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Ruth King

The Coronavirus Mask Charade Continues By John G. Maguire

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/the_coronavirus_mask_charade_continues.html

When he announced on May 1 that masks would be  worn in public places, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker was emphatic.

“We view this as common sense.  This is going to be basically a way of life.  No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts.”

However,  doubts are showing up.

First, Baker’s order said to wear face coverings when in public places and unable to keep a social distance of six feet.  Why’d he pick six feet?  There is no research showing that six feet means anything in a public space.

That six-foot idea is an arbitrary guess that was “conjured up out of nowhere,” according to Professor Robert Dingwall, a top scientific adviser to the British government, which like the U.S. has adopted six feet as a safe social distance.  The authorities guessed that it might be a good distance because some study had shown that a cough could travel six feet in a tightly closed dead-air space.  The relevance of that to everyday life — who knows?

Anyone claiming the six-foot rule is not arbitrary should explain why the World Health Organization suggests a three-foot distance and why Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have adopted that rule, and why Germany and other countries use a 4.5-foot rule.  Does the coronavirus behave differently in Europe?

REP. DAN CRENSHAW-(R-TX-2) ON TWITTER

Dan Crenshaw
@DanCrenshawTX

US House candidate, TX-2
I just want to remind all that when you create an “autonomous zone,” you don’t get to demand a long list of supplies from the orderly capitalist society that you are rebelling against.Kind of defeats the meaning of “autonomous.”

How Dr. Fauci’s fraudulent pandemic advice put millions of Americans through hell Steven W. Mosher

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/how-dr-faucis-fraudulent-pandemic-advice-put-millions-of-americans-through-hell

– For weeks the diminutive doctor dominated the airwaves.  Dr. Anthony Fauci was a fixture at President Trump’s China Virus press conferences, warning us in his raspy voice that we were facing a disease so infectious that a single droplet in the air could infect and kill us. 

Stopping the spread of this disease would not be easy, he said, but nothing else mattered.  This was the kind of pandemic that comes along once a century or so, caused by an unknown virus for which there was no cure.  If we don’t follow his instructions to the letter, he warned us, millions of Americans could die.

And what was his advice?

The entire country was going to have to go into lockdown, he told us in March. Become laid off from your job, close your business, pick up your kids from the school, and then go home and shut yourself in.  At first, he advised us that we may have to “hunker down” in this way for “several months.” But by early April, he was saying that the lockdown would have to continue until there are no “new cases” of coronavirus. 

That is, indefinitely.

For many Americans, it was nothing short of an open-ended sentence of house arrest.   Yet Fauci was absolutely insistent in interview after interview that if we didn’t make this collective sacrifice, that there wouldn’t be enough coffins to hold those who would die of the China Virus.  Over and over again he demanded that the shutdowns continue, warning that “suffering and death” awaits America if it opens too soon.

Fauci was all over the media with this message, all the time.

The entire country panicked, especially the Democrat governors in Blue states.  Following Fauci, they abused their authority to impose on Americans unheard of restrictions on their liberty.

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Sydney Williams “It’s the Culture, Stupid – Part II”

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Ignorance is the bane of civilized society. It is inexcusable in a country with free high schools. In a manifestation of cancel culture, mobs tear down statues of yesteryear’s heroes. I wonder: what is gained by destroying historical artifacts? Where is the curiosity expressed by Washington Irving in Sketchbook almost two hundred years ago? “I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievements.”[1] Should we rename army bases in a moment of exuberant zeal, or would it be wiser to debate the issue when heads are cooler? Are past wrongs righted when relegated to the ash heap of ignorance? Can we assume we have reached perfection where our descendants will find nothing wrong in today’s actions? Would those whose bravery stems from being part of a mob tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus have had the courage of the Italian navigator to sail across an infinite sea to an unknown land?

History must be considered in context and with perspective. It is impossible for us to judge the behavior of our forefathers based on today’s moral standards, just as it will be unfair to us for our descendants to mock our actions today based on values a hundred years hence. Should we ignore Columbus because he is now pilloried as a racist, more than five hundred years after his voyage of discovery? Should we disregard Thomas Jefferson, and the words he wrote about self-evident truths and of how all men were created equal with unalienable rights, because he kept slaves? Cannot we admire the former and criticize the latter?

The cultural war is perhaps most pronounced in the Washington D.C. environs, where 283,000 federal bureaucrats work. They are joined by about 14,000 staffers for the 535 Congressmen and Senators. Lobbyists comprise another 11,600 people. Added to the mix are thousands who work in media. In all, they make up almost 20% of the metro areas workforce. These are highly paid people who live in four of the nation’s five wealthiest counties – Howard (MD) and Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington, all in Virginia. It is a self-contained culture where most jobs are based on who you know. Once hired, they are ensconced, moving from agency to lobbyist firm to agency. But as Richard Grenell, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and ex-acting Director of National Intelligence, recently noted, the D.C. culture is autonomous, where there is “no outside thought, there’s no perspective.” While forty million Americans lost their jobs due to a state-mandated shut-down of the economy, these people kept theirs, even when told to stay home – most paid from our tax dollars. The contrast to the rest of the country is startling. It was this narcissistic cocoon that Donald Trump threatened to dismantle in 2016 when he pledged to “drain the swamp.”

Tom Cotton EVISCERATES Cancel Culture in ‘Obelisk of Wokeness’ Speech By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/culture/tyler-o-neil/2020/06/12/tom-cotton-eviscerates-cancel-culture-in-obelisk-of-wokeness-speech-n518979

On Thursday night, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) eviscerated the terrifying “cancel culture” that seeks to silence anyone who dares disagree with leftist dogma. Cancel culture animates the vandalism against statues — including those of black volunteer troops for the Union fighting against slavery — along with the abortion of television shows and the firing of people.

Cotton briefly listed many of the recent victims of cancel culture in the wake of the George Floyd riots: a UCLA professor facing police investigation because he declined to postpone final exams to let students protest, a professor under investigation for reading from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, a professional soccer player who was fired for his wife’s tweet, and “business executives and editors at newspapers and magazines.”

Tom Cotton did not need to mention former New York Times op-ed editor James Bennet, who resigned amid backlash for publishing Cotton’s op-ed.

Lastly, the senator mentioned Ivanka Trump, whose commencement speech at Wichita State University got canceled.

Senate Collusion Theater By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/lindsey-graham-investigation-objectives-unclear/

Someone wake me up when we hear something from John Durham.

‘Anybody who knew about the problems with the dossier and continued to use it are good candidates to go to jail.”

So said Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R., N.C.) earlier this week, referring to the infamous “dossier” of faux intelligence reporting generated by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Senator Graham was laying the groundwork for a push he has recently invigorated — to say “reinvigorated” would be misleading — to examine . . . well . . . it’s not exactly clear what he’s planning to examine.

Sometimes, it seems Graham is after FISA abuse by the FBI in the Trump–Russia investigation. Sometimes, it’s the decision by then-deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the sitting president under circumstances where there was no basis for such an investigation. Sometimes, the focus is described as the Mueller investigation itself: why it went on so long despite the lack of a solid evidentiary predicate, why Rosenstein, in August 2017, defined its scope based on allegations long known to be either groundless or far afield from purportedly suspected Trump–Russia collusion.

Given that Graham has no power to send any good candidates to jail, and the real investigative work either has already been done by the Justice Department’s inspector general, or is in the process of being done by prosecutor John Durham, one can’t help but ask: What is the objective of this scattershot production?

‘Expert Models’ + Fear = Stress Pandemic By Thomas W. Smith

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/13/expert_models__fear__stress_pandemic_143428.html

“It’s the science, the science, the science, not politics.” This from leaders calling for the continuation of the shutdown. It is “the science” they say they’re responding to when they tell us how to live every moment of our waking lives. It is the science that tells citizens in Michigan not to buy seeds, not to take their boats out on the lake. It is lifesaving not to go to church. It is lifesaving to wear masks even when you are walking in the park. It is lifesaving to stay six feet apart. Listen up. We, your leaders, have no choice. It’s the science. And remember, if you don’t listen to us, it’s death, and more death, everywhere death.

Apparently, our science-induced leadership has a formula to solve the virus pandemic: Science + (or x) Fear = The Virus Cure. In other words, shut down the economy. Again, there was no choice. Lives were at stake.

Here is what John Kay of the Financial Times has written about science: “The objective of science is not an agreement on a course of action but the pursuit of truth. … Science is a matter of evidence. … The route to knowledge is transparency. … The route to truth is the pluralistic expression of conflicting views. … There is no room in the process for any notion of scientific consensus.”

The American Press Is Destroying Itself A flurry of newsroom revolts has transformed the American press Matt Taibbi

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself

Sometimes it seems life can’t get any worse in this country. Already in terror of a pandemic, Americans have lately been bombarded with images of grotesque state-sponsored violence, from the murder of George Floyd to countless scenes of police clubbing and brutalizing protesters.

Our president, Donald Trump, is a clown who makes a great reality-show villain but is uniquely toolless as the leader of a superpower nation. Watching him try to think through two society-imperiling crises is like waiting for a gerbil to solve Fermat’s theorem. Calls to “dominate” marchers and ad-libbed speculations about Floyd’s “great day” looking down from heaven at Trump’s crisis management and new unemployment numbers (“only” 21 million out of work!) were pure gasoline at a tinderbox moment. The man seems determined to talk us into civil war.

But police violence, and Trump’s daily assaults on the presidential competence standard, are only part of the disaster. On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, we’re watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.

NYT and WaPo Fawn Over Seattle Autonomous Zone Anarchists By Tobias Hoonhout

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/nyt-and-wapo-fawn-over-seattle-autonomous-zone-anarchists/

The mainstream press gives the “conservatives pounce” treatment to left-wing anarchists.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have in recent days provided sympathetic and even outright celebratory coverage of the Seattle “Autonomous Zone,” emphasizing the “freedoms” secured by the far-left anarchists who drove the police out, rather than neutrally reporting on the phenomenon of militia-style checkpoints choking off American streets.

The Seattle Police Department abandoned its East Precinct on Monday after days of clashes with George Floyd protesters. As the police withdrew, activists moved in and assumed control of the precinct and the surrounding blocks of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, setting up barricades and spraying graffiti on local businesses and residences, including the message “Leaving USA,” to designate their new fiefdom.

The occupiers have released a list of demands to the government, including the “abolition” of the Seattle Police Department and its attached court system, free college for all people in the state, as well as “the abolition of imprisonment, generally speaking, but especially the abolition of both youth prisons and privately-owned, for-profit prisons.”

While the situation has so far been peaceful, far-left groups such as Antifa have called for “people with guns at the CHAZ” on Twitter, while others have vowed to “fight to keep” the area. Journalists have documented armed guards at the entrances to the zone.