As a wise ambassador once said, there are three sides to every story. Your side, his side, and the truth. This blog is dedicated to always showing you the third edge of the sword.
For a two-week period that began Tuesday, people can go to work only if their employer cannot make tele-commuting possible.
But news reports have shown groups of friends and families strolling in parks despite the clampdown, prompting calls from some officials for even stricter limits.
Many have been observed ignoring the one-meter (three feet) safe inter-personal distance in queues at the essential businesses that were allowed to stay open.
And one thing that caught my eye was that people were required to remain at home. But what about the homeless?
Oh good...law abiding citizens who own the local hardware store are required to remain in their homes hiding from a virus, while useless drug addled pieces of (literal) human trash are able to wander around to their hearts' content.
How long until some enterprising Californians start realizing they can just put on crappy clothes and no ID and go back to living their proper life?
With all of the Wuhan Flu events and closures and emergency economic spending etc. etc. etc. all over the world, there is one question I'm not entirely sure has been well answered:
What's the endgame?
I'm not talking as any sort of conspiracy theory of this being a practice run for longer-term government control, or even the leftists like Bernie Sanders who (simultaneously) insist this is a reason to increase long-term government power over the economy.
What's the point of all of these closures and shutdowns? Why couldn't I go to O'Byrnes on St. Patrick's Day this year? It was fun on Saturday and everything (even when Martok wore his garish all-green outfit including that stupid foam top hats), but St. Patrick's Day proper is really when you deck yourself out in greenorange and go wild at the bar. Why is it that the iconic St. Patrick's Day in Dublin/Boston/Chicago/NYC also couldn't happen with the pubs all closed? Why didn't we have to see those stupid green Maple Leafs jerseys this year because the entire NHL is shut down? Why can't I go skiing again even though Marmot continues to get good snow? What's the point of all of this? What's it all for?
The answer of course is #FlattenTheCurve. You'd think this is something about the 40th anniversary of The Dukes of Hazzard perhaps, but instead it's about a plan to make the inflection point be reached later so that the cases level off lower so that the outbreak doesn't overwhelm the healthcare system.
They've been repeating this #FlattenTheCurve mantra so often that it's curious I can't find anybody else who has been asking this basic question: how many cases can each healthcare system receive before it is overwhelmed? You can check, but nobody has been answering this (unasked) question either.
Instead what we've seen is that almost every political jurisdiction in the world taking the exact same actions at nearly the exact same times. With a couple exceptions (eg. Canada still letting planeloads of people in from Red China weeks after Trump and Putin "colluded" to both block direct travel) things are progressing everywhere at the same rate. Elections, pace President Monkey, didn't seem to matter after all. It doesn't matter if you elect a conservative (Kenney, Ford, Pallister, Trump, Johnson, Kemp) or a liberal (Rat Bastard 2.0, Newsom, Moon, Legault, Sánchez, Irish Poofter). It doesn't matter if your government is formed by a left-right coalition (Italy, Sweden, Germany, Japan) or if you don't get to choose your government at all (Iran, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia). In late February your government wanted you to self-isolate if you traveled abroad or had flu symptoms. In early March citizens were being repatriated from cruise ships. By March 12 your sports league was cancelled. By March 13th your schools were cancelled. By March 17th your bars and restaurants were closed down. By March 20th your borders were closed to nonessential travel. Sure some areas are more intense (Spain was on lockdown as of March 14th even though Queerbec bars were still serving people almost a week later), but the pattern is pretty consistent.
So are all of these countries, despite some pretty giant discrepancies in the spread of the virus (most nations got their first case roughly the same time), all having their healthcare systems at the same point in the "overwhelmed curve"? The New York Times article about this concept includes a nice pretty graph showing how implementing outbreak mitigation plans will slow the curve and keep the total number of active cases below what the healthcare system can handle.
I've adapted it below. As the question goes, we want to be in the "blue" curve not the "red" curve. But are we at the right spot in the "blue" curve? Are the cases rising in a manner which would indicate that we are going to fill the Canadian healthcare system with patients but not overwhelm it?
That's that question not asked. And it's important. Let's look at another modification to the chart which imagines the healthcare system can handle more cases than the maximum number reached based on the mitigation efforts. In this version, we have mitigated too hard and the caseload is well below what the system can accommodate.
Why is this a problem? Simple: there's a massive economic hit the world economy is taking as a result of pandemic response. It's not just in the stock crash, though that's an impact in wealth to be sure. Every nation is taking a GDP hit, and to give the rest of the post away early it is taking a hit far in excess of the impact of Wuhan Flu itself. Ten (10) deaths in Cameroon has resulted in mitigation efforts directly costing their economy 3.1% of GDP or $1.07B as of March 13th. We haven't even begun to properly calculate what the economic cost to all of this enforced and/or voluntary social distancing will be (where's Thomas Sowell when you need him?). It's not a question of will there be a cost, the question will be what will that cost be? And is it justified.
While it's a comforting platitude to bleat "if it saves even one life its worth it", it really isn't. Let's take one of my favourite subjects, highway speeds. In 2018 there were 1,922 people in Canada killed in traffic collisions, with another 152,847 injuries (9,494 of them were serious). I can bring that number all the way down to zero, effective immediately. I have a single policy proposal that would permanently end all fatalities and serious injuries, with the number of total injuries also approaching zero:
Aren't those 1900 lives worth the price? To quote Leonard Nimoy from The Simpsons: the answer is no. The price in the case of a 1km national speed limit would be the grinding to a halt of commerce, tourism, and industry. You wouldn't even have a run on toilet paper because you'd never see it. Fresh fruits and vegetables would be a thing of the past, grocery stores would be perpetually empty or stocked with expired foods. Medical supplies would never get to where they were needed. The economic impact would be incalculable. In other words, the loss of our standard of living caused by the policies that would save 1,922 dead people is not worth it. This is, of course, why the "renewable energy" crowd is totally out to lunch: even if you accepted their (false) numbers about how many people are "killed" by fossil fuels it pales in comparison to how many people are better off or indeed saved by them.
How many lives are we losing by saving Wuhan Flu patients?
Again no matter which government is in power, the choice seems to have been made: we will sacrifice everybody and everything to minimize the death toll from COVID-19. Should we be doing this? Isn't there, like traffic deaths, an acceptable number of losses for which we will shrug and say it's tragic and we're very very sorry to the families who lost loved ones but admit that the costs of saving these lives is too high and we're willing to cut them loose to keep the economic engine revving? Strangely enough, there's very little talk about this (yet), which means we're still not in a position of making rational judgements.
So far every government with the temporary exception of the UK has been totally deferential to the whims of public health officers. It's why Ontario closed bars the same day the Premier (and indeed his own public health official) insisted they wouldn't. The Prime Minister has been apparently deferring to the judgement of the same Chief Public Health Officer (CPHO) who routinely ignored the advice in her own 2006 report. Not that I'm saying we need to make this useless skank Theresa Tam our new overlord, far from it. Indeed, the very name "prime minister" reflects the reality of any properly run political structure: that there is a number of officials representing different interests and viewpoints all armed with their own facts and projections which then all have to be properly balanced in the interest of good public policy.
So after this pandemic is over, can we have an official with the equivalent role of a CPHO (CPIO?) who makes decisions based 100% on what's best for Canadian industry to balance things out? Shut down all Injun Reserves and mandatory stay-at-home order for anybody who donated money to Greenpeace? Can we obliterate all regulatory restrictions on industrial facilities, pipelines, and energy projects? After all, if it saves even one dollar of GDP than it's worth it to rewrite the COVID mantra.
Yes yes I know, lives can't be replaced (though, one notes, neither can unmanageable public debt or overpriced public sector pension expenses). But what happens when we also start risking people's lives? The Wall Street Journal, of all places, warned that global disruptions to supply chains increases the likelihood of insulin shortages, even as they are ruled "essential" services to stay open. On top of that, medicine and food and other essentials need to be transported by trucks driven by truck drivers which ever increasingly are finding these blanket bunker-in-home pandemic solutions to make their job next to impossible. However much we like to dream that "multinational corporations" are super-powerful, they are many of their subcontractors work with razor-thin margins, and massive disruptions like this mean pretty soon your insulin can't cross the globe fast enough, or your canned goods can't get across Pennsylvania when the drivers can't use the can, and the manufacturers who build the ventilators are discovering that their sub-sub-sub-supplier was not considered an "essential business" by some busibody politician in California or Italy and therefore life saving medical equipment won't get finished after all.
It's worth noting too that this economic disruption comes with its own health impacts. Poor people are less healthy than rich people, and a country's GDP can tie pretty closely to its health (when other factors are corrected for) as indicated below:
We lost 650k people to heart disease last year. The big counter for that is excerise, the big way to get lots of bad things is a lack of excerise.
We’re telling everyone to hide at home. We’re closing health clubs. If the number of people we “save” comes at the cost of a tiny increase in sedentaries’ various diseases and side effects, then we’ll be a net loser
He made a good point. Of course, the leftists pounced on him for "not being the adult in the room..."
Clearly in other situations we’d have unlimited resources for healthcare? Or is it that the extremely sick 70+ year olds who are at most risk for dying would be in the peak of health with out this situation? Or is it that what is happening is simply cost free?
These evaluations don’t even attempt to make anything like a cost benefit evaluation.
Why retreat into auto-didactics and barstool expertise instead of accepting the authority of people who actually study and know things?
Go to an expert surgeon and you discover you need surgery. Go to an expert plumber and you discover you need to hire a plumber. Go to an expert in epidemiology and we discover how to shut down the disease.
Is shutting down all public events and the rest of the various prices we’re being asked to pay worth it?
We're risking mass illness due to our "fix" in order to en masse flatten a curve that may not need to be flattened at this particular time, and indeed may never be flattened enough. Meanwhile the very thing that extended our life expectancy to the level where 80+ can have a 85.2% survival rate during a pandemic -- our high starndard of living -- is being systematically destroyed.
Call your politicians. Hold them to account. Ask them these questions.
BARCELONA, SPAIN --Spain locked down its 46 million citizens and France ordered the closing of just about everything the rest of the world loves about it -- the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the cafes and restaurants -- as governments took increasingly desperate measures to put more space between people and contain the coronavirus.
So now the same Spaniards who were mad at Trump that they couldn't go from Frankfurt to Denver are discovering 48hrs later they can't go from Madrid to Bilbao.
48 hours after that none of them can get into Canada.
Did you ever think you'd live to see the day it came true?
Yes that's right, "Chief" Frank Alec literally beat his wife. Almost to death. And because he's a privileged Red Indian, he only got 9 months in jail.
So this is a good time to remind you of why "murdered and missing indigenous women" (MMIW) is a thing: their menfolk are violent savages. Okay, the women are too: but jackpine savage man versus jackpine savage woman is still a pretty quick fight. The squaw doesn't stand a chance.
In the social justice crowd however, the general received wisdom is that this is yet another "legacy of Residential Schools". [the only thing that doesn't appear to be a legacy of Residential Schools is educated Indians... -ed] But is that backed up by the facts? Are missing and murdered squaws only to be found in Canada? Wouldn't this same sociological phenomenon in a political jurisdiction with a completely different history negate this claim?
153 cases of missing or murdered indigenous women were missing from law enforcement records, according to a study done by the Urban Indian Health Institute.
Nine of those cases were in Anchorage.
“The 153 cases were not in law enforcement records, but what’s really disturbing about all of that, is why aren’t they?” Asked Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center Executive Director Tami Truett Jerue at an Anchorage Assembly public safety committee meeting Wednesday.
The committee was meeting in part to discuss the high rates of these crimes.
“Unfortunately, Alaska does rank fourth in the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls cases, as we can document it, at this point,” Truett said. “Anecdotally, we know it’s higher.”
"Anecdotally we know it's higher"...this oral history nonsense is sure pervasive, isn't it? Regardless, in Alaska Eskimo women go missing or get murdered pretty often compared to the white Alaskans, almost as if there's some sort of inherent racial attribute causing it.
Meanwhile remember when they said it's the fourth highest? Do they mean in the world? Is this just a pale imitation of the Canadian effect?
Native American women face a staggering rate of violence of any type. According to the Indian Law Resource Center, more than 4 out of 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than 1 in 2 women have experienced sexual assault or harassment.
The Indian Law Resource Center also cites the epidemic of missing Native American women, and says they cannot get a precise estimate due to an inadequate reporting system. The Urban Indian Health Institute published a report titled “Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls” and found that of 5,712 cases of missing or murdered American Indian or Alaskan Native heritage were reported in 2016, only 116 were entered into the Department of Justice’s database.
Operation Lady Justice aims to erode this trend by implementing a seemingly stronger bureaucratic framework. This includes establishing “a multi-disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional team, which will include tribal law enforcement, to review cold cases,” consulting with tribal governments, and developing presumably updated “model protocols and procedures for addressing both new and unsolved cases of missing and murdered persons in tribal communities,” along with other communication and awareness campaigns.
Advocates in the Native American community have doubts about the task force’s power. They point to the lack of representation on the task force itself, which is composed of officials from federal agencies, but no one from an indigenous American community.
What the hell will somebody "from an indigenous American community" contribute to this task force? They don't have any special knowledge, or skills, or power. They would just be there to check boxes and get in the way.
However both the Trump Task Force and violent Frank Alec provide the same data point: that the cause of "missing and murdered indigenous women" has nothing to do with Canada's efforts to educate the Red Indian as mandated by the treaties Canada is routinely and falsely accused of violating. Instead, the cause can be attributed to bad lifestyle choices made by the squaws themselves, as conservatives have long since insisted. They become dirty street hookers (who tend to get murdered). They marry within their own race and wind up with husbands like Frank Alec. They (unavoidably) have Red Indian fathers and brothers and male cousins who similarly rape and/or murder them. The other data point that Red Indian activists find unacceptable, the high incarceration rate in both Canada¶ and the United States, seems to speak to a moral or behavioural failing within the race itself. No Residential Schools are required.
† If you're about to fly off the handle about how the "correct" term is "Inuit" then you're an ignorant fool: there are no Inuit tribe in Alaska. It would be like referring to people from Denmark as "German" because you were told that "European" was an ethnic slur. ‡ If you're not flying off the handle about how this is an incorrect term, what's wrong with you? To be a "native American" involves literally being born in America. That's exactly what, for geopolitical purposes, a "native" is. ¶ The Canadian rate, it should note, should be higher: thanks to the disastrous R v. Gladue (1999) ruling, men like Frank Alec who commit horrible crimes against their own people get reduced or even suspended sentences instead of the full equal-to-whites sentence they deserve.
Bonus "problems with the people who wandered onto this land first and did little else" discovery: I'm in the middle of a re-read of Anna Karenina (I try to read it every decade or so). About halfway through the book, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, trying to cement his political power as his domestic power wanes, gets involved in the Tsarist equivalent of a Royal Commission into the self-preserving political machinations of something called the "Native Tribes Organization Committee". No such historical body seems to have existed, but it's interesting to note that lousy conditions on "Indian Reserves" isn't a uniquely Canadian problem:
He demanded the appointment of another special commission to inquire into the question of the Native Tribes Organization Committee. The question of the Native Tribes had been brought up incidentally in the Commission of the 2nd of June, and had been pressed forward actively by Alexey Alexandrovitch as one admitting of no delay on account of the deplorable condition of the native tribes. In the commission this question had been a ground of contention between several departments. The department hostile to Alexey Alexandrovitch proved that the condition of the native tribes was exceedingly flourishing, that the proposed reconstruction might be the ruin of their prosperity, and that if there were anything wrong, it arose mainly from the failure on the part of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department to carry out the measures prescribed by law. Now Alexey Alexandrovitch intended to demand: First, that a new commission should be formed which should be empowered to investigate the condition of the native tribes on the spot; secondly, if it should appear that the condition of the native tribes actually was such as it appeared to be from the official documents in the hands of the committee, that another new scientific commission should be appointed to investigate the deplorable condition of the native tribes from the—(1) political, (2) administrative, (3) economic, (4) ethnographical, (5) material, and (6) religious points of view; thirdly, that evidence should be required from the rival department of the measures that had been taken during the last ten years by that department for averting the disastrous conditions in which the native tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally, that that department explain why it had, as appeared from the evidence before the committee, from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from December 5, 1863, and June 7, 1864, acted in direct contravention of the intent of the law T... Act 18, and the note to Act 36.
It's an interesting read, especially seeing as how relatively recent case law supports the Sullum thesis more than the Price thesis:
In 2014, Kaci Hickox, a nurse who had treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, was detained for 80 hours after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport, then sent back to her home state of Maine under an order by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Although Hickox had no Ebola symptoms and had tested negative for the virus, Maine Gov. Paul LePage ordered her to remain at her home in Fort Kent for three weeks. Hickox, who defied that order by going for a bike ride, successfully challenged LePage's edict in state court.
Charles C. LaVerdiere, chief judge of the Maine District Courts, ruled that any potential threat posed by Hickox could be adequately addressed by "direct active monitoring" aimed at detecting the onset of symptoms should she become ill. Since Hickox "currently does not show any symptoms of Ebola and is therefore not infectious," LaVerdiere said, forcibly isolating her at her home was not justified.
Sullum notes that there's a lot of overlap between the mass quarantine powers of all levels of United States governments and the power to force people into psychiatric care.
Of course, the wet dream of far-left advocates like Price is right here north of the 49th parallel, where the Supreme Court routinely decides that that pesky Charter of Freedoms doesn't apply unless you're a Niggerfag interested in molesting underage boys or getting your balls chopped off and demanding entrance to the women's changing rooms, meaning that the Government of Canada has realistically no restrictions in what it can decide to do.†
There is an actual Quarantine Act (2005): An Act to prevent the introduction and spread of communicable diseases. Strangely enough though, it doesn't mention anything about large scale quarantine orders, and instead is all about the process to force individuals with diseases to obey quarantine orders or the transportation of cadavers. Indeed, the Act permits the federal government to force people to turn their homes or businesses into quarantine zones as long as they get the province on board:
7 The Minister may by order designate any place in Canada as a quarantine facility and amend, cancel or reinstate the designation.
8 (1) Any person in charge of a place shall, at the request of the Minister, provide that place to the Minister if, in the opinion of the Minister, the temporary use of the place as a quarantine facility is necessary to protect public health.
(2) The place is deemed to be designated as a quarantine facility.
(3) The Minister may compensate any person for the Minister’s use of the place.
(4) The Minister shall consult with the provincial public health authority of the province in which the place is situated before taking possession of it.
But that's pretty weak sauce compared to how things are done in the (infected) Shiny Pony's favourite country of China.
8 (1) While a declaration of a public welfare emergency is in effect, the Governor in Council may make such orders or regulations with respect to the following matters as the Governor in Council believes, on reasonable grounds, are necessary for dealing with the emergency:
(a) the regulation or prohibition of travel to, from or within any specified area, where necessary for the protection of the health or safety of individuals;
(b) the evacuation of persons and the removal of personal property from any specified area and the making of arrangements for the adequate care and protection of the persons and property;
(c) the requisition, use or disposition of property;
(d) the authorization of or direction to any person, or any person of a class of persons, to render essential services of a type that that person, or a person of that class, is competent to provide and the provision of reasonable compensation in respect of services so rendered;
(e) the regulation of the distribution and availability of essential goods, services and resources;
(f) the authorization and making of emergency payments;
(g) the establishment of emergency shelters and hospitals;
(h) the assessment of damage to any works or undertakings and the repair, replacement or restoration thereof;
(i) the assessment of damage to the environment and the elimination or alleviation of the damage; and
(j) the imposition
(i) on summary conviction, of a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or imprisonment not exceeding six months or both that fine and imprisonment, or
(ii) on indictment, of a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding five years or both that fine and imprisonment, for contravention of any order or regulation made under this section.
(2) Where a declaration of a public welfare emergency specifies that the direct effects of the emergency extend only to a specified area of Canada, the power under subsection (1) to make orders and regulations, and any powers, duties or functions conferred or imposed by or pursuant to any such order or regulation, may be exercised or performed only with respect to that area.
So the provinces (and as mentioned, the unions) still exert some control over the situation. Note to Jason Kenney: this is your chance to stick it to the feds at a moment's notice.
(3) The power under subsection (1) to make orders and regulations, and any powers, duties or functions conferred or imposed by or pursuant to any such order or regulation,
(a) shall be exercised or performed
(i) in a manner that will not unduly impair the ability of any province to take measures, under an Act of the legislature of the province, for dealing with an emergency in the province, and
(ii) with the view of achieving, to the extent possible, concerted action with each province with respect to which the power, duty or function is exercised or performed; and
(b) shall not be exercised or performed for the purpose of terminating a strike or lock-out or imposing a settlement in a labour dispute.
9 (1) Nothing in a declaration of a public welfare emergency or in any order or regulation made pursuant thereto shall be construed or applied so as to derogate from, or to authorize the derogation from, the control or direction of the government of a province or a municipality over any police force over which it normally has control or direction.
(2) Where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is used or employed in a province or municipality pursuant to an arrangement under section 20 of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act, subsection (1) applies in respect of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, subject to the terms and conditions of the arrangement.
Democrats are deeply angry at the ways in which Trump and his enablers within the GOP have steered the country. In exit polling in California's primary last week, almost 3 in 4 voters (73%) described themselves as "angry" about the Trump administration. In Texas, more than 6 in 10 (62%) said the same. And in Virginia, 58% described themselves as angry at the Trump administration.
(After the exchange was criticized by both Sanders and Trump's campaigns, Biden said Tuesday, "I'm surprised that Sanders is joining Trump. It's surprising.")
A video recently circulated by conservative outlets falsely suggested Biden supports widespread confiscation of guns, according to FactCheck.org.
Given that mood, it's hard to see how Biden getting in a shouting match with a guy saying that Biden wants to take away peoples' guns (fact check: not true) and using a few expletives to make his point is a negative (if it has any impact at all) for him.
There's also a deeply rich irony here in the Trump campaign trying to suggest that confrontations, generally speaking, and a politician using a few curse words is a bad thing. After all, this President loves confrontation! And cussing! Often in public! And dismissing those who say that he isn't acting presidential as wimps and whiners!
Yes, this is a huge double standard. When Trump tells people where they can stick it, his fans say he's being tough and standing up for America. When Biden does the same, he's unhinged.
Look. I'm not sure this one incident changes many -- or any -- voters' minds. But to the extent it does have an impact, it's hard for me to see this as anything but good for Biden as he seeks to put away Sanders in the primary and pivot to taking on Trump in the general.
And will Biden be changing his platform after winning the primary? After all, maybe he'll pull a routine like President Monkey did on endorsing illegitimate sodomite fake marriages: talk about how his "opinion has evolved". There is some precedent for it...I'm not talking about former primary versus general elections either. I'm talking about Joe Biden talking about gun control over the course of that clip: 0:12 Biden: "I support the second amendment" 0:15 Biden: "it's like right now if you yell fire, that's not free speech" (this would be Biden being against freedom of speech, actually) 0:28 Biden: "I'm not taking your guns away, at all" 0:32 Wayne: "You were with Beto when you said you were going to take our gun rights away" 0:35 Biden: "I did not say that, that's not true" 0:45 Biden: "Wait, wait, wait, wait, we'll take your AR-14s away" (this would be Biden agreeing to take away a fictional gun from an XBox game)
In the span of 17 seconds Biden goes from not taking guns away to taking guns away. So why doesn't FactCheck.org consider that the most recent Biden statement we have as of the time of writing explicitly says he plans to take guns away?
Seriously though, long before COVID-2019 became a thing, between the U.S. Presidential Election and everything else did anybody even know/care there was an Olympic Summer Games being held in Tokyo this year?
With the COVID-19 health crisis worsening, Alberta energy-hating Tim Horton's is taking the opportunity to protect public health improve profitability by cancelling Roll Up the Rim except online using their app. If you're asking isn't that the app with all the privacy and functional issues? the answer is yes.
Is there a risk that Roll Up the Rim will increase the chances of Timmy Ho customers getting the coronavirus? Tiny, but sure. Is there a risk that continuing to use Roll Up cups will hurt the company bottom line? Absolutely.
You see, when you go to an online/email model instead of a physical model, the number of people who redeem their prizes is significantly reduced. I can't find any figures on the web but I've heard less than half. It's similar to the reason companies love "e-billing": they know that the number of emails we all receive mean the odds of us missing an email about a bill increase versus getting a sheet of paper in our mailbox. That means charging those sweet sweet late fees which drive a surprising amount of the income of utilities. So when you get an "e-coupon" from Tim Hortons instead of a physical piece of wax-covered paper, you are less likely to remember to cash it in. Sure the physical ones can get lost too, but in reality going to an all-electronic freebie model means they have to give away fewer free coffees and doughnuts. Obviously the chances of you winning a RAV4 and forgetting about it because you don't read the "you just won a RAV4" email often enough to stick it in your brain is basically zero. But free coffees? Will people other than regular daily users of the app remember them?
The only health impact from this change is to the bottom line: Tim Horton's is going to make a killing on the new Roll Up the Rim promotion.
We learned back in the President Monkey days that negroes appear awfully tribal in their voting practices. After all, you don't hit 100% support in Detroit without a few dudes shutting off the civilized parts of their brains and getting no further than "LOOK LIKES ME=GOOD". I was more than willing to assert these motives to them.
Okay they didn't quite say it like that. But not that far off, frankly.
As we show in our new book, “Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior,” the generally unified preference among black Americans for Democratic candidates (in 2016, according to exit polls, the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, won 88 percent of the black vote, compared with 8 percent for Republican Donald Trump) reflects not unified political preferences, but a social process by which black Americans hold one another accountable for voting in favor of the party that is understood to best represent the group as whole.
Um...wow. So this book by Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird (aren't you missing a vowel in there, Cheryl?) is essentially saying that when niggers vote, they all are expected to share their vote with each other and therefore all express their vote as a block.
That's such anathemia to the entire concept of liberal democracy that WaPo (as noted in the clever pun for the post title) is supposedly so committed to. To have their pages be used to say "well, for civilized white people maybe. niggers would prefer to club anybody over the head for supporting it" is hilarious.
This isn’t to suggest the absence of some fairly wide policy agreements among African Americans, but rather that without this social process, the degree of partisan unity at the polls would not hold.
Oh, that's much better than isn't it? Wait, no. It would be bad enough if negroes were a massive voting block like Wahabbi Muslims who all fervently support all the exact same policy goals. For them to all have different ideals and principles and priorities and interests and then to still mass ignore or abandon them as part of their tribal loyalty is really sickening. I've written before that letting women vote was generally a bad idea but who knew that extending it to other races would be such a disaster? Well, the Washington Post, presumably.
The lesson to take from what we know about why black voting is steadfastly Democratic in general elections, and to apply to the primaries, is that candidates seeking to consolidate bloc-like support from black voters have a twofold job. First, without party identification as a shortcut for political decision-making, the candidates have to prove to black voters that they have unique claim to the likelihood that they will represent the interests of the black community
Without a "LOOK LIKES ME=GOOD" and it's close cousin "HAS 'D' IN THEIR PARTY NAME=GOOD" shorthands, heaven forbid, negro voters will have to forego the mental shortcuts they maintain to replace rational decision making and instead resort to...
...um, too...?
Second, they need to show that they can deliver on the black community’s understood interest in beating the Republican, particularly President Trump, in the general election. These two criteria can consolidate the impression that a particular candidate is clearly best for the group
So replace "HAS 'D' IN THEIR PARTY NAME=GOOD" with "ORANGE MAN=BAD", I suppose. In the meanwhile, remember that part I quoted at the start about 88% voting for Hillary and "only" 8% of blacks voting for Trump? Halfway through their article, White/Laird revisit this point by mentioning that 85% of black voters recently said they would vote for Warren/Sanders head-to-head against The Donald. Still tribal, but less so apparently. Is the legendary "shy Tory" effect at play even when it comes to the primitivized negro vote? Apparently! (WaPo, incidently, dismisses talk of a surge of Trump voters just because he's polling almost double what he got in 2016. Black voters aren't the only tribal ones around here...)
Meanwhile the discussion about the since-vanquished Mini-Mike is even more illuminating:
Bloomberg’s recent rise is perhaps most revealing about the trade-offs black voters face in the Democratic primary. As a mayor who, for years, embraced and perpetuated a stop-and-frisk policy that targeted African Americans and Latinos, Bloomberg is not well liked among black Americans. The January Post-Ipsos poll found Bloomberg had only a 29 percent net favorability rating among African Americans (with the caveat that many of those polled had either never heard of him or had no opinion) — compared with 69 percent for Biden, 63 percent for Sanders and 51 percent for Warren. In the same poll, among registered black voters, nearly 14 percent reported they wouldn’t vote in the general election if Bloomberg were the Democratic nominee — compared with 6 percent for Biden, 8 percent for Sanders and 10 percent for Warren. Lastly, when asked who would be the best candidate at addressing issues that are important to the black community, only 3 percent of black Democrats identified Bloomberg as the best, compared with 32 percent who selected Biden and 19 percent who chose Sanders.
Ignoring the fact that the biggest beneficiaries of stock-and-frisk are the poor negro communities that have most violent and thuggish of their citizenry suffering instead of them (the Professional Niggers® don't understand this: as this article makes it clear, rational thought continues to elude them), apparently their opinion of how a Bloomberg Presidency would improve their lives has little to do with what his policy goals actually are and instead is completely dependent on whether or not he would win. Better the guy who would (apparently) cause them harm than somebody they are trained like apes to dislike that would implement policy goals they approve of.
That this speaks ill of negro voters apparently occurs to White/Laird, who finish their article off by trying to mischaracterize negro voters as being better than they really are.
Many of Bloomberg’s priorities remain at odds with more policy-grounded group interests of black Americans.
Leftists always lie. niggers don't have policy-grounded group interests. They remain petty, tribal, and uncivilized.
This year the always-overhyped International Women's Day does not fall on a workday, which is a shame because one of the more perverse thrills is going to Subway for lunch on those days and literally having a woman make me a sandwich.
This year though is almost better: by falling on the second Sunday in March, it also falls on the same day as the beginning of Daylight Savings Time. At 2am this morning all clocks in Canada and the United States (excepting Saskatchewan) changed to 3am, the infamous "spring ahead". Why is that interesting/important? Well, because that means...
International Women's Day 2020 is officially the shortest day of the year.
I don't even mean "day" as shorthand for "daytime" like we do on the winter solstice every year: it literally is shorter. International Women's Day is only 23 hours long, unlike 24 days for every other day (excepting the end of Daylight Savings Time which is, of course, 25 hours to "make up" the one lost to today.
Maybe we should make that International Men's Day...
Bonus Tess Riski "investigating the alt-right" article: When the right is physically present when somebody "verbally harasses" a left-wing lunatic she can't denounce him fast enough.
Bonus Bonus Tess Riski article: Hey, these train blockades are the hip new thing apparently, and she's very calm and neutral as Americans try to claim that climate change is a bigger problem than their mere crimes against humanity.
You probably never heard of X-Site Energy before this week. I certainly never had, though I've certainly driven by their Red Deer offices a few times, probably their Edson offices (since all Edson businesses are within a stone's throw of Highway 16), maybe even their Grande Prairie offices. They're just another oilfield services company.
Wait, sorry, I think I missed that. Can you show it to me again? Sure!
Nice, but I see you had to take a screenshot from a news report. Do you have a hastily made homemade better version?
Great! Is there an artsy fartsy version?
All I need is a "clean" gif version and I'll be happy.
So now that we've had some fun with the decal, let's be very very sad that X-Site CEO has apologized. You never apologize. Ever. That just emboldens them for next time.
I guarantee I will never apologize for this post. Greta the Magic Retard demands an audience with politicians and media and made herself a public figure. Eat it. Eat every last ash-filled bite of it, just like the cartoon version of your vagina is clearly eating X-Site Energy's meaty dick.
Because let's remember that's what this is: a cartoon version of a public figure. Apparently some whiner in Queerbec demanded a police investigation. The same people who coo and cheer when child molesting faggots dressed like women read sick sodomite stories to kids in the public library apparently don't think it's now kosher to sexualize a cartoon depiction of a 17-yr old who wants to have her arguments treated like an adult. For half a decade now Greta the Magic Retard could murder her unborn baby without parental consent. Girls a third of her age are being given hormones without parental consent because they are delusional enough to think they aren't girls. (At least Greta's delusion, that CO2 is real, doesn't require any disfiguring outside the massive estrogen boost she wants to give the world economy).
Forgetting that this is actually a tattoo whose artist loved the idea that it was sexual up until about 18 minutes ago (and good luck with your lawsuit for this same reason), public figures are open to condemnation and ridicule. Just look at cartoon Trump and Putin as a minor example. Nobody went apeshit that Trump's likeness was being used in a pornographic manner without his consent. They only do this to whiteknight Greta in order to attack the oil industry that they know does good deeds and needs to fight for its survival. We tried fighting nice, and ignoring these little fascists. That didn't work. So now we ridicule them with stickers.
And we can keep going. Remember the Kathy Griffin Trump head controversy? Let's re-create that with the Right Honourable Stephen Harper (pbuh) and Greta the Magic Retard:
Or how about going back to the cartoon gag:
Or let's go back to the sexy time:
Okay okay, enough fun. Now time to get a little serious.
Where can I get the decal? Not the mockups or the screengrabs? Where can I get the original? Or at least a high-resolution scan of the original?
Because I am going to resume the distribution of the decals. X-Site Energy sheepishly announced they were going to try and collect all the previously distributed decals. I hope they aren't wholly successful. Like those "Indian Hunting Licences" from the late 70s, I hope some hoarders keep them around. And that sooner rather than later, those physical decals or at the very least high rez copies come into my hands.
Because it's time to fight fire with fire. They blockade trains and we're the bad guys for making fun of them in sticker form? I don't think so. Greta the Magic Retard is fair game. The stickers were hilarious. They need to remain in the ecosystem. So if you find one on Kijiji, or know somebody who got their hands on one, please leave a comment below.
Together, we can humiliate the eco-terrorists who thrive on lies.
I haven't really talked about how "New Woke Trek" hasn't hit my radar very much, have I? Well, it hasn't.
Sorry Internet, I did that wrong:
Well, SPOILER ALERT, it hasn't.
The last new Star Trek property I watched was Into Darkness. You may recall my review (FaggotSpock, etc.). I didn't do a review of Star Trek Beyond because I didn't even watch it, partly because I had no interest in literally watching FaggotSulu (a woke nod to real life that even that evil sodomite Takei was upset by). That Star Trek Discovery "SJWDiscovery as I dubbed it" featured two evil sodomite main characters was all I needed to know before I chose never to let it darken my screen (which, from reviews I've seen/heard, is pretty much metaphorically what happened).
So by the time Star Trek Picard came along I knew it wasn't going to be for me. Part of the problem is that from the get-go, the series has had creative input by a man who has famously been incapable of properly understanding the character of Jean-Luc Picard. No, not Alex Kurtzmann (who has just a general lack of understanding about Star Trek). I'm talking about Patrick Stewart himself [all references to "Sir" in reference to this Brexit-hating lunatic have been removed out of respect for Her Majesty's Loyal Government. -ed]. Remember, this is the guy who welcomed Ira Steven Behr to the franchise by complaining that the diplomatic tea-drinking thinking man's starship captain didn't do "enough fighting and fucking". One of the reasons the TNG movies all suck is that, unlike the TV show, the actors sign on per-film after first seeing the script. If you read the classic Michael Pillar book FADE IN: The Making of Star Trek Insurrection (you can download the .PDF here, you'll see how one of the issues in getting it (and all TNG films) produced is getting their lead actor to sign on.
But there was one more voice at the studio to be heard from and it belonged to Jonathan Dolgen, Chairman of Viacom Entertainment Group, the chief operating officer of the company. As a rule, Dolgen doesn’t involve himself in creative decisions. But he breaks that rule for Star Trek. And it’s not (just) the money. He happens to be a huge fan. Dare I say, a Trekker?
He thought the idea of people being exploited for natural resources was old hat and that Picard needed a bigger challenge. He didn’t feel there was enough action for Picard in space. He complained the story had too much internal Star Trek intellectualism and thought the countervailing argument by the Federation conspirators made a great deal of sense. Picard might be perceived as being on the wrong side of the issue.
Rick and I were discussing how to respond to the Dolgen notes when we received a call from Australia. We’d also sent a copy of the story to Patrick Stewart.
Patrick hated the story even more than Jonathan Dolgen. (p. 95-96)
In this particular case (as Bitter Script Reader explains), Stewart referenced it being a rehash of episodes of the show, and even Brent Spiner had some positive contributions. It's not inherently bad that the actors have a say. Both of the Nicholas Meyer written TOS movies have elements that came about trying to make the actors happy: Captain Sulu drinking tea as the first line of the script to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is what convinced Takei to sign on and precluded Doohan and Nichols (who along with Takei almost banded together to refuse en masse to sign onto Star Trek V) from refusing as well. If you know the story of how Meyers wrote the first three drafts The Wrath of Khan in less than a week, you'll know that making Shatner and Nimoy happy was the impetus behind the first and second drafts (each approved by one, rejected by the other, the third combining the aspects both liked) and both of those films were received fairly well.
The comparison fails in that Shatner is driven by pure ego and can be distracted by shiny baubles, Nimoy deeply understands the Spock character and the Roddenberry world of Star Trek as a whole (and his main TWOK issue was he wanted to be killed off), and Patrick Stewart fundamentally doesn't get Jean-Luc Picard. Watch Section 5 from the infamous Mr. Plinkett review of Star Trek: Nemesis in which it's revealed why exactly there's a stupid dune buggy chase in the movie for the most glaring example (time code 4:41):
So this idiotic portrayal of Picard is the one likely sold to Patrick Stewart before he would sign onto the show. So that's already a giant part of the problem. The second part is that Stewart has famously promo'd the series by bragging about how it would do what no production by far-left Hollywood leftists were ever daring to do: criticize President Donald Trump.
Stewart went on to say that he believes the U.S. under Trump and the UK under Prime Minister Boris Johnson are “completely fucked.”
As I and many others remarked during the infamous "Trek Against Trump" campaign, left-wingers thinking that they "owned" the Star Trek concept was a little disingenuous. Jonathan Frakes apparently forgot the part where Commander Riker, when faced with an invading army pretending to be poor refugees on a mission of peace, locked phasers and prepared to blow them out of the sky. How was that different than Trump's response, other than actually being more violent? Sure, Gene Roddenberry figured the Federation had evolved into Marx's perfect communism (somehow, just before Star Trek Enterprise apparently), but that was the weirdo belief he imposed on early TNG, and even then not exactly universally. But outside of Gene between 1975-1991, "woke leftism" was hardly the total story of Star Trek.
Which pro-Vietnam War episode of the original Star Trek series was your favourite?
Yes, you read that right: episodes in favour of unilateral U.S. military action in Vietnam in the late 1960s. Now I know what you're thinking, no no, it was anti-Vietnam war: I watched that episode and it was called "The Omega Glory". Or was it Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"?
There's the thing, and that's my key point here: those episodes were against the Vietnam War. But other (better) episodes were in favour, including "Errand of Mercy" and "A Private Little War". Meanwhile, while not so explicitly about Vietnam, there was a little episode denouncing peace activists and expressing how wars can be totally justified and necessary...just a little obscure episode called "CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER". While the authors themselves were still far-left lunatics who caused huge suffering by refusing to allow America to win the Vietnam War at the very least their stories were nuanced affairs that covered both sides of the issue fairly. In fact, if you're looking at quality of episode instead of quantity of argument, it's almost like when Star Trek writers tried to promote their own political beliefs that they couldn't seem to find a narrative to support it:
City on the Edge of Forever (Pro)
Errand of Mercy (Pro)
A Private Little War (Pro)
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (Anti)
The Omega Glory (Anti)
So with that said, and acknowledging that I'm not up to speed on either series, where's the pro-Trump episode of Star Trek: Discovery? Which episode of Star Trek: Picard looks at both sides of the issue and comes down however slightly on the Brexit side of the equation? Hell, in "A Private Little War" even while the episode takes the pro-Vietnam side Dr. McCoy takes the other side of the issue. In TNG episodes like "Pen Pals" or "Who Watches the Watchers" main characters fall on two sides of an issue even as the show itself is strongly skewed in one direction.
Can we even get a sympathetic main character who expresses the beliefs of the majority of American and British voters?
Even if the other characters evaluate his/her argument and express semi-strawman takedowns of it, at the very least it can be seen to exist. But that's not how the modern far-left cancel culture works: if you deviate from the approved groupthink like a Dean Cain or Roseanne Arnold or a Manu Intiraymi then you are a nonperson who isn't being considered for roles anymore lest you use your celebrity platform to say the opposite of what celebrities are "supposed" to all think. Antonio Sabato Jr. and Kristy Swanson have also reported they have been blacklisted and wait who's Manu Intiraymi? Well I wouldn't have been able to tell you that a week ago either. I was never a big fan of Star Trek: Voyager and the "kiddie Borg" episodes are some of the worst ones, so the name of the actor who played Icheb was never anywhere in my brain. But that's who Intiraymi is, and despite even being on the "Trek Against Trump" bandwagon the rumour is that the active actor was not asked to return to his role because of comments he made about sodomite actor Anthony Rapp (one of ass pirates on SJWDiscovery) and how he was whining about Kevin Spacey's "unwanted sexual advances". It's especially ludicrous when you realize that Rapp only used it to whine about how he was being asked to ass fuck a different homo than the homo he was already ass fucking. Neither Rapp nor Intiryami are expressing the correct answer about what you do when a uranist hits on you: you break his fingers and beat him into a bloody pulp (it's easy and fun, I can assure you). But Intiryami wasn't even that rational, all he did was suggest the obvious that the #MeToo nonsense is going too far when its a complaint that you get propositioned by a creepy man who you can just go ahead and say no to. It's the "Kent Hehr leered at me in an elevator" affair all over again. Now sure, like child molesting faggot Dr. Kristopher Wells, Spacey's tastes range well into the single digits. But Rapp was 14, and Intiryami's comments coincide nicely with the people who think that a 14 year old with the same mental disability as Rapp can get his nuts cut off and go on hormone treatments, so they really have no leg to stand on here.
For more on the specific discussion, here's the RedLetterMedia Re:View episode on Star Trek: Picard episodes #5 & #6: The fate of Intiryami is an important reminder: the far-left who write for Hollywood are petty, irrational, and they will come for you unless you're in lockstep 100.5% of the time. They are as intolerant and as psychotic as the fictional right-wingers they falsely portray in media (leftists always project their own sickness onto others), and their dangerous views on the way the world should work would create a hellish Orwellian nightmare of a future. It wouldn't be anything like Star Trek, come to think of it. The perfect world of Trek requires conservatives, and trying to remove them from society would turn a wonderful civilization into a disaster. It sounds like a great relevent plot for a TV show, in fact. Pity the losers in charge of Star Trek: Picard are sticking to their tired one-sided anti-Brexit diatribe.
For a two-week period that began Tuesday, people can go to work only if their employer cannot make tele-commuting possible.
