Welcome to the Tuesday edition of The Mark Steyn Show, in which Mark addresses the latest on lockdowns and 'lections ...and Covid-positive beverages. There's also another edition of The Hundred Years Ago Show, with news of gun-grabbers and rock-splitters, plus black country singers, Coloradan Frenchmen, Croat hepcats, and a world first for Swaziland. Also: Steyn answers Denyse O'Leary's question on America's disenfranchised millions.
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"The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise" reminds me of one of Stan Laurel's best bits: In the feature "The Flying Deuces" Stan and Ollie have joined the French Foreign Legion, and as you would expect, their general incompetence leads to them being condemned to be shot at dawn. As they languish in their cell, awaiting their fate, Stan pulls up the springs under his cot, plucks a few of the wires, and after tuning them by Stan magic, begins playing it like a harp, and that is the tune he plays - to Ollie's amazement and irritation. And the audience's hilarity.
I'm a bit behind on all things Steyn since I decided to take a break from the internet for a couple of weeks so I'm just getting to this show now. That's my loss but now I'm glad to being to spend my Christmas week catching up on the always wonderful content here. I'll be heading back to Florida in a few days and I'll be downloading what I can to listen to on the flight.
I happened to be in Florida two weeks ago where, heaven save us, I dared to eat, drink and (my voice hushing to a whisper) be merry. I even saw live music three times and even though the talent was at best average you take what you can get these days. Eight days after my return I took a state mandated Covid test ahead of a medical procedure. Alas, negative! Up here in the Northeast you're told by authorities that just stepping foot in Florida practically guarantees you'll get Covid. I've taken three trips there since June and not come down with ChiCom-19 (soon to be 20 and 21). Meanwhile I've had a few friends and relatives who have steadily heeded the warnings of not to do, well...anything, stricken by the virus. All, thankfully, have recovered. I've been saying for months now that common science has failed us so why not use common sense? It's not to be. Not this year. And perhaps, not ever again.
Your oblique identification of the Ketèlbey piece was greatly appreciated. As you were discussing the German loss of their colonies and the music started in the background, I found myself thinking, hang on, that is Albert Ketèlbey, isn't it? But which piece?
And then you referenced the *Persians* being the *market* for an army. Good stuff. And while I am at it, may I say how I love the 100 Years ago show. I'll keep listening avidly until I keel over from a corona-infected Coca Cola or until January 2120, whichever comes first.
" ... a duty to look elsewhere."
Excuse me for a moment (and apologies to Lennon and McCartney)
elsewhere man
he's a real elsewhere man
no longer a republican
looking for someone to represent him
they don't like his point of view
knows not where he's going to
isn't he a bit like you and me?
elsewhere man, please listen
the media, they are dissin'
you and me, the world is at their command
he's as angry as can be
worry's 'bout his family
elsewhere man, does anyone really care?
he's a real elsewhere man
just a US citizen
in their minds that makes him just a nobody.
In the latest example of why "conservative, inc" is, in fact, a controlled opposition whose real purpose is to guarantee leftist success while separating conservative grassroots from both time and money, how about this latest tiff in the Wall Street Journal and National Review going after Jill Biden's doctorate in education?
1) Could any issue be anymore irrelevant?
2) Could there be any issue that you are guaranteed to lose in the public eye as much as this one? Nothing endears the undecideds to the conservative movement than going after someone's wife for getting a post graduate degree.
Conservatives deserve a better political party, and a better pundit class.
"Could any issue be anymore irrelevant?"
Totally agree, Eric - although conservatives were "going after someone's wife" because the Left thinks it needs to be rammed down everyone's throat. Apparently some guy got sacked for writing a column that was insufficiently respectful towards "Dr Biden".
No doubt the Dems are using the issue as a distraction from her husband's China Collusion. Is National Review covering that??
No and no ...count another one here for total agreement with you. Did not read the Joseph Epstein piece, but if is the same JE who has written in past for WSJ, he is definitely not a Trump supporter. Recall him as a 'quiet' never-Trumper, and that leads to the hypothesis that the column was designed to do just what it did -- i.e. take attention away from the real issues. Left excels at that sort of thing and there's always some never-Trumper (or soft supporter of freedom) willing to assist. This morning L. Graham is quoted in the WT waxing on about 'reaching across the aisle'; no doubt he has already crossed the aisle and is sitting on Schumer's lap.
I haven't seen National Review cover China perfidy outside the context of a fundraising letter. Every now and again they'll throw out a bone about Hong Kong or human rights violations by the Chi-Coms, but they'll never reconsider the free trade dogma that turned China from an impoverished backwater as recently as the 70's into a global superpower ready to overtake us now.
Perhaps the real illusion to go is that they were ever really on different sides of the aisle to begin with.
Mark, your "Last Call" point about conservatives getting the CCP-19 messaging wrong is made far more compelling by them than by you!
And the ChiComs must be loving the fact that the focus - and the blame - has been entirely domestic across the West: they got away with it! (Andrew Lawton articulated this very well in your recent discussion.) Would the international fury in March over the (impending) deaths and disruption have persisted if "slow the spread" had been only 15 days? Maybe not.
But it's as though diminishing the deaths - as either "natural" or insignificant/ inaccurate in number - is a condition of the anti-lockdown position. They are merely a statistic - and a disputed one, at that. But several things can all true, as you've noted, and an attack by China on its enemies can be also be an assault by Western governments on their own citizens and economies. We're still standing in Godzilla's footprint minimising the main monster's role in this.
PS. In the US, Scott Atlas did a superb job explaining the numbers (which the WH has overseen directly since July). The excess "all cause" mortality data is revealing in the context of the timing and location of outbreaks. His over-arching message is that Covid-19 kills - and so do extended lockdowns!
Scott Atlas noted-
• Covid-19 killed 200,000 Americans between April and September. (The data reflected the impact of age, as well the expected *common* co-morbidities like obesity, Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnoea etc - additive effect.)
• Lockdowns (deaths of despair) and hospital avoidance (due to fear) killed a further 100,000 Americans over the same six month period.
PS. The latest information on PCR cycle thresholds is consistent with the use of mass testing in the asymptomatic (= with insignificant viral loads) to create "casedemics" - justifying lockdowns. #CovidCoup
Taiwan is such an interesting situation because we all know China wants them back in the fold just like Hong Kong. But does anyone really think Taiwan will roll over for that? Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan is very much armed. They don't have enough arms to actually win if China goes to the mat for it, but they have enough to exact a heavy price for the taking. Will they do it?
If Taiwan fights, will anyone help? If the world really does nothing, what then? Or what if Taiwan blinks? If Taiwan blinks, then look out, because that will effectively make Xi a global emperor.
Taiwan won't blink - but the rest of the world will. It's not hard to imagine Joe and Justin supporting "unity" with the PRC.
After Taiwan - Guam, Hawaii, Australia, NZ, Polynesia, Micronesia, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan.
When China has aircraft carriers parked off the Isle of Wight, it will be way too late.
The Dems sold out South Vietnam after the Paris Treaty.. They will do the same now but with the added benefit of profiting from it.
One other point.... Mark has criticized the prolonged time from election to swearing-in of a US president. This one time I wish it was longer. The obstacles placed in President Trump's way and the abandonment of free, fair and transparent elections by both political and judicial entities has made this election a farce. The people will no longer be able to choose the President... as in totalitarian states , we will be only approving the choice made by those who control all of the mechanisms of government. Voting will be an illusion propping up the visage of a "republic". It;s one thing to feel helpless right now... but soon it will be hopeless ... God save the USA...
"This one time I wish it was longer."
I've been thinking the same thing! Last time they used it to subvert Trump, and this time (in view of the ongoing subversion) he needs it to expose them.
Biden is not only a fraud, but a top level national security threat. So there's still reason to remain optimistic that it's not over. Rand Paul & Co and Ken Starr were very compelling. Ratcliffe is standing his ground (and Hunter's laptop may be irrepressible). Boris Epshteyn has advised everyone to contact their legislators while the legal side of things continues.
And a crowd of several million in Washington DC on January 6th would send a message!
Everyone is clamoring for "evidence" of voter fraud. What once was evidence now is just "hearsay". Even allowing for that, this election's fraud is like the definition of pornography... can't fully define it but when you see it you know it. Put another way... one walks out and sees the ground and streets wet and puddles everywhere but one is told that the rain is "hearsay" even if other people were outside when it happened. Life supersedes fiction and Orwell is so quaint these days. "1984" with Burton and Hurt should become a holiday classic to bring warmth and merriment of the good old days into homes around the world.
Thank you, Emperor Xi, for the delicious glass of COVID-Cola
It looks like we'll all have to take a walk outside of our dachas and retrieve the Xerox and mimeograph machines we stashed for a rainy day.
Any club members on Parler?
The follow the science crowd are, of course, being selective. They are shedding the dark lights of perverted science.
There is some real science, which points 180Âş from where their propaganda is taking us.
The FDA's report on the Pfizer vaccine shows that, of 20,000 people given a placebo, only 0.8% (162) experienced respiratory issues and tested positive for the Chinese Virus. Of these, just 3 were scientifically adjudged as "serious" , and only one was hospitalized.
The report is at fda[dot]gov fwdslash media fwdslash 144245 fwdslash download - see P 30. Like the electoral fraud, or Hunter Biden's laptop, I suspect it is not verified until CNN says it is.
"Perverted" sums up science 2020...checking data on adverse reactions to covid vaccines today, and learned the "experts" have already declared any incidence of guillain-barre syndrome in a recently covid-vaccinated individual to be "coincidence" -- now that's quite a coincidence given the current rate of vaccination and the low frequency of G-B (in US and UK it's between 1 and 2 per 100,000 per year).
"Alaskan has allergic reaction after getting Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine: An Alaskan health worker had a serious allergic reaction after getting Pfizer Inc and BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine, but is now stable, public health authorities said on Wednesday. The adverse reaction in the person, minutes after taking the Pfizer shot on Tuesday, was similar to two cases reported last week in Britain." Reuters, Dec 16.
It is ridiculous that the entire public sector and those highly connected with the public sector have hardly had to take a hair cut during this year where large portions of the wealth creating private sector are withering on the vine. I don't know how we would ever change this in this country, though, without first facing prolonged economic collapse - probably including the collapse of the dollar. However, I don't know how this happens exactly, as every other country - including China - appear to be doing things like quantitative easing to keep asset prices amped up and otherwise seem to prevent a total economic collapse.
I don't know how it's going to happen, but someday the chickens are going to come home to roost on all this financial mismanagement. ... Until then, buy gold or bitcoin maybe? ...
I wrote about this some time ago Joseph. This economic catastrophe has fallen almost entirely on the private sector and even there mostly on the lower and middle classes. Virtually every political leader or health 'expert' pushing an endless lockdown have their direct deposits rolling in like clockwork - no worries about that upcoming mortgage payment or next weeks grocery bill. Teachers and their largely useless administrative staffs are still being paid, protected by their contracts. Gov't employees at all levels have no worries either. These chickens will come home to roost eventually as you stated and first to fall likely will be our financial system - then the collapse of our society will quickly follow. I just ran the numbers from the Treasury Dept. federal spending year to date $7.8 trillion against federal revenue of $3.47 trillion. Well golly fellow Americans
how are we going to pay off our Federal Debt now at $27.44 trillion with an annual debt of $4.33 trillion with annual deficits of at least $1.2 trillion as far out as we can project. These numbers are so far beyond insane and unsustainable by any measure it truly astounds me that almost no one cares. Then again more than 95% of our populace believes that SS has a trust fund with $2.9 trillion in assets. If you can sell this abject nonsense to the public then all bets are off.
Ultimately, the electorate has become collectively too ignorant for true self-governance. They really do need to be ruled, almost for their own good. Sure, there are a solid 125 to 150 million or so who are capable of it. But we live in a country of 330 million. So there is no way for that minority to exert control.
Even if you assume we're still in the majority, which is a fair assertion, we have crossed the threshold "beyond the margin of lawyer" as Mark says, thus allowing a very vocal and motivated cabal of wannabe dictators direct and control the massive ill-informed mob created by decades of corrupted public schooling.
Looking at the WEF agenda, it would appear the financial mismanagement across the West is intentional and co-ordinated.
The Great Reset is the Great Leveller. And Big Gov and Crony Capitalists can rest easy.
Wayne,
Is this a parody? Sounds like a good comrade wrote it.
Cheers.
"Beyond the margin of lawyer" should be changed to "beyond the margin of the judiciary" with how we're being screwed at the moment.
A soldier in Leningrad ,holding off the German siege, was told to report to Communist Party headquarters. At that time no edible animal remained with cold, starvation and death everywhere. When he arrived at the Party headquarters there was warmth and food...as if no war existed outside. Times haven't changed. Newsom can shut down business while he and his buddies' stay open...even next door to the closed. Warmth, food and insulated protection are part of being a bureaucrat , high level gov. employee or public sector union boss. Nothing changes really. Not until the "elites" are brought down to harsh reality.
Remember when the debt was $6 Trillion on the day we lost the War On Terror, 9/11? Hell, I remember when Barry Goldwater railed against the debt of $300 Billion. I am even nostalgic for the days when it was only $20 trillion, and that was only a couple of years ago.
Just the depressed ramblings of a pessimistic patriot.
Question: How similar is China today like the Third Reich?
China's clearly "ein volk", living in an expanding "ein reich", led by "ein fuhrer".
They like goosestepping.
They have concentration camps.
They harvest organs.
They are hot on perverted science.
They don't believe in co-existence, nor mutual benefits.
On the other hand, they make lousy cars, can't invent stuff, and have awful beer.
I don't think they have any particular hatred of Jews. They don't seem to let emotion cloud their judgement the way the Nazis did. They definitely has the same sense of superiority, but they don't seem to think they will be victorious simply because of it, which leads to more rational geopolitical decisions.
Getting my dues worth commenting on this show, but I just had to add how painful it was to listen to that poor restaurant owner scream with Kafkaesque impotence (when even Orwell won't do) at the Covid Commisars and their indifference--nay, hostility--toward his plight. God damn them. I mean that, Lord. Damn them. Thunderbolt, plague, Act of...You. Let. Them. Have. It.
The only person I feel sorrier for is the poor Australian woman who could only see her blue-lipped mother through the window of the senior home, and screamed in fury and terror as the lackey behind the window, tired of all the questions from the woman, led her mother away. Perhaps never to be seen again. I don't think I've ever felt worse for anyone. That's not out of Orwell or Kafka; that's out of Stephen King.
I'm not an economist, but --
What if the US & other western countries calculated the costs to our economies of the COVID-19 pandemic, and subtracted that from debt owed to China? If multiple countries got together to do that, perhaps the US dollar would not sustain damage.
Nice idea on the surface, but, the likely outcome of that would be a deterioration in the credit worthiness of U.S. Treasury issues. We may not be able to issue debt to cover all the money printing that we do and may be forced to have balanced budgets. Hmmmm. Wait a minute. That actually sounds like a great idea!
I think we have 2 more planks for the "Paper Ballot" party platform: Chinese reparations and the gold standard.
Here's another one I read lately: term limits not only for elected politicians, but also 10-year limits for all unelected Washington bureaucrats. The loss of "expertise" would be more than compensated for by the limitation of corruption and hidden agendas.
The international condemnation and demand for reparations stopped after "15 Days" in March.
China outsmarted us yet again. Sad!
"...We consume our years with a sigh../The days of our years are but seventy years, and if in great strength, 80 years." Psalms (90[89])Many people are dying "of" the virus. Many are dying "of" something else with the virus present. The virus may be present and yet contribute in no way to a death. In the northern hemisphere, we are in the time of year when the crush of deaths among the oldest and frailest begins (until early February or so). We must acknowledge the cycle of life, or we will never be able to alleviate the fear of living, a fear now so profound that bureaucrats can shut down life in all its manifestations. Of course coke is not free of the virus, which is everywhere -- on surfaces of all kinds, including food, in water (because it is released in urine and feces). Faulty premises will only lead us to bad conclusions -- e.g. if the virus is everywhere, how will any lock down prevent it from moving around? As for Coumo and Baker -- both of whom are loathsome politicians -- what alternative did they have to returning residents of long-term care facilities to those facilities, which are the homes of the residents (and they were returning home, just as anyone leaving a hospital -- still positive and still under treatment, would)? Hospitals are acute-care settings; they are not set up or staffed to care for those who need assistance in all/most things, but not medical treatment. And hospitals have no flexibility in terms of space and staff. (See Becker's Hospital Review -- free online -- and read about the number of beds, registered nurses/medical professionals and hospitals themselves that were cut even as the virus started to spread in spring. And well before that, the contraction was enormous.) Again, the biggest spreader in long-term care is probably fecal-oral. Spend some time in a L-T care setting and realize that pervasive odor is a combination of urine and feces. It's reality. It's life. People in L-T care need love and visitors, if not their visitors just visitors and activity about them...Locking them up (as Coumo did) is the genuine horror. So many bad premises regarding the virus, even now. If China lied to us (and it did) early in 2020/late in 2019, why is no one objecting to its obvious, ongoing lie now about its low case number? How can anyone look at the cases/maps and just accept the lie? The rino globalists with a donor base and the dem/left globalists with a dependency base are no different, really. Only the R or D attached to it
-- the last sentence of the comment: Otherwise, none of them are affected by any policy they put in place. And they both no we cannot fight them if we are locked in and masked up.
Sorry to say but this kind of bedrock common sense paired with a bit of biblical philosophy has no place in 2020 America today other than a few conservative web-sites and on Fox News. Not only is journalism dead but even the idea of free speech is pretty much gone. You were dead on in opposing this insane lockdown back in the spring Diane and remain a voice of reason on this virus. By the way Red Cross blood test samples show that this virus was already in America last fall. so China's lie goes back much further than first supposed not that anyone is allowed to say this today. We referred to the 1918-19 contagion as the Spanish flu which wasn't really accurate but the China virus as our great president calls it (to wide-spread revulsion in the media) is far more accurate than Covid. Some perspective would be useful as well. The Spanish flu killed no less that 50 million world-wide with a population of 1.8 billion compared to the 1.64 million dead with a population 4 times greater. Mike Rowe's idea of safety 3rd simply put is that you don't destroy a company or occupation by draconian safely rules. This also applies to how a rational response to a virus should be handled in a so-called democracy - but few are asking this difficult question.
How can we prevent the country from splitting apart when we can't even prevent Plymouth Rock from splitting apart? Or, as Cole Porter put it in Anything Goes:
Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock
If today
Any shock they should try to stem
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock would land on them
I'm no prude, but I think we could use a dose of Puritanism these days. But that's not likely to happen when the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (New York and California) are pulling up stakes and moving in droves to the Judaean countryside. New York's rich are fleeing the city and, according to Reuters, taking their $34 billion with them. The freeways of LA, at the same time, are clogged with moving vans relocating businesses and whole industries out of the tarnished Golden State and back to the (Gold) Dust Bowl of Texas: Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Tesla, Schwab, etc. Unfortunately, those escaping socialist tar pits bring their politics with them, turning rock-ribbed Republican regions into metrosexual metropoli. Mark knows this all too well, as Massholes have abandoned the Taxachusetts they voted into being for the safe harbor of New Hampshire's traditionally low taxes. Only to vote for the same sort of skunks in their adopted state who run and ruined their home state. It's been a while since I've seen the movie "Nothing Sacred" (1937), but I'm sure I remember a line (by the great screenwriter Ben Hecht) to the effect that something would be as hard to find as a Democrat in Vermont--meaning rare!!! As Vermont goes, so goes New Hampshire. And as New Hampshire goes, so goes Texas. Perhaps the exodus of New Yorkers and Californians will leave a conservative base behind, ready to turn those states' 84 Electoral College votes over to the Republicans, but I'm not sure the tide flows both ways. Just out.
PS: While searching for the Hecht quote, I came across another one worth the fruitless search: "I'll tell you briefly what I think of newspaper men. The hand of God, reaching down into the mire, couldn't elevate one of them to the depths of degradation!"
PPS: One more from the same character on the same subject: "You're a newspaperman. I can smell 'em. I've always been able to smell 'em. Excuse me while I open the window?"
They don't write 'em like that anymore.
I believe the 'Democrats in Vermont' line is from White Christmas (pardon the expression), where Bing Crosby has an inn in Vermont.
Oh, I'm SURE you're right! Memory file corrected. Thank you!
Thank God that bloody Croat music is over! It seened to go on forever.
It takes a Dvorák to turn that kind of tune into great music. It's not only the Slav stuff that doesn't know when to stop.
+1. Otherwise usual great show :)
"Too many notes dear Mozart...."
Mark, curious to hear your take on how we will know we've reached peak Woke? In my rather limited circle formerly apolitical people are recognizing the madness to varying extent and pulling away from legacy media, etc. This seems slightly encouraging, but I've no idea how widespread it may be.
Additionally, could you please someday choose "On the Alamo" for Song of the Week? You mentioned it previously in passing but I'd love to see it further discussed. I really like Bing's version from one of his last records. Thanks for all that you do.
Nice to tribute to Charley Pride, Mark! He was a great singer. I am particularly fond of his "Kiss An Angel Good Morning," a classic example of the country-pop sound that dominated country music in the 70s and 80s. Much like Ray Charles' love of country music (check out his cover of Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On"), Pride's success in the field showed that the main difference between R&B and Country was simply instrumentation. And, unlike the progressives need to tout diversity by selecting folks on one's appearance, Pride's success showed that the country music audience cared solely about a singer's talent.
Mark,
Bit of light relief regarding Denyse O'Leary's comments about who Trump's seventy-four million voters have to vote for now.
In theory, however, the Harris/Dr. Jill Biden ticket got eighty million votes. But how many of these were for real people, dead, OR alive?
Recently vdare ran a letter from a West Texas reader posing the question as "Not who, but WHAT counts the votes ....", hinting that many Harris/Dr. Jill Biden votes were just numbers in a computer somewhere.
Again, that's pure H P Lovecraft ... this time from The Shadow Over Innsmouth .....
"From that day on my life has been a nightmare of brooding and apprehension, nor do I know how much is hideous truth and how much madness. My great-grandmother had been a Marsh of unknown source whose husband lived in Arkham—and did not old Zadok say that the daughter of Obed Marsh by a monstrous mother was married to an Arkham man through a trick? ... Was Obed Marsh my own great-great-grandfather? Who—or what—then, was my great-great-grandmother?
Okay, I'm going to ask this question yet again since no one ever seems to attempt to answer it when I ask. This time around, let's just take it as a given that I'm a terrible person and probably a Chinese spy and actually get to the question: Exactly how do you propose fighting this war with China that a lot of you seem to want?
Mark says this is a new kind of war and it'd better be. An old style military war with China would of necessity come to nukes for us to have any hope of winning.
We could simply ban all Chinese products. As I told a friend, that would mean our store shelves would only be empty for 2-3 years probably. As I asked before and no one ever answered, if we bring all our manufacturing jobs back here, would we also have to import millions of immigrants from somewhere to fill them? It seems we already have to do that now to fill the jobs we have. Even Trump says we need that.
Do our companies simply offshore all their jobs to some different country and, if so, exactly what country do we trust with that?
I know it's fun to rant about China, but what exactly do you want to DO about it?
First off, buy American. Have you noticed that Amazon doesn't list the country of origin in its product specifications? It is rather difficult to trace down some of factories. I'd been thinking about some optical gear, and would have gotten it if I could have verified that it was produced here (not likely,) or in Japan, SK or Taiwan, but alas, the item was from China. No sale, thank you. If more of us would do that, then reasonably high tech factories would become profitable when sited in our Red states. All we have to do is give our kids a couple of years of remedial education and they will be up to the Chinese standard, and from there they will excel given our greater freedom and competition.
Next, wars are now fought in financial terms. Iran has been limited in its oil sales by the US sanctions. But lately they have been shipping in their own flag and they have doubled their daily production to around 900,000 barrels. They are no doubt looking forward to Biden in hopes of doubling once again. If the sanctions bite too deep, then alternate methods are used, like the civil war in Yemen which led to the missile attack on the Saudi refinery several years ago. There were also a number of attacks on tankers in the St. of Hormuz. There are ample opportunities for savage little wars that do not result in nuclear exchanges. For 60 years, we have been willing to engage in these wars with no thought of winning, or even any clear idea of what winning meant. This won't change over the next four years. My thought is we would do better when confronting what is basically piracy to use a huge hammer, swing it once or twice, and walk away. Repeat as necessary. Avoid bragging about kill ratios and fighting wars of attrition with authoritarian governments that are not beholden to those they have enslaved. Protect our troops with appropriate ROEs, ignore the world court and all that baloney. Don't Tread on Us or Our Friends.
Firstly and most importantly, don't despair. Above all else don't lose hope or that spark that keeps you going. Of course that is easier said than done as all of the noise coming in at the moment from all quarters is, to put it mildly, overwhelming and that is the point. Once you feel like it is all too much and there is no point in pushing back or trying, it is really hard to pull out of that spiral.
I grew up in the pre-internet world and thank god for that! I remember the "old" world and I also know that it still continues and even though things seem to be crazy, the old values and beliefs still hold and are relevant. All this rubbish at the moment is designed (I am not a conspiracy person but to get your attention and to waste your life on useless stuff is its highest priority) to make you lose yourself in the madness and mayhem.
Also know that there are more good people out there than the bad. Take this club for instance, we all care and are concerned and we are by no means alone. I may seem a bit half empty at the moment about the US but I still believe in the goodness of its people and I believe that, of course there are turbulent times ahead, but above all else somehow they will messily get through.
Regarding the situation with China, of course that is a concern of major significance, don't think that it doesn't worry me. That said, I do what I can - make sure I buy good quality and keep away from Chinese rubbish. Make sure my house is in order and that I am looking after those that I care about and who matter to me.
As far as the manufacturing is concerned, it is clear that with the advances in manufacturing / automation/technology etc that the importance of the large cities and manufacturing centres is decreasing by the year and that smaller towns and municipalities are growing in strength and importance. Remove the internet bulldust away (social media is a joke beyond any other) and you will see that you can now do more and more with fewer resources than ever before. I sincerely believe that we are seeing the beginning now of the emergence of the country/rural areas as the future power houses of growth and innovation for the future.
Bigger was better up until a few decades ago, now that is proving to not be the case. I can tell you that a lot of people in Australia (especially in Melbourne) after the lockdown debacle have had time (heh) to seriously question the reason for being in large city as opposed to the country and acted accordingly.
Steven, I hope you don't mind if I tack onto your question. I've been grappling with this puzzle for a while, and not just on China. What's can a little person living a little life in a little corner of world like me do about any of this? I'm a live and let live-er and want to be able to live and let live for the rest of my life. With that in mind, here are a few things I've done:
- I've been honest with my kids about what's going on in the world and been thoughtful about their education (which has included big changes like moving and reallocation of the family budget).
- I vote. In person. Even if local dog catcher is the only race on the ballot. If they have to cheat to win, I want to make sure they have at least one more vote to overcome.
- I avoid made in China. I try to be careful about where I spend my money. Amazon is vendor of last resort, not 1st. (I agree with Robert Stewart's comment -- online vendors are largely hiding the ball re: where a product is made. I can often find the answer in the buyers' comments, which is heartening because then I know I'm not the only one who cares about this.)
- I opened the doors to my small office as soon as I was able even though all of us are able to work from home. My employees needed the normalcy.
- I called my governor to thank him for ending the lockdown in our state.
- I listen to Mark Steyn to find out what the real news is. (Sadly, I'm being serious, not facetious.)
But like you, I'd like to hear from other MSC members as to what else can we do? What else are MSC members doing? I do listen to what many of the commentators have to say on the happenings in the world -- here's how they stole your vote, here's how China's insidiously taking over the world, here's how big tech is manipulating you -- but I don't hear as many suggestions on actions that everyday people can take to counter these ills.
Thanks for raising your question, and thank you to the two Roberts (so far!) who have thoughtfully responded.
I'll gladly attempt to answer your question. Here is how we fight this war with China:
1) Recognize in a unified manner that China's goal is world domination. This means we stop with the impish labeling of those who already recognize this as being racists and xenophobes. If we can't accomplish #1, you can stop reading here and accept we are done as a nation.
2) The United States hosts 300,000+ Chinese nationals in our colleges and universities. Since 99.999% of colleges and universities are sucking at the Treasury tit, we can make continued Federal funding contingent on colleges' and universities' willingness to deny admissions to ALL Chinese nationals. No exceptions.
3) It has recently been reported that the Chinese communists have planted spies in hundreds if not thousands of American companies that have contracts with the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the CIA and FBI. We need legislation making it illegal for ANY employer from hiring or contracting with Chinese nationals and companies based in China.
4) Bank Of America issued a report earlier this year that says it would cost an estimated $1 trillion over 5 years to decouple the economies of Western Europe and North America from dependence on China. That sounds like a lot of money but it's only a fraction of the amount that Uncle Sugar has shelled out to date because of Covid, not to mention the damage borne by American businesses that will never be recouped. If that estimate is accurate, Congress should pass a bill today to fund the effort to do just that and begin work immediately.
5) Will we need to bring in immigrants to take the newly created manufacturing jobs? Nope. Cut the cost of employing someone by cutting out unnecessary regulations. Locate manufacturing facilities in our large cities that were rocked by rioting this past year so that the poor in urban areas can work at jobs that pay not only a livable wage, but provides enough income to be upwardly mobile. Generations ago, some rural areas had significant manufacturing employment that supported thousands of blue collar families. Now, in the shadows of the rusting factories, we have young people sticking needles in their arms before their shifts at the Quickie Crap because there's nothing more to life than that. And if we still need immigrants, great! Go bring them in. I have no problem with that.
6) I have a few more, but I've run out of characters (2500 max).
Mark replies:
Point Five is particularly well taken, Robert, by those of us who live in Northern New England and similar areas.
Steven, if, after Vietnam, we forgot to "never get involved in a land war in Asia", The Princess Bride reminded us. China got rich on trade and piracy. "This war with China that a lot of you seem to want" would be fought on those fronts, as far as I'm concerned, and President Trump has already deployed forces. Tariffs, embargoes, blacklisting, whatever it takes to restrict the flow of capital to the criminal enterprise operating out of Beijing. And when I say "criminal", I mean up to and including crimes against humanity. I think concentration camps count; I think slave labor counts--under both of which the Uighur minority suffers. And when I say "slave labor", I mean up to and including picking cotton. (Can't say the Chicoms do anything by half-measures.) So, while I own and use Apple products, I would lean all the weight of the federal government on any company doing business in and with the godless, goddamned Chinese Communist Party to do otherwise, but quick. What about free enterprise? What's "free" about slave labor--besides the cost of labor, that is? If we can't shame our left-wing robber barons into change, then let's make it very much in their interest to change on their own. If they know what's good for them.
As for piracy, we learned only this week that two million card-carrying CCP members are loosed upon the world as spies in all facets of society: business, academic, etc. I take my cue on how to handle Chinese espionage (and a lot of my attitude toward China) from Gordon Chang: they must go. Call it "de-coupling", call it the "Chinese Spy Exclusionary Act of 2020", I don't care. I don't hate any persons because they're Chinese; I hate foreign powers waging an all-but-declared war against us and our allies (Hiya, Aussie!) when we won't fire a shot back. I don't know why they haven't just taken Taiwan already, the way Russia seized Crimea. Oh right Orange Man Crazy is still in the White House. When Obama's third term begins in January, all obstacles will have been removed, and Chairman Xi can send an aircraft carrier to to it away any time.
"I know it's fun to rant about China, but what exactly do you want to DO about it?" -- It's not fun, actually. It's profoundly sad. Do about it? Nothing. Doing anything would be tantamount to insurrection at this point -- we are the United States of China -- and we would be crushed.
More good people than bad. I want to believe that is true with 75 million Trump supporters but how many are willing to stand up and risk it all? That I'm worried about. Seems that many would rather live a slave than die free because they're afraid of losing it all. Many are and have lost it all because of the pandemic and the power it gave the Dems. We can't keep running away when they win because the territory we give up will be harder to gain back the next time around and as we find a new home, they'll be coming for that too.
Even though Trump wanted manufacturing to return on a large scale, it's not a realistic possibility. Labor unions killed that off long ago, yet another gift from the Left. We can't compete with cheap (in China's case free/slave) foreign labor and the West has turned a blind eye to questionable labor practices because of this unhealthy, codependent relationship we have. Even our so-called "cheap labor" a.k.a. illegal immigrants, aren't any match for China's conscripted work force. The virtue-signaling Left, wringing their hands over working conditions, living wage issues, providing benefits and other entitlements, has made sure that we will stay tied to China's apron strings. Ironically, the Left will slam U.S. manufacturers for outsourcing to 3rd world countries and accuse them of exploitation and human rights violations, but there's never any meaningful criticism from the same quarter on China.
"Exactly how do you propose fighting this war with China that a lot of you seem to want?"
The point is that China has been waging war for some time without the West even realising it (regardless of whether or not we "want" it). Some would say Covid-19 is the coup de grâce.
Sun Tzu, again: "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
PS. Prof Clive Hamilton's "Silent Invasion" and "Hidden Hand" are worth reading.
No Kate, that's not the point. The point is, how do we fight back? I have yet to see you offer an answer to that.
Well folks, I was going to respond here, but too many good points made and people have probably already moved on. I particularly wanted to respond to Robert F's point 5 and other points about manufacturing. I do claim some expertise here because of my career as a millwright. That career was spent working on machinery in a great many manufacturing plants and gave me a lot of insight into manufacturing. However, I think the time may have passed for now. It'll probably come up again, though.
Thanks for all the good comments!
Steven: I was quoting you. And it's the point you keep making - that the US has much bigger problems than China. We had a similar discussion about 6 months ago... "vassal state" elicited a chuckle - as though it was paranoia - remember?
In any case, there's a good list above. Identifying the obvious points of weakness means they can be addressed - from 5G to Confucius Centres... it's not rocket science! An example of under-utilised leverage points (for Australia) offered by Peter Jennings last week: "Australia has four points of advantage in dealing with China. In order of value they are: our alliance with the US; our ability to shape how other democracies deal with China; iron ore and, finally; the things we produce that wealthy Chinese consumers like."
Well thought out, and to point 4, a trillion at every stroke of the pen for Obama/Pelosi/Reid stimuli; as soon as Biden takes office on student loans; to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc. (by Obama even more so than Bush...) and tens of trillions for the "War on Poverty". Disengagement from China, without quite the abrupt quality of what was done to Japan in the 30's, might just do the trick.
Again, buying lots of Aussie wine here in support ...
You're "risking it all" if you DON'T fight them. Keep a close eye on your 401K these coming dark years.
No complaints. Best conversation starter of the week. Things were getting a bit monotonous and negative.
Mark, have you noticed that there are practically no deaths in all of East Asia from COVID? I don't mean China's own BS stats, I mean anywhere there. With Europe, South America and North America all in the 800-900 deaths per million range, most East Asian countries are less than 1/100th of that.
Here are the deaths per millions while Britain's is 954: Taiwan (0.3), Vietnam (0.4) Thailand (0.9) China (3), Singapore (4), South Korea (12), Malaysia (13), Hong Kong (16), Japan (21) and Myanmar (40).
And then there are the countries that have reported zero deaths per million: Laos (0), Macao (0), Cambodia (0), Bhutan (0)
Something's amiss. Could be just intentional underreporting by some for PR purposes, but not across so many nations. Could be a bit harsher control of the population in some. But that can't explain ratios of 100:1 or even 1000:1 between France and Taiwan. Could be a natural resistance to similar viruses that has developed in that part of the world over the decades. Again, I could believe an outlier here or there like New Zealand for the English speaking world, but these are 14 countries that all border one another and where the virus started.
Mike, our CV death counts are hopelessly corrupted by reimbursement awards. If someone dies in a hospital, and if CV is indicated as present, the hospital is awarded an additional $13,000. If the patient was intubated, then the award goes to $39,000. They don't even need to test the patient with the PCR swab. Just check a box (or enter a code) on the death certificate and your institution is a "WINNER!!" There are known cases where automobile accident deaths were given the CV treatment.
One estimate is that only 7% of the listed CV deaths would be attributed to CV if the reporting was done along the lines of prior pandemics, such as the SARS (2003-2004) or the Swine flu (2009-2010). This may explain the discrepancy between our data and that of the countries you mention.
The political dimensions of the current policies vastly outweigh any "public health" considerations. The controversy over the hydroxychloroquine makes this very clear. Used early and in proper dosages, HCQ is very effective. A study published in the NIH's Virology Journal in 2005 bears the title "Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread". Nevertheless, the CDC performed phony tests using HCQ dosages that were fatally high on patients who were extremis, and these yielded the intended consequence, which was to embarrass Trump. This isn't to say that CV didn't have some minor role in many of the deaths, but nothing about the disease warrants the lockdowns and financial destruction of those deemed "inessential", let alone the disruption of our communities and the corruption of our elections. Our local newspaper features a daily "death" and "case" count for our county. It is all rubbish. It is only by creating this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that the pubic will go along with the abusive policing and social intimidation. They are grooming America for future abuse.
Like Stalin counting votes, it doesn't matter what causes all those deaths, it only matters who gets to determine the cause of those deaths. Heart disease the number one killer in the USA? No longer. Gotta pile up those corpses for the Joe Biden!!! More politically correct, and while I don't know for certain, maybe waay more profitable too. Certainly all those drug kingpins at big pharma are getting richer than Croesus from the American Lockdown. Wonder if they are sharing any of that loot with Joe, Barach, Kamala, AOC, and HillBill?
Two possibilities:
1) Testing discrepancies. The coronavirus tests are not universal, and different tests pick up on different levels of the virus. If the tests used in these countries are less sensitive, that results in less cases. They might also not be testing anyone and everyone who may possibly maybe perhaps have been in proximity to someone else who was symptomatic. Or they might barely be testing at all, except for people who are symptomatic and require hospitalization for those symptoms.
2) See Mr. Stewart's comments about death reimbursements. This isn't a problem in the US alone, it's an issue in many countries in the Western world including, for some strange reason I can't understand, here in Israel. Hospitals get money for every WuFlu death and, in some cases, more money for every WuFlu patient. So if someone is in the final stages of cancer and they are hospitalized, they pass away and it's discovered they were CV positive, the cause of death is listed as...CV. There have been automobile accident deaths and even the death of a construction worker on site that were listed as CV deaths. So the death rate - as stated even by the CDC - is vastly inflated and means absolutely zilch.
"The political dimensions of the current policies vastly outweigh any "public health" considerations." Exactly right!
By the way, there've been some excellent Q&As - by clinicians *opposed* to ongoing large-scale lockdowns - regarding diagnostic criteria/ clinical coding/ death certification etc. (There are always increased hospital costs associated with ICU admission )for any reason), but remuneration for death - vs survival - sounds alarmingly unethical!)
For what it's worth, former "winners" like Germany and Sweden are currently seeing big hospital/ ICU surges.
PS. It's thought that gain-of-function research was permitted *because* HCQ was known to be an effective treatment (in the event of a laboratory mishap), and the sudden blanket bans on prescribing it were with this in mind. Who knows? Blanket lockdowns/ blanket prescribing bans/ blanket censorship/ blanket vaccines... a lot of things seem co-ordinated at best, and nefarious at worst.
Some of those countries are communist dictatorships and they lie, others might have a vested interest in reporting low numbers (Japan really wants those Summer Olympics in 2021!), still others might have different methodology for determining cause of death and not attributing it to COVID if there are other underlying conditions. And as you suggested, these populations might have acquired herd immunity due to exposure to similar coronaviruses which have circulated among them before.
Mark, are you aware that Fauci played an important role in funding the "gain of function" viral experiments at Wuhan? There are multiple journal articles dating from 2016 to 2017 relating to their work with ferrets that were exposed to (inoculated or some other unnatural means) the COVID bat virus. The idea is to let the virus mutate within the captive ferrets, and hopefully (??!) become naturally transmissible to other ferrets. The so called gain of function being really an explicit shot in the dark attempt to enhance of transmissibility. The same thing could have been done by Mengele 80 years ago, but now we have RT-PCR to examine the result and give this dark venture a veneer of technical respectability. At best, Fauci was oblivious to his conflict of interest, but more likely his recommendations were heavily colored by his culpability. Newsweek had an article about this in April of 2020, and it garnered a little more interest up thru June, but the whole thing seems to have disappeared from the public discussion. You will also find that Bill Gates supported a foundation that is cited as one of the contributors to the "research".
Robert - check out the UN's Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. Bill Gates is the spider at the heart of the web. Imperial College, GPMB, BBC, Big Pharma - he and his wife are pulling the strings. His "foundation" is an investor in Big Pharma.
The deaths are sad, the Chinese are indeed at war with everyone not Han.
But how do we know that the deaths are really attributed to the Chinese virus? We don't.
No-one's dying from other stuff. Why not? Its B..x
Mask-wearing is going to kill and sicken far more than the virus.
Dr Vernon Coleman (on brandnewtube(dot)com) is a real doctor, hence his Youtube bans. Lots of commonsense, so censored.
How many people know about Agenda 21?
We are in a war, and we don't know how to fight back. This is an existential fight - we can get into virtual cattle trucks, or we can resist, and fight back.
I meant to say that Fauci is on the GPMB, chaired by the awful Norwegian ex-PM that refuses to retire from the trough.
Thanks for the GPMB reference. I did see Fauci was listed as a board member. There is photo, dated Aug. 7th, 2012, of Fauci with "nostilitis" Waxman, Elton John, and Nancy Pelosi that suggests his sympathies and concerns do not include the President he nominally serves. The occasion for that photo was something to do about needle exchanges, but it does indicate a mindset that was singularly myopic. The Gates Foundation is a big investor ($20 million) in Moderna as well as Inovio Pharmaceuticals ($9 million.) These are interesting times.
Actually, the gain of function research was done earlier in an American lab at the University of North Carolina in 2015. They went one better than innoculating animals hoping they would act as intermediaries. They actually created a hybrid virus by successfully infecting human cells (the famous HeLa cells) with coronavirus from the Horseshoe Bat. The Chinese scientists/researchers were present for this event so they know how to do it. The Wuhan lab was built in 2017 so I imagine they began their own experiments using this knowledge right away.
This was a virus that was unleashed purposely and did not "escape" from the lab as there has never been a coherent explanation on it nor any tracing that would prove it was a natural occurrence. Animal-borne viruses don't jump species that easily, especially not from animal to human directly. There is always an intermediate host, usually another animal like a pangolin (yuk!) or the civet cat. The genome sequence of COVID-19 never provided a close enough match (it has to be near 99%) to any of these animals, thus indicating it was manufactured in a lab.
Then the Chinese tried to throw everyone off the scent with the red herring about the wet market in Wuhan that sold live bats as being the culprit. The whole thing was a lie and scientists know it. As one said, "the virus went into the Wuhan market before it ever came out of it", meaning those infected went in there, probably as an intentional plant so it the virus could be traced there and blamed on those selling illegal animals.
Why oh, why didn't President Trump convene a White House conference last March and blame the whole Covid 19 China screw-up on Fauci, the WHO, the NIH, and the CDC? Fire them all and bring on board at the NIH and CDC leadership that would have told the truth and treated Covid as the moderately interesting "flu-like" illness that it i(if it is even that, with all the proven Covid lies told by the pols in 2020 I am not convinced it is really more than a "cold-like illness").
Then he could have shut down the lock downs. But he is only one man, and the Dems and Repubs saw a Huge, Huuge, Huuuuge profit opportunity. Oh, well. Lets see how Uncle Joe handles the problem.
Every single doctor talking common sense with more than a minimal amount of views or subscribers is getting banned from YouTube.
I'm beginning to think that maybe it would be more effective for Trump not to be president, but to use his money to launch a full-blown media challenge across all platforms - print, social media, online news, cable, the whole thing.
So if I take your comment and Mr. Stewart's comments and put them together, that means that Bill Gates:
a) funded coronavirus, and
b) is funding the cure to said virus.
In other words, he's cashing in on both ends. Is that what he mean in that viral video from years back when he warned about the possibility of some mega-virus spreading around the world?
AlyM, I had read of some earlier experiments, but the UofNC experiment and the use of HeLa cells is new information. I was under the impression that such experiments were banned in the US in 2012, hence the need to support offshore labs by those who wished to play with the creation of these dangerous pathogens. Perhaps the ban didn't explicitly mention human cells as a host? It wouldn't be the first time that a policy or law was subverted by some sematic trick. I was attracted to the notion that ferrets were the initial host based on the report that millions of minks were being slaughtered in Holland as they were found to be infected with CV. Using duck duck go I found a wiki article on UNC and Wuhan collaboration for creation of a virus using HeLa cells with a viral surface protein of SCH014 and this was published in "Nature Medicine" vol. 21 in 2015. Perhaps all these threads were woven into CV-19 in Wuhan over the next few years. And poor Donald Trump ends up using Fauci as his main advisor. A true swamp creature would have sensed that Fauci was not what his credentials seemed to imply, but then Trump seemed to be the antidot to swampitis.
Mark, I know this is a little off topic. but I was wondering about your thoughts about when a song becomes a part of "the Great American Songbook". In particular I refer to "Our Day Will Come". I have at least five versions on my IPOD. From "Ruby and the Romantics, to Nancy Wilson. Your thoughts would be a nice break from all the political stuff we are subjected to daily.
Thanks, Mike Costello