"You're stuck between lawless mobs and egomaniac government tyrants"

So, systemic racism is bad in cities that Democrat mayors have run for the last half century? They're the problem, not the solution.

"Law-abiding citizens have been sandwiched between egomaniac government tyrants and lawless mobs. Lawless mobs that are being cheered on by the aforementioned government tyrants."   (Add to that credentialed elites and actors).

The hyprocrisy is total and will kill people: From tweets betwen Olivia Gatwood and James Beatty: "Burn it down, fuck property, fuck cops".



Above excerpts from Instapundit's June 4th morning posts.

Shocking: Care Homes and New York City account for almost 70% of All Covid-10 Deaths. Targeting Here Would Mean National Lockdowns Unneeded.

71% of all Covid-19 deaths were either in long term care facilities or in New York City. The Pandemic Plans attacked every American instead of just the people in the critical core.

The numbers are changing rapidly but here goes:
A recent national death tally attributed to Covid-19          94,000  (or 100,000)
Recent deaths attributed to Long Term Care Facilities    43%  of 94,000 or roughly 40,000  (see chart)
Recent death tally in New York City area     29,650    (or maybe about 35,000)
Recent death tally from Care Facilities NY State   5800.
  Some portion of those deaths are NYC and downstate, say 1/2.
Net NYC deaths outside Care Facilities              26,750.
     Expressed as a percentage of the national tally =   28%
So, rough and ready, 28% plus 43% of 94,000 deaths are in Long Term Care Facilities across America and New York City.

Chart from the first link

If some of the hundreds of billions of dollars had been targeted on Long Term Care Facilities and the leadership of New York City, the rest of the country could reasonably have been spared the loss of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars.

Hindsight is 20-20.  This wasn't known initially.  That's no excuse for there being no logical progression to better targeted responses.  Besides getting some herd immunity to Covid-19, we've also acquired some herd immunity against the next time over-the-top tyrants want to abrogate the constitution.

Add the 2 lines together.

China Makes Moves Pointing To War But Why ?

This is becoming critical knowledge to acquire.  Why is China now making additional warlike moves towards India, towards Hong Kong, towards Taiwan and continuing to steal prominence in the South China Sea?   There is threat towards the United States too, not the least of which is blaming the US for Covid-19's creation.

Instead of an answer, I am linking to a short Instapundit note May 28th and the many voices speculating in the comment section.  There is a disturbance in the force.

New England Journal of Medicine May 2020: Mask Offers Little, If Any, Protection From Infection

"We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection."   

That's the opener in this weeks NEJM article.  This has always been true. (Listen to Laurie Garrett  back in February who has been in dozens of disease zones).  

What exposure does it take to get sick?

"Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic."

Note the word "anxiety".  Masks play a useful symbolic role:

It is also clear that masks serve symbolic roles. Masks are not only tools, they are also talismans that may help increase health care workers’ perceived sense of safety, well-being, and trust in their hospitals. Although such reactions may not be strictly logical, we are all subject to fear and anxiety, especially during times of crisis.

Some people hate and hassle you if you won't wear a mask in even the safest settings.  "Because Science".   Saying "science" doesn't repair delusion.

Pretty funny exposition of Mask vs No-Mask right here.  "I didn't know sheep could speak English"  "I'm not going to wear a face diaper"  and so on.

Roughneck Team Make Drilling Rig Pipe Connection: Unforgettable 4 Minutes of Hard Dangerous Work.

Magnificent Roman Floor Tiles Uncovered

At a dig near Verona, a like-new mosaic floor has been uncovered a couple feet down. Parts are perfect and I want to take off my shoes and walk on those bright ancient colours.

Squirrel Thieves Challenge Course

A wonderful entertainment on a nearly squirrel-proof challenge course to a bird feeder, brought to you by the guy who invented glitter spray bombs for Amazon parcels that were being stolen from front door steps.  Wow.

Update:  Maybe there really is a squirrel proof bird feeder.  Glossy surface, 4.5 inches in diameter so the squirrels can't shinny down the tube, 21" long tube so they can't stretch from top to bottom of the tube and a battery powered widget at the bottom that tosses off the squirrel but supports up to four birds.

Kayleigh McEnany - A Perfect Description

"A no-nonsense camp counselor in charge of the problem kids".

Poisonous Spin in the Media Every Day. Today Pew Twists Covid-19 Chart.

The chart shouts out that Republican districts have been by far the safest to ride out Covid-19.  The spin says there has been almost no improvement in Republican districts while Democrat districts have been drops in death.  How awful and how typical.  Every day, this is the diet on offer.  Being a consumer is a dangerous occupation.  To get good information, you must be a hunter gatherer who gets out there and finds their own food.

Hong Kong About To Lose Special Status: Once in a Generation Moment

Pompeo announced that Hong Kong can no longer be considered sufficiently autonomous to have special status different from the rest of China.  This is part of his mandatory report to Congress for May 25th of this year. Next move is with congress.

“This decision gives me no pleasure. But sound policy-making requires a recognition of reality,” Mr. Pompeo said in the statement. “It is now clear that China is modeling Hong Kong after itself.”

Tariff exemptions and travel freedoms may shortly be stopped.  China's financial sector has grown immensely so that the calculus of swallowing up Hong Kong but losing special market access may now look okay to the CCP.

This is a generational change, large elements of world politics and commerce are going to re-align but go better or worse is unknown.

Elvis Worked Hard For Those Hits

I remember Elvis for dozens of hit songs. 

What I didn't realize is that he recorded over 700 songs 

to get those couple dozen.  

Top guys get lucky by working hard.

V Shaped Recovery Coming. BC Parks Re-started On-Line Camping Reservations Monday And Promptly Crashed

Unprecedented demand for BC campsite reservations exploded Monday morning as bookings were re-opened.   The government site opened at 7 a.m. and crashed immediately, yet by noon over 35,000 had gotten through, despite redials, shaky site graphics and a ban on out-of-province tourists.

From the Vancouver Sun story

This looks like a V-shaped economic recover, against all the odds.  It matches Kudlow's hopeful prediction of a Great American Comeback in the States  and a top Obama economist's fearful prediction that the United States will see the "best economic data" in its history.

A Sad Day: Twitter Branch Of The Democrat Party Owns Your Vote

Twitter started censoring the President's tweets.  If you don't like mail-in ballots, you won't be allowed to say so.  Democrat Party 1  Democracy 0.
h/t  theconservativetreehouse.com

Twitter along with Google, Facebook and even Wikipedia exercise government power through narrative control.

Apple Charts How We move: Bus is flat, foot and car is back to normal.

This is the chart behind the stories of Americans on the move again.  Cell phone tracking by Apple shows day and night pulses and dramatic changes that outstrip the partial lifting of lockdowns.  But only in private travel.  Public transit is dead and flat.  Governors holding the OFF button down are fighting a losing battle.

A fun read from Katie Hopkins (and acerbic): What I learned from Coronavirus

Before you read the rest for your entertainment, here are highlights:
1.   People overreact.  It's comforting to know that the most fearful in our society will never need to buy toilet paper again.
2.   The massive overreaction has been horrible to watch.  It's disturbing to learn people you thought you could trust are as mad as the rest of the herd.
3.   Too many people enjoy imposing rules on others.  They enjoy telling you how to ride your bike, how far away you have to stand for their safety and how many times you can walk your dog.
4.    No cost is too much to cover a politician's backside.  Think of those zombie hospitals never used.
5.    Spending more time around family is pleasant.

Erasable History: The Wayback Machine is becoming vulnerable to censorship.

The Wayback Machine is the near ultimate digital record of our past.  A new feature allows judgements to be attached to records, labelled "potential disinformation"..   This distortion is where the camel gets its nose under the tent to disrupt a faithful record.   As Faulkner wrote, "The Past isn't dead.  It isn't even past".

"More and more of humanity’s knowledge is accumulated in massive digital repositories. The danger is not only in the outright loss of stored data as a result of technical malfunctions but also in the greater ability to execute historical revisionism and misrepresenting facts to future generations. Wikipedia – a widely consulted online encyclopedia – is already guilty of this. But, now the Wayback Internet archive is trending down this slippery slope with its recently implemented labeling of snapshot results as potential disinformation."

"Elliot Leavy, warns in an article addressing the changes at the Wayback Machine site, “if we continue to censor the past, attaching intent to some but not to others, we will be unable to evaluate anything at all.”

Covid19: People who are in a state of anxiety are blind

From the former Israeli Health Minister:

“This is nothing more than a flu epidemic if you care to look at the numbers & data, but people who are in a state of anxiety are blind.”
”Mortality due to coronavirus is a fake number. Most people are not dying from coronavirus…The number of infected people is fake, because it depends on the number of tests.. The only real number is the total # of deaths – all causes of death, not just coronavirus.”
“Every winter we get what is called an excess death rate… Coronvavirus comes very fast, but it also goes away very fast. The flu wave is shallow as it takes 3 months to pass.. CV season, we have had an excess mortality which is about 15% larger than the epidemic of regular flu in 2017”
“Compared to that (15%) rise, the draconian measures are of biblical proportions. Hundreds of millions of people are suffering.. More people will die from the measures than from the virus. And the people who die from the measures are the breadwinners.”

Expanded information is posted at thegatewaypundit and is taken from Dr. Andrew Bostom's retweet of Yoram Lass's interview.

Tour Ancient Rome, Almost Alive.

The four minute animated clip of the heart of ancient Rome is stunning.   The wealth and colour and craft on display I think were real.  The video has people riding and walking about but the throngs are missing and clearly some parts of the city were crowded and stinky.  But the showpiece areas were the wonder of the world and would be so today.   Created by New Historia. 

Why are flowers pretty? They ride first class with us and push our buttons.

Playing twenty questions as kids, we were allowed "animal, vegetable or mineral?"   I was superior to humble plants.  They however are more like us than you may think and represent the most recent and innovative development of a billion years evolution.  They are so advanced in fact that they recruit almost every creature in the animal kingdom to help reproduce.  They craft their lures to attract the hairy bee legs that collect pollen, they add hooks to piggy back on mammalian fur,  tobacco and poppies concoct addictive drugs for homo sapiens, sugars and bright colours capture the attention not just of humming birds but of the crown of creation, our very own humble selves.   All that without wings or legs or a cerebrum.

They immodestly decorate their genitals to be sure that highly-evolved brainy creatures stop by to investigate and help make plant sex successful by transporting DNA.  Perfume, nectar and eye-catching colour are popular  lures.  They are attractive because trial and error has found the buttons that move us. An ivory tower philosopher may wonder if beauty is universal.
The garden variety thinker sees that whatever gives an organism a future (life and progeny) is hardwired to create a pleasurable motivating sensation to seek it out.   The flowering plants skillfully take advantage of this, because they are riding in the same first class coach as us, they know us, and are the product of a school of hard knocks in which they learned a thing or two.
The principle is delegate to others what you don't need to do yourself.

Masks Now Have Politics

From Powerline's Hinderaker:

"Increasingly, wearing and not wearing face masks has become a cultural divide. Those who fear COVID-19, or who want to make the point that the virus is the great issue of our lifetimes, or who want to show support for high-handed politicians who have issued shutdown orders that may or may not be legal, wear masks. Those who are skeptical of any of the above propositions, or doubt whether masks do any good, or simply aren’t very afraid of the virus, generally don’t, unless they have to."

I'm with group two, The Deplorables.