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As is my practice I will do this once again....

But first, scoring last year.

  • Harris/Biden inaugurated.  Yep.

  • Senate NOT going 50/50.  Miss.  It did and is.

  • Rumblings of secession.  Yep.  Multiple states, with the most-noted being Florida, surprisingly enough.  Nonetheless this was not really much of a rumble and a "Cesar" in DeSatan is arguably worse than Biden, so on balance its a miss.

  • Covid insanity collapsing.  Nope.  Karen still screams.

  • Dooming public acceptance of jabs.  Depends on how you count it.  If you count it on coercive tactics that's a solid score. Acceptance is just that -- not a gun up the nose.  I'm taking that point.

  • Inability to interdict spread will be resisted -- and won't matter.  Yep.  Delta and now Omicron have proved all the "mitigations" were worth zero.  Now even CNN admits it, yet it doesn't matter, as I predicted.  I said we'd learn an effective nothing, and, well, we learned an effective nothing.

  • Bread and circuses still work.  Indeed.  Now the backlash, but that's for this coming year, isn't it?  Yep.

  • Inflation is coming.  Oh boy, did it.  Do I get two points for that one?

  • The money-printing grab-bag will continue.  Alright, do I get two for this one as well?

  • The left will go back to violence.  Well...... I guess that one is tougher.  On the one hand yes, but on the other no.  This one is a tough call, but what I thought I'd see is not what we got, although we got plenty with wildly-elevated murder rates and monstrous amounts of smash-n-grab and similar.  I'm going to be tough on myself and score that as a miss, as what I thought we'd get was more-akin to "burn it all to ash" ala "I can't breathe!" style nonsense.  We didn't, so it's a miss.

  • They'll ignore the lessons of Christmas Day in Nashville in 2020.  Yep.  And we have paid for it, but not in really ridiculous terms.  Yet.  Log2j, lots of service outages, but.... no "grand" exploit.  I said I wouldn't be surprised, so that wasn't a "it'll happen", and what I did expect (ignoring it) did, so I'll take that point.

  • Political violence escalation. Nope.  Not yet anyway.  Clean miss.

  • Bond market coming apart.  No, although you have to wonder what Powell is actually thinking.  He's lying by the way, but so far getting away with it.  Miss.

  • Strum and furor out of DC, but no real progress. Check.  I don't know how in the Hell I could have predicted that one better.  Let's Go Brandon!

  • My cat will remain my best friend.  Indeed.  The list of people I hang around with and actually like (as opposed to a purely-transactional experience) has gone to nearly zero, and I doubt it will change in the future.  Point.

So I score it as 9 to 6.  Not terrible for a one year prognostication.

How about for 2022?

Well, here we go, because why not?  I will intentionally omit anything related to the virus directly because of where this is posted, and because of the censorship of the big techs.  Never mind that you all know where I come down on most related topics in that respect anyway, so let's keep it to social, political and economic for this year.

  • Inflation will not calm down.  Yes, it will ebb and flow some, but this is a math problem at the end of the day and until Congress cuts it out it isn't going to stop unless The Fed says "nuts!" and, so far, they haven't.  Incidentally for those who say it will be "hyperinflation" you're nuts; I'll take the other side of that bet every day and twice on Sunday.  But in terms of trouble in the supermarket, yep.

  • The Democrats are going to get obliterated in the midterms.  Let's define that: They absolutely lose the Senate and I'll give it 50/50 they lose The House.  In any event without the Senate anything Biden wants is done, and so is anything Pelosi wants, no matter if she keeps the gavel or not.  My prediction is that the Senate will be at least 52-48 and it might be worse than that for the "D" side, so even if they can peel off a defector it doesn't help.  In short Biden's administration has about six months of actual life left in it after which its a dead letter with the upcoming elections and then the change in power comes the following January.  As I've pointed out for 20 years despite the screaming people always vote their wallet and the Democrats have literally stolen their wallets with inflation.  They're done, even though Trump caused half of it or more they're going to eat the blame for it, just as Carter did.  If the bracketing predictions (above and below) prove up in 2023 inflation will ebb as the Republicans take control of the legislature and 2024 will mark the end of the current Democrat party; all that will be left is the screaming Socialists like AOC who will be lucky to have 150 seats in The House.

  • The Fed is going to get forced into actual liquidity drains.  Not the lies of the last couple of months, real drains.  By spring, with inflation still raging, they'll have little choice -- and inflation is shifting away from fuels (which become less relevant in terms of "need" as heating season winds down anyway) into other core staples.  There comes a point at which the exponential nature of this deterioration is going to force their hand and I think we're a couple months away from it happening.  They won't like it, but they'll do it.

  • The USSC will "split the baby" on the abortion decision and nobody is going to like it.  This could be very dangerous in terms of court-packing except for one problem -- the Democrats can't get it through Congress, and they lose this upcoming November.  Ditto for any other decision that could threaten "court-packing."  It's not going to happen folks; you can't do that on reconciliation and there's not a snowball's chance in Hell you get it past a filibuster.

  • The equity market is extremely vulnerable over the next six to nine months.  Risk:reward is wildly unfavorable.  It will shift coming into the elections but for the time being I would be very, very selective about anything with exposure to a blow-up in the term structure (meaning any firm with potential debt coverage issues), any of the "social" stocks and anything levered to government tax farming.  I'll put the odds of a blow-up from now until the last few weeks before the election, defined as a 25% draw-down or worse, at 50:50.  The compounding effect of that on the midterm elections, if it occurs, will be substantial.

  • There is no short-term supply chain relief coming.  The problem is simply this: It's only smart to offshore labor to China when you can use wage and environmental disparities; it is otherwise stupid since transportation is never free.  In an inflationary environment this is especially nasty because if the supply chains lengthen you also increase your risk in that regard.  Being unable to quote prices with a reasonable degree of forward accuracy makes long-duration, long-distance supply chains wildly dangerous.

  • Business is going to get it in both holes.  Between labor productivity and costs, which will continue to deteriorate due to multiple factors (inflation, how business has treated employees, supply chain issues and more) and the inability to put any sort of forward pricing certainty in place there is serious trouble afoot.  Those with the longest international supply chains and heavily labor-intensive outfits get it the worst, but nobody is immune.  Businesses can claim its about "mandates" all they want but from the perspective of the employee it is all the fault of their boss, period, and they're right.  Businesses can tell the government to screw goats and shut down, refusing to comply with mandates by refusing to operate.  How long does DC or any other city or state survive without food, fuel, power and similar?  Hours.  Who has the power in this relationship again?  Yeah.  May I remind you (again) that the only difference between sex and rape is consent?

  • The blue hives are in particularly-serious trouble.  Mandate all you want; you can't force people to come.  All of these locations are wildly dependent on leisure, business travel or both.  Those who live in such places can and will go out of said cities on a temporary basis to do things such as eat, and if it continues they can and will move.  This is a losing game in a big way for these cities and towns.  The losses when it comes to hospitality and optional firms such as theatres, restaurants and similar, along with the tax revenue losses, will be catastrophic and once someone packs and moves they're gone and won't be coming back.  I'm expecting a quarter to a third or more of all remaining restaurant and similar firms in the blue hive cities to permanently close within the next 12 months and without the tax revenue city services cannot be provided.  If the city governments do not relent before warmer weather comes Detroit will be reprised in multiple places including New York, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere.

  • Significant geopolitical trouble breaks out.  I'll give it one of two places -- Ukraine or any of the Chinese issues, specifically their Muslim population and Taiwan.  Of the two Ukraine has the higher probability.  The facts of the matter are that Europe has sucked off our military spending for decades when it comes to such matters and frankly, if they're pissed off about both energy and defense they should have done something about it instead of whining and shutting down their existing energy sources.  I have zero sympathy for them and I don't care if Putin decides he's had enough of NATO.

  • Ghislaine Maxwell's trial is not the end of that story.  I'll predict that it blows up this coming year in a lot of people's faces.  What you've seen at CNN, for example, I'll bet is just a start.  This crap has been going on for a very long time and the "bench" on it in terms of who's in it up to their necks is deep and long.  It does not end with her by any stretch of the imagination, nor with one dude at CNN either.  While I don't expect the entire sordid mess to come apart in 2022 I do expect serious cracks in the dike and they don't have enough fingers to try to plug the holes.  Watch this one closely as it could easily go prompt critical and if it does all bets are off in terms of the scope and depth of the damage.

  • Biden is finished this year.  He's done.  Either he dies literally or he bows out due to "health."  It's wildly clear at this point the man is an empty head with advanced mental deterioration.  Repeated strokes, and he's had several, have a way of doing that to people and so does age-related dementia generally.  Like it or not here comes Kamala but it won't matter because of the above; she's even less liked than Biden is, so Seat Warmer Harris it shall be.

  • Business uncertainty lifts in the back half.  Yes, I know, I said it looked like crap up front and will be for most of the year.  But not all, and with the Federal Government basically out of the picture as of the first of 2023 economically and market-wise the forward view looks better.  Beware holding a bearish view politically or economically beyond the November elections; you are likely to get your face ripped off.

  • Housing, as a bubble, is done.  God help you if you overpaid and it wasn't a lateral move.  For those whom it was, you traded one bubble for another so provided you didn't dump your equity percentage blowing the rest on other things you won't be hurt badly.  For those who entered into it from 2020 forward and especially for those who thought the investment side was going to continue to skyrocket you're going to get it in both holes.  Between cities doing rankly stupid things (such as NY mandating no natural gas in new buildings) that will wildly raise operating costs, tax term structure going to Hell in anywhere blue and the collapse in real labor value among productivity and costs you've got pressure on all sides in this part of the market.  My base case is that returns are wildly negative accounting for that over the next five years and 20-50% capital losses are possible from top to bottom.  Those who reset their leverage thinking the current prices were "a floor" are in for a date with Mr. Hands.  This is not a one year story and the worst of it is not a 2022 story either, but it will become apparent this year.  I do not expect things to clear until 2024-25 or even perhaps later.

  • The Medical Complex has a serious problem on their hands - both in credibility and cost.  Sure, some will be ok, but not much of it.  I suspect this trend is generational and may not clear for a decade or more.  It will be quite interesting to see the screaming and whining that comes out of these folks as their naked swimming becomes exposed for all, and it will.  This is the year it becomes apparent to enough people to matter.  Since this is 20% of the economy, one dollar in five, its an economic earthquake that will send shockwaves through colleges, government agencies and businesses.  This has been a long time coming and both fully earned and deserved, especially for the TikTok dancers and those exhorting othersIf you're in that sector with investments get out -- it will be radioactive within six to twelve months and stay that way for years.

  • The credentialism of the so-called "top schools" will deteriorate markedly and some may collapse.  The idea that you can con people into paying $50,000/year to sit at home and watch zoom calls is flat-out insanity.  It has long been apparent that the majority of the "value" in such places is the "ins" you get by going there, living there and hob-nobbing with people in low places -- not the education "per-se."  That these institutions are so arrogant as to believe they can destroy the social interaction that is the very basis of their current value equation and not have that blow up in their face is astounding, but here we are.  This is a realization that should have come 20 years ago, but like all such ego-driven nonsense it tends to go on a lot longer when the red warning light is on before someone blows off their own hand -- or head.

  • Trump is done, and so are those who cling to him.  Run away now or be run over.  The man will become glowing nuclear waste before the election.  Exactly who fills the vacuum is not currently known, but the leading odds dude is likely DeSantis.  I don't like that very much but it is what it is and the bench sucks on both sides of the aisle -- it's not just the GOP in that regard.

As always I may add more to this and revise predictions until 12:01 on January 1st, 2022 at which point other than typos its a time capsule and we'll see how it all plays out come the end of 2022.

Oh, as for that wee light in the tunnel referenced up top?

IT'S A TRAIN.

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2020-06-10 07:29 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 716 references
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Are you done yet?

Probably not.

Who is Christine Grady?

Why.... she works at the NIH.  She's a medical type - well, sort of.  She's got a BS in nursing, and went on to get a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown.

Notice that she's claimed, on the NIH site, to be a "Doctor."  That's an intentionally misleading claim.  She does not have a doctorate in medicine.  She's a nurse, from a medical perspective.  There's an argument that anyone with a PhD is a "Doctor" but when you say "doctor" in the context of medicine you're not talking about holding a PhD in philosophy.  Don't get me wrong -- nursing is a great profession and nurses have a decent amount of medical knowledge, obviously -- but they're not doctors.

She serves as the chief in charge of "bioethics."  In other words, the person who gets to make decisions on exceptions to the FDA rules when it comes to things like drugs and vaccines, along with other exceptions to the normal, allegedly-transparent process that is supposed to take place before drugs and other things get into the American marketplace.

If you read her NIH page you will also find something quite-curious.  There's no mention of her personal life.  That, standing alone, is not uncommon among professional listings.  After all, one's personal life isn't really connected to professional credentials and achievements -- most of the time.

But in this case, the omission appears to be rather intentional.

You see, according to reports, which are now circulating around social media, she's Anthony Fauci's wife.

Who is the director of NIAID, a division of the NIH.

Who was appointed to said position in 1984.

Approximately one year before he married the person who now gets to make exceptions to the rules and transparency, who works for the same government agency that he works for, and from which position in said government he "advises" people, including now President Trump, on the path "forward" where and when such transparency and required scientific proof can be exempted.

Gee, why do I hear echoes of Vader with his hand out talking about "father and son", except this time it's "husband and wife"?

Exactly how much attention has this received in the media and Congress again and exactly how did all that happen?

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2020-05-18 06:00 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 585 references
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The only difference between rape and sex is consent.

It's quite clear that the screwing that has been going on since March, as defined by the people of this nation, can only be described as sex as I can't find even a single digit percentage of Americans who refuse consent.

Let's cut the crap.

Since the end of March it has been obvious that there was exactly zero evidence for any sort of "lockdown" of any business or person save one -- nursing homes.

I've been pointing it out.  Trump had a point with the original "15 days" simply because we didn't know where we were.  I had a working hypothesis with regard to the actual "R", methods of spread, their comparable efficacy and similar, all derived from the data available.  It was also obvious in the beginning and middle of March that ventilators were not an answer and thus attempting to build lots of them was stupid at best -- and homicidal at worst.

Even in March we had good reason to believe we were not on the cusp of a disaster.  Events such as Diamond Princess provided extremely strong evidence of this; that we were either much further along with infections than we thought we were or there was some sort of cross-immunity or resistance to this bug.

The person making extraordinary claims (2.2 million Americans will die) has the burden of proof, and the more-extraordinary the claim the higher the burden.

May I point out that while "2.2 million Americans will die" sounds apocalyptic it in fact isn't?  2.7 million, more or less, Americans die every single year.  It's normal.  The question isn't whether someone will die; it is of what will they die.  Not "with" what -- of what.

There's plenty of evidence of not only fraud but intentional causation of death during this alleged "pandemic."  Colorado has walked back roughly 15% of their claimed deaths after being caught claiming that someone who literally drank themselves to death died of Covid-19.  No, Covid-19 did not cause the person with a 0.55 BAC level to expire.  But it took exposition of fraud at that level of outrage for the State to 'fess up and reclassify those who were falsely spiking the numbers back out -- and we don't even know, because there's no independent auditing going on, whether they in fact took them all back out.

Then there are the ten states where nursing home deaths are half or more of all deaths.  Nursing homes are state regulated institutions.  The States, in several cases including New York, issued regulations forcing these institutions to accept people who were Covid-19 positive, effectively seeding the equivalent of smallpox into those facilities on purpose.  We knew very early on that if you had one of a relatively-short list of maladies you were much more likely to have a severe case of this disease and by definition anyone in a nursing home is seriously compromised in their physical health.  We have thrown people in prison for manslaughter on far less provocation that what these governors have done -- and with good cause.  Where are the prosecutions and why have the citizens of New York, along with other states, allowed their governors to kill Grandma without an immediate uprising?

Next up is the claim was that these lockdowns and other restrictions were to "flatten the curve" and prevent hospital overloads.  Most people would accept that if it was true.  But it was never true especially when you take the intentionally-caused serious cases out of the system.  New York was one of the few places with an actual hospital overload but in New York Cuomo's order on nursing homes caused roughly half the deaths and without them there would have been no overload at all.

But the most-damning evidence of all comes out of the unbroken series of serology tests along with coroner's reports (including out of NYC) that prove that for those without one of a list of underlying conditions your risk of a bad outcome is very close to zero -- and well below that of all-cause mortality.  To be blunt you're more-likely as an infant to die of SIDS than Coronavirus.  Never mind the personal choices people make that increase their risk, particularly obesity.  Would you lock down the entire nation and destroy its economy because some people choose to smoke or drink to excess, and as a result are more-subject to lethal disease?

That's what we've been doing!

To be blunt: So-called social distancing is a flat-out crock of shit.

What's even more outrageous is to claim a "public health emergency" exists when you ride down the street in an armored truck shooting people, explicitly targeting those who are fat and thus it would pose more difficulty in treating their wounds, yet that is exactly what Governor Cuomo -- and others -- did.  These governors roughly doubled the fatality count from Covid-19 through their own intentional acts with full knowledge of the danger they were putting the victims under.

In any just society that would lead to instantaneous federal indictment under 18 USC 242 with said person being arrested and thrown in the dock immediately -- and no prayer in Hell of being bonded out. Indeed the entire point of the federal government claiming a right to enforce Civil Rights at the state level arose out of exactly this sort of disparate harm intentionally aimed at certain parts of the population.  Since when does being black give you special rights that someone who is also part of a distinguishable part of the population -- specifically, being old and frail -- does not have?

May I point out the penalties clause for 18 USC 242:

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

I'll take Guillotines for $100, Alex.

Then there are the nasty set of facts on this virus to begin with.  Those who have severe or critical cases are much more likely to be deficient in Vitamin D, for example.  Vitamin D is found in fatty fish such as salmon with small amounts also found in other animal products such as beef liver, cheese and egg yolks.  It is also generated by your body as a consequence of sun exposure.  That is, locking people into their homes directly injures them in terms of their personal risk of a severe outcome from this disease and despite the screaming Karens those Spring Breakers who flooded the beaches of Florida were actually engaged in behavior that was partially protective.  Isn't it interesting that despite all the claims that we'd have spring breakers dropping like flies the actual count of cases traced to that numbered...... wait for it..... five?

Who has been taken out, put in the stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes for their vilification of young people, inherently at less risk to start with, engaging in behavior that we now know is actually protective?

Of course doctors and other "medically minded" people killing people through malfeasance and misfeasance is not new.  Such as my article from 2014 on UK doctors killing 80,000 people a year over a decade's timewhich I remind you is far more than have succumbed to The Roma in the UK.  Did we lock down for that?  Did the UK impose house arrest or other "restrictions" on the population?

Do you think this is an isolated incident?  May I remind you that upwards of 100,000 people a year are killed in the United States by nosocomial infections -- that is, infections acquired in a hospital!  That's more than the number of people felled by The Roma thus far and it happens in the US every single year.  Every one of those deaths is not only a homicide it's a negligent homicide too; exactly zero of them are unavoidable.  The medical industry put the name "nosocomial" on them so as to evade ordinary people calling it what it is and parading it on the TV: Negligent homicide.

Where is the chyron at the bottom of CNN, Faux Snoox and everywhere else listing the number of people killed every day by hospitals and doctors through their refusal to practice reasonable infection control?  If Covid-19 is a "public health emergency" why hasn't this been a continuing public health emergency and subject to the same sort of "mitigation" for the previous 20+ years when it kills an equal number of Americans not once -- but every year without fail!

As expected there are the screams of racism! coming from people because of a skew in the death numbers toward black and brown people.  So viruses are racist eh?  Nice try.  The truth is something entirely different: Lifestyle choices made by people have an outsized impact on the course of this disease -- specifically, the Pie Hole virus frequently precedes, by decades of willful personal action, a fatal outcome for Covid-19 exactly as it does for smoking and lung cancer.

Take both the willful and intentional actions of governors along with personal choice out of the mix as causative factors for serious, critical and fatal outcomes and suddenly this bug is an epidemiological annoyance.

Now let's add in 1968.  In 1968/69 H3N2 swept the globe; it was extremely contagious and troops returning home after the Vietnam War brought it rapidly into the United States, where it killed about 100,000 people.  There were about 200 million people in the US at the time, so adjusting for population this would put the death toll at about 150,000 today.

This is almost-directly comparable in terms of the rate of death seen with Covid-19 and yet exactly zero lockdowns were put in place and the economy was not impaired.  In addition, unlike Covid-19 but in line with most influenza strains that virus also killed a lot of infants and very young children.

And if that's not enough the prognostications of doom for those places that have reopened have been universally false.  The last leg of the stool on which these "lockdowns" rested was that if we did reopen the economy on a mass basis people would die en-masse.  But now we have the facts on that as well; it simply hasn't happened in any measurable way at all and that destroys the last argument for not immediately and completely removing all of the constraints.

China lied about this current virus in many respects, including its fatality rate.  But we've lapped up many of those lies as Americans and the so-called mainstream media has amplified them along with governors on both sides of the aisle.  There are exactly zero governors who have lifted all constraints and told people the truth: We were lied to, we were wrong and our actions, in light of the facts which we now know, were unsupportable.  This bug is nasty if you are medically impaired however we can lock in nursing homes and by doing so there is little risk of overload of the medical system, never mind that since hospitals are ill-equipped to deal with infectious disease generally the correct model for those infected is a sanitarium, which we will put in place for the duration should we have problems with this or a similar disease in the future.

Busing patients to such a place (and back when they're recovered) is dirt cheap compared to shutting down the economy.  Paying the caregivers in such places a  very significant bonus as compensation for being "locked in" for the duration or until they seroconvert and no longer can transmit the infection is dirt cheap by comparison as well.  Rent and line up RVs in the parking lot if you have to.

But instead we have a nation where half the people are screaming Karens parading around in masks claiming that "we're all gonna die" from the Roma if we are not literally imprisoned in our homes while the other half spends so much on kneepads as to run Amazon.com and everyone else out of them. The reason for their purchases?  To hide the use of their man-pleaser on our President's schlong on a daily basis; without those kneepads said acts would be evidenced by bare, white bone sticking out of the front of their knees.

Meanwhile our economy is dying.  A huge percentage, perhaps one in four or more, small businesses that were forced closed will never reopen.  Those are the firms that employ a quarter of America.  They're also how Americans have risen from being a wage slave to financial and personal independence from all walks of life irrespective of their race, color, religion or family wealth over the entire time this nation has existed.  Destroying these people through no fault or poor decision-making of their own is an outrage literally beyond words and more than sufficient cause for the people of this nation to start penning a second edition of The Declaration of Independence.

There are many who think the Federal Government can simply "spend" to make this up.  Nope.  That will inevitably be reflected back into prices and already is happening in the grocery store.  The full impact won't be felt for a couple of years and once again those at the lower end of the income ladder will take the worst of it simply because they lack the disposable income to deal with a 20, 30 or 50% increase in the cost of certain necessities.  That's financial sex; it's not rape because, once again, you continue to consent on a daily basis instead of dragging the people responsible out of their offices by their hair.

And oh, by the way, the "masks" worn by our so-called "leaders" have been caught on multiple occasions already as nothing more than theater; as soon as they think the cameras are turned off they all immediately take the masks off.  So much for believing what they're saying in public and even ordering you to do as a matter of alleged "law."

There is zero reason for anyone, irrespective of their political leanings, to consent to any element of our federal, state and local governments at this point.  I remind you that even a low single-digit percentage of those who actively refuse and are willing to back up that refusal with whatever is necessary to enforce same is sufficient to stop all of this bullshit in one afternoon as they would outnumber every law enforcement agency in the nation by a factor of 10:1.

There are those who claim this is all a "Get Trump!" conspiracy.  For those individuals please identify the Red State that has told all the screaming Karens to go screw a goat and has dropped all the constraints -- every one of them.  Those running that bullshit are lying; The fact is that both sides of the aisle are literally orgasmic over the power they're exerting and the screwing they are imposing on the populationespecially those on the lower end of the income scale.

Leaving aside the economic damage intentionally inflicted on our nation under false pretense, the majority of which has fallen on those making less than $50,000 a year -- the ordinary working stiff -- with exactly zero having fallen thus far on federal employees and lawmakers, every single one of whom is drawing their regular salary, along with the criminal malfeasance among governors who screwed up their alleged "unemployment" systems such that those people are not getting that which they paid into as insurance premiums, the rank violations of the basic Constitutional Freedom to go where we wish, when we wish and with whom we wish under intentional false pretense is plenty of reason standing alone for the people of this nation to refuse to consent to the continued existence of the government at all levels -- federal, state and local.

This intentional criminal malfeasance by governors has included freeing persons in jail and prisons. In at least two cases, one in Blue Colorado and a second in Red Florida these freed persons, one a convict and the second being held awaiting trial said individuals now stand accused of murder -- acts they would not have been able to commit but for their release.

If you drive someone to a bank knowing they are of criminal mind and they rob said bank you get charged.  Where are the criminal charges of accessory to murder for the governors and other jurisdictions involved in these releases when said persons were of knowing criminal mind -- trivially proved since they were already in jail!

Ask yourself this: If you're not going to rise and put a stop to the grave insult served upon our Constitutional freedoms at this level, deliberately aimed at the 70% of private sector workers on the lower end of the scale while exempting from those same consequences every single lawmaker, politician and enforcer irrespective of political party or affiliation then exactly when and under what circumstance would you so rise -- and why should anyone bother so much as lifting a finger to push buttons on a keyboard, say much anything else, in furtherance of defending your alleged "freedom"?

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2020-04-28 10:54 by Karl Denninger
in Podcasts , 195 references
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2020-04-15 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 258 references
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Folks, this tinfoil garbage just won't quit.

Look, I get it -- people love to find something to blame, and "oh, it was a bioweapon" is one of the common ones going around, along with "it's triggered by 5g!" (which is just flat-out horsecrap.)

The problem with bioweapons is that they're doomsday devices in that they have a 100% chance of scoring an "own goal."  To prevent this you must first have a vaccine with 100% coverage on your side so your people don't get the bug, and that vaccine must have permanent immunity.

Let me repeat this for you just in case your IQ is smaller than your shoe size: There has never been a successful attempt to prevent the spread of a virus beyond some arbitrary line on a map.  Ever.  Even in the days of old before international commerce and easy air travel it never worked.

Second, if you were going to create a viral weapon the last thing you'd use is a coronavirus.  Why?  Because despite decades of trying there has never been a successful, durable vaccine for a coronavirus either, so the odds of scoring such an "own goal" are in fact 100%.

Coronaviruses not only infect people they infect animals.  We have tried to create vaccines for animal husbandry and pet purposes on multiple occasions, and have failed every time to obtain permanent immunity.  We have also wound up creating amplification effects by accident too; the poster child for this one was a feline "vaccine" that actually wound up amplifying the effects of the virus instead of attenuating or preventing infections!  This is why, by the way, that there is no reason whatsoever to believe we will ever have a permanent vaccine; despite attempts in both animals and humans we've never succeeded before with this particular type of virus.

Now is it entirely possible -- even probable -- that this specific virus was an accidental release?  Yep.  In fact I'd say it's more likely than not.  That's the "civil standard of proof", and it's present.  Why?  Because this virus behaves like an attenuated live virus, but not attenuated enough.  For those who think that sort of idea is crazy I remind you that we've used that exact concept for decades with oral polio, and it works.  So the theory that this was an accidental release from Wuhan's lab and they were working on a vaccine for SARS, for example, is not crazy.  The only crazy part is that their odds of success were near zero in the first instance, but scientists try to find breakthroughs in things that appear to have a near-zero probability of success all the time.

But a bioweapon?  Nope.  There are plenty of candidate virus families to use for that sort of thing, if you're into attempting it. 

Coronavirus isn't one of them.

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