Face Masks and Panic Porn

Panic porn has taken over even the medical community that should know better.  Dr. Ted Noel is an anesthesiologist who has rounded up plenty of data and studies about whether these annoying face masks are doing any good.  He concludes his American Thinker piece:

Of key interest, in one CDC study, 85% of COVID victims report nearly always wearing face masks. One study claiming benefits had to be withdrawn after its conclusions were contradicted by continuing experience. Others have major confounding variables. Mask advocates ignore significant downsides such as reduced personal performance, severe psychosocial consequences, and difficulty breathing. And the Danish Mask Study, a “gold standard” randomized, controlled study, showed no benefit to mask wearing in the general population.

Difficulty breathing is something I didn’t quite appreciate during the thirty-six years I wore a mask on a daily basis in the operating room. After all, masks were a part of life. But I always dropped my mask the moment I left the OR, and almost every other OR staff member did the same. It’s really simple. Masks increase your work of breathing. If you’re wearing a properly fitted N-95, all your air has to come in and out through that filter material. That’s work. And it makes you short of breath.

Do a simple experiment. Fold a bath towel a couple of times and try to breathe through it. Make sure you aren’t breathing around it. The filtration from the fabric creates resistance to air flow. Now do it for several minutes. That’s what breathing through an effective mask feels like. You’ll get short of breath, and as soon as you can, you’ll take it off. What you felt was increased work of breathing. And that’s why the movies often show someone being strangled with a pillow.

Most Americans intuitively recognize that masks don’t reduce infections. But they go along with the virtue signaling to be good citizens. And, to make their own life a bit better, they use a single thickness gaiter over their mouth and nose like a train robber. Or they use a face shield that does nothing at all other than “covering” their mouth and nose without restricting air flow. Often you see them with a mask over their mouth but not their nose. And of course, President Biden doesn’t wear one in the Oval Office.

Returning to Einstein, since a single mask doesn’t help in the general populace, why should anyone think that double masking might help? Or quadruple, as Dr. Segal suggests. Such suggestions fall under the logical designation of “magical thinking.” Or as Albert Einstein is reputed to have said, insanity.

The full article is here.  I wear my mask around my chin as a small protest. I’ve been asked to wear it over nose and mouth only once – at a medical clinic.

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How about Mike Gibbons

Rob Portman is not running for re-election in the U.S. Senate. Cleveland Tea Party's Ralph King posts:

Let the swamp games will begin! 

We need a good guy like Mike Gibbons at the top of the list to run for this seat -- not an establishment swamp retread like Slickster Jim Renacci or Ohio's Happy Hypocrite Jon Husted running for this seat.

More about Mr. Gibbons here. 

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He’s not running

 

Photo credit: CNBC

The headline at Breitbart:

Rep. Jim Jordan Declines to Run for Senate in 2022

The referenced report at cleveland.com is behind a paywall. To read the report at Breitbart, click here.

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Tea Party 2.0: Look Ahead America

 

Yesterday evening, our household was watching “Tipping Point” on One America News.  Kara McKinney’s guest was Matt Braynard, who was there to introduce viewers to the organization Look Ahead America (Look Ahead America). From their website:

Our Mission

There are millions of rural and blue-collar patriotic Americans who are disaffected and disenfranchised from the nation’s corridors of power. Their fears ignored, their priorities dismissed, their values ridiculed, they’ve become cynical and pessimistic about a government that so often does not hear their voices.

Our mission is to register, educate, and enfranchise these disaffected citizens and ensure that their voices are not just heard but heeded and that the American Dream becomes their dream again.

We will also organize and guide patriotic citizens in lobbying their state legislatures and local governments on America First initiatives like fighting corporate censorship and ensuring voter integrity.

You can join our effort by donating, volunteering, and spreading the word about our daunting but necessary endeavor.

My initial take:  In a sense, this is a natural successor to the 2009 Tea Party initiative, and it is a potential partner to Cleveland Tea Party.

Mr. Braynard was an articulate guest, and he informed viewers of the upcoming grassroots training session (more links to follow).  This organization seeks to influence positive conservative changes at the state and local levels, with election integrity being a major focus. One particular strategy will be to affect change in those states with conservative legislators or leadership.  (Ohio has nominally Republican leadership, so there’s a lot of work to be done.) 

Please visit their website; there are quite a few videos of Mr. Braynard’s appearances describing the organization’s upcoming activities

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Portman’s Senate seat: A Decepticon’s decision

 

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has an interesting take on Sen. Rob Portman’s announcement that he will retire when his term is up in 2023:

With four GOP senators having announced they’re not running (Burr, Johnson, Toomey, Portman) there’s essentially zero chance of the GOP retaking control of the Senate in 2022.  [20 R seats up & only 14 D seats that are in solid D strongholds] it is far more likely the Democrats will gain seats, so keep this in mind…. 

…When we think about forming a third party, the “you will split the vote” crew always peddles their vote split narrative.  However, the GOP doesn’t have a chance in hell to win 2022 given what the base of the Republicans think about these senate DeceptiCons now.

There has never been a better time for a New Party to launch and capture three or four seats from the retiring GOPe crew.  It would be great to see true MAGA representatives that can caucus with Republicans but hold ground on America First principles.

Sundance’s full report with links and commentary is here.

UPDATE:  Don Surber thinks a third party is still a bad idea.  See here.

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The Post-Inauguration World

 

Over the past couple of months, several contributors to the American Thinker blog reported on probable election fraud, including fraud allegedly related to the Dominion voting machines.  Apparently, Dominion threatened to sue the blog out of existence, and as a consequence, the proprietor, Thomas Lifson, published an abject apology for publishing such outright misinformation.  His “apology” was so out-of-character, so craven, that I for one did not believe one word.  However, some comments turned up at other blogs that linked to the apology, indicating that some readers took Mr. Lifson’s “apology” at face value.  (Mr. Lifson also discontinued publishing reader comments.  The heavy hand of censorship is silencing so many conservative voices.) 

I don’t think Mr. Lifson had a choice.  As I read it, had he not issued his “apology,” his blog – which is a labor of love – would have been crushed. So I continue to visit the American Thinker blog and frequently share content with Cleveland Tea Party readers.  Today, I’m sharing some extracts from an article by E.M. Cadwaladr:

I don't think any of us will be going back to normal anytime soon.  Recent events have broken not buildings and a few thousand lives, but the last weak remnants of the institutions that our founders left us.  We have passed, in the course of a couple months, from a world in which some grudging impulse toward fairness usually prevailed into a world in which raw power is being wielded without the slightest principle.  From a world in which legalities were worth the hope of pursuing into a world in which they are merely the formal decoration on the underlying blunt trauma of the ruling class's cudgel.  From a fragile but functional republic into a grotesque parody of one.

. . .

Unless you are willfully blind or constitutionally numb, there is a pretty good chance you are quietly, or not so quietly, afraid.  You have good cause.  If you love the country that you have rightfully inherited, you now have a target on your back.  Our institutions have completely failed us.  We alone, you and I and the insulted tens of millions, are now the only obstacle between our descendents and totalitarianism.

In the sobering and dangerous days to come, let us lose neither our principles nor our humanity.  If we must journey through the darkness, let us walk proudly as freeborn men and women and not as lawless animals or broken slaves. . . .

Read the rest here. 

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After the "mock inauguration"

 

Paul Gottfried at American Greatness traces the history of liberal progress through our bureaucratic and cultural institutions.  He goes back decades.  And he has a plan for conservatives who are reeling from the stolen election and the "mock inauguration" two days ago.  He starts off:

The conservative Catholic columnist John Zmirak ends his inauguration day column for The Stream with this expression of profound disgust:

So by all means enjoy the mock-inauguration of a corrupt, senile hack as the fruit of ballot-box stuffing and fake COVID panic. But remember that now we all live in a tinpot Bananas Republic. And a disciplined, fanatically nationalist, resurgent Red China is smiling. The virus it shipped worldwide succeeded beyond its leaders’ wildest expectations.

I quote Zmirak’s peroration because of the openness of his loathing for the administration that began its reign on Wednesday. Pat Buchanan, Roger Simon, Newt Gingrich, Roger Kimball, and Michael Walsh have all recently produced informative and eloquent columns underscoring the lies, deceit, and intimidation that they associate with the woke Left. These columnists have also documented the extent of leftist control and underlined the need to resist their odious domination.

Here’s Mr. Gottfried’s plan:

Although there are lots of properly indignant Americans on our side, we should not exaggerate the value of our hand. The best course for us to pursue given our relative weakness would be to try to isolate our opposition. Do nothing to cooperate and concede no ground. There should be no plan for “bipartisanship” or for reaching out. I can’t see the benefit of either, and as I watched Matt Continetti, Geraldo Rivera, and then Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) going after Trump for “inciting a riot” during his last weeks in office, I was struck by the futility of this groveling to the Left. 

Conservatives in Congress should treat the Biden-Harris Administration exactly the way the Democrats treated Trump’s presidency, by totally dissociating themselves from any of its actions. This resistance could have started (and for many did) by ignoring the “mock inauguration” that John Zmirak so pungently described.

And, oh yes, avoid the word “president” in designating the implausible new occupant of the White House.

Or put the word “president” in scare quotes.  Mr. Gottfried’s full column is here. 

Bonus link:  Katie Hopkins was in DC for the "inauguration."  Her report is here.

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