Peter Skurkiss on Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (RINO-Ohio) (with UPDATE)

 

Peter Skurkiss at American Thinker asks whether “anti-Trump RINO Rep. Anthony Gonzalez [can] survive a primary challenge?”  Gonzalez represents Ohio's 16th congressional district, which includes part of Northeast Ohio including Wayne County and parts of Cuyahoga, Medina, Summit, Portage and Stark Counties.  Mr. Skurkiss begins:

You may recall that Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (RINO-Ohio) is one of ten Republican House members who voted to impeach President Trump after he left office on the bogus charge that he had incited the riot in the nation's capital on January 6.  For this, Gonzalez was formally censured in early May by the Ohio Republican Party and asked to resign.

Far from being chastised, Gonzalez continued his vendetta against Trump and by extension MAGA supporters.  He next voted for the Democrat resolution to establish a commission to investigate the January 6 fracas.  Nancy Pelosi, chief proponent of the commission, says the commission will be "independent and bipartisan."  Who in his right mind could believe Pelosi on this?  Was there anything remotely fair or honest in the way Pelosi's House of Representatives held its two Trump impeachment trials? 

In reality, the January 6 commission will function as a red herring designed to advance the Democrat agenda going into the 2022 election.  The commission will be to focus media attention on the false Democrat argument that the events on January 6 constituted an insurrection.  By any objective standard, it did not.  All the ensuing kabuki theatrics will be a replay of the Russian collusion hoax, with the corporate media aggressively pushing the Democrat agenda.  This will be done with the intent to take the spotlight off the mounting failures of the Harris/Biden administration.  And for this, Gonzalez voted "yes."

It is interesting to hear Gonzalez's spurious argument as to why he shouldn't be purged from the Republican Party or primaried.  It's the usual trite blather: we need to be a big tent party; we can't chase voters away; dissent is healthy.  There is some truth in all those sayings, but they miss the point.  Gonzalez conflates his treason to the GOP with legitimate dissent.  Nobody would have thought ill of Benedict Arnold if he had merely disagreed with George Washington on tactics or strategy.  But Arnold went beyond the pale.  He gave aid and comfort to the enemy, just as Anthony Gonzalez has done.  Gonzalez seemingly lacks the wisdom to heed the words of Abraham Lincoln ("a house divide cannot stand") or Jesus (Mark 3:25: "and if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand").

Gonzalez is in survival mode.  He's throwing self-serving excuses around in the hope that some might stick.  Just as likely, he's also auditioning for a lucrative post-political career in the arms of those who first recruited him to come back to Ohio from California to run for office.  Gonzalez is angling to be the poster body purged by the narrow, mean-spirited Republican Party.  His big-money backers will lap that up. 

Skurkiss closes with a comparison to Jane Timken’s candidacy for Portman’s Senate seat in the 2022 election:

As to Gonzalez's vote to impeach President Trump, Timken was initially soft on Gonzalez.  . . .  But now that [Josh] Mandel, a MAGA man, has sharply criticized Timken for supporting Gonzalez, she has abruptly changed her tune.  She now is reported to favor Gonzalez out of office.  Some profile in courage that Timken is.  . . .

Anthony Gonzalez and Jane Timken typify all that is wrong with the established Republican Party.  The sooner they and their ilk are driven from power, the stronger and better the party will be.  To be a big tent party does not require that back-stabbers be tolerated.

That’s most of Mr. Skurkiss’s article, but click here for the entire article.

Update from David M. Drucker at the Washington Examiner:

Republican Max Miller is poised to ride an endorsement from Donald Trump to victory over Rep. Anthony Gonzalez in a GOP primary in Ohio, a contest unfolding as a clear test of the former president’s influence with grassroots conservatives.

Miller, a 32-year-old former Trump White House aide, was endorsed by the former president soon after announcing for the Cleveland-area 16th Congressional District. Trump was intent on getting revenge on Gonzalez, a second-term congressman among the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him in the waning days of his administration for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s swift endorsement of Miller has, so far, kept other Republicans who might want to challenge Gonzalez, 36, out of the race. Party insiders are skeptical that will change, setting up a one-on-one contest between pro-Trump and anti-Trump candidates on track to reveal how much punch the former president has in GOP primaries post-White House.

More here.

# # #

 

Coercive Control: Fauci Speaks

 

We’ve all noticed (read: we are unable to avoid seeing or hearing) ads promoting COVID-19 vaccination.  Ohio’s Governor DeWine added million dollar lotteries to vaccinated Ohioans in order to bribe encourage people to get the jab.  Why are federal and state governments trying so hard to promote an experimental vaccine?  It would seem that they might be pushing too hard.  

And Megan Fox at PJ Media has a column on “The Age of Coercive Control:  We’re in an Abusive Relationship with Our Government Now.”  The full article is here, and it considers government over-reach on COVID-19 and other matters.  But here are two headlines that reveal some of the carrots and sticks to force people to get the jab. 

At The Blaze:

Dr. Fauci: Expect cruise lines and airlines to require proof

of vaccination before you can travel 

At Breitbart: 

Anthony Fauci Predicts Airlines, Universities

Will Require Proof of Vaccination

Ms. Fox looks at other ways that Americans are now being controlled, including by “Monitoring Activities” and surveillance, isolation, financial restrictions, and other controls.  This blog linked to information on vaccination passports here. Tea Party people want to get the information and then make up their own minds. 

# # #

Independence Day fireworks: they’re on

Marc Bona at Cleveland.com reports:

The Fourth of July fireworks are coming back to downtown Cleveland for the first [time] since 2019. Light Up the Lake – Downtown Cleveland Alliance’s annual free, family-friendly fireworks show – is scheduled for Sunday, July 4. The 2020 display was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Folks can head downtown with blankets and chairs between 8 p.m. and midnight. Fireworks are slated to go off from Dock 20, which is just southwest of FirstEnergy Stadium.

The location offers a variety of viewing vantages downtown. Suggested viewing areas include the Flats – both East and West banks - and North Coast Harbor.

 # # #

Vaccine Passports: a bad idea

 

Although author Janet Levy is drawing on some California statutes, her analysis on vaccine passports applies to all of us. From American Thinker:

. . .digital records can be used to track people. Cyberattacks and data glitches could reveal private medical information. Worst of all, vaxxports create a two-tiered society. Those who choose not to be vaccinated – for religious reasons or because the non-FDA approved vaccines are of dubious safety and efficacy – won’t be able to move about freely and lead normal lives.

Peggy Hall, a community leader who runs the website The Healthy American, exposes the duplicity of the county’s Board of Supervisors. She says that by not formally mandating vaxxports, the county can affirm adherence to the California civil code (CIV Sec 51), entitling every individual free and equal access to “all services in any business establishment of any kind whatsoever, regardless of their medical condition.” The true fight, she says, is to get the Board of Supervisors to state on record that they will prosecute businesses for discrimination should they demand vaccine passports from customers.

Ms. Hall also draws on another California law – the Protection of Human Subjects in Medical Experimentation Act – giving individuals the right “to determine what is done to their own bodies” and “the right to decide or consent or not to consent to a medical experiment without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, coercion or undue influence on the subject’s decision.” Since all anti-COVID vaccines remain unapproved, they may be deemed experimental. Therefore, individuals have the right to refuse and should not be penalized in any way for doing so.

Ms. Levy’s full article is here.

# # #

The Tyrants Among Us

The Editorial Board at Issues and Insights gives us fair warning on returning to normalcy:

 Of course they’re not going to let a crisis go to waste.

   . . . 

There’s a natural progression from the pandemic lockdowns to restrictions on freedom in the name of saving the sky from global warming. But the tyrants among us won’t stop there. We find it useful here to quote the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s international affairs analyst, who realized more than six months ago that “the virus of tyranny has already found itself in the bloodstream of liberal democracies.”

For instance:

• President Joe Biden and his party hope to saddle Americans, through undisciplined spending, with debt and a de facto tax (inflation) that can be repaid only by mortgaging the future and bondage to the federal monster.
• There is a core on the left, not even the hard left, that is resisting a return to normal. It wants liberty-shackling rules in place in perpetuity.
• Our freedom to speak will continue to be abridged.
• Our ability to make independent and individual health care decisions will be curtailed further.
• Second Amendment rights will be in danger of being rolled back because of “public health” needs.
• Expect to be forced out of our fossil-fuel-burning automobiles and herded into mass transit.
• Protests and rallies will be put down as insurrections – unless they are in service of the “right” groups, such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

Once lost, freedom is difficult to regain. “Be warned,” says author Michael Walsh. “If you think the petty tyrants currently making your lives miserable are going to willingly relinquish their illicit powers, think again. They’ve got a taste for it now.”

So intoxicated from their deep swig of power are they that they no longer see boundaries, just opportunities to subjugate. Fight back, or lose in a few years what has made America unique and great for more than two centuries

The entire editorial is here.

# # #

A columnist’s heroes: David Horowitz and Donald J. Trump

 

Bruce Bawer is a regular contributor to Front Page Magazineonline.  In his view, David Horowitz and Donald J. Trump are not “principled conservatives” – except that the opposite is true.  Here’s Mr. Bawer:

In their article, [Ronald] Radosh and [Sol] Stern contrast David Horowitz to what they call “principled conservatives.” This is a term we see often these days. It is used by never-Trumpers to describe their own wonderful selves. It is premised on the notion that before Trump came along, the GOP was a party of perfect dignity and decorum, seemliness and respectability, ethics and honor. Well, let me put in my own two cents here. Nearly four decades ago, I began my career writing for conservative publications – mostly about cultural topics (novels, poetry, movies), rarely if ever about politics per se. At first, it didn’t matter that I was gay. Homosexuality wasn’t a frequent topic in political magazines in those days. A few years later, however, as gay-rights issues heated up, it began to matter quite a bit.

Even back then, there were many gay writers at conservative publications. But some weren’t out to their editors, fearing that they would be fired if they revealed themselves. (One of them told me at the time that his editor looked upon him as a son, but if he knew he was gay, “I’d be dead to him.”) Many others were out to their editors, but, knowing the unwritten rules, didn’t mention their sexual orientation in print. One friend of mine was an exception: not understanding those unwritten rules, he published a book in the early 1990s in which he referred in passing to his homosexuality. As a result, he was, to his everlasting shock, given the boot by the editor of the conservative magazine to which he was a frequent contributor. His offense, the editor made clear, wasn’t being gay – the editor had never had a problem with that – but mentioning it in print. Anywhere.

It was a different time.

In 1993 it was my turn. In that year I published a book, A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society, that argued for the full inclusion of openly gay people in American society while also criticizing the “queer” left for its far-left radicalism, hatred of America, and love of its own marginality. I saw it as a deeply conservative book. But it made many conservatives, especially members of the pre-boomer generation who still held the reins at the magazines and journals, uncomfortable. Over the course of a year or two, I found myself estranged from all my conservative outlets – an estrangement that would last two decades, until (in most cases) a younger generation of editors took over. Some of those publications closed their doors to me; others I walked away from, recognizing that, for the time being at least, my continued presence there made both me and my editors uneasy, and that my hours there were almost surely numbered anyway.

And it was at precisely that point that David Horowitz – a virtual stranger to me, but aware of what I was going through – reached out, inviting me to write for his magazine Heterodoxy. It was a gesture – dare I say a principled gesture? – that I have never forgotten.

My feelings about David Horowitz are in many ways mirrored by my feelings about Donald Trump. As noted, self-regarding conservative veterans like Radosh and Stern tend to write about the pre-Trump GOP as if its leading figures were amalgams of Edmund Burke and St. Francis of Assisi. For my part, I cast my first presidential vote ever for Gerald Ford and my second for Ronald Reagan. But after that, the party’s presidential candidates, whether they won or lost, held little appeal for me. (This is not to say that their Democratic counterparts were any better.) They all used ugly, malevolent gay-bashing to win votes, implying that gay people were the greatest threat of all to American values. Trump – “vulgar” Trump – never stooped that low. He never came close. During the 2016 campaign I kept holding my breath waiting for it to happen – it had to happen; he was a Republican – and it never happened.

Vulgar? Nasty? No, in thunder. He was nothing less than noble. Not just in the way he talked to gays, but also in the way he addressed blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, Appalachian coal miners, Midwestern farmers, the military, the police. There was not a hint of Democratic identity-group pandering, and none of the awkwardness of a George H.W. Bush, say, trying desperately to pretend to relate to people about whose lives he was utterly clueless. Yes, Trump was a billionaire, but he had spent his adult life on construction sites rubbing shoulders with plumbers, carpenters, welders, roofers, glaziers, electricians, and other working stiffs; and he had hired and promoted – and fired – on the basis of excellence and nothing else.

And that was only a small part of what he did. He effected changes in the GOP that I had been dreaming of my whole adult life. His love for America, and respect for Americans, high and low, were palpable. He made most of the GOP presidential hopefuls before him, and most of the Republicans in Congress during his own tenure, look like wimps, hacks, careerists, phonies, cowards. Unlike all those “principled conservatives” whom Radosh and Stern celebrate, Trump was a Republican presidential candidate whom I could cheer without serious reservation. He knew what the real issues were. He knew who the real enemies were. He knew the real America, and was fully on its side. And through it all, he was never afraid to speak the truth, loud and clear.

Just like – yes – a certain American hero named David Horowitz.  

Full article is here.

# # #

 

Mark Steyn on post-constitutional America

 

Mark Steyn concludes his column “America’s PoliticalPrisoners”:

In post-constitutional America, there is no equality before the law: If you riot violently in Minneapolis or Portland, you'll be cheered on by the media and Democrats, and bailed out by Seth Rogen or a Kamala Harris staffer. If you're let into the US Capitol by its so-called "police" and leave the statuary et al untouched, you'll be charged with trespassing, and, despite having no criminal record, will languish in prison (for over four months so far) until trial begins.

Those jailed for the events of January 6th are what we would call in other countries "political prisoners". Mr Chansley is in the slammer to concentrate his mind: right now, it's trespassing, but we see you used an ATM en route to DC, and you wouldn't want us to throw in "disrupting interstate commerce", would you?

As I've said for a long time, "federal justice" is an oxymoron - and, if you get a whiff that you're attracting the attention of this dirty rotten stinkin' evil system, flee the country. Meanwhile, I'm thinking of making a complaint to the UN Human Rights Council about the detainees of January 6th: If nothing else, it'll give the Cubans and Sudanese a laugh.

Mr. Steyn’s full column is here.

# # #

Socialism's seductive appeal

 

Roger Kimball has good history and philosophical lessons for us at American Greatness. He concludes:

For centuries, prudent political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny. The rise of political correctness has redistributed that lust over a new roster of issues: not the proletariat, but the environment, not the struggling masses, but “reproductive freedom,” gay rights, the welfare state, the Third World, diversity training, and an end to racism and xenophobia. It looks, in Marx’s famous mot, like history repeating itself as farce. It would be a rash man, however, who made no provision for a reprise of tragedy.

Such attitudes are all but ubiquitous in modern democratic societies. Although of relatively recent vintage, they have spread rapidly. The triumph of this aspect of Enlightened thinking, as [philosopher David] Stove notes, marked the moment when “the softening of human life became the great, almost the only, moral desideratum.”

The modern welfare state is one result of the triumph of abstract benevolence. Its chief effects are to institutionalize dependence on the state while also assuring the steady growth of the bureaucracy charged with managing government largess. Both help to explain why the welfare state has proved so difficult to dismantle. The governments that support the welfare state, Stove points out,

are elected by universal adult franchise; but an electorally decisive proportion of the voters—in some countries, approaching a quarter—either is employed by government or is dependent to a significant extent on some welfare programme. In these circumstances it is merely childish to expect the welfare state to be reduced, at least while there is universal suffrage. A government that did away with free education, for example, or socialised medicine, simply could not be re-elected. Indeed it would be lucky to see out its term of office.

Is there an alternative? Stove quotes Thomas Malthus’ observation, from his famous “Essay on Population,” that “we are indebted for all the noblest exertions of human genius, for everything that distinguishes the civilised from the savage state,” to “the laws of property and marriage, and to the apparently narrow principle of self-interest which prompts each individual to exert himself in bettering his condition.”

“The apparently narrow principle of self-interest,” mind you.

Contrast that robust, realistic observation with Robert Owen’s blather about replacing the “individual selfish system” with a “united social” system that, he promised, would bring forth a “new man.”

Stove observes that Malthus’ arguments for the genuinely beneficent effects of “the apparently narrow principle of self-interest” “cannot be too often repeated.” Indeed. Even so, a look around at the childish pretended enthusiasm for socialism makes me think that, for all his emphasis, Stove understated the case. Jim Carrey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (not to mention a college student near you) would profit by having a closer acquaintance with the clear-eyed thinking of Thomas Malthus.

It’s the same lessons that gave America its first Thanksgiving;  when collective socialism failed, the settlers learned that freedom, incentive, and private property harnessed self-interest to the greater good.

Read Mr. Kimball’s entire essay here.

# # #

Energy independence: gone

 Usual fun and satire at The Week In Pictures at Powerline, including this meme:

# # #

Police Officer Memorial Day

From the National Police week website: 

Washington, (March 10, 2021) - Host organizations of National Police Week, which include the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum, the Fraternal Order of Police and Auxiliary (FOP), and Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S), have made the difficult but necessary decision, due to the ongoing pandemic, to postpone in-person events of National Police Week to October 13-17, 2021, in Washington, D.C. The rescheduling of the originally planned events to be held May 11-16, 2021, is due to the inability to secure necessary permits in time for in-person gatherings due to the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.

The National Police Weekend will offer the same honor, remembrance, and peer support as the extended National Police Week, while allowing law enforcement, survivors, and citizens to gather and pay homage to those who gave their lives in the line of duty.

Today was the originally scheduled day for Police Officer Memorials.

A few years ago, we visited the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum in DC.  Here are some photographs of police memorabilia, exhibits, and by happy chance, some displays showcasing police work in northeast Ohio.  Images by Pat Dooley photography (no Facebook page any more, so ignore the byline on one of the photos):

Click to embiggen.

# # #

The Three Faces of the Republican Party?

 

At American Thinker, Patricia McCarthy comes close in her title:

The Three Faces of the Republican Party

…

Thanks to Donald Trump, we can all clearly see who among our officials actually represents the American people who elected them; which members of Congress are interested only in keeping their seats; and those who passively align themselves with the Democrats to push our republic into a version of communist China with a social credit system, struggle sessions, and mandatory submission to an all-powerful government that would make Mao and Stalin proud.  Far too many of them are sitting still for this.

The Republican Party is in serious disarray; it's fractured.  Yellow-bellies like Kevin McCarthy are the majority, and the open NeverTrumps are traitors to their constituents.  Where do they all seem to work together?  When confirming Biden's dismal appointees to high office within his illegitimate administration.  They are all awful!  William Burns for CIA has numerous links to the Communist Party of China; Susan Hennessey to the DOJ is a confirmed rabid Russia hoaxer.  Lisa Monaco probably ordered the raid on Giuliani.

On this one score, their three faces meld into one insipid like-mind that cravenly submits to the most radical administration in U.S. history.  Republicans never fight as the Dems do.  They capitulate.  The Democrats never capitulate; they fight like the thugs they are.

Under the Biden administration, those of us who continue to embrace Trump's America First policies that engendered the best economy for all demographics, who support securing our southern border, who were thrilled by the energy independence that Trump brought about and the de-regulation that energized so many small and large businesses, are even more deplorable to the left now than we were in Hillary Clinton's view.  Wanting a free and economically powerful America is anathema to the left.  The left means to indoctrinate our kids rather than educate them.  Leftists' totalitarian agenda demands "equity" rather than equality; skin color reigns supreme.  They mean to cripple this nation; no more oil exploration, no more secure borders, no more law and order, no more freedom of speech or assembly, no more Second Amendment.  The left means to destroy America as founded, and, though interrupted by Trump's presidency, the Soros-Obama plan is back in play.  China owns Biden, and he is speeding up America's decline in service of the communist nation and the globalists.

The left is by nature miserable.  Leftists will not rest until everyone is as miserable as they are.  And because our ruling class is thoroughly removed from reality, they believe that their prescriptions for the rest of us will never affect their oh, so privileged lifestyles.  The left suffers from dissociative identity disorder, too: "a mental illness that involves disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/or perception."  That pretty much sums up too many members of our political class, left and right.  Think Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.  Think Joe Biden.

When the right does not fight back against the left's anti-American grand plan — its absurd erasure of biological sex, its primacy of criminals over law-abiding citizens — the right is as certifiably mentally ill as the left.  That the Republicans are not, as a whole, standing up against the pandemic nonsense — mask mandates and lockdowns — is so disappointing.  They should be fighting for the essential "my body, my choice" when it comes to vaccines!  Why are they not, as a cohesive group, opposing the very notion of vaccine passports?  Why can't the Republicans in Congress learn from governors like DeSantis?  They don't.  They are cowering in the corners of their congressional offices, terrified of the left media.  God forbid they be criticized by a mindless hack at the NYT or on CNN or MSNBC.

The Republican Party is suffering from an identity crisis.  What is a Republican?  For what principles do these people stand tall?  We know who the good guys are, but they are a minority.  Why aren't all of the elected Republicans on the same page?

The easy explanation:  Most of them belong to the Uniparty-R.  (Full article is here.)

# # #

 

Falling Down and Falling Apart

 

On his blogsite, Robert Stacy McCain quoted part of Tucker Carlson’s Tuesday monologue yesterday.  Our household deleted Fox from our Favorites list some months ago, but Mr. Carlson made some good points.

The lessons of [the 1993 film] Falling Down were on my mind as I watched Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue for his Tuesday program:

There are a lot of unprecedented things happening, but not all of them are shocking. For example, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that, once they got their hands on real power, the same lunatics who don’t believe in human biology immediately made a serious mess of our economy. It took them less than six months to do it.

First, they acted like the U.S. dollar had no value. They spent money like they’d just printed it for the occasion, which, needless to say, they had. Predictably, we wound up with frightening levels of inflation, which for the record they still deny exists. But inflation does exist, as you well know if you live here.

Corn prices, to name just one example of a staple commodity that’s now out of control, have risen by 50 percent just since January. But that wasn’t bad enough. The lunatics decided to make it worse. They paid millions of Americans more than they make at work, to stay home and do nothing. To justify doing this, they used the word “COVID” quite a bit, but it had nothing to do with the pandemic. They just wanted to break the system. And so they did. And the rest of us immediately wound up with a bewildering combination of rising unemployment in the middle of a severe labor shortage.

So, at the very same time, we found ourselves with too many workers, and also too few workers. That doesn’t even make sense, but thanks to their policies, that’s now exactly what we have. And then, finally, in case 2021 didn’t remind you enough of a grimmer version of the 1970s, we now have serious gas shortages, in a country that just recently was energy independent. All along the east coast of the country today, people couldn’t fill up their cars. The footage looks like Venezuela.

And so forth. The real point — why it reminded me of Falling Down — is that ordinary citizens are powerless to fix this manmade disaster. The people in charge don’t give a damn about ordinary citizens, because if they did, they wouldn’t have done what they’ve done. We find ourselves in a broken system, where the incentives have gone haywire, and the world has stopped making sense. 

See – it’s not just you.  (Mr. McCain's full blog post is here.) 

# # #

Available early treatment protocols?

 

Mark Wauck at Meaning in History has useful information just in case you are exposed to COVID-19; his post concludes:

The article--What is causing COVID-19 deaths to spike in India?--is highly informative and contains multiple graphs that illustrate the author's points in a useful way. Beyond that, however, the author points out another signal failure of our Covid response: the systemic failure to authorize a treatment regime for Covid. Indeed, we now know that the reason for this failure--this refusal--is closely linked to the push for vaxxing. Here is his conclusion:

This finding reinforces why an early treatment protocol is essential. However, my own doctor confirms there is no early treatment approved to treat COVID-19 in the U.S. (and probably most western countries) except quarantine with instructions to go to the hospital when symptoms worsen. This (perhaps criminal) omission is one more reason deaths got so high.  

A new anti-viral drug called Molupiravir is nearing completion of clinical trials.  It is intended as a five-day outpatient treatment similar to Tamiflu commonly prescribed to combat the effects of influenza. It would lack the unwarranted controversy surrounding the off-label use of HCQ making it ideal for an early treatment protocol.    

Until the CDC authorizes an early treatment protocol, we are on our own. However, there are several inexpensive, safe, common vitamins/drugs proven effective against COVID-19 that are available over the counter.  Examples include vitamin    D3,  Zinc, Glutathione, Quercetin, and even low-dose aspirin. There are others, and with some research you can be your own first responder. 

Full blog post is here.

# # #

The Infernal Revenue Service

 

Here’s Cal Thomas at Newsbusters on torture at tax time:

Thanks to the beneficence of the Internal Revenue Service -- and the fallout from COVID-19 -- we half of Americans who pay federal income taxes have been given until May 17 to file.

Since I began earning enough to file Form 1040 and associated forms, I have only known one person who prepared his own taxes. That was Bill Archer, a Texas Republican who formerly headed the House Ways and Means Committee. I once asked Archer why he prepared his. His reply was that not only did he think it was fun, but because he helped write the tax code, he felt a responsibility to demonstrate competence in filling out the forms.

These days, the forms are so complicated, hardly anyone I know understands them. The instructions need instructions.

I have again filed jointly with my wife (more than 70 pages). She owns a business, so it is more complicated than if we filed separately. Still, the forms require translating a language I have never studied and wouldn't want to. If you call the IRS and ask for help, you are still responsible for interest and penalties if they give the wrong advice.

How complicated is it? Here are just a few examples. Right off the top, I am threatened with prison should I knowingly fudge information on the form. The federal government does threats very well, including those read by flight attendants. Refuse to wear a mask, even if vaccinated, and you risk arrest. Don't even think of tampering with the smoke detector. Even the post office is now spying on us.

How's this for clarity from the estimated tax worksheet: "Add lines 2a and 2b. Subtract line 2c from line 1. Figure your tax on the amount on line 3 by using the 2021 Tax Tables. Caution: If you will have qualified dividends or a net capital gain or expect to exclude or deduct foreign earned income or housing, see worksheets 2-5 and 2-6 in Pub. 505 to figure the tax."

Got that?

There are schedules and forms for everything. They are nearly as numerous as the growing list of gender identities. Under Schedule D, Profits and Losses, there is this gibberish: "Totals for all short-term transactions reported on Form 1099-B for which basis was reported to the IRS and for which you have no adjustments (see instructions). However, if you choose to report all these transactions on Form 8949, leave this line blank and go to line 1b."

Say what?

No civilized society should force its citizens to go through this annual torture.

. . .

The rest is here.

#  #  #

David Horowitz: Divisions of our time

 

David Horowitz is a red-diaper baby who not only rejects communism but is an eloquent and prolific defender of the Constitution and freedom.  He is the proprietor of David Horowitz’s Freedom Center and its online presence at Front Page Mag.  His essay yesterday is my idea of a must-read.  It begins:

My Former Friends Have Joined the Fascists:

A personal tale of the divisions of our time.

The accusation that dissent is dangerous and must be suppressed mimics the fascist voice of the Democrat Party in its campaign to criminalize anyone who questions the 2020 election. Calling the break-in to the Capitol “an armed insurrection,” when there were no arms and no insurrections, ordering 25,000 troops to the Capitol to deal with a non-existent threat, calling Republicans “enemies of the state” (Pelosi), authorizing witch-hunts of (right wing) “extremists” in the military, the Capitol police and the Department of Homeland Security, seeking the expulsion of Senators Hawley and Cruz and the impeachment of the president for questioning the legitimacy of the electors are of a piece with Radosh and Stern’s malicious charge against me. The aim is to criminalize dissent and make it a high crime in the process.

The reality of course is that Democrats themselves have challenged the legitimacy of every Republican presidential victory this century, including the election of Trump, which they have never accepted. Their “resistance” has caused great damage to the republic, which they prefer not to notice.

The full essay is here. 

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Wokeness erasing America

 

Most excellent commentary from Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness:

If wokeness should continue and “win,” by now we all know where it will end up. After all, this is not a prairie-fire, peasants-with-pitchforks, spontaneous bottom-up revolution.

The woke Left seeks a top-down erasure of America, engineered by the likes of LeBron James from his $40 million estate talking revolution to Oprah at her $90 million castle, as Mark Zuckerberg throws in $500 million here, and his colleagues $400 million there, and as the top executives of Coke, Target, and Delta Airlines believe their $17 million-a-year salaries make them experts on the crimes of non-diversity, exclusion, and inequity. Anytime revolutionaries at the outset of their enterprises seek exemption from the consequences of their own ideology, we know their plans will end badly for everyone else.

. . .

Full article is here.

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Absurdities Of The COVID Pandemic

A.F. Branco cartoons are published at Legal Insurrection.com

The Top 10 Absurdities Of The COVID Pandemic…So Far 

by Zero Hedge,posting at InfoWars

In countdown order:

#10 – One-way traffic rules in supermarket aisles –

#9 – COVID is Trump’s fault –

#8 – Teachers can’t go back to work, but everyone else can –

#7 – It was xenophobic for Trump to halt travel from China  –

#6 – Fifteen days to slow the spread  –

#5 – President Joe Biden: “Help is on the way” –

#4 – The response by The World Health Organization –

#3 – Blue states did it better –

#2 – Get the vaccine, but keep doing all of the other stuff  –

#1 – Wear two masks  –

The beginning of the pandemic was chaotic, and it would have been understandable if Dr. Anthony Fauci had simply made a mistake when he told us we didn’t need masks. But it wasn’t a mistake. He lied to us and admitted doing so. Fauci justified his deceit by claiming concern that masks might not be available for health care professionals. Then Fauci decided to stop lying to us and told us to wear masks, but wouldn’t even follow his own directive. Fauci threw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals opening game last year, and forget that he threw the ball like a little girl; which, if anything, is insulting to little girls. He was wearing a mask despite the nearest person being sixty feet away. He then proceeded to sit in the stands directly next to a friend, at which point he removed his mask. Then late last year Fauci decided that it would be best if we wore two masks, without any evidence to support his notion. Like lockdowns, there’s still no evidence that mask-wearing had a significant impact on the pandemic. Dr. Fauci has zero credibility at this point, and if you’re following this recommendation by wearing two masks, then you are a moron.

More chapter-and-verse  here.

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Babylon Bee Fun

 From the newspaper of record, er, satire at the Babylon Bee:

CIA Replaces Waterboarding With 12-Hour Lectures On Intersectional Feminism

May 5th, 2021 - BabylonBee.com

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Real "Left and Right" of Politics

Insanity Wrap #201 (a/k/a Stephen Green) posted the graph below:

It seems like every week there’s some new chart or graph like this one, but Insanity Wrap thought this one was particularly thoughtful and well done. (Click to embiggen or click on the link above and scroll down).

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“I’m Still Not Getting the Vaccine”

 

Dan Gelernter posted “I’m Still Not Getting the Vaccine” at American Greatness:

. . . We have decided to make avoiding disease our full-time job. It’s more important than going to work or seeing your friends. It’s worth destroying the established Western social convention that we be able to see each other’s faces in public. 

I’ve got news for you: If you spend all your time worrying about getting sick, you’re sick already. America is having a giant, hysterical, hypochondriacal fit. 

. . .

As a young and healthy person, there is really no upside to vaccination. I’m simply not likely to get the disease. And, say what you will, we don’t know what the long-term effects of this vaccine will be. 

(Full article is here.) And America’s Frontline Doctors has a sort of “white paper” on why an “experimental” vaccine injection cannot be mandated, legally [endnotes not included in this extract]:

Covid-19 Vaccines are Experimental

Covid-19 vaccines are not approved by the FDA.  The Covid-19 vaccines are only approved under an Emergency Use Authorization, for investigational use only. Covid-19 vaccines lack requisite studies and are not approved medical treatment. The FDA’s guidance on emergency use authorization of medical products requires the FDA to “ensure that recipients are informed to the extent practicable given the applicable circumstances … That they have the option to accept or refuse the EUA product …”

. . .

The right to avoid the imposition of human experimentation is fundamental, rooted in the Nuremberg Code of 1947, has been ratified by the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki, and further codified in the United States Code of Federal Regulations. In addition to the United States regarding itself as bound by these provisions, these principles were adopted by the FDA in its regulations requiring the informed consent of human subjects for medical research. It is unlawful to conduct medical research, even in the case of an emergency, unless steps are taken to secure informed consent of all participants

The white paper (just 3 pages including endnotes] specifies students but the legal constraints protect us all.

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Donald J. Trump's new website

 

It's up.  And here's the link:  <https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk>

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Epidemics: then and now

 

Wolf Howling posted a piece a week or so ago at Bookworm Room that makes the case that the city of Charleston, SC handled the 1760 epidemic of small pox better than the United States has handled COVID-19.  The contrasts are remarkable:

. . . the final death toll in the city [pop. 8,000 in 1760) was merely 650 people from small pox and, by June, there was only one reported case of the disease in Charleston. Life was wholly back to normal.

That contrasts starkly with the course of Covid 19 epidemic. Our modern society has tried to use quarantine to cure the illness, rather than letting the disease run its course, especially among those not endangered by the disease. Instead of being done with Covid 19 in a matter of months, we are still wrestling with it well over a year on, and at tremendous cost to our nation, both economic and otherwise.

In 1760, the people of Charleston faced a deadly epidemic that they handled with grace and at minimal cost to society. In 2020-2021, our nation has faced a mild epidemic that it has handled with fear-mongering and government mandates. And unlike the Great Charleston Small Pox Epidemic that was over in approximately four months, our modern society is still dragging on – at great expense – our response to Covid 19. Will someone please explain to me how we have advanced in intelligence and common sense relative to our colonial forebears some 260 years ago?

The full article is here.

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Your Feel-Good Story of the Day: Romney “showered with boos”

Andrew Mark Miller has the story at the Washington Examiner:

Romney showered with boos at GOP event
as hecklers call him a 'communist' and 'traitor'

Sen. Mitt Romney was showered with loud boos by a Republican audience in Utah as he attempted to slam President Joe Biden’s agenda.

“I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues,” Romney said Saturday as delegates at Utah’s Republican convention shouted their disapproval, with some calling him a “traitor” and a “communist.”

Aren’t you embarrassed?” Romney asked the crowd at one point.

Romney also touted his Republican credentials and told the crowd that the boos don’t bother him.

“You can boo all you like,” said Romney. “I’ve been a Republican all of my life. My dad was the governor of Michigan, and I was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.”

The jeers finally stopped when the outgoing party chairman urged the delegates to “show respect.”

More at the link.  Utah conservatives are not feeding Romney The RINO.  Bravo!

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Ending Masks in Schools – for starters

 

I am posting this from today’s Insanity Wrap in the hopes that some readers with kids in public schools will be inspired to tear a page from the AZ parents:

Insanity Wrap isn’t going to sugar-coat this one: It’s the greatest thing in the history of all things since we don’t know when.

Hundreds of parents showed up to the Vail School Board meeting to demand the board make masks optional. The board didn’t want to hear it so they walked out of the meeting before it even began. So the parents, under Robert’s Rules of Order, voted in a new school board. Then, the new members voted to end the mask requirement in Vail Schools.

The full 94-minute video of the entire thing is on YouTube.

Watching these parents using Robert’s Rules to vote themselves as board members in place of the runaway cowards is maybe the most delightfully American thing we’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing.

We earnestly hope this makes your day — week, year — as much as it did ours.

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Not the State of the Union Address

 

They are not calling it the State of the Union address.  The by-invitation-only event is being referred to as the “Presidential Address to the Joint Session of Congress.”  It starts this evening, Weds. Apr-28 at 9pm.  The TV Guide lists it as concluding at 11pm.  Will our President make it through the full two hours?

No matter.  You don’t have to watch it, because Vodkapundit will be live DrunkBlogging the address;  click here.   

UPDATE at 8:48pm:  Direct link is now up; click here.

(Mr. Vodkapundit already gave us the heads up from yesterday’s Insanity Wrap blog:

Insanity Wrap will return in our VodkaPundit guise on Wednesday evening right here at PJ Media for a much-requested drunkblog of Presidentish Biden’s much-delayed State of the Union address.)

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