Good morning, I guess.
It is clear, if it wasn’t already, that everything hinges on whether the American public is as stupid and inattentive as those seeking to manipulate it think it is.
1. Mobs? What mobs? I just listed to CNN’s health expert, Dr. Gupta, list the reasons there has been a surge in Wuhan virus cases. Notably absent from his list were the mass, no social distancing demonstrations/protests/riots that began two weeks ago as a prominent part of the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck. These, as you may recall, were largely supported by the health experts (though I don’t have a record of Gupta being among them) as they apparently decided that Black Lives Matter matters more than all the black lives that would be put in danger by ignoring the safety measures we shut down the country to install.
I also have yet to read a single news story about the new cases of the virus that highlights the completely predictable effect of the mobs, which are still roaming, as a factor in the so-called “surge,” though I can’t check everything.
Is the news media really certain that if they don’t report this connection, it will never occur to most of the public? I’m already reading accusations that opening up the states is “racist” because of the evidence that African-Americans have contracted the virus and died from it at a higher rate than the rest of the public. By that logic, encouraging the mobs of George Floyd protesters was also racist.
To re-phrase Wilford Brimley from his great scene in “Absence of Malice”: “American Public, are you that dumb?” So far, it seems so.
2. Speaking of stupid…MSNBC is really and truly planning on promoting Joy Reid to replace Chris Matthews as the host of its 7 PM prime time news and opinion program. Check out Reid’s Ethics Alarms dossier, which is far from complete. She’s openly biased, dishonest, irresponsible, and incompetent. She should have been fired years ago.
3. Meanwhile, representing “the stupid party”: Republican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert yesterday kept banging on his desk during a House Judiciary Committee hearing as Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general , tried to testify. Gohmert said that Ayer had used up his allotted time. “I can’t hear this witness,” Democratic Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson said, as Gohmert refused to stop the distracting noise. “Well, he’s way beyond his time, and if there are no rules when people can talk, there’s no rules about when you can make noise,” Gohmert responded. “Either we have rules or we don’t.”
When the tapping didn’t stop the testimony, Gohmert stood up and made loud farting noises. OK, that’s not true. It might as well be, though. There’s no rule against that, either.
4. “I want to wake up in a city that doesn’t think…” New York City has adopted Washington D.C.’s approval of graffiti as a legitimate expression of official policy. Well, of course it did. A “Black Lives Matter” street mural will be painted outside Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, according to a statement from Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s office. “The president is a disgrace to the values we cherish in New York City. He can’t run or deny the reality we are facing, and any time he wants to set foot in the place he claims is his hometown, he should be reminded Black Lives Matter,” Julia Arredondo, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said yesterday. She also said that a chorus of volunteers would be recruited to scream “Trump is a poopoo head!” from across the street between the hours of 8 am and 6 pm, seven days a week.
OK, OK, again, that’s not true. It would represent no less of a deterioration of respectable government conduct, however. Since there appears to be no depths to which the New York city mayor won’t stoop, I wouldn’t be so sure the chorus won’t be announced next week.
5. ARGH! The stupid! It burns! It burns! Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said yesterday, “Mr. George Floyd’s tragic death was not due to a lack of training — the training was there. Chauvin knew what he was doing. The officers knew what was happening — one intentionally caused it and the others failed to prevent it. This was murder — it wasn’t a lack of training.”
I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a conspiracy somewhere to make it impossible for Chauvin to get a fair trial so we can have more riots. That would be giving the ignoramuses like Arradondo and Nancy Pelosi the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that they know what they are doing.
6. The lesson: The George Floyd Freakout is making African Americans paranoid. Maybe that’s the idea.
The fake news was that a racist redneck NASCAR fan had retaliated against the organizations new Freakout-triggered Confederate flag ban by placing a noose in the garage of Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s only black driver.The story was marked as one more symptom of the nation’s systemic racism. Then 15 FBI agents investigated, and reported that the “noose” was actually a garage door pull that had been at Talladega since October 2019, long before Wallace was ever assigned that garage bay. Wallace wasn’t the one who found the “noose” and only accepted what his team told him, but instead of saying, “Oopsie! Never mind!” he decided to insist that the rope was a racist message, which had to mean that it magically planted last year by someone who had psychically discerned that NASCAR’s only black driver would eventually get assigned tha tbay. Wallace told Don Lemon, who will believe anything if it suggests that racism is afoot, “From the evidence that we have…it’s a straight-up noose’.” Uh, the evidence is what the FBI investigation reported, Bubba. If Don Lemon wasn’t a hack, he would have raised that critical point.
Instead, Wallace is left looking, well, dumb and desperate. At Talladega, NASCAR made a ridiculous display of virtue-signaling and pandering, with drivers and team members pushing Wallace’s car to the front of the field before the race commenced, and having the infield grass painted with #IStandWithBubba, all for a non-existent racial threat. Then Bubba finished 14th.
He was embarrassed when the truth came out, and, of course, Facts Don’t Matter.
Ethics Alarms 
Lots of the garages at Talladega have loops at the end of their pull ropes.
And a loop is not a noose, which tightens when it is pulled.
OMG, that guy at :08 in that video almost got lynched by that noose.
Pictures have been released and that particular one was fashioned to look like a noose. But it did last year too
Noose’s are not inherently racist. It could have someone feeling morbid, contemplating suicide, or any number of other possibilities.
It’s also the strongest way to make a loop that doesn’t slip.
1. Jack said:
To re-phrase Wilford Brimley from his great scene in “Absence of Malice”: “American Public, are you that dumb?” So far, it seems so.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you…
2. Gohmert
Our legislators are real professionals, aren’t they? I don’t mean as legislators, I mean as members of the human race.
Ignore the rules, make noise… what next, a food fight?
I say we bring back Code Duello for the Congress. Might thin the heard of idjits a little.
4. Stupid
I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a conspiracy somewhere to make it impossible for Chauvin to get a fair trial so we can have more riots.
Yes, they are trying to make a fair trial impossible, and they’d better hope it sticks. In a just society, it wouldn’t but no less than the Chief Justice proved the other day the willingness of the judiciary to embrace expediency as a solution.
5. My question is, exactly why did the Department of Justice waste my money investigating this? Why not the local/state police first?
Seriously, the investigation itself is virtue signaling and idiotic. It took all of 24 hours for somebody to find old pictures of the “nooses” as far back as 2017, yet we sent in the feds.
These are truly interesting times…
In fact, they are denying it.
http://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/us/coronavirus-cases-protests-black-lives-matter-trnd/index.html
A day or so ago we discussed Trump’s statement about virus spikes and the relationship testing has with actual infections. Most said they understood what Trump was saying but others blasted him for his statement as stupid.
Now we have the NBER, that illustrious agency whose very statements can set off an avalanche of sell orders on the stock exchange, come out with almost an identical statement in terms of distorted meaning. The media does not criticize the NBER at all.
What is going on now is conscious parallelism of action. There is no organized conspiracy to overthrow the government they just figure that every roadblock they can erect will help achieve the transformation if America into their ideal world where the elites rule over the classless. This is what HRC meant when she said It Takes A Village.
Protesters are not getting tested for many reasons but perhaps the most rational is they are asymptomatic and dont feel it necessary.
No. no. no, no! The BLM protestors are granted limited COVID-19 immunity. There is a little known immunity clause that specifically states that active protestors cannot acquire the disease during BLM=sanctioned events. By extension, that includes building burnings, riots, statue toppling, and looting. That is the reason these protests have been so violent and have lasted so long. The protestors won’t hedge their bets and suffer inadvertent contagion to the disease. Simple outrage over bad things happening is insufficient and is not covered under the Grant of Immunity.
jvb
Good catch, John. I see the makings of a good law review article here. You’ll have your pick of all the top publications.
Did you read this line from the CNN article? Check it out:
“Our findings suggest that any direct decrease in social distancing among the subset of the population participating in the protests is more than offset by increasing social distancing behavior among others who may choose to shelter-at-home and circumvent public places while the protests are underway,” the report reads.
That means that there was a direct impact on the infection rates but the rates were reduced because responsible people stayed home instead of rioting and busting up stuff. Here is the link to the whole stupid article:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/us/coronavirus-cases-protests-black-lives-matter-trnd/index.html
I tried to share this post on Reddit and got this.
Thanks, ME…just posted on this. I’m seriously pissed off.
#1. If health officials don’t ask about protests, then they can ignore it. Here is an article claiming that it is being ignored in NYC.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/15/new-york-city-instructed-contact-tracing-team-not-to-ask-about-protest-participation/
I’m seeing the same repeated locally, both in the states largest metro area and in my podunk county. The states largest newspaper specifically asked the question during a Q&A last week, and they state epidemiologist flat out said they’re not asking because they presume people would lie anyways.
When Yahoo news is asking whether it’s time to get rid of the Star-Spangled Banner, because every time you sing it you celebrate its racist legacy, then the answer is yup, we’re getting dumberer.
How many shivers of sharks will this campaign jump?
5. You sure wouldn’t know Bubba Wallace is black by looking at him. His father is white. Interesting how the infamous and thankfully “one drop” rule is used to advantage by so many people, like Halle Berry, or, oh say, our erstwhile president. The white parents get ditched when it’s good for business, even though they often raise the “bi-racial” children alone. But hey, it’s great to not be TOO black, right Bubba? Plus, bein’ a race driver and all you get yourself a regulation blond girlfriend!
typo. Thankfully dead and buried one drop rule.
I hear he’s taking Kristen Bell’s place as the voice of “Molly” on Central Park.
He can’t. That would be misappropriating a biracial woman. Can’t have that.
I say we do away with actors voicing cartoon characters in favor of using pitch correct and computer-generated voices.
jvb
1. The Arizona Republic yesterday finally admitted and reported that the “spike” in Covid cases in Arizona is partly due to expats and others returning to Arizona from Mexico for better Covid care. Plus, the vast majority of the deaths reported yesterday were actually “reclassifications” of deaths that had occurred days or weeks before to change the cause of death to “Covid related.” Entitling the facility where the death occurred to an additional $20,000 of Medicare benefits.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=gomer+pyle+surprise+youtube&&view=detail&mid=4053737E042C8D3127104053737E042C8D312710&rvsmid=CFEA63B601FA91D99D15CFEA63B601FA91D99D15&FORM=VDQVAP
Also:
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/25/falling-covid-19-death-rates-are-even-smaller-than-they-look/
That rat I’ve been smelling since the beginning of this colossal policy and economic fuck-up just keeps getting larger and smellier.
#1 Clearly Dr. Gupta didn’t want to inflame the mobs by criticizing them in any way, the mobs might target him next.
Regarding #4 –
At what point does that legally happen? I’m guessing this revolves around the voir dire process? Given how decisive the issue is, I’m sure both sides get plenty of peremptory challenges, and the judge would be careful to consider the cause challenges. I’m unaware of a point where the judge would decide that a fair trial is impossible and they just dismiss. Does that happen?
The defendants’ counsel make motions for a change of venue based on whatever evidence they can assemble and present to the judge. If they’re convicted, wherever they’re convicted, the defense counsel handling the appeal argue a fair trial was impossible and move to vacate the conviction.
If the conviction is thrown out, the prosecutors will have to decide whether to re-try the defendants. All of these potential decisions at these various junctures will give rise to more “mostly peaceful protests.”
Jack,
In the Lemon interview, Wallace assured the audience this isn’t just some “quick knot”, but that it took time to make. Coincidentally, the longest instructional video I could find was under two minutes (with pauses and text explanations).
For me, as I flunked knots in the Boy Scouts, all knots take a long time. The scariest moment in “Jaws” for me is when Quint makes Hooper tie a sheepshank.
Yep. He and Lemon have now asserted that systemic racism in NASCAR is at play. Wallace was the driving force* behind banning Confederate images at NASCAR races and NASCAR fans were furious. So, they hung a noose in his bay last October, knowing fully well that some George Floyd type would suffer at the hands of racist police, provoking universe-wide protests and riots. NASCAR didn’t like the distraction from its newly opened season so they glombed onto the noose story, alerted the media and the FBI, and made huge denouncements of racism at NASCAR. Wallace, in the meantime, just wanted to drive his car really fast and would have preferred to handle things in-house, as it were. He reluctantly looked to Lemon for help because Lemon has a very long history of honest reporting and objective investigations. Sadly, NASCAR’s smear campaign was just too much for him. All the NASCAR racers tried to get rid of him by moving his car and pit crew to a less-desirable garage, among other racist displays.
jvb
#5. When Bubba Wallace made his debut in NASCAR Winston Cup, I had wondered how long it would be before the mixed-race driver was set up to become the “voice of Black America” for one cause or another, and whether or not he would take the bait. It would seem that his time has arrived, and he has taken the bait hook, line and sinker. Last year, Wallace gave several interviews in which he discussed his struggles with depression and frequent feelings of impending breakdown. I now have to wonder what role depression might play in supposed feelings of victimization and oppression to which a millionaire race car driver feels he is subjected when he is competing at his sport’s highest level.
Wallace has been snared by Black Lives Matter, no less. You know, the cop-hating “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon!” folks. Having actually had his car “sponsored” by BLM at Martinsville a couple of weeks ago, and now doubling down on the victim role over the “noose” incident, it seems that his metamorphosis to full-fledged radical is complete.
Incidentally, sponsoring a Cup car in a one-race deal typically costs $350,000 to $500,000. I’ve not been able to discover whether BLM or someone acting on their behalf actually paid, or whether car owner Richard Petty was “persuaded” to donate the sponsorship space to BLM. I did read that the large peace sign on the lower quarter panels was Petty’s idea, not part of the original BLM design. Of course not; they have no real interest in peace . Maybe the “donation” will qualify for a tax write-off.
Wallace said, ” Running this race car on national television on FOX is going to speak volumes about what I stand for..”
Oh, it does, Bubba, it does!
A sport started by moonshine runners in the Appalachian hills. If the France family thinks they can take the Old South out of their little golden goose, they’re whistling past the graveyard.
Sorry, that comment was directed at item #6, not #5.
Well, that’s my fault, since #6 was originally labelled #.5
6)
Yes.
This is all a ploy to whip the African-American voters back onto the Democrat plantation. Anyone who’s been awake the past 8-12 years has noticed a subtly growing conversation in the black community that maybe the Democrats really aren’t good for the black community.
Exactly how is this supposed to whip black people back to the Democratic plantation.
Really??
Ratchet up the intensity of the persecution and victimhood complex and point the finger at conservative values?
I’m not explaining this Ejercito because frankly you know it.
Newsweek reported on it. (Thanks to william A. Levinson for sharing the link on Facebook)
http://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.culture.israel/NMVx-rItpTk/KoLAUWQIAwAJ