Energy independence: gone

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

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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.

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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.)

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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.) 

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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.

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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.

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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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