SPECIAL: Does Democratic Governors’ Petty Tyranny Spell Doom in November?

J Robert Smith

  • April 17, 2020
  • 4 min read

At least one protester, Monica Faith Ussery, 51, of Holly Springs [North Carolina], was charged with violating the [Governor Roy Cooper’s] executive order.

“I have a right to peacefully assemble,” she said as officers led her away, her hands bound with a zip tie. “God bless America.”

— The News & Observer, April 14, 2020

[Gov. Gretchen] Whitmer’s order generated a great deal of pushback. It includes a prohibition on large retailers selling allegedly nonessential items, such as paint and outdoor supplies, meaning stores like Home Depot had to tape off those sections from customers. Lawncare services have been temporarily shuttered. With very few exceptions, the order prohibits people from traveling between residences [snip]

— Reason, April 15, 2020

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If We Can Save Even One Life, Maybe We Shouldn’t

Rob Meyne

  • April 17, 2020
  • 3 min read

Imagine you could time travel back just three months. You’re watching your local news and the reporter says “The governor today issued orders banning church services, golf, eating at restaurants, or assembling in groups of ten or more.” If you value freedom as much as you should, you would have been stopped in your tracks, amazed, rattled, scared, and absolutely certain you heard this wrong. “No,” you would say, “Surely I can’t actually have just heard that church services have been banned. That not only makes no sense, the First Amendment actually guarantees freedom of religion.” You would be right to be outraged. Today, we hear such things daily, and don’t bat an eyelash. Why? Because we’ve been conned into thinking our health is the only thing that matters. Whatever we do to stay safe, we should. Period.

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SPECIAL: Following COVID-19 Pied Pipers Off the Cliff

J Robert Smith

  • April 10, 2020
  • 3 min read

An expert avoids all of the many pitfalls on his or her way to the grand fallacy.”

— Henry Mintzberg Collection of Expert Quotes

“When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.”

— Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August

THE TAKE

The experts and epidemiological models have been embarrassingly wrong. COVID-19 isn’t a figment of our imaginations, but it’s not the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic – not by a long shot. We’re in the midst of an historic overreaction to a contagious infection. Tens of millions of working Americans and small businesses are paying the price. Paychecks and jobs, lost, and small businesses hanging by threads.

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SPECIAL: Why are Democrats, MSM Excusing Xi Jinping’s COVID-19 Catastrophe?

J Robert Smith

  • April 5, 2020
  • 5 min read

[Rep. Sean] Casten’s [D-IL] sin, in the National Republican Congressional Committee’s view, was a pair of conference calls during which he told constituents that China had acted “quickly” and “to their credit … shut down the entire province that this was in, and they seem to largely have isolated the cases.”

— The Washington Post, April 3, 2020

Most critically, Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors—unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body—and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.

— Foreign Policy, April 2, 2020

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Is Compromise Possible When You Can’t Even Agree on Whether the Sky Is Blue

Rob Meyne

  • April 1, 2020
  • 4 min read

Most in the mainstream media place President Trump somewhere on a spectrum that runs from worthless, to dangerous, to evil. Hopefully, the opinions of future historians will not necessarily be clouded by slavish devotion to the Left/Democratic Party/Socialists/media (but I repeat myself).

It would seem logical that people who fail at something, and want not to fail the next time, would ask what they need to do differently? If you hit a golf ball into the rough, you generally assume you did something wrong. You don’t assume the bad shot was the result of demonic intervention, a gypsy spell, or the heartbreak of psoriasis. If you want to hit the next shot better, you need to, well, hit it better.

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NEWSFEED THURSDAY: Coronavirus can’t be a Crisis that becomes a Catastrophe

J Robert Smith

  • March 26, 2020
  • 3 min read

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

— Helen Keller

THE TAKE

In the fight to subdue the coronavirus contagion, the nation is hunkered down. Businesses, big and small, considered nonessential, are shuttered. Schools are closed. Sports, amateur and pro, are shelved. Restaurants are struggling. In some places, “shelter at home” is mandatory. In others, its voluntary.

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NEWSFEED MONDAY: Why Leftists Add “Democratic” to Socialism

J Robert Smith

  • March 2, 2020
  • 3 min read

Disinformation [ dis-in-fer-mey-shuhn, dis-in- ]

deliberately misleading or biased information; manipulated narrative or facts; propaganda:

— Dictionary.com

[Winston] Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, and his job is to rewrite the reports in newspapers of the past to conform with the present reality. Smith lives in a constant state of uncertainty; he is not sure the year is in fact 1984.

— The Conversation, June 12, 2019

THE TAKE

What’s so bad about socialism that leftists have to qualify it with “democratic?” Isn’t socialism supposed to be inherently… democratic?

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Thank God the Left Doesn’t Get It

Rob Meyne

  • March 2, 2020
  • 4 min read

Never in memory has our country been dominated by political cohorts that seem to know less about each other, as these piece from the Guardian and Town Hall edify. Yet understanding the person sitting on the other side of the table is fundamental to making progress.

If you’re seeking to get a job, buy a house, or negotiate a union contract, it’s essential to understand what the other side wants. You can’t solve problems, come to agreements, or conclude deals that both parties endorse unless you understand what you both care about. It’s that simple.

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NEWSFEED TUESDAY: Democrats Headed for a British Labour Party Disaster

J Robert Smith

  • Feb. 25, 2020
  • 3 min read

Some of the most astute analysis of Labour’s thumping loss has come from Lisa Nandy, member of Parliament for Wigan, who resigned from Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet in 2016 over his management and her party’s Brexit position. Nandy is an outside shot for the leadership, but she has impressed with her straight talk on where the party went off the rails. Speaking about feedback from voters, she says:

“There was just a general sense that at the top of the Labour Party we don’t speak for people like them anymore, a sense we don’t have skin in the game, that we’re not rooted in those communities, and we’re just not like them, and we don’t come very often to just ask people what they think and to listen to what they’ve got to say.” [bold added]

— Bloomberg, via the Japanese Times, January 12, 2020

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NEWSFEED MONDAY: Bernie’s Never-Ending Fidel Castro Crush

J Robert Smith

  • Feb. 24, 2020
  • 3 min read

“We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?” Sanders told Anderson Cooper.

— Fox News, February 24, 2020

Castro’s End: With Fidel Castro’s death at 90, the encomiums are rolling in, especially from what remains of the American Big Media. But in fact, Castro during his 58 years of dictatorship was an evil man, a communist who tortured, killed and imprisoned with no remorse, a tyrant who tore a once-beautiful country apart and sent its finest citizens into exile.

— Investors’ Business Daily, November 26, 2016

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