It’s Friday, January 28th, 2022…but before we begin, another picture worth far more than a mere thousand words:

Meanwhile, as this video from James Nichols reveals, nothing to see here, America…

…please move along like the sheep you’ve been conditioned to be.

By the way, when the country and world are going to Hell in a hand basket and the complete incompetent responsible…and his equally inept handlers…find tweets such as this appropriate…

…we’re all for…

Hat tip to Speed for the Mean Tweets meme and James Nichols for the tweet.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, a favor.  Here’s a link to a GoFundMe page for… 

This is a case where we’re personally acquainted with the parties involved, and know for certain the only option to their great aunt caring for them is giving these precious babies up to foster care.  Problem is, the great aunt and her husband both work full-time in a hair salon they own, and though they frankly don’t have the money necessary to care for Matthew and Mya at the moment, they’re committed to raising them until their birth mother’s on her feet again, a very lengthy process.

So any amount anyone would care to give would be both greatly appreciated and sure to be spent on the intended purpose.

Moving on, writing at The Epoch Times, James Dale Davidson details how…

Covid Hysteria Degrades Public Discourse

 

““Our public health agencies—together with their cronies in mainstream media, Big Pharma, and Big Tech—have been conspiring for almost two years to keep you very afraid…

“One way they have been keeping you scared is by vastly inflating the number of deaths that are actually attributed to the virus.

“It’s a story you won’t hear about from most media outlets. Still, countries across the globe are quietly lowering the number of deaths caused by Covid. Take Italy, for example. A couple of weeks ago, Italy’s National Institute of Health (ISS) made a shocking revelation. They admitted their country’s official number of Covid-19 deaths had been greatly miscalculated. And they revised the numbers to reflect that 97% of reported ‘Covid deaths’ were probably not due to Covid after all. It turns out that of the 130,000 deaths that were registered as official Covid fatalities, only 3,800 were directly attributed to the virus. The others died with Covid, but not from Covid. It’s a distinction our government hierarchy refuses to accept.” — Dr. Al Sears, a doctor of medicine based in Florida.

Think about it. Italy’s National Institute of Health revises down the official number of COVID deaths by 97 percent. That is a significant fact. But I would bet a significant amount of money that you have heard not a whisper of it.

A toxic combination of “political correctness,” Big Tech censorship, and crony capitalist special pleading has effectively twisted the public dialog about COVID in a fashion that heightens hysteria and public fear. Government officials want to intimidate you into ceding your freedom and autonomy.

…Early in the pandemic, I read a fascinating argument advanced by two doctors in California, drawing attention to the slippery statistics that over-stated deaths from the pandemic. They argued that anyone who died after testing positive for COVID-19 was added to the COVID tally, quite apart from whether COVID was reasonably implicated as the cause. Thus, a COVID-positive pedestrian run-over by a bus would be counted as a COVID-19 victim.

That sort of nonsense underscores the importance of genuine freedom of speech. It is more difficult for the authorities to frighten the public into ceding their freedom. The hope for informed civic discourse depends on circumventing political controls on thought.“

In a related item courtesy of Townhall.com, Dennis Prager explains…

Why the Masked and the Unmasked Have Disdain for Each Other

 

“Among the many unbridgeable divides between Americans is a completely antithetical view of mask wearing. On one side are those who wear masks almost everywhere outside their homes and who demand that others do so, including young children in class and on outdoor playgrounds, and 2-year-olds on airplanes.

“On the other side are those who only wear a mask where they are punished for not doing so (most obviously, airplanes). They regard masks as essentially pacifiers for adults.

Generally speaking, these two groups have disdain for each other.

Why the pro-mask half of America holds the anti-mask half in contempt needs little explanation. They believe anti-mask Americans are putting others in grave danger. Pro-maskers believe that even children who do not wear masks put their own lives and the lives of other children and teachers at risk.

Consequently, pro-mask Americans regard those who do not wear masks, let alone those who actively oppose mask-wearing, as selfish, anti-science potential killers.

What may be less obvious is why anti-maskers hold pro-maskers in equal contempt. So, this needs explaining in greater detail. After all, anti-maskers don’t believe that maskers are putting people in hospitals.

First, anti-maskers regard the charges made against them by pro-maskers as baseless. Therefore, as odd as it sounds, anti-maskers have contempt for the pro-maskers’ contempt. To wrongly charge people with causing mass death is, to understate the case, immoral. And if this charge is demonstrably wrong, the people who level it are the ones who are anti-science.

Since each side regards the other as anti-science, what is the science? 

Nearly all public health authorities claim that masks are absolutely necessary to save lives. But they have virtually no science to back up the claim.

There is, however, abundant scientific evidence that masks are worthless vis-a-vis viruses and do great harm to society.

Here is a fraction of the examples I could give…”

Rand Paul offered this advice for anyone confronted by a mask Karen like those in the video above:

Here’s the juice: Mask hysteria is just another example of life imitating art…

…and is unsupported by anything remotely approaching “science”.

Turning from science to political science, AEI‘s M. Anthony Mills wonders…

Is this still an emergency?

As with 9/11, we cannot sustain crisis politics for years after a moment of unity passes.

 

“With a new variant running rampant, an enormous wave of cases, hospitals under strain, mask mandates returning, states of emergency being redeclared, and schools reverting to virtual learning, it is easy to get the sense that we have slid back to where we started. A raft of news articles in late December described the perilous and demoralizing feeling that the country was returning to the pandemic moment of early 2020.

Yet much has changed in two years. Besides the fact that Omicron is milder, we now have vaccines, antivirals, and a much better understanding of the disease and how to treat it. Logistical, rather epidemiological, problems — such as the shortage of health care workers, the distribution of new medical treatments, and inadequate testing capacity — increasingly take center stage in our policy debates.

But the change goes much deeper than this. The political form of the crisis itself is now fundamentally different.

Back in March 2020 — when the country finally snapped to attention — the rationale for shutting down national life was not that everyone faced the same degree of risk. Rather, it was that the only effective way to neutralize the threat was for all of us to work together. Those who could stay home should, for the sake of those who couldn’t — to “flatten the curve” and relieve our health care system. The rationale for pandemic policies was altruistic, though paradoxically so: We had to withdraw from our common life to protect the common good.

What the pandemic gave rise to, then, was not just extraordinary policies — such as school closures and stay-at-home orders — but an extraordinary form of politics. A community facing a crisis of such magnitude becomes unified. Analogies with World War II were commonplace: We are facing a once-in-a-century global threat that requires all of us to make personal sacrifices for the greater good, much as during the 1940s Americans accepted rationing and planted victory gardens and sent their sons to fight and die overseas for the sake of defeating the Axis powers.

It is easy to forget now how real that unity was in the pandemic’s early phase. The doubts about restrictions that are now so pervasive were the province of a small minority (A province, we’re proud to say, in which we resided.). Most elected leaders — including President Trump himself — ignored the skeptics and heeded the advice of the experts, who then urged lockdown policies. And the large majority of our fellow citizens went along with them. Indeed, research suggests that many Americans were already voluntarily withdrawing from public activities before leaders imposed restrictions.

That moment has passed. We are no longer unified as a country around a shared purpose and mission. Instead, we are increasingly polarized along familiar ideological, sociological, and geographic lines, precisely about how we view Covid and what it demands of us.

This polarization is, of course, widely recognized and bemoaned. And yet much of our country’s political and media leadership seems unable to come to grips with our fractured state. They persist in a political mode that wishes the country back into that unifying moment of March 2020.

The Trump administration squandered an opportunity to lead during our moment of unity, needlessly undermining it with mixed messaging and by sowing distrust. The Biden administration is now undermining its own pandemic response for almost the opposite reason: by failing to articulate a clear objective and path to victory to a stubbornly divided country that can no longer agree about what kind of threat it faces, much less what to do about it.

If we have any hope of a return to normal life, our leaders must come to grips with the return of normal politics…”

Here’s the juice: When it comes to constructing an offramp from the WuFlu Thruway, if Progressive politicians have any say whatsoever, there’ll be…

And in the EnvironMental Moment, in a forward from Jeff Foutch, the Institute for Energy Research records 46*’s…

Interior Department Revokes Federal Leases for Twin Metals Minnesota

 

“President Biden’s Department of the Interior revoked existing federal leases for Twin Metals Minnesota to mine copper, nickel, cobalt, and platinum-group elements in the Superior National Forest. These metals are needed for President Biden’s program for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies. Electric vehicles, for instance, use twice as much copper as vehicles with internal combustion engines. Instead of producing these metals domestically, President Biden wants to be dependent on imports. Biden is choosing foreign sourced minerals, including mines that use child slave labor, over domestic mines and a union workforce that follows the best labor and environmental standards in the world in order to kowtow to environmentalists who want to ban mining in the United States. With less worldwide production of these metals and growing demand for them, their prices will skyrocket and be passed onto consumers who will eventually be forced into buying the products as auto manufacturers are planning to manufacture only electric vehicles in the future.

To reach a green energy future, the International Energy Agency (IEA) found that the world needed to massively increase its production of minerals—forecasting needed growth of graphite, cobalt, nickel, copper, graphite, and lithium by between 20 and 40 times by 2040…”

Anyone care to guess where the majority of said imports will originate?  Yeah, that’s right…

The cost of which will of course include a little something extra for Hunter and the Big Guy.

It’s worth noting the revocation was issued despite Twin Rivers commitment to use only electric vehicles in its mining operations, as well as putting forward a plan which would have minimal environmental impact.  Such counterproductive psychopathy surely begs the question from whence, other than foreign sources which involve far more environmentally destructive mining than in the U.S., these Birkenstockers hope to produce the raw materials necessary for their utopian clean energy future?  Other than, of course…

Next, another septet of items specially selected with inquiring Conservative minds in mind:

(1). Having learned nothing from the disaster which resulted the last time he made such a commitment…

…46* reiterated his campaign pledge to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.

(2). In two related items, Charlie Cooke first gives us four reasons Justice Breyer’s retirement may not be all bad news for Conservatives, then relates why Kommielaa won’t be a candidate.  The Journal’s Kim Strassel opines on reason #3, while the most important reason may well prove to be reason #2.

(3). The Morning Jolt offers a primer in how to stop Russia from initiating a “volcano of violence” from in Europe.

(4). Writing at NRO, Wes Smith records how the once-dependable/now-dismissible George Will contradicts himself in promoting assisted suicide.

(5). Courtesy of the WSJ, Dan Henninger correctly concludes, “The primary culprits aren’t the perpetrators running wild through a society that has devalued accountability. The blame lies with the adults in the room, the establishment elites, who have so often explained away and validated this behavior.”  Don’t forget the educational system which taught the perps such behavior was de rigueur.

(6). Perhaps if Biden hadn’t green-lighted the Nord Stream 2 pipeline like he did an incursion into Ukraine, his State Department wouldn’t have found it necessary to threaten its destruction.

(7). In yet another real shocker, a report in the Washington Examiner forwarded by George Lawlor informs us Black Lies Matter’s millions are unaccounted for after its leaders quietly jumped ship, noting:

“No one appears to have been in charge at Black Lives Matter for months. The address it lists on tax forms is wrong, and the charity’s (“charity“?!?) two board members won’t say who controls its $60 million bankroll, a Washington Examiner investigation has found.“

Making Black Lies Matter one of biggest scams since Jim and Tammy Fay.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…

…the lovely Shannon…

…Speed…

…and Major Jon…

…along with four bon mots from Ed Hickey:

Finally, we’ll call it a week with the Just Desserts segment, courtesy today of yet another educated idiot, as Cal Coast News describes…

San Luis Obispo climate change activist Heidi Harmon’s electric car calamity

 

“Former San Luis Obispo mayor and climate change activist Heidi Harmon attempted to “do the right thing,” and travel to a rally in San Francisco in an electric car. After multiple attempts to find a working charging station in San Jose, Harmon realized charging the car would take up to seven hours and there was no way she could make the rally.

Harmon posted multiple videos about her difficulties in traveling in an all-electric vehicle. She discusses calling the police or asking someone to send a helicopter to rescue her.

Many of the posts have now been deleted, though a collage of portions of Harmon’s videos remains…”

Oh, the humanity!  What,…Uber doesn’t operate in San Jose?!?

Magoo

Video of the Day

Jesse Watters highlights how Nancy the Red came to possess so much green. If there are levels to Hell, we know on which Nancy’s seat is reserved.

Tales of The Darkside

John Stossel relates how and why the once-Golden State has steadily headed into the tank.  This isn’t madness, and it sure as heck isn’t Sparta: It’s UTTER SOCIALIST INSANITY!!!

On the Lighter Side

Courtesy of Jeff Foutch, a glass half-full look at the stark statistics of Black crime.

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