The Tasmanian Devil Open Thread

You guys do realize film history is American and World history? Right? Enjoy…. Open Thread, natch 🙂

60% Of Americans Are Not Stupid

Isn’t it nice when the world makes sense?

Victoria Taft at Sweatclothes Media:

Hospital and medical personnel, who are literally putting their lives on the line to treat COVID-19 patients, rightly came in number one in the poll. The people who take care of people’s children came in second, followed by the state government, the individual’s employers, and the federal government’s health leaders. Vice President Mike Pence, who has headed the government’s response to the virus, came in just slightly ahead of President Trump. The Congress and the media brought up the rear.

Considering the media’s portrayal of Trump and their hate-hate relationship with him, 60% probably seems like 100% to the president. And that’s a triumph.

A 60/40 split on public opinion is about as good as you could hope for in today’s polarized America. If Trump cured cancer, AIDS and the common cold he still would be despised by 100% of Democrats. Best of all is the timing. GHWB hit 90% approval near the midpoint of his term, but by election day that national warm fuzzy feeling had faded and he was defeated. Jimmy Carter was riding high when the Iranian Hostage Crisis began. He lost too.

If Ronald Reagan had run for reelection in 1982 he would likely have lost because of what was called the “Reagan Recession.” By 1984 the economy was booming and he won in a landslide. At this point, all Trump has to do is not screw up and November should be a cakewalk. (Knocks on wood)

It is no accident that the Democrats and the media are at the bottom. The only thing I find surprising is that their numbers aren’t even lower.

Like a Boss vs. Like a Bitch

Leaders Lead

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

– William Butler Yeats

The Democrats are desperate, and desperate men are dangerous.

They’re also stupid.

After going all-in on Russian Collusion and impeachment and losing, they are doubling down on the chingaderavirus. They are like gamblers who lose their life savings and start borrowing money so they can “win it back.”

The other day we were treated to the sight of four different reporters at a press conference on the Chickity China the Chinese chickenvirus asking President Donald J. Trump if saying “China virus” was racist. (SPOILER: Trump told all four of them it was not racist.)

Meanwhile, Taterhead over at CNN has been claiming since 2015 that if you even look cross-eyed at a journalist you are inciting mob violence against them and that when Trump calls them “fake news” he is undermining Trust in the news media which is the most important branch of government. As if CNN hasn’t been trying to undermine Trump since the day he declared his candidacy.

Some Democrats seem to think they see the Hand of God in the timing of the Kung Flu. (I see the hand of the Chinese government.) The things the Democrats are saying about Trump don’t tell us much about Trump but they reveal a lot about the Democrats.

The unbiased consensus has been that Trump looked very presidential and statesmanlike in the past couple weeks. Hence the Democrat freak-out.

The Democrats keep making the same mistake with PDJT. As they say in Scarface, “You don’t get high on your own supply.” The Democrats have been drinking their own Koolaid and believing their own propaganda. They really believe all the bullshit they spew about Trump. They are convinced that Trump is a bumbling idiot who keeps getting lucky. They have been munching on TDS-infected bats from China and it has made them delusional.

The Democrats have been praying for some major natural disaster or a war so that Trump’s incompetence would be fully exposed to the voting public. So along comes this Wang Chung Virus at just the right moment. (It doesn’t take a whole lot of paranoia to think there is something suspicious about the timing of all this)

So what does that big orange doofus do? He gets up on the bully pulpit and looks presidential! No wonder Nasty Nana looks like Hillary did the morning after the election. THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!!!!

While the Democrats were keeping the Nattering Nabobs of Cable News distracted with impeachment, Trump was putting a travel ban on China. To the extent it got any attention, the travel ban was called racist. At first they said Trump was doing too much. Then they flip-flopped and said he wasn’t doing enough. So Trump did more. So they played the race card again, and said calling the Kung Pao Flu the “China virus” or “Wuhan virus” was racist, even though that is what they were calling it until they decided it was racist.

Trump was unfazed. They covered his pressers from beginning to end until they saw it was improving his poll numbers, so now they are embargoing them. But you cannot ignore the President of the United States. That goes for any POTUS – good or bad, the news has to cover him. Ever since Reagan the media follows the POTUS around with a camera crew just in case he gets shot or something.

So Trump is up there at the podium in the Rose Garden being a leader. Our most recent presidents in times of crisis tend to hide until they figure out what they are going to do and then they are resolute in sticking to whatever they decided come hell or high water. And they spend more time making sure their asses are covered than they spend on finding solutions. They often follow the advice of the political fixers rather than the real experts.

Trump is no Obama. He doesn’t pretend to know everything. He’s bringing out the experts and the people in his administration who are handling stuff and letting them talk. And he’s keeping the media in check.

The Democrats want us to believe that this is a Flight 93 moment. They want us to believe that they need to rush the cockpit and seize the controls to keep Trump from crashing the plane. But the natural reaction of most people in a crisis is to rally ’round the flag and support the president.

And the Democrats haven’t exactly been boosting their image with displays of competence. They bungled impeachment and the Iowa and Nevada caucuses so far this year, and both were unforced errors.

Leaders lead. Trump is leading. I don’t know what to call what the Democrats are doing.

“I really hate that guy.”
“Me too.”

The Ratchetization of America

A Great Egret and Blue Heron fight it out over nesting space.

Even before Establishment Dems turned a nice trick re-making Bernie Sanders into the left’s own Ron Paul, we were already on this road. This road is marked with plenty of road signs, but few exits. As we drove it we heard the crackled voices of an amplified left screaming “Koch! Koch! Koch!,” passed many a mall and state fair with mobs of angry black youth, gawked as the crowds gathered and fizzled on Wall Street, then watched as their fires spread to universities, witnessed a drive to demonize police over literal street thugs, culminating in a raucous defiance of conventional wisdom and the incineration of every shred of the media’s credibility.

Today we find we are all screamers. The mobs are ours to join. The pain and fear of lack of privilege and the difference it can make between life and death is more acutely and more broadly felt.  The lock-downs in blue states enforced by the very Police Brothers they were just demonizing could move to the red states (currently resisting fiercely), and, depending on the outcome, might be okay with the conservative citizens of said states.

This is who we are now. Eight straight years of protest training for Democrats (during a Democratic presidency, mind you) have turned the entire left into Pavlov’s dogs, who now bark and salivate at the merest hint of footsteps. And because this is difficult, we do what people in close relationships do: we all fall to the lowest behavioral denominator. Now even budget-conscience conservatives are hollering for their check.

And while you’re sleeping, safe in your disinfected homes, the darkest forces in our government, the ones who don’t like freedom, who find the everyday working person cannot be trusted with liberty, these folks are driving a huge Trojan Horse into the 2020 election.

Unsuccessful at a rogue investigation and an impeachment that was waged while the virus hazard was growing, Democrats are actively growing the panic in their ranks. They have turned the entire base of the Democratic party into those protesting college kids, angry over micro-aggressions, blowing shit up and the consequences be damned. These folks are doing it for the same reasons, too: so they could take joyrides instead of going to class, because, ya know, it hurts to be young when so many old people don’t care about your manipulations.

Remember rules 3 & 4, & 9 of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals:

3. “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
   4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
   9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.

This is still their playbook. They are still using it. And because the Democrat’s Dogs are being trained in our midst, we’re also adapting to the techniques. This first major national crisis since the 2008 housing market crisis is really showing it. And it could get worse, because the division in our politics, the willingness of one side to run the whole country off a cliff, is starkly apparent now in ways it could not be in the absence of a crisis.

What if the Hu Phlung Pu Flu is a dud?

Hmmm, that’s strange. Where are all the zombies?

What if this isn’t the end of the world as we know it?

Rachel Bovard at American Greatness:

Coronavirus Unmasks America

The Chinese coronavirus crisis has unmasked much about America in just a few short weeks: the vulnerabilities in our critical supply chains, the burdensome and bureaucratic regulatory regime that stifles our public health response, the selfishness of Millennials and Gen-Zers who think social distancing is an Instagram meme, and the latent corporatism in both of our established political parties.

One hopes that when we are collectively on the other side of this, we can all have a national conversation about what went wrong and adjust our policy parameters accordingly.

One thing is certain – the Kung Flu is not Captain Trips, the superflu that kills 98% of the people in the world in Stephen King’s The Stand. Another thing that seems obvious is that we were not ready for a deadly pandemic similar to the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920. Perhaps that could make the Chinese Lung Rot a blessing in disguise.

Imagine a flu that 80% of the people got and that killed 10% of its victims. A flu like that would kill tens of millions of people in the United States alone. We need to be prepared to face a virulent pandemic without bringing our economy to a crashing halt.

Or perhaps that is asking too much. How much of our freedom do we want to sacrifice for an average strain of influenza? How do we avoid a situation where the government cries wolf every year or two and people ignore the warnings? How do we keep the news media from behaving like blithering idiots? Perhaps occasional pandemics are the sort of thing that we have to accept as part of the price of freedom.

But one thing that must change – just as we cannot be dependent on foreign oil we cannot allow ourselves to be dependent on anyone else (but especially China) for our medicines and medical supplies. And it wouldn’t hurt to make hoarding toilet paper a felony.

I was socially distant before social distancing was cool

It turns out that I’ve been training for social distancing my whole life. When I was a kid, Mom would tell the neighbor kids not to play with me because I was a bad influence. When I complained that I had no friends Mom said, “Friends are overrated. Now get back in the basement.”

“That’s not a basement, it’s just a crawl space.”

“Well, good thing you know how to crawl. Now git!”

The voices in my head wouldn’t talk to me. Even my imaginary friend wouldn’t play with me.

When I was married to my babymama her step-dad called me his “shun-in-law.”

This is an open thingie.

Gov. Gruesome Newsom Puts California On House Arrest

The last time I was on house arrest I had to wear an ankle monitor.

DAY ONE:

Yesterday the governor of California, Gavin “Gruesome” Newsom ordered millions of people to go home and stay there. If President Donald J. Trump had given such an order there would be protests and lawsuits. But since Gov. Gruesome is a Democrat there has been nary a peep. I can’t tell you how many people are defying the Governor with Great Hair because I am afraid to go outside and look.

I don’t have any constitutional issues with the order, at least not to the extent that the order is both temporary and was made in response to a genuine public health emergency. My inner libertarian is screaming “This is how liberty dies!” but this order falls within the legitimate police powers of government. If the Hu Flung Pu Flu was a huge fire nobody would question the pretty-boy governor’s ability to order an evacuation. Instead of ordering us to evacuate he is telling us to stay-cuate.

Meanwhile, Mom is getting cabin fever.

Anyhoo, this is an open thread.

Gruesome Newsom