First Do No Harm

They called it “Bleeding” and at one time, draining your blood was considered a cure for many illnesses.  George Washington was one of its most famous victims.  Washington fell ill after supervising farm activity on December 12, 1799.  He asked to be bled by his overseer.  Three physicians were called in and each one drew more blood until he lost 40% of his blood before he died.

In Washington’s time, bloodletting was widely considered a treatment for many ailments based on the ancient Greek idea that the human body was composed of four humors, one of which was blood.  Removing blood was supposed to "rectify the humors."

In retrospect, that loss of blood contributed to Washington’s death.  “First do no harm” is an old medical doctrine.  We should be reasonably sure that the cure we prescribe in not worse than the disease.  

Which brings us to the “cure” of shutting down the economy to stop the spread of a virus.   There is no question that people who have a communicable disease should stay away from people who are well.   However, forcing everyone to stay home, sick or well, as a way of coping with a virus has serious side effects.  These include loss of income, psychological problems including rising suicide levels, failure to treat other illnesses, drug and alcohol abuse and material shortages.  

The American Institute for Economic Research cited a study which predicted what the effects of a shutdown:

This article forecasted more than 100,000 excess deaths due to drug overdoses, suicide, alcoholism, homicide, and untreated depression – all a result not of the virus but of policies of mandatory human separation, economic downturn, business and school closures, closed medical services, and general depression that comes with a loss of freedom and choice.

The prediction has come true:

People are dying across all demographics due to the radical transformation of life itself. In addition, new research is showing that there has been a huge increase in excess deaths in elder-care homes probably due to despair and loneliness from the prevention of family visits. 

The whole pattern is extraordinary and deeply tragic. It was also entirely predictable. Instead of dealing rationally with a textbook virus, as we had done during the whole of the 20th century, we embarked on a new social/political experiment in lockdowns. We attempted to intimidate a virus with PhDs and political power, hoping that it would shrivel and die, and in so doing dramatically disabled human freedom and social functioning. What do we have to show for it? Massive carnage, and a virus that is still with us.

Remember the mantra in March of 2020 that we had to “flatten the curve?”  Nobody says that any more because hospitals are not facing a surge of patients with Covid-19.  But policy makers seem unwilling to admit their errors and some want us to repeat the failed experiment.  

We have become smarter about living with a virus and have begun to realize that shutting the economy down is not the answer to managing this pandemic.  Unlike George Washington’s physicians, we are not going to take more and more blood until the patient dies.  

If there is a government shut down .....

Schumer's shutdown reveals: Democrats will destroy America just to spite Trump

The Hill

Donald Trump was inaugurated one year ago after promising to make America great again. Throughout the campaign everyone knew what he believed, though it was not clear what his opponents stood for.

The Schumer shutdown has revealed the totality of the Democrats’ agenda: animosity and amnesty.

When President Trump set out to deliver historic tax cuts for the American people, Democrats sat on their hands, rather than participating in the legislative process.

Now they’ve come off the sidelines to actively sabotage the government established to serve the American people.

Their stated reason for doing so is even more astounding than the act itself.

Never before in American history has a major political party put the interests of lawbreaking foreign nationals ahead of the interests of law abiding Americans. Yet that is exactly what the Democrats have done in holding the government hostage to extract special favors for illegal immigrants.

This is a remarkable achievement — and it’s the only achievement the Democrats can claim since blowing their “sure thing” election in 2016.

We already knew the Washington Democrats hated Trump.

Now we know they oppose not just the president, but American government, the American people and even the very concept of American citizenship as well.

Things are not going as the Democrats expected.

Trump slams Senate Democrats for government shutdown on anniversary of his inauguration

Ted Cruz: No apologies, no regrets

From the comments:

Cruz has what other Republicans and many conservatives do not have: conviction and a strong belief system. He doesn’t grope for what he will say next, does not use passive words to seek an interviewer’s approval, or dance all around an issue to avoid speaking the truth. We need an army of Cruz’s to set this country right again.

I should add the he doesn't buy into he implied assumptions of the MSM. Note how he handles the question about the government shut-down.

“None of You [Reporters] Were Math Majors, Were You?”

Via Powerline

Default hysteria continues in Washington, in defiance of the most basic facts of arithmetic. Some Republicans have even been taken in, but one who is having none of it is Congressman David Schweikert of Arizona, the former treasurer of Maricopa County:

“You and I can find ways the game-playing has been done,” said Arizona Rep. David Schweikert, the former treasurer of Maricopa County. “You don’t get to have those debates and discussions if you have the administration able to game-play with the trust funds.”

Another reporter asked Schweikert to respond to some doom-saying quotes from Chinese bankers. “I lay this at the steps of the administration and Jack Lew,” said the congressman. “The unconscionable, unacceptable use of language, the word ‘default,’ when the borrowing we need for 2014 is we’re 16 percent short on revenue. To use the word ‘default,’ to scare the markets—are politics really that important to this administration that it ignores basic math?”

Schweikert ticked off ways that he, as a county treasurer, had sought balance. “The basic repo desk, running your ladders on your debt—it’s stunning that the politicians in the administration care more about keeping this as a wedge than the international markets. Even Geithner made it clear that he had the ability to prioritize…. [T]here is no such thing as default unless there is an actual evil attempt from the administration. When you have 18 percent of GDP coming in in cash, less than 2 percent going out in debt coverage—I’m stunned you all fall for it in the press. None of you were math majors, were you?”

Forgive me if I have not written about default before, but I can't help but notice that when the Obama administration uses the term "default" it loses its meaning. Default is not paying the interest on your debt. It doesn't mean that you can't go out for your usual Friday night dinner at a fancy restaurant.  But that's how Team Obama defines it.

I think that some on the Right are beginning to get it

Some are beginning to understand that the purpose of the Tea Party and it's members in Congress like Ted Cruz, is not primarily to elect Republicans.  It's taken people so long because so much of the political thinking is not concerned with ideas but by parties.  What's bad for Republicans is supposed to be good for Democrats and vice versa.  But that's not necessarily true.  That makes it impossible to see what's really happening.  It's much bigger than that, and some are beginning to get it.  One is Steven Hayward at Powerline.

The conventional wisdom right now is that the government shutdown ranks somewhere between a debacle and a catastrophe for Republicans, and their abject surrender is expected before too much longer. I’m not so sure. While I thought the shutdown was a dubious and unwise tactic, I think taking a longer view may cast a different light on the scene.

First of all, like the sequester, have the majority of Americans noticed its effects beyond what the media has been screaming about? The bullying tactics of forcibly shutting off public spaces like the World War II memorial on the mall has surely inflicted damage on Obama that, had he behaved with minimal restraint, he might have been spared.

It really doesn't matter what Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid cook up as a "compromise." People are beginning to notice, big time, that Big Government isn't working.

Who is helped and who is hurt by that realization?  Neither party is helped, but an emerging ideology is.  And with this in mind, the country that elected a Socialist a little over a year ago, France, is electing members of what the press refers to as "the far right."   Things can change very quickly is you are willing to think outside the box.

Park Service Paramilitaries

Mark Steyn:

But perhaps the most extraordinary story to emerge from the NPS is that of the tour group of foreign seniors whose bus was trapped in Yellowstone Park on the day the shutdown began. They were pulled over photographing a herd of bison when an armed ranger informed them, with the insouciant ad-hoc unilateral lawmaking to which the armed bureaucrat is distressingly prone, that taking photographs counts as illegal “recreation.” “Sir, you are recreating,” the ranger informed the tour guide. And we can’t have that, can we? They were ordered back to the Old Faithful Inn, next to the geyser of the same name, but forbidden to leave said inn to look at said geyser. Armed rangers were posted at the doors, and, just in case one of the wily Japanese or Aussies managed to outwit his captors by escaping through one of the inn’s air ducts and down to the geyser, a fleet of NPS SUVs showed up every hour and a half throughout the day, ten minutes before Old Faithful was due to blow, to surround the geyser and additionally ensure that any of America’s foreign visitors trying to photograph the impressive natural phenomenon from a second-floor hotel window would still wind up with a picture full of government officials. The following morning the bus made the two-and-a-half-hour journey to the park boundary but was prevented from using any of the bathrooms en route, including at a private dude ranch whose owner was threatened with the loss of his license if he allowed any tourist to use the facilities.

The smiling face of the NPS Nazis

Smokey the Thug.

Jon Jarvis, Gute Amerikaner

On the principle of "know your enemy," here's a snapshot of the director of the National Park Service, the man who has been handing on the orders to block aged veterans from their monuments, eject retired couples from their homes, and forbid tourists to take photos of natural parks (hat tip: Clarice Feldman).

 

Jonathan B. Jarvis was appointed director of the NPS in 2009. He was employed by the service since 1976, beginning as an interpreter in the Washington, DC park system. He then served as a park ranger, resource manager, biologist, and chief ranger at parks including Prince William Forest Park in Virginia, Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, and Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and North Cascades National Park in Washington. He acted as superintendent at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and Mount Rainier National Park. In 2002 he was named Regional Director of the Pacific West Region, overseeing parks scattered across tens of thousands of miles in the Pacific.

That's it for Jonathan Jarvis. Nothing out of the ordinary -- no scandals, no controversies, not a word out of place, as far as the record shows. He's a little compulsive about green topics, thinking that his major duties involve "...climate change, urban development, habitat destruction, non-native species, and air and water pollution." But that's nothing unusual in today's NPS.

He's not your typical Obamacrat. Far from it: a career National Parks employee who worked his way up from ranger status straight to the top. Yet at the same time he is diligently and obediently, without protest as far as we know, carrying out the most obnoxious, detestable, and perhaps even illegal orders ever given a man in his position, exactly as if he was a swag-bellied, unqualified precinct captain dragged out of some Southside Chicago ward.

But that's the way it is with career bureaucrats -- like Lois Lerner, John Brennan, Keith Alexander and ten thousand others. We know from the historical record that bureaucrats will avidly commit the most horrendous crimes if ordered by the people at the top of the heap. There's a clear and distinct selection process in operation in bureaucracy. People who progress are those who will do what they're told without blinking. and Jarvis is perfect example.

Just like the "good Germans" just following orders.

Insurrection in DC

Veterans Storm Memorials...
Remove Barricades, Bring to White House...
Police in riot gear...


Tear down these walls," the crowd chanted. Protesters also sang "God bless America" and other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial plaza.

Veterans Remove Barricades from Memorials and Bring Them to White House

"This is the people's memorial," Palin told the crowd. "Our veterans should be above politics."

The memorial has become a political symbol in the bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans over who is at fault since the shutdown began. Earlier rallies have focused on allowing access for World War II veterans visiting from across the country with the Honor Flight Network.

Sunday's rally was more political. A protest by truckers converged with a rally by a group called the Million Vet March at the World War II Memorial. Participants cut the links between metal barriers at the National Park Service site and pushed them aside.

Later some protesters carried barricades to the White House and rallied outside the gates, confronting police in riot gear. Protesters carried one sign reading "Impeach Obama."

Remember the Tea Party rallies?  This is bringing it to Obama's door. 



Will police fire on civilians not obeying orders?

Split among Democrats

ELEANOR STARES DOWN OBAMA...

Reid tells DC Mayor: 'Don't screw it up'...

 

 

Death benefits not paid to fallen soldiers families

 

The MSM  and the conservative media are treating the scandal very differently. 

 

To read about the story in the MSM, the Pentagon had no choice about withholding payment of the death benefit from the grieving families and denying them a plane ride to Dover AFB to meet the bodies  of the soldiers killed in battle.  It seems that some unknown entity we'll call "Mr. Government Closer" found a rule that said that death benefits can't be paid, but that the Pentagon can keep the military golf course open so that President Obama can play.  Of course nobody told Obama anything, he has to wait to read about it in the Washington Post.  And of course, when Commander-in-Chief Obama found out what the Obama Pentagon had done he went right to work ordering his Pentagon to find a way.  What a guy! 

 

Of course the reality is 180 degrees from this fairy tale.  The Obama administration wanted to create the maximum pain on the American people to pressure the House of Representatives to cave in to all the Obama demands.  These include absolutely no changes in that train wreck called ObamaCare (except what Obama decrees) and a blank check with no limits on all future government spending.  

 

So how can we cause the American people pain while blaming it on the Tea Party?  If that meant closing the open-air World War 2 Memorial and the Viet Nam Memorial that was one way.  If it meant closing the Grand Canyon and Mt. Rushmore, that was another.  If it meant turning young cancer patients away form the NIH and refusing to consider a bill passed by the House to keep it open, that was third.  If it meant not paying the widows and orphans of the dead, that was a fourth.  The list of petty and vindictive actions taken by Team Obama is much longer than this, but they will do to show the nature of the people at the top. 

 

This is the group that has the full throated support of the MSM who tell us that we should be blaming the Republicans and the Tea Party because they can make all this pain go away if only they would give in.  And it's true, you can always make the torturers stop if you give them what they want.  But make no mistake about who's inflicting the pain and the nature of the people who choose to deny aging veterans access to their memorials, families the right to see their parks and grieving families the right to meet their dead heroes and collect the pittance that is due them.   Make no mistake that when you hear how this is all the fault of the Tea Party, just keep in mind that the House of Representatives has passed bills to fund all of these activities, but Harry Reid won't let them pass in the Senate and Obama promises to veto them.   

The 2013 Battle of Yorktown -- restaurant owner defies feds

“I am now occupying the building at this time.”

And with that one decision – restaurant owner Glenn Helseth joined the ranks of Americans who’ve decided to defy the strong-arm tactics of the National Park Service.

For the past 11 years Helseth and his wife have operated the Carrot Tree Kitchens Restaurant inside the historic Cole Digges House in Yorktown, Va.

At least 20 of Helseth's longtime employees are facing unemployment. They can’t make rent and some are faced with choosing between buying food or buying medicine.

The National Park Service owns and operates the building. So when the government shut down on Oct. 1, the Helseths were given 48 hours to pack up and move out.

The couple also owns a restaurant on Jamestown Island. They had to close that restaurant after the National Park Service blocked access to the island.

“We’re upset on a number of levels – not the least of which is the impending financial doom that Carrot Tree faces,” Glenn told me.

At least 20 of his longtime employees are facing the unemployment line. They can’t make rent and some are faced with choosing between buying food or buying medicine.

So Glenn decided it was time to take some action – and at 11 a.m. ET he reopened the Carrot Tree Kitchens Restaurant – in defiance of the federal government.

I agree with Thomas Jefferson about watering the tree of liberty.

Progressivism, Chaos, Tyranny, and the Community Organizer's Blackmail and Extortion

The Diplomad remarks that if Harry Reid calls opponents "modern day anarchists,'' we should return the favor and call him a modern day Bolshevik.  the difference is that he's lying and we are telling the truth.

We see our National Parks, a Republican idea, used to further the progressive's notions of expanding government. The US Park Service, once a model of what a government agency could be, has become just another tool used by progressives to create chaos in furtherance of progressive goals. Park Rangers, once admired for their knowledge of American history, geography, flora, and fauna are now just tools of petty repression. They are used to roust elderly veterans out of the monuments built to honor those elderly veterans, and to prevent taxpayers from viewing the great parks and historical locations in our country, many of them partially, mostly, or even entirely built with private funds.

In sum, what do we see? We see the community organizer tactic of using lies, chaos, and the uncertainty that flows as tools of blackmail and extortion. The progressives have moved into almost every aspect of our lives, and when they encounter resistance to further encroachment, they threaten us by shutting down the other services on which they have made us dependent. It's blackmail, pure and simple. We have the extraordinary spectacle of an American President predicting economic disaster and warning Wall Street of tough times to come if he does not get his way. We have a President pushing the stock market to crash, and dissuading businesses from investing and creating jobs, all over a dispute about his seriously flawed health care policy. He, again, is the Chicago community organizer threatening the local landlord or McDonald's franchise with instability, violence, and disruption if he does not get what he wants. Imagine what he can do to you, if he controls your health care.

Chaos in the service of tyranny. The only way to defeat this is to stop the encroachment of government on our lives and begin a serious campaign of rollback.

I agree with Thomas Jefferson; I think a little revolution every now and then is healthy.

'All about power and leverage' -- feds shut down major roadway, block access to graveyard

Folks who live in the Great Smoky Mountains have just about reached their breaking point with the federal government.

“It’s almost like they are pushing to see how far they can push before the American people say enough is enough,” said Ed Mitchell, the mayor of Blount County, Tenn. “We were founded on a declaration of independence. And they are about to push the people to the line again.”

Nearly a third of Blount County is inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So when the federal government shut down the park, it also shut down one of the area’s chief sources of revenue.

The National Park Service also closed the Foothills Parkway, a major thoroughfare in the county. The closure came without warning and left the local school district scrambling to get children back to their homes.

At what point do you say to heck with the feds?

The children live in the eastern Tennessee community of Top of the World – serviced by School Bus 49. Normally, the bus travels along the Foothills Parkway. Other roads leading to the isolated mountain community are impassible by bus.

Democrats who want kids with cancer to die, like Harry Reid, don't care if your kids get killed on a school bus.  This may be the point where there are a lot of local insurrections.

It’s gotten to the point where Mayor Mitchell said Americans are ready to start fighting back.

“It’s almost like they are pushing to see how far they can push before the American people say enough is enough,” he said.

They almost crossed that line in Blount County.

The mayor sent a letter to the Department of Interior and copied the area’s congressional delegation. The letter detailed a plan that would allow the local government to take control of the park until the federal shutdown ended.

“We were willing to open that park up at no cost to the federal government,” he said. “We worked out a plan. That park could be running today just as efficiently as if the federal government had it up and running.”

He never heard back from the feds or his state’s congressional delegation.

This is a perfect time for the Tea Party to show up.

Park Service OKs immigration reform rally on 'closed' National Mall

Well, of course.  These are friends of Obama.   WW2 vets,,  not so much.

Obama hits the campaign trail, yet again. He'd probably do that if aliens invaded

Obama finds something he's good at, does it time after time.

Let's imagine that America is invaded by aliens. They vaporise Congress and melt down the Statue of Liberty. What does Obama do? He hits the campaign trail.

"It's time for the Martians to pack their bags and leave the USA!" he tells screaming crowds at a university event in Boulder, Colorado. "I won't negotiate, or retaliate – I'm just gonna stand here and wait until they go away!" Barbra Streisand sings the national anthem; Kal Pen tells a gag about flying a UFO while stoned. "Thank you Mr President for supporting the rights of gay people to marry," Eva Longoria says as the intergalactic hordes of Thraaag storm over the horizon firing their ray-guns at liberal students.

"Dare to hope, America! Dare to hope!"

That's what Obama does in the middle of any crisis. He doesn't confront events head on like a mature leader should – particularly a mature leader in the middle of his second term with no more elections to run in. No. Obama goes out and campaigns. And he's doing it right now.

That's very good, and very true.  It makes you wonder about his intelligence. 

A Good Week for the Anarchists

Bud Norman at Central Standard Times:

The fundamental premise of modern liberalism, so far as we can discern one, is that almost everything in life is best left to the government’s good intentions and uncanny effectiveness. This past week, alas, has not bolstered the argument.

By far the two biggest stories of the week were the partial shutdown of the federal government and its simultaneous opening of the long awaited, long dreaded Obamacare health care “exchanges.” Neither story shines a flattering light on the government, despite the best efforts of the old-time media, and both might therefore be seen as an embarrassment to the party that is most associated with modern liberalism and its belief in the goodness and effectiveness of government. For those who are new to the politics of America and are unsure which party that is, be advised that the Democrats have lately taken to calling the Republicans “anti-government” and even “anarchist,” while the Republicans are becoming increasingly comfortable with the descriptions.

Read the whole thing.

I notice that the old-time media is showing incremental changes in it's view. They are still peddling the story that the problems with ObamaCare as the result of its overwhelming popularity, but they are at least mentioning that there are problems.  The greatest power the press has is to ignore events that do not fit their template.  On another topic, global warming may still be the dominant religion, but, just as the Protestant reformation created schisms in the Christian church, we are beginning to see sects develop. Bob Geldof is predicting the end of humanity by 2030 while the editors of the Virginian Pilot are only predicting that Norfolk, VA will be underwater by that time. And the same Virginian Pilot has changed its claims about voter fraud from "none" to "few." as it wages war against having got show ID to vote.  (sorry for my frequent references, it's my local monopoly paper trying to be a junior varsity NY Times)

Obamaha Beach.