Author: VD

A non-entity vanishes

Sportswriter Jim Klobuchar’s daughter has abandoned her no-hope campaign:

Amy Klobuchar is ending her presidential campaign and will endorse Joe Biden later on Monday, according to a campaign aide, making her the third Democrat in three days to exit the race after Biden’s big win in the South Carolina primary.

The only reason she was a U.S. Senator in the first place is because Al Franken is a perv. She had absolutely no business running for President.

It is interesting that they’re all bowing out and endorsing Biden, though. Apparently the Democratic Party elders really don’t want to see the socialist jew blown out by the God-Emperor.

Sink the ships or else

The globalist media is attacking Greece for defending its borders against hundreds of thousands of hostile invaders:

Greek border police have shot dead a Syrian migrant attempting to reach Europe as clashes grow following Turkey’s announcement that the border was “open.”

The Greek border is being besieged by thousands of migrants convinced they can reach EU welfare havens following Ankara’s decision to stand down. Following clashes that saw migrants pelt police with rocks and other objects, one victim was shot through the mouth and died at the scene.

 “Open war is upon you whether you would risk it nor not.”  

I could use a week off

An enforced vacation from the gym:

Nella regione Lombardia e in provincia di Piacenza
In tali territori si applica altresì la misura della sospensione delle attività di palestre, centri sportivi, piscine, centri natatori, centri benessere, centri termali (fatta eccezione per l’erogazione delle prestazioni rientranti nei «livelli essenziali di assistenza»), centri culturali, centri sociali, centri ricreativi.

The schools are also closed through 8 March. Keep in mind that something like this is probably going to happen near you, sooner or later, if the situation in Washington is not unique.

The coronavirus has been circulating undetected and has possibly infected scores of people over the past six weeks in Washington state, according to a genetic analysis of virus samples that has sobering implications for the entire country amid heightening anxiety about the likely spread of the disease.

The researchers conducted genetic sequencing of two virus samples. One is from a patient who traveled from China to Snohomish County in mid-January and was the first person diagnosed with the disease in the United States. The other came from a recently diagnosed patient in the same county, a high school student with no travel-related or other known exposure to the coronavirus. The two samples look almost identical genetically, said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who announced the results of the research on Twitter late Saturday night.

“This strongly suggests that there has been cryptic transmission in Washington State for the past 6 weeks,” Bedford wrote. “I believe we’re facing an already substantial outbreak in Washington State that was not detected until now due to narrow case definition requiring direct travel to China.”

Goodbye, Little Gay Pete

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Little Gay Pete didn’t make it to Super Tuesday.

Three people with knowledge of Buttigieg’s decision told The Associated Press he began informing campaign staff on Sunday. They were not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity. His campaign said Buttigieg will speak Sunday night in South Bend, Indiana.

I expect Warren is only sticking around in the hopes of a vice-presidential nomination. It’s really down to Biden vs Sanders now; no one is going to support Bloomberg no matter how much Mini-Mike spends.

The truth about the Douma Report

Peter Hitchens helps two whistleblowers publicize their critique of the document that was used to justify US and British bombings in Syria:

The investigation report is a bait and switch tactic that creates the illusion of a report about a breach of confidentiality, when in fact it is little more than a public defence of the scientifically questioned Douma Report. Ironically, the defence, from a highly technical and scientific body, is not founded on science or logic, but on ad hominem attacks on two of its former inspectors, who had raised concerns about the scientifically indefensible manner in which the Douma investigation was conducted. It is classic ‘if you can’t get the ball, get the man’.

In another classic ruse, the Technical Secretariat tries to distract from the serious concerns of A and B, by trying to portray them as “individuals who could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence”. This is demonstrably false and conspicuously the report never says what those ‘views’ are supposed to have been. As a technical body the TS will be aware that inspections, verification, or investigations are never about ‘views’. Views are subjective by definition. They are not the currency of scientists and engineers who (should) only deal in facts, evidence and hypotheses.

It is about the suppression and cherry-picking of these facts and evidence, and the refusal to test alternative hypotheses, which is scientifically questionable, that Inspectors A and B have raised concerns with senior management. These concerns are not exclusive to A and B. Other inspectors involved in the Douma investigation have the same, but because of their contractual relationship with the Organisation are not free to raise them without fear of repercussion.

It’s a brutally-effective fisking. As usual, the Official Story and the mainstream narrative are both false.

Extremists vs moderates

The Z-Man explains a pair of natural divides. I point out a third.

Michelle Malkin is a good example of why civic nationalism must inevitably lead to someone like Ben Shapiro lecturing you about the creedal nation. Her speech was pretty much what Ben Shapiro says, except she strongly opposes immigration and what she calls globalism. For obvious reasons, Malkin must argue on ideological grounds, rather than from nature. Her brand of dissident politics must be open to everyone, who accepts the ideological points of her program.

It’s one of those things that sounds good in theory, but in reality it is impossible to police ideological borders. The Left has been trying to solve that puzzle since the French Revolution and it always ends in disaster. The right-wing effort at it led to Buckley conservatism and eventually David French. For now, ideology and argument are the tools required to win people to our side, but ultimately the goal must be boundaries that do not require constant maintenance…

Listening to Fuentes speak, I was thinking about how this spasm of white identity politics has mirrored previous iterations. The alt-right split in two. One group is seeking to operate above ground and gain legitimacy. The other group retreated into a self-imposed ghetto. The TRS crowd is really just a younger version of the old Stormfront community that formed up after the Buchanan movement. Go back further and it is a replay of the Bircher-Buckley split.

Fundamentally, these splits are over presentation. The “optics” side cannot fathom why the hardcore cannot understand the need to make a good presentation. The hardcore cannot understand why the optics guys don’t see the dangers of compromise. Both sides are right, but both sides have always failed. The hardcore ends up in something similar to a cult and the optics guys get gobbled up by the system. There really needs to be a different approach to this in order to avoid a repeat of the past…

The reality is that every successful movement requires both its extremists and its moderates. See Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army, or the Palestine Zionist Executive and the Irgun. In this case, the core problem that the moderates face is that no matter how flawless their optics might be, their position simply isn’t a viable one. Like communism, like socialism, like secular humanism, civic nationalism has been thoroughly tried and tested. And it has failed, even more spectacularly than these other ideological catastrophes.

Of course, the one thing the political activists of every stripe never seem to grasp is that the political philosophers simply aren’t interested in activism of any kind. In my case, both the activists and their enemies alike fail to grasp that I’m neither interested in joining a cult nor in being gobbled up by the system. I’m not interested in joining anything, least of all a mass movement. There are no shortage of opinion leaders who seek attention and influence in pursuit of their ideals, and that is well and good, but there should always be someone to observe the events and make sense of them in a historical context too.

Those who venerate Aristotle, Virgil, and Thucydides are seldom inclined to follow the paths of Alexander, Caesar, and Alcibiades.

Creepy Joe claims the black vote

Diversity is coming back to bite the Democrats, hard. The South Carolina primary results:

48{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Biden
19{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Sanders
11{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Steyer
08{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Buttigieg
07{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Warren
03{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Klobuchar

Blacks simply will not vote either Sanders nor Bloomberg, which is why neither of them has a ghost of a chance against anyone in the general election, let alone the God-Emperor Donald Trump I.

Fake news about the fake pope

This would be almost Biblical if it were true:

The Vatican has confirmed in a statement that Pope Francis and two of his aides have tested positive for the novel Coronavirus. The three new cases add up to the over 400 cases confirmed in Italy under a week. Pope Francis missed a planned Mass with clergy in Rome yesterday after showing Coronavirus-like symptoms.

However, I haven’t seen any mention of this in the Italian media or from the Vatican press office site, so I’m highly dubious.

Just this season’s flu?

As large quantities of deaths fail to appear in Italy or anywhere else outside of China, there is some reason to at least begin to suspect that the potential danger from Corona-chan has been significantly exaggerated:

An editorial published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine speculated that the coronavirus currently causing panic in world markets could turn out no worse than “a severe seasonal influenza” in terms of mortality.

Citing an analysis of the available data from the outbreak in China, the authors note that there have been zero cases among children younger than 15; and that the fatality rate is 2{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} at most, and could be “considerably less than 1{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3}.”

Those who have died have been elderly or were already suffering from another illness — as with ordinary flu. The underlying data suggest that the symptoms varies, and fewer than one in six of the cases reported were “severe.”

The authors note that coronavirus looks to be much less severe than other recent outbreaks of respiratory illnesses:

[T]he overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3}) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} and 36{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3}, respectively.

The vast majority of patients recover, and among those who are hospitalized, the median stay thus far is 12 days.

Alternatively, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine may be heavily invested in the equity markets and are looking for a dead cat bounce to shed the remainder of their stocks. At this point, virtually no one outside of China actually knows anything.

Is Spielberg next?

Now that Weinstein has been convicted, it appears the #MeToo movement has another major Hollywood figure in its sights. CDAN offers a possible explanation for why Spielberg suddenly and unexpectedly bailed on the latest Indiana Jones movie:

This permanent A+ list mostly movie director is bailing on a project because of news he is trying to keep under wraps. Apparently there are recordings of him interviewing young child actors and asking them wholly inappropriate questions. The recordings are from about two decades ago and are from either one or two movies filmed at around the same time. He was only the director on one of them but helped cast both. 

Yet God hath placed by the side of each a man’s own Guardian Spirit, who is charged to watch over him—a Guardian who sleeps not nor is deceived…. So when you have shut the doors and made a darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone; for you are not alone, but God is within, and your Guardian Spirit, and what light do they need to behold what you do?
—Epictetus