Rand Paul makes the same point:
"The founders never intended for Americans to trust their government. Our entire constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil, to be restrained and minimized as much as possible."
Most troubling to me with the current pandemic lockdown is the proliferation of health officials and governors who declare this and that to be the law but without constitution and without the consent of the governed through legislation. Equally troubling is the equanimity of millions who accept being told how to run their homes and do their jobs. Let such authority be robustly challenged on the facts. When the rulers rely on "because I said so", you need better rulers.
Look at these two quotes.
Richard Fernandez: "If you lockdown long enough, there's no longer enough battery to restart the systems."
Jonathan Turley: "De Blasio just said on CNN that New York cannot open because it has no money to do so."
Listen, think, but don't believe each jot and tittle of expert prediction. Powerlineblog reminds me that "Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of human error."
The quote is from George Eliot. Experts and politicians selling us models of infection control have destroyed more than a trillion dollars of human capital and yet those models have never been tested properly.
Yogi Berra: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."
Ronald Reagan: "Trust but verify".
Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts".
My dear grandmother revealed to me a wild side you don't consider today. In a year when Queen Victoria was still on the throne, she and her best friend went down by the sea in Scotland. Hiding behind boulders where no-one could hear or see, they called out their rebellion against all authority and perhaps against God Himself. "Maybe!" "Maybe!" "Maybe".
How radical is that! They spoke up against predestination and addressed the possibility that God doesn't have a plan unchangeable for everyone in everything and at all times.
The bill for Steele's Fusion GPS dossier was sent directly to Robbie Mook on Hilary's campaign. This gem was buried in a release this week of Elias's testimony to Schiff's committee, page 17..
Such slime buckets. It doesn't qualify as "oppo research" but it was weaponized to destroy the administration after inauguration.
"If anyone is arrested, I ask that is only be me", Elon Musk tweeted May 11.
That puts him back in my "admired" column. Alameda County had health inspectors shut the plant down and put everyone out of work.
Mining asteroids will compete with earth mines.
They can be staggeringly rich in nickel, platinum, and gold.
Remember the gold on earth was made in the sun
and migrated outwards before
ending up here.
The US supports "let's make a deal" for space business. This is great, in my view. The Artemis accords are being drafted to draw in co-signatories and focus on the moon. They include social distancing: "The Artemis Accords ... propose “safety zones” that would surround future moon bases to prevent damage or interference from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity. The pact also aims to provide a framework under international law for companies to own the resources they mine, the sources said."
Something uncommon with sun spots. As we go into the next 11 year sunspot cycle, there are briefly co-existing spots from the previous and the upcoming cycle. Some with magnetic spin sinister, some dexter.
Everybody loves this artist's impression
Omuamua was the first interstellar object confirmed to be passing through our system. It is rather long and thin, a shape much less probable to have endured than a somewhat rounder form. What's new is "excess acceleration" not explainable by gravity. One way to make sense of this is if it is hollow and has a skin thinner than silk allowing it to function as a photon-driven sun sail. Likelier is a jetting sublimation of surface ice from the tumbling object.
The Japanese have another success with the Hyabusa2 probe.
Not only did it land again on asteroid Ryugu but a slightly jerky movie has been released of it landing and rebounding immediately after capturing some dirt. The dirt is coming home.
There's a black hole you can "see" with the naked eye. Not very far away in our own galaxy is a triple star system, visible in the constellation Telescopium from the Southern Hemisphere. Two are visible and one is not, but of the stars that shine, the one closest to the black hole "star" has a wobble with a 40 day period. This is 1000 light years away in our galaxy which is over 100,000 light years across. Two features: It is the closest ever found and it isn't reacting violently with its environment.
High res infrared mapping of Jupiter was just released.
When mockers are muted, that means they know they should apologize but won't. Instead of hearing more about Georgia's Governor being "a monster with blood about to be on his hands", Governor Kemp tweets May 10th:
“Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th,” Kemp posted to Twitter on Saturday."
Quite a few Sidney roads have spots of iron with rust tails sloping away. Where did the asphalt mix come from? I've seen it nowhere else in Canada. My favourite example is the bicycle lane west of the Airport where this picture was taken.
"The Oscars and the Emmys: If the big, broad, general audience you used to have is gone, and deep down you think it’s never coming back, then why not make a harder bid for the loyalty of the smaller audience you’ve got left? In a time when the entertainment industry is (or thinks it is) a one-party state with no dissenters, you had better echo that politics back to your base. What were once cultural institutions with a broad, bipartisan audience are becoming niche players with a narrow fan base. They no longer view partisan politics as a dangerous move that will shrink their audience."
At first, this is a delicious story exposing wrongdoing by WHO in Tanzania, a useful bombshell for WHO's critics. It goes like this: President Magifuli of Tanzania says they played a trick on WHO and sent a sample of papaya, goat and pheasant for coronavirus testing at their national and all three came back positive.
This sounds like on of those jokes that start: An Irishman, an Englishman and a Scot walk into a bar. You can verify, however, that President Magifuli did make the claim, but don't bet the farm yet on its truth. He has problems of his own at home and although some lab people have been sent packing,
"The Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention rejected claims of faulty tests by Tanzania’s president." Wait before exploiting the story. What technician would bother to make up a fake test reoirt for a piece of fruit?
Incidentally, although I saw this story a day earlier, search results seem suppressed on both Google and Duck Duck Go.
As his daughter, Ivanka, said in a 2016 ad, "My father is absolutely fearless" and he loves to post stuff that cast him in a funny light that others would flee. Preening scalliwags may not like this retweet. More than CNN's Stelter fit as targets in this memorable week when the DOJ gave up all charges against General Flynn.
"Thucydides noticed this. ... The great historian wrote that in a time of civil war certain words changed their usual meanings and took on new ones. For example, “reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any.” It’s not only civil war that produces such linguistic deformations. Any crisis will do...
“The new normal.” Is there a more nauseating flake of smug linguistic presumption? I think that the imperative “stay safe,” born of our coronavirus panic, comes close. But “the new normal” is worse because it pretends to knowledge not just solicitude.
Julie Kelly raised a question that has to have been on the minds of many people. What if “social distancing” doesn’t work? “We have,” she notes “been assured by the credentialed class that keeping a distance of six feet between healthy people for weeks on end was the only tried-and-true way to prevent the deadly spread of the novel coronavirus.” But what does the evidence show? We’ve shuttered the economy for almost two months. We’ve destroyed trillions in wealth. We’ve put millions out of work. We’ve denied tens of thousands of people access to medical care for anything except treatment of the coronavirus. We’ve imperiled hospitals across the country.
Senator Tom Cotton reports that the Wuhan lab was sealed off in October. The writeup at Gateway Pundit includes "Cell phone data suggests the roads around the Wuhan Lab were shut down for a number of days in October. This was around the time of the expected viral release." (Interview with Maria Bartiromo at the link.)
This kind of granular data is increasingly probative. It predates the Wuhan wet market misdirection. The Communist Party of China knew there was trouble and dissimulated from the start, shaping the narrative.
Check the clothing. The people crowded in one picture and widely spaced in the other picture are dressed the same. They are the same people. The photographer's choice decided what you got to see. See rest of the story at Powerlineblog. In this example, the intent of the cameraman was to educate, not to push a "progressive" agenda.
During lockdown, thrift stores closed. People at home have been finding things they no longer need and nowhere to take them. They have also had more time to do spring cleaning than usual. When thrift stores re-open they will be swamped with donations. This is an opportunity for shoppers and a burden to the volunteers that run the stores.
"He governs best who governs least" I believe Thoreau's point is true. "Least" will vary with the hazard of a situation. 
