Thoughts On A Sunday

It looks like we’ve made it through our Covid-19 Thanksgiving, celebrating with our self-isolated family members at the younger WP Sister’s place. While our Thanksgiving celebration was a shadow of what we usually experience, something I think most people have also experienced this year, we made the best of it. Traffic was lighter than we usually see, something also not unexpected, since not as many people were traveling this year. Even Black Friday didn’t see nearly as many people flooding the stores for deals, yet again not unexpected.

I have to admit the news about Covid-19 has been sounding dire, making it sound like people were dropping in the streets. Yes, it has been “spreading like wildfire”, but one thing I’ve noticed is that neither the number of hospitalizations or deaths has tracked the increase in positive cases, a promising statistic.

Tomorrow, reality will reimpose itself. It will be time to go back to work, to experience another Monday, something most of us dread in the best of times.

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Turning to the election results, Roger Kimball asks some very important questions that need to be asked, questions the Democrats are trying very hard to quash, to make go away. They don’t want any inquiries about voting irregularities, the so-called “unsubstantiated accusations” line the media keeps shoving down our throats. (To me, “unsubstantiated accusations” equates to “uninvestigated allegations”.)

Inquiring minds want to know, how is it possible that voter turnout in just those key cities in just those key states was so high: often 90 percent or more? How is it possible that Joe Biden, who barely campaigned, garnered more votes in just those spots than even Barack Obama had done? How is it possible that, as everyone was getting tucked into bed on the night of November 3, Donald Trump had notable leads in almost all of those states and then, suddenly, all at once, in the wee hours, floods of votes poured in and—wouldn’t you know it—they were overwhelmingly, sometimes exclusively, for Biden? And what about those voting machines from Dominion: are we confident that they are secure?

If the situation were reversed, the Democrats would be screaming “Vote fraud! Vote fraud! VOTE FRAUD!!!” at the top of their lungs, the media would be pushing hard for the investigation of every allegation 24/7, and there would be investigations. But because the fraud helped them win and was committed on their behalf (if not by them directly), it has to be quashed, stamped out, eliminated in its entirety. No investigation of any allegation, even those which have the math to back them up, will be allowed if the Democrats get their way. The media will keep selling the lie that there was no fraud of any kind.

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I was reminded of this quote from C.S. Lewis over in the comments in today’s DBD.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

It seems the “moral busybodies” – our Progressive ‘betters’ – will be doing everything they can to make our lives a living hell with constantly shifting rules and definitions of right and wrong, pushing social justice causes that have nothing to do with actual justice, creating entire classes of untermenschen at whim or at need to help support their belief in their own superiority over the rest of us.

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It seems our political class is finding out there are Constitutional limits on their power regarding public health.

I’ve heard the argument made that public health trumps all, but “public health” can be used as an excuse to restrict or even eliminate one Right after another, all in the name of the pubic good. We’ve seen that on a small scale when restrictions on public gatherings have been placed on religious institutions but not social justice groups, including those who protest...and riot, and loot, and burn. Too bad for them (and good for us) that the US Supreme Court disagrees with them.

When the Supreme Court blocked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's restrictions on religious services this week, it was the first time the justices had enforced constitutional limits on government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision predictably provoked hyperbolic reactions from critics who seem to think politicians should be free to do whatever they consider appropriate during a public health crisis.

Describing the Court's emergency injunction in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo as "the first major decision from the Trump-packed court," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that "it will kill people." He added: "The bad logic is obvious. Suppose I adhere to a religion whose rituals include dumping neurotoxins into public reservoirs. Does the principle of religious freedom give me the right to do that?" Krugman averred that "freedom of belief" does not include "the right to hurt other people in tangible ways—which large gatherings in a pandemic definitely do."

There are several problems with Krugman's gloss on the case, starting with his understanding of the constitutional right at stake. The Court was applying the First Amendment's ban on laws "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion, which includes conduct as well as belief. Krugman, of course, is right that the Free Exercise Clause is not a license for "dumping neurotoxins into public reservoirs"—or, to take a more familiar example, conducting human sacrifices. But it is hard to take seriously his suggestion that holding a religious service during the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of the safeguards observed, is tantamount to poisoning millions of people's drinking water.

--snip--

Cuomo's restrictions on religious gatherings were much more onerous than the rules for myriad secular activities that pose similar risks of virus transmission. That point was crucial because the Court has held that laws are presumptively unconstitutional when they discriminate against religion. At the same time, it has said the Free Exercise Clause does not require religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws, which obviously would include statutes that prohibit mass poisoning or murder.

Indeed. By Krugman’s and other critics’ reasoning, actions up to and including those taken by Kodos The Executioner would be appropriate if it ‘protected’ public health.

I stopped listening to Krugman years ago once I realized his Nobel Prize in Economics had gone to his head and that he had lost any reasoning ability whatsoever. He isn’t even any good in economics any more, particularly in light of his prediction of economic collapse after Trump’s election win in 2016 was proven to be so wrong on so many levels. Why would anyone listen to him on this topic?

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Now for some relevant and much more useful information: Do not let moose lick your car.

It apparently has to do with moose liking the road salt that is deposited on the body panels of cars and trucks since it gives them easy access to the salt.

...it is also against the law that prohibits people to feed or disturb wildlife in national parks, with violators facing fines of up to $25,000.

So if a moose licks the salt from your car or truck, you are in fact violating Canadian law and could be fined for allowing them to do so. Somehow, I find it difficult believing the RCMP or local police departments would issue citations because a moose decided to partake of the road salt deposited on your car. At least, I’d like to believe they wouldn’t do so.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re experiencing a bout of good weather before the heavy rains arrive late Monday, partaking of Thanksgiving leftovers, and girding our loins for a return to work on Monday.

Covid-19 Deaths Aren't Necessarily Caused by Covid-19 or "Where Have All The Excess Deaths Gone?"

Talk about synchronicity!

On more than one occasion I have commented that too many deaths have been attributed Covid-19 that were not in fact caused by Covid-19. Yes, some patients who have died had Covid and it contributed to their demises. There were others who tested positive for Covid but were not symptomatic and it had nothing to do with their passing. Then there were those who never tested positive for Covid but had it listed as cause of death on their death certificates. Many have castigated me for making such claims, but when I challenged them to prove my claims were unfounded, they couldn’t.

Now comes a piece from Johns Hopkins University by Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins, where she delved into the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The conclusion from her analysis?

Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.

The linked piece includes the breakdown in deaths from 2014 to 2020. I have also included a link to a webinar covering this topic.

One thing I must mention about this is that JHU made the article by Dr. Briand “disappear”. The links to the article and webinar came from Archive.org. (I guess JHU hasn’t realized that “The Internet is Forever.”)

On Thursday, Johns Hopkins University explained that they deleted the article on the study because it “was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic.”

They did not, however, challenge the accuracy of the data or its conclusions. In other words, the article was deleted because it didn’t fit the proper narrative.

When studies are retracted, there are usually detailed explanations for the retraction. But JHU’s ‘explanation’ was along the lines of “Though making clear the need for further research, we just didn’t like the conclusions reached, so we spiked the article.”

Just A Little Bit Of History

I wonder what this pandemic will lead to in the way of new inventions?

(H/T The Feral Irishman)

What The Covid-19 Numbers Are Actually Telling Us

The Covid-19 “crisis” is a gift that keeps on giving…to the federal, state, and local governments.

Here in New Hampshire we have been seeing a rapid increase in the number of positive cases, with an average of 435 new cases a day over the past few days. That is far above what was seen during the first wave back in April and May, which saw about 65 new cases a day back then.

One would think the numbers would imply that we would also see a big spike in the number of deaths every day considering the number of new cases, but you would be wrong.

Instead we are seeing approximately 40% the number of daily deaths from the peak of the first wave even though we’re seeing 667% the number of daily new cases. What conclusions can we draw from those two different sets of numbers?

Here’s my take on them:

1.The number of new positive cases is inflated, either through false positive test results caused by over-amplification of samples performed during the PCR tests, a huge increase in the number of tests being run compared to this past Spring, or some combination of both.

2.The number of new deaths is low because of better and more aggressive treatments, better isolation of vulnerable populations, or the inevitable attenuation of the virus meaning it isn’t nearly as strong or as deadly as what was seen this past spring, or some combination of all three.

3.Lockdowns did little to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

4.Most masks provide little actual protection and are more of a psychological crutch to give people a false sense of security. If the masks being used by people are not N95 masks and are not properly fitted, they are not effective. Even then, they should be used by the infected to protect the uninfected, not the other way around.

However, looking at these numbers, the increasingly tightening restrictions being placed upon New Hampshire residents make no sense on the face of it. Yes, we’re seeing an increase in positive cases, but are they a real increase or an artifact caused by the conditions listed in Point #1 above? (This likely applies to people in other states, but I can only speak to the case here in New Hampshire.)

We aren’t watching people drop dead in the streets. We don’t have anyone on a horse-drawn cart riding down the street calling “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!” There are no mass graves or large funeral pyres to dispose of the mounds of dead. Yet our government leaders are reacting to this as if it were a repeat of Black Plague in the 1340’s or the Spanish Flu in 1918 even as we ignore the lessons of those deadly diseases.

Isolating the vulnerable should have been and should remain the top priority, not locking everyone else away, shutting down the economy, forcing businesses to close (in too many cases, permanently), and forcing people out of their jobs. The Powers That Be got it wrong and are continuing to get it wrong.

Shoved Down The Memory Hole

Remember when Democrats castigated President Trump for his claim that a coronavirus vaccine would be available before the end of the year, telling everyone the earliest we would see a vaccine would be mid to late spring?

The first US immunizations are likely to be here on December 12^th.

I expect Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer will take credit for that.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Here it is, the weekend before Covid-19 Thanksgiving, and some folks are freaking out. No, not because of Covid-19, but because state governments are freaking out, announcing mask mandates and travel restrictions before one of the biggest holidays in the nation. The question is, how many people will abide by these restrictions and how many will tell their governors to “Sod off, Swampy!” because they are both tired of Covid-19 restrictions and know that many of the precautions are more feel-good measures rather than an effective means of preventing the spread of an increasingly virulent and weakening coronavirus?

Count me as one of the folks telling our governor and the governor of neighboring Massachusetts to “Sod off!”

With an growing number of studies showing masks and lockdowns don’t work, people are increasingly questioning the measures being taken by their local and state governments. They’re tired of the constant fearmongering, the “We’re all gonna DIE if we don’t lock ourselves away and cower in fear!” take on the news, and ‘experts’ pushing narratives we already know are pure BS.

They’ve had enough.

So have I.

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I wonder how long it is going to take for schools, colleges, and universities to learn that the First Amendment applies to everyone, particularly at public schools, colleges, and universities? Numerous Federal courts and the US Supreme Court has ruled these institutions of higher learning do not have the power to the restrict speech of students, faculty, and staff. Speech codes and arbitrary restrictions on speech have been struck down on First Amendment grounds again and again and again. Yet these educational institutions keep trying to work their way around the Court rulings so they can silence speech that does not meet the Progressive narrative or that they see as ‘offensive’ to their sensibilities or the sensibilities of some unnamed ‘others’.

They fail. Every. Single. Time.

Their latest fail?

Two Wisconsin school districts found out the hard way that they aren’t immune to the First Amendment.

Officials in two Wisconsin school districts came up with a novel way around the Tinker precedent: redefine what counts as “speech.”

A federal judge swatted down this move in a consolidated case brought by students whose gun-themed clothing was banned on school grounds. Officials claimed the clothing “fail[ed] to convey a particularized message,” so it wasn’t constitutionally protected.

“Not only did Plaintiffs intend to convey a clear message in wearing their shirts, it also seems clear that school authorities understood the message Plaintiffs were intending to convey, at least to the extent their message included an appreciation for the right to own firearms,” U.S. District Judge William Griesbach wrote in a short ruling earlier this month.

I expect the school districts will appeal, but I can see this going all the way to the US Supreme Court if needed, particularly since the students’ messages used the First Amendment to support Second Amendment rights. I also expect the those hating both the First and Second Amendments will continue their efforts to make both of them go away, clearing their way to eliminate the rest of our Constitutional Rights.

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It was 57 years ago today that three shots rang out from a seventh-floor window of the Texas Book Depository on Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, wounding Texas Governor John Connally and killing President John F. Kennedy, changing the course of history.

Everyone alive at that time knows where they were when JFK as assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. I was in our living room in our house in Auburn, Maine. The television had nothing but coverage of the assassination on all three channels - ABC, CBS, and NBC (remember, this was the pre-cable TV days of rabbit ear antennas) – and I remember my mom being upset, on the verge of tears most of afternoon and evening. While I knew what was going on, I didn’t grasp just how momentous and terrible an event it was at the time.

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The Democrats keep saying the voting machines are secure and couldn’t be hacked, so the vote totals are correct.

Here’s something that blows that lying narrative away, showing that it takes only 1 minute to hack in and change the results. (A backup link to the YouTube video should Twitter realize anyone is watching the video and suspends the account.)

Of course I expect the fraudsters and their clients to vehemently deny any such hack could possibly take place. No one would need to hack the machines in private as all it would take is the assistance of one partisan election official to look the other way to make it happen.

While the video is two years old, a work colleague to whom I sent the video (who is an experienced coder with years of experience and a few post-grad degrees) says the machines are as vulnerable now as they were two years ago, primarily because they are using the same operating system they were using two years ago.

(H/T Chris Muir)

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I have to agree with the Feral Irishman on this one.

That’s The Shortest Recession I’ve Never Lived Through... (He also delves into Election Year 2016 and the issues seen then.)

You hear der Bidengaffer talking about getting the economy back on track as if Covid-19 had nothing to do with the recession we’ve experienced, one that had a V-shaped recovery, and that was all Trump’s Fault^TM.

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If our deluded youth want to experience the joys of Socialism then perhaps they should listen to those who grew up and lived under a socialist system. One such person can be found at The People’s Cube and he’ll tell them that the real definition of socialism is “Do as I say or else.”

The real definition of socialism is: Everyone does exactly what I say or else.

The reason socialists can never be pinned down to say exactly what they mean by "socialism" is that it actually means: "You will do exactly what I tell you to do or else."

This is really simple and straightforward. Once you understand what they mean when they say "socialism," everything else about socialists and socialism becomes clear.

There is no deep meaning to the idea, nor any substance to the word "socialism," nor any other outcome other than a person or a small group ruling (in every sense ruling) over the rest of society.

It is Rule. It is dictatorship. It is the end of self-governance, of consent of the governed, and of everything else that we need to live as humans on a human plane of living.

Socialists are criminals on a social scale and they know it. Hence they don't like to say who they are and refuse to be nailed down to exactly what they mean by the word "socialism." Which is, "Do exactly what I tell you to do or else."

The ‘modern’ socialism of Marx has always been a killer, literally (that’s the “or else” part), and a totalitarian system, something Marx never really talked about all that much. Then again, he tried to create a social system that was more reminiscent of the insect societies of ants, bees, and termites, where the Queen ruled all and all of the rest were replaceable, faceless and nameless workers. Replace the term ‘Queen’ with ‘Elite’ or ‘Intelligentsia’ or ‘Nomenklatura’ and replace ‘workers’ with ‘the proletariat’. That’s Marx’s socialism.

Check out the post to see photographic evidence of the wonders of socialism in action.

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Sometimes you can’t get around the math or the data. In this case, there was an unusual pattern and ratios in ballot data for votes cast in Philadelphia. What do these patterns and ratios show?

An interesting review of Philadelphia ballot uploading results indicates a pattern of manipulated results according to an independent researcher looking at raw data. The results are discussed within a video upload explaining how the data-sets were organized and manipulated in a series of timed events.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather can’t seem to make up its mind, the people are trying to figure out how they’re going to pull off Thanksgiving, and where I am taking some time off from work.

Why Most Masks Don't Prevent The Spread Of Covid-19

We’ve been hearing more and more about mask mandates, particularly here in New Hampshire. So many people seem to think masks are a cure-all for preventing the spread of coronavirus. But the cloth masks and disposable masks most folks use are ineffective, and there’s a good reason why.

Bacteria are something the masks most folks use will readily block. Viruses, being about one-twentieth the size of many bacteria, will pass through those masks. The manufacturers of the masks understand this which is why they include warning labels on their boxes of masks, the warning usually being something along the lines of:

These masks help protect against certain particulate contaminants but do not eliminate exposure to the risk of any disease or infection. (Emphasis mine – ed.)

As best I know only N95 facemasks are capable of filtering out viruses. This is the type used by medical personnel. This is not the type used by most people.

The mask mandates are really more of a psychological action to make people feel better, not a means of actually preventing the spread of Covid-19. How long will it take before people realize most masks really don’t work? They aren’t designed to filter out viruses and never were.

Promoted From (Another Blog's) Comments

Seen in Disqus comments over at Granite Grok:

Do you know the real difference between a Socialist and a Communist?

A Communist has been issued a rifle.

'Nuff said.

Governor Sununu Buys The B.S.

I was sure our governor wouldn’t fall for the pseudo-scientific bulls**t surrounding Covid-19.

I was wrong.

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu issued a statewide mask mandate earlier today which takes effect tomorrow.

Sununu made the announcement Thursday during his weekly briefing on the coronavirus. The new emergency order comes as the state has recorded its highest totals of current COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic.

--snip--

The emergency order applies to anyone over the age of 5 in indoor public spaces and outdoors when social distancing cannot be maintained.

What’s ironic is that more studies are showing that mask use does not prevent spread of Covid-19, one of the latest being published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This same study also showed that lockdowns were ineffective. Hopefully our governor won’t be stupid enough to do that...again. We suffered enough from the first one.

What’s ironic is that while we’re experiencing this second wave with Covid-19 spreading rapidly, the virus has become weaker and not nearly as deadly. This isn’t unexpected as that is how most viruses mutate, becoming more virulent (meaning it spreads more easily) while at the same time becoming weaker and less deadly. That’s where we are now.

Are we still seeing deaths? Yes, but we’re not seeing anywhere near the same number even though we have more active cases now than we did back this spring.

Where are the majority of the deaths taking place? In long-term care facilities, i.e. nursing homes. As I have mentioned in a number of other places including Disqus, most people in those facilities aren’t there to get better. They’re there for end-of-life care which means many of them are already vulnerable to any opportunistic infection. They are the most vulnerable and that’s where we need to focus prevention efforts. Instead we focus on everyone else, cause disruptions, economic chaos, and scaring the bejeezus out of the public with mis-/disinformation, and the vulnerable people still die.

What a waste.

The Cure For A Peristent And Deadly Virus

This Certainly Explains More Than Few Things

(H/T Knuckledraggin)

Thoughts On A Sunday

We returned to more normal temperatures for mid-November here at the lake, something not unexpected. We were hoping the unseasonably warm weather would hang around a bit longer, but it was not to be.

With the change in the weather we have been seeing a big upswing in Covid-19 cases, something that wasn’t a surprise as the prognosticators had predicted we would see a second wave, and we have. Of course it isn’t just here, but across the nation. I have to admit it is affecting how I am handling some of my business, working from home as much as is practical to reduce any possible exposure to the WuFlu. There are two reasons for limiting any possible exposure – the WP Mom, while being I excellent health, is 86 years old, one of the more vulnerable demographics; and prepping for a small family gathering on Thanksgiving Day, trying to reduce the probability of carrying or catching Covid-19.

This has also limited contact with some family members, particularly my ex-missus. She works at the one of the local long term care facilities, a facility that has seen its first Covid-19 cases just this past week. She is working with the affected patients, meaning she is limiting her contact outside of work. She’s not going to her gym for the time being, doing a on-line spin class instead. She isn’t going to be going to her folks for Thanksgiving. She won’t be visiting our son and his girlfriend, or coming to The Gulch to visit me and the WP Mom. We are in constant contact via text and phone calls as I know she’s feeling isolated.

I have a feeling we will not be making the trip to the younger WP Sister’s on Thanksgiving Day if this second wave intensifies. As sad as that will be should it come to that, better safe than sorry.

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Something else of a personal nature: It was 6 years ago the WP Dad passed away. It doesn’t seem that long ago.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss him.

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Why Trump supporters are here for good.

If people living in Trump country seem like they live in a different world from that inhabited by Silicon Valley executives and the editors of The New York Times, there is a reason for that: They do.

--snip--

Some of the snoots living in Blue America sneer that the inhabitants of Red America are ignorant, living in a fantasyland. But in many ways, Red America understands Blue America better than Blue America understands Red America. It doesn’t have much choice: The news media, the entertainment business, technology and social media, and the commanding heights of big business live in Blue America and largely share Blue America’s biases, assumptions and points of view. Some of them are at least a little aware of their ignorance — Dean Baquet, the editor of The New York Times, confessed in 2016: “We don’t get religion. We don’t get the role of religion in people’s lives.” He might have added guns, farming, and much else to the list of things his staff doesn’t get.

--snip--

Blue America is feeling triumphant at the moment. But vanquishing Donald Trump is not quite the achievement they think it is, because Trump has always been much more a symptom of our Great Divide than a cause of it. That may not be obvious to an intellectual class that knows more about the Uyghurs than it does about Southwestern Oklahoma, but those who are interested in understanding the other America rather than merely sneering at it have a lot of homework to do.

The question is whether or not they will be willing to do that homework or will they allow their willful ignorance to go unchallenged and continue to believe the propaganda and mis-/disinformation being disseminated by their leaders. Will it be “Déjà vu all over again”, with our self-anointed ‘betters’ recreating the atmosphere of the Germany of the 1930’s? Will they corral antifa and turn them into their version of the Sturmabteilung? Will the Blue “sleepers” finally awake from their ignorance and come to realize they’ve been lied to for decades before it’s too late?

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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There are voting irregularities still being investigated despite claims by the DNC-MSM that reports of vote fraud were “unsubstantiated”, meaning they haven’t been investigated yet, not that they did not happen. (The Michigan Legislature called a special joint session of the Senate and House Oversight Committees to call election officials in 53 Michigan counties to appear before them to answer questions about voting machines in their districts swapping votes, this being but one inquiry.)

There are others looking into voter registration irregularities in six contested states that may affect 1.25 million voters.

[Matt] Braynard has assembled a team to look for inconsistencies in the six contested states—Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada.

So far, they’ve identified 1.25 million voter issues that they’re following up on through phone calls and against other databases.

The largest issue they’ve found so far is with voters who had submitted a National Change of Address form to the post office indicating they moved out of state, yet appear to have voted in 2020 in the state they moved from.

--snip--

In Georgia, the team found 17,877 early or absentee voters who had filed out-of-state move notices—a higher number than the current vote differential in the state. The current vote tally in Georgia as of 1 p.m. on Nov. 13 shows Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead of Trump by 14,164 votes.

The article goes on to describe a number of double votes detected. They also contacted people who had been sent absentee ballots that had not been received back, asking them if they had received, filled out, and sent their ballots back, and if so, when. So they are also looking into the possibility that legal absentee ballots were never received, either through loss by the USPS or by deliberate diversion by unknown third parties.

And the hits keep on coming…

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where mid-fall weather has returned, schools are switching back to remote learning, and where we’re getting mighty tired of having to deal with this damned virus.

Would A National Mask Mandate Be Obeyed?

Has anyone out there wondered what might happen if Biden does indeed become president and he issues a nationwide mask mandate? How many states will tell der Bidengaffer to “Sod off, Swampy”?

I know of at least one: South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.

As former Vice President Joe Biden proposes a nationwide lockdown and a national mask mandate in response to resurgent coronavirus cases in several states, at least one Republican governor is promising she will not comply.

In a statement made to the Argus Leader, a South Dakota newspaper, Gov. Kristi Noem's office said that Biden, as president, would lack the authority to impose a nationwide mask mandate on state governments.

--snip--

Though Biden cannot constitutionally compel state governments to adopt a mask mandate, senior advisers on his presidential transition team reportedly say the presumptive president-elect will begin contacting governors and prominent mayors asking for local governments to impose mask requirements. Currently, 33 state governments have some sort of mask requirement for people who go out in public.

My state is unlikely to impose heavy mask mandates since they didn’t last time. The state and the municipalities issued mask mandates this past spring for those entering state or municipal buildings, something well within their purview, but for the most part didn’t requires masks across the board. Businesses had the right to require their personnel and customers to wear masks if they entered their buildings. Again for the most part the state didn’t order them to do so. The only exception were restaurants and bars/pubs, once they reopened after the initial lockdown. (Indoor seating wasn’t allowed and many restaurants switched over to pickup and delivery service during the lockdown. When they reopened for service most seating was outdoors, with towns easing liquor license restrictions to allow them to serve alcohol outdoors, something that usually requires additional endorsements.)

How will other states react should a national mask mandate come to be? I figure many of the Blue states will likely fold and do what der Bidengaffer tells them to do., assuming the haven’t already told their subjects to wear masks under penalty of fines and/or arrest. Some of the Red states will refuse. The rest of the Blue and Red states are a toss-up.

The same will be likely if Biden tries to order a lockdown. (Not that I think that he’d be foolish enough to order one, but one can never tell.) Many states will choose to ignore such a mandate, even under threat of losing federal funds, seeing it as an unconstitutional grab for power...because it would be.

Lockdowns have also been shown to be ineffective for stopping/slowing the spread of coronavirus. But they are quite effective at damaging the economy and destroying small businesses, but little else.

Hopefully neither mandate will ever come to be.

Yeah, That Ought To Do It

By way of Powerline comes this little gem of an idea:

Thoughts On A Sunday

I have a confession to make: I haven’t been paying any attention to the national news in relation to the elections. Call it election fatigue, bulls**t overload, or feeling no need to listen to the DNC-MSM propaganda..err...news as I have been exposed to it far too much over the past 4 years.

I will admit to feeling exhausted as I headed home from the polls Tuesday night. It had been an almost 16 hour day, helping ensure the almost 6,000 ballots cast in our town all made it into our ballot boxes, were properly counted and accounted for (we have to count all of the ballots cast to ensure that number matches the number counted by the machines which do not include the hand-counted ballots), count the write-in votes, tally them, box up and seal all of the ballots, and wait for the official results for our town to be announced.

With all of that the only election results that interested me were the state elections (Governor, Executive Council, NH Senate, and NH House) and I was pleased to see the end of the Democrat majorities in the House and Senate. Maybe now we’ll be able to fix problems the Democrats tried hard to create as well as eliminate our voter registration loophole that allows out-of-state residents to vote in our elections.

As an aside, the weather this weekend has been warm and sunny, making me wish I had waited one more week before pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water. It would have been great to be out on the lake this weekend. But it must be kept in mind that the weather could have just as easily been winter-like, so having the boat already winterized and stored away until next spring isn't a bad thing.

The warm weather also gave me the opportunity to clean the garage here at The Gulch, getting rid of the detritus collected over the past year or so. It also gave me a good excuse to repair the overhead pull-down stairs leading to the attic over the garage. The repair also allowed me to move some of the stuff in the garage up into the attic, freeing up space in the garage.

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This isn’t good.

It appears an election watchdog group found over 21,000 dead voters still on Pennsylvania’s voter rolls, along with some voting activity seen after the voter had died.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, says 92 percent of the registrants died more than a year ago. The group also says there is evidence of voting activity after death. The findings were mentioned in an amended lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of State over its failure to maintain accurate voter rolls.

The PILF says that as of October 7, 9,212 registrants have been dead for five years, 1,990 registrants for 10 years, and 197 registrants for 20 years. "Pennsylvania still left the names of more than 21,000 dead individuals on the voter rolls less than a month before one of the most consequential general elections for federal officeholders in many years," the group said.

--snip--

The complaint further claims 114 individuals registered to vote after death, and hundreds of votes were cast by deceased individuals in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

One has to ask how many of the dead in Pennsylvania cast votes in this election?

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Now that it’s ‘official’ that Joe Biden has won election, I can safely start ignoring the news to my regular level rather than the ‘no contact whatsoever’ level I’ve been exercising since Tuesday evening.

Hearing Joe talking about uniting the country reminded me when Barack Obama said exactly the same thing after he won his first term. This is the same Barack Obama who showed he was divisive rather than uniting, and let slip his racist leanings more than once, had no use for the Constitution, and when he said he would work to reach compromises with the other side, he didn’t tell anyone his definition of compromise was “Sit down, shut up, and do what I tell you.” He was the 21st century version of Woodrow Wilson who was the first Progressive president who was hostile to the Constitution.

Will Joe repeat the prevarications of his Democrat predecessor?

More importantly, will Joe last in office long enough to unite the country before Kamala and Nancy make their move and use the 25th Amendment to remove him? It would certainly leave the way open for Kamala to push her socialist agenda. (We know she already has no use for the Constitution seeing just how much she ignored it while she was the Attorney General of the People’s Republic of California.

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One has to ask “When will the purges begin? When will the gulags be built and populated by those who had the audacity to support Donald Trump?”

Think it won’t happen? Then why are they making lists and taking names? All one has to do is remember the Democrats doing something very similar during the Obama administration, using the FBI, IRS, and the other government agencies to go after ‘enemies’, meaning Republicans who opposed Obama’s damaging programs and EO’s. Today’s Democrat leadership is even more vindictive than it was during the Obama years after being egged on by four years of TDS.

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Alex Trebek has passed away after fighting pancreatic cancer for almost 2 years. He was 80.

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Is the Covid-19/Bat Soup-CCP virus pandemic now over? Seeing how the Democrats gathered to celebrate the still unofficial Biden win, it must be.

Every Trump campaign rally we heard nothing but how dangerous and irresponsible it is to gather together in large numbers during a pandemic. But that’s all over, now, because Trump lost and therefore so did Covid-19. It was defeated at the ballot box!

Yeah, no. It wasn’t. And neither was Trump, yet, considering no “official sources” have declared him winner, which is the criteria Twitter used to censor Trump’s tweets.

Yes, it’s definitely hypocrisy day on the left. Which we expected. And here’s the proof in the pudding.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer-like weather has returned, there are boats out on the lake, and where we are all glad the 2020 elections are in the review mirror (even if the results aren’t final yet).

I Don't Think This Is What They Meant By "Blue Wave"

(H/T Powerline)

Election Day Is Finally Yesterday

It was a long day for my yesterday, with it starting at 4:40am when one of the feline contingent here at The Gulch decided it was time for me to wake up. Not that I needed to be up that early even though I had to be at the polls at 6:30am to prepare for opening the polls at 7am.

Right from the beginning voting was heavy. We saw the usual three rounds of high numbers of voters waiting in line to vote, the first being when the polls opened until about 8:30am, the second starting around 10:30am until a little past noon, and the last starting at 3:30pm until 5:30pm. It tapered off after 5:30 but was still busy with a steady stream right up to closing at 7pm.

We made accommodations for those voters who couldn’t or wouldn’t wear a mask, setting aside a separate line for them. Fortunately we had only a few voters that fell into that category, but we were prepared to handle hundreds if the need arose.

We saw around 5300 ballots cast, with 2000 of them being absentee ballots, an all time record. We’ve never seen so many absentee ballots, even as a percentage of all votes cast.

Another record set – 330 new voters registered to vote, with a line that continued right up to the polls closing. (Those in line when the polls closed were allowed to register and vote, meaning we couldn’t close the ballot boxes and start tallying until a little past 8pm.)

One not-so-surprising thing were the number of crossover votes we saw in our town, where a large percentage of Democrats voted for the Republican incumbent governor. This was something that also occurred across the state as the incumbent crushed his Democrat challenger by an almost 2-to-1 margin. (This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a lot of crossover voting. I can remember when a previous Democrat governor – John Lynch - was re-elected by a wide margin with a lot of Republican cross-over votes because he had done a good job. He was popular, particularly after he stood up to the legislature when they tried to raid the state highway fund to pay for things he felt were unneeded, and more importantly, unconstitutional.)

I haven’t been paying any attention to the Presidential race because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to hear the continual babble from the talking heads which would have “harshed my mellow”. Trump did win in our town by a pretty good margin, but then our town is a heavily Republican town in a heavily Republican county. All I’ve herd is that a number of swing states are too close to call.

I’ll find out soon enough as it is.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Today was the day.

Today we took the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water. It was a little chilly – about 50ºF – though certainly nowhere near the coldest it’s been when we’ve trailered the boat to haul it to winter storage. The engine was fogged before shutting it down, the bilge plug pulled, and the drain plugs removed from the engine block and exhaust manifolds to allow the water to drain.

All of the gear was removed and stored away before the boat was hauled to one of the local boatyards for winterization and storage. It was one of the last boats pulled from the lake will be one of the firsts to go back in next spring.

I have no complaints about this year’s boating season other than it wasn’t long enough. (It never is.)

A lot of good memories were made this year on our boat. We made some new friends. We watched a number of great sunsets. We did a lot of swimming off the transom when anchored at some of our favorite places on the lake. There was a lot of family time.

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From the new “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Crazier” Department comes this from Duke University.

According to Duke University cultural anthropologist Christine Folch, the reason white female professors have been impersonation women of color is male privilege.

My first response to this was an immediate and rather vocal “What The F**k?”

“And at the root I think what we see is a competition for scarce resources on the part of those who are not the hegemonic ideal in academia, which remains white male.”

In other words, she said, there’s a competition for inclusion among the historically excluded in academe. And “strategic use and appropriation of brownness” becomes a way to “accumulate more power, more legitimacy, grants, coolness points.”

Umm, no. Not buying it. Could it be because these ethnic impostors saw an advantage to not being white? I doubt male privilege had anything to do with it and rather it was the hostile academic atmosphere towards white men and women on college campuses is the main reason.

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Is anyone out there laying odds on the possibility there will be post-election rioting should Trump win?

Seeing what has already been happening in the Blue-run cities with the tacit approval of the Democrat city governments, unless Trump wins overwhelmingly, I expect there will be mostly violent protests (or partially peaceful protests for those who don’t believe anyone could possibly be violent during a protest). If there are, I would like to think the rioters will be given no latitude, meaning they won’t be allowed to commit arson or to loot. Attacks on citizens and police will be quashed. Rioters will be arrested and tried, not kicked loose by bought and paid for prosecutors.

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It’s amazing (though not surprising) that a number of recent polls show a major shift in the Presidential race, with Trump catching, if not passing Biden in a number of states, and narrowing the gap in other states with the differences in some of them being well within the margin of error.

Does this mean there’s been an actual shift among likely voters, better polling methodology and data, or are likely voters now voicing their real choice now that we’re so close to election day?

The most important poll will be taking place this coming Tuesday and pollsters will be looking at the election results and comparing them to their poll results. Some will be thinking they did a decent job while others will be wondering how they could have gotten their numbers so wrong.

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Compare and contrast:

Democrat-Run Hellholes Prepping for Election-Night Violence Because Of Course versus No One Is Boarding Up Their Stores Because of These People.

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This past Friday I ran across our Town Clerk and asked her how many absentee ballots had been received so far. Her answer surprised me.

Two thousand.

While it may not sound like a lot for some towns and cities, it is about one-third of the total registered voters in our town. A third. In a town that has a very high percentage of its eligible residents registered to vote, that is a significant number. (We have around 6,100 registered voters in a town of around 7,200 year-round residents. That means just about every eligible resident 18 years and older in our town is registered to vote.)

I’m betting we’ll see above 90% voter turnout on Tuesday.

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How often have we heard the willfully ignorant among us utter “All cultures are equally valid/valuable”?

I’ve lost count over the years, but I have heard it too often. This usually comes from someone who has never experienced living within another culture. (Sorry, but eating Thai or Indian food doesn’t count as having experienced life in another culture. Nor does spending Spring Break at one of the many Caribbean tourist resorts or watching movies and streaming TV series taking place someplace else qualify.)

As such, those making such pronouncements have nothing against which to make a comparison. They are taking the word of someone else who has also had no experience living within another culture. (These also tend be a lot of the same folks who complain about “cultural appropriation”, seeing it as some form of genocide if someone wants to try making a meal using food from another culture even if the meal itself is a modified version of the original, or horror upon horrors, creating music that fuses many different types of music from different places into a new form.)

I don’t buy the “equally valid/valuable” trope.

There are cultures that are superior to others, that offer more and help their people become greater than they already are. There others that offer less, but are no less valuable. There some that with the removal of some old barbaric cultural customs could become so much better than they are. Then there are others that should be wiped from the face of the earth because they are so barbaric they should no longer exist. I am not referring to those of isolated tribes hidden away in deep rain forests, but modern cultures that have carried a host of their barbaric traditions with them and practice them to this day.

Those cultures are so abhorrent, between the way they treat people outside their culture, and worse, how they treat people inside of it, they should fade away into the shadows of history much like other abhorrent cultures have.

Are there any ‘perfect’ cultures? No, of course not. I doubt there ever will be. Somehow I think a ‘perfect’ culture would be as boring as heck and, in the end, would be likely to die away because it would become static. Static cultures die.

Vibrant cultures grow, many times by borrowing from other cultures and adding those borrowed aspects to their own. This is the dreaded “cultural appropriation” so many of the willfully ignorant rail against. They don’t realize they are trying to impose cultural stasis, something that will kill the very cultures they say they are trying to preserve.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the number of boats plying the waters have dropped to almost zero, preparations are being finalized for Election Day, and where we’ll all be happy when it’s Wednesday.