMI).  We had all kinds of distinguished historians come to speak to the cadet corps in Jackson Memorial Hall.  As an outlander new to the South I watched the reaction of the cadets carefully, curious to see how much the tale would stir them.  It did not.  They listened with some level of polite interest but that was the limit of their engagement.  The fire had gone out even then.

Today, with the exception of re-enactors and antiquarian eccentrics involved in the literature of that time, few people care.  That is why there has been no serious or effective resistance to defacing and removing Confederate Memorials.  Few care, certainly not "practical people."

But, pilgrims the Confederate caper was merely a warm-up for the big game, the game intended to smash the present social and governmental  order in the US and replace it with something other, something better in the collective mind of the revolutionary movements.  "White Supremacy" is code for the present forms  of government and economy.  These movements are deeply Marxist, deeply against private enterprise, deeply anti-democratic except for the Soviet definition of the word. "Government ownership of the means of production and distribution."

The insurrectionists are hoping for a collapse of the will to resist, a PTA moment in which the weak willed throw up their hands and surrender.  To get to that point a constant barrage of abusive language and childish behavior is part of the program, something like the way badly behaved children take control of weak parents.

Disbandment of police forces are a necessity long the way.

Weak politicians who in their hearts are filled with guilt over "White Supremacy" are a convenience.   

I would give the insurrectos high marks for their progress thus far.  pl 

A Coupla Things - 29 June 2020

"Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that he’s come up with a plan to cut or transfer $1 billion from the NYPD’s $6 billion budget and would not guarantee the department’s headcount won’t shrink — even as shootings surge across the city.

“I’m excited to say we have a plan that can achieve real reform, that can achieve real redistribution — while at the same time ensure that we keep our city safe, while we make sure that our officers are on patrol around where we need them around this city,” de Blasio said during his daily City Hall press briefing.

“We can do this, we can strike the balance, we can keep this city safe,” he later added.

While Hizzoner offered few details about his spending cuts plan, he would not guarantee that the NYPD’s police force would remain at its current level of roughly 36,000 officers when pressed by reporters.

“We have found a plan that will keep this city safe, that will achieve the billion dollars in savings,” de Blasio claimed during his daily press briefing Monday.

Separately, de Blasio also said his plan would move at least half-billion dollars from the NYPD’s construction and major projects budget to help fund building improvements at youth centers and public housing.

De Blasio and the City Council must reach an $87 billion budget deal by Tuesday that would cut expected spending by an estimated $8 billion overall."  NY Post

https://nypost.com/2020/06/29/de-blasio-plans-to-cut-nypd-budget-by-1b-as-nyc-shootings-spike/

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New York City may become uninhabitable and largely uninhabited.  New York City people love left wing Democrats because they themselves are mostly left wing Democrats.  De Blasio lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land where the necessity to maintain order and find actual money to fund his fantasies is simply unimportant.  The God that De Blasio may or may not believe in will provide in a world filled with benevolent and progressive human beings.    Flight from New York state and city taxes is well underway.  People have discovered that staying home with momma, the kids and the dog is not so bad and you save money on commuting costs.  Hmmm.   And, New York may well be leading a trend away from the cities.  Good . pl

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New  Subject.  I just heard someone named Colonel David Hunt (don't know him) tell Bill Hemmer on Foxienews that he doesn't believe the intel people would decide not to brief Trumpy and Pence about the Russia! Russia! Russia! story of marauding GRU men paying the Taliban to kill their joint adversaries (us).  Why?  In Hunt's view because it was sooo important.  I doubt that Hunt IS an intel guy...  As I have tried to explain several times, analysts exist in the IC for the purpose of deciding which of the bits in the flood of raw information that comes to them is true and which are just bits of junk.  Non-intel people really believe that intel analysts functionally and as humans have no value because if they were not losers they would not be intel people.   The media, the operations combat arms people, State Departmet foreign service fops and politicians all generally believe that to be true.  Steven Hayes the journalist is a prime example.  He made his reputation by insisting that information DIA had rejected as false must be true because there was a lot of it.  He had gotten that rubbish from the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in Douglas Feith's DoD empire.  Nobody in OSP had ever worked in intelligence.  They were all neocon former congressional staffers.  In other words, they were ignorant of the process.  Congressional committees  do intel budget, not intel work.  In the same period endless hordes of newly emergent neocon savants (mostly childlike creatures) assured me that nothing I knew mattered because they and their colleagues  were creating a brave new world in which old things and data would be meaningless.  So, pilgrims, bottom line.

If you think a story is BS you do not brief it at the WH where it will spin the president up against the Russians or anyone else.  pl 

Joe Biden should not have control of the Gold Codes and the Football

My thesis here is that Biden is mentally unfit to be Commander in Chief.

The 120 million dead from COVID-19 statement that he made is SO bad, SO bad.  IMO that means that he has no critical reasoning ability left at all.  None.  A truly sentient being would have known instinctively in the moment that it could not be true that 120 million Americans have died of the effects of the virus.  What happened?  Was the teleprompter text that wrong?  In any event a person in touch with reality would have known that was not true and would not have said it.  Joe also said on 25 February in South Carolina that 150 million Americans have been killed in gun violence since 2007.  (See link below)  So, pilgrims, in Joeworld 120 million have been killed by COVID-19 and 150 million by guns.  In Joeworld there are only 80 million of us folks left.

The CinC of the US armed forces (POTUS) has immediate control of the country's nuclear forces.  He/she can launch an attack with those forces without seeking congressional agreement.  We built this crazy system during the Cold War and made sure the Soviets understood it.  We did that to make MAD credible.  So far as I know, we have never taken the system down.

A military person follows the president around with a satchel full of attack options (the football) which the president would use to order an attack by the operating forces. In his wallet the president has a card generated daily with which to positively identify himself/herself on the phone.  The code would be transmitted to SECDEF for verification of identity.  SECDEF also has the daily Gold Code.  After verification the order goes to CJCS and then to the forces.  SECDEF does not have the authority with which to countermand the attack order.  The satchel and the the Gold Code card together are the keys to a door beyond which is Armageddon.  

The argument will be made that Trump as well should not be trusted with these abominable toys.  I am open to that argument.  BUT, Trumpy HAS NOT unleashed Armageddon in the last 3 1/2 years.  IMO that is an argument in his favor.

The MAD launch system controls require both sanity and mental competence.  Joe is not mentally competent.

One can only wonder at the evidence now presented by polling that the American people prefer this demented wreck of a man over Trump.  They dislike Trump that much?  Remarkable.  pl 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Codes

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-150-million-gun-deaths/

This is not fair to poor old Joe

"On Thursday, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said that 120 million Americans have died from the novel coronavirus, though the current total is over 124,000.

"People don't have a job, people don't know where to go, they don't know what to do," Biden said Thursday. "Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID."

According to a tracker provided by Johns Hopkins University, as of Friday, there are currently at least 124,424 deaths related to the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, as well as over 2.4 million confirmed cases."  Newsweek

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-mistakenly-says-120-million-americans-have-died-coronavirus-1513696

This poor man needs help.  Someone take him home where he can live in his fantastic past (literally).  pl 

If this goes on the Dems will win it all - poor them.

Just now it looks like the Democrats and their temporarily friendly allied hordes of marxo-anarchists are on a path to win the presidency and both houses of congress in November.

This is a remarkable reversal in the political world since the period immediately before the arrival of the CODIV-19 hysteria with its opportunity for epidemiologists to "be all they could be."  In that long ago era, the US economy was going from strength to strength.  Trump's statements about that lost economy are hyperbolic as usual but correct in their essence.  His re-election seemed assured by that economy and the failure of the Democrats to bring him down intra-term.  God knows they tried!  

Now Trump is seriously down in all the polls, possibly because the citizenry has come to think that he really is a weak man who is unable to understand that the pathetic mobs could be easily cowed into quietude by a significant use of force against them.  Rather than do that, he dithers and seems to embrace the State Department battle cry "Don't shoot! Don't shoot! They'll kill us all!"  The ghost of Kent State is widely invoked in Republican circles as "proof" of the fatal political results of the use of force.  IMO Senator Cotton is right.

The Democrats have embraced the COVID-19 panic inspired house arrest of the country.  It should be obvious to the casual observer that they are doing everything they can to hold down the economy and maintain a high level of misery until they win in November.  The general public panic is being successfully promoted in spite of the low death rates from the disease in the general public.  The agreement of the triumvirs; Cuomo, Murphy and Lamont to close the NY city region to "foreign" travelers from threatening COVID-19 infected areas is an obvious signal that a depressed economy MUST BE MAINTAINED at  all cost (until November)

The wave of anarcho-marxist guerrilla agitprop attacks serves the purposes of the Democratic Party very well.  It reveals Trump to be a timid man.  His base does not like that.   And truth be told the long existing Democrat local governments of the main sites of anti-US street action are in sympathy with many of the goals of the insurgents.  Seattle, Minneapolis, Washington, DC (as a city under Home Rule), Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Richmond, etc.  The pattern is clear.

The Democrat pols calculate that they can ride the tigers (virus and revolutionary mobs) ravaging the country and then regain control after they win it all.  IMO they are mistaken in that belief.

If they win, the revolutionary tiger will continue to rage and will devour them just as later waves of Jacobins devoured people like Danton and Robespierre in the French Revolution.

And by then the economy will be such a shambles that the people will inevitably turn against the Dems in despair over their poverty and joblessness.  pl

Number of CODIV-19 cases does NOT = number of deaths from CODIV-19

Anyone want to contest that statement or document the facts?  pl 

Showdown in Lincoln Park? - 25 June 2020

The DC mob has communicated (somehow) its intention to remove from its pedestal in Lincoln Park in Washington the statue of Lincoln with a kneeling freedman.  This will be an interesting contest of wills.   The park is 10 blocks due east of the capitol building and about the same distance west of the DC National Guard Armory.  It is deep in the predominately Black residential part of Washington and nowhere near the White House, Lafayette Park, St. Johns Church, etc.

The US Park Police and the single MP Battalion of the DC National Guard will evidently be charged with preventing the action.  The battalion has six or seven hundred people at full strength, but you never take the field at full strength and the unit probably does not have more than three or four hundred that it can field.  

Some people are writing to say that the mere presence of unarmed part time soldiers of the National Guard will intimidate the mob.

The writers cite batons (clubs) and a modicum of tear gas as sufficient deterrent to restrain the miscreants.

OK!  I want to see it!  If this works it would be a convenient expedient everywhere.  pl

More Silliness About The DC Guard.

As I have written here before it is nothing less than murder to place unarmed soldiers on the streets with the mission of guarding anything in the face of mobs who have no respect for government and certainly no respect for soldiers.  

The mob tried to capture and occupy Lafayette Park across the street from the White House last night.  They tried to overturn and demolish the statue of President Andrew Jackson in the center of that park.  Do you think they won't be back?

The District of Columbia National Guard are part time amateur soldiers.    They will be very afraid of the mob.

Esper, McCarthy and that ass, Milley, think this is a good idea?  Incredible.  pl

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/504282-national-guard-deploying-unarmed-personnel-to-protect-dc-monuments

Discussion on CW/WBS

There was a statue that stood at Prince and Washington Streets in Alexandria, Virginia.  It stood  there since the 1890s as a memorial to Alexandria's Confederate dead.  As I recall there were 110 names on the pediment.  The city in 1860 had 12,000 inhabitants, 3/4 of them White and the rest mostly slaves but some free Black people, a few of whom owned slaves.  The dead were mostly from the 17th Regiment of Virginia Volunteer Infantry (the Alexandria Regiment).  The regiment had its pre-war roots in the 6th Battalion of Virginia Militia.  The leaders of that militia battalion were local community notables.  The men were a mixed lot of people from the town and the proximate countryside.  Two additional companies were raised for the fight for Virginia independence from the parishioners of St. Mary's Catholic Church, the oldest Catholic parish in Virginia.  George Washington was a sponsor of the foundation of the parish around 1800 although he was an Anglican.  The flags of these two companies of Irish and Italian immigrant laborers were blessed by the Dutch Jesuit pastor at the altar.

The statue and its pediment with the names is gone now, reclaimed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy before the mob inspired by the leftist city council and mayor could ravage and desecrate it.  I drove by the site today.  The city has been disemboweled.

A company from Front Royal was added to to the 17th when it was mustered into the Confederate forces at Manassas.

The subject of the TREASON of the Confederates is now a fresh topic in the context of anarchist attacks, Marxist politics and the ongoing rebellion of the oh, so indoctrinated "Ute"  ("My Cousin Vinnie").

The accusation that they fought to keep Blacks enslaved is also quite current.  

The mobs in the streets are seeking to destroy America as it has been.  The great internal war of the 19th Century and its political context have become relevant to the discussion of who we really are.

I appeal to you all to write up your views and I will post them if they are of any value.  pl 

 

A summary on COVID-19 from "Deap"

"From an alleged media research and review organization: Trust, but verify. COVID-19 - what we now know today Overview According to the latest immunological and serological studies, the overall lethality of Covid-19 (IFR) is about 0.1% and thus in the range of a strong seasonal influenza (flu). In countries like the US, the UK, and also Sweden (without a lockdown), overall mortality since the beginning of the year is in the range of a strong influenza season; in countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, overall mortality is in the range of a mild influenza season. Even in global “hotspots”, the risk of death for the general population of school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not taken into account. Up to 80% of all test-positive persons remain symptom-free. Even among 70-79 year olds, about 60% remain symptom-free. Over 95% of all persons develop at most moderate symptoms. Up to 60% of all persons may already have a certain cellular background immunity to Covid19 due to contact with previous coronaviruses (i.e. common cold viruses). The median or average age of the deceased in most countries (including Italy) is over 80 years and only about 4% of the deceased had no serious preconditions. The age and risk profile of deaths thus essentially corresponds to normal mortality. In many countries, up to two thirds of all extra deaths occurred in nursing homes, which do not benefit from a general lockdown. Moreover, in many cases it is not clear whether these people really died from Covid19 or from weeks of extreme stress and isolation. Up to 30% of all additional deaths may have been caused not by Covid19, but by the effects of the lockdown, panic and fear. For example, the treatment of heart attacks and strokes decreased by up to 60% because many patients no longer dared to go to hospital. Even in so-called “Covid19 deaths” it is often not clear whether they died from or with coronavirus (i.e. from underlying diseases) or if they were counted as “presumed cases” and not tested at all. However, official figures usually do not reflect this distinction. Many media reports of young and healthy people dying from Covid19 turned out to be false: many of these young people either did not die from Covid19, they had already been seriously ill (e.g. from undiagnosed leukaemia), or they were in fact 109 instead of 9 years old. The claimed increase in Kawasaki disease in children also turned out to be false. Strong increases in regional mortality can occur if there is a collapse in the care of the elderly and sick as a result of infection or panic, or if there are additional risk factors such as severe air pollution. Questionable regulations for dealing with the deceased sometimes led to additional bottlenecks in funeral or cremation services. In countries such as Italy and Spain, and to some extent the UK and the US, hospital overloads due to strong flu waves are not unusual. Moreover, this year up to 15% of health care workers were put into quarantine, even if they developed no symptoms. The often shown exponential curves of “corona cases” are misleading, as the number of tests also increased exponentially. In most countries, the ratio of positive tests to tests overall (i.e. the positive rate) remained constant at 5% to 25% or increased only slightly. In many countries, the peak of the spread was already reached well before the lockdown. Countries without curfews and contact bans, such as Japan, South Korea, Belarus or Sweden, have not experienced a more negative course of events than other countries. Sweden was even praised by the WHO and now benefits from higher immunity compared to lockdown countries. The fear of a shortage of ventilators was unjustified. According to lung specialists, the invasive ventilation (intubation) of Covid19 patients, which is partly done out of fear of spreading the virus, is in fact often counterproductive and damaging to the lungs. Contrary to original assumptions, various studies have shown that there is no evidence of the virus spreading through aerosols (i.e. tiny particles floating in the air) or through smear infections (e.g. on door handles or smartphones). The main modes of transmission are direct contact and droplets produced when coughing or sneezing. There is also no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in healthy or asymptomatic individuals. On the contrary, experts warn that such masks interfere with normal breathing and may become “germ carriers”. Leading doctors called them a “media hype” and “ridiculous”. Many clinics in Europe and the US remained strongly underutilized or almost empty during the Covid19 peak and in some cases had to send staff home. Millions of surgeries and therapies were cancelled, including many cancer screenings and organ transplants. Several media were caught trying to dramatize the situation in hospitals, sometimes even with manipulative images and videos. In general, the unprofessional reporting of many media maximized fear and panic in the population. The virus test kits used internationally are prone to errors and can produce false positive and false negative results. Moreover, the official virus test was not clinically validated due to time pressure and may sometimes react positive to other coronaviruses. Numerous internationally renowned experts in the fields of virology, immunology and epidemiology consider the measures taken to be counterproductive and recommend rapid natural immunisation of the general population and protection of risk groups. At no time was there a medical reason for the closure of schools, as the risk of disease and transmission in children is extremely low. There is also no medical reason for small classes, masks or ‘social distancing’ rules in schools. The claim that only (severe) Covid-19 but not influenza may cause venous thrombosis and pulmonary (lung) embolism is not true, as it has been known for 50 years that severe influenza greatly increases the risk of thrombosis and embolism, too. Several medical experts described express coronavirus vaccines as unnecessary or even dangerous. Indeed, the vaccine against the so-called swine flu of 2009, for example, led to sometimes severe neurological damage and lawsuits in the millions. In the testing of new coronavirus vaccines, too, serious complications and failures have already occurred. A global influenza or corona pandemic can indeed extend over several seasons, but many studies of a “second wave” are based on very unrealistic assumptions, such as a constant risk of illness and death across all age groups. Several nurses, e.g. in New York City, described an oftentimes fatal medical mis­manage­ment of Covid patients due to questionable financial incentives or inappropriate medical protocols. The number of people suffering from unemployment, depressions and domestic violence as a result of the measures has reached historic record values. Several experts predict that the measures will claim far more lives than the virus itself. According to the UN 1.6 billion people around the world are at immediate risk of losing their livelihood. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that the “corona crisis” will be used for the permanent expansion of global surveillance. Renowned virologist Pablo Goldschmidt spoke of a “global media terror” and “totalitarian measures”. Leading British virologist Professor John Oxford spoke of a “media epidemic”. More than 600 scientists have warned of an “unprecedented surveillance of society” through problematic apps for “contact tracing”. In some countries, such “contact tracing” is already carried out directly by the secret service. In several parts of the world, the population is already being monitored by drones and facing serious police overreach. A 2019 WHO study on public health measures against pandemic influenza found that from a medical perspective, “contact tracing” is “not recommended in any circumstances”. Nevertheless, contact tracing apps have already become partially mandatory in several countries."  Deap

Open Thread - 22 June 2020

pl

Stand Watie - the last Confederate General to surrender

"Watie was born in Oothcaloga, Cherokee Nation (now Calhoun, Georgia) on December 12, 1806, the son of Uwatie (Cherokee for "the ancient one", sometimes spelled Oowatie), a full-blood Cherokee, and Susanna Reese, daughter of a white father and Cherokee mother.^[2] He was named Degataga. According to one biography, this name means "standing firm" when translated to English.^[3] He loosely translated his name as simply "Stand" and combined it with his father’s name to get Stand Watie.^[2] His brothers were Gallagina, nicknamed "Buck" (who later took the name Elias Boudinot); and Thomas Watie. They were close to their paternal uncle Major Ridge, and his son John Ridge, both later leaders in the tribe. By 1827, their father David Uwatie had become a wealthy planter, who held African-American slaves as laborers.^[2]

After Uwatie converted to Christianity with the Moravians, he took the name of David Uwatie; he and Susanna renamed Degataga as Isaac. In his life, Degataga preferred to use a form of the English translation of his Cherokee name, "Stand Firm." Later, the family dropped the "U" from the spelling of their surname, using "Watie." Along with his two brothers and sisters, Stand Watie learned to read and write English at the Moravian mission school in Spring Place, Cherokee Nation (now Georgia).^[2]"

^{------------------}

^{Well, pilgrims, he probably is Oklahoma's favorite Indian (native American).  He was paramount chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, a slaveholder (Black slaves of course), a rich planter as his father had been in Georgia before the Great Removal (Trail of Tears).  He raised a regiment of cavalry which he commanded throughout the war in good times and bad.  It is little known that the Confederate government in Richmond reserved seats in their Congress for representatives of the Indian Nations which sided with them; Cherokee, Creek, Chocktaw, Seminole, etc.  Indian inclination toward the CS declined during the war but then, people often drift away from causes facing defeat.}

^{There must be a statue of this man somewhere that can be torn down, and Elizabeth Warren can demand his posthumous expulsion from her tribe.}

^{He would have sought a ticket for tonight's rally in Tulsa.   pl} 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_Watie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_units_of_Indian_Territory

Oklahoma - 20 June, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbrnXl2gO_k

" ... IT MAY DEPLOY 240 STARLINK CRAFT."

 

 ""If the cost to launch is 1/4 the price of the [Falcon 9] and can carry 4 times the satellites... how is that anything but the right tool for the job?"

Indeed, the Starship is designed to reduce the price of rocket flights by a large amount. In November 2019, CEO Elon Musk said that the operational costs of flying Starship would be around $2 million per flight.

But one of the main issues could be deploying the satellites in space. SpaceX's website shows how the cargo bay could open up to release satellites."  inverse.com

----------------

Well, pilgrims, they haven't managed to get the thing more than a few feet off the ground yet.  Let's see that happen before we celebrate.  pl 

https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-starship-stunning-image-shows-how-it-may-deploy-240-starlink-craft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

Security screening of manuscripts

It is the law in the United States that those who have had legal access to the secrets of the government must submit private manuscripts for removal of such secrets BEFORE they are published or even presented to a potential publisher.  Every department of government has an office charged with such work.

I know this process well because my memoir "Tattoo" has been in the hands of the appropriate Defense Department office for nigh on six months.  The book is long, and I was so unlucky as to have DoD shut down its auxiliary services during my wait.  I have thought of withdrawing it from screening but, surprisingly, the screeners tell me it has some worth for those who will come after. So, I will wait.

All this applies to John Bolton, a career State Department man whose adult life has been soaked in government secrets.  I first noticed Bolton as a glowering presence at briefings I gave to selected State Department people with regard to national command authority projects I was running.  His attitude was consistent.  If the idea was not his, it was simply wrong.

Bolton's "kiss and tell" book about Trump is IMO as much caused by wounded ego as a desire to make money.  He submitted the book for security review to DoD and the CIA.  Why not State?  Ah, Pompeo would tear it to pieces.  Bolton evidently grew impatient with the pace of clearance and decided to go ahead with publication without clearance

To do this is a felony.  The release of the book today completes the elements of proof for the crime.

Bolton should be arrested and charged with any of a number of possible crimes.  pl

Jim and Joe's political allies

""Every day that I show up here, I'm not here to peacefully protest," Grayson told the "U.N. Me" filmmaker, who also embedded himself in Minneapolis protests earlier this month.

"I'm here to disrupt until my demands are met," Grayson continued. "You cannot rebuild until you break it all the way down."

STREET PREACHER TELLS SEATTLE PROTESTER: ELECT BIDEN 'TO SEE BLACK MEN GET KILLED'

The CHOP group has blocked off six city blocks in downtown Seattle, where the East Precinct is located, as an act of protest for the police-involved death of George Floyd on May 25. On Tuesday, protesters reached an agreement with the city to reduce the occupied area to three blocks and to allow traffic. The agreement came a day after the Seattle City Council voted to ban police from using chokeholds and crowd-control devices like tear gas and pepper spray."

*********** 

"It's not a slogan. It's not even a warning," Grayson said. "I'm letting people know what comes next."

"If the Seattle Police Department turns in their badges, we'll have made a move forward," Grayson said.

The group has published a list of demands for the city council and mayor, including abolishing the police, prisons, courts and criminal justice system "as we know it today."

******

""If there's no change, there might be a lot more destroying until there is!" a hooded man wearing sunglasses and a black face cover, told him, "but I think some destruction and looting kinda sends the message to people and breaking their s--t is justified."

Another said, "'F--k the property. f--k the consumption, f--k capitalism."

A woman then said, "white people owned slaves so f--k them."

https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-chop-protest-police-video

----------------

What does Biden say about this or more importantly what does Clyburn say?  ?  Who among you condones this?

I watched video yesterday from the "new country."  Men urinating  and defecating on the streets, some of them with their pants stained with their diarrhea.  The level of drug consumption seems very high.

Ms. Grayson says that she is an African forcefully brought to the US.  Could she be persuaded to return to her ancestral homeland?  Probably not.

Our British and Canadian cousins should not feel smug.  Canada has a colonial past and the treatment of the metis by the colonial Canadian government will be examined in spite of all the modern day BS that claims Canada to be a "metis nation."

Oxford University is taking down a statue of Cecil Rhodes.  Baden Powell's statue is under threat as is a statue of Churchill in downtown London.  Who will be next, Gladstone, Disraeli, Joseph Chamberlain?  Do you think the mob will spare the Albert Memorial, or statues of the Queen Empress herself?

I do not.  pl 

I have Joe by the b--s and you all will be punished ...

"an American politician of the Democratic Party serving as House Majority Whip since 2019.^[1] He is a two-time Majority Whip, having previously served in the post from 2007 to 2011 and served as House Assistant Minority Leader from 2011 to 2019.

Currently in his 14th term as a congressman, Clyburn has served as U.S. Representative for South Carolina's 6th congressional district since 1993. His congressional district includes most of the majority-black precincts in and around Columbia and Charleston, as well as nearly all of a mostly rural region within South Carolina. Clyburn is the current dean of the South Carolina congressional delegation.

Clyburn has been the third-ranking Democrat in the House behind Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer since 2007, serving as Majority Whip behind House Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer during periods of Democratic House control, and as Assistant Minority Leader behind Minority Leader Pelosi and Minority Whip Hoyer during periods of Republican House control. After the Democrats took control of the House following the 2018 midterm elections, Clyburn was re-elected Majority Whip in January 2019 on the opening of the 116th Congress, alongside the re-elected Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer, marking the second time the trio has served in these roles together.  wiki

----------------

Watch the interview linked below.  The interview took place last night on Special Report.

I used to have a high regard for Clyburn, but not after last night.  My analysis is that the underlying truth in his attitude is "Joe Biden's campaign was dead until I brought SC's Black vote to him and caused him to win the primary here.  Joe can't win the presidency without overwhelming Black support.  Only I can bring him that vote.  Joe's record with regard to Blacks is poor in spite of all his BS to the contrary.  Without me he is nothing.  With me he is everything.  When he is president he will do what I tell him and then our grievances dating all the way back to colonization will be be expiated by you White people.

Just look at Clyburn during the interview.  Look at his hostility to Baier.

Clyburn used to describe himself as a Southern Gentleman.  That was then.  This is now.  pl

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=721583178644171

(Left click on the image for sound)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Clyburn

The Atlanta cop should have due process.

Watch the body camera footage.  This shootee passed out drunk in the drive-thru lane of the Wendy's resto and was blocking the lane.  The management understandably called the police to get him and his car removed.  They could not do business with him there.  The cops woke him up, and gave him several sobriety tests.  He failed all of them.  They decided to arrest him for drunk driving.  He started fighting both of them when they attempted to handcuff him.  He seized one of their TASER weapons and tried to shoot one of the cops.  Then he ran away with the TASER.  One of the policemen shot him as he ran.  

The mayor of Atlanta fired the shooter without a hearing or investigation of his conduct.  The police chief resigned the next day.

This action by the mayor was IMO grotesquely unjust.  He should be re-hired pending an investigation.  Failing that he should sue the city for personal injury.  pl

https://www.insider.com/atlanta-police-footage-show-moments-officer-shot-dead-black-man-2020-6

"The Civil War, a Narrative." Foote

Minneapolis and Seattle - a tale of two cities

"This past Sunday, a veto-proof majority of the council announced plans to disband its police department and invest in community-based public safety programs.

According to Friday's resolution, the city council will begin a year-long process of engaging "with every willing community member in Minneapolis" to develop a new public safety model.

"We acknowledge that the current system is not reformable — that we would like to end the current policing system as we know it," council member Alondra Cano said.

The council declared it would create a "transformative new model" of public safety in the city.

A "Future of Community Safety Work Group," will be formed and will include staff from city departments, including the offices of violence prevention and civil rights.

The council also voted unanimously on Friday to end the local emergency order that had been declared due to protests in the wake of Floyd's death. "  Forbes

----------------

And then out in Seattle we have the "summer of love" mayor on TeeVee accepting something that looks like a miniature version of the Paris Commune while being framed on one side by "Old Glory" and on the other by Washington State's green flag with the face of George Washington (a prominent slaveholder and planter) featured thereon.  Will it not be necessary to change the name of the state?

To repeat my earlier assertion it seems inevitable that there will be more, many more, "Communes" springing up across the US.  The locale will be all important of course.  I would recommend against trying this gambit anywhere in Texas.  OTOH, just about anywhere in California will be fertile ground and Boston might be welcoming to an "Autonomous" enclave somewhere downtown.  Any Democrat run area is a possibility really.

Trump is at West Point bloviating today.  He has the right instincts concerning the need to maintain public order but he has never learned how to drive the machine of the Executive Branch and his personnel decisions have often been appalling.  

It would be interesting to learn what a President Joe Biden and then the wise woman of color who succeeds him would do with the ongoing development of this situation.  pl

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/12/minneapolis-city-council-unanimously-votes-to-replace-police-with-community-led-model/#78964a8471a5

SST

I have been talked into continuing with the blog for a while.  pl 

If Seattle can accept CHAZ' secession, why not San Francisco. LA or Chicago?

"What we do know is that Washington officials have completely lost control of the CHAZ, and they won’t get it back without exerting force. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has tried to negotiate with these protesters without success, and the protesters haven’t shown signs of budging. Peaceful or not, this is anarchy. And the only reason Seattle protesters have gotten away with it is that law enforcement hasn’t been able to challenge them.

This is what happens when you remove policing from the picture. If we do not have a way to enforce our laws, then any number of citizens could do what these protesters are doing and create their own autonomous zones, make up its rules, and force other citizens to obey them. Last I checked, we considered such behavior unacceptable.

And it is, which is why Democrats and other activists should think twice before supporting “defund the police,” a movement that would ultimately like to see law enforcement abolished or at least crippled. If this movement has its way, the lawlessness will not stay in Seattle. It will spread, and it will lead to violence."  Washington Examiner

---------------

The mayor of Seattle says that the seizure and occupation of a portion of downtown Seattle is OK by her.  She predicts that Seattle may now experience a "summer of love" and that Trump should stay in his besieged bunker in Washington and mind his own business.

The "Capital Hill Autonomous Zone" (CHAZ) has defined its present borders, installed border guards and is taxing (extorting) business and people within its territory.  The mayor of Seattle and the governor of Washington State (soon to be renamed) are notorious leftists as are many citizens resident in the city and state.

What is being affected in Seattle is de facto secession from the United States.  This differs from the secession of the Confederate States in 1861 in that it is the states that are the contracting parties in the US constitutional union and not cities or parts of states.  

The US Congress some years ago created US Northern Command with headquarters in Colorado for the purpose of defending the US against threats both external and internal.  It is one of the Unified Commands that are subordinate to POTUS and below him to SECDEF.  Like the other Unified commands it has no troops of its own but has numerous contingency plans under which troops will be made available to it on order.  Nearby at Tacoma there is Ft. Lewis which has most of the 2nd Infantry Division in garrison.  when Trump says that he could take action against the CHAZ rebellion, he has the means.  The question arises as to whether the chain of command would obey him considering that General Milley has expressed the tenderness of his feelings with regard to the use of troops to suppress disturbances.  I have pointed out that federal troops (not the NG) have been used 14 times  since the end of the Indian Wars to suppress unrest but, this is evidently of no concern to Milley or Fightin' Jack Keane who supports Milley.

I ask you pilgrims, if secession is allowed in Seattle, why would various discontented groups not attempt it elsewhere?  pl

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/seattles-lawlessness-will-spread-if-the-defund-the-police-movement-has-its-way

What was this about?

pl

Milley apologized for Trump? He must go.

"America's top general is apologizing for appearing in a photo-op with President Donald Trump after the forceful dispersal of protesters outside the White House last week, saying the move was a "mistake."

Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also said that he was "outraged" by the killing of George Floyd and added that the protests it sparked spoke to "centuries of injustice toward African Americans."

"As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched. And I am not immune. As many of you saw, the result of the photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week. That sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society," Milley, said in a pre-recorded speech to a group of graduates from the National Defense University released on Thursday.

 

"I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it," he added.   CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/milley-trump-appearance-mistake/index.html

---------------

Does Millet think that this speech leaked to CNN is not "involvement of the military in domestic politics?"

Well pilgrims, Mark Milley does not know his place.  It is not his privilege to denigrate the CinC to anyone in public, much less a group of War College graduates on the occasion of  their commencement.  These fellows will all hold very responsible positions in government and he has spoken to them in such a way as to encourage insubordination in the chain of command.  He should be retired immediately.  He can then go to work for CNN/MSNBC where he can wait for a putative President Joe Biden to appoint him SECDEF or some such thing.

Trump has IMO lost control of the Defense Department.   He should take decisive action to regain that control.   IMO Esper cannot be fired so close to the election, but he and the other "squirrels" in the five sided mix-master have to be limited  in what kind of mischief they can accomplish.

I understand that a retired brigadier general who is a Trump supporter is being placed in OSD as the policy head.  Fine.  To the extent that the "mutineers" do not cut him out of the loop, he can tell Trump what devilment they are up to, but more is needed.

I suggest that a genuine intellect sit in the WH where he can monitor ALL actions and policies proposed by DoD BEFORE they are issued to the world

IMO Victor Davis Hanson is the man for that job.  pl  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Davis_Hanson

 

"Coronavirus vaccine developers are chasing outbreaks before they disappear" Washpost

"The top teams rushing to develop coronavirus vaccines are alerting governments, health officials and shareholders that they may have a big problem: The outbreaks in their countries may be getting too small to quickly determine whether vaccines work

A leader of the Oxford University group, one of the furthest ahead with human trials, admits the reality is paradoxical, even “bizarre,” but said the declining numbers of new infections this summer could be one of the big hurdles vaccine developers face in the global race to beat down the virus.

Even as new cases are growing worldwide, transmission rates are falling in Britain, China and many of the hardest-hit regions in the United States — the three countries that have experimental vaccines ready to move into large-scale human testing in June, July and August."  Washpost

---------------

Well, pilgrims it would seem that the Post staff  does not see the irony in their own writing, or perhaps they do.  There have been scattered evidences of rationality there lately.   Even as Democrat governors and mayors across the country drag their feet on the re-opening of the American economy, infection rates are falling.  In the Faucibirxist view of things everything depends on vaccine development (or herd immunity post holocaust).  But, alas there just aren't enough new, vibrant infections to make development of the vaccines convenient.   What will happen to the flow of government money to these projects if this phenomenon becomes  general knowledge.  Someone at the Post should be disciplined for this indiscretion.  pl 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-trials-astrazeneca-moderna/2020/06/09/48f28fea-a414-11ea-898e-b21b9a83f792_story.html

A Picture Is Worth ...

Nancy, Chuck and Stenny Hoyer kneeling in memory of St. George.  I kid you not.  She had to be helped up.  Poor thang!  pl

A note of thanks to the trolls

You keep me in the fight.  Thanks.  pl 

Waves of public hysteria

We seem particularly prone to these in the US.  The Germans tend to this as well.  "Welle." Is that the word in German?  

A few recent cases come to mind:

-The terrible fear of the end of civilized life that preceded the year 2,000.  

- The terrible fear of "the terrorists" that overwhelmed the country in the months after 9/11.  People hid out at home for weeks, refusing to go to work in places like the World Bank in Washington, DC.  People stared hostilely at each other on public transportation if there was anything unusual about a person's appearance.  "If you see something, say something."  Like a beard, perhaps

- The wave of insane trials in the 90s of the staff and owners of child day care centers for child molestation, satanic ritual, etc. on the basis of elicited testimony of three and four year olds.  A sample test question in court was "Is red heavier than yellow?"  Actual answer from a child witness - "Yes."  On the basis of such testimony many were sent to prison for long terms.  The public was quite happy with that.  No, the public was quite enthusiastic about it.

Now we have an MSM and social media induced madness over the death of St. George of Minnesota.  The craziness has led to successful mob demands for the destruction of historic monuments, toleration by business leaders of looting, and such whackiness as the proposed abolition of police forces and a reliance instead on the goodness of mankind.  The public, to include TeeVee executives have now meekly surrendered to the mob and are actually doing things like cancelling profitable programs that are about the police.  What are they going to do in the UK?  Half their programming seems to be about policing.  What will Her Majesty do if deprived of her favorite show, "Midsomer Murders?"

 pl  

My take on the present situation.

1.  Mayor Muriel Bowser proudly stated that she "pushed the Army away from our city."  The Army she is talking about is the US ARMY and she wants it out of "her" city whether it be the Regular Army (active force) or the National Guard of the various states.  It appears to be her position that in the District of Columbia the US armed forces are foreign forces.  Bowser is also quite self assured in saying that she does not want to see any "exceptional" federal police presence in DC.   Does she have a future referendum on "sovereignty" in mind?  A city state?

2.  The antifa+ forces manipulating BLM, the happy camper crowds, Muriel Bowser et al on the left have now demonstrated the extent of their command and control capabilities.  They brought the crowds in Washington right up to the fence around the WH and then had them leave notes attached to the fence as markers as to the limits of federal government power.  The message is clear. "We bring violence when we wish and we turn it off when we please.  This is the limit of your territorial control, this fence.  We can guide the mob to you from any number of assembly areas, can guide them with free cookies, hot dogs, colored balloons.  Donald Trump you are now essentially imprisoned in the WH.  You can fly in and out of your prison but the streets ..."

3.  The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive.  They can move people around the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick,  55 gallon new trash cans of frozen water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a well thought out distribution pattern.  Who pays for this?  Who plans this?  Who coordinates these plans and gives "execute orders?"  AVAAZ?  Maybe.

4.  Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda.  These campaigns are fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party.  The present meme of "Defund the Police" is an example.  This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously across the country.  I am impressed.  Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force.  Gutting the civil police forces has long been a major goal of the far left, but now, they have the ability to create mass hysteria over it when they have an excuse.  

5.  The senior civilians in DoD and the US military high command appear to no longer accept their constitutional subordination to the President of the United States.  They countermanded several of his instructions recently and simply ignored others.  IMO they are now de facto allies of Muriel Bowser and antifa+ in thwarting President Trump's ability to manage the street situation in the capital of the US and in confining him to the WH grounds unless he comes and goes by helicopter.  The House of Representatives want to have Esper and Milley testify this week as to their actions and attitudes.  Good!  I want to hear it.

6.  George Floyd.  A minister in Texas eulogized him yesterday and in doing so compared him to Jesus.  Really?  Really?  Perhaps a new religion will spring up based on his martyred sanctity.  Yes.  Chauvin is a brute, but George Floyd was no saint.

Antifa+ and their globalist political allies made a lot of progress recently, a lot.  The questions remain as to where the money, training in planning and logistics come from.  pl 

Will Muriel lead the attack on the White House?

What you are looking at, pilgrims, is a view up 16th St NW from K Street to the White House.  You can see the steeple of St. John's Episcopal Church on the left at the end with Lafayette Park and the White House beyond.

The Democrats are seeking to bring 1 million of their flock (protestors, anarchists and antifa+) to Washington this weekend.  

Muriel Bowser,  (mayor of the autonomous city of Washington) has sent an official letter to Trump requesting the removal of all federal military and security forces from the city.  What the basis for that might be escapes me. The District of Columbia is not a state.  It is an administrative convenience for the federal government.  It never had an elected government until 1973.  That change in government encouraged by LBJ caused what was called the "run for the bridges."

IMO what Bowser has done on 16th Street today is create a clearly marked assembly area for a very large mob.  It is two blocks long and aimed squarely at the White House.

IMO the response should be to bring a rifle company of the 3rd US Infantry Regiment (Old Guard) from Ft. Myer or Ft. McNair (divided garrison) and position it on the White House lawn with a big pile of ammunition to await any breach by Bowser's Army.  The rest of 3rd Infantry and the marines at 8th and I can wait in reserve. 

But can we be sure that Esper and Milley will defend the White House?

Let the die be cast.  pl

"Defund the Police!" Start with Blue cities...

"America badly needs to rethink its priorities for the whole criminal-justice system, with Floyd’s death drawing urgent, national attention to the necessity for police reform. Activists, civil-rights organizations, academics, policy analysts, and politicians have drawn up a sprawling slate of policies that might help end police brutality, eliminate racist policing, improve trust between cops and the communities they work in, and lower crime levels.

A more radical option, one scrawled on cardboard signs and tagged on buildings and flooding social media, is to defund the cops. What might that mean in practice? Not just smaller budgets and fewer officers, though many activists advocate for that. It would mean ending mass incarceration, cash bail, fines-and-fees policing, the war on drugs, and police militarization, as well as getting cops out of schools. It would also mean funding housing-first programs, creating subsidized jobs for the formerly incarcerated, and expanding initiatives to have mental-health professionals and social workers respond to emergency calls.

Read: How to actually fix America’s police

More broadly, the demand to divest from policing doubles as a call to invest in safety, security, and racial justice. This week, cops in riot gear teargassed teenagers, Humvees patrolled near the White House, and military helicopters buzzed protesters. At the same time, health workers fought COVID-19 wearing reused masks. This is not serving. This is not protecting."  Anne Lowry at The Atlantic

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How did The Atlantic become so Left?  That happened while I was not paying attention.  Ms. Lowry seems a sincere soul.  I wonder which of the Seven Sisters or the Ivies she flowered at.  Ah! I see now that it was Harvard.  One of my ancestors was a Puritan minister who was among the founders of the place.  Would that have made me a "legacy?  She is married to Ezra Klein whom I have thought a sensible fellow.

"Man is born free and is everywhere in chains."  This quote from Jean Jacques Rousseau seem to lie at the heart of  Ms. Lowry's core beliefs as to the possible nature of human societies.  She believes people to be inherently good and capable of living together without rules or sheepdogs to keep them in line and on the job.

Floyd's death and the media induced hysteria that has followed provide a plausible excuse and platform for people like Lowry to push for a well established meme of the far left, i.e., "Defund the Police!"  

Well, pilgrims, I do not believe humans are innately good, quite the opposite.  But, the experiment in abolition of policemen and their replacement with social workers would be interesting.

If the Lowrys of the world want to try this, they should begin with cities controlled by Ms. Lowry's comrades.  Minneapolis would be the ideal place to begin, followed by Los Angeles, Oakland, California and the like.  Ah, I almost forgot Richmond, Virginia.  pl

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/defund-police/612682/

"Lord Acton and the American Civil War" The Imaginative Conservative

"... if we take for granted that Acton would be infatuated with twenty-first century Americanism we might think again, for, as much as Acton thought of Jefferson and Adams, out of all American political theorists he reserved the highest praise for a man now deemed anathema: John C. Calhoun. To Acton, it was Calhoun rather than Daniel Webster who “was the real defender of the Union,” for Calhoun’s theory of nullification represented “the very perfection of political truth.” What Acton found compelling was Calhoun’s idea that in the modern age the distinctions between monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are less significant than the distinction between centralized regimes, which stifle communities and individuals, and decentralized regimes, which accord considerable agency to various quasi-sovereign actors.

Having observed Acton’s esteem for Calhoun, it is worth adding that Acton also deplored slavery, and that in the coexistence of these two seemingly incompatible sentiments we find ourselves brought up against one of the many unexamined assumptions of contemporary America. Not only is it logically possible to find slavery objectionable without regarding Southern political culture with unmitigated hostility, it is possible to oppose slavery while positively admiring Southern political culture—or at least while preferring said culture over the one which prevailed among New England Puritans.  Salyer

--------------

Enjoy  pl

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/02/lord-acton-american-civil-war-jerry-salyer.html

Mayor Lavar Stoney proposes further "contextualization."

"Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced Wednesday that he and 9th District Councilman Mike Jones will introduce an ordinance on July 1 to remove all city-controlled Confederate statues from Monument Avenue.

A commission appointed by Stoney recommended taking down the Jefferson Davis statue and adding context to others.

“I appreciate the recommendations of the Monument Avenue Commission – those were the appropriate recommendations at the time," Stoney said in a statement. "But times have changed, and removing these statues will allow the healing process to begin for so many Black Richmonders and Virginians." RTP

***********

"Richmond is no longer the Capital of the Confederacy – it is filled with diversity and love for all – and we need to demonstrate that.”

A law set to take effect July 1 allows local governments to take down Confederate monuments. The five on Richmond’s Monument Avenue — raised between 1890 and 1929 — have been some of the most controversial in the state. Four of the five are on city property, while a statue honoring Robert E. Lee is on state property and would not be subject to local control.

Asked about the Lee monument at a news conference Tuesday, Northam said he would "follow that discussion, and follow the lead of the city council and ... the people that live in Richmond.""  RTP

---------------

It is interesting that Mayor Stoney is "filled with love for all."  I am beginning to think that "contextualization" is the least offensive of the possibilities in terms of desecration.

There are future candidates for "contextualization" in Richmond.  Hollywood Cemetery (full of dead Johnnies including Jeb Stuart),  The Virginia Historical Society Library (too many rebel  uniforms in cases and murals), The Museum of the Confederacy and CS White House,  The Medical College of Virginia where people like Doctors Hunter McGuire and Simon Baruch were trained.  Both were medical corps majors in the CSA.  Reverence for them must be ended.  And that VA medical center that TTG uses must have its name changed (Hunter McGuire).  And then there is Oakwood Cemetery where solders were brought from Chimborazo hospital to be buried.  I should not forget the statue of Lee that stands in the state capitol on the spot where he accepted command of Virginia's forces in 1861.  The possibilities are endless.

It is announced today that Ralph Northam will order Lee's statue removed from Monument Avenue.

Hopefully Richmond will sink into being a boring middle sized city bereft of an industrial base now that tobacco is gone and filled in the downtown with parking lots where grand houses once stood..  Without its past it is a rather ugly city without much context at all.  pl

https://www.richmond.com/news/local/government-politics/stoney-to-propose-removing-all-confederate-statues-from-monument-avenue/article_b427ca62-fbd3-578c-82a7-c7d32071d8c6.html

Dr. Janice Underwood, chief of "contextualization" for the New Dominion."

"As the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Dr. Underwood will develop a sustainable framework to promote inclusive practices across Virginia state government; implement a measurable, strategic plan to address systemic inequities in state government practices; and facilitate ways to turn feedback from state employees, external stakeholders, and community leaders into concrete equity policy.

“I am deeply honored to serve the Commonwealth in this inaugural position,” said Dr. Underwood. “As I embark on this role I will be relying on my many personal and professional experiences as a teacher, an educational researcher, a parent and wife, and a diversity leader. I am dedicated to working with Virginians to promote lasting, institutional change at all levels of state government, and I look forward to working closely with Governor Northam and the rest of his administration to make the Commonwealth more diverse, equitable, and inclusive for all who live here.”"  Northam's Office

-------------------

Under Virginia's constitution Northam cannot succeed himself, but his program of personal repentance and transformation of Virginia into an east coast version of California will probably set him up nicely for a national role in the Democratic Party.  pl

https://www.governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/all-releases/2019/september/headline-846422-en.html

"Contextualization" of STT

In the context of the contextualization of monuments in Richmond and the further contextualization of the statue "Appomattox" in Alexandria I have decided to pre-emptively contextualize the ad for my trilogy, "Strike the Tent."  If you wish, you can search the archive for it.pl

"... Antifa Agent Caught Paying And Giving Orders To Rioters."

https://www.bitchute.com/video/PiBS52P7Rds0/

pl

A Reminder

"THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF A NATION IS NOT MERELY A REPOSITORY.  OUR VISION OF THE PAST CHANNELS OUR VISION OF THE FUTURE BY CONSTRAINING OPTIONS, BUT ALSO IT PLAYS A PROACTIVE ROLE.  THIS MEMORY IS ACTUALLY A VERY IMPORTANT FACTOR IN STRUGGLE.... IF ONE CONTROLS PEOPLES' MEMORY, ONE CONTROLS THEIR DYNAMISM....  IT IS VITAL TO HAVE POSSESSION OF THIS MEMORY, TO CONTROL IT, TO ADMINISTER IT, TELL IT WHAT IT MUST CONTAIN.'  COLLECTIVE MEMORY IS THE TOOLSHED, TOMORROW'S IDEOLOGICAL ARSENAL, FROM WHICH POLITICAL CONCEPTS AND SYMBOLS ARE SELECTED, REINTERPRETED, AND MANIPULATED BOTH BY ESTABLISHED GOVERNMENTS AND OPPOSITION GROUPS.  IT MAY WAIT FOR DECADES, PATIENTLY DORMANT, ONLY TO BE REACTIVATED SUDDENLY AS AN EXPLOSIVE CONTAGIOUS FORCE."

DR. CHRISTINE M. HELMS IN MCNAIR PAPER # 10 "ARABISM AND ISLAM: STATELESS NATIONS AND NATIONLESS STATES."  SEPTEMBER, 1990.

More insurrection points:

1- Where do all the fireworks come from in ALL these riots?  They are now generally restricted for sale in the US.  And how about the pallets of bricks, pre-positioned stolen cars in groups and all the other raw material of the rioters.

2- As you can see today, the instruction to Antifada+ is now to intimidate the police, National Guard and all others present at confrontations to kneel on demand to the rioters.  Nothing could be clearer as a message of whom is winning control.  This generally a successful tactic.

3 - In re Richmond, IMO the graffiti and obscenities now adorning the statues of Lee, Jackson, Davis and Jeb Stuart should remain there for all eternity a a memorial to the "contextualization" of Richmond's shame and disgrace.  Someone tried last night to saw off Stuart's leg.  I wish I had been there.

4.  Trump tonight rejected Kushner's ass kissing response to the mobs and placed CJCS in charge of the emergency.  We will see what happens now.  I recommend Thiers' response to the Communards.  Too bad Clemenceau had skipped town before the French Army caught him.  Nika!  Nika!  pl  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._E._B._Stuart

The New Dominion

This is now the New Dominion of the Democrats and Northam.  pl 

Lara Logan on Antifa's cadre role in anarchist agitprop

I listened to this colloquy last night betwixt Ingraham and Logan.  It supports the statements made just now by the governor of Minnesota and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul that the rioters the last few nights increasingly are organized, led and coordinated by people from "out of state" and dressed in black.  

Someone pays for the equipping, training, transporting of these anarchist cadres.  Who?  pl

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=lara+logan+and+antifa&docid=13893463882189&mid=FEEEF1A3CF5C354492A1FEEEF1A3CF5C354492A1&view=detail&FORM=VIRE