It’s Friday, May 29th, 2020…but before we begin, are we the only one who believes Joe Biden’s Memorial Day appearance follows in the footsteps…

…of his equally inept Progressive predecessors?!?

Since we’re on the subject of photo ops going bad, here’s a clip from our Video of the Day, accessible through link #2 immediately below our Quote of the Day at the top of the page:

Yes, Katy, the images are indeed…

…but only in so far as they point out the hypocrisy of you, your network and most of your entire industry.

Here’s the juice: is it really a pandemic when you can get an abortion but not a knee replacement?  Is it really a national health emergency justifying the destruction of our economy when you can frequent a liquor store but not attend an AA meeting?

Maryland statistics speak for themselves: 2,130 deaths out of a population of 6,000,000+ equals a death rate of 0.00355, or .335 of 1%!!!  And when, as this forward from James Nichols records, the fact some 43% of nationwide deaths from the Wuhan virus occur in nursing homes is combined with the geographic concentration of the most serious outbreaks…

…the only conclusion one can logically reach is this has been, relatively speaking, much ado about nothing.  This is not to diminish the pain suffered by the families of those who’ve died, but the inalterable fact remains, harsh as it sounds…

But don’t accept our assessment: consider, courtesy of Balls Cotton and Steve Armour, the legal record from Illinois in the case of…

Mainer v. Pritzker Transcript – Let Liberty Ring

 

“…Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred:

• I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy.
• Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family-owned business is not.
• Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.
• A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will.
• We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are canceled.
• Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will.
• If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will.
• Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.

These are just a few of the examples of rules, regulations, and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious, and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense. State’s attorneys in this state, county sheriffs, mayors, city councils and county boards have openly and publicly defied these orders followed by threats to withhold funding and revocation of necessary licenses and certifications unless you obey.

Our economy is shut down because of a flu virus with a 98 percent-plus survival rate. Doctors and experts say different things weekly. The defendant cites models in his opposition. The only thing experts will agree on is that all models are wrong and some are useful. The Centers for Disease Control now says the virus is not easily spread on surfaces.

The defendant in this case orders you to stay home and pronounces that, if you leave the state, you are putting people in danger, but his family members traveled to Florida and Wisconsin because he deems such travel essential. One initial rationale why the rules don’t apply to him is that his family farm had animals that needed fed. Try selling that argument to farmers who have had to slaughter their herds because of disruption in the supply chain.

When laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled. Make no mistake, these executive orders are not laws. They are royal decrees. Illinois citizens are not being governed, they are being ruled. The last time I checked Illinois citizens are also Americans and Americans don’t get ruled. The last time a monarch tried to rule Americans, a shot was fired that was heard around the world. That day led to the birth of a nation consensually governed based upon a document which ensures that on this day in this, any American courtroom tyrannical despotism will always lose and liberty, freedom and the constitution will always win…”

High-sounding words, indeed; but only words, as the judge went on to rule on behalf of Illinois’ hypocritical governor.

P.S.  As suggested by our discussion with one Daniel Francis Feeney, pay attention to the refusal to open schools next August/September.  It’s a decision Progressive-dominated school districts and state governments can at least attempt to make without voter approval in their deliberate effort to defeat The Donald.

After all, if the kids stay home, at least one parent can’t work.  Stay tuned, particularly given the number of single-parent households.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of NRO, the great Victor Davis Hanson offers a requiem for…

The Remains of an Administration

Obama’s policies are in tatters, and the worst scandals of his White House are coming to light.

 

“One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.”
— Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“Each day that the Obama administration fades into the past, its wrongdoings manage to wander back into the present.

After years of suppression, all sorts of strange events keep popping up to remind us of what little is left of the Obama years — the Susan Rice memo, Christopher Steele deleting his computer records, FBI-doctored and lost 302s, text messages wiped clean, the bizarre Obama January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting, the ambush interview of Michael Flynn, the unmasking and leaking of redacted names swept up in reverse-targeting surveillance operations, the administration fraud perpetrated on the FISA courts. The list is so overwhelming and bizarre that it ensures that anything at any time can now appear. And the result keeps reminding Americans of how corrupt were the years between 2009 and 2017 and how untruthful was the coverage of such institutionalized wrongdoing…

…We were supposed to see a fundamental transformation of the country between 2009 and 2025, as the Obama-Clinton 16-year regnum finally made America right and correct. Instead, we witnessed eight years that ended in scandal whose full dimensions of criminality will take years to process.“

Though we’re more than willing to condense it for anyone willing to listen.

Speaking of conspiratorial criminality, also courtesy of NRO, Andy McCarthy finds himself…

Respectfully Dissenting from Judge Luttig on Flynn Mandamus

After permitting Judge Sullivan to defend himself, the D.C. Circuit should dismiss the case.

 

“…The ten days give Sullivan an opportunity to count to ten and do his duty. No one is suggesting that he needs to agree with or approve of the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss the case. He must, however, accept that this is the Justice Department’s call to make. Sometimes, the shoe is on the other foot: A judge will exercise his or her discretion in a way prosecutors believe is profoundly wrong but that is not effectively reviewable. Our justice system is rightly the envy of the world, but it relies on discretion in many instances; within wide bounds, discretion is the authority to make decisions with which reasonable minds disagree — often passionately.

…So far, regrettably, Judge Sullivan appears to be digging in deeper. As I noted last week, his order calling for amicus briefs in a criminal case not only defies governing law, it also flies in the face of multiple orders he himself has issued in this very case — further demonstrating that he has lost perspective. It is jaw-dropping that Sullivan would compound this inexplicably poor judgment by retaining a private lawyer to represent him. Yes, an outside attorney, who has not been appointed by a president or confirmed by the Senate, has been retained (by the judge himself? By the judicial department? Who knows?) to help wield judicial power to the due-process detriment of a defendant in a criminal case — evidently because the actual judge assigned to the case senses he needs help explaining the inexplicable to the reviewing court.

It would be nice if participants in this drama could get beyond Trump derangement and remember what criminal cases are about. This matter is not about Judge Sullivan or the Justice Department. It is not even about Michael Flynn as the former Trump administration official caught up in the Trump–Russia contretemps. It is about Michael Flynn, the accused, who is presumed innocent and entitled to the full array of rights assured by the Constitution, federal procedural rules, and due-process jurisprudence.

The criminal-justice system’s principal task is to provide due process to the accused. It is human nature that judges and prosecutors often come to believe that the accused is guilty, is a rogue, is gaming the system, and so on. Yet this does not change the judge’s or the prosecutor’s duty to ensure that a defendant is afforded every protection to which the system entitles him…”

For more on the subject of criminal conspiracies, courtesy of The Hill via George Lawlor, former Assistant Director of Intelligence and 24-year FBI veteran Kevin Brock concludes…

New FBI document confirms the Trump campaign was investigated without justification

 

“Late last week the FBI document that started the Trump-Russia collusion fiasco was publicly released. It hasn’t received a lot of attention but it should, because not too long from now this document likely will be blown up and placed on an easel as Exhibit A in a federal courtroom. The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John Durham, will rightly point out that the document that spawned three years of political misery fails to articulate a single justifiable reason for starting the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation.

Those of us who have speculated there was insufficient cause for beginning the investigation could not have imagined the actual opening document was this feeble. It is as if it were written by someone who had no experience as an FBI agent.

Keep in mind the FBI cannot begin to investigate anyone, especially a U.S. citizen or entity, without first creating a document that lists the reasonably suspicious factors that would legally justify the investigation. That’s FBI 101, taught Day 1 at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va. (Maybe Strzok was out behind the latrine playing pocket pool that day!)

To the untrained eye, the FBI document that launched Crossfire Hurricane can be confusing, and it may be difficult to discern how it might be inadequate. To the trained eye, however, it is a train wreck. There are a number of reasons why it is so bad. Two main ones are offered below (if you would like to follow along, the document is here):

First, the document is oddly constructed. In a normal, legitimate FBI Electronic Communication, or EC, there would be a “To” and a “From” line. The Crossfire Hurricane EC has only a “From” line; it is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division whose contact is listed as Peter Strzok. The EC was also drafted by Peter Strzok. And, finally, it was approved by Peter Strzok. Essentially, it is a document created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok.

On that basis alone, the document is an absurdity, violative of all FBI protocols and, therefore, invalid on its face. An agent cannot approve his or her own case; that would make a mockery of the oversight designed to protect Americans. Yet, for this document, Peter Strzok was pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire.

In addition, several names are listed in a “cc” or copy line; all are redacted, save Strzok’s, who, for some reason, felt it necessary to copy himself on a document he sent from himself to himself.

Names on an FBI document are always listed in cascading fashion, with the most senior at the top and on down to the least senior. On this EC, Strzok is listed last, so the redacted names should be more senior to him. Those names could well include then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and then-Counterintelligence Assistant Director Bill Priestap. The document also establishes these redacted names as “case participants.”…”

“Case participants” indeed; they seem more like…

…future cellmates to us!

For more on the subject of those deserving long stretches in prison, courtesy of Jeff Foutch, Frontpage Magazine‘s Dan Greenfield puts what follows in terms even a Progressive might understand, as he reveals…

A woman who can turn her back on genocide would hardly blink at spying on Republicans.

 

“When Hillary Clinton stepped down as Secretary of State to prep for a presidential run, her boss had an obvious replacement in mind. His close political ally, Susan Rice. But while Obama had won nearly all of his appointment battles, moving Rice into the top position on foreign policy was too much.

Senate Republicans would always associate (quite rightfully!) Rice with Benghazi. But even Senate Democrats had second thoughts about the woman who is at the center of Obamagate and a potential Biden Veep pick. When Rice ended her bid to replace Hillary, it was a bitter and shocking defeat for Barack Obama who responded with an angry tantrum, accusing Republican senators of efforts to “besmirch her reputation”.

…While Obama publicly directed his anger at Senate Republicans, there was little enthusiasm for defending Rice even among Senate Democrats. Beyond Benghazi, Rice’s years in the foreign policy establishment had left behind scandal, dishonesty, and even genocide in her political wake.

Rice’s involvement in genocide had been linked to the same quality that had entangled her in Benghazi. “If we use the word genocide and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November election?” Samantha Power, who would later become Obama’s UN Ambassador, quoted Rice as saying during the Rwandan Genocide. Rice has claimed that she does not remember ever saying that.

The genocide of black people mattered less to Rice than her southern white boss winning an election.

Rice’s calculus, whether it was the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Africans or four Americans in Libya, was how it would affect the upcoming elections for Bill Clinton or Barack Obama…”

All that mattered was four more years in power.  As we’ve often observed, not until we encountered the Clintons and Obamas…and the likes of their willing acolyte Susan Rice…did we even begin to consider there might be levels in Hell.

In a related item, writing at the Democracy Fund‘s Voter Study Group, Messrs. Daniel Cox and Robert Griffin conclude…

Religious Americans Agree on Limiting In-Person Services, Split on Returning to Worship as Usual

 

“…New data from Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape shows areas of alignment and division on restoring religious conventions during the pandemic.

Most Americans believe state and local governments should have the authority to shutter places of worship temporarily to reduce transmission of the coronavirus. In Nationscape data collected between April 23 and April 30, more than three-quarters (77 percent) of the public said state and local governments should be able to limit people’s right to attend religious services in person in order to limit the spread of COVID-19. Fewer than one in four (23 percent) Americans said that the right to attend religious services in person should be protected, even if it increases the risk of people exposing themselves and others to the disease.

Further, there was widespread agreement across major religious traditions in support of governmental authority to curb religious gatherings. A majority of white evangelical Protestants (60 percent), white mainline Protestants (74 percent), white Catholics (75 percent), black Protestants (76 percent), members of non-Christian religious traditions (76 percent), Hispanic Catholics (82 percent), and religiously unaffiliated Americans (85 percent) believe government officials have the power to limit Americans from attending religious services.

Even if restrictions were lifted, not all Americans are ready to attend in-person services. In Nationscape data collected between April 16 and May 6, fewer than half (48 percent) of religiously affiliated Americans who attended services before the COVID-19 outbreak say they would definitely or probably attend religious services even if public health officials deemed it safe.

On this question, there are striking differences across religious traditions. More than six in ten (63 percent) white evangelical Protestants who attended services before the pandemic say they would likely return to the pews if public health officials advised lifting those restrictions. Fewer Muslims (50 percent), white Catholics (47 percent), white mainline Protestants (46 percent), black Protestants (46 percent), Hispanic Catholics (38 percent), and Jews (33 percent) who participated in worship services previously say they would be likely to return. At least half of those belonging to these religious groups say they are not likely to attend a worship service even if public health officials endorse lifting the restriction…”

Polls, schmolls, let alone polls purportedly recording the opinions of “religious Americans”: we for one will NEVER grant government the “right” to prohibit religious services.  Rather, in the face of a genuine pandemic (which we continue to question this actually was!), we believe churches should willingly cooperate with authorities to help limit the spread of the disease and protect their congregations.

And that, friends, is a HUGE difference.  It’s what’s sets the Constitution for the United States of America apart from just about every other basis for a system of government in history.

Which brings us to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s this from Speed Mach…

…another from Jeff Foutch…

…and yet one more from Balls Cotton:

Finally, we’ll call it a month with News of the Bizarre, and another strange story courtesy of a rather melancholy mate, as a…

Heartbreaking video shows stranded kayaker’s final moments

 

“A harrowing video (harrowing video”…REALLY?!?) depicts the tragic final moments of a kayaker stranded at sea off the coast of New South Wales, Australia. Jeremy Worthy, 43, had posted the video to Facebook Sunday as a last-ditch rescue plea before his body was discovered in the water just hours later, reports the Daily Mail.

“There’s no going back where I came…that’s too far,” laments the adventurer, who can be seen hopelessly trapped (“hopelessly trapped”…REALLY?!?) in the tumultuous swells (“tumultuous”…REALLY?!?) miles from land in any direction. (“miles from land”…

…REALLY?!?)

“[Do I] keep going or stay here?”

Prior Facebook photos from 11:20 a.m. Sunday show that the Yass, Australia, native had embarked on a kayak fishing trip. Despite getting “swamped while launching,” Worthy says “the conditions weren’t too bad past the shore waves,” according to an 11:36 a.m. post. Less than an hour later, Worthy uploaded his final video. “This is tiring,” says the exhausted Aussie about his bleak predicament, adding that “it’s cold and wet and dark.”

Despite the dire circumstances, Worthy is not above taking a cheeky jab at his mate. “Paulie, I’m blaming you for telling me to come out here,” he quips dryly. “Paul, this is on you, mate.”

The kayaker concludes the clip by commenting, “It’s nice when it calms down.”…”

So what happened to the “tumultuous swells”, and how, in less than 76 minutes (from 1120 to 1136, then “less than an hour later”) was Worthy exhausted and it become dark…the daylight in the video notwithstanding?!?  And why, if he was able to upload videos did Worthy not seek assistance?!?

As our eldest son Jon suggested, this seems like a case of suicide by kayak, as the deceased appeared to be in about as much trouble as the unfortunate featured below:

To be clear, we’re not making light of Worthy’s death, but we are questioning the quality of the reporting of his demise.

Magoo

P.S. Welcome to what Progressives TRULY intend…

…as the NEW normal!  We can only suggest they BRING IT ON!!!