[PJ] Robert Redfield, the former director of the CDC, told CNN that he believes COVID-19 "escaped" from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that it was spreading as early as September or October of 2020, roughly two to three months before China alerted the World Health Organization about it. He stressed that it was his opinion.
"I’m of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory," Redfield told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta. "Escaped. Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out."
"It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker," he continued, before clarifying that he was not "implying any intentionality."
"It’s my opinion, right? But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology," he added. "I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human and at that moment in time that the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission."
Redfield was the director of the CDC from 2018 through the end of the Trump administration.
[CNS] Certain national-conservative governments in East Europe should be natural allies to conservative policy makers stateside, if such unicorns existed.
Vladimir Putin’s, for example.
Before his death, from the safety of exile, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of Russia’s bravest and most brilliant sons, praised Putin’s efforts to revive Russia’s traditional Christian and moral heritage. For example:
In October 2010, it was announced that "The Gulag Archipelago" would become required reading for all Russian high-school students. In a meeting with Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Mr. Putin described "The Gulag Archipelago" as "essential reading": "Without the knowledge of that book, we would lack a full understanding of our country and it would be difficult for us to think about the future." ...
If [only] the same could be said of the high schools of the United States. (Via The Imaginative Conservative.)
The Russian president patiently tolerates America’s demented, anti-Russia monomania. And, as America sinks into the quicksands of Cultural Marxism, Putin’s inclinations are decidedly reactionary and traditionalist.
He prohibited sexual evangelizing by LGBTQ activists. He comes down squarely on the side of the Russian Orthodox church, such as when vandals, the Pussy Riot feral females, obscenely desecrated the cathedral of Christ the Savior. The Russian leader has also welcomed as refugees persecuted white South Africans, where America’s successive governments won’t even officially acknowledge that they’re under threat of extermination. Policies to stimulate Russian birthrates have been put in place by the conservative leader.
Hungary is oh-so happy in its homogeneity and wants to keep it. But not if Washington can help it. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s motto is, "Procreation, not immigration." Orban plumps for closed borders, and pro-Western, Christian, Hungarian-families-first policies. Yet his ongoing campaign against George Soros, an agitator for global government, was met by Donald Trump’s State Department with a stern rebuke to Hungary that its anti-Soros law will cost the country dearly.
Americans on the Right could only dream that, like Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic—the U.S. would "shut its border to Islamic migrants to keep potential terrorists out."
#1
A wandering article focusing on the usual target, the United States. There is plenty of blame to go around among the so-called International Community. Perhaps a more appropriate title line might read...
#4
Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s motto is, “Procreation, not immigration.” Orban plumps for closed borders, and pro-Western, Christian, Hungarian-families-first policies.
#5
The author over-writes. The big and important idea that peeps out here and there is radical and striking: freedom presupposes social order, which itself cannot be achieved in the absence of -- this is the main point, the truth that the American Uniparty cannot accept -- "historic national identity and cultural hegemony."
IOW, by rejecting the "blood and soil" basis of traditional conservative ideologies -- by replacing it with newfangled, ahistorical and anti-national "creedal" ideals -- American conservatism is powerless to protect freedom from Wokery's onslaught of anarchy and violence. In brief, US conservatives have it exactly backwards. The causal flow should be: historic identity + cultural hegemony => order => liberty
NOT
liberation/democracy => order => novus ordo seclorum
The author also buried her lede. These final paragraphs need pruning and should have come first:
S/b: "True freedom requires social order."
Then: To Kirk’s contention that “true freedom can be found only within the framework of a social order,” I’d wager that "In my former homeland, South Africa, this bulwark against barbarism has collapsed. In my new homeland, America, the framework social order that sustains the country’s ordered liberty is so rapidly being eroded, so as to be near collapse."
"...Ludwig von Mises warned that liberty in the United States could not—and would not—endure unless the founding nation retained its historic national identity and cultural hegemony."
[Fox9 via Lucianne] "Minnesota becomes more politically polarized every year and the metro politicians have shown us that rural Minnesotans are no longer represented by St Paul. It's time to leave," read a webpage on Munson's campaign website.
The idea echoes a similar push among rural Oregon counties to join Idaho.
Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem appeared to be in support of Munson's idea, by retweeting his plan.
"In South Dakota, we roll out the red carpet for people who love personal responsibility and Freedom," tweeted Noem. sigh, who am I kidding? St Paul will never let go.
#1
With the mumbling of civil war in the air, its just not about states separating but also counties from states. Could be some major realignments in the offing.
#5
Eventually we could create a series of blue archipelagos: greater Seattle, Portland, Eugene and Olympia could become one political entity with 2 senators, and the rest of WA and OR could join Idaho. WA and OR would lose 4-5 House seats while keeping their senators; Idaho would gain those House seats.
Ditto for non-coastal California down to Bakersfield: those counties would join Nevada.
Rural Minnesota would join North Dakota.
Posted by: Caesar Darling of the Faeries7174 ||
03/27/2021 14:24 Comments ||
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[Townhall] "We now have an intelligentsia which, though very small, is very useful to the cause of Hell." -C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
A masterful piece of religious prose disguised as satire, C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is a series of messages from senior devil Screwtape to his protégé Wormwood on how best to corrupt mortals. Originally released during World War II, its tight 175 pages provide charming, timeless wisdom.
In an addendum released shortly before the author’s death in 1963 — Screwtape Proposes a Toast — Lewis pivots from dispensing universal wisdom to directly criticizing social trends of his day, trends which have gone from mere whispers on college campuses 60 years ago to become orthodoxy with the power of law today. Reading it today, it feels like the author was more prophet than professor.
In the 15-page essay — full text available here — the devil Screwtape outlines how the term democracy can be warped into destroying excellence, first in the halls of education then to society at large to make sure everyone stays "equal."
"Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose," Screwtape tells his fellow devils. "The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be ’undemocratic.’" And don't forget Ritalin/affirmative action/rejection of DWEMs.
All the rest will follow naturally.
#1
We're so far from any of CS Lewis's ideals now, it would be depressing to read any of his stuff. We're just trying to get back to what prevailed in 2007. The cultural situation of 1963 seems like ancient times now ... lost cause
[American Greatness] - South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem made a name for herself after she stood boldly against COVID-19 lockdown policies in her state. Going from a relative unknown to a nationally-recognized figure essentially overnight, Noem is now considered to be on the short list of Republican presidential contenders moving forward.
Former President Donald Trump even named Noem a rising young star within his remade America-First GOP during a recent podcast appearance with Lisa Boothe of Fox News. Noem has emerged along with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri as viable politicians who could carry the base for generations beyond Trump.
And then, in one fell swoop, she messed it all up by opposing House Bill 1217, a measure pushed by South Dakota Republicans in the state legislature that would protect female sports from the invasion by transgender athletes born biological males. Christian activists are enraged at the latest betrayal of traditional values and mental sanity from a Republican leader.
...Noem seemed like she was one of the few who could buck the trend when she rejected COVID-19 lockdown mandates in South Dakota. After her capitulation on transgender insanity, it is apparent Noem is another corporate servant of Big Capital. She fights COVID-19 mandates not due to principle but rather because it negatively impacts the bottom-line of big business entities affiliated with the Republican establishment.
#1
She's dropping like a lead zeppelin in my book. Or, perhaps I am only now learning what others already knew.
I think what got the ball rolling was her Sec of State getting off lightly after hitting and killing a man while driving a car and claimed he thought he hit a deer. That's Democrap rubbish.
#4
I hate One Strike You’re Out thinking, and am willing to wait to see what results from this. Legislatures have in the past been known to write and pass careless laws that do not accomplish what they intended.
[Babylon Bee] RICHMOND, VA—Governor Ralph Northam signed into law this week a historic piece of legislation that bans the death penalty for every crime in the state of Virginia, except for being an unwanted baby.
"It is the current year, people," Northam said at a signing ceremony. "No crime is deserving of death, except for the crime of your mom not wanting you. That is still, obviously, a capital crime deserving of death. I mean, how inconsiderate is that! You're sitting there trying to live, being a little parasite, while your mom has a career, a social life, a drinking or drug habit, and friends to maintain. It's really the worst crime there is."
"And just think about the fathers who accidentally get a woman pregnant!" he added, pounding the podium. "What would they do if they had to man up, get a job, and care for a little one? We live in a society, after all."
At publishing time, Northam had reminded everyone that wearing blackface was still not punishable by anything, from the death penalty to even having to resign as governor.
[Philadelphia Inquirer] Sometimes America’s legacy of white supremacy is hiding in plain sight, literally. When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a hastily passed voter suppression law that many are calling the new, new Jim Crow on Thursday night, surrounded by a half-dozen white men, he did so in front of a painting of a plantation where more than 100 Black people had been enslaved.
The fitting symbolism is somehow both shocking and unsurprising. In using the antebellum image of the notorious Callaway Plantation — in a region where enslaved Black people seeking freedom were hunted with hounds — in Wilkes County, Ga., as the backdrop for signing a bill that would make it a crime to hand water to a thirsty voter waiting on Georgia’s sometimes hours-long voter lines, the GOP governor was sending a clear message about race and human rights in the American South.
The portrait of the plantation was the starkest reminder of Georgia’s history of white racism that spans slavery, Jim Crow segregation, the rebirth of the modern Ku Klux Klan, and today’s voter purges targeting Black and brown voters — but it wasn’t the only one. At the very moment that Kemp was signing the law with his all-white posse, a Black female Georgia lawmaker — Rep. Park Cannon — who’d knocked on the governor’s door in the hopes of watching the bill signing was instead dragged away and arrested by state troopers, in a scene that probably had the Deep South’s racist sheriffs of yesteryear like Bull Connor or Jim Clark smiling in whatever fiery hellhole they now inhabit.
#3
The author of the article is a truely lost soul, what the hell are you writing about ? America moved on, way passed you 50 years ago...get real Bub, you are not even in the 20th century, let alone the 21st Century.
#4
Yeah, funny how baseball is all white, and just the other day I saw different water fountains and some poor chap being directed to the back of the bus....oh, crap, I woke up late!
#6
Such a ridiculously obvious redirect. Pay no attention to those absentee ballots... or the strange man harvesting them ... or the unmarked white van arriving at the counting center after the statutory end to the voting season ... or the 'everyone out of the pool haha" farcical shooing away of Repub observers ... or the clownshow suitcase yanked from under a table after the GOPpers wiz gone ...
No let's talk about stuff that happened in the days before Darwin
#9
Don't forget that the White House was built during the period of slavery? That the current occupant comes from a former slave state? And was friends with known Klansman (a former senator from WV)?
#10
You can't help but notice that any mention of the 150th, and now 160th anniversary of the war between the states and subsequent battle anniversaries are wholly neglected. All that courage in the face of unimaginable bloodletting. The immensity of sacrifice both to seceed and hold the Union together. Nah, nothing to see there better to fantasize.
#12
You're damn right. We want voter suppression. We want to suppress the votes of dead people, fictitious characters and illegal aliens.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/27/2021 13:17 Comments ||
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#13
New Woke '1619' History:
American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.
The Civil War was fought to preserve white supremacy.
The civil rights movement was an evil plot to make war on young black men.
[Jerusalem Post] Jonathan Pollard, the convicted spy for Israel whose story haunted the American Jewish community’s relations with the US government for decades, is unrepentant.
"The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we will always have dual loyalty," Pollard said in an interview published Thursday in Israel Hayom, his first extensive remarks since his release from prison in 2015.
Pollard recalled how much of the Jewish leadership did not stand up for him following his 1985 arrest, when he was a civilian analyst for the US Navy who was found to be spying for Israel.
"If you’re outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable," he said.
The US Jewish leadership eventually softened in its outlook, and some Jewish leaders lobbied for Pollard’s release, saying his life sentence was excessive.
Pollard’s full interview will be published Friday. In an earlier excerpt published by Israel Hayom, he said he knew he "crossed a line" when he relayed the information to Israel, but added that he believed the United States was withholding from Israel intelligence critical to its security.
Pollard’s arrest and eventual conviction complicated ties between US Jews and sectors of the government. Jews seeking entry into or advancement in the national security apparatus were often rebuffed, with Pollard cited as the reason. The Pollard narrative in part drove the espionage charges brought in 2004 against two top staffers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — a case that fell apart but drastically changed how AIPAC operated.
#4
The opinion of a man who lived by the credo he proclaims universal to justify his own actions says nothing about those he claims are just like him. Especially Jews, of whom it has from time to time been said that if you ask two Jews, you’ll get three opinions.
#5
Socialist, who identify as Jews like those who identify as Christians, that all too often back the Paleos demands, which are designed to destroy Israel, don't seem to validate the assertion.
#7
On the other hand, g, since I'm an American and we're the big dog and Israel is the small dependent state that relies on a large state for safety, how about Israel change their rules instead?
Or maybe the US should become neutral toward Israel if not.
#8
IIRC, Pollard did his 30 years. The attempts to release him early were pathetic, but he did his time and nuff said. Prison didn't deter Eddie Sutton, either.
#9
Of course, there is the risk that you will spend much of the rest of your life in an American prison. I only wish we were as tough on Chinese spies.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/27/2021 13:25 Comments ||
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#10
#7 I just successfully survived family Seder, so you can't get me mad. However: (a) USA is a big dog - in small dog's yard; (b) lets look at the record ...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[PJ] Robert Redfield, the former director of the CDC, told CNN that he believes COVID-19 "escaped" from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that it was spreading as early as September or October of 2020, roughly two to three months before China alerted the World Health Organization about it. He stressed that it was his opinion.
[CNS] Certain national-conservative governments in East Europe should be natural allies to conservative policy makers stateside, if such unicorns existed.
[Fox9 via Lucianne] "Minnesota becomes more politically polarized every year and the metro politicians have shown us that rural Minnesotans are no longer represented by St Paul. It's time to leave," read a webpage on Munson's campaign website.
[Philadelphia Inquirer] Sometimes America’s legacy of white supremacy is hiding in plain sight, literally. When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a hastily passed voter suppression law that many are calling the new, new Jim Crow on Thursday night, surrounded by a half-dozen white men, he did so in front of a painting of a plantation where more than 100 Black people had been enslaved.
I'd like to suggest a 'mobile ballot drop-off box.' 
